Actually, they do. SSI and Disability benefits become harder to achieve during a time of depressed economic activity. Cases are reevaluated and oftentimes the benefits are decreased for those already recieving. If someone's "borderline" disabled then they're threatened with a loss of benefits if they don't start actively pursuing either a.) career rehabilitation, b.) medication or c.) employment.
I know, I know. A joke. But it's soooo fun to ruin a great joke with some stupid factoids.
-Sara
Re:What's up with all the depressing career storie
on
Lifetime Careers in IT?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There's a difference between "raising awareness" and telling people to run for the hills. A lot of the stuff I'm seeing on Slashdot has been of the "There is nothing left in IT that you can ever do, and IT is dying."
There's a WORLD of difference between saying "Sure, the city's a little flooded right now, maybe you should spend a couple of nights in a hotel outside of the city for comfort", and "SHIT! THE CITY'S FLOODED! THERE WILL NEVER BE A CITY AGAIN! PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!"
In case you haven't heard, most people are NOT making money now, no matter what profession they're in. My dad makes BOXES in a factory, and they're having paycuts. My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
The ads are the BEST part of it! =] Personally, I find them much more amusing than the game itself. Of course, I'm not a football fan, so that's not saying much.
Either way, you can see the ads here (if you're like me and don't want to be interrupted by football) superbowl-ads.com
Actually, it makes COMPLETE sense that they'd be into it. Duh. =] Why do consumers buy expensive computers and computer equiptment?
- Download Music
- Print stuff out
- Burn CDs, or movies
- Share stuff with friends
The "Open/free content" available on the web (whether legal or not) is a big draw for customers of technology companies. If harsh limitations are put on these technologies that might accidentally interfere with legitimate use, or even curb common illegitimate (but popular) use, then guess what--people will stop buying computers. Sure, they won't ALL stop, but sales will suffer.
I don't think the gov't should handle SSL certs, not because they'd be more expensive, but for a variety of other reasons, none of which involve Bush's cockamie tax-break scheme. (It's bad, it's been proven not to work, the alternatives have been proven to work. End of discussion.)
On topic, my reason for disliking the idea of the Gov't controlling SSL certificates, or issuing some sort of identification for people...
1- Governments are typically slow to embrace technologies and innovations. While the head of a company can get a committee to okay the adoptation of a new technology, the Gov't has to go through multiple hoops. Including repetitive protests by people who like the old way better, like a different new way better, or think that the Gov't is harboring aliens that are trying to get them to adopt the new way.
2- Recent legislation regarding privacy, copyright, digital rights, etc. does not make me feel at all at ease with the idea of them controlling anything that interacts with encryption.
3- I don't want yet another foolish type of debate to start springing up. "Republicans are rallying behind the time-proven SSL while Democrats attempt to forge ahead into the future with revolutionary new technology X." The government and politicians/office holders already have enough on their hands. Don't put something else on their hands that they might or might not understand.
4- Which freaking gov't? "The Goverment" is not the United States government, is it? Will each gov't have their own rules for issuing SSL certificates? What if a government in a third-world country has a citizen who wants an SSL certificate, but doesn't have the means to provide one for him/her? And trade restrictions--will the government forbid browser manufactuers from allowing certificates assigned by certain authorities to be accepted/implemented due to disagreement with certain policies within the country?
Giving control of certs, or even server identification to the gov't is NOT going to be efficient at this time. Governments worldwide are still reeling about the internet. To tell them they need to be in charge of authenticating the identity of someone is quite ridiculous at this point.
Actually, a certificate just prevents a message from popping up and saying "This is not encrypted" or "This is encrypted by a non-trusted authority", which--to the average user--sets off bells and whistles and makes them put their credit card away. It has nothing to do with trust, it has everything to do with the lack of warning.
The majority of people are morons who would be happy to whip out their credit card and trust that IStealCreditCardsforFun.com is a trusted authority, so long as something doesn't pop up and tell them otherwise.
