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Washington State LUG to Hold "Nerd Auction"
elrous0 writes "As part of a PR stunt, a Washington Linux user group is holding a "Nerd Auction" and appealing to local sororities to exchange dates and makeover advice for their computer skills and homework assistance. 'The problem is that we're all still nerds. Let's face it, guys. If anyone's going to bid on us, we'll need some spicing up,' writes Washington State Linux Users Group president Ben Ford on the group's website. 'And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?' So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines."
Isn't it obvious, by installing linux.
If there's one good reason to support windows, it's to help sorority girls upload their pajama party photos to your^H^H^H^H their flickr account.
$8.95/mo web hosting
This is not the Washington State LUG, it's the Washington State University LUG
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The sorority girls probably aren't going to bite. They know they can get nerds like us to work on their computer and homework assignments and have to give nothing in return. They just have to be... girls. This is sort of like people boycotting gasoline... it just won't work. They can hold out indefinitely since they have other sources of income (read: non-nerds sexing them up) where as we will sit there demanding cheaper gas (read: any sexing up).
Gibert: I just wanted to say that I'm a nerd, and I'm here tonight to stand up for the rights of other nerds. I mean uh, all our lives we've been laughed at and made to feel inferior. And tonight, those bastards, they trashed our house. Why? Cause we're smart? Cause we look different? Well, we're not. I'm a nerd, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it.
Lewis: Hi, Gilbert. I'm a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us then there are of you. I know there's alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams you might've been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you're a nerd or not, why don't you just come down here and join us. Okay? Come on.
Gibert: Just join us cos uh, no-one's gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.
So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines
Lots of protection.
Please help metamoderate.
It's the Washington State University LUG not the Washington State LUG.
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
I submitted this yesterday, but apparently a working link to the story is considered bad form.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Lesbian Until Graduation. That makes the headline of this article even more interesting!
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
I, for one, welcome our new sorority girl overlords.
This brings a whole new meaning to "Got Root?"
Bring a video camera to this event and you'll have the entirety of the next season of Beauty and the Geek .
Who will be eliminated first? Oh, the suspense.
rm -rf
Its a nice idea but doomed...the geeks will be far to interested in rooting the girls box which leaves little if any time for a makeover. If, that is, the girls will get anywhere close to the geeks. Is anyone else here having flashbacks of "Revenge of the Nerds" on this one?
I can see a number of problems with this.
OK, I'll admit that most men have the ulterior motive of trying to get laid. Still, the tone of every report I have read is, "Look what the nerds will go through in an attempt to get laid." They are propagating a stereotype and no one seems to care.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
WSU student here, I've been to a LUG meeting before and sausage-fest doesn't begin to describe it. Those hideous chuds will be lucky if they can make more than $10, especially from sorority girls. Sororities aren't stupid, they let the "less-than-supermodel" girls in who have usable skills, especially in regards to computers. The amazing story here is that somehow this made the AP wire.
nice way to find some pics and install vnc server and write down some ip's and.. ect.
fyi, sorority girls like coorslite, 2 pitchers ought to do it
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
So what's the minimum bid that the nerds need to come up with to get near the girls? Oh wait...
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Protection is nice and all but it doesn't hurt to see if shes infected before hand to, I recommend a full OPEN PORT scan just before you sync up with her.
lolita.crabs.exe, lawlerskates_herbies.ini and parishilton_nude_genetal_warts.bat are some pretty nasty viruses. Wouldn't wanna infect your kernel with those if you know what I mean.
And how does that compare with calling someone out to fix a PC?
And why am I asking here? Anyone posting on Slashdot already knows how to fix their own PC and most likely knows where to get nerds for free.
As a Linux user for well over a decade, I'm periodically tempted to drop by the local LUG, but every time I do, I find myself annoyed at the, well, nerdiness of the people there. I mean, sure, I know fourteen programming languages, I was a software engineer for a decade, and I'm working on a PhD in Computer Science (after already having studied Physics and Linguistics), but I just don't fit in to "Nerd" culture. This is because when I'm not doing something useful with Computer Science, traveling around the world, or I'm at the gym, or playing the piano, or sitting court-side at an NBA game or at any number of other social events. Your sorority girls are happy to have a smart guy who can fix their computer — but they're going to go for the ones who can function in society before they go to the fat, bespectacled, social outcasts that seem to congregate at LUGs.
-brian
Maybe the female college students are already smart enough to fix their own computers, and don't need a big strong man-brain to show them how. For that matter, aren't there any female nerds who'd like also to be appreciated for the technical skills? Can they auction themselves off to the highest bidder too? This story is demeaning to women and to geeks.
Administrator: How can we get these nerds to socialize better so that more girls will take CS?
