The primary function of language is not communication; it's cognition.
Says who? You can repeat that statement as much as you like, and it doesn't make true even the unstated presupposition that there is such a thing as a "primary" function of language.
There are some functions of language that you're not acknowledging at all, too, like establishing and maintaining group boundaries, with the obvious political and economical consequences.
While modern day English uses an apostrophe to indicate the possessive, [...]
No, to indicate the possessive, English uses an inflectional suffix (with weird syntax/morphology, but I digress).
You're making a Linguistics 101 error: the grammar of a language must be stated in terms of its spoken form, not in terms of its orthography. Orthography is a very imperfect and inconsistent rendition of the language.
English is wiping other languages out (becoming the lingua franca, if you will) [...]
But English isn't wiping other languages out. Regional lingua francas, in general, are wiping other languages out. The extinction of languages is probably more to the benefit of Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi, Spanish, Javanese, Wolof, Lingala, Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Tagalog, Bambara and several dozen others, than it is to the benefit of Enlgish.
Notice that from what you just told me, if you hadn't told me anything else, I wouldn't know that changes to timezone files would be pushed through volatile. First, I'd have to know about the existence of the fricking edge case of a timezone definition file changing; second, I'd have to remember the damn thing; and third, even if I did those two things, I wouldn't be able to infer that timezone file changes are handled through volatile.
Linguistics 101: grammar rules are hypotheses, and you're supposed to defend or attack them by appeal to usage data. You, on the other hand, are treating grammar rules as edicts from high, and are appealing to an edict of yours to argue against usage data.
There's a pair of much bigger bad assumptions at play here: (a) the idea that software ought to be the cheaper thing than hardware, and (b) the idea that because some things are labeled as "basic" they ought to be cheap.
Over the past 30 years, hardware has consistently gotten faster and cheaper. The cost of developing and bringing to the market complex software solutions, on the other hand, hasn't really gotten much cheaper. If we reach a point where software becomes more expensive than the hardware it runs on, then that just means that the human costs of making computers do useful stuff have become larger than the costs of making computers. Depending on how you reckon it, if it's not already happened (what's the comparative cost of writing embedded software vs. the hardware it runs on?), it will happen in our lifetimes.
I don't really see why you are so concerned. If a major bank fails, FDIC liabilities would almost surely be under 300 billion. And we finance 300 billion in bonds every year anyway, without much effect on inflation.
The worry isn't simply about the amount of money. It's about the market panic that a major bank failure might trigger.
[...] it's just not illegal to censor someone when you're not the government in the US.
That's not quite right; it is often illegal to censor somebody when you're not the federal government. It's just not forbidden by the Constitution; rather, it would have to be forbidden by federal or local law.
Dude, you're replaying a stereotypical reaction to having a microaggressions pointed out to you. "Aren't you overreacting?" "How do you know they meant it that way?" Etc.
Then I don't understand what you meant in the comment you were replying to.
The point I was making was that, if the anecdote referenced in the article is actually a statistically significant effect, either they aren't using this process, or they think they are but aren't implementing it correctly, because whatever process they are using at least appears to be behaving in clearly biased ways.
We shouldn't forget that the publication selection bias isn't the only bias. Even if that bias were actually completely controlled through double-blind procedures, there may be other biases that may result in women submitting fewer papers.
Though actually, my impression from the handling of anonymous submissions in another field (Linguistics) is that the process isn't very careful at all. I do know for a fact that for a very big Linguistics conference in the USA, in the past, the reviewers have discussed papers as a panel in which the chairman, who is present in the same room, is aware of the identities of the submitters of the papers being discussed. I even learned this in the context of an anecdote where the chairman at one such meeting clearly insinuated the identity of a submitter to a reviewer.
(The committee was going to reject a submission because it didn't cite the seminal paper about the topic; but the paper under consideration was actually submitted by the author of that seminal paper, who didn't cite himself because he worried that it would identify his anonymous submission. The chairman recommended the reviewers to disregard that objection; the reviewers can't have but picked up on why they were instructed to do so.)
I can't see how requiring a good publication record is in any way a bias against women.
That's because you fail to understand that the procedures by which a lot of the academic world decides which papers are worthy of publication are biased on gender and ethnicity. Conferences and journals that use a review process that keep submitters' identities anonymous from reviewers accept significantly more submissions from women and ethnic minorities than those that don't.
This idea of interview based only on the number of papers published is more likely to overlook qualified and talented people, not from some "gender bias" that sees fewer women getting published, but because it creates a bias that seeks quantity over quality.
I think that when GP says "double-blind," it means no names or identifying information attached to the submissions sent out for review. I know this is common practice for Linguistics in the USA; when you write a paper and submit it to a journal, or when you submit an abstract to a conference, you're not allowed to put any identifying information in it. If you do so, it's automatically disqualified.
I don't know what the situation is in CS or Engineering, but I read the claim in the article as saying that there are many journals and conferences that don't do this.
When reviewers for papers and conference submissions are aware of the identities of the submitters, the acceptance rate gets skewed towards white males. Many academic associations and journals have switched to anonymous review, and the amount of work accepted from women and ethnic minorities typically shoots up immediately afterwards.
"The article sucks, therefore Berners-Lee must be wrong, even though he didn't write the article. I have anecdotes, that I've experienced and understood from my own point of view, which do not challenge my understanding of the situation."
The absolute prices of shares of a company are not a meaningful number. The meaningful numbers are ratios between that price and other, meaningful quantities like shares outstanding, and the price at other points in time.
