IRC: #techbytes @ Techrights IRC Network: Sunday, March 05, 2023

1 AM, March 5

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > I'm sorry not to get back to you sooner but xxxxxx told us that we

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > weren't allowed to contact you, but now he's left I guess its okay!

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; I thought he had done this. He did the same to me. Cannot speak to anybody. Isolating me.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > I haven't dared look at the pensions! Could you tell me what the pension

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > provider said? Was it Now Pensions?

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; Nobody can find the pension the workers had until 2016. Even people who left the company years ago are told by Standard Life that the account isn't there and they refuse to say anything else. It's therefore suspected the current pension can't be trusted to be there either. People affected by this are still investigating.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > Roy's blog has made me laugh when he talks about Mr Kink instead of Mr

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > xxxxx! I laughed at some of the memes too :)

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; Thanks to you we know the nature of his relationship.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > Can you tell me why you've both left now? You couldn't tell me before

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > and all we were told by xxxxx is that you have left!

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; I was being picked on, accused of something I didn't do and did not even know about. So I resigned.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > Now xxxxxx is gone, xxxx is the only CEO and has been working double

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > shifts as there is no-one else. However a new guy has just been employed.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; Maybe he doesn't know what's really happening and will find out over time.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > Because you two left, we haven't been able to take any holiday, so as

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > this new guy has just started I have taken 5 days and am currently in

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > xxxx in xxx staying with an old friend for ten days which is

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > great. Tomorrow we go to xxxxx for the day.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; Sounds great!

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > What are you both going to do for work now?

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; I had a job interview this past Thursday. Fingers crossed.

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; > Hope all is well with you both!

01:22 schestowitz[TR]; And you as well.

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; Re: Article on MS as a "religious" debacle

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; > Greetings chaps,

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; > I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the following with regard

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; > to clarity and message. It concerns recent remarks on the Internet

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; > on "religious choice" and technology.

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; > Roy, would you care to publish this once I am happy with it?

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; I would love to!

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; I heard the same many times before over the years and we wrote some articles to that effect, so it strikes a chord.

01:27 schestowitz[TR]; Going to read now...

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; Note: I've not _yet_ read but intend to read the article shorNote: I've not _yet_ read but intend to read the article shortly.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > I wouldn't like to disqualify the use of religious beliefs as a means to

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > support free software, or even to defend one's our freedoms.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; I beg to differ. For a long time Free software was characterised as religious dogma; as if wanting to share something that does not cost money to replicate is akin to superstition. In 2020, after Red Hat (then IBM) had participated behind the scenes in a campaign of defamation against the Free software _community_ (the real one) I researched IBM's past to highlight hypocrisy: anything from misogyny to racism. I reckoned that in year

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; s to come they'd try to weaponise "isms" against people not controlled by corporations and/or CoCs. And I was right. Then they contacted me, trying to get me not to talk about their past.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; But the point is, if people accuse X of being a "religious", one way to respond is projection. Then they desist.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; I later made a whole wiki page for it:

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; http://techrights.org/wiki/IBM

http://techrights.org/wiki/IBM

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > I mean, faith pretty much by definition involves made-up beliefs,

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > whether or not they have a root of truth, or an ethical/moral

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > underpinning.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > As much as I trust the scientific method better than religious beliefs,

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > the Brazilian constitution, for one, equates the protections to

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > religious and philosophical beliefs, and my perception is somewhat

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > colored by it, as I find there's a lot of sense behind it: if you dig

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > deep enough, even the most scientific belief will likely run into

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > premises taken for granted that are hardly indistinguishable from

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > enlightened, questionable religious beliefs. So trying to draw a line

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > between them on these grounds risks coming across as elitist.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > I mean, we do have our parody religion, and though it's for fun, I

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > wouldn't mind at all using it to advance our cause, and I would have

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > named the Church of Emacs as my religious belief had I been given the

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > longer questoinnaire in the ongoing census in Brazil.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > Furthermore, someone's inability to successfully articulate

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > philosophical, scientific arguments for e.g. an intuition that leads to

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > self-consistent, self-preserving, self-respecting behavior might as well

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > be [md]isqualified as religious fanaticism, and in our case it often is,

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > but should it? I don't think so.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > OTOH, inasmuch as such fallacies are used against our cause, attempting

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > to disqualify our philosophical foundations as religious whims, we might

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > as well respond by using the labels stapled on us, fairly or not, to

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > advance our cause.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > ----

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; >

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > Now, reading your article without knowing the news that prompted it (I

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > read the link at the bottom only after going through the whole piece),

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > it appeared to me that someone was claiming religious alignment to

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > insist on using Microsoft software, rather than the other way round, or

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > even that the company insisted on using Microsoft software on religious

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > grounds. Those sounded awfully implausible to me. But the confusion

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; > started at the title, and remained distracting throughout.

01:38 schestowitz[TR]; Titles are important. As long as they don't mislead or tell a lie (eye-catching for the sake of traffic, at the expense of truth itself) I think it's fair play.tly.