He probably means buying something other than pieces-parts in a putty-colored box. HP (and previously Compaq) has drivers written for their rack-mounted hardware and RedHat. They have an install script for it, which does all the dirty work for you. Of course, they also have it for Windows versions -- and trust me, it's hell to try to install a proprietary box without the OEM's supplied disks.
GUI on servers is the main reason I don't like Windows boxes. Do you really need a GUI 99.9% of the time? Nope. Then why carry the overhead?
Not just computer parts and consumer electronics; I was looking for a certain brand of fiber-reactive dye, and the first half of the page was those "Search for [fiber-reactive dye]!" links. Usually deceptively named, however. I've also run into it in my quest for stained glass (yes, I'm both a geek and an artsy-crafty-type person).
But it's still not as bad as the 'bad old days' of altavista. Or the Days Before Google. I can still find the data I want; it just takes a few seconds longer. I figure that google will continue to adapt, and the resellers/partners will continue to adapt as well.
Like spam, it's simply an arms race; who can outdo someone else's algorithms.
I've seen that mostly on NBC (probably because I'm a Law & Order junkie) -- it's fascinating, but I typically don't record one-off shows (miniseries are different). That's why they make season passes.
I really wish they'd do that more on some of the other channels. I end up half-watching commercials sometimes when I'm doing other things than just watching TV (washing dishes, making dinner, wandering aimlessly around the house), think 'oh, that's cool. I might want to watch that show later.' and then forget all about it.
Love scenes, death scenes, action bits. Each slightly more bearable than the last. I wouldn't have gone had my ticket not been paid for by someone else.
Not only am I *not* looking forward to episode iii, I will probably not see it, because it's what Lucas is churning out now. Drek. Pure, unadulterated drek. Like the rest of Hollywood. Perhaps Lucas once had 'it', but he seems to only be listening to his marketdroids (how appropriate!) and marketing his 'story' to 12-17 year-olds.
There is elegance to a story that can be told to a child or an adult and be received with equal interest by both. Whatever magic well he tapped for the first movies dried up for the prequels.
Sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but I'm rather bitter today, and 'telling it like it is' is really all I can muster.
We were infected by someone dialing in to (of all places, MSN) and opening an *authorized* VPN tunnel to our network.
Users will not patch their machines, even if there's a bright icon in their start menu. Even if it reminds you all the damn time. If it doesn't automagically download and install, they're not going to do it.
Should they have to? No. No one should have to patch as often as they do. Especially not desktops. Home users, for the most part, are technically savvy enough to plug in a USB device and have it 'work'. Office users, forget about it. For the most part, people think computers are magic, and IT people are just weird to be able to understand them.
We had most of our important stuff running on HP-UX. Of course, this was, oh, 4-5 years ago. I doubt that they've changed much (except maybe hardware upgrades) since then. Our computer room was made up of "The Desk" (where operations staff did their work), the 8 HP boxen, band printers (and Xerox Docutechs later), and the NT boxes shoved in a corner, about 1/4 the area of the Unix boxen/printer area.
I worked at a hospital, in IT, oddly enough. All of the critical software we had was run on UNIX.* From patient care to billing, including our ER software. BUT... it was run in a terminal window on a windows box.
If the hospitals 'out there' are anything like the one I worked at, they'd be all over the worm, patched all desktops through login scripts, patch all servers quickly and quietly, with a minimum of downtime.
*At the time I left, we had one fairly massive 'system' of 12 NT boxen for a slightly critical service -- medical records. But the place I worked had some of the best of the best NT people. So they'd be on top of everything before it happened.;)
A little over a year ago, I dealt with a shop that was running SunOS 2.5.1, and had it not been a total mess (thanks to the previous admin), they'd probably still be running it.
Imagine not doing all of the administrative tasks to a machine. Now imagine not doing them, doing them wrong and backwards, then deciding you were half-right, and doing it sideways from there, and you've pretty much got the "environment".
I will agree that it's the compatability and the tools lost that are most expensive. People want their stuff to 'look like' what they're used to. That's why windows users use Windows 95 still, in many shops. That's why users freak out when an upgrade comes around.
Solaris has its faults, but it's almost trivial to install on sparc hardware, and it's very GNU-friendly, out of the box, with no expensive add-ons. As opposed to, say, HP-UX ($$ for their compiler) or IRIX ($$ for their headers, $$ for their compiler).
