I think a poster on the escapist forums but it most succinctly: "The gaming community is being bullied for profit".

The gaming community is being singled out for being misogynist, over the film/tv industry, over the music business, over religious groups, because they are a relatively easy target who won't put up as much of a fight. While it's almost certain that Sarkeesian has received threats, let's be honest, they do not carry anywhere near the same weight as those which would come from, say, a religious group who was called out for being conservative. Gamers also lack the PR money to respond, which would be readily available to entertainment companies. Overall, it's a fairly safe group to criticize.

I'm sure that misogyny exists in video games, but no more (and I would argue to a lesser extent) than that seen in general society and other forms of entertainment. Yet Sarkeesian and her backers have launched what amounts to an internet crusade against the most counter-cultural -- and I would argue visibly progressive -- media industries.

Her videos present selectively chosen examples from several video games, purporting to show that games are actually hateful towards women. Many of us have played several of these titles, and can judge how exaggerated such claims are. Indeed, using Sarkeesian's techniques, it would be perfectly possible to go through these games and more, and selectively picks clips and examples "proving" that games and the gaming industry promote animal cruelty.

Yet no-one makes the animal cruelty argument about video games. And the reason is I think obvious -- The misogynist argument makes more money. Sarkeesian has been backed to the tune of $150,000 to makes these videos. Sites like Kotaku generate huge ad-revenue from the inevitable click-bait headlines which follow from these exaggerated claims. The more games who take the bait, who defend their hobby from these accusations, the more revenue goes to the people making and promoting them.

This does not represent a genuine feminist movement. This represents a business model. Gamers are being singled out and bullied -- over religious conservatives, over music video directors, over corporate policies towards women -- because gamers are an easier and more lucrative target. Gamers are "hate-baited" with very, very ugly accusations painting them as haters of women, so that their predictable responses can be farmed out to ad-servers and marketing firms. Bullied; for profit.

I've played video games since 1990; I do not hate women; My hobby does not hate women; The vast majority of people who play video games do not hate women. Please, Sarkeesian's of the world, turn your attentions to the people who do.

But if you don't puff up your offspring with enough praise early one, how will they have the iron-cast confidence to windbag their way to the top in todays bullshit world? Again, what use is true intelligence if you don't have the bellicosity to shout down all gainsayers?

If you RTFA, you'd see that they referenced ISIS PR videos, so it's not just "oh that looks like it might be training camp" but "these geo features from the videos correspond exactly to this thing here on the map" type of analysis.

It's obviously, The Big O.

Your outdated "value-adding" "service provding" skills are so 20th century. 21st century careerism is about networking. Networking. Networking. Netowrking.

Look at item number one on TFAs list.

1. Take names. ...

In five to 10 years, that will all be different and the person who you ignored because they were boring and couldn't help you will be the person who could have won you an important opportunity.

Network! Impress people! Dress right! Booze people up! This is how successful companies are made. You will not attract the rright venture capital with your simple abilities. Most companies won't even use those anyway.

2. Problem solving. .....

Problem solving is essentially the same thing you learned in abstract in seventh or eighth grade or whenever you learned simple algebra.

See! Look at this! The people this guy is writing for don't even know how to solve problems. They just code stuff nobody really needs -- and they're still successful! You think your ability to analyse and abstract is something all the cool kids will pay for? Think again. Your geek/nerd/hipster/bro-grammer cred wil matter far more.

6. Work more than 40 hours per week.

Profession? You think programming is a profession. Get back on that hamster wheel and like it code monkey. And get some hair dye. First sign of a grey hair or stress line from yellow packs like you and we sack you and hire a fresh young grad to suck into a husk.

5. Think in terms of a career, not a series of jobs.

Translation: "You can either join the fed-money, app-cloud bullshit wagon, or you can learn to love foodstamp lines. Either way, it'll still be a superior outcome to any science-fiction fantasy you imagined programmers were capable of making in a rational universe. The Market wants fart-buttons, not robots, so drink the kool-aid or join the lowest caste of contract workers you, you, you..... Loser."

No wonder so many programmers go into management.

Silly rabbit. Property rights and contract laws don't apply in the digital world. Control is 99/100ths of the law.

Depends on the exposure the publisher wants. Daily if they are paranoid, or weekly seems sensible. As Bitcoin spreads the volatility goes down. Then it could be monthly. But you are missing both the points I made. You can now spend Bitcoin a lot of places, so you can spend directly from your Bitcoin account as (a) it reduces the amount of time you are holding it and (b) there are zero transaction costs for both parties making it currently the world's best currency for transactions. The second is that it doesn't matter if there are a zillion transactions of a zillionth of a dollar. There are no transaction costs, it just goes into the Bitcoin wallet and you end up with a dollar.

