And just a day or two ago, someone on Slashdot was telling me all about how at least Microsoft has never cut an American job for one overseas. Nyah nyah!:P
So when all the jobs are outsourced and everyone around the world is making $8/hr in the new Global Economy, who is going to be able to afford $200 for an operating system? Or $500 for Office? Or $1500 for Adobe?
Listen, citizens - in case this somehow escaped you - anything that deprives private business from accruing money is and should be criminalized. This includes sharing books, sharing information, discussing movies or letting someone else listen to your radio or watch your television.
Any of you who behave in opposition to this way of thinking are terrorists and clearly hate America. You are either with us (corporate America) or you're against us. You evil doers will not do us.. uh.. out. There's a saying back where I come from. Take a man's fish and give him... er... uh.. . Give a man your banana and reap his fis... er...wait no... feed a man a melon and take his bananas...
So you're suggesting that the media and society are to blame for portraying an impossible body image to women. So why are so many getting so far these days at a record rate? Doesn't sound like they're feeling so pressed to fit that body image after all, huh? And if anything, society specifically DISLIKES people who have plastic surgery. You hear as many jokes about nosejobs, tummy tucks and face lifts than you do just plain being fat.
Not to mention, I don't want to hear this whiney crap about what women are expected to be like by society. Like men don't have their own fucking crosses to bear? At least if you're a cute chick, society just flat out digs you. If you're a guy, you have to be financially and professionally successful. Have a flashy car, big house, lots of cash and on and on. I'd take sitting around looking pretty and playing dumb than busting my ass for a living just to appear "worthy" as a male to society.
I'm sure those girls bitching about how RedBook and Vogue portray hot airbrushed girls dream of the handsome rich doctor who drives a porche and has a svelt body-builder body. So if she's going to indulge in stereotypes and continuing pressures against societal constraints, she should just shut up and deal with it when society does the same back.
Or... do like reasonable people do and just not give a fuck in the first place. *shrug*
Never in my life have i told a girl she needed bigger tits and a skinnier waste, so don't lay your shit on me.
I love how the Slashdot editors will gladly edit the hell out of a headline to draw more attention to it, but can't be bothered to do fuckall about obvious and completely horrific grammar, spelling or duping.
Hey, genius... An awful lot of the people there look pretty fucking ambulatory to me. For every old person or wheel-chair bound person, I'm seeing twenty or thirty you are up and walking around and even look pretty fucking athletic. So don't give me this bullshit about some 91,000 of those people stranded being too sickly or institutionalized to take a car, bus, cab, bike or train 20 miles before the shit hit the fan.
And as far as the government doing an "awful job". Sure, they could probably have done better, but what were they supposed to do? Start sending everyone at great time and expense to New Orleans on a hunch? And what if it turned out that it was Florida or Texas or elsewhere that was seriously hit, instead? Now you have to right-turn the entire effort and deploy somewhere else. Not to mention, the storm wasn't enough to have done a lot of damage... if it weren't for the levee breaking.
I think it's pretty idiotic to act like everyone who is there, is there because they couldn't possibly make it out of the city with two days advanced warning. I'm sure if you told them they were giving away free televisions in Lafayette, they'd have fucking rollerskated the 130 miles.
Yeah, too bad the only games they ever made were the type that only douchebags who also get off playing the "word jumble" in the daily comic section of their paper would play.
Because, if they went through all the trouble of evacuating people and it turned out to be nothing, the entire city, state and country would be PISSED.
We had advanced warning (36+ hours) that this was going to happen.
Right. So how dumb are you if you just sat around rather than getting the hell out of the city?
Where were FEMA, the NG, Homeland Security, etc?
What, you wanted them to be on-site before the storm and flood ended so that the people and resources for rescue would themselves be destroyed?
Traveling takes time. Putting together volunteers (such as national guardsmen who have real jobs they have to be called away from) takes time. Not to mention, the federal government can't just waltz in and start doing shit in your state. There is a legal structure that they are required to follow before they just start coming in and running things in any given state on a federal level.
Honestly, I don't know what it is people expected. Plus, nobody knew it was going to be this bad ahead of time. I saw "experts" on the news a couple days ahead of time telling news reporters that they were blowing things out of proportion and that the storm would come and go and with little impact.
