CWRU's firewalling is VERY minimalist. We're allowed to do pretty much anything.
Hell, over summer while we have very few students and very low internet connection usage, they even tolerate a bit of *cough* ftp service *cough*. There is a bigass trafficshaper in the main NOC that shapes down most of the useless P2P traffic. It's pointless anyway, because we have an on-campus LAN/samba search engine that will dig up nearly any mp3 you can ever want. We need the internet pipe free so the real ftp boxen can pull in the 0sec mp3s.;p
one of the things that i say over and over to people that are looking at cwru - our professors (faculty) suck ass, but the STAFF here rocks. People like sinnergy (hi Froggy) are what make going to school here bearable.
I hate my classes, i hate my professors, and the social life here leaves a lot to be desired... but i've met and worked with what i consider to be some amazingly cool and smart people. that is what i will take with me when (if?) I leave CWRU. ("if" because I'd love to continue to work here for a while if there is a position.:)
As a student worker who has helped trace some of the fiber on campus and done work on several of the network maps, I believe I'm qualified to answer this to some extent.:)
The Mail server - yes, it is still unencrypted, although that should end with IMAP this fall. (in theory). Besides - the gigabit is all switched. Much harder to see what's going down the wire unless you MAC spoof.
As for the card access - i'm not sure about the past, but currently the card readers are on their OWN SET OF FIBER. The SSNs are sent as SERIAL data. The card readers are serial devices that come back to FOMs (fiber-optic modems) which run singlemode back to Crawford at the end of the quad. From crawford, all of the signals are muxed again onto one pair of singlemode that is then shot over to security across Adelbert, which houses the server that actually holds the access records for the buildings.
As far as I know, card access has always been done like this. there has been talk of running it over IP, encapsulated & encrypted to hell. However, that is just talk, and it hasn't been done, yet or ever. Your SSN isn't readable. Anyone who says otherwise has either tapped the actual fiber that runs the cardreaders, or the layout has changed from the past.
I'll wager half of my karma, a couple nat portmans, 3/4's of a beowulf (that's how you spell it dammit) and 2 penis birds that NCSU's amount of hack attempts doubles after they begin rolling this out.
RH7 - *shudder*.
hell, redhat PERIOD, *shudder*. it comes with more holes than a sieve by default...
"It's funny, laugh."
(or just mod me up =D)
and for those of you looking for a valid argument... bash MS all you want, but W2k (and NT) have MANY less opportunities to be owned remotely, you have to give them that.
It takes a good 10-15 hours on a fast machine, like Athlon 650, to do this.
*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*
if you add "in FlaskMPEG", then you're correct. i routinely do a whole DVD in 8-9 hours on a p3-500. granted, the CPU is spiked at 100% the whole time and i usually don't use the box for much else. but it doesn't take as long as everyone thinks if you use good software. check out the real howto.
rippping and encodeing into mpeg 4 takes about 35-40 hours on his PIII 550 with 512 ram running Win2k.
if you use FlaskMPEG, which sucks balls.
hit up the good howto to learn how to do it much quicker.
on my p3 500/384 meg, total time, start to finish, is around 8-9 hours depending on how much i use the box.
But the technology mentioned isn't new - MPEG4 has been around for a while in the form of Divx:-). But this is the first review I've seen from a major site like Tom's
and it really sucks. whoever from tom's covered this should be shot, they did a horrid job and are just increasing the incorrect awareness of it.
i had coverage (almost anonymous) from MSNBC for the site i ran that had a DivX;-) howto (complete with graphics). do a search on MSNBC and notice the picture that has "void.cwru.edu" overlaid on it - thanks M$ news for ripping off my graphics!!
yeah, that's my grubby photoshop circling on the image. they just added the hostname, assholes that they are.
Pirates encourage each other to learn how to copy movies, offering up elaborate instructions and how-to guides on the best methods. This guide author even circled critical instructions before posting screen shots in his step-by-step explanation.
my ass. i just want to expand the knowledge of the world and get people to do it RIGHT. it's called freedom of speech, stupid big business shit.
at least now i have verifyable proof... here is the linkage
whereas a college undergrad could, probably starting around sophomore year
where did you go that they taught you that stuff that soon? CWRU's comp. sci program is biting the big one hardcore (and i'm jumping ship) - they're just beginning to explain POINTERS in SECOND SEMESTER of freshman year.
oh, and then they try to cover it in 2 days and expect everyone to comprehend everything pertaining to pointers and their usage after those 2 days. bad teaching.
