Gender Gap in Earning

From Men Don't Have it Easy Either:[Emphasis mine]

6. Women earn less for the same work than men.
False: For the same work, women earn, on average, the same. According to the book, Why Men Earn More, based on a decade of analysis of government and other statistics, reasons for the "women earn 80 cents on the dollar" figure include that men more often choose careers that are more dangerous (e.g., police and firefighter), uncomfortable (from sewer repairer to crop duster), isolating and difficult (e.g., engineer and programmer) and work longer hours. The average man who says he works full-time works more than six hours a week longer than the average woman who says she works full-time. In addition, men are more likely to work evenings and weekends. For a promotion, more men are willing to move to places that fewer people desire. An offshore oil rig in Montgomery, Alabama, anyone?
Even comparing salaries in the same career tends to be biased against men. For example the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps together all medical doctors but men are more likely to pursue higher-stress specializations with unpredictable hours such as surgeon whereas women are more likely to be a lower-stress pediatrician, and thus women physician salaries are lower.
Despite all this, today, unmarried women who have never had a child earn 113% of what men earn. That suggests that for the same nature, quantity, and quality of work, women likely earn more than men, and only when a woman makes the choice to have children and thus, on average, is less focused on her work life, does that woman's overpayment dissipate.
The good news for women is that when they make the same career choices as men, they can earn at least as much.

The article has much more info on how the world is getting difficult for men as opposed to women. A must read. [Via Ben]

Close Friends

From Ben Casnocha's recent blogpost:

I just told a friend I was writing this post. She said, "This is a litmus test I use for how close I am with a friend. If s/he doesn't tell me anything bad about their life, I assume we're not very good friends."

Very true. I have been using the same test for many years. :)

Forecasting Apple vs Microsoft

Paul Graham told in his cult classic Hackers and Painters [2004]:

And it [Apple] hasn’t lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.

Aha!

From http://blog.oddhead.com/2010/07/15/most-prescient-footnote-ever/ via O'rielly radar.

Links

The physical basis for humanity - II: The genesis:

A nice analysis of Eastern vs Western cultures.

If Linux was the most used system in the world…

Most of the Linux is hard statements from people are due to the fact that they are accustomed to the Windows way of doing things. Not because Windows is better designed for usability. A little humorous take on it.
   -Via Kanchilug Newsletter.

Must-do MessagingMenu and MeMenu Tweaks

I've been using Lucid since it arrived on the scene and loved the social integration it provided. But I never had an always-on Internet connection and so didn't bother with tweaking them. Since now I'm always online at office, i tweaked it to my needs:

Adding a Gmail notifier to the MessagingMenu a.k.a. indicator applet:

go to [1] for instructions and package download. I installed the first package which just displays number of messages in selected labels but doesn't clutter the menu with subject lines (it displays subject in the one-time D-bus notification, though). Second one is for people who love clutter. :p

Removing Evolution from MessagingMenu:

Just remove following the file: /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/evolution [Careful! This removes evolution from the menu for ALL USERS]. There is a way to block it only for you [2], but that doesn't work for me.

Go social from the start:

By default, social apps (Empathy and Gwibber) will start only after manually selecting them from MessagingMenu. Only then status options and textbox appeared in MeMenu. This was annoying for me and I wanted to go social the moment I logged-in.

• Gwibber has a check-box to start on login in its preferences window; solved.
• Empathy is the problem. Open System->Preferences->Startup Applications. The command to be added is empathy -h. '-h' is for hidden; no windows, just in menu, logged-in and ready to chat.

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/05/gmail-notifier-puts-gmail-in-your.html
[2] http://superuser.com/questions/73200/remove-or-add-entry-in-indicator-applet-ubuntu-gnome