Could it be that they're forced out when they do have kids, on the assumption that they're not going to be as dedicated splitting their time between family and career and all that?
This is called pregnancy discrimination, and it is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
They had to pass Title VII in the 70's because after 10 years of the Civil Rights Act barring discrimination on the basis of sex, women were still being fired as a matter of *company* *policy* upon the birth of their first child. I kid you not. BTW when the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993, there was of course a gap of several months between the date the law was passed and the date it went into force. There was a large spike in calls to 9to5 -- companies were summarily firing all of their pregnant workers, just so they would not have to deal with the FMLA. While that's a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, good luck financing a lawsuit when you're pregnant and have just lost your job.
Title VII is still unenforceable for all but the wealthiest, so it's still practical to fire women from "normal" jobs (such as those in IT) when they fall pregnant -- particularly if they're single or are the sole support of their families due to, say, disability or permanent impairment of the father. Say he comes back from Iraq with a plate in his head and barely two brain cells to rub together, for example. Happens all the time.
Unions perform all the same services for their members that contracting outfits perform, only much much better and for a lower cost. My brother in law is a union steamfitter, and clears darn near six figures -- and a small fraction of that goes to union dues which cover his pension, health insurance and even provides scholarships and dental coverage for the kids. Oh, and supplemental unemployment insurance as well. Not to mention extensive training and certification. My brother gets college credit towards his engineering degree for the CAD/CAM, project management and site planning courses he takes while an apprentice carpenter -- and is getting *paid* to do so.
Plus if the insurer or health care provider starts to get cheeky with a union member, watch out. The union goes to bat for their brothers and sisters in cases like this, whereas an IT contracting outfit will drop you like a hot potato.
Many things a union has going for it in terms of negotiating contracts: they don't need to clear a profit, just break even, so a union could underbid the contracting outfits massively for the same quality services.
When you hear about bad unions like the UAW failing in their negotiations with the auto companies in getting the auto companies to perform on existing contracts for retiree health benefits and pensions, for example -- the UAW was stupid to let the management of those essential services out of their hands in the first place. *Skilled* trade unions like the carpenters, boilermakers and steamfitters, all organized under the AFL/CIO (not the UAW) manager their own pension funds and benefits out of union dues, so it's not something they can negotiate away.
Programmers and IT specialists should consider ourselves skilled labor, and organize ourselves accordingly to our own liking. Otherwise...gee I wonder what would happen if 90% of the US IT and high tech work force were unionized and decided to uh...go on strike. Knowledge is power, but only if organized on a large scale like this can it actually effect change.
Depends on the school, and on the program. At Cornell, in the Engineering College, there are two types of masters: a Master of Science, that is awarded upon washing out of your PhD program after 2 years -- or a Master of Engineering which is, in fact, a one year program (including, I think, the summer after graduation). The ME is a really good choice for going into industry or business (or business school afterwards) because it marks you as someone interested in getting out into the real world rather than merely yet another failed academic.
We don't actually know that oldhack was trying to be funny.
He or she may well have been quite serious!
The sad commentary is that the moderators (and you) simply assumed that oldhack's extremely good advice, because it suggested a (presumably) man train in a traditionally female field, must be a lame attempt at humor rather than what it actually is: extremely sound advice: for all the reasons you provide.
Funny that. Another piece of advice I would give this person is NOT to publish anything commercially viable or useful while a graduate student. Publish some of the theoretical underpinnings, but upon graduation day, take your invention-reduced-to-practice and the patent application you have prepared, and FILE. Do not disclose it to the university thinking it will bring you kudos because your professor will claim it, the University will get all the licensing fees, and all you'll be left with is a stupid piece of paper saying you actually graduated.
That's just a small sample of the outright age, class, gender and race bigotry you get to experience in academic environments. Remember, the responder is a professor. Consider the source.
He was right about how much easier it is to drop down into easy areas like business after doing a degree in something rigorous -- that actually trains you to think logically -- like engineering.
Remember, the responder is a business professor after having trained in CS. Case in point.
