Seattle Pixel

Today Joel Spolsky had an odd recommendation: "don't hide or disable menu items." His reasoning is that user see disabled menu items and are confused as to why they can't click on them. So, rather than disabling the menu item, he suggests the following:

Instead, leave the menu item enabled. If there's some reason you can't complete the action, the menu item can display a message telling the user why.

• Screenshot #1 - Disabling Menu Items: The "Status" field is disabled because I'm in "edit" mode. Right. I don't know why I would have expected to be able to edit the status while editing the bug .
  
  
• Screenshot #2 - Hiding Menu Items: When you go into "Resolve" mode, you can now edit Status. Oh goody. Wait, how come my only options are "Responded", "Won't respond", "SPAM", etc? What ever happened to good ol' fashioned "Fixed" and "Working on"? Ah, of course. I have to go back to Edit Bug, change Category from "Inquiry" to "Bug", Save, then go to Resolve. Now I can see other options for Status. Makes perfect sense...
  
  

Fascinating. An Albanian custom permits women to take an oath of virginity and live their life as men. The gender-swapping custom has its roots in gender inequality: it provided a patriarch for families who were left without one.

The sworn virgin was born of social necessity in an agrarian region plagued by war and death. If the family patriarch died with no male heirs, unmarried women in the family could find themselves alone and powerless. By taking an oath of virginity, women could take on the role of men as head of the family, carry a weapon, own property and move freely.

Taking an oath to become a sworn virgin should not, sociologists say, be equated with homosexuality, long taboo in rural Albania.

“Today women go out half naked to the disco,” said Ms. Rakipi, who wears a military beret. “I was always treated my whole life as a man, always with respect. I can’t clean, I can’t iron, I can’t cook. That is a woman’s work.”

Eww. Father-Daughter Purity Ball [tip: get a login / password from bugmenot.com].

The girls, ages early grade school to college, had come with their fathers, stepfathers and future fathers-in-law last Friday night to the ninth annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball. The first two hours of the gala passed like any somewhat awkward night out with parents, the men doing nearly all the talking and the girls struggling to cut their chicken.
...
For the Wilsons and the growing number of people who have come to their balls, premarital sex is seen as inevitably destructive, especially to girls, who they say suffer more because they are more emotional than boys. Fathers, they say, play a crucial role in helping them stay pure.

“Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,” Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. “They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”

Recent studies have suggested that close relationships between fathers and daughters can reduce the risk of early sexual activity among girls and teenage pregnancy. But studies have also shown that most teenagers who say they will remain abstinent, like those at the ball, end up having sex before marriage, and they are far less likely to use condoms than their peers.

One week in Buenos Aires really makes you appreciate the things the U.S. gets right - simple things, like safety regulations. The sidewalks are uneven and have gaping holes. Lane dividers in the road are mere suggestions. Steps are barely large enough for your foot and often vary in size. Building doors frequently open inwards. I've only seen one person in a wheelchair in this city, but I can't imagine how he gets around this city.

My apartment building, like many others here, actually requires a key to exit. Yes, that's right - in order to get out of my building and onto the street, I have to unlock the building door with a key. Crazy. And dangerous. Picture what would happen in a fire: the tenants all rush to the door, and the person at the front doesn't have a key. Even if they're lucky and someone passes them a key, the stampede of people rushing the door could make it impossible to open. The U.S. vividly learned its lesson on exit doors in 1911; Argentina has not.

This weekend, at a club called Crobar, I noticed another regulation that is apparently missing here in Argentina: railings. The bar probably had about five feet of standing room and then a two foot drop into the dance floor. As you might imagine, with people pushing to get a drink, it's very easy to fall off the ledge. A club in the U.S. would put a railing between the ledge and the dance floor, but why would you do a silly thing like that in the land of no negligence?

You know, maybe lawyers do add value to the world?

Yes, folks, it's true. April 11th, almost three years after my first day as a Googler (or "Noogler"), was my last day. Did I hate it? Did something go horribly wrong? Did the company completely change? No no, nothing like that.

I loved Google. It's a fantastic company, particularly for engineers. You're driving the products, it's growing quickly, and you get to solve challenging problems all the time. I learned a ton and I'm really glad I had that experience.

But, with three years at Google and four internships between Microsoft and Apple, the experience I'm missing is a startup.

