First, it's not "anecdotal." Feel free to search - you'll find plenty of articles and studies done within the last year that show that, even when both partners work full-time outside the home, women still do most of the housework. Don't take my word for it - search for yourself and find links you trust. Women still do most of the laundry and spend 3x as long doing cleaning chores as men.
Men have a different psychology, and asking for directions is something they are more reluctant to do because it can be construed as a sign of defeat.
I can ask for directions without it being seen as a sign of defeat (or maybe weakness), but a man can't. Doesn't that sort of prove one of my points - that a lot of our behaviour is hard-coded, and and as such not only leads to such stereotypes being formulated, but also validates them?
Even if we grant that this may be the result of social conditioning, it still shows a gender difference in behaviour. And the studies on housework distribution just rub it in.
Now I've never said that these differences are universal - there are men who will clean the toilet, replace the toilet paper, ask for directions, clean up after themselves when they've done cooking, just like there are probably women who refuse to ask for directions, will move to a new apartment before they'll get down on their hands and knees to scrub a toilet bowl, let the cat lick the dishes "clean" and then re-use them after a cursory rinse and wipe, and can't cook worth a darn.
But I'm not going to deny what I've seen with my own eyes, and other women have confirmed - and that study after study still confirms - that even when both sexes work outside the home full-time, the woman still bears the brunt of the housework. This is clearly a gender bias.
As for aggression, the statistics you link to clearly show that in cases where one party is the aggressor and the other the victim, it's several times more likely that it's the woman who gets killed. Maybe it's due to the fact that women are generally easier to kill than men, or that men act more aggressively in the initial attack, so that women don't have the opportunity for the "fight or flight" mechanism to actually work, but the fact remains - the stereotype of men usually being the killer in both male | male and male | female murders is 100% true.
Some stereotypes are just prejudice. Others, such as who cleans the toilets, are a reflection of the current state of the division of labour among couples in todays' society.
I never said that Carlin referred to anyone as "IT". If anyone is doing any conflating - or perhaps outright trolling - it's not me. Please check your calendar - this is not Troll Tuesday - and no, I'm not saying that in anger, just pointing out that you might want to re-read what I actually wrote. I was pointing out that there are still plenty of people who are not ashamed to call a woman "it" if she's got a transsexual past. Not Carlin. I would be astounded and disappointed to learn that he ever did such a thing.
All humour has a "mean" component to it - it's the way we lance the wound to help drain the pus and help it heal. However, like any surgery, it has to be done with skill. Carlin had that skill - the right place at the right time in the right context with the right audience. He would say a line like that, and people would laugh, but because it was Carlin, and it was done in a greater context, you knew that he was also very much poking fun at the people who found such lines funny at the expense of others; his edginess had a purpose, and he was good at it. No, that's probably a lie - he was great at it.
Good comedy challenges the status quo and makes people think. It opens up avenues of discussion that we wouldn't normally have - and this has been true for centuries. Just look at the Fool in King Lear - he could get away with telling the truth to the King when nobody else could. The Fool has always had a dual role, as both entertainer and social bellwether. Comedy leads, society laughs (a bit self-consciously or nervously) rather than acting violently, and then a while later, society has advanced to the point where it no longer gets a laugh. Society has internalized the issue.
20 years ago it was sexual orientation - gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. 40 years ago it was skin colour - blacks. 60 years ago it was European ethincs - italians, Greeks, etc.
Today it's transsexuals. The only problem is, it was also transsexuals 20 years ago. And 40 years ago. And the violence is still also there, often from the time we're kids, and at the hands of parents, relatives, classmates, and long-time friends who then betray that friendship and beat you up in public before the whole school just to be popular.
People who wouldn't dream of using the N word in public still have no problem with calling a woman with a trans history a.. well, let's just say it's the TS equivalent of the "C" word and then some. It's mean, it's rude, and it's downright nasty. But it still gets a laugh from the chuckle-heads - the same ones who, paradoxically, just love using it as a search term for their porn fantasies. Go figure. (./shrug)
There's still a long way to go - look at how many people still think that transsexualism has something to do with sexual orientation, or don't understand the difference between gender and sex. At least now we *can* talk about it openly in some venues, but the sad fact is that TS are still heavily discriminated against even today - and the financial and social impact is an ugly fact. How would you like to have most jobs illegally denied to you based on your gender? It happens all the time.
I guess what I'm saying is that the punch line doesn't work in this context - many of us don't find it that funny when compared to our reality. If it were a one-off post, that would be one thing, ignore it and move on. As a signature line, it's making a statement - and not a healthy one. This is not to criticize the person - to the contrary, I would find it very hard to believe that someone adopted such a signature on purpose to put down anyone. They probably wanted something from Carlin, and "These are the 7 words you can't say on television etc..." doesn't fit in slashdot's crummy signature length limit - something that people have been complaining about for years.
All I'm doing is relaying what we talk about in the kitchen while the guys are watching TV. One wife is complaining that in the 5 years they've been married, he's *still* not looked above her neck. This isn't to say he's not a nice guy - just that he's hard-wired to notice one thing - boobs. He even admits it. Another one was seeing a guy for 3 years and he still didn't know the color of her eyes - and to compound it, when he guessed, he got it *so* wrong... this isn't to criticize men, but to make the point that so much behaviour is determined by biology - we're still only scratching the surface in that field.