To the poster: remember that your academic advisors got where they are by being white, male, privileged-class blowhards -- and smarter than average, and specializing in "generating new knowledge" in some field.
Figure out who you have the most to learn from in the direction you want to go, and get what little you can out of them: some exposure to a new field, some experience doing original research, a recommendation and a piece of paper.
Good people are scattered across programs, and they are few and far between. It's your job to find someone you can work with, and who will further YOUR goals.
Your advisor will have a far greater influence on the outcome of your graduate studies than the choice of program. There are plenty of paint-by-numbers physicists who are basically doing the same work over and over, and will turn you into a lab rat who spends most of his time dickering with equipment suppliers, and there are psychology professors in cognitive who design truly inspired studies with a great deal of rigor to them. You can't even go by field as to where the really interesting and innovative work is being done.
Some things to watch out for: someone who doesn't have tenure yet will work you like an animal on their own projects and not care one bit about your goals or interests. The recently tenured will be focused on academic empire-building and may or may not care about your goals or interests. People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
I AM A FORMER PATENT OFFICIAL FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA, AFRICA. A NIGERIAN COMPANY LAGOS ANALYTICS CORP MY OWN A PATENT ON TECHNOLOGY YOU HAVE RECENTLY INCORPORATE ON YOUR PC DEVIICE. BUT I CAN HELP YOU AVOID ANY DIFFICULTY WITH LAGOS ANALYTICS CORP IF WE BECOME FRIENDS.
PLEASE, I PRAY YOU WILL REPLY.
MR AYO OYEGBOLA
someone!!! Update my spam filter puh-leeze!
now i have an interesting story to tell. that was originally the end of the post. however, because there were so many caps (it's characteristic of nigerian fee scam letters to be in all caps, it was done for effect) it was auto-rejected by a bot. which is probably why nobody has taken this obvious cheap shot yet. however, I'm hoping if i include enough lowercase text it will balance it out and get this gross piece of purple buffoonery past the auto-bot copy editor, perhaps -- perhaps this will make it through. sigh. here goes.
Greg Palast lives in New York. He's a US Citizen. He only publishes in the UK newspapers because US newspapers (and other media outlets) won't publish his investigative journalism. Which is why its so great when his books (eg ARMED MADHOUSE) sell well enough to make the New York Times Bestsellers list. Because then the NYT *HAS* to mention his name. Delicious.
Brava! My mom (a granny eight times over) took up computing for the very reasons the OP chose to denigrate: family communications and yes, knitting patterns. Our favorite is Knitty because of its "open source" policy.
Her latest project has been to dub all of the family home movies to DVD's, first for archival purposes, and now she's editing them down to the funniest moments by theme and/or subject, and dubbing music tracks over them.
While visiting my sister in New York, one of her teenage grandsons was overheard telling his friends, "Let's ask Nana how that works -- she know everything about computers!"
Anyway, knitting patterns, family photos and communicating with the grandchildren are are certainly a lot nicer applications for technology than what a number of young men seem to think the internet is for -- thanks to grannies, it's not just a big electronic wank mag anymore!
Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, Headline read, "San Diego Mother wins Nobel Prize!"
The Anne Sayer biography of Rosalind Franklin. Franklin built the rig and grew the crystals and took the X-ray crystallographs of DNA published by Watson and Crick in NATURE without Franklin's knowledge or consent -- you know the work Watson and Crick (but not Franklin) ultimately won a Nobel Prize for.
The piece on mathematician Emmy Noether in Bell's "Men [sic] of Mathematics"
Special mention for Margot O'Toole who blew the roof off of one of Nobel Prizewinner and Famous Fraud David Baltimore's papers,
which he refused to withdraw -- but rather blacklisted the bearer of bad news instead.
A: Actually, I think you might be under just such an obligation. [to apply the patch]
B: Technically, you're right, but practically nobody is ever going to come and get you.