Anyway, evacuating more than 100,000 people - many of whom were trapped in and surrounded by water and hard to get to - in seven days? Sounds pretty impressive to me. Not to mention, it hasn't been 7 days unless you're counting the time before the storm ended, which is dumb... because nobody's going to send people and resources into the eye of a storm.
Yes, but Coupland's point is that the victim is affecting innocent third-parties who have nothing to do with the situation other than being visitors to Fuddrucker's site. Fuddruckers is in the wrong. Customers of theirs did nothing wrong and should not be "attacked". A passive image being shown in place of the flash portion, indicating that fuddrucker's was stealing the guy's bandwidth and talent would have been reasonable as it let's visitors know what Fuddrucker's is doing without afflicting any splash damage on someone just going to check out their menu.
Aw, man. I was being sarcastic, but then everyone took me so seriously and had such interesting things to say that I almost feel guilty for having not been serious in the first place.
My point really was that there's all this clammoring about how there are no female-friendly games, but then the two most popular games in history both happen to be extremely female-accessible and friendly and are made up of a huge population of female players.
I have always felt that a game should be created for playability and enjoyment. Political correctness be damned. I don't really care if the male has unrealistic quantities of muscles and the female is barbie-like in fantasy-level proportions. What, like I want to escape my life as a fat lazy tech dork by playing a fat lazy character? Hell no.
Good games will be good games. Period. There are some games more geared toward women, just like "The Princess Diaries" is a movie girls will flock to. And there are some games geared toward men - just like Tears of the Sun or something are geared to.
Then there are great games that, like movies, everyone will flock to.
Maybe what would help is if women would EXPLAIN what kind of games they think should be made for them? I have heard countless complaints about how games are so male oriented (possibly because there are so many MALES in gaming? Nobody claims that Magick: The Gathering is too male oriented). But I never hear a single one lay out what is so unique and different about the gameplay they want.
So girls, what is this amazing female-friendly game that will revolutionize the world that every female is just dying to get her hands on, if only someone would make it? Or - has it already been made and everyone is complaining about nothing? (A Tale in the Desert, Myst, The Sims, Nintendogs, etc).
It was the game that mostly women played and got addicted to, before it was replaced by the other most popular game ever made that mostly women play and get addicted to (The Sims).
I sure wish the game industry would stop being so sexist and start focusing on games that women would enjoy.
Really, this whole issue was a nothing-deal. I mean come on - if the kids were "hacking" the machines that's their fault. If you clean the machines up and GIVE THEM RIGHT BACK TO THOSE SAME KIDS -- it's YOUR fault.
Seriously. Just don't give them the computers back. Problem solved.
Do you now understand why DRM will succeed and why customers will *like* it?
Because, it will be presented like this:
"DRM will help secure you and your computer so that nobody will be able to pirate movies or music through your computer and you won't have to worry about being sued for $100k".
Fortunately, they'll be able to do whatever they want with the code/server stuff in another 70 years, right? Or is it the life of the game maker, plus 70 years? So by the end of the 21st century, they should be able to use it however they like.
Which brings up a question - is applying the same public domain criteria/time period to software really fair? Since it outlives its usefulness/profitibility much quicker than books, music and movies - should it have a much shorter life before entering the public domain?
When you compare the two events, the long stretch of time between them - and the amazing advancements in everything else outside of actual space travel - it's not awe-inspiring. It's a piddly achievement in the scheme of things.
The only way we got to the moon in the first place was because Kennedy had the gonads to set an impossible goal WITH A DEFINITE TIME FRAME of one decade and rally the entire country behind it.
Do you seriously think if he had remained alive, he'd have said "wow, great job guys! Now our next goal is to land a little box on wheels on mars... and we have FOUR decades to do it". Hell no.
See, that's the difference. Some people think small and are satisfied with small steps. Others see where we should be. Where we could have been. And where we could go - if only we'd stop being so shocked at minor achievements.
And hell, didn't Bush say something about committment us to putting a person on Mars by 2020? And then what have we heard of it? Nothing? The "goal" doesn't have the drive behind it that the moon mission did almost 40 years ago. When 2020 comes and goes, nobody will even remember that we had a goal of getting to mars. In fact, I bet 75% of people right now don't know that we have a goal to reach mars by 2020 (or whenever that was).