Err. "Small fee". Government. PLEASE! Bush would end up giving certificate-breaks to the wealthy, and making the lower/middleclass pay 1/3rd of their annual income.
Comodo issues relatively inexpensive certs that are accepted by most consumer, and even most non-consumer browsers.
FreeSSL also offers inexpensive (though it doesn't quite seem to be free) certs.
They seem to work with Lynx, Mozilla-based browsers, IE... Well. Look at the compatibility list. =]
If you want to be compatible with EVERYONE, you'll have to spend a bit more, but these are good for the majority of e-commerce sites, and intranets/basic sites.
You can save memory by running an alternate window manager under WinXP. It's just called a "Shell". When you use a different Shell, memory usage drops because the GUI can be made more simple/more efficient.
While 'Windows is just a WM' is un-true, 'there are alternate WM's for Windows" is not un-true, and those WM's save a lot of system resources (As does shutting off most of the 'services' that run by default under XP, disabling any devices that aren't on the system even though XP insists that they are, etc.)
Just be sure to back up your registry before you muck around with changing WM's. The first time I did that I ended up nearly b0rking my WinXP install, and had a fun time playing around for 30 minutes to get it to run properly again.
From THIS user's POV, there is definitely a difference between Solaris and Linux.
First off- Linux means free & open source. Last I checked Solaris would release source, but if you wanted to modify it you had to pay some sort of licensing fee. Linux is typically without those restrictions.
Second off- All *nix distributions, even those within the Linux family, have quite a few differences that could throw a casual (or even advanced) user off. Try telling me that the average Joe user could be placed on gentoo, Redhat, Solaris, and OS X and never know the difference.
Unix variants are just that. Variants. They may share themes and source code, and run the same programs, and have the same GUI, but they still vary by quite a bit, and it's foolish to say a user wouldn't know the difference. It's even more foolish to say that a Unix user wouldn't see much difference, as the typical Unix user is far more astute than say... The average consumer of say... Windows or the Mac OS. (Note: I'm saying "AVERAGE" so please don't jump to defend your favorite OS--I'm sure you're far above average.)
Furthermore, it's about choice. Choice drives the market. If someone likes a certain flavor of OS, it's in their best interest to evangelize and make it known that that OS has a million and two benefits over the other OS. Word of mouth means higher popularity. Higher popularity means a better chance of survival. So "quibbling" over a flavor of *nix, particularly when it comes down to "Sun" vs "Redhat/SuSE/Mandrake/Debian" is quite productive. It sparks the curiousity of the party on the other side, and raises the liklihood that that person might try, like, switch, and strengthen the userbase of the *nix you know and love.
The person you responded to had a very valid point. Even though Sun has a Linux, their primary pushing point is Solaris. If MS decided to have a Linux and opened a Linux school, do you think it would be a fabulous idea for MS to have a Linux school, or would you think that it was just another attempt at world domination?
"Hello dear student, today we will discuss Linux administration (and why you want to be on our OS instead). We will discuss the pros (not pro-enough) and the cons (totally reason to switch to our other OS and pay us a fortune in licensing fees) of Linux as an operating system."
Sorry- I meant to say major/only consumer in the desktop/workstation [computer] market, and somehow I managed to leave out that classifier. I'm aware the powerpc chip is used in a number of other industries, and even related industries (Cisco/gaming/biotechnology/research/etc.)
If you re-read my post with the correction I just made, it will probably make a bit more sense.
Apple is the only major consumer of the PowerPC chip in a desktop (speed-driven) market, the other consumers of the PowerPC have concerns other than speed. (Having to add multiple fans to a router or a game machine would be undesirable. Having the possibility of heat-related failure would be a definite deal-killer for the Military. Since Apple's the major (desktop) consumer of the PowerPC, and Apple is a minor market, it doesn't make sense that Motorola would spend time pushing the chip just to satisfy Apple's marketshare at the risk of losing the other purchasers of the PPC.
