What's in a word?

 Equal Rights, Life, Morality, Politics  No Responses »
Mar 302011
 

I said / you said / he said / she said.

I admit, I’m biased. English is my natural language, and other than a few programming languages I’m hopelessly inept at any other language. I can introduce myself and ask if someone speaks English in French, and know the word for “welcome” in a bunch of languages (thanks Apple).

Yet there’s some features missing from English that would be really handy. Like, for instance, a gender neutral way of referring to a person. What if it doesn’t matter if the person is “he” or “she” when you reference them? Hell, half of the talk in English about sexism and political correctness comes from the simple fact that “it” is our only gender-neutral reference, and everyone is reluctant to use the reference on people.

I particularly liked Greg Egan’s “ve”, “ver” notion for software entities, but I can’t see that being readily adopted, regardless of how sensible it is.

But I come not to talk to you today about gender neutral speech. Instead, I want to reference the power of the word.

Words are intensely powerful symbolic references. Names, a subset of words, even more so – in ancient times, and sometimes still today, people think there’s literal power in a name. Fantasy is awash with stories about people having a public name, and a private name, and to give someone their private name is to give them power. We see this today online – many people have public pseudonyms on the internet that bear little or no resemblance to their real name. It may be that they want some anonymity, or it may be how they self-identify – or some combination of the two. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t always go by “Preston de Guise” online – depending on where I am or what I’m doing, I have other nicknames. (Those who know me though, who are really close friends, can follow me regardless of where I am or what I’m called at any given time.)

Words are powerful, powerful things.

Words are why we seek equality in marriage.

He has a boyfriend / she has a husband.

Forget sex in that statement, just read it for what it is: the former implies a transient or non-permanent relationship. The latter implies a permanent relationship. Sure, we know that people can get divorced, but the act of marriage is a statement of commitment. It doesn’t mean it’s a statement of religious commitment, or a statement of monogamy – it just simply means it’s a statement of commitment.

The simple fact is: if someone tells you they have a boyfriend/girlfriend, or someone tells you they’re married, you make an automatic assumption about the longevity of the relationship and the potential level of commitment. Or at least, a lot of heterosexuals do.

I have a boyfriend. He’s been my boyfriend for 14 years, heading into 15. Not so transient a relationship when said that way, but “I have a boyfriend” sounds nowhere near as complete as “I have a husband”.

I am have a partner / I’m married.

The latter statement is simple – it refers to a lasting commitment that, in the west in particular, we assume to be about love.

The former? Is it a business partner? Is it a cold, loveless relationship? “Partner” is not a warm term at all. It’s about as cold as saying, “There is a person whom I live with and periodically share in activities with.”

Because I can’t say “I’m married”, expressions of my relationship become sterile, spartan statements which belittle the extent of the relationship.

We’re in a de-facto relationship / we’re married

In the latter half of the 80′s in Australia at least, de-facto relationships slipped out of being polite vernacular for “living in sin” to “OK, so they don’t want to get married”. But there’s still a stigma associated with de-facto relationships. Is it because one partner feels too aloof to take the other partner’s name? (When viewed from a traditionalist/religious background.) Is it because one of the partners is a real ball breaker? Is it because one of them wants to get married but the other one doesn’t, and therefore may leave at any moment?

Society may put up a veneer of acceptance for de-facto relationships, but in the end people snicker and sneer behind closed curtains about what that de-facto status means.

Two people who have been in a de-facto relationship for years or decades are usually accorded less respect than two people who have been married for just a few minutes.

Come to our Civil Union / Come to our Wedding

Apologists want to reserve “wedding” and “marriage” exclusively for heterosexuals. That’s just a clap trap attempt to avoid the demand for civil rights. You may as well say, “Look, we’re really sorry we’re dirty filthy faggots in your eyes – just let us call our relationships ‘civil unions’ and we can all get along together.”

What’s a civil union? It’s another cold statement of relationship. It’s not about warmth or love or long-term commitment. It’s an acknowledgement of partnership. Do you really want to run around after your civil union and say, “Look, we’re partners now!”? Or will you say “we’re married” to your homosexual and accepting heterosexual friends, and “we’re in a union” to people you don’t know?

