But... I *do* work in aerospace, and that *is* one way to handle the software component of the spacecraft.
A lot of space missions have a fairly narrow window in which they can launch; after that, there's no point in bothering. You *can* send new object files to the spacecraft. You *can* reboot the spacecraft midflight.
Historically, developers have said that it is more profitable to design games for boys than for women, because it was believed that boys were a bigger market.
If women in fact comprise the bigger market, well, there may be implications there for the industry.
There was a report on CNN a few weeks ago about pot usage... most had to do with Canada, but anyway... they reported that according to their survey (not sure if it was call-in vs. them calling people, not sure if it was Canadians or USians or what), 93% favored legalization of marijuana.
NINETY-THREE PERCENT.
I'm no statistician, but it seems likely that those numbers are significant. You suggest that pot smokers are wrong in (wanting to) believe everyone supports reform... but I'm not so sure that they are.
Not that I've ever seen this movie or have ever been involved in a rape trial, but don't they look for evidence of recent intercourse too (tiny cuts, bruises, etc. that sex often causes)? Not just the presence of semen?
I agree that it's nice to have open development, but with an open source license, you don't need the original developers to welcome you -- all you need is someone willing to spearhead a new effort.
If a development community isn't willing to play nice, you can always branch off and use their code to start your own open community.
Sure, it's easier (and cleaner!) for the original development group to do this for you, but if they won't, you do have a choice.
I get what you're saying, but just as a note... you could also sort the explorer listing by extension and hilight all of your.mp3 files pretty quickly.
A lot of people are amazingly (to me, anyway) bad at remembering commands, not to mention typing them. For some people, remembering how to get to the run menu, type 'cmd', cd to the directory the care about, and type some command is much slower, or at least much more frustrating, than the point and click approach.
(As far as I'm concerned, the windows command prompt is torture, anyway. If cygwin is installed, I'll use that, but I far prefer using some combination of the run menu and the explorer to using that piece of crap pseudo DOS prompt.)
I've given up trying to show people what's fastest/easiest for me. What matters is, what's fastest/easiest for *them*?
Re:Googlewashing, PageRank and Online reputation..
on
NYT On Online Reputations
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Whenever I'm considering a product, I google for that product + "review", and I generally get a good idea of how well the product was received. Mountain bikes, monitors, cars... there's almost always a review by *someone*. It's probably the case that dissatisfied customers are more likely to post than satisfied ones; still, I've seen tons of comprehensive reviews ("It's mostly good, but watch out for this aspect...") as well as cheerleaders ("This is the best xyz ever!!!!! You must get it NOW!!!!")
Sure, it takes some amount of brain activity to synthesize the reviews into a belief of how well the product will serve me... As a simple example, I looked at a bunch of reviews of a certain mountain bike. The only complaint (this being for a hardtail, mind you, not full suspension) was that it felt a bit rough landing 7-foot jumps. Well, I'm quite certain I won't be doing that, and if I were to be doing that, I'd probably get a full suspension bike. So that complaint didn't alter my generally positive view of the bike one whit.
Anyway, point being, it's easy to find a wide variety of reviews on any single product... granted, that's not the same as establishing a view of the corporation, but customer reviews of several key products are probably a good indicator of how well a company is meeting its customers' needs.
Some of us like the taste of coffee, but don't like the effects.
Believe me, I love a good caffeine buzz -- and for the longest time, I didn't think it was affecting me, because I could easily go to sleep at night, and I could sleep for 12 hours at a stretch, too!
Problem was, I was always tired. No amount of sleep was enough. My doctor suggested quitting caffeine -- and it worked! Like a charm. Sure, I had a pounding headache for the first week, but after that, I felt great, and I could wake up refreshed after a normal amount of sleep. I actually had *more* energy than I did while on caffeine.
