I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena, that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
Look, the whole MS v. Linux feud has been going on for quite some time now (publicly since the Halloween documents, and privately since at least 1995). But whereas Microsoft is publicly showing its dedication to this relationship, showing they're willing to go the extra mile to keep the love burning, what have we done? What have we contributed?
Nothing. That's right: nothing. We're like spoiled kids unable to grasp the fundamentals of longterm relationships: communication and a willingness to share responsibilities and efforts equally between the two parties. They throw the antitrust case for us, but what have we done in return? We didn't even thank them. Pretty soon, Microsoft will stop speaking to us at all, maybe crash at a friend's house and start running up therapy bills with their suicidal thoughts and deppressional motivations.
Linux needs Microsoft the way Laverne needs Shirley. Without them, our drive for excellence will atrophy, just as theirs did when our relationship started petering out years ago. Why do we even make the pretense of a relationship at all? We should sever our ties and free Microsoft to pursue their old flames again, like that Apple fellow.
But unless we can take that drastic step (and I don't think we can, since we're so accustomed to the emotional security that comes form an abusive and dysfunctional relationship), then we have to start contributing again. Let's reaffirm our love by sabatoging the 2.4 kernel. I realize Redhat's been trying to help with their Redhat7 bugs, but this is a responsibility we have to assume ourselves. At the very least, we must slow down development a little, get a big smug attitude of victory and give Microsoft a chance to catch up.
Unless we do, it may spell the end of a beautiful relationship.
I'd ask "him" myself, but the site's already slashdotted. I mean, he was the principal designer of BSD, got the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (think Nobel prize for computer geeks under 30), was all over pipeline structure for the Sparcs and NFS (ok, maybe we should skip that last one). Here was a fellow who really knew technology from the inside out and who had a vision for how things ought to be: not dictated from management or marketing, but from an engineer himself. I respected him.
But now look at him. Co-chairman of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee. You can even listen to him discuss all the "great problems" his panel worked on, all the "exciting directions" he and the panel (and the Federal government) will take us in the next century.
Don't get me wrong. I like the Federal government. I think it's a great testimony to the strength of our democracy and constitution that our government has the ability to adapt to changing times and assume the vital roles our states can no longer play themselves (at least in the last eighty years or so). But at the same time, it's the same government that can't seem to keep its hands of the technology sector. Build this bomb; don't distribute these songs; don't do drugs or use the internet to tell your friends how to do drugs.
And where is Bill Joy in all this? He signs right up to be a big part. Not just a panel member, but the co-chairman. I'm not sure I would've done any different in his shoes, but then I don't have his stock options. I have a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed (if you count my pets -- I sure do). Power is seductive, but maybe he even could've made some great use of his. Maybe he could've brought a strong voice to the table and guided our nation with sensible national policy in this area for a change.
But did he? The answer is clearly 'no' or else we'd have heard of it by now. Did any of you even remember that panel when it was formed or what came out of it? It was buried pages deep in the New York Times. Not even the science&technology section made much fanfare.
Frankly, I'm disappointed with the guy. He let us all down.
Typical creationist pab, and I see it all the time. Just because something exists in nature doesn't mean it was necessarily placed there by an intelligent and omnipotent Creator. It goes back to Dawkins and the watchmaker -- complexity will manifest itself when given sufficient time and enough evolutionary pressure.
Look, the internet is going on thirty years old today. Do you have any idea how many doublings of Moore's law that is? Is it really that hard to believe that somewhere in there, when all those transistors got packed in really tight in warm dark quarters, they remained completely chaste? Is it so inconceivable that the result of just one of these matings could've produced the primordial ancestor of the modern internet filter?
The universe is an exciting enough place as it is. We don't have resort to unsubstantiated but entrenched rumors about divine intervention in these strictly mortal affairs.
I had 7 email accounts and usually got about 5 spams a day on some of them. I canceled those acounts, set up a new account which NO ONE but my friends/family gets, and set up an account at Excite (which is a nice one).
Or better yet, get a Hotmail account and let the spam collect at Microsoft's expense. Using junkbuster or a similar ad-filtering program, you're a net loss for them.
How long until we see all the vic20 emulators updated to emulate WAP? Personally, I can't stand WAP as a standard, but if you spread it around long enough, maybe it'll turn into fertilizer.
