Michael Larabel over at Phoronix brings us news of a stealth Social Justice coup over at FreeDesktop.org:
X.Org, GStreamer, Wayland, LibreOffice, Mesa, VA-API, Harfbuzz, and SPICE are among the many projects hosted by FreeDesktop.org that now appear to be on a contributor covenant / code of conduct.
The Contributor Covenant for those unfamiliar with it is trying to promote a code of conduct for open-source projects that is trying to promote diversity and equality of contributors to libre software projects. From the covenant's website, "Part of this problem [of "free, libre, and open source projects suffer from a startling lack of diversity, with dramatically low representation by women, people of color, and other marginalized populations"] lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names."
The covenant states in part that those contributing should use welcoming and inclusive language, be respectful to others, showing empathy towards others, avoid insulting comments, and avoid inappropriate conduct. For the most part, it's basically common sense.
Now it seems this Contributor Covenant is being forced onto all FreeDesktop.org-hosted projects.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:53AM (7 children)
In 20XX, passive aggressive wars was beginning, fought with CoCs and HR departments over corporatized ENTERPRISE QUALITY code.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @08:17AM (3 children)
Thankfully they have made themselves irrelevant by sabotaging Xorg and focusing on the clusterfsck that is wayland.
Make X11 great again... fork X Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:02PM (2 children)
Upon hearing this, suddenly I've become a lot more skeptical of Wayland.
I'm... still pretty sure it's the right way forward???
I've got one of those statuses I can pull to be a victim if I need to submit a patch, but CoCs mean they're more interested in my status than my code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:23PM (1 child)
Look at it from the positive perspective. If you dislike Wayland, welcome their HR-department infection of equal outcome diversity .. ;-)
Clusterfuck-code-R'-us! :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @05:51PM
But I don't dislike Wayland. I know I'm in the minority here, but I rather like it.
All I'm waiting on to switch over to Wayland from X11 is for NVidia's drivers to play nice with it.
Works pretty well with nouveau except for some weirdness with Audacious. Well, that, and I admit there are decades of polish in existing X11-based stacks I'm walking away from.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 10 2017, @11:50AM
In 20XX, passive aggressive wars was beginning
For great social justice!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @11:59AM
Long throbbing black CoCs!
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday April 10 2017, @08:34PM
I've been about a while now, and in my experience, better code seems to come from places where human beings are treated with dignity and respect.
The sort of places where people are bullied for arbitrary reasons by a few "elite" developers/managers tend to be miserable places to be, frequently miss deadlines, have poor quality code and generally fail sooner or later.
Maybe it has something to do with how human beings need to cooperate to survive?
Code quality is something that comes out of collaboration.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Monday April 10 2017, @08:28AM (5 children)
No discussing CoCs on SoylentNews. How say you, Soylentils? This will not end well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @08:30AM (1 child)
:-P
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @11:53AM
he likes coc, but only small coc - that's what "pedarast" is all about
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @04:45PM (2 children)
> No discussing CoCs on SoylentNews. How say you, Soylentils? This will not end well.
Only because some people can't bear the thought of being judged for behaving like an asshole.
Their right to shit all over anyone anywhere anytime is more important than everybody else's right not to be shat on.
Well, unless you shit on the whiners. Then they lose their shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:33PM (1 child)
Yes, we've all noticed social justice warriors are liars with ideologies based on "alternative facts" that are obnoxiously farted into the faces of others.
Yes, we've all noticed this about SJW's.
Yes, we've all noticed. Thank you for your pointless contribution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:23AM
Yes, we've all noticed social justice warriors are liars with ideologies based on "alternative facts" that are obnoxiously farted into the faces of others.
He who smelt it, dealt it, Runaway! You flatulent old bastard, you! It is going to be so much fun to track the progress of your dementia! Not a Trump supporter? Pfffhhhttt! Ha ha! Not a racist? Got Black
friendscow-orkers? Pphhhhfffffttttt...dd. Wow! You do know that Warrior of Justice, social, tend to be vegetarian, if not vegan? Less gas, dude! You should try it!(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @08:33AM (1 child)
I have some code online too, it's a hobby project and you could say I "volunteer" to do it I suppose. It is also STARTLINGLY non-diverse! A single white male has COMPLETE control over all of it. The user(s) of the code is also COMPLETELY white and male - it must be due to sexist and racist comments in the code. Won't someone stand up for diversity in GPU based simulation of robust L1 structured matrix approximations!? Me and one Russian guy cannot continue to oppress and control the entire online community.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 10 2017, @03:03PM
See there.. you have been influenced by those evil Russkies! ;-)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Monday April 10 2017, @08:38AM (29 children)
Seriously, can we not stop that BS that somehow the computer world is the worst sexist/racist thing ever?
That's annoying. Especially since about all the guys I've met in the field were eager to have more women in the team. There were a few really misogynists assholes, usually coming from countries were women are not treated right, but those were really a small minority.
You know what? I'm a 46 years old french white guy and I have been using computers since the early 80s. While computers are my job and one of my main interests, I have others. For instance, I do a bit of sewing and have built clothes for myself & some girl friends. Why that detail?
Because EVERY time I go to a shop or -worse- to a "creative hobby" show -where the main topics are drawing, cooking, sewing & jewelry-, 95% of the people present are women.
Of the 5 remaining percent, 3 are part of the crews managing the shops, 1 are husbands/boyfriends, who are obviously -in most cases- dragged in by force (husbands usually look like they'd rather be dead than be there), then the very last percent (probably less) is men alone like me. It's so rare that I often get weird looks. One time I asked a question to a vendor who had his back turned to me, once facing me, he told -playfully- that he had been surprised by hearing A MAN'S VOICE asking for information...
What about perfume shops? I go there sometimes to buy some cologne for me. When I am checking out, EVERY time the vendor -mostly girls- asks me my wife/GF fidelity card... Talk about sexism and prejudice...
So where is the outrage? Why is there not more diversity & inclusion?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday April 10 2017, @08:50AM (6 children)
I was tempted to put "dressmaking" in the hobbies section of my CV. It's an exageration of course, all I did was tweak things that didn't quite fit my g/f's proportions, but it required the eye and the hand (and a needle, obviously), so it's at least one rung up that ladder.
Damn, I notice that there's a skirt on the unit beside me that I said I'd take in months ago...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday April 10 2017, @12:01PM (5 children)
Yeah - seamsters of the world unite and fight the oppression!
