I didn't write "Ted Turner," I wrote "Turner." I suppose if someone bought a Dell computer, you'd think that Michael Dell came over to set it up?
So your city has a long history of overreaction and incompetence?
My colleagues do fieldwork all over the world, so if by "your city" you mean cities all over the world including LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Dallas, Albany and cities in Spain, France and Germany, then the answer is yes. Turns out police everywhere get twitchy about random devices left in public spaces, even before 9/11.
It's a frigging blinking sign!
Ahh, I get it. If the device looks cute, we can all safely ignore it
Sorry, but you just don't put random electrical devices in public places without telling people or leaving identifying information. I'm the first to criticize authorities for over reacting, but aside from the arrests last night, I don't see the problem. The police investigated, found out the truth, and that was it. Some roads were closed, but the city has hardly brought to a "halt".
So it the person who called this in - they should be charged for the mess.
Bullshit. Someone (most likely someone who's never even heard of ATHF, much less knows what a Mooninite is) saw an an odd-looking device attached to a potentially suspicious target and reported it. The bomb squad blew one up, and investigated the others. Yes, some roads and bridges were closed, but the city wasn't evacuated, the national guard wasn't called out, no one was rounded up. By the time I heard about this, it was already over. The system worked the way it should.
Turner, on the other hand may have something to answer for. As part of my job, I leave electronic monitoring equipment for days or weeks in pubic places. Even before 9/11, I knew better than to do so without informing the authorities - if I can't inform someone in charge, I attach a note to the device saying "this is a sound monitoring device for project XXX. If you have any questions, call John Smith at (617) 555-8944." I have heard from many colleagues who did not take these steps, and had their $5000 devices blown up by the bomb squad (again, this stuff was happening before 9/11).
If Turner took these steps, and officials got their wires crossed, then yes the authorities obviously overreacted. But if the city wasn't informed, the city took all the right steps. Did you expect the authorities to just ignore the devices because they looked cute?
... at least when it comes to the science of engineering.
Engineering is about solving problems, usually within cost constraints and other limitations. Engineering problems often require innovative solutions. Innovative solutions require creativity. If everyone thinks alike, you're creativity pool is limited.
You've never seen someone use a random life experience to solve an engineering challenge?
Ahh, yeah, the old "diverse ideas" chestnut. So amusing. I mean, if you have slightly darker skin, lighter skin, have tits, have testicles, etc... you're really going to bring new approaches to the SCIENCE of computing.
Ahh, no, having differently colored or shaped body parts isn't going to bring new ideas to the science of CS. However, what we experience based on these differences often lead to inspiration - and people with different skin color/body parts/sexual orientation/etc will have different life experiences. The more experience you can draw from, the better the chances are of a breakthrough. That's not likely to happen if everyone looks and thinks like you.
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Because the more diverse the workforce (gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, etc), the more potential for innovative ideas. I constantly see posts on./ and other tech sites bemoaning the lack of innovation in GUI's and other CS areas in recent years. Could that be because everyone thinks alike?
Not to mention that the potential market for software products in the U.S. (in the aggregate) is 50% female. Do you think that men really know what women want? If so, you should write a book, I'll buy it;)
Maybe there are not so many self-taught female engineers because women mature socially earlier and thus don't spend as much time talking to their monitors. Maybe women tend to be emotional thinkers and engineering doesn't jive well with emotional thinking. Maybe there's just a shortage of women who are nerds.
True. And maybe there is nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, maybe it's because women see tech as a "good ole' boys club" and they're indoctrinated from youth to pursue other areas. And there is something wrong with that. What's the harm in encouraging women to get into tech? It's not a zero-sum game.
In this case, Apple doesn't support PFS because 1.) MS has never been very forthcoming in sharing and 2.) When Apple is totally and completely dominating a single market they just don't need second rate technology.
Yet, I completely fail to understand what he did wrong.
Another life long MA residents here (one who has spent 2/3 of my residency in the western part of the state). Here's a few things off the top of my head:
Spending 212 days away from the state he was supposed to be governing in 2006.
Claimed his policies resulted in a $1 billion budget surplus, only to tell us after the election it's actually a $1 billion deficit
Pretty much ignored the western half of the state, (including only marketing the eastern half of the state to prospective employers, and letting them go to other states/countries instead of lobbying for CMass/WMass when EMass proved to be unsuitable) except for...
