--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 02d
+title: LinuxCon Europe 2014
+date: November 8, 2014
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: in the flesh, tech
+---
+
+As a change of scenery, I spent most of the 12th-18th October week in
+Düsseldorf, Germany, at the [LinuxCon Europe][1] conference held at Messe
+Congress Center. Since I'm not into this kind of (rather tiresome) experiences
+and I don't do them very often, I think it would be very useful to write about
+a part of what I've seen there, as I don't think I have the time nor the space
+to cover absolutely everything.
+
+The time I spent there was unfortunately pretty short: I arrived in Düsseldorf
+on Sunday and left on Thursday, which means I barely got to see a few parts of
+the town. I spent most of the time at the conference, where the organizers
+attempted to pack a shitload of smaller events into just three days. This is,
+from what I've heard, not uncommon, it's like the whole thing is designed to
+turn you into a zombie as you try to face the fatigue, leaving you with little
+time to do anything else but go to sleep, waiting for tomorrow's even more
+interesting presentations. That aside, I'll share my thoughts on the conference
+itself and on my overall experience with Germany so far.
+
+## The conference
+
+Leaving aside the more "meta" keynotes, LinuxCon in fact consisted of three
+conferences, namely the main track (LinuxCon), CloudOpen and Embedded Linux
+Conference. The "Cloud" aspect of it was in fact very widely spoken about, both
+in the presentations and at the booths, as many providers, either of distros or
+of other solutions, focused on the large-scale stuff. This honestly didn't
+interest me very much, so most of the presentations I've been to were from ELC.
+I'll give a very brief summary of the most interesting stuff that I've seen.
+
+The first non-keynote presentation I've been to was Ron Birkett's [Enhancing
+Real-time Capabilities with the PRU][2]. Although mostly a marketing
+presentation, the talk gave me a really good insight into Texas Instruments'
+orthodox approach to providing support for real-time applications. This makes a
+lot of sense for applications where that microsecond (or less than that) really
+matters, so you don't want caches and pipelines and other such nasty stuff to
+interfere with what you're doing. As someone who's looking into running
+real-time stuff and Linux side by side, I found the presentation really, really
+interesting.
+
+The second interesting presentation, this time not so marketing-related, was
+Dave Anders' [ARM vs x86][3]. Despite what the title suggests, the talk was
+less focused on the architectures themselves and more on the difference between
+and the pros and cons of ARM and x86 platforms and development boards and
+intellectual property producers, manufacturers and so on and so forth. If
+you've worked with ARM in the past and wonder whether you should give an
+x86-based environment a try, then you'll find this interesting. Similarly, if
+you've worked with x86 stuff in the past and wonder whether you should use the
+same architecture in the embedded world, you should certainly take a look at
+the slides if you haven't been there.
+
+At the beginning of the second day I've had the pleasure of watching Jono
+Bacon's [Building Exponential Communities][4] presentation. I've been reading
+Bacon's stuff since he was with Ubuntu, and despite the fact that he's not
+technically-oriented, I really enjoyed the talk and found many similarities
+between the problems he described and the ones that I often face in the (way
+smaller) communities that I'm involved in.
+
+Also in the second day, Brendan Gregg from Netflix gave a talk on [Linux
+Performance Tools][5]. Although the approach of his presentation might have
+come as "too high-level" for some, I found the extensive overview to be very
+enlightening. To my shame, I haven't used ftrace or sysdig or pcstat before, in
+scenarios when I would have found them possibly helpful. Indeed, his Linux
+Performance page is now a reference in terms of performance analysis of Linux
+subsystems.
+
+In the same day, Karim Yaghmour, the guy who wrote the Embedded Android book,
+talked about the ins and outs of [Android Security][6]. Although I'm not an
+Android programmer and I'm only vaguely familiar with its architecture, I'm
+well aware of how Android relies on not having root in order to provide
+security; also, of how it relies on TrustZone for some of the more dubious
+stuff, and how this causes problems even for some of the legitimate system
+programmers. The parts about the lack of security features in Binder and the
+otherwise useful pain in the ass that is SELinux were however mostly news to
+me.
+
+I had heard of [Jailhouse][7] before watching [Jan Kiszka][8]'s talk on it.
+Much to my surprise, the guys at Siemens that are working into getting
+Jailhouse up and running are using a very pragmatic approach: Jailhouse doesn't
+really have a scheduler, so it simply dedicates processors for real-time tasks.
