Re:Who would have guessed
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The Internet At 35
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· Score: 4, Insightful
No, that's not right. The moon landing, along with the rest of the Mercury and Apollo missions, had a profound and lasting impact on the world. Yes, we're not all flitting from one planet to the next in our own personal rocket ships, but we think about ourselves and our place in the universe differently now. If you think the moon landings have had no impact on your life, it's most likely that you've never lived in a world without space travel.
The Internet happened in a very different way. Its inception was, at the time, incomprehensible to everyone but a few smartypants researchers. And even those scientists really had no idea how the net would grow to encompass so much of our lives. Even fifteen years after its birth, very few people had any clue about the Internet. The Internet may have been technically born when the first two machines were plugged in, but it wasn't important until many years later, when it became a movement.
...Verisign essentially won a contract to maintain a couple of the most important top level domains for ICANN (on behalf of the rest of us). Verisign took that essentially as a grant of monopoly power over all unassigned domains in those TLD's, and thinks that it therefore has the right to point all requests for such unassigned domains to its own site.
ICANN then said to Verisign: "Oh no you don't. Your contract is just to maintain a couple of databases. You don't suddenly own the net." And so, predictably, Verisign went to court to plead it's so-called case. Just as predictably, they lost.
in which its International Open Source Network (IOSN) will educate Asian users on the benefits of Free and Open source Software
That's kinda funny. From what I hear, Microsoft products are all "free" (as in beer) in many parts of Asia.
You'd think that Microsoft would be thrilled to replace its products with FOSS ones on Chinese computers, for example. With a piracy rate over 90% in China, Microsoft must be "losing" billions of dollars there every year. If Chinese users simply switch over to Linux, they'll instantly become legitimate, fully licensed users instead of software pirates, Microsoft will no longer "lose" billions! What enterprising business wouldn't like to stick its rival with a market where piracy is rampant?
Erm, no, I guess that won't work. Chinese users switching to Linux means Microsoft suddenly loses control of the largest emerging market in the world, and the only thing it'll actually lose is the opportunity to wring as much money out of China as it can. And since you can't lose what you don't have, Microsoft doesn't actually lose money in China, it just doesn't realize all the potential sales. Microsoft would likely lose more sales in China if users there rampantly copied someone else's product than it does now with users rampantly copying Microsoft products.
Universities have long been centers of knowledge and information in our society, and they're linked tightly to economic development.
What happens when a university decides to expand its role in society and start selling access to their "content"? Yeah, academia is supposed to be all about the free interchange of ideas and all that. But really, universities already do sell access to their assets in the form of tuition and other fees.
What I'm thinking is what would happen if a university started acting as a distributor of copyrighted works not only to its students, but also to the surrounding community. You move to a college town, the first thing you do is log onto the local university's web site and sign up for music, movies, and TV content on demand for $x a month.
Maybe that sounds far-fetched, but if the service is really all that, it might be worthwhile for community members to just always sign up for 3 credits of enology and onology.
My guess is that this is a service that universities will offer mostly just to foster a healthy sense of respect for intellectual property and to cover their own and their students' asses. There's probably not much incentive for them to get into the for-profit content-distribution business. But it does help clarify a line that academic centers need to be careful about crossing.
including microchips on marathon runners' shoes, ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool, radar guns at the beach volleyball and cameras that take 1000 images per second
It'd be nice if we could throw a little technology at improving the judging in gymnastics. The athletes deserve a lot more fairness than they got this year.
Perhaps we should start by locating a guillotine on the podium, where it might serve as a constant reminder to the judges.
When you're in your twice-a-day commute, you eventually get complacant and stop paying attention.
That's certainly one of the risks associated with commuting. It's worse than just getting bored or complacent, too... I regularly see drivers reading books or newspapers.
Really, once you've achieved proficency, no ammount of time is going to degrade your ability to drive
I don't believe that's true. Any physical skill improves with practice and diminishes without practice.
If insurance companies are pushing this idea, then you can reasonably expect that they're not going to lose any money on the deal.
It's possible that they could actually make more money and charge customers less if pay-as-you-go insurance results in truly safer roads. The insurance companies would therefore pay out less, and even though they also took in less, they'd still make more money.
But it seems more likely that most people won't actually change their behavior all that much, and pay-as-you-go will instead provide a plethora of excuses for insurance companies to raise their average premiums.
It makes perfect sense for people who use their car only every once-in-a-while. Why should they pay as much as someone who is commuting from LA to SF twice a week?
For one thing, someone who drives twice a month gets a lot less practice driving than someone who drives every day. It's for this very reason that pilots must fly a certain number of hours each month.
Another thing: The roads you drive on make a difference. Highway driving, which is what most of us who commute daily do, carries different risks than city driving, which is what most people who drive only occasionally do. Not necessarily smaller risks, but different. Speeds are higher on highways, but *relative* speeds may actually be lower since everyone is travelling in the same direction. There's less starting and stopping on a highway, and the actions of other vehicles tend to be more predictable.
So the fact that you only drive occasionally won't necessarily mean your rates will be lower.
I'm not a fan of the government-imposed insurance tax. If someone smashes into you (and is found at fault) who has chosen not to have insurance, you take them to court and force them to pay for your car.
That's fine. In fact, you don't actually need any sort of insurance to drive, provided you only drive on your own roads. If you want to drive on public roads, however, you'll need to carry liability insurance to protect the public in case you injure someone.
