How could those lovable Gendarmes de Saint-Tropez possibly be involved in something as insidious as international corporate espionage?
Seriously, can you imagine Gendarme Ludovic Cruchot pulling off what you're implying?
That must be the French strategy... export lots of comical caricatures of your police and in the meantime build up your secret police into an international menace. Much like Canada.
Ok, let me preface this statement: OUR society is not built upon anarchy.
What I'm trying to say is that there are rules that most of us abide by because it makes social interaction possible. Redefining these rules to suit your own world-view is frowned upon.
Anarchists will say destruction of corporate property is acceptable, because they stole it from the workers in the first place.
If this is the case, then what's to stop me from forming my own philosophy "Paulism", which advocates the elimination of the religious texts? I claim that reproducing the words of God is blasphemy. I claim that no human can claim to understand the infinite wisdom of God and that any attempt to capture this wisdom is folly. Not only folly, but a distortion.
Therefore, Paulism contends that marching into bookstores, motel rooms and private residences to destroy any religious writing is acceptable.
Would I get away with this? If you can, why can't I? Because "the man" is holding me down? No, I don't think you'd even need a any government laws or even any moderately religious individual for people to decide this is wrong.
It's just not done. Respect for the belongings of others is a fundamental tenet in modern society.
Summarily declaring that corporations are not entitled to "own" property is ridiculous. You're right, corporations are legal entities not people. However, there are people who voluntarily contribute their property to the corporation. One of the main reasons they do this is to protect against litigation - not to steal from workers. Are they no longer entitled to their work once it is "owned" by the corporation? Workers, too, are compensated for their work and a large number don't complain.
If you don't like corporations, don't work for one. There are many, many sole proprietorships or partnerships that offer employment. Equating these with corporations is not only wrong, but ignorant. The risk in running your own business is substantial. And I doubt very much if the anarchist protestors that frequent WTO meetings take the time to distinguish between a private business or a corporation.
You claim that I take a whole paragraph out of context and at the same time rationalize violent criminal activity with the writings of a pacifist 19th century French printer-(unwittingly)-turned-revolutionary.
See, this is another problem. You have your definition, I have mine. I don't necessarily agree with yours and you have issues with mine.
If everyone agreed with everybody else, this planet would be boring as hell. =)
The trouble comes when a group decides that their world-view is the "right" one. There is nothing so arrogant as believing your personal belief system is more valid than someone else's.
This is why I so dislike these politically correct societal revisionists telling me that "my kind" is responsible for "repressing" group X. Instead of pointing fingers at me and demanding restitution, why don't they do something constructive and help out the underprivileged?
McDonalds has absolutely nothing to do with the trade fight. In all likelihood, McDonalds is probably using locally produced food anyways. (Why the hell would you buy food shipped from overseas?)
Jose figured McDonalds would be a good target to take out his frustrations on America. Since, of course, the locally-owned franchise is the epitomy of evil.
We are against violence. We acknowledge the need for self-defense when confronted with the incredible amounts of violence carried out against us by the institutions that oppress. By violence we do not include property damage or swearing, but do include comments or behavior that is sexist, ageist, homophobic, racist, classist or otherwise oppressive. If engaging in property damage and/or self defense we will strive to take the necessary measures to avoid causing intentional harm to others.
These people believe the destruction of property belonging to others (IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO... since only greedy capitalists would own something anyways) is a perfectly acceptable means of furthering their own views.
By definition, anyone who so much as disagrees with them is an "oppressor" and by their first definition, is inextricably linked with "white supremacists", "homophobia", "animal abuse" and a range of other equally distasteful groups.
I harbour no sympathy for Jose or his anarchist compatriots. Society is not built upon anarchy. He deserves whatever he gets.
Jon, next time, please find a "hero" that's worth respecting.
Being powerful means being able to influence your own life. That is what makes poor people powerless, because they have very little means of changing their life.
I would argue that being powerful means being able to influence the lives of others. By this definition, teachers wield a lot of power.
Lots of people have absolute control over their own lives but can't do a thing to affect others. Would you call them powerful, or empowered?
Those crackpots who stock up on guns and refuse to pay taxes, what are they called, the Freemen or something? By your definition they are extremely powerful. I argue that they are only minimally powerful in that they can endanger the lives of their neighbours and federal agents.
OTOH, someone Gandhi and Jesus Christ are extremely powerful, even though they are no longer among us, because they affect people's lives on a daily basis.
(I can't understand why your post hasn't been moderated up, because it's honestly the best one in this entire story.)
