Slashback: life-support, petrol, gender, tunes

Back for more already? Good. Today's early dinner of information includes humble pie baked by NASA, quantities of penguins rescued from roiling in oil, a morsel about sex discrimination in the computer world, and a take-out order of XF86 for the diners in our Slackware booth.

Absolutely no danger whatsoever at all. Contradicting the BBC story reported last week on Slashdot, NASA officials deny that a 1997 shuttle mission was ever in danger because of communication interruptions. Signal 11 writes: "NASA has a press release out which refuses a previous story from the BBC stating that an unknown 'hacker' was able to disrupt communications between mission control and the shuttle." Aardwolf64 pointed to MSNBC coverage of the NASA denial.

The NASA release reads, in part:

"NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.

At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems."

Fly away little birdies! Fly away! Errr, swim away, little birdies! Swim away! Errr ... come back later! An unnamed correspondent writes: "follow up on recent story about penguins caught in oil spill. After being cleaned, the penguins were flown to Port Elizabeth and released to swim the +/- 800 km's back to Cape Town. This will give enviromnetal cleaners a short space of time to clean the oil from the beaches where they live. Two of the penguins are being tracked. This site tracks their progress via satellite. Can't someone novelize this rescue attempt under the title "Penguin's Progress"?

Sir, please stop hitting me with the 'No Discrimination' sign. fegg writes: "Emmett recently posted a story in which there was a reference to an AP article which discussed gender bias as regards women and computer science. This was put -- I thought cavalierly --i nto the "this-has-nothing-to-do-with-gender-dammit dept." Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that it has everything to do with gender or, at least, how the world is presented to young boys and girls.

This is a rather important topic to me, especially now that I have two daughters (not to mention a wife who is a professional computer scientist). I view this as a must read for anyone who wants to develop a reasonable understanding of why there is such an imbalance of men and women in computing.

The gender bias situation is real, and it has been known for quite a while by many in education and technology circles. I would like to refer the Slashdot community to Ellen Spertus, who, in 1991, wrote "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" Particularly compelling, IMHO, is the piece therein on stereotyping.

Spertus's "Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering" provides an excellent set of pointers for people interested in this topic."

Isn't this what killed John Belushi? strredwolf writes "If you haven't heard, XFree86 4.0.1 is out in full force, with binaries and docs online. Slackware users can get the "Slackballs" via the Linux Mafia, along with other goodies." (Here's the direct link to the 4.0.1 files, but linuxmafia.org is worth exploring anyhow. Warning: it is an unabashed Pro-Slack Zone.)

This would be worth more than my car. Dredd13 writes "Empeg, Ltd., a UK company, shipped the first of its Mark 2 MP3 car-stereo to customers this past week. This is the same stereo that runs Linux and has won awards. The Mark2 is expected to be a full production run, (as opposed to the initial Mark1, which only had about 300 units) with enough to satisfy ample demand. As a former MkI owner (and one of the guys who got a Mark2 today from Mr. FedEx), I can say its worth every penny!" Slashdot's been following the Empeg saga for a while now; check out this item Rob posted in 1998. I hope they can bring the price down a bit, to better compete with the various mainstream MP3 players now emerging.

Comments

How A Boy Made It This Far - How Your Daughter Can

[Seumas]

While I have a moment, I should use it to explain my thinking on this a little further. My original statement may strike one who did not read my posts in the original article as heartless.

I am not for promoting a specific group of people simply to achieve some sort of equality in statistics, so that Universities, rights groups and government politicians can pat themselves on the back and feel they accomlpished something.

What I am wholly for, is the increase in educational oppertunities across the board. When I hear someone whine about how they are poor at math or science or computers because their teacher didn't call on them enough in school or their teacher didn't instill enough self-confidence in them (pardon me, but isn't self-confidence, by virtue of its name, something that cannot be instilled by an external force?) or because the "boys were too obnoxious and eager", it makes me want to wretch.

So, should we punish boys because they're sometimes eager to learn? Rediculous. Perhaps the problem isn't that boys often are louder and demand more attention when it comes to time in class-room, but that females do not demand the same and excersize their same unrestricted ability to raise their hand and shout "ooh! ooh! I know the answer!". You know what this suggests? Maybe there is something different between boys and girls after all. (Oh my gosh! No! That can't be!)

Perhaps what makes boys excel more often in science is precisely this same attitude and enthusiasm that is exhibited in grade school. Instead of shutting it down and tuning them out, in favor of shy quiet girls, coax the girls out of their shells.

