{"id":4486,"date":"2014-07-09T13:54:18","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T13:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=4486"},"modified":"2014-07-09T14:47:43","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T14:47:43","slug":"fortune-and-cowsay-get-egalitarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=4486","title":{"rendered":"Fortune and cowsay get egalitarian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fortune_%28Unix%29\">Fortune<\/a> is a simple program that displays a pseudo-random message from a database of quotations that first appeared in Version 7 of Unix and runs on the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Command-line_interface\">command line<\/a> on Unix-like systems.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cowsay\">Cowsay<\/a> is another simple program running on the command line which generates <abbr title=\"American Standard Code for Information Interchange\">ASCII<\/abbr> pictures of a cow with a message.<\/p>\n<p>I have used fortune and cowsay in the past to demonstrate the use of a pipe | which feeds the output of one program and uses it as the input for the next program.<\/p>\n<p>Today running fortune | cowsay yielded the message in the image below.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2014\/07\/cowsay_egalitarian.png\" alt=\"cowsay showing output reading equal bytes for women\" width=\"258\" height=\"128\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4487\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The message is most apposite as half the human race is under-represented in IT and other technical fields.<\/p>\n<p>In March this year <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sustainable-business\/women-in-tech-female-representation\">The Guardian reported<\/a> as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2005, women made up 24% of computer science students. By 2010, that figure had dropped to 19%, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency. A 2012 report from Creative Skillset found that only 29% of the interactive media industry in the UK is female, and the majority hold positions in art and design and communications rather than engineering.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Guardian&#8217;s report concluded that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a long way to go before there is parity between the genders in the technology industry. But every baby step made has a tiny effect on the representational content of the diverse audience that uses software and hardware. Developers are known to develop solutions for themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fortune is a simple program that displays a pseudo-random message from a database of quotations that first appeared in Version 7 of Unix and runs on the command line on Unix-like systems. Cowsay is another simple program running on the command line which generates ASCII pictures of a cow with a message. I have used [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17,5,9],"tags":[36,19,12,23],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux-and-os-matters","category-oddities","category-open-source-software","category-tech","tag-comment","tag-free-software","tag-open-source","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4486"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4493,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4486\/revisions\/4493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}