bethling

Thanks - I'll check the books out.

As a woman engineer, who's a really bad negotiator, I'm not surprised. I know "how" to be better, but I do wilt and get scared when I've gotten an offer - I think only once or twice I've ever made any sort of counter.

I don't know why I don't act in my own best interest though. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some societal element to it, but it really seems strange/weak/victim-ish to blame something external for what really does feel like a personal shortcoming - after all my own sister doesn't seem to have the same sort of "conditioning".

Are there tips out there to help getting over the fear of negotiating? Not really thinking about looking for something else at the moment, but there always seems to be a "next job" out there somewhere.

At least for me, part of the reason I like the Fire is that it isn't the full Android experience - I have a Archos tablet, that I don't use for any reason other than to test things. With the Fire I look past/don't see the parts of Android that I dislike - and I think a lot of that is that I really only use the Kindle for the occasional E-Book/App, watch a streaming video, or listen to music.

For the subset of things that I actually want it for, it does well - very well in my opinion. I'm sure it likely falls flat if you expect more out of it (which it sounds like he did).

Although it's probably correct that ads wouldn't impact the content/bias of Wikipedia articles, I think a portion (at least) of the success is that it's clear that there isn't any such interference by corporations on the editorial content of the site. The moment you bring ads into the picture at least a portion of the internet will start to wonder about that. There are a lot of cynical (or realistic - depending on your point of view :) people out there who have seen people/sites/whatever chasing money change the direction and feel of a website.

I'd much rather deal with Jimmy Wales' pleas every so often than to wonder if maybe [insert sponsoring entity here] had some role of changing the tone/content/whatever of a given article.

I have to admit, I'm actually enjoying my fire a lot more than I thought I would - I work for Amazon and got a chance to try a pre-release version of it and was less than excited. The interface still isn't quite as smooth as I'd have hoped (hoping they fix this or at least improve on it in a future update), but tolerable.

I used it on a cross country flight to read a book and watch a couple of videos, and it really did grow on me over that time. The size and clarity of the screen was great for watching a video, and the form grew on me in time for reading (it's still a back lit device, so it's not as nice as e-ink, but I didn't have any problems reading on my flight) - page turning needs work, but that's a software issue that (again) hopefully can get worked out.

It's not the iPad - but as someone who was already a prime customer - it does feel like a good device to me, maybe a little rushed.

Very true - this is what old WML based devices use to do - WML got compiled to WBXML or WMLC (depending on who wrote the docs :), and that got sent to the device, making much easier to handle parsing for the device. There were really big speed ups both computing wise - but (especially in those days) also transport.

I don't know how Amazon is doing it with Silk, but I'm guessing they're seeing enough of a speed up to make it worthwhile.

Because by splitting the accounts - they've removed pretty much the only piece of value that they provided over Hulu/Amazon/Redbox. There was one single place that I logged on to with my ratings, my recommendations, my queues for both streaming and DVDs.

Without that, their competitors are now almost pure drop-in replacements for their product. NetFlix had an advantage (to me) in that everything was unified. Now that they're split, that's gone - and they have to find some other way to be better than the other offerings to justify me keeping my subscription(s).

I kept my account even after planning on dropping it when the price increase happened, but now I don't really see any reason to keep my streaming account. At least when they were integrated, searching in one place, and having all my reviews in one place provided some additional benefit for me.

Now I don't really see any benefit at all for keeping the streaming portion over Amazon Prime (which I have) and maybe adding Hulu Plus. I'll have to see if having the game option makes it useful for me to keep the DVD portion of my account.

As soon as the sites split, NetFlix looses a great deal of value to me as a customer. Before it was a single place where I could pick movies to see - whether streaming or on DVD, now it becomes a repository of a bunch of okay television shows and (esp. once they lose Starz Play), a mediocre movie selection.

I changed my name when I got married. My maiden name is linked to my current name in a lot of these databases - typically the legal process where you change your name is open, and they just mine that piece of information as well.

I used to work at a company that worked in Logistics. I don't know if it's gotten better, but at least at that point there really was no good solution for multi-modal loads. If you wanted to go truck->train->truck, you were on your own for arranging all of the details. It was far easier to just use a truck from point to point than the other solutions.