Well, maybe there will be someone who volunteers to make threatening noises to the users who refuse to install
the patch, on behalf of the original patent holder. They could demand audits, send in BSC-like goons, etc -- with the
result being that Microsoft either publicly has to pay (indemnification) or publicly have to refuse to pay
(highlighting the lack of indemnification). Either way, the public wins, the original patent holder wins, Free Software
wins (everybody scared to run MS now) and,
most importantly, MS loses.
Seems a bit obnoxious, but who ever said lawyers were nice people?
...and as I said before, the shit is freakin obvious. The problem here isn't prior art, because you shouldn't have to search for prior art, you should be able to recognize that this is a trivial merger of two already existing technologies. Even if there was no prior art directly implementing the claims of the patent, it should have been immediately thrown out.
Oh... I see. Because in your opinion "This shit is freakin obvious" it should also be "freakin' obvious" to everybody else in the world with ordinary skill in the field . Since you also assert that you are qualified to say how the system ought to be changed, clearly you must be familiar with all of the details in the existing system -- so surely you must know that the criterion of non-patentability due to obviousness is that it be obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field, not specialist.
Furthermore, I'm sure (since you're such an expert in the existing system and therefore know exactly how it should be changed) you are certainly aware of the fact that the merger of two existing techniques -- if they produce a result which neither of the original technologies was intended for is in fact patentable, no matter how "freakin obvious" it seems five or six years down the track. Many things look "freakin obvious" after the fact, that were not at all obvious at the time of filing .
However, in this specific case, as I have mentioned before, because the KA9Q guys were sending each other email over amateur packet-switched radio more than 10 years prior to the date of filing, that it would be much easier to prove specific prior art. To prove obviousness is far more difficult, but clearly, my LOUD friend, since you are such an expert in the workings of the USPTO as to be qualified to criticize it -- you know this already.
As another poster has mentioned, it's pretty lame to think that gals will just see "ooh! pretty role model! Me do too!"
(although guys are pretty susceptible to "Arnie does it, so can I!" logic) and that gals so easily influenced would
make your prime candidates for nuclear physics.
A more reasonable goal would be to just get people in general used to the idea of seeing females in a wide
variety of technical, scientific and medical roles.
Patents should be changed so that, like copyright, the evidence is argued in a court of law with expert witnesses. The presumption that an orgainzation that refers to patent applicants as its "customers" and time and time again approves nonsense patents (with no consequences to itself) is qualified to decide what is a valid patent is nonsense.
You're just demonstrating your complete ignorance of US Patent law here. Patents are regularly challenged in a court of law and before a judge with the input of expert witnesses . They often lose. People prosecuting a patent that would not withstand this level of scrutiny typically drop their requests for royalties when push comes to shove, and go off looking for an easier mark -- at least they have every time I've served as the expert. One report from me, and they go runnin' scared.
It's good money too.
Of course, you need something more substantive, my loud friend, to challenge a patent than ignorant assertions like "this shit is freakin obvious" and "The USPTO is worthless," and "Patents should be changed so that..." followed by a description of how patents are already work. Unless, of course, your goal is to be laughed out of the court.
For an historical perspective, recall that Walt Disney was much the same as Ronald Reagan in denouncing his colleagues in the entertainment industry to the Homeland Sec^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^HHouse Committee on Unamerican Activities after 9/11^h^h^h^h^h^h in the 1950's.
Perhaps it's more the case that this shit is freakin obvious.
Most patented material is at least somewhat obvious to a specialist in the field, particularly
after the fact. That's why people patent things in the first place. The criterion according to the USPTO
is that it cannot be obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the field--and it cannot have been reduced to practice, published and sold. Personally I think that the KA9Q guys sending email to each other over amateur wireless radio links means that wireless email had been reduced to practice years before the original patent was filed, and might
make a more competent case to the judge than "this shit is freakin obvious".
Perhaps a more effective approach would be to summarize your evidence in the context of 35USC and 37CFR and provide it to opposing counsel, along with your oh-so-well-reasoned suggestions.
Francis Crick and James Watson, co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, were following up on a suggestion made just a couple years earlier by chemist Linus Pauling about the general helical nature of large protein molecules.
