Mark Shuttleworth (the CEO of Canonical/Ubuntu) has been in the news recently because of comments he made during a conference presentation. I was present at a Ubuntu Open Week session where he was questioned about diversity, and wrote a brief guest post on the Geek Feminism blog about it.

(Meme ganked from damned_colonial.)

The problem with journals: we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. So ask me something you want to know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. Then, if you feel so inclined, post this in your journal and find out what people don't know about you.

First off: since Skud's OSCON keynote, I've been following the Geek Feminism blog. I think you should too.

Every now and again, something happens in our community that's problematic -- something racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful. It can be something high profile, or something as seemly innocuous as a comment on a mailing list or irc channel. In fact, I shouldn't say "every now and again" -- it happens a lot. More than you might think.

This post really spoke to me -- this comment in particular. Part of the issue surrounding being a minority in FOSS is that your time and energy get diverted from the productive bits (coding, testing, writing, etc) whenever you're forced into dealing with incidents like the above.

We have a lot of amazing people from a lot of diverse backgrounds in FOSS, and we all benefit from their contributions and expertise. So when someone says or does something (intentionally or not) that makes people in the community -- our community -- feel unwelcome, or excluded, or threatened -- we all need to step up and address it.

Nobody wants to have their project saddled with behaviour that drives people away. We all benefit from an environment that's welcoming the broadest possible range of contributors. So when it comes time to deal with sexist behaviour, women shouldn't be the only ones paying the troll tax. Geek guys need to step up and take part of the load. I'm trying to start with me.

Guys, if your experience mirrors mine, you've been in the situation where someone else has done something that crossed the line. You've gotten that sinking feeling that what's just happened is wrong, but maybe you weren't quite sure what to do about it, or how to do something about it, or if you were even the right person to do something about it. I'm going to urge you to step outside of your comfort zone a little, and say or do something to let people know that this kind of behaviour isn't ok. A stern glance or a terse "not cool" can be enough. It doesn't have to be elaborate or involved, but it does have to happen, because silence is tacit approval. If nobody objects, it looks to all concerned as though it's ok.

This isn't a sermon from on high. Nobody is perfect, least of all me. There are going to be times when we screw up, or let something slide that we shouldn't have. We're human; it happens. What's important is that we make the effort -- a serious and genuine effort -- to work together, respect and support each other as fellow hackers and human beings.

(Some random links that inspired this post. I found them useful; I hope you will, too.)

• Jay Smooth: How to Tell People They Sound Racist
• Shakesville: Crank it up to 11
• mdz: Do not stand by
• Chris Clarke: How Not to be an Asshole: A Guide for Men (frank but important read, especially if you think a woman is overreacting to an incident of online harassment.)

So, I and several thousand other people noticed that you released an iPhone app called "AMP UP before you score":

• http://jezebel.com/5379070/pepsi-releases-iphone-app-to-help-men-score-with-women-and-brag-about-it-on-twitter
• http://mashable.com/2009/10/12/amp-before-you-score/
• http://mashable.com/2009/10/12/pepsi-and-amp-app/

What the fuck?

How could anybody on your marketing team sign off on this?

Do I even have to start to address why this is Not Cool?

I'm a member of your target audience. Leaving aside the core issue of how this campaign blatantly objectifies and demeans women, I'm outraged at your implicit assumption that I'd find it amusing, and disgusted at the notion that it might endear me to your product.

As for your "apology": you will excuse me if I find it lacking, seeing as you are contrite enough to offer a half-hearted defense of your iPhone App, yet not contrite enough to actually remove the thing from your website or the iTunes App Store.

I've been a loyal consumer of your products up until today; it should go without saying that I won't be buying them any more. No matter how gross other energy drinks are, I'm sure they'll be easier to stomach than sexist bullshit.

