Women suck at computers
Computers are all over the place: the bank, the sciences, the workplace — in other words, places where women are not. Is this a coincidence? You bet your ass that no it isn’t.
Women face countless problems in their pipe-dream of equality. The biggest being that the whole notion is childish and only realistic to an insane person or someone who has never had a job.
Women also suck at computers.
It’s the same way that men suck at being happy when their best friend gets dumped and then has to rely on them for emotional support. That just doesn’t make the kind of sense to us.
Computers are that way for women.
You see, women don’t understand computers because they don’t understand the basics of cause and effect — that the one causes the other. It’s childlike in its simplicity, I know, but it’s absolutely true.
This backwards mentality applies to computers just as easily as it applies to every other aspect of a woman’s life, which she is right about to hopelessly fuck up yet again by doing the exact same thing and expecting it somehow to magically work this time.
I saw this in action just yesterday while waiting in line for an ATM at the bank. For some absurd reason, a woman had been put in charge of her own finances and had promptly lost her ATM card in the machine. She started frantically pressing buttons, expecting that at any moment something profoundly contrary to what had happened was about to happen. Guess what. It didn’t.
What I’m saying here is that men are better than women because every time a man drops a rock in to a ditch, he knows it’s going to fall. Women think that if they do it enough, it will turn into a Snicker’s bar.
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That sand-brown bit was very funny.
-Dick
late 80’s Chevy Celebrity. GM model. And yep, auto tranny.
Oh and for the women out there, it was sand-brown in color.
-wolfe
Sony, you’re being a man and analyzing the problem further. That’s good.
I’ll respond in kind. The idea that the alternator was “fine” but unable to replenish the battery in order to operate the electrical systems would mean it was defective. Not “fine”. True, if it was operating at all (it turned out not to be), turning off all electrics, including legally mandatory signals might indeed have helped if one ran the engine a long time. (It would not have in this particular case since the alternator turned out to be completely shot, but that’s a reasonable suggestion). But shutting off the car when the battery was self-evidently low was not a very bright move as you and I agree.
“Then either run in as high a gear as possible”
North America. Automatic transmissions. Made to make women’s lives easier. So nice to be able to start a car with a dead battery by rolling it down a hill. Not possible with an auto.
“However, in any case, the engine SHOULD NOT have been turned off”
Yeah, exactly.
The point simply is this, and I mean it sincerely and politely. Most women, in my experience, construct very poor mental models of what is happening around them — especially with technology, but even with men as well. Some women do not even appear to construct such models at all, and appear bemused at the concept of doing so.
Most men construct reasonable mental models. Sometimes incomplete, sometimes flawed, but comprehensibly so.
Best,
-wolfe
Btw. I’m puzzled. What car was that to have an alterntor then?
I don’t think she acted stunned. I think her perplexity was genuine.
Wolfe, you’re account is a little sketchy. Yes, the alternator acting up is a reasonable assumption, but it’s hard to tell from just what you’ve said whether it was totally shot or not, as in still replenishing the battery somewhat, or if it was something else entirely.
It might have been that the alternator was totally fine - or if it wasn’t it could still reasonably replenish the battery - , just that it couldn’t keep up with the cummulative drain strain of all the electrical systems running, and probably having run for some time, on the car. Which drained the battery. It is my opinion that was, in fact, the case.
And yes, given the symptoms, and some prior knowledge of basic car mechanics and electrics to be entirely fair (women rarely have such knowledge or even care for their - or their husband’s - cars at all), the logical, rational and entirely reasonable course of action would have been to turn off everything running on the battery except the ignition (i/e the engine). I assume it was daylight and you were outside city limits?
Then either run in as high a gear as possible so as to optimise further drain on the battery (till the first town) if the alt. was indeed unable to power the ignition itself on its own, or run in as low a gear as possible and at as high rpm as possible so as to replenish the battery if the alternator was indeed functional - even if only to some extent as long as it could provide for at least what the ignition needed - , or simply pull off the road and leave the engine running for awhile. As you see, quite the contradiction.
