thricedotted

There it goes!

Must have been some kind of weird caching issue.

I did a hard refresh and tried it in two different browsers just now -- are we talking about the same link? I'm referring to the one right above the info button.

Uh oh, the "new document" button is still directing to localhost for me!

I disagree with much of what you say, but because I don't think continued debate will get either of us anywhere at this point, I'd like to return to the last point I made, which was: at the end of the day, does it matter whether or not gender binaries and socialization and sexism is the reason there aren't more women in tech? It sure as hell is a reason the women who ARE in tech are dissatisfied. Does it matter that sexism isn't unique to the tech field and therefore can't a barrier to entry, so nothing needs to be done about it? I still hold that it's a barrier to entry, though one that will hopefully be torn at just as it was in other fields (do you think feminists in those communities didn't also have these conversations?), but even if it wasn't, does that mean it's perfectly okay for these attitudes to continue?

The answer is no, so this debate is moot. If we fix the sexism problem and women keep shying away from CS/the tech industry, then a point to you. As for me, I'll just be happy that we all respect each other more from it.

Here's the trend I see: all the browsers after IE pretty much go in order of market share. Safari isn't that special because it's the default on Macs, so even though its market share is only slightly above Opera's, the score there is dampened because there's still greater diversity in the people using it. But way fewer people are using Opera rather than Chrome or Firefox...I bet if you went back to the times Chrome/Firefox had a similarly sized market share, you'd see the same spike.

So it's not sampling bias, per se, but...I guess it's something along those lines?

Yes, because the comment you made that I responded to on the first place struck me as bafflingly insensitive to the point that was being made: that this intimidation is an obstacle in and of itself. If such a situation sounds like an entirely foreign experience to you, I am inclined to believe that you have never found yourself or can imagine yourself in a similar situation, thereby belying a high measure of privilege.

...I don't know how to put this more clearly than uncr3ative already did, but both of the responses to that post have basically demonstrated exactly why we feel the way we do when we walk into a classroom dominated by men.

It's not embarrassment. It's the fact that you walk in and you are already seen as the "other", different from them. The fact that they can be talking about you as if you're an The fact that they will be talking about their interests which might not coincide with yours (but oftentimes coincide with you and people of your sex), and so you're not sure how to broach conversation with them. The fact that you feel like an intruder, unwanted or invisible, because you're not in ~the clique~ and therefore shouldn't be there.

The fact that somebody would respond to this, and put quotes around "obstacle", because how could any of those things be an obstacle at all?

I'm sorry that your level of privilege has never allowed you to savor the harsh taste of true intimidation at some point in your life.

Exactly the point I wanted to make, but pithier. Kudos.

Here's my view on this as a young female computer nerd: even with all the negative stereotypes attached to the male computer nerd, the fact remains that (a) he is typically male, and (b) he is not the only one of his ilk.

Let's consider the perfectly realistic scenario where society has only just recently realized that women are good for more than making sandwiches and childbearing, and can are capable of doing professional jobs as well as any man. Thanks, society! But since this change just happened recently, it is not unreasonable for there to still be fields that are male-dominated, despite the fact that women are just as able to work successfully in these fields. This is what gives us (a).

However, now that the floodgates have opened, women would really like to get into tech! But first, there's everything that cheez mentioned -- society's subtle socialization of women into their proper gender role. Boys are expected to tinker with and possibly break their toys, girls should be combing doll hair. And later, the boys who are nerds almost always find a nerd clique...which is almost entirely comprised of other boys. And the girl who wants to bond with somebody over her nerddom? All the boys are scared of her, for she is GIRL, a separate and incomprehensible breed from BOY. And there's condition (b).

Personal anecdote time: all of my friends (which is stretching it) in high school were guys because the other girls at my school thought computers and programming and video games were "a guy thing". and even among this group, I only had one who truly respected me (who brought me into the circle in the first place) -- to the rest, I was the token female to be awkward around and bounce sexist jokes off of. During that time, I was a huge tomboy and a huge jerk -- not because I don't like doing typically femme-y things, like wearing makeup and dresses, but because I felt like I'd be more accepted if I wore guy clothes and made dick jokes and, yes, sometimes even objectified women and acted homophobic (but only for men, because lesbians are hot, har har) for the sake of humor. Even being more "guy-like", though, never really earned me any respect -- even if I laughed at their jokes about "dumb bitches" and made my own, the fact remained that I was still born without a penis and could therefore never really relate. It was only after I got to college that I was able to recognize my disgusting attitude for what it was and realize that it was possible to be both femme and a CS major, though that would have earned me no love from most of my HS "friends".

tldr, men do have to overcome the barrier of being socialized to like sports and fast cars and what-have-you, but once they do, they've at least found more of their kind. Women, on the other hand, face that barrier two-fold -- both from outside and within the community, and that really, really sucks.

