The misogyny arises from the implied assumption that the woman is just the object of men's desire, that she has no will of her own or ability to act, except to comply with the wishes of whichever man reaches her. The story doesn't actually say any of that, but it is pretty strongly implied. There's also the implication that the physicist and engineer are male, but that's the lesser issue.

It's interesting to note that merely reversing the gender roles in the story causes the perceived problem to disappear, but doesn't address the real issue. This is because it's not the story itself that implies the misogyny, but the cultural subtext, and since that subtext assumes that men are actors and initiators that the man has decided to go along with the game. You can truly eliminate the problem by modifying the story to make the woman the organizer of the little game, which puts all three on equal footing. She's acting by setting the scenario up, the men are acting by deciding whether or not they wish to participate and if so, how.

The difference is subtle, but such subtle, unconscious biases in many different areas can and do often combine into significant -- though often completely unintentional -- bias against women.

As an aside, when we speak of the "objectification" of women, the original use of that word in that context means not object as in "thing", but object as in "direct object", from grammatical structure. The objectified person is one who is always acted upon rather than acting upon others. This story clearly indicates both meanings of the word: The woman in the story is an object of desire, in this case sexual. That's actually perfectly fine. Men and women both can be objects of sexual desire, and as long as the desire doesn't translate into unwelcome advances or into other negative effects, everyone appreciates being thought desirable. But the woman is also and object upon which the physicist or engineer will get to enact their will, and her will isn't relevant. That is the way in which objectification is negative.

Revising the story to make the woman the initiator of the game, while not removing the ability of the physicist and engineer to choose, makes all of the participants actors and none of them pure objects.

If we can't figure out a way to reduce that probability to approximately zero sometime in the next 866 years, we deserve to get smashed.

Actually, compromised Linux systems are in high demand because they make great botnet command and control servers. They're far more valuable than a compromised Windows box.

Also, the assumption behind your assertion is easily demonstrated to be untrue. MacOS had major virus problems, in spite of being much less popular than Windows. OS X has almost no viruses, in spite of being much more popular than MacOS. Android is a great case study: The dominant Android versions, using the Google Play store only, have no significant virus problems, while the much, much less popular Chinese devices have lots. iOS, of course, has basically none, and it's a far more attractive and profitable target than Chinese Android devices. It's less popular than mainstream Android, but given the demographics of the platforms is probably more attractive.

Market share has basically nothing to do with vulnerability to malware.

You know when gun deaths were really low? Before guns were invented. The homicide rate, however, was about an order of magnitude higher than it is now.

Your statement is true, but utterly irrelevant to the question of where the safest places to live are. Does it matter what weapon is used to kill you? Or rob you or, rape you, or... Of course it doesn't. You have fallen victim to (or else are disingenuously pushing, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're foolish, not malicious) to a very clever stratagem pushed by advocates of gun control: Focusing only on gun crime and ignoring other crime.

The statistic that matters isn't the number of gun deaths, it's the number of homicides, assaults, rapes, robberies, etc., total. And on any one of those scales, those states with strict gun laws don't do particularly well. To make them look good you have to do exactly what you did: arbitrarily exclude much of the violence.

I'll never know. The very first thing I do when I get a new Thinkpad is to disable the touchpad on it completely. The trackpoint is greatly superior to any touchpad, even an Apple touchpad.

Um, the main point of the post *is* that the US DoD is involved. I quote the GGGGP:

Man On Pink Corner said the DoD's influence was the issue, essentially that the DoD is brainwashing kids through Call of Duty, and that he'd address that point with his kids.

But there is no evidence that the DoD had anything whatsoever to do with Call of Duty.

But what is the connection with the US DoD?

Sometimes, but not always. It really depends on the post.

I think real names do help, but only some. I think you can divide the population into three groups:

1. The people who will be civil, at least most of the time, regardless of anonymity.

2. The people who will be civil if they have to attach a name they care about (which may be a pseudonym).

3. The people who just don't care. Most, if not all, of these are asses in real life, too. We all know some.

I think the majority of people fall into group 1. Group 2 is a minority. Group 3 is a tiny minority... but on the Internet the relevant population of even a moderate-size site is enormous, so a tiny minority can do enormous damage.

Well, it's possible that there are some unknown laws of physics that are relevant as well.

I listened to a talk by Google HR a while ago about this. They found that within Google women were being promoted at a much lower rate than men. Looking closer, they realized that among men and women who self-nominated for promotion (the Google promotion process is one of self-nomination rather than manager nomination), the promotion rates were statistically indistinguishable, but that women self-nominated at a lower rate than men. HR's solution was to direct managers to specifically seek out women they felt were ready for promotion and encourage them to self-nominate. They did not issue any instructions to the promotion committees to favor the promotion of women, and instead reaffirmed the commitment to purely merit-based promotion (or as close to it as could be achieved).

But as it turned out there was no need to tell the committees to favor women, because merely getting managers to encourage women to self-nominate immediately equalized the promotion rates. Of course, there are still far fewer women promoted because there are far fewer women.

I've heard some criticize Google HR's actions on the grounds that it shows favoritism toward women. I don't think that's true. I think it shows recognition of and adaptation to gender differences. Whether the differences are ultimately biological or cultural in origin, they clearly exist, and not adjusting for them is a bias in favor of men. If a system evolved in a context where one predominates, then the system will have evolved to best fit the culture and characteristics of that group. De-biasing such a system requires making intelligent adjustments to account for the differences with other groups. I think Google's solution to their promotion imbalance was spectacular -- minimal intervention, precisely on target and without lowering the standard at all.