Okay, time for trademark class... when you apply for a trademark you have to fill in a blakn called "goods and service" in which you specify which goods and services you wish this trademark to apply to. The Linux trademark owned by Linus Torvalds has 1 single entry in this (usually huge) section. That entry is for computer operating systems only. Microsoft, on the other hand, had to break their patent up into over a dozen separate pieces specifying each and every single good and service they might want the trademark to cover, from lunch boxes to T-shirts to posters to computer operating systems to domain names. So Microsoft shutting down www.microsoftsucks.com or something similar is well within their legal bounds as it falls under their trademark. Linus, on the other hand, enforcing his Linux trademark on such things is simply outside the law. There is a Linux trademark owned by some other guy for the express use as the name of a laundry detergent. Linus can do nothing about this because it doesn't conflict with his.
Do a search for the United States Patent and Trademarks Office and you can go straight there and search for "Linux" in trademarks. One of the bunch listed (there are a bunch that pop up like LinuxXpress and such, marketing logos of various companies) is owned by Linus. Page down to the goods and services part and see for yourself. Then search for Microsoft and witness the pages and pages and PAGES of stuff their trademark covers.
You got her quote exactly right, but you took it to mean what she wanted you to read it as and not as what it actually says. Like I pointed out, the percentage of women getting computer science degrees compared to the number of women getting degrees in other subjects might be declining and that would still make her observation valid, but read wrong... she never says its in relation to men.
You're still wrong, read Microsofts trademark, it explicity applies to thing such as domain names. The Linux trademark owned by Linus does NOT apply to such things, do your research!
Ahhh, but you're making the mistake of thinking that anything done on the Internet is real. You see, the luddites that continually expel the kind of repulsive filth that this study represents are the same people who burned the inventors of the past at the stake. They believe that if I talk to you for 8 hours straight via a chat program, we cannot communicate any information to one another. If I smell your bad breath and belch in your face then scream louder than you so you can't talk, we would be holding a *DIVINE* conversation and be happily on our way to solving world hunger.
Yes, the elderly are pouring onto the net. Which proves their point in their eyes - the elderly are isolating themselves. They're talking to unreal people over an unreal network and everyone is lying to them. If they'd only walk the streets at night instead, maybe they'd get to meet a nice mugger and get killed, that's the kind of thing that rampant "socialism" (not the Marxist theory, the anti-anti-social kind) leads to..
Esperandi I'm staying inside today, and tomorrow, and hopefully every day after that. I wish.
Re:dogs are better than the internet :)
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Dog's don't provide porn. Dog's don't provide porn. Dog's don't provide porn. Dog's don't provide porn.
Enough said.
Esperandi
Such intense sucking crap
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If I'm ICQing an aunt 50 miles away, one of my best friends 300 miles away, meeting new people thousands of miles away, I AM NOT BEING ISOLATED! You lovers of breathing the recycled air of mouth-breather, sharing the smell of flatulence and the ability to out-shout your opponent in an argument can go screw yourselves. There is very, very little benefit to face to face communication, ESPECIALLY in family situations. Nothing prevents you from being as expresive and sincere online besides the inability of most people to conceive of the medium (al the simple stuff adds up like no caps lock, use correct grammar when possible, etc).
And, to close, I'd like to say that houses isolate people more than the net. Before we had houses we had to sleep on our neighbors while they screwed! Now THAT was human closeness!
You all living in houses are antisocial hermits! You're probably going to shoot your classmates or something....
Why do I have a feeling you're the extremely paranoid and jumpy type in life?
Apple is not trying to "stop and force themes off". Number 1, they're not attacking themes that look like Aqua, they're going after Aqua because Aqua is THEFT of their logos, violations of their trademarks. The people who made Aqua thought they were so slick they wouldn't take the time to create their own logo to make it look good, they'd just rip one off from Apple. Number 2, no one is ever forced to do *ANYTHING* unless they are threatened with physical harm. When you use it in reference to anything else, you're whining. When you have to make a hard choice and you REALLY want choice A, but choice A comes with some consequences you don't like, you don't tell anyone you were forced to take choice B. You make a rational choice and you defend it rationally. Just a tip to live by.
