but hey, if it can get all these people off prozac and bring my heath insurance price down I'm all for hooking the kittens up to serial ports or whatever to experement.
(yeah, I know that doesn't have the right pins to be a serial port..geek!)
Sure enough, I searched around a bit and couldn't find a Barbarian or Bloodsword for the Apple 2. But then I remembered that those *fuckers* that had C64's when I was a kid always had better games. Sure enough I found screenshots of a c64 version called Barbarian. Bloodsword was most likely the name of the Apple 2 port, or the bootleg I bought:(
I did get a good laugh at the old c64 guys, because I remember the Apple 2 version had better graphics. Of course, then I saw that the c64 got a sequal! Not only did they get Barbarian 2, but B2 had overt sexuality and animalities! The picture of that chick was damn wankable back then. Those C64 guys got everything ^_^.
One that I never hear mentioned is Bloodsword for the Apple II computers. It was a 1v1 fighting game, and it came out around 1985. Needless to say, it had the blood of the early mortal kombat games with the ability to chop someones head off in mid combat. Then a goblin would come out and kick around the severed head like a soccer ball. You never heard of it, because it wasn't popular enough to be blamed for something. It's only the popular violent games that get pegged by people looking to place blame rather than assign personal responsibility
Take Doom and Colombine for example. Instead of blaming the teachers for letting those kids be teased everyday, or blaming the kids themselves for venting their frustrations in an unacceptable manner (ie shooting up the place) the media and the parents had to blame doom. Does anyone really think if doom wasn't around those kids wouldn't have shot the place up anyway?
he always dreamed about making games that give people total freedom, but what he discovered is that complete freedom in a game world is boring after about ten minutes.
Not true, I've played both GTA and GTA3 for hours upon hours without ever finishing a mission (or even trying to). Finding creative things to do in the GTA sandbox was enough fun to keep me entertained. Some people don't want missions, or rules. After a days work they just want to come home, and do something fun not virtual chores like fetching Vinnys hookers or something.
I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Fable this summer, but I can't help but wonder: Does freedom turn us into complete psychopaths in the game world, or does freedom allow us to "express ourselves" in the game world without real world consequences?
I think that is the real fun of open ended games. It shows you what people are capable of if there are no consequences. Of course, the playtester understood that the mayor and the mayors daughter weren't people....but would he have done it in-game if they were people? (ie in a MMORPG). I really think a MMORPG with no consequences other than ones created by other players would be a great social experement on top of a great game.
Anyone should be able to PvP anytime, anywhere. The penalty for dying should be perma-death + loss of whatever items you have but you come back as your characters son/daughter who has rights to anything they had in the bank/storage.
A person should not be able to look at someones profile and see what level they are. This will actually make PvP a risk. Why? Say you have 2 level 15 griefers. Lets also say that New players spawn with a basic outfit and backpack. Sure they could just go around attacking people with the basic outfit, but if there are no safe zones they wouldn't have a good place to camp. On top of that, what is to stop a level 50 wizard from throwing on some newb garb and ganking the griefers?
If a gaming company wants to take advantage of an untapped market, they should make a PvP with no rules. I'm looking foward to darkfall which will allow a bit more freedom.
MMO's strike me now as games that have little risk for dying, and it takes forever to get any rewards (ie they are timesinks) not to much fun to me, seems more like a chat room than a game. Obviously, there is a market for these games, but there is also a market for people who want freedom, and all the risk that comes with it.
If we went to nuclear war, as countries both we and the chinese would be eliminated.
No, we wouldn't.
The chinese would fall in a nuclear fire, we would fall from the tremendous damage afterwards
No, we wouldn't. Although it would take a large amount of nukes to destroy China's command and control (somewhere around 340). It would take about 400 to cause a nuclear winter assuming a US/Russia war. A US/China war would probably need more to cause a nuclear winter, because the US's nukes are smaller tacticle nukes. Some scientists don't even believe the nuclear winter theory
And even MAD doesn't govern us, the political climate of the last decades is basically scared shitless of even small scale nuclear war.
