Considering how many times the.DOC file format has changed, can you still open up.doc files you made in Word 1.0 with Word 2k3? The answer is YES, so the closed format and not being able to view it in 10 years is mute. You don't think MS will support their own formats 10 years from now?
First, just because they "support" one format going forward does not mean they "support" all of them. There are plenty of deprecated Microsoft file formats that are no longer readable. Second, have you ever opened a really old.doc file with a new version of Word? The fonts and layout are invariable messed up and and mathematical equations are gibberish in Word documents just two versions old. I have a number of four year old.doc files bequeathed to me at work and only about half of them display correctly. I have three that will not even open in Word, but will in OpenOffice. So to answer your question, no I don't think I'll be able to properly view MS's PDF replacement files after 10 years. And no I don't think MS removing all competition from yet another set of applications and then leaving them to stagnate along with much of the rest of computing is a good idea.
Frankly, OSX (any version) would be a HUGE downgrade for me since you can't play most games on it.
That's not really true you know, right? Sure there are some games you can't play, but most games are ported and a number of good games never get ported from the the mac to Windows. If you just want to play games you might as well buy a console.
All the other shit I need a computer for like browsing, email, DAP sync, word processing works just fine under XP... So, I say again, what does OSX have that I actually need?
How about spell checking, grammar checking, language translation, dictionary/thesaurus/google lookup of all text everywhere? How about just using the same spell checking dictionary in both your mail and word processor if you so desire? How about the ability to make a PDF from every application without having to buy additional software? How about being able to view PDFs without your machine grinding to a halt while they load? How about being able to leave your computer running 24/7 for a month with a dozen applications open without worrying about your machine slowing down or a game running slowly because other programs are open? How about having the option of viewing all of your open windows simultaneously and instantly with a single mouse button press and being able to select from among them? How about being able, without additional software and without writing a line of code to automatically script hundreds of different computer operations from renaming files to downloading images from a web site, scaling them to size, inserting them in a PDF, and e-mailing them to a given address. How about being able to find and launch any program, file, website, etc. with a quick 5 keystrokes that are ordered in such a way that you don't need to memorized them (cmd-space-1st letter of name - 2nd letter - enter)? How about just being able to browse the web and open any e-mail message without having to worry that it might contain a virus or internet worm?
Now I use Windows for certain tasks, OS X for many tasks, and Linux for certain tasks, but as far as general purpose computing goes OS X is so much faster, and more functional than Windows XP that there really is no comparison.
The truth is, I am about as associated with microsoft
Jeez, learn to take a joke already.
GSView is nice and fast, but it is crash proned[sic]
Really? I know the half-assed Windows port used to crash occasionally, but I've never had the Linux or BSD versions crash on me. I guess that shoots down the myth about Windows having more, better, applications.
As for open vs. closed. I agree with you when talking about applications (although open is a big plus for custom or business use). When it comes to file formats, however, I strongly disagree. You see I want to be able to read my financial records, books, and other documents 10 years from now and I want the option of allowing anyone else to do the same. I also like the option of using whatever program/OS I like and have available to do it. Right now you don't like any of the PDF viewers you've tried but at least you have a choice and can try more than one. When MS pushes PDF out of the home/office space you will be stuck using just the one they provide. Also, like the situation with IE, once they have the market, they will not have to compete to maintain it so you can say goodbye to any improvements from then on.
I publish a lot of documents for both select audiences and the general public as well as archiving my own papers. I expect to be highly annoyed when I have to deal with a lot of half-assed publication in formats that only some people can read and even fewer write because not all platforms are supported. I also imagine I'll be very annoyed as everyone continues to use what will become an outdated and inferior format, simply because it is shipped with Windows by default.
Your complaints about viewing PDFs are very valid. It demonstrates the need for competition in the space and a good alternative to PDF, or at least alternative viewers. MS expanding their monopoly into the space, however, will make the situation much, much worse in the long term.
Have you ever compared the speed-feel of using a crappy XP machine (say my 1.3Ghz Pentium M laptop) to, oh, say a top-of-the-line OS X machine?
Nope. But I've certainly done a lot of comparisons using middle of the road, but similar OS X and Windows Systems. For a very long time my desktop held two machines I used for very similar tasks, mostly using the same software. The PC had a little more RAM and a lot more Ghz, but all in all they were both middle of the road professional machines. You know what I found? Windows is faster at some things, OS X at others. For example, opening a folder with many items in it was faster in Windows. Opening applications was faster on the mac. Running Perl scripts and performing intensive text mapping in Adobe applications was much faster on the mac. Previewing images was faster in Windows, but it could not handle nearly as many types of images. The most important thing for me, however, was multitasking. Windows was just fine at running an application. It was a little slow running an application while several other applications sat idle. It sucked donkey balls when trying to run a dozen programs simultaneously or when trying to have multiple programs actually do things at the same time. I kind of like to tell an application to do something, then move on to another task. With Windows it sometimes took more than a minute just for focus to switch to another application and then doing anything was like working on a 386.
I use a lot of different OS's, but when comparing Windows to the mac, well Windows takes forever to accomplish tasks and can't handle many of the things I do every day. Right now I have about 15 applications running, including several web browsers, some Adobe apps, mail, terminals, calendar , graphics editor, chat client, word processor, XML editor, diagram layout app, etc. That just did not work for me on Windows. I had to be content with a terminal, layout app, and maybe one other application if I wanted it to be responsive enough to get anything done. I still use Windows for tasks where it is faster or better and for compatibility testing, but it just can't cut it as a general workstation OS.
you can turn off all the slow Finder animations," but no one at the Mac store has ever been able to demonstrate this to me.
This right here tells me you have never given OS X a try as a working OS. Pretty much anyone can figure this out in about 15 minutes. All of the whizbang animations, etc. are able to be turned on or off in the system preferences pane for that feature. Apple is offering a 30 day trial of mac minis right now. You can sign up at their website and they will ship you one. Try it for a month and if you don't like it, ship it back. It will cost you as much as it takes to ship it back. They are certainly not fast machines, but they are fine for most general purpose computing or to get a feel for the OS. Personally, I don't think I could ever give up plug-in system wide services (like spell checking, grammar checking, and translation for all text, everywhere) nor do I think I could give up the functional multitasking and real CLI.
they tend to cost more than the commoditized PC compatible.
That is a more reasonable claim, and I'm sure it is true for some Apple computers and not rue for others. Obviously there is no way to do a perfect comparison. Your previous claim about $1000, however, was absurd. So I challenge you to find a small-form factor machine with the same or better hardware and software specs as the mac mini for a cheaper price. I challenge you to find a consumer laptop with similar or better specs to an ibook for the same or cheaper. Don't forget to include applications equivalent to what is shipped with those machines and don't forget to include reliability and support that matches Apple's top rating by consumer reports.
You say you're just trying to make a point, well so am I. Five years ago Apple machines were more expensive for what you could get than a comparable PC. Today, however, they may not have as many offerings to fill every price point, but the machines they do have are very competitive on price. I use both macs and PCs and a have a very hard time finding even reasonably good quality hardware for the same prices Apple sells at. Sure they gouge you for RAM if you're foolish enough to buy it from them and in some cases they are more expensive on the high-end. But it is time to quit repeating this foolish overpriced myth that you read in PC magazine 5 years ago. It just isn't true anymore and hasn't been for a long time. So put up or shut up already.
