> uppose for a moment that you are a guy who just graduated from college, make $20,000 a year in your dream internship, and are on the long trek to success in your field. You're in a new city, and don't know many people. You're constantly bombarded with pictures of men who "made it", have $200k cars, wear $10k suits, drink $500 bottles of liquor, and buy their mistresses $80k pieces of jewelry.

I know what you're trying to get at with this but there are two types of people in the world - those who start to feel depressed because they haven't "made it" and those who take it as an inspiration for what they could become. Which direction one goes in is a choice. The losers will give up, the winners will fail over and over again until they succeed. I would not want to be in a world where success is hidden from me because I might cry over not having it myself.

For the record, I agree that bikini shots are not appropriate at a software conference whether women are present or not. I do not see it as sexist but I do think that it is entirely irrelevant and misplaced and would question what the person who put them in there was thinking and whether they might be drunk.