Let me see if I've got this:
[society] does need to be engineered to ensure that pathways are open to qualified people based upon performance and ability
short term solution is to ensure that women... can become role models and examples for others to follow
Women and men may be interested in different things... who cares... so long as they are informed about the wide ranges of opportunities available
best ways to solve the problem is to ensure that children are educated... so that they have enough self-esteem to pursue their goals
If everyone involved acted based upon these tenets, I don't think anyone in their right mind could argue. Sadly, I don't believe that this is the case. There are just too many radicals who would rather beat down one group to advance their own.
Well, since there is no evidence that women don't like tech fields due to a genetic difference (and you would probably have a hard time arguing that there is one since there is no real evolutionary advantage to it), then the cause must be social influence.
That is a very slippery slope you've built yourself there. It has been very well documented that in general men have much better spatial perception than women, while women have superior language ability.
This is just one of many studies from a quick Google search: from John's Hopkins.
Also, social trends != discrimination. If you don't want to work in an industry because there's a large proportion of "geeks", I'd suggest that you are the one who is prejudiced and discriminating.
I have read a wonderful book on this but as I can't remember the name/title/publisher/isbn I probably shouldn't bother to mention it;-)
I have a collection of lectures by Ursula Franklin (a retired physicist from the U of Toronto) that sort of addresses what you're talking about. She doesn't go along gender lines though. The book is very dry too. I hope she was a much better speaker.
But anyways, she does mention a book called "Economic Anthropology" by M.J. Herskovits (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952) that apparently addresses some of the holistic/directed issues.
For the record, while I wouldn't go so far as to generalize and say women are better, I agree that both approaches are complementary.
Furthermore, it's just more evidence that men and women aren't the same. Why do we have to deny this? It is such anathema to our society.
These are all great points, and I must say, it's difficult to argue with them - but for the sake of discussion (and since I like to play the Devil's Advocate) I'll play the cold-hearted right-winger.
Regardless, your friend shouldn't have to choose between getting a big salary or getting maternity leave.
Shouldn't have to. But this is the real world. In an environment where everyone "owns" her/his projects (and everyone is over-worked), how do you deal with the loss of a quality employee for six months?
It's very difficult to transfer all the knowledge, the contacts, the understanding of a project to someone new - particularly if the recipient is already burdened with her/his own work. It's even more difficult to train a temp or a new employee.
There can be a definite expense to the company to lose an employee on maternity/paternity leave. Legislation or not, it's still an inconvenience at best.
What is going on is that people are trying to enourage and help women get themselves in better paying positions.
Touche.
Ummm, it's called compliance with labor law and I require it of any company I consider working for (and I don't even want to have kids).
Labour law is one thing. Working environment is another. Is it reasonable to expect in this industry that when you return after six months, that nothing will have changed?
In that time, customers who used to deal with you directly may have forged new contacts with your co-workers. You may have been passed over for promotion. Projects you were working on may have wrapped up.
All of these are very possible. They may be unjust, but nobody ever said life is fair. It's definitely a setback.
As for the boys who want to go but can't afford it, there are grants available for them as well.
I have a problem with this reasoning. Often these types of grants are very poorly advertised, and the only people who end up getting them are the ones whose parents know about them in the first place - not the parents who work 60 hours a week in some hot kitchen to make ends meet.
Studies have shown that boys can be very agressive which has a negative affect on girls in school. So the idea of a computer camp for girls sounds kinda cool to me.
Studies have also shown a predisposition towards different types of "play" in infants - who are very unlikely to have been contaminated by social expectations.
I don't think it's entirely valid to point to just one study and say "this is conclusive proof". There's no such thing as a conclusive study in psychology. It's virtually impossible to design a study that isn't riddled with confounds. Nobody is really sure how much is nature or nurture... but pretty much everyone agrees by now that most behaviour is a product of both.
Well, as far as self-serving charitable contibutions go, this would hardly be the worst culprit. But given the choice between spending my free time tutoring girls or tutoring random kids, this might be enough to make me lean towards tutoring girls through a SWE program
Good for you! I think this is exactly more of what's needed. Positive role models, not legislation. More importantly, active participation for everyone involved, not selective exclusion by gender.
1) On average, women make less money than men. This is mostly because of carrer choice. Tech jobs can pay very well. Some people feel that gender pay inequality is bad for society in general - contibuting to the childhood poverty rate and such. Some people feel that as long as women have second class finacial status, they will have second class political and social status. Personally, I tend to feel that everyone should have an equal chance to take care for themselves financally and feel these these efforsts help remove barriers.
