> First, if you say "It's a fact. Get over it." you HAVE to put up references even if it's not peer-reviewed
In most competitive sports and fields where being a woman is not a clear physical disadvantage, women are generally not even in the top 10 (when you rank them amongst the men).
The average woman might be better than the average guy in lots of stuff, but in very many fields (not all) it's not the average that makes the big difference. What matters in those fields is how close you are to being the best.
Nobody really cares if you can sprint faster than the average person. They only start caring if you can run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds. Hardly anyone cares if you can add and multiply a bit better than the average person. They start noticing if you can solve stuff like the Poincare conjecture BEFORE other people.
Nowadays there's little really stopping women in the Western World.
If harsh or discouraging words or wolf-whistles would stop someone from succeeding, then they clearly do NOT have what it takes to be a "success"[1] in many fields (especially high paying ones). You think those rich asshole investment bankers didn't get harsh words or discouragement? They took their bonuses anyway...
In the USA it seems lots of "nerdy guys" get harassed (even physically) by others for being "nerdy/geeky". They persist anyway, and a few might even become famous and successful nerds. The rest? They remain nerdy guys anyway;).
So what's stopping women from starting their own OSS projects? Sourceforge doesn't care what gender or race you are.
From what I see, women generally aren't as competive as men. If a woman had a compulsion to wash her hands very often, she'd either seek professional help or try to keep it a secret. If a guy had a compulsion to wash his hands very often, there's a higher chance that he'd join a group of like-minded guys and they'll argue about the best way to wash, whether bar or liquid soap is better, what sort of water or even liquid, and brag about how many times they washed. That's what a lot of popular male hobbies are... It stops being silliness when they discover something practical or very interesting, or get millions of people to join in the insanity...
But competitiveness is overrated - if you know you're not the best, then if you are wise you pick a field or market where being the "Star person/company" isn't as important. There are plenty of areas where you (or your company) can do well without having to be the top 10 or even top 1000.
[1] But what's the definition of success? At the end of the day, most women appear to have lots of close friends, whereas a top CEO might have only a few close friends.
The difference between the Finance sector and Casinos is that in the Finance sector it is more common for "professionals" to gamble with OTHER people's money. If they win, they get a big bonus. If they lose small, they still get paid. If they lose big, at worst they have to change jobs. If everyone loses big, they get a bail out (and might still get bonuses).
Just curious, what in the.NET libraries do you use often? What are the benefits of using.NET for you?
I've tried a bit of win32 (not.net) coding with python, the MSDN docs on win32 stuff are OK I guess but sometimes ambiguous and not very clear on explaining basic Windows concepts (e.g. what's the difference between a owner window and a parent window and _why_ the distinction exists).
> I have heard the argument "why should I pay for my neighbour?" from several Americans regarding healthcare
The other answer to that argument is they are ALREADY paying even if they're ignorant of it- Medicare, Medicaid, and also for the people sitting in ER (who may also cost them by getting in the way of "real" ER treatment).
The USA has very good healthcare, for the people who can get it. Best survival rates for various cancers for instance.
But overall the US people are paying more for healthcare, and getting less in return, when compared to other 1st world countries.
If you ask me, I personally think that people should be allocated a certain amount for healthcare (depends on how rich the country is). If they use their quota up, too bad.
The reality is few countries can afford to give everyone a million dollars. So beyond a certain point, it's unfair to _force_ everyone else to pay for you, even if you would die otherwise.
If other people wish to transfer some of their quota to help you, that's up to them (high amounts should be subject to regulatory approval - to prevent abuses, swindles etc). If they want to pay real $$$ to help you and your sob story, that's fine too.
Why is it fair to even force people to pay for the poor and unfortunate? To me, it's not so unfair to require people who want to live in a civilized society to pay for it. It may not be the most efficient way of providing that bit of civilization, but it's clear that the US "HMO" and Company insurance methods are worse.
People with "GP treatable conditions" sitting in ER, or waiting till they're so sick that they either die or an ambulance takes them to hospital is not very "developed world".
> However, the Chinese Government is very likely to be interested in spying on US citizens whose computers contain sensitive trade/technological/industrial/military secrets
Don't those US citizens normally just brag about such secrets after a few drinks?;)
And Chinese students just take home their lab notes, or even get their professors to email them the stuff...
The Chinese Government is unlikely to be interested in spying on US citizens (or taking control of their computers). They'll be spying on their own citizens.
Similarly, the US Government is more likely to spy on US citizens.
