Lots of metrics, though the obvious one is political donations--and to the best of my knowledge IBM does not donate to political parties or encourage employees in any way to donate IBM doesn't have a PAC, which is probably a good move since typically these organizations end up donating to both sides to hedge their bets. But it does participate extensively in lobbying, which I see as just as bad as campaign donations, and have less oversight. However, I also disagree that share price should be taken as the only metric of company success. I agree, since share price is more a representation of sentiments of how the company is perceived, rather than a metric of actual company health. However, the shareholders are the ones in charge, they are the ones the CEO has to please. You need to balance, running the company, and not disappointing shareholders. In this specific case, I think it's part of the general hollowing out of American industry and strengthening of Chinese industry--which mostly reminds me of what happened in America before the Civil War. I see it differently, the South never changed, it stayed with it's cotton fields taking advantage of its supply of cheap labor. The north changed, gave up the lower value items for the south to produce and focused on higher value industries. In the 70's and 80's electronic manufacturing moved to asia to take advantage of cheaper labor markets, and the US focused on using the cheaper goods for more value added industries such as software. As software is becoming a commodity and being outsourced, domestic companies can focus on more value added activities such as consulting.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is progress. The "system" has finally ironed out the rebels. This new version of The Matrix means that tyhose that rebel and try and fuck things up by killing people or selling drugs sell out and become pop-culture icons and never do we hear the likes of Snoop complain. This is nothing new, society has often been intrigued by rebels, and latched on to them as part of pop-culture. Once they become rich & famous and fit in with society, they sell out. The phenomenon isn't new, the Kennedy's wouldn't be where they are without Papa Joe's bootlegging dollars, the hippies of the 60's were the corporate raiders of the 80's, the outlaws of the wild west became the sheriffs, judges, and mayors.
With the growing dominance of EA and the interest of Hollywood, are we looking at the beginning of the decline (so far as quality, innovation, and "fun" are concerned) I don't think there is a decline in any of those aspects. "Fun" is different for different people, the introduction of new segments of society to gaming have also changed the kind of games being played. Madden football is definately "fun", but the reasons are different than what traditional gamers like. Madden football is more of a social experience, get together, drink beer, play football. Personally I don't think Unreal Tournament or other frag-fests are fun, but they appeal to a different audience. In terms of innovation, it's always difficult to define. In some respects pretty much every game has been done already. RPG's harken back to "adventure", MMOs are just graphic MUDs, Katamari Damacy is just a new take on Pac-Man/loadrunner, etc. As for quality, it's a toss up, try playing an old game, sure it won't crash, but the UI may be annoying, or the presentation is lacking.
I'm not convinced - leaking just the first episode shortly before the series is due to begin means that those interested download it and watch it and if it's good they'll help hype it up and produce more publicity for the actual series. "Leaked" videos are good to increase name awareness, it's a useful technique to introduce a show/movie to an audience that isn't aware of it. When MST3K first came out the name alone wouldn't get the attention of people even in the target audience. That is why they said "Keep Circulating the Tapes," they needed to introduce people to the concept of their show. Dr. Who is different, it is a series that among it's target audience needs no introduction. Very few Sci-Fi fans will ask, "What is Dr. Who?" You don't have to give people a taste of the show to get them interested, just saying "There will be a Dr. Who series on TV" will have them tuning in. It is more important to keep things secret, so everybody watches at least the first episode. Would downloaders really be able to convince that many people, that otherwise would not have seen the show? If it's good it would just be preaching to the choir, if it's bad the companies would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Who believes these 'leaks' anymore? "Leaking" a program is not good advertising, good advertising is hyping something up and not letting anybody peek behind the curtain. For your premiere episode you want to keep people curious. The XFL (An American Football League created by a Pro-Wrestling executive) was an example of excellent advertising. The premiere had amazing ratings just because nobody knew what to expect, then the league folded because it sucked. A certain % of the interested audience will not like the show, whether it is good or bad (look at the people who hated Battlestar Galactica). But if nobody knows what to expect everybody from the interested audience will tune in.
