13 ms·

Microsoft fixes 'big boobs' coding gaffe

23 points by anons2011 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
briandear 14y ago
Dear god. Microsoft ought just chill. Anyone offended by a Hex string needs iCouch.me. It would be different if it were some Nazi slogan or some Al Sharpton quote. Either way, it's in Hex. Consider it a funny Easter egg. Let the nerds have some fun! After all, for some MS engineers, that's a close to big boobies as they'll ever get.
- alexobenauer 14y ago
  It's a bit bigger of an issue than that. There's nothing wrong with easter eggs, but the big issue here is that it is a sexist remark at a time when women are having a difficult time making it in many STEM fields, specifically software development, directly because of the actions like this that affect them in the workplace.
  - donall 14y ago
    I doubt there was any sexist intent (regardless of perception). The fact is that there are a limited number of intelligible strings that can be made out of 8 hex chars and this is one of them that brought a smile to somebody's face. If we seriously consider that guy to be some sort of misogynist, then should we also consider OxDEADBEEF to be a radical vegan statement?
    - cgranade 14y ago
      The fact that it was without intent indicates to me how poorly many people understand the effects of comments that objectify women's bodies. If there wasn't already a pre-existing culture in which women expect to find themselves judged for their bodies more than for their aptitude at their jobs, then 0xBI6B00B5 wouldn't matter so much. As it is, it serves to reinforce the existing perception (and unfortunately, the existing reality) that women are judged by different criteria from their male colleagues. Combine this with stereotype threat [1], and you get that the effects are decidedly harmful, even in the absence of sexist intent. I doubt that removing the specific magic number in this case really helps much, though. Rather, I think that it is important to establish a standard that this kind of thing is not in keeping with professional standards or with human decency towards one's colleagues. Given that most people really do seem to mean well, having that awareness and empathy about the direct and indirect effects of seemingly innocuous choices like this can only help make programming a better career choice for all involved. [1]: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/butterfliesandwheels/~3/BHPheQ6mois/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/butterfliesa...
  - StavrosK 14y ago
    Goddamnit, I don't know what's sexist and what isn't any more. What if the message was 0xB1GD1CK (okay, there's no K in hex). Should men be offended?
    - georgefox 14y ago
      Although I obviously understand how you formed your analogy, I just don't see how it's actually analogous. Software development is a male-dominated field, and the objectification of body parts is much more prevalent with women's breasts than with male genitalia. If we lived in a world where males felt uncomfortable working in software development environments due to repeated sexual harassment by their predominantly female co-workers and where billboards and music videos were filled with gratuitous imagery of male genitals, then this might be analogous. But that kind of hypothetical is way beyond my imagination.
      - StavrosK 14y ago
        That's fair. However, I don't understand what "objectification of body parts is". Men are attracted to big breasts, small waists and large hips, women are attracted to broad shoulders and big arms (or so I am led to believe). Body parts are objects. I don't expect my broad shoulders to be able to hold a reasoned debate for long. What do you mean by objectification? If the fact that someone is attracted to "big boobs" and putting it in some source code is anathema, does the same thing happen with "intelligence is hot"? If not, why is one acceptable and the other not? Granted, I haven't thought about these issues long, so my mind can easily be changed if someone demonstrates errors, but it seems to me that we went from "some men need to stop being creeps and hit on women at least during work hours" to "any mention of any attraction ever is forbidden".