As a 'female gamer' type person, let me just say you've hit the nail on the head. I'm an RPG-puzzle-arcade gamer. The draw for me is the storyline for RPG's and the gameplay for everything else. If I can't figure out how to play it in 20 minutes, screw it. It's not worth playing.
1) Games are not marketed at them, this includes advertising and the whole T&A approach that some developers like Acclaim are overly fond of.
Games are *not* marketed at 20-mumble year old women. GTA being the obvious choice to pick on, with its cars, b3wbs, etc. I also, as a straight woman, don't really care to watch bikini volleyball (either in real life or in a video game). Or bikini-clad score-card holders, et al.
2) Gaming is far more mainstream now than it ever has been, but it is still considered more of a "kids" thing. You don't think so, you think you are what the marketing department at Sega or Sony has decided is the typical gamer but you are not. Look at some of the ads, or some of the portrayal of gamers as geeks, clearly the picture of the community has some catching up to do with the mirror.
Games are still designed with 12-year-old boys in mind, and from my brief touch with game programming (1 semester-long class, I was one of 2 females in there), I can see why. A lot of 'the business' is a boy's club, whether it's intended to be or not. Like most computer-related jobs.
3) Like so many other activities that are not traditionally feminine, peers and whatnot exclude women from gaming. I am not saying that the girl police patrol the streets and beat sense back into those that stray over the blue line into "boy hobbies" it does mean that growing up, girls have less exposure to gaming than boys. This in turn leads to less interest in games and less purchasing.
Luckily for me, my peers were as weird and tomboy-ish as I was. That, paired with 4 younger brothers "allowed" me to be exposed to games. I currently own an SNES*, N64*, PS2**, and GameCube. I still occasionally play games on the older platforms. I buy ~1 game/month on average, play it until I get bored with it, or beat it, and go to the next one. Whether or not they're marketed toward me. And I will continue to do so as long as games are made that are at least borderline interesting.
* Technically, I have 2 SNES's and 2 N64's, as my husband owned them both as well.
** I actually was geeky enough to pick up my PS2 on the day it came out.
In my cubby farm, if you leave your desk even 2 minutes without kicking in some sort of screen lock, you are gently reminded that you probably have a couple of windows opened with root access to extremely important machines, and that you could be liable for any email sent with your email id.
If you leave your machine unlocked here, someone will remind you (and all of IT) that you have to bring donuts on Friday.
Amen! It may make a good gaming chair, but it's missing places for a phone, a writing surface, etc. Barely anyone works for a company whose product is purely virtual. Most computer users still use paper and pencil for certain things -- scribbling voicemail messages, writing notes in meetings, etc. What about our dead trees? I have two overhead bins full of dead trees that I need for my work.
It doesn't look like the monitors are all that stable, but at least they're flat screens -- they don't hurt as much as CRT's when they fall and smush you.
I have a bad habit of wiggling around when I'm thinking about things, this would definitely be a hassle if there were too much motion transfer from one of the parts to the others.
What if I bang on the keyboard, will that transfer movement elsewhere to the chair? Where's the spot for your caffeine of choice? Are you going to clutter the floor with wires for this thing? Is that an OSHA violation? Will my co-workers beat me up for my lunch money because I have a REALLY geeky looking chair? The questions are endless.
In summary: Interesting design, but not for real business-people. It looks too much like a toy to be taken seriously, and doesn't take into consideration the way people actually use computers.
as the other news on that page. It says that the London Daily Mirror has the first reviews of "Reloaded". I'll let google be your guide to find it for yourself, if you want to.
um - actually sun support can be surprisingly good, but it often depends on who you talk to like any other large IT vendor. You might also find that they've got a really good handle on openSource and may even know the code better than some of the development teams.
Plus, of the 'big names' in UNIX, Solaris is much more GNU-friendly than most, and I say this out of experience, yes. At least they give you the headers you need without having to buy the rather expensive compiler (HP, IRIX).
As for the leasing issues, that's a business deal, probably done as a tax dodge, as most equipment leases are.
I guess I'm lucky in that my director doesn't care what tools we use, as long as the job gets done. I'm actually working, getting more open source programs in for myself and the DBAs.
Episode I: The Pod Race I didn't see it until after it had gotten its, erm, 'rave reviews', so no great expectations there.
