Your response amounts to "just tough it out" - it is an ignorant attitude and is part of the problem. You clearly don't understand depression and I'm not even going to try to educate you on it.
There are people who when faced with an unpleasant situation will commit suicide rather than deal with it. That isn't what happens with someone with depression. A person with clinical depression who becomes suicidal usually does not see any other choice but death.
Agreed. Depression is usually completely misunderstood by those with no experience of it, either direct or by loved one. Worse are the people who know someone is depressed and then tell them to "just snap out of it" or who pile on extra stress in other ways - it's like kicking the crutches out from someone with broken legs.
But this is the inverse of reality, in which the thing people are ultimately judged by is the work they produce, and often the major differentiator is the amount of effort involved.
I agree with your comments somewhat. The one above caught my eye though. It sounds true but "the work they produce" is often justified by a metric that evaluates more than what you did, how hard it was to do it and how well it works. For example "are you a team player?" I've been on a few projects now where the culture was one of - don't point fingers when people screw up. So someone messes up badly meaning you have to redo 50% of your work but when you explain why your bill is 50% higher than they had expected they don't like it... personal responsibility in the workplace is starting to become rarer. So your comment might better be something along the lines of "... people are ultimately judged by is the work they produce, and how they produced it,..."
Well there will be no possibility of work without that idea phase so you can see why they think that. Maybe it should be "the idea phase is worth 90% and the implementation phase is worth another 90%."
Seriously though, I know what you mean. I've known many guys who get stuck with the "it was my idea so I should stay in control and most of the profit should be mine" syndrome. I try to explain that ending up owning 10% of something that makes millions is a lot better than owning 90% of something that makes thousands or even nothing. They nod their heads up and down and agree and then proceed to ignore it. When the time comes to give up control they just can't do it. And the brighter they are the worse it is because they are convinced they can run everything - make the design decisions, make the marketing decisions, make the HR decisions, handle the financing etc. And even when they manage to give those up they still want to be "big cheese" and tell the experts how to do their jobs or veto the decisions of the experts.
I'm not sure I'd do any better in their position though.
It wasn't me, but the point was that this was the interface presented to a new user by default. I don't think "try a completely different UI" is really as reasonable response to "why have you needlessly changed things?"...
Sure the idea of having linux as the major OS is a nice dream, but at the end of the day how does improving it for "plebs" help the rest of us.
ok, if you don't care about linux being adopted as a major OS then sure, there's no point. Or is there? You know it's actually the case that you have a lot in common with "plebs" and making things work better for them might make things work better for you too... Sometimes it's easier to see things when you use a "simpler" test model (or subject as the case may be).
Surprisingly, that's actually a remarkably bad idea...
As someone who has done product testing, for tech products designed for use by non-tech people, I can tell you it's actually a remarkably good idea. Users are in fact the real usability experts in the truest sense - and it isn't hard to find people who will tell you the blunt truth about how usable your product is. And of course studies must be conducted by experts... I was talking about the subjects of the study, not who runs the study or analyses the results.
As for faster startup times - they aren't bad now. Better to have reasonable startup times for a system that's really usable than ultra-fast startup times for a system users don't want to use. I'm sorry you don't see it that way. The chance of someone using their computer is going to be most strongly correlated with how usable it is, not whether it boots up in 10 seconds rather than 25 seconds.
As to the "Windows way" I was referring to the particular use of mouse buttons to drag and drop files - sorry I didn't make that obvious.
It would be nice if they quit making low priority, and at times frankly pointless, changes and concentrated on making it both useful to users and a happy experience. From Gutsy to Hardy the applications presented in the toolbar changed - for no good reason as far as I can see, needlessly confusing users. At the same time basic UI improvements went undone. I was going to remove Evolution for someone until I saw what synaptic said would also need to be removed... choice apparently doesn't include letting the users decide for themselves what mail, calendar etc. to use...
It isn't that I don't appreciate what the Ubuntu people are doing but they are fooling themselves if they think that installing and using Ubuntu (or any other distro I suspect) is anything like a friendly, happy experience for a new user. If it comes preconfigured on a system and the user doesn't want to change anything then maybe... but otherwise normal human beings aren't going to be happy.
Here's an example - iirc Ubuntu is going to make Samba the default file share mechanism (rather than NFS)... I tried using it to copy a directory tree for someone and it bitched about file names being too long... now they weren't too long for the source (Win2K) and they weren't too long for Hardy but apparently they were too long for Samba...the limit seemed to be 128. They were music files with artist, album, track number, track name etc. in the file name... very easy to get past 128 chars. Imagine being a naive user and getting that message... they will give up
If you're coming from a windows environment is it obvious in Ubuntu how to copy, rather than move, a file to a directory? I don't think so. Yes you can find it in the docs but users don't want to read the docs - why do things differently (just to be different?) and cause the user to have to work needlessly? Maybe just doing it the way Windows does is a patent problem thing but it was one of the first problems my friend encountered.