+This should, at least in theory, make it much easier to get a certification,
+which sounds like a much more realistic goal than that envisioned by some of
+the other embedded hypervisors out there, say, the "exotic" stuff that are the
+L4-based ones.
+
+Of the other technical presentation, I'll only remind [Porting Linux to a New
+Architecture][9], [rtmux][10] and [Mastering the DMA and IOMMU APIs][11], plus
+Josh Triplett's [Linux Kernel Tinification][12], which I missed. Other than
+that, the most interesting stuff from the third day were the opening and
+closing sessions.
+
+Torvalds' keynote discussion was fun to watch, although the Linus Torvalds I've
+seen was very different from the throat-cutting Linus Torvalds from LKML.
+Clearly, the guy is a technical guru who now has an enormous marketing pressure
+on him, so he spends most of his time resisting that pressure, just for the
+sake of keeping the Linux tree clean and neutral. [The talk][13], moderated by
+Dirk Hohndel received a lot of publicity over Linus' statement that he regrets
+some of the harsh language he's been using in the past; for his sake, I hope he
+reconsiders that, because yes, no matter how political incorrect this might be,
+being harsh is an integral part of running such a huge project, and no, project
+management isn't a democracy.
+
+There was also the closing game, but I'll pass describing this particular event
+for the sake of brevity.
+
+Bottom line, the conference was interesting, informative and gave me a good
+insight on the "trends" and whatnot. I don't have the space to write about the
+booths, but I've watched BMW's PandaBoard/Wayland demo, and I've also watched
+[prpl][14]'s PowerVR demo. The attendees were mostly from corporations and
+smaller companies and only a small number of people came from universities or
+research institutes.
+
+## Düsseldorf, Germany et al.
+
+Despite this being my first time visiting Germany, I've found the view and
+atmosphere to be somehow familiar, which is pretty weird, considering that I
+live in the Bucharest shithole that most sane people are running away from. For
+one, Düsseldorf is a big town, but not at all agitated. I was accommodated
+quite near the city's center, in a multicultural zone consisting of Chinese and
+Turkish restaurants, along with a few of my Romanian friends. Interestingly
+enough, we were about fifteen Romanians at LinuxCon, most of us having some tie
+or another to UPB, although we've met a couple of people coming from Cluj.
+
+The best thing in Düsseldorf, except the beer, of course, is the orderliness.
+Walking through Altstat, I've had the chance to see the people carrying on with
+their lives, running, walking, going to the opera house and so on. In
+contradiction to Romanians' arrogant assumption that Romanian women are the
+most beautiful beings in the whole wide Universe, Germany has some really cute
+girls, although it also has some damn ugly women, so there, nothing new here.
+Germans are pretty boring until you get to interact with them, when they're
+either your best friends, or arrogant enough so that you'd give them a punch
+straight in the fucking nose. However they are, they're keeping their public
+places clean, a fact which I wholeheartedly appreciate.
+
+The worst thing in Germany is without doubt the food. Sorry guys, I'm pretty
+sure you enjoy your wursts and schnitzels and overly salted and condimented
+french fries there in the bubble you're living in, but really, go taste some
+Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian and Romanian food, you'll see what I mean. The
+Türks on Graf-Adolf-Straße had decent kebaps, but even those are nothing
+compared to the stuff in Bucharest's old center.
+
+All in all, a nice experience, although I don't think I'm doing this again
+until next year. I hear they're planning to do the next one in Dublin. We'll
+see, I guess.
+
+[1]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-europej
+[2]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/Enhancing%20RT%20Capabilities%20with%20the%20PRU%20final.pdf
+[3]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/elce-x86-arm-2014.pdf
+[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=velMxS4iA-0
+[5]: http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html
+[6]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/android-security-141014.pdf
+[7]: http://lwn.net/Articles/574274/
+[8]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/lcjp13_kiszka.pdf
+[9]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/Rybczynska_Porting_Linux_to_a_new_architecture_ELC2014.pdf
+[10]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/rtmux_1.pdf
+[11]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/20140429-dma.pdf
+[12]: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/tiny.pdf
+[13]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EUuaY6rh4o
+[14]: http://www.imgtec.com/prpl/
--- /dev/null
+---
+postid: 02e
+title: On the inherent harmfulness of political correctness
+date: November 16, 2014
+author: Lucian Mogoșanu
+tags: asphalt
+---
+
+<p style="text-align: right">
+*But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.*
+-- George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
+</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">
+*THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal.*
+-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "Harrison Bergeron"
+</p>
+
+Three years ago I wrote an essay entitled
+"[un argument împotriva corectitudinii politice][1]", loosely translatable as
+"An argument against political correctness". Said essay starts with the Google
+dictionary definition of the term "political correctness", which I shall
+re-introduce here:
+
+> the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression
+> or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of
+> people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.