It certainly is unfair to compare OSX to Beta 1 because Beta 1 literally has none of its new features built in...
What are the most advanced and best operating systems you can get from each vendor? Well you can get the OS X 10.4.2 or OS X for intel release or you can get WinXP Pro or the Windows Vista beta 1. I'd say comparing these to one another is certainly fair.
But we all know who wins a Windows vs. OS X comparison based upon the current releases so a lot of people are looking at what MS will be releasing and comparing it to what they can from Apple. When the Vista beta 2 and Vista Gold releases are available for comparison I'm sure they'll be compared as well. It's not like Windows is the only OS that releases software where most of the advancement is aimed at the architecture and what developers can do with it. OS X 10.4 added tons of meta data functionality, built in graphics and database functionality, etc. It does not matter. All users care about is what they can do with the OS and right now that is Vista beta 1 for some WinXP for others. Windows has fallen behind and is trying to catch up. Deal with it.
PDF is an open, published standard with multiple open and closed source implementations of both readers and writers. PDF sucks on Windows right now mostly because most people view PDFs with the slow and bloated Acrobat reader plug-in running with IE and neither IE nor Windows in general has good end-to-end multitasking. When most people think of PDFs they think of clicking on a link and then waiting a few minutes while their computer is unusable for the thing to load. Viewing PDFs on Linux or OS X on the other hand is fast and if your internet connection is too slow, your machine is still usable while you wait for it to download. PDF as format is just fine.
Now contrast this with what MS will likely be offering. You will have no choice of client, probably no choice of OS, it may or may not be readable on current software in a decade, and it will probably be as half-assed as all their other take over programs. It will be just good enough for most users to not bother buying or downloading an alternative. It will suck for real publishing where PDF will continue to dominate, but it will still take over on the low-end because it will be bundled with the OS and hence with pretty much every PC you buy. Basically it will be very similar to the existing Word format with better layout controls and vector graphics. It will abound in office settings since most users and managers won't realize that they are losing choice and forward compatibility. It will suck for everyone who has to deal with it that is not running Windows.
I guess if you think moving from an open standard to a closed one owned by Microsoft is a good thing, well we'll just have to agree that you're being paid a lot of money by them.
it still does it better than windows for a mere $1,000 more than your silly little white box."
Wow you can buy a small form factor PC for -$500 dollars? Sign me up for a billion of them. Oh, wait, you didn't mean to include minis. OK, just send me a few million of those free consumer grade laptops and a couple of those $500 professional laptops with the firewire, multiple monitor support, comprehensive software package etc.
Or maybe you can do a little research and stop spreading that ridiculous FUD about how expensive Apple machines are. Apple does not offer as many price points and form factors, but they are pretty competitive if you compare them on the included hardware and software vs. price.
is it fair to compare Tiger to a Beta?? 'ha! our completed OS OWNS your beta OS. unf unf in your face'
Well, I'd say it is not really fair. What needs to be said is "our current OS is still better even then your new OS that won't even be out for another year or two. " By the time Vista is released Apple's current offering will probably be another few years ahead of it and While Windows users are drooling over the "new" features, OS X users will be running a system comparable to what MS will release a few years after that.
After reading about Vista, and then about what features are actually going to be into it I was pretty annoyed to discover most of the core features are either weak copies of OS X features or ways to lock-in the user even more. They are adding in DRM galore, trying to kill openGL and move everyone to their proprietary DirectX, trying to kill PDF and move everyone to their proprietary alternative, etc., etc. Too bad most purchasers are so uninformed. I wonder if they will be able to buy the EU to avoid getting beaten for all this continued monopoly abuse and move to closed, proprietary formats that contradict EU purchasing policies and further illegally extend MS's monopoly.
Motorola actually do make decent phones for talking to people on.
Perhaps, but if so they also make really crappy phones. The interface on my motorola phone is so bad it takes a minimum of 6 key-presses to select someone from your phone book and call them. You can, however, buy a new "wallpaper" for your phone's background (which will automatically be added to your bill) by dropping it. Great idea making that the single easiest thing to do. Also, it is a flip phone, but they helpfully included buttons on the outside of the phone and no way to lock them. As a result my phone must be in silent mode all the time or I beep as I walk as the buttons are constantly pressed. Motorola needs to hire a few good UI designers, if not they sure won't ever get my money again.
if they're so "incidental" why can't he just ignore them?
If you bothered to continue reading, I wrote, "Certs, education, experience, are all pretty incidental. What counts is demonstrating you can do the job and do it well. What works here, however, would not work everywhere. In some places certs are a plus, in others a minus."
He apparently works in a situation where he believes the presence of certs on a resume is a useful predictor of undesired characteristics. Since presumably neither of us work at the same place as the person who made that comment, what basis would we have for saying that he is wrong in his assessment?
While based upon algebra and geometry, differential calculus does not fall wholly into either one of these mathematical disciplines and is usually regarded, in academic circles, as it's own entity.
And you don't think you can increase your mental "working space" with practice?
Certainly, but that is not the point. Intelligence is defined as the capacity for understanding. If you are so inclined you can argue that it is the capacity of an individual at a given time and can be increased with practice or that it is the total capacity for an individual. The problem with applying the latter definition in this context, however, is that IQ test does not even attempt to measure that second capacity and so it falls outside the scope of relevance for this discussion.
hen we've got a scale (PM tests) whish give sensible human-equivalent IQ scores for dolphins, or chimps
Ahhh but how many chimps and dolphins have you asked about what sort of biases they have encountered in the tests? The more different a subject is from the author of a test, the more room for error due to bias. Who is to say if we are short-changing or over-estimating the intelligence of these animals? I mean dolphins spend all their time eating, screwing, playing, and doing things we don't understand with sponges. Obviously they are more successful than we are, but they only score higher in one test that I have ever heard of. And yet, they can't build a simple airplane, so they are obviously less intelligent. Or maybe, they are just intelligent in different ways, perhaps ways we don't normally even consider intelligence? There is not really any good way to know.
I have a hard time accepting that all IQ tests are equally poor, and hence completely worthless.
I don't think anyone ever argued that all of them are equally poor. It is easy to make a very poor and biased test. The trouble is that on the opposite end of the spectrum it is impossible for a human being to write an IQ test that will test a range of individuals without any bias. The trick is to keep that bias very small. In my experience most tests are pretty poor, especially some of the most popular ones which should have been retired decades ago.
What possible evidence do you have to support that (definite) assertion? Even if some tests are biased (which I'm not arguing with), how on earth can you possibly extend that to assert all tests always are? This is a complete logical non-sequiteur.
You're applying physical standards of proof to a purely intellectual problem. All test must have authors, or they are not tests, per se. All authors have a set of experience, knowledge, and concepts with which they deal with reality. In creating a test authors use their experience, knowledge, and conceptual understanding because it is the way brains work. Hence all tests will reflect, in some way, their creator. It is a proof by the nature of tests, not by experience with a property of tests; a logical proof, not a physical one. The whole concept as to whether an answer is correct or not depends upon having the same understanding as the author. Simple things like the language of a test, the shapes used, the colors, etc. are all very relative to the perceptions of the author(s) and subjects. Theoretically could their be some sort of completely impartial, random IQ test generating pseudo-intelligence? Maybe. But for all practical purposes all IQ tests will be biased to some degree.
if all IQ tests exhibit a slight tendency for men to score higher, what's the difference in evidence between "every test in the world ever being biased" and men actually being cleverer?
