That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Specifically, she is talking about female/minority judges bringing an additional context to a decision, informed by their life experiences, that a (rich/white/male/privileged) person's life experience would necessarily preclude them from having. Which I don't think is a racist point; her early life's biography is significantly different than the rest of t
Uncivilized, perhaps, but prisons can in no way be considered 'the wild.' Of all dysfunctional social constructs, prison systems are probably the most extreme. I'm not sure how 'natural' the banding together is; it could very well be an intentional de facto method of control, a somewhat self-regulating means of keeping an overall increase of violent behavior in check through both an internal policing of segregated groups through gang hierarchy and a means of directing violence along predictable fault lines, rather than a large amount of individual skirmishes. If the prison system didn't want these groups to exist, then they could get rid of them. Or, if it is determined to be too costly to change the status quo, then you must still admit that it is an artificial environment that is creating these conditions and hence these groupings can hardly be considered a 'natural state' akin to wolves in the wild.
In any case, these groupings are more than skin deep; it is cultural similarities that tie them together more than the color of their skin, in many cases the culture being a preexisting condition through generations of gang hierarchy that extends from the streets to the prisons and vice-versa. Racial grouping in prisons is much more complex than simply being visually identified as a member of a race, though I'll grant the moot point that color is the most obvious indicator of the index of cultural, historical, and socio-economic similarities.
That's a complete lie. Here's the press release about the OGL for 4th edition. There is a fee for a prerelease OGL, but once the game actually launches it's free. I assume they charge for the extra work getting the documents to the third party takes, and because there'll be an obvious bonus to other publishers due to the PR frenzy at release.
And what's so bad about not being compatible? It's an entirely different rules set, designed to play much differently. It's not like there's a dearth of 3rd edition material that hasn't been played by the average group, and campaign settings have always been described in terms of both flavor and mechanics, so if you're really desperate for new ideas you could just steal them from there (or any other gaming company's publications).
Also, I'm tired of hearing people complain about having to buy new books. No one is forcing you to upgrade if you really love 3ed that much, and all your REALLY need to play is the player's handbook (plus DMG and Monster Manual, but that's for the DM). I really wish I had ANY hobby as cheap as PNP RPGing can be; you can buy into D&D4e for less than the cost of two semi-recent video games. Buy a couple of supplements a year and you're still way below the threshold for basically any other hobby. There's plenty of fan-generated material you can get for free on the web, you seriously never have to spend more than $30/$90 plus dice ever to play the game.
It's not that the last gen is totally over (although only the PS2 is de facto supported anymore) but that the industry's focus shifted to the next generation. There may still be a trickle of titles (in Japan PS1 games were still being released two or three years ago) for another year but the emphasis is on newer systems. If you factor in the PS2's life support you'd also have to include that for other generations (NES games and redesign from 94) which would push the average lifespan up another year but it was simpler just sticking to launch dates.
I jumped around because the parent first mentioned the entire last generation as being short; Dreamcast is where the last gen arguably began, and the 360 launch somewhat prematurely ended it (the PS2 being the only console that's really getting anything more than token support anymore). Then since the NES-SNES days were characterized as golden days of longevity, I put down their timelines, then figured I might as well show all the Nintendo ones to demonstrate the average length of time by the company with the most generations released. There was no disingenuousness intended.
The PS2-PS3 generation was six years (Oct 2000 - Nov 2006). If you count the Dreamcast, the last-gen started in Sept 99 and ended in Nov 05 with the 360 - still six years. The NES came out in October of 85, the SNES in August of 91 - less than six years. The N64 came out Sep 96, the Game Cube in Nov. 01 - a little over five years, and five years again until the Wii. The console generations are as long as they've ever been. There's more games available for the PS and PS2 than any other console. And if you're wary about buying crappy accessories, those have always been around. ROB the Robot, Super Scope Six, The SNES mouse, the N64 and Dreamcast Microphones (at least they came with the game), the Dreamcast's fishing controller, DDR mats, Guitar Hero, etc. Nothing is different, except now with the Wii game developers will move gimmick development over to the system that has all those capabilities built in so less money is wasted on 1-game peripherals.