Sorry man, but you're on crack, or hot grits, or Nat Portman.
IPv6 is NOT in use on Abilene. How do I know?
My edu is one of the many on Abilene.
I have most of the Abilene network topology memorized. I love bandwidth and networks. 'Nuff said.
some lowdown on the stuff... "normal" internet traffic doesn't travel over the I2 links. that's BS. AFAIK, I2 doesn't touch I1 at all. I've **never** had a route to a.com follow our school's abiliene router out to the gigapop and onto I1. it always just uses the "commodity" section of our link, which is about 25mbits of our single OC3 to OARnet, Ohio's big research network. OARnet has an OC3 into the ohio gigapop (i think in columbus) and then from there the packets can jump almost anywhere EDU. the remaining 130 mbits of our OC3 are all for I2 traffic, of which we don't have a ton at the moment. Normal stuff goes out the 25mbit pipe to OARnet where it's routed to normal backbones, and stuff for Uni's goes out on the I2 section of the OC3.
note that vBNS and Abilene are NOT very well connected at all. traffic from my i2 link to another edu that is ONLY on vBNS just runs on the commodity internet link. however, when i trade w4r3z with a bud at Kent state, it uses an I2 link to get there.
mostly though, I2 is all a bunch of phooey. what is much cooler is playing with ATM over fiber at the desktop level. I have an OC3 as my LAN connection. quake3 ping for local games - usually from 1-3. =)
come to CWRU, get your own OC3... limit your local pr0n xfers by your hard drive speed...:>
The connotation of `nerd,' etemologically, has ALWAYS been that of "an outcast," a person who doesn't fit in because of their brains/mannerisms.
the original connotation of geek was a carnie guy who ate the heads of bats, chicken, and other small mammals & birds, much like some death metal bands we all know about.
however, seeing as how those kinds of things don't happen, geek has been redefined.
i take geek as a compliment. i call myself geek. women can call me geek when they smile at me after i fix their computer. geeks know what they're doing with (insert subject of interest here), but they also have some amount of social ability that varies from geek to geek.
when we geek guys unleash our techspeak, we just make any non-geek feel stupid and ignorant, both men and women.
Budweiser: "True, true." 'Nuff said.
Anyways, in contrast, women seem to have (in general) much more difficulty in relating abstract concepts to more physical/familiar counterparts; they're more confortable sticking with purely abstract things, not crossing over with metaphores and real-life examples.
bullshit. total and utter bullshit, sorry.
i've got a wonderful metaphor for computer hardware that women understand completely fine. men get it too, but note: you used a "Computer to car" concept, and that makes sense - people expect a non-geek guy to know about cars or something. my metaphor just takes something that more women happen to be familiar with (namely because guys are so damn lazy in this area): the kitchen.
[cringes at the oncoming blows of feminists]
i'm not being male-centric here, i'm simply putting things to light in a way that many women are familiar with...
you + your hands == cpu counter == L1 cache, drawers == L2, cupboards == RAM, fridge or pantry == HDD, the freezer in the basement == CDROM
i think i've made it clear. it works, it makes sense, it's really damn extensible too.
i'm going to continue on and ruin your math theory too... my ex-gf was a calculus WHIZ. AP calc in high school, everyone would be sitting there banging away at their TI-85s and -86's... she had an 85 yet didn't know how to USE half of the functionality and thus banged out a ton of the calc by hand. this girl was SMART. she LOVED doing it too, i attempted to persuade her into trying to code - her mentality was such that she would've enjoyed it and done well at it... but she was so cemented into her one-track mind that she wanted to be a doctor, she wouldn't consider my suggestions.:-/
oh and sidenote to the story - she was great at math and i absolutely SUCKED. i find it somewhat difficult to do ANY mental math. at times when i'm real bad, i count on my fingers. i'm a bit better at theory stuff, but i still prefer to use a tool (TI-89/mathematica/maple) to do my work, which is obviously frowned upon by math profs.
in short, i'd say that most of your post is based upon one or two experiences, and i'm just trying to give you the flip side, not bash you to smithereens. please don't take it wrong, just gather knowledge from this.;)
BTW, the reason that most male geeks can't get dates is because you are so non-aggressive that we don't even notice that you like us. Stop sniveling in the corner and ask us out.
for real? is this really it?