The problem there is that you end up training a bunch of tech leaders in some other country who then found companies and brutalize us in the marketplace It's happening anyway, 50% of engineering/computer sci PhDs are earned by foreign born students
Managment are in there nature dumb. No, most managers are very intelligent. Sometimes too intelligent, making them arrogant and unwilling to admit when they are out of their element. This applies to both engineers and business people placed in leadership positions. Companies fail with arrogant business leaders who believe they can market their way out of problems; as well as arrogant engineers, who believe making a great product will just sell itself. BTW, you should proof-read comments when you are calling people dumb.
Putting the wrong instrument into a rover is due to "failure to follow procedure". This is a big deal. Actually what is worse, is it's possible there is no procedure to follow, so it could be an even bigger issue. From my experience in commercial industry a mixup like this is a big deal, no impact doesn't mean no problem. Every little problem should have a full investigation, and should have system improvements to address it; otherwise it eventually will happen again.
The average IQ of a Caucasian US Male holding a medical degree is IQ 124, but as the front page of the San Jose Mercury proclaimed in huge block letter headlines, and millions of IQ scores show (see the Bell Curve book data), the chance of a FEMALE obtaining a test score of 124 is EIGHT TIMES LESS LIKELY than an equivalent male. EIGHT TIMES LESS LIKELY. Conversely very low IQ people are almost always males. The average IQ is the same for both genders 100, but the IQ distribution bell curves are dramatically different shapes. IQ doesn't necessarily translate into real world performance, that's why it is typically not used as a metric for jobs. You can argue experience and education which are more reliable metrics for performance, however, you did not provide facts based on that. Also, I didn't realize there were no missions that exploded or failed before women were put in charge. Were there no men at all involved in any parts of the project, or who had the responsibility of oversight at some level (ie 2nd tier managers)? Although the top level managers were women, at some level probably some men screwed up too. I'm not going to argue about the impact of gender/minority based hiring policies, I'm just saying your conclusions in this specific case are flawed. At the highest levels managers are responsible for higher level management practices, not individual screw-ups. Your arguement is along the lines of holding the CEO of IBM responsible because your laptop had a too many bad pixels. There are high level issues that do need to be addressed. I see the Mars Spacecraft loss as part of an overall epidemic of poor execution and quality control at NASA. Hubble, Columbia, Challenger, Galileo, Cassini, etc. all had issues, you can't just hold one project that happened to be completely managed by women and say "See the problem is women." NASA itself is in trouble, and I'd venture to guess it's alot deeper than it's hiring practices.
OMG, how is parent troll????
No no no, Troll isn't a moderation, it's the name of what killed him. Like in the obituaries: Mr. Jones -64 (heart attack)
Apple (or whever else this argument is used against) is not a monopoly. Monopolies are difficult to define. It could be argued apple is near monopoly on software for their systems. A similar example would be the automakers. No one manufacturer has a monopoly of industry, but they were found to have monopolistic practices when it came to parts & services for their individual products (ie Ford has a monopoly on Ford truck repairs). The automakers were therefore ordered to post the diagnostic codes so 3rd party repair shops could use them. monopoly (mnp'l) , market condition in which there is only one seller of a certain commodity; Apple has a dominant control in the apple software space due to their bundling practices. I recently purchased a powerbook and went into the mac forums to ask what 3rd party software I should get. Almost every application I needed was already made by apple and bundled in the system (save for Photoshop and Word). You don't think apple gets an unfair advantage in the online music sale arena by bundling iTunes? I'm not saying necessarily that Apple a monopoly, but arguements can be made that their practices have unfairly locked out competition.
Seriously, who the heck lives in the basement? Why not just use the room you used as a kid? Dude, my room as a kid is right next to my parents room; I need to be ready with my tricked out pad in the basement for when I get a girl to come over... someday
Anyone want to guess which branch would be more popular? For the geeks... Linus, for the companies with money... IBM The money trail will probably end up deciding the winner.
I imagine if we funded the department of education the way we funded the military, we might have all sorts of research grants for building new education tools. I doubt it, while the problems for military applications are complicated, they are easy to identify. While I agree schools are under funded, what exactly innovative would you get with $40 billion more in education? Building more schools and hiring more teachers is not innovative. If you're thinking giving more money to universities to do research, that goes to the science and theory side (we'll have more thingies like carbon nanotubes we won't know what to do with), not to innovative applications. Let's say you do fund educational research more, the military will still be the first in line to exploit it. The military would love to have more effective training techniques, improved methods of learning languages, psychological control techniques (both positive and negative), new ways to allow troops to multi-task effectiely, identification/modification of behaviors, etc.