Installing a state-run control board in Springfield who's primary goal seemed to be the breaking of unions rather than quality services; that's not to say that the CB wasn't needed, it was - but clearly their first priority seemed to be implementing Romney's ideals (teacher merit pay anyone?) rather than "compromising" with city officials and workers.
IME, most people outside of 495 aren't sorry to see him go...
Jobs is not poor, yet he does very little as a philanthropist short of giving Apple computer discounts to schools to get more market share.
We've been through this before... Jobs may not have made any public announcements about his philanthropy, but that doesn't mean that he's not donating time and/or money to worthy causes. In other words, the only people who know how much (or how little) Jobs gives away is Jobs himself and his accountant.
I'm not trying to excuse any lack of philanthropy - if Jobs is in fact not "giving back" then that is indeed disappointing. But you and I don't know for sure what he's doing with his money (unless you happen to be his accountant).
... back at my last job, one of my co-workers ordered a bunch of ruggedized WinCE boxes for a set of field measurements products. The units in question were supposed to survive a 4-ft drop.
One day I was walking past his office and I saw that he received the units. I stopped in, and picked up one of the units. I looked it over, and asked if these were the units in question. He replied 'yes.' I then proceeded to drop the unit I was holding on to the floor.
My colleague jumped up, yelling "what the h*ll are you doing?" I replied "the unit is supposed to be able to survive a 4-ft drop right? I wanted to see for myself."
As a business, the only way to have a verifiable identity is to incorporate.
Not true. Sole proprietorships usually (if not always) require registration with the city/town where located. Small business, DBE and MBE programs can also be used to verify identities - DBE/MBE programs in particular are probably more reliable than incorporation in terms of verification since these programs require site visits by the applicable state agency.
Finally, let's not forget federally-sanctioned groups like Dun & Bradstreet who provide business verification services for all types of businesses.
If you can't get a certificate as a sole proprietorship, INCORPORATE! Problem solved. [...] And this day in this sue-happy age, there's plenty of other reasons incorporation is a good idea.
Sole proprietor here. As someone who has spent a lot of time and energy looking at sole proprietorship vs llc vs s-corp incorporation, let me just mention that (contrary to popular belief) incorporation isn't some magic bullet that completely shields business owners/officers from liability - just ask Ken Lay. Incorporation does help shield business owners from the incompetence/misconduct of other employees. Of course this doesn't matter in one-person companies where (by definition) all the business decisions are made by the business owners.
Incorporation does, in theory, separate business assets from personal assets. However, in our "sue-happy" environment, there is a very easy way to get around this separation: simply sue the business *and* the owner.
There are scenarios when it makes sense to incorporate: lower tax rates (only worth it for six-figure revenues by my calcs), if you have employees, if you have multiple locations, if you're trying to establish a Chinese wall for separate-but-related business, etc.
Incorporating in my case (1-person business) would mean hiring a lawyer and accountant to file the annual state forms, draw up the stock agreement, and file the taxes in return for a few hundred dollars in tax savings and pretty much no liability protection. I found it was much cheaper to buy gen liability and E&O insurance (needed anyway for certain gov't contracts I have), and remain a sole proprietor. I imagine that this is true for hundreds (if not thousands) of other businesses across the US.
might [sic] remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista... "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system.
The earliest I can find of any discussion of Longhorn's "advanced user interface" as part of the roadmap appears to be about 2003 timeframe. Aqua was publicly revealed at Macworld 2000 San Francisco.
High frequency sounds are the most damaging to the human ear.
No!
The human hearing range is approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Humans are most sensitive to frequencies in the 500-4000 Hz range (which corresponds to speech frequencies). Humans generally are not all that sensitive to frequencies above 10 kHz except at very high SPL's. Furthermore, hearing loss in that range isn't likely to have much effect in day-to-day life since (outside of music) there's not a whole lot interesting.useful sounds (to humans) in that range.
There are frequencies towards the edge of the human hearing range that can cause damage.
Umm, no. The frequencies towards the edge of the human hearing range are the frequencies that we are least sensitive to, so they're not going to cause many problems.
The sound pressure in a loud environment is still there, even if you can't hear it.
That's incorrect. Sound is pressure (or more accurately, pressure fluctuations). ANC works by generating negative pressure waves to cancel out the original pressure wave. By definition (in an ideal environment) this reduces the pressure fluctuation to 0.
