The article is so drastically tilted, I almost have to believe it’s a joke; seriously, is this copied from The Onion?
I tend to think that treating anyone as a member of a protected class in order to ensure their participation is more divisive than any difference a few members of the group might perceive. In this case, the article’s overt treatment of women as “the fair sex” implies both diminished mental capacity and an overly “warm and fuzzy” approach to working with others. As long as we’re going this route, why don’t we insist on “more fair” treatment for people with different skin color than the majority? You only have to take these kind of practices a step or two further for them to become truly repugnant.
If there are behaviors in a male dominated sphere that drive off women, they’re driving off other men too. The issue is the behaviors, not what gender is perpetrating them. There are some good articles about excising poisonous people from your group, be it an OSS project, the workplace or what have you. This is a big step for some communities who have come to rely on individuals who bring the notion “antisocial” to dire levels. Look closely at some of the OSS projects that are very small and seem unable to gain contributors, and I bet you’ll find these poison pills. Some of them are so abrasive they simply work completely alone. I submit that the main reason this is less prevalent in proprietary software is that companies have HR departments with rules and processes designed both to prevent adding these people to the team, and to get rid of them if necessary.
Lastly, I think if you believe in gaining equality the first step is to truly believe that you are equal and insist on treatment as such. Accommodating mental and emotional handicaps, as the article seems to suggest, isn’t the way to get there.
According to the tubes, Dreamworks will be producing a live-action version of Ghost in the Shell. While there’s great fun to be had debating the pros and cons thereof, I’m going to stick to the usual casting speculation game.
My first pick for Motoko Kusanagi is Jodie Foster. She has the acting chops to pull off both the hard-as-nails Major and the introspective, almost-vulnerable Motoko – not to mention the physical resemblance being close enough to not require silly amounts of makeup or a complete divergence from the original character design. I’m not certain about action sequences, but I’ve seen enough movies to know that all those people flying around punching down walls aren’t athletes in real life. I say give her a shot.
There’s a report that BD isn’t selling well, specifically the players required to view the discs. From my perspective, a BD player is still a ways off. There are too many obstacles to adoption at this point:
1. Price. Manufacturers, make your money on the movies as always (DVDs have a huge markup, BD even more so), but lower the bar for entry so more people can adopt the format. Until the player is a commodity, the format will languish.
2. Feature set. BD Profile 2.0 or whatever it is just isn’t possible on the bulk of the available players, because they don’t have ethernet connectivity. There’s also too much disparity in what audio formats are supported by different players, making price shopping an experiment in whether the player will work well with your existing system. Sure, the high dollar players have all the features you probably need, but it’s unacceptable that a firmware update could conceivably bring the others up to speed, if only.
3. DRM. I would buy a BD drive for my HTPC in short order if viewing my own movies weren’t so encumbered with draconionan DRM that it becomes nearly impossible to do so on a non-blessed platform. I don’t particularly want to circumvent DRM, it’s just a boring hassle; but I would be forced to if I attempted to integrate BD into my system for the lowest cost possible.
I know the PS3 is a popular, (relatively) inexpensive solution that also plays games, but the lack of IR kills the ability to integrate it into an existing system. Sony may have won the format war, but they don’t understand or don’t care how to implement a truly compelling all-in-one STB / game machine.
Wishlist item: a Nintendo Wii with BD and a gestural interface. Not fully gestural, obviously, but imagine using the wiimote as your shuttle control, scrubbing back and forth in a scene. The possibilities…