The friend I mentioned in my previous post was recently hired at Ford Motor Company. IMHO, she's a damned good Controls Engineer and could easily have gotten an excellent starting salary great benefits and far better opportunity for advancement at any of the smaller contractors Ford hires to design and maintain their machines.
Instead, she chose Ford itself - not because they offered to pay her more or because she's on the fast track to management. You know why she chose Ford? Because they offer a great maternity leave package and job security. That was the deciding factor.
She wasn't even looking for the biggest salary or upward mobility - she was looking for a comfortable job with a decent salary. A job that won't make her feel guilty leaving when she decides to have kids.
I don't think it's fair to point to statistics that say "women earn less, pay them more" because there's a fundamental difference in what a large number of women are looking for when they seek employment. Yes, those statistics often cover the value of benefits too. But how do you measure something like the knowledge that your job will still be there when you return after a six-month leave?
2) We could use more tech workers and women are an 'untapped resource'. With all the companies lobbying to increase the number of visas, it only makes sence to spend some effort in genreating more applicants at home.
Yes, but how are you generating those applicants? Are you in fact generating more applicants, or just different ones?
The article mentions big names like Cisco and IBM sponsoring tech camps for girls. What about the boys that would have _killed_ to go to those? Are you going to get Betty Crocker to sponsor Summer Cooking Camps for boys? =) It sounds ridiculous, because it is.
3) Having people from diverse backgrounds working on design and problem solving often yields better results.
Can't argue with that. Good point. Although, arguably, removing immigration barriers accomplishes this too. Perhaps even moreso.
4) People already in the industry (both male and female) would, all other things being equal, enjoy having some more women in the office.
This is hardly a good reason to push girls into science and engineering. So that it's easier to put together a co-ed office softball team? =)
OTOH those positions that you mentioned men don't want aren't seen as positions of power so...
What about:
"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world." - W.R. Wallace
Would Hitler have been Hitler if he had a different childhood experience? What about Einstein? Bill Clinton? Kurt Cobain?
Saying that work with children isn't important because you don't make public policy is just plain ridiculous.
If you ask me, the garbageman contributes more to society than your average hack politician. I still remember my kindergarten teacher - her name, her face. Do you remember who your MP (Congressman) was twenty years ago?
I took an introductory psych course this year taught by a moderate feminist prof.
One day in class she was lecturing on gender bias in the elementary school system and how girls/women are discouraged from careers in science and engineering because teachers have this preconception that boys are better (and subsequently devote more time to them).
At one point, she stopped and we listened to this girl in class describe how she, personally, had experienced this phenomenon in her gr. 5 class and that because of this, she was no longer capable of doing well in mathematics courses.
Well, during this whole sob story, one of my best friends was sitting right next to me, snickering. She later recounted to me her own experience in high school: her gr. 13 physics teacher had laughed in her face when she told him her post-secondary plans. Electrical Engineering. He told her then rather dubiously to come and visit when she got her degree.
She's planning a visit in six weeks.
WHY DOES THERE HAVE TO BE A 50/50 SPLIT IN EVERYTHING? Is it not possible that some women just aren't as interested in some things as some men are? And vice versa? Why do we need to engineer our society to be perfectly symmetrical?
Somebody please give me a good answer to this. Explain to me why.
The propogation losses should be significantly lower... and if you can create a switching device that's efficient enough, you would be able to drive signals as far as you need (or at least as far as the "pin").
Of course, there are probably a zillion other issues that aren't occuring to me.
If you can make a usable piece of hardware using only free space, sign up for the Nobel Prize, my friend. =)
In crown glass (I don't really want to figure out the velocity in silica fibre and can't seem to find it quickly), light travels at roughly 66% of its free-space velocity. This is, indeed, very close to 2 x 10^8 m/s.
Just for clarity... the originating post in this thread is asking about photonic motherboards, which are briefly referenced in the article:
Photonic wiring between transistors could make faster chips, while photons zipping between chips could turbo-charge your computer's motherboard. snip Engineers at companies such as Honeywell, Sun Microsystems and IBM, as well as at universities around the world, are already testing arrays of light-emitting diodes and laser beams that could serve as the "bus" that transports information across a motherboard from microprocessors to memory chips to display screen and back.
Is it just me, or is anyone worried that some key patents in this field could hold the future of computing innovation hostage by two or three viciously greedy companies?
