Not even sports should be gender-based. They should be based on classes (weight, height, whatever) just like gender-segregated sports are individually. A 250-pound body-builder-type female, for example, should not be stuck playing with a bunch of smaller females (or the very few larger ones) based solely on the fact that women statistically have smaller frames. The statistics obviously don't apply to her. She should play with people of a similar size, and if that means men, that's perfectly fine.
Remember, here in the USA, we use both CDMA and GSM, and even worse, they use different bands so a GSM phone isn't necessarily compatible with all GSM carriers.
(1) The CDMA versus GSM point may be a valid one, but differences like that are not limited to the USA. Europe currently is rolling out UMTS, which is just as incompatible with GSM as CDMA is.
(2) I don't think i've heard of a GSM phone that isn't at least dual-band (almost all mobile phones sold in Europe are dual-band as far as i know). The only problem you might reasonably expect to have is trying to get a dual-band European phone to work on 1900 MHz networks in the States. In practice almost every GSM phone you can buy in America will work on every GSM carrier in America -- they have to, because each company (e.g. T-Mobile) needs to license other companies' (e.g. Cingular's) networks in order to provide reasonable coverage.
It may not be 'Orwellian', but i fail to see the purpose. Surely this sort of 'illegitimate use' is already prohibited by Canada's regular plain old trade-mark laws?
FYI, on Windows XP, even after disabling menu effects there is still a delay in how long it takes for a cascaded menu to pop up. I don't remember the default value, but i think it's something like 300 ms. As far as i know there is no way to change this using the 'regular' Windows options. You need to edit the Registry or get a 'tweaking' program like TweakUI.
(Honestly, you should never run Windows without getting TweakUI anyway.)
I'm not positive, but i think that problem has been fixed with the latest 'monster' firmware and tutorials that are floating around. If you configure the Alltel firmware properly you'll be able to get your PRL normally (with *228).
Otherwise, not that big of a deal, all you have to do to update it manually is upload a list over USB once every month or two.
Plus, if you're willing to work for it, you can flash to another provider's firmware to get rid of all that bull shit Verizon puts (or rather, doesn't put) on their phones. This is what i plan to do with my Verizon RAZR, which i will be getting as a free upgrade next month. Horrible firmware on their phones, lately, but the coverage is great where i live and (so far) so is their customer service.
He gave her the standard ToS - the (presumably) standard 20 buck offer - not rude. I have no idea what the mail she sent him looks like.
I disagree. I mean he wasn't a total dick, but his initial response was pretty stand-offish. For example, 'Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced'. The last part really seems unnecessarily gruff-sounding. So does 'This is non-negotiable'. It's like he's already arguing with her, even though she doesn't start the rebuttals until the next e-mail.
This is assuming, of course, that she gave the (more-or-less) full exchange. If there were some other e-mails in between it might be a different story.
Well that's actually just cuz their pee comes out in different places...
My understanding of diaper engineering was that they're all pretty much the same except for the colours and patterns on the outside. You may be right, though; if so i stand corrected on that point.
I don't think they make any difference... being referred to as "she" isn't going to make someone less likely to be interested in computers.
Not by itself, no, but this combined with everything else re-inforces the 'otherness' factor (which of course contributes to what activities a person feels comfortable engaging in, et cetera, et cetera).
This is unavoidable; girls grow up to have children, guys don't get pregnant, this has a huge difference at the genetic level due to evolution.... blah blah blah...
That's not what i'm talking about. I mean domestic responsibilities and things like that. In my family for example there is an understanding that washing dishes is a 'girl's job'. I am sure you will agree that there is in fact no 'difference at the genetic level' that makes this the case. (That is a trivial example obviously; it extends to many many other things.)
Tha's down to sexuality rather than sexism.
Why don't we have gay males use the girls' locker room then? In any case it's irrelevant. It's never appropriate to punish people because certain others can't control themselves.
Again, sexuality... does distract!
See above. ALSO, it would be far less distracting if there wasn't an institutional mystique attached to the sexes (accomplished, again, through systemic segregation). Integrate two things and they will no longer be exotic to each other.
This is not social conditioning, this is pure cold genetics, and the effects touch every part of life.
