Yes, Canada is different but enough people have brought up assumptions and have mentioned Canada to assume that Canada has the same problems as the US that it is completely valid for us Canadians to post and let you know, North of the border is not the same.
And yes we have a very multicultural society, there are ghettos (Jane and Finch in Toronto, Parts of North Montreal), and poor neighbourhoods that are populated by immigrants, native reservations that are no more than shanty towns, as well as the staggering staggering poverty of east Vancouver.
Although a large percentage of Black people I meet in Canada are newer immigrants from the Caribbean, and Africa, there is a long, and interesting black history up here too (Africaville, The Colored Corps, and The Underground Railroad).
Canada too has a history of discrimination against Natives, Asians, Blacks, East Asians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, English in Quebec, French in Ontario, etc), at some time in history nearly every non-English/non-French group - but as time goes by, race relations are getting better and although far from perfect, compared to the media and experiences visiting the US, things seem better here.
Maybe us Canadians are posting because we feel slighted when our culture is lumped in to the US culture.
I am Canadian too, and I think some Americans forget that he US is not the world. In what i considered the most red neck part of Canada (Calgary, Alberta), I went to school with, and have worked with many people of many different nationalities and descents, and both men and women. Diversity is not an issue in IT, although racism in Canada does still exist (and is targeted towards Natives more than any other group).
Don't ever think Canada is a promised land without racism, it would be Natives on the bottom rung here in Canada.
The segregation and relocation of Natives on to reserves was nothing less than Apartheid. The destruction of culture via residential schools, has left many natives not knowing their own history, faith or languages. Land claims are not respected, and rarely considered. Poverty, alcohol and drug use among the Native population is staggeringly high, and it seems when a Native does leave the reservation, the racism and stereotypes gives them little chance of gainful employment.
It seems that persons of Native decent must completely assimilate into the dominant European culture (or be only part native and look European), if they to escape poverty. After they shed any trappings of their own culture, and are working in the cities, they will overhear racist statements on a regular basis dues to the stereotypes of natives as being lazy drunks.
In my website I have around 2500 attempts per day to spam everything from comment forms to the guestbook, forum and mail forms.
About 10 spam entries or bots get through - and I don't use a captcha or "human test".
Personally I hate captchas & the other human tests - so I really had to figure out something fast or I may as well just leave the site to the spammers.
I took a multipronged attack.
First, I have a BIG list of deny from & rewrite rules in my.htaccess which blocks about 500 bots & IPs per day.
Next, on all forms I use the phpBB board's session ID, and I tied it into all the forms so any registered member of the forum who has had an account for more that 15 days can bypass all the other filters.
The sessionID is then placed in all the non-phpBB scripts on my site, as a form element.
The sessionID sent in the form is then checked against the phpBB sessionID. (Yesterday this blocked 1086 attempts to POST)
Next if this fails to block it, I use linksleeve.org's RPC call to see if any content in the post matches against their DB of spam. (Yesterday this blocked 993 attempts to POST)
Lastly, I use my own keyword list to block any POST containing those wonderful derivations of spelling that spammers use. (Yesterday this blocked 52 attempts to POST)
The 15 day limit before you can post without the spam filter gives us time to delete the bots before they share the account and start spamming - we delete about 10 accounts per day.
About 6 months ago, the comment spam attempts were higher than they are now too, it was closer to 4000 attempts per day.
It may have been easier to put in a captcha, but many bots can crack those too.
I have 2 domain catchalls which go to me, along with 4 other accounts which all get forwarded to my gmail. I just let gmail auto delete my spam automatically.
Last year my spam box had an average of 3500 spam items, and this year it averaged about 5000 per month, until September and October when it peaked at over 7000. Suddenly this month, my spam folder cleared out! All month, it has averaged about 1700 instead!
I don't know if this is just temporary, or perhaps gmail is keeping the worst even out of the spam boxes now.
My inbox has remained consistent though, about 3 or 4 a day make it past the filter.
When you go from university to an IT career, the integrator role is not much of a shift. You are already used to the crazy hours, and crunch time to get a project done at the last moment. Your friends in school are your classmates in CS and you expect co-workers as friends. You are young, and a perk filled job even with being on job even when you are off seems like fun, after all you are doing what you dreamed of.
I wanted to be a programmer since I was 9 years old, and after I was done school and working full time, work was my life. I'd often work from 7 am until 11 pm, and I would hang out with co-workers off hours too. Although my co-workers and I had diverse conversations, the subject easily slid into work related matters, so it seemed I never really escaped the topic of tech very often. We didn't have Google level perks, but I was having a great time, making pre-dot-com-crash cash and had almost no time to spend it.
The crash happened. I was now 30, work was my life, and "real life" was slipping by me. I had grown apart from "non-work friends", relationship with my family, and my love life suffered too. I felt like I was one dimensional, because work had taken up almost every moment of my waking life, the other interests I once had, were sitting on the shelf. I hadn't seen a live band, gone to the theatre, spent the afternoon in an art gallery, instead I was working or talking about work. Being out of work for a year gave me time to think. I remembered how much I enjoyed so many things other than IT - and took up hobbies, contacted old friends, and found a new boyfriend and by the time I found a full time job again I knew I did not want to work for any company who was offering too many perks because I knew from experience that if they give you too many perks they expect too many hours back from you.
I now separate. I show up for work at 9am and leave at 5pm. My current job does not expect constant overtime (maybe once or twice a year) and in an emergency I will check my email or VPN in - but that too is rare. My co-workers are in their 30's and 40's so they have lives too. I see them during work hours only and although I like them and enjoy working with them, they are co-workers, not friends.
