Thankfully, a small segment of the American populace endeavor to maintain our 2nd Ammendment rights in order to ensure the rest of our rights.
Another Canuck mentioned it too but I haven't notice that particular group. I notice lots of corprate interests groups buying your government off. I notice civil liberties slowly fading away. But have yet to see an interested militia kick out the corrupt. I did see your vice prez exercise his second amendment rights and shoot a "friend"... you have to something fiercely evil when the guy you shot apologizes to you.
The law does not create rights, you have them as a human. You can arrive at them, rather simply, through logic, or based on western religious theory (possibly eastern, I'm not sure).
Attributing one specific behavior as sociopath, yes, to do that you'll need to be a physchologist. Especially going by your over-simplified definition; not letting a word you were taught to be upset at, not upset you. I seriously doubt that comes anywhere close to being able to torture someone and not feel the slightest bit of empathy for that person. That's what sociopaths do (and you can pick that up from a REAL physchologist by watching the show Most Evil).
Rights aren't universal. Many make logical sense. But ultimately law itself is a artificial construct. If your lucky then the people with the means to create violence were idealists and the laws where you live are progressive and logical. If your not they can be very arcane and extremely unfair. The point of law is to arbitrate what is fair without having to be omniscient. For instance many people refer to the first amendment. As written it's a prohibition against the state limiting speech and thought through legislation. Meaning My critic of people using Racial slurs and racial slurs ought not be banned through legislation and I'll agree on both counts. The spirit behind it was to ensure all of the separate tribes of folk that made up America would be allowed to go about their business in peace. That if one group attained power, it ought not disadvantage the others by outlawing their beliefs, practices, and ideologies. It doesn't say that we should remove emotional weightings of various words. Nor does it say that we should consider "nigger" "chink" "gook" "kike" "mic" "wop" etc.. acceptable part of everyday language. You may resent that others look down on you for using those words but none of us have enacted government legislation to ban such language. I would not support it. So Zonk used "gypped" I mentioned it was a slur. I stated I would prefer more neutral language. This is free speech.
Psychology. I've taken up to 3xx level courses on abnormal psyche. Sociopaths aren't necessarily the torture animals kind. They have difficulty with aspects of social norms. Thus it gets lumped in with psychopaths in the designation for "antisocial Personality disorders" covering a whole spectrum of anti-social behaviors and symptoms. One of the side effects of one of the symptoms is the inability to respond to emotionally weighted words like "murder", "bitch", "fuck", "cunt", "chink", "nigger" etc.. This is one of a set of possible symptoms. Indeed in the extreme a person with a severe Anti-social disorder could slowly skin a woman alive while she screams then get dressed and go to church like nothign happened. In milder forms they issues with right and wrong and impulse control. Some just have issues with their inability to think of anyone but themselves. They are often also emotionally immature. They can also be aggressive. A combinations of some of these symptoms would flag someone as having a anti-social personality disorder (sociopath/psychopath).
The point it, by default most of humanity will respond to just words. Remember the pen is mightier then the sword because ideas can have real effects on society and people and words are merely symbols for ideas. So If someone gave you the finger while your drove for a large swath of humanity they will feel some anger. More if they felt they didn't deserve it. But thats just a gesture. The words "IRS audit" has a healthy negative effect due to the weighting of those words. Even if you have nothign to hide. "You are a fucking moron" has an effect. Depending on who is saying it. Random strangers like me to you it means nothing. Your boss, your father, your teacher, your wife, or your kids. Now it carries emotional weight. So I may ignore someone who doesn't know me like you. I cannot ignore my peers nor authority figures to the same extent. If it's habitual eventually it has more then an emotional response. Some ha
Re:gypped? what is this 1939 berlin?
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Unproven but highly likely as others have pointed out. They can't find any other lead on it's origin. As well "gypsied" was also used as a term for being cheated at one time. Seems a bit too similar to completely disavow the connection.
I'd love to see how much of that 70% makes its way to the artists. Perhaps Vivendi misunderstood where the "indecent" portion of the financial split exists...
That depends on who the artist is. If it's The Rolling Stones it's likely 20% of that. If it's somebody new like AFI it's likely 5%.
What, are you a physchologist now? No, then STFU with your sociopathy crap. Geek used to be an insult; the fact that you now take pride in it proves my point. You CHOOSE to let a word offend you or not. Just like you can choose the reaction to your significant other cheating on you
Need I be? need you be a Civil liberties lawyer to make a comment on free speech?
No, they don't hurt. YOU get yourself upset. You choose it. You can choose to not let it affect you.
