Slashdot Mirror
The Economist on Mitchell Baker
Sara Chan writes "The Economist has a
story about a trapeze artist who, in her spare time, is the Chief Lizard Wrangler at a non-profit. You perhaps know her as
Mitchell Baker, leader of Firefox." From the article: "Ms Baker gradually found herself the leader of this project. Perhaps this is because she is a somewhat unusual member of the Netscape diaspora. For a start, she is a woman in a community populated, as one (male) colleague puts it, by geeky males with 'spare time and no social life'. Ms Baker herself has never even written code. She studied Chinese at Berkeley, and then became a lawyer--her role at the old Netscape was in software licensing. On all technical matters, she defers to Brendan Eich, her chief geek."
As are the lizards...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
This sentence contradicts itself - no actually it doesn't.
This is not a troll. And, I agree it is unfortunate. However, I saw Mitchell Baker being interviewed by Charlie Rose. She was amazingly socially unsophisticated. She said she had no technical knowledge, but is a lawyer. She gave the impression that she needs to be replaced by someone more capable.
She gave such a poor account of herself that Charlie Rose was visibly embarrassed. That's the only time I've seen Charlie Rose embarrassed in the many years I've watched his interviews.
Don't think you are being loyal to Mozilla by supporting someone who is so obviously not suited to be a leader.
even though she doesn't write any code, they figured having a woman telling the developers what to do would be the best way to get them to obey as they were used to taking orders off their mothers/wives
i kid, i kid, posting this from firefox, keep up the good work guys
Unfortunately, the Charlie Rose show charges $30 for a copy of the show on which Mitchell Baker appeared.
Transcripts are cheaper, but the Charlie Rose show does not guarantee the accuracy of its transcripts.
Customer: How did they get there?
Support guy: It's the cable company, they send them down the wire.
Customer: I want you to do something about it! NOW!
Support guy: Not my department sir.
Customer: I'm going to report this.
Support guy: They'll say you did it.
If you don't know 'Jam' you're really missing something
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240273/
She was amazingly socially unsophisticated.
I'm not sure what that means. Could you elaborate?
She said she had no technical knowledge, but is a lawyer. She gave the impression that she needs to be replaced by someone more capable.
You are hiding behind a linguistic construct called the passive voice to express an opinion. But what is the basis for your opinion? You simply do not say.
"Trained as a lawyer"
But, but, I thought we didn't like lawyers. but we like women...*HEAD EXPLODES*
Jesus. How many male geeks are there that look like shit. Why you would even bother posting something as insidiously stupid as "God damn she's ugly" is beyond me. You give fire to people who say our industry is sexist. Give the feminazis amunition and they will use it. Moron.
http://linuxphile.org A lust for linux.
@ AC and Erebus: please post pictures of your handsome selves for comparison.
OSS's draw is in its lack of a social strata. If geeks had to socialize in order to make great products like firefox, then microsoft would be a much happier company.
I'm not sure which is sadder: the troll saying that she's ugly, or the rebuke of the troll in which the word "feminazi" is used unironically.
Here you go
I can't wait till I'm as mature as you, then I can go around shitting my trousers, and waiting for my mother to clean up after me.
This seems to be a leadership problem: There is a huge well-known bug in Firefox 1.5, the CPU and memory hogging bug. Developers refuse to fix it, even though anyone can demonstrate the bug easily. Apparently there is some kind of social problem. Maybe no one has the authority to deal with a major bug. It seems to be the kind of problem that can exist when a programming team is led by someone with no technical knowledge.
This bug has been reported to Bugzilla, and is very easy to reproduce (see below), but Firefox developers have marked it invalid because there is not enough specific information! The bug has existed in Firefox for more than 2 years, and several people report that it is worse in Firefox 1.5. Firefox's Bugzilla does not allow direct links from Slashdot, so copy and paste Bugzilla URLs into a new tab. Remove the space:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131 456
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222 660
See comments #48 and #49 of bug 222660 for an example of the symptoms under Windows XP. A typical Windows Task Manager screen shot attached to comment #49 shows the "I/O Other Bytes" increasing by 20K/second with no program activity. At that point, the bug was not yet showing the worst symptoms.
The huge memory use, and 94% CPU use or more with no activity, normally occur after opening and closing many Firefox windows and tabs, as happens when researching something on the internet over a period of hours or days. The bug symptoms are worse after putting the computer on standby or after hibernating. My experience has been that the memory and CPU hogging always occur together, so they appear to be the same bug. However, the CPU hogging symptom takes longer to appear. If the computer has perhaps 256 Megabytes of memory, the most obvious symptom at the beginning is hard disk thrashing.
