Maybe the downvoters can make an argument. I doubt it, since that is the reason people abuse the downvote button - to shut off an argument they are incapable of understanding.
I didn't down-vote you (and can't), but it may not be that people "are incapable of understanding" you, and instead objecting to your claim that a method for reviewing/appraising one aspect of a film is "designed to enforce slave morality on creative people".
Using less wildly provocative language may be more conducive to a rational discussion.
My language is not more "wildly provocative" than your use of the the phrase "wildly provocative". It's only "wildly provocative" to you because you didn't bother to understand it. The whole point of the Bechdel test is to promote a slave morality (in this case feminism). Insisting that nobody embellish their language a little is unworkable, as you illustrated by embellishing your own language.
Given that your first comment is a hysterical argument labelling your opposing philosophy as 'total degeneration' and 'slave morality', I think most people would be hard-pressed to believe you were actually interested in discussion over soap-boxing. It's reinforced when you call people too stupid to understand you. What possible value can come out of engaging you?
Feminism is a slave morality by definition. I didn't invent the term. You're welcome to reject advances in Western Philosophy if you like. The value that comes out of engaging me is talking to someone who is interested in more than mere gossip. I mean, look at your comment: no more than questioning my credentials, in response to a comment of mine suggesting that maybe people put forward some _actual content_. Amazing
Despite your clumsy attempt at flowery terms, you're clearly a troll. Anyway, this exchange is exactly why the HN guidelines state: Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Because patriarchy is the slaving morality of the status quo?
You've never thought that the fact these little tests exists is because the level of male domination in social discourse is so high that it causes reactions such as yours when it is challenged?
You used the phrase, but perhaps if you want to not be a smartass, let's be clear about this in a way you haven't in the previous posts:
Male-dominated thinking is so prevalent in society that it is second nature. As a general rule, female leads are fewer than male leads, male roles have more significance than female roles in anything that's not romance and comedies, and there are significant differences in that which go beyond a mere reflection of society or properly-reasoned discrimination in the current world.
Thus, a couple of Swedes think it would be a good idea to let people know that this goes on, a lot, without any pretention of doing much more than pointing it out.
Replace "woman" with "racial minority", or "poor", and it still makes sense, although the points of contention are different. Minorities are underrepresented in most movies (that is, they are proportionally less prevalent than even reality in the roles they cast), or in the case of, for example, black people, are cast into very clearly-defined stereotypes which do not necessarily match reality, and worse, give no possibility to the fact that black people can be anything else other than a stereotype.
Keeping with the example of black in movies, although this has been changing, such changes can also happen in the unnatural role where a minority is purposefully put into a role that breaks stereotypes. That may be fine, but there is a broad spectrum of character diversity between stereotype roles and main characters put in place to "make a point" about diversity.
Even then, positions of patriarchy are still so embedded that the way in which minorities are represented, even with the intention of breaking stereotypes, can be flawed.
That is what this test is about, with regards to gender equality, and I fail to see anything surprising about it.
That you think the terms "slave morality" and "total degeneration" are "extreme rhetoric" illustrates that you didn't understand the post. The point of reading is not to find any old interpretation, but to figure out what the poster meant. It's because of these highly superficial readings that the GP is allowed to get away with inserting the assumption that these sort of measures represent improvement, in spite of the fact that at the limit of slave morality is total degeneration.
Maybe if feminists (part of the parasitic political class) spent less time being resentful of what others have built and built something themselves they'd have less reason to be resentful in the first place. Now we're living not just with the reactive feminist losers, but the reactive-reactive super-loser MRA types.
In other words, you ignored the content of my comment and went looking for _dirt_ you could use against me. Bravo, you complete imbecile. And I am anti-egalitarian - feminism is just the current vogue in the tech scene, which is currently degenerating both technically and socially. And your behavior of gossiping about my account is a prime example.