However, in any case, the engine SHOULD NOT have been turned off because the battery would, in all likelyhood, have not been able to turn it over even it could still power the spark plugs.
Here we have to deal with the vagaries of the English language.
Yes, women can “use computers” or “use cars” or “use lights” or what have you. The problem occurs when something goes wrong, and this is what Dick is speaking of (note the chaos he wrote of when the woman ‘lost’ her card inside the machine and panicked).
Speaking generally, women don’t seem to construct good mental models of what is occuring, so they lack the ability to diagnose problems and work around them.
(Of course there are exceptions, and they are a great credit to their gender and almost universally scorned by women everywhere).
I remember being in a car with a very nice woman. She was driving. I was of course only 14 at the time, so couldn’t. The engine was running fine, but her signal indicators stopped working, the interior lights wouldn’t power on, the headlights wouldn’t work (it was still daytime). I said “DO NOT TURN OFF THE CAR”.
Men reading this can guess what she did.
I knew the odds were pretty good the alternator was shot. I could envision what was happening — the battery was no longer being charged and had run down powering the cars non-essential electrical systems.
I had a reasonably accurate mental model of how the car worked, electrically and mechanically, and I knew what that symptom probably meant.
What did she do? Yes, men, you are right, she turned the car off, stranding us all, and appearing amazed when it wouldn’t turn back on.
Women are like that. They tend, in general, to construct mental models of how things work that bear no relation to reality, and do precisely the reverse of what any man suggests, then act stunned at the results.
-wolfe
“What I’m saying here is that men are better than women because every time a man drops a rock in to a ditch, he knows it’s going to fall. Women think that if they do it enough, it will turn into a Snicker’s bar. ”
LOL your classic man!.
One question though if women are so bad at computers than why are so many of them secretaries that have to deal with using them?.. sure they might not be writing code or dealing complex mathematical equations but I know there are plenty of women who know how to open excel, make a spreadsheet, take down notes, make a letter. Might not be that complicated but that still shows, and dissproves you, that they are good at using computers.
But the real question is why aren’t more women dealing with IT departments?.. I don’t really understand that. Maybe they just don’t like it. But to really say women suck at computers, you haven’t convinced me at all?
Boom. Headshot!
Oh well. Back to polishing the Athlon 64’s brand new radiator’s ass with some fingernail files I found laying around.
The aluminium is already feeling mirror smooth. I should have bought a copper radiator but, alas, I’m a cheapskate.
Hope nobody notices how dull the files have become all of a sudden and raises up a stink.
Oh yes. I will push the little fucker from 1800 to 2400 and beyond. If it kills it I will.
Perhaps if some computers were designed to speak in plain English, women would be more accommodating with them.
They could even be programmed to say a few standard pleasantries while she works, such as;
“Your hair looks nice today” or “Where did you buy those gorgeous shoes?”
Women might then learn how to use the damn things instead of decorating it with happy-meal toys and 20 photos of her ugly children.
I’m sure it would also help raise female morale in the workplace. We all know how miserable women are at work when nobody pays them any attention.
Well. I unsuccessfully attempted a little huge overclocking on my machine today. Dare I say it is and will continue to be a learning experience.
The outcome is a little comical and a little annoying - software wise only (thanks entirely to my manly wisdom, intelligence and forethought). No biggy.
Also, being able to learn from past experience (man), next time i’ll make sure and educate myself regarding the target machine mboard’s sata controller as in whether it’s synchronously locked to the fsb or not before attempting such manly feats.
It’s even better, Al. If you look closely, that’s the “Brillant” Paula Bean. Looks as though she was as good at English as she was “at computers”.
-wolfe
But is Lori as good as The Brilliant Paula Bean?