I would also point out that the study itself is flawed because of the self-selection factor. Go to a place and look at people who are dancing, and most of those people probably think, at some level, that dancing ability is an indicator of "something." That something could be as simple as people who hold their alcohol better tend to be in better health overall, so they don't end up doing the funky chicken walk or wearing their underwear on their head.
And no, I have never judged people by how they dance - I've never been one to hang around bars except as a group - you know, celebrating someone quitting (always take them out on their last day to celebrate their future success), a group get-together or party, or stuff like that.
You won't get any contrary argument from me:-) The Bible shows two contradictory Jesus. I suspect that if we had a time machine, we'd find one of them was edited in. Probably the mean one - after all, "yet another mean religious zealot" wouldn't have been news back then.
I agree that most people just want to live their lives in peace, create some good memories with friends and family, and go to bed at night with the goal of repeating it all over the next day. A normal life.
I also think that most people are insecure about *something*, whether it's their appearance, their intelligence, their age, their weight, their height, their social status, their job, their spouse, their kids, their parents, their grades, or something else.
Now while I personally am not offended by the Carlin joke when he made it - he was an equal-opportunity joker - it's not the same thing when it's in a signature. For one thing, the context is lacking. For another, the poster is not George Carlin. I can choose to ignore it, but I can also understand how others might not be able to. Also, by choosing to ignore it, I then become part of the problem. So there's a choice - either ignore it, or discuss it. After all, next time it might be something that *I* feel I cannot ignore.
There's no anger at the original poster - just a "hey, you might want to consider that this is a site that has a lot of transgendered people, many who are living in fear of discovery, and your signature is derogatory, not to our beliefs, or to our country, our politicians, or whatever, but to us as human beings. Just something to consider."
George Carlin did it for laughs, and he got the laughs. Then again, he was on stage, and it was expected that he would lampoon everyone - comedians serve a purpose by exposing our foibles so that we can then examine them.
On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular). And he certainly wouldn't do it one-on-one. Comics are very much aware that the other side of laughter is pain.
To take your "friends, parents, pets" example - none of those contain implicit put-downs of the person you are talking to - and you probably know at least one transgender - though they're probably doing a good job of hiding it, which they learned to do at a very young age after getting beaten up and made fun of all the time.
Sure, people make stupid jokes... sometimes to cover up their own unease, or as a way of trying to show that they're okay with it, or whatever. If no offense is meant, then it's no harm, no foul, and we can all laugh at our flaws and weaknesses. Unfortunately, what is okay among friends, where you know that deep down they have your best interests at heart, isn't the same thing as, for example, the posts that insist on looking only at the chromosomes. Even the Olympics had to stop doing that - not only were there too many anomalies in the general human population to make it a universal standard, but when they flunked someone who later gave birth, it showed that it's not all about that 46th chromosome.
We all say stupid things, we all make social gaffes, but the great thing is that we don't think the other person is a jerk or evil just because they were a bit maladroit when confronted with a situation they didn't understand.
How is it sexist to state the truth - that men ARE reluctant to ask for directions? Just like if I walk into a bathroom at a relatives and there's only one square of toilet paper left on that roll, you can be darn sure it was one of the guys who left it like that - and again, I'm not the only one to experience this. It's a cliché because it's so common.
Yes, there are exceptions, on both sides, but that doesn't mean that it's sexist to point out that one gender behaves predominantly one way, and the other gender the opposite. To refuse to acknowledge this would itself be sexist, don't you think? Let's take another example - criminal behaviour. Men are 10x more likely to commit murder, and 9 times more likely to have been in jail. Is it sexist to point this out? No. Does it mean that every man is going to be a serial killer? No, but ignoring the reality would be sexist as well as dangerous.
Trading service for advertising is one thing. Trading service for privacy is quite another.
I'd go further, Trading service for invasion of privacy is quite another.
There's a concept called "anonymity of the crowd" - that you have a reasonable expectation to be able to just blend into the crowd in public. Nobody has a right to start following you around and tracking what you're doing just because you're in public - we call it "stalking." So why should it be tolerated on the Internet?
The worst part is that advertisers see social media as giving them even more insight into peoples private and semi-private lives.
I understand completely. I just got to the point where I don't really care who knows. You might say that I've totally internalized the "if you have a problem with it, it's not my fault." Besides, I have a sister who can't keep a secret. Her "I didn't tell anyone" quickly degenerated into "okay, just tell me who you DIDN'T tell." One of my friends did pretty much the same. I had two choices, be angry, or laugh. There are some who still don't know, but I refuse to be "held hostage" by worry over it. I've got enough problems to deal with, same as everyone else:-)
It's not an "in your face" thing - I'd much rather that they hadn't been such blabber-mouths. Just like it would have been nice to have been able to help someone on slashdot w/o being exposed - but it's all for the better. (at least that's what I keep telling myself:-)
Your argument also applies even more to Java. The standard is licensed by ONE company. It's even more of a fat, resource hogging pig. It's (a lot) less portable than flash - ask any of the licensees who paid to license JavaME. (Java Mobile Edition - the completely non-free (as in pay me a license to use it and a fee for every phone solde) and non-portable (as in apps have to be tweaked for every phone).