ETA: I got a response back from Pepsi via email on Thu, 15 Oct. They thanked me for my "candid and sincere" feedback, noted that the app was available to users 17 and older who "choose to opt in to the experience", said that it was designed to be "entertaining and appeal to a select audience of AMP energy drink consumers", and that it was "apparent [I] was upset by this promotion" -- but they didn't apologize.

I've been meaning to write this up for a while, but certain events impelled me to try to get it out while it still has a slight pretense of timeliness.

Two things about Mark Shuttleworth's remarks before I go on to talk about the bigger picture.

First: what he said (that Linux is "hard to explain to girls") represented a lapse in judgement, or at least phrasing; it wasn't a deliberate and calculated exercise in dumbassery à la CouchDB. That particular choice of words didn't seem like something Shuttleworth would be particularly invested in, which is why I can't understand why it seems to be so hard to set things aright with a simple "I misspoke; it's not cool to cast all women as technical novices; I'll try to do better in the future."

Second: what floors me even more than Shuttleworth's remarks is the reaction that's come from the community. When you can't even say "Hey, you know, I think we should talk about the issue of sexism in F/OSS" without a crowd of people telling you "OMG, you're blowing things out of proportion, there's no problem, STFU" -- that's a pretty good sign that there's a problem.

I've been hoping to contribute to Dreamwidth for a while, and now have the opportunity to do so for a brief while seeing as I don't have any contract work lined up at the moment. I'll still be around here on LJ of course, and anything that's not Dreamwidth-development-specific will be cross-posted here from there. For those of you who do happen to have DW accounts, you can find me right where you'd expect: http://shadowspar.dreamwidth.org/.

Lately I've started signing all my outgoing mail with my GPG key. This has had two salutary effects, the first intentional, the second not quite so:

1. I've started to actually remember my damn passphrase, and
2. every time I send a message, I'm reminded that I own those words, so I'd damn well better make sure they reflect positively upon me.

One of the reasons some people give for the fact that there are fewer women than men involved in many areas of technology, engineering, and "hard" sciences is that, you know, women and girls aren't very interested in that "tech stuff"; they just don't like it as much as men and boys.

If you would have been with us on our trip to Science North this past weekend, you would have seen that argument for the great load of bullshit that it is. Not only did our girls have a great time, there was pretty close to an even gender split amongst the other kids in attendance, and I sure didn't see anyone off in the corner sulking about how "boring" or "uninteresting" the place was.

(This post courtesy of my discovering a store of unfinished, half-written blog posts hanging out on my hard drive.)

A fair while ago, I read The Mythical Man-month, a truly legendary tome in software engineering. While the maxims, rules, and expertise it contains are what make it a classic, I was astonished at the accuracy of the predictions that Brooks laid out in an out-of-the-way table near the back of the book: (p203, Fig 16.1)

Exciting Products:

Yes

• Unix
• APL
• Pascal
• Modula
• Smalltalk
• Fortran

No

• Cobol
• PL/1
• Algol
• MVS/370
• MS-DOS

So, way back in the day, when I was working at UVic, I was writing a program that let my fellow sysadmins track overtime hours. Of course, you get a different amount of credit if your overtime happens on a holiday, and as I started making up a list of stat holiday dates, I thought to myself (as one often does when programming, especially in Perl): "Surely somebody has solved this problem before. If I'm lucky, they've even put code up on CPAN to solve it for me."

The first might have been true, but the second wasn't. There was a whole hierarchy of Date::Holidays modules, with holidays for Germany, Australia, the UK...but not for Canada.

I complained to the owner of a paintball field about the banner graphic on their website; it features a bikini-clad woman covered in ersatz paint splotches. This kind of thing is common in the paintball industry; I dislike it because I think it portrays women as "scenery" instead of serious players, and because it tells me that the business in question thinks I'm a dick with a wallet instead of a thinking customer.

I got back a reply from the female co-owner of the field saying

I am sorry that you took offence to the banner.  It was suggested by my graphic designer who I respect and whom is female. The girl in the photo plays paintball at Double Tap on a regular basis. 

