I'm a computer programmer and have worked in this kind of job for about 15 years. Out of all the dozens of computer programmer colleagues I have had in those years, exactly ONE was female.
Now, that could be interpreted as confirmation of our industry's anti-female bias, but in my experience, that's not how it is at all. OK, maybe there are software development companies out there that do have a misogynistic culture; maybe my experience is completely a-typical... But in those places where I have worked, female colleagues would have been welcomed with open arms. Problem is, there just weren't any to be found.
(Note that there were plenty of women in those companies, at all levels, from the cafeteria staff to upper management. The only type of jobs where they were conspicuously absent were the hard-core technical ones, that is, programming and system administration.)
Maybe, just maybe, there are so few women IT workers because there simply aren't a lot of women that want that kind of job. Accusing the IT profession of being hostile to women seems like a knee-jerk reaction; sure, the theory fits the facts, but it's by no means the only explanation.
Before I believe in sexist discrimination in the IT industry, I'd like to hear from some people who have actually witnessed that kind of thing first-hand.
OK, not the first artist to record on CD, but...
on
The CD Turns 25 Today
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I think Klaus Schulze's "Dig It" deserves an honorable mention as the first *truly* digital CD: performed on digital synthesizers, recorded and mastered on digital tape. Nothing analogue until you popped in your player! Nifty. (Cool CD, too.)
By that logic, if you really want to make a dent in unemployment, you should get rid of unemployment benefits altogether. No one will register, hence zero percent unemployment. Not even the Communists ever did better than that!
You, sir, sound as partisan as you seem to accuse Krugman of being. You just quote different sources, refuse to deal with Krugman's reasoning, and then blame the recession on Clinton, and finally conjure up a booming self-employment industry. I have yet to see any evidence of all that.
In 150AD, Ptolemy of Alexandria published his theory of epicycles--the idea that the moon, the sun and the planets moved in circles which were moving in circles which were moving in circles around the Earth. This theory explained the motion of celestial objects to an astonishing degree of precision.
Ptolemy's model did not agree with the movements of the planets "to an astonishing degree of precision". It was observably inaccurate.
His model was simply the best that he could do given that he refused to consider any other type of motion than circles.
Brahe and Copernicus tinkered with his model precisely because it wasn't accurate. Brahe's observations then gave Kepler the kind of data to allow him to see what was really going on in the skies.
Sure, dark matter is a kludge, but our models of the universe, inelegant as they may be, are one hell of a lot more accurate, not to mention plausible, than the ones of 1000+ years ago.
Offshore was about global wealth creation and integrating economies, she explained, adding that it would create more high-value jobs in the US than people could imagine today.
She's right. I can't imagine those new high-value jobs!
(Neither can she, or there'd be a few examples, no?)
It's sad that the parent article got modded "funny".
What's so fucking funny about it? We're being told that we deserve to lose our jobs because we're lazy and overpaid, and because we're so lazy and overpaid we're not competitive internationally.
Yeah, sure, make us compete against people in the third world, where the cost of living is $5 a month.
Thanks. This is what I went to college for?
the economy will survive, though your job, as it is currently, will likely not.
You'll be living in a cardboard box, but you'll see people drive their X5 to their $250,000 suburban home at the end of the day.
What's good for the economy is good for the people! C'mon, Jim, pass the wine.
Well, as long as they aren't telling us which MS products are being used to "trap dissidents", and how MS was supposed to have known they were going to be used that way, they shouldn't even print an article like that.
Having said that, I'm sick and tired of this "guns don't kill, people do" logic that's used to justify opposition to controls on the sale of dangerous technology. Sure, if you sell a golf club to someone and it gets used to bash someone's brains in, it would be silly to blame the club manufacturer... But when Cisco writes custom software, specifically to allow the Chinese government to snoop and censor the flow of information, it is aiding a crime against the Chinese people. In that case, the "uuuh, I had no idea it was gonna be used for that purpose" defense is just cynical denial.
I cringe whenever the political right uses that argument, anyway. If they really believed in it, they would vote to abolish all laws banning recreational drug use, and acknowledge that drugs don't kill, reckless users do.
China is controlled by a repressive regime that we shouldn't do business with. The only reason our governments are telling us that it's OK to do business with them, is that China is such a huge, juicy market. The kickbacks are too big to ignore. It's all about $$$$, and principles are only invoked when we're pissed off at small countries.
Of course that would mean that the Gimp is now a clear case of copy prevention circumvention technology. Distributing and using it is therefore a DMCA violation.
It's not just a crazy idea that some lefty commie hippie dreamed up in a drug-induced stupor.
Speaking as a born-in-the-1960s leftie commie hippy, who has done some of his best coding in a drug-induced stupor, I must strenuously object to this slur. C'mon, Linus, just because you moved from Helsinki to Los Angeles, you don't have to let go of *all* your Euro-libertarian ideals.
(I seem to remember reading -- on one of your very own web pages -- that the original Linux kernel was fueled by quite a bit of beer, right? So let's not diss altered states of consciousness too quickly.:-) )
Charlton Heston, being interviewed by Michael Moore:
'Where did you make the change from Liberal Democrat to Conservative Republican?'
