On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Louis Gorenfeld <louis.gorenfeld(a)gmail.com> wrote: That was very nearly a sexually loaded joke :) Because the community doesn't openly work towards attracting female contributors. I'm not kidding you. That's the feminist motto these days: if you don't want to be a sexist, you have to openly invite women to participate in your project. You also can't claim that you already treat male and female contributors the same way, that would not be sufficient. So you are become non-sexist by making women a special case contributor. Except you can't call it that, because it would be sexism :) FWIW, equal rights and all that is a wonderful thing and very much worth the effort. But the ways to reach the social equilibrium are not always nice or logical. Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

I mean, I really understand why someone would hate that wallpaper-- especially as a default. I think it's a strawman to say that equality is ignoring the differences between males and females. People just want a little respect and to be taken seriously, and I totally get that. But I think there's a really backwards justification when it comes to sexism in tech-- "There are so few women that it *must* be because of sexism". It's not true and I just get really tired of hearing it. My personal thoughts on the matter is that it's because geeks are an easy target, and there's a lot of vicious anti-intellectual subtext to go along with that line of reasoning, too. -Louis On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:

Whatever I write would not be convincing. I am an asshole. I accept that. But! maybe the following argument would at least open up your mind on sexism. How did you come to linux? or hacking? or computer science? How does one human being come to that? Is there a special pattern? My bet is: no. It's pure random. At point t in time you don't care, at point t+dt you care and roll on. If this is right, why don't we find 50% of female humans, as in the general population? So there is a problem. You don't see it because you are males. All of you. No female friend to talk to you about what she lives. Dig a bit on the web. Recently several women in tech went public on how they are treated by you, males. That said, I already made my point, I won't pollute that list further. I'll stick to technical stuff. There is no point to fight with people who don't accept there is a problem. Thanks to Bill Gribble for finding better words I'll ever can. I doubt it will be useful though, but that's how desperate I am when there are other human beings involved. Happy music, happy hacking. And to hell with sexism. And Hermann, don't take it personally. I used guitarix for the guitar part. Well, nobody take that personally. It's more a "group behavior" that I see and you don't see because you're in it. Okay, enough noise.

On 02/10/2013 03:15 PM, Louigi Verona wrote: I honestly believe that sxdx has never actually talked to a woman about things like this. I think he would be in for a rude awakening. -- --- My bands, CD projects, music, news, and pictures: http://www.lateralforce.com My blog, with commentary on a variety of things, including audio, mixing, equipment, etc, is at: http://audioandmore.wordpress.com Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch; und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.' - [Friedrich Nietzsche]

Agreed. For my part, too, it wasn't the picture per se that I objected to particularly and wanted to speak up against - it was more the ensuing debate and the attitudes betrayed therein by certain parties. Also, for what it's worth, I don't think the 'but my wife thinks it's fine' defense holds that much water. Surely we're smart enough to realize that opinions may differ on something like this from one woman to another? The contention was never 'all women will be offended by this'; rather, 'it's possible that some women may feel less-than-comfortable with this'. On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 10:57 PM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com> wrote:

On 02/10/2013 05:31 PM, Al Thompson wrote: Oh please. Can we drop this thing entirely ? I've had some pleasant exchanges with Cedric over the past ten+ years. In the present instance he felt strongly about something that probably would have been better left alone, but there's a little more back-story here than just the pic. Said back-story is also better left alone so we can move on. So, anyone for moving on ? Or shall we just wallow in the mire a little longer ? :) Watch for my next post. Best, dp

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 05:31:27PM -0500, Al Thompson wrote: Ha! Some woman are just as bad or even worse! :D IOW, what they see as OK, would make the average man blush and speechless. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

He didn'd make sweeping generalizations. He said "SOME women," and "the average man." And I've seen and heard enough from female friends of mine to know that what he says is true. On 02/11/2013 04:01 AM, Louigi Verona wrote: -- --- My bands, CD projects, music, news, and pictures: http://www.lateralforce.com My blog, with commentary on a variety of things, including audio, mixing, equipment, etc, is at: http://audioandmore.wordpress.com Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer. Kalt lügt es auch; und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.' - [Friedrich Nietzsche]

Sorry, you're wrong. How did I get into tech? Let me tell you. I picked up programming as a kid, and I got really into it when I was getting my ass kicked at school twice a week. Music and computers kept my sanity. It's something I continue to play hard at, doing DSP and 6502 assembly and gigging in my spare time. So, no, not random at all. My skill at music and code correlates perfectly with the crap I put up with in my youth. Why isn't it 50% of the population? Who knows. Why do I go to gatherings where everyone is hacking on games-- music, art, sound, code-- and there are no women? You answer me that, since you seem to be infinitely wise. Sent from my iPhone On Feb 10, 2013, at 12:14 PM, SxDx <sed(a)free.fr> wrote:

"I think that including an image of a 'hot' female tacitly sends the message that those who are viewing it are likely to be (heterosexual) males, i.e., that this is a 'boy's space'." Using that same logic, NOT including an image that is considered "hot" by one sex or the other must then mean that we are tacitly send the message that those who are viewing are likely to be asexual, that this is "asexual space". And some asexual people might get offended.