> we still do not have the ability to even accurately map active neural networks in the brain let alone communicate with them in real time.
Does the prize apply if the BCI only works if it is installed at an early age?
That way we don't need to have accurate maps of the neural networks (which are likely subtly different for each brain).
We just put the interface in, and let the brain learn how to use it - just the way tetrachromats get four colour vision while most humans have 3 colour vision.
Or how humans can learn how to use echolocation, see with their tongues (google seeing with tongue), or see with sound that's derived from videos/pictures ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lmSYP7OcM ).
> It seems kind of pointless, since a machine that shuts down every two hours is essentially useless. Might as well pull the plug in March and call it done.
You don't understand the Windows market. It's big and diverse.
So there'll still be people using it like that, and then kicking up a big fuss when it totally stops working.
There are economic advantages to smoking. It seems very silly to ban smoking everywhere, and at the same time keep worrying about the "aging population problem".
1) Smokers tend to die sooner after their productiveness declines. Whereas healthy nonsmokers are more likely to live for 1, or 2 more decades thus using up more resources and still get something just as expensive as lung cancer. Remember eating all that healthy stuff and getting good exercise means you are less likely to get heart disease or a stroke and so you are more likely to die of cancer. You can't avoid death, just postpone it.
2) If you do it right the tobacco taxes more than make up for what they cost (which means they help pay for the nonsmokers like me:) ).
For example: in the UK smoking related problems cost the NHS 5 billion pounds a year. However the tobacco taxes bring in 10 billion pounds a year. Thus UK smokers contribute more than they take out from the system. And it's easier to make smokers pay more in taxes, than to increase income or sales taxes.
By all means educate people about the dangers of smoking, and take measures to prevent nonadults from smoking. But if adults still want to smoke, let them - as long as it doesn't cause stuff to blow up etc.
As for 2nd hand smoke, it's simple: to increase the number of smoke-free places (e.g. restaurants, pubs), just tax places that allow smoking more than those that don't (e.g. require more expensive operating licenses). That way you get increased tax revenue, while maintaining choice. Banning doesn't increase tax revenue at all.
There are lots of unhealthy/risky stuff we do everyday which makes the danger of 2nd hand smoke pale in comparison. Consuming large fries+fizzy sugar water every day will probably kill most people faster than having them breathe in 2nd hand cigarette smoke everyday.
Yes there's a choice to consume fries or not. But with my suggestion (taxing places that allow smoking) there'll also be choice for both nonsmokers AND smokers.
Maybe every year a country should give a posthumous award (The Black Lung?) to the top smokers who died contributing to their country...;)
With "old fashioned" key ignition car I can switch the car off in less than 3 seconds.
"Hold 3 seconds" is way too long in an emergency. If you are travelling at 100kph it's an extra 83 metres in addition to the "car finally starts to stop distance".
Yeah, and that's why I suggested people write the whole thing in a faster to develop language first, then try to optimize parts of it.
Then if some bright spark thinks he's some hotshot programmer, he'll waste less of everyone's time failing to optimize small parts of it than if he tried to write the whole thing.
While strictly speaking slower algorithms were causes of many performance problems in code I've had to speed up, they were closer to being candidates for "thedailywtf" than what people would normally call "inefficient algorithms".
Making 300 database queries EVERY time a single webpage is loaded is not a good thing.
Trying to get info on a connection by looking in a file in/proc/ for up to 20 seconds for every connection is not a good idea. Especially when it's done in a way where it can't handle other connections during those 20 seconds.
Not much diff to them anyway - most of the existing displays and video recording technologies will appear to be missing colours to them.
There are very few movie cameras and renderers that support 4 primary colours (e.g. R,G1,G2,B, or R1,R2,G,B - depends on what sort of tetrachromat you are too:) ).
You could have a reality TV show where voters vote for candidates to be sent to Space/Moon/Mars on one-way/two-way trips.
FWIW, VotedOffThePlanet.com does not appear to be registered (probably expired - someone registered it when I suggested the idea to him some years ago;) ).
> The real treasures that will be returned from space will be from highly automated orbital manufactories
Or contracts to "Not send asteroids on collision course with Earth" in exchange for whatever the "Coalition of Independent Space Colonies" want.
When you're sitting in a gravity well, it's a lot easier for people to chuck stuff at you than the other way round. You definitely don't have the "higher ground" advantage.
If they geek it too much someone might go blind... Seriously.
