Ubuntucat

You got that recent notification about the Facebook vote, right? Oh, no? You didn’t? But you got some notification that your friend commented on some other friend’s status? Or that someone added a stupid Facebook application?

Oh, you haven’t heard about the Facebook vote at all? I’m not surprised. Facebook hasn’t really publicized it. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg wrote about it on the Facebook blog… because all Facebook users read that, of course. Yeah.

Do you know what Mark Zuckerberg wrote?

For this vote and any future one, the results will be binding if at least 30 percent of active Facebook users at the time that the vote was announced participate.

Let’s see. So there are 175,000,000 Facebook users, and they need 30% to vote. Do you know how many have voted so far?

At the time of this writing, 283,361 Facebook users have voted. That’s 0.16% of Facebook users, and we have until next Thursday to make up another 29.84% (or 52,220,000) users. Um, not going to happen.

The tech news is reporting this as a some kind of Facebook democracy, but how is it democracy if you hide the vote? I found out about it only because I keep up with tech news. I can guarantee you maybe only one or two or my Facebook friends (maybe even zero) know about this vote. Why not just say the vote will be whoever shows up? Can you imagine if government elections were decided based on a certain percentage of the voter population having to vote? No. If you don’t vote, you don’t count. It makes no sense to say that those who do show up don’t count (which is essentially what they’re doing). And, worse yet, you can’t have an election if you don’t let people know about it. Facebook users are not automatically subscribed to Mark Zuckerberg’s blog. Unless they keep up with tech news, they get no notification whatsoever that there’s any kind of vote.

Well, if you’re reading this now and are a Facebook user also, go vote now. At least you can say you tried and somewhat care about your privacy and user rights. Maybe we can even get up to a full 1%. Whoop de do!

With the recent 96% Microsoft netbook fiasco (i.e., poor excuses for tech journalism, as usual), I see a lot of smug comments from the Linux community about the upcoming ARM-powered Linux netbooks.

The argument goes something like this:

Yeah, Windows may dominate the netbooks now, but Linux will come back. Windows doesn’t run on ARM yet, and the ARM-powered netbooks will be cheap and have long battery life. If they sell netbooks for US$200 with a 15-hour battery life, then who would pick a more expensive Windows option with less battery life?

I would love Linux to succeed on netbooks, but look what has happened already? Let’s review, shall we? First, the One Laptop Per Child project introduced the idea of a very low-cost laptop for children in developing countries. Then the Classmate PC came out as a rival. Both Microsoft and Apple tried to edge their operating systems on to the OLPC laptop. What happened? Well, not only is the Sugar interface on the X0 rubbish, but OLPC even started entertaining putting Windows on its laptops, despite its earlier refusals in objection to the use of proprietary software.

Then there were all these rumors about Asus coming out with a $200 very small laptop. People got all excited. $200? Really? Wow! What happened? The Eee PC. It was a big hit! Was it $200? No. It was $400. And it had a 4 GB SSD drive. Later, they came out with a $300 version with a 2 GB SSD drive. At first people marveled at these small things and even praised the Linux interface (with very large icons) as something anyone could use. Then they realized it was some crippled version of Xandros and promptly started to replace Xandros en masse with Windows or Ubuntu (or some other Linux distribution).

Other vendors started jumping on the bandwagon, because they didn’t want to lose out in this new netbook market, so Acer, MSI, Sylvania, and HP all ended up coming out with their own versions. The prices either got higher or stayed the same (but with better specs).

And then Windows XP started appearing. Unfortunately, if you want people to actually start using Linux, preinstallation is not enough. First of all, that preinstalled version has to be preconfigured, too, and thoroughly tested. Then it has to be properly marketed. It also should be a proper Linux distribution and not a crippled one (no Linpus Lite, no customized Xandros).

Pretty soon, Linux became synonymous with enormous cartoony icons and lack of easy software installation. Windows won. That, and a few FUD stories thrown in about return rates being higher for Linux netbooks (even though that was for only MSI, not Dell or Asus), and Microsoft has basically won the battle.

