There is a law here that says that you can get charged for making someone angry, yes that is a law, in practice someone can report you to the police for walking inside your own home becuase that made them angry, does it mean I am a criminal because I am potentially making someone angry for walking inside my own home?
same thing here, I can potentially be charged for aiding a criminal but that doesnt mean that I am a criminal before when I did not
That's like saying that you bear no responsibility for selling weapons, bomb making material, or nuclear material to ISIS. If you have good reason to suspect that what you're selling is going to be used by a criminal to do a crime then that makes you a criminal or at least an accomplice. Sure there are neutral cases like selling a hunting rifle that later is used in a crime but there are also cases where there's a high probability that the other person is a criminal and you shouldn't participate in the transaction. This goes for engineers too. If you are asked to design a product whose primary purpose is likely to be criminal then you shouldn't participate.
Now it's about how the pie gets distributed, with streaming taking a large piece by cannibalizing sales in other distribution streams.
Yeah, i didn't even mention streaming sites like netflix. How many people now go watch the movie in the theatre and then wait until it comes to netflix/redbox and never buy it at all. Sure, netflix doesn't have all the movies but it has more than enough to fill every waking moment of a person's life. They like to blame piracy but at least among my friends, very few pirate anything now days. Most of them just fill their entertainment time with B grade movies/videos from netflix, youtube and cable tv. The movie industry would probably make more money if they ditched the whole dvd sale thing and instead had a slightly more expensive netflix (say $20/month) that including the A movies too.
People like to watch new movies in the theatre. Piracy doesn't affect that. It might affect home video sales but if they've already made a profit, home video sales are just gravy. Kindof like musicians make a majority of their money from live shows. The movie industry already knows this. That's why they give out free copies of previous movies on various streaming sites right before the sequel comes out. Let's just make home videos free and be done with it.
If they are selling it on the open market to the highest bidder without vetting who they are selling it to then yes they are a criminal too.
How so? What laws are being broken?
They've already fought this is court many times. They can get you for aiding a criminal. They use it all the time in the war on drugs. They bust contractors for digging tunnels and installing secret compartments in cars even if the person didn't ever touch the drugs.
how is someone selling a bug exploit to someone else illegal?, or are you assuming everyone who calls themselves hackers are doing illegal stuff and have found the exploits illegally?
If they are selling it on the open market to the highest bidder without vetting who they are selling it to then yes they are a criminal too.
Whether you believe that everyone descended from Adam and Eve (who was made from Adam's genetic material), and their children interbred for a thousand years, or two complex and exact duplicate mutations happened at the same time (within 30 years)
You make it sound like those are the only two options. By studying other animals, we're pretty confident that distinct species happen when 2 groups get separated via geography or other means until there is enough genetic variations that when they meet again that they can no longer reproduce. There was likely never just 2 humans but rather a collection of non-humans that we evolved from. I think the best scientific guess is that at our lowest point there were about 10k pre-humans that make up our genetic pool.
This is a rather stylish looking concept that might be at home in some sci-fi media, but it is a horribly impractical concept to actually implement in real life.
Even if the construction cost was double, if it could cut the lifetime cooling cost significantly, it would still be worth it.
You'd better build the power plant next door. Imagine the energy that thing would consume.
The Empire State Building uses about 9-10 megawatts peak, and that's filled mostly with people and offices, not high-density servers.
How is that different than current datacenters? Current datacenters already have tons of servers but for some reason are flat with alot less outside surface area. As the outside surface area increases slower than the inside area, it makes sense to have tall narrow datacenters if you are wanting to passively cool it. There is no logically reason to have single story datacenters.
This is probably not a bad idea. If they are only accurate to the nearest 50km anyways then map each zipcode to the nearest post office because even if they only return 2 decimal places some people will still assume that it's an exact match.
I have no clue what planet or country you live in, but here in the USofA we are not free. You can't own a house and land, you pay rent to the Government and a Bank. And even if you "buy" a house in the sticks you are only renting the land from the Government. Have doubts, refuse to make your tax payments and call me so I can laugh at you.
