Fedora release naming "is a" bit contentious

Posted Mar 30, 2012 6:34 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

It is known as the First Law Of Weakness: all particles in a system interact through meaningless messages. There's nothing you can do about it. Because of the Principle Of Conservation of Conversation, this exchange of messages wears these particles down, until -- and this is the Second Law -- they are simply too weak to keep it up. To observers in different reference frames this will look like a total, sudden collapse of the system, but to other observers some of the messages will in fact appear to have a charge, and they will -- Third Law -- become attracted to the system, and start to reciprocate.

This is a depressing state of affairs, not in the least because it has been shown that a system like this can't be halted.

(Some researchers, in a feeble attempt to save this model of our world, have proposed that if you look at the messages close enough, you may detect some meaning in them. But other researchers were quick to prove that at those scales there is an inherent uncertainty in the interpretation of any such message, rendering the whole system unstable. New developments however show that there may be a mechanism that allows any message to acquire meaning, which is obviously incredibly exciting news.)

Posted Mar 31, 2012 6:33 UTC (Sat) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

If the badness is in them, then add them (on that topic) to your mental kill file and get on with your life.

That's a strategy that only works when the offense is basically minor, when you're in a position of power that lets you brush off other people's hostility toward you. When offensive language is often used by people who engage in discrimination or violence, it's a lot harder to ignore. If it's used in ignorance, it's a sign that the person using it needs to be educated. If offensive language is used deliberately, it's a sign that the person using it bears us (or whomever they're targeting) ill will. When we let people get away with being offensive, it legitimizes the more dangerous behavior that the offensive language is associated with. I'm not suggesting that we need to make offensive speech illegal, but I do think it needs to be considered socially unacceptable along with the views it supports.

As an example in the Free Software world, this is why the Ada Initiative is pushing for a code of conduct that includes preventing sexist speeches and presentations. You can't draw a neat line between allowing sexist speech and creating an environment that's hostile to women, or between creating an environment that's hostile toward women and one that's actually dangerous. The only thing to do is to make it clear that even offensive behavior is unacceptable, much less anything stronger.