Firefox still remains my browser of choice: it has it's problems, yes, but for me, configurability is king. (Chrome, what do you mean I can't - even with an extension - mousewheel to change tabs or set up a mouse gesture to minimise the window?) And IE is a total non-starter on that front: it's rubbish defaults are pretty much all you are going to get. Things like Adblock (and now, Noscript) are essentials as far as I'm concerned, and (since Opera, see below), so is the ability to configure tabs and set up mouse gestures - it's just so much faster having proper control and the ability to configure things. This is also why Safari will never be an option: a while back, when we had a weird proxy issue, Safari was the only browser that didn't let you into the proxy config enough to fix it - the stock answer for Mac users then was "You'll have to use Firefox".

Over time, it has been something like: Netscape (for the tiny bit of my internet-accessing days where that was relevant), then Internet Explorer (because there was no choice when Netscape imploded), then Opera (this was a good decade ahead of the others in terms of features for quite some time), then Firefox (when I finally gave up on having to keep switching to IE for all those sites that didn't support Opera - at the time, Firefox was more supported in more places). And Firefox it has stayed, for a long time. Chrome has never sat well with me: too much memory hogging, not enough ability to configure it (and not as good on the extensions front); minimalism is fine for some, but I want to be able to put exactly what I want, where I want (and yes, this means I have no less than 6 buttons on my toolbar for extensions - and I use all of them).

Also, Firefox is one of the only browsers that still separates the search and URL bars. If I want to search, I will use the search bar - I do not want you trying to hit up Google Search just because the slightly unusual URL I typed doesn't look like a URL to you.

Having said this, browser use in recent times has become more heterogeneous. There are times at work that I can't avoid IE (e.g. intranet; also, specifying that IE is the only browser we should be using is an utterly retarded decision on the part of our IT department - but thankfully Portable Apps exist). Chrome tends to get used for times when we don't want to reload a session of 10+ tabs for one thing, or for video streaming, when we don't need to be multitasking. At times, it's now "whichever browser is closest", although Firefox to me is still the best, as it's one of the few that actually still lets me make decisions for myself on how the browser should behave.

This idea of Chrome-only apps that's starting to emerge is horrid. Please do not do that. (I have an Android app that I would use on the desktop as well, if it had a version for anything other than a Chrome version - it's not worth another browser just for that).

Another reason I want to keep using Firefox is that it keeps a third rendering engine in the game (although I am getting concerned that this is starting to be lost): Firefox was a hero back when it finally managed to eke out just enough market share that "Designed for Internet Explorer" ceased to be valid, and we finally saw innovation return to the browser scene (arguably, this paved the way for things like Chrome to exist). The three-way Trident/Webkit/Gecko* scene we have had has seen more browser innovation than ever, but I worry that if we drop back to only two, we might see a duopoly that stifles innovation. Oddly enough, Microsoft's decision to revamp but not go Webkit was actually worth applause I think (not that I'm going to use it) - they apparently did this because they wanted to avoid a single-browser-engine world (though the irony of that shouldn't be lost on the audience here).

*Sorry Opera, you were great, but never quite big enough to make the difference you deserved; RIP Presto.

This is actually quite a good point. As someone with more than one Gmail account (personal, business, and one through my university), having tabs with different sessions would be a really, really useful feature (Gmail's built-in ability to link accounts and switch between them is fine - if you only want one open at a time; for those of us that want a different account in each tab, useable at the same time, it doesn't work well at all).

We also use persistent sessions as it's extremely useful, but sometimes when you just want to quickly check that one thing, you don't want to wait for a browser to load 10 - 20 tabs... As a consequence of all of this, we end up with 2 (or in my wife's case) 3 browsers open. An ability to say "this tab is to be an isolated session" (isolated, not private browsing, although that can be useful for this sort of thing as well), and an ability to have a "quick-load the browser without messing with my normal session and loading everything I had open" would be two excellent solutions - unless someone knows how to do either of these?

The issue is that high school grades are now skewing to see girls doing much better than guys, but those "most competent" students aren't taking up the STEM jobs (arguably the most useful ones for our high-tech society). So, the logical conclusion is to try and get skilled engineers by tapping into those skilled students - who just happen to be female. The whole point of this is to increase the number of skilled engineers.

Also, from what I have seen, the more diverse a team or industry is (and this goes far beyond gender), the better it is, especially when that discipline has to deal with high complexity - which is absolutely the case with the modern tech/engineering industries. We need a wider range of types of thinking in engineering.

As for the school teachers one, there is some evidence that a mixture of male and female teachers is good for students (in particular, boys need good male role models at that age), so gender diversity specifically does have benefit.

This is also a problem, although one that probably isn't quite as easy to solve, as it's more socially complex. The "females in STEM" one is generally based on two factors, (a) it hasn't been advertised/understood as something they would like (which TFA is addressing), and (b) a tendency for the industry to be a bit hostile to females once they graduate. The "less males are graduating high school" problem is one that I don't think we have as many answers to, although I do know of a bunch of candidate social reasons that could be causing it. A simple one is probably that young boys are more geared to want to go out and do something than sit and comply with academic requirements (which have only got more demanding), and we have pulled back on the old-school harsh discipline that forced them to learn that, but that's far from the only factor.

