Much like the MadTV Saprano's on PAX spoof...
on
Homer Becomes Omar
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· Score: 0
I can't imagine that each show would last longer than two or three minutes a piece after being "converted" to be presentable to an Arab audience.
One can't help but to be amused at the whole idea of "We really like the Western World, except for this, this, this, this, this, etc., et al".
To a student, finding a five spot in the couch cushion is a lot of money.;-)
There is a certain unwritten law that the more you make the more you spend. That is, of course, until you hit the lottery or become a CTO of a company that these rules start to fall apart because you will have more money than a reasonable person should have at any given time.
I moved from Arizona a couple of years ago, where I "topped out" at $56k. I make a shade less than twice of that now, but it comes at a price.
I am a software developer (not in the gaming industry) and I work in Manhattan. Of course, I live eighty miles from where I work so that I can enjoy some of the money that I actually earn. I'd say commute time is four to five hours a day, round-trip. So, that is at least twelve hour workdays. Could I work where I live? Sure. Could I live on it? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong, Madison is a great city, but $11k there (and for a student) is a nice little gig. You will make more when you are finished with school. Then you will run into the following psuedo-code paradigm:
Step 1: Date / Get Married / Have Children (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%)
Step 2: Get promotion (Increase money in pocket by 10%)
Step 3: Pick a number between one and ten.
a: Wrong number?
Step 3.a.1: Get divorced (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%)
Step 3.a.2: Go to Step 1
b: Right number?
Step 3.b.1: Go to Step 2
Step 4: Get your job offshored and get a job at Taco Bell (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%)
Step 5: Get promotion to second assistant manager in-training (Increase money in pocket by 2%)
Step 6: Collect Social Security when you reach 65 (Increase money in pocket by 20%)
Step 7: If you have gotten this far without a divide by zero error, you are in better shape than I thought...
My advice to you. Stay in school as long as you can! Milk it! Change majors every year. When they run out of majors, find a new school with majors that you never even thought of before. Whatever you do, don't graduate!
Is it just me or does this reek with the smattering of turn of the century visions of a Utopian society? This sounds like the kind of thing people would have laughed at in a science fiction novel because it is just does not seem realistic.
I'd hate to be a tech for one of those floating targets - that would take one tall ladder. Not to mention the fact that they could paint a bullseye on you for when some rouges sends a homebrew drone into one (or a few) of those.
Microsoft today acquired Incyte for an undisclosed amount of money. When asked for comments, Bill Gates was only heard to be muttering something about the "8.5% left before all your base are belong to us".
Ballmer was downright giddy to reporters, stating that when Microsoft gained majority control of all people, Slashdotters would be restricted from chair-throwing comments.
Not to go off on a little bit of a tangent, but you really hit upon something that is very irksome to me. Has anyone besides me stopped to wonder if the fact that there are a large number of largely ignorant HTML jockeys out there is because of the fact that IE continually "interprets" their best intentions? You have to stop and wonder if IE actually become more stict in parsing and rendering, if a fair number of people would find themselves out of work...
This is intended as a knock against web developers, either. I do my fair share of web development work, as well.
Every infomercial I watch talks about how every product is a leading scientific breakthrough for the 21st century. I have a channel on DirecTV that only has infomercials, so I should know.
Just wait until Ronco hears about this!
If it is "smart", it means it didn't come out of Redmond. They either aquired a company with a similar product that had a good interface, or outsourced it.
Of course, we will have to work out something with a proper currency exchange prior to any diplomatic relations then, because I've never been to a Catholic church that doesn't pass that collection plate.
Let's see... 143,300,203 Zorcandian Pesos is equal to one Mexican Peso...
Not saying it because I am a software developer, but between coding and release, there is a little thing called testing.
So, on behalf of all developers, I petition that QA teams throughout the world should be held responsible with violators to appear at public trials and stockaded on street corners. All the while, people will shoot Nerf darts at them while walking by.
