Better yet, use screen -x with multiple coders connected to the same machine. Works fine for pair programming, as long as the people working together can agree on an editor.;)
Actually, pair programming was how I learned more than rudimentary emacs skills--- figuring that it's easier for me to learn emacs than for anyone else to learn vi.
If you're a Smith College student, you can get support-level funding for an unpaid internship through their Praxis: the liberal arts at work program. Every student can get at least one Praxis grant during her undergrad career, to fund that cool internship that doesn't pay anything but is a great experience.
(Smith's a women's college, and home of the first engineering undergrad program at a US women's college. If you're in high school, do consider applying. Women's college graduates get PhDs in the sciences at a much higher rate than do women who attend coed undergrad programs.)
Yes, but how much of the code has tests to go with it? If I can't run a test suite on it, the code's very hard to modify without knowing whether I broke something. Ultimately, testing and documentation are just as important as code.
e-smith: a better business model, and GPL too
on
Death of a Rebel
·
· Score: 1
Which is why e-smith's business model is much better. They distribute a GPLed Linux-based OS on a CD that will turn your commodity Pentium into a network appliance. It's really cool, and very easy to install and configure. The internals are easy to customize if you like to hack things. I had my system up and running with a 3rd-party streaming MP3 plugin within an hour of popping in the CD.
e-smith gives away their distro, making money by providing support and services for the businesses who use it. They also support community development and re-sellers; check out their community site at http://www.e-smith.org. They'll do a lot better by selling services than by trying to sell hardware. Everyone's got a random P-100 lying around to run their software on.
Disclaimer:
I'm not affiliated with e-smith; I'm just a satisfied user. But they are very cool.
iCalendar is the common data exchange format you're talking about. See RFC2445 for the details.
Evolution's calendaring facilities speak iCalendar, as will the tools that Reefknot is building. Reefknot is a toolkit client/server project that speaks iCalendar. I hear the Evolution folks are planning a calendar server as well.
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.
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.
I know we've had prior discussions here about the topic of unions or guilds for technical workers. (NOTE: the two are not the same.) Do you think that there will be, or should be, a labor movement among geeks? Something that'll help us educate one another about what [un-]fair labor practices look like, and how to be paid fairly for the work we do?
Lots of geeks I know are just out of college, or get their first job at a startup and promptly get screwed because they don't know how to negotiate or stand up for themselves when the boss wants a 100-hour week. Do you have any advice for them?
No, just wait until you get out of college. There are decent MOTAS out there. and in general, ppl don't figure out until they're older that intellect can be as important as looks in a partner. College and HS are just the beginning, but it doesn't seem that way while you're in them.
we now return you t your regularly scheduled topic...
hell yeah. if i hadn't gone to a private school where being smart was cool, i don't know what i would have done. but it sucks to rely on scholarships to keep oneself sane.
Geeky females get to deal not only with the pervasive anti-intellectual bent of American schools, we also have to deal with a culture that tells us that if you're young and female and don't look like a supermodel, you don't count. Being female in HS is hard enough; being female and a geek is worse. IME you've gotta be "one of the boys" to be accepted/respected by geek guys, and that's not always the greatest either.
The Colorado school shootings make me want to buy a bunch of the stickers that Unamerican.com sells: "THIS TOWN EATS ITS YOUNG" and post them around my hometown. One of those kids looks just like a guy i knew in HS who got suicidal because he couldn't deal with the XOR choice between being smart and being cool. damn shame.
Slashdot Mirror
Better yet, use screen -x with multiple coders connected to the same machine. Works fine for pair programming, as long as the people working together can agree on an editor. ;)
Actually, pair programming was how I learned more than rudimentary emacs skills--- figuring that it's easier for me to learn emacs than for anyone else to learn vi.
If you're a Smith College student, you can get support-level funding for an unpaid internship through their Praxis: the liberal arts at work program. Every student can get at least one Praxis grant during her undergrad career, to fund that cool internship that doesn't pay anything but is a great experience.
(Smith's a women's college, and home of the first engineering undergrad program at a US women's college. If you're in high school, do consider applying. Women's college graduates get PhDs in the sciences at a much higher rate than do women who attend coed undergrad programs.)
Yes, but how much of the code has tests to go with it? If I can't run a test suite on it, the code's very hard to modify without knowing whether I broke something. Ultimately, testing and documentation are just as important as code.
e-smith gives away their distro, making money by providing support and services for the businesses who use it. They also support community development and re-sellers; check out their community site at http://www.e-smith.org. They'll do a lot better by selling services than by trying to sell hardware. Everyone's got a random P-100 lying around to run their software on.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with e-smith; I'm just a satisfied user. But they are very cool.
Evolution's calendaring facilities speak iCalendar, as will the tools that Reefknot is building. Reefknot is a toolkit client/server project that speaks iCalendar. I hear the Evolution folks are planning a calendar server as well.
The Netizen training docs are under the Open Publications License, so they're both libre and free.
That's why it's free (beer) and free (speech).
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.
Lots of geeks I know are just out of college, or get their first job at a startup and promptly get screwed because they don't know how to negotiate or stand up for themselves when the boss wants a 100-hour week. Do you have any advice for them?
No, just wait until you get out of college. There are decent MOTAS out there. and in general, ppl don't figure out until they're older that intellect can be as important as looks in a partner. College and HS are just the beginning, but it doesn't seem that way
while you're in them.
we now return you t your regularly scheduled topic...
srl
hell yeah. if i hadn't gone to a private school where being smart was cool,
i don't know what i would have done. but it sucks to rely on scholarships
to keep oneself sane.
Geeky females get to deal not only with the pervasive
anti-intellectual bent of American schools, we also have to deal with
a culture that tells us that if you're young and female and don't look
like a supermodel, you don't count. Being female in HS is hard enough;
being female and a geek is worse. IME you've gotta be "one of the boys"
to be accepted/respected by geek guys, and that's not always the greatest
either.
The Colorado school shootings make me want to buy a bunch of the stickers
that Unamerican.com sells:
"THIS TOWN EATS ITS YOUNG" and post them around my hometown.
One of those kids looks just like a guy i knew in HS who got suicidal
because he couldn't deal with the XOR choice between being smart
and being cool. damn shame.
srl