We need to address both, and I think you are right that our current focus is perhaps skewed more to one than the other. But, let's encourage both, not discourage either.

Yes, you can have an actual citation (publication from the Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand; PDF warning).

And, on the anecdotal side, as someone who has a number of female engineers as friends and who works as an engineer myself, I can say that it can be pretty sexist - sometimes not intentionally; it can be just that it's a bunch of old guys who have been working with the same bunch of old guys for the last 40 years, and so end up being a little impenetrable to outsiders, and young guys tend to be more pushy so get a better chance of getting in to those clubs. Of course, at other times, there are baby boomer engineers who don't trust female engineers because they have never worked with them, so it can get a bit more actively stifling. A female engineer has more to prove to be accepted, even if she is equally (or more) competent.

Here's a question though: how many people actually know what an engineer is or does? If you ask the average high school student, you will probably find that most really don't have any idea. I knew quite a few (female) classmates who really enjoyed engineering, but almost all of them had some "Aha" moment (that could easily have been missed) where they found out what engineering actually was. I know someone now who wishes she had done engineering, but didn't know what it was when she was choosing what to study.

Engineering is extremely diverse and has so many possible applications, but the general understanding of what an engineer does is really narrow, and I can understand why someone (female or not) would find that narrow idea really boring and unattractive. It wasn't until I (through a relative) realised what engineering can do for the world that I developed any interest in it - and now, I find myself wishing I had known all this earlier.

Engineering has been a pretty poorly-advertised discipline. This is starting to change (here in New Zealand, we have a bit of an advantage with the Christchurch earthquakes bringing the importance of civil engineering to the fore, but also the work of excellent people like Michelle Dickinson, aka "Nanogirl", who are working to change that). If more people knew what you could do with it, they'd be more interested. Engineering has had a very "uncool" and "boy's drinking club" look, and that needs to change.

I would agree with this, although it goes beyond just "males catering to males" to "what has usually been a particularly type of personality and thinking type creating courses catering to that type". The prototypical engineer has been a sequential thinker, ordered, focused more on minute details than the big picture, and used to order and predictability, and without much need of being a people person. Of course, the reality is that the world now needs engineers with management and other soft skills, and who can deal with complexity, incomplete information, and are able to be more flexible in their thinking, creative, and adaptable.

I'm completely at the other end of the sequential/globalist thinker scale to the "average" for engineers, and I really felt it with certain lecturers (feeling completely lost for an hour of derivations to only finally understand at the end of the lecture what we were aiming for - at which point I could have gone back and actually started to understand it; all it would have taken is a couple of minutes to give an outline at the start, but because of the lecturer's thinking style, they didn't cater to anyone different). On the other hand, the faculty trying to introduce subjects that tackled more management-focused topics with vaguely-defined goals ("What do you mean we have to work out what we think the assignment means?") were subjects that I enjoyed far more than most of my classmates.

I think it's good for the discipline. Engineering no longer exists as a back-room theoretical discipline now; the world has become more complex than that, and so widening to include a range of people types is good (whether that be different thinking/learning styles, or other genders, or whatever). I had female classmates who I would easily hire ahead of the guys, because they added more than just competency (they had that too; some even left me feeling a little stupid, and I'm no intellectual slouch).

However (and I can literally talk from first-hand experience here), if you have a goal in what you are doing, it gives a lot more motivation to slog through the stuff you don't like. I have kind of come to an uneasy peace with calculus, but hated it when I started my engineering degree (and still wouldn't describe myself as good at it). But, because I had a purpose in doing the degree (my goal with it from the start has been to get into humanitarian work), I had the motivation to do the uninteresting bits because I could see why they were important.

You are right though that the interesting stuff comes at the end though. Doesn't stop you getting through necessarily though - everyone I knew who had a purpose in it did ok on that front.

Also, was "build all the foundations" intentionally a civil engineering pun? :-)

As someone who recently finished a civil engineering degree, and tended to have more female than male friends in my classes, I can say that I think the idea is excellent - although, not just because it will attract females, but also because it will attract people who want to make a difference to disciplines that can make a difference. My entire reason for doing civil engineering was to get into humanitarian work, so I have perhaps a different approach than most (I'm currently looking at what I might be able to do in Nepal, though I possibly don't have sufficient experience yet). I didn't see the degree as being particularly tailored to "make the world better", despite the fact that a lot of people wanted to (social causes are a big thing for Gen Y particularly). Our local chapter of Engineers Without Borders was quite "female-heavy" too, so I would agree that it is often females who go for the social causes more - although some of us guys do too (interestingly, some of the highest achievers among the guys were the ones who had the most involvement with EWB).