Not particularly... this type of stuff has happened before... Jack Kilby (TI) and Robert Noyce (Fairchild, later Intel) both applied for patents on the integrated circuit at about the same time (1959) and eventually settled their disputes by cross-licensing each other's technology.
Does TI dominate the world market in ICs today? Not really. Fairchild is still around but I don't think anyone would say they "control" the world's supply of integrated circuits.
The important thing here is that there are many different companies working in parallel on this next generation of technology. Agilent, Lucent, Nortel et al are competitors. They each want to be first to market with this stuff. And when they are first to market, they want to be entitled to collect the rewards on their considerable investment.
This is exactly why the patent system exists. To reward innovation.
So what will Agilent and Lucent do if Nortel is first? Find a rock to crawl under and die? Hell no... they'll develop their own processes.
Healthy competition is what's needed to ensure the public benefits from the technology.
I don't think the public is served in any way by refusing patents to these companies. Without patents, companies will viciously guard their secrets and forward progress is slowed considerably. With a patent in effect, others can see what one company has done and come up with novel new ideas that 1) circumvent the patent and are 2) well, novel new ideas. =)
Patents are not inherently bad. A microphotonic switch is not exactly as obvious as "one click buying". =)
These guys aren't saying they're going to build a motherboard with fibre-optic cables. They're talking about a silicon fabrication process that is used to build waveguides (micro-fibre-optic cables, if you will) into the silicon wafer itself.
It's not the speed of light that matters here (the speed of an electrical signal is virtually identical to a light signal) - it's the switching speed. Even with the best CMOS processes out there today, there is still a finite switching time - the time it takes a transistor to go from one logic level to the other - that presents a barrier to the maximum available processing speed of the chip. With decreasing size and voltage you can improve the speed of the chip, but there's only so far you can go.
These people are exploring the likelihood that you may be able to build something analogous to a transistor that acts upon photons instead of electrons.
If they can succeed in making these feasible - then you have a technology that is potentially 1) faster than CMOS and 2) much more efficient.
That is huge. It's not just a frivolous new motherboard with lots of unwieldly wires built into it. It would be a one-piece integrated design that would in all likelihood run very cool and perhaps even faster than microelectronics ever will.
Dude, that is commendable. They should give awards out for doing stuff like that. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
I've found telcos in general are EXTREMELY arrogant towards customers since well, who else is going to give you your phone service? =) Deregulation of the local phone telcos can't come soon enough if you ask me.
I was living in a basement apartment in Toronto about two years back and called up Bell Canada to get a phone line installed. I waited about two weeks for the appointment and even skipped out of work early to make sure I was there for their 12-4 pm time slot. They never showed.
I called them the next day (from another line, obviously) and was told that yes, my line had, in fact, been installed. This was news to me since there was no jack in the basement at all and there was only one twisted pair leading to an older-style closed demarcation box (which, having been there before, I assumed was for the upper apartment - it was).
Also during this phone call, they informed that they hadn't sent any techs, because they determined that the address already had two lines - they simply activated the second line (the second line was also multiplexed - as the guy in the previous post mentioned). Nice of them to inform me of this - after I had already missed a half day of work.
So now, my upstairs neighbours have two phone lines and Bell is telling me that it's my responsibility to re-wire the house in order to suit my needs. I informed them that it's their own policy to install an open demarcation point (with an RJ-11 jack) on ALL installations. They said that any further visits would be billed at an hourly rate of $100/hr. I informed them that under no circumstances was I going to pay for them to do work they should have done on their first visit.
They still billed me. I had to call them again and explain for the nth time to some cheerful call centre rep why I was not going to pay $100 for a 5 minute job that they didn't do right the first time.
Finally, after two months of haggling, I had a usable phone jack (luckily the demarcation box was in my bedroom) and only the standard $50 deposit paid.
They can be bastards because no one in the whole chain is accountable. The call centre rep can't be blamed - all they do is open a ticket. The techs can't be blamed - they only followed standard procedure. Who wrote the procedure? You don't know. The billing centre is also blameless because it's all automated anyways. So you've got a half dozen people who you've (not) dealt with and not one of them is to blame.
I guess you can write a letter to the Ombudsman. Whoop dee doo. =)
So why is everyone so miffed anyways? If Linux is the better OS as everyone must know by now, why do we even need to see the Solaris source?
Or is it conceivable, that maybe... just maybe, Sun has had one or two good ideas about how to implement Unix in the decade that they've been developing SunOS and Solaris.
Why is it so fashionable to rip into Sun so much around here? Solaris has a kernel that's generations ahead of Linux, their name is synonymous with reliability and scalibility and it - along with DEC and HP-UX - pretty much held the fort for Unix while Linux was still gestating.
