Google-Supported CodeGirl Documentary Makes "Exclusive YouTube Premiere" 289
theodp writes: As part of our Made with Code and media perception initiatives," wrote YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki over at the Official Google Blog, "I'm excited that we're supporting award-winning documentary filmmaker Lesley Chilcott — of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman [and Code.org] fame — on her next film, CodeGirl. Until November 5 Lesley's film will be available for free on YouTube, before its theatrical debut in the next few weeks." Microsoft is pretty jazzed about the movie too, as is Al Gore. Decidedly less excited about CodeGirl is film critic Inkoo Kang, who writes, "CodeGirl, a chronicle of this year's Technovation contest, is just as well-intentioned as its subject. It coasts for as long as it can on the feel-good fuel of watching smart, earnest girls talk about creating an app, but with virtually no tension, context, narrative or characterization driving the story, the documentary grows to feel like a parent describing their daughter's involvement in an international competition. The girls' achievements are impressive, but you definitely don't want to hear about them for nearly two hours.
Sheesh Dice... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Thursday the new Friday?
I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Interesting)
As a woman, I'm upset because this kind of shit is divisive.
Until all of this "social justice" bullshit really started infecting the Internet, we were all just coders. We weren't "girl coders" or "boy coders" or "shemale coders" or "heshe coders" or "dogkin coders". We were just coders. It didn't matter if you had a penis. It didn't matter if you had a vagina. It didn't matter if you had a penis that had been surgically converted into a vagina. It didn't matter if you had a vagina that had been surgically converted into a penis. After all, genitals have absolutely nothing to do with computer programming. Nothing at all!
We used to be focused on the code, and only the code. But now thanks to the "social justice" wieners, we've been unnecessarily divided into these artificial groupings based on the flesh between our legs, or our sexual preferences, or our skin color, or some other irrelevant criteria.
Let me repeat, GENITALS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPUTER PROGRAMMING. NOTHING AT ALL!
By the way, I'm a woman. Unlike many of the so-called "women" of the "social justice" movement, I was actually born a woman. I want us to return to the days where the focus was on the code, and just the code. Things were much more equitable then!
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Funny)
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as a third hand
Let me guess: You use EMACS.
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Funny)
I use my penis as a third hand
Londo Mollari? Is that you?
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Oh, are you so wrong. I use my penis as a third hand
Let me guess, your condoms fit like a glove.
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The real tragedy is that we are only promoting the really nice jobs to women. Even though no one was ever stopping women from being engineers, politicians, coders, scientists, etc. Plenty of 'not so nice' jobs are male dominated, but no one cares. Where are the female coal miners, oil rig workers, lumberjacks, and commercial fishers?
More women take higher education, and more women graduate from it. There are also way more scholarships and grants for women. Equality of outcome is bogus. We need equalit
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I fully agree with you, but that is the essential point: it is always about divide and conquer, and certainly Google has just as much validity, or lack of credibility, as Jerry Yang when he gave up a pro-democracy activist to the Chinese government (doubt we'll ever hear from that poor fellow again)!
Every so often the Pew Research Center, funded by the oil companies and banks, comes out with a designed-to-be-divisive study, they are the ones who, a few years back, came out with the so-called study claiming
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Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Insightful)
experience gender dysphoria due to their body not matching what their brain perceives it should be
Yes, but the salient point is that absent a birth defect or genetic mutation, the body is not what is broken. The body is fine. The issue is with the brain, and I've never seen any evidence of any "Trans" person having a brain which is physically at odds with the body. The logical conclusion is that the dysphoria is primarily psychological in nature, not physiological. A rational person would conclude that any treatment of such a condition would also be based on psychology, and that mutilating the body in an attempt to appear to be of the other gender is not a healthy course of treatment.
there's no need to use scare quotes or imply that they're not real men/women
Those are not scare quotes. Those quotes are used to indicate that the person writing the post does not agree with the contextual definition of the word the parent was using.
Despite what many in the GLBT movement would like to believe, Gender and Sex are indeed the same thing. Gender Identity is not the same thing as gender, but all of our words which describe gender are based on the biological Sex of an individual.