I grew up drinking coffee. My dad taught me how to brew it when I was four. Cheap decaf sucks -- my understanding is that they use chlorine in the process, but whatever the reason, cheap decaf makes my stomach churn. It also tastes awful. Expensive decaf is better, but still just a little less tasty than the real deal.
If they can make a plant that will give me yummy coffee and little caffeine, I'm all for it!
The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card -- technically sci fi, it's really about the author's exploration of human nature: What makes us human? What makes a person great? People go on about Ender's Game, and it's pretty good, but I think the story of Jason Worthing goes much deeper.
Trader by Charles de Lint -- A story about waking up in a stranger's body sounds a bit cheesy, but this one sucked me in with its exploration of identity and personality. The ending wasn't the predictable warm, fuzzy, everything's okay type, either.
Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice, both historical fiction with no vampires or magic whatsoever. She does a wonderful job of bringing these places and times to life.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson -- just incredibly engaging. The book is huge, but it's a page-turner from start to finish. Actually, I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson or Steven Bury (an alternate pen name) that I haven't adored.
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower). Epic, beautifully written coming of age story set within the context of a compelling war between good and evil. The characters really come alive.
You say, "You can't listen to that much in a reasonable fashion."
Who are you to dictate what's reasonable?
I have 41G of MP3s; well over 5000 songs, but I forget the exact number. I like to load the whole thing up on random and listen as I muck around on my computer. Why is that unreasonable? Just because you personally might prefer your music to have a theme-of-the-week doesn't mean I do.
I like to have all of my music avialable because I don't know this morning what this evening's mood will be. Is it techno? Classical? Metal? Folk? I'd rather have it all available and only listen to some of it than have some of it available and want to listen to something else.
Having your music take up a lot of disk space is not "simple geek nonsense"; it's a preference for variety and accessability.
If I'm going to run multiple OSes, I have a choice of two machines, each running one OS, or one machine, dual-booting (or running VMWare). One choice allows me instant, fast access to both operating systems; the other is less convenient. I choose convenience. How is making sure that you have access to all your mp3s any different?
You're illustrating exactly the problem I have with modern-day beliefs about gender differences.
" I'm quite sure there's something they're also _better_ at than men."
Yeah, I'd like to believe that, too, but the funny thing is, the vast majority have only heard about what you guys are better at, not what we women are better at -- or if we are told we're better at something, it's something along the lines of sitting at home reading "the hungry caterpillar" to our 2.4 kids.
If more studies were coming out showing that women were better at things that actually applied to fields I'm interested in, and/or perhaps if the capabilities which women supposedly excel in were considered important by society, then maybe I'd be somewhat mollified. But that's not the way it turns out, is it, because you can't even come up with a single example of what women are better at for your post. (And don't give me this "well women can give birth" crap -- some of us just plain don't want to.)
Frankly, I don't give a god-damn about what the "average man" can do vs. the "average woman" because I'm neither -- I'm me. And frankly, I am terrified of finding my options limited to those that are considered best for me simply because of my gender, when I strongly believe that we have yet to figure out which "gender differences" are nature, which are nurture, and which are simply folklore that people have grown up to believe.
It may be convenient to use MS products, but it is not a need. If I cannot afford (or choose not to spend money on) these products, no one is forcing me to use them. There is no gun to my head or the heads of my loved ones. It is still a choice. I need food. I need shelter. I need medical attention. I do not need a computer, let alone an application.
Don't try to rip away my autonomy or yours. We all make choices in life. If I choose to use software without the permission of the distributor, it is exactly that -- a choice. I'm not even telling you whether it's right or wrong -- it's a decision based on your personal beliefs and tolerance for the possiblity of jail time. But it's still a decision.
You're mixing two arguments -- ability to interoperate and the non-material nature of software. What if the product in question were a particular piece of hardware? Only one company produces it, and many of your customers use it. The property of "affecting your ability to interact with Starbuck's customers" is not one that exclusively applies to software, so your use of "in other words" is simply an attempt to gloss over your lack of ability to connect the first argument to the second.
