If you've ever had roll a car down an incline to start it, or have ever been startled by a cyclist coming up behind you, you'll understand exactly why cars NEED to be noisy. It's not a spurious thing, driver or no.
Modern cars are essentially completely silent when their engines are off. An extremely dangerous situation occurs when someone has forgotten to put up their handbrake and has left their car on even a slight incline. A rolling car with its engine off is a gliding metal girder of death, silent as it is deadly. You simply will not hear it, especially if there is other traffic noise. A car does not have to be traveling very fast to maim or kill pedestrians or indeed drivers of other cars in its path.
Without an aural warning, people will be killed by electric cars. A good example of the need for these warnings, actually comes from video games. Many enemies and bosses in 3D video games have "audio cues" which occur just before they attack or perform some other noteworthy action. This is so that the player has a chance to react, often to a threat which is "offscreen". Without these cues, enemies and bosses become much more difficult to cope with. Since in a city, most oncoming traffic is "offscreen" to pedestrians, they need audio cues. They're playing for real!
Arachnophobia is the most common phobia, certainly in the western world. It's certainly not innate. Babies show no fear of spider at all. We pick arachnophobia up from our parents and from those around us, and it's easy to see why. When people around you, and almost everyone you see in contemporary media displays arachnophobia, it's hard not to be arachnophobic. Hollywood's use of spiders, and spider like creatures, as stock horror objects is actually a self perpetuating.
I would compare this to the slightly less common, and more substantiated, fear of wasps and bees. People will become very, very nervous around wasps and bees, jumping up from their seats, running away, or trying to kill the creature. But the reality is that these creatures will rarely sting unless you disturb them or their nest(at least in europe). Nevertheless fear of wasps is much more acceptable than fear of spiders, but only slightly more justifiable, and it's just as irrational.
Some people are so arachnophobic that they will actually kill any spiders they see. It's a very ugly thing to see someone quite viciously slam down a shoe or newspaper on a spider as it tries to scurry to safety. There is no reason to it. At least people who stand on chairs aren't taking it out on the spider. Apparently a cure for a phobia is gentle exposure. A friend of mine went to a spider museum in Prague and apparently lost all apprehension around spider entirely. I'm not sure I'd recommend this for your wife though.
Character is worth a lot. You can glean what a person's character is like from a lot of things.
Character is worth nothing. It has become a marketing term to be exploited by charlatans who know what ties to wear and which social functions and political opinions to adhere to in order to ingratiate themselves with like minded hypocrites. It's social astroturf for people with no individual virtues. When I hear the word "Character", I reach for my cluestick.
Judging the actual quality of someone else, or even yourself, is in fact a very difficult thing. You cannot appraise someone's ethereal "worth" by how often they go skydiving or haircut or "morals". The truth is, someones personality and habits can undergo tectonic shifts and random times. Eagle scouts can sometimes become Jekyll and Hyde.
Because of this, "character" should rightly be regarded as useless in judging applicants for a position. Instead, the proper metric is merit. That is; How proficient and professional someone is in their field. That's all you want. Whether the guy goes skydiving on the weekends or stays in his basement playing Doom, should be of absolutely no importance. What is important is his ability to do the job you pay him to do, and to do it well.
If you ask for extra qualities besides that, then you are essentially paying for those extra qualities, and I don't think the boss will be pleased when he finds out just how much of the pay roll is being spent on "character" instead of actual work being done.
With Mathematica, you have to trust that the methods they use, which you can't see, are legitimate and don't introduce any unforeseen error.
Absolutely.
I work on pretty much a daily basis with computer algebra systems. In my work, I am using CAS systems to perform integrals on what would be otherwise an unmanageable amount of equations, in order to generate some nice neat, but still quite large matrices. Despite its obvious technical inferiority, I'm using Maxima to do this. A lot of this has to do with running Mathematica and the like on Linux, which is a painful process, but the peer reviewable nature of an open source system is another major factor.
I've said this before, but essentially Mathematica is the modern mathematical Oracle at Delphi; arcane, totally inscrutable, and regarded by almost everyone as infallible. You cannot use its results professional for anything other than integral tables or the like. At least, not in mathematics. Maybe physicists use it, but I'd have my doubts. (Engineers?... well they're a heathen lot anyway...)
True, Mathematica is useful. But it's closed source nature, combined with its almost universal presence in scientific research is very troubling.
Maxima also sucks. Here's a session from just this afternoon.
[omf@midgar 14:45:36 ~]$ maxima Maxima 5.13.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ Using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (aka GCL) Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING. Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter. This is a development version of Maxima. The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information. (%i1) Q=matrix.........