There's only one company that controls dalvik. And dalvik is closed.
So, to quote you, quit being stupid.
Flash works. html5 doesn't. Pick one to develop your next game. I'm sticking with flash for the foreseeable future - it's much more cross-platform than html5.
There's a simple way for guys to stop dancing like a frog in a blender -just stop dancing.
If you're doing it wrong, stop doing it. Then take some.
I know, that'll happen about the time guys start asking for directions, or changing the roll of toilet paper. If you can't do that, take your laptop and use it to record yourself "dancing" and you'll get the picture. You might not see what you're doing right, but you'll see what you're doing wrong. Work on removing all the wrong stuff, and hopefully what's left will be the right stuff.
As for looking in the same direction, you will notice, that in the OP, i was saying that girls should judge the GUYS by their heart.
And I said that will happen when guys are finally able to look at women and notice that there's actually something ABOVE the neckline. I know, never gonna happen, unfair to ask because guys can't help it, little head has a mind of its own, and when the blood goes to it, it leaves the brain.
And finally, what do you have against frogs. All this frog defamation in this thread, is really making me sick.
It's the guys dancing like frogs in a blender who make the frogs look bad. Besides, women have nothing against frogs - you have to kiss a lot of them to find a prince.
For those with gender identity issues the choice is resist or take hormones/surgery and deal with society's reaction....but given that reaction it is certainly not a choice I envy them.
Thank you. Much of society is like you - they may not have a clear understanding of the issues, not having had to confront them up close and personal, but they're willing to at least discuss it. The problem is that some people react very negatively - even violently so - to transsexuals. And then there are the religious people who insist that "Satan has a hold of your life and you must pray it away", and the politicians who find transsexuals and bathrooms to be a great way to get attention. Now throw the occasional stalker into the mix. Why? Who knows - go ask them.
I would like to point out that the medical community would disagree with you. Addicts can overcome their addiction, in some cases with medication. Transsexuals, on the other hand, have some structural differences in the part of the brain that deals with gender identity imprinting, and these appear to have been caused by both the fetal environment - not enough testosterone because the genetic programming in the fetus that triggers the production of testosterone acts too late, as well as the testosterone receptors in some cases having extra base pairs, making them a poor fit. This causes the failure of the fetal brain to change in a critical area - the area that determines your gender identity or self-perception.
We've known about the testosterone problem for more than 100 years - it's easily detectable just by looking at the hands. The future growth of the finger bones is also influenced by testosterone at about the same time. Men have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers because testosterone causes the ring finger to grow longer in comparison to the others, for some reason. This is known as the 2D;4D ratio (second and 4th digits).
Now this isn't a universal truth, since there's always variance among individuals, but male-to-female transsexuals also often exhibit the same 2D;4D ratio as genetic women. This helps explain why transsexuals feel like women trapped in mens bodies - kind of hard not to when that part of your brain is hard-wired from before birth to keep sending you that message.
We can't change the brain structure, or you would be right, except that then we run into an even greater moral dilemma. Changing the brain means you're no longer you.I'm sure you'll admit that how you see your gender is a big part of who you are. Would you consent to changing that if you woke up tomorrow with certain parts "missing"?
We have a treatment that is safe, has a very high success rate, and doesn't involve trying to convince people that they aren't who their brain says they are. Certainly a lot more reasonable approach than saying "you must be unhappy with who you are for the rest of your life."
There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence), and then there's the way that transphobes react - its a second knife wound that most people simply don't have to deal with, and have absolutely no concept of how much it cuts to the core. And we all encounter it at some point during our transition. And you hope it doesn't get to the point where you have to call the police because you don't know how THEY are going to react.
Of course, these same people couldn't do what we have to do to be ourselves - not for one day, never mind for a lifetime. Could you picture one of them even pretending to have "the talk" with one of their friends? Heck no! They'd volunteer to have their appendix removed without anesthesia first. That's "manly". Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid. It's 3-ply paper, and you leave a one-ply half square sitting there like an orphan, and you're hoping that when we open the door the draft won't blow away your sorry "excuse" for not changing it. You dissect the toilet paper, and then walk around all day making skid marks in your formerly-tidy-whiteys, rather than change the stupid roll of toilet paper.
In many cases, at some level, at least some of the transphobes know that we have more courage than they do. They don't understand that the real act of courage was confronting the issue and looking at the alternatives, ranging from depressing to grim, and then asking for help and acceptance in an uncertain and sometimes-hostile world.
There are posters on slashdot who are still afraid to "come out" about being trans, simply because they know that someone, somewhere, is going to be an ass. So they stay hidden, same as they do in their personal lives - because they are afraid of the consequences of being "discovered". Been there, done that, traded in the tshirt for a bra and skirt. It's what's right for me, and while I'm willing to discuss it with those who have a problem with it, in the end I'm not the one with the problem.
This is not to imply that slashdot is infested with transphobes - quite the contrary. Most of the slashdot crowd is very supportive, and I owe them for that. At least that's been my experience after I wrote this and this and people began to ask how I knew so much about the whole "woman trapped in the wrongly-gendered body" experience.
