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User: westlake

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Comments · 12,170

  1. Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel on Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture · · Score: 1

    We've all seen the recent stats on similar stories. Over half of all gamers are female. The stereotypical teenage boy gamer is a small component of the "gamer" culture.

    The majority of gamers may be female ---- but the majority of gamers who post to Slashdot are male --- and much more easily stereotyped as arrested adolescents than adults.

  2. Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" on Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That slashdot plays along is not surprising, this website has a long reputation of pandering to that crowd and backing down on real facts cases like these. It's much easier to just play along right?

    I first heard about Slashdot when I was still dependent on AOL, a dial-up modem and an affordable toll-free regional calling plan.

    Then and now when the geek speaks about women, I can't escape the feeling that I have been teleported back to the high school locker rooms of 1964. The only pandering on this site is to the geek's own adolescent sense of manhood,

  3. Re:Franchise laws = Racket laws on Tesla's Next Auto-Dealer Battleground State: Georgia · · Score: 1

    There is no way in hell those franchise laws were put in place for the benefit of you and me.

    The auto and truck dealership began as a home town business, employer and taxpayer.

    It typically offered a full range of vehicles appropriate to its market, argued for a better selection, and it could and did push back against the auto maker in ways an ordinary customer could not,

  4. Re:Drivers license on Uber Now Blocked All Over Germany · · Score: 1

    Everyone has passed that, its called a "Drivers license" unless they just hand them out at the age of whatever in Germany. lol

    To obtain a commercial driver's licence in Germany, the first thing you need is a standard EU driver's license, which are not passed out like candy at a fireman's picnic.

    You will need to know the law and demonstrate competence in handling your class of vehicle.

    You will be run through a seres of no-nonsense medical and psychiatric evaluations. You will need a damn near perfect drving record and no criminal record.

    The big city taxi driver must also have "The Knowledge" - a deep understanding of routes, traffic, destinations, and so on.

  5. Pays just "decently?" on Code.org Discloses Top Donors · · Score: 1

    This will make one of the few jobs that still pays decently

    The median household income in the US is $51,000. 15% of Americans living in poverty

    The median annual wage for computer programmers [is] $74,000. Computer Programmers

  6. Re:Silicon Valley runs out of code-monkeys! on Code.org Discloses Top Donors · · Score: 1

    In common with a lot of people on Slashdot, I earned to code for the love of it and then found myself in an industry where programmers are treated like scum

    Workers in other industries solved this problem by forming unions and building the strength and discipline needed to bargain for better wages and working conditions. The price of unionization, of course, is that you have to stop thinking of yourself as something special, and not merely an employee like any other in your company.

  7. Privacy Last on Tox, a Skype Replacement Built On 'Privacy First' · · Score: 2, Informative

    Readers of this story will have noticed the links to four of the major social media sites, including Facebook.

    Since the earliest days of USENET and IRC Chat, the geek has a flawless record of making one-on-one communication over the Internet as painful a process as possible for the non-technical user.

    It took the commercial services like Sype to break the spell.

  8. Re:If the Grand Ayatollah's against it.... on Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards" · · Score: 1

    Stupid opinions based on violent fairy tale books, at that.

    If the geek were honest about the thing, he would that he has built his own language and culture from bits and pieces scavenged from pop cultural icons like Star Trek --- whose stories were in turn drawn from familiar sacred and secular texts, myths, legends, and fairy tales,

  9. Re:Stop being so impatient.... on Hidden Obstacles For Google's Self-Driving Cars · · Score: 1

    The same reason worlds fair showed tech that will be coming out in 5-10 years. Its' fun, it's cool. It also show they are thinking long term and not quarterly

    GM's "Futurama" of 1939 looked to the world of 1960.

    Futurama is widely held to have first introduced the general American public to the concept of a network of expressways connecting the nation.

    Bel Geddes assumed that the automobile would be the same type of carrier and still the most common means of transportation in 1960, albeit with increased vehicle use and traffic lanes also capable of much higher speeds.

    To meet these assumptions, four general ideas for improvement were incorporated into the exhibition showcase.

    First, that each section of road be designed to receive greater capacity of traffic. Second, that traffic moving in one direction could be in complete isolation to traffic moving in any other. Third, segregating traffic by subdividing towns and cities into certain units that restrict traffic and allow pedestrians to predominate. And fourth, consequent traffic control for predetermined maximum and minimum speeds.

    Through this, the exhibition was designed to inspire greater public enthusiasm and support for the constructive work and planning by engineers and public officials who had contributed so much toward improvement of streets and highways.