Your comment is up there with the "worst garbage" on HN. An inconvenient opinion that you have no answer to (see next paragraph), answered with a laughable accusation of "extreme sexism". Get a life, loser.
>You might as well have said civil rights leaders should have sucked it up and built something themselves.
You might as well have brought the slaves of Sparta into the discussion. The conditions of women trying to produce their own films aren't even in the same _sport_ as the broad issues facing blacks during the civil rights movement. This is one mark of the egalitarian: to covertly exploit those weaker than him in order to press forward his own interests.
>But out of place - this is for serious discussion.
Yes, like your moronic attack on me. Grow a brain.
It is extremely dishonest of you to accuse this person of _hating women_ based upon his dislike of particular kinds of activism within the programming field.
Here's some more evidence for you, from his public facebook posts[0]: "Fuck women, they are coddled and have their needs met their entire lives so they never see past their own needs to empathize with others."
Misogyny is not necessarily hating women, but can also mean fearing, disliking, distrusting, and otherwise treating women as fundamentally different and inferior to men.
Claiming that a man asking that people not be immature assholes means that "a progressive movement is being coopted by women who want to make it about their vagina" is pretty much a textbook example of misogyny.
Claiming that software engineering is a "male space" (so, what, do that make the female software engineers I work with some kind of intruders on my "male space"?) is also a textbook example of misogyny.
What is it going to take for you to accept that this guy is a misogynist? Actually physically harming women? There are a lot more ways to spread fear, distrust, and hatred than just physical harm.
Sorry, misogyny means hating women. Perversion of language won't help you. Also, I don't care if the guy is a misogynist or not. There are plenty of hateful people in the world. I hate lots of people (women are nice though). What I do care about is the fact that his _post_ has had a label thrown on it to neutralise it when it contains a valid point. You've imbibed too much Kool-Aid, my friend.
Sorry, misogyny means hating women. Perversion of
language won't help you.
We don't speak ancient Greek. In modern English, misogyny means hatred, distrust, contempt towards women. Reacting to a post from a man asking "could we be more respectful and inclusive of others" with something about being "coopted by women who want to make it all about their vagina" definitely expresses a distrust and contempt towards women.
Of course, you can always parse semantics apart and say "well, he didn't say all women". That's not the point; misogyny doesn't require that you qualify all hateful statements to include every woman in existence. But that quote, in response to a man asking if we could be nicer and more inclusive, definitely states a fairly contemptuous attitude towards women.
when it contains a valid point
It has no such valid point.
No one is coming into the Ruby community, or the programming community, and trying to make it "all about their vagina". In fact, they're asking the opposite; that there's less emphasis placed on their vagina, and more on their code.
And calling programming a "male space" is inherently exclusionary. He is dismissing in one fell swoop all of the women who do code, who are part of the community.
Asking that people be nicer, and maybe consider the effect that gems named "rape_me" and "retarded" might not really reflect well on a community, with a defensive knee-jerk reaction about "politically correct thought-police safe spaces" is not a "valid point".
Yes, and I'm sure where you come from "micro-aggressions" is a real word too.
>And calling programming a "male space" is inherently exclusionary.
No, it's a statement of fact. The US Marines is a male space. Oops, am I a bad little misogynist now?
>Asking that people be nicer, and maybe consider the effect that gems named "rape_me" and "retarded" might not really reflect well on a community, with a defensive knee-jerk reaction about "politically correct thought-police safe spaces" is not a "valid point".
Yes, it is. If it's invalid, then by all means invalidate it for me.
>No one is coming into the Ruby community, or the programming community, and trying to make it "all about their vagina". In fact, they're asking the opposite; that there's less emphasis placed on their vagina, and more on their code.
I don't hang out with Rubyists. I don't care about Ruby. It's a bad language, for a start. In the general programming field there are plenty of people spending lots of time trying to boost the status of women and institute PC memes. Do you deny this?
Yes, and I'm sure where you come from "micro-aggressions"
is a real word too.