Well first, the article never mentions how many tests are used, but I seriously doubt it is "all tests." What we are discussing is the results of a few (most likely very popular) IQ tests. Of the three most commonly used IQ tests two were written by white, male, academics and one was written b
While it is unusual to discriminate someone for a redeeming quality it is not unheard of. A recent discrimination case was brought against Merill Lynch for refusing to hire Yale graduates, as the hiring manager was a Harvard graduate.
I can see where you might have a case if you can prove that the degree is a "redeeming quality." This person, however, never said they refused to hire anyone with a cert, they just said it was a strike against them. Also, they justified it as an indication that the candidate was unsuitable for the job because they wasted their time with useless bureaucracy. That may be an opinion that many people do not share, but it is just as valid as saying you prefer not to hire candidates from a particular school because you think their programs teach non-productive material. That is not to say that you would refuse to hire anyone from that school, merely that you don't think they are likely to be qualified. I'd be willing to bet that the case you mentioned earlier involved a person who either refused everyone from Yale without considering their other qualifications or refused to hire anyone from Yale, because they had gone to Yale, not because of how that qualified them for their job.
...if I were a mid-level manager and needed to hire an IT person, and I hire someone with certification I can truthfully say I checked his qualifications. If they screw up, well, it's not my fault because I checked on what I could. But if I hire someone without certification, and they screw up, I can't prove I did all I was supposed to.
Ouch! Talk about planning for failure instead of working towards success. I personally would prefer to hire competent people I think will do a job and do it really well. That way, they won't make a huge screw up. Starting a job with covering your ass first and getting things done properly second is a pretty good way to lower the quality of the work done.
As you don't say which one it is, your argument is meaningless
The previous poster was making a point that whoever it was that made the assertion that what they were doing was illegal, was full of crap. The reason for that was because they don't know if this person is doing hiring in the U.S., Uzbekistan, or on the freaking moon. In any case, I don't know of any location where it is illegal to not hire people based upon their certifications. Can you name one?
you're underqualified for your job
I see following up on making an uninformed assertion without all the facts by making yet another. Sheer genius.
Personally, I can understand why people would get certifications for resume fodder, to fulfill work requirements or contract requirements, or just because they wanted to learn something new and thought they might as well have some documentation of that. At the same time, however, I can see this guy's point. If a potential employee has been spending their time getting certified in things that is that much less time they have been spending getting real work experience. It also shows a tendency towards fitting in with a bureaucracy and "playing the game." That may be exactly the kind of people who are not useful to him in whatever environment he is hiring.
I personally work with dozens of people with no pertinent degrees or certifications working side by side with PhD's who spent a decade teaching this stuff at a university. There are still others that have a couple dozen certificates from various companies. Certs, education, experience, are all pretty incidental. What counts is demonstrating you can do the job and do it well. What works here, however, would not work everywhere. In some places certs are a plus, in others a minus.
Picassa is something they acquired, not developed. Desktop is in beta still and fills a niche on Windows that does not really exist on the Mac or on Linux. It is making up for obvious deficiencies in Windows and lets you do things that are already easy on most Macs and Linux machines. Hello was acquired along with Picasa.
Don't you think it is a little bit of a stretch to complain about a lack of OS X and Linux client for a beta application that is still missing a huge chunk of core features, especially when OS X and Linux versions are already announced? Also, when there is an easy work-around that is even more functional than the Windows only version? iChat and GAIM are both more functional and easier to use than Google's talk client. I don't see the problem.
It's a beta already! They announced the OS X client, just wait a bit. Heck, the Windows client looks like it was written over a long weekend. I expect we'll see great improvements to it, as well as more platforms supported.
...they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.
I disagree. There is a huge difference between a service and an application. So long as the service is open and documented, they can make applications for whatever platforms they want. The google talk client application is truly a beta. It is Windows only, very no frills, and is missing a boatload of nice features. that is just fine, it's a beta. People who complain about missing features in a free, beta application need a beating with a clue-stick.
They have already announced OS X and Linux versions of the client, but who really cares? Just use a third-party chat client like everyone already does anyway. iChat ships on pretty much every mac, GAIM on most linux distributions. Google has a nice page of instruction on how to set each of them up to use Google Talk, and instructions for several other chat clients as well. I don't see what the problem is.
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central.
"Every strategic move should build a positional advantage or remove a disadvantage."
Why is Google offering a Google talk system? It currently serves no ads, and being client agnostic, will likely be a long time before it does serve ads consistently. How does this service, which costs money, serve Google as a company? It is not bringing in any money. All it does is counter the chat offerings from web portal competitors like MSN and Yahoo (both of which offer chat services). Google has implied that they will facilitate interoperability with other chat services and even offer e-mail as a parallel example. So maybe talking to other jabber servers is disabled temporarily in the beta, or maybe they plan to keep it disabled as an anti-spam measure. I foresee this following the same route as e-mail though. In the long term maintaining a whitelist of servers will be too hard, so Google will move to a blacklist and spam filtering solution. By interoperating they gain access to users on other systems, and make their service more attractive, thus gaining more direct users. They'd be pretty dumb not top make it interoperate with everyone in the long-term.
Intelligence isn't necessarily the same thing as self-relience, though. Intelligence is how well you sift data and extract meaning from it - how fast and well you learn something new, not how well you apply a skill you already have.
Technically, intelligence is the capacity to know or understand. The only way to demonstrate understanding, however, is through application of that knowledge or communication of it to another. This is where the problems begin with IQ testing.
So they understand algebra better than you. This is a skill, and experience, not intelligence.
Algebra? I was actually thinking about back in school when we had to solve third order differential equations with just paper and pencil. Some people can easily hold big chunks of the equation in their minds at once and can repeatedly do a lot of basic mathematic operation correctly. Some people can only subtract two numbers correctly 99 out of a 100 times in a row when working under time constraints. To some degree this is influenced by practice, but in others it is truly how much you can fit in your head at once and how well you can recognize patterns.
That's because everything you list is a learned skill, not innate intelligence. Intelligence is how fast you pick up new skills
How do you demonstrate intelligence except through application? Where does the speed of learning fit into the definition of intelligence. It is the capacity to learn, not the speed with which one learns. If anything I'd say the best judge of intelligence is the ability to create new concepts or recognize patterns. How can these things be judged, aside from through results though?
It's only unsurprising if you can prove the test is definitely biased. What you have is suspicion, and that's not a valid reason to conclude the test is definitely wrong.
I assert that not only IQ tests, but every creation is biased by it's creator. The reason I find a bias against women so very believable is because it has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past with the most common IQ tests. Here's a real experiment for you. Sit five female psychologists in a room and have them create an intelligence test from scratch, then look to see what gender does best taking it. Everyone has a set of knowledge, language, and concepts that they employ every day. The more similar your life experience is to someone else's the more of this knowledge, language, and conceptual information you are likely to have in common. Every word included in a test reflects the knowledge and vocabulary of the author. You may unconsciously assume everyone knows what a gear looks like, but other people might assume everyone knows what a whisk looks like. You'd both be wrong.
Subjective experience (easily as biased as any IQ test) does not trump a statistical study.
