Or by hiring a bunch of self-taught coders who do not understand the concepts of testing and stability. The other problem with getting folk to the *nix side is the sysadmins and others one will meet there.

Um, as a woman (note the user name) and someone who has worked in tech for 20+ years, I cannot tell you how wrong you are.

Most of the women in tech that I know share at least some of these cultural preferences, but that is self-selection. The ones who share it are the ones who are comfortable staying.

It is not just women who are put off by the need for constant competition within this culture that goes on in so many programming teams or in the server room. I have a male friend with whom I have worked for years and who is a well-qualified Unix sys admin who was hounded from a job because he does not particularly enjoy video games. Oh, and he was older than the rest of the team, which also made him a pariah (they said so out loud).

Men don't flock to nursing or primary school teaching in large part **because** they are considered feminine but also because they are poorly paid. Sexist -- absolutely. I know lots of women who have left the field because the harassment (not the lack of social interaction) got to be too much. Too many anecdotes and too much research that shows that women are regularly told to "get the hell out" because we "don't belong." That will lower your rates of participation and also create a bit of an echo chamber. Culturally restricted -- yes. All the way to racist -- I am not sure (I am white, I would not necessarily experience it). Racism isn't always white people prejudging people of color. Racism is both how things are presented (have you ever seen a black person in a tech presentation?) and who is accepted into a program or hired. And it is the tone of the workplace. It is well past time, though, that the first response of the tech community to criticism stops being "NO!! YOU'RE BAD!!!! GO AWAY!!!" The solution sounds a little lame and like ham-handed stereotyping, but I am not in the affected community. If there is an assumption that everyone involved in tech must be engaged in the same culture of science fiction, superhero comics, and video gaming, then, yeah, something trivial might make those who are interested less likely to walk away after hitting the wall of "YOU ARE NOT JUST LIKE ME!!!! SCARY!!!! GO AWAY!!!!"

I really understand that this is what the calls to remove it look like. And I agree (without having seen whether the general sexism was light or included threatening language) that it is over the top to call for people to lose their jobs for public sexism.

Do take a minute and give the women reading this in an environment that is already exclusionary a thought. We are constantly pushed (or driven, with threats of rape or death) away from the possibility of earning a living with our skills. One is jabbed with that day in and day out. Then, in a place one thinks might just be available for one to improve one's skills and employability there is one more, big damned jab, straight in the face. A big "fuck you, bitch, you are ruining my place by wanting to participate." Now, be calm and reasoned in your response. Like yours to the people on Twitter who you see as wanting to "punish anyone who doesn't comply with their demands."

I don't think you know what a daily shit sandwich it can be for women attempting to work in tech. And the people making it a misery are regularly praised for their wit and charm. While the women who "don't comply with the demands" of the exclusionary men to get the hell out of programming and find another way to make a living are "punished."

Which could have been used to monitor heart health, which would be useful. Same freaking data, saving lives instead of shaming/guilting women. Who would think that was valuable?

eyeroll

I disagree.

First -- there is a big difference between privacy and anonymity/going off the grid.

I would agree that the ability to do the latter while participating in first world society is effectively impossible.

There is a lot that can be done, both by the individual and by governments, to improve the ability of individuals to control how information about and by themselves is used and transmitted.

Officially (but not enforced to nearly the extent it should be), the EU Data Protection Act states that information about an individual belongs to that individual and there is a basic right to a degree of anonymity. One is supposed to be informed where the data sits, whether it is correct, and how it is being used. We are all learning the extent to which that law is ignored in Europe. It is, however, a beginning and establishes the common sense idea that I own information about myself, including images of myself. The vast majority of countries world-wide have variations of this law.

The US starts from the assumption that data belongs to those who collect or aggregate it. This means that, in order to provide any privacy (in the sense of controlling data from/about oneself), individual bits of that information have to be defined and exempted from that assumption. This is how we got HIPAA (which is extremely narrow and poorly enforced), the cluster of banking privacy acts (again, poorly enforced). Until this changes, it is really difficult to control how/whether data about yourself is used, by whom, and whether it is accurate.

