Start reading. Accusing people of being "politically correct" is a standard white, male, racist, asshole tactic for dismissing.
The problem isn't necessarily that Winston Zedmore's character sucked and was just a wall to bounce jokes off of. The problem is that is how this was the standard way virtually any black character was constructed by Hollywood. Winston's character got the least character development, his main screentime was him being all "WHOA", and most of his speaking lines were side jokes and comic relief.
There's no reason to pull out the racist card any time a black man isn't portrayed as the ultimate hero and intellect in a movie. All the characters in this COMEDY were slightly strange and comedic characters...
Yes, except virtually the only lines his character gets are to crack jokes.
While his character was supposed to be a little dorky I suppose, he was just pure awesome to me.
One of the things I enjoyed about his character in the movies as I got to be older was his relationship to Jeanine was a bit complicated. She clearly puts the moves on him...but unlike nearly every male movie character I can think of (who isn't implied to be gay) - he's ambivalent, tolerates, or rebuffs her. The stereotypical reaction from male movie characters is "Yeah, let's get it on!", especially in action movies.
However, there's a scene - I can't remember which - where he says something, she responds with "OH EGON, I just blah blah blah" and he responds with a look that's half "Yeah, baby. You know you like it" and half "siiiigh, ok, I'll console you, fine..."
Now...if only Winston's character hadn't been so racist. That's the part I hate the most about Ghostbusters; Winston Zedmore is pretty much just there to bounce jokes off of or be the 'dumb black clown' character. I feel like the cartoon actually gave him character development and whatnot more on par with the others (although did they ever show any of his family, for example?) The series definitely played up the "the most normal and people-skills-equipped of the group" elements.
"Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones."
I keep seeing this claim, that "many" people have cell phones. This is a country where 10% of the population have a landline. North Korea claims they have 1 million cell phone subscribers, but really, do you believe that?
Even if it were true, that's about four percent of the population, which does not fit any dictionary definition of "many" I have ever seen.
It would be nice to have multiple standards for charging stations, and it work across all cars.
Teslas come with a bunch of adapters to charge using a standard 110V outlet (which is fine for overnight charging), some 220/240V outlets (hint: if you're staying with a friend and they have an electric dryer, guess what...) and J1772 plugs, which ARE the standard EV charging socket, in the US. You can buy adapters from them to charge off damn near any socket you could possibly find in the continental United States, and since sockets imply current ratings, "safety" is taken care of (provided the wiring was installed properly and to code, which is not an EV's responsibility.)
The arrogance of ignorant slashdotters never ceases to amaze me. If this were the 60's, Slashdot would be chiming in from its armchairs about how NASA really needs to make sure those astronauts have a way to breath oxygen on the way to the moon, and some way to talk to people on the ground.
It's sad that this got an insightful mod. The fact that everyone jumps to potential mate every time a woman does something is one of the biggest barriers to women in technical fields.
First off, if you think "mate" is what love is about, you're the one with the problem.
Second, one person is not "everyone."
Third: did you really think the poster was serious? It was a hyperbolic statement, meant as a strong statement of respect.
Fourth: we can't desire a woman's lifelong companionship for her body (sexual objectification), but please do explain what is wrong with desiring a woman's companionship for her impressive work? Because you do realize that damn near every straight woman on this planet selects her mate by his accomplishments, wealth, and social standing, right?
apparently the darling child of the automotive industry
What's with the snide side commentary? Tesla isn't the "darling" of anyone. Snide, obnoxious comments like this are pretty much du jour in any coverage. Everyone's gunning for them, simply because they're odd kid on the block.
A Tesla catches fire after hitting a piece of massive road debris or getiting into a crash, and it's a fucking national emergency, their stock tanks, electric cars are suddenly "unsafe", etc.
Meanwhile: do you drive a Ford SUV made in the 90's? Twice, Ford weakened the roof and support pillars to save money, against the recommendation of their engineers.
Drive a 90's Ford? Their ignition switches were substandard and could short out, causing your car to catch fire at random. 8.6 million vehicles: http://articles.baltimoresun.c...
