Electronic Arts and scams by other companies on the Apple App Store

A couple of days ago I purchased an application for my iPad called Need For Speed Shift 2 Unleashed by Electronic Arts.  I then decided that I was going to buy an in app purchase of coins to get a better car, what goo is a racing game with a crappy car.   I hit the purchase button, confirmed my in app purchase and then, as I pressed confirm, the app crashed.  Apple debited my account like they were supposed to, but the in app purchase did not appear in the game.  All of these big name companies like google, apple, EA, Microsoft, etc... have horrible customer service on products.  They put you through loops to try to contact someone and when you finally get to the support page all it is is how to troubleshoot your device and frequently asked questions. I found the support email me button after digging through their site and had to answer questions about what product I had, no support is given for applications on the developer page.  The app is shit it crashes every three seconds and does not do half of the features it says it could do.  lately on the Apple store no developer has tested their applications and Apple  has not been screening apps because they do not have the man power to do so thus destroying apps when developers update things.  I emailed EA support and they did not answer in their promised 24 hr timeframe.  I wrote a review in apple under the app giving it 1 star and telling others what my problem was in hopes that EA would fix the piece of shit that they put out on the app store.  I had no luck with this because Apple deemed my review inappropriate even though I was not using words like shitty or crappy I was stating my complaint about the product that I had received.  Is Apple protecting Electronic Arts or is it something else?  If developers are charging 6-10 dollars for an application and not testing them on the devices they claim to support then not listening to reviews and customer complaints then they are involved in scamming people out of their money on the biases of false advertising. Don't buy games from EA on the App store.

racism in america

There are white people who are trying to be seen as not racist, but we cannot be 100% in on the idea that everyone is equal because people have preferences, I would prefer to be in a room full of white people, not because I don’t like black people, but because I would prefer it.  If I was in a room filled with people of different races and ethnicities I would definitely be uncomfortable, but i would not think less of anyone in the room.  If you see a Muslim person flying on the same plane as you in full orthodox dress chances are that he is a religious, law abiding, and moral person, but people profile as a way of surviving.  If the person is uncomfortable with the idea of a man in a turban sitting next to them on a plane they may not go on the plane and in the slight chances that something happens then they would be better off.  We all profile people, we cannot help it to categorize people into certain stereotypes, black is black, white is white, a suspicious looking person is a suspicious looking person (if a person looks creepy chances are the person is creepy, but the person could be the nicest, most friendly person you will ever meet).   One of the articles is about trying not to raise racist children.  The article states that parents (white parents) try to teach their kids to not judge people because “everyone is equal” and “ under the skin, we’re all the same”  but isn’t that the problem, the skin. As much as people try to think that they are not racist and try to teach their children the everyone is equal in every way, they aren’t and their kids who grow up thinking that everyone is equal find out that they are not all equal because some will always be more equal than others.  While it is true that it should be what is on the inside that counts we cannot help but see the outside.  Questions on almost every application ask what is your race or ethnicity, not are you a nice person on the inside.  It is not fair but people need to grow up knowing that things are not fear in order to be educated on certain topics.  The article titled “whites in US edge towards minority status” says that by 2050 the “minorities” are going to go on to become the majority.  This surprises me but not really.  What during the times when white people become a minority, what would happen?  Would the white race be segregated and discriminated against because of how we, as a race (not as an individual person), have treated almost every other minority race or ethnicity?

Affirmative action

Affirmative action is necessary to increase the diversity in the school systems.  However, affirmative action should not really be taken because it is a sort of excuse for the minorities to say, “we are not trying hard enough therefore we cannot get into your school on our own merit and intelligence so let me in because I am…(include race or ethnicity here).”  Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of circumstances that could affect learning that results in low test scores and low GPA, like the school that the person attended had bad teachers or technology was not so great, but still people should not be allowed to get by in life solely based on race. There are people who come from these minority backgrounds that try really hard and they succeed.   The University of California has a small group of minority presence, this proves that even though there is a small percentage of minorities, that minorities can get into college without special treatment.  Race should not really be a deciding factor because the school has its academic requirements, so if a person of color and a white person both qualify for the one open spot in the admissions then go with the person who has better extracurricular and more life experience and ignore race. A university gives out an application that does not include any space to put race or ethnicity; If enough people apply from all different races, ethnicities, and life backgrounds (experiences), then on a first come first serve basis the university should be able to look at the applications and determine who is qualified to be in the university.  The university would then be able to take the qualified applicants and admit based on a) when the applicant submitted his/ hers application, and b) who out of the qualified people are more qualified.  If race was not a factor then nobody should be able to say that the university is racist, because the school is not even looking at race.  If the school ends up admitting a class that is 60% white, 8% black, 2% native American, 20% Latino and 10% other, then how can the school be punished for not looking at race.

On the other hand race could be useful only if the university blindly admitted a class of 100% white people.  In this case the minorities get upset and say that they were cheated.  This wouldn’t be fair to them even though race was not considered in the final or even preliminary decisions.  If student A has a ton of good qualities and life experience also gets good grades, but one of his or hers bad qualities is that he or she does not really work very hard (he just floats by on border line B’s) , and student B gets worse grades (C’s), but also has great life experiences and a great resume that would bring perspective to the classroom; who would you choose?   