    Futurama (New York World's Fair)

    For 30 years the Burma-Shave signs delivered about 30 seconds of entertainment with no significant changes in the size of the signs or their spacing. That says volumes about the enormous investment in infrastructure that Bel Geddes was proposing and the political will needed to make it happen,

  10. Re:Time Delay on Judge Allows L.A. Cops To Keep License Plate Reader Data Secret · · Score: 2

    A sufficient time delay before the information becomes public would solve most or all of the problem with compromising investigations.

    How do you define "sufficient time" in any meaningful way?

    Real-lie criminal investigations are not wrapped up in the sixty minutes or so they are allotted on a TV show like CSI or Criminal Minds.

    The stakes can be high, quite literally, life and death.

  11. Animal House. on Why Women Have No Time For Wikipedia · · Score: 3, Informative

    I thought it might be - well, let us say, instructive - to simply re-post some of the choicer responses to this story, all modded up to +4 or +5.

    Because the "social justice warriors" tell you it must be. And if they don't get their way, they'll whine, cry, and call it rape.

    Men in general seem to have less tolerance for what they perceive as error and a greater willingness to fight to correct error.

    Man? Have you ever dated?? Women are the single most argumentative, must be right, cant change their minds, NEEDS AN APOLOGY EVEN WHEN PROVEN WRONG group out their.

    the big problem on Wikipedia is that most edit hurt feelings, especially when you write a lengthy article about your favourite celebrity and someone come behind you and rape all your work with facts. Such senseless rigour are symptom of the patriarchy.

  12. Re:Never useful info given with patches on Microsoft Releases Replacement Patch With Two Known Bugs · · Score: 1

    What pisses me off as a consumer is that Microsoft patches never come with any kind of useful information.

    "This patch makes Windows 8 a little more stable." states its purpose clearly and simply.

    The link to the KB --- which is always there --- implies a deeper understanding of the OS than most users are likely to have or need.

    It won't make their decision to install the patch any easier.

  13. Re: Her work on Anita Sarkeesian, Creator of "Tropes vs. Women," Driven From Home By Trolls · · Score: 1

    For example, there are worse things in gaming than a "save the princess" plot device, but let's face it, feminist issue aside, it's a horribly cliched trope that could stand to be re-examined.

    You can see the change in Disney. In Tangled, Wreak-It Ralph, and Frozen.

  14. WTF were you thinking? on California DMV Told Google Cars Still Need Steering Wheels · · Score: 1

    In a decade or so, cars will likely be able to drive with no people on board, or even transport children with no adult in the car.

    The driverless car is not a chauffer or an nanny.

    It knows only that it has arrived at its pre-programed destination. It doesn't know whether that destination was entered correctly. It doesn't know whether that destination is currently a safe place to drop off your kids.

  15. The casebook method. on Free Law Casebook Project Starts With IP Coursebook · · Score: 2

    Which includes a discussion of whether and when the term "intellectual property" is a dangerous misnomer

    The casebook is meant to illustrate how judicial thinking and case law has evolved over time.

    It doesn't editorialize.

    A typical example in the law of contracts is Hadley v Baxendale (1854).
    Textbooks for students earning non-legal degrees concisely state the famous rules announced in that case that

    (1) consequential damages are limited to those foreseen by the parties at the time of contracting, implying that
    (2) a party must notify the other up front of its specific needs in order to expand what is mutually foreseeable and thereby recover consequential damages if the other breaches.

    Thus stated, Hadley seems simple enough, but a casebook for a law school course will not say that. Rather, the law student must deduce those principles from the text of the Court of Exchequer's slightly archaic mid-19th-century decision.

    This teaching method differs in two ways from the teaching methods used in most other academic programs:

    (1) it requires students to work almost exclusively with primary source material which is often written in obscure or obsolete language; and
    (2) a typical American law school class is supposed to be a dialogue about the meaning of a case, not a straightforward lecture.

    Casebook method

    When the casebook becomes the lecture. it is not doing its job.

  16. This isn't a sharing economy. on Uber Has a Playbook For Sabotaging Lyft, Says Report · · Score: 4, Informative

    The so-called sharing economy seems just as cutthroat --- if not more so --- than any other industry out there.

    The geek's definition of "sharing" has always been --- flexible.

    Taxi services were cutthroat in the old days. Fleecing their customers and constantly at war with each other. That is why they came under regulation.

  17. Re:Horseless cars must accept horse harness on California DMV Told Google Cars Still Need Steering Wheels · · Score: 1

    So that real horses can take "immediate physical traction" of the vehicle if necessary.

    You have no idea how punishing the roads were in the early days of the automobile, how often cars broke down or became hopelessly mired in mud or snow. In rural states, the horse was still in the towing business as late as 1940.

  18. The myths of Alexandria on A Horrifying Interactive Map of Global Internet Censorship · · Score: 3, Informative

    It actually started with the burning of the great library of Alexandria and the murder of Hypathia at the start of an era we call the Dark Ages when Christianity was born.

