gian

Whether it’s pertinent or not is irrelevant. Whether it’s useful to know is irrelevant. How they’re treated is (kinda) irrelevant.

Whatever, I still think that knowing such information in a technical forum is irrelevant and should not be asked or disclosed per se.
I will still treat the person as she deserve, with respect to the person if she is respectfull or as assholes if she is an assholes, irregarless how they choose to identify themself.

If you think it is wrong how I treat people think whatever you want, it is not my problem.

Why in this context I need to know that ? And why in this context I would like to ask about this ? How it is pertinent ?

My point is simply that there are situations where these kind of information are not needed nor usefull. I am not saying that this is valid everywhere and every time but that there are places where knowing that the person you are talking to is a queer is important, situation where it is not important and situation where merely asking for that information is dangerous.
In my view, on the Ubuntu’s discourse this is an information that is not relevant nor usefull to know.

Do you want to consider it as a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy ? Fine, I just try to treat people like they deserve in any case and to do this I don’t need to know these informations, a queer is a normal person to me when it comes to interact with him/her/whatever.

No, that’s treating you as a normal person irregardless of the private aspects of your life. You are free to disclose them and I am free to ignore them since in this context I don’t care, and I don’t see why I should care, about them.

Else explain to me how being a queer/gay/trans/whatever impact on the submitted code or contribution.

And what better way to normalize diversity in this context than ignore everything but the code you submit ? We are talking about code, not personal issues.

I mean, I don’t care that the bus driver who take me to the office this morning is gay/trans/whatever, why I should care about this for the person that send me a code contribution ? Being queer make the code inherently better ? Or bad code should be accepted because a queer person send it ?

As I see it, you send good code it is merged, you send bad code it is refused and, most importantly, it was explained why the code is not good enough to be accepted. Nowhere in this flow knowing that you are a queer has any importance.

Ubuntu has a diversity policy to explicitly welcome and encourage participation, mentioning that they explicitly honor diversity in sexual orientation among other things.

I think that things would be far better if these type of informations should not be disclosed by anyone in context like this, where they are irrelevant.

For example, I went in to met a coworker and fix her laptop. While I was there the devs in front of me were discussing a thing that my team was working on. I didn’t know they needed that thing and they didn’t know we were working on it. I took new information back to my group.

Ok, but that just demostrate that you have no communication between teams. You get the information by sheer luck. have you been there 10 minutes earlier/later you would have missed it.

While bullshitting with the tech support manager I learned some things about their policies and procedures. Found out I had made incorrect assumptions and learning about those helped me in my role.

Again, non clear communication between teams and again you got the information by sheer luck.

True, it has happened because you both were in the office but in a sane environment you would have knows these thing because they would have been documented.

At some point they just said it’s happening and we’re not listening to you.

Which at this point is a more honest answer than the mental gymnastics they are pulling out.

It is a little difficult to spy on phone owner (except knowing where the phone is located) when everything you have is SMS and a memory measured in Kb, leaving aside that every phone had its own firmware incompatible with everyone else.
Of course telecom companies always know where you were and who you call, like today, but at most they can tap and read the SMS.

For context, GPRS was rolled out around 2001, before that you basically have not any data connection if not plugging to the phone an external modem.

True but I was only pointing out that what is a problem in modern smartphone was not a problem in older dumb phone since they lack the functionalities (and the supporting infrastructure)

spyware in a 90s phone ? Where it was even a miracle to be able to connect to Internet ? Yeah, they were able to pinpoint your position using the cell towers (which were less than today so not that precise) and the telecom know who and when you were calling but other than that…

Without an actual victim there is no crime.

And I understand this. What I don’t like is the idea that to try to prevent that there will be victims is bad.

We agree on the last part. But my feeling is that if a crime isn’t “bad” enough to require actual jail time then it probably shouldn’t be a crime at all.

Define “bad enough”, because this is a very slippery slope. What about thefts ?

Speeding, DUI, and other risky behaviors should be punished if, and ONLY if, an actual incident occurs. Because then there is actually a victim, and not just some nebulous might-have-been.

Following this reasoning, there are no crimes until you get caught and/or there is a victim. To me this is unacceptable in a decent society.

Hurt someone while drinking and driving? That’s no accident, that’s an intentional attack. Kill someone? Again, not an accident, but premeditated murder.

And why we should not to try to avoid to have a person in jail and one killed in the first place ?

Probability is not certainty.

True, but there is an history of cases about it where the probabilty became certainty.

I do not want people in jail for doing something that is probably a crime.

Me eighter but at the same time I would like to prevent some behaviors that could be dangerous to others.
I know it could be a slippery slope but honestly it would not console me to know that the drunken driver where punished *after *he hit me, I would prefer if he would be stopped *before *being able to hit me.

Every so-called crime that has no jail time shouldn’t be a crime. Fees are just another way of enforcing class warfare.

But fines works only if they are proportional to your wealth, else they are a punishment only for the poor.

Proven? To whom?

Never heard about people killed in crash caused by drunken driver ? Or pedestrians hit by cars driven by drunked drivers ?