Development doesn't occur in a vacuum. There isn't just a black and white wall dividing Linux users from the rest of the world. Isn't it possible that the Linux community benefits from the leagues of programmers/engineers who were first exposed to commercial Unix at work and decided to volunteer their expertise - developed using Solaris et al - to the Linux community?
No, Sun isn't scared their marketshare will disappear the day after they release their source. I doubt if any Sun employee loses too much sleep thinking about whether or not Richard Stallman approves of the SCSL. Most importantly, I don't think anyone at Sun is going to break into tears at the hissy fits some people are throwing over this.
Grow up and realize that Linux can still benefit greatly from understanding what makes Solaris. Whether or not Sun gives you the 10 million lines of code as a whole package or in logical segments really doesn't make a lick of difference. And you know it.
My biggest hope for this is that it will result in an x86 version of Solaris that will perform comparably to the sparc rev. I would dearly love to have a full-on Solaris box in my bedroom, but the cost of Sparc hardware is just out of this world and is justifiable only for corporate budgets.
Solaris will never run as well on x86 hardware as SPARC because, well... it's x86 hardware! =) As a general rule, it's inherently worse than Sun's stuff.
It's like those kit Fieros you see sometimes, all spiffed up to look like a Lamborghini or something. You can put a lot of time into making your Fiero look like a Lamborghini. You can put more time into making it go fast. But even with all that time, effort and money... it still won't be a Lamborghini. =)
Besides... the lower end Sun workstations aren't at all that expensive these days. Pricier than your average econo-model, yes... but are they worth it? Hell ya.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, can you imagine Gendarme Ludovic Cruchot pulling off what you're implying?
That must be the French strategy... export lots of comical caricatures of your police and in the meantime build up your secret police into an international menace. Much like Canada.
=)
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Ok, let me preface this statement: OUR society is not built upon anarchy.
What I'm trying to say is that there are rules that most of us abide by because it makes social interaction possible. Redefining these rules to suit your own world-view is frowned upon.
Anarchists will say destruction of corporate property is acceptable, because they stole it from the workers in the first place.
If this is the case, then what's to stop me from forming my own philosophy "Paulism", which advocates the elimination of the religious texts? I claim that reproducing the words of God is blasphemy. I claim that no human can claim to understand the infinite wisdom of God and that any attempt to capture this wisdom is folly. Not only folly, but a distortion.
Therefore, Paulism contends that marching into bookstores, motel rooms and private residences to destroy any religious writing is acceptable.
Would I get away with this? If you can, why can't I? Because "the man" is holding me down? No, I don't think you'd even need a any government laws or even any moderately religious individual for people to decide this is wrong.
It's just not done. Respect for the belongings of others is a fundamental tenet in modern society.
Summarily declaring that corporations are not entitled to "own" property is ridiculous. You're right, corporations are legal entities not people. However, there are people who voluntarily contribute their property to the corporation. One of the main reasons they do this is to protect against litigation - not to steal from workers. Are they no longer entitled to their work once it is "owned" by the corporation? Workers, too, are compensated for their work and a large number don't complain.
If you don't like corporations, don't work for one. There are many, many sole proprietorships or partnerships that offer employment. Equating these with corporations is not only wrong, but ignorant. The risk in running your own business is substantial. And I doubt very much if the anarchist protestors that frequent WTO meetings take the time to distinguish between a private business or a corporation.
You claim that I take a whole paragraph out of context and at the same time rationalize violent criminal activity with the writings of a pacifist 19th century French printer-(unwittingly)-turned-revolutionary.
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See, now if everyone in the world could reach a consensus like this, all our problems would be solved! =)
*sigh*
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If everyone agreed with everybody else, this planet would be boring as hell. =)
The trouble comes when a group decides that their world-view is the "right" one. There is nothing so arrogant as believing your personal belief system is more valid than someone else's.
This is why I so dislike these politically correct societal revisionists telling me that "my kind" is responsible for "repressing" group X. Instead of pointing fingers at me and demanding restitution, why don't they do something constructive and help out the underprivileged?
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Jose figured McDonalds would be a good target to take out his frustrations on America. Since, of course, the locally-owned franchise is the epitomy of evil.
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Trashing.
There are many freedoms we enjoy, but destroying the property of others is not one of them.
Sadly, these neo-revolutionaries like to redefine their definitions of right and wrong, violence and peaceful protest.