Well it's nice to see that there's some diversity there, I'd be more interested in the services of the seamstresses guild but it's good of you to identify yourself as a member of the male side of the profession for those so inclined.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 10 2017, @01:47PM (4 children)
Funny about that word seamster. '-ster' is itself a feminine suffix from an older version of English. Don't know what the original word was. 'Seamer', maybe. 'Seamster' is one of those words that has had a feminine suffix added on twice in the development of English.
So my brother once told me.
Looking it up online, the wiktionary entry traces 'seamstress' back to 'seamster'. But looking up the suffix '-ster' I find in Dutch, which is a Germanic language like the ones English is descended from, -ster is a feminine suffix corresponding to the masculine 'er'.as a suffix. Perhaps there is something similar in Old English? Anyone know any native Old English speakers?
My brother attributed this to two waves of men taking over traditional women's professions in times of economic dislocation and the women being forced to distinguiish themselves with an extra suffix.
-- hendrik
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:17PM (1 child)
I'm sure that'll trigger a regressive somewhere. It's almost as if human languages themselves are gendered like the species that developed them. Not that it'll matter when all communication is censored lest some delicate little snowflake take offence.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 10 2017, @05:53PM
The Dutch language has two genders:
(1) Masculine or feminine
(2) Neuter.
Well, there are masculine and feminine personal pronouns, but those are used when speaking of obviously gendered things, such as people.
The noun 'meisje', which means 'girl' or 'little girl', has neuter gender. But if you refer to a girl using a pronoun, you use a feminine pronoun.
Many languages have gender built into them. But they don't clearly map onto two sexes.
I'm told there's an Australian language with eight genders.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:29PM
What does this tell us about banksters? Gangsters?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:56AM
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ster
"""
Old English -istre, from Proto-Germanic *-istrijon, feminine agent suffix used as the equivalent of masculine -ere (see -er (1)). Also used in Middle English to form nouns of action (meaning "a person who ...") without regard for gender.
The genderless agent noun use apparently was a broader application of the original feminine suffix, beginning in the north of England, but linguists disagree over whether this indicates female domination of weaving and baking trades, as represented in surnames such as Webster, Baxter, Brewster, etc. (though spinster probably carries an originally female ending). Also whitester "one who bleaches cloth;" kempster (c. 1400; Halliwell has it as kembster) "woman who cleans wool." In Modern English, the suffix has been productive in forming derivative nouns (gamester, punster, etc.).
"""
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @09:18AM
Sorry, the rest of your comment has been discarded because you are anti-migrant.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday April 10 2017, @01:32PM (3 children)
Now that you mention it... If we go into the professional realm:
- Most jewelers are men.
- Drawing isn't really gender based (In fact, if you're male and play the starving artist role it can actually attract females.)
- Most chefs in restaurants are men. Been to a back yard BBQ? Men run the grille.
- Tailors are typically men. But usually limited to men's clothing.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:30PM
Most chefs in restaurants are men. Been to a back yard BBQ? Men run the grille.
Obviously we don't do enough to encourage women into cooking. Let's be progressive and get more girls in the kitchen!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:05AM (1 child)
> - Most jewelers are men.
Maybe the store-owners, who are businessmen, perhaps. That's not creative. But those I personally know who actually create jewelry are *exclusively* female.
Hmm, that's another thing I could put on my CV - I've even been a model for one of those local jewellers.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Thursday April 13 2017, @01:42AM
I know a couple, she's the jeweler, he's the goldsmith. They make some really nice stuff.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday April 10 2017, @02:04PM
Seriously, can we not stop that BS that somehow the computer world is the worst sexist/racist thing ever?
Nope!
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Monday April 10 2017, @03:26PM (15 children)
One of the funny things about the whole situation is many liberal corporations like Google are eager to bring in Muslims withe the most backwards ideas on women, you know, burqas an so forth, into the US and to bring them onto their campuses. Most American computer types I know are not at at all rude or condescending to women and always open to their involvement, ironically, yet these workers are most hated by corporate america, and the Muslim from third world who thinks women should not be allowed to go out alone seem to be held in high esteem by the Zuckerberg and Google types.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @04:42PM (14 children)
One of the funny things about the whole situation is many liberal corporations like Google are eager to bring in Muslims withe the most backwards ideas on women, you know, burqas an so forth,
Just how many burqa-wearing muslims have you seen in America?
I'm pretty sure it is zero.
For that matter, how many muslims do you know personally?
I'm pretty sure that number is also zero.
Turns out that even wearing a head-scarf, much less a freaking burqa is far from universal among muslims.
For example, Indonesia is the largest muslim majority country in the world and until recently basically nobody wore head-scarves.
Now its the hipster thing to do, a fashion trend like hats. Hijabs and high-heels [google.com] are common fashion accessories.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 10 2017, @05:05PM (13 children)
Just how many burqa-wearing muslims have you seen in America?
Depends where you are. Go shopping in Houston sometime, they are a regular feature of the landscape. Seen a few farther East along the Gulf Coast as far as New Orleans. Might be more extensive, that is just as far as I can claim direct visual confirmation.
Diversity + Proximity = War
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @05:49PM (8 children)
There's an infestation in Melbourne Beach, FL. I encounter them at the fishing dock and they creep me out. The way the women act, they might as well cover themselves in giant cardboard boxes.
Any sort of distinctive religious clothing serves to prevent integration. That's probably why they do it.
We need to fix our way-too-innocent first amendment so that we can deal with these issues. We won't, so we're doomed to a descent into extreme personal violence. I doubt my side will win, but I'm at least trying to help: made 11 kids so far, probably ending up as a Catholic/atheist mix.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 10 2017, @06:01PM (5 children)
Any sort of distinctive religious clothing serves to prevent integration.
That isn't always dangerous, after all the mainstream American culture IS diseased so trying to keep the worst of it off of you and your children is rational. We have a lot of the more harmless variety in the area, Mennonites for example. Good solid folk who don't want to cut my infidel neck. The problem is Islam; we don't have time for a Reformation and as is it is violently hostile to pretty much everyone, including other Muslims.
But the maxim I quoted would probably even hold for them if their numbers grew great enough, there would be war between the factions. Humans suck that way. Difference is I face that reality and propose policy that accords with what people actually are while the left believes humans can be perfected... with a big enough pyramid of skulls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @06:57PM
The problem is Islam; we don't have time for a Reformation and as is it is violently hostile to pretty much everyone, including other Muslims.