Maybe someday medical science will find a way to actually allow a full biological transformation. But there is no such process, and what we have today is at best a piss-poor attempt to mimic the biology of the other sex, and is almost completely cosmetic in nature.
Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is not a Woman. He is a man, who has had surgeries and hormone therapy so that his body vaguely resembles that of a female. He chooses to identify himself as a female, and personally I have no problem with that. But I am under no obligation to contribute to his personal delusions just like I was under no requirement to call Prince "The Artist" during his "change name to a symbol" years, and just like I'm under no obligation to treat this guy as if he was really a reptile: http://www.thelizardman.com/
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but the salient point is that absent a birth defect or genetic mutation, the body is not what is broken. The body is fine. The issue is with the brain, and I've never seen any evidence of any "Trans" person having a brain which is physically at odds with the body.
If you haven't seen evidence, maybe you haven't looked too hard, or have been looking in the wrong places (confirmation bias)? As just one example of how genes and the uterine environment combine to contribute to being transsexual, please consider this: 90% of the population are right-handed, but the majority of transsexuals are lefties. This is relatively old news for anyone who bothered to look, but it agrees with studies that show a difference in the ratio of the lengths of the 2nd and 4th finger (2d-4d ratio) where M2F women have ratios similar to genetic women instead of genetic men, and that one structure of the brain more closely resembles that of our target, rather than birth, sex. Both of those are caused by genes expressing themselves differently, and the 2d/4d ratio is genes expressing themselves under hormonal effects in the uterine environment. So, I hope you can see why we say we're "born that way, and with all the problems it brings, it's certainly not a choice unless you are extremely masochistic. [telegraph.co.uk]
Given that it has its basis on genes and epigenetics, why not consider the surgeries as corrective, not mutilation?
So, not a delusion, not a psychological disease, but a variant of human biology. And as time goes on, the evidence continues to accumulate that this has been the case for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
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To give an example, BarbaraHudson's genes, gender identity, and body form are not really any of my business. However, she wants to be treated as a woman, and be referred to by a typically female name, and it just seems like common courtesy to address her that way. Her social identity is partly my business, and I'm fine with whatever she's fine with.
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Women's brains and men's brains are not the same.
This statement is at odds with your usual thoughts on the matter. Your posting history has a lot of "there is no reason for any task to be more desirable to one gender over the other" type of posts.
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Men and women are different, but we know (because we asked) that women do want to go into CS. It's a myth that women are just not suited to it. There is also no evidence that women lack the intelligence or ability to think logically.
I agree that we know that women don't want to go into CS, BUT it's a big leap of faith t assume that the reason is due to your particular belief system. Also, I, and all of the other egalitarian, never made the claim about female intelligence. IOW we never claim that women lack the ability only that they find solo activities less desirable.
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then it would follow that there should be women who "believe they're really a man." Except ... there aren't. Go ahead, find a Caitlyn that wants to be a Bruce.
They're called FTM's or transmen. Been around for years, however since our society seems to be obsessed with the MTF side, you don't hear much about them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Find a bill that would allow women to use the men's bathroom.
http://lexiecannes.com/2015/11... [lexiecannes.com]
http://www.upworthy.com/heres-... [upworthy.com]
"Transgenderism" is a thing that only came about when feminists started pushing their whole "the penis is evil" thing.
Actually the first scholarly book about it, was written in what was it, 1910?
Lili Elbe transitioned in 1930 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And Christine Jorgensen did so in 1951, long before any so-called "penis is evil" thing you claim exists:
https:/ [wikipedia.org]
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"As researchers study this more, they've come to find that gender and our perception of it is very likely to be determined by the structure of the brain, much like sexual preference, and a large number of other things." No matter how hard you thi
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No. If there's a Y chromosome in there, the sex is male. It could be they have a disorder with a biological basis, but the sex is still male. Those 'researchers' are likely political activists first, scientists second. They're the first cause for the 'gender' self assignment craze.
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There's possible mixups, and there are women who were born female with Y chromosomes.
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#define sex
#define gender
Those 'researchers' are likely political activists first, scientists second. They're the first cause for the 'gender' self assignment craze.
There is no craze that supposed researchers started. The researchers are researching an already existing group. There have been transgendered people for a a LONG time in cultures all across the planet.
