It's actually very easy, I've done it. It's just not something anyone does because of two factors:
1. Desktops always look a little odd when encapsulated inside of a window. Think VLC or VirtualBox/etc.
2. Aero isn't a touch Interface, and all web development has been going towards UIs that work well on both touch and desktop systems.
And that latter is also why Windows 10 looks the way it does. Which is also why it looks like the web enough for you to think they're replicating what looks good on the web - they're trying to do the same thing.
No, it was put up as a big fuck you to the rest of the country. SC put it up in the early 1960s to protest civil rights. It wasn't up before then.
In the early 2000s, it was superficially moved to a cemetery in front of the Capitol, but that was a "compromise", and was the moving of the flag, not a removal.
Well, it is banning the game (from the App Store) if Apple removes it from the App Store. The fact you can modify it and get your modified version put up doesn't mean you don't suffer harm in the meantime.
And the modification you're having to do is also absurd. What are you going to use to represent Confederates in battle other than a Confederate battle flag?
I'm not finding a lot of support for Apple's position at the moment. Apple's actions, if anything, undermine the more serious reasons to call on the government of a US state to stop using it. Suddenly a call for a US state to show humanity and stop being dicks is turned into a de-facto nationwide ban on controversial symbols. Not good.
I think a part of it is a misunderstanding on the part of some of the companies pulling flags from their shelves.
The outrage over the flag wasn't that the flag itself exists. It was that a State of the United States of America had it flying over or in front of their capitol building, and worse still than that, was doing it as a "Fuck you" to the rest of the country for "imposing" civil rights on it.
Given the fact it's suddenly high profile, I can certainly see some manager walking through BigboxMart looking at their shelves and seeing bumper stickers or even the flags themselves, and saying "Do we really want to be the people selling these?"
But... to go further, and start banning anything with the flag in or on it, regardless of context, shows businesses have forgotten what the controversy was in the first place.
I think it's a kneejerk reaction, to something in the news, and kneejerk reactions are usually pretty bad. Of course, my kneejerk reaction is what I'm writing here, so for all I know, I'm about to find my position is ridiculous too.
I think this story is a little more nuanced than that to be honest.
Apple, eBay, et al, obviously have the right to sell whatever they want, and if they don't want to sell a flag representing treason and racism, then that's fine and their right, of course.
But...
1. Apple is going a tad overboard here. For example, they're banning Civil War games, because those games have Confederate Flags in them. I'm confused as to what Apple thinks its doing by banning those games.
2. There's a difference between, say, a State, like South Carolina, flying a flag that essentially says "Fuck Black people" either over its State House, or more recently, in front of it, and someone, that is, a person, not a government, be they... a little ill-informed, or an outright racist, buying it to express their own views, for some aesthetic reason, ironically, or whatever.
I would rather the companies currently rushing to ban it step back for a moment and think their policies through. What are they trying to achieve? What products do they have that actually portray the flag and in what context are those flags portrayed? Is banning all of them the right way forward?
(Large wall of text comprising of quoting me and then adding "LULZ" or some other generic non-contributory comment removed. But you're not shitposting are you.)
I wish we could have an adult discussion of gender issues in tech, if not here than somewhere. But we cannot, because your side has already decided the answers and will shout down anyone who disputes them.
No, no, we haven't. Even if we had, what possible point is there in shouting down all discussion of gender in tech, of demanding Slashdot ban discussions of it?
But we cannot, because your side has already decided the answers and will shout down anyone who disputes them. You throw poo about "brogrammers" and "toxic masculinity".
Nope, I don't. Not to people who want to seriously discuss the issues. I've called (as I did above) groups who deliberately shitpost and demand Slashdot ban articles on sexism names, but, why would those people be deserving of respect?
And something tells me that the very fact you'd use the words "toxic masculinity" as something that apparently I (who has never used that term) are using the shutdown debate means you've heard some third hand version of what it means, but have actually no idea what it means.
Not that I necessarily am unsympathetic. To tell the truth, a lot of the jargon used by academic feminists, from TM to privilege and even to "sexism" (which is used in a slightly different way to how most of us use it) is confusing, awkward, and frequently likely to be misinterpreted. But at the same time, the ideas they're referring to need labels. It's just a shame someone takes, say "TM", thinks it means men are toxic, and then promptly shits all over a discussion trying to deal with under-representation of women in the workforce where the term hasn't even been used because "TM" was somehow an insult to them, and it must have been made by "Feminazis", and "Feminazis" want women to have better opportunities, and therefore you an enemy of women having better opportunities.
Funny how that works. Almost like the jackass who used that term in front of you (because, let's be honest, you didn't hear it from Anita Sarkeesian or, for that matter, Joss Whedon: you heard it from another fellow/r/KIAer and you just took as read their interpretation was the right one) actually wanted you to shit all over posts about women being given better opportunities.
You claim atrocities and if other people (men or women) say they've never seen such, you make the unfalsifiable claim they happen constantly behind their back. You alternate between claiming men and women are the same (and therefore there should be 50% representation in tech) and that they are different and need to be treated differently. You insist that certain feminist views be accepted as axioms without or in spite of evidence. And if people insist on arguing against your point of view you call them horrible misogynists and claim they personally are part of the problem.