Not really sure where you got that. I didn't use that term and neither did the author of the original post. It's a perfectly valid English construction; whether the term it describes is something that's particularly relevant is another question.
No, it's a statement of fact. The US Marines is a
male space. Oops, am I a bad little misogynist now?
There are women in the Marines, and many of them have served and died in the line of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. So not only is that not a statement of fact, it's also quite insulting to those women who have put their life on the line for this country.
Now, it's true that as of now in the US, women have not been put directly into combat roles. Combat battalions are still exclusively male spaces. Of course, that doesn't mean that women haven't been involved in combat; sometimes they have by accident, or in many cases they have through loopholes or trial programs like the Marine Corps Lioness's program.
Stating that the programming profession is male dominated is a statement of fact. Stating that people are trying to "co-opt male spaces" by being more inclusive of women is misogynist. Talking about co-opting male spaces implies that it's something that men have the right to and women to not; that something is being taken away from men by making it friendlier for women to join. That implies that either women in the space are bad, or being friendlier and making them feel more comfortable is bad, either of which can accurately be described as misogynist.
Yes, it is. If it's invalid, then by all means
invalidate it for me.
Thought police must be, well, police. Even if you want to speak metaphorically, they must be someone with some kind of coercive power to apply rules that are designed to shape how people think.
The original author was simply pointing out some examples of bad behavior, and saying "hey, this doesn't make you cool, it makes you an asshole". He mused about whether RubyGems should ban them, but then said this was unrealistic.
On the other hand, Aaron Ashworth threatened to and then did ban him from the Ruby Facebook group. So if you're looking for "thought police", that qualifies more than criticizing some people for childish names.
So, I've invalidated the point. Will you now admit that the point was not valid, and that the nasty behavior (accusing women of making it "all about their vaginas") was simply nasty behavior for the sake of being nasty, and not because there was a valid point?
And don't try to tell me something along the lines of "well, maybe he didn't have a valid point about this particular post, but it is a real problem." If you want to discuss real problem, you should discuss real problems, not lash about about vaginas and thought police.
I don't hang out with Rubyists. I don't care about Ruby.
It's a bad language, for a start.
Sure, let's forget about Ruby for the moment.
In the general programming field there are plenty of
people spending lots of time trying to boost the status
of women and institute PC memes. Do you deny this?
There are some people spending lots of time trying to boost the status of women, yes. I'm not sure I'd say "lots of people" relative to the size of the community. Most people mind their own business and don't really act one way or another. Some people act aggressively negatively. Some people act more dismissively negatively.
I have no idea what you mean by "institute PC memes". The phrase "PC" is thrown around to refer to so many things, and tar so many thing with whatever bad reputation that it's supposed to have, that I'm never really sure what people mean when they say it any more.
Some people try to institute policies to make male-dominated spaces more friendly to women. Some people try to use social means, of speaking up about what they find to be unacceptable behavior. Some focus on encouraging and mentoring women.
But none of these are about making anything "all about their vagina". That's a ridiculous reactionary overstatement. The original post wasn't about anyone's vagina, it was about wanting to take the focus off of things like that and put it onto more constructive things.
Making this argument is like making the argument that any time you bring up some men's issue, it's "all about your dick." No, actually. Both women and men are a lot more complex than just their most distinctive sex-linked anatomical features. But saying that is a great way to dismiss any concerns that there might be some kind of sexist behavior going on, because obviously if you complain about sexist behavior you must want to make everything be about your vagina, right?
You are misrepresenting what he said. Programming is primarily a male activity. That is fact. He is pointing to the attempts to co-opt the programming landscape "out-of-band" by activism - as opposed to simply taking control of and starting new projects. Your post is a perfect illustration of this sort of activism; you have put words right into the guy's mouth because you don't want to be surrounded by men.
I'm not sure what a "male space" is, but it isn't software engineering. It is not a gender specific role, both men and women can do it, men and women excel at it, and men and women should be encouraged to do it. When we think of programming as a "male space" or a "male activity" we are not moving the profession forward.