How would you define free? Being on a island in the middle of nowhere with no government? I'm pretty darn free. I don't pay rent to the government or the banks for the land I own. I do pay a small amount of property taxes but it's less than what it would cost to send my kids to a private school and a heck of a lot less than what it would cost to hire someone to protect my land from marauders. If I wanted to grow my own food and live off the land I could and by having no income I would be eligible for enough government benefits to more than pay for my property taxes if I wanted to go that route. So, yes, it is possible in the USA to be completely free or as completely free as possibly while living near other people. The other option would be to move to a warzone where property rights don't exist and whoever has the biggest guns owns the land but then you're a slave to all the people that you have to pay to protect your property from thieves.
If the car uses technology that can see better in darkness it can react to things that the human driver might have missed.
It seems like one good use of this technology would be to integrate it with some sort of HUD overlay on the windshield so that a driver can see things in the dark. I would love to have a car that put red outlines around things like deer in the road or even the lines on the road. All the self driving cars are using enhanced features to make them safer than human drivers but many of these enhanced features like super accurate mapping of the roads and seeing things in the dark could also be used to make human drivers safer as well. I think self driving cars may some day be safer than human drivers but let's not forget to improve the human driver too while we're at it. It's very possible that by giving some of these safety features to humans as augmented reality that we can make human drivers considerably safer than they currently are.
In the grand scope of things, your DNA is basically diluted to nothing after a couple of generations.
The ideas and values you imprint on the kids you raise have a much greater chance of surviving and creating a legacy for you.
In the grand scope of things your ideas and values are also diluted to nothing in a few generations as well. The ideas and values of the society you live in probably have a much greater effect than you do on your great grand children and you can forget about much beyond that. But it doesn't really matter, unless you're someone especially famous (like king tut or a president), you'll be completely forgotten in about 5 generations and even if you are someone famous, you're still stuck on this little blue dot that is going nowhere fast and everything you are will disappear into nothingness and the universe doesn't care.
Except that it wasn't indefinitely. The contract was for 7 years, which Google has said that they are going to honor. They are just not going to sign up any new customers for that plan.
Then that's fair enough but don't expect many of the ultracheap customers to remain customers if you only offer them the choice between a high price plan and an ultra high price plan. The fact that they are relatively cheap compared to other ultra fast connections is most likely irrelevant to people happy with 5M and will likely be able to find other plans under $50 from a different provider to switch to. Myself, I'm perfectly happy with my 1M connection although I wish I could get faster upload.
This is more analogous to paying for installation of a beer tap, but then having it dispense unlimited free beer (but at a slower rate than you might like). Google's saying that now you need to fork over $50/mo, but you'll get unlimited beer dispensed at 20x the rate. It's still a way better deal than anything the competitors are offering, especially considering how vital the beer is for getting any work done.
Yes, but if I paid for the installation of a beer tap that promised to give me 3 beers a day indefinitely then I would be pissed if all of a sudden they said I had to pay $50/month for 60 beers for day. I have no desire to drink 60 beers a day. The extra beer is wasted on me. Even if they can no longer offer a free service, they need to respect their original agreement by refunding the construction fee or at the very least offer a similar low bandwidth option for $10/month. At $50/month anyone who was happy with 5M/s is likely going to move to something else. There are plenty of cheaper options under $50/month whether it is DSL or tethering that will net you 5M/s. The people on the 5M plans don't want 100M, if they did then they likely would have signed up for the 1G plan at only $20/month more.
One reason that the Chinese and outsiders see the Tiananmen Square incident very differently, is that the protesters never called for reform of the Hukou system. Outsiders see the protesters as heroes standing against oppression. Many Chinese see them as spoiled offspring of the urban elite trying to preserve their privileges.
The other reason is that Chinese school children are taught it never happened. I've actually had conversation with college aged kids from China who still don't believe it really ever happened.
Yes, this means the first few times a given image is presented to a human, the system isn't sure what the correct answer is which means it passes some people/bots it should not
No, it doesn't. That's why recaptcha always presents you two images. One image is the test where they know the correct answer because X number of people have already told them the correct answer while the other image is the image that they don't yet know the correct answer for. You really only need to know the answer to one of the images to pass but you never know which one. If one of the images is completely unreadable then it is likely that it is the unsolved one so just making something up for that spot will likely still let you pass.
