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Comment Re:Treason.. or... (Score 4, Insightful) 524

Not. There isn't a difference. You don't call someone a bimbo for saying or doing something stupid; you call them a bimbo when you have written them off as a stupid person. Furthermore, you don't use bimbo when referring to a stupid male, you use it when referring to a stupid female. And you use it to particularly address the fact that a stupid person is a woman. It is a label that has a legacy of having been used to deride and reduce women in the workplace for decades. Maybe you don't take offense to it, but that's on you. Civilized people do, and surely, there are words that offend you.

Comment Re:Bigots who think this is a joke - shame on you! (Score 1) 814

>If anyone here with more reputation than me feels that there should be an article on Slashdot about bigotry within the geek community in general, please let me >know and I'll be happy to write one.

Then write one, please. I'm a cisgendered straight male. I can only understand so much of the bigotry you face being a woman and a lesbian, let alone someone else being trans. But here's the thing, if you're going to make it about us evil straights attacking gays and transgendered persons, you're going about this all wrong. For example, I've done more to advocate for same sex marriage than my gay and lesbians friends who sat around and just automagically thought Prop 8 would fail, and that includes the git I know who attacked Chick-Fil-A for their anti-gay position whilst repeatedly going back to eat their sandwiches. Also, the AC had it right, the "gay community" has traditionally been unfriendly to transgendered people. Being gay doesn't automatically make you enlightened and open-minded. I don't think you can even assume generally that most gays support transgendered people. When Dan Savage repeatedly mocked transgendered people, it was mostly people like myself and trans people who criticized him.

Some of the hateful comments here might just be geeks showing off that infamous geek emotionally stunted sense of tact. If it's real, and if comments in articles like this one and the past one about women being groped at tech conferences are any indication, then your efforts might be largely wasted trying to teach Slashdotters to think differently.

Comment Re:Let me PARSE that for you (Score 1) 137

I think this is where Android's diversity gets it into a few different categories. At the high-end market, Android is for the technical elite. I can run a python interpreter and do some programming and run some custom apps that take advantage of the more arguably powerful hardware and hardware feature set that high Android phones offer vs iPhone and low end Androids. At the mid to low end market, Android is for consumers who just want to consume media and easily download apps. The statement that Android out-selling iPhone by a large margin requires at least an asterisk. There is only one iPhone, and there are many many Androids with many performance-minded Android owners often buying new Androids multiple times in a year.

I agree that Android isn't *for* the technical elite. It clearly wears many hats, but I also believe it's a likely a smaller subset of Android customers that actually has any more freedom with their Android than I have on my iPhone. In my social circle for example, no one I know runs custom firmware or do anything that really takes full advantage of their Androids. All that power, and they're mostly just playing Angry Birds and doing Facebook. I have python on my iPhone. I've used my iPhone as practice guitar amp and a synth for composing music (work) when I didn't have access to my regular gear. I'm admittedly more on the techie side of iPhone users.

Comment Re:copyright exempt? (Score 1) 297

As a huge fan of MST3K, I think their diligence is what's kept us fans from getting a complete MST3K DVD collection. There's a lot of separate licenses to work out and some of the original film makers weren't happy having their movies laughed at. I think Rifftrax is also doing some licensing as well. I distinctly remember getting the riff track for Twilight immediately after the DVD was released, which sort of implies that maybe they at least got to view a screener.

Comment Re:Just because they made money on your video (Score 5, Insightful) 297

No. It's analogous to you sitting at a table and playing Monopoly, then uploading a video of that gameplay, only to have Parker Brothers hijack your ad revenue. Gameplay video differs from TV and movie uploads in that, for consumers, the latter is the goal itself –– to watch the TV program or movie. For a game consumer, gameplay video isn't the goal. Gamers want to play the game, not watch a video of another person playing the game. Yes, the gameplay video involves copyright protected content, without which one couldn't make this new content, and so there is the temptation to argue that gameplay video is a derivative work; still, gameplay video is very clearly within the spirit of Fair Use. This should be especially apparent in the case of YouTube game reviewers or game commentators. If it were not, then I suppose I would be infringing just by playing a video game in front of a bunch of people. The fact that gameplay videos are free promotions for game publishers probably shouldn't have much weight since it's anyone's right to decide how they want to promote their product, but in any case, the threshold at which Nintendo suddenly takes over is curious. How many frames of video must feature a Nintendo product before Nintendo can take the ad revenue? What happens if I'm a video game reviewer and I show clips of gameplay from both Sony and Nintendo content? Will that result in a threeway battle over ad money between Nintendo, Sony, and me?

Comment Re:Is it bribery? (Score 1) 317

I get what you're saying. It's not technically bribery to reward someone for going through with what they already planned to. You haven't induced them to doing anything; however, people talk, and if politician A gets a huge "bonus reward" from a contributor for doing a thing, it's probably that politician B will be inclined to seek that reward to by following along. After a while, if enough politicians do this, junior politicians M, N, and O might vote in agreement under peer pressure. Going back to A, big contributors rarely have just a single issue that care about once. It's very likely that, having already gotten a bonus, politician A will be further inclined to continue receiving these bonuses and will thus base his positions on what that contributor wants. Therefore, that initial generosity becomes a seed that will inevitably turns into bribery.

Comment Re:That's a pretty large decline, yes. (Score 1) 523

I played WoW and EVE Online for a while, but ended up returning to multiplayer FPSs for the first time since Doom 2 because I was looking for a more competitive sports-like experience, as shallow as that may be compared to what you can achieve with EVE. I play Call of Duty Black Ops and Battlefield. The network effect will keep me playing and will lead me to buy the next round of gaming consoles. I don't want to suggest that WoW should in any way aspire to be more COD-like; I'm just saying that I stay with multiplayer gaming, but chose a different style of play.

Comment Re:Since when? (Score 1) 398

I've never tried Planetside, but I'll look into it, thanks. I get that I'm asking for something that probably wouldn't be very popular. I would like Battlefield/COD meets EVE Online. So, deep customization of my avatar's looks and equipment set in the near-future with contemporary weapons and a huge urban sprawl to explore. What I would really like is Mamoru Oshii's 2001 cyberpunk film "Avalon" If you haven't seen that movie, it's pretty dry. I'm still not sure whether it's what I would have expected from the creator of Ghost in the Shell.

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