Do you think they've got a room full of sweatshop workers chained to desks counting them by hand? No. They count them with a punch card reader. Okay, so I've never used one (I'm not _that_ old), but I really doubt that they're impossible to compromise.
I doubt that they are *impossible* to compromise, too. But, you're omitting a few relevant details:
- These machines work on technology that has been essentially unchanged for many, many years. The code is simple, and likely is public domain, since the government probably developed it. The process is mostly mechanical.
- Access to those machines is very limited. The people who use them are all employees of the election system, which doesn't put them above scrutiny, but does make them far more accountable than Joe Voter. You don't have the punch-card readers out on public display for literally every registered citizen to be able to walk up and stick a smartcard into.
- When there's a question about the results, a *hand* recount can be and is done. This happened in Florida... hundreds of people *did* sit there and go through those cards by hand, tabulating votes.
Obviously, the issues are far from parallel, and there are methods of dealing with them in the case of the old punch cards. Here, there's simply no voter-verifiable record... so no recounts possible.
Yeah, keep believing there are no differences between the parties. Its that kind of thinking that got us in this mess in the first place.
I shudder to think of the mess we can get into with "anybody but Bush" logic, myself.
I voted for Nader last election. I don't apologize... I'm in California, not like it was an issue anyway. But even if Nader hadn't been running, I would have voted third party. I got to that point sometime in August or September I think. I simply couldn't stomach voting for someone who was supposedly the "liberal" side of things... but who didn't seem to mind if I don't have religous freedom and whatnot. Lieberman blew it for me big-time with his "freedom of religion, but not freedom FROM religion" crap.
Now people are going all over again. They're running this election as a yes or no on Bush, without regard to the consequences. Kerry seems all right so far, and I think I'll probably vote for him (though he hasn't picked a running mate yet, and that was the dealbreaker last time). But if I don't think he represents me, I won't vote for him.
I think, hopefully, that the Democratic party learned a lesson from last time: turning your back on the Left doesn't do you many favors. You cannot out-conservative Bush; there's no point in trying. But if we go ahead and elect a "democrat" who, in other decades, would be obviously a republican, we lose any semblance of liberal politics in this country. Granted, chances are that we lose any semblance of democracy if Bush wins... but at least we have a shot at getting invaded by the UN on a "liberation from the evil oppressor" mission.
If these machines are more difficult to operate and more expensive to maintain, and require the hiring of additional personnel to administer, why are they being used?
Most poll workers report that people found them fairly easy to use, even relative to the old paper systems. So ease-of-use is there.
It's very expensive to run an election (just ask California... we got to spend $50 million on getting a new governor, so that he could do just what the old one was doing, but with a funny accent). A lot of the cost is printing up ballots. In addition, it's difficult to make last-minute changes... when I voted in California, the Democratic primary ballot included candidates who had dropped out more than a month ago. There are many new costs with electronic balloting, but there are a lot of costs you get rid of at the same time.
The biggest savings is time and money on vote tabulation. Even when it's punch cards, someone has to stack those up and feed them into the machine. With an electronic ballot, the votes are tabulated instantly. Even if you do a 5% sample of the paper record to double-check, you save a huge amount of resources on counting.
So e-voting isn't necessarily a lot more expensive than paper voting. Sure, it can be, but there's the potential for significant cost savings if it's done right. (I reserve judgement on whether or not it's being done right by most jurisdictions.)
Don't be fooled by talk of "paper receipts". What we need are paper ballots. If they're machine-generated, that's fine; it avoids problems with incorrectly marked ballots. If they're machine-readable, that's fine too -- as long as they're also human-readable.
You can call it a ballot or a receipt, it doesn't matter. All you need is, after you vote, it prints out your votes for you to review. After checking it for accuracy (if you care), you press the final button to submit. Then you put your paper printout into one of those anonymous grey envelopes and drop it in the big grey box and get your "I voted" sticker. If all goes well, no person needs to count your paper ballot, but you could do routine 5% sampling fairly cost-effectively just to double-check.
Bottom line is, you need to have a NON-CHANGEABLE record of your vote to review. It doesn't matter *how* secure or insecure the machines are... if the vote only exists as a bit, it is way too easy to change after the fact.
If I were in California I would have a hard time believing anyone that told me my vote would be counted.