Check out the definition of violence according to these groups. Pay close attention to the 2nd point:
These people believe the destruction of property belonging to others (IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO... since only greedy capitalists would own something anyways) is a perfectly acceptable means of furthering their own views.
By definition, anyone who so much as disagrees with them is an "oppressor" and by their first definition, is inextricably linked with "white supremacists", "homophobia", "animal abuse" and a range of other equally distasteful groups.
I harbour no sympathy for Jose or his anarchist compatriots. Society is not built upon anarchy. He deserves whatever he gets.
Jon, next time, please find a "hero" that's worth respecting.
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I would argue that being powerful means being able to influence the lives of others. By this definition, teachers wield a lot of power.
Lots of people have absolute control over their own lives but can't do a thing to affect others. Would you call them powerful, or empowered?
Those crackpots who stock up on guns and refuse to pay taxes, what are they called, the Freemen or something? By your definition they are extremely powerful. I argue that they are only minimally powerful in that they can endanger the lives of their neighbours and federal agents.
OTOH, someone Gandhi and Jesus Christ are extremely powerful, even though they are no longer among us, because they affect people's lives on a daily basis.
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(I can't understand why your post hasn't been moderated up, because it's honestly the best one in this entire story.)
Let me see if I've got this:
If everyone involved acted based upon these tenets, I don't think anyone in their right mind could argue. Sadly, I don't believe that this is the case. There are just too many radicals who would rather beat down one group to advance their own.
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That is a very slippery slope you've built yourself there. It has been very well documented that in general men have much better spatial perception than women, while women have superior language ability.
This is just one of many studies from a quick Google search: from John's Hopkins.
Also, social trends != discrimination. If you don't want to work in an industry because there's a large proportion of "geeks", I'd suggest that you are the one who is prejudiced and discriminating.
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I have a collection of lectures by Ursula Franklin (a retired physicist from the U of Toronto) that sort of addresses what you're talking about. She doesn't go along gender lines though. The book is very dry too. I hope she was a much better speaker.
But anyways, she does mention a book called "Economic Anthropology" by M.J. Herskovits (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952) that apparently addresses some of the holistic/directed issues.
For the record, while I wouldn't go so far as to generalize and say women are better, I agree that both approaches are complementary.
Furthermore, it's just more evidence that men and women aren't the same. Why do we have to deny this? It is such anathema to our society.
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Shouldn't have to. But this is the real world. In an environment where everyone "owns" her/his projects (and everyone is over-worked), how do you deal with the loss of a quality employee for six months?
It's very difficult to transfer all the knowledge, the contacts, the understanding of a project to someone new - particularly if the recipient is already burdened with her/his own work. It's even more difficult to train a temp or a new employee.
There can be a definite expense to the company to lose an employee on maternity/paternity leave. Legislation or not, it's still an inconvenience at best.
Touche.
Labour law is one thing. Working environment is another. Is it reasonable to expect in this industry that when you return after six months, that nothing will have changed?
In that time, customers who used to deal with you directly may have forged new contacts with your co-workers. You may have been passed over for promotion. Projects you were working on may have wrapped up.
All of these are very possible. They may be unjust, but nobody ever said life is fair. It's definitely a setback.
I have a problem with this reasoning. Often these types of grants are very poorly advertised, and the only people who end up getting them are the ones whose parents know about them in the first place - not the parents who work 60 hours a week in some hot kitchen to make ends meet.
Studies have also shown a predisposition towards different types of "play" in infants - who are very unlikely to have been contaminated by social expectations.
I don't think it's entirely valid to point to just one study and say "this is conclusive proof". There's no such thing as a conclusive study in psychology. It's virtually impossible to design a study that isn't riddled with confounds. Nobody is really sure how much is nature or nurture... but pretty much everyone agrees by now that most behaviour is a product of both.
Good for you! I think this is exactly more of what's needed. Positive role models, not legislation. More importantly, active participation for everyone involved, not selective exclusion by gender.
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The friend I mentioned in my previous post was recently hired at Ford Motor Company. IMHO, she's a damned good Controls Engineer and could easily have gotten an excellent starting salary great benefits and far better opportunity for advancement at any of the smaller contractors Ford hires to design and maintain their machines.
Instead, she chose Ford itself - not because they offered to pay her more or because she's on the fast track to management. You know why she chose Ford? Because they offer a great maternity leave package and job security. That was the deciding factor.
She wasn't even looking for the biggest salary or upward mobility - she was looking for a comfortable job with a decent salary. A job that won't make her feel guilty leaving when she decides to have kids.
