The paper is about the use of the flip graphical language and their experiences with it as a teaching tool. The gender findings are just mentioned by the by, and have been seized upon by the popular press. (For obvious reasons. Certainly no made less obvious by the super defensive "But that certainly must not be true!" response from so many people here. Oh, /.)

Mind you, the primary issue isn't one of sample size (though yeah, ideally more would be a plan) but selection, and it appears that the difference between the two groups is pretty large in that class. The problem is that it is a class, which makes it a seriously non-random population. Not a big thing when the point of the paper is "We built this cool teaching tool, and this is our experience using our teaching tool," but if you wanted to make a more general statement about learning, you would want a differently chosen population.

Or a number of different classes, which doesn't sidestep all of the problems, but is a lot easier to implement.

The problem of course comes not when you download it, but when it's placed on a /. server so that people can dowload it from there, rather than from the WaPo site. This is, like, remedial piracy.

Providing a link to the review was genius.

I was pretty appalled that he grabbed me - even in terms of Cleveland, where* having random construction workers call out to bring my ass over there so they can stick their dick in it** - campus was usually free from the overtly obnoxious crap. I didn't perceive it as particularly physically threatening, but many, perhaps most women might have.

Getting police involved? It really didn't occur to me, and I wonder if I'd be taken seriously - he grabbed my arm, I shook him off and was clearly really mad, he backed the hell away. OTOH, philosophically, if someone, say, tried to attack me on the street I would call the police even were I easily able to resolve the issue without injury to myself - I don't think being a martial artist means that it's okay to attack me, and I don't think me having humiliated an attacker means that they shouldn't then have to deal with the police. But in this case, even if it had occurred to me, my gut sense is that I wouldn't have been taken seriously. Escalating it through the university would have been another matter though... ugh. That just sounds like such a probable clusterfuck.

If someone groped me at a conference, even one which I was attending on my own time, yes, I would report it, both to the conference staff and the local police. And frankly I would be prepared for it to blow up in my face. Because I am a woman in tech, and that happens a reasonable proportion of the time. (And while I wince to think of some of the crap I've taken - or, rather, slapped down but not reported - I also know it's partly because as a woman, getting a reputation as someone who calls harassment is career poison.)

If someone groped me in a purely social setting, I'd consult my hosts, first. Depending on the circumstances, having the offending party thrown out of the event with prejudice might be a satisfactory option,*** and inviting the police to a party in progress might be more trouble than it's worth.

* Well, when I still had hair - when I arrive I had hip length hair, though it was always either tied up or braided back. For a number of reasons I ended up trimming my hair down to a couple of mm, which has cut down on the catcalling a lot.
** Seattle so very much did not prepare me for this.
*** This is a pretty well established option, too.

The professional colleague? I broke his hold - more or less reflexively, and stingingly - and wondered whether I needed to introduce his face to a nearby wall. Not that I said anything, and I doubt he had the background to really read the stance change, but he clearly got the "that was a really terrible idea" and backed off. It honestly didn't occur to me to press charges.* He's in a different department, and so he's not someone I have to deal with on a regular basis, which helps. (This was just a couple of years ago. Though I think he might have moved on, as I haven't seen him in a year or so.)

I wonder a bit more about the groping in social situations, to be honest. I mean, at the time - this was mostly a decade or more back** I had a fairly well established reputation as someone to treat with respect, and it was socially considered kind of funny that occasionally someone would push the line and I would firmly and somewhat painfully explain to him the error of his ways. It was downright hilarious that there was one guy who was such an idiot as to try it twice. This was back when I still worked in industry, and seriously, while I rarely dealt with coworkers with inappropriate touching issues, dealing with (mostly mild) inappropriate behavior from male coworkers was really common, I was good at it, and saw that kind of toughness as part of doing well as a woman in software - especially in a leadership role. (And yes, I'm skipping back and forth between social and work responses - but then, I worked a lot, most of my friends were also in software, and each response shaped the other.)