The design might be safe since they'd be spreading out the laser, but it could become unsafe if someone starts collimating the light (or removing the "decollimator"). Especially since the "laser" in such devices is likely to be invisible to the eye (but still able to damage retinas).
The risk of someone making the "wifi" replacement into something dangerous is low, but too many people don't realize the dangers of lasers, so it might not be low enough.
Just recently there was someone who was messing about with a "made in china" class 3B laser device that draws animated and decorative patterns, the idiot was pointing it at everyone in the room I was in. I told him to stop but he kept playing with it. Sure a class 3B does not automatically make you blind, but you don't go positioning it where it can hit people in the eye directly. And you should stop doing that when people tell you to stop.
The amount of precautions you have to take to make it safe show that it's not like some normal bright light (more like light from an arc-welder - or even brighter).
So it's closer to pointing a loaded gun at someone, nobody gets hurt if there are no screw ups, but you've just made things a lot more dangerous.
Lots. I personally prefer robots that aren't "strong AI".
Not so much because they may rule over us but more because we aren't already doing a great job with animals, so it'll be irresponsible to create a new class of creatures that we will likely enslave (in contrast I think enslaving "dumb machines" is fine- my car is less likely to feel anything than an ant, or even an amoeba).
Having the focus more on augmenting humans than emulating humans seems a better approach to me.
If we really need nonhuman intelligences that we don't understand so well (because they were evolved rather than were designed by us), we can get those in a pet shop.
Slashdot Mirror
> First, if you say "It's a fact. Get over it." you HAVE to put up references even if it's not peer-reviewed
;).
In most competitive sports and fields where being a woman is not a clear physical disadvantage, women are generally not even in the top 10 (when you rank them amongst the men).
The average woman might be better than the average guy in lots of stuff, but in very many fields (not all) it's not the average that makes the big difference. What matters in those fields is how close you are to being the best.
Nobody really cares if you can sprint faster than the average person. They only start caring if you can run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds. Hardly anyone cares if you can add and multiply a bit better than the average person. They start noticing if you can solve stuff like the Poincare conjecture BEFORE other people.
Nowadays there's little really stopping women in the Western World.
If harsh or discouraging words or wolf-whistles would stop someone from succeeding, then they clearly do NOT have what it takes to be a "success"[1] in many fields (especially high paying ones). You think those rich asshole investment bankers didn't get harsh words or discouragement? They took their bonuses anyway...
In the USA it seems lots of "nerdy guys" get harassed (even physically) by others for being "nerdy/geeky". They persist anyway, and a few might even become famous and successful nerds. The rest? They remain nerdy guys anyway
So what's stopping women from starting their own OSS projects? Sourceforge doesn't care what gender or race you are.
From what I see, women generally aren't as competive as men. If a woman had a compulsion to wash her hands very often, she'd either seek professional help or try to keep it a secret. If a guy had a compulsion to wash his hands very often, there's a higher chance that he'd join a group of like-minded guys and they'll argue about the best way to wash, whether bar or liquid soap is better, what sort of water or even liquid, and brag about how many times they washed. That's what a lot of popular male hobbies are... It stops being silliness when they discover something practical or very interesting, or get millions of people to join in the insanity...
But competitiveness is overrated - if you know you're not the best, then if you are wise you pick a field or market where being the "Star person/company" isn't as important. There are plenty of areas where you (or your company) can do well without having to be the top 10 or even top 1000.
[1] But what's the definition of success? At the end of the day, most women appear to have lots of close friends, whereas a top CEO might have only a few close friends.
The difference between the Finance sector and Casinos is that in the Finance sector it is more common for "professionals" to gamble with OTHER people's money. If they win, they get a big bonus. If they lose small, they still get paid. If they lose big, at worst they have to change jobs. If everyone loses big, they get a bail out (and might still get bonuses).
> "It's $200 in the store vs. $20 from the guy with the blanket on the sidewalk, I'll buy from the guy, it's the same thing."
Where did most people get their toxic pet food from? The guy with the blanket on the sidewalk or from the stores?
Just curious, what in the .NET libraries do you use often? What are the benefits of using .NET for you?
.net) coding with python, the MSDN docs on win32 stuff are OK I guess but sometimes ambiguous and not very clear on explaining basic Windows concepts (e.g. what's the difference between a owner window and a parent window and _why_ the distinction exists).