If you smash into a tree, it's your own damn fault if you don't have insurance.
That's exactly what liability insurance is. It'll compensate another party for any damages (up to your limit) that you might do to them, but you're on your own as far as repairing/replacing your vehicle, etc. So if you smash into a tree that belongs to someone else, they'll pay for the tree but not your car.
It's a little bit different in "no-fault" states. There, your insurance covers your expenses and the other party's insurance covers theirs. Your argument makes a little more sense in that case, but I'm sure you still need some sort of protection from liability.
Dear government, please stop telling me how to spend my money.
Dear citizens, no problem, so long as you all agree to live in a world where you have no protection from damages you'll suffer due to the actions of others. Sign here: _____________________
DRM serves no purpose but to inconvience the people who would never rip it off, and midly deter the ones who were considering it.
Before iTMS, music "sharing" was rampant. Nearly everybody and their grandmother was downloading "free" mp3 music from the various P2P networks. Think whatever you like, but Apple was the first company that found an acceptable balance between convenience and security. DRM has a place and a function, so long as it's fair and reasonable. Like anything else, it can be abused.
Sometimes a mild deterrent is all you really need. Most homes are not secure in any real sense: any idiot can break a window or kick in a door and walk right in. But windows and doors provide enough of a psychological barrier that they're still effective.
Let's see, to prevent this someone would have had to predict that 1) a terrorist would use the name of a major political office holder that is instantly recognizable by anyone over the age of 20, and 2) this rich, famous, instantly recognizable super-human member of the species would actually want to fly on a bargain-rate airline instead of in the family jet.
No, they only needed to consider that innocient people would occasionally be mistaken for people on their list of known terrorists.
The problem isn't that someone mistook Ted Kennedy for a terrorist. The problem is that they apparently haven't put enough effort into creating a reliable means of identifying and resolving the mistakes that will inevitably be made.
It appears you assume that they didn't do any testing...any simulation on this process before implementation.
I assume nothing. Whatever testing they did was prima facie insufficient, due to the fact that this problem arose. Any serious test plan should have included many situations where the system produces a false positive result. The system itself should have one or more mechanisms that deal with said false positive, and the testing should determine either that these mechanisms work well, or that they don't. If they didn't, they should have been fixed and tested again.
It appears that some or all of that didn't happen, as exemplified by the fact that it took three weeks for a US Senator to resolve a problem that the Department of Homeland Security itself says should have never happened.
Is you position that the system was well tested and this problem was beyond the reach of reasonable testing?
I'd absolutely agree that any non-trivial system is bound to have bugs upon completion. Such systems should not, however, have huge, glaring, easy to predict bugs whose results take three weeks for anyone to correct, much less the staff of a US Senator. It's not so much the bugs that are the problem, it's when and how you deal with them.
Note: I'm not saying that senators should get special treatment because of their position; I'm just saying that they usually do, and they certainly have access to all the right people.
Yeah, a passport from Sweden (where they pretty much kick you out if you aren't over six feet, scratch that, two meters tall, blond, fair skinned, and blue eyed) will be useful to someone in a nation where a Swede would likely be mistaken for an albino.
I was watching that show Airline that follows around SW Airlines employees and they wouldn't let a couple fly becasue they had too much to drink. Could that be the REAL reason Kennedy wasn't allowed to fly?
You didn't read the article either, did you?
Asa Hutchinson appeared before a Senate committee to explain the problem and apologize for it. Probably, that wouldn't have happened if the whole thing was a judgement call on the part of an airline employee. Clearly, Kennedy was on a 'no fly' list of some sort. Later reports claimed that he was actually only on a list of passengers to be screened, but that doesn't seem to match the facts.
Sounds like Ted was staging a publicity stunt to me.
Right. And rather than call him on it, Asa Hutchinson decided to bite the bullet and appear in front of a Senate committee to apologize up and down for the mistake.
Sounds like an interesting opportunity for a little experimentation. Next time you fly, try wearing different clothing from what you normally do. If you usually wear baggy pants and t-shirts, try normal-fitting jeans and a nice button-down shirt. Try carrying a different piece of luggage.
I'm not saying you should conform to the TSA's idea of non-threatening style, just that a little experimenting might nail down exactly the sorts of things they're looking for.
You may know full well why they screen you already, and I don't mean to ask. Could be your name or your skin color or probably several other things that you can't change that I haven't thought of.
Well, yes. After implementing any system, you review after a period of time, and correct mistakes/problems.
Of course, but you typically do that before you put the system into production. If you can't run the implemented system in a test bed environment, then at the very least you put the system in place and instruct users not to rely on it, and you give them a quick way to report problems. Also, note that there's a big difference between mistakes made in the system and mistakes made by the system. The former may take a while to isolate and correct, but there should be a mechanism to fix the latter quickly.
Very, very few (if any) are the complex systems put into place with zero bugs.
That's no excuse. If you have to put a system in place without thorough testing, you think long and hard about the kinds of problems it can cause, and you make damn sure you've got a fast and effective means of dealing with those problems.
You're right. Apparently the answer to my question is "yes, TiVo does need saving."
But it sounds like they should be looking to a CEO and not a software engineer to solve their problems. I keep giving them money, and so do many of my friends and probably a huge proportion of/. readers and all sorts of non-techie people as well. That's a pretty nice spot to be in for any business. If their expenses are consistantly outpacing their revenue, well, that's a business problem that needs to be solved.
