A laptop does not require any more administration than a tablet. The myth that computers require "administration" and that smartphones/tablets don't is just that. At myth. What is happening is that the same tasks that are called "administration" on computers are being called "settings" on a tablet.
Most people's laptop experiences administration wise are exactly the same as a tablet. When it is brand new, they enter their name and password. They then install the applications they use and that is it as far as administration goes.
I agree. Renting cars is just not worth it. A standard connector combined with a small gasoline trailer would solve the road trip/emergency headache for a large number of people. Drive on all electric for day to day driving, and when you need to make that 400 mile road trip, you hook on the trailer and go.
True, but Apple will gobble up everything they can. They also forgo features as cost savings measures. My suggestion is that Google make the baddest of bad ass phones. Even if that mean taking a loss on the hardware. And then limiting there sales to 10 percent of the market. This is very different than what Apple is doing.
That it's if you think that the high end market is only 10%. It also rules out the possibility that Google might break even or lose money on those phones. Remember. The idea isn't to achieve the highest margins. It is to make the best phones irrelevant of margins, without taking over the whole market. To set a bar that other manufacturers will push towards. The highest margins are not always on the most expensive products.
This is why I say that Google should set a market share target for Motorola. They should take something like 10% of the Android market, and set their price to hit that target. While doing that, they should make beyond top of the line phones. The idea being that every other manufacturer should be compared to how close they are to the Motorola phones. If Motorola starts taking more than their target share, they can raise their price, increasing profit margins. They make more money and their partners don't get scared off. If they start selling under their target, they lower the price and chalk the loss up to marketing.
This would push the platform forward, keep partners from having to worry about Google cutting them out, and might even make them some large profits.
That being said, they should continue with their Nexus program as well.
You are a good example of someone who is 80% down the slippery slope. Anonymity is one type of privacy. It is an important type of privacy. It may very well be the most important type of privacy. It is the type of privacy that you get when you mark a box on a ballot.
The reason that Apple "needs" to come up with new ideas is that coming up with new ideas is their business model. Really it isn't "coming up with new ideas" it is repackaging existing ideas in a way that turns a niche market (or market segment) into a mass market.
Apple is a high margin manufacturer. If they don't move into new markets or market segments, they quickly become overwhelmed by companies making that produce products at a better quality/price/feature ratio. They did that with GUI Desktops, MP3 Players, PDAs, Smart Phones, Tablets, and *nix on the desktop. They were overwhelmed in the GUI Desktop market. MP3 players are now a niche market again because MP3 players come free inside every smartphone sold now. PDAs are niche market for the same reason. They have lost the lead in the Smart Phone market, and are seeing serious chinks in the armor of their tablet market. They are still doing well profit wise on with Unix on the desktop, but they have not had the success in taking it really mass market like their other products. Their market share is still very low. At the same time that they are making progress on that front, they are educating the public that they don't need Windows while a dramatically cheaper alternative *nix is waiting in the wings to move from every other market into the desktop. Some (not I) would argue that the desktop market is going niche anyway.
Even the "driving with one hand" is BS. People will make all sorts of excuses, but A) A huge percentage of the people don't drive with both hands even if they are not doing anything else at the same time. B) People driving stick shifts can't keep both hands on the wheel any better than someone on a phone.
Cell phones also fall prey to confirmation bias. The way the data is collected, is that if a person is using a cell phone, the accident is listed as a cell phone related accident. This is the case even if the driver hasn't slept in three days and the conversation they are having is the only thing keeping them awake while they are legally stopped at a red light and the other vehicle is a car smashing into them from behind because the driver was trying to see their baby in a rear facing car seat that is in the back seat.
There is no reason that one job shouldn't be able to support a whole family in this day and age. Our levels of efficiency and automation are so high that we are now bumping our heads on not having enough for everyone to do.
The big problem for chiropractic care is that their are too many quacks. As you say, the mechanisms by which it works is well understood and fully supported by medical science. Unfortunately, even when people go for treatments that do work, many chiropractors will add a little hocus pocus to raise the bill.
The problem with affirmative action is that it leads to addiction just like pain killers. Affirmative action is like giving you an Oxycontin prescription with unlimited refills because your neighbor broke his leg.
