It’s still going on, and whenever a woman brings it up, it gets worse. Some of the comments to the article will confirm that.
Commentary: If you want to make a difference in gender equality, consider the subtle and often subconscious ways in which women are overlooked, devalued and underestimated in the business world.
Source: Everyday injustices for working women: The slights add up – CNET
International Day Against DRM – Defective by Design CC-BY
Led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Defective by Design, we’re celebrating today the ninth annual Day Against DRM. It’s meant to raise awareness of the harm done by the application of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to our media. Videos that will play only under specific circumstances. Music that you can listen to only on authorized devices. Books that you can read only after jumping through the right hoops.
As noted at the bottom of the Green Comet website, there is no DRM on anything you find here. You can read the books any time, anywhere. You can listen to me read the stories on any device that plays open audio. Unlike those who encumber their offerings with arbitrary restrictions, I want people to read and hear my stories.
Read the article and follow the links. Find out why there is a day against DRM.
 DRM affects almost everyone on a daily basis, but in the blind community it is a problem of epic proportions. Usually when people want something to read, they go to a library, pick up a book, and check it out. Blind people in the US can use the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in almost the same way—except for one major difference: coming from the NLSBPH, books are usually audiobooks, stored in a specialized format encumbered with DRM.
Bob Satterfield – Public Domain – Tap for a bigger image
A challenge for all you programmers out there, especially you app-makers. What we really need is a speech parser. An app that can analyze what someone says and rate it for content. I visualize a scale, say from one to ten, to indicate the level of content in what was said. If there’s no content, it gets a rating of zero. If it’s chock-full of meaningful content, it’s a ten. I don’t predict many perfect scores.
This app would be useful when an athlete or a politician is answering a reporter’s questions. Or a spouse is explaining what happened to the rainy day fund. Or maybe a contractor is telling you what you’re going to get for your money. But mostly for politicians. I can see the scale on the screen, continuously registering the content quotient as they make their speeches. No more being hypnotized by the droning voice and the great hair. Now we’ll have a graphic indication of how vacuous their words really are.
So you programmers, sharpen up your bits and get to your keyboards and hammer out the speech parser app. Baffled listeners everywhere will thank you.
rjb
ISBN 978-0-9919532-0-2
