I really liked your approach on how to sell it to girls too. I'm going to try to figure out how to sell my daughter on learning a bit more. She's unfortunately part of the current 12 year old generation of thinking that she knows about technology because she can use it. I'm working on getting her interested in how it ticks, unfortunately as the parent that doesn't have her most of the time it's difficult to work into a couple of days at a time.
My story, while not as bad in many respects as yours was just as bad if not worse as far as learning was concerned. (Better home life thankfully) I lived in the deserts of West Texas, in a poor community. There were no computers I could use, and my parents actually said "we didn't have computers when we were kids, you don't need them now", so I had next to zero family support, and next to no opportunity to learn elsewhere as the industry of my town revolved around cantaloup, onions, and cattle. I couldn't even get something from a business trash pile because business trash piles in that are consisted of animal waste and rotten vegetation.
Despite that I read Discover Magazine, I read 321 Contact when I was young, I read Omni, I read Popular Science, I kept up with what was going on even if it was what was going on in what was practically a parallel universe. Every piece of electronic junk I could get my hands on I drug home and took apart, one of the first things I successfully fixed was 45 lb Sony Betamax. I had motors, batteries, LED's old telephones with asbestos and cloth insulators, microphones speakers, you name it hooked up with chewing gum and electric tape. Finally when I was 17 I was given an 8088 - this was right after the first socket 7 Pentiums came out. I was overjoyed to have it.
Within a year in the business world I was ahead of many peers my own age who grew up immersed in computers (yes I moved to a metro area). Within two or three years the country bumpkin origins story was nearly completely neutralized - with one lingering exception. I never really learned to program. I do alright when I need to alter some code, but I'm not a coder, and I never found time to really learn to do it well. I was always too busy doing massive amounts of sysadmin, cabling, hardware, various whatever else work. It's still on my to-do list but it matters less all the time.
I too am fortunate. My wife is by no means a techy geek type, but her dad is, her brother is, most of the people around her growing up were at least a little on the geek side of things so she admires the fact I am one, but that was good enough in my case, especially since I was already mid-30's when we married. I'm well past my live and breathe geek things phase, having someone who is happy with what I do with it works great for me.
Seems more likely they are just victims of the Peter Principal or good at interviewing. Lots of people get into good positions because they interview well, but are actually pretty bad at their jobs in practice.
You see, I can't buy that outright. I can to some degree because we had shitty men come and go and not just because they chose to, but the shitty women were allowed to stay. Most of the ones I'm referring to were new hires, but a couple were outright nepotism.
It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with. Most of these guys secretly want a geek girl that's close to equal but just slightly better than them in certain areas so they have someone to push them and compete with.
These are the same guys wondering why women are so focused on fashion and reality TV, things which are not logical.
Each of these geek guys secretly wants to be asked by a pretty young thing real technical questions about what they do, not "how can you spend all of your time in front of a computer?" but "exactly what is this compiler you're talking about?"
I'm 37 years old, I've been a professional geek since I was 18, I have come across these geek girls. The place I came across the most of them was an ISP that attracted young people in general. Even in that place most of the females saw what they did as a job to make a few bucks, but roughly 5% were interested in doing what the slightly older guys did (which included me, one of the older people there at the age of 21).
I have become convinced from my own interactions that this just is not a female thing. I helped anyone who asked for help, I encouraged learning, self research and gave good long explanations that were fit for a classroom environment. The fact that I have seen women do well, succeed, and run with the men tells me they can. The fact only a few of them would take the initiative to do it when you had someone like me, and my other employees that I encouraged to help and to train any who asked - and did - yet only about 5% wanted to know more than the minimum causes me to wash my hands of it - stop trying to guilt trip me for being good at my job when there are proportionally way less women who can keep up.
Since that job I've worked with other women, other good women who I consider my level. I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty. Nope, most wanted to do the paperwork - which I didn't really mind, because I hate paperwork, but other than title and the official list of duties these women were not my direct peers. Even at the worst of these jobs there was usually one or two women would would run with the guys, but for each of them there was two or three that wouldn't. A man taking the same attitude towards work as those others wouldn't last more than a week or two before being let go.
