Politics of Gnome and Perceptions of rudeness (Random things from Daveshah's thread)


Got to start somewhere. I’ve derailed this thread enough but before I finish I’d just like to ask: to parallel with a code of conduct, I’m curious whether you disagree with a society having laws against carrying out threats, theft, murder etc.? In other words, why does something being online (which is now an intrinsic part of society) mean that our behaviour should be any less acceptable here than in the “offline” world?
That "somewhere" should ideally be at the actual source of things, have you ever asked yourself why people are actually systematically being dicks on the internet? Because they are raised to be dicks by the society they grew up in, the internet just makes it easier to show it to the world. This is not just about communication, it goes much deeper.

One should not forget that this is primarily an American movement and therefore also coined to and by the American society, which favors an extremely egoistic and antisocial mentality that tries to blatantly hide it behind a fake smile. Asking "how are you" has degraded into a meaningless greeting for which nobody expects a meaningful answer, politically everything social is immediately being badmouthed as being communist while the whole turbo-capitalism and hire-and-fire mentality continuously wrecks the working class. There is plenty of need for more "social" in the political area that could have an immense positive influence on what this society will further develop into, it is just natural that there's a social movement trying to push this idea. However, that is exactly what I fail to see with the Social Justice movement, they prefer to fight the symptoms instead. I'd even go as far as saying BLM achieved a lot more in that department in just a few weeks than the SJ movement did in a whole decade. People that are dicks won't change if you enforce them to use fake friendly words, they will still be and act like dicks. What you really want to change is the reason why they became dicks. Making people more aware of the consequences of their actions for their immediate environment would e.g. be a good start.

Do you know why the average American perceives Germans as rude? Simply because they provide and expect straight answers. If you fucked up they tell you that you fucked up, and they actually expect you to tell them if they fucked up because you can't do better if you don't know how you fucked up - without actually being offensive. Trying to wrap that up in feel-good words simply defeats the purpose, for both sides the whole reason of the conversation is the fuck up and not the feelings connected to it. The same counts for asking for someone's opinion, if they don't like something they will just say it right in your face. If a German compliments you about something or asks how you're doing, they are actually being sincere and not just polite. In this context I actually feel somewhat discriminated by CoCs, simply because they create a lot of room for potential and unintentional conflicts, they blur the line between actual abusive language and which is only perceived as such because context is missing, like a harmless little jab among friends that none of them would consider offensive (bonus points if you get the reference).
 
:D who would precieve germans as rude :D we dutch won't, but I guess we lead the way in brutal honesty :p

Ive experienced the american way first hand, "hey meet mr x, mr x bosbeetle, bosbeetle mr x, mr x actually is a great guy because of such and such" three meters furter down the road "dont work with mr x he's such a dick" :p errr wait a minute you also said I was a nice new student.... that really made me doubt friendlyness while in that country.
 
I absolutely love this conversation, but we really should move it to a different thread.
 
:D who would precieve germans as rude :D we dutch won't, but I guess we lead the way in brutal honesty :p

Ive experienced the american way first hand, "hey meet mr x, mr x bosbeetle, bosbeetle mr x, mr x actually is a great guy because of such and such" three meters furter down the road "dont work with mr x he's such a dick" :p errr wait a minute you also said I was a nice new student.... that really made me doubt friendlyness while in that country.
It depends on where you are in America too, in the North East, we have much of a similar reputation on perceived rudeness as Germans do, for much of the same reasons. The south have a reputation of being overly polite and friendly, but under the guise of not being genuine.
 
Software is not the place for politics. Software should only be about performance and accomplishing it intended task
Politics and software are not and cannot be separated. What task is software to fulfill? Lock in the user? Spy on the user? Liberate the user? Those are political questions. Technology is used to accomplish tasks that are determined by politics. Software is just a part of the implementation of politics.

Also, politics drives software. As an example, GNU/Linux has been about politics from the start. Richard Stallman was driven by politics and even Linux Torvalds had to make political decisions in order for us to have GNU/Linux. Without politics GNU/Linux as we know it today would not exist.
 
