Girls are attracted to pink and dolls and dressing up without any help from their parents.
Yeah. That's right. Girls are genetically attracted to pink. There must have been huge stretches in our evolution where females being more attracted to pink than males was essential to the survival of the species.
Well that's a little hyperbolic. But your statement is open to at least a little ridicule. If you were truly able to interact with your children without gender bias you're a very remarkable person. Studies have shown that adults interact with babies they believe to be girls differently from babies they believe to be boys, regardless of the actual sex of the baby. And parents describe their female children from birth onward as smaller, more passive, prettier, and less active than male children regardless of objective measurements. (Rubin, 1974 among others, and more recently confirmed by Sweeney and Bradbard 1988, among others).
I don't deny there are differences between boys and girls. I just don't think we know which of those differences are down to nature and which nurture. [And I'm not sure it's possible to find out in an ethical way.]
In any case, the main issue is:
Why is it that we must find few women in CS as a problem? There are few men in, say, nursing. Is that a problem? Not necessarily. If a group is self-selecting toward or away from a particular profession, why do we insist denying that?
It's a problem becauses people self selecting away from a profession for reasons other than their lack of fitness for that profession will leave us with, overall, worse computer scientists (and nurses) than we could otherwise have.
On a general level for our society as a whole, that means we don't have the best people in the best jobs, which leads to a lower quality of life overall. On an individual basis people could well be happier if they had a more even playing field for developing their careers in.
And for women in particular, that selection process currently tends to lead them into less well paying jobs which can lead to a greater concentration of poverty among older women than in the population at large.
Since you imply you're the father of a girl, you might want to be a bit more concerned about that.
Design a way for the group of them to act out a simple logic board - "program" them by giving them cards with binary actions then position them in such a way that a given input gives a predictable output. Change their action or their position to change the output.
That way they can start to think of computers in terms of the simple steps that build up to produce complex behavior.
Plus they get to stand up and be active instead of just listening to someone talking.
Microsoft has undertaken a lot of underhand tactics, but I don't think this is one of them.
The licensing they're donating is under their Open Licensing system, which gives downgrade rights for almost all programs. So you can get a license for XP but actually run Windows 3.1 if you want (and there are way to many nonprofits that do want to).
They can simply claim the expenses of producing and distributing the media (they send a single CD, regardless of number of licenses, for each product a nonprofit gets) and the cost of administering the program. These are expenses they actually incur.
Microsoft can't claim a tax deduction for the retail price of the software, only for the cost of providing the CD etc. to the nonprofits.
Since it all comes out of pre-tax income they don't get a return. They just get to say it is a legitimate business expense, so they don't have to pay tax on the money they actually spent administering the program.
Money or other gifts from an organization have to have a legitimate purose or they become taxable income as though they were actually profit (presumable this is to stop them giving gifts to share holders instead of paying tax on their profit before dispersing it).
The Billion dollar figure is just for public relations.
The nonprofits using CompuMentor's philanthropy program aren't giving up free (as in speech) software and swapping it for MicroSoft stuff because it's low cost. They're upgrading from old Microsoft programs to newer ones. If the program wasn't their very few of them would move to open source, they'd just stay on older technology for longer and be less efficient.
This philanthropy program isn't where nonprofits get their first fix, that comes from pre-installed operating systems and software just as it does for most small businesses.
CompuMentor's TechSoup.org site also distributes Lotus' 1-2-3 and Smartsuite Millenium, as well as providing links and resources for open source software, but the biggest demand is for Microsoft products. That demand will change in nonprofits when it changes in the for-profit sector.
Virtual volunteering has been going on for quite a long time.
Volunteer Match and NetworkForGood list in person volunteer opportunities online. But most opportunities to actually volunteer online are around mentoring.
The UN has an online volunteering (see:http://www.unv.org/volunteers/options/online/ index.htm. Their online volunteering specialist, Jayne Cravens (homepage www.coyotecommunications.org, has been vocal about the benefits of online volunteering for years (real years, not internet years).
There are also opportunities at Mentoring.org (a site devoted to mentoring youth), and MicroMentor a pilot project devoted to mentoring micro entrepreneurs.
You're kind of misreading. The speech that this decision relates to wasn't an advertisement like a poster or a TV commercial for Nike products. It was for press releases and other public relations pieces around a debate on business ethics.
