Why Young Males Are No Longer the Most Important Tech Demographic

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Why Young Males Are No Longer the Most Important Tech Demographic

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 8, 2012 @10:32AM from the too-easily-distracted dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has an article discussing how 18- to 35-year-old males are losing their place as the most important demographic for tech adoption. 'Let me break out the categories where women are leading tech adoption: internet usage, mobile phone voice usage, mobile phone location-based services, text messaging, Skype, every social networking site aside from LinkedIn, all Internet-enabled devices, e-readers, health-care devices, and GPS. Also, because women still are the primary caretakers of children in many places, guess who controls which gadgets the young male and female members of the family get to purchase or even use?' The article points out that most of the tech industry hasn't figured this out yet — perhaps in part to a dearth of women running these companies."

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This is hardly news by ProDeveloper · 2012-06-08 10:34 · Score: -1, Troll

This is hardly news, and it seems like geeks are offended by normal people using the internet. In fact, normal people are the ones that obviously use internet more, while the geek keeps eating chips and cola in his parent basement.

Judging by TV series and Slashdot, U.S. doesn't seem to have very good men-to-women ratio on IT work. However, this is completely different in other parts of the world. Especially in Asia where students and women actually really want to work in IT and are good at it.

On top of that, women tend to more productive, even if they play Farmville during work time. Men do the same - they just play some other games, watch porn or talk about sports with their colleagues. On IT field it has been discovered that women's ability to multitask is a significant bonus. Men can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If something else happens, they get distracted. This is why you sometimes see people complaining about instant messages and emails during work - they cannot multitask.

Now that aside, there is a third gender which is basically all the good parts of men combined to good parts of women - transponders, or like they are called over here, ladyboys. They are honest, hard-working, cute and great to chat with. And they look good! I had an one night stand with one ladyboy and forgot around $100 to her home. Next time I saw her she promptly gave it back, even while I didn't have so good memory of it. Honest, hard working people.
1. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:39 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  NEWSFLASH! No one can multi-task. Only switch between single tasks. Don't know of any evidence women do that better. There is evidence the more people do it the worse they become at it (which is a bit unusual, one expects practice to help on a task).
2. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:43 · Score: -1
  
  New account, eh bonch? You've been awfully quiet lately; I was beginning to think you'd finally given up.
  From you only other post in your posting history: "Even Google isn't stupid enough to pull stuff like that."
  Fuck off bonch.
3. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:54 · Score: 0
  
  Whoever you are, I sincerely hope you are dead soon, and that before you die
  you suffer the tortures of the damned.
4. Re:This is hardly news by BlackSnake112 · 2012-06-08 11:00 · Score: 0
  
  So you can't pat you head, rub your stomach, and hold a conservation at the same time?
5. Re:This is hardly news by Mitchell314 · 2012-06-08 11:02 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Well, the newer models of humans come with dual core, so they can truly multitask. The rest of us just have to wait for the proper timeslices. :P
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
6. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 11:13 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  This article and your post are both yet more examples of misandric garbage being passed off as science... the article written by a corporate 'empowered' woman of course, and who knows what your interest is, but I doubt it's as altruistic as you want the reader to believe. How many people here would believe an article written by a male saying that men are the be-all end all?
  It's not about offense.. it's about these ignorant people demanding that us geeks dumb things down to their level even when it's not really possible to do without sacrificing functionality that we need. There's nothing wrong with ignorance btw, because it implies that one could still want to learn. WILLFUL ignorance however, is THE issue of this society's problems today.
  Being part of a dominant consumer group is NOT the same thing as being tech-relevant, or even important in terms of trending new innovations. See, in order to innovate, there needs to be a group of people who are willing to take on early adoption. This is key... most of this is done by men. As to why, I could only guess that, but my limited understanding of psychology tells me that men are the ones who are more willing to take risks to differentiate and gain advantage. Read the list in the article.. all of those things had been used by men long before they were mainstream...ie when they were initially adopted for use. This piece is just an attempt at proving some sort of gynocentric ego.
  
  On top of that, women tend to more productive, even if they play Farmville during work time. Men do the same - they just play some other games, watch porn or talk about sports with their colleagues. On IT field it has been discovered that women's ability to multitask is a significant bonus. Men can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If something else happens, they get distracted. This is why you sometimes see people complaining about instant messages and emails during work - they cannot multitask.
  unbiased citation needed, from a study not run by people with huge political conflicts of interest. This is one of those memes that is a load of rubbish. It needs to die. BOTH genders have trouble 'multitasking'.. just ask anyone who's seen a woman driving an SUV while chatting on the cellphone.
7. Re:This is hardly news by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 11:14 · Score: 1
  
  NEWSFLASH - Man walks and chews gum!
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
8. Re:This is hardly news by perpenso · 2012-06-08 11:22 · Score: 2
  
  So you can't pat you head, rub your stomach, and hold a conservation at the same time?
  That is not multitasking. That is a serialized activity. Setting up a repeating event and then engaging in a conversation. In mid conversation try changing the event. For example go from pat head and rub stomach to rub ... uh ... cranium and pat stomach in the middle of the conversation.
9. Re:This is hardly news by mrex · 2012-06-08 11:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  >Especially in Asia where students and women actually really want to work in IT and are good at it.
  Thank you for acknowledging that much of the problem isn't discrimination, but peoples' choices. It has always troubled me to hear people talk about how important it is to secure womens' rights, then in the next breath talk about all the ways society needs to impose different thinking on women and girls in order to make them do what we think is best for them. The reality is that there are not very many qualified female IT workers in the US because American women generally do not want to work in IT.
  Now someone will bring up social messaging and cultural attitudes towards gender roles, and blame society for the way most American women feel. Because that is totally respectful of women and not patronizing towards them at all.
10. Re:This is hardly news by hawguy · 2012-06-08 11:37 · Score: 1
  
  NEWSFLASH - Man walks and chews gum!
  While that's true for trivial tasks, Man can't read (and understand) a book and write a software program at the same time without timeslicing between them. For tasks that require little thought, more seamless, continuous multitasking is possible.
  Walking and chewing gum are trivial tasks that don't require the full coordination of the cognitive part of your brain, so the ability to walk and chew gum is more akin to an operating system offloading the TCP stack handling to its NIC and using a hardware RAID controller so it just needs to do some minimal filesystem processing, but basically just passes off blocks of data to the RAID controller and lets it take care of parity calculations, decide where to physically place the data, etc.
  So the computer can read a TCP stream and write it to disk with barely using any of the main CPU at all, the CPU just needs to coordinate the data transfer. Just like you can walk and chew gum at the same time with very minimal use of your brain, though your brain is still active keeping an eye out for obstacles, keeping your tongue away from your teeth, savoring the artificial grape flavor, etc.
11. Re:This is hardly news by Gr8Apes · 2012-06-08 11:40 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  There was a study that there are about 4% of the population that are true multi-taskers. The tests were done regarding cell phone talking and driving. I do believe that a small group can do more than one task at a time, such as typing this message and holding a conversation.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
12. Re:This is hardly news by Mike+Buddha · 2012-06-08 11:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  There was a study that there are about 4% of the population that are true multi-taskers. The tests were done regarding cell phone talking and driving. I do believe that a small group can do more than one task at a time, such as typing this message and holding a conversation.
  Good thing you remembered this nameless study, otherwise you'd have lost this argument! Phew!
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
13. Re:This is hardly news by 19thNervousBreakdown · 2012-06-08 12:07 · Score: 1
  
  YHBT
  HTH
  HAND
  
  --
  <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
14. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  That's just unfair. The cell phone obviously has nothing to do with the ability to drive a car. Women just suck at driving, period.
15. Re:This is hardly news by FrootLoops · 2012-06-08 12:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  My score on Multitask 2 disagrees with you. Practice also improves my play significantly. After not having played for months I only stayed alive for 85 seconds and I fell apart with 5 tasks. My record is 105 seconds with 6 things at once. After a while it's hard for me to gather enough visual information to play each game, and they all use keyboard input which overloads that part of my brain. Towards the end I can "think" what needs to be done, but not cause my fingers to do so quickly enough.
  I usually multitask when playing the piano. I...
  * Get fingers positioned right (both hands of course)
  * Decide on little touches like dynamics, stoccato, pedaling, rubato, what emotional content I want to convey, if any; I often make these up anew each time
  * Decide on changes to the piece, like different rhythms, extra grace notes, changed chords, etc.
  * Evaluate my playing--"missed note", "incorrect dynamics", "this emotional arc sucks", "I really like that passage at that speed", etc.
  * Perhaps read music
  * Let my mind wander, thinking about the day or interactions I had with someone or sometimes a math problem (to calibrate difficulty, I was fiddling with pointwise approximations of complex measurable functions by polynomials almost everywhere a while ago, and the non-null-homotopicness of a particular curve yesterday)
  * Listen to people if they're talking around me or listen to TV if it's on; I can tune these out if I wish
  Interestingly I can't respond verbally to someone while playing the piano. I can understand someone perfectly and think of a response (nodding if yes/no, for instance), but the verbal part of my brain seems to be engaged with the music. As a rule I can multitask somewhat on simple similar tasks and I can multitask to a large extent on unrelated tasks. Oh, I often juggle or otherwise occupy my hands while doing other things (eg. reading, thinking about math). I vary the patterns somewhat to keep that part of me from getting bored so it's not just tossing and catching in the same basic pattern forever.
  If none of this is multitasking to you, you'll have to clarify your use of the term.
16. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 13:08 · Score: 0
  
  the article written by a corporate 'empowered' woman of course
  Sorry, what? The author is Alexis Madrigal, who is a man.
17. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-08 13:27 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'd planned a long-winded reply to this, but screw it. I'm just going to say that if you came in and made an Asian joke, another group of people stereotyped as bad drivers, people would look down on you for it. If you ever uttered the n-word, people would look down on you for it. But men will always have the allowances, excuses and bullcrap reasons to make as many jokes bashing women as they want, and it will never change. They'll always laugh when faced with criticism, painting the woman calling them on it as a "humorless bitch" as if it doesn't hurt to see it happen in a forum I enjoy and want to feel a part of, but is always faced with the fact that she doesn't have a bulge between her legs.
  And it does... hurt, meaning. Say you're joking if you want and that I'm just a humorless bitch. I'm just tired of hearing this asinine crap, and decided to say something about it. I almost didn't, because I know the reception this might get, but I don't really care.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
18. Re:This is hardly news by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2012-06-08 13:39 · Score: 1
  
  Now someone will bring up social messaging and cultural attitudes towards gender roles, and blame society for the way most American women feel. Because that is totally respectful of women and not patronizing towards them at all.
  Hyperbole much?
  
  --
  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
19. Re:This is hardly news by Squiddie · 2012-06-08 14:21 · Score: 0
  
  You take things much too seriously, so yes you are what would be called humorless. I wouldn't call you a bitch, but whatevs, no?
20. Re:This is hardly news by Martha+Bridegam · 2012-06-08 14:23 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you, Cazekiel. Except it will change when enough people understand that misogyny is bad business.
21. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 14:28 · Score: 0
  
  the article written by a corporate 'empowered' woman of course,
  of course..... NOT. the author of the article is, in fact, male...
  There's a picture and bio right at the top if you'd have taken the time to, I dunno.. actually click through to the article before making an ass of yourself......
22. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-08 14:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  When I see it everywhere, yes, I start to take it a bit seriously. And I'm actually a very goofy person in day-to-day life. We're talking either get odd looks or make people guffaw goofy. But when you've dealt with sexism, yourself being the target at times in your daily life, you don't really care if someone thinks you're humorless when you point it out.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
23. Re:This is hardly news by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 14:45 · Score: 2
  
  From observation and experimentation with myself - There are two main "cores" in the human mind that operate independently and in parrallel - visual and auditory. There's a Feynman clip (that I can't find) where he talks about using this in a party trick. You need a bit of practice but the idea is you visualise the seconds passing as a digital display or whatever visual works for you, at the same time use your inner voice to read out loud from a book, practice until you can read out loud and time a minute with reasonable accuracy. Depending on which 'core' you naturally use for which task the trick may appear 'simple' to some and 'impossible' to others.
  
  Of course there are other cores for critical system services such as chewing gum, walking, ect, as you say they don't require much (if any) help from the two main consious cores.
  
  Man can't read (and understand) a book and write a software program at the same time without timeslicing between them.
  Yes, both activities normally make heavy use of the inner voice core.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
24. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  You're right, she was his principle source though: "The body of evidence amassed by Intel researcher Genevieve Bell indisputably shows that men's role in technology adoption continues to be overstated."
25. Re:This is hardly news by Ironhandx · 2012-06-08 14:57 · Score: 2
  
  I've lived in many different places, and I have to say, you take this way too hard. Where I'm from, women are nearly-universally much worse drivers than men due to an over-nervousness behind the wheel that causes its own distractions, in particular when it exists but the woman is simply ignoring it.
  While this could be partly cultural, and could be partly genetic, I haven't noticed the same statement holding true in other places.
  I have in my time seen a woman on a cell phone take a left turn through a red light in busy traffic. The worst I can say about a male driver is I've seen one back into a very obvious fence at about 10km/h and that men tend to drive a bit too fast.
  So while you may think it an asinine comment, I actually have seen accident numbers where I live that back up my statements. Now, insurance rates were higher for men because when a man did get into an accident he was far more likely to be speeding and write off one or two cars. The actual accident rates were much higher for women.
  And in other cases, you should actually consider the possibility that you may be an overly-sensitive overly-literal individual. Which someone else may call a "humorless bitch".
  I had someone like that report me at a job site previously for chatting with a buddy of mine and it offended her that I liked her ass. This was a conversation that she overheard, and was not a part of, nor did I even realize she was nearby. Apparently it was something to do with the objectifying of women etc etc and I should appreciate her hard work more than her physical attributes etc etc. All complete bullshit, all totally unnecessary. I've had women comment that I have a nice ass before, the difference is I take the compliment for what it is and don't get my panties in a knot over it. By the by, thats been a saying for a very long time, and for a very good reason.
  I get the feeling you and her might get along quite well.
26. Re:This is hardly news by Ironhandx · 2012-06-08 15:00 · Score: 1
  
  Sigh, that'll teach me not to preview my posts. I missed a sentence in which I stated that while it holds true for my particular "home" it doesn't hold true for all, or even most, areas. However, because it holds true in SOME areas, it continues to be a comment that gets thrown around a fair bit.
27. Re:This is hardly news by strikethree · 2012-06-08 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  Concerning female multi-tasking, I agree; however, I know a woman who blew me away by multi-tasking. I walked in to my mom's room one time and she was chatting on the phone and had a nintendo controller in her hand. She was having an in-depth conversation requiring some thought and was playing Tetris. I forget which level she was on but the blocks were dropping at the fastest speed on the game. I stood there with my jaw on the floor and my mother started talking me too... while not missing a block. Batshit crazy amazing.
  She obviously beat the game.
  