In other words, if you can't hear it, it's not damaging your hearing.
The measurements were made one inch away from the drives, so you could expect the levels to be pretty high. Unfortunately, their measurement methodology also means that the noise levels are useless for anything but comparison purposes.
It would be nice to know whether the levels were A-weighted or linear. Also, with the meter they were using, differences of less than 2 dB aren't meaningful.
The way these things work is that when someone hacks your hardware, you get an injunction to stop them from talking about it. If they talk about it, they go to jail for contempt of court. If you were to RTFA, you might get the very strong impression that he's under an injunction of this type.
Instead of letting us infer the facts, why not just say "because of a court order, we can't talk about it"? It happens all the time.
If there is a hack, I want to know. I'm not looking for details, I just want the answer to
Jon Gruber's question: "Have Maynor and Ellch found a vulnerability that affects MacBooks using Apple's built-in cards and drivers?"
If the answer is "yes" or "no" just say so! If they're under a gag order, just say "We're under a gag order." Asking us to read between the lines isn't cutting it.
Not to mention that the ad-homs aren't helping his credibility...
Great - so the next time we see an Airport update, everyone will be screaming "Maynor and Ellch were right!" despite the fact that Apple has released Airport client & base station updates before.
A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do goodworks, and try to save lives.
As written, the "no military use" GPL extension doesn't specifically forbid this type of use, but I'm sure the military isn't going to want to keep track of licenses/usage across its fixed and mobile facilities, so stuff created under this license won't get used at all. Is that a good thing?
We're not talking about an activity, like sports, where you have to have the support of other people in order to pursue it.
We are talking about an activity where you need the support of other people! Even assuming for the moment that OSS programming is a 'solitary' activity, the skills you need for this activity aren't solitary in nature - they are acquired through classwork, reading books (often through recommendations), online and offline (face-to-face) discussions, mentoring, and by browsing discussion sites.
When all of these communities are comprised of horny single males constantly talking about Natalie Portman's nipples, is it suprising that many females might choose to do something else? I may not think discussing women's body parts is particularly offensive, but I don't get to decide what other people take offense to.
...needs to grow a spine and get with it.
If you're talking about a few isolated incidents, I agree wholeheartedly. When you're talking about institutionalized attitudes, it eventually becomes little more than self-inflicted pain. If you're facing a hostile environment at every turn, it's understandable if one says "screw it, I'm going to do something else."
Because many of us here who are male had to deal with the same sort of thing, just from a different crowd (the jocks).
Not the same thing. You're talking about group 'A' (jocks) that is picking on you for choosing to do activity 'b' (computers). Presumably your peers in compsci were supportive of your efforts. Imagine if you really wanted to do athletics, but the jocks throughout grade school, high school, and college consistently tormented you, all in the name of 'good-natured' humor. Are most people going to 'grow a spine' and stick with it, or eventually move on to something else?
I'm looking at the comments so far and they seem to be broken up into two groups:
"We need naked pics" jokes (like this, this, and this); and
"Women aren't in tech because they choose not be in tech" as exemplified by this.
Hasn't anyone ever thought that these two viewpoints might be related? That maybe the reason more women don't go into tech is cultural - not in the "women are more interested in nail polish than hard drives"-sort of way, but in the sense that they sick and tired of dealing with all the "oohh, titties!" comments that we men think is good natured humor, but gets old with women? Maybe, just maybe, if women (or minorities or the handicapped, etc) can be provided with a supportive environment, we'll find that women are interested in tech. Maybe we'll even find that some women can be really good at it.
Let me put it another way. Everyone once in a while, a sports-related story pops up on Slashdot, and the comments inevitably drift toward stories of posters who have been pushed around by jocks in high school, so they now have a dim view of sports. Like us men making "titties" jokes, jocks would consider their messing with geeks to be good-natured humor. Imagine for a second that your exposure to sports came in a supportive environment (think affirmative action for geeks)- is it possible that this might have resulted in a more positive outlook towards athletics (especially sports like American football and basketball that involves a high degree of strategy as well as athletic talent)?
It's not a matter of discrimination or taking something away from men. It's all about providing a supportive environment so that women can concentrate on the matter at hand, rather than dealing with all the 'good natured' 'non-PC' crap that men throw at them.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think Ted called this in?