With that said, let me answer some questions:

Q: So, now that you're not there, you can tell me what you were working on, right?

No, silly, that's not how NDAs work! :-) I'll let you know when it ships though.

Q: Well, what are you doing now?

At this very moment? Sitting in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. I'll be in Buenos Aires for the next three months, learning Spanish, drinking wine, eating good food, and playing around with some startup ideas. I'll be back in Seattle on August 1 and I'll eventually join a startup.

Got suggestions about what to do in Buenos Aires? Let me know!

Q: What startup will you be joining?

I'm not sure. Since I wanted to travel for a few months, I really had to do that first and then look once I get back to Seattle.

But... if you have suggestions, here's what I'm looking for:

• Project management / business role at a small company, or development for a startup
• Seattle based (or allow me to work remotely). I like Seattle and I'm not planning on leaving anytime soon.
• Ideally consumer or mobile apps, but I'm open to other ideas.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I almost fell for Gmail custom time. I thought "oh, that's sort of sketchy"... and then I quickly remembered it's April Fools day. Nice try, guys :-).

I think this is my favorite testimonial:

"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

Todd J., Investment Banker

The Virginia Senate recently voted to cut off state funding for Planned Parenthood because it offers abortions. Ironically, Planned Parenthood probably does more to prevent abortions than almost any other organization in the country. Planned Parenthood offers pregnancy prevention education, contraception, breast exams, STD testing, etc. Why is it that the people who claim to care so much about the death of a fetus aren't doing anything to stop the fundamental cause? To stop abortions, you need to stop unplanned pregnancies. That's what Planned Parenthood is doing.

Here's the thing that gets me: the US claims to have a separation of church and state. However, we still fund faith-based charities and educational institutions. Sure, the government will only fund the non-religious activities, but doesn't that seem like a somewhat silly distinction? If you give a $1000 to a church's homeless program, you free up $1000 of the church's money that they can then use to expand their religious activities.

Despite the separation of church and state, we are essentially funding religious institutions on the grounds that one service they provide is worthwhile. Other services (eg, religion) provided by the religious institution are unconstitutional to fund. We still fund the institution.

Planned Parenthood of Virginia provides many services with goals that Pro-Lifers would support. They offer contraception to prevent abortion, STD testing to save lives, etc. Yet, because law makers simply don't like one service (which is perfectly legal to fund), they revoke funding for all of these services.

Where's the logic? Why does a church get funding because of one service even though it's unconstitutional to fund another, while Planned Parenthood loses funding for all services because law makers morally oppose one (legal and constitutional) service?

A long time believer in the self-interested nature of mankind, I appreciate a person, company or organization which is able to align motivations in productive ways. Want to raise money for your team? Give people something for it. Throw a fund raising party so they can meet new people. Put the donating company's logo on your website so that they can increase visibility. Party A needs to assign its goals with Party B.

By this logic, self-improvement goals should be easy because there is no other party to cooperate with. There's only your goal to lose weight, your goal to exercise more, your goal to spend more time with your children, etc. The benefits to you in all cases are clear. So why do so many people struggle with keeping such commitments?

In many ways, your short-term self (ST) and your long-term self (LT) are different parties. LT would love to look better in a swimsuit for summer by shedding 20 pounds, but ST would really like that slice of cheesecake. The long duration of the goal, the more LT and ST clash.

StickK helps to align ST and LT's goals by imposing simple penalties when ST starts to stray. Here's how it works (for, say, weight loss)

1. You enter in your current weight, height and target weight
2. You give a time frame in weeks, with a maximum weight loss of two pounds per week.
3. You offer a monetary penalty of, say, $100 per week and either a charity or anti-charity recipient.
   

   Charities: American Red Cross, CARE, Doctors without Borders, Feed the Children, Freedom from Hunger, Multiple Sclerosis Society, UNICEF, and United Way.
   
   Anti-Charities: NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, Americans United for Life, Freedom to Marry, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, NRA Foundation, Nature Conservancy, and The National Center for Public Policy Research.

4. You choose to either have the goal "on your honor" or to have friends referee you.
5. Each week, you (or your referees) log in to track your progress. If you're on track, great! Otherwise, well, there goes your $100.

