Why does every single discussion about women in tech immediately result in a bunch of denials, followed by pats on the back (upvotes) as dudes congratulate other dudes on how much of a not-problem there is?

Your post could have closed out the thread. Because that's exactly what it turned into (unsurprisingly).

Thank you for this. I started to read his reply which was even more off-the-wall, so I couldn't finish. But I'll add to your sentiment.

From one male nerd to the rest, who think this way: talk to women. Seriously, talk to them sometime. It will blow your mind just how little you understand about what it's like to be female.

And another thing:

You know how every guy dates some girl he thinks is hot, but it turns out she's pathetic/manipulative/whiny/needy/annoying/whatever? And later, you regret it and think "man, what the hell was I thinking?". I've never met a man who doesn't have at least one regretted relationship, unless they really don't date very much. When guys do this, they have a "man I used to date this stupid bitch" story.

When girls do this, they get raped.

I'm not quite sure why this is so difficult to understand.

Little travel tip that I, as a Canadian, learned years ago entirely by chance.

If you encounter this security system in the US (still mostly as gas pumps) - 99.5% of pumps will allow Canadians to use a "zip code". Take the first 3 numeric digits in your Postal Code, and add "00" to the end, making a 5 digit "zip code". Works like a charm almost every time. I've only had it fail once. And they do actually use this as a security code, I've tried 55555 and 90210 and nothing else will work. But this one does.

I'm stunned that this little tidbit isn't all over the Canadian news, considering how many of us travel to the US (especially in our cars!).

This is only the US version. Canada Post's "super mail" boxes only require one key. You use it, and return it to the outgoing mail slot.

I know many people who still act as if they don't have Internet.

Shows like Spartacus and Game of Thrones are their only boob intake. And they will proudly tell you they will watch them almost solely for the boobs. And spend hours discussing how great the boobs are, if you give them a chance.

Looking this sort of thing up on the Internet apparently will offend the wife, or their inner sensibilities, or something. But seeing it on HBO is just a-OK.

We still live in an eerily puritanical society.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not really making Pakistan look any better. You're picking semantic nits that quite frankly make Pakistan look just as bad - to anyone who has any respect for a woman as an equal.

I'll faux-Godwin the thread and point out that you might as well have said "pf, we're not as bad as Nazi Germany, our gas chambers killed our Jews in a far more humane manner". We didn't make them suffer that badly, stop lumping us in with those nasty Germans!

Your 486DX4-100 was most certainly faster than a Pentium 66, and on par with a 75 if not a bit better. At least for the vast majority of software out at the time. My DX4 lasted me well into 1997, but by that point the affordable Pentiums were into the 200Mhz+ range and MMX was all the rage, so it became a more obvious upgrade.

The only people who ever ran 66s and 75s when they were current were those with money to burn.

Man, I miss how simple things were back then. When clockspeed actually meant something, and there was a pretty linear relationship between it and performance. I haven't cared about CPU performance in nearly a decade. I just get whatever $100 gets me, and I'm ALWAYS I/O- or (less these days) RAM-bound.

You am brasil?

Or, smart enough to realize that almost anything that can be said in 160 characters or less, really isn't worth saying at all.

"Hey, do you wanna to go camping this weekend?"

"Shit, I'm gonna be a few minutes late for our meeting"

Or even something as simple as "Happy Birthday!".

Yeah, I can't possibly think of any use for a communication medium that is terse.

I swear, I'm as much of an old grumpy fuck as the next Slashdotter - but even I recognize something that's ubiquitous, simple, and damned handy. Email is more involved, calling has its own issues (not everyone is free to engage in a call every second of the day), IM is nowhere near standardized...

Gimme SMS text for making plans with people or blasting off quick info, thanks. It's one of the best technologies invented in terms of "it just works". Well, presuming most people have cellphones (insert a bunch of comments below about how you don't own a TV either, and we may have another Onion article on our hands).

Contrary to what some kids seem to think these days, SMS texting is not Twitter. I'm not sending "I'm taking a dump!" to my friends through SMS (although perhaps I should...).

Don't worry, it was a pun and funny.

The poster clearly thought they had a chance to explain your ignorance, but the joke's on them - they didn't realize you actually knew what you were talking about (which was obvious to anyone who "got" the joke).

While I realize your username long predates the US government department of the same name, I found a bit of dark humour in the fact that this post came from someone named "TSA".

Q: What size of quiche are you making that you're using ingredients measured in GALLONS???

A: An American one.

Hate to break it to you, but they made children's movies long before Star Wars. And very few were remembered 35 years later. You may not personally like them, but they were a hell of a lot more than just "mediocre children's movies", for several generations.

Hell, my 30-something parents (at the time) absolutely loved them and saw them several times in the original theatrical run. While that may be no big deal today, with adults regularly going to "children's" movies - 30 years ago it was COMPLETELY UNHEARD OF.

The originals completely defined the movie-going experience in ways we still don't fully understand. Damn near every movie made since then owes something to Star Wars - whether it's in merchandising, blockbusting, hype, promotion, special effects, genre-openness, sequel anticipation, or just plain cool factor.

Well like most people, I messed around with a ton of distros at first. Slack, Gentoo (ugh), Debian, Suse, Mandrake, probably more that I don't remember.

Once I went "full on Linux" on my desktop in 2003: Red hat -> Knoppix -> Ubuntu -> Kubuntu (within a few days). And I've been there ever since. I've always kept a laptop running Windows handy (XP, Vista (yes, Vista) and now 7) for those one-offs that just have problems in Linux. Which are extremely few and far between these past few years.

I'm weird in that I know virtually no one who used Knoppix (3.0/4.0 days) as a primary desktop distro for any length of time. Personally, I found that at the time it had one of the best h/w detection routines, it installed fairly cleanly, and it was just overall a nice distro to work with. I used it exclusively for several years. I really only moved off once *ubuntu took off as a valid alternative.

Perfectly predictable insurance means that you end up paying exactly the cost of the damage you cause. Or in other words, exactly what would happen in a world without insurance (which incidentally is precisely what happens in situations where a "really bad driver" cannot afford any insurance at all - they go without).

Insurance, by definition and design, is about SPREADING risk. Not charging people exactly based on their risk. Most people seem to have a hard time grasping that. I'm not sure these devices are such a great idea - if we're just going to charge people commensurate with the damages they may cause, what's the point of insurance in the first place? Just send them the bill for repairs/medical bills and that's their new premium.