Computer algebra systems are not the best to begin with, but Maxima has a very, very long way to go before it can compete with Mathematica. Most of my analytical work on a daily basis is done using Maxima and I can safely say that the program could be a lot better than it currently is.
Forget all that scientific evidence...what, because you say so?
Neuroscience babble is not, and probably never will be, scientific evidence. Most, if not all, neuroscientists are essentially isomorphic to this caricature. They wear white coats, but they are not scientists.
So nearly all species in the animal kingdom have inherent behavioral differences between males and females - except humans? You really believe that?
What do these behavioral differences have to do with professional work in the field of computer science, or any science for that matter? What is it about behavior in male and female monkeys that effects the differences in their computer programs?
Some people, talk a lot of shit. Shit about "female brains" and "male brains" and "spatial reasoning" and "behavioral differences" and some other tripe. But I have yet to see any solid proof, outside of neuroscience and psychology junk studies, that any of the shit they talk has anything to do with people's ability to do a job, or have an interest in a field. If all you can offer me is statistical hocus pocus, then you can't offer me anything at all.
Go back in time 50 years and make a replacement in most of the arguments you see in this thread. Specifically, change "men" and "women" to "whites" and "blacks". My intention is not to make a rhetorical point, but to show you just how invalid most of the arguments for the lack of women in science really are. They keep the same company as old ideas and arguments about racial superiority/inferiority, so they cannot honestly be regarded as objective sources of truth.
Changing workforce trends over the last 50 years in western society have taught us one thing. The huge majority of reasons for the past lack of women in highly skilled labour was due to cultural and social factors. Therefore, if you ask me why there is a lack of women in computer science at this point in time, I can with some confidence state that it is because of social and cultural reasons.
Of course, I could be wrong. There could be some testosterone/estrogen activated/deactivated brain region or gland that promotes/inhibits emotional/spatial thinking when someone is exposed to dolls/trucks/fixed width fonts. Maybe. We could all pull all manner of such tripe out of our asses all day, and are indeed doing so in this thread. But you know what? I'll bet not one single experiment, a real experiment (blah, blah, wiki-trip, blah), will ever confirm a single word of it.
It's cultural. So stop talking shit, and acknowledge it.
This reminds me of a pretty egregious faux-pas in the character customization menus in the recent Fallout game. Basically, amid the extensive options available for tweaking your character, there was initially (right after gender) a "race" option. The options were something like:
1) Caucasian 2) Asian 3) African American
Coming from outside the US, this ranks as one of my top ten "WTF?" moments in video gaming. I knew that Americans were fairly insular, but to define an entire racial group as "XXXican American" struck me a particularly flagrant example of classic American ignorance. To wit; There are black people who have never been to America, whos ancestors have never been to America, and who probably never will go to America so long as they live. Many may not even know where America is. Similarly for "Asian Americans".
This kind of Americanization of even very basic things is quite frightening sometimes. It's scary to think just how much of the culture, laws, practices and viewpoints in my own country have their origins in a country with a very different mindset and world view. The politics of Middle America seems to end up in my living room whether I like it or not.
Irish kids are taught NOTHING about manners, and manners are what lead to common-decency.
Here! Who the fuck do you think you are spouting that kind of shite! I was raised to sit up straight, and be polite, and peel me spuds before aeatin' 'em. I'm as polite and well mannered a Irishman as ever you'd meet. So feck off with yourself!
Why, so you could fail about in third person with your keyboard and mouse, all the while complaining about the lack of a first person perspective? I think Epic would make the right call by keeping the title on consoles.
Besides, Gears of War is the antithesis of everything PC shooters stand for. It is the total opposite of the run-and-gun mechanics that have dominated shooters since,... well forever. It involves no circle strafing, no rocket jumping, and handles fragging gracefully by allowing the possibility of recovering. You take cover from enemy fire, and they reciprocate. You actually need your teammates to do more than shoot. You need to think tactically, know the importance of flanking, and of close combat, which involves more than switching to a knife and rapidly right clicking.
It's also aesthetically beautiful, with levels featuring extravagant and detailed architecture. Not a hundred meters of flat terrain, or uninteresting rubble over which to crouch jump and strafe while you dodge bullets. Each room is filled with objects and cover, allowing multiple ways of defeating the enemy instead of the standard pair of a) Run in blasting, b) Jump in and out of doorways blast. The game relies on actual art design instead of texture resolution and frame rates to look good, and it pays.
It's a game for console gamers. It provides the level of quality, polish and professionalism that console gamers have come to expect from AAA titles. This comment is not a troll. My honest opinion is that PC-game developers have become complacent about quality, and for that matter, so have PC-gamers. You've been fed slop for so long that when you're served up veal, you'll complain that it isn't slop.
