The idea is not all that interesting, but I certainly don't see any problems with using it. If I'm a doctor or if I'm on call when a server goes down, I can over-ride the feature and still receive my call.
At best, this is just a small feature to allow busy people who don't want to have to remember to turn their phones off when they enter a movie theater, to have it done automatically. Fine with me. This isn't going to prevent the annoying noise of cell-phones, unless people make the voluntary decision to do so.
I don't really even find cell-phones that annoying, unless it's in certain circumstances such as theaters. And chances are that some dumbass is going to think that waiting for a call from his buddies downtown is just as important as the call for the doctor who has to rush to the hospital to save a car-accident victim's life.
I'm not suggesting we should force anyone to turn their phones off or down, either. That's a bit stupid and big-brotherish, to me. It also could leave a lot of room for lawsuits and liability issues.
This only serves to make life a tiny notch simpler for those who care to be responsible enough to keep their volume down or off in certain public places. The problem of those who could care less about making those 'sacrifices' will have to be dealt with via old-fashioned intolerance by people around them when their phones go off and they engage in annoying conversation while you're trying to enjoy a flick. That is, next time someone's phone rings in the middle of a movie and they don't immediately shut it off -- or worse, they answer it and start talking, the people around them should chastise them for it. It's better than enforcing some dumb law and the moron still has the choice of leaving the theater or staying there and being a prick, if he can put up with the resulting disapprovement of the other movie-goers. --- seumas.com
Re:That's great if you know the trick...
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Web Site "Lock-In"
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I completely agree. The thing is that there is a very thick line between "hey, I'm redirecting you to hotnakedteens.com!" and "hey, I'm gonna redirect you from somesite.com/index.html to somesite.com/index.cgi, okay?".
Pop-ups, however, suck regardless. I don't care if your site uses a pop-up for an advertisement, questionnaire, poll/survey, to give me background information -- whatever. I just don't want pop-ups unless I specifically click on something to cause that pop-up. For example, visiting your website and having a pop-up displayed immediately to tell me I should use your new cheap phone service, is stupid. But using a pop-up to display a definition of words, when I click those specific words, is comletely fine (and sometimes helpful) with me. --- seumas.com
Not everyone runs their own box and has access to their Apache config files, though. Of course, they can always modify their own.htaccess files (well, most hosts tend to allow that at least), but a surprising number of webmasters have no clue that they can create/edit/modify it. --- seumas.com
A lot of sites use meta-refresh to guide users from an index.html to an index.cgi page, as most of their site is not static -- including the main page.
The browser already offers an answer to this. Hold down the Back button on the browser and select the page just before the index.html page you visited. Problem solved. --- seumas.com
Oh my god, that was funny. That wraps a great deal of my concern into a nice little package. I doubt that such skepticism covers all corners of the study of animal intelligence, but there are enough that I'm not certain it is unjustified.
On the other hand, such a horse probably qualifies as intelligent by virtue of the ability to manipulate the stupid human into giving him a carrot. --- seumas.com
Yes, but we've also seen this issue similarly raised in the education of children. Do our schools (in America, at least) offer an extension and excersize of the ability of the individual to comprehend and understand or do we, on the whole, teach them to simply memorize information?
I certainly don't mean to relegate this concern to a rat with feathers -- the asssertion of intelligence versus recognition/patterned behavior is more or less across the board. --- seumas.com
I am not impressed that people a lot smarter than me have deemed building a web-browser for a parrot as a meaningful and reasonable cause worth funding.
Perhaps the good doctor in this study (up until her browser stuff) has produced interesting studies with potential, but there are many others before here and beside her that have not worked with such a supposed level of esteem and responsibility before presenting people with the idea of what they propose they are displaying is intelligence. --- seumas.com
Maybe I'm a complete idiot here, but I have absolutely no clue what the hell em>intellectually dishonest means. Sounds like an empty catch-phrase from some political pundit.
Maybe you mean I'm lying, smartly?
And no, I completely concede that researchers have not proven that parrots do more than immitate. I'm all for it though. I'm not rooting for parrots to be proven complete morons, but I want to know that they're intelligent without a doubt. Unfortunately, I see nothing to reasonably do this. I firmly believe it will take much more than a few parlor tricks or circus side-show parrot-gimmicks to define the intelligence level of these animals.
I do not think that surfing the web will accomplish any of this. (Now, if some Polly out there finds a way to universally free the world from spam, I will completely concede and consider them to not only be intellectually proven, but smarter than most humans!) --- seumas.com
I was just thinking -- has anyone performed any manner of scan on a parrot's brain when it is being asked various questions? We can map out what part of the brain in humans is stimulated and active in response to various stimuli. We know what areas of the brain are mostly active during certain cognitive functions. Perhaps we could do the same with the parrots. I'm not sure if this has been done or not, but I found nothing on a search of it. --- seumas.com
Let me use a primate as an example. There is a great difference between figuring out that you can reach an apple stuck inside of a long tube by taking a branch from a tree, breaking it and then reaching it into the tube to stab the fruit and pull out the reward and pointing to a blue key when asked, because all the time away from the camera, you'd been told 'no' hundreds of times when you chose anything other than that blue key.
