Because I have no idea how you justify asking people for donations for a nice NYC trip when you could actually pick up all the skills for your "cause" right from where you are over the internet and for free - while people are dying right where you live. Do your high-up-the-Maslow-hierarchy needs take precedence over them starving? And if they do, it is yet another small drop in the ocean of tears that unfortunately left big parts of Africa in the desolate state they currently are in.

I know this isn't an easy decision because hey, everybody wants to go to NYC like that, and I am sure you are going to say with all that knowledge you can make Africa a little better then in the future. Well, you can do that now and you can pick up all those skills for free without going anywhere and you could be making Africa a little better right this very moment while learning how to make things even better in the future. Be a hero like that. Or you take your own slightly egoistic dreams over the needs of others and you would just be another proverbial "brick in the wall". Others see you doing that, they are going to ask themselves why they should do anything for others when they can just further their own personal needs under the blanket of "charitable" actions.

If anything, you should never have asked for money but asked the hacker community to help you out with skills and knowledge or e.g. (used) hardware donations. That would have gotten you much more towards your proclaimed "goal" and with more ethical integrity.

What tells me "Martha" even exists and that she was admitted to hackerschool and will actually go to NYC with the money she just begged for? Even the twitter and github accounts could be part of an elaborate scam. Plus she asked for around $4000, by now has raised quite a bit more. Will that surplus be donated to further her "cause" (if there even is one) and support other girls to join her? Or is that just going to be nice pocket change?

To further satisfy my own curiosity, why is donating to her more "ok" and others asking for money are just "beggars"? Or would you donate to some random e.g. white guy who would ask for a couple of thousands for a nice trip like that? Would you consider donating to a person who is in a stable living condition but simply could not afford a trip to NYC or Berkeley? Or do you have to be third world and implied broke to apply for that? Which I don't think she is, by the way.

Also, why is "women in IT" a cause that even needs supporting? How would the world be better off with more women in IT - when actually nothing is really keeping most girls from getting into IT, unless there are local equal-rights shortcomings to keep girls out of ALL education; in my own experience, for whatever reason, most of the women I have met do not want to and actually say they hate all that technical stuff. The ones that did want to start programming, they worked hard at it and picked the right university; unfortunately many of those who did simply failed the programming exams or other technical courses. The remaining rest who wanted to be in IT and made the cut, they are doing just fine... it's just a small percentage and I do not think this is the case because anyone is actively keeping girls "out" - and I doubt things are going to somehow be "better" if only there were more girls in IT.

And aren't there local institutions to help people like her to further her education? I am quite sure there have got to be, even in Africa. Even for nice trips like that.

So, at the end of the day all I see so far is, you are supporting a romantic story and at first glance, that is tugging too many heart strings so it naturally sets off my "scam" alert. Please do prove me wrong! I am honestly curious.

Finally, most importantly, even if all she said is true: There are people simply dying not too far away, I think 5000 or the surplus 1000 could buy a good amount of actually very cheap but vital medicine to keep locals from dying under horrible conditions, to give them back their eye sight and keep their babies from starving.

So all the doubts aside, let's cut to the chase: WHY should I or anyone finance a nice NYC trip for Martha while that is going on and she can very well pick up ALL the necessary skills right where she is, over the internet, for free? Just like pretty much all "hackers" did.

Why does she ask for money instead of asking the community to support her with knowledge and skills?

By now women (thankfully!) have the right to vote, to study, to pick and divorce their partners as THEY see fit, they are allowed to drive, to drink, to be artists, to be engineers, scientists, to be anything they want, there are extremely influential political and economic positions held by very capable women. Now, I am NOT saying we are perfect and women should just stop complaining - but I AM going to say let's just be happy for a moment we made it this far because there are still quite a lot of countries in this world where all the aforementioned are denied to women and splitting hairs on comparatively petty subjects like the stereotypically non-tech "grrrls" seems like a waste of everyone's time and effort. Better focus on subjects that actually matter instead of wasting it on over-compensating and über-political-correctness.

I may not be working in the most hip and trendy kind of places so YMMV, in my own experience the IT industry I have seen so far definitely IS predominantly male to the point having 1/3 female colleagues would seem like the maximum I (n)ever (even) encountered. In the university where I studied they were trying hard to attract female students, we started with maybe 1/3 or so female; then came the programming lessons and unfortunately those mainly got rid of most of the girls. At the end, there were just a couple of girls left who finished their degree. IT is not for everybody and there are a lot of guys who just cannot do it either, why is it such an atrocity to say the same about girls? Nobody would cry murder if the article was explaining it to "my little brother".

If you are radically doing what you love for the love of doing it and you laugh about money, good for you. But don't blindly hope or subconsciously count on some miracle future success just because you loved your work so much. The people who completely bombed doing what they love(d) hardly ever share their crushing stories.

You cannot control all the things that can greatly influence your success and loving what you do won't shield you against it either. Keep that in mind. Get something out of it now, always get some sort of return for yourself and NOW, if that is "just" money and you consciously made that decision then that is ok. If it means really good connections and a technological playground you love playing/working in, then that is also ok. If it is a great opportunity to learn and grow it into a career even if the pay is horrible, well that is ok too. There are industries where this is pretty-much the norm and if you ever want to be anybody in those industries, you got to pay your dues. Luckily in IT, you are mostly shielded from that and can always expect at least not half bad compensation, given you can sit in a comfy and cool office and hit a few keys and get the chance to do 99% of your clicks over if you screwed up.