If MS products are overpriced or bundled in obnoxious ways, how does that "force" me to pirate?
Starbucks coffee is pretty expensive. That doesn't "force" me to steal cups of coffee. If I choose to steal a cup of coffee, that is my decision, not the inevitable result of their high prices.
Hey, I hate MS as much as the next person, but I still believe that I'm in control of my own actions.
Altavista was the top search engine among the cognoscenti. Then one day, someone found out that Altavista had been selling top search spots to the highest bidder. These spots weren't specially marked in any way -- they were being presented as plain old search results. People felt betrayed by their old standby and started using other search engines. Some time after that, Google appeared on the scene.
The author also wrote a book on why single-sex education is good... and it shows.
I have serious reservations about gender-oriented education. I'm female, and I *don't* fit in with the averages. I *was* outspoken in my classes, and I *did* major in CS. I didn't even know what "programming" was when I took intro to CS, but after the first assignment, I was hooked.
In this article, they talk about trying to change the CS curriculum to involve fewer "girl-unfriendly" elements.
From the article: "The environment isn't girl-friendly. Intelligent, creative girls want to do larger-scale programs that actually do something. They don't want to look at a logarithm that deals with a math thing and how we're going to apply it. They don't like puzzle problems -- or they don't exclusively, and yet that's a lot of what the Advanced Placement test is about."
Give me a break. If someone doesn't enjoy or do well at puzzle problems, how on earth are they going to turn customer requirements into a working product? Maybe there's a reason the AP test focuses on these things?
And sure, I don't remember a lot of the math I learned in college now, but understanding the foundation for algorithms, why this one is faster than that one, etc. when you're learning them is pretty damn important.
If these people had their way and the educational world were divided into girl sections and boy sections, misfits like me would definitely lose out. Maybe instead of trying to separate kids because the girls (on average) won't speak up in a class with boys, we should *gasp* look at the root causes -- the socialization that goes on in the home and on the streets.
I saw a little girl the other day, maybe 2.5 or 3 years old, with her mom in the store. They were looking at some themed candy -- different cartoon characters decorated the containers. The girl picks the Batman candy, and mom puts it back. "Batman's not for girls, honey. Why don't you pick something more appropriate? How about Tweety? You like Tweety?"
Until parents learn not to put predispositions in the minds of their kids (girls, don't do math or contact sports, the boys won't like you; boys, be tough and never show the hurt, or you'll look like a fairy), there will be uneven numbers in the different disciplines. That's just the way it goes.
On a side note, and I may be totally off-base, but I wonder if anyone does studies on how many young men major in english lit and education?
"From the beginning computers have been built by engineers for engineers and by men for men. And it came out in the earliest language of computers - the early IBM system had, you know, do you want to abort, terminate or fail this process was the standard language that came up on your screen. It was not woman friendly talk."
Some people really have to stretch to get their research dollars, don't they?
I haven't actually bought this book yet, but I plan to do so. Not because of the class listings -- as several have mentioned, these are just javadocs on paper -- but because of the examples. I found the book's website while searching for a solution to a particular problem. I was able to use the examples to solve my problem, but that was just the beginning. I found myself browsing through the examples, picking up lots of great little tips and tricks. Sure, a lot of it was old hat, but these examples are really easy to follow and definitely shore up the weak spots in java documentation, which all too often assumes that a method's definition is all you need to understand its proper use.
Slashdot Mirror
But ... I *do* work in aerospace, and that *is* one way to handle the software component of the spacecraft.
A lot of space missions have a fairly narrow window in which they can launch; after that, there's no point in bothering. You *can* send new object files to the spacecraft. You *can* reboot the spacecraft midflight.
Er ...
...
Not to be picky or anything, but
You said, "You call it a holy war, I call it English."
I believe that proper English would require you to rephrase the above as:
1. "You call it a holy war, and I call it English."
2. "You call it a holy war; I call it English."
