07 Dec 2006, at the Open Source Developers Conference in Melbourne, at a lightning talk session, quoting Why there s few women in IT, at Richard Jones blog:

The conference last week was educational for the committee in a way that was completely unexpected:

Observation 1: During one of the lightning talks a presenter put some porn up on the big screen. He was peripherally discussing a Perl module called Acme::Playmate (which basically looks up Playmate info on the playboy playmate directory).

We (the committee) had never thought it would be necessary to have to explicitly say that it s not OK to put up porn. Or that we d have to actively discourage discussing a module that would clearly offend members of the audience.

Observation 2: I was amazed that Acme::Playmate exists in (and is blessed by) CPAN.

I spoke before the keynote the next day apologising to the attendees and our sponsors for what had happened.

Observation 3: Some attendees thought that we had overreacted by even saying anything.

At least one woman walked out the conference. The next morning, the organisers apologised to the attendees and their sponsors for the images.

You can read more, including the guy s name at Mary Gardiner's blog entry. Quoting:

I gave a 5 minute lightning talk at OSDC entitled Women in FOSS groups [...]. It was mostly an attempt to jam Adam Kennedy s lightning talk about Acme::Playmate, which featured lingerie shots of women (and maybe topless shots, I didn t want to watch it [...]). So mine featured pictures of women, fully clothed, with labels like Linux user and AI researcher.

I still wonder where the slides from the Debian ftp-masters s talk at Debconf 3 are available from, because of the technical content of the slides was good, only the way it was presented made this ftp-master team like a boys-only club where no women would ever belong. Because it made me want to walkout, but instead I stayed there and almost cried. Update: I found the slides.

Of course, this was 2003, it is all forgotten and forgiven, and Debian, including the speakers that gave this talk, has really changed since The Debian Women Project was started in Brazil, 2004. And I mean really changed. Even the ftp-masters scripts named after Elmo s Angels were renamed in the latest Dak release (look for What does each script do at The DebianEdu ftpmaster-Howto for the cuties names). I am no longer bitter about this. I am even happy it happened because it indeed motivated me to start the whole flamewar, as it even came up on Debian Weekly News - March 9th, 2004.

<peterS> Amaya: as Lincoln once said to Harriet Beecher Stowe: so you re the little woman who started this big war   (/me refers to the now famous -vote thread)

While I sometimes think Debian Women died from success, stories like this remind me why Debian Women is still needed and useful.

If you ever feel a bit like Darth Vader or some Bond villain, you really need to check out Peter's Evil Overlord List.

It starts out with "My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones."

I just got back from 4S, which happens to be one of my favorite of the large professional association conferences. Ok, 15 minutes to deliver talk is the equivalent of being treated as canned sardines, and thus totally unpleasant, but I feel like I can go to most any talk and find it relevant or interesting to my own work. I t is certainly more manageable too in terms of size than something like the AAAs which also gives you a paltry 15 minutes to present and worse, the association has been treading in some ethically problematic territory lately, so much so, I would rather throw my money to the other AAA. While in Vancover, my Internet access was near to nothing (I was staying with a friend who I have not seen since the summer of 2002, but alas, thanks to chatting we have been in pretty consistent contact). When I came back I came across some discouraging but not so surprising new news on the AAA and their cowardly decision to fight the FRPAA that would mandate open access for articles derived from federally funded research… The cherry on top of the cake was they dissolved the AnthrSource Steering Committee formed precisely to figure out how to open up access, no less! Alex Golub, a Savage Minds blogger, and a now ex-member of AnthroSource committee has written an excellent roundup of the story (link above) and Peter Suber, also has two very nice summaries, including links to the appropriate documentation. This year since I am curtailing my time on the conference circuit, I decided not to go to the AAA conference because frankly I am totally annoyed with the professional organization. I am usually quite proud to be or at least amused after I tell folks that I am am anthropologists (most react as if I had decided to embark on some real courageous path) but I am quite embarrassed about the association that is supposed to represent my interests and the profession at large. The links on SM point to and flesh out the problems with AAA’s refusal to jump on an exciting opportunity to free up some knowledge but I want to just emphasize three of the most problematic parts of their decision: 1.The most offensive part is that in reality the proposed bill is quite conservative in so far as it only asks for what should already be (a) given. That is, if the government is using tax dollars to fund research, it has every right to demand the fruits of such scholarship is made available to tax payers. Right? Given the neoliberal moment we are in, in which the government is retrehcnhing on all sorts of supports, this bill is admirable and I am afraid that if it does not pass it can be easily used by conservatives to justify future cuts of such funds. And given the very uncontroversial nature of the bill, it is not surprising that so many of the social science and humanities associations did not protest the bill… Anthropology sticks out as a sore sore thumb in fact. 2. The AAAs deployed FUD tactics to justify their position saying that open access would jeopardize peer review… Sigh. That is just so off the mark and the AnthroSource steering committee letter addressed this point well. 3. Many anthropologist know first-hand how appalling access outside of Europe, US, Australia, Japan etc, can be, even for academics and thus, AAA’s lack of support for this is also implicitly sanctions the North South Division that have plagued the field and all of academia so long. And for a field that has often been very thoughtful about these power/knowledge dynamics, it is doubly even more stinging… Is there really such a strong disconnect between the association and discplinary ethical currents?

