Uh, what? Since when have the Masons been going around doing stuff like that?
I mean, i suppose i have to admit that George Washington and his fellow Masons did deprive Great Britain of a little property (100 million acres or so) and destroy a few people (about 50,000 of them) but i don't think that's quite the same thing.
Do you have some kind of magic solution for fixing this problem? Google can't make the software open source and then simultaneously prevent the carriers and manufacturers from rolling their own versions with funky skins and locked bootloaders. Nor can Google force the carriers/manufacturers to update the software in a timely manner. Google can try to provide incentives, but they can't force the issue. You can have free and open software or an iron fisted regime where everyone is forced to move in lockstep, but you can't have both at the same time.
As for the idea that started this thread and that you reiterated in another branch, that there not much point in releasing a new version when most people haven't even upgraded to the latest previous version, is just crap. It's ludicrous to suggest that Google should artificially delay new improvements until "enough" people were on ICS. Microsoft developed Windows 7 even though a lot of people didn't upgrade to Vista, so there were many people, including me, who ended up jumping straight from XP to 7. That's not a bug, that's a feature. The more Android is developed the more advanced the OS will be whenever those still on old versions finally upgrade their phones. When that finally happens are they going to complain that there were too many improvements?
Meanwhile those of us who actually care about having the latest version more than any other feature will either get a Nexus phone or a phone we know we can root and update the OS ourselves. Everyone else probably really doesn't care as much about the OS version as the naysayers like to make out.
Ahh, i somehow had this vague notion that you couldn't focus a laser down to a point because running it through a lens would destroy the coherence. Thanks.
So the laser refuses to fire unless the machine detects there's something in the way to be cut, and there's absolutely no backup in case it somehow does get fired while there's nothing in the target area or it happens to go just a little too long after it finishes cutting through the target? That doesn't seem especially likely.
A laser cutter involved a laser strong enough to cut through metal. (Duh.) So what do you use to stop the laser once it goes through whatever you're trying to cut/drill? I presume there must be something at the other end designed to defocus and/or safely absorb the energy from the laser, i'm just curious what the exact method is.
It reminds me of that lightning weapon used in "District 9". Don't know if it's powerful enough to make people literally explode.
Or the staff weapons from Stargate SG-1:
O'Neill: This [holds up a staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy. This [holds up a P-90] is a weapon of war. It's made to kill the enemy.
Jobs certainly did seem to get his transplant rather quickly (although admittedly i'm more familiar with kidney transplants, where the wait can be up to seven years depending on where you live.) But i'm sure there are numerous ways to shorten the wait if you happen to be incredibly rich, most of them easier and more circumspect than bribing your doctor with cheap real estate.
I'm pretty sure that logically the only thing that can threaten the US Constitution is the US government. Maybe i'm forgetting something, but i had the impression the Constitution is all about giving rights to the citizens and restricting the rights of the government. As a citizen (or rather, a citizen who is not a government official) i can break the law, but i can't break the Constitution. I can choose not to exercise the rights granted to me by the Constitution, but that's not the same thing. The government however can break the Constitution by violating the restraints placed upon it.
Don't we keep getting articles posted about how poor the US educational system is?
I guess our educational system is the same as our democracy, it's the worst kind of that type (education/government,) except for all the others that have been tried?
What makes you think that one has anything to do with the other? There are certainly unpleasant, stressful environments where women work; the New York City public school system comes to mind.
I certainly have no proof, if i had the choice between a job that was relatively pleasant and unstressful, a job that was unpleasant and stressful because the coworkers were assholes, and a job that was unpleasant and stressful because it was a very challenging job, i would pick the first or third options. There is no way i would pick the middle option, and i can't see why anyone else would either, all other things being equal.
This is not 1985; the people on the Internet are not representative of people in technical fields. You might want to look up the term, "Eternal September," to see the major turning point in the net.. If women are being harassed to a greater degree than men on the Internet, then that is a problem that has nothing to do with technical culture -- or do you really think that the technical culture is dominant online in this century?