On Sun, 2013-02-10 at 21:08 +0000, James Mckernon wrote: In this case the comparison does hit the nail right on the head. Do we all see the same picture? The picture here does show an averaged girlie, not in street wear, but averaged disco Lolita outfit and pose. For some people male or female it is erotic, but it's not blatant erotic, it's very soft and absolutely no porn. I've seen colouring books for girls at a Catholic German elementary school showing models that look similar. This was around a year ago, when I worked at this school.

On Mon, February 11, 2013 7:55 am, Louigi Verona wrote: I've never met an asexual person. Are they are big market segment these days? On the flipside. I would rather see a sexy image than a violent image and as nearly all professional music these days is targeted at human sexuality - Love/Sex being interchangeable in the modern Pop music lexicon - maybe they should have more sexual images on their marketing material if they are trying to get to the kind of people who are making that kind of music... -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 09:50:00PM +0100, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: In the nine years or so I've been reading this list, I can't remember a single occasion where a female poster (there are some) was subjected to any form of sexism. And if it would happen, I'd be the first to flame (hot flames with extra oxygen) whoever did it. :-) -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

Am 10.02.2013 21:14, schrieb SxDx: Yes, I didn't take it personnel. I have just a other meaning/view then you here, that's all. And be ensured that my view didn't depend on a "group behavior", I'm to old for such games. :-) see you hermann

On Tue, February 12, 2013 5:58 am, Dragan Noveski wrote: Just to confirm, Is she a girl or a woman? -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

+1 to Bill ... but bringing this back to the linux-audio-sucks conversation: choosing a default UI that makes some people uncomfortable is usually poor UI design. In some places here in the US it is cute and kitschy to put sacks of salted roasted peanuts around your tavern and let people drop the empty shells on the floor. It makes the wood floor shiny and keeps the customers thirsty. But it also serves to exclude the population subset with a peanut allergy. Did you intend to exclude people who find pin-up girls uncomfortable from your user group? If not, design principles of usability and accessibility dictate you should probably change your default behavior. To me, this is the same as fixing a default palette that is unusable to those who are colorblind. ----- Luke Peterson - sent via mobile device - On Feb 10, 2013 2:27 PM, "Bill Gribble" <grib(a)billgribble.com> wrote:

Funny you should mention that Fons as, appropriately enough for this ridiculous thread, we call those tight male trunks 'Spaedos' back in Blighty. I'm in total disbelief at the amount of fuss Cedrics upset has caused here. There's really nothing to talk about here as people get upset about silly stuff all the time - there's no need for this extended group analysis so please stop it already! I'm certain I have never read or seen any genuine sexism on this list in as long as I've been subscribed. I'm disappointed with myself for having bothered read most of this silly thread but had I not I wouldn't have become aware of the genre Polite Grind and have caught Louis' historic musical response. Politegrind deserves a proper album or 4, surely? On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 9:35 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons(a)linuxaudio.org>wrote;wrote:

Saying that you are going to spit on everybody who disagrees and then speaking about empathy is, in my view, self-contradiction. As soon as someone speaks about morals, at the same time behaving as if they are 100% sure their view is correct, I just can't take them seriously.

Hi Johannes, I just used my voice. It was recorded through a laptop mic and clipped a little. I'm finding the secret to vocal grunts is to do it softly and let the amplification do its magic (though I'm not sure if that is the "correct" way to do it) . The other gear I used was Renoise and Slayer 2. Glad you liked it!

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 02:26:34PM -0500, Bill Gribble wrote: "sexualized"? I'm intrigued, first time I've seen that word. Not sure I've seen a "Victoria's Secret billboard" but if it's selling womans lingerie, then of course in context it should be OK. Imagine if the default wallpaper was Justin Bieber in a weird sexist pose, (In our eyes.) but girls croon and salivate all over it. I don't know about you but I'd be thinking WTF, and deleting it from my HDD. I think you mean sexist, instead of "sexualized" -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:46 AM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote: Actually "the resume simply is that" everybody is different. Let's teach everyone in different classes? :) -- Bruno Gola <brunogola(a)gmail.com> http://bgo.la/ | +55 11 9-5552-3599

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 04:57:07AM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Just as well I didn't go to a German state school. It's "have too many pupils" :) No. You are missing the point! -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

While I am generally against using "curse words", I do find myself having changed my opinion about it. I mean, what's wrong with profanities? Penn and Teller: Bullshit! - Episode on profanity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD4Rj-hYn2U

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 02:15:15PM +0300, Louigi Verona wrote: It's rude to swear. Say this innocent poem ten times fast: "I'm a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's son I'll keep on pluckin' pheasants till the pheasant pluckin's done" -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

Stephen Fry is great :) And I agree with him! On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Florian Faber <faber(a)faberman.de> wrote: -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

