Lambdas. Ha. Lambdas are older than I am, and they think they discovered them. Garbage collection, too. Yeah, we know, functional programming and garbage collection will save the day and no one will ever have to write a loop, mutate an object, or allocate memory again. How many years have they been saying that? Probably longer than they've been saying RISC will kick CISCs butt, and... oh, hell, the young'ns don't even know what that is, do they.
Bet you didn't see that coming. It's not merely everything a man ever does that promotes rape culture in this new world, you see, it's also every step a woman might take to reduce the likelihood of rape.
Apparently they're upset at anything a potential victim might want to do, at all.
From the article: "As a woman, I'm told not to go out alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things. That way, rape isn't just controlling me while I'm actually being assaulted -- it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior. Solutions like these actually just recreate that. I don't want to fucking test my drink when I'm at the bar. That's not the world I want to live in."
And there's actually a small point there. Unfortunately, however, she doesn't get a choice as to the world she lives in; none of us do, it's take it or leave it. And despite all the man-blaming, there's not much the vast majority of men, who are non-rapists, can do about the few who are. No amount of our not-raping will change the rapists out there. Particularly not the vanishingly few using date-rape drugs; they either know they're doing wrong, or they're mentally ill, and aren't likely to respond to any sort of cultural persuasion either way.
So, should she let (fear of) rape influence her to take precautions? It's really up to her. If she doesn't want her behavior limited, she can simply not limit it. The risk is hers to take, and the rapist is still in the wrong -- but that doesn't make the risk go away. It's the same risk anyone takes when they engage in behavior putting them at risk of crime -- walking around the NYC subway holding your iPhone. Cutting through the projects rather than walking around. Driving a nice car through Southwest Philadelphia. Though not testing one's drink probably falls into the same category of "not wearing a Kevlar vest whenever you go out", given how rare drink-spiking is.
Otherwise they'd be black knights. I will tell your from experience though that no amount of White Knighting on the internet is gonna get you laid.
How about Black Knighting? I know it gets us much better looking horses and armor (except that guy in Holy Grail; he always was the white sheep of the group)... so maybe that too?
Why else would someone decide the only way to deal with someone texting in a theater is to blow their fucking head off?
Yeah, because that happens all the time. It's socially acceptable. When I come into work on Monday, my co-workers and I talk about all the fucking texters we shot over the weekend.
Or to deal with someone who's music is too loud is to put a gun through the window and start shooting?
Yep, because a singular case which makes national headlines is evidence of a greater culture of acceptance of such things.
It swings both ways. If they want to track my every move via a cell phone then I'll use it as an alibi when I go out and commit crime then tell them I was home the whole time because I purposely left my phone on the kitchen counter.
Nice idea, but you also have to deal with license plate recognition, EZ-Pass, tire RFID, shoe RFID, facial recognition, and the like.
Everyone I know who uses vi uses ":wq" rather than ":x". Don't know why. I'm an emacs user, so I couldn't even tell you what the command is to save and quit; I just move my fingers and feet in a pattern stored in muscle memory, and things get done.
What's innovative about AirBnB and Uber and the likes is figuring out how to do something blatantly illegal to gain a competitive advantage over legitimate businesses that do follow rules and regulations (which in many cases exist for very good reasons), without getting immediately shut down.
Ha ha, yes, "legitimate businesses" in the Fat Tony sense. Legitimate businesses that long ago used those rules and regulations to put competition out of business.
*People* are different, and like different things. Men and women, however, aren't that different (roles in reproduction excepted), so a statistically significant difference points to a social or psychological cause, not biology.
Well, you can go ahead and take that on faith... but there are gross physiological differences between men and women, even besides those directly implicated in reproduction. Women are smaller on average, have longer legs proportionally, have different normal hemoglobin levels, etc. So why assume everything's the same neurobiologically?
Blechley Park and earlier research projects employed female "computers" before they developed electric ones because women worked hard and worked cheap.
You're kind of missing the obvious there: men were in short supply due to the war.
The slashdot editors apparently think it's a problem. I feel like I see this same topic on slashdot every month...
There's a general push from a few groups to try to push men out of the field. Well, a few of those groups want to do that, but the ones who are getting things accomplished along those lines (mostly white males in upper management or executive positions) actually just want a stick to beat up their low-level male tech workers.
"Computing's Narrow Focus"? Get a degree in petroleum geology or structural engineering if you want a narrow focus. Or pick the wrong field in biology. I know a woman who got a PhD in an area of microbiology that turned out to be a dead end. She ended up managing a coffee shop.
It's certainly true that my not-far-post-1984 CS degree was focused pretty much on computing itself; computer architecture, automata, algorithmic complexity, database internals. Not so much on applications; the article suggests that pre-1984 there was more focus on what you can do with computers. I'm not so sure this particular explanation holds up, because the drop in women in CS is mirrored by a drop in women in business computing, which by definition remained focused on applications.