I think you may be confusing reality with perception. Or rather you might be confused about how much other people get confused by the two. Not everyone on the internet is a geek or an engineer (i think disambiguating between geeks and engineers was unnecessary, but i'll try to be inclusive from this point on) not even most any more, i agree. However i think the internet is still viewed as a somewhat geeky/techy place, and especially the kind of gamer heavy areas where harassment is most likely to crop up. I'm not convinced that none of the people being assholes aren't engineers or hackers or geeks, but it doesn't necessarily matter. I'm pretty sure at least some of the script kiddies and others like them like to believe they are geeks/tech types and present themselves as such. And i still think there is a perceptual connection between the internet as a whole (and again, gaming related sites in particular) and geeks/engineers/tech people in general. Though i'd love to see some studies proving or disproving that.
Maybe it will have an effect, but why is nobody bothering to tell those young women that the culture of Internet trolls is not the culture they will find in engineering schools?
Maybe someone is, but maybe the girls are forming preconceptions and not bothering to ask. Then again, intellectually i know that not all jocks are assholes, i know that as an adult if i go to a sporting event i am not likely to be seriously harassed, yet early conditioning has left me rather disinclined to associate with jocks or go to sporting events in general.
Engineers and computer scientists are not the ones harassing or intimidating high school girls on the Internet, so please stop acting like it is our fault.
Where did i say it was our fault? The closest i came was pointing out that some tech companies present a hostile work environment for females, but that was only a corollary and example of how unnecessarily unpleasant situations can encourage people to leave/stay away, not as an argument to prove a direct cause and effect relationship with the geek/tech culture and the internet.
Engineers and computer scientists are not (generally) the ones harassing or intimidating girls and women on the internet, but i think it can be argued that we and other moral people aren't doing enough to stop it. I agree it's not a problem that's possible to solve completely, but that doesn't excuse standing by doing nothing while it takes place.
I admit i'm at least part of the problem, i've seen harassment taking place online and i haven't always stood up about it. Sometimes i've confronted the harasser, sometimes i've said nothing but reported the harasser to the appropriate authorities, and sadly sometimes i didn't feel comfortable getting involved at all. But it's something i'm trying to improve on, and i think it would be good if others did as well.
Men manage to deal with it -- we horse around, joke around, and generally say offensive things to each other all the time.
Actually, the men i generally hang out with don't do that. There will occasionally be teasing and gently ribbing, but women are perfectly able to hand that kind of interaction. it never turns into sexist stereotyping though, either against men or women. Funnily enough, about half the employees at the company i work at are female. (At least in development, i never make it up to the marketing and sales floors, but i think it's fairly even there as well.) And let me tell you, it's quite a nice change from working in the 90%+ male games industry. (The games industry having it's own special problems with gender issues.)
My experience is pretty limited, but what i've heard from other people indicates that many other companies aren't nearly as pleasant. "Surprisingly" a lot of those companies don't have anywhere near as many female employees in the technical sections as we do.
As for your idea that people shouldn't work in a field if they can't handle the requirements is fair, but getting harassed by your coworkers is hardly a requirement. Your attitude is coming across as "If they can't handle the environment they'll leave, so let's make the environment as harsh for them as possible." There are plenty of people that are willing to stick through necessary challenges when trying to get something done, but will bail if they have to deal with what they feel are unnecessary challenges.
I'm not ashamed to admit that i was a nerd growing up. I didn't get beat up a lot (possibly in retrospect because i was taller than average for my age, or possibly just because i tried to hide and keep a low profile as much as possible) but i certainly got teased a lot. That certainly drove me away from everything the jocks were interested in and drove me towards the sciences and computers because that was a "safe" place for geeks. If i'd been a female and harassed by the male geeks i probably would have avoided the sciences and computers as well. Yet despite having such thin skin i seem to have manged to get through college and get jobs at multiple successful tech firms and make valuable contributions.
Getting back on topic, women are not bothering to enroll in CS programs in college. What environment are you blaming for that one? Do you think high school girls somehow "know" what sort of environment they'll face when they arrive at college and start attending their CS classes?
Uh, have you been paying attention? The whole point of the article is that part of the problem may be the internet, which girls are certainly using these days well before high school. (Which means your point about girls not being more likely to drop out is irrelevant. If this theory is true those who can be intimidated out of the field have already been eliminated before college.)