I see my real friends after work and on weekends, and instead of talking about technology, we talk about independent film, politics, art, music, theatre and just about everything but computers. I don't talk about work to my friends except when I have had a busy day, I let them know it was hectic and I'd love to go out for a beer to forget it.
Despite less money and no perks, I enjoy my job just as much as my pre-dot-com-crash job, and I have a very interesting life outside of work. Both sides are fulfilling, and I now prefer both sides separate.
CDs degrade, the booklets are small, and many lack inserts or anything special.
I miss the good old days of colored vinyl, or vinyl with picture on it.
What I'd like to see is vinyl like back in the oldie days including large foldout booklets of lyrics, inserted posters, photographs, and stickers. But since I'll also want to listen on my iPod, I also want a CD of mp3s included so I don't have to buy the CD too, or spend a couple hours with my steeo equipment attached to the computer in order to carry my music on my ipod.
I have been seeing more & more vinyl out there lately and buying both vinyl & CDs, but nobody's caught on to the idea of including a CD along with the vinyl.
Easy enough to block your images and video from being crawled. Most webmasters use some sort of directory structure - just block your image & video directories.
Disallow:/images/ Disallow:/video/
And use your.htacess file to have images remotely linked in the interm go to a rude image to disuade theifs.
Hey Rob - let her use one of your many computers and type a response - tell her side of the story!
Also maybe a regular spot from a geek girl might be cool!
I am absolutely willing to take up the task myself as well. I am sure quite a few geek girls would like the job of being the inhouse Slashdot chick - unless it literally meant inhouse - and she had to live with the guys.
After all they might want backrubs, or thier bath run, or god forbid a hug!
The cookies might be possible, let me copy cookie-lib.pl - oh wait you meant the kind you can eat. Sorry - I don't have time to bake right now, I am posting to Slashdot.
This poll, and the corresponing article, appropriately labeled under the Monty Python Foot, seems to be a reoccuring theme at Slashdot and one that gets quite a few posts in response.
Mention geeks, girls, women, dating, girl geeks, and voila! Instant high traffic posting.
Although I must admit I post in response to many of these articles myself, it seems to be a theme that has popped up quite frequently, and each time - posting galore.
On the subject of dating, I feel sorry for those men who are having trouble meeting women, and I feel sorry for the geek girls who are having trouble with meeting men - perhaps if for each of these articles, there is one or two slashdotters that get up a bit of confidence and meet a member of whatever sex attracts them, maybe it is worth it.
One man I know who has never had trouble meeting women is my dad. From the days before he met my mom in university - when he met my mom he was dating 4 women and dropped them all for her - this was in 1969 - different world. To his single days after the divorce where my dad and I would be on our father daughter weekends - and women would approach him in droves, this man never had trouble meeting women.
What do I think attracts women to my dad - I don't know? He is an above average looking man, very intellegent, and very intellectual. He has a broad range of interests, and is a very friendly, laid back person.
My dad is not the type of person who focuses on the negative, he is not critical of others or himself.
I have inheritted my father's ability to attract, although I am more of a critical person than he is. So I know it is not that.
I personally think the way to attract people is simply to know that you do not need someone else to care for you, or to love you in order for your life to be good. Liking yourself is the most attractive characteristic to the sex you wish to attract.
Now we need a moritorium on subjects dealing with geeks and their love lives, or at least a section in/. dedicated to this subject at all times - maybe a slashdot.love section.
On the only option for a hetro woman for the poll, Sexism?? Really?? Here??? I don't find Slashdot sexist, personally, although some less experienced men may say things that may be misconstrued by a feminist as sexist from time to time. There are boys and men who don't understand the sensitivities in certain actions such as addressing women as humans. Perhaps these are the dateless ones.
Each time a female orientated subject comes on on/. - I cringe - knowing surely I will read something that will make me a touch irate - no matter how much I remind myself that some males are just so clueless. We need a subject heading for sure for female related topics so I can filter tham out - and not feel forced to post to defend my position.
Parody using generalizations, yet putting a few valid points in doesn't always come off perfect.
Sorry if I offended you, Roblimo's post had the same sort of generalisations - yet made some valid points.
Rob's valid points were to be yoursdelf, and not to set standards too high or you may be overlooking a perfect girl for you simply because she does not look like the girl of your dreams.
My point was to the girls, that you can not sacrifice your own independence for a man, and that there are some men out there, perhaps Rob included who need a woman to care not just about them, but for them. These men are what I was refering to as Mama's Boys.
Also the point about a bar as a meeting place, the bar can be a fine place to dance, and even have a relaxing drink - but it is not a place to meet a lover or a partner. You want to meet a person when you are of clear mind to genuinely assess thier character.
And with regards to the statement about men all wanting to sleep with thier female friends - that was obvious in its lack of sincerity. Friends make the best lovers - and best mates. There is a trust there. What that waas is a parody of the "you are such a good friend..." syndrome some of the men I know have endured. I have met less females than men who have went through the experience of developing a crush on a friend and not having it recipocated.
The last couple lines should have made the parody of the whole thing more clear, but still there was a point there. If you feel you are lacking in self-confidence and you decide to play the part, self-confidence often follows. Same with when you are out with friends, if you are having an awfully dull time, act like you are having fun, and soon enough, you will be.
It is a simple little axiom, but we reap what we sow, if you want a fun loving, self-confident partner, you are more likely to find that partner if you are fun-loving and self-confident.
Who you are attracts a certain type of partner. I am sure a man like you will have no trouble atracting a woman who likes a creative, secure man.
After all, you must have confidence to admit being a mama's boy!! - Just kidding.
If a geek girl ands geek boy have divergent interests in the realm of geekdom, it can also make things less competetive.