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like some dumbass comments suggesting the massive harassment campaigns against women in tech aren't happening, despite being rather obviously visible. And you're putting other words into my mouth, which again sound less like even something those awful, awful, SJWs, say, and more like what people in/r/KIA say SJWs say. Men and women the same? 50% representation? Views accepted without question?
Do you realize what/r/KIA is doing to your brain? It's fucking you up man. It's not just making you look like a misogynist dick who gets literally everything wrong about the "other side", but it's actually moving you closer to being one.
Slashdot's approach to moderation simply prevents your side from effectively censoring discussion through sock-puppeting as you would at a si
Oh right, the age-old gambit of "let's moderate dissent away"
No, I was describing the age-old gambit of "shout down people we don't want people to listen to", and asking how it can solved.
Dissent? No. We're not having a discussion on Slashdot here about whether this will help women, or help the tech industry. We're just having the usual suspects demanding Slashdot ban discussion of the topic, together with some weird posts complaining about discrimination against men. Plus the usual stupid rants about "SJWs" (ie anyone whose views on women is to the left of Saudi Arabia's.)
What? These aren't "knuckleheads from/r/KotakuInAction" as you claim, these are the actual staple slashdot commenters.
No, most of them aren't. Most are ACs, and the vast majority have recent Slashdot IDs.
Your kind have shown repeatedly that there is nothing to discuss
"Your kind"?
We can't have an adult discussion here because you knuckleheads insist on shitflooding every single article about diversity with whines about how outraged you are Slashdot is even covering the topic.
And yeah, some, like you, live in denial, absolutely convinced that any woman complaining about harassment and death threats on the 'net is somehow part of some kind of weird conspiracy to cut your balls off and steal your vidja.
Me, I'd like it if we could discuss it. You probably should READ the comments (you don't, except for the ones that agree with you, obviously), but if you're not prepared to do that, go somewhere else. There's no reason to keep shitposting and abusing moderation to silence those who want to discuss it.
What harm does it do to you, seriously, that we discuss the topic?
While it's a mainstay of many movies from the 1960s and 1970s for criminals to disguise themselves using highly expensive plastic surgery, I'd hardly call it "common", no.
You saw the summary on Slashdot's front page. You knew what the comments would be. Why did you go ahead anyway and click through?
Did you expect an adult discussion of gender issues on Slashdot? Did you expect an interesting back and forth discussion about whether this will help with various issues to do with women in tech, or if other issues need to be resolved that are of more import, or anything like that?
If so, did you miss the dozen or so other articles in the last year that dealt with similar articles, where the comments section was flooded by knuckleheads from/r/KotakuInAction? Where almost every comment that tried to discuss sexism was modded down out of view, and every comment disclaiming sexism exists or demanding Slashdot ban the subject from their front page modded up.
If ever there was a sign we need a different approach to Slashdot moderation, it would be this. I just don't know what that approach is. Slashdot's broteam is toxic, too effective at shouting down voices who want to discuss serious issues. How to deal with that in a way that doesn't have equally bad side effects is a discussion we need to have.
But not everyone would interpret it the same way. Just because you meant it one way, doesn't mean other people will interpret it that way.
Agreed, but it's pretty hard to read her comments as an attack on all people who play computer games. She's very clear she's talking about a specific group that marketers aim at.
She should probably have mentioned "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" as an example of a previous case in which the marketers aimed at this demographic and found they'd completely misjudged.
Those guys who made those dongle jokes probably didn't mean offense as Adria Richard interpreted it.
Probably not. It was unprofessional but it's an outrage that they lost their jobs over it, and that Adria felt the need to pillory them for it.
Game devs probably don't mean the sexist things Anita Sarkeesian interpreted in their games.
Correct, and she'd probably be the first to agree. She's pointing them out in part because they're tropes - cliches (for want of a better word) artists put in without really thinking because they're convenient, without the artists thinking about the consequences.
Sarkeesian is not the monster she's portrayed as by GG FWIW. She's not pro-censorship, she's the opposite. She believes criticism, not boycotts and legal action, is the right approach to dealing with what she sees as problematic issues with games. It's very obvious to anyone watching her videos, and seeing, for example, her criticisms of - say - Hitman - in context.
Which is why gamedevs more or less love her.
Ok, then you shouldn't be offended by all the slashdotters coming out to object these articles and feminism in general, unless somehow you are one of them "feminazis" or "SJWs" that they often complain about.
I'm not offended, I object to it. There's a difference.
I object because it means we can't have an adult discussion of how to deal with very real issues of gender (and other minority) problems within our industry. Instead we see every discussion of any article that raises such an issue swamped by an unholy alliance of "I've got mine" men terrified their territory is being stepped upon, misogynists and other bigots, and contrarians who heard some talking point supposedly debunking the notion of sexism and now believe it cannot happen. They swamp the forums, making them toxic, and it becomes impossible to discuss how to solve very real issues in an adult fashion.