He said, 'Well, I was in Northern California in 1964 and I was making a film, Major Dundee. I was driving down the road and there was a Barry Goldwater for President billboard and it said, 'In Your Heart You Know He's Right'. I looked at the billboard and it was almost a vision and suddenly in my heart I knew he was right - and at that moment I made the switch'.
George Orwell, "1984":
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn,
self-willed exile from the loving breast!
Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won
the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
All of us stupid, short-sighted Free Software idiots:
Finally, we understood. In our hearts, we knew Darl was right. We won the victory over ourselves and mailed in our $699 checks, and we were thankful that we were given a Second Chance to avoid having to pay $1399. We loved closed source.
We loved SCO.
If there were some easy-to-see indication on the dash that the system's phone line was open, this kind of sneakiness would be impossible.
Of course, the next step would be for a law to be passed that forced OnStar, ATX, etc., to put code in that would allow Big Brother to open the phone line without the indicator being activated.
This reminds me of something I read a long time ago, about how it used to be possible (maybe still is?) for the phone company to open a line to your phone without having it ring... Using this trick, they could easesdrop on anything that happened within earshot of your phone, and you'd never know what was going on.
Actually, this kind of eavesdropping should also be covered by this court decision, since your phone would be busy and hence unreachable while this kind of eavesdropping was going on.
The phone-eavesdropping evil can be defeated by only using phones that physically disconnect the handset from the line while on-hook. With OnStar/ATX, you don't have a handset, so that would be a bit harder to fix.
My experience with OLE has been pretty good. No crashes, no file bloat (other than the usual bloat that MS Office seems to have, anyway), and no file corruption.
But, that doesn't mean that those problems don't exist, of course!
Any new (re)implementation of the OLE concept should be engineered to be robust, but that's doable. I think the basic OLE *concept* is totally valid; the fact that the Microsoft implementation is less than perfect doesn't mean that it can't be done right.
I think it *should* be done, too. I may not be a typical user, but many of the documents I have to write and/or maintain are big-ass Word documents with dozens of embedded tables and diagrams. Being able to double-click an embedded Visio chart and edit it in place beats the crap out of having to do the "copy, start Visio, paste, edit, copy, paste back" routine.
Defining the UI guidelines and the APIs is a challenge, but plug-in technologies are a lot better today than they were when Microsoft designed OLE. Just think JavaBeans, for example.
This is an important feature, and it's no rocket science to implement. I can't wait to see someone define a standard like this, and StarOffice seems like the perfect starting point. I really think this could spark a revolution in Unix desktop productivity apps.
Does StarOffice 7 have OLE, or something similar?
The ability to embed content created in a different app, and edit it in place, is a big plus for Microsoft Office, in terms of ease of use, and in terms of document management (everything in one file).
IMHO any office suite needs an "open" embedding and linking protocol in order to be able to compete for the power users' desktops.
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I'm a computer programmer and have worked in this kind of job for about 15 years. Out of all the dozens of computer programmer colleagues I have had in those years, exactly ONE was female.
Now, that could be interpreted as confirmation of our industry's anti-female bias, but in my experience, that's not how it is at all. OK, maybe there are software development companies out there that do have a misogynistic culture; maybe my experience is completely a-typical... But in those places where I have worked, female colleagues would have been welcomed with open arms. Problem is, there just weren't any to be found.
(Note that there were plenty of women in those companies, at all levels, from the cafeteria staff to upper management. The only type of jobs where they were conspicuously absent were the hard-core technical ones, that is, programming and system administration.)
Maybe, just maybe, there are so few women IT workers because there simply aren't a lot of women that want that kind of job. Accusing the IT profession of being hostile to women seems like a knee-jerk reaction; sure, the theory fits the facts, but it's by no means the only explanation. Before I believe in sexist discrimination in the IT industry, I'd like to hear from some people who have actually witnessed that kind of thing first-hand.
I think Klaus Schulze's "Dig It" deserves an honorable mention as the first *truly* digital CD: performed on digital synthesizers, recorded and mastered on digital tape. Nothing analogue until you popped in your player! Nifty. (Cool CD, too.)
...but they are way too smart to talk to strangers!
For a straightforward demolition of the concept, see this article at The Register.
You, sir, sound as partisan as you seem to accuse Krugman of being. You just quote different sources, refuse to deal with Krugman's reasoning, and then blame the recession on Clinton, and finally conjure up a booming self-employment industry. I have yet to see any evidence of all that.
Ptolemy's model did not agree with the movements of the planets "to an astonishing degree of precision". It was observably inaccurate.
His model was simply the best that he could do given that he refused to consider any other type of motion than circles.
Brahe and Copernicus tinkered with his model precisely because it wasn't accurate. Brahe's observations then gave Kepler the kind of data to allow him to see what was really going on in the skies.
Sure, dark matter is a kludge, but our models of the universe, inelegant as they may be, are one hell of a lot more accurate, not to mention plausible, than the ones of 1000+ years ago.