I take it you never took statistics? Statistics are only valid science as predictors. "Correlation is not causation" should be listed as a disclaimer at the beginning of every article like this for people like you who do not seem to understand the difference. So here are your variables: gender, test, test results. Apply the scientific method and explain to me why the gender variable is a more likely cause of a change in the test results, than that the test is. Here's an incredibly biased IQ test: "Are you black?" Answers of "yes" are perfect and answers of "no" are zeros. 500 people take this test and the black people do much better on it. Now tell me why it is that that statistic makes it more likely that black people are more intelligent than it means the test is flawed?
we have to take into account the possibliity that the test's biased. However, this merely means we should withold judgement, not rip it to shreds as if it were definitely wrong
If you bothered to read my post you'd see that I specifically state that based upon the knowledge we have of the study we don't know what the cause is, only that gender bias is just as val
Could you point me to an example of an unbiased test? Or at least one biased in the other direction?
Sure. There are several tests linked to from the following page that were created as demonstrations, for white americans, of what kind of bias we are talking about.
the idea that because nonwhites and women do worse on these tests, the tests must be biased.
We don't know what IQ tests were used in this study, but we do know several of the most common IQ tests were written by white men from academia and things they may unconsciously assume are common knowledge, or common language are not necessarily that to people with different life experiences. Believe it or not, but gender and race play a big part in an individual's cultural experience, including language and common knowledge.
So you posit "women's intelligence" or something like it.
I do nothing of the sort. Intelligence is a very difficult concept to quantify and the best we have come up with as far as IQ tests are concerned are for them to be consistent with one another (which of course does not rule out common bias, it encourages it) and to be predictors of real world events. Few IQ tests have ever demonstrated a statistically significant biologic correlation, let alone causation. Many are considered valid based upon their ability to predict success (which is usually shown by financial or career success which is both subject to the same racial/cultural/gender biases as the testing, and wholly subjective.) Who is to say the ability to achieve relative happiness, help the largest number of people, or live the most exciting life is not more successful than being rich or working in a prestigious job?)
You seem to be having trouble seeing this from someone else's point of view. Intelligence is the capacity to know or understand. Different people know and understand things in different ways and express that understanding in different ways. In some cases the differences may be very subtle. IQ tests use all sorts of words and concepts that may or may not be common to both the author of the test and the subject of the test. Don't you think it is likely that the closer your life experience is to the author of a test the more likely you are to have words and concepts in common?
It can't be that we culturally shortchange women and nonwhites, because we're all equal, right now, according to you.
Equality? Culturally short-change? How can one culture be superior to another? Everyone is different with different ways of looking at things. Because a woman is more likely than a man to know how many lunar cycles occur in a year, does that make "women's culture" superior? Sex biases are very common in our society. A man is much more likely to know how a camshaft or gear works simply because they are more likely to be exposed to it due to our culture. Ignoring these biases is ridiculous. Now, I'm not claiming that these results are due to gender bias in IQ tests, but it certainly seems a more likely cause for these results than women being less intelligent. There is no way to determine that as a certainty, however, since IQ tests are inherently biased by their creators.
I mean, aren't they still losing money because of a defective product?
How are they losing money? They spent money on an ipod, which did not last as long as they thought it would and Apple did not make enough effort to inform users that the batteries would only last 1-3 years. Basically they did the same thing all the other digital music player manufacturers did, except they charged more for new batteries and they were wildly successful, which makes them a great target. No one lost any money on this. I'm pretty sure everyone knows batteries die over time. When you buy a new car, no one tells you that eventually you'll have to buy a new battery for it either. People expected them to last longer, although no one at the time provided batteries that did, and Apple did not make a point of advertising how long they would last, nor that it was difficult to change them yourself. Now Apple is paying $25+ dollars per user because the judge agreed that they should have been more informative or batteries should have lasted longer or been cheaper to replace or something. It makes little sense to me.
Here's something you may find amusing. Studies of men and women seeking significant others showed a marked difference in what attributes were most important for attractiveness. For women the single most important characteristic in a man was not, weight, age, wealth, position, hair color, or intelligence. It was height. Women almost invariably chose the taller of two candidates as more attractive.
Men were no better, however, the single most important factor for them was age. Men chose younger women more often than anything, including weight, height, intelligence, standing, wealth etc.
One more fun fact, women looking for dates in the vast majority of instances glance at a man's crotch within 30 seconds of meeting them. Most claimed to be unaware of this behavior, although it was recorded by cameras. Men often glance at breasts, but usually spend the majority of the first few minutes studying the face of a woman they are interested in. I hope you find these little factoids as amusing as I do.
The experimental procedure and results haven't been published yet - nobody even knows what the numbers are, how the trial was conducted or even what IQ test(s) were used, and yet here we have people who know nothing but a soundbite about the final conclusion of the study, already feeling justified in ripping it to shreds. This has none of the justifications of considered intellectual doubt, and all of the hallmarks of instinctive emotional rejection.
From reading many of the comments here, I'd say you are correct. But there are plenty of rational reactions to this information as well. Many people recognize that the articles are virtually useless because they are a load of speculation. What we really know is that based upon statistics of IQ tests, women scored lower than men, overall. What we don't know is how significant these statistics are, if they are accurate or not, or what the implications of that would be, if they are accurate.
Personally, when I saw this article my first thought was, "well duh." I've taken a number of IQ tests and compared those numbers with other people I know. What became quickly evident to pretty much all of us is that IQ tests in general are:
Very biased by sex and race (the vast majority in use were written by white men, go figure).
Not a good measure of how quickly a person learns new skills.
Not a good measure of how well someone can perform any given task.
Not a good measure of general problem solving ability.
Not a good measure of general ability to perform intellectual tasks.
So what are IQ test good at predicting? Well they seem ok at predicting how well you will do on another IQ test written in the same era. They seem ok as predictors of scholastic ability if normalized for motivation. Really that is about all we could figure.
I know people with higher IQs than I have who are completely unable to solve easy problems and who would die if their parents or some other guardian was not there to provide for them. I know people with lower IQs than I have that can solve mathematical equations that I would never be able to without a computer. I know still others who can manage a whole group people and get them to work together on projects. Most IQ tests completely fail to take into account social ability or many other kinds of intelligence and most have an inherent bias for people with the same background/abilitites/culture as those who wrote the test.
A more interesting study might actually be a correlation of what demographics do well on particular IQ tests as compared to the corresponding traits of those who authored the tests.
It is in no way surprising that women would score statistically lower on a sampling of IQ scores, nor even that minority ethnic groups, educational segments, income groups, or local populations would also score in statistically significant ways. Most people should know by now from their own personal experience that there are plenty of intelligent women out there and if women are scoring lower on intelligence tests, maybe we should look at both variables, the women and the tests, to determine what is really going on.
For $500 I'll show them how to hold down the shift key while they load up a file.
First, I'm not sure that works on really old versions of Word, and Second, telling a bunch of middle-aged computer-phobic businessmen who keep a list next to their computer to tell them how to save, open, quit, and delete and who transfer files by putting them on a floppy disk and mailing them with the USPS to "hold down shift" when opening files is a bit like telling them to always stand on one foot while opening files. A few might do it, a good percentage will think you are an idiot because no system would be designed that way, a good chunk would not care or remember what you said and ignore you, and another good chunk would add it to their arguments for getting rid of the computers and going back to typewriters (which some still advocate to this day).
