Debian and the hot babe problem [LWN.net]

This Intent To Package posting was guaranteed to raise a bit of a fuss. The program involved is hot-babe, a graphical CPU utilization monitor. It works by displaying a typical Bruno Bellamy drawing of a minimally-clad, maximally-endowed woman. As the CPU gets busier ("hotter"), the woman undresses to compensate. Your editor, whose journalistic ethics required that he investigate this utility, found it to be an amusing addition to the desktop - for about five minutes, or until the children walk in, whichever comes first.

The Debian developers raised the obvious, predictable objection to the inclusion of this utility: the associated images were covered by a non-free license.

Once that little issue was cleared up (the artist made the drawings available under the Artistic License), the way was cleared for the other predictable argument: should a utility seen by some as pornographic be part of the Debian distribution? On the face of it, there would appear to be little basis for keeping it out. The Debian standards for software require that it be free; there is nothing in the software guidelines or social contract about not being offensive to anybody.

There is no doubt that inclusion of hot-babe into Debian is asking for certain kinds of trouble. The imagery involved is no worse than that found on many European billboards, but it will go against many American "community standards" and is completely out of line by the standards of many other parts of the world. Including hot-babe in Debian will render the distribution unsafe for work environments in many places, will complicate the work of those trying to deploy it in libraries and schools, and will simply offend a certain number of the distribution's users.

Then again, the same could be said of fortunes-off, the King James Bible, or the Anarchist FAQ, all of which are already part of Debian. Some people are probably offended by fsck, Doom, or the emacs Zippy quotes file. Your editor, offended by illegible text, immediately and violently disables "color ls" on every system he installs. Creating an offense-free distribution can be a hard task even for companies which adopt that goal explicitly; it's pretty much impossible for a distribution which values freedom, and which has dedicated itself to becoming the biggest collection of free software around.

Unless the Debian Project changes its social contract to allow the exclusion of packages on moral grounds, tools like hot-babe will find a home there. Debian is, increasingly, the master repository for a family of distributions; it should probably be as inclusive as possible. Most of the distributions built on top of Debian, such as Linspire, Xandros, Skolelinux, LinEx, or Ubuntu, apply some discretion in the packages they select. They are unlikely to include tools like hot-babe, and, thus, may be considered safer versions to use in situations where somebody may get offended.

Well, OK, perhaps we can't be too sure with Ubuntu.

Linux developers and distributors clearly must be sensitive to the needs and feelings of their users. The needs that come first and foremost for Debian users are freedom and quality. Applying any other sort of filter to Debian would change that distribution in a fundamental way. The nice thing about Linux is that distributions can be made for a wide variety of audiences. A safe-for-schools version of Debian can be distributed without imposing additional standards on Debian itself. Linux can be configured to meet the tastes, morals, and standards of almost any group of users, without inflicting those standards on others. That is freedom at its best, and how it should be.

Except that your editor really would like to see color ls abolished everywhere.

to post comments

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 3:08 UTC (Thu) by LogicG8 (guest, #11076) [Link] (2 responses)

Gentoo works around this sort of "problem" with a USE flag. Adding the
key word "offensive" to the USE flag will allow Gentoo to install more
risque programs/themes/fortunes

And now bit of juvenile humor I couldn't resist (the easily offended
may ignore this). Attempting "emerge -p hot-babe" gave the following
output:

...
emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "hot-babe".
...

Gentoo and hot babe

Posted Dec 4, 2004 22:49 UTC (Sat) by tres (guest, #352) [Link]

Paul has made an ebuild for hot-babe. Get:

http://dindinx.net/hotbabe/gentoo/hot-babe-ebuild.tar.bz2

Instructions: Untar under your local portage directory (eg. /usr/local/portage/) and then 'emerge hot-babe'.

Taboo slang

Posted Dec 9, 2004 12:50 UTC (Thu) by phd (guest, #952) [Link]

> key word "offensive"

It is not of any help to turn "offensiveness" off. In Russian language the root (stem) "eb" corresponds to English "f*ck". Imagine how we the poor Russians feel looking at the name "ebuild"! How can we pronounce it on a street?!

Well, there are worse problems with "eb". "eBuisines" translated to Russian "eCommerce", but what can we do with "ebXML"?