My point was not that there are no biological differences between males and females. There obviously are. The point is that social conditioning does not allow for the exceptions that might naturally follow in their absence (nor does it allow for the ones that somehow do manage to persist).
What problems? The fact that men and women have different bathrooms at the airport? The fact that most languages have gender-specific pronouns?
Do "it's a girl!" type exclamations at births actually bother you?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Personally I don't want to morph into an androgynous society (and I don't think we will) but your opinion seems to differ.
That's a straw-man. Eliminating sexism does not make us an 'androgynous society', any more than eliminating racism makes us a raceless society. Black and white people are still quite distinct; however, they do not have separate bath rooms at the aeroport, they do not have separate pronouns, and they do not have separate balloons and birth-day cards. Somehow we still manage to struggle through existence.
Did you seriously just fucking imply that women wear pink because of evolution?
Pink was a boys' colour (noted for its 'strength') for many many years before it every became associated with girls. (In fact, one theory is that the NAZIs popularised its 'femininity' when they gave homosexuals pink arm bands.) It is absolutely, 150%, a social invention.
It's fairly well documented that females are more likely to do x and males are more likely to do y, even in the absence of socialisation. There's nothing wrong with recognising that as a fact.
The problem is that people (and i mean the very vast majority of people) don't just see it as a statistical likelihood, they see it as a rule, something that should or must be adhered to. Even people who claim to be 'open-minded' or 'liberal' often disapprove of (or feel uncomfortable about) those who don't, for whatever reason, match up perfectly with the statistical majority. And that is a powerful factor in how a person turns out.
People still discriminate based on sex. It is not just a fringe issue, it is ingrained in almost every single person and entity in existence. Distinctions that would get a person condemned if they were based on race are still perfectly acceptable to society when they are based on sex. For example, although we decided half a century ago that 'separate is never equal', we still segregate men and women every chance we get. One of the oft-cited reasons we have segregated bath rooms is the fear of lewdness, sexual misconduct, &c., which is the exact same line of thinking as not letting black people into white neighbourhoods because they might 'rape our women'.
This kind of stuff affects our behaviour way more than most people seem to realise.
To be more blatant, males and females are different; physically, emotionally, intellectually, men and women are not the same. It is silly that people are constantly trying to treat them as if they are.
What the fuck are you talking about? Why do people always say this? Nobody is 'constantly trying' to treat men and women the same. Their separate treatment begins before they are even born, as evidenced by pink versus blue balloons in the hospital, 'it's a boy!'/'it's a girl!' novelties, &c. From there we move to separate names and separate pronouns. Separate diapers. Separate clothing. Separate blankets. Separate toys. Separate expectations. Separate responsibilities. Separate titles. Separate bath rooms. Separate locker rooms. Separate schools. Separate sports. Separate job opportunities. It's a never-ending stream of different treatment. Prescriptive treatment, not descriptive.
And then you want to say that women don't get into IT because they're so obviously different. Well no shit! We're all brain-washed from birth to be different. You can't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions about the true nature of something in the presence of interference like that.
I do agree that patronising women into submission is not really the solution, though. The trend of 'empowering' women through programmes like this is a superficial, condescending band-aid. It is an extension of sexism, not a solution. Fix the problems listed above -- then we'll actually have a level playing field and you'll know whether women truly find IT 'appealing'.
You say that as if you shy away from paying a premium for stuff... yet, you know, you have a RAZR. Remember that the RAZR itself cost like 3 times as much as other phones when it came out (and actually is still pretty expensive compared to more 'standard' phones, although getting it with a 2-contract can alleviate that), so you can't really look down on the iPhone price-wise all that much.
Apple doesn't seem to have noticed that every attempt at a phone that didn't have tactile buttons for basic phone functionality (i.e. real buttons for actual dialing) has been a massive flop.
I don't know, the RAZR's buttons are pretty un-tactile.
But what social networks do folks here use? Is there a good one that offers the benefits of a Facebook or Myspace, while being less superficial and spammy?
Yeah: Facebook or Myspace.
