What? My wife uses Firefox and Chrome with outlook.com every day. What doesn't work properly, exactly?

Strange. We have been automating various installation package types on Windows for a while, now, usually with answer files... for test purposes.

This is interesting to me, I've never heard this. Are you saying that parted, as in the Linux partitioning tool, uses the Microsoft partition type GUID incorrectly... and that is what Windows is reading, and thus sees it as not being formatted correctly?

I'm not a fan of the metro stuff and start screen on 8, though at least 8.1 half fixed metro apps by letting you close them. Windows 10 is supposed to run metro apps in a window on the desktop. But, all that said - I have to say that if I had a tablet, the new Start screen thing and metro apps ... would be totally fine. That seems to be what it was designed for. And being able to switch between those two contexts is even better (as 10 can do, I believe... manually, or based on screen size). I'm assuming it was the metro stuff that you meant was a dealbreaker. I've heard good things about it on Windows phones (I don't own own)

This comes from someone running RHEL on his work laptop, Windows 8.1 on his desktop, and Android on all his mobile/tablet devices. And I work with several versions of unix, linux, and windows for a living... I'm no Windows fanboy. :) But Windows 7 was good, Windows 8 was better aside from the badly implemented UI changes, 8.1 improved somewhat [I installed a third party start button modification thingy], and it looks like Windows 10 will actually be pretty good, from what I've seen [I have not actually run it]. It seems that Microsoft is trying to reinvent itself somewhat, moving to a make-money-with-services idea... more platform agnostic. Which is awesome; Google and Apple could use some competition, and Amazon could, too, in the cloud arena ... specifically, making things more widely compatible (seriously, why isn't there a google music roku app?).

I didn't mean to imply it was all learned... though I was actually refering more to what is considered "acceptable behavior" vs. what they are actually interested in. e.g., learning that flowers are okay to like as a girl but not as a boy, or that building stuff is a boy thing and not a girl thing.

That said, I agree that people are inherently and intrinsically different, not simply products of society/social pressures/whatever. But views of what is "normal" behavior for a girl or boy certainly is something that is significantly learned from surroundings/society, isn't it? And that can certainly serve to form or at least encourage development or non-development of interests. If I thought programming was something that "real boys" don't do, I might not have been so inclined to do it, even though I was inherently interested in it.

There are lots of different good responses to this ... based on what the relationship of the one responding is - parents, schools, peers, friends, society, government, etc. My response as a parent will be different than what I want society, friends, schools, or the government to do. e.g., I would like society to accept female engineers just as readily as male engineers, but not push my daughter to be an engineer or to somehow imply that to be an empowered woman, she HAS to do things that used to be considered "man stuff." However, as a parent, I want to encourage interests and let them explore and find out what they like, get them to try things they don't want to because of various reasons (fear, social pressures, advertising, whatever it is) but let them not continue if they don't like it, etc.

But pushing society towards equally accepting an engineer, a mother, a secretary, and an athlete as a "real woman" is important, I think. It seems similar to pushing society to accept a both blacks and whites as equally human. Yes, I can deal with that as a parent, but I think we should deal with it as a society, too.

I responded to you in another thread. I am not stalking you. ;) I would venture to say that it seems like we actually seem to agree pretty much, but may have seen different experiences and are approaching it from two different perspectives. I apparently have seen the problem of ignoring the societal pressure issue more and you seem to have seen the ignoring genuine interest differences more.

I agree, the generalization that all male/female differences are due to societal pressures is stupid. I DO think generalizations can be made about males or females as a whole, and thus I would expect certain fields/careers to be more women than men. But I don't expect every given woman to conform, nor do I think it's weird if they don't.

So, just as assuming that all male/female differences are due to socieal pressures is stupid, I would argue that so is assuming that it's all because of different generalized interests. Or "genderalized" :)

Yeah, I agree it's hard to tell if it's what they actually like or if it's "conforming." And conforming isn't always bad, I suppose. Seems societies cycle from wanting to conform to everything to wanting to be non-conforming to everything, ha. :)

That said, I know women (e.g., my wife) who don't like the "girly stereotype" for a variety of reasons (like the annoying useless small talk that neither of us are good at), but do like what is stereotyped as "girly" - flowers, pink, cute things, dresses, etc.

I guess... people are complex, we have lots of varying interests, and the "pink vs. blue"/"girl vs. boy" interests stuff is often just silly and such a vast over-generalization, and yet seems to be very prevalent. Cynicism coming out here: it does make a lot of money for retailers of "his and her" sorts of stuff, though.

