theevocater's comments

shout out to your casual misogyny:

> Great. Then the relatively physically weak, the infirm, the elderly, the women, will be at the mercy of the strong

as if women are somehow magically incapable defending themselves.

Well, if women are leaving faster than men and often cite reasons of being bullied or otherwise forced out by men... why would women desire to enter that workforce?

This is the most patronizing thing I've read in a while. Women don't magically have some (ableist) disadvantage that prevents them from participating.

The thing that keeps them from participating is men bullying them and forcing them out.

What you are missing here is that the trolls friends still show up in the original persons mentions. So rather than the troll disappearing and interacting stopping it allows the abuse to spread.

The new system put the onus on the person being abused to keep blocking, whereas the old one general just stopped it.

Yeah Houston (I'm assuming you are talking about Houston) is a really progressive place. I do love Austin (its a young city and I'm a young person) but its not some shining light in the center of Texas. It's really not that different than any other big city in Texas.

see http://pycon.blogspot.com/2013/03/pycons-response-to-inaprop...

Just, why is everyone focusing on the smokescreen of he said/she said? Who cares! He broke a federal law!

So wait, this guy was smoking some weed (I assume) in the middle of a con and got banned. Why is this even questioned? Whether you agree with smoking weed or not, he committed a crime during a PyCon event.

also, cmd-l (go to the awesomebar) and start with a ? to always search.

you can also have different engines

    ?cat 

will search your default engine for cat

i have one for ddg so

    ddg cat

searches duck duck go for cat etc. its fantastic

Isn't this more the arena of a procedural than federal law? This definitely seems more feel good than reality. I believe the court precedent is called "legislative entrenchment"[1] which seems to prevent Congress from passing these laws that "bind" future Congresses.

So, to answer the Representative's question, it would appear that courts would hold this bill unconstitutional.

[1] http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/essay/leg...

While I happen to agree with you, I'm trying to make the point that even people emotionally invested in their hatred of pornography should see that this law is faulty. Even if we happened to disagree on the specifics of obscenity, this law is wrong.

Just what citizens need: a the government watching everything you do! Regardless of how you feel about pornography or other "obscene" content, this kind of power will be abused. Even if Iceland, arbiters of good taste, manage to use it entirely within the given bounds, that kind of information could be pilfered and used by more malicious people. Even big tech focused companies are not immune to data theft, so why would Iceland do any better?

As the saying goes: let's collect data on how everyone in Iceland browses the web; what could possible go wrong?

Talk about playing right into the pirate bay's hands. The Pirate Bay can sue the CIAPC and put on a show about how even copyright's defenders mess up.

This would be the one sticking point for me: it seems Apple has never really cared about games, so it is unclear they will start caring.

I wish it well but my assumption is that it will fail :(

Hardware is hard; software is hard; distribution is hard; but they want to do all of it all at once. I wish them the best but I don't see them lasting unless they get acquired

Think about the long term though. Apple has already convinced millions of people to put the AppleTV in their homes. With a simple update they could enable iDevices and an App Store to allow developers to do crazy stuff. Then at next iteration they unveil offerings more tuned to hardcore gamers. They liked the first one, now they want more. Apple is already deep in the gaming market, they have the patience.

So yeah at first Apple will compete with on delivering simpler game experience like Angry Birds or Space Team or Letterpress. But so what? People love those! Don't forget that "hardcore" gamers are no longer the focus here, other markets are much bigger. Apple can wait to focus on bigger titles.

I'm vaguely imaging a scenario where they don't sell anything resembling a console, but expect you to own some sort of iDevice to go a long with your AppleTV, or maybe sell it with a iPod touch?

But yeah, I could see your scenario happening. It would probably be amazing either way

Oh wow, good point I totally forgot about valve holy crap. That should be soon!

I'm not sure Apple will/would do it, but I think they have the muscle. They aren't competing with CoD, they are competing with Tetris. They want you to buy and play games on your media device, not watch media on your games device. Hugely different market which is ripe for picking.

Apple would probably not build a device they lose money on: that isn't their game. They are a hardware company and they make their money on hardware. This is why I assume they would build something similar to the AppleTV with maybe a bit more juice: rely on the iPad to deliver the CPU juice and the AppleTV (or whatever) to show the content. "Everyone" already has an iDevice, leverage that and jump in.

I am super curious. Sony is at a huge turning point here. They are faltering badly and sort of stumbling around. For example, they released the new PSP and the Xperia Play last year which are basically direct competitors. They have all kinds of products but no real clear strategy as to how to put them together. It boggles the mind that they sell everything in the home but haven't found a way to actually get it all together. They literally sell everything from laptops to televisions to receivers to speakers to phones to consoles and more. Just imagine if they had a strategy as coherent as Apple's across all those products.

I've been shouting this for as long as I could: Once Apple (or maybe an Android company or even someone new) enters this market in earnest, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo should take watch.

Apple has the infrastructure to deliver games, has tiny/medium/large touch devices that can connect via bluetooth in many customers hands (which already play games), and many many game developers familiar with the platforms. Every big studio has an iDevice team and there are hundreds of good iPhone games out there. If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush.

You can already do cool stuff like stream the game to the TV via airplay and use the device for a score/map screen (basically a WiiU) and it works surprisingly well and doesn't need cords or anything.

The only other real competitor here I see is one of the bigger android vendors like Sony or Samsung. If Sony could get the company in shape and stop producing products that compete with each other, they have many of the same advantages as Apple. They have android devices, experience making console/tv/etc hardware and even own game studios. They make every kind of electronic that goes in the tv room. But Sony has had this for years so that seems unlikely. They have already had huge employee slashes and are floundering.

Samsung has the same thing going on. They make everything and they have huge android phone/tablet penetration. I could see them easily jumping in on this and I hope they do. More competition blowing the doors of this stagnant industry could lead to a renaissance of smaller game studios.

EDIT I should add that Valve also has a chance here. There are many rumors swarming about a valve console or something similar. They have the distribution system and the games market experience, but have no experience with how to make hardware. Remember the last time that happened? I believe they called it the "red ring of death". I'm not saying valve can't pull it off but hardware is hard to get right. I look forward to what they do.