They Finally Found Out We Like Our Computers 184
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Sociologist Clifford Nass is talking about how people think of their computers as something like human beings. In one of his experiments, Nass found that people are more willing to 'help' computers when the computer helped them previously: 'When people were then asked to help optimize the screen resolution on a computer where the program had been "helpful," they were much more likely to do so than with the less helpful version.' He also found that people evaluating software's performance were more forgiving if the evaluation was done on the same computer the software was tested on. Nass has recently published the book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, in which he 'uses our interactions with machines to investigate how human relationships could be improved.'"
A proposition (Score:5, Funny)
Nass has recently published the book The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, in which he 'uses our interactions with machines to investigate how human relationships could be improved.'
I propose forcing women to think like computers instead of like women. They would be much easier to interact with.
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If you're lying to your wife (not little white lies like "no, honey, your ass isn't big" but lies like "I have to work overtime" when you're really at the bar), your marriage is doomed.
More on-topic, this anthropomorphism [wikipedia.org] is something I've been futily warning about for thirty years. people believe their computers think. Even back when a mainframe was less powerful than a musical Hallmark card they called them "thinking machines."
Are you ready for the "machine rights" movement, similar to the animal rights m
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In soviet anthropomorphia, wikipedia reads you!
> Machines can't think, people, and they never will unless a chemistry-based computer is invented.
Why do you think only chemicals can think? Wouldn't a computer running a simulation of a biological brain be indistinguishable from the 'real thing'?
> How many beads do I have to put on my abacus to make it sentient?
How many dumb neurons do I have to put in a jar to make them sentient?
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I'm not sure you need brains to cause minds.
No, you don't. Amoebas don't have brains, yet they can go after food and show other indications of thought.
Although the processes in our minds are complex, they can be described algorithmically or be simulated by artificial neural networks
You can simulate an atomic explosion, but no radiation is produced. You can simulate a race car, but no movement is produced. You can simulate a brain, but no thought is produced.
Thoughts and feelings are nothing more than comple
Re:A proposition (Score:5, Funny)
I propose forcing women to think like computers instead of like women. They would be much easier to interact with.
What? are you crazy? that would be horrible....Just imagine trying to have a conversation with a woman who continually pauses, buffers, and freezes as she is talking to you... ...damn, that actually sounds pretty awesome!
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I think I'll get a model where all the hardware is Linux or *BSD compatible.
But then you're stuck with a rather crappy UI, and who wants that on a woman...
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Of which "the UI" do you speak?
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Oh, I think there's a great difference in the quality of terminals. How do they behave if you log in from somwhere with ISO-8859-1 to somewhere with UTF-8, for example? And how big and fast are the scroll buffers? Will it subject you to unreadable dark-blue-on-black text, or can you choose an enhanced colour set replacement that is readable? Can you search scroll buffers? Or save them? Are full VT emulations supported? Does it behave well when hooked up to a serial? Which might be 9600-E-7-1? Does
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Excuse me, but KDE 4.5 kicks the shit out of Mac OS X' Disney UI, unless you're a pedo...
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I see you haven't run Linux in YEARS. Try it again, I like Mandriva's interface far more than Windows', and I'm even starting to like Windows 7.
Well, I was until last night whe I downloaded patches and the damned thing rebooted without asking. You call that a good interface? I don't. The damned computer shouldn't do anything I don't specifically tell it to.
Actually, having a woman who would do what I told her without backtalk would be pretty cool... come to think of it, Windows' interfacs IS like a woman. I
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Can we change the shell skins?...no I don't feel like Jessica Alba today, I'll go with Scarlet Johansson please.
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Yeah but it's still statutory rape if you need wine to ply her.
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In what universe?
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> Except games. And who wants a woman that won't let you play with her?
Games and women really don't mix. You really don't want a woman that plays games.
There's better more suitable hardware for playing games that comes with none of the BS and baggage.
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She'll never go down on you...
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No wonder those Mac guys smile suspiciously... they've been using Time Machine [wikipedia.org] to go back and relive those favorite moments.
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a woman who continually pauses, buffers, and freezes as she is talking to you... ...damn, that actually sounds pretty awesome!
Pretty awesome?! I can think of a couple of situations where that certainly isn't the best idea...
Oh yeah, keep going!...
*pauses*
Don't stop... That's the one...
*buffering*
What?! No, keep going! Don't stop now! Now NOW!
*blue screen*
Fine. I'll just go have a wank...