The biological reason is that women have babies. I know, your first thought is "What?!?!?! That is stupid!". Here me out though. The answer to almost all questions concerning "is it biological or environmental" is "Yes". 20,000 years ago chasing down a wild boar while 9 months pregnant in the dead of winter was simply not realistic. We had not yet developed agriculture, so planning ahead for the winter and late pregnancy wasn't really going to cut it. At this time in human history, attaching yourself to a male that will 'bring home the bacon' was a matter of survival. For men, 'bringing home the bacon' was a means to procreation. It may be crude to say in mixed company, but this is why prostitution is considered the oldest profession.
Jump ahead 10,000 years and humans started developing agriculture. Early agriculture couldn't be easy work. It was a time where being the biggest and strongest might not have been an absolute necessity, but it certainly gave big strong men an evolutionary advantage of small weak ones. Still, women who attached themselves to big strong men who would stick around had a greater chance of passing on their genes.
We have only had, maybe, 100 years of civilization where being big and strong did not give men a biological advantage and women a biological advantage by having sex with these men greater than they could get by assuming the roles that these men filled. It would be fair to argue that 100 year number to be as low as 0 when spread across the entire population.
So, what we see now is that we have 20,000 years of biologically created social structure to overcome. I will make a call back to the question of "Is it biology or environment?", and say again "Yes". We now live in an age where 90% of the jobs could be done by women and taking a few months off for a pregnancy is not going to lead to starvation, but there is still the 10% of jobs that are biologically biased, and we have to deal with the societal environment we been pushed to by biology.
The biggest hurdle is that people are people. Most people will work take the path of least resistance and work as little as possible in the easiest job they can find. What this leads to is that little girls are trained that they can make a living without even getting out of bed. People don't want to admit this, but I see it every day. It starts out from before they can walk. STEM fields are harder than a lot of other fields. They require effort. It isn't that women can't do it. It is that they don't have to. Consider, how many people you know that would continue to work at their current job if they won the lottery tomorrow? When it comes to food on the table and a roof over their head, most women in the US have won the lottery. (Notice that I am not saying that they won in terms of other rights or quality of life. I am strictly speaking of food and shelter. The things that let you survive.)
To be fair, I also agree that gender stereo types are incredibly strong in society. It is really strong even with many who believe they don't do it. I am very conscious of it with my child, and I know that even I do it. If my son wanted to where a pretty pretty princes dress, I wouldn't tell him no, but I would talk with him about how he could expect to be treated by others because of it, and let him decide if it was worth it, or if it was something he wanted to do only at home. I also don't buy him princess dresses as surprise gifts. When his mom is painting her nails and he wants to paint his too, I recommend black because it is a color than males can pull off without getting teased. I still won't tell him no, but there is also no good reason to throw him to the wolves unprepared. If I had a daughter, nail polish or a princess dress wouldn't even cross my mind.
I tried not to assume anything. I'm asking if women don't attain higher in STEM fields of education because they don't see a career in STEM as a viable target, because there are few women working in STEM. Negative feedback loop anyone?
I am not buying this. While there might be some jobs like fireman or kindergarten teacher where gender dominance is publicly visible to kids, I don't think most kids know that STEM is predominantly male until someone starts telling them that more women are needed, and that "really, you can do it even though you are a girl".
The feedback loop you are looking for is as old as man itself. The fact that chasing down a wild boar in the dead of winter while 9 months pregnant doesn't lead to a real high survival rate. This lead to making sure that if you were of the child bearing gender, you tried to bear children only with those who would care for you. Fast forward 10,000 years and little girls are still trained from birth that 'bringing home the bacon' is an option and that they can choose to just find a man to take care of them. Little boys are taught from birth that if they want to eat, they will need to 'bring home the bacon'. If they want to breed, they will need to give a bunch of that bacon to a woman.
While times are changing, up until very recently, if a woman didn't work while her husband did, she was a 'housewife'. If a man didn't work while his wife did he was a 'bumb'.
You are right that a long term view is needed. That is why biasing towards women is a bad plan. Today, people tell themselves that "We are just correcting historical bias". The problem is that you are just creating a new set of biases. In the long run, you are not fixing the problem, you are just shifting which group has the advantage. I see this all the time with my 9 year old son. Over the years we have had lots of events and programs that he would have loved to attend and would likely have learned a good deal from, but they were only being offered to girls. Frequently the events he does attend will include people running them that make subtle, (or sometimes not so subtle) digs against boys, implying that they are inherently bad or inferior. Just reading the comments on this article, you see adult men that have been trained to believe that somehow they don't deserve to be treated as an equal individual because they have a penis. The rhetoric against males has only snowballed in the the past two decades. The long term view says that you stop the pendulum from swinging. You don't just shove it in the other direction.