Yeah -- and they wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the X-ray crystollographic data they stole from
the one scientist in the world able to synthesize the crystals and make the relevent measurements on them--
Rosalind Franklin
Slashdot Mirror
Could it be that they're forced out when they do have kids, on the assumption that they're not going to be as dedicated splitting their time between family and career and all that?
This is called pregnancy discrimination, and it is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
They had to pass Title VII in the 70's because after 10 years of the Civil Rights Act barring discrimination on the basis of sex, women were still being fired as a matter of *company* *policy* upon the birth of their first child. I kid you not. BTW when the Family and Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993, there was of course a gap of several months between the date the law was passed and the date it went into force. There was a large spike in calls to 9to5 -- companies were summarily firing all of their pregnant workers, just so they would not have to deal with the FMLA. While that's a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, good luck financing a lawsuit when you're pregnant and have just lost your job.
Title VII is still unenforceable for all but the wealthiest, so it's still practical to fire women from "normal" jobs (such as those in IT) when they fall pregnant -- particularly if they're single or are the sole support of their families due to, say, disability or permanent impairment of the father. Say he comes back from Iraq with a plate in his head and barely two brain cells to rub together, for example. Happens all the time.
Absolutely. We need to form a union. Seriously.
Unions perform all the same services for their members that contracting outfits perform, only much much better and for a lower cost. My brother in law is a union steamfitter, and clears darn near six figures -- and a small fraction of that goes to union dues which cover his pension, health insurance and even provides scholarships and dental coverage for the kids. Oh, and supplemental unemployment insurance as well. Not to mention extensive training and certification. My brother gets college credit towards his engineering degree for the CAD/CAM, project management and site planning courses he takes while an apprentice carpenter -- and is getting *paid* to do so.
Plus if the insurer or health care provider starts to get cheeky with a union member, watch out. The union goes to bat for their brothers and sisters in cases like this, whereas an IT contracting outfit will drop you like a hot potato.
Many things a union has going for it in terms of negotiating contracts: they don't need to clear a profit, just break even, so a union could underbid the contracting outfits massively for the same quality services.
When you hear about bad unions like the UAW failing in their negotiations with the auto companies in getting the auto companies to perform on existing contracts for retiree health benefits and pensions, for example -- the UAW was stupid to let the management of those essential services out of their hands in the first place. *Skilled* trade unions like the carpenters, boilermakers and steamfitters, all organized under the AFL/CIO (not the UAW) manager their own pension funds and benefits out of union dues, so it's not something they can negotiate away.
Programmers and IT specialists should consider ourselves skilled labor, and organize ourselves accordingly to our own liking. Otherwise...gee I wonder what would happen if 90% of the US IT and high tech work force were unionized and decided to uh...go on strike. Knowledge is power, but only if organized on a large scale like this can it actually effect change.
yeh right. like we're supposed to believe some young twit that wasn't even born yet when the great renaming of usenet groups took place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwYrZLvvJU
google groups is just a cheap web interface with ads on top of nntp.
Yup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGwYrZLvvJU
Tune the radio in each room to the same station.
Duh.
You can broadcast on your own low-power station if you want to listen to your own CDs, MP3's, etc.
Depends on the school, and on the program. At Cornell, in the Engineering College, there are two types of masters: a Master of Science, that is awarded upon washing out of your PhD program after 2 years -- or a Master of Engineering which is, in fact, a one year program (including, I think, the summer after graduation). The ME is a really good choice for going into industry or business (or business school afterwards) because it marks you as someone interested in getting out into the real world rather than merely yet another failed academic.
We don't actually know that oldhack was trying to be funny.
He or she may well have been quite serious!
The sad commentary is that the moderators (and you) simply assumed that oldhack's extremely good advice, because it suggested a (presumably) man train in a traditionally female field, must be a lame attempt at humor rather than what it actually is: extremely sound advice: for all the reasons you provide.
Hmm. If it's "flamebait" where are the flames?
