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The Jargon File claims that the famous B1FF was Joe Talmadge, creator of the Flamer's Bible - it doesn't say where he started out, but his current address is at HP. There might have been an original BIFF, but this guy apparently used scripts to help him along.

The Jargon File, maintained by esr, is an interesting reference - I've been through the thing, and you pick up little peices of lore. Not as good as experiencing it first hand, but you do find gems like Jeff K.

The Jargon File claims that the famous B1FF was Joe Talmadge, creator of the Flamer's Bible - it doesn't say where he started out, but his current address is at HP. There might have been an original BIFF, but this guy apparently used scripts to help him along.

The Jargon File, maintained by esr, is an interesting reference - I've been through the thing, and you pick up little peices of lore. Not as good as experiencing it first hand, but you do find gems like Jeff K.

I posted that as a reply to the wrong comment 8-P. You can tell I was in a hurry because I didn't even grammar check it first.

The real troll is here, and yes, he is a troll, according to the defination.

Actually, I fould your post quite funny, and apologize for the inconvience.

Oh, yes, they will. Those days you could still keep up with Usenet, the days 99% of posts was relevant to the group and the previous message, those days when "Flame" stood for an intelligent, almost literary rebuttal, instead of moronic incendiary gutter-drivel, the days of the Crystal Cave, the days the 'net _was_ free and open, and abuse and crass commercialism non-existent. They will be missed, Jon, until they pry the keyboard from my cold, dead fingers and nail the coffin shut. And I bet many will agree, if maybe not here.

Just how far back are we going, Grampa? I started reading newsgroups a couple of years before the September-that-never-ended, and absolutely none of the conditions that you mention above obtained. Pretending that, by October, all those clueless newbies either caught the train or dropped out ignores all of those dysfunctional yet persistent perpetual students who eschewed getting a life in favor of ceaselessly trying to exert some sort of control or influence, however negative, on that imaginary world displayed in 80 columns of monospaced type on their CRTs.

Hey, maybe there was, indeed, a time before that when there was a lower S/N ratio, if only because there were only a handful of research institutions on the net and only CS majors had accounts. Certainly there's a lot more noise these days on just about any group. But mourning the "days you could still keep up with Usenet" strikes me as just a little creepy; it's kind of like being nostalgic for the days when you could still keep up with all the books being published, because there were only about twelve, including the Bible.

I don't think so

Just because there are more people on the net, doesn't mean that they are clued.
Refer to The September that never ended.

A bit off subject, but I was caught off-guard by "AAN" (Apartment Area Network). A cool TLA, but I've never heard it used before. Did some quick digging and...

- Jargon File (aka: the "Hacker's Dictionary") contains no entry
- dictionary.com contains no entry
- www.everything2.com contains only, "Airport code for Al Ain, United Arab Emirates"

What is the moral of this story? I need to get a life and stop reading slashdot on Saturday nights. =>

It wasn't that long ago that people were using UUCP and bang paths to push mail around. The jargon file entry for Internet address mentions that the term is used loosely for anything reachable from the Internet, including bang paths.

It wasn't that long ago that people were using UUCP and bang paths to push mail around. The jargon file entry for Internet address mentions that the term is used loosely for anything reachable from the Internet, including bang paths.

How interesting that you quote from ESR's book. I think you should surf his site some more, you just might find the person you are looking for.

You go to a liberal arts school and learn computer science so that you know that Joseph Leibnitz defined God in terms of the many worlds theory described in the second paragraph of the bogo-sort definition. While you're there you take classes in logic, physics, math, chemistry and computer science so that you know better than to use the bogo-sort. There's a lot more to going to college than getting job training. If all you want is some job training go to a community college for a couple of years and learn to program or repair electronics or whatever.
_____________

You go to a liberal arts school and learn computer science so that you know that Joseph Leibnitz defined God in terms of the many worlds theory described in the second paragraph of the bogo-sort definition. While you're there you take classes in logic, physics, math, chemistry and computer science so that you know better than to use the bogo-sort. There's a lot more to going to college than getting job training. If all you want is some job training go to a community college for a couple of years and learn to program or repair electronics or whatever.
_____________

You go to a liberal arts school and learn computer science so that you know that Joseph Leibnitz defined God in terms of the many worlds theory described in the second paragraph of the bogo-sort definition. While you're there you take classes in logic, physics, math, chemistry and computer science so that you know better than to use the bogo-sort. There's a lot more to going to college than getting job training. If all you want is some job training go to a community college for a couple of years and learn to program or repair electronics or whatever.
_____________

You can become a computer programmer anytime.

