The interesting thing is that once they start talking to lawyers, I think they are informed of just how screwed they are.
I mean, if they defeat the GPL, then they couldn't use the software in the first place, if they defend the GPL, then they need to conform to it.
Either way, the whole GPL suits are so full of pitfalls and dangers to those abusing the code that they really don't have a chance, and any good lawyer should be telling them that.
There was another suit awhile ago with CherryOS vs PearPC, that looked to be pretty hefty, but before anything could be done, they dumped the product entirely. Sometimes, if something isn't worth that much... it's just not worth keeping around.
It's pretty sad, but it can require something REALLY bad in order to actually disbar a lawyer, and even harder for a judge.
I remember there was a Drunk Driver lawyer in New Mexico called "Ron Bell", and his slogan was "I sue drunk drivers." Then he was arrested for a DUI, and ended up being disbarred. Now he still sues drunk drivers, he just doesn't represent you himself in the court, as he's not allowed to.
Interesting, and actually, I haven't really had any trouble with guys treating me like a piece of meat. I think for the most part, especially in geek culture, we've shed the expectation that women are objects for men to own, and thus saying highly offensive things to a girl is appropriate.
Now, I've actually expressed interest in one guy at work... I passed him a note, and then he told me that he had a girlfriend (drat!) but we talk now, and he treats me nicely, like I would expect someone to treat a girl. But the rest of the people on my team seem to treat me like shit, or expect me to act like "one of the guys". I'm sorry, but part of being diverse and not expressing a biased against women is that you can't simply require females to be "one of the guys". That's unfair, and biased if women can't just be women...
You can either accept this fact, or fight against it. Imagine a man trying to hang out with a group of girls, if he doesn't make some accomodations for them he probably won't be welcomed. I'm just wondering if the other female's aggressiveness is accepted by the men because she's seen as a member of their group, while the same behavior from you is seen as some girl (outsider) being bitchy. I can understand someone not liking to have to do this, but if you're trying to fit in with a certain group of people that are different from yourself, then you're going to need to make some changes to your own behavior for them.
Ok, I can understand your point here. However, I am not willing to "be a guy" just to do my job. That's not me, and it will not work. I went through college acting like that, and nearly a year at my current job trying to do that... I failed, and it made me miserable, and drove such an amount of depression into my life, that I could not work, or even do simple upkeep at my house.
I actually had my boss implicitly accuse me of sexual harassment for a story I told once, about a film that showed up on the internet on a popular webcomic, that just happened to show my panties for a second and a half.
I suppose for him especially, any mention of ANYTHING even REMOTELY associated with sex is grounds for sexual harassment. Even when the focus was not the sexual nature of my panties, but rather my embarrassment that they were exposed to perhaps 50~80% of the geek society.
*nod nod* it's nice to see the other side of the perspective. The tomboy-ish girl, as opposed to my very femme nature.
I'd probably say that the problem for me is a bit of a combination. Not only do I naturally face the same impression that I don't know what's going on, but also my coworkers seem to just kind of get sick having to deal with a girl... almost like I'm invading their "club". And because I'm not willing to act the part of a guy, they reprimand me for it.:(
OK... you got the wrong end of the meaning. People with Asperger's just can't help it. We had one in our office. He was easier to deal with than the rest of the people who do not have Asperger's. Rather, the IT industry, and geeks in general tends to take the position that Asperger's is the ideal way to act, even if you are not medically diagnosed, you are expected to act as such.
When a normal person comes into a girl's office, and she's crying because she's frustrated about something, the proper response is not "Well, what am I going to do about?" (Note: exception given for those who have a medical reason why they can't sense empathy in others. Those with Asperger's and Autism.)
Anyone displaying those traits of vulnerability is going to get hammered. Find a way to master yourself and limit the damage caused by those personality defects. They do you no good, and they are your fault (because you are self-aware and know they exist). Get some self-esteem.
This is exactly the point of view that I'm struggling against. Everyone doesn't need to be a cut-throat asshole/bitch in the world. And I will not alter my personality and turn myself into someone that I am not, simply to suit the world...
I've been down that road for far too long, and it caused me to lapse into such deep depression that I couldn't even function at all.
They are not personality defects... and I have plenty of self-esteem. My emotionality and passivity are my greatest asset, and I treasure them far too greatly to let them be derided, and discarded by someone like you.
My compassion and helpfulness is lead by my emotionality and my helpfulness and my work in an assistive manner are lead by my passiveness. Being "used" as a tool does not make me worthy to be abused as a person.