  --
  "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
28. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:20 · Score: 2
  
  Hey, there's nothing wrong with bashing jokes.. In fact, it's a healthy way of getting the truth out there. Women do it to men all the time.. Just watch 5 minutes of TV, commercials or content, or listen to one of the many pop diva tunes made in the last 30 years. There's plenty of man bashing out there. There's also plenty of it in the law and education, which is where it really hurts men. I have a problem that men are being told to hush while women run around saying/doing whatever/whoever they want and then blaming men and holding them responsible for their own choices. If I was to do what feminists want and take their mindset as the mindset of all women, I would have to assume that women just don't understand what empowerment is truly about.. They get the benefit part, but not the responsibility, like children...and yes, part of this includes being able to take what one dishes out when dirty jokes are being handed around.
29. Re:This is hardly news by kermidge · 2012-06-08 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  As far as I can tell from various studies, let alone real life, let alone computer languages, it all boils down to time slicing. Until someone demonstrates true programming examples or demonstratable neural behaviour, there ain't no thing such as multi-tasking in the sense we like to think it means.
30. Re:This is hardly news by strikethree · 2012-06-08 15:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It has always troubled me to hear people talk about how important it is to secure womens' rights
  I will repeat this again: There is no such thing as womens' rights.
  Let that sink in for a minute...
  How did you react? Think about that.
  Now, think about this: There are rights that all Americans have. There are no special right for women, blacks, or any other group. If women are not being treated like people, then that needs to be addressed but it does NOT give them any special rights.
  Let me make that clear: All Americans have the same rights. If any Americans are having these rights being denied, then that needs to be addressed. Giving and "special" rights to any one sub-group takes away from the rights of everyone else.
  Clear?
  
  --
  "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
31. Re:This is hardly news by sdoca · 2012-06-08 15:29 · Score: 1
  
  See, in order to innovate, there needs to be a group of people who are willing to take on early adoption. This is key... most of this is done by men.
  
  unbiased citation needed, from a study not run by people with huge political conflicts of interest. This is one of those memes that is a load of rubbish. It needs to die. BOTH genders have trouble 'multitasking'.. just ask anyone who's seen a woman driving an SUV while chatting on the cellphone.
  ... and where is your ubiased citation for the first part of your post that I've quoted???
32. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-08 15:32 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  No, actually, I wouldn't. In my workplace, we all routinely sexually-harass each other. If I WAS the type of person you're talking about, my boss would be enjoying two hots and a cot for a long, long time by now. I can very easily distinguish relatively innocent humor from actual misogyny. You can't judge everything I do or interpret in life from a comment I made. You're taking an extreme and placing it on me, someone who's just tired of flippant sexism.
  And as you say in your next comment, added to this, that's in your area. There was a case on Judge Judy years and years ago, involving a woman who tried getting out of a ticket; one of the factors she cited was that she'd seen him pull over "just women" and he was discriminating against her and women in general. As it turned out, they reviewed his pull-over record an found the opposite. Not by a wide margin, but it definitely made her look like an idiot. That applies to your argument; you see a woman on a phone make a driving-blunder, and another guy being responsible, and that means the stereotype is true? A tiny sample, not subject to test conditions is suddenly fact? I've seen the exact reverse--men plowing through a red, women being responsible. Many, many times. Each time I see this behavior, whether it's a man or woman, I say "idiot fuckin' drivers!" not "MEN!"
  My problem is the proliferation of sexist commentary, everywhere you look. It's growing exponentially. To me, the flippant nature of it is almost more dangerous, as it simply becomes customary and acceptable. I've got a tough enough skin to roll my eyes in most cases and just let it go, especially on the internet, but it's still annoying. In the end, does it need to be said? Why is it "You're too sensitive, get off the internet!"/"Grow some balls!" instead of "Why do people have to act like douches and insult other people?" I hear this argument so many, TOO many times. I suppose it's more acceptable to be snide, snarky and generally mean than trying to be a good person, even if it means you're a little sensitive and taking things seriously sometimes.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
33. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-08 15:33 · Score: 1
  
  OT, I always forgot TO submit, altogether. I'll go looking for a comment I made and say "Wuuuuh, where'd it go?" then realize... "Aw dang, never ACTUALLY hit 'submit'..."
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
34. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  men and women do that a lot. It's not difficult because they exercise different parts of the brain, where one task is theoretical and abstract while the other is immediate and tactically predictable. tetris doesn't require much theoretical or abstract thought, while yacking about relationships is not. It's like listening to music while driving vs having a conversation while driving..
35. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:35 · Score: 1
  
  'is not' should be 'does'
36. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-08 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  I don't agree with man-bashing, either. General joking's not going to kill anyone, I DO bitch about guys at times (that's so totally natural, on both sides), but when it comes to actual harm or cruelty? Nay. Just so you know. I hate hearing about good dads getting screwed in court when they should have custody over the idiot mothers, I hate women who'll smack a guy around and if he shoves her away starts screaming, "DON'T HIT A GIRL!"... all of that. I had a friend who confessed to hitting her husband and thought it was okay; I told her it wasn't, flat-out.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
37. Re:This is hardly news by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:43 · Score: 2
  
  yes, but it merited a serious reply..
38. Re:This is hardly news by Lost+Race · 2012-06-08 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  We're all dual-core.
39. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 17:11 · Score: 0
  
  I'm just going to say that if you came in and made an Asian joke, another group of people stereotyped as bad drivers, people would look down on you for it. If you ever uttered the n-word, people would look down on you for it.
  He's actually right, women do suck at driving.
  You know why women are such bad drivers?
  Because they're human.
  Same formula works if you replace "women" with any other category of people and "driving" with any other activity.
  E.g. Why do gays have such bad taste in music?
40. Re:This is hardly news by dimko · 2012-06-08 19:18 · Score: 0
  
  Man can concentrate better on one thing.when woman does 4 things, man does 1 and does it 4x times better. I worked in many different companies over the Europe. Very a few girls could compete with guys. Even in places where girls were supposed to dominate.(tech support)
41. Re:This is hardly news by jmerlin · 2012-06-08 21:32 · Score: 1
  
  Reading while pooping. A much more concise example, in my opinion.
42. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 22:13 · Score: 0
  
  Women can perform N+1 tasks simultaneously, as long as at least N involve talking
43. Re:This is hardly news by FrootLoops · 2012-06-08 22:54 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  E.g. Why do gays have such bad taste in music?
  Because they play only Madonna at the meetings. It's indoctrination. I'm an ex-gay; I would know.
  You see, two weeks after a young gay guy comes out, he gets a welcome package in the mail. It includes some educational material*, "necessaries"**, a copy of the gay agenda, and an invitation to the next monthly meeting. If he doesn't go, his gay license is taken away (so nobody will have sex with him; well, girls might, but who cares?). They all end up at the meetings eventually. It's like a Nazi dance party--glitter and leather everywhere. Anyway, at those parties all they play is Madonna. The leaders say it "encourages unity". The truth is, Madonna bought the gay industry years ago for cheap, before she became 90% plastic. She supports her career now almost exclusively with young gay guys who don't know any better. It's tragic really; I mean why would gay guys pick a female artist when there's so many hot guys to choose from nowadays with their YouTube videos and amazing pecs and delicious arms and... I mean, there are better artists than Madonna.
  Anyway, I got out of that senseless life and am living clean. No gay for me, thanks; I like girls now. I tore up my license last week. My roommate tried to stop me, but in his tears all I saw was the glittery taint of corporate greed. I let him kiss me one last time, just a little--we can't all be perfect!--but I'm done. I like girls now. Oh, I said that already.
  But yeah, that's why gays have such bad taste in music. So now you know.
  * Includes: several pamphlets on jargon, at basic (top, bottom), intermediate (39, chibi), and advanced (chicken-of-the-sea, curry queen) levels; HIV/AIDS and other STD prevention information; a list of common hookup methods (Grindr, Manhunt, Craig's List local m4m section); a book on developing a lisp; several quick-start fashion and decorating guides; and of course Dr. Niederwieser's magnum opus, Bend Over!: The Complete Guide to Anal Sex for Men! .
  ** Includes: condoms, lube, poppers, a dildo, your gay license, tickets to a Lady Gaga concert near you, a gym membership, and new jeans that make your ass look great.
44. Re:This is hardly news by TeknoHog · 2012-06-08 23:14 · Score: 1
  
  Interestingly I can't respond verbally to someone while playing the piano. I can understand someone perfectly and think of a response (nodding if yes/no, for instance), but the verbal part of my brain seems to be engaged with the music.
  I have also noticed this, and it has been frustrating since I would like to be able to accompany my own singing. In the past, I could only sing while playing if I only used the left hand (which is often enough, being bass and chords, but it looks a little dumb on stage). I also recall experiencing tension in my throat while learning difficult passages (not singing at the time). However, after some practice I can sing while playing fairly well, and as a bonus, the tension in my throat is mostly gone. Nevertheless, for best results I still prefer doing one thing at a time.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
45. Re:This is hardly news by TeknoHog · 2012-06-08 23:19 · Score: 1
  
  Also, the left hand issue makes a lot of sense if I think about playing the guitar, which for me has little effect on singing, and the hard parts are again done with the left hand. This also reminds me of left-handed people who developed a stammer as a result of being forced to be right-handed.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
46. Re:This is hardly news by Ironhandx · 2012-06-08 23:44 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  See, women in general from my experience seem to think that "being a good person" means being overly sensitive etc. as a sort of "well, I don't mind, but someone else might!". There are men like this too of course but most of them are gay men and the remainder are relatively speaking rare. Except in certain professions, such as psychologists, councilors, and politicians looking for votes et al.
  It really doesn't mean that however. Being a good person means being there to help someone through a rough time, or to help someone that IS overly sensitive to understand a situation that may have occurred and help them through it. Going through life with such a thin skin as to be offended by this sort of stuff is not a good thing. I understand if it gets to physical harassment or someone gets singled out etc, but the rest of it is just sort of, you know, guys complaining about their wives/women in general etc. Guys don't have the same sort of crazy databasing of "everything he's done wrong" that most women seem to have, so we tend to generalize more. We complain about women, and women complain about men, they're just more specific about it.
  Besides that, a LOT of men, best friends for years even, tend to insult and generally carry on with each other on a very regular basis. A lot of over-sensitive people can't even tell the difference, and I've had the comment said by many many women about some of my relationships as well as relationships they see around them, generally between men, of "You'd think they were mortal enemies".
  A lot of this comes from men and women internalizing things differently etc... however most of the actual harmful behavior towards women ended upwards of 20 years ago. Right now a LOT of men are pushing back against conforming to some of this bullshit. Whereas the minority, the real idiots and misogynists were the ones doing it before.
  Unfortunately this form of pushback causes some guys to just pick up some of the older, harmful ways of sexism, even though they don't really believe half of what they're saying.
  We as men, in general, and not as an absolute rule, internalized things a LOT differently. I had the unfortunate situation of growing up in a family where the women are all understanding and have a great sense of humor, and all thought it was great that I generally tend to say the first thing that comes to my mind. We're also a family that appreciates honesty, even to the point of brutality, which also doesn't help.
  This caused a lot of awkward situations as you might imagine. I sent several girls whose mothers I guess actually WERE like the woman I mentioned before off crying, without even knowing what the fuck I had done.
  Basically what I'm saying here is that there has to be some give and take. We as men should learn to control our mouths around you women a bit as we grow up, but you as women need to grow thicker skins as you grow up. It will never work as long as one group or the other demands absolute adaptation from the other. Previously we had the women being the ones forced to adapt and now we're getting to where more and more onus is being put on the men to adapt, when we're already doing what we can for the most part.
  I should also mention that men throw off the adaptation around other men, and for a long time the internet was 95%+ men in most of its dark corners. Some guys will push back because they're losing one of their few remaining bastions of sanity where they can say what they like.
  Whether women like to be treated as possessions or objects or not, men are genetically geared to be hunters and warriors. Hunters and warriors that got us to the very top of the food chain. That sort of gearing is closer to grizzly bear than bunny rabbit, and grizzlies view everything in the world around them as objects to be possessed. At least 99% of us understand that women are not, but you've got to cut us some slack for discussing them as such, especially in an environment where we may not think any women are around to hear. Women for the most part ARE completely foreign, but beautiful, to many of us. Thats not a dig at the slashdot community etc, I'm married and women are STILL completely foreign to me.
47. Re:This is hardly news by FrootLoops · 2012-06-08 23:51 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not a singer, though I can actually sing while playing without difficulty, at least so long as my right hand's melody is the same (or nearly the same) as the vocal part. As I play I have a copy of the song running in my head with the melody, usually the right hand part, running through my normal speech bits (just as if I were humming it). I think my problem with talking while playing is that two different tasks are trying to go through my vocal center at once--the "humming" and regular speech. Changing the "humming" to words and actually vocalizing externally instead of internally is apparently not an issue for me.
  I might have difficulty singing harmony while playing, but I'm not certain; I just sang while playing for the first time in months a few minutes ago, to test things out.
  I hadn't heard of people developing a stammer with forced handedness--that's really interesting, consistent with my mental model of multitasking, and sad.
48. Re:This is hardly news by misexistentialist · 2012-06-09 00:11 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I had a friend who confessed to hitting her husband and thought it was okay; I told her it wasn't, flat-out.
  You talk the talk, but do you really transcend gender (to infinity and beyond!)? If your friend's husband hit her you would get her to call the police, help her apply for a retraining order, let her stay at your place or find her a shelter, find her a divorce lawyer, work with her to destroy him legally, etc. You would accept nothing less. When she hits her husband you say "that's no OK" and order her another margarita.
49. Re:This is hardly news by bzipitidoo · 2012-06-09 02:35 · Score: 1
  
  There are plugins for this problem. Check out Lazarus for Firefox.
  Don't be too quick to dismiss notions of mental differences as sexism. From what I've read, both sexes are about equally good drivers. Insurers certainly considered young males more accident prone than young females. The blame was placed on young men being more aggressive, hotheaded, and reckless. Turned out the women had fewer accidents because they didn't drive as much. Then young women started driving about as much, and the accident rate equalized. But the ways women go wrong with driving do seem a little different than men. Of course, it is sexist to notice only those differences that put men in a better light, and conclude that women are worse drivers.
  But back to the topic. Figures that if the leading demographic wasn't young men, it had to be young women. Why'd they bother with the "young" part? Older people couldn't be it. And what about race? Wealth? Education? Women also now lead in college degrees, maybe that correlates with adoption of tech? The list of tech areas where women lead fit the stereotypes all too well: communications and health. And GPS. Men never get lost!
  