<peterS> stew: hmmmm. I keep forgetting to do that. I wonder, if I posted a message supporting aj against the recall resolution, whether aj would remind people that they don't have to listen to me (:

Hard to believe it's been more than a week since I posted on my blog. It's been a fun-filled week; Maj, Amita June and I took a cruise of the Baltic Sea. It was everyone's first cruise, as well as our first time in the area, so we did a lot of travelling -- hitting wt:Lubeck, wt:Visby, wt:Stockholm, wt:Tallinn and wt:Saint Petersburg during the week. Unfortunately, our onboard Internet connection was neither easy to use, reliable, nor cheap, and our time on land was too short (about 8-10 hours per city) to waste in Internet caf s. I did manage to get wireless in Tallinn, which famously has free municipal WiFi, but otherwise I was stuck with exorbitant satellite-feed access on board our ship. Most of my time online was making sure that Wikitravel wasn't crashed while we were at sea. (It's my constant fear -- as soon as I get out of range of easy Internet access, I'm sure that either the servers have gone kaput or there's an exploitable bug in the software. Either way, I'm pretty nervous on most trips. Kind of ironic, in a way.) Suffice it to say that it was really a worthwhile, good time for us. We're back in wt:Copenhagen today. I'm trying to catch up with a couple of Debian developers and NM candidates to exchange wp:OpenPGP key signatures, and trying to plan our scant 23 hours in wt:Zurich starting tomorrow. tags: cruise baltic wifi debian blogs

Blogue My friend Nicolas Ritoux, an Internet and games journalist in wt:Montreal, has a new blog at http://www.vulusu.ca/ . Vu, lu, su means "seen, read, known" in French, and I think it makes a lot of sense for the name of his blogue. He's got a near-comprehensive view of Internet and video gaming culture, and I think that this blog will be a nice addition to his weekly columns in La Presse. tags: niko vulusu blogs

We hit Movies 4 Mommies again this morning, although some horrible construction project on Av Papineau around Jean Talon made us about 20 minutes late. They say that there are two seasons in Quebec: winter, and construction. I think they say that about a lot of places, though. Today's movie was The Devil Wears Prada, which reads much better in French on the posters at the theater: Le Diable s'habille en Prada. It's the story of a girl who wants to be a journalist and takes a job as the assistant to a powerful fashion publisher. It stars Anne Hathaway of The Princess Diaries as the earnest young striver and Meryl Streep as the Andy Warhol-like cruel and judgemental boss-lady. The girl learns about love, life, and being true to yourself. In other words, it was sappy dreck. But it was watchable dreck, unlike the horrible Click we saw last week. I didn't feel stupid for sitting through this movie, which is pretty low praise but for the Mommy Matinee there's only so much you can do. The only bummer is that Streep's character spoke in a ferocious, disdainful whisper, which was hard to hear over the crying babies. tags: movies movies 4 mommies devil wears prada crying quebec late

Lawn After the movie we stopped by the Canada Tire in March Central for some garden supplies. I'd promised Maj for a Mother's Day gift that I'd convert the 10'x10' square of weeds and trash outside the front door of our apartment into a nice lawn for sitting on and drinking white wine, but it was raining on Mother's Day and one thing or another got in the way of me actually doing what I said I was going to do. Until now. I had weeded the lawn on Sunday, which was pretty damn hard -- the weeds were waist-high and full of barbs and fluff and procrastination and other defense mechanisms. But I managed to rip out almost everything with a leafspan greater than half a centimeter, which left most of the area bare of plants. We spread out some grass seed given to us by friends Tara and Chris, but I wanted to give it a little more care. So I got one of those pushy lawn mowers at Canada Tire, and a big rake, and some grass seed with fertilizer mixed in since I'm apparently too lazy to mix it together myself. I assembled the mower when we got home, then mowed what was left of the grass down to a low buzzcut. I raked the little square like the dickens to get out the old leaves and dead grass and rocks and sticks and cigarette butts and wrappers, which had the side benefit of turning over the soil, too. Then I threw big handfuls of grass-seed with fertilizer pellets all over the resulting mulched up soil. Some water, some cleanup, and voila: I have what looks like a patch of dirt with seeds in it. Hopefully this will become a lush lawn sometime in the near future, because we also bought some beautiful fold-up wt:Muskoka chairs to put on the front lawn. I think these are just about the same as wp:Adirondack chairs, but I'm sure some expert in patio furniture could explain the difference. They are, however, my favorite kind of chair, and I'm looking forward to sitting out there with some white wine in a few weeks once the lawn grows in. Like, I dunno... maybe Labo[u]r Day. tags: lawn canada tire mower grass muskoka chairs adirondack chairs