Hey, not all of California got stuck with these machines. Los Angeles County convinced the state that we couldn't *possibly* roll out electronic voting in time for the March election, so we got something called Ink-A-Vote instead. It looks a lot like punch cards, but the little doohickey leaves a perfect black ink spot where you punch, instead of trying to poke through the paper.
Yay, chad-free, and I got to look at my ballot before it went in the box. Seems good enough to me, until we get a *real* secure electronic voting system.
What part of Voting means exactly doodle-squat nowadays is beyond the comprehension of the ~30% of voters who keep tilting at that windmill?... This country is going to hell like a ferret sliding on a 60 deg ice slope.
Anyone besides me see a correlation between the notion that the country is going to hell in a handbasket *and* voting doesn't make a difference?
Wise up. If more people got off their asses and voted, we might not be *in* this mess. Boo hoo, you're disenfranchised... because you choose to be.
1) The idea that artifical geographical boundries matter. There is no reason my voting choices should be limited by where I live. Whether it's the state or the neigborhood where I live should have no bearing on who I am allowed to vote on.
Artificial geographical boundaries are still our best approximation of representation. Gerrymandering laws recognize that minority voting blocks can be either held together or split apart when drawing the lines, and splitting them up is in many cases illegal. People still tend to gather geographically according to demographic characteristics which usually affect their representation choices.
So how do you propose to have a representative democracy without using geographical boundaries?
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of the voting age people in Florida are idiots. 5 year olds had no problem with their ballots, yet 60 year olds were "confused". If you can't follow simple directions, you really shouldn't be voting.
1) If 5-year-olds were voting, that's a sure sign that something funny was going on.
2) Did you see a picture of the ballot? not only was the butterfly design rather confusing, it was actually misprinted in many locations, so that the arrow for Gore was halfway *between* two holes. One of those holes was the Buchanan spot. The odd layout (which is illegal in many states) combined with the misprint meant that many people, especially those with poor eyesight, could honestly make a mistake. And, given that Buchanan got more votes in Florida than anywhere else, they probably did.
If they hadn't misprinted it, there might not have been a problem with the layout. If they hadn't used the strange layout, there might not have been a problem with the misprint. Between the two, some folks were bound to get tripped up.
Hmm.. on one hand audio equipment is mostly a commodity, on the other hand, its not like it doesn't matter at all what equipment you use,
But it's not like companies hire full-time employees to administer their PA system.
There's a few highly specialized uses where audio equipment requires a full-time person to support it. Most of them are in the entertainment industry. If software became commoditized in the way I was describing, it would probably be a lot like audio equipment is today... a few people working in highly specialized industries, maintaining very high-end software, tweaking things constantly to maintain peak operation. But that's a lot fewer people needed than the current-day situation.
Let's all stop using zippers and become Amish while we're at it so no one ever loses a job to progress ever again (No offense to the Amish, they seem to enjoy their lifestyle, it's just not for me or just about anyone I know.)
You missed the point of my post. The person I was responding to pointed out that (1) docks were trying to introduce automation, which drastically reduces the need for live bodies; and (2) the union workers fighting it were too stupid or something to learn to use the new technology. He completely failed to realize that they were fighting it not necessarily because they didn't want to learn the new tech (a lot of the equipment they use now is highly specialized), but because no matter WHAT they learn, many of them will lose their jobs.
People on here complain all the time about losing their jobs because companies are outsourcing to India, and before that, they complained about H-1B visas. It is perfectly rational from a business standpoint to lower labor costs as much as possible, but it will always piss off the people who have been working that job. There's no getting around it... no one will easily accept being obsolete, whether or not they're in a union. Union representation simply increases the chances that they can hang onto their jobs longer.
Unions don't make jobs. Companies do. Unions just insure that workers don't ever have to work hard on the job.
So, insisting on rules that prevent companies from reducing jobs isn't anything like making jobs?
And, what union are you in? Obviously, since union workers don't work hard, you must have a union job... you'd be stupid not to, right? They make more money, get better benefits, *and* they don't have to work hard... where's the downside?
Unions aren't a perfect mechanism, much as corporations are not. They balance each other and reflect each other. Companies want to make the most money they can with the least expenditure of capital possible. Individuals want to make the most money they can with the least expenditure of effort possible. Corporations protect company profits, unions protect work environments. What was your point again?
Strikes really don't work anymore, because you will just be replaced.
In October-November, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority was basically shut down by a five-week mechanics strike. Now there is a new contract, and all those mechanics still have their jobs.