I don't think adding web content to TiVo is likely to fix their problems. Now, letting customers share their recorded video with friends might be an interesting enough feature to drive new sales and get existing users to pay for a feature upgrade. But still, you don't turn a money-burning company around for the long term on the strength of a nifty new feature. You've got to cut expenses and open up new markets. That's the sort of thing that CEO's do, not programmers.
Does TiVo really need saving? It's the best PVR around... you plug it in, and it just works. TiVo gets it.
I heard someone say recently that TiVo is the Macintosh of PVR's. They were talking about ease of use, not market share. As far as I know, TiVo is pretty much the Microsoft of PVR's in terms of market share. Or at least the Dell.
If TiVo is having financial issues, I don't think it's because of lack of consumer interest or difficulty in selling units. It could well be due to regular, difficult, business issues, like having too many irons in the fire or having to worry about Microsoft's nefarious tactics. I'm sure that the cable companies are trying to horn in on TiVo's market with their various video on demand services, but they tend not to work as well as TiVo anyway.
But really, TiVo is a great device/service that already does exactly what I want it to do. They don't need to turn it into something else.
Boy, does this take me back. Right back to seventh grade math, when we were learning to do stuff like factor polynomials and kids would ask in their whiniest voices: "But why do we have to learn this? What good is it for? I'm never going to have to do this in real life..."
Of course, there was never a satisfying answer from the perspective of a seventh-grader. The more perceptive among us knew that this was just stuff you had to learn, sorta like eating your vegetables. It turned out that it was a stepping stone to more advanced math, and that it was a tool that we could use to understand things that would otherwise have been difficult. But it's not like you ever factor a polynomial in the course of balancing your checkbook.
Well, lucky for you. Professor Mehl has a relatively easy to find and easy to understand web page that talks about his research. (Apologies to the good professor for any minor slashdottings this link may bring.) It turns out that this sampling is a tool that he uses to help answer questions about how people deal with life, and particularly with traumatic events. For example, he did a study where eleven students carried these recorders in the first days after the 9/11 attacks.
I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like this sort of research has plenty of value.
Is there something inherently good about equal percentages of men and women enjoying programming?
No, but there is something inherently good about men and women having equal opportunity to enjoy programming.
But if on average fewer women want to go into CS, because they simply don't like it, then why does that necessarily need to be changed? Why does it matter?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Are there few women in CS because women somehow have an inherent dislike of the discipline, or do women feel unwelcome in CS because they see that there are few women in CS, and they have few role models?
Your argument sounds eerily like the argument against Title IX. And it's pretty much exactly what people say when they try to explain why there are few women CEO's, or board members, or politicians:
"Maybe women just don't like doing that sort of thing. They could if they wanted to, but they choose not to. It's their choice... what's the problem?"
Take a look at government. There are 14 women in the U.S. Senate, and 62 in the House of Representatives. That works out to 14% in each house, while approximately 50% of the population is female. How likely is it that the issues facing 50% of our population can be dealth with by 14% of the members? Not so long ago, there were zero women in Congress, and women held significantly less political clout than they do now. Is that a coincidence?
Same goes for business. A huge majority of upper level executives and board members of the nation's major corporations are men. Women still work for, buy from, and otherwise deal with these corporations, and it would seem that the world would be a better place for everyone, men and women, if women's interests were better represented among the top corporations' top brass.
Back to CS. I doubt very many men in CS are so unenlightened that they'd consciously work to prevent women from entering the discipline. That doesn't mean that we don't send messages that women don't belong, though, whether we mean to or not. Who among us would not be a little surprised to meet a woman who turned out to be a really sharp programmer? There just aren't that many female programmers in the first place. That surprised expression is exactly the sort of thing that says "you're out of place" and which can be very discouraging.
Another example: Men tend to compete with each other and show that they're the best, the smartest, the fastest, etc. Why? To impress our peers, and to establish ourselves at the top of the social hierarchy. If it's not a show of programming skillz, then it's dominance in sports or art or business or whatever. We're like male birds showing off fancy plumage. (For striking evidence of this, read up on male bower birds, which are truly the geeks of the avian world.) All this creates an environment that generally makes women say "Ugh... boys competing. I want no part of this." I'll bet that this creates a fairly high barrier, so that only women who are strongly interested in CS (or whatever) stick around. It's not that we're trying to get them to go away... it's just that we create an atmosphere which isn't as much fun for women as it is for men.
Is that sort of thing discrimination? I guess we could argue about that for quite a while, but ultimately it's not a good thing. Women can bring attitudes, perspectives, and approaches to CS that can benefit us all.
I don't care if women as a group choose to be 5% of the undergraduate CS population or 85%, so long as they really and truly do have an equal opportunity. As the majority, I think we have a moral responsibility to make sure that we're not doing things that prevent others from entering our field. If we're not willing to take a good, hard, open-minded look at ourselves and our field then we're probably not meeting that obligation.
Discrimination? There is *no* discrimination here! Women *choose* not to go into software engineers.
You sound pretty sure. But how do you know that? What data can you point to that shows that conclusively?
The fact is that for a long time, there was discrimination against women in science. It's easier for women to get into science now, but there are still obstacles. Yet you come along and declare that "there is *no* discrimination here!" I'm sure the world would welcome a paper on this discovery of yours.
Just because women aren't "forbidden" doesn't mean that they're welcome.