Funny that. Another piece of advice I would give this person is NOT to publish anything commercially viable or useful while a graduate student. Publish some of the theoretical underpinnings, but upon graduation day, take your invention-reduced-to-practice and the patent application you have prepared, and FILE. Do not disclose it to the university thinking it will bring you kudos because your professor will claim it, the University will get all the licensing fees, and all you'll be left with is a stupid piece of paper saying you actually graduated.
Again, good luck.
That's just a small sample of the outright age, class, gender and race bigotry you get to experience in academic environments. Remember, the responder is a professor. Consider the source.
He was right about how much easier it is to drop down into easy areas like business after doing a degree in something rigorous -- that actually trains you to think logically -- like engineering.
Remember, the responder is a business professor after having trained in CS. Case in point.
To the poster: remember that your academic advisors got where they are by being white, male, privileged-class blowhards -- and smarter than average, and specializing in "generating new knowledge" in some field.
Figure out who you have the most to learn from in the direction you want to go, and get what little you can out of them: some exposure to a new field, some experience doing original research, a recommendation and a piece of paper.
Good people are scattered across programs, and they are few and far between. It's your job to find someone you can work with, and who will further YOUR goals.
Your advisor will have a far greater influence on the outcome of your graduate studies than the choice of program. There are plenty of paint-by-numbers physicists who are basically doing the same work over and over, and will turn you into a lab rat who spends most of his time dickering with equipment suppliers, and there are psychology professors in cognitive who design truly inspired studies with a great deal of rigor to them. You can't even go by field as to where the really interesting and innovative work is being done.
Some things to watch out for: someone who doesn't have tenure yet will work you like an animal on their own projects and not care one bit about your goals or interests. The recently tenured will be focused on academic empire-building and may or may not care about your goals or interests. People in extremely prestigious programs may spend all of their time preening and winning awards and only needs students to supply them with narcissistic supply: if you can't stand kissing A, stay away from the most lauded people at the most prestigious programs.
'All in all, this move would solidify IBM's role as "the developer company,"
...right. After laying off all the developers.
no, that's binary. trims is actually user number 0x12
didn't I already receive one of these?
DEAR MRS. OLPC
I AM A FORMER PATENT OFFICIAL FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA, AFRICA. A NIGERIAN COMPANY LAGOS ANALYTICS CORP MY OWN A PATENT ON TECHNOLOGY YOU HAVE RECENTLY INCORPORATE ON YOUR PC DEVIICE. BUT I CAN HELP YOU AVOID ANY DIFFICULTY WITH LAGOS ANALYTICS CORP IF WE BECOME FRIENDS.
PLEASE, I PRAY YOU WILL REPLY.
MR AYO OYEGBOLA
someone!!! Update my spam filter puh-leeze!
now i have an interesting story to tell. that was originally the end of the post. however, because there were so many caps (it's characteristic of nigerian fee scam letters to be in all caps, it was done for effect) it was auto-rejected by a bot. which is probably why nobody has taken this obvious cheap shot yet. however, I'm hoping if i include enough lowercase text it will balance it out and get this gross piece of purple buffoonery past the auto-bot copy editor, perhaps -- perhaps this will make it through. sigh. here goes.
in Austin, Goodwill is very good about getting old computers working -- and if they don't work, making sure their components are handled responsibly.
oooh they're getting clever! you'll have to add this line now too: 127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
add this line to your hosts file
127.0.0.1 ads.google.com
And you'll never see another google ad again.
Greg Palast lives in New York. He's a US Citizen. He only publishes in the UK newspapers because US newspapers (and other media outlets) won't publish his investigative journalism. Which is why its so great when his books (eg ARMED MADHOUSE) sell well enough to make the New York Times Bestsellers list. Because then the NYT *HAS* to mention his name. Delicious.
Brava! My mom (a granny eight times over) took up computing for the very reasons the OP chose to denigrate: family communications and yes, knitting patterns. Our favorite is Knitty because of its "open source" policy.