On Abstinence-Only Driver's Ed (parody):

ABSTINENCE-ONLY DRIVER'S ED.
BY SUZANNE KLEID

- - - -

Thanks for making it out on a rainy Saturday, kids. Slippery out there, huh? Let's get started. We're gonna have some fun today!

Car accidents are a leading cause of death for teenagers. The school board and your elected representatives want to make sure that you and your families are spared from such a tragedy, which is why the money for driver's ed was eliminated from the budget. Whereas last year I was teaching your older siblings how to shift and brake and three-point-turn during a six-week course, it has since been decreed that I actually need just one afternoon to tell you the only piece of safety information I'm permitted by law to share:

The ONLY 100 percent effective method for avoiding car accidents is to ABSTAIN from driving until marriage.

Today while browsing on Facebook, I ran across this charming group:

Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich

"Dedicated to keeping Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office and in the kitchen"

More than one friend has read my blog and asked, "when did you become such a feminist?" The assumption is, of course, that all feminists must be bra-burning and man-hating lesbians. Having never observed me actually burn a bra, universally hate men, or, well, "swing the other way" (much to some people's disappointment), you can see their confusion.

Out of the 100 or so RSS feeds I read, Feministing and Feministe are two of the more interesting ones. Feminists are not man-hating - they're pro-equality. They're not anti-sex - they're believe in each person making their own choice. They are women and men. If I had to generalize about the actual beliefs of feminism, I'd say that they don't believe in generalization. They believe in the individual.

They believe that pharmacists should not be able to deny contraception to women.

In Indiana, the state senate passed a measure that would allow pharmacists to refuse to do their jobs. If a woman wants contraception (including emergency contraception), pharmacists would be within their rights to refuse to fill her prescription. The bill’s sponsor initially said that it wouldn’t apply to contraception, only emergency contraception — a statement he later had to backtrack on, probably when someone informed him that emergency contraception is the exact same thing as standard birth control pills, just in a higher dose. Plus, you know, it’s contraception. And yet, “he claimed this week that it would not apply to birth control pills.”.

So there it is: ugly and worthless, or live bait/freak magnet. Those are the choices patriarchy offers to our girls. Picking on young girls for being awkward is cruel; so is sexualizing them. Men should just leave them alone until they’re grown up. But apparently that’s too much to ask.

The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion — some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other “rules” that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

And Republicans have… outlawing abortion and telling people to keep their legs closed until they’re married. The very things that never work. And they oppose the measures that have been proven to decrease the abortion rate. Because they’re pro-life like that.

They’re going after Dr. Tiller, a Kansas abortion provider, for approximately the 340,986th time. Dr. Tiller is a favorite of theirs because he’s one of the last abortion providers in Kansas, and he provides late-term abortions. One of their followers shot him in both arms a few years ago, his clinic has been vandalized on numerous occasions, his workers are regularly harassed, and he’s Target #1 for a “pro-life” movement that murders doctors. Tiller’s home address, family members’ information, and pictures are all posted on “pro-life” websites. For protection, he lives in a gated community, has a high-level security system surrounding his home, and wears a bullet-proof vest to work every day.

Jamie Leigh Jones was raped by her American co-workers in Baghdad. She was then imprisoned in an effort to cover up her assault.

Using overtly sexist language, he has referred to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a "she devil" and compared her to a "strip-teaser." He has called her "witchy" and likened her voice to "fingernails on a blackboard." He has referred to men who support her as "castratos in the eunuch chorus." He has suggested Clinton is not "a convincing mom" and said "modern women" like Clinton are unacceptable to "Midwest guys." He has called her "Madame Defarge" and "Nurse Ratched."

The CDC said 23.6 percent of women and 11.5 percent of men reported being a victim of what it called "intimate partner violence" at some time in their lives.

The CDC defined this as threatened, attempted or completed physical or sexual violence or emotional abuse by a spouse, former spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend or a dating partner. The CDC estimates that 1,200 women are killed and 2 million injured in domestic violence annually.

A state lawmaker used a derogatory term Wednesday to describe unmarried teen parents as sexually promiscuous and complained that society condones premarital sex.

"In my parents' day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are," Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during a GOP legislative caucus meeting in Denver. "There was at least a sense of shame."

Liston continued: "There's no sense of shame today. Society condones it ... I think it's wrong. They're sluts. And I don't mean just the women. I mean the men, too."

