" I have never heard of an instance where the city tried to exert any control over the content of the network, they just provide the pipe."
It doesn't matter if they are doing it, the question is whether they can. Also, you wouldn't likely know. How often did you see the NSA interference before Snowden leaked it?
Personally, I'd prefer to see the entire thing handed over to a non-profit with a board filled with privacy advocates. And we really need some stronger and more modern personal protections on communications and media in the Constitution. There should not be a risk of compromise because of some perceived national security nonsense or every time a new technology becomes available. We need to explicitly take the power to water down warrants and apply censorship out of the hands of all three branches of national government as well as state and local government. We could do a better job on the commerce clause as well and probably.
Begone Troll. Ajit is trying to control the internet as well. There is a third choice in which allow neither government nor corporations access to manipulate and/or censor the internet.
Hardly, Ajit is just a shill for corporations who want to control you to get your money. That's bad enough but government is even worse, government wants to control your actions and behavior, even manipulate you. The people behind that motivation are some combination of power grabbers, corporate puppets, and fanatics who want to impose their own political agenda on others.
The only ones who can be trusted to decide what you do and share online are the people themselves. Even access to the infrastructure should be limited to repair personnel and require public notice and transparency.
Does the FCC outlaw headshops and tattoo parlors or enact blue laws? I don't know that this is happening in the cities in question but this is a very real risk and as such we need to make sure to head off the possibility of it ever happening. It isn't whether something is being abused by government, it is whether a bad actor in government or political climate could abuse something under the law. Police abuse is also a serious risk especially in small towns.
I'm a fan of net neutrality but lets not for a second pretend you can trust government more than corporations, corporations just want to screw you out of your money, government wants to actually control and police your actions and behavior. The less power government actually has, the less anyone's political agenda can impede your freedom to define your actions, behavior, and speech for yourself.
"That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police "threatening, abusive or hateful" language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech. But municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact."
Without assuming I know what any municipal project is doing there IS a big risk here. For one, as a rule ease of police access reduces freedom and increases state power. It is dramatically more likely police can monitor and investigate your activities if they have a tap in town. The only ones who can prevent them from abuse are themselves at that point.
The other issue is interpretation of how the restrictions of government in the Constitution apply at the state and city level isn't clearly spelled out. To some degree it has fallen to courts to interpret much of this with some of the basis actually going back to old English law. As a consequence there is this odd blend of rules applying like legal rights of citizens when arrested, and cities believing they aren't bound such as a city curfew, smoking ban, or city bans of tattoo parlors and head shops. Providing an infrastructure like city water is one thing, having access to or defining how you use the internet or what you view is something I think we can all agree that no level or branch of government should have a voice in. True net neutrality also means government is hands off.
So let me get this straight, their solution is to crowd source data from all the people in the most lightly populated and poorly connected portions of the country?
It isn't like they'll be able to report the results Waze style. Participation rates in this sort of thing are notoriously low, in urban environments that is fine because low participation is still a lot of people. That isn't true in Blood, IL population 500.
If the reporting metrics and types are inconsistent across providers then come up with a combined information map with stringent requirements and a heavy fine structure. Require them to report the updated metrics and THEN put in a system like this where not only do you gain whatever advantages are to be had from crowd-sourcing but teeth are attached. If the fines are steep enough they can motivate the carriers to fix their networks. Don't just keep the funds of course, convert them into a prize for the provider big or small with the highest customer satisfaction results or something along those lines.
"They need protection from punitive actions by the government, certainly... That said, white supremacists and similar degenerates should NOT be protected from the free speech of others."
Agreed but we aren't talking about the free speech of others. We are talking about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" which in the United States has been determined to at a minimum mean that everyone has a right to pursue gainful employment. We both know many contribute to these projects on contract from an employer or in hopes of demonstrating their skills for future employment. If you prevent people from participating, you are hindering their ability to be gainfully employed.