It may be an amazing thing from an individual's viewpoint. For a set of people to accomplish what they've accomplished in the last few years. But as a country and a scientific community, I can't believe this is all we've managed in a life time.
And by the way - I think traveling from town to town over several days by horse in 1910 to landing men on the moon in 1969 is a FAR greater distance than anything between the moon in 1969 and whatever we've accomplished today.
The whole world talked about the Michael Jackson trial, too. And that dude that killed his pregnant wife. That's hardly an indicator of much.
And what's so awe-inspiring about it? We put men on the fricking moon almost 40 years ago. I'm supposed to be amazed that, in only FORTY years, we managed to stick a little machine on Mars?
I spend all of my time working (either on work or on my personal project, which I don't actually enjoy but am obligated to since I've been doing it for almost seven years) and I don't have a life, either. Just because you waste your time gaming doesn't mean you have less of a life than those of us who waste our time doing anything else.
It seems people think that if you're pursuing money or anything other than "family" or "relationships" that you're "wasting time". If you spend all your time with your girlfriend or wife or kids or family, you're spending your time wisely. If you spend it learning, working, making money, creating something - you're somehow unhealthily addicted and blah blah blah.
I say - fuck it. Do stuff you want to do. If you like doing it 24x7 - great - as long as it's not crack or booze, who the hell cares?
Yeah, I guess I'd be in awe of it if not for the fact that we went there (and haven't been there again) in THREE generations. Hell, my mom was less than half my age during the moon landing.
I'll be awe inspired when NASA and the government support something awe inspiring. The only exciting things NASA has done in my life time is blow up a shuttle on launch and another on re-entry. Oh - and waste a bunch of money because they mixed metric and imperial.
Slashdot Mirror
Which results in one less job in the states than there was yesterday and one more in China.
Sounds like MOVING to me.
Chinese are not pleased with the number of jobs being moved to China, and one of Lee's duties was to identify jobs for export.
MOVING and EXPORTING jobs is not the same as HIRING new people for new jobs.
And just a day or two ago, someone on Slashdot was telling me all about how at least Microsoft has never cut an American job for one overseas. Nyah nyah! :P
So when all the jobs are outsourced and everyone around the world is making $8/hr in the new Global Economy, who is going to be able to afford $200 for an operating system? Or $500 for Office? Or $1500 for Adobe?
Four sides, you mean.
:D
At least, if it's two-ply.
Same with maxi-pads.
Listen, citizens - in case this somehow escaped you - anything that deprives private business from accruing money is and should be criminalized. This includes sharing books, sharing information, discussing movies or letting someone else listen to your radio or watch your television.
.wait no... feed a man a melon and take his bananas...
Any of you who behave in opposition to this way of thinking are terrorists and clearly hate America. You are either with us (corporate America) or you're against us. You evil doers will not do us.. uh.. out. There's a saying back where I come from. Take a man's fish and give him... er... uh.. . Give a man your banana and reap his fis... er..
Good night and God bless.
So you're suggesting that the media and society are to blame for portraying an impossible body image to women. So why are so many getting so far these days at a record rate? Doesn't sound like they're feeling so pressed to fit that body image after all, huh? And if anything, society specifically DISLIKES people who have plastic surgery. You hear as many jokes about nosejobs, tummy tucks and face lifts than you do just plain being fat.
Not to mention, I don't want to hear this whiney crap about what women are expected to be like by society. Like men don't have their own fucking crosses to bear? At least if you're a cute chick, society just flat out digs you. If you're a guy, you have to be financially and professionally successful. Have a flashy car, big house, lots of cash and on and on. I'd take sitting around looking pretty and playing dumb than busting my ass for a living just to appear "worthy" as a male to society.
I'm sure those girls bitching about how RedBook and Vogue portray hot airbrushed girls dream of the handsome rich doctor who drives a porche and has a svelt body-builder body. So if she's going to indulge in stereotypes and continuing pressures against societal constraints, she should just shut up and deal with it when society does the same back.
Or... do like reasonable people do and just not give a fuck in the first place. *shrug*
Never in my life have i told a girl she needed bigger tits and a skinnier waste, so don't lay your shit on me.