Translation: DON'T ASSOCIATE WITH SUPERFICIAL PEOPLE AND YOUR MYSPACE EXPERIENCE WILL REFLECT THAT
I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people on Slashdot to grasp. It is barely any different from real life. Every day, at the grocery store, at your job, at school, at church, there are people all around you who are superficial or otherwise undesirable to you. The entire world we live in is like that. The trick is that you don't fucking hang out with people like that. Problem solved.
If you don't like 'emo' kids, don't add any to your friends list. If you don't like 'whores', don't add any to your friends list. If you don't like teen-agers in general, don't add any to your friends list. Your experience on MySpace will be interesting and constructive if you surround yourself with interesting and constructive people.
In the end you may have some other reason for disliking MySpace, of course, but the Slashdot line that MySpace is populated solely by angst-ridden uneducated children is bull shit. You would have the same impression of Earth if you were looking at it from the outside. But if you actually use the superior intelligence that you imply you possess, you will discover that there are many people on MySpace who do not fit your caricature.
Or, you know, you could just use it to communicate with people from real life, the way i and everybody else i know do, and not even worry about how the rest of the world behaves on MySpace.
On the other hand, my year-old CyberShot works flawlessly (despite having been dropped on concrete several times). My dad's 2-year-old CyberShot works flawlessly. My 9-year-old PlayStation (which i bought second-hand) works flawlessly. My 5-year-old PlayStation 2 works flawlessly. My brother's (newer) PlayStation 2 works flawlessly. My brother's 5-year-old Trinitron monitor works flawlessly. All the Sony accessories (controllers, memory cards, Memory Sticks) we've ever bought for any of those things still work flawlessly.
Some people have bad luck with certain companies. Some people don't. That's how it works for everything.
Discrimination against homosexuals is just a form of sexism when you boil it down. In that sense, whether or not homosexuality itself is a choice is completely irrelevant. The point is that you're prescribing and enforcing behaviour based on sex, which i'm sure you would agree is not a choice.
Overt racial discrimination, maybe. Sexual discrimination is still perfectly acceptable in almost all facets of society.
Try mandating that your Black employees have to dress differently from your White employees and you'll never hear the end of it, but that works cool if it's males and females. Or see if saying 'we only hire White people for our wait staff' is treated the same as 'we only hire women'. And then there's that last great bastion of segregation, the bath room. We got rid of racially segregated bath rooms but doing it based on sex is still alright. Same with locker rooms, sports teams, entire schools, whatever you want.
EVE is like the single most complicated game i have ever played in my entire life. I read about it, i thought the graphics were cool, i thought the idea was neat, it seemed to offer unlimited possibilities, a kind of semi-realistic economy and political environment, all kinds of stuff. And then i actually downloaded the game (and it's enormous)... and it was awful. I do not have the attention span to micro-manage the 4830958347803 different menus and buttons in each of the 393094935656 different aspects of the game.
I enjoyed WoW for a few weeks, but a lot of what turned me off of it (aside from the monthly fee) is the people who play it. What a bunch of fucking ass holes, Jesus Christ. Making a million duplicate characters is like so much the norm in the game that you just can not enjoy exploring or learning things as you go along.
People assume you're an expert at the game, no matter how low of a level you are, because (seemingly) every single person in the entire game is on their fifth or sixth character and they know all the lingo and the terrain and the mechanics, and you're just left there feeling like a big ass hole because this level-8 orc you teamed up with (because you thought he was a newbie just like you) is calling you a retard for not being an expert at running dungeons yet.
Seriously that was my experience the entire time i played the game (i got up to like level 25). Everybody was an expert except me, and of course they're all too busy going through the motions to get their guy up to level 60 for the third time this year that they don't want to help you figure anything out. Even if you're looking for people at your level, even if you're looking for people below your level. They all know more about the game than you, and very obnoxiously so.
Slashdot Mirror
Not even sports should be gender-based. They should be based on classes (weight, height, whatever) just like gender-segregated sports are individually. A 250-pound body-builder-type female, for example, should not be stuck playing with a bunch of smaller females (or the very few larger ones) based solely on the fact that women statistically have smaller frames. The statistics obviously don't apply to her. She should play with people of a similar size, and if that means men, that's perfectly fine.
