Comment Re:observatory (Score 1) 225
You're not referring to Adler Planetarium, are you? Big difference between a planetarium and an observatory.
I don't find it surprising that slashdot users favor android. I also don't find it surprising that they are a bit antagonistic about iOS. Your study here is akin to going to a secular humanism newsgroup and then concluding based on the posts there that atheists are numerous and more antagonistic than theists.
I don't have any data to back this up, so I'll understand if you decide to disregard my opinion, but my experience is that android users are far better informed about iOS and its advantages and disadvantages, and tend to prefer android on its merits more than out of fanboyism (though surely it is a factor, I suspect it is less of a factor than with apple). As for why they might be antagonistic? I don't know, but it might be at least partly a reaction to apple fans being obnoxious about their products. I'm reminded of Maddox's bit on apple. I've met quite a few apple loyalists who seem unwilling to consider alternatives, and when you consider that the alternatives usually provide more value for your money in all of the quantifiable ways (except number of apps with iOS devices), it comes off as a reaction to cognitive dissonance. You see them rationalizing about how you can't get viruses with apple computers (you can) or how things just work (in my experience, they often don't) or how apple's support might be better (they might be right).
And I know what you're probably thinking. I'm just a fanboy and I don't see it. But it's not quite as simple as that. My first smartphone *was* an iPhone. My initial assumptions about Android were generally negative. Seemed like a copycat and I was skeptical that it could perform as well. I used to come up with any rationalization I could, even when presented with conflicting evidence. "Well surely the iPhone easier to use" or "It's probably more reliable" or "I don't need to run multiple processes" (yes, I know, they fixed that) or "Voice dialing? eh, it's a luxury I don't have any use for". Reading reviews and talking to people, I learned that actually android had a lot to offer that iOS did not, and I got increasingly fed up with the lack of features. What finally did it in for me was when the iOS4 update turned my iPhone 3G into an unreliable useless piece of slag. Apps would autoclose themselves, take forever to load, etc. (some apps, like the dictionary one, would autoclose every time before fully loading). Some of my games became useless. All of my data was deleted by the sync operation. Sure, some of it I synced and got back, like contacts, apps, and music, but most of my app data was gone (including videos I had taken with a 3rd party app since the iPhone 3G didn't have integrated video capture). It was as if I suddenly noticed my apple koolaid was spiked with piss. Yes, I could have gotten an iPhone 4 and most of those issues would have been answered, but by then I no longer thought of apple as any better than anyone else if I could experience all of those issues... so I opened my mind and looked into alternatives, and based on every quantifiable feature, android phones just looked better.
Hanging on to the Idea that your OS choice is superior to the others, and the need to protect it against other ideas, falls under the same emotion. Failure to do so may cause other OS's to become more popular then you have wasted your time and resources on that choice. But if you defend it and keep it going then your choice was valid and good and you didn't wast your life on your OS choice.
I was going to say that I figure the reason the preference exists is that we appreciate the security of something we *know* performs adequately over the uncertainty of an alternative. When the two products were initially rated, that knowledge didn't exist, but once the person became familiar with the product and determined it was at least *good enough*, it becomes preferable to keep using the product than to switch and take a risk. What you've said here, I think, expands upon that and explains a bit more why we would not only prefer one product over the other, but would then irrationally and emotionally defend that product as well.
By comparison to women, yes, men do ignore the fashion industry. There are real gender-based differences in behavior, and these are reflected in buying preferences. I doubt that we will ever see gender equality in the market for haute couture, or for videogames.
This is definitely true in much of the US, but the male indifference to fashion is new-ish even here, and even now, the most respected men tend to be good dressers (or have found people who can dress them well). Then go to Italy, and the game reaches a whole new level. I don't think this is a male thing. I think this is an expectation thing. In US culture today, men don't get nearly the impression that women do that it matters what they look like or how they dress. Go back 60 years or so, and any man who considered himself a gentleman could tell you about clothing items the average modern American man doesn't even know the name for.
Despite what certain groups have tried to say during the years, there are key differences in the genders. While there are always exceptions, there is a fairly obvious list of "things that guys like" and "things that girls like".
So essentially, if people point out how their personal experience differs from this, that's covered by "there are always exceptions", and yet you can get away with treating your point as self-evident.
I won't bother to list these as it's not the point.
That's a shame. I love being told what I should like, as a man. Clearly, I should be a big sports fan, for example. Also, I probably was far too amused and entertained by collecting and experimenting with all the clothing options in Saints Row 2. And finally, in order to maintain my manly cred, I probably shouldn't admit that I loved every romance story in every Bioware game I've ever played (oops).
But lest you think I'm just girlier than your average guy, I also have own every Halo game ever released, have had great fun with the Gears of War series and dabbled a bit in Call of Duty, and didn't mind one moment of staring at Lara Croft's ass in the Tomb Raider games I've played.
My point, since I should get to it, is the any real life person has diverse interests that can not be reliably predicted from incidental qualities like gender. I fit the stereotype in some ways, and I don't fit it in others. Just like everyone.
at least they can look at Lara Croft and see someone who looks like them.
Heh, because the typical chesty woman is also an athletically built gymnast.
However, does that percentage hold for every sector of gaming? For example, are 50% of console gamers women? It might be that there are certain areas where the desires of female gamers are being met abundantly, but other areas where they are not.
I did, however, think this was funny:
"Women not only exhibit different gaming behaviors than men, but also express attitudes about gaming that are dissimilar to those of their male counterparts," said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Intrepret. "For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons. "
That's exactly the sort of game I like, and I don't feel that my needs aren't met. In fact, I don't have enough time to play the games I have!
It certainly does seem that what made Duke Nukem 3D Awesome is missing from DNF. They've taken Halo and added Tits and dick jokes.
Not even that. Halo is a good game, even a great one, arguably.
I agree with what you're getting at here, but it's a poor analogy.
Well, it has one flaw, certainly, which is that it's open to the objection that crime-fighting puts me at risk.
Tell me if you think this is a better analogy:
I have the power to spend a large portion of my free time volunteering and doing charity work. This entails little or no risk to myself and would have a large positive impact on other people. Do you feel that I have a responsibility to sacrifice my free time to such an endeavor?
In fact, my odds of preventing crimes by spending my free time actively being a crimefighter are greater than the difference I make on Sony's bottom line by not buying their products.
This is where you lose me. This is obviously untrue. People buying Sony products is Sony's bottom line.
Yes, but my decision to buy a Sony product or not is a drop in the ocean. It is a measurable but tiny effect. You could similarly try to measure my chance of doing good as a crimefighter and estimate the effect there. I suspect that, every now and again, I could make a real difference in a real person's life, which is a much greater impact than Sony not getting money from me.
To try and offer a counter-analogy: You are walking to the store, and you see a woman getting mugged at gunpoint. You are unarmed. You have no opportunity to stop the crime in progress, but the criminal runs right past you as he tries to make his escape. Three big guys are chasing him. Do you have a moral responsibility to trip the mugger? Or, to bring this back around, do you have a moral responsibility to affect the outcome of the situation in a miniscule but measurable way?
I do not think you have a moral responsibility to do so, no. You probably *should* do so. It is the right and proper course of action as surely as the right thing to do when on fire is to stop, drop, and roll, but if the gunman escapes, you are not responsible for his actions or his escape. You did not behave optimally, but it was also not fair to expect you to behave optimally.
Maybe it would be different if you were an on duty policeman and you let him go, but that's because you have volunteered to take on that responsibility.
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