A very good point. And I agree, you don't get rid of politicking ever. I'd just rather deal with the girl's end of politicking which I understand, rather than the (to me, and in my sole opinion) whacko weird unusual confusing, and irrational system.
I think my biggest problem with dealing with men appropriately is I was sleeping through most of my life, just getting by and coasting for so long, that now that I'm actually out here dealing with men, it's like "Holy shit! what are these guys thinking?"
They don't reward cooperation: if two people are working on a project, then one person is wasting energy.
Cooperation is actively punished: your review is actually hindered in our company's generally zero-sum game of assigning review values.
Independent action is absolutely required: asking people for assistance or help is impinging their work time, and thus not respecting them as employees.
Active help from your superiors is nonexistant: It's well known and documented in research that women expect unsolicited help, while men expect help to only be given when asked for. As such, the manager is expecting help to be given when asked for, while the employee is expecting help to be given whenever the manager has the opportunity.
Establishing a true cause of failure is overlooked over "falling on the grenade": As someone pointed out before, men in general don't want to here "X is broken because of Y" they want to hear "X was broken, and I fixed it." However, female culture tends to reward collective collaboration for the solution of problems. This is why women "bitch and moan" about things, and then get upset when the guy just goes out and "fixes it", the best solution had not already been found, and the guy likely just took a short cut to solve the issue.
Overall, I feel like I am in a very hostile situation, and I very much would leave, and would have left months ago, because I don't fit, if it had not simply been for the fact that I need my medical insurance, because I'm struggling with medical care at this time.
Essentially, my boss has me boxed in, and the explicit out that he's been trying to encourage is to quit, which I cannot do, as the threat I face from quiting is far greater than the threat I face from keeping in such a constrained and hostile work place. Plus, I don't think it's fair to drum someone out of a job...
Hm... a very good point, and I concede your position. I don't think we can really pin down the cause... all I really know is that I've been poorly accepted and accomodated.
I can really only acknowledge that as being that they have less experience handling feminity in the work place, which of course, may be caused by either of the two you present. Either it's because there are too few women working there, and the managers and culture does not get sufficient input as to the female culture to support them, or if the managers and culture are simply unaccomodating by lack of knowledge, or intention.
Ok, well, I will admit openly, that there are different pressures on both of the sexes, and that outliers to that conformance are often criticized and mocked for it.
I just guess the comformance to the cultural standards that are expected of women is much more palpable to me, as I am one, rather than those levied upon men, which I don't experience.
I can understand a lot of your position. However, at some point, the decision comes down to, do I be myself, or do I keep this job?
To me, being me is more important than keeping any particular job. If the IT field rejects me as a person for personal reasons, then pfff.... I'll find something else, probably. I don't have the *ahem* "balls" to play rough with the boys... that just doesn't work for me at all. Never has, never will.
This does get to much of the issue in our culture, why we separate jobs into male and female jobs. Men were exclusively teachers until recently, now it's nearly exclusively female. We do naturally tend to associate together into "ghettos" of job fields.
Immigrants did it for the same reasons, you get along with people similar to yourself better, and you have different issues around people who are different for any reason. Thus, men and women tend to separate up, and establish cultural barriers to distinguish the sexes, beyond the natural biological ones.
I'll admit that there's a few cute guys where I work (it's true! there are some cute geeky guys) and in a lot of ways, they're way cuter than any guy I've picked up at a bar, etc. They can make it difficult for me to concentrate on work, too... so don't think it's just a guy thing.
Our minds can wander just as much as yours sometimes... just we aren't really allowed to point it out. That and it probably is a bit easier for us to covertly express... I mean, it's not like when we get excited we lift up a flag to let anyone looking at us know that we're excited.
Is someone finally going to clue in on the reason for my sexist statement? That the OP was a sexist statement about women, so I went and made a sexist statement about men?
Your post greatly demonstrates exactly the sort of innate biased that is in the IT industry.
I am a great programmer, and I've debugged and solved the craziest of issues. My boss hasn't fired me precisely because I'm such a valuable asset. Just he has an issue with how I go about solving problems, and working.
I don't work huddled in my office fixing stuff. When there is a problem, I raise it up, and see if someone else is more qualified to take the issue on. This worked great in Open Source, where I was very well respected, but it's punished here in the corporate world, because of the natural biased that this culture at this company has.
Your attitude of "nothing is wrong with it, so I'm not going to fix it" is precisely the problem. You have your head far too up your ass to even recognize that anything is wrong. People work in different ways, and the Asperger-esque bullshit ideal that everyone has about the IT industry is STUPID, and exactly what Berners-Lee is talking about.
