One of the reason many poor stay that way Horrible decisions made from the financial standpoint.
When is 25K to 50K poor? I know! When you're on Slashdot dealing with overprivileged spoiled brat libertarians whose daddies got them shell accounts on their workplaces Unix boxes when they were 8. I have a job, I work as a PA to the disabled. I made less than $16000 last year. Do you know why it pays so low? Because the majority of people who do it in the cities are african american women. And thusly the work is devalued. (Downstate where I'm at, there's more caucasians and men, but it's still a woman heavy job.) Privileged white folks do what they have always done, hand off their babies, elderly and disabled to black women to take care of, cause they sure don't want to wipe their grannies ass, it's below them. Have you ever wondered why there's so many women (and even lesbian women) in social services? Because the work is so devalued by those with economic power (affluent white males) that it pays so low that men won't do it. And because it pays so low the agencies can't be picky about hires, thusly leading to lesbian friendly workplaces. And because the social services are known as being lesbian friendly, college aged lesbians know they can go into social services and get jobs and not have to worry about hiding who they are.
An article in the AJC earlier in the year was showing the plight of the homeless in Atlanta, the impact of the story fell on its face as all but two of those pictured had a cell phone - a few were using them when the picture was taken.
Yep they have cell phones, because a pay as you go cell phone is much cheaper than a landline or a regular cell plan. I'm averaging about 8 bucks a month for my pay as you go phone. Technically it's a personal use phone but the job essentially requires it.
Darn right, I was circumcised as an infant and turned out to be hypospadic (with meatal stenosis). Hypospadic boys should never be circumcised as it prevents the most effective fixes to the problems involved. Apparently the doctor didn't notice, though I suspect what he did was use the circumcision as cover to try to fix worse hypospadias that my parents didn't notice. My circ is unusual. And the doctors never actually gave my parents information on what was going on. When problems cropped up they just said things, like oh we need to operate or we need to regularly dilate. I only found out shit as an adult
Fuckers, which is why I am opposed to circumcision (though I'm not a member of those no-circ groups)
The best public high school in Illinois (ask Newsweek), New Trier in Winnetka has the highest per pupil spending of any school in Illinois. The city and downstate schools can't match that, plus they have to deal with problems New Trier doesn't:
Kids who's parents can't afford computers
Kids whose parents can't afford breakfast
Kids whose parents have problems paying for school supplies
Kids whose parents public and school libraries can't afford books.
New Trier has a fencing club...fencing, at a public high school. They have a radio station, they have a newspaper. They got all kinds of shit that gives them HUGE advantages over kids in poorer schools. Don't believe me? Head to the Universities
Take a look at who works on the Uni newspapers or uni radio/tv stations, or is involved in student goverment It's the kids from places like new trier. The first thing a Uni newspaper/radio station/tv station will ask someone who wants to write/work for them is "what did you do at your schools newspaper/radio station/tv station"
Hell even when it comes to computer programming or IT, those New Trier type kids are ahead. Remember Robert Tappan Morris, his daddy got him a shell account as a kid, so by the time he hit MIT he was years ahead of say some poor kid from bumfuck Illinois who might not have ever touched a computer and had no Dad that worked for Bell Labs or something.
And one of the reasons the Nation of Islam has a foothold is all those frakkin Segregationist Southern Baptist Dixiecrats, who control the Republican party these days. Remember Trent Lott saying that if Jefferson Davis was alive today he'd be a Republican? What would that make Lincoln? Republicans here in Illinois celebrate Lincoln day and I bet it sticks in their craw when the Dixiecrats running the party on a national level say shit like that.
I would also argue that the xbox has a better 'entertainment hub' edge currently. It is a better experience. They did something Sony should have done ages ago. They brought people in and tested it and did study groups. They watched people use it. They figured out what people struggled with and what they didnt. It is a very well done experience. The only down side is to use it properly you MUST have a PC with media center. Sony on the other hand currently feels like it is tacked on, but is a 1 box solution. Sony is getting there. However by the time they get there will anyone still be interested?
That was very insightful Anonymous Coward, I'm surprised you posted this anonymously, and as much as I like my PS3, I agree. SCEA couldn't market their way out of a paper bag.
The browser isn't Sony code, it's Netfront, why sony just didn't use some kind of embedded Firefox or something is beyond me, they just seem to loooove Netfront. Perhaps because Netfront is produced by a Japanese company.
So, Sony saw, thought 'oh yeah, games are just so 80s, we can have a bit of that pie too' and now you see news fluff like this as part of their competitive stance against each other.