Computers need to be simple enough for the average person to use without having to go back to school and they have to give the user the options they need and explain them. This is possible, it just hasn't been happening lately and viruses/worms are part of the price we pay.
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Considering how many times the .DOC file format has changed, can you still open up .doc files you made in Word 1.0 with Word 2k3? The answer is YES, so the closed format and not being able to view it in 10 years is mute. You don't think MS will support their own formats 10 years from now?
First, just because they "support" one format going forward does not mean they "support" all of them. There are plenty of deprecated Microsoft file formats that are no longer readable. Second, have you ever opened a really old .doc file with a new version of Word? The fonts and layout are invariable messed up and and mathematical equations are gibberish in Word documents just two versions old. I have a number of four year old .doc files bequeathed to me at work and only about half of them display correctly. I have three that will not even open in Word, but will in OpenOffice. So to answer your question, no I don't think I'll be able to properly view MS's PDF replacement files after 10 years. And no I don't think MS removing all competition from yet another set of applications and then leaving them to stagnate along with much of the rest of computing is a good idea.
Frankly, OSX (any version) would be a HUGE downgrade for me since you can't play most games on it.
That's not really true you know, right? Sure there are some games you can't play, but most games are ported and a number of good games never get ported from the the mac to Windows. If you just want to play games you might as well buy a console.
All the other shit I need a computer for like browsing, email, DAP sync, word processing works just fine under XP... So, I say again, what does OSX have that I actually need?
How about spell checking, grammar checking, language translation, dictionary/thesaurus/google lookup of all text everywhere? How about just using the same spell checking dictionary in both your mail and word processor if you so desire? How about the ability to make a PDF from every application without having to buy additional software? How about being able to view PDFs without your machine grinding to a halt while they load? How about being able to leave your computer running 24/7 for a month with a dozen applications open without worrying about your machine slowing down or a game running slowly because other programs are open? How about having the option of viewing all of your open windows simultaneously and instantly with a single mouse button press and being able to select from among them? How about being able, without additional software and without writing a line of code to automatically script hundreds of different computer operations from renaming files to downloading images from a web site, scaling them to size, inserting them in a PDF, and e-mailing them to a given address. How about being able to find and launch any program, file, website, etc. with a quick 5 keystrokes that are ordered in such a way that you don't need to memorized them (cmd-space-1st letter of name - 2nd letter - enter)? How about just being able to browse the web and open any e-mail message without having to worry that it might contain a virus or internet worm?
Now I use Windows for certain tasks, OS X for many tasks, and Linux for certain tasks, but as far as general purpose computing goes OS X is so much faster, and more functional than Windows XP that there really is no comparison.
The truth is, I am about as associated with microsoft
Jeez, learn to take a joke already.
GSView is nice and fast, but it is crash proned[sic]
Really? I know the half-assed Windows port used to crash occasionally, but I've never had the Linux or BSD versions crash on me. I guess that shoots down the myth about Windows having more, better, applications.
As for open vs. closed. I agree with you when talking about applications (although open is a big plus for custom or business use). When it comes to file formats, however, I strongly disagree. You see I want to be able to read my financial records, books, and other documents 10 years from now and I want the option of allowing anyone else to do the same. I also like the option of using whatever program/OS I like and have available to do it. Right now you don't like any of the PDF viewers you've tried but at least you have a choice and can try more than one. When MS pushes PDF out of the home/office space you will be stuck using just the one they provide. Also, like the situation with IE, once they have the market, they will not have to compete to maintain it so you can say goodbye to any improvements from then on.
I publish a lot of documents for both select audiences and the general public as well as archiving my own papers. I expect to be highly annoyed when I have to deal with a lot of half-assed publication in formats that only some people can read and even fewer write because not all platforms are supported. I also imagine I'll be very annoyed as everyone continues to use what will become an outdated and inferior format, simply because it is shipped with Windows by default.
Your complaints about viewing PDFs are very valid. It demonstrates the need for competition in the space and a good alternative to PDF, or at least alternative viewers. MS expanding their monopoly into the space, however, will make the situation much, much worse in the long term.
Have you ever compared the speed-feel of using a crappy XP machine (say my 1.3Ghz Pentium M laptop) to, oh, say a top-of-the-line OS X machine?
Nope. But I've certainly done a lot of comparisons using middle of the road, but similar OS X and Windows Systems. For a very long time my desktop held two machines I used for very similar tasks, mostly using the same software. The PC had a little more RAM and a lot more Ghz, but all in all they were both middle of the road professional machines. You know what I found? Windows is faster at some things, OS X at others. For example, opening a folder with many items in it was faster in Windows. Opening applications was faster on the mac. Running Perl scripts and performing intensive text mapping in Adobe applications was much faster on the mac. Previewing images was faster in Windows, but it could not handle nearly as many types of images. The most important thing for me, however, was multitasking. Windows was just fine at running an application. It was a little slow running an application while several other applications sat idle. It sucked donkey balls when trying to run a dozen programs simultaneously or when trying to have multiple programs actually do things at the same time. I kind of like to tell an application to do something, then move on to another task. With Windows it sometimes took more than a minute just for focus to switch to another application and then doing anything was like working on a 386.
I use a lot of different OS's, but when comparing Windows to the mac, well Windows takes forever to accomplish tasks and can't handle many of the things I do every day. Right now I have about 15 applications running, including several web browsers, some Adobe apps, mail, terminals, calendar , graphics editor, chat client, word processor, XML editor, diagram layout app, etc. That just did not work for me on Windows. I had to be content with a terminal, layout app, and maybe one other application if I wanted it to be responsive enough to get anything done. I still use Windows for tasks where it is faster or better and for compatibility testing, but it just can't cut it as a general workstation OS.
you can turn off all the slow Finder animations," but no one at the Mac store has ever been able to demonstrate this to me.
This right here tells me you have never given OS X a try as a working OS. Pretty much anyone can figure this out in about 15 minutes. All of the whizbang animations, etc. are able to be turned on or off in the system preferences pane for that feature. Apple is offering a 30 day trial of mac minis right now. You can sign up at their website and they will ship you one. Try it for a month and if you don't like it, ship it back. It will cost you as much as it takes to ship it back. They are certainly not fast machines, but they are fine for most general purpose computing or to get a feel for the OS. Personally, I don't think I could ever give up plug-in system wide services (like spell checking, grammar checking, and translation for all text, everywhere) nor do I think I could give up the functional multitasking and real CLI.
they tend to cost more than the commoditized PC compatible.
That is a more reasonable claim, and I'm sure it is true for some Apple computers and not rue for others. Obviously there is no way to do a perfect comparison. Your previous claim about $1000, however, was absurd. So I challenge you to find a small-form factor machine with the same or better hardware and software specs as the mac mini for a cheaper price. I challenge you to find a consumer laptop with similar or better specs to an ibook for the same or cheaper. Don't forget to include applications equivalent to what is shipped with those machines and don't forget to include reliability and support that matches Apple's top rating by consumer reports.
You say you're just trying to make a point, well so am I. Five years ago Apple machines were more expensive for what you could get than a comparable PC. Today, however, they may not have as many offerings to fill every price point, but the machines they do have are very competitive on price. I use both macs and PCs and a have a very hard time finding even reasonably good quality hardware for the same prices Apple sells at. Sure they gouge you for RAM if you're foolish enough to buy it from them and in some cases they are more expensive on the high-end. But it is time to quit repeating this foolish overpriced myth that you read in PC magazine 5 years ago. It just isn't true anymore and hasn't been for a long time. So put up or shut up already.
