Far from my first time here, but the first time I bothered to get a login, yes. [grin] I knew someone was going to bust my chops for that.
And no, I wasn't shocked by the immature comments, but I gave the trolls one reply. Why? I'm not interested in an extensive flamewar, but a lot of women just shut up and look uncomfortable when stupid sexist bullshit happens. So, that was my token protest. I'm not intending on feeding them any more, and I doubt I changed any of their minds, but I probably made a few lurking women feel better.
Re:Question for Raven, since I noticed you're read
on
Hackers: Under The Hood
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Okay, so you don't want to specialize at the moment. Fair enough. I am assuming that your wanting to understand "how things work" is programming in general and not security programming/code audit?
In short, find something that you are interested in and take it apart. [grin] You don't necessarily have to follow a structured academic program to become proficient in a field, whether your intent is to make it your hobby or to make it your profession. My academic background is entirely not in CS, and though I have many friends in CS academia, what they do can be very different indeed from what I do day to day. I learned mostly by experimentation and research on things that I was interested in.
So, find something that you like. Look at the source code, if it's available. Try to figure out what does what. Change things around, and see if you can make it better. One of the best ways to learn for many people is by doing. If you don't know what needs doing, volunteer for a project that is already established and is looking for people. Open Source is so helpful this way -- it feeds your resume *and* helps the community.
My first programming language was Perl. I was told by many geeks that this was a bad choice -- it would give me bad habits if I ever wanted to move to a language with a more rigorous structure. They were right, but it was both a good and bad thing. When I started doing C, and in particular when I started poking at kernel code, I had a lot of extra learning to do. But Perl was still a good way for me to start, because when I started programming I wanted to do quick scripting, not kernel hacking, and the flexibility of Perl was great for me.
Well, if it was a "scum" definition, I would think that I wouldn't have qualified to be interviewed. Behold the angelic halo. [grin]
I've had this argument with journalists before; it's one of the reasons that I tend to avoid being interviewed.
"Tell me about your secret blackhat teenage years!"
"Uh, I never had a secret blackhat teenage phase."
"Oh, come on, you can tell me."
"No, really, I didn't."
All feminists don't necessarily agree... just like "hacker" can have a whole bunch of different connotations, so can "feminist". And, like many other minority groups, we are often known by our extremists. I think that makes it all the more important for those of us who *aren't* extremists to use the term rather than abandon it.
For clarity's sake, I am a feminist in the "I believe in equal rights" way, not the "I believe in special treatment" way. I do not believe in or condone banning books. (Indeed, my car has a "Read banned books" sticker on it.) And you can see my take on feminism and porn, as relevant to your linked Foucaultian debate, right on my site. [grin] So, I suspect that we largely agree. Thanks for a thoughtful and intelligent comment. It's refreshing.
Hi. It's really nice to know that whatever I can do technically, that it's my cup size that really matters. I'm 28. I do backbone security, incident response, vulnerability assessment, and pen-testing. I work in varying capacities with Nessus, Snort, and the Open Source Vulnerability Database. And fuck you.
http://www.oneeyedcrow.net/securitygeekfemme.html
Slashdot Mirror
Far from my first time here, but the first time I bothered to get a login, yes. [grin] I knew someone was going to bust my chops for that.
And no, I wasn't shocked by the immature comments, but I gave the trolls one reply. Why? I'm not interested in an extensive flamewar, but a lot of women just shut up and look uncomfortable when stupid sexist bullshit happens. So, that was my token protest. I'm not intending on feeding them any more, and I doubt I changed any of their minds, but I probably made a few lurking women feel better.
Okay, so you don't want to specialize at the moment. Fair enough. I am assuming that your wanting to understand "how things work" is programming in general and not security programming/code audit?
In short, find something that you are interested in and take it apart. [grin] You don't necessarily have to follow a structured academic program to become proficient in a field, whether your intent is to make it your hobby or to make it your profession. My academic background is entirely not in CS, and though I have many friends in CS academia, what they do can be very different indeed from what I do day to day. I learned mostly by experimentation and research on things that I was interested in.
So, find something that you like. Look at the source code, if it's available. Try to figure out what does what. Change things around, and see if you can make it better. One of the best ways to learn for many people is by doing. If you don't know what needs doing, volunteer for a project that is already established and is looking for people. Open Source is so helpful this way -- it feeds your resume *and* helps the community.
My first programming language was Perl. I was told by many geeks that this was a bad choice -- it would give me bad habits if I ever wanted to move to a language with a more rigorous structure. They were right, but it was both a good and bad thing. When I started doing C, and in particular when I started poking at kernel code, I had a lot of extra learning to do. But Perl was still a good way for me to start, because when I started programming I wanted to do quick scripting, not kernel hacking, and the flexibility of Perl was great for me.
Well, if it was a "scum" definition, I would think that I wouldn't have qualified to be interviewed. Behold the angelic halo. [grin]
I've had this argument with journalists before; it's one of the reasons that I tend to avoid being interviewed.
"Tell me about your secret blackhat teenage years!"
"Uh, I never had a secret blackhat teenage phase."
"Oh, come on, you can tell me."
"No, really, I didn't."
Repeat ad nauseum.
All feminists don't necessarily agree... just like "hacker" can have a whole bunch of different connotations, so can "feminist". And, like many other minority groups, we are often known by our extremists. I think that makes it all the more important for those of us who *aren't* extremists to use the term rather than abandon it.
For clarity's sake, I am a feminist in the "I believe in equal rights" way, not the "I believe in special treatment" way. I do not believe in or condone banning books. (Indeed, my car has a "Read banned books" sticker on it.) And you can see my take on feminism and porn, as relevant to your linked Foucaultian debate, right on my site. [grin] So, I suspect that we largely agree. Thanks for a thoughtful and intelligent comment. It's refreshing.
I thought it was nicely ironic myself. I didn't have anything to do with choosing the ads, of course, but if I had I couldn't have done better. [grin]
Hi. It's really nice to know that whatever I can do technically, that it's my cup size that really matters. I'm 28. I do backbone security, incident response, vulnerability assessment, and pen-testing. I work in varying capacities with Nessus, Snort, and the Open Source Vulnerability Database. And fuck you. http://www.oneeyedcrow.net/securitygeekfemme.html