As I said in my earlier (now modded troll... seriously?) comment: as a father of a 2yo girl, I'm painfully aware how easy it is to encourage girls to follow paths away from their interests just by referring to it - once even! - as a boy thing. My girl has always shown an interest in Thomas the Tank Engine and found PJs with Thomas on them. I, genuinely innocently being concerned it might not fit her because I don't know if boys and girl's PJs are cut differently, asked my wife and made the mistake of saying they were boys PJs in B's earshot.
That's almost minor compared to some of the things we want to discuss here, though it does relate to this specific story. Promote chemistry sets for boys, and girls will feel they're not "girl's toys" and they shouldn't touch them. But it's not clear that the right solution is to promote "girl's chemistry sets" or if that just exacerbates the problem.
So, pretty please, let us discuss this like adults and if you're not interested in the subject, please walk away. These are not attacks on you. It is not an attack on gamers to say that many games have problematic themes from the point of view of a healthy relationship between the sexes. It's not an attack on comic book readers to say it would be nice to see more superheroines - preferably not overly sexualized. (And I'm happy that both issues are starting to be addressed.)
verall the best advice I can give everyone is that if your son or daughter is interested in something nurture it! Sports or art or science, they all give us ways to grow, and it really doesn't matter what gender you are so long as you never stop learning.
Thank you. This is exactly what I hope to do. I'm still kicking myself for describing the Thomas PJs as "boys PJs" within her earshot because I saw immediately the affect and that even the most minor things can cause someone to think something they find interesting is not for them.
It's a learning process. I hope she can navigate these bizarre socially restrictive waters to find her own happiness, and I'll do my best to help her.
No, they wouldn't expect that. They'd never go to those links under normal circumstances, unless they saw it written down.
Would you go to slashdot.org/macdonalds and expect a page about hamburgers to come up?
The only people that go to youtube.com/lush are people that have seen it written down or who have bookmarked it, which means, essentially, only people visiting this blogger.
URLs should not change meaning except in extreme circumstances. Google's inability to understand that is baffling given their position as the web's defacto gatekeeper.
It's a shame Google has nobody working for them who knows what a URL does and what it's meant to do.
Maybe they can employ someone to tell them, and explain why changing URLs at random (or "algorithmically" if you'd prefer) to go to entirely different things is a problem.
Perhaps that same person can then tell them what a search engine is...
Yeah I did. What a stupid comment. Aren't you glad you didn't write and sign it?
Yes, describe any demographic, even a made up one and you can find examples of people who fit it. Alexander didn't pretend otherwise, indeed it was a part of her point.
Anyone who actually read Leigh Alexander's post saw that she put the word "gamer" in quotes throughout. She wasn't referring to people who play games, she was referring specifically, as the AC even admitted, to a shitslinging anti-social "demographic". A group that doesn't really exist (as a demographic anyway) but that games makers have been insisting every game should be aimed at since the early nineties.
There was never any reason to be offended at Alexander's post unless somehow you were an obnoxious anti-social loon. Who happened to play games. Who didn't appreciate being called an obtuse shitslinger even though you knew you were one. WTF? Why? I mean how do you simultaneously see the words "obtuse shitslinger" and self identify, and become offended at the same time? Or was it just the notion the games industry shouldn't market towards you?
> These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They donâ(TM)t have to be yours. There is no âsideâ(TM) to be on, there is no âdebateâ(TM) to be had.
That's referring to real people. A LOT of real people. THe author explicitly intended it to refer to them and backpedaling and spouting double-think about it is no use now.
Well, you've called me a "You're a shameless lying zealot" and followed that by a claim I'm "backpedaling" (huh?) and "spouting double-think", so I'm going to assume that one of those "real" people are you. Not because you play games, but because you are a an obtuse shitslinger, and a childish internet-arguer.
And here we have it. Why you were offended. Why your interpretation of the comment wasn't that it should aim at a demographic that doesn't exist per se.
Yes, of course, if you describe any market, you're going to get a tiny minority that do fit into that. If the Foobar industry aims at a group of 25-40 year old Nazis who love Hitler, and make every Foobar aimed at them, then when someone calls them up on it and says "Wait, the vast majority of Foobarers are not 25-40 year old Nazis. "Foobarers" - the term you've been using to describe 25-40 year old Nazis do not have to be your audience", then yeah, a few Nazis, who make a minority of actual Foobarers, aren't going to be upset.
There was no reason, EVER, to be upset with Leigh Alexander's criticism of the games industry for going slapping the label "Gamer" on a made up demographic of jackasses. Not unless you were a jackass yourself. Not a gamer, a jackass.
Alexander never attacked gamers. She attacked the industry's marketing of games towards a made up demographic of obnoxious assholes.
But I suspect you know that. Your problem is that you aren't a gamer. It's that you are a "Gamer". And combination of someone suggesting the industry shouldn't cater to you, and your own antisocial asshattery, is a lethal mix.
