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Posts in 2008 November 27
Thanksgiving is a season to think about all the things we are grateful for, but so often we forget the bits of technology that we enjoy. Here are the pieces of technology I am grateful for:
Digital Rights Management We so rarely think about it, but DRM touches our lives every day. This proven useless piece of wonderful technology brought to us by wonderful narrow-minded people of the music and movie industries brings joy to our lives every time we try to do anything with our legally purchased content. Then, it makes us go buy new hardware, providing an incredible excuse to waste more money.
Dumb Comments Without the occasional dose of stupid, annoying comments, I would never be able to put up with the huge number of intelligent comments. Can you imagine only getting intelligent comments on your blog? No dumb ones and no spam? How would you survive?
Monopolies Ahhh… monopolies… Don’t listen to those people who say they’re bad for consumers or whatever! Monopolies are just another excuse to waste some more money (always fun!) and develop another idol (the company’s marketing department). Besides, without monopolies, we wouldn’t have this guy making a fool of himself.
Open Source Purists I just can’t stand those people who think it is OK to have a little closed code on your system. You know, the people who are too spoiled to use gNewSense. How can you stand touching any evil .doc files and MP3’s? Why can’t they just bug people into using other software! If their boss doesn’t like it, they should just get a new job.
Just in case you didn’t notice, I’m being highly sarcastic.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, profanity is a lot more common in open source than in closed source software. Also not surprisingly, some people find it offensive while others view it as nothing more than an exercise of free speech.
For me it depends on the situation. Using the word f**k in kernel code comments is one thing – I highly doubt that anyone can write code for the Linux kernel without having heard the word f**k before. (See the updated Linux kernel f**k count.)
Another slightly trickier issue is Damn Small Linux. (On a side note, I don’t understand why I have to choose between recommending Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux to people. I really can’t decide which is worse. If you find yourself in a similar situation, try NimbleX.) Anyway, aside from the abundance of strange names for small Linux distros, the Damn Small Linux FAQ says this on the topic:
Why the name?
It’s really just a way to emphasize the incredible small size of the distro. If you are offended by the name, just do what most people do. Call it “DSL”.
Yeah, great idea – until someone asks you what it stands for. And except for the fact that that happens to be the same acronym used for a very popular type of broadband internet access. (- Hey! You should try out DSL. – I already have DSL. – No, I mean the Linux distro. – The what? What does DSL stand for? – Umm, well.) This topic sparked this thread over at LXer, which happens to be one of the funniest threads ever to appear in a Linux forum.
Still, despite the awkwardness of promoting DSL (yeah, try putting that on a shirt), I have to fall on the developer’s side here. After all, it really is his or her choice. DSL has never exactly been targeted at the average user and it is very upfront about the name.
I draw the line at rudely named packages in the Ubuntu repos, though. You can’t expect people to know that there are references to profanity in obscure packages and Ubuntu does market itself to the average user. In fairness, there are only three packages that mention the word f**k and all of those references are to brainf**k, which is apparently an actual thing, in the description. Still, this should not be there. For me, though, the issue is not that some kid could see it (after all, as has been pointed out, there are many other ways kids will learn these words), but that it is not professional. I want my operating system, no matter who develops it, to appear just as professional as Windows and OS X.
Even worse, in my opinion, are the random uses of damn in descriptions of other packages. Here the word is used simply as a word, not part of a name. Sure it is all just for fun, but there are other places to joke about that sort of thing with other developers. You don’t need to do it in release software.
This is not as big of an issue as it is being made into (yeah, yeah, I know I am not helping), but it should be changed.