So, drox, are you saying that men and women aren't wired differently, or are you agreeing while simultaneousdly dissecting the citations ?
Behavioural differences do exist between men and women. Centuries of observation back this up. Whether this is due to nature or nurture is a metter of pure conjecture, but science starts with observation. Currently, no-one has the either the instruments or capabilities to produce any empirical data on this matter. So, as a species we still know nothing about how the brain works. The technology we think is cool for measuring neurological activity is still too crude to tell us anything
So the authors concusion is rape is about sex rather than violence and for women not to 'dress provocatively'./i>
A similar argument was once articulated by an 'eminent' High Court Judge in Britain. It got the adverse publicity it deserved. He 'retired' soon after.
The irony was pretty sharp as reflected in last week's "LonelyNet"discussion. Although by no means a scientific sample, hundreds of the very people portrayed as isolated from human contact by the Internet disagreed
Dear John,
Perhaps there was no irony at all. Is there an emoticon for irony ? Perhaps the people who wrote to you weren't lonely. Perhaps instead they were angry, irritated, or felt the need to inform you that you presume a great deal, and that reality is different to how you portray it in your musings.
The great luxury of journalism is that it isn't rigorous or scientific. Most journalists still submit copy counted by the word. This discourages verbosity, and rigour is a luxury they can't afford. Perhaps we need an article on how the internet is changing the face of journalism # ----- (insert an irony emoticon here) -----
Men and women are definitely wired differently. Hence the growing discipline of 'gender dimorphism', which study of the differences.
Examples of this include peripheral vision - men's is better because of millions of years of hunting. Men are proven better at map-reading, and women are better at listening. Women have a more sensitive palate, which is why scottish whisky blending houses employ women tasters. The list goes on....
I like hacking around with code, operating systems and toys. It is an extension of my childhood Lego set. I suppose I am a hacker, and most/. readers will get this. Problem is, the term 'hacking' is pejorative. It has got a bad press. The PR machine of the non-malign hacker is silent, indeed non-existent ! We need a better one. We also need to reclaim the term 'hacker' or find something new to replace it. Microsoft and Apple do it all the time. Why can't we ?
Issue 2: Why are 'hackers' male ?
OK, computing is male dominated. The reasons are better discussed by John Katz than me. As for crackers - everyone convicted to date (to my knowledge) has been male. Once the press apply the standard 'identi-kit' hacker prose describing them and their deeds, the male hacker/cracker stereotype, with all its associated images, gets reinforced. I await the press reaction to the conviction of the first high profile female cracker with great interest.
I saw a documentary the other day about a soup kitchen in Silicon Valley.
.It's boast was that its clients had the highest IQs amongst 'down and outs'. Most of these people were either coders who had burnt out, been put out to grass (for being too old), or had lost their shirts (and houses) in failed.com startups.
Reading this article, it figures. Wonder if I saw any Free PC execs in the queue ?.......
"As for litigation as a spectator sport, what about Mr Fayed and Mr Hamilton?" - perhaps the first libel case in Britain to draw a capacity crowd in living memory. OK - then there has also been some excitement about those other Tory cabinet ministers, Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer. It may be catching on !
"Legendary" implies belonging to a bygone era, the great deeds a matter of archive. Their GUI, derived from the Xerox Star, was both unique and magnificent. And legendary.
"Toys to kill for" - The Apple II and the Mac were definitely "toys to kill for" at the time. There was nothing else to touch them for years. The current Apple offerings do not set the pulse racing or the cash registering in quite the same way. Perhaps because there are so many others in the market place in competition. They now have toys to lust after, until the next one comes along. Thing is, we don't wait as long for the next one now. This is why Apple has had to develop its aesthetic appeal, to differentiate itself. Because, let's face it, the Macintosh was no oil painting. Take away the aesthetics of a G3 or G4, and the much of the innards are familiar. As I said, a triumph of style over substance. Nice technology - but much, much nicer marketing. I'm not knocking it, but merely seeing it for what it is. After all, Heinz Beans and Coca Cola did it for years.
OK - to put it another way - aren't you even slightly amazed that so many intelligent and talented can make a living litigating over the rights to a shape ?