Granted, there is perhaps usually a fine line between walking and talking like a duck and actually being a duck. If we understood the concept of learning and how the brain (not just ours, but that would be a start) worked, we would probably have a larger conensus of whether or not specific animals are displaying true intellect. --- seumas.com
Scientific control of making a mouse-potatoe out of a parrot? Dude, you have got to be kidding me.
This is no more science than strapping moonshoes to your dogs paws and saying that you are scientifically experimenting with the posibilities of piloting a mission to Mars.
Those dunderheads who spend their careers (and tax money) teaching primates to 'speak' and 'communicate' through a massive specially developed lexicon expect us to fall for the same thing. They're so attached to their work and so biased -- and we never see it. We just think "aw, how cute! It's like people! It must be smart!".
How's this for 'scientific control'. Remove all prompting and all cues. Face the parrot and say " what is four plus five'. If the parrot can answer something like that without physical prompts of blocks or keys or balls, then maybe we have something. Even then, how do we know that the trainer and researcher haven't just unknowingly taught the parrot that the answer to 'four and five' is nine, without actual comprehension?
And this is my problem with this whole thing. To claim that they're intelligent without reasonably establishing that there is a level of comprehension as opposed to learned rote response. --- seumas.com
How do you teach a dog to bark "I love you" or a horse to click his stomp his hoofs to 'count' the occurance of something? Our perception of something intelligent doesn't necessarily denote it as intelligent. For christ's sake, humans routinely have a life-like attachment to stuffed animals and name our computers and our boats and our cars as if they were people. We see things that aren't exactly there.
I'm not suggesting parrots are stupid. Far from it. But if you expect me to think a parrot is going to gain anything from some contraption that allows him to browse Slashdot and the ArtBell website, you must think I'm nuts.
I'm glad to know that while there are children in the country starving and women being beaten and raped and people dying of a million diseases, someone is funding the development of a web-browser for a freaking bird.
--BEGIN UNNECESSARY SARCASM-- If parrots are so smart, how come there are over a million of them trapped in cages in America? Hmmm? Answer that?! What, now they're going to read the screen-play from 'The Great Escape' and plan a massive rebellion and freedom revolution? --END SARCASM-- --- seumas.com
I hate to be the big skeptic here, but a lot of data I've seen on these "brainy parrots" (there have even been similar main-stream reports confirmation this assertion) suggest that Parrots are doing no more than repeating what they've learned to do via positive re-inforcement.
It doesn't take too many tries to find out that if you are told "blue metal" and you pick up the metal key (being that the only item on the table that is blue is also the only item that is metal) -- you get a treat. This seems like nothing more than conditioning to me.
And the researches I've seen raving about these "brilliant birds" are as looney as anyone -- talk about your biased research. The phrase "I want to believe" seems to be perfectly fitting for them. --- seumas.com
Okay, so now we have the picture at the BBC to look at and, just as I imagined it would look, it's basically flat shoe-platforms with springs encased inside, and pistons along side your legs, strapped about your knee.
The first thought that went through my mind when I saw this picture was "what a great way to have the lower part of your legs completely torn off from the rest of your body". --- seumas.com
So long as I won't be at risk of exploding or falling flat on my face into the asphalt while wearing them, I want a pair!
I don't drive. Driving sucks. Traffic in the Bay area sucks. I live almost nine miles away from my company's campus and I would love a pair of these to trot along at a nice 25mph along the side of the San Tomas expressway.
These would also come in handy when your boss is chasing you down the hall to hand you some extra work. With these suckers, it's just one big leap and you're half way across the building, out of his path!
I wish there were photos of the shoes. God, I want a pair so bad! --- seumas.com
On one hand I'm skeptical. They sure haven't been hurting much in the face of their traditional release methods.
Perhaps this is all in preperation for something huge they have planned and they want to drop it on the market to a considerably awed consumer-base. --- seumas.com
No, I'd tend to agree with your sentiment. The very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the article was helium is probably on the Moon for a reason. Just because it isn't serving a direct purpose that satisifies us doesn't mean it's uselessly squandered on the Moon. --- seumas.com
Well, then perhaps the answer also includes 'making up' for all the time women have lost, by grabbing a random 100,000 of them, giving them a nominal test and grading them on a huge curve, and then employing them in the technical field.
You will never change individual behavior. These studies and assertions are wholly useless, unless someone wants to pass a law making it illegal for any parent, teacher or co-worker to ever say anything to a woman that may be construed as detrimental to her ego, self-confidence or worth and value as a female.