Even if you don't have a teacher who does this -- for example, if you have a teacher who absolutely refuses to call on a single girl for an entire year and almost completely ignores them (perhaps he's some sort of demented sadist -- ooh! there I am again, assuming the male as the evil on -- oh gosh, I'm so sexist!), you can still achieve amazing things.

Most of my life in school, I was not one of the loud boisterous ones raising my hand every second to beat everyone else out in answering a question. Hell, after the first couple grades, my scores dropped horribly. A lot of it was due to insane family problems, but a lot of it was boredom. Absolutely, earth-stopping boredom.

In fact, I didn't exactly even graduate 10th grade. I don't even know that I had enough credits to graduate 9th grade. But I was able to quickly leave school, take my GED and SAT's (scoring in the absolute top percentiles of both) and walk more or less directly into a very high-paying career in the Valley (yes, the silicon one).

My parents disliked computers and videogames, thinking they were a waste of time and I should be doing yardwork or something. My school didn't know what good their obsolete computers were for other than teaching children how to type. And the only computer we had around the house until I was twelve years old, was a used VIC-20 (it didn't last long).

My parents eventually graduated to a 386 in 1989 or 1990, but I was almost never allowed to use it. It was a holy grail, used only to play solitaire religiously by my parents (and the occasional MindSweeper).

No, it wasn't until much much later when I sold most of my worthwhile posessesions as a teenager, that I was able to afford a computer. It was a 286 with a 20mb hard drive and an green monochrome monitor. Couple megabytes of RAM and no sound card.

I put an advertisement in the paper and within a week had sold this for almost double what I paid for it (I made a few minor improvements to the machine.. *cough*...)

I took that money and bought a 386 with a CGA monitor, 80mb hard drive and 4MB RAM. I ran my first (and very successful) BBS on this. I learned to write in BASIC on this. I learned to cause innocent trouble with minor security flaws in BBS software packages (such as Remote Access BBS and WWIV).

I was destined, due to my performence in school and my standing with my parents, to pump gas or work as a stock boy in a grocery store for the rest of my life. I was certain of it. There was no way I'd make anything out of myself.

I was, in a word, fucked.

Having a mind-numbing job in the physical labor market scared the hell out of me. I'm not exaggerating when I say that, in my teenage years, I thought of suicide as a possibility if I was going to be stuck in one of those jobs. No offense intended to people who work in those fields, but it isn't for me. I couldn't tolerate the six weeks at a fast food joint when I was sixteen, because it required zero mental ability and provided zero mental stimulation. I wanted to stick my head in the fry-grease and let my brain sizzle.

Some time ago, I was crossing the street late one night and was struck by a brand new shiny white Subaru. It hit me and kept going for about fifty feet before the driver even considered hitting the breaks. Then it threw me through the air another fifty feet. Thankfully, I landed in the street, on the nice safe asphalt. The car was obliterated and I could have walked away, if the bystanders hadn't insisted I wait for an ambulance. An hour later, I walked out of the hospital. Aside from soreness and pain in my joints for a month (a few visits to the chiropractor and I was back to normal) and picking asphalt and windshield out of my skull, I was fine.

It shook me somehow, though. Everyone in my family noticed it. I said "fuck it" and knew that I had the skills and dedication to do whatever the hell I wanted, regardless of my history in school. I would make sure that employers saw my ability and my dedication and gave me a shot, without concern of my poor performance in the past.

I grabbed a job providing tech support at a tech farm (one that does tech support for numerous companies at once). A year and a half later, and I was marketable. I left home and jumped to one of the absolute top technical companies in Silicon Valley (hint: They make a version of Unix).

Now I'm making more money than nearly anyone in my family, including college graduates with Masters degrees and a Doctor. I work in exactly the field I had wanted, making more money than I expected, learning more than I ever could dream -- and all without the formal education and attention and coddling that people tend to use the lack of as an excuse for their failing -- or their failing to try.

I'm slow. I have to spend a long time contemplating intellectual arguements and have difficulty parrying with people who are quicker, wittier, more worldly and better educated than me. My scores in the top percentiles of those SAT tests were sheer luck. Anyone could have pulled it off. I took the time to explain my long -- probably boring -- story, because I'm a nobody who would be lucky to fall into the middle of any category or ranking of anything. But I've done what a lot of people whine that they could never do. And that's bullshit. It's utter fucking bullshit. It's cowardice. It's fear.