I do understand how it works. I just find it hilarious.
Probably my Britishness showing. Litigation hasn't really took off as a spectator sport over here yet. We still haven't decided whether the televised OJ trial was a docusoap or surrealist comedy.
I accept your point about Apple's commitment to aesthetics and ergonomics. However, the legendary status is precisely that. Legendary. The toys are no longer 'to kill for', just merely to lust over for a short while. Shame really.
My point is, there are a lot of logos out there, with people protecting them with lawyers. Most are two dimensional. In 50 years time, will we see a case where maths professors are brought in as expert witnesses in a case like this ? Will future attorneys in this field need a Ph.D. in Topology ?
This whole deal has the capacity to get out of hand, and become Pythonesque in its silliness
As you guessed, I am not a lawyer, or a marketing exec. These are the only people to ultimately benefit from this state of affairs.
So Apple is prepared to sue over the use of a two dimensional shape ?
Apple launched some new toys yesterday. I saw it here on/. If anyone produced knock-offs of the innovative parts of those, we would all wish to see the copier punished.
But to sue over someone using a logo ? I'm sorry ! Logos are two dimensional. There are millions of organisations in the world with logos. Everytime you doodle, or perform a bodily function, you risk imitating someones logo ! The mathematics of topology in two dimensions, and the number of logos in the world make this unavoidable.
This is not about Apple the technology leaders. This is about Apple, once the technology leaders now being led by their marketing executives. This 'cease and desist' letter demonstrates that in their case, style has defeated substance. There will be no more toys to kill for from Apple, just pretty monitor cases, pretty logos and law suits for anyone threatening the topology of their logo, or using the wrong shade of blue anywhere.
First, Apple had the Apple II. With Visicalc, they had a product to kill for.
Ok, the Lisa was a bit of an expensive turkey, but in the Macintosh, they produced a product to kill for.
Now they have a box with a number of components which wouldn't be out of place in your PC. They have a proprietary OS which is nothing out of the ordinary. And they have monitor cases to kill for (if you shop at IKEA).
Somehow, I feel slightly underwhelmed. Instead of producing products which define what personal computing is about, they are making machines which don't break any ground, but will match your interior decor.
I really hope they return to form soon, and produce something more innovative and exciting than a patented case design.
There are sections of legislation in the UK under the 'Computer Misuse Act' which may potentially clash with this legislation. If M$ (for instance) were to disable say SQL Server, preventing me from getting access to my data, they have technically breached the Computer Misuse Act in the UK.
I am not saying that this will prevent it happening in the UK, merely that there is scope for a feeding frenzy here once the lawyers get involved.
I can see, for reasons of improved business process, why they might want credit card details in their database.
A successful class action would probably set e-commerce back a number of years, but would be a good thing for consumers if providfers ultimately got this right.
Am I the only one who thinks that the blind optimism causing the suits to bet the farm on e-commerce and 'dot com' stocks is ill-founded, given the current capabilities of the technologies ?
I am not a legal person, but the suffix '.net' usually denotes a provider of network services. Unless Blizzard have evolved Warcraft into some new and startling protocol or network service, I can't see how they can claim it.
This could be potentially ludicrous. If it turns out that a community college, for the sake of argument called 'Blizzard College', (because they are the community college in a place called Blizzard !) had the domain name 'blizzard.edu', could they get stomped on as well ? Or a world-wide charitable trust, doing scientific studies on blizzards ('blizzard.org')?
This is a serious issue. This is not cyber-squatting. It is a corporate bid for 'cyberlebensraum'. I hope that it fails.
Interesting view on Webmonkey. You suggest that there were compromises and sell-outs at the behest of their owners, Lycos. I don't know about it, so I can't comment on its truth or falsehood. It does happen though
I don't really care about Webmonkey. I do care about/. My fear, and yours, and I suspect the fear of many/dotters, is that/. will have pressure placed on it to compromise its editorial standards, and they become another Webmonkey, bowing to the whims of an overlord. Let's face it, in these days of '.com' silly money, that overlord could be anybody in a year's time.
Like yourself, I believe in the editorial staff at/. If any of them leave, I will be watching carefully.
