WinterAyars

There's another issue too. It's not just "the iPad is closed, therefore openness is doomed". That would be obviously silly. The problem is that all the powerful forces in our society (barring technology itself) are pushing towards these closed, integrated, proprietary systems. Go look at what ISPs want to do to our internet access! Rather than, as we would expect, having cell phone contracts become more internet-like they want it to be the other way around!

In MMOs it's easy: go look at the psychology of rewards. Psychologists found that if you rig up an experiment where you take rats and give them a button where they get food when they press it they'll more or less do the sensible thing: when they're hungry they press it and then eat.

However, if you rig it up so that if they press it they some times do NOT get food they'll immediately press the damn button until their tiny paws fall off. (No joke.) Even though they could do the same thing (press it until they are no longer hungry), the inconsistent rewards makes them freak out. It's the same thing with MMOs--that's why MMOs have loot that you have a better chance of winning the lottery than getting: because it makes people play 24/7 until they die of exhaustion.

As for myself... i prefer to play games that aren't quite as blatantly copied from psychological experiments. Once you buy into the internal logic of the MMO you're done for until you crash and/or quit.

It's definitely too big to be a wolf. The size would be appropriate for a bear, and bears are probably more likely than wolves anyway. It's not quite the right shape for a bear, but that's just my opinion.

I think this is a pretty naive way to look at it. Of course Harvard realizes their MBAs often end up with a duty to maximize shareholder value at any and all costs. Isn't that kind of the point? "That" being to create tension between the two duties and hopefully get people to examine the system?

This whole short-sighted duty to maximize shareholder value is unarguably a part of the problem with modern capitalism. That was the driving force behind the rush to the dizzying returns promised by the financial black magic that melted the economy.

I think they're more closely aligned with psychopathy/sociopathy (the actual disorders) than outright "evil".

(Of course, psychopathy/sociopathy is probably the closest thing to a medical description of "evil" that there is...)

But women now have to keep wearing make-up in order to "keep up with" gender perception. (Or so one could argue.)

Well, i think we could do a better job of protecting government from corruption than we currently do. It would make a big difference if we had, for instance, publicly funded elections.

That argument is a form of definition-mongering.

It's basically "because you can't provide an EXACT line that separates these things there's no separation at all!"

But that's plainly not a convincing argument.

The DMCA is, itself, a racket and was designed right from the start to be.

NASA has some rather particular requirements, though. If their systems fail their spaceships crash and explode. Possibly killing people.

It's a much stricter requirement than most people will ever deal with, but wow do you not ever want to get that wrong.

In my view, contracts can do the "redundancy" thing much better than typing can. It's explicit, it's optional, it's a better guarantee that you're getting what you want, it's more flexible, etc. Contracts and TDD are my favorites right now, i guess.

TDD is particularly great, though, as it's an in-code description of what the program should do. If it doesn't pass the tests it doesn't do what you thought it should do--ie, there are bugs.

(Of course, then we have to figure out how to write the tests... but hey...)

Advances in technology have often killed jobs. Actually, advances in technology kill jobs continuously. Like, since the invention of the wheel probably.

It's just that technology hasn't made people LIKE THIS obsolete before. At least, not recently. Now we're killing the jobs of people who can write stuff to thousands, if not millions at a time. It's all fair until it's YOUR job, right?

The other "rule of them" i've heard is that the first 80% of the work takes 80% of your time, but the last 20% of the work takes the second 80% of your time.

Okay, but the school example is bull. I've blown people away with all kinds of stuff, but i've never gotten anything more than an "A" out of it.

Of course this is one way in which school is unlike real life. In school your success is effectively capped, whereas in real life it is... well... still capped, but very very loosely so compared to the school environment.

In other words: school encourages mediocrity because you can never break the 100% barrier.

Now i know that's a generalization, but it's a lot more true than the given example.

Wow, a bit bitter are we?

Well guess what...

The problem is... that's exactly how quacks operate.