Like a hardware and a software geek or perhaps a sysadmin and a programmer.
You can't have too much in common as to lead to competetiveness or boredom, but a common interest in a realm - but different aspects can be quite interesting. Take it from me - that is what I have, and it rules.
How about advice for the lovelorn geekettes? The single geekettes may like some advice too on how to find that man who doesn't mind thier passion for source code.
I would have to say the best advice I can give from my experience is find a man who does not need to be cared for or mothered in any way. Find a man who considered it a treat if you bake cookies - although you would have rather translated the recipie into perl for humor sake.
A man who needs to be cared for, and needs his dinner cooked for him or he will forget to eat, with not appreciate the time you spend programming.
Find a man who lives alone, without roomates. Never takes his laundry home to his mom, infact preferable lives in a different city than his mom. Mama's boys are looking for a girl who will take care of him just like mom did except with the extra of sex.
Don't go for the best looking man on the block unless all you want is a superficial cheating ego-maniac. Trophy boyfriends are for women like Melanie Griffith and Cher. They are just a waste of time. What women wants a man who takes more time getting ready to go out than she does. If a man is dressed to well, either his mama dressed him or his girlfriend does.
Also, if you are more of a programmer, do not date a fellow programmer. He WILL compete with you. Men are threatened by the possibility of anyone, man or women being better than they are. Any illusions of working on a program together are shattered the first time that either of you finds a flaw in the other's source code.
A programming girl needs a man who can cook his own annd even her dinner occasionally. Although two programmers may be able to afford fast food and takeout frequently, it is not the best solution.A man who has lived alone should be able to cook at least a few staples.
Meeting a man like this, an independent man, may seem like an impossible task. Here is a couple tips on how and where to find him. First of all he won't be at the bar. There are only two types at the bar, the vain ones who are looking for a one night stand, and the mama's boys who are too shy to talk to a girl. Let friendship be your guide, male and female friends are always willing to set up single friends. Become friends first, then later lovers. Men are more relaxed than women with making the transition from friends to lovers. You rarely hear from men the statement "You are such a good friend, I wouldn't want to ruin it by sleeping with you." Men want to sleep with almost all of thier female friends.
And teenage geekettes, don't worry, your self confindence with bloom, as will you body. I was flat as a board until I was 19. I look great now. The biggest advice I can give to a girl is if you don't have self confidence, fake it! If you saren't having fun, fake it! Self-selfconfident men are attracted to self-confident women.
Before you flame me, I don't agree with all of the article - but it does provide some understanding on the general lack of women in CS.
My opinion: If women have these views that this is what is holding them back, it is no wonder why they are being held back. It is quite a cycle, women feel held back, therefore are held back.
The Link Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?
My personal outlook: Nobody is holding my back, or down. I have encountered almost no gender related prejudice in my life from other techies. I encounter more prejudice on the fact I can get started on talking about computers and be stuck on the topic forever. And that is my own geeky fault.:)
On the terms grrls, chix, and the like I would rather prefer chix and grrls than womyn. But to tell the truth all of these silly slangs annoy me too. I remeber all the grunge women calling themselves/grr(*r)ls/, and as a former punk rocker, I really though it was rather silly - what does it mean? And what are all of the permentations of the numbers of r's and the meaning of each r - if you have more r's does it mean you are more angry?
Well here I am posting to another question about women involved with linux.
I am not involved in FSF - open source or anything really high tech right now.
I am on a year of rest from the task of getting my computer science degree. I sit at home and code perl for fun and play on my linux box trying to optimize and customize it to my standards. I write perl to give myself cute little shortcuts, and occassionally I help a friend by working on a nifty little perl script to handle some form input.
Not very kernel happy am I? Well perhaps I will be in the future. I would like a little open source hobby, perhaps when I go back to school, I will have the confidence to do more than just read all the C that makes my OS run.
There is a lack of women in the techie world though - most of the women I know who are technologically able are in web design and graphic arts. Perhaps one day there will be more girls in computer science, and in technology in general. I hope so. But for now, I have joined linuxchix and I write perl code - and I don't feel like the only one.
Maybe someday I will become a linux kernel hacker. For now I just play with perl. Perl is currently my favorite language.
Arrays of Associative arrays are just beautiful!
I actually started learning perl by playing with porting a mailling program to NT, I was trying to figure out how to access smtp directly since NT lacks sendmail by default.
I was like a kid in a candy store - or non-geek women in a shoe store (Don't take offence - I also "collect" shoes - over 60 pairs currently) - when I first found a page that was a port of unix commands and protocols to perl. I lost the link to that - if anyone knows the Url please tell me.
I must admit Calgary is getting better, definately better, but I think there needs to be some shifts in attitude. There are a lot of great little software companies locally, but what I have a problem with is the local press.
Actually it is Canadian press in general. The Canadian press is controlled almost exclusively by one man Conrad Black - and this to me - leads to a singluar minded press that does not notice smaller companies, inovators and the like.
Don't get me wrong, I love this country, I love this city, I love that only in Canada open BSD thrives, and that new software and hardware is starting to come alive in this city.
Theo is an example of how things can change in this city - and how there can be a shift from the oil and gas business to something new.
After I get my degree I will hopefully be doing some cool work too - I know since I am not officially in the industry yet, I can not criticise it in all confidence - yet from summer co-op positions I have only seen the Oil and Gas side.
Perhaps I should have held on longer, and not taken the first co-op position, and maybe I am a bit of a pessimist, but just as Calgary has been slowly changing from the one horse town founded on oil it was 10 - 15 years ago, I have been slower in seeing the changes.