Read Calder v. Bull, a decision rendered back at the end of the 18th century or so. The ex-post-facto clause has long been held to apply only to criminal sanctions, not civil ones. In that case in particular, the Connecticut legislature (sitting in its preconsitutional capacity as high court) revised someone's will, having the effect of "punishing" one party but only in a civil capacity. Several tresspass cases from the Jim Crow south in this century have upheld that reasoning.
And even if it did apply to criminal sanctions, your example is still wrong. There's nothing constitutionally"ex-post-facto" about making something legal which was previously illegal. It's strictly a negative restriction.
Snail mail doesn't go far enough -- any idiot can write a letter and mail it. If you really want to make an impact in today's jaded DC politics, you have to think big. Unless it's staring them down from the heavens, they'll just ignore it. Hire skywriters.
Nolan didn't just start Atari. He was also the pioneer of Chuck E Cheese, that annoying pizza/playspace chain. It's a sad commentary on American consumerism that Chuck E Cheese is the $300 million company it is, while Atari, his true love, has all but slipped of the map. It must be truly frustrating, or at least as frustrating as things can be when you're still as rich as he is.
When the portable transistor radios came out decades ago, people worried about the distractions. When portable walkmans came out later, people worried even more about the distractions: "You mean, people will have these things strapped to their ears while walking around in public? How will they hear the cars coming down the street?" Ubiquitous cellphones and pdas have raised the level of technology but not so much the level of risk (as long as the idiots aren't operating heavy machinery at the time like, say, a car).
You won't see personal insurance any time soon, if ever. What you will see, though, is corporate insurance for companies whose employees rely on these devices in the course of employment. Deeper pockets --> greater liability, and all.
I'm just doing my part to show that, whatever edicts Rob and Jeff may hand down from on high as to what's best for slashdot and who deserves to be here, there's always untapped potential for creativity.
As long as they don't see a massive brain drain from the buyout, they should be doing fine. Despite what you say, there still exist companies like Microsoft and IBM who have enormous R&D departments and budgets. A buyout would be a shoe-in.
Besides that, they still have other products waiting in the wing (which haven't fled to other companies yet). Digital paper, for one. There are enormous untapped markets and potentials for growth, if they could get some competent management in there.
It may be bleak for us nostalgics, but it isn't half as bad for PARC as the naysayers would have us believe.
[W]hy would mother Nature tell us that we don't need to eat meat to get by in life while giving us sharpened teeth to eat meat better?
We have neither the sharpened teeth nor the intestinal infrastructure necessary to be meat eaters. Besides, my point wasn't one of material necessity but of moral obligation. You don't *need* to eat meat; therefore, you *ought* not eat meat.
But eating meat is a part of almost every human culture.
I do frown upon senseless violence to animals
Then don't kill them and eat their little bodies. It's entirely senseless.
So's spousal abuse. Social prevalence does not make it anything more than just popular. People like beating their spouses and they like eating their meat. It doesn't help your point.
Slashdot Mirror
Like Moller's skycar. Why do we have to do the equivalent of reinventing the flying wheel?
I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena , that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
Look, the whole MS v. Linux feud has been going on for quite some time now (publicly since the Halloween documents, and privately since at least 1995). But whereas Microsoft is publicly showing its dedication to this relationship, showing they're willing to go the extra mile to keep the love burning, what have we done? What have we contributed?
Nothing. That's right: nothing. We're like spoiled kids unable to grasp the fundamentals of longterm relationships: communication and a willingness to share responsibilities and efforts equally between the two parties. They throw the antitrust case for us, but what have we done in return? We didn't even thank them. Pretty soon, Microsoft will stop speaking to us at all, maybe crash at a friend's house and start running up therapy bills with their suicidal thoughts and deppressional motivations.
Linux needs Microsoft the way Laverne needs Shirley. Without them, our drive for excellence will atrophy, just as theirs did when our relationship started petering out years ago. Why do we even make the pretense of a relationship at all? We should sever our ties and free Microsoft to pursue their old flames again, like that Apple fellow.
