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Comment Re:Holy shit, this is some wank. (Score 1) 165

Leaving aside the completely ridiculous assertion that a system composed of people can be debugged in the same manner as code simply because it happens to be called a "code" of law,.

It's not because both is called code. It is because both legal and computer code are both nothing more than a set of rules. And the more complex such sets become, the more unwanted side effects you have. People try to find loopholes in those rules for personal gain are either called lawyers or hackers and for both, best practice of avoiding such loopholes is to keep the rules as simple and exactly worded as possible.

Code injection is a bit of a stretch, though, but in general, programs and laws have a lot in common.

Comment Re:Haven't you guys see the *TRUE* picture yet? (Score 1) 173

So your solution is NOT to "learn to code" and start with the burger flipping job right away? Any other idea where to get a "sweet 32k/year gig" without college?

Doesn't change anything about you being spot-on right.

But I wish I could give my kids some more reliable career advice than "Drop out of school and become the next Mark Zuckerberg". Well, I know the American Dream where anyone can make it from rags to riches with hard work, but so could anyone get struck by lightning or anyone could win the lottery.

Comment Re: Never heard that one before (Score 1) 504

But that's Star Trek TOS you're talking about.

First of all, old SF stuff tell us more about the time they were written in than about the actual future. And with Star Trek, We're talking about about Space race and cold war here.References and stereotypes from those subjects are kind at least understandable, like Stepin Fetchit movies (heard the first time of him today) told us about the actual racism in his time.

But episode one is a piece from the late 90s. If a cartoon character is shown with some possibly racist traits, this is simply sloppiness. Laziness to invent some actual accent, unthoughtfullness of noticing it how the characterizatzon and accent match a stereotype (it probably would have been noted if the role was casted with an actual black actor instead of blue-greyish a computer animation) and general cluelessnes of pushing that lazy, clumsy nuisance into the viewers field of vision at all.

OK, now back to Star Trek and why it can't be compared: The stereotypes in ST aren't (usually...) not Stereotypes used as a lazy way to make easy characterizations (see: James Bond: blonde guy with german accent --> evil, eyepatch: evil or a fake italian accent to depict some guy as 'funny') They're rather allegorys. Yes, Romulans are space russians, but if you want to tell about an utopia about all space races living happily federated together, you need someone to symbolize the warmongering people that has to be coped with, too.

And please note while the Romulans symbolize Cold war russia, it was poor Chekov who had all the stereotypical russian stuff!

And while Star Wars did their happy Science Fiction Fairy Tale, ST actually went onto the subject of racism (Let that be your last battlefield) - in al allegorical way with all stereotypical dead weight removed. So if someone in ST is symbolizing someone back here on earth, it can be done that it is on purpose.

And still my final point stands: If seeing a non-human character with some negative traits triggers some black/white stereotypes, it tells a lot about how deeply rooted these prejudices are within the recipient. (...maybe: too..)

But as a conclusion, I'd like to say the the whole Jar Jar character is SO annoying, and as a whole is a result of bad and uninspired writing, that perceived racist stereotype don't make the top ten on my list of reasons to wish him some unpleasant veneral diseases.

Comment Re: Never heard that one before (Score 2, Interesting) 504

You're intentionally missing the point. there's a cultural history found in movies, tv and books that portray black people as subservient and uneducated stereotypes. This portrayal reinfoced class and racial structures of the day that served to keep black people "in their place". Long tradition of this. summary mentions stepin fetchet. uncle remus. blackface comedy. jar jar is a direct decendent of this line of humor. either you're being purposefully obtuse, or maybe you're from iceland or something and completely unexposed to american culture and history.

So, if you see a subservient and uneducated non-human character on screen, that makes you think of black people?

Interesting. But with such a mindest, I wouldn't complain about other peoples "racism".

Comment Isn't it the advertisers? (Score 1) 233

I thought it's the advertisers who choose which target user profile their ads should be shown to?

And can you really blame them for trying to keep their advertising costs low by selecting a target profile as narrow as possible to keep "wasted" views, that have to be paid for, too, as low as possible?

I don't see Google at fault here.

Comment Re:GRR (Score 1) 227

I disagree. At least for Star Trek. That setting is wide (not to say bland...) enough to allow for any type of story. Heck, they managed to mash a Picard-Die-Hard-Action-flick and a Back-To-The-Future-comedy into a single movie and it worked!

Each ST series had a unique style and tone. TOS with their "monster of the week" 60's-Sci-Fi, TNG ("we have the moral duty to...") and Ds9 with the longer, almost soap-like story arcs. Add to this the regular oddball-episode dabbling into absolutely non-Science Fiction areas. (VOY combining the worst of the now boring "monster of the week" with Picards worst speeches about moral dilemmas)

You could have made tons of movies and series that could have stood on their own, but in a desperate try to tap into the fanbase by adding charackters with the same name as TOS crew, they went down the "prequel"-trap that rewrites canon an turns a endless, open playground story-universe into a tightly tangled mess of alternative "timelines".

Comment Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score 2) 135

the whole point of locations is that they be basically what the death camps are today- aka, public places, museums

No. As a funny side note, it's amazing how some officials go out of their ways to avoid labeling these places as "museums". The new expression "documentation centeres" was coined for museums in non-museum-worthy places.

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