If we maintain the mindset that military applications drive innovation, then that's all we'll receive.
The military is just the ultimate "early adopter" of technology. The underlying research and science is driven by educational institutions. One of the reasons the military is such a driving force in innovation is because, like the space program, they are constantly trying to solve problems at the "extremes". Questions like "what if half the country was nuked" was one of the main reasons for the decentralized structure of the internet. The hardest part of innovation is asking the right questions. "Necessity is the mother of invention"
Did you play EQ when it first started? Patches every other day it seemed like, down servers, lots of things were broken. SWG was even worse, completely unbalanced, extremely buggy, multiple server crashes per day (not load related), and a completely unfulfilling grind. WoW may not be perfect, but it is fun which is the most important thing.
The problem is that there is very little flexibility in the system and we are practically stuck within an economic class from birth Yes there are disadvantages, but they are not impossible to overcome. Most people just don't have the drive to actually do what it takes to improve their economic status. Education is the primary means to allow economic movement. When you look at 33% drop out rates is it any wonder there is no mobility? They love to claim that workers are underqualified - what a great bargaining chip when it comes time to negotiate the value of labor. The wealthy can't just say "everybody is underqualified" they have to still fill the jobs. If you don't get a job it's because there was somebody more qualified to take the spot. The wealthy compete with each other to attract workers, and workers compete with each other to get jobs. Money is dead people. Overpopulation and automation will force the end of all economic theories as we know them. People have been arguing that since the industrial revolution. What about overpopulation? What about when there are 100 candidates for every open position? Or 1,000? Or even 10,000? People scream that everytime there is an economic downturn. Did the population shrink in the 90's? Sometimes there is excess labor, sometimes there are shortages, and it varies industry to industry and region to region.
So, it's random just because we don't understand why it does what it does? It's random because it is impossible to predict the next event. Flipping a coin is not random because you in theory could measure, the forces, weight, etc. Once all those variables are fixed, the outcome has been determined. You can predict the outcome of the event before it happens In QM due to the heisenberg uncertainty principle, you cannot know all the variables involved, so it is impossible to predict. but to a layperson, the word "random" often implies an event with no governing principles whatsoever.
For anything useful, you need a governing principle, if you want a number between 1 and 100, you have put an artificial constraint to govern the output. Randomness comes in the fact that at no time can you know the outcome of the next event. You can detect patterns in the stream of data (probability distribution), but that distribution will not be able to tell you what happens next.
And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count? Elections aren't about accuracy, they are about giving people a warm 'n fuzzy feeling so there isn't civil war. For many people there is still distrust of machines, there is fear about what is really going on behind all those blinking lights.
That statement invalidates the impact of those fields and, despite the fact that I am in a scientific field, I think that that just isn't true. Consider the impact of Capitalism/Communism/Socialism/Democracy/The Republic. I agree those fields have impact, leadership, entrepreneurship, even philosophy are important aspects to society. I see science/math/technology as the means by which society drives forward, the social sciences is how we reconcile within society the changes brought about by discovery. A balance is needed between the two, however, social pressures tend to work against technology. Perception is everything to teenagers, and the idea of becoming that "nerdy IT person" discourages otherwise talented individuals. I disagree though. "Why are we having a Women Should Enter Engineering Day? Because there aren't enough female engineers..." or even "Why are we having a Women Should Enter Engineering Day? Because the number of women entering engineering falls short of our expectations..." is a negative message. I think they are more along the lines of "we know you believe IT is X, this is what IT really is" type activities. Encouraging somebody isn't necessarily a cheerleading activity, these forms of encouragement are really ways to educate people about reality so they can make their own informed decision. Awesome. My initial concern wasn't really that students with a talent for engineering are directed toward it. I agree sometimes things go too far (look at the number of untalented people in the 90's). When you see that a group that is very underrepresented, and when you analyze the reasons and find that it's not technical aptitude or interest, that's when programs such as this should be pursued. I have to admit that I hate discussing matters such as this though. I should not have entered this conversation. I am an open minded person who thinks that everyone should be treated equally. I feel, however, that if I don't say what people want me to say, that I'll be painted as some sort of racist/sexist/bigotted neo-nazi. I'm not one. Even though we disagree I would never call you racist/sexist/etc. It's good that people can intelligently debate such important issues, because we should consistantly review and challenge existing ideas. These issues are complex, and really the only way to come up with good solutions is debating, and understanding the problem from many diffent views. You are posting semi-anonymously on a website, yet you still feel doubt about what you should say because how others will perceive you. These are similar to the doubts teenagers have about how their friends perceive them. These are real issues, and historically affect some groups more than others, that's one of the reasons there is such discrepency between what is expected and what is happenning. I do think you are right, maybe instead of a Women's Engineering Day there should be just an Engineering Day to tear down the myths for all people. Not only would it help encourage students, it would also educate the other students, such that they wouldn't create a negative environment. However, I still think there needs to be some targetted activities, since there are specific issues that affect specific groups (ie women speakers talking about the ability to succeed in a male dominated work environment)
I don't think that this is a valid route to accomplish this.