On a final note, I guess I really should see if it's possible to change the account name, because when I post something funny and people who don't know go "Dude! That was great!" I'm caught between laughing at the incongruity and going *sigh*. It makes for some interesting back-and-forth. And this account has great karma and lots of equally-great fans.
Dancing like a frog in a blender has nothing to do with testosterone levels and everything to do with trying too hard, which sends the signal that you lack confidence. Stop dancing like a frog, problem solved.
rather then looking into our hearts, and judging us by what kind of people we are.
I don't think it's a womens heart you're looking at - it's just a coincidence that it's in the same general area.
I think most people would agree that there's a significant difference between a predisposition (an addictive personality), which can be overcome, as millions of ex-alcoholics, ex-drug addicts, and ex-smokers prove, and gender identity issues, which have proven to be intractable to "curing" except by hormones and surgery.
As for the other insulting crap you posted, I'll refrain from commenting on it. It speaks for itself.
People can choose to be drunks and gluttons. Nobody chooses to be a transsexual.
Associating the two is catering to the stereotype of transsexuals as having "made a choice", when in fact it's a "coming to grips with the situation instead of denial" option.
Any woman (genetic or trans) is going to be put on the defensive by being referred to as a man - and this is what the joke does. And it does it to a class of people who already trying to deal with an incongruent self-image.
To put it another way - did you choose your gender identity? Or were you just "you"? When your self-identity matches up with the way the rest of the world sees you, no problem. When it's not... big problems.
If you look at the comments elsewhere in the thread, you'll see the flippant dismissal that others have of the situation. Now imagine being a transsexual and seeing that sort of ignorance expressed on a regular basis - maybe even from some members of your own family. It can be a bit disheartening.
The fear of being exposed to that sort of ridicule can keep a transwoman from seeking medical help for a long time, or make them prey to religious people who convince them that they can "be healed by prayer", or any one of a number of other ways to avoid dealing with "it."
And this doesn't even begin to cover the additional problems, such as job discrimination, and the OMG I DON'T WANT "IT" USING MY WASHROOM!" crowd.
"IT" ???! Yes, there are still people who react that way to transsexuals. Not human beings. "it" - even though everything was just fine until they found out that she used to be a he.
Trust me on this one - it's not a choice, and certainly not a "lifestyle choice" as some critics try to portray it, and it's not a situation you would ever want to be in.
In this case, a permanent injunction is appropriate based on his current behavior. Not only won't the suit get tossed, it will get messier as other parties are drawn into it. Any other company that there is so much as a rumour that they had contact with Hurd is going to get dragged in.
Well, ye! Looking like you're having an epileptic fit is decidedly unsexy. We needed a study for that? What next - a study saying that facebook is for loo... oops - too late
Read the complaint - it's not that long (47 pages, double-spaced), well-written, and very specific as to what Hurd has done in terms of breaching the conditions of his separation agreement. Or do you think that HP doesn't have good lawyers?
Also, to answer your question, I've successfully argued cases in both criminal and civil courts, as well as successfully sued the government. That last one makes a good example - They claimed $71k. I told them "see you in court." They then offered to settle for $20k. I told them "see you in court and hired a lawyer. My lawyer called me to tell me that, after talking to everyone, he thought he could work out a settlement for less. I fired him and took over the case myself, since I had originally told him (1) there is no money owed and (2) no negotiations whatsoever. Not for one red cent. Scorched earth.
Then I had the fun experience of listening to a lawyer on the other side whining - WHINING - for me to at least make SOME sort of offer, and my again saying "tell it to the judge - we have a court date."
Net result, 2 days in court, 1 won every argument, made mince-meat out of everyone on the other side, and the judge agreed that not only did I not owe a penny, but that I was owed a couple of grand. So I trust my opinion, and HPs lawyers opinions, more than I would trust the average slashdotters - or most lawyers, for that matter. Most lawyers are incompetent - read any lawyer's biography and they'll admit as much:-)
Get yourself informed before you post. Go read some actual venue disputes. Where the breach of contract takes place (and who it takes place with) can definitely influence choice of venue. If the breach takes place at X, with a group of participants who all reside and work at X, and the other parties also have a business presence at X, everyone can argue that the natural place to hear the dispute is X, and not Y.
The breach occurs when he communicates information to people when meeting with them at X. To argue otherwise is ridiculous.
The FUD is all over, and I'm sick of it. Obviously I hit a sore point - the only reason there are no good open-source implementations is not because the spec is closed, but because of all the people doing the complaining (wrongfully) that it is closed-source are too lazy to get off their rear ends and supply a second implementation. They don't believe it's possible "because it's proprietary" - a complete load of hogwash.
So why didn't firefox try to implement it instead of using a plugin? It's because they can't. They don't have the skills, just like they don't have the skills to do a proper threading client. Instead, they waste time and effort on this stupid - very stupid - game contest. All it will do is highlight that html5 is not supported uniformly across all browsers, and that browsers still make lousy app platforms, and the "browser as platform" model deserves to die. The DOM is crap that was bolted on and then extended for all the wrong reasons, and we're wasted more than a decade with it. Move on, already.
The future will be multiple runtime platforms for custom apps (same as we already have for java, and flash, and php, and perl, and python), not browsers.