So don't ask for a port. You won't like the game anyway.
Why bicker about things no one can ever prove or disprove? What is the value in it?
Because we should value things that can be proven over those that cannot be disproven.
Things that have been proven, scientifically proven, are intrinsically more valuable than those that have not. And both are infinitely more valuable than ideas that can and never will be proven or disproven. Our leading scientific theories are proven facts which have been subjected to the highest level of scrutiny and standards.
Fuck this "Falisification" Bullshit! Evolution is a proven fact. Newtonian mechanics is a proven fact. General relativity is a proven fact. If you want to pull some falsification argument out of your ass or nitpick about thing not being compatible and how relativity "falsifies" Newtonian mechanics, then you can Fuck off back to your coding and your Wiki trips and let real scientists get back to doing their job. And that job is, yes, discovering the truth, not the myths or what we would like to be the truth. The Real Truth; which only science can provide.
I'm done with pandering to irrational people, and cultures, who refuse to let go of ridiculous and unsubstantiated beliefs. I'm sick of their rationalizations of totally irrational things, and I'm furious at their attempts to trivialize the importance of and depreciate the superiority, yes superiority, of the scientific method. There is nothing wrong with proclaiming its superiority and the manifest inferiority of and of the nonsense put forward as an alternative. We should not be afraid of telling people who believe ridiculous things that they are indeed ridiculous, and indeed ridiculing them when they obstinately persist in their unreason.
And the thing that gets me the most, is that by simply being honest, and expressing my honest opinions, even politely, I'll be regarded as a "militant". If I don't bow and scrap and perform becalming rituals before creationists, IDists, astrologists, philosophers, deists, theists, homeopaths, cultists, UFO nuts, conspiracy theorists, Holocaust denialists, AIDS denialists and any other Quack who spouts the first load of nonsense they can wrap in ten dollar words..... then I'm the Bad Guy!! I'm "oppressive", or "elitist", or "imperialist", or "bigoted", or "too scientifically minded"..... How Dare You!
I'm returning to the science of my childhood. That rock-solid method of investigating and understanding the universe through reason and experiment. There was nothing wrong with it and I'm ashamed that I ever listened or heeded the appeasers of unreason. It was and is a method infinitely superior to the rambling, incoherent, misleading, lies offered up by creationists and their ilk. I'm done with admitting the (ever dwindling)limits of science, and giving far more than due consideration to things I know to be totally and utterly wrong, just for the sake of not offending inunoffendable people. As you've probably guessed: "I'm Mad As Hell, And I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore!"
So, the next person who talks rubbish to me is going to get a piece of my mind. Politely perhaps, but not without barbs. I suggest that all reasonable Slashdotters who value science and its place in out society to do the same.
The Democrats are not far left, and the Republicans are not far right.
The Democrats are center left, and the Republicans are just plain right(and also just plain wrong).
Your new president is trying to fix the mess that ignorant and irrational opinions like yours helped to create. His success will largely depend on how many people like you ever wake up to reality and stop rationalizing their ridiculous dogmas.
Lego was to the European Court of Justice and were active in the fight against the Canadian competitor Mega Brands, which is a block on the market that fits that of Lego. The Court ruled today that the design of Lego is not protected by the trademark and that there should be no question of monopoly.
Born and raised in the PRC, baby. First ten years of my life, and two years back there more recently.
People tend to have rather nostalgic and idealized notions of the land of their birth/youth. It's usually irrational. Anyway, I'm guessing that you hail from a very modern and urbanized part of China, where the differences with the western world would not be as stark (The building in the west being smaller for example.)
Perhaps you could enlighten us on your own experiences with the country?
Perhaps you could enlighten us with your own experiences of life in the Chinese rural provinces?
People forget that China's industrial boom, colossal as it is, has not actually affected most of the country or the population. 800 million people have been left behind over the course of the boom. The wealth and indeed to some extent freedoms enjoyed by the urban populations have most certainly not been extended to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. These people are not even allowed to live and work where they want to, essentially needed a chit from local officials to so much as rent an apartment. If that's not oppression, I don't know what is.
So please remember that China is a colossal country, and while you may have experienced little or no oppression in your own small and modernized corner, that does not mean that your experience is universal. When people in the west complain about lack of human rights and freedoms, it is largely the rights of the poor majority which they are referring to.
Now, your experience shows that life is getting better in China, and to be fair, there has been much improvement in the quality of life for many. But there has been little or no improvement in the political and other freedoms in China. Freedoms that people should enjoy, regardless of any ethos of consent. It is true that the communist party of China is in a difficult position, but even still they have made inexcusably little effort to give Chinese people the rights they should enjoy. They might be afraid of another July 4th, but if they don't release pressure by granting rights, then they will end up with another whether they like it or not.