Girls show up on the internet and get harassed. Frequently much more and much more harshly than guys do. Meanwhile male geeks loudly claim the internet as their own territory. You don't think the girls are going to make a connection? Online gaming and gaming sites, one of the favorites hobbies of a lot of geeks, are notoriously bad in that regard. Even some of the comments here on Slashdot in response to this article have been rather hash. Geeks maintain the internet, we act like we're the kings of the internet. Girls show up on the internet, and in the worst case get told to get raped and die. In some of the "better" cases they're told that women aren't wanted and aren't needed in the tech industry. You really don't think that's going to have any effect on what those girls choose when it comes time to decide what they're going to focus on in college, and thus what kind of people they're going to be hanging out with?
I focused on tech schools when choosing my college and tried to avoid any with fraternities, because i'd learned in high school and earlier t
I actually quite like my 7" Nook, i can actually stick it in my pocket if i'm wearing cargo pants/shorts. I'm not sure i'd be able to do that if it was much bigger though.
Also, i forgot to mention it above, but i suspect Google is probably quite interested in blunting the momentum of the Kindle Fire if they can. Amazon rolling their own version of Android and cutting Google out of the market and ad loop is perfectly legal under the licensing terms, but that doesn't mean Google is necessarily pleased with the idea.
I think the concern is that 8" or greater would be smack in the middle of the market that Apple currently holds, and there's a lot more brand identification with the iPad than there is with the Nook or Kindle. The Nook and the Kindle have proven that a cheap smaller tablet is salable and competing against them would be easier than competing against the iPad. Not to mention that matching them in price will be a lot easier since they don't have nearly the economy of scale that Apple can pull off with their huge orders of parts.
There are already too many posts asking some variant of "what makes it so bad for women?" or "they have free will, if they're not in the industry it's their own choice." Well i suspect that incidents like this are part of the reason why. I really can't imagine why young women starting to consider their career options might see that and consider staying as far away from the internet professionally as they possibly can.(/sarcasm)
There are also a number of comments about how the women who are in the industry know how to handle the macho bullshit that gets tossed around, implying that it's therefore okay i guess, since some women can put up with it and not all of them are being forced out of the industry. Well of course the women who are still around can handle it, selection bias much? That doesn't mean they should _have_ to handle it though.
You know, every time there's a story about some company, or even most of an entire industry, doing something assholeish to its employees people pop out of the woodwork to say something about how the free market will correct the issue because all the good employees will find work at companies that treat them properly, and the companies abusing their employees will thus inevitable fail. I wonder how much that group overlaps with the group that think women ought to just suck it up when they're treated poorly.
It's funny how when a company/industry/environment treats all their employees badly it's the company that's at fault. This libertarian/republican/conservative viewpoint is that it's up to the employees to fix the problem, but at least the company is still clearly designated as the problem in the equation. But suddenly when the company/industry/environment is specifically targeting women for bad treatment, whether that's intentional or not, and the women choose to go elsewhere, it's not the free market responding to the fault of the company, it's the fault of the women for not being willing to put up with the shit they're dealt.
Seems a bit random, i don't know of anything that special about Ecuador, well except... oh wait, he's going to wait for a space elevator to be built there so he can escape to space!
Come on. It's got to be between 1 person and 310 million or so. At least narrow it down a little.
Are you sure about that? I was just catching up with the Colbert Report on my DVR, and apparently in New York they've frisked more young black males under the "stop and frisk" policy than are actually living in the city. Maybe the NSA has multiple investigations/wire taps going on for each person, maybe they're investigating people who are just visiting the country (not sure if that's legal, but it's not like that would stop them anyways.)
Also, as a bonus, Seanan McGuire has an amusing "teaching song" about the Black Death which briefly covers a lot of the objections to the y. pestis theory. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be one of the songs with a performance on YouTube, though you can hear a brief clip of it on CDBaby.
Some people think it was the bubonic plague because that matches _some_ of the symptoms reported at the time and y. pestis has been found in mass graves from the period. (Obviously people who disagree are pulling out the "correlation does not equal causation" card.)
