I would love to see more women in engineering. But I think it just ain't gonna happen, at least not to the point of anything resembling equality. Uncomfortable as it may make the "every human is born precisely equal in all possible respects" crowd, men and women are not the same. Our brains are wired differently. Obviously we don't know nearly enough about neuropsychology yet to say for sure, but it doesn't seem impossible that those physical differences might result in different interests and inclinations.
The paucity of women in engineering is not solely an artifact of lack of opportunity, nor of cultural conditioning, though both of those things obviously have an impact. In a typical Silicon Valley tech company, you'll find far more Chinese and Indian women than white women in engineering, even though the white population is much larger than the Chinese or Indian populations in the area. So clearly culture matters, and to that extent there's a problem we can and should address. But you'll find even more Chinese and Indian men than women in those same companies -- it's not clear that culture alone can explain the gap.
So by all means, provide good opportunities for girls and young women who would be interested in engineering (or physics, or...) but for the lack of exposure. We all benefit from that. But please don't try to force the issue beyond the levels they'll naturally settle at when everyone has the appropriate opportunities -- even if those levels are still male-dominated.
To be fair, Mexico doesn't have a history of accepting waves of immigrants from all over the world. The US has actively encouraged immigration for most of its history. Isn't it conceivable that that might result in a different set of norms and expectations about immigrants, and a different view about the extent to which the culture should accomodate them?
Or, to put it another way: So you're suggesting the US should look to Mexico as a model of how to conduct its affairs?
I thought the point of copyright was to give the creator of a work the sole right to create copies of it (and thus decide who can have a copy, and under what terms).
I agree with your point over all about needing better laws, but one nit that IMO is a critically important and usually-overlooked aspect of the debate:
In the US, at least, the point of patents and copyright is to benefit society as a whole by advancing science and the arts. Says so right there in the Constitution in the clause that authorizes Congress to set up patent and copyright laws; you can't really interpret those words any other way. Letting creators control their work is the means, not the end.
One can argue that letting people stop others from repeating what they've said (which is really what copyright boils down to in the end) is a worthwhile goal in and of itself, but anyone who wants that to be the underlying principle that's supposed to inform the law of the land will have to take it up with Thomas Jefferson.
On the one hand you want to be a nice person and help others improve their weak spots.
On the other hand, a lot of the time you'd just be inviting the person to come back with, "Ah, great! So if I go learn more about XYZ, then I'm hired?" Maybe you can't really fully grok this until you've been on the hiring side for a while, but most often the lack of a particular skill or expertise is not the problem in and of itself. It's an indication of deeper problems, which are not usually easy (or even possible) to give people constructive feedback on without taking lots of time talking it over with them.
For example, if I'm interviewing an engineer who claims to have both Java and C++ experience, one of my typical initial easy questions is, "Tell me some of the differences between the Java and C++ object models." The ultimate point of that question is not to find out how much you know about the differences between Java and C++. If your answer goes no further than describing which keywords are used in which language, then chances are you aren't the type who likes to dig beneath the surface of the tools you use and think about why things work the way they do. And if you give me a really thorough answer without having to stop and think about it, it tells me you probably know what you're talking about, at which point I dispense with most of the other easy questions on my list.
The trouble is, if someone completely flubs that question (and I don't get the sense it's just due to nerves or whatever) then what am I supposed to tell them? "Sorry, come back when you're more inquisitive" doesn't exactly work as constructive criticism. And "Sorry, you don't know the difference between these object models" is even less useful because that was never the point of the question to begin with -- and what's more, it implies that if only they had skimmed that chapter of their "Java for C++ Programmers" book the night before, they'd be walking away with a job offer.
It sucks to be turned down for a job without knowing why. I have very smart friends to whom that happens over and over again and they find it intensely frustrating. But at the same time, the "why" is not always easy to describe, and is even less easy to describe in a way that doesn't come off rude or condescending and that doesn't give people false hope. And of course as an interviewer, you're trying to fill a job position, which probably means that every minute spent helping out a rejected candidate is one you're not spending reading the next resume in the stack on your desk.