As opposed to you who are violently hostile to all muslims but have never actually met a muslim in your life.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 10 2017, @10:23PM (3 children)
Mennonites for example. Good solid folk who don't want to cut my infidel neck.
jmorris! How do you think you know this? I am quite sure the Brethren would want to string you up, draw and quarter you, pull at your flesh with red hot pincers, and burn your bottom off in a raging auto de fe! Or they would if they were subject to your increasingly loony posts on SoylentNews.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:36PM (2 children)
Psychological projection at it's finest; "increasingly loony posts" indeed!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:44AM
Psychological projection at it's finest; "increasingly loony posts" indeed!
Oh, you have no idea! This is just what I think Pacifists might do to jmorris. My imagination tends to the darker side, more like, "50 Shades of jmorris". If I could, I would make jmorris face the fundamental indeterminancy of existance, the pure lack of being that allows beings like us to be present to the world. Only then would the pure "being-there-ness" of the "well-known-liberal-bias" of an absurd and irrational objective world have its full impact on the jmorris, causing him to realize that we all are not ever only what we are, we are not things, we are subjects, perceivers, persons, and each one of us, especially SJWs, are deserving of respect and even admiration for how we deal with a universe devoid of meaning and full of Right-wing Nut-jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:00AM
Vide locus Classicus:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
MINSTREL (singing):
Bravely bold Sir Robin, rode forth from Camelot.
He was not afraid to die, o Brave Sir Robin.
He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin!
He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,
Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken.
To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir Robin!
His head smashed in and his heart cut out,
And his liver removed and his bowels unplugged,
And his nostrils ripped and his bottom burned off,
And his penis--
ROBIN: That's -- that's, uh, that's enough music for now, lads.
Not projection, Cultural reference, you Phillistine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @06:49PM (1 child)
Any sort of distinctive religious clothing serves to prevent integration. That's probably why they do it.
And yet, once again reality's well-known liberal bias doesn't cooperate with the crazy.
Alan Manning and Sanchari Roy, economists at the London School of Economics, kick-started the literature on cultural assimilation with their 2007 paper testing whether Muslim immigrants in the U.K. assimilated any more slowly than other immigrants. Maybe, they conceded, policy interventions were needed if cultural assimilation of some groups was not fast enough.
They concluded, however, that “we find no evidence for a culture clash in general, and one connected with Muslims in particular.” In other words, Muslim immigrants assimilate no slower than do any other immigrants.
That conclusion was called into question the next year when economics professors Alberto Bisin, Eleanora Patacchini, Thierry Verdier, and Yves Zenou published their paper (ungated version here) “Are Muslim Immigrants Different in Terms of Cultural Integration?” in the Journal of the European Economic Association. The authors criticized Manning and Roy’s metric for integration and proposed their own, along with a model to test for group variation. After conducting their analysis, they concluded that, “Muslims integrate less and more slowly than non-Muslims.”
However, when a team at Stockholm University attempted to replicate Bisin’s paper in 2011, they discovered a coding error in the original analysis. They wrote, “our examination of the data using their variable definitions and the same set-up indicates that their claims about differences between Muslims and non-Muslims[…]does not hold.” Bisin’s team tried to respecify their model (a red flag) to resuscitate their findings but even then, conceded that their revised findings were “less clear-cut.”
— Do Muslim Immigrants Assimilate? [niskanencenter.org]
Yeah, it turns out that religious garb does not prevent the wearer from assimilating although it can cause the beholder to be less willing to accept their assimilation. You know, by going around complaining that people who just want to live their own lives "creep them out."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:15PM
oh yeah, muslims are really known for just minding their own business and practicing their "religion" in peace. you're fucking stupid and brainwashed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @06:04PM
Diversity + jmorris = War
FTFY!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @06:51PM
Depends where you are. Go shopping in Houston sometime, they are a regular feature of the landscape.
Yeah, right. Dumbass doesn't even know the difference between a burqa and a headscarf.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:32AM (1 child)
[begin coded message] SJW Task Force, jmorris Division, Special Tracking Squad. Special Report. Geo-location details leaked by an anonymous source on the internets, namely, jmorris. Houston. Seems like they have a problem, and it is jmorris. Previous operative have suggested a Texas location for the jmorris, based solely on lack of intelligence and proclivity for conspiracy theories. Now horse's mouth near confirmation. Please advise on how to proceed. [end coded message]
.
.
{ Um, could someone over there at SJW Headquarters do something about the secure messaging protocol? Seems we are leaking all over SoylentNews. jmorris may now be appraised of where he lives. }
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:22PM
He's already leaked the location of his home base. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday April 10 2017, @08:42AM (3 children)
Because:
(A) financially supporting corporations directly supports those corporations being aggressive and using policies we disagree with, it financially supports monopolistic behaviour, for example; but
(B) using software written by sexists, racists, homophobes, and transphobes does not support their sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia, it's just using the functions of some software. The authors may not even know, and may have not have received any remuneration, and therefore cannot benefit from you using their software.
These are practically incomparible situations.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @09:17AM
This is the world we live in. A world of logical failures left and right, propagated at the speed of light.
Last week it was consenting behavior is misogyny -- GOR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:51AM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure you ride on railways and roads originally built by slaves. How dare you, sir. How DARE you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @11:57AM
cry us a river
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)
The covenant states in part that those contributing should use welcoming and inclusive language, be respectful to others, showing empathy towards others, avoid insulting comments, and avoid inappropriate conduct. For the most part, it's basically common sense.
Common sense? Not at all.
For example, "avoid insulting comments": Some people tried to get this rule put in force on the Linux kernel mailing list, after Linus insulted someones code. This shows that the "avoid insulting comments" rule is NOT intended as "don't insult people", but as "don't insult my code. I'm allowed to write crappy code, damn it".
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Monday April 10 2017, @01:30PM
"Insults shall be posted only once rephrased as constructive criticism." Is that better?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 10 2017, @09:29AM (6 children)
I will repeat what I said when CoC was first introduced.
Imagine 1 person who got promoted because of a special allowance. Now you have 1 person in your organization that will ensure that everyone knows that giving special allowance is the most important thing in a team and non-negotiable. That 1 person becomes the virus and will turn the team under it into a bunch of people who are their for special allowance.
This is a chink in the armor of otherwise functioning system.
What it effectively means is that their is war and you cannot win it by ignoring it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
And he can dress up in armor if he wants to, you discriminatory jerk!
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 10 2017, @07:38PM
I don't promote discrimination and I understand not only the emotional but logical need to make our system more agnostic to individuality, because if it isn't, then it is no better than living in the jungle [youtube.com], but we have a flaw in the system that it is designed to be gamed and misused. We must eliminate this feature where more abusive you are, and better at being a psychopath, your path to success is written. Otherwise we can never be sure we are right and/or settle any dispute forever.