I don't think it's fair to point to statistics that say "women earn less, pay them more" because there's a fundamental difference in what a large number of women are looking for when they seek employment. Yes, those statistics often cover the value of benefits too. But how do you measure something like the knowledge that your job will still be there when you return after a six-month leave?
Yes, but how are you generating those applicants? Are you in fact generating more applicants, or just different ones?
The article mentions big names like Cisco and IBM sponsoring tech camps for girls. What about the boys that would have _killed_ to go to those? Are you going to get Betty Crocker to sponsor Summer Cooking Camps for boys? =) It sounds ridiculous, because it is.
Can't argue with that. Good point. Although, arguably, removing immigration barriers accomplishes this too. Perhaps even moreso.
This is hardly a good reason to push girls into science and engineering. So that it's easier to put together a co-ed office softball team? =)
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What about:
Would Hitler have been Hitler if he had a different childhood experience? What about Einstein? Bill Clinton? Kurt Cobain?
Saying that work with children isn't important because you don't make public policy is just plain ridiculous.
If you ask me, the garbageman contributes more to society than your average hack politician. I still remember my kindergarten teacher - her name, her face. Do you remember who your MP (Congressman) was twenty years ago?
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One day in class she was lecturing on gender bias in the elementary school system and how girls/women are discouraged from careers in science and engineering because teachers have this preconception that boys are better (and subsequently devote more time to them).
At one point, she stopped and we listened to this girl in class describe how she, personally, had experienced this phenomenon in her gr. 5 class and that because of this, she was no longer capable of doing well in mathematics courses.
Well, during this whole sob story, one of my best friends was sitting right next to me, snickering. She later recounted to me her own experience in high school: her gr. 13 physics teacher had laughed in her face when she told him her post-secondary plans. Electrical Engineering. He told her then rather dubiously to come and visit when she got her degree.
She's planning a visit in six weeks.
WHY DOES THERE HAVE TO BE A 50/50 SPLIT IN EVERYTHING? Is it not possible that some women just aren't as interested in some things as some men are? And vice versa? Why do we need to engineer our society to be perfectly symmetrical?
Somebody please give me a good answer to this. Explain to me why.
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The propogation losses should be significantly lower... and if you can create a switching device that's efficient enough, you would be able to drive signals as far as you need (or at least as far as the "pin").
Of course, there are probably a zillion other issues that aren't occuring to me.
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In crown glass (I don't really want to figure out the velocity in silica fibre and can't seem to find it quickly), light travels at roughly 66% of its free-space velocity. This is, indeed, very close to 2 x 10^8 m/s.
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This fortune was at the bottom of the page when I refreshed this thread:
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Not particularly... this type of stuff has happened before... Jack Kilby (TI) and Robert Noyce (Fairchild, later Intel) both applied for patents on the integrated circuit at about the same time (1959) and eventually settled their disputes by cross-licensing each other's technology.
Does TI dominate the world market in ICs today? Not really. Fairchild is still around but I don't think anyone would say they "control" the world's supply of integrated circuits.
The important thing here is that there are many different companies working in parallel on this next generation of technology. Agilent, Lucent, Nortel et al are competitors. They each want to be first to market with this stuff. And when they are first to market, they want to be entitled to collect the rewards on their considerable investment.
This is exactly why the patent system exists. To reward innovation.
So what will Agilent and Lucent do if Nortel is first? Find a rock to crawl under and die? Hell no... they'll develop their own processes.
Healthy competition is what's needed to ensure the public benefits from the technology.
I don't think the public is served in any way by refusing patents to these companies. Without patents, companies will viciously guard their secrets and forward progress is slowed considerably. With a patent in effect, others can see what one company has done and come up with novel new ideas that 1) circumvent the patent and are 2) well, novel new ideas. =)
Patents are not inherently bad. A microphotonic switch is not exactly as obvious as "one click buying". =)
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These guys aren't saying they're going to build a motherboard with fibre-optic cables. They're talking about a silicon fabrication process that is used to build waveguides (micro-fibre-optic cables, if you will) into the silicon wafer itself.
It's not the speed of light that matters here (the speed of an electrical signal is virtually identical to a light signal) - it's the switching speed. Even with the best CMOS processes out there today, there is still a finite switching time - the time it takes a transistor to go from one logic level to the other - that presents a barrier to the maximum available processing speed of the chip. With decreasing size and voltage you can improve the speed of the chip, but there's only so far you can go.
These people are exploring the likelihood that you may be able to build something analogous to a transistor that acts upon photons instead of electrons.