It's time the whiners and sour grapers get off their high horse and acknowledge that rich people, for the most part, are rich because they are just smart and work harder than the rest.
Where do you live? In the United Federation of Planets or something? Over here, on Planet Earth, most rich people are rich because they are greedy, cunning and ruthless. Yes, that is the reason. Being smart and working hard will, 99 times out of a hundred, NOT make you wealthy. On the other hand, you can be fairly simple, and lazy and yet still be very rich. It just takes greed, cunning and ruthlessness.
I'm not saying that there is anything intrinsically wrong with these qualities, though in excess they can cause terrible harm. But, I do acknowledge the power of these forces to create wealth and employment for more than a few greedy people.
And what social responsibility. Just because someone was able to get a bunch of people to work for them in exchange for a pay check society gets to suck off their teat??? Wow... that's some reward for being successful, seeing all that money put to such good use by the government.
Everyone has social responsibility, even the greedy. Of course, its obvious from statements like this one that the greedy will not readily let go of their gains, often choosing to hoard them to the disadvantage of all. Greed is a force which we as a society have tried to domesticate, so that we can reap the benefits. Greed is in fact good, but only when kept on a leash. Not too tight of a leash of course, but you do need one, otherwise we'll all end up working for feudal barons and bosses again.
Rich people can only be rich in a society and framework that supports such a state of affairs. Being rich without a government means being robbed on a regular basis, or else spending exorbitant amounts on security for your person and possessions. Like it or not, the rich still owe a lot to the society they live in.
Did this guy not get legal advice pointing out that what he's asking for is almost definitely illegal/unconstitutional?
In Ireland, we do not have what you would call Laws. What we have are more like Customs.
For example, it is customary in Ireland that no one need carry identification papers. Now, you do need a drivers license to drive a car, but it is customary, by the custom above, that this is not usually asked for by a Garda when you are stopped at say a road checkpoint for example. It is however, customary that a Garda will always, always ask you for your Name and Address when speaking to you. In fact, this particular custom is enshrined, not in constitutional law, but instead by statute. Every second bill passed in the Dail, will have the standard attached rider that "Under this bill, a member of An Garda Siochana may ask for the name and address of...", or the like.
Now, it is(or was) legally the case in Ireland that if a law is struck down, then you're free to do whatever it was prohibiting, and free to go if convicted under that law. However, it's also customary that if you were convicted of say, a particularly offensive offense, then you're not supposed to be released. Now, these two principles, the legal and customary, have indeed come into conflict. Google "Irish Supreme Court Mr A case" for the outcome. In short, the Irish Supreme court came down on the side of custom.
That's how Ireland is run. The law is a guideline, nothing more, a guideline to support the smooth application of our customs. This of course leads to very Irish problems, for which we must have very Irish solutions.
To surmise, the Garda Commissioner has made a request. It should be noted that it is customary for such requests to be granted.
There is a difference between browsing and buying.
People wear fashionable clothes for many reasons, and yes, one of those reasons is to attract potential spouses. But the key is potential. A woman in a short skirt, if it is indeed her objective, is wearing the skirt to attract potential suitors so she may appraise each that comes, reject any she deems unfit, and select any(one?) that she prefers.
It's a strategy to get noticed, not to get raped. And yes, the two concepts are completely exclusive. There's no excuse for getting so bitter about a perfectly reasonable decline from a woman in a pretty dress. The reality is that you probably would never have even asked if the skirt was not so short.
Men also employ this exact same strategy. Very few people go to a nightclub unkempt in a ragged shirt. People want potential partners to notice them, because that's how partners are obtained. Some people twist this into a convoluted rationalization of rape, but it's a poor excuse from people with no respect, and no patience.
People probably tend to have, or go along with, such a twisted view because of the nature of sexual interaction in our society. Typically, men have to approach and solicit them, and this solicitation is almost always completely indirect and obfuscated. As with anything, lack of transparency in motives, intentions and inquiry leads to confusion, embarrassment and anger. Yes, the situation is not ideal, but that is no excuse for being so ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've ever had roll a car down an incline to start it, or have ever been startled by a cyclist coming up behind you, you'll understand exactly why cars NEED to be noisy. It's not a spurious thing, driver or no.
Modern cars are essentially completely silent when their engines are off. An extremely dangerous situation occurs when someone has forgotten to put up their handbrake and has left their car on even a slight incline. A rolling car with its engine off is a gliding metal girder of death, silent as it is deadly. You simply will not hear it, especially if there is other traffic noise. A car does not have to be traveling very fast to maim or kill pedestrians or indeed drivers of other cars in its path.