I think that this route sends the message that other fields are not as good. In terms of investment engineering/science/math are the drivers that move society forward. Art, music, politics, are all great, but a painting does not have the same impact as sequencing a gene. I think that this route also sends the message that your expectations from (group x... in this case women) are low. No going this route sends the message that your expectations for group x are higher than what currently exists, and you are trying to address the social roadblocks that might be preventing the group from fully realizing their potential. I think that if all of the silly pretense was lost, that people would just get on with their lives and do the right thing. I think that building up lots of programs and barriers sends the message "we want more girls in engineering (...because girls are intimidated by it)." Closing your eyes and pretending there isn't a problem won't solve it. The issues of social stigma are there "Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social," Some girls may feel they have the technical drive to enter science/IT, but the misconceptions of other aspects of the job may prevent them from pursuing that career path. I don't see the problem in explaining to them of what truly goes on, such that they can make informed decisions. It's completely backwards, it's discriminatory policies ("we don't think you'll do this on your own, here's a helping hand"), engineered by people who are trying to make up for their past insensitivities. What is being done is pointing out that technical jobs aren't like they are sterotyped. Apart from social perceptions, there are perceptions of "good ole boy" networks, that you won't be able to become successful because you don't fit in. Bringing in successful women/minorities, helps tear down those misconceptions. I've mentored hispanic students steering them towards engineering. They had the talent, however, they were discouraged by misconceptions. They were intimidated by silly things like not fitting in with peers because they weren't devoted to Star Trek and computer games, as well as more techinical things like not wanting to live in a cube solving math problems all day. Explaining the hands on of working on machines, the types of problems that you solve, even telling them about my department in college having a soccer team, eased their worries. If we dropped this nonesense now, in 2050, it would be considered an insult to say "we want to encourage women (who wouldn't otherwise go into math and science) to go into math and science." If you don't change anything, most likely nothing will change.
For that matter, why are you telling women specifically to go into the field? I agree that there are fewer women in CS (and I wish that the ratio was better... it's hard finding a date in the department), but telling a bunch of high school women "you should go into IT to even out the ratio" is akin to saying "all of the jobs that you'd rather pursue are girly jobs, you need to go into IT to keep up with the boys." They are encouraging women to enter IT because they feel there may be very talented people who are being kept out of the industry due to social barriers. The idea is to tear down the social barriers to improve the overall quality of IT professionals. You should just provide the best environment possible for kids to become the best whatever they want to be that they can be. That is what they are doing. They are trying to educate and remove social barriers such that kids can pursue whatever they want to be. It can be intimidating to enter a field where you don't "fit-in", because you wonder if you will be accepted by your peers. You should get rid of sexism by not practicing sexism. You should get rid of racism by not practicing racism. The problem is the vicious circle, if no women/minorities are in a field, other women/minorities will be intimidated and not enter the field. I don't see encouraging to be a racist or sexist activity.
Well, strictly speaking, that's not random either, since the laws of physics dictate how and when the particles decay in a radioactive material. The laws of physics dictate a probability, whenever you sample the decay of radioactive material you get a random data point in that probability.
but they are:) now go clean the beakers, I have to just get this experiment to go right just one time out of a thousand, and I'll be able to base my entire thesis on that one data point.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of metrics, though the obvious one is political donations--and to the best of my knowledge IBM does not donate to political parties or encourage employees in any way to donate
IBM doesn't have a PAC, which is probably a good move since typically these organizations end up donating to both sides to hedge their bets. But it does participate extensively in lobbying, which I see as just as bad as campaign donations, and have less oversight.
