Category Archives: News

THIS Is Girlfriend Mode!

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girlfriend mode - the mode when I beat you with my controller A few days ago on twitter (where do you get news?) Some people within the design crew of Borderlands 2 were calling their easier difficulty mode, “Girlfriend Mode.”  Since then there has been a lot of articles claiming people are over reacting, backpedaling and clarifications by CEOs.  You can find the original article here on Eurogamer, with some updates.

I first noticed the story when @SunriseRobin (Author of Zeus, Inc. and founder/blogger of www.fangirlconfessions.com) was tweeting about it.  Now i know many women who are great at video games, and many who suck.  We all have our own preferences, just like I know many men who are good and many men who suck.  It’s not a gender thing, but for some reason there is a big group of people, or perhaps a loud group of people who seem to want to put down women who game.  Not only that, they want to keep women from gaming.  (and there is also a backlash where women now are being expected to prove that they are action gamers and not just posers /sigh)

My reaction to this “Girlfriend Mode” was not to flame tweet, was not to call for a boycott of Borderlands 2 (Borderlands the original game is very good and I can’t see one designer being stupid as cause for a boycott) but this image came into my head.  I was swamped with work so I asked Robin to remind me to draw it later.

I hope you all enjoy it for the fun it is meant to be.

Let’s punch the glass ceiling in the belly!

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I was watching and old episode of the Simpsons yesterday, “Mr. Lisa goes to Washington.”  It was aired in 1991 and Lisa goes to DC, there is a line in the show where a senator says “One day you might even grow up to be a senator, there are women senators you know.” To wit Lisa replies, “I know, there are two, I checked.”  That made me sit up, I knew there were more female senators now, but didn’t know how many.  Out of 100 senators 17 are female.  In over twenty years we went from 2, to 17.  Now the growth rate is tremendous and I applaud that, but when you think about it, 17 out of 100 isn’t that many, especially if you consider that there are more women in the population than men (marginally, sure.)

So then I decided to check and see how many minorities are currently serving in the senate, and there are only 4!  Two Asians and two Hispanic, the last African American was voted out in 2010, and the one before that was elected president (not too shabby) in 2008.

I could also tally up the numbers in the house, but I think it’s easier to get elected into the house than it is into the senate, and a brief look tells me that even so, percentage-wise the minority and female representation is shockingly low.  Now one might argue that it doesn’t matter what someone’s race or gender is, that all that matters is if they can do the job well, and I agree with that, but do you really think the job is being done well?  Do you really think the interests of minorities and women are being championed in the senate?  When complaints are raised the number of complainers are so small that they have no voice.  This is a problem.

I have no solution, other than to ask more women and more minorities to enter into politics. I ask that you don’t play the game but that you work hard to do right, sure it’s not the fastest way to get elected, but at least if you are elected you will do a better job for your country.  There is a young woman I know who is an undergrad, I have been encouraging her to study law because I want her to someday enter politics.  She is someone I would vote for in a heartbeat, we need fresh blood like this.  We need to encourage the youth to pick up the mantle and make this country better.

 

In related news, the first female 4-star general was named.  That’s just awesome!  Plus, she has one of the coolest names ever “Janet C. Wolfenbarger.”  Discussion of this promotion brought about this post’s title, JRD Skinner said she kicked the glass ceiling in the belly :)

This also brought up another amazing lady, Grace Murray Hopper, Computer legend and Rear Admiral (granted she retired a Commander and they continued to promote her after the fact because of all she contributed to technology).

Blurb stolen from Wikipedia:

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navyofficer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.[1][2][3][4][5] She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Due to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace.” The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) was named for her, as was the Cray XE6“Hopper” supercomputer at NERSC.

Ranting on the internet works… really?

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“It comes in threes”

GoDaddy learned we don't like fascismIn an apathetic world like today it’s easy to feel defeated and without hope.  I know I do, often, ever since NDAA passed I had lost my faith in the “people.”  Then something great happened, first, GoDaddy backed the SOPA bill, then the internet found out and the boycott started.  It didn’t take long and GoDaddy reversed their position, of course that doesn’t take back any testimony, but it was a big hit to the pro-SOPA community, they saw, with our dollars how not listening to their customers could hurt their business.

SOPA and PIPA can go the way of the DoDoNext, there was the Internet Blackout Day, Wikipedia, many blogs and other sites on the internet went dark, even Google had a doodle showing their distaste for both SOPA and PIPA.  Many Senator and Congressmen’s websites went down that day, not by choice but from the flood of traffic from people who followed links on blacked out websites looking to contact their local politicians to make sure they knew their voters were against this.  The next day we found out that both SOPA and PIPA were shelved.

Komen thinks it can push planned parenthood around, they were wrongThe other night I learned from Planned Parenthood that the Susan B. Komen Foundation had decided to cut their funding for breast cancer screening because PP overs abortions. This was an outrage and something close to my heart, along with other men and women on the internet I shared my links and voiced my complaints on twitter, facebook and google plus.  This morning I woke up to find that SBK has reversed their decision.

That’s right people, the internet has been heard.  Now while I often shy away from talking politics on social media (never talk politics or religion right?) I am starting to think that’s not a good idea.  When it comes time to make a change, we need to be more vocal.  Just think what would have happened if we has all gotten upset over NDAA?  Would it have passed?  I think not.  I think seeing these three examples is enough to show people that apathy is not the way, that we can make a difference if we rant loud enough.  We have the money, we have the voice, we have the power.  Don’t think you can’t win, don’t think your one voice won’t change the world, thanks to social media, it can.

A couple of things:

Facebook goes public and will sell your soul to the devil!

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borrowed this from CBS, watch their videos

I’ve seen a few people get upset over this “NEW” information on how facebook makes money and what going public will mean for you, the facebook user.

Of course there is a defaming article on Yahoo that I’m being pointed to here.   I’ll let you read the article, then come back here and see my replies.

1. Facebook is going to “sell” users for $120 each
This isn’t any different than what’s happening now.  They already sell your information for ads, google does the same.  Are you using gmail to read this?  look to the side and tell me what ads you see?  Those are personalized ads, same things you see if you just do a google search (unless you have turned off private browsing) and while on facebook those ads are supposed to be tuned to your needs, this is why I see local ads. It’s not new, it’s just that FB will make more money from it.  OK.  I was fine with it before, why would I not be fine with it now that they might make more?

2. Facebook users are about to become billboards
So basically if you “like” something it is going to be advertised to your friends to get them to like it too.  Again, that’s already happening, it’s nothing new.  I see everything my friends like, I see ads to like things my friends have liked already, not new, not unscrupulous, this is what social media is.  The idea behind FB is what your friends are doing is interesting to you, it’s a peep pressure kind of thing, my friend is playing farmville?  well I better play it too, oh look now it’s Castlewars, ooo look my brother likes George Takai, I better like that too.  This is how FB works, how it has become the site you check every day.
3. The IPO is as much a Public Relations coup as a Share offering
so FB is going public but Zuckerberg is keeping full control, he could bequeath it to his dog… he could do that now, again, nothing is changing.
I think the big thing here is that nothing is changing but prices will go up and FB will make more money, isn’t that the american dream, to make money off of nothing.  I can’t wait to see what Mark does with his millions now.  Please give more of my schools grants.  (While I may think I wouldn’t like Mark as a person, I like when he donates his money, much like I love it when Bill Gates donates his money, and these are grants I see and work with all the time.
Now when I look up information on facebook going public there are other points of view, CBS seems to like this move. (videos)  It is amusing, the ads for these videos are for Google, Facebook’s competition.