Without an aural warning, people will be killed by electric cars. A good example of the need for these warnings, actually comes from video games. Many enemies and bosses in 3D video games have "audio cues" which occur just before they attack or perform some other noteworthy action. This is so that the player has a chance to react, often to a threat which is "offscreen". Without these cues, enemies and bosses become much more difficult to cope with. Since in a city, most oncoming traffic is "offscreen" to pedestrians, they need audio cues. They're playing for real!
Arachnophobia is the most common phobia, certainly in the western world. It's certainly not innate. Babies show no fear of spider at all. We pick arachnophobia up from our parents and from those around us, and it's easy to see why. When people around you, and almost everyone you see in contemporary media displays arachnophobia, it's hard not to be arachnophobic. Hollywood's use of spiders, and spider like creatures, as stock horror objects is actually a self perpetuating.
I would compare this to the slightly less common, and more substantiated, fear of wasps and bees. People will become very, very nervous around wasps and bees, jumping up from their seats, running away, or trying to kill the creature. But the reality is that these creatures will rarely sting unless you disturb them or their nest(at least in europe). Nevertheless fear of wasps is much more acceptable than fear of spiders, but only slightly more justifiable, and it's just as irrational.
Some people are so arachnophobic that they will actually kill any spiders they see. It's a very ugly thing to see someone quite viciously slam down a shoe or newspaper on a spider as it tries to scurry to safety. There is no reason to it. At least people who stand on chairs aren't taking it out on the spider. Apparently a cure for a phobia is gentle exposure. A friend of mine went to a spider museum in Prague and apparently lost all apprehension around spider entirely. I'm not sure I'd recommend this for your wife though.
There are no stupid questions. But there are stupid places to ask them. Try elsewhere, for better sources of information.
Change or upgrade your distro, then come back to me.
Like the Iranian's with the Bomb!
Character is worth nothing. It has become a marketing term to be exploited by charlatans who know what ties to wear and which social functions and political opinions to adhere to in order to ingratiate themselves with like minded hypocrites. It's social astroturf for people with no individual virtues. When I hear the word "Character", I reach for my cluestick.
Judging the actual quality of someone else, or even yourself, is in fact a very difficult thing. You cannot appraise someone's ethereal "worth" by how often they go skydiving or haircut or "morals". The truth is, someones personality and habits can undergo tectonic shifts and random times. Eagle scouts can sometimes become Jekyll and Hyde.
Because of this, "character" should rightly be regarded as useless in judging applicants for a position. Instead, the proper metric is merit. That is; How proficient and professional someone is in their field. That's all you want. Whether the guy goes skydiving on the weekends or stays in his basement playing Doom, should be of absolutely no importance. What is important is his ability to do the job you pay him to do, and to do it well.
If you ask for extra qualities besides that, then you are essentially paying for those extra qualities, and I don't think the boss will be pleased when he finds out just how much of the pay roll is being spent on "character" instead of actual work being done.
Absolutely.
I work on pretty much a daily basis with computer algebra systems. In my work, I am using CAS systems to perform integrals on what would be otherwise an unmanageable amount of equations, in order to generate some nice neat, but still quite large matrices. Despite its obvious technical inferiority, I'm using Maxima to do this. A lot of this has to do with running Mathematica and the like on Linux, which is a painful process, but the peer reviewable nature of an open source system is another major factor.
I've said this before, but essentially Mathematica is the modern mathematical Oracle at Delphi; arcane, totally inscrutable, and regarded by almost everyone as infallible. You cannot use its results professional for anything other than integral tables or the like. At least, not in mathematics. Maybe physicists use it, but I'd have my doubts. (Engineers? ... well they're a heathen lot anyway...)
True, Mathematica is useful. But it's closed source nature, combined with its almost universal presence in scientific research is very troubling.
Maxima also sucks. Here's a session from just this afternoon.
[omf@midgar 14:45:36 ~]$ maxima .....
Maxima 5.13.0 http://maxima.sourceforge.net/
Using Lisp GNU Common Lisp (GCL) GCL 2.6.8 (aka GCL)
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
This is a development version of Maxima. The function bug_report()
provides bug reporting information.
(%i1) Q=matrix....