This is exactly it. From the day they are born, little boys are taught that if they want to have a roof over their head and food in their belly, they would need to make sure they had a job. Even if that job completely sucked. From the day they are born, little girls are taught that they are just one blowjob away from a warm bed and a good meal. (OK that was crass and society usually works up to the blowjob part) The point is that it is made clear to every boy that he MUST work and to every girl that she CAN work.
If you divide up the groups based on who is told they CAN work as opposed to MUST work, you find that everything looks a lot more fair. There are other reasons that people do or don't have to work, and you will find that men who believe they don't have to work tend to fall into the same category as the bulk of women, whereas women who believe they do have to work tend to fall into the category as most men.
It isn't so much a gender bias in the workplace as a systemic bias towards women having their way paid by men with a bit of "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." thrown in.
That or she taught you the lesson you would carry with you for the rest of your life. She tough you that women are helpless victims and that men are evil abusers who's very presence is an attack on women. She was wrong.
The problem is that you are discriminating against men. Women make sexual jokes, flirt in the office, are crass just as much as men. The difference that a large portion of the population takes the stance that if a man makes a sexual or biased comment, the man is a sexist. If a woman makes a sexual or biased comment the man is a sexist.
I can say that I have never heard a man in an office declare that he should mutilate women's sexual organs. I have heard more than one woman comment that they should mutilate men's sexual organs.
I can say that I have never been to a children's at a museum where the event coordinator wore a "Guys Rule!" T-Shirt. I can't say the same about "Girls Rule!" and other gender biased shirts.
I can say that I have never been told "We will not consider women for this position". I have been told "We will not consider men for this position".
I could go on, but the point is that male bashing is not the solution to end gender bias. You are part of the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
A laptop does not require any more administration than a tablet. The myth that computers require "administration" and that smartphones/tablets don't is just that. At myth. What is happening is that the same tasks that are called "administration" on computers are being called "settings" on a tablet.
Most people's laptop experiences administration wise are exactly the same as a tablet. When it is brand new, they enter their name and password. They then install the applications they use and that is it as far as administration goes.
Nope. When the car was first introduced, it was not a step forward. Not even close.
I agree. Renting cars is just not worth it. A standard connector combined with a small gasoline trailer would solve the road trip/emergency headache for a large number of people. Drive on all electric for day to day driving, and when you need to make that 400 mile road trip, you hook on the trailer and go.
Even better than renting a gas car for road trips would be to hook up a small gas generator trailer (perhaps rented) to the back of your EV.
You seem to be implying that the US doesn't isn't stuck with a perpetual set of "nut jobs" holding the balance of power.
True, but Apple will gobble up everything they can. They also forgo features as cost savings measures. My suggestion is that Google make the baddest of bad ass phones. Even if that mean taking a loss on the hardware. And then limiting there sales to 10 percent of the market. This is very different than what Apple is doing.
In California, the legislature has dictated school subjects for a long time. I assume it is the same in most states.
That it's if you think that the high end market is only 10%. It also rules out the possibility that Google might break even or lose money on those phones. Remember. The idea isn't to achieve the highest margins. It is to make the best phones irrelevant of margins, without taking over the whole market. To set a bar that other manufacturers will push towards. The highest margins are not always on the most expensive products.
This is why I say that Google should set a market share target for Motorola. They should take something like 10% of the Android market, and set their price to hit that target. While doing that, they should make beyond top of the line phones. The idea being that every other manufacturer should be compared to how close they are to the Motorola phones. If Motorola starts taking more than their target share, they can raise their price, increasing profit margins. They make more money and their partners don't get scared off. If they start selling under their target, they lower the price and chalk the loss up to marketing.
This would push the platform forward, keep partners from having to worry about Google cutting them out, and might even make them some large profits.
That being said, they should continue with their Nexus program as well.
You are a good example of someone who is 80% down the slippery slope. Anonymity is one type of privacy. It is an important type of privacy. It may very well be the most important type of privacy. It is the type of privacy that you get when you mark a box on a ballot.
Commodore?
The reason that Apple "needs" to come up with new ideas is that coming up with new ideas is their business model. Really it isn't "coming up with new ideas" it is repackaging existing ideas in a way that turns a niche market (or market segment) into a mass market.
