grifpete

Once again I refer you to the actual blog post. The concern about the post mortem she actually voiced was that the investigation was by an agency paid for by the company. The well known problem with such investigations is that they are rarely seen as being independent and hence, sadly irrespective of their merits of lack of them, they rarely solve the problem because their reports are seen as being tainted. Hence such investigations do not serve to remove the chill she was trying to explain and which you evidently failed to understand.

With regard to the apparent imbalance between Horvath and Github and its employees, such an alleged imbalance is fictional. This kind of situation where there is an employee involved in any kind of war of words with a company is indeed rarely balanced but it is rare for it to be truly in favor of the employee. A company has the resources and many means to make its position clear. This starts with engaging a PR / crisis management firm to craft the strategy to be rolled out. It will typically involve and investigation and two classes of public statements. Statements from the company expressing vague regret and apology for any perceived wrong doing. And orchestrated anonymous statements from employees explaining how the situation was more nuanced and how the employee in question was always difficult etc etc. Just to be clear how typical this pattern is, I predicted precisely this rollout weeks ago and it followed the standard pattern precisely.

Please note that I do not have any knowledge of the situation and assume nothing about what did or didn't happen. I do however recognize that precisely that uncertainty, if not properly handled after the effect can indeed have a chilling effect. It is for that reason that I believe the original post had merit.

Please further note that my concern with your comment is because you mindlessly trot out stereotyped generalities about the unfairness of the ways men and women are treated in the workplace. The same tired old shibboleth's about how women are inevitably considered blameless and right and men villainous perpetrators whatever the facts.

As for me being surprised by your insight that women too can have negative sides to their personalities - grow up.

The post does not do that. In fact it doesn't lay out a case that Horvath must be in the right at all. What the post actually does, for those who took the time to read it, is point out that a distressing takeaway from the whole messy affair is that without a convincing post mortem (legal or not) that is has a chilling effect on the way women feel about the tech workplace. In other words, the key point is about how such messy events are handled and the impact ths 'handling' has.

As for your concern about my concern for your anger. I think your last paragraph speaks for itself. Apparently you don't seem to understand that angry statements about the way women (the unfair beneficiaries of being unthinkingly treated as victims) and men (unfairly branded as villains) just reproduces a stereotyped position that is as laughable as your idea that listing the many negatives of women is doing them a favor.

What are 'alpha' traits please?

'despise' is a very strong term. It implies a much much stronger reaction to the material than just disagreeing with it. Why is that?

'it seems to argue that any woman who claims anything should be treated as unequivocal truth, punishment meted out to the harshest extent possible'

No it doesn't. It doesn't say anything of the kind.If you take that from the article then you are bringing that position to the material.

"Not all women are honest and truthful. Women are not above pettiness, power plays and self-interests."

Very true. But it is hard to see how this relates to the real point of the blog.

All in all, I detect clear evidence of an angry person, ready to project his resentment at what he believes to be inappropriate powerplays by scheming women. Scary powerplays that are too often blindly supported.

That's pretty funny. I truly doubt many if any Canadians are counting on that.

I remember going to Africa where I encountered sounds so radically different that on my return it was luminously clear to me that French, German and Italian were close kin to English in comparison. It gave me food for thought. Chinese is indeed very different from English. But so are many African languages.

wrt Zuckerberg you are mistaken. You are only liable for tax on a gain when you realize that gain. He became liable for tax when he sold stock and by selling it he had more than the cash needed to pay the tax.

You are of course at liberty to have a beef with economics, but the idea that it is not an empirical discipline that values falsifiable hypothesis is itself a false hypothesis. Furthermore, the idea that economists do not learn from failed hypothesis or attempt to embody that learning into new hypotheses is also false. You write like someone who has an observer's impressions of economics rather than any real exposure to the discipline.

Jane Doe??

A lot of the comments here seem to be missing the key point. The question is not whether immersion is a good thing or is better than classroom. The question the theory set out to investigate is what does it take for someone to become an outstanding learner of a foreign language, even when older. Why can some people do what is widely regarded as being impossible, achieve true native level fluency when learning >18?

Apalling.

