Probably a better term for "SJW" in its current dominant usage would be keyboard warrior, however the horse has already bolted.

To paraphrase James Randi, "words are defined by their usage". "Social Justice Warrior" has definitely a predominantly pejorative usage, generally used to describe the self important authoritarians rather than the selfless compassionate ones. For example, few people who use SJW as a pejorative would ever describe Ayaan Hirsi Ali as an SJW, yet SJW will be used predominantly to describe self important keyboard warriors

At this point, SJW has as much chance of having a predominantly positive usage as "Men Rights Activist".

I've looked into this too. There are certainly threatening comments on twitter, but these get labelled as "By Gamergate" without any kind of awareness of the association fallacy. A threatening comment is always the responsibility of the individual. There are threatening comments all over social media, and anyone can be a victim of it. The media have been parroting this online harassment as fact without distinguishing it from criticism or just rudeness, and also without any acknowledgement of the same harassment on the other side. Active Gamergate supporters seem to vastly outnumber the anti Gamergate crowd by an order of magnitude, so I wonder if that makes it seem worse.

After 5 months of "GamerGate" there's been no arrests, no serious evidence of any imminent threat published or connection to any organized "harassment" campaign. Gamergate supporters themselves have been harassed, swatted, sent malicious objects in the mail and this is largely ignored in the media. Possibly because many of them took a different approach, and didn't kick up that much of a fuss about it, or perhaps because it doesn't fit the media's narrative.

This is my personal experience only, but the vast majority of gamergate supporters I spoke to were laid back, intelligent, friendly, and positive. There was the same ratio of weird but nice people that you'd find in any group really. However, many of Zoe Quinn's supporters ranged from being rude to abusive to authoritarian. They had an air of mocking superiority that gets old really quickly, and why I stay away from twitter.

Judging by her online postings she doesn't seem all that different to this new wave of internet troll that we're getting these days. A whole lot of name calling, revelling in drama, and taunting her "haterz", and that kind of thing. It's a bit cringeworthy.

I accidentally dropped my kettle breaking the switch. I thought it would be easy to just unscrew the base, and reinsert it. Except it was screwed with what I later learned were tamper proof screws. I could buy the screwdriver online, but with the cost, postage, one off use, and three days without cups of tea I just bought a new one.

But then you could also buy your coffee at costco, and a nice flask, and you get your cheapest caffeine every day and less disposable cups going to landfills. Though, another point worth mentioning is that coffee's stimulant effect on the body wears off after a while as the body learns to adapt. Some athletes will give up coffee so that their caffeine gels are a bit more effective on race day.

It's kind of a gateway drug, in that once you open the Red Bull gate you are entering a world where you pay triple for the equivalent energy of a banana, and the equivalent caffeine of a cup of coffee. It's kind of like a gateway to a world of dummies.

Well, it's a logical fallacy, called Poisoning the Well. You discredit what a person might say later by misrepresenting them now. You calmly and rationally tell them that it's a logical fallacy, and that's how you defend it.

I remember in the old days of debating on the internet logical fallacies were referenced a lot. I remember Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit getting a lot of hits when arguments got emotional. It doesn't happen so much anymore, because there's a large influx of people making highly emotive arguments but without much discipline in reasoned arguments. They may make valid points, but when they don't you should point out the logical fallacies in their reasoning. We're all prone to logical fallacies, so it's healthy for debate overall.

Under a 2002 law it was made illegal to change the IMEI unless you're the manufacturer. However, under a 2006 amendment to the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 it was made illegal to even OFFER to do this. You don't have to actually change the IMEI to commit the offense, you just have to offer or say you will. Punishment is up to 5 years in prison. The smartphone blackmarket could be wiped out just by enforcing this law.

Were you aware of how much that whole scenario is like a Seinfeld episode?

Surely, I can't be the only one that';s rolling my eyes at this 45%\46% statistic that's being thrown about lately. It seems like this statistic is either misunderstood or abused. Puzzle, board and card games made up the majority of online games at 34%. Action, sports, RPG games were all categorized together bizarrely and represented 26%. There's no breakdown of gender per genre, something that's pretty important in a discussion about gender in games. Most gamers would not consider someone who plays poker or scrabble online as a gamer, though, yes, I suppose technically they are. You're a gamer if you play snake on your phone while waiting for the train, but then, if you're a woman, is it fair to criticize the games industry for not catering to you, because in a trade show on the other side of the country a scantily clad model is dressed up as a video game character? Even if you do factor in board and phone games, E3 is not catering to these kinds of players. Is that sexist? I don't know, but I know the ESA's report isn't accurate enough to make that call. Most people have a gaming device called a phone, and have probably played a few games on it, and purchased Angry Birds or some such tat. Does that make them a gamer? I would welcome a more detailed study, particularly one that goes into a lot more detail. Twitch.tv(for game streaming), online multiplayer, trade shows seem to be dominated by men. If women are making up nearly half of gamers where are they? I'm not saying the study is lying. I'm just saying it's too broad. There are genres and gaming platforms favoured by men and women in different proportions, and evidence of sexism starts with gathering

It's nice that they're alive to tell us about how they feel. Aaron is not. I can't imagine the amount of pain he went through that drove him to kill himself, but I imagine he felt something close to what someone in a burning skyscraper might feel, and did what they might do. Take the least painful route. These guys face a different situation, and have a different choice. When your worst problem is getting hate mail, you have options.

I want one!!
http://i.imgur.com/1JqrLVc.jpg

Notice his bizarre reference to Babylon 5 that seems to be without irony. He's obviously a fan, but did he miss the message the show had about how a group of soldiers had to follow their conscience and expose war crimes and corruption from their government at home. These characters had to deal with propaganda from the government, professional snitches (Nightwatch) and threats of treason and imprisonment from their corrupt government. I guess Adrian Lamo was rooting for President Clarke all along.

I love how this thread brought out all the Aussie expressions and in-fighting. Finally Aussie nerds get an excuse to be aussies on slashdot!

Nice toy, but fuck anyone who clips a wild bird's wings just to make it a more convenient pet. For thousands of years mankind has looked at birds and wished he could fly like a bird. Now that we've mastered flight some fuckers want to take that away from the birds.