To throw out my own hypothesis, the PC revolution also caused a huge increase in the number of prospective majors in the field. Overwhelmed departments responded with "weed-out" classes and restrictive admissions policies; this may have had a disparate impact on women.
It's certainly true that the first drop in female enrollment happened shortly after the PC came on the scene (the second drop happened after the dot-com crash). I'm not sure that's sufficient evidence to blame the PC (my post title is a formal fallacy, after all), but at least it has better support than the prevalent "smelly misogynistic nerd" theory.
The industry won't cater to female gamers until there's a value parity between different demographics.
On the contrary, the industry already is catering to female 'gamers'. It's just that the industry isn't going to stop catering to male 'gamers' as well. And the industry (or industries), unlike the summary writer and some of the more disingenuous commenters, realize that despite that both consist of people who play video games, there are significant differences between the markets.
Most of these women (who play a bit of casual games) don't even WANT to be called gamers, so I don't understand the push to call them so.
It's just an oblique attack on men. They would like game companies to not only stop catering to teenage boys, but to actively exclude them in favor of catering to women. Of course, the game companies are not that stupid and realize that equivocating over the term "gamer" isn't going to change a thing.
I think you're right. Being smart isn't a liability. It's an extreme advantage. Being an arrogant prick is a liability because you aren't stronger or more powerful than those around you. But as you said, if you were smart you'd figure that out.
That's odd, because I see a lot of successful arrogant pricks who aren't particularly bright; in fact, it appears to me that being an arrogant prick is more likely to lead to success than intelligence.
It's a BOMB (known to antiquity) in a CAR (a German invention). You can't just put the two together and claim it's a new invention... what is this, the patent office?
1) Make rules that prevent anyone from doing anything. 2) Waive rules for people and companies you favor.
Now you effectively control who gets to do anything, and all in the name of the environment, or puppies, or whatever your original rule purported to protect.
I'm not saying that filling out an awkward online form is necessarily a test for a tech job, but it may be... Can you follow directions? Can you restate your prior job responsibilities in a format other than your prepared resume?
I think you're misunderestimating just how bad many of these things are. They aren't just badly designed. They hang, they freeze, they throw ASP errors just before the final submit (or just after, leaving you wondering if it sent or not).
The reason seems obvious: In most cases, the output either goes straight to File 13, or goes to some CYA file and is never actually looked at. They're applications for non-jobs.
I'm going to wait until someone who isn't essentially gambling with their patients' lives without informed consent can review these findings.
Why? Do unethical experiments (by western standards) somehow not work? If we listened to ALL the handwringers we couldn't even experiment on mice, or do nuclear tests on our own planet, and then were would we be?
You want to help restore privacy? Start by burning down the Google offices and NSA headquarters.
That won't do anything. Step 1 would be getting CALEA and any similar laws requiring networks to be built in an insecure manner repealed. Once that's done, rebuild telephone and email networks to support easy to use end-to-end encryption. And make sure any storage devices encrypt all data at rest. Any services which require you to store data on a third-party server, or transmit through a third party server, unencrypted (or encrypted with a key outside your control) must be considered less private; that's not the fault of the third parties, that's just a fact.
The idea would be to make bulk collection infeasible, and individual privacy violation difficult enough that the violator does actually have to work at it, and has a good chance of being caught at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Lambdas. Ha. Lambdas are older than I am, and they think they discovered them. Garbage collection, too. Yeah, we know, functional programming and garbage collection will save the day and no one will ever have to write a loop, mutate an object, or allocate memory again. How many years have they been saying that? Probably longer than they've been saying RISC will kick CISCs butt, and ... oh, hell, the young'ns don't even know what that is, do they.
Apparently they're upset at anything a potential victim might want to do, at all.
From the article:
"As a woman, I'm told not to go out alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things. That way, rape isn't just controlling me while I'm actually being assaulted -- it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior. Solutions like these actually just recreate that. I don't want to fucking test my drink when I'm at the bar. That's not the world I want to live in."
And there's actually a small point there. Unfortunately, however, she doesn't get a choice as to the world she lives in; none of us do, it's take it or leave it. And despite all the man-blaming, there's not much the vast majority of men, who are non-rapists, can do about the few who are. No amount of our not-raping will change the rapists out there. Particularly not the vanishingly few using date-rape drugs; they either know they're doing wrong, or they're mentally ill, and aren't likely to respond to any sort of cultural persuasion either way.
So, should she let (fear of) rape influence her to take precautions? It's really up to her. If she doesn't want her behavior limited, she can simply not limit it. The risk is hers to take, and the rapist is still in the wrong -- but that doesn't make the risk go away. It's the same risk anyone takes when they engage in behavior putting them at risk of crime -- walking around the NYC subway holding your iPhone. Cutting through the projects rather than walking around. Driving a nice car through Southwest Philadelphia. Though not testing one's drink probably falls into the same category of "not wearing a Kevlar vest whenever you go out", given how rare drink-spiking is.
