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Domain: netizen.com.au

Stories and comments across the archive that link to netizen.com.au.

Comments · 7

  1. Netizen training materials by srl · · Score: 3 · on Finding Educational Materials For A Linux Class?
    You might want to check out the training materials put out by Netizen at http://bits.netizen.com.au/training/. They're more designed for 1-day classes and such, but you could use them for an overview talk with handouts or something. They're particularly strong in explaining what Perl is and why you might want to use it.

    The Netizen training docs are under the Open Publications License, so they're both libre and free.

  2. Re:a gender thing? by srl · · Score: 1 · on Ask Deb Richardson About Open Source Documentation
    Kirrily Robert, aka Skud, has written on this already; see her paper geek chicks: second thoughts. Basically, she points out that because the OS community has valued "hard skills" (the ones closer to the machine) so much, people with soft skills (like documentation, internationalization, etc) haven't been encouraged. And, she argues, many of those skills are "traditionally female" skills.

    IOW: if the OS community wants documentation that doesn't suck, it needs to encourage all those females who've been writing documentation or doing tech support professionally to contribute.

    IMO: Given the flamish environment of many geekish circles, it's not surprising that females with more elevated social circles have stayed away. If I thought "the OS/Free Software community" == "Slashdot" I'd stay away too.

  3. Re:Look at the submission date on this article by Coram · · Score: 2 · on When Does Y2K Begin?

    Of course you do realise that 00:00:00 would be the start of the day.. so your post was dated this morning, new years eve and not new years day.

    Oh, and while i'm at it the new millenium begins 2001! That's not stopping me from wearing my "Fuck the Millenium" tshirt tonight though... and i get to recycle it next year!

  4. Fully Y2K Defiant by Coram · · Score: 1 · on The Geek Compound Prepares for Y2k

    I'm set, prepped and kitted up for a big one.

    I am stocked up with several cases of Carlton Cold, a fine Australian brew, for myself and friends.

    My black CK jeans are hanging over a nearby chair, next to my "Fuck the Millenium" tshirt, which incidentally took 2 months to arrive after I ordered it online.

    I'll be reporting events live from Sydney, one of the early entrants to Y2K, to various folk around the globe. What bigger media event than the appocalypse?

    Actually I'm looking forward to a good dose of rioting. And looting. Contemplated what you'd go for? Fancy some new clothes that you really don't want to spend the money on? How about expanding your cd collection. Perhaps one of those juicy Toshiba laptops you've been drooling over? mine runs linux great.

    Or maybe you'll just take the flexible option and go for cash? Hey sure, that's how I've always done it.

  5. Re:Here it is again... by Skud · · Score: 1 · on Women in the Open Source/Free Software Communities?

    Try the following:

    http://www.ai.mit.edu/peopl e/ellens/Gender/pap/pap.html
    http://tap.mills.edu/
    http://slinky.scrye.com/~lej/women/
    http://netizen.com.au/~skud/articles/c hick2/
    http://www.linuxchix.org
    ... and no doubt many more.

    I'm sick of this same thing coming up on slashdot every few weeks, too. Bookmark those sites, guys, and stop making the same old assumptions over and over.

  6. Re:Differing sexes, differing attitudes. by Skud · · Score: 1 · on Girls Like Linux Too

    Ayup. Women just aren't usually that obsessive.
    Ellen Spertus, who wrote a paper on women in
    computing that was slashdotted recently, comments
    that maybe women just aren't insane enough to spend
    all their time eating, sleeping and breathing computers -- and that maybe that's a good thing.
    Personally, I think that since women in our society seem to be better trained at "having a life"
    and doing all those communications kinda things that might keep some of us from hacking as obsessively,
    perhaps we should put those skills to use in the geek/hacker/OSS field. I wrote a whole rant on it, but /. didn't see fit to post it, so check out
    http://netizen.com.au/~skud/articles/chick2/ if you're interested in reading more.

  7. Some thoughts on female geeks/programmers/hackers by Skud · · Score: 1 · on Encouraging Female Programmers

    As a female who is a programmer, and who is
    involved in the open source/free software/geek
    community on a day to day basis, I have to say
    I'm getting kind of sick of seeing the same
    things over and over again. One of the things
    I see most often is ill-conceived affirmative
    action intended to encourage women into technical
    fields, often doing more harm than good. I mention this because I think CMU's
    efforts in this case are *not* ill-conceived and
    I want to make it clear that I'm not just saying
    that because I'm female yada yada yada. As far
    as I can tell from the very short and shallow
    article, CMU seem to be doing the right things.
    They're not setting arbitrary quotas, they're
    just getting out there and selling the course in
    places where women happen to be listening. They're not changing to course to fit the women,
    but rather are pointing out the applicability of
    the subject matter to a wide range of fields
    (many of which just happen to appeal more to women). So it will be interesting to see how it
    all turns out. I suppose it's unlikely that
    they'll post followup stories, though :(

    If anyone's interested, there's an article I wrote
    a few weeks ago which you can read at
    http://netizen.com.au/~skud/articles/c hick2/
    about female geeks, how to encourage them, and
    whether we actually want more of them in the
    Open Source/Free Software community.

    K.