At the moment you can pay the Washington Post using all those currencies. There are yanks abroad you know! WP does it by plugins that take (I presume) Paypal or VISA. They do the same thing but take a large chunk of revenue for doing very little. Bitcoin has the potential to eliminate transaction charges, that's why it's interesting.

Phillip.

Except the Catch-22. It will never get adopted if it doesn't gain traction, that requires the early adopters trading what they have to get momentum going to make it worth others mining it. I thought about buying a few for novelty value but didn't bother when I saw it had already broken the $2 barrier. I remember early adopters boasting of the profits they had made when it reached $11. There was that story of one early adopter who mined what became $2M worth but had thrown away the hard drive with them on, and fruitlessly hunted around his local rubbish tip. Despite the paranoid Bitcoin haters infesting this thread, it really doesn't sound like there was any nefarious get-rich-quick scheme involved here.

Phillip.

You have missed the whole point of Bitcoin. And currency. Why do you think gold became an important commodity? The only reason was because they discovered a simple chemical test to determine its authenticity. This means somebody in Australia could take a lump of gold to India, and the local Indian merchant could validate the currency on-site and conclude a transaction. Bitcoin has the same property that you can validate it is a real Bitcoin. However the method it uses requires a widely distributed "directory" you can check, and to get this spread widely the currency needs to have momentum. Hence the failure of alt currencies to challenge, despite the worry of fragmentation.

Certainly Bitcoin is more credible than other places I have money. For instance I have an online poker account which tells me I have $X in it, but of course there isn't any money in there at all. I just assume they will transfer money into my bank account if I ask them.

Phillip.

Gold could have been seen as a high risk investment at the time. There were plenty of alchemists working on trying to turn other substances such as lead into gold, and science at the time couldn't prove it wasn't going to work. The moment it did the bottom of the market would drop out.

At the base of it gold must have seen like some ponzi scheme. When nobody cared about it, people were just gathering it up off river beds and rock faces. Suddenly it becomes worth something when everybody decides it's desirable and by coincidence it is now hard to get hold of? Pretty suspicious. And why were people carrying around gold instead of the official currency of the time? Probably just criminals.

So far the experiment of leaving Bitcoin take it's natural course is working pretty well.

Phillip.

Bitcoin is just cash and carries the same risks. Credit cards have exponentially more money stolen, and are completely unsafe, but that cost is hidden as a tax on society. VISA soaks up just enough fraud and theft to keep them legally and visibly safe, yet still made a $1.4bn profit in the last quarter. All the costs are passed on as part of the fees merchants pay which in turn we pay in higher prices in stores.

If I used Bitcoin I would do the same as you, and actually use it for what it was designed to do: a currency with zero transaction fees.

Phillip.

Why is the factually inaccurate troll marked "Insightful"? Bitcoin is not a ponzi scheme, it's not legally dangerous, and it's not criminally dangerous. And obviously it's not doomed and people have been predicting its demise since day 1 and quite the opposite has happened.

Phillip.

ICANN should just reserve a TLD or two for private networks similar to how some IP ranges were reserved in RFC1918. For example:
.private (broad scope - for internal/private use)
.here (narrower scope - limited to a particular location e.g. different starbucks outlets could be using whats.here and at each of those outlets it resolves to that specific outlet's stuff )
Feel free to think of other TLDs for private but different usage.

I actually proposed .here many years ago: http://tools.ietf.org/html/dra...

But seems they were too busy approving "Yet More Dot Coms" (e.g. .biz, .info etc).

That's one of the reasons I have a low opinion of ICANN. Anyone in the field could see this problem years ago, but they have done little to help and maybe even made things worse.

Isn't the point of Bitcoin that there is no processor? You buy a plugin for your ecommerce backend that accepts Bitcoin and et voila. Then you can exchange into your favourite currency after X days or when the wallet reaches Y amount. Or you can pay out Bitcoin directly for example by using it for all your expenses such as equipment and hosting fees, and just convert what is left over as a dividend (for now, though so many places are starting to accept it you may not need to exchange at all).

Phiillip.

Look at the amount of ignorance and stupidity around? See the number of university graduates thinking hoax mails/posts are true and spreading them...

So what would any sociopathic channel boss prefer to run? Stuff that most people would watch and talk about, or stuff that only a minority would enjoy?

It's about making money not educating people. That's why actually "public TV" can be a good thing. It's not like the private sector would care or even if they did at first, the $$$ pressures would change them.

Compare National Geographic's narration for their octopus vs shark video-
2006: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
2007: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I prefer the 2006 narration - less annoying. But I guess most viewers would prefer the 2007 version?