kebabShopBlues

I once worked in an IT company that had a ‘Data Preparation’ department. Every single member of the team (I seem to recall there were about 15 of them) were women. I asked one of the bosses about this once, regarding the equality issues, and he said that only one man had ever applied for a job in that team. Well it was one or none anyway. These days, I sense that answer would not have been enough. Today, I suspect that he would have had to prove that any job adverts for roles in that team would have been ‘equally accessible’ to men and women, that special efforts had been made to ensure men had felt able to apply for the role. What is the equality world coming to?

(more…)

Jeff Atwood has posted about the Sugar UI, which is the proposed operating system for the $100 PC, ‘One Laptop Per Child’ initiative. He looks at the new OS, which has been designed to be a new experience for first-time users of a PC - read ‘Children’:

(more…)

Today I’m going to tell you the story of the best job I never got. And it’s entirely true, which is nice. (more…)

I hate it when I hear or read phrases like ‘these data’. It looks, feels and sounds plain wrong to me, and if not wrong then clumpy and turgid, like something you’d regret stepping in. (more…)

I’m going on a short break to Venice later today. My stress-levels are rising, and I suspect that this is mostly because of a nervousness that I do not know the language and I feel embarrassed to be another Brit abroad trying to communicate in loud English. (more…)