It's almost as if demand is elastic with respect to price! How strange! I wonder if they have a field of study devoted to predicting that kind of bizarre outcome.
But if we catch the non-innocent fraction and turn them away before they enter, then this makes everyone's life in the US a bit easier.
Only if you catch just the non-innocent fraction. It does not make my life in the US any easier if my friends from other countries get turned away at the border because of some glitch or false positive in a secret database somewhere.
I rarely see anyone bring this up in discussions about patent-related articles, so I'll toss it out there:
Patents expire.
Whatever evil you think might result from the fact that people can apply for patents on stuff like this, in 20 years the patent (if granted) will expire and its contents will be free for anyone to use.
Yeah, 'cause starving them out with a trade and travel embargo has worked wonders so far. No wait, we've already succeeded! Fidel Castro is no longer in charge there! Woo hoo, just stick to your guns for 44 years, and those rotten commies are sure to wither and die! (Of old age, but pfft, details.)
Look at how much more horrible life has gotten in China since Nixon went there and normalized relations, and since Clinton opened the trade firehose. Their pathetic burgeoning middle class is a sure sign of how horribly downhill things will go for the victims of communist rule when the West decides to engage rather than isolate.
There is certainly pork on the coasts, but it's also well-documented that federal money by and large flows from coasts inland rather than the other way around. I haven't seen anyone dispute the figures in question (but if you have, please point me to a refutation!)
Which in and of itself says nothing about midwesterners other than that they're better than the coastal types at getting the government to pay up.
Enough of this pantywaist "Centers for Disease Control" crap, let the diseases run rampant among the poor so we enlightened people don't have to pay for their stupid wasteful "vaccinations." If we care about not being surrounded by people with infectious diseases, we'll stay off the streets.
Anyone who catches a viral disease should bloody well have stayed home that day. Let them deal with the consequences of their choices.
And for some reason, critics are always written off as paranoid or unrealistic.
Nah, just left-wing nutjobs. That drumbeat will continue until the next time a Democrat is elected president and the new administration addresses the security rules. At which point the new security rules will instantly become either (a) an unacceptable affront to America's tradition of personal liberty and a symbol of how the left is out to control everyone's lives (if the restrictions are tightened), (b) a sign that the left is weak and doesn't understand the sacrifices required to fight the war on terror (if the restrictions are loosened), or (c) a sign that the left has no new ideas and should be removed from office (if the rules aren't changed at all.)
I have an HDTV and am an early adopter... but I'll probably only buy a PS3 once it has a few games I want to play. None of the launch titles do much for me, so even though I could probably find a PS3 if I really wanted to right now, there's no point.
The Wii, on the other hand, has Zelda, which looks like fun, and Wii Sports, which other members of my household will enjoy playing. So I'll probably get one of those first.
But it's not about liking one console more than another, or (to a huge extent) about the price; it's about the games.
I don't buy that. I can't remember a single time when I ever hit the Enter key after selecting a file I didn't actually want to open. I can remember more instances than I can count of, "Dammit, I wanted to open it, not rename it! Stupid UI." The current UI adds annoyance and gives me nothing in return; if you're right, it's trying to protect me from a mistake I never make at the cost of making the thing I do want to do less convenient than it could be. When I hit Enter on a file, it usually means I was navigating with the keyboard, and keyboard navigation is very precise.
If opening a file unintentionally is so bad, why is it okay to perform that expensive operation on a double-click? In my experience, missing the item you want is far more frequent when navigating with the mouse (or, worse, the trackpad) than with the keyboard. So if anything, I'd expect double-clicking to be the place you'd want the "protect you from opening the wrong file" UI (if, in fact, you want such a UI at all.)