Inkjet cartridges expire so quickly after being opened because they contain ink... which is wet, and evaporates, leaving dry residue in the compartment which cannot be used.
BS. Back in the 90's I used the same ink cartridge in an old deskjet for something like a year or two and it worked just fine; it eventually ran out of ink and had to be replaced. I live in a state where it gets extremely dry during the winters. No issues.
We have a giant plotter-size inkjet at work that hadn't been used in 3 years. The print head was clogged to hell and back, requiring a lot of squirting of alcohol and deionized water, but after I had run several cleaning cycles, all the jets cleared out. I'd been worried the ink inside the mechanism and cartridges would be bust, but the same cartridges lasted us for several rolls worth of prints that looked great, and new cartridges were not noticeably better (yes, I waited until we'd likely used up the ink in the tubing.)
The deskjet was built well before companies started going crazy with chipping everything. The plotter-sized printer was built for a market that wouldn't tolerate that kind of bullshit; the printer warns you if the cartridge is old, but the error message is buried in the ink settings page and it never complains again.
offer business grants to get people to open up shop there, give the existing population work (instead of just importing more people), and give them the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
More importantly, give them SMALL business grants, so that Detroit develops a very diverse economy, and you have lots of 2, 3, 10, 50 employee companies that are providing a diversity of services. Even better, give priority to non-franchises so the money stays in the local economy (and the country, for that matter, instead of getting shipped off to a Cayman holding company.) Bring back the bakers, the shoe shops, the florists, etc.
The last thing Detroit needs is another mono-industry or mono-company economy. That's how damn near every 'boom town' gets burned...they start catering to one company or industry, and become the city equivalent of codependent. The point of a city is to be a good place to live, not a good place to work...
One does not need to operate completely in adherence or consistency with a concept or argument they're promoting in order for that concept or argument to be valid. Thus: nor is it valid to challenge someone's argument because they have failed to do so.
Argument pro tip: if you're focusing on the person (ad hominem) you're Doing It Wrong.
So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.
Showing up at the doorstep of a engineer whose work has nothing to do with the shuttles is moronic, but objecting to companies running massive private transportation for the wealthiest people (most Google employees fall firmly into at least the top 4%, more like 2% or less) is not "moronic" and it's not too hard to see their points (they have several.)
On the most practical point: you see Google "being too eco-friendly"; I see them sucking away demand from public transit busses that employees would've taken otherwise. In the US public transit has to magically justify its existence whereas bridges, roads, airports, etc are massively subsidized without blinking. If all the Google employees start taking Google busses instead of the "358 bus" (I made that number up) from a particular neighborhood into SF, then the only people left are the contractors and non-tech workers in the area, and if there aren't "enough" of those people left behind for the line to be profitable enough, the line goes bu-bye, and the people who relied on it are screwed.
This doesn't even begin to touch the issues around separating your super-rich employees from the "unwashed masses." Google "NYC tale of two cities" to read about this problem in modern, east-coast city-life contexts.
If google wanted to be "eco-friendly", they could simply support the existing system in some fashion, or at the least buy their employees public transit passes....though since most googlers make six figures plus, they can damn well already easily afford them on their own; if it takes a private bus to get them to stop driving, the issue is that they're already looking down upon "regular" people, and that is not to be rewarded.
Seriously, the elitist attitude among many geeks/nerds is absurd, and it's particularly strong with every Google employee I've ever met. The last thing they need is to be further coddled and given even more privilege.
I was cheering for you with the "women are not objects" point of your post, and then you just had to go and assume that he's the one paying. Because it's the man's job to pay, right?
Nevermind that any man that pays for his date off OKcupid on the first meeting is an idiot. Go dutch until she proves she's not just there for a free meal with company...which sadly, many are (mostly the "I don't want to waste a lot of time exchanging messages" types who also put little or no effort into filling out their profiles.)
"Theo Happy Day" - for each person who contributes at that level, Theo behaves like a responsible, polite, civil, empathetic human being for an entire day.
