A Joke about Dongles at a Conference Led to Two People Losing Their Jobs and a Huge Mess for the....

Yahoo.com ^ | 3/22/13 | Kevin Smith

[Alistair Stratford IV]

Earlier this week at the PyCon conference (the largest annual gathering for developers using the open-source Python programming language) a woman named Adria Richards overheard a joke between two men sitting behind her during a crowded presentation.

Richards was offended and took a picture of the two men who were making jokes. She tweeted, "Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles. Right behind me #pycon." She also attached a photo of the two people making the jokes.

[Rebelbase]

“Many, many years ago, a secretary in our engineering department went to HR. She was very upset over a conversation she overheard between a couple of Unix programmers. They were discussing ‘killing children’ and ‘flushing’ things down ‘pipes’. She was assured that these were technical terms and that kids weren’t being murdered. “

We got a complaint from a government agency once for using the word “orphan” as an adjective in a report.

[21twelve]

I understood the “dongle” part. (It took me awhile to quit calling flashdrives “dongles” - my kid’s would look at me with a confused face every time I would call them that!)

And I imagine in her tweet the word forking means “F-ing” - but what does “repo’s” mean?

[dennisw]

Her real complaint is how unpalatable she looks....

[exDemMom]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle

Thanks for the link. I knew I’d heard the word recently, probably from my son, and I was wondering what the heck it was. Now I know.

[Private_Sector_Does_It_Better]

NPR will recruit her.

[Pollster1]

she had to move out of state for a job

I love happy endings. Those who steal should not profit from their dishonesty.

[PapaBear3625]

she should have used a personal Twitter account I didn’t see any reason for anyone to be fired

She was a woman with a little bit of power, being a "tech evangelist" (ie, spokeswoman to the media and blogosphere).

She overheard a conversation between two other people and decided she felt disrespected.

She used her power (having 10,000 twitter followers and a moderately popular blog) like a thug to bust a cap in the butts of the two who dissed her, getting one of them fired.

Then she gets surprised when members of the tech community decide she's a mad dog who needs to be put down.

I realize you don't think the retaliation against her was overblown. Your opinion doesn't matter. What matters is that a whole bunch of guys decided they didn't want to be the next ones bitten by her, and took steps to remove her from having that kind of power.

[PapaBear3625]

What happened to "gentlemen don't discuss such things in public, certainly not in the presence of a lady?"

The "lady" was a hypocrite, having made jokes of a sexual nature on Twitter to a wide audience. See here

[PapaBear3625]

but what does “repo’s” mean?

Repo is a popular version control repository tool, or could just generically refer to repository.

[Sherman Logan]

Irrelevant. The “gentlemen” in question did not know she was not a “lady.”

Also, if you look at the picture it is reasonable to assume she was not the only female within earshot of their lewd conversation.

I find it really difficult to believe supposed conservatives defend such behavior on the part of males, simply because the female in question is not really a lady.

As I told an irate feminist once, I treat her and all women as ladies because I strive to be a gentleman, not because she is necessarily deserving of my respect.

[kearnyirish2]

“It’s best to just say nothing.”

You’re right about that.

[21twelve]

Thanks!

[x]

If I hadn't died in 1888, I could be in real trouble now" -- Edward Lear