Words are powerful things

Words are powerful things indeed. They not only express thought, but they help to shape thought. Look at race relations in the United States. 100 years ago, the term “nigger” was deemed a perfectly acceptable way of referring to African-Americans. Now, thanks to a change of attitude, it’s at most something that can be used jokingly between African-Americans, but it’s not a word to be used by people of other ethnic backgrounds. Was that responsible for improving the basic rights of such individuals? No, it wasn’t responsible – but when you refuse labels, or counter them, you also counter the thought. If it’s no longer politely acceptable for people to use unpleasant words in public, the majority of them won’t, and therefore they’ll start to think differently – which in turn means they’ll start to think.

If we give in on gay marriage rights, and let our marriages be called “civil unions” or “partnerships” or any other sub description, we remain a sub class. Equality comes through thought, and thought is intrinsically tied to language. I’m not trying to start a debate on whether you can have language without thought or thought without language, but it’s clear the two are closely related, and it’s clear that while thought can influence language, language can also influence thought.

We must not give ground on the language of our relationships if we want our relationships to be recognised as equal.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:28 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

No Tony, you and your cronies will be wrong

 Politics  No Responses »
Mar 262011
 

Tonight NSW Labor will likely see the biggest landslide against it in Australian political history. The population of the state has overwhelmingly decided the election is a moot point: after years of not being governed by the NSW Labor government, everyone is tired. 16 years rule by one party is too long in Australian politics. NSW Labor has demonstrated the worst effects of such longevity: cronyism, nepotism, graft, scandal and a complete lack of ideas is just the tip of the iceberg.

And so, short of Barry O’Farrell being filmed casting his vote this morning while doing an unspeakable act with a goat, the chances of NSW Labor clinging onto power is a pipe dream only in the minds of the most delusional members of the electorate.

But, the real question is – how long will it take Tony Abbott to claim that the NSW election victory by the Liberal party is actually a “resounding” or “emphatic” repudiation by the electorate against Federal Labor, and particularly Federal Labor’s proposed Carbon Tax?

I’m betting under just under 28 seconds. That, after all, is how long it takes an idiot to put his brain into gear (apparently). And when he does claim that it’s been a referendum on the carbon tax you can safely bet just one thing: that anyone who believes him would also believe “Hmmm, I just made a sandwich using some fresh dog shit. It’s SO TASTY.” That’ll just be O for Awesome.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:05 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Apparently we're hijacking the civil rights movement

 Equal Rights  No Responses »
Mar 182011
 

That’s right, a leader within the NAACP (USA: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) has got a bee in his little bonnet, saying that the gay community is hijacking the civil rights movement. See here: NAACP Leader: ‘Gay Community Stop Hijacking The Civil Rights Movement’ | The New Civil Rights Movement.

According to the above article:

Rev. Keith Ratliff Sr., president of the Iowa-Nebraska chapter of the NAACP, spoke at a marriage rally in Des Moines on Tuesday, adding, “Deviant behavior is not the same as being denied your right to vote,” and calling any parallel between the African-American civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement an “insult.”

The lesson in this?

It’s an important one: bigotry comes in many forms, and we’d be foolish to assume that just because someone shares in persecution, they would actually understand that persecution, and the persecution of others.

And when we, the persecuted minorities, fail to understand that lesson – well, the bigots win.

 Posted by PMdG at 6:18 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

"Don't vote Greens, say Catholic bishops" – Hmmm.

 Equal Rights, Morality  No Responses »
Mar 182011
 

According to the SMH article, “NSW Election | Don’t vote Greens, say Catholic bishops“:

CATHOLIC bishops have warned the faithful against voting for the Greens in the state election, saying some of their policies were of ”grave concern”.

They also warn:

about voting for candidates who might share similar views, pointing out that some MPs in the main parties had voted for ”bad legislation” such as same-sex adoption.

We’re also told:

The letter outlines six areas of ”grave concern”, including the Greens’ treatment of personal drug use as a health and social issue ”and therefore acceptable”, and its efforts to legalise gay marriage.

”Changing the law on marriage would expose churches and schools to coercive pressures from the state to cease teaching their beliefs about marriage and family,” it reads.

Echoing the sentiment of a letter posted on the Christian Schools Australia website this week, it also criticised the party’s commitment to remove religious exemptions from the Anti-Discrimination Act.