It says alot for this city though that Theo would choose to live here in comparison to Vancouver or ever Toronto. This city is changing and Theo is one of the forces enacting that change.
I am glad of the young people who have ideas locally. And I am glad the University and Mount Royal are still teaching computer science on Unix based system (MRC was using redhat 5.2 when I was there).
This city though can not pick up on idea when they see them.
Case in point: Back in the early to Mid 90's - my mom and her boyfriend had a computer bbs, and after all the late nights talking to the kids online about thier problems, including a couple suicide attempts, they changed the focus of the bbs to a teen help bbs. They made the bbs free, and got government funding. The funding only lasted a year, although thier plan was to slowly port it to an internet based teen help system and to hopefully find other cities to co-ordinate a larger project like this with.
Funding ran out, the goverment thought that this new fangled idea of using a computer to help teens to talk anonymously wouldn't work. They missed out on a great idea.
Foundation/Cybercrisis BBS was great while it existed, we even got some local press. My photo was in the paper for that!:) A thanks to so many of the volunteers, and others who made the BBS work! I miss some of you.:)
Later on, I went back to school, (MRC) to start my computer science degree. I got a summer job with NOVA Gas Transmissions Ltd. This company was not bad at all. The main server was AIX, and NT was for the workstations. I had fun there until Transcanada pipelines took over. Not a soul there who I knew, knew about OpenBSD, linux or any other free OS's. Perhaps the Unix guru did, but I was a grunt, I didn't get much of a chance to chat with him.
That was the first, and only mention I ever saw in the paper about Theo! I first read about Theo - online. First found out he was local - online. This city prefers to verate people who start schools for getting a MSCE rather than people who are intellegent. When I was in school, maybe two people I knew had heard of OpenBSD, and one of them because he had met Theo.
This city is an over-grown hicktown. This city was founded by Ranchers who found oil. This city is more interested in large dividends and big profits than ideas. If I was to go downtown to the office buildingd today, I bet I would find maybe a dozen people in thier it departments that would know about the existance of OpenBSD. It is not a big money making venture!
I want to move, perhaps after I go back to school and get my degree, I will go to place where ideas are more important than if your grandpappy was a cattle baron who happened to find oil.
I can't believe how long it took a local paper to recognize a local innovator.
I am a Calgary resiedent and actually I am not too shocked. The majority of the classified ads under technology are for Microsoft based products. Calgary, lately has been trying to pretend it is no longer an oil and gas town but a new technology mecca. I don't believe it.
The conservative attitudes of the aging oil elite prevail. The tone of the article was more a statement that OpenBSD exists rather than the glowing writing about another twit opening up a school to give people MSCE certificates for a really sick price. (That article I think was last week some time).
In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially oil and gas money.
I just joined LinuxChix, not because I want to whine with other women about the glass ceiling and how much it hurts my head everytime I try to stand up, but because I thought it may be interesting to take part in a mailing list which has other women interested in linux in it.
If I am a feminist - I am the Camila Pagila type - I don't get along with Womyn - but grrls and chix are quite fun. From my experience Chix and Grrls tend to like being female and like men, Womyn don't like men, and don't even tend to be that feminine.
I have always had more male friends than female friends, I love male geeks, perhaps a tad too much - nothing turns me on more than a tall sexy intellegent man. I found one who I can play Lan with. (Private Joke - normal couples play house, geek couples play LAN when they get together). I think I joined linuxchix because perhaps they will petition for small t-shirts with linux logos, perhaps some mini-T's with tux on them - it is just such a bother to make my own. Just kidding.
Actually I think I joined because I want to talk with other women in the industry - I would like to meet other women who think of programming as C, perl, java, etc, instead of HTML. I would like to meet more women with brains. There are so many clueless women out there!!
On the glass ceiling, I really don't know what to think of it, most women who complain about the glass ceiling tend to be Women's Studies majors. How do they expect to find a job in a most male enviroment without learning the proper trade. I have met female mechanics, even Heavy Machinery Mechanics, I have met female welders, female geeks, and none of these women have complaints about a glass ceiling, only the Women's Studies Majors.
On the men's attitude, perhaps some of them are a tad young, and inexperienced. A geek girl, is still a girl, treat her with respect, woo her with some ram, or perhaps a new sound card if she doesn't like flowers. For an aniversy present ask if she'd prefer a ring, or a laptop, they cost about the same. A geek girls looks are likely to be about the same as any cross section of humans, there will be dolls and dogs. Perhaps if we are working 12 hour days infront of a computer we may not be wearing as much makeup.
I met a geek girl at school who was a model part time to go to school - so perhaps there are a few barbies. I did some modelling when I was 18 myself - so I know my looks are pretty good. Just as not every man fits the geek sterotype, not every woman does either.
Anyways - Us geeks perpeuate our own sterotypes on what a geek is and what they look like. If we want the rest of the world to stop seeeing us as the stereotype, why don't we start breaking through the sterotype in our own circles!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Canada is different but enough people have brought up assumptions and have mentioned Canada to assume that Canada has the same problems as the US that it is completely valid for us Canadians to post and let you know, North of the border is not the same.
And yes we have a very multicultural society, there are ghettos (Jane and Finch in Toronto, Parts of North Montreal), and poor neighbourhoods that are populated by immigrants, native reservations that are no more than shanty towns, as well as the staggering staggering poverty of east Vancouver.
Although a large percentage of Black people I meet in Canada are newer immigrants from the Caribbean, and Africa, there is a long, and interesting black history up here too (Africaville, The Colored Corps, and The Underground Railroad).