  --
  Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
50. Re:This is hardly news by Bengie · 2012-06-09 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  In other news human can offload basic muscle movement to the Cerebellum. The real question is if you can hold two intellectual conversations at the same time, both in subjects you are not well versed.
51. Re:This is hardly news by schroedingers_hat · 2012-06-09 03:13 · Score: 1
  
  Or rather we have an extremely large number of highly specialised cores.
  You can often manage to do two or more things at once if you're not using the same hardware for both tasks. One example from my recent life would be walking, folding some origami (a crane which is a pattern I've done enough that I don't have to think about it at all), holding a conversation, and looking something interesting.
  Those last two can hinder each other a bit (both use the focus on something consciously bit), but the others are orthogonal as far as I can tell.
  I would imagine that someone who texts for 8 hours a day whilst spending a large portion of their time not looking at their phone and drives for the other 8 (for a period of a few years on the same model phone/car) could safely combine the two activities -- at least providing that the conversation was dull and didn't cause them to have to think about something too hard. I'm certainly not going to try it (I won't even use hands free, I pull over), and I doubt that the vast majority of people could, either (and could judge when to suspend the conversation if it took too much attention).
52. Re:This is hardly news by Taevin · 2012-06-09 03:37 · Score: 2, Interesting
  Let's just start with a short list of how you portray women in your post there:
  
  Women are overly sensitive. The only men that are overly sensitive are gay (or if it's their profession to care/pretend to care).
  
  Women are thin skinned.
  
  The way women process interpersonal relationships is "crazy."
  
  Women are too specific about their grievances.
  
  Women internalize things incorrectly.
  
  Women make the world insane, and sanity can only be achieved by hiding from them.
  
  It's acceptable for men to treat women as possessions, or at least discuss them as such.
  
  Women are completely foreign.
  
  Really, each one of these deserves at least a good paragraph of exposition but that's more than anyone will read or comprehend. I'm inclined to believe that your post is in earnest and that you didn't even notice writing these things and still may not even see what's wrong with them. That's the true nature of sexism: it's incredibly insidious and it pervades every single aspect of our society. As men, we have been taught since we were little boys about how men and women are different and the myriad ways women are inferior. Not directly, mind you. At least in my own experience, no guardian or role model has come out and said things like "women talk too much" or "they're terrible drivers." No one needed to however, because if you tell a lie enough it becomes the perceived truth and these little lies fly freely and masquerade as "jokes."
  
  So you're right, in a sense, about internalization: what men and women have internalized is quite different. See common "sense" like men are strong, hunters/warriors, dominant and natural leaders. Common "sense" about women is that they're weak/uncoordinated ("you throw like a girl!"), (overly) sensitive, and better at domestic activities. If you stray from these boundaries you are mercilessly attacked by your peers. Men who are sensitive are either gay or not real men. Women who are active or dominant are tomboys, dykes, or just plain bitches. So let me ask you: do you think any of this crap about women is actually true or just "the way it has always been so it must be true?"
  
  Regardless, if you continue to treat and expect women to be completely foreign to you, they will remain so.
53. Re:This is hardly news by TuringTest · 2012-06-09 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  You must be old school, Madonna is in decline - it's all Lady Gaga now.
  
  --
  Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
54. Re:This is hardly news by FrootLoops · 2012-06-09 04:21 · Score: 1
  
  Madonna is in decline
  That's because of our "Homo NoMo" telethon. Every day I'm surrounded by dedicated young men working their phones, sweating for hours on end under hot stage lights--they're so good with their jobs, so giving. Lady Gaga's concerts are mostly supported by the ticket in the gay welcome basket I mentioned before (the "fruit basket", if you will). I'm sure her popularity will be plummeting any day now too.
55. Re:This is hardly news by ShieldW0lf · 2012-06-09 04:24 · Score: 2
  
  Ever try to develop ambidexterity?
  It's been my experience that my right hand responds well to rational thought, but my left hand is useless when I attempt to control it with rational thought. My left hand responds well to "feel"... the approach that is effective is to concieve the outcome and allow the hand to do what feels right.
  Developing the ability to stickfight with both hands simultaneously required being able to think about what one hand was doing while explicitly not thinking about what the other one was doing.
  No "inner voice" involved. Now, the left hand reacts to need in the heat of the moment, the right hand implements my tactics, and I can still focus yet another part of my mind on analyzing patterns in the external world and devising strategy on the fly.
  I could probably do all this and sing a song at the same time, but I'd look awfully silly, so I've never tried.
  
  --
  -1 Uncomfortable Truth
56. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-09 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  I suppose you're right, seeing as you know me so well. Oh, wait.
  She DID divorce him, and didn't take him for everything he had. She DID realize it was wrong and jumped ship before it got worse.
  I HAVE had a friend who's boyfriend was abusive. I DIDN'T plot and scheme to destroy him. I supported her and was glad when she left him.
  Why I feel the need to explain myself, who knows. Maybe it's because I get annoyed and defensive when someone who doesn't even know what colors my eyes are starts claiming that I'd do this or that, or that I'm a hypocrite based on absolutely no evidence.
  To add, she told me at work. We don't drink margaritas at work, and I rarely, if ever, go to bars with "the girls" to talk about how all men suck and our periods like you think I (and women in general) do. If you want to classify me, stereotype me, I can't stop you, and it's actually not my problem. It's yours. How this got 'insightful' when insightful implies that you're well-learned in the subject you speak of (in this case, me) and have constructed an analysis of something observable, I mean... wow.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
57. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-09 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  Well said. I don't think that it's sexist to point out differences, because there are loads. But like you said, to simply determine that someone's better than another because you'd LIKE it that way, or once saw an accident in East Cupcake, Iowa that involved a woman who ran a stop sign and base every single opinion on that... well, anyway. Kinda sick of talking about it, but your response is refreshing. :)
  There are a lot of factors, one of which imho, has to do with women getting more encouragement to "go for it" from teachers, parents, etc. in their early years. I know a lot of college aged girls, and so many of them are taking on great degrees in science and math, while dabbling into things like astronomy as electives. Things have changed since I was a little girl, someone not encouraged to sign up for challenging courses while the boys plowed ahead top-speed. As some have said here, it's about choice; both men and women should go for it, not being held back for superfluous, asinine reasons.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
58. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-09 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Hah, you're welcome. Sometimes I worry that I'm a blabbermouth... and I AM sometimes, but hey, it's a forum. A forum's meant for discussion, so... :)
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
59. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 06:42 · Score: 0
  
  For some reason, I swear I have a better peripheral vision than most, or else this timeslicing is ninjalike in me to the point I am not even focused on it. It's embarrassing to admit this, but I can go for minutes to hours driving (freeway or city) while busy on my phone. I drive a lot for work, up to 5 hours a day, for 6 years. I have never been close to an accident and I'm over 30. But there are times when I've looked up and realized I haven't been focusing on the road for 15-20 minutes but somehow I can stay in my lane and always notice if traffic is slowing or merging. Maybe it has to do with where I hold the phone/tablet so I can see everything else going on. I am sure people driving by in trucks and whatnot are probably cursing at me and shaking their heads most of the time.
60. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 07:29 · Score: 0
  
  I know a woman who blew me
  Come on, you're on slashdot! There's no way I'm believing that!
  captcha: "vomiting", lol.
61. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 07:46 · Score: 0
  
  To take a cue from you, where did the parent say that they thought you sat around to talk about how all men suck and your periods? Its pretty hypocritical of you to assume that just because the parent made what you took (way too literally) to be a sexist and uninformed comment, that the parent thought you and "the girls" sit around and talk about such rubbish simply because they mentioned drinking margaritas.
  
  Seriously, you are way too wound up, trying to make mountains out of the tiniest of molehills. Why don't you go do something fun, by yourself. Get away from people for a while. Maybe when you come back your skin will be a little thicker...
62. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 07:46 · Score: 0
  
  You'll find women making jokes of men, and men doing the same. The only difference men don't care but women will want to enter men locker rooms if they could.
63. Re:This is hardly news by Gr8Apes · 2012-06-09 07:48 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There was a study that there are about 4% of the population that are true multi-taskers. The tests were done regarding cell phone talking and driving. I do believe that a small group can do more than one task at a time, such as typing this message and holding a conversation.
  Good thing you remembered this nameless study, otherwise you'd have lost this argument! Phew!
  Good thing I can apparently google cell phone driving multitasking in less than 5s and note the 3rd entry
  I may have been lazy or in a hurry with the last post. You, however, should please turn in your geek card to the next real geek you meet.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
64. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 07:54 · Score: 0
  
  Harm and cruelty? Go on make jokes as you want, most guys won't give a toss what women say among themselves.
65. Re:This is hardly news by dewrox · 2012-06-09 08:56 · Score: 1
  
  The fact remains that society on a whole does not accept the fact that women abusing men happens and so when it does we do tend to look the other way but still make a monster out of the guy that does it. The reality is that regardless of your gender if you abuse your counterpart you are the monster and should change. Simply leaving the situation does not cure or change you. Your friend is no angel because she left. She is still as messed up as she was before she left. To think otherwise is not only rediculous but nieve. Instead of getting defensive about the differences between the sexes or picking on each other, if more people just accepted the fact that yes there is a difference in what each gender is good at and celebrate those differences instead of thinking that the differences are weaknesses people would get along so much better. I have never understood why a woman would want to be treated like a man, when men are truthful they will tell you they adore and look up to the women in their lives. Why would you want to change that? Guys do not adore other guys ( in general ). Personally I recognize the differences that exist between myself and my wife. We each are better at some things than the other but together we are pretty awesome at most everything. Does it mean we don't dissagree? No but you find compromises. Society on a whole ignores this.
66. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-09 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  This whole comment sounds like Tommy Wiseau wrote it.
  It's funny that with every comment made about women being abused, it becomes a tit-for-tat session, wherein men jump up and yell, "MEN are abused TOO!" Yes, they are. There are plenty of abusive women out there. There, does that validate anything? And have I denied anything, saying that men AREN'T abused anywhere in this thread? No, I haven't. I'm sick and tired of having to validate this crap, and the fact that men are starting this movement as if they're suddenly second-class citizens is so absurd to me.
  Whether or not men get treated badly for being men in general, it is most definitely not a given, and most certainly not at the degree that women are subjected to in being women. You don't have to carry mace or other weaponry when going down a dark street because women pose a threat to you, generally-speaking. You get paid more than the woman next to you doing the same work in many cases. You all but get a parade if you stick around to be a father, as if that shouldn't be a given, while a professional woman working outside the home has to deal with people saying, "But don't you want to be home with your kids?" to her at a constant, painting her as a bad mother for not wanting to leave a high-paying career and become a housewife.
  The fact that you perceive a woman wanting change and respect, whether in a professional field, not reproducing and being their own person as "being treated like a man" says a lot. Your comment, I have never understood why a woman would want to be treated like a man, when men are truthful they will tell you they adore and look up to the women in their lives. = Giving up admiration if they don't want kids, want to work a professional job, etc., the things women SHOULD be doing, amirite?
  We don't want to be men. We just want the men who say "what's she doing outta the kitchen?? HAR HAR!" to stfu. We want the general, flippant disrespect to stop. That's not women's rights, it's common decency between evolved humans.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
67. Re:This is hardly news by Ironhandx · 2012-06-09 09:50 · Score: 1
  
  Women are overly sensitive, from the perspective of a man. From the perspective of another woman, most women are perfectly fine.
  Most of the rest of that list is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to pull out of my post, however the biggest point I'm trying to make is that the sexes are DIFFERENT. Rather than being combative about it, I think for the most part we've gotten rid of the harmful bits and the rest people should just learn to deal with, on both sides.
68. Re:This is hardly news by dewrox · 2012-06-09 10:04 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps you should take your own advise and not think that you know someone and how they are when you post and people would not do it to you. My wife is a professional. She does get paid what her male counterparts get paid. Not every man is as you think. By you continuing to yap on and on without listening to yourself makes you come off exactly as you desire not to. Just take a pause. That is all I am saying.
69. Re:This is hardly news by Cazekiel · 2012-06-09 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  Never said she wasn't, did I? And I also never said every man is against women, did I? Gave as generic statements as I could, never once claiming to "know you".
  Dropping it, cos' I am sick of it.
  
  --
  You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
70. Re:This is hardly news by mrex · 2012-06-09 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  It isn't hyperbole! It's the default explanation supplied in virtually every news story about why most girls don't become interested in math and science at a young age, or why young women don't seek college degrees or careers in science, engineering, and technology.
71. Re:This is hardly news by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2012-06-09 19:33 · Score: 1
  
  You turned it into hyperbole by simplifying it into black and white, throwing out all nuance and complexity. You only undermine your own position by characterizing those who disagree as having a grade-school attitude. Anyone with a reasonable level of critical thinking ability will read what you wrote and think to themselves, "If that's the level of his understanding of the opposition, then it's probably the level of his understanding of the entire debate."
  
  --
  When information is power, privacy is freedom.
72. Re:This is hardly news by Ironhandx · 2012-06-09 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  Thats hilarious. I just did the same damn thing in response to someone else in this thread. I had a relatively long post, but not as long as the other two, written out in response to that ridiculous list someone else posted.
  *poof* Gone.
  So he/she got the short answer instead.
73. Re:This is hardly news by mrex · 2012-06-10 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  >You turned it into hyperbole by simplifying it into black and white, throwing out all nuance and complexity.
  Now that would be a good example of "hyperbole". I predicted that someone else would throw out all nuance and complexity, because that happens quite frequently in the mainstream dialog on this issue as exampled by the press. If you'd like an explicit acknowledgement from me that personal preferences can be influenced by social messaging, then you have it.
74. Re:This is hardly news by TapeCutter · 2012-06-10 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  Ever try to develop ambidexterity?
  Yeah, but my stick is called a "pool cue", I try and avoid fighting with them. :)
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
75. Re:This is hardly news by ShieldW0lf · 2012-06-10 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  I studied celtic stickfighting for a bit, I still try to keep my hand in it from time to time.
  
  --
  -1 Uncomfortable Truth
76. Re:This is hardly news by AthanasiusKircher · 2012-06-10 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  If none of this is multitasking to you, you'll have to clarify your use of the term.
  I'm not sure you understand the difference between "multitasking" and just doing a more complicated task. Running in place while clapping your hands is not multitasking. It may take some practice to coordinate various parts of your body (like the "walking and chewing gum" thing that some people seem to worry about), but pattern-based activities can be learned and "replayed" (generally with significant variation).
  