As for my use of "Apple heads", I was not refering to everyone that uses a Mac. I was refering to the consumer user-base, specifically the large number of people who have bought into "the mhz myth" and think that it still applies. I belong to a number of graphics/3D related mailing lists, and I still hear people saying that their G4 450 or G3 300 can beat a Windows computer any day.. While that might be true for usability, that's not what they're refering to. They're talking about speed.
As for color management--I don't know. Windows seems to do an awfully good job once it's been calibrated right. And it's not even particularly hard to calibrate. It's just a matter of what you're used to.
If the image goes into your image editing program and comes out with different colors, then it's really not the OS, you know. It's the software you're using, and the way it's calibrated.
2- Apple is the major (only) consumer of the PowerPC chip.
3- Apple-heads seem to be content with waiting for as long as it takes to get faster machines. As such, there's no significant pressure on Apple to improve immediately. They have people still quoting the Mhz myth and saying their G4 450 can kick a P4 3.04 (With rambus)'s ass.
4- They're one of the biggest companies when it comes to cellphones, which are NOT a small market share.
5- Research and development is EXPENSIVE, and when you take 1-4 into consideration, why would a company want to put so much research and development into something that won't yeild significant return?
Paint isn't just about "pretty". It's about "Makes the wood not rot like crazy".
As a kid I had a really nice wooden swingset for exactly 2 years. My dad never re-painted it and it quickly rotted to the point where we had to toss it out.
Yeah. Unfortunately. I once talked to an employee at a computer store (I wont' say the name of it... but they use a cow as a mascot.:p) who was convinced that Photoshop wouldn't run on a 1Ghz Celeron, only on a Pentium. "You mean it won't run as WELL?" I said. "No. It won't run." was her response.
Some of them are obviously trying to pull a fast one, though.
Yeah--too many people have a God complex. I've found that the best way to get quality "stock" education is to actually go to those funny little career schools, pay for one-on-one instruction, and just crank through the classes at top-speed.
1- the instructors don't think they "know everything"
2- you're not held back by a class that doesn't know anything
3- you get a quick up-and-running knowledge from which you can build on drastically using books and other reference materials, or you fill in holes that you have from book-learning.
I did MCSE and A+ this way. Enjoyable experience, much more so than going to a University, and DEFINITELY more so than my highschool memories. Not to say that University learning's "bad"--once you get into the better Universities and past the basic stuff that you need to sludge through before they'll give you a decent class.. I've just found that this method suits me much better, because I'm my primary teacher.
A lot of women end up following this path if they want to get into IT. It bypasses a lot of the foolishness and frustrations. Heck- Most guys that I know follow this path (instead of, or in addition to University study), as well.
"Knowledge quest" is the defining feature of the geek. When someone is on an eternal search for knowledge, they don't need it handed to them, or forced down their throats quite so much.
*Laughs* Yeah. I was once offering tech support to some chick via email, and she assumed I was a guy (I had a generic email address at that point) and started moaning about how she didn't understand stuff because she was a girl.
I signed my next email "Sara", and she quickly stopped moaning, and started just doing what I told her.
Some women like to try to get guys to do their work, even when they DO understand it.
*laughs* Good to know it's not gender-specific. =]
When someone tries to scam me, it's fun to go along with it for a few minutes, then completely reverse the tables and let them know, beyond doubt, that you knew you were being scammed all along, and that they're looking veeeeery stupid at the moment.
Who knows--hopefully they'll become too paranoid to try it on someone else.
Or maybe they're really dumb and believe what they're trying to sell.
They do tend to do it a bit more with women, though. =\
I had two options. I could have stayed and taken a class that was too easy for me, with a teacher that was a major twit... Which I was not about to do. He would have failed me even if I had done everything perfectly. His method of "quizzing" was to have a number of objective questions, and 2 subjective "How would you do this?" questions. I'd always get the bulk of the questions correct, but he'd mark my "subjective" ones wrong when he didn't agree with my methods, and I'd walk away with a D. Which would be fine if my methods were actually wrong--but they were a.) more elegant and b.) less prone to error than the "correct" methods he wanted me to quote back verbatim.