        georgefox 14y ago
        "Objectification of body parts" was poor phrasing on my part. The issue is the sexual objectification of women, in this case reducing them to their component body parts (e.g., "big boobs"). A woman is more than a set of breasts—she's a human—yet you often see well endowed women used in advertising as nothing more than highly sexualized decoration with a disproportionate focus on their breasts (or other parts). This is the sort of objectification I'm talking about (and it happens in more forms than this and in more than just advertising). I don't think this isn't even a matter of stating attraction to "big boobs." This is merely saying "big boobs" for laughs. It's the kind of stuff young children do (see also: the penis game), so I'm not sure why anyone's rushing to defend this sort of behavior. Let me ask you this, though. Suppose you work as a developer (as you likely do), and you're tasked with welcoming a new female developer to the team and bringing her up to speed on the system she'll be working on. While opening up the source code and explaining one particularly peculiar section, you come across this constant: BIGBOOBS = 0xB16B00B5; How comfortable are you showing off this bit of code to the new developer? How comfortable do you think the new female developer would be in this situation?
  - TwiztidK 14y ago
    I'm seroiusly having difficult time figuring out how this is a "sexist" statement. It definitely is sexual, but I can't see how it would convey that women are inferior or that they don't belong. Honestly though, I'm not a woman or programmer, at least not by trade, I have no idea how a woman would interpret this, so please enlighten me.
  - waldo2k2 14y ago
    I don't believe that sexual harassment is the only reason more women aren't in the field. The same level and types of harassment are found in any field. The problem is with the picture society paints of anti-social, acne-ridden males dwelling underground with only faint green light for illumination as the "computer geek". There are many other reasons as well including the lack of exposure to the field during education, the same goes for Engineering.
saalweachter 14y ago
> His comments, and those on the Linux mailing list, have started a huge debate about whether use of the string was sexist and how male developers should conduct themselves.
dkhenry 14y ago
I find it funny that this is offensive to some people. I cringe that some of the silly names we have given internal code bits or projects might one day offend someone somewhere and need to have a formal apology. It's a good thing people can't get under the paint of their walls as it's common for construction workers to write notes and draw on unfinished sheetrock.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  It's not about leaving a humorous note or reference (I know I've left plenty), but that it's a sexist one reflects poorly on developer culture.
  - watty 14y ago
    Men have boobs too, and some men have big boobs (often referred to as moobs). This just shows that people can get angry at any and everything. Sexist? Only if you want it to be.
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      It's vaguely sexist, but primarily it's just really immature and smacks of the boys club mentality.
      - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
        "Big Boobs" is not a boys club. Women are welcome. And many woman are into big boobs (either their own or those of others). What is sexist is to grip a notion that only men are capable of being immature or into big boobs. Not to mention that thinking women can't be into big boobs kind of sounds homophobic. Hey look... two can play the lets overreact and haphazardly toss around labels game. :)
        demewmew 14y ago