(%i11) Q.T.transpose(Q);
(%o11) matrix([cos(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12)
- sin(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22), cos(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11)
- sin(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21), cos(t) T13 - sin(t) T23],
[cos(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22) + sin(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12),
cos(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21) + sin(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11),
cos(t) T23 + sin(t) T13], [cos(t) T31 - sin(t) T32, cos(t) T32 + sin(t) T31,
T33])
(%i12) trigsimp(%);
Universal error handler called recursively (:ERROR NIL
CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER
""
"Couldn't protect")
Universal error handler called recursively (:ERROR NIL
CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER
"" "Couldn't protect")
Maxima encountered a Lisp error:
Error in CONDITIONS::CLCS-UNIVERSAL-ERROR-HANDLER [or a callee]: Caught fatal error [memory may be damaged]
Automatically continuing.
To reenable the Lisp debugger set *debugger-hook* to nil.
(%i13) Q.trigsimp(T.transpose(Q));
(%o13) matrix([cos(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12)
- sin(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22), cos(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11)
- sin(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21), cos(t) T13 - sin(t) T23],
[cos(t) (cos(t) T21 - sin(t) T22) + sin(t) (cos(t) T11 - sin(t) T12),
cos(t) (cos(t) T22 + sin(t) T21) + sin(t) (cos(t) T12 + sin(t) T11),
cos(t) T23 + sin(t) T13], [cos(t) T31 - sin(t) T32, cos(t) T32 + sin(t) T31,
T33])
(%i14) trigsimp(Q.trigsimp(T.transpose(Q)));
Segmentation fault
[omf@midgar 14:48:25 ~]$
Computer algebra systems are not the best to begin with, but Maxima has a very, very long way to go before it can compete with Mathematica. Most of my analytical work on a daily basis is done using Maxima and I can safely say that the program could be a lot better than it currently is.
Ah. Not so easy then.
Neuroscience babble is not, and probably never will be, scientific evidence. Most, if not all, neuroscientists are essentially isomorphic to this caricature. They wear white coats, but they are not scientists.
What do these behavioral differences have to do with professional work in the field of computer science, or any science for that matter? What is it about behavior in male and female monkeys that effects the differences in their computer programs?
Some people, talk a lot of shit. Shit about "female brains" and "male brains" and "spatial reasoning" and "behavioral differences" and some other tripe. But I have yet to see any solid proof, outside of neuroscience and psychology junk studies, that any of the shit they talk has anything to do with people's ability to do a job, or have an interest in a field. If all you can offer me is statistical hocus pocus, then you can't offer me anything at all.
Go back in time 50 years and make a replacement in most of the arguments you see in this thread. Specifically, change "men" and "women" to "whites" and "blacks". My intention is not to make a rhetorical point, but to show you just how invalid most of the arguments for the lack of women in science really are. They keep the same company as old ideas and arguments about racial superiority/inferiority, so they cannot honestly be regarded as objective sources of truth.
Changing workforce trends over the last 50 years in western society have taught us one thing. The huge majority of reasons for the past lack of women in highly skilled labour was due to cultural and social factors. Therefore, if you ask me why there is a lack of women in computer science at this point in time, I can with some confidence state that it is because of social and cultural reasons.
Of course, I could be wrong. There could be some testosterone/estrogen activated/deactivated brain region or gland that promotes/inhibits emotional/spatial thinking when someone is exposed to dolls/trucks/fixed width fonts. Maybe. We could all pull all manner of such tripe out of our asses all day, and are indeed doing so in this thread. But you know what? I'll bet not one single experiment, a real experiment (blah, blah, wiki-trip, blah), will ever confirm a single word of it.
It's cultural. So stop talking shit, and acknowledge it.
Because Science is important, and we need all the scientists we can get.
This reminds me of a pretty egregious faux-pas in the character customization menus in the recent Fallout game. Basically, amid the extensive options available for tweaking your character, there was initially (right after gender) a "race" option. The options were something like:
1) Caucasian
2) Asian
3) African American
Coming from outside the US, this ranks as one of my top ten "WTF?" moments in video gaming. I knew that Americans were fairly insular, but to define an entire racial group as "XXXican American" struck me a particularly flagrant example of classic American ignorance. To wit; There are black people who have never been to America, whos ancestors have never been to America, and who probably never will go to America so long as they live. Many may not even know where America is. Similarly for "Asian Americans".
This kind of Americanization of even very basic things is quite frightening sometimes. It's scary to think just how much of the culture, laws, practices and viewpoints in my own country have their origins in a country with a very different mindset and world view. The politics of Middle America seems to end up in my living room whether I like it or not.
Here! Who the fuck do you think you are spouting that kind of shite! I was raised to sit up straight, and be polite, and peel me spuds before aeatin' 'em. I'm as polite and well mannered a Irishman as ever you'd meet. So feck off with yourself!
Why, so you could fail about in third person with your keyboard and mouse, all the while complaining about the lack of a first person perspective? I think Epic would make the right call by keeping the title on consoles.