Second option: go to the administration, complain about sexism, have the teacher reprimanded, and end up in a class where he'd be afraid to grade my work down--even when my methods were faulty.
My take: give me a fscking art class. I'll learn how to program from a book. I don't need the grief.
Once I got past "places of education", I actually experienced remarkably little gender-related prejudice. (Other than the odd tendency of Slashdot guys to add me to their "friends" list.:p)
Generally speaking, sexism is most prevalent in places like computer stores(Compusa, Staples, etc.), educational institutions, and financial institutions. I can't speak about racism--I'm white, but if you walk into the average tech shop--whether you're a guy or a girl, if you have an interview with someone who knows anything, and you speak both "Geek" and "English", and are able to establish a rapport, then you're on an even playing field.
If anything, in NYC, tech places are more willing to hire a minority (People from Asia and India, particularly) the consensus seems to be "They work harder".
-Sara
Re:Sara so I assume you support affirmative action
on
Girls not Going into CS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, I don't. I think it's a ridiculous and annoying concept that someone should obtain a free passage simply because of heritage, gender, disability, etc. Sure, it's one way around obnoxious stereotypes... But it's not a method that I'd want to take.
*laughs* Never said I was un-modest. I just said I wasn't modest.
CV's don't talk, resumes don't talk. Answering questions as they're asked talk. "Yep, know that and the related technology. I've used it in situation a, b, and c.", and "No, I am not familiar with that implementation of technology B." are both parts of my vocabulary.
From my experience of interviewing female job applicants, most of them don't know how to say "Yes I know that". They start going into detail about what they DON'T know, instead. Either that or they take the opposite path and say they know everything, then fall apart under casual questioning. A number of guys do the same, but it's more common among women.
Valid question. I was polite to the teacher, I never implied I knew more than the other students--other than at the end of the week when I requested a transfer to a more advanced class and was denied, and other students paid much less attention than I did. The two times I wasn't paying attention were less than 1 minute each (I was asking the student next to me about something I didn't quite catch the teacher saying), other students were playing minesweep and solitaire.
You're right, though. Maybe it wasn't that I was a girl. Maybe it was that he didn't like the color of my jeans (blue) or the fact that I was taller than he was.::shrugs::
C'mon. I don't cry wolf. I would have MUCH prefered that we had a conflict of personality. But when someone refuses to shake my hand and the hand of another female student, yet shakes the hands of any guy who offers, it's really fscking hard NOT to assume that it's because I lack a schlong.:p
Oh. One more thing. Once you get into the "real world" (the world beyond typical means of education) a lot of us go as guys or asexuals, opting for a generic email address like jsmith@domain.com instead of janeS@domain.com, or even johnS@domain.com This will skew "numbers" of women practicing in the IT field, if you do a casual survey.
I opt to retain my female status unless I'm obviously getting treated unfairly (common occurence when communicating with tech support staff at various mobo manufacturers, hosting providers, and ISPs, oddly enough.) then I swap over to my alternate male ego and get treated as though I know what I'm talking about.
Dammit, why do some guys feel the need to explain what a traceroute is when you just SAID you used it? I'm NOT confusing it with a bloody ping.
And, walking into a computer store? I wish I could successfully pull off dressing like a guy and spare the schmeel about "This great new thing called Windows95" as some pimply teenager tries to hand me a dusty box full of upgrade floppies.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they do. SSI and Disability benefits become harder to achieve during a time of depressed economic activity. Cases are reevaluated and oftentimes the benefits are decreased for those already recieving. If someone's "borderline" disabled then they're threatened with a loss of benefits if they don't start actively pursuing either a.) career rehabilitation, b.) medication or c.) employment.
I know, I know. A joke. But it's soooo fun to ruin a great joke with some stupid factoids.