Politics and software are not and cannot be separated. What task is software to fulfill? Lock in the user? Spy on the user? Liberate the user? Those are political questions. Technology is used to accomplish tasks that are determined by politics. Software is just a part of the implementation of politics.

Also, politics drives software. As an example, GNU/Linux has been about politics from the start. Richard Stallman was driven by politics and even Linux Torvalds had to make political decisions in order for us to have GNU/Linux. Without politics GNU/Linux as we know it today would not exist.
Speaking of RMS, I sent him an inquiry a few months ago to see what hardware he is running. It's a Thinkpad T400s with 100% free software from the bios on up.
 
It depends on where you are in America too, in the North East, we have much of a similar reputation on perceived rudeness as Germans do, for much of the same reasons. The south have a reputation of being overly polite and friendly, but under the guise of not being genuine.

This was in NYC seemed like a very overly polite people to me. Apperently its worse in the south.

But I was perceived as blunt even by new yorkers, I guess we dutch are...

Germans seem to me mostly fluffy nice people with a tendency to be a bit insecure, especially around people a bit higher in the hierachy. :D
 
This was in NYC seemed like a very overly polite people to me. Apperently its worse in the south.

But I was perceived as blunt even by new yorkers, I guess we dutch are...
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam ;)

As an American visiting Paris, France, I was honestly surprised how nice everyone was. I also noticed that Europeans will go above and beyond to make sure expecting mothers have a seat on a train.
 
I kinda hate these kinds of topics to be honest. Makes me lose faith I had in some members of the community every time. All that for stuff that probably would never be an issue in practice here.

Yet, I admit, it's hard to not look at it. I will refrain from actively participating though. There's no friends to be made here.
 
I personally prefer a meritocracy because it's better for code quality and I do not care about other people's race, gender, or sexuality.

But I think that DEs are for weenies anyway. Right now I use a window manager without DE, but in the past I've used LFS with twm and no DE as main OS for a while. After that I've also Arch but without graphical environment as main OS. I used tmux and I used the frame buffer for reading PDFs. I also watched Youtube using Elinks and by passing the URL to a command (probably using mpv and youtube-dl) which then played the video in the framebuffer for me. It was pretty wild.
 
But I think that DEs are for weenies anyway. Right now I use a window manager without DE, but in the past I've used LFS with twm and no DE as main OS for a while.
What are you talking about? As far as I know a DE is a convenient name for a window manager. You take raw X and add a DE (desktop envioronment) and you can spawn at least a terminal in a window and much else as you go forward. And twm is a DE, one of the original ones as I recall (though there's always the chance I wasn't there at the beginning).
 
Politics and software are not and cannot be separated. What task is software to fulfill? Lock in the user? Spy on the user? Liberate the user? Those are political questions. Technology is used to accomplish tasks that are determined by politics. Software is just a part of the implementation of politics.
I can kind of see where you're coming from, but I don't think that applies to software as a whole.

What's the politics of the game TIS100? It's a game about programming a fictional computer. Or even better - Pong - It's two bats and a ball...

What about SAP or Salesforce? I'm not talking the companies, but the software, and hopefully large enough people have heard about them. They are platforms for business to buy, sell, manage inventory, and communicate with customers.

You might be able to find some political links if you squint hard enough and twist your head backwards, but they are not designed around that. They serve a purpose for somebody to do something.

And while, yes, politics were probably the reason for Linux and the different DE's got created; but I've seen people (myself included) attempt to write an OS for no reason other than to learn and/or fun.
 
Pong is the story of 2 lines that are bullying another shape because it's different !!
That poor shape just wants to stay alone and go away, but the "game" consists in you denying that to him, just for "fun"... :-||
Also, even if black comes first, and it's definitely the majority, all the important stuff are white... this is definitely a racist game as well !! :-||

Politics can be found anywhere, if someone really wants to find it... :cool:
 
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There's something about ridiculous arguments against codes of conduct (basically asking people to act in a mature, respectful and fair way to one another) that reminds me of an oft cited quote from Gandhi when asked what he thought of Western civilization. Purportedly he replied with "I think it would be a good idea"
 
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