I've tried a bit of win32 (not
> I have heard the argument "why should I pay for my neighbour?" from several Americans regarding healthcare
The other answer to that argument is they are ALREADY paying even if they're ignorant of it- Medicare, Medicaid, and also for the people sitting in ER (who may also cost them by getting in the way of "real" ER treatment).
The USA has very good healthcare, for the people who can get it. Best survival rates for various cancers for instance.
But overall the US people are paying more for healthcare, and getting less in return, when compared to other 1st world countries.
If you ask me, I personally think that people should be allocated a certain amount for healthcare (depends on how rich the country is). If they use their quota up, too bad.
The reality is few countries can afford to give everyone a million dollars. So beyond a certain point, it's unfair to _force_ everyone else to pay for you, even if you would die otherwise.
If other people wish to transfer some of their quota to help you, that's up to them (high amounts should be subject to regulatory approval - to prevent abuses, swindles etc). If they want to pay real $$$ to help you and your sob story, that's fine too.
Why is it fair to even force people to pay for the poor and unfortunate? To me, it's not so unfair to require people who want to live in a civilized society to pay for it. It may not be the most efficient way of providing that bit of civilization, but it's clear that the US "HMO" and Company insurance methods are worse.
People with "GP treatable conditions" sitting in ER, or waiting till they're so sick that they either die or an ambulance takes them to hospital is not very "developed world".
> However, the Chinese Government is very likely to be interested in spying on US citizens whose computers contain sensitive trade/technological/industrial/military secrets
;)
Don't those US citizens normally just brag about such secrets after a few drinks?
And Chinese students just take home their lab notes, or even get their professors to email them the stuff...
The Chinese Government is unlikely to be interested in spying on US citizens (or taking control of their computers). They'll be spying on their own citizens.
Similarly, the US Government is more likely to spy on US citizens.
If insurance companies can still discriminate based on "pre-existing conditions" then I'm sure they can find a way to workaround the GINA thing.
> we still do not have the ability to even accurately map active neural networks in the brain let alone communicate with them in real time.
Does the prize apply if the BCI only works if it is installed at an early age?
That way we don't need to have accurate maps of the neural networks (which are likely subtly different for each brain).
We just put the interface in, and let the brain learn how to use it - just the way tetrachromats get four colour vision while most humans have 3 colour vision.
Or how humans can learn how to use echolocation, see with their tongues (google seeing with tongue), or see with sound that's derived from videos/pictures ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lmSYP7OcM ).
Yay for virtual telekinesis, telepathy, auxiliary video in and digital "videographic" memory.
Except that DRM and restrictive Copyright laws will probably cripple it...
Using Steam is renting not buying.
If Steam is only slightly cheaper than buying a game, using Steam is a more expensive way to rent your games.
> I'd have to disagree, steam has been driving the price of games steadily downward.
Renting is normally cheaper than buying.
> It seems kind of pointless, since a machine that shuts down every two hours is essentially useless. Might as well pull the plug in March and call it done.
You don't understand the Windows market. It's big and diverse.
So there'll still be people using it like that, and then kicking up a big fuss when it totally stops working.
I'm a nonsmoker.
There are economic advantages to smoking. It seems very silly to ban smoking everywhere, and at the same time keep worrying about the "aging population problem".
1) Smokers tend to die sooner after their productiveness declines. Whereas healthy nonsmokers are more likely to live for 1, or 2 more decades thus using up more resources and still get something just as expensive as lung cancer. Remember eating all that healthy stuff and getting good exercise means you are less likely to get heart disease or a stroke and so you are more likely to die of cancer. You can't avoid death, just postpone it.
2) If you do it right the tobacco taxes more than make up for what they cost (which means they help pay for the nonsmokers like me :) ).
For example: in the UK smoking related problems cost the NHS 5 billion pounds a year. However the tobacco taxes bring in 10 billion pounds a year. Thus UK smokers contribute more than they take out from the system. And it's easier to make smokers pay more in taxes, than to increase income or sales taxes.
By all means educate people about the dangers of smoking, and take measures to prevent nonadults from smoking. But if adults still want to smoke, let them - as long as it doesn't cause stuff to blow up etc.
As for 2nd hand smoke, it's simple: to increase the number of smoke-free places (e.g. restaurants, pubs), just tax places that allow smoking more than those that don't (e.g. require more expensive operating licenses). That way you get increased tax revenue, while maintaining choice. Banning doesn't increase tax revenue at all.