Other people believe it was ebola, anthrax, or something else because the incubation period, the rate and nature of the spread, and some of the symptoms don't match those of the modern bubonic plague.
Some people believe it was the y. pestis, but it behaved differently back then because humans had zero immunity when it was introduced, and both humans and the bacteria have had a few centuries to evolve since then.
And some people believe that it wasn't just one disease that was responsible for the black death but a number of different diseases sweeping through around the same time. They didn't know much about disease at the time, and if everyone has heard of the black death and a bunch of people get sick and die, everyone is going to blame it on the black death.
I agree! I'm not sure exactly which plans those are that you're listing, but after getting an unlocked phone i'm paying $65 for 500 minutes, unlimited text and "5 gb of data." (Perhaps the plans vary by area? Or is there a surcharge for 4g? I'm only at 3g.)
I am _so_ glad that AT&T didn't manage to buy them out!
I'm going to answer the headline as it applies to me, rather than trying to match the details specified in the body. When i'm at work or at home i prefer regular headphones with flat foam coverings. Not the kind that go around your hear, but the kind that rest on top. A couple caveats, the foam has to be soft, not scratchy, and the band can't be too tight or it will pinch my ears. I bought a disastrous pair a while back that have a "cup" design like it's mean to go around your ear, but are actually designed to go on top of it, so the edge of the cup presses down all long the rim of your ear. This was combined with a very stiff headband that made them incredibly annoying to wear. I actually broke the headband by accident trying to stretch it out, but that did result in making them loose enough to tolerate.
When i'm out, usually exercising, going for a walk somewhere, or just out doing some shopping or whatever, i prefer the earbud style headphones that actually have a plastic loop attached that goes over your ear to old them on. Regular earbuds just fall out when i try to use them, or i shove them in so hard they hurt, and then after a few minutes they fall out anyways. The plastic loop keeps them in place without applying significant pressure. And since there's no headband you can still easily fit them in your pocket when you're not using them.
I don't really have a favorite brand or model number for either of those types, usually i just pick up whatever looks decent and is moderately priced at Radio Shack or Amazon. Apparently i'm not much of an audiophile.
Because the people who are implementing the censorship are not the ones who mandated the censorship, and the goals of the two bodies may not be aligned.
In theory an ISP might want to return a "this has been censored" code in the case of anything where some outside entity forced them to censor the content so they can pass the blame on to someone else. I don't know if any ISP would actually care enough to bother implementing it, but it's certainly a possibility.
I guess i get to be the one to point out that you fail physics forever. It's entirely possible to build a car that will bounce off an obstacle without taking significant damage. But if the car bounces without deforming then the passengers inside have to withstand the exact same forces. Without something else absorbing the energy even 10-20 mph impacts would be exceedingly dangerous. Don't believe me? Go outside, find a brick wall, and try running into it full tilt without stopping. That's what it would feel like if you were driving in a car at 10-20 mph and it instantly came to a dead stop in a collision.
The parent said that we need fossil fuels to produce food, and we're going to run out of fossil fuels. I said we could make more. Yes i may have worded it badly, but it seems pretty clear i meant "we can make more of that stuff from materials at hand" and failed to change the name of the (chemically identical) substance to reflect the means of production. And it was a mistake that wasn't even especially relevant to what we were discussing since the source of the carbon doesn't really impact whether or not we'd be able to produce food using it. So i can only figure out two interpretations for your initial response.
1: You didn't know about the existence of synthetic fuel before, but now you're trying to say the correction was about the grammar.
2: You were in fact correcting my grammar, but instead of clearly saying "you said X but you meant Y", you implied you didn't know what i was talking about, or that you believed i was incorrect about the feasibility of doing so.
Next time if you think i'm confused about my grammar, then correct the grammar in a clear manner. Otherwise it's just going to lead to further confusion and miscommunication.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds kind of Masonic.
Uh, what? Since when have the Masons been going around doing stuff like that?
I mean, i suppose i have to admit that George Washington and his fellow Masons did deprive Great Britain of a little property (100 million acres or so) and destroy a few people (about 50,000 of them) but i don't think that's quite the same thing.