...which puts me in the rather, uh, unusual position of telling a cadre of women to knock it off with the women-unfriendly sexist stuff. O_o

Someone on last.fm suggested posting what country your top 50 artists are from. I'm curious, so here are the results:

Japan (25)
1 B'z
2 THE BLUE HEARTS
4 BUMP OF CHICKEN
5 GReeeeN
7 Perfume
8 アンジェラ・アキ (Angela Aki)
9 嵐 (Arashi)
11 古代祐三(Yuzo Koshiro)
14 YUI
15 L'Arc~en~Ciel
16 ORANGE RANGE
20 HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR
21 SINGER SONGER
23 関ジャニ∞ (Kanjani 8)
27 FUNKY MONKEY BABYS
28 LUNA SEA
29 大塚愛(Ai Otsuka)
31 ロードオブメジャー (Road of Major)
35 MONKEY MAJIK
36 nobodyknows+
38 KinKi Kids
42 レミオロメン (Remioromen)
44 ケツメイシ (Ketsumeishi)
46 TOKIO
51 NEWS

USA (12)
3 Neil Voss
13 The Killers
17 God of Shamisen
18 Flogging Molly
22 Acid Tetris Music Team
24 Bowling for Soup
25 Leigh Nash
32 Papa Roach
34 The Hooters
38 Nelson
43 Jonathan Coulton
47 Guster

Canada (9)
6 The Weekend
10 Billy Talent
12 Two-Minute Miracles
19 Raffi
26 Sarah Harmer
40 Stan Rogers
41 The Lowest of the Low
45 Treble Charger
48 Blarney (they're from my hometown!)

UK (2)
49 Natasha Bedingfield
51 Sandi Thom

Brazil (1)
30 Serapis Bey

Bermuda (1)
36 Heather Nova

Columbia (1)
50 Carolina Marquez

Australia (1)
51 Merril Bainbridge

As much as people get freaked out about what their kids are getting up to on the internet, who they're texting, what kind of pictures they're taking with their cell phone camera and who they're sending them to, and so forth, all this gadget technology has an upside: equipped with my mp3 player and a suitable selection of audio, I now have infinite perseverance when it comes to trying to outlast a fussy infant who won't settle down and let me nurse her to sleep.

Well...winter is here, and like usual, the first few snowfalls are resulting in dozens of crashes as people forget their winter driving skills and neglect to take the slippery conditions into account.

In the spirit of a gentle reminder, then, here's a little screed that an officer at the local provincial police detachment attached to the end of a press release after a first snowfall a few years ago. While I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir when it comes to my flist, perhaps some of you might want to print it out and tape it up over the water cooler at work or something. =)

(edited to improve spelling, grammar, and presentation.)

SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN

Every winter the OPP investigates numerous collisions that result in death, injuries and property damage that never did have to happen.

Every year we ask and tell the driving public to slow down and adjust your driving to the weather conditions when you see ice, snow, rain, fog or any other inclement weather.

Every winter we investigate collisions where the driving public ignores this tidbit of advice and are unnecessarily injured or killed because they insisted on travelling at or above the posted speed limit during an ice or snow storm.

Every winter, since the inception of time, we always get bad winter storms that make for hazardous driving conditions.

Every winter we will continue to call the tow trucks, ambulance, or funeral homes for body removal because YOU JUST WON'T SLOW DOWN!!!

This winter let's do our collective best to prove us wrong!!!

SLOW DOWN IN BAD WEATHER AND LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY!

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

We're opening winter with a bang this year -- modest snowsqualls and lake effect snow started overnight yesterday and have continued since. 25 fender-benders in town yesterday. We probably have the 15cm/6" of snow they were calling for by now.

Is it so wrong that I'm excited about trying out the hardcore new snow tires that we put on the van this year? Incredibly enough, I don't think I've ever driven a vehicle with proper snow tires on it -- just all-seasons -- so I'm looking forward to it.

