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In my senior undergraduate class in geology, there were 8 males, 1 female. The year after me there were 10 females, 3 males. In grad school, we had a transgendered prof who was very cool and, as far as I could tell, didn't really phase anyone.

Daily mail talks about women one day out pacing men in long-distance running. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420999/Women-day-faster-long-distance-running-men-predict-experts.html

From the Wikipedia entry on Women and sumo:

Professional sumo is notable for its exclusion of women from competition and ceremonies. Women are not allowed to enter or touch the sumo wrestling ring (dohyō), as this is traditionally seen to be a violation of the purity of the dohyō.^[16] The female Governor of Osaka from 2000-2008, Fusae Ohta, when called upon to present the Governor's Prize to the champion of the annual Osaka tournament, was required to do so on the walkway beside the ring or send a male representative in her place. She repeatedly challenged the Sumo Association's policy by requesting to be allowed to fulfill her traditional role as Governor. Her requests were repeatedly rejected until she stepped down from office.
The view of those who criticize this continuing "men-only" policy is that it is discriminatory and oppressive.^[16] In general, women in the sumo world are only expected to be supportive wives of rikishi, and, in the case that their husband has become a stable master, a surrogate mother for all of his disciples.^[13] The view of the Sumo Association is that this is a tradition that has been firmly maintained through the centuries, so it would be a dishonor to all of their ancestors to change it.^[16]
This was not always the case. Starting as early as the 18th century a form of female sumo or onnazumo was performed in some areas of Japan. In the cities it was more of a spectacle often associated with brothels. However, in some areas of Japan female sumo had a serious role in certain Shinto rituals. In later years, there were limited tours of female sumo that lasted for a time.^[17] However, female sumo is not considered to be authentic by most Japanese and is now prohibited from taking place beyond amateur settings.^[18]

Good points. Interestingly, you rarely hear about people clamoring for more women as professional wrestlers a la WWE. I wonder about the SUMO variety too...

Do you not want more women in your work environment?

It was .. for a while.. for me anyway..

is there a lack of women joining IT because the industry is actual hostile to them, or is it because it's perceived to be hostile to them.

3rd option is that they just aren't interested in the high-stress, inflexible hours, no job security, continual retraining, etc, that a career in IT brings.

Notice that nobody complains and makes a political issue out of how few female truck drivers and auto mechanics there are. Nor is anyone overly concerned that nursing & social work is overwhelmingly dominated by women.

Is this something we can change the preception of?

Why should we?

yeah and someday kuro5hin will be the front page of the internet!

You've put some amazing thought into your response, needless to say I actually agree with a lot of it. There's a lot of intresting information here I would love to examine, mainly who has been nominated in the past and for what. That would be the best way to tell if there's some significant gender bias going on.

I've been involved in a lot of debates about women in the IT industry over the last year and one thing that's come up that I'd like to find a way to examine is, is there a lack of women joining IT because the industry is actual hostile to them, or is it because it's perceived to be hostile to them.

The media picks up and amplifies cases where women are mistreated, which if I was a young girl I'd might see and say, "Nope I'm not spending my career working in a job pinned to the ground level by people that hate me". It's interesting that young women aren't even going to university for IT. When I was in university there were only four women in my graduating year, vs. ~50 men. I sit on a scholarship committee that gives to women going into IT and we only get like two applications a year. We've had years with zero applications.

Is this something we can change the preception of?

Thanks. Your second post motivated me to do my own fact-checking as well and I went to the same website.

It was actually quite eye-opening to go directly to the source rather than taking the CBC article as the most effective reading of the data. It might make posting stories to Pipedot harder, but incorporating this kind of fact-checking could make the story summaries more balanced and fair (just like Fox News).

Mind you, if Pipedot is engaged in news aggregation, it raises the question of what is news when news agencies might be creating stories out of no or little evidence.

Thanks for this as well... your elaboration is exactly the kind of thoughtful commentary I was hoping for... you raise a number of interesting points...

Point One: What is the gender breakdown of Hall members? I went to the Canada Science Hall of Fame website http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-hall.php and expanded the Hall members list until the "show more" option stopped coming up. I then scanned the Hall members and got these numbers (after only one visual pass over the list): 60 total members, 10 women (so a Hall membership rate of 16.7% women). This strikes me as quite possibly reflective of merit based on the participation of women in science over the past century which may have structurally favoured greater opportunities for men.

