As a general rule: Don't shit where you eat. Some of the incident she describe are legit sexual harassment and others are a male trying to pick up a lady. Don't do that ever where you work or have important business to attend[your technique maybe lacking].
I Genuinely think this is not really a Geek problem. There is statistically large number of people with sexual deviation. For instance, it is estimated that between 3-9% of the population are Pedophiles[1]. At a conference with about 100 people there maybe 3 persons there with a sexual deviation. But it only takes one of those guys to approach all the women in the conference and spoil the whole thing for all of us.
My suggestion is if ever you were to encounter a situation of sexual assault report it immediately to the police[not the conference organizer]. I don't want that guy who hits ladies on the bum to be walking around freely in society. He would not be operating at Conferences alone.
As a side note to how important it's to report these things:"nonincestuous pedophiles who molest boys had committed an average of 282 offenses against 150 victims"[1]. As I said previously, just one deviant can crash the party for a whole lot of people.
None of the incidents described carry any hint of sexual deviancy. The worst of them are "just" cases of someone making unwanted sexual advances - being (way) too quick to go beyond flirting and too slow to back off.
This can be due to a lack of respect for women in general, but also due to a mix of social ineptness and sheer desparation. And you can't tell me the latter is not statistically more likely to occur in geeks.
I think the my first paragraph pointed that out that there are two types of things happening here. One guys aren't aware that they over steps some bounds.
But putting your hand down a females underwear and hitting someone's bum unexpectedly. Normal people don't do that.
I think it's partly a problem with organizers not paying enough attention to the community aspect of conferences. There are talks and there's sometimes lunch, but a lot of socializing happens too. I think it works better when organizers plan after-conference events or talk with those planning them and make sure they know what's going on and that responsible people will be there the whole time.
People who are going with the flow of a conference often want to stay up and hang out until 10 or 11 and meet people, and it's not difficult to organize or get local companies to organize events that go that late, like hack fests. People who decide to stay up later, well, at that point they're not going with the flow of the conference. Hopefully they know what they're doing. And if they don't, and something bad happens, of course the offender should be blamed.
I just don't think having to wing it should be a normal part of a conference experience.
Edit: I realized that I've only been to small (<500) conferences. It still seems like bigger conferences could have evening events, but they might be trickier to plan. Perhaps having a few evening events that are announced and that the organizers can vouch for would be a solution. Also I don't think it's all-or-nothing; the more well-organized activities there are that fill up the evenings, the less chance of something bad happening at a poorly-organized evening activity.
hmm...
I think many rationals problem is that they don't interact enough and then use their positive social interactions to social proof their bad ones.
Consider his first scenario where the person puts up his hand and says that they don't have the budget to do that.
The speaker might indeed be mad and likewise some others in the room.
Invariably there would be someone there that likes your outspoken or directness[just by the share number of people in the room, probability dictates it].
Now, if our rational guy stands there by himself and refuses to interact with others, the speaker and his allies will brand him as rude. Every move he makes, no matter how trivial would only be seen in this light.
If he had started interacting until he found someone who likes his disposition, he is then social proof by that person. Then he begins to climb a ladder of social proof. He would meet someone else who because that one person liked him they would like him too, and you can see how this spreads exponentially. Now, it would be just the speaker left hating him; well no actually, the speaker will now think his evaluation of the situation was previously wrong and that the guy is alright.[Appropriate reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments]
And if our rationalist is lucky he can turn his new found social proof into Authority by running for some prestigious position such as president. At which point, people will like him cause he is in that given position.
Being nice has it's only problems also. For instance, people would assume you want something from them if you start acting nice the first time you meet them.
Again, social proof can over come this problem of being suspecting of wanting something.
Social proofing can lead to what I call, the lovable Jerk. People who act in a way that undermines others but the general populous loves them so they are forgiven time and time again.
With that said let, me sum up my points. Being social proof will lead to people liking you but as a rational you only have a few people who naturally like you but you need to build from those few.[Appropriate viewing: Derek Sivers - How to start a movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg ]
From what you have said, your friend would rather it not be patented, but he wouldn't be all that upset if it did. The major problem he is having is that some Professors who didn't contribute anything to the project are now claiming part ownership. I think your first line of approach is to talk to the university directly and tell them you don't appreciate this and you want it change to just you alone. After this and they don't comply you can follow other HNers advice about going to the media and the like.
1) You are saying too much. Saying stuff about looking for the best is obviously your purpose, so no need to say that. Now, you are left defending yourself about being Jerk. For somethings, it is best just to give the facts.
2) Why aren't you hiring developers from your network?