Excessive alcoholism is known to cause harm. Should we make being an alcoholic illegal? Wouldn’t that make it harder for alcoholicsnto try to get help, for fear of being arrested instead of getting help, much like what happens to drug addicts?

No, we should just have laws try to avoid consequences for others Are you an alcoholic ? Ok, we will help you to be ok but at the same time we try to avoid you drive while drunk. It not seems too unreasonable

People get hurt constantly while fishing, too. Should we make fishing illegal?

Point is: how probable is that someone fishing hurts someone else ? How much damage you can do ?
Again, the point is not to make something illegal because you can hurt yourself, it is about trying to have law that try to prevent you hurt someone else while doing something.
If fishing can hurt others, maybe we should have a law that, while not forbidding to fish, protect the others from what you are doing. I would imagine that you would not like to swim in the sea while someone is fishing with bombs (illegal) 2 meters away from you, don’t you ?

The problem is where do we draw the line. You want to draw it at some possibility of harm to others. I want to draw it at actual harm to others.

Fine as long as you accept the consequences. I just don’t agree with you.

Which of these is more or less likely to wind up being stretched over time?

Both, because you just need to redefine what “harm” means. And some people is good to do it.

And secondly, we have to consider why gig work even exists, aside from being a fresh new way to exploit workers and deny them the traditional protections of the labor market. Because there is a specific reason gig work exists right at this very transitional moment in the workforce, and I’ll give you a spoiler: It exists because of AI.

Wrong, gig work existed way before the advent of AI, even before the advent of Internet and PC. It was not uncommon that teenagers worked during the summer holidays to have money to go on holidays, to buy themself something or to pay for school or other activities.
The problem is that for some people it is the only way to work, and this was happening way before companies started to use AI for everything.

I don’t like the idea of actions that don’t hurt others being a crime.

Me neither, but I like even less the idea that an action that is, demonstrably, dangerous to other should not be stopped until it provoke damages.

It’s about consistency.

You are right. And it is about consistency the starting point from which we are discussing: minors should not be able to access porn. Now, in the real life there is such law and it in on the seller to check, exactly because you cannot count on the fact that a parent is 24/7 with his child, so I don’t see why we should not try to enforce the same law on the Net, it is only on a different media.
Now, I agree that checking on the net is way harder than in real life, but minors are minors and porn is porn. If it is dangerous to see a naked woman on Playboy is also dangerous to see her on Playboy.com.

If we make it illegal to do things that MIGHT wind up hurting someone there’s no limit to what we can make illegal.

I see your point, but I simply think that if something is proven to hurt someone, like DUI, then maybe it is right to make it illegal.

I don’t like the idea and where it could take us.
In the case of DUI, I think the idea behind the law is to avoid that a drunken driver hurts someone, with potentially lethal consequences, not only punish them if he do it.
Once a drunken driver killed someone is too late, even with the harsher punishment.

Again, your problem is not the law itself, it is the fact that your law and the justice system is designed in such a way that you are always set up to fail, in a way or another, be for the stupid DUI charge if you are sleeping in your car, the open container law or the way too expensive justice system. That is what you should fight.

Let me turn that around on you.

You think people should be charged with a crime they haven’t done yet? Because that is exactly what happens in some DUI arrests.

Of course not, but then maybe the problem is not the DUI law, it is the fact that you cannot fight it if you cannot get a good lawyer, which cost money. Basically your justice system is fucked up.

Sleeping it off in your car but have the engine on because it’s cold/hot outside? DUI.

Slippery slope. How can police know that you just turned on the engine but not moved instead of driving and then stopping because you fall asleep ?

Then there are the idiotic open container laws where even an open alcoholic drink is legally a DUI, even if the driver isn’t drinking.

That is a stupid law, I agree, but it is the law.

A block from his house, he cracked open a beer. Now even if he had chugged it, there’s no way he’d be even slightly drunk before he got home.

Well, he should not have done it. He know the laws. I can feel pity for him in the specific case, but he breaks the stupid law.

The arrested him for DUI in his own driveway, due to idiotic open container laws, despite blowing a 0.

That was the problem here. The laws is written so you fail either way. Here if I have an open wine bottle in the car but I blow a 0, nobody could do anything to me.

But assuming I agree with you, what would be your suggestion to avoid people driving around while drunk ? Or to avoid minors to access porn material ? Aside the charade “parents need to educate they children” that obviously you cannot take for granted.

The problem with that is that you quickly become responsible for EVERYONE, and then you wind up right back where we are with government bureaucrats telling parents how to raise their children.

Ok, so do you think it is better to not be responsible for nodoby ? Good, as long as you are prepared to pay the consequences of this, both at personal level and a social level.

If a law or rule can be used to harass otherwise good people, then it will be.
If you give some self-important bastard an inch, they’ll take a mile. Just look at the police.

Sadly true, but this do not means that we should not have laws.

Except you forget about the whole “as long as it doesn’t directly affect others” thing.

I followed on your steatment. If I forgot it, you also forgot it.

But my point stand, by the traffic code you cannot drive drunk also if you don’t affect anyone else on the road.
Generally it is not that you can do something that is illegal thinking that it is ok as long as it doesn’t affect others.