Re:A proposition (Score:4, Funny)
"I'm almost there! Almost! Now I am 39 years from it. Now I am 3 seconds! 99%.... 99%.... 99%...."
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Oh yeah, keep going!... *pauses* Don't stop... That's the one... *buffering* What?! No, keep going! Don't stop now! Now NOW!
It's not the woman, it's her ISP. She's being throttled.
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I propose forcing women to think like computers instead of like women. They would be much easier to interact with.
What? are you crazy? that would be horrible....Just imagine trying to have a conversation with a woman who continually pauses, buffers, and freezes as she is talking to you... ...damn, that actually sounds pretty awesome!
No, it would be like dating William Shatner.
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I guess you either haven't dealt with a women and/or used Windows lately.
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He's probably used OS X too often and became jaded.
That would also explain why he doesn't deal with women.
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So logically, until you lose that beer gut, learn to pick your socks up off the floor, do laundry and dishes and clean up after you "help" by cooking and leaving a god-forsaken mess, and ask for directions when you're lost, you fail the unit testing process. Better be ready to go f$ck yourself :-)
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That will be all
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Bigger than sudo fsck me?
You're running Windows, aren't you?
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Imagine a Beowulf ... oh wait ...
It's called a Harem!
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Sorry guys, it's my fault that more women aren't here. My bad. I didn't realize I had such an effect on humorless women.
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I don't think that's very misogynistic. While not disagreeing with your assessment, it's true that I can go out with a woman, learn all about the way she likes to be treated, what turns her on, off, etc, and then think I've got it all figured out. I'll go out with another, apparently similar, woman, and everything I know is now wrong. I give the same set of inputs, and I receive completely different outputs. Sometimes even faults, errors, and outright crashes. Sometimes it doesn't even have to be a dif
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I wasn't trying to be misogynistic
Yeeeaaah, that's kinda what I was talking about. Congrats though, now I just figure you're not that great with people in general, most men I know are more interesting than you portray them too.
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And how exactly have I portrayed most men to be? I said that if you figure out what a guy likes, chances are he's going to keep liking that same thing. That sounds neither uninteresting nor interesting, just "normal".
I'm glad that you can read so much into what I write that you're able to determine what kind of a person I am, though. I think we're making a connection here.
Re:A proposition (Score:4, Funny)
Get a chatroom, you two.
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I've never understood this 'women are hard to understand" thing. It seems pretty easy to me, since they are just humans, after all. Perhaps if you spent less time thinking about sex you might notice what's going on?
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or paint with your menstrual blood...
Wow... you might want to seek professional help.
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Hell, I've been with women that I've slept with several times
This is Slashdot, you insensitive clod.
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Contrast that with men, even. If you find a guy, and you figure out that he enjoys having a few beers out, followed by a blowjob, it's reasonably fair to assume that at any point in the future if you repeat your actions, he's going to respond the same way.
And this is the mistake most men make. Once men figure out what they like, they see no reason to change. Women like mystery. It is hard to explain this without oversimplifying in a short post, but that is close. A friend who got married several years before I did first pointed this out to me. His wife argued with him about it for around a half hour before she finally agreed with him. Most of that time was spent with him making his point in different ways (although it would have taken significantly less time
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And this is the mistake most men make. Once men figure out what they like, they see no reason to change.
I'm not sure if that's a mistake..
Women like mystery.
I understand, things like impulsiveness, surprises, and The Unknown are attractive. I enjoy setting things up like this for people who appreciate it, although I don't really like the convention that it's essentially the man's job to come up with everything. Maybe I've just dated the wrong women, but it seems like there are significantly more things expected of men than women. Even right down to the first meeting, traditionally it's the man's responsibility to approach th
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Men want sex
Women want security
Surveys indicate that women cheat more than men. What women want varies from woman to woman but in general I do not think security is the alpha and omega.
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Women want security, but they want a stud to father a child. No reason not to have both...
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Women want security, but they want a stud to father a child. No reason not to have both...
So what's the deal with women chasing and dating guys who look really great and are both dumb as a stump and incapable of holding a decent job? There's no security there and you can't really say much for how smart the kid would turn out either. Looking at the type of people having children vs. the type of people who aren't, am I the only one thinking that as a society we're devolving?
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Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah bla bla bla bla.
Man != woman
Woman != man
Stop playing the feminine card, please?
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If a woman had commented "I propose forcing men to think like computers instead of like men. They would be much easier to interact with" would you have posted about how mysandrist it was? I would have still found it humorous. Which brings up another old joke:
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: THAT'S NOT FUNNY, ASSHOLE!!!!!