Do you have some kind of magic solution for fixing this problem? Google can't make the software open source and then simultaneously prevent the carriers and manufacturers from rolling their own versions with funky skins and locked bootloaders. Nor can Google force the carriers/manufacturers to update the software in a timely manner. Google can try to provide incentives, but they can't force the issue. You can have free and open software or an iron fisted regime where everyone is forced to move in lockstep, but you can't have both at the same time.
As for the idea that started this thread and that you reiterated in another branch, that there not much point in releasing a new version when most people haven't even upgraded to the latest previous version, is just crap. It's ludicrous to suggest that Google should artificially delay new improvements until "enough" people were on ICS. Microsoft developed Windows 7 even though a lot of people didn't upgrade to Vista, so there were many people, including me, who ended up jumping straight from XP to 7. That's not a bug, that's a feature. The more Android is developed the more advanced the OS will be whenever those still on old versions finally upgrade their phones. When that finally happens are they going to complain that there were too many improvements?
Meanwhile those of us who actually care about having the latest version more than any other feature will either get a Nexus phone or a phone we know we can root and update the OS ourselves. Everyone else probably really doesn't care as much about the OS version as the naysayers like to make out.
Ahh, i somehow had this vague notion that you couldn't focus a laser down to a point because running it through a lens would destroy the coherence. Thanks.
So the laser refuses to fire unless the machine detects there's something in the way to be cut, and there's absolutely no backup in case it somehow does get fired while there's nothing in the target area or it happens to go just a little too long after it finishes cutting through the target? That doesn't seem especially likely.
A laser cutter involved a laser strong enough to cut through metal. (Duh.) So what do you use to stop the laser once it goes through whatever you're trying to cut/drill? I presume there must be something at the other end designed to defocus and/or safely absorb the energy from the laser, i'm just curious what the exact method is.
It reminds me of that lightning weapon used in "District 9". Don't know if it's powerful enough to make people literally explode.
Or the staff weapons from Stargate SG-1:
O'Neill: This [holds up a staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy. This [holds up a P-90] is a weapon of war. It's made to kill the enemy.
Jobs certainly did seem to get his transplant rather quickly (although admittedly i'm more familiar with kidney transplants, where the wait can be up to seven years depending on where you live.) But i'm sure there are numerous ways to shorten the wait if you happen to be incredibly rich, most of them easier and more circumspect than bribing your doctor with cheap real estate.
I'm pretty sure that logically the only thing that can threaten the US Constitution is the US government. Maybe i'm forgetting something, but i had the impression the Constitution is all about giving rights to the citizens and restricting the rights of the government. As a citizen (or rather, a citizen who is not a government official) i can break the law, but i can't break the Constitution. I can choose not to exercise the rights granted to me by the Constitution, but that's not the same thing. The government however can break the Constitution by violating the restraints placed upon it.
Don't we keep getting articles posted about how poor the US educational system is?
I guess our educational system is the same as our democracy, it's the worst kind of that type (education/government,) except for all the others that have been tried?
Apply directly to the [cancerous] forehead!
What makes you think that one has anything to do with the other? There are certainly unpleasant, stressful environments where women work; the New York City public school system comes to mind.
I certainly have no proof, if i had the choice between a job that was relatively pleasant and unstressful, a job that was unpleasant and stressful because the coworkers were assholes, and a job that was unpleasant and stressful because it was a very challenging job, i would pick the first or third options. There is no way i would pick the middle option, and i can't see why anyone else would either, all other things being equal.
This is not 1985; the people on the Internet are not representative of people in technical fields. You might want to look up the term, "Eternal September," to see the major turning point in the net.. If women are being harassed to a greater degree than men on the Internet, then that is a problem that has nothing to do with technical culture -- or do you really think that the technical culture is dominant online in this century?