Agreed, any leader caught up in such a thing wouldn't be a leader for long.
As for US and russia - if we went to war with them, bothe of us plus the rest of the world would be rendered uninhabitable (assuming large scal
Definatly. With over 10,000 nukes combined a US/Russia Nuclear war truely means MAD for the whole world. A Chinese/American Nuclear war doesn't though.
I've seen MAD mentioned a lot in this thread, but I wonder if people realize that MAD still only exists between the US and Russia. Most people think China is somehow involved, but they only have 20 nukes that can reach the US. It would take about 150 to destroy US command and control and 1/4th of the population.
The Vehicles are great. But why didn't they put them into Deathmatch and CTF? DM and CTF just seem like boring rehashes of the ut2k3 versions with new maps.
I think in the game industry the situation is actually the opposite of this. Most game companies, despite having been in business for years, still underestimate the difficulty of the task (because it keeps getting harder every year) and hire people who are underqualified (often because they just can't get anyone else).
So why don't game companies do something about it? Like open up a school, or offer internships or something?
he time I see job listings like "Lead programmer for massively multiplayer game, must have 3 years of C++ experience, must know Direct3D , Visual C++" and I just think "Wow, these guys don't have a chance -- if their stock was public I'd short it."
Funny, most of the ads I see are looking for someone with like 8-10 years Visual C++. I agree that there probably aren't very many people out there qualified to work as game programmers but at some point the industry has to make an attempt to offer a legit specialized education to them. Also, I almost never see entry level programming jobs for game companies.
Why not take someone who has worked as a programmer for a few years in another industry and let them work as an entry level game programmer for a project or two and move up?
Bullshit. Story is important in pretty much one genre: RPGs. For everything else, it's only sometimes required, and rarely important.
Agreed somewhat, but a Story is one of the elements that can make a good game into a great game. Sure, some games nowadays (unreal tournament comes to mind) don't need much of a story. Consider some of these...
Ninja Gaiden(NES)(Action)- a Classic sidescroller, which was made much better by the cut scenes and storylines which were great for it's time
Street Fighter(Various)(Fighting)-All of the Street fighter games have various storylines involving the characters. The games don't need these at all, but they are pretty good.
I could probably throw out a bunch more, but my point is you are right you don't need a story for a game. But it sure as hell helps. It's kind of like sound/music. If the music for a game isn't very good you kind of just ignore it, but when it's good it makes the game that much better.
If the eventual goal is to beat Microsoft on the desktop, the parent is right. 1 or 2 Distros that do everything well is better than 100 that each do one or two things *very* well.
Joe User wants his OS to do everything well and intuitively, not just one or two things.
You're forgetting about the massive amount of service jobs that simply can't be outsourced, like cutting hair, making food, cleaning, and the like. It may be that lower classes don't make things for exporting, but that's hardly going to force imminent economic collapse.
Lets say that IT unemployment jumps to 50%, and most programmers are unemployed. While joe programmer flips burgers or whatever to make ends meat while he tries to find a new profession, joe programmers son needs a haircut. Of course, there isn't a lot of money around, so Joe Programmers son gets the bowl cut from mom. Joe Programmer and his family used to go out to eat on Fridays. Can't afford that anymore either. He used to get his *white collar* shirts cleaned, but he doesn't need that anymore since he can just throw his burger world shirt in the washing machine, or maybe he sells the washing machine and just washes it in the sink.
My point is extreme, but these things do have a trickle down effect on the economy. I have no problem with free markets when they are all on equal or somewhat equal footing. I do have a problem with the amount of Corporate welfare that goes on in America.
Would you want to have the same sort of jobs available to Americans now that existed 50 years ago? Of course not, because bolt-turning jobs don't pay well, because anyone in the world can do that now.