There are also many other dirty words. Zope, well-known web-application server, looks in Russian as the Russian word "asshole". And often abused by people who dislike Zope.

I think it is unavoidable. There are far too many dirty words in all languages.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 3:16 UTC (Thu) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link]

I don't want to nit-pick, but...

Well, OK, perhaps we can't be to sure with Ubuntu.

Typo: should be "too" not "to".

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 3:48 UTC (Thu) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link] (7 responses)

IMHO the biggest problem with colour ls is not the notion of having ls output coloured (which is sometimes useful), but the fact that the default colour schemes (at least as used by various distributions) are seemingly optimised for minimal readability (dark blue on black, there's a good combination! Not.) and/or maximum garishness (often both at the same time).

I have much the same view on colour syntax highlighting in editors. Done properly it can be quite useful. But the defaults generally show the feature in its worst light (unreadable colour combinations, a different colour for every word, etc).

My solution to both is to have a minimal set of useful colours which I carry from machine to machine, installing them each time the defaults bother me. (My .vimrc uses only four colours for virtually everything and is quite usable, unlike the common defaults. I have a few more ls colours, but they're only used for obscure things.)

Perhaps the distributions could give some thought to more useful sets of colours. (I notice more recent RedHat Enterprise Server versions at least have two sets of colours for dark-background and light-background situations. It's unfortunate that it's detection of which to use doesn't work as well as might be desired -- _my_ xterms have black backgrounds.)

Ewen

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:16 UTC (Thu) by kael (guest, #1599) [Link] (1 responses)

I actually went to the trouble of turning on comments to make just this point.

There is nothing wrong with color ls. The defaults are bad (BAD), but a couple of minutes reveals how to customize (and improve) the settings and then spread as you will.

One could lump vim in the same basket, same solution applies (I admit to liking the blue color scheme, harking back to the DOS 5.0 edit days).

if ( baby and water ) {
don't_throw_bathwater();
}

Colour ls

Posted Jan 1, 2005 23:22 UTC (Sat) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link]

If only the configuration file let you use RGB triplets for specifying
the colors. Instead it takes a raw chunks of extended VT100/ANSI terminal
control sequences. Unfortunately not the entire sequence... just a portion
from the middle. Thus you can only use the basic foreground and background
colors which are quite ugly. The only way to obtain less saturated, less
clashing, and brighter colors is to change your XTerm color settings so
that they no longer match with the specified colors.

If they had been more flexible you could use the builtin color cube for the
foreground and background colors (\033[38;5;`((R*6)+G)*6+B+16`m) or
even use the dynamic color palette. It's possible to query the current
background color so the defaults could be made to look nice so there could
be separate color selections for dark and light backgrounds.

So I agree that in theory color directory listing could be ok, the
implementation (color-ls) sucks. The problem is deeper than the default
color selection.

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 16:45 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

dark blue on black, there's a good combination! Not.

It's fine for backup files and other totally nonimportant files. (Assuming your background colour is black, of course.)

I whipped up a script some time back which you tell your terminal background colour and it ensures that your colour-ls and grep colourization settings don't clash with some horrid seddery. (This is necessary when installing software for use in a work environment where some people colour their xterms like fruit salad. Bright red backgrounds and green and orange text, I ask you...)

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 21:25 UTC (Thu) by ewen (subscriber, #4772) [Link]

dark blue on black, there's a good combination! Not.
It's fine for backup files and other totally nonimportant files. (Assuming your background colour is black, of course.)

The problem, of course, is that at least with my terminal setup (off-white on black), these "dark blue on black" combinations turn up, with most vendors defaults, for directory names. Which don't quite count as "totally nonimportant"... While you're perhaps right that it could be used for something unimportant, I prefer simply not to colour the things I don't care about and they become "and other stuff".

My main point, however, was that the defaults were fairly terrible, which everyone seems to agree with. I too have various shell, sed, etc magic, to make for better defaults and deal with black-background and white-background better. But it shouldn't be necessary to fix every system I use; the vendor defaults should be better, and at least default to "reasonably useable on most setups".

Ewen

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 17:17 UTC (Thu) by jabby (guest, #2648) [Link]

I actually *like* color ls.

I use a white background, so I don't have as much trouble with the dark colors. The bold light blue default for soft links is hard to read, but I usually want to know what it points to if I care about it and in a long listing (-l) the target is shown with its own appropriate (more legible) color assignment.