Canada too has a history of discrimination against Natives, Asians, Blacks, East Asians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, English in Quebec, French in Ontario, etc), at some time in history nearly every non-English/non-French group - but as time goes by, race relations are getting better and although far from perfect, compared to the media and experiences visiting the US, things seem better here.
Maybe us Canadians are posting because we feel slighted when our culture is lumped in to the US culture.
I am Canadian too, and I think some Americans forget that he US is not the world. In what i considered the most red neck part of Canada (Calgary, Alberta), I went to school with, and have worked with many people of many different nationalities and descents, and both men and women. Diversity is not an issue in IT, although racism in Canada does still exist (and is targeted towards Natives more than any other group).
Don't ever think Canada is a promised land without racism, it would be Natives on the bottom rung here in Canada.
The segregation and relocation of Natives on to reserves was nothing less than Apartheid. The destruction of culture via residential schools, has left many natives not knowing their own history, faith or languages. Land claims are not respected, and rarely considered. Poverty, alcohol and drug use among the Native population is staggeringly high, and it seems when a Native does leave the reservation, the racism and stereotypes gives them little chance of gainful employment.
It seems that persons of Native decent must completely assimilate into the dominant European culture (or be only part native and look European), if they to escape poverty. After they shed any trappings of their own culture, and are working in the cities, they will overhear racist statements on a regular basis dues to the stereotypes of natives as being lazy drunks.
Comment spam is a pain!
.htaccess which blocks about 500 bots & IPs per day.
In my website I have around 2500 attempts per day to spam everything from comment forms to the guestbook, forum and mail forms.
About 10 spam entries or bots get through - and I don't use a captcha or "human test".
Personally I hate captchas & the other human tests - so I really had to figure out something fast or I may as well just leave the site to the spammers.
I took a multipronged attack.
First, I have a BIG list of deny from & rewrite rules in my
Next, on all forms I use the phpBB board's session ID, and I tied it into all the forms so any registered member of the forum who has had an account for more that 15 days can bypass all the other filters.
The sessionID is then placed in all the non-phpBB scripts on my site, as a form element.
The sessionID sent in the form is then checked against the phpBB sessionID.
(Yesterday this blocked 1086 attempts to POST)
Next if this fails to block it, I use linksleeve.org's RPC call to see if any content in the post matches against their DB of spam.
(Yesterday this blocked 993 attempts to POST)
Lastly, I use my own keyword list to block any POST containing those wonderful derivations of spelling that spammers use.
(Yesterday this blocked 52 attempts to POST)
The 15 day limit before you can post without the spam filter gives us time to delete the bots before they share the account and start spamming - we delete about 10 accounts per day.
About 6 months ago, the comment spam attempts were higher than they are now too, it was closer to 4000 attempts per day.
It may have been easier to put in a captcha, but many bots can crack those too.
I have 2 domain catchalls which go to me, along with 4 other accounts which all get forwarded to my gmail. I just let gmail auto delete my spam automatically.
Last year my spam box had an average of 3500 spam items, and this year it averaged about 5000 per month, until September and October when it peaked at over 7000. Suddenly this month, my spam folder cleared out! All month, it has averaged about 1700 instead!
I don't know if this is just temporary, or perhaps gmail is keeping the worst even out of the spam boxes now.
My inbox has remained consistent though, about 3 or 4 a day make it past the filter.
When you go from university to an IT career, the integrator role is not much of a shift. You are already used to the crazy hours, and crunch time to get a project done at the last moment. Your friends in school are your classmates in CS and you expect co-workers as friends. You are young, and a perk filled job even with being on job even when you are off seems like fun, after all you are doing what you dreamed of.
I wanted to be a programmer since I was 9 years old, and after I was done school and working full time, work was my life. I'd often work from 7 am until 11 pm, and I would hang out with co-workers off hours too. Although my co-workers and I had diverse conversations, the subject easily slid into work related matters, so it seemed I never really escaped the topic of tech very often. We didn't have Google level perks, but I was having a great time, making pre-dot-com-crash cash and had almost no time to spend it.
The crash happened. I was now 30, work was my life, and "real life" was slipping by me. I had grown apart from "non-work friends", relationship with my family, and my love life suffered too. I felt like I was one dimensional, because work had taken up almost every moment of my waking life, the other interests I once had, were sitting on the shelf. I hadn't seen a live band, gone to the theatre, spent the afternoon in an art gallery, instead I was working or talking about work. Being out of work for a year gave me time to think. I remembered how much I enjoyed so many things other than IT - and took up hobbies, contacted old friends, and found a new boyfriend and by the time I found a full time job again I knew I did not want to work for any company who was offering too many perks because I knew from experience that if they give you too many perks they expect too many hours back from you.
I now separate. I show up for work at 9am and leave at 5pm. My current job does not expect constant overtime (maybe once or twice a year) and in an emergency I will check my email or VPN in - but that too is rare. My co-workers are in their 30's and 40's so they have lives too. I see them during work hours only and although I like them and enjoy working with them, they are co-workers, not friends.
I see my real friends after work and on weekends, and instead of talking about technology, we talk about independent film, politics, art, music, theatre and just about everything but computers. I don't talk about work to my friends except when I have had a busy day, I let them know it was hectic and I'd love to go out for a beer to forget it.
Despite less money and no perks, I enjoy my job just as much as my pre-dot-com-crash job, and I have a very interesting life outside of work. Both sides are fulfilling, and I now prefer both sides separate.
CDs degrade, the booklets are small, and many lack inserts or anything special.
I miss the good old days of colored vinyl, or vinyl with picture on it.