The stock of a bankrupt company will most likely go to 0. Remember, creditors are first in line to be paid before shareholders. The only way that the stock of a bankrupt company can be valuable is if there is any equity left after all creditors are fully compensated--unlikely. The most likely outcome is that if the company survives at all, it will be owned by the former creditors, and the reorganization will cancel all pre-bankruptcy shares. A share of stock that does not entitle anbody anymore to a share of the profits of a company is worth nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Says who? You can repeat that statement as much as you like, and it doesn't make true even the unstated presupposition that there is such a thing as a "primary" function of language.
There are some functions of language that you're not acknowledging at all, too, like establishing and maintaining group boundaries, with the obvious political and economical consequences.
No, to indicate the possessive, English uses an inflectional suffix (with weird syntax/morphology, but I digress).
You're making a Linguistics 101 error: the grammar of a language must be stated in terms of its spoken form, not in terms of its orthography. Orthography is a very imperfect and inconsistent rendition of the language.
But English isn't wiping other languages out. Regional lingua francas, in general, are wiping other languages out. The extinction of languages is probably more to the benefit of Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Bangla, Punjabi, Spanish, Javanese, Wolof, Lingala, Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Tagalog, Bambara and several dozen others, than it is to the benefit of Enlgish.
Notice that from what you just told me, if you hadn't told me anything else, I wouldn't know that changes to timezone files would be pushed through volatile. First, I'd have to know about the existence of the fricking edge case of a timezone definition file changing; second, I'd have to remember the damn thing; and third, even if I did those two things, I wouldn't be able to infer that timezone file changes are handled through volatile.
Computer 1, Human 0.
The difference is statistical. The plural occurs in the same situations in American English, but only at a lower rate.
Linguistics 101: grammar rules are hypotheses, and you're supposed to defend or attack them by appeal to usage data. You, on the other hand, are treating grammar rules as edicts from high, and are appealing to an edict of yours to argue against usage data.
There's a pair of much bigger bad assumptions at play here: (a) the idea that software ought to be the cheaper thing than hardware, and (b) the idea that because some things are labeled as "basic" they ought to be cheap.
Over the past 30 years, hardware has consistently gotten faster and cheaper. The cost of developing and bringing to the market complex software solutions, on the other hand, hasn't really gotten much cheaper. If we reach a point where software becomes more expensive than the hardware it runs on, then that just means that the human costs of making computers do useful stuff have become larger than the costs of making computers. Depending on how you reckon it, if it's not already happened (what's the comparative cost of writing embedded software vs. the hardware it runs on?), it will happen in our lifetimes.
The worry isn't simply about the amount of money. It's about the market panic that a major bank failure might trigger.
That's not quite right; it is often illegal to censor somebody when you're not the federal government. It's just not forbidden by the Constitution; rather, it would have to be forbidden by federal or local law.
I feel like I'm repeating myself, but it sure as hell helps, you know...
Dude, you're replaying a stereotypical reaction to having a microaggressions pointed out to you. "Aren't you overreacting?" "How do you know they meant it that way?" Etc.
It's because the problems are invisible to you, because you are never subjected to them, and have never had the chance or bothered to understand them.
But it sure as hell helps, you know...
In the comment I was replying to.
Then I don't understand what you meant in the comment you were replying to.
We shouldn't forget that the publication selection bias isn't the only bias. Even if that bias were actually completely controlled through double-blind procedures, there may be other biases that may result in women submitting fewer papers.
Though actually, my impression from the handling of anonymous submissions in another field (Linguistics) is that the process isn't very careful at all. I do know for a fact that for a very big Linguistics conference in the USA, in the past, the reviewers have discussed papers as a panel in which the chairman, who is present in the same room, is aware of the identities of the submitters of the papers being discussed. I even learned this in the context of an anecdote where the chairman at one such meeting clearly insinuated the identity of a submitter to a reviewer.
(The committee was going to reject a submission because it didn't cite the seminal paper about the topic; but the paper under consideration was actually submitted by the author of that seminal paper, who didn't cite himself because he worried that it would identify his anonymous submission. The chairman recommended the reviewers to disregard that objection; the reviewers can't have but picked up on why they were instructed to do so.)
That's because you fail to understand that the procedures by which a lot of the academic world decides which papers are worthy of publication are biased on gender and ethnicity. Conferences and journals that use a review process that keep submitters' identities anonymous from reviewers accept significantly more submissions from women and ethnic minorities than those that don't.
Are you implying that the effects are exclusive?
I think that when GP says "double-blind," it means no names or identifying information attached to the submissions sent out for review. I know this is common practice for Linguistics in the USA; when you write a paper and submit it to a journal, or when you submit an abstract to a conference, you're not allowed to put any identifying information in it. If you do so, it's automatically disqualified.
I don't know what the situation is in CS or Engineering, but I read the claim in the article as saying that there are many journals and conferences that don't do this.
When reviewers for papers and conference submissions are aware of the identities of the submitters, the acceptance rate gets skewed towards white males. Many academic associations and journals have switched to anonymous review, and the amount of work accepted from women and ethnic minorities typically shoots up immediately afterwards.
"The article sucks, therefore Berners-Lee must be wrong, even though he didn't write the article. I have anecdotes, that I've experienced and understood from my own point of view, which do not challenge my understanding of the situation."
"We don't like the name, and we don't like it."
Why? When have Google ever demonstrated expertise at building and selling consumer electronics?
You didn't only lose that money. You also violated the terms of your loan, that require you to use the money only for educational expenses.