My suggestion to Ubuntu folk is this - pay a bunch of people to use the current system and tell you what they don't like - and then change what *they* want not what you think they should want changed. Get people who have never used a computer, get people who have used a computer but not Ubuntu or other distros, get people who have used the current version for some months... I bet you boot times and web integration aren't anywhere near the top of the resulting wish-list.
And geez, it's the 21st century and we still have fixed limits on the length of paths and filenames?
Well you said:
You have to trust that those with the votes will take the time to ensure the needs of those that don't (can't) vote are met. Historically, this doesn't happen.
Those with the votes voted to give the franchise to women and blacks - two groups that were under represented in government. So apparently those with the votes can, and at least occasionally do, address the needs of those that can't vote.
The idea that only those who share attribute X can adequately represent the needs of others that have attribute X is fallacious. And giving more value to the vote of those who are educated on relevant things seems reasonable to me as long as everyone has the opportunity to become educated about the relevant topics. Do you really see it as a bad thing that people who can do basic arithmetic and figure out the cost of borrowing have votes a little more weighted than those who cannot figure out if government is being honest when it says it will fund three 1 million dollar projects from a 2 million dollar fund? Heck if that's the case then I want my dog to have the vote too because he'll make just as good decisions.
Mmmm I'd say women and blacks getting the vote are pretty good counter-examples to your claim. In any case my main point is that "one man one vote" and (theoretically) everyone voting isn't the only way to run a democracy.
Is it the case that there is only one definition of democracy?
Suppose everybody starts off with one vote. Then you get extra votes by demonstrating abilities relevant to good voting.
If the vote is for government then perhaps you demonstrate some basic level of knowledge relevant to government. For example you pass a simple test on arithmetic, compound interest etc. demonstrating you could understand the cost of government borrowing, that you could tell when the government makes statements amounting to cutting that pie into five quarter pieces etc. Perhaps you get another vote for demonstrating that you understand the structural nature of your government (whether it have houses, parliaments, legislatures, senates) and how the parts fit together. Maybe you get another vote for passing high school. And another for university degree.
Heck I think we'd get better results if, in any particular election, we just had a random draw of 1000 people from the pool of eligible voters and then only those people would get to vote. Have the candidates appear in forums directly in front of those 1000 people and ban TV.
It isn't even a question of ignorance - although that might be the next problem. The first problem is being able to recognize that there is a question. The second problem is that, even with all the facts/evidence/etc., most people do not know how to analyze a question to determine if it is a legitimate or a relevant question (for whatever purpose is at hand) or, having decided it is a legitimate/relevant question, to consider how one might go about finding an answer to the question.
I'm all for teaching more science but the schools also need to teach logic, analysis etc.
Alternately, it could indicate that for social reasons women are less likely to go into a career track that would lead them to such a position. The point being, same pay for the same job is not conclusive evidence of no gender discrimination.
<cough> <cough> Well yes, proving a negative has always been rather hard.
I don't think you are correct. I remember reading a study a year ago that compared men and women's salaries for the same jobs and levels of education and experience and the results were women paid 15% less overall (25% less when one only looked at the private sector).
The poster was correct. About 10 years ago Statistics Canada did exactly that kind of study and found less than a 3% difference in income after normalizing for these sorts of factors. Less than 3% among younger groups (for reasons that should be obvious). But that's never what gets reported. Instead it's "Women earn 65 cents on the dollar compared to men"... of course that number is achieved by, amongst other intellectually dishonest things, comparing women working 30 hours/week to men working 52 hours/week. Well duh, yes working longer at the same job means you make more money... do they really expect to work less hours and still get paid the same? Well, sadly, yes I've heard that suggestion made in the name of "equality".
Here's another statistic that rarely gets any press - men put in more time for the benefit of their families than women. Again from Statistics Canada. Yes, when you include all the time getting to and from work, time at work, time doing things for the family at home etc. etc. men put in about 4 hours a week more than women.
Caveat: my country may not be the same as yours. YMMV.
Where I live the breakdown of kids entering university is 3 girls for every 2 boys. Yet still all we hear about is how girls are "disadvantaged" and need extra resources thrown at them to improve their performance in university. Meanwhile the boys aren't even making it to university.