There are lots of unhealthy/risky stuff we do everyday which makes the danger of 2nd hand smoke pale in comparison. Consuming large fries+fizzy sugar water every day will probably kill most people faster than having them breathe in 2nd hand cigarette smoke everyday.
Compare:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ped/content/ped_10_2x_secondhand_smoke-clean_indoor_air.asp
http://health.howstuffworks.com/death-by-auto-accident-or-french-fry2.htm
Yes there's a choice to consume fries or not. But with my suggestion (taxing places that allow smoking) there'll also be choice for both nonsmokers AND smokers.
Maybe every year a country should give a posthumous award (The Black Lung?) to the top smokers who died contributing to their country... ;)
So to you smokers out there, "Thanks!"
> There is the food aspect
FWIW, robotic pack mules probably taste worse than conventional mules.
With "old fashioned" key ignition car I can switch the car off in less than 3 seconds.
"Hold 3 seconds" is way too long in an emergency. If you are travelling at 100kph it's an extra 83 metres in addition to the "car finally starts to stop distance".
Yeah, and that's why I suggested people write the whole thing in a faster to develop language first, then try to optimize parts of it.
/proc/ for up to 20 seconds for every connection is not a good idea. Especially when it's done in a way where it can't handle other connections during those 20 seconds.
Then if some bright spark thinks he's some hotshot programmer, he'll waste less of everyone's time failing to optimize small parts of it than if he tried to write the whole thing.
While strictly speaking slower algorithms were causes of many performance problems in code I've had to speed up, they were closer to being candidates for "thedailywtf" than what people would normally call "inefficient algorithms".
Making 300 database queries EVERY time a single webpage is loaded is not a good thing.
Trying to get info on a connection by looking in a file in
Same goes for writing in a "scripting language" and optimizing some parts in C.
Not much diff to them anyway - most of the existing displays and video recording technologies will appear to be missing colours to them.
:) ).
There are very few movie cameras and renderers that support 4 primary colours (e.g. R,G1,G2,B, or R1,R2,G,B - depends on what sort of tetrachromat you are too
You could have a reality TV show where voters vote for candidates to be sent to Space/Moon/Mars on one-way/two-way trips.
;) ).
FWIW, VotedOffThePlanet.com does not appear to be registered (probably expired - someone registered it when I suggested the idea to him some years ago
> The real treasures that will be returned from space will be from highly automated orbital manufactories
Or contracts to "Not send asteroids on collision course with Earth" in exchange for whatever the "Coalition of Independent Space Colonies" want.
When you're sitting in a gravity well, it's a lot easier for people to chuck stuff at you than the other way round. You definitely don't have the "higher ground" advantage.
FWIW, I'd rather get shot than go blind (if I get shot in my eye I'd most likely die, which sucks but at least it's quick).
If they geek it too much someone might go blind... Seriously.
The design might be safe since they'd be spreading out the laser, but it could become unsafe if someone starts collimating the light (or removing the "decollimator"). Especially since the "laser" in such devices is likely to be invisible to the eye (but still able to damage retinas).
The risk of someone making the "wifi" replacement into something dangerous is low, but too many people don't realize the dangers of lasers, so it might not be low enough.
Just recently there was someone who was messing about with a "made in china" class 3B laser device that draws animated and decorative patterns, the idiot was pointing it at everyone in the room I was in. I told him to stop but he kept playing with it. Sure a class 3B does not automatically make you blind, but you don't go positioning it where it can hit people in the eye directly. And you should stop doing that when people tell you to stop.
It's not the same as pointing a bright spotlight at someone. Evidence that it is much riskier is shown by articles like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_scanning
http://www.laserist.org/2008-07_Russian-incident.htm
The amount of precautions you have to take to make it safe show that it's not like some normal bright light (more like light from an arc-welder - or even brighter).
So it's closer to pointing a loaded gun at someone, nobody gets hurt if there are no screw ups, but you've just made things a lot more dangerous.
"to table" something? Don't give that guy in Redmond any more ideas.
"to chair a meeting" has already started to have other connotations.
Lots. I personally prefer robots that aren't "strong AI".
Not so much because they may rule over us but more because we aren't already doing a great job with animals, so it'll be irresponsible to create a new class of creatures that we will likely enslave (in contrast I think enslaving "dumb machines" is fine- my car is less likely to feel anything than an ant, or even an amoeba).
Having the focus more on augmenting humans than emulating humans seems a better approach to me.
If we really need nonhuman intelligences that we don't understand so well (because they were evolved rather than were designed by us), we can get those in a pet shop.