2008/11/3 Anne Ghisla Insubriae <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > hi all! > > after reading Linda's presentation and the following thread, I agree with > you about keeping this list alive. > My Linux story started three years ago at university thanks to a friend, > Clara, who installed Debian on my laptop. Then I dropped it for Ubuntu, > because I felt too dummy. Now I decided turning back to Debian and > subscribed to this list among others. I think we could discuss women and their own perception of their capabilities, and the fact that society largely still encourages them to perceive themselves in such a light, etc etc. Okay some people are technophobes or just hopeless with any technology be it car, bike or computer whereas others are completely at home with technology and science. I don't think there is a gender bias in the skill - the bias comes about where society expects women to be inept and men to be capable - and by society I don't necessarily mean politicians or leading feminist thinkers - although they may have an effect By society I mean school, parents, family, friends and associates who think it might be really bad if a 6 year old is bought mecaano set for no other reason than she is female and she should make do with a Cindy doll just like they did.
Some children are typical of their gender and some aren't - it works both ways. I believe computing to be one area where the intellect is the deciding factor, not physical strength, and there is no reason why women cannot do as well as men in it if they have the capability. But take a look at the UKUUG conference in Manchester UK this weekend - not one female speaker there. Anyway I started with SuSE back in 1999 in the winmodem dial up days and moved to Debian some years ago. Until the beginning of October I had a OpenBSD firewall with one Debian box hanging off it and a dead OB box waiting for me to kick it back into life - all in store atm. Currently using a doze box but mercifully able to ssh into my Debian VM to keep me sane and looking at buying a portable drive to have as my substitute Linux boxen. I found SuSE better at exploiting technology - graphics cards etc - and therefore producing a better screen than previous releases of Debian stable. Have yet to run Debian unstable in any meaningful way. Regards L. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
