Brendan Eich (JS inventor, Mozilla CTO) on stage at dotJS in Paris, Dec 2nd
dotjs.eu
dotjs.eu
Also, going as far as calling people fools show that you care more than you may think about what others think.
No doubt, for someone to whom this would actually matter, boycotting the conference would seem a principled act providing a lovely warm glow of righteousness. I submit that there are many ways of obtaining said lovely warm glow, most of which do not entail denying oneself the opportunity to study with many high luminaries of one's chosen field. For example, one might donate $1000, or perhaps some greater sum, to some organization advancing the cause of gay marriage, and thus feel free to attend the conference without fear of moral taint.
Good on him for standing up for what he believes in, and putting his money where his mouth is. If only more did the same.
I don't actually think it's good that people donate money on advancing discriminatory policies, even if they believe in them.
People who say yes to the above are the ones sapping all the fun and enjoyment out of the world in the name of their crazy political correctness bullshit.
I don't think it's fruitful to get into such an argument here, so lets just agree to disagree.
One of them is a human rights issue, the other is a word for people with a certain job and, like many other words for people who have a certain job, changes depending on the gender of the person. This is a useful distinction and is really just a matter of words, however denying gay people the right to marry obviously is not.
Waitress - a woman who waits on people
Marriage - The union of one man and one woman
As Stephen Fry said, give them all the same rights, just call it something else. "Civil Union" or something.
Are you suggesting Eich was dontating to stop the misuse of a word as opposed to stopping gay people having equality?
I am suggesting that yes.
Likening gay marriage to interspecies marriage is demeaning and offensive. I would appreciate it if you would stop.
"It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so fucking what?" - Stephen Fry
I'm done here.
For example, I don't want any business with the people who support the ban on gay marriage. If this is their call to support it, it can be my call to do my best in legal terms to prevent them from earning more money and donating more to these campaigns.
Btw, I'm talking about acting as an individual, not managing an organization.
How is that even relevant at all? Do we all have to agree on everything? Is it wrong for someone to support that?
If that is relevant, pretty much the same mistake NASA has made: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/11/nasa-chinese-...
Not relevant. In an open source web world, people can have different political opinion, social opinion.
If gayes want equality and stop discrimination, then let other people enjoy their own freedom of not agreeing with everything the "norm" seems to agree on. If he's Catholic, do half of the non-Catholic, and anti-Catholic people have to leave this conference?
Sentiment is understandable, but don't bring that up in a technical conference.
The NSA thing at BlackHat is also controversial. While I disagree with what NSA is doing most of the time, I think we should pay some respect to the speaker while the speaker is speaking on stage. You can protest afterward.
Freedom ends when you restrict others. Spreading awareness on such subjects helps individuals decide if the subject is important enough for them to personally show their disapproval. This is totally relevant.
I don't discriminate gays at all. I have my opinion on gays, abortion, education and government reform. We all do, right?
What people are doing here is making a difficult call for organizers and attendees. Should they attend this talk they could be called "criminals" since no one should be looking up to someone opposing gay rights. And I think that call is difficult.
Chinese having children in America or in China because the One-child policy(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy for details, > The limit has been strongly enforced in urban towns, but the actual implementation varies from location to location.[26] In most rural areas, families are allowed to apply to have a second child if their first-born is a daughter[27] or suffers from physical disability, mental illness or mental retardation.[28] Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines. Families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties and may possibly be denied bonuses at their workplace.)
exists. I think its a horrible policy which violates human rights but many both inside an outside of China support it.
That is one packed conference with people who have created some powerful software.
Personally, I think using "inventor" when related to writing software is a little over the top.
Still, not as irritating as when people call Crockford "inventor of JSON" I guess...
I do agree that "inventor" is much stronger than "creator" but in the case of something as huge as JavaScript itself, I think he deserves it :)
You wouldn't invent a specific language, but maybe the concept of "programming language" itself or specific language features. Lovelace invented the program, Zuse invented he programming language, and someone invented classes (probably Scandinavian) and first-order functions (probably a mathematician).
So invent and design are near synonyms. There are subtle differences, of course. For example, I don't think it would be right to accuse you of designing the distinction you're making here. ;)
You wouldn't say "Wow you invented a lovely picture of a house" to your kid would you. They drew a picture. Just like a programmer writes a program.