In Britain, the Advertising Standards Authority wouldn't have sway over these pieces of speech either.
It isn't clear cut, as the 4 -3 verdict shows because it's about more than selling product. The ACLU is on Nike's side in this issue because they see this as a debate over a matter of public interest in which one side will be able to enjoy full first amendment rights (allowing them to play fast and free with the truth) and the other side won't. Such a difference in the ability to use speech could easily stymie or skew the debate.
Whether Nike themselves are evil or not (and they look pretty awful in regards to their business practices), this judgment is about whether anyone selling things can take part in public debate on issues surrounding their business with the same first amendment rights as their opponents.
Pointing out the fact that schools ought to have valid licenses for the machines they run is hardly outragous.
The sleazy bit of what they're doing is trying to get schools to police their donors by asking for materials (the CD etc.) so that donors will have a harder time installing the operating system on another machine. It's the donor who goes on to re-use a pre-installed operating system on another machine who is really breaking the licensing agreement.
I work for a non-profit that helps schools and other non-profits plan and manage their technology. My advice with donated computers is that they make sure they have the rights to a license by asking for documentation or proof that the machine came with a pre-installed operating system and a letter from the donor transferring the license before relying on their right to run the software legally.
This is important for schools to know about licensing. Even if they choose to run 100 machines with 4 licenses, they should understand the decision they've made.
Gartner has a brief analysis of StarOffice's viability in the corporate work place.
They see it as a potential replacement for non-power users. I their analysis, they anticipate a retail price of $100 and licensing at $25 - $75. The key to the savings that could be made seems to be Microsoft's recent changes to volume licensing. Some firms, according to Gartner, are about to see their Office license costs double.
Gartner's iffy prediction (0.6 rating) is that Star Office will take over 10% of Microsoft's Office market unless Microsoft make significant changes to their price structure.
The problem is the non-teaching crap you have to put up with - governments who want you to have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed by making sure you follow the exact strict rules laid down by them, and fill in a dozen forms so they can check you're doing things right. The problem that arises from that is that you end up working 3, 4 or sometimes 5 hours into every evening doing paperwork and marking.
The thing about this is it is about the money not necessarily the money the teachers get in their pocket but the cost to the school/government/society of having teachers do this.
If they we're being paid $150,000 a year, no one is going to have them fill in crappy forms that add no value.
Now, of course they don't get paid by the hour so you may be thinking - it wouldn't cost any extra no matter what their salary, but that isn't how organizations value staff. Commercial organizations will pay the secretary overtime/use a courier/buy the right hardware to free up the CEO's time even though the CEO pulls a salary too.
Many highly qualified staff in the public and nonprofit sectors end up spending way too much of their time on crap because their wages aren't high enough to make people think twice. It's a terrible waste of talent and training.
I think it's inevitable that they will try it and experiment with it a little. A democracy requires communication to be effective and as the population moves over to email and the web politicians will need to as well.
However, unlike most commercial bodies, political folk (be they politicians or other political activists) have a vested interest in not antagonizing great swathes of people.
I work in the non-profit sector where mission based messages is our bread and butter. Putting out messages that people are likely to latch on to is important. But few mature organizations risk upsetting too many people even if they are unlikely to ever be a true supporter of your cause.
Businesses are only really interested in their customers. Some big firms have a general public image to care about but that sex site that spams every address it can get its hands on really doesn't care if 100,000 women (or anyone else) are upset about receiving a pornographic email.
But politics is built on consensus and give and take. If you produce too many enemies or tarnish your general public image you weaken yourself. It's rarely worth it.
Sure, there will be mistakes like this one but as politicians see how upset people get they'll change their habits to ones that are more acceptable (so if you got one of these emails, make sure to let them know that it's turned you against him).
What an odd twist of affairs THAT would be...a physical document that can't be authenticated against an electronic source version of the document?
It's not simply linking it to the source document that's the key, it's the logs that tie the source document to a person and show that the document presented is consistent with those logs.
That's why you're supposed to initial memo's that you send out, so that there is something linking that piece of paper, in its original form, to you.