However, I also disagree that share price should be taken as the only metric of company success.
I agree, since share price is more a representation of sentiments of how the company is perceived, rather than a metric of actual company health. However, the shareholders are the ones in charge, they are the ones the CEO has to please. You need to balance, running the company, and not disappointing shareholders.
In this specific case, I think it's part of the general hollowing out of American industry and strengthening of Chinese industry--which mostly reminds me of what happened in America before the Civil War.
I see it differently, the South never changed, it stayed with it's cotton fields taking advantage of its supply of cheap labor. The north changed, gave up the lower value items for the south to produce and focused on higher value industries. In the 70's and 80's electronic manufacturing moved to asia to take advantage of cheaper labor markets, and the US focused on using the cheaper goods for more value added industries such as software. As software is becoming a commodity and being outsourced, domestic companies can focus on more value added activities such as consulting.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is progress. The "system" has finally ironed out the rebels. This new version of The Matrix means that tyhose that rebel and try and fuck things up by killing people or selling drugs sell out and become pop-culture icons and never do we hear the likes of Snoop complain.
This is nothing new, society has often been intrigued by rebels, and latched on to them as part of pop-culture. Once they become rich & famous and fit in with society, they sell out.
The phenomenon isn't new, the Kennedy's wouldn't be where they are without Papa Joe's bootlegging dollars, the hippies of the 60's were the corporate raiders of the 80's, the outlaws of the wild west became the sheriffs, judges, and mayors.
With the growing dominance of EA and the interest of Hollywood, are we looking at the beginning of the decline (so far as quality, innovation, and "fun" are concerned)
I don't think there is a decline in any of those aspects. "Fun" is different for different people, the introduction of new segments of society to gaming have also changed the kind of games being played.
Madden football is definately "fun", but the reasons are different than what traditional gamers like. Madden football is more of a social experience, get together, drink beer, play football. Personally I don't think Unreal Tournament or other frag-fests are fun, but they appeal to a different audience.
In terms of innovation, it's always difficult to define. In some respects pretty much every game has been done already. RPG's harken back to "adventure", MMOs are just graphic MUDs, Katamari Damacy is just a new take on Pac-Man/loadrunner, etc.
As for quality, it's a toss up, try playing an old game, sure it won't crash, but the UI may be annoying, or the presentation is lacking.
I'm not convinced - leaking just the first episode shortly before the series is due to begin means that those interested download it and watch it and if it's good they'll help hype it up and produce more publicity for the actual series.
"Leaked" videos are good to increase name awareness, it's a useful technique to introduce a show/movie to an audience that isn't aware of it. When MST3K first came out the name alone wouldn't get the attention of people even in the target audience. That is why they said "Keep Circulating the Tapes," they needed to introduce people to the concept of their show.
Dr. Who is different, it is a series that among it's target audience needs no introduction. Very few Sci-Fi fans will ask, "What is Dr. Who?" You don't have to give people a taste of the show to get them interested, just saying "There will be a Dr. Who series on TV" will have them tuning in. It is more important to keep things secret, so everybody watches at least the first episode.
Would downloaders really be able to convince that many people, that otherwise would not have seen the show? If it's good it would just be preaching to the choir, if it's bad the companies would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Who believes these 'leaks' anymore?
"Leaking" a program is not good advertising, good advertising is hyping something up and not letting anybody peek behind the curtain. For your premiere episode you want to keep people curious.
The XFL (An American Football League created by a Pro-Wrestling executive) was an example of excellent advertising. The premiere had amazing ratings just because nobody knew what to expect, then the league folded because it sucked.
A certain % of the interested audience will not like the show, whether it is good or bad (look at the people who hated Battlestar Galactica). But if nobody knows what to expect everybody from the interested audience will tune in.
The problem there is that you end up training a bunch of tech leaders in some other country who then found companies and brutalize us in the marketplace
It's happening anyway, 50% of engineering/computer sci PhDs are earned by foreign born students
Managment are in there nature dumb.
No, most managers are very intelligent. Sometimes too intelligent, making them arrogant and unwilling to admit when they are out of their element. This applies to both engineers and business people placed in leadership positions.