Color ls is also good for recognizing the *lack* of color. Since the color is based not only on file type (directory, soft link, socket, etc.), but also on permissions (executable) and extension, one can quickly glean information about the types of files in a directory. And if one is expecting a certain type of file to be present, it's absence is immediately noticed. It's especially useful in my src directories. I can immediately see whether a directory has been built or needs to be cleaned, etc.

I've also gone to the (mild) trouble of customizing the color output to highlight our in-house extensions (.980, .909, etc.) and to subtly indicate the difference between .o binaries (light green) and executable binaries (light green & bold!).

I think it's pretty widely accepted that using color (and other visual cues, such as bold or italics) is a great way of organizing and grouping sets of data. The mind instantly recognizes objects of the same color as a "set" of a sort. And if they happen to appear as a block, they *really* jump out at you. The more your brain can process visually, the less brain cycles you need to spend figuring it out by reading the text and processing its meaning.

Jason

Colour ls

Posted Dec 2, 2004 18:54 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

An alternative (which I do) is to make your colors contrast better with a dark background:

XTerm*background: MidnightBlue
XTerm*color0: MidnightBlue
XTerm*color1: firebrick1
XTerm*color4: DodgerBlue
XTerm*color12: DodgerBlue
XTerm*color5: violet

(xterm does the "bright" colors with bold, which is sufficiently visible for me for 9 and 13 but not 12)

I have a little cat script to use ANSI escape sequences to display all the colors, bright and normal, when is good for tuning this (but it's a bit tricky to post, being full of ESC characters).

Colour ls

Posted Dec 4, 2004 8:59 UTC (Sat) by astrand (guest, #4908) [Link]

A solution that seems to work on RedHat/Fedora systems is "eval `dircolors`".

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 4:01 UTC (Thu) by riddochc (guest, #43) [Link] (7 responses)

*sigh*

My girlfriend, reading over my shoulder, commented: "Well hey, if we're gonna include the hot babe program then we've need to have the hot guy program too, but they should still call him a babe. I mean, if we're gonna go that route, then it's only fair. We might as well go one step farther: you should be able to customize by ethnicity."

I suppose she's got a point.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 6:09 UTC (Thu) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (1 responses)

AFAIK the program is not currently themable, but there is a standing offer to make it so if someone furnishes me with alternative (DFSG-free) graphics sets within the next two months.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 19:41 UTC (Thu) by joey (guest, #328) [Link]

Will code for pr0n?

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 7:52 UTC (Thu) by guybar (guest, #798) [Link] (1 responses)

you should be able to customize by ethnicity

Or, to be a real smart-ass, you can draw a baby. Or a babe with a baby as in hot-babe^2 , thus making your name as an ig-noble wannabe.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 23:10 UTC (Thu) by fjf33 (guest, #5768) [Link]

Yeah that would be cool. A chick that gets more and more pregnant. You can call it the circle-of-life, but then Disney may sue you.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 7, 2004 18:08 UTC (Tue) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link]

I believe the customary response is "patches welcome". I can't imagine the author/packager would object much. :)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 7, 2004 18:41 UTC (Tue) by jeld (guest, #22397) [Link]

> you should be able to customize by ethnicity

Yeah, and also by age and weight :) (just couldn't resist)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Jan 14, 2005 1:48 UTC (Fri) by glenalec (guest, #26113) [Link]

or: As the CPU heats up, the 'babe' (female or male) develops a tan, then
a sunburn, then blisters! ;-)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 5:03 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (4 responses)

"The Debian developers raised the obvious, predictable objection to the inclusion of this utility: the associated images were covered by a non-free license."

Am I alone in thinking this is the funniest thing said in an official LWN.net story so far? ;-)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 6:03 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

No, Jonathans dry humor always cracks me up, and this little gem is definitely a keeper. :-)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 6:17 UTC (Thu) by hingo (guest, #14792) [Link]

me too!

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 13:53 UTC (Thu) by WZot (guest, #13623) [Link]

Totally agree... And so true :-)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 7, 2004 1:02 UTC (Tue) by walters (subscriber, #7396) [Link]

Nah, I thought the funniest thing was: "Well, OK, perhaps we can't be too sure with Ubuntu."

