When I took grade ten computer class for fun I made my password 115 characters (some sentence and the digits of pi), but once I forgot it the first time and had to retype it. The teacher became frustrated so he made me make it shorter.
Google text ads are unobstrusive and being text, they are difficult to remove. Who would want to anyway, I don't read them or click on them.
Video adds may or may not be unobstrusive depending on the placement. But, video ads are _not_ difficult to remove and it's already possible. So if you don't like them, remove them.
Teach them that social situations are scary and they need to avoid social situations and read Slashdot all day. People who lack in the social area try to make up for it in other ways.
I try and use minimalist software whenever possible. You can't beat the start up times and simplicity. Obviously lighter software has fewer features, so that's why you need to keep more bloated pieces of crap around in case you need them. For instance:
1) Browser. Usually for browsing I use elinks. It's an awesome console text browser. It has tabs, bookmarks, table and frame support, and very importantly, editing text boxes in an external editor (this post is being typed in ViM). It can browse most websites with ease. Starts up pretty much instantaneously and even with several tabs, barely uses more than 4MB of memory, compared with 100+MB for firefox.
However, there are websites which I need other browsers for. If I need to view images, I can use the links browser with image support. But usually I use firefox for more complicated things. My University website is completely inoperable in elinks. For bloated websites, I need a bloated browser.
2) Music player. Easy, XMMS. I tried Audacious (an updated GTK2 client), but the sound quality wasn't as good. XMMS with thunar (custom action to enqueue in XMMS) makes a perfect music manager. I have a separate workspace with XMMS and thunar open to manage and listen to music. No frills, and it works. XMMS also is very memory efficient (4MB about).
3) Text Editor. ViM for many tasks. However, sometimes when editing large amounts of LaTeX files I use the Cream scripts or Gedit with the LaTeX plugin. Just a side note, ViM has a latex suite that makes it very easy to edit LaTeX files.
Often lightweight software can be extended by scripting or plugins to add just the features you want, instead of using a heavy bloated piece of crap.
4) Checking email. Unfortunately I've yet to find something lightweight. I use sylpheed claws that uses about 20MB, which isn't bad at all, but it's more in the medium category. I tried various text based clients and whatnot, but every single client I've tried either a) requires a fetchmail/getmail like installation or b) has horrible documentation and it's too frustrating to set up. I prefer an email app, but Gmail is perfectly usable in elinks for those who don't mind Gmail's setup. You can use ViM for your Gmail this way.
5) Window Manager. Fluxbox. When I moved to Linux last year I used GNOME. Believe me, there is nothing in GNOME that you can get in Fluxbox with a little customization...well maybe that's not entirely true but it's coming close. Here's a huge tip for Ubuntu users. Get the alternate installation CD, and install a command line only system. Then install fluxbox and GTK, and whatever else you use. This will avoid the installation of lots of useless services and make your startup time really fast. Mine went from 1min to 30 seconds, and shutdown time is 12 seconds now.
1) PDF support. Almost all PDF readers on Linux except for Adobe's product have difficulties with large PDF documents. What's with the "LOADING" message that takes forever? Adobe Reader looks horrible (inconsistent with the native GUI). There isn't a single PDF reader besides Adobe Reader that supports subpixel rendering which makes the font rendering hurt my eyes.
2) MIDI support
3) A "configuration manager" that knows most of the contents of the/etc directory and has three windows: a list of text config files, a window that displays the file, and a window with a paragraph or two of explanations and examples on how to change the file.
4) More active development of Fluxbox. It could use more features like shading on mouse wheel scroll and multiple backgrounds for each workspace.
5) A publicity website for Linux! This is probably the most important thing the Linux community could do. Features are nice, but who cares if no one uses them? The website would contain among other things:
-Step by step guide and interactive application to help people select a distribution -Explanation of all major window manager/desktop environments, again to help people select. -List of most mature Linux apps with description, screenshots, reviews, and commentary by users -Discussion forums -Latest on Linux section: demos of CompizFusion, new apps, tips and tricks, etc. -Section specifically for articles on switching from Windows difficulties -User friendly, designed primarily for noobs -Linux store with quality Linux clothing -Professional design
Agreed. I'm sure the nerd response is "well a DHCP request to be assigned an IP address was honored by the router itself, thus this means we can go ahead and use it", but think about it. This is basic human ability:
If you asked the person, "can I use your wireless network for free while you pay for it?" I'm pretty damn sure I know what the answer would be to that question!