Recaptcha is a great platform because it's not a computer trying to beat a computer so it's easy to stay one step ahead of any computer program. For instance it would be easy to switch it to "identify this object" or even "identify this emotion". Computer vision has a long way before it can identify photos as well as humans.
Getting one on viewing gives pressure for him to inform on the others in the group.
You have at all backwards. If it's illegal for both parties then they have a mutual reason to keep it quiet. On the other hand if it's legal to consume but illegal to create then you have one side working against the other. This works for prostitution and bribes too. There should be a reward on one side. For instance, if you make it legal to give bribes but illegal to receive them then anyone who can convince a politician to accept a bribe gets rewarded. The same could work for child pornography. You could give an incentive for white hat hackers to track down and DOX creators of child porn. The way it is now, there is no legal gray area for someone to even research child pornography because even the act of searching for it is illegal.
It's worse than just reshares. I've recently started seeing "shares" that are really just a share from a company that one of my friends had liked. Annoyingly, this also means all the companies I have liked are now posting posts that look like I shared. I'm now trying to decide between deleting my facebook account or unliking every page that I've ever liked so I'm not endorsing posts I may not approve of.
- if you select to work in field that is easy or where we already have too many people you will get payed less
- if you select to work in profession where not enough people can/want to work, and is extremely hard/stressful like cardio-surgeon, you get payed much more
not every job is worth the same
That's kindof my point. You look at most hard stressful demanding jobs you will see a lot more men. STEM jobs tend to be very demanding and pay accordingly. Many women have no desire to have a career like that. There are some that do and I think everyone should be allowed to pick their job but trying to force it is silly. Just look at where men and women volunteer to see natural preferences and you'll see the same kind of break down. Even when they are volunteering men tend to pick more stressful jobs like coaching over less stressful jobs like working at the library.
Then why all of the whining about "wage gaps"? If women are majoring in genuinely useful things, then there should be no "wage gap". If there is such a thing, perhaps it points to some attempt by SJWs to over value certain professions despite clear market forces that indicate otherwise.
Women are majoring in genuinely useful things but when men primarily optimizes for money while women optimizes for things like happiness, family time, helping others, and group cohesion then there will always be a wage gap. My kids are a perfect example. They share the same box of legos and watch all the same movies but my daughter has a small village of doctors and nurses taking care of animals while my son has spaceships and weapons. My son also wants to build legos in a room by himself with no interaction with other people while my daughter wants it to be a social event where everyone builds something together. My daughter is more geeky than my son and loves programming, fishing, and chess but there is still a very social aspect to all her activities that is missing from my son. We are dealing with thousands of years of evolution where men were competing with each other and women were working together for the common good.
There are more women than men at most universities but they seldom study anything useful (no offense). It's college for college's sake. If you want to get more women in 'STEM' you could start by killing Gender Studies.
If by "nothing useful" you mean elementary education, early childhood development, nursing, and medicine then I would agree with you but otherwise you're full of it. I've never met anyone who majored in gender studies but I do know a ton of women that go into feel good majors that are vital to society and help people but unfortunately don't pay well.
I know you mean well but your post illustrates why this is still an issue. If the ratio of women to men at your university is so low, aren't you interested to know why?
Yes, trying to fix it at the university (or lower) level makes sense but you can't fault the companies when they are hiring a higher percentage of women than are graduating from college with the degrees they need. Even at the university level though you are fighting a uphill battle. Many women don't want to do that kind of work. It amazes me how many women I know working for low pay in NFP/NPO that always talk about wanting to help people but I'm not sure I've ever heard a single male make similar statements.
It would be nice if these voice assistances let you pick a voice.
They do. Most have the choice of male/female as well as several dialects but a female voice is generally more pleasant to listen to for both male listeners and female listeners which is why it is the default.
While we're on the topic of "fleshed out" - what about the "porn drives technology" factor behind internet (DVD, VHS, printed, etc.) transmission of photos, video, video chat, and all manner of other remote applications? If it's "a tech toy" that has porn applications, that seems to drive adoption and growth in most cases - later leading to more mainstream applications.