I'm getting pretty tired of these guilt-tripping affirmative action programs. Instead of giving me more of that 5% or 1 in 3 depending on where I was I'm worried these programs might work and flood the workplace with the 95% or 2 in 3 that the natural dedicated geeks, yes, the men and the women who will run at their level will be expected to carry.
Exactly! There's no reason women's clothes should cover 70% of the sales floor while the 15% devoted to men (after baby items and household goods are accounted for) should happen. Just make everything kilts, togas, jeans, and T-shirts!
All of the science stuff I grew up with was pretty generic. "Rock Tumbler!" - it had a picture of the rock tumbler, which was black, gray, and red on the outside. That was it. It wasn't gender specific in any way.
My chemistry set came packaged in cardboard with a clear plastic window that let you see the contents which were about as visually exciting as a bunch of little plastic bottles, tweezers, and test tubes could be. They box was silvery gray and mostly contained a bunch of text about what was included. Again, marketed to no gender in particular.
My telescope was packaged in plain cardboard with the words "Sears" and "Telescope" stamped on it. How I miss the Sears catalog - when you ordered something it came in generic looking packaging with none of the blister-pack marketing non-sense attached.
Not marketed to girls? I would argue the stuff from my era wasn't exactly marketed to boys either, these were gifts to me growing up in the 80's and 90's. - Supposedly when things were worse than they are now.
This social-justice-warrior high-horse garbage spilling over into the day-to-day articles on Slashdot is horse crap.
I survived the bust than happened right at the end of the Clinton administration/beginning of the Bush administration by being in my field in an unrelated industry. I did I.T. work at an oil company, the burst didn't touch me at all - initially. Until the oil industry took a major hit, and the I.T. industry hadn't recovered yet, but at least I got a well past the burst before I was thrown into the fray.
Now that the I.T. industry is stronger and isn't exactly in a bubble, I'm still shielded by working for another industry. In fact a bit of an I.T. field bust can actually benefit my particular place in the industry as it forces vendors to beg for my business and cut better deals, and if I need to hire project help from the pool to select from is better stocked versus when the industry is thriving. Yes, that's cold and pragmatic, but it doesn't stop it from being a fact.
On the other hand if the I.T. industry is thriving (I really miss those days) I have an easier time jumping ship and going to something better.
I tried sending a text with Google's voice engine last week just to try it out. It did a very good job of taking my dictation to text, then it asked if I wanted to send. I said yes. It spelled out yes in it's little window, then asked again, I said yes again, I tried other words, it also recognized those words, and every time asked me if I wanted to send, while recognizing the words. I finally reached over and hit the send button.
FTR: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world
Yeah, I admit their hardware is pretty good, and it's certainly up near the top in design and reliability, but damn, saying it that way sure does look like a conflict of interest.
Seriously, it exists. Not that I actually used it, I basically booted it up once after purchase to be sure it worked (I didn't go through the setup crap), turned it off, upgraded the RAM and immediately put Kubuntu on it (now replaced with Netrunner).
Starter edition - the (rightfully) forgotten Windows 7.
I design homes as a hobby - how would I build my own? Most of my designs - except for the most "modernly practical" use DC power for at minimum lighting.
The one thing I need to work out - exactly how do we make a Lava Lamp work efficiently on DC power....
That Trihawk was pretty cool. It's downfall was catering to the wrong market, I can tell from the video. I don't know how $15,000 scales to 1984, I would have to look it up, but the fact they were calling a specialty car demanding a premium instead of a budget mobile like the Elio probably is why nobody knows what it is today.
Cherry 2000, haven't seen that movie since what? 1991? I liked it back then, not sure if I would now or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Beautiful reply!
I really liked your approach on how to sell it to girls too. I'm going to try to figure out how to sell my daughter on learning a bit more. She's unfortunately part of the current 12 year old generation of thinking that she knows about technology because she can use it. I'm working on getting her interested in how it ticks, unfortunately as the parent that doesn't have her most of the time it's difficult to work into a couple of days at a time.
My story, while not as bad in many respects as yours was just as bad if not worse as far as learning was concerned. (Better home life thankfully) I lived in the deserts of West Texas, in a poor community. There were no computers I could use, and my parents actually said "we didn't have computers when we were kids, you don't need them now", so I had next to zero family support, and next to no opportunity to learn elsewhere as the industry of my town revolved around cantaloup, onions, and cattle. I couldn't even get something from a business trash pile because business trash piles in that are consisted of animal waste and rotten vegetation.