The absence of the kind of CoC terms we've really been discussing here may result in a less friendly environment. Because of that people might choose because of their sensitivities not to participate. But the current terms for most these projects aren't preventing them from participating and expressing themselves. Flamewars may erupt, people get unproductive for a bit, then calm down and can participate again. Under these terms, people would actually be kicked off projects, sometimes long time dedicated contributors, and in some cases maybe top resources that have no counterpart in the world. In many cases a project might be kicking out the lynchpin which holds the project together. I say might and may. I'm not asserting a claim that the lynchpins and best would certainly contradict these CoC terms. I'm pointing out that these terms not only exclude people for life over what may be a single out of turn comment, they define a class of people who will never be welcome, without any regard to their merit, where the current terms welcome anyone. Software development isn't a numbers game, not really, one fantastic developer can be worth 10,000 mediocre ones.
There is really only one form of merit in software development. It is all about the code. Any policy that has the potential to reject the best code on a basis that has absolutely nothing to do with code.
The bomber didn't target critics, the return address says it all. The bomber targeted those involved in the conspiracy to prevent Sanders nomination. The entire investigation into the evil Russians was and still is largely meant to distract from the DNC conspiracy it revealed. Bombs aren't the answer but if you are upset about Trump being elected, target your anger at Hillary Clinton and the powers at be who sabotaged the popular candidate on the left.
Here is a hint, anyone who tried to suggest that the demographic of Bernie Sanders was uneducated white men... the man who actually fought for civil rights BEFORE it was politically expedient or there was any hint he'd ever go into politics. People were sick of the 2 parties and were rallying around Bernie Sanders who seems to be the only genuine candidate, he supported women when it was unpopular, opposed global wars on terror, opposed the drug war, fought for civil rights, fought to oppose unreasonable measures which target the store and manufacturer for actions outside their control with regard to firearms, along with being the only person in the senate who isn't filthy rich and ACTUALLY refused to take money from corporations and wealthy donors. He had a plan for tax reform backed by academics and even Forbes indicated that while they disagreed with the goal behind it that economically this would be the correct way to go about it.
Sure he was an independent but that is because he dodged the kind of structure which tries to rig the media to claim Hillary has won before the votes are tallied, rigs the primary for Hillary Clinton, and then when caught at it tosses the Chairwoman under the bus while suggesting Sanders needs to get a leash on the millions of supporters who were calling for Hillary Clinton to do the only ethical thing and withdraw.
There would be no Trump presidency without the DNC and Hillary Clinton and for what? So someone could feel better about themselves because someone who has nothing to do with them beyond having a vagina sat in a chair and fucked them over just as well as the male R's and D's do?
"You have also as I predicted angrily refused to provide any evidence for your claims about me."
I characterized comments you made and quoted them. What claims, about you specifically, am I supposed to be providing evidence for?
"Anyone should be allowed to express an opinion unless it's an opinion you don't like (I.e. An opinion about something someone said). Sorry dude, that will never fly with the first amendment."
You are simply taking what I said an pretending I said the opposite. I am opposing rules that punish, deter, and exclude people from working, participating, and expressing their views. Anyone should be allowed to express an opinion, that doesn't mean they should be allowed to reshape the rules to reflect that opinion. The rules for a sanitation worker shouldn't exclude the hiring and continued employment of an outspoken neo-nazi anymore than they exclude the hiring and continued employment of an outspoken butch lesbian.
When you are talking about the technical distinction begin illegal (criminal) and legal with civil liability, yes it pretty much is. Also the scope of this discussion included consensual sex and even flirtation where it involves a boss and an employee. There are certain circumstances which actually are illegal but most all of these interactions are against corporate policies.
Here in the US it is one of our principles that a diversity of viewpoints actually makes us stronger. Small pockets of extremism mean our nation with it's principles of freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints is actually functioning as intended. It is alarming to me when those pockets began to gain momentum as the social norm.
"just remind yourself that people are generally trying to make these projects welcoming"
I do believe that the people pushing these agendas are trying to make these projects welcoming. They are doing so by via a means of systemically rejecting and casting out others they've defined as unworthy of welcome. This philosophy makes being anti-social a systemic crime but there is nothing to say social norms of behavior are correct and all that should be tolerated. Without anti-social behavior we'd still have a crown to answer to, slaves in the fields, and women without suffrage in this nation. Without anti-social behavior the result is conformity and a lack of individual expression. In the workplace this has developed not because it is a good thing but out of fear, out of fear of public shaming and financial liability for your employer.