Lighten up, lady. It's a JOKE. Get over yourself and find a sense of humor.
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I propose forcing women to think like computers instead of like women. They would be much easier to interact with.
Given that your reaction to an unrelated article is a misogynistic 'joke,' the difficulties in your relations with women might not be on their end.
Aww c'mon, mod this up, she got him good :D
He was saying he had trouble interacting with women, and she kicked him in the teeth. That's not a win for feminism.
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Of course we like our computers (Score:5, Funny)
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Be careful with those warm, fuzzy computer moments. The oxytocin [wikipedia.org] that triggers may make you trust [scientificamerican.com] them too much. Think of it as a new sort of user vulnerability.
Like I needed to know. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Like I needed to know. (Score:5, Funny)
1- Start doing some exercise (Say running instead of crawling to the refrigerator)
2- Now you can jog for a few minutes a day(You don't need to go outside just)
3- Start spending every weekend climbing some mountain
(By this point you are only ugly at worst, it is okay)
4- Do some muscular training (Women dig muscle even on an ugly man - just don't overdo it and become some muscle champion, women don't like small dicks)
5- Get or change job to one that lists female employees (We can't hope to get you into a bar successfully yet)
6- Force yourself to talk to the female employees (Start from the ugly ones just so you remember you don't want to fall for a coworker, they are only the last option if you can't succeed otherwise, the friend zone is your friend. And at this point you are likely to bring sexual harassment charges to yourself.)
(By now you should understand women a bit better)
7- Meet some woman you aren't going to see again (Say a fellow mountain climber) Talk her into a dinner.
8- After she has declined your advancements note at which point it happened and try to fix what you think might have failed. Remember to use what you learned of women thought from your coworkers, what kind of hair or dressing fits you better and the like.
(Volume is important to account for standard deviation, be sure to use equivalent lines for every single woman you meet. If every single woman dumps you before starting you have probably missed something in the previous steps.)
9- IF NOT DINNER GOTO 7
10 - "Damn it worked! It has never worked before! What am I supposed to do?" Nothing. Just talk to her and follow a similar debugging process. Here the goal isn't sleeping with her(That would be an advanced student bonus) you want her to repeat the meetings while knowing you are romantically interested in her. If you are put into the friend zone don't dump her, use as woman thought database material.
11 - UNTIL KISS GOTO 7 (Sorry)
12 - (Now you are pretty close, assuming you didn't force it, if you did you might be close anyways) Tell her you think you might feel romantically inclined towards her. Try to repeat the kissing experience as many times as possible. Then use as many low(but legal) tricks as you can(wine, long late dinners, I missed the last train) to run the final mile. Women can smell your insecurity long after they are into you. It is a lot easier to nail them when one is not an insecure nerd. Remember to bring condoms but not the whole box and if you think you might come in milliseconds that first time practice self-control techniques at home. Also practice for the opposite situation or at least fake an orgasm after about 30 minutes since penetration. Women aren't as tight as hands. Don't try anything but missionary position until the second sex date and don't ever cum on eyes tits mouth unless she asks you to or you are sure apologies will work.
13 - It's not the end, you might break up with her, don't despair, troubleshoot repeat and rinse. You should have a lot more self esteem after sex with a woman who wasn't a sex worker.
14 - ???
15 - Profit
Re:Like I needed to know. (Score:5, Funny)
Pff, I'm not taking advice from some noob who uses GOTO.
Re:Like I needed to know. (Score:5, Funny)
But he was giving you basic advice
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Can't run the program, system requirements are too high, crashes on launch. Can you write a more lightweight version?
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4- Do some muscular training (Women dig muscle even on an ugly man - just don't overdo it and become some muscle champion, women don't like small dicks)
I'm not a muscle champion and I still have a small dick. What am I supposed to do about that?
Buy tiny furniture.
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What I need is a map to get out of the basement and interact with real people!
Still, when you get out you'll remember all those things you read online on how to treat people. [theonion.com]
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Lesson: Don't go out. At least not near river banks
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If you're talking about the basement room with a blue ceiling and a fusion lamp, relatively few of us have gone upstairs.
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At the risk of a "troll" mod (some people have NO sense of humor), A Nerd's Guide to Getting Laid [slashdot.org]
I don't know how to maturely discuss this. (Score:4, Funny)
Guess this lowers the theoretical barriers to the sexbot market.