So, here’s the rub: you want to be free from politics; you want public funding and resources, but you want to be free to discriminate? Oh, and you’d like to advise people how to vote, too? Well fuck you.

Get your grubby paws off my government, religion. Here’s a thought: let’s have a year where there’s not one religious figure caught fiddling with a kid, where there’s not one religious figure caught doing the wrong thing with public money, where there’s not one religious figure caught in some sort of sex or marriage scandal. Please, think of the children – and the kids.

Until then, leave the discussion of public morality to those actually fit to handle it: the people with real morals and scruples.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:29 am

Lessons from Babylon 5

 Politics, Science Fiction  No Responses »
Mar 152011
 

Being away on work with little to do of an evening, I’ve been re-watching Babylon 5 lately, and today stumbled across a fantastic quote. While at times, Babylon 5 might have been a bit kitsch, the fundamental story, and the lessons in that story, remain strong and powerful. Not much is more powerful than the following:

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.

It seems a fundamental part of human nature that we desire freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of non-interference. It doesn’t matter how many guns or canisters of tear gas or bombs are at the disposal of those trying to cling onto ill-gained power, the will of people intent to be free surpasses all. This is why, for instance, the Chinese government so actively censors its incoming internet feed; every time there’s talk of an uprising anywhere, they immediately clamp down on incoming information to the country. Why? Because all those big men in power are actually terrified little men. Or as Winston Churchill said:

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers they dare not dismount.

Lately, the tigers of the world have been getting very restless.

It’s quote like the one at the start of the article from Babylon 5 that reminds me so much why I love science fiction. So much fiction on TV and in the movies is about nasty things happening, or pointless humour. Science Fiction is about dreaming futures – and to dream of a future you must dream of hope.

The world needs more hope. Science Fiction teaches us to hope.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:51 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

10 truths about hotels and motels

 Uncategorized  1 Response »
Mar 132011
 

Travelling reminds me there’s ten universal truths about hotels and motels:

  1. If you forget to check the alarm clock, the arsehole who stayed in the room before you will have set the alarm for 2am.
  2. Hotel staff seem to think that the last thing you want to do before going to bed is engage in a to-the-death wrestling match with sheets and blankets tucked in so tightly that you can give yourself RSI, or wrench your shoulder out of its socket, trying to pull back from the bed.
  3. At least one light bulb will be out in the room.
  4. “Mood lighting” is about the only option available. Apparently no-one likes the sorts of lighting they have at home when they’re in a hotel room.
  5. There will be insufficient power points for anyone with even a slight level of geek cred.
  6. In Australia at least, broadband will be charged at a rate that is comparable to the per-ounce cost of gold.
  7. There’ll either be a mini bar so small you can’t fit your own drinks into it, or packed so tight that you have to empty a small shipping container onto the limited bench space available before you can fit your own drinks into it.
  8. If instant coffee and tea bags are provided, they’ll be sourced directly from pulverised cat droppings.
  9. The ironing board provided will be explicitly designed to collapse while you’re ironing, trapping any genitalia in its path on the way down.
  10. If the hotel offers “pay tv”, that means 1 news channel, 2 documentary channels, and 8,736 sports channels. All other channels – Sci Fi, drama, etc., cease to exist within the confines of the hotel room.
 Posted by PMdG at 7:53 pm

Apple won. Get with the programme.

 Data, Technical  3 Responses »
Mar 082011
 

It’s time for the PC folk of the world to understand that Apple has won the computer war. It didn’t win by becoming the dominant computer manufacturer – there’s a big difference between winning a battle and winning a war. It won the war through the simplest of strategies: understanding what the war was actually about.

The first step to winning is understanding what you’re competing about. For years, Apple misunderstood this, and almost destroyed itself in the process. However, in 1996, when they reacquired Steve Jobs and acquired NeXT, they not only rediscovered their why, but they also discovered the fundamental problem in computing: that the natural evolution of the industry was not towards more complex systems, but to simpler systems.

Consumers want simplicity, not complexity. They want a system they can power on and know it will work, regardless of when they last used it, or what it looks like ‘under the hood’.

But hang on, I hear some people say say – I want to fiddle with the inner workings, or I want to see what it looks like under the hood. For those people, that may very well be right.