"Fire suit" - for this contribution, you are entitled to one (1) interaction with Theo where he does not insult, belittle, demean, or behave in a condescending manner, towards you.
we do lack an objective instrument for how screwed we are as a species, but "any minute now" is just a terribly uninformative model.
Relative to the timescale of the human species, I'd say "any minute now" is pretty accurate. We've been around for over 200,000 years - but in the space of about one hundred years, we've irreversibly altered the planet and created the tools with which to destroy it completely, and I'm not just talking about the nukes.
I'd give us about 100 years tops before we're at post-apocalyptic climate/civilization status.
Also, given that both the USSR/Russia and the US have had numerous accidents and close-calls involving nuclear weapons and those weapons are aging and not really going away...yeah, I'd say it's pretty accurate. I've always been amazed that we haven't blown up anything "by accident" yet.
That's not possible. Someone must be lying. I know this because California banned all those evil high powered rifles.
Murder still happens. We still ban murder.
In fact, virtually every kind of crime happens. We don't just go "oh well" and remove the laws because a bunch of people did it anyway.
Stop being so goddamn butthurt that you can't play with the lethal toys you want to. Please, by all means, move to a country with fewer gun restrictions, and enjoy actually having to use them to protect yourself from all the people who have 'em, too.
Rich idiots in privileged settings come up with this crap and force it down the throats of the rest of us,
Nothing like a bit of ad hominem in the morning. Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the 1:4 efficiency difference and is a conspiracy by rich people to cram "crap" down the throats of us "common", good, hard-workin' innocent folk.
The whole reason this has been legislated is that people refuse to buy compact fluorescent bulbs because they're stubborn and hate change. So they say "they give me headaches" and "they're not as bright" and so on. Even "they cost too much", after you've gone blue in the face showing them the VERY basic math that a 3rd grader could do, showing they pay themselves back within a year or two, AND practically give them away with rebates.
Well, if they're Intel turbo-boost processors, running more threads (and activating more cores) drops the frequency of all the cores. Fewer cores in use = higher core frequency.
They've been upset for a long time, about doing secret, unapproved missions. It's a snowden LEAK that make their discontent... public knowledge.
Meh. I disagree - I think most NSA employees love that they get to do something really james-bond-ish, get a blank-check budget, and have essentially unlimited power over everyone else. There is no doubt a strong voyeuristic angle to the whole thing. They're also, by and large, getting paid obscene amounts of money.
I've met a number of people who work government jobs with clearances and they all act so goddamn smug about it, I've wanted to punch them in the mouth.
I think they were all quite happy nobody knew the power they had; they were "getting away with it." Now that we do, they're demoralized because they don't get to lord over us with the mystique. Plus, robbing the cookie jar isn't fun when everyone sees you do it.
Fuck 'em. I hope the place becomes a miserable place to work and the whole thing falls apart at the seams.
Porches are notorious for "biting your head off" when you make a mistakes
You're referring to the 911, which is rear-engined. The 911 turbo was particularly infamous because it had a poor turbo boost delay. You'd put your foot down, there'd be a delay, and then suddenly you'd have gobs of uncontrollable power.
944's, 914's, Caymans, Boxsters, etc are/were not "notorious" by any stretch.
Slashdot Mirror
"One of the great things about ghostbusters was that it came out at a time when accepted humor wasn't limited by this kind of PC garbage."
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
Start reading. Accusing people of being "politically correct" is a standard white, male, racist, asshole tactic for dismissing.
The problem isn't necessarily that Winston Zedmore's character sucked and was just a wall to bounce jokes off of. The problem is that is how this was the standard way virtually any black character was constructed by Hollywood. Winston's character got the least character development, his main screentime was him being all "WHOA", and most of his speaking lines were side jokes and comic relief.
There's no reason to pull out the racist card any time a black man isn't portrayed as the ultimate hero and intellect in a movie. All the characters in this COMEDY were slightly strange and comedic characters...