3) You should try to come off as "We are awesome, and we want you to be awesome too.", not "We are awesome and you are not".
This doesn't say anything about whether to take this guy's money. They can still get money from banks, friends, other angel's or get this guy to reduce his terms. Right now, this guy wants to know what are his options.
I am suggesting that an "Avoid the worst" strategy may be superior to "pursue the best" strategy because the absolute value of "the worst" is far inferior to the margin between this (suboptimal) option that he has and an optimal option that we may only imagine.
The only problem with this strategy is that 30% may leave you with nothing as the majority owner drives the company into the ground or fires you prior to vesting. You would be in a worse situation than 0 because you would have invested your time and energy. As entrepreneurs, we all know how demanding a start-up is. To be swindled is just not an acceptable result of effort.
Right, i wouldnt give up control until i exited. i assumed two founders bringing in an investor who would take 1/3, so the two colluding founders would still have control.
I think the op mentioned that the investor wants a majority stake. Otherwise, I agree assuming that you know your co-founder well enough that s/he dose not collude with the investor to oust you.
I think alot of people have the paradigm wrong. I think people conceive Natural Language Programming as a simply change in syntax, which in it self would complicate stuff.
But if you take the stance that we as humans are Natural Language Programmers, the concept becomes easier to understand.
You can think of your boss at your software development firm as your programmer. He wants some job done and you program some approximation of what he wants done, then you modify based on his inputs. It is a similar thing with Natural Language Programming, your boss didn't use complex symbols to get what he wants done and didn't have to sit with you all the way through to get something done.
For me, it is not a question of whether this makes programming simply but whether we can build a machine with the same capacity as a human.
The bosses instructions and confused and imprecise. The natural language dance in this scenario involves us repeatedly trying and failing and adding more communication until the various terms being used are precisely defined enough so that the software can be written.
This is what Dijkstra was talking about. That without a formal system we end up wasting a lot of time tightening up what we mean.
It may be an interesting field to see if we can make a computer do this dance but it isn't useful.
The current process is: Bosses tells you the programmer and then you instruct the computer precisely. With natural language programming, the boss just tells the computer. There is no you now.
Why is this faster? Because you used to take 3 months to get the sofware done, our new system can do it in 3 seconds[the times are arbitary, the general assumption is that it's less than a human].
Of course you are going to still have to specify what you want with both NLP and a human. So this time is constant and it is not relevant when comparing the two system.
What I'm saying is that the NLP would be like a human but faster and less error prone.
An interesting point is that programming a human computer is in itself an acquired skill.
A "boss" with years of experience instructing programmers will get better results than an amateur. Experience with the particular programmer also improves results. An important part of this is knowing what to specify and what to leave to the programmer.
Like you started off saying, looking at this as a way of making programming easier for people who can't currently program is probably wrong. It's possibly useful as something to paddle towards, but I suspect it isn't a genuine raison d'etre.
The problem here is that there is 20+ years of acquired "state" that allows this to happen. Also, think of the hiring process, weeding out potential programmers with "bad" "state"; i.e. they are crap programmers.
If you want a machine with the same capacity as a human you had better have something that can learn at the same rate as a human, and then add 20 years of "life experiences" and education. Then.. _maybe_ you might have a good programmer.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but us meat sacks are better at doing that, evolution has stumbled upon some pretty cool hacks that make it cheap enough (think of a 20 year computer maintenance and energy bill!) to have a "sentient" being.
I don't want to get into the how. The how should be a very open question. Like there is a million and one ways to program something, so there are a million and one ways to create AI. Some implementations are more efficient than others.
What you should be asking yourself is how do I make this more efficient than taking 20 years?
Do you have any idea how expensive a child is for that same 20 years? Way more expensive than the computer maintenance and energy bill, my friend (I offer my beleaguered bank account as evidence) - and you can't copy the software after maturation, either.
I Genuinely think this is not really a Geek problem. There is statistically large number of people with sexual deviation. For instance, it is estimated that between 3-9% of the population are Pedophiles[1]. At a conference with about 100 people there maybe 3 persons there with a sexual deviation. But it only takes one of those guys to approach all the women in the conference and spoil the whole thing for all of us.
My suggestion is if ever you were to encounter a situation of sexual assault report it immediately to the police[not the conference organizer]. I don't want that guy who hits ladies on the bum to be walking around freely in society. He would not be operating at Conferences alone.
As a side note to how important it's to report these things:"nonincestuous pedophiles who molest boys had committed an average of 282 offenses against 150 victims"[1]. As I said previously, just one deviant can crash the party for a whole lot of people.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Prevalence_and_child...