Emotions are often part of your circuitry. You may choose to ignore your wife/husband cheating on you but that isn't the default reaction for most of humanity. Someone might call me a geek. That is derogatory as well but I am proud of that title. It's less weighted then "chink" and Geeks have reclaimed the word.Words carry emotional weight. The absence of a emotional reaction to heavily weighted words like racial slurs is actually a sign of sociopathy. I assure you I am likely not a sociopath.
Bullshit. People will come up with different words. You're not going to stop racism by banning derogatory terms. PC is nothing be censorship and pretending to fix problems instead of actually fixing them.
And believe me, you don't need to be Asian to be called names. I was in a school that was all white, and I was called names for other things. I didn't hurt me, I didn't let it define me. I suggest you do the same.
who said ban them. I only outlined the link and stated why PC had some legitimate motivations. PC is an extension of the idea that language influence thought processes. The language you use taints the thoughts you have. There is some empirical data for this. I am uncertain of how strong the correlation is. I do not believe in banning speech. I do not believe you can are absolved from all responsibility of your speech however. So while you may call someone a nigger. You are more then within your rights as a human being. You must deal with the emotional reaction you will invoke in everyone who hears you and if you did so in a public forum, you may have to deal with hostility from a certain community.
It invokes such a reaction in minorities because it highlights your powerlessness. It taunts us by saying "look, due to how you were born you are worth less then me." You may have moved past that but it doesn't make it a non-issue. I can't help being asian. I may be able to stop being a geek/nerd/emo/goth/airhead/jock/drama geek/burn out/loser/punk but I can;t stop being asian.
Wow, I didn't believe you so I looked it up. And if you are comparing the cheap PS3 to the PS2, you are correct. According to Wiki the lauch price of the PS2 in Canada was $449.99 compared to $549.99 for the PS3.
It sort of puts a different spin on the whole PS3 thing. A lot of geeks have been attributing it to malice/arrogance of Sony. In light of the above information it looks like a more benign bad call by the Sony. They thought they could just do what they did before. Much like shipping the PS2 without a good set of tools. They figured people didn't use their tools for the PS1 anymore so the entire industry will just code their own. In this case they were a smash hit at around that price point before so they needn't change. Unfortunately a lot of economics made their decision really stupid.
I am personally enraged when people try to limit my freedom of speech in any form, including racial slurs. They are horrendous, but that is no excuse to violate my 1st amendment rights.
Did I say you couldn't say that? I said you shouldn't say that. There is a very important distinction. You should be limited by law in your ability to shout fire in a crowded place. You should be limited by your own personal sense of bad-taste not to call your black neighbor "nigger". Your first amendment right is not to be censored by your government. Last time I looked I am not your government. It says you may express any opinion and the Government shall not seek to pass laws limiting this. It doesn't say that other groups can't frown upon certain language and object to you using it. As I said in another post. Say what ever you want, but you are responsible for the consequences of those actions. Freedom of speech is not freedom form consequences of that speech. If you call me a chink you will have to deal with a very irate Asian guy. I will stop short of violence but I will react negatively to you.
This is always the first thing those attempting to limit my speech try, and your attempt is no different and no less wrong than all the others before you. You can allow words to hurt you, there is a vast difference.
Limit speech and consequences of speech are two separate issues. If I murder everyone who calls Macdonald's "fifthy mcnasties" then I am limiting free speech. If I give you a cold shoulder or object to you calling me a chink thats just a consequence of your actions. Words are very powerful things. The assumptions they cannot hurt you is extremely naive. They are weighted with cultural and emotional attachments. The only ones truly unhurt by any words are sociopaths.
No, the whole "PC thing" is to teach us that certain words and thoughts are harmful. The end result being, things that cause harm are dangerous, and dangerous things can be outlawed. You're allowing your thoughts to be censored (indirectly) by buying into this "PC thing". Good job there.
rights have responsibilities. Do as you will but you have no logical or moral grounds to object if other behave negatively towards you. The whole PC thing is not entirely out to get free speech. It's a critical reaction to some speech and unfortunately sometimes it resorts to censorship. But the idea itself doesn't have to be that way.
Funny, as a non-popular guy I was harassed. Why is it you think that your harassment is any different or worse? And what on earth makes you think that your "hurt" is a good enough reason to override the 1st amendment?
again first amendment means nothing like you think it means. You were harrassed. Was that right? no? so how does that justify me being harassed on racial grounds? non sequitur.
How about weaning yourself off that addiction? Seriously, it's bizarre how Americans can be so zealously anti-drug, and yet treat a caffeine addiction as 'just something that most people have'.
It's more of an expression. I'm a tea drinker and don't really need it to wake up. But I often make typos and messed up grammar due to dyslexia so if I don't' have enough time before a post it has numerous grammatical errors.