She's right. I can't imagine those new high-value jobs!
(Neither can she, or there'd be a few examples, no?)
It's sad that the parent article got modded "funny".
What's so fucking funny about it? We're being told that we deserve to lose our jobs because we're lazy and overpaid, and because we're so lazy and overpaid we're not competitive internationally.
Yeah, sure, make us compete against people in the third world, where the cost of living is $5 a month.
Thanks. This is what I went to college for?
You'll be living in a cardboard box, but you'll see people drive their X5 to their $250,000 suburban home at the end of the day.
What's good for the economy is good for the people! C'mon, Jim, pass the wine.
Having said that, I'm sick and tired of this "guns don't kill, people do" logic that's used to justify opposition to controls on the sale of dangerous technology. Sure, if you sell a golf club to someone and it gets used to bash someone's brains in, it would be silly to blame the club manufacturer... But when Cisco writes custom software, specifically to allow the Chinese government to snoop and censor the flow of information, it is aiding a crime against the Chinese people. In that case, the "uuuh, I had no idea it was gonna be used for that purpose" defense is just cynical denial.
I cringe whenever the political right uses that argument, anyway. If they really believed in it, they would vote to abolish all laws banning recreational drug use, and acknowledge that drugs don't kill, reckless users do.
China is controlled by a repressive regime that we shouldn't do business with. The only reason our governments are telling us that it's OK to do business with them, is that China is such a huge, juicy market. The kickbacks are too big to ignore. It's all about $$$$, and principles are only invoked when we're pissed off at small countries.
Go Amnesty International!
Oh, please.
Compare the following wishful-thinking statement from the 1970's:
Because so many people are having fun doing drugs, draconian anti-drug laws will disappear.
Check your dictionary and look for the word repression.
Of course that would mean that the Gimp is now a clear case of copy prevention circumvention technology. Distributing and using it is therefore a DMCA violation.
Speaking as a born-in-the-1960s leftie commie hippy, who has done some of his best coding in a drug-induced stupor, I must strenuously object to this slur. C'mon, Linus, just because you moved from Helsinki to Los Angeles, you don't have to let go of *all* your Euro-libertarian ideals. :-) )
(I seem to remember reading -- on one of your very own web pages -- that the original Linux kernel was fueled by quite a bit of beer, right? So let's not diss altered states of consciousness too quickly.
D'oh, where did I leave my asbestos underwear?!?
'Where did you make the change from Liberal Democrat to Conservative Republican?'
He said, 'Well, I was in Northern California in 1964 and I was making a film, Major Dundee. I was driving down the road and there was a Barry Goldwater for President billboard and it said, 'In Your Heart You Know He's Right'. I looked at the billboard and it was almost a vision and suddenly in my heart I knew he was right - and at that moment I made the switch'.
George Orwell, "1984":
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!
Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
All of us stupid, short-sighted Free Software idiots:
Finally, we understood. In our hearts, we knew Darl was right. We won the victory over ourselves and mailed in our $699 checks, and we were thankful that we were given a Second Chance to avoid having to pay $1399. We loved closed source.
We loved SCO.
Don't you love a happy ending?
Of course, the next step would be for a law to be passed that forced OnStar, ATX, etc., to put code in that would allow Big Brother to open the phone line without the indicator being activated.
This reminds me of something I read a long time ago, about how it used to be possible (maybe still is?) for the phone company to open a line to your phone without having it ring... Using this trick, they could easesdrop on anything that happened within earshot of your phone, and you'd never know what was going on.
Actually, this kind of eavesdropping should also be covered by this court decision, since your phone would be busy and hence unreachable while this kind of eavesdropping was going on.
The phone-eavesdropping evil can be defeated by only using phones that physically disconnect the handset from the line while on-hook. With OnStar/ATX, you don't have a handset, so that would be a bit harder to fix.
But, that doesn't mean that those problems don't exist, of course!
Any new (re)implementation of the OLE concept should be engineered to be robust, but that's doable. I think the basic OLE *concept* is totally valid; the fact that the Microsoft implementation is less than perfect doesn't mean that it can't be done right.
I think it *should* be done, too. I may not be a typical user, but many of the documents I have to write and/or maintain are big-ass Word documents with dozens of embedded tables and diagrams. Being able to double-click an embedded Visio chart and edit it in place beats the crap out of having to do the "copy, start Visio, paste, edit, copy, paste back" routine.
Defining the UI guidelines and the APIs is a challenge, but plug-in technologies are a lot better today than they were when Microsoft designed OLE. Just think JavaBeans, for example.
This is an important feature, and it's no rocket science to implement. I can't wait to see someone define a standard like this, and StarOffice seems like the perfect starting point. I really think this could spark a revolution in Unix desktop productivity apps.
Does StarOffice 7 have OLE, or something similar? The ability to embed content created in a different app, and edit it in place, is a big plus for Microsoft Office, in terms of ease of use, and in terms of document management (everything in one file).
IMHO any office suite needs an "open" embedding and linking protocol in order to be able to compete for the power users' desktops.