Category: Science & Technology

We all love Top 10 lists – they can be fun, informational and succinct – like a really good parable or story. A recent Top 10 list on CNet has, however, really missed the mark: Top ten girl geeks. I think there’s some humour in there and perhaps some basic research and genuine admiration. But I think in this case the list has done a disservice to women who are trying to topple that horrible trend of geeks and computers being so strictly gendered as masculine and feminine respectively.

If the list of the top 10 geek girls in history is so sparse that the author needed to include a fictional character, a cartoon character, and a Hollwood geek-lust icon then one of two things is wrong:

1. There is a serious lack of role models and innovators to choose from
2. The author simply didn’t want to present an honest list

Seeing as how there are some potential list members missing from this list, I tend to think that the first possibily – that there is a lack of people to list – is not the problem.

So that leaves us with the option that the author didn’t want to make a genuine list. Perhaps it was deemed too staid and boring if there wasn’t something pop-culture-related on the list? I’m not sure of the motivations.

However I am sure that this list gives me the impression that when discussing women and computers it is OK to put them on the same level as fictional characters and cartoons. People say that the computing industry isn’t hostile to women anymore? Really?

On a related note I was elated to see that the Gnome project created a women-only opportunity over the summer in relation to the Google Summer Of Code project. Kudos to them for standing up and addressing the elephant in the room, and then for actually doing something about it!

Sorry for the bad pun in the title.

In February I noted that Target is being sued in a class action lawsuit because its website purportedly discriminates against blind users or anyone else using screen reader technology to shop at the website. I wasn’t shy about my opinion either:

… I support this guy, and I think that if the judicial system chooses again to say that the rules of brick-and-mortar stores do not apply online, screw that. The Internet is no longer a toy or hobby. Social and consumer pressures exist – acknowledge this and don’t let people get away with laziness at the expense of the disabled.

Last week a judge ruled that this lawsuit can go forward – she believes that

… the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.

I think she’s right – if you offer the public a consumerist service you need to ensure that you do not do so in a discriminatory fashion. Period.

Earlier this month AOL released to the public a sizable chunk of data. The data was in the form of the verbatim search queries submitted by AOL subscribers from March to May 2006. Their intention was purportedly to aide academic researchers in creating new search-based tools by providing them with some real-life data to work with. AOL knew they did not want to violate their subscriber’s privacy so they changed the identifying information in the log lines to unique numbers. So kbridger could become, for example, user 3402937.

What they failed to realize – and this is a major stumbling block in artificial intelligence today – is that there is some information in the context of the data as well. For example look at this “anonymous user’s” search history:

17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 how to kill your wife
17556639 wife killer
17556639 how to kill a wife
17556639 poop
17556639 dead people
17556639 pictures of dead people
17556639 killed people
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 dead pictures
17556639 murder photo
17556639 steak and cheese
17556639 photo of death
17556639 photo of death
17556639 death
17556639 dead people photos
17556639 photo of dead people
17556639 www.murderdpeople.com
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 decapatated photos
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crashes3
17556639 car crash photo

Continue reading Dear Internet: Oopsie! Love AOL.

We’ve all heard the joke about how medical breakthroughs in medical genetics and reproductive technology will eventually make either men or women (depending on who’s telling the story) obsolete. Funny most of the time – until you hear about how they have now successfully created sperm cells that were grown outside of a male body, implanted into a female, and produced viable offspring. Suddenly the term artificial insemination takes on a totally new meaning.

In all honesty I’m sure not everyone is surprised about this. It really is the next step, and a preliminary one at that. The offspring suffered, with one dying before reaching adulthood. As the article notes:

“There are currently many things we don’t know about how sperm are formed let alone why it sometimes goes wrong and leads to infertility in some men.

But he added: “It is more difficult to say whether artificial sperm produced this way could ultimately be used as a new treatment for male infertility. There are many technical, ethical and safety issues to be confronted before this could even be considered.”

At this point in reading the article I stopped and mentally noted that not a single person voiced the first question that came to my mind: Should we? Certainly they make all sorts of sabre-rattling efforts, claiming that various aspects of ethical, cultural and societal impacts need to be assessed along the way. I can hear the white-mustached man clearing his throat, lowering his bushy white eyebrows and declaring that analysis needs to be done. Hrumph, harumph, we’ll do this right!

And yet, I believe we need to look at things a little differently. Just because we can, doesn’t necessarily mean we should. That’s my personal belief.