But those people are not all people – and whether those people want to admit it or not, they’re in an ever shrinking minority.

It didn’t start that way – not by a long shot. Back in the day when Apple was just starting, people built their own computers; I’m not talking buying a case, some cards, drives, CPU and memory and plugging them all together – I’m talking about something much lower level – buying the individual chips and attaching them to the circuit board, etc. A computer was built one small, fiddly component at a time.

As such, this only attracted what we’d these days describe as hard-core geeks. Enter Apple – already at that point, its focus, it’s why was to make computers that would enable users. So at a time when people were manually soldering bits and pieces, Apple started with something much closer to a conventional computer – and since then it’s just kept on going down that path.

Fast forward to 2011, and Apple has proven that consumers want simplicity. It’s not about sacrificing performance, or “dumbing” things down, it’s about ease of use.

Think about it: almost everything we do and all technology we evolve, we evolve it to be simpler and easier to use. I’ve watched “historical” dramas that saw women ironing by putting hot charcoals in an iron to keep it hot. I’ve used toasters that required you to pull down the cover, put the bread in at the risk of burning yourself against the element, and toast one side at a time.

All technology used by humans seem to share two evolutionary traits:

  • They get more powerful/more efficient
  • They get easier for regular people to use

At the same time, there’s a lot of technology which, regardless of how consumer-oriented it’s got, you’ll have some people who want to tweak it and make it work faster. That’s why, for instance, despite the long history of advances in things even as simple as say, cooking meat in the open, you get people who feel that it could be done faster by doing something like using liquid oxygen to get the BBQ hot faster. Or to put it another way – some people are computer overclockers, and others are BBQ overclockers. But neither the average computer user, nor the average BBQ user, are interested in overclocking their tools.

Look at cars as a perfect example. These days, cars are at the point where the average person wants to get in, turn a key (or press a button), have the car start, and then drive off. Automatic transmissions were introduced long ago, but there are still cars which have manual transmissions. But even cars that have manual transmissions are more advanced than cars from a decade ago. Most cars now have power steering. Many cars have advanced brake systems. We’re starting to see cars with collision avoidance systems, with the ability to park themselves – and so on. In ten years time this won’t be just in the top of the line cars – it’ll be appearing in the standard cars that the average person buys.

There are still car owners who want to push their vehicle to its limits and beyond. You start with the basics – like people who are “petrol heads” – enthusiasts who want a hotted up car. Above and beyond that though, you get the car owners who are into high performance engine tuning, people who not only want to get every ounce they can out of their car, but will frequently do as much as they can to increase what the car can give beyond what any normal driver would consider. They’re car overclockers.

There’s a place for overclockers in the world, regardless of the technology that’s being overclocked. But the simple fact remains that the average consumer does not want to overclock their device. When the average person goes to buy a kettle, it’s not on the basis of seeing how extensible it is so that maybe, say, an extra 4 elements can be put in it to boil the water really fast. It’s bought to boil water.

I think Apple almost inherently offends a lot of overclockers because it creates a much more closed in system. That closed in system means they can’t tweak components, performance, etc., to their hearts’ desire: from the most basic (theming the OS) through to the most complex (hacking it to run on any hardware), Apple sacrifice non-consumer extensibility at the expense of making it more accessible to an increasing number of consumers. Nothing demonstrated this more than iOS – be it on the iPad or iPhone, or even the iPod Touch. Both for the consumers, and for the overclockers.

It’s the natural evolution of technology.

Apple won: those computer and computing devices companies out there that are smart will at some point realise how Apple won and start to deliver similar products aimed at consumers, leaving the overclockers to continue to do their own pursuits the same way they have done in every technology area.

Then everyone will win.

 Posted by PMdG at 10:27 pm  Tagged with: , ,

The end of the IT department … my arse

 Data, Humour, Technical  3 Responses »
Mar 012011
 

Over at 37 Signals, David writes about how a growing generation of computer savvy users, and along side it, the cloud, spell the end of the IT department. This is a riveting story of unreality that starts with this corker paragraph:

When people talk about their IT departments, they always talk about the things they’re not allowed to do, the applications they can’t run, and the long time it takes to get anything done. Rigid and inflexible policies that fill the air with animosity. Not to mention the frustrations of speaking different languages. None of this is a good foundation for a sustainable relationship.