Wrong, because in Japan, the PS2 had multimedia features before the Xbox did. The stuff that we can do now on the PS3, download video and demos, rip CD's, browse the net, etc; Japanese PS2 owners could do with the BBN.
Sorry Doc, I got YDL 6 on my PS3. I came "this close" to choosing PS3 Ubuntu, but decided to go with the one that was Redhatty (since I had used SCEfoo's wacky kondara-ized RedHat on the PS2), and that had corporate backing. Now if I ever get another PS3, I'd probably try out PS3 Ubuntu on that.
Are the PS3 Ubuntu forums getting a lot of folk who are new to Linux? (heck might as well check myself) Looks like it.
I'm a moderator over at the YDL forums myself. I Ought to sign up to the psubuntu forums, looks like there's some nice newbie information we can borrow.:-)
Except for the wiimote, you don't have a usable way to controlling looking and turning that's more fine-grained than on-off.
Analog sticks aren't just on/off. As for buttons, it usually works like this:
Analog sticks for movement and aiming
D-pad gets miscellaneous functions like scope/binoculars (consider it 4-8 buttons)
4 shoulder buttons.
4 action buttons.
L3/R3, those are the buttons you get when you press in the analog sticks. Often used for crouching and stuff.
Select and Start are usually used for menu functions, or to see the team list.
Limited communication facilities (oh yeah, I want to use an on-screen keyboard to chat...), except if you go and invest in a headset; how commonly is this supported?
Headset support is pretty much mandatory (and expected) in any console online FPS. I only know of one that doesn't have it, the PS2 version of Tribes.
There's probably one other thing that scared Microsoft shitless back in the early days of the PS2:
"We could put Linux on the PS2 tomorrow if we wanted to."
Microsoft depends on the Office/gaming lock-in to keep people buying Windows. If there's an alternate platform that has lots good quality commmercial games AND an office suite that gets the job done (and e-mail, IM, basic photo editing), then people won't need Windows so much. And while Linux on the PS2 didn't have an office suite, (though you could install AbiWord or SIAG), Linux on the PS3 has OpenOffice.
Personally, I don't need Windows much at all, I have a PS3 with Yellow Dog installed. Why Sony doesn't promote the PS3 as a good "second PC" or promote the PS3 to parents as "Lil Timmy can do his homework on it too, thus letting Dad/Mom use the PC without interruption" is beyond me.
I wonder, anyone have the sales figures for Oblivion? That's a good example of a PC/Console game that utilizes the hardware to it's full potential.
I'd like to know that too, because the full price GOTY edition is STILL on the shelves for all three platforms. Usually older RPG's like that disappear relatively quickly, to be replaced by Sports game year $foo, or film license $foo in the slot, but it's still there. I do know that the PS3 non-GOTY version is now a $29.99 Greatest Hits title. (The PS3 GOTY version is still full price) Ah here we go: "A PlayStation 3 game must be on the market for 10 months and sell at least 500,000 copies to meet the Greatest Hits criteria."
or better yet, a more complex interface (such as a flight sim)
Aint nothin stopping flight sims on consoles these days except for the fact that flight sim dev houses tend to be PC only. I know of at least two console flight games that support USB Joystick and Throttle type controls.
while also allowing me to concurrently search the web, write in my blog, podcast, record my music, and write software...a console can't do that.
Where have you been for the last 6 years. Did you ever wonder why Sony always referred to the PS2 (and PS3) as "computer entertainment systems"?
I love doing this:
[CronoCloud@mideel ~]$ cat/etc/redhat-release Yellow Dog Linux release 6.0 (Pyxis)
Used to do it with my PS2 with a Linux kit in it too.
creating walled gardens, instead of standards based architectures.
When it comes to games, walled gardens are a good thing.
Furthermore, if consoles are opened up to be as general purpose as a computer --- why bother having a console in the first place?
One might ask that if consoles can do general purpose computer type things, why have a Windows computer? But let me answer your question. Gaming on the console is true plug and play. I don't have to worry about system requirements or a game like Crysis forcing a hardware upgrade on me for it to be playable. Everything just works. And I have a large selection of genre's other than just RTS, FPS and MMORPG.
Unless you're running SETI@Home, rendering the next Pixar movie, or simulating nuclear explosions, business applications across many users just don't run that way.
And if you are running them, you still might want IBM hardware:
"Hello IBM? I need a Cell based cluster." or if you need it really cheap and don't need a HUGE amount of processing power.
