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Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

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Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#131

Post by vijayr »

jean_valjean wrote: post #23
bcowcher wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a little from both columns. The US government makes Jons job alot easier than it has any right to.. and that scares me...

The US government has been a staple of comedy for many, many years. See: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Rogers His quotes from 80 years ago still sound timely.

I dunno who this guy is, but he sure is funny:

This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#132

Post by SilasX »

sage_joch wrote: post #6

Fun fact: the SOPA page on Wikipedia was still accessible during the blackout.

All pages were (intentionally) accessible, just with a little inconvenience and without disclosure of the instructions.

One way as to just use the mobile version of the site: en.m.wikipedia...

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#133

Post by un1xl0ser »

thebigshane wrote: post #116

Everyone here (besides `jerfelix` apparently) is missing something crucial: Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! These were the congress(wo)men that were trying to bring in experts/techies/geeks/nerds/whatever. So, I'm sorry that the techies here were insulted by that word (I wasn't!) but most of the people using the word were actually fighting for your side! And if you lis…

>Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA!

So what? Were they anti-SOPA from the beginning, or just when we started getting serious pressure applied... Even if they were instinctively anti-SOPA, would it be fine if they refer to you as something similar to carnival show (okay, that's a geek), as opposed to a concerned expert in the field? That was at least my take-away from the clip, have not watched the full episode yet.

Do they refer to bankers as Till Fiddling Cash Rapists? Decorum counts for something, and we are not a side-show.

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#134

Post by lelele »

pinaceae wrote: post #71
kiba wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For last couple of centuries or so, each generation grows up with unprecedented change in their lifetime. For example, I enter elementary school, the internet started to take off and browsers were primitive. Nowadays, we can enjoy the convenience of movie streaming, fast browsers, and extraordinary rich video games(Dwarf Fortress, I am looking at you). So it doesn't make sense to me that congressmen are literal dinos…

you're seriously too young to understand. i am 32 years old. the first time i went online was in 1999. before that i had personal computers, yes. but no internet whatsoever. can you even imagine a world without google and wikipedia? i got my first mobile phone in that time frame. my parents were born after ww2. your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world. you translate everything you see in…

> your time as a youth shapes you, forms your understanding of the world.

Only if you stop learning. And by learning i mean challenging your ways of thinking and acting (think about a computer geek learning salsa dancing), not learning something similar to things you already know (think about a computer geek learning yet another programming language).

> the majority of people (aka normal people) who where adults before 1985 do not "get" this new world the way you do.

Don't be a sheep. I mean, do not get along only with people in your age bracket. Keeping an open mind, socialize with younger people: they'll teach you things, if you let them.

Disclosure: 37 year old fart here.

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#135

Post by johnny22 »

jordan0day wrote: post #108
DTanner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you watch SC2 on GSL with Tasteless and Artosis, you'll see that even "nerd" is no longer pejorative. The greatest compliment they know is "nerd baller". They refer to themselves and the audience as "nerds" all the time, but in a totally friendly way. It's almost a badge of pride.

Do you really think the congresspeople saying "Well I don't know how it works!? I'm not a nerd!" We're really using it as a compliment, though? And as the Stewart clip points out, why couldn't they have just said "expert"? It's clear they were at best making backhanded compliments -- at worst they were intentionally framing it as "here's some weird arcane thing that only nerds care about, not normal people like us!"…

sounds like the same thing as saying "I'm not smart enough to understand this".

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#136

Post by molmalo »

dalke wrote: post #93
saulrh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For last couple of centuries or so, each generation grows up with unprecedented change in their lifetime. I'd argue that this generation's changes aren't just unprecedented, but in an entirely different category. Not just in size, but in speed and extent. The cell phone alone is the most fundamental change in society in human history; suddenly, every person on earth can communicate instantly with almost any other per…

Consider someone who died in 1955 at the age of 70. In their life they saw the introduction of: home electric providers, telephones, radio, movies, automobile, air travel (from nothing to the jet age!), nuclear energy, the polio vaccine, penicillin, color photography, frozen food, and more. There are also less known changes with deep impact: the introduction of municipal garbage service cleaned up our cities and impr…

You have a very valid point. I can't think of the enormous change the introduction of the home electric providers must have been. I mean, from candles to bulbs!