There is some privacy. You do not have to have your SSN tattooed on your forehead, nor do you have to give it to everyone who asks. You should protect your banking information and you don't have to tell your employer about any disability unless you want accommodation. Which is all fine in theory, but in practice, few of us take the time to learn the laws and our privacy rights and even fewer of those who want to collect this information bother to learn the rules or abide by them.

You can go off the grid, but you have to leave everything behind. And, if you really want to, you should find a place to live that uses just paper records.

But cells are not what they are recommending for replacing POTS service -- it is IP phone service (like MagicJack), which relies on internet service being functional, which takes more power than POTS lines, but, with ADSL, is prone to many of the physical service issues (how far from the next hub, how many squirrels have gnawed on the not-yet-replaced copper cables, etc.).

When you hit 60, tell me the same story. There is extreme age discrimination. A friend my age survived 5 yrs of wiping the butts of 20 somethings for whom the notion of testing code before going live was a novelty. Oh, and once we hit 65, we are a lot cheaper to insure.

Stupid -- the same way I did. You continue to work (if you are lucky enough to be healthy throughout), take a few weeks off, then maybe work from home if you need or want to, then go back to work. OOOOHHH, here's something you clearly never considered -- one of those woman things might actually earn more than you and you can stay home with the child until you can earn more than child care costs.

Someone in the family with a chronic illness, a house? Burying your parents or making sure they are taken care of? And you will not necessarily continue to get that money for as long as you need it.

I had to fight my mother's newest doctor to get him to comply with her living will. I am still angry 15 yrs later. He had not been through the 4-5 hospitalizations a year for failing lungs. My poor mother had. Not his call to intubate when the ICU nurses could clearly tell this was a final time. I am still grateful for their discreet and gentle support. I helped my best friend from college to pass. She had horrible, "at home" hospice with no training for her husband in how to roll her to avoid bedsores or how to keep her clean or comfortable and a nurse who came for an hour every other day. Those last weeks were hideousness I do not want imposed on me. My son has clear, written instructions and people with medical training identified and enlisted to help him understand and make decisions.

Yes. And don't try to survive in an HMO if you have anything atypical. Oh, and if they have just started teaching it in medical schools, you are likely more screwed than before they taught it.

For both the flu shot and the MRI, there is risk to the patient. From the flu shot -- allergic reactions are rare, but you need someone to notice it and do something. For MRIs, someone needs to know whether the image is sufficient for what is being looked at and you have the need to be able to deal with people who are having claustrophobia reactions to the machine. Finally, there is a comparatively limited number of diabetics from whom potentially infected used sharps need to be collected. Expand that to the general public, which includes people who cannot be bothered to put cigarette butts in trash containers or pick up their dogs' feces, and you have a serious public health issue.

It has been standard in law that any work done with tools (including systems) that belong to an employer belongs to the employer. When you start a job, you should be given a form to sign that you acknowledge that any and all work done for the employer or using the employer's systems belong to the employer and announcing that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using the employer's systems. Now, if the City of SF wanted his personal password to systems he owned, supported, and housed, that would be an invasion of property. If you put anything on the systems owned by your employer, they are no longer exclusively yours. Use your own damned server to store your own things. And assume that you must hand over passwords, encryption keys, data on your phone, and any damned thing else you grabbed or created on their systems. Oh, and read the play "The Water Engine" if you think this is something new.

It sounds easy, but try to do the audit that will give you that number. I guarantee they keep very "complex" books and records that can prove just about anything. The fine needs to cover more than what they (and the companies that knowingly hired from them) underpaid the individual workers. it needs to cover the economic damage caused by depressing salaries in those fields, as well. There are major employers in the tech field known to pay "wages only immigrant will take." They need to feel that pain as well.