You're right, Windows is definitely a niche market.
... What are you talking about? You can do that in XP too. The 'search box' is just accessed a little differently. Two options:
1. Start > Run... > cmd /k ipconfig
2. Win+R > cmd /k ipconfig
Remember, here in the USA, we use both CDMA and GSM, and even worse, they use different bands so a GSM phone isn't necessarily compatible with all GSM carriers.
(1) The CDMA versus GSM point may be a valid one, but differences like that are not limited to the USA. Europe currently is rolling out UMTS, which is just as incompatible with GSM as CDMA is.
(2) I don't think i've heard of a GSM phone that isn't at least dual-band (almost all mobile phones sold in Europe are dual-band as far as i know). The only problem you might reasonably expect to have is trying to get a dual-band European phone to work on 1900 MHz networks in the States. In practice almost every GSM phone you can buy in America will work on every GSM carrier in America -- they have to, because each company (e.g. T-Mobile) needs to license other companies' (e.g. Cingular's) networks in order to provide reasonable coverage.
It may not be 'Orwellian', but i fail to see the purpose. Surely this sort of 'illegitimate use' is already prohibited by Canada's regular plain old trade-mark laws?
I don't have a Mac (yet), so maybe i'm not completely sure what you're talking about, but... isn't that how it works in every operating system?
FYI, on Windows XP, even after disabling menu effects there is still a delay in how long it takes for a cascaded menu to pop up. I don't remember the default value, but i think it's something like 300 ms. As far as i know there is no way to change this using the 'regular' Windows options. You need to edit the Registry or get a 'tweaking' program like TweakUI.
(Honestly, you should never run Windows without getting TweakUI anyway.)
I'm not positive, but i think that problem has been fixed with the latest 'monster' firmware and tutorials that are floating around. If you configure the Alltel firmware properly you'll be able to get your PRL normally (with *228).
Otherwise, not that big of a deal, all you have to do to update it manually is upload a list over USB once every month or two.
Plus, if you're willing to work for it, you can flash to another provider's firmware to get rid of all that bull shit Verizon puts (or rather, doesn't put) on their phones. This is what i plan to do with my Verizon RAZR, which i will be getting as a free upgrade next month. Horrible firmware on their phones, lately, but the coverage is great where i live and (so far) so is their customer service.
Uh. The same reason football players can't keep playing professionally after they've fucked up their knees?
Just because it's still connected doesn't mean it's still functional.
He gave her the standard ToS - the (presumably) standard 20 buck offer - not rude. I have no idea what the mail she sent him looks like.
I disagree. I mean he wasn't a total dick, but his initial response was pretty stand-offish. For example, 'Restoration is not available to members who do not upgrade, and our policy will be strictly enforced'. The last part really seems unnecessarily gruff-sounding. So does 'This is non-negotiable'. It's like he's already arguing with her, even though she doesn't start the rebuttals until the next e-mail.
This is assuming, of course, that she gave the (more-or-less) full exchange. If there were some other e-mails in between it might be a different story.
I don't recall suggesting that i wasn't allowed in the women's locker room.
Well that's actually just cuz their pee comes out in different places...
My understanding of diaper engineering was that they're all pretty much the same except for the colours and patterns on the outside. You may be right, though; if so i stand corrected on that point.
I don't think they make any difference... being referred to as "she" isn't going to make someone less likely to be interested in computers.
Not by itself, no, but this combined with everything else re-inforces the 'otherness' factor (which of course contributes to what activities a person feels comfortable engaging in, et cetera, et cetera).
This is unavoidable; girls grow up to have children, guys don't get pregnant, this has a huge difference at the genetic level due to evolution.... blah blah blah...
That's not what i'm talking about. I mean domestic responsibilities and things like that. In my family for example there is an understanding that washing dishes is a 'girl's job'. I am sure you will agree that there is in fact no 'difference at the genetic level' that makes this the case. (That is a trivial example obviously; it extends to many many other things.)
Tha's down to sexuality rather than sexism.
Why don't we have gay males use the girls' locker room then? In any case it's irrelevant. It's never appropriate to punish people because certain others can't control themselves.