In fact, as the article title suggests, the industry *tries* to attract women in the field.
Indeed. And schools do the same. It's a good thing, and a sign that we as a society recognize that there has been a problem and that we're trying to do something about it. It's therefore important to monitor the progress of such programs, and see whether they're having the intended effect. The fact that the numbers are changing in the opposite direction is a concern: what's the reason for this change? What has happened that women suddenly have a stronger aversion to CS than they used to?
And I would dare to think that if an employe has to choose between 2 programmers, 1 male and 1 female, with equal competences, (s)he will choose the female, just to have a healtier ratio.
I agree. And why is that necessary? Why do employers feel like they need to have a "healthier" ratio? Why is a 20:1 men:women ratio unhealthy in a software engineering department?
Let's face it: There's no discrimination here. Women simply don't like CS.
Again, how do you know that? And if you're right, don't you think it's still important that we a) make sure that discrimination is in fact not the reason for the disparity, and b) find out what the reason is? After all, it's probably pretty interesting.
And heterosexual men don't like "Interior design" or the such.
I think your own biases are coming through here. There's a stereotype that says that all interior designers must be either gay or female. There's an old episode of "Cheers!" that plays on this, where Norm, who has a knack for these things, has to pretend he's gay so that he can get a job. But it ain't necessarily so. Many of the designers on "Trading Spaces" and the like are men who are apparently not gay, for example.
If You could have twice your salary as an interior designer, would you embrace this career? I wouldn't. It's the same thing for women.
I might, yes. From my perspective, they're not all that different. Both jobs require that you think hard about requirements and aesthetics and design. Both let you build and change and arrange stuff to solve a problem. I suspect that other straight men might do the same, particularly if you double their salary, if you'd only change the name of the job from "interior design" to "interior architecture" or "aesthetic dynamics" or something like that.
You may have no interest in those sorts of things. And that's fine, but your individual preferences don't represent those of all the people of your gender. I know plenty of women who have zero interest in machines or computers or math or engineering, and would never become CS majors. But I also know plenty who were regularly discouraged from math and science starting at an early age, and who are smart and insightful and technical and throrough and who do have an interest in computers, but think that they're not smart enough. These women might well have gone into some sort of science, even CS, but didn't.
It's not the choices that any one particular person makes that count, but the choices numbers that women make. Is there a difference between the choices men make and the choices women make? Yes, obviously. What's the reason for the difference? I don't know, but I don't think you can rule out societal bias.
These figures matter because women have long been discouraged from going into science for no reason other than the fact that society thought women weren't smart enough or tough enough to work in science.
These figures matter because when you have some professions that are chock full of women and others that are devoid of women, it's easier to discriminate against women. Compare salaries for teachers and nurses against those for software engineeers. It's easy to say "oh, it's okay that nurses make 60% of what software engineers do, because there are lots of nurses, and nursing is less technical and less important." Well, there's currently a huge shortage of nurses, and an overabundance of software engineers. If you think it's less technical, you don't know much about modern nursing. The nurses I know save lives on a daily basis, and that would seem more important by any measure than writing, debugging, and meeting with other people about code.
These figures matter because I like women. And not just to look at and fool around, but to work with and talk to and socialize with. The best projects I've worked on (best here = most productive, highest quality code) are the ones where I've worked closely with a woman. Same was true in college. For whatever reason, there's just been a really good, effective dynamic there in terms of helping each other to understand requirements, come up with good designs, and build solid implementations. But the group I'm in now has zero women out of thirteen programmers, and the one I was in before had two women out of twenty-five programmers. Getting more women into software development would be a good thing.
It just isn't important to monitor such trivial things.
It is very important to monitor and learn about such things. The reasons behind these changes tell us useful and important things about our industry, and about society. It could turn out that there are legitimate reasons for the change in the rate of women entering computer science. Or, it could turn out that schools and businesses are discouraging women from entering CS, and that discouragement might rise to the level of unfair gender discrimination.
One obvious reason to monitor such things is that there's a history of discrimination against women, and we want to make sure that we're not falling back into that historical pattern.
As long as you can do your job why should it matter if you have a penis or a vagina?
Exactly. So, why does it seem to matter?
Maybe there's a difference between the genders that just makes men enjoy the challenges that software brings, and makes women all want to go into nursing and teaching. Maybe it works out that way completely voluntarily, because we're all enlightened and obviously everyone is treated equally and without gender discrimination. Let's just accept that for a moment.
So we've got this fairly interesting gender difference staring us in the face. It's so strong that it accounts for a 4:1 ratio of men:women in computer science and probably other engineering fields, and a 1:4 ratio in teaching, and a 1:15 (or something like that) difference in nursing. Wouldn't it be important from an academic point of view to study this difference? What is it that drives men into some fields and women into others?
Alternatively, there's some outside force, something other than innate differences between those of us with a Y chromosome and those with a double dose of X, that has at least some impact on the matter. And I can't think of any kind of outside force that wouldn't qualify as gender discrimination.
If there is unfair discrimination, then hiding your head in the sand and saying "why do we even bother monitoring silly things like this" is the thing that allows it to continue. Trying to understand it, and to make sure that you and your own attitudes are not part of the problem, is the only way to begin to end it.
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No, that's not right. The moon landing, along with the rest of the Mercury and Apollo missions, had a profound and lasting impact on the world. Yes, we're not all flitting from one planet to the next in our own personal rocket ships, but we think about ourselves and our place in the universe differently now. If you think the moon landings have had no impact on your life, it's most likely that you've never lived in a world without space travel.