I didn't write "Ted Turner," I wrote "Turner." I suppose if someone bought a Dell computer, you'd think that Michael Dell came over to set it up?
So your city has a long history of overreaction and incompetence?
My colleagues do fieldwork all over the world, so if by "your city" you mean cities all over the world including LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Chicago, Dallas, Albany and cities in Spain, France and Germany, then the answer is yes. Turns out police everywhere get twitchy about random devices left in public spaces, even before 9/11.
It's a frigging blinking sign!
Ahh, I get it. If the device looks cute, we can all safely ignore it
Sorry, but you just don't put random electrical devices in public places without telling people or leaving identifying information. I'm the first to criticize authorities for over reacting, but aside from the arrests last night, I don't see the problem. The police investigated, found out the truth, and that was it. Some roads were closed, but the city has hardly brought to a "halt".
So it the person who called this in - they should be charged for the mess.
Bullshit. Someone (most likely someone who's never even heard of ATHF, much less knows what a Mooninite is) saw an an odd-looking device attached to a potentially suspicious target and reported it. The bomb squad blew one up, and investigated the others. Yes, some roads and bridges were closed, but the city wasn't evacuated, the national guard wasn't called out, no one was rounded up. By the time I heard about this, it was already over. The system worked the way it should.
Turner, on the other hand may have something to answer for. As part of my job, I leave electronic monitoring equipment for days or weeks in pubic places. Even before 9/11, I knew better than to do so without informing the authorities - if I can't inform someone in charge, I attach a note to the device saying "this is a sound monitoring device for project XXX. If you have any questions, call John Smith at (617) 555-8944." I have heard from many colleagues who did not take these steps, and had their $5000 devices blown up by the bomb squad (again, this stuff was happening before 9/11).
If Turner took these steps, and officials got their wires crossed, then yes the authorities obviously overreacted. But if the city wasn't informed, the city took all the right steps. Did you expect the authorities to just ignore the devices because they looked cute?
Engineering is about solving problems, usually within cost constraints and other limitations. Engineering problems often require innovative solutions. Innovative solutions require creativity. If everyone thinks alike, you're creativity pool is limited.
You've never seen someone use a random life experience to solve an engineering challenge?
Ahh, yeah, the old "diverse ideas" chestnut. So amusing. I mean, if you have slightly darker skin, lighter skin, have tits, have testicles, etc... you're really going to bring new approaches to the SCIENCE of computing.
Ahh, no, having differently colored or shaped body parts isn't going to bring new ideas to the science of CS. However, what we experience based on these differences often lead to inspiration - and people with different skin color/body parts/sexual orientation/etc will have different life experiences. The more experience you can draw from, the better the chances are of a breakthrough. That's not likely to happen if everyone looks and thinks like you.
Why does it matter? What is the business reason for developing more female engineers?
Because the more diverse the workforce (gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, etc), the more potential for innovative ideas. I constantly see posts on ./ and other tech sites bemoaning the lack of innovation in GUI's and other CS areas in recent years. Could that be because everyone thinks alike?
Not to mention that the potential market for software products in the U.S. (in the aggregate) is 50% female. Do you think that men really know what women want? If so, you should write a book, I'll buy it ;)
Maybe there are not so many self-taught female engineers because women mature socially earlier and thus don't spend as much time talking to their monitors. Maybe women tend to be emotional thinkers and engineering doesn't jive well with emotional thinking. Maybe there's just a shortage of women who are nerds.
True. And maybe there is nothing wrong with it. On the other hand, maybe it's because women see tech as a "good ole' boys club" and they're indoctrinated from youth to pursue other areas. And there is something wrong with that. What's the harm in encouraging women to get into tech? It's not a zero-sum game.
In this case, Apple doesn't support PFS because 1.) MS has never been very forthcoming in sharing and 2.) When Apple is totally and completely dominating a single market they just don't need second rate technology.
3, MS won't (repeat: will not ) license WMA10 DRM for Macs.
Yet, I completely fail to understand what he did wrong.
Another life long MA residents here (one who has spent 2/3 of my residency in the western part of the state). Here's a few things off the top of my head:
IME, most people outside of 495 aren't sorry to see him go...
Jobs is not poor, yet he does very little as a philanthropist short of giving Apple computer discounts to schools to get more market share.