[revelation hits]
if this doesn't work i'm coming back and flaming you to a crisp.:-P
i've been thinking this same kind of thing for a long time, but not being female, i've never speculated about it.
the interesting flip-side of this coin is also that if you're a male and are attempting to be on the geek bandwagon, it is often hard to get on if you still have any other persuits, such as the aforementioned "spend time with friends, talk, do charity work, assist in the rearing of children."
i wanna be a full fledged (male) geek but it's often hard to fit it around everything else i wanna do - one of those things being social.:P
And, we tend to have more money (or at least more moneymaking potential - [D]) than the average Joe Six Pack, which is supposed to be attractive (according to the Discovery Channel, because it signals the women that we're more apt to provide for their young).
BZZZZZZZZT. nope. sorry. Sure, we might be apt to provide for their young... if they actually took the time to think about the whole package
the problem is that most of the women i find myself interested in (not necessarily code jockeys, but smart & attractive females) don't focus on a man/guy/boy/(insert pronoun here)'s personality and moneymaking potential.
as per a PhD in psychology's POV (a friend of mine) - at some low-level part of their brain, women are programmed to look for the "buff," jock-like, "what our society deems as `attractive'" kind of males. this rules out (i'm guessing) about 90% of the "geek" field. personally i'm not worried about heart problems or anything, but at 6'3" and about 225lbs i'm not about to go run a marathon.
now, to get back on to the rest of the reply...
So, what's up? Why do the women keep flocking to the high-power lawyers (which is just as non-physical, academic a job as programmer), while neglecting us? What the hell is going on?
easy, my fellow lonely geek.
the position of "lawyer" (see also "backstabbing ass," "power hungry snake") has been elevated by society. the typical stereotype of a lawyer, that of a really rich, yacht-sailing guy, is considered a good thing for a woman to want.
consider the stereotype of "geek": unkempt, dirty, fat, caring more about electronics than women.
sure, neither one is seen in the eyes of society as "a hot guy," but a woman is certainly much more likely to be attracted to the former than the latter. as you said:
Sure, the occasional one of us is a fat slob or turbo-nerd, but I don't think those subsets are in the majority.
that's exactly the point. those subsets aren't in the majority, but the stereotype is typically one or both of said subsets.
the problem is, as things progress, we only become more geeky and better at what we do, and thus, exacerbate our own problem. ohhh, the tragedy of being a single, intelligent, computer-savvy, not-hot-but-not-ugly-(maybe-termed-"cute"), "geek."
my only hope is that maybe society's eyes will open as *nix becomes "mainstream" and being a geek will be a good thing in EVERYONE's eyes, not just in the eyes of a geek him- (or her-) self.
hmmm... 80% chance that nobody ever sees this to mod it up... i don't post often, but when i do i have good stuff to say, i just get in on the discussion too friggin' late.:-/
I won't start on personal hygiene, because that is something every geek must get together - for the sake of his friends and especially those of the opposite sex. HEY now.
not all male geeks are dirty, longhaired, bearded tubs of lard...
I for one actually shower at least once a day, more if i've been working my ass off on like 4 different boxen in rapid succession, thus creating a skanky odor...
pigeonholes suck. 'nuff said.
ok and while i'm at it... i'm a single male who lives in a town of old people. being still in college and such, i still reside with my parents, 'scuse me for living. sure, i play computer games. however,
i'm still 19
i would much rather be out on a date with someone but:
it's hard to meet women at my school and
it's hard to meet women in my town (which is populated mainly by old people, as i said)
teen male mentality? we all know an average teen male would tell you to take that & shove it. i prefer to instead ask you to clarify further... maybe some people fit that pigeonhole, but not all do.
wow, mindless ranting about a subject about which i have almost passionate feelings is extremely gratifying.
hey grammar nazi, wanna check this for me? i'm too lazy to do it myself, but i feel that aside from the capitalization (or lack thereof) it should be fine and dandy. (yes, i know that is a trite cliché, deal with it.)
/me wonders if this will get an automatic +1 for length...
I go to CWRU. I am currently switching out of the Comp. Sci. program there because I feel it is a horrible disgrace to the school - DO NOT GO TO CWRU.Edu FOR COMP. SCI. (Ok for Comp. E, but not CS...)
Anyway.