Yes, except virtually the only lines his character gets are to crack jokes.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...
While his character was supposed to be a little dorky I suppose, he was just pure awesome to me.
One of the things I enjoyed about his character in the movies as I got to be older was his relationship to Jeanine was a bit complicated. She clearly puts the moves on him...but unlike nearly every male movie character I can think of (who isn't implied to be gay) - he's ambivalent, tolerates, or rebuffs her. The stereotypical reaction from male movie characters is "Yeah, let's get it on!", especially in action movies.
However, there's a scene - I can't remember which - where he says something, she responds with "OH EGON, I just blah blah blah" and he responds with a look that's half "Yeah, baby. You know you like it" and half "siiiigh, ok, I'll console you, fine..."
Now...if only Winston's character hadn't been so racist. That's the part I hate the most about Ghostbusters; Winston Zedmore is pretty much just there to bounce jokes off of or be the 'dumb black clown' character. I feel like the cartoon actually gave him character development and whatnot more on par with the others (although did they ever show any of his family, for example?) The series definitely played up the "the most normal and people-skills-equipped of the group" elements.
"Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones."
I keep seeing this claim, that "many" people have cell phones. This is a country where 10% of the population have a landline. North Korea claims they have 1 million cell phone subscribers, but really, do you believe that?
Even if it were true, that's about four percent of the population, which does not fit any dictionary definition of "many" I have ever seen.
We enforce laws to catch the people who feel they don't have to abide by them.
We don't enforce laws purely to make people follow them.
It would be nice to have multiple standards for charging stations, and it work across all cars.
Teslas come with a bunch of adapters to charge using a standard 110V outlet (which is fine for overnight charging), some 220/240V outlets (hint: if you're staying with a friend and they have an electric dryer, guess what...) and J1772 plugs, which ARE the standard EV charging socket, in the US. You can buy adapters from them to charge off damn near any socket you could possibly find in the continental United States, and since sockets imply current ratings, "safety" is taken care of (provided the wiring was installed properly and to code, which is not an EV's responsibility.)
Circuits may vary [...] safety features/interlocks [...] patent neutral [...] etc
If only there were a body of professionals in the field of electronics...and if only they came up with a standard that encompassed this sort of thing!
Oh, wait. There is.
If only there were a way to search worldwide hypertext documents for such information before you posted....
The arrogance of ignorant slashdotters never ceases to amaze me. If this were the 60's, Slashdot would be chiming in from its armchairs about how NASA really needs to make sure those astronauts have a way to breath oxygen on the way to the moon, and some way to talk to people on the ground.
The OP's comment did not "reduce her to a baby factory."
It's sad that this got an insightful mod. The fact that everyone jumps to potential mate every time a woman does something is one of the biggest barriers to women in technical fields.
First off, if you think "mate" is what love is about, you're the one with the problem.
Second, one person is not "everyone."
Third: did you really think the poster was serious? It was a hyperbolic statement, meant as a strong statement of respect.
Fourth: we can't desire a woman's lifelong companionship for her body (sexual objectification), but please do explain what is wrong with desiring a woman's companionship for her impressive work? Because you do realize that damn near every straight woman on this planet selects her mate by his accomplishments, wealth, and social standing, right?
I complain about the submission author's bias and general bias against Tesla, and you mod it offtopic?
Time to start meta-moderating more.
apparently the darling child of the automotive industry
What's with the snide side commentary? Tesla isn't the "darling" of anyone. Snide, obnoxious comments like this are pretty much du jour in any coverage. Everyone's gunning for them, simply because they're odd kid on the block.
A Tesla catches fire after hitting a piece of massive road debris or getiting into a crash, and it's a fucking national emergency, their stock tanks, electric cars are suddenly "unsafe", etc.
Meanwhile: do you drive a Ford SUV made in the 90's? Twice, Ford weakened the roof and support pillars to save money, against the recommendation of their engineers.
Drive a 90's Ford? Their ignition switches were substandard and could short out, causing your car to catch fire at random. 8.6 million vehicles: http://articles.baltimoresun.c...