Now what is a "male space"? The military? No, women are on the front lines. Finance? No, a woman is about to become the first Chairman of the Fed. Politics? No, we have 20 female US Senators and a viable Presidential candidate. Professional sports? No, women have their own leagues, and several men's teams have female execs. Software Engineering???
It turns out he might be a bit of a jerk after all. Nonetheless that is not the post the GGP was responding to. And your tactic of discrediting the guy rather than looking at what he actually said in the current thread is reactive behavior.
What he said about women trying to make a progressive movement all about their vagina? What is that even supposed to mean? How is the ruby community a "progressive movement" (yes, he was just quoting someone, but it doesn't even make sense in that context).
This was in response to a man asking that people not act like assholes and name things immature sexual names.
There was no point here. He was just lashing out at something he's afraid of and frustrated by. Asking that people act nicer does not make something a "politically correct thought police 'safe space'". And claiming that asking that people act nicer is "co-opting of male spaces" is a pretty pathetic attempt to play the victim card while simultaneously trying to exclude and marginalize women who have contributed tons to the tech industry.
Dismissing someone by comparing a man who is asking for there to be less sexualized and derogatory language in a community to "women who want to make it all about their vagina" is nonsense on several axes. For one, the person he was attacking is a man. For another, the whole point of the argument is for it to be less about vaginas, or other sexual differences. Bringing up sex (and especially in violent and derogatory terms, like rape-me and recursive_pimp_slap) can make an environment uncomfortable for people who already feel marginalized in a community.
>What he said about women trying to make a progressive movement all about their vagina?
It's an outburst. So what? Maybe it's humor, maybe he has some kind of pathological issue with women. It doesn't matter because there is a valid point being completely ignored so people can moan about how "women unfriendly" the post is.
>What is that even supposed to mean? How is the ruby community a "progressive movement"
Firstly, I don't think the Ruby movement is progressive, mostly because it's a shitty language. Secondly, the point is not whether Ruby is or is not progressive. Even if you accept that it's a retrogressive movement his point stands because it is a general one.
>There was no point here. He was just lashing out at something he's afraid of and frustrated by.
I beg to differ. There is a real trend of PC activism aiming to protect sensitive little flowers of various kinds against offense. Your attempt to psychologise the guy is just a cheap tactic to avoid this point.
>Asking that people act nicer does not make something a "politically correct thought police 'safe space'".
The hidden (and incorrect) assumption here is that this is unconnected to PC activism.
>And claiming that asking that people act nicer is "co-opting of male spaces" is a pretty pathetic attempt to play the victim card while simultaneously trying to exclude and marginalize women who have contributed tons to the tech industry.
"Pathetic", "margenalize", "afraid", "exclude", etc. And you say this is unconnected to PC activism? His post didn't marginalize anyone. It was making a fairly specific point that your defense mechanisms are preventing you from seeing.
I'm not attempting to "psychologize" the guy. He made a flat-out misogynistic comment. I don't know anything more about him than that (well, and the other comments which have been quoted on here). But it only takes a single comment of someone calling someone else a "nigger" in an attempt to demean and exclude them before you can call someone a racist. The same is true here; someone who claims that asking that people be a little more sensitive means that women want to make it all about their vagina is clearly lashing out in the same way.
The hidden (and incorrect) assumption here is that
this is unconnected to PC activism.
I'm not even sure what "PC activism" is supposed to mean any more, or why people consider a lot of things they accuse as being "PC activism" to be negative. Most of the times I've seen it thrown around recently were when people were just asking that other people act more nicely. Apparently asking people to act nice is now "PC activism".
I will welcome debate about how much needs to be codified; I hate policies that say "you can't use these X words" as the next guy. But a lot of what people rail about as being "PC activism" is just like this; asking that people be a little more considerate in naming package they're putting into a public repository.