The Internet happened in a very different way. Its inception was, at the time, incomprehensible to everyone but a few smartypants researchers. And even those scientists really had no idea how the net would grow to encompass so much of our lives. Even fifteen years after its birth, very few people had any clue about the Internet. The Internet may have been technically born when the first two machines were plugged in, but it wasn't important until many years later, when it became a movement.
...Verisign essentially won a contract to maintain a couple of the most important top level domains for ICANN (on behalf of the rest of us). Verisign took that essentially as a grant of monopoly power over all unassigned domains in those TLD's, and thinks that it therefore has the right to point all requests for such unassigned domains to its own site.
ICANN then said to Verisign: "Oh no you don't. Your contract is just to maintain a couple of databases. You don't suddenly own the net." And so, predictably, Verisign went to court to plead it's so-called case. Just as predictably, they lost.
It's nice when things work out like they should.
in which its International Open Source Network (IOSN) will educate Asian users on the benefits of Free and Open source Software
That's kinda funny. From what I hear, Microsoft products are all "free" (as in beer) in many parts of Asia.
You'd think that Microsoft would be thrilled to replace its products with FOSS ones on Chinese computers, for example. With a piracy rate over 90% in China, Microsoft must be "losing" billions of dollars there every year. If Chinese users simply switch over to Linux, they'll instantly become legitimate, fully licensed users instead of software pirates, Microsoft will no longer "lose" billions! What enterprising business wouldn't like to stick its rival with a market where piracy is rampant?
Erm, no, I guess that won't work. Chinese users switching to Linux means Microsoft suddenly loses control of the largest emerging market in the world, and the only thing it'll actually lose is the opportunity to wring as much money out of China as it can. And since you can't lose what you don't have, Microsoft doesn't actually lose money in China, it just doesn't realize all the potential sales. Microsoft would likely lose more sales in China if users there rampantly copied someone else's product than it does now with users rampantly copying Microsoft products.
Universities have long been centers of knowledge and information in our society, and they're linked tightly to economic development.
What happens when a university decides to expand its role in society and start selling access to their "content"? Yeah, academia is supposed to be all about the free interchange of ideas and all that. But really, universities already do sell access to their assets in the form of tuition and other fees.
What I'm thinking is what would happen if a university started acting as a distributor of copyrighted works not only to its students, but also to the surrounding community. You move to a college town, the first thing you do is log onto the local university's web site and sign up for music, movies, and TV content on demand for $x a month.
Maybe that sounds far-fetched, but if the service is really all that, it might be worthwhile for community members to just always sign up for 3 credits of enology and onology.
My guess is that this is a service that universities will offer mostly just to foster a healthy sense of respect for intellectual property and to cover their own and their students' asses. There's probably not much incentive for them to get into the for-profit content-distribution business. But it does help clarify a line that academic centers need to be careful about crossing.
including microchips on marathon runners' shoes, ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool, radar guns at the beach volleyball and cameras that take 1000 images per second
It'd be nice if we could throw a little technology at improving the judging in gymnastics. The athletes deserve a lot more fairness than they got this year.
Perhaps we should start by locating a guillotine on the podium, where it might serve as a constant reminder to the judges.
An automobile is not an airplane.
You're right. I've never been hit by an airplane.
When you're in your twice-a-day commute, you eventually get complacant and stop paying attention.
That's certainly one of the risks associated with commuting. It's worse than just getting bored or complacent, too... I regularly see drivers reading books or newspapers.
Really, once you've achieved proficency, no ammount of time is going to degrade your ability to drive
I don't believe that's true. Any physical skill improves with practice and diminishes without practice.
If insurance companies are pushing this idea, then you can reasonably expect that they're not going to lose any money on the deal.
It's possible that they could actually make more money and charge customers less if pay-as-you-go insurance results in truly safer roads. The insurance companies would therefore pay out less, and even though they also took in less, they'd still make more money.
But it seems more likely that most people won't actually change their behavior all that much, and pay-as-you-go will instead provide a plethora of excuses for insurance companies to raise their average premiums.
It makes perfect sense for people who use their car only every once-in-a-while. Why should they pay as much as someone who is commuting from LA to SF twice a week?
For one thing, someone who drives twice a month gets a lot less practice driving than someone who drives every day. It's for this very reason that pilots must fly a certain number of hours each month.
Another thing: The roads you drive on make a difference. Highway driving, which is what most of us who commute daily do, carries different risks than city driving, which is what most people who drive only occasionally do. Not necessarily smaller risks, but different. Speeds are higher on highways, but *relative* speeds may actually be lower since everyone is travelling in the same direction. There's less starting and stopping on a highway, and the actions of other vehicles tend to be more predictable.
So the fact that you only drive occasionally won't necessarily mean your rates will be lower.
I'm not a fan of the government-imposed insurance tax. If someone smashes into you (and is found at fault) who has chosen not to have insurance, you take them to court and force them to pay for your car.
That's fine. In fact, you don't actually need any sort of insurance to drive, provided you only drive on your own roads. If you want to drive on public roads, however, you'll need to carry liability insurance to protect the public in case you injure someone.
If you smash into a tree, it's your own damn fault if you don't have insurance.