The theory is that these people use the site as a means of self promotion
It's a fact. And look at all the businesses trying to do the same. And they're failing, for one simple reason - the facebook format is not conducive to conversations.
You're free to improve on Adobe's implementation. They published the spec, they made the latest Flex source open-source so you can download it and bang away on it, you already have access to a complete reference implementation and there's nothing preventing you or anyone else from releasing a different player if you think you can do better.
That's a lot better than html5, which is a work in progress and much fought over.
No, it's not. Please,.for once, follow a link and read it instead of believing the echo chamber that is most of slashdot's uninformed masses.
Here - since everyone is so brain-dead when it comes to actually doing any research... he's being sued under California statute 3426.2
California Civil Code Section 3426.2
(a) Actual or threatened misappropriation may be enjoined.
Upon application to the court, an injunction shall be terminated when
the trade secret has ceased to exist, but the injunction may be
continued for an additional period of time in order to eliminate
commercial advantage that otherwise would be derived from the
misappropriation.
(b) If the court determines that it would be unreasonable to
prohibit future use, an injunction may condition future use upon
payment of a reasonable royalty for no longer than the period of time
the use could have been prohibited.
(c) In appropriate circumstances, affirmative acts to protect a
trade secret may be compelled by court order.
In other words, the separation agreement which he received over $12 million dollars to sign on August 6th, and which he violated less than one month later (because the deal had to be in place before it was announced) is in full conformity with California law. The agreement puts in writing both parties rights and obligations under California law.
This (their hiring of Hurd) also tells us that Oracle doesn't have a clue as to what to do with Sun's server division. Since the future of Sparc is already iffy at best, it looks like Ellison may one day be able to add Sun Servers to his "OraKILL hit list".
The discovery will be deep and ugly, because the acquisition of Sun by Oracle left a lot of people who have a story to tell and would be willing to talk - and that was before the last month of shenanigans.
Slashdot Mirror
I can ask for directions without it being seen as a sign of defeat (or maybe weakness), but a man can't. Doesn't that sort of prove one of my points - that a lot of our behaviour is hard-coded, and and as such not only leads to such stereotypes being formulated, but also validates them?
Even if we grant that this may be the result of social conditioning, it still shows a gender difference in behaviour. And the studies on housework distribution just rub it in.
Now I've never said that these differences are universal - there are men who will clean the toilet, replace the toilet paper, ask for directions, clean up after themselves when they've done cooking, just like there are probably women who refuse to ask for directions, will move to a new apartment before they'll get down on their hands and knees to scrub a toilet bowl, let the cat lick the dishes "clean" and then re-use them after a cursory rinse and wipe, and can't cook worth a darn.
But I'm not going to deny what I've seen with my own eyes, and other women have confirmed - and that study after study still confirms - that even when both sexes work outside the home full-time, the woman still bears the brunt of the housework. This is clearly a gender bias.
As for aggression, the statistics you link to clearly show that in cases where one party is the aggressor and the other the victim, it's several times more likely that it's the woman who gets killed. Maybe it's due to the fact that women are generally easier to kill than men, or that men act more aggressively in the initial attack, so that women don't have the opportunity for the "fight or flight" mechanism to actually work, but the fact remains - the stereotype of men usually being the killer in both male | male and male | female murders is 100% true.
Some stereotypes are just prejudice. Others, such as who cleans the toilets, are a reflection of the current state of the division of labour among couples in todays' society.
All humour has a "mean" component to it - it's the way we lance the wound to help drain the pus and help it heal. However, like any surgery, it has to be done with skill. Carlin had that skill - the right place at the right time in the right context with the right audience. He would say a line like that, and people would laugh, but because it was Carlin, and it was done in a greater context, you knew that he was also very much poking fun at the people who found such lines funny at the expense of others; his edginess had a purpose, and he was good at it. No, that's probably a lie - he was great at it.
Good comedy challenges the status quo and makes people think. It opens up avenues of discussion that we wouldn't normally have - and this has been true for centuries. Just look at the Fool in King Lear - he could get away with telling the truth to the King when nobody else could. The Fool has always had a dual role, as both entertainer and social bellwether. Comedy leads, society laughs (a bit self-consciously or nervously) rather than acting violently, and then a while later, society has advanced to the point where it no longer gets a laugh. Society has internalized the issue.
20 years ago it was sexual orientation - gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. 40 years ago it was skin colour - blacks. 60 years ago it was European ethincs - italians, Greeks, etc.
Today it's transsexuals. The only problem is, it was also transsexuals 20 years ago. And 40 years ago. And the violence is still also there, often from the time we're kids, and at the hands of parents, relatives, classmates, and long-time friends who then betray that friendship and beat you up in public before the whole school just to be popular.
People who wouldn't dream of using the N word in public still have no problem with calling a woman with a trans history a .. well, let's just say it's the TS equivalent of the "C" word and then some. It's mean, it's rude, and it's downright nasty. But it still gets a laugh from the chuckle-heads - the same ones who, paradoxically, just love using it as a search term for their porn fantasies. Go figure. (./shrug)
There's still a long way to go - look at how many people still think that transsexualism has something to do with sexual orientation, or don't understand the difference between gender and sex. At least now we *can* talk about it openly in some venues, but the sad fact is that TS are still heavily discriminated against even today - and the financial and social impact is an ugly fact. How would you like to have most jobs illegally denied to you based on your gender? It happens all the time.