We should be protecting the ability of those we disagree with to contribute and prove their worth, not promoting policies which systematically exclude them. I will always speak loudly in response to something like this while I can and others should as well. The less defensible their views, the more difficult to understand, the more protection they need. Protecting the right to free speech of a Marxist or Neo-Nazi does not make you one and the systemic effect of allowing that comparison to me is more dangerous than allowing the people who actually do hold those views to participate in our world.
Feel free to disagree. If nothing else I'm sure we can agree there is nothing more to be gained from this discussion.
I don't care if you agree with me or not. Your own comments lacked rational argument and I can't see any value in debating you. I did nothing more than highlight them as a randomly chosen example of the kind of attitude being expressed by extremists. I let your commentary speak for itself to others. I can certainly extract something from someone being emotional and extreme coming from the other direction but the simple truth is that this side of extremism is making headway into expanding and succeeding in actually changing things in its image whereas the other is mostly just blowing hot air like it always has in this country.
It's pretty easy to point out an ideology doing extreme things like planting bombs. Subtle systemic discrimination implemented under the guise of protecting people and fairness is far less flashy and dramatic and more difficult to demonstrate but is ultimately much much more dangerous for the same reasons.
We are a country which embraces viewpoint diversity and freedom of expression. In general being a woman, man, communist, neo-nazi, satanist, christian, stutterer, homosexual, muslim, bitch, asshole, jerk, creep, sheep bugger, etc and speaking your views should not prevent you from pursuing or continuing your career or hobbies or otherwise live your life unless it objectively obstructs your job function in some way. When you try to obstruct those same freedoms for someone else (including by advocating advantages, unearned credibility, etc) everyone else should being standing up for that someone else, even if we don't like or agree with their views ourselves.
Here is the problem. This is the statement of an extremist and how he stereotypes and characterizes everyone who disagrees with him. Of course the only thing disagreeing with him means is an argument for preserving due process in a nation which has as it's most sacred legal concept "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."
"Unfortunately, it's become an incredibly nasty community dedicated to hating women as much as possible and no small part of it actually involves cheering on mass murder. That I have no sympathy with.
The body image thing, so that's a thing. It also has several aspects. Body issues can be very hard to shift even if you objectively know it's not really true. And probably many people will never really quite reach their ideal, and pressure to do so has caused a lot of problems for women historically and a rapidly growing amount for men too now. That basically sucks for all involved.
However it's a problem when it turns into "women are evil femoids and Elliot Rodger was a supreme gentleman, but I can't get a date because of my jawline rather than because I transparently hate women and want to murder then". It's also used to trap hapless depressed men into the community. The further in they're drawn, the harder it is to escape, because the overriding message is it's someone else's fault and you can't change anything no matter what."
"Firstly there are very, very, few cases where #metoo concerns one allegation against a man. In general virtually every #metoo case, from Spacey to Kavanaugh, has involved multiple people bringing up cases of sexual assault."
There are always multiple cases once there is one against a public figure whether anything real happened or not. As far as sexual assault goes, the concept has been watered down to the point where being drunk and stupid one evening a club and misreading signals that lead to unwanted contact is being called sexual assault. That should be socially frowned on but then it always has been but it certainly shouldn't be illegal.
Far more likely is the scenario that you find someone attractive and try to behave without the interest naturally slipping out in ways that combined with restraint come off as creepy because the ladies in question aren't interested. At some point you ask a random employee who happens to be female to gather things up after a meeting or grab starbucks on the way in for a team gathering, something you wouldn't hesitate to ask a male, and bam they profile you.
Fired? Pre-2015 you'd probably just have a reputation that hurts your career and some employees shifted around. Which would be a good thing because there is a serious risk if you ever have to pass one over or write them up for poor performance. Now? The company politically would probably have to fire you the minute a hint of something inappropriate is raised or risk being accused of ignoring reported issues. Who knows.
"You do know members of the opposite gender want relationships and/or sex as much as you do, right?"
Rarely. Women have sex drives and an individual woman might even have a greater sex drive than an individual man but in light of recognizing and making things comfortable for these individuals we have started to forget the generality that the typical man has by an order of magnitude a stronger drive than the typical woman remains generally true.