At least, that's what I learned in high school.
I suspect you're missing the point.
Historically, developers have said that it is more profitable to design games for boys than for women, because it was believed that boys were a bigger market.
If women in fact comprise the bigger market, well, there may be implications there for the industry.
There was a report on CNN a few weeks ago about pot usage ... most had to do with Canada, but anyway ... they reported that according to their survey (not sure if it was call-in vs. them calling people, not sure if it was Canadians or USians or what), 93% favored legalization of marijuana.
... but I'm not so sure that they are.
NINETY-THREE PERCENT.
I'm no statistician, but it seems likely that those numbers are significant. You suggest that pot smokers are wrong in (wanting to) believe everyone supports reform
It's not the 'update' part that bothers me; it's the 'automatic' part.
Not running automatic updates is *not* the same as never updating. Some people, like me, like to know what we're about to put on our machines.
Not that I've ever seen this movie or have ever been involved in a rape trial, but don't they look for evidence of recent intercourse too (tiny cuts, bruises, etc. that sex often causes)? Not just the presence of semen?
I agree that it's nice to have open development, but with an open source license, you don't need the original developers to welcome you -- all you need is someone willing to spearhead a new effort.
If a development community isn't willing to play nice, you can always branch off and use their code to start your own open community.
Sure, it's easier (and cleaner!) for the original development group to do this for you, but if they won't, you do have a choice.
I get what you're saying, but just as a note ... you could also sort the explorer listing by extension and hilight all of your .mp3 files pretty quickly.
A lot of people are amazingly (to me, anyway) bad at remembering commands, not to mention typing them. For some people, remembering how to get to the run menu, type 'cmd', cd to the directory the care about, and type some command is much slower, or at least much more frustrating, than the point and click approach.
(As far as I'm concerned, the windows command prompt is torture, anyway. If cygwin is installed, I'll use that, but I far prefer using some combination of the run menu and the explorer to using that piece of crap pseudo DOS prompt.)
I've given up trying to show people what's fastest/easiest for me. What matters is, what's fastest/easiest for *them*?
Whenever I'm considering a product, I google for that product + "review", and I generally get a good idea of how well the product was received. Mountain bikes, monitors, cars ... there's almost always a review by *someone*. It's probably the case that dissatisfied customers are more likely to post than satisfied ones; still, I've seen tons of comprehensive reviews ("It's mostly good, but watch out for this aspect ...") as well as cheerleaders ("This is the best xyz ever!!!!! You must get it NOW!!!!")
... As a simple example, I looked at a bunch of reviews of a certain mountain bike. The only complaint (this being for a hardtail, mind you, not full suspension) was that it felt a bit rough landing 7-foot jumps. Well, I'm quite certain I won't be doing that, and if I were to be doing that, I'd probably get a full suspension bike. So that complaint didn't alter my generally positive view of the bike one whit.
... granted, that's not the same as establishing a view of the corporation, but customer reviews of several key products are probably a good indicator of how well a company is meeting its customers' needs.
Sure, it takes some amount of brain activity to synthesize the reviews into a belief of how well the product will serve me
Anyway, point being, it's easy to find a wide variety of reviews on any single product
Some of us like the taste of coffee, but don't like the effects.
Believe me, I love a good caffeine buzz -- and for the longest time, I didn't think it was affecting me, because I could easily go to sleep at night, and I could sleep for 12 hours at a stretch, too!
Problem was, I was always tired. No amount of sleep was enough. My doctor suggested quitting caffeine -- and it worked! Like a charm. Sure, I had a pounding headache for the first week, but after that, I felt great, and I could wake up refreshed after a normal amount of sleep. I actually had *more* energy than I did while on caffeine.
I grew up drinking coffee. My dad taught me how to brew it when I was four. Cheap decaf sucks -- my understanding is that they use chlorine in the process, but whatever the reason, cheap decaf makes my stomach churn. It also tastes awful. Expensive decaf is better, but still just a little less tasty than the real deal.