Now, looking at that all, I think my approach doesn't port and doesn't scale. I mean, I'm tall, muscular, socially confident, a trained martial artist***... and mostly what the more clueless guys seemed to get from our interactions was not to push the line *with me.* Most of my fellow geek women are smaller, shyer and not as well trained for these situations. (And less used to having to get into people's faces on a regular basis. One of the things I enjoy most about not being in software is that research gives me so much more room to be a nice person...)

Other than refusing to have anything to do with social contexts that don't throw folks out for that kind of behavior, though I'm not entirely certain what to do. I mean, when is it appropriate to press charges? When will you be taken seriously (considering how hard it is to get taken seriously for a rape charge much of the time "someone grabbed my tit at a party" seems like a non-starter). And, of course, there are all the semi-social things - say, geek conferences that one attends on one's own time.

BTW - on that whole "Men are expected to make the advances..." So, I know there's generally speaking an expectation there (and I know that a number of my female research students don't follow it). But personally, I've initiated the majority of relationships (and, for that matter, one night stands) I've been in. So it's really frustrating when I hear this kind of thing brought up in the context of bad male behavior (especially since considering my generally social affect it's hard to imagine anyone convincing themself I was playing the coquette).

* Okay, truth, I was more thinking of things like dislocating his elbow. And whether I was going to survive my time in Ohio, which has a lot more rampant street harassment, without doing someone serious bodily harm. And I don't tend to hurt people as a first response, and de-escalation is pretty deeply engrained, but yeesh - I mean, clearly I want people calling obscenities at me, I went out wearing my breasts.
** I don't get out much, between the research and martial arts, and most of the parties I do attend will throw people out for that kind of behavior and make sure they're never invited back.
*** And I still run into some of this shit, and doesn't that say something right there?

Now doesn't that just take me back...

That's mostly the one I work with.

Mostly, because there are exceptions. Guys who come up behind me, hug me and grab my breast? I put them in a joint lock right off.* Maybe it's the difference between harassment and assault.

* Though a male friend opines that if they did that to a guy, he'd most likely slug them in the jaw, so a joint lock that's only really painful if you're stupid enough to fight it while I explain that you don't touch me without asking first** might really count as one free try.
** Though I cut folks a lot more slack if it's not outright groping. Well, or trying to restrain me. (No, seriously, after turning down a professional colleague a few times, he came up and tried to chat me up, so I told him I didn't want to talk to him. Clear, simple direct. So he grabbed hold of my arm. Which was not only highly inappropriate, but he also knew that I'm a martial arts instructor, making it incredibly stupid.)

I wouldn't be surprised if many slashdotters who are women are avoiding reading the comments (a lot of the comments on posts having to do with gender dynamics have been awfully toxic recently) or are reluctant to post, but there are quite a few of us around, y'know?

I don't think applying the term "troll" to your second type is really that useful, especially since it tends to lead to people confusing it with the first type and discounting the problem.

Hear, hear.

Trolling is obnoxious, and different forums can have different ways of dealing with it - and there are and should be forums where it's just ignored and tolerated. (Because dealing with idiots is part of free and open communications. And going into walled gardens to get away from idiots is always an option.)

Stalking, harassment and threats are a bit more than that, and confusing the two does a disservice to both - but more importantly, to all of us.

Yeah, but that only applies if the images shown are the same - which they aren't. (And there's probably a particularly poor overlap between geek girls who are interested in games and folks buying Cosmo or whatever.)

I wonder about routes of exposure. I was going to write about how my best friend (also female) first got me into gaming via D&D - and then it occurred to me that no, really my first exposure was when my dad introduced me to Collosal Cave Adventure (which was right then bring the entire CS department to a screeching halt) when I was five. My later vectors were my aforementioned SF geek best friend and my hacking buddies.

And the scantily clad fantasy babes used in a lot of advertisements are seriously offputting to a lot of women, especially teenagers.

"...and if you don't have that skill-set..."

Or if it's just not your favorite thing. Game style preference doesn't mean lack of skill (though if one is bored enough by a particular style one is less likely to acquire the skill, but there's a lot of room for playing this while I wait for something better to come along.)

Do you mean, like, back to the Qin Emperor?