rehmi@umcp-cs.UUCP (08/18/83)
{~ /* flame on */
Well, well, well... So much has been said about this useless subject...
People are even proposing changes to the language, just to shut
everyone else up (if I got you wrong, Randwulf, don't shoot me). I almost
submitted some pronouns myself till I realized two things.
One, it would be a waste of money, time, and filespace. How many sites get
news? Let's say about 400, that looks right from looking at the map (Lord
alone knows how many small sites poll/are polled that we don't know about. A
good-sized message is about 2k once all the headers have been tacked on. That
comes to 400*2k=800k (almost a megabyte) spread out over the entire network.
How much total time does it take to transfer 800k? Well, with the uucp
packet overhead, the effective phone link speed is 100 bytes/second, at 1200
baud between Vaxen which have nothing else to do but drive the uucp line.
Say that this kind of transfer happens in a quarter of all machine-machine
links. Well, that's (800k*1/4)/100=2k seconds, or about 33 minutes 20
seconds. Not to mention the system overhead it would use in all. Eugh...
It would be indeed a heinous crime to abuse the net with such a useless
message (on an order of uselessness comparable to the idiotic rehashing
which 70% to 80% of many of the messages I see are. Especially on
net.{unix-wizards,flame,women,jokes}. Yuch...)
Two, it isn't worth that much trouble. I am not a bigot, don't get me wrong.
I don't care about a person's sex, unless I want to go out with that person
(in which case that person must be female). I *do* care about a person's
competence, ability, and personality. I am not predisposed to expecting
male gender if I see the word 'man' used in appropriate context, such as
'man-made', nor is anybody whom I know well. Also, I don't feel threatened
by the presence of women. It is in fact refreshing.
Conclusions: If it really makes a difference to you whether I say 'he',
'she', or 'it' in a generic context, then you're probably narrow-minded,
bigoted, or insecure, in which case I probably wouldn't care about your
opinion, or want your drivel using filespace on my machine. Go suck your
thumb.
~} /* flame off */
If I receive any hate mail which contains offensive language, then the
sender shall receive that mail 40-fold, I promise. Intelligent flames shall
be respected. Anything not in the above two categories will be ignored.
-rehmi
--
By the fork, spoon, and exec of The Basfour.
Arpa: rehmi.umcp-cs@udel-relay
Uucp:...{allegra,seismo}!umcp-cs!rehmi