So . . . .
. . . . that's what an "old school technology reviewer looks like?
Who knew?
In flagrant negation of the forces of nature, I seem to be growing less clumsy as I get older. That is, I break fewer things and do it less often. This is partly the result of a series of conscious decisions to be more careful. One such was choosing to don my spectacles before making breakfast rather than after, thus cutting …
Several reasons, actually, @Small Wee Jobbie:
It makes the article NSFW (in many Ws, probably).
It's insulting (it suggests that readers click links to see titillating pics, not to, you know, read the article).
It's irrelevant (unless you're seriously suggesting that she's either carrying out a stress test, or is correctly attired to carry out such tests).
It's irrelevant, 'cos this is the internet, and if you want pictures of scantily-clad women (or men, or goats), then they're over there. But please don't let el Reg get cluttered up with irrelevant irrelevancies.
And FFS, it's another brick in the wall of mindless Page 3/Daily Mail/Heat/Closer/etc objectification of women
for no apparently better reason than "because I like looking".
That's why.
A bloke in a similarly-irrelevant-to-the-claimed-context outfit, posed and dressed in such a way as to suggest that the undercarriage may be flapping in the breeze (but just about hidden from plain view) and with no real relevance to the article?
No, no, of course that would be completely different.
If you're going to defend randomly sticking photos of semi-naked women in articles allegedly about technology, at least be honest while doing so rather than using crap straw-man arguments. It makes you look less of a prat.
*shrug* She's not semi-naked, unless we're now living in some kind of conservative world where showing leg is considered semi-naked.
If anything the best reason to have it is to make irrational people angry, so I get to laugh at all the "it's objectifying blah", "but what if it was a man blah", "it's irrelevant blah", what it is, is a girl showing off her legs and probably earning a reasonable amount of cash for a perfectly legitimate career.
As far as I'm concerned you could have a stark bollock naked man with a sledge hammer and his wang flapping proud and I'd probably think much the same as I do with this lass and her legs doing whatever it is she's doing. "Heh" actually if it was naked man I'd go direct to the comments to see the unbridled rage!
@AC 14:05
It's not "showing leg", she's at best got a greyhound skirt on and at worst is wearing nowt from the waist down. Which, you know, is fine if its what you want to look at - but it's bog-all to do with the article and the kind of thing that's considered NSFW in many workplaces.
Nothing against the woman in question doing whatever she feels like doing in front of a camera - my objection is the use of her picture in an article where "tangential" is too generous a description of the connection between the two.
>A bloke in a similarly-irrelevant-to-the-claimed-context outfit, posed and dressed in such a way as to suggest that the undercarriage may be flapping in the breeze (but just about hidden from plain view) and with no real relevance to the article?
Here you go:
http://blackbooks.wikia.com/wiki/Dave's_syndrome
(IT angle?- image taken from Black Books, a Graham Linehan series that pre-dated The IT Crowd)
"It's insulting (it suggests that readers click links to see titillating pics, not to, you know, read the article)."
How would the reader know there was a picture of a lady in a short skirt prior to opening the article?
"It's irrelevant (unless you're seriously suggesting that she's either carrying out a stress test, or is correctly attired to carry out such tests)."
It's a stock photo of someone expressing anger at a piece of tech.
"it's another brick in the wall of mindless Page 3/Daily Mail/Heat/Closer/etc objectification of women"
I hate to tell you but people have been using 'sex' to sell things for a very long time, oh and thanks for pointing out that we are all incapable of treating half the species as nothing other than eye candy.
NSFW, Insulting, Irrelevant, objectifies women.... Oooh, you forgot gender stereotyping!! El Reg readers, being techie types, will be mostly male and therefore will mostly prefer to see an attractive girl than an attractive guy.
Will anyone think about El Reg's femael and gay readership?
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Can someone please point me to the semi-naked woman? I seemed to have missed that part. -_-
Or are you referring to the to the woman wearing far more then the holiday photos of their SOs most people put on the desk in professional environments?
Good lord, you're prudish.
Why are people getting so worked up over a humorous stock photo acompanying a lighthearted piece?
And where would you have to be employed for the pic to be considered nsfw?, puritan industries inc.?
Sexist?, pffft, its usually fat munters and lesbo`s that cry sexist out of petty jealousy because noone wants to drool over em.
Some people just have to read too much into everything.
1) Blatant sexism. Grow up.
2) The "test" seemed to favour the Apple (or maybe that's just the result of the totally unscientific nature). In the frist drop test, the SIII is allowed to land face first, the Apple is dropped edge-on. In the final drop test, the flat surface of the bottle strikes the Apple, by the bottom corner of the bottle strikes the SIII (much harsher impact). The only test where the Apple could be safely said to have "won" is the wet test, and that was quite impressive.
""Misogyny .... is a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.""
(Johnson, Allan G. The Blackwell dictionary of sociology: A user's guide to sociological language. )
Immediately not impressed that they dropped the S3 at a 45 degree angle so it landed on the edge of the screen and then hit the screen on the ground and dropped the iphone on it's end so the screen didnt impact.
That can not be considered a test. So it's a video of some plonkers breaking phones.
Rest of the video becomes irrelevant, rather see them blended..
Mythbusters once built a machine to drop buttered toast, to see whether they'd land butter-down more often than butter-up. I'm sure that with minor modifications it could be used to drop smartphones in a brand-agnostic and orientaion-neutral way. Then we'll have a true statistically-valid drop test.
..who actually looks after expensive things?
If I spend £500 on a phone, I put it in a protective case, screen protector and don't make a habit of throwing it around. Same with laptops, games consoles etc.
Whether they belong to me or not, I feel like technology items need my protection, not abuse.
I view most technology as a tool, I use it, treat it with some respect but am not overly protective of it.
a good example is my laptop which is covered in scrapes (9 inch scrape across the back of the screen) however after 4 years it is still working perfectly and has no damage to the keyboard or screen, if I was overly protective of it then it would be in pristine condition but wouldn't have done 75% of the jobs it has.
as I said.. it's a tool I will use it till it falls apart and then repair or replace it but I won't avoid using it because it might pick up some damage.
.who actually looks after expensive things?
No, you're not. Having said that, my experience with the iPhone is that it works best for me "naked" (blame the pic, grin). I did have it in a case for a while but it got annoying, so it only got back into a case because I wanted more battery power (and it gives it a normal micro-usb connector, also a win).
Personally, if you want to test how robust tech is, all you need to do is give it to some 5..10 year olds. The 5 year olds will stress the hardware, the 10 year olds will do things with the software you'd never dream of. If it survives that, you're probably up to military spec..
I've noticed that toddlers are more attracted to cameras, spectacles, mobile phones (even when the phone is turned off) and wristwatches [in short, expensive stuff designed to appeal to adults] than they are to toys. They seem to instinctively know what you don't want broken, and make a beeline to it.
You would have though that toy designers would have noticed this too, but no.
Fortunately, the whole post-a-jam-sandwich-in-the-VCR-door experiment is a thing of the past in most households.