I agree that IPV6 means addresses so huge that everyone will be uniquely defined. This is a problem which scares me rigid.
I can still see a role for ISPs here. Instead of offering Internet services accessible to your modem, instead they will offer proxy services, masking your IP address and your identity from the world.
The beige box design came about because we needed PCs to be all things to all men. The design was a compromise, to allow a PC to be used for most things, but not ideally suited to any one. A mill in an 'Industrial Revolution' factory was a single source of rotary power. Belts and chains were used to transfer that power to machines, to do the work of the factory. Similarly, the beige box PC has been a comparable piece of utilitarian computing power technology. The belts, chains and machine tools to drive work from this mill were supplied courtesy of Mr Gates and Linus.
A processor such as the Crusoe offers a number of developmental opportunities. Transmeta have redefined the interface between software and processor with this chip, and this itself should lead to some powerful innovations. The low power consumption will remove a number of constraints from designers of portable equipment. BR Instead of owning one beige box, providing computing power, I expect the standard user in a decade's time to own several devices, each performing specific functions, each with a dedicated processor, and probably an OS which is designed purely to deliver the design functions of that device. Linux lends itself better to evolving into this future vision than any current MS operating system product. Transmeta seem to believe that as well.
We cracked this technology in the UK ages ago. You can now see it in action in our House of Lords in London.
One problem was with fuel consumption. After taking on a full load of steak and kidney pudding and whisky, the 'bots tend to drop into sleep mode for several hours. There are plans now to scrap them.
Slashdot Mirror
In that time
she declared war on Argentina
decimated a very strong Miner's union
killed off all industry outside a 50 mile radius of London
Scared the living daylights out of the rest of Europe
Made millions of children have nightmares
Privatised everything that moved
In short, she was one of the most successful Prime Ministers in the history of the UK, measued on a scale of 'Michael Foot' to 'Genghis Khan'.
I hope that this thing doesn't catch on. Women play too rough to play as men.
So, drox, are you saying that men and women aren't wired differently, or are you agreeing while simultaneousdly dissecting the citations ?
Behavioural differences do exist between men and women. Centuries of observation back this up. Whether this is due to nature or nurture is a metter of pure conjecture, but science starts with observation. Currently, no-one has the either the instruments or capabilities to produce any empirical data on this matter. So, as a species we still know nothing about how the brain works. The technology we think is cool for measuring neurological activity is still too crude to tell us anything
So the authors concusion is rape is about sex rather than violence and for women not to 'dress provocatively'. /i>
A similar argument was once articulated by an 'eminent' High Court Judge in Britain. It got the adverse publicity it deserved. He 'retired' soon after.
The irony was pretty sharp as reflected in last week's "LonelyNet"discussion. Although by no means a scientific sample, hundreds of the very people portrayed as isolated from human contact by the Internet disagreed
Dear John,
Perhaps there was no irony at all. Is there an emoticon for irony ? Perhaps the people who wrote to you weren't lonely. Perhaps instead they were angry, irritated, or felt the need to inform you that you presume a great deal, and that reality is different to how you portray it in your musings.
The great luxury of journalism is that it isn't rigorous or scientific. Most journalists still submit copy counted by the word. This discourages verbosity, and rigour is a luxury they can't afford. Perhaps we need an article on how the internet is changing the face of journalism
# ----- (insert an irony emoticon here) -----
Right on !
....
Men and women are definitely wired differently. Hence the growing discipline of 'gender dimorphism', which study of the differences.
Examples of this include peripheral vision - men's is better because of millions of years of hunting. Men are proven better at map-reading, and women are better at listening. Women have a more sensitive palate, which is why scottish whisky blending houses employ women tasters. The list goes on
Check out "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" by Allan Pease, which tells you more about it.
Issue 1 : Hackers v Crackers
/. readers will get this. Problem is, the term 'hacking' is pejorative. It has got a bad press. The PR machine of the non-malign hacker is silent, indeed non-existent ! We need a better one. We also need to reclaim the term 'hacker' or find something new to replace it. Microsoft and Apple do it all the time. Why can't we ?
I like hacking around with code, operating systems and toys. It is an extension of my childhood Lego set. I suppose I am a hacker, and most
Issue 2: Why are 'hackers' male ?