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By the way, I'm a woman. Unlike many of the so-called "women" of the "social justice" movement, I was actually born a woman.
Calling someone a so-called woman is kind of insulting, don't you think? Not all of us are crazy SJWs who think that political correctness is our God. See my post here [slashdot.org] as one example. I've seen life from both sides of the fence, and yes, there are things that need to be changed. However, cooperation, discussion, compromise, and leading by example are a better method than SJWs, who seem to be preoccupied with scoring points on how many misanthropic positions they can stir up the muck around, how much PC the
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No - everything I wrote is factual. It is a mistake to think that transsexual and transgender are the same thing. Cross-dressing, etc., are sexual fetishes, and have nothing to do with transsexuals. It's also a fact that some m2f transsexuals have a hyper-stereotyped image of what a woman should look like and how she should behave. They try to conform to this exaggerated "ideal" rather than just being themselves, so in effect they ARE acting out a role. This is decidedly unhealthy, because they've given up
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Donno. Never had the urge to watch it. What little I saw before I turned the channel promised to be as boring as The English Patient, which I also stopped watching early on.
They hired a straight guy to play Will in Will and Grace because the gay guys who applied weren't "gay enough." The hired Felicity Huffman [wikipedia.org] (Desperate Housewives, etc) to play the lead role as a transsexual named Sabrina Osborne in the movie TransAmerica. A good actor can play any roll. A bad actor can't even play themselves in an autob
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"It's not dividing anyone."
Oh please. The first blaring announcement in the documentary is a whine about how "fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John".
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"It's not dividing anyone."
Oh please. The first blaring announcement in the documentary is a whine about how "fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John".
But of course that is true - very few women are named John :-)
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I'm not saying it's untrue, only that it's "divisive".
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Well, I got the joke too, but the substance is worth addressing too.
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I completely agree it's divisive. It's a total non sequitur, gratuitously thrown in to provoke. Trying to encourage girls and women to code has nothing to do with heading a large corporation. They're completely different skill sets, with different career paths. The people running the corporations aren't going to write code - they're going to hire someone else to because it costs less in terms of dollars per hour of salary worked. Why would they want to know how to code when they can hire a specialist who c
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"The goal is to show girls writing code and enjoying it, in order to demonstrate to other girls that coding can be enjoyable and rewarding and interesting"
Way to miss the point. The point is that there is no need to do that. Programming is gender-agnostic, race-agnostic, age-agnostic. A movie that showed boys writing code and enjoying it can also demonstrate to BOTH boys and girls that coding can be enjoyable. Why are you suggesting that girls need to see other girls in order to understand that? That is ver
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Insightful)
So you may have to start asking more uncomfortable questions as to why.
Despite what the Social Justice crowd will have you think, we already know the reasons why. Women and Men are not identical! Women prefer socialization on average, Men prefer isolation on average. This leads to women preferring careers with socialization, while men are led to careers with less socialization. STEM careers for the most part are isolated jobs. Programming for the most part is sitting in front of a computer typing away, women are not drawn to this, they for the most part prefer socialization to isolation. BUT, and this is important, why does gender matter at all in any job? Are there tons of women being prevented from working in STEM, no. Just as there aren't tons of men being prevented from entering the nursing field. People choose the jobs that they want to do, trying to force people into jobs they don't want will never make them happy.
Focusing on people's sex is sexism, therefore the whole social justice movement is sexist at its heart. Normal people don't focus so strongly on other people's sex, companies hire the best person for a job, why would they not hire a woman if she fit the job? Companies aren't out to discriminate against anyone, they are out to find the best person for the job, not handicap themselves by focusing on only certain types of people.
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We know some of the reasons. We don't know all the reasons. Currently, there are fewer women in computer fields than there were, and so there are cultural influences.
In this case, we don't know whether the cultural influences increased the number of interested women earlier or decrease it now, and it's worth finding out.
The fact that there is a certain ratio right now doesn't make it the right ratio. If women are interested in CSci somewhat less than men are, and face social pressure, we'd see the s
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Insightful)
But still they lag in Engineering and CS. I don't think it's the case that most ought not or couldn't enjoy it, but clearly they've demonstrated some preferences. So you may have to start asking more uncomfortable questions as to why.