The only people I would describe as "perpetually offended" are those who swamp every single story concerning diversity with whines that Slashdot shouldn't cover such issues, and somehow it's an attack on gamers (WTF? Seriously?) to want the technology industry to both be open to more people, and to produce products aimed at more people.
Nobody's coming for your games.
Nobody's insulted you.
Nobody "attacked" gamers in any real sense - that article you keep bitching about is one you never read, it was talking about a made up marketing demographic, not the real people that constitute "everyone who plays games".
This not a zero sum game. Employing more women does not mean employing fewer men, just like shooting fewer unarmed black people does not mean shooting more armed white people. Making chemistry sets that appeal to both boys and girls does not mean fewer boys will play with them (and wouldn't it be nice if the average boy didn't feel socially awkward about wanting an Easybake Oven? Or is cooking something only women should do all of a sudden?)
I appreciate for most of you who swamp the comments at Slashdot demanding the site ignore the very public discussion of underrepresentation in tech will not care about any of this. For some reason, you continue to interpret the discussion as an attack on you when it's nothing of the sort. But I wish you would. In the meantime, I kindly ask you reread my comment above, particularly the message to you, directly, from my myself and on behalf of my daughter - one of the many millions of girls who faces a miserable future if I let you thugs win.
1. This site has always covered a variety of subjects, and women in IT isn't a new issue.
2. Actually, many of us are interested in issues relating to why various groups are excluded from IT
3. There was a time this site wasn't packed with gamergaters or paleogamergaters responding to every post about exclusion with demands Slashdot stop covering the subject. There's always been a few unpleasant groups mind you, but usually they made up a tiny minority.
4. Neither this post, and none of the other posts on similar topics, are designed to make anyone feel bad. If you feel bad because you're a nerd, then you're a fucking idiot, because the story is loosely related to the lack of women nerds. If you feel bad because you're white and male (or otherwise have what feminists call, somewhat confusingly and misleadingly, "privilege") then you're also a fucking idiot. If, on the other hand, you feel bad because you didn't wait to see your daughter's interests before buying her 100 princess outfits when she was two, and passed by the chemistry sets when she was a little older because you didn't think she'd be into that, then yeah, feel bad fuckface.
I remember when Slashdot used to have a somewhat smarter community that didn't respond to anything with the words "Women" or "Girls" in the headline with some kind of MRA/Gamergate BS centered around imaginary feminists and an apparent avoidance of discussing the issues raised by the article.
In other words, alas, I think you're spitting in the wind trying to explain to these knuckleheads what the article is about.
All I know is this: I want my daughter to have the same opportunities as males. I don't want her to have those opportunities on paper, but in practice find she's steered away by everything from a hostile work environment where the mere admission of working in tech leads to harassment online and off, to the absurd segregation of "interests" we see all the time.
On Saturday night we went to the store to buy her new pajamas. I wasn't sure if girls and boys PJs are cut differently, so I went into the girl's section with her. She promptly ran around the entire row (which was boys on the other side) and screamed, from the other side, "Dada! It's Thomas! It's Thomas!"
She found the PJs she wanted. Thomas the Tank Engine PJs. In the boy's section. She's loved Thomas since she saw the associated TV show start to play at the end of our Sesame Street recordings, and we ended up (neither my wife nor I can stand the show) recording it for her under protest.
I waited until my wife came to ask whether there was any physiological reason why she shouldn't wear "boy's" PJs. Unfortunately she overheard, and immediately became convinced she couldn't wear the PJs because they were "for boys". We had to explain that's not what Dada meant before she made it clear again that the Thomas PJs were the ones she wanted (and did so enthusiastically), and last night she wore them and told me they were the best PJs ever.
So, to those of you saying that boys and girls can't share the same interests, and that it's right that marketers aim stuff to do with princesses and fairies at girls, and dinosaurs and superheroes at boys, and pretending Feminists are demanding things they're not and demonizing that group that's trying to ensure my daughter has the same opportunities I did, on behalf of my daughter and I, I wish you a hearty fuck you.
(And yeah, this is something I believed before I had a daughter, but I can tell you now it hits home now more than ever.)
Not intentionally, but I've nearly accidentally bought that shit because the infants and childrens medicines section at most pharmacies is full of it, with only careful reading of the small print revealing it's homoeopathic (indeed, some of it isn't labelled using the word explicitly, you have to rely on the fact it tells you the dilution to realize - I guess they know we're onto them.)
I suspect a sizable number of people go in to pharmacies desperate for anything that will relieve their 2 year old's stomach/congestion/whatever and ended up leaving with homoeopathic crap because that's the only thing sold in that age range, and at that point they'd try a witch doctor if one was available.
As I've argued before, much to the anger of some, at least one country, the US, can do a lot by reducing coercion in a critical area that happens to be responsible for around 25% of US CO2 emissions.
The US is the only country I' m aware of where most urban areas are mandated to follow suburban planning policies, making redevelopment within cities prohibitively expensive as all developments are subject to absurd parking mandates that make little sense in high density areas where good doesn't-even-need-subsidies transit should be the norm.
