The extortion part comes in when you are being sued for downloading "Anal Teen Nightmare" (IIRC that was the name of one of the movies involved in this or a similar suit). Most people don't like being accused of that, whether they are guilty or innocent. In other words, the accusation alone is enough to ruin peoples reputation, and therefore is actual extortion. On the other hand, the threat of being accused of downloading "Poker Face" is considerably less damaging to ones reputation (well, for most people anyways), and therefore is less clearly legal extortion. Still extortion because of the legal fees involved, but not the almost-blackmail status of being accused of downloading porn (and somewhat deviant porn, at that).
Unless the US Court for Illinois started doing April fools jokes, on the 30th no less, this is not a joke. See the link at the bottom of the Ars Technica article to the judge's decision (someone also linked it higher up too.)
Exactly. The way an idea is written is, for the purposes of a writing course, far more important than the idea itself, or even for that matter if the argument itself is well-made (although, obviously, that isn't completely incidental). I've seen many college-level students who simply cannot write well. Sure they may be able to spell decently, but their sentences tended to be organized poorly, and their paragraphs were even worse. An automated system could detect a lot of that. Besides basic spelling and grammar, there are stylistic things, like they reusing words unnecessarily, run-on sentences, even awkward syntax, that computers could be programmed to look for. It can't do everything, sure: humans will always be needed to provide feedback in important areas, but many of the basics of writing can be graded by computer.
Writing follows certain rules and patterns, and computers excel at determining that. More advanced stylistic issues can still be an issue, and of course logical validity needs a human to judge, but that is easier to do if the writer has all of the basic necessities of writing well down.
It might have something to do with the fact that the fictional country Game of Thrones is set in (at least in the TV show, not very subtly either) is based off of England. The politics and geography bears an extremely striking resemblance.
And Tolkien (British) created the Shire in The Hobbit and LotR based off British countryside. Fantasy, in particular, is almost universally set in a Middle-Age-England-type setting and is often based heavily off of their mythology. It almost wouldn't make sense not to have a British accent. Don't blame the Americans: the British were doing that a long time before Americans were (hell, before America was even a colony). And of course Narnia (by C.S. Lewis, British) is actually set partly in England as is Harry Potter (again, a British writer).
The best was when they sent me a renewal notice for the warranty on my flat-screen TV.
I don't own a flatscreen TV, I never have, and I certainly wouldn't buy one from Best Buy. They have to have known this, which means they were deliberately attempting to scam me into buying something I didn't need and wouldn't even be able to use. That or they are simply completely incompetent (can't ever rule that out).
Why, because there's a rumor that the next generation of consoles might have the same restriction that's been standard on PCs for a decade?
A decade? Hell no. The last one I, personally, sold, was my copy of Oblivion to a friend (mostly because I don't tend to do the whole used-game thing, I like to keep my games around if I want to play them in 5 years again). However, except for the online activation systems (which have, granted, become popular recently), you've been able to trade any boxed PC game since forever. Many of them you still can. In fact, you can trade most of the on-line activation ones too (you just have to deactivate it or not install it more than the activation limits).
Steam obviously prevents that, but steam wasn't "standard" until 5 years ago or so. Up till then, every single PC game (except MMOs) could be freely traded used. If there are any exceptions, I don't know of them (Counter-strike, maybe? Didn't play the original).
Yet Google would have to know what the address numbers really was in order to validate the reCAPTCHA, so that can hardly be why they are doing it. They don't need to crowd source an answer that they already know.
No they don't. They also add an altered text image alongside the picture (which presumably they generated), and can use that to validate the CAPTCHA. The street number can be validated by numerical probability (if 70% of them say it is "257", and the numbers "2,5,7" appear frequently in the rest, it is probably "257") even if they don't already know what it is.
Try looking at the Australian version of that page: http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/4g/ Sure it does mention that 4G works only in the US, only in fine print, and not where it talks about the 4G features themselves. I also don't know if that was a recent addition or if it said that at launch. The page also states "iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G models connect to GSM/UMTS networks worldwide" and there is no mention there that 4G functionality only works in the US/Canada. You could also argue that "4G LTE" isn't specific enough (not all forms of 4G are LTE) to make it clear to consumers that 4G only works in the US.
If you advertise a device as "4G-LTE" compatible without qualification, and it not compatible with 4G-LTE in that country (where you are advertising it as 4G-LTE compatible), that is misleading advertisment.