No matter how much the rest of us want everyone, including every woman, to have an unfettered chance to do what they desire without being restrained or hampered by crude and unfair comments, it will always be undermind by those few who actually are in positions to say those things at the times which they are most agregious. --- seumas.com
That's another thing -- perhaps a lot of women avoid tech careers precisely because they are not insane.
I work between 70 and 120 hours per week. That's just at and on work. I have to cram my own personal venture in there somewhere, too. Over the last six months, I've probably spent 50% of the nights sleeping under my desk, at work.
I haven't seen a movie in over a year. I haven't watched television in nearly six months. I haven't had groceries in my refrigerator in six months. I don't have time to wash laundry -- I buy more clothes on my way to work. I'm not kidding, I'll just buy some jeans and t-shirts instead of taking the time to wash and dry everything, reasoning that someday I will have some time to just wash my massive pile of worn outfits.
I went from relationship after relationship (and hot sex after hot sex, I might at!.. erm..) to completely single for the last three years (exactly since I started in this field).
This career takes a huge toll. If you don't have the stamina and steadfastness to get into this career, despite what people say or do to hold you back, you're not going to have what it takes to maintain this career. Male or female, it doesn't matter. I've seen them fall, repeatedly, by the wayside when they couldn't prove themselves or keep up.
As far as sexes and their interests -- it doesn't surprise me that most women don't want to be in the tech career. I don't want to be in the child-care, teaching, nursing or domestic-engineer fields, myself. Maybe it's because I'm male. Maybe it's just because I find them utterly without interest to me. Or maybe it's because I was told that boys don't do that sort of thing.
Which extends to another point -- the opposite of this whole conflict is that while people are "fighting for girls to be in this career", men are simply expected to be in it (or careers like it). As a male, if I were to stay at home (and yes, I was actually a stay at home father for awhile) instead of have a career (note, I dont' say "have a job", because being a homemaker sure as hell is one!), I would be ridiculed. "Look at him riding on that poor girls coat-tails..."
Also, while I see guy after guy kicked out into the street by his parents when he's 18, I see countless girls who still live with their parents, rent free, not going to school and without jobs, at the age of 20, 22, 24 or even 26.
This thing goes both ways. And sometimes, to be quite honest, I'm too busy working and trying to keep my head on straight to really give a fuck. --- seumas.com
In my division/product of the company I work in, there are nearly as many management and lead women as there are men. In fact, the two highest positions 'Vice President of Customer Satisfaction' and 'Director of Customer Support' as well as two managers of product development probably a third of product sustaining development are all women.
I gaurantee, women are taken seriously by a real company. Yes, there are obvious exceptions to this and women can be treated as underlings to fetch coffee, but I've been treated like garbage, simply because I don't have a degree from a university (nevermind that the people who treated me this way probably scored unbelievably lower than I on SATS and entrace exams -- for whatever they're worth).
Still, nobody seems to have said solidly -- if the problem is that we're keeping women out of tech jobs, then what percentage of the workforce should be made up of women? Eh?
That this behavior is exhibited by a handful of tight-assed staff and professors who have no business deciding who should learn what is an example of why things need to be pressed in whatever 'court' a school provides and, if not addressed, pressed in a true court of law.
Such a comment or suggestion from a school official, especially one accredited by or recieving funding from the government, would not be looked upon lightly. --- seumas.com
While I have a moment, I should use it to explain my thinking on this a little further. My original statement may strike one who did not read my posts in the original article as heartless.
I am not for promoting a specific group of people simply to achieve some sort of equality in statistics, so that Universities, rights groups and government politicians can pat themselves on the back and feel they accomlpished something.
What I am wholly for, is the increase in educational oppertunities across the board. When I hear someone whine about how they are poor at math or science or computers because their teacher didn't call on them enough in school or their teacher didn't instill enough self-confidence in them (pardon me, but isn't self-confidence, by virtue of its name, something that cannot be instilled by an external force?) or because the "boys were too obnoxious and eager", it makes me want to wretch.
So, should we punish boys because they're sometimes eager to learn? Rediculous. Perhaps the problem isn't that boys often are louder and demand more attention when it comes to time in class-room, but that females do not demand the same and excersize their same unrestricted ability to raise their hand and shout "ooh! ooh! I know the answer!". You know what this suggests? Maybe there is something different between boys and girls after all. (Oh my gosh! No! That can't be!)
Perhaps what makes boys excel more often in science is precisely this same attitude and enthusiasm that is exhibited in grade school. Instead of shutting it down and tuning them out, in favor of shy quiet girls, coax the girls out of their shells.