        I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter whether or not I like big boobs, or whether or not I like childish humor. If I'm interacting with people in a professional or collaborative context, and I employ childish humor, it's totally reasonable for people to consider me unprofessional / a person with poor boundaries, and to find me difficult to work with. And so they probably aren't going to work with me. That's the issue, and most of the research on retention of minorities in industry supports that people leave or choose not to participate in the first place due to behavior like this.
gjulianm 14y ago
So someone set 0xB16B00B5 as the guest ID in the hyper-v code in the Linux kernel, and some other people got offended and asked Microsoft to change it. I don't see the problem, I don't know how someone could be offended because of this. And as Paule Bolle says [1], it can be changed without breaking anything. The only serious thing that comes to mind about this is the MS Trustworthy Computing initiative, but I don't think it has anything to say here. [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/13/362 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/13/362
- jabiko 14y ago
  2976579765 is just the decimal representation for 0xB16B00B5. I wouldn't call this a change.
  - pwny 14y ago
    In this case, 2976579765 should be considered sexist too!
alexobenauer 14y ago
The mere fact that so many software developers don't see the big issue here is exactly the big issue.
- chimi 14y ago
  Especially in a forum, where very frequently, there is a post about sexism in our industry and a call to attract more women to the field.
- milesokeefe 14y ago
  I don't see the big issue. The phrase "big boobs" alone is not sexist. If it had said "the only good thing about women is big boobs" this would be a different case, but it doesn't. The phrase alone means nothing and anyone calling it derogatory or celebratory is simply projecting.
- hobin 14y ago
  Why? People who don't get jobs because of their gender is a big issue. Why, of all problems, is this a big issue? In my not so humble opinion, people are simply looking for something to complain about. If there were a supposedly man-degrading word that could easily be expressed in hex, I'd use that for debugging, too. There's absolutely no reason to think that the use of these words is somehow meant as some sort of insult, and taking it as such appears to me to show a very rigid mind.
- tzs 14y ago
  The big issue I see is a bunch of men, most of whom have probably never actually worked with a woman in a STEM field, think they are experts on what such women would find offensive.
  - demewmew 14y ago
    Exactly. What a depressing array of responses here. This is precisely why this needed attention.
  - michaelcampbell 14y ago
    I find this hypothesis truly bizarre. Since almost the late 80's I have been in one of these (clever acronym du-jour) STEM fields, and have yet to NOT have worked with women in my group, as peers. (My background is primarily writing banking software, if that matters.) I've never NOT worked with a female geek programmer either at my level or above. My anecdote is not data, but neither are vast and wild generalizations like you are making.
gautaml 14y ago
Wow, just, wow.. really?
exDM69 14y ago
Now lets go bash oracle/sun for using 0xcafebabe for the magic number in java class files. No, please, get serious. Trying to find a hint of sexism in everything is almost as bad an offence as making sexist jokes where it's inappropriate.
verroq 14y ago
Is 0xcafebabe on the chopping block as well?
- Auguste 14y ago
  How about 0xDEADBEEF and vegetarians?
  - hobin 14y ago
    You can take my life, but you'll never take my 0xDEADBEEF.
jjacobson 14y ago
Related: I just noticed the original answer to the "How to be a brogrammer" Quora question got pulled down. Brogrammer backlash has been swift. http://www.quora.com/Brogramming/How-does-a-programmer-become-a-Brogrammer http://www.quora.com/Brogramming/How-does-a-programmer-becom...
jack-r-abbit 14y ago
Worth repeating: Until it is proven that the coder who put that in was, in fact, a male it is highly sexist to just assume that it was a man and that ladies are not capable of being childish or being into big boobs as well. ;)