1. Teenages have insane amounts of money (or goods and services equivalent to an insane amount.) How many get cars for their 16th birthday? Their own computers in their bedroom separate from their parents'? Cell phones, digital cameras, ipods, musical instruments? Or for that matter, massive game collections? Spoiled brats are the exception rather than the rule, but name a teen without some combination of at least three of the above. Not every teen has these luxuries, but the conspicuous spenders at the top are the ones who'll do the buying/begging so you have to weight their smaller number more heavily. $600 (more like $800) at Christmas isn't that much for many teens. Anyway, with this past console generation, the primary spenders became the 18-34 year old males, which is probably large enough to eat up the 1 million in its entirety already. When the prices come down, then teens will become more of a factor.
2. Your second point is too blatantly biased for me to even need to consider.
3. Considering the reports saying Sony is stopping shipment of blue lasers to other companies in order to have enough to install into those million PS3, there may not really BE a separate market yet. And don't think that just because they are an "enthusiast" that they automatically want to spend as much money as possible - many audio-videophiles love to brag about their used equipment bargains or home-built speakers and cabinets. $600 is a pretty good deal for a Blu-ray player alone - they may hesitate to spend almost double that amount due to the format wars (just because you have a nice tv and stereo doesn't mean you can afford to throw out $500), and enough may be interested in actually having the PS3 for a video game system as well (especially since it will the one best able to show off their setup with its HDMI capability).
4. The "twenty-somethings" are a larger demographic than you seem to give them credit for. When you start throwing around terms like "145 million Americans play video games" and "60% of all gamers are 25 to 44 years old" you see the video game world is much larger than you might have thought, and a million consoles (between the two largest markets) is a drop in the bucket. When my brother got his 360 back in April, there was only 1 core system left in a town of 150,000 (we checked seven different places). We asked the salesmen about sales patterns - they were still selling out within a few days of shipment, we would have had to wait another week or so, if not two, until another batch was available. It wouldn't surprise me if 360s were still that unavailable. Remember, Microsoft had its own trouble reaching expected shipment amounts last year too and there were almost as many "$500 is too much for a console" complaints as there are now - and the launch titles were just as poor. PS3s are going to sell out like mad until Sony can ramp up their production to a point where they can actually reach demand.
The real focus shouldn't be on the guaranteed 1 million sales at the launch - there is a demand much greater than the supply for probably the next six months - it should be on what happens in a year or so when all three consoles are fully available to anyone that wants one, when all three are trying to expand past their core market into the general public. I think the early lead is going to go to whoever can manufacture the most consoles in the next year. In the long run, the $100 price difference between the 360 and PS3 isn't going to matter as much as the game selection - 2007 will be determined by how many people will pay $200 for Metal Gear Solid 4 or Final Fantasy XIII versus $150 for Halo (counting a year's worth of Xbox live and any costs for wireless adapter and headset. Yes you can play other games on it, but once you pay the Sony tax you can play other games besides MGS4 for "free" as well). Where Nintendo fits in is anyone's guess - I think they'll do pretty well for themselves, because they're aiming for the largest slice of the demographics: everyone. But like I said, it's going to take a year or two to see which console is the first to break out of the "3 million sold" pack.
Could they not be including it because HDMI is a feature maybe 10% of the market will actually be able to use? Or given the fact that even though early adopters are more likely to *have* HDTVs, when they're in for a penny they're in for a pound, the marginal price increase for the top of the line input isn't going to scare anyone who already intends to buy one away.
In the PS2/XBOX generation, and every console before that, RCA cables have been standard - composite cables sold for $30. The Xbox 360 Premium pack has composite built in, but the Core only has RCAs. For those unlucky enough to have purchased a Core system, Microsoft isn't afraid to charge $40 for composites. This isn't Sony being a cheapskate, it's being competitive. HDTV owners will always be the exception rather than the rule among PS3 owners, it makes no sense to raise the cost for everyone else to subsidize the cost for people who can probably better afford the cables anyway.