OK, computing is male dominated. The reasons are better discussed by John Katz than me. As for crackers - everyone convicted to date (to my knowledge) has been male. Once the press apply the standard 'identi-kit' hacker prose describing them and their deeds, the male hacker/cracker stereotype, with all its associated images, gets reinforced. I await the press reaction to the conviction of the first high profile female cracker with great interest.
I saw a documentary the other day about a soup kitchen in Silicon Valley.
.com startups.
.......
.It's boast was that its clients had the highest IQs amongst 'down and outs'. Most of these people were either coders who had burnt out, been put out to grass (for being too old), or had lost their shirts (and houses) in failed
Reading this article, it figures. Wonder if I saw any Free PC execs in the queue ?
OK - I get it now. Whether I want to buy it or not won't be an option.
The only reason I can see for this technology is to allow the vendor or their agent to prevent me from seeing what should be on my screen.
I would certainly never want to buy it, given a choice.
Am I missing something ?
"As for litigation as a spectator sport, what about Mr Fayed and Mr Hamilton?" - perhaps the first libel case in Britain to draw a capacity crowd in living memory. OK - then there has also been some excitement about those other Tory cabinet ministers, Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer. It may be catching on !
"Legendary" implies belonging to a bygone era, the great deeds a matter of archive. Their GUI, derived from the Xerox Star, was both unique and magnificent. And legendary.
"Toys to kill for" - The Apple II and the Mac were definitely "toys to kill for" at the time. There was nothing else to touch them for years. The current Apple offerings do not set the pulse racing or the cash registering in quite the same way. Perhaps because there are so many others in the market place in competition. They now have toys to lust after, until the next one comes along. Thing is, we don't wait as long for the next one now. This is why Apple has had to develop its aesthetic appeal, to differentiate itself. Because, let's face it, the Macintosh was no oil painting. Take away the aesthetics of a G3 or G4, and the much of the innards are familiar. As I said, a triumph of style over substance. Nice technology - but much, much nicer marketing. I'm not knocking it, but merely seeing it for what it is. After all, Heinz Beans and Coca Cola did it for years.
OK - to put it another way - aren't you even slightly amazed that so many intelligent and talented can make a living litigating over the rights to a shape ?
I do understand how it works. I just find it hilarious.
Probably my Britishness showing. Litigation hasn't really took off as a spectator sport over here yet. We still haven't decided whether the televised OJ trial was a docusoap or surrealist comedy.
I accept your point about Apple's commitment to aesthetics and ergonomics. However, the legendary status is precisely that. Legendary. The toys are no longer 'to kill for', just merely to lust over for a short while. Shame really.
I read the post - thanks.
My point is, there are a lot of logos out there, with people protecting them with lawyers. Most are two dimensional. In 50 years time, will we see a case where maths professors are brought in as expert witnesses in a case like this ? Will future attorneys in this field need a Ph.D. in Topology ?
This whole deal has the capacity to get out of hand, and become Pythonesque in its silliness
As you guessed, I am not a lawyer, or a marketing exec. These are the only people to ultimately benefit from this state of affairs.
So Apple is prepared to sue over the use of a two dimensional shape ?
/. If anyone produced knock-offs of the innovative parts of those, we would all wish to see the copier punished.
Apple launched some new toys yesterday. I saw it here on
But to sue over someone using a logo ? I'm sorry ! Logos are two dimensional. There are millions of organisations in the world with logos. Everytime you doodle, or perform a bodily function, you risk imitating someones logo ! The mathematics of topology in two dimensions, and the number of logos in the world make this unavoidable.
This is not about Apple the technology leaders. This is about Apple, once the technology leaders now being led by their marketing executives. This 'cease and desist' letter demonstrates that in their case, style has defeated substance. There will be no more toys to kill for from Apple, just pretty monitor cases, pretty logos and law suits for anyone threatening the topology of their logo, or using the wrong shade of blue anywhere.
First, Apple had the Apple II. With Visicalc, they had a product to kill for.
Ok, the Lisa was a bit of an expensive turkey, but in the Macintosh, they produced a product to kill for.