Drive a recent GM truck? They've also got a "randomly burst into fire" problem; 370,000 vehicles: http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/1...
Just google "GM recall fire" or "Ford recall fire" and read page after page of recalls that affect hundreds of thousands if not millions of vehicles.
Inkjet cartridges expire so quickly after being opened because they contain ink... which is wet, and evaporates, leaving dry residue in the compartment which cannot be used.
BS. Back in the 90's I used the same ink cartridge in an old deskjet for something like a year or two and it worked just fine; it eventually ran out of ink and had to be replaced. I live in a state where it gets extremely dry during the winters. No issues.
We have a giant plotter-size inkjet at work that hadn't been used in 3 years. The print head was clogged to hell and back, requiring a lot of squirting of alcohol and deionized water, but after I had run several cleaning cycles, all the jets cleared out. I'd been worried the ink inside the mechanism and cartridges would be bust, but the same cartridges lasted us for several rolls worth of prints that looked great, and new cartridges were not noticeably better (yes, I waited until we'd likely used up the ink in the tubing.)
The deskjet was built well before companies started going crazy with chipping everything. The plotter-sized printer was built for a market that wouldn't tolerate that kind of bullshit; the printer warns you if the cartridge is old, but the error message is buried in the ink settings page and it never complains again.
offer business grants to get people to open up shop there, give the existing population work (instead of just importing more people), and give them the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
More importantly, give them SMALL business grants, so that Detroit develops a very diverse economy, and you have lots of 2, 3, 10, 50 employee companies that are providing a diversity of services. Even better, give priority to non-franchises so the money stays in the local economy (and the country, for that matter, instead of getting shipped off to a Cayman holding company.) Bring back the bakers, the shoe shops, the florists, etc.
The last thing Detroit needs is another mono-industry or mono-company economy. That's how damn near every 'boom town' gets burned...they start catering to one company or industry, and become the city equivalent of codependent. The point of a city is to be a good place to live, not a good place to work...
Hello, Tu quoque fallacy.
One does not need to operate completely in adherence or consistency with a concept or argument they're promoting in order for that concept or argument to be valid. Thus: nor is it valid to challenge someone's argument because they have failed to do so.
Argument pro tip: if you're focusing on the person (ad hominem) you're Doing It Wrong.
These companies should consider allowing non-employees to pay a fare to use the busses.
Sounds great. And they could grow the system as more and more people want to use it - multiple pickup spots, more stops, more destinations.
We could call it "public transit"!
So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.
Showing up at the doorstep of a engineer whose work has nothing to do with the shuttles is moronic, but objecting to companies running massive private transportation for the wealthiest people (most Google employees fall firmly into at least the top 4%, more like 2% or less) is not "moronic" and it's not too hard to see their points (they have several.)
On the most practical point: you see Google "being too eco-friendly"; I see them sucking away demand from public transit busses that employees would've taken otherwise. In the US public transit has to magically justify its existence whereas bridges, roads, airports, etc are massively subsidized without blinking. If all the Google employees start taking Google busses instead of the "358 bus" (I made that number up) from a particular neighborhood into SF, then the only people left are the contractors and non-tech workers in the area, and if there aren't "enough" of those people left behind for the line to be profitable enough, the line goes bu-bye, and the people who relied on it are screwed.
This doesn't even begin to touch the issues around separating your super-rich employees from the "unwashed masses." Google "NYC tale of two cities" to read about this problem in modern, east-coast city-life contexts.
If google wanted to be "eco-friendly", they could simply support the existing system in some fashion, or at the least buy their employees public transit passes....though since most googlers make six figures plus, they can damn well already easily afford them on their own; if it takes a private bus to get them to stop driving, the issue is that they're already looking down upon "regular" people, and that is not to be rewarded.
Seriously, the elitist attitude among many geeks/nerds is absurd, and it's particularly strong with every Google employee I've ever met. The last thing they need is to be further coddled and given even more privilege.