Yes, you hav limits -- I couldn't become a neurosurgeon, just because I say I want to be one. But we're not talking about brain surgery -- we're talking about reading some books, playing around on a cheap computer, getting a foot in the door of the tech world via a low-level geek job, and then exploiting that until your whole body is in the door. In that respect, women are no different from men. In fact, as fierce and unwavering as I've known many women to be, there should be less of an excuse.

The only piece of advice I could give to parents -- especially mothers, is to instill in your daughters the understanding that they need to be outgoing enough to make it known when they are upset or have something to say, share or ask. It won't just help them in school, but in relationships and careers. It isn't the schools job, necessarily, to pamper your little girl and make sure absolutely every little whim and need is catered to, but it is certainly their role to address her questions and curiosities -- so give her the understanding and confidence to make those things known. I knew girls when I was in school -- even grade school, that would but the most fierce boys to shame. Do you know how the boys felt? A bit embarassed, but at the same time, there was this slightly not-understood feeling among all of us. There was something about a really smart and outgoing girl that made is grin and treat her with a little more respect than (as kids) we probably would have.

So that's all I have to say on this, I think. At least, you hope, right? *grin*.
---
seumas.com

Sites on Gender & Computer Science

[Ellen Spertus]

Thanks for the links to my documents/sites on gender and computing. The most comprehensive site is actually The Ada Project.

Get Off It Already!

[Seumas]

After skimming through "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?", I have to say that I'm still not convinced. Even the terminology used to discuss this topic puts me off.

The typical language used is such to suggest victimization, inequality, unfairness -- a need to be encouraged, given a nudge, coddled.

Look, I'm sorry that there isn't one women for every man in the technical work force. That's just too bad. But when, in stories such as that previously exampled, illustrates reasons such as "who wants a stuffy 9 to 5 job?" and "you have to be, like, so precise and stuff with computers" and "let Bill Gates do it all -- why should I have to?", a great deal of empathy and sympathy is lost.

If a woman wants a technical career, she has just as many options -- if not more, than a man. This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"

There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to. To suggest that a woman can't make it becuase of the big bad sexist teachers, men and society is ludicrous. I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up. You get what you get, and it isn't handed to you. If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question.
---
seumas.com

Re:Get Off It Already!

[w3woody]

This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"

Wanna bet?

My wife and I work together on web site programming. She has a masters in theoretical physics; I have a BS in mathematics, both from the same school (Caltech). Yet when we go to a job site to talk about development issues, she is asked to go fetch coffee for the boys, or asked to take notes, or otherwise treated as my personal secretary, not my business partner. Once, I even had someone ask me a question about physics (as part of a game), and I turned and asked my wife--after all, she's the one with a master's degree in physics. Everyone in the room stopped cold and looked at me like I grew a horn or something--after all, why should I ask my pretty, stupid, coffee fetching wench for something that only men would understand?

There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to.

I don't know what planet you've been on, but here on planet Earth, while there are thousands of highly successful women, the vast majority of programmers, heads of corporations and leaders are men. And not because men are somehow biologically superior--but because from birth, women are told they cannot.

I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up.

My mother is a successful architect. My wife, a successful programmer. In both cases I can report first hand the additional barriers they've had to face that I, as a successful programmer, have not.

My mother can now curse and swear like a sailor--and has been known to tell contractors on a job site to go fuck themselves because any self-respecting woman would never do so. Even so, she constantly has to remind people on the job site that she's in charge. Even so, in the last two months, my mother has (a) been descriminated by a legal arbitrator who told my mother flat out before arbitration that she was going to lose because she's just a "stupid cunt and has no business being in charge of a building site" (dispite having 15 years experience), (b) been assulted by a male who thought she had no business being on a job site (even though she was > the construction through her company. In the past she's been sexually assulted by a building inspector, threatened, and otherwise harrassed, all because she's a woman in a male dominated industry.

My wife has had to face similar issues. She's asked to fetch coffee, ignored during meetings with socially ill-equipped males who cannot stand the idea that a female is more mathematically competant than they are, and otherwise degraded repeatedly. In the > I've never had to deal with any of these issues--solely because I'm a 5'11 240lb fit confident male, instead of a 6' 135lb slender and attractive female.

If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question.

If you think sexual descrimination comes from "[some] fifth grade teacher [calling] on you more often than someone else", you're sadly mistaken.

Misuse of technology

[DonkPunch]

How is it we're able to track two penquins in the ocean on a webpage via satellite, but I still can't find where my cat hides all afternoon?