We've been through this before... Jobs may not have made any public announcements about his philanthropy, but that doesn't mean that he's not donating time and/or money to worthy causes. In other words, the only people who know how much (or how little) Jobs gives away is Jobs himself and his accountant.
I'm not trying to excuse any lack of philanthropy - if Jobs is in fact not "giving back" then that is indeed disappointing. But you and I don't know for sure what he's doing with his money (unless you happen to be his accountant).
... back at my last job, one of my co-workers ordered a bunch of ruggedized WinCE boxes for a set of field measurements products. The units in question were supposed to survive a 4-ft drop.
One day I was walking past his office and I saw that he received the units. I stopped in, and picked up one of the units. I looked it over, and asked if these were the units in question. He replied 'yes.' I then proceeded to drop the unit I was holding on to the floor.
My colleague jumped up, yelling "what the h*ll are you doing?" I replied "the unit is supposed to be able to survive a 4-ft drop right? I wanted to see for myself."
FWIW, the unit kept on ticking....
As a business, the only way to have a verifiable identity is to incorporate.
Not true. Sole proprietorships usually (if not always) require registration with the city/town where located. Small business, DBE and MBE programs can also be used to verify identities - DBE/MBE programs in particular are probably more reliable than incorporation in terms of verification since these programs require site visits by the applicable state agency.
Finally, let's not forget federally-sanctioned groups like Dun & Bradstreet who provide business verification services for all types of businesses.
If you can't get a certificate as a sole proprietorship, INCORPORATE! Problem solved. [...] And this day in this sue-happy age, there's plenty of other reasons incorporation is a good idea.
Sole proprietor here. As someone who has spent a lot of time and energy looking at sole proprietorship vs llc vs s-corp incorporation, let me just mention that (contrary to popular belief) incorporation isn't some magic bullet that completely shields business owners/officers from liability - just ask Ken Lay. Incorporation does help shield business owners from the incompetence/misconduct of other employees. Of course this doesn't matter in one-person companies where (by definition) all the business decisions are made by the business owners.
Incorporation does, in theory, separate business assets from personal assets. However, in our "sue-happy" environment, there is a very easy way to get around this separation: simply sue the business *and* the owner.
There are scenarios when it makes sense to incorporate: lower tax rates (only worth it for six-figure revenues by my calcs), if you have employees, if you have multiple locations, if you're trying to establish a Chinese wall for separate-but-related business, etc.
Incorporating in my case (1-person business) would mean hiring a lawyer and accountant to file the annual state forms, draw up the stock agreement, and file the taxes in return for a few hundred dollars in tax savings and pretty much no liability protection. I found it was much cheaper to buy gen liability and E&O insurance (needed anyway for certain gov't contracts I have), and remain a sole proprietor. I imagine that this is true for hundreds (if not thousands) of other businesses across the US.
not to mention that Windows had desktop search capabilities from Microsoft and Google long before OSX had the Steve Jobs blessed version.
OS X had index-searching capabilities via Sherlock from the beginning, but it was just ungodly slow.
And let's not forget that index searching first showed up in the Mac in MacOS 8.5.
might [sic] remember that even before OS X was launched for its first version, the "vista" "road map" had been published clearly stating what major components would be part of Vista... "Aero" has always been slated as part of the opertating system.
The earliest I can find of any discussion of Longhorn's "advanced user interface" as part of the roadmap appears to be about 2003 timeframe. Aqua was publicly revealed at Macworld 2000 San Francisco.
High frequency sounds are the most damaging to the human ear.
No!
The human hearing range is approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Humans are most sensitive to frequencies in the 500-4000 Hz range (which corresponds to speech frequencies). Humans generally are not all that sensitive to frequencies above 10 kHz except at very high SPL's. Furthermore, hearing loss in that range isn't likely to have much effect in day-to-day life since (outside of music) there's not a whole lot interesting.useful sounds (to humans) in that range.
More info.
Umm, no. The frequencies towards the edge of the human hearing range are the frequencies that we are least sensitive to, so they're not going to cause many problems.
The sound pressure in a loud environment is still there, even if you can't hear it.
That's incorrect. Sound is pressure (or more accurately, pressure fluctuations). ANC works by generating negative pressure waves to cancel out the original pressure wave. By definition (in an ideal environment) this reduces the pressure fluctuation to 0.