There always has to be one, doesn't there?

As frickinmuck correctly points out, while American voters may have repudiated racism by putting a black man in the nation's highest office, many also endorsed homophobia in several ballot initiatives, including California Proposition 8.

I'm disgusted by the notion that human rights should be subject to a majority vote, let alone that any of these measures passed. Times like this remind me of how much I cherish the protections afforded me by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

(As an aside, any time anybody mentions the phrase "Traditional Marriage", I can't help but think of this Rick Mercer clip. You know! Traditional marriage, like with arranged marriages, beatings and stuff!)

This is awesome.

The vindictive, hateful, greedy and simpleminded rule of the last eight years has made a mockery of the great ideals upon which America was founded. Now I have hope -- hope that we'll see the USA coming back onto the world stage as a nation that's more interested in making and working with friends than in making and killing enemies. A nation that cares about people and not just profits. A nation that sticks to its principles instead of trying to find ways to work around them.

I've always respected the flag of the United States of America, but tonight I'd be proud to hoist her along with my own.

• Turnout hit an incredible low. A lot of people have mentioned the lack of charisma evinced by Harper and Dion, which may be part of the problem. I think the biggest part of the problem was that this was an election without any galvanizing issues. It wasn't called to decide on a crucial issue of the day. It was called because Harper felt that flaunting his own election date law and spending 300,000,000 taxpayer dollars was a worthwhile price to pay for a chance to shoot the dice for a majority.
• Feeling less than enchanted with the NDP. While I think Layton by and large is pushing for the right things, he always comes off like a sanctimonious broken record. His rolled up sleeves, no doubt symbolising his solidarity with the working man, amuse me almost as much as Harper's sweater. Most of all, when the debates came around, the NDP -- a party that, historically, has bitterly complained about being excluded from the democratic process -- wasted no time in trying to shove Elizabeth May and the Greens out the door. The NDP tries to cultivate an image of being principled and not subscribing to "politics as usual", so the irony here was just waaaay over the top.
• Speaking of whom -- I thought that Elizabeth May did a bang-up job at the English debate, pulling together eloquent and pointed passages on the fly instead of repeating talking point after talking point. Unbeknownst to some, heckles are a longstanding tradition in parliamentary debate, so while she may have come off to others as rude, I thought her verbal jabs were great (probably the best of the night was a terse "Where is it?" when Harper started going on about his platform). If only the Greens would run a decent candidate locally! It would be enough to make me at least consider them.
• Duceppe was on top of his game in the English debate as well, delivering the most memorable line of the night. Asked what the first thing is that you would do as prime minister, he replied with the instant classic "Well, I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither."
• It sounds like the knives are coming out for Dion already, which isn't a surprise given that the big story of this election hasn't been the rise of any party but the weakness of the Liberals. It's too bad; he seems like a decent guy, and even someone who I'd be interested in sitting down and having a conversation with over a few drinks, but his personality just didn't electrify the electorate. Not everyone has charisma in spades. That doesn't make him a terrible human being, just someone who's on par with the rest of us schlubs.
• While increasing the Conservative seat count, Harper could not make good on his shot at a majority, even with an incredible set of circumstances in his favour:
  • the Conservatives started off polling in majority territory,
  • the Liberals had the weakest leader in recent memory,
  • the right is united, no longer suffering the Reform/PC vote split,
  • the resurgent NDP and up-and-coming Greens are splitting the vote on the left, and
  • the economy is on everyone's mind, a topic that he and the Conservative party should be strong on.
  If he couldn't cash in for a majority this time, do you think he ever will?
• Finally, if you wanted to find a strong argument for Proportional Representation and an equally strong indictment of FPTP, you only need look as far as the third, fourth, and fifth place results in this election. The Bloc got 10% of the popular vote and was rewarded with 50 seats. The NDP took 18.2% of the popular vote and got 37 seats in return. The Greens received 6.8% of the popular vote, an atta-boy, and no seats.