-Sara
There's a difference between "raising awareness" and telling people to run for the hills. A lot of the stuff I'm seeing on Slashdot has been of the "There is nothing left in IT that you can ever do, and IT is dying."
There's a WORLD of difference between saying "Sure, the city's a little flooded right now, maybe you should spend a couple of nights in a hotel outside of the city for comfort", and "SHIT! THE CITY'S FLOODED! THERE WILL NEVER BE A CITY AGAIN! PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!"
In case you haven't heard, most people are NOT making money now, no matter what profession they're in. My dad makes BOXES in a factory, and they're having paycuts. My mom takes care of the mentally ill, they're having paycuts. (the caretakers, not the mentally ill.)
-Sara
The ads are the BEST part of it! =] Personally, I find them much more amusing than the game itself. Of course, I'm not a football fan, so that's not saying much.
Either way, you can see the ads here (if you're like me and don't want to be interrupted by football)
superbowl-ads.com
-Sara
Of course it won't result in a mySQL transaction. It's running on postgreSQL. =]
-Sara
Actually, it makes COMPLETE sense that they'd be into it. Duh. =] Why do consumers buy expensive computers and computer equiptment?
- Download Music
- Print stuff out
- Burn CDs, or movies
- Share stuff with friends
The "Open/free content" available on the web (whether legal or not) is a big draw for customers of technology companies. If harsh limitations are put on these technologies that might accidentally interfere with legitimate use, or even curb common illegitimate (but popular) use, then guess what--people will stop buying computers. Sure, they won't ALL stop, but sales will suffer.
-Sara
Err.
It was a joke. I'm actually a capitalist hog.
I don't think the gov't should handle SSL certs, not because they'd be more expensive, but for a variety of other reasons, none of which involve Bush's cockamie tax-break scheme. (It's bad, it's been proven not to work, the alternatives have been proven to work. End of discussion.)
On topic, my reason for disliking the idea of the Gov't controlling SSL certificates, or issuing some sort of identification for people...
1- Governments are typically slow to embrace technologies and innovations. While the head of a company can get a committee to okay the adoptation of a new technology, the Gov't has to go through multiple hoops. Including repetitive protests by people who like the old way better, like a different new way better, or think that the Gov't is harboring aliens that are trying to get them to adopt the new way.
2- Recent legislation regarding privacy, copyright, digital rights, etc. does not make me feel at all at ease with the idea of them controlling anything that interacts with encryption.
3- I don't want yet another foolish type of debate to start springing up. "Republicans are rallying behind the time-proven SSL while Democrats attempt to forge ahead into the future with revolutionary new technology X." The government and politicians/office holders already have enough on their hands. Don't put something else on their hands that they might or might not understand.
4- Which freaking gov't? "The Goverment" is not the United States government, is it? Will each gov't have their own rules for issuing SSL certificates? What if a government in a third-world country has a citizen who wants an SSL certificate, but doesn't have the means to provide one for him/her? And trade restrictions--will the government forbid browser manufactuers from allowing certificates assigned by certain authorities to be accepted/implemented due to disagreement with certain policies within the country?
Giving control of certs, or even server identification to the gov't is NOT going to be efficient at this time. Governments worldwide are still reeling about the internet. To tell them they need to be in charge of authenticating the identity of someone is quite ridiculous at this point.
-Sara
Actually, a certificate just prevents a message from popping up and saying "This is not encrypted" or "This is encrypted by a non-trusted authority", which--to the average user--sets off bells and whistles and makes them put their credit card away. It has nothing to do with trust, it has everything to do with the lack of warning.
The majority of people are morons who would be happy to whip out their credit card and trust that IStealCreditCardsforFun.com is a trusted authority, so long as something doesn't pop up and tell them otherwise.
-Sara
Err. "Small fee". Government. PLEASE! Bush would end up giving certificate-breaks to the wealthy, and making the lower/middleclass pay 1/3rd of their annual income.
