What Geeky Women Are Doing Now

Posted by ubergeeke on March 4th, 2010 in blogpost 2 Comments »

While it’s hard to top a label like “Mother of the Internet”, Radia Perlman has added another distinguished title to her list: Intel Fellow.

Intel’s CTO, Justin Rattner, announced this week that Perlman will be joining the Intel team. Dr. Perlman, an MIT grad, was with Sun Microsystems (which appears to have been swallowed whole by Oracle) where she was a Senior Distinguished Engineer.

Perlman holds more than 100 patents in encryption, decryption and routing, is a published author, and has repeatedly been named one of the 20 most influential people in her industry. Perlman’s focus has been network and security protocol, and she talked about her work in this 2006 interview from Network World.

A few years ago, Perlman received one of the first Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision awards, specifically for Innovation.

People - techies and geeks included - like to throw around the word “genius” a lot and generally use it to describe someone of exceptional intelligence or unmatched technical skill. Consider this more precise definition:

“More than just originality, creativity, or intelligence, genius is associated with achievement of insight which has transformational power.”

Perlman’s work is the backbone of the Internet, the skeleton upon which all the other matter depends, and that construct has transformed all our lives. For that reason alone, Radia Perlman is a true genius.

Posted by ubergeeke on March 1st, 2010 in blogpost 1 Comment »

In the 02.11.10 issue of Electronic Design, Ashwini Govindaraman and Sonia Gandhi summarize “USB 3.0 - The Next-Generation Interconnect”.

USB is enviable in its ubiquity. (Perhaps someday, we’ll see that kind of universality in some remaining troublesome software - say, video file and electronic book formats - as well.) The authors begin by briefly recapping the history of USB and the evolution from Hi-Speed to SuperSpeed (3 Gbits/s). What follows is an admirably simple discussion of USB architecture and power management, followed by a comparison with other interfaces and a tabular view of differences between USB 2.0 and 3.0.

Wondering how long it will be before USB 3.0 is on the market? Not long at all - at least one device with USB 3.0 is already slated to be revealed at CeBIT 2010 in Hannover this week.

Both Gandhi and Govindaraman are employed by Cypress Semiconductor, whose “offerings include the…PSoC programmable system-on-chip families…CapSense touch sensing and TrueTouch solutions for touchscreens.” Gandhi is a senior applications engineer, and Govindaraman is a product marketing manager currently hacking on an MBA at the Wharton School of Business.

Posted by ubergeeke on February 12th, 2010 in blogpost 2 Comments »

The space shuttle Endeavour is in the midst of a two week mission to the International Space Station, and its crew includes Kathryn “Kay” Hire. Hire has one heck of a bio, with extensive Naval experience and years of engineering work under her belt.

Her time in space includes a stint on STS-90 Neurolab back in 1998, where she logged over 381 hours in space (Doesn’t that sound more impressive than the number of actual days?)

“During the 16-day Spacelab flight, the seven-member crew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia served as both experiment subjects and operators for 26 life science experiments focusing on the effects of microgravity on the brain and nervous system.  The STS-90 flight orbited the Earth 256 times, and covered 6.3 million miles.”

The liftoff footage for Endeavour’s launch is amazing, though the on-shuttle camera cuts out a little.

Be sure to check out Kevin Lee’s impressive article about Hire, her family beginnings and later career,  then listen to an interesting piece from Go Navy Radio that includes Hire and Wendy Lawrence, another Naval Academy grad to become an astronaut.

Lastly, visit NASA’s Space Shuttle site for more details on the mission. Once the mission completes, mission details will be stored under STS-130.

(Need some music to accompany all this reading material? Check out SOMA.fm’s streaming Mission Control channel, which mixes ambient music with real chatter from NASA’s STS-130 mission!)

Posted by ubergeeke on February 5th, 2010 in blogpost No Comments »

This is a bit late, but I want to thank Sam Lemonick for including .51 in his recommendations for that you should be reading. That said, let me just mention that I think “Under The Microscope” should be added to your reading queue as well.

While the focus of “Under The Microscope” is similar to .51, it provides information specifically on women in science and STEM-related fields.

(And yes, I really should make these posts longer, don’t you think?)

Posted by ubergeeke on January 25th, 2010 in blogpost No Comments »

Here’s a quick peek at the February issue of the IEEE Spectrum.

For those who look for Sally Adee’s articles first (like I do), this issue features two for our reading pleasure. The first, “Cat-Brain Fever”, briefly chronicles two different approaches to brain simulation - one from a neurological perspective and the other from the realm of computer architecture - and how the two positions recently clashed quite publicly.

Adee’s second article, “Winner: Google Chrome, the Conqueror,” explores the soon-to-be-mainstream geek playground known as Chrome OS, Google’s seven-second-boot-time-web-based operating system. Note that this is a *separate* product from Google’s Chrome browser, just to keep technophiles on their toes. What’s particularly interesting in this article is the discussion of Google’s benevolent plan to take over the world. Didn’t Microsoft used to say that? Remember how that turned out?

Other articles of interest include Sandra Upson’s “Russia Reinvents Its Railroad” and Anne-Marie Corley’s “Dim Prospects for Bright Light”. For those of you who are not members of the IEEE, check your local well-stocked newsstand for the IEEE Spectrum.

Posted by ubergeeke on January 5th, 2010 in blogpost No Comments »

Canonical’s current CEO, Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu project founder), is stepping down and making way for Jane Silber!

Silber has been COO of Canonical, also known as “the folks behind Ubuntu”, and is more than qualified for the gig. She is scheduled to take over in March. While no dramatic changes are in the works, it will be interesting to see what effect this change - and Silber’s leadership - might have on the company and its Linux distribution.

Check out this video from an OSCON event here in PDX. (Sure, it’s a straight-up recruiting vid, but she does talk a bit about her history in tech.)