It certainly is unfair to compare OSX to Beta 1 because Beta 1 literally has none of its new features built in...
What are the most advanced and best operating systems you can get from each vendor? Well you can get the OS X 10.4.2 or OS X for intel release or you can get WinXP Pro or the Windows Vista beta 1. I'd say comparing these to one another is certainly fair.
But we all know who wins a Windows vs. OS X comparison based upon the current releases so a lot of people are looking at what MS will be releasing and comparing it to what they can from Apple. When the Vista beta 2 and Vista Gold releases are available for comparison I'm sure they'll be compared as well. It's not like Windows is the only OS that releases software where most of the advancement is aimed at the architecture and what developers can do with it. OS X 10.4 added tons of meta data functionality, built in graphics and database functionality, etc. It does not matter. All users care about is what they can do with the OS and right now that is Vista beta 1 for some WinXP for others. Windows has fallen behind and is trying to catch up. Deal with it.
PDF is an open, published standard with multiple open and closed source implementations of both readers and writers. PDF sucks on Windows right now mostly because most people view PDFs with the slow and bloated Acrobat reader plug-in running with IE and neither IE nor Windows in general has good end-to-end multitasking. When most people think of PDFs they think of clicking on a link and then waiting a few minutes while their computer is unusable for the thing to load. Viewing PDFs on Linux or OS X on the other hand is fast and if your internet connection is too slow, your machine is still usable while you wait for it to download. PDF as format is just fine.
Now contrast this with what MS will likely be offering. You will have no choice of client, probably no choice of OS, it may or may not be readable on current software in a decade, and it will probably be as half-assed as all their other take over programs. It will be just good enough for most users to not bother buying or downloading an alternative. It will suck for real publishing where PDF will continue to dominate, but it will still take over on the low-end because it will be bundled with the OS and hence with pretty much every PC you buy. Basically it will be very similar to the existing Word format with better layout controls and vector graphics. It will abound in office settings since most users and managers won't realize that they are losing choice and forward compatibility. It will suck for everyone who has to deal with it that is not running Windows.
I guess if you think moving from an open standard to a closed one owned by Microsoft is a good thing, well we'll just have to agree that you're being paid a lot of money by them.
it still does it better than windows for a mere $1,000 more than your silly little white box."
Wow you can buy a small form factor PC for -$500 dollars? Sign me up for a billion of them. Oh, wait, you didn't mean to include minis. OK, just send me a few million of those free consumer grade laptops and a couple of those $500 professional laptops with the firewire, multiple monitor support, comprehensive software package etc.
Or maybe you can do a little research and stop spreading that ridiculous FUD about how expensive Apple machines are. Apple does not offer as many price points and form factors, but they are pretty competitive if you compare them on the included hardware and software vs. price.
is it fair to compare Tiger to a Beta?? 'ha! our completed OS OWNS your beta OS. unf unf in your face'
Well, I'd say it is not really fair. What needs to be said is "our current OS is still better even then your new OS that won't even be out for another year or two. " By the time Vista is released Apple's current offering will probably be another few years ahead of it and While Windows users are drooling over the "new" features, OS X users will be running a system comparable to what MS will release a few years after that.
After reading about Vista, and then about what features are actually going to be into it I was pretty annoyed to discover most of the core features are either weak copies of OS X features or ways to lock-in the user even more. They are adding in DRM galore, trying to kill openGL and move everyone to their proprietary DirectX, trying to kill PDF and move everyone to their proprietary alternative, etc., etc. Too bad most purchasers are so uninformed. I wonder if they will be able to buy the EU to avoid getting beaten for all this continued monopoly abuse and move to closed, proprietary formats that contradict EU purchasing policies and further illegally extend MS's monopoly.
Motorola actually do make decent phones for talking to people on.
Perhaps, but if so they also make really crappy phones. The interface on my motorola phone is so bad it takes a minimum of 6 key-presses to select someone from your phone book and call them. You can, however, buy a new "wallpaper" for your phone's background (which will automatically be added to your bill) by dropping it. Great idea making that the single easiest thing to do. Also, it is a flip phone, but they helpfully included buttons on the outside of the phone and no way to lock them. As a result my phone must be in silent mode all the time or I beep as I walk as the buttons are constantly pressed. Motorola needs to hire a few good UI designers, if not they sure won't ever get my money again.
if they're so "incidental" why can't he just ignore them?
If you bothered to continue reading, I wrote, "Certs, education, experience, are all pretty incidental. What counts is demonstrating you can do the job and do it well. What works here, however, would not work everywhere. In some places certs are a plus, in others a minus."
He apparently works in a situation where he believes the presence of certs on a resume is a useful predictor of undesired characteristics. Since presumably neither of us work at the same place as the person who made that comment, what basis would we have for saying that he is wrong in his assessment?
isn't that still algebra?
While based upon algebra and geometry, differential calculus does not fall wholly into either one of these mathematical disciplines and is usually regarded, in academic circles, as it's own entity.
And you don't think you can increase your mental "working space" with practice?
Certainly, but that is not the point. Intelligence is defined as the capacity for understanding. If you are so inclined you can argue that it is the capacity of an individual at a given time and can be increased with practice or that it is the total capacity for an individual. The problem with applying the latter definition in this context, however, is that IQ test does not even attempt to measure that second capacity and so it falls outside the scope of relevance for this discussion.
hen we've got a scale (PM tests) whish give sensible human-equivalent IQ scores for dolphins, or chimps
Ahhh but how many chimps and dolphins have you asked about what sort of biases they have encountered in the tests? The more different a subject is from the author of a test, the more room for error due to bias. Who is to say if we are short-changing or over-estimating the intelligence of these animals? I mean dolphins spend all their time eating, screwing, playing, and doing things we don't understand with sponges. Obviously they are more successful than we are, but they only score higher in one test that I have ever heard of. And yet, they can't build a simple airplane, so they are obviously less intelligent. Or maybe, they are just intelligent in different ways, perhaps ways we don't normally even consider intelligence? There is not really any good way to know.
I have a hard time accepting that all IQ tests are equally poor, and hence completely worthless.
I don't think anyone ever argued that all of them are equally poor. It is easy to make a very poor and biased test. The trouble is that on the opposite end of the spectrum it is impossible for a human being to write an IQ test that will test a range of individuals without any bias. The trick is to keep that bias very small. In my experience most tests are pretty poor, especially some of the most popular ones which should have been retired decades ago.
What possible evidence do you have to support that (definite) assertion? Even if some tests are biased (which I'm not arguing with), how on earth can you possibly extend that to assert all tests always are? This is a complete logical non-sequiteur.
You're applying physical standards of proof to a purely intellectual problem. All test must have authors, or they are not tests, per se. All authors have a set of experience, knowledge, and concepts with which they deal with reality. In creating a test authors use their experience, knowledge, and conceptual understanding because it is the way brains work. Hence all tests will reflect, in some way, their creator. It is a proof by the nature of tests, not by experience with a property of tests; a logical proof, not a physical one. The whole concept as to whether an answer is correct or not depends upon having the same understanding as the author. Simple things like the language of a test, the shapes used, the colors, etc. are all very relative to the perceptions of the author(s) and subjects. Theoretically could their be some sort of completely impartial, random IQ test generating pseudo-intelligence? Maybe. But for all practical purposes all IQ tests will be biased to some degree.
if all IQ tests exhibit a slight tendency for men to score higher, what's the difference in evidence between "every test in the world ever being biased" and men actually being cleverer?