I have to say that in my particular large, very distributed and varied corporate tech workplace, I've not really encounterd any sexism nor racism.

Yes. In limited ways, I experienced some of it. But that said, I think there's more pressure on women to conform than men. And regardless of who has more or less pressures, the point is that it's worth it to try to point out that those pressures should at the very least be made known, if not corrected. For guys as well as girls, yes... though, like I said, I observe it to be a more significant problem for women than men.

I jumped to conclusions about you, my apologies for that. And this is what we want to do as well.

Yeah, I think this is the case with some of the other cartoons that I watched as a kid - which would have been in the 90s :) - like Bugs Bunny. Both old ones and the newer ones from the 80s/90s.

I do like the humor of Rocky and Bullwinkle though... I think a lot of it would have made no sense to me as a kid, probably just the more slapstick type elements would have been funny at that time. Maybe a couple of the jokes... but not a lot of the stereotyping and cold-war era humor and wordplay and all that.

So for those 20% that are men - is it difficult for them to succeed as vets? Is it viewed as somewhat non-masculine behavior? Is it actually viewed as uncommon as in "so what do you do? A what? A vet? Wow, are there many men that are vets?"

I totally agree with that... though I think we also need to consciously try to encourage people to think this way, as I don't think it comes naturally. People naturally think certain careers are manly and certain careers are womanly, and it seems hard for people to change that thinking.

I have met many. I've also met women who would prefer to talk about physics rather than celebrities. And many men that don't talk about other women as though it was their favorite hobby.

I agree, insulting what they MIGHT find to be important to them is bad (you left out "might" so I FTFY .. ;) ). And making sure that they are accepted even if they are interested in "tomboy" things is important, too... in other words, we shouldn't call them tomboys for liking things that are more commonly liked by men.

But, we do. Having a daughter, now - even as young as she is, under a year old - I'm very aware of how different things get interpreted based on whether a boy or girl does it. If our daughter "talks" (baby talk) a lot, it's because she's a girl. If a boy "talks" a lot, it's strage. If a "girl" likes building things or running around outside when they're older, they are a "tomboy." If a boy likes staying inside reading and cooking, well that's a bit odd - why isn't he outside pretending to beat up bandits? etc...

And at such a young, impressionable age ... you think perhaps what they learn is the "accepted behavior" during their first 5 years of life might carry through for quite a while, and be hard to fix? On both sides, too; not just women deciding they want to go into physics, but men deciding that they are capable. And that it shouldn't be weird.

Have you considered that there may be societal pressures about what a woman is supposed to be, and a nerdy programmer doesn't fit that?

It's the same pressure that makes guys think that liking "pink" is bad, or liking flowers is girly, or liking babies is something for women, and that fighting/violence is masculine.

To assume that women have no interest in something and thus that interest MUST be inherent and not because of various societal pressure about what it means to be a "woman" seems a bit short-sighted. Are there similar pressures for men? Sure. But overall, it seems men have much greater freedom - and, historically, have had more or less the same freedoms whereas women have had even fewer - about their career and interest choices.

It's very interesting to me that "interior design" and "fashion" were mentioned earlier in this thread. You may as well have thrown in "cooking" and "secretary-ing" (is there a verb form of that? ha) and covered almost all of the "typical woman" jobs. Strange that there are so few and they are so un-technical.

I have a daughter now, and am more aware of how society ... treats women, so to speak ... from a young age. When's the last time you gave a lego set to a girl? or gave them a book about planes or tractors or cars? It's *hard* to, because all of the advertising for "girl's" stuff is pink, fluffy, princess, dolls, flowers, and the like. Try finding an ad - or an example of a gift - for somehing more technical than Barbie that is "meant" for a girl. Or try giving a young girl a lego set for her birthday and see what the other adults think.

It seems this is changing somewhat again, and for good reason. We will be doing our best to give our daughter what she appears to be interested in by herself, and not try to make her conform to what society thinks she SHOULD be interested in - talking on the phone, makeup, boys, interior decorating, and baking. She'll have access and support if she wants to do math, science, computers, software, programming, animals, medicine, vet medicine, physics, geology, politics, cooking... or, yes, if she decides that what she wants most in life is to be a wife and mother. And if she doesn't like pink - that's fine, too. And we won't call her a "tomboy" and won't let others call her a "tomboy" in our presence if she just happens to like things that "traditionally" are boy things - like, uh, running around outside... because, clearly, that's only for boys.

(for the record, I hold other beliefs that would make "feminists" quite annoyed. I am no SJW; I just happen to think that women have long been thought of as inferior in intellect, among other things, and pressured to be what men want them to be - pretty things to look at.)