Category: Technology

Categories
Diversity Technology

Breaking eggs

The discussion associated with the last post, on the display of a pornographic image at a tech conference, has really been civil and engaged. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a discussion of this nature where many of the concerns aren’t rejected almost out of hand. It’s actually rather refreshing.

One person did bring up the long hours and raising babies, but that’s been almost universally rejected in the comments. As women enter into, and even begin to dominate, other fields that require a strong commitment on time, such as medicine and law, this no longer makes sense as a ‘reason’. In particular, as more men become involved with their children, and reject the so-called ‘horrendous’ hours of IT, it makes less so as time goes on.

No, there’s more here than first meets the eye. I’ve had some ideas on this score for a while now, and when I’m not heavily involved in writing on my books and my Missouri site, I’ve also been researching what I can see of the tech industry: specifically the computer science degree programs.

As I wrote in comments at the site, the tech industry is broken. This state isn’t reflected just in the lack of women–it’s programs like agile computing, which are trying to compensate for behavioral characteristics that we’re finding out, now, cause more harm than good. Yet, the colleges gear their programs to people with these same behavioral characteristics. That’s where we need to start. We need to completely change the curriculum of computer science in school. In fact, we need to eliminate computer science as a separate field.

I wrote in comments:

I’m incredibly behind a book, too much so to be able to spend the time responding as I would really like.

I think we need to go beyond looking at a few classes, or behaviors in school. I think we need to completely challenge how the computer science programs are designed.

It’s not that these programs are antagonistic to women, but they’re also antagonistic to many men. These programs are geared to a specific behavior, as much as they are focused at an interest.

I have met many women who have ended in technology but not through the computer science programs. They come in through psychology, music, business, library science, biology, and so on. That’s what we need to look at doing — removing computer science as this isolated, odd field (what other field focuses purely on the tools?) and split it into other departments, as an option.

Take the data portion of the computer science degree, and put this is as part of a library science program focused on data and organization of such.

Do the same with psychology, business, accounting, and so on–degrees in these fields with emphasis on computing.

Not only would we get more women, we’d get a strong computing community. People grounded in fields of interest beyond just computing.

The computer science programs are padded with so many inconsequential classes to make up a full degree. Who really needs assembly language now? And we have a class in Pascal one day, and databases the next — without any rhyme or reason how these interface into the real world.

We’ve already seen the ‘bleed’ of the computer science classes into the other disciplines. Let’s finish the job.

Let’s break this stranglehold of the aloof, obsessed ‘geek’. Let’s remove computer science out of engineering, where it never really belonged. Let’s stop isolating IT, and bring it into the other fields, where it should have been in the first place.

Our programs are stuck in a time when computers filled rooms, and only an elite few had access. This is just not a viable approach any more.

This is just a start, and I don’t have time to do more than toss a few disjointed sentences out.

I do know that the programs to ‘encourage’ girls to take computer science classes are failing. Probably because the entire field is biased–predetermined to a specific gender and mindset.

The tech field is broken. Only drastic means can fix it.

I checked out the computer science program at Missouri and it looks little different than when I tool computer science almost 25 years ago. Oh, there’s new languages, and more on the web, and a focus more on Java and the like rather than Pascal, but the concepts are the same. We have classes in assembly language, algorithms like our friend the bubble sort, disjointed offerings on database management and OO programming with C+. We also have several requirements for analytical geometry and calculus. Perhaps a class on Unix or graphics, and so on.

We spend our entire time focusing on the tools, rather than the application of the technology. We’re still teaching computer science, as if no one has access to computers because they’re still room sized and only available to an elite few.

Computer Science is still too heavily associated with either the math or the engineering departments, neither of which reflects how computers are used today. Computers are used in business and in social sciences, in psychology, medicine, history, and on and on. We associate computer science with calculus, when something like the library sciences would provide more useful integration, with its better understanding of the gathering and categorizing of data.

We didn’t know how to deal with computers and how to integrate into our school systems decades ago, and so we bunged them in, established a ‘core’ curricula and then stuck with it, like flies caught in amber.

I look at the computer science programs now in most schools and frankly, with today’s technology, they’re dull as dishwater. There’s no connection with what’s happening in the world. There’s nothing more than a desperate attempt to hold on to what’s familiar. Unfortunately, though, the side effect is that the programs attract a certain type of person, and frankly, discourage others who could and would add much to the field.

The most difficult step to take to ‘fixing’ why there’s too few women in IT is first by recognizing IT is broken. In our society, where we supposedly encourage women to go into field, and explore any profession, any such that has this few women in it, is broken. No, we don’t need to encourage women, we don’t need to make men realize that showing porn images at a professional conference is inappropriate. It goes far beyond just these simple acts: the field is broken, and how it is taught in university only encourages the flaws that break it.