What complete horse shit. There are no barriers to entry in any job field for women. In fact today we have women getting jobs because of the qualifier "woman".
For 40 years women have been receiving preferential treatment in Education. Women receive more funding, more scholarships, and have been receiving far more degrees than men because of Gender, yet people continue to bleat how "men are biased" because that's what people tell them. It is really not that hard to check facts. As a single and simple example here [cappex.com] is a list of available scholarships. "Men" doing anything becomes "patriarchy" and evil so we can't.
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You took the quote out of context. As you have demonstrated substantial ability in reading and writing I suspect that you simply keyed in on some particular phrasing and skimmed/did not really read the rest. In other words, it got under your skin. Relax. While you may or may not agree with each other, you are arguing with a point that wasn't being made.
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You know, like how boys are blue, girls are pink.
Is it men, or women, that are perpetuating this?
Or boys play with action figures of soldiers and astronauts and whatnot, while girls play with barbies and miniature houses.
This has of course been studied more than once on children before they could have been coerced by social stereotypes. You do know what the results of these studies were, right?
Girls ARE actively discouraged from pursuing careers in science and technology as they're more "masculine" occupations and steered towards more "feminine" occupations like teacher and nurse.
Who is doing the "active" discouraging?
I have an idea. You raise your kids, and I'll raise mine. If you fuck your kids up thats your business. If I fuck my kids up thats my business. If you ever try to tell me how to raise my kids I'll tell you to STFU, and if you ever try to force
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Is it men, or women, that are perpetuating this?
Both, because it's society as a whole.
If I fuck my kids up thats my business.
No it's not just your business, we don't live in vacuums. No man is an island If YOU fuck up YOUR kids, who then go on to fuck things up for OTHERS, that's OUR business.
and if you ever try to force it through government coercion (violence) then I'll fucking kill you.
Wait...government is violence? And then you respond with such a violent tone?
If your kids try the same I'll kill them too. You do not get to fuck up my kids. Period.
You do NOT get to be a self absorbed asshole who fucks things up for everyone else. We are a SOCIETY. Maybe you're one those aspie libertarians who doesn't understand things like Society or emotions in general, but that's no
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Both, because it's society as a whole.
In society, is it the men or the women? Dont avoid answering questions just because its uncomfortable. You claim both and we know its not true. Men don't give a shit about colors.
No man is an island
This is exactly what someone says when they are trying to take away someones liberty.
Wait...government is violence? And then you respond with such a violent tone?
Yes, and its not a violent tone. Its a promise. Let me repeat this one more time. You. Do. Not. Get. To. Fuck. Up. My. Kids.
You do NOT get to be a self absorbed asshole who fucks things up for everyone else.
I am fucking things up for you, ....by not letting you fuck up my kids?
See right here is your agenda in full nakedness
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Insightful)
" It doesn't even touch on issues like sexism..."
The very first moments of the film open with the statement that there are fewer female CEOs than there are male CEOs named John. The film literally starts with a divisive claim of sexism. The film is an insult to the many female coders I have known in my 30 years of experience.
Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because if it were seen as just a fact by the filmmakers and devoid of sexism, the ratio of male CEOs to female is of no relevance to women in coding and wouldn't even be in the film, much less its opening moments.
Why not the ratio of males to females in elephant caretakers?
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Why not the ratio of males to females in elephant caretakers?
Because most women will avoid that sort of job. Oops, made a hateful sexist statement because I imply that women are discouraged from that job.
Let me recalibrate: Most women are smart enough to avoid that sort if job. Still obviously a sexist statement, but one that SJWs would approve of.
The hypocrisy of SJWs escapes them - but then again, it's about ego, not common sense.
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Actually that's not true at all. Many women wanted to carry on working after the war, but as men came home and returned to civilian life they took those jobs back again. That's fair enough to some extent, it would be unreasonable to expect them to come home to unemployment after being drafted into the war.