The pain in her thumb might not be related at all to what her thumb is doing but the fact that it's on the same nerve pathway as the index and middle finger, wrist, and forearm. Could be carpal tunnel syndrome, or tendonitis, or some other form of neuropathy. I have cubital tunnel syndrome, which is kind of related - it has to do with the ulnar nerve, which runs from the pinky up the arm, over the funny bone, and into the shoulder. My pinky and ring finger become painful and numb along with my elbow, because the ulnar nerve becomes compressed at the elbow from long periods of flexing. A 90 degree angle is too steep for me to keep my arms bent at for very long - 25-45 is the optimum range.
So it really could have nothing to do specifically with the thumb (especially since she experiences pain in her hand and arm too) and more to do with ergonomics, posture, or just a natural tendency towards being more susceptible to RSIs due to biology (I'm 23, I got mine young because my forearm-elbow angle is naturally larger than most people's). Rather than a new mouse, she should see a doctor and get treated, not fired - she (hopefully) has health insurance (I don't, I developed mine before I had a real job, been suffering for a year now with no hope in sight for the surgery I need), and she did receive this damage working for the company. Firing her would probably be grounds for a nice fat lawsuit. Surgery might not be necessary - there are physical therapies, braces (worn while working or while sleeping - a fair amount of symptoms can be relieved by wearing a wrist brace at night, because some people bend their wrists for hours at a time while sleeping, compressing the nerve - before I had CTS, I had an unrelated case of tendonitis which was gone within a few months of drugstore naproxen and wearing braces at night), cortisone injections, cold compressess (good for immediate short-term relief) and more exotic input devices like speech recognition and head-mounted laser mice .
If all else fails a new job should be a last resort - I don't think anyone here on slashdot would like being told "find a career that doesn't use computers." Years of schooling, experience, and knowledge down the drain. Good luck finding a professional office job that doesn't require computer use. Also, once you're already injured, ordinary tasks become painful and aggravating as well - driving, yard work, cleaning... and you might as well forget about playing musical instruments. These injuries are devastating, psychologically/emotionally as well as physically. Constant pain, surgery, months of rehab, the possibility of various degrees of permanent incapacitation, career derailment - it's not something to be taken lightly. I know it has caused me several major depressive episodes when despair sets in.
Don't be so sure it won't happen to you - you're still young, but after *years* of repetition it can happen to anyone, ergonomics be damned.
The sooner that woman gets treated, the better - the earlier you catch it, the less likely the damage will be permanent. Don't waste time with fancy keyboards and mice (though they may be necessary) - get her diagnosed first, and work with a physical therapist from there.
Slashdot Mirror
More specifically, here is the relevant section:
Specifically, she is talking about female/minority judges bringing an additional context to a decision, informed by their life experiences, that a (rich/white/male/privileged) person's life experience would necessarily preclude them from having. Which I don't think is a racist point; her early life's biography is significantly different than the rest of t
In any case, these groupings are more than skin deep; it is cultural similarities that tie them together more than the color of their skin, in many cases the culture being a preexisting condition through generations of gang hierarchy that extends from the streets to the prisons and vice-versa. Racial grouping in prisons is much more complex than simply being visually identified as a member of a race, though I'll grant the moot point that color is the most obvious indicator of the index of cultural, historical, and socio-economic similarities.
That's a complete lie. Here's the press release about the OGL for 4th edition. There is a fee for a prerelease OGL, but once the game actually launches it's free. I assume they charge for the extra work getting the documents to the third party takes, and because there'll be an obvious bonus to other publishers due to the PR frenzy at release. And what's so bad about not being compatible? It's an entirely different rules set, designed to play much differently. It's not like there's a dearth of 3rd edition material that hasn't been played by the average group, and campaign settings have always been described in terms of both flavor and mechanics, so if you're really desperate for new ideas you could just steal them from there (or any other gaming company's publications). Also, I'm tired of hearing people complain about having to buy new books. No one is forcing you to upgrade if you really love 3ed that much, and all your REALLY need to play is the player's handbook (plus DMG and Monster Manual, but that's for the DM). I really wish I had ANY hobby as cheap as PNP RPGing can be; you can buy into D&D4e for less than the cost of two semi-recent video games. Buy a couple of supplements a year and you're still way below the threshold for basically any other hobby. There's plenty of fan-generated material you can get for free on the web, you seriously never have to spend more than $30/$90 plus dice ever to play the game.