It's quite clear that almost no one would want someone stealing their bandwidth for free if they knew what bandwidth was all about and the consequences, so respect that and don't use it.
(things like sports complexes and other facilities mostly incidental to actual education)...
I've found it extremely important that my university has a good gym. The membership fees are vastly reduced for students and it's right on campus so it's very convenient during the year. Yes, I know the reduced membership fees are probably because tuition is a rip off, but it's not as if tuition would be much less if there was no sports complex.
Scientific papers today are not understandable by laypeople. To take an extreme, mathematics papers are not understandable by other mathematicians in an unrelated field. Hence for the public to benefit there needs to be what PLoS biology does with most (all?) of their papers: provide a nontechnical summary.
Currently, scivee.tv only has videos that would be of interest to people that know quite a bit about the topic already (example: Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase-Like Superfamily).
The videos also need more polishing. They use some diagrams and slides reproduced from paper, but they don't reproduce well with high compression.
Yes this is extremely old news. I thought it would be something new, but then I see the comment from the SVN guys is dated 2006: last year for people who keep track of time.
For instance, the comment from the Subversion team states that they hope the kernel dev team find some VCS that they like. They already did and it was git (http://git.or.cz/), a program that Linus Torvalds wrote himself.
As a side comment, I like git over Subversion for a number of reasons. First it has data verification in the form of checking SHA1 (note that this isn't for repository protection from attacks but just for verification from corruption). It's distributed, and doesn't blow up the repository size when the repository gets large. SVN keeps a.svn metadata folder in each normal directory; hence if you have 1000 normal directories you get 2000 directories.
Even if that's not much of an increase in space, it's ugly and it makes the repository (just files) hard to copy (have no idea why they implemented it this way). Of course there's a backup feature in the program so there's no reason to copy by hand, but still, it's inelegant.
There are about six or seven of these multipage articles linked to on Slashdot each day. It took me less than twelve seconds to get the link to this one. Would it not be possible for submitters/editors to do this? Or is it that Slashdot has some kind of agreement not to do this?
I've seen all ~70 episodes of The Original Series and all the movies, and I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started. I mean, he showed some interest here and there but that's it.
And how many people actually believe what they see in the movies is possible? Everyone knows what they do are special effects. Not a single person on this planet would state a fact and then say "of course that's possible, I saw it in Die Hard". Next time you talk to someone, back up a fact by a movie and watch the laughter.
Realize that some of the greatest things done by humankind were from doing "pointless projects" as you call them. Prime numbers for instance were studied by mathematicians just for fun, and now look, they're used for cryptography. Try doing your banking without them.
Complex numbers originated from something "useless" like trying to solve the quartic polynomial in radicals...try building a bridge without them. In fact all of science is built upon people going in random tangents doing things they enjoy, discovering seemingly "useless facts" but most of it becomes useful *and* gives us an idea of the universe in which we live.
Only working on immediate practical problems is very shortsighted, and if mandated throughout the academic community, would mean the death of innovation and most discoveries.
To be fair though, Linux (the kernel) is what started it all: without the kernel, the GNU tools would hardly be as advanced as they are today, because the Linux attracted so many people. Without the GNU tools, well there would be other programs to replace them. There are a LOT more people who can write a userland tool than a kernel. That's why Linus gets a lot of credit, because there are few other people who could have done what he did.
UnFoRtUnAtElY, for these people, everything is wrong. They equate sexual pleasure with immorality, with obvious Christian roots. In the article about Cosmopolitan, they refer to it (and possibly other magazines) as "gauntlet of smut". To everyone who doesn't know what that means: p-o-r-n (notice that that word also means "A smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt" (dictionary.com).
Cosmopolitan by the way is not porn. It does give sexual positions [1] and sometimes uses words like "bitch", but that's common slang anyways, and kids are going to be exposed to the idea of a "bitch" no matter what. Sex advice is not pornography.
It's exactly their kind of thinking and influence that's responsible for hundreds of sexual problems in this country: people thinking that sex is bad and dirty. Even if you are enlightened about sex, you might still have remnants of this brainwashing in you.
By removing Cosmopolitan, or any other magazine or source in the media that tries to suppress sexual ideas is one of the worst kinds of censorship, because it's not just censorship of information; it is censorship of information pertaining to the natural feelings of one's own body.
Why are they doing this? For the children? please! Sexual education of the kind that celebrates how good it feels is only beneficial (obviously, it's about our bodies, and how we feel the need to connect). Obviously kids will already start learning about sex themselves, there's no stopping that. Why? because it's natural. And, if you think your kid is too young, that's what YOU are there for, as a PARENT.