You may be able to become a programmer anytime, but you can't become a computer scientist anytime.

Whats the difference? A programmer can program, a computer scientist solves problems. I first need to see that guy which uses the same algorithms as I do, does the same design as I do and did learn to program on his job. I need to find the guy, who does never ever use bogo-sort but learned programming on the fly. I don't know him yet.

Actually, LISP's funny interpretation is "Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses".

Check it out at the Jargon File:LISP

Somewhat more on topic, Shannon is mentioned directly in the Jargon file, where we find that
Claude Shannon first used the word "bit" in print in the computer science sense.

Also, I just read the book "Crypto" by Steven Levy and was surprised to find out how critical Shannon's work on information theory was to early non-government crypto research. If it wasn't for his papers, it is likely that the US government would still have the only really strong cryptography in the world.

He will be remembered.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Actually, LISP's funny interpretation is "Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses".

Check it out at the Jargon File:LISP

Somewhat more on topic, Shannon is mentioned directly in the Jargon file, where we find that
Claude Shannon first used the word "bit" in print in the computer science sense.

Also, I just read the book "Crypto" by Steven Levy and was surprised to find out how critical Shannon's work on information theory was to early non-government crypto research. If it wasn't for his papers, it is likely that the US government would still have the only really strong cryptography in the world.

He will be remembered.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

I was just thinking about the subject, and I relized that intercal would be the perfect language for this. I'm quite surprised nobody has thought of this yet. This would be perfect as it looks line noise, it is relativly rare, and there is no way the MPAA could understand it. Is there any slashdot readers that know intercal?

Also, the non-word in question, "boxen," is not entirely identical in use to the word "boxes" in that its use seems restricted to the metal boxes that encase computational devices.

Plus it's a cute word. Don't get me wrong I'm not a linguasexual or anything (no offense to those who are), but I think this specific term has a little bit of charm over the term it actually does duplicate "computers." Besides, it's not half as heinous as the word "biotch," ('bEE-och) which I've lobbied against in rap music journals for as long as it's been in use.

On these points we disagree. That's fine. I hereby grand you permission to have your own (pre-approved) opinion. What I would like to know now is you've targeted this specific usage of a nonstandard English word. Surely you've seen the gross proliferation of almost non-sensical words and phrases that are thrown around here. (All your base are now mine.) While I applaud your style and eloquence, I wonder why you put up the effort. Was this just one term too many, or are you taking the every little bit helps approach?

"May I release my ankles now? My arms hurt."
--the Pedro Picasso

--

From http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/taoup/chapter4 .html:

Emacs stands for `EDiting MAcroS' (pronounce it /ee'maks/)...

Wouldn't that make it 'EDMAS'?

Um, you seem to be laboring under a mighty misapprehension about the word "pagan". (Or maybe you're a lame-ass troll, but for the sake of potentially being educational I'll assume not.) Might I suggest ESR's Neopagan FAQ?

You're also laboring under a mighty misapprehension about the word "socialist", for which I'd recommend some reading about libertarian socialism.

And if I were afraid of gun owners I'd be unable to look in the mirror without my knees quaking.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Obviously, it's because of the Eric Conspirancy Secret Labs ;-)

Or for the references to "art fags"...

Sorry for the "OT" question, but what exactly does the www.tuxedo.org site do?

The block's probably for the gun page...

Your Working Boy,
- Otis (LICQ: 85110864)

Despite the fact that you agree with me, I invoke Godwin's law.