I think you may be confusing reality with perception. Or rather you might be confused about how much other people get confused by the two. Not everyone on the internet is a geek or an engineer (i think disambiguating between geeks and engineers was unnecessary, but i'll try to be inclusive from this point on) not even most any more, i agree. However i think the internet is still viewed as a somewhat geeky/techy place, and especially the kind of gamer heavy areas where harassment is most likely to crop up. I'm not convinced that none of the people being assholes aren't engineers or hackers or geeks, but it doesn't necessarily matter. I'm pretty sure at least some of the script kiddies and others like them like to believe they are geeks/tech types and present themselves as such. And i still think there is a perceptual connection between the internet as a whole (and again, gaming related sites in particular) and geeks/engineers/tech people in general. Though i'd love to see some studies proving or disproving that.
Maybe it will have an effect, but why is nobody bothering to tell those young women that the culture of Internet trolls is not the culture they will find in engineering schools?
Maybe someone is, but maybe the girls are forming preconceptions and not bothering to ask. Then again, intellectually i know that not all jocks are assholes, i know that as an adult if i go to a sporting event i am not likely to be seriously harassed, yet early conditioning has left me rather disinclined to associate with jocks or go to sporting events in general.
Engineers and computer scientists are not the ones harassing or intimidating high school girls on the Internet, so please stop acting like it is our fault.
Where did i say it was our fault? The closest i came was pointing out that some tech companies present a hostile work environment for females, but that was only a corollary and example of how unnecessarily unpleasant situations can encourage people to leave/stay away, not as an argument to prove a direct cause and effect relationship with the geek/tech culture and the internet.
Engineers and computer scientists are not (generally) the ones harassing or intimidating girls and women on the internet, but i think it can be argued that we and other moral people aren't doing enough to stop it. I agree it's not a problem that's possible to solve completely, but that doesn't excuse standing by doing nothing while it takes place.
I admit i'm at least part of the problem, i've seen harassment taking place online and i haven't always stood up about it. Sometimes i've confronted the harasser, sometimes i've said nothing but reported the harasser to the appropriate authorities, and sadly sometimes i didn't feel comfortable getting involved at all. But it's something i'm trying to improve on, and i think it would be good if others did as well.
Men manage to deal with it -- we horse around, joke around, and generally say offensive things to each other all the time.
Actually, the men i generally hang out with don't do that. There will occasionally be teasing and gently ribbing, but women are perfectly able to hand that kind of interaction. it never turns into sexist stereotyping though, either against men or women. Funnily enough, about half the employees at the company i work at are female. (At least in development, i never make it up to the marketing and sales floors, but i think it's fairly even there as well.) And let me tell you, it's quite a nice change from working in the 90%+ male games industry. (The games industry having it's own special problems with gender issues.)
My experience is pretty limited, but what i've heard from other people indicates that many other companies aren't nearly as pleasant. "Surprisingly" a lot of those companies don't have anywhere near as many female employees in the technical sections as we do.
As for your idea that people shouldn't work in a field if they can't handle the requirements is fair, but getting harassed by your coworkers is hardly a requirement. Your attitude is coming across as "If they can't handle the environment they'll leave, so let's make the environment as harsh for them as possible." There are plenty of people that are willing to stick through necessary challenges when trying to get something done, but will bail if they have to deal with what they feel are unnecessary challenges.
I'm not ashamed to admit that i was a nerd growing up. I didn't get beat up a lot (possibly in retrospect because i was taller than average for my age, or possibly just because i tried to hide and keep a low profile as much as possible) but i certainly got teased a lot. That certainly drove me away from everything the jocks were interested in and drove me towards the sciences and computers because that was a "safe" place for geeks. If i'd been a female and harassed by the male geeks i probably would have avoided the sciences and computers as well. Yet despite having such thin skin i seem to have manged to get through college and get jobs at multiple successful tech firms and make valuable contributions.
Getting back on topic, women are not bothering to enroll in CS programs in college. What environment are you blaming for that one? Do you think high school girls somehow "know" what sort of environment they'll face when they arrive at college and start attending their CS classes?
Uh, have you been paying attention? The whole point of the article is that part of the problem may be the internet, which girls are certainly using these days well before high school. (Which means your point about girls not being more likely to drop out is irrelevant. If this theory is true those who can be intimidated out of the field have already been eliminated before college.)