First off, you're totally right about Apple, its all a trademark thing and the guys making the Aqua theme have obviously already provoked Apple and refused to remove their logo (no doubtedyl in the name of freedom.... too bad its theft, not freedom).
Second off, you're wrong about Linus. Linus does not own a trademark that applies to domain names. Go ahead and read the patent application yourself on the webite, Linus' trademark is only on the word "Linux" when used as the name of an operating system. What Linus did was flat out bullying and nothing else. If he had come after me, I would have fought him in court and made his lawyers look like the retards they are.
Go aghead and moderate this down, moderators, I need to friggin rant. I've submitted several stories lately that were absolutely letter-perfect for Slashdots pages and all were rejected. I submitted one about a company working out a deal so that open source programmers could get free hardware from people and companies that wanted to provide it. And 2 days ago I submitted the story about the UCITA a couple hours after it passed in Virginia... I also submitted the story about the AMD Athlon 1.1GHz that was demoed and it was rejected.... 2 days later, Slashdot posts it from someone else. What the hell is this? So they wait around until one of their favorites submits a story before they'll even consider it?
You're correct, this is the way reality works and "instant computing" will never exist, but it is a good example to throw out when people say "I don't need 1GHz to play Solitaire"... theres another law by some other famous guy (I am horrid with names) that says software is a gas. It expands to fill the space it is given. I completely believe that. I know personally, my computer use is a gas. I moved from a 166 to a 350 with 4x the RAM and such, it took me a month before I was needing more speed because I simply increased the things I did and ran beefier stuff that I never did before... hell, I used to trace fractals for literally days at a time on my 386 with Fractint... now I just trace the more complicated ones that would have taken a month or more;) I'm looking forward to the Athlon I ordered boosting my speed with video processing a significant amount, but the minute that happens I'll start doing bigger videos, use better codecs that take longer to process, etc, etc....
No, I didn't mean a P2 or even an AMD chip at 450 against the Celeron. I meant if you have 2 processors side by side running at 450 and one is naturally running at 450 with a base clock of 125 with a multiplier of 2 (these numbers are made up, multipliers are rarely this small) and the other is running at a core clock of 100 with a multiplier of 4.5 that someone overclocked to that, the real 450 would be faster than the overclocked version.
hehe, good retort, but software goes above that and adds more and more layers of complication. Tracing what a function in a scripting languages actually does in reality (meaning with electrons) is much more complicated than tracing down what happens when pin 1 goes hot while pin 195 is low and in 203 is hot...
She didn't say "the percentage of women in cs programs is declining", she said "the percentage of women graduating with bachelors degrees in computer science" is declining. She's not playing with the figures if the figures say that less women are getting bachelors degrees in computer science percentage-wise than are getting degrees in other fields. And she'd still be making the exact same arguments... that 20 years ago some giant paradigm shift in parenting or society happened and all of a sudden women were discouraged from competition, from sticking up for themselves, and the other things that she mentions in her interview. She doesn't say it boils down to a shift 20 years ago but she implicitly says it. If she believes society was like this before 20 years ago, then she'd have to explain why there was an INCREASE in women at any point in time (which there had to be cause you have to have an increase in order to have a decrease)...
In fact, her statitics might have been a decrease in the growth of women graduating in CS, similar to the political arguments where one side says the other side wants to reduce something when they really just want to reduce the rate of increase... I really wish she had just been straight with what she was talking about.
When it all comes down to it though, it doesn't matter. Women aren't getting into the field because those women don't want to be in the field. The ones that do want to, they get into it.
Computer science doesn't seem like a flopping fish? Computer science is flopping around like an epileptic halbiut watching that episode of Pokemon with pikachus eyes flashing! It changes not every decade like some sciences, not every year like others, not every month like others, it changes each and every single moment of the day and night. Computer science sits still for no man to standardize or stagnate into simplification...
As for the ratios... her statistics aren't necessarily comparing men to women, she doesn't even claim that they are. Yes, there are a lot more men in computer science and engineering than men. Why? Well, that's a big question I think and I don't think its the question at hand... here, her point (if it exists, I suspect it doesn't) is that women are decreasing. Now, if she wants to argue that its biological, that doesn't compute. Women wouldn't have EVER been higher if so. If she argues that its environment, she needs to look back in time and see the changes.
