We used to have crapware preinstalled on Windoze PCs.
Now we get google crapps preinstalled on our smartphones.

Is that why men spend so much time explaining how it is the woman's problem and why women are wrong when the subject comes up on slashdot?

Hum... Afraid that women will cut into your male dominated world? I doubt women game in a "man cave". But maybe in a "woman's lair". I know that both of my college age daughters actively play games most every day.

And why does playing Candy Crush make you any less of a gamer than some blood drenched single shooter game?

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area so the risk of a major quake that will disrupt power, water and roads is very real. I have 12 one gallon bottles of water in their boxes bought when they were on sale for a buck a piece. I store it in my basement next to the outside door so I can probably get to them even if the house has major structural issues.

Water is important. You can live for a week or more without food. But no water will do you in after a few days. In a major earthquake, it is very likely that the water system will fail. Broken pipes, lack of power, contaminated supply, etc.

Food is probably not a big issue. You probably have 4 or 5 days of food in your kitchen. Those cans in the back of the cupboard, soup mix, rice, beans or other dry goods. It may not be very appetizing, but it is food.

In America we are lucky. In the event of a major earthquake or other natural disaster, the rest of the country will rally. Food, water, tents, bedding will be brought in in a matter of days. You just have to plan for the first 96 hours.

The importance of offsite backups for personal data or data for a small company can not be stressed enough. In a major quake fire is a very real danger. Natural gas lines break and a spark can start a fire.

Offsite backups do not need to be fancy. I have two 1 TB USB drives I use for backup. I copy all of my data to one drive and then take it to my parents house. I then do backups to the second drive. Every month or so, I swap the two drives. If the drive in my house gets destroyed I only loose a month of data, not all of my data. You could also backup to the cloud but I would rather not have the cloud provider grubbing through my personal data.

The two USB drives solution is low-tech and low-cost. You just have to remember to swap the two drives every now and then.

Why Law Enforcement in California pushed for the law was that there is a real problem with violent smartphone robberies. The victim steps away from her friends to talk on her smartphone. The thief hits her from the back so she falls forward grabbing her phone and runs. She would not see who the thief was. This is an every weekend occurrence in San Francisco and the San Francisco Police don't like this. A kill switch would make smartphone theft less profitable.

Looks like they have started selling email addresses. I just got email from multiple spam runs for my email addresses from:
    netfirms.com
    joker.com
    sys-con.com
    mixonline.com
    livedesignonline.com

Spam does not bother me so much. But the first two email addresses do. They are my domain registrars. So they have my account information and could change my domain registration. Time to change some passwords.

RLH

This is a great idea. Getting people to think about opening their homes in times of a disaster before the disaster happens. Sort of like the organ donation sticker on your drivers license.

Having a database of people who are willing to open their homes in a disaster and what their parameters for guests are would be invaluable. I am a single older man so I would be willing to have other single older men stay with me as well as a family or a couple. What Airbnb is proposing is using their tools to help disaster relief agencies create a database of places for people to stay. Probably of limited use the night of the disaster, but useful for the next two weeks.

This is an interesting step forward for disaster relief agencies learning how to use social media. Airbnb is willing to help this happen. While it is good PR for Airbnb, it is also a great way for them to give back to the community.

Are you a software developer? How many women programmers are on your team? What, no women on your team? Or if they are on your team they are QA or documentation people? It is not because they are not qualified. It is because most development teams are toxic to women.

I am a sysadmin and most of the female sysadmins I have known have left the field. It is not because they can't take it. They can and dish it out as well. They just get tired of the "boy's club" attitude of their male coworkers. They kept waiting for the boys to grow into men, but then realized they probably won't.

It takes a real MAN to own up to the fact that this harassment of women is insidious and pervasive in the tech/geek communities. But the boys will just continue to try and explain why it is the women's problem, not theirs.

Maybe being treated equal is something other than being treated like a man. Maybe it is treating the woman with respect.

Don't talk to many women do you? Just try asking them.

You want well researched in depth commentary on the subject go to YouTube and look for Feminist Frequency by Anita Sarkeesian. She talks in depth about the issues and the problems women face in the gaming industry. She also talks about how she has been persecuted by men on the Internet. Well researched, well thought out commentary.

Know any geek girls? Ask them what they think of sexual harassment in the gaming industry. Have they received any rape threats over postings?

You mentioned death threats. Do you ever get death threats with your home address included? It is not uncommon for rape threats to include detailed personal information about the woman. Where they live. Where they work. What their email address and phone numbers are. Truly scary stuff.

But truth be told, you are probably not really interested in the truth. You would rather keep your blinders on so you don't have to face the fact that this is a serious problem that technical women / geek girls face every day. You might have to change your views and own up to how you are part of the problem.

Don't talk to many women do you? Just ask a woman. Ask your mother. I think you will be surprised how common it is.

Ask simple questions like:
Have you ever felt unsafe because of the comments men are making about you?
How often do you evaluate your personal security around men?
Have you ever been sexually harassed?

Know a geek girl? Ask her:
Have you ever been harassed with a rape threat because of a comment you made on line?

Listen to the answers and then start looking at your own behavior. Why are you making it the women's problem rather than looking at your own behavior and beliefs?

My daughter and I were talking about how much personally directed sexual violence geek girls must endure. She was talking about the obsessive personally detailed threats Anita Sarkeesian creator of Feminist Frequency endures from the male geek community on a continual basis. Some of these are threats include her personal details needed to carry them out. This is really scary stuff.
We were talking about this and she casually let drop:
"I received my first rape threat in a forum when I was eleven"

She casually went on:
"Eleven is the age when geek girls first start discovering the Internet and make their first posts. They comment on a game about some small feature they don't like. Some guy will flame them with a rape threat"

This is very shocking for a dad to hear his daughter say. "My eleven year old little girl!" She is twice as old now. But her saying it so casually is deeply disturbing.

My daughter has assimilated it. She has grown a "thick skin". I think she enjoys giving back as good as she gets. But not the violent rape stuff.

It is very sad that the male geek culture permits such abuse to go on.
We MEN need to start talking about this. We MEN need to ostracize the men who threaten rape.
* It is never funny.
* It is not "just a joke".
* It is not harmless.

It is really scary for geek girls because there is always a risk that it might be real. There are unbalanced men out there after all.

How do I change this? I start by writing about it. I talk with other people. I try to get MEN to understand the problem and see how scary it is for women.

Sorry about dieing. It looked wrong but aspell liked it.

When you comment on someone's spelling errors do you ever think about how that might hurt the writer. I know you probably thought it funny or helpful but spelling has always been a struggle for me. Up until 10th grade when an English teacher looked at any of my writing, the first thing out of their mouths was "Robert, you need to work on your spelling". Like Calvin, I would tune out and visit planet Zoke. It was not until age 16 that I got an English teacher who made me feel like I could write. That was almost 40 years ago.

And for people who suggest that maybe I should use a different spell checker, aspell works for me. My text editor is vim. My spell checker is aspell.

Besides there are some basic problems with spell checkers as Taylor Mali says in his hilarious poem:
"The The Impotence of Proofreading"
Watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...