I was cheering for you with the "women are not objects" point of your post, and then you just had to go and assume that he's the one paying. Because it's the man's job to pay, right?
Nevermind that any man that pays for his date off OKcupid on the first meeting is an idiot. Go dutch until she proves she's not just there for a free meal with company...which sadly, many are (mostly the "I don't want to waste a lot of time exchanging messages" types who also put little or no effort into filling out their profiles.)
"we're seeing a side that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years"
You know that Martian soil - completely gas-tight. And you know Martian rocks - for billions of years, they stay completely motionless.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "rocket scientists"
Further ideas for funding levels:
"Theo Happy Day" - for each person who contributes at that level, Theo behaves like a responsible, polite, civil, empathetic human being for an entire day.
"Fire suit" - for this contribution, you are entitled to one (1) interaction with Theo where he does not insult, belittle, demean, or behave in a condescending manner, towards you.
we do lack an objective instrument for how screwed we are as a species, but "any minute now" is just a terribly uninformative model.
Relative to the timescale of the human species, I'd say "any minute now" is pretty accurate. We've been around for over 200,000 years - but in the space of about one hundred years, we've irreversibly altered the planet and created the tools with which to destroy it completely, and I'm not just talking about the nukes.
I'd give us about 100 years tops before we're at post-apocalyptic climate/civilization status.
Also, given that both the USSR/Russia and the US have had numerous accidents and close-calls involving nuclear weapons and those weapons are aging and not really going away...yeah, I'd say it's pretty accurate. I've always been amazed that we haven't blown up anything "by accident" yet.
That's not possible. Someone must be lying. I know this because California banned all those evil high powered rifles.
Murder still happens. We still ban murder.
In fact, virtually every kind of crime happens. We don't just go "oh well" and remove the laws because a bunch of people did it anyway.
Stop being so goddamn butthurt that you can't play with the lethal toys you want to. Please, by all means, move to a country with fewer gun restrictions, and enjoy actually having to use them to protect yourself from all the people who have 'em, too.
Rich idiots in privileged settings come up with this crap and force it down the throats of the rest of us,
Nothing like a bit of ad hominem in the morning. Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the 1:4 efficiency difference and is a conspiracy by rich people to cram "crap" down the throats of us "common", good, hard-workin' innocent folk.
The whole reason this has been legislated is that people refuse to buy compact fluorescent bulbs because they're stubborn and hate change. So they say "they give me headaches" and "they're not as bright" and so on. Even "they cost too much", after you've gone blue in the face showing them the VERY basic math that a 3rd grader could do, showing they pay themselves back within a year or two, AND practically give them away with rebates.
Is the processor running free microcode?
Also, did they really code their own SMC bios? I find that hard to believe.
Well, if they're Intel turbo-boost processors, running more threads (and activating more cores) drops the frequency of all the cores. Fewer cores in use = higher core frequency.
They've been upset for a long time, about doing secret, unapproved missions. It's a snowden LEAK that make their discontent ... public knowledge.
Meh. I disagree - I think most NSA employees love that they get to do something really james-bond-ish, get a blank-check budget, and have essentially unlimited power over everyone else. There is no doubt a strong voyeuristic angle to the whole thing. They're also, by and large, getting paid obscene amounts of money.
I've met a number of people who work government jobs with clearances and they all act so goddamn smug about it, I've wanted to punch them in the mouth.
I think they were all quite happy nobody knew the power they had; they were "getting away with it." Now that we do, they're demoralized because they don't get to lord over us with the mystique. Plus, robbing the cookie jar isn't fun when everyone sees you do it.
Fuck 'em. I hope the place becomes a miserable place to work and the whole thing falls apart at the seams.
Porches are notorious for "biting your head off" when you make a mistakes
You're referring to the 911, which is rear-engined. The 911 turbo was particularly infamous because it had a poor turbo boost delay. You'd put your foot down, there'd be a delay, and then suddenly you'd have gobs of uncontrollable power.
944's, 914's, Caymans, Boxsters, etc are/were not "notorious" by any stretch.