It might have improved in the last 10 years though :)

I went to MIT, I can say that the only "real" advantage that I got from going there that I couldn't have gotten an a different school is that my Resume says I went to MIT - and that tends to get people to take a closer look at it if/when they might otherwise not.

I've found that for really good/talented people where they go doesn't matter as much as what they do and how deeply they explore the subjects. For me, the huge advantage to having been at MIT, is that all that hacking/discussion with peers was almost impossible to avoid. You almost can't help but work on cool, mind opening projects, and interact with people much smarter than you are.

But really - that opportunity is available no matter where you go to school. You might just have to work a little harder to find them. For the most part the best developers/hackers I've worked with didn't go to one of the "top top" schools - they worked super hard where ever they were and worked and learned outside of their normal curriculum, and in some cases that might even be better for them.

Career wise, I don't thing that having a degree from MIT has gotten me anything that I couldn't have gotten by having someone at a company say "you got to talk to her, she's really good." Just get to be good, do some cool things and you'll get noticed. If you worry that you're not getting exposed to the topics that you would at a place like MIT, you can always take a look at the books (or use OpenCourseWare) that they use to teach yourself a lot of the same things.

There's a world of difference between seeing shit happen to other people and having it happen to you. You might think you're ready to handle it, but the moment you're violated it will likely affect you in ways that you could never really imagine. (and that's not to say that everyone will fall apart - but it's almost never what you expected)

I think it depends on the time frame you look at. I started in Java back w/ some of the pre 1.0 releases. Between then and now, it's come a really long way.

Maybe I'm biased due to other new(er) languages becoming mainstream. But it feels like Java (as a language) has fallen behind as other Languages adopt new features that cater to different/modern techniques.

Java won't ever be cutting edge (and given the types of applications that are built with it, some stability/maturity makes a lot of sense), but look at the advances that C# has made since 1.5/1.6 has been out.

It wasn't like C++ pre C+11 -it didn't take a decade or soto catch up with the rest of the programming world, but you can see the its size slowing its advancement down.

I want to like programming in Java again (I'm not saying it's bad, or it's a mistake) - for a long time it was my go-to language for when I play with ideas. But for now it's just a way to pay the bills while I try to figure out what I want to do/make/build.

I have to admit - I never even thought that there would be an easier math-formula way to calculate it. Though I would have written the switch:

  case "september":
  case "april":
  case "june":
  case "november": return 30;

It's sad, but still need to go through the poem in my head to remember most of the time.

I don't know if I agree. The Java language has floundered (I've been stuck coding in it for the last couple of years), but I think the platform/JVM has started becoming used more and more often for new + exciting language options. The new release should make implementing dynamic languages on top of the JVM easiser, and could open the doors for a lot of interesting options.

I think the how you see the context of the photo has a lot to do with how offensive it is - if it's a just a random photo from a party, then it's something I'd shake my head at and sigh.

If it were something on an official Google page (which seems to be how some people in the comments are taking it), it would be downright offensive.

As something in a "serious" article - it bothers me - not enough to be 'outraged', but it is indicative of a lot of the issues women have in technology. There are times where it's just not appropriate. It's fine to like looking a big breasted + attractive women, but also realize that women are made uncomfortable when they're put into environments where they feel like who we are/what we can do is second to what we are. Photos like that create such an environment - and take away from the article.

I don't think we need to get to 50% - I would just like it so that women don't feel like they're pushed out - some of it is cultural (it's easier to believe that you can't do something as well as the next person when the messages around you reinforce that this isn't the right field to you) - but some of it is a negative atmosphere created by the sexist jerks.

And it's not most, or even many of the guys I've worked with, but it just takes one or two to complete ruin an environment. Had a had a child when I had planned to, I can almost guaranteeing that I wouldn't have bothered returning to software development.

It's better now - I don't know if it's because I work in a different city, with different people, or maybe I'm just older and the younger women deal with the same old crap. It'll still pop up from time to time - and I'm getting better at seeing the warning signs that someone is going to be that person, deal with it before it saps any of the remaining enjoyment I have for the field.

I think there's a line between "These are patterns that we have seen work" and "These are good patterns so use them". Back when I first read the book, I was pretty junior and I remember thinking "oh! I can use this...and this!". And built "wonderfully" over-architected code. Now I'll run into situations where after I starting working on some the solution I have resembles a pattern - and it's nice to be able to use common terms that the other developers will understand when you discuss it.