Even if you don't have a teacher who does this -- for example, if you have a teacher who absolutely refuses to call on a single girl for an entire year and almost completely ignores them (perhaps he's some sort of demented sadist -- ooh! there I am again, assuming the male as the evil on -- oh gosh, I'm so sexist!), you can still achieve amazing things.
Most of my life in school, I was not one of the loud boisterous ones raising my hand every second to beat everyone else out in answering a question. Hell, after the first couple grades, my scores dropped horribly. A lot of it was due to insane family problems, but a lot of it was boredom. Absolutely, earth-stopping boredom.
In fact, I didn't exactly even graduate 10th grade. I don't even know that I had enough credits to graduate 9th grade. But I was able to quickly leave school, take my GED and SAT's (scoring in the absolute top percentiles of both) and walk more or less directly into a very high-paying career in the Valley (yes, the silicon one).
My parents disliked computers and videogames, thinking they were a waste of time and I should be doing yardwork or something. My school didn't know what good their obsolete computers were for other than teaching children how to type. And the only computer we had around the house until I was twelve years old, was a used VIC-20 (it didn't last long).
My parents eventually graduated to a 386 in 1989 or 1990, but I was almost never allowed to use it. It was a holy grail, used only to play solitaire religiously by my parents (and the occasional MindSweeper).
No, it wasn't until much much later when I sold most of my worthwhile posessesions as a teenager, that I was able to afford a computer. It was a 286 with a 20mb hard drive and an green monochrome monitor. Couple megabytes of RAM and no sound card.
I put an advertisement in the paper and within a week had sold this for almost double what I paid for it (I made a few minor improvements to the machine.. *cough*...)
I took that money and bought a 386 with a CGA monitor, 80mb hard drive and 4MB RAM. I ran my first (and very successful) BBS on this. I learned to write in BASIC on this. I learned to cause innocent trouble with minor security flaws in BBS software packages (such as Remote Access BBS and WWIV).
I was destined, due to my performence in school and my standing with my parents, to pump gas or work as a stock boy in a grocery store for the rest of my life. I was certain of it. There was no way I'd make anything out of myself.
I was, in a word, fucked.
Having a mind-numbing job in the physical labor market scared the hell out of me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, in my teenage years, I thought of suicide as a possibility if I was going to be stuck in one of those jobs. No offense intended to people who work in those fields, but it isn't for me. I couldn't tolerate the six weeks at a fast food joint when I was sixteen, because it required zero mental ability and provided zero mental stimulation. I wanted to stick my head in the fry-grease and let my brain sizzle.
Some time ago, I was crossing the street late one night and was struck by a brand new shiny white Subaru. It hit me and kept going for about fifty feet before the driver even considered hitting the breaks. Then it threw me through the air another fifty feet. Thankfully, I landed in the street, on the nice safe asphalt. The car was obliterated and I could have walked away, if the bystanders hadn't insisted I wait for an ambulance. An hour later, I walked out of the hospital. Aside from soreness and pain in my joints for a month (a few visits to the chiropractor and I was back to normal) and picking asphalt and windshield out of my skull, I was fine.
It shook me somehow, though. Everyone in my family noticed it. I said "fuck it" and knew that I had the skills and dedication to do whatever the hell I wanted, regardless of my history in school. I would make sure that employers saw my ability and my dedication and gave me a shot, without concern of my poor performance in the past.
I grabbed a job providing tech support at a tech farm (one that does tech support for numerous companies at once). A year and a half later, and I was marketable. I left home and jumped to one of the absolute top technical companies in Silicon Valley (hint: They make a version of Unix).
Now I'm making more money than nearly anyone in my family, including college graduates with Masters degrees and a Doctor. I work in exactly the field I had wanted, making more money than I expected, learning more than I ever could dream -- and all without the formal education and attention and coddling that people tend to use the lack of as an excuse for their failing -- or their failing to try.
I'm slow. I have to spend a long time contemplating intellectual arguements and have difficulty parrying with people who are quicker, wittier, more worldly and better educated than me. My scores in the top percentiles of those SAT tests were sheer luck. Anyone could have pulled it off. I took the time to explain my long -- probably boring -- story, because I'm a nobody who would be lucky to fall into the middle of any category or ranking of anything. But I've done what a lot of people whine that they could never do. And that's bullshit. It's utter fucking bullshit. It's cowardice. It's fear.
Yes, you hav limits -- I couldn't become a neurosurgeon, just because I say I want to be one. But we're not talking about brain surgery -- we're talking about reading some books, playing around on a cheap computer, getting a foot in the door of the tech world via a low-level geek job, and then exploiting that until your whole body is in the door. In that respect, women are no different from men. In fact, as fierce and unwavering as I've known many women to be, there should be less of an excuse.