That's exactly what liability insurance is. It'll compensate another party for any damages (up to your limit) that you might do to them, but you're on your own as far as repairing/replacing your vehicle, etc. So if you smash into a tree that belongs to someone else, they'll pay for the tree but not your car.
It's a little bit different in "no-fault" states. There, your insurance covers your expenses and the other party's insurance covers theirs. Your argument makes a little more sense in that case, but I'm sure you still need some sort of protection from liability.
Dear government, please stop telling me how to spend my money.
Dear citizens, no problem, so long as you all agree to live in a world where you have no protection from damages you'll suffer due to the actions of others. Sign here: _____________________
The scientific view of religion is not atheism. The scientific view is agnosticism and simplicity.
And it's expressed as "On what factual grounds do you base these far-reaching assertions?"
DRM serves no purpose but to inconvience the people who would never rip it off, and midly deter the ones who were considering it.
Before iTMS, music "sharing" was rampant. Nearly everybody and their grandmother was downloading "free" mp3 music from the various P2P networks. Think whatever you like, but Apple was the first company that found an acceptable balance between convenience and security. DRM has a place and a function, so long as it's fair and reasonable. Like anything else, it can be abused.
Sometimes a mild deterrent is all you really need. Most homes are not secure in any real sense: any idiot can break a window or kick in a door and walk right in. But windows and doors provide enough of a psychological barrier that they're still effective.
Let's see, to prevent this someone would have had to predict that 1) a terrorist would use the name of a major political office holder that is instantly recognizable by anyone over the age of 20, and 2) this rich, famous, instantly recognizable super-human member of the species would actually want to fly on a bargain-rate airline instead of in the family jet.
No, they only needed to consider that innocient people would occasionally be mistaken for people on their list of known terrorists.
The problem isn't that someone mistook Ted Kennedy for a terrorist. The problem is that they apparently haven't put enough effort into creating a reliable means of identifying and resolving the mistakes that will inevitably be made.
It appears you assume that they didn't do any testing...any simulation on this process before implementation.
I assume nothing. Whatever testing they did was prima facie insufficient, due to the fact that this problem arose. Any serious test plan should have included many situations where the system produces a false positive result. The system itself should have one or more mechanisms that deal with said false positive, and the testing should determine either that these mechanisms work well, or that they don't. If they didn't, they should have been fixed and tested again.
It appears that some or all of that didn't happen, as exemplified by the fact that it took three weeks for a US Senator to resolve a problem that the Department of Homeland Security itself says should have never happened.
Is you position that the system was well tested and this problem was beyond the reach of reasonable testing?
I'd absolutely agree that any non-trivial system is bound to have bugs upon completion. Such systems should not, however, have huge, glaring, easy to predict bugs whose results take three weeks for anyone to correct, much less the staff of a US Senator. It's not so much the bugs that are the problem, it's when and how you deal with them.
Note: I'm not saying that senators should get special treatment because of their position; I'm just saying that they usually do, and they certainly have access to all the right people.
Yeah, a passport from Sweden (where they pretty much kick you out if you aren't over six feet, scratch that, two meters tall, blond, fair skinned, and blue eyed) will be useful to someone in a nation where a Swede would likely be mistaken for an albino.
I was watching that show Airline that follows around SW Airlines employees and they wouldn't let a couple fly becasue they had too much to drink. Could that be the REAL reason Kennedy wasn't allowed to fly?
You didn't read the article either, did you?
Asa Hutchinson appeared before a Senate committee to explain the problem and apologize for it. Probably, that wouldn't have happened if the whole thing was a judgement call on the part of an airline employee. Clearly, Kennedy was on a 'no fly' list of some sort. Later reports claimed that he was actually only on a list of passengers to be screened, but that doesn't seem to match the facts.
Sounds like Ted was staging a publicity stunt to me.
Right. And rather than call him on it, Asa Hutchinson decided to bite the bullet and appear in front of a Senate committee to apologize up and down for the mistake.
Sounds like an interesting opportunity for a little experimentation. Next time you fly, try wearing different clothing from what you normally do. If you usually wear baggy pants and t-shirts, try normal-fitting jeans and a nice button-down shirt. Try carrying a different piece of luggage.
I'm not saying you should conform to the TSA's idea of non-threatening style, just that a little experimenting might nail down exactly the sorts of things they're looking for.
You may know full well why they screen you already, and I don't mean to ask. Could be your name or your skin color or probably several other things that you can't change that I haven't thought of.
Well, yes. After implementing any system, you review after a period of time, and correct mistakes/problems.
Of course, but you typically do that before you put the system into production. If you can't run the implemented system in a test bed environment, then at the very least you put the system in place and instruct users not to rely on it, and you give them a quick way to report problems. Also, note that there's a big difference between mistakes made in the system and mistakes made by the system. The former may take a while to isolate and correct, but there should be a mechanism to fix the latter quickly.
Very, very few (if any) are the complex systems put into place with zero bugs.
That's no excuse. If you have to put a system in place without thorough testing, you think long and hard about the kinds of problems it can cause, and you make damn sure you've got a fast and effective means of dealing with those problems.
You're right. Apparently the answer to my question is "yes, TiVo does need saving."
/. readers and all sorts of non-techie people as well. That's a pretty nice spot to be in for any business. If their expenses are consistantly outpacing their revenue, well, that's a business problem that needs to be solved.