Now they have a box with a number of components which wouldn't be out of place in your PC. They have a proprietary OS which is nothing out of the ordinary. And they have monitor cases to kill for (if you shop at IKEA).
Somehow, I feel slightly underwhelmed. Instead of producing products which define what personal computing is about, they are making machines which don't break any ground, but will match your interior decor.
I really hope they return to form soon, and produce something more innovative and exciting than a patented case design.
The US government's biggest aircraft carrier, that's us ......... :-(
There are sections of legislation in the UK under the 'Computer Misuse Act' which may potentially clash with this legislation. If M$ (for instance) were to disable say SQL Server, preventing me from getting access to my data, they have technically breached the Computer Misuse Act in the UK.
I am not saying that this will prevent it happening in the UK, merely that there is scope for a feeding frenzy here once the lawyers get involved.
Pseudnet - a portion of the internet where pretentious intellectuals impress their contemporaries with the extent of their vocabulary and verbosity.
I can see, for reasons of improved business process, why they might want credit card details in their database.
A successful class action would probably set e-commerce back a number of years, but would be a good thing for consumers if providfers ultimately got this right.
Am I the only one who thinks that the blind optimism causing the suits to bet the farm on e-commerce and 'dot com' stocks is ill-founded, given the current capabilities of the technologies ?
Hope it generates a 'blizzard' of faxes !
I am not a legal person, but the suffix '.net' usually denotes a provider of network services. Unless Blizzard have evolved Warcraft into some new and startling protocol or network service, I can't see how they can claim it.
This could be potentially ludicrous. If it turns out that a community college, for the sake of argument called 'Blizzard College', (because they are the community college in a place called Blizzard !) had the domain name 'blizzard.edu', could they get stomped on as well ? Or a world-wide charitable trust, doing scientific studies on blizzards ('blizzard.org')?
This is a serious issue. This is not cyber-squatting. It is a corporate bid for 'cyberlebensraum'. I hope that it fails.
Interesting view on Webmonkey. You suggest that there were compromises and sell-outs at the behest of their owners, Lycos. I don't know about it, so I can't comment on its truth or falsehood. It does happen though
/. My fear, and yours, and I suspect the fear of many /dotters, is that /. will have pressure placed on it to compromise its editorial standards, and they become another Webmonkey, bowing to the whims of an overlord. Let's face it, in these days of '.com' silly money, that overlord could be anybody in a year's time.
/. If any of them leave, I will be watching carefully.
I don't really care about Webmonkey. I do care about
Like yourself, I believe in the editorial staff at
Who says that coding is not an art form ;-)
I once did a 1970s version of this - Cobol in rhyming couplets. Just about feasible, but your iambic pentameter goes out of the window.
You get a flat forehead as well.
I agree that IPV6 means addresses so huge that everyone will be uniquely defined. This is a problem which scares me rigid.
I can still see a role for ISPs here. Instead of offering Internet services accessible to your modem, instead they will offer proxy services, masking your IP address and your identity from the world.
The beige box design came about because we needed PCs to be all things to all men. The design was a compromise, to allow a PC to be used for most things, but not ideally suited to any one. A mill in an 'Industrial Revolution' factory was a single source of rotary power. Belts and chains were used to transfer that power to machines, to do the work of the factory. Similarly, the beige box PC has been a comparable piece of utilitarian computing power technology. The belts, chains and machine tools to drive work from this mill were supplied courtesy of Mr Gates and Linus.
A processor such as the Crusoe offers a number of developmental opportunities. Transmeta have redefined the interface between software and processor with this chip, and this itself should lead to some powerful innovations. The low power consumption will remove a number of constraints from designers of portable equipment.
BR Instead of owning one beige box, providing computing power, I expect the standard user in a decade's time to own several devices, each performing specific functions, each with a dedicated processor, and probably an OS which is designed purely to deliver the design functions of that device. Linux lends itself better to evolving into this future vision than any current MS operating system product. Transmeta seem to believe that as well.
We cracked this technology in the UK ages ago. You can now see it in action in our House of Lords in London.
One problem was with fuel consumption. After taking on a full load of steak and kidney pudding and whisky, the 'bots tend to drop into sleep mode for several hours. There are plans now to scrap them.