The guy in the story says that there were some wireless options but they were extremely expensive. Just fine them the cost of the wireless service until they install the cable.

I use Keepass backed up a cloud storage drive and my home server. Even if I lose everything on me I can still go to any random computer and access the database file, and open it with a quick download of Keepass. In the event that I lost everything at the airport I'm sure I could scrounge give minutes of computer time from somewhere.

Australia is a common law country, right? Is it even possible for them to put you in a position where discontinuing an action is illegal, effectively forcing you to do it? Obviously they passed the law, but would it stand up in court?

I'm trying to think of some legal basis to challenge it. What if the canary required signing with two PGP keys to be considered valid, and one of those keys was held by someone outside Australia? The victim in Australia wouldn't be able to force them to sign the canary, but might still be found guilty for setting up such a mechanism in the first place.

Other providers like Tencent are offering a few terabytes for free, so the only real reason to pay Amazon is for their guaranteed service level... Which appears to be non-existent. So, I'm not sure why you would pay $60/year for this.

I like having unlimited on-line encrypted backups. If good software is available that supports Amazon I suppose that would be a selling point.

I imagine people made the same complaint about newspapers when black rights really started to gain traction and the last racist laws were being challenged/repealed. They definitely made the same complaints when gay rights and same-sex marriage was being introduced.

Actually the same-sex marriage "debate" has many interesting parallels to this one. Many of the anti-gay-rights people made similar claims to the anti-feminism people, e.g. gay people aren't interested in marriage and the whole issue is just an attack on straight people. There were claims that it was just a tax dodge, people wanting to marry their same-sex children or friends just to transfer money without any of it going to the government. All sorts of theories about how it was all nothing to do with the core issues: rights and fairness.

Don't worry, big improvements are being made, most of the major tech companies are making a real effort to sort this out. In a few years it will go away.

Here is a really good post on Oculus and why they are failing, rather than being an example of why there isn't a problem: http://killscreendaily.com/art...

If you want to claim that Oculus is proof women don't want to work in tech, you have to explain why their parent company (Facebook) manages to employ a 30% female workforce.

Your example of Oculus is misleading. They are almost 100% male, and yet companies like Facebook are around 30% female, so clearly the problem is with the way they are hiring and not with women simply being uninterested in technology. They actually mentioned what the problem is in their Q/A session:

So they know the problem - very few women applied - but don't know the solution. Companies like Facebook clearly do know the solution, it's no great mystery. A lot of applicants come from networking contacts. Men tend to network with other men more than women, so it's a feedback loop that ensures most of the applicants will be male. Maybe they were not offering much flexibility that women look for to balance their work and family lives. There are books about this stuff, they could fix it if they wanted to.

Why are you trying to make it into some kind of gender war, where one side has to lose for the other to gain? It's not a zero sum game and it's not about women trying to beat men down. That's your take on it, not what mainstream feminists and companies that make an effort to hire more women are trying to do.

Your anecdote is interesting because it shows who people's preconceptions colour their perception of events. Let's look at alternative explanations of what happened, with no offence intended towards you.

It sounds like HR had identified specific issue in the company and was monitoring it. An employee was then promoted based on merit. If there is any fault here, it's that HR didn't make enough effort to check that other employees were given the same opportunities.

Someone had identified this employee as a valuable asset and decided it was worth making an effort to employ her. It turned out that they were right. Race and gender had nothing to do with it.

When these sorts of things get to trial there usually has to be more evidence than this, precisely because it can be interpreted either way.

That's certainly the current anti-feminist narrative. There is no problem, sexism is over and anyone who complains is themselves a sexist, usually a man hater. Same with racism, there isn't any of that any more and people complaining about it just want money and privilege.

If a company never hires women it's pretty easy to catch them in a sting where you send two more or less identical CVs, one with a woman's name and one with a man's. If the women's is rejected and the man gets an interview it's lawsuit time.

The only way to avoid being sued for discrimination is to stop discriminating, not to do more of it.

Or, you know, they could just stop discriminating and avoid lawsuits that way. Seems easier than trying to screen for people who might sue them, which itself may fall foul of discrimination laws if they start asking about certain aspects of that person's life.

Depends on the situation, doesn't it? If the guy was married he might be pretty upset. If he is interested in the women he might not. In any case men are more likely to keep quiet about it because they are afraid of looking weak if they complain, because you know, macho nonsense and all that. That's what people mean when they talk about deconstructing masculinity - it's okay to complain about unacceptable behaviour, it's the right thing to do.

According to undisputed court testimony Pao did complain multiple times and was eventually side-lined and eventually fired.

I've worked with many women and constantly smile at them, also never been sued into oblivion or accused of being a creep. I even asked one out once, didn't seem to be a problem.

I think some guys are walking on egg shells all the time because they fear being accused of sexual harassment when actually there is very little danger. If it is as bad as you say where you work then your company has a serious problem. It might actually work out for you though because such insane policies are likely to be quite lucrative when you sue them for wrongful dismissal.

Are you sure it's just women that have this power? Have you tried falsely accusing a women of harassing you to see if she is instantly fired?

Personally I really like working with women. Cuts out a lot of the macho bullshit you get otherwise, and all the work environments that have been mixed have seemed a lot nicer than the male only ones I've experienced.

RSA probably feels that it's a technology conference, so using sex to sell products is inappropriate. It's not really the sexism, it's the fact that it harms the reputation of the conference as a serious technology driven event and not just another consumer tech party.

How did you get from my suggestion to give them more choices to "take away all their choices"?