But I'm so glad that this conversation is happening, because I really do think that making the tech industry more welcoming to women is important -- and if it turns out that you're right, that at the end of the day more boys and few girls go into tech anyway, at least we're still a kinder, better, more accepting community. What do we have to lose from that?

Not sure if this is what johnswamps was referring to, but the two big things that come to mind are the Sokoban levels (there are only two fixed variants which can only guarantee you one of two things, and a lot of the time if people don't get the thing they want (usually the bag of holding), they end up restarting since the odds of getting it anywhere else in the game are pretty low after that) and the fact that you can do things like pudding farming to obtain items/corpses easily. A lot of actions in Nethack are formulaic and based on tricks, whereas DC:SS encourages things like unknown item use more. In the end, I love Nethack and it was my first roguelike, but DC:SS is just a lot more fun.

Also, here's a post comparing Dungeon Crawl and Nethack that I just remembered: http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Linleys_Dungeon_Crawl

Wow, slick and simple interface. As somebody who was always better at carrying a new paper list each day than dealing with things like RTM or Google Tasks, but also doesn't always have something to write down new things to do, I think this just might be the app I never knew I wanted. I'll be trying it out over the next few days.

One question -- why is the password input in plaintext on the Android app? I don't like the thought that somebody could get hold of my device and see my password just sitting there in plaintext if they just went to settings...

On my rather average 3-yo laptop without dedicated graphics, Alt-Tab works great if the system load is low, but if I have a lot of things going on, it can take a second to pop up.

Oddly, Super seems to work with less lag (though it stutters) than Alt-Tab for me while I'm running something resource-intensive.

I was 10 when COPPA first came into effect, but even before that I never put my actual age/birthday into accounts I registered, and if it was an email service that required an "actual" name from me, I always used some silly pseudonym. All this so I could play Scrabble, chess, and Battlefield with strangers on various websites, email my fourth grade teacher, make a Homestead chatroom, and tell the internet how much I loved SpongeBob SquarePants. Until I turned 13, I never batted an eyelash about lying about my age on the internet -- it was simply something I thought I was expected to do, not because I thought the government wanted to keep me off the internet (which they did, but my parents didn't, so whatever), but because if everybody at least pretended to be over 13, then those under 13 might be safer. My offline and online identities didn't merge until I was 17 or 18...at about the time Facebook started picking up speed.

Now, I don't think that's the right mentality to have, and it's based on false logic since being a teen still makes you prey on the internet, but it's the mentality that was imbued in me as a person who started using the internet pre-COPPA restrictions and, more importantly, pre-Facebook -- in an age when people weren't EXPECTED to have their offline identities connected to their online ones. Especially children.

His parents obviously knew about COPPA restrictions due to the YouTube account business, although I'm still confused as to why he wasn't asked for his age/birthdate on the Gmail registration page. No, their son shouldn't have put his age into Google+, especially if he already know that he couldn't use it to create a YouTube account; yes, Google should at least allow data export for the account (although they are by no means obligated to) and/or provide a streamlined process for parents to authorize the accounts of any users under 13. I remember GameFAQs reacted to COPPA by locking the account of any user under 13 until their 13th birthday -- this would be more reasonable to me, but it sounds like the personal data storage issue gets in the way of that.

Anyway, to me, the more interesting thing is that this post made me realize that I came "of age" (i.e., reached a point where I would be considered something of an adult rather than a complete child) at the same time the internet identity paradigm shifted from relative anonymity and "alter egos" to something much more closely interconnected to a person's real life. And so I wonder: if Alex had been born in 1991 rather than 2001, would this have happened with the theoretical Hotmail account he might have had? No, I think, because once upon a time, it was pretty much expected that a person would not be who they said they were on the internet -- and that was absolutely fine. And even moreso, back in the days when you COULD be a child on the internet, I don't think most children wanted to be known AS CHILDREN. Because seriously, who the heck wants to play Scrabble with an 8-year-old kid?

So, I guess as a kid who grew up before social networking became big, I still think kids are better off lying about their ages anyway. Those who know them in real life will understand that they're circumventing COPPA, and those who don't will possibly be less prone to being creepy/condescending/what-have-you. While I'm sure that this can be interpreted as victim blaming and everybody should have a right to feel safe on the internet while using their true identity, COPPA serves as something as an arbitrary age of consent, since 10-year-olds could unwittingly provide information that gets them kidnapped, just as 15-year-olds can unwittingly make babies. But if you're a 10-year-old who's mature enough to be conscious about privacy, or a 15-year-old who's mature enough to know about safe sex and birth control, then have at it, I say. The system is there to protect, but if you're not in need of the system's protection, then go ahead and circumvent it.

tldr, sorry your son cried, but it would have been easy enough to prevent, and pretty much the expected thing to do during the pre-social networking era.