More recently, we just ended a five-month strike at Southern California Vons (Safeway), Albertson's, and Ralphs (Kroger) supermarket locations. Those who didn't find a better job in the interim still have their jobs (though if the allegations about Ralphs falsifying documents to rehire workers as scabs under fake social security numbers are true, they might not all keep them). They have a new contract, and while they didn't win one of the major points (there is now a two-tier wage system), they did win another (they won't have to pay any more for health care for at least a year).
Strikes may not work as well as they used to, but it's been a while since we've had a major strike that resulted in replacement workers taking over (like the air traffic controllers). So not sure where you were coming from with your statement.
Except that management also wanted to automate things like it's done on the East Coast. In the east, the docks are so automated that they don't need nearly as many people to do the unloading.... their loser workers would either have to A) update their skills to use the new "high tech" equipment or B) get let go because they didn't know how to use the new "high tech" equipment.
Uh... did you notice while typing your post that their "loser workers" (glad you know so many dockworkers and can inform us that they're losers) would be losing their jobs *anyway*, because there are LESS OF THEM?
Corporations exist to make and protect profits. Unions exist to make and protect jobs. They mirror each other. Don't be so surprised... if corporations didn't have enormous profit motives to exploit labor, then unions wouldn't exist.
Upper management don't get paid overtime, would you like to work for a flat rate?
Most IT positions I've ever seen manage to fall under the category of "professional" jobs, which are exempt from overtime... just like upper management.
When you have a dozen products that can in theory forfill your need, you might need an expert to select the one that fits your needs best.
You miss the meaning of the term "commoditized." An item that is a commodity has no significant differentiation between different brands. The technology gets "topped out" as it were, and products are more or less interchangeable. Commodities markets tell you the price of a good, not the price of a good from this or that supplier. It doesn't matter where it comes from.
In that world, the one that fits your needs best is the one that has the best price for your type of business. The things that will matter -- licensing structure, update pricing, etc., will be financial decisions that can be made by people with only a basic knowledge of the purpose of the software.
I'm not saying this is around the corner, but that *if* it happens, the software consulting niche goes out the window.
okay, maybe "service" is a bad word (since it conjures up the image of low-pay, low-challenge tech support jobs). a better word is "solution". sure there are a lot of companies that claim to be "solution providers" but few really are. the successful companies are the ones that take free software, tailor it, combine it with other free wares, integrate it, document it, deliver it and support it as a unified "solution".
This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.
Not that I personally think what you propose is a bad idea, but playing devil's advocate for a moment...
I wouldn't use the term "stupid", but, as a generalization, women certainly need to be treated differently due to the difference in technical skill level.
I find the opposite to be the case.
If I talk to another woman about computers, she'll usually ask questions about stuff she doesn't understand, and communicate back (paraphrasing, etc.) to verify what she does understand. If I talk to a man about computers, he's far more likely (than the woman is) to say "uh-huh, uh-huh" even though he has no idea what I'm talking about, so I tend to have to ask a lot more questions to find out where his skill level is and what he understands.
The ratio of men to women among technically competent people is irrelevant, because the ratio of technically competent people to lusers is so tiny. The percentage of the male population that groks technology is not really that much higher than the percentage of the female population who does, but men are (in my experience) far more likely to attempt to hide their incompetence because of some macho idea that they *should* know this.
Creating a printer that will be marketed under the theme "printer easy for women to use" is not going to mollify complaints like Myers, instead, it seems to reinforce her argument that electronics retailers and manufacturers think women are stupid.
While this doesn't address a great deal of the issues raised by the article (such as marketing and salesjerks), having a printer designed entirely by women does address some of the issues with women and electronics.
My hands tend to be smaller. It can be more awkward for me to carry things with two hands in front of me, due to anatomy. Men and women do not respond the same way to the same symbology; a UI designed by/for women will be different than one designed by/for men.
Because this printer is developed by women, it should be easier for women to use than current offerings... which doesn't necessarily mean that it will be easier for *everyone* to use. It may be that guys will find it frustrating, because the buttons are small and the pictures make no sense to them.
I've actually heard somewhere the opposite being true.
That exposure to too many infectious agents over your lifetime will "wear out" your body's defenses.
They also thought that infant exposure to allergens and dirt would make you more likely to be allergic and that you'd be sicker. Turns out the opposite is the case.