CoC is designed to be abused. It doesn't come with a list of words. It doesn't promote fixing a problem. If it were law it would be laughed at the court house. But it acts as a law because it will punish you but also without acknowledging that you are being punished. The person who will get caught [theguardian.com] will have no idea what could have been done to avoid it and any next person will only learn how to avoid same situation. The problem remains. Because it serves only one purpose: promote its pushers and give them a leverage to remove someone they don't like.
What study has been done to see which behavior exactly is so caustic, even if we assume that the presence of caustic environment is a reality? Have we decided (not settled) on what exactly causes that behavior? No and no. CoC is how you divert and hide your political maneuvers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Monday April 10 2017, @04:30PM (3 children)
It is called Entryism. I'd recommend everyone go get Vox Day's SJWs Always Lie and study your enemy. At the minimum get the free chapter he has out for free on what do the day the rage mob picks you for the day's festivities. People who react close to his recommendations generally keep their jobs while those who didn't normally do not. Spoiler: Apologizing and trying to appease the mob is the losing move btw. Read the book to learn the actual tactical failure that costs you your job and how to increase your odds.
They infect every organization the second it becomes large enough to have spare resources for the locust to consume, and consume they will unless you are aware of the threat and take active measures to prevent them ever getting established in your organization. Freedesktop.org long since aggregated enough projects and attracted enough corporate cash to make itself a juicy target. That is the only useful thing a CoC is good for, it tells the observant that an organization has been seized. It is no longer focused on developing Free Software, it is devoted to Social Justice as the original goal of the organization becomes increasingly impossible to carry out.
History records no organization being cleansed of this infection, fortunately Free Software is an exceptional product in that it is not capital intensive at all. Forking is in fact how Freedesktop.org itself came into being so they can't really object to having it done again to them. The time to flee is now, the incompetence[1] of freedesktop.org has been obvious for years and things can't possibly improve as a SJW converged organization.
I said this on the last CoC related thread but it bears repeating. It isn't the actual contents of the CoC that is the red flag to RUN. Most are bland "everybody be nice" corporate drone stuff. Well of, for Free Software peeps that alone should be bad news, we don't want to be generic cubedwellers, amiright? Especially do not want corporate drones telling us the terms under which they will accept gifts. Anyway.... Is it the fact the leadership of the organization have become the sort who will waste valuable time letting a few snowflakes dominate the conversation long enough to push through a CoC. And the actual words are meaningless, again as we saw in the last thread about a CoC, the person was sacked even though he didn't violate the letter of the CoC but because the SJWs were in charge and the actual rules were to basically impose a college safe space. Bottom line, leadership has lost focus and software isn't their prime function anymore. RUN!
Imagine 1 person who got promoted because of a special allowance.
Yup, but it is worse than you imagine. It is designed this way, to create large numbers of people who understand their position utterly depends on supporting the system that put them where they are. Think about it from a systems view. Women in general do not want to do IT (because their sperg spectrum rate is a fraction of the male rate but expand the concept beyond IT and ignore that) for reasons not well understood. Same for 'minorities' and for purposes of debate assume some might actually be prejudiced behavior, doesn't matter. All that matters is the hiring pool for women and minorities is small and once you get a CoC or big enough for the EEOC to mandate quotas you MUST hire a fairly fixed percentage. Do the math people.
Let us use a simplistic quality metric for illustration. A one to ten scale of skill required for a job. You have a position that needs a skill level 5 and you need a dozen employees. Because of the fierce competition for diversity hires you will not five nearly enough level 5 women and minorities (remember Asian men are not minorities for EO purposes) so you settle for 3 or 4, at best. No you won't find a single 5 since they are working at level 6 or 7 somewhere, perhaps already in your organization and aren't interested in a pay cut. Most people do not understand the math problem, they only see that the women and minorities they have to work with are always incompetent and they are having to carry their dead weight. And the seething begins the day they make that realization, until they understand the math, then they can correctly focus the rage.
And the women and minorities know the situation too, even the ones who can DoubleThink it away from their daily life, because The Party will make sure of it; since that knowledge is the 100% sure fire way to make them solid Blue voters. Nothing like knowing your job absolutely depends on Affirmative Action remaining a mandate to assure loyalty.
[1] Seriously. When you find crap broken for years on end during endless rewrite, it is Freedesktop.org or RH/Pottering behind it 90% of the time.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 10 2017, @07:48PM
Unfortunately, SJW movement stems from feminist hijacking of all politically correct discourse. The dominant narrative is that if you like equality, then you are by default a feminist, and if you disagree you are too stupid/driven by (racism/homophobia/xenophobia/islamophobia/and basically anything that is politically incorrect) to know anything better. The death of political correctness, if it happens indeed, will only be seen on these hijackers by the history. So it is almost impossible task to pick up the fallen torch until the wind stops blowing so much against it.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 10 2017, @10:28PM (1 child)
I'd recommend everyone go get Vox Day's
Never have I seen a review more negative than a recommendation by jmorris.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @11:20PM
Funny, that's exactly why I just read it. It confirmed everything I already knew (mostly it's a collection of truisms) until the author started lionising the paedophile-supporting Catholic church for their capacity to resist infiltration. Still, it's a an otherwise worthwhile and easy read. 4/5 and the free chapter is here. [voxday.net]
Every genuine social liberal should read it, so that it's clear who the real oppressors are and how we stop their incessant bullying.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday April 10 2017, @09:35AM (1 child)
There'd probably be objections with including it. I'm sure the echo chamber tells itself because all programmers are male and white and sexist and meh and shmeh and BLEH. But in reality it's just as bad as most attempts to police words and thought. With pretty much the same infuriating language. This is the entire paragraph for "Enforcement".
Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting the project team at conduct@lists.freedesktop.org. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances. The project team is obligated to maintain confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident. Further details of specific enforcement policies may be posted separately.
Which if you're going to get down to brass tacks means "whatever we don't like can be punished however we like and you won't know if it's just us that doesn't like you or a user". Might as well just go "Be nice or you're banned".
To be clear, bigots of a different flavor still taste like bigots to me. I literally cannot give less shits about this social justice crap anymore. The damage was done. But I question the practicality even if it were one of those occasions where a shitty maintainer turned someone away because they were too brown/religiously-differing. What's such an agreement do besides encourage spiteful non-constructive criticism in subtler ways. Also intent to offend is something so terribly difficult to recognize. Or have we learned nothing about the importance of context recently.