It's just a shame that the boom years of the 50s couldn't have provided more jobs for women too. American manufacturing was riding high because all the competition in Europe and Asia had been destroyed by
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You're full of shit.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/... [infoplease.com]
The number was higher in 1950 than in 1940 and higher again in 1960. It has grown steadily for a hundred years.
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Yes, but the GP was making a point about women doing manufacturing jobs.
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http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2... [bls.gov]
Stats only valid until 2010. A surprising number of women work in manufacturing jobs - and continued to do so even after WWII. They comprised a goodly portion of the textiles, clothing, and even footwear factory employees. The idea that all the women gave up their jobs is a myth. One of the reasons America was so prosperous is that there were jobs aplenty for both genders. Albeit, if you were black you were kind of out of luck when the soldiers came home. A whole shitton of
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Of course it was higher, population has grown. But what was stated was that women were forced out of manufacturing jobs (and other male oriented positions) when the war ended. Which is quite true. Women were directly told that they had to give up their jobs being welders or whatever to returning GI's and those that wanted to work were pushed into more traditionally female jobs.
IIRC Grace Hopper herself stated that during the war there were opportunities for women to do things that they hadn't been allowe
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You know it's a PERCENTAGE at the link, right? Sorry that your narrative and a fictional movie doesn't reflect reality but do try to be honest, here. There have been, and still are, loads of women in manufacturing since the days of the industrial revolution where the jobs were filled by women and children. Again, you are parroting a myth. There are the numbers to prove it. There's a second link in my second reply. Both are actual numbers from the US.
Your communist is showing (Score:3)
You keep repeating the same exact propaganda over and over in different posts, and anyone doing even a cursory study of recent history should be able to tell you how wrong you are. Men did not come back and just take those jobs away. Women were not working because the technology you take for granted did not exist. Sure, the advent of canned vegetables was there but we had no cheap restaurants or fast food. There were no good disposable diapers, cheap baby formula, fast food restaurants, cheap clothing,
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In some cases, it is. Those are the most frightening ones. (Insert C.S. Lewis tyranny quote here)
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It's the new Slashdot. All of us -- on both sides -- are unpaid cast-members in Dice's reality show. They post an article that starts a flame war, and they sit back and collect the ad revenue.
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Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, I'm a woman, and I'm feeling the same frustration.
Please don't trot out the MRA strawman* here. Or shall I go with the vernacular and say that you're mansplaining?
(*This by the way is why I have problems with gender-based identity politics characterizations: either MRAs are losers that mommy didn't love enough but are powerful enough to be the invisible hand of society that holds women back, or women are strong and capable until they're called "bossy", and then they get crushed back to non-existence.)
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Who the hell ever said that? I don't think I've ever seen anyone portray those basement-dwellers are 'the invisible hand of society', that title goes to people with actual power. No the MRAs are losers but as it turns out doxing and death threats aren't the sort of thing that requires social power or even serious numbers, just a handful of determined losers can do a lot of da
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Regarding your contention of MRAs: So, what you're saying is that those sexists that are holding women back in careers, that are enforcing the wage gap and are keeping women out of tech and C-suites, and squashing them at the sprout level by calling them "bossy", are you saying they haven't got that so-called "MRA mindset"?
Because to have it explained by anyone who shouts "MRA!" at even the vaguest criticism of women/women's initiatives, it seems as if both the sexists at the top and the neckbeards at the b
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Well the term 'MRA' is quite ill-defined and I guess people have different definitions, but by mine I would say no. The MRA mindset is quite a specific one, there are many other types of
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demands a selfless focus on the subject (the code, the game, the proof), which is pretty hard to achieve when you think bearing children is the ultimate meaning of life.
Try this on for size:
demands a selfless focus on the subject (the code, the game, the proof), which is pretty hard to achieve when you think having sex is the ultimate meaning of life.
men are willing to have sex with just about anything that crosses their path [google.ca], which I guess explains the two guys that had sex with a porcupine [slashdot.org]
Claiming women can't bring sufficient concentration to a problem because of their interest in child-bearing is as lame as claiming men can't because of sex.
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It annoys me that there were probably some boys out there who REALLY care about programming who didn't get to participate in this contest.
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Well you're probably right. And seeing as how Eirc Raymond, made this post yesterday [ibiblio.org] you have a right to be annoyed, if not angry. If what he made in terms of a statement is true then there is a problem, but the problem isn't men.