So how come people are getting fatter, faster?
I don't see the follow through on the logic there.
I love how the Slashdot editors will gladly edit the hell out of a headline to draw more attention to it, but can't be bothered to do fuckall about obvious and completely horrific grammar, spelling or duping.
Hey, genius... An awful lot of the people there look pretty fucking ambulatory to me. For every old person or wheel-chair bound person, I'm seeing twenty or thirty you are up and walking around and even look pretty fucking athletic. So don't give me this bullshit about some 91,000 of those people stranded being too sickly or institutionalized to take a car, bus, cab, bike or train 20 miles before the shit hit the fan.
And as far as the government doing an "awful job". Sure, they could probably have done better, but what were they supposed to do? Start sending everyone at great time and expense to New Orleans on a hunch? And what if it turned out that it was Florida or Texas or elsewhere that was seriously hit, instead? Now you have to right-turn the entire effort and deploy somewhere else. Not to mention, the storm wasn't enough to have done a lot of damage... if it weren't for the levee breaking.
I think it's pretty idiotic to act like everyone who is there, is there because they couldn't possibly make it out of the city with two days advanced warning. I'm sure if you told them they were giving away free televisions in Lafayette, they'd have fucking rollerskated the 130 miles.
That's not true. Only in some states.
Yeah, too bad the only games they ever made were the type that only douchebags who also get off playing the "word jumble" in the daily comic section of their paper would play.
Because, if they went through all the trouble of evacuating people and it turned out to be nothing, the entire city, state and country would be PISSED.
We had advanced warning (36+ hours) that this was going to happen.
Right. So how dumb are you if you just sat around rather than getting the hell out of the city?
Where were FEMA, the NG, Homeland Security, etc?
What, you wanted them to be on-site before the storm and flood ended so that the people and resources for rescue would themselves be destroyed?
Traveling takes time. Putting together volunteers (such as national guardsmen who have real jobs they have to be called away from) takes time. Not to mention, the federal government can't just waltz in and start doing shit in your state. There is a legal structure that they are required to follow before they just start coming in and running things in any given state on a federal level.
Honestly, I don't know what it is people expected. Plus, nobody knew it was going to be this bad ahead of time. I saw "experts" on the news a couple days ahead of time telling news reporters that they were blowing things out of proportion and that the storm would come and go and with little impact.
Anyway, evacuating more than 100,000 people - many of whom were trapped in and surrounded by water and hard to get to - in seven days? Sounds pretty impressive to me. Not to mention, it hasn't been 7 days unless you're counting the time before the storm ended, which is dumb... because nobody's going to send people and resources into the eye of a storm.
Yes, but Coupland's point is that the victim is affecting innocent third-parties who have nothing to do with the situation other than being visitors to Fuddrucker's site. Fuddruckers is in the wrong. Customers of theirs did nothing wrong and should not be "attacked". A passive image being shown in place of the flash portion, indicating that fuddrucker's was stealing the guy's bandwidth and talent would have been reasonable as it let's visitors know what Fuddrucker's is doing without afflicting any splash damage on someone just going to check out their menu.
Aw, man. I was being sarcastic, but then everyone took me so seriously and had such interesting things to say that I almost feel guilty for having not been serious in the first place.
My point really was that there's all this clammoring about how there are no female-friendly games, but then the two most popular games in history both happen to be extremely female-accessible and friendly and are made up of a huge population of female players.
I have always felt that a game should be created for playability and enjoyment. Political correctness be damned. I don't really care if the male has unrealistic quantities of muscles and the female is barbie-like in fantasy-level proportions. What, like I want to escape my life as a fat lazy tech dork by playing a fat lazy character? Hell no.
Good games will be good games. Period. There are some games more geared toward women, just like "The Princess Diaries" is a movie girls will flock to. And there are some games geared toward men - just like Tears of the Sun or something are geared to.
Then there are great games that, like movies, everyone will flock to.
Maybe what would help is if women would EXPLAIN what kind of games they think should be made for them? I have heard countless complaints about how games are so male oriented (possibly because there are so many MALES in gaming? Nobody claims that Magick: The Gathering is too male oriented). But I never hear a single one lay out what is so unique and different about the gameplay they want.
