That's nice. I hear that the best form of debate is where you just to call everything you don't agree with bullshit. Fortunately for you, you may even get a few upvotes.

However, judging by the fact that you seem to receive very few upvotes at all for any of the comments you post (but quite a few downvotes), I'm going to suggest that you change strategy, and maybe accept that you can be wrong. Because, applied to software, you sound like the kind of guy who will claim that a problem doesn't exist (because you can't replicate it), until your coworkers find it and fix it for you.

Those two stories are totally legit. Believe it or not, I actually forgot about them until recently because they are from 5-10 years ago. Every male including myself knows that every female pretty much strolls online and gets harassed. And, stuff like that needs to change. I don't believe from a business point of view women will ever get full pay parity (because if they have kids they will be away from work, etc), but, things are worse than that. The Christmas tree thing had good intentions, but the plan is kind of flawed

In one place I worked, the CEO said they don't hire women because all they do is "sit around and look pretty, and hang out on facebook". At another, the director was worried about sexual harassment issues.

The problem isn't the workers, its the people doing the hiring, and the CEO's. I agree that women don't seem to be as interested in IT, but, with all due respect, there are serious problems in our industry, and you sir, are actually the one saying bullshit (but you might not realise it).

And yes, this is written by a guy. And no, I don't support everything women claims, but, the above is just my experience (its the side of the story which people like yourself may not hear about).

Things are a bit different in those occupations though. I'm a male, and there are many women who are avoiding computing simply because of the way they are being treated (I didn't want to believe it either). But, in occupations such as nursing, where there are less men, they aren't finding that men aren't being hired simply because of a persons gender. In fact, they are actively being encouraged to join and hired.

But women on the other hand are often being treated badly, the moment they contribute to any computing discussion (many female blogs are absolutely buried in comments from 10 year old guys saying how they will mistreat them). So targeting high schools is only a good thing.

But, I don't believe discriminating against men to get women into the field is the right way either, which is the case here. I was the only guy in my high school who knew C++, and I wouldn't have been happy if Google wouldn't let me join in with a major project, despite being a super nerd in my spare time instead of going to parties. Its the wrong approach.

We do need more women in the tech field, but my feeling is that having exclusively female projects like this can actually widen the gap.

What it basically says is that girls and boys can't work together, and it doesn't teach guys to work as coworkers with women. Furthermore, boys who wanted to join in, later in life may feel jealous that women always get what they want, and may avoid hiring women.

A better approach would have been to have 2 trees, 1 for the females, 1 for the males.Nobody would feel left out then.

What's wrong with Drupal? It's modular, very flexible, free, secure, and has been demonstrated to be good enough by other major organisations (ie, the Whitehouse, and Australia is essentially America's lapdog these days).

It's not easy to set up, but, that doesn't make it a poor choice, and what other alternative can you suggest which is proven to be secure, is flexible, modular and has a huge community base?

I hate our government for so many things, but, it's very easy to implement a powerful search engine in Drupal, and there are so many modules available that its a good choice for projects designed to last well into the future.

Also, one of my mates found a serious backdoor in a CMS system used often in Europe (and it was open source). So, since the Whitehorse has likely done some auditing of the Drupal code, it makes sense for the AU government to build on top of their work/testing.

Out of curiosity, have you found issues with the Wireless, multiple networks (ie, guest networks) and the Billion 7800NXL's? The only reason I ask, is because Billion is denying an issue with both of these things, but, we seem to be able to easily replicate issues..

I work for a company which installs and deploys home / business networks for home automation purposes, and EVERY Linksys device we have tested, has inevitably ended up in the bin, not because they were faulty, but because they turned out to be rubbish.

Linksys has a long history of producing unstable devices, and their original WRT54GL Linux router's only redeeming feature was that it was open source. The interface was terrible, and so was the firmware. In fact, we aren't only talking routers, because we noticed that some of Linksys's cheap gigabit switches had issues with stuttering when playing media (no other switches were affected by this issue, including 10/100 cisco ones). It's particularly pathetic given that Blu-ray requires only 54mbps to stream.