23 points by anons2011 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Dear god. Microsoft ought just chill. Anyone offended by a Hex string needs iCouch.me. It would be different if it were some Nazi slogan or some Al Sharpton quote. Either way, it's in Hex. Consider it a funny Easter egg. Let the nerds have some fun! After all, for some MS engineers, that's a close to big boobies as they'll ever get.

alexobenauer 14y ago
It's a bit bigger of an issue than that. There's nothing wrong with easter eggs, but the big issue here is that it is a sexist remark at a time when women are having a difficult time making it in many STEM fields, specifically software development, directly because of the actions like this that affect them in the workplace.
- donall 14y ago
  I doubt there was any sexist intent (regardless of perception). The fact is that there are a limited number of intelligible strings that can be made out of 8 hex chars and this is one of them that brought a smile to somebody's face. If we seriously consider that guy to be some sort of misogynist, then should we also consider OxDEADBEEF to be a radical vegan statement?
  - cgranade 14y ago
    The fact that it was without intent indicates to me how poorly many people understand the effects of comments that objectify women's bodies. If there wasn't already a pre-existing culture in which women expect to find themselves judged for their bodies more than for their aptitude at their jobs, then 0xBI6B00B5 wouldn't matter so much. As it is, it serves to reinforce the existing perception (and unfortunately, the existing reality) that women are judged by different criteria from their male colleagues. Combine this with stereotype threat [1], and you get that the effects are decidedly harmful, even in the absence of sexist intent. I doubt that removing the specific magic number in this case really helps much, though. Rather, I think that it is important to establish a standard that this kind of thing is not in keeping with professional standards or with human decency towards one's colleagues. Given that most people really do seem to mean well, having that awareness and empathy about the direct and indirect effects of seemingly innocuous choices like this can only help make programming a better career choice for all involved. [1]: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/butterfliesandwheels/~3/BHPheQ6mois/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freethoughtblogs/butterfliesa...
- StavrosK 14y ago
  Goddamnit, I don't know what's sexist and what isn't any more. What if the message was 0xB1GD1CK (okay, there's no K in hex). Should men be offended?
  - georgefox 14y ago
    Although I obviously understand how you formed your analogy, I just don't see how it's actually analogous. Software development is a male-dominated field, and the objectification of body parts is much more prevalent with women's breasts than with male genitalia. If we lived in a world where males felt uncomfortable working in software development environments due to repeated sexual harassment by their predominantly female co-workers and where billboards and music videos were filled with gratuitous imagery of male genitals, then this might be analogous. But that kind of hypothetical is way beyond my imagination.
    - StavrosK 14y ago
      That's fair. However, I don't understand what "objectification of body parts is". Men are attracted to big breasts, small waists and large hips, women are attracted to broad shoulders and big arms (or so I am led to believe). Body parts are objects. I don't expect my broad shoulders to be able to hold a reasoned debate for long. What do you mean by objectification? If the fact that someone is attracted to "big boobs" and putting it in some source code is anathema, does the same thing happen with "intelligence is hot"? If not, why is one acceptable and the other not? Granted, I haven't thought about these issues long, so my mind can easily be changed if someone demonstrates errors, but it seems to me that we went from "some men need to stop being creeps and hit on women at least during work hours" to "any mention of any attraction ever is forbidden".
      - georgefox 14y ago
        "Objectification of body parts" was poor phrasing on my part. The issue is the sexual objectification of women, in this case reducing them to their component body parts (e.g., "big boobs"). A woman is more than a set of breasts—she's a human—yet you often see well endowed women used in advertising as nothing more than highly sexualized decoration with a disproportionate focus on their breasts (or other parts). This is the sort of objectification I'm talking about (and it happens in more forms than this and in more than just advertising). I don't think this isn't even a matter of stating attraction to "big boobs." This is merely saying "big boobs" for laughs. It's the kind of stuff young children do (see also: the penis game), so I'm not sure why anyone's rushing to defend this sort of behavior. Let me ask you this, though. Suppose you work as a developer (as you likely do), and you're tasked with welcoming a new female developer to the team and bringing her up to speed on the system she'll be working on. While opening up the source code and explaining one particularly peculiar section, you come across this constant: BIGBOOBS = 0xB16B00B5; How comfortable are you showing off this bit of code to the new developer? How comfortable do you think the new female developer would be in this situation?
- TwiztidK 14y ago
  I'm seroiusly having difficult time figuring out how this is a "sexist" statement. It definitely is sexual, but I can't see how it would convey that women are inferior or that they don't belong. Honestly though, I'm not a woman or programmer, at least not by trade, I have no idea how a woman would interpret this, so please enlighten me.
- waldo2k2 14y ago
  I don't believe that sexual harassment is the only reason more women aren't in the field. The same level and types of harassment are found in any field. The problem is with the picture society paints of anti-social, acne-ridden males dwelling underground with only faint green light for illumination as the "computer geek". There are many other reasons as well including the lack of exposure to the field during education, the same goes for Engineering.

saalweachter 14y ago

> His comments, and those on the Linux mailing list, have started a huge debate about whether use of the string was sexist and how male developers should conduct themselves.

dkhenry 14y ago

I find it funny that this is offensive to some people. I cringe that some of the silly names we have given internal code bits or projects might one day offend someone somewhere and need to have a formal apology. It's a good thing people can't get under the paint of their walls as it's common for construction workers to write notes and draw on unfinished sheetrock.