They could also, if needed, point out they have a "doomsday machine" ready to go if they were pressed into it by the US.

The whole point is that there's more to languages than just "technical correctness". Lisp is great technically and theoretically, but in other respects it is quite a ways behind (for instance) Ruby. So Ruby has some big problems (speed, to use everyone's favorite example) but just saying "Ruby is slower so we should all use Lisp" is a bit ridiculous. That's what he was trying to say.

(He's also not a native English speaker, so i cut him some slack on that front.)

If you did, indeed, see the talk then i think you missed the point.

Try listening to Matz talk about his experience with Lisp and (subsequently) his inspiration to make Ruby. Basically, he said Lisp sounded great in theory... but actually when you have to use it it's a huge pain in the ass. And Matz is a pretty fucking smart guy, so it's not just that too many people are too stupid to use it. Lisp actually has problems. But nobody is willing to talk about them.

(I'm trying to hunt down that talk, but not having much luck.)

Well, first we have to define what exactly we're talking about: physical sex, mental sex, behavioral sex, or some sort of combination. Since it wasn't spelled out i'm just assuming it's "whichever you feel is most important" :)

So for physical sex the "bonus options" (i'm excluding transgender in all cases, since it has its own explicit option) would include, but not be limited to: intersexed (itself an enormous list of totally different and interesting conditions), eunuch (a couple of options here as well), someone who has altered their body in a way that does not fall into eunuch or transgender, or that sort of thing.

Mental sex is a big one, since we don't really understand it and lots of people have slightly different ways of describing themselves. Just a short list: bi-gendered, neither, androgynes (who might say they're different from the bi-gendered--not both, not neither, but somewhere in between), non-conformist male or female (to the point where they would put "other" despite falling more into one category), various cultural versions, and so on.

Behavioral sex almost defies categorization, since it's often explicitly an attempt to defy categorization. You've got crossdressers (who might or might not choose "other" over male or female--or over transgender too, i suppose--and who might be aiming at "passing" or who might be explicitly aiming at perceieved crossdressing), androgynes, various quasi-genders that show up in the queer community ("butch", "femme", etc--though i wouldn't expect these to choose "other", they certainly could if we're talking about behavior and presentation), those who choose to "perform" gender as a political act, etc.

I'm kind of being lazy, but it's a complicated question...

What if my soul was androgynous from the start, and it's my body/"gender" that i'm bringing into line with my soul rather than the other way around?

I mean, that's the other option, isn't it?

Awwe, a "wtf" option would ruin the whole thing :P

(Smooth, by the way ^_^)

Yes, i did indeed register for this poll. I've been lurking here for a while, just never found a thread/poll i really wanted to participate in. Since i'm a bit of a minority i felt that i should represent myself :)

(I don't know about over-representing females, though. It's hard to say without asking a bunch...)

In MY opinion--mine only, can't speak for anyone else--i think "other" is fine if you don't want to include a big list of stuff. "Other" and "transgender" is probably also fine, but i would have been pretty comfortable with just "other" myself.

It's a last resort sort of question for when you're desperate. Monty Pythonian, sure, but that sort of question has really hurt people, unfortunately.

"(which is/should be obvious)"

Not always as obvious as you might think! It's the exceptions that are important, here.

Shouldn't your biology actually be more obvious than your gender? I mean, being somewhat of a devil's advocate here.

There are a variety of conditions that usually fall into "intersex", from XY females (who usually identify as female and would typically pick the female option as that's how they typically (again: typically, they're perfectly justified in choosing "other" or "transgender" and arguably justified in choosing "male") prefer to describe themselves) to chimeras (who can be damn near anything) or the like. "Other" could also be someone who has modified their sex, but is not "transgender" or at least not comfortable self-describing that way (androgynes, certain lesbians, etc) or someone who does not fit into the binary gender scheme in general. (If we're talking gender.)

"Transgender" is pretty straightforward.

Heh!

Yes! "Other" please :)

(Edit: and just as i post, the poll is edited. Now all us weird people can vote, too! Yay!)