So, what's an appropriate reaction to this post? Maybe to say "OK, listing 'hoe' in there is overkill, that's just being used as a pun on 'rake'." Or maybe saying "hmm, I'm not sure how useful it is to ask people to be nicer while calling them assholes."
What's not an appropriate reaction? Talking about vaginas and male spaces and banning someone who just made a request to be nicer and listed a few examples of the kind of behavior they were talking about.
Yes, you speculated on his mental state quite extensively. Quoting you: "He was just lashing out at something he's afraid of and frustrated by."
>He made a flat-out misogynistic comment.
Sorry, he did nothing of the sort. He made the astute point that women tend to co-opt spaces established by men using activism. Do you deny this?
>Apparently asking people to act nice is now "PC activism".
Nope. Again, it's not just "asking people to be nice", it's a concerted, long-term effort to insert PC memes under the guide of being a nice person.
>But it only takes a single comment of someone calling someone else a "nigger" in an attempt to demean and exclude them before you can call someone a racist.
Nope. People say all sorts of things in anger, and this kind of thinking is exactly the kind of PC stupidity that is becoming a concern.
>Talking about vaginas and male spaces and banning someone who just made a request to be nicer and listed a few examples of the kind of behavior they were talking about.
What's your point here, exactly? That his ban was too harsh? Got anything to say about PC activism (you know, the thing that we were talking about)?
>So, what's an appropriate reaction to this post?
Oh, piss off you moist wanker. Did you stop to think that maybe it's not your job to tell other people how to communicate with others?
Do you really honestly think the way in which you communicate with people has no impact?
I completely agree, as a white dude having to worry about the way in which people receive my communication is just so unfair. I mean I call one guy a nigger and all of a sudden I'm racist. I'm not, I was just angry. Admittedly angry enough to call on centuries of historical context and language coached in violence to point out the lower social status of someone. But that's not racist.
It's not your job to tell people how to communicate with others. But it entirely your responsibility to communicate with people in the way they wish to be communicated with, if you want to be heard. This isn't about being PC, it's about not being exclusionary to 50% of the population. Women are not going to want to work with you if you're not willing to be inclusive.
Piss off you moist wanker. Did you stop to think that what you consider PC, other people might consider legitimately offensive? Did you ever stop to think it's not your job to tell women what they're allowed to be offended by? It's honestly pretty impressive that you consider someone expressing their discomfort with sexist language to be worse than the sexist language itself.
Pointing out his misogyny is not "ad hominem" as you seem to think and provides further context for understanding the other comment. Not that it's needed, he is pretty clear, I don't think anyone here is misunderstanding it.
For reference, ad hominem means "attempts to undermine an argument based on an irrelevant fact about the person making the argument" (Wikipedia). It doesn't seem unfair to use it to paraphrase the description "your tactic of discrediting the guy rather than looking at what he actually said".
Exactly. The guy hating women or not is not _irrelevant_, but it's not relevant in the way GP is trying to use it. That's why he tries to play the "ad hominem" card so he can throw up some moronic straw man about relevancy.
Actually I was pointing out that lucisferre's use of the term 'ad hominem' to characterise your comment was completely fair and not 'putting words in your mouth' just because you never used the explicit phrase.
I didn't bring up the term "ad hominem". Please stop putting words into my mouth. You are very determined to do anything but address anything anyone's actually saying. Your defense mechanisms are showing.
It is not my intention to misread. I'm not sure I understand how your interpretation differs from mine. Your interpretation seems to be saying "if you want a culture with a more inclusive atmosphere, start one yourself." How does this contradict my interpretation? Does this interpretation deny the female-unfriendly atmosphere of the existing culture? Does it show any more initiative/interest on his part to change this?
Well, since you are now no longer talking about "hostility" or even absolute inclusion (but rather the much less definite "more inclusive"), then I assume you retract your assertion that the post condones "hostility" toward women. Yes/no?
The poster may well be hostile toward women. But his post here contains a valid point about activism in the computing field.
