[clug] Political (in)Correctness or Just Some Fun?

[Jim Croft]

as a d00d, I am actually quite offended by this digital, nay
hexadecimal, objectification - and I will have none of it!

6a696d

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Daniel Pittman<daniel at rimspace.net> wrote:
> steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> writes:
>
> You might find it easier to answer these questions yourself if you stop
> thinking about the problem in the terms that your subject line frames it, and
> more about the actual problem itself.
>
> You could, for example, as this as:
>
>    Does this exclude, diminish, or attack the role, involvement, presence, or
>    acceptance of women in Java, IT, or the broader community?
>
>    Is it just the developer having fun, or are they having fun at the expense
>    of someone else?
>
>    Does this have the effect of excluding, diminishing or attacking women
>    once outside the original context?[1]
>
> Those are a much, much clearer questions, and probably much easier for you to
> try and answer yourself.  Framing the question clearly is valuable in seeking
> answers.
>
> [...]
>
>> "Compiled Java class files (bytecode) start with hex CAFEBABE. When
>> compressed with Pack200 the bytes are changed to CAFED00D."
>>
>> Ie. Cafe == coffee == Java.  Babe is uncompressed, Dude is
>> packed/compressed.  Any significance I can't see?
>
> Probably not.  You seem generally intelligent, so you should be able to do the
> analyses yourself and work out the answer.
>
> I would note, though, that part of the question is absolute — structured like
> I suggested above — and part of it is about the intention of the original
> programmer, and the effect of his actions without that context.
>
> Answering those later parts is very hard.  I don't claim to know the intention
> or thoughts of the developer.  Perhaps it was sexist, and now isn't.  Perhaps
> not.
>
>
> One question that leaps to my mind, though, is for you, personally:
>
> Why are you asking?  It isn't clear what sort of answer you hope to get out of
> this, or even what your core question is — at least, not to me.
>
>
>> I loved the IBM convention of initialising unalloc space with
>> "DEADBEEF". Cute, possibly accurate if you used the uninit variable.
>
> *nod*
>
> Generally, I think that cute wordplay in magic numbers really is just that.
>
>        Daniel
>
> ...and, yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  This is also a very important question.  At the risk of raising Godwin's
>     law, this is somewhat like raising a swastika flag because it was a
>     religious symbol bringing good luck for literally thousands of years
>     before the Nazi movement grabbed it.
>
>     You are not *wrong*, but you better be ready for an awful lot of people
>     to misinterpret your actions, and to be very, very unhappy about them.
>
> --
> ✣ Daniel Pittman            ✉ daniel at rimspace.net            ☎ +61 401 155 707
>               ♽ made with 100 percent post-consumer electrons
>   Looking for work?  Love Perl?  In Melbourne, Australia?  We are hiring.
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-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ...
... 'All is leaf' ('Alles ist Blatt') - Goethe