Not sure about the other (your body "wearing out")... what seems more likely is that eventually you get something like mononucleosis that messes up your immune system. I was the healthiest kid... never missed more than two days of school together, and even so it was just because I only got sick once or twice a year that my mom would let me stay home whenever I did.
When I was 17, I got mononucleosis. Two months later I got chicken pox (I'd had it for, not kidding, 24 hours when I was 4 and hadn't caught it since), and I got strep throat every six months for the next two years. And that's even though I spent two weeks in bed when I had mono and then did nothing but go to school for another two months. Doctor warned me that if I didn't get completely over it, I could end up with chronic fatigue syndrome.
So, yeah, there are diseases that will compromise your immune system and make you sicker. But for the garden-variety germs and irritants, if you don't get used to them early, you'll have trouble with them the rest of your life.
I'll second that. We have one in the living room. It's off right at the moment because it needs cleaning, but usually we leave it on high for 24 hours a day. My husband and my cat get along just fine because of it (so long as he washes his hands after he pets her).
Cleaning it isn't a great deal of fun, but it's not terrible either, and you never have to hunt down replacement filters for it. Besides which, it's easier to wipe off the panels from the Ionic Breeze and spray some canned air in the chasse every six weeks or so than to vacuum out my HEPA filter every six months when I change the filter. (It would need changing more often, but we don't run it as much because it sucks a lot more power and makes a lot more noise.)
There's also some evidence that living in an environment that's too sterile can actually be harmful - your immune system needs a workout, and if you don't give it one it can go wrong... causing allergies, asthma, etc.
Exposure to pets reduces allergies and asthma (there's a more recent study from Germany specifically about infant exposure to cats and asthma, but I couldn't find a link)
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Do you think they've got a room full of sweatshop workers chained to desks counting them by hand? No. They count them with a punch card reader. Okay, so I've never used one (I'm not _that_ old), but I really doubt that they're impossible to compromise.
I doubt that they are *impossible* to compromise, too. But, you're omitting a few relevant details:
- These machines work on technology that has been essentially unchanged for many, many years. The code is simple, and likely is public domain, since the government probably developed it. The process is mostly mechanical.
- Access to those machines is very limited. The people who use them are all employees of the election system, which doesn't put them above scrutiny, but does make them far more accountable than Joe Voter. You don't have the punch-card readers out on public display for literally every registered citizen to be able to walk up and stick a smartcard into.
- When there's a question about the results, a *hand* recount can be and is done. This happened in Florida... hundreds of people *did* sit there and go through those cards by hand, tabulating votes.
Obviously, the issues are far from parallel, and there are methods of dealing with them in the case of the old punch cards. Here, there's simply no voter-verifiable record... so no recounts possible.
Yeah, keep believing there are no differences between the parties. Its that kind of thinking that got us in this mess in the first place.
I shudder to think of the mess we can get into with "anybody but Bush" logic, myself.
I voted for Nader last election. I don't apologize... I'm in California, not like it was an issue anyway. But even if Nader hadn't been running, I would have voted third party. I got to that point sometime in August or September I think. I simply couldn't stomach voting for someone who was supposedly the "liberal" side of things... but who didn't seem to mind if I don't have religous freedom and whatnot. Lieberman blew it for me big-time with his "freedom of religion, but not freedom FROM religion" crap.
Now people are going all over again. They're running this election as a yes or no on Bush, without regard to the consequences. Kerry seems all right so far, and I think I'll probably vote for him (though he hasn't picked a running mate yet, and that was the dealbreaker last time). But if I don't think he represents me, I won't vote for him.
I think, hopefully, that the Democratic party learned a lesson from last time: turning your back on the Left doesn't do you many favors. You cannot out-conservative Bush; there's no point in trying. But if we go ahead and elect a "democrat" who, in other decades, would be obviously a republican, we lose any semblance of liberal politics in this country. Granted, chances are that we lose any semblance of democracy if Bush wins... but at least we have a shot at getting invaded by the UN on a "liberation from the evil oppressor" mission.
If these machines are more difficult to operate and more expensive to maintain, and require the hiring of additional personnel to administer, why are they being used?
Most poll workers report that people found them fairly easy to use, even relative to the old paper systems. So ease-of-use is there.
It's very expensive to run an election (just ask California... we got to spend $50 million on getting a new governor, so that he could do just what the old one was doing, but with a funny accent). A lot of the cost is printing up ballots. In addition, it's difficult to make last-minute changes... when I voted in California, the Democratic primary ballot included candidates who had dropped out more than a month ago. There are many new costs with electronic balloting, but there are a lot of costs you get rid of at the same time.
