A good friend of mine who happens to be bi works in a law office where he endures a constant stream of anti-gay jokes on a regular basis. It's right up there with contributing to a "hostile work environment" and I'm sure if he went to HR he could complain about inappropriate sexual and/or bigoted humor, but still, the problems exist.
I'm not sure how people could honestly hate Microsoft more. And alienating a substantially large customer base by caving into peer pressure from a religious nut^H^H^H Evangelical Christian isn't going to help matters much.
Perhaps they figure that since they own such a substantial amount of the market in software, they can afford to piss off a few more people. Meantime, I'll continue to happily use Firefox and perhaps consider Linux for my next operating system.
The thing is that if I want to meet a bunch of people I don't know, I can go outside and go to a bar.
While I do not necessarily disagree with you completely, I myself have very little in common with your average bar goer. I don't know about you personally, however. I am much more likely to go to a scifi or anime meetup and meet people with whom I can have an interesting conversation with, versus guys attempting to ask me my sign or chat me up regarding the last Survivor show, when I could care less about 99% of what passes for entertainment on television.
The idea of meeting people with similar interests is great, but there's no need for meetup.com to bring those people together, and there never was. Those people are already brought together elsewhere, meetup.com should have made it easier for them to arrange to meet one another.
Where? In my area, news to me. I guess I have to envy whatever geographical location that you have that you can automatically find people who are already meeting up for whatever interests you currently happen to possess.
Meetup.com worked for me when I was new to the area, and in a lot of ways still does. I meet up with a lot of people who otherwise I wouldn't have met. I've heard of people saying that Yahoogroups is an alternative, and frankly it isn't. You have to deal with spammers on a regular basis and/or moderate new members to be certain that you're free from them. If the list gets huge, you'll have to find other people to help out in that moderation or face moderating it on a fairly regular basis. I moderate two lists, one with 200+ people and another with 400+, so I have a pretty good idea of what goes into moderating a list, and it is MUCH of more of pain in the ass than being a meetup.com organizer, as much of a thankless job as it is.
Speaking as the female minority in a wide number of fields, I will definitely say that I am very used to being either the only woman, or one of maybe two or three out of an IT development team. I find it to be a shame.
But, hey, gives me an advantage in the dating game in finding a guy geek to go out with.;)
Depends on the woman as much as it depends on the man. I know men who don't do what you list as "typical" male activities, and I know women who do them on a fairly regular basis.
Speaking as a woman, I spend most of my computer time gaming, chatting, surfing the web, blogging, or at/. And yes, I download mp3s and find nothing wrong with pron.;)
Hey, my Yahoo profile publically displays a photo. Course, you could always argue that I stole the picture from someone else, and I'm really a 65 year old balding male in disguise. ^_^
Then again, you could also be a 13 year old girl in disguise too!
I was wondering the same thing myself. I guess it comes down to how large the files are. Were they 10 *MEGS* I could see people complaining. But 10 gigs of music repetitive? I'm thrilled to just have a tape adapter hook up to my car discman and have it not stop playing when I go over one of Boston's many potholes, and have it play ~15 songs in a row without changing the CD.
I can't imagine what I would do with an iPOD or any other mp3 player that had 10 gigs of storage space. Probably bliss out on the happiness of having so much music, I would imagine.
If RIAA had it their way we would be denied our MP3 players.
That's what was originally said about VCRs, that it would ruin the film industry by allowing people to copy movies onto tapes. The RIAA needs to get with the times and realize that by trying to limit the usage and copying of mp3 files--or prevent them entirely--they're only hurting themselves.
Those flaws have long been fixed. Whoever volunteers to be an organizer can reschedule the meetup places AND dates/times, and even set up polls to determine what arrangement works best for the majority of people.
Ironically enough, many emails have gone out to members of the meetup.com groups, asking for "volunteers" to be an organizer. And I can say that as an organizer of two small groups, it's a thankless job--and even more thankless to be *PAYING* to do all of that work. Why should I pay to stick my neck out and get people to show up to events? Or worse yet, expect people to show up and pay a fee to help me out? What if only two people show? What about all of the "maybes"? What if you create an event and only one out of three people who RSVPed show up?