Re:video gamers have their own version of reality
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if hardly anyone is aware of its origin or its possible interpretation as a racial slur, is it still a racial slur in practice? explain.
the etymology has no confirmed alternative origin. Event he closest plausible alternative is actually a term that also derived from gypsies. It's as highly likely it back links to gypsies as it is that jewed back links to Jews. Read up on it. It's not common knowledge but that doesn't it make it true. Saying "god That car salesmen just jewed my wife" does no damage if everyone in the room is not offended by that jewed. Does it make it okay?
Wow, how about you quit being a crybaby. Growing up, I was always taught "words can never hurt me." Perhaps you should stop letting words have such power over you, and move on with your life. Honkey and cracker could be equally as offensive to me as a white person, but I never give a shit when anyone uses them.
I am personally enraged when someone uses an Asian racial slur around me. Words are part of culture and they can hurt you. Why was my great great grandfather not allowed to bring his family over from china or get payed a decent wage for taking the dangerous jobs building the Canadian railway? because there was a tight cultural connection between Chink,Chinese and china men with Sub human in the minds of the people of Canada. The whole PC thing is to help break this up. If kids aren't taught "jewed", "chink", "nigger" etc.. it helps prevent them from making such associations. As a non white guy I was harassed with racial slurs most my life and often it would come with violence. So really you don't know what it feels like until you are the only Asian kid in a class of 30 white kids. It's even worse if you're poor and their affluent.
Gyp is nowhere near the in the same league as jewed (are chinked or niggered even words?). Although it is likely that it has its origins from the word gypsy, the fact that it originated in the U.S (which has no anti-gypsy bias to speak of) means that it was never meant as a slur. Heck, "Indian Summer" is far more of a slur than gyp is (as Indian being used to mean false). So get over yourself.
The Entomology of that is also questionable. It may have come into common usage in the US but it still refers back to Gypsies/Roma. Do some digging.
Re:video gamers have their own version of reality
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Funny, you have no problem with a game that simulates killing. Just make you you speak nicely when doing it though.
I say "God I wish my boss wasn't such a tightwad, he gyped me out of a raise". Consequence: This links Cheap/theft with Gypsies.
I kill a Covenant Brute. consequence: A whole bunch of transistors change voltage levels in my 360.
I'm fairly certain both aren't that severe int he grand scheme of things but the first has more real world effects then the second.
PS. I don't' have a 360, I wont' be buying the game. Need I be abstinent before marriage to critique female circumcision? Similar logic applies with your statement.
Re:video gamers have their own version of reality
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its why they play games in the first place. to escape the awful reality where they are responsible for the consequences of their actions and words. sort of like why i rant online lol.
anyways, i predict 10 seconds until someone counter 'argues' that it should be OK to say jewed, n***, etc, because political correctness is evil blah blah blah.
it is the same argument they will have if you point out that murdering prostitutes and stealing their money is not the best thing for our culture to be involved in simulating.
Perhaps I need to clarify. I wasn't saying the game mentions "Gypped" but instead the review closes with a paragraph that contains "gypped". A lot of people aren't aware thats a racial slur and I wanted to bring it to people attentions. I'm all for free speech. Say it how ever you like. But be aware it does offend some people. I know some paragons of the PC movement who say "gypped" all the time because they weren't aware it's a racial slur. I wanted to let people know.
I prefer if people made their points without racial slurs but I also believe in people being able to say what ever they want. But the right to do so comes with the responsibility for what they say.
I wonder how many people are aware that 'gypped' is a racial slur. Might as well just say jewed or chinked or niggered. Your doing the same thing. Associating an ethnic group with a negative stereo type. Maybe you should just say "not feeling ripped off" or "feeling they got their moneys worth". I am not of that ethnic group but I find it offensive when someone says "jewed" or calls me "slanty eyed".
So Microsoft brought him onto their payroll. Seriously this guy is a PR machine that just advertises the things he criticizes. He minus well get paid by Take two and Microsoft.
When it comes to manned space programs, I generally agree. Robotic missions on the other hand do wonderful science and can be just as awe-inspiring at much less cost.
Both constituents important work. The race to get people up there had many spin off technologies come out of the programs and informs us of a lot of basic science. Robots can do a lot as well but there is value in sending people up.
You are assuming that progress in general is considered "good". If our goal is merely to keep up with the Jones' then basic research doesn't help because the results are usually available to our competitors also (assuming not military research).
Humanity as a whole benefits from basic research more then most corporate research. Competition is good and artificial monopolies on information are bad in the long run. In fact the avoidance of such information disappearing is why we have a patent office. In exchange for making inventions, techniques, and discoveries public the government grants a temporary monopoly on those innovations. So while it's be great for 300 million people if the US kept all it's research to itself it's great for 6.5 billion people if science shares as science builds on top of itself. The more there is the more there will be.