Sexual awareness of your own body is a wonderful experience, and a calming experience, and promotes the mental well being of the citizens. Too much well-being is bad for those in control, because the better someone feels, the more likely they are to help other people, and thus create an opposition to power. It's a well known phenomenon in psychology: the feel good, do good phenomenon. If you feel really good, you're much more likely to do something good. Power leads to corruption, which is antithetical to doing something good. This is partly the reason for sexual repression.
Remember in 1984? The guy gets together with the girl and one of the first things they do is go make love.
Why do individuals participate in this "morality campaign"? First reason, they're brainwashed by their own society. Second, some of them are actually turned on by reading about sex all day. Someone up there ^^ make a +5 funny remark about that, but it's true, everyone has those feelings, and of course reading about it all day is their way to get off.
[1] If you want a really great sex book, read "Guide to Getting it on!" by Paul Joannides.
Technically since this is observed hundreds of thousands light years away, it's already happened hundreds of thousands (perhaps many millions) of years ago.
Sorry, but your logic is flawed! The universe is not a continuum of sizes. There IS a smallest size, so there are a finite number of sizes in [0,k] intersect the set of possible sizes.
Give you a simple example: between 0 and 100ML of water, there are only a finite number of volumes that can exist, since the minimum size for anything is the water molecule.
I agree completely. Documentation needs to be clear without any extra frills like stories and poems.
However, there's a difference between the essential documentation and supplementary instruction manuals.
The essential documentation needs to have everything in it and be clear and well organized, and hence it will be extremely boring. A supplementary instructional manual on the other hand like this one for Ruby has the ability to capture the reader's interest in a way documentation can't.
I would very much like more guides and tutorials to be as entertaining as possible, while still having the basic boring trusty documentation to go back to when I need it.
The very fact that such disparities in salary don't exist means that either the über-programmer does not exist, or else there is something so screwy about the internal politics of corporations that the suits in management won't stand for some dweeb hax0r making ten times their salaries.
Hah! Something so screwy? People rarely get paid proportionally according to their technical abilities. People get paid according to their management abilities and the ability to out-compete everyone else for the next position up. Some people spend their lives concentrating on how to get the next promotion without doing any actual work on their current job.
Okay.. So you're saying that most women do not want to work in the IT field, because they don't like the atmosphere there?
If the answer is yes, then where do you see a problem with that?
Sigh. It's exactly this kind of attitude that's the problem: "it's all good for me so why should I care about anyone else?". The problem is that many women (and some men) are going to be turned away from IT just because people like you don't care to make a bit of effort to accommodate others and be more cordial.
Remember, this means that potentially there are people out there that will be missing an opportunity to do something they enjoy.
"be professional, ask questions when necessary and remember that you do not have to tolerate any bullshit that your male colleagues do not have to endure"
That's a very male way of looking at something: you assume that you just have to be professional and go with the flow.
Unfortunately the workplace (esp male dominated) often runs on competition and "winning", and getting things done in a very aggressive way. I'm not saying women can't handle that, but it's not a very friendly atmosphere, and I don't even like it myself (and I'm not a woman).
The problem with this is that men and women have different styles of thinking. It's not black and white: women always do this and men do that, but in terms of solving problems women like the collaboration whereas men often see it as a means to an end. There are subtle sex differences that do make a difference. The vast majority of IT people are men.
For instance, women tend to nod more when listening to a presentation to show that they are listening, and men tend to stare more and not make any gestures. Nodding can be interpreted as agreement when it's not. Women use "yes" more as a way of indicating the want for discussion, whereas men use "yes" as a "sounds good, now I'm leaving". These differences can lead to huge misunderstandings esp when the management is mostly male and almost everyone else is too.
Add the social ineptitude of most people working in IT and it makes for a pretty damn cold and uninviting place, except for those who have similar traits.
That's perhaps due to sex differences in interests as well, so I'd guess that IT will always have more guys, but the point is to make the environment as friendly as possibly for the women that actually do want to go into any male dominated field.
The workplace is a complicated place with complicated social structures and politics. It's not jut about "I'm the boss, I say what goes".
A little late to reply perhaps, but there are those who do care about OpenMoko. There is already a phone for it coming out in October (FIC Neo1973) with 2G capabilities with some extras ("2.5G"). It has been covered in the news several times (The Economist for one), and it doesn't need the support of providers because:
-It will work with almost any network in the world that supports a SIM card, including Rogers. -Applications are free and many applications can already be ported to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Mr Huxley definitely wasn't getting any.