The car analogy would actually be saying "This car can go 100mph!" when it can only go 100mph if you drive it down a hill. Technically correct, but not actually an applicable statement in most situations where you actually drive the car, and therefore misleading advertising.
And yes, advertising is often misleading (that is a fair amount of the point of advertising), but to advertise a device so that it looks like it has worldwide 4G capability (which they did) when it does not (which it doesn't) is false advertising.
Can't wait until Micheal Bay directs a movie about this...
Why? Are there massive explosions and car chases when you configure your AP? If so, you might be doing it wrong.
Or very very right, depending on how you look at it. Seriously, if you can get your AP to explode, literally, just by configuring it, I would be impressed.
It's not necessarily a piracy thing, but heck if it is, can you blame them?
Yes, I can blame them, and I do. By not buying that crap.
That doesn't mean ownership can't be passed along though.
It'll be tied to your origin account, so unless you sell that and all the games on it (or make separate accounts for every game), you can't. Also, that probably violates the EULA on the account and will result in the account being banned if they discover it.
It sounds like the plan is for the satellites to only be launched when an asteroid is detected incoming (probably a few months before it would hit), since they mention flying the satellites in formation with the asteroid. That means the satellites aren't a permanent thing and in fact will probably be non-functional after serving their purpose, so there really couldn't ever be any political argument against a deployment of such a system in a case of actual need (I mean a good political argument, I'm sure someone will still find a way). Development, on the other hand, that might encounter some resistance, but considering the US Navy is already developing directed-energy and long-range railgun weapons, I doubt it (not to mention the US is looking at satellite weapons that actually can be used on ground targets, which makes this system completely innocent by comparison).
You say this jokingly, but it is in a very real way true. It is always in the best interest of a government to be well informed, and for their, uh, "friends" (the quotation marks are not optional in this case) to not be. Which means it is perfectly consistent for a government to protest foreign intelligence gathering, while conducting their own. It is hypocritical, in a way, but in another way it isn't.
Same holds true of nearly every kind of advantage (economic, military, or political). A country wants itself to have it, but not its (potential) enemies. Nothing about that is actually contradictory, unless you are an outside observer who treats every country as being perfectly equal. No such observer exists. Even third parties are inevitably biased, through personal interest or simply prejudice against one side or another.
Oh granted, the guy is clearly an asshole (even if he was drunk when he posted them). But I really don't think you should be imprisoned just for being a racist. He should get kicked out of school, sure, because the school doesn't want to be affiliated with someone who does that shit. But a criminal sentence for saying something? You do realize that it isn't a very big step between that, and a criminal sentence for saying anything a majority of people don't like, right? Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
I realize the UK doesn't have laws protecting what he did. I'm saying maybe it should, because not having them is worse than this guy not going to jail, in the long run.
We always seem to be right on the edge of every amputee having bionic limbs.
Have we? I mean, true bionic limbs require tactile feedback, which in turn requires some kind of biological-machine interface. We are getting closer to it, but I wouldn't say we are anywhere near being on the edge of that (even now). Without that kind of feedback, even a sophisticated robotic limb is pretty well worthless, since you won't be able to use it for all that much. Granted, for someone without a hand, even that limited use is an improvement. The real problem isn't creating a robot hand or limb: the problem is controlling it. Simple motions are possible: complex ones, such as moving individual fingers on it, are not, and until we get that, losing a limb will always be a major disability.
Does anyone know how standard magnetic fields are generated, or at least bother to take a look at the pretty pictures in the article? The 100T that was quoted was undoubtedly in the center of the giant metal solenoid (new buzzword for the pseudoscientists out there!). To "protect" a space vehicle from more science words using this specific methodology basically means building a giant metal sewer pipe around every space shuttle to begin with.
This in itself shows a clear lack of understanding of how magnetic fields work. Magnetic fields are closed loops: what that means is, if there is a 100T flux through the middle of the magnet, there will also be an intense magnetic field curving back around the outside of the magnet (this is middle-school physics here). So if you ran the magnet through the center of the ship (and had sufficient power to leave it on, or hell a permanent magnet would also work), it would create a magnetic field that would extend around the entirety of the ship, which would deflect and charged particles stream that got near the ship (except at the ends, where like the Earth's north pole, the field would be parallel to incoming particles and wouldn't be deflected). Indeed, that design would be exactly identical to the Earth's magnetic field.