The distinction between "female unfriendly" and "hostile to women" seems subtle to me, but sure, I'm fine changing that. Maybe "hostile" was a bit too strong.
You're misrepresenting what he said. He's clearly trying to troll as hard as possible. So congratulations on agreeing with an intentionally inflammatory and sexist post I guess?
Really? How do you know that? You appear to be attributing intentions to him that are not actually demonstrated by his words. [edit for clarity: him = the facebook admin]
My interpretation is far closer to his words than the GP, and I am giving the speaker the benefit of the doubt. So please be consistent and reply to the GP pointing out his mistake. Oops, you just revealed your bias.
Yes. My bias is that when people say something horrifically bigoted, I believe that they mean it. If they didn't, then it's on them to prove that if they need to, I see no need to give the benefit of the doubt. I suspect that our different approaches here reflect a different base level of belief in the existence of real bigotry, and hence the likelihood of such statements reflecting real bigotry rather than being the ironic/trolling type.
Again, your whole deal is "what is he like"? This is the sort of dull thinking that leads people to become obsessed with rumors and celebrity gossip. The fact that he might hate women is relevant, just not in the way you desperately want it to be - the way in which you can ignore what he said. I grew up around racists and sexists, so you're utterly wrong in your speculations about my world view. And that's all your responses are - speculations about some psychological defect or another that you can use to ignore what's being said. That is called a 'defense mechanism'.
What? I'm not ignoring what he said. I am responding specifically to it. You are telling people to ignore the objectionable sections of his comment to talk about the bit you want to. Sorry, but I'm not having a conversation about activism right now - I'm talking about how inappropriate this guys comment was. Stop calling it a 'defense mechanism' for people to criticise someone for objectionable behaviour. If my manager stands up on the conference table peeing while presenting the annual sales figures, it is not a 'defense mechanism' for me to respond by objecting to his pee instead of talking about the sales figures.
I am curious, if my theory was wrong, why you tend to believe that people are joking about being bigoted when it is so likely that they are not.
>I'm not ignoring what he said. I am responding specifically to it. You are telling people to ignore the objectionable sections of his comment to talk about the bit you want to.
Obviously, you are not ignoring "what he said". That's a given, since you're talking about his post. But you're not addressing the point (that was the sense used, and I'm shocked you lack the common sense to understand this). Rather, you're engaging in gossip about whether he hates women. You even went as far as digging up another comment he made at another time to gossip about his attitude. You are the "Thought Police" this guy is talking about.
>Sorry, but I'm not having a conversation about activism right now - I'm talking about how inappropriate this guys comment was.
And so the backpedaling begins. Now you're concerned about how "inappropriate" it was. Note the misdirection, where suddenly you dial down the heavyweight accusations of "misogyny" and Internet detective work to look more reasonable at a tactically opportune moment. It's all about how "appropriate" the comment was. Unfortunately for you he is the administrator of the group in question and he (and Facebook and any other administrators) get to decide what is "appropriate" there. What you are really doing (ignoring your little tactical retreat) is trying to tie the essential point of the post to a hatred of women. Which note is not the same thing as whether the poster himself hates women.
>If my manager stands up on the conference table peeing while presenting the annual sales figures, it is not a 'defense mechanism' for me to respond by objecting to his pee instead of talking about the sales figures.
Bad analogy. The forum on which the post was made isn't yours to police, and his actions aren't equivalent to pissing on the table, which is a health hazard and a far more egregious social violation than saying some mean things on the Internet. Further, you have employed the same tactics against me by bringing my tendencies and background into question.
>I am curious, if my theory was wrong, why you tend to believe that people are joking about being bigoted when it is so likely that they are not.
A more interesting question is how you know how I "tend" from a sample of one. Just think how this power could be used for the good of mankind!
To be clear: by using the word 'inappropriate' I did not in any way intend to reduce or back away from the argument that what he said was misogynist, I was just changing up the wording.