But unless we can take that drastic step (and I don't think we can, since we're so accustomed to the emotional security that comes form an abusive and dysfunctional relationship), then we have to start contributing again. Let's reaffirm our love by sabatoging the 2.4 kernel. I realize Redhat's been trying to help with their Redhat7 bugs, but this is a responsibility we have to assume ourselves. At the very least, we must slow down development a little, get a big smug attitude of victory and give Microsoft a chance to catch up.
Unless we do, it may spell the end of a beautiful relationship.
No matter what you call
;-)
these so-called Haikus of yours,
they're still senryus
But thanks anyway.
I'd ask "him" myself, but the site's already slashdotted. I mean, he was the principal designer of BSD, got the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (think Nobel prize for computer geeks under 30), was all over pipeline structure for the Sparcs and NFS (ok, maybe we should skip that last one). Here was a fellow who really knew technology from the inside out and who had a vision for how things ought to be: not dictated from management or marketing, but from an engineer himself. I respected him.
But now look at him. Co-chairman of the Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee. You can even listen to him discuss all the "great problems" his panel worked on, all the "exciting directions" he and the panel (and the Federal government) will take us in the next century.
Don't get me wrong. I like the Federal government. I think it's a great testimony to the strength of our democracy and constitution that our government has the ability to adapt to changing times and assume the vital roles our states can no longer play themselves (at least in the last eighty years or so). But at the same time, it's the same government that can't seem to keep its hands of the technology sector. Build this bomb; don't distribute these songs; don't do drugs or use the internet to tell your friends how to do drugs.
And where is Bill Joy in all this? He signs right up to be a big part. Not just a panel member, but the co-chairman. I'm not sure I would've done any different in his shoes, but then I don't have his stock options. I have a mortgage to pay and mouths to feed (if you count my pets -- I sure do). Power is seductive, but maybe he even could've made some great use of his. Maybe he could've brought a strong voice to the table and guided our nation with sensible national policy in this area for a change.
But did he? The answer is clearly 'no' or else we'd have heard of it by now. Did any of you even remember that panel when it was formed or what came out of it? It was buried pages deep in the New York Times. Not even the science&technology section made much fanfare.
Frankly, I'm disappointed with the guy. He let us all down.
Age is a measure of cell oxidation and generations of cell division. Neither's going on if you're frozen, so you're fine at that level.
Typical creationist pab, and I see it all the time. Just because something exists in nature doesn't mean it was necessarily placed there by an intelligent and omnipotent Creator. It goes back to Dawkins and the watchmaker -- complexity will manifest itself when given sufficient time and enough evolutionary pressure.
Look, the internet is going on thirty years old today. Do you have any idea how many doublings of Moore's law that is? Is it really that hard to believe that somewhere in there, when all those transistors got packed in really tight in warm dark quarters, they remained completely chaste? Is it so inconceivable that the result of just one of these matings could've produced the primordial ancestor of the modern internet filter?
The universe is an exciting enough place as it is. We don't have resort to unsubstantiated but entrenched rumors about divine intervention in these strictly mortal affairs.
I had 7 email accounts and usually got about 5 spams a day on some of them. I canceled those acounts, set up a new account which NO ONE but my friends/family gets, and set up an account at Excite (which is a nice one).
Or better yet, get a Hotmail account and let the spam collect at Microsoft's expense. Using junkbuster or a similar ad-filtering program, you're a net loss for them.
Spambouncer has been running on Linux since at least the 2.0 kernel days.
Check out wap.org. Coincidence, or is something waiting in the wings?...
How long until we see all the vic20 emulators updated to emulate WAP? Personally, I can't stand WAP as a standard, but if you spread it around long enough, maybe it'll turn into fertilizer.
Read Calder v. Bull, a decision rendered back at the end of the 18th century or so. The ex-post-facto clause has long been held to apply only to criminal sanctions, not civil ones. In that case in particular, the Connecticut legislature (sitting in its preconsitutional capacity as high court) revised someone's will, having the effect of "punishing" one party but only in a civil capacity. Several tresspass cases from the Jim Crow south in this century have upheld that reasoning.
And even if it did apply to criminal sanctions, your example is still wrong. There's nothing constitutionally"ex-post-facto" about making something legal which was previously illegal. It's strictly a negative restriction.
Snail mail doesn't go far enough -- any idiot can write a letter and mail it. If you really want to make an impact in today's jaded DC politics, you have to think big. Unless it's staring them down from the heavens, they'll just ignore it. Hire skywriters.