All in all, the only option I see at present is to create a Yahoogroup, send out the link to current members, and resign as the organizer of the current meetup group. This of course means that I'll have the aggravation of running the emailing list, approving new members, setting new folks to moderated to weed out spammers, and I don't have time for that. I run too many emailing lists as is. Meetup.com eliminated spammers and the need to approve of new subscribers and posts in order to arrange a convenient way to get a bunch of people together who didn't know each other and meet somewhere locally. Now that's gone, hopefully someone will step up and take their place.
Actually, the organizer has the ability to put up polls and redetermine where and when the group can meet. I've done this a number of times to find the best day and time that people can meet up at.
That's great if you already know everyone in the group. The great thing about meetup.com was the ability to meet new people in your area who share your interests.
I used their service when I moved to Boston in order to make new friends and get around socially. And yes, it worked.:)
Evite assumes that you already know the people with whom you're meeting up. The great thing about meetup.com was meeting new people with the same interests.
Of course it probably does discourage groups that are not already established from forming or growing...
Yup, that's exactly what it's going to do. I am the organizer of two groups, both of which have less than 5 people who make it monthly. And that $9/month fee only lasts for this year on top of it all. I certainly can't expect nor wouldn't expect the one or two people who show up to start kicking in $4 a piece or whatever, so I plan to resign as organizer.
Incorrect. There is no epsilon between the gamma and the nu. It should be "Ãíùèé Óåáõôïí".
Methinks you need to take a class in Attic Greek.:)
-- Greek geek
I was a CS major in college, graduated, and have since been involved in the programming industry for the past four years. I never had a problem being female in any of my classes in college, and my professors and peers never treated me any differently--though as I recall, I think that I was one of maybe two women in the CS department of my graduating class.
The biggest factor, IMO, was dealing with public school in K-12. I'm sure anyone here can imagine how much I was ostracized by my peers when I went to computer summer camp at age eight. Needless to say, I've always been a very independent person and never really cared what others thought, and I think that made all of the difference.
It also depends on your home environment. My father raised me on a steady diet of Star Trek, RPGs, computers, science fiction, fantasy, and Monty Python, and my mom was perfectly fine with this even though she wasn't interested in any of it (I still have no idea how they've managed to be married for over 30 years:). Most of my friends as a result when I was growing up were male, and I joined the Computer Club when I was in high school.
Yes, I was and am a geek:) I didn't care one bit--and still don't.
Slashdot Mirror
A good friend of mine who happens to be bi works in a law office where he endures a constant stream of anti-gay jokes on a regular basis. It's right up there with contributing to a "hostile work environment" and I'm sure if he went to HR he could complain about inappropriate sexual and/or bigoted humor, but still, the problems exist.
http://www-306.ibm.com/employment/us/diverse/award s.shtml
Perhaps they figure that since they own such a substantial amount of the market in software, they can afford to piss off a few more people. Meantime, I'll continue to happily use Firefox and perhaps consider Linux for my next operating system.
Entry for new movie updated from: "Harmless" to: "Mostly harmless"
No, actually, Padme won't be off to Alderaan. But I've read the book already so I know what happens. :)
While I do not necessarily disagree with you completely, I myself have very little in common with your average bar goer. I don't know about you personally, however. I am much more likely to go to a scifi or anime meetup and meet people with whom I can have an interesting conversation with, versus guys attempting to ask me my sign or chat me up regarding the last Survivor show, when I could care less about 99% of what passes for entertainment on television.
The idea of meeting people with similar interests is great, but there's no need for meetup.com to bring those people together, and there never was. Those people are already brought together elsewhere, meetup.com should have made it easier for them to arrange to meet one another.
Where? In my area, news to me. I guess I have to envy whatever geographical location that you have that you can automatically find people who are already meeting up for whatever interests you currently happen to possess.