Several years ago my long distance phone company, Working Assets, asked if I'd like to help the environment by receiving my bill electronically. "Why yes" I cried. They started emailing a text version, it wasn't pretty but it was all I needed. After several months they started sending me a URL to a web page instead. At which point I told them to return to killing trees and mailing me stuff.
In the case of a dispute I'm don't want to have to rely on information that they have control over, even though I think they're an honest company. I don't even want to be in the situation where I'm sure the statement said one thing when I first read it then, when I go back, it says another and I have no way of being sure that I wasn't just too tired/distracted/drunk when I first looked.
Generally companies are much more interested in accountability than they are in trying to hide things. This type of system becoming common place would put digital signatures back off the agenda for a long time because people will come to think of email and electronic communication only as multimedia versions of chatting.
Using a system like "shreddable email" isn't the same as sending a letter, fax, non shreddable email or anything else traceable. You won't be able to get people to take the same sort of action on an email you're not prepared to stand behind than you would an email your are.
Ever been in one of those meetings where someone says "That sounds good, why don't you put it on paper and we'll take it from there"? It's not simply a matter of them not being able to remember what was said.
This photo from the interior of a mobile lab may give you ideas.
A number of organizations who attempt to tackle the digital divide are considering something similar.
I would think the actual set up you want would depend on what you wanted people to get out of the experience. If you want to people to learn hardware skills you'll need a different set up than if you wanted to teach them MS Office.
If you don't actually need to provide the classroom space, I once used a neat mobile set up which had a half a dozen small Windows CE devices wirelessly networked to a hefty laptop than acted as a server. It was all packaged in a wheeled box that fitted into the trunk of a small car.
There is a web site www.TechSoup.org which provides all sorts of technology support to non profits, including a recycled and refurbished hardware resource list. Not all of the organizations are non-profits accepting and distributing donated computers (IBM's on there!) but many are. If you're looking to donate this is a useful list.
TechSoup is also attempting to push open source solutions as a low cost alternative for non profits. They currently have links to the StarOffice download on the front page as well as an open source message board. Unfortunately, for many of the same reasons as threads on Slashdot have mentioned, it's not a great solution for most non profits yet.
CompuMentor (who run TechSoup) also offer Microsoft software to non-profits at low rates through their software program. There are some restrictions (3 products, 10 license limit per fiscal year, some broad restrictions on limits). But if you know a small non-profit struggling for MS software forward the link.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. That's right. Girls are genetically attracted to pink. There must have been huge stretches in our evolution where females being more attracted to pink than males was essential to the survival of the species.
Well that's a little hyperbolic. But your statement is open to at least a little ridicule. If you were truly able to interact with your children without gender bias you're a very remarkable person. Studies have shown that adults interact with babies they believe to be girls differently from babies they believe to be boys, regardless of the actual sex of the baby. And parents describe their female children from birth onward as smaller, more passive, prettier, and less active than male children regardless of objective measurements. (Rubin, 1974 among others, and more recently confirmed by Sweeney and Bradbard 1988, among others).
I don't deny there are differences between boys and girls. I just don't think we know which of those differences are down to nature and which nurture. [And I'm not sure it's possible to find out in an ethical way.]
In any case, the main issue is: Why is it that we must find few women in CS as a problem? There are few men in, say, nursing. Is that a problem? Not necessarily. If a group is self-selecting toward or away from a particular profession, why do we insist denying that?
It's a problem becauses people self selecting away from a profession for reasons other than their lack of fitness for that profession will leave us with, overall, worse computer scientists (and nurses) than we could otherwise have.
On a general level for our society as a whole, that means we don't have the best people in the best jobs, which leads to a lower quality of life overall. On an individual basis people could well be happier if they had a more even playing field for developing their careers in.
And for women in particular, that selection process currently tends to lead them into less well paying jobs which can lead to a greater concentration of poverty among older women than in the population at large. Since you imply you're the father of a girl, you might want to be a bit more concerned about that.
Design a way for the group of them to act out a simple logic board - "program" them by giving them cards with binary actions then position them in such a way that a given input gives a predictable output. Change their action or their position to change the output. That way they can start to think of computers in terms of the simple steps that build up to produce complex behavior. Plus they get to stand up and be active instead of just listening to someone talking.
Microsoft has undertaken a lot of underhand tactics, but I don't think this is one of them.
