Oh, Firefox, I love your add-ons, but your memory leaks are killing me. And by “killing me” I mean “forcing me to restart you a lot more than I’d like to because of those damn memory leaks.”
Well guess what! One Men’s Rights Redditor has figured out the cause of these memory leaks, and all of Firefox’s other issues. It was Social Justice Warriors all along!
Hmm. I’m pretty sure Brendan Eich ushered himself out the door because his support of Prop 8 had caused a virtual revolt in the Mozilla community. You know, the people without whom Firefox could not continue to exist as a viable piece of software. But whatever. Somehow Firefox would be magically bug-free if the dude the Mozilla community rejected had stuck around anyway because … Men’s Rights?
Fur dudes who like to think of themselves as master logicians these guys aren’t terribly logical a lot of the time.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
Sorry, I meant to quote them talking about the “perks of being a woman on the internet” and “in geek circles”. #notallgeekmen
“These can be deceptively complicated to track down…”
One of my first jobs on a programing project and I had to track down a memory leak. I thought I had figured it out right away, as there was a very likely suspect. However, the close command released the memory automatically, so it couldn’t be the problem. … Or to be more accurate, the manual said the close command was supposed to release the memory automatically. After three days of trying everything else, I went back and said, “Screw it. I’ll force it to release the memory manually and then close it.” And it worked.
I know – it doesn’t occur to them that that ‘special treatment’ is unrequested and often unwanted!
You know, if they’re sending women pics of their dangly bits under the impression that the women will consider that a perk, someone should probably have a quiet word with them about that.
Davidknewton: I’m guessing their argument is “well I’d love it if women objectified me and showed me unsolicited snaps of their genitals, so women must love it when it happens to them. What’s that? They don’t? Naaaaaah.”
So, in order to get special perks like harassment and threats on the internet, I need to show my breasts? Um, I think I’ll pass. Thanks.
Also, doesn’t it occur to them that showing a pair of breasts doesn’t prove you aren’t a sock? You can just be showing pics/video of someone else?
Ninja’d! SJWs at it again!
@ WWTH
Good news! You don’t have to show your boobs to get harassment and threats on the internet. As long as angry dudes know that you have them that’s usually enough.
True. I got an avatar for Gawker/Jezebel/Io9 commenting and it’s a picture of Sophie Turner (who plays Sansa on GoT) on the iron throne. I get called c*nt and told to calm down way more now. Even though the avatar isn’t a picture of me.
It’s a great picture though. Here it is in gif form.
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140910204436/real-life-villains/images/c/c9/Sansa-misandry.gif
Dear god, that little firefox/redpanda is a cute bugger!
I love the subtext here. “women are crappy programers, and are of course the cause of all bugs, and without women there would be no bugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
@lensman: No, the problem with Firefox in Debian is not the code. Firefox is entirely FLOSS. But: the problem is the branding, i.e. the name and the logo.
You see, the logo, the red fox hugging the globe, is non-free; you are not allowed to modify it. And this goes against the DFSG, the Debian Free Software Guidelines. They dictate what the Debian project considers free software. And that includes that you are allowed to change to code, and all art and text resources.
So Debian then went along to and changed the logo. Mozilla said “but the logo is an important part of the Firefox branding”. To fix that, they also had to change to name. They chose Iceweasel, and added a logo that looks similar to the original Firefox logo, but with a weasel.
To recap: the only different between Iceweasel and plain Firefox is the name and the logo.
Yes, you can read the source and look for the memory leak. It’s not that easy though: it’s a darn huge codebase, and they have their own memory management. This, and the issues that addons also request memory and do things, makes it a quite complicated issues to debug.
Is this some sort of coding equivalent to the “then carry a gun” argument about what women should do if they don’t like being catcalled? I mean sure, if you’re a coder and want to help fix things and have time to do so then why not, but “go fix the bugs in Firefox” doesn’t seem like a very reasonable suggestion overall.
@DrMcCoy
Thanks for clarifying this. I thought that the reason that Debian had its own fork of Firefox was the recently introduced Sync Service. I am still inclined to think that there are a few changes in the code between Iceweasel and Firefox, since I can’t get my Monkey Scripts to work.