Also, the EMP effect would be non-existent if you could keep the magnet charged (assuming you built up slowly), so that point is... well, not relevant to the posters question (he didn't say this design would work, only asked how strong the field would need to be in general). And your third point is just being snarky. He asked an interesting hypothetical question, and you answered snarkily and, ironically, in a way that revealed your own ignorance.
You are blithely and falsely judging people in a animalistic and barbaric way.
My point was the exact opposite: that is precisely what I am not doing. I'm making judgments that are rigorously logical and scientific. And ethics don't enter into it: I don't treat anyone any differently based on those judgments. Hell, even if people confirm those judgments perfectly, that doesn't mean I will treat them any differently (ethically speaking). If my treatment of a person changes, it is because of their actions, not any prior judgments.
In fact, my point is it is illogical not to make judgments about people a priori based on statistical evidence. Now, to allow those judgments to interfere with personal experience of them, and not to be willing to revise your opinion the instant you gain practical knowledge of that individual, that is sexist. But to say "women are physically weaker than men"? That is fact. To pretend otherwise it to give in to political pressure to ignore reality in favor of fantasy.
But to say "This woman is weaker (physically) than that man, necessarily because she is a woman" is false. You can only say "this women is probably physically weaker than most men". And anyone who denies that is acting irrationally. In fact, I would say those who attempt to deny the facts are the ones who are acting like animals: to give way to emotion over reason is, classically speaking, the very definition of brutish and animalistic behavior (literally, a brute is someone who behaves according to emotion and not reason).
I would add furthermore that attempting to use reason or science to justify an emotional intuition about a group of individuals (for example, people who attempted to argue that Africans were sub-human) is wholly and utterly reprehensible in the very worst way, because it attempts to twist reason to serve an emotional and yes, barbaric, animalistic intuition. However, to say "Africans have black skin" is not racist (not in any negative way, at least: one could define racism to include a statement of fact, but that is stupidity, and kind of my point), it is just fact. You have to, of course, make a clear distinction between these sorts of judgments and actual racism: one can lead to the other very carefully. I'm not saying "the way we tend to think is the way we should think." What I'm saying is that there is a kind of truth in the way we think (a very limited kind), insofar as I can make judgments about individuals based on statistical evidence taken from the group they belong to, and those judgments have a chance of being right. The problem is two-fold: one, that most people don't base their opinion of a group on actual facts, and secondly that they don't base their opinion of individuals on the actions of those individuals, but only upon their (often wrong) opinion of the group that individual represents. We do, because of the limits of human knowledge and society, need to be able to make judgments about individuals without knowing them personally, because knowing everyone you have to have contact with, ever, is impossible. What we need to do, though, is make sure that opinion isn't clouded by false or emotional opinions.
This issues is quite difficult to explain fully, so I'll just some it up by saying I am wholly against racism or sexism, but you can't reject facts about groups of individuals just because it is politically incorrect in some way.
That is true. It is still true to make universal statements about what men and women are better at. It may well happen that this person doesn't fit the statistical average, and that that is reasonably common (although by definition not the majority), but it remains true that given a random person on the street you can judge them according to statistical stereotypes, and you will probably be right.
Now, if they should prove differently and you fail to accept that, that is your problem. But the fact remains that gender (and yes, race) do influence behavior patterns, if for no other reason than biology. The same biological factors that cause women to develop female physical characteristics also influence behavior and mental characteristics. Does society and upbringing play a role? Yes, and a big one. But keep in mind that societal roles do proceed partially from evolutionary and physical characteristics as well. Men are physically stronger than women (because of testosterone), so they are naturally more capable of jobs that require great physical strength (hunting, fighting), and therefore society fits them into that role, because they tend to be better at it on the whole. Does that mean women can't fill those roles? No. It just means that on the whole, men happen to be better at it. A certain women might happen to be better than most men (possibly, even all). But initial judgments should be made from the average, not the exception, since that will be accurate most of the time.
I think the estimates are somewhere are in the petabytes in magnitude (best exact figure I can find is 2.5 petabytes, in Scientific America a few years ago). So yes, quite a lot. But as the summary says, the process isn't fully understood.
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The extortion part comes in when you are being sued for downloading "Anal Teen Nightmare" (IIRC that was the name of one of the movies involved in this or a similar suit). Most people don't like being accused of that, whether they are guilty or innocent. In other words, the accusation alone is enough to ruin peoples reputation, and therefore is actual extortion. On the other hand, the threat of being accused of downloading "Poker Face" is considerably less damaging to ones reputation (well, for most people anyways), and therefore is less clearly legal extortion. Still extortion because of the legal fees involved, but not the almost-blackmail status of being accused of downloading porn (and somewhat deviant porn, at that).