Things in Unix are meant to be fast; just ask any Linux user why they run Linux, and they'll tell you that they enjoy the power and speed compared to WinBlows. But the fact that Emacs takes a long time to load up (at least on my P75 machine), has a list of unnecessary features that could rival M$ Word, and simple things like saving a file require 2 commands (ctrl-x ctrl-s) all adds up to a lack of speed, a lack of elegance, and a lack of design.

------
That's just the way it is

Kernel Traffic, the linux kernel development newsletter, seemed to indicate that the idea has been welcomed, except for ESR's choice of Python as the development language, as many people are concerned that it means that you need a working python environment to build a kernel.

What the heck are you talking about?

Eric's stuff is everywhere. Take a look at the Acknowledgements file for Emacs, for example. Every time you fire up a debugger in Emacs, or edit a Makefile, or shoot off a cvs command you have Eric to thank. In fact, he apparently has more Lisp code in Emacs repositories than anyone besides RMS. He also wrote the keeper software for FTP supersite sunsite. He is currently working on a new build structure for the Linux kernel, and apparently some stuff for the PNG picture format. He is also active on the Python development lists (where he is pushing for wxPython over Tkinter).

He also is a major contributor to Nethack. Which means he has been responsible for hours of my lost productivity.

And that's just the stuff that I can think of off the top of my head, and it doesn't include stuff like the fact that he is maintainer of the Terminfo files, the Jargon file, and a whole pile of other stuff (if you haven't read the documentation for Intercal then you really are missing out). Oh, and let's not forget fetchmail. It seems he wrote an entire book on that particular experiment. If you are really interested in reading about the code he has contributed go here. Most of the interesting bits are at the bottom.

I don't agree with all of ESR's views either, but saying that ESR doesn't deliver is completely untrue. What's more, the software that he has written is quite well done. The documentation, in particular, is usually quite astoundingly good.

The fact of the matter is that ESR is probably twice as talented a hacker as both you and I put together.

Not to mention the way he's unabashedly biased the Jargon File. Check out the entry for Python, if you want to see what I mean.

I realize ESR has done a lot more for ...urm...open source...as he likes to call it that I have, but I don't have an ego the size of New York City, either. That just bugs me.

Of all the people I know using open-source (GNU/Linux) code, I don't know any using Eric's stuff. I don't know any advocating Eric's philosphies, either. I've heard Richard Stallman, and I have disagreements with some of his views, but I know he's considerably more influential. I don't think Eric really delivers anything, whereas Richard usually has something meaningful to say. It's at least tangible enough for me to get a hold of and disagree with, if need be. Perhaps I'm just overly concerned with his love of guns to take his rants seriously. Or perhaps I'm too British :-)

Accomplishments from the fetchmail project aside,

Hey, don't forget the broken version of ncurses he released (3.something). Fortunately, more able people have since released a better version.

does anyone think that ESR still has a credible voice in the community? For me, he stopped having credibility shortly after the flurry of Linux-related IPOs.

You mean when he wrote self-promoting crap like his "Newfound Wealth" bitching-cause-i'm-rich or the "Take my Job please" bitching-cause-i'm-famous bit?

I, along with a lot of other people, interpreted his statements as arrogant, thinly-guised, and frankly insulting bragging (the exact stuff we love Linus for *not* doing).

You're hardly the only one.

In any event, it seems to me that his role as a community mouthpiece has been largely taken over

It's about time.

I know this is marginally off-topic, but I need to know if I'm alone amongst the serious /. inhabitants in not wanting to hear from this guy again

Not hardly. If a tree fell on ESR in a forest filled with Linux users, would anyone notice? The guy is, and always has been, all talk. Say what you will about RMS (a communist), Larry Wall (a pseudo-scientist babbler), or Theo deRaadt (a sociopathic cult leader), but they produce working code. Until ESR does more than a simple mail downloader (is he capable of it?), he is simply not needed.