Which, coincidentally, just happens to be my #1 OSX UI peeve. Why should hitting Enter do something I almost never want to do (rename the file) instead of what I intuitively expect it to do (open the file)? Everywhere else in the UI, Enter is short for "execute the currently selected function," but somehow you're expected to want to spend all day renaming files rather than actually using them.
Yes, I know about command-O. I'm saying it would make much more UI sense for rename (the rarely-used function) to require a two-keystroke command, and for the keystroke that usually means "execute whatever's currently selected" to open the file.
Why would buying a new player require you to replace hundreds of DVDs? I am completely baffled by that (very common) argument. A Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player will play your existing DVDs perfectly well; there's no need to throw them away. You will presumably buy new movies in the future; those are the ones you buy in the new format.
The ones who have more than one family member in the house? My girlfriend thought this game was cute and wanted to try it when she saw me playing, but she'd have no interest in Resistance: Fall of Man or Final Fantasy XIII or whatever. Hardcore gamers may be the ones buying PS3s but once they do, there's no reason games can't be sold to the other members of their households. Seems perfectly sensible to me.
Is it really important? I hate waiting for loading too (Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 were a delight to play in part because of their on-the-fly background loading) but I can't say I've ever refused to buy a game I wanted because it took too long to load.
If you (and I) grumble about a problem but buy anyway, then from the company's perspective it actually isn't that important a problem after all, no matter what we say. It's only a problem the industry has any reason to pay attention to if it affects sales.
Slashdot Mirror
Or that that the aliens' equivalent of NASA keeps getting its budget cut.
The paucity of women in engineering is not solely an artifact of lack of opportunity, nor of cultural conditioning, though both of those things obviously have an impact. In a typical Silicon Valley tech company, you'll find far more Chinese and Indian women than white women in engineering, even though the white population is much larger than the Chinese or Indian populations in the area. So clearly culture matters, and to that extent there's a problem we can and should address. But you'll find even more Chinese and Indian men than women in those same companies -- it's not clear that culture alone can explain the gap.
So by all means, provide good opportunities for girls and young women who would be interested in engineering (or physics, or...) but for the lack of exposure. We all benefit from that. But please don't try to force the issue beyond the levels they'll naturally settle at when everyone has the appropriate opportunities -- even if those levels are still male-dominated.
Or, to put it another way: So you're suggesting the US should look to Mexico as a model of how to conduct its affairs?
As opposed to which countries that interoperate when it's against their own best interests?
I agree with your point over all about needing better laws, but one nit that IMO is a critically important and usually-overlooked aspect of the debate:
In the US, at least, the point of patents and copyright is to benefit society as a whole by advancing science and the arts. Says so right there in the Constitution in the clause that authorizes Congress to set up patent and copyright laws; you can't really interpret those words any other way. Letting creators control their work is the means, not the end.
One can argue that letting people stop others from repeating what they've said (which is really what copyright boils down to in the end) is a worthwhile goal in and of itself, but anyone who wants that to be the underlying principle that's supposed to inform the law of the land will have to take it up with Thomas Jefferson.
As for jaywalking, don't count on the cops looking the other way. (A good example of why the law needs to be changed.)
On the other hand, a lot of the time you'd just be inviting the person to come back with, "Ah, great! So if I go learn more about XYZ, then I'm hired?" Maybe you can't really fully grok this until you've been on the hiring side for a while, but most often the lack of a particular skill or expertise is not the problem in and of itself. It's an indication of deeper problems, which are not usually easy (or even possible) to give people constructive feedback on without taking lots of time talking it over with them.
For example, if I'm interviewing an engineer who claims to have both Java and C++ experience, one of my typical initial easy questions is, "Tell me some of the differences between the Java and C++ object models." The ultimate point of that question is not to find out how much you know about the differences between Java and C++. If your answer goes no further than describing which keywords are used in which language, then chances are you aren't the type who likes to dig beneath the surface of the tools you use and think about why things work the way they do. And if you give me a really thorough answer without having to stop and think about it, it tells me you probably know what you're talking about, at which point I dispense with most of the other easy questions on my list.
