It's not discriminatory, it's reality. If you actually have less ability, you should actually not get a medal.
Where I live, the police force has a huge gender imbalance on the dog squad. The reason for this is that to be on the dog squad, you are required to be able to lift a fully-grown alsatian over a six-foot-high wall. Needless to say, there is a larger pool of men who can do this than women.
This is, I think most of us would agree, perfectly reasonable, even if we also think it's unfortunate. There is tremendous social value in having a police dog squad; dogs are, for example, a far less dangerous way of chasing and subduing people who present a danger to the public. Losing a dog is nowhere near as bad as losing a human. Crucially, lowering the requirements (or using smaller dogs, as one hack suggested) would decrease the operational effectiveness of the squad, and thus the public would be at greater risk.
You, on the other hand, are talking about sport. Winning a gold medal might be great for the person who won it, but for the rest of us, that act has no utility by itself. The social value of elite sport is twofold: entertainment, and encouraging people to get fitter and healthier.
What you've failed to show is that the nett social value of elite sport is decreased by having separate contests for men and women, able-bodied and disabled, adults and children, professional and amateur, major and minor leagues, and so on. Indeed, the opposite is actually true. Having different classes of contest increases nett social value on both metrics: it broadens the audience for the entertainment, and encourages a wider variety of people to engage in fitness activities.
So you'd have a point if the question of who got a gold medal actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. But we're all nerds here, and I think we all know that's not true.
You could have them compete, but in many situation you would need to give the women a head start.
Just like the example of weight classes, it wouldn't be the first time. Many sports have a handicapping system, including horse racing, golf, croquet, sailing and basketball.
The problem is that we have two classes of competitions, [...]
More than two, if you include the Paralympics.
By the way, it's probably for the best that you posted this as an AC, because you damn well should be ashamed of what you wrote. No true nerd would ever refer to someone with a lesser capacity for engaging in athletic activities as "genetically inferior".
This is they key point. "Freaks of nature" are over-represented in the elite athlete community already. That's part of what makes them elite. Why should abnormalities related to sex chromosomes or hormones be any different?
To be clear, I was not arguing out of ignorance. I was honestly asking the question of exactly what the design patents cover.
As far as case design goes, I have never seen a Samsung product which looked like an Apple product in any respect except for aspects which are effectively dictated by clear technical constraints, the requirements of basic functionality, or the zeitgeist of the era. That's what was behind my question.
BTW, I freely admit that the software UI design patent claims could make more sense, since there's more freedom on how that could have been designed.
Just how many shapes are there for smartphones with the constraint that the primary interface should be the touchscreen rather than mechanical buttons?
Remember that it's a phone, so you need to leave space for the ear speaker and microphone. Having the touchscreen as the primary interface is is a purely technical constraint that was blindingly obvious from the commercial success of the first Palm Pilots. Everyone wanted to minimise the number of mechanical buttons; buttons take up precious space.
Is it about edges and corners that are round? That's clearly utility. Every mobile phone I've ever had (since 1999) has had rounded corners and edges, because sharp edges are uncomfortable to hold. (I had a case for my Palm m500 for precisely this reason!) Children's toys have been made with rounded edges for decades so that they don't get snagged on clothing. Star Trek PADDs had rounded edges and corners.
I understand the arguments about the UI, like the behaviour when you scroll to the end of a list. But I don't get the arguments about the case design. I find it especially amusing that people seriously use the word "ornamental" to refer to a postmodern mostly-blank black box.
As Steve Hollasch famously noted, computer graphics is the only area of science where if it looks right, it is right. The correct amount of detail is whatever the tradeoff between artistry and gameplay demands. Your goal as a game designer is to have the audience say "what a great game", not "what great detail". Unfortunately, it's sometimes easier to optimise for high detail than it is to optimise for great gameplay.
More to the point, what the question is really asking is what the modern outlets are for homebrew/indie game developers. Of course, the answers are "there are plenty":
- Web (Flash/Java/HTML 5) - Android - XNA - Most crucially of all, modding
Most big studios love you modding their engines, because who uses your mod must have (in theory) bought the game.