They're not 'Do this, and you'll have good code', they're just an observation that good code may often use many of these patterns - not because they're forced in there, but because the solution simply maps well to that kind of model.

Thanks!

I took ctecqyA3qAGB5UAs

As sad as it sounds, I really think it's preying on the weak for profit. So much of society/economy/whatever very much depends on taking advantage of those who are don't have much other choice in the matter.

I don't think it's as visible to us as it used to be, but I think it's still very much there.

These are the intro Aerospace Engineering classes - if I remember right (I didn't take it, but several of my friends did) - it really is a bunch of individual classes combined for convenience/scheduling. They're not being taught everything at once - there will be some classes on how things fit together - but they tend to focus on a single subject (or two - since it's two classes you take at once) at a time.

When it came down to everything, the amount of aid I got from MIT made it cheeper than going to my state university. I paid it off over the course of 6 or 7 years, with a payment that was less than a car payment.

It really doesn't hurt to apply - I got my aid package before I had to decided to commit to any school.

MIT also tends to be generous with its financial aid money. When I went there, I ended up paying less than any other school that accepted me - including my state university.

Might be true for guys, but if you give me an L or and XL, I might use it to sleep in, but the chances that I'll wear it out in public are essentially zero.

When I see at least some smaller sizes (and I'm not a petite woman), I feel like at they least they were thinking of people like me.

These are the reasons I've really enjoyed playing around with it. Unfortunately I tend to get distracted with many of my toy projects, and so little ever gets seen by anyone. But so far, with Mongo, I don't tend to get as bogged down with data modeling. That means that I usually get further into it before life takes me away.

I have no idea how well it would scale if I did build something that ended up being a success - but it's a risk I'm happy to take if (due to my own personal quirks :), it increases that chances that something that I build ends up being a success.

But I really don't think you'd see it applied there, and if you did it would most likely in the homophobic/sexist way that one is the wife, and their role is to support the "husband". It's one of the underpinnings of what some (and thankfully fewer and fewer) people think of marriage - that it is a union of a man and his wife, rather than that of two equals.

The lack of a Y chromosome doesn't help or hinder any given task, but the best teams seem to have people who look at the big pictures differently. Having different points of view means having different ways of looking at problems, and will (I feel) lead to stronger teams.

The solution isn't to optimize the process to hire more women, it's to look at the reasons why women avoid tech. Getting more qualified people into the hiring pool can only help.

When I started off in CS, the introductory class was 60/40 (approximately the same as the school) at the start. By the end it was 85/15 - women dropped it at a far higher rate then the men. Why? I don't think it has to do with men being better at it than women, I think a lot of it has to do with what we're told to expect of ourselves.

Everyone in that class was smart, and almost everyone was used to getting A's throughout high school. A guy who got a B or C would look at it as they we're doing well enough and work harder, a woman would be more likely to think that "they" were right and this field wasn't for them.

In high school, my guidance counselor told me not to bother applying to MIT, and if it wasn't for my parents standing up for me, I likely wouldn't have. I know other women who heard the same sorts of things growing up. That's where the problem lies, it's not something that can be fixed easily. Maybe it's too deeply rooted in our society to be fixed any time soon, but I think that if we at least can help women over that hump and get them to realize that they can do it, that the numbers will come up, and everyone will benefit from it.

Exactly. And teams do better when there are different perspectives, different ways of thought. Women have a different set of life experiences, and if we're dissuaded from technology, then the rest of the technology world misses out of those different perspectives. There's nothing better or superior about them, they're just different.

It's not that women should be encouraged because we're women. It's that 1/2 the population often feels (at least to some extent) like outsiders to the field. If there are other groups that feel the same way, then that needs to be dealt with as well. It's just that lack of women tends to be noticeable - in 15 years of software development I've only had 3 other women developers on my team.

Amazon is trying to consolidate into just SLU. Right now most people are either there, the Pac Med Building (which used to be the headquarters), or in Union Station.

Welcome :)

I fully agree with this - I lost my mom unexpectedly in July, and it's been tough. #1 can help a lot - therapists know the right questions to ask to help you start dealing with the grief in a healthy way - everyone is different, and if someone can help you start down your own personal path, it makes the road easier to find and a lot less bumpy.