Just because your paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. Have you paid attention to the world lately? There have been numerous public pushes for action against men accused by women without any due process.
"All a boss has to do is imply that a sexual act will affect your standing (positive or negative) and he/she has just opened themselves up to one whopper of a lawsuit."
It's worse than that. If someone feels like that is the case, real or imagined, anything the boss has said or done, including watching the employee is highly dangerous. It doesn't matter if there is any validity to the feeling or not.
That's pretty sketchy as a claim of "legally no" you can claim civil liability for just about anything. If I overwater my lawn and the run-off kills your rosebush I could have civil liability but that doesn't mean I've broken the law.
Legally yes, but a boss is not entitled to even attempt to convince an employee to engage in a sex act or allowed to participate in a sex act with a willing and consensual employee in most businesses. It is a conflict of interest. People are supposed to get raises for work performance not because they will suck a dick for it.
anyone who attempts to inject politics into such a thing is acting in an extreme manner
That's an entirely different argument from this:
anyone who is trying to emphasis a CoC beyond "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" in software development projects is by definition a political extremist.
It may be literally different but is not in substance different. It barely even looks different when taken out of context like you've done here but the entire CoC issue being discussed and debated is about injecting politically correct behavior and respect for identity politics into arenas which contain neither role models nor politics.
CoC should just be the forum rules or what have you but within the current context any discussion about a "Code of Conduct" for an open source project is referring a political push to inject political correctness and identity politics into a code which rejects and excludes those who express non-conformant opinions. I'm drawing a distinction between normal rules of behavior such as "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" and identity politics driven codes of behavior. Individuals pursuing the later are exhibiting unexpected and unusual behavior (extreme behavior) driven by their politics (of a political nature). Thus they are political extremist.
"What is extreme about a code of conduct?"
I never said a code of conduct was extreme, if used in the normal sense to refer to simple codes that keep illegal content, spammers, and those otherwise not contributing out. But again you could call such rules by many names, in an open source project in the wake of the Torvalds CoC incident this specific turn of phrase is being used to refer to an identity politics based agenda being pushed on such projects. Since that means booting people for not conforming to rules of behavior which are irrelevant to the quality, consistency, or frequency of their contributions a CoC of this sort is extreme for the project as well.
"Can't there be non-extreme politics?"
Whether there are politics that are not extreme is off topic, the point is politics are out of ordinary and unexpected and therefore extreme within the context of software development. Code is math, software is math, politics generally do not impact math and good math from those with poor politics performs better than bad math from those with tasteful politics.
"Let's ignore the fact that you are changing your arguments on a whim."
Amusing, considering nothing in your post had any significant relation to your original argument. You make a new argument with each post, throw out new straw men. Twisting my words and arguments, being deliberately obtuse to context. This isn't a courtroom, you don't win a prize by convincing the argument you are correct while actually being incorrect. All you win is a slightly dimmer world for everyone who walks away having bought what you are selling and can't understand the difference. We both know you are trolling and props for trolling well but you do understand we have an actual political powder keg here in the states and it is spreading, I'm trying to defuse the extreme positions that are threatening to blow it and you are stirring the pot.
Injecting an identity politics issue into something which has no relation to identity or politics.
You are welcome to pick any of these definitions of extreme from Merriam Webster. going to great or exaggerated lengths exceeding the ordinary, usual, or expected a very pronounced or excessive degree
Here we have a definition of political from the same source. : of, relating to, involving, or involved in politics and especially party politics
Now let me correct it again to match my argument and see if your strawman argument still works if it actually matches my own.
"The existence of a code of conduct is completely tangential to, or even directly at odds with, political extremism." "The [advocacy] of a code of conduct [which contains politically driven elements, into an objective and non-political project] is completely tangential to, or even directly at odds with, political extremism."
My argument is obviously correct, anyone who attempts to inject politics into such a thing is acting in an extreme manner, acting in an extreme manner due to politics. I challenge to find a notable dictionary which disagrees. Of course my argument doesn't actually hinge on the dictionary definition being correct or not. This entire subject is as best a tangent or a red herring.
Slashdot Mirror
" I have never heard of an instance where the city tried to exert any control over the content of the network, they just provide the pipe."
