Society

In today's installment of Yet Another Paul Graham Essay, he's talking about PR firms. The article begins like this:

"Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in September 2004, June 2004, September 2003, November 2002, and February 2002.

I've had a lot of trouble with comment spam. This blog has blocked many thousands of comment spams. And unfortunately, it's blocked a few of Cliff's legitimate posts, too.

So I have switched to the new captcha module for Drupal. In case you don't know, a captcha is an automated test designed to tell humans and computers apart. It often takes the form of a graphic with letters or numbers in it -- letters or numbers than humans can read, but computers can't.

I used this idea before with Wordpress and it was 100% successful.

So now, you can prove that you are a human right when you make a post -- and you will be told instantly if the post is accepted or not. And if it is, it appears instantly.

A lot of comment spam is arriving via trackbacks, and captchas can't be used with them, so I've disabled trackbacks for now.

I think this should make blogging a lot less annoying.

This change also applies to the other Drupal sites hosted here: The Haskell Sequence, Forest of the Plains, and Rail Passenger.

The Long Emergency is a fascinating account of one author's predications of shrinking oil capabilities and the results on American life. Sounds plausible to me; but even if you don't agree, it's still a fascinating read.

Hanna Wallach wrote recently about the article HOWTO encourage women in Linux. I had read that article some years back, maybe in 2002 when it was first written, but it is interesting to re-visit it. It is a good read, and a thought-provoking piece even if you disagree.

I find myself mostly agreeing. There are some truly appaling examples of sexism there, such as a conference inviting someone to speak on a "wives of hackers" panel instead of give a more technical talk that she was qualified for.

I also wonder how much has changed in the 2-3 years since the document was written. For instance, the "Computing perceived as non-social" section. I know this was the case not long ago, but is it still? With the proliferation of IM software, it seems that it is sometimes becoming the trendy social activity.

In general Linux or Debian lists, there are still people that act disrespectful towards women, just as there are in society at large. I have noticed that when this happens, the other people on the list -- especially the men -- are far more likely to take action today than they would have been a few years ago. Personally, sexism in either direction offends my sense of treating each human being as a person, and feel it reflects poorly on Debian/Linux/whatever context it's in. I wonder if women feel that it's getting better too, or am I just not reading the right lists? (Yes, there have been ugly incidents in Debian, but my point is that the instigators of these incidents were roundly criticized. Granted, this is not where things should be, but it's an improvement.)

I would like to suggest expanding this howto to be "HOWTO encourage *people* in Linux". A number of things mentioned there would apply equally well to most men.

I was particularly amused the authors thought that these tips applied specifically to women:

* The article complained about LUGs that have pizza all the time, or meet at 10PM in a warehouse downtown. I'd prefer fruit to pizza too, and would probably avoid the slimy warehouse at 10PM.

* "Try to schedule your meetings at family and school friendly times" -- men can have families and kids, too, and we seem to be seeing more of that in the Linux community of late (though they are probably still a minority). Perhaps we also need to explore why there are so few older people in the community and why there are so few "family" types here. CS has been around longer than many people think and there are incredibly talented people in the (very broad) 50-80 range.