Look at the responses to this story from a couple of weeks ago:

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/06/19/2028229/womens-enrollment-in-computer-science-correlates-negatively-with-net-access

Now tell me that the majority of Slashdot commenters aren't complete douches.

Has anyone bothered to ask women directly why they chose not to do Computer Science?

You know, rather than just guessing...

Seriously - has anyone surveyed a good cross section of women to ask why they are not interested in IT?

I'm sure there are a couple of women reading this site - could you tell us why you decided to go into IT (assuming you are), and why your friends aren't?

Basically, every time these stories get posted, we get hundreds of comments from guys trying to explain why more women aren't in IT. At no point does anyone ask women directly why they aren't in IT...

Especially in light of the UK's recent decision to block The Pirate Bay.

I wonder what the legal recourse would be if this tool found the government in your respective 'free' democratic country was blocking sites for political reasons...? Could anyone sue the UK government if they were found to be blocking sites without providing a genuine legal reason for doing so?

So many responses to this question (and previous similar questions) try to take guesses and assumptions as to why women don't choose software development as a career choice.

Has anyone thought to actually ask women directly?

I know this is Slashdot, but surely somebody somebody has done a survey of a broad spectrum of women to ask:

a) Why they never chose to do software development in the first place.
and
b) Why they wouldn't consider doing it now?

So how does this work for those people who actually enjoy their place of work, and the people they work with? Where's the office banter? The camaraderie? The sneaky lunchtime visits to the pub?

What about training? How do train someone to work on your product if there's no one there to train them up and show them the ropes?

Sure you can argue that working form home does not suit every business, but to the those businesses that encourage it (i.e. O2) I would ask - how do you build a team that has never actually met?

Agreed 2!

I buy large disks in pairs these days. One drive sits permanently inside my desktop machine, the other (identical size from same manufacturer) sits in a generic external USB2 enclosure. Backup maybe once a week (using Microsoft SyncToy), and keep the drive with you (in your car, rucksack, draw at work, whatever...).

That way you get both file redundancy and geographical redundancy. It doesn't matter if your house burnt down (well, it won't matter *that* much...) because all your important (non-replaceable) data is still safe, physically separate from the main desktop.

Like you, my data allowance is cr*p, and I don't trust online backup solutions. Do it all yourself - it's the only way to be sure.

...with that onboard camera? Please?

To hush the anti-moon-landing conspiracists once and for all.

Oooh! Snap!

This is quite sad. I obviously prefer my source of knowledge to be up-to-date, and easily accessible, so online encyclopedias make sense. But...I find it quite charming flicking through copies of encyclopedias that are more than 20 years old, seeing a snapshot of our knowledge at the time, and seeing how we've moved on since then. And what library was complete without a complete set of these on their shelves?