It's not that the last gen is totally over (although only the PS2 is de facto supported anymore) but that the industry's focus shifted to the next generation. There may still be a trickle of titles (in Japan PS1 games were still being released two or three years ago) for another year but the emphasis is on newer systems. If you factor in the PS2's life support you'd also have to include that for other generations (NES games and redesign from 94) which would push the average lifespan up another year but it was simpler just sticking to launch dates.
I jumped around because the parent first mentioned the entire last generation as being short; Dreamcast is where the last gen arguably began, and the 360 launch somewhat prematurely ended it (the PS2 being the only console that's really getting anything more than token support anymore). Then since the NES-SNES days were characterized as golden days of longevity, I put down their timelines, then figured I might as well show all the Nintendo ones to demonstrate the average length of time by the company with the most generations released. There was no disingenuousness intended.
The PS2-PS3 generation was six years (Oct 2000 - Nov 2006). If you count the Dreamcast, the last-gen started in Sept 99 and ended in Nov 05 with the 360 - still six years. The NES came out in October of 85, the SNES in August of 91 - less than six years. The N64 came out Sep 96, the Game Cube in Nov. 01 - a little over five years, and five years again until the Wii. The console generations are as long as they've ever been. There's more games available for the PS and PS2 than any other console. And if you're wary about buying crappy accessories, those have always been around. ROB the Robot, Super Scope Six, The SNES mouse, the N64 and Dreamcast Microphones (at least they came with the game), the Dreamcast's fishing controller, DDR mats, Guitar Hero, etc. Nothing is different, except now with the Wii game developers will move gimmick development over to the system that has all those capabilities built in so less money is wasted on 1-game peripherals.
1. Teenages have insane amounts of money (or goods and services equivalent to an insane amount.) How many get cars for their 16th birthday? Their own computers in their bedroom separate from their parents'? Cell phones, digital cameras, ipods, musical instruments? Or for that matter, massive game collections? Spoiled brats are the exception rather than the rule, but name a teen without some combination of at least three of the above. Not every teen has these luxuries, but the conspicuous spenders at the top are the ones who'll do the buying/begging so you have to weight their smaller number more heavily. $600 (more like $800) at Christmas isn't that much for many teens. Anyway, with this past console generation, the primary spenders became the 18-34 year old males, which is probably large enough to eat up the 1 million in its entirety already. When the prices come down, then teens will become more of a factor.
2. Your second point is too blatantly biased for me to even need to consider.
3. Considering the reports saying Sony is stopping shipment of blue lasers to other companies in order to have enough to install into those million PS3, there may not really BE a separate market yet. And don't think that just because they are an "enthusiast" that they automatically want to spend as much money as possible - many audio-videophiles love to brag about their used equipment bargains or home-built speakers and cabinets. $600 is a pretty good deal for a Blu-ray player alone - they may hesitate to spend almost double that amount due to the format wars (just because you have a nice tv and stereo doesn't mean you can afford to throw out $500), and enough may be interested in actually having the PS3 for a video game system as well (especially since it will the one best able to show off their setup with its HDMI capability).
4. The "twenty-somethings" are a larger demographic than you seem to give them credit for. When you start throwing around terms like "145 million Americans play video games" and "60% of all gamers are 25 to 44 years old" you see the video game world is much larger than you might have thought, and a million consoles (between the two largest markets) is a drop in the bucket. When my brother got his 360 back in April, there was only 1 core system left in a town of 150,000 (we checked seven different places). We asked the salesmen about sales patterns - they were still selling out within a few days of shipment, we would have had to wait another week or so, if not two, until another batch was available. It wouldn't surprise me if 360s were still that unavailable. Remember, Microsoft had its own trouble reaching expected shipment amounts last year too and there were almost as many "$500 is too much for a console" complaints as there are now - and the launch titles were just as poor. PS3s are going to sell out like mad until Sony can ramp up their production to a point where they can actually reach demand.