Unless the US Court for Illinois started doing April fools jokes, on the 30th no less, this is not a joke. See the link at the bottom of the Ars Technica article to the judge's decision (someone also linked it higher up too.)
Exactly. The way an idea is written is, for the purposes of a writing course, far more important than the idea itself, or even for that matter if the argument itself is well-made (although, obviously, that isn't completely incidental). I've seen many college-level students who simply cannot write well. Sure they may be able to spell decently, but their sentences tended to be organized poorly, and their paragraphs were even worse. An automated system could detect a lot of that. Besides basic spelling and grammar, there are stylistic things, like they reusing words unnecessarily, run-on sentences, even awkward syntax, that computers could be programmed to look for. It can't do everything, sure: humans will always be needed to provide feedback in important areas, but many of the basics of writing can be graded by computer.
Writing follows certain rules and patterns, and computers excel at determining that. More advanced stylistic issues can still be an issue, and of course logical validity needs a human to judge, but that is easier to do if the writer has all of the basic necessities of writing well down.
It might have something to do with the fact that the fictional country Game of Thrones is set in (at least in the TV show, not very subtly either) is based off of England. The politics and geography bears an extremely striking resemblance.
And Tolkien (British) created the Shire in The Hobbit and LotR based off British countryside. Fantasy, in particular, is almost universally set in a Middle-Age-England-type setting and is often based heavily off of their mythology. It almost wouldn't make sense not to have a British accent. Don't blame the Americans: the British were doing that a long time before Americans were (hell, before America was even a colony). And of course Narnia (by C.S. Lewis, British) is actually set partly in England as is Harry Potter (again, a British writer).
The best was when they sent me a renewal notice for the warranty on my flat-screen TV.
I don't own a flatscreen TV, I never have, and I certainly wouldn't buy one from Best Buy. They have to have known this, which means they were deliberately attempting to scam me into buying something I didn't need and wouldn't even be able to use. That or they are simply completely incompetent (can't ever rule that out).
(Either that or Yo-Ho, when someone finds a reliable way to pirate games on to the console)
FTFY
Why, because there's a rumor that the next generation of consoles might have the same restriction that's been standard on PCs for a decade?
A decade? Hell no. The last one I, personally, sold, was my copy of Oblivion to a friend (mostly because I don't tend to do the whole used-game thing, I like to keep my games around if I want to play them in 5 years again). However, except for the online activation systems (which have, granted, become popular recently), you've been able to trade any boxed PC game since forever. Many of them you still can. In fact, you can trade most of the on-line activation ones too (you just have to deactivate it or not install it more than the activation limits).
Steam obviously prevents that, but steam wasn't "standard" until 5 years ago or so. Up till then, every single PC game (except MMOs) could be freely traded used. If there are any exceptions, I don't know of them (Counter-strike, maybe? Didn't play the original).
Yet Google would have to know what the address numbers really was in order to validate the reCAPTCHA, so that can hardly be why they are doing it. They don't need to crowd source an answer that they already know.
No they don't. They also add an altered text image alongside the picture (which presumably they generated), and can use that to validate the CAPTCHA. The street number can be validated by numerical probability (if 70% of them say it is "257", and the numbers "2,5,7" appear frequently in the rest, it is probably "257") even if they don't already know what it is.
Try looking at the Australian version of that page: http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/4g/ Sure it does mention that 4G works only in the US, only in fine print, and not where it talks about the 4G features themselves. I also don't know if that was a recent addition or if it said that at launch. The page also states "iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G models connect to GSM/UMTS networks worldwide" and there is no mention there that 4G functionality only works in the US/Canada. You could also argue that "4G LTE" isn't specific enough (not all forms of 4G are LTE) to make it clear to consumers that 4G only works in the US.
If you advertise a device as "4G-LTE" compatible without qualification, and it not compatible with 4G-LTE in that country (where you are advertising it as 4G-LTE compatible), that is misleading advertisment.
The car analogy would actually be saying "This car can go 100mph!" when it can only go 100mph if you drive it down a hill. Technically correct, but not actually an applicable statement in most situations where you actually drive the car, and therefore misleading advertising.
And yes, advertising is often misleading (that is a fair amount of the point of advertising), but to advertise a device so that it looks like it has worldwide 4G capability (which they did) when it does not (which it doesn't) is false advertising.