Well it is possible, last time I checked, to compile firefox using GTK1 and not GTK2. There are other applications that still can only use GTK1, I know Nethack does if you try to compile in the "experimental" GTK graphical windowing system support.
Use youtube-dl http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/ It'll get you the flv (or mp4 if you use the -b flag) file that you can play in vlc or mplayer or whatever else you have. Quite handy if you're running Linux on PPC (PS3 in my case, not an old Mac.)
Slashdot Mirror
When is 25K to 50K poor? I know! When you're on Slashdot dealing with overprivileged spoiled brat libertarians whose daddies got them shell accounts on their workplaces Unix boxes when they were 8. I have a job, I work as a PA to the disabled. I made less than $16000 last year. Do you know why it pays so low? Because the majority of people who do it in the cities are african american women. And thusly the work is devalued. (Downstate where I'm at, there's more caucasians and men, but it's still a woman heavy job.) Privileged white folks do what they have always done, hand off their babies, elderly and disabled to black women to take care of, cause they sure don't want to wipe their grannies ass, it's below them. Have you ever wondered why there's so many women (and even lesbian women) in social services? Because the work is so devalued by those with economic power (affluent white males) that it pays so low that men won't do it. And because it pays so low the agencies can't be picky about hires, thusly leading to lesbian friendly workplaces. And because the social services are known as being lesbian friendly, college aged lesbians know they can go into social services and get jobs and not have to worry about hiding who they are.
Yep they have cell phones, because a pay as you go cell phone is much cheaper than a landline or a regular cell plan. I'm averaging about 8 bucks a month for my pay as you go phone. Technically it's a personal use phone but the job essentially requires it.
Darn right, I was circumcised as an infant and turned out to be hypospadic (with meatal stenosis). Hypospadic boys should never be circumcised as it prevents the most effective fixes to the problems involved. Apparently the doctor didn't notice, though I suspect what he did was use the circumcision as cover to try to fix worse hypospadias that my parents didn't notice. My circ is unusual.
And the doctors never actually gave my parents information on what was going on. When problems cropped up they just said things, like oh we need to operate or we need to regularly dilate. I only found out shit as an adult
Fuckers, which is why I am opposed to circumcision (though I'm not a member of those no-circ groups)
The best public high school in Illinois (ask Newsweek), New Trier in Winnetka has the highest per pupil spending of any school in Illinois. The city and downstate schools can't match that, plus they have to deal with problems New Trier doesn't:
Kids who's parents can't afford computers
Kids whose parents can't afford breakfast
Kids whose parents have problems paying for school supplies
Kids whose parents public and school libraries can't afford books.
New Trier has a fencing club...fencing, at a public high school. They have a radio station, they have a newspaper. They got all kinds of shit that gives them HUGE advantages over kids in poorer schools. Don't believe me? Head to the Universities
Take a look at who works on the Uni newspapers or uni radio/tv stations, or is involved in student goverment It's the kids from places like new trier. The first thing a Uni newspaper/radio station/tv station will ask someone who wants to write/work for them is "what did you do at your schools newspaper/radio station/tv station"
Hell even when it comes to computer programming or IT, those New Trier type kids are ahead. Remember Robert Tappan Morris, his daddy got him a shell account as a kid, so by the time he hit MIT he was years ahead of say some poor kid from bumfuck Illinois who might not have ever touched a computer and had no Dad that worked for Bell Labs or something.
And one of the reasons the Nation of Islam has a foothold is all those frakkin Segregationist Southern Baptist Dixiecrats, who control the Republican party these days. Remember Trent Lott saying that if Jefferson Davis was alive today he'd be a Republican?
What would that make Lincoln?
Republicans here in Illinois celebrate Lincoln day and I bet it sticks in their craw when the Dixiecrats running the party on a national level say shit like that.
Wasn't the Senator raised by his mother and Grandmother? I wasn't aware that they were Muslim.
Then it's time the South got rid of the "plantation" mindset and figured out a way to use more machines and less manual labor.
That was very insightful Anonymous Coward, I'm surprised you posted this anonymously, and as much as I like my PS3, I agree. SCEA couldn't market their way out of a paper bag.
It is possible to compare FireFox, Opera (via a Linux install on the PS3) and the PS3's Netfront. I'll get around to doing it sooner or later.
The browser isn't Sony code, it's Netfront, why sony just didn't use some kind of embedded Firefox or something is beyond me, they just seem to loooove Netfront. Perhaps because Netfront is produced by a Japanese company.
Wrong, because in Japan, the PS2 had multimedia features before the Xbox did. The stuff that we can do now on the PS3, download video and demos, rip CD's, browse the net, etc; Japanese PS2 owners could do with the BBN.