Men presidents only

I think that having a woman president would be a bad idea for our country. Women are not meant to rule countries and be in charge. They are meant to make decisions but not confirm them.

Our president deals with some countries that don't respect or allow women in leadership positions. I wonder if the United States would have more terrorist attacks because we would be seen as weak with a woman leader. I agree that women can do many things, but leave the ruling of the countries to the men.

BRITTANY BAYLES, 13, Kennewick

Rape can be confusing, it doesn't make it "gray." Feminists have long fought to dispel the myth that initially consenting to one form of intimacy does not make it okay for someone to force another kind on you. In this case, the young woman was hooking up with her eventual-attacker when he forced her to perform oral sex on him.

I've gone a little bit form happy today. Google Docs just announced today the introduction of forms in Google Spreadsheets. Oh, happy day... :-)

Prior to this, I had a simple little form app that I wrote. It wasn't great, but it kind-of-sort-of did the trick. There were two versions that I used for Seattle Anti-Freeze:
1) Public Access - anyone can add or remove rows. All updates get emailed to me.
2) View-Only Access - only admins can add or remove rows. Anyone can view the data.

For the "add yourself to the invite list" form, I used #1. This was mostly ok - I just had to be diligent about monitoring the list. I got a lot of comments about why there isn't more security on my forms, but it really wasn't a problem. Sure, I could lock stuff down with a password - but why? There's a balance between security and the user interface - more security is not always a good thing (although it would have been nice if a certain someone stopped adding Barney Stinson to my lists...).

For the guest list, I used #2. It let anyone view it but not edit it. Technically Google Spreadsheets could do this before, it was just a little more work to add rows (since you have to be logged in to gmail). Easy adding and removing, but there was no ability to edit the contents of a row. One day I fully meant to get around to implementing this, but now... meh.

Hellooooo forms. Beautiful. Perfect. I've got a little bit form happy today by replacing my old forms with new Google Spreadsheets form. I've got a new invite list form, an idea submission form, and a form to track the guest list for parties. Excellent.

And, you can monitor any changes to the docs via iGoogle. Wheeeee! This makes me a happy person.

Obvious bugs in software annoy me. Obvious bugs in software that have been there for a while annoy me even more. Obvious bugs in software that have been therefore for a while that should be trivial to fix make me laugh.

Wed, Dec 26, 2007
Philadelphia International Airport, (PHL) to Seattle/Tacoma International Airport, (SEA)
Flight: United Flight 2234 operated by US Airways (on Airbus A321-100/200)
Depart: 05:55 PM, Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Arrive: 09:09 PM, Seattle/Tacoma, WA (SEA)
Total Travel Time: 3 hrs 14 mins

Sun, Sep 23, 2007
Philadelphia International Airport, (PHL) to Seattle/Tacoma International Airport, (SEA)
Flight: US Airways Flight 753 ((on Airbus A321-100/200)
Depart: 05:55 PM, Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Arrive: 08:57 PM Seattle/Tacoma, WA (SEA)
Total Travel Time: 3 hrs 2 mins

Mon, Sep 3, 2007
Flight: Delta Air Lines Flight 533 ((on Boeing 757-200)
Depart: 02:23 PM, Atlanta, GA (ATL)
Arrive: 04:30 PM Seattle/Tacoma, WA (SEA)
Total Travel Time: 2 hrs 7 mins

Tue, Feb 27, 2007
Flight: United Flight 2032 Operated by US AIRWAYS( nonstop )
Depart: 08:35 AM, Seattle/Tacoma, WA (SEA)
Arrive: 04:31 PM, Philadelphia, PA (PHL)
Total Travel Time: 4hrs 56min

Google Seattle/Kirkland is running its tech talk series with speaking from inside and outside of Google. Here's the lineup:

Rumor has it that Match.com is coming out with a facebook app called "Little Black Book". Details on it are a tad fuzzy, but it sounds like it will show other users who have installed Little Black Book in addition Match.com users.

Little Black Book lets Facebook users sign up to see the other Facebook users who hope to date someone. Once they're signed up, users of Little Black Book will receive potential matches among Facebook users and non-Facebook users who are signed up with Match.com.