The only piece of advice I could give to parents -- especially mothers, is to instill in your daughters the understanding that they need to be outgoing enough to make it known when they are upset or have something to say, share or ask. It won't just help them in school, but in relationships and careers. It isn't the schools job, necessarily, to pamper your little girl and make sure absolutely every little whim and need is catered to, but it is certainly their role to address her questions and curiosities -- so give her the understanding and confidence to make those things known. I knew girls when I was in school -- even grade school, that would but the most fierce boys to shame. Do you know how the boys felt? A bit embarassed, but at the same time, there was this slightly not-understood feeling among all of us. There was something about a really smart and outgoing girl that made is grin and treat her with a little more respect than (as kids) we probably would have.
So that's all I have to say on this, I think. At least, you hope, right? *grin*. --- seumas.com
After skimming through "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?", I have to say that I'm still not convinced. Even the terminology used to discuss this topic puts me off.
The typical language used is such to suggest victimization, inequality, unfairness -- a need to be encouraged, given a nudge, coddled.
Look, I'm sorry that there isn't one women for every man in the technical work force. That's just too bad. But when, in stories such as that previously exampled, illustrates reasons such as "who wants a stuffy 9 to 5 job?" and "you have to be, like, so precise and stuff with computers" and "let Bill Gates do it all -- why should I have to?", a great deal of empathy and sympathy is lost.
If a woman wants a technical career, she has just as many options -- if not more, than a man. This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"
There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to. To suggest that a woman can't make it becuase of the big bad sexist teachers, men and society is ludicrous. I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up. You get what you get, and it isn't handed to you. If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question. --- seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
At best, this is just a small feature to allow busy people who don't want to have to remember to turn their phones off when they enter a movie theater, to have it done automatically. Fine with me. This isn't going to prevent the annoying noise of cell-phones, unless people make the voluntary decision to do so.
I don't really even find cell-phones that annoying, unless it's in certain circumstances such as theaters. And chances are that some dumbass is going to think that waiting for a call from his buddies downtown is just as important as the call for the doctor who has to rush to the hospital to save a car-accident victim's life.
I'm not suggesting we should force anyone to turn their phones off or down, either. That's a bit stupid and big-brotherish, to me. It also could leave a lot of room for lawsuits and liability issues.
This only serves to make life a tiny notch simpler for those who care to be responsible enough to keep their volume down or off in certain public places. The problem of those who could care less about making those 'sacrifices' will have to be dealt with via old-fashioned intolerance by people around them when their phones go off and they engage in annoying conversation while you're trying to enjoy a flick. That is, next time someone's phone rings in the middle of a movie and they don't immediately shut it off -- or worse, they answer it and start talking, the people around them should chastise them for it. It's better than enforcing some dumb law and the moron still has the choice of leaving the theater or staying there and being a prick, if he can put up with the resulting disapprovement of the other movie-goers.
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seumas.com
Pop-ups, however, suck regardless. I don't care if your site uses a pop-up for an advertisement, questionnaire, poll/survey, to give me background information -- whatever. I just don't want pop-ups unless I specifically click on something to cause that pop-up. For example, visiting your website and having a pop-up displayed immediately to tell me I should use your new cheap phone service, is stupid. But using a pop-up to display a definition of words, when I click those specific words, is comletely fine (and sometimes helpful) with me.
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seumas.com
Not everyone runs their own box and has access to their Apache config files, though. Of course, they can always modify their own .htaccess files (well, most hosts tend to allow that at least), but a surprising number of webmasters have no clue that they can create/edit/modify it.
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seumas.com
The browser already offers an answer to this. Hold down the Back button on the browser and select the page just before the index.html page you visited. Problem solved.
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seumas.com
Nobody is funding me for this! Although receiving a grant for Slashdot would be... *sigh*... pretty damn sweet.
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seumas.com
On the other hand, such a horse probably qualifies as intelligent by virtue of the ability to manipulate the stupid human into giving him a carrot.
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seumas.com
I certainly don't mean to relegate this concern to a rat with feathers -- the asssertion of intelligence versus recognition/patterned behavior is more or less across the board.
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seumas.com
Perhaps the good doctor in this study (up until her browser stuff) has produced interesting studies with potential, but there are many others before here and beside her that have not worked with such a supposed level of esteem and responsibility before presenting people with the idea of what they propose they are displaying is intelligence.
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seumas.com
Maybe you mean I'm lying, smartly?
And no, I completely concede that researchers have not proven that parrots do more than immitate. I'm all for it though. I'm not rooting for parrots to be proven complete morons, but I want to know that they're intelligent without a doubt. Unfortunately, I see nothing to reasonably do this. I firmly believe it will take much more than a few parlor tricks or circus side-show parrot-gimmicks to define the intelligence level of these animals.
I do not think that surfing the web will accomplish any of this. (Now, if some Polly out there finds a way to universally free the world from spam, I will completely concede and consider them to not only be intellectually proven, but smarter than most humans!)