Wow your stereotypical male engineer is apparently a buff stud too stupid to use the elevator. That's like some hardcore confusion right there:-) You're thinking of jocks and football players who major in hotel management and comparative studies.
Real male engineers are buff studs smart enough to use elevators.
I don't care how you solve the problem... I just want my box up the three flights of stairs without carrying it.
If you can solve it with less effort, then kudos:) I'll maybe give you a kiss... or probably not.
The very short article consisted of Berners-Lee saying that male geeks act stupid, and that causes women to not want to enter the field. It would be nice to have some examples of this so-called stupid behavior. You're always going to have idiots, both male and female. I don't think this is the rule.
I work as a software developer, and being male I am the minority. We have 3 men and 7 women on my team, and none of us act stupid. I would say most teams here have at least 50% women.
You just supplied evidence that his solution would work.
I work as a software developer, and being female, I'm *VASTLY* in the minority. We have 2 women, and 20-30 min on my team, and well, I don't know if they act stupid or not, but they certainly aren't accomodating of femininity in general.
I would say most teams here have at most 10% women...
Really? I'd contend that pasty female geeks with no fashion sense fit right in. The pastier and geekier the less resistance they experience.
The resistance that they experience is not actually in the IT field, I would agree that the IT field is much more open-armed for pastier and geekier women.
However, the resistance comes from the external world. At this point in our culture, it's simply unacceptable for a female to be pasty and geeky. They face enormous discrimination and social resistance in general than they gain as a benefit by being more accepted in the IT industry.
Example in point: The guys at my college would tease this one girl beind her back because she smelled poorly. Now, there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her, but to them, she was "stinky girl". They didn't call anyone else "stinky boy" or anything like that. They targetted her, for failing to sustain the essential fundamental stereotype of women in our culture... that they need to be fashion oriented, pretty, and smell wonderfully.
Yes, there's discrimination, but in IT I chalk it all up to a field that practically demands a certain type of personality.
Does it really require a certain type of personality? I'm a very capable female computer engineer, however, due to my emotionality, and my passive nature, I get stomped on at work, and treated extremely poorly.
The one other female in our group (of 20-30 people) doesn't really see any discrimination against us, but she's quite a bit of a tomboy, and she's willing to tell people to just shut up, and take a back seat. When I do that, I'm told by my boss that I'm demanding. When I explain failures and root causes, I'm told that I'm blaming.
While it's true that the IT culture is primarily based around the idea of Asperger's Syndrome being the ideal engineer, it should not discriminate against people who do not hold to that ideal, while still being very capable, and intelligent people. Just because someone doesn't work the way you're expecting them to work, doesn't mean that you should tell them that they don't deserve to be there.
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The interesting thing is that once they start talking to lawyers, I think they are informed of just how screwed they are.
I mean, if they defeat the GPL, then they couldn't use the software in the first place, if they defend the GPL, then they need to conform to it.
Either way, the whole GPL suits are so full of pitfalls and dangers to those abusing the code that they really don't have a chance, and any good lawyer should be telling them that.
There was another suit awhile ago with CherryOS vs PearPC, that looked to be pretty hefty, but before anything could be done, they dumped the product entirely. Sometimes, if something isn't worth that much... it's just not worth keeping around.
It's pretty sad, but it can require something REALLY bad in order to actually disbar a lawyer, and even harder for a judge.
I remember there was a Drunk Driver lawyer in New Mexico called "Ron Bell", and his slogan was "I sue drunk drivers." Then he was arrested for a DUI, and ended up being disbarred. Now he still sues drunk drivers, he just doesn't represent you himself in the court, as he's not allowed to.
Interesting, and actually, I haven't really had any trouble with guys treating me like a piece of meat. I think for the most part, especially in geek culture, we've shed the expectation that women are objects for men to own, and thus saying highly offensive things to a girl is appropriate.
Now, I've actually expressed interest in one guy at work... I passed him a note, and then he told me that he had a girlfriend (drat!) but we talk now, and he treats me nicely, like I would expect someone to treat a girl. But the rest of the people on my team seem to treat me like shit, or expect me to act like "one of the guys". I'm sorry, but part of being diverse and not expressing a biased against women is that you can't simply require females to be "one of the guys". That's unfair, and biased if women can't just be women...
My team is some 30 people... however, my company has about 300,000 full time employees.