Point Two: Who were the nominees for the past two years and why? I actually think this information is probably not published and I'm not sure what the ethics would be on publishing the information of unsuccessful nominees. Nonetheless, considering this question made me realize that I actually sit on an awards committee for some career geoscience awards and I haven't seen any women nominated for the awards that my committee judges in any of the past four years. However, this is mostly reflective of who gets nominated by the general community and not of the gender bias of myself or my fellow panelists because our committee doesn't go out looking for nominations ourselves (we simply judge on the nominations we receive). Women have received these awards in the past, however; a woman is on the panel itself; and, I am not aware of any gender bias from the panelists when choosing recipients of the award. A role for gender bias may be in the structural opportunities presented to women selecting careers in geoscience up until now, however.

Point Three: How might the popular media have fed a narrative without regard for fact or context? I find this quite interesting at this stage. I think that certain narratives gain traction in society and are useful for the goals of media corporations therefore because they have traction and generate support and thus revenue. However, sometimes the continued appeal to an established narrative can cause new problems. For example, there may be evidence emerging at the leading edge of this issue that present-day men are actually at a disadvantage to women in starting a career in science research. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/08/1418878112.abstract) observed experimentally a 2:1 hiring preference in academic faculty for women over men for tenure track science positions. Thus, men may still be winning the majority of career science awards right now due to past structural biases, but the bias pendulum may be swinging to women's favour presently and this may lead to new observations in a generation's time. This leads to your main point, perhaps, that:

Point Four: The CBC article probably doesn't advance this discussion much because it invokes a simple narrative on a possibly nuanced topic.

Sorry, I found the hall of fame website right after my last post

These are all the recipients, I can't figure out what years each of them won in:
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-hall.php

This is the nominations page, it looks like nominations are open to anyone and they have guide lines post as to what the committee will accept:
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-nominations.php

Ha, I won't say which one, but one of my old University profs actually sits on the committee.
http://cstmuseum.techno-science.ca/en/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-selection-committee.php

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing you for posting the story. I'm criticizing the CBC, and media in general, for creating an state of affairs that I CAN'T take this article at face value. If it's true, I'm pretty appalled as well.

Being skeptical doesn't mean I don't believe the story isn't a possibility, but it could be a women hasn't been nominated/won and award for a number of reasons, but the CBC is most likely just focusing on the gender side of things as a method to piss people off and generate clicks at the expense of the reputations of those that sit on the nomination committees. I highly doubt they all sit around tempeling their fingers scheming ways to keep women out while muttering, "Excellent", when a women doesn't win the nomination.

Instead of looking at whether women have been nominated in the last two years, I'd like to look at who was nominated and for what reason. Maybe, the nominations were fairly given out, but it just happens some people were more deserving and happened to be male. I tried to go look it up, but unfortunately Google is now full of articles parroting each other about the committee members that resigned. So I'll have to go back to it to investigate when I have more time.

That brings up another issue with media publications as well. One prints a faluty story with little fact or mostly incorrect facts and other publications jump on it and print the same stories without doing their own independent fact checking. By the time anyone knows there was something wrong with the original story it's reached critical mass and people are losing their minds about it. Then the original publication will make a small correction to the article, no ones the wiser, but the public's still calling for blood based off fault information.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, I didn't mean to seem like I was coming down on you for posting the article.

Thanks for this... it's a good reminder...

I believe that I am pretty skeptical about media output, but maybe I'm not, in fact. I am conscious that I am the easiest one to fool in the case of self-perception. I really appreciate your comment as it provides an outside perspective for me.

In any case, my motivation to submit the story was that I thought it provided an opportunity to discuss an issue that I believe is important -- i.e., how we recognize and reward scientists for their contributions to knowledge (with jobs, tenure, salary, grants, awards, or, in this case, a nomination to a Canadian Science Hall of Fame). One of the ways to evaluate how we reward scientists is to look at what is actually happening. I was prepared to trust the CBC article -- without further research -- in its claim that no women have been nominated for the Canadian Science Hall of Fame in the last two years. Maybe I am naive, but I didn't think the article would fake this fact. If true, on its own it is an interesting observation with two end-member implications that either: (1) women's contributions haven't warranted a nomination when compared to the competing nominations of male scientists, or (2) the nomination process is biased in regards to gender. I was hoping Pipedot readers would have some views on this, either from direct observation of women's worthy contributions or the lack thereof. Maybe there is no way to sort that kind of thing out on an internet forum, however, and the article and story ends up just being clickbait. I suppose I could have looked up the statistics independently from the Science Hall of Fame site itself and linked to that, if I had found anything noteworthy, and maybe that's the lesson for me here.