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 5:43 UTC (Thu) by lordsutch (guest, #53) [Link] (1 responses)

Including hot-babe in Debian will render the distribution unsafe for work environments in many places, will complicate the work of those trying to deploy it in libraries and schools, and will simply offend a certain number of the distribution's users.

Not really, unless (for some unfathomable reason) the package is automatically installed as part of a task or given priority "standard" or higher. Otherwise, it's just another apt-get-able package. Debian isn't KitchenSinkLinux where every damn thing on the DVD gets put on the computer by default.

That said, John, the line about the images not being DFSG is priceless, and completely true-to-our-form. And, one suspects to be included in Ubuntu, the images will have to be replaced with suitably multicultural ones… :-)

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 9, 2004 13:05 UTC (Thu) by alexu (guest, #7216) [Link]

There is no chance (according to Policy) that this would be automatically installed, as the proper priority of the package is Optional or maybe even Extra. And there is no chance if this would run automatically as the user logs in - unless the user made it that way. This definitely should be included into debian - maybe after adding gender and apperarance changing themes.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 11:02 UTC (Thu) by lyda (subscriber, #7429) [Link]

"The imagery involved is no worse than that found on many European billboards, but it will go against many American "community standards" and is completely out of line by the standards of many other parts of the world."

nudity bad, violence and killing good. yes, that's my country! i'm so proud.

sigh.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 12:28 UTC (Thu) by mly (guest, #2171) [Link] (8 responses)

> Well, OK, perhaps we can't be too sure with Ubuntu.

If that was a joke, it wasn't very funny, and if it wasn't, it
doesn't show much of an understanding for the goals of Ubuntu.

While the images used in some Ubuntu prerelease caused some
eyebrows to be raised, it should be obvious to anyone who tries
to understand what was happening, that this was an attempt to
create a "human touch", rather than the geeky techno-focused
themes we are used to... While some people are likely to brand
them as offensive (for instance the kind of people who demand
that all women should wear a burkha as below
http://www.suedasien.net/images/news/aug2003/250_afghan_w... )
it was clearly not the intent to offend or to suggest anything
erotic or sexual.

It's quite possible that it's impossible to do what the Ubuntu project
tried to do without offending people in large parts of the world,
without resorting to boring office images of the kind found at e.g.
http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/default.aspx

This kind of business image isn't what they're after, and to find
some kind of image which represents the Ubuntu concept of "humanity
towards others" without seeming amateurish, silly, implying a certain
cultural context or causing people to associate to completely unrelated
things is obviously very difficult.

This "hot-babe" is something entirely different. Anyone who fails
to understand that should seriously try to figure out what it is
he has failed to understand about respect and gender issues. The
big bonus in figuring this out is that he'll dramatically increase
his chances if getting a smart girl friend!

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 13:59 UTC (Thu) by WZot (guest, #13623) [Link]

Oh come on... Have a laugh! :) I am sure he knows about the philosophy of Ubuntu. But sometimes it's possible to use some irony.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 14:04 UTC (Thu) by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032) [Link]

If that was a joke, it wasn't very funny

Sorry to disagree, but I thought it was a) clearly tounge-in-cheek and b) pretty funny. Although I'll admit that making jokes that everybody finds funny is probably impossible.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 14:59 UTC (Thu) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

I think that Socket's girlfriend (see above) is on to something. I imagine that, like most other software these days, hot babe will pick up theming capability and we will see "hot guy", "hot space alien", etc. and no doubt other graphical representations of processor load which don't even involve people, as long as the images are released under a free license.

Personally, I'll stick with Gnome System Monitor, though.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:20 UTC (Thu) by sideshow (guest, #2791) [Link] (2 responses)

We'll it's not just prereleases of Ubuntu, have you seen the December Calendar background image? While certainly a beautiful picture/woman, it certainly will raise the eyebrows of many many people (probably more than the original image which caused all the commotion). There is a difference between that image and the hot-babe one to be sure.

I guess I really don't have much of a point here, just felt the need to comment. Some people are always going to find something offensive in whatever you do. I think if your goal is adoption/usage of your particular product, you should do whatever appeals to the demographic you're going after. If you're not going after the business world or the American mid-west conservative family man, then those images are certainly going to be more acceptable to your target audience. However if your goal is world domination, then maybe the images should be toned down a bit to be more widely acceptable.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 16:08 UTC (Thu) by marduk (guest, #3831) [Link] (1 responses)

Agreed, while I like the December wallpaper, I will refrain from taking my laptop to work this month...

