From: Xcott Craver <caj@math.niu.edu>
To: “William H. Geiger III” <whgiii@openpgp.net>
Message Hash: 8a18f1f11c7c979fe53d69b661a4a1cfd9026259a6c25cb81589337176a95b6b
Message ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980825155854.3483A-100000@baker>
Reply To: <199808251952.OAA001.81@geiger.com>
UTC Datetime: 1998-08-25 21:20:12 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 14:20:12 -0700 (PDT)
From: Xcott Craver <caj@math.niu.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 14:20:12 -0700 (PDT)
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@openpgp.net>
Subject: Re: Is hate code speech?
In-Reply-To: <199808251952.OAA001.81@geiger.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980825155854.3483A-100000@baker>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, William H. Geiger III wrote:
> <sigh> Now we have to worry about PC variable and function names. What a
> crock.
Oh, yeah, you really have to worry about *accidentally*
calling your variables getwatermelons and somefriedchicken.
Reminds me of this one guy in our neighborhood who was just
jogging by our house, bent down to tie a shoelace, lost
his balance and accidentally planted a huge burning cross
in our front lawn. Woops! Those damn PC-mongers are
making it a crime to jog!
One note: I don't see why this lawsuit would be hard to win
on the grounds that source code isn't necessarily "speech."
If co-workers left a big wooden swastika on her desk it
wouldn't be speech either, but I'd call that actionable.
Another note: frivolous naming conventions are dangerous
for more than one reason. Some Y2K firms scan COBOL code
for variables which are likely to be dates, using the actual
variable names for clues; this is much less likely to work if
you name your field BLOW-JOB instead of ESTIMATED-START-DATE.
-Scott
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