Despite that I read Discover Magazine, I read 321 Contact when I was young, I read Omni, I read Popular Science, I kept up with what was going on even if it was what was going on in what was practically a parallel universe. Every piece of electronic junk I could get my hands on I drug home and took apart, one of the first things I successfully fixed was 45 lb Sony Betamax. I had motors, batteries, LED's old telephones with asbestos and cloth insulators, microphones speakers, you name it hooked up with chewing gum and electric tape. Finally when I was 17 I was given an 8088 - this was right after the first socket 7 Pentiums came out. I was overjoyed to have it.
Within a year in the business world I was ahead of many peers my own age who grew up immersed in computers (yes I moved to a metro area). Within two or three years the country bumpkin origins story was nearly completely neutralized - with one lingering exception. I never really learned to program. I do alright when I need to alter some code, but I'm not a coder, and I never found time to really learn to do it well. I was always too busy doing massive amounts of sysadmin, cabling, hardware, various whatever else work. It's still on my to-do list but it matters less all the time.
You're a very fortunate man.
I too am fortunate. My wife is by no means a techy geek type, but her dad is, her brother is, most of the people around her growing up were at least a little on the geek side of things so she admires the fact I am one, but that was good enough in my case, especially since I was already mid-30's when we married. I'm well past my live and breathe geek things phase, having someone who is happy with what I do with it works great for me.
Seems more likely they are just victims of the Peter Principal or good at interviewing. Lots of people get into good positions because they interview well, but are actually pretty bad at their jobs in practice.
You see, I can't buy that outright. I can to some degree because we had shitty men come and go and not just because they chose to, but the shitty women were allowed to stay. Most of the ones I'm referring to were new hires, but a couple were outright nepotism.
It's the dream of every young (straight) geek guy to find a real geek girl to share their life with. Most of these guys secretly want a geek girl that's close to equal but just slightly better than them in certain areas so they have someone to push them and compete with.
These are the same guys wondering why women are so focused on fashion and reality TV, things which are not logical.
Each of these geek guys secretly wants to be asked by a pretty young thing real technical questions about what they do, not "how can you spend all of your time in front of a computer?" but "exactly what is this compiler you're talking about?"
I'm 37 years old, I've been a professional geek since I was 18, I have come across these geek girls. The place I came across the most of them was an ISP that attracted young people in general. Even in that place most of the females saw what they did as a job to make a few bucks, but roughly 5% were interested in doing what the slightly older guys did (which included me, one of the older people there at the age of 21).
I have become convinced from my own interactions that this just is not a female thing. I helped anyone who asked for help, I encouraged learning, self research and gave good long explanations that were fit for a classroom environment. The fact that I have seen women do well, succeed, and run with the men tells me they can. The fact only a few of them would take the initiative to do it when you had someone like me, and my other employees that I encouraged to help and to train any who asked - and did - yet only about 5% wanted to know more than the minimum causes me to wash my hands of it - stop trying to guilt trip me for being good at my job when there are proportionally way less women who can keep up.
Since that job I've worked with other women, other good women who I consider my level. I've also worked with quite a few affirmative action women who had my job title, usually got paid a little better than me, yet would crawl around in the sub floor to track cables because it was icky, wouldn't/couldn't move any equipment, wouldn't terminate fiber because they didn't like the epoxy, wouldn't put on the asbestos suit and run cable with the guys because it's hot and sweaty. Nope, most wanted to do the paperwork - which I didn't really mind, because I hate paperwork, but other than title and the official list of duties these women were not my direct peers. Even at the worst of these jobs there was usually one or two women would would run with the guys, but for each of them there was two or three that wouldn't. A man taking the same attitude towards work as those others wouldn't last more than a week or two before being let go.
I'm getting pretty tired of these guilt-tripping affirmative action programs. Instead of giving me more of that 5% or 1 in 3 depending on where I was I'm worried these programs might work and flood the workplace with the 95% or 2 in 3 that the natural dedicated geeks, yes, the men and the women who will run at their level will be expected to carry.
I miss the Dockers with the almost hidden zipper on the leg to hide your phone in.
I really don't see what this has to do with Open Source though.