nicholassmith 14y ago
It's not about leaving a humorous note or reference (I know I've left plenty), but that it's a sexist one reflects poorly on developer culture.
- watty 14y ago
  Men have boobs too, and some men have big boobs (often referred to as moobs). This just shows that people can get angry at any and everything. Sexist? Only if you want it to be.
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    It's vaguely sexist, but primarily it's just really immature and smacks of the boys club mentality.
    - jack-r-abbit 14y ago
      "Big Boobs" is not a boys club. Women are welcome. And many woman are into big boobs (either their own or those of others). What is sexist is to grip a notion that only men are capable of being immature or into big boobs. Not to mention that thinking women can't be into big boobs kind of sounds homophobic. Hey look... two can play the lets overreact and haphazardly toss around labels game. :)
      - demewmew 14y ago
        I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter whether or not I like big boobs, or whether or not I like childish humor. If I'm interacting with people in a professional or collaborative context, and I employ childish humor, it's totally reasonable for people to consider me unprofessional / a person with poor boundaries, and to find me difficult to work with. And so they probably aren't going to work with me. That's the issue, and most of the research on retention of minorities in industry supports that people leave or choose not to participate in the first place due to behavior like this.

gjulianm 14y ago

So someone set 0xB16B00B5 as the guest ID in the hyper-v code in the Linux kernel, and some other people got offended and asked Microsoft to change it. I don't see the problem, I don't know how someone could be offended because of this. And as Paule Bolle says [1], it can be changed without breaking anything. The only serious thing that comes to mind about this is the MS Trustworthy Computing initiative, but I don't think it has anything to say here. [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/13/362 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/13/362

jabiko 14y ago
2976579765 is just the decimal representation for 0xB16B00B5. I wouldn't call this a change.
- pwny 14y ago
  In this case, 2976579765 should be considered sexist too!

alexobenauer 14y ago

The mere fact that so many software developers don't see the big issue here is exactly the big issue.

chimi 14y ago
Especially in a forum, where very frequently, there is a post about sexism in our industry and a call to attract more women to the field.
milesokeefe 14y ago
I don't see the big issue. The phrase "big boobs" alone is not sexist. If it had said "the only good thing about women is big boobs" this would be a different case, but it doesn't. The phrase alone means nothing and anyone calling it derogatory or celebratory is simply projecting.
hobin 14y ago
Why? People who don't get jobs because of their gender is a big issue. Why, of all problems, is this a big issue? In my not so humble opinion, people are simply looking for something to complain about. If there were a supposedly man-degrading word that could easily be expressed in hex, I'd use that for debugging, too. There's absolutely no reason to think that the use of these words is somehow meant as some sort of insult, and taking it as such appears to me to show a very rigid mind.
tzs 14y ago
The big issue I see is a bunch of men, most of whom have probably never actually worked with a woman in a STEM field, think they are experts on what such women would find offensive.
- demewmew 14y ago
  Exactly. What a depressing array of responses here. This is precisely why this needed attention.
- michaelcampbell 14y ago
  I find this hypothesis truly bizarre. Since almost the late 80's I have been in one of these (clever acronym du-jour) STEM fields, and have yet to NOT have worked with women in my group, as peers. (My background is primarily writing banking software, if that matters.) I've never NOT worked with a female geek programmer either at my level or above. My anecdote is not data, but neither are vast and wild generalizations like you are making.

gautaml 14y ago

Wow, just, wow.. really?

exDM69 14y ago

Now lets go bash oracle/sun for using 0xcafebabe for the magic number in java class files. No, please, get serious. Trying to find a hint of sexism in everything is almost as bad an offence as making sexist jokes where it's inappropriate.

verroq 14y ago

Is 0xcafebabe on the chopping block as well?

Auguste 14y ago
How about 0xDEADBEEF and vegetarians?
- hobin 14y ago
  You can take my life, but you'll never take my 0xDEADBEEF.

jjacobson 14y ago

Related: I just noticed the original answer to the "How to be a brogrammer" Quora question got pulled down. Brogrammer backlash has been swift. http://www.quora.com/Brogramming/How-does-a-programmer-become-a-Brogrammer http://www.quora.com/Brogramming/How-does-a-programmer-becom...

jack-r-abbit 14y ago

Worth repeating: Until it is proven that the coder who put that in was, in fact, a male it is highly sexist to just assume that it was a man and that ladies are not capable of being childish or being into big boobs as well. ;)