You can demonstrate the memory use problem quickly by loading and closing the following large web page into multiple Firefox tabs a few times:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/ libc.html. To see the memory and CPU percentage used in Windows, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Choose the Processes tab.This demonstrates one aspect of the bug, but is not representative of big occuring in normal use, since that web page is huge.
Maybe the only solution is for a developer who knows the code to reproduce the problem and see what causes it. It is not clear to me why they are unwilling to do so. This bug seems especially interesting to me. It is likely that fixing this bug will fix other issues. It is likely that fixing this bug will make it easier to work on the Firefox code.
The bug has often been reported on Slashdot. Here are a few examples:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169676&cid=141 43632
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62501
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62671
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 66613
I posted the bug numbered 222660 in Bugzilla. It is interesting to note that apparently no developer has bothered to read the entire bug report and take the time to understand it. For 2 1/2 years, developers have been saying things like this: 1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly version. 2) Yes, this bug exists, but it isn't important. 3) No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too.) 4) I
I just cranked out a batch to her picture. Is that weird, or does that mean I'm into bestiality?
Hahaha yeah, and what's up with that excuse for a haircut?
She is not that ugly, look carefully at this: http://www.mozilla.org/press/image-library/people- mitchell-baker.jpg. Her hairdresser however, deserves to get shot without a trial.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I don't know anything about Baker, but I can't say enough about Brendan Eich. Excellent technical skills, very good people skills. Good leader, good teacher. Brendan is a person who has earned a great deal of trust and respect.
Nothing some airbrushing and photoshopping can't fix.
I should know better than to feed the trolls, but... whoever lit that photo should be strung up; it's perfect--if your goal is to vastly magnify every wrinkle and skin blemish.
Moreover, I vehemently disagree with your assertion.
I'd do her, and i quite like her hair, but then i have odd taste in women.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I'm sorry if this comes across as a troll or flamebait post (it's not intended as either; it's honest criticism), but I've unfortunately got to say it shows in Mozilla. Many of the higher-ups don't seem to know or care much about the code at all. Mitchell Baker is just one example of an incompetent person with a high-up position in the Mozilla organisation; Asa Dotzler is another, as is David Baron. Now, the latter two may actually have contributed code (I think David has, at least; not sure about Asa), but both have shown that they ultimately care more about marketing than about code quality; and the founding of a for-profit (!) company that takes over from the non-profit we had until now shows what it's all about really: making money for a few while those who actually do the grunt work and wrote the code don't get a dime.
And that's not just theory, either: I use Mozilla (1.7.12) daily, and have for years, so I know what I'm talking about. The 1.7 series is supposed to be in deep maintenance mode - supposed to have been for a long time, in fact -, but still, it crashes or locks up on me daily — literally. There is not a single day where I don't have to kill Mozilla from the task manager or where it does not crash.
Quality is something different.
And it's not like I haven't tried to get these things fixed. I once tracked down a lock-up to specific conditions that triggered it and reported them on Bugzilla; the only thing that happened was that a few months later, I got an email telling me that there had not been any activity on the bug and that it would be closed automatically if there wouldn't be any in the future, either. Think about that: nobody confirmed the bug, nobody looked into it, nobody asked questions - nothing at all. And that's a lock-up — just as bad as a crash, and with the exception of a security hole, the worst kind of bug there is. But nobody cared enough to even look at it.
I'm still using Mozilla, but quite honestly, there is exactly one reason left why I still do: AdBlock. As soon as something similar for Opera pops up (sorry for the pun), I'll switch, and I will *never* go back.
Hear that, Mozilla people? You have lost me. And you not only have lost me for your current products; the incompetence, ignorance and arrogance you have shown means that you've lost me for good. As soon as I can, I will abandon your products, and I will never touch them again. And I will tell my story to everyone who's interested in it so they'll be able to see through the marketing and the hype, too, which seems to be all that you are focussing on these days.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Maybe from your mom's basement it seems reasonable that appearances should be unimportant, unfortunately, those of us with lives know it just ain't so. Welcome to the real world.
PS. What's with that hairstyle?
Here's a quote from the Economist article about Mitchell Baker: 'For a start, she is a woman in a community populated, as one (male) colleague puts it, by geeky males with "spare time and no social life". Ms Baker herself has never even written code. She studied Chinese at Berkeley, and then became a lawyer -- her role at the old Netscape was in software licensing. On all technical matters, she defers to Brendan Eich, her chief geek.'
Although, as the Economist article says, Mitchell Baker "gradually found herself the leader of this project" (the Mozilla Foundation), she is not able to understand or detect when there is a technical problem. How can someone lead a group when she cannot begin to understand the conversations?