Exactly. Chances are if you have a roomful of people in a position of power, you might agree with a fair amount of them - in regards to their viewpoints on any given issue. But, it is the one person with either uber-liberal, uber-conservative, or uber-crazy ideals that will make the most noise.
What I find amazing is that this issue almost treats video games like they are so different than other forms of entertainment, while I don't see it. For years now, we have been restricting availability to entertainment based upon consensus views of what is appropriate for a given group (minors) and what constitutes a minor. I don't find that it is terribly unreasonable to use rating similar to television rating for video games.
Honestly, I think it would be great if we could start perpetuating the ratings accross different types of media, as it would provide standardization (read as less room for interpretation). If the pimply geek at the WalMart counter sells a copy of GTA to a minor, he should be subject to a fine and/or jail time. Look at how some states handle liquor and tabacco sales to minors - not only is the store fined, but the employee is, as well. Most stores can shrug off the fine, but it is the employee who made the violation that will take notice and hopefully learn from it.
I don't think that there is a perfect system or answer, but I do believe that doing too little is sometimes worse than doing nothing at all.
Good for you, and more power to you. It is the responsibility of the government to protect children until they become adults. In many states, negligence is equatible to child abuse. Who protects children from abusers? Local government, which is given that power by state and federal government.
And if you would by porno for your kid, that speaks volumes upon volumes. Contributing to the deliquency of a minor is a misdemeanor in most states.
In case you haven't opened up your eyes to the "reality" of the retail market and the relationships that some parents have with their children in these times, here is a little primer.
Parents, not all, but enough of a count to be represented, believe that child care consists of televisions and/or video games. No one is saying that games shouldn't have the content that they do, so put your flag waving ideals back in your pocket, first of all.
If more parents were involved in there children's life in more than a cursory fashion, this would largely be a non-issue. Since it is obvious that some parents just do not care what their children do, however, it is the responsibility of the government to protect them. This is done through laws. Having a subjective law that is widely open to interpretation does nothing except extend the debate to another group of people.
Would you sell a child porn, or a copy of Faces of Death? Even if you wanted to, chances are that you couldn't. Content is protected through a ratings system which is enforcable by fines and/or jail time. How is this different that what they are doing in California? Instead of having a "review board" determine what is write and wrong, it is left to individual judicial review. Twenty different cases, twenty different judges, twenty different opinions on what constitutes "values".
If you honestly think that nothing should be done to protect the innocent victims, then you are the one that is denying reality. The reason that age restrictions exist is because there is a collective group as a whole that understand you don't give a copy of Playboy to an eight year old and an NWA CD to a preschooler. Maybe you see nothing wrong with those examples, which would make you part of the problem.
I could honestly care less if you work in the video game industry. Did you want a cookie? Just because someone stabs people on the subway doesn't mean that we need to turn it into a form of entertainment that young people can desensitize reality with.
...I am glad that there is an effort to strike this down. The law is so widely open to interpretation that it provides no enforcable measures by which to "draw the line".
The fact that the law mentions "standards" and "values" in determining which video games qualify really lead me to believe that this is just a "feel good" sort of law that is there to appease the people who want legislation, without actually having any sort of enforcable merit.
And no, I am not a lawyer. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Judging from the article, Microsoft's security offering will be a separate product line and not a part of the OS. This is my slant on it...
I believe that Microsoft has an obligation to provide this as a core functionality of the OS. Otherwise it is the equivalent to buying a house without a roof, and then having to pay again so that it is livable/usable. While it should be appreciated that Microsoft has recognized that there is a legitimate need to correct these issues, doing so by offering a new product line is the wrong way to go about it.
As a software developer, I could only wish that I could get away with selling a product that could only be secure/viable/etc. by having the user buy another product to plug the leaks. How about trying to improve system testing or cooperating with other vendors to isolate and contain threats? Nah, that would be way too productive.
...wait ten seconds until you have started reading an article and cover what you are reading with a flash animation that does not go away until it has run it's course.
...produce a lot of noise in a quiet office with meaningless music, sound effects, or voice-overs.