It's also a two way street. Discoveries in Sequencing technology in Canada enabled the entire field of genetics to shave months off of research projects. If every nation horded it's knowledge we'd would be a lot farther behind.
From industry to Academia the general trend to is to focus on smaller and smaller time frames to judge success. This myopic view is exemplified anytime anything about NASA comes out. People moan about money wasted that could be used for social programs or some ignorant rant about how NASA's funding could prevent world hunger. You can also see it in how companies now are interested only in looking good for the next quarter. Where they mortgage the future of a company just to see higher Quarterly returns. We all hear of how Company X has a banner year but lets go of 1/3 of their workforce before the 2nd quarter to show a even rosier quarter. Academia is now slowly converting into just an alternative corprate R&D lab. Long term basic research is getting harder to fund and you need buzz words like "string theory", "nano technology", "Quantum", and "Intelligent Design" to get any funding from the current Government.
There are so many things that are useful to know beyond what is immediately useful. If it was naught for the hundred of thinker toiling away on trivial problems we wouldn't have such a broad knowledge base in science. We'd have much better made Full plate armors, Sailing ships, rapiers, pots, cast iron cook ware, black plague repelling perfumes, and Iron Plowshares. Many of the really interesting and unique inventions came about form basic research into trivial things. We need to fund those. Arpa net used to be one of the ones who did this but a general mindset of "we need results this quarter" will hurt science and humanity in general.
He's a clever geek, no doubt but he owes everything to the good fortune of meeting Steve Jobs. Without him Woz would still be a calculator engineer at HP. And frankly I find it difficult to take him seriously when he calls his biography "iWoz" when he had nothing to do with the Mac let alone any of the "i" products. Publicity hungry empty vessel. Who cares what he thinks: he has no particular insight.
Without Woz, jobs would be a sleazy new age religious leader. Without Jobs, Woz would be somewhere in the upper echelon of HP, wasting away his genius on crappy main frames and calculators. without them both meeting Personal computing would be very different. Billy and his gang would have no one to steal ideas from. IBM wouldn't have been panicking and signed their john handcock on a really dumb licensing deal with Billy. Ubiquitous computing may never have happened. And We may all be marveling at how the IBMs new Big Blue 1.0 gzh main frame is just a paltry $500,000, 600 lbs, and comes with 10 gigs of hard drive space because computing never hit it's stride with efficiencies of scale.
don't' over estimate Jobs. He's done well because he's foudn the right people to do the right things and has both vision and business accumen but he didn't do it all alone. dont' under estimate WOZ, a hardware/software genius is hard to find. He wrot ehte OS and designed the hardware. Few can do both.
Gears of War had a good commercial. Bioshock had a good commercial. Wii has annoying 30s game demoes mixed in with shots of two random japanese guys. Trust me it';s not the commercials. It's:
1- Word of mouth (Someone plays it at a friends, goes out and gets on) 2- Low price of entry (Most people will have enough in their monthly entertainment budget to get one) 3- Broad mass appeal and "easy" games.
The commercials are so lame as I can't conceive how any 12-35 male would want one just after seeing it or any 13-35 female would even care.
It's been argued that the Wii is dominating the current generation of gaming consoles simply because Nintendo advertises the Wii as a gaming console while Sony and Microsoft advertise their consoles as media centers.
And I'd say it's exclusively because the price point is where it's not a huge deal to get one while the other two you have to budget for. I'm fairly certain thats the case because the Wii commercials are pretty dumb.
It runs Linux like crap because it doesn't provide access to hardware accelerated graphics. And by "hardware accelerated graphics", I don't just mean 3D games and Compiz. It doesn't even have 2D acceleration, so you'll see redraw lag just scrolling in Firefox.
Basically Linux compatibility was just a scheme to get into a different import tax bracket in the European Union (where computers have a lower tax than video game consoles or media players). Actual usability wasn't a design goal.
I assumed you never tried it and just rolled with here say. Ubuntu runs fine on mine. I get no lag scrolling with firefox. Perhaps it was the flavor they used versus anything explicit about the machine. Or I did some freaky setting swap no one else has tried? The GPU is restricted but if someone was clever they could use a SPU or two to do some simple frame buffer enhancements to compensate.
Obviously, things are different this time. The PS3 costs much more (even when adjusted for inflation) than any Sony console to date. The US economy is much worse compared to '95 or 2000. And so on.
In the US. Adjusted for inflation it's within $50 of the PS2 launch price in Canada, indeed in most markets it's close to the launch PS2 price after inflation, only int he Us is it massively more expensive. I'd chalk it up to bad aim from Sony. They aimed at roughly the same "relative" price as the PS2 but the US economy tanked so hard and the currency dropped so much it seemed like a ridiculous price. Nintendo knew better and priced lower and Ms cut corners and subsidized.
