Whoops.
In this day and age of ubiquitous cameraphones and Youtube, nobody is allowed to have fun or be brutally honest anymore. Too much risk of being recorded and then quoted out of context or scrutinized by Puritans.
Windows Azure Dance Routine
51–60 of 79 posts
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#52Whoops. In this day and age of ubiquitous cameraphones and Youtube, nobody is allowed to have fun or be brutally honest anymore. Too much risk of being recorded and then quoted out of context or scrutinized by Puritans.
What are they brutally honest about? That women aren't welcome in the IT community? And what kind of context are we missing here?
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#53Whoops. In this day and age of ubiquitous cameraphones and Youtube, nobody is allowed to have fun or be brutally honest anymore. Too much risk of being recorded and then quoted out of context or scrutinized by Puritans.
That's not burtally honest. It's just plain juvenile.
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am an atheist, which I know generally offends people, and some people think I deserve to die for that. Meaning I can't give a shit if some people get offended. If females don't show up, that is their choice.
You being an atheist really has nothing to do with this. Being offended at how women are objectified/marginalized in the tech industry and being offended at someone's personal religious choice are two completely different things. Also, it's "women", not "females".
I prefer reserving the term women for actual people and females for aggregrate groups. Makes it easier to keep the two separated.
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#55I wonder if those playing the "it's cheesy but c'mon, it's not offensive" line have missed the 20+ discussions about sexism and how to foster a healthy environment for women in tech on HN over the last year. The assumption that developers are men is enough here, and speakers at the conference mentioned in the song have expressed surprise and distaste at their inclusion. For example, they say "Lea Verou will make your…
I fail to see the creepyness/offensive factor of the "Lea Verou will make your dreams come true" line (even if thats what she personally felt)
I took it to mean "programming" dreams. Whatever anyone else did with that in their own mind is their problem. Is there some missing context I'm missing? Just because the other parts of the song sorta mentioned penises, vaginas and drugs, that means they MUST be talking about sex in reference to Lea? I didnt make that connection.
I'd say those parts were much more offensive than the Lea Verou line. I had no idea who Lea Verou was before this, but now I have another great female tech role model to follow.
Overall this was extremely distasteful, and I think microsoft with all their money could provide much better entertainment
But who's to say whats popular in Norway? I certainly don't know what their social norms are. But I also dont know how this conference was marketed. Was it truly a regional event?
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
This video just shows how necessary it is to beat that drum.
You can't beat the drum about social issues and culture. You can beat the drum about something people don't know, a food drive, a political issue, etc but it makes no sense to keep whingin about something that people already know and have made up their minds about. Remember House? People don't change.
>People don't change.
Sure they do. Last century it was okay to oppress women and blacks (and even keep the latter as slaves). Times, and people, can change radically.
That said, aside from mentioning the word "penis" in a frankly stupid song, I fail to see how this is sexist. The term is going to lose all meaning if it keeps getting bandied about by such minutiae like this and the beer thing at the California convention.
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#57I dunno, I'm sure for some people there's a great crime against women hidden in there somewhere, but all I see is a great crime against good taste. I think something has to pass a certain muster of sophistication before it can be genuinely offensive. This isn't the doctrine of coverture, it's a penis scrawled near the entrance to the ladies' room. What I really want to know is, is it so hard to get decent entertainme…
Just to clarify: That atrocity wasn't organised by the conference, they'd just agreed to give Microsoft (their biggest sponsor) the stage for a bit to do their big Azure announcement. There's certainly a lesson for conference organisers in there about how much you let your sponsors get involved in the conference, but what happened on stage was still all Microsoft's fault. Also just to clarify: As a woman who was actu…
Thank you for speaking up. Just as it's crucial that women not be silent when being excluded from tech, it's just as (if not more) imperative we hear that you're not feeling discriminated against. Especially when there is a rallying cry from men saying that you should be, or that we should hold Microsoft responsible for this great sexist faux pas.
This community is overcorrecting in a bad way and starting to identify sexism where it isn't. Usually, women don't correct this assumption. Please keep doing so. I hate that the definition of the word "sexist" is starting to evolve to mean "offensive".
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#58I wonder if those playing the "it's cheesy but c'mon, it's not offensive" line have missed the 20+ discussions about sexism and how to foster a healthy environment for women in tech on HN over the last year. The assumption that developers are men is enough here, and speakers at the conference mentioned in the song have expressed surprise and distaste at their inclusion. For example, they say "Lea Verou will make your…
"Sexism" and "creepiness" are not synonyms of each other.
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#59If we exclude cultural differences, I think the most cringeworthy thing about this is its total misapprehension of the target audience. Of course, this includes assuming the entire crowd is male and loves nob gags; but if I was to have live music on for a bunch of developers, that is the last thing I would think of.
Enduring that travesty would be totally analogous to hitting up one of the UK's many tacky nightclubs that host an 'electro-house' (read: trance) night every Friday and have the same monotonic 'MC' drawling all over the track.
Maybe it's fine in Norway and they love that sort of thing, but I think it'd be very difficult to reconcile the developer and trance scenes elsewhere.
Re: Windows Azure Dance Routine
#60Stunts like this must take a lot of people and a lot of time to set up. Here's my question: could someone explain exactly how this kind of stuff moves from idea to execution to performance without anyone raising an enormous red flag?
if the someone with the idea has enough pull, (s)he probably simply shuts down any red flags with "it was my idea, do it now!"
Who are we kidding? It was definitely a 'he'.