  I usually multitask when playing the piano. I...
  * Get fingers positioned right (both hands of course)
  * Decide on little touches like dynamics, stoccato, pedaling, rubato, what emotional content I want to convey, if any; I often make these up anew each time
  * Decide on changes to the piece, like different rhythms, extra grace notes, changed chords, etc.
  * Evaluate my playing--"missed note", "incorrect dynamics", "this emotional arc sucks", "I really like that passage at that speed", etc.
  As someone who has been a professional freelance keyboardist and, more importantly, a professional accompanist, I call all of these tasks simply "playing the piano." This is not multitasking. They are all constituent tasks which require coordination, but they do not split your attention -- if they do, you can't really play the piano.
  
  * Perhaps read music
  Yeah, as someone who used to sight-read as an accompanist for vocalist auditions and such, again, this is an essential task of being a good pianist.
  According to your criteria, anyone who could read a newspaper aloud would be a tremendous "multitasker" -- after all, he is not only moving his eyes along the page, parsing words, punctuation, grammar, etc., silently, but he is also causing his mouth to articulate complex patterns of open and closed sounds, varying speed, inflection, articulation, dynamics, etc. to make the meaning of the text and its emotional content clear to a listener... etc, etc.
  I'm not saying it's easy for everyone to read aloud in a fluent and effective manner. It takes practice. But I'd hardly call that "multitasking." Would you? If not, why is playing an instrument any different?
  
  * Let my mind wander, thinking about the day or interactions I had with someone or sometimes a math problem (to calibrate difficulty, I was fiddling with pointwise approximations of complex measurable functions by polynomials almost everywhere a while ago, and the non-null-homotopicness of a particular curve yesterday)
  Doing a repetitive physical skill along with more active "thinking" is again not multitasking. People run on the treadmill while watching TV. Are they multitasking? Playing piano is slightly more complicated, but I would bet lots of money that your ability to actively engage with your musical interpretation goes way down when you are deeply involved in some unrelated thoughts. You essentially let your hands go on "autopilot" while you think about something else, just like the runner watching TV. Yes, you might still vary your musical performance somewhat, just as you might slow down or speed up your running, but anything more generally requires "taking turns" with your attention.
  
  * Listen to people if they're talking around me or listen to TV if it's on; I can tune these out if I wish
  Yep, just like running on the treadmill while doing these things. I dare you to come up with an innovative performance including complex changes to all the musical aspects you discussed while actively paying attention to these other things.
  
  Interestingly I can't respond verbally to someone while playing the piano. I can understand someone perfectly and think of a response (nodding if yes/no, for instance), but the verbal part of my brain seems to be engaged with the music.
  This takes practice. As someo
77. Re:This is hardly news by FrootLoops · 2012-06-10 11:51 · Score: 1
  
  Your threshold for what constitutes multitasking seems unnecessarily high. Decreased skill at individual tasks is irrelevant to what qualifies as multitasking for me, so long as it doesn't decrease to zero. I am indeed worse in some ways at thinking about complex math problems while playing the piano, but so what? It often helps me see an approach I was missing because I was focusing too much on the line of reasoning I had been pursuing. Many times I've been playing, gotten new insight into a problem, and then stopped playing to pursue the math completely. In any case, I never said multitasking was efficient or inefficient, just that it exists (the context of my post was someone saying, "No one can multi-task. Only switch between single tasks.").
  You seem to arbitrarily group related tasks into meta-tasks and I'm not sure why. I define tasks as things that can be done independently and use different parts of my brain (the second half is unfortunately hard to make explicit). A person can play the piano without evaluating their performance (for instance, by wearing ear plugs) or the reverse (eg. by listening to a recording of themselves). A person playing while evaluating is doing more things at once. The tasks are related, but I don't care. The two actions use different parts of my brain and can be done independently of each other so they're different tasks to me.
  You seem to want multitasking to be difficult. Walking and talking at the same time without running into things is indeed multitasking by any definition I can think of that doesn't have arbitrary difficulty or complexity requirements. Your version may more accurately be termed something like "efficient, complex multitasking".
  Finally, please don't project yourself on me so much. Our experiences are somewhat different, and I suspect I'm significantly better at "efficient, complex multitasking" (which I'll leave implicitly defined). As I mentioned with juggling while doing other activities, I vary the pattern. That's not "autopilot"; there's a small amount of independent thought required--the muscle movements themselves probably do qualify as being on "autopilot", for what that's worth. As an example, while revising this post, I just found myself doing an odd low amplitude, high speed pattern, which was momentarily surprising since I found out about it from the particularly loud sound the balls made while slapping against my hands. The revising part and the juggling part of my conscious mind had briefly diverged, though both were doing independent, creative things, not just regurgitating past actions by rote.
78. Re:This is hardly news by Taevin · 2012-06-11 09:25 · Score: 1
  Most of the rest of that list is a bit of a stretch of the imagination to pull out of my post
  It's really not though. I pulled all those just by skimming down your comment.
  
  Women are overly sensitive. The only men that are overly sensitive are gay (or if it's their profession to care/pretend to care). You've already agreed to this one.
  Women are thin skinned. In the context of women being overly sensitive: "Going through life with such a thin skin as to be offended by this sort of stuff is not a good thing" and "... but you as women need to grow thicker skins as you grow up."
  The way women process interpersonal relationships is "crazy." You said: "Guys don't have the same sort of crazy databasing of "everything he's done wrong" that most women seem to have, so we tend to generalize more. " Subtext: The stereotypical male handling of interpersonal relationships is not crazy and therefore, superior.
  Women are too specific about their grievances. You said: "We complain about women, and women complain about men, they're just more specific about it." Each sex complains about the other, however (subtext) the stereotypical woman is more specific about it (i.e. more negative, whereas the stereotypical man brushes these things off).
  Women internalize things incorrectly. You said (paraphrasing due to length): Men often bond and show respect and affection for one another through teasing and insults. The stereotypical woman does not understand this, due to men and women internalizing behaviors differently. Subtext: I'm a man and this behavior seems completely normal to me, thus anyone who doesn't understand must be incorrect.
  Women make the world insane, and sanity can only be achieved by hiding from them. You said: "I should also mention that men throw off the adaptation around other men, and for a long time the internet was 95%+ men in most of its dark corners. Some guys will push back because they're losing one of their few remaining bastions of sanity where they can say what they like." No need for subtext here "few remaining bastions of sanity". There's also an "old boys club" thing here of woman encroaching on a man's domain and keeping them from being "men" that I missed the first time.
  It's acceptable for men to treat women as possessions, or at least discuss them as such. You said: a borderline silly analogy of men to grizzly bears and how grizzly bears "view everything in the world around them as objects to be possessed." You further said that while nearly all men understand that woman are not possessions, it's still OK to pretend like they are as long as no woman are around to hear.
  Look my intention here is not be combative or to try to make you look like a misogynist or something. As I said, I believe you made your post with the best of intentions which (unfortunately, for you) made it the perfect target of what I'm trying to say. The point I'm trying to make is that all of this is so completely baked into our culture that it's difficult for men (and many women, even!) to see the problems. The goal is to get you--get anyone!--to look at this and say "hmm, what if he's right?"
  
  I know first hand how hard it is to accept this stuff. It feels like you have to give up fun and harmless jokes and lose out of the feeling of camaraderie with other men joking about taking an us-vs-them approach to women. The first knock on the door of understanding for me was a Sociology 101 course I took in college to (easily, I thought) fill a humanities req. One day the professor said something to the effect of "gender is not intrinsically linked to sex." As you might imagine, I was horrified and nearly left because I thought this must be some sort of psychotic feminist propaganda.
  
  It seeded that "what if" though. What if we realized that little girls tease and play in the dirt, just like boys, at least until we beat it out of them by telling
79. Re:This is hardly news by Mike+Buddha · 2012-06-11 17:24 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, I was busy frantically trying to verify all the other wholly unsubstantiated claims on the Internet to get to yours. My bad, dog.
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
80. Re:This is hardly news by Gr8Apes · 2012-06-13 04:36 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, I was busy frantically trying to verify all the other wholly unsubstantiated claims on the Internet to get to yours. My bad, dog.
  And yet you found the 10s to post an insulting reply.
  
  --
  The cesspool just got a check and balance.
81. Re:This is hardly news by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-14 03:36 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, just one of the cores is a DSP and the other one a traditional CPU.
82. Re:This is hardly news by Mike+Buddha · 2012-06-14 13:53 · Score: 1
  
  Yep, dummy.
  
  --
  by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
New tagline by SuperKendall · 2012-06-08 10:37 · Score: 2

"Transponders - more than meets the eye".

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
behind every powerful man... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:38 · Score: 1

The old adage remains. It's all about eating and mating, and that means pleasing the women, directly or indirectly.
Enjoy your evolution.
1. Re:behind every powerful man... by Mitchell314 · 2012-06-08 11:03 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  This is geeks we're talking about. Mating is out of the question.
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
2. Re:behind every powerful man... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:42 · Score: 0
  
  "Behind every powerful man there is a great woman, and behind her; his wife."
3. Re:behind every powerful man... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:51 · Score: 0
  
  It was, back when men cared about propagating the race. But women want to do that on their own now, so us men are free of all that nonsense, and can just enjoy watching the women clamor that they're "empowered', "superior", and all that ancient twaddle. If women were truly serious about all of this, they would take the high ground. Instead they're just proving they're the same human beings they apparently don't want to be. It's a game of double-standards, where the only winning move is not to play.
4. Re:behind every powerful man... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 14:54 · Score: 0
  
  Aha . . . bitter about being rejected over and over, huh?
5. Re:behind every powerful man... by cayenne8 · 2012-06-08 15:37 · Score: 2
  
  Great...so, now...everything coming out will be fuckin' pink?!?!
  :)
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
6. Re:behind every powerful man... by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-08 22:23 · Score: 1
  
  Apparently pink mobile phones are far less likely to be stolen than other colours. I don't know how true this is: I'd also heard that pink is a good colour for luggage because it's easy to spot on the conveyor belt after getting off a plane, but then I was standing in an airport where my black suitcase was easy to spot because it was almost the only one that wasn't pink...
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
7. Re:behind every powerful man... by TeknoHog · 2012-06-08 23:21 · Score: 2
  
  Behind every powerful woman... is a man checking out her ass.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Gossip - no wonder women dominate by cpu6502 · 2012-06-08 10:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

"Internet usage, mobile phone voice usage, mobile phone location-based services, text messaging, Skype, every social networking site aside from LinkedIn, all Internet-enabled devices, e-readers, health-care devices, and GPS." --- Most of these things all revolve around communicating with others. Daughters used to spend all their time talking on the phone (watch an old episode of Gidget for an example). Now it's texting on internet devices.
Healthcare makes sense, since it's usually the mom that deals with sick kids. Ditto GPS/location services since they are driving the kids around. And e-readers are handy to use while waiting for the kids to finish with their doctor appointments or soccer games.
I draw the line at buying some minivan or SUV though.
I like my car.

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
1. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by slazzy · 2012-06-08 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  It will be interesting to see how this changes in the next few years.
  
  --
  Website Just Down For Me? Find out
2. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 11:18 · Score: 1
  
  ...or that women need more healthcare and devices to compensate for less ability to deal with the environment around them. The implication being that men don't need as much healthcare, or that they're better able to find their way without a moronic computer telling them what to do. See I can speculate too. If gossip is going to fuel internet growth, all of us should just quit using it now.. gossip is among the most toxic of fallout from human evolution to date.
3. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by girlintraining · 2012-06-08 11:20 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Most of these things all revolve around communicating with others. Daughters used to spend all their time talking on the phone (watch an old episode of Gidget for an example). Now it's texting on internet devices.
  The internet has always been a communications technology, and women tend to communicate more in both frequency and diversity of content. But it's a leap to say that means women are more important. A lot of internet traffic is streaming media and bittorrent. Does that mean those are the first things people think of when you mention the internet? Probably not. Quantity doesn't always equate to importance.
  Conversely, men aged 18-35 have never been social movers and shakers; They're the grunts. Always have been. It's never been any different in IT than anywhere else... that age group is always used for something new and experimental because they're disposable. If young men throw away their lives in war, poor career choices, or develop work-related injuries, etc., we just give them a line about how honorable their sacrifice was and then lead them away from the public spotlight.
  I guess my point is that studies like this offer neither wisdom nor insight; The conclusions drawn invariably reflect our own prejudices. And they will continue to do so until the social expectations of men and women, young and old, etc., are equal.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
4. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by amicusNYCL · 2012-06-08 11:31 · Score: 2
  
  Ditto GPS/location services since they are driving the kids around.
  I think you meant to say "because men never get lost."
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
5. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by samoanbiscuit · 2012-06-08 12:45 · Score: 1
  
  If gossip is going to fuel internet growth, all of us should just quit using it now.. gossip is among the most toxic of fallout from human evolution to date.
  Actually, that's not true. Gossip has been studies by a lot of fields (especially psychology) and is considered a useful way of communicating social mores and building alliances. Basically people who were once considered "non-technical" or whatever are using the internet as extensions of themselves more than ever, which is a good thing IMHO.
6. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 12:48 · Score: 0
  
  Don't know about the GPS. My wife thinks she knows the directions to everyplace (and she usually does). I just turn on the GPS and zone out.
7. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 13:13 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but unfortunately the basis is flawed. argumentum ad populum - everyone is saying this, therefore it must be true/you must comply. Building alliances on such fallacious reasoning is probably one of the primal causes of conflict and mass social failure.
  Yeah it would be great, except that instead of extending themselves to what was built (by 'geeks'), they want/are getting it dumbed down to their level by force of ubiquity and/or profit motive.. This is an example of why some think the movie Idiocracy should be considered a piece of speculative fiction.
8. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by cayenne8 · 2012-06-08 15:44 · Score: -1, Flamebait
  
  It will be interesting to see how this changes in the next few years.
  