Companies fail with arrogant business leaders who believe they can market their way out of problems; as well as arrogant engineers, who believe making a great product will just sell itself.
BTW, you should proof-read comments when you are calling people dumb.
Putting the wrong instrument into a rover is due to "failure to follow procedure". This is a big deal.
Actually what is worse, is it's possible there is no procedure to follow, so it could be an even bigger issue. From my experience in commercial industry a mixup like this is a big deal, no impact doesn't mean no problem. Every little problem should have a full investigation, and should have system improvements to address it; otherwise it eventually will happen again.
The average IQ of a Caucasian US Male holding a medical degree is IQ 124, but as the front page of the San Jose Mercury proclaimed in huge block letter headlines, and millions of IQ scores show (see the Bell Curve book data), the chance of a FEMALE obtaining a test score of 124 is EIGHT TIMES LESS LIKELY than an equivalent male. EIGHT TIMES LESS LIKELY. Conversely very low IQ people are almost always males. The average IQ is the same for both genders 100, but the IQ distribution bell curves are dramatically different shapes.
IQ doesn't necessarily translate into real world performance, that's why it is typically not used as a metric for jobs. You can argue experience and education which are more reliable metrics for performance, however, you did not provide facts based on that.
Also, I didn't realize there were no missions that exploded or failed before women were put in charge. Were there no men at all involved in any parts of the project, or who had the responsibility of oversight at some level (ie 2nd tier managers)? Although the top level managers were women, at some level probably some men screwed up too.
I'm not going to argue about the impact of gender/minority based hiring policies, I'm just saying your conclusions in this specific case are flawed. At the highest levels managers are responsible for higher level management practices, not individual screw-ups. Your arguement is along the lines of holding the CEO of IBM responsible because your laptop had a too many bad pixels.
There are high level issues that do need to be addressed. I see the Mars Spacecraft loss as part of an overall epidemic of poor execution and quality control at NASA. Hubble, Columbia, Challenger, Galileo, Cassini, etc. all had issues, you can't just hold one project that happened to be completely managed by women and say "See the problem is women."
NASA itself is in trouble, and I'd venture to guess it's alot deeper than it's hiring practices.
OMG, how is parent troll????
No no no, Troll isn't a moderation, it's the name of what killed him. Like in the obituaries: Mr. Jones -64 (heart attack)
you need to tip your PB around in a certain pattern before it will unlock?
You know everybody will set their pattern to Up-Up-Down-Down...
Apple (or whever else this argument is used against) is not a monopoly.
Monopolies are difficult to define. It could be argued apple is near monopoly on software for their systems. A similar example would be the automakers. No one manufacturer has a monopoly of industry, but they were found to have monopolistic practices when it came to parts & services for their individual products (ie Ford has a monopoly on Ford truck repairs). The automakers were therefore ordered to post the diagnostic codes so 3rd party repair shops could use them.
monopoly (mnp'l) , market condition in which there is only one seller of a certain commodity;
Apple has a dominant control in the apple software space due to their bundling practices. I recently purchased a powerbook and went into the mac forums to ask what 3rd party software I should get. Almost every application I needed was already made by apple and bundled in the system (save for Photoshop and Word). You don't think apple gets an unfair advantage in the online music sale arena by bundling iTunes?
I'm not saying necessarily that Apple a monopoly, but arguements can be made that their practices have unfairly locked out competition.
Seriously, who the heck lives in the basement? Why not just use the room you used as a kid?
Dude, my room as a kid is right next to my parents room; I need to be ready with my tricked out pad in the basement for when I get a girl to come over... someday
Anyone want to guess which branch would be more popular?
For the geeks... Linus, for the companies with money... IBM
The money trail will probably end up deciding the winner.
I imagine if we funded the department of education the way we funded the military, we might have all sorts of research grants for building new education tools.
I doubt it, while the problems for military applications are complicated, they are easy to identify. While I agree schools are under funded, what exactly innovative would you get with $40 billion more in education? Building more schools and hiring more teachers is not innovative. If you're thinking giving more money to universities to do research, that goes to the science and theory side (we'll have more thingies like carbon nanotubes we won't know what to do with), not to innovative applications.
Let's say you do fund educational research more, the military will still be the first in line to exploit it. The military would love to have more effective training techniques, improved methods of learning languages, psychological control techniques (both positive and negative), new ways to allow troops to multi-task effectiely, identification/modification of behaviors, etc.