What I'd like to see is vinyl like back in the oldie days including large foldout booklets of lyrics, inserted posters, photographs, and stickers. But since I'll also want to listen on my iPod, I also want a CD of mp3s included so I don't have to buy the CD too, or spend a couple hours with my steeo equipment attached to the computer in order to carry my music on my ipod.
I have been seeing more & more vinyl out there lately and buying both vinyl & CDs, but nobody's caught on to the idea of including a CD along with the vinyl.
Here are the pieces you will need.
Get Firefox: http://mozilla.com/
Install Greasemonkey: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
Then install the following greasemonkey scripts:
MySpace Tag Remover: http://www.userscripts.org/scripts/show/746
MySpace Custom Style Remover: http://www.userscripts.org/scripts/show/997
MySpace Ad Remover: http://www.userscripts.org/scripts/show/3719
xoxoxox - like this is the bestist design evah!!! 3 3 3 3 3
Easy enough to block your images and video from being crawled. Most webmasters use some sort of directory structure - just block your image & video directories.
/images/ /video/
.htacess file to have images remotely linked in the interm go to a rude image to disuade theifs.
Disallow:
Disallow:
And use your
RewriteEngine on
# Prevent Image theft
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www/\.)?|(portal\.)?)yoursite.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|mpg|mp3|pdf)$ http://www.yoursite.com/rude_image_for_thiefs.gif [R,L]
Duh!
About what Rob wrote.
Hey Rob - let her use one of your many computers and type a response - tell her side of the story!
Also maybe a regular spot from a geek girl might be cool!
I am absolutely willing to take up the task myself as well. I am sure quite a few geek girls would like the job of being the inhouse Slashdot chick - unless it literally meant inhouse - and she had to live with the guys.
After all they might want backrubs, or thier bath run, or god forbid a hug!
The cookies might be possible, let me copy cookie-lib.pl - oh wait you meant the kind you can eat. Sorry - I don't have time to bake right now, I am posting to Slashdot.
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I couldn't think of a subject.
/. dedicated to this subject at all times - maybe a slashdot.love section.
/. - I cringe - knowing surely I will read something that will make me a touch irate - no matter how much I remind myself that some males are just so clueless. We need a subject heading for sure for female related topics so I can filter tham out - and not feel forced to post to defend my position.
This poll, and the corresponing article, appropriately labeled under the Monty Python Foot, seems to be a reoccuring theme at Slashdot and one that gets quite a few posts in response.
Mention geeks, girls, women, dating, girl geeks, and voila! Instant high traffic posting.
Although I must admit I post in response to many of these articles myself, it seems to be a theme that has popped up quite frequently, and each time - posting galore.
On the subject of dating, I feel sorry for those men who are having trouble meeting women, and I feel sorry for the geek girls who are having trouble with meeting men - perhaps if for each of these articles, there is one or two slashdotters that get up a bit of confidence and meet a member of whatever sex attracts them, maybe it is worth it.
One man I know who has never had trouble meeting women is my dad. From the days before he met my mom in university - when he met my mom he was dating 4 women and dropped them all for her - this was in 1969 - different world. To his single days after the divorce where my dad and I would be on our father daughter weekends - and women would approach him in droves, this man never had trouble meeting women.
What do I think attracts women to my dad - I don't know? He is an above average looking man, very intellegent, and very intellectual. He has a broad range of interests, and is a very friendly, laid back person.
My dad is not the type of person who focuses on the negative, he is not critical of others or himself.
I have inheritted my father's ability to attract, although I am more of a critical person than he is. So I know it is not that.
I personally think the way to attract people is simply to know that you do not need someone else to care for you, or to love you in order for your life to be good. Liking yourself is the most attractive characteristic to the sex you wish to attract.
Now we need a moritorium on subjects dealing with geeks and their love lives, or at least a section in
On the only option for a hetro woman for the poll, Sexism?? Really?? Here??? I don't find Slashdot sexist, personally, although some less experienced men may say things that may be misconstrued by a feminist as sexist from time to time. There are boys and men who don't understand the sensitivities in certain actions such as addressing women as humans. Perhaps these are the dateless ones.
Each time a female orientated subject comes on on
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Parody using generalizations, yet putting a few valid points in doesn't always come off perfect.
..." syndrome some of the men I know have endured. I have met less females than men who have went through the experience of developing a crush on a friend and not having it recipocated.
Sorry if I offended you, Roblimo's post had the same sort of generalisations - yet made some valid points.
Rob's valid points were to be yoursdelf, and not to set standards too high or you may be overlooking a perfect girl for you simply because she does not look like the girl of your dreams.
My point was to the girls, that you can not sacrifice your own independence for a man, and that there are some men out there, perhaps Rob included who need a woman to care not just about them, but for them. These men are what I was refering to as Mama's Boys.
Also the point about a bar as a meeting place, the bar can be a fine place to dance, and even have a relaxing drink - but it is not a place to meet a lover or a partner. You want to meet a person when you are of clear mind to genuinely assess thier character.
And with regards to the statement about men all wanting to sleep with thier female friends - that was obvious in its lack of sincerity. Friends make the best lovers - and best mates. There is a trust there. What that waas is a parody of the "you are such a good friend
The last couple lines should have made the parody of the whole thing more clear, but still there was a point there. If you feel you are lacking in self-confidence and you decide to play the part, self-confidence often follows. Same with when you are out with friends, if you are having an awfully dull time, act like you are having fun, and soon enough, you will be.
It is a simple little axiom, but we reap what we sow, if you want a fun loving, self-confident partner, you are more likely to find that partner if you are fun-loving and self-confident.
Who you are attracts a certain type of partner. I am sure a man like you will have no trouble atracting a woman who likes a creative, secure man.
After all, you must have confidence to admit being a mama's boy!! - Just kidding.
