But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Yes, but the columnist's point was that you don't need fancy graphics with photos to tell you that. All you need is a clear diagram.
For those of us who can read maps, sure. But there's something of a sampling bias here on/. -- we tend to be folks who can process symbolic information pretty well. Maps are not a lot of use for my wife, whereas a picture of the intersection with something pointing to where she should leave would be just what she needs.
Generally, a bed is waiting for me in the destination area, and I would like to get some sleep before the morning meeting rather than spend the night driving around the one-way street system in some foreign city.
or even ask somebody along the way / make a quick phonecall to known local resident when close to destination and lost (also - they, or other people who often travel the route you are planning to take, know much more than GPS: which way is more pleasant)
Yeah, my friends love when I do that at 3am. More of a nuisance when I'm driving somewhere where I don't know anybody, and quite often don't speak the language. Just because GPS doesn't suit your lifestyle doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't be using it.
Yes, but it's only looking at one side of the issue. "Overall, the Carnegie Mellon team concluded that the time drivers spent fixated on their satnav displays decreased sixfold and the number of glances needed to confirm results decreased threefold when the navigation system simply used words and numbers to convey instructions rather than fancy graphics." Fine -- but what did it do to the number of missed turns, or the number of times the driver gets into the wrong lane becuase they don't really understand what the words and numbers are actually telling them to do? They're things that can make drivers "especially vulnerable to doing stupid(which in a car means dangerous) things" too. Most of the time sure, I just listen to my satnav. But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Your RA is correct, but only discusses the case where a PDF is presented as part of a web-browsing experience. That's not the usual situation with eBooks. If I were to download Twilight to my eReader (in any format) my problem wouldn't be that it comes out as a linear block of text. The same is true of news articles -- just how much internal navigation is needed in a news article? And links to related articles isn't the answer, because eBooks are not web pages. I read eBooks in flight, where access to dynamically updated content is flaky at to say the least. Those suggesting PDF for eBooks are making the mistake of treating eBooks as printed documents; you seem to be making the mistake of treating them as web pages. They're neither.
PDF is very poor for eBooks, because it doesn't have enough information regarding the significance of content on a page and the page size is hard-wired into the document, so for example PDF text doesn't reflow well if you change the font size on a reader, header and footer information get messed up, tabular information is a no-hoper on an eReader at anything but native page size and so on.
This will even out, with time (modern day Genghis Khans aren't siring their own clans any more), but it will take a while to sort itself out.
Will it? What would be the evolutionary driver to even it out? I suspect you're right about the evolutionary drivers that have led to the differentiation, but although (as you say) they're less marked now they still exist so the differences look set to remain.
I don't think the news is that people are buying turntables to go along with their records. The news is that so many people are buying records that stores are beginning to stock record players again. And that IS surprising!
In the UK, turntables never completely went out of the stores. They went out of the box-shifting stores but specialist electronics stores such as Maplins kept stocking them. What's surprising is that their website currently lists a turntable as their top product!
"Women are far more likely than men to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as feeling that their work is doing some good.That means that fewer women reach the top because most women would rather be doing something they enjoyed."
Women enjoy usefull work but reaching the top is out of the question because apparantly you can't do meaningfull stuff at the top?
I don't think that's the point you want to make.
You're right, it isn't. But on the path to the top there are a lot of places where a person is faced with a choice of doing the "right" thing and doing the thing that will get them advancement, and women are more likely to be motivated by what is "right" and men by what will gain them advancement. Men will make the decision that's right for the corporate bottom-line, no matter what the effect on the customer or themselves. So will women, but they'll feel a hell of a lot worse about it and eventually resign in disgust at the rat-race. All "on average" of course.
No it's not. As pointed out by the parent, this is the sort of thing that is commonly pointed out by women as evidence of the lack of equality in our society.
Largely the women you hear putting that position are those in positions of status and power (and so probably in the 20% motivated by those things) or who have accepted it from those 20 percenters as a political dogma. Objectively it's wrong, but politically some women find it expedient.
Ironically, I think the only (slightly? somewhat?) flame-baiting thing you've said, you've said after suggesting you might be baiting the flames:)
So do I, but, as another poster has pointed out, Lawrence Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard for daring to suggest what I've claimed, so quite a few people do see it as wrong and offensive to speak these particular truths.
Well, the difference in variance of intelligence does exist and has the effect I described, but I agree that difference in risk taking could be yet another factor.
Or that despite having more votes than men, it's somehow men's fault that we haven't had a female President and few female Senators. Subscribing to a lower set of standards is convenient when demanding reparations, but it's not the way to actually earn any sort of meaningful respect.