(I already know what the trolls think),

Heh.

or am I just being too hard on a guy who still has something worthwhile to say despite letting the dollar-signs go to his head at one point?

One word: no.


-- Floyd

Ignoring the minor problem that ASN.1's binary representations are the ugliest thing since Intercal or maybe PGP and that people who try too hard to steal bits should be locked up in padded rooms, and that in spite of its ugliness it's still offers incompleteness and ambiguity, the important difference between the two standards is that ASN.1 is a top-down centrally-controlled standard where anybody who wants to define an object type has to either negotiate with a committee to get namespace or buy a hunk of private vendor namespace, while XML is decentralized and anybody can define any object type they like that doesn't start with [Xx][Mm][Ll] and propagate the definitions. The good part about centralization is that it's unambiguous, doesn't lead to conflicts, and reduces portability problems, but it's slow, cumbersome, and often not worth the bother (though the slowness and cumbersomeness does encourage you to get the design right before going through the pain of registration.) Decentralized groups who want to do reusable interoperable XML DTDs still have to negotiate namespace with each other, but you can resolve much of that with naming conventions like FooProjectWidget1 instead of just calling your object Widget1, so you only need to discuss with other FooProject makers what kinds of widgets you need.

> First, I dont think its a shame that they can't upgrade their machines in 3 years. I think its a shame that they have machines that can perform 33 million instructions per second and that this insn't enough to browse the web with modern software. MIPS != MHz. For example, a 486dx2-50 will only execute about 6 million instructions per second. On the other hand, MIPS are, as the Jargon File puts it, a "Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed", because some instructions take less clock ticks to perform than others.

Huh? Most of the major open source programs I can think of are imitative rather than innovative. Linux is an OS implementation of Unix, Gnome and KDE are attempts to clone MS Windows on Linux, etc.

The innovative OS programs I can think of t(httpd, Mosaic, BSD) tend to come out from universities and are more properly the side benefits of research rather than the direct result of the open source movement.

But, the Open Source Community was derived from (or is closely related to -- take your pick) the scientific and academic communities, just sharing software instead of research, and updated to use the Internet. ESR's essays touch upon this topic. Check out: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/

Innovation is usually the result of the work of a few people rather than the output of the million monkeys of the Internet.

While I agree that true innovation (not M$FT's fake variety) does indeed happen on a personal level, why the elitism? Do you really think that only academics can innovate?

I suggest that the OSS process brings us back to the days (1600s - 1700s maybe?) in which anyone with a sound mind could contribute to science. You didn't have to go through a 4 to 8 year scholastic meat grinder and become a narrowly focused professional first. Likewise, now anyone who is a good programmer can pick a project and make significant progress. Those who aren't programmers but who can write, can help with the docs.

The "Next Big Thing" may come from someone in Bangladesh or outer Mongolia, yet they are some of your "million monkeys of the Internet".

Come to think of it, so am I. We need a new motto:

The many.
The proud.
Innovating in ways never thought possible before.
The million Internet monkeys.

>In a world where the lead developer and figure head of the next greatest software is a Finn from Sweden...

Linus is not a "Finn from Sweden",(He would be pissed if he read that, I certainly am!) nor is he a Sweed from Finland altogh thats much closer. Linus is a Finnishsweed. You should read Eric S. Raymonds Linus FAQ

Ahh yes... All nouns can be verbed. Example: "All nouns can be verbed."

Gotta love the Dictionary.

First, the travelling salesman problem is solvable even by a Turing-machine analogue

I'm speaking practically here. I'm going to visit 10,000 cities. Please give me the absolute guaranteed best route (in my lifetime, if you please).

Pattern recognition seems to be built into the human brain as much as (and perhaps more than) binary addition is built into modern processors.

Well, obviously, and so is creativity, emotion, and self-awareness. That doesn't mean that we know how they work.

So, you questions answered...

Actually, you haven't answered anything.

a self-organizing network becomes a problem when you want it to do something, like minimize network traffic (or at least collisions) or be trustable.