What i really want to do with my life is networks. I've got the ThinkGeek "Will Work For Bandwidth" shirt and i really mean it. How in HELL does one begin to get experience in this field, since schools don't offer anything of the sort... I was offered two different positions with two places... one an ISP, one a "network rollout house" (install NT servers/Netware servers, build machines, etc). The ISP was gonna give me $15/hr, i think my main job was going to be setting up a 4 machine 1U rackmount cluster on turbolinux to run their DNS server and RADIUS DB.... in any case, they interviewed me, said they wanted me, and then due to some administrative stupidities, couldn't hire me (if you want the full story, email me).
what am i doing wrong here?
is there something i'm missing out on, or does Cleveland simply lack openings for budding geeks?
In reality, your computer's electronics will not be fazed by water. You could throw your processor in a bucket of water, let it sit for two weeks, pull it out and let it dry and plug it back in. It'll work just fine.
Dayton, Ohio. Computerized car washes, they used Gateway(TM) boxen to run the timers for the bays, etc.
Flood happens. Flood is muddy. flood is EVIL. box is under 6 feet of silty water for a week or so.
i strip dead machine. Mobo=dead. drives=dead & rusted. RAM=thought to be working, POSTed fine. started generating random errors on scandisk and such, determined bad after it made the machine think a 4 gig WD hard disk was corrupted to all fuck (when i knew it wasn't) discarded ram(80 megs of it too!!)
CPU (first stepping P2 233)=Looked rather corroded... but worked absolutely PERFECTLY (after a new CPU fan) for about 6 months straight in a gaming machine.
Ok, as one of the d00dz who has been around DiVX;-) for a while, i feel obligated to drop some info here. My IRCnick (EFNet) is BcKSpacE, i hang in #DiVX from time to time, moreso when it's college time.
The FULL, proper name is "DiVX;-)" (with those cases and the smiley
the author is (supposedly) Spanish, not french
DiVX;-) sprung from a hack of the M$ MPEG4 video codec, the same one that's used in ASFs. The codec needed to be hacked to be use-able with AVI video (non streaming).
audio for DiVX;-) is typically MP3 audio, however there has also been a hack of the WMA audio codec that will encode into AVIs. HOWEVER, there is an interesting issue with these hacked codecs on some systems. The hacked VIDEO codec uses the DiVX;-) decoder codec. any AUDIO encoded with the (very alpha) hacked WMA codec is DEcoded with the BUILTIN windows WMA decoders. On some systems, this creates some really funky errors, depending on the version of DirectX media that's installed.
the definitive HOWTO on CREATING your own, GOOD QUALITY DiVX rip can be found at the FM4 (Free MPEG4) site. I wrote the original howto after reading some texts on it written by FM4. the pics are almost all mine... and MSNBC actually took one of them, stuck my hostname (From school) on the picture and posted it on MSNBC.com - without my permission. any lawyer geeks know how i can get back at them?
Oh, and DiVX;-) looks almost as good and sounds almost as good as a DVD... and if you have a fat pipe, it's easy to get and free... blows VCD/MPEG1 out of the water too. =)
Those things were PHAT. And they DO still exist. I have a serial one sitting on my AMD K5 linux box right now,but you can buy new ones... except you get charged $50 and it's now called the "Wingman Gamer Mouse."
But it's a cool graphite color.;-)
The Intellimouse Explorer is wonderful. Extremely comfortable, works on almost anything, and damn, the thumb buttons (default to forward & back in IE/nutscrape) are like crack - once you use them, you can't stop.
I agree with all those that say MS should stick to hardware. I have an "MS desktop": a Natural Elite KB and Imouse Explorer. very comfy and useable.
Ok, i guess the 64 meg modules aren't out yet... But they are on their way and hopefully will be out at the time of the player itself. plus, the 32 meg ones are much cheaper than "SmartMedia" 32mb modules - SM go for about $100 a pop, while the whole MP3 package, with TWO 32 meg MMC modules is supposed to retail for $225 - subtract the 100 for the "bare" model and you have $125 for the TWO 32 meg modules, so they are much cheaper than the SM modules...
My aforementioned solution to the whole MP3 issue: the upcoming Visor Springboard module MP3 player. I just got a Visor Pro (the blue one, if you care) and i'm loving it already. There is an MP3 player being released for it this summer, i have my name on the mailinglist already for more info... What's so special about it? Two things.
1.) It uses "MMC" memory cards, not the crappy "smartmedia" that all of the Rios and their breathren use. 2.) it has NO builtin memory, but has TWO card slots.
