Okay -- for the AMD fanboys out there -- what would you do if Intel tried that exact same line of reasoning on you? (Of course, they don't have to, since they've got the fastest chip on the block.)
You forget the capstone of a nerd reading 'news for nerds' pointing out the nerdishness of fellow nerds.
But yes, I agree, the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and D&D references, reached some sort of critical mass in this thread. It is now Slashdot's veritable Trinity site.
Wasn't Microsoft supposed to have a system that would patch without rebooting by now? I thought Windows 2000 was supposed to do it. But here we are on XP, and you still have to reboot for nearly all of the critical patches.
Anybody else notice the text on the front page that was up earlier? Subscribers get access to the new articles early or something like that. Well, I could care less, but FP's may be a thing of the past. And I can't seem to post as AC right at the moment. Not that I planned to, but I noticed it was gone.
I'm reading the UNIX haters guide that got posted recently, and I just wanted to post this:
There are two schools of debugging thought. One is the "debugger as physician"
school, which was popularized in early ITS and Lisp systems. In
these environments, the debugger is always present in the running program
and when the program crashes, the debugger/physician can diagnose the
problem and make the program well again.
Unix follows the older "debugging as autopsy" model. In Unix, a broken
program dies, leaving a core file, that is like a dead body in more ways than
one. A Unix debugger then comes along and determines the cause of death.
Interestingly enough, Unix programs tend to die from curable diseases,
accidents, and negligence, just as people do.
As a consequence, she left her weapon in the car when she came to work.
Yeah, that makes your company a lot safer. Instead of having the gun in the hands of a female -- trained at its use, at that -- it's out in the parking lot. The first person to break into that car and find it will present a million (actually far more) times the threat that woman did. And the gun won't be there -- again, in the hands of a woman trained in its use -- in case it is ever needed.
I don't know how you feel about the whole situation -- you probably aren't responsible for the decision -- but I think it stinks.
Your post is marked funny, but it's actually pretty sad. The new movies were written by a completely different author than the guy who wrote the original Star Wars. My guess is that the Earl of Oxford wrote Star Wars, and Lucas is just some hack.
Ivy League schools already have quotas for certain groups of people who happen to be genetically disadvantaged... There's a case before the Supreme Court right now.
The first post about hormone treatments was ridiculing the idea of trying to make men and women exactly the same, if you'll notice. I didn't say that the women capable of math are unfeminine. I did say that mathematics was anti-social in a large number of cases. But yes, far more men are good at math, and far more men enjoy it than women. Most women don't seem to want careers in computer science, and that seems to be the problem that others are discussing. Those who do, and who are capable of it, have few problems in our society. They probably have a few advantages even. The social implications are that the mathematical subjects will always be a majority male enterprise.
The real social implications of what I've been talking about in general are that male aggression is greater for reasons of genetics. This means that the vast majority of criminals will be males, as is true in all societies that have ever existed. It also means, that in all areas where men and women compete for social status, men will probably hold most of the top positions, as in all societies that have ever existed. This is, as I've said before, a matter of the hard drugs we are taking. In most societies, this tends to lead to a separation of male and female roles in a society, but the current economic and political systems that exist certainly act in a way to undercut those social forces of separation.
I'm not making a moral judgment about the ideas in the above paragraph, I'm just pointing them out. Aggression is hormonal, and aggression in an important part of motivation. That probably means that we will never live in an equal society, no matter how much everyone wants it. Men will act quite differently about sex and about career. Women have different values in a lot of areas, and I do think that it's important not to try to force others to fit your mold of what they should be like, which is part of what the whole effort to make more women choose CS seems to be about.
If you cannot grasp that I have said nothing about all men, all women, or all mathematicians, I wonder how it is that you can craft a semi-coherent argument at all. Not all men are mathematicians, just as not all women are unsuited for it. It must be understood however, that this is a matter of proportions.