Nice hand-wave. The reason I bring up the TSP and pattern recognition is that they are problems that seem like they should be simple, but aren't. I believe self-organizing networks fall into the same category.

But hey, someone prove me wrong. I'd love to see it happen.

--

Touch screens looked good in Star Trek, but in real life, you end up with users suffering from Gorilla Arm.

Similarly another Trek-ism, voice control suffers from the same problem. Just as touch screens cause Gorilla Arm, voice recognition generates laryngitis and has the additional effect of annoying bystanders.

I think I'll stick with the keyboard & mouse for the time being. Though I wouldn't mind seing the keyboard redesigned. Get rid of useless keys like Scroll lock, and simplify things a bit.

With zerocopy, when you issue sendfile(), the kernel does the network DMA straight from the page cache, avoiding that extra copy. In the case where the network card is capable of doing the TCP checksum in hardware (as a lot of newer cards can), the kernel doesn't even have to look at the data between the disk DMA and the network DMA.

This is almost consumer electronics, after all; there's no such thing as a static product line anymore. Even the venerable 3c509b is being (has been?) phased out for a -c version; which almost certainly has nothing fundamentally new or worthwhile in the way of capabilities, but might be a cheaper design, and is just different enough to cause trouble with old drivers. See also backward combatability.

However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

you brought ww2 into this. really though to compare the loss or your precious cable to the lives lost at perl harbor is sad. thats the point when any rational discussion ended.

use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that

hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker. The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see the network and Internet address). For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic). It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled bogus). See also wannabee. This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.

But I never, ever thought that such a relationship between a "recreational" hack and real work hacking would be understood by the coding methodists. Some people work through a problem in order, and organized. They do well, and they are usually very good teachers. A hacker builds up a ridiculously large body of knowledge about coding, os quirks, configs, styles of development, architectures, systems and services, and then, just sort of starts to "get it" when presented with a new problem.

Those of you who have had this happen know what I'm talking about. Just, well, "feeling" where the problem should be in the code, and it's there. Some of my coworkers called it "zenning" the code. I like that term. Hacking is a term of honor, and I'm not there yet.

Open your mind. Read the Jargon File

The Jargon File on tuxedo.org.

Enjoy or don't. Disagree or don't. But always, always think and consider.

The problem with zip disks is that they are too fast. With a floppy at least only the most moronic work directly off the floppy (they are only nearly uncountable).

Now, the biggest problem with your solution (that is, emailing your big files to yourself) is that this is another STUPID way to be transferring files. There are always better ways to transfer files than email. It should be the method of last resort. Let's see, http, scp, ftp ... that's enough for now. Or use one of the free netdrive services.

Nothing is more annoying for a sysadmin than to slogin to the server in the morning and discover that some pinhead has filled up their mail box with 600MB of files (which translates into about 685MB after MIME translation, BTW). Believe me.

Then again, LARTing said pinhead can be quite satisfying.

Godwin's Law prov.

[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

From here.

Thanks for proving the law and its associated codicil, even if this isn't usenet! ;-)

My post said that most local businesses and a lot of national business aren't of the nature where adveritising on the national scale doesn't make sense. When was the last time you saw a superbowl ad for a plumber?

True, but irrelevant. Spam is cheap, and cost shifting makes it even cheaper. I get two or three spams a day for businesses in Argentina; I've never even been to Argentina. Why? Because it's more expensive to carefully target your email than it is to just send out a few million extra and live with the decreased response rate.

I don't like spam as much as the next guy, but to think that you'll ever get thousands a day? Get real.

Ten years ago, I got zero. Five years ago, I got one or two. Today, I get maybe 30 a day, despite extensive technological and social measures to reduce spam. Since you seem to have the answers, care to tell me what the maximum number I'll get is? Don't forget to include the fact that only a small percentage of potential internet users are currently on the net.

You're right that it won't be thousands a day, because I'll abandon email entirely at that point. But Moore's law makes spamming ever cheaper and Metcalfe's law makes it ever more useful. Pretending that spamming won't get worse is just sticking your head in the sand.