Adding a social conscience to STEM subjects can only be a good thing IMHO: it's certainly not going to hurt having that taught to those who are doing the subjects just for the money too, even if only a small part of it sticks.

Suggesting that we need to adapt electric engine + battery technology to serve SUVs and big pickup trucks is just a little disingenuous... What we actually need is for Americans (and others, but mostly Americans) to stop thinking that SUVs are a good idea. Just because lots of people have been buying a vehicle that is totally unsuitable for the usual use-case doesn't mean that we should try and work out how to make that continue. It means people need to learn to adjust their lifestyle to suit the realities of the world we live in, before they break it.

Yes, there are cases where something like a pickup truck is useful and a good choice. No, that does not describe most buyers of these vehicles.

Of course, the question is then: why is this fluid "crystal clear". That implies a notably different (probably quite a bit simpler) chemical composition. In theory, if you landed at only and exactly the average of a normal fuel, it should still work fine (e.g. same average, lower spread), although the engine tuning might need adjustment (which may be totally automatic in a modern car now?) Of course, the good news is that if it is more homogeneous, then you should be able to achieve cleaner combustion (maybe even near perfect?), as you are only tuning for one substance, not a wide, diverse range.

Of course, there probably is something inherently worse about the coal bogeyman than the nuclear one. It just doesn't get the headlines that the nuclear one does. This needs to change (and, we need to go to MSRs and/or Thorium - or at least gen 4 reactors, like say a pebble bed - so that we reduce the danger further).

I expect that at some point, the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be viewed as the "nuclear dark age", because we stopped making them safer and got so frightened that we didn't actually build better ones.

This "let's have as few useful things as we can" idea is rubbish (Apple!)

The sole Apple device I own is a Macbook Pro, and that only because it was inherited with a broken screen and too expensive to fix (it runs Linux BTW, and I haven't booted OSX once since I got that up and running). But, because of said broken screen, it gets used as a pseudo-desktop, so consequently mouse, keyboard, and the invariable "something else" (USB drive, phone, sometimes multiples thereof) require more than the given two ports, and thus a hub - which is stupid, when that's just for my basic setup. In my opinion, two ports (or worse, one) is bad design, because it's only catering to the "most people, most of the time" crowd, leaving no space for the slightly more unusual cases, which invariably happen. And, as someone noted, this doesn't consider the failure and/or destruction of a USB port (we had this happen with a previous laptop when its power cable got tripped over - for anyone with kids, a broken USB port is only a matter of time).

Also, if you are not thinking about mouse+keyboard+external monitor as a standard setup, then you don't care about your users' posture or the health of their backs. I rarely use any laptop for an extended period without this configuration, and then only because I don't have much option (e.g. in bed, on a bus) - and I usually regret the hunching posture pretty soon after.

Fewer ports on an ultra-portable (ultrabook or *cough* netbook) makes some sense, but I would still say 3 is my minimum expectation, although I might settle at 2 in those cases. Considering that the Macbook was definitely not in the ultra-portable category (previous user was a graphic designer), I see 2 ports as very poor - especially considering the original price tag!

What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that wireless tech, while constantly improving, is fundamentally going to be worse performance than a physical, wired connection. I notice this with our wireless mouses (just that tiniest bit of responsiveness glitch). When I want to transfer files, it's still faster for me to use a naff old UTP cable than it is to use the 802.11n wireless (of course, for bigger files, an external USB drive still seems to be quicker than both, especially if it's all USB3 or eSATA). Yes, wireless is nice for convenience, but not for performance or reliability.

Let's just say that next time someone mentions they are thinking of buying a Mac with it's single failure point port, I'll have a really simple answer: "No, don't."

Maybe I'm just strange because I actually want to use a computer to be productive? (Also why I loathe touchpads).

I've always thought that a better option than "must have at least 1 upper case and 1 lower case letter, 1 number, 1 symbol, and 1 untypeable character" kind of rules, is to match the passwords users are attempting to set up against a rainbow table (i.e. approach it in the same way that hackers do). "P@ssw0rd1" is a crap password, but will be accepted by almost any site as "strong". Instead, match against a dictionary, against known common passwords, and against a general sanity filter (e.g. 3 characters is too short, perhaps even display the results of an entropy calculation if you're feeling really snazzy). beaglemayhemsenselessaurevoir would be an excellent password - but a lot of algorithms wouldn't think so.

This works fine... as long as the browser (or the HDD it's stored on) doesn't crash. The reason we use passwords is that we need something we can take with us anywhere, which pretty much limits it to "something you know" (as "something you are" - i.e. biometrics - isn't implemented for this sort of thing yet, and we tend to lose the "something we have").

Best kind of password though: the nonsense phrase. Easy to remember, hard to guess. I read "Beagles twirl whiddershins up my saxophone" in a magazine article about passwords some 10 - 15 years ago and have never had trouble remembering it since. The "acronym" nonsense phrase is about as good (e.g. "I like eating ten elephants" = "ile10e").