It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with. Most of these guys secretly want a geek girl that's close to equal but just slightly better than them in certain areas so they have someone to push them and compete with.

These are the same guys wondering why women are so focused on fashion and reality TV, things which are not logical.

Each of these geek guys secretly wants to be asked by a pretty young thing real technical questions about what they do, not "how can you spend all of your time in front of a computer?" but "exactly what is this compiler you're talking about?"

I'm 37 years old, I've been a professional geek since I was 18, I have come across these geek girls. The place I came across the most of them was an ISP that attracted young people in general. Even in that place most of the females saw what they did as a job to make a few bucks, but roughly 5% were interested in doing what the slightly older guys did (which included me, one of the older people there at the age of 21).

I have become convinced from my own interactions that this just is not a female thing. I helped anyone who asked for help, I encouraged learning, self research and gave good long explanations that were fit for a classroom environment. The fact that I have seen women do well, succeed, and run with the men tells me they can. The fact only a few of them would take the initiative to do it when you had someone like me, and my other employees that I encouraged to help and to train any who asked - and did - yet only about 5% wanted to know more than the minimum causes me to wash my hands of it - stop trying to guilt trip me for being good at my job when there are proportionally way less women who can keep up.

Since that job I've worked with other women, other good women who I consider my level. I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty. Nope, most wanted to do the paperwork - which I didn't really mind, because I hate paperwork, but other than title and the official list of duties these women were not my direct peers. Even at the worst of these jobs there was usually one or two women would would run with the guys, but for each of them there was two or three that wouldn't. A man taking the same attitude towards work as those others wouldn't last more than a week or two before being let go.

I'm getting pretty tired of these guilt-tripping affirmative action programs. Instead of giving me more of that 5% or 1 in 3 depending on where I was I'm worried these programs might work and flood the workplace with the 95% or 2 in 3 that the natural dedicated geeks, yes, the men and the women who will run at their level will be expected to carry.

I miss the Dockers with the almost hidden zipper on the leg to hide your phone in.

I really don't see what this has to do with Open Source though.

Exactly! There's no reason women's clothes should cover 70% of the sales floor while the 15% devoted to men (after baby items and household goods are accounted for) should happen. Just make everything kilts, togas, jeans, and T-shirts!

All of the science stuff I grew up with was pretty generic. "Rock Tumbler!" - it had a picture of the rock tumbler, which was black, gray, and red on the outside. That was it. It wasn't gender specific in any way.

My chemistry set came packaged in cardboard with a clear plastic window that let you see the contents which were about as visually exciting as a bunch of little plastic bottles, tweezers, and test tubes could be. They box was silvery gray and mostly contained a bunch of text about what was included. Again, marketed to no gender in particular.

My telescope was packaged in plain cardboard with the words "Sears" and "Telescope" stamped on it. How I miss the Sears catalog - when you ordered something it came in generic looking packaging with none of the blister-pack marketing non-sense attached.

Not marketed to girls? I would argue the stuff from my era wasn't exactly marketed to boys either, these were gifts to me growing up in the 80's and 90's. - Supposedly when things were worse than they are now.

This social-justice-warrior high-horse garbage spilling over into the day-to-day articles on Slashdot is horse crap.

Yet not doing so means we neglect them......

and a bomb lifter.

He collects weird stuff, I don't see a legal problem with it. His wife sure sees a problem with it, but that is another thing all together.

Who really remembers the 1907 Ben-Hur? No one. The 1959 version is a thing of legends.

Who remembers the 1923 The Ten Commandments? Not many. The 1956 one is the one people know.

Oceans 11 from 1960 was quite a loved classic. The 2001 one was popular enough to spawn sequels.

Gone in 60 seconds was a a cult classic, that being said most people I know personally didn't even know about the 1974 one. Same could be said about The Inglorious Bastards being the inspiration for Inglorious Basterds.

I would argue the most recent Batman franchise was the best. The 1989 Batman I used to call "Batman the good one" before the Christopher Nolan version. What generation of reboot was the most recent? 3rd based on the TV series? Fourth based on the serials? More than that based on cartoons?

I had a problem with Jurassic Park from the start. The very first movie didn't follow Michael Crichton's book quite closely enough, the first book basically started where the sequel did, with the dinosaurs being off the island. Each movie in the original series strayed further from the source, and got goofier. As far as I'm concerned a good reboot is needed, either that or a complete disavowment.

uhmm, sure, uhmmm....

I survived the bust than happened right at the end of the Clinton administration/beginning of the Bush administration by being in my field in an unrelated industry. I did I.T. work at an oil company, the burst didn't touch me at all - initially. Until the oil industry took a major hit, and the I.T. industry hadn't recovered yet, but at least I got a well past the burst before I was thrown into the fray.

Now that the I.T. industry is stronger and isn't exactly in a bubble, I'm still shielded by working for another industry. In fact a bit of an I.T. field bust can actually benefit my particular place in the industry as it forces vendors to beg for my business and cut better deals, and if I need to hire project help from the pool to select from is better stocked versus when the industry is thriving. Yes, that's cold and pragmatic, but it doesn't stop it from being a fact.

On the other hand if the I.T. industry is thriving (I really miss those days) I have an easier time jumping ship and going to something better.

That's one of the coolest old men ever! Not to mention he played Dracula in more languages that most people know how to find a bathroom in.

It wasn't in the main text field dumbass, it was in the field that displayed the text of what I said.

I tried sending a text with Google's voice engine last week just to try it out. It did a very good job of taking my dictation to text, then it asked if I wanted to send. I said yes. It spelled out yes in it's little window, then asked again, I said yes again, I tried other words, it also recognized those words, and every time asked me if I wanted to send, while recognizing the words. I finally reached over and hit the send button.

FTR: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world

Yeah, I admit their hardware is pretty good, and it's certainly up near the top in design and reliability, but damn, saying it that way sure does look like a conflict of interest.

I must say I'm surprised and impressed.

Seriously, it exists. Not that I actually used it, I basically booted it up once after purchase to be sure it worked (I didn't go through the setup crap), turned it off, upgraded the RAM and immediately put Kubuntu on it (now replaced with Netrunner).

Starter edition - the (rightfully) forgotten Windows 7.