Microsoft's ill-chosen magic constants

[mjg59]

Paolo Bonzini noticed something a little awkward in the Linux kernel support code for Microsoft's HyperV virtualisation environment - specifically, that the magic constant passed through to the hypervisor was "0xB16B00B5", or, in English, "BIG BOOBS". It turns out that this isn't an exception - when the code was originally submitted it also contained "0x0B00B135". That one got removed when the Xen support code was ripped out.

At the most basic level it's just straightforward childish humour, and the use of vaguely-English strings in magic hex constants is hardly uncommon. But it's also specifically male childish humour. Puerile sniggering at breasts contributes to the continuing impression that software development is a boys club where girls aren't welcome. It's especially irritating in this case because Azure may depend on this constant, so changing it will break things.

So, full marks, Microsoft. You've managed to make the kernel more offensive to half the population and you've made it awkward for us to rectify it.

Comments

[xb95]

Sigh. This is frustrating.

Now now, let's not be rash.

[(Anonymous)]

How about instead of removing 0xB16B00B5, you add 0xADFCBABE? This should balance things out nicely.

[(Anonymous)]

You could just replace it with:

$ echo $((0xB16B00B5))
2976579765

I've used this when searching for hex words:

$ grep "^[0-9a-flogs]*$" /usr/share/dict/words |
tr logs 1065 | awk '{print length, $0}' |
sort -n | cut -f2- -d' '

cheers, P@draigBrady.com

Not just for boys...

[(Anonymous)]

I feel compelled to point out that men are not the only gender who appreciate breasts.

Is 0xDEADBEEF offensive to cows?

[(Anonymous)]

I'd bet if you, a guy, hadn't publicized this, no girl would have EVER found out :-P

But seriously, /troll, does anybody have an estimate on how many women actually touch, or even see, kernel code? I've only ever seen a smattering of posts, but I don't ever recall seeing a female name on kernel-related mailing lists.

get real

[(Anonymous)]

"make the kernel more offensive to half the population"? Most people don't read source code of any kind. Please drop the faux-offended male feminist pretense, and get real. (BTW, my wife just read your post and thinks B00B5 are funny.)

nice

[(Anonymous)]

Girls don't go for nice guys, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. It was true back in Feynman's day, it's true today, and it'll be true a thousand years from now. Get over it!

[evith]

Just as offensive as the original pretence are the charming comments you're getting. You really should produce a bingo card.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, if you're worried about offending people with the hex constant, you could always represent it in decimal or octal... :)

[(Anonymous)]

oh chill out

Developer Douchebaggery

[(Anonymous)]

'Nice' guys; http://www.torontostandard.com/technology/toronto-tweeter-causes-twitter-uproar-over-violent-beat-up-anita-sarkeesian-game was like 5 minutes ago, and super high profile, and we're still going with "lighten up", and making excuses? This is relatively a much lower level of misogyny to be sure, but the lopsided treatment of women in IT in general ain't gonna get better until we actually discourage this crap instead of making apologies for it.

Men can also have boobs

[(Anonymous)]

Just wondering what made you think boobs refers specifically to females. I mean their are men with big boobs, especially overweight guys that eat too much steak and hamburgers. That's still politically incorrect, of course.

Seriously?

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously?

If this offends you, please, please, just do us a favour and get over it.

The real, technical problem here is that the magic number was not drawn at random. The pool of constants that "look like" English words/phrases is much much smaller than the pool of all 32-bit constants. So you're much more likely to get a collision with somebody else. Entropy's a bitch...

Standard Interpretations

[ao2.it]

Add a comment stating "BI SEX BOOBS" and work around the issue by throwing documentation at it...

Uhh

[(Anonymous)]

How do you know it was written by a male? Females often also have a sense of humor and are perfectly capable of writing funny error codes too.

[(Anonymous)]

So define

#define MAGIC_FOO 2976579765u

and get on with life.

Your openID is broken by the way

[(Anonymous)]

Come on. Go name some variable 'small_dick' and calm down. How on Earth can a hexadecimal be offensive? What's next, an illegal prime?

I think whoever gets insulted that easy should see a doctor. Not sure if it would help though.

Empathy

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you.

.....that's the tip of the iceberg!

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawn5NzO3VSYQkvHPMbC57xti-uxN2krA1-A]

I'm sure Marilyn Manson fans (aka. emos) are somewhat offended by TAINTED_CRAP too!

So what if the humour in this "magic constant" is male-orientated? The only people to take offense to this are people who are equally as braindead as those who take offense to the very existence of

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<ubuntu|debian>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<badattemptathumour> I'm sure Marilyn Manson fans (aka. emos) are somewhat offended by TAINTED_CRAP too! </badattemptathumour>

So what if the humour in this "magic constant" is male-orientated? The only people to take offense to this are people who are equally as braindead as those who take offense to the very existence of <Ubuntu|Debian> Women and the like (and there's more of an argument for that being inherently exclusionary in title than this joke!).

It's freely contributed code, if I had any say i'd vote for 0xB16B00B5 to remain. It's no worse than potentially offending vegans with 0xDEADBEEF or calling a Linux distribution a Beefy Miracle.

[(Anonymous)]

Everybody see what they want to see. Some see "BIG BOOBS" written in 1337-style, but I see just bunch of letters and numbers.

Also, enough of this feminist crap. I'm getting tired of ill-minded women who seek for chance to sue somebody who looked at them slightly differently or smiled to them. They call this "harassment". I call this "good manners" and true way how a MEN should act with women.

The inverse

[duffy.id.fedoraproject.org]

So what could a female write in hex that would be analogously inappropriate?

Derailing by the book

[(Anonymous)]

I love how some (most) of the responses reflect how well they can follow the guidelines of the D4D book (http://www.derailingfordummies.com/retaliation.html) ...

[(Anonymous)]

OMG! Now i know why Linux has so many problems, you didn't catch bugs, you search and analyze code for non-tolerant shit. Hell yeah! Continue and we will win!

P.S. Conspiracy mode on.

M$ did it specially for disturb and destroy linux!!!!

Conspiracy mode off.

[13-49-ru.blogspot.com]

How do you feel about potentially offensive hex constants in languages you do not speak? What if your sense-free english hex constant is in fact offensive in other language?