Nerd: Well, you could maybe stop calling us nerds?
Administrator: Dweeb, wonk, spaz -- it's all good.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
"So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines"
Meh, if you've seen one box you've seen them all.
When you're really break it down they're all nothing but I/O devices. Sure, some might have a few more bugs then others. And sure, some are more easy to get into then others. But at the end of the day a box is a box.
Oh, and beer never hurts.
We had a slave auction for charity at the Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity where I lived. I remember being sold for $500, but for the life of me, I can't remember to who or what I ended up having to do. Thank you alcohol.
To clarify on some details: We are the Linux Users Group at Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington. Enrollment in general in Computer Science has been down for the past few years. This has more greatly affected female enrollment, than anything else, where the number of females in WSU's Computer Science department is somewhere below 10%. What I'd like to make clear is that this event is not being put on to get geeks laid. Rather, it is to make the rest of campus aware that we exist, and are human. Our president, Ben Ford, and a female member came up with the idea to run this event. We hadn't planned for it to be much more than a fund raiser. But when the Associated Press ran a story on this yesterday, things started to blow up. Since then, our president has been shipped off to news studios. I've been on TV twice, and can hardly keep my phone from going off long enough for me to be interviewed. At the time of this writing, three sororities are in full participation for the event. The support has been so huge, that instead of a small fund-raiser like we were intending, the goal now is to raise enough money for a female scholarship in Computer Science.
Why do they specifically need sorority girls? There are PLENTY of hot social women in technical majors that would gladly help them present themselves better. I speak from first hand experience. When I was in college, I lived in a dorm building with about 40 women in science and engineering majors. While not all of them are hot (maybe 60% were), about 90% of them were social, fun, and smart. And that was just in one dorm building. If they really must have a sorority, why not try Alpha Omega Epsilon? It's an engineering sorority (yes there is such a thing).
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
True, except that no-one calles WSU "Washington State". It's referred to most commonly as "Wazzu" or sometimes W.S.U.
They don't call 'em sorostitutes for nothing.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
I would have thought that to be pretty obvious.
As I've been saying before, the situation is pretty skewed for both genders.
- About half the guys in a high school or university want the top 10 super-models. Move a bit lower and about 90% of the guys want the top 10% girls. Some might eventually get realistic enough to settle for a bit less, but only grudgingly.
- About the same applies to the girls. Half the girls want the top 10 jocks. Some 90% of the girls want the top 10% most desirable guys.
Interestingly enough, according to a recent study, girls seem to be a bit more realistic as to who they can actually get. Guys will tend to aim above what they can get.
Basically anyone who says that someone can get laid anytime she wishes and by anyone she wishes because she's a girl, probably is doing the same daydreaming: thinking about those top 10 most popular girls in the whole damn college. Noone thinks of the shy, flat, nerdy girl in the back row when they make such generalization. That's her problem in a nutshell: to 90% of the guys she's just short of invisible, or little more than a piece of decor.
To put it even more bluntly, half the western culture (of both genders) is generally more about getting a status symbol than someone they actually plan to get along with. It's the same as getting, say, the sportiest BMW you can afford: it's typically not as much because you actually need something that expensive and that much of a gas guzzler, but just to show everyone that you can afford what most others can't. Same here: girlfriends and boyfriends get chosen as status symbols more than anything else.
And same as almost noone wants the lower half of the guys, if they have a choice, noone wants the lower half of the girls either. Note that I'm not talking about the butt-ugly gang of either sex. Just being _average_, already isn't much of a status symbol.
So my take of what's going to happen is basically:
1. They _will_ find a bunch of girls noone else wants, willing to give it a try. Then they'll get to go, "eeew" as they discover that they didn't get some smooth and highly desirable jock. (Who just happened to be single and limited in nerdiness to knowing how to install Windows.)
2. The guys, conversely, will drool at the thought, right until they find out who they got to meet. And that it's not the horny super-model with huge tits, that they thought they _deserve_ for being so smart and for knowing all that command line stuff. Cue the mandatory "eew" from the guys too.
Nice try, but probably no banana.
Both groups will eventually settle on something more realistic, but if we're talking university LUGs and sororities, not yet. Well, not for most of them.
(And before anyone accuses me of being sexist, note that I've talked about both genders.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
what is your people's problem? get out of the basement.
"So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines."
These guys will just lower their standards and deal with the Windows stuff.
Just like the sorority girls will be lowering their standards by going out on dates with these guys.
It's a win-win!
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Seriously, sororities are about conformity and groupthink, and being a nerd ([i]especially[/i] a Linux-using nerd) is about fighting that.
/. for any length of time knows that is not true.