[UPDATE: I emailed Linking for Dollars and they have now updated their code to include the rel="nofollow" attribute. They now fall within the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Nice work!]

Much like I nod my head to the inventor of Pet rocks, I would nod to whoever came up with Facebook gifts. If you can get people to pay $15 (adjusted for inflation) for a rock, or $1 to send an icon (eg, "gift") with a message, I say "bravo!" The sillier the idea, the more impressed I am when someone monetizes it. Really - I'm impressed with their brilliance in marketing.

In a similar fashion, I say "bravo" to Empowering Youth's Linking for Dollars* initiative. Empowering Youth* is, presumably, trying to raise its pagerank (or if not pagerank specifically, they're trying to market their company). Instead of paying people to link to them, which breaks Google Webmaster Guidelines, they'll donate $1 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for each person that links to them. It doesn't seem quite so unethical if the money is going to a charity, does it?

Empowering Youth, Inc, is sponsoring an effort to raise funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Last year, "Linking for Dollars" raised $500! You can help. Empowering Youth will pay one dollar to St. Jude, just for posting this announcement. Details are here

I woke up this morning, checked Facebook, and discovered that Facebook had removed 'is' from status messages.

Previously, because all status messages were preceded by "is", users have been forced to either reword their phrases to be grammatically correct (eg, "Gayle is looking for people to play soccer on Wednesday nights. Let her know!" instead of "Gayle: let me know if you want to play soccer on Wednesday nights."), or to deal with bad grammar. I personally was in the awkward rewording camp. No bad grammar for me!

Users had been fighting for this for a while via Facebook groups. While Facebook 'petitions' (aka, groups) can not save Darfur, elect Barack Obama elected (even if you are One Million Strong), or legalize gay marriage, it can in fact change Facebook.

It appears that I should have started my petition to keep 'is' in status messages while I had the chance. I think I'm one of the few people who don't support this change.

The Facebook 'is' was part of Facebook's personality - the awkwardly worded status messages, the "So-and-so is happy because she got admitted to Penn", and the people who would just say screw it and deal with their bad grammar. It's part of what made Facebook Facebook.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. The button is pretty silly:

1. You would only use if you know what the first result will be, in which case you probably would have bookmarked the page already.
   
2. It clutters up the interface with something that's rarely used.
   
3. It arguably costs Google money because it skips over search results, and therefore ads (or it would if people, you know, used it).
   

My laptop, which I fear is on its last legs, got a little servicing today from Dell. It'd been blue screening frequently since, well, since Dell last visited me two months ago (broken fan -> overheating laptop). I'm going to assume that's just a coincidence, although the timing is suspicious...

I tried reinstalling windows first, of course, but then it blue screened when I tried to reinstall. Excellent! At least Dell can't tell me it's a software issue...

I ran some tests and then Dell ran some more tests, to discover that absolutely every test passed. Wonderful! (Paraphasing)

Gayle: "All the tests passed."
Dell: "Ok, well we'll send out a technician to replace the hard drive and the CPU."
Gayle: "Ok, but we ran two separate hard drive tests and they both passed."
Dell: "Sometimes the tests skip over things."
Read: Dell is taking shots in the dark right now. Excellent.

• Pictures: I use Picasa. Quick, easy install. Man I love Picasa / Picasaweb - have I mentioned that? More on that another time :-).
  
• Word Processing: Somewhere, amongst piles and piles of CDs, I have the Word and Excel. I think. Google Docs & Spreadsheets works better for most things anyway (since I can access my files from other computers), so I'll hold off on installing Office for now.
  
• Email: I weened myself off Outlook years ago (I used to be a big fan, but then it broke on me) and have been using Gmail for a long time.
  
• Calendar: Google Calendar. Love it!
• Web Browsing: Firefox. Installed.
  
• Programming: For non-work things, I use .NET and Visual Studio. I recently moved my two websites (Social/Conduct and CareerCup) over to ASP.NET 2.0, which means that I can just use Visual Studio Express. Good thing too - the regular Visual Studio took sooo long to install.
  
• IM: My friends are split between Google Talk, AIM and Windows Live Messenger.
  
• Google Talk: I do prefer the windows client, so I downloaded that - small, quick, easy.
  