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Thankfully, a small segment of the American populace endeavor to maintain our 2nd Ammendment rights in order to ensure the rest of our rights.
Another Canuck mentioned it too but I haven't notice that particular group. I notice lots of corprate interests groups buying your government off. I notice civil liberties slowly fading away. But have yet to see an interested militia kick out the corrupt. I did see your vice prez exercise his second amendment rights and shoot a "friend"... you have to something fiercely evil when the guy you shot apologizes to you.
The law does not create rights, you have them as a human. You can arrive at them, rather simply, through logic, or based on western religious theory (possibly eastern, I'm not sure).
Attributing one specific behavior as sociopath, yes, to do that you'll need to be a physchologist. Especially going by your over-simplified definition; not letting a word you were taught to be upset at, not upset you. I seriously doubt that comes anywhere close to being able to torture someone and not feel the slightest bit of empathy for that person. That's what sociopaths do (and you can pick that up from a REAL physchologist by watching the show Most Evil).
Rights aren't universal. Many make logical sense. But ultimately law itself is a artificial construct. If your lucky then the people with the means to create violence were idealists and the laws where you live are progressive and logical. If your not they can be very arcane and extremely unfair. The point of law is to arbitrate what is fair without having to be omniscient. For instance many people refer to the first amendment. As written it's a prohibition against the state limiting speech and thought through legislation. Meaning My critic of people using Racial slurs and racial slurs ought not be banned through legislation and I'll agree on both counts. The spirit behind it was to ensure all of the separate tribes of folk that made up America would be allowed to go about their business in peace. That if one group attained power, it ought not disadvantage the others by outlawing their beliefs, practices, and ideologies. It doesn't say that we should remove emotional weightings of various words. Nor does it say that we should consider "nigger" "chink" "gook" "kike" "mic" "wop" etc.. acceptable part of everyday language. You may resent that others look down on you for using those words but none of us have enacted government legislation to ban such language. I would not support it. So Zonk used "gypped" I mentioned it was a slur. I stated I would prefer more neutral language. This is free speech.
Psychology. I've taken up to 3xx level courses on abnormal psyche. Sociopaths aren't necessarily the torture animals kind. They have difficulty with aspects of social norms. Thus it gets lumped in with psychopaths in the designation for "antisocial Personality disorders" covering a whole spectrum of anti-social behaviors and symptoms. One of the side effects of one of the symptoms is the inability to respond to emotionally weighted words like "murder", "bitch", "fuck", "cunt", "chink", "nigger" etc.. This is one of a set of possible symptoms. Indeed in the extreme a person with a severe Anti-social disorder could slowly skin a woman alive while she screams then get dressed and go to church like nothign happened. In milder forms they issues with right and wrong and impulse control. Some just have issues with their inability to think of anyone but themselves. They are often also emotionally immature. They can also be aggressive. A combinations of some of these symptoms would flag someone as having a anti-social personality disorder (sociopath/psychopath).
The point it, by default most of humanity will respond to just words. Remember the pen is mightier then the sword because ideas can have real effects on society and people and words are merely symbols for ideas. So If someone gave you the finger while your drove for a large swath of humanity they will feel some anger. More if they felt they didn't deserve it. But thats just a gesture. The words "IRS audit" has a healthy negative effect due to the weighting of those words. Even if you have nothign to hide. "You are a fucking moron" has an effect. Depending on who is saying it. Random strangers like me to you it means nothing. Your boss, your father, your teacher, your wife, or your kids. Now it carries emotional weight. So I may ignore someone who doesn't know me like you. I cannot ignore my peers nor authority figures to the same extent. If it's habitual eventually it has more then an emotional response. Some ha
Unproven but highly likely as others have pointed out. They can't find any other lead on it's origin. As well "gypsied" was also used as a term for being cheated at one time. Seems a bit too similar to completely disavow the connection.
I'd love to see how much of that 70% makes its way to the artists. Perhaps Vivendi misunderstood where the "indecent" portion of the financial split exists...
That depends on who the artist is. If it's The Rolling Stones it's likely 20% of that. If it's somebody new like AFI it's likely 5%.
What, are you a physchologist now? No, then STFU with your sociopathy crap. Geek used to be an insult; the fact that you now take pride in it proves my point. You CHOOSE to let a word offend you or not. Just like you can choose the reaction to your significant other cheating on you
Need I be? need you be a Civil liberties lawyer to make a comment on free speech?
No, they don't hurt. YOU get yourself upset. You choose it. You can choose to not let it affect you.
Emotions are often part of your circuitry. You may choose to ignore your wife/husband cheating on you but that isn't the default reaction for most of humanity. Someone might call me a geek. That is derogatory as well but I am proud of that title. It's less weighted then "chink" and Geeks have reclaimed the word.Words carry emotional weight. The absence of a emotional reaction to heavily weighted words like racial slurs is actually a sign of sociopathy. I assure you I am likely not a sociopath.