The licensing they're donating is under their Open Licensing system, which gives downgrade rights for almost all programs. So you can get a license for XP but actually run Windows 3.1 if you want (and there are way to many nonprofits that do want to).
Your understanding is incorrect.
They can simply claim the expenses of producing and distributing the media (they send a single CD, regardless of number of licenses, for each product a nonprofit gets) and the cost of administering the program. These are expenses they actually incur.
Microsoft can't claim a tax deduction for the retail price of the software, only for the cost of providing the CD etc. to the nonprofits.
Since it all comes out of pre-tax income they don't get a return. They just get to say it is a legitimate business expense, so they don't have to pay tax on the money they actually spent administering the program.
Money or other gifts from an organization have to have a legitimate purose or they become taxable income as though they were actually profit (presumable this is to stop them giving gifts to share holders instead of paying tax on their profit before dispersing it).
The Billion dollar figure is just for public relations.
The nonprofits using CompuMentor's philanthropy program aren't giving up free (as in speech) software and swapping it for MicroSoft stuff because it's low cost. They're upgrading from old Microsoft programs to newer ones. If the program wasn't their very few of them would move to open source, they'd just stay on older technology for longer and be less efficient. This philanthropy program isn't where nonprofits get their first fix, that comes from pre-installed operating systems and software just as it does for most small businesses. CompuMentor's TechSoup.org site also distributes Lotus' 1-2-3 and Smartsuite Millenium, as well as providing links and resources for open source software, but the biggest demand is for Microsoft products. That demand will change in nonprofits when it changes in the for-profit sector.
Volunteer Match and NetworkForGood list in person volunteer opportunities online. But most opportunities to actually volunteer online are around mentoring.
The UN has an online volunteering (see:http://www.unv.org/volunteers/options/online/ index.htm. Their online volunteering specialist, Jayne Cravens (homepage www.coyotecommunications.org, has been vocal about the benefits of online volunteering for years (real years, not internet years).
There are also opportunities at Mentoring.org (a site devoted to mentoring youth), and MicroMentor a pilot project devoted to mentoring micro entrepreneurs.
You're kind of misreading. The speech that this decision relates to wasn't an advertisement like a poster or a TV commercial for Nike products. It was for press releases and other public relations pieces around a debate on business ethics.
In Britain, the Advertising Standards Authority wouldn't have sway over these pieces of speech either.
It isn't clear cut, as the 4 -3 verdict shows because it's about more than selling product. The ACLU is on Nike's side in this issue because they see this as a debate over a matter of public interest in which one side will be able to enjoy full first amendment rights (allowing them to play fast and free with the truth) and the other side won't. Such a difference in the ability to use speech could easily stymie or skew the debate.
Whether Nike themselves are evil or not (and they look pretty awful in regards to their business practices), this judgment is about whether anyone selling things can take part in public debate on issues surrounding their business with the same first amendment rights as their opponents.
Pointing out the fact that schools ought to have valid licenses for the machines they run is hardly outragous.
The sleazy bit of what they're doing is trying to get schools to police their donors by asking for materials (the CD etc.) so that donors will have a harder time installing the operating system on another machine. It's the donor who goes on to re-use a pre-installed operating system on another machine who is really breaking the licensing agreement.
I work for a non-profit that helps schools and other non-profits plan and manage their technology. My advice with donated computers is that they make sure they have the rights to a license by asking for documentation or proof that the machine came with a pre-installed operating system and a letter from the donor transferring the license before relying on their right to run the software legally.
This is important for schools to know about licensing. Even if they choose to run 100 machines with 4 licenses, they should understand the decision they've made.
Gartner has a brief analysis of StarOffice's viability in the corporate work place.
They see it as a potential replacement for non-power users. I their analysis, they anticipate a retail price of $100 and licensing at $25 - $75. The key to the savings that could be made seems to be Microsoft's recent changes to volume licensing. Some firms, according to Gartner, are about to see their Office license costs double.
Gartner's iffy prediction (0.6 rating) is that Star Office will take over 10% of Microsoft's Office market unless Microsoft make significant changes to their price structure.
If they we're being paid $150,000 a year, no one is going to have them fill in crappy forms that add no value.