Even assuming that patches are supplied which fixes the issues with this router, unless Linksys seriously has seriously improved their development team, and their hardware, you would be far better off with a cheap TP-Link which acts solely as a router/ADSL modem, a switch which manages the network traffic (NOT A LINKSYS ONE), and Unifi's for your Wifi (those are a dream to roll out in bulk, and the new Unifi software if it comes will even support Seamless wireless WITHOUT an expensive hardware controller).

Further evidence, we didn't even want to risk selling our used Linksys equipment on eBay and damage our seller rating (it was worth the write-off)..

Agreed.

And its big things which makes Windows 8 sucky, such as the lack of easy ad-hoc connections. Nobody has been using this for wireless anyway, but, some wireless devices require adhoc for initial configuration (such as the Global Cache Wireless products). There is no real legitimate reason to remove this.

Whats even more concerning is that during testing, Microsoft didn't realise that people would require google to find the power-off button. Whilst this is finally being fixed, usability problems such as this should have been identified during testing (whenever I'm onsite and I see someone with a new Windows 8 laptop, I tell them where the power button is, and 99% of the time, they always wondered, but never knew for sure).

I work for a company who installs automation here in Australia (Mox BI VIC). Firstly, the good thing is that you have the opportunity to decide how you want to wire things now if the house isn't built.

1) Start by Wiring back the TPS for lights, downlights, and power points to a single rack. This means that you wont need to crack open the wall to change to a new tech in the future, even if you plan to use a retrofitable system. I cry a little when I see a new house being built, and a retrofitable technology tacked on. Structuring the wiring will make all the difference in the future.

2) Wireless technologies such as Z-Wave are great, however, keep in mind that technologies running on 2.4GHZ need to accept interference. If the idiot neighbors run a baby monitor on those frequencies, and you get dropouts, you cannot sue them, or force them to change. For that reason, only use wireless technologies for retrofits if possible (for multicolored lights, they may need to realistically be wireless though). Do not design a system that will rely on it (except for iPad/iPhone AV control).

3), Run more CAT5/CAT6 than you think you need. And keep in mind, CAT6A theoretically can run up to 10gbit/s up to 37m. There is higher quality unofficial standards such as CAT7A available, however, only install them if you have the money (because, they aren't official, and may not add any real benefit, but are nice to have).

4) Have a 15A socket in the garage. UPS's work better with it, and, in an automated home, it might be nice to have control of some features.. Also, try to get a high-amperage TPS run to the garage (for electric cars potentially in the future).

5) Single story house is TONS less painful for future changes than double. If you are doing double, be doubly sure that the wiring downstairs is right. You might not get a second chance without tearing serious holes in plaster (which we have had to do in a few systems to add/change extra functionality the client later wanted).

6) Run at least 3 Ethernets to every TV. You might want a matrix switch later, and you may also want to control your TV's. If you run a single CAT5 to each TV, you might regret it..

7) You might want electric blinds... Keep that in mind.. You may also want gate lock and front/back door to be openable via intercom.

8) The last problem is wall switches. Unfortunately, many common protocols at this time use a Bus wired system (we use CANBUS, which is utilised in cars also). If you run 6-core security wire in a chain to each point, and RJ45 back to the central rack, you should be covered (albeit, in an expensive way).

9) Pick a standard with an open protocol. To be honest, many protocols can be reverse engineered (it just takes time). If you have the protocol though, even if you pick a standard that dies, it may be possible to develop a software bridge that bridges between 2 protocols, and slowly phase parts of the system out.

Obviously, I am biased, but I recommend MOX Canbus (as I know MOX is committed to the system for the long haul), but, ultimately, the system you choose will also depend on your country anyway (because, it needs to be electrically approved in that country anyway).

