Fran Allen Wins Turing Award

shoemortgage writes "The Association for Computing Machinery has named Frances E. Allen the recipient of the 2006 A.M. Turing Award for contributions that fundamentally improved the performance of computer programs in solving problems, and accelerated the use of high performance computing. Allen,74, is the first woman to receive the Turing Award in the 41 years of its history. She retired from IBM in 2002."

Comments

So, has the black guy won yet?

[elrous0]

Well, we've established who the token woman is for awards in computing. So, who's the token black guy? And has he won this award yet?

If not, I think they should give it to him next year. And, if we're lucky, maybe at some point they can dedge up a Native American with some mediocre qualifications too.

-Eric

Re:Rare Women

[Anonymous Coward]

So: if "engineering ability" is sex-linked, what is the explanation for the recent, dramatic rise in technical women? Is there some kind of genetic mutation occurring? One possible explanation is that women have some latent "engineering ability," though not enough to compete with men; in this case, we should expect the ratio of women/man engineers to converge on an equilibrium point somewhere below 50%.

Well, let me give you a hint: Ever heard of reverse discrimination? Or, the PC term designed to hide the truth, the so-called "affirmative action"?
Let me tell you, 200 years ago there were equally as few women studying liberal arts as there were women studying science (zero). How is it that they managed to basically take over liberal arts, and not science? Is there some kind of conspiration of male chauvinistic scientific pigs preventing them from doing so? Should we track it on our crusade towards progress?
Or perhaps you could accept the truth: men and women are NOT identical. There are far more men than women both in science and in prisons. Why can you accept that one of these is a result of natural differences between the genders and cannot accept that the other is too?