Also i have to say that this policing makes so little sense unless it's a server for doing localization strings like Valve's crowdsourced translation. Where exactly does this come up in code except for seriously stretched examples like Django's?
People on mailing lists being mean? I get it, but then how often do you deal with mailing lists. Also, raging pissant nerds are easy to deal with. You simply call them raging pissant nerds and move on to a project that will appreciate you.
Hell I'll appreciate you. Even if you're as black as Coal Miner Colby's ass or gayer than John Waters. I'm awesome like that.
Anyway. One point of reference I have is a PR for Django [djangoproject.com] I saw years ago. I suppose you can take that as a baseline of "offensiveness" for django to accept related matters as an issue. So refer to their own [djangoproject.com] enforcement manual for how a project has gone about this. Of course the manual is subject to change at its whim because it's Living(TM).
Also I'm into bondage and I find the whole thing offensive.
P.S. Look at this doozy [freedesktop.org] of a commit summary. Well fuck. Guess criticism is off the table. I wanna act like a human being D':
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @12:06PM
What stood out for me in the paragraph you quoted was that there was no consideration given to the anonymity of the accused in a reported incident. Abusing this is a common tactic of "no smoke without fire" -style smear campaigns.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @09:44AM (6 children)
If I contributed to any of these, I'd already have forked the project and rewritten the CoC to ensure that every single commit must contain (in some form) a politically incorrect joke. Retarded attempts at Orwellian language policing have no place on a software project or any place that relies on effective, open communication. Welcome to 2017.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:54AM (4 children)
But I posted essentially this earlier: They can suck their CoC, and Xorg and company should be forked, because they've spent quite a while messing up features of Xorg while at the same time pushing how much better wayland is (even when lacking features considered necessary before it can replace X11.)
Given some of the other questionable projects Xorg has been pushing (dbus integration? libinput?) I would daresay it is long past time to fork FDO/X.org, much like xfree86 was forked before it, and start focusing on what's required to bring X11 into the future. Notably splitting it into a legacy server (for keeping support for pre-KMS display drivers.) and a 'future' server, focused on kms/framebuffer based display technologies with all the legacy cruft removed, and protocol specific acceleration/compatibility added back on top of that design as needed for keeping old software running. Along with this, the security complaints made about allowing out of focus apps snarf input device events should be handled, perhaps with an extension passing it to either the WM, or an 'input device compositor' which can act as a sort of firewall application for who input events should be passed to and under what conditions. It is not like the X protocol itself REQUIRES the other behavior to happen, it's just that nobody bothered to examine the behavior as implemented and compared it to the behavior as intended.
Besides that, the GPU performance losses have mostly been mitigated by the fact that everything just dumps to a framebuffer nowadays, making the performance loss due to X11 protocol overhead miniscule in comparison to other layers of abstraction. If it was good enough for a 68k/386/SPARCv7, it is good enough for our multi-ghz current gen hardware. And if it ISN'T fast enough, should you really be using a GUI for whatever your application is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @12:12PM (2 children)
Saw it dude. My concerns here are not so much the code, simply the relentless march of the marxist thought crime brigade and their offensive doublethink.
Seems innocuous enough?
The truth is that identity politics is narcissism. An individual who bases their entire personality around their race, gender or sexuality will deem every criticism a personal attack and play the victim card. Worse, they themselves are usually intolerant bullies with fragile egos that they protect by projecting blame onto those they are attacking. Let's have some recent IRL examples:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)
Unbeatable.. Crazy SJW triggered [youtube.com] ;-)
The truth is that identity politics is narcissism. An individual who bases their entire personality around their race, gender or sexuality will deem every criticism a personal attack and play the victim card. Worse, they themselves are usually intolerant bullies with fragile egos that they protect by projecting blame onto those they are attacking.
They use their own identity as a attack vector. Instead of basing their value on what they do, it's what they are which is usually quite irrelevant. At least in STEM.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:11PM
Ha, No shortage of these bigots. [youtube.com] They're neo-puritans and even more obnoxious and deluded than the conservative Christian groups who used to crusade against pop music, movies and video games.
It's irrelevant in the personal context in which they attempt use it, but not, as Bill Maher points out [youtube.com] in the grand scheme of things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @09:58PM
Xpra already enhances the security when combined with firejail. Now all those attacks "because we can read the socket" are useless. Demostration that the protocol only requires people to use the brain to improve or completly fix the situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:01PM
If you won't respect my disrespect you are a hypocrite
If you won't tolerate my intolerance you are a hypocrite
If you won't love my hate you are a hypocrite
If you use GNU you are a Free software hypocrite.
(Score: 3, Informative) by KritonK on Monday April 10 2017, @10:36AM (2 children)
I don't know about the other projects above, but is LibreOffice really hosted by freefesktop.org ? LibreOffice used to use freedesktop.org's bug tracker, but it's been some time since they've switched to using their own [documentfoundation.org]. As for downloads, they have a large network of mirrors; I just tried downloading the latest version of LibreOffice, and the download came from a local university's server, which I'm sure has nothing to do with freedesktop.org.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday April 10 2017, @11:42AM (1 child)
You're a facist, sexist, racist Trump-lover for pointing out a minor detail in her...
Oh wait, a male-pig wrote the article? Nevermind. Carry on, carry on.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @07:27PM
Damn, boy!
You've got a helluva persecution complex, dontchya?
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Monday April 10 2017, @11:38AM (4 children)
There's also a startling lack of diversity in documentation, interface design, and other related populations that lies with the very structure of coder-first contribution everywhere.
When are these activists going to complain that in Romance languages a group of 100 women uses the female plural pronoun, but adding 1 male to that group dictates using the male plural pronoun? Is that sexist too?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday April 10 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)
When are these activists going to complain that in Romance languages a group of 100 women uses the female plural pronoun, but adding 1 male to that group dictates using the male plural pronoun? Is that sexist too?
You are SO behind [current year] dude. Didn't you see where the AP style guide now permits they as a singular pronoun so that both he and she can be eliminated? Only way to solve for fifty and growing gender identities, most of which will be unknown (and often unknowable) to a poor ink stained wretch writing on a deadline.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @05:31PM
English isn't a Romance language.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 10 2017, @06:17PM (1 child)
So instead of "they", a female collective pronoun, I have to use "they", a male collective pronoun as soon as one male enters the crowd?