If we maintain the mindset that military applications drive innovation, then that's all we'll receive.
The military is just the ultimate "early adopter" of technology. The underlying research and science is driven by educational institutions.
One of the reasons the military is such a driving force in innovation is because, like the space program, they are constantly trying to solve problems at the "extremes". Questions like "what if half the country was nuked" was one of the main reasons for the decentralized structure of the internet.
The hardest part of innovation is asking the right questions. "Necessity is the mother of invention"
Did you play EQ when it first started? Patches every other day it seemed like, down servers, lots of things were broken. SWG was even worse, completely unbalanced, extremely buggy, multiple server crashes per day (not load related), and a completely unfulfilling grind. WoW may not be perfect, but it is fun which is the most important thing.
The problem is that there is very little flexibility in the system and we are practically stuck within an economic class from birth
Yes there are disadvantages, but they are not impossible to overcome. Most people just don't have the drive to actually do what it takes to improve their economic status. Education is the primary means to allow economic movement. When you look at 33% drop out rates is it any wonder there is no mobility?
They love to claim that workers are underqualified - what a great bargaining chip when it comes time to negotiate the value of labor.
The wealthy can't just say "everybody is underqualified" they have to still fill the jobs. If you don't get a job it's because there was somebody more qualified to take the spot. The wealthy compete with each other to attract workers, and workers compete with each other to get jobs.
Money is dead people. Overpopulation and automation will force the end of all economic theories as we know them.
People have been arguing that since the industrial revolution.
What about overpopulation? What about when there are 100 candidates for every open position? Or 1,000? Or even 10,000?
People scream that everytime there is an economic downturn. Did the population shrink in the 90's? Sometimes there is excess labor, sometimes there are shortages, and it varies industry to industry and region to region.
So, it's random just because we don't understand why it does what it does?
It's random because it is impossible to predict the next event.
Flipping a coin is not random because you in theory could measure, the forces, weight, etc. Once all those variables are fixed, the outcome has been determined. You can predict the outcome of the event before it happens
In QM due to the heisenberg uncertainty principle, you cannot know all the variables involved, so it is impossible to predict.
but to a layperson, the word "random" often implies an event with no governing principles whatsoever.
For anything useful, you need a governing principle, if you want a number between 1 and 100, you have put an artificial constraint to govern the output. Randomness comes in the fact that at no time can you know the outcome of the next event. You can detect patterns in the stream of data (probability distribution), but that distribution will not be able to tell you what happens next.
And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count?
Elections aren't about accuracy, they are about giving people a warm 'n fuzzy feeling so there isn't civil war. For many people there is still distrust of machines, there is fear about what is really going on behind all those blinking lights.
That statement invalidates the impact of those fields and, despite the fact that I am in a scientific field, I think that that just isn't true. Consider the impact of Capitalism/Communism/Socialism/Democracy/The Republic.
I agree those fields have impact, leadership, entrepreneurship, even philosophy are important aspects to society. I see science/math/technology as the means by which society drives forward, the social sciences is how we reconcile within society the changes brought about by discovery. A balance is needed between the two, however, social pressures tend to work against technology. Perception is everything to teenagers, and the idea of becoming that "nerdy IT person" discourages otherwise talented individuals.
I disagree though. "Why are we having a Women Should Enter Engineering Day? Because there aren't enough female engineers..." or even "Why are we having a Women Should Enter Engineering Day? Because the number of women entering engineering falls short of our expectations..." is a negative message.
I think they are more along the lines of "we know you believe IT is X, this is what IT really is" type activities. Encouraging somebody isn't necessarily a cheerleading activity, these forms of encouragement are really ways to educate people about reality so they can make their own informed decision.
Awesome. My initial concern wasn't really that students with a talent for engineering are directed toward it.
I agree sometimes things go too far (look at the number of untalented people in the 90's). When you see that a group that is very underrepresented, and when you analyze the reasons and find that it's not technical aptitude or interest, that's when programs such as this should be pursued.
I have to admit that I hate discussing matters such as this though. I should not have entered this conversation. I am an open minded person who thinks that everyone should be treated equally. I feel, however, that if I don't say what people want me to say, that I'll be painted as some sort of racist/sexist/bigotted neo-nazi. I'm not one.
