Of course I'm not.

But seriously, am I the only one who doesn't give a shit?

Look, don't code. Don't encourage your kids or students to code. It'll make those who do more valuable. Do mechanics worry about everyone on the planet knowing how to fix their car? Do carpenters spend countless hours navel-gazing about bringing carpentry to school children and girls and the average CEO? Do HVAC specialists?

Do whatever the hell you want to do. The fewer who want to code, the better for the negotiating power and leverage of coders and technologists going into the future.

It has been at least suspected that smoking caused cancer for about one hundred years, now.
It has been widely known, including the Surgeons General warning, for at least fifty years.

I am long past the point of having any concern for people who can't kick the smoking habit or are ill from it (other than simple human sympathy for anyone suffering, of course). Unless you are at least 70 years old, today, there is no excuse for you to have any real smoking problems. You know it is going to kill you, today. You knew it would kill you, when you started. We are almost to the point where anyone with even the slightest "well, I didn't know back then" excuse for smoking is dead.

Anyway, this is sad news. I know that Nimoy is in his 80s. I know he has lived a full life. However, I have been dreading his passing. As many people my age likely have, I've a mental list of older guys whose passing I'm sure to be alive for and who are going to really gut me. He's one of the guys on that list.

It's painfully clear that whoever holds the reigns at Slashdot these days just wants it to become another Engadget/Gizmodo/whatever. Just dump the existence community, revamp your site, and get on with the 78 cell phone news stories per day and native-advertising.

I wish we could all correlate these stores, in some way, to actual companies. I don't deny that this awkwardness exists, but in twenty years working among a lot of women (and various nationalities, sexual orientations, and trans*) I have only heard of two negative stories from one close female friend in the late 90s and never witnessed any sort of this behavior. As just a completely rough guess, I would say a quarter or even a third of my colleagues are female. Their gender is never relevant. it is never made relevant. Their advise, contribution, and insight is never questioned because of their gender. They are at every level of the ladder from front desk secretary to security to janitorial to customer service to tech support to sales engineer to engineering and development to research to helpdesk to IT to human resources to management to CFO.

I'm not dismissing that it is a concern in some areas of the industry, perhaps. I'm not dismissing the fact that certainly some individuals have individual experiences that impact them (though I don't think those experiences can be said to certainly be constant for everyone). I'm just saying that I've been an adult working with adults in an industry where they all act like adults and it is difficult for me to get a real picture of where these places are in the tech industry that jobs are being denied based on gender, educations are being denied, promotions are being denied, or people with something to contribute are being told to shut up or ignored or something. Are these all young people in startups with no experience acting like its still a frat-house and sorority or something? I mean, a woman coder in (in my experience in this industry) would be about as much a curiosity to myself or anyone I work with as a coffee pot in the break room.

So you're posting to slashdot from the grave.

I'll admit, we've all probably known the girls who go to college and use it as a "find my future husband" utility and then never actually do anything with their education or career as soon as they graduate, marry the guy they met in college, and have kids -- but they're hardly representative of the whole and I've *CERTAINLY* never heard of, say, girls attending the local linux group to score some hot rich sugar daddies.

I'm going to play the safe bet and assume your comment was sarcastic.

So you want your daughter to be a tech blogger that quotes press releases from the latest cell phones and tablets and throws out occasional tech tips or howtos for a living? Regardless of gender, the whole gizmodo/engadget type of profession doesn't really qualify as a STEM career in my mind. It's like saying that someone assigned to reporting on local crime for the local paper is in the law enforcement career.

If people really need role models (I don't really know why they do, but okay), then maybe someone like Jeri Ellsworth would be a more compelling one? Someone who doesn't make her living regurgitating current tech news and subjects for a crappy blog or youtube videos, but actually -- you know -- makes stuff. Using a strong engineering and mathematical and science background to do so.

You don't know it to be false anymore than the commentors know it to be true. Especially considering studies that assert there are differences in, if not behavior, possible wiring of brains between the sexes. That isn't to say they are conclusively "wired differently", but it's bullshit for you to dismiss it as "propagating a myth".

http://www.scientificamerican....

How about the myth you seem to be propagating? That somehow men and women only populate the fields of interests and careers they do, because of big meanies imposing sexist and genderist constructs upon them during their formative years? That the only reason little johnny wants to be a kung-foo-astronaut-scientist-president at the age of ten is because the sexist society which surrounds him does not allow him to want to be a movie-star-princess-ballerina-nurse-stay-at-home-dad. That left to their own devices and interests, the distribution of genders would be perfectly even across the spectrum. This might be a fair assertion, were it not for real world experience. I mean, in a vacuum, where we look upon humanity as if we were some alien life-form visiting this unfamiliar species.

Also, could you introduce me to these parents and siblings and family and friends and teachers and rest of society who are going around telling young women that they can't be interested in science or engineering or programming? Especially in this day and age? I have yet to really meet any of these people, but they must be absolutely everywhere -- like closet racists or something -- since they apparently have such a monumental impact on the world.

So a woman who doesn't have a degree in or work experience in science, technology, engineering, math, or programming is having difficulty getting into a programming career and it's because of sexism.

I see this statement made all the time, about getting girls in grade school interested in science and technology. Oh, but they aren't interested, because of all that theoretically sexual harassment and sexism they're going to face twenty years into their future!

Right. Riiiiiight. The same age group that believes being a farmer-astronaut-rockstar-veterinarian is disinterested in science and technology careers, because of an issue they're not even familiar with yet and won't be relevant to them for a decade or two.

Yes, tax payers cover the costs. And they are significant. New Jersey (where the superbowl isn't even happening) is spending something like $20m just to accommodate extra transportation for the super bowl. Nobody will give exact numbers, so they all just say that the revenue brought in from visitors during the super bowl should offset the cost to the taxpayers. I'm not sure how that works, since if *I* pay *my* taxes and *my* taxes cover the cost of the super bowl transportation, security, amenities, and so on and then some diner and hotel downtown rakes in money from the extra business... how that benefits me or compensates me as a tax-payer.

And the 100,000+ at the event will gladly accept it, because "better safe than sorry" and "you gotta give up a little freedom and convenience for security durp durp".

Even if that were true... all these resources to protect so many of the most disposable.

Oh, so Chive? Or Newsvine? Or Digg?

Admittedly, all the current news aggregators are shit, but I don't see anyone revolutionizing them in the near future and we don't need more mediocre ones in the meantime.

They don't want anyone to benefit from anything in their Bejeweled game.

Why? Because some overzealous pimple-faced minimum-wage snot might call the fucking FBI over it?

No, keep wearing them. And let the idiots keep involving the fucking FBI every time, until they give up with the bullshit nonsense.