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Jan 18, 2005 9:23 UTC (Tue) by sitaram (guest, #5959) [Link]

and for those of us who dont have Ubuntu, how about a link? :-) In fact, someone should maintain these pictures for posterity, dont you think?

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 2, 2004 19:21 UTC (Thu) by mightyduck (guest, #23760) [Link]

But what if I DON'T WANT a smart girlfriend ;-)? A girlfriend has to be
something which pleases my eyes (and other parts of the body) first, the
smart thing comes later.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 9, 2004 18:26 UTC (Thu) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link]

http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/default.aspx

Nice pics of hot chicks on that MS URL. :-#

Maybe someone should tell the MS PR people that they are being
insensitive?

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:20 UTC (Thu) by Boobis (guest, #533) [Link] (13 responses)

Oh my, im stunned. Is the possibility that some might take nudity as offending what concerns you all?

Please do some homework on the feminist cause, and on mens constant objetification of the female body, and get a clue.

I was really hopefull when I read the headline, but it seems to me that noone so far really understands why including naked girls in a distro is a really bad thing.

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:44 UTC (Thu) by climent (guest, #7232) [Link] (8 responses)

In fact, commercials on TV showing stupid men in the kitchen duties should have raisen as many objections, since they put men as kitchen illiterates (thus putting women as real experts on that area), but they dont.

Many other apps can also raise objections due to the nature of the affirmations done, but freedom is about respecting others' views, too. And hot-babe is also about drawing art, not only about nudity/feminism/machism.

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 15:59 UTC (Thu) by Boobis (guest, #533) [Link] (7 responses)

Why does every post suggesting that men might be in a privileged position draw out men trying to prove that they have a hard time too?

The reason we have a feminin cause and not a masculin cause is that females are treated worse than men.

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 17:08 UTC (Thu) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link] (6 responses)

Please. In the US, women are given so much special treatment, from the courtroom to the family to the boardroom, that it's become ridiculous. Men are looked down on if they exhibit even simple qualities like decision making skills or having unflappable values and principles, and are mocked in every cheezy sit-com on the air (which just happens to include every sit-com on the air). Take your feminism cause to Iraq or Afgahnistan, but it has long worn out it's value in the US (and possibly some European countries). What started out as a very necessary movement to allow women to, first, vote, then later a push to be fully treated as equals, has become an overzealous and sidetracked effort to position women as greater than equals by consistenly emasculating males in the educational and cultural realm, and of course with plenty of the all consuming "politicaly correct" social pressure. It's gotten completely out of hand and militant over the last 30 to 40 years, and all the feminists I know who follow this type of feminism are not real women at all. They are in the midst of an identiy crisis and are angry at the world. The TRUE feminists celebrate their female uniqueness and do not attempt to use the childish "put down another to make myself look better" technique by bashing men, but merely recognize that men and women are different, and those differences are a GOOD THING that make society stronger as a whole, not weaker.

As far as this "hot babe" package, all it does is demonstrate how immature some people are. Let them create their package, but like several have mentioned already, that doesn't mean it has to be part of the various Debian-based distributions, nor does it have to be (or need to be) installed by default. Those who want it can apt-get it just like every other package that's not installed by default.

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 19:05 UTC (Thu) by Boobis (guest, #533) [Link] (5 responses)

Thank you for making such a perfect example of what I was trying to say. Too bad you are just plain wrong. The feminist movement are very much needed in the us and women are not treated as equals at all, or do you actually believe that the reason you have not had a single female president is that women are less suited to the task? The fact that some countries are even worse doesn't make women equal in the US.

Anyhow women should not have to put up with their bodies being comoditized, and hot-babe is one step in that direction.

Clueless

Posted Dec 2, 2004 22:36 UTC (Thu) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link] (4 responses)

You're welcome.

One thing I will definitely agree with you on however:
"Anyhow women should not have to put up with their bodies being comoditized, and hot-babe is one step in that direction."