But, it basically does boil down to the ratio. In any industry its believed that the cut should be 50/50 since the population basically is. I'd like to ask why? If I'm a man or a woman, when I consider going into a field, should I take the gender balance into consideration and act accordingly? i don't think so. i think every industry should be filled with people that are passionate about what they are doing no matter what kind of genitalia they have. If I confronted the lady in this article with this viewpoint, I'd bet money that she'd agree. She would also argue that there are barriers preventing this, which she does. She argues that all the confrontation and "greed, gadgets, glory" aspects that draw women away because of how they were raised.
Now, tell me, at some point in time women increased in the computer field. Now they are decreasing. Was there a large cultural shift about 20 years ago that could have caused this? Unless she can nail that shift, her arguments are nothing but air.
Esperandi Oh, and the ratios in my university... in my Computer Architectures course: 8:1. 7 guys that struggle, me (who gets it cause I'm obsessed), and a girl that gets it because she's smart. In my Internet Programming class (ASP) its more like 12:10, 12 guys and 10 girls, not sure what the level of understanding is but I know there are a few smart girls. I have never met a girl in computer science at my university who wasn't better than 80% of the guys there.
i wanted to go to CMU BAD when i was looking for a place to go. I'd transfer tomorrow if they invited me, i hope to go there for graduate work if I decide to do that... the thing about CMU is that they get 5000+ applications for the college of computer science every semester and they have under 300 spots available... that's what i was told when i wanted to go there... didn't even try because its expensive as all hell and also because my high school grades were pretty nasty so scholarships were a bust, they didn't offer any merit-based scholarships. Well, I'm going to an expensive private college now thanks to a merit-bsed scholarship. I took a computer science-oriented test which dealt with writing pseudocode, formulating algorithms, etc, and aced it. Every college should have such a thing. Having 1 computer class in high school that I got to sit out because i wrote a program to calculate and save glaze formulas for the pottery class and the pottery teacher taught the computer programming class doesn't make my grades in high school reflect the fact that I'm balls-to-the-walls in love with computers and programming!
Esperandi forgive the rant at the end, it still bugs me;)
I definitely agree that computer classes should be offered earlier in high schools but it really would not help. It would help in one way... there would be a much smaller number of people droving to computer science because they heard about the good jobs then finding out after their first semester that they just cannot wrap their mind around computers and they don't like the idea of debugging a computer science homework assignment for 5 days straight and then drop that major. This is what happens at my university, Wheeling jesuit University (man, wish I was a woman, maybe I could have gotten a scholarship and afford CMU where I really wanted to go). We have around 50 or 60 people every fall semester joining into the CSC program. First class they take is a C++ algorithms and data structures course. Well, guess how many make it past that to the spring semester in CSC? 45? 35? Well, no. generally 4. That's right, its not a typo. FOUR.
If they had run into this brick wall and found out they hate programming early on in high school without a big penalty like wasting a semester, we'd get the 4 that make the cut and we'd get even more that didn't even realize they loved programming!
We've got 1 female in our classes (we usually have more than one, but the others just graduated or are in a lower class) and she started life as a math major. She took a few computer courses for fun and totally got hooked. She had no idea she dug computers, now she's double majoring in it. Huzzah for her!
But if 1 woman get into and get through a computer science curriculum hating computers and not doing very well at them, who the hell benefits from it?!? Just because she has a vagina, her graduation is not sacred.
That fewer women go into CS than men is not a problem to be dealt with, just a fact to be recognized
It is? Funny, that's not what her statistics say. It's what she wants you to believe, but that is not what she said... be careful with stats, they are tricky.
What about the fact that there isn't a problem and that the lady in this interview is skewing statistics and basically lying about the state of women in computers?
Both men AND women are declining in the percentage that graduate from computer science programs in relation to the number of students which enroll in computer science programs. Is this the statistic that she is picking apart and highlighting the women part? Is she saying that the percentage of computer science graduates that get degrees are less and less women? Read the article again, I bet you assumed the latter, but she didn't specify and it could easily be the former.
I say, let people get what they go after. If people want it bad enough, they're going to go get it no matter if people call them lesbians, fags, geeks, nerds, losers, or any enless slew of names that get thrown at female AND male computer science people.