In other words, if you can't hear it, it's not damaging your hearing.
Probably not since Mr. Universe competitors likely have high BMI's.
The measurements were made one inch away from the drives, so you could expect the levels to be pretty high. Unfortunately, their measurement methodology also means that the noise levels are useless for anything but comparison purposes.
It would be nice to know whether the levels were A-weighted or linear. Also, with the meter they were using, differences of less than 2 dB aren't meaningful.
If you're under a gag order, there's a decent possibility that the gag order forbids you to talk about the gag order.
Considering that they are willing to talk about the issue with some people, I don't think that excuse is applicable here.
The way these things work is that when someone hacks your hardware, you get an injunction to stop them from talking about it. If they talk about it, they go to jail for contempt of court. If you were to RTFA, you might get the very strong impression that he's under an injunction of this type.
Instead of letting us infer the facts, why not just say "because of a court order, we can't talk about it"? It happens all the time.
If there is a hack, I want to know. I'm not looking for details, I just want the answer to Jon Gruber's question: "Have Maynor and Ellch found a vulnerability that affects MacBooks using Apple's built-in cards and drivers?"
If the answer is "yes" or "no" just say so! If they're under a gag order, just say "We're under a gag order." Asking us to read between the lines isn't cutting it.
Not to mention that the ad-homs aren't helping his credibility...
Great - so the next time we see an Airport update, everyone will be screaming "Maynor and Ellch were right!" despite the fact that Apple has released Airport client & base station updates before.
...so that you could remove the speck from your brother's.
A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do good works, and try to save lives.
As written, the "no military use" GPL extension doesn't specifically forbid this type of use, but I'm sure the military isn't going to want to keep track of licenses/usage across its fixed and mobile facilities, so stuff created under this license won't get used at all. Is that a good thing?
We're not talking about an activity, like sports, where you have to have the support of other people in order to pursue it.
We are talking about an activity where you need the support of other people! Even assuming for the moment that OSS programming is a 'solitary' activity, the skills you need for this activity aren't solitary in nature - they are acquired through classwork, reading books (often through recommendations), online and offline (face-to-face) discussions, mentoring, and by browsing discussion sites.
When all of these communities are comprised of horny single males constantly talking about Natalie Portman's nipples, is it suprising that many females might choose to do something else? I may not think discussing women's body parts is particularly offensive, but I don't get to decide what other people take offense to.
If you're talking about a few isolated incidents, I agree wholeheartedly. When you're talking about institutionalized attitudes, it eventually becomes little more than self-inflicted pain. If you're facing a hostile environment at every turn, it's understandable if one says "screw it, I'm going to do something else."
Because many of us here who are male had to deal with the same sort of thing, just from a different crowd (the jocks).
Not the same thing. You're talking about group 'A' (jocks) that is picking on you for choosing to do activity 'b' (computers). Presumably your peers in compsci were supportive of your efforts. Imagine if you really wanted to do athletics, but the jocks throughout grade school, high school, and college consistently tormented you, all in the name of 'good-natured' humor. Are most people going to 'grow a spine' and stick with it, or eventually move on to something else?
I'm looking at the comments so far and they seem to be broken up into two groups:
Hasn't anyone ever thought that these two viewpoints might be related? That maybe the reason more women don't go into tech is cultural - not in the "women are more interested in nail polish than hard drives"-sort of way, but in the sense that they sick and tired of dealing with all the "oohh, titties!" comments that we men think is good natured humor, but gets old with women? Maybe, just maybe, if women (or minorities or the handicapped, etc) can be provided with a supportive environment, we'll find that women are interested in tech. Maybe we'll even find that some women can be really good at it.
Let me put it another way. Everyone once in a while, a sports-related story pops up on Slashdot, and the comments inevitably drift toward stories of posters who have been pushed around by jocks in high school, so they now have a dim view of sports. Like us men making "titties" jokes, jocks would consider their messing with geeks to be good-natured humor. Imagine for a second that your exposure to sports came in a supportive environment (think affirmative action for geeks)- is it possible that this might have resulted in a more positive outlook towards athletics (especially sports like American football and basketball that involves a high degree of strategy as well as athletic talent)?
It's not a matter of discrimination or taking something away from men. It's all about providing a supportive environment so that women can concentrate on the matter at hand, rather than dealing with all the 'good natured' 'non-PC' crap that men throw at them.