I think C Rice is an disturbing figure because she appears to be a contradiction. Nobody expects much of figures such as Rumsfeld or Chaney - they come across as ruthless unprincipled technocrats who are prepared to do some extraordinary dangerous things in pursuit of their ideological convictions. But CR is obviously highly intelligent and somehow more relatable. Which makes her actions feel like a betrayal. Hence the highly emotive reaction to her apologetics. One senses she should and indeed must know better.

She has been an outspoken apologist for some pretty heinous policies. It is rational to assume she hasn't changed.

"...some educators worry that three years isn’t enough time for young people to find themselves intellectually or emotionally."

Almost all degrees in England are three years degrees.

I have one. I'll never go back.

I suspect the did much more damage developing javascript.

What about organizations that actively support gay rights? Where CEOs actively promote policies to advantage the status and wellbeing of gay employees eg Apple? There may well be Apple employees or investors that don't agree with that policy but CEOs can't not stand for anything because of the risk that some will be offended by their positions.

IF his beliefs lead to policies inside Mozilla that disadvantage gay employees THEN will be the time to protest. Otherwise he is entitled to hold his own private beliefs no matter how much we/I may disagree with them.

Totally agree - well said.

I agree. I totally disagree with him but he has a right to hold views that I and others disagree with. And he has a right to donate accordingly. And Mozilla is not an organization whose mission is gay rights. This is politically correct overreach.

I am all for gay marriage and I have a deep dislike of homophobia. But I am concerned about some of the reactions to Mozilla because of Brendan Eich's position. I totally disagree with him but surely he is entitled to have his view and to donate accordingly. He was donating as a private person not as a representative of Mozilla. Furthermore, there is nothing about Mozilla as an organization that particularly 'stands for' gay rights. It is not as if he is working for a gay rights group and then donating to oppose the group he is working for. This smacks of the thought police to me.

As I made plain - I couldn't read the original article. But let me see if I understand you correctly. a) person A has a patent (which incidentally as a matter of law cannot be for just an abstract idea) b) person B challenges the patent - I am not sure what the grounds for this challenge are because you don't specify them. Is it because B is claiming that the patent was falsely awarded because it was no more than an abstract idea? c) person A disputes the challenge by pointing out that it isn't abstract.

If this interpretation of your comment is correct then I don't see how it is in conflict with my observation that abstract ideas can't be patented.

I can't read the original article because it is behind a paywall...BUT...abstract ideas do not get patents.

This is not my opinion, it is fact. Look it up.

Haha. It happened already. http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scan... "Several female GitHub employees, who spoke with The Verge on condition of anonymity, said they’ve never felt gender discrimination at the company. "I don’t feel isolated or alone," one female developer says. "I have never personally experienced anything like that and I’ve never witnessed it.""

Webpage not available - nice touch!

a) you can't fix the problems of the past by giving her a job now b) being a significant investor doesn't make you 'relatively high-ranking in the company.' You are either an employee with a high ranking job, or an investor. If you have no executive functions and are just an investor you are not entitled to intervene in day to day affairs unbidden. c) It matters morally because even if she had the paper that would not entitle her to talk and harass an employee with the tacit support and protection of a senior member of the company.

I am favorably impressed by the statement recently issued by Github.

That's kind of the point. :) She acted as if she did.

I agree, but as I state about, in such circumstances "...it is that officer's responsibility to make the situation clear to the employees which whom he/she will be interacting and to oversee such interactions. Needless to say, if such interactions cause distress or could constitute harassment then it is the officer's job to deal with the problem."

I have a hypothesis but it's probably bullshit.

If a) Horvath had felt for some time that she was in a hostile work environment and that she was being subjected to pressures that a male employee would not have to endure (ie sexist discrimination, and b) the company senior management / founder(s) felt that there was a risk that she was going to leave and go public with her allegations of sexism, then c) it makes a twisted kind of sense that the founder would send his wife to go talk to Horvath to try to negotiate some kind of truce, make her happy. The (unfortunate) logic being that a woman to woman communication might be better for defusing Horvath's concerns. d) unfortunately the wife, whilst female, handled it clumsily and make matters worse...and as the situation deteriorated she played an increasingly crazy and (apparently) unmanaged role. For all we know she had represented to her founder husband that she could handle it and panicked when things started going downhill. e) etc etc

Like I said, it's probably bullshit...