Girls show up on the internet and get harassed. Frequently much more and much more harshly than guys do. Meanwhile male geeks loudly claim the internet as their own territory. You don't think the girls are going to make a connection? Online gaming and gaming sites, one of the favorites hobbies of a lot of geeks, are notoriously bad in that regard. Even some of the comments here on Slashdot in response to this article have been rather hash. Geeks maintain the internet, we act like we're the kings of the internet. Girls show up on the internet, and in the worst case get told to get raped and die. In some of the "better" cases they're told that women aren't wanted and aren't needed in the tech industry. You really don't think that's going to have any effect on what those girls choose when it comes time to decide what they're going to focus on in college, and thus what kind of people they're going to be hanging out with?
I focused on tech schools when choosing my college and tried to avoid any with fraternities, because i'd learned in high school and earlier t
I actually quite like my 7" Nook, i can actually stick it in my pocket if i'm wearing cargo pants/shorts. I'm not sure i'd be able to do that if it was much bigger though.
Also, i forgot to mention it above, but i suspect Google is probably quite interested in blunting the momentum of the Kindle Fire if they can. Amazon rolling their own version of Android and cutting Google out of the market and ad loop is perfectly legal under the licensing terms, but that doesn't mean Google is necessarily pleased with the idea.
I think the concern is that 8" or greater would be smack in the middle of the market that Apple currently holds, and there's a lot more brand identification with the iPad than there is with the Nook or Kindle. The Nook and the Kindle have proven that a cheap smaller tablet is salable and competing against them would be easier than competing against the iPad. Not to mention that matching them in price will be a lot easier since they don't have nearly the economy of scale that Apple can pull off with their huge orders of parts.
Also, the company that's supposed to be producing the Nexus 7 already has a very nice line of larger tablets available.
There are already too many posts asking some variant of "what makes it so bad for women?" or "they have free will, if they're not in the industry it's their own choice." Well i suspect that incidents like this are part of the reason why. I really can't imagine why young women starting to consider their career options might see that and consider staying as far away from the internet professionally as they possibly can.(/sarcasm)
There are also a number of comments about how the women who are in the industry know how to handle the macho bullshit that gets tossed around, implying that it's therefore okay i guess, since some women can put up with it and not all of them are being forced out of the industry. Well of course the women who are still around can handle it, selection bias much? That doesn't mean they should _have_ to handle it though.
You know, every time there's a story about some company, or even most of an entire industry, doing something assholeish to its employees people pop out of the woodwork to say something about how the free market will correct the issue because all the good employees will find work at companies that treat them properly, and the companies abusing their employees will thus inevitable fail. I wonder how much that group overlaps with the group that think women ought to just suck it up when they're treated poorly.
It's funny how when a company/industry/environment treats all their employees badly it's the company that's at fault. This libertarian/republican/conservative viewpoint is that it's up to the employees to fix the problem, but at least the company is still clearly designated as the problem in the equation. But suddenly when the company/industry/environment is specifically targeting women for bad treatment, whether that's intentional or not, and the women choose to go elsewhere, it's not the free market responding to the fault of the company, it's the fault of the women for not being willing to put up with the shit they're dealt.
Seems a bit random, i don't know of anything that special about Ecuador, well except... oh wait, he's going to wait for a space elevator to be built there so he can escape to space!
Come on. It's got to be between 1 person and 310 million or so. At least narrow it down a little.
Are you sure about that? I was just catching up with the Colbert Report on my DVR, and apparently in New York they've frisked more young black males under the "stop and frisk" policy than are actually living in the city. Maybe the NSA has multiple investigations/wire taps going on for each person, maybe they're investigating people who are just visiting the country (not sure if that's legal, but it's not like that would stop them anyways.)
TBH, I'm surprised the EFF didn't figure this one out sooner.
Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie has some pretty convincing prior art. Of course they're far from the only ones, but they're probably the most amusing.
Also, as a bonus, Seanan McGuire has an amusing "teaching song" about the Black Death which briefly covers a lot of the objections to the y. pestis theory. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be one of the songs with a performance on YouTube, though you can hear a brief clip of it on CDBaby.