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seumas.com
I was just thinking -- has anyone performed any manner of scan on a parrot's brain when it is being asked various questions? We can map out what part of the brain in humans is stimulated and active in response to various stimuli. We know what areas of the brain are mostly active during certain cognitive functions. Perhaps we could do the same with the parrots. I'm not sure if this has been done or not, but I found nothing on a search of it.
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seumas.com
Let me use a primate as an example. There is a great difference between figuring out that you can reach an apple stuck inside of a long tube by taking a branch from a tree, breaking it and then reaching it into the tube to stab the fruit and pull out the reward and pointing to a blue key when asked, because all the time away from the camera, you'd been told 'no' hundreds of times when you chose anything other than that blue key.
Granted, there is perhaps usually a fine line between walking and talking like a duck and actually being a duck. If we understood the concept of learning and how the brain (not just ours, but that would be a start) worked, we would probably have a larger conensus of whether or not specific animals are displaying true intellect.
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seumas.com
This is no more science than strapping moonshoes to your dogs paws and saying that you are scientifically experimenting with the posibilities of piloting a mission to Mars.
Those dunderheads who spend their careers (and tax money) teaching primates to 'speak' and 'communicate' through a massive specially developed lexicon expect us to fall for the same thing. They're so attached to their work and so biased -- and we never see it. We just think "aw, how cute! It's like people! It must be smart!".
How's this for 'scientific control'. Remove all prompting and all cues. Face the parrot and say " what is four plus five'. If the parrot can answer something like that without physical prompts of blocks or keys or balls, then maybe we have something. Even then, how do we know that the trainer and researcher haven't just unknowingly taught the parrot that the answer to 'four and five' is nine, without actual comprehension?
And this is my problem with this whole thing. To claim that they're intelligent without reasonably establishing that there is a level of comprehension as opposed to learned rote response.
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seumas.com
Squawk! Yes, this is Polly and I'd like to place an order for 10 tons of crackers!
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seumas.com
I'm not suggesting parrots are stupid. Far from it. But if you expect me to think a parrot is going to gain anything from some contraption that allows him to browse Slashdot and the ArtBell website, you must think I'm nuts.
I'm glad to know that while there are children in the country starving and women being beaten and raped and people dying of a million diseases, someone is funding the development of a web-browser for a freaking bird.
--BEGIN UNNECESSARY SARCASM--
If parrots are so smart, how come there are over a million of them trapped in cages in America? Hmmm? Answer that?! What, now they're going to read the screen-play from 'The Great Escape' and plan a massive rebellion and freedom revolution?
--END SARCASM--
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seumas.com
It doesn't take too many tries to find out that if you are told "blue metal" and you pick up the metal key (being that the only item on the table that is blue is also the only item that is metal) -- you get a treat. This seems like nothing more than conditioning to me.
And the researches I've seen raving about these "brilliant birds" are as looney as anyone -- talk about your biased research. The phrase "I want to believe" seems to be perfectly fitting for them.
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seumas.com
The first thought that went through my mind when I saw this picture was "what a great way to have the lower part of your legs completely torn off from the rest of your body".
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seumas.com
I don't drive. Driving sucks. Traffic in the Bay area sucks. I live almost nine miles away from my company's campus and I would love a pair of these to trot along at a nice 25mph along the side of the San Tomas expressway.
These would also come in handy when your boss is chasing you down the hall to hand you some extra work. With these suckers, it's just one big leap and you're half way across the building, out of his path!
I wish there were photos of the shoes. God, I want a pair so bad!
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seumas.com
Perhaps this is all in preperation for something huge they have planned and they want to drop it on the market to a considerably awed consumer-base.
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seumas.com
No, I'd tend to agree with your sentiment. The very first thing that came to my mind when I saw the article was helium is probably on the Moon for a reason. Just because it isn't serving a direct purpose that satisifies us doesn't mean it's uselessly squandered on the Moon.
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seumas.com
You will never change individual behavior. These studies and assertions are wholly useless, unless someone wants to pass a law making it illegal for any parent, teacher or co-worker to ever say anything to a woman that may be construed as detrimental to her ego, self-confidence or worth and value as a female.
No matter how much the rest of us want everyone, including every woman, to have an unfettered chance to do what they desire without being restrained or hampered by crude and unfair comments, it will always be undermind by those few who actually are in positions to say those things at the times which they are most agregious.
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seumas.com
I work between 70 and 120 hours per week. That's just at and on work. I have to cram my own personal venture in there somewhere, too. Over the last six months, I've probably spent 50% of the nights sleeping under my desk, at work.
I haven't seen a movie in over a year. I haven't watched television in nearly six months. I haven't had groceries in my refrigerator in six months. I don't have time to wash laundry -- I buy more clothes on my way to work. I'm not kidding, I'll just buy some jeans and t-shirts instead of taking the time to wash and dry everything, reasoning that someday I will have some time to just wash my massive pile of worn outfits.