But it sounds like they should be looking to a CEO and not a software engineer to solve their problems. I keep giving them money, and so do many of my friends and probably a huge proportion of
I don't think adding web content to TiVo is likely to fix their problems. Now, letting customers share their recorded video with friends might be an interesting enough feature to drive new sales and get existing users to pay for a feature upgrade. But still, you don't turn a money-burning company around for the long term on the strength of a nifty new feature. You've got to cut expenses and open up new markets. That's the sort of thing that CEO's do, not programmers.
Does TiVo really need saving? It's the best PVR around... you plug it in, and it just works. TiVo gets it.
I heard someone say recently that TiVo is the Macintosh of PVR's. They were talking about ease of use, not market share. As far as I know, TiVo is pretty much the Microsoft of PVR's in terms of market share. Or at least the Dell.
If TiVo is having financial issues, I don't think it's because of lack of consumer interest or difficulty in selling units. It could well be due to regular, difficult, business issues, like having too many irons in the fire or having to worry about Microsoft's nefarious tactics. I'm sure that the cable companies are trying to horn in on TiVo's market with their various video on demand services, but they tend not to work as well as TiVo anyway.
But really, TiVo is a great device/service that already does exactly what I want it to do. They don't need to turn it into something else.
Please explain the value of this?
Boy, does this take me back. Right back to seventh grade math, when we were learning to do stuff like factor polynomials and kids would ask in their whiniest voices: "But why do we have to learn this? What good is it for? I'm never going to have to do this in real life..."
Of course, there was never a satisfying answer from the perspective of a seventh-grader. The more perceptive among us knew that this was just stuff you had to learn, sorta like eating your vegetables. It turned out that it was a stepping stone to more advanced math, and that it was a tool that we could use to understand things that would otherwise have been difficult. But it's not like you ever factor a polynomial in the course of balancing your checkbook.
Well, lucky for you. Professor Mehl has a relatively easy to find and easy to understand web page that talks about his research. (Apologies to the good professor for any minor slashdottings this link may bring.) It turns out that this sampling is a tool that he uses to help answer questions about how people deal with life, and particularly with traumatic events. For example, he did a study where eleven students carried these recorders in the first days after the 9/11 attacks.
I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like this sort of research has plenty of value.
Is there something inherently good about equal percentages of men and women enjoying programming?
No, but there is something inherently good about men and women having equal opportunity to enjoy programming.
But if on average fewer women want to go into CS, because they simply don't like it, then why does that necessarily need to be changed? Why does it matter?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Are there few women in CS because women somehow have an inherent dislike of the discipline, or do women feel unwelcome in CS because they see that there are few women in CS, and they have few role models?
Your argument sounds eerily like the argument against Title IX. And it's pretty much exactly what people say when they try to explain why there are few women CEO's, or board members, or politicians:
"Maybe women just don't like doing that sort of thing. They could if they wanted to, but they choose not to. It's their choice... what's the problem?"
Take a look at government. There are 14 women in the U.S. Senate, and 62 in the House of Representatives. That works out to 14% in each house, while approximately 50% of the population is female. How likely is it that the issues facing 50% of our population can be dealth with by 14% of the members? Not so long ago, there were zero women in Congress, and women held significantly less political clout than they do now. Is that a coincidence?
Same goes for business. A huge majority of upper level executives and board members of the nation's major corporations are men. Women still work for, buy from, and otherwise deal with these corporations, and it would seem that the world would be a better place for everyone, men and women, if women's interests were better represented among the top corporations' top brass.
Back to CS. I doubt very many men in CS are so unenlightened that they'd consciously work to prevent women from entering the discipline. That doesn't mean that we don't send messages that women don't belong, though, whether we mean to or not. Who among us would not be a little surprised to meet a woman who turned out to be a really sharp programmer? There just aren't that many female programmers in the first place. That surprised expression is exactly the sort of thing that says "you're out of place" and which can be very discouraging.
Another example: Men tend to compete with each other and show that they're the best, the smartest, the fastest, etc. Why? To impress our peers, and to establish ourselves at the top of the social hierarchy. If it's not a show of programming skillz, then it's dominance in sports or art or business or whatever. We're like male birds showing off fancy plumage. (For striking evidence of this, read up on male bower birds, which are truly the geeks of the avian world.) All this creates an environment that generally makes women say "Ugh... boys competing. I want no part of this." I'll bet that this creates a fairly high barrier, so that only women who are strongly interested in CS (or whatever) stick around. It's not that we're trying to get them to go away... it's just that we create an atmosphere which isn't as much fun for women as it is for men.
Is that sort of thing discrimination? I guess we could argue about that for quite a while, but ultimately it's not a good thing. Women can bring attitudes, perspectives, and approaches to CS that can benefit us all.
I don't care if women as a group choose to be 5% of the undergraduate CS population or 85%, so long as they really and truly do have an equal opportunity. As the majority, I think we have a moral responsibility to make sure that we're not doing things that prevent others from entering our field. If we're not willing to take a good, hard, open-minded look at ourselves and our field then we're probably not meeting that obligation.
Eventually, you'd reach a point where there wouldn't be enough remaining wild women to maintain the porn supply.
If we're looking for examples of the reason that women avoid CS departments, ZoneGray should probably be Exhibit A.
Discrimination? There is *no* discrimination here! Women *choose* not to go into software engineers.
You sound pretty sure. But how do you know that? What data can you point to that shows that conclusively?
The fact is that for a long time, there was discrimination against women in science. It's easier for women to get into science now, but there are still obstacles. Yet you come along and declare that "there is *no* discrimination here!" I'm sure the world would welcome a paper on this discovery of yours.