Bullshit. People will come up with different words. You're not going to stop racism by banning derogatory terms. PC is nothing be censorship and pretending to fix problems instead of actually fixing them.
And believe me, you don't need to be Asian to be called names. I was in a school that was all white, and I was called names for other things. I didn't hurt me, I didn't let it define me. I suggest you do the same.
who said ban them. I only outlined the link and stated why PC had some legitimate motivations. PC is an extension of the idea that language influence thought processes. The language you use taints the thoughts you have. There is some empirical data for this. I am uncertain of how strong the correlation is. I do not believe in banning speech. I do not believe you can are absolved from all responsibility of your speech however. So while you may call someone a nigger. You are more then within your rights as a human being. You must deal with the emotional reaction you will invoke in everyone who hears you and if you did so in a public forum, you may have to deal with hostility from a certain community.
It invokes such a reaction in minorities because it highlights your powerlessness. It taunts us by saying "look, due to how you were born you are worth less then me." You may have moved past that but it doesn't make it a non-issue. I can't help being asian. I may be able to stop being a geek/nerd/emo/goth/airhead/jock/drama geek/burn out/loser/punk but I can;t stop being asian.
Wow, I didn't believe you so I looked it up. And if you are comparing the cheap PS3 to the PS2, you are correct. According to Wiki the lauch price of the PS2 in Canada was $449.99 compared to $549.99 for the PS3.
It sort of puts a different spin on the whole PS3 thing. A lot of geeks have been attributing it to malice/arrogance of Sony. In light of the above information it looks like a more benign bad call by the Sony. They thought they could just do what they did before. Much like shipping the PS2 without a good set of tools. They figured people didn't use their tools for the PS1 anymore so the entire industry will just code their own. In this case they were a smash hit at around that price point before so they needn't change. Unfortunately a lot of economics made their decision really stupid.
I am personally enraged when people try to limit my freedom of speech in any form, including racial slurs. They are horrendous, but that is no excuse to violate my 1st amendment rights.
Did I say you couldn't say that? I said you shouldn't say that. There is a very important distinction. You should be limited by law in your ability to shout fire in a crowded place. You should be limited by your own personal sense of bad-taste not to call your black neighbor "nigger". Your first amendment right is not to be censored by your government. Last time I looked I am not your government. It says you may express any opinion and the Government shall not seek to pass laws limiting this. It doesn't say that other groups can't frown upon certain language and object to you using it. As I said in another post. Say what ever you want, but you are responsible for the consequences of those actions. Freedom of speech is not freedom form consequences of that speech. If you call me a chink you will have to deal with a very irate Asian guy. I will stop short of violence but I will react negatively to you.
This is always the first thing those attempting to limit my speech try, and your attempt is no different and no less wrong than all the others before you. You can allow words to hurt you, there is a vast difference.
Limit speech and consequences of speech are two separate issues. If I murder everyone who calls Macdonald's "fifthy mcnasties" then I am limiting free speech. If I give you a cold shoulder or object to you calling me a chink thats just a consequence of your actions. Words are very powerful things. The assumptions they cannot hurt you is extremely naive. They are weighted with cultural and emotional attachments. The only ones truly unhurt by any words are sociopaths.
No, the whole "PC thing" is to teach us that certain words and thoughts are harmful. The end result being, things that cause harm are dangerous, and dangerous things can be outlawed. You're allowing your thoughts to be censored (indirectly) by buying into this "PC thing". Good job there.
rights have responsibilities. Do as you will but you have no logical or moral grounds to object if other behave negatively towards you. The whole PC thing is not entirely out to get free speech. It's a critical reaction to some speech and unfortunately sometimes it resorts to censorship. But the idea itself doesn't have to be that way.
Funny, as a non-popular guy I was harassed. Why is it you think that your harassment is any different or worse? And what on earth makes you think that your "hurt" is a good enough reason to override the 1st amendment?
again first amendment means nothing like you think it means. You were harrassed. Was that right? no? so how does that justify me being harassed on racial grounds? non sequitur.
How about weaning yourself off that addiction? Seriously, it's bizarre how Americans can be so zealously anti-drug, and yet treat a caffeine addiction as 'just something that most people have'.
It's more of an expression. I'm a tea drinker and don't really need it to wake up. But I often make typos and messed up grammar due to dyslexia so if I don't' have enough time before a post it has numerous grammatical errors.
if hardly anyone is aware of its origin or its possible interpretation as a racial slur, is it still a racial slur in practice? explain.
the etymology has no confirmed alternative origin. Event he closest plausible alternative is actually a term that also derived from gypsies. It's as highly likely it back links to gypsies as it is that jewed back links to Jews. Read up on it. It's not common knowledge but that doesn't it make it true. Saying "god That car salesmen just jewed my wife" does no damage if everyone in the room is not offended by that jewed. Does it make it okay?