Thus Spake Zaracassandrakitty:
It’s a coding equivalent to the “then make your OWN game!” gamergate argument. You’re right that it isn’t very helpful, but “Make your OWN game!” isn’t very helpful either, and isn’t meant to be. It’s just a trump card the gamergrotz like to throw around (even at women who do, indeed, make their own games).
Yeah, that’s how it read to me, which is why I was raising my eyebrows and going “really?”.
I’m guessing not everyone here saw the carry a gun if you don’t like being catcalled asshole I was referring to. If so, enjoy.
http://thepsychoticfuckingbiotic.tumblr.com/post/101706248644/terrasigillata-thepsychoticfuckingbiotic
@lensman: No, that Iceweasel rebranding was years ago… *looks* Damn, 2006? Where the hell did the time go?
And yeah, like every distribution, Debian does include various patches to upstream. The patches currently applied (that would be for Firefox 33.1 from Debian experimental) are here: http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mozilla/iceweasel.git/tree/debian/patches , the file “series” defines the order in which they are applied.
No idea if there’s anything that interferes with what you’re trying to do. I don’t really know much about how Firefox works under the hood.
If you can, maybe investigate and/or file a report to the Debian bugtracker? Yes, that will probably be a lot of work, sorry.
Ahhh, sorry. Didn’t mean to re-tread ground you already knew.
As to “THEN CARRY A GUN!”… yeah, I’m unfortunately familiar with that as well. Though I don’t want to get into the politics of who owns guns and why — because boy howdy, is that ever a can of worms — I wish Mr. Steve Santagati had considered for one second how the judicial system is likely react to a woman of color who “stands up for herself” by pointing a gun at a white man. Kiddies, this is what privilege looks like.
She had some epic WTF expressions during that discussion. The most interesting thing, though, other than the obvious fact that if a black woman tried that she’d probably get shot by the nearest cop, is the dude’s facial expression when he says the bit about the gun. He’s not actually suggesting that she carry a gun, what he’s really saying is “fuck you”, and look at the way the veins in his neck are bulging and his eyes are widened and his nostrils are flared. He’s absolutely furious that she’s daring to argue with him. That body language and those facial expressions? He could not be demonstrating more clearly that catcalling is about aggression, not attraction. His earlier attempts to brush off her points were meant to intimidate her into silence, and when that didn’t work he got really angry really fast.
Not with quite that undercurrent of malice. But yeah, there are geeks who honestly think everyone could code well enough to fix e.g. Firefox if they just tried. It’s more from Typical Mind Fallacy, a lack of perspective on what non-geeks are like.
I read CARRY A GUN’s expression a little differently, though no less favourably – I saw just an overwhelming condescension for anyone who doesn’t immediately think violence is so _obvious_ a solution.
@C.S.Strowbridge – Excellent 🙂 Always read the manual… but never trust it!
Of course, if he catcalled a woman and had a gun pulled on him, he’d no doubt consider himself ill-used.
Also, the discussion of actual CompSci here is far more interesting than anything the OP managed. Well done, everybody!
Thus Spake Zaracassandrakitty:
Holy cow, you’re right. I’d never noticed that, but you’re right — he’s visibly getting angry at these women for talking back to him on the issue. It’s even clearer if you watch the actual video — he’s actually chuckling to himself as Amanda Seales tells him that catcalling makes women uncomfortable, then the grin fades. He looks blank, then annoyed. He starts talking over them, and when they won’t shut up he becomes visibly angry. You can even see his face flush and the tendons in his neck stand out.
What other asshole thought this asshole would be an effective counterpoint? He might as well be yelling “SHUT UP, WHORE.” (Or maybe that was the whole point?)
I have to point out that you may not have been seeing the aggression because you’re not in the group it was directed towards, and you’ve probably never seen it aimed at you before in those circumstances. Women, otoh, tend to have a lot of experience in watching men go from vaguely condescending to postal when we disagree with them.
I’m glad he wasn’t in the same room as the other guest, because if he had been I’d almost guarantee he’d have tried to hit her.
Last comment @ davidnewton, btw.
Thus Spake Zaracassandrakitty:
You’re probably right. This kind of thing is why I try to remember that sometimes the best thing I can do is not argue, not explain, but rather shut up and listen.