Enter twitter. They were the first ones to offer text-message (SMS) to website publishing for free and internationally. This was huge, even for me who giggles at "web 2.0" to this day. This is why it's 140 chars only and this was the main reason it ever got people's attention in the first place, now "everyone" could easily publish all that vital information about their pet's last bowl movement at any given time of the day from everywhere. And even more importantly, they could do all that showing-off in a much more efficient and easy way since it was only 140 characters so they did not have to bother with coming up with some "lorem ipsum" like entry to accompany their showing off. It was being able to show-off without feeling guilty about not writing a long blog entry. Reaping all that sweet peer-approval with hardly any of the work you needed before. twitter quite literally enabled this conspicuous showing-off and made it en vogue. Since all the "cool" kids were showing how great their lives are, so you had to too, right?

And now for something completely (or slightly) different. One of my real-life friends does that showing-off on fb in an even cheaper way that I haven't seen anyone else doing so far and I just find it even more ridiculous and it has become a pet peeve of mine. Without failure the last 30 to 50 posts he made were pictures of some sort of object of more or less conspicuous consumption and as text he would just write the one or two words describing what is on the picture - and then, to somehow add depth and give it more "meaning" without anything actually being there except showing off and to make it look "smarter", he would add a smiley. That's it. So imagine posts like:

"whiskey :-)"

"enchiladas :-)"

"sunset :-)"

" :-)"

"someotherexpensivecrap :-)"

One of these days, the internet curmudgeon in me is going to call him out on it and properly ridicule him for it!

As an addendum to this: be realistic what this means in terms of work-life balance or whatever you want to call it. Any executive position that lets you EARN will not only take up large chunks of your life but it will basically become your life. You will have to be available almost 24/7, you will be having phone conferences on the weekends, you will be checking your smartphone constantly, getting ready for meetings, you will be going through tons of paper, you will be having a LOT of unpleasant conversations with all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. And you will have to put up with the particular kind of people these positions of power typically attract. And remember, the further at the top, the lonelier it gets and especially in large organizations you will have to protect yourself from all sorts of politics and other shenanigans. There is a reason burn-out, heart attack and psychological issues are so extremely prevalent amongst managers.

So before you do make that decision to EARN, you should talk to friends or other people in similar positions and get a feel for what their whole life is like - then decide if that's for you. Money is one thing but what is that nice little place in an exotic country worth when you die from a heart attack at age 50 or 60?

(source: my best friend's partner holds an executive position for an S&P500 company; another friend took over the successful family business)

Why in the heavens would you reboot obviously badly administrated machines quite literally half across the globe if you otherwise took every initiative to not harm the target machines and keep your foot print as small as possible? (lowest possible priority, watchdog) Killing the process and removing the files should have been more than enough and you just don't know what a reboot could do to these systems; regardless of how much the admins of those machines are to blame.

Well, there are people who claim fasting makes them feel better, too. Or living on allegedly nothing but sun light.

I am not sure this is very good proof since e.g. not eating for a couple of days makes you feel good because it's your body trying to make you more active to gather food... so, as logical as some correlations might sound it seems flimsy to me. The best way is probably to go by blood and medical exams, to see if you actually are healthier.

There are constantly new results doing away with old truisms only to have those results, in turn, questioned and overturned by other studies and then there are basically opposing theories being found as valid, too. To make matters worse, there is an overwhelming abundance of less-than-scientific literature following the latest "fad" scientific results, plugging some diet "silver bullets" and to top it off, most "professionals" in that area are nothing but gym rats that payed lots of money for some training on a specific diet fad and then that is the only thing they will in turn plug to their customers. And the actual professionals, as in doctors, well mostly they appear to not be up-to-date with the latest-and-greatest "proven" theories so I always feel like I am missing out some of the good stuff that the latest fads are promising me.

All I wanted was a REALLY, actually healthy diet. Do I eat mostly wholemeal bread and rice as is common where I am from? Paleo and Atkins tells me this is literally poisoning and destroying my body and THE worst thing I could do next to shooting myself in the stomach. So only lots of fat, meat and vegetables? But "everyone knows" lots of meat is bad and one should only eat meat maybe twice a week, says the official generals statement here. Of course there are the different shades of vegetarians and vegans who all have discovered the one truth and the ONLY ethically correct way of living and they have the studies to back them up on the "healthy" side but e.g. the legumes they are eating are supposed to be literally poison according to the paleo crowd... yet beans are healthy, says another group, also backed by studies. Oh and fish, we all should eat more fish right? Yet we keep hearing how polluted the oceans are and how fish are full of mercury and probably nuclear waste from dumping it into the north sea. And I could go on and on and on....

For practically each diet recommendation or "fad" backed by studies you can easily find at least one opposite or contradicting study and at least two other, even more "true" and new diet fads.

Ultimately, this means I have no idea what I should actually, really really be eating and it leads me to the conclusion that: diet and health are the educated masses' modern equivalent to religion. Everyone is following their one true savior and will launch into borderline religious flame wars against the "infidels" of the other fads and theories.

Yet actually definitive answers seem to be missing.

And I am sorry if this seems like an incoherent rant, somehow it is, but I assure you with all the best intentions. Maybe it is just the tech inside me that wants a clear and definitive answer.

When it comes down to it, he is a politician, a lobbyist and while these roles are arguably not without use I would rather not have someone like that lay down the law what I as a "hacker" should and should not do or how I am supposed to be more like him.

But you are right, the article had it wrong:

> Originally the phrase 'Dutch courage' referred to the courage that results from indulgence in Dutch gin (jenever), but 'Dutch courage' can also refer to the gin itself. [...] Because of the effects of Dutch gin English soldiers fighting in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century apparently called the drink "Dutch Courage".

So it never actually referred to the people.