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Geez, that's some scary shit. Now *there's* a story actually worthy of being on Slashdot.
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I agree. It's terrifying (well, more disappointing) that completely unsubstantiated claims from someone who was chatting anonymously on IRC are being taken seriously by anyone, ESPECIALLY someone who is seen as a thought leader in the OSS community, and that some idiots will latch on to this kind of weak shit as proof of their preconceptions and then begin acting on this nonsense.
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The source wasn't anonymous to esr; he knows who it is.
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After reading some of esr's writings, he thinks weird. I'll read him because he's interesting and thought-provoking, but I don't really trust his judgment of other people, or his opinions.
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I agree. It's terrifying (well, more disappointing) that completely unsubstantiated claims from someone who was chatting anonymously on IRC are being taken seriously by anyone,
Well if it's fake, it's a long con. Especially after you [pauloflaherty.com] start [wweek.com] seeing [plainsite.org] all [apache.org] this [oregonlive.com] stuff [lkml.org] right?
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Yeah, because the post that was linked doesn't show an obvious agenda, with quotes like "(Donâ(TM)t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!)" That seems pretty axe-grindy to me and only serves to perpetuate the cycle of mistrust and abuses that mistrust enables.
I agree that if people, regardless of gender, are concerned that private one-on-one interactions they have may be used against them, by all means, strive to never b
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By all means - please keep perpetuating the cycle and tell me how that works out for you.
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No fucking kidding.
There are days when I wonder if the men around me are scared of me because they feel like they can't tell me what's really on their mind without me running to HR to tell them what kind of sexist pig they are for having the balls to be honest that my reports might not be the pinnacle of scientific progress.
I felt as if I had impostor syndrome for years because I was afraid of this very thing. I'm a little more confident nowadays, but at this point, I have no idea what to think sometimes.
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Nah, they're scared because they've never seen a woman with a gray neck beard, specifically a Dorito speckled beard, guzzling quarts of Mountain Dew faster than they sip coffee.
Well, I mean, you are a geek. I'm pretty sure you must have a beard, eat cheesy chips, and guzzle Mountain Dew (or Jolt). Sheesh.... I think those are standard features that you get when ever you write your first BASIC program. By the time you're at shell scripts you should have forgotten how to bathe. Pretty soon, usually when you s
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In my case, the fact that it attracts stupid comments from idiots like you.
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Why are you upset about this? What about this movie or this story annoys you?
The only part that annoyed me is the whole "exclusive youtube premiere". You know what else has an exclusive youtube premiere? Cellphone video of cats.
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I found it very disconcerting that the primary Google search box, as seen on Chrome's empty page, had an advertisement under it. I automatically thought, 'whoa, this must be bad news if anybody's spent THAT MUCH MONEY to promote it'. If it's not money but influence, that's just as worrying.
I don't remember electing Google to dictate the course of society. Some of us are trying pretty hard to elect for instance Bernie to do that, which is a legitimate path to take toward that goal. Getting really chummy with
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Google has an obvious interest in promoting the growth of its potential workforce, and they feel there's an opportunity to do that by getting more girls coding. Is there anything wrong with that?
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The only part that annoyed me is the whole "exclusive youtube premiere". You know what else has an exclusive youtube premiere? Cellphone video of cats.
Which of course brings up the question of why there are almost no pets in STEM careers.
The thing that seriously annoys me about this whole women can code thing is why we are going out of our way to train women for jobs that won't exist for them unless they renounce their citizenship, move to another country, then come back to get a job using an H-1B visa.
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So we can create an economy of laborers that are unskilled and unprepared for the job market, so that the upper class can claim we're the problem because we're not trying hard enough to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps, and American workers are so unworthy of the jobs they want to bestow, that they have to be filled overseas?
Call me crazy, but I think there may just be a little bit of malice going on here.
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Call me crazy, but I think there may just be a little bit of malice going on here.
It very well might be indistinguishable from that.
If the idea was to get young ladies interested in Science, then I'm for as much exposure as they are willing to handle. But trying to get them into a dying field (at least for American citizens in America - is just plain nasty.