Sadly though, rather than hot-babe being just "one step in that direction", it's yet another product (out of billions) of the current culture that has taken hold, where those absorbed with the perverted idea of what women and/or sexuality are (which the porn industry has created and exacerbated) will forever be clueless as to why themes suggesting group sex or naked women with huge breasts are not only innapropriate, but socially destructive. We are not socially or culturally "enlightend" when there is nothing sacred or special anymore or when we shed all our inhibitions, we merely become more debased and simplistic, like animals. Contrast the age of chivalry and romance with a couple of dogs "doing it" on the side of the road. That's a picture of where we've come from and where we're headed.

All in all though, I'm still a huge Debian fan and will continue to use it. There are a few other debian packages that are offensive as well, but they are not installed by default and shouldn't be. As a general rule, if you can't put it on an enterprise desktop or a family PC that your kids will use, then it shouldn't be there by default. However, if Debian someday becomes a dumping ground for packages by perverts and people who have become numb to healthy moral and social standards, then I might reconsider and use a distribution that doesn't have that kind of baggage. I'm inclined to think though, that there are enough people with common sense working on Debian to keep it clean for the most part for a long time to come.

Design for Frustration by Contract

Posted Dec 5, 2004 9:42 UTC (Sun) by Saigua (guest, #6069) [Link]

It's a CPU monitor! With Artistic License! 'nuff!

...'course, for this comment, I'm tossing in that it's also a behavioral device for associating naked hotness with howling fans and thermostatically-throttled CPUs, which is an odd decision; the operator is compelled to either overbook CPU and guarantee that the nude is mere decoration, or guard modesty and silence to the fault of staring at the black of the garb.

Last week I visited a gay-hazing ecumenical. 12 and 24V molex sockets were everywhere and there was a definite fetish for the orange UV fans. Same-gender sex and fan noise were everywhere, and nobody would take off their black body socks. Eventually one man was expelled for packing too many fans inside his kuddl-duds, which was an oddly oversexed thing to do. Myself, I had to get out of that turtleneck. That inhibition reeked.

Maybe if the garment were more dynamic, or tore, I could tell from that how my CPU was; or more likely, laugh at mod-lm_sensors as it misreported -82 deg. farenheit measurements. Is that a gnunitard and ski-boots, honeychild? ooh! I'm hiding something socially destructive in my individuality too!

Clueless

Posted Dec 9, 2004 18:35 UTC (Thu) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link] (2 responses)

When was the "age of chivalry and romance", was that when women were not
permitted to vote? Was that when it was legal for a man to beat his
wife? Was that when women were expected to be subservient to men in
every way?

I prefer modern values, and I suspect that women who think about the
issues and read history books do too.

Clueless

Posted Dec 9, 2004 21:19 UTC (Thu) by thompsot (guest, #12368) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, that's when men treated women like they were jewels and were expected to win a woman's heart the hard way, not just hop into bed with her on the first date, and there was a certain expectation of good behavior on both parts. Sorry you misunderstood.

Clueless

Posted Dec 10, 2004 1:26 UTC (Fri) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link]

Thompsot, one thing you are really clueless about is history.

It's a really modern idea that a couple spend months or years dating
before getting married. Arranged marriages have historically been common
in all cultures, as have situations where women had no economic options
other than to get married.

The idea that men should "win a woman's heart the hard way" is a very
sexist idea that you generally only see in the trashiest fiction books
(Mills and Boone). Ever considered the possibility that women should
"win a man's heart the hard way and not just hop into bed with him on the
first date"? It takes the agreement of both parties for sex on a first
date (or any date for that matter). Why should it be the man's fault if
the woman wants sex on a first date?

Clueless

Posted Dec 7, 2004 18:08 UTC (Tue) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link]

I'm sorry, I'd have more luck reading your comments if my brain didn't keep mentally inserting an extra 'e' in your nickname... Bad brain, no biscuit for you.

Clueless

Posted Dec 9, 2004 7:31 UTC (Thu) by bronaugh (guest, #26553) [Link] (2 responses)

I entirely agree with Boobis here that it's not kosher to be objectifying anyone's body. I strongly disagree with this. At the same time, though, I strongly disagree with most every form of censorship.

What it comes down to is: Is Debian supposed to be rated G? I mean, there's plenty of offensive stuff in Debian -- may I refer you to xevil (violent but not overall sexist) and fortunes-off (definitely has sexist content).