I guess what I'm saying is that the punch line doesn't work in this context - many of us don't find it that funny when compared to our reality. If it were a one-off post, that would be one thing, ignore it and move on. As a signature line, it's making a statement - and not a healthy one. This is not to criticize the person - to the contrary, I would find it very hard to believe that someone adopted such a signature on purpose to put down anyone. They probably wanted something from Carlin, and "These are the 7 words you can't say on television etc ..." doesn't fit in slashdot's crummy signature length limit - something that people have been complaining about for years.
I would also point out that the study itself is flawed because of the self-selection factor. Go to a place and look at people who are dancing, and most of those people probably think, at some level, that dancing ability is an indicator of "something." That something could be as simple as people who hold their alcohol better tend to be in better health overall, so they don't end up doing the funky chicken walk or wearing their underwear on their head.
And no, I have never judged people by how they dance - I've never been one to hang around bars except as a group - you know, celebrating someone quitting (always take them out on their last day to celebrate their future success), a group get-together or party, or stuff like that.
Want to get my attention? Make me laugh a bit.
You won't get any contrary argument from me :-) The Bible shows two contradictory Jesus. I suspect that if we had a time machine, we'd find one of them was edited in. Probably the mean one - after all, "yet another mean religious zealot" wouldn't have been news back then.
I also think that most people are insecure about *something*, whether it's their appearance, their intelligence, their age, their weight, their height, their social status, their job, their spouse, their kids, their parents, their grades, or something else.
Now while I personally am not offended by the Carlin joke when he made it - he was an equal-opportunity joker - it's not the same thing when it's in a signature. For one thing, the context is lacking. For another, the poster is not George Carlin. I can choose to ignore it, but I can also understand how others might not be able to. Also, by choosing to ignore it, I then become part of the problem. So there's a choice - either ignore it, or discuss it. After all, next time it might be something that *I* feel I cannot ignore.
There's no anger at the original poster - just a "hey, you might want to consider that this is a site that has a lot of transgendered people, many who are living in fear of discovery, and your signature is derogatory, not to our beliefs, or to our country, our politicians, or whatever, but to us as human beings. Just something to consider."
On the other hand, I doubt that George would make the same joke over and over again in a venue where he knows that there are going to be a statistically much higher than average number of transgenders (such as the tech field in general, and programming in particular). And he certainly wouldn't do it one-on-one. Comics are very much aware that the other side of laughter is pain.
To take your "friends, parents, pets" example - none of those contain implicit put-downs of the person you are talking to - and you probably know at least one transgender - though they're probably doing a good job of hiding it, which they learned to do at a very young age after getting beaten up and made fun of all the time.
Sure, people make stupid jokes ... sometimes to cover up their own unease, or as a way of trying to show that they're okay with it, or whatever. If no offense is meant, then it's no harm, no foul, and we can all laugh at our flaws and weaknesses. Unfortunately, what is okay among friends, where you know that deep down they have your best interests at heart, isn't the same thing as, for example, the posts that insist on looking only at the chromosomes. Even the Olympics had to stop doing that - not only were there too many anomalies in the general human population to make it a universal standard, but when they flunked someone who later gave birth, it showed that it's not all about that 46th chromosome.
We all say stupid things, we all make social gaffes, but the great thing is that we don't think the other person is a jerk or evil just because they were a bit maladroit when confronted with a situation they didn't understand.
Yes, there are exceptions, on both sides, but that doesn't mean that it's sexist to point out that one gender behaves predominantly one way, and the other gender the opposite. To refuse to acknowledge this would itself be sexist, don't you think? Let's take another example - criminal behaviour. Men are 10x more likely to commit murder, and 9 times more likely to have been in jail. Is it sexist to point this out? No. Does it mean that every man is going to be a serial killer? No, but ignoring the reality would be sexist as well as dangerous.
I'd go further, Trading service for invasion of privacy is quite another.
There's a concept called "anonymity of the crowd" - that you have a reasonable expectation to be able to just blend into the crowd in public. Nobody has a right to start following you around and tracking what you're doing just because you're in public - we call it "stalking." So why should it be tolerated on the Internet?
The worst part is that advertisers see social media as giving them even more insight into peoples private and semi-private lives.
It's not an "in your face" thing - I'd much rather that they hadn't been such blabber-mouths. Just like it would have been nice to have been able to help someone on slashdot w/o being exposed - but it's all for the better. (at least that's what I keep telling myself :-)
Your argument also applies even more to Java. The standard is licensed by ONE company. It's even more of a fat, resource hogging pig. It's (a lot) less portable than flash - ask any of the licensees who paid to license JavaME. (Java Mobile Edition - the completely non-free (as in pay me a license to use it and a fee for every phone solde) and non-portable (as in apps have to be tweaked for every phone).
There's only one company that controls dalvik. And dalvik is closed.
So, to quote you, quit being stupid.
Flash works. html5 doesn't. Pick one to develop your next game. I'm sticking with flash for the foreseeable future - it's much more cross-platform than html5.