-Big Al
Heh, Sony you were to let the women try to answer. Oh well, you’re probably right they won’t. Your rapid response from someone who’s never claimed to know anything much about computers is quite indicative of what men are capable. Quite good really. You answered the most important question perfectly.
Sonyad: on 1, 10/10.
On 2, 0/10, fair enough. Send me a PM if you want more info. We’ll leave that one open for the ladies, though.
On 3, Outstanding. 20/20. This actually was the key question in my mind.
Q1 told whether someone was alive; Q2 told whether someone had encountered anything involving heterogenous networks, Q3 tells whether or not a person can think at least a little.
On 4, [deleted text; send me a PM via boards if you want more] There are some interesting mathematical subtleties here; this question tests whether a person can think and model mathematically, or is just some sort of script-girl.
Q5: This question would take more time, but is basically an attempt to assess someone’s design skills beyond simply Q3.
Q6: I’m afraid I have to give you a 5/20, but that’s hardly your fault since you never claimed you were a computer expert representing your entire gender. General thoughts:
- The FAT32 system is a dreadful choice for a server; its only merit is compatibility and openness. Completely lacking in journaling, it’s an apallingly unstable file system with which to inflict a machine.
- You’re right about far more drivers for windows, but this is largely irrelevant in the server area and almost entirely irrelevant in the embedded area.
- Anything other than a Windows nt kernel base (note the slight trick there in the question between OS and kernel) (which is NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista ) is a dreadful version of Windows for a server. Riddled with 16 bit compatibility code, horrible bugs, a lack of a coherent kernel design and privilege separation, it’s an exploitive disaster waiting to happen. Even the NT versions (certainly pre-vista) get a bit shaky themselves.
- OS X is a bit poorly suited to being a server OS simply because it’s not tuned as such nor is there extensive hardware support for the kind of variety of servers an organization might need. Of course, that doesn’t prevent it from being an excellent server choice for certain applications. Some say it’s a fairly solid and secure web-server in its default shipping mode.
- The Win 9x and nt as well as the pre Mac OSX were attempts to see if the person grasped the difference between things like non-preemptive multi-threading and preemptive multi-threading, as well as proper hardware barriers between processes. The other OS’s were tossed in to see how comfortable people were with flavors of *nix, RTOS’s and boutique OS’s like Be.
Overall, you pass, and total masculine kudos on your answer to question 3.
-wolfe
1. 64kbit[/s?] * 1024 = 65536 bits/s = 8192 bytes/s = 8 KB/s.
2. What’s a DS0 channel? 64kwhat?
Nyq.’s theorem?…
Such networking skills are beyond my little self.
3. By virtue of common sense and from what background knowledge I have I say elsewhere. A crucial function such as braking should have it’s own subsystem and own software. Not even another processor or (logical) core on the same system would do, imo.
It should not be left to chance that the cpu (core) or the needed memory for handling the breaking assistance function be swamped by rather irrelevant, by comparison, software functions such as GPS signal monitoring, map parsing, positioning and display, voice recognition routines, etc., and increase page faults, etc.
4. I am not sure what this is. Perhaps I know it by some other name, perhaps I don’t know it at all. I lean towards the latter.
5. Such networking skills are beyond my little self.
6. I can only boast some meagre (well not quite) knowledge of windoz 95, 98 ME, and windoz XP kernels (all properly, legally licensed, unlike some software that I run/ran on them). I do however feel that these Osystem’s kernels are greatly underrated.
For my needs at least I feel that some krafty use of shortcut parameters to set the runtime kernel priority of the desired program is quite adequate for running serverside operations with the desired kernel efficiency. Like so (hlds.exe - half life dedicated server, UDP/IP game server type application):
C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c “START /REALTIME “” “H:\Steam\SteamApps\*************\dedicated server\hlds.exe”" +sv_lan 1 -nomaster -insecure -console -game cstrike +rcon_password ********** +hostname *********.****.Ro +maxplayers 12 +map de_dust2
Also worth noting are the myriad of options available to the knowledgeable windows user intent on optimising and reinforcing his OS. Everything from the msconfig and regedit utilites to Control Panel’s customization of paging file’s fixed size and partition placement, system restore disabling, and so much, much more.