The word "geek" is extremely offensive, although the word is often used in a way that implies that it is acceptable. Calling someone a geek is the social equivalent of calling a black person a nigger.
Having "no social life" is not a benefit for a programmer. It is a huge shortcoming in everything in life, including programming.
Although I myself am a programmer, I'm married to the woman of my choice. I have no trouble getting and holding the attention of attractive women, and not because of looks. The unthinking assumption that technically knowledgeable people are socially unskilled is unacceptable, and for many, not true.
as well as values. Anybody who is working to improve the world around her is more than just interesting.
Honestly, I find her a lot more attractive for that than any generic barbi doll out there, as well as yourself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
a story about a trapeze artist who, in her spare time, is the Chief Lizard Wrangler
Sounds like the synopsis of a porno movie.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Quote from a comment posted below: Mozilla browser "... crashes or locks up on me daily...". (From the comment Never written any code.)
As the comment poster says, that is evidence of poor leadership.
Other main fact is that I have not had one browser based attack succeed on my main computers (work or home), compared to the M$ fiascos that cause a significant amount of our company's IT budget to be consumed in "silly patchwork" fixes, and it doesn't matter to me what Ms. Baker looks like or how much code she has/hasn't written.
What matters is that Firefox and Thunderbird have been well guided, to the extent that there needs to be enough profitibility in a related enterprise to defend both against corporate, copycat, or cracker type attacks.
Sure, Mozilla is our pet lizard, but wouldn't you rather have a good chief lizard wrangler than nobody?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
http://rapidshare.de/files/7978013/silver_and_blac k.avi.html
Perhaps you have a more intellectual term for feminists who think all sex is rape?
Mitchell Baker declared "Wired" Magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
I don't know... did you see the hair cut?
Let's see, unilaterally means of or relating to one side only. Hrmm. So, unironically would mean of or relating to one Ron only?
I do, actually. It's "a tiny minority of people who should not be taken seriously, and who are vastly outnumbered by Rush Limbaugh listeners and Fox News watchers who believe that they have taken over the world."
"Feminazi" is shorter, though. I'll give you that.
Actually, if you hold your hand over either side of her face, it looks normal. Interesting hair-do.
Maybe from your mom's basement it seems reasonable that appearances should be unimportant, unfortunately, those of us with lives know it just ain't so. Welcome to the real world.
And those of us who've been in the real world for a while understand that the importance of physical beauty is very unfortunate, and should be minimized as much as humanly possible. The correlation between beauty and ability is weak at best (arguably, it's negative, but still weak).
Furthermore, Mitchell isn't an ugly woman. Her skin isn't perfect (a fact quite thoroughly highlighted by the photographer's choice of lighting) and her face is ordinary, but at worst that puts her in the "average" category, particularly since she's quite fit. She's also energetic, witty, smart and capable, all of which more than offset any lack of decorativeness.
PS. What's with that hairstyle?
You do have a point there.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
And of course, the use of the term "feminazi" in a post complaining about sexism.
I am officially gone from
Here i am. Check me out.
So far we have...
- she's ugly
- she's socially inept
- she's a lawyer
- she has a bad hair cut
- she's obviously "not a leader"
- she's not a geek (this was posted as a bad thing)
- she doesn't care about the code
- she only cares about marketing
- Mozilla never fixed my pet bug (several times).
- the software crashes on me every day
Back to your basements, little boys, or your mother will spank you.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Oh well, he's Lead Engineer, at any rate... the position that counts.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
You're a real geek. :)
I happen to like the way they look in the morning when they first wake up. Or after a workout, or just after a shower. There's something genuinely human about it. When they're dressed up and covered in makeup, I feel myself becoming an objectifying asshole -- and that's something I'd rather not be.
But hey, this is Slashdot. What am I doing being serious?
you misspelled "i'm a desperate loser who would have sex with anything that would let me"
What about "tiny minority of people who should not be taken seriously, but whose influence in academia and general culture is so disproportionate to their stature as to color their whole movement"? And that's after granting they are a tiny minority of feminists - I don't.
The word "feminazi" has its own theory of the nature of knowledge? (I think you mean "etymology.")
I challenge your assertion of the term as having that specific a meaning in its original construction, unless you have a paper or something by Tom Hazlett claiming otherwise. More generally it has come to mean any feminist who exhibits misandry. In my experience, it's usually applied to any woman who considers herself a feminist, period.
Let's just say that if the term ever had a meaning that wasn't derogatory, it has since been corrupted.
And thus reminds me of what friend of mine said (he's a gen. consel):
In the end, laywers always win (cha-ching).
