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OK, long ago for people, but the majority of programmers used to be women. They started this field : http://womensenews.org/story/b.... It was considered clerical work at the time. When it was recognized as pretty substantial work, companies turned to universities for recruiting and male graduates were far more prevalent at the time and the graduates quickly dominated the field.

My wife was told by her guidance councilor that she shouldn't be a programmer because she'd just be typing stuff in and working with dusty old tape. My mom was steered away from engineering, so she got an RN instead. The dominance of boys over girls in this field was culturally manufactured. What else would one expect from a culture that teaches girls the importance of being pretty, their parents giving praise when they are pretty, and boys being praised for being strong or smart?

There is nothing intrinsic in boys or girls that makes them good or bad at computer science and programming. People will cling to the myth that they have some rare super ability in their brain to do programming; it gives someone a sense of self worth which is important for people to have. What you need is a reasonable memory and time to practice. Can everyone do it? No, but the bar is not sky high; the majority could pass it.

Pardon me, but when someone says something terribly ignorant, and that ignorance can be remedied with a 3-second google search, I feel somewhat compelled to step in. http://www.womensenews.org/story/rape/030330/sexual-assault-pervasive-military-experts-say http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military/ http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/31/military.sexabuse/index.html http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/485424/franken_s_anti_rape_amendment http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/04/weekinreview/the-army-s-problems-with-sex-and-power.html Really, you missed all these articles? I guess you really weren't paying attention. You must be either comatose or deliberately blind to certain aspects of reality--you know, those parts that undermine your pithy little points.

Now, I don't need to name any terrorist organization that has done more damage then a government. We give consent to the government to do some of the things they do.

I didn't give consent, unless you mean by not opposing it enough means giving consent. Actually when Bush ran when 2000 instead of voting for whom I wanted as president I specifically voted against Bush. I didn't want Gore as president either but I thought he'd be less bad than Bush, so when it came tyme to vote I selected Gore. But as far as I'm concerned that was a wasted vote and in 2004 Michael Badnarik got my vote. Though I disagree with some of his positions late last year and early this year I was supporting Ron Paul, now I'm watching to see who the Libertarian candidates are.

Oh, also "our" government supported some of those terrorists. And other bad guys. Up until his invasion of Kuwait the US supported Saddam. Former president Bush, Sr, even argued before congress that trade sanctions against Iraq would hurt US trade as Reagan 's VP. And that was while Saddam was using WMDs. The US also supported al Quada and the Taliban, while they were fighting the Soviets, the US helped arm and finance them. Then Secretary of Defense Cheney even patted Saddam on the back. As late as 2001 President Bush supported the Taliban. For instance Bush gave them $43 million in May 2001, yet it was Clinton who targeted al Quada training camps being protected by the Taliban. This was even after the Taliban blew up those Buddhist statues.

Uhh, two of them on a whim? I'm pretty sure we had good reasons for going into Afghanistan.

When Pres Bush asked, er told, the Taliban to turn over bin Laden they asked for evidence bin Laden had anything to do with 911 but he refused and just invaded. Oh and let's not forget Bush gave the Taliban millions of US taxpayer dollars in aid before the invasion. "Bush Gives Taliban $10 Million To Fight Opium". That's $43,000,000 there. Yet the Taliban profit from the opium trade.

Of course, it makes you wonder, why couldn't they create some disease to kill the cane toad off? Or destroy opium poppies etc.

They better leave their hands off of opium! It's the only source of money some have, the US and Aghan gpvernments promised aid so they could make money from other things but the aid was never provided.

Here we have the Taliban in Afghanistan benefiting from the opium trade, yet early in his first term Bush gave the Taliban US taxpayer money supposedly for fighting against opium.

How will we ever do without the US's vaunted, impeccable integrity running the Internet? You know, the vaunted US integrity displayed by their invasion of a sovereign country under false pretences? Or the great work they've done in helping combating racial poverty in their communities? Or the work of their high ranking politicians? Or their work in preventing the spread of fatal disease in Africa?

How can we possibly be safe without the US controlling the Internet?

Hey guess who supported the Taliban and gave them millions of taxpayer dollars to them?...

The current occupier of the Whitehouse, President Bush. Even as they were blowing up historically and culturally significant monuments and executing people in a soccer stadium.