-Sara
Comodo issues relatively inexpensive certs that are accepted by most consumer, and even most non-consumer browsers.
FreeSSL also offers inexpensive (though it doesn't quite seem to be free) certs.
They seem to work with Lynx, Mozilla-based browsers, IE... Well. Look at the compatibility list. =]
If you want to be compatible with EVERYONE, you'll have to spend a bit more, but these are good for the majority of e-commerce sites, and intranets/basic sites.
-Sara
You can save memory by running an alternate window manager under WinXP. It's just called a "Shell". When you use a different Shell, memory usage drops because the GUI can be made more simple/more efficient.
While 'Windows is just a WM' is un-true, 'there are alternate WM's for Windows" is not un-true, and those WM's save a lot of system resources (As does shutting off most of the 'services' that run by default under XP, disabling any devices that aren't on the system even though XP insists that they are, etc.)
Just be sure to back up your registry before you muck around with changing WM's. The first time I did that I ended up nearly b0rking my WinXP install, and had a fun time playing around for 30 minutes to get it to run properly again.
-Sara
Err. Ehm. ::re-reads:: ::coughs::
From THIS user's POV, there is definitely a difference between Solaris and Linux.
First off- Linux means free & open source. Last I checked Solaris would release source, but if you wanted to modify it you had to pay some sort of licensing fee. Linux is typically without those restrictions.
Second off- All *nix distributions, even those within the Linux family, have quite a few differences that could throw a casual (or even advanced) user off. Try telling me that the average Joe user could be placed on gentoo, Redhat, Solaris, and OS X and never know the difference.
Unix variants are just that. Variants. They may share themes and source code, and run the same programs, and have the same GUI, but they still vary by quite a bit, and it's foolish to say a user wouldn't know the difference. It's even more foolish to say that a Unix user wouldn't see much difference, as the typical Unix user is far more astute than say... The average consumer of say... Windows or the Mac OS. (Note: I'm saying "AVERAGE" so please don't jump to defend your favorite OS--I'm sure you're far above average.)
Furthermore, it's about choice. Choice drives the market. If someone likes a certain flavor of OS, it's in their best interest to evangelize and make it known that that OS has a million and two benefits over the other OS. Word of mouth means higher popularity. Higher popularity means a better chance of survival. So "quibbling" over a flavor of *nix, particularly when it comes down to "Sun" vs "Redhat/SuSE/Mandrake/Debian" is quite productive. It sparks the curiousity of the party on the other side, and raises the liklihood that that person might try, like, switch, and strengthen the userbase of the *nix you know and love.
The person you responded to had a very valid point. Even though Sun has a Linux, their primary pushing point is Solaris. If MS decided to have a Linux and opened a Linux school, do you think it would be a fabulous idea for MS to have a Linux school, or would you think that it was just another attempt at world domination?
"Hello dear student, today we will discuss Linux administration (and why you want to be on our OS instead). We will discuss the pros (not pro-enough) and the cons (totally reason to switch to our other OS and pay us a fortune in licensing fees) of Linux as an operating system."
-Sara
Sorry- I meant to say major/only consumer in the desktop/workstation [computer] market, and somehow I managed to leave out that classifier. I'm aware the powerpc chip is used in a number of other industries, and even related industries (Cisco/gaming/biotechnology/research/etc.)
If you re-read my post with the correction I just made, it will probably make a bit more sense.
Apple is the only major consumer of the PowerPC chip in a desktop (speed-driven) market, the other consumers of the PowerPC have concerns other than speed. (Having to add multiple fans to a router or a game machine would be undesirable. Having the possibility of heat-related failure would be a definite deal-killer for the Military. Since Apple's the major (desktop) consumer of the PowerPC, and Apple is a minor market, it doesn't make sense that Motorola would spend time pushing the chip just to satisfy Apple's marketshare at the risk of losing the other purchasers of the PPC.
