. . . should stay away from doing science. Using science and doing science are two very different career fields.

Engineer: Based on my experience . . .
Scientist: Based upon rigorous examination of the data modeled by a Poisson distribution, we conclude to within a five sigma error . . .

N=100 anthropological study of chimpanzees being correlated to the roles gender plays in human society is not a valid extrapolation.

It is an interesting preliminary study, but saying that girls play with barbie dolls because there have been 100 observations of chimpanzees possibly playing with sticks like dolls is about as scientific as concluding that most bonobo males are willing to have sex with infants therefore most human males are pedophiles.

Ever consider that the universe is just a computer simulation in some lab that exists on a plane of existence that we may never be able to access?

That's why science is so important. We can throw speculation out there all we want, but until we actually form a valid hypothesis and rigorously test it, that is all it is, speculation.

We know (from rigorous scientific testing) that the roles women and men play in society have a very strong cultural basis. We know, for instance, that the decline of women participating in CS programs was caused by changing environmental factors.

It is important that we stick to what we know scientifically and not add unfounded speculation. It is also important (from a pragmatic perspective) that we address what we can change, not what we cannot. Even, for the sake of argument, if we assume that men and women tend to naturally gravitate toward certain occupations, we cannot change that. What we can change is the well-documented environmental factors that influence the disparity.

So basically, you don't have any conclusive scientific evidence so you simply claim that it is, 'rediculously obvious [sic]," and leave it at that?

What is, "rediculously obvious", is that there are a myriad of cultural factors that discourage women from pursuing certain fields such as engineering, physics, and computer science. This is backed up by some pretty compelling quantitative evidence, such as the decrease of participation of women in CS programs in the United States (unless you want to believe that the "girly" genes of the female population magically increased in a span of one generation).

Now, absent these cultural factors, would half of nurses be men and half of programmers be women? It is impossible to say with the evidence we have before us. There COULD be congenital factors to the gender disparity, but it is important to note that the possibility of something existing is not the same as it actually existing.

What we do know is that there exist significant cultural factors that discourage women (and men) from taking on certain roles in society. This is backed up by significant scientific evidence. The "nurture" claim is not.

From a practical standpoint, the nature versus nurture argument is meaningless anyway. We don't know whether or not nature keeps women from taking on certain roles in society and even if it does, there is little we can do about it. We do know that nurture keeps women (and men) from taking on certain roles in society, and that is something we can work to correct.

The question is, will Nature be "free" going forward? If not, what limitations will be put on it.

Reading the article, it seems that the way this is going to work is that non-subscribers cannot access nature articles (which is disappointing), but anyone who does have access to the articles can share them with anyone who does not have access.

It is still a much better solution than the current one, which requires you to either pay or to login to your institution and search.

At least it is a step in the right direction.

Microsoft got where it is today because its enterprise tools are so good. In a small school district, with a part-time IT guy, I could see this being a real mess but if a school has a properly staffed, full time IT department, it is not that hard to manage these things through active-directory and other enterprise tools.

Actually, that is why most universities have switched from local administration to Google or Microsoft for email and such, and Microsoft seems to be winning that battle. You can create one login for the student for their entire tenure in the district, and that can include active directory logins, office 365, and email, so they can use that login on tablets, school computers, and the city library.

Of course, those are major universities and colleges. I'm not sure how well it scales down to a school district serving a town of 3000 people with 300 students K-12.

Surface pro 2s have been selling for as low as $300. That is $200 cheaper than an iPad Air, and they come with a digitizer (you know, so you can actually take real notes) and you can add a well-designed keyboard cover.

If you're an engineer looking for a high-end ultrabook, then yes, the Surface Pro can easily set you back $2000. However, for schoolwork, Microsoft actually seems to be providing a much better alternative than the iPad. An actual PC tablet running an i3 (not a toy running ARM) with an actual active digitizer and the ability to run desktop open source and commercial software.

For some reason, this reminded me of a passage from "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan. The computing world seems more and more divided between a small creative class (scientists, artists, programmers, engineers, writers, et cetera) who mostly use PCs (laptops, desktops, workstations, convertibles like the Surface) and a much larger consumer class (people who primarily use toy computers like the Apple TV, Xbox, iPad, iPhone, et cetera).

I don't doubt that tablets have the potential to be useful in education, but I really hope that schools don't start treating education as a consumable product, like a movie or webpage.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

  Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

1. People who don't want to lug around two devices (the Surface Pro is an ultrabook and a tablet).

2. People who take notes with diagrams or mathematics, like students, researchers, engineers, et cetera (other than a few rather pricey Android tablets, the Surface Pro and its Windows-based brothers are the only tablets with digitizers).