  Depends...on a couple of things.
  1. Did you lose your spine at the alter? She liked you for being a man, making decisions...leading, you're gonna change that now?
  2. The "Golden Rule"...whoever makes the most gold, gets to make the rules. Unless you are one of the growing (according to new stats and news stories) you are making less than your woman.
  Hey, different strokes for different folks...and of course, in a relationship, it take compromise, but man, I sure hate it in some people I've seen in relationship, and even worse in a legal marriage, when the guy just gets 100% spineless and caves into everything their woman wants. And sad thing is...in so many cases, I've seen it go to where the guy doesn't assert himself anymore, and the woman loses respect for him....and in many cases, not only walks all over him, but dumps him.
  Sure, you gotta compromise....but keep being a man, and assert yourself. Most women *do* respond positively....it is in the genes.
  I know a lot of guys in LONG term relationships...that the wife/girlfriend drives the car she wants/needs (soccer mom car)..and he's still driving the 2 seater sports car.
  Just because you fall in love...doesn't mean you have to give up the things YOU love....as a guy.
  Keep being a guy...
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
9. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by hairyfeet · 2012-06-08 16:13 · Score: 1
  
  They are also missing a VERY important point which is why going after the male is still a better strategy...brand loyalty. Frankly we men get set in our ways easily and if we find something we like we tend to stick with it. women on the other hand have ZERO brand loyalty when it comes to tech, to them its an accessory like clothes or shoes and like clothes and shoes their tastes change and out goes the device.
  For example my GF has to have gone through a good 4 phones in the past two years, she'll drop it or bust it or she doesn't like the way it texts or something and its gone...poof! Buh bye phone and i honestly don't think she has EVER bought the same brand twice when it comes to tech, its whatever one of her girlfriends recommend or what catches her eye. i tend to stick with HTC as they've never given me any problems so when one dies i get another HTC so if you get me liking your brand I'll tend to stick with it.
  So if all you want is a single sale then sure, it might be smart to target the women. but if you want a long term customer its smarter to target the men as we have more brand loyalty, at least from what I've seen.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
10. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Alex+Belits · 2012-06-08 17:14 · Score: 1
  
  i tend to stick with HTC as they've never given me any problems so when one dies i get another HTC so if you get me liking your brand I'll tend to stick with it.
  Nokia, hairyfeet. You are supposed to push Nokia now.
  
  --
  Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
11. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 17:23 · Score: 0
  
  It will be interesting to see how this changes in the next few years.
  Depends...on a couple of things.
  1. Did you lose your spine at the alter? She liked you for being a man, making decisions...leading, you're gonna change that now?
  2. The "Golden Rule"...whoever makes the most gold, gets to make the rules. Unless you are one of the growing (according to new stats and news stories) you are making less than your woman.
  Point 1. The man may not want to change but the woman will insist he changes according her to stipulations. And he will like it or else loose at least 50% of his assets.
  Point 2. His money is her money. Her money is her money. Who earns the most is irrelevant because no purchase may be made without her consent.
  Marriage is a trap and death sentence for most men. Few women are truly worthy of marrying.
12. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 19:45 · Score: 0
  
  So basically anything that involves talking!
13. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 20:10 · Score: 0
  
  "So if all you want is a single sale then sure, it might be smart to target the women."
  From a business perspective, all these single sales add up.
14. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 21:15 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  "Also, because women still are the primary caretakers of children in many places, guess who controls which gadgets the young male and female members of the family get to purchase or even use?"
  "The article points out that most of the tech industry hasn't figured this out yet â" perhaps in part to a dearth of women running these companies."
  Perhaps it's nothing to do with the industry figuring it out, but that in most relationships the couple have made the concious decision for the woman to be the homemaker, meaning that person is the one who can only make themselves available to work shorter hours.
  Seriously, it's the same old tiresome story, you get a feminist whine about how there aren't enough women CEOs etc. but the fact is that's because a sizeable portion of female staff are also the ones that want to knock off early to look after the kids etc. They just can't simply expect to have a flying career AND get to leave early/have every school holiday off/work part time or whatever as well. You just can't have people in important positions in the company who aren't there half the time, it's just not going to work.
  Equality has to be a two way thing, and will only arise from becoming a two way thing. I don't think I've ever met a man ever in my entire life that would not give someone a job "because she's female" contrary to the feminist rants suggesting there's some conspiracy where exactly that is the case. What needs to happen for a greater balance of women in higher positions, is that a more balance ratio of men and women are the homemakers, rather than the gross slant towards women in the moment eliminating a massive proportion of the female working base as potential candidates for high up roles.
  Me and my girlfriend aren't really bothered about having kids, and as a result she can work as long as she wants, and her career has flown along as a result, she puts in the hours of any man and has never seen anything that amounts to discrimination.
  Honestly, I've seen far far more problems in terms of ageism (both ways - i.e you're too young, as well as just you're too old) and homophobia than the zero instances of sex discrimination I've seen and heard about within any companies I've worked at. Time and effort needs to be spent solving those issues more than anything else.
  Maybe I've just been fortunate and everywhere I've worked has been good in terms of sex discrimination, though I doubt it, because I worked in public sector for years which was frankly the most homophobic, racist, ageist place I've ever worked, but sexism was never an issue, because if anything there were more female managers than male there for the most part. The places I've worked since have a roughly equal balance of male/female employees, and whilst I agree one female I work with currently is good enough to be deserving of more responsibility and more pay, I should note that there's also about 4 men in the same boat too so it would be hard to say she's being explicitly discriminated against, the problem is simply that they're all ready to move up and there are no positions for them currently.
  If women want careers equivalent to their male counterparts they need to choose between having kids, or making sure they're in a two way relationship where they're equally allowed the opportunity to grow their career and not be the homemaker.
  I agree with what you say, the article is really just a "I'm hard done by boo-fucking-hoo" type rant and offers nothing to the debate. If it was just an actual factual study about the usage of technology by different demographics and a historical comparison of how that's changed it might be of value, but no, it was nothing more than a pointless rant devoid of any meaningful facts and figures to back up it's argument.
15. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 23:22 · Score: 0
  
  both point 1. and point 2. are easily solved with SAME solution (prenup)
16. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by gremlinuk · 2012-06-08 23:40 · Score: 2
  
  You're not married, are you? ... and with an attitude like that, if you ever do get married, it won't last long either.
  Successful, long term marriages are partnerships.
17. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 00:07 · Score: 0
  
  That is nice. What everyone who reads your factually incorrect babble wants to know is - Did communism fuck you up or was it being an anti-ms troll? Hmm.. or maybe it was lack of breast-feeding.
18. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by LordVader717 · 2012-06-09 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  Most of the services mentioned are kinda passé. GPS (I presume they mean car navigators) have become obsolete due to the "mobile phone location-based services". Text messages and mobile phone voice usage are just expensive versions of Skype and Facebook for people who haven't caught on yet. Internet adoption is such an all-encompassing term to be virtually meaningless.
  The only real novelty here are e-readers, which I suppose is because women read a lot more than men do.
19. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by cellocgw · 2012-06-09 01:07 · Score: 1
  
  Ditto GPS/location services since they are driving the kids around.
  I think you meant to say "because men never get lost."
  This an obvious FTFY, but: you meant to say "because men never ask for directions."
  
  --
  https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
20. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Crosshair84 · 2012-06-09 01:48 · Score: 1
  
  Interesting observation, just looking at me I can see several brand loyaltys.
  
  Home networking. D-Link. (Used to be linksys, but their reliability was crap so out they went.)
  Monitors. Samsung all the way.
  Hard drives. Western Digital. (I'll consider buying an SSD when WD starts making them.)
21. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by amicusNYCL · 2012-06-09 04:04 · Score: 1
  
  Well, there's no reason to ask for directions if you never get lost.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
22. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by cayenne8 · 2012-06-09 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  Successful, long term marriages are partnerships.
  
  I don't want, nor intend to have kids. If you're not having children, what's the point of getting married, besides risking losing half your shit you own, if she decides to try to control you or goes she-bat crazy (as many of them do eventually)?
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
23. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by hairyfeet · 2012-06-09 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  See? We men tend to like a brand and stick with them. For me on the tech front, Samsung HDDs, especially their EcoDrives but since they are gone now I'll go like you with WD, As far as monitors go while you can't go wrong with Samsung I've been quite happy with Dell Business for the last few purchases. their desktops may be crap but their business monitors are quite reliable, for routers I like D-Link as well for wireless but prefer trendnet for wired, as I have set several of them up on jobs sites because i honestly thought the harsh conditions there would kill any router and didn't see the point in buying more expensive but frankly they surprised me, not a single dead one despite such nasty conditions and temp shifts. Tough little bastards they are.
  So you see why I said the men can bring you a long term customer that keeps coming back, we find something we like we tend to stick with it. Women just don't seem to develop preferences when it comes to tech, as I said my GF treats her phone like she does shoes, something to be used while she likes it and tossed when she doesn't and I honestly can't think of a single tech device where she got the same brand twice. What I find funny is that in clothes she knows all the brands, tells me without me even trying them on which companies make their sizes a little tighter or a little looser, and have her preferences there for both herself and for me while I honestly don't give a rat's ass as long as it covers me without cutting off the blood flow, but while i know all the geek brands and all the quirks and preferences she honestly couldn't care less about the whole thing, its strictly what catches her eye or what some GF of hers recommends that month. But I guess that's why its smart to aim clothing at women and tech at the guys, build customer loyalty with the sex that will care about your product.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
24. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Crosshair84 · 2012-06-09 12:46 · Score: 1
  
  Well funny funny. As I get home today my 23" Samsung monitor has a line of vertical stuck-on pixels. Warranty expired 2 years ago. Ordered........another Samsung, an LED model, a third the power consumption of my current one. I'll use this old one on my computer in the basement where I have my reloading equipment till it dies completely, however long that takes.
  
  Sad thing is that my 17" Trinitron CRT was bought used and then was in service by me for 8 years and I still have it as a backup, since it's such a nice monitor. On the flip side though, this monitor was a cheap one with a 1 year warranty instead of a 3 year and cost less than a third of what the Trinitron would have cost new. Meh, I got my money's worth.
25. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by hairyfeet · 2012-06-09 15:04 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like you got your money's worth out of it, that's what matters. the average price I've been spending on the Dell Business monitors is around $140 for the 20 inchers and in the 3 years or so I've been using them for my small business customers the only losses reported were by a customer who sadly had a fire that destroyed everything, otherwise they've been quiet with clear pictures. On the consumer side i've had good luck with the Hanns-G monitors and my consumer customers like the fact they have decent (if not bassy) speakers built in as it lets them set up a quad sound in a small space, especially great for the college kids with dorms. I've had enough good luck with them that when my dad asked what the boys would probably like for Xmas (he HATES shopping and ever since i introduced him to tiger and newegg he's a net tech buying fool LOL!) I pointed him towards a couple of 22 inch Hanns-Gs for the boys that they just adore. I was afraid going from CRTs they'd complain but the blacks are nice and they haven't suffered any ghosting that we can see, even when they are smacking me around in TF2 LOL!
  As for Sony.....sigh. Speaking of brand loyalty my dad is a Sony man all the way but I can tell you their consumer gear just ain't what it used to be. They were good about honoring the warranty on my dad's new (and damned sure NOT cheap) 42 inch Bravia but after the second set had the speakers crap and die, and my dad does NOT crank TVs at all, he said to hell with going through all the BS and just had me point him to a decent soundbar for his set and he just killed the internals. I used to swear by Sony but after hearing so many complaints from customers and seeing the trouble dad had i just don't think the quality is there. my customers have me often hooking up HTPCs and other media devices so I get to talk to them about and check out a LOT of different setups and I think LG and Toshiba get the most positive praises sung about them so if that Sony craps out when the warranty expires i'll probably try to steer him to one of those, but when it comes to brand loyalty dad sticks for ages.
  Anyway damn sorry to hear about your troubles, i always hate when something just bites it without warning, the least it could do is give me a few days for shipping LOL! Frankly with monitors being so cheap I don't know if caring about the warranty is even worth it unless you get a $1K+ monster. Personally I'd just get a triple setup with Eyefinity if I wanted to go large but since i sit in a comfy chair close enough to my 20 incher I can touch it I don't really see the point. Good luck on your next monitor though.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
26. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Crosshair84 · 2012-06-09 15:33 · Score: 1
  
  Pffff, no problems, it still works minus the line of stuck pixels, I'll live till the replacement gets here. Like I said, it will go in my basement on my computer that I run QuickLOAD on for my reloading bench. (Also plays my internet radio and mp3s.) Got some other simulation software as well and the big monitor is good for reading the pressure curve data. I have a 17" on it now and QuickLOAD likes a wide screen monitor for displaying the charts.
27. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by hairyfeet · 2012-06-10 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Well in the shop I have everything running on a KVM to a 19inch Dell so lucky me I only need one monitor for work and one for home, which is a 20 inch Dell that was given to me brand new by that customer that had the fire, he was having hell dealing with the insurance so I just handed him 3 older towers and some CRTs that hadn't sold at the shop and just told him "You hang onto these until you get that mess straightened out, don't want you to be shut down while you deal with the red tape". So when he got the money he came by the shop and ordered the parts for me to build him some new towers and had me throw 4 monitors in the cart. when the boxes were built and he came to load them up i reached to load in the fourth and he said "That's yours, I don't forget those that help me when i'm down" and slapped $400 above the cost of the job in my hand and refused to take it back. So its nice to know that karma does come back around from time to time.
  Anyway if you decide you want a nice big monitor for the basement keep an eye out on your local Craigslist, anything that isn't a laptop or tablet will often sell for stupidly cheap on there. I recently helped a customer pick up a 32 inch trinitron from a CL ad, damned nice set, beautiful picture, know how much he paid? $110. Guy had gotten a plasma and didn't want it anymore. Hell I had a buddy that wanted a little netbook and we scored him an Atom dual core, nice little Dell Mini, $80. Hell it was so new the guy still had the original packaging. Got him an iPad and decided he didn't want it, simple as that. I swear there are some seriously stupid people on that site. I got myself a brand new still in the box Rogue electric acoustic bass in a beautiful black tigereye for $50. College kid decided playing guitar was 'cooler" so he played it a week and put it back in the box, makes a wonderful bass for sitting on the porch or playing a little unplugged. So keep an eye out, you can score some crazy deals if you keep your eyes open.
  BTW if its just stuck pixels you might want to give this a try as it might fix it. Its really a coin flip when it comes to stuck pixels but hell its free and the worse it'll do is leave you in the same position you are in now, so couldn't hurt.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
28. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by airdweller · 2012-06-11 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  "men aged 18-35 have never been social movers and shakers; They're the grunts. Always have been. It's never been any different in IT than anywhere else... that age group is always used for something new and experimental because they're disposable. If young men throw away their lives in war, poor career choices, or develop work-related injuries, etc., we just give them a line about how honorable their sacrifice was and then lead them away from the public spotlight. "
  You're either somehow unaware of the whole history of mankind, or your notion of "social movers and shakers" and "grunts" differs from the average. I can't figure it out.
29. Re:Gossip - no wonder women dominate by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 08:21 · Score: 0
  
  I draw the line at buying some minivan or SUV though.
  I like my car.
  Well that came out of no where... If it were possible to mod just a part of a post as "off topic", I'd say that part would qualify.
Adoption, not use. by Hatta · 2012-06-08 10:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

The young male demographic has already adopted tech, so adoption will be low. New technology will be targeted at people who haven't adopted tech yet, because those markets aren't as saturated and competetive. It was bound to happen in a maturing industry. Young males still use more tech then females though.