I know plenty of people who would work those kinds of jobs. If you are in the US, Travel to any Ghetto in your state and you will find people willing to work labor intensive jobs in order to support themselves and their families. Don't assume that just because you wouldn't do "bolt-turning" jobs that other people wouldn't.
What is going to happen when most of the Jobs are outsourced to other countries and in order to make a middle class/lower middle class living you have to move to another country? Do you think India will take our working class? Mexico? Good luck.
EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
is just trash. I really can't stand them or anything I've bought from them recently. I'm not buying anything made by them this year. Not that they will care...
One thing I never understood about PvP vs Non-PvPers, why don't the non-PvP or social type people ever team up? It's like, most grief players are so anti-social they only have a few friends online, and most of the social type people run around in these huge cliques. Instead of securing a town or two and just PKing anyone that causes trouble they just whine to the GM's.
I don't understand the point of most MMO's nowadays anyway, the reason I would play a MMO is to get away from the real world. Who wants to play a MMO with a bunch of rules on how you have to act, and what you can and can't say. Shouldn't a game be about freedom?
I personally don't get stressed out at my job about my deadlines (I work as a programmer), I worry more about what I'll be doing if I ever want to move on from where I am. It used to be that a Degree in Computer Science is all you would need, but It really doesn't seem that way anymore. I worry more about what I'll be doing 10 years from now than I worry about what I have to do today.
Hey McCloud, the 80's called, they want their pay per play idea back. In case you haven't noticed, the only gaming platform that uses this type of payment system is dying....the arcades.
The first thing you need to do is find an actual job/job field you want to be in, and see what the typical requirments are for that job. It doesn't sound like you really want to be a programmer or a network admin from this line in your post:
grew up with computers, and naturally I want to study a field that involves a lot of interaction between people and technology (mainly computers)
I would try to narrow that down to an actual job title. Now, if you do decide that you want to be a programmer, or at least continue to pursue a CS degree, The first thing is,
DON'T GIVE UP!
Despite what some of the keyboard warriors here on slashdot say, if you want to do it I'm sure you can. If I were you I would pick up Head First Java I had to train someone to move from being a web designer to using Java at my job. I recommended this book and it went over really well. Check out some of the sample chapters and see if you like their "teaching" style.
But Java is a boring, dull, tedious choice for an introductory CS course.
Huh? What language would you recommend then? Java is actually a good language for a intro into CS. Most of the Java libraries abstract a user from the nitty-gritty detail and allow a CS-101 student to do some nice things.
Mod me down as flaimbait or whatever, but I personally think we need a global cataclysm. We don't need something that kills off the entire human population, but we certainly need something to cleanse our planet.
We need something to take our collective heads out of our asses and come together as one people and work together for the common good.
do you really think a global cataclysm would make people work together for the common good more than they do today? Or is it more likely that resources would become greatly limited so humans would be more likely to kill each other for their own good? While human life is still a struggle for resources, I doubt the red cross was around in the caveman days, helping the guy who got clubbed on the head and had his dinner stolen.
They name their clan "DoMe" and don't expect to get shit? please. Everyone knows that a real FPS clan name has to have a reference to evil, a lack of light, drugs, mythical creatures, or computer hardware.
No, you probably get treated the same way guys do when they play online games, especially FPS games.
Females make up 51% of the world population, after all, so there's a HUGE market out there.
Yes, but this doesn't mean they make up 51% of the video game playing population. While gaming may be popular with younger women nowadays, there is still a huge gap in the 25+ aged women who just don't play games at all (outside of slots, solitare, pogo, etc) . To them, there is still a social stigma against it.
I can tell you one thing that girls are though. We're not interested in being called names, just because we try to show an interest in the very same field as guys.
Anyone in an online game gets called names. Seriously, I'm sure that anyone who plays a FPS game here has been 'flamed or lamed' at one point or another. Don't expect special treatment because you are a girl, of a certain race, etc.