+
+It is worth noting that the definition has been revised since then. Firstly,
+the current definition acknowledges the danger of extremism implied by
+political correctness, a revision which I, for one, find very
+pleasing. Secondly, it explicitly mentions "disadvantage" and "discrimination"
+as two possible issues addressed by political correctness.
+
+I shall in the paragraphs that follow attempt a complete rewrite, since the
+translation would prove to be inaccurate[^1]. I also feel the need to mention
+that this essay focuses on political correctness as a linguistic tool more
+than anything else, mostly because I find myself both fascinated and scared by
+this particular aspect.
+
+## The case against political correctness
+
+Be aware, dear reader, that I write to you in what the educated Englishman
+would consider to be broken English, but I write frankly. Notice how I said
+"Englishman" and not "Englishperson", not because I have anything against women
+-- on the contrary --, but because I found it most natural; maybe it's just
+that language evolves and mine will prove to remain a relic, but I will be here
+to make my case for as long as I live.
+
+This case probably deserves a historical background. I am however poorly
+equipped with the knowledge for this, so I will keep it brief: the sexual (and
+whatnot) revolution of the '60s gave birth, among others, to rather peculiar,
+although entirely understandable, political movements in the States. Women,
+despite not being a minority, felt the need to assert their status as persons,
+followed by other social groups who felt now that they could strongly stand
+for whatever it is that they believed in. Note that many people were, as
+people usually are, unkeen to adhere to these new beliefs, especially due to
+the fact that they weren't theirs, but the minorities'. Many people still are
+now, half a century later, despite the strong propaganda occuring in the
+mass-media.
+
+Since we're discussing communication, this phenomenon was followed by an even
+more peculiar one: given the new person-status of persons in said social
+groups, some people, a very vocal crowd, felt the need to also change all the
+terms pertaining to the denigration of women, black people, gay people, and so
+on, and so forth: it is nowadays forbidden to call an African American a
+"nigger"[^2], although that word is, in all honesty, part of their heritage.
+You see, here in uncivilized Romania, we call Gypsies "Gypsies", because that's
+who they are, and it is fortunate of them that they are really proud of their
+heritage. On the other hand, this indeed has the unfortunate side effect of
+creating an inter-ethnical, maybe even inter-"cultural" clash, but that's only
+because Gypsies are very resilient to the cultural brainwashing which Western
+people like to call "integration".
+
+The problem with this linguistic mashup is that not only it's completely
+artificial, but it is also very dangerous from a moral and ethical point of
+view, in that it creates false morals. To quote Orwell once more, it is akin
+to creating a "Newspeak", a language where concepts are disguised as
+different, sometimes completely opposite, terms. And while this is used to
+support the "good guys", let us remember that the same tactics were used by
+the bad guys in the past: let's not call it a slaughterhouse, call it a
+"concentration camp"; let's not call it slavework, call it "re-education". As
+Orwell and Vonnegut very well noticed, this is nothing but politicians' false
+pretenses to their own ends.
+
+The problem with political correctness is also that it creates false problems:
+for example, feminists state there aren't enough women working in the IT
+industry, when there should be, and companies should somehow magically,
+forcefully, bring women to work there. Yes, maybe "tech companies", or
+engineering companies in general, are populated with male pigs suffering of
+superiority complex, but this doesn't imply stuff about women in any way[^3].
+The only "achievement" this mindset brings is that it grossly misrepresents the
+causal chain: if we wish for equality so much, then why aren't there more
+female construction workers? Ah, because we don't educate them to? There you
+go.
+
+Finally, based on this train of ideas, I argue that political correctness is
+inheretly harmful, because it paves the way for what I would call a
+generalization of the Stockholm syndrome: a harsh reality covered in and by
+pretty words, solely for the desire of being less hateful to one another, like
+hate is the only problem, and like we don't have the right to hate[^4]. It is,
+in the end, brainwashing for the sake of "equality".
+
+Quasi-theoretical arguments are, however, not valuable by themselves. I will
+therefore attempt to provide a case study in order to further express my point
+of view and make it clearer, and then I will let you, dear reader, reflect
+upon this and develop your own point of view.