So what you're saying is that on that measure, left-wing persons had a higher absolute error and right-wing persons had a higher relative error. So the GP is correct for some definition of "worse".
...and one day when a handful of armed men from The Government show up to load you on to a cattle car, you'll think "Thank God they don't allow me to have grenades or machine guns"
The scenario of the government showing up to load you onto a vehicle isn't hypothetical. It's actually happened.
So here's a thought experiment for you. Suppose that some of those Japanese-American citizens who were rounded up in the early 1940s had been armed, and defended themselves from precisely this. Can you imagine the NRA of its day defending those peoples' right to defend themselves from the over-reaching, civil-rights-destroying government?
How about those whose fifth amendment rights are routinely trampled upon under the so-called War on Drugs?
How about if the students at Kent State or the Lattimer miners had shot back?
Of course they bloody wouldn't. No government will ever do this to you if you're popular. When The Government shows up to load "you" onto a cattle car, whoever "you" happens to be at the time, the NRA is going to cheer, and some of its members will be doing the herding, and if you attempt to defend yourself, history will remember you the same way that it remembers the Branch Davidians. And you'll be dead.
Ask Manuel Noriega how useful it was to have machine guns, grenades and a whole fracking army at his disposal when faced with the might of 27,000 grunts armed with the complete works of Def Leppard. Or perhaps ask the Ludlow miners how well it worked out for them.
Neither machine guns nor grenades will protect you from a hypothetical tyrannical US government, wrapped in the flag and waving a cross. That's because gun owners don't care about civil rights. They care about, typically at most, one civil right. The only time they would actually use guns against a tyrannical US government is if the government tried to take away their guns, which is completely circular.
Unless you have a job or hobby for which guns are part of the standard toolkit (e.g. you're a farmer or security guard), they are useless. They won't protect your civil rights. Only you and your fellow citizens working together can do that. Your civil rights are entirely contingent on the rest of the public respecting them. No magical talisman will help you with that.
Even if I lived in the US, I am far less likely to be shot in a movie theatre than struck by lightning or hit by a car crossing the street. It's not a risk that any scientifically-minded person should spend any time bothering with.
I'm far more concerned about your concealed carry permit. By having one and exercising it, you are telling me that you don't trust me with the information that you are armed. I, in turn, don't trust you with the gun.
That's the problem - pretty much every NoSQL implementation that calls itself NoSQL are heavy java apps.
This highlights an important point, which I will put in italics for emphasis: There is no such thing as NoSQL.
The term "NoSQL" is like "C/C++" or "intellectual property". None of these exist, except possibly as social movements. Rather, they are umbrella terms for collections of distinct and very different things.
For NoSQL, that's both good and bad. It's good, because there's plenty of scope for creativity and innovation. It's bad, because any project is going to involve some amount of vendor lock-in.
We need some standards, but not yet.
Don't put a database to do a hash table's job. [...] If you have everything in X, and X will do, don't change it for the reason of changing it.
I realise these are rules of thumb rather than law tablets, but these two pieces of advice are often contradictory. Sometimes, a database is already there, and so the choice is between that as a key-value store or adding an additional dependency. SQLite on Android is a good example.
We do. The problem is that Australia is a small market, and full-length titles are expensive to make. You effectively have to go through a US publisher if your game is over a certain size.
I agree completely. E.E. Cummings had a far better grasp of grammar and punctuation than most.
"The rules" are there because breaking them creates an effect. Great artists break the rules to achieve a desired effect. Mediocre artists don't even know what the rules are, and hence achieve unintended effects.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not discriminatory, it's reality. If you actually have less ability, you should actually not get a medal.
Where I live, the police force has a huge gender imbalance on the dog squad. The reason for this is that to be on the dog squad, you are required to be able to lift a fully-grown alsatian over a six-foot-high wall. Needless to say, there is a larger pool of men who can do this than women.
