This subject tends to make men believe they are being accused of being sexist. That somehow the imbalance is a consequence of deliberate or perhaps inadvertent sexism. The thing is this: there doesn't need to be overt sexism for an environment to be uninviting.

Any situation where there is an existing gender imbalance leads to this imbalance being reinforced simply because it is less comfortable for the minority and more comfortable for the majority.

So when it is suggested that we need to make special efforts to attract women to the IT industry it is not necessarily to redress a active sexist attitudes on a matter of principle or to be PC, but rather a simple and pragmatic approach to getting the other half of the population to contribute to the IT industry.

You're cute when you are naive. When the DMCA passed its implications for free speech were clear, and since that time have been used to control what appears on YouTube and many other sites. Corporations now control speech. When the PATRIOT act passed it was almost unanimous. Now you get to be virtually stripped naked every time you fly; a gross invasion of privacy. The NDAA sweeps away the last vestiges of any of your rights to a trial. Corporations now assign their cronies into critical Government roles at will while the Police permit execution of innocents in the streets if they belong to a minority. Meanwhile Corporations have purchased the media to openly indoctrinate and control the population. They don't even try to hide this agenda any longer.

The last time the US were considered the defenders of freedom and justice was a long time ago. The OOXML business was another example of corporate interests corrupting genuine efforts to create a genuine standard to help users. Again the object was to control and restrict people. Now we have the US exporting legislation like the DMCA via ACTA and TPPA to other countries to extend their iron grip of cultural death.

Wake up America - this is not a case of "one day" ending up in 1984 - you are there now. Just look at how the Occupy movement failed through control of the media. There will be no revolution of the people while corporations can control the discussion and the media. Wake up - you have already lost your rights.

Sounds like a opportunity to reverse engineer it and make it available more generally for those in a similar situation.

The interesting thing for me was that the description in the article was an excellent CV. We have had many discussions here about whether a Computer Science Degree really prepares you for the IT industry, and in my opinion they are at best a primer. I am also "unqualified", but have made a successful career in IT. I have also been making hiring decisions for several years in several organisations.

When you get past the skill set required what I am looking for is independence in terms of being able to take a task or feature and deliver it without overt oversight. Are you able to analyze a requirement, come up with a solution, and deliver it? Do you have professional disiplines? I'm talking about use of version control, working inside a team environment.

One way of getting exactly these kinds of skills is through open source teams. Open source provides a low barrier to entry for those looking to make their mark. It will give you excellent practical experience, that in my book is approximately double the value of commercial experience because it shows commitment and passion for software development.

In short the original description above reads better than most CV's I get across my desk. University qualifications do play a part, but not as much as you might think.

"He'll be our President because we put him there"... I think maybe Democracy is broken. If regardless of who you vote for the result is the same you are living in a Dictatorship. It's not just patents either - Gitmo, Iraq, Patriot Act, Health Care, seems that even when the Republicans aren't in office they are. No wonder the focus has been on security - they are gonna need it when the people find out they have been duped by the DemoRepublican Party for so long.

And what about the countries unlucky enough to be situated below the equator?

This is an interesting question because it brings up a serious problem with how poor the common domain has become. Maori have a culture and cultural artifacts which they own collectively. It is their culture. No single Maori can claim it for themselves, but they together own it. Today virtually all the cultural artifacts of our period are owned by someone else. Try and use the artifacts of your own culture in a new work and just see how fast you will find yourself in court for copyright violation.

Sing a popular song, draw a picture of a Coke can, or copy a tattoo from someone who is famous, and suddenly it's a huge problem. But it is clearly a double standard. They can copy cultural artifacts, but we cannot copy them.

I'm not really standing up for pirates - outright duplication of works for profit - but I do think that there should be a liberal ability for individuals to copy segments in order to create new works.

In other news coming to hand, "Free Software" doesn't mean the software is free of cost.

And exactly are they going to control a robotic vessel with it's rudder and propulsion at the bottom of the ship covered in tons and tons of cargo? Hell - they will need gear to cut into the hold just to get access to cargo, and then they need some way to carry it away. The ship won't stop, and if you do manage to disable the control systems you won't have any easy means to actually control the ship. It would be much more difficult to pirate such a ship.

Right now this is a "fun" project - I'm not trying to get too worried about the applications. The real issue with autonomous boats is the ability to visually detect and avoid other craft. While not important with small models like I've got now, once we start to get to a reasonable size it will need to be able to process visual information to identify and avoid collisions.

I think it is a mistake to try and build a boat like this around a specific application - especially cleaning oil. Energy would be better directed into developing systems to carry cargo. Think about cargo ships sailing into dangerous areas - such as those with pirates. If you have a ship that is autonomous there are no lives to risk, and if boarded the control systems could be buried under tons of cargo; impossible to reach, and with ability to control from on board.

Such vessels would be controlled by satellite. They would of course need the software to run autonomously, including interfacing with radar, GPS, visual etc. Another advantage with this approach would be that you could make them smaller, and make them sailing ships; or perhaps wind turbine or kite assisted. Plenty of possibilities to reduce the carbon emissions of international trade.

They want tens of thousands of dollars to make a prototype that will be "low cost"? This isn't a story about something that has been actually made. How much is actually required to make a autonomous boat? Well, I guess I know a little more than most, since I've actually built a prototype - the budget needed for all the parts easily comes in under $3000.

My latest efforts are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zvC-CpljCc

The "Open Boat" project is intended as a research platform; eventually to permit long term sea going boats to perform research such as weather monitoring. It is also the first step towards investigating autonomous cargo vessels. All the software is open source, and currently running on a Linux based ARM.

University gives you critical thinking skills. It gives you a broad knowledge that has applicability beyond your job. However, However, I do understand what this employer means, but University will never be the environment to churn out ready to go developers. What is needed is an apprenticeships where those new to development are taken under the wing of an experienced developer.

It seems that most people here have assumed that it should be digital storage. For example, flash drives or USB hard drives that can be stored in a safe place. These are certainly a good idea, and you should do this. However, there is one thing you should also do: Print photos. Nothing is quite as durable as photographic paper - especially when you treat it right, by which I mean keeping photos in somewhere away from moisture and heat variation.

Keeping images in paper form does require a device to view them. Devices and interfaces change, so keeping things in the digital space means moving when interfaces change. Also formats change, such as on disk formats. However, paper requires no maintenance; you can store it more or less indefinitely and you will never have any trouble "reading" the data. Sure paper does not have the same information density, so you might have to be more choosy about which ones to print, but this will only increase the quality of your collection.

Build it and they will come?

The reality is that without a concerned marketing plan people won't knock down your door. Most businesses will want their applications supported properly, with contracted SLA's. Sales cycles can be long.

I'm not saying this to come down on you; I'm suggesting a few mays you might be able to capitalize on what you have done:

- Find an existing company selling into the industry you have developed the software for; try and make a deal so they will get the lion share of the revenue, but will handle promotion, marketing and support.

- Sell the software outright to a company as above.

- Make it Open Source and encourage users. Then, if it takes off you will be in a position to support it and continue development.