Wow, how about you quit being a crybaby. Growing up, I was always taught "words can never hurt me." Perhaps you should stop letting words have such power over you, and move on with your life. Honkey and cracker could be equally as offensive to me as a white person, but I never give a shit when anyone uses them.
I am personally enraged when someone uses an Asian racial slur around me. Words are part of culture and they can hurt you. Why was my great great grandfather not allowed to bring his family over from china or get payed a decent wage for taking the dangerous jobs building the Canadian railway? because there was a tight cultural connection between Chink,Chinese and china men with Sub human in the minds of the people of Canada. The whole PC thing is to help break this up. If kids aren't taught "jewed", "chink", "nigger" etc.. it helps prevent them from making such associations. As a non white guy I was harassed with racial slurs most my life and often it would come with violence. So really you don't know what it feels like until you are the only Asian kid in a class of 30 white kids. It's even worse if you're poor and their affluent.
Gyp is nowhere near the in the same league as jewed (are chinked or niggered even words?). Although it is likely that it has its origins from the word gypsy, the fact that it originated in the U.S (which has no anti-gypsy bias to speak of) means that it was never meant as a slur. Heck, "Indian Summer" is far more of a slur than gyp is (as Indian being used to mean false). So get over yourself.
The Entomology of that is also questionable. It may have come into common usage in the US but it still refers back to Gypsies/Roma. Do some digging.
Funny, you have no problem with a game that simulates killing. Just make you you speak nicely when doing it though.
I say "God I wish my boss wasn't such a tightwad, he gyped me out of a raise". Consequence: This links Cheap/theft with Gypsies.
I kill a Covenant Brute. consequence: A whole bunch of transistors change voltage levels in my 360.
I'm fairly certain both aren't that severe int he grand scheme of things but the first has more real world effects then the second.
PS. I don't' have a 360, I wont' be buying the game. Need I be abstinent before marriage to critique female circumcision? Similar logic applies with your statement.
its why they play games in the first place. to escape the awful reality where they are responsible for the consequences of their actions and words. sort of like why i rant online lol.
anyways, i predict 10 seconds until someone counter 'argues' that it should be OK to say jewed, n***, etc, because political correctness is evil blah blah blah.
it is the same argument they will have if you point out that murdering prostitutes and stealing their money is not the best thing for our culture to be involved in simulating.
Perhaps I need to clarify. I wasn't saying the game mentions "Gypped" but instead the review closes with a paragraph that contains "gypped". A lot of people aren't aware thats a racial slur and I wanted to bring it to people attentions. I'm all for free speech. Say it how ever you like. But be aware it does offend some people. I know some paragons of the PC movement who say "gypped" all the time because they weren't aware it's a racial slur. I wanted to let people know.
I prefer if people made their points without racial slurs but I also believe in people being able to say what ever they want. But the right to do so comes with the responsibility for what they say.
I wonder how many people are aware that 'gypped' is a racial slur. Might as well just say jewed or chinked or niggered. Your doing the same thing. Associating an ethnic group with a negative stereo type. Maybe you should just say "not feeling ripped off" or "feeling they got their moneys worth". I am not of that ethnic group but I find it offensive when someone says "jewed" or calls me "slanty eyed".
Mea Culpa. when the coffee is scarce, the mind does silly things.
So Microsoft brought him onto their payroll. Seriously this guy is a PR machine that just advertises the things he criticizes. He minus well get paid by Take two and Microsoft.
When it comes to manned space programs, I generally agree. Robotic missions on the other hand do wonderful science and can be just as awe-inspiring at much less cost.
Both constituents important work. The race to get people up there had many spin off technologies come out of the programs and informs us of a lot of basic science. Robots can do a lot as well but there is value in sending people up.
You are assuming that progress in general is considered "good". If our goal is merely to keep up with the Jones' then basic research doesn't help because the results are usually available to our competitors also (assuming not military research).
Humanity as a whole benefits from basic research more then most corporate research. Competition is good and artificial monopolies on information are bad in the long run. In fact the avoidance of such information disappearing is why we have a patent office. In exchange for making inventions, techniques, and discoveries public the government grants a temporary monopoly on those innovations. So while it's be great for 300 million people if the US kept all it's research to itself it's great for 6.5 billion people if science shares as science builds on top of itself. The more there is the more there will be.
It's also a two way street. Discoveries in Sequencing technology in Canada enabled the entire field of genetics to shave months off of research projects. If every nation horded it's knowledge we'd would be a lot farther behind.