I recommend the FAT32 file system, despite its appaling reviews especially by MSoft when compared to NTFS.
Another huge plus when compared to BEos, Unix based/derived OSs, etc. is the readily available supply of drivers for contemporary windows OSs, even when dealing with the newest and most exotic of components. Also, rather old components/devices such as my Parallel port printer and scanner are still somewhat usable by virtue of generic drivers provided with the OS. Driver smoothness is hardly the case for Linux users with pretentious or plain old/unlucky systems/components. Also, the drivers that be for this OS for such components as Gfx boards are rarely on par with those designed with/for the windows kernel and .NET framework.
There are many more advantages to using a windows for a serverside OS but I shall boil them down to 4: accountability, support, simplicity, standardization.
I do not know what POSIX compliant means.
And then there was the deafening sound of silence.
The next voice to be heard was the crying of a woman changing the topic in a desperate attempt to save face.
Well said, Mike. Of course, you’re a man, so we’d be inclined to believe you anyway. After all, only men have flown to the moon and back.
My dear girl, with “ALL” the women using them, that simply qualifies you as a group of secretaries or data entry clerks.
However, you contend you’re “very good at computers”. Fair enough. Here are a few simple computer questions.
1. You are examining a data network. It is specified as 64kbit. Exactly how fast is this in bits per second?
2. You are examining a voice network. Each channel is specified as DS0 or 64k. How fast is this in bits per second? Is there a reason why the answer might differ from (1)? Discuss. Consider Nyquist’s Theorem; what might this have to do with the answer? Discuss.
3. You are designing a computer controlled braking system for a large truck. Management would like you to include processing GPS input and format it for display on a small digital LCD display. Discuss the merits of architecting the GPS processing a) in the same system routines as the braking; b) on the same cpu core as the braking; c) in the same physical module; d) elsewhere.
4. Why is random exponential binary backoff good? In what circumstances might you expect to see it? Discuss the flaws of this method. Propose a better one.
5. You have a satellite with a series of 64kbit data channels, d1…dn. You are designing two ground stations for this satellite. You need not concern yourself with analog issues; assume you are merely concerned with the digital processing of the channels, including framing issues. Outline the design of an embedded system, with particular focus on the software architecture, that will permit you to both sub-multiplex and channel bond these d channels. Assume your inputs (and outputs) on the terrestrial side are video, voice, UDP and TCP/IP packets. Discuss your multiplexing and channel bonding scheme in considerable detail. Outline the kind of hardware you will need. How would you handle routing, queueing and prioritization? What other issues do you think might be important?
6. Discuss the merits of the kernels for the following OS’s: BeOS, Windows NT, Windows 95, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Linux, QNX. Are there any you would regard as unsuitable for deployment on a server? An enterprise desktop? An enterprise embedded system such as a video kiosk? Bonus question: Do you see any advantage to being POSIX-compliant on the desktop? Discuss.
I hope this list of questions is easy for you as you’re “very good at computers”. I suspect however, that you will look at it with some shock as you realize there’s more to the field of computing than loading up Word or Visual Basic or booting up your mac, or even being an MCSE.
I await, though not with bated breath, your answers.
-wolfe
I’m good at flying to the moon and back, Lori. But I don’t expect anyone here to believe me just because I wrote it.
Dick? You are so wrong. I’m very good at computers and I’m pretty sure every other woman in this room is too. As ALL the women in the in this room are using them and a small group of guys are say in the middle flicking paper like children. You really need to get a life. You stupid sexist bastard.
Because they are the proof as you so astutely observed. Simply commenting on the ways in which men are better than women does not make me the one to prove it. Women have been proving it since the dawn of time.
-Dick