This is, I think most of us would agree, perfectly reasonable, even if we also think it's unfortunate. There is tremendous social value in having a police dog squad; dogs are, for example, a far less dangerous way of chasing and subduing people who present a danger to the public. Losing a dog is nowhere near as bad as losing a human. Crucially, lowering the requirements (or using smaller dogs, as one hack suggested) would decrease the operational effectiveness of the squad, and thus the public would be at greater risk.
You, on the other hand, are talking about sport. Winning a gold medal might be great for the person who won it, but for the rest of us, that act has no utility by itself. The social value of elite sport is twofold: entertainment, and encouraging people to get fitter and healthier.
What you've failed to show is that the nett social value of elite sport is decreased by having separate contests for men and women, able-bodied and disabled, adults and children, professional and amateur, major and minor leagues, and so on. Indeed, the opposite is actually true. Having different classes of contest increases nett social value on both metrics: it broadens the audience for the entertainment, and encourages a wider variety of people to engage in fitness activities.
So you'd have a point if the question of who got a gold medal actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. But we're all nerds here, and I think we all know that's not true.
If we draw the line at humanity, who would straddle that line?
Oscar Pistorius, to pick but one.
One more thing while I think of it.
From what I understand women just can not hit a golf ball as far as a man, and I assume this is repeated in most other sports.
It's the opposite in gymnastics.
You could have them compete, but in many situation you would need to give the women a head start.
Just like the example of weight classes, it wouldn't be the first time. Many sports have a handicapping system, including horse racing, golf, croquet, sailing and basketball.
The problem is that we have two classes of competitions, [...]
More than two, if you include the Paralympics.
By the way, it's probably for the best that you posted this as an AC, because you damn well should be ashamed of what you wrote. No true nerd would ever refer to someone with a lesser capacity for engaging in athletic activities as "genetically inferior".
This is they key point. "Freaks of nature" are over-represented in the elite athlete community already. That's part of what makes them elite. Why should abnormalities related to sex chromosomes or hormones be any different?
To be clear, I was not arguing out of ignorance. I was honestly asking the question of exactly what the design patents cover.
As far as case design goes, I have never seen a Samsung product which looked like an Apple product in any respect except for aspects which are effectively dictated by clear technical constraints, the requirements of basic functionality, or the zeitgeist of the era. That's what was behind my question.
BTW, I freely admit that the software UI design patent claims could make more sense, since there's more freedom on how that could have been designed.
Just how many shapes are there for smartphones with the constraint that the primary interface should be the touchscreen rather than mechanical buttons?
Remember that it's a phone, so you need to leave space for the ear speaker and microphone. Having the touchscreen as the primary interface is is a purely technical constraint that was blindingly obvious from the commercial success of the first Palm Pilots. Everyone wanted to minimise the number of mechanical buttons; buttons take up precious space.
Is it about edges and corners that are round? That's clearly utility. Every mobile phone I've ever had (since 1999) has had rounded corners and edges, because sharp edges are uncomfortable to hold. (I had a case for my Palm m500 for precisely this reason!) Children's toys have been made with rounded edges for decades so that they don't get snagged on clothing. Star Trek PADDs had rounded edges and corners.
I understand the arguments about the UI, like the behaviour when you scroll to the end of a list. But I don't get the arguments about the case design. I find it especially amusing that people seriously use the word "ornamental" to refer to a postmodern mostly-blank black box.
Precisely.
As Steve Hollasch famously noted, computer graphics is the only area of science where if it looks right, it is right. The correct amount of detail is whatever the tradeoff between artistry and gameplay demands. Your goal as a game designer is to have the audience say "what a great game", not "what great detail". Unfortunately, it's sometimes easier to optimise for high detail than it is to optimise for great gameplay.
Apologies for the bad copy-editing. I really should check before submitting.
More to the point, what the question is really asking is what the modern outlets are for homebrew/indie game developers. Of course, the answers are "there are plenty":
- Web (Flash/Java/HTML 5)
- Android
- XNA
- Most crucially of all, modding
Most big studios love you modding their engines, because who uses your mod must have (in theory) bought the game.
I double dare you to submit an article with the subject line: "Are you functionally literate?"
$yourWorstSubject is an onerous stumbling block for all kinds of students: disadvantaged and affluent, black and white.