Change that, and give developers more freedom to build what people actually want, and a sizable number of people won't feel forced to live in suburbia any more (and many people who currently live there thinking urban living is somehow synonymous with run-down crime ridden neighborhoods will change their minds.)
Staggeringly enough, I don't think most people want to live inefficiently. Most want to make the maximum use of their dollars to get the best living environment they can. Most state and counties currently force them to waste dollars on supporting huge amounts of infrastructure that offer little value to them.
Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee some idiot will respond to this claiming I'm the one forcing people to do something, because I'm proposing offering a choice of living more efficiently, and that... I don't know... will make people who still choose to live in the middle of nowhere feel bad or something? Or maybe they're terrified that the market will choose the urban areas and all of a sudden suburbia will become run down and impossible to live in? I have no idea. I don't understand the mindset.
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually very easy, I've done it. It's just not something anyone does because of two factors:
1. Desktops always look a little odd when encapsulated inside of a window. Think VLC or VirtualBox/etc.
2. Aero isn't a touch Interface, and all web development has been going towards UIs that work well on both touch and desktop systems.
And that latter is also why Windows 10 looks the way it does. Which is also why it looks like the web enough for you to think they're replicating what looks good on the web - they're trying to do the same thing.
If you enforce it by banning the game until it's modified, then yes, it is. By definition.
Can you get the game now? No? Then it's banned.
I'm not talking about just Slashdot.
No, it was put up as a big fuck you to the rest of the country. SC put it up in the early 1960s to protest civil rights. It wasn't up before then.
In the early 2000s, it was superficially moved to a cemetery in front of the Capitol, but that was a "compromise", and was the moving of the flag, not a removal.
Well, it is banning the game (from the App Store) if Apple removes it from the App Store. The fact you can modify it and get your modified version put up doesn't mean you don't suffer harm in the meantime.
And the modification you're having to do is also absurd. What are you going to use to represent Confederates in battle other than a Confederate battle flag?
I'm not finding a lot of support for Apple's position at the moment. Apple's actions, if anything, undermine the more serious reasons to call on the government of a US state to stop using it. Suddenly a call for a US state to show humanity and stop being dicks is turned into a de-facto nationwide ban on controversial symbols. Not good.
Yeah well, I'm still not buying it, I must prefer the dual band one I have which is guaranteed not to radiate asbestos on the 2.4GHz frequency.
I think a part of it is a misunderstanding on the part of some of the companies pulling flags from their shelves.
The outrage over the flag wasn't that the flag itself exists. It was that a State of the United States of America had it flying over or in front of their capitol building, and worse still than that, was doing it as a "Fuck you" to the rest of the country for "imposing" civil rights on it.
Given the fact it's suddenly high profile, I can certainly see some manager walking through BigboxMart looking at their shelves and seeing bumper stickers or even the flags themselves, and saying "Do we really want to be the people selling these?"
But... to go further, and start banning anything with the flag in or on it, regardless of context, shows businesses have forgotten what the controversy was in the first place.
I think it's a kneejerk reaction, to something in the news, and kneejerk reactions are usually pretty bad. Of course, my kneejerk reaction is what I'm writing here, so for all I know, I'm about to find my position is ridiculous too.
I think this story is a little more nuanced than that to be honest.
Apple, eBay, et al, obviously have the right to sell whatever they want, and if they don't want to sell a flag representing treason and racism, then that's fine and their right, of course.
But...
1. Apple is going a tad overboard here. For example, they're banning Civil War games, because those games have Confederate Flags in them. I'm confused as to what Apple thinks its doing by banning those games.
2. There's a difference between, say, a State, like South Carolina, flying a flag that essentially says "Fuck Black people" either over its State House, or more recently, in front of it, and someone, that is, a person, not a government, be they... a little ill-informed, or an outright racist, buying it to express their own views, for some aesthetic reason, ironically, or whatever.
I would rather the companies currently rushing to ban it step back for a moment and think their policies through. What are they trying to achieve? What products do they have that actually portray the flag and in what context are those flags portrayed? Is banning all of them the right way forward?
No, no, we haven't. Even if we had, what possible point is there in shouting down all discussion of gender in tech, of demanding Slashdot ban discussions of it?
Nope, I don't. Not to people who want to seriously discuss the issues. I've called (as I did above) groups who deliberately shitpost and demand Slashdot ban articles on sexism names, but, why would those people be deserving of respect?
And something tells me that the very fact you'd use the words "toxic masculinity" as something that apparently I (who has never used that term) are using the shutdown debate means you've heard some third hand version of what it means, but have actually no idea what it means.
Not that I necessarily am unsympathetic. To tell the truth, a lot of the jargon used by academic feminists, from TM to privilege and even to "sexism" (which is used in a slightly different way to how most of us use it) is confusing, awkward, and frequently likely to be misinterpreted. But at the same time, the ideas they're referring to need labels. It's just a shame someone takes, say "TM", thinks it means men are toxic, and then promptly shits all over a discussion trying to deal with under-representation of women in the workforce where the term hasn't even been used because "TM" was somehow an insult to them, and it must have been made by "Feminazis", and "Feminazis" want women to have better opportunities, and therefore you an enemy of women having better opportunities.