A couple years ago I would have believed this story, but the CBC has become a nest of agenda pushing click bait journalists who will take any opportunity to take a story and blow it out of proportions [1]. They have to feed the outrage culture to keep generating income. There are so many cases now of reporters knowing they're not reporting the truth, not just in CBC, but pushing it anyway, then apologizing later [2] or insisting in spite of actual evidence they've done nothing wrong.

I've seen so many reporters in the last year involved in scandals, pushing personal agendas and involved in conflicts of interest [3][4][5][6]. The media just wants things to get people angry and journalists will do whatever they can to get the "facts" that back whatever narrative they decide they're going to push.

Honestly I believe there's no such thing as a reliable source in the media anymore. If it's not coming directly from the horses mouth take it with salt. You can't even trust the sources I'm listing below.

Be skeptical.

[1] http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/11/cbc-breaches-multiple-journalistic-ethics-standards-to-smear-gamergate/
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/31p2sz/success_entertainment_weekly_corrects_and/
[3] http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/26/cbc_fires_jian_ghomeshi_over_sex_allegations.html
[4] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/the-rolling-stone-rape-scandal-when-subjects-come-before-readers/article23820366/
[5] http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-what-went-wrong-20150405
[6] http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/global-tv-anchor-leslie-roberts-resigns-after-probe-finds-he-breached-conflict-of-interest-rules

After looking at "metro" I can't blame anyone who won't write code for Windows now

Are you able to download a pirate version of Windows today? Yes or No?
Still they sell a lot of Window licenses.

Open sourcing does not mean to give away for free. It means anyone who bought Windows is able to look at the source and do modifications for himself. It is all about licensing. "Open source" and "free" are not symonyms. Some open source licenses means free, other not. Spreading the source to people not having a bought license would still be pirating, if they want it to be so.

MS is at this point in desperate need to get developers. This is visible from their latest moves. Anything that might attract developers to develop for Windows is welcome inside of the new MS. It is thus not impossible they will open source Windows in the future unless they have too much licenced code as an obstacle in this process.

At this point I am fully agreeing. I just hate the "user experience" of Windows. For me the right environment is a combination of *nix, tiling window managers and many terminals open.

I like how parts are interchangeable in an *nix environment. I can put together something that fits my work perfectly. Most settings are just text files, simple scripts and almost anything can be customized.

But somewhere at Redhat there is a man whos name has become a curse for the whole *nix world. That man tries his best to make Linux similarly unfriendly as Windows. It might be that if ever Windows becomes open source the difference will not be big anymore. We already see a lot of binary stuff replacing simple text files, binary logs and other kind of abomination.

This is a software problem you're having, just replace the software.
From googling, you have a Pentium M so the CPU has a hardware bug with PAE meaning some linux distros won't work but you can at least run linux mint LMDE2 Mate edition 32 bit.
Or hell, such kind of hardware can run Windows 7 and it's actually faster than a fucked up Windows XP (cruft + virus + antivirus is killing, so much that even though Windows 7 a.k.a. Vista 1.1 is very heavy on disk accesses, it'll be like stuff is instantly done)

Microsoft isn't about to give up it's cash cow that it's been milking for 30 years. they would only ever do this if it no longer gave them an advantage. this effectively means that the source would only be released after windows was worthless.

...I would not care. Apart from all the politics, I just don't like the 'user experience'. When I have to develop using Windows I always feel like I am wearing boxing gloves.

It's not the job of reporters to post an exact transcript of what someone said. Instead, they include the highlights. Sometimes it's easiest or most useful to include exact quotes in there, but often it's best to just summarize the key points. The fact that they summarized instead of including his exact words, doesn't make it somehow invalid. If you've got some *other*, more compelling reason to believe they're guilty of inaccurate reporting, I'd like to hear it.

Considering the competition and how open source seems to be the "trendy choice", perhaps the "new M$" is just waiving an open-source-windows-carrot in front of millions of donkeys hoping they will follow.

Or at least there's no evidence he did. The article quotes exactly two words ("definitely possible") around which it builds its assertion about the Windows source code.

The remainder of the article is related to Linux VMs that happen to be running in the Azure cloud, and have brave MS is not to be freaking out about it too much.

"what should we do with our software -- open versus not-open versus services" doesn't imply in any way that the Windows OS is going to be open sourced any time soon. He could be talking about almost anything. Maybe small parts of MS Office will be open sourced to compete with GApps and LibreOffice. Who knows.

Every conversation you can imagine about what should we do with our software -- open versus not-open versus services -- has happened

I can imagine how that conversation went:

Sales Guy:
Inexpensive alternatives like Chrome OS are eating into our Windows revenue! What if we give away the OS and charge everyone a yearly maintenance fee?

