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Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

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Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#121

Post by lr1970 »

worik wrote: post #86

Backwards in high heels, indeed Behind every successful woman is a man, who tried to stop her: Not quite, but her husband could not cope with a wife better than him. Perhaps she was "out of his league"?

> Behind every successful woman is a man, who tried to stop her

What are you talking about? Her husband Bob Harp was the head of R&D and main technical and product force behind all of Vector products [0]. After he left in 1982 over the dispute with Lore about who should run the company Vector quickly deflated. Vector was a great partnership between Lore and Bob until it wasn't.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-20-fi-2173-s...

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#122

Post by saagarjha »

0xEF wrote: post #118
ThomPete wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are no odds as a woman in the tech business. The tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it measures talent and value creation not features no one can do anything about

ITT: likely male HN users weighing in on how difficult or not difficult it is to be a woman in the tech industry. I'd love to hear thoughts on this take about just how inclusive the tech industry from women, or LGBTA or BiPoC individuals.

Unfortunately Hacker News might not be the best place to solicit that opinion, given the demographics of its users…

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#123

Post by buescher »

lr1970 wrote: post #120
shrubble wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She married a multi-billionaire, who she was in a relationship of some kind with, before she was ever divorced. Did you notice that in the article? BTW Bob Harp went on to found Corona Data Systems also.

For a more balanced contemporary (from 1985) depiction of the Vector story, see [0]. Basically, Bob Harp was the main technical force behind all Vector products, akin to Steve Wozniak at early Apple. In 1982 Bob and Lore could not agree who should be running the company and Bob left. Soon thereafter Vector deflated. [0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-20-fi-2173-s...

Moreover, the company he founded made a succesful pivot to making IBM PC clones and outlasted Vector. Whether the sale to Daewoo represents a succesful exit is perhaps debatable.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#124

Post by grujicd »

nimfan wrote: post #63

"Vector was late in moving from machines with 8K processing to 16K, which had become the new industry standard." I was interested in S100 bus machines, but couldn't afford one! If I'd only known, I'd have borrowed to buy a Vector Graphic S100 back then, just for the novelty of having an 8192-bit CPU! ;-)

It was a clear sign that author doesn't know a difference between 8-bit CPU and 8K of RAM and what kind of transition was happening at the time.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#125

Post by buescher »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #109

It's like a story from an alternate version of reality - I think of all the articles I've read touting 'the two Steves', and this is the first time I've read about Lore Harp McGovern.

It's almost as if Apple went under in 1982 and all Steve Jobs ever did after that was remarry well.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#126

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

ekms wrote: post #66
leononame wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ist 20%/23% good? Am I reading the numbers wrong? 40%, that I could agree on. But 23% is very low. Another thing is culture. The in the company's where I've worked at, how the men talked about women was pretty off-putting to be honest. They didn't do it in front of women (obviously), but even your nerdy developers would drop comments that had me wondering whether I was really in the ckrrect field. I'm sure the wo…

23% > 20% which means if someone goes into the field of computer programming they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman than if they are a man. "remain in the field" is used as a proxy for success. You could argue about whether or not it's a good proxy for success, but your response sounds like you think women would be more likely to drop out of the field alltogether than men, which doesnt appear…

> they're more likely to remain in the field if they are a woman

Top earning fields (+most fields) were rife with strong resistance to hiring women. For women who'd managed jobs in top-earning professions (source: grew up around professional women born early 1920s (budget analyst, peace corps, navy intel, usvp sec).

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#127

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

trimethylpurine wrote: post #113
leononame wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you define odds being good as "the odds are good for the ones that choose to study CS", sure. But if you define the odds as "women overall", 20% is a relatively poor number in my opinion. Yes, we're getting better and yes, it takes time. But I don't think we can pat ourselves on the back here. That the women who decide to work on tech do well is (in my very unscientific and unproven) opinion just an indicator that…

These assumptions and stats are virtually meaningless. Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges. Classifying these challenges by sex ignores the vast and more important majority of an individual's fitness for one career or another, or lack there of. More than just encouraging your daughter to study tech or any other career (tech might be saturated), encourage them to learn how to interview aggressively,…

> Every human being, man or woman, has unique challenges.

And many people get heaped additional challenges by virtue of their birth group - challenges that are commonly supplied by people whose birth group started at the lowest difficulty level.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#128

Post by buescher »

mkesper wrote: post #119
nimfan wrote: post #63

"Vector was late in moving from machines with 8K processing to 16K, which had become the new industry standard." I was interested in S100 bus machines, but couldn't afford one! If I'd only known, I'd have borrowed to buy a Vector Graphic S100 back then, just for the novelty of having an 8192-bit CPU! ;-)

The CPU was a Z80, that must have been RAM. http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware%20Folder/Vector%20Grap...

No, it looks more like a misunderstanding. The Vector 3 was an 8-bit machine with 64K of RAM. https://web.archive.org/web/20110925031455/http://www.vector...

The arrival of the IBM PC (and PC-DOS/MS-DOS) in 1981 was an extinction-level event for the CP/M-based, mostly-Z80-based, 8-bit business microcomputer industry. Vector did not weather it.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#129

Post by Chris2048 »

worik wrote: post #88
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them. I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

> Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

This sound a lot like the "just asking questions", esp because of the "seems like a good thing to me" bit, like you know it's a mischaracterisation of the problem.

If you really don't understand, read what people write.

If all you believe DEI is what you characterised as above, then you aren't reading any dissenting opinion.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#130

Post by Chris2048 »

px43 wrote: post #106
userbinator wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you start hiring people because of who they are, and not what they can do, it won't be long before that shows in the results you get. DEI has effectively replaced competence with identity politics.

DEI is a counterweight to unconscious bias, which, as far as I've seen, is still way more of a factor in hiring than DEI.

> which, as far as I've seen

and a lot of other people have the opposite view, only to be told their subjective opinion doesn't count.

"unconscious bias" has certainly spurred/influenced policies wrt DEI, despite its dubious academic basis.

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