We are obviously studied the wrong subject if we wanted to spur innovation.
Um ... okay.
First, can you please define feminazi? In a non-trollish way? Cause I'm just curious where the line is drawn between "woman asserting equal rights" and "feminazi".
Second, can you please cite evidence that these feminazis actually exist in academia, and tell us what your background is that you give credence to this? Because I work at a liberal west-coast public university, and I have never once in all of my years working here met one of these people that most would classify as a feminazi.
look, this is ridiculous. for all the valid criticism of extreme, 70s style feminism, everybody knows it's indefensible to use an epithet like feminazi in a serious argument. i can't believe we're even debating this because (a) it's ridiculous to even consider the possibility that it's a word with serious and well-definid meaning and (b) nonetheless we all know exactly what he meant despite the course language. so lets just table it.
As a moderate Texan, I can try to give you the definition of my more conservative peers (male and female) with quotes close enough to what I have heard on the subject. A feminazi is someone "foolish enough to believe that certain masculine things like competition and aggression will ever not exist on the planet." A feminazi is someone "that scorns women who chose to be simple housewives." A feminazi is someone "rejects the idea that men are better at some things." A feminazi is someone "puts the right to do what she wants with her body over the right of a child to be born."
I don't agree with any but maybe part of the last one. I have a problem with certain people going on and on about how "women have a right to do whatever they want to their bodies" in teh case of abortion when we have certain laws against prositution and drug use that prove that in our society that is not the case.
Open Source Sushi
Hah! No replies yet, I guess this stopped him well!
Mwahahahaha.
Seriously. She's my new hero. I had no idea who was "behind" the success of Mozilla and its offspring, or that any one individual really was. But I think that Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla and the rest are keys to the survival of the web as a useful tool, and it's great to put a name and face with the success.
With a dozen more like her, the net would be a much better place.
It may be ridiculous, but I think ideas like this need to be confronted (assuming genuineness on the part of the poster), especially on places like slashdot where they are so often allowed to breed and fester unchallenged. Maybe that's an unwarranted assumption here. I really don't know.
Sometimes it's better not to stir things up and give people undue attention. But I'm willing to give this poster a chance first to explain themselves.
well, you're far more charitable than i. :-) i'm pretty sure the guy was full of shit. in fact, i think feminazi should be enough to invoke goddard's rule.
yeah, you're probably right :) Ah, well, tis the season to be charitable.
First off, thanks for an honest reply.
So what I'm hearing is that you think a feminazi is anyone who's pro-choice, because we have laws in most states that prohibit commerce involving sex? (ack, that was perhaps the most unsexy description of prostitution I've ever seen. Sorry.)
It is possible to be pro-choice, anti-drug-criminalization, and pro-prostitution, after all. That's practically the libertarian party line.
Just curious to hear your point of view.
Real person involved with computers. Shocking.
I'm not saying 'feminazi' is a valid term to use in an actual argument - ad hominem attacks don't usually fly too well anyway - but Slashdot is hardly a formal forum. I would call a feminazi someone who dogmatically disregards all sex-related differences between men and women and stifles any possible debate on the matter. For example, the MIT biologist who felt "physically ill" when Larry Summers considered hypothetical differences between men and women is, in my opinion, a feminazi. I would also add people like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon who take ridiculously radical stands on issues like pornography and the morality of sex. It's not a hard and fast thing; I think the best way to look at my mental categories would be to consider Rawls' distinction between rational and reasonable people.
As for feminazis in academia, perhaps you're lucky enough not to have to deal with such people. I'm an undergrad at Stanford, and I've had a few feminazi TAs, and there's a seemingly endless parade of feminazi speakers. More importantly, in our required freshman humanities classes, people like Dworkin and McKinnon were used to represent a large part of the feminist movement, which leads me to believe that their ideas have substantial currency.
a) It's called Godwin's Law.
b) Godwin's Law is fucking idiotic. I'm sick of self-righteous Usenet freaks "calling Godwin's Law" on someone.
c) How about arguing for your ideas, instead of just dismissing others'?
What you;re hearing is completely different from what the guy said. What about all the things before the abortion views? I'm pretty rabidly pro-choice, and I agree with the previous points. I'd have to say that anyone who outright rejects a woman's choice to stay at home or refuses to entertain any thought of men having some natural advantages (while accepting women's better verbal and social skills) is a feminazi.
a) Sorry I mistyped. b) It's a fucking joke, asshat. A joke. Nobody really thinks it's true. c) I didn't dismiss an idea. I dismissed a stupid epithet. I wasn't even discussing the idea (because I didn't actually disagree with the underlying idea). Using the term 'feminazi' has no substantive, productive value. It's a slur, not an argument. Maybe you should figure out what an actual idea looks like before throwing around the phrase.