I think anyone who has read
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Truly fine promotional work. I joined the WSU LUG my freshman year after playing willing victim with my Windows 95 box to a few exploits a member showed me. My passion for computer security and quality operating systems has never waned. Since I left WSU in 2001 I've kept in contact and Ford has been one of the remaining members who has put in a great deal of personal effort into sustaining the group. Congratulations and I hope you have a fabulous year.
no matter how confident it is you are that they do.
Quack, quack.
it's the universal equaliser. forget your over complicated dating setup, just buy a fucking keg people.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
# echo "10 17 * * 5 root (ifconfig eth0 down ; ifconfig eth1 down ; wall "Your computer is broken, please call $NERD at $PHONE immediately")" > /etc/crontab
(I swear, it's like the mere mention of meeting a chick turns off the whole BOFH part of the brain with you people...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
These sorority girls really know their makeovers. Once LUG members have been given advice on mascara, making their boobs look bigger, and looking good in a belly shirt no man will be able to resist them!
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
"CHRIS KNIGHT:
These girls are not used to geniuses. You might impress them.
CORNELL:
I don't see how.
CHRIS:
Let me put this another way. Given the type of people you are and the environment you're in, you guys have to admit the strong probability that this may be the only chance you'll ever get in your entire lives to have sex."
I think it is because everyone here thinks that he is the exception to the stereotype. It's along the same lines as the old story about some marines about to go into a hopeless battle:
Colonel: "This is a difficult mission. I am sorry to say that only 1 in 3 of you will come out alive."
Each marine looks to the guys on his left and right and thinks, "Those poor bastards."
Anyone got a link to the famous photograph of Linux users taken at a conference a year or two ago? You know, the one with the T-shirted lank-haired nerds standing around with hands in their pockets, and (my favourite bit) the random old bearded guy wearing a propeller beanie?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Maybe someone could explain to the sorority girls that the difference between a jock and a nerd is that nerds read the manual. A nerd may have a problem getting the girl, but he won't have any trouble keeping her.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Nerds: have you ever talked to sorority girls? Go to your school's newspaper or theatre or improv group and interact with nice girls instead.
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
When you get to college, being a "nerd" isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to dating. When you leave high school, women gain an appreciation for a man who can say something more substantive than "DUH. I was on the football team."
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Isn't it funny how many highly-moderated posts complain about the Slashdot groupthink? Why doesn't the groupthink mod them down?
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Hey Ben, congrats on getting your name on a site that gets like a million page views a day! -James
Sounds like a yeast infection to me. Tell her to get that checked out....
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
I happen to be Ben Ford's ex-fiance, and I can assure you, Ben's intentions are probably not totally pure. It is no coincidence that he came up with the idea in the shower. Way to go Mr. One-socked Wonder!! Somebody needs to save those poor sorority girls...
Which does kind of suck when you realise that by the time it's "your turn", (a) they've been with every guy on the football team, twice, and have all sorts of interesting diseases, and (b) you now have to pay for 20 years of school fees and lunches while they lose interest in sex (with you at least).
:P At least I'm safe from that situation. :) I thought for ages that I wouldn't be though. :(
God I'm a pessimist.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
So Linux users talk about Microsoft ripping off ideas now we have a Linux group ripping off ideas calling it their own and getting attention for it. I thought we were better than that. "so I'll fix your computer if you have sex with my hairy pimply ass and after you can do my makeup" real men with real personalities can get dates without paying for it no matter how nerdy they are. If this is how you get members I think your group is going to fall apart. Very desperate attempt and I guess even retards can be sexist.
What a waste of space, time, and thanks for making a fool of yourself so I can have a laugh.
(Ben Ford and Rosey Palm)
(hmm wouldn't it be nice to have sex with a real chick)
Time to go think about sorority chicks in the shower and get a life!
It's called humor. If your sense of humor is good enough you can make fun of the stereotypes you've been labelled with, and recognize when this is being done.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
And just so I said it, I am not affiliated with the author or publisher in any way. I just like the book.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Sure: Men want hot women, study confirms
The short and skinny version (of what's already a summary) is that:
1. Guys may write on a questionnaire that they're looking for this or that personality trait, but then base their actual decision 100% on looks. (I guess "she's got a great personality" _is_ an euphemism to the average guy;) Women tended to actually choose what they said they wanted.
2. Women tended to be indeed more choosy, but adjusted their aim to what they think they can actually get and keep, no higher. Less attractive women aimed for less desirable guys. Men seemed to have the same (or similar) threshold regardless of how attractive or desirable he actually is.
So basically, ok, looks that I was remembering wrong that guys generally aim too high, but not by much: some guys still aim too high. Even the least desirable guys will still aim above that threshold. (And since we're talking nerds here, yeah, they won't aim for a woman who'd actually want them.)
