Political Correctness

After an incident at the Geek Dinner (which I didn't attend) and after this link came up during a heated discussion (probably better described as scattered patches of vehement agreement) on the #clug IRC channel about the political incorrectness of geeks, I think I have an idea why geeks (hackers) tend to be less politically correct.

Geeks, simply put, don't care about being politically correct because it serves no function. It does not generate well written code. It does not solve any problems. It creates new ones. It is a hindrance.

Most geeks are already a little dysfunctional by "normal" standards. They are generally quite liberal in who is accepted in their circle. In the group of geeks I generally converse and mingle with we have different races, different religions, different qualifications, different tastes and different genders. We have widely differing world views. Despite this we get along swimingly because we have a shared interest.

We have some great arguments though. Just the other day I disagreed with someone quite strongly over South Africa's political future. Some days I'd really like to strangle some of the atheists in this group for being so close-minded (traditionally they are the open-minded ones, but you'd be amazed how closed it gets when they don't agree). I have personally taken some time out because my Christian viewpoints most certainly don't go down well in this group.

Enter outsider from stage left. This person is almost SURELY going to be offended at some point. I dare say this point will be reached sooner rather than later. The diversity of the group guarantees it. The important thing to realise is that this has nothing to do with your gender, race or views. In a group as diverse as this, we are unlikely to push people out just because they are different, but we don't mind debating those differences to death.

With that said, there is a place for everything, and the geek dinner incident was perhaps an example of bad taste. This does not strictly fall within the normal inner workings of the geek group anyway, as this was a public incident. As such it is probably fair to say that the presenter should have known better. I mean, I can hang around the house in my underwear but when I have guests it is probably best not to do that, especially if I don't know who else might be forced to share my company.

Not having been there I'm probably not qualified to say too much though. Most of this is just speculation and random thoughts anyway. From personal experience I found that taking offense is often a useless gesture in this group. Everyone in this group has been offended at least a couple of times and had to put up with it. Even the most notorious of them -- healthy white males -- are occasionally treated like the cat dragged them in because they are different in some respect. Then something technical comes up and we bury the hatchet.

In such a diverse group, political correctness is a perceived problem. None of us are liberal enough to qualify as PC all the time. We are almost guaranteed to offend each other occasionally. The only way to get along is to respect and ignore it. Which is why I say: geeks simply don't care about being politically correct. It serves no purpose.

The question now becomes whether we SHOULD in fact care a little more about being politically correct, and whether we can do this without destroying the balance in the group. The notion of political correctness exists for a reason. It would not be wise to simply ignore it, especially in public settings. On the other hand I often feel that too much political correctness, or being too open-minded, destroys your ability to have an honest opinion of your own.

In the end I suppose I really said nothing new. Geeks are a strange and diverse lot where offense is around every corner. When and whether this is acceptable is still very open to debate.

To return to the incident that sparked this line of thought, I'd have to say that not only does it fall outside the normal workings of a diverse geek group, but it also falls outside the set of debatable PC issues. I think the issue of slavery has been solved a long long time ago, it is definitely morally wrong, never mind non-PC. When a woman is reduced to a sex-object, I would say the same applies. As CS Lewis once said: Can you imagine a society where being a coward would be something to be proud of (quoted from memory)? I have to ask: Can you imagine a society where it is morally right, never mind politically correct to portray a woman as a sex object?

I actually expect diverse and heated arguments about this viewpoint of mine...

Blog spam

I've been scratching my head over this one most of the day. How do you get rid of blog spam once and for all? You can make it harder, but you cannot actually stop automated posting. If you're running a high profile site, any measures you put in place may be rendered useless.

Consider the product called BotMaster. I'm not going to put a link to them for obvious reasons, but add ".net" to the end of that name if you want to see what we're up against.

Most of my pondering actually started when an abuse email was received from our hosting company for bugs.python.org. This is a brand new roundup tracker that is supposed to take over from the sourceforge tracker currently in use. Unfortunately is is being targeted quite actively by spammers. They actually register an account using a free email address, then they post their spam as attachments to existing issues. The process is completed by spamming various blogs on the internet with links to these attachments.