Just because women aren't "forbidden" doesn't mean that they're welcome.
In fact, as the article title suggests, the industry *tries* to attract women in the field.
Indeed. And schools do the same. It's a good thing, and a sign that we as a society recognize that there has been a problem and that we're trying to do something about it. It's therefore important to monitor the progress of such programs, and see whether they're having the intended effect. The fact that the numbers are changing in the opposite direction is a concern: what's the reason for this change? What has happened that women suddenly have a stronger aversion to CS than they used to?
And I would dare to think that if an employe has to choose between 2 programmers, 1 male and 1 female, with equal competences, (s)he will choose the female, just to have a healtier ratio.
I agree. And why is that necessary? Why do employers feel like they need to have a "healthier" ratio? Why is a 20:1 men:women ratio unhealthy in a software engineering department?
Let's face it: There's no discrimination here. Women simply don't like CS.
Again, how do you know that? And if you're right, don't you think it's still important that we a) make sure that discrimination is in fact not the reason for the disparity, and b) find out what the reason is? After all, it's probably pretty interesting.
And heterosexual men don't like "Interior design" or the such.
I think your own biases are coming through here. There's a stereotype that says that all interior designers must be either gay or female. There's an old episode of "Cheers!" that plays on this, where Norm, who has a knack for these things, has to pretend he's gay so that he can get a job. But it ain't necessarily so. Many of the designers on "Trading Spaces" and the like are men who are apparently not gay, for example.
If You could have twice your salary as an interior designer, would you embrace this career? I wouldn't. It's the same thing for women.
I might, yes. From my perspective, they're not all that different. Both jobs require that you think hard about requirements and aesthetics and design. Both let you build and change and arrange stuff to solve a problem. I suspect that other straight men might do the same, particularly if you double their salary, if you'd only change the name of the job from "interior design" to "interior architecture" or "aesthetic dynamics" or something like that.
You may have no interest in those sorts of things. And that's fine, but your individual preferences don't represent those of all the people of your gender. I know plenty of women who have zero interest in machines or computers or math or engineering, and would never become CS majors. But I also know plenty who were regularly discouraged from math and science starting at an early age, and who are smart and insightful and technical and throrough and who do have an interest in computers, but think that they're not smart enough. These women might well have gone into some sort of science, even CS, but didn't.
It's not the choices that any one particular person makes that count, but the choices numbers that women make. Is there a difference between the choices men make and the choices women make? Yes, obviously. What's the reason for the difference? I don't know, but I don't think you can rule out societal bias.
Why do these figures matter?
These figures matter because women have long been discouraged from going into science for no reason other than the fact that society thought women weren't smart enough or tough enough to work in science.
These figures matter because when you have some professions that are chock full of women and others that are devoid of women, it's easier to discriminate against women. Compare salaries for teachers and nurses against those for software engineeers. It's easy to say "oh, it's okay that nurses make 60% of what software engineers do, because there are lots of nurses, and nursing is less technical and less important." Well, there's currently a huge shortage of nurses, and an overabundance of software engineers. If you think it's less technical, you don't know much about modern nursing. The nurses I know save lives on a daily basis, and that would seem more important by any measure than writing, debugging, and meeting with other people about code.
These figures matter because I like women. And not just to look at and fool around, but to work with and talk to and socialize with. The best projects I've worked on (best here = most productive, highest quality code) are the ones where I've worked closely with a woman. Same was true in college. For whatever reason, there's just been a really good, effective dynamic there in terms of helping each other to understand requirements, come up with good designs, and build solid implementations. But the group I'm in now has zero women out of thirteen programmers, and the one I was in before had two women out of twenty-five programmers. Getting more women into software development would be a good thing.
It just isn't important to monitor such trivial things.
It is very important to monitor and learn about such things. The reasons behind these changes tell us useful and important things about our industry, and about society. It could turn out that there are legitimate reasons for the change in the rate of women entering computer science. Or, it could turn out that schools and businesses are discouraging women from entering CS, and that discouragement might rise to the level of unfair gender discrimination.
One obvious reason to monitor such things is that there's a history of discrimination against women, and we want to make sure that we're not falling back into that historical pattern.
As long as you can do your job why should it matter if you have a penis or a vagina?
Exactly. So, why does it seem to matter?
Maybe there's a difference between the genders that just makes men enjoy the challenges that software brings, and makes women all want to go into nursing and teaching. Maybe it works out that way completely voluntarily, because we're all enlightened and obviously everyone is treated equally and without gender discrimination. Let's just accept that for a moment.
So we've got this fairly interesting gender difference staring us in the face. It's so strong that it accounts for a 4:1 ratio of men:women in computer science and probably other engineering fields, and a 1:4 ratio in teaching, and a 1:15 (or something like that) difference in nursing. Wouldn't it be important from an academic point of view to study this difference? What is it that drives men into some fields and women into others?
Alternatively, there's some outside force, something other than innate differences between those of us with a Y chromosome and those with a double dose of X, that has at least some impact on the matter. And I can't think of any kind of outside force that wouldn't qualify as gender discrimination.
If there is unfair discrimination, then hiding your head in the sand and saying "why do we even bother monitoring silly things like this" is the thing that allows it to continue. Trying to understand it, and to make sure that you and your own attitudes are not part of the problem, is the only way to begin to end it.