Hey, Baby Speaking of national (international?) holidays, in the aristo calendar it's the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day, everyone. My favorite 4th of July media item is the great song "4th of July" by X from their album See How We Are. X has an X the Band myspace thingy, which seems to play 4th of July when you navigate to it today. Which, like, hooray for them. Go, X. Amita June and I danced around the house this morning singing the "America -- Fuck Yeah!" song from Team America: World Police. Sometimes I wonder how Amita June is going to feel about her "dual heritage" when she grows up. She's got a Canadian passport and an American one; I hope for her that she'll be better able to appreciate the world by having that dual perspective. I've heard that there are parts of the world where Americans living abroad get together on the 4th of July and have hot dogs and toss the ol' pigskin around and stuff. I don't know if there's an Americans get-together in Montreal, and I kind of don't care. It's not like we're stationed in Siberia here, and we need to congregate once a year to remember what "home" was like. Quebec isn't so far from the US that I feel homesick for American culture -- just homesick for the people. I think the US Embassy in wt:Ottawa has a big party, but the Montreal US Consulate doesn't seem to. Which is probably just as well -- it's at the top floor of a 30-story building, which would make barbecuing hard, and playing tag football on the roof would probably be dangerous ("Go long!"). tags: 4th of july x canada usa consulate montreal

.de vs. .it Of course, there aren't any Stars and Stripes flying in Montreal today -- all the houses we passed today were flying the Italian flag, for the World Cup semifinals. Montreal has a vibrant Little Italy, and the residents and other Italians in Quebec are going nuts for the Cup games. I can't imagine what's going to happen tonight if Italy wins. I saw one car driving around with a German flag on the roof today... I hope they guy makes it home in one piece, is all I can say. I like the name "Little Italy" -- it makes me think of a cross between wt:Palermo and wp:Munchkinland. Like, 1-meter-tall Italians drinking espresso and playing tarantellas and dancing and cheering with those tiny squeaky speeded-up Alvin-and-the-Chipmunk voices. Teensy-weensy Italy! Itty-bitty Italy! It's so cute! tags: italy little italy montreal world cup quebec munchkins

Grilling After reading the Meathenge slapdown for once-a-year barbecuers, I'm once again happy that I'm a vegetarian (more or less). I just can't compete in that league, and my little propane BBQ with veggie burgers, portabellos and an occasional trout is enough for me, thanks. tags: bbq meat grilling meathenge

Wikitravel 10K Party I just announced on wt:Wikitravel:4 July 2006 that Maj and I are going to throw a little Wikitravel 10K Party during Wikimania 2006. I'm going to be presenting about Wikitravel and travel guide wikis, so it's going to be an exciting event for us. On a side note, it looks like we'll be in wt:Odense for Wikisym. Lots of people we like there, and Maj has always wanted to be in wt:Saint Petersburg for her birthday, so this will probably be close enough. tags: conferences wikitravel wiki wikimania wikisym 10k

El Destino One of the great minds of the Internet goes incognito as El Destino on Pigdog Journal. He may be one of the best media commentators I've ever read, and I'm proud to say that I know him well. Or, well, used to. He's written two articles for Pigdog Journal lately after a 3-4 year hiatus (I think... something like that). His article on the Devo + Disney combination is really funny and good. I hope I hear his voice more often; sometimes I wonder what he thinks of the Web in 2006. tags: el destino destiny pigdog journal devo disney

Stephen Hawking and the Long View Dr. Stephen Hawking asked Yahoo! Answers, " How can the human race survive the next hundred years?". tags: yahoo yahoo answers stephen hawking