And my suspicion is that it’ll win the war, too. The real problem is that OEMs are not invested in seeing Linux succeeding. If Linux is a cheap option that will get them some revenue, OEMs will use Linux. But if Windows will get them even more revenue, they’ll use Windows. And a lot of Linux users aren’t helping, either. This whole mentality of “Well, if the Windows option is better, so I’ll just buy that and install Linux myself on it” will just limit future Linux options, as executives at OEMs will just say “We tried to offer a Linux option, but even the Linux users will just buy Windows and install Linux over it themselves. What’s the point?”

Will ARM be $200? We don’t know that. Will ARM have amazing battery life that the Windows netbooks won’t compare to? We also don’t know that. Some of the more recent Windows Eee PCs boast up to 9.5 hours of battery life.

Call me cynical. Call me pessimistic. But I see ARM either falling through the cracks or Android falling through the cracks, or ARM netbooks being marketed badly or overpriced or configured badly. I will be extremely surprised if Ubuntu shows up on an ARM-powered netbook that’s US$189 with a 15-hour battery life, a comfortable keyboard, a large hard drive, a slick look, and no “We recommend Windows for home computing” at the top of the vendor page. The vendors will keep recommending Windows, and Microsoft will keep pushing Windows 7. And it’ll bring out its ARM smears and Android smears. Microsoft will go down fighting or not go down at all. I have to confess, at this point, I’m very tempted to just throw in the towel and get a Windows netbook and install Linux myself on it, even though that’ll just add to Microsoft’s bottom line and its boasts about the demise of the Linux netbook.

You vendors, you’d better come out with some cool Linux netbook soon… and don’t let Apple steal this new market away the way it did with portable audio players and the iPod.

I don’t watch Tough Love, and I don’t even know who this Steve Ward guy is. I also think there is altogether too much victim-blaming when it comes to women and rape. It doesn’t matter what a woman is wearing. She does not deserve to be raped. It doesn’t matter if she’s a tease or a flirt. She does not deserve to be raped. It doesn’t matter if she’s a prostitute. It doesn’t matter if she’d previously had consensual encounters with that man. It doesn’t matter if he bought her an expensive dinner. No one deserves to be raped, and women should not be blamed for being raped.

From what I’ve read in another blog about what Steve Ward said in a recent episode of Tough Love his phrasing was terrible and invoked victim-blaming for sure:

Steve Ward tells Arian, who is on the hot seat for doing poorly on her date that night, that her sexually aggressive flirting will, and I quote, “get [her] raped.” She, unsurprisingly, leaves the room bawling and telling Steve that “you just don’t tell a girl that.”

But his follow-up email clarifying his position did make more sense to me:

I have been told many stories by victims of sexual abuse and listened to them describe in their own words how they put themselves in a position to be taken advantage of. These stories typically involved fraternity parties, binge drinking, promiscuous behavior, “roofies” and mostly that sort of thing. In Arian’s case she will sexually provoke anyone, anytime, anywhere for her own amusement and my only intention was to caution her that one of those people could end up being the wrong person to provoke.

The truth of the matter is that even if you are never at fault for being raped and you never deserve to be raped, you can put yourself in a position in which you are more likely to be raped. And you can choose the wrong person to tease.

I liken this to the whole road rage phenomenon. Does anyone deserve to get shot by a stranger in another car? Do you deserve to get beat up because you yelled at someone who cut you off? No. No one deserves to get shot because of their driving behavior.

But even if you’re in the right, and that asshole who cut you off or didn’t signal or ran a red light and almost hit a small child crossing the street is wrong, if you make a habit of yelling at other drivers in your righteous anger, you are more likely to get shot, because it’s more likely you will provoke the wrong person. That person will still be a psycho murderer. But you will also still be shot. And your actions made your likelihood of being shot by a psycho murderer go up.