Well first, the article never mentions how many tests are used, but I seriously doubt it is "all tests." What we are discussing is the results of a few (most likely very popular) IQ tests. Of the three most commonly used IQ tests two were written by white, male, academics and one was written b
While it is unusual to discriminate someone for a redeeming quality it is not unheard of. A recent discrimination case was brought against Merill Lynch for refusing to hire Yale graduates, as the hiring manager was a Harvard graduate.
I can see where you might have a case if you can prove that the degree is a "redeeming quality." This person, however, never said they refused to hire anyone with a cert, they just said it was a strike against them. Also, they justified it as an indication that the candidate was unsuitable for the job because they wasted their time with useless bureaucracy. That may be an opinion that many people do not share, but it is just as valid as saying you prefer not to hire candidates from a particular school because you think their programs teach non-productive material. That is not to say that you would refuse to hire anyone from that school, merely that you don't think they are likely to be qualified. I'd be willing to bet that the case you mentioned earlier involved a person who either refused everyone from Yale without considering their other qualifications or refused to hire anyone from Yale, because they had gone to Yale, not because of how that qualified them for their job.
Ouch! Talk about planning for failure instead of working towards success. I personally would prefer to hire competent people I think will do a job and do it really well. That way, they won't make a huge screw up. Starting a job with covering your ass first and getting things done properly second is a pretty good way to lower the quality of the work done.
As you don't say which one it is, your argument is meaningless
The previous poster was making a point that whoever it was that made the assertion that what they were doing was illegal, was full of crap. The reason for that was because they don't know if this person is doing hiring in the U.S., Uzbekistan, or on the freaking moon. In any case, I don't know of any location where it is illegal to not hire people based upon their certifications. Can you name one?
you're underqualified for your job
I see following up on making an uninformed assertion without all the facts by making yet another. Sheer genius.
Personally, I can understand why people would get certifications for resume fodder, to fulfill work requirements or contract requirements, or just because they wanted to learn something new and thought they might as well have some documentation of that. At the same time, however, I can see this guy's point. If a potential employee has been spending their time getting certified in things that is that much less time they have been spending getting real work experience. It also shows a tendency towards fitting in with a bureaucracy and "playing the game." That may be exactly the kind of people who are not useful to him in whatever environment he is hiring.
I personally work with dozens of people with no pertinent degrees or certifications working side by side with PhD's who spent a decade teaching this stuff at a university. There are still others that have a couple dozen certificates from various companies. Certs, education, experience, are all pretty incidental. What counts is demonstrating you can do the job and do it well. What works here, however, would not work everywhere. In some places certs are a plus, in others a minus.
And Picassa? And Desktop? And Hello?
Picassa is something they acquired, not developed. Desktop is in beta still and fills a niche on Windows that does not really exist on the Mac or on Linux. It is making up for obvious deficiencies in Windows and lets you do things that are already easy on most Macs and Linux machines. Hello was acquired along with Picasa.
Don't you think it is a little bit of a stretch to complain about a lack of OS X and Linux client for a beta application that is still missing a huge chunk of core features, especially when OS X and Linux versions are already announced? Also, when there is an easy work-around that is even more functional than the Windows only version? iChat and GAIM are both more functional and easier to use than Google's talk client. I don't see the problem.
Why didn't they release an os X port?
It's a beta already! They announced the OS X client, just wait a bit. Heck, the Windows client looks like it was written over a long weekend. I expect we'll see great improvements to it, as well as more platforms supported.
I disagree. There is a huge difference between a service and an application. So long as the service is open and documented, they can make applications for whatever platforms they want. The google talk client application is truly a beta. It is Windows only, very no frills, and is missing a boatload of nice features. that is just fine, it's a beta. People who complain about missing features in a free, beta application need a beating with a clue-stick.
They have already announced OS X and Linux versions of the client, but who really cares? Just use a third-party chat client like everyone already does anyway. iChat ships on pretty much every mac, GAIM on most linux distributions. Google has a nice page of instruction on how to set each of them up to use Google Talk, and instructions for several other chat clients as well. I don't see what the problem is.
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central.
"Every strategic move should build a positional advantage or remove a disadvantage."
Why is Google offering a Google talk system? It currently serves no ads, and being client agnostic, will likely be a long time before it does serve ads consistently. How does this service, which costs money, serve Google as a company? It is not bringing in any money. All it does is counter the chat offerings from web portal competitors like MSN and Yahoo (both of which offer chat services). Google has implied that they will facilitate interoperability with other chat services and even offer e-mail as a parallel example. So maybe talking to other jabber servers is disabled temporarily in the beta, or maybe they plan to keep it disabled as an anti-spam measure. I foresee this following the same route as e-mail though. In the long term maintaining a whitelist of servers will be too hard, so Google will move to a blacklist and spam filtering solution. By interoperating they gain access to users on other systems, and make their service more attractive, thus gaining more direct users. They'd be pretty dumb not top make it interoperate with everyone in the long-term.
Intelligence isn't necessarily the same thing as self-relience, though. Intelligence is how well you sift data and extract meaning from it - how fast and well you learn something new, not how well you apply a skill you already have.
Technically, intelligence is the capacity to know or understand. The only way to demonstrate understanding, however, is through application of that knowledge or communication of it to another. This is where the problems begin with IQ testing.
So they understand algebra better than you. This is a skill, and experience, not intelligence.
Algebra? I was actually thinking about back in school when we had to solve third order differential equations with just paper and pencil. Some people can easily hold big chunks of the equation in their minds at once and can repeatedly do a lot of basic mathematic operation correctly. Some people can only subtract two numbers correctly 99 out of a 100 times in a row when working under time constraints. To some degree this is influenced by practice, but in others it is truly how much you can fit in your head at once and how well you can recognize patterns.
That's because everything you list is a learned skill, not innate intelligence. Intelligence is how fast you pick up new skills
How do you demonstrate intelligence except through application? Where does the speed of learning fit into the definition of intelligence. It is the capacity to learn, not the speed with which one learns. If anything I'd say the best judge of intelligence is the ability to create new concepts or recognize patterns. How can these things be judged, aside from through results though?
It's only unsurprising if you can prove the test is definitely biased. What you have is suspicion, and that's not a valid reason to conclude the test is definitely wrong.
I assert that not only IQ tests, but every creation is biased by it's creator. The reason I find a bias against women so very believable is because it has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past with the most common IQ tests. Here's a real experiment for you. Sit five female psychologists in a room and have them create an intelligence test from scratch, then look to see what gender does best taking it. Everyone has a set of knowledge, language, and concepts that they employ every day. The more similar your life experience is to someone else's the more of this knowledge, language, and conceptual information you are likely to have in common. Every word included in a test reflects the knowledge and vocabulary of the author. You may unconsciously assume everyone knows what a gear looks like, but other people might assume everyone knows what a whisk looks like. You'd both be wrong.
Subjective experience (easily as biased as any IQ test) does not trump a statistical study.