To see my point, go into a fps with a neutral nickname and announce you are of a certain ethnic group and see how long it takes for people to bring that up. People aren't picking on you because you are a girl, it's because you are there and they do it to everyone else also.
We girls are simply seen as people who aren't techy
Look at the gender breakdown of computer science or mathmatics majors that finish with a degree. It's not that you are seen as not being _techy_ it's that most of you aren't. That doesn't mean you can't be, it's just that most girls aren't interested in that kind of stuff.
In fact, most of my female friends play games.
Yes, but that doesn't mean most females play games. Most of my friends work in IT, but that doesn't mean 75% of the world works in IT.
Maybe, just maybe, more girls would confess to being gamers if they weren't insulted whenever they tried it.
It seems to me girls are encouraged to play (given free things, invited to join clans, etc) more than men are. Like I mentioned before, if you get called names online it's not beacuse you are a girl, it's just because you are there.
t's a travesty that U.S. law has become so complex no person could ever understand it all, leave alone be able to obey it all. We are all criminals, and when someone in the government wants to get you, they simply need to figure out what obscure, byzantine law you are ignornantly breaking and proceed to enforce it.
The funny part is that you can't plead ignorance to the law in a court, but most Americans couldn't read the lawbooks since the average American has a 6th grade reading level.
While I'm all for capitalism, it just doesn't work well in some industries. Criminal Justice is one of them. The reason the laws are so fucked is because the Criminal Justice system profits from them being that way.
Slashdot Mirror
This kitten sure doesn't look happy
but hey, if it can get all these people off prozac and bring my heath insurance price down I'm all for hooking the kittens up to serial ports or whatever to experement.
(yeah, I know that doesn't have the right pins to be a serial port..geek!)
Sure enough, I searched around a bit and couldn't find a Barbarian or Bloodsword for the Apple 2. But then I remembered that those *fuckers* that had C64's when I was a kid always had better games. Sure enough I found screenshots of a c64 version called Barbarian. Bloodsword was most likely the name of the Apple 2 port, or the bootleg I bought :(
Check it out, headkicking goblin and all
I did get a good laugh at the old c64 guys, because I remember the Apple 2 version had better graphics. Of course, then I saw that the c64 got a sequal! Not only did they get Barbarian 2, but B2 had overt sexuality and animalities! The picture of that chick was damn wankable back then. Those C64 guys got everything ^_^.
One that I never hear mentioned is Bloodsword for the Apple II computers. It was a 1v1 fighting game, and it came out around 1985. Needless to say, it had the blood of the early mortal kombat games with the ability to chop someones head off in mid combat. Then a goblin would come out and kick around the severed head like a soccer ball. You never heard of it, because it wasn't popular enough to be blamed for something. It's only the popular violent games that get pegged by people looking to place blame rather than assign personal responsibility
Take Doom and Colombine for example. Instead of blaming the teachers for letting those kids be teased everyday, or blaming the kids themselves for venting their frustrations in an unacceptable manner (ie shooting up the place) the media and the parents had to blame doom. Does anyone really think if doom wasn't around those kids wouldn't have shot the place up anyway?
he always dreamed about making games that give people total freedom, but what he discovered is that complete freedom in a game world is boring after about ten minutes.
Not true, I've played both GTA and GTA3 for hours upon hours without ever finishing a mission (or even trying to). Finding creative things to do in the GTA sandbox was enough fun to keep me entertained. Some people don't want missions, or rules. After a days work they just want to come home, and do something fun not virtual chores like fetching Vinnys hookers or something.
I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Fable this summer, but I can't help but wonder: Does freedom turn us into complete psychopaths in the game world, or does freedom allow us to "express ourselves" in the game world without real world consequences?