Your statement about Jack the Ripper shows exactly how silly this line of reasoning can get. It's not that the majority of serial killers that are male -- it's that the overwhelming majority are male. (In America, most are white, interestingly enough in the context of our discussion. That is despite the massive black crime rate.) The chance that Jack the Ripper, a murderer who targeted female prostitutes, was a woman, is so mind-numbingly small as to make your statements that have come before laughable. There is certainly a small possibility that it was so -- and some women are good mathematicians as well. Perhaps some day, there will even be a great one. Perhaps. But none of that changes the real differences between populations men and women.
Too late. In Western societies, more people believe in Global Warming than believe in God. It is to good a story to stay anything but the global boogeyman it is.
If you find my argument appalling perhaps you could specify reasons rather than attacking me personally. The feelings that you mention are all very fine, I'm sure, but try to put them aside for a bit while we try to debate our way to the truth.
Your mention of Camille Paglia is the closest you get to a direct statement on my actual arguments, and you can't seem to say that you find her statement untrue -- only appalling. Her full quote is appropriate here:
Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
If you have ever met many mathematicians -- I have -- you will quickly find that they are rarely very socially adept. In fact, it's quite obvious that they often have certain anti-social fixations which are a greatly bound up with their research. Mathematics is not, after all, a collaborative sport. It is quite possible that the same sort of defects that produce Jack-the-Rippers produce mathematicians. And it is quite certain that men have more of those defects.
Wow, you're brillant. You can know a mathematical sequence from just two numbers. A regular fucking Rainman. Tell me, if you don't mind revealling your impressive secret, how you can rule out all other possible sequences so early on? I mean, you're a goddamn prodgidy. We need to put you on TV.
Dumbass, read the XIVth amendment section 2. If the Florida legislature had acted independently of the popular vote, the penalties enumerated therein would have kicked in (representation in Congress and electoral college reduced).
XIVth: Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
Interestingly, the XIVth amendment only applies to males over the age of 21, so you're right in the case of women and those under 18. Most people ignored all this in the 2000 debates, but if you read carefully you'll notice that the XIXth amendment not only does not cancel the XIVth, it also does not modify it. Same for the XXVIth.
XIXth: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
XXVIth: Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Don't apologize for crypto-misogynist, it's a wonderful word! I love it. It may even describe me personally, but I'll leave that a bit of a mystery, of course. . . No I can't say that after all. I feel that men and women are fundamentally different, but I certainly could never characterize myself as a misogynist.
Now, first off, your claim that many CS students major in something other than a mathematical or science field is interesting. Leaving aside the anecdotal nature of the claim, it is actually very interesting. You seem to be saying that I might be correct if CS was like math or physics, but since it's not, girls are perfectly suited for it. That's an interesting way to argue. I think you're wrong about CS, but since I was just using the topic as an excuse to pontificate about women, I'll just note that you seem to be acknowledging my point about mathematical ability.
Your next point seems to be the claim that the differences (with regard to emotionality that I spoke of) that exist between men and women are taught and not inborn. Your call of 'nurture, not nature' is the standard rejoinder in this sort of discussion, but I think that there are certainly some big holes to be poked in it. I mentioned prison in my above post. I don't think that I need to pull out sources to prove to you that the prisons in our society, and every society that has them, are filled mainly with men. And I don't think that I'll have to try hard to convince you that this suggests that aggression and violence is more common among men than among women. The universality such a thing suggests nature. Further, the fact that certain other primate species (who are without access to things like culture and state schools and the Rolling Stones) display even further differentiated levels of aggression between males and females seems to suggest that genes are responsible for our case.
In fact, the most likely culprit is hormones. My statements in the above post were not entirely in jest. Men and women are on different drugs. Testosterone especially is known to be a powerful 'mind-altering' substance. Aggression and sexual 'side-effects' in both males and females who take it artificially are well-documented. The idea that every young boy can be filled with this stuff throughout his development and then later in his adult life, and still remain the same 'blank slate' as our young girls is preposterous. All the finger paints in the world aren't going to make up for the hard drugs that nature decrees are children shall take.