The biggest savings is time and money on vote tabulation. Even when it's punch cards, someone has to stack those up and feed them into the machine. With an electronic ballot, the votes are tabulated instantly. Even if you do a 5% sample of the paper record to double-check, you save a huge amount of resources on counting.
So e-voting isn't necessarily a lot more expensive than paper voting. Sure, it can be, but there's the potential for significant cost savings if it's done right. (I reserve judgement on whether or not it's being done right by most jurisdictions.)
Don't be fooled by talk of "paper receipts". What we need are paper ballots. If they're machine-generated, that's fine; it avoids problems with incorrectly marked ballots. If they're machine-readable, that's fine too -- as long as they're also human-readable.
You can call it a ballot or a receipt, it doesn't matter. All you need is, after you vote, it prints out your votes for you to review. After checking it for accuracy (if you care), you press the final button to submit. Then you put your paper printout into one of those anonymous grey envelopes and drop it in the big grey box and get your "I voted" sticker. If all goes well, no person needs to count your paper ballot, but you could do routine 5% sampling fairly cost-effectively just to double-check.
Bottom line is, you need to have a NON-CHANGEABLE record of your vote to review. It doesn't matter *how* secure or insecure the machines are... if the vote only exists as a bit, it is way too easy to change after the fact.
If I were in California I would have a hard time believing anyone that told me my vote would be counted.
Hey, not all of California got stuck with these machines. Los Angeles County convinced the state that we couldn't *possibly* roll out electronic voting in time for the March election, so we got something called Ink-A-Vote instead. It looks a lot like punch cards, but the little doohickey leaves a perfect black ink spot where you punch, instead of trying to poke through the paper.
Yay, chad-free, and I got to look at my ballot before it went in the box. Seems good enough to me, until we get a *real* secure electronic voting system.
What part of Voting means exactly doodle-squat nowadays is beyond the comprehension of the ~30% of voters who keep tilting at that windmill? ...
This country is going to hell like a ferret sliding on a 60 deg ice slope.
Anyone besides me see a correlation between the notion that the country is going to hell in a handbasket *and* voting doesn't make a difference?
Wise up. If more people got off their asses and voted, we might not be *in* this mess. Boo hoo, you're disenfranchised... because you choose to be.
No. You *don't* tear up a mis-voted ballot...
All ballots not used must be torn up or marked in a way that shows they weren't used, then sent back.
So, you don't tear it up, instead... you tear it up?
I think your automatic blank-filling engine added "and throw it away" after "tear it up" to the original poster's comment...
1) The idea that artifical geographical boundries matter. There is no reason my voting choices should be limited by where I live. Whether it's the state or the neigborhood where I live should have no bearing on who I am allowed to vote on.
Artificial geographical boundaries are still our best approximation of representation. Gerrymandering laws recognize that minority voting blocks can be either held together or split apart when drawing the lines, and splitting them up is in many cases illegal. People still tend to gather geographically according to demographic characteristics which usually affect their representation choices.
So how do you propose to have a representative democracy without using geographical boundaries?
I think it's pretty safe to say that the majority of the voting age people in Florida are idiots. 5 year olds had no problem with their ballots, yet 60 year olds were "confused". If you can't follow simple directions, you really shouldn't be voting.
1) If 5-year-olds were voting, that's a sure sign that something funny was going on.
2) Did you see a picture of the ballot? not only was the butterfly design rather confusing, it was actually misprinted in many locations, so that the arrow for Gore was halfway *between* two holes. One of those holes was the Buchanan spot. The odd layout (which is illegal in many states) combined with the misprint meant that many people, especially those with poor eyesight, could honestly make a mistake. And, given that Buchanan got more votes in Florida than anywhere else, they probably did.
If they hadn't misprinted it, there might not have been a problem with the layout. If they hadn't used the strange layout, there might not have been a problem with the misprint. Between the two, some folks were bound to get tripped up.
Hmm.. on one hand audio equipment is mostly a commodity, on the other hand, its not like it doesn't matter at all what equipment you use,
But it's not like companies hire full-time employees to administer their PA system.