I went from relationship after relationship (and hot sex after hot sex, I might at!.. erm..) to completely single for the last three years (exactly since I started in this field).
This career takes a huge toll. If you don't have the stamina and steadfastness to get into this career, despite what people say or do to hold you back, you're not going to have what it takes to maintain this career. Male or female, it doesn't matter. I've seen them fall, repeatedly, by the wayside when they couldn't prove themselves or keep up.
As far as sexes and their interests -- it doesn't surprise me that most women don't want to be in the tech career. I don't want to be in the child-care, teaching, nursing or domestic-engineer fields, myself. Maybe it's because I'm male. Maybe it's just because I find them utterly without interest to me. Or maybe it's because I was told that boys don't do that sort of thing.
Which extends to another point -- the opposite of this whole conflict is that while people are "fighting for girls to be in this career", men are simply expected to be in it (or careers like it). As a male, if I were to stay at home (and yes, I was actually a stay at home father for awhile) instead of have a career (note, I dont' say "have a job", because being a homemaker sure as hell is one!), I would be ridiculed. "Look at him riding on that poor girls coat-tails..."
Also, while I see guy after guy kicked out into the street by his parents when he's 18, I see countless girls who still live with their parents, rent free, not going to school and without jobs, at the age of 20, 22, 24 or even 26.
This thing goes both ways. And sometimes, to be quite honest, I'm too busy working and trying to keep my head on straight to really give a fuck.
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seumas.com
I gaurantee, women are taken seriously by a real company. Yes, there are obvious exceptions to this and women can be treated as underlings to fetch coffee, but I've been treated like garbage, simply because I don't have a degree from a university (nevermind that the people who treated me this way probably scored unbelievably lower than I on SATS and entrace exams -- for whatever they're worth).
Still, nobody seems to have said solidly -- if the problem is that we're keeping women out of tech jobs, then what percentage of the workforce should be made up of women? Eh?
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seumas.com
Such a comment or suggestion from a school official, especially one accredited by or recieving funding from the government, would not be looked upon lightly.
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seumas.com
I am not for promoting a specific group of people simply to achieve some sort of equality in statistics, so that Universities, rights groups and government politicians can pat themselves on the back and feel they accomlpished something.
What I am wholly for, is the increase in educational oppertunities across the board. When I hear someone whine about how they are poor at math or science or computers because their teacher didn't call on them enough in school or their teacher didn't instill enough self-confidence in them (pardon me, but isn't self-confidence, by virtue of its name, something that cannot be instilled by an external force?) or because the "boys were too obnoxious and eager", it makes me want to wretch.
So, should we punish boys because they're sometimes eager to learn? Rediculous. Perhaps the problem isn't that boys often are louder and demand more attention when it comes to time in class-room, but that females do not demand the same and excersize their same unrestricted ability to raise their hand and shout "ooh! ooh! I know the answer!". You know what this suggests? Maybe there is something different between boys and girls after all. (Oh my gosh! No! That can't be!)
Perhaps what makes boys excel more often in science is precisely this same attitude and enthusiasm that is exhibited in grade school. Instead of shutting it down and tuning them out, in favor of shy quiet girls, coax the girls out of their shells.
Even if you don't have a teacher who does this -- for example, if you have a teacher who absolutely refuses to call on a single girl for an entire year and almost completely ignores them (perhaps he's some sort of demented sadist -- ooh! there I am again, assuming the male as the evil on -- oh gosh, I'm so sexist!), you can still achieve amazing things.
Most of my life in school, I was not one of the loud boisterous ones raising my hand every second to beat everyone else out in answering a question. Hell, after the first couple grades, my scores dropped horribly. A lot of it was due to insane family problems, but a lot of it was boredom. Absolutely, earth-stopping boredom.
In fact, I didn't exactly even graduate 10th grade. I don't even know that I had enough credits to graduate 9th grade. But I was able to quickly leave school, take my GED and SAT's (scoring in the absolute top percentiles of both) and walk more or less directly into a very high-paying career in the Valley (yes, the silicon one).
My parents disliked computers and videogames, thinking they were a waste of time and I should be doing yardwork or something. My school didn't know what good their obsolete computers were for other than teaching children how to type. And the only computer we had around the house until I was twelve years old, was a used VIC-20 (it didn't last long).
My parents eventually graduated to a 386 in 1989 or 1990, but I was almost never allowed to use it. It was a holy grail, used only to play solitaire religiously by my parents (and the occasional MindSweeper).
No, it wasn't until much much later when I sold most of my worthwhile posessesions as a teenager, that I was able to afford a computer. It was a 286 with a 20mb hard drive and an green monochrome monitor. Couple megabytes of RAM and no sound card.
