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Comment Re:And? (Score 2, Informative) 295

So how about we just let people go into any career that makes them happy and fulfilled, and not worry about their gender? Want to be a nurse, a scientist, a homemaker? Male or female, who cares, just do it.

The only issue here is that society doesn't see it that way. The issue isn't that "oh man, women are 51% of the population but only 41% of the scientists (numbers not meant to be accurate, just illustrative) so we have a crisis and we better do whatever before the sun implodes." The issue is to allow and encourage people, without judging them or imposing preconceived notions, to seek their own destiny in their own way.

But some things simply will never change. Women are still going to be 100% of the mothers and men 100% of the fathers. (I did *not* say caregivers or homemakers.)

Comment Re:For me it's Windows NT 3.1 (Score 4, Informative) 387

Windows 3.0 (and subsequent in that series) was not an operating system, it was a windowing environment. Remember, it still ran on top of MS-DOS, and it was still effectively single-tasking in that switching tasks paused the previous task.

Windows was not a true OS until Windows 95, as I recall the history.

There were others, like GEM, that never really caught on despite their relative quality.

But (to change the subject a little) I think the "big one that got away" was OS/2. A pity that IBM didn't know how to market it.

Comment Re:USA in good company... (Score 1) 649

Let's put your theory to the test by giving the kid a noose for a night. If he doesn't hang himself, then we know for sure he'd rather live than die.

I'll go along with this, but with the following modification. Do this once a year, every year. First time, maybe the kid decides to live. After five, ten, twenty years with no hope at all?

Execute him, the punishment is quickly over. Put him in jail, he's likely to live 50 more years knowing he'll never, ever get out.

Comment Re:Numbers (Score 1) 529

Why would my opinion change if whites were disadvantaged?

It's the same idea.

You assume racial bias in my comment. My arguments reference racial situations as they exist today, but swap the colors around and the argument is exactly the same.

Comment Re:Numbers (Score 4, Informative) 529

That's what this is really all about, isn't it? That Latinos and Blacks should be present in higher numbers for social equality reasons?

Everyone deserves an equal chance, but it happens that the Asian culture highly values education and family, and instills those values (Jewish culture is similar). It seems to work.

If Latinos and Blacks grow up in a culture that values these things to a lesser degree, they start off with a disadvantage. But giving them a free boost (artificially lowered admission standards via preference or however) doesn't seem right either (matter of opinion, that's my opinion), but more importantly, I don't think it's sustainable.

So what's the answer? I think as usual it's to work on the root cause. Make sure kids aren't disadvantaged by accident of birth. Now, that's a lofty aspiration, and very hard to accomplish. But in the end I think it's the only real and lasting answer.

Side note: I'm an MIT alum, graduated way back in 1970. At the time, MIT was trying to attract Black students who they thought could succeed. One of the administration's ideas was to guarantee a four-year full scholarship to such Black students.

Do you know who opposed that policy? The Black Student Union! The BSU said that help for the first year was a good thing, for the student to get started, but guaranteed help for four years sends the message that the Black student can't make it on his/her own, while other students can. My respect for the BSU was really, really high. They were straight shooters.

Comment Re:Our own computers ... (Score 3, Interesting) 154

So when some whiny punk says "just run Linux", they demonstrate how utterly clueless they are. In the real world, that's rarely an option.

Maybe, maybe not. If you have a truly mission-critical application that requires Windows, it's clear what you're going to do.

I'm not so sure about the whole support thing, though. How good is most commercial support, really? Not so great, and that's true for a lot of "big name" things like ERP packages, databases, etc. Sure, you pay for support. Generally you pay a lot. Do you get a lot? My own experience (decades in the industry) is quite mixed, but a "big name" and a big fee don't necessarily correlate with quality support.

A lot of the free stuff that you deride is actually supported better, for free, in online forums. Now, that's not the type of guarantee that corporate types want to see. But the idea that paid support is solid support is not necessarily true. I remember some years ago being pushed by management to move from Apache to Microsoft Internet Server (or whatever it was called) so we could get "support." That would not have been such a great idea, because --- get this --- the servers were mission critical and the FOSS solution worked better and was better supported.

So I'm saying there's no one answer. Commercial software is not a guarantee of anything. You do what you have to do to run your business. Sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other. I've done everything I've needed to do for many years using mostly free open source software. It meets my needs. If I had some real specialty application, that might not hold true. To each his own.

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