

On Engendering Strong Reactions, Merbist's statement about the presentation furor - knowtheory
http://merbist.com/2009/04/28/on-engendering-strong-reactions/

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davidmathers
Oh man. Looks like he missed, or didn't understand, Giles' excellent comment.
Witness:

 _My view is that offending someone is walking up to them and saying: “You
suck, your code sucks and your partner’s code sucks!”. That is not what I did
in my talk._

Failing so hard it's almost painful to watch.

~~~
marcusbooster
Seriously. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, just a lame joke that
went on too long. Now I see it's the _organizers_ fault for having him talk,
and _my_ fault for "choosing to take offense". If this guy had any p.r. savvy
he'd just issue a simple apology and move on; instead he's stoking the fire
more.

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grandalf
I was at gogaruco and at the time of Matt's talk I happened to be sitting next
to a woman.

It was clear to me from the title of the talk (and the cover slide, which was
published in advance) that the talk was going to rely on some sort of porn
analogy.

In my opinion, Matt's talk was quite unsubtle and way overdid the analogy, to
the point where I was looking around the auditorium wondering if the women
present would be offended. I was quite surprised that none appeared to look
offended, disgusted, etc., and that none got up and left in the middle.

I kept thinking, sheesh I would guess that anyone who knows Matt probably
finds this funny and harmless... but at the same time it struck me as a few
steps over the line... especially since his point could have been made with
far more subtlety.

I think _why's comment says it all: Be sure to make it look like when you zoom
out it's just two bagels.

The whole apology thing is great, but I think the ideal response would have
been "Ok, I see that putting hard core porn in the middle of a slide show is
likely to offend some people"... To me that is quite obvious.

edit: I should note that I'm not the least bit offended by most porn, but
think it's best experienced either alone or in the company of people who have
opted in.

~~~
gojomo
I understand a few slides were removed from the version on the web... but did
the version as presented include 'hard core porn', graphic depiction of actual
sex acts?

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grandalf
The pictures were mostly of scantily clad women. I think one involved oral
sex.

He flipped through the images rather quickly, so it wasn't exactly clear what
was going on in them, which actually made them seem a bit more risqué than
they probably were.

My judgment that the talk was over the line comes from how I felt quite
certain that women in the audience would be uncomfortable.

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ivankirigin
As an outsider to ruby/rails, this whole issue is crazy. Don't waste your time
paying attention to it.

~~~
pwk
As a user of ruby/rails, this whole issue is crazy. Don't waste your time
paying attention to it.

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donaq
Huh. I almost find this piece more offensive than the presentation itself. Why
can't he just say "I was wrong" and be done with it?

~~~
ivankirigin
"Why can't someone I disagree with just admit that they aren't right!"

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jcapote
It's like scala vs ruby all over again...