If you're doing it wrong, stop doing it. Then take some.
I know, that'll happen about the time guys start asking for directions, or changing the roll of toilet paper. If you can't do that, take your laptop and use it to record yourself "dancing" and you'll get the picture. You might not see what you're doing right, but you'll see what you're doing wrong. Work on removing all the wrong stuff, and hopefully what's left will be the right stuff.
And I said that will happen when guys are finally able to look at women and notice that there's actually something ABOVE the neckline. I know, never gonna happen, unfair to ask because guys can't help it, little head has a mind of its own, and when the blood goes to it, it leaves the brain.
It's the guys dancing like frogs in a blender who make the frogs look bad. Besides, women have nothing against frogs - you have to kiss a lot of them to find a prince.
Thank you. Much of society is like you - they may not have a clear understanding of the issues, not having had to confront them up close and personal, but they're willing to at least discuss it. The problem is that some people react very negatively - even violently so - to transsexuals. And then there are the religious people who insist that "Satan has a hold of your life and you must pray it away", and the politicians who find transsexuals and bathrooms to be a great way to get attention. Now throw the occasional stalker into the mix. Why? Who knows - go ask them.
I would like to point out that the medical community would disagree with you. Addicts can overcome their addiction, in some cases with medication. Transsexuals, on the other hand, have some structural differences in the part of the brain that deals with gender identity imprinting, and these appear to have been caused by both the fetal environment - not enough testosterone because the genetic programming in the fetus that triggers the production of testosterone acts too late, as well as the testosterone receptors in some cases having extra base pairs, making them a poor fit. This causes the failure of the fetal brain to change in a critical area - the area that determines your gender identity or self-perception.
We've known about the testosterone problem for more than 100 years - it's easily detectable just by looking at the hands. The future growth of the finger bones is also influenced by testosterone at about the same time. Men have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers because testosterone causes the ring finger to grow longer in comparison to the others, for some reason. This is known as the 2D;4D ratio (second and 4th digits).
Now this isn't a universal truth, since there's always variance among individuals, but male-to-female transsexuals also often exhibit the same 2D;4D ratio as genetic women. This helps explain why transsexuals feel like women trapped in mens bodies - kind of hard not to when that part of your brain is hard-wired from before birth to keep sending you that message.
We can't change the brain structure, or you would be right, except that then we run into an even greater moral dilemma. Changing the brain means you're no longer you.I'm sure you'll admit that how you see your gender is a big part of who you are. Would you consent to changing that if you woke up tomorrow with certain parts "missing"?
We have a treatment that is safe, has a very high success rate, and doesn't involve trying to convince people that they aren't who their brain says they are. Certainly a lot more reasonable approach than saying "you must be unhappy with who you are for the rest of your life."
There's the way that men treat women in general (which has its own share of dismissal, ridicule, and voilence), and then there's the way that transphobes react - its a second knife wound that most people simply don't have to deal with, and have absolutely no concept of how much it cuts to the core. And we all encounter it at some point during our transition. And you hope it doesn't get to the point where you have to call the police because you don't know how THEY are going to react.
Of course, these same people couldn't do what we have to do to be ourselves - not for one day, never mind for a lifetime. Could you picture one of them even pretending to have "the talk" with one of their friends? Heck no! They'd volunteer to have their appendix removed without anesthesia first. That's "manly". Same as not asking for directions, leaving their dirty clothes on the floor, and not changing the toilet paper roll when they finish it - or leaving half a square neatly balanced on the roll so they can say they didn't "really" finish it. Come on you guys reading this, fess up, you do this all the time, and it bugs us that you think we're that stupid. It's 3-ply paper, and you leave a one-ply half square sitting there like an orphan, and you're hoping that when we open the door the draft won't blow away your sorry "excuse" for not changing it. You dissect the toilet paper, and then walk around all day making skid marks in your formerly-tidy-whiteys, rather than change the stupid roll of toilet paper.
In many cases, at some level, at least some of the transphobes know that we have more courage than they do. They don't understand that the real act of courage was confronting the issue and looking at the alternatives, ranging from depressing to grim, and then asking for help and acceptance in an uncertain and sometimes-hostile world.
There are posters on slashdot who are still afraid to "come out" about being trans, simply because they know that someone, somewhere, is going to be an ass. So they stay hidden, same as they do in their personal lives - because they are afraid of the consequences of being "discovered". Been there, done that, traded in the tshirt for a bra and skirt. It's what's right for me, and while I'm willing to discuss it with those who have a problem with it, in the end I'm not the one with the problem.
This is not to imply that slashdot is infested with transphobes - quite the contrary. Most of the slashdot crowd is very supportive, and I owe them for that. At least that's been my experience after I wrote this and this and people began to ask how I knew so much about the whole "woman trapped in the wrongly-gendered body" experience.
On a final note, I guess I really should see if it's possible to change the account name, because when I post something funny and people who don't know go "Dude! That was great!" I'm caught between laughing at the incongruity and going *sigh*. It makes for some interesting back-and-forth. And this account has great karma and lots of equally-great fans.
I don't think it's a womens heart you're looking at - it's just a coincidence that it's in the same general area.