White Like Me: Privilege

I agree with the statement on Amazon mostly because Tim Wise does an excellent job at convincing the reader that a lot of situations do have to do with race, most of the situations he mentions do, but in others I fail to see a direct connection to privilege.  While it is true that white people in general have the privilege to not be too worried about being pulled off to the side for a “Random” security check, and I use “random” because we do use racial and appearance based stereotypes to screen almost anyone we see as a natural instinct to get a first impression of whether or not a person is threat, I do not believe that being white is as much of a privilege in some of the scenarios that he describes. He mentions a time at Tulane when he lived next to a drug dealer who was so successful that if he dropped a few bags of weed in the halls he wouldn’t miss them.  He uses the situation to explain that white people, “Privileged people like to overindulge”(40).  The one black guy in his group of friends who would sit in the dorm room and smoke was worried about getting caught, therefore he was not willing to overindulge in the substance; the white people in the group were not afraid of getting caught and did a lot more drugs than the black guy in the same sitting.  I don’t agree with this notion of the black guy being afraid of being caught because I call the act of doing the amount of weed that he was talking about stupidity not privilege. 

He says that privilege of being white got him the roles he wanted in drama class although he was considered only a mediocre actor.  He says that some parts of the play where white spaces only given to white people.  I do not know the ratio of black to white students in the school that he attended, but I can assume that the ratio shrinks when it gets into the drama club at the school.  Back to the white only spots in the production; being in theater as a member of the stage crew I can say that our school makes every effort to get as many people involved in the production as possible. For example “Spelling Bee” the upcoming musical has an original Broadway cast on nine, which turned into roughly 65 students when it will be performed in our school.  I know that DHS is not the most racially diverse school out there, but from his description of the director his school did the same thing, make small productions larger so that anyone who auditioned has the opportunity to make it.  While being white does give greater opportunity to you in the theater environment it is only due to the fact that many plays only have white leads, color is mentioned in the character description of some plays, and other plays allow more freedom, but based off of the character of the character some roles will just fit in a certain racial group.  To make the play more authentic theaters, high schools included, want to cast the role as close as they can to what the script calls for.  Therefore white characters are cast as white people, black characters as black people, Asian as Asian and so on.  An example of why this situation of theater does not apply to privilege of race can use DHS perfectly.  There have been times in this school (Deerfield High School) that many people in the theater program wanted to do a show like “Hairspray” or “Rent” or other shows that involve a clash or race or culture, but we just don’t have enough racial diversity in our school for it to work.  I said that DHS is a perfect example of how his theory of privilege in theater is due to being white because Deerfield needs more of a black presence to do shows that have a massive racially diverse cast the show requires. We cannot do “Hairspray” with white people because things will get way to confusing. 

            He talks about privilege of white people during Woodstock.  200,000 people, majority of them white, were burning lighting scaffolds, rioting, and raping; and the police did nothing.  He says this is because of privilege I say it is because 30 police officers cannot control a crowed of 200000. He then states that when a fight broke out at a local hip hop concert between two or three people the police from all over the county were called in to keep the peace.  He failed to mention in the chapter the color of the fighter's skin and also failed to mention that white people listen to hip hop as well. Thirty cops wrestling three people is a lot easier than 30 cops controlling 200000. 
           I agreed with some of his other statments about driving a beat up car was the only reason why he got pulled over and that is something that "rich" white people do not have to deal with; however there exsits poor white people who also have beat up cars and may also sell drugs to get money.  While there are tensions between the races, some of Tim's examples of how whites are privileged don't work.

The fall of movie theater edequette

People do not know how to see movies any more. The younger generation has lost the ability to just sit for the duration of a film without chatting with friends or constantly texting on their phones. I recently saw the movie woman in black. It would have been a good movie had the 30 people sitting behind me and the 7 next to me, all of whom looked to be no more than 12 to 13 years old, had not been constantly chatting amongst each other like they were the only people in the theater. The movie started and people in the row in front of me just got up, stood there, turned to his friend and in a normal talking voice, not even trying to be quite, mumbled something and left the theater yelling "this movie sucks.". Theater etiquette, the norms that dictate cell phone use and talking in the theater is gone for the younger generations. Everyone sitting behind me had a cell phone out, at one point in the movie one of the girls was on speaker phone with a friend sitting on the other side of the theater, another person in the theater had a laser pointer which periodically made its debut on the screen. The girl directly behind me had text messages coming in every 2 minutes, her phone was not on silent, I turned around and told her in these exact words, "your phone has a thing called silent, use it." she said her phone was broken and did not go on silent, I replied with a simple question, "can you live without your phone for just 1 hour and 34 minutes?" I determined that they cannot. They live in a fairly "rich" town, they did not pay for the movie out of their pocket and they do not pay for the iPhone 4s or droid that they are carrying, why should they care about the people in the theater that did pay for the movie because they want to see the movie and not text on their phone or talk. I went with a group of people from stage crew, we took up 3/4 of a row; the kids behind us took up two entire rows only they were staggered amongst the theater so they would yell in a whispering voice across the theater to their friends sitting in the front row. The person that left the theater saying, "this movie sucks," had left the theater only ten minutes into the film making an effort to stomp his feet as he walked all the way down the stairs and out of the theater, he returned to watch the rest of the film, yelling something every time he left; a faction of the group behind me, who were all sitting in the front, were running in and out of the theater with squeals and giggles. Why can't people watch the movie they came to see without talking or having a phone in their hand to light up the theater or make noise? Why can't theaters kick out these people who do not follow the simple rules of be quite and don't kick the seat of the person in front of you? Do parents teach their kids anything about how to behave in a crowded theater or anywhere else?