I’m a little rusty on my rape statistics, but I believe 80% of date or acquaintance rapes involve alcohol. So, yes, you can put yourself in dangerous situations, and there are ways to lower your chances of being raped. That doesn’t mean if you drink alcohol you deserve to be raped or that your rapist has a right to have sex with you if you don’t want it. Nor does someone walking around in a dangerous neighborhood at night deserve to be mugged. But she is more likely to be mugged.

Every day we go through life making choices, and some of those choices lower our likelihood of being assaulted, robbed, raped, or harassed. We never deserve these things, and certainly the perpetrators of these terrible acts are in the wrong. And, more importantly, rape victims are overly scrutinized for their behavior in ways that victims of other violent crimes are not. So I understand why Arian was upset, and I understand why people attacked Steve Ward.

Eventually, though, we need to come back from our kneejerk reactions against what we know are constant injustices and take some of these case by case. Yes, in an ideal world, a woman can act however she wants sexually and that will have absolutely no bearing on whether the men she encounters will be rapists or not. In an ideal world, I can also carry around loads of cash in my front pockets and that will have absolutely no bearing on whether I get robbed by a pickpocket or not. In this same ideal world, I can leave my front door unlocked, and no robber is going to steal my stuff either. We should strive for that ideal world, but we’d be idiots if we ignore the fact we aren’t quite there yet.

Right now, there’s a lot of debate among computing enthusiasts about whether Microsoft’s claim of 96% sales on netbooks is true… or meaningful. I tend to believe the percentages, but I don’t think it means what Microsoft seems to imply it means (“We’re better. People prefer us”). I do believe Windows users would rather stick with something familiar than switch to something else, especially if the two are around the same price. I also believe the Linux options on netbooks were badly marketed (and in many cases, badly implemented). It certainly doesn’t help that when you go to HP’s or Dell’s websites and try to order a Linux netbook, you’ll be told HP recommends Windows for everyday computing or Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium. Are you really going to tell me sales would have been the same if both the Linux and Windows pages said HP recommends Linux for everyday computing or Dell recommends Ubuntu Linux? Microsoft pays those OEMs money or cuts them deals to have those phrases plastered all over the sites, and with good reason.

Let’s see. I’m a consumer. I can go with Windows, which I’m already familiar with and which Dell recommends, or I can go with… U… bun… tu? which Dell doesn’t appear to recommend? And when I pick the Ubuntu option, Dell says I can “upgrade” to Windows (Windows is clearly better, since it’s an upgrade)? I think I’ll go with Windows. Of course. Why wouldn’t I?

So, yes, I can believe the 96%, but it doesn’t mean consumers were offered a fair choice and decided they liked Windows better and that Linux sucks. It means Microsoft strong-armed its way into the netbook marketplace, just as it always did with other markets. It’s like if we have a race and I bring my fans to the stadium and kick your fans out. Then I jam a cleat into your shin, stick gum on the bottom of your running shoes, and bat your ears just as the gun goes off. Oh, and the officials running the track meet are on my payroll. After I “win” the race, I brag to everybody that you’re slow. It doesn’t mean I’m a faster runner than you. It means I’m a bully and a cheat.

I have to confess I’m even tempted to get a Windows netbook myself, even though I’ve promised myself I won’t buy any more Microsoft products, even if I’m just planning to install Linux right over it. Why? Look at the selection out there! I’ve checked NewEgg, Amazon, just about every vendor I can find, and the Linux selections keep getting slimmer and slimmer. And they also tend to be the older models. If I want to get the best netbook out there right now (in terms of hardware specifications and battery life), it’s about US$349 from Asus and runs Windows XP—it’s one of the newer Eee PCs. If I want to get the best Linux netbook available right now, it’s about US$500 from HP and doesn’t even have a third USB port or VGA out.

The most popular Linux netbook options out run Linpus Linux Lite (crippled Fedora) and a specialized (i.e., crippled) Xandros Linux. The Dell Mini 9 looks okay and gets decent reviews but doesn’t have a hard drive bigger than 16 GB. And the HP Mini Mie also looks great but is really expensive when spec’ed out and still hasn’t fully ironed out its Ubuntu implementation (even though their new interface for Ubuntu looks pretty).