Sadly, I think it all really comes down to "money drives technology". Whether it is toys, porn, war, the space race, smuggling drugs, or grants for pure research, it takes money to move technology forward. And in the case of just a tinkerer in the basement, it has to be something interesting to the tinkerer for them to invest time and money into making it better and unless you're Tony Stark, the scale is usually going to be considerably smaller than what can be achieved by selling the intermediate products to first adopters.
Well, I asked some conservatives, and they were bothered by that usage. Whether that's "logic" or not is a long and winding philosophical battle.
I think most muslims would prefer "muslim extremist" to "muslim terrorist" and I would agree as by using the word extremist then you are somewhat acknowledging that it is not all of them. Likewise if you use if for something like "greenpeace extremists" or "christian extremists". It also sounds silly if you use it for a group entirely made up of extremists as something like "KKK extremists" or "Nazi extremists" sounds weird and gives the opposite effect of expressing approval for the organization. Although to be fair, the Amish could be considered "christian extremists" so what we are really talking about are who are extreme in their use of violence.
Brand new technology rarely as well fleshed out as existing technologies, This is the obvious statement news at 11.
It's not that it's "not as well fleshed out". There are lots of things that start out as "not as well fleshed out". It's not about features and power users. It's more that many technologies actually start out as toys. Being a toy is the killer app that allows them to continue to grow until they get a real killer app. Today's CPUs and GPUs would be a lot further behind if they didn't have the cashflow from gamers on the leading edge. If you want to look at current toys that might one day make the switchover look at drones, immersive technology, 3d printing, and the handsfree interfaces of xbox/wii. At their current level they aren't really useful outside of toys but people buying them as toys is what allows money to continue to flow in so that they can improve. The automobile is another such toy that took early adopters to get it off the ground.
Another interesting thought experiment would be what technologies are we missing out on because they are harder to "toyify" and therefore never get the cashflow needed to progress to the next level?
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There is a law here that says that you can get charged for making someone angry, yes that is a law, in practice someone can report you to the police for walking inside your own home becuase that made them angry, does it mean I am a criminal because I am potentially making someone angry for walking inside my own home?
same thing here, I can potentially be charged for aiding a criminal but that doesnt mean that I am a criminal before when I did not
That's like saying that you bear no responsibility for selling weapons, bomb making material, or nuclear material to ISIS. If you have good reason to suspect that what you're selling is going to be used by a criminal to do a crime then that makes you a criminal or at least an accomplice. Sure there are neutral cases like selling a hunting rifle that later is used in a crime but there are also cases where there's a high probability that the other person is a criminal and you shouldn't participate in the transaction. This goes for engineers too. If you are asked to design a product whose primary purpose is likely to be criminal then you shouldn't participate.
Now it's about how the pie gets distributed, with streaming taking a large piece by cannibalizing sales in other distribution streams.
Yeah, i didn't even mention streaming sites like netflix. How many people now go watch the movie in the theatre and then wait until it comes to netflix/redbox and never buy it at all. Sure, netflix doesn't have all the movies but it has more than enough to fill every waking moment of a person's life. They like to blame piracy but at least among my friends, very few pirate anything now days. Most of them just fill their entertainment time with B grade movies/videos from netflix, youtube and cable tv. The movie industry would probably make more money if they ditched the whole dvd sale thing and instead had a slightly more expensive netflix (say $20/month) that including the A movies too.
People like to watch new movies in the theatre. Piracy doesn't affect that. It might affect home video sales but if they've already made a profit, home video sales are just gravy. Kindof like musicians make a majority of their money from live shows. The movie industry already knows this. That's why they give out free copies of previous movies on various streaming sites right before the sequel comes out. Let's just make home videos free and be done with it.
If they are selling it on the open market to the highest bidder without vetting who they are selling it to then yes they are a criminal too.
How so? What laws are being broken?