The term "Feminazi" was invented by Rush Limbaugh. That's reason enough not to use it.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
You do realize that you're at Stanford, an extremely liberal (and private!) institution and popular destination in the speaking circuit? And that Stanford doesn't represent mainstream academia?
Stifling of debate is never good. But neither is spouting off bad science from a position of authority. Larry Summers didn't just say men and women are different; that much is obvious, and anyone who would deny that is a moron. To paraphrase, he stated that nature is more powerful than nurture, and that men were better, and implied that they would always be better, than women in science and math. He vastly overstated any evidence he had for his cause.
He later retracted his statement, and admitted that the real argument is far more complex and nuanced. You can argue that he was stifled and shouted down; I would argue that he made a fool out of himself in public making hyperbolic statements and self-censored so as not to appear any more of an ass.
You are at university. Please, while you're there, consider some experiences and opinions outside your own. Meet and have genuine discussions with people who think differently than you, and not with the intention of winning an argument, but of understanding what they have to say. It may be the only time in your life that you have an opportunity to get outside yourself and learn more about who you are.
For what it's worth, Dworking and McKinnon are used as examples of the extreme in the feminist movement, not as some kind of idols.
Look, I wasn't responding to what the poster's peers were calling feminazis. I was responding to the one point that he agreed with, which reads pretty clearly as code for "anyone who would support a woman's right to abortion." Go back and reread that one section. I am curious if this is truly what he or she meant, or was just using the languange casually. I was not meaning to misinterpret, but to encourage them to be honest about what they were suggesting.
You know what? Someone who has all of these qualities described in the grandparent probably is what you would call a "feminazi". Big deal.
This person is also what is known as a straw man. They do not exist, except in the deluded rabid imaginations of exremists.
If you are to meet someone who you thought actually held these opinions, I suggest you talk with them in a nonconfrontational fashion. You just might find their views a little more nuanced than you give them credit for.
Well, I'm glad those two aren't mainstream - I just accepted my (feminist) TA's characterization of them. And please don't patronize me. I have personal friends who are feminist, maybe even feminazis, and I've certainly engaged in genuine discussions of these topics with them. Finally, about Summers, his comments raised the possibility that nature is more powerful than nurture. He made a conjecture based on his personal opinion, in a speech that emphasized the need for further research and investigation. You also misrepresent this conjecture, as do many in the media, by saying that men are better than women at science. More proper statements would be to say that, on average, men have a higher aptitude for science than women do, or that the variance of men's science aptitude exceeds that of women, so we can expect to find more men at the highest - and lowest - levels than women. These statistical semantics are important, since they give the lie to the claims that these statements are discriminatory. The average man and the average women are very poor scientists - different means are no reason to discriminate. They can, however, be used to show that imbalance in science departments attributed to discrimnation may be better attributed to greater population variance.
b) Many people on Slashdot seem to use it non-humorously, and I haven't found anything online to indicate it's a joke. I didn't realize you were an exception. I hope that you realize that some people do tatke it seriously to avoid any future confusion.
c) The epithet, as you point out, has an underlying idea. In an informal forum like Slashdot, the epithet is shorthand for the idea. Rejecting the epithet and shorthand and expecting people to write long explanations of the idea shows your bias against the underlying idea.
No. I think anyone who places such a high priority on the issue of "a woman's right to do whatever she wants with her body" that it soley determines their personal policy is an example of a Feminazi because they are arguing for the correct policy with the wrong intentions. For example, if someone votes for a political candidate just because they are "pro-choice" I consider them to be a bad kind of feminist- many other issues are far more important to women and the legal precident in my nation (U.S.) shows that women HAVE NO RIGHT to do what they want to their bodies. Abortion rights are secured because of a right to privacy. Basically I am intollerant to those who really believe in a policial philosophy but don't understand it.
It is possible to be pro-choice, anti-drug-criminalization, and pro-prostitution, after all. That's practically the libertarian party line.
Yet most of the worst Feminists (image wise) claim to be liberals or Democrats. Hence my dislike of their kind.
For consistency, I think all of those who voted for Bush here in Texas because he would "stop gays from marrying" or "to end abortion" are dumbasses as well. Much bigger issues in life, and people on both sides pick the one that is 100% up to the Supreme Court. Sure politicians put people on that court, but that is a piss poor reason to vote for anyone where our society has so many other problems.
But if you must know I am personally against abortion, but I am not for making it illegal.
Open Source Sushi