To assume that it's a "fault" that you haven't had a female president or that "meaningful respect" is a serious driver is very male-oriented thinking. Thing is, women aren't defective men, they're their own people with their own motivations. Only about 20% of women are motivated primarily by extrinsic factors such as pay and status, compared to about 60% of men (source: Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox. Women are far more likely than men to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as feeling that their work is doing some good.That means that fewer women reach the top because most women would rather be doing something they enjoyed. (For what it's worth, women consistently score higher than similarly qualified men for job satisfaction -- Pinker again. There's more than one glass ceiling, but we don't notice the job-satisfaction one because we choose male-oriented measures of success.
There is another reason fewer women reach the top, though: although the average intelligence of men and women is about the same, the variance is significantly higher in men. So women are right: if somebody does something really dumb then it probably was a man. But the other side of that coin, which women tend not to like so much, if that if somebody does something really smart, that probably was a man too
And for those whose mouse is hovering on the "flamebait" button, remember that this is about averages. Nothing I've said means that a woman can't be stunningly intelligent and can't be driven by money and power -- just that they tend to be less extreme and more sensible.
Simple, clever doesn't pay the bills, reliable and maintainable do.
Whose bills? You're right that reliable and maintainable pay the shareholders' bills, but there's no difference to the coder's bills (because [s]he's off on a new contract with a different company by the time the maintenance problem hits) unless you have really good review processes in place. So the coder is going to do it the way that gives most satisfaction, not necessarily the way that's best. I reckon that strong reviews are the only way to overcome that.
I recently tried submitting that as the documentation for some software (tongue in cheek - I was working on the real stuff). The users didn't understand what all the strange shapes meant. The gap between the geek and the casual computer user is greater than you, I or Randall Munroe imagine.
Slashdot Mirror
But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
Yes, but the columnist's point was that you don't need fancy graphics with photos to tell you that. All you need is a clear diagram.
For those of us who can read maps, sure. But there's something of a sampling bias here on /. -- we tend to be folks who can process symbolic information pretty well. Maps are not a lot of use for my wife, whereas a picture of the intersection with something pointing to where she should leave would be just what she needs.
Generally, a bed is waiting for me in the destination area, and I would like to get some sleep before the morning meeting rather than spend the night driving around the one-way street system in some foreign city.
There are some people in the world who just shouldn't be allowed out of the care home!
or even ask somebody along the way / make a quick phonecall to known local resident when close to destination and lost (also - they, or other people who often travel the route you are planning to take, know much more than GPS: which way is more pleasant)
Yeah, my friends love when I do that at 3am. More of a nuisance when I'm driving somewhere where I don't know anybody, and quite often don't speak the language. Just because GPS doesn't suit your lifestyle doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't be using it.
Yes, but it's only looking at one side of the issue. "Overall, the Carnegie Mellon team concluded that the time drivers spent fixated on their satnav displays decreased sixfold and the number of glances needed to confirm results decreased threefold when the navigation system simply used words and numbers to convey instructions rather than fancy graphics." Fine -- but what did it do to the number of missed turns, or the number of times the driver gets into the wrong lane becuase they don't really understand what the words and numbers are actually telling them to do? They're things that can make drivers "especially vulnerable to doing stupid(which in a car means dangerous) things" too. Most of the time sure, I just listen to my satnav. But at complex junctions, actually seeing the layout and where I'm supposed to end up is invaluable. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.
And who said anything about free media? The RA specifically states that the books in question are DRM'd.
Your RA is correct, but only discusses the case where a PDF is presented as part of a web-browsing experience. That's not the usual situation with eBooks. If I were to download Twilight to my eReader (in any format) my problem wouldn't be that it comes out as a linear block of text. The same is true of news articles -- just how much internal navigation is needed in a news article? And links to related articles isn't the answer, because eBooks are not web pages. I read eBooks in flight, where access to dynamically updated content is flaky at to say the least. Those suggesting PDF for eBooks are making the mistake of treating eBooks as printed documents; you seem to be making the mistake of treating them as web pages. They're neither.
Open at least means not having the page and font sizes hard-wired into the document, so it can be read on different readers at different font sizes.
PDF is very poor for eBooks, because it doesn't have enough information regarding the significance of content on a page and the page size is hard-wired into the document, so for example PDF text doesn't reflow well if you change the font size on a reader, header and footer information get messed up, tabular information is a no-hoper on an eReader at anything but native page size and so on.
And don't forget the Daily WTF.
This will even out, with time (modern day Genghis Khans aren't siring their own clans any more), but it will take a while to sort itself out.