And having worked with several women engineers and scientists, there was a common thread in thinking that these type efforts are pointless, and especially blaming it all on men is likewise pointless.
And it isn't a denial of misog
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The general consensus among the guys I know (and in my own personal experience) is that you're never going to stop anyone who truly genuinely wants what they want. Women who ended up in engineering according to these guys (at least the ones with long-sustained careers) were 100% go-getters. They didn't need their hands held or any convincing that what they wanted to do was to put that pencil to paper (keys to keyboard...whatever) and go until the problem was solved.
I'd been an inveterate puzzle solver sin
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Which of course brings up the question of why there are almost no pets in STEM careers.
PETA. Bosses wouldn't be allowed to treat animals the way they treat humans :-)
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Which of course brings up the question of why there are almost no pets in STEM careers.
PETA. Bosses wouldn't be allowed to treat animals the way they treat humans :-)
Well played!
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Breathlessly announcing that this is some sort of farcical "dey gunna take our jerbs!" maneuver is fucking STUPID, and just one more attempt by the good old boys' network to scare women away from tech careers.
You do have some serious reading comprehension problems donchya, Coward?
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Why are you upset about this? What about this movie or this story annoys you?
I just want to know when they'll be producing Nurse Boy, and Teacher Man. I can't get worked up about the topic of the lack of women in STEM if we're not going to be equally worked up about the lack of men in traditionally female careers.
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I just want to know when they'll be producing Nurse Boy, and Teacher Man. I can't get worked up about the topic of the lack of women in STEM if we're not going to be equally worked up about the lack of men in traditionally female careers.
OTHER people are worked up about it and a trying to do things about it. You just won't hear about it on in the neckbeard-centric tech-career-obsessed Slashdot.
https://www.discovernursing.co... [discovernursing.com]
http://www.aamn.org/ [aamn.org]
Film Critic (Score:4, Insightful)
The documentary is too long. 90% of the time you see a group of girls giggling and chatting about non issues (clichees are confirmed).
Two nerdy girls solve Rubic Cube with one hand (that's the only memorizable part for me).
They speak about coding, but you don't see anyone really coding, they just have the laptop and type (could be chatting or emailing).
The coding is about mobile applications - if you expect to see a diagram how things are setup, nothing.
The documentary communicates: teenage girls can develop apps (one has to assume this as it's not really shown), even with a social agenda and not just hype something meaningless to earn money. The documentary looks at teams competing for some price to win, training to present their ideas - it's close to a meaningless reality show. Topic-wise interesting, as documentary it falls short in my eyes, all remains on the surface. All girls are treated like props, no personality of anyone is explored sufficiently, no history, too many faces, too little depth.
A (interesting) topic cannot carry a documentary alone.
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SJW's applaud documentary that shows teenage girls giggling and acting vacuous instead of actually learning and accomplishing something.
Way to advance the cause, dipshits. Now people are SURE to take women coders seriously.
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It's probably not impossible but it's likely damned difficult and counterproductive to design a mobile app with something as basic and featureless as Scratch. MIT did not make Scratch for coding anything useful, really. I mean, I've played with it and I suppose you could. I don't think it's practical. The code that they show them working on is in Scratch.
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Coding is not much of a spectator sport. Watch me, and I'll sit still for a while, make some notes, bring up some other part of the code, stare at it, and then there will be a quick burst of rapid typing, after which I'm back to motionlessly staring at the screen.
This documentary is the wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for asking women to move into tech jobs - we have too little of them. But I think this documentary sends the wrong message. Girls building one-shot girlie apps isn't very flattering a proposition for women in tech.
They should've done a really good documentary on Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and perhaps some current day programmers doing serious and exciting work.
I was at the Google Polymer Summit a few weeks ago and there were some young women there, some of them high-profile software developers - a length interview with those would give off a much better impression of what type of women in tech we all want. One of the ladies was on the chrome team working on the rendering and DOM engine - I can barely image what a hardcore coding job that is.
And yes, they did look girlie and quite cute actually. Makeup, high-heels, elaborate hair-do. No problem here. The point I'm making is that they were *coding* serious stuff. You can be into cupcakes, pink pettycoats, pigtails and hello kitty and still do that. ...
