

Microsoft's ill-chosen magic constants - xb95
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/14955.html

======
_delirium
A short-term mitigating measure could be to place a comment nearby in the code
indicating that the maintainer is aware that the constant is juvenile and
somewhat embarrassed by it, but has no choice but to retain it for now because
it's needed for interoperability with another system that's hardcoded it. Then
at least it'd make it clear to anyone who stumbled across it that the Linux-
side maintainers aren't doing it as some kind of in-joke, and do realize it
might annoy people.

(What the odds are of anyone actually stumbling across it randomly, I don't
know, but it's a cheap band-aid just in case.)

------
tzs
Spelling "boobs" with numbers is a classic joke, acceptable enough that you'll
even see it on American broadcast TV in prime time, where they have to cater
to the most sensitive viewers. This indicates that anyone complaining about
this is probably being ridiculously over sensitive.

What you won't see or hear on American prime time broadcast TV is the word
"fuck", so maybe if they are really concerned about offending people, they
should take a look at the couple dozen "fuck"s in the Linux source.

And what about the animal lovers that might be offended by the 200 or so
"deadbeaf"s in the Linux kernel?

~~~
mjg59
Comparing sexualised language to generally offensive language is a wonderful
example of false equivalence. Good work.

~~~
batista
"Sexualized"? That is, with the newspeak concept of: "oh, it can hurt the
feelings of some sex"?

Well, I fail to see the difference between "generally offensive language",
then.

It too can hurt the feelings of a very large part of a population -- the
conservative, prudish ones.

Do you imply that something being offensive to (some) women as women, is worse
than something being offensive to (some) conservative people as conservative
people (which might be even more populous than women in general)?

It seems to me that the PC police just wants to build it's own prudish
rules...

------
kefs
Why are we assuming men wrote that particular piece of code? As one of the OPs
comments points out, 'men are not the only gender who appreciate breasts.'

~~~
mjg59
I hope you die lonely.

~~~
batista
You "hope he dies lonely" because in a comment thread about a joking reference
to boobs in hex constants, he wrote that "men are not the only gender who
appreciate breasts"?

I hope you understand that your comment shows a disturbed personality and/or
horrible person.

Now, it could just be that you didn't have your morning coffee yet.

But in any case, the hate you spread with that comment is far worse than any
(probably immature) reference to boobs or dicks or whatever.

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twerquie
Were we not all once suckling at the teet? Big boobs are universal.
Furthermore, the joke is so childish and innocent that it's more offensive of
you to object to it than it was in the first place. Lighten up.

~~~
batista
> _Big boobs are universal._

Not only that, but the whole fucking reason of progress, for example, is not
to be so fucking sensitive about commonplace things.

WTF, people, have we merely exchanged the prudish, religious police with the
politically correct police?

Yes, America was built by puritans and religious nuts sent away from Europe
(literally, in the beginning), but can we fucking move along?

The rest of the world could care less about such moral outrage over a hex
joke.

George Carlin FTW!

------
wallflower
Don't forget Java's CAFEBABE

<http://www.artima.com/insidejvm/whyCAFEBABE.html>

------
shinratdr
> Try "big boobs" with a Z.