I put an advertisement in the paper and within a week had sold this for almost double what I paid for it (I made a few minor improvements to the machine.. *cough*...)
I took that money and bought a 386 with a CGA monitor, 80mb hard drive and 4MB RAM. I ran my first (and very successful) BBS on this. I learned to write in BASIC on this. I learned to cause innocent trouble with minor security flaws in BBS software packages (such as Remote Access BBS and WWIV).
I was destined, due to my performence in school and my standing with my parents, to pump gas or work as a stock boy in a grocery store for the rest of my life. I was certain of it. There was no way I'd make anything out of myself.
I was, in a word, fucked.
Having a mind-numbing job in the physical labor market scared the hell out of me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, in my teenage years, I thought of suicide as a possibility if I was going to be stuck in one of those jobs. No offense intended to people who work in those fields, but it isn't for me. I couldn't tolerate the six weeks at a fast food joint when I was sixteen, because it required zero mental ability and provided zero mental stimulation. I wanted to stick my head in the fry-grease and let my brain sizzle.
Some time ago, I was crossing the street late one night and was struck by a brand new shiny white Subaru. It hit me and kept going for about fifty feet before the driver even considered hitting the breaks. Then it threw me through the air another fifty feet. Thankfully, I landed in the street, on the nice safe asphalt. The car was obliterated and I could have walked away, if the bystanders hadn't insisted I wait for an ambulance. An hour later, I walked out of the hospital. Aside from soreness and pain in my joints for a month (a few visits to the chiropractor and I was back to normal) and picking asphalt and windshield out of my skull, I was fine.
It shook me somehow, though. Everyone in my family noticed it. I said "fuck it" and knew that I had the skills and dedication to do whatever the hell I wanted, regardless of my history in school. I would make sure that employers saw my ability and my dedication and gave me a shot, without concern of my poor performance in the past.
I grabbed a job providing tech support at a tech farm (one that does tech support for numerous companies at once). A year and a half later, and I was marketable. I left home and jumped to one of the absolute top technical companies in Silicon Valley (hint: They make a version of Unix).
Now I'm making more money than nearly anyone in my family, including college graduates with Masters degrees and a Doctor. I work in exactly the field I had wanted, making more money than I expected, learning more than I ever could dream -- and all without the formal education and attention and coddling that people tend to use the lack of as an excuse for their failing -- or their failing to try.
I'm slow. I have to spend a long time contemplating intellectual arguements and have difficulty parrying with people who are quicker, wittier, more worldly and better educated than me. My scores in the top percentiles of those SAT tests were sheer luck. Anyone could have pulled it off. I took the time to explain my long -- probably boring -- story, because I'm a nobody who would be lucky to fall into the middle of any category or ranking of anything. But I've done what a lot of people whine that they could never do. And that's bullshit. It's utter fucking bullshit. It's cowardice. It's fear.
Yes, you hav limits -- I couldn't become a neurosurgeon, just because I say I want to be one. But we're not talking about brain surgery -- we're talking about reading some books, playing around on a cheap computer, getting a foot in the door of the tech world via a low-level geek job, and then exploiting that until your whole body is in the door. In that respect, women are no different from men. In fact, as fierce and unwavering as I've known many women to be, there should be less of an excuse.
The only piece of advice I could give to parents -- especially mothers, is to instill in your daughters the understanding that they need to be outgoing enough to make it known when they are upset or have something to say, share or ask. It won't just help them in school, but in relationships and careers. It isn't the schools job, necessarily, to pamper your little girl and make sure absolutely every little whim and need is catered to, but it is certainly their role to address her questions and curiosities -- so give her the understanding and confidence to make those things known. I knew girls when I was in school -- even grade school, that would but the most fierce boys to shame. Do you know how the boys felt? A bit embarassed, but at the same time, there was this slightly not-understood feeling among all of us. There was something about a really smart and outgoing girl that made is grin and treat her with a little more respect than (as kids) we probably would have.
So that's all I have to say on this, I think. At least, you hope, right? *grin*.
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seumas.com
The typical language used is such to suggest victimization, inequality, unfairness -- a need to be encouraged, given a nudge, coddled.
Look, I'm sorry that there isn't one women for every man in the technical work force. That's just too bad. But when, in stories such as that previously exampled, illustrates reasons such as "who wants a stuffy 9 to 5 job?" and "you have to be, like, so precise and stuff with computers" and "let Bill Gates do it all -- why should I have to?", a great deal of empathy and sympathy is lost.
If a woman wants a technical career, she has just as many options -- if not more, than a man. This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"
There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to. To suggest that a woman can't make it becuase of the big bad sexist teachers, men and society is ludicrous. I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up. You get what you get, and it isn't handed to you. If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question.
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seumas.com