I guess the best solution here would be for Debian to have an "offensive" tag for packages (or maybe even a totally separate package source for material that could be construed as offensive), so that things like fortunes-off, xevil, and now "hot-babe" can be put into that and be entirely excluded if desired. Essentially, take them more or less "out of the public eye".

Now, a bit of a rant: To those who have said on this thread "bla bla bla women are treated better than men, bla bla bla" -- so far as I see, that's not true. There's still gender inequality in terms of pay, women are still less likely to feel safe on the street, etc. This is in spite of government intervention to ameliorate this. You're wrong -- now get over it, and quit making statements which have been thoroughly proven to be false.

Clueless

Posted Dec 9, 2004 8:35 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

The trouble with women *feeling* less safe on the streets is nothing to do with government and, short of censorship, there's no way the government can do anything about it ...

Dunno about America, but here in the UK the group of people at greatest risk of being randomly attacked on the streets are young males. Yet here also, it's women who feel most threatened.

Cheers,
Wol

Clueless

Posted Dec 9, 2004 18:43 UTC (Thu) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link]

Young males are most likely to be attacked on the street because they
most often do things to incite attack.

Women feel unsafe on the streets because they tend to be physically
weaker than men and because a majority of both men and women believe that
a man who attacks a woman is certain of success (despite much evidence to
the contrary).

I know some men who are not overly muscular who appear to feel more
unsafe on the streets than some women I know.

But it's nothing to do with the issues of gender equality. It's just a
fact that there are bad people out there and different people have
different ways of assessing the risk posed by such people and their
chances of success in dealing with them.

Debian and the hot babe problem

Posted Dec 3, 2004 2:45 UTC (Fri) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link] (3 responses)

One obvious objection is that in some jurisdictions, someone running this
application on their desktop could cause their employer to be sued for
creating a hostile work environment.

Seriously.

Ubuntu may want to consider this in their choices of images as well.

Yes it is strange, and doesn't make sense, but true.

Derek

Ubuntu's choice of images

Posted Dec 3, 2004 11:52 UTC (Fri) by cbetan (guest, #10157) [Link] (2 responses)

If you keep an 'offensive image' on your desktop for a full month, then I conclude that it was not 'accidentally there', and fairly enough your employer can be sued in those jurisdictions. If the image was there by accident after a default install, it can be easily corrected within one minute. No employer can be sued for that.

It is not Ubuntu's fault: it is the user's choice to disable the images or not.

What do I care about some jurisdictions in the USA? I don't live there, Ubuntu's HQ is not there, and I have quite a lot of fun with Ubuntu's creativity on their image choices. However I respect your opinion, the solution would not be to make Ubuntu 'consider their choices of images'.

Remember: there is a World 'out there' beyond USA borders.

Ubuntu's choice of images

Posted Dec 3, 2004 12:33 UTC (Fri) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (1 responses)

But Debian *is* located in the US, insofar as the main FTP server is located there and Debian's non-profit umbrella is incorporated there.

It's one thing to say "the US has stupid laws". It's another thing to say "let's ignore the US's stupid laws, even though SPI, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, etc, are based there." The first is the start of a solution; the latter is a quick way to discourage free software use in the US.

Location of Debian

Posted Dec 9, 2004 18:59 UTC (Thu) by etbe (subscriber, #17516) [Link]

Technically it would not be difficult to setup a master server for a
country that contains packages that comply with the laws and customs of
that country. So a Debian server in Iran or China could have a much
smaller list of packages, and a Debian server in the Netherlands could
have even more packages than the server in the US. This has already been
suggested, but some people don't like that idea, they want the US and
Netherlands repositories for Debian to contain the same set of packages
that are considered suitable for an Iranian mirror.

As for SPI incorporation, this problem doesn't seem to apply to
multi-national corporations. I can think of a couple of examples (which
I won't name due to legal reasons) of subsidiaries of US companies in
other countries performing actions that would almost certainly result in
them being successfully sued if the parent company in the US did the same
things. I doubt that Debian in the Netherlands could get SPI in trouble
any more than a subsidiary of a US corporation can get the parent company
in trouble.

A baseless law suit can kill a small company if the attacker has a
significantly larger legal budget than the victim. If Debian could be
destroyed in such a manner then it's quite likely that someone would have
tried it already. However due to it all being free software Debian is
immune to such attacks. The code will always remain free and the
developers will always want to work on it so no matter what happens
Debian will remain.