Why does clicking blog take me to a "Hello World" application?
this made me distrust the whole thing. I mean if you can't get the blog page zero right, why on earth would I trust you with an operating system?
Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#32Can we please stop giving personal assistants female names/traits? It does not create a positive message for equality and diversity in tech. It's quite frustrating and uncomfortable to see the phrase "just command her to do tasks for you" on a promotion for a Linux distro. SemiCode OS takes this way too far. Just look at this incoherent dump of objectification from the website: "Sarah is Your New Girl Friend She will…
> In a 2011 paper, they reported that both women and men said female voices came across as warmer. In practice, women even showed a subconscious preference for responding to females; men remained subconsciously neutral. “Men will say they prefer female speech, and women really do prefer it,” MacDorman says. [1]
Some of the wording for SemiCode may be overly sexist, but there are good reasons Alexa, Siri, Cortana use female voices by default in most cases, even if SemiCode's tool does not use text-to-speech itself. [2] I think your outrage is a bit over the top, to be honest.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/10/why-siri-cortana-voice-interfa...
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-compute...
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#33This must have been created by someone who has never used Linux: > Includes Most of Popular Programming Languages Compilers, top Editors and best Integrated Development Environments. so basically $ sudo apt install gcc npm python3 emacs24 but without the huge mindshare and all the support that comes with Debian/Ubuntu?
You forgot to include an editor. ;)
I don't get why he's installing an operating system within an operating system. (I use Emacs).
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#34The only distribution I've really enjoyed using for development is Antergos (Arch derivative) because all my packages are up to date.
The only way another distribution would catch my eye is if it targeted a specific hardware platform. Like, if a group of developers built a Linux distribution around Dell's XPS laptop line so that hardware support was perfect.
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#35Maybe this needs a separate thread but for a long time now, there have only really been 5 (or 6 depending on who you ask) upstream distros, Debian, Fedora/RH, Gentoo, Opensuse, Slackware, Ubuntu. I get the reason for offshoot distros to exist but I can't help thinking that a lot of the time it would just make more sense to publish a script to add packages/modify the default configuration, rather than Just-Another-New…
Arch Linux is a major one these days.
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#36Their digital assistant Sarah seems to be unique. I don't know any other OS which has it. http://www.semicodeos.com/sarah/
It looks like a wrapper around wolframalpha. It's not that fancy and it's not very useful.
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#37Can we please stop giving personal assistants female names/traits? It does not create a positive message for equality and diversity in tech. It's quite frustrating and uncomfortable to see the phrase "just command her to do tasks for you" on a promotion for a Linux distro. SemiCode OS takes this way too far. Just look at this incoherent dump of objectification from the website: "Sarah is Your New Girl Friend She will…
> In a 2011 paper, they reported that both women and men said female voices came across as warmer. In practice, women even showed a subconscious preference for responding to females; men remained subconsciously neutral. “Men will say they prefer female speech, and women really do prefer it,” MacDorman says. [1] Some of the wording for SemiCode may be overly sexist, but there are good reasons Alexa, Siri, Cortana use…
Both of these articles phrase very nicely the reasons for my dislike of female-gendered assistants.
"The late Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass, who coauthored the field’s seminal book, Wired for Speech, wrote that people tend to perceive female voices as helping us solve our problems by ourselves, while they view male voices as authority figures who tell us the answers to our problems. We want our technology to help us, but we want to be the bosses of it, so we are more likely to opt for a female interface." [1]
"According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman's voice." [2]
The predominance of female voices is based (at least partially, the biological argument is certainly interesting) on history and societal norms that place women beneath men in competence and authority. Thus my dislike comes from a desire to get rid of these subtly ingrained social ideas of male/female authority/submissiveness. The tech world has a far-reaching influence, so I think it needs to be conscious of the implications of choices like the "gender" of an assistant.
My personal preference is for a completely gender neutral interface, because I want to treat my computer like the tool that it is and not like another human. I think the best course of action is to give the option and let the user choose which they prefer.
The reason I called out this instance is because it goes too far. Yes, I can rationalize that people have a preference for female personalities for a variety of reasons, but the author of "Sarah" has blatantly sexualized a programming tool. This makes no sense to me. Especially as a publicly available distro. (The quality is definitely wonky for other reasons, but that is not an excuse). This extreme case reflects on the less egregious things I dislike about gendered computers in general.
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#38You must have no real problems to solve in your life or job uf this is what rustles your jimmies to the point of writing long winded comments on random foums, probably even going to the point of creating an account on some website just for it. Or maybe you don't have the balls to say what you think with your regular account.
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#39There's one link I could find to "Compilers" and the page doesn't exist. So much for being "for developers".
Re: Linux Distribution for Programmers and Web Developers
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a 2011 paper, they reported that both women and men said female voices came across as warmer. In practice, women even showed a subconscious preference for responding to females; men remained subconsciously neutral. “Men will say they prefer female speech, and women really do prefer it,” MacDorman says. [1] Some of the wording for SemiCode may be overly sexist, but there are good reasons Alexa, Siri, Cortana use…
Both of these articles phrase very nicely the reasons for my dislike of female-gendered assistants. "The late Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass, who coauthored the field’s seminal book, Wired for Speech, wrote that people tend to perceive female voices as helping us solve our problems by ourselves, while they view male voices as authority figures who tell us the answers to our problems. We want our tech…
Well my preference is to be helped by helpful women. Go build your own distro if you want to be helped by a faceless robot. I'll take Sarah, Siri, and Cortana, thanks.
If you don't like it, build a better product that competes with these devices. No one likes a whiner, especially one who thinks they are the centre of the universe and their personal preferences should dictate the course of the "tech world", as you put it. Your ideas are absurd and do not match the biological reality of humans, sorry.