I take it you never took statistics? Statistics are only valid science as predictors. "Correlation is not causation" should be listed as a disclaimer at the beginning of every article like this for people like you who do not seem to understand the difference. So here are your variables: gender, test, test results. Apply the scientific method and explain to me why the gender variable is a more likely cause of a change in the test results, than that the test is. Here's an incredibly biased IQ test: "Are you black?" Answers of "yes" are perfect and answers of "no" are zeros. 500 people take this test and the black people do much better on it. Now tell me why it is that that statistic makes it more likely that black people are more intelligent than it means the test is flawed?
we have to take into account the possibliity that the test's biased. However, this merely means we should withold judgement, not rip it to shreds as if it were definitely wrong
If you bothered to read my post you'd see that I specifically state that based upon the knowledge we have of the study we don't know what the cause is, only that gender bias is just as val
Could you point me to an example of an unbiased test? Or at least one biased in the other direction?
Sure. There are several tests linked to from the following page that were created as demonstrations, for white americans, of what kind of bias we are talking about.
the idea that because nonwhites and women do worse on these tests, the tests must be biased.
We don't know what IQ tests were used in this study, but we do know several of the most common IQ tests were written by white men from academia and things they may unconsciously assume are common knowledge, or common language are not necessarily that to people with different life experiences. Believe it or not, but gender and race play a big part in an individual's cultural experience, including language and common knowledge.
So you posit "women's intelligence" or something like it.
I do nothing of the sort. Intelligence is a very difficult concept to quantify and the best we have come up with as far as IQ tests are concerned are for them to be consistent with one another (which of course does not rule out common bias, it encourages it) and to be predictors of real world events. Few IQ tests have ever demonstrated a statistically significant biologic correlation, let alone causation. Many are considered valid based upon their ability to predict success (which is usually shown by financial or career success which is both subject to the same racial/cultural/gender biases as the testing, and wholly subjective.) Who is to say the ability to achieve relative happiness, help the largest number of people, or live the most exciting life is not more successful than being rich or working in a prestigious job?)
You seem to be having trouble seeing this from someone else's point of view. Intelligence is the capacity to know or understand. Different people know and understand things in different ways and express that understanding in different ways. In some cases the differences may be very subtle. IQ tests use all sorts of words and concepts that may or may not be common to both the author of the test and the subject of the test. Don't you think it is likely that the closer your life experience is to the author of a test the more likely you are to have words and concepts in common?
It can't be that we culturally shortchange women and nonwhites, because we're all equal, right now, according to you.
Equality? Culturally short-change? How can one culture be superior to another? Everyone is different with different ways of looking at things. Because a woman is more likely than a man to know how many lunar cycles occur in a year, does that make "women's culture" superior? Sex biases are very common in our society. A man is much more likely to know how a camshaft or gear works simply because they are more likely to be exposed to it due to our culture. Ignoring these biases is ridiculous. Now, I'm not claiming that these results are due to gender bias in IQ tests, but it certainly seems a more likely cause for these results than women being less intelligent. There is no way to determine that as a certainty, however, since IQ tests are inherently biased by their creators.
I mean, aren't they still losing money because of a defective product?
How are they losing money? They spent money on an ipod, which did not last as long as they thought it would and Apple did not make enough effort to inform users that the batteries would only last 1-3 years. Basically they did the same thing all the other digital music player manufacturers did, except they charged more for new batteries and they were wildly successful, which makes them a great target. No one lost any money on this. I'm pretty sure everyone knows batteries die over time. When you buy a new car, no one tells you that eventually you'll have to buy a new battery for it either. People expected them to last longer, although no one at the time provided batteries that did, and Apple did not make a point of advertising how long they would last, nor that it was difficult to change them yourself. Now Apple is paying $25+ dollars per user because the judge agreed that they should have been more informative or batteries should have lasted longer or been cheaper to replace or something. It makes little sense to me.
Here's something you may find amusing. Studies of men and women seeking significant others showed a marked difference in what attributes were most important for attractiveness. For women the single most important characteristic in a man was not, weight, age, wealth, position, hair color, or intelligence. It was height. Women almost invariably chose the taller of two candidates as more attractive.
Men were no better, however, the single most important factor for them was age. Men chose younger women more often than anything, including weight, height, intelligence, standing, wealth etc.
One more fun fact, women looking for dates in the vast majority of instances glance at a man's crotch within 30 seconds of meeting them. Most claimed to be unaware of this behavior, although it was recorded by cameras. Men often glance at breasts, but usually spend the majority of the first few minutes studying the face of a woman they are interested in. I hope you find these little factoids as amusing as I do.
The experimental procedure and results haven't been published yet - nobody even knows what the numbers are, how the trial was conducted or even what IQ test(s) were used, and yet here we have people who know nothing but a soundbite about the final conclusion of the study, already feeling justified in ripping it to shreds. This has none of the justifications of considered intellectual doubt, and all of the hallmarks of instinctive emotional rejection.
From reading many of the comments here, I'd say you are correct. But there are plenty of rational reactions to this information as well. Many people recognize that the articles are virtually useless because they are a load of speculation. What we really know is that based upon statistics of IQ tests, women scored lower than men, overall. What we don't know is how significant these statistics are, if they are accurate or not, or what the implications of that would be, if they are accurate.
Personally, when I saw this article my first thought was, "well duh." I've taken a number of IQ tests and compared those numbers with other people I know. What became quickly evident to pretty much all of us is that IQ tests in general are:
So what are IQ test good at predicting? Well they seem ok at predicting how well you will do on another IQ test written in the same era. They seem ok as predictors of scholastic ability if normalized for motivation. Really that is about all we could figure.
I know people with higher IQs than I have who are completely unable to solve easy problems and who would die if their parents or some other guardian was not there to provide for them. I know people with lower IQs than I have that can solve mathematical equations that I would never be able to without a computer. I know still others who can manage a whole group people and get them to work together on projects. Most IQ tests completely fail to take into account social ability or many other kinds of intelligence and most have an inherent bias for people with the same background/abilitites/culture as those who wrote the test.
A more interesting study might actually be a correlation of what demographics do well on particular IQ tests as compared to the corresponding traits of those who authored the tests.
It is in no way surprising that women would score statistically lower on a sampling of IQ scores, nor even that minority ethnic groups, educational segments, income groups, or local populations would also score in statistically significant ways. Most people should know by now from their own personal experience that there are plenty of intelligent women out there and if women are scoring lower on intelligence tests, maybe we should look at both variables, the women and the tests, to determine what is really going on.
For $500 I'll show them how to hold down the shift key while they load up a file.
First, I'm not sure that works on really old versions of Word, and Second, telling a bunch of middle-aged computer-phobic businessmen who keep a list next to their computer to tell them how to save, open, quit, and delete and who transfer files by putting them on a floppy disk and mailing them with the USPS to "hold down shift" when opening files is a bit like telling them to always stand on one foot while opening files. A few might do it, a good percentage will think you are an idiot because no system would be designed that way, a good chunk would not care or remember what you said and ignore you, and another good chunk would add it to their arguments for getting rid of the computers and going back to typewriters (which some still advocate to this day).
Computers need to be simple enough for the average person to use without having to go back to school and they have to give the user the options they need and explain them. This is possible, it just hasn't been happening lately and viruses/worms are part of the price we pay.