I think that is the real fun of open ended games. It shows you what people are capable of if there are no consequences. Of course, the playtester understood that the mayor and the mayors daughter weren't people....but would he have done it in-game if they were people? (ie in a MMORPG). I really think a MMORPG with no consequences other than ones created by other players would be a great social experement on top of a great game.
Anyone should be able to PvP anytime, anywhere. The penalty for dying should be perma-death + loss of whatever items you have but you come back as your characters son/daughter who has rights to anything they had in the bank/storage.
A person should not be able to look at someones profile and see what level they are. This will actually make PvP a risk. Why? Say you have 2 level 15 griefers. Lets also say that New players spawn with a basic outfit and backpack. Sure they could just go around attacking people with the basic outfit, but if there are no safe zones they wouldn't have a good place to camp. On top of that, what is to stop a level 50 wizard from throwing on some newb garb and ganking the griefers?
If a gaming company wants to take advantage of an untapped market, they should make a PvP with no rules. I'm looking foward to darkfall which will allow a bit more freedom.
MMO's strike me now as games that have little risk for dying, and it takes forever to get any rewards (ie they are timesinks) not to much fun to me, seems more like a chat room than a game. Obviously, there is a market for these games, but there is also a market for people who want freedom, and all the risk that comes with it.
If we went to nuclear war, as countries both we and the chinese would be eliminated.
:)
No, we wouldn't.
The chinese would fall in a nuclear fire, we would fall from the tremendous damage afterwards
No, we wouldn't. Although it would take a large amount of nukes to destroy China's command and control (somewhere around 340). It would take about 400 to cause a nuclear winter assuming a US/Russia war. A US/China war would probably need more to cause a nuclear winter, because the US's nukes are smaller tacticle nukes. Some scientists don't even believe the nuclear winter theory
And even MAD doesn't govern us, the political climate of the last decades is basically scared shitless of even small scale nuclear war.
Agreed, any leader caught up in such a thing wouldn't be a leader for long.
As for US and russia - if we went to war with them, bothe of us plus the rest of the world would be rendered uninhabitable (assuming large scal
Definatly. With over 10,000 nukes combined a US/Russia Nuclear war truely means MAD for the whole world. A Chinese/American Nuclear war doesn't though.
That doesn't mean anyone wants to start one.
Will it defeat MAD though?
I've seen MAD mentioned a lot in this thread, but I wonder if people realize that MAD still only exists between the US and Russia. Most people think China is somehow involved, but they only have 20 nukes that can reach the US. It would take about 150 to destroy US command and control and 1/4th of the population.
The Vehicles are great. But why didn't they put them into Deathmatch and CTF? DM and CTF just seem like boring rehashes of the ut2k3 versions with new maps.
I think in the game industry the situation is actually the opposite of this. Most game companies, despite having been in business for years, still underestimate the difficulty of the task (because it keeps getting harder every year) and hire people who are underqualified (often because they just can't get anyone else).
So why don't game companies do something about it? Like open up a school, or offer internships or something?
he time I see job listings like "Lead programmer for massively multiplayer game, must have 3 years of C++ experience, must know Direct3D , Visual C++" and I just think "Wow, these guys don't have a chance -- if their stock was public I'd short it."
Funny, most of the ads I see are looking for someone with like 8-10 years Visual C++. I agree that there probably aren't very many people out there qualified to work as game programmers but at some point the industry has to make an attempt to offer a legit specialized education to them. Also, I almost never see entry level programming jobs for game companies.
Why not take someone who has worked as a programmer for a few years in another industry and let them work as an entry level game programmer for a project or two and move up?
Bullshit. Story is important in pretty much one genre: RPGs. For everything else, it's only sometimes required, and rarely important.
Agreed somewhat, but a Story is one of the elements that can make a good game into a great game. Sure, some games nowadays (unreal tournament comes to mind) don't need much of a story. Consider some of these...