Funny how that works. Almost like the jackass who used that term in front of you (because, let's be honest, you didn't hear it from Anita Sarkeesian or, for that matter, Joss Whedon: you heard it from another fellow /r/KIAer and you just took as read their interpretation was the right one) actually wanted you to shit all over posts about women being given better opportunities.
I honestly don't know what you're talking about. It sounds like some dumbass comments suggesting the massive harassment campaigns against women in tech aren't happening, despite being rather obviously visible. And you're putting other words into my mouth, which again sound less like even something those awful, awful, SJWs, say, and more like what people in /r/KIA say SJWs say. Men and women the same? 50% representation? Views accepted without question?
Do you realize what /r/KIA is doing to your brain? It's fucking you up man. It's not just making you look like a misogynist dick who gets literally everything wrong about the "other side", but it's actually moving you closer to being one.
No, I was describing the age-old gambit of "shout down people we don't want people to listen to", and asking how it can solved.
Dissent? No. We're not having a discussion on Slashdot here about whether this will help women, or help the tech industry. We're just having the usual suspects demanding Slashdot ban discussion of the topic, together with some weird posts complaining about discrimination against men. Plus the usual stupid rants about "SJWs" (ie anyone whose views on women is to the left of Saudi Arabia's.)
No, most of them aren't. Most are ACs, and the vast majority have recent Slashdot IDs.
"Your kind"?
We can't have an adult discussion here because you knuckleheads insist on shitflooding every single article about diversity with whines about how outraged you are Slashdot is even covering the topic.
And yeah, some, like you, live in denial, absolutely convinced that any woman complaining about harassment and death threats on the 'net is somehow part of some kind of weird conspiracy to cut your balls off and steal your vidja.
Me, I'd like it if we could discuss it. You probably should READ the comments (you don't, except for the ones that agree with you, obviously), but if you're not prepared to do that, go somewhere else. There's no reason to keep shitposting and abusing moderation to silence those who want to discuss it.
What harm does it do to you, seriously, that we discuss the topic?
While it's a mainstay of many movies from the 1960s and 1970s for criminals to disguise themselves using highly expensive plastic surgery, I'd hardly call it "common", no.
Hi, gentle reader.
You saw the summary on Slashdot's front page. You knew what the comments would be. Why did you go ahead anyway and click through?
Did you expect an adult discussion of gender issues on Slashdot? Did you expect an interesting back and forth discussion about whether this will help with various issues to do with women in tech, or if other issues need to be resolved that are of more import, or anything like that?
If so, did you miss the dozen or so other articles in the last year that dealt with similar articles, where the comments section was flooded by knuckleheads from /r/KotakuInAction? Where almost every comment that tried to discuss sexism was modded down out of view, and every comment disclaiming sexism exists or demanding Slashdot ban the subject from their front page modded up.
If ever there was a sign we need a different approach to Slashdot moderation, it would be this. I just don't know what that approach is. Slashdot's broteam is toxic, too effective at shouting down voices who want to discuss serious issues. How to deal with that in a way that doesn't have equally bad side effects is a discussion we need to have.
Agreed, but it's pretty hard to read her comments as an attack on all people who play computer games. She's very clear she's talking about a specific group that marketers aim at.
She should probably have mentioned "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" as an example of a previous case in which the marketers aimed at this demographic and found they'd completely misjudged.
Probably not. It was unprofessional but it's an outrage that they lost their jobs over it, and that Adria felt the need to pillory them for it.
Correct, and she'd probably be the first to agree. She's pointing them out in part because they're tropes - cliches (for want of a better word) artists put in without really thinking because they're convenient, without the artists thinking about the consequences.
Sarkeesian is not the monster she's portrayed as by GG FWIW. She's not pro-censorship, she's the opposite. She believes criticism, not boycotts and legal action, is the right approach to dealing with what she sees as problematic issues with games. It's very obvious to anyone watching her videos, and seeing, for example, her criticisms of - say - Hitman - in context.
Which is why gamedevs more or less love her.
I'm not offended, I object to it. There's a difference.
I object because it means we can't have an adult discussion of how to deal with very real issues of gender (and other minority) problems within our industry. Instead we see every discussion of any article that raises such an issue swamped by an unholy alliance of "I've got mine" men terrified their territory is being stepped upon, misogynists and other bigots, and contrarians who heard some talking point supposedly debunking the notion of sexism and now believe it cannot happen. They swamp the forums, making them toxic, and it becomes impossible to discuss how to solve very real issues in an adult fashion.
As I said in my earlier (now modded troll... seriously?) comment: as a father of a 2yo girl, I'm painfully aware how easy it is to encourage girls to follow paths away from their interests just by referring to it - once even! - as a boy thing. My girl has always shown an interest in Thomas the Tank Engine and found PJs with Thomas on them. I, genuinely innocently being concerned it might not fit her because I don't know if boys and girl's PJs are cut differently, asked my wife and made the mistake of saying they were boys PJs in B's earshot.