Actually, epidemiology is entirely unsure about the matter. (Also, don't anthropomorphize inanimate objects, they hate it when you do that.)
Some people think it was the bubonic plague because that matches _some_ of the symptoms reported at the time and y. pestis has been found in mass graves from the period. (Obviously people who disagree are pulling out the "correlation does not equal causation" card.)
Other people believe it was ebola, anthrax, or something else because the incubation period, the rate and nature of the spread, and some of the symptoms don't match those of the modern bubonic plague.
Some people believe it was the y. pestis, but it behaved differently back then because humans had zero immunity when it was introduced, and both humans and the bacteria have had a few centuries to evolve since then.
And some people believe that it wasn't just one disease that was responsible for the black death but a number of different diseases sweeping through around the same time. They didn't know much about disease at the time, and if everyone has heard of the black death and a bunch of people get sick and die, everyone is going to blame it on the black death.
I agree! I'm not sure exactly which plans those are that you're listing, but after getting an unlocked phone i'm paying $65 for 500 minutes, unlimited text and "5 gb of data." (Perhaps the plans vary by area? Or is there a surcharge for 4g? I'm only at 3g.)
I am _so_ glad that AT&T didn't manage to buy them out!
I'm going to answer the headline as it applies to me, rather than trying to match the details specified in the body. When i'm at work or at home i prefer regular headphones with flat foam coverings. Not the kind that go around your hear, but the kind that rest on top. A couple caveats, the foam has to be soft, not scratchy, and the band can't be too tight or it will pinch my ears. I bought a disastrous pair a while back that have a "cup" design like it's mean to go around your ear, but are actually designed to go on top of it, so the edge of the cup presses down all long the rim of your ear. This was combined with a very stiff headband that made them incredibly annoying to wear. I actually broke the headband by accident trying to stretch it out, but that did result in making them loose enough to tolerate.
When i'm out, usually exercising, going for a walk somewhere, or just out doing some shopping or whatever, i prefer the earbud style headphones that actually have a plastic loop attached that goes over your ear to old them on. Regular earbuds just fall out when i try to use them, or i shove them in so hard they hurt, and then after a few minutes they fall out anyways. The plastic loop keeps them in place without applying significant pressure. And since there's no headband you can still easily fit them in your pocket when you're not using them.
I don't really have a favorite brand or model number for either of those types, usually i just pick up whatever looks decent and is moderately priced at Radio Shack or Amazon. Apparently i'm not much of an audiophile.
Because the people who are implementing the censorship are not the ones who mandated the censorship, and the goals of the two bodies may not be aligned.
In theory an ISP might want to return a "this has been censored" code in the case of anything where some outside entity forced them to censor the content so they can pass the blame on to someone else. I don't know if any ISP would actually care enough to bother implementing it, but it's certainly a possibility.
I guess i get to be the one to point out that you fail physics forever. It's entirely possible to build a car that will bounce off an obstacle without taking significant damage. But if the car bounces without deforming then the passengers inside have to withstand the exact same forces. Without something else absorbing the energy even 10-20 mph impacts would be exceedingly dangerous. Don't believe me? Go outside, find a brick wall, and try running into it full tilt without stopping. That's what it would feel like if you were driving in a car at 10-20 mph and it instantly came to a dead stop in a collision.
The parent said that we need fossil fuels to produce food, and we're going to run out of fossil fuels. I said we could make more. Yes i may have worded it badly, but it seems pretty clear i meant "we can make more of that stuff from materials at hand" and failed to change the name of the (chemically identical) substance to reflect the means of production. And it was a mistake that wasn't even especially relevant to what we were discussing since the source of the carbon doesn't really impact whether or not we'd be able to produce food using it. So i can only figure out two interpretations for your initial response.
1: You didn't know about the existence of synthetic fuel before, but now you're trying to say the correction was about the grammar.
2: You were in fact correcting my grammar, but instead of clearly saying "you said X but you meant Y", you implied you didn't know what i was talking about, or that you believed i was incorrect about the feasibility of doing so.
Next time if you think i'm confused about my grammar, then correct the grammar in a clear manner. Otherwise it's just going to lead to further confusion and miscommunication.