• Bush Gives Taliban $10 Million To Fight Opium
• Underwriting the Taliban

Thanks for the link. I see where it says congress ended educational funding via USAID in the mid '90s. I'll have to spend more tyme reading it.

No... I think you're being a bit overly serious here.

It's funny (as in odd or strange to ponder) that at the time this was a huge issue, yet now we take it for granted. It is strange for the current generation to ponder that there ever was a time where women's right to vote could have ever been questioned.

• Women's Salaries in Life Sciences One-Third Less
• A Comparison of the Career Attainments of Men and Women Healthcare Executives
• Comparison of society attitudes to homosexual men and women. (sorry can't find a link for this one, but lesbian women are by far more discriminated against than gay men)

It is a subject worth examining. It wasn't that long ago, really. Looking at the parallels between surveillance then and surveillance now should make us question why we are still watching dissidents today, and are today's dissidents tomorrow's heroes? And if that's so, why aren't they today's heroes?

While the Taliban was in power, the US gave quite a bit of aid and assistance to them. After all, they were our buddies- they were going to crack down on drugs! It's easy to turn a blind eye to everything and anything else that the US supposedly stands for, provided they tell us they'll crack down on opium production.

I mean, it's a well known fact that the US can never do any wrong- so, why is this guy going to jail?

Perhaps we should put this retarded administration on trial, along with the schmucks in previous administrations who thought it was a good idea to put a bunch of folks through Terrorism for Dummies, CIA Edition. Hell, perhaps we could even go so far as to look at our current actions- the CIA sponsors guerilla training like that given to our buddie Osama in a number of countries. You see, when the US wants something from some un-developed nationn we train a bunch of locals to despose the current dictator and put one in that is more to our liking... It's usually about getting some resource that the other guy didn't feel like sharing. Oil? COULDN'T BE!

USA! USA! USA!

First of all, I must admit that I can't tell if your post was flamebait or if you're just completely misguided. But let me address your three main points.

Your first point, sarcastically put as it was, is that secretaries have a far more complicated set of tasks than simply typing into typewriters. I agree with that to some extent, which is why I said explicitly in my original post "Start there and then add whatever else you need. Don't start with a general purpose computing platform and complain that it's too hard to use.". Nobody is claiming that typewriters are the perfect tool, but being able to draft letters and memos is infinitely more relevant than being able to minimize, restore, and drag a Solitaire or FreeCell window around a virtual desktop.

Which takes me to the second point. Does "she" have any use for email or the web? Maybe, but she has no inherent right to those things as you seem to imply, especially for personal use. How is web browsing any more acceptable during business hours than watching television or playing Quake? Do your WORK. Is that such a hard concept to understand? And if said work involves accessing the web or exchanging emails, then that can be incorporated into the appliance I described quite easily, with proper filters, proxies, client software, etc.

The rest of this post now deals with your sickeningly misguided dismay at the use of the term "Sally Secretary". For those of you who have no interest in gender issues, logic, and truth, feel free to stop reading now. Otherwise...

"Sally Secretary" (which I quoted, btw, and did not initiate) is a nickname for a generic person, like "Terrible Tommy" for a misbehaving kid or "Timmy Tricketer" for a sneaky little kid. Do these nicknames or their use imply that all men are misbheaving sneaks or that people who cause problems are generally male? No, they are generic nicknames for the purpose of conversation. And as soon as Jenny Q. Oxford invents an English gender-neutral third-person pronoun suitable for people, we can start using that. Hey did you notice that I called her "Jenny"? That must be because all women have better vocabularies than all men.

But more importantly in this case is that most secretaries are female. Sorry to break the news to you. Feel free to do some actual research, for example see the fine report by the 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women. Or maybe just read an article that references that report which says: "More than one in four women in this country have clerical or administrative jobs, according to 9 to 5 National Association of Working Women, the Atlanta-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to strengthen women's ability to work for economic justice."

Maybe it troubles you that there are so many women secretaries. Go fight that battle then. But try to make a separation between what you're fighting for. It's ignorant knee-jerk PC comments like yours that distract from real social issues (such as why so many women go into such professions) rather than actually addressing them. Your hush-hush "Equity Through Obscurity" approach to social politics is out-dated, conterproductive, and off-topic.