Besides, Gears of War is the antithesis of everything PC shooters stand for. It is the total opposite of the run-and-gun mechanics that have dominated shooters since, ... well forever. It involves no circle strafing, no rocket jumping, and handles fragging gracefully by allowing the possibility of recovering. You take cover from enemy fire, and they reciprocate. You actually need your teammates to do more than shoot. You need to think tactically, know the importance of flanking, and of close combat, which involves more than switching to a knife and rapidly right clicking.
It's also aesthetically beautiful, with levels featuring extravagant and detailed architecture. Not a hundred meters of flat terrain, or uninteresting rubble over which to crouch jump and strafe while you dodge bullets. Each room is filled with objects and cover, allowing multiple ways of defeating the enemy instead of the standard pair of a) Run in blasting, b) Jump in and out of doorways blast. The game relies on actual art design instead of texture resolution and frame rates to look good, and it pays.
It's a game for console gamers. It provides the level of quality, polish and professionalism that console gamers have come to expect from AAA titles. This comment is not a troll. My honest opinion is that PC-game developers have become complacent about quality, and for that matter, so have PC-gamers. You've been fed slop for so long that when you're served up veal, you'll complain that it isn't slop.
So don't ask for a port. You won't like the game anyway.
Because we should value things that can be proven over those that cannot be disproven.
Things that have been proven, scientifically proven, are intrinsically more valuable than those that have not. And both are infinitely more valuable than ideas that can and never will be proven or disproven. Our leading scientific theories are proven facts which have been subjected to the highest level of scrutiny and standards.
Fuck this "Falisification" Bullshit! Evolution is a proven fact. Newtonian mechanics is a proven fact. General relativity is a proven fact. If you want to pull some falsification argument out of your ass or nitpick about thing not being compatible and how relativity "falsifies" Newtonian mechanics, then you can Fuck off back to your coding and your Wiki trips and let real scientists get back to doing their job . And that job is, yes, discovering the truth, not the myths or what we would like to be the truth. The Real Truth; which only science can provide.
I'm done with pandering to irrational people, and cultures, who refuse to let go of ridiculous and unsubstantiated beliefs. I'm sick of their rationalizations of totally irrational things, and I'm furious at their attempts to trivialize the importance of and depreciate the superiority, yes superiority, of the scientific method. There is nothing wrong with proclaiming its superiority and the manifest inferiority of and of the nonsense put forward as an alternative. We should not be afraid of telling people who believe ridiculous things that they are indeed ridiculous, and indeed ridiculing them when they obstinately persist in their unreason.
And the thing that gets me the most, is that by simply being honest, and expressing my honest opinions, even politely, I'll be regarded as a "militant". If I don't bow and scrap and perform becalming rituals before creationists, IDists, astrologists, philosophers, deists, theists, homeopaths, cultists, UFO nuts, conspiracy theorists, Holocaust denialists, AIDS denialists and any other Quack who spouts the first load of nonsense they can wrap in ten dollar words..... then I'm the Bad Guy!! I'm "oppressive", or "elitist", or "imperialist", or "bigoted", or "too scientifically minded". .... How Dare You!
I'm returning to the science of my childhood. That rock-solid method of investigating and understanding the universe through reason and experiment. There was nothing wrong with it and I'm ashamed that I ever listened or heeded the appeasers of unreason. It was and is a method infinitely superior to the rambling, incoherent, misleading, lies offered up by creationists and their ilk. I'm done with admitting the (ever dwindling)limits of science, and giving far more than due consideration to things I know to be totally and utterly wrong, just for the sake of not offending inunoffendable people. As you've probably guessed: "I'm Mad As Hell, And I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore!"
So, the next person who talks rubbish to me is going to get a piece of my mind. Politely perhaps, but not without barbs. I suggest that all reasonable Slashdotters who value science and its place in out society to do the same.
The Democrats are not far left, and the Republicans are not far right.
The Democrats are center left, and the Republicans are just plain right(and also just plain wrong).
Your new president is trying to fix the mess that ignorant and irrational opinions like yours helped to create. His success will largely depend on how many people like you ever wake up to reality and stop rationalizing their ridiculous dogmas.
Here's the translated page. And no, BabelFish did not produce a translation of the same quality.
Google frightens me sometimes. Almost every day now.
John.
Can you land on planets yet?
People tend to have rather nostalgic and idealized notions of the land of their birth/youth. It's usually irrational. Anyway, I'm guessing that you hail from a very modern and urbanized part of China, where the differences with the western world would not be as stark (The building in the west being smaller for example.)
Perhaps you could enlighten us with your own experiences of life in the Chinese rural provinces?