It doesn't matter if they are doing it, the question is whether they can. Also, you wouldn't likely know. How often did you see the NSA interference before Snowden leaked it?
In other words, you have no logical refutation of what I said, just some words to put in my mouth drawn from your own bias.
Personally, I'd prefer to see the entire thing handed over to a non-profit with a board filled with privacy advocates. And we really need some stronger and more modern personal protections on communications and media in the Constitution. There should not be a risk of compromise because of some perceived national security nonsense or every time a new technology becomes available. We need to explicitly take the power to water down warrants and apply censorship out of the hands of all three branches of national government as well as state and local government. We could do a better job on the commerce clause as well and probably.
Begone Troll. Ajit is trying to control the internet as well. There is a third choice in which allow neither government nor corporations access to manipulate and/or censor the internet.
Hardly, Ajit is just a shill for corporations who want to control you to get your money. That's bad enough but government is even worse, government wants to control your actions and behavior, even manipulate you. The people behind that motivation are some combination of power grabbers, corporate puppets, and fanatics who want to impose their own political agenda on others.
The only ones who can be trusted to decide what you do and share online are the people themselves. Even access to the infrastructure should be limited to repair personnel and require public notice and transparency.
Does the FCC outlaw headshops and tattoo parlors or enact blue laws? I don't know that this is happening in the cities in question but this is a very real risk and as such we need to make sure to head off the possibility of it ever happening. It isn't whether something is being abused by government, it is whether a bad actor in government or political climate could abuse something under the law. Police abuse is also a serious risk especially in small towns.
I'm a fan of net neutrality but lets not for a second pretend you can trust government more than corporations, corporations just want to screw you out of your money, government wants to actually control and police your actions and behavior. The less power government actually has, the less anyone's political agenda can impede your freedom to define your actions, behavior, and speech for yourself.
"That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police "threatening, abusive or hateful" language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech. But municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact."
Without assuming I know what any municipal project is doing there IS a big risk here. For one, as a rule ease of police access reduces freedom and increases state power. It is dramatically more likely police can monitor and investigate your activities if they have a tap in town. The only ones who can prevent them from abuse are themselves at that point.
The other issue is interpretation of how the restrictions of government in the Constitution apply at the state and city level isn't clearly spelled out. To some degree it has fallen to courts to interpret much of this with some of the basis actually going back to old English law. As a consequence there is this odd blend of rules applying like legal rights of citizens when arrested, and cities believing they aren't bound such as a city curfew, smoking ban, or city bans of tattoo parlors and head shops. Providing an infrastructure like city water is one thing, having access to or defining how you use the internet or what you view is something I think we can all agree that no level or branch of government should have a voice in. True net neutrality also means government is hands off.
So let me get this straight, their solution is to crowd source data from all the people in the most lightly populated and poorly connected portions of the country?
It isn't like they'll be able to report the results Waze style. Participation rates in this sort of thing are notoriously low, in urban environments that is fine because low participation is still a lot of people. That isn't true in Blood, IL population 500.
If the reporting metrics and types are inconsistent across providers then come up with a combined information map with stringent requirements and a heavy fine structure. Require them to report the updated metrics and THEN put in a system like this where not only do you gain whatever advantages are to be had from crowd-sourcing but teeth are attached. If the fines are steep enough they can motivate the carriers to fix their networks. Don't just keep the funds of course, convert them into a prize for the provider big or small with the highest customer satisfaction results or something along those lines.
"They need protection from punitive actions by the government, certainly... That said, white supremacists and similar degenerates should NOT be protected from the free speech of others."
Agreed but we aren't talking about the free speech of others. We are talking about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" which in the United States has been determined to at a minimum mean that everyone has a right to pursue gainful employment. We both know many contribute to these projects on contract from an employer or in hopes of demonstrating their skills for future employment. If you prevent people from participating, you are hindering their ability to be gainfully employed.