--
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
1. Re:Adoption, not use. by Mashiki · 2012-06-08 13:46 · Score: 1
  
  Bingo. You see the same thing with cars though, and shiny new computer stuff. This really isn't a surprise by any stretch, rather it's that people who have the stuff they want already have it. Just wait for the *next big thing* to come along and it'll change. Well providing that they have a job.
  
  --
  Om, nomnomnom...
2. Re:Adoption, not use. by tgv · 2012-06-08 19:30 · Score: 2
  
  Exactly. Who adopted internet and mobile phones and whatever when the tech was in its infancy (see how cleverly I used that word)? Men.
  Curiously, I didn't see slashdot in the list of sites not dominated by women (and slashdot is a social site, isn't it?). Does that mean that we're all women?
3. Re:Adoption, not use. by metrometro · 2012-06-09 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  > Young males still use more tech then females though.
  This appears to be true, at least for 7th graders. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080312172614.htm
Fuck women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:43 · Score: -1, Troll

So, let me get this straight.
The bitches bitch about being under-represented in the tech industry.
They bitch rudely about booth babes.
They bitch about companies that use hawt female models to sells products.
NOW once somebody figures out they are the most important tech demographic, it's A OK to pander
to the bitches.
LETS ALL START MAKING TECH ADS WHERE THE MAN IS A BUMBLING IDIOT LIKE
IN OTHER INDUSTRIES.
Then, these fucking misandric bitches can say "Fuck you, men, we are the #1 tech demographic,
it's ok to appeal to our vaginas"
Right. Women and their fucking equal rights. Equal rights and special treatment.
Soon, all computers will come with a free dildo and THAT'S JUST FINE!
Fucking cunts. Women are the most unfair of human beings. They are self-entitled
bitches that can only thing me me me me me me me me.
They have ruined EVERY single industry there is, and now with the "brogrammer"
campain they are seeking to destroy one of the last bastions of normality.
What's next, quotas for the bitches? FUCK YOU WOMEN, YOU ARE NOTHING
MORE THAN A VAGINA AND AN OBNOXIOUS MOUTH.
FUCK YOU!
1. Re:Fuck women by alphatel · 2012-06-08 10:51 · Score: 0
  
  http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6778520/the-fall-of-pinterest
  
  --
  When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
2. Re:Fuck women by BlackSnake112 · 2012-06-08 11:03 · Score: 0
  
  *points at the subject* Why yes. As often as possible. Hoping to have as many orgasms (women win with the multiple orgasm thing) as possible too.
3. Re:Fuck women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:05 · Score: 1
  
  I know better than to feed a troll, and I'm sure you somehow think you are being funny, but your post reeks of serious psychological problems suggesting that you have a very unhealthy outlook toward women, with rage issues. I hope for the sake of the females in your life, you work on yourself and your outlook. Maybe you've been abused, but you can stop the cycle of abuse by not being abusive.
4. Re:Fuck women by cayenne8 · 2012-06-08 15:51 · Score: 1
  
  LETS ALL START MAKING TECH ADS WHERE THE MAN IS A BUMBLING IDIOT LIKE IN OTHER INDUSTRIES.
  Not just that...these days, the overwhelming percentage of stumbling, buffoons in any commercial or ad or comedy these days...is the prototypical, overweight (likely deserved), stupid white guy.
  You never see a bumbling, butt of the joke, ad for a idiot woman, or stupid, bumbling black or hispanic guy. Nope, I can't name one, and please link me to examples where I'm wrong...but it is now always politically ok to make fun of the Caucasian male, at least in the US.
  I understand diversity on the media, no problem...but there ARE stupid people or those that make mistakes of all races and both sexes (if you only count 2...but according to many databases...> 2 are officially recognized).
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
5. Re:Fuck women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 17:11 · Score: 0
  
  ... a bumbling, butt of the joke, ad for a idiot woman ...
  
  TV is full of idiotic women, or at least dumb blondes. (Phoebe "Friends", Kelly "Married ... with children") . But they're fun-loving, good-looking sluts, so we respect and protect them anyway.
  
  now always politically OK to make fun of the Caucasian male
  
  I agree. In Australia, we had government-funded adverts for road-safety that insulted penis-size. That's a great way for people with vaginas to excuse whatever they do while driving.
6. Re:Fuck women by cayenne8 · 2012-06-08 17:15 · Score: 1
  
  TV is full of idiotic women, or at least dumb blondes. (Phoebe "Friends", Kelly "Married ... with children") . But they're fun-loving, good-looking sluts, so we respect and protect them anyway.
  
  That stereotype...even is almost nonexistent.
  Kelly Bundy...early 90's. Phoebe...well, how long as 'Friends' been off the air?
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
7. Re:Fuck women by Kurrel · 2012-06-09 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  Penny from Big Bang Theory. Jenna from 30 Rock. Laurie from Cougar Town. Brittany from Glee. Harmony from Buffy. Claire from Heroes. Lana from Smallville. Amanda from Ugly Betty. Jessica Simpson from herself. Lindsay from Arrested Development. Quendra from Community.
  
  Shall I go on?
8. Re:Fuck women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 07:46 · Score: 0
  
  Soon, all computers will come with a free dildo and THAT'S JUST FINE!
  Don't they already? Or are you saying that you can get a refund on the MS Windows license?!
Evident right here by Missing.Matter · 2012-06-08 10:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is most evident on places like Slashdot, which are dominated by young males 18-35. From OSX to iOS to Windows 8 to Office 2010 and the Ribbon to the iPad to the iPhone to locked bootloaders on Android to custom Android skins (Sense etc.), almost every decision in mainstream tech is cast as "boneheaded" or "backwards" here. Yet almost everything Slashdot has a problem with, the general population eats it up.
1. Re:Evident right here by spire3661 · 2012-06-08 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  If everyone eats it up, then obviously there is no problem? Fantastic logic! Do you have a newsletter?
  
  --
  Good-bye
2. Re:Evident right here by Missing.Matter · 2012-06-08 10:49 · Score: 2
  
  Problems are relative. The problems we come up with here obviously mean nothing to the majority of tech buyers out there. Is it a problem for me that I can only install Apps from the Appstore on my iPad? Yes. Is it a problem for my mom? No. It doesn't make the complaints we have not legitimate... it just means it's less and less likely anyone is going to care.
3. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 10:52 · Score: 1
  
  Has there really been a survey to determine the ages and sexes of Slashdot users or do you all just assume everybody is young and male?
4. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:52 · Score: 1
  
  There's something to that, the atmosphere on most tech forums is "overly entitled cheeto-encrusted cheap-assed jerk". Slashdot is actually a bit nicer than the completely toxic environments at Gizmodo & so on.
  (Also, all these people claim their friends and family rely on them for technical advice, even though that is clearly no longer necessary.)
  Perhaps marketers were willing to put up with nerd asshole behavior when they were buying $3000 PCs, but it's just not worth it to sell a $200 cell phone.
5. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:59 · Score: 0
  
  There was a poll... But it was before you made your account.
6. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:05 · Score: 0
  
  Given that the tech field is overwhelming dominated by men, and this is a tech site, it's not a great leap of logic to conclude most who come here are male. The question is how old... hard to say but most of the reminiscing of the "good old days" here relates to the 80s and 90s, which points to people who are in their 20s and 30s. Of course slashdot has a firm base of people who think the good old days were the 50s and 60s, but they've been irrelevant in mainstream tech for a long time now.
7. Re:Evident right here by Belial6 · 2012-06-08 11:08 · Score: 2
  
  It's not just that. It is also that the general public doesn't recognize time very well. They complain about the problem they are having at the moment, but are unwilling or unable to consider that the actions they took hours, days or months earlier lead to that problem. Watching it is like seeing a drunk driver complain about a tree being in his way instead of recognizing that the bottle of Jack he drank an hour earlier was actually the problem.
8. Re:Evident right here by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 11:35 · Score: 2
  
  Nah, the problem is slashdotters can't accept that they are in fact part of the general public, it makes us feel ordinary.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
9. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:42 · Score: 0
  
  Way, way, way before by the looks of it.
10. Re:Evident right here by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 11:47 · Score: 1
  
  but they've been irrelevant in mainstream tech for a long time now.
  Stop masterbating on my lawn and I'll think about giving you a job.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
11. Re:Evident right here by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-06-08 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  What percentage of slashdotters would tell the truth about their age and sex? here? and does that exceed the number that actually know their own real age and sex? How would anyone know, and why would anyone care?
  Come on, there is a lifetime supply of slashpolls here just waiting for deployment! Just think enquiring Google wants to know!
  
  --
  Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
12. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 12:33 · Score: 0
  
  Oh god. Slashdot isn't toxic you say?
  It's got one of the worse communities nowadays.
  I come here about once a week and all I see in the comments in bile and absolutely nothing of interest.
13. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 12:47 · Score: 1
  
  Given that the tech field is overwhelming dominated by men, and this is a tech site, it's not a great leap of logic to conclude most who come here are male.
  That's pretty unscientific.
  
  The question is how old... hard to say but most of the reminiscing of the "good old days" here relates to the 80s and 90s, which points to people who are in their 20s and 30s. Of course slashdot has a firm base of people who think the good old days were the 50s and 60s, but they've been irrelevant in mainstream tech for a long time now.
  If you remember the "good old days" of the 80s and 90s clearly, you're pushing 50 or older now.
14. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  There was a poll... But it was before you made your account.
  I believe you, but since I'm relatively new here, perhaps you could clue me in on how to find old Slashdot polling data.
15. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 12:53 · Score: 1
  
  Why would we lie about our age on Slashdot. We're all using aliases and Slashdot doesn't seem a to get anybody laid.
16. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 12:58 · Score: 3, Interesting
  There's a new subject for a poll right there:
  How many times have you gotten laid using Slashdot?
  
  Sure, happens all the time.
  Once or twice, but I'm trying to live it down.
  I'm trying, but no success so far.
  I met my husband/wife on Slashdot! So no...
  It never happened, I swear.
17. Re:Evident right here by tsotha · 2012-06-08 13:56 · Score: 1
  
  I seriously doubt slashdot is dominated by men 18-35. Men, yes, but I think the age bracket is much higher than that.
18. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 14:34 · Score: 1
  
  If you remember the "good old days" of the 80s and 90s clearly, you're pushing 50 or older now.
  On the Internet, reminiscing about the 80s/90s usually involves discussing Saturday morning cartoons, rather than say going to grunge bars.
  The archetypical Slashdotter seems to have gotten an Amiga for his 14th birthday, and then picked up Linux during it's underground stage in the mid-1990s. I suspect most of the audience here is between 30-40.
19. Re:Evident right here by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 14:57 · Score: 1
  
  This doesn't mean the slashdot population is wrong. The question you should be asking is "important to whom and why?" Technically incompetent consumers are more dependent and thus more profitable to companies. This article sources someone who probably has political motivations for saying the things she said, as well as being motivated by her employer (intel). In the end, the slashdot crowd is much more in line with the interests of these consumers than those who want to bilk money from them. the latter love seeing fluff articles like this.
20. Re:Evident right here by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:12 · Score: 1
  
  Then there are those who run around said forums claiming the users are 'entitled jerks' because they have opinions that dare to differ from 'ogle-eyed worship' of said product/company/technology. pure fallacious shaming tactics at work...
  
  (Also, all these people claim their friends and family rely on them for technical advice, even though that is clearly no longer necessary.)
  The fact that these 'neo-friendly' devices are less serviceable makes them even harder to fix when their limited interfaces won't do what the idiot user wants. Guess who gets asked to 'make it work'? These devices are actually customer toxic.. They're increasingly designed to maximize profits on services rather than do what they're advertised as doing: serve the owner.
21. Re:Evident right here by cayenne8 · 2012-06-08 15:54 · Score: 1
  
  If you remember the "good old days" of the 80s and 90s clearly, you're pushing 50 or older now.
  Depends on the subject matter...
  Music, for instance...pretty much got lame after the late 70's-early 80's.
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
22. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 16:06 · Score: 0
  
  Then why do you keep coming?
23. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 16:07 · Score: 0
  
  Wow, can that be taken out of context of what?
24. Re:Evident right here by Raenex · 2012-06-08 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  If you remember the "good old days" of the 80s and 90s clearly, you're pushing 50 or older now.
  I'm not sure how I follow your math. I grew up in that time period and am "only" starting to push 40 (though am still under). Anyways, Slashdot had its heyday during the dotcom boom, in the late 90s through the early 2000s, and it was dominated by male techies and largely still is judging by the comments.
25. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 22:34 · Score: 0
  
  I would if I could remember it !
26. Re:Evident right here by Nursie · 2012-06-09 00:03 · Score: 1
  
  Some of us remember the good times, when people, when people who actually knew stuff about things used to come here, and most of the front page wasn't paid advertisements.
  It can be hard to let go, but I'm getting there, slowly.
27. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-09 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  At 38, you'd be "pushing 40" in 2012, so you'd have been born in 1974 which means you were six in 1980. Your awareness of the larger culture outside your momma's house would be pretty sketchy. By 1990, you'd be sixteen and beginning to understand what was going on outside momma's house. So basically you missed the 80's in terms of the understanding the culture and technology of the time.
  If you were born a decade earlier, you had the opportunity to see the culture and tech play out as an adult or near-adult.
28. Re:Evident right here by Raenex · 2012-06-09 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  At 38, you'd be "pushing 40" in 2012, so you'd have been born in 1974 which means you were six in 1980.
  Which is, in fact, correct.
  