What's good about these things? The BIGGEST good point - MMC cards come in 64 MB size. Now onto point number two. Think. 64+64 == 128 Mbytes of MP3 storage. THE LARGEST SOLID STATE SIZE ON THE MARKET, at this moment. Plus, because BOTH cards are removable, if/when a 128mb module comes out, you can stick in two of those, instead of being stuck with a base 64mb and only having the versatility of ONE addon.
The thing runs off of the batteries on the Visor, but also has a plug for an external adaptor. Est. retail price for a memory-less model: $100.
They say a 64 meg version should go for $225.
STILL cheaper than a 64 meg Rio500, and WOW, it uses USB to load (right through your handspring)... you can play the audio while using the visor too, the player has all its own DSPs and stuff, just uses the visor for batteries and (if you want) display of ID3 tags.
Yes, i have linkage. Right here. Check Innogear's "MiniJam" out. If you found this informative, well, MODERATE it!
MD Computer drives are next to IMPOSSIBLE to come by in the US... One of those would be real cool, and if I could get one, it would push me FOR SURE to an MD player. See my later post (top level) for my intended solution to the "portable non-skip easily changeable" music problem.
Slashdot Mirror
actually, not at all true.
;p
:)
CWRU's firewalling is VERY minimalist. We're allowed to do pretty much anything.
Hell, over summer while we have very few students and very low internet connection usage, they even tolerate a bit of *cough* ftp service *cough*. There is a bigass trafficshaper in the main NOC that shapes down most of the useless P2P traffic. It's pointless anyway, because we have an on-campus LAN/samba search engine that will dig up nearly any mp3 you can ever want. We need the internet pipe free so the real ftp boxen can pull in the 0sec mp3s.
one of the things that i say over and over to people that are looking at cwru - our professors (faculty) suck ass, but the STAFF here rocks. People like sinnergy (hi Froggy) are what make going to school here bearable.
I hate my classes, i hate my professors, and the social life here leaves a lot to be desired... but i've met and worked with what i consider to be some amazingly cool and smart people. that is what i will take with me when (if?) I leave CWRU. ("if" because I'd love to continue to work here for a while if there is a position.
uh, you claim to be a cisco guru... you should have an idea.
:) The sprint guys who installed them were really nice too, i talked to a couple.
the switches are all 6509s and 6513s. Many many blades of gig fiber.
"Do you realize..."
:)
"And you... piece of crap, who just called..."
That gave me a good laugh, thanks.
FUD! FUD! FUD!
:)
As a student worker who has helped trace some of the fiber on campus and done work on several of the network maps, I believe I'm qualified to answer this to some extent.
The Mail server - yes, it is still unencrypted, although that should end with IMAP this fall. (in theory). Besides - the gigabit is all switched. Much harder to see what's going down the wire unless you MAC spoof.
As for the card access - i'm not sure about the past, but currently the card readers are on their OWN SET OF FIBER. The SSNs are sent as SERIAL data. The card readers are serial devices that come back to FOMs (fiber-optic modems) which run singlemode back to Crawford at the end of the quad. From crawford, all of the signals are muxed again onto one pair of singlemode that is then shot over to security across Adelbert, which houses the server that actually holds the access records for the buildings.
As far as I know, card access has always been done like this. there has been talk of running it over IP, encapsulated & encrypted to hell. However, that is just talk, and it hasn't been done, yet or ever. Your SSN isn't readable. Anyone who says otherwise has either tapped the actual fiber that runs the cardreaders, or the layout has changed from the past.
I'll wager half of my karma, a couple nat portmans, 3/4's of a beowulf (that's how you spell it dammit) and 2 penis birds that NCSU's amount of hack attempts doubles after they begin rolling this out.
RH7 - *shudder*.
hell, redhat PERIOD, *shudder*. it comes with more holes than a sieve by default...
"It's funny, laugh."
(or just mod me up =D)
and for those of you looking for a valid argument... bash MS all you want, but W2k (and NT) have MANY less opportunities to be owned remotely, you have to give them that.
an alternative to k5 and /., not yet clogged up by weenies... although the siteops are kinda weeny. =P
It takes a good 10-15 hours on a fast machine, like Athlon 650, to do this.