Episode II: The 2-d "love" story I wouldn't have seen it if someone else hadn't paid. I saw the actor who played Anakin in "Life as a House" before I saw ep II. I think that most of the wooden characterizations were less through bad acting, and more through bad directing, and terrible dialogue.
Note to self: Go back in time. Make sure Lucas writtes the entire story at once, then lock away Episodes I-III and VII-IX, hire a decent-but-unknown director, and film the damn things, 3 at once, like LOTR. 10 years between the three parts of the nonology (ie, I comes out 10 years after VI. VII comes out 10 years after III). Tell Lucas: Cast it all, film it all, don't tell anyone. Don't release control to your 'universe' to novel-writers. Get a good ghostwriter to help you make sure the continuity is kept, and the series doesn't go so far downhill.
Episode III, I'll probably go see after the hype has worn down, and it's at the $1 theater.
And pay attention to what your husband is feeling, you are probably totally emotionally neglecting him; you're supposed to ask questions like "What are you feeling?".
Well, if we didn't communicate our feelings, sure, I'd ask. If I didn't already know when to ask that and when to leave him the hell alone, I might ask that more often.
You don't have shed all your femininity to be a geek girl. Just be into technology or whatever it is that is geek. You don't have to be socially inept or not give a fuck about your appearance. Wash your damn hair, you give the real geek girls a bad name.
Femininity is all in the attitude. It's not in the pink frilly dress, the half-there miniskirt, or the heels, or the hair that takes an hour to pull together. As for the hair-washing, I never implied that being geek means that you drop common decency or cleanliness.
With me, the biggest problem is getting *away* from the geekiness.
On our honeymoon, we decided to watch the sun go down, because it's supposedly romantic. We sat down on the bench, facing the ocean, and... talked about what OS we'd prefer on our desktop machines, which 1u rackmount server we should buy, and how icky the slug was that was sliding down the railing in front of us.
some geek guys just don't want geek girls for whatever combination of reasons... And not every prissy little girl is oblivious to a philips and a torx.
It all comes down to the "we are all individuals" claim, and my comment earlier about stereotypes. Not every geek guy wants a geek girl. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted for who they are and what they do. People, in general, want to have a relationship in which they have common interests with their partner, and can share activities/ideas/beliefs. It's great being a geek girl because of the sheer number of geek guys. And while not every prissy girl is oblivious to screw-heads, I'd wager that owning a large set of bits and a drill isn't in most prissy girls' top 10.:P
My friends have a name for girls like you... 'dyke.'
As I am heterosexual, that name does not apply. You and the other 12-year-olds in your pack should learn that 'dyke' is simply another name for 'lesbian', and applies only to homosexual women.
As I lived and worked in Silicon Valley during the boom, yes, the majority of people I met were like this. I did meet a few who didn't fit the mold -- one, like you, liked expensive clothes, another worked out extensively, and yet another guy was more mildly interested in computers, but would rather be playing football. I actually dated a guy (before I left for SV) who was into fancy clothes (and refused to wear jeans), and thoroughly devoted to his FC (to the point of listening to internet broadcasts when visiting.
Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. There might be some white people who can dance. There are people from the south who don't talk like they're Scarlett O'Hara, or Bubba Jones. I've heard of Irish who don't drink. But stereotypes come around because a majority of the people who are [x] do [y].
First, I'm just barely married... 15 days. Second, it took me 27 years to get that way (ok, 11 years from first date to marriage, with 4 guys between first and last bf). Third, some girls like dating geeks for the percieved cash appeal, the pity-date, or the "I can clean this one up and keep him" appeal.
Yeah, it's fairly easy for geek chicks to meet geek guys and not so much vice versa -- probably because of the huge male:female ratio, and the fact that geeks who leave their houses are like moles in the sunshine, squinting, wandering aimlessly.:P
I think it's the blinders that geeks put on to actually get work done. The intense focus on technicalities and the small issues that makes other people think geeks are weird. The social ineptitude comes from spending more time with machines than people. People are notoriously illogical and unpredictable.
I even faced culture shock coming to my current job, where the 'junior techies' in the helpdesk aren't geeks; they're good at what they do, yes, but they don't have the dry sense of humor and the love of puns and wordplay that most geeks have.
Going to the movies is just an example of one of those things that people expect couples to do together. You can apply that to watching TV, playing a sport, taking a hike, etc. If you have to trade arranging flowers for "being able" to watch your NFL|NHL|Soccer(football) game, it's the same as promising to take her to [chick flick] to have her go with you to [action movie].