Categories
Technology

The Dell workaround

A Dell customer, unhappy with the company’s response to his complaints, sued the company. However, rather than having the papers delivered to the company headquarters, he had them delivered to a Dell Kiosk in a shopping mall. When the court date came, Dell wasn’t represented and the customer won the case.

What’s particularly interesting with this, is a constrast between it and a case in Illinois where Dell was being sued in a class action lawsuit. Purchasers of Dell computers sued the company because it claimed a specific chip was the ‘fastest’, and they disputed this claim after getting their computers.

In the Illinois case, Dell filed a motion to stay the proceedings based on the fact that the Terms and Conditions of the computer sale contained an arbitration clause. Since the buyers completed the purchase, the buyers agreed to the T & C, including the use of arbitration in any and all disputes between them and the company.

The lower courts denied the motion, but Dell won on appeal and the case was remanded to arbitration. (See more details in the Internet Cases weblog.)

On appeal, the court held that the plaintiffs were properly made aware of the terms and conditions. The hyperlinks appearing on the web pages made the pages “the same as a multipage written paper contract. The blue hyperlink simply takes a person to another page of the contract, similar to turning the page of a written paper contract.” The contrasting blue color of the hyperlink served to make it conspicuous. Finally, the court noted that because the plaintiffs were purchasing computers online, they were not novices, and should have known that more information would have been available by clicking on the link.

(emph.mine)

If the customer in the first story had filed with the agent on record for the company in his state, his lawsuit would have been squashed, and he would have been forced into arbitration.

Why is this not necessarily in the best interest of the customer? Why did the plaintiffs in the Illinois case fight this move to arbitration? Let’s just say that little people seldom win against Big People in arbitration. In a story the Washington Post ran in 2000, it found that for the National Arbitration Forum, one corporate client won over individuals in arbitration, 99.6% of the time. More importantly, there is no transparency in arbitration: most of the actions are secret; whatever rights we have during the arbitration process are given at the discretion of the arbitration company and not mandated by law; and the decisions lack verifiability. It has, however, become a billion dollar industry, and new darling of the corporates.

Personally, I’ve had nothing but good service from Dell, so I’m not picking on the company just to pick on the company. However, before you make your online purchases this year, read the Terms and Conditions and look for an arbitration clause. If you find one, consider if you really want to enter into an agreement to arbitrate if a problem occurs.

Oh, and I’ve checked: so far as I can see, Apple has not inserted a mandatory/binding arbitration clause into it’s Terms and Conditions.

Categories
JavaScript Web

Absolute must for web developers

Firebug has released a beta of the first full version, 1.0. The previous version was extremely helpful. This version is beyond helpful. I dare say it goes all the way to, “Wow!”

I don’t use Firebug because I’m a Firefox browser user. I’m a Firefox browser user because of extensions like Firebug.

Categories
JavaScript

Best practices don’t win points

Roger Johansson sharpens his teeth and tears into Ajax/JavaScript/Web application developers with You cannot rely on JavaScript being available. Period. He poses a questions:

I have a question for people who label themselves as JavaScript developers: Have you forgotten about, never heard of, or never cared about the terms progressive enhancement, graceful degradation, and Hijax? If the answer is yes, then please tell me why.

I would also like to know whether you actually consider disregarding those best practice methods to be compatible with modern, responsible, and professional JavaScripting.

Following the question, Roger lists out several popular web sites with a description of what happens when script is blocked. I’m not surprised at Bloglines, but wouldn’t have expected Blogger to depend on JavaScript for login. That’s very limiting.

As to his question, this is a time of flash and sizzle, and anyone who programs cautiously, worrying about such things as graceful degradation or accessibility, is going to be left behind. There is a frantic need to prove that JavaScript and Ajax and the whole genre of tools is cooler than cool. This is a time of competition for eyeballs, and grabbing market shares, and wow factors, and pages so crowded with interactivity, frankly, it’s like trying to read or work with an ant hill. With angry ants.

It’s this way because if you go slow, or urge caution, or back off of some of the more ‘hip’ Ajax/JavaScript effects, you’re out of the loop–not a part of the ‘with it’ kids. This all means then you don’t get the opportunities, jobs, even the pats on the head and a well done. As for those who might provide accolades to those who do use the JS best practices, well, they’re too busy in their own world focused on web design, CSS, accessibility, XHTML–conferences here, web standard get-togethers there. The only time they might notice us ‘hacks’ is when we do something they don’t like.