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If a geek girl ands geek boy have divergent interests in the realm of geekdom, it can also make things less competetive.
Like a hardware and a software geek or perhaps a sysadmin and a programmer.
You can't have too much in common as to lead to competetiveness or boredom, but a common interest in a realm - but different aspects can be quite interesting. Take it from me - that is what I have, and it rules.
How about advice for the lovelorn geekettes? The single geekettes may like some advice too on how to find that man who doesn't mind thier passion for source code.
I would have to say the best advice I can give from my experience is find a man who does not need to be cared for or mothered in any way. Find a man who considered it a treat if you bake cookies - although you would have rather translated the recipie into perl for humor sake.
A man who needs to be cared for, and needs his dinner cooked for him or he will forget to eat, with not appreciate the time you spend programming.
Find a man who lives alone, without roomates. Never takes his laundry home to his mom, infact preferable lives in a different city than his mom. Mama's boys are looking for a girl who will take care of him just like mom did except with the extra of sex.
Don't go for the best looking man on the block unless all you want is a superficial cheating ego-maniac. Trophy boyfriends are for women like Melanie Griffith and Cher. They are just a waste of time. What women wants a man who takes more time getting ready to go out than she does. If a man is dressed to well, either his mama dressed him or his girlfriend does.
Also, if you are more of a programmer, do not date a fellow programmer. He WILL compete with you. Men are threatened by the possibility of anyone, man or women being better than they are. Any illusions of working on a program together are shattered the first time that either of you finds a flaw in the other's source code.
A programming girl needs a man who can cook his own annd even her dinner occasionally. Although two programmers may be able to afford fast food and takeout frequently, it is not the best solution.A man who has lived alone should be able to cook at least a few staples.
Meeting a man like this, an independent man, may seem like an impossible task. Here is a couple tips on how and where to find him. First of all he won't be at the bar. There are only two types at the bar, the vain ones who are looking for a one night stand, and the mama's boys who are too shy to talk to a girl. Let friendship be your guide, male and female friends are always willing to set up single friends. Become friends first, then later lovers. Men are more relaxed than women with making the transition from friends to lovers. You rarely hear from men the statement "You are such a good friend, I wouldn't want to ruin it by sleeping with you." Men want to sleep with almost all of thier female friends.
And teenage geekettes, don't worry, your self confindence with bloom, as will you body. I was flat as a board until I was 19. I look great now. The biggest advice I can give to a girl is if you don't have self confidence, fake it! If you saren't having fun, fake it! Self-selfconfident men are attracted to self-confident women.
And you don't want a mama's boy.
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That is the exact page I was looking for!
I will spend a few days reading it over again now that I got the link again!
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also are scared of Kelvin
I like Centegrade tempeture. I like Kelvin too. But what I can't wait for is a metric system of time.
Kelvin tempeture is even better. Today it is about 270 K outside. God I hate winter in september.
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From what I remember the Farienheit scale is based of off the tempature in London England, not any greater purpose.
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Before you flame me, I don't agree with all of the article - but it does provide some understanding on the general lack of women in CS.
:)
/grr(*r)ls/, and as a former punk rocker, I really though it was rather silly - what does it mean? And what are all of the permentations of the numbers of r's and the meaning of each r - if you have more r's does it mean you are more angry?
My opinion:
If women have these views that this is what is holding them back, it is no wonder why they are being held back. It is quite a cycle, women feel held back, therefore are held back.
The Link
Why are There so Few Female Computer Scientists?
My personal outlook:
Nobody is holding my back, or down. I have encountered almost no gender related prejudice in my life from other techies. I encounter more prejudice on the fact I can get started on talking about computers and be stuck on the topic forever. And that is my own geeky fault.
On the terms grrls, chix, and the like
I would rather prefer chix and grrls than womyn. But to tell the truth all of these silly slangs annoy me too. I remeber all the grunge women calling themselves
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Well here I am posting to another question about women involved with linux.
I am not involved in FSF - open source or anything really high tech right now.
I am on a year of rest from the task of getting my computer science degree. I sit at home and code perl for fun and play on my linux box trying to optimize and customize it to my standards. I write perl to give myself cute little shortcuts, and occassionally I help a friend by working on a nifty little perl script to handle some form input.
Not very kernel happy am I? Well perhaps I will be in the future. I would like a little open source hobby, perhaps when I go back to school, I will have the confidence to do more than just read all the C that makes my OS run.
There is a lack of women in the techie world though - most of the women I know who are technologically able are in web design and graphic arts. Perhaps one day there will be more girls in computer science, and in technology in general. I hope so. But for now, I have joined linuxchix and I write perl code - and I don't feel like the only one.
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Maybe someday I will become a linux kernel hacker. For now I just play with perl. Perl is currently my favorite language.
Arrays of Associative arrays are just beautiful!
I actually started learning perl by playing with porting a mailling program to NT, I was trying to figure out how to access smtp directly since NT lacks sendmail by default.
I was like a kid in a candy store - or non-geek women in a shoe store (Don't take offence - I also "collect" shoes - over 60 pairs currently) - when I first found a page that was a port of unix commands and protocols to perl. I lost the link to that - if anyone knows the Url please tell me.
I am just a perl loving linux chick!
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I must admit Calgary is getting better, definately better, but I think there needs to be some shifts in attitude. There are a lot of great little software companies locally, but what I have a problem with is the local press.
Actually it is Canadian press in general. The Canadian press is controlled almost exclusively by one man Conrad Black - and this to me - leads to a singluar minded press that does not notice smaller companies, inovators and the like.
Don't get me wrong, I love this country, I love this city, I love that only in Canada open BSD thrives, and that new software and hardware is starting to come alive in this city.