I think most people would agree that there's a significant difference between a predisposition (an addictive personality), which can be overcome, as millions of ex-alcoholics, ex-drug addicts, and ex-smokers prove, and gender identity issues, which have proven to be intractable to "curing" except by hormones and surgery.
As for the other insulting crap you posted, I'll refrain from commenting on it. It speaks for itself.
People can choose to be drunks and gluttons. Nobody chooses to be a transsexual.
Associating the two is catering to the stereotype of transsexuals as having "made a choice", when in fact it's a "coming to grips with the situation instead of denial" option.
Any woman (genetic or trans) is going to be put on the defensive by being referred to as a man - and this is what the joke does. And it does it to a class of people who already trying to deal with an incongruent self-image.
To put it another way - did you choose your gender identity? Or were you just "you"? When your self-identity matches up with the way the rest of the world sees you, no problem. When it's not ... big problems.
If you look at the comments elsewhere in the thread, you'll see the flippant dismissal that others have of the situation. Now imagine being a transsexual and seeing that sort of ignorance expressed on a regular basis - maybe even from some members of your own family. It can be a bit disheartening. The fear of being exposed to that sort of ridicule can keep a transwoman from seeking medical help for a long time, or make them prey to religious people who convince them that they can "be healed by prayer", or any one of a number of other ways to avoid dealing with "it."
And this doesn't even begin to cover the additional problems, such as job discrimination, and the OMG I DON'T WANT "IT" USING MY WASHROOM!" crowd.
"IT" ???! Yes, there are still people who react that way to transsexuals. Not human beings. "it" - even though everything was just fine until they found out that she used to be a he.
Trust me on this one - it's not a choice, and certainly not a "lifestyle choice" as some critics try to portray it, and it's not a situation you would ever want to be in.
In this case, a permanent injunction is appropriate based on his current behavior. Not only won't the suit get tossed, it will get messier as other parties are drawn into it. Any other company that there is so much as a rumour that they had contact with Hurd is going to get dragged in.
Well, ye! Looking like you're having an epileptic fit is decidedly unsexy. We needed a study for that? What next - a study saying that facebook is for loo ... oops - too late
Also, to answer your question, I've successfully argued cases in both criminal and civil courts, as well as successfully sued the government. That last one makes a good example - They claimed $71k. I told them "see you in court." They then offered to settle for $20k. I told them "see you in court and hired a lawyer. My lawyer called me to tell me that, after talking to everyone, he thought he could work out a settlement for less. I fired him and took over the case myself, since I had originally told him (1) there is no money owed and (2) no negotiations whatsoever. Not for one red cent. Scorched earth.
Then I had the fun experience of listening to a lawyer on the other side whining - WHINING - for me to at least make SOME sort of offer, and my again saying "tell it to the judge - we have a court date."
Net result, 2 days in court, 1 won every argument, made mince-meat out of everyone on the other side, and the judge agreed that not only did I not owe a penny, but that I was owed a couple of grand. So I trust my opinion, and HPs lawyers opinions, more than I would trust the average slashdotters - or most lawyers, for that matter. Most lawyers are incompetent - read any lawyer's biography and they'll admit as much :-)
The breach occurs when he communicates information to people when meeting with them at X. To argue otherwise is ridiculous.
2 Delaware corporations sparring over venue. The case was NOT heard in Delaware, even though both parties (SCO and IBM) are Delaware corporations.
Venue is never automatic when dealing with companies that have operations in more than one state, or where parties are located in different states.
So why didn't firefox try to implement it instead of using a plugin? It's because they can't. They don't have the skills, just like they don't have the skills to do a proper threading client. Instead, they waste time and effort on this stupid - very stupid - game contest. All it will do is highlight that html5 is not supported uniformly across all browsers, and that browsers still make lousy app platforms, and the "browser as platform" model deserves to die. The DOM is crap that was bolted on and then extended for all the wrong reasons, and we're wasted more than a decade with it. Move on, already.
The future will be multiple runtime platforms for custom apps (same as we already have for java, and flash, and php, and perl, and python), not browsers.
It's a fact. And look at all the businesses trying to do the same. And they're failing, for one simple reason - the facebook format is not conducive to conversations.
Maybe Ellison can buy them and kill them off.
This is NOT news. Except maybe to nerds, who often look like a frog in a blender whenever they get near a woman.
That's a lot better than html5, which is a work in progress and much fought over.
No, it's not. Please,.for once, follow a link and read it instead of believing the echo chamber that is most of slashdot's uninformed masses.
Here - since everyone is so brain-dead when it comes to actually doing any research ... he's being sued under California statute 3426.2
In other words, the separation agreement which he received over $12 million dollars to sign on August 6th, and which he violated less than one month later (because the deal had to be in place before it was announced) is in full conformity with California law. The agreement puts in writing both parties rights and obligations under California law.
This (their hiring of Hurd) also tells us that Oracle doesn't have a clue as to what to do with Sun's server division. Since the future of Sparc is already iffy at best, it looks like Ellison may one day be able to add Sun Servers to his "OraKILL hit list".
The discovery will be deep and ugly, because the acquisition of Sun by Oracle left a lot of people who have a story to tell and would be willing to talk - and that was before the last month of shenanigans.