The absence of the kind of CoC terms we've really been discussing here may result in a less friendly environment. Because of that people might choose because of their sensitivities not to participate. But the current terms for most these projects aren't preventing them from participating and expressing themselves. Flamewars may erupt, people get unproductive for a bit, then calm down and can participate again. Under these terms, people would actually be kicked off projects, sometimes long time dedicated contributors, and in some cases maybe top resources that have no counterpart in the world. In many cases a project might be kicking out the lynchpin which holds the project together. I say might and may. I'm not asserting a claim that the lynchpins and best would certainly contradict these CoC terms. I'm pointing out that these terms not only exclude people for life over what may be a single out of turn comment, they define a class of people who will never be welcome, without any regard to their merit, where the current terms welcome anyone. Software development isn't a numbers game, not really, one fantastic developer can be worth 10,000 mediocre ones.
There is really only one form of merit in software development. It is all about the code. Any policy that has the potential to reject the best code on a basis that has absolutely nothing to do with code.
The bomber didn't target critics, the return address says it all. The bomber targeted those involved in the conspiracy to prevent Sanders nomination. The entire investigation into the evil Russians was and still is largely meant to distract from the DNC conspiracy it revealed. Bombs aren't the answer but if you are upset about Trump being elected, target your anger at Hillary Clinton and the powers at be who sabotaged the popular candidate on the left.
Here is a hint, anyone who tried to suggest that the demographic of Bernie Sanders was uneducated white men... the man who actually fought for civil rights BEFORE it was politically expedient or there was any hint he'd ever go into politics. People were sick of the 2 parties and were rallying around Bernie Sanders who seems to be the only genuine candidate, he supported women when it was unpopular, opposed global wars on terror, opposed the drug war, fought for civil rights, fought to oppose unreasonable measures which target the store and manufacturer for actions outside their control with regard to firearms, along with being the only person in the senate who isn't filthy rich and ACTUALLY refused to take money from corporations and wealthy donors. He had a plan for tax reform backed by academics and even Forbes indicated that while they disagreed with the goal behind it that economically this would be the correct way to go about it.
Sure he was an independent but that is because he dodged the kind of structure which tries to rig the media to claim Hillary has won before the votes are tallied, rigs the primary for Hillary Clinton, and then when caught at it tosses the Chairwoman under the bus while suggesting Sanders needs to get a leash on the millions of supporters who were calling for Hillary Clinton to do the only ethical thing and withdraw.
There would be no Trump presidency without the DNC and Hillary Clinton and for what? So someone could feel better about themselves because someone who has nothing to do with them beyond having a vagina sat in a chair and fucked them over just as well as the male R's and D's do?
"You have also as I predicted angrily refused to provide any evidence for your claims about me."
I characterized comments you made and quoted them. What claims, about you specifically, am I supposed to be providing evidence for?
"Anyone should be allowed to express an opinion unless it's an opinion you don't like (I.e. An opinion about something someone said). Sorry dude, that will never fly with the first amendment."
You are simply taking what I said an pretending I said the opposite. I am opposing rules that punish, deter, and exclude people from working, participating, and expressing their views. Anyone should be allowed to express an opinion, that doesn't mean they should be allowed to reshape the rules to reflect that opinion. The rules for a sanitation worker shouldn't exclude the hiring and continued employment of an outspoken neo-nazi anymore than they exclude the hiring and continued employment of an outspoken butch lesbian.
When you are talking about the technical distinction begin illegal (criminal) and legal with civil liability, yes it pretty much is. Also the scope of this discussion included consensual sex and even flirtation where it involves a boss and an employee. There are certain circumstances which actually are illegal but most all of these interactions are against corporate policies.
Here in the US it is one of our principles that a diversity of viewpoints actually makes us stronger. Small pockets of extremism mean our nation with it's principles of freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints is actually functioning as intended. It is alarming to me when those pockets began to gain momentum as the social norm.
"just remind yourself that people are generally trying to make these projects welcoming"
I do believe that the people pushing these agendas are trying to make these projects welcoming. They are doing so by via a means of systemically rejecting and casting out others they've defined as unworthy of welcome. This philosophy makes being anti-social a systemic crime but there is nothing to say social norms of behavior are correct and all that should be tolerated. Without anti-social behavior we'd still have a crown to answer to, slaves in the fields, and women without suffrage in this nation. Without anti-social behavior the result is conformity and a lack of individual expression. In the workplace this has developed not because it is a good thing but out of fear, out of fear of public shaming and financial liability for your employer.