Interesting point of English grammar. English is my second language, so I'll have to be careful to get it right,
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 11 2017, @09:34AM
To avoid problems like these, everyone should just adopt Finnish as the first language for a collaborative project - as there is formal gender. My g/f and I are a really romantic couple - we got "hänen" and "hänen" pillowcases made for us when we lived in Finland! (I'm sure she keeps stealing mine.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @11:44AM (1 child)
SJW-ism triggers me and many other fellow developers. It's like totally unbearable. Developers need safe spaces from SJWs to stay productive.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 10 2017, @02:50PM
Usually the safe space occurs naturally because many people find computers and science boring where you in the past couldn't get rich.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @12:24PM (9 children)
If they actually gave a single shit about equality, their 'code of conduct' would use a policy where contributors were FORBIDDEN from revealing their gender or race over official channels. That way, all contributors would actually be equal and judged primarily on the quality of their code and technical arguments.
But they didn't, and because of that, we see what this is actually about - seizing power, controlling people, virtue signalling, censorship, and revenge. Or rather, turning the core of the project from producing code towards these things. That said, some of these projects seem to have had this rot in them before, but this is a lot more public and explicit about enshrining it.
(Score: 1) by AssCork on Monday April 10 2017, @02:10PM (2 children)
They don't even want the power, most often they just want attention.
"LOOK! We made them do something different!"
Then they move on.
Someone needs to start a Fight Club for SJWs "The first rule about equality is that you don't talk about equality"
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday April 10 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Then they move on.
Citation needed. Law #2 says "SJWs Always Double Down."
They never move on until the organization is destroyed, the demands increase. Once they have purged anyone who might possibly object they move on to consuming all of the resources of the original organization as they shift the focus of it to Social Justice. The CoC is only the opening gambit. Next the convention budget gets redirected from a booth and paying a couple of starving devels to attend to sponsoring a Women in Tech track. A bunch of fully trained Diversity Coordinators come onboard at $150K per diverse head. The mentoring programs kick off. And so on. Google can supply the hundreds of examples for you if you dig a bit. Intel has enough revenue to sustain a lot of these ticks on its back and still push the tech front forward, Freedesktop.org and GNOME not so much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @06:01PM
That is a most awesome metaphor.
good list of typical abominations too
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:35PM
Who sponsors FreeDesktop.org? or influences it? I suspect George Soros and his hired guns is around..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by eravnrekaree on Monday April 10 2017, @03:39PM (2 children)
This whole idea that there is this disdain for women in programmer communities is a myth. It is true that there are a lot of men in programming, but the SJWs thn assume it must be because women are excluded. There is really no such exclusion. the idea that programmers dont like a code contribution because it comes from a woman or lower value it is just insane, its insane craziness. Many SJWs believe that they are being systematically oppressed and anything and everything is oppression, its hypersensitivity. So they see things that are not there. The demographics of participation in programming, Its is due to the fact fewer women have chosen to be involved software development. If more women want to become interested, this is great. Programming should be meritocracy, gender has nothing to do with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by melikamp on Monday April 10 2017, @04:08PM (1 child)
What is SJW? People who are vocal about social justice issues? Funny how you can see into the minds of people, and then generalize despite the fact that some notions of social justice (for example, islamic or christian social justice) are inherently biased against women. You are just bullshitting, aren't you? Using SJW as a vague pejorative and making shit up?
No, it's just stats [arstechnica.com], mon, and if this one study is flawed, I am sure you can find others by googling.
This is in light of women being (apparently) on average better at coding, and
which the study explained by noting that
So the gender bias manifesting as higher-rate code rejection is not an "insane craziness", it's supported by stats. Obviously there are ways to overcome it, and it looks like females have found those ways, but pretending the bias does not exist in the face of facts is what I would call craziness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:28PM
This is in light of women being (apparently) on average better at coding, and
[citation needed]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by https on Monday April 10 2017, @03:45PM
Your virtue signalling is transparent.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @10:27PM
If they actually gave a single shit about equality, their 'code of conduct' would use a policy where contributors were FORBIDDEN from revealing their gender or race over official channels. That way, all contributors would actually be equal and judged primarily on the quality of their code and technical arguments.
WTF?
Instead of establishing an expectation of equal treatment regardless of who you are, people must hide who they are so that the idiots who can't control themselves won't be triggered into misbehaving.
That's like saying if women don't want to be raped, they need to cover their bodies so men won't be incited to rape them.
Screw that shit. If you can't treat people decently, you are the one who needs to hide your identity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by oakgrove on Monday April 10 2017, @01:45PM (14 children)
I've been a desktop Linux and huge proponent of free software for about 10 years now. That said, I've just about had it with this SJW shit. At this point I'm about ready to say fuck GNU, fuck Xorg, fuck OpenOffice, etc. and just get a Mac.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @02:43PM
Emphasis mine. You're playing right into their hands. I'm sure Apple would like nothing better than for you to abandon the libre mindset and adopt a proprietary OS which is locked to their (mostly) proprietary hardware. Besides, I'm sure most of the SJW's are on the apple platform already as that's what it takes to be part of the "in crowd".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday April 10 2017, @02:57PM
You are doing it wrong. Free software means freedom for self determination in usage and development direction. If you go for Apple, you are walled in and eventually prevented from leaving (easily). If you think the Apple jail is going to be free of SJW.. think again..
If a free project gets fucked up, then fork and move on. There's been a lot of obfuscation attempts as of lately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @03:29PM (10 children)
this is not just happening in open source world. also happens in large corporations such as Microsoft. So do not attribute this to an open source only thing. Microsoft ironically, seems desperate to hire muslims who have the mot backward ideas about women, at the same time, they hate American computer programmers, its the american and european programmers who are very open and welcoming of women into the coding community.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 10 2017, @03:47PM (9 children)
To quote the C rules of reality..
If Microsoft aims and shoots their own code in the ass. Reality will reliably deliver the collapse with assured reliability ;-)
Not counting bad starting point with the betrayal to alphabet soup, poor product quality, work environment that keeps good people away, resentment in their own industry etc.. Shorting them in the market place may turn a profit.
There IS a reason Americans, Europeans, Australians and Japanese, South Koreans etc comes up with innovative stuff and can make them work and others less so. There's a loose connection to the mythical-man-month dogma too. What's worse is there's whole clusters of people that can't comprehend these less than obvious factors and gets totally lost using metrics that won't give any insight to the factors that matters.