*cough*BULLSHIT*cough*
if you add "in FlaskMPEG", then you're correct. i routinely do a whole DVD in 8-9 hours on a p3-500. granted, the CPU is spiked at 100% the whole time and i usually don't use the box for much else. but it doesn't take as long as everyone thinks if you use good software. check out the real howto.
rippping and encodeing into mpeg 4 takes about 35-40 hours on his PIII 550 with 512 ram running Win2k.
if you use FlaskMPEG, which sucks balls. hit up the good howto to learn how to do it much quicker.
on my p3 500/384 meg, total time, start to finish, is around 8-9 hours depending on how much i use the box.
and it really sucks. whoever from tom's covered this should be shot, they did a horrid job and are just increasing the incorrect awareness of it.
i had coverage (almost anonymous) from MSNBC for the site i ran that had a DivX ;-) howto (complete with graphics). do a search on MSNBC and notice the picture that has "void.cwru.edu" overlaid on it - thanks M$ news for ripping off my graphics!!
yeah, that's my grubby photoshop circling on the image. they just added the hostname, assholes that they are.my ass. i just want to expand the knowledge of the world and get people to do it RIGHT. it's called freedom of speech, stupid big business shit.
at least now i have verifyable proof... here is the linkage
read the REAL tutorial from FM4, xprog, & yours truly.
whereas a college undergrad could, probably starting around sophomore year
where did you go that they taught you that stuff that soon? CWRU's comp. sci program is biting the big one hardcore (and i'm jumping ship) - they're just beginning to explain POINTERS in SECOND SEMESTER of freshman year.
oh, and then they try to cover it in 2 days and expect everyone to comprehend everything pertaining to pointers and their usage after those 2 days. bad teaching.
Sorry man, but you're on crack, or hot grits, or Nat Portman.
.com follow our school's abiliene router out to the gigapop and onto I1. it always just uses the "commodity" section of our link, which is about 25mbits of our single OC3 to OARnet, Ohio's big research network. OARnet has an OC3 into the ohio gigapop (i think in columbus) and then from there the packets can jump almost anywhere EDU. the remaining 130 mbits of our OC3 are all for I2 traffic, of which we don't have a ton at the moment. Normal stuff goes out the 25mbit pipe to OARnet where it's routed to normal backbones, and stuff for Uni's goes out on the I2 section of the OC3.
:>
IPv6 is NOT in use on Abilene. How do I know?
My edu is one of the many on Abilene.
I have most of the Abilene network topology memorized. I love bandwidth and networks. 'Nuff said.
some lowdown on the stuff... "normal" internet traffic doesn't travel over the I2 links. that's BS. AFAIK, I2 doesn't touch I1 at all. I've **never** had a route to a
note that vBNS and Abilene are NOT very well connected at all. traffic from my i2 link to another edu that is ONLY on vBNS just runs on the commodity internet link. however, when i trade w4r3z with a bud at Kent state, it uses an I2 link to get there.
mostly though, I2 is all a bunch of phooey. what is much cooler is playing with ATM over fiber at the desktop level. I have an OC3 as my LAN connection. quake3 ping for local games - usually from 1-3. =)
come to CWRU, get your own OC3... limit your local pr0n xfers by your hard drive speed...
Actually, i see it as the exact opposite.
The connotation of `nerd,' etemologically, has ALWAYS been that of "an outcast," a person who doesn't fit in because of their brains/mannerisms.
the original connotation of geek was a carnie guy who ate the heads of bats, chicken, and other small mammals & birds, much like some death metal bands we all know about.
however, seeing as how those kinds of things don't happen, geek has been redefined.
i take geek as a compliment. i call myself geek. women can call me geek when they smile at me after i fix their computer. geeks know what they're doing with (insert subject of interest here), but they also have some amount of social ability that varies from geek to geek.
at least, that's how i see it.
think of the possibilities for the single male's bathroom...
"Wow Tom, you've got WALLPR0N!!!!"
you all know this should be "Score +(bignumber):Funny"
Budweiser: "True, true." 'Nuff said.
bullshit. total and utter bullshit, sorry.i've got a wonderful metaphor for computer hardware that women understand completely fine. men get it too, but note: you used a "Computer to car" concept, and that makes sense - people expect a non-geek guy to know about cars or something. my metaphor just takes something that more women happen to be familiar with (namely because guys are so damn lazy in this area): the kitchen.
