You want it

I’m pretty sure that at least one of my friends will find this Velociraptor skeleton to be really cool and will want me to pack it up in a box and mail it off

Track this…

If you’re keeping an eye on what Firefox is doing you may have noticed a disturbing trend for websites to track your surfing by send a cookie to google.analytics.com.

Besides annoying me for tracking where I am coming from or going to, this one slows down my access to photobucket and it pisses me off as it is a bit of a bitch to thwart.

Unless, that is,  you download a free and rather nifty little tool (actually an extension…) called CustomizeGoogle that allows you to do nifty things such as removing ads and spam and blocking google.analytics.com.

Happy surfing…

Geek culture?

I came across this little gem that was posted in ZDNET back in September 2007. While I can vouch for the existence of a male geek culture and how it often excludes females from great jobs, the last paragraph is just plain silly.

The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has called for an end to the “stupid” male geek culture that disregards the work of capable female engineers, and puts others off entering the profession.

Berners-Lee said that a culture that avoided alienating women would attract more female programmers, which could lead to greater harmony of systems design. “If there were more women involved we could move towards interoperability. We have to change at every level,” he said.

According to Berners-Lee, a culture exists where women can be put off a career in technology both by “stupid” behaviour by some male “geeks”, and by the reactions of other women.

“It’s a complex problem — we find bias against women by women. There are bits of male geek culture and engineer culture that are stupid. They should realise that they could be alienating people who are smarter and better engineers,” said Berners-Lee.

Engineering research facilities that interview candidates based only on how many papers they have had published also risk adding to the problem, according to Berners-Lee, because of an apparent in-built bias against women.

One academic went through a sex change, submitted the same papers under both identities, and found that papers were accepted from a man but were rejected when they came from a woman, said the web inventor. This bias is unaccountable, but adds to institutional bias, he said.

Reflections…

I started out with me and sort of knowing who I am.

In reflection I’m not sure.

Driving music

What could be better than a bit of Antonín Dvořák?

Maybe some oldies?

Male geek culture

ZDnet brings this little gem:

The inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has called for an end to the “stupid” male geek culture that disregards the work of capable female engineers, and puts others off entering the profession.

Berners-Lee said that a culture that avoided alienating women would attract more female programmers, which could lead to greater harmony of systems design. “If there were more women involved we could move towards interoperability. We have to change at every level,” he said.

According to Berners-Lee, a culture exists where women can be put off a career in technology both by “stupid” behaviour by some male “geeks”, and by the reactions of other women.

“It’s a complex problem — we find bias against women by women. There are bits of male geek culture and engineer culture that are stupid. They should realise that they could be alienating people who are smarter and better engineers,” said Berners-Lee.

Engineering research facilities that interview candidates based only on how many papers they have had published also risk adding to the problem, according to Berners-Lee, because of an apparent in-built bias against women.

One academic went through a sex change, submitted the same papers under both identities, and found that papers were accepted from a man but were rejected when they came from a woman, said the web inventor. This bias is unaccountable, but adds to institutional bias, he said.