Be very, very careful when pulling a "they can't punish everyone" stunt. Sometimes it turns out that yes, they very much can.
Can't wait until Micheal Bay directs a movie about this...
Why? Are there massive explosions and car chases when you configure your AP? If so, you might be doing it wrong.
Or very very right, depending on how you look at it. Seriously, if you can get your AP to explode, literally, just by configuring it, I would be impressed.
And? 47% is pretty damned close if they used to differ by ~7200% percent.
It's not necessarily a piracy thing, but heck if it is, can you blame them?
Yes, I can blame them, and I do. By not buying that crap.
That doesn't mean ownership can't be passed along though.
It'll be tied to your origin account, so unless you sell that and all the games on it (or make separate accounts for every game), you can't. Also, that probably violates the EULA on the account and will result in the account being banned if they discover it.
Not a huge loss, since the pirates generally offer better support anyways.
It sounds like the plan is for the satellites to only be launched when an asteroid is detected incoming (probably a few months before it would hit), since they mention flying the satellites in formation with the asteroid. That means the satellites aren't a permanent thing and in fact will probably be non-functional after serving their purpose, so there really couldn't ever be any political argument against a deployment of such a system in a case of actual need (I mean a good political argument, I'm sure someone will still find a way). Development, on the other hand, that might encounter some resistance, but considering the US Navy is already developing directed-energy and long-range railgun weapons, I doubt it (not to mention the US is looking at satellite weapons that actually can be used on ground targets, which makes this system completely innocent by comparison).
I'd rather have a 10km^3 of extra space junk orbiting the Earth than have 10km^3 of solid asteroid slamming into it.
You say this jokingly, but it is in a very real way true. It is always in the best interest of a government to be well informed, and for their, uh, "friends" (the quotation marks are not optional in this case) to not be. Which means it is perfectly consistent for a government to protest foreign intelligence gathering, while conducting their own. It is hypocritical, in a way, but in another way it isn't.
Same holds true of nearly every kind of advantage (economic, military, or political). A country wants itself to have it, but not its (potential) enemies. Nothing about that is actually contradictory, unless you are an outside observer who treats every country as being perfectly equal. No such observer exists. Even third parties are inevitably biased, through personal interest or simply prejudice against one side or another.
He was found guilty of inciting racial hatred by a jury of his peers.
And yes, we take that pretty seriously over here.
But, apparently, not freedom of speech.
Oh granted, the guy is clearly an asshole (even if he was drunk when he posted them). But I really don't think you should be imprisoned just for being a racist. He should get kicked out of school, sure, because the school doesn't want to be affiliated with someone who does that shit. But a criminal sentence for saying something? You do realize that it isn't a very big step between that, and a criminal sentence for saying anything a majority of people don't like, right? Can't have a democratic government without freedom of speech, and that includes the right to say hateful things, for good or for ill.
I realize the UK doesn't have laws protecting what he did. I'm saying maybe it should, because not having them is worse than this guy not going to jail, in the long run.
We always seem to be right on the edge of every amputee having bionic limbs.
Have we? I mean, true bionic limbs require tactile feedback, which in turn requires some kind of biological-machine interface. We are getting closer to it, but I wouldn't say we are anywhere near being on the edge of that (even now). Without that kind of feedback, even a sophisticated robotic limb is pretty well worthless, since you won't be able to use it for all that much. Granted, for someone without a hand, even that limited use is an improvement. The real problem isn't creating a robot hand or limb: the problem is controlling it. Simple motions are possible: complex ones, such as moving individual fingers on it, are not, and until we get that, losing a limb will always be a major disability.
Does anyone know how standard magnetic fields are generated, or at least bother to take a look at the pretty pictures in the article? The 100T that was quoted was undoubtedly in the center of the giant metal solenoid (new buzzword for the pseudoscientists out there!). To "protect" a space vehicle from more science words using this specific methodology basically means building a giant metal sewer pipe around every space shuttle to begin with.
This in itself shows a clear lack of understanding of how magnetic fields work. Magnetic fields are closed loops: what that means is, if there is a 100T flux through the middle of the magnet, there will also be an intense magnetic field curving back around the outside of the magnet (this is middle-school physics here). So if you ran the magnet through the center of the ship (and had sufficient power to leave it on, or hell a permanent magnet would also work), it would create a magnetic field that would extend around the entirety of the ship, which would deflect and charged particles stream that got near the ship (except at the ends, where like the Earth's north pole, the field would be parallel to incoming particles and wouldn't be deflected). Indeed, that design would be exactly identical to the Earth's magnetic field.