Making the environment easier to get into will not work in computer science - you can't scale a flopping fish.
A percentage of WHAT? She doesn't say. She didn't say as a percentage of the total computer science body graduating with bachelors, notice. She could be talking about a smaller percentage of women students going to college in ANY subject are graduating from computer science programs. She could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating in computer science in relation to the number of women entering into computer science programs... she could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating from computer science programs in terms of the percentage of the entire student body going into computer science... statistics are very tricky and unless the giver gives enough information so you *KNOW* what they're talking about and in relation to what, ignore them. There's a reason they didn't' spell it out.
Honestly I forget... but during the coverage of the Columbine shooting in the day after it happened they were talking about school shootings not being a new thing and they talked about a school shooting in Kansas in 1922 where a student killed over 30 other students. I can't remember the name of the school and every web search just turns up information about Columbine which everyone claims is the worst in history because they don't know history.
Esperandi Percentage of children under 12 killed by ADULTS in 1997-98: 90%
Once again it needs pointed out that this statistic is COMPLETELY BOGUS. The number of MALES receiving bachelor degrees in computer science is decreasing as well.
Why? because men are mentally inferior? Because we need to "show that we care" like the lady begs in the article? No. It's because computer science is the most complicated profession in the history of mankind (you name a more complicated invention than a piece of software that manipulates billions of microscopic switches billions of times per second). Colleges are closing down their departments of computer science (Marshall University closed theirs a couple years ago because no one was graduating). Entry classes into computer science is schrinking, the number getting past year 1 is shrinking even faster.
For one reason. It takes passion. You can be a doctor without passion.. maybe not a good one, but if you screw up a stich by a tenth of an inch, the patient doesn't die, no one even notices. You miss a semicolon or a comma, your software just does not work. It takes an obsessive passion to get into computers and not many people have that.
Another reason is the huge technology job boom where there are too many jobs for too many people (and this will not reverse for a long time because of the passion issue). Why get a degree when you can get hired without one, get every type of job benefit you can imagine, etc? I'm getting a degree because I just might go on to become a professor so I can work in theory stuff, but i don't see the point of anyone else doing it.
Offending people is a favorite topic of mine because the bald faced fact is that everyone who is offended chooses to be offended. Of course they (and you) won't admit that because it puts the problem where it lies (in the listener not the speaker) and it robs you of your ability to try to interfere with other peoples lives, but it is the truth.
Someone comes up to me and calls me a moron, it really doesn't offend me. They're wrong. Wow. Oh no, i can't go around with people having misconceived notions about me, my race, my age group, the userbase of my OS, etc, can I? Yes, I can.
Esperandi Being an individual is far more involved and complicated than any individualist understands.
Heh, yes, let's go back to the 50s... daddy gets home from work, kicks back 8 scotches, beats the kid and the wife, then no one talks about it. Mom stays home all day popping baby laxatives like candy and no one talks about it. Johnny fucks the cheerleaders bareback on Makeout Point and when they get pregnant the girl goes to visit a sick aunt in another town so no one has to talk about it.
The most fatal school shooting was in 1922.
Esperandi The past sucks, live for the future. (BTW I knw your post was sarcastic, consider this ammunition against the morons)
If I had to pick a song to nominate it would inevitably be "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" but not the one sung by the kids in the movie, the one sung by Tres and Matt during the credits! That song is one of the best punk songs I've ever heard!
There's some law in software and hardware design, its named after someone but I forget. Anyhow, the law says that humans can't "see" benefits in performance unless they're at least a 20% speed advancement.
I think that's pretty much about right, and based on that you wouldn't notice the difference (not to mention the fact that the difference between a 300 and an overclocked 450 is NOT even close to the difference between a 300 and a real 450 (unless the multiplers are the same, chance are they're not)).