That's almost minor compared to some of the things we want to discuss here, though it does relate to this specific story. Promote chemistry sets for boys, and girls will feel they're not "girl's toys" and they shouldn't touch them. But it's not clear that the right solution is to promote "girl's chemistry sets" or if that just exacerbates the problem.
So, pretty please, let us discuss this like adults and if you're not interested in the subject, please walk away. These are not attacks on you. It is not an attack on gamers to say that many games have problematic themes from the point of view of a healthy relationship between the sexes. It's not an attack on comic book readers to say it would be nice to see more superheroines - preferably not overly sexualized. (And I'm happy that both issues are starting to be addressed.)
If acknowledging tha
Thank you. This is exactly what I hope to do. I'm still kicking myself for describing the Thomas PJs as "boys PJs" within her earshot because I saw immediately the affect and that even the most minor things can cause someone to think something they find interesting is not for them.
It's a learning process. I hope she can navigate these bizarre socially restrictive waters to find her own happiness, and I'll do my best to help her.
No, they wouldn't expect that. They'd never go to those links under normal circumstances, unless they saw it written down.
Would you go to slashdot.org/macdonalds and expect a page about hamburgers to come up?
The only people that go to youtube.com/lush are people that have seen it written down or who have bookmarked it, which means, essentially, only people visiting this blogger.
URLs should not change meaning except in extreme circumstances. Google's inability to understand that is baffling given their position as the web's defacto gatekeeper.
It's a shame Google has nobody working for them who knows what a URL does and what it's meant to do.
Maybe they can employ someone to tell them, and explain why changing URLs at random (or "algorithmically" if you'd prefer) to go to entirely different things is a problem.
Perhaps that same person can then tell them what a search engine is...
Happy Father's Day too! And congratulations to your daughter!
Yeah I did. What a stupid comment. Aren't you glad you didn't write and sign it?
Yes, describe any demographic, even a made up one and you can find examples of people who fit it. Alexander didn't pretend otherwise, indeed it was a part of her point.
Anyone who actually read Leigh Alexander's post saw that she put the word "gamer" in quotes throughout. She wasn't referring to people who play games, she was referring specifically, as the AC even admitted, to a shitslinging anti-social "demographic". A group that doesn't really exist (as a demographic anyway) but that games makers have been insisting every game should be aimed at since the early nineties.
There was never any reason to be offended at Alexander's post unless somehow you were an obnoxious anti-social loon. Who happened to play games. Who didn't appreciate being called an obtuse shitslinger even though you knew you were one. WTF? Why? I mean how do you simultaneously see the words "obtuse shitslinger" and self identify, and become offended at the same time? Or was it just the notion the games industry shouldn't market towards you?
It was the latter, wasn't it?
Well, you've called me a "You're a shameless lying zealot" and followed that by a claim I'm "backpedaling" (huh?) and "spouting double-think", so I'm going to assume that one of those "real" people are you. Not because you play games, but because you are a an obtuse shitslinger, and a childish internet-arguer.
And here we have it. Why you were offended. Why your interpretation of the comment wasn't that it should aim at a demographic that doesn't exist per se.
Yes, of course, if you describe any market, you're going to get a tiny minority that do fit into that. If the Foobar industry aims at a group of 25-40 year old Nazis who love Hitler, and make every Foobar aimed at them, then when someone calls them up on it and says "Wait, the vast majority of Foobarers are not 25-40 year old Nazis. "Foobarers" - the term you've been using to describe 25-40 year old Nazis do not have to be your audience", then yeah, a few Nazis, who make a minority of actual Foobarers, aren't going to be upset.
There was no reason, EVER, to be upset with Leigh Alexander's criticism of the games industry for going slapping the label "Gamer" on a made up demographic of jackasses. Not unless you were a jackass yourself. Not a gamer, a jackass.
Alexander never attacked gamers. She attacked the industry's marketing of games towards a made up demographic of obnoxious assholes.
But I suspect you know that. Your problem is that you aren't a gamer. It's that you are a "Gamer". And combination of someone suggesting the industry shouldn't cater to you, and your own antisocial asshattery, is a lethal mix.
The only people I would describe as "perpetually offended" are those who swamp every single story concerning diversity with whines that Slashdot shouldn't cover such issues, and somehow it's an attack on gamers (WTF? Seriously?) to want the technology industry to both be open to more people, and to produce products aimed at more people.
Nobody's coming for your games.
Nobody's insulted you.
Nobody "attacked" gamers in any real sense - that article you keep bitching about is one you never read, it was talking about a made up marketing demographic, not the real people that constitute "everyone who plays games".
This not a zero sum game. Employing more women does not mean employing fewer men, just like shooting fewer unarmed black people does not mean shooting more armed white people. Making chemistry sets that appeal to both boys and girls does not mean fewer boys will play with them (and wouldn't it be nice if the average boy didn't feel socially awkward about wanting an Easybake Oven? Or is cooking something only women should do all of a sudden?)