The trouble is, if someone completely flubs that question (and I don't get the sense it's just due to nerves or whatever) then what am I supposed to tell them? "Sorry, come back when you're more inquisitive" doesn't exactly work as constructive criticism. And "Sorry, you don't know the difference between these object models" is even less useful because that was never the point of the question to begin with -- and what's more, it implies that if only they had skimmed that chapter of their "Java for C++ Programmers" book the night before, they'd be walking away with a job offer.
It sucks to be turned down for a job without knowing why. I have very smart friends to whom that happens over and over again and they find it intensely frustrating. But at the same time, the "why" is not always easy to describe, and is even less easy to describe in a way that doesn't come off rude or condescending and that doesn't give people false hope. And of course as an interviewer, you're trying to fill a job position, which probably means that every minute spent helping out a rejected candidate is one you're not spending reading the next resume in the stack on your desk.
It's almost as if demand is elastic with respect to price! How strange! I wonder if they have a field of study devoted to predicting that kind of bizarre outcome.
Only if you catch just the non-innocent fraction. It does not make my life in the US any easier if my friends from other countries get turned away at the border because of some glitch or false positive in a secret database somewhere.
Patents expire.
Whatever evil you think might result from the fact that people can apply for patents on stuff like this, in 20 years the patent (if granted) will expire and its contents will be free for anyone to use.
Look at how much more horrible life has gotten in China since Nixon went there and normalized relations, and since Clinton opened the trade firehose. Their pathetic burgeoning middle class is a sure sign of how horribly downhill things will go for the victims of communist rule when the West decides to engage rather than isolate.
Which in and of itself says nothing about midwesterners other than that they're better than the coastal types at getting the government to pay up.
Anyone who catches a viral disease should bloody well have stayed home that day. Let them deal with the consequences of their choices.
You read it here first.
The Wii, on the other hand, has Zelda, which looks like fun, and Wii Sports, which other members of my household will enjoy playing. So I'll probably get one of those first.
But it's not about liking one console more than another, or (to a huge extent) about the price; it's about the games.
If opening a file unintentionally is so bad, why is it okay to perform that expensive operation on a double-click? In my experience, missing the item you want is far more frequent when navigating with the mouse (or, worse, the trackpad) than with the keyboard. So if anything, I'd expect double-clicking to be the place you'd want the "protect you from opening the wrong file" UI (if, in fact, you want such a UI at all.)
Yes, I know about command-O. I'm saying it would make much more UI sense for rename (the rarely-used function) to require a two-keystroke command, and for the keystroke that usually means "execute whatever's currently selected" to open the file.
Therefore, they are incapable of ever making any correct predictions and should be ignored.
But if we can't torture people, how will we ever find out they're innocent? Answer THAT, you traitor.
Why would buying a new player require you to replace hundreds of DVDs? I am completely baffled by that (very common) argument. A Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player will play your existing DVDs perfectly well; there's no need to throw them away. You will presumably buy new movies in the future; those are the ones you buy in the new format.
It's almost as if there's more than one Slashdot user and thus more than one point of view! Bizarre.
The ones who have more than one family member in the house? My girlfriend thought this game was cute and wanted to try it when she saw me playing, but she'd have no interest in Resistance: Fall of Man or Final Fantasy XIII or whatever. Hardcore gamers may be the ones buying PS3s but once they do, there's no reason games can't be sold to the other members of their households. Seems perfectly sensible to me.
What's wrong with both?
I hear they might be coming out with some new movies in the future. Just a rumor, though.
If you (and I) grumble about a problem but buy anyway, then from the company's perspective it actually isn't that important a problem after all, no matter what we say. It's only a problem the industry has any reason to pay attention to if it affects sales.