Again, sexuality... does distract!
See above. ALSO, it would be far less distracting if there wasn't an institutional mystique attached to the sexes (accomplished, again, through systemic segregation). Integrate two things and they will no longer be exotic to each other.
This is not social conditioning, this is pure cold genetics, and the effects touch every part of life.
My point was not that there are no biological differences between males and females. There obviously are. The point is that social conditioning does not allow for the exceptions that might naturally follow in their absence (nor does it allow for the ones that somehow do manage to persist).
... K... because that's totally what i was talking about.
What problems? The fact that men and women have different bathrooms at the airport? The fact that most languages have gender-specific pronouns?
Do "it's a girl!" type exclamations at births actually bother you?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Personally I don't want to morph into an androgynous society (and I don't think we will) but your opinion seems to differ.
That's a straw-man. Eliminating sexism does not make us an 'androgynous society', any more than eliminating racism makes us a raceless society. Black and white people are still quite distinct; however, they do not have separate bath rooms at the aeroport, they do not have separate pronouns, and they do not have separate balloons and birth-day cards. Somehow we still manage to struggle through existence.
Did you seriously just fucking imply that women wear pink because of evolution?
Pink was a boys' colour (noted for its 'strength') for many many years before it every became associated with girls. (In fact, one theory is that the NAZIs popularised its 'femininity' when they gave homosexuals pink arm bands.) It is absolutely, 150%, a social invention.
It's fairly well documented that females are more likely to do x and males are more likely to do y, even in the absence of socialisation. There's nothing wrong with recognising that as a fact.
The problem is that people (and i mean the very vast majority of people) don't just see it as a statistical likelihood, they see it as a rule, something that should or must be adhered to. Even people who claim to be 'open-minded' or 'liberal' often disapprove of (or feel uncomfortable about) those who don't, for whatever reason, match up perfectly with the statistical majority. And that is a powerful factor in how a person turns out.
People still discriminate based on sex. It is not just a fringe issue, it is ingrained in almost every single person and entity in existence. Distinctions that would get a person condemned if they were based on race are still perfectly acceptable to society when they are based on sex. For example, although we decided half a century ago that 'separate is never equal', we still segregate men and women every chance we get. One of the oft-cited reasons we have segregated bath rooms is the fear of lewdness, sexual misconduct, &c., which is the exact same line of thinking as not letting black people into white neighbourhoods because they might 'rape our women'.
This kind of stuff affects our behaviour way more than most people seem to realise.
To be more blatant, males and females are different; physically, emotionally, intellectually, men and women are not the same. It is silly that people are constantly trying to treat them as if they are.
What the fuck are you talking about? Why do people always say this? Nobody is 'constantly trying' to treat men and women the same. Their separate treatment begins before they are even born, as evidenced by pink versus blue balloons in the hospital, 'it's a boy!'/'it's a girl!' novelties, &c. From there we move to separate names and separate pronouns. Separate diapers. Separate clothing. Separate blankets. Separate toys. Separate expectations. Separate responsibilities. Separate titles. Separate bath rooms. Separate locker rooms. Separate schools. Separate sports. Separate job opportunities. It's a never-ending stream of different treatment. Prescriptive treatment, not descriptive.
And then you want to say that women don't get into IT because they're so obviously different. Well no shit! We're all brain-washed from birth to be different. You can't possibly draw any meaningful conclusions about the true nature of something in the presence of interference like that.
I do agree that patronising women into submission is not really the solution, though. The trend of 'empowering' women through programmes like this is a superficial, condescending band-aid. It is an extension of sexism, not a solution. Fix the problems listed above -- then we'll actually have a level playing field and you'll know whether women truly find IT 'appealing'.
You say that as if you shy away from paying a premium for stuff... yet, you know, you have a RAZR. Remember that the RAZR itself cost like 3 times as much as other phones when it came out (and actually is still pretty expensive compared to more 'standard' phones, although getting it with a 2-contract can alleviate that), so you can't really look down on the iPhone price-wise all that much.
Apple doesn't seem to have noticed that every attempt at a phone that didn't have tactile buttons for basic phone functionality (i.e. real buttons for actual dialing) has been a massive flop.
