The Real Purpose of DRM

Roberto writes "Gorgeous nerd Annalee Newitz hacked a political interpretation to recent vacuum cleaner cockfights at O'Reilly's ETech: 'Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines. You haven't seen ugly until you've watched what a DVD player without DRM can do to a TiVo.' Don't try to even think of this at home."

Comments

Dude...

[SigILL]

April fools day is *so* yesterday.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't try to even think of this at home."

What the hell does that mean?

Re:Gorgeous?

[capt.Hij]

Dude! This chick just made a joke about Ubuntu *and* Gentoo users in the same sentence and then went on to disparage Red Hat users. I don't know what bug is up your nether regions, but I for one am in love. (She also discusses "USB devices." *drool*)

Re:Gorgeous?

[LouisZepher]

In your case then, "beer holder", not "beholder".

Re:Looks...

[Lispy]

Please don't complain that /. is not women friendly. Not after yesterday. I am still suffering. :)

Meta-commentary: "Gorgeous" really relevant?

[svkal]

Do the Slashdot editors really feel that introducing a woman by a description of her (in this context irrelevant) physical looks is appropriate? (I say "woman" because I have a hard time imagining that Slashdot would introduce a male with a similar adjective: a case in point is that it was obviously a joke when they commended Linus Torvalds on his physical looks yesterday. If they were to do it in a non-joking manner, that would obviously be just as inappropriate as this.)

As was pointed out yesterday by several posters, this year's April Fool's was more than a little misogynistic in that it seemed to imply(obviously through exaggerations as Slashdot normally does on April Fool's) that women would like pink and ponies rather than technology news. I'm quite willing to let that slide, knowing that subtle humour is not really Slashdot's forte - but really, they shouldn't push their luck by describing female writers as being "gorgeous" the day afterwards.

(I do know that "political correctness" is largely frowned upon at Slashdot, but really, this isn't about submitting to some ever-changing and arbitrary standard, it's about basic politeness and showing respect for the people you are describing. You don't bring things like physical looks into the picture unless they are somehow relevant, and you certainly don't set different standards for what is relevant depending on the gender of the person being described.)

(Oh, and if anyone feels the need to argue that though "gorgeous" in this context obviously wouldn't be said about a male subject - given the gender of the Slashdot editors - it is a harmless one-word compliment which doesn't lastingly change the focus of the discussion: do note that there's already a thread contesting that Ms. Newitz is "gorgeous" based on a 120x130 grayscale picture in her profile. (Which in and of itself confirms some stereotypes about geeks.) Would there be such a thread debating this unless the submitter/editor had seen it fit to mention this in the introduction?)

Re:Meta-commentary: "Gorgeous" really relevant?

[cgenman]

To be fair, it wasn't the slashdot editor but the story submitter that referred to the author in that way.

Likewise that introduction would be obviously inappropriate if the author's story was about an OpenSSH vulnerability or a commentary on the sad state of Windows Vista. In that case writing about physical appearances would be an irrelevant distraction which would imply judgement of factual nature of the article in question based upon the physical appearance of the person. Whether or not that judgement is positive isn't important.

But on a farcical story about cockfighting roombas that line isn't very clear. Can a comedian be demeaned by references to her appearance? Are they making less relevant a story that is already, at core, irrelevant? It again implies a degree of judgement, and a reminder of the prevalant nature of physical judgements in this culture. (I might add, the most insidiously judgemental people about women's appearances are largely other women)

I personally would have edited out the reference to her "gorgeousness." But the question remains... In a non-serious, non-professional context, is it OK to slip in an irrelevant compliment about someone looks?

Re:Meta-commentary: "Gorgeous" really relevant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a thing you wrote rings true. "Other side of the business world"? I work both and there is no other side, just the same distribution of assholes. She wore short skirts working IT, knowing the physical work entailed? She worked IT just for Comp Sci geeks who chased her from the field? None of the narrative, what little there is, makes any sense. It's a bullshit moral fable on a topic which doesn't need artificial stories to justify itself.

Re:Looks...

[91degrees]

Bet you're just saying that because you're ugly.