3. People who want something like the Macbook air, only with better features for less money.

I mean, if all you want to do is surf porn on your couch while you watch football, then by all means, get an iPad, or better yet, a $300 Android tablet (better value for the money than an iPad). The Surface Pro is not a toy computer like the iPad or the Galaxy. It is a full-fat computer that happens to work pretty well as a tablet as well.

The market for a $2000 surface pro 3 running Windows and virtualizing Linux and loaded up with open source and professional software is very different than the market for a $400 iPad running iTunes and a bunch of entertainment apps for couch potatoes.

So when an Ubuntu live-CD wouldn't even load the graphics drivers necessary to see anything past the boot manager, that was my fault for, "trying to impose [my] Windows experience on it"?

The fact is, Linux driver support is impressive considering that the OS is given away for free, but it is hardly impressive in the overall sense.

Microsoft and Apple sell a lot of operating systems because the Windows and OS-X experience is pretty good for the average user. Linux distros struggle to give their OS away for free to PC users because, compared to the Windows and OS-X experience, the Linux experience is pretty subpar for the average user.

Which means, that like most windows tablets and laptops, you can probably get another OS to boot, but it probably won't be pretty.

In theory, some distros of Linux have support for digitizers and touchscreens but the reality is, Microsoft is the only game in town when it comes to having a almost two decades of development into x86 tablets. Apple hardware running OS-X has never had digitizers or touch-screens built-in and Linux distros have done their best to cobble-together support for tablet-PCs into the interface and kernel over the years, but it is a sophomoric effort at best (still impressive considering it is free).

But I bet by the year 2030, the Linux will be the best operating system to run on a Surface Pro 3, like it is today with computers from 2000.

The sapphire was for their iWatch and sapphire or ruby crystals are commonly used in high-end watches. I'm not sure if it is too brittle for a phone screen, but it is probably too expensive.

Actually, I don't see the problem. It is still legal to ride horses and bicycles in the streets. I imagine that in the future, you might add human-operated cars to that list. There might be more restrictions, like human-operated cars must stick to the right-hand lanes. The enforcement standards might also be much higher. Automated cars could auto-report any self-driven car that violates someone's right of way or commits another infraction, ensuring that only the best, most competent drivers are allowed to operate their vehicles without computer control.

I grew up in the suburbs and in my experience, suburbs combine the worst aspects of rural and urban living.

Row homes are built right next to each other, usually an eighth of an acre or less in the newer suburbs. Suburban apartments tend to be located on bigger plots that may have pools and gardens. On the whole though, there is the exact same lack of privacy as in the cities. In the city, single-family homes might have the walls built into each other and in the suburbs, they might have a small ally-way between them. Either way, you are not significantly further from your neighbor. Ditto for apartments.

There is less density in the suburbs (but many suburbs, especially those of major urban areas like San Francisco, LA, and New York still have higher population densities than many cities such as Atlanta or Houston), but there are still an awful lot of people. It is not like a rural area where you can actually largely get some privacy and away from others.

And on the flip side, where good cities typically have enough density and proper urban design to allow you to get around easily without a car, in suburbs you are stuck with driving everywhere, often in the same heavy traffic that cities experience during rush hour, and there often are no viable alternatives. You rarely can just walk to the bar, the bodega, the cafe, the train station, the ferry, et cetera. You have to spend a lot of time and money driving, which is one of the reasons that suburban residents are much less healthy than urban residents.

As for "self-determination"? That is a joke. In rural areas, people typically leave you alone. In suburbs, it is often worse than the city, because suburbs are full of home-owners associations that have the legal right to dictate every aspect of what you do on your property, everything from the car you drive to your house color and law decoration.

The US, especially certain "cities" like Houston, have been endlessly expanding outward, creating an unsustainable mess and taking away precious natural resources such as parks and agricultural lands. This simply cannot continue.

Suburbs in major urban areas like New York, LA, and San Francisco have already been experiencing population density increases, to the point where the vast majority of the big ones are higher in population density than many actual cities (like Houston and Atlanta).

The solution is to redesign existing suburbs around high density, mixed-use (residential and commercial) transportation corridors (trains, canals with ferries, trollies, rapid bus lines). It is already happening in more sensible (and usually higher density) areas of the country.

Rural areas are a different matter. In many of them, car sharing may be impractical.