So girls, what is this amazing female-friendly game that will revolutionize the world that every female is just dying to get her hands on, if only someone would make it? Or - has it already been made and everyone is complaining about nothing? (A Tale in the Desert, Myst, The Sims, Nintendogs, etc).
It was the game that mostly women played and got addicted to, before it was replaced by the other most popular game ever made that mostly women play and get addicted to (The Sims).
I sure wish the game industry would stop being so sexist and start focusing on games that women would enjoy.
You also can't vote.
Really, this whole issue was a nothing-deal. I mean come on - if the kids were "hacking" the machines that's their fault. If you clean the machines up and GIVE THEM RIGHT BACK TO THOSE SAME KIDS -- it's YOUR fault.
Seriously. Just don't give them the computers back. Problem solved.
Man, you're never going to get laid.
Do you now understand why DRM will succeed and why customers will *like* it?
Because, it will be presented like this:
"DRM will help secure you and your computer so that nobody will be able to pirate movies or music through your computer and you won't have to worry about being sued for $100k".
70 years.
Fortunately, they'll be able to do whatever they want with the code/server stuff in another 70 years, right? Or is it the life of the game maker, plus 70 years? So by the end of the 21st century, they should be able to use it however they like.
Which brings up a question - is applying the same public domain criteria/time period to software really fair? Since it outlives its usefulness/profitibility much quicker than books, music and movies - should it have a much shorter life before entering the public domain?
When you compare the two events, the long stretch of time between them - and the amazing advancements in everything else outside of actual space travel - it's not awe-inspiring. It's a piddly achievement in the scheme of things.
The only way we got to the moon in the first place was because Kennedy had the gonads to set an impossible goal WITH A DEFINITE TIME FRAME of one decade and rally the entire country behind it.
Do you seriously think if he had remained alive, he'd have said "wow, great job guys! Now our next goal is to land a little box on wheels on mars... and we have FOUR decades to do it". Hell no.
See, that's the difference. Some people think small and are satisfied with small steps. Others see where we should be. Where we could have been. And where we could go - if only we'd stop being so shocked at minor achievements.
And hell, didn't Bush say something about committment us to putting a person on Mars by 2020? And then what have we heard of it? Nothing? The "goal" doesn't have the drive behind it that the moon mission did almost 40 years ago. When 2020 comes and goes, nobody will even remember that we had a goal of getting to mars. In fact, I bet 75% of people right now don't know that we have a goal to reach mars by 2020 (or whenever that was).
It may be an amazing thing from an individual's viewpoint. For a set of people to accomplish what they've accomplished in the last few years. But as a country and a scientific community, I can't believe this is all we've managed in a life time.
And by the way - I think traveling from town to town over several days by horse in 1910 to landing men on the moon in 1969 is a FAR greater distance than anything between the moon in 1969 and whatever we've accomplished today.
The whole world talked about the Michael Jackson trial, too. And that dude that killed his pregnant wife. That's hardly an indicator of much.
And what's so awe-inspiring about it? We put men on the fricking moon almost 40 years ago. I'm supposed to be amazed that, in only FORTY years, we managed to stick a little machine on Mars?
Sure, it's cool. But hardly awe-inspiring.
I spend all of my time working (either on work or on my personal project, which I don't actually enjoy but am obligated to since I've been doing it for almost seven years) and I don't have a life, either. Just because you waste your time gaming doesn't mean you have less of a life than those of us who waste our time doing anything else.
It seems people think that if you're pursuing money or anything other than "family" or "relationships" that you're "wasting time". If you spend all your time with your girlfriend or wife or kids or family, you're spending your time wisely. If you spend it learning, working, making money, creating something - you're somehow unhealthily addicted and blah blah blah.
I say - fuck it. Do stuff you want to do. If you like doing it 24x7 - great - as long as it's not crack or booze, who the hell cares?
Yeah, I guess I'd be in awe of it if not for the fact that we went there (and haven't been there again) in THREE generations. Hell, my mom was less than half my age during the moon landing.
I'll be awe inspired when NASA and the government support something awe inspiring. The only exciting things NASA has done in my life time is blow up a shuttle on launch and another on re-entry. Oh - and waste a bunch of money because they mixed metric and imperial.