You can have your prissy little girls who wouldn't know a philips from a torx! To each their own. It's liberating for me to not have to attempt to do the girly things just to leave the house. I can do the girly stuff when needed, but I'm too... geek to worry about them all the time. Who will I meet at the grocery store/cafe/etc. who cares whether I'm wearing makeup, whether I'm wearing the right shade to match my clothes, etc.?
Don't get me wrong; I can get all prettyed up if need be, dress and heels (1" max, as I'm already 5'10") included. I just prefer to be who I am, and I'm a very jeans and t-shirt, converse all-stars, geek. Who happens to be a girl.
Slashdot Mirror
He probably means buying something other than pieces-parts in a putty-colored box. HP (and previously Compaq) has drivers written for their rack-mounted hardware and RedHat. They have an install script for it, which does all the dirty work for you. Of course, they also have it for Windows versions -- and trust me, it's hell to try to install a proprietary box without the OEM's supplied disks.
GUI on servers is the main reason I don't like Windows boxes. Do you really need a GUI 99.9% of the time? Nope. Then why carry the overhead?
Not just computer parts and consumer electronics; I was looking for a certain brand of fiber-reactive dye, and the first half of the page was those "Search for [fiber-reactive dye]!" links. Usually deceptively named, however. I've also run into it in my quest for stained glass (yes, I'm both a geek and an artsy-crafty-type person).
But it's still not as bad as the 'bad old days' of altavista. Or the Days Before Google. I can still find the data I want; it just takes a few seconds longer. I figure that google will continue to adapt, and the resellers/partners will continue to adapt as well.
Like spam, it's simply an arms race; who can outdo someone else's algorithms.
I've seen that mostly on NBC (probably because I'm a Law & Order junkie) -- it's fascinating, but I typically don't record one-off shows (miniseries are different). That's why they make season passes.
I really wish they'd do that more on some of the other channels. I end up half-watching commercials sometimes when I'm doing other things than just watching TV (washing dishes, making dinner, wandering aimlessly around the house), think 'oh, that's cool. I might want to watch that show later.' and then forget all about it.
Some of the newer cars come with an AUX jack; wouldn't be hard to jump over to radio snack and pick up a cable.
Love scenes, death scenes, action bits. Each slightly more bearable than the last. I wouldn't have gone had my ticket not been paid for by someone else.
Not only am I *not* looking forward to episode iii, I will probably not see it, because it's what Lucas is churning out now. Drek. Pure, unadulterated drek. Like the rest of Hollywood. Perhaps Lucas once had 'it', but he seems to only be listening to his marketdroids (how appropriate!) and marketing his 'story' to 12-17 year-olds.
There is elegance to a story that can be told to a child or an adult and be received with equal interest by both. Whatever magic well he tapped for the first movies dried up for the prequels.
Sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but I'm rather bitter today, and 'telling it like it is' is really all I can muster.
We were infected by someone dialing in to (of all places, MSN) and opening an *authorized* VPN tunnel to our network.
Users will not patch their machines, even if there's a bright icon in their start menu. Even if it reminds you all the damn time. If it doesn't automagically download and install, they're not going to do it.
Should they have to? No. No one should have to patch as often as they do. Especially not desktops. Home users, for the most part, are technically savvy enough to plug in a USB device and have it 'work'. Office users, forget about it. For the most part, people think computers are magic, and IT people are just weird to be able to understand them.
We had most of our important stuff running on HP-UX. Of course, this was, oh, 4-5 years ago. I doubt that they've changed much (except maybe hardware upgrades) since then. Our computer room was made up of "The Desk" (where operations staff did their work), the 8 HP boxen, band printers (and Xerox Docutechs later), and the NT boxes shoved in a corner, about 1/4 the area of the Unix boxen/printer area.
I worked at a hospital, in IT, oddly enough. All of the critical software we had was run on UNIX.* From patient care to billing, including our ER software. BUT... it was run in a terminal window on a windows box.
If the hospitals 'out there' are anything like the one I worked at, they'd be all over the worm, patched all desktops through login scripts, patch all servers quickly and quietly, with a minimum of downtime.
*At the time I left, we had one fairly massive 'system' of 12 NT boxen for a slightly critical service -- medical records. But the place I worked had some of the best of the best NT people. So they'd be on top of everything before it happened. ;)
Some company did. It's called TiVo. Or Replay TV. Of course, you have to pay for the box.