Theo is an example of how things can change in this city - and how there can be a shift from the oil and gas business to something new.
After I get my degree I will hopefully be doing some cool work too - I know since I am not officially in the industry yet, I can not criticise it in all confidence - yet from summer co-op positions I have only seen the Oil and Gas side.
Perhaps I should have held on longer, and not taken the first co-op position, and maybe I am a bit of a pessimist, but just as Calgary has been slowly changing from the one horse town founded on oil it was 10 - 15 years ago, I have been slower in seeing the changes.
It says alot for this city though that Theo would choose to live here in comparison to Vancouver or ever Toronto. This city is changing and Theo is one of the forces enacting that change.
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I am glad of the young people who have ideas locally. And I am glad the University and Mount Royal are still teaching computer science on Unix based system (MRC was using redhat 5.2 when I was there).
:) A thanks to so many of the volunteers, and others who made the BBS work! I miss some of you. :)
:)
This city though can not pick up on idea when they see them.
Case in point:
Back in the early to Mid 90's - my mom and her boyfriend had a computer bbs, and after all the late nights talking to the kids online about thier problems, including a couple suicide attempts, they changed the focus of the bbs to a teen help bbs. They made the bbs free, and got government funding. The funding only lasted a year, although thier plan was to slowly port it to an internet based teen help system and to hopefully find other cities to co-ordinate a larger project like this with.
Funding ran out, the goverment thought that this new fangled idea of using a computer to help teens to talk anonymously wouldn't work. They missed out on a great idea.
Foundation/Cybercrisis BBS was great while it existed, we even got some local press. My photo was in the paper for that!
Later on, I went back to school, (MRC) to start my computer science degree. I got a summer job with NOVA Gas Transmissions Ltd. This company was not bad at all. The main server was AIX, and NT was for the workstations. I had fun there until Transcanada pipelines took over. Not a soul there who I knew, knew about OpenBSD, linux or any other free OS's. Perhaps the Unix guru did, but I was a grunt, I didn't get much of a chance to chat with him.
Oh well - I have blabbed enough.
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That was the first, and only mention I ever saw in the paper about Theo! I first read about Theo - online. First found out he was local - online. This city prefers to verate people who start schools for getting a MSCE rather than people who are intellegent. When I was in school, maybe two people I knew had heard of OpenBSD, and one of them because he had met Theo.
This city is an over-grown hicktown. This city was founded by Ranchers who found oil. This city is more interested in large dividends and big profits than ideas. If I was to go downtown to the office buildingd today, I bet I would find maybe a dozen people in thier it departments that would know about the existance of OpenBSD. It is not a big money making venture!
I want to move, perhaps after I go back to school and get my degree, I will go to place where ideas are more important than if your grandpappy was a cattle baron who happened to find oil.
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I can't believe how long it took a local paper to recognize a local innovator.
I am a Calgary resiedent and actually I am not too shocked. The majority of the classified ads under technology are for Microsoft based products. Calgary, lately has been trying to pretend it is no longer an oil and gas town but a new technology mecca. I don't believe it.
The conservative attitudes of the aging oil elite prevail. The tone of the article was more a statement that OpenBSD exists rather than the glowing writing about another twit opening up a school to give people MSCE certificates for a really sick price. (That article I think was last week some time).
In fact I am shocked they even wrote about open bsd in a city where money talks - esspecially oil and gas money.
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I just joined LinuxChix, not because I want to whine with other women about the glass ceiling and how much it hurts my head everytime I try to stand up, but because I thought it may be interesting to take part in a mailing list which has other women interested in linux in it.
If I am a feminist - I am the Camila Pagila type - I don't get along with Womyn - but grrls and chix are quite fun. From my experience Chix and Grrls tend to like being female and like men, Womyn don't like men, and don't even tend to be that feminine.
I have always had more male friends than female friends, I love male geeks, perhaps a tad too much - nothing turns me on more than a tall sexy intellegent man. I found one who I can play Lan with. (Private Joke - normal couples play house, geek couples play LAN when they get together).
I think I joined linuxchix because perhaps they will petition for small t-shirts with linux logos, perhaps some mini-T's with tux on them - it is just such a bother to make my own. Just kidding.
Actually I think I joined because I want to talk with other women in the industry - I would like to meet other women who think of programming as C, perl, java, etc, instead of HTML. I would like to meet more women with brains. There are so many clueless women out there!!
On the glass ceiling, I really don't know what to think of it, most women who complain about the glass ceiling tend to be Women's Studies majors. How do they expect to find a job in a most male enviroment without learning the proper trade. I have met female mechanics, even Heavy Machinery Mechanics, I have met female welders, female geeks, and none of these women have complaints about a glass ceiling, only the Women's Studies Majors.
On the men's attitude, perhaps some of them are a tad young, and inexperienced. A geek girl, is still a girl, treat her with respect, woo her with some ram, or perhaps a new sound card if she doesn't like flowers. For an aniversy present ask if she'd prefer a ring, or a laptop, they cost about the same. A geek girls looks are likely to be about the same as any cross section of humans, there will be dolls and dogs. Perhaps if we are working 12 hour days infront of a computer we may not be wearing as much makeup.
I met a geek girl at school who was a model part time to go to school - so perhaps there are a few barbies. I did some modelling when I was 18 myself - so I know my looks are pretty good. Just as not every man fits the geek sterotype, not every woman does either.
Anyways - Us geeks perpeuate our own sterotypes on what a geek is and what they look like. If we want the rest of the world to stop seeeing us as the stereotype, why don't we start breaking through the sterotype in our own circles!
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