And, as for your last point, I'm sorry to say that I am one of those Bell Curve idiots. I am familiar with the critiques, and do not find them convincing. Gould was, is, and will remain, despite our many disagreements on a variety of subjects, my favorite science author, and his book was accurate and interesting - only it never dealt with the actual claims of the Bell Curve, instead replying only tangentially. The actual critiques of Bell Curve were less persuasive. If you find IQ silly, I wonder how you bother to explain the persistent under-performance of American black students on all manner of academic tests in all levels of social and economic status. Actually I don't wonder how you explain it, but you'll give me a chuckle when I hear you say it.
First, women have far less variation in IQ then men. Thus they have less representation at the bottom of the scale, and less at the top. They average out about the same as men. Moreover, they tend to do better with verbal tests and not so well with mathematical tests.
Women are also likely to value emotional attachment and emotional stimulation higher than the averge man. (An interesting side point is Aspenger's syndrome and like emotional introversions that tend to strike men at much higher rates.)
Anyone familar with computer science sees how this disadvantages women in the field. Luckily, it's probable that the brain development track that men take is mostly influenced by hormone levels throughout childhood. Therefore the solution to getting more women in CS is simplicity itself. Testosterone shots from the age of 6 months until 18 years. Hell, we could even sterilize the females and get rid of the secondary sexual organs through surgery. With this program of hormone treatment and surgery, I think that we can finally get rid of inequality between the sexes by erasing most of the major biological differences. I'm glad to live in this age that truly recognizes the uselessness of all 'feminine' characteristics and pursuits, and understands that it is only men, and people who are able to act like men, that accomplish anything interesting in the world. If women on average enjoy mathematics less then men, we'll goddamn have to make them enjoy. After all, it's not like some people could find it somewhat unfulfilling...
I will now attempt to give some of the lesser intelligences on slashdot (ie. the editors) a clue.
You CAN get energy from harnessing vibrations. That dampens the vibrations. Therefore, if you wanted to use the vibration from a pager or cell phone to charge the battery, you would have to use even more power from the battery to make it vibrate at normal levels. The energy you would get from dampening the vibration would not be enough to make up from the energy you would have to use to make up for the dampening. The only use of the idea presented by JN (and vetted by Hemos) would be to send it to Congress and hope for some Congressmen to include a million dollars of new perpetual motion research in the next farm appropriations bill.
On the other hand, large motors and such do generate large amounts of vibration (and heat) as a necessary byproduct. There is nothing fundamentally impossible with harnessing this. It is almost certainly completely impractical, so you may just want to hook up an electrical generator to the swirlee-wheel on your hat instead.
One of the most common errors made when discussing this sort of thing is to imagine that there are only two races, the 'White' race, and the 'Black' race. It is particularly common amoung white educated liberals, the supposed 'tolerant class', for some reason. And you -- no doubt innocently -- assume that even if there were other races, they couldn't score higher than whites. That's an interesting subconcious expresion on your part, but we don't really need to discuss it. The Asian average is around 15 points higher than the White average. Moreover certain groups (Ashkenazi Jews, high-caste Indians) score even higher as a population.
Of course, the 100 mark wasn't set that exactly, so all that is important is to understand that a clear relative difference appears wherever the mean is.
IQ tests are never racist. Only people are.
Well, it is possible to make manifestly racist tests. For example, you could predicate voting rights in the American southwest on English ability. Tests like that have been used around the world for many reasons. I agree with you that IQ tests are not amoung these.
7 points down, that's about half the IQ difference between Blacks and Whites (avg. 85 and 100 respectively). It's interesting how an IQ test can be meaningless and racist, but still reflect minute quantities of harmful substances in the bloodstream. Reminds me of all those racist and sexist SAT math exams. I have yet to find a single objectionable math question, but the scores prove that it must be so...
Yes, yes, this will draw flames. I think some people might like to have a honest discussion about this though, so mod the flames down, and but keep your hands off of the 'flamebait' button in regards to this post. If you feel I'm wrong -- reply. (I shouldn't have to include this paragraph, but it goes to show how busted slashdot's moderation system is.)