And the entrance split isn't the fault of the universities - they base their acceptance on high school results. In the high schools the honor roll positions and scholarships largely go to girls. And yet still we hear how girls are disadvantaged in school and need more encouragement and resources thrown at them to achieve equality.
One has to wonder what the definition of equality is in the educational sphere - nothing but female students?
Well there is a significant difference between "never" and "so infrequent as to be statistically insignificant"... in decades of taking and teaching science and CS I have never once heard such a comment directed to a female. In fact the schools went out of their way to encourage female students to take math, engineering and science - starting several decades ago.
It became quite trendy about 25 years ago for parents to give their little children presents that were "gender neutral" or even "gender opposite" toys, e.g. giving dolls to boys and trucks to girls. The thing is, as the parents rapidly found out, the boys found ways to use the dolls to play war etc. etc. Boys and girls are different. Women and men are different. It's not a crime and not a bad thing - people should just get used to it.
Oh no, of course you wouldn't nit pick... or, oh wait... here you are doing it again... even your denial is implicitly nit picking a definition of nit picking just to defend yourself against the nit picking you had already done. lol!!!
Please, I beg you, point the gun away from your foot and save yourself by stopping now.
And I'm sorry you didn't get it but I didn't paraphrase what you wrote re Occam's Razor, I gave a more complete and correct definition of Occam's Razor.
As for the other, Occam's Razor has little to do with logic per se. Rather, it implies that the simplest solution (i.e., the one that introduces fewest complications) is the most likely to be correct.
Actually it says that the solution requiring the fewest assumptions is the one most likely to be correct. The correct solution could still be more complex (which is my assumption on what you mean by complications) than other proposed solutions. When the number of assumptions is equal then the solution with the lower complexity is favoured.
ok, I guess I must have missed all those articles, where people made huge generalizations like "female programmers suck or can't compete with men", that it was in response to. BTW, didn't your Mom tell you? Two wrongs don't make a right.
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Your response amounts to "just tough it out" - it is an ignorant attitude and is part of the problem. You clearly don't understand depression and I'm not even going to try to educate you on it.
There are people who when faced with an unpleasant situation will commit suicide rather than deal with it. That isn't what happens with someone with depression. A person with clinical depression who becomes suicidal usually does not see any other choice but death.
Agreed. Depression is usually completely misunderstood by those with no experience of it, either direct or by loved one. Worse are the people who know someone is depressed and then tell them to "just snap out of it" or who pile on extra stress in other ways - it's like kicking the crutches out from someone with broken legs.
But this is the inverse of reality, in which the thing people are ultimately judged by is the work they produce, and often the major differentiator is the amount of effort involved.
I agree with your comments somewhat. The one above caught my eye though. It sounds true but "the work they produce" is often justified by a metric that evaluates more than what you did, how hard it was to do it and how well it works. For example "are you a team player?" I've been on a few projects now where the culture was one of - don't point fingers when people screw up. So someone messes up badly meaning you have to redo 50% of your work but when you explain why your bill is 50% higher than they had expected they don't like it... personal responsibility in the workplace is starting to become rarer. So your comment might better be something along the lines of "... people are ultimately judged by is the work they produce, and how they produced it, ..."
Well there will be no possibility of work without that idea phase so you can see why they think that. Maybe it should be "the idea phase is worth 90% and the implementation phase is worth another 90%."
Seriously though, I know what you mean. I've known many guys who get stuck with the "it was my idea so I should stay in control and most of the profit should be mine" syndrome. I try to explain that ending up owning 10% of something that makes millions is a lot better than owning 90% of something that makes thousands or even nothing. They nod their heads up and down and agree and then proceed to ignore it. When the time comes to give up control they just can't do it. And the brighter they are the worse it is because they are convinced they can run everything - make the design decisions, make the marketing decisions, make the HR decisions, handle the financing etc. And even when they manage to give those up they still want to be "big cheese" and tell the experts how to do their jobs or veto the decisions of the experts.
I'm not sure I'd do any better in their position though.
It wasn't me, but the point was that this was the interface presented to a new user by default. I don't think "try a completely different UI" is really as reasonable response to "why have you needlessly changed things?"...
Sure the idea of having linux as the major OS is a nice dream, but at the end of the day how does improving it for "plebs" help the rest of us.
ok, if you don't care about linux being adopted as a major OS then sure, there's no point. Or is there? You know it's actually the case that you have a lot in common with "plebs" and making things work better for them might make things work better for you too... Sometimes it's easier to see things when you use a "simpler" test model (or subject as the case may be).
Surprisingly, that's actually a remarkably bad idea...