They've already fought this is court many times. They can get you for aiding a criminal. They use it all the time in the war on drugs. They bust contractors for digging tunnels and installing secret compartments in cars even if the person didn't ever touch the drugs.
how is someone selling a bug exploit to someone else illegal?, or are you assuming everyone who calls themselves hackers are doing illegal stuff and have found the exploits illegally?
If they are selling it on the open market to the highest bidder without vetting who they are selling it to then yes they are a criminal too.
Whether you believe that everyone descended from Adam and Eve (who was made from Adam's genetic material), and their children interbred for a thousand years, or two complex and exact duplicate mutations happened at the same time (within 30 years)
You make it sound like those are the only two options. By studying other animals, we're pretty confident that distinct species happen when 2 groups get separated via geography or other means until there is enough genetic variations that when they meet again that they can no longer reproduce. There was likely never just 2 humans but rather a collection of non-humans that we evolved from. I think the best scientific guess is that at our lowest point there were about 10k pre-humans that make up our genetic pool.
This is a rather stylish looking concept that might be at home in some sci-fi media, but it is a horribly impractical concept to actually implement in real life.
Even if the construction cost was double, if it could cut the lifetime cooling cost significantly, it would still be worth it.
You'd better build the power plant next door. Imagine the energy that thing would consume.
The Empire State Building uses about 9-10 megawatts peak, and that's filled mostly with people and offices, not high-density servers.
How is that different than current datacenters? Current datacenters already have tons of servers but for some reason are flat with alot less outside surface area. As the outside surface area increases slower than the inside area, it makes sense to have tall narrow datacenters if you are wanting to passively cool it. There is no logically reason to have single story datacenters.
This is probably not a bad idea. If they are only accurate to the nearest 50km anyways then map each zipcode to the nearest post office because even if they only return 2 decimal places some people will still assume that it's an exact match.
I have no clue what planet or country you live in, but here in the USofA we are not free. You can't own a house and land, you pay rent to the Government and a Bank. And even if you "buy" a house in the sticks you are only renting the land from the Government. Have doubts, refuse to make your tax payments and call me so I can laugh at you.
How would you define free? Being on a island in the middle of nowhere with no government? I'm pretty darn free. I don't pay rent to the government or the banks for the land I own. I do pay a small amount of property taxes but it's less than what it would cost to send my kids to a private school and a heck of a lot less than what it would cost to hire someone to protect my land from marauders. If I wanted to grow my own food and live off the land I could and by having no income I would be eligible for enough government benefits to more than pay for my property taxes if I wanted to go that route. So, yes, it is possible in the USA to be completely free or as completely free as possibly while living near other people. The other option would be to move to a warzone where property rights don't exist and whoever has the biggest guns owns the land but then you're a slave to all the people that you have to pay to protect your property from thieves.
If the car uses technology that can see better in darkness it can react to things that the human driver might have missed.
It seems like one good use of this technology would be to integrate it with some sort of HUD overlay on the windshield so that a driver can see things in the dark. I would love to have a car that put red outlines around things like deer in the road or even the lines on the road. All the self driving cars are using enhanced features to make them safer than human drivers but many of these enhanced features like super accurate mapping of the roads and seeing things in the dark could also be used to make human drivers safer as well. I think self driving cars may some day be safer than human drivers but let's not forget to improve the human driver too while we're at it. It's very possible that by giving some of these safety features to humans as augmented reality that we can make human drivers considerably safer than they currently are.
In the grand scope of things, your DNA is basically diluted to nothing after a couple of generations.
The ideas and values you imprint on the kids you raise have a much greater chance of surviving and creating a legacy for you.
In the grand scope of things your ideas and values are also diluted to nothing in a few generations as well. The ideas and values of the society you live in probably have a much greater effect than you do on your great grand children and you can forget about much beyond that. But it doesn't really matter, unless you're someone especially famous (like king tut or a president), you'll be completely forgotten in about 5 generations and even if you are someone famous, you're still stuck on this little blue dot that is going nowhere fast and everything you are will disappear into nothingness and the universe doesn't care.
Except that it wasn't indefinitely. The contract was for 7 years, which Google has said that they are going to honor. They are just not going to sign up any new customers for that plan.