I don't know, the RAZR's buttons are pretty un-tactile.
But what social networks do folks here use? Is there a good one that offers the benefits of a Facebook or Myspace, while being less superficial and spammy?
Yeah: Facebook or Myspace.
Translation: DON'T ASSOCIATE WITH SUPERFICIAL PEOPLE AND YOUR MYSPACE EXPERIENCE WILL REFLECT THAT
I don't know why this is such a difficult concept for people on Slashdot to grasp. It is barely any different from real life. Every day, at the grocery store, at your job, at school, at church, there are people all around you who are superficial or otherwise undesirable to you. The entire world we live in is like that. The trick is that you don't fucking hang out with people like that. Problem solved.
If you don't like 'emo' kids, don't add any to your friends list. If you don't like 'whores', don't add any to your friends list. If you don't like teen-agers in general, don't add any to your friends list. Your experience on MySpace will be interesting and constructive if you surround yourself with interesting and constructive people.
In the end you may have some other reason for disliking MySpace, of course, but the Slashdot line that MySpace is populated solely by angst-ridden uneducated children is bull shit. You would have the same impression of Earth if you were looking at it from the outside. But if you actually use the superior intelligence that you imply you possess, you will discover that there are many people on MySpace who do not fit your caricature.
Or, you know, you could just use it to communicate with people from real life, the way i and everybody else i know do, and not even worry about how the rest of the world behaves on MySpace.
On the other hand, my year-old CyberShot works flawlessly (despite having been dropped on concrete several times). My dad's 2-year-old CyberShot works flawlessly. My 9-year-old PlayStation (which i bought second-hand) works flawlessly. My 5-year-old PlayStation 2 works flawlessly. My brother's (newer) PlayStation 2 works flawlessly. My brother's 5-year-old Trinitron monitor works flawlessly. All the Sony accessories (controllers, memory cards, Memory Sticks) we've ever bought for any of those things still work flawlessly.
Some people have bad luck with certain companies. Some people don't. That's how it works for everything.
Discrimination against homosexuals is just a form of sexism when you boil it down. In that sense, whether or not homosexuality itself is a choice is completely irrelevant. The point is that you're prescribing and enforcing behaviour based on sex, which i'm sure you would agree is not a choice.
Overt racial discrimination, maybe. Sexual discrimination is still perfectly acceptable in almost all facets of society.
Try mandating that your Black employees have to dress differently from your White employees and you'll never hear the end of it, but that works cool if it's males and females. Or see if saying 'we only hire White people for our wait staff' is treated the same as 'we only hire women'. And then there's that last great bastion of segregation, the bath room. We got rid of racially segregated bath rooms but doing it based on sex is still alright. Same with locker rooms, sports teams, entire schools, whatever you want.
EVE is like the single most complicated game i have ever played in my entire life. I read about it, i thought the graphics were cool, i thought the idea was neat, it seemed to offer unlimited possibilities, a kind of semi-realistic economy and political environment, all kinds of stuff. And then i actually downloaded the game (and it's enormous)... and it was awful. I do not have the attention span to micro-manage the 4830958347803 different menus and buttons in each of the 393094935656 different aspects of the game.
I enjoyed WoW for a few weeks, but a lot of what turned me off of it (aside from the monthly fee) is the people who play it. What a bunch of fucking ass holes, Jesus Christ. Making a million duplicate characters is like so much the norm in the game that you just can not enjoy exploring or learning things as you go along.
People assume you're an expert at the game, no matter how low of a level you are, because (seemingly) every single person in the entire game is on their fifth or sixth character and they know all the lingo and the terrain and the mechanics, and you're just left there feeling like a big ass hole because this level-8 orc you teamed up with (because you thought he was a newbie just like you) is calling you a retard for not being an expert at running dungeons yet.
Seriously that was my experience the entire time i played the game (i got up to like level 25). Everybody was an expert except me, and of course they're all too busy going through the motions to get their guy up to level 60 for the third time this year that they don't want to help you figure anything out. Even if you're looking for people at your level, even if you're looking for people below your level. They all know more about the game than you, and very obnoxiously so.