I've watched entire TV episodes and movies on Hulu with my 2.50 firmware PS3
Sorry Doc, I got YDL 6 on my PS3. I came "this close" to choosing PS3 Ubuntu, but decided to go with the one that was Redhatty (since I had used SCEfoo's wacky kondara-ized RedHat on the PS2), and that had corporate backing. Now if I ever get another PS3, I'd probably try out PS3 Ubuntu on that.
Are the PS3 Ubuntu forums getting a lot of folk who are new to Linux? (heck might as well check myself) Looks like it.
I'm a moderator over at the YDL forums myself. I Ought to sign up to the psubuntu forums, looks like there's some nice newbie information we can borrow. :-)
You don't consider Nethack a great game?
Analog sticks aren't just on/off. As for buttons, it usually works like this:
Analog sticks for movement and aiming
D-pad gets miscellaneous functions like scope/binoculars (consider it 4-8 buttons)
4 shoulder buttons.
4 action buttons.
L3/R3, those are the buttons you get when you press in the analog sticks. Often used for crouching and stuff.
Select and Start are usually used for menu functions, or to see the team list.
Headset support is pretty much mandatory (and expected) in any console online FPS. I only know of one that doesn't have it, the PS2 version of Tribes.
There's probably one other thing that scared Microsoft shitless back in the early days of the PS2:
"We could put Linux on the PS2 tomorrow if we wanted to."
Microsoft depends on the Office/gaming lock-in to keep people buying Windows. If there's an alternate platform that has lots good quality commmercial games AND an office suite that gets the job done (and e-mail, IM, basic photo editing), then people won't need Windows so much. And while Linux on the PS2 didn't have an office suite, (though you could install AbiWord or SIAG), Linux on the PS3 has OpenOffice.
Personally, I don't need Windows much at all, I have a PS3 with Yellow Dog installed. Why Sony doesn't promote the PS3 as a good "second PC" or promote the PS3 to parents as "Lil Timmy can do his homework on it too, thus letting Dad/Mom use the PC without interruption" is beyond me.
The Wii port of "The Force Unleashed" is based on the PS2 version not the PS3/Xbox 360 version.
I'd like to know that too, because the full price GOTY edition is STILL on the shelves for all three platforms. Usually older RPG's like that disappear relatively quickly, to be replaced by Sports game year $foo, or film license $foo in the slot, but it's still there. I do know that the PS3 non-GOTY version is now a $29.99 Greatest Hits title. (The PS3 GOTY version is still full price) Ah here we go: "A PlayStation 3 game must be on the market for 10 months and sell at least 500,000 copies to meet the Greatest Hits criteria."
Aint nothin stopping flight sims on consoles these days except for the fact that flight sim dev houses tend to be PC only. I know of at least two console flight games that support USB Joystick and Throttle type controls.
Where have you been for the last 6 years. Did you ever wonder why Sony always referred to the PS2 (and PS3) as "computer entertainment systems"?
I love doing this:
Used to do it with my PS2 with a Linux kit in it too.
When it comes to games, walled gardens are a good thing.
One might ask that if consoles can do general purpose computer type things, why have a Windows computer? But let me answer your question. Gaming on the console is true plug and play. I don't have to worry about system requirements or a game like Crysis forcing a hardware upgrade on me for it to be playable. Everything just works. And I have a large selection of genre's other than just RTS, FPS and MMORPG.
You're forgetting the PS3 has the ability to run Linux, so there's your hobbyist dev station right there, at least for 2D games.
And if you are running them, you still might want IBM hardware:
"Hello IBM? I need a Cell based cluster." or if you need it really cheap and don't need a HUGE amount of processing power.
"Hello Terrasoft? I need a 8-Node PS3 cluster."
Just use gmail over IMAP/SMTP with your regular GPG supporting mail program, or if you must use a web browser use FireGPG
wake me up when it actually works with youtube on Firefox. gnash is not ready for prime time.
Perhaps, but they DO officially support Linux on PPC, unlike Adobe, so you can take your PS3 with a YDL6 install and have Opera 9.60.
Well it is possible, last time I checked, to compile firefox using GTK1 and not GTK2. There are other applications that still can only use GTK1, I know Nethack does if you try to compile in the "experimental" GTK graphical windowing system support.
Use youtube-dl http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/ It'll get you the flv (or mp4 if you use the -b flag) file that you can play in vlc or mplayer or whatever else you have. Quite handy if you're running Linux on PPC (PS3 in my case, not an old Mac.)