Re: inappropriate racist and other offensive material
On Fri, 15 Mar 2002 20:57, user list wrote:
> > You would remove Debian from your machines, or you would remove the
> > package from your machines?
>
> people, you have to understand that at a government facility all of our
> traffic can be monitored and we can be held responsible for its content. I
> like the Debian distribution alot but without a policy statement it simply
> won't be worth the risk when I can use another distribution that is more
> careful about its content. I also don't have the time to look at every
> message that comes out of every package. As I said, the practical solution
> is that I will rely on the social contract.
This is an example of how repressive governments damage their own interests
by repressing their population and their employees.
The long term trend of this is that repressive governments will damage their
countries by blocking access to technology and governments that are more
liberal will benefit.
We've already seen how certain countries are kept in the dark ages by
religious fundamentalist governments who ban the free flow of information.
Having other governments doing the same thing in the name of
political-correctness is an extension of the same principle.
> I would think this would be a no-brainer for Debian. Whether Debian sees
> itself this way or not, the distribution is seen as a whole by many users.
I agree that the question of whether we pander to opressive regimes is a no
brainer.
> I would be very surprised (though I will make a point to find out) if Red
> Hat, for example, hasn't thought about this. I'll also point out that this
> is a public forum and that other distributions, not to mention Darth Vader
> (AKA MS) probably listen to this. If ever Debian would be so lucky as to be
> an economic threat, the outcome of this thread could be very useful. I'm
Well if MS wants to make an issue out of this then we can just pull out an
early edition of Encarta which apparently has some interesting things to say
about the native people from a few countries (which from the accounts I've
heard is a much better example of racism than most things being discussed
here).
Years ago I watched a science show on TV about contact lenses. They were
showing how the lenses were designed and talking about how a "breakthrough"
has been made by discovering that Asians have different shaped eyes to
Caucasians. Apparently for years Asians had been prescribed contact lenses
that didn't fit properly and caused pain to the wearer because no-one had
really studied the matter.
The next day I spoke to some of my friends at university about the show and
was criticised by everyone for being a racist in even discussing the TV show.
One of my friends told me that to say "Asians have different shaped eyes" is
racist, and that any medical developments relying on such knowledge should
not be performed!
Along similar lines, I was recently watching a documentary on the development
of crash-test dummies for car safety tests. Developing crash test dummies
relies on performing experiments on cadavers (which makes tests somewhat
tricky to arrange). Because of the difficulties in finding fresh corpses
with suitable permission and getting government approval there apparently has
not been that much research done. Apparently all such research has been on
adult white males! A German university wanted to do research on child
cadavers to produce crash test dummies to simulate children but negative
public reaction killed that test. So if you're not an adult white male then
no car has been properly tested for being safe for you!
I'm sure I'll get some weenies calling me a racist now for suggesting that
people of different races may have different physical characteristics that
affect their chances of surviving a car crash.
--
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