We should be protecting the ability of those we disagree with to contribute and prove their worth, not promoting policies which systematically exclude them. I will always speak loudly in response to something like this while I can and others should as well. The less defensible their views, the more difficult to understand, the more protection they need. Protecting the right to free speech of a Marxist or Neo-Nazi does not make you one and the systemic effect of allowing that comparison to me is more dangerous than allowing the people who actually do hold those views to participate in our world.
Feel free to disagree. If nothing else I'm sure we can agree there is nothing more to be gained from this discussion.
I don't care if you agree with me or not. Your own comments lacked rational argument and I can't see any value in debating you. I did nothing more than highlight them as a randomly chosen example of the kind of attitude being expressed by extremists. I let your commentary speak for itself to others. I can certainly extract something from someone being emotional and extreme coming from the other direction but the simple truth is that this side of extremism is making headway into expanding and succeeding in actually changing things in its image whereas the other is mostly just blowing hot air like it always has in this country.
It's pretty easy to point out an ideology doing extreme things like planting bombs. Subtle systemic discrimination implemented under the guise of protecting people and fairness is far less flashy and dramatic and more difficult to demonstrate but is ultimately much much more dangerous for the same reasons.
We are a country which embraces viewpoint diversity and freedom of expression. In general being a woman, man, communist, neo-nazi, satanist, christian, stutterer, homosexual, muslim, bitch, asshole, jerk, creep, sheep bugger, etc and speaking your views should not prevent you from pursuing or continuing your career or hobbies or otherwise live your life unless it objectively obstructs your job function in some way. When you try to obstruct those same freedoms for someone else (including by advocating advantages, unearned credibility, etc) everyone else should being standing up for that someone else, even if we don't like or agree with their views ourselves.
Here is the problem. This is the statement of an extremist and how he stereotypes and characterizes everyone who disagrees with him. Of course the only thing disagreeing with him means is an argument for preserving due process in a nation which has as it's most sacred legal concept "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."
"Unfortunately, it's become an incredibly nasty community dedicated to hating women as much as possible and no small part of it actually involves cheering on mass murder. That I have no sympathy with.
The body image thing, so that's a thing. It also has several aspects. Body issues can be very hard to shift even if you objectively know it's not really true. And probably many people will never really quite reach their ideal, and pressure to do so has caused a lot of problems for women historically and a rapidly growing amount for men too now. That basically sucks for all involved.
However it's a problem when it turns into "women are evil femoids and Elliot Rodger was a supreme gentleman, but I can't get a date because of my jawline rather than because I transparently hate women and want to murder then". It's also used to trap hapless depressed men into the community. The further in they're drawn, the harder it is to escape, because the overriding message is it's someone else's fault and you can't change anything no matter what."
"Firstly there are very, very, few cases where #metoo concerns one allegation against a man. In general virtually every #metoo case, from Spacey to Kavanaugh, has involved multiple people bringing up cases of sexual assault."
There are always multiple cases once there is one against a public figure whether anything real happened or not. As far as sexual assault goes, the concept has been watered down to the point where being drunk and stupid one evening a club and misreading signals that lead to unwanted contact is being called sexual assault. That should be socially frowned on but then it always has been but it certainly shouldn't be illegal.
In fairness there really isn't any evidence to support many of the allegations of the #metoo movement either.
Far more likely is the scenario that you find someone attractive and try to behave without the interest naturally slipping out in ways that combined with restraint come off as creepy because the ladies in question aren't interested. At some point you ask a random employee who happens to be female to gather things up after a meeting or grab starbucks on the way in for a team gathering, something you wouldn't hesitate to ask a male, and bam they profile you.
Fired? Pre-2015 you'd probably just have a reputation that hurts your career and some employees shifted around. Which would be a good thing because there is a serious risk if you ever have to pass one over or write them up for poor performance. Now? The company politically would probably have to fire you the minute a hint of something inappropriate is raised or risk being accused of ignoring reported issues. Who knows.
"You do know members of the opposite gender want relationships and/or sex as much as you do, right?"
Rarely. Women have sex drives and an individual woman might even have a greater sex drive than an individual man but in light of recognizing and making things comfortable for these individuals we have started to forget the generality that the typical man has by an order of magnitude a stronger drive than the typical woman remains generally true.