  Your awareness of the larger culture outside your momma's house would be pretty sketchy. By 1990, you'd be sixteen and beginning to understand what was going on outside momma's house. So basically you missed the 80's in terms of the understanding the culture and technology of the time.
  Not correct. Growing up between the age of 6 and 16 were very formative years, and I have a lot of nostalgic memories from the time and am quite familiar with a lot of the culture, from politics, to music and movies, fashion styles, tech, and so on. For example, I clearly remember the PC boom. The 90s were also formative years as a young adult. By the time the 2000s rolled around, I was already starting to tune out on various bits of culture.
  I don't know what experience you are drawing from. Maybe you led a sheltered life or just didn't absorb as much from your youth.
29. Re:Evident right here by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-09 10:03 · Score: 1
  
  Compare your awareness of what was going on in any area: popular culture, technology, politics, finance, etc. in the '90s to your awareness of those same things in the '80s. I'm confident that you will see that you understood the world a LOT BETTER in the '90s than in the '80s.
  The same applies to me with respect ot the '80s versus the '70s. I thought I knew what was going on at the time and have clear memories of SOME things, but nothing like my experience of the '80s.
30. Re:Evident right here by Raenex · 2012-06-09 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  I could talk endlessly about the "good old days" of the 80s. Sure, when I was 6, I wasn't very aware, but by 1984 I was already 10 and can still remember Apple's landmark Superbowl commercial. I'm familiar with the 80s movies: Terminator, Risky Business, Poltergeist, the second Star Wars, the John Hughes hits, the list goes on and on. Television: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, the rise of Fox with the controversial Married with Children, etc. Fashion: Big hair, big shoulder pads, silly accessories, Valley Girls). Politics: Reagan and the height of the Cold War, with the pervasive fear of a nuclear war.
  Of course I've grown since then, but I can say that every 10 years. The point is at the time I was a sponge and those were very formative years.
31. Re:Evident right here by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 18:05 · Score: 0
  
  Almost everyone I've ever known thinks the music they listened to when they were about 14 is the best music ever.
  People who were 35 in the 1970s lamented how nothing was like The Beatles or Elvis. People who were 35 in the 1990s lamented how nothing was like Queen or Motley Crue. People who are 35 today lament how nothing is like old Metallica or Nirvana or something.
  By choosing the late 70s, all you just did is admit that you're approximately 45.
Finally, the women rule, as it should be. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:43 · Score: 0, Insightful

Great. Now women rule the internet too. This is clearly a much better situation, closer to the way the great feminist god intended it.
Done. Good.
Now leave me alone and let me tend to my garden.
It's easy to herd of cattle by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:43 · Score: 0

It's easier to control a herd of stupid cattle than it is to try and wrangle up cats. Young males are usually somewhat educated, curious, and skeptical about technology where there is almost a social stigma against smart women in ANY field of science. It's sad, and I don't like it, but the primary enforcing factor for this seems to be women themselves, so I don't feel so bad for pointing it out.
1. Re:It's easy to herd of cattle by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 12:40 · Score: 1
  
  It's easier to control a herd of stupid cattle than it is to try and wrangle up cats.
  Yes, but cats rarely stampead.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
2. Re:It's easy to herd of cattle by epyT-R · 2012-06-08 15:02 · Score: 1
  
  There's almost no stigma these days, not when 2/3 of university level graduating classes are female. most of the 'stigma' is imagined by feminist political groups like NOW who want everyone thinking there is. That way women will get the benefits of having the upper and has well as the benefits of having the (assumed) lower hand. It's dirty politics. Women themselves aren't that interested in tech. Women were never into the tools of the trade because the men did those things.. Women do other things, and when it came time to use a tool, it was to get something done and move on. The process is rarely important to them unless it breaks. Then it's time to call a man (usually) to come fix it.
So, what are they saying? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:55 · Score: 0

The most popular color was pink?
1. Re:So, what are they saying? by chadenright · 2012-06-08 11:12 · Score: 1
  
  Don't you mean Fuchsia?
wat? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 10:59 · Score: -1

This sounds like a bunch of PC horseshit.
ah by ILongForDarkness · 2012-06-08 11:01 · Score: 2

So all the things I really don't care much about. They can have them. I'd dispute the internet thing (by bandwidth I suspect guys win what with gaming and porn). But otherwise: location based apps? I see it more as a privacy risk for little benefit, FB and other narcissistic tools: no use and I really don't care what my cousin's friend found funny so can't be bothered with other people's personal BS.
Also of tech demographic means relatively simple to use "chatty" services than girls might win. How about hard (for mainstream user) tech adoption? Setting up a home server, remote backup, dual booting systems etc.?
1. Re:ah by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 18:16 · Score: 0
  
  How about hard (for mainstream user) tech adoption? Setting up a home server, remote backup, dual booting systems etc.?
  Dual booting is for pussies. Real men go all in.
  So, looks like women can't drive OR use information technology... Stop being objects, consumers grazing on what somebody else provides, always with strings attached. Blaze your own trail. Girls too could but sadly few do.
Back to the Future by NicknamesAreStupid · 2012-06-08 11:01 · Score: 1

Slackers all! With no draft, manual labor out of fashion, Ritalin, and most physical activities in decline, young men have turned into slackers. I've seen it coming ever since 1985. For those of you who don't know -- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slacker and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ndJNXCkNxg . Hell, most are not even getting laid! Women are taking over. When they do, they will have to deal with a nation half-full of slackers. Be careful what you wish for.
1. Re:Back to the Future by couchslug · 2012-06-08 12:32 · Score: 2
  
  Conscription didn't instil anything in recent decades but resistance to conscription and desire to GTFO the military. The Hollow Force era demonstrated that thoroughly and well. I served during the Reagan recovery and
  Manual labor sucks unless its for yourself or you get well paid for it. The cult of working yourself do exhaustion so you can get shitcanned next time FuckyouCorp right-sizes its workforce understandably went away.
  There is no point in work without reward.
  The elites don't give a fuck, the poor get government monies, so why should they want to carry everyone else and be chumps?
  I get the "slackers" point. Martyrdom is a virtue in others.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
2. Re:Back to the Future by girlintraining · 2012-06-08 14:17 · Score: 1
  
  When they do, they will have to deal with a nation half-full of slackers. Be careful what you wish for.
  Everyone here will tell you that women have been calling men lazy since [poster's year of birth].
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
3. Re:Back to the Future by gmhowell · 2012-06-09 18:34 · Score: 1
  
  When they do, they will have to deal with a nation half-full of slackers. Be careful what you wish for.
  Everyone here will tell you that women have been calling men lazy since [poster's year of birth].
  Never heard either of my grandmothers say anything even remotely approaching that sentiment.
  
  --
  Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Male != Clueless by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 11:01 · Score: 1

Does anybody really think that Apple doesn't know their market? Does anybody think Google and Amazon and Facebook don't know what users want? Just because the heads of these companies are male doesn't mean they don't know how to women.
1. Re:Male != Clueless by Farmer+Tim · 2012-06-08 12:07 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Just because the heads of these companies are male doesn't mean they don't know how to women.
  I hope that's not the latest term for cross-dressing...the thought of Steve Ballmer in drag gives me the screaming meemies.
  
  --
  Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
2. Re:Male != Clueless by Zero__Kelvin · 2012-06-08 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  Well Zuckerberg might not know how to women now, but wait until the SEC finishes with him!
  
  --
  Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
3. Re:Male != Clueless by __aaltlg1547 · 2012-06-08 12:41 · Score: 1
  
  Does anybody really think that Apple doesn't know their market? Does anybody think Google and Amazon and Facebook don't know what users want? Just because the heads of these companies are male doesn't mean they don't know how to women.
  Sorry about the missing verb. I intended "sell to" but you can insert whatever verb pleases you.
Definately! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:03 · Score: 2, Funny

It's a proven scientific fact that men who drive minivans spontaneously grow a vagina.
1. Re:Definately! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:56 · Score: 0
  
  Bzzt. Wrong. There is a correlation between manginas and male minivan driving, but it hasn't been shown which (or whether) one causes the other.
Er... don't agree by brunes69 · 2012-06-08 11:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

I have never met a member of the general population that liked the office ribbon. It confuses the hell out of my wife - which is a giant pain since it also confuses the hell out of me, who is usually her tech support. This results in routine 5-10 minute "find the option" sessions where we search for what used to be obvious. I predict a very similar reaction to Windows 8, just like Windows 7 confused the heck out of my wife and mom.
The whole problem with these UX designers is they forget that it is 2012 and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO USE COMPUTERS, starting from 8 years old on!
It doesn't matter if something is "easy to use for a novice" to computers when there are no novices remaining on the planet. It is much more important to KEEP CHANGE TO A MINIMUM. People in general do not deal well with change in something they are used to. Anyone who has assisted in an office-wide rollout of a new software program will attest to this.
1. Re:Er... don't agree by Anne+Thwacks · 2012-06-08 12:23 · Score: 1
  
  Anyone who has assisted in an office-wide rollout of a new software program will not be working on UI design
  FTFY
  
  --
  Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
2. Re:Er... don't agree by TapeCutter · 2012-06-08 12:29 · Score: 1
  
  Obigatory car analogy; I've been driving on public roads for 35yrs, I backed a freinds car out of the driveway the other day and then sat there for a good five minutes trying to work out why the car wouldn't let go of the key after I turned it off.
  
  Cars, like computers, used to have a very simple interface and it was common for non-mechanics to do their own repairs because you could open any bonnet and point to the caby, the distributor, the coil, etc, under the bonnet of my current car there is a large black plastic cover with holes where you put the oil and water, taking the cover off doesn't help much. Sure old cars/computers make me go all misty eyed with nostalgia for their 'simplicity', but lets face it, they were unreliable crap compared to what is available today.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
3. Re:Er... don't agree by brunes69 · 2012-06-08 12:35 · Score: 2
  
  Yep - it would be a real shame to let the people who know the most about the everyday support-ability problems with software to be helping with the interfaces. Nope - much better to leave it to self-righteous UX "experts".
4. Re:Er... don't agree by jmerlin · 2012-06-08 21:42 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that "UX" has lost its original meaning. It now refers to artists. A person who designs the horribly unusable "user interfaces" you see in movies would pass as a "UX" designer these days. Art and aesthetic design is NOT in any way related to user experience. Google recently demonstrated this to us in a really huge way (gmail). Microsoft is doing it in many ways in W8 and did so with Ribbon.
  
  It's about time to fire all of these artists ruining software and get some real UX engineers.
5. Re:Er... don't agree by drdaz · 2012-06-09 00:15 · Score: 2
  
  The whole problem with these UX designers is they forget that it is 2012 and EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO USE COMPUTERS
  You've missed the point really. Or, more likely, nobody's ever bothered to explain it.
  Good UX usually relies upon the standard and accepted ways of interacting with the computer. So it doesn't patronize you by trying to show you what to do with a text input field - we can usually assume the user knows what they are looking at, as long as we lean on the accepted ways of presenting standard functionality.
  The real task of good UX is to use present the domain the application is servicing in an easily understood and accessible manner. For example, a good system for doing tax returns might help the user to understand the terms the tax system uses and perhaps how to calculate those numbers.
  I agree completely about the Office ribbon btw. MS' UX people clearly thought they could improve on the accepted patterns used for interacting with desktop applications... I think their solution is awful. Change *can* be a good thing though, and sometimes a fundamental change is needed to move things forward - I think that the paradigm shifts made in iOS are great, for example.
6. Re:Er... don't agree by LordVader717 · 2012-06-09 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  Office functions used to be a plethora of inappropriately named text lines scattered across a jungle of menus, sub-menus and sub-sub-menus.
  People who've had a specific task and routine for years will always be stubborn. Personally I dislike all office-suites anyway.
  Sure, there are good and bad UI choices, but if a change to a better UI is confusing it's probably a sign that the software functionality is maybe a little too advanced for their needs.
7. Re:Er... don't agree by Dusty101 · 2012-06-09 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  I have a friend who swears that the Microsoft Office Ribbon was actually designed by Ern Rubik.
8. Re:Er... don't agree by Dusty101 · 2012-06-09 08:17 · Score: 1
  
  Bah. Stupid Slashdot, that can't correctly parse Hungarian characters and kill a joke.
  "Erno"
Women are playing catchup by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:04 · Score: 1

Women are currently leading adoption only because the men have already adopted said technology and the women are catching up.
perhaps by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:10 · Score: 0

perhaps its because no one thinks like this anymore???..........
Biology has changed by hackstraw · 2012-06-08 11:23 · Score: 1

news at 12
Social Butterflies by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:30 · Score: 0

This makes sense to me. Women are social butterflies. Tools that allow them to be social anytime anywhere are bound to be widely adopted.
For men, texting *GRUNT* back and forth is has diminishing returns.
Drivel by pkinetics · 2012-06-08 11:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

This is basic diffusion model of business. Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards.
Here's what I recall with the adoption trend of mobile device consumption.
It started with the geeks, and then the guys.
Then teenagers adopted it. Holy buckets, text messaging went through the roof.
Smart devices came out. Mostly geeks, guys and the group of teenagers. Parents were still playing catch up to why their child sent 2000 text messages and now they owed $1k to the cell phone company.
Social media explodes onto the seen. The teenagers are growing up. They are consuming and in turn demanding more enhancements. Companies are responding because they need to keep adding adopters.
Social media became a status symbol. Note: I did not say cool. Cool is attitude, not imaginary friends, followers, tweets, etc. Cool is measured in binary, yes or no. There is no magical calculation that establishes cool. No amount of bling makes someone cool. You are either Fonzy or Richie. Analogy stolen from Dennis Miller.
Now there are apps, web and mobile, for all social sharing for everyone. It is going from saturation to supersatured as the industry tries to secure all the late adopters.
The next innovation is coming.
Rinse repeat recycle.
1. Re:Drivel by Isaac+Remuant · 2012-06-08 16:10 · Score: 1
  
  virtual +1 Well said.
  