So Roger, the answer to your question is: when was the last time you pointed out those who support the ‘good’ practices of JavaScript?

Categories
Web

Microsoft does not want us to use IE

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Writing Learning JavaScript and now Adding Ajax, as well as creating web page applications such as my photo popup has led me to an epiphany: Microsoft really doesn’t want us to use IE. No, I’m not being facetious–the company would probably prefer that people move to another browser.

Let’s look at the facts.

First, web developers must add additional tweaks in scripting code and CSS in order for web applications to work with IE7; yet no specialized code or CSS is required for other web browsers. Now, why release a new version of a browser that’s guaranteed to be incompatible with all other browsers? It’s not as if any of the technologies are new: most have been out for five or more years.

Backwards compatibility doesn’t explain this deliberate nonalignment. One can continue to support something like attachEvent while adding support for addEventListener using application wrappers. Developers have been providing backwards compatible wrappers in code for years. I can’t believe that the Microsoft developers aren’t familiar with this technique. It shouldn’t be a burden within the code, yet keeping something like a proprietary event system just continues to add developer aggravation, as well as adding to the number of sites that break.

IE7 is also a nag. So much so that I’ve finding I can’t load applications, visit pages, do much of anything without some warning or another popping up. It nags constantly, and much of this can’t seem to be turned off. It’s wearying to use IE7–it is not an unobtrusive element of the web browsing experience.

Then there’s the new, ‘helpful’ way to test in both IE 6 and IE7–Microsoft is providing a Virtual PC image preloaded with XP and 6 just so you can test your pages with IE 6, while having IE 7 loaded on your regular installation.

No need to buy a license for XP within the VPC image. How sweet. But you do have to load an application that loads another version of the operating system in memory, just so you can test a web browser. A web browser! I don’t know about all the people who are tossing flowers at Microsoft’s feet for this ‘kind’ gesture, but this ‘workaround’ is an insult to web developers, and a mockery of the concept of a browser–you know that simple yet powerful application that opens the world but leaves a small footprint? Yeah, that browser.

According to the IE weblog, this VPC image will only function until April 1st, 2007, but I think the April Fool’s joke is getting people to reserve both memory and disc space–as well as having to go through Microsoft’s validation process–just to test against a browser. What happens after April, then? Are all the Windows 2000 installations going away? There will be no need to test for IE6?

Add it all up, and I think the facts equal Microsoft making a strategic decision to phase out Internet Explorer.

Microsoft was challenged back in 1994/1995 by an upstart company that said the web and its browser would eventually replace the need for an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows. Microsoft couldn’t let that slide, came out with IE, and proceeded to blow the doors off of Netscape’s Navigator.

Once the house of Netscape began to crumble and fail, and more importantly, once the browser space began to develop an open source following with the Mozilla effort, Microsoft lost interest in the browser space. The company’s bread and butter is based on operating system, Office and entertainment applications, and developer tools–not browsers.

IE has also been plagued for years with security flaws; flaws costing the company time and effort, true, but more importantly, costing the company credibility. The security flaws associated with Windows do not get the media play that security flaws with IE get. As such the issues of security associated with IE potentially could impact on the perception of the company’s new golden goose, Vista. There is no such thing as a 100% secure browser–so why take the chance? Drop the browser, and push the burden off on other browsers, while the company touts the security of it’s new and improved operating system.

You can see the seeds of IE’s growing lack of fit with Microsoft global strategy in the choice of Ray Ozzie as lead tech architect for the company. Ozzie is not a web man. His background is in distributed computing, not web services; his focus is going to be on applications built on Windows OS, based on Windows development architecture, and locking customers in to Windows OS–not the free for all that is the web.

Microsoft doesn’t need to prove a dominance in the browser space anymore. If it needed to do that, it would have released a more complete browser–and it would have issued new releases more regularly. It definitely wouldn’t have released the application so encumbered that one has to load a VPC image just to test new browser releases.

IE is an anchor now. It brings in no accolades to the company, and gets little respect. It costs money, though, and associates security problems with the Microsoft name. Solution: get people off of IE, and for those that stubbornly persist in using IE, put so many security roadblocks in the way that there is absolutely no chance the company can be held accountable for any security violation through IE.

Why else would the company release a new version of the browser with so many glaring and obvious incompatibilities with other browsers? Why else make it virtually impossible to visit any web site, without running against multiple warnings and blocks? Why else make it so difficult to test existing and new versions of the browser, that you have to run a completely new OS image?

Microsoft management must want people off of IE.