Posts by Jackie

UK IT should 'fire men first', says Kate Craig-Wood

Opportunities

You guys in the computing world are not seeing the future properly. This recession won't last forever......Computers will help us ALL find ways to improve life. i.e. prevent disease by pattern matching and discovering mechanisms for silencing genes, they will "find" genes out of 3 billion bits of data, and do operations in trillionth of a second, databases will become very large, indexing, queries and performance will improve, data and statistical methods will improve and increase, and more intuitive HCI's for non-technical users will enable people to use your advanced technology tools. Computers will help us answer those big questions...the origins of the universe, the workings of the mind (artificial intelligence) and which gender is the best! (LOL)

Women in IT

I think some of the previous comments display just what an aggressive place the IT workplace is....and I am glad I no longer work in it. Having said that I have always thought that in a new industry like computing, the old fashioned traditional ingrained chauvanistic behaviours should have gone. Yes it is true women get pregnant - but they don't get that way on their own!!! Men should be as offended as women that co-workers are paid less for doing the same job - then Kate's comments would rile no-one. To restrict our pool of talent, either intentionally or unintentionally, by discouraging women from pursuing careers in IT will guarantee that the "products" will be significantly less than they could be. Also, the interests of women may not be completely coincident with those of their male colleagues. We have buying power now - and we are 50% of the population surely, we need to service all our customers whatever bits they have in their knickers.