Re: Is hate code speech?

[Xcott Craver <caj@math.niu.edu>]

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