I'm shocked that you don't seem to realise that this isn't a discussion about some random facebook group and whether the owner thereof is allowed to be a giant asshole. The point of the post was about hatred and rejection of women in software engineering, and this comment was one example of it being a real thing, frequently denied all over HN. And when a bunch of HNers came in and said 'he didn't mean that, he was just trolling the stupid PC SJ types, I'm sure he wants women to be in software engineering just without being activists about it' (not quoting you) the evidence of his other postings, showing a consistent worldview of hatred of women, was relevant.
If I thought that forum were somewhere I could police, don't you think I'd be over there policing it? However I don't think anything of the sort, so in fact I'm on here discussing it. If you don't think that we should be discussing his comment, feel free to not be part of it.
I'm sorry if I over generalised your habits from your behaviour. If you don't normally give the benefit of the doubt to people displaying bigoted behaviour, why did you do so in this case?
>The point of the post was about hatred and rejection of women in software engineering, and this comment was one example of it being a real thing, frequently denied all over HN.
Nope. It was a valid comment directed at a little PC warrior. Possibly from an unsavory character with malignant motives - as you keep repeating - but that isn't of interest. Further, my reply - from which your whole conversation with me spawns, and therefore constitutes the topic of this subthread (the one involving you and me) - was commenting on the reaction of people to the post itself which was a valid observation. Your contention that it is offensive and comes from someone you don't like is of no interest to me. The content of the post was not hateful toward women, even if the author is (itself dubious on a troll-filled Internet). Perhaps if you'd bothered reading what I say instead of firing off scattershot self-righteousness you'd have gotten somewhere in this thread.
>And when a bunch of HNers came in and said 'he didn't mean that, he was just trolling the stupid PC SJ types, I'm sure he wants women to be in software engineering ...
Please limit yourself to what I said in the parents, since that is what you are replying to. It's enough work to get you to read my own posts for comprehension without taking on the additional burden of defending other people in the thread who you _imagine_ share common ground with me.
>I'm sorry if I over generalised your habits from your behaviour. If you don't normally give the benefit of the doubt to people displaying bigoted behaviour, why did you do so in this case?
I don't agree that the post displayed bigoted behavior. The only reason to think the comment comes from a hatred of women is from information that you dug up. I'm not interested in digging up bullshit this guy might have said elsewhere, therefore there was no reason for me to think that's where it came from. I don't care if he's a _child molester_. He may or may not be any number of things.
The fact that you apologise for over-generalising shows that you missed the point, which is not that you affronted me by over-generalising, but that you destroyed the discussion and wasted my time by going on about my personality and the personality of the person who made the original post. And you're still doing it!
Glad we could clear up the fundamental disagreement - I found what he said offensive, bigoted, misogynist and hateful to women before ever reading anything else he'd said.
It's not the "source" of a video that's in question here. And having HTML at the bottom of everything by no means guarantees "source". Just because HTML is often used to convey source doesn't mean that anything conveyed with HTML is source. Another misconception perpetrated by web types.
Maybe now people will understand that the "open web" is just another power grab by another group in the "dirt war" of computing. The scam is to give the peasants lots of shiny-looking stuff while foisting a crap programming model, Byzantine standards and now DRM. And because the peasants don't have a clue what computers are capable of they gush at every little pseudoinnovation while the W3C plays catch up with the past. The rest of computing suffers from this problem but the web is the absolute worst of the lot. Elegance and rigor is last on their list of priorities, after convenience to the implementor. And yet, elegance is of the utmost importance to users in the long-run. So the reality is that they place implementors _before_ users, because their aim is to win the dirt war and be written into history in a favorable light.