Exactly! There's no reason women's clothes should cover 70% of the sales floor while the 15% devoted to men (after baby items and household goods are accounted for) should happen. Just make everything kilts, togas, jeans, and T-shirts!
All of the science stuff I grew up with was pretty generic. "Rock Tumbler!" - it had a picture of the rock tumbler, which was black, gray, and red on the outside. That was it. It wasn't gender specific in any way.
My chemistry set came packaged in cardboard with a clear plastic window that let you see the contents which were about as visually exciting as a bunch of little plastic bottles, tweezers, and test tubes could be. They box was silvery gray and mostly contained a bunch of text about what was included. Again, marketed to no gender in particular.
My telescope was packaged in plain cardboard with the words "Sears" and "Telescope" stamped on it. How I miss the Sears catalog - when you ordered something it came in generic looking packaging with none of the blister-pack marketing non-sense attached.
Not marketed to girls? I would argue the stuff from my era wasn't exactly marketed to boys either, these were gifts to me growing up in the 80's and 90's. - Supposedly when things were worse than they are now.
This social-justice-warrior high-horse garbage spilling over into the day-to-day articles on Slashdot is horse crap.
Yet not doing so means we neglect them......
and a bomb lifter.
He collects weird stuff, I don't see a legal problem with it. His wife sure sees a problem with it, but that is another thing all together.
uhmm, sure, uhmmm....
I survived the bust than happened right at the end of the Clinton administration/beginning of the Bush administration by being in my field in an unrelated industry. I did I.T. work at an oil company, the burst didn't touch me at all - initially. Until the oil industry took a major hit, and the I.T. industry hadn't recovered yet, but at least I got a well past the burst before I was thrown into the fray.
Now that the I.T. industry is stronger and isn't exactly in a bubble, I'm still shielded by working for another industry. In fact a bit of an I.T. field bust can actually benefit my particular place in the industry as it forces vendors to beg for my business and cut better deals, and if I need to hire project help from the pool to select from is better stocked versus when the industry is thriving. Yes, that's cold and pragmatic, but it doesn't stop it from being a fact.
On the other hand if the I.T. industry is thriving (I really miss those days) I have an easier time jumping ship and going to something better.
That's one of the coolest old men ever! Not to mention he played Dracula in more languages that most people know how to find a bathroom in.
It wasn't in the main text field dumbass, it was in the field that displayed the text of what I said.
I tried sending a text with Google's voice engine last week just to try it out. It did a very good job of taking my dictation to text, then it asked if I wanted to send. I said yes. It spelled out yes in it's little window, then asked again, I said yes again, I tried other words, it also recognized those words, and every time asked me if I wanted to send, while recognizing the words. I finally reached over and hit the send button.
FTR: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world
Yeah, I admit their hardware is pretty good, and it's certainly up near the top in design and reliability, but damn, saying it that way sure does look like a conflict of interest.
I must say I'm surprised and impressed.
Seriously, it exists. Not that I actually used it, I basically booted it up once after purchase to be sure it worked (I didn't go through the setup crap), turned it off, upgraded the RAM and immediately put Kubuntu on it (now replaced with Netrunner).
Starter edition - the (rightfully) forgotten Windows 7.
(I did have the hots for that redhead way back then)
I design homes as a hobby - how would I build my own? Most of my designs - except for the most "modernly practical" use DC power for at minimum lighting.
The one thing I need to work out - exactly how do we make a Lava Lamp work efficiently on DC power....
got rid of the stupid overlay advertisement Slashdot puts on my phone that keeps me from ever being able to read the very bottom of anything....
Of course I live in Texas.
I've seen snow stay on the ground a maximum of one day since I've moved to Houston, about five years ago.
That Trihawk was pretty cool. It's downfall was catering to the wrong market, I can tell from the video. I don't know how $15,000 scales to 1984, I would have to look it up, but the fact they were calling a specialty car demanding a premium instead of a budget mobile like the Elio probably is why nobody knows what it is today.
Cherry 2000, haven't seen that movie since what? 1991? I liked it back then, not sure if I would now or not.
I've been worried about it getting the Tucker treatment myself.
Hey, the Elio is more Sci-Fi cool and less of the Steve Urkle flair associated with the Smart Car.