...tell me that I just won something spectacular and can claim it if I participate in only five partner offers.
...create new instances of themselves every thirty seconds (for example, certain web sites that refresh information in fixed intervals and have to create a new instance of the popup or popunder every time).
Slashdot Mirror
I can't imagine that each show would last longer than two or three minutes a piece after being "converted" to be presentable to an Arab audience. One can't help but to be amused at the whole idea of "We really like the Western World, except for this, this, this, this, this, etc., et al".
QA fell down on the job. If you get the number, go to step 4 - not two. Life might seem like an infinite loop, but I digress. ;-)
There is a certain unwritten law that the more you make the more you spend. That is, of course, until you hit the lottery or become a CTO of a company that these rules start to fall apart because you will have more money than a reasonable person should have at any given time.
I moved from Arizona a couple of years ago, where I "topped out" at $56k. I make a shade less than twice of that now, but it comes at a price.
I am a software developer (not in the gaming industry) and I work in Manhattan. Of course, I live eighty miles from where I work so that I can enjoy some of the money that I actually earn. I'd say commute time is four to five hours a day, round-trip. So, that is at least twelve hour workdays. Could I work where I live? Sure. Could I live on it? Probably not.
Don't get me wrong, Madison is a great city, but $11k there (and for a student) is a nice little gig. You will make more when you are finished with school. Then you will run into the following psuedo-code paradigm:
Step 1: Date / Get Married / Have Children (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%) Step 2: Get promotion (Increase money in pocket by 10%) Step 3: Pick a number between one and ten. a: Wrong number? Step 3.a.1: Get divorced (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%) Step 3.a.2: Go to Step 1 b: Right number? Step 3.b.1: Go to Step 2 Step 4: Get your job offshored and get a job at Taco Bell (Reduce money in pocket by 50%-75%) Step 5: Get promotion to second assistant manager in-training (Increase money in pocket by 2%) Step 6: Collect Social Security when you reach 65 (Increase money in pocket by 20%) Step 7: If you have gotten this far without a divide by zero error, you are in better shape than I thought...
My advice to you. Stay in school as long as you can! Milk it! Change majors every year. When they run out of majors, find a new school with majors that you never even thought of before. Whatever you do, don't graduate!
...it would be before my milk expired. Well, they are a day late. This is just udderly devastating.
Is it just me or does this reek with the smattering of turn of the century visions of a Utopian society? This sounds like the kind of thing people would have laughed at in a science fiction novel because it is just does not seem realistic. I'd hate to be a tech for one of those floating targets - that would take one tall ladder. Not to mention the fact that they could paint a bullseye on you for when some rouges sends a homebrew drone into one (or a few) of those.
...that this whole ongoing chain of events has more action and more of a plot than the last few video games I did buy.
Yes. I believe the DS uses McWEP.
Hold on a sec... Can you repeat that after I put my tinfoil beanie on?
Microsoft today acquired Incyte for an undisclosed amount of money. When asked for comments, Bill Gates was only heard to be muttering something about the "8.5% left before all your base are belong to us". Ballmer was downright giddy to reporters, stating that when Microsoft gained majority control of all people, Slashdotters would be restricted from chair-throwing comments.
...for users to RTFA before jumping to conclusions about government trying to control their daily lives on every other story.
Not to go off on a little bit of a tangent, but you really hit upon something that is very irksome to me. Has anyone besides me stopped to wonder if the fact that there are a large number of largely ignorant HTML jockeys out there is because of the fact that IE continually "interprets" their best intentions? You have to stop and wonder if IE actually become more stict in parsing and rendering, if a fair number of people would find themselves out of work... This is intended as a knock against web developers, either. I do my fair share of web development work, as well.
Twenty years have already gone by - hard to believe it's been in beta that long already. Anyone know when we will see a release candidate?
Every infomercial I watch talks about how every product is a leading scientific breakthrough for the 21st century. I have a channel on DirecTV that only has infomercials, so I should know. Just wait until Ronco hears about this!