As someone who has done product testing, for tech products designed for use by non-tech people, I can tell you it's actually a remarkably good idea. Users are in fact the real usability experts in the truest sense - and it isn't hard to find people who will tell you the blunt truth about how usable your product is. And of course studies must be conducted by experts... I was talking about the subjects of the study, not who runs the study or analyses the results.
As for faster startup times - they aren't bad now. Better to have reasonable startup times for a system that's really usable than ultra-fast startup times for a system users don't want to use. I'm sorry you don't see it that way. The chance of someone using their computer is going to be most strongly correlated with how usable it is, not whether it boots up in 10 seconds rather than 25 seconds.
As to the "Windows way" I was referring to the particular use of mouse buttons to drag and drop files - sorry I didn't make that obvious.
Boot times and web integration????
It would be nice if they quit making low priority, and at times frankly pointless, changes and concentrated on making it both useful to users and a happy experience. From Gutsy to Hardy the applications presented in the toolbar changed - for no good reason as far as I can see, needlessly confusing users. At the same time basic UI improvements went undone. I was going to remove Evolution for someone until I saw what synaptic said would also need to be removed... choice apparently doesn't include letting the users decide for themselves what mail, calendar etc. to use...
It isn't that I don't appreciate what the Ubuntu people are doing but they are fooling themselves if they think that installing and using Ubuntu (or any other distro I suspect) is anything like a friendly, happy experience for a new user. If it comes preconfigured on a system and the user doesn't want to change anything then maybe... but otherwise normal human beings aren't going to be happy.
Here's an example - iirc Ubuntu is going to make Samba the default file share mechanism (rather than NFS)... I tried using it to copy a directory tree for someone and it bitched about file names being too long... now they weren't too long for the source (Win2K) and they weren't too long for Hardy but apparently they were too long for Samba...the limit seemed to be 128. They were music files with artist, album, track number, track name etc. in the file name... very easy to get past 128 chars. Imagine being a naive user and getting that message... they will give up
If you're coming from a windows environment is it obvious in Ubuntu how to copy, rather than move, a file to a directory? I don't think so. Yes you can find it in the docs but users don't want to read the docs - why do things differently (just to be different?) and cause the user to have to work needlessly? Maybe just doing it the way Windows does is a patent problem thing but it was one of the first problems my friend encountered.
My suggestion to Ubuntu folk is this - pay a bunch of people to use the current system and tell you what they don't like - and then change what *they* want not what you think they should want changed. Get people who have never used a computer, get people who have used a computer but not Ubuntu or other distros, get people who have used the current version for some months... I bet you boot times and web integration aren't anywhere near the top of the resulting wish-list.
And geez, it's the 21st century and we still have fixed limits on the length of paths and filenames?
Well you said:
You have to trust that those with the votes will take the time to ensure the needs of those that don't (can't) vote are met. Historically, this doesn't happen.
Those with the votes voted to give the franchise to women and blacks - two groups that were under represented in government. So apparently those with the votes can, and at least occasionally do, address the needs of those that can't vote.
The idea that only those who share attribute X can adequately represent the needs of others that have attribute X is fallacious. And giving more value to the vote of those who are educated on relevant things seems reasonable to me as long as everyone has the opportunity to become educated about the relevant topics. Do you really see it as a bad thing that people who can do basic arithmetic and figure out the cost of borrowing have votes a little more weighted than those who cannot figure out if government is being honest when it says it will fund three 1 million dollar projects from a 2 million dollar fund? Heck if that's the case then I want my dog to have the vote too because he'll make just as good decisions.
Mmmm I'd say women and blacks getting the vote are pretty good counter-examples to your claim. In any case my main point is that "one man one vote" and (theoretically) everyone voting isn't the only way to run a democracy.
Is it the case that there is only one definition of democracy?
Suppose everybody starts off with one vote. Then you get extra votes by demonstrating abilities relevant to good voting.
If the vote is for government then perhaps you demonstrate some basic level of knowledge relevant to government. For example you pass a simple test on arithmetic, compound interest etc. demonstrating you could understand the cost of government borrowing, that you could tell when the government makes statements amounting to cutting that pie into five quarter pieces etc. Perhaps you get another vote for demonstrating that you understand the structural nature of your government (whether it have houses, parliaments, legislatures, senates) and how the parts fit together. Maybe you get another vote for passing high school. And another for university degree.
Heck I think we'd get better results if, in any particular election, we just had a random draw of 1000 people from the pool of eligible voters and then only those people would get to vote. Have the candidates appear in forums directly in front of those 1000 people and ban TV.