Now, of course they don't get paid by the hour so you may be thinking - it wouldn't cost any extra no matter what their salary, but that isn't how organizations value staff. Commercial organizations will pay the secretary overtime/use a courier/buy the right hardware to free up the CEO's time even though the CEO pulls a salary too.
Many highly qualified staff in the public and nonprofit sectors end up spending way too much of their time on crap because their wages aren't high enough to make people think twice. It's a terrible waste of talent and training.
Helen
I think it's inevitable that they will try it and experiment with it a little. A democracy requires communication to be effective and as the population moves over to email and the web politicians will need to as well.
However, unlike most commercial bodies, political folk (be they politicians or other political activists) have a vested interest in not antagonizing great swathes of people.
I work in the non-profit sector where mission based messages is our bread and butter. Putting out messages that people are likely to latch on to is important. But few mature organizations risk upsetting too many people even if they are unlikely to ever be a true supporter of your cause.
Businesses are only really interested in their customers. Some big firms have a general public image to care about but that sex site that spams every address it can get its hands on really doesn't care if 100,000 women (or anyone else) are upset about receiving a pornographic email.
But politics is built on consensus and give and take. If you produce too many enemies or tarnish your general public image you weaken yourself. It's rarely worth it.
Sure, there will be mistakes like this one but as politicians see how upset people get they'll change their habits to ones that are more acceptable (so if you got one of these emails, make sure to let them know that it's turned you against him).
That's why you're supposed to initial memo's that you send out, so that there is something linking that piece of paper, in its original form, to you.
Several years ago my long distance phone company, Working Assets, asked if I'd like to help the environment by receiving my bill electronically. "Why yes" I cried. They started emailing a text version, it wasn't pretty but it was all I needed. After several months they started sending me a URL to a web page instead. At which point I told them to return to killing trees and mailing me stuff.
In the case of a dispute I'm don't want to have to rely on information that they have control over, even though I think they're an honest company. I don't even want to be in the situation where I'm sure the statement said one thing when I first read it then, when I go back, it says another and I have no way of being sure that I wasn't just too tired/distracted/drunk when I first looked.
Generally companies are much more interested in accountability than they are in trying to hide things. This type of system becoming common place would put digital signatures back off the agenda for a long time because people will come to think of email and electronic communication only as multimedia versions of chatting.
Using a system like "shreddable email" isn't the same as sending a letter, fax, non shreddable email or anything else traceable. You won't be able to get people to take the same sort of action on an email you're not prepared to stand behind than you would an email your are.
Ever been in one of those meetings where someone says "That sounds good, why don't you put it on paper and we'll take it from there"? It's not simply a matter of them not being able to remember what was said.
The '91 predictions.
This photo from the interior of a mobile lab may give you ideas.
A number of organizations who attempt to tackle the digital divide are considering something similar.
I would think the actual set up you want would depend on what you wanted people to get out of the experience. If you want to people to learn hardware skills you'll need a different set up than if you wanted to teach them MS Office.
If you don't actually need to provide the classroom space, I once used a neat mobile set up which had a half a dozen small Windows CE devices wirelessly networked to a hefty laptop than acted as a server. It was all packaged in a wheeled box that fitted into the trunk of a small car.
The IFPI is an unbrella group of national recording industry movements. RIAA is the US member of the IFPI.
Your ignorance is hardly a good reason for nationalistic indignation.
Get upset at the fact the US might consider sanctions rather than the fact an international group isn't based in DC.
--
"It is a mistake to seek in fantasies the key to concrete behavior" - Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex
There is a web site www.TechSoup.org which provides all sorts of technology support to non profits, including a recycled and refurbished hardware resource list. Not all of the organizations are non-profits accepting and distributing donated computers (IBM's on there!) but many are. If you're looking to donate this is a useful list.
TechSoup is also attempting to push open source solutions as a low cost alternative for non profits. They currently have links to the StarOffice download on the front page as well as an open source message board. Unfortunately, for many of the same reasons as threads on Slashdot have mentioned, it's not a great solution for most non profits yet.
CompuMentor (who run TechSoup) also offer Microsoft software to non-profits at low rates through their software program. There are some restrictions (3 products, 10 license limit per fiscal year, some broad restrictions on limits). But if you know a small non-profit struggling for MS software forward the link.