If they can make a plant that will give me yummy coffee and little caffeine, I'm all for it!
The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card -- technically sci fi, it's really about the author's exploration of human nature: What makes us human? What makes a person great? People go on about Ender's Game, and it's pretty good, but I think the story of Jason Worthing goes much deeper.
Trader by Charles de Lint -- A story about waking up in a stranger's body sounds a bit cheesy, but this one sucked me in with its exploration of identity and personality. The ending wasn't the predictable warm, fuzzy, everything's okay type, either.
Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice, both historical fiction with no vampires or magic whatsoever. She does a wonderful job of bringing these places and times to life.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson -- just incredibly engaging. The book is huge, but it's a page-turner from start to finish. Actually, I haven't read anything by Neal Stephenson or Steven Bury (an alternate pen name) that I haven't adored.
The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (Dragonbone Chair, Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower). Epic, beautifully written coming of age story set within the context of a compelling war between good and evil. The characters really come alive.
Just tried this ...
I didn't see Content.IE5 in the "files" section of the explorer, but I did see it when I expanded the directory tree.
What does this directory actually do, though?
True, but you have to be careful.
In java, if both a and b are booleans,
if (a = b) {}
will compile without a peep.
Java has no problem with evaluating assignments as conditionals; it simply distinguishes between numerics and booleans.
(I tested this recently before doing a presentation for my company on java.)
You say, "You can't listen to that much in a reasonable fashion."
Who are you to dictate what's reasonable?
I have 41G of MP3s; well over 5000 songs, but I forget the exact number. I like to load the whole thing up on random and listen as I muck around on my computer. Why is that unreasonable? Just because you personally might prefer your music to have a theme-of-the-week doesn't mean I do.
I like to have all of my music avialable because I don't know this morning what this evening's mood will be. Is it techno? Classical? Metal? Folk? I'd rather have it all available and only listen to some of it than have some of it available and want to listen to something else.
Having your music take up a lot of disk space is not "simple geek nonsense"; it's a preference for variety and accessability.
If I'm going to run multiple OSes, I have a choice of two machines, each running one OS, or one machine, dual-booting (or running VMWare). One choice allows me instant, fast access to both operating systems; the other is less convenient. I choose convenience. How is making sure that you have access to all your mp3s any different?
You're illustrating exactly the problem I have with modern-day beliefs about gender differences.
" I'm quite sure there's something they're also _better_ at than men."
Yeah, I'd like to believe that, too, but the funny thing is, the vast majority have only heard about what you guys are better at, not what we women are better at -- or if we are told we're better at something, it's something along the lines of sitting at home reading "the hungry caterpillar" to our 2.4 kids.
If more studies were coming out showing that women were better at things that actually applied to fields I'm interested in, and/or perhaps if the capabilities which women supposedly excel in were considered important by society, then maybe I'd be somewhat mollified. But that's not the way it turns out, is it, because you can't even come up with a single example of what women are better at for your post. (And don't give me this "well women can give birth" crap -- some of us just plain don't want to.)
Frankly, I don't give a god-damn about what the "average man" can do vs. the "average woman" because I'm neither -- I'm me. And frankly, I am terrified of finding my options limited to those that are considered best for me simply because of my gender, when I strongly believe that we have yet to figure out which "gender differences" are nature, which are nurture, and which are simply folklore that people have grown up to believe.
-- monique
It may be convenient to use MS products, but it is not a need. If I cannot afford (or choose not to spend money on) these products, no one is forcing me to use them. There is no gun to my head or the heads of my loved ones. It is still a choice. I need food. I need shelter. I need medical attention. I do not need a computer, let alone an application.
Don't try to rip away my autonomy or yours. We all make choices in life. If I choose to use software without the permission of the distributor, it is exactly that -- a choice. I'm not even telling you whether it's right or wrong -- it's a decision based on your personal beliefs and tolerance for the possiblity of jail time. But it's still a decision.