Even though we disagree I would never call you racist/sexist/etc. It's good that people can intelligently debate such important issues, because we should consistantly review and challenge existing ideas. These issues are complex, and really the only way to come up with good solutions is debating, and understanding the problem from many diffent views.
You are posting semi-anonymously on a website, yet you still feel doubt about what you should say because how others will perceive you. These are similar to the doubts teenagers have about how their friends perceive them. These are real issues, and historically affect some groups more than others, that's one of the reasons there is such discrepency between what is expected and what is happenning.
I do think you are right, maybe instead of a Women's Engineering Day there should be just an Engineering Day to tear down the myths for all people. Not only would it help encourage students, it would also educate the other students, such that they wouldn't create a negative environment.
However, I still think there needs to be some targetted activities, since there are specific issues that affect specific groups (ie women speakers talking about the ability to succeed in a male dominated work environment)
I don't think that this is a valid route to accomplish this.
I think that this route sends the message that other fields are not as good.
In terms of investment engineering/science/math are the drivers that move society forward. Art, music, politics, are all great, but a painting does not have the same impact as sequencing a gene.
I think that this route also sends the message that your expectations from (group x... in this case women) are low.
No going this route sends the message that your expectations for group x are higher than what currently exists, and you are trying to address the social roadblocks that might be preventing the group from fully realizing their potential.
I think that if all of the silly pretense was lost, that people would just get on with their lives and do the right thing. I think that building up lots of programs and barriers sends the message "we want more girls in engineering (...because girls are intimidated by it)."
Closing your eyes and pretending there isn't a problem won't solve it. The issues of social stigma are there
"Some issues (the girls) brought up included fears that their friends will think (working in IT) is a geeky thing to do, and that IT work is not very social,"
Some girls may feel they have the technical drive to enter science/IT, but the misconceptions of other aspects of the job may prevent them from pursuing that career path. I don't see the problem in explaining to them of what truly goes on, such that they can make informed decisions.
It's completely backwards, it's discriminatory policies ("we don't think you'll do this on your own, here's a helping hand"), engineered by people who are trying to make up for their past insensitivities.
What is being done is pointing out that technical jobs aren't like they are sterotyped. Apart from social perceptions, there are perceptions of "good ole boy" networks, that you won't be able to become successful because you don't fit in. Bringing in successful women/minorities, helps tear down those misconceptions.
I've mentored hispanic students steering them towards engineering. They had the talent, however, they were discouraged by misconceptions. They were intimidated by silly things like not fitting in with peers because they weren't devoted to Star Trek and computer games, as well as more techinical things like not wanting to live in a cube solving math problems all day. Explaining the hands on of working on machines, the types of problems that you solve, even telling them about my department in college having a soccer team, eased their worries.
If we dropped this nonesense now, in 2050, it would be considered an insult to say "we want to encourage women (who wouldn't otherwise go into math and science) to go into math and science."
If you don't change anything, most likely nothing will change.
For that matter, why are you telling women specifically to go into the field? I agree that there are fewer women in CS (and I wish that the ratio was better... it's hard finding a date in the department), but telling a bunch of high school women "you should go into IT to even out the ratio" is akin to saying "all of the jobs that you'd rather pursue are girly jobs, you need to go into IT to keep up with the boys."
They are encouraging women to enter IT because they feel there may be very talented people who are being kept out of the industry due to social barriers. The idea is to tear down the social barriers to improve the overall quality of IT professionals.
You should just provide the best environment possible for kids to become the best whatever they want to be that they can be.
That is what they are doing. They are trying to educate and remove social barriers such that kids can pursue whatever they want to be. It can be intimidating to enter a field where you don't "fit-in", because you wonder if you will be accepted by your peers.
You should get rid of sexism by not practicing sexism. You should get rid of racism by not practicing racism.
The problem is the vicious circle, if no women/minorities are in a field, other women/minorities will be intimidated and not enter the field. I don't see encouraging to be a racist or sexist activity.
Well, strictly speaking, that's not random either, since the laws of physics dictate how and when the particles decay in a radioactive material.
The laws of physics dictate a probability, whenever you sample the decay of radioactive material you get a random data point in that probability.
but they are :)
now go clean the beakers, I have to just get this experiment to go right just one time out of a thousand, and I'll be able to base my entire thesis on that one data point.