Blah blah blah blah blah!

Dear David, let’s see some facts and figures on those people who talk about their IT departments thusly, shall we? Some actual studies showing a high percentage of staff in a high percentage of businesses feeling that IT act that way towards them. I’m waiting – your article referenced none. I’ll return the favour with this one, but I’ll throw in a bit of bonus logic though.

The post runs along the lines of:

  1. Internal IT within a company is a monopoly.
  2. Monopolies are abusive.
  3. Therefore, internal IT is abusive.
  4. Reciprocating, business doesn’t respect IT and just treats it as a cost centre, exacerbating the issue.
  5. Computer users are getting smarter. They don’t need servers any more.
  6. If you don’t need servers, you don’t need IT.

This, dear reader, is a fetid pile of dead donkey’s entrails left in the Australian summer sun. Let me summarise how I read this:

Some IT departments have a poor attitude towards the business. Some businesses have a poor attitude towards the IT department. Ergo, cloud based computing will see IT killed off.

This is a terrible argument. Basically the premise is that some companies have unhealthy relationships with their internal IT departments, and therefore all IT departments are a bad idea given the new cloud paradigm and more technically savvy users. Well, maybe here’s the alternative: IT departments exist to facilitate the business, and any IT department that fails to do so is failing the business. But that doesn’t tar all IT departments with the same brush. And any business that fails to use the tools at its disposal equally is a failure.

What’s more, David insists that IT departments have their own best interests (i.e., self preservation) at heart in trying to push back against cloud based computing, using the example:

At the same time, IT job security is often dependent on making things hard, slow, and complex. If the Exchange Server didn’t require two people to babysit it at all times, that would mean two friends out of work. Of course using hosted Gmail is a bad idea!

No, it’s perfectly fine to fire IT staff and have the email outsourced to the cloud and Google! What could possibly go wrong? Hmmm? How about:

Gmail History Of Up To 150,000 Users VANISHES

No, see, it’s perfectly safe! That only happened February 2011! Cloud has learnt since then, hasn’t it? What? Oh, that’s right, it’s March 1, 2011. This shit still happens. Putting your stuff in the cloud doesn’t make it über secure. We’re now being told by all sorts of pundits that even though our stuff is in the cloud, and we can’t see, touch or feel the storage, we should be responsible for the backups of said material.

I personally think said pundits are definitely touching and feeling something, but it’s not the storage. Yeah, I love backup, I leave breathe and eat it every single day of my life – but it’s complete and utter bullshit that any cloud provider or pundit should think that it’s acceptable for users to still somehow be responsible for the backups of their data in that situation. They fail backup #101 by requiring a decentralised backup process. Hell, they fail ethics #101.

But users are getting smarter at computers! Well, sure – we’re also getting smarter at a bunch of things. The average person now probably knows more about medicine than the some doctors did 200 years ago. But that doesn’t mean we got rid of doctors. This harks to something I constantly get told by proud parents: “My X is so smart with computers. He/she uses them all the time!” When questioned, X plays World of Warcraft, or uses Facebook, etc. OK, so the average person is more proficient at using the tools to do what they want. That does not imply they’re more proficient at creating new tools.

So, let’s come back to 37 Signals, which ends on this real beauty:

The transition won’t happen over night, but it’s long since begun. The companies who feel they can do without an official IT department are growing in number and size. It’s entirely possible to run a 20-man office without ever even considering the need for a computer called “server” somewhere.

Oh really – “It’s entirely impossible to run a 20-man office without ever considering the need for a computer called ‘server’ somewhere.” Honestly, where do they get this shit from? No, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to run a 20-person business without a server. What’s bullshit is that they would have the audacity to claim that this is because of cloud. There’s plenty of 20-person businesses that have existed without servers or dedicated IT staff for decades. It isn’t rocket science. 20 people is easy to do without servers/IT staff.

50?

100?

1,000?

10,000?

100,000?

500,000?

37 Signals needs to get some real world experience rather than spouting this stuff. It’s the sort of bad science fiction that makes Skyline look like a fascinating and deeply plotted movie.

 Posted by PMdG at 4:28 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,
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