Haha! Nice one ) I should use this, indeed: ************* ******** *************************************

On 02/11/2013 10:38 AM, Dave Phillips wrote: Indeed very peaceful, masks out the monkey-brain nicely. Well-suited for meditation. Perhaps it could be released as droning201 as part of a soundtrack for meditation CD? -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://clanjones.org/david/ http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiuVbkFXeZ4 We are hovering above a city, looking at the streets and buildings. Each of those is full of people, each with his own life, circumstances, world view, friends, family and a story... And we are just flying over, travelers, saying hello and saying good bye and moving on to fields and long roads and then to another city... *********** ******* *********************** ********* ******************************************

On 12/02/13 10:24, Chris Bannister wrote: Yes, just search YouTube for "A Bit of Fry and Laurie".

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 02:15:15PM +0300, Louigi Verona wrote: It's illegal on packet radio, but does anyone actually use that anymore? -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X

On 11/02/13 11:16, Louis wrote: I don't think it is the maths that is the factor here ... going by numbers described below the electronics is what is of least interest most teenage women. I've spent many years in the technical side of theatre and performance and I've worked with very many women who are very interested and skilled in the field, but at the moment I'm doing an undergrad degree in maths and computing (though I'm almost 3 times the age of most of my fellow students). The gender balance in the various classes is very clear, though of course just a sample from a single institution. The really small numbers of female students is striking. The classes with most women are the highest level pure maths (about 35%), next comes the other maths, then the computing classes with maybe 10%, then the electronics and digital logic a long last with only a handful of women in first year classes of 150 to 200. Both the final year pure maths units I've taken so far were taught by women, and several of the computing units, and though there are more men on staff than women the numbers are much less biased than the student numbers. The high school results here show women consistently doing better than men in maths. So given the above it does not seem to be the maths component that is the significant one ... but there is certainly something that has led very few teenage women to choose studying computing and especially the embedded electronics side as the way to spend their next few years. Most of the women on the computing staff are senior staff members, the younger staff are mostly men ... so this problem may be getting worse with so few very young women interested in spending time in the field. I suspect it has a lot more to do with what is considered cool or fashionable by teenage boys compared to what is considered that way by teenage girls, and that probably has a lot to do with the way gender and identity is presented in the media, entertainment and cultural sources that are read/watched/listened to by teenagers. So in regards to this thread is Linux Audio better served by presenting a face that fits with the current fashionable images, or is it better served by actively rejecting current fashion and consciously presenting stereotypes that we think are better and more moral, and that musicians SHOULD be portraying? Should we be broadening our appeal to include more fashion conscious young people, or should we be something different, something outside the mainstream and take a more didactic stance against fashions we dislike and find inappropriate. But what could "we" mean anyway! The image in question is, I believe, from the on-stage presence of a group that projects the animated image as the lead singer with a synthesised voice. There is a lot of music out there which does not conform to my idea of a good thing, but I certainly don't want to keep it out of Linux because it does not have what I consider a pure and correct line. You may dislike the artists for their choices and reject their music as performed, you may also think that such a group is wrong-headed and should be removed from distributions due to their bad message and inappropriate social stereotyping. But you would be excluding a hell of a lot of music, musicians and audiences from Linux if you followed that line consistently. Even so, apart from your strong personal dislike of their message, their image (which takes a few seconds to swap for your preferred wallpaper) and presumably their music they are still quite relevant to a computer music distribution ... they make fairly interesting and popular use of music and audio technology, and they appeal to a much younger audience than most of this list. In the context of this thread it would be interested to know whether the character/group has more male or female fans. Simon

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 6:07 AM, James Harkins <jamshark70(a)gmail.com> wrote: I don't see how that could be the case. XCode is still a totally free IDE, and you get all the tools necessary to build all kinds of apps except for iOS stuff. It's not like Windows where Microsoft has threatened to pull everything but Metro from their free version of MSVC and otherwise crippled the free versions. Right, I think getting into technology is maybe discouraged for women, which is a shame. Or, as a woman I met at a party put it, "I got into videogames because I was too young to know girls weren't supposed to be into it". Of course, when I was a kid, I was just flat out into computer music. I wanted to create, and with a computer, you could have an entire band at your fingertips. The technical skill followed. Right, and that's my main point. Of course, by definition, I think a true "geek" will pursue something they like regardless of whether it has society's stamp of approval. What we need are more stubborn non-conformists. I'd also like to put another point out there: I was at a super bowl party at a bar a couple weeks ago, and the gender ratio was surprisingly even. I don't know how many people on the list watch stuff like this, but there was no woman on-screen who wasn't reduced to a sex object. The entire program was aimed squarely at dudes. However, this kind of sexism didn't discourage a relatively large number of women from being interested in these sports. IMO, if you look at mainstream society, it shoots down the idea that women aren't interested in technology because of sexism in the workplace or even necessarily school. There is something else going on, and it's happening much earlier in peoples' development. -Louis