Just because your paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you. Have you paid attention to the world lately? There have been numerous public pushes for action against men accused by women without any due process.
"All a boss has to do is imply that a sexual act will affect your standing (positive or negative) and he/she has just opened themselves up to one whopper of a lawsuit."
It's worse than that. If someone feels like that is the case, real or imagined, anything the boss has said or done, including watching the employee is highly dangerous. It doesn't matter if there is any validity to the feeling or not.
That's pretty sketchy as a claim of "legally no" you can claim civil liability for just about anything. If I overwater my lawn and the run-off kills your rosebush I could have civil liability but that doesn't mean I've broken the law.
Legally yes, but a boss is not entitled to even attempt to convince an employee to engage in a sex act or allowed to participate in a sex act with a willing and consensual employee in most businesses. It is a conflict of interest. People are supposed to get raises for work performance not because they will suck a dick for it.
anyone who attempts to inject politics into such a thing is acting in an extreme manner
That's an entirely different argument from this:
anyone who is trying to emphasis a CoC beyond "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" in software development projects is by definition a political extremist.
It may be literally different but is not in substance different. It barely even looks different when taken out of context like you've done here but the entire CoC issue being discussed and debated is about injecting politically correct behavior and respect for identity politics into arenas which contain neither role models nor politics.
CoC should just be the forum rules or what have you but within the current context any discussion about a "Code of Conduct" for an open source project is referring a political push to inject political correctness and identity politics into a code which rejects and excludes those who express non-conformant opinions. I'm drawing a distinction between normal rules of behavior such as "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" and identity politics driven codes of behavior. Individuals pursuing the later are exhibiting unexpected and unusual behavior (extreme behavior) driven by their politics (of a political nature). Thus they are political extremist.
"What is extreme about a code of conduct?"
I never said a code of conduct was extreme, if used in the normal sense to refer to simple codes that keep illegal content, spammers, and those otherwise not contributing out. But again you could call such rules by many names, in an open source project in the wake of the Torvalds CoC incident this specific turn of phrase is being used to refer to an identity politics based agenda being pushed on such projects. Since that means booting people for not conforming to rules of behavior which are irrelevant to the quality, consistency, or frequency of their contributions a CoC of this sort is extreme for the project as well.
"Can't there be non-extreme politics?"
Whether there are politics that are not extreme is off topic, the point is politics are out of ordinary and unexpected and therefore extreme within the context of software development. Code is math, software is math, politics generally do not impact math and good math from those with poor politics performs better than bad math from those with tasteful politics.
"Let's ignore the fact that you are changing your arguments on a whim."
Amusing, considering nothing in your post had any significant relation to your original argument. You make a new argument with each post, throw out new straw men. Twisting my words and arguments, being deliberately obtuse to context. This isn't a courtroom, you don't win a prize by convincing the argument you are correct while actually being incorrect. All you win is a slightly dimmer world for everyone who walks away having bought what you are selling and can't understand the difference. We both know you are trolling and props for trolling well but you do understand we have an actual political powder keg here in the states and it is spreading, I'm trying to defuse the extreme positions that are threatening to blow it and you are stirring the pot.
Injecting an identity politics issue into something which has no relation to identity or politics.
You are welcome to pick any of these definitions of extreme from Merriam Webster.
going to great or exaggerated lengths
exceeding the ordinary, usual, or expected
a very pronounced or excessive degree
Here we have a definition of political from the same source.
: of, relating to, involving, or involved in politics and especially party politics
Extremist
the quality or state of being extreme
Now let me correct it again to match my argument and see if your strawman argument still works if it actually matches my own.
"The existence of a code of conduct is completely tangential to, or even directly at odds with, political extremism."
"The [advocacy] of a code of conduct [which contains politically driven elements, into an objective and non-political project] is completely tangential to, or even directly at odds with, political extremism."
My argument is obviously correct, anyone who attempts to inject politics into such a thing is acting in an extreme manner, acting in an extreme manner due to politics. I challenge to find a notable dictionary which disagrees. Of course my argument doesn't actually hinge on the dictionary definition being correct or not. This entire subject is as best a tangent or a red herring.