  --
  "Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Men are not potted plants by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:40 · Score: 0

This suggests that men are nothing more than potted plants in the household. Just because women may be the primary caregivers doesn't mean men have no say in what goes on, perhaps to the dismay of feminazis everywhere.
so now that tech by Osgeld · 2012-06-08 11:42 · Score: -1

Allows women to talk more, they are using it more, I mean more thank half the examples given are technology to enable more yappin, are we supposed to be surprised?
Single Use Devices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 11:42 · Score: 0

These are, for the most part, single predefined use devices. Women use them more because they tend to do those single things more. Men prefer open ended devices that they can use to extend and make other things. This isn't really "adoption" so much as purchasing something like you would a toaster.
Disagree by brunes69 · 2012-06-08 12:11 · Score: 2

For every 10 women who buy a GPS, or a phone, or a Kindle - there is a trusted geek they asked for advice before they bought it.
And those geeks are usually male.
Just because the overall market penetration skews toward women doesn't make them the influencers.
1. Re:Disagree by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 16:54 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, you'd like to think that because it makes you feel needed. But the geeks in my family are all women. They're the early adopters, the fixers, and the inforamation resource.
Mark Penn by Presto+Vivace · 2012-06-08 12:29 · Score: 1

made the same point in his book Micro Trends.
Sounds like discrimination... by RightSaidFred99 · 2012-06-08 12:39 · Score: 1

How can we fix this massive problem of men getting77 gadgets on the 100 compared to women?
Even G+? by k(wi)r(kipedia) · 2012-06-08 12:39 · Score: 1

... categories where women are leading tech adoption: internet usage, mobile phone voice usage, mobile phone location-based services, text messaging, Skype, every social networking site aside from LinkedIn ...
I can understand women leading in Facebook adoption. But G+? I was under the impression that G+ was still a more tech-oriented social networking site (If at all, I see the G+ button more often on tech sites like Slashdot than more mainstream sites like the BBC or E Online). BTW I'm sure that Slashdot is still a predominantly male networking site.
Most important? by skine · 2012-06-08 12:44 · Score: 1

I don't know if I really agree with calling any one segment of the population the "most important demographic" in any industry.
Rather, it might be more accurate to say that technology has expanded beyond the hobbyist level to near ubiquity.
Just look at the number of people today who call their mp3 players iPods or smart phones iPhones, and I'll tell you about my mother who said I played too much Nintendo as kid - despite the fact that I didn't own a Nintendo system until I was in my 20's.
The listed applications are geared toward women. by Kaz+Kylheku · 2012-06-08 12:55 · Score: 2

No surprise.
Skype, voice, social networks: This is just a continuation of the millennia-old girl network, now happening over the electronic network. As a heterosexual male, I want to be talked *about* on that network (whether it be on or offline), but not actually be there.
Health: I'm a guy! I go for years without seeing a doctor.
E-reader: Most paperback pulp at the supermarket is aimed at women; now it's on devices. Inevitable.
GPS: Ask for directions? No way, I know where we are. I'm a guy! Furthermore, I don't care that it's a creepy area and it's getting dark.
Re:The listed applications are geared toward women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 13:37 · Score: 0

E-reader: Has large quantities of ALL types of books. I've read tons of sci-fi/fantasy on my e-reader. I've also got a library that includes about 5-10 different classical books loaded on it at any given time. I've seen plenty of tech books in the marketplace as well. And we all know that the primary market for Tolkien, Asimov, Homer (Greek), and anything related to CS/IT is primarily women.
Re:The listed applications are geared toward women by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 13:44 · Score: 0

Cool, but what kind of guy reads on an ereader?
I think you're missing the point by goldcd · 2012-06-08 13:52 · Score: 2

most of those technologies are old/established and a great deal of money is being made selling those to the mass-market - and I'm quite willing to admit whilst as a "dink-y" 35-year old male I'm important to, but not the sole focus of the vendors. My ilk will not decide the market success of particular 'products'.
Damned if I'm not going to fight the imputation that I'm not responsible for the success of the underlying 'tech' though.
GPS - I was wearing the Casio GPS watch, I was dangling a GPS MMC out of my PocketPC (plus external magnetic aerial) when the luddites thought mobiles had to have buttons. Now I'm quite prepared to admit there was a lot of swearing, wasted money and bluntly it wasn't due to necessity but rather it clearly being the cool-as-fuck-future - and that's ignoring the pile of dead-end tech that was accumulated in parallel - but I really resent this slur.
I'll restrain myself from listing everything else - but there is absolutely no piece of 'tech' that hasn't been launched on the sci-fi-tinged dreams of a 20-something-year old male with slightly too much disposable income.
I perhaps do consider in these later years, that it wasn't 'me' but the age/ideal - I still steadfastly hold to the opinion that twitter is pointless - despite the bleatings of the youth below me and the easily-lead marketing execs above.
Not Tech but Social Media and Gadgets by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 13:59 · Score: 0

Men, especially nerds, tend to find technology cool. In that case technology as such. An iPhone, however, is no longer technology as such. It is a gadget. You do not need to understand or want to understand the technology to use it. So in the end the text is comparing apples with pears.
Ho-hum by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 14:06 · Score: 0

Social media and devices used to access social aren't the only "tech"s that exist. Maybe it meant more women use consumer electronics for social media more often than men do? I don't see the point of this article, as it doesn't contain any real information. It does come off as a "You go, girl! Geek is hot!" piece, though.
It's called networking/rainmaking when men do it. by Martha+Bridegam · 2012-06-08 14:16 · Score: 0

If a woman does something there must be a demeaning word for it: http://schroedingerstabby.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-tell-male-from-female.html
No, but being visibly female here has consequences by Martha+Bridegam · 2012-06-08 14:30 · Score: 2

I can imagine that some female commenters here might wish to appear safely ungendered. At Slashdot, the discussion is ordinarily sane, intelligent, mutually respectful and clever, but as soon as the existence of the female sex gets mentioned, a certain proportion of the self-identified males start to grunt contempt at women and girls in general, and the whole sense of an inclusive, honorable community slumps into crud.
Young men lost that by rsilvergun · 2012-06-08 14:35 · Score: 1

because we're broke. Seriously. 40 years of no wage increases kinda does that to a guy.

--
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
1. Re:Young men lost that by EmagGeek · 2012-06-08 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  How can you expect 40 years of wage increases when there have been 40 years of no GDP increases?
2. Re:Young men lost that by cellocgw · 2012-06-09 01:15 · Score: 1
  
  How can you expect 40 years of wage increases when there have been 40 years of no GDP increases?
  On the off chance this wasn't pure sarcasm, have you seen the change in salary ratio over the last 40 years? That is, ratio of top to bottom salary within a corporation. Go look it up, but not on a full stomach.
  PS What's GDP got to do with it in the first place?
  
  --
  https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
3. Re:Young men lost that by EmagGeek · 2012-06-09 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  GDP has not increased in 40 years, but the population and number of workers has increased, meaning that productivity per employee has been steadily decreasing for the last 40 years.
  Wages and salaries are monies paid in exchange for productivity. Why do you think people deserve to be paid more for doing less?
Sigh, no more ads of skimply dressed hot chicks by Trax3001BBS · 2012-06-08 15:05 · Score: 1

Just brawny guys

I'm going to miss the good ole days.
Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 15:15 · Score: 0

I hate marketing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo
But I'm a white male age 18-49 by tehlinux · 2012-06-08 16:04 · Score: 1

Everyone is supposed to listen to me!

--
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
::SIGH:: by bornagainpenguin · 2012-06-08 17:24 · Score: 1

Oh, look! It's this article again...

Sure, tell me about how men are failing at everything again and how women everywhere are coming to fix things for us useless cretins who only invented it all...

Tell me again about how worthless men are and how perfect and truly in control of everything women are...

--
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
No! by LucyMary · 2012-06-08 17:58 · Score: 1

Why Young Males Are No Longer the Most Important Tech Demographic? I think young males are the most important tech demographic all the time.

--
I really love club dresses ,
Navigational skills ftw! by darkHanzz · 2012-06-08 18:47 · Score: 1

Let me break out the categories where women are leading tech adoption: mobile phone location-based services
So we still beat them at map-reading ? nice ;-)
Reductio ad absurdum by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 19:41 · Score: 1

The term "tech" has become so generalized that it no longer has any meaning. Almost everything you buy these days is "tech" in some way. We need a new term to differentiate between things like high-end computers and computerized nick-knacks.
It just means that it is time for another tech-rev by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 20:46 · Score: 0

It just means that after the odd 30 years it took, the current technological revolution i.e. in the field of electronics has come to a mature level and it becomes part of boring everyday live. It als means that it is time for a new generation of young tech savvy males to bring on the next technological revolution in perhaps another possibly related field.
From a physician's point of view by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 22:46 · Score: 0

Women are neurotic, and have to be in constant contact and control of everything and everyone around them in order to feel "safe."
Kids are on a short leash, husband is on an even shorter leash, assuming he has put up with her bullshit. Instant messaging phones, and now the two-way video phones, are their favorite tools for control and monitoring. It's not out of malice - it's out of anxiety and fear.
Women are also flaming hypochondriacs, so they'll buy any and every medical device that comes along to make sure their little snowflakes are properly diagnosed. They then bring them into my office proclaiming that their kid has the imagined illness of the day. They know because their latest magazine or medical gadget told them so.
As a physician, I refer 20 times as many women as I do men for behavioral health treatment (therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists); and about as many children who have been permanently damaged by their neurotic mothers.
Women are all about feeling "safe." That's the #1 most important thing to them. Nearly all of my female patients present with anxiety over some perceived threat to their physical, or more often financial wellbeing. Certainly the fact that we market almost everything on a platform of FUD doesn't help.
TV is constantly telling women about something they need to be afraid of, and of course a product they can buy to help guard against it. Fear is a powerful motivator.
1. Re:From a physician's point of view by airdweller · 2012-06-11 07:22 · Score: 1
  
  Log in so we can mod you up.
Multitasking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-08 23:17 · Score: 0

Using different part of the brain for different stuff is what I would call low multitasking. That game is an example of it. In fact once you supress the *obnoxious* music, it is rather not "too" hard to do, and frankly piano as described is one of those. OTOH there is what I call hard multitasking : calling the same part of your brain to do various stuff. In office context , it is like working on an accounting sheet, and speak to a colleague at the same time about numbers and projection. Try it : it is very hard and it is the type of multitasking which people say people do badly. Want to try something ? Try use one of the minigame (not mixed with the other) , say for example the arrow one, *AND* pay attention to a film on TV. NOW that is a true test of multitasking because it both force you to pay attention to different area, whereas the game multitask 2 only ask you to pay attention to similar task on a very small screen estate.
stereotype threat by manaway · 2012-06-08 23:59 · Score: 1

The phrase for this is "stereotype threat." It's real, there's nothing funny about it; serious and humorless is the better approach. I recently caught myself making a sexual distinction even while pointing out the false generalization of a particular nationality distinction. Stereotypes are insidious; if you're laughing it off, you're a bigot.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you...
Very well agreed by KramberryKoncerto · 2012-06-09 00:28 · Score: 1

But I see no action. Please, please, send more women to my office.
Very true - the first decisions are by young men by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 04:28 · Score: 1

Exactly so. I saw this in the U.S. and see it in Europe too. Whereas young males like and prefer to research and decide on their own, women almost universally seek out the advice of ...those same young males who have done the research.
It's almost to an annoying extent. My GF should be quite capable of deciding what e-reader, if any, to buy. But noooo.... she has to get my advice on what to buy. And inevitably her final purchase is based on whatever I say, however flippant.
Quite wisely, tech companies get this and target the deciders (young men).
Article misses reasons by a mile by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 06:01 · Score: 0

Certainly it's true that young males aren't significant market players in these technologies. The entire typical nerdy "early adopter" markets are largely irrelevant now but not for the reasons given. Actually it's because the technology adoption curves of most of the major technologies are all coming to an end-of-life (mass adoption) at exactly the same time. This includes computers, internet and most of the technologies listed or implied in the article. Most everything that is mainstreamed as "high tech".
Young males *could* become a major demographic if a new disruptive technology appears - young males usually dominate early adoption and especially long-cycle disruptive technologies. It simply won't be these technologies ever again: they've achieved the status of the wheel, paper and books, and electricity in terms of population adoption. THAT'S WHY WOMEN ARE LARGE PLAYERS: because ALL people are players in late adoption phases of any technology. What will come and become the new disruptive technology will necessarily be something different.
Re:It's called networking/rainmaking when men do i by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-09 06:56 · Score: 0

Recently a commenter suggested that I post about how I became a female misogynist. I've been thinking about what to post.
I could summarize my life story, which has been an object lesson - though far from the worst one I know of - in the disastrous effects of allowing women power in society, but then, whose hasn't? Most people of my generation and younger had mothers who were happy to be told that being a mother was something you could do in your spare time, between more important, "fulfilling" pursuits.
No one has been able to remain unaware that our schools, which are run almost entirely by women, have become hotbeds of violence and sexual assault in which little if any "learning" takes place, so I don't need to recount my personal saga of spending my childhood being beaten up and groped by boys while the teachers watched happily, giggling girlishly when one of the boys glanced her way. Just last night I came across this: Girls Accepting Sexual Assault At School As Fact Of Life. Consider this carefully: this is a realm where the authority figures are almost all female, and girls are completely unsafe from boys in it. This is precisely the opposite of what feminists keep claiming will happen if they're in charge. (Also take into account that many of these boys who terrorized me were denied a male authority figure at home by divorce. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals, welfare recipients, and substance abusers come from fatherless homes.)
Then there's the many female friends who turned on me for the most incredibly superficial reasons. No amount of generosity on my part could forestall this: gifts, shelter, financial support, a sympathetic ear, favors, hopping on a plane at a moment's notice (in October of 2001, no less) because I was needed, everything I could give did me no good when I had served my purpose and the female in question was bored with me. This is why divorce is so hard to get in civilized countries; women, by nature, will drop people when they're no longer amusing or useful. When they're in a chimpanzee troop or a primitive tribe, this is only sensible for keeping the species going, but for a civilization, it pretty much sucks. Women with a sense of loyalty exist, but they are very rare. But everyone who has entrusted a woman with affection has experienced this.
And of course, there's the women I've dated. Being a female misogynist is an uncomfortable position for a lesbian, but it's also damn near inescapable. When I first came out of the closet, I rented a movie called Bar Girls, about a bunch of constantly shifting, insanely neurotic lesbian romantic relationships. I thought it was impossibly over the top. Of course, at that point I'd only had one date. One year later, I had been in several relationships every bit as insane. I spent two years in the lesbian dating game, experiencing firsthand what the Sexual Revolution has done to people's ability to commit. The straight women who write Cosmo are always complaining that they can't get men to commit to marriage. The women I've dated couldn't handle commitments along the lines of "I'll meet you at eight". I dated one woman for two weeks. Not only was she unable to stay faithful for an entire fortnight, I also caught her in four separate lies - which means there must be more I didn't stick around long enough to find out about. Then there was the one who was sleeping with several other people and using drugs, both of which she lied about right up until the end. And the one who whined and whined about how her ex-girlfriend had battered her and cheated on her, and then dumped me when that same ex asked her to come back. The only lesbians I know who don't have a supply of similar horror stories are the ones who haven't dated yet. And I know that straight men get put through the exact same wringers.
I had dreamed of meeting Miss Right and settling down with her and raising a family, a proper loving family to compensate for the one I didn't have growing up. (This, by the way, is one of the most damaging effects of fe
I'll believe it when I see it. by Karmashock · 2012-06-09 22:57 · Score: 1

Women don't dominate these fields because men make them feel unwelcome. Who says the men feel welcome in these fields? The garage innovation that remains the source of much of this talent and change has nothing to do with a culture of acceptance and everything to do with people going off on their own investing their time in these things. Women don't do it. No one stopped them. They could have founded apple or microsoft or google or facebook... they didn't because this doesn't interest them.
And it's also rather silly to say that only women can make products for women. The perfume industry is dominated by men. They make most of it. Men also tend to dominate the fashion industry. On and on. Look at all the products that are mostly consumed by women and you'll find that there are a lot of men not just running it but designing it and providing the creative energy for it.
I don't know why that is... it just is... and before you say it's all about male oppression of women... in the fashion industry we're talking about mostly openly gay men. If you think gay men have an easier chance of it then women... you're high.

--
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Liberty Prime says: by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-11 00:49 · Score: 0

Radical feminist detected on American soil. Probability of mission hindrance....................ZERO PERCENT!!! We will not fear the pink menace.