If you think we don't need faster processors except for high end stuff, consider this: Instant computing. When you click something it is done. You don't think about it, you don't wait, it IS. As in it works as fast as when you drop something. You open your hand and its gone, no waiting. The death of progress bars. The % symbol goes homeless.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, time for trademark class... when you apply for a trademark you have to fill in a blakn called "goods and service" in which you specify which goods and services you wish this trademark to apply to. The Linux trademark owned by Linus Torvalds has 1 single entry in this (usually huge) section. That entry is for computer operating systems only. Microsoft, on the other hand, had to break their patent up into over a dozen separate pieces specifying each and every single good and service they might want the trademark to cover, from lunch boxes to T-shirts to posters to computer operating systems to domain names. So Microsoft shutting down www.microsoftsucks.com or something similar is well within their legal bounds as it falls under their trademark. Linus, on the other hand, enforcing his Linux trademark on such things is simply outside the law. There is a Linux trademark owned by some other guy for the express use as the name of a laundry detergent. Linus can do nothing about this because it doesn't conflict with his.
Do a search for the United States Patent and Trademarks Office and you can go straight there and search for "Linux" in trademarks. One of the bunch listed (there are a bunch that pop up like LinuxXpress and such, marketing logos of various companies) is owned by Linus. Page down to the goods and services part and see for yourself. Then search for Microsoft and witness the pages and pages and PAGES of stuff their trademark covers.
Esperandi
You got her quote exactly right, but you took it to mean what she wanted you to read it as and not as what it actually says. Like I pointed out, the percentage of women getting computer science degrees compared to the number of women getting degrees in other subjects might be declining and that would still make her observation valid, but read wrong... she never says its in relation to men.
Esperandi
You're still wrong, read Microsofts trademark, it explicity applies to thing such as domain names. The Linux trademark owned by Linus does NOT apply to such things, do your research!
Esperandi
Ahhh, but you're making the mistake of thinking that anything done on the Internet is real. You see, the luddites that continually expel the kind of repulsive filth that this study represents are the same people who burned the inventors of the past at the stake. They believe that if I talk to you for 8 hours straight via a chat program, we cannot communicate any information to one another. If I smell your bad breath and belch in your face then scream louder than you so you can't talk, we would be holding a *DIVINE* conversation and be happily on our way to solving world hunger.
Yes, the elderly are pouring onto the net. Which proves their point in their eyes - the elderly are isolating themselves. They're talking to unreal people over an unreal network and everyone is lying to them. If they'd only walk the streets at night instead, maybe they'd get to meet a nice mugger and get killed, that's the kind of thing that rampant "socialism" (not the Marxist theory, the anti-anti-social kind) leads to..
Esperandi
I'm staying inside today, and tomorrow, and hopefully every day after that. I wish.
Dog's don't provide porn.
Dog's don't provide porn.
Dog's don't provide porn.
Dog's don't provide porn.
Enough said.
Esperandi
If I'm ICQing an aunt 50 miles away, one of my best friends 300 miles away, meeting new people thousands of miles away, I AM NOT BEING ISOLATED! You lovers of breathing the recycled air of mouth-breather, sharing the smell of flatulence and the ability to out-shout your opponent in an argument can go screw yourselves. There is very, very little benefit to face to face communication, ESPECIALLY in family situations. Nothing prevents you from being as expresive and sincere online besides the inability of most people to conceive of the medium (al the simple stuff adds up like no caps lock, use correct grammar when possible, etc).
And, to close, I'd like to say that houses isolate people more than the net. Before we had houses we had to sleep on our neighbors while they screwed! Now THAT was human closeness!
You all living in houses are antisocial hermits! You're probably going to shoot your classmates or something....
Urgh, I need a beer.
Esperandi
Why do I have a feeling you're the extremely paranoid and jumpy type in life?
Apple is not trying to "stop and force themes off". Number 1, they're not attacking themes that look like Aqua, they're going after Aqua because Aqua is THEFT of their logos, violations of their trademarks. The people who made Aqua thought they were so slick they wouldn't take the time to create their own logo to make it look good, they'd just rip one off from Apple. Number 2, no one is ever forced to do *ANYTHING* unless they are threatened with physical harm. When you use it in reference to anything else, you're whining. When you have to make a hard choice and you REALLY want choice A, but choice A comes with some consequences you don't like, you don't tell anyone you were forced to take choice B. You make a rational choice and you defend it rationally. Just a tip to live by.
Esperandi
First off, you're totally right about Apple, its all a trademark thing and the guys making the Aqua theme have obviously already provoked Apple and refused to remove their logo (no doubtedyl in the name of freedom.... too bad its theft, not freedom).