Everyone who isn't on the side of the police here is an Al Queda sympathizer. If these 'college kids' weren't terrorists, why would the police have used the Patriot act on them to seize their hard drives? The rioters are charged with "flipping cars and vending machines, igniting fires and inciting riots." You think that one of these vendor-machine flippers would hesitate for a second in piloting a plane full of jet fuel and hundreds of passengers into a building? Haul them off to Gitmo!
The only thing that the new Patriot II act needs is a provision that gets people with your type of opinions put up against the wall and shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay -- for the AMD fanboys out there -- what would you do if Intel tried that exact same line of reasoning on you? (Of course, they don't have to, since they've got the fastest chip on the block.)
You forget the capstone of a nerd reading 'news for nerds' pointing out the nerdishness of fellow nerds.
But yes, I agree, the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and D&D references, reached some sort of critical mass in this thread. It is now Slashdot's veritable Trinity site.
You are forgetting the leson of Intel. It's actually equivalent to trespassing.
Wasn't Microsoft supposed to have a system that would patch without rebooting by now? I thought Windows 2000 was supposed to do it. But here we are on XP, and you still have to reboot for nearly all of the critical patches.
Anybody else notice the text on the front page that was up earlier? Subscribers get access to the new articles early or something like that. Well, I could care less, but FP's may be a thing of the past. And I can't seem to post as AC right at the moment. Not that I planned to, but I noticed it was gone.
Of course their latest strip will get them in trouble. It's just asking for a slashdotting.
As a consequence, she left her weapon in the car when she came to work.
Yeah, that makes your company a lot safer. Instead of having the gun in the hands of a female -- trained at its use, at that -- it's out in the parking lot. The first person to break into that car and find it will present a million (actually far more) times the threat that woman did. And the gun won't be there -- again, in the hands of a woman trained in its use -- in case it is ever needed.
I don't know how you feel about the whole situation -- you probably aren't responsible for the decision -- but I think it stinks.
Your post is strangely bitter, insulting, and unrelated to my own.
Your post is marked funny, but it's actually pretty sad. The new movies were written by a completely different author than the guy who wrote the original Star Wars. My guess is that the Earl of Oxford wrote Star Wars, and Lucas is just some hack.
The Lone Gunmen are dead!!!
Ivy League schools already have quotas for certain groups of people who happen to be genetically disadvantaged... There's a case before the Supreme Court right now.
The first post about hormone treatments was ridiculing the idea of trying to make men and women exactly the same, if you'll notice. I didn't say that the women capable of math are unfeminine. I did say that mathematics was anti-social in a large number of cases. But yes, far more men are good at math, and far more men enjoy it than women. Most women don't seem to want careers in computer science, and that seems to be the problem that others are discussing. Those who do, and who are capable of it, have few problems in our society. They probably have a few advantages even. The social implications are that the mathematical subjects will always be a majority male enterprise.
The real social implications of what I've been talking about in general are that male aggression is greater for reasons of genetics. This means that the vast majority of criminals will be males, as is true in all societies that have ever existed. It also means, that in all areas where men and women compete for social status, men will probably hold most of the top positions, as in all societies that have ever existed. This is, as I've said before, a matter of the hard drugs we are taking. In most societies, this tends to lead to a separation of male and female roles in a society, but the current economic and political systems that exist certainly act in a way to undercut those social forces of separation.
I'm not making a moral judgment about the ideas in the above paragraph, I'm just pointing them out. Aggression is hormonal, and aggression in an important part of motivation. That probably means that we will never live in an equal society, no matter how much everyone wants it. Men will act quite differently about sex and about career. Women have different values in a lot of areas, and I do think that it's important not to try to force others to fit your mold of what they should be like, which is part of what the whole effort to make more women choose CS seems to be about.
It was a statement of opinion. I hadn't bothered to conduct a Gallup poll.
If you cannot grasp that I have said nothing about all men, all women, or all mathematicians, I wonder how it is that you can craft a semi-coherent argument at all. Not all men are mathematicians, just as not all women are unsuited for it. It must be understood however, that this is a matter of proportions.