Ok, I can understand your point here. However, I am not willing to "be a guy" just to do my job. That's not me, and it will not work. I went through college acting like that, and nearly a year at my current job trying to do that... I failed, and it made me miserable, and drove such an amount of depression into my life, that I could not work, or even do simple upkeep at my house.
So, this choice is not an option.
*nod nod*
I actually had my boss implicitly accuse me of sexual harassment for a story I told once, about a film that showed up on the internet on a popular webcomic, that just happened to show my panties for a second and a half.
I suppose for him especially, any mention of ANYTHING even REMOTELY associated with sex is grounds for sexual harassment. Even when the focus was not the sexual nature of my panties, but rather my embarrassment that they were exposed to perhaps 50~80% of the geek society.
*nod nod* it's nice to see the other side of the perspective. The tomboy-ish girl, as opposed to my very femme nature.
:(
I'd probably say that the problem for me is a bit of a combination. Not only do I naturally face the same impression that I don't know what's going on, but also my coworkers seem to just kind of get sick having to deal with a girl... almost like I'm invading their "club". And because I'm not willing to act the part of a guy, they reprimand me for it.
OK... you got the wrong end of the meaning. People with Asperger's just can't help it. We had one in our office. He was easier to deal with than the rest of the people who do not have Asperger's. Rather, the IT industry, and geeks in general tends to take the position that Asperger's is the ideal way to act, even if you are not medically diagnosed, you are expected to act as such.
When a normal person comes into a girl's office, and she's crying because she's frustrated about something, the proper response is not "Well, what am I going to do about?" (Note: exception given for those who have a medical reason why they can't sense empathy in others. Those with Asperger's and Autism.)
This is exactly the point of view that I'm struggling against. Everyone doesn't need to be a cut-throat asshole/bitch in the world. And I will not alter my personality and turn myself into someone that I am not, simply to suit the world...
I've been down that road for far too long, and it caused me to lapse into such deep depression that I couldn't even function at all.
They are not personality defects... and I have plenty of self-esteem. My emotionality and passivity are my greatest asset, and I treasure them far too greatly to let them be derided, and discarded by someone like you.
My compassion and helpfulness is lead by my emotionality and my helpfulness and my work in an assistive manner are lead by my passiveness. Being "used" as a tool does not make me worthy to be abused as a person.
A very good point. And I agree, you don't get rid of politicking ever. I'd just rather deal with the girl's end of politicking which I understand, rather than the (to me, and in my sole opinion) whacko weird unusual confusing, and irrational system.
I think my biggest problem with dealing with men appropriately is I was sleeping through most of my life, just getting by and coasting for so long, that now that I'm actually out here dealing with men, it's like "Holy shit! what are these guys thinking?"
I think the best way to put it is
They don't reward cooperation: if two people are working on a project, then one person is wasting energy.
Cooperation is actively punished: your review is actually hindered in our company's generally zero-sum game of assigning review values.
Independent action is absolutely required: asking people for assistance or help is impinging their work time, and thus not respecting them as employees.
Active help from your superiors is nonexistant: It's well known and documented in research that women expect unsolicited help, while men expect help to only be given when asked for. As such, the manager is expecting help to be given when asked for, while the employee is expecting help to be given whenever the manager has the opportunity.
Establishing a true cause of failure is overlooked over "falling on the grenade": As someone pointed out before, men in general don't want to here "X is broken because of Y" they want to hear "X was broken, and I fixed it." However, female culture tends to reward collective collaboration for the solution of problems. This is why women "bitch and moan" about things, and then get upset when the guy just goes out and "fixes it", the best solution had not already been found, and the guy likely just took a short cut to solve the issue.
Overall, I feel like I am in a very hostile situation, and I very much would leave, and would have left months ago, because I don't fit, if it had not simply been for the fact that I need my medical insurance, because I'm struggling with medical care at this time.
Essentially, my boss has me boxed in, and the explicit out that he's been trying to encourage is to quit, which I cannot do, as the threat I face from quiting is far greater than the threat I face from keeping in such a constrained and hostile work place. Plus, I don't think it's fair to drum someone out of a job...
Hm... a very good point, and I concede your position. I don't think we can really pin down the cause... all I really know is that I've been poorly accepted and accomodated.
I can really only acknowledge that as being that they have less experience handling feminity in the work place, which of course, may be caused by either of the two you present. Either it's because there are too few women working there, and the managers and culture does not get sufficient input as to the female culture to support them, or if the managers and culture are simply unaccomodating by lack of knowledge, or intention.
I'm not complaining... I happen to like excited boys... *laugh*
Ok, well, I will admit openly, that there are different pressures on both of the sexes, and that outliers to that conformance are often criticized and mocked for it.