People forget that China's industrial boom, colossal as it is, has not actually affected most of the country or the population. 800 million people have been left behind over the course of the boom. The wealth and indeed to some extent freedoms enjoyed by the urban populations have most certainly not been extended to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. These people are not even allowed to live and work where they want to, essentially needed a chit from local officials to so much as rent an apartment. If that's not oppression, I don't know what is.
So please remember that China is a colossal country, and while you may have experienced little or no oppression in your own small and modernized corner, that does not mean that your experience is universal. When people in the west complain about lack of human rights and freedoms, it is largely the rights of the poor majority which they are referring to.
Now, your experience shows that life is getting better in China, and to be fair, there has been much improvement in the quality of life for many. But there has been little or no improvement in the political and other freedoms in China. Freedoms that people should enjoy, regardless of any ethos of consent. It is true that the communist party of China is in a difficult position, but even still they have made inexcusably little effort to give Chinese people the rights they should enjoy. They might be afraid of another July 4th, but if they don't release pressure by granting rights, then they will end up with another whether they like it or not.
Where do you live? In the United Federation of Planets or something? Over here, on Planet Earth, most rich people are rich because they are greedy, cunning and ruthless. Yes, that is the reason. Being smart and working hard will, 99 times out of a hundred, NOT make you wealthy. On the other hand, you can be fairly simple, and lazy and yet still be very rich. It just takes greed, cunning and ruthlessness.
I'm not saying that there is anything intrinsically wrong with these qualities, though in excess they can cause terrible harm. But, I do acknowledge the power of these forces to create wealth and employment for more than a few greedy people.
Everyone has social responsibility, even the greedy. Of course, its obvious from statements like this one that the greedy will not readily let go of their gains, often choosing to hoard them to the disadvantage of all. Greed is a force which we as a society have tried to domesticate, so that we can reap the benefits. Greed is in fact good, but only when kept on a leash. Not too tight of a leash of course, but you do need one, otherwise we'll all end up working for feudal barons and bosses again.
Rich people can only be rich in a society and framework that supports such a state of affairs. Being rich without a government means being robbed on a regular basis, or else spending exorbitant amounts on security for your person and possessions. Like it or not, the rich still owe a lot to the society they live in.
Just like central heating, electricity, piped water supplies, and your car.
In Ireland, we do not have what you would call Laws. What we have are more like Customs.
For example, it is customary in Ireland that no one need carry identification papers. Now, you do need a drivers license to drive a car, but it is customary, by the custom above, that this is not usually asked for by a Garda when you are stopped at say a road checkpoint for example. It is however, customary that a Garda will always, always ask you for your Name and Address when speaking to you. In fact, this particular custom is enshrined, not in constitutional law, but instead by statute. Every second bill passed in the Dail, will have the standard attached rider that "Under this bill, a member of An Garda Siochana may ask for the name and address of ...", or the like.
Now, it is(or was) legally the case in Ireland that if a law is struck down, then you're free to do whatever it was prohibiting, and free to go if convicted under that law. However, it's also customary that if you were convicted of say, a particularly offensive offense, then you're not supposed to be released. Now, these two principles, the legal and customary, have indeed come into conflict. Google "Irish Supreme Court Mr A case" for the outcome. In short, the Irish Supreme court came down on the side of custom.
That's how Ireland is run. The law is a guideline, nothing more, a guideline to support the smooth application of our customs. This of course leads to very Irish problems, for which we must have very Irish solutions.
To surmise, the Garda Commissioner has made a request. It should be noted that it is customary for such requests to be granted.
There is a difference between browsing and buying.
People wear fashionable clothes for many reasons, and yes, one of those reasons is to attract potential spouses. But the key is potential. A woman in a short skirt, if it is indeed her objective, is wearing the skirt to attract potential suitors so she may appraise each that comes, reject any she deems unfit, and select any(one?) that she prefers.
It's a strategy to get noticed, not to get raped. And yes, the two concepts are completely exclusive. There's no excuse for getting so bitter about a perfectly reasonable decline from a woman in a pretty dress. The reality is that you probably would never have even asked if the skirt was not so short.
Men also employ this exact same strategy. Very few people go to a nightclub unkempt in a ragged shirt. People want potential partners to notice them, because that's how partners are obtained. Some people twist this into a convoluted rationalization of rape, but it's a poor excuse from people with no respect, and no patience.
People probably tend to have, or go along with, such a twisted view because of the nature of sexual interaction in our society. Typically, men have to approach and solicit them, and this solicitation is almost always completely indirect and obfuscated. As with anything, lack of transparency in motives, intentions and inquiry leads to confusion, embarrassment and anger. Yes, the situation is not ideal, but that is no excuse for being so ignorant.