Then that's fair enough but don't expect many of the ultracheap customers to remain customers if you only offer them the choice between a high price plan and an ultra high price plan. The fact that they are relatively cheap compared to other ultra fast connections is most likely irrelevant to people happy with 5M and will likely be able to find other plans under $50 from a different provider to switch to. Myself, I'm perfectly happy with my 1M connection although I wish I could get faster upload.
This is more analogous to paying for installation of a beer tap, but then having it dispense unlimited free beer (but at a slower rate than you might like). Google's saying that now you need to fork over $50/mo, but you'll get unlimited beer dispensed at 20x the rate. It's still a way better deal than anything the competitors are offering, especially considering how vital the beer is for getting any work done.
Yes, but if I paid for the installation of a beer tap that promised to give me 3 beers a day indefinitely then I would be pissed if all of a sudden they said I had to pay $50/month for 60 beers for day. I have no desire to drink 60 beers a day. The extra beer is wasted on me. Even if they can no longer offer a free service, they need to respect their original agreement by refunding the construction fee or at the very least offer a similar low bandwidth option for $10/month. At $50/month anyone who was happy with 5M/s is likely going to move to something else. There are plenty of cheaper options under $50/month whether it is DSL or tethering that will net you 5M/s. The people on the 5M plans don't want 100M, if they did then they likely would have signed up for the 1G plan at only $20/month more.
One reason that the Chinese and outsiders see the Tiananmen Square incident very differently, is that the protesters never called for reform of the Hukou system. Outsiders see the protesters as heroes standing against oppression. Many Chinese see them as spoiled offspring of the urban elite trying to preserve their privileges.
The other reason is that Chinese school children are taught it never happened. I've actually had conversation with college aged kids from China who still don't believe it really ever happened.
Yes, this means the first few times a given image is presented to a human, the system isn't sure what the correct answer is which means it passes some people/bots it should not
No, it doesn't. That's why recaptcha always presents you two images. One image is the test where they know the correct answer because X number of people have already told them the correct answer while the other image is the image that they don't yet know the correct answer for. You really only need to know the answer to one of the images to pass but you never know which one. If one of the images is completely unreadable then it is likely that it is the unsolved one so just making something up for that spot will likely still let you pass.
Recaptcha is a great platform because it's not a computer trying to beat a computer so it's easy to stay one step ahead of any computer program. For instance it would be easy to switch it to "identify this object" or even "identify this emotion". Computer vision has a long way before it can identify photos as well as humans.
Getting one on viewing gives pressure for him to inform on the others in the group.
You have at all backwards. If it's illegal for both parties then they have a mutual reason to keep it quiet. On the other hand if it's legal to consume but illegal to create then you have one side working against the other. This works for prostitution and bribes too. There should be a reward on one side. For instance, if you make it legal to give bribes but illegal to receive them then anyone who can convince a politician to accept a bribe gets rewarded. The same could work for child pornography. You could give an incentive for white hat hackers to track down and DOX creators of child porn. The way it is now, there is no legal gray area for someone to even research child pornography because even the act of searching for it is illegal.
It's worse than just reshares. I've recently started seeing "shares" that are really just a share from a company that one of my friends had liked. Annoyingly, this also means all the companies I have liked are now posting posts that look like I shared. I'm now trying to decide between deleting my facebook account or unliking every page that I've ever liked so I'm not endorsing posts I may not approve of.
- if you select to work in field that is easy or where we already have too many people you will get payed less
- if you select to work in profession where not enough people can/want to work, and is extremely hard/stressful like cardio-surgeon, you get payed much more
not every job is worth the same
That's kindof my point. You look at most hard stressful demanding jobs you will see a lot more men. STEM jobs tend to be very demanding and pay accordingly. Many women have no desire to have a career like that. There are some that do and I think everyone should be allowed to pick their job but trying to force it is silly. Just look at where men and women volunteer to see natural preferences and you'll see the same kind of break down. Even when they are volunteering men tend to pick more stressful jobs like coaching over less stressful jobs like working at the library.