Also, the EMP effect would be non-existent if you could keep the magnet charged (assuming you built up slowly), so that point is... well, not relevant to the posters question (he didn't say this design would work, only asked how strong the field would need to be in general). And your third point is just being snarky. He asked an interesting hypothetical question, and you answered snarkily and, ironically, in a way that revealed your own ignorance.
You are blithely and falsely judging people in a animalistic and barbaric way.
My point was the exact opposite: that is precisely what I am not doing. I'm making judgments that are rigorously logical and scientific. And ethics don't enter into it: I don't treat anyone any differently based on those judgments. Hell, even if people confirm those judgments perfectly, that doesn't mean I will treat them any differently (ethically speaking). If my treatment of a person changes, it is because of their actions, not any prior judgments.
In fact, my point is it is illogical not to make judgments about people a priori based on statistical evidence. Now, to allow those judgments to interfere with personal experience of them, and not to be willing to revise your opinion the instant you gain practical knowledge of that individual, that is sexist. But to say "women are physically weaker than men"? That is fact. To pretend otherwise it to give in to political pressure to ignore reality in favor of fantasy.
But to say "This woman is weaker (physically) than that man, necessarily because she is a woman" is false. You can only say "this women is probably physically weaker than most men". And anyone who denies that is acting irrationally. In fact, I would say those who attempt to deny the facts are the ones who are acting like animals: to give way to emotion over reason is, classically speaking, the very definition of brutish and animalistic behavior (literally, a brute is someone who behaves according to emotion and not reason).
I would add furthermore that attempting to use reason or science to justify an emotional intuition about a group of individuals (for example, people who attempted to argue that Africans were sub-human) is wholly and utterly reprehensible in the very worst way, because it attempts to twist reason to serve an emotional and yes, barbaric, animalistic intuition. However, to say "Africans have black skin" is not racist (not in any negative way, at least: one could define racism to include a statement of fact, but that is stupidity, and kind of my point), it is just fact. You have to, of course, make a clear distinction between these sorts of judgments and actual racism: one can lead to the other very carefully. I'm not saying "the way we tend to think is the way we should think." What I'm saying is that there is a kind of truth in the way we think (a very limited kind), insofar as I can make judgments about individuals based on statistical evidence taken from the group they belong to, and those judgments have a chance of being right. The problem is two-fold: one, that most people don't base their opinion of a group on actual facts, and secondly that they don't base their opinion of individuals on the actions of those individuals, but only upon their (often wrong) opinion of the group that individual represents. We do, because of the limits of human knowledge and society, need to be able to make judgments about individuals without knowing them personally, because knowing everyone you have to have contact with, ever, is impossible. What we need to do, though, is make sure that opinion isn't clouded by false or emotional opinions.
This issues is quite difficult to explain fully, so I'll just some it up by saying I am wholly against racism or sexism, but you can't reject facts about groups of individuals just because it is politically incorrect in some way.
That is true. It is still true to make universal statements about what men and women are better at. It may well happen that this person doesn't fit the statistical average, and that that is reasonably common (although by definition not the majority), but it remains true that given a random person on the street you can judge them according to statistical stereotypes, and you will probably be right.
Now, if they should prove differently and you fail to accept that, that is your problem. But the fact remains that gender (and yes, race) do influence behavior patterns, if for no other reason than biology. The same biological factors that cause women to develop female physical characteristics also influence behavior and mental characteristics. Does society and upbringing play a role? Yes, and a big one. But keep in mind that societal roles do proceed partially from evolutionary and physical characteristics as well. Men are physically stronger than women (because of testosterone), so they are naturally more capable of jobs that require great physical strength (hunting, fighting), and therefore society fits them into that role, because they tend to be better at it on the whole. Does that mean women can't fill those roles? No. It just means that on the whole, men happen to be better at it. A certain women might happen to be better than most men (possibly, even all). But initial judgments should be made from the average, not the exception, since that will be accurate most of the time.
The French should remind themselves that their motto is Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and that all three bits are important.
Yes, but some bits are more important than others.
I think the estimates are somewhere are in the petabytes in magnitude (best exact figure I can find is 2.5 petabytes, in Scientific America a few years ago). So yes, quite a lot. But as the summary says, the process isn't fully understood.