When I took grade ten computer class for fun I made my password 115 characters (some sentence and the digits of pi), but once I forgot it the first time and had to retype it. The teacher became frustrated so he made me make it shorter.
Personally I don't see what the fuss is about.
Google text ads are unobstrusive and being text, they are difficult to remove. Who would want to anyway, I don't read them or click on them.
Video adds may or may not be unobstrusive depending on the placement. But, video ads are _not_ difficult to remove and it's already possible. So if you don't like them, remove them.
Teach them that social situations are scary and they need to avoid social situations and read Slashdot all day. People who lack in the social area try to make up for it in other ways.
I try and use minimalist software whenever possible. You can't beat the start up times and simplicity. Obviously lighter software has fewer features, so that's why you need to keep more bloated pieces of crap around in case you need them. For instance: 1) Browser. Usually for browsing I use elinks. It's an awesome console text browser. It has tabs, bookmarks, table and frame support, and very importantly, editing text boxes in an external editor (this post is being typed in ViM). It can browse most websites with ease. Starts up pretty much instantaneously and even with several tabs, barely uses more than 4MB of memory, compared with 100+MB for firefox. However, there are websites which I need other browsers for. If I need to view images, I can use the links browser with image support. But usually I use firefox for more complicated things. My University website is completely inoperable in elinks. For bloated websites, I need a bloated browser. 2) Music player. Easy, XMMS. I tried Audacious (an updated GTK2 client), but the sound quality wasn't as good. XMMS with thunar (custom action to enqueue in XMMS) makes a perfect music manager. I have a separate workspace with XMMS and thunar open to manage and listen to music. No frills, and it works. XMMS also is very memory efficient (4MB about). 3) Text Editor. ViM for many tasks. However, sometimes when editing large amounts of LaTeX files I use the Cream scripts or Gedit with the LaTeX plugin. Just a side note, ViM has a latex suite that makes it very easy to edit LaTeX files. Often lightweight software can be extended by scripting or plugins to add just the features you want, instead of using a heavy bloated piece of crap. 4) Checking email. Unfortunately I've yet to find something lightweight. I use sylpheed claws that uses about 20MB, which isn't bad at all, but it's more in the medium category. I tried various text based clients and whatnot, but every single client I've tried either a) requires a fetchmail/getmail like installation or b) has horrible documentation and it's too frustrating to set up. I prefer an email app, but Gmail is perfectly usable in elinks for those who don't mind Gmail's setup. You can use ViM for your Gmail this way. 5) Window Manager. Fluxbox. When I moved to Linux last year I used GNOME. Believe me, there is nothing in GNOME that you can get in Fluxbox with a little customization...well maybe that's not entirely true but it's coming close. Here's a huge tip for Ubuntu users. Get the alternate installation CD, and install a command line only system. Then install fluxbox and GTK, and whatever else you use. This will avoid the installation of lots of useless services and make your startup time really fast. Mine went from 1min to 30 seconds, and shutdown time is 12 seconds now.
1) PDF support. Almost all PDF readers on Linux except for Adobe's product have difficulties with large PDF documents. What's with the "LOADING" message that takes forever? Adobe Reader looks horrible (inconsistent with the native GUI). There isn't a single PDF reader besides Adobe Reader that supports subpixel rendering which makes the font rendering hurt my eyes.
/etc directory and has three windows: a list of text config files, a window that displays the file, and a window with a paragraph or two of explanations and examples on how to change the file.
2) MIDI support
3) A "configuration manager" that knows most of the contents of the
4) More active development of Fluxbox. It could use more features like shading on mouse wheel scroll and multiple backgrounds for each workspace.
5) A publicity website for Linux! This is probably the most important thing the Linux community could do. Features are nice, but who cares if no one uses them? The website would contain among other things:
-Step by step guide and interactive application to help people select a distribution
-Explanation of all major window manager/desktop environments, again to help people select.
-List of most mature Linux apps with description, screenshots, reviews, and commentary by users
-Discussion forums
-Latest on Linux section: demos of CompizFusion, new apps, tips and tricks, etc.
-Section specifically for articles on switching from Windows difficulties
-User friendly, designed primarily for noobs
-Linux store with quality Linux clothing
-Professional design
Agreed. I'm sure the nerd response is "well a DHCP request to be assigned an IP address was honored by the router itself, thus this means we can go ahead and use it", but think about it. This is basic human ability:
If you asked the person, "can I use your wireless network for free while you pay for it?" I'm pretty damn sure I know what the answer would be to that question!