Second off, you're wrong about Linus. Linus does not own a trademark that applies to domain names. Go ahead and read the patent application yourself on the webite, Linus' trademark is only on the word "Linux" when used as the name of an operating system. What Linus did was flat out bullying and nothing else. If he had come after me, I would have fought him in court and made his lawyers look like the retards they are.
Esperandi
Go aghead and moderate this down, moderators, I need to friggin rant. I've submitted several stories lately that were absolutely letter-perfect for Slashdots pages and all were rejected. I submitted one about a company working out a deal so that open source programmers could get free hardware from people and companies that wanted to provide it. And 2 days ago I submitted the story about the UCITA a couple hours after it passed in Virginia... I also submitted the story about the AMD Athlon 1.1GHz that was demoed and it was rejected.... 2 days later, Slashdot posts it from someone else. What the hell is this? So they wait around until one of their favorites submits a story before they'll even consider it?
Esperandi
You're correct, this is the way reality works and "instant computing" will never exist, but it is a good example to throw out when people say "I don't need 1GHz to play Solitaire"... theres another law by some other famous guy (I am horrid with names) that says software is a gas. It expands to fill the space it is given. I completely believe that. I know personally, my computer use is a gas. I moved from a 166 to a 350 with 4x the RAM and such, it took me a month before I was needing more speed because I simply increased the things I did and ran beefier stuff that I never did before... hell, I used to trace fractals for literally days at a time on my 386 with Fractint... now I just trace the more complicated ones that would have taken a month or more ;) I'm looking forward to the Athlon I ordered boosting my speed with video processing a significant amount, but the minute that happens I'll start doing bigger videos, use better codecs that take longer to process, etc, etc....
Esperandi
No, I didn't mean a P2 or even an AMD chip at 450 against the Celeron. I meant if you have 2 processors side by side running at 450 and one is naturally running at 450 with a base clock of 125 with a multiplier of 2 (these numbers are made up, multipliers are rarely this small) and the other is running at a core clock of 100 with a multiplier of 4.5 that someone overclocked to that, the real 450 would be faster than the overclocked version.
Esperandi
hehe, good retort, but software goes above that and adds more and more layers of complication. Tracing what a function in a scripting languages actually does in reality (meaning with electrons) is much more complicated than tracing down what happens when pin 1 goes hot while pin 195 is low and in 203 is hot...
Esperandi
She didn't say "the percentage of women in cs programs is declining", she said "the percentage of women graduating with bachelors degrees in computer science" is declining. She's not playing with the figures if the figures say that less women are getting bachelors degrees in computer science percentage-wise than are getting degrees in other fields. And she'd still be making the exact same arguments... that 20 years ago some giant paradigm shift in parenting or society happened and all of a sudden women were discouraged from competition, from sticking up for themselves, and the other things that she mentions in her interview. She doesn't say it boils down to a shift 20 years ago but she implicitly says it. If she believes society was like this before 20 years ago, then she'd have to explain why there was an INCREASE in women at any point in time (which there had to be cause you have to have an increase in order to have a decrease)...
In fact, her statitics might have been a decrease in the growth of women graduating in CS, similar to the political arguments where one side says the other side wants to reduce something when they really just want to reduce the rate of increase... I really wish she had just been straight with what she was talking about.
When it all comes down to it though, it doesn't matter. Women aren't getting into the field because those women don't want to be in the field. The ones that do want to, they get into it.
Esperandi
Computer science doesn't seem like a flopping fish? Computer science is flopping around like an epileptic halbiut watching that episode of Pokemon with pikachus eyes flashing! It changes not every decade like some sciences, not every year like others, not every month like others, it changes each and every single moment of the day and night. Computer science sits still for no man to standardize or stagnate into simplification...
As for the ratios... her statistics aren't necessarily comparing men to women, she doesn't even claim that they are. Yes, there are a lot more men in computer science and engineering than men. Why? Well, that's a big question I think and I don't think its the question at hand... here, her point (if it exists, I suspect it doesn't) is that women are decreasing. Now, if she wants to argue that its biological, that doesn't compute. Women wouldn't have EVER been higher if so. If she argues that its environment, she needs to look back in time and see the changes.