Your statement about Jack the Ripper shows exactly how silly this line of reasoning can get. It's not that the majority of serial killers that are male -- it's that the overwhelming majority are male. (In America, most are white, interestingly enough in the context of our discussion. That is despite the massive black crime rate.) The chance that Jack the Ripper, a murderer who targeted female prostitutes, was a woman, is so mind-numbingly small as to make your statements that have come before laughable. There is certainly a small possibility that it was so -- and some women are good mathematicians as well. Perhaps some day, there will even be a great one. Perhaps. But none of that changes the real differences between populations men and women.
Too late. In Western societies, more people believe in Global Warming than believe in God. It is to good a story to stay anything but the global boogeyman it is.
Your mention of Camille Paglia is the closest you get to a direct statement on my actual arguments, and you can't seem to say that you find her statement untrue -- only appalling. Her full quote is appropriate here: If you have ever met many mathematicians -- I have -- you will quickly find that they are rarely very socially adept. In fact, it's quite obvious that they often have certain anti-social fixations which are a greatly bound up with their research. Mathematics is not, after all, a collaborative sport. It is quite possible that the same sort of defects that produce Jack-the-Rippers produce mathematicians. And it is quite certain that men have more of those defects.
Wow, you're brillant. You can know a mathematical sequence from just two numbers. A regular fucking Rainman. Tell me, if you don't mind revealling your impressive secret, how you can rule out all other possible sequences so early on? I mean, you're a goddamn prodgidy. We need to put you on TV.
Don't apologize for crypto-misogynist, it's a wonderful word! I love it. It may even describe me personally, but I'll leave that a bit of a mystery, of course. . . No I can't say that after all. I feel that men and women are fundamentally different, but I certainly could never characterize myself as a misogynist.
Now, first off, your claim that many CS students major in something other than a mathematical or science field is interesting. Leaving aside the anecdotal nature of the claim, it is actually very interesting. You seem to be saying that I might be correct if CS was like math or physics, but since it's not, girls are perfectly suited for it. That's an interesting way to argue. I think you're wrong about CS, but since I was just using the topic as an excuse to pontificate about women, I'll just note that you seem to be acknowledging my point about mathematical ability.
Your next point seems to be the claim that the differences (with regard to emotionality that I spoke of) that exist between men and women are taught and not inborn. Your call of 'nurture, not nature' is the standard rejoinder in this sort of discussion, but I think that there are certainly some big holes to be poked in it. I mentioned prison in my above post. I don't think that I need to pull out sources to prove to you that the prisons in our society, and every society that has them, are filled mainly with men. And I don't think that I'll have to try hard to convince you that this suggests that aggression and violence is more common among men than among women. The universality such a thing suggests nature. Further, the fact that certain other primate species (who are without access to things like culture and state schools and the Rolling Stones) display even further differentiated levels of aggression between males and females seems to suggest that genes are responsible for our case.
In fact, the most likely culprit is hormones. My statements in the above post were not entirely in jest. Men and women are on different drugs. Testosterone especially is known to be a powerful 'mind-altering' substance. Aggression and sexual 'side-effects' in both males and females who take it artificially are well-documented. The idea that every young boy can be filled with this stuff throughout his development and then later in his adult life, and still remain the same 'blank slate' as our young girls is preposterous. All the finger paints in the world aren't going to make up for the hard drugs that nature decrees are children shall take.
And, as for your last point, I'm sorry to say that I am one of those Bell Curve idiots. I am familiar with the critiques, and do not find them convincing. Gould was, is, and will remain, despite our many disagreements on a variety of subjects, my favorite science author, and his book was accurate and interesting - only it never dealt with the actual claims of the Bell Curve, instead replying only tangentially. The actual critiques of Bell Curve were less persuasive. If you find IQ silly, I wonder how you bother to explain the persistent under-performance of American black students on all manner of academic tests in all levels of social and economic status. Actually I don't wonder how you explain it, but you'll give me a chuckle when I hear you say it.
It's quite simple actually.