Ninja Gaiden(NES)(Action)- a Classic sidescroller, which was made much better by the cut scenes and storylines which were great for it's time
Street Fighter(Various)(Fighting)-All of the Street fighter games have various storylines involving the characters. The games don't need these at all, but they are pretty good.
I could probably throw out a bunch more, but my point is you are right you don't need a story for a game. But it sure as hell helps. It's kind of like sound/music. If the music for a game isn't very good you kind of just ignore it, but when it's good it makes the game that much better.
If the eventual goal is to beat Microsoft on the desktop, the parent is right. 1 or 2 Distros that do everything well is better than 100 that each do one or two things *very* well.
Joe User wants his OS to do everything well and intuitively, not just one or two things.
You're forgetting about the massive amount of service jobs that simply can't be outsourced, like cutting hair, making food, cleaning, and the like. It may be that lower classes don't make things for exporting, but that's hardly going to force imminent economic collapse.
Lets say that IT unemployment jumps to 50%, and most programmers are unemployed. While joe programmer flips burgers or whatever to make ends meat while he tries to find a new profession, joe programmers son needs a haircut. Of course, there isn't a lot of money around, so Joe Programmers son gets the bowl cut from mom. Joe Programmer and his family used to go out to eat on Fridays. Can't afford that anymore either. He used to get his *white collar* shirts cleaned, but he doesn't need that anymore since he can just throw his burger world shirt in the washing machine, or maybe he sells the washing machine and just washes it in the sink.
My point is extreme, but these things do have a trickle down effect on the economy. I have no problem with free markets when they are all on equal or somewhat equal footing. I do have a problem with the amount of Corporate welfare that goes on in America.
Would you want to have the same sort of jobs available to Americans now that existed 50 years ago? Of course not, because bolt-turning jobs don't pay well, because anyone in the world can do that now.
I know plenty of people who would work those kinds of jobs. If you are in the US, Travel to any Ghetto in your state and you will find people willing to work labor intensive jobs in order to support themselves and their families. Don't assume that just because you wouldn't do "bolt-turning" jobs that other people wouldn't.
What is going to happen when most of the Jobs are outsourced to other countries and in order to make a middle class/lower middle class living you have to move to another country? Do you think India will take our working class? Mexico? Good luck.
1. EA's Attitude lately with statements like:
EA owns your gold, your swords, your characters - they are all just digital bits. If your entertainment is to destroy other peoples' entertainment, you're going to be tossed."
is just trash. I really can't stand them or anything I've bought from them recently. I'm not buying anything made by them this year. Not that they will care...
One thing I never understood about PvP vs Non-PvPers, why don't the non-PvP or social type people ever team up? It's like, most grief players are so anti-social they only have a few friends online, and most of the social type people run around in these huge cliques. Instead of securing a town or two and just PKing anyone that causes trouble they just whine to the GM's.
I don't understand the point of most MMO's nowadays anyway, the reason I would play a MMO is to get away from the real world. Who wants to play a MMO with a bunch of rules on how you have to act, and what you can and can't say. Shouldn't a game be about freedom?
I personally don't get stressed out at my job about my deadlines (I work as a programmer), I worry more about what I'll be doing if I ever want to move on from where I am. It used to be that a Degree in Computer Science is all you would need, but It really doesn't seem that way anymore. I worry more about what I'll be doing 10 years from now than I worry about what I have to do today.
Hey McCloud, the 80's called, they want their pay per play idea back. In case you haven't noticed, the only gaming platform that uses this type of payment system is dying....the arcades.
Incompatibility would run rampant. My java apps barely work for my phone as it is.
Sun is working on a J2ME standard for cell phones, so hopefully in a few years you wont have that problem.
Sun isn't going to Open source Java, it wont happen for the reason you mention. Incompatibility would ruin the cross-platform appeal of Java.