But, it basically does boil down to the ratio. In any industry its believed that the cut should be 50/50 since the population basically is. I'd like to ask why? If I'm a man or a woman, when I consider going into a field, should I take the gender balance into consideration and act accordingly? i don't think so. i think every industry should be filled with people that are passionate about what they are doing no matter what kind of genitalia they have. If I confronted the lady in this article with this viewpoint, I'd bet money that she'd agree. She would also argue that there are barriers preventing this, which she does. She argues that all the confrontation and "greed, gadgets, glory" aspects that draw women away because of how they were raised.
Now, tell me, at some point in time women increased in the computer field. Now they are decreasing. Was there a large cultural shift about 20 years ago that could have caused this? Unless she can nail that shift, her arguments are nothing but air.
Esperandi
Oh, and the ratios in my university... in my Computer Architectures course: 8:1. 7 guys that struggle, me (who gets it cause I'm obsessed), and a girl that gets it because she's smart. In my Internet Programming class (ASP) its more like 12:10, 12 guys and 10 girls, not sure what the level of understanding is but I know there are a few smart girls. I have never met a girl in computer science at my university who wasn't better than 80% of the guys there.
i wanted to go to CMU BAD when i was looking for a place to go. I'd transfer tomorrow if they invited me, i hope to go there for graduate work if I decide to do that... the thing about CMU is that they get 5000+ applications for the college of computer science every semester and they have under 300 spots available... that's what i was told when i wanted to go there... didn't even try because its expensive as all hell and also because my high school grades were pretty nasty so scholarships were a bust, they didn't offer any merit-based scholarships. Well, I'm going to an expensive private college now thanks to a merit-bsed scholarship. I took a computer science-oriented test which dealt with writing pseudocode, formulating algorithms, etc, and aced it. Every college should have such a thing. Having 1 computer class in high school that I got to sit out because i wrote a program to calculate and save glaze formulas for the pottery class and the pottery teacher taught the computer programming class doesn't make my grades in high school reflect the fact that I'm balls-to-the-walls in love with computers and programming!
;)
Esperandi
forgive the rant at the end, it still bugs me
I definitely agree that computer classes should be offered earlier in high schools but it really would not help. It would help in one way... there would be a much smaller number of people droving to computer science because they heard about the good jobs then finding out after their first semester that they just cannot wrap their mind around computers and they don't like the idea of debugging a computer science homework assignment for 5 days straight and then drop that major. This is what happens at my university, Wheeling jesuit University (man, wish I was a woman, maybe I could have gotten a scholarship and afford CMU where I really wanted to go). We have around 50 or 60 people every fall semester joining into the CSC program. First class they take is a C++ algorithms and data structures course. Well, guess how many make it past that to the spring semester in CSC? 45? 35? Well, no. generally 4. That's right, its not a typo. FOUR.
If they had run into this brick wall and found out they hate programming early on in high school without a big penalty like wasting a semester, we'd get the 4 that make the cut and we'd get even more that didn't even realize they loved programming!
We've got 1 female in our classes (we usually have more than one, but the others just graduated or are in a lower class) and she started life as a math major. She took a few computer courses for fun and totally got hooked. She had no idea she dug computers, now she's double majoring in it. Huzzah for her!
But if 1 woman get into and get through a computer science curriculum hating computers and not doing very well at them, who the hell benefits from it?!? Just because she has a vagina, her graduation is not sacred.
Esperandi
That fewer women go into CS than men is not a problem to be dealt with, just a fact to be recognized
It is? Funny, that's not what her statistics say. It's what she wants you to believe, but that is not what she said... be careful with stats, they are tricky.
Esperandi
What about the fact that there isn't a problem and that the lady in this interview is skewing statistics and basically lying about the state of women in computers?
Both men AND women are declining in the percentage that graduate from computer science programs in relation to the number of students which enroll in computer science programs. Is this the statistic that she is picking apart and highlighting the women part? Is she saying that the percentage of computer science graduates that get degrees are less and less women? Read the article again, I bet you assumed the latter, but she didn't specify and it could easily be the former.
I say, let people get what they go after. If people want it bad enough, they're going to go get it no matter if people call them lesbians, fags, geeks, nerds, losers, or any enless slew of names that get thrown at female AND male computer science people.