Many people decry that we are messing with God’s work here, creating life in a way that should never be done. I think these people often follow this experiment to its natural conclusion: same-sex couples being able to have biological children together. Then the scientists step in and say that God’s desire is to have humans grow and stretch ourselves – that if s/he hadn’t meant us to do this we wouldn’t be able to do it.

I find these arguments rather pointless, as beliefs are not universal and really can’t be used as a cultural solution. But I do think we should ask ourselves why this is needed in today’s world, what the ramifications will be, and whether we really do need to follow this path to its completion. These questions may result in ‘yes’ – who can say? Nobody’s really ever figured it out.

Another example of science leading society down a road it may not even be aware of, let alone be thinking about critically. What does that road means to the culture, society, and people on the trip? Do we even care anymore? Is it progress for progress’s sake?

I always wondered what happened to my teeth once the tooth fairy took them away in the dark of the night. Eventually I just figured that the most obvious and practical option was the most likely – the fairy takes the teeth down underground somewhere and melts them all down into molten teeth. The fairy then purifies the molten teeth, whitening them and removing all that nasty discolouration. Once the liquid is pipping hot it is poured into silver metal moulds in the shape of unicorns. Once cooled the new tooth unicorn statue is added to the “Unicorn Garden” – a growing pile of pristinely white statues spreading wildly over a simple green lawn.

At this point things get fuzzy, because I’m not sure if the unicorn statues come to life every Hallowe’en, sadly watching costumed children (in who’s mouth the unicorns once dwelt) traipse about collecting tooth-rotting candy from strangers, or if the fairy uses them in demonic rituals, animating them as grotesque creatures who’s sole desire in life is to bring the world to a thundering, shattering, enamel drenched end.

But I digress.

Scientists in Edmonton have miniaturized a device that will allow a tooth to be regrown from a root – how cool is that? Forget false teeth! I’ll just regrow my missing/broken/chipped tooth! It only takes a few months. Combine this new device with an interest in using stem cells to create new teeth and we have a brand new way of growing teeth. What used to be something we experienced only as children can soon be relived by all of us – well, all of us with the cash to pay for it.

So now the Unicorn Garden may start to grow a little faster – people will be jettisoning teeth throughout their lives not just as children but repeatedly as adults as their teeth grow old and fall out or get bashed about by flying pucks. So either the garden will have to be expanded beyond the underground lair (how cool would that be?) or the fairy will be doing more demonic rituals. Could this mean a return of the unicorn to modern day zoological references? If so, does it mean we should see them only on Hallowe’en, or is this simple Edmontonian discovery a harbinger of the end of the world?

The word outsourcing has become a dirty word in the Canadian and American vernacular. In fact my own software employer has begun dipping its toes into that swollen river ever so slightly. Just to see how it feels, they say. Just to test the waters, as it were. Luckily I’m such a star that I couldn’t possibly be outsourced, but I feel for everyone else – I really do.

And now I hear that outsourcing has come to McDonald’s drive-throughs!

It all makes sense, of course. You talk to a little speaker phone – who cares where the person on the end side actually exists? Florida? Washington? Bangalore?

It’s interesting seeing how they describe the call center that is contracted out to deal with the incoming food requests. I thought my Support days were bad, but monitoring to that extent makes me angry just reading about it. And then to hear that they have to try to up-sell you? Blood. Boiling!

And why are these things important? Why, to save money of course. This is a capitalist society and all that bunk.

When the customer pulls away from the menu to pay for the food and pick it up, it takes around 10 seconds for another car to pull forward. During that time, Mr. King said, his order-takers can be answering a call from a different McDonald’s where someone has already pulled up.

The remote order-takers at Bronco earn the minimum wage ($6.75 an hour in California), do not get health benefits and do not wear uniforms. Ms. Vargas, who recently finished high school, wore jeans and a baggy white sweatshirt as she took orders last week.

The call-center system allows employees to be monitored and tracked much more closely than would be possible if they were in restaurants. Mr. King’s computer screen gives him constant updates as to which workers are not meeting standards. “You’ve got to measure everything,” he said. “When fractions of seconds count, the environment needs to be controlled.”

The whole article requires registration (or simply visit BugMeNot and find a free login) but it ends with this simple statement:

Ms. Aleman said that, over all, the system had improved accuracy and helped her cut costs. She said that now she did not need an employee dedicated to taking orders or, during the lunch rush, an assistant for the order-taker to handle cash when things backed up. “We’ve cut labor,” she said.

Ah yes, once again we see technology really helping those that need it most – the minimum wage workers slaving away under the grease gods. All praise the silicon tutelary!