• AIM: While a lot of applications don't significantly improve with each version, AIM was one of the few which actually got worse. Installing was always a hassle because you have to find the appropriately old version of AIM and then match that to the right version of DeadAIM (a plugin that adds some nice features). Gmail Chat now has AIM integration - I think I'll just stick with that.
• Windows Live Messenger: Oh my this was hard to install! I download the installer (WLInstaller.exe) and open it. It starts a webpage with my default browser (firefox, of course) and then tells me that I need to use IE 5.0 or greater. Well, damn. Do I really have to change my default browser just to install Windows Live Messenger? Come on now. I eventually track down another site that offers the install file directly.
  

Really, name a cruise ship the MS Explorer, and of course it'll crash. Silly people. :-)

A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began sinking, but all 154 passengers and crew, Americans and Britons among them, took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.

The Chilean navy said the entire MS Explorer finally slipped beneath the waves Friday evening, about 20 hours after the predawn accident near Antarctica's South Shetland Islands.

I get asked pretty frequently to review resumes, by strangers and friends alike. I wrote a bit about this on CareerCup (my other website - technical interview questions and such).

When I was in high school, a teacher returned an essay of mine with the following written on the top of the paper: "Know your audience." The task was to write a persuasive essay on any topic of our choosing. I just so happened to pick a topic on which the teacher had extensive knowledge and strong feelings. I hadn't been thinking about this at the time I chose the topic, but he was right - I should have known this wasn't a good topic. Lesson learned.

Writing a resume is no different. Tailor what you're writing to the specific company and position.

[more on Cosmetics, Content, Software Engineering Resumes, Wording & Proofing, Customization, etc]

Barack Obama is speaking at Google today. Supposedly, Eric Schmidt explained his speaking at Google was kind of like an interview. When we interview candidates at Google, we like to ask technical questions.

Schmidt: What's the fastest way to sort 32 bit numbers?
Barack: Not bubble-sort.

I still read my university's newspaper. I'm not sure why, really - other than that little 'subscribe' in Google Reader is just too easy to hit.

Each year, it's the same set of crimes - some shootings near campus that don't involve Penn students, a bunch of muggings, the bank being robbed, and some violent crimes towards students. And really - I do think Penn security does a good job, but it's still West Philadelphia.

One of the recent incidents actually involves a Penn security officer:

The guard offered to escort the student from 38th and Sansom streets to her house, near 41st and Locust streets, at about 9:00 p.m. They arrived at her door, and he said something to get the student's attention. When she turned around, he had exposed himself.

The security guard, 21, was arrested shortly after the incident was reported and has permanently been removed from campus. He did not have a criminal record, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush said.

Rush said the minimum age for security guards is being raised from 21 to 25 to ensure that guards are "mature enough" to handle the job.

Coming to you from Big Brother in South Africa...

... viewers of the incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon after an extended drinking bout which ended in copious vomiting and apparent blackout for Molokwu, remain adamant about what they saw: Bezuidenhout lay down next to the comatose young woman and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. He carried on despite the pleas of another female housemate for him stop.

if a "non-consensual physical relationship" began there, the producers - Endemol SA - would have intervened. "There is no indication that she was unconscious at the time," said Joseph Hundah, an executive at M-Net.

Bezuindehout, defending his sexual behaviour in a show that has featured copious nudity, recently told his housemates, "Well, this is Africa."

• 1.7 Million rapes per year, in a country of 23 million women. 7.3% of women are raped annually (assuming an even distribution of rape - which is probably not quite correct, but the alternative isn't any less scary).
  
• A girl is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read (more)
  
• 25% of girls are raped before they turn 16 (more)
  
• Of South African men who know someone who was raped (doesn't that have to almost everyone?), 16% believe that the survivor enjoyed their experience and had asked to be raped. (more)
• 50% of women will be raped in their lifetimes (more)
• About 30% of adolescents report that their first sexual experience was forced (more)

I've heard this argument before - that women who wear revealing clothing are "asking" to be raped or assaulted. That doesn't necessarily mean that the women deserve it, or that they're glad it happened to the women. Instead, they argue that dressing too sexy is like leaving your doors unlocked - you don't deserve to be robbed, but it doesn't mean you weren't being stupid.

The Daily Mail confirms that people do indeed think this.

If the woman was wearing sexy or revealing clothing, 6pc said she was totally responsible and 20pc said she was partially responsible.