There's a few highly specialized uses where audio equipment requires a full-time person to support it. Most of them are in the entertainment industry. If software became commoditized in the way I was describing, it would probably be a lot like audio equipment is today... a few people working in highly specialized industries, maintaining very high-end software, tweaking things constantly to maintain peak operation. But that's a lot fewer people needed than the current-day situation.
Let's all stop using zippers and become Amish while we're at it so no one ever loses a job to progress ever again (No offense to the Amish, they seem to enjoy their lifestyle, it's just not for me or just about anyone I know.)
You missed the point of my post. The person I was responding to pointed out that (1) docks were trying to introduce automation, which drastically reduces the need for live bodies; and (2) the union workers fighting it were too stupid or something to learn to use the new technology. He completely failed to realize that they were fighting it not necessarily because they didn't want to learn the new tech (a lot of the equipment they use now is highly specialized), but because no matter WHAT they learn, many of them will lose their jobs.
People on here complain all the time about losing their jobs because companies are outsourcing to India, and before that, they complained about H-1B visas. It is perfectly rational from a business standpoint to lower labor costs as much as possible, but it will always piss off the people who have been working that job. There's no getting around it... no one will easily accept being obsolete, whether or not they're in a union. Union representation simply increases the chances that they can hang onto their jobs longer.
Unions don't make jobs. Companies do. Unions just insure that workers don't ever have to work hard on the job.
So, insisting on rules that prevent companies from reducing jobs isn't anything like making jobs?
And, what union are you in? Obviously, since union workers don't work hard, you must have a union job... you'd be stupid not to, right? They make more money, get better benefits, *and* they don't have to work hard... where's the downside?
Unions aren't a perfect mechanism, much as corporations are not. They balance each other and reflect each other. Companies want to make the most money they can with the least expenditure of capital possible. Individuals want to make the most money they can with the least expenditure of effort possible. Corporations protect company profits, unions protect work environments. What was your point again?
Strikes really don't work anymore, because you will just be replaced.
In October-November, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority was basically shut down by a five-week mechanics strike. Now there is a new contract, and all those mechanics still have their jobs.
More recently, we just ended a five-month strike at Southern California Vons (Safeway), Albertson's, and Ralphs (Kroger) supermarket locations. Those who didn't find a better job in the interim still have their jobs (though if the allegations about Ralphs falsifying documents to rehire workers as scabs under fake social security numbers are true, they might not all keep them). They have a new contract, and while they didn't win one of the major points (there is now a two-tier wage system), they did win another (they won't have to pay any more for health care for at least a year).
Strikes may not work as well as they used to, but it's been a while since we've had a major strike that resulted in replacement workers taking over (like the air traffic controllers). So not sure where you were coming from with your statement.
Except that management also wanted to automate things like it's done on the East Coast. In the east, the docks are so automated that they don't need nearly as many people to do the unloading. ...
their loser workers would either have to A) update their skills to use the new "high tech" equipment or B) get let go because they didn't know how to use the new "high tech" equipment.
Uh... did you notice while typing your post that their "loser workers" (glad you know so many dockworkers and can inform us that they're losers) would be losing their jobs *anyway*, because there are LESS OF THEM?
Corporations exist to make and protect profits. Unions exist to make and protect jobs. They mirror each other. Don't be so surprised... if corporations didn't have enormous profit motives to exploit labor, then unions wouldn't exist.
Upper management don't get paid overtime, would you like to work for a flat rate?
Most IT positions I've ever seen manage to fall under the category of "professional" jobs, which are exempt from overtime... just like upper management.
When you have a dozen products that can in theory forfill your need, you might need an expert to select the one that fits your needs best.
You miss the meaning of the term "commoditized." An item that is a commodity has no significant differentiation between different brands. The technology gets "topped out" as it were, and products are more or less interchangeable. Commodities markets tell you the price of a good, not the price of a good from this or that supplier. It doesn't matter where it comes from.
In that world, the one that fits your needs best is the one that has the best price for your type of business. The things that will matter -- licensing structure, update pricing, etc., will be financial decisions that can be made by people with only a basic knowledge of the purpose of the software.
I'm not saying this is around the corner, but that *if* it happens, the software consulting niche goes out the window.
okay, maybe "service" is a bad word (since it conjures up the image of low-pay, low-challenge tech support jobs). a better word is "solution". sure there are a lot of companies that claim to be "solution providers" but few really are. the successful companies are the ones that take free software, tailor it, combine it with other free wares, integrate it, document it, deliver it and support it as a unified "solution".