I'm sure people here noticed the difference in mindset even among people that are superficially supposedly "just like you".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @05:40PM (8 children)
There IS a reason Americans, Europeans, Australians and Japanese, South Koreans etc comes up with innovative stuff and can make them work and others less so.
And what do you claim is that reason?
Personally, I point to religion. Even in Europeans, notice that they are not all equal: the southern ones generally do nothing innovative at all, except the Italians with their cars (Ferrari etc.). Greece and Portugal are economic backwaters. And in the USA, it's the same: the southeastern states don't come up with anything innovative at all. What's the common thread? Religiosity. The southern European nations are far more religious, as are the southeastern US states. And of course the middle east is a hotbed of religiosity. Likewise, south and central America are very religious. In the US, it's the west-coast and northeastern states that do all the innovation (mainly the western), and that's where people are least religious. Japan and South Korea are very non-religious.
I think the thought patterns that support religiosity are mostly incompatible with innovation in science and technology; with religion you already have all the answers, and are just trying to fill in details, and discarding anything that doesn't fit your dogma. Without religion you have an open mind and are more willing to consider all possibilities. And without religion you're also not wasting a lot of time and money on mythical nonsense and the shysters who push it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 10 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Correlation is not causation; I think you're overlooking a likely common cause: climate.
You live in a place with winter so harsh that you've gotta work all summer to prepare for it, that "builds character" (as they say) -- during the winter, you're in the shed making tools to make the coming summer a little easier and more successful. The result is a culture of hard work and innovation.
You live in a bloody year-round paradise where food practically grows itself, you have time to loaf around daydreaming about gods, and the resulting culture will prioritize leisure and religion.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @10:06PM
The problem I see with this is the popularity of the Spanish language (and to a lesser extent, Portuguese): those two kingdoms used to be some of the most powerful places on Earth, which is why they were so successful in establishing colonies in the New World. On top of that, before them, the Roman Empire was very successful, and southern Italy is a really nice, warm place too. Before them, several other civilizations flourished in the Middle East or nearby: the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Persians, the Greeks, etc. It really wasn't until much more recent times when the cold places became the sources of successful civilization. Over in the East, India had a very prosperous society 2000+ years ago, but then things kinda fell apart.
Finally, you don't need a "year-round paradise" to give you time to "loaf about daydreaming about gods"; this is disproven by the Norse. They had a successful society for a time, but they had a very strong mythology which persists to this day with the names of our days (Tuesday through Friday). They absolutely had to prepare for harsh winters.
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday April 10 2017, @09:42PM (2 children)
An AC made this point, but it bears repeating: correlation is not causation.
There are a lot of common factors and any one of them could be the culprit. Evidence is necessary to make this kind of judgment.
I'm not saying it isn't religion; the reason for a lack of innovation might very well be religion. What I am saying is that your opinion is predicated on a shaky premise.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @10:16PM (1 child)
All the places you name are quite warm, with long periods of little or no precipitation.
You'll have to support this one. Are you talking about the southerly, uninnovative places? In the American southeast at least, this is completely false: it rains there all the time, and weather is notoriously hard to predict as rainstorms can last for very short periods. Also, South America extends pretty far south; it isn't tropical-warm in south Argentina. And a good part of Australia is pretty warm (even tropical in the north).
Those places are also generally low-lying, geographically speaking, with large areas of smooth terrain. Why isn't geography to blame?
Western Europe fits this description very well, and according to Jared Diamond is a big reason it was so successful historically. So why were they successful yet many other places with large areas of smooth terrain weren't? And Japan doesn't fit this description at all (very mountainous), yet also is successful.
Finally, I point to ancient Rome. It was quite warm, low-lying with smooth terrain, southerly with less variation in daylight, and yet it was extremely successful and innovative for a while, with aquaducts, plumbing, concrete, etc. They had religion of a sort (the Roman Pagan gods), but then notice that after they adopted Christianity, it all fell apart and the innovation was gone. Other ancient civilizations were very innovative too, and had polytheistic religions. Perhaps the common thread is monotheistic Abrahamic religions: places that adopt those in a strong way seem to invariably become non-innovative.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 11 2017, @12:36PM
> Western Europe fits this description very well
Ah, yes, the Alps, that well-known salt-flat.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @12:59AM (2 children)
I think it's way more to it than religion.
Historian Niall Ferguson made a TV series [youtube.com] on the "Civilization west and rest, killer-apps" [pbs.org] that points out some factors:
* Competition
* Science
* Property rights
* Medicine
* Consumerism
* Work ethic
The Egyptian civilization got wrecked by corruption btw. Rome seems to have collapsed when it got big enough that people could adopt values that were countering what made the empire work. Seems quite familiar.. China when they succeeded to quell any dissent. They also quelled any top innovation, ie cannons. The Soviet when initiative of individuals were quelled.
So fair competition, pursuing science, widespread ownership, effective medicine, production by citizens for citizens, good values on work, saving, academic pursuit and not being stuck with any dogma. Which even scientific institutions seems to fall for sometimes. Did I mention quasi crystals?.. Blue light emitting diodes were also supposedly a worthless pursuit. WWII caused a lot of death. But it made the society as a whole to get science done and do away with the bullshit (lest the opponent wins).
One can observe that at least USA have deviated from some of these factors:
* Fair competition is not compatible with bribed senators that write biased laws or sue happy juridical system.
* Science education has to make use of the full talent pool not just ones with rich parents or other nations that do this lesson will have one up. Though internet is likely to equalize this on a scale and depth many people will not realize yet. Then there's the whole biosciences segment that USA might loose out on because of religions blocks.
* Property can be confiscated at will by the police for certain crimes, courts are too expensive for ordinary people and the rest can be sued from you.
* Medicine is being derailed by big Pharma. With more side effects, high pricing and favoring headache pills over real health issues.
* Work ethic.. if the expectation is that everything is easy, it ain't going to work. Also given the increasing complexity and demand for higher productivity. Continuous academic pursuit is a must. Space-X didn't land first stage by doing the way it has always been done. And now they can crush the competition.
A society better be aware on a large scale where they are and where they should go lest opportunistic factors wreck it all. Especially by not letting petty affairs grow out of proportion. And I would also say that a society needs to allow healthy partner selection, inbreeding hurts mental capability.
There's also another system of values to rise even above this. Those lessons can be found by looking at how Nobel prize winners and corporate founders live and value things (hint, they will not watch Kardashian). In the long run few people remember who run the country in 1884 or were rich. But the name and effects of one person that emigrated to USA that year is felt even today. It's still up to people if they will make a difference or pursue nothingness.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 11 2017, @01:37AM (1 child)
academic pursuit and not being stuck with any dogma. Which even scientific institutions seems to fall for sometimes. Did I mention quasi crystals?.. Blue light emitting diodes were also supposedly a worthless pursuit.