If it is "smart", it means it didn't come out of Redmond. They either aquired a company with a similar product that had a good interface, or outsourced it.
Ancient Greece? Burp! I think that is what those fries I had at McDonalds were cooked in. ;-)
Let's see... 143,300,203 Zorcandian Pesos is equal to one Mexican Peso...
So, on behalf of all developers, I petition that QA teams throughout the world should be held responsible with violators to appear at public trials and stockaded on street corners. All the while, people will shoot Nerf darts at them while walking by.
> I think I just had a vision of Utopia. ;-)
What I find amazing is that this issue almost treats video games like they are so different than other forms of entertainment, while I don't see it. For years now, we have been restricting availability to entertainment based upon consensus views of what is appropriate for a given group (minors) and what constitutes a minor. I don't find that it is terribly unreasonable to use rating similar to television rating for video games.
Honestly, I think it would be great if we could start perpetuating the ratings accross different types of media, as it would provide standardization (read as less room for interpretation). If the pimply geek at the WalMart counter sells a copy of GTA to a minor, he should be subject to a fine and/or jail time. Look at how some states handle liquor and tabacco sales to minors - not only is the store fined, but the employee is, as well. Most stores can shrug off the fine, but it is the employee who made the violation that will take notice and hopefully learn from it.
I don't think that there is a perfect system or answer, but I do believe that doing too little is sometimes worse than doing nothing at all.
And if you would by porno for your kid, that speaks volumes upon volumes. Contributing to the deliquency of a minor is a misdemeanor in most states.
Parents, not all, but enough of a count to be represented, believe that child care consists of televisions and/or video games. No one is saying that games shouldn't have the content that they do, so put your flag waving ideals back in your pocket, first of all.
If more parents were involved in there children's life in more than a cursory fashion, this would largely be a non-issue. Since it is obvious that some parents just do not care what their children do, however, it is the responsibility of the government to protect them. This is done through laws. Having a subjective law that is widely open to interpretation does nothing except extend the debate to another group of people.
Would you sell a child porn, or a copy of Faces of Death? Even if you wanted to, chances are that you couldn't. Content is protected through a ratings system which is enforcable by fines and/or jail time. How is this different that what they are doing in California? Instead of having a "review board" determine what is write and wrong, it is left to individual judicial review. Twenty different cases, twenty different judges, twenty different opinions on what constitutes "values".
If you honestly think that nothing should be done to protect the innocent victims, then you are the one that is denying reality. The reason that age restrictions exist is because there is a collective group as a whole that understand you don't give a copy of Playboy to an eight year old and an NWA CD to a preschooler. Maybe you see nothing wrong with those examples, which would make you part of the problem.
I could honestly care less if you work in the video game industry. Did you want a cookie? Just because someone stabs people on the subway doesn't mean that we need to turn it into a form of entertainment that young people can desensitize reality with.
The fact that the law mentions "standards" and "values" in determining which video games qualify really lead me to believe that this is just a "feel good" sort of law that is there to appease the people who want legislation, without actually having any sort of enforcable merit.
And no, I am not a lawyer. But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I read Taco Naut. Maybe they will start off by launching that damn little dog from all the old Taco Bell commercials into space.
Read the "Right Click Triumph" paragraph in the above screenshot. That just reeks of the following disclaimer:
Available only on Microsoft Operating Systems through any Web Browser named Internet Explorer.
I believe that Microsoft has an obligation to provide this as a core functionality of the OS. Otherwise it is the equivalent to buying a house without a roof, and then having to pay again so that it is livable/usable. While it should be appreciated that Microsoft has recognized that there is a legitimate need to correct these issues, doing so by offering a new product line is the wrong way to go about it.
As a software developer, I could only wish that I could get away with selling a product that could only be secure/viable/etc. by having the user buy another product to plug the leaks. How about trying to improve system testing or cooperating with other vendors to isolate and contain threats? Nah, that would be way too productive.