The other conclusion still stands, though: a _lot_ of women will be ignored every time.
Note however that the ages involved in this study are 26 to 40 years old, i.e., when people already start being a bit more realistic. I'm still under the distinct impression that if we're talking high school and, to a somewhat lesser extent college, choosing a girlfriend or boyfriend is a lot more of a status-symbol exercise. How you think at 26 is quite a bit more mature than how you think at 16, and how you think at 21 is still closer to the former than to the latter.
At 26, or better yet at 40, you might settle for "oh well, I'll just get a wife who doesn't look too bad", but I'd be genuinely surprised if many 16-year-olds thought like that. High school is an artificial status-symbol based society. It's all about being seen with the coolest guys or gals, being allowed at the most popular kids' table, etc.
Well, I can believe that very easily, but that doesn't modify the problem by much IMHO.
1. For a start you don't tell me how good the guys or gals doing the proposal looked. I'd be genuinely surprised if there was no threshold whatsoever there.
2. Women wanting a stable relationship (or at least more than one date) before they take off their panties, well, for most guys just means you have to go that route. And there we're back to the previous problem. (Some) Guys may fuck almost anything once, but, see the study I linked: they may not want a second date with someone who doesn't pass certain attractiveness criteria.
Basically I largely still stand by what I've said: the average looking girl in the back row might be technically able to get laid if she went to a nerd and asked "wanna fuck?" But talk about a second or third date, and she goes back to being invisible again.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There was a study a while ago which I can't find right now. In a monkey tribe where food was scarce, the researchers taught certain low-status monkeys how to get food. Soon the whole tribe knew that these monkeys could bring them precious food.
The interesting thing is that their status didn't change. They remained at the bottom of the totem pole.
Sound familiar? No amount of cleverness will raise your status.
While searching for this study, I saw quite a few monkey studies. Almost all made similar, depressing points. Like this story about monkey celebrity fever.
Why are you safe? Married? Gay? Taking drugs to suppress the libido? (Probably an excellent investment).
Engaged, to one of the maybe three geek girls I've met in my *life* that were both single and not related to me. :P Better than winning lotto, in my opinion. :)
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
...how to video chat with her friends using MSN...
Lots of rockclimbing nerds out there :-)
Me too!
Did you know that there is german research that clearly shows that elite rockclimbers are very much above average intelligence? My wife had a look at that, when she was studying psychology. This is quite unique to rockclimbing, and not found in other sports.
Bart
Congratulations!
Only if the girls you want to date judge you by the car you drive, your paycheck, and your house/apartment. Then when someone comes along with a bigger car/house/apartment/paycheck they will leave you.
Remember the following advice. Honestly, it may set a record for the number of people who get laid due to something they read on Slashdot.
Young women often can't distinguish between confidence and arrogance in males. This is why they date assholes, then complain to their "nice" male friends about it (argh, that got so tiring to hear). Telling the difference is skill they learn through experience.
Meh. Come to find out, the sorority is Omega Moo.
Pass.
Although, I've been out combing the high schools all day.
-Nino
Everyone who believes in telekinesis- Raise MY hand.
One vote for drugs.
Economic sensibility is not implied by "clever." You must be thinking of "shrewd." Very clever inventors often die in poverty, or see little for their revolutionary inventions.
My thinking on the do-it-yourself instinct is this: I work my 40 hours a week. What do I do with the rest of it to better myself? If I wanted to do more work, I would have to do some consulting on the side. This would require a significant amount of networking and other energy expenditure on my part to maintain, and while it might be a good long-term career move, in the short-term it would take a lot of time for relatively little money. Plus, I spend my whole day talking business - I hardly want to keep talking about it for hours after 5:00.
On the other hand, I could take up auto repair a hobby and maybe save some money on basic repairs and maintenance. It's meditative and interesting. Plus, I learn something, and I don't have to worry about being cheated by dishonest technicians.
That means you're not using your skills right. What you should do is offer to look at it for her, since you do your own car repair, and could tell her if it was just cleaning off the corrosion on her battery terminals or if she needed a full rebuild. All of a sudden you're attractive and useful, and you have a reason to spend more time with her. The root problem is that you're technically inclined, but not interpersonally inclined. Recognizing you have a weakness is the first step to solving it ;) He may be an effeminate jerk, but he saw his opening in the conversation and took it, and you didn't see yours.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
What's a PUA?
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
Just managed to figure out (after searching a bit) that he meant "pick up artist", and assumed we all knew what he meant.
My 229 is all the Sig I need http://thegunwiki.com/
It's cruel.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
Comment removed based on user account deletion