Two very effective prevention methods have been put into place. One is a mandatory 4 second delay. The current implementation of the bot does not wait 4 seconds. This causes the automated registration to fail. The other is that attachments are always shown with a content-type of text/plain: this renders javascript redirects ineffective and makes the spam message a lot less readable.

The problem with a site like this is it's popularity. If it is popular enough, someone will work at it to defeat any measures you put in place. If the attacker is determined enough, the program will soon be changed to wait while filling in forms.

Kapcha? No longer sufficient. Work out the squareroot of 3 squared plus minus four squared? If they are out to get you someone will write a parser for that. Who sang the theme song to "Spy Hard"? Pretty soon the bot will google for the answer and fill it in. Multiple choice? Just try every possible answer.

At the moment the only good answer seems to be an actively managed bayesian classifier. Nothing sufficiently easy for the lowest common denominator of humans (including those with visual disabilities) remains that cannot be broken by a computer.

I'll be very interested in a simple method to verify that someone is human. Something that is hard for a machine to do. A little like breaking RSA by brute force. Unfortunately math of that kind is a little hard for humans.

It would seem that the only solution is to legislate, disconnect and/or prosecute, but first you need to catch the little bastards.

The unbearable lightness of being

This is actually the title of a book (and a movie) written by Milan Kundera that I read (and saw) once. I saw the english version of the movie, then read the german version of the book (Der Unerträgliche leichtichkeit des seins).

The story is somewhat arty with lots of symbolism. It is about a light-hearted womanising surgeon who meets a girl that is the complete opposite of himself: she takes life very seriously. They end up getting married, with lots of conflict that leads to lot of philosophical questions.

The story has a bitter-sweet ending after the Soviet invasion of Prague (and his unwillingness to retract a letter in which he criticised the soviet party) forces him to leave his position as successful surgeon and become a window washer. He finally finds meaning in life, moving to a small town with his wife and living a simple life as a truck driver (Lastwagenfahrer). Then one evening they go dancing and on their way back home they die in an accident, caused by the badly worn brakes on his truck.

A good movie that I can recommend (if you can find it). Be warned, it has an age restriction of 21 for sex and nudity (it was published in the time when they still went that high).

Why can't we all just live together in peace?

In the complex where I live the houses are quite close to each other, so we have rules about what is acceptable. These rules include driving at the speed limit (20km/h), no honking the horn, no loud music, and if you're throwing a party and it runs past 11 o' clock, you are expected to keep it down. These rules are there so that we can all live in peace.

This last weekend I had a taste of what happens when someone breaks the rules. Someone in my street invited over a couple of friends on Friday afternoon. They parked the car in front of the house (nice 2.0 Golf GTI), turned the car stereo on nice and loud, then proceeded to have a barbecue in the backyard. At arround eleven I walked over and asked them to keep it down, at which point they made a slight reduction in the volume of the car stereo. The party nevertheless continued until the early hours of the morning. This was somewhat irritating, but it is not the first time a neighbour bent the rules somewhat. At least this one didn't go outside at three in the morning singing to the moon along with Ge Korsten's "Liefling".

Unfortunately the party continued on Saturday. For most of the day we had to listen to a type of music that basically goes "BOOM" every two seconds with some sort of talking in between. The party now moved from the backyard to the front. Once again the party continued until 03:30 the next morning. All this time several people asked them to keep it down, but as the blood-alcohol level rose their willingness to do this diminished somewhat.

On Sunday morning a car was parked in the neighbours driveway across the street, several empty bottles were piled into the car and they left. A while later they returned with reinforcements. The party then continued, with more heavy drinking, now in the street in front of the house, with the music still going. The angry stares from the neighbours only made things worse. While capturing a video clip of all this with a cellphone, one of them was even shouting something at me in some or other language I don't understand.

By 17:00 they finally left.

The result of this is that this person will probably be given a warning or perhaps even evicted (a similar incident, limited to one evening, has already led to complaints on a previous occasion). To make it worse, the tenant is black and most of the rest of us are white, which means the whole incident will be painted as racist at a later stage.

And that in short, is why we cannot all just live in peace. Nothing wrong with that really. Even married people sometimes need some time on their own. We cannot live in peace, not all of us, and not always. If we can recognise that and give each other some space (and respect) we might be a lot better off.