Meetup.com worked for me when I was new to the area, and in a lot of ways still does. I meet up with a lot of people who otherwise I wouldn't have met. I've heard of people saying that Yahoogroups is an alternative, and frankly it isn't. You have to deal with spammers on a regular basis and/or moderate new members to be certain that you're free from them. If the list gets huge, you'll have to find other people to help out in that moderation or face moderating it on a fairly regular basis. I moderate two lists, one with 200+ people and another with 400+, so I have a pretty good idea of what goes into moderating a list, and it is MUCH of more of pain in the ass than being a meetup.com organizer, as much of a thankless job as it is.
Yes, but I really don't want to know what a BSOD would look like on it. ^_^
But, hey, gives me an advantage in the dating game in finding a guy geek to go out with. ;)
I know equal numbers of men and women who are anime fans, though. I don't think it's female specific.
Speaking as a woman, I spend most of my computer time gaming, chatting, surfing the web, blogging, or at /. And yes, I download mp3s and find nothing wrong with pron. ;)
Then again, you could also be a 13 year old girl in disguise too!
I can't imagine what I would do with an iPOD or any other mp3 player that had 10 gigs of storage space. Probably bliss out on the happiness of having so much music, I would imagine.
That's what was originally said about VCRs, that it would ruin the film industry by allowing people to copy movies onto tapes. The RIAA needs to get with the times and realize that by trying to limit the usage and copying of mp3 files--or prevent them entirely--they're only hurting themselves.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Ironically enough, many emails have gone out to members of the meetup.com groups, asking for "volunteers" to be an organizer. And I can say that as an organizer of two small groups, it's a thankless job--and even more thankless to be *PAYING* to do all of that work. Why should I pay to stick my neck out and get people to show up to events? Or worse yet, expect people to show up and pay a fee to help me out? What if only two people show? What about all of the "maybes"? What if you create an event and only one out of three people who RSVPed show up?
All in all, the only option I see at present is to create a Yahoogroup, send out the link to current members, and resign as the organizer of the current meetup group. This of course means that I'll have the aggravation of running the emailing list, approving new members, setting new folks to moderated to weed out spammers, and I don't have time for that. I run too many emailing lists as is. Meetup.com eliminated spammers and the need to approve of new subscribers and posts in order to arrange a convenient way to get a bunch of people together who didn't know each other and meet somewhere locally. Now that's gone, hopefully someone will step up and take their place.
And yes, Virginia, there are girl geeks on /.
-yet another girl geek
Actually, the organizer has the ability to put up polls and redetermine where and when the group can meet. I've done this a number of times to find the best day and time that people can meet up at.
I used their service when I moved to Boston in order to make new friends and get around socially. And yes, it worked. :)
Evite assumes that you already know the people with whom you're meeting up. The great thing about meetup.com was meeting new people with the same interests.
Yup, that's exactly what it's going to do. I am the organizer of two groups, both of which have less than 5 people who make it monthly. And that $9/month fee only lasts for this year on top of it all. I certainly can't expect nor wouldn't expect the one or two people who show up to start kicking in $4 a piece or whatever, so I plan to resign as organizer.
Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. :(
Of course, the Greek didn't print on there... should be Gamma, nu, omega, theta, iota then Sigma epsilon alpha upsilon tau omicron nu.
Incorrect. There is no epsilon between the gamma and the nu. It should be "Ãíùèé Óåáõôïí". Methinks you need to take a class in Attic Greek. :)
-- Greek geek
The biggest factor, IMO, was dealing with public school in K-12. I'm sure anyone here can imagine how much I was ostracized by my peers when I went to computer summer camp at age eight. Needless to say, I've always been a very independent person and never really cared what others thought, and I think that made all of the difference.
It also depends on your home environment. My father raised me on a steady diet of Star Trek, RPGs, computers, science fiction, fantasy, and Monty Python, and my mom was perfectly fine with this even though she wasn't interested in any of it (I still have no idea how they've managed to be married for over 30 years :). Most of my friends as a result when I was growing up were male, and I joined the Computer Club when I was in high school.
Yes, I was and am a geek :) I didn't care one bit--and still don't.
Kyrene http://www.livejournal.com/users/kyrene