I appreciate for most of you who swamp the comments at Slashdot demanding the site ignore the very public discussion of underrepresentation in tech will not care about any of this. For some reason, you continue to interpret the discussion as an attack on you when it's nothing of the sort. But I wish you would. In the meantime, I kindly ask you reread my comment above, particularly the message to you, directly, from my myself and on behalf of my daughter - one of the many millions of girls who faces a miserable future if I let you thugs win.
What University did you go to where CS courses are over 30 years long?
Problems with your comment:
1. This site has always covered a variety of subjects, and women in IT isn't a new issue.
2. Actually, many of us are interested in issues relating to why various groups are excluded from IT
3. There was a time this site wasn't packed with gamergaters or paleogamergaters responding to every post about exclusion with demands Slashdot stop covering the subject. There's always been a few unpleasant groups mind you, but usually they made up a tiny minority.
4. Neither this post, and none of the other posts on similar topics, are designed to make anyone feel bad. If you feel bad because you're a nerd, then you're a fucking idiot, because the story is loosely related to the lack of women nerds. If you feel bad because you're white and male (or otherwise have what feminists call, somewhat confusingly and misleadingly, "privilege") then you're also a fucking idiot. If, on the other hand, you feel bad because you didn't wait to see your daughter's interests before buying her 100 princess outfits when she was two, and passed by the chemistry sets when she was a little older because you didn't think she'd be into that, then yeah, feel bad fuckface.
I remember when Slashdot used to have a somewhat smarter community that didn't respond to anything with the words "Women" or "Girls" in the headline with some kind of MRA/Gamergate BS centered around imaginary feminists and an apparent avoidance of discussing the issues raised by the article.
In other words, alas, I think you're spitting in the wind trying to explain to these knuckleheads what the article is about.
All I know is this: I want my daughter to have the same opportunities as males. I don't want her to have those opportunities on paper, but in practice find she's steered away by everything from a hostile work environment where the mere admission of working in tech leads to harassment online and off, to the absurd segregation of "interests" we see all the time.
On Saturday night we went to the store to buy her new pajamas. I wasn't sure if girls and boys PJs are cut differently, so I went into the girl's section with her. She promptly ran around the entire row (which was boys on the other side) and screamed, from the other side, "Dada! It's Thomas! It's Thomas!"
She found the PJs she wanted. Thomas the Tank Engine PJs. In the boy's section. She's loved Thomas since she saw the associated TV show start to play at the end of our Sesame Street recordings, and we ended up (neither my wife nor I can stand the show) recording it for her under protest.
I waited until my wife came to ask whether there was any physiological reason why she shouldn't wear "boy's" PJs. Unfortunately she overheard, and immediately became convinced she couldn't wear the PJs because they were "for boys". We had to explain that's not what Dada meant before she made it clear again that the Thomas PJs were the ones she wanted (and did so enthusiastically), and last night she wore them and told me they were the best PJs ever.
So, to those of you saying that boys and girls can't share the same interests, and that it's right that marketers aim stuff to do with princesses and fairies at girls, and dinosaurs and superheroes at boys, and pretending Feminists are demanding things they're not and demonizing that group that's trying to ensure my daughter has the same opportunities I did, on behalf of my daughter and I, I wish you a hearty fuck you.
(And yeah, this is something I believed before I had a daughter, but I can tell you now it hits home now more than ever.)
Not intentionally, but I've nearly accidentally bought that shit because the infants and childrens medicines section at most pharmacies is full of it, with only careful reading of the small print revealing it's homoeopathic (indeed, some of it isn't labelled using the word explicitly, you have to rely on the fact it tells you the dilution to realize - I guess they know we're onto them.)
I suspect a sizable number of people go in to pharmacies desperate for anything that will relieve their 2 year old's stomach/congestion/whatever and ended up leaving with homoeopathic crap because that's the only thing sold in that age range, and at that point they'd try a witch doctor if one was available.
As I've argued before, much to the anger of some, at least one country, the US, can do a lot by reducing coercion in a critical area that happens to be responsible for around 25% of US CO2 emissions.
The US is the only country I' m aware of where most urban areas are mandated to follow suburban planning policies, making redevelopment within cities prohibitively expensive as all developments are subject to absurd parking mandates that make little sense in high density areas where good doesn't-even-need-subsidies transit should be the norm.
Change that, and give developers more freedom to build what people actually want, and a sizable number of people won't feel forced to live in suburbia any more (and many people who currently live there thinking urban living is somehow synonymous with run-down crime ridden neighborhoods will change their minds.)
Staggeringly enough, I don't think most people want to live inefficiently. Most want to make the maximum use of their dollars to get the best living environment they can. Most state and counties currently force them to waste dollars on supporting huge amounts of infrastructure that offer little value to them.
Unfortunately, I can pretty much guarantee some idiot will respond to this claiming I'm the one forcing people to do something, because I'm proposing offering a choice of living more efficiently, and that... I don't know... will make people who still choose to live in the middle of nowhere feel bad or something? Or maybe they're terrified that the market will choose the urban areas and all of a sudden suburbia will become run down and impossible to live in? I have no idea. I don't understand the mindset.