You are now in violation of Godwin's Law. We will come to collect you shortly.

But didn't Linux first *define* BogoMIPS?

Okay, time to clean up Emacs' auto-saves...

% rm *~
*~ not found. Assuming you meant "rm *"
%

...hmm, I guess there weren't any auto-saves.

% ls
%

Hey, where's my code?

According to the story as told in the Jargon File, DWIM actually stands for "Damn Warren's Infernal Machine", at least in the opinion of the victim of such an accident, who then wanted to tie the author to his chair and enter the same command on his workstation. Twice.

David Gould

Seriously, though... you've really got to stop adding your own personal bias so forcefully to your content.

-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."

I didn't say it wouldn't change things. I just don't see why that's a reason to be so Chicken Little about it.

Take everything you know about life and reconsider.(...) What is life, really?

Is this a question you claim to have the answer to? Do you think cloning is likely to change that answer?

If you answered 'yes' to both of the above questions, you don't have the answer yet. Come back when you have a theory that can't be shaken so easily.

Do clones have the same rights as any other human? Will this create a new sub-class of humans? Most likely.

Please tell me how you can tell the difference between someone who is a clone and someone who is not. Quickly, walking down the street or talking to them in a bar.

How can you discriminate against or deny rights to a class of people when you can't determine who its members are? How will this "create a new sub-class" of humans, unless they somehow engineer all clones to have, say, purple spots on the middle of their foreheads (which, before you go getting all pseudo-philosophical or hysterical about genetic engineering, we can't do yet)?

It becomes easy to abdicate responsibility for such attrocities as nuclear weapons, the hydrogen bomb, the holocaust (you think Hitler knew the best way to gas jews?), the list goes on. "It wasn't me!" the scientists cry

Notwithstanding Godwin's Law, you've just abjured responsiblity yourself, by foisting it all off on those evil, mean scientists who are obviously out to sell all our souls to Hell with their Godforsaken investigations. This kind of thing is nothing more than Frankenstein revisited. If you want to be a Luddite, fine. But why drag the rest of us down into this morass of fear? Some of us prefer to look on every new discovery as an opportunity, instead of a reason to be afraid.

Cyclopatra

"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore

Tell me this: how long have you been working for Napster? Are you a regular employee or some bum paid $10 to express their opinion?

A subscription is the Right Thing to do. It will allow artists to get money they rightfully deserve for their work.

I seriously doubt that.

First of all, I usually download MP3s of things that aren't in the RIAA's grasp. (Last week, it was the final theme to Spaceship Earth. Before that, it was "Barney Gets Shot", and before that, it was the monorail narration from Walt Disney World.)

Second, how much of the money do you actually think will get to the artists? My guess is, none.

Third, 'the money they rightfully deserve' may or may not be that. That's a whole other argument.

Be sure and not complain when you cant find that obscure song you were looking for. Or when the service quality just plain sucks.

I've had much better quality from OpenNAP than from any official server. Not to mention that I've found virtually all of the 'obscure songs' I mentioned earlier on OpenNAP servers.

Steve Jobs is Linus Torvalds? Nah... don't think so. :-)

This is the classic stovepipe system anti-pattern, and is caused when your code has too many intertwined and circular dependencies. When this happens, it's impossible to even predict how many areas will be affected by a given change. The code has reached the point of no return. (Note the original intent of object-oriented programmed is to reduce dependencies between varying systems.)

Of course, what most companies do that this point is hire a Mongolian Horde of programmers to fix things by brute-force, aka the "Warm Bodies" anti-pattern. By then, it's too late. Leave.

Unfortunately, as a junior developer, you probably shouldn't be making these decisions yourself; you'll only anger people above you. If there isn't a culture of refactoring when necessary, there's nothing that can be done. It must either always be there, or brought in and bought in from the top. Sadly, most PHBs do not understand this. I find it laughable when a PHB will hire 40 people for 4 years gang-banging the code, instead of having 3 or 4 smart people send a year refactoring.