As for my use of "Apple heads", I was not refering to everyone that uses a Mac. I was refering to the consumer user-base, specifically the large number of people who have bought into "the mhz myth" and think that it still applies. I belong to a number of graphics/3D related mailing lists, and I still hear people saying that their G4 450 or G3 300 can beat a Windows computer any day.. While that might be true for usability, that's not what they're refering to. They're talking about speed.
As for color management--I don't know. Windows seems to do an awfully good job once it's been calibrated right. And it's not even particularly hard to calibrate. It's just a matter of what you're used to.
If the image goes into your image editing program and comes out with different colors, then it's really not the OS, you know. It's the software you're using, and the way it's calibrated.
-Sara
Err. And would they be particularly wrong?
1- Apple has a small market share.
2- Apple is the major (only) consumer of the PowerPC chip.
3- Apple-heads seem to be content with waiting for as long as it takes to get faster machines. As such, there's no significant pressure on Apple to improve immediately. They have people still quoting the Mhz myth and saying their G4 450 can kick a P4 3.04 (With rambus)'s ass.
4- They're one of the biggest companies when it comes to cellphones, which are NOT a small market share.
5- Research and development is EXPENSIVE, and when you take 1-4 into consideration, why would a company want to put so much research and development into something that won't yeild significant return?
-Sara
Someone asked if I supported affirmative action. I said "no", and gave my reasons.
a.) Yes. I had a point. Re-read my post, and if you still don't see the point, I'd be happy to elaborate.
b.) I don't think I rambled nearly as long as I usually do.
-Sara
Err.
Paint isn't just about "pretty". It's about "Makes the wood not rot like crazy".
As a kid I had a really nice wooden swingset for exactly 2 years. My dad never re-painted it and it quickly rotted to the point where we had to toss it out.
-Sara
Yeah. Unfortunately. I once talked to an employee at a computer store (I wont' say the name of it... but they use a cow as a mascot. :p) who was convinced that Photoshop wouldn't run on a 1Ghz Celeron, only on a Pentium. "You mean it won't run as WELL?" I said. "No. It won't run." was her response.
Some of them are obviously trying to pull a fast one, though.
-Sara
Yeah--too many people have a God complex. I've found that the best way to get quality "stock" education is to actually go to those funny little career schools, pay for one-on-one instruction, and just crank through the classes at top-speed.
1- the instructors don't think they "know everything"
2- you're not held back by a class that doesn't know anything
3- you get a quick up-and-running knowledge from which you can build on drastically using books and other reference materials, or you fill in holes that you have from book-learning.
I did MCSE and A+ this way. Enjoyable experience, much more so than going to a University, and DEFINITELY more so than my highschool memories. Not to say that University learning's "bad"--once you get into the better Universities and past the basic stuff that you need to sludge through before they'll give you a decent class.. I've just found that this method suits me much better, because I'm my primary teacher.
A lot of women end up following this path if they want to get into IT. It bypasses a lot of the foolishness and frustrations. Heck- Most guys that I know follow this path (instead of, or in addition to University study), as well.
"Knowledge quest" is the defining feature of the geek. When someone is on an eternal search for knowledge, they don't need it handed to them, or forced down their throats quite so much.
-Sara
*Laughs* Yeah. I was once offering tech support to some chick via email, and she assumed I was a guy (I had a generic email address at that point) and started moaning about how she didn't understand stuff because she was a girl.
I signed my next email "Sara", and she quickly stopped moaning, and started just doing what I told her.
Some women like to try to get guys to do their work, even when they DO understand it.
-Sara
*laughs* Good to know it's not gender-specific. =]
When someone tries to scam me, it's fun to go along with it for a few minutes, then completely reverse the tables and let them know, beyond doubt, that you knew you were being scammed all along, and that they're looking veeeeery stupid at the moment.
Who knows--hopefully they'll become too paranoid to try it on someone else.
Or maybe they're really dumb and believe what they're trying to sell.