I definitely like being given enough rope to hang myself. Life wouldn’t be fun without the challenge of trying to hang myself increasingly less often over the years. And Bazaar-NG has shown me today some of the good rope it can give, and I’m happy. This is about the annoyance that is, at least for me, having to type bzr diff -r 12344:12345 to get the diff introduced in revision 12345, instead of just bzr diff -r 12345 or similar. This happens on other VCSs, like CVS, Subversion, and Bazaar (or so I hear). For Subversion (as an anecdote), five months ago (January) I found out on IRC (thanks, peterS) that a -c option had been added to svn diff which did precisely that (commited 3 months before, in October). An improvment that would be released in version 1.4, due in about a month or so now (but six when I first heard about it, and nine after being implemented). For Bazaar-NG, it’s been today the day I’ve got annoyed enough by this issue (while peeking here, btw) as to search if there had been any discussion on this issue, and I found this six-month old bug. It seemed a bit dead, so I gave my opinion about the issue, and discussion seems to have started again. The good part comes now, though. I’m sure the bzr developers will give a solution to this problem: maybe sooner, maybe later; maybe the one I liked most, maybe not. But, the important thing for me is that I have, within hours of having felt frustrated, a solution that works for me: a plugin that wraps the diff command and interprets “-r N” the way I want. It may make the bzr authors shake their head (or not :P), but I certainly feel grateful for them having given me the possibility of doing it, and of being my responsibility whether to continue to use it in the future. Oh, you can find the crak here. Surprisingly compact. (Update: well, not that much anymore after reimplementing it in a non-dumb way.) NP: Paolo Conte, Via con me

Laundry day. New roommate Thaddeus Black is really on the ball; today is the first laundry day we've had at the conference, and he was prepared for it, and reminded the rest of us when we woke up. I think I'll wait until the Thursday laundry day. To get your laundry done here, you put it in a plastic bag, and mark it somehow. Then the bags go into a pile, and some company hired by the hotel comes and washes them, and returns the bags of clean clothes to you the same or next day. You can even choose between regular drying and sun drying the clothes. Debian. Yesterday someone filed a bug against my expect package; today Alec Berryman sent in a patch that fixed it. Thank you Alec! The fixed package is now uploaded and should be available to everyone tomorrow. Food. Ville Vuorela brought a big bag of candies from Finland for Simon Richter, who shared them with the table here in the hack lab. They were salty and sweet, with mild licorice flavor. They were quite good. My friend Jesus Monroy, a food columnist in the San Francisco Bay Area, had a few comments on my food adventures yesterday, which I will quote here:

Pancita is Spanish for stomach. Most likely you had a type of menudo, or soup dish. This is a very common and popular dish. Usually used for hangovers. Check the chicken vendor's spices when you can. With some hope he did not use MSG. MSG, as you may know, can be toxic in large amounts. It's not unheard of in Mexico, but they don't know that MSG can be toxic. My mother has refused to eat at some friends houses because they use so much the chicken tastes extremely over-salted. MSG toxic effects are lathargy, nausea, headaches, all the way to death (very extreme). Then again too much salt, or just water, can be toxic. As for the church, they have not changed much in 500+ years in Mexico. Most likely what you saw was what was built.

Conference. Today I attended the one presentation that motivated me to attend Debconf; Peter van Eyndes Common Lisp presentation. Common Lisp, of course, is the best programming language ever, in terms of developer time. Haskell is similar, but is designed more for machines to run fast, than for developers to develop fast. The LISP community has almost universally switched to using darcs for their revision control system, which is not only the easiest to use I have ever found, but is also written in Haskell. Nine people attended Peters presentation. He showed us how to drive the Lisp compiler from inside emacs using slime, with its advanced auto-completion features. He demonstrated the common lisp controller which has advanced dramatically in the past five years. It is now simple and intuitive to load libraries into your Lisp program. He showed us how to package lisp libraries using asdf, which has long been an opaque mystery to me. Luca Capello fom Switzeland, the maintainer of the stumpwm window manager was present, and he promised to demonstrate stumpwm later tonight. stumpwm is not yet as advanced as ratpoison, but it could become far more advanced and whiz-bang than ratpoison could ever be. It has potential. I also met Erick Lopez of Mexico, who wants to package cl-wiki, but is looking for a sponsor. As a Lisp developer, he will be an asset to Debian. After the presentation Peter opened the floor, and every question I'd had about Lisp for the past few years was answered very satisfactorily. At the end, Peter showed us a book called Practical Common Lisp, by Peter Seibel, which he praised highly for those who want to use Lisp for "real" things. Such as a streaming MP3 server. I'm sold! But if you are poor (povre), you can read it for free at Gigamonkeys.