Heck, our male coder type digs nerf guns and is all exited about the new star wars like a nine-year old at the age of 40 - like that's anymore grown-up a pastime.
I could be wrong, but I do think we have to move the coding women doing the serious stuff on to the stage - that would give off a better impression.
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Have you seen the film? The girls look girly. It's not just one-shot apps, they are talking about a general interest in making apps etc. While I agree that some history will be inspiring, I think actually making some useful apps that have real world applications in their home towns and countries is worthwhile and serious work. I know what you are saying, but there is time for the more hard core CS stuff when they are older.
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I'm all for asking women to move into tech jobs - we have too little of them. But I think this documentary sends the wrong message. Girls building one-shot girlie apps isn't very flattering a proposition for women in tech.
Some times the whole thing sounds a little like the ladies down at Curves ( a women only gym) complaining about men excluding them.
They should've done a really good documentary on Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper and perhaps some current day programmers doing serious and exciting work.
Or Hedy LaMarr, who had the side benefit of being so beautiful, she could destroy the "homely smart girl with glasses" stereotype instantly Aside from he acting career, she was an inventor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the most well known invention in conjunction with another person, of frequency hopping spread spectrum radio.
But back to women in science in general, Mari
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And it's hard to blame that on men
Is it? Usually when someone points this out - that women do a much better job at keeping smart women down than men do - someone comes along and starts claiming that this is internalized misogyny, instilled in women by the patriarchy. Sounds pretty easy to me.
Well, of course. But I've found in most matters, the people who have ot tap-dance through reasoning fo excuses, as in "I am never wrong", tend ot be.
Wrong.
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Or simply create documentaries focusing upon more balanced development teams.
I can definitely see how many people would think that programming is indifferent or hostile to women. Online, those who bellow loudest tend to have sexist attitudes (one way or the other). If you look at documentaries, a lot of them are dominated by men to the point that the inclusion of women frequently appears to be a token gesture. While the groups being featured may be dominated by men, it certainly does not present an impre
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Is the answer to that problem the sexism showed in this film? It is extraordinarily sexist to imply that women are so weak that they need other people to fight for them.
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I could be wrong, but I do think we have to move the coding women doing the serious stuff on to the stage - that would give off a better impression.
Unfortunately, this wouldn't fit into the narrative that women are being pushed away from these fields. The narrative is more important than the truth that there already are women in tech, and no one is out pushing women away from tech.
buit the biggest question is... (Score:2)
feel-good fuel of watching smart, earnest girls talk about creating an app
did they actually make an app, and was it anything worth making?
SJW porn (Score:2)
It's great that some interested girls got to learn some stuff. It's not so great that some interested boys didn't.
CodeGirl ?? (Score:2)
I think I'll stick with codebabes
https://www.youtube.com/user/C... [youtube.com]
Just to give google a taste of their own medicine (Score:2)
Issue a DMCA takedown notice. It's easy to submit one and not so easy to dispute it. And Youtube will comply because it's staffed by drones.
Is tension really important in a documentary? (Score:2)
Tension makes things more interesting, but if you set out to document something that's happening *right now* (as opposed to, say, some event in history that you already know was really tense), the *correct* way to document it is to document the truth. This is actually the responsible thing to do.
A few years ago, there was some indie game making contest reality show, and the people doing the show decided to *create drama* by asking one team if they felt that the other team was at a disadvantage because they
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Comments are disabled for this video.
Exactly as expected...
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Because, ironically, they function under the assumption that girls and women are so weak-willed and fragile that even the slightest obstacle can forever dissuade them from pursuing their passion. They also have the patronizing assumption that no woman would ever choose to be a programmer unless she's somehow goaded into it.
From the producer of Obama's 2008 DNC bio (Score:2)
Tale of Obama [adage.com]: Davis Guggenheim and Lesley Chilcott, the Academy Award winning director/producer team behind Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, returned to politics this summer when Barack Obama's campaign managers called them to produce A Mother's Promise, the ten-minute biographical film of the senator that aired at the Democratic National Convention and now appears on Obama's campaign site, which relaunched with a new design this week.
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