It's quite clear that almost no one would want someone stealing their bandwidth for free if they knew what bandwidth was all about and the consequences, so respect that and don't use it.
I've found it extremely important that my university has a good gym. The membership fees are vastly reduced for students and it's right on campus so it's very convenient during the year. Yes, I know the reduced membership fees are probably because tuition is a rip off, but it's not as if tuition would be much less if there was no sports complex.
Scientific papers today are not understandable by laypeople. To take an extreme, mathematics papers are not understandable by other mathematicians in an unrelated field. Hence for the public to benefit there needs to be what PLoS biology does with most (all?) of their papers: provide a nontechnical summary.
Currently, scivee.tv only has videos that would be of interest to people that know quite a bit about the topic already (example: Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase-Like Superfamily).
The videos also need more polishing. They use some diagrams and slides reproduced from paper, but they don't reproduce well with high compression.
Yes this is extremely old news. I thought it would be something new, but then I see the comment from the SVN guys is dated 2006: last year for people who keep track of time.
.svn metadata folder in each normal directory; hence if you have 1000 normal directories you get 2000 directories.
For instance, the comment from the Subversion team states that they hope the kernel dev team find some VCS that they like. They already did and it was git (http://git.or.cz/), a program that Linus Torvalds wrote himself.
As a side comment, I like git over Subversion for a number of reasons. First it has data verification in the form of checking SHA1 (note that this isn't for repository protection from attacks but just for verification from corruption). It's distributed, and doesn't blow up the repository size when the repository gets large. SVN keeps a
Even if that's not much of an increase in space, it's ugly and it makes the repository (just files) hard to copy (have no idea why they implemented it this way). Of course there's a backup feature in the program so there's no reason to copy by hand, but still, it's inelegant.
Print version of the article on a single page.
There are about six or seven of these multipage articles linked to on Slashdot each day. It took me less than twelve seconds to get the link to this one. Would it not be possible for submitters/editors to do this? Or is it that Slashdot has some kind of agreement not to do this?
I've seen all ~70 episodes of The Original Series and all the movies, and I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started. I mean, he showed some interest here and there but that's it.
And how many people actually believe what they see in the movies is possible? Everyone knows what they do are special effects. Not a single person on this planet would state a fact and then say "of course that's possible, I saw it in Die Hard". Next time you talk to someone, back up a fact by a movie and watch the laughter.
However, Google maps has the advantages:
-Can modify driving route directly from the map by dragging a square
-Doesn't require flash
Realize that some of the greatest things done by humankind were from doing "pointless projects" as you call them. Prime numbers for instance were studied by mathematicians just for fun, and now look, they're used for cryptography. Try doing your banking without them.
Complex numbers originated from something "useless" like trying to solve the quartic polynomial in radicals...try building a bridge without them. In fact all of science is built upon people going in random tangents doing things they enjoy, discovering seemingly "useless facts" but most of it becomes useful *and* gives us an idea of the universe in which we live.
Only working on immediate practical problems is very shortsighted, and if mandated throughout the academic community, would mean the death of innovation and most discoveries.
To be fair though, Linux (the kernel) is what started it all: without the kernel, the GNU tools would hardly be as advanced as they are today, because the Linux attracted so many people. Without the GNU tools, well there would be other programs to replace them. There are a LOT more people who can write a userland tool than a kernel. That's why Linus gets a lot of credit, because there are few other people who could have done what he did.
UnFoRtUnAtElY, for these people, everything is wrong. They equate sexual pleasure with immorality, with obvious Christian roots. In the article about Cosmopolitan, they refer to it (and possibly other magazines) as "gauntlet of smut". To everyone who doesn't know what that means: p-o-r-n (notice that that word also means "A smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt" (dictionary.com).
Cosmopolitan by the way is not porn. It does give sexual positions [1] and sometimes uses words like "bitch", but that's common slang anyways, and kids are going to be exposed to the idea of a "bitch" no matter what. Sex advice is not pornography.
It's exactly their kind of thinking and influence that's responsible for hundreds of sexual problems in this country: people thinking that sex is bad and dirty. Even if you are enlightened about sex, you might still have remnants of this brainwashing in you.
By removing Cosmopolitan, or any other magazine or source in the media that tries to suppress sexual ideas is one of the worst kinds of censorship, because it's not just censorship of information; it is censorship of information pertaining to the natural feelings of one's own body.