Her latest project has been to dub all of the family home movies to DVD's, first for archival purposes, and now she's editing them down to the funniest moments by theme and/or subject, and dubbing music tracks over them.
While visiting my sister in New York, one of her teenage grandsons was overheard telling his friends, "Let's ask Nana how that works -- she know everything about computers!"
Anyway, knitting patterns, family photos and communicating with the grandchildren are are certainly a lot nicer applications for technology than what a number of young men seem to think the internet is for -- thanks to grannies, it's not just a big electronic wank mag anymore!Mod Parent Up! Please
But also please add to the top of the list:
Well, maybe there will be someone who volunteers to make threatening noises to the users who refuse to install the patch, on behalf of the original patent holder. They could demand audits, send in BSC-like goons, etc -- with the result being that Microsoft either publicly has to pay (indemnification) or publicly have to refuse to pay (highlighting the lack of indemnification). Either way, the public wins, the original patent holder wins, Free Software wins (everybody scared to run MS now) and, most importantly, MS loses.
Seems a bit obnoxious, but who ever said lawyers were nice people?
Oh... I see. Because in your opinion "This shit is freakin obvious" it should also be "freakin' obvious" to everybody else in the world with ordinary skill in the field . Since you also assert that you are qualified to say how the system ought to be changed, clearly you must be familiar with all of the details in the existing system -- so surely you must know that the criterion of non-patentability due to obviousness is that it be obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the field, not specialist.
Furthermore, I'm sure (since you're such an expert in the existing system and therefore know exactly how it should be changed) you are certainly aware of the fact that the merger of two existing techniques -- if they produce a result which neither of the original technologies was intended for is in fact patentable, no matter how "freakin obvious" it seems five or six years down the track. Many things look "freakin obvious" after the fact, that were not at all obvious at the time of filing .
However, in this specific case, as I have mentioned before, because the KA9Q guys were sending each other email over amateur packet-switched radio more than 10 years prior to the date of filing, that it would be much easier to prove specific prior art. To prove obviousness is far more difficult, but clearly, my LOUD friend, since you are such an expert in the workings of the USPTO as to be qualified to criticize it -- you know this already.
As another poster has mentioned, it's pretty lame to think that gals will just see "ooh! pretty role model! Me do too!" (although guys are pretty susceptible to "Arnie does it, so can I!" logic) and that gals so easily influenced would make your prime candidates for nuclear physics.
A more reasonable goal would be to just get people in general used to the idea of seeing females in a wide variety of technical, scientific and medical roles.
You're just demonstrating your complete ignorance of US Patent law here. Patents are regularly challenged in a court of law and before a judge with the input of expert witnesses . They often lose. People prosecuting a patent that would not withstand this level of scrutiny typically drop their requests for royalties when push comes to shove, and go off looking for an easier mark -- at least they have every time I've served as the expert. One report from me, and they go runnin' scared. It's good money too.
Of course, you need something more substantive, my loud friend, to challenge a patent than ignorant assertions like "this shit is freakin obvious" and "The USPTO is worthless," and "Patents should be changed so that..." followed by a description of how patents are already work. Unless, of course, your goal is to be laughed out of the court.
For an historical perspective, recall that Walt Disney was much the same as Ronald Reagan in denouncing his colleagues in the entertainment industry to the Homeland Sec^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^HHouse Committee on Unamerican Activities after 9/11^h^h^h^h^h^h in the 1950's.
You also might want to check out Ariel Dorfman's take on Disney.
Most patented material is at least somewhat obvious to a specialist in the field, particularly after the fact. That's why people patent things in the first place. The criterion according to the USPTO is that it cannot be obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the field--and it cannot have been reduced to practice, published and sold. Personally I think that the KA9Q guys sending email to each other over amateur wireless radio links means that wireless email had been reduced to practice years before the original patent was filed, and might make a more competent case to the judge than "this shit is freakin obvious".
Perhaps a more effective approach would be to summarize your evidence in the context of 35USC and 37CFR and provide it to opposing counsel, along with your oh-so-well-reasoned suggestions.
Good Luck!