[cringes at the oncoming blows of feminists]
i'm not being male-centric here, i'm simply putting things to light in a way that many women are familiar with...
you + your hands == cpu counter == L1 cache, drawers == L2, cupboards == RAM, fridge or pantry == HDD, the freezer in the basement == CDROM
i think i've made it clear. it works, it makes sense, it's really damn extensible too.
i'm going to continue on and ruin your math theory too... my ex-gf was a calculus WHIZ. AP calc in high school, everyone would be sitting there banging away at their TI-85s and -86's... she had an 85 yet didn't know how to USE half of the functionality and thus banged out a ton of the calc by hand. this girl was SMART. she LOVED doing it too, i attempted to persuade her into trying to code - her mentality was such that she would've enjoyed it and done well at it... but she was so cemented into her one-track mind that she wanted to be a doctor, she wouldn't consider my suggestions. :-/
oh and sidenote to the story - she was great at math and i absolutely SUCKED. i find it somewhat difficult to do ANY mental math. at times when i'm real bad, i count on my fingers. i'm a bit better at theory stuff, but i still prefer to use a tool (TI-89/mathematica/maple) to do my work, which is obviously frowned upon by math profs.
in short, i'd say that most of your post is based upon one or two experiences, and i'm just trying to give you the flip side, not bash you to smithereens. please don't take it wrong, just gather knowledge from this. ;)
[revelation hits]
if this doesn't work i'm coming back and flaming you to a crisp. :-P
[mouth forms into dumbstruck grin]
[wonders if she's cute]
i've been thinking this same kind of thing for a long time, but not being female, i've never speculated about it.
the interesting flip-side of this coin is also that if you're a male and are attempting to be on the geek bandwagon, it is often hard to get on if you still have any other persuits, such as the aforementioned "spend time with friends, talk, do charity work, assist in the rearing of children."
i wanna be a full fledged (male) geek but it's often hard to fit it around everything else i wanna do - one of those things being social. :P
[quiet sobs of anguish]
BZZZZZZZZT. nope. sorry. Sure, we might be apt to provide for their young... if they actually took the time to think about the whole package
the problem is that most of the women i find myself interested in (not necessarily code jockeys, but smart & attractive females) don't focus on a man/guy/boy/(insert pronoun here)'s personality and moneymaking potential.
as per a PhD in psychology's POV (a friend of mine) - at some low-level part of their brain, women are programmed to look for the "buff," jock-like, "what our society deems as `attractive'" kind of males. this rules out (i'm guessing) about 90% of the "geek" field. personally i'm not worried about heart problems or anything, but at 6'3" and about 225lbs i'm not about to go run a marathon.
now, to get back on to the rest of the reply...
easy, my fellow lonely geek.
the position of "lawyer" (see also "backstabbing ass," "power hungry snake") has been elevated by society. the typical stereotype of a lawyer, that of a really rich, yacht-sailing guy, is considered a good thing for a woman to want.
consider the stereotype of "geek": unkempt, dirty, fat, caring more about electronics than women.
sure, neither one is seen in the eyes of society as "a hot guy," but a woman is certainly much more likely to be attracted to the former than the latter. as you said:
that's exactly the point. those subsets aren't in the majority, but the stereotype is typically one or both of said subsets.
the problem is, as things progress, we only become more geeky and better at what we do, and thus, exacerbate our own problem. ohhh, the tragedy of being a single, intelligent, computer-savvy, not-hot-but-not-ugly-(maybe-termed-"cute"), "geek."
my only hope is that maybe society's eyes will open as *nix becomes "mainstream" and being a geek will be a good thing in EVERYONE's eyes, not just in the eyes of a geek him- (or her-) self.
hmmm... 80% chance that nobody ever sees this to mod it up... i don't post often, but when i do i have good stuff to say, i just get in on the discussion too friggin' late. :-/
not all male geeks are dirty, longhaired, bearded tubs of lard...
I for one actually shower at least once a day, more if i've been working my ass off on like 4 different boxen in rapid succession, thus creating a skanky odor...
pigeonholes suck. 'nuff said.
ok and while i'm at it... i'm a single male who lives in a town of old people. being still in college and such, i still reside with my parents, 'scuse me for living. sure, i play computer games. however,
teen male mentality? we all know an average teen male would tell you to take that & shove it. i prefer to instead ask you to clarify further... maybe some people fit that pigeonhole, but not all do.
wow, mindless ranting about a subject about which i have almost passionate feelings is extremely gratifying.
hey grammar nazi, wanna check this for me? i'm too lazy to do it myself, but i feel that aside from the capitalization (or lack thereof) it should be fine and dandy. (yes, i know that is a trite cliché, deal with it.)