If the woman behaved in a flirtatious manner, 6pc said she was totally responsible and 28pc said she was partially responsible.

In each of these scenarios a slightly greater proportion of men than women held these views - except when it came to being drunk, when it was equal.

The men were then asked to evaluate which of the two women he would prefer to approach to do something she did not want to do. The men picked the submissive woman. These researchers also evaluated the differences in non-verbal cues between dominant and submissive women. They found that the submissive women generally gestured with less expansive movements and wore more body concealing clothing than dominant women.

When it comes to planning large events (1000+ people invited, 200+ people attending), Evite just doesn't cut it. Heck, it's never great, but it really suffers on large, paid events. So, what are my options?

I've evaluated the following: Evite, Socializr, MyPunchBowl, Zoji, Renkoo,

Problem Description: I'm looking for an invite application for planning large events. These events have 1000+ people invited, and around 200 people can buy tickets. Guests need to be able to respond and invite more people with minimal hassle, and they need to be able to easily view who's actually coming (eg, paid). It also needs to be easy for me, as the organizer, to be able to copy the invite list over to the next one.

Evite: It's a bit buggy, but it works fine for smaller events. For large events, it's pretty weak. Guests can spam all other guests. There's a cap on the number of guest you can invite. You can't easily export and import guest lists. Slow and buggy.

Disclaimer: Evite is the standard in invite apps, which both helps and hurts its assessment. I know its negatives better than anything else, which hurts its grade. However, I'm also accustomed to Evite's features and expect every other service to have the same things.

Pros:

• Templates: Large selection (although fairly mediocre design)
• No forced registration: Guests can RSVP and invite others without registering
• Guest List Management: Supports exporting as a .CSV, I can edit guest responses,
  
• I can set a public url for people who aren't on the invite
  
• I can add a field for payment (which is really just a link to paypal)
  

• Lacks security on the guest list: guests can spam other guests. Unacceptable with 1000+ people.
• Guest list cap of 750 - too small for me.
• Description field: max character counts of 3000 - the count is buggy and include HTML characters.
  
• Unable to importing guest list
• Garbles links inserted into invite.
• Invite email doesn't provide date or time.
• Annoying banner ads
• Painfully slow

• Ease of Use for Guests: A. (It doesn't require registration for RSVPing or inviting people).
  
• Guest List Management: B (You can export guest lists, but you can't import them).
  
• Elegance: B- (Lots of mediocre templates, and a lot of ads).
• Final Grade: B-
  

• Supports closing the guest list to future RSVPs. Awesome feature!
• Templates: elegant, and you can save your own template or use other people's.
  
• Description field: sufficiently long, and you can edit the HTML directly.
• Good guest list management: guests can remove themselves from the invite, and you can export and import guest lists. Organizer can edit guest responses.
  
• Can redirect users to another website to pay after RSVPing.
• Invite email provides the date and time.
• Registration is not require to RSVP.
  

• Not enough templates
• Requires guests to register an account in order to invite more people. So close....

• Ease of Use for Guests: C+. (Docked for requiring guests to register to invite people).
  
• Guest List Management: A+
• Elegance: B
• Final Grade: C
  

• Very slick designs!
• You can load guests lists from previous parties
• Invite email provides the date and time.
• Organizer can change guest's display names after inviting them.
• You can edit guest responses (sort of - you can move yes -> no or no -> yes), and you can do this quickly.
  
• Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
• People who respond "No" can't leave a public comment with their response (instead this gets emailed as a private response to the host). I'm not totally sure if this is actually a good or bad thing, but I'll put this as a pro.
  

• Invite email is pretty ugly (or I just don't like the gray background).
  
• RSVPing is a multiple page / tab process. (1) Click yes, no or maybe. (2) Are you bringing anyone with you? (3) Comment. I prefer being able to do all of these at once - it's easier.
• Guests can't view the comments unless they RSVP. (This might be a pro for a lot of people, but not for me.)
• There's no "maybe" option. There's a "decide later" option, but that's just a way for someone to send themselves a reminder.

• Ease of Use for Guests: C (there's no maybe option)
  
• Guest List Management: B (you can copy invites, but you can't move guests to "Decide Later")
  
• Elegance: B+ (Slick invites, but ugly emails)
• Final Grade: C-