Tech Guy:
Are you sure the customers would stand for paying for bug fixes every year, forever?

Sales Guy:
Why not? It's brilliant! They only look at the purchase price of the laptop in the store. They won't even realize that they'll end up paying us significantly more than they are now!

Tech Guy:
But what if they want to cancel their subscription?

Sales Guy:
Cover their screens in Windows Genuine Advantage ads and force their computer to reboot after a few minutes; like we do with pirated copies now!

Tech Guy:
Won't that just push them further towards Linux-based alternatives?

Sales Guy:
Oh ya, that reminds me. You and 18,000 of your buddies report to this room down the hall. Sorry.

I'm in almost the same boat... My sight is good enough that I pass DMV eye exams without issue, but I do have prescription glasses for an astigmatism, and came to realize the world is a bit fuzzier (and slower to come into focus) for me than it is to most everyone else.

What is so "old" than how power is generated?

"Fire" heats water makes stream that turns a turbine to make electric power.

Replace word "fire" with: Coal, Oil, Gas, Nuclear, Solar Furnace, Geo-Thermal, so 19th century!

So superheated stream driving the plunger is less efferent the electric-o-magnetic.

One conversion of energy, vs two? No loss there!

I wear glasses while driving to improve safety (especially at night) , but otherwise my eyesight is good enough not to bother me. I feel like there should be a "I don't do anything" option, as it is very seldom that I drive (and thus wear glasses).

I think they'll either follow Apple by open sourcing some very low levels parts of the OS while keeping the rest of the stack proprietary, or open sourcing a cut-down Windows RT for Raspberry Pi or some such.

I've been waiting to take my tropical vacation there for some time now, and didn't want to wait for the alien invasion and terraforming.

No snark was intended. I was even thinking about mentioning how auctions funded the HDTV converter box rebates, but opted not to make it any longer.

But your reply suggests there's no alternative to auctioning spectrum, which isn't true at all. Instead, meritocratically assigning it (as is done with TV, radio, public safety, etc.) without any money changing hands, could be just as effective a way to utilize the available spectrum. After all, it's not money pulled from thin-air, but money the public will have to pay for (in service fees) in the end. And the rules and restriction the FCC puts on the spectrum auctions, in addition to the price, is similarly because pure capitalism doesn't result in ideal distribution of these resources.

While I didn't intend to go down this road, let's not forget that the incentive auctions are a pretty bald-faced money-grab, selling off highly useful broadcast TV spectrum, causes changes which are likely to cost consumers many millions of dollars (to replace existing TV antennas) and will certainly reduce media diversity, local news sources, etc., etc., and disproportionately affecting the poor and minorities.

Wireless spectrum assignment can only be done by the government, for the betterment of the people in the country. The government should be well compensated for that limited resource and should apply those funds for the betterment of the people who own that spectrum and allow it to be put to private use. I don't know how insanely libertarian you have to be to think that there isn't a single governmental function that should exist and be funded with these fees. Defense? Border Security? Science Research Funding? Lowering price of admission for the Smithsonian? Library of Congress? Space Travel? Reduced Taxes on individuals? Surely, there must be something that you think the government should do, and maybe these fees can fund that?

We can disagree on how these fees should be spent, but surely they can be put to a good use for all of us.

Other than for creating a true Windows clone. At this stage I would love my own Windows 98 clone just to toy with at source level. Windows AC!

Quick DDG search of the sentence turns up this article:

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/burt-rutan-skigull/

I only supplied two of the many recent links about the skigull project. There is more information here http://http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2015/March/16/Rutan-SkiGull , on the antennafilms site (linked from some of the articles previously mentioned) and of course more links http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Burt+Rutan+skigull

So far as the second link in the original post the biggest reason for Burt to be at Airventure is to announce the Skigull has flown. His previous history with Airventure would suggest this is as big or even bigger reason than the 40th anniversary of one of his designs.

I didn't see any mention of the new aircraft in the second linked article. Perhaps the wrong link was used? I also don't see the quote about flying around the world with his wife in either article. This leads me to think, even more, we might have the wrong link or we are missing a link. Can someone provide the correct link with the "flying around the world" quote?

Just put the carrier itself in the air and you can get rid of the catapults altogether.

Well, if the complaint about the steam catapult is (per the summary),

"There's no smooth acceleration with a steam piston, resulting in increase wear on the body of the aircraft. "

Then perhaps the thing to do is look at introducing modern controls into the existing system. I'll bet there is a way to make a proportional steam valve and hook it to a micro controller, with some feedback about the position, velocity and acceleration of the sled... Aircraft carriers seem to have no shortage of steam at high pressures, so it might make sense to keep this as the catapult power source.