Apple is a high margin manufacturer. If they don't move into new markets or market segments, they quickly become overwhelmed by companies making that produce products at a better quality/price/feature ratio. They did that with GUI Desktops, MP3 Players, PDAs, Smart Phones, Tablets, and *nix on the desktop. They were overwhelmed in the GUI Desktop market. MP3 players are now a niche market again because MP3 players come free inside every smartphone sold now. PDAs are niche market for the same reason. They have lost the lead in the Smart Phone market, and are seeing serious chinks in the armor of their tablet market. They are still doing well profit wise on with Unix on the desktop, but they have not had the success in taking it really mass market like their other products. Their market share is still very low. At the same time that they are making progress on that front, they are educating the public that they don't need Windows while a dramatically cheaper alternative *nix is waiting in the wings to move from every other market into the desktop. Some (not I) would argue that the desktop market is going niche anyway.
Not if your study is rigged to show that it isn't.
Even the "driving with one hand" is BS. People will make all sorts of excuses, but A) A huge percentage of the people don't drive with both hands even if they are not doing anything else at the same time. B) People driving stick shifts can't keep both hands on the wheel any better than someone on a phone.
Cell phones also fall prey to confirmation bias. The way the data is collected, is that if a person is using a cell phone, the accident is listed as a cell phone related accident. This is the case even if the driver hasn't slept in three days and the conversation they are having is the only thing keeping them awake while they are legally stopped at a red light and the other vehicle is a car smashing into them from behind because the driver was trying to see their baby in a rear facing car seat that is in the back seat.
There is no reason that one job shouldn't be able to support a whole family in this day and age. Our levels of efficiency and automation are so high that we are now bumping our heads on not having enough for everyone to do.
Highlander what? They only made one Highlander move and a TV show. ONE I SAY!
The big problem for chiropractic care is that their are too many quacks. As you say, the mechanisms by which it works is well understood and fully supported by medical science. Unfortunately, even when people go for treatments that do work, many chiropractors will add a little hocus pocus to raise the bill.
The problem with affirmative action is that it leads to addiction just like pain killers. Affirmative action is like giving you an Oxycontin prescription with unlimited refills because your neighbor broke his leg.
The biological reason is that women have babies. I know, your first thought is "What?!?!?! That is stupid!". Here me out though. The answer to almost all questions concerning "is it biological or environmental" is "Yes". 20,000 years ago chasing down a wild boar while 9 months pregnant in the dead of winter was simply not realistic. We had not yet developed agriculture, so planning ahead for the winter and late pregnancy wasn't really going to cut it. At this time in human history, attaching yourself to a male that will 'bring home the bacon' was a matter of survival. For men, 'bringing home the bacon' was a means to procreation. It may be crude to say in mixed company, but this is why prostitution is considered the oldest profession.
Jump ahead 10,000 years and humans started developing agriculture. Early agriculture couldn't be easy work. It was a time where being the biggest and strongest might not have been an absolute necessity, but it certainly gave big strong men an evolutionary advantage of small weak ones. Still, women who attached themselves to big strong men who would stick around had a greater chance of passing on their genes.
We have only had, maybe, 100 years of civilization where being big and strong did not give men a biological advantage and women a biological advantage by having sex with these men greater than they could get by assuming the roles that these men filled. It would be fair to argue that 100 year number to be as low as 0 when spread across the entire population.
So, what we see now is that we have 20,000 years of biologically created social structure to overcome. I will make a call back to the question of "Is it biology or environment?", and say again "Yes". We now live in an age where 90% of the jobs could be done by women and taking a few months off for a pregnancy is not going to lead to starvation, but there is still the 10% of jobs that are biologically biased, and we have to deal with the societal environment we been pushed to by biology.
The biggest hurdle is that people are people. Most people will work take the path of least resistance and work as little as possible in the easiest job they can find. What this leads to is that little girls are trained that they can make a living without even getting out of bed. People don't want to admit this, but I see it every day. It starts out from before they can walk. STEM fields are harder than a lot of other fields. They require effort. It isn't that women can't do it. It is that they don't have to. Consider, how many people you know that would continue to work at their current job if they won the lottery tomorrow? When it comes to food on the table and a roof over their head, most women in the US have won the lottery. (Notice that I am not saying that they won in terms of other rights or quality of life. I am strictly speaking of food and shelter. The things that let you survive.)