I just guess the comformance to the cultural standards that are expected of women is much more palpable to me, as I am one, rather than those levied upon men, which I don't experience.
I can understand a lot of your position. However, at some point, the decision comes down to, do I be myself, or do I keep this job?
To me, being me is more important than keeping any particular job. If the IT field rejects me as a person for personal reasons, then pfff.... I'll find something else, probably. I don't have the *ahem* "balls" to play rough with the boys... that just doesn't work for me at all. Never has, never will.
This does get to much of the issue in our culture, why we separate jobs into male and female jobs. Men were exclusively teachers until recently, now it's nearly exclusively female. We do naturally tend to associate together into "ghettos" of job fields.
Immigrants did it for the same reasons, you get along with people similar to yourself better, and you have different issues around people who are different for any reason. Thus, men and women tend to separate up, and establish cultural barriers to distinguish the sexes, beyond the natural biological ones.
I'll admit that there's a few cute guys where I work (it's true! there are some cute geeky guys) and in a lot of ways, they're way cuter than any guy I've picked up at a bar, etc. They can make it difficult for me to concentrate on work, too... so don't think it's just a guy thing.
Our minds can wander just as much as yours sometimes... just we aren't really allowed to point it out. That and it probably is a bit easier for us to covertly express... I mean, it's not like when we get excited we lift up a flag to let anyone looking at us know that we're excited.
Is someone finally going to clue in on the reason for my sexist statement? That the OP was a sexist statement about women, so I went and made a sexist statement about men?
It's not your problem, but rather our problem, as a culture. We need to fix this crap, which is precisely why more women don't get into the IT field.
Your post greatly demonstrates exactly the sort of innate biased that is in the IT industry.
I am a great programmer, and I've debugged and solved the craziest of issues. My boss hasn't fired me precisely because I'm such a valuable asset. Just he has an issue with how I go about solving problems, and working.
I don't work huddled in my office fixing stuff. When there is a problem, I raise it up, and see if someone else is more qualified to take the issue on. This worked great in Open Source, where I was very well respected, but it's punished here in the corporate world, because of the natural biased that this culture at this company has.
Your attitude of "nothing is wrong with it, so I'm not going to fix it" is precisely the problem. You have your head far too up your ass to even recognize that anything is wrong. People work in different ways, and the Asperger-esque bullshit ideal that everyone has about the IT industry is STUPID, and exactly what Berners-Lee is talking about.
Pff... it's the perfect Slashdot article... "Did you RTFA?" "No, I didn't need to... there was nothing there..."
I don't care how you solve the problem... I just want my box up the three flights of stairs without carrying it.
If you can solve it with less effort, then kudos
You just supplied evidence that his solution would work.
I work as a software developer, and being female, I'm *VASTLY* in the minority. We have 2 women, and 20-30 min on my team, and well, I don't know if they act stupid or not, but they certainly aren't accomodating of femininity in general.
I would say most teams here have at most 10% women...
Hey Hunky, could you carry this 100 pound box for me up the three flights of stairs here? God, you're so sexy when you're exerting your self... :)
The resistance that they experience is not actually in the IT field, I would agree that the IT field is much more open-armed for pastier and geekier women.
However, the resistance comes from the external world. At this point in our culture, it's simply unacceptable for a female to be pasty and geeky. They face enormous discrimination and social resistance in general than they gain as a benefit by being more accepted in the IT industry.
Example in point: The guys at my college would tease this one girl beind her back because she smelled poorly. Now, there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her, but to them, she was "stinky girl". They didn't call anyone else "stinky boy" or anything like that. They targetted her, for failing to sustain the essential fundamental stereotype of women in our culture... that they need to be fashion oriented, pretty, and smell wonderfully.
Does it really require a certain type of personality? I'm a very capable female computer engineer, however, due to my emotionality, and my passive nature, I get stomped on at work, and treated extremely poorly.
The one other female in our group (of 20-30 people) doesn't really see any discrimination against us, but she's quite a bit of a tomboy, and she's willing to tell people to just shut up, and take a back seat. When I do that, I'm told by my boss that I'm demanding. When I explain failures and root causes, I'm told that I'm blaming.
While it's true that the IT culture is primarily based around the idea of Asperger's Syndrome being the ideal engineer, it should not discriminate against people who do not hold to that ideal, while still being very capable, and intelligent people. Just because someone doesn't work the way you're expecting them to work, doesn't mean that you should tell them that they don't deserve to be there.