If they can succeed in making these feasible - then you have a technology that is potentially 1) faster than CMOS and 2) much more efficient.
That is huge. It's not just a frivolous new motherboard with lots of unwieldly wires built into it. It would be a one-piece integrated design that would in all likelihood run very cool and perhaps even faster than microelectronics ever will.
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I've found telcos in general are EXTREMELY arrogant towards customers since well, who else is going to give you your phone service? =) Deregulation of the local phone telcos can't come soon enough if you ask me.
I was living in a basement apartment in Toronto about two years back and called up Bell Canada to get a phone line installed. I waited about two weeks for the appointment and even skipped out of work early to make sure I was there for their 12-4 pm time slot. They never showed.
I called them the next day (from another line, obviously) and was told that yes, my line had, in fact, been installed. This was news to me since there was no jack in the basement at all and there was only one twisted pair leading to an older-style closed demarcation box (which, having been there before, I assumed was for the upper apartment - it was).
Also during this phone call, they informed that they hadn't sent any techs, because they determined that the address already had two lines - they simply activated the second line (the second line was also multiplexed - as the guy in the previous post mentioned). Nice of them to inform me of this - after I had already missed a half day of work.
So now, my upstairs neighbours have two phone lines and Bell is telling me that it's my responsibility to re-wire the house in order to suit my needs. I informed them that it's their own policy to install an open demarcation point (with an RJ-11 jack) on ALL installations. They said that any further visits would be billed at an hourly rate of $100/hr. I informed them that under no circumstances was I going to pay for them to do work they should have done on their first visit.
They still billed me. I had to call them again and explain for the nth time to some cheerful call centre rep why I was not going to pay $100 for a 5 minute job that they didn't do right the first time.
Finally, after two months of haggling, I had a usable phone jack (luckily the demarcation box was in my bedroom) and only the standard $50 deposit paid.
They can be bastards because no one in the whole chain is accountable. The call centre rep can't be blamed - all they do is open a ticket. The techs can't be blamed - they only followed standard procedure. Who wrote the procedure? You don't know. The billing centre is also blameless because it's all automated anyways. So you've got a half dozen people who you've (not) dealt with and not one of them is to blame.
I guess you can write a letter to the Ombudsman. Whoop dee doo. =)
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Ultra 5 Model 360 Workstation with 4 memory slots, 3 PCI I/O slots, includes:
The price? Just over $2000. That's right... no missing zeroes there. =)
or...
Ultra 10 Model 440 Workstation with 4 memory slots, 4 PCI I/O slots, and 2 EIDE disk bays, includes:
$5000.
Granted, you could buy "equivalent" PC hardware for much less. But this is Sun hardware. It works. Well. =) And you get their warranty and support.
Check it out. Sun hardware doesn't have to cost a fortune.
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Or is it conceivable, that maybe... just maybe, Sun has had one or two good ideas about how to implement Unix in the decade that they've been developing SunOS and Solaris.
Why is it so fashionable to rip into Sun so much around here? Solaris has a kernel that's generations ahead of Linux, their name is synonymous with reliability and scalibility and it - along with DEC and HP-UX - pretty much held the fort for Unix while Linux was still gestating.
Development doesn't occur in a vacuum. There isn't just a black and white wall dividing Linux users from the rest of the world. Isn't it possible that the Linux community benefits from the leagues of programmers/engineers who were first exposed to commercial Unix at work and decided to volunteer their expertise - developed using Solaris et al - to the Linux community?
No, Sun isn't scared their marketshare will disappear the day after they release their source. I doubt if any Sun employee loses too much sleep thinking about whether or not Richard Stallman approves of the SCSL. Most importantly, I don't think anyone at Sun is going to break into tears at the hissy fits some people are throwing over this.
Grow up and realize that Linux can still benefit greatly from understanding what makes Solaris. Whether or not Sun gives you the 10 million lines of code as a whole package or in logical segments really doesn't make a lick of difference. And you know it.
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Solaris will never run as well on x86 hardware as SPARC because, well... it's x86 hardware! =) As a general rule, it's inherently worse than Sun's stuff.
It's like those kit Fieros you see sometimes, all spiffed up to look like a Lamborghini or something. You can put a lot of time into making your Fiero look like a Lamborghini. You can put more time into making it go fast. But even with all that time, effort and money... it still won't be a Lamborghini. =)
Besides... the lower end Sun workstations aren't at all that expensive these days. Pricier than your average econo-model, yes... but are they worth it? Hell ya.
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