Vendors, are you listening to me? If you can offer the following, I can guarantee you your Linux sales will be gangbusters:

• Stop recommending Windows on your Linux netbook pages.
• Offer a Linux netbook under US$400 with 7 or 8 hours of battery life, an actual hard drive with a lot of space, 3 USB ports, a 92%-95%-sized keyboard, and VGA out.
• Use a Ubuntu variant but make sure the interface is useful and the video playback isn’t choppy

As long as the Linux options are crippled (either on the hardware or software fronts), then, yes, people will keep buying Windows netbooks. Some people may buy the Windows netbooks just to install Linux on them, but if Windows is either the only option, the cheapest option, the option with the best hardware features, or all three of the above, then Windows will continue to outsell Linux on the netbook front.

I’ll close with some excerpts from Amazon reviews:

Asus doesn’t offer the 1000HA with Linux. I don’t know what they’re thinking here. I’m forced to buy yet another Windows license that will never be used

I loaded Ubuntu Linux 8.10 to have a dual-boot system and I must say it runs Linux very well — no problems on the Linux side.

I bought this Windows XP model, just because there is no Linux equivalent of Eee PC 1000HA on sale(Asus, are you listening?).

Installed Easy Peasy linux, based… right out of the box. I did manage to hose windows xp, which is fine, since I’m not interested in running it

Linux was actually faster, and easier to set up (more plug and play, and no questions to answer). It started up each time much faster

I was primarily looking for a netbook with some form of linux installed on it, but I liked the size and battery life of this one so I went ahead and bought it.

I love my Eee PC 701. At some point I want to upgrade it, and I hope at that time there’ll be some decent Linux options out there.

Everyone I know is familiar with the sexual promiscuity double standard. Men who have sexual experience are studs. Women who have sexual experience are sluts or whores. Of course, the label slut doesn’t have to come from true promiscuity at all. It is just the perception of promiscuity. A girl or woman could be called a slut even if she is a virgin, as long as she dresses provocatively or has large breasts or speaks frankly about sex. She may not even do any of those things, but she may be someone other women look down upon for some reason or other.

I noticed two instances of slut-shaming this past weekend.

On one occasion, it was a social gathering, and one woman remarked that all the “whores” at her school were on the field hockey team. Most likely, they weren’t literally prostitutes. But the remark was intended to shame these women as definitely unlikeable and beneath her, and then vaguely too sexual.

On the other occasion, at church of all places, one church member remarked jokingly called another member a “slut” because of the latter’s shoes (which had been part of a Halloween costume) with stiletto heels. It was a joke, of course, and the recipient took it that way, too, but the joke hints at the truth—the truth being that even if you are a “good Christian,” if you also happen to be wearing certain clothes, you will be stigmatized sexually if you are a woman.

What baffles me most about this slut-shaming is that is often comes from other women, whether it is seriously putting down another group of women or jokingly putting down a close friend. Why do women engage in slut-shaming? Is it for the same reason men engage in wimp-shaming? I know a lot of men who call other men wimps, pussies, faggots, or any other name that denotes the men as “less manly” (manly, in this context, meaning heterosexual and not in any way like a woman, because “of course” the worst thing a man could be is like a woman). Men who do this seem insecure to me. They need to put other men down as less manly so they can appear comparatively more manly.

So is that what women slut-shaming other women is about? Do they worry they themselves might be labeled sluts? Do they want to appear less slutty? I don’t know. That may be part of it, but I don’t think it’s quite the same. After all, rarely do het men parade around in “gay” outfits and say “Look how gay I look” to other het men unless they want to get beat up. And yet a woman could wear what she considers herself to be a “slutty” outfit and say “Look how slutty I look” to her fellow non-slutty friends and get a couple of laughs and that’s it.

I don’t know what it is. And I’m also not sure if it’s my place to stop it. I’m always a bit wary, as a man, of telling women what is appropriate or inappropriate to do (from a feminist perspective). Any thoughts?