How about Black Knighting? I know it gets us much better looking horses and armor (except that guy in Holy Grail; he always was the white sheep of the group)... so maybe that too?
Yeah, because that happens all the time. It's socially acceptable. When I come into work on Monday, my co-workers and I talk about all the fucking texters we shot over the weekend.
Yep, because a singular case which makes national headlines is evidence of a greater culture of acceptance of such things.
Nice idea, but you also have to deal with license plate recognition, EZ-Pass, tire RFID, shoe RFID, facial recognition, and the like.
Everyone I know who uses vi uses ":wq" rather than ":x". Don't know why. I'm an emacs user, so I couldn't even tell you what the command is to save and quit; I just move my fingers and feet in a pattern stored in muscle memory, and things get done.
Ha ha, yes, "legitimate businesses" in the Fat Tony sense. Legitimate businesses that long ago used those rules and regulations to put competition out of business.
Well, you can go ahead and take that on faith... but there are gross physiological differences between men and women, even besides those directly implicated in reproduction. Women are smaller on average, have longer legs proportionally, have different normal hemoglobin levels, etc. So why assume everything's the same neurobiologically?
You're kind of missing the obvious there: men were in short supply due to the war.
There's a general push from a few groups to try to push men out of the field. Well, a few of those groups want to do that, but the ones who are getting things accomplished along those lines (mostly white males in upper management or executive positions) actually just want a stick to beat up their low-level male tech workers.
It's certainly true that my not-far-post-1984 CS degree was focused pretty much on computing itself; computer architecture, automata, algorithmic complexity, database internals. Not so much on applications; the article suggests that pre-1984 there was more focus on what you can do with computers. I'm not so sure this particular explanation holds up, because the drop in women in CS is mirrored by a drop in women in business computing, which by definition remained focused on applications.
To throw out my own hypothesis, the PC revolution also caused a huge increase in the number of prospective majors in the field. Overwhelmed departments responded with "weed-out" classes and restrictive admissions policies; this may have had a disparate impact on women.
It's certainly true that the first drop in female enrollment happened shortly after the PC came on the scene (the second drop happened after the dot-com crash). I'm not sure that's sufficient evidence to blame the PC (my post title is a formal fallacy, after all), but at least it has better support than the prevalent "smelly misogynistic nerd" theory.
On the contrary, the industry already is catering to female 'gamers'. It's just that the industry isn't going to stop catering to male 'gamers' as well. And the industry (or industries), unlike the summary writer and some of the more disingenuous commenters, realize that despite that both consist of people who play video games, there are significant differences between the markets.
It's just an oblique attack on men. They would like game companies to not only stop catering to teenage boys, but to actively exclude them in favor of catering to women. Of course, the game companies are not that stupid and realize that equivocating over the term "gamer" isn't going to change a thing.
So where are the Einsteins, Fermis, and Von Brauns of today?
That's odd, because I see a lot of successful arrogant pricks who aren't particularly bright; in fact, it appears to me that being an arrogant prick is more likely to lead to success than intelligence.
The cops just didn't know that dinosaurs were extinct. Now, if he'd written that he killed an honest cop, they'd have known it was fiction.
It's a BOMB (known to antiquity) in a CAR (a German invention). You can't just put the two together and claim it's a new invention... what is this, the patent office?
You know the answer to that... once you've paid the Danegeld, you'll never get rid of the Dane.
1) Make rules that prevent anyone from doing anything.
2) Waive rules for people and companies you favor.
Now you effectively control who gets to do anything, and all in the name of the environment, or puppies, or whatever your original rule purported to protect.
I think you're misunderestimating just how bad many of these things are. They aren't just badly designed. They hang, they freeze, they throw ASP errors just before the final submit (or just after, leaving you wondering if it sent or not).
The reason seems obvious: In most cases, the output either goes straight to File 13, or goes to some CYA file and is never actually looked at. They're applications for non-jobs.
Why? Do unethical experiments (by western standards) somehow not work? If we listened to ALL the handwringers we couldn't even experiment on mice, or do nuclear tests on our own planet, and then were would we be?
Determine the boundary of the contaminated-sediment area. Pump cement in there, to make toxic concrete. Once it sets up, pull it out.
Given that the previous engineering firm bailed out a few years ago with a letter that stank of CYA, I'm going to guess it's not that this time.
That won't do anything. Step 1 would be getting CALEA and any similar laws requiring networks to be built in an insecure manner repealed. Once that's done, rebuild telephone and email networks to support easy to use end-to-end encryption. And make sure any storage devices encrypt all data at rest. Any services which require you to store data on a third-party server, or transmit through a third party server, unencrypted (or encrypted with a key outside your control) must be considered less private; that's not the fault of the third parties, that's just a fact.
The idea would be to make bulk collection infeasible, and individual privacy violation difficult enough that the violator does actually have to work at it, and has a good chance of being caught at it.
So in 5 years India manages about 75% of what the US does in 13? Sounds a lot better that way.