This model, however, depends on software not becoming commoditized. If we get to a point where there is sufficient well-supported, well-documented software out there, which is interoperable and essentially modular, then you no longer need an expert to put together your solution. Once upon a time we needed people to pump gas and operate elevators because it was sorta difficult. Once it got down to punching buttons, those jobs went bye-bye.
Not that I personally think what you propose is a bad idea, but playing devil's advocate for a moment...
You're thinking of the BBC adaptation, I think.
Yep, pretty sure he is...
I wouldn't use the term "stupid", but, as a generalization, women certainly need to be treated differently due to the difference in technical skill level.
I find the opposite to be the case.
If I talk to another woman about computers, she'll usually ask questions about stuff she doesn't understand, and communicate back (paraphrasing, etc.) to verify what she does understand. If I talk to a man about computers, he's far more likely (than the woman is) to say "uh-huh, uh-huh" even though he has no idea what I'm talking about, so I tend to have to ask a lot more questions to find out where his skill level is and what he understands.
The ratio of men to women among technically competent people is irrelevant, because the ratio of technically competent people to lusers is so tiny. The percentage of the male population that groks technology is not really that much higher than the percentage of the female population who does, but men are (in my experience) far more likely to attempt to hide their incompetence because of some macho idea that they *should* know this.
Creating a printer that will be marketed under the theme "printer easy for women to use" is not going to mollify complaints like Myers, instead, it seems to reinforce her argument that electronics retailers and manufacturers think women are stupid.
While this doesn't address a great deal of the issues raised by the article (such as marketing and salesjerks), having a printer designed entirely by women does address some of the issues with women and electronics.
My hands tend to be smaller. It can be more awkward for me to carry things with two hands in front of me, due to anatomy. Men and women do not respond the same way to the same symbology; a UI designed by/for women will be different than one designed by/for men.
Because this printer is developed by women, it should be easier for women to use than current offerings... which doesn't necessarily mean that it will be easier for *everyone* to use. It may be that guys will find it frustrating, because the buttons are small and the pictures make no sense to them.
Not with women that don't have a sense of humor about themselves or anything else....
"A sense of humor" and "offended by ridiculous stereotypes" are not mutually exclusive.
However, "male chauvinist" and "getting the point" seem to be, in your case...
Grr... what movie is that from?
It's not from a movie... yet.
The answer is 42. Maybe not to your question, but to *the* question.
I've actually heard somewhere the opposite being true.
That exposure to too many infectious agents over your lifetime will "wear out" your body's defenses.
They also thought that infant exposure to allergens and dirt would make you more likely to be allergic and that you'd be sicker. Turns out the opposite is the case.
Not sure about the other (your body "wearing out")... what seems more likely is that eventually you get something like mononucleosis that messes up your immune system. I was the healthiest kid... never missed more than two days of school together, and even so it was just because I only got sick once or twice a year that my mom would let me stay home whenever I did.
When I was 17, I got mononucleosis. Two months later I got chicken pox (I'd had it for, not kidding, 24 hours when I was 4 and hadn't caught it since), and I got strep throat every six months for the next two years. And that's even though I spent two weeks in bed when I had mono and then did nothing but go to school for another two months. Doctor warned me that if I didn't get completely over it, I could end up with chronic fatigue syndrome.
So, yeah, there are diseases that will compromise your immune system and make you sicker. But for the garden-variety germs and irritants, if you don't get used to them early, you'll have trouble with them the rest of your life.
I go two words for you...
Ionic Breeze
I'll second that. We have one in the living room. It's off right at the moment because it needs cleaning, but usually we leave it on high for 24 hours a day. My husband and my cat get along just fine because of it (so long as he washes his hands after he pets her).
Cleaning it isn't a great deal of fun, but it's not terrible either, and you never have to hunt down replacement filters for it. Besides which, it's easier to wipe off the panels from the Ionic Breeze and spray some canned air in the chasse every six weeks or so than to vacuum out my HEPA filter every six months when I change the filter. (It would need changing more often, but we don't run it as much because it sucks a lot more power and makes a lot more noise.)
There's also some evidence that living in an environment that's too sterile can actually be harmful - your immune system needs a workout, and if you don't give it one it can go wrong... causing allergies, asthma, etc.
Very true...
Babies who get fevers are healthier
Exposure to pets reduces allergies and asthma (there's a more recent study from Germany specifically about infant exposure to cats and asthma, but I couldn't find a link)