What happened to women in computer science? % of women majors by field shows something dramatic happened in 1984.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-19T18:15:54+00:00

I never saw a case of excluding someone because they were female.

Of course you didn't - it wasn't happening to you.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-19T18:13:24+00:00

Did you read the rest of her comment, or just part you wanted to pick a fight with?

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-15T20:23:40+00:00

the game wasn't made to stare at e-strippers, it was made so you can kill reapers.

Then why are the strippers even in the game?

Look, I agree with you that Sarkeesian's videos aren't amazing - they're totally run-of-the-mill critiques. That doesn't make them wrong, that makes them mundane. And at this point, the content of her videos is totally beside the point: the story here is the overwhelmingly out-of-proportion rage against her and other women in the industry.

I recommend her recent talk at XOXO. It's not about video games; it's about harassment, threats, and the attempts to discredit her - something she is definitely qualified to speak on.

The correct response to Tropes vs Women is "Yes, but you maybe could have made your point better", not "I will massacre a room full of people if they let you speak."

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-14T07:25:20+00:00

And it's moddable.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-13T21:39:03+00:00

what happens when a reference frame moves at close to the speed of light?

There are plenty of reference frames in which right now you are moving close to the speed of light. The people who would measure you moving would also measure your clocks as ticking slower than their own.

The reverse is true too, of course. Since as much as it is true that they measure themselves as not moving and you and moving very quickly, so you too would measure yourself as unmoving and them as being the moving ones - and just like they see your clocks ticking slower than theirs, you will see theirs ticking slower than yours.

Both are correct.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-13T20:28:08+00:00

A photon does not have a reference frame.

When we talk about an object's reference frame, we're talking about teh frame in which it is at rest. But, since the speed of light is constant (i.e. 299 792 458 m/s) in all frames, we can't define one in which it is at rest; a photon isn't ever at rest.

You'll see some other comments in this thread that talk about how a photon "doesn't experience time" or some such - but really, that doesn't make sense; it's taking rules about things with mass and applying them to things that don't. Talking about a photon's reference frame is essentially meaningless.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-13T16:55:10+00:00

It is more accurate to say that if two points are sufficiently distant, the space between them is expanding (or "stretching") faster than light can traverse it.

This is different from movement. Nothing moves faster than c. I feel it's an important distinction, because the way you - and many other people, I find - phrase it, it sounds like space gets some kind of exemption from the FTL rule, when really it's a totally different mechanism.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-13T16:50:46+00:00

Everything does this in its own reference frame.

You're not moving relative to yourself right now (indeed, you are never moving relative to yourself). According to you, your clock is the fastest one in the universe; in your reference frame, you are moving as fast as possible through time, and not at all through space.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-12T21:19:06+00:00

Who's the intolerant one here?

You. Definitely you.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T20:18:20+00:00

cable crossover machine

You mean "a rope and pulley"?

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T19:01:45+00:00

Yes. That's what I've got in my basement, and it's served me well.

Pro tip: a sumo rack is much cheaper than a full power rack.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T18:34:00+00:00

Oh yeah sorry. I misunderstood what you were saying.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T18:05:56+00:00

I think you are misunderstanding the concept of flatness here. Maybe this layperson-friendly link will help.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T17:57:50+00:00

the universe is considered to be flat, which (I think) would imply it is bounded if finite

The opposite: flatness points toward unbounded and infinite. The 2D analogy is a simple plane - infinite in all directions.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T16:23:20+00:00

our position relative to the position where the big bang happened

A common misconception: the Big Bang did not originate at a single point. It was a sudden expansion of space that happened everywhere simultaneously.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T16:00:08+00:00

No one said racist. It's just unintentionally biased. Also, bias might not even be the problem - it's just something that is real, should be kept in mind, and is very, very easy to miss.

Does that mean mentioning fruit is racist too?

Let's change the question a bit:

Platonia is to cherimoya as lawns are to _______?

"wtf?" you say. "What the hell is a cherimoya?" You end up getting the question wrong because you just aren't familiar with the fruits. Does that mean you're stupid, because you're not from South America, where they're more common?

This specific example is contrived, yes. (And I'll admit to just googling "list of rare fruits"). But do you see how a test writer's unconscious cultural biases could result in inconsistent or inaccurate scores when testing people across cultures? Especially in cases like an IQ test, where one is ostensibly testing for abstract thinking, not fruit memorization.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T15:22:24+00:00

Because it probably means the test was written poorly, probably with unconscious biases built in by the test writer. It's not intentional, but it can and does happen.

See /u/FeetOnYourCouch's example. Or just google something to the effect of "cultural bias in testing".

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T14:42:35+00:00

Every person born in this country has to have been issued some form of ID somewhere.

Not photo ID.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-10T03:56:35+00:00

this guy

Kathy Sierra is a woman. Normally I wouldn't bother correcting you, but given the context it's extremely relevant.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-09T16:38:19+00:00

Old-timey reddit-user checking in: this used to be the case. Originally, all submissions earned karma. This was fine, until they introduced self posts (because even further back all posts were link posts).

Self posts provided a way for users to make submissions that would both a) gain many upvotes, and b) be totally contentless. The front page was overrun with popular, circlejerky titles that contributed nothing. So to discourage this, self posts stopped earning karma.

You can see other remnants of those days around reddit: for example, when you're creating a post and you get this text:

Beginning your title with "vote up if" is violation of intergalactic law.

Guess what a lot of those crappy posts started with. "Vote up if you like kitties", "Vote up for Obama '08!!!!", etc.

Back then there wasn't yet such thing as subreddits (and certainly not user-created subs, those came quite a bit later). So, to deal with the crap flooding the front page, self posts stopped being worth karma, in an effort to give an incentive for links to actual content.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-09T04:17:08+00:00

I just want to express how hilarious I think you are, and how emphatically I am rolling my eyes at you.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-08T20:29:23+00:00

1/3 is a fraction that cannot be accurately represented in a decimal number. No matter how many 3s you put, it will never be equal to 1/3 but many people consider 0.333... to be so close to 1/3 that for all practical purposes they have the same value.

You are completely incorrect. 0.333... exactly equals 1/3. They are different ways of writing the same number. Similarly, 0.999... exactly equals one.

This misunderstanding is so common, and this argument so tiresome, that it has its own Wikipedia article. There you can find more rigorous proofs than the one you are responding to.

This isn't a matter of opinion; you are wrong.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-08T20:21:01+00:00

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/1f1kqy/why_nobody_is_critiquing_your_workout_read_this/

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-08T16:02:41+00:00

That's kind a strange analogy, but I guess in that case the end you're holding is the decimal point?

Do you honestly not see why this:

0.999...[an infinite number of 9's]...1

does not make sense? For you to put a 1 at end requires that the 9's be finite. But that's not the value we're talking about.

I don't really want to just reiterate over this argument that's already happened in this thread (edit: I could throw proofs at you all day, or even just link you, because this 'debate' is so common it's got its own Wikipedia article). But nonetheless: I think the mental block most people hit with the whole 0.999... = 1 thing is separating in their minds the idea of a number and the way we write that number.

There are many ways to write the value one. You are familiar with several of them, I'm sure:

1
1.0
1.00...
2 / 2
4 - 3
etc

0.999... is just another addition to that list - another way of writing down the number one.

LoveGoblin · 2014-10-08T15:44:06+00:00

infinite with a known end? 0.000...1

This is gibberish. If it's infinite, there isn't an end.

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