It isn't even a question of ignorance - although that might be the next problem. The first problem is being able to recognize that there is a question. The second problem is that, even with all the facts/evidence/etc., most people do not know how to analyze a question to determine if it is a legitimate or a relevant question (for whatever purpose is at hand) or, having decided it is a legitimate/relevant question, to consider how one might go about finding an answer to the question.
I'm all for teaching more science but the schools also need to teach logic, analysis etc.
Being on the other side oft he country I'm curious.... skyrocketed to how much?
Alternately, it could indicate that for social reasons women are less likely to go into a career track that would lead them to such a position. The point being, same pay for the same job is not conclusive evidence of no gender discrimination.
<cough> <cough> Well yes, proving a negative has always been rather hard.
I don't think you are correct. I remember reading a study a year ago that compared men and women's salaries for the same jobs and levels of education and experience and the results were women paid 15% less overall (25% less when one only looked at the private sector).
The poster was correct. About 10 years ago Statistics Canada did exactly that kind of study and found less than a 3% difference in income after normalizing for these sorts of factors. Less than 3% among younger groups (for reasons that should be obvious). But that's never what gets reported. Instead it's "Women earn 65 cents on the dollar compared to men"... of course that number is achieved by, amongst other intellectually dishonest things, comparing women working 30 hours/week to men working 52 hours/week. Well duh, yes working longer at the same job means you make more money... do they really expect to work less hours and still get paid the same? Well, sadly, yes I've heard that suggestion made in the name of "equality".
Here's another statistic that rarely gets any press - men put in more time for the benefit of their families than women. Again from Statistics Canada. Yes, when you include all the time getting to and from work, time at work, time doing things for the family at home etc. etc. men put in about 4 hours a week more than women.
I think that any blame in this imbalance has to fall on anti-intellectualism among boys.
Ah yes, blaming the victim - tried and true.
Caveat: my country may not be the same as yours. YMMV.
Where I live the breakdown of kids entering university is 3 girls for every 2 boys. Yet still all we hear about is how girls are "disadvantaged" and need extra resources thrown at them to improve their performance in university. Meanwhile the boys aren't even making it to university.
And the entrance split isn't the fault of the universities - they base their acceptance on high school results. In the high schools the honor roll positions and scholarships largely go to girls. And yet still we hear how girls are disadvantaged in school and need more encouragement and resources thrown at them to achieve equality.
One has to wonder what the definition of equality is in the educational sphere - nothing but female students?
Nothing like throwing in a little racism to get your sexist point across, eh?
Well there is a significant difference between "never" and "so infrequent as to be statistically insignificant"... in decades of taking and teaching science and CS I have never once heard such a comment directed to a female. In fact the schools went out of their way to encourage female students to take math, engineering and science - starting several decades ago.
It became quite trendy about 25 years ago for parents to give their little children presents that were "gender neutral" or even "gender opposite" toys, e.g. giving dolls to boys and trucks to girls. The thing is, as the parents rapidly found out, the boys found ways to use the dolls to play war etc. etc. Boys and girls are different. Women and men are different. It's not a crime and not a bad thing - people should just get used to it.
I can only imagine the uproar were anyone to start using a phrase like "estrogen poisoning" to refer to the functioning of female brains.
I went out of my way to point out that we were basically AGREEING
uh huh... suuurrrre you did...
I have no use for conversation with somebody who wants to make an argument out of nothing.
Thank goodness, at least we can be sure you aren't sitting there talking to yourself. lol!
Oh no, of course you wouldn't nit pick... or, oh wait... here you are doing it again... even your denial is implicitly nit picking a definition of nit picking just to defend yourself against the nit picking you had already done. lol!!!
Please, I beg you, point the gun away from your foot and save yourself by stopping now.
And yet, you do. lol!
I'm sorry you think I missed your point.
And I'm sorry you didn't get it but I didn't paraphrase what you wrote re Occam's Razor, I gave a more complete and correct definition of Occam's Razor.
Have a nice weekend.
As for the other, Occam's Razor has little to do with logic per se. Rather, it implies that the simplest solution (i.e., the one that introduces fewest complications) is the most likely to be correct.
Actually it says that the solution requiring the fewest assumptions is the one most likely to be correct. The correct solution could still be more complex (which is my assumption on what you mean by complications) than other proposed solutions. When the number of assumptions is equal then the solution with the lower complexity is favoured.
ok, I guess I must have missed all those articles, where people made huge generalizations like "female programmers suck or can't compete with men", that it was in response to. BTW, didn't your Mom tell you? Two wrongs don't make a right.