Sorry, I meant silly bottlenecks in X11...

Interestingly, Daniel Stone touches on Network Transparency in his presentation on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44

Basically though:
* Network transparency is pretty sketchy these days anyway because of DRI2/SHM
* Network communication on X11 actually has a lot of bottlenecks which causes it to perform very poorly.
* VNC will perform significantly better in Wayland than X11 (due to a different design). I agree that VNC on X11 is a disaster, however, there are fast VNC like protocols on other platforms that do perform well..

Also nobody is saying dump X11 entirely (distros can still use X11), however, there are so many silly bottlenecks in Wayland (Chrome wasted 0.5 secs on startup for him doing redundant stuff such as filling the window with grey). Daniel's argument is VERY persuasive, and the argument promoting X11 seems to be based on what people THINK is the case, not what is ACTUALLY the case.

The real question, is, does any of the recent controversies surrounding Canonical affect users in a practical sense (or mainly from a political/development/long term sense)?

Last version of OpenSUSE I tried was great, but, I kept having small problems (mainly related to installing Nvidia drivers which actually broke the system, steam support and other Yum issues).Technically, the nvidia issue isn't their fault, but on the other hand, it would be expected that Nvidia users need proprietary drivers.

OpenSUSE definitely deserves a lot more users, and I think long term, it could easily overtake the others. Hopefully this is a step closer in that direction.

You do make a fair point.. I recall Photoshop taking a year to port, however, as it turns out, the delay was because they used carbon instead of cocoa (I didn't realise it at the time though, because I only got into Apple coding a year later).However, you are possibly right that it was pretty close most of the time (except in cases of byte ordering probably, in which case additional work would have been needed, however, such changes could probably practically be done with temporary compatibility flags in the compiler during writes/reads to external outputs)

Computers for starters.. Long term, we can run Android apps on Intel computers at full speed. On Apple, that won't be possible without an emulator, recompile, or switching the computer to ARM.

Apple's program execution is nothing special. ART eliminates the disadvantages of using portable code, and allows the execution system to be far more flexible than Apple's. Android is using a slower system at the moment, but, better solutions do take more effort (one giant leap for mankind).

Where'd you get that figure? Anyone who purchased the humble bundles did. Part of the Apple Store's intention is to actively block competitors. That is even dodgier when you consider that Apple has stolen products in the past (which, after doing so, they will be competing against you). Also, if the hacker community wasn't there, we would have no good way to make videos of the product we developed for iPhone (we tried a video camera, it was terrible).

Humble bundle gets plenty of visibility, and its a separate system. Also,if you spend 2 months developing software, you WILL be able to run it on the platform ultimately. On the Apple App store, you basically need to discard or Cydia the software if it isn't approved.

Finally, in 2009, it was estimated that Cydia was installed by 10% of the iPhone userbase (could be biased, from the Cydia website). And so, their app's obviously do have PLENTY of visibility on iPhone. The fact though that Cydia constantly breaks though is "hostile" towards unapproved apps. It shouldn't be necessary.

That's $99 without any guarantee you will ever be able to sell the software you are developing on another iPhone (unless you go to Cydia). That sounds fantastic! There are so many developers on Cydia, who have developed great Apps, that Apple has screwed. I'm sure many Cydia developers LOVE Apple as much as you do.

Why is it an airplane's company fault if a pilot accidentally hits the wrong button causing the plane to crash? In the Airplane industry, they call this "Human Factors". The glass backing is an inexcusably poor design. The guy who I saw was cut, was just picking up his dropped phone . Basically, if you drop it on its back, it is designed to shatter, and if you are lucky, there are sharp glass fragments on the ground for other people to step on. Apple must have known that making the back out of glass (instead of Plastic or other materials), but instead, they decided to use an extremely fragile material (obviously weighing up whether the Apple Fanbase would care or not), and they ignored human factors in the process of designing the phone (all for the interest of making a good looking phone).