They do tend to do it a bit more with women, though. =\
-Sara
I had two options. I could have stayed and taken a class that was too easy for me, with a teacher that was a major twit... Which I was not about to do. He would have failed me even if I had done everything perfectly. His method of "quizzing" was to have a number of objective questions, and 2 subjective "How would you do this?" questions. I'd always get the bulk of the questions correct, but he'd mark my "subjective" ones wrong when he didn't agree with my methods, and I'd walk away with a D. Which would be fine if my methods were actually wrong--but they were a.) more elegant and b.) less prone to error than the "correct" methods he wanted me to quote back verbatim.
Second option: go to the administration, complain about sexism, have the teacher reprimanded, and end up in a class where he'd be afraid to grade my work down--even when my methods were faulty.
My take: give me a fscking art class. I'll learn how to program from a book. I don't need the grief.
-Sara
Once I got past "places of education", I actually experienced remarkably little gender-related prejudice. (Other than the odd tendency of Slashdot guys to add me to their "friends" list. :p)
Generally speaking, sexism is most prevalent in places like computer stores(Compusa, Staples, etc.), educational institutions, and financial institutions. I can't speak about racism--I'm white, but if you walk into the average tech shop--whether you're a guy or a girl, if you have an interview with someone who knows anything, and you speak both "Geek" and "English", and are able to establish a rapport, then you're on an even playing field.
If anything, in NYC, tech places are more willing to hire a minority (People from Asia and India, particularly) the consensus seems to be "They work harder".
-Sara
Actually, I don't. I think it's a ridiculous and annoying concept that someone should obtain a free passage simply because of heritage, gender, disability, etc. Sure, it's one way around obnoxious stereotypes... But it's not a method that I'd want to take.
-Sara
*laughs* Never said I was un-modest. I just said I wasn't modest.
CV's don't talk, resumes don't talk. Answering questions as they're asked talk. "Yep, know that and the related technology. I've used it in situation a, b, and c.", and "No, I am not familiar with that implementation of technology B." are both parts of my vocabulary.
From my experience of interviewing female job applicants, most of them don't know how to say "Yes I know that". They start going into detail about what they DON'T know, instead. Either that or they take the opposite path and say they know everything, then fall apart under casual questioning. A number of guys do the same, but it's more common among women.
-Sara
Valid question. I was polite to the teacher, I never implied I knew more than the other students--other than at the end of the week when I requested a transfer to a more advanced class and was denied, and other students paid much less attention than I did. The two times I wasn't paying attention were less than 1 minute each (I was asking the student next to me about something I didn't quite catch the teacher saying), other students were playing minesweep and solitaire.
::shrugs::
:p
You're right, though. Maybe it wasn't that I was a girl. Maybe it was that he didn't like the color of my jeans (blue) or the fact that I was taller than he was.
C'mon. I don't cry wolf. I would have MUCH prefered that we had a conflict of personality. But when someone refuses to shake my hand and the hand of another female student, yet shakes the hands of any guy who offers, it's really fscking hard NOT to assume that it's because I lack a schlong.
-Sara
Oh. One more thing. Once you get into the "real world" (the world beyond typical means of education) a lot of us go as guys or asexuals, opting for a generic email address like jsmith@domain.com instead of janeS@domain.com, or even johnS@domain.com This will skew "numbers" of women practicing in the IT field, if you do a casual survey.
I opt to retain my female status unless I'm obviously getting treated unfairly (common occurence when communicating with tech support staff at various mobo manufacturers, hosting providers, and ISPs, oddly enough.) then I swap over to my alternate male ego and get treated as though I know what I'm talking about.
Dammit, why do some guys feel the need to explain what a traceroute is when you just SAID you used it? I'm NOT confusing it with a bloody ping.
And, walking into a computer store? I wish I could successfully pull off dressing like a guy and spare the schmeel about "This great new thing called Windows95" as some pimply teenager tries to hand me a dusty box full of upgrade floppies.
-Sara