Then why all of the whining about "wage gaps"? If women are majoring in genuinely useful things, then there should be no "wage gap". If there is such a thing, perhaps it points to some attempt by SJWs to over value certain professions despite clear market forces that indicate otherwise.
Women are majoring in genuinely useful things but when men primarily optimizes for money while women optimizes for things like happiness, family time, helping others, and group cohesion then there will always be a wage gap. My kids are a perfect example. They share the same box of legos and watch all the same movies but my daughter has a small village of doctors and nurses taking care of animals while my son has spaceships and weapons. My son also wants to build legos in a room by himself with no interaction with other people while my daughter wants it to be a social event where everyone builds something together. My daughter is more geeky than my son and loves programming, fishing, and chess but there is still a very social aspect to all her activities that is missing from my son. We are dealing with thousands of years of evolution where men were competing with each other and women were working together for the common good.
There are more women than men at most universities but they seldom study anything useful (no offense). It's college for college's sake. If you want to get more women in 'STEM' you could start by killing Gender Studies.
If by "nothing useful" you mean elementary education, early childhood development, nursing, and medicine then I would agree with you but otherwise you're full of it. I've never met anyone who majored in gender studies but I do know a ton of women that go into feel good majors that are vital to society and help people but unfortunately don't pay well.
I know you mean well but your post illustrates why this is still an issue. If the ratio of women to men at your university is so low, aren't you interested to know why?
Yes, trying to fix it at the university (or lower) level makes sense but you can't fault the companies when they are hiring a higher percentage of women than are graduating from college with the degrees they need.
Even at the university level though you are fighting a uphill battle. Many women don't want to do that kind of work. It amazes me how many women I know working for low pay in NFP/NPO that always talk about wanting to help people but I'm not sure I've ever heard a single male make similar statements.
It would be nice if these voice assistances let you pick a voice.
They do. Most have the choice of male/female as well as several dialects but a female voice is generally more pleasant to listen to for both male listeners and female listeners which is why it is the default.
While we're on the topic of "fleshed out" - what about the "porn drives technology" factor behind internet (DVD, VHS, printed, etc.) transmission of photos, video, video chat, and all manner of other remote applications? If it's "a tech toy" that has porn applications, that seems to drive adoption and growth in most cases - later leading to more mainstream applications.
Sadly, I think it all really comes down to "money drives technology". Whether it is toys, porn, war, the space race, smuggling drugs, or grants for pure research, it takes money to move technology forward. And in the case of just a tinkerer in the basement, it has to be something interesting to the tinkerer for them to invest time and money into making it better and unless you're Tony Stark, the scale is usually going to be considerably smaller than what can be achieved by selling the intermediate products to first adopters.
Well, I asked some conservatives, and they were bothered by that usage. Whether that's "logic" or not is a long and winding philosophical battle.
I think most muslims would prefer "muslim extremist" to "muslim terrorist" and I would agree as by using the word extremist then you are somewhat acknowledging that it is not all of them. Likewise if you use if for something like "greenpeace extremists" or "christian extremists". It also sounds silly if you use it for a group entirely made up of extremists as something like "KKK extremists" or "Nazi extremists" sounds weird and gives the opposite effect of expressing approval for the organization. Although to be fair, the Amish could be considered "christian extremists" so what we are really talking about are who are extreme in their use of violence.
Brand new technology rarely as well fleshed out as existing technologies, This is the obvious statement news at 11.
It's not that it's "not as well fleshed out". There are lots of things that start out as "not as well fleshed out". It's not about features and power users. It's more that many technologies actually start out as toys. Being a toy is the killer app that allows them to continue to grow until they get a real killer app. Today's CPUs and GPUs would be a lot further behind if they didn't have the cashflow from gamers on the leading edge. If you want to look at current toys that might one day make the switchover look at drones, immersive technology, 3d printing, and the handsfree interfaces of xbox/wii. At their current level they aren't really useful outside of toys but people buying them as toys is what allows money to continue to flow in so that they can improve. The automobile is another such toy that took early adopters to get it off the ground.
Another interesting thought experiment would be what technologies are we missing out on because they are harder to "toyify" and therefore never get the cashflow needed to progress to the next level?