But then again, I think that the main difference now is the current rate of adoption of the new technologies. How many years took to build the electric system? How many years took the use of the mobile phone to become widespread? Everything moves faster and faster, and that's what is letting lots of people behind. They just can't adapt fast enough.

For example, my mother. Every time she has a new mobile phone, she asks me to teach her how to use it. I start saying, "Read the screen, think, decide and then press the buttons." Because, i tell her "if not, what will you do when even your TV has more and more menus?" Of course, she grumbles, but at least tries. And when she REALLY needs help to learn something, i help her.

And I see this pattern everywhere. Tech changes so fast now, that while a few people adapt extremely fast, and to some it takes it a little longer, to the rest, they're just tired of learning how to use new stuff, every now and then.

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#137

Post by thebigshane »

un1xl0ser wrote: post #133
thebigshane wrote: post #116

Everyone here (besides `jerfelix` apparently) is missing something crucial: Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! These were the congress(wo)men that were trying to bring in experts/techies/geeks/nerds/whatever. So, I'm sorry that the techies here were insulted by that word (I wasn't!) but most of the people using the word were actually fighting for your side! And if you lis…

>Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! So what? Were they anti-SOPA from the beginning, or just when we started getting serious pressure applied... Even if they were instinctively anti-SOPA, would it be fine if they refer to you as something similar to carnival show (okay, that's a geek), as opposed to a concerned expert in the field? That was at least my take-away from the…

Lofgren, Issa and Chaffetz were anti-SOPA at least since the first hearing Dec 15th (That hearing is the source of those clips). I'm not sure when you consider "serious pressure being applied".

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#138

Post by endtime »

thebigshane wrote: post #116

Everyone here (besides `jerfelix` apparently) is missing something crucial: Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! These were the congress(wo)men that were trying to bring in experts/techies/geeks/nerds/whatever. So, I'm sorry that the techies here were insulted by that word (I wasn't!) but most of the people using the word were actually fighting for your side! And if you lis…

It's not about being insulted, it's about understanding the mindset of Congress. The fact that even the anti-SOPA people see engineers that way is even more concerning.

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#139

Post by thebigshane »

endtime wrote: post #138
thebigshane wrote: post #116

Everyone here (besides `jerfelix` apparently) is missing something crucial: Jon Stewart showed 4 people using the word 'nerd'. Three of them were anti-SOPA! These were the congress(wo)men that were trying to bring in experts/techies/geeks/nerds/whatever. So, I'm sorry that the techies here were insulted by that word (I wasn't!) but most of the people using the word were actually fighting for your side! And if you lis…

It's not about being insulted, it's about understanding the mindset of Congress. The fact that even the anti-SOPA people see engineers that way is even more concerning.

I think this all makes a lot more sense under context. As I recall (I watched the first two hearings, nearly entirely), somebody asked a technical question like "What are the consequences of [something]?" and one of the supporters of SOPA said something like "I don't know, I'm not a nerd" and that prompted the opponents to respond with "Exactly! We don't know! Let's go ask a nerd!"

tl;dr: They started it :-p

Re: Jon Stewart calls out congressional nerd bashing over SOPA

#140

Post by angersock »

lusr wrote: post #46
cpeterso wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An analogy for software development I've heard is to imagine building the Empire State building but with your view limited to a 15" glass portal. You must remember the off screen portions of the "building" in your head.

My current favourite is to describe it like this: You have to build a puzzle. Problem is nobody really knows what the puzzle should look like. Instead you get a few hundred pages of documentation written by a bunch of people who don't really know much more about the puzzle than you do describing how they think PARTS of the puzzle should look like in the end - based on discussions they've had with people who have no i…

You got documentation to start from? Lucky bugger.
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