Another way to sniff out dirt warmongers is to look for reactive behavior. And the W3C is the most reactive organization, constantly pushing one thing only to do a U-turn later (e.g. asm.js) when those choices threaten their own self interests. The whole idea of the browser as any more than one application on the web - for viewing static documents - is nothing more than a quick power grab by people eager to get as many installs as possible. "Look, we can shoe horn an application into this thing and increase market share". And so the idea of a networked, general purpose computing platform (on which document browsers are but one application) has its air sucked out by the browser with some programming stuff bolted onto the side. The more elegant arrangement is a HIGHER idea, one that is general and powerful, but currently benefits nobody in the dirt war.
Reason rests on fictions, too. For example objects/things don't exist. But without believing in them it's impossible to function. Religion also has to be evaluated functionally.
What do the Markdown people think of things like NML: (http://genius.cat-v.org/erik-naggum/xml-sgml-nml-lisp)? Isn't this a much nicer way of working with HTML (especially with macros)? The syntax described in the link is compact and elegant, whereas markdown is smallish but basically ad hoc.
>But if you're writing an iOS game, an HTML 5 web app, a utility that automates work so you can focus on the creative fun stuff, then you don't have to fall back on the existing, comfortable solutions that developers before you chose simply because they too were trapped by the patterns of the solutions that came before them.
This isn't really true at all. It's very difficult to go against the existing standards. If you think the standards for the web are stupid then you're simply out of luck. Back to the desktop with you. What about all the hardware being optimized for C? How many people work in some language they hate because there's money in it and they have to eat?
The systems we have aren't designed for high level programming. Right from the start you are hobbled by this choice. Then someone decides to water things down further by enforcing a high level language on anything running in the browser environment so you don't even get your nice "raw performance" for the things the hardware is actually good at. And this high level environment isn't a a good one, even considered within the constraints set by the hardware! Then there's C - an awful language even for the hardware tailored for it, but many are stuck using it for one reason or another?
Being open to abuse and being something that is commercially viable and desirable are totally different things. Yes, you can do all manner of nefarious things with native web technologies — as I understand it, this was one of the reasons it took so long for a native JS fullscreen API to be implemented, as it would open the door to spoofing the operating system's interface chrome.
But where these technologies differ is that Flash was marketed as a one-size-fits-all solution, that allowed designers and developers to work inside of a single framework. The barrier to entry is also very low: you can achieve a lot (relatively speaking) without much technical expertise — certainly when compared to how much effort it might be to do things the right way with native tech.
I don't ever see this happening with the likes of asm.js or WebGL because they're much more narrow in focus, plus they require very different (and non-trivial) skillsets to those of designers. As soon as an endeavour like this requires multiple developers and designers, it no longer appeals to your common or garden ‘chuck it over the wall’ marketing agency; the only ones that can afford to invest in this are the ones using the tools appropriately (or at least, most of them will be).
To say that asm.js and WebGL are "narrow in focus" is like saying x86 is "narrow in focus". They're general-purpose primitives that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. UDK, Unity, Gamemaker, Construct all export to HTML5. Flash has achieved a huge degree of success, so if it goes away maybe the next contender will be less damaging, but the mistake can be remade at any point, and with the power of asm.js/WebGL almost any framework can be ported.
People have always abandoned the pure, semantic HTML way as soon as the power has been there to do so. Sometimes this has been for good, sometimes for evil. You need to either turn it into a general purpose computing platform (Mozilla have been fighting this for a long time and finally lost) or leave it as a pure document browser (in other words, an application rather than a platform). But since people always want cooler, shinier things delivered faster, and the web provides fast, sort-of-safe delivery, there will be pressure from many places to start trying to eat up some of the native pie, which is how we got here in the first place.
The web people got everything wrong. They pushed a ton of waffly high-level rubbish trying to hang onto a restricted, comprehensible model, but in the end they had to cave and stick all the powerful stuff in anyway, and on a C-machine that means something like C (hence asm.js, which is a C compile target). And what we've ended up with is, frankly, pretty shit. The whole idea of nice, semantic HTML only works as a restricted application with no client-side programming facilities. Maybe in 30 years someone will have the sense to lift it out into the "user land" of the browser where it belongs.