The real focus shouldn't be on the guaranteed 1 million sales at the launch - there is a demand much greater than the supply for probably the next six months - it should be on what happens in a year or so when all three consoles are fully available to anyone that wants one, when all three are trying to expand past their core market into the general public. I think the early lead is going to go to whoever can manufacture the most consoles in the next year. In the long run, the $100 price difference between the 360 and PS3 isn't going to matter as much as the game selection - 2007 will be determined by how many people will pay $200 for Metal Gear Solid 4 or Final Fantasy XIII versus $150 for Halo (counting a year's worth of Xbox live and any costs for wireless adapter and headset. Yes you can play other games on it, but once you pay the Sony tax you can play other games besides MGS4 for "free" as well). Where Nintendo fits in is anyone's guess - I think they'll do pretty well for themselves, because they're aiming for the largest slice of the demographics: everyone. But like I said, it's going to take a year or two to see which console is the first to break out of the "3 million sold" pack.
Could they not be including it because HDMI is a feature maybe 10% of the market will actually be able to use? Or given the fact that even though early adopters are more likely to *have* HDTVs, when they're in for a penny they're in for a pound, the marginal price increase for the top of the line input isn't going to scare anyone who already intends to buy one away.
In the PS2/XBOX generation, and every console before that, RCA cables have been standard - composite cables sold for $30. The Xbox 360 Premium pack has composite built in, but the Core only has RCAs. For those unlucky enough to have purchased a Core system, Microsoft isn't afraid to charge $40 for composites. This isn't Sony being a cheapskate, it's being competitive. HDTV owners will always be the exception rather than the rule among PS3 owners, it makes no sense to raise the cost for everyone else to subsidize the cost for people who can probably better afford the cables anyway.
So it really could have nothing to do specifically with the thumb (especially since she experiences pain in her hand and arm too) and more to do with ergonomics, posture, or just a natural tendency towards being more susceptible to RSIs due to biology (I'm 23, I got mine young because my forearm-elbow angle is naturally larger than most people's). Rather than a new mouse, she should see a doctor and get treated, not fired - she (hopefully) has health insurance (I don't, I developed mine before I had a real job, been suffering for a year now with no hope in sight for the surgery I need), and she did receive this damage working for the company. Firing her would probably be grounds for a nice fat lawsuit. Surgery might not be necessary - there are physical therapies, braces (worn while working or while sleeping - a fair amount of symptoms can be relieved by wearing a wrist brace at night, because some people bend their wrists for hours at a time while sleeping, compressing the nerve - before I had CTS, I had an unrelated case of tendonitis which was gone within a few months of drugstore naproxen and wearing braces at night), cortisone injections, cold compressess (good for immediate short-term relief) and more exotic input devices like speech recognition and head-mounted laser mice .
If all else fails a new job should be a last resort - I don't think anyone here on slashdot would like being told "find a career that doesn't use computers." Years of schooling, experience, and knowledge down the drain. Good luck finding a professional office job that doesn't require computer use. Also, once you're already injured, ordinary tasks become painful and aggravating as well - driving, yard work, cleaning... and you might as well forget about playing musical instruments. These injuries are devastating, psychologically/emotionally as well as physically. Constant pain, surgery, months of rehab, the possibility of various degrees of permanent incapacitation, career derailment - it's not something to be taken lightly. I know it has caused me several major depressive episodes when despair sets in.
Don't be so sure it won't happen to you - you're still young, but after *years* of repetition it can happen to anyone, ergonomics be damned.
The sooner that woman gets treated, the better - the earlier you catch it, the less likely the damage will be permanent. Don't waste time with fancy keyboards and mice (though they may be necessary) - get her diagnosed first, and work with a physical therapist from there.