Not true in my case. Sport was not part of my final grade.
So what you're saying is that on that measure, left-wing persons had a higher absolute error and right-wing persons had a higher relative error. So the GP is correct for some definition of "worse".
I don't think it's a coincidence at all. I've long maintained that guns aren't the problem, it's just that Americans can't be trusted with them.
...and one day when a handful of armed men from The Government show up to load you on to a cattle car, you'll think "Thank God they don't allow me to have grenades or machine guns"
The scenario of the government showing up to load you onto a vehicle isn't hypothetical. It's actually happened.
So here's a thought experiment for you. Suppose that some of those Japanese-American citizens who were rounded up in the early 1940s had been armed, and defended themselves from precisely this. Can you imagine the NRA of its day defending those peoples' right to defend themselves from the over-reaching, civil-rights-destroying government?
How about those whose fifth amendment rights are routinely trampled upon under the so-called War on Drugs?
How about if the students at Kent State or the Lattimer miners had shot back?
Of course they bloody wouldn't. No government will ever do this to you if you're popular. When The Government shows up to load "you" onto a cattle car, whoever "you" happens to be at the time, the NRA is going to cheer, and some of its members will be doing the herding, and if you attempt to defend yourself, history will remember you the same way that it remembers the Branch Davidians. And you'll be dead.
Ask Manuel Noriega how useful it was to have machine guns, grenades and a whole fracking army at his disposal when faced with the might of 27,000 grunts armed with the complete works of Def Leppard. Or perhaps ask the Ludlow miners how well it worked out for them.
Neither machine guns nor grenades will protect you from a hypothetical tyrannical US government, wrapped in the flag and waving a cross. That's because gun owners don't care about civil rights. They care about, typically at most, one civil right. The only time they would actually use guns against a tyrannical US government is if the government tried to take away their guns, which is completely circular.
Unless you have a job or hobby for which guns are part of the standard toolkit (e.g. you're a farmer or security guard), they are useless. They won't protect your civil rights. Only you and your fellow citizens working together can do that. Your civil rights are entirely contingent on the rest of the public respecting them. No magical talisman will help you with that.
Even if I lived in the US, I am far less likely to be shot in a movie theatre than struck by lightning or hit by a car crossing the street. It's not a risk that any scientifically-minded person should spend any time bothering with.
I'm far more concerned about your concealed carry permit. By having one and exercising it, you are telling me that you don't trust me with the information that you are armed. I, in turn, don't trust you with the gun.
I think you just got voted -1, Slashdot moderators don't get satire about French politics.
This highlights an important point, which I will put in italics for emphasis: There is no such thing as NoSQL.
The term "NoSQL" is like "C/C++" or "intellectual property". None of these exist, except possibly as social movements. Rather, they are umbrella terms for collections of distinct and very different things.
For NoSQL, that's both good and bad. It's good, because there's plenty of scope for creativity and innovation. It's bad, because any project is going to involve some amount of vendor lock-in.
We need some standards, but not yet.
I realise these are rules of thumb rather than law tablets, but these two pieces of advice are often contradictory. Sometimes, a database is already there, and so the choice is between that as a key-value store or adding an additional dependency. SQLite on Android is a good example.
Actually, the koalas have chlamydia. No, I'm not joking; look it up.
Since when do you have to have multiple inheritence to write Proxy?
Bridge, not Proxy.
What year did slashdot become the home of the moron?
I have a 5-digit uid, and it's been thus for as long as I can remember.
We do. The problem is that Australia is a small market, and full-length titles are expensive to make. You effectively have to go through a US publisher if your game is over a certain size.
It's a reference to this famous piece, hence the saying that surrealism isn't everyone's cup of fur.
I wasn't. I was referring, as you correctly surmised, to the "everyday folks" who also happened to be almost all Muslim.
I agree completely. E.E. Cummings had a far better grasp of grammar and punctuation than most.
"The rules" are there because breaking them creates an effect. Great artists break the rules to achieve a desired effect. Mediocre artists don't even know what the rules are, and hence achieve unintended effects.