{"id":94,"date":"2006-05-10T08:28:29","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T12:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/2006-05-10\/its-not-bias-its-discrimination\/"},"modified":"2006-08-04T15:23:59","modified_gmt":"2006-08-04T19:23:59","slug":"its-not-bias-its-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/2006-05-10\/its-not-bias-its-discrimination\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s not Bias, It&#8217;s Discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techweb.com\/wire\/software\/187201420\">techweb.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"copy\"> A trade association has blasted the Massachusetts Information and Technology Division (IDT) for requesting a plug-in for Microsoft&#8217;s Office Suite, seizing on the issue as evidence that the state&#8217;s policy of mandating the OpenDocument <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techweb.com\/encyclopedia\/defineterm.jhtml?term=Format&#038;x=&#038;y=\">Format<\/a> (ODF) is &#8220;a biased, open source-only preference policy.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is false: what the state of Massachusetts is doing is not bias, it is discrimination, and it is what citizens should expect from their government. Preferring open standards is a thoughtful, discriminatory policy.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the word &#8220;discrimination&#8221; has grown tentacles over the past 30 years; it is high time for English speakers to reclaim the original sense of the word: to make wise choices between options. To say that someone is &#8220;discriminating&#8221; was at one time one of the highest of compliments; the civil rights movement has unfortunately (and unwittingly) done the English language a misservice by turning &#8220;discrimination&#8221; into an accursed word.<\/p>\n<p>Good:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Discrimination in hiring based on the applicant&#8217;s level of education and ability to perform the job;<\/li>\n<li>Discrimination in serving somebody drinks at a bar based on their apparent level of drunkenness;<\/li>\n<li>Discrimination in issuing a loan based on credit history and income.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Bad:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Discrimination in hiring based on the  applicant&#8217;s race;<\/li>\n<li>Discrimination in serving somebody drinks at a bar based on their nationality;<\/li>\n<li>Discrimination in issuing a loan based on gender.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It is perfectly reasonable for Microsoft to argue that discrimination against Microsoft Office because it doesn&#8217;t support the Open Document Format should fall under the category of &#8220;bad&#8221; discrimination: that&#8217;s a question of public policy. But it certainly isn&#8217;t bad simply because it is discriminatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From techweb.com: A trade association has blasted the Massachusetts Information and Technology Division (IDT) for requesting a plug-in for Microsoft&#8217;s Office Suite, seizing on the issue as evidence that the state&#8217;s policy of mandating the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is &#8220;a biased, open source-only preference policy.&#8221; This is false: what the state of Massachusetts is doing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mozilla","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin.smedbergs.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}