The first thing you need to do is find an actual job/job field you want to be in, and see what the typical requirments are for that job. It doesn't sound like you really want to be a programmer or a network admin from this line in your post:
grew up with computers, and naturally I want to study a field that involves a lot of interaction between people and technology (mainly computers)
I would try to narrow that down to an actual job title. Now, if you do decide that you want to be a programmer, or at least continue to pursue a CS degree, The first thing is,
DON'T GIVE UP!
Despite what some of the keyboard warriors here on slashdot say, if you want to do it I'm sure you can. If I were you I would pick up Head First Java I had to train someone to move from being a web designer to using Java at my job. I recommended this book and it went over really well. Check out some of the sample chapters and see if you like their "teaching" style.
But Java is a boring, dull, tedious choice for an introductory CS course.
Huh? What language would you recommend then? Java is actually a good language for a intro into CS. Most of the Java libraries abstract a user from the nitty-gritty detail and allow a CS-101 student to do some nice things.
"Fluffy the USB-enabled Hamster" Is that the sequal to Kitty-Kitty Parellel port? Here is a pic from that show...
Scroll down to see Kitty!
Mod me down as flaimbait or whatever, but I personally think we need a global cataclysm. We don't need something that kills off the entire human population, but we certainly need something to cleanse our planet. We need something to take our collective heads out of our asses and come together as one people and work together for the common good.
do you really think a global cataclysm would make people work together for the common good more than they do today? Or is it more likely that resources would become greatly limited so humans would be more likely to kill each other for their own good? While human life is still a struggle for resources, I doubt the red cross was around in the caveman days, helping the guy who got clubbed on the head and had his dinner stolen.
They name their clan "DoMe" and don't expect to get shit? please. Everyone knows that a real FPS clan name has to have a reference to evil, a lack of light, drugs, mythical creatures, or computer hardware.
We simply do not get any respect.
No, you probably get treated the same way guys do when they play online games, especially FPS games.
Females make up 51% of the world population, after all, so there's a HUGE market out there.
Yes, but this doesn't mean they make up 51% of the video game playing population. While gaming may be popular with younger women nowadays, there is still a huge gap in the 25+ aged women who just don't play games at all (outside of slots, solitare, pogo, etc) . To them, there is still a social stigma against it.
I can tell you one thing that girls are though. We're not interested in being called names, just because we try to show an interest in the very same field as guys.
Anyone in an online game gets called names. Seriously, I'm sure that anyone who plays a FPS game here has been 'flamed or lamed' at one point or another. Don't expect special treatment because you are a girl, of a certain race, etc.
To see my point, go into a fps with a neutral nickname and announce you are of a certain ethnic group and see how long it takes for people to bring that up. People aren't picking on you because you are a girl, it's because you are there and they do it to everyone else also.
We girls are simply seen as people who aren't techy
Look at the gender breakdown of computer science or mathmatics majors that finish with a degree. It's not that you are seen as not being _techy_ it's that most of you aren't. That doesn't mean you can't be, it's just that most girls aren't interested in that kind of stuff.
In fact, most of my female friends play games.
Yes, but that doesn't mean most females play games. Most of my friends work in IT, but that doesn't mean 75% of the world works in IT.
Maybe, just maybe, more girls would confess to being gamers if they weren't insulted whenever they tried it.
It seems to me girls are encouraged to play (given free things, invited to join clans, etc) more than men are. Like I mentioned before, if you get called names online it's not beacuse you are a girl, it's just because you are there.
t's a travesty that U.S. law has become so complex no person could ever understand it all, leave alone be able to obey it all. We are all criminals, and when someone in the government wants to get you, they simply need to figure out what obscure, byzantine law you are ignornantly breaking and proceed to enforce it.
The funny part is that you can't plead ignorance to the law in a court, but most Americans couldn't read the lawbooks since the average American has a 6th grade reading level.
While I'm all for capitalism, it just doesn't work well in some industries. Criminal Justice is one of them. The reason the laws are so fucked is because the Criminal Justice system profits from them being that way.