We'll see robot girlfriends purposefully installing Microsoft software for the plausible deniability upon contracting a virus.
Wish I could quarantine my W32.Herpes/Worm. :'(
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Sexbot? Bah. I'd rather have a Persocom anyday. Not only are they cuter, they will do the laundry and cook.
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Depends on where you live I guess. After googling up these persocoms, I wouldn't be surprised if relations with one of those snagged you some nifty puritanical child molestation charges.
All I can say is (Score:2)
I prefer to beat my computers. (Score:3, Funny)
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Operation completed successfully, say log files. [theonion.com]
Remember that time? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not me. (Score:2)
Most of the time, I want to kick my computer's ass. My laptop has been raised over my head for smashing many times, but fortunately for my wallet, I haven't followed through.
If it were a woman, it would've been dumped long ago. Probably on the first date.
If it doesn't involve typing, I actually prefer to use the internet on my phone over the computer. Way less frustrating.
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I once tossed a desktop in a river. The water was brackish, so it was fresh at times and salt at others. I fished the computer out after a few weeks. After letting it dry, I put it in from of the other computers. I threatened to do the same to the other computers.
I have not had a problem since with any machine. I am often told that the computer problem just goes away when I go near other people's computers to fix them. I think the computers got the message. Piss me off and I will toss you in the river.
The q
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I work in a school and from many years ago I remember the best (imho) moments.
1. In a classroom with computers, 1 mouse broke, I nailed it to the wall at the head of the room to show the other mice what I would do to them if they also broke down, for the last 3 years in that classroom no mice broke.
2. One of the administrative staff was having a problem with her computer, she called me and I came downstairs.
She showed me what she did and sure enough, the machine gave an error message.
Me: Ok, do you treat th
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I know how it sounds and the only explanation I can think of is that my timing of keypresses was better than hers, allowing the software to finish its process before having to start a new one. ;)
But I never tell my users that
Sounds right to me (Score:2, Interesting)
I see you're trying to ... (Score:2)
... extrapolate social interactions onto non-sentient objects. Would you like me to:
1) Find some friends for you on facebook?
2) Order you some books on interpersonal relationships from Amazon.com?
3) Club CN over the head with a baseball bat, so he'll stop trying to shoehorn 'social' interactions into my goddamn UI.
(And, yes: This is a gross generalization, but not totally untrue.)
Never anthropomorphize computers ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Nah, what they hate and what they like alternates in a completely random fashion.
Except for clothes shopping. They may say they hate it but that doesn't stop them from inspecting every garment in the store.
Some people must be SICK! (Score:2, Interesting)
So if people think of their computers as people why do they not care about their computers getting viruses? Some people are ignorant, some are lazy and don't care that their computer/friend has a virus. Some think that it is not their problem! There is clearly a type of person in our society who receive minimal respect for the work they do - in fact they are treated worse than animals!
People who go around giving STDs to people knowingly are prosecuted - why not people who do the same with computers?
Why w
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I do treat my computer like other humans! (Score:2)
God, I didn't think of it before, but i'm horrible.
Much like homeless people asking for change, I'll ignore emails.
Hot Chicks? Can't touch them in person or online.
Both people and computers make me mad sometimes, enough that I want to hit them, but i don't.
Human & computer error messages are hard to understand most the time.
um, i'd write more, but my computer is looking at me funny.
Thanking a computer ? (Score:2)
Perhaps these are the same people who say 'thankyou' to automatic doors?
And I thought (Score:2)
It was just a feedback-loop where after pushing some buttons you receive a (audio)visual/sensory reward or result for pushing the buttons in a certain sequence.
As a programmer, you are paid to generate a certain audiovisual result for someone who has learned to ask other people to learn to push the buttons in the right sequence to come to the sensory result (s)he desires.
How old is this news? (Score:2)
Participants in one experiment interacted with a program that said something like "Most PCs these days have at 2MB of memory. Being an older model I only have 1MB. What do you feel inadequate about?"
My emphasis. How old is this news exactly?
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They've known about anthropomorphism for a LONG time. You never cursed your car and called it names when it wouldn't start? This is the same thing.
All has to do with (Score:2)
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Why would it be superficial to date a self-aware non-biological machine?
Sounds like uppity biological machine talk to me.
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If we as a society become more accepting of how we view machines in our daily lives, does that mean that androids will be accepted as part of our daily lives too?
Why not? All your other machinery is accepted. If you start talking "machine rights" I'm going ballistic, though.
An android would be way better than some of the women I know. [slashdot.org]
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