To be fair, I also agree that gender stereo types are incredibly strong in society. It is really strong even with many who believe they don't do it. I am very conscious of it with my child, and I know that even I do it. If my son wanted to where a pretty pretty princes dress, I wouldn't tell him no, but I would talk with him about how he could expect to be treated by others because of it, and let him decide if it was worth it, or if it was something he wanted to do only at home. I also don't buy him princess dresses as surprise gifts. When his mom is painting her nails and he wants to paint his too, I recommend black because it is a color than males can pull off without getting teased. I still won't tell him no, but there is also no good reason to throw him to the wolves unprepared. If I had a daughter, nail polish or a princess dress wouldn't even cross my mind.
I tried not to assume anything. I'm asking if women don't attain higher in STEM fields of education because they don't see a career in STEM as a viable target, because there are few women working in STEM. Negative feedback loop anyone?
I am not buying this. While there might be some jobs like fireman or kindergarten teacher where gender dominance is publicly visible to kids, I don't think most kids know that STEM is predominantly male until someone starts telling them that more women are needed, and that "really, you can do it even though you are a girl".
The feedback loop you are looking for is as old as man itself. The fact that chasing down a wild boar in the dead of winter while 9 months pregnant doesn't lead to a real high survival rate. This lead to making sure that if you were of the child bearing gender, you tried to bear children only with those who would care for you. Fast forward 10,000 years and little girls are still trained from birth that 'bringing home the bacon' is an option and that they can choose to just find a man to take care of them. Little boys are taught from birth that if they want to eat, they will need to 'bring home the bacon'. If they want to breed, they will need to give a bunch of that bacon to a woman.
While times are changing, up until very recently, if a woman didn't work while her husband did, she was a 'housewife'. If a man didn't work while his wife did he was a 'bumb'.
You are right that a long term view is needed. That is why biasing towards women is a bad plan. Today, people tell themselves that "We are just correcting historical bias". The problem is that you are just creating a new set of biases. In the long run, you are not fixing the problem, you are just shifting which group has the advantage. I see this all the time with my 9 year old son. Over the years we have had lots of events and programs that he would have loved to attend and would likely have learned a good deal from, but they were only being offered to girls. Frequently the events he does attend will include people running them that make subtle, (or sometimes not so subtle) digs against boys, implying that they are inherently bad or inferior. Just reading the comments on this article, you see adult men that have been trained to believe that somehow they don't deserve to be treated as an equal individual because they have a penis. The rhetoric against males has only snowballed in the the past two decades. The long term view says that you stop the pendulum from swinging. You don't just shove it in the other direction.
This is exactly it. From the day they are born, little boys are taught that if they want to have a roof over their head and food in their belly, they would need to make sure they had a job. Even if that job completely sucked. From the day they are born, little girls are taught that they are just one blowjob away from a warm bed and a good meal. (OK that was crass and society usually works up to the blowjob part) The point is that it is made clear to every boy that he MUST work and to every girl that she CAN work.
If you divide up the groups based on who is told they CAN work as opposed to MUST work, you find that everything looks a lot more fair. There are other reasons that people do or don't have to work, and you will find that men who believe they don't have to work tend to fall into the same category as the bulk of women, whereas women who believe they do have to work tend to fall into the category as most men.
It isn't so much a gender bias in the workplace as a systemic bias towards women having their way paid by men with a bit of "That which does not kill you makes you stronger." thrown in.
That or she taught you the lesson you would carry with you for the rest of your life. She tough you that women are helpless victims and that men are evil abusers who's very presence is an attack on women. She was wrong.
The problem is that you are discriminating against men. Women make sexual jokes, flirt in the office, are crass just as much as men. The difference that a large portion of the population takes the stance that if a man makes a sexual or biased comment, the man is a sexist. If a woman makes a sexual or biased comment the man is a sexist.
I can say that I have never heard a man in an office declare that he should mutilate women's sexual organs. I have heard more than one woman comment that they should mutilate men's sexual organs.
I can say that I have never been to a children's at a museum where the event coordinator wore a "Guys Rule!" T-Shirt. I can't say the same about "Girls Rule!" and other gender biased shirts.
I can say that I have never been told "We will not consider women for this position". I have been told "We will not consider men for this position".
I could go on, but the point is that male bashing is not the solution to end gender bias. You are part of the problem.