Will it? What would be the evolutionary driver to even it out? I suspect you're right about the evolutionary drivers that have led to the differentiation, but although (as you say) they're less marked now they still exist so the differences look set to remain.
How is this funny?
Because the rest of us recognised the reference.
I don't think the news is that people are buying turntables to go along with their records. The news is that so many people are buying records that stores are beginning to stock record players again. And that IS surprising!
In the UK, turntables never completely went out of the stores. They went out of the box-shifting stores but specialist electronics stores such as Maplins kept stocking them. What's surprising is that their website currently lists a turntable as their top product!
My dad has cases and cases of vinyl records from his youth just rotting away in the attic.
As have I. Hold on -- Jane, is that you?
"Women are far more likely than men to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as feeling that their work is doing some good.That means that fewer women reach the top because most women would rather be doing something they enjoyed."
Women enjoy usefull work but reaching the top is out of the question because apparantly you can't do meaningfull stuff at the top?
I don't think that's the point you want to make.
You're right, it isn't. But on the path to the top there are a lot of places where a person is faced with a choice of doing the "right" thing and doing the thing that will get them advancement, and women are more likely to be motivated by what is "right" and men by what will gain them advancement. Men will make the decision that's right for the corporate bottom-line, no matter what the effect on the customer or themselves. So will women, but they'll feel a hell of a lot worse about it and eventually resign in disgust at the rat-race. All "on average" of course.
No it's not. As pointed out by the parent, this is the sort of thing that is commonly pointed out by women as evidence of the lack of equality in our society.
Largely the women you hear putting that position are those in positions of status and power (and so probably in the 20% motivated by those things) or who have accepted it from those 20 percenters as a political dogma. Objectively it's wrong, but politically some women find it expedient.
Ironically, I think the only (slightly? somewhat?) flame-baiting thing you've said, you've said after suggesting you might be baiting the flames :)
So do I, but, as another poster has pointed out, Lawrence Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard for daring to suggest what I've claimed, so quite a few people do see it as wrong and offensive to speak these particular truths.
Well, the difference in variance of intelligence does exist and has the effect I described, but I agree that difference in risk taking could be yet another factor.
Or that despite having more votes than men, it's somehow men's fault that we haven't had a female President and few female Senators. Subscribing to a lower set of standards is convenient when demanding reparations, but it's not the way to actually earn any sort of meaningful respect.
To assume that it's a "fault" that you haven't had a female president or that "meaningful respect" is a serious driver is very male-oriented thinking. Thing is, women aren't defective men, they're their own people with their own motivations. Only about 20% of women are motivated primarily by extrinsic factors such as pay and status, compared to about 60% of men (source: Susan Pinker's The Sexual Paradox. Women are far more likely than men to be motivated by intrinsic factors such as feeling that their work is doing some good.That means that fewer women reach the top because most women would rather be doing something they enjoyed. (For what it's worth, women consistently score higher than similarly qualified men for job satisfaction -- Pinker again. There's more than one glass ceiling, but we don't notice the job-satisfaction one because we choose male-oriented measures of success.
There is another reason fewer women reach the top, though: although the average intelligence of men and women is about the same, the variance is significantly higher in men. So women are right: if somebody does something really dumb then it probably was a man. But the other side of that coin, which women tend not to like so much, if that if somebody does something really smart, that probably was a man too
And for those whose mouse is hovering on the "flamebait" button, remember that this is about averages. Nothing I've said means that a woman can't be stunningly intelligent and can't be driven by money and power -- just that they tend to be less extreme and more sensible.
Simple, clever doesn't pay the bills, reliable and maintainable do.
Whose bills? You're right that reliable and maintainable pay the shareholders' bills, but there's no difference to the coder's bills (because [s]he's off on a new contract with a different company by the time the maintenance problem hits) unless you have really good review processes in place. So the coder is going to do it the way that gives most satisfaction, not necessarily the way that's best. I reckon that strong reviews are the only way to overcome that.
Well, you could try mining for it where there isn't any if you like. China has the current monopoly on active lithium mines.
Lithium production.
Raw materials? It's going to be far easier to come up with those than more oil (which is slowly running out).
When China has a monopoly on the lithium needed for the batteries, and is reportedly planning to reserve it for internal use?
Well, yes, I used that for years, but that's really a DOS equivalent, not a Windows equivalent.
I recently tried submitting that as the documentation for some software (tongue in cheek - I was working on the real stuff). The users didn't understand what all the strange shapes meant. The gap between the geek and the casual computer user is greater than you, I or Randall Munroe imagine.