We can't use solar because the collectors create 'hot spots'
The only thing left is flatulence, and let's just say the collection process is better left to professionals. :P
A little over a year ago, I dealt with a shop that was running SunOS 2.5.1, and had it not been a total mess (thanks to the previous admin), they'd probably still be running it.
Imagine not doing all of the administrative tasks to a machine. Now imagine not doing them, doing them wrong and backwards, then deciding you were half-right, and doing it sideways from there, and you've pretty much got the "environment".
I will agree that it's the compatability and the tools lost that are most expensive. People want their stuff to 'look like' what they're used to. That's why windows users use Windows 95 still, in many shops. That's why users freak out when an upgrade comes around.
Solaris has its faults, but it's almost trivial to install on sparc hardware, and it's very GNU-friendly, out of the box, with no expensive add-ons. As opposed to, say, HP-UX ($$ for their compiler) or IRIX ($$ for their headers, $$ for their compiler).
As a 'female gamer' type person, let me just say you've hit the nail on the head. I'm an RPG-puzzle-arcade gamer. The draw for me is the storyline for RPG's and the gameplay for everything else. If I can't figure out how to play it in 20 minutes, screw it. It's not worth playing.
Games are *not* marketed at 20-mumble year old women. GTA being the obvious choice to pick on, with its cars, b3wbs, etc. I also, as a straight woman, don't really care to watch bikini volleyball (either in real life or in a video game). Or bikini-clad score-card holders, et al.
Games are still designed with 12-year-old boys in mind, and from my brief touch with game programming (1 semester-long class, I was one of 2 females in there), I can see why. A lot of 'the business' is a boy's club, whether it's intended to be or not. Like most computer-related jobs.
Luckily for me, my peers were as weird and tomboy-ish as I was. That, paired with 4 younger brothers "allowed" me to be exposed to games. I currently own an SNES*, N64*, PS2**, and GameCube. I still occasionally play games on the older platforms. I buy ~1 game/month on average, play it until I get bored with it, or beat it, and go to the next one. Whether or not they're marketed toward me. And I will continue to do so as long as games are made that are at least borderline interesting.
* Technically, I have 2 SNES's and 2 N64's, as my husband owned them both as well.
** I actually was geeky enough to pick up my PS2 on the day it came out.
If you leave your machine unlocked here, someone will remind you (and all of IT) that you have to bring donuts on Friday.
Amen! It may make a good gaming chair, but it's missing places for a phone, a writing surface, etc. Barely anyone works for a company whose product is purely virtual. Most computer users still use paper and pencil for certain things -- scribbling voicemail messages, writing notes in meetings, etc. What about our dead trees? I have two overhead bins full of dead trees that I need for my work.
It doesn't look like the monitors are all that stable, but at least they're flat screens -- they don't hurt as much as CRT's when they fall and smush you.
I have a bad habit of wiggling around when I'm thinking about things, this would definitely be a hassle if there were too much motion transfer from one of the parts to the others.
What if I bang on the keyboard, will that transfer movement elsewhere to the chair? Where's the spot for your caffeine of choice? Are you going to clutter the floor with wires for this thing? Is that an OSHA violation? Will my co-workers beat me up for my lunch money because I have a REALLY geeky looking chair? The questions are endless.
In summary: Interesting design, but not for real business-people. It looks too much like a toy to be taken seriously, and doesn't take into consideration the way people actually use computers.
as the other news on that page. It says that the London Daily Mirror has the first reviews of "Reloaded". I'll let google be your guide to find it for yourself, if you want to.
um - actually sun support can be surprisingly good, but it often depends on who you talk to like any other large IT vendor. You might also find that they've got a really good handle on openSource and may even know the code better than some of the development teams.
Episode I: The Pod Race I didn't see it until after it had gotten its, erm, 'rave reviews', so no great expectations there.
Episode II: The 2-d "love" story I wouldn't have seen it if someone else hadn't paid. I saw the actor who played Anakin in "Life as a House" before I saw ep II. I think that most of the wooden characterizations were less through bad acting, and more through bad directing, and terrible dialogue.