While you're waiting for someone to translate the article (or redundantly post the 'fished version), amuse yourself with biographical information. The man has done much more for the digital audio field than just mp3. That said, it's much easier to get recognized when you have all those academic credentials (unlike some idiot in his twenties who puts together a buggy, centralized, mp3 server and calls it a revolution).
Nolan didn't just start Atari. He was also the pioneer of Chuck E Cheese, that annoying pizza/playspace chain. It's a sad commentary on American consumerism that Chuck E Cheese is the $300 million company it is, while Atari, his true love, has all but slipped of the map. It must be truly frustrating, or at least as frustrating as things can be when you're still as rich as he is.
When the portable transistor radios came out decades ago, people worried about the distractions. When portable walkmans came out later, people worried even more about the distractions: "You mean, people will have these things strapped to their ears while walking around in public? How will they hear the cars coming down the street?" Ubiquitous cellphones and pdas have raised the level of technology but not so much the level of risk (as long as the idiots aren't operating heavy machinery at the time like, say, a car).
You won't see personal insurance any time soon, if ever. What you will see, though, is corporate insurance for companies whose employees rely on these devices in the course of employment. Deeper pockets --> greater liability, and all.
"Mankind's fault"? Trust me, I'm quick one to blame men for what they deserve, but here I think you're going too far.
But what's the question? Therein lies the difficulty.
Wow. My very own imposter, someone who aspires to be what I have become. You love me! You really really love me! *sob*
I'm just doing my part to show that, whatever edicts Rob and Jeff may hand down from on high as to what's best for slashdot and who deserves to be here, there's always untapped potential for creativity.
TheSeventhCircuit |topornographyin |excitedaboutabig
Appealshasastrong |general,sincethe |precedent,,remember
trackrecordonfree-|ordinanceswept |thattheSupreme
speechrightsevenfor|broadlyandwould've |Court rarelyhears
sexuallyexplicit |evencoveredsuch |caseslikethisone
speech. AmericanBook|----------------------|unlesstheycom
Sellersv.Hudnutcame|TheSeventhCircuitof|fromCon
outofthe7thCircuit|Appealshasastrong|--localpol
andstruckdownthe |trackrecordonfree-|rarelytouchedonce
Indianapolisordinance|speechrightsevenfor|they'
againstpornography |sexuallyexplicit |bytheintermediate
deemeddegradingto |speech. |appealscourts. On
women(regardlessof |----------------------|theotherhand,the
howmuchpainthe |artisticworksas |Rehnquistcourthas
womenexperience,it's|Shakespeare'sand |beenespecially
stillconsidered |others'). Butbefore|attentivetoparents'
speech--aresultI |you1stamendment |"rights"oflate,so
actuallyagreewithin|mavensgettoo |nothingisassured.
spiteofmyopposition|
Companies being treated as collective plurals is the proper idiom in British English. They have a right to it; it is their lanugage, after all.
As long as they don't see a massive brain drain from the buyout, they should be doing fine. Despite what you say, there still exist companies like Microsoft and IBM who have enormous R&D departments and budgets. A buyout would be a shoe-in.
Besides that, they still have other products waiting in the wing (which haven't fled to other companies yet). Digital paper, for one. There are enormous untapped markets and potentials for growth, if they could get some competent management in there.
It may be bleak for us nostalgics, but it isn't half as bad for PARC as the naysayers would have us believe.
[W]hy would mother Nature tell us that we don't need to eat meat to get by in life while giving us sharpened teeth to eat meat better?
We have neither the sharpened teeth nor the intestinal infrastructure necessary to be meat eaters. Besides, my point wasn't one of material necessity but of moral obligation. You don't *need* to eat meat; therefore, you *ought* not eat meat.
But eating meat is a part of almost every human culture.
I do frown upon senseless violence to animals
Then don't kill them and eat their little bodies. It's entirely senseless.
So's spousal abuse. Social prevalence does not make it anything more than just popular. People like beating their spouses and they like eating their meat. It doesn't help your point.
How can you prove matters of metaphysics? That's why they're metaphysical in the first place.
Actually, genuine question here: What is the vegetarian viewpoint on oral sex? Do you spit/swallow/run to mommy?
Swallow. The guiding principle is: don't eat it if it tries to run away.