Making the environment easier to get into will not work in computer science - you can't scale a flopping fish.
Esperandi
A percentage of WHAT? She doesn't say. She didn't say as a percentage of the total computer science body graduating with bachelors, notice. She could be talking about a smaller percentage of women students going to college in ANY subject are graduating from computer science programs. She could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating in computer science in relation to the number of women entering into computer science programs... she could be talking about a decrease in the percentage of women graduating from computer science programs in terms of the percentage of the entire student body going into computer science... statistics are very tricky and unless the giver gives enough information so you *KNOW* what they're talking about and in relation to what, ignore them. There's a reason they didn't' spell it out.
Esperandi
Honestly I forget... but during the coverage of the Columbine shooting in the day after it happened they were talking about school shootings not being a new thing and they talked about a school shooting in Kansas in 1922 where a student killed over 30 other students. I can't remember the name of the school and every web search just turns up information about Columbine which everyone claims is the worst in history because they don't know history.
Esperandi
Percentage of children under 12 killed by ADULTS in 1997-98: 90%
It's the adults that are violent, not the kids.
Once again it needs pointed out that this statistic is COMPLETELY BOGUS. The number of MALES receiving bachelor degrees in computer science is decreasing as well.
Why? because men are mentally inferior? Because we need to "show that we care" like the lady begs in the article? No. It's because computer science is the most complicated profession in the history of mankind (you name a more complicated invention than a piece of software that manipulates billions of microscopic switches billions of times per second). Colleges are closing down their departments of computer science (Marshall University closed theirs a couple years ago because no one was graduating). Entry classes into computer science is schrinking, the number getting past year 1 is shrinking even faster.
For one reason. It takes passion. You can be a doctor without passion.. maybe not a good one, but if you screw up a stich by a tenth of an inch, the patient doesn't die, no one even notices. You miss a semicolon or a comma, your software just does not work. It takes an obsessive passion to get into computers and not many people have that.
Another reason is the huge technology job boom where there are too many jobs for too many people (and this will not reverse for a long time because of the passion issue). Why get a degree when you can get hired without one, get every type of job benefit you can imagine, etc? I'm getting a degree because I just might go on to become a professor so I can work in theory stuff, but i don't see the point of anyone else doing it.
Esperandi
Offending people is a favorite topic of mine because the bald faced fact is that everyone who is offended chooses to be offended. Of course they (and you) won't admit that because it puts the problem where it lies (in the listener not the speaker) and it robs you of your ability to try to interfere with other peoples lives, but it is the truth.
Someone comes up to me and calls me a moron, it really doesn't offend me. They're wrong. Wow. Oh no, i can't go around with people having misconceived notions about me, my race, my age group, the userbase of my OS, etc, can I? Yes, I can.
Esperandi
Being an individual is far more involved and complicated than any individualist understands.
Heh, yes, let's go back to the 50s... daddy gets home from work, kicks back 8 scotches, beats the kid and the wife, then no one talks about it. Mom stays home all day popping baby laxatives like candy and no one talks about it. Johnny fucks the cheerleaders bareback on Makeout Point and when they get pregnant the girl goes to visit a sick aunt in another town so no one has to talk about it.
The most fatal school shooting was in 1922.
Esperandi
The past sucks, live for the future.
(BTW I knw your post was sarcastic, consider this ammunition against the morons)
If I had to pick a song to nominate it would inevitably be "What Would Brian Boitano Do?" but not the one sung by the kids in the movie, the one sung by Tres and Matt during the credits! That song is one of the best punk songs I've ever heard!
Esperandi
There's some law in software and hardware design, its named after someone but I forget. Anyhow, the law says that humans can't "see" benefits in performance unless they're at least a 20% speed advancement.
I think that's pretty much about right, and based on that you wouldn't notice the difference (not to mention the fact that the difference between a 300 and an overclocked 450 is NOT even close to the difference between a 300 and a real 450 (unless the multiplers are the same, chance are they're not)).
If you think we don't need faster processors except for high end stuff, consider this:
Instant computing. When you click something it is done. You don't think about it, you don't wait, it IS. As in it works as fast as when you drop something. You open your hand and its gone, no waiting. The death of progress bars. The % symbol goes homeless.
Esperandi