    Although there is a mythology of the burning of the Library at Alexandria, the library may have suffered several fires or acts of destruction over many years. Possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria include a fire set by Julius Caesar in 48 BC, an attack by Aurelian in the A.D. 270s, the decree of Coptic Pope Theophilus in A.D. 391, and the decree of the second caliph Omar ibn Al-khattab in A.D. 640.

    It's contents were largely lost during the taking of the city by the Emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270-275), who was suppressing a revolt by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. During the course of the fighting, the areas of the city in which the main library was located were damaged. Some sources claim that the smaller library located at the Serapeum survived, though Ammianus Marcellinus wrote of the library in the Serapeum temple as a thing of the past, destroyed when Caesar sacked Alexandria.

    Library of Alexandria

    According to the only contemporary source, Hypatia was murdered [370 AD] by a Christian mob after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria: the governor Orestes and the Bishop of Alexandria. Kathleen Wider proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, and Stephen Greenblatt observes that her murder "effectively marked the downfall of Alexandrian intellectual life". On the other hand, Maria Dzielska and Christian Wildberg note that Hellenistic philosophy continued to flourish in the 5th and 6th centuries, and perhaps until the age of Justinian.

    Hypatia

  19. Re:I thought it was bad on Predictive Modeling To Increase Responsivity of Streamed Games · · Score: 1

    I thought Bioshock was bad when they made a game that you literally could not lose at. It was impossible to die or fail.

    It worked out quite well for Ron Gilbert and Monkey Island in 1990.

    The pleasures to be found in playing a game like The Dig or Grim Fandango lie in exploring the worlds their authors create.

    If you begin with something as richly imagined as Rapture or the airship city Columbia the mistake is trying to shoehorn the game into the narrow confines of a first person shooter,

  20. Re: The world we live in. on New Nail Polish Alerts Wearers To Date Rape Drugs · · Score: 3, Informative

    if all rapes were reported, we may well see that men rape women no more often than women rape men

    I don't think that is in any way very likely.

    According to a 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in theed States have been raped. The actual number is likely higher, experts say, as incidents of sexual violence are severely underreported in the United States -- particularly among male victims.

    Against his will: Female-on-male rape

  21. Never as easy as it sounds. on New Nail Polish Alerts Wearers To Date Rape Drugs · · Score: 2

    Being able to say no to liquor is extremely easy.

    It can be extremely hard to say no to alcohol in certain social settings --- and you don't have to be an alcoholic to know this.

  22. News For Nerds on Put A Red Cross PSA In Front Of the ISIS Beheading Video · · Score: 1

    Why does this belong on Slashdot?

    because tech exists within a larger social context, the geek doesn't always have the final say on how it will be used or abused. it doesn't help matters any that he is fundamentally a binary thinker, it's all or nothing, black or white.

  23. Re:Yeah, as music artists know, not so fun is it? on Dropbox Caught Between Warring Giants Amazon and Google · · Score: 0

    Yes, something music artists know all to well...
    It's a bummer when your on the wrong side of supply and demand aint it?!

    If the demand for music isn't there, why is the geek spending his time cruising Pirate Bay?

    Contributing nothing in exchange for content others have been willing to pay for --- which is the only reason it continues to be produced.

  24. Never look back. on News Corp Australia Doesn't Want You To Look Closely At Their Financials · · Score: 2

    Successful entrepreneurs are notoriously unsentimental.

    To put things in perspective:

    On May 2, 2014, News Corp acquired romance novel publisher Harlequin Enterprises from Torstar for $415 million. The deal closed On August 1 2014.

    News Corp

    Harlequin Enterprises Limited engages in the publishing and sale of books for women worldwide. The company publishes printed and electronic books in various languages in the areas of romance, fiction, nonfiction, young adult novels, erotic literature, and fantasy. The company was founded in 1949 and is based in Don Mills, Canada with additional offices in Toronto, New York, London, Tokyo, Milan, Sydney, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Athens, Budapest, Granges-Paccot*, Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, and Istanbul.

    Company Overview of Harlequin Enterprises Limited

    Harlequin will become part of News Corp's HarperCollins group.

    -----
    * - Granges-Paccot is a municipality in the district of Sarine in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland. [I just had to look this up,]

  25. Re:They're not gamers. on Among Gamers, Adult Women Vastly Outnumber Teenage Boys · · Score: 1

    Women used to read magazines at the doctors office, but those are always 3yrs out of date so they switched to facebook. That's gotten boring over the years so now there's Candy Crush.

    I always look to Slashdot when I need to know whether the dinosaurs still walk the earth.