From industry to Academia the general trend to is to focus on smaller and smaller time frames to judge success. This myopic view is exemplified anytime anything about NASA comes out. People moan about money wasted that could be used for social programs or some ignorant rant about how NASA's funding could prevent world hunger. You can also see it in how companies now are interested only in looking good for the next quarter. Where they mortgage the future of a company just to see higher Quarterly returns. We all hear of how Company X has a banner year but lets go of 1/3 of their workforce before the 2nd quarter to show a even rosier quarter. Academia is now slowly converting into just an alternative corprate R&D lab. Long term basic research is getting harder to fund and you need buzz words like "string theory", "nano technology", "Quantum", and "Intelligent Design" to get any funding from the current Government.
There are so many things that are useful to know beyond what is immediately useful. If it was naught for the hundred of thinker toiling away on trivial problems we wouldn't have such a broad knowledge base in science. We'd have much better made Full plate armors, Sailing ships, rapiers, pots, cast iron cook ware, black plague repelling perfumes, and Iron Plowshares. Many of the really interesting and unique inventions came about form basic research into trivial things. We need to fund those. Arpa net used to be one of the ones who did this but a general mindset of "we need results this quarter" will hurt science and humanity in general.
How does it do collapsing / expanding comment threads on digg.com?
Didn't' us Geeks abandon digg? Well I never used digg so I don't know.
He's a clever geek, no doubt but he owes everything to the good fortune of meeting Steve Jobs. Without him Woz would still be a calculator engineer at HP. And frankly I find it difficult to take him seriously when he calls his biography "iWoz" when he had nothing to do with the Mac let alone any of the "i" products. Publicity hungry empty vessel. Who cares what he thinks: he has no particular insight.
Without Woz, jobs would be a sleazy new age religious leader. Without Jobs, Woz would be somewhere in the upper echelon of HP, wasting away his genius on crappy main frames and calculators. without them both meeting Personal computing would be very different. Billy and his gang would have no one to steal ideas from. IBM wouldn't have been panicking and signed their john handcock on a really dumb licensing deal with Billy. Ubiquitous computing may never have happened. And We may all be marveling at how the IBMs new Big Blue 1.0 gzh main frame is just a paltry $500,000, 600 lbs, and comes with 10 gigs of hard drive space because computing never hit it's stride with efficiencies of scale.
don't' over estimate Jobs. He's done well because he's foudn the right people to do the right things and has both vision and business accumen but he didn't do it all alone. dont' under estimate WOZ, a hardware/software genius is hard to find. He wrot ehte OS and designed the hardware. Few can do both.
Gears of War had a good commercial. Bioshock had a good commercial. Wii has annoying 30s game demoes mixed in with shots of two random japanese guys. Trust me it';s not the commercials. It's:
1- Word of mouth (Someone plays it at a friends, goes out and gets on)
2- Low price of entry (Most people will have enough in their monthly entertainment budget to get one)
3- Broad mass appeal and "easy" games.
The commercials are so lame as I can't conceive how any 12-35 male would want one just after seeing it or any 13-35 female would even care.
It's been argued that the Wii is dominating the current generation of gaming consoles simply because Nintendo advertises the Wii as a gaming console while Sony and Microsoft advertise their consoles as media centers.
And I'd say it's exclusively because the price point is where it's not a huge deal to get one while the other two you have to budget for. I'm fairly certain thats the case because the Wii commercials are pretty dumb.
It runs Linux like crap because it doesn't provide access to hardware accelerated graphics. And by "hardware accelerated graphics", I don't just mean 3D games and Compiz. It doesn't even have 2D acceleration, so you'll see redraw lag just scrolling in Firefox.
Basically Linux compatibility was just a scheme to get into a different import tax bracket in the European Union (where computers have a lower tax than video game consoles or media players). Actual usability wasn't a design goal.
I assumed you never tried it and just rolled with here say. Ubuntu runs fine on mine. I get no lag scrolling with firefox. Perhaps it was the flavor they used versus anything explicit about the machine. Or I did some freaky setting swap no one else has tried? The GPU is restricted but if someone was clever they could use a SPU or two to do some simple frame buffer enhancements to compensate.
Obviously, things are different this time. The PS3 costs much more (even when adjusted for inflation) than any Sony console to date. The US economy is much worse compared to '95 or 2000. And so on.
In the US. Adjusted for inflation it's within $50 of the PS2 launch price in Canada, indeed in most markets it's close to the launch PS2 price after inflation, only int he Us is it massively more expensive. I'd chalk it up to bad aim from Sony. They aimed at roughly the same "relative" price as the PS2 but the US economy tanked so hard and the currency dropped so much it seemed like a ridiculous price. Nintendo knew better and priced lower and Ms cut corners and subsidized.