Yes, scientific institutions do have their own dogmas, but they get overturned eventually, on the order of years or decades, because someone re-investigates and proves the dogma wrong. Look how long it took the medical profession to finally realize how big a role gut bacteria has in our health, and that the appendix isn't a useless vestigial organ. However, we're talking about dogma that only persisted for probably less than a century (it wasn't *that* long ago that germ theory was accepted after all, and we finally learned about bacteria). With religion, however, you can pretty much never really get rid of the dogma, because adherents always believe that the Holy Book is the inerrant "Word of God" and everything else must fit in with that. So while we got stuck with modern medicine overlooking gut bacteria for a few decades or so, we're still stuck with dumb religious teachings that are a couple millennia old, and in the case of the Jews they're stuck with dumb teachings that are quite a bit older than that (such as not eating pork; not that I'm a big fan of pork (I *much* prefer chicken and seafood), but their reason for not eating it is purely stupid, since we now understand how to preserve and prepare it so you don't get sick unlike 5000 years ago). Scientific and religious dogma just don't compare, because of how much faster and easier it is to dispel the scientific mistakes.
Anyway, about your observations on the USA:
* Fair competition is not compatible with bribed senators that write biased laws or sue happy juridical system.
When has this not been the case? And how is it that much better in other countries? Western Europe is probably the least corrupt place on Earth, and maybe Japan too, but every place else is much worse. But in those places, the laws don't foster entrepreneurialism that much either. It's hard to start businesses in Europe because the risk is much higher: if your business fails, you're frequently personally stuck with the debt, as it's lot harder to just declare bankruptcy and walk away, and also failure is not accepted well so it's hard to try again.
* Science education has to make use of the full talent pool not just ones with rich parents or other nations that do this lesson will have one up. Though internet is likely to equalize this on a scale and depth many people will not realize yet. Then there's the whole biosciences segment that USA might loose out on because of religions blocks.
Science education and research is extremely worrying in the US now, because of drying-up funding, and also lack of interest from students (for good reason: these jobs (in sciences, different from engineering) don't pay well, and aren't very stable). I expect to see much of that work go to Europe and Japan and even China. The religious nuttery in the US doesn't help, but it really only affects some life sciences, and even there I think has become much less of a factor as they've figured out other places to get stem cells besides fetal tissue. The religious nuts only seem to pop up and block things for very specific issues, not overall (I hate to admit, since I do prefer to bash religion when I can). Climate science is getting a beating now, but I wouldn't call that a religious block, as much as I would a political one: entrenched industries don't want to change and they're using their bribed politicians.
* Medicine is being derailed by big Pharma. With more side effects, high pricing and favoring headache pills over real health issues.
I do expect (or at least hope) to see more medicine being done in Europe and Japan. These nations have far better public health systems than we do, and innovations they make to improve health with better medicines will directly translate to savings on their nationalized health programs.
Especially by not letting petty affairs grow out of proportion. And I would also say that a society needs to allow healthy partner selection, inbreeding hurts mental capability.
I'm not following; what are you getting at here? Are you saying there should be more encouragement of interracial dating or something? Not that I have a problem with that (I'm in such a relationship myself), but I haven't seen any evidence that, for instance, the current state of white people dating each other outside their immediate families is causing any trouble, or that there's any kind of actual inbreeding going on (except in rural Appalachia which is the common butt of such jokes). Besides, if you look at our genetics, almost all of us humans are inbred, according to what I've read: you can take two random humans from anywhere on the globe outside of Africa, and they'll likely be much more closely related genetically than two chimpanzees from different tribes in the same forest. This is because we (not-subSaharan-African) humans almost went extinct at some point, and we're all descended from that small band of survivors. Sub-Saharan Africans are the exception.
Those lessons can be found by looking at how Nobel prize winners and corporate founders live and value things (hint, they will not watch Kardashian).
Yeah, but it's *always* been this way. The "high society" upper classes have always had different pursuits and entertainment preferences than the lower classes. Remember the movie "Titanic" when they showed the upper classes on the ship in fancy dining rooms with impeccable clothing and fine music, and then Jack goes below decks where the lower classes are roomed, and they're playing folk music and being generally noisy and rowdy? It's always been this way; the difference today is that the masses' entertainment options and preferences and musical styles have gained far more exposure due to mass communications and exploitation by corporations, so for instance these days someone in the upper crust probably won't raise any eyebrows by listening to some jazz or classic rock. But the crappier entertainment, yes, they're not very likely to have any interest in (e.g. The Kardashians, Honey Boo Boo, etc.)., but that's true as well of just about anyone with a decent education and some intelligence, not just some ultra-rich people. Seriously, how many people on this site would watch that trash? And how many here are very wealthy (like private jet and mansion wealthy)? And same goes in the "old days" for Nobel winners: they weren't generally extremely wealthy, but they certainly had different tastes than the "rabble" (the lowest classes), and that's still true.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 11 2017, @04:04AM
Science in Europe is likely underfunded. Japan has likely insane degree demands. And China have a completely insane justice system and many problems. Adding to their domination explicitly seems wrong in the long term too. They also have a social structure problem that hinders them from getting at their full potential.
As for climate science block. Political block can almost be as bad as religious ones.
Money for medicine in Europe will probably be spent on religious nutters and their consequences in the feature. Let's say it's not the native religion that is the problem but a 1400 year old imported one. As for economics if health care cost is shared but tax productivity is not, then the system doesn't perform.
Petty affairs.. well acting on non-existent intelligence information on what has happened and almost getting sucked into a WWIII without any real payoff. Same for domestic issues, where a sex life of politicians seems to matter more than their policies.
In some cultures, dating outside cousins or what you parents thought appropriate exposes you to serious retribution. Health clinics in Europe has some shivering statistics.
The pursuits and entertainment borders is not so much along economic lines but rather in thought and values. People that are curious, inquisitive and thoughtful. Will likely find the new Ferrari and mansion comfortable but boring, neither will the bland mass entertainment be even on the radar. Someone like Musk doesn't buy a fancier super mansion. He builds a rocket and electric car. All too often are there rich people with a character not much more developed than a random factory worker. they have the fine habits but not the intellect to join it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 10 2017, @05:41PM
So your solution to your annoyance with SJWism is to join the hipsters and get the most hipster-loved platform out there?