mkaltenecker

Sigh. You are deliberately obtuse, aren’t you?

I don’t believe there is any high-skilled job where you can get away with no social skills in the majority of situations.

Those high-skilled jobs always require team efforts. Only rarely can a single person do something and make enough money with that. Yes, software development has probably more such opportunities than other fields (I’m thinking of the lone developer of Tiny Wings, for example†) but it’s not the normal case. You shouldn’t go into software development expecting to be able to work on your own.

As such, software development can profit from social skills just as much as any other profession. The normal case is that you will have to work together with other people to make things happen. (And even if you don’t, you still have to work together with customers.)

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† Who is clearly an extreme outlier. He did the overall design, code, art and music of his game all by himself. There aren’t many people who are skilled in all those disciplines to be able to make such a high quality game. It’s also pretty obvious that he can’t do as much as others can as a lone developers even though he has comparable success (but he doesn’t seem to want to, so all the better for him).

I completely agree with you. Don’t be so aggressive, be nice!

Apple should remove the zoom button. It’s not necessary, more confusing than anything.

Zoom tries to remove the scroll bars. It makes the window big enough so that the scroll bars disappear. If there are no scrollbars and the main content just automatically resizes with the window (e.g. in Aperture) it is equivalent to the maximize button.

The biggest problem with that is that developers make it work inconsistently.

So, uhm, are all the misogynists showing up in this thread here also just trolls? Cause there’s tons of them.

Nope, you are quite wrong, actually.

Ahem, who is talking about policing the internet? Making YouTube videos or blog posts about something you are critical of is not policing. It’s normal and healthy and if anything should be encouraged.

It is, in fact, what freedom of expression is all about. If you receive tons of awful threats and harassment you should be able to loudly talk about that and even describe it as a big problem. Because it is.

I was convinced to become an atheist by people calling out other people. I was convinced to become a feminist by people calling out other people.

I know it’s an anecdote. I know from communication research that changes in opinion don’t really happen all that often in the real world, especially not in response to the media. But in the end I can say that I was personally changed by people calling out things.

I think it’s a valuable thing to do. The world would be a very sad place if it were impossible to change people with argument.

And if not this generation then the next one.

Point is, sometimes you just wanna vent because no one understands you. SRS is exactly that place. It’s not for activism, it’s not for changing stuff, it’s for venting frustration and having fun with that.

The point of SRS is not to change the world, it’s to have a place where you can laugh at idiots and have no one spoil that fun. And that’s perfectly alright.

No, they just moved it to the Dock preference pane.

Talk about not getting it (on SRS).

SRS parodies how feminists are usually portrayed by others – that doesn’t mean they think the vile shit linked there really isn’t shitty. How can you not understand that?

Misogyny in sports is also a problem that has to be called out. Why do you assume that it isn’t?

Sports are at least a bit more progressive in this respect that video games, though.

Also, the thing is that some of society’s behavior warrant change. That was and is the case with racism. That was and is the case with misogyny. Changing things means calling them out and protesting against them. Even if you might be able to ignore some of it instead if you really wanted to.

Your assumption is that misogyny in video games is as valid a viewpoint as being against that. That’s your judgement to make but don’t wonder when people say you are wrong.

There is nothing wrong with calling out misogyny in media. Intense and reasonable criticism is part of every healthy society. You might have a point if she wanted to ban or censor games – but she does not.

Gamers and game developers don’t have a right to not be criticized.

Furthermore, games are a huge business and everyone is playing them. They are not some obscure thing that can be ignored. They are pretty central in our society, just ignoring them is not an option.

Like racist media before it, misogynist games will have to face the criticism.

That seems unlikely. WiFi should certainly drain your battery less than cellular. (I have yet to jump on the smartphone train but my iPad gets consistent 7 hours with 3G, 10 hours with WiFi.)

Mountain Lion is a much improved version of Lion, no more. That’s great.

I don’t see any roadblocks to installing it. It already works much better than Lion.

That is wrong. Apple doesn’t glue the screen in the Retina MBP to the case. It’s screwed to the case, as you can see here: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook-Pro-Retina-Display-Te...

There is nothing wrong with that. In that case saying yes to as many people as possible means allowing phones.

It’s just the justification (“We want to say yes to everyone!”) that’s so odd. If there are good reasons for actually allowing phones then say that, not that you want to say yes to everyone.

Is this an all-or-nothing thing? All other Macs are just as hard or easy to disassemble as ever. And iPhones or iPads are much harder to disassemble than the Retina MacBook Pro.

(This is kinda irrelevant and I don’t think it has anything to do with Facebook – but what a stupid policy. It won’t work. You cannot always say yes, if only because saying yes to one person may be mutually exclusive with saying yes to another person. All you can ever do is try to say yes to as many people as possible, never everyone.

Why are phones banned? Because one person can annoy the whole class with them. Banning phones in this case means creating an undisturbed Yoga class, i.e. saying yes to everyone who wants to be able to concentrate on Yoga and nothing else. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that’s the majority in a Yoga class.)

Tim Schafer said “That much money for Pax Prime?” when discussing the budget (more specifically, which non-wage stuff to cut or leave in) for the Double Fine Adventure in the latest episode of the documentary.

Ok, then I won’t.

Skeumorphism that doesn’t affect functionality is purely about taste. Anything beyond that is bad. End of the story.

Skeumorphism is purely about looks. If it impacts functionality it’s more than that.

If it’s only looks it doesn’t matter and is only about taste.

Visually polished? They stretched a font! That’s unacceptable. A deadly sin. You don’t do that. Ever.

Uhm, Podcasts App? Lion?

Skeumorphism is about taste. You just don’t share Apple’s. Simple as that. As long as it doesn’t impact the UI there is nothing wrong with skeumorphism.

Every app can use the notification system. They only can’t use push notifications if they are not in the App Store. Not terribly relevant for the desktop.

Quick Sync is not DRM. It’s a video de-/encoder.

Does the amount of stuff added matter? If the quality is good I honestly don’t care.

Lion was a bit of a dud. Mountain Lion doesn’t add much but it improves massively on Lion. It corrects its mistakes. I’m very much ok with that, I don’t need flashy new features. I really don’t want Apple to start pulling features out of there ass (especially now that they switched to a yearly update cycle), mere refinements every year for something mature like OS X would be awesome.

What’s so bad about clarifying that that includes the internet?

I mean, there are politicians in democratic states who believe that protections afforded to the press on the basis of rights don’t apply to, for example bloggers. It’s not altogether obvious why freedom of expression or speech should automatically include the internet.

What’s mean about that statement? You don’t have to read it like that. Always take the generous interpretation.

Apple doesn’t do stuff like that.

Well, sometimes they do and fail spectacularly. Does anyone remember the iPod HiFi? Similarly expensive, point- and useless.

If this is how they want to compete with Apple they haven’t understood Apple very well. (I do not think that’s their intention. Google is, in fact, pretty good at competing with Apple. Android does very well. They know what they are doing for the most part.) Apple is about making mass market products that differentiate themselves from the rest by their design – but they are not just design props. They are actual products people love to use, not put behind glass and stare at.

The Nexus Q is Google’s iPod HiFi. Utterly stupid, doomed for failure but of no consequence for Google in the long run. I wouldn’t read anything into it. Even the best companies do stupid stuff from time to time.

(Yes, this is a prediction. I recognize that I might be wrong and you can hold me to it.)