Note to self: Go back in time. Make sure Lucas writtes the entire story at once, then lock away Episodes I-III and VII-IX, hire a decent-but-unknown director, and film the damn things, 3 at once, like LOTR. 10 years between the three parts of the nonology (ie, I comes out 10 years after VI. VII comes out 10 years after III). Tell Lucas: Cast it all, film it all, don't tell anyone. Don't release control to your 'universe' to novel-writers. Get a good ghostwriter to help you make sure the continuity is kept, and the series doesn't go so far downhill.
Episode III, I'll probably go see after the hype has worn down, and it's at the $1 theater.
Actually, yeah. I've got 3 half-sisters... Only one's as geeky as I am -- last I heard, she wanted to go into forensic science...
Well, if we didn't communicate our feelings, sure, I'd ask. If I didn't already know when to ask that and when to leave him the hell alone, I might ask that more often.
Femininity is all in the attitude. It's not in the pink frilly dress, the half-there miniskirt, or the heels, or the hair that takes an hour to pull together. As for the hair-washing, I never implied that being geek means that you drop common decency or cleanliness.
On our honeymoon, we decided to watch the sun go down, because it's supposedly romantic. We sat down on the bench, facing the ocean, and ... talked about what OS we'd prefer on our desktop machines, which 1u rackmount server we should buy, and how icky the slug was that was sliding down the railing in front of us.
It all comes down to the "we are all individuals" claim, and my comment earlier about stereotypes. Not every geek guy wants a geek girl. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted for who they are and what they do. People, in general, want to have a relationship in which they have common interests with their partner, and can share activities/ideas/beliefs. It's great being a geek girl because of the sheer number of geek guys. And while not every prissy girl is oblivious to screw-heads, I'd wager that owning a large set of bits and a drill isn't in most prissy girls' top 10. :P
My friends have a name for girls like you... 'dyke.'
As I am heterosexual, that name does not apply. You and the other 12-year-olds in your pack should learn that 'dyke' is simply another name for 'lesbian', and applies only to homosexual women.
HTH. HAND.
As I lived and worked in Silicon Valley during the boom, yes, the majority of people I met were like this. I did meet a few who didn't fit the mold -- one, like you, liked expensive clothes, another worked out extensively, and yet another guy was more mildly interested in computers, but would rather be playing football. I actually dated a guy (before I left for SV) who was into fancy clothes (and refused to wear jeans), and thoroughly devoted to his FC (to the point of listening to internet broadcasts when visiting.
Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. There might be some white people who can dance. There are people from the south who don't talk like they're Scarlett O'Hara, or Bubba Jones. I've heard of Irish who don't drink. But stereotypes come around because a majority of the people who are [x] do [y].
First, I'm just barely married... 15 days. Second, it took me 27 years to get that way (ok, 11 years from first date to marriage, with 4 guys between first and last bf). Third, some girls like dating geeks for the percieved cash appeal, the pity-date, or the "I can clean this one up and keep him" appeal.
Yeah, it's fairly easy for geek chicks to meet geek guys and not so much vice versa -- probably because of the huge male:female ratio, and the fact that geeks who leave their houses are like moles in the sunshine, squinting, wandering aimlessly. :P
I think it's the blinders that geeks put on to actually get work done. The intense focus on technicalities and the small issues that makes other people think geeks are weird. The social ineptitude comes from spending more time with machines than people. People are notoriously illogical and unpredictable.
I even faced culture shock coming to my current job, where the 'junior techies' in the helpdesk aren't geeks; they're good at what they do, yes, but they don't have the dry sense of humor and the love of puns and wordplay that most geeks have.
Going to the movies is just an example of one of those things that people expect couples to do together. You can apply that to watching TV, playing a sport, taking a hike, etc. If you have to trade arranging flowers for "being able" to watch your NFL|NHL|Soccer(football) game, it's the same as promising to take her to [chick flick] to have her go with you to [action movie].
You can have your prissy little girls who wouldn't know a philips from a torx! To each their own. It's liberating for me to not have to attempt to do the girly things just to leave the house. I can do the girly stuff when needed, but I'm too... geek to worry about them all the time. Who will I meet at the grocery store/cafe/etc. who cares whether I'm wearing makeup, whether I'm wearing the right shade to match my clothes, etc.?
Don't get me wrong; I can get all prettyed up if need be, dress and heels (1" max, as I'm already 5'10") included. I just prefer to be who I am, and I'm a very jeans and t-shirt, converse all-stars, geek. Who happens to be a girl.