First, women have far less variation in IQ then men. Thus they have less representation at the bottom of the scale, and less at the top. They average out about the same as men. Moreover, they tend to do better with verbal tests and not so well with mathematical tests.
Women are also likely to value emotional attachment and emotional stimulation higher than the averge man. (An interesting side point is Aspenger's syndrome and like emotional introversions that tend to strike men at much higher rates.)
Anyone familar with computer science sees how this disadvantages women in the field. Luckily, it's probable that the brain development track that men take is mostly influenced by hormone levels throughout childhood. Therefore the solution to getting more women in CS is simplicity itself. Testosterone shots from the age of 6 months until 18 years. Hell, we could even sterilize the females and get rid of the secondary sexual organs through surgery. With this program of hormone treatment and surgery, I think that we can finally get rid of inequality between the sexes by erasing most of the major biological differences. I'm glad to live in this age that truly recognizes the uselessness of all 'feminine' characteristics and pursuits, and understands that it is only men, and people who are able to act like men, that accomplish anything interesting in the world. If women on average enjoy mathematics less then men, we'll goddamn have to make them enjoy. After all, it's not like some people could find it somewhat unfulfilling...
I will now attempt to give some of the lesser intelligences on slashdot (ie. the editors) a clue.
You CAN get energy from harnessing vibrations. That dampens the vibrations. Therefore, if you wanted to use the vibration from a pager or cell phone to charge the battery, you would have to use even more power from the battery to make it vibrate at normal levels. The energy you would get from dampening the vibration would not be enough to make up from the energy you would have to use to make up for the dampening. The only use of the idea presented by JN (and vetted by Hemos) would be to send it to Congress and hope for some Congressmen to include a million dollars of new perpetual motion research in the next farm appropriations bill.
On the other hand, large motors and such do generate large amounts of vibration (and heat) as a necessary byproduct. There is nothing fundamentally impossible with harnessing this. It is almost certainly completely impractical, so you may just want to hook up an electrical generator to the swirlee-wheel on your hat instead.
One of the most common errors made when discussing this sort of thing is to imagine that there are only two races, the 'White' race, and the 'Black' race. It is particularly common amoung white educated liberals, the supposed 'tolerant class', for some reason. And you -- no doubt innocently -- assume that even if there were other races, they couldn't score higher than whites. That's an interesting subconcious expresion on your part, but we don't really need to discuss it. The Asian average is around 15 points higher than the White average. Moreover certain groups (Ashkenazi Jews, high-caste Indians) score even higher as a population.
Of course, the 100 mark wasn't set that exactly, so all that is important is to understand that a clear relative difference appears wherever the mean is.
IQ tests are never racist. Only people are.
Well, it is possible to make manifestly racist tests. For example, you could predicate voting rights in the American southwest on English ability. Tests like that have been used around the world for many reasons. I agree with you that IQ tests are not amoung these.
7 points down, that's about half the IQ difference between Blacks and Whites (avg. 85 and 100 respectively). It's interesting how an IQ test can be meaningless and racist, but still reflect minute quantities of harmful substances in the bloodstream. Reminds me of all those racist and sexist SAT math exams. I have yet to find a single objectionable math question, but the scores prove that it must be so...
Yes, yes, this will draw flames. I think some people might like to have a honest discussion about this though, so mod the flames down, and but keep your hands off of the 'flamebait' button in regards to this post. If you feel I'm wrong -- reply. (I shouldn't have to include this paragraph, but it goes to show how busted slashdot's moderation system is.)
Everyone who isn't on the side of the police here is an Al Queda sympathizer. If these 'college kids' weren't terrorists, why would the police have used the Patriot act on them to seize their hard drives? The rioters are charged with "flipping cars and vending machines, igniting fires and inciting riots." You think that one of these vendor-machine flippers would hesitate for a second in piloting a plane full of jet fuel and hundreds of passengers into a building? Haul them off to Gitmo!
The only thing that the new Patriot II act needs is a provision that gets people with your type of opinions put up against the wall and shot.