Why are they doing this? For the children? please! Sexual education of the kind that celebrates how good it feels is only beneficial (obviously, it's about our bodies, and how we feel the need to connect). Obviously kids will already start learning about sex themselves, there's no stopping that. Why? because it's natural. And, if you think your kid is too young, that's what YOU are there for, as a PARENT.
Sexual awareness of your own body is a wonderful experience, and a calming experience, and promotes the mental well being of the citizens. Too much well-being is bad for those in control, because the better someone feels, the more likely they are to help other people, and thus create an opposition to power. It's a well known phenomenon in psychology: the feel good, do good phenomenon. If you feel really good, you're much more likely to do something good. Power leads to corruption, which is antithetical to doing something good. This is partly the reason for sexual repression.
Remember in 1984? The guy gets together with the girl and one of the first things they do is go make love.
Why do individuals participate in this "morality campaign"? First reason, they're brainwashed by their own society. Second, some of them are actually turned on by reading about sex all day. Someone up there ^^ make a +5 funny remark about that, but it's true, everyone has those feelings, and of course reading about it all day is their way to get off.
[1] If you want a really great sex book, read "Guide to Getting it on!" by Paul Joannides.
Mathematics, like reading, exercises the mind, which is never a bad thing.
Technically since this is observed hundreds of thousands light years away, it's already happened hundreds of thousands (perhaps many millions) of years ago.
Sorry, but your logic is flawed! The universe is not a continuum of sizes. There IS a smallest size, so there are a finite number of sizes in [0,k] intersect the set of possible sizes.
Give you a simple example: between 0 and 100ML of water, there are only a finite number of volumes that can exist, since the minimum size for anything is the water molecule.
I agree completely. Documentation needs to be clear without any extra frills like stories and poems.
However, there's a difference between the essential documentation and supplementary instruction manuals.
The essential documentation needs to have everything in it and be clear and well organized, and hence it will be extremely boring. A supplementary instructional manual on the other hand like this one for Ruby has the ability to capture the reader's interest in a way documentation can't.
I would very much like more guides and tutorials to be as entertaining as possible, while still having the basic boring trusty documentation to go back to when I need it.
Hah! Something so screwy? People rarely get paid proportionally according to their technical abilities. People get paid according to their management abilities and the ability to out-compete everyone else for the next position up. Some people spend their lives concentrating on how to get the next promotion without doing any actual work on their current job.
Sigh. It's exactly this kind of attitude that's the problem: "it's all good for me so why should I care about anyone else?". The problem is that many women (and some men) are going to be turned away from IT just because people like you don't care to make a bit of effort to accommodate others and be more cordial.
Remember, this means that potentially there are people out there that will be missing an opportunity to do something they enjoy.
"be professional, ask questions when necessary and remember that you do not have to tolerate any bullshit that your male colleagues do not have to endure"
That's a very male way of looking at something: you assume that you just have to be professional and go with the flow.
Unfortunately the workplace (esp male dominated) often runs on competition and "winning", and getting things done in a very aggressive way. I'm not saying women can't handle that, but it's not a very friendly atmosphere, and I don't even like it myself (and I'm not a woman).
The problem with this is that men and women have different styles of thinking. It's not black and white: women always do this and men do that, but in terms of solving problems women like the collaboration whereas men often see it as a means to an end. There are subtle sex differences that do make a difference. The vast majority of IT people are men.
For instance, women tend to nod more when listening to a presentation to show that they are listening, and men tend to stare more and not make any gestures. Nodding can be interpreted as agreement when it's not. Women use "yes" more as a way of indicating the want for discussion, whereas men use "yes" as a "sounds good, now I'm leaving". These differences can lead to huge misunderstandings esp when the management is mostly male and almost everyone else is too.
Add the social ineptitude of most people working in IT and it makes for a pretty damn cold and uninviting place, except for those who have similar traits.
That's perhaps due to sex differences in interests as well, so I'd guess that IT will always have more guys, but the point is to make the environment as friendly as possibly for the women that actually do want to go into any male dominated field.
The workplace is a complicated place with complicated social structures and politics. It's not jut about "I'm the boss, I say what goes".
A little late to reply perhaps, but there are those who do care about OpenMoko. There is already a phone for it coming out in October (FIC Neo1973) with 2G capabilities with some extras ("2.5G"). It has been covered in the news several times (The Economist for one), and it doesn't need the support of providers because:
-It will work with almost any network in the world that supports a SIM card, including Rogers.
-Applications are free and many applications can already be ported to it.