Anyway.
What i really want to do with my life is networks. I've got the ThinkGeek "Will Work For Bandwidth" shirt and i really mean it. How in HELL does one begin to get experience in this field, since schools don't offer anything of the sort... I was offered two different positions with two places... one an ISP, one a "network rollout house" (install NT servers/Netware servers, build machines, etc). The ISP was gonna give me $15/hr, i think my main job was going to be setting up a 4 machine 1U rackmount cluster on turbolinux to run their DNS server and RADIUS DB.... in any case, they interviewed me, said they wanted me, and then due to some administrative stupidities, couldn't hire me (if you want the full story, email me).
what am i doing wrong here?
is there something i'm missing out on, or does Cleveland simply lack openings for budding geeks?
potential employers: my resume is available in PDF on the web.
Dayton, Ohio. Computerized car washes, they used Gateway(TM) boxen to run the timers for the bays, etc.
Flood happens. Flood is muddy. flood is EVIL. box is under 6 feet of silty water for a week or so.
i strip dead machine. Mobo=dead. drives=dead & rusted. RAM=thought to be working, POSTed fine. started generating random errors on scandisk and such, determined bad after it made the machine think a 4 gig WD hard disk was corrupted to all fuck (when i knew it wasn't) discarded ram(80 megs of it too!!)
CPU (first stepping P2 233)=Looked rather corroded... but worked absolutely PERFECTLY (after a new CPU fan) for about 6 months straight in a gaming machine.
the moral: Intel does make good shit.
Oh, and DiVX ;-) looks almost as good and sounds almost as good as a DVD... and if you have a fat pipe, it's easy to get and free... blows VCD/MPEG1 out of the water too. =)
BcKSpacE AKA [Dilbert]
Those things were PHAT. ,but you can buy new ones... except you get charged $50 and it's now called the "Wingman Gamer Mouse."
;-)
And they DO still exist. I have a serial one sitting on my AMD K5 linux box right now
But it's a cool graphite color.
The Intellimouse Explorer is wonderful. Extremely comfortable, works on almost anything, and damn, the thumb buttons (default to forward & back in IE/nutscrape) are like crack - once you use them, you can't stop.
I agree with all those that say MS should stick to hardware. I have an "MS desktop": a Natural Elite KB and Imouse Explorer. very comfy and useable.
Ok, i guess the 64 meg modules aren't out yet...
But they are on their way and hopefully will be out at the time of the player itself. plus, the 32 meg ones are much cheaper than "SmartMedia" 32mb modules - SM go for about $100 a pop, while the whole MP3 package, with TWO 32 meg MMC modules is supposed to retail for $225 - subtract the 100 for the "bare" model and you have $125 for the TWO 32 meg modules, so they are much cheaper than the SM modules...
My aforementioned solution to the whole MP3 issue: the upcoming Visor Springboard module MP3 player. I just got a Visor Pro (the blue one, if you care) and i'm loving it already. There is an MP3 player being released for it this summer, i have my name on the mailinglist already for more info... What's so special about it? Two things.
1.) It uses "MMC" memory cards, not the crappy "smartmedia" that all of the Rios and their breathren use.
2.) it has NO builtin memory, but has TWO card slots.
What's good about these things? The BIGGEST good point - MMC cards come in 64 MB size. Now onto point number two. Think. 64+64 == 128 Mbytes of MP3 storage. THE LARGEST SOLID STATE SIZE ON THE MARKET, at this moment. Plus, because BOTH cards are removable, if/when a 128mb module comes out, you can stick in two of those, instead of being stuck with a base 64mb and only having the versatility of ONE addon.
The thing runs off of the batteries on the Visor, but also has a plug for an external adaptor. Est. retail price for a memory-less model: $100.
They say a 64 meg version should go for $225.
STILL cheaper than a 64 meg Rio500, and WOW, it uses USB to load (right through your handspring)... you can play the audio while using the visor too, the player has all its own DSPs and stuff, just uses the visor for batteries and (if you want) display of ID3 tags.
Yes, i have linkage. Right here. Check Innogear's "MiniJam" out.
If you found this informative, well, MODERATE it!
MD Computer drives are next to IMPOSSIBLE to come by in the US... One of those would be real cool, and if I could get one, it would push me FOR SURE to an MD player. See my later post (top level) for my intended solution to the "portable non-skip easily changeable" music problem.