You're mixing two arguments -- ability to interoperate and the non-material nature of software. What if the product in question were a particular piece of hardware? Only one company produces it, and many of your customers use it. The property of "affecting your ability to interact with Starbuck's customers" is not one that exclusively applies to software, so your use of "in other words" is simply an attempt to gloss over your lack of ability to connect the first argument to the second.
If MS products are overpriced or bundled in obnoxious ways, how does that "force" me to pirate?
Starbucks coffee is pretty expensive. That doesn't "force" me to steal cups of coffee. If I choose to steal a cup of coffee, that is my decision, not the inevitable result of their high prices.
Hey, I hate MS as much as the next person, but I still believe that I'm in control of my own actions.
People keep asking why Altavista died ...
If I remember correctly, it went as follows:
Altavista was the top search engine among the cognoscenti. Then one day, someone found out that Altavista had been selling top search spots to the highest bidder. These spots weren't specially marked in any way -- they were being presented as plain old search results. People felt betrayed by their old standby and started using other search engines. Some time after that, Google appeared on the scene.
At least, that's how I remember it.
The author also wrote a book on why single-sex education is good ... and it shows.
I have serious reservations about gender-oriented education. I'm female, and I *don't* fit in with the averages. I *was* outspoken in my classes, and I *did* major in CS. I didn't even know what "programming" was when I took intro to CS, but after the first assignment, I was hooked.
In this article, they talk about trying to change the CS curriculum to involve fewer "girl-unfriendly" elements.
From the article:
"The environment isn't girl-friendly. Intelligent, creative girls want to do larger-scale programs that actually do something. They don't want to look at a logarithm that deals with a math thing and how we're going to apply it. They don't like puzzle problems -- or they don't exclusively, and yet that's a lot of what the Advanced Placement test is about."
Give me a break. If someone doesn't enjoy or do well at puzzle problems, how on earth are they going to turn customer requirements into a working product? Maybe there's a reason the AP test focuses on these things?
And sure, I don't remember a lot of the math I learned in college now, but understanding the foundation for algorithms, why this one is faster than that one, etc. when you're learning them is pretty damn important.
If these people had their way and the educational world were divided into girl sections and boy sections, misfits like me would definitely lose out. Maybe instead of trying to separate kids because the girls (on average) won't speak up in a class with boys, we should *gasp* look at the root causes -- the socialization that goes on in the home and on the streets.
I saw a little girl the other day, maybe 2.5 or 3 years old, with her mom in the store. They were looking at some themed candy -- different cartoon characters decorated the containers. The girl picks the Batman candy, and mom puts it back. "Batman's not for girls, honey. Why don't you pick something more appropriate? How about Tweety? You like Tweety?"
Until parents learn not to put predispositions in the minds of their kids (girls, don't do math or contact sports, the boys won't like you; boys, be tough and never show the hurt, or you'll look like a fairy), there will be uneven numbers in the different disciplines. That's just the way it goes.
On a side note, and I may be totally off-base, but I wonder if anyone does studies on how many young men major in english lit and education?
Did anyone read this quote from the article?
"From the beginning computers have been built by engineers for engineers and by men for men. And it came out in the earliest language of computers - the early IBM system had, you know, do you want to abort, terminate or fail this process was the standard language that came up on your screen. It was not woman friendly talk."
Some people really have to stretch to get their research dollars, don't they?
I haven't actually bought this book yet, but I plan to do so. Not because of the class listings -- as several have mentioned, these are just javadocs on paper -- but because of the examples. I found the book's website while searching for a solution to a particular problem. I was able to use the examples to solve my problem, but that was just the beginning. I found myself browsing through the examples, picking up lots of great little tips and tricks. Sure, a lot of it was old hat, but these examples are really easy to follow and definitely shore up the weak spots in java documentation, which all too often assumes that a method's definition is all you need to understand its proper use.