+
+## A not-so-thorough case study
+
+You might remember the Brendan Eich scandal from April this year. In case you
+don't know who Brendan Eich is, I'll clear that up for you: he's the guy who
+created Javascript, the one and only client-side scripting language available
+on the web today. No matter how awesome or awful the language might be, he
+basically wrote the book, made history, call it whatever you like.
+
+According to official sources[^5], Eich occupied his rightful place as CEO of
+the Mozilla Corporation for exactly one week and three days. Sometime during
+this timeframe, voices had discussed a political donation made by Eich for some
+law or another which seeked to invalidate gay marriage rights in some US state
+or another, which, I suppose, would lead one to believe that Eich hates gays.
+The outcry and political pressure spawned by this was impressive, and while
+being gay or pro-gay or anti-gay has nothing to do with his merits as a CEO, he
+was effectively forced to resign.
+
+Now, my educated view of this unfortunate event tells me that Brendan Eich has
+a lot of enemies. Whatever his personal life is, this was used by people who
+don't exactly like him in order to bring him down right at his moment of peak
+and, if possible, to completely break him as a man who's in a perfectly
+legitimate position. This evil, if I may call it so, was no different from
+forcing someone to leave somewhere due to religious beliefs or you name it,
+since those are nothing but his personal beliefs and views of the world,
+whatever they may be. What happened was the perfect strawman, the kind of
+tribal behaviour that never occurs in the civilized world.
+
+On another note, activists who are pro-some-group-or-another like to perform
+"public shaming" on all "straight white males" on various social networks, on
+the false premise of positive discrimination, stating that people born in a
+social group or another are somehow indebted to people born in some other
+social group, which I suppose goes back to the Christian sophism that we all
+bear Adam and Eve's sins. One such attack is the harassement of Notch[^6] on
+[Twitter][5] on the basis that he didn't do enough to help
+some-group-or-another in his games. Others include the rantings of artists whom
+I otherwise admire[^7], who try to impose that art ["oughta" consider][6] some
+or other views, otherwise it "oughta" cease to be viewed as such, like people
+actually give a damn about what anyone else thinks art "oughta" be.
+
+Finally, I feel compelled to remark the hypocrisy that comes along with all the
+politically correct nonsense: Coca Cola got [publicly burned][7] in a recent ad
+promoting diversity, multiculturalism and other such values that "oughta
+matter" to this Brave New World, albeit in a manner which doesn't promote
+"positive discrimination" and political attitudes. This goes to show that
+modern tribalism considers that it's ok, no, that it's better to be a black gay
+woman, just as long as you're not a brown muslim arab who doesn't speak
+English.
+
+And no, it doesn't matter that [you have a Phd][8]. Your political correctness
+is a proverbial Auschwitz of minds, and it's killing me.
+
+[^1]: Tried it, didn't work.
+
+[^2]: If I were an American, right now I would have been impaled or something.
+Fortunately for me, I'm not one.
+
+[^3]: Do you know any women saying that they don't want to do programming
+because programmers are emotionally broken? Neither do I, and maybe that's
+because women have no idea of how programmers are when they decide to become
+programmers (or not) and the former would rather avoid it because [they like
+barbie dolls][2], or something equally un-programmer-ly.
+
+[^4]: For the record, ideologically speaking, the opposite of "the right to
+hate" is forcing people to "live in harmony", which is another term for
+fascism.
+
+[^5]: [Mozilla Leadership Changes][3], [Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla
+CEO][4]
+
+[^6]: The guy who made Minecraft and some other equally neat games.
+
+[^7]: Say, Dresden Codak's Aaron Diaz, who's only one of the many who fight
+fire with fire by overusing the "straight white male" crap in their public
+discourse.
+
+[1]: http://lucian.mogosanu.ro/bricks/un-argument-impotriva-corectitudinii-politice/
+[2]: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1883
+[3]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/03/24/mozilla-leadership-changes/
+[4]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/03/brendan-eich-steps-down-as-mozilla-ceo/
+[5]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/471410993143099392
+[6]: https://twitter.com/dresdencodak/status/496744410953302017
+[7]: http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/75447787843/speak-english-racist-revolt-as-coca-cola-airs
+[8]: http://trilema.com/2014/and-now-for-part-2-of-our-smash-hit-hey-stupid-women-we-need-to-talk-smart-women-don%E2%80%99t-want-to-be-with-you-anymore/
projects / thetarpit.git / commitdiff