I can see the advantages for schools, easy admin, so this seems like it is going to happen in a big way. Not so sure that I like the idea of kids getting used to the idea that "computer = browser + net connection". There are still many things that thin clients don't do, and being able to get closer to the hardware (at least for interested students) is the way to learn about being more than just a "computing service user".

The analogy I'm thinking of is electric power before the grid. Small factories (and possibly schools?) had their own power source, either direct hydro (etc) or a generator that someone had to maintain. The kids that were interested in the machinery probably learned a lot more about electric power than we do these days. Plugging things into the wall is so easy that very few appreciate the infrastructure behind it...and the result is the sometimes-fragile grid that nearly all of us depend on. A likely side effect of taking the grid for granted, is that very few really talented and smart people are attracted to jobs in that industry, so at best it muddles along.

You've got to imagine a troop of 10 year old kids going down to the computer lab. Your school can now have a lab that consists of nothing but HDMI monitors. Each kid gets a stick from the teacher, and they do whatever they do using web services available through ChromeOS (which is basically just a bit more complex than a Chrome browser and a tiny bit of desktop).

From the point of the school, the maintenance and systems admin burden of running a computer lab this way is hugely more efficient and inexpensive than a lab full of, say, Win10 desktops that need basically full-time administration. This hardware might put a dent in the futures of projects like Edubuntu, which reconfigs desktop hardware into thin clients. That's unfortunate. But it will have a powerful impact on schools that will stop buying Windows desktops, and that in turn will affect how many kids coming out of schools thinking that "computer = windows."

As for keyboard quality you are absolutely right - these guys aren't focused on hardware quality. My HP Chromebook has a chiclet keyboard, and I'm not a fan of it (it's no worse than any other modern HP laptop though). If you want a good keyboard, buy a Chromebox and stick whatever USB you like into it - even a Model M! For me, despite the ubiquity of laptops, this is the advantage of a 'desktop computer' no matter which OS it happens to be running: the peripherals I want/need/love, from trackballs to fancy ergo keyboards etc.

It's been done quite a bit. Google 'Raspberry Pi Commodore 64 internal" and you'll come up with a huge list of guys who have gutted old C64s and replaced the computing parts with a Raspberry Pi on which they run emulator software, usually. There's also a guy on Etsy who created his own custom keyboard controller, and now sells refurbished C64s, Sinclairs, and other retro computers you can now use as a fully-functioning USB external keyboard. I'm sorely tempted by these - love the idea of a C64 on my desk connected to a real computer elsewhere.

Thanks for the answer, too bad this won't work. Economically, I agree that an extra $50 is not a problem. But I think there will be a *huge* difference in keyboard quality between my ThinkPad T40 and any low priced Chromebook.

It would be really fun to take do a weird mod with it, like gut out an old all in one pc, and replace the guts with the chromebit.

I now live 400m from a TPG exchange, and 1 street - literally stone's throw away - from the local NBN rollout. Braddon, if you care.

The situation really sucks. TPG is all ready to roll fibre to anywhere it can, in true capitalistic style, and the government has passed laws to ensure that NBN is the only fibre network. Just makes you want to cry.

Now netflix comes along and you have to wonder what it will be like in 2 years time if 30% have signed up. Telstra is already showing signs of stress. What will it take to bring Aus ISPs to their knees to demonstrate to the government that we need the NBN *now*

After reading your first sentence I have already started a reply in my head along the lines "Australia too..." Only to see that you were talking about Australia.I finally have good ADSL speeds only because I live next to phone exchange now. But getting reasonable Internet connection was a struggle at 4 previous place I lived in.

Some of us have lived in places with crappy wiring that makes DSL expensive or not an option. These of us have a phone plan with a few GB of data to get by on. I moved to get DSL. Pity the Aus government is killing the fibre network rollout.. and Netflix is killing the current bandwidth available.

Steam catapults are a remarkably old technology for launching $20M aircraft into the air.

Screws/propellers are a remarkably old technology for propelling ships through the water. We still do that on even the newest multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier. We should stop.

Do I really need to go on?

... storty ...

Google Translate doesn't work if you can't type the words right in English. Should be "rakonto".

Nope. Not unless your laptop has HDMI inputs, and the rest of hardware (keyboard, mouse, etc), can be plugged-in to a USB hub... The Chromebit is designed to plug-in to HDTV & computer monitors, taking over for a tower PC.

Besides, a Chromebook is only $50 more than the Chromebit... so if you want the laptop form-factor, you should spend the extra $50 and get the former, ready to go out-of-the-box.