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NetBSD Announces Logo Design Competition
jschauma writes "The NetBSD Project has announced that it has
launched an international competition for the creation of a new logo. There
is a cash prize of US $100.00 for the winning entry. The successful logo will
also have wide exposure, featuring in all NetBSD material including, but not
limited to; the NetBSD.org web site, software media, apparel, and business
systems. The competition will close on February 29, 2004. The rules of the
competition, submission information and the design brief can be found in the
official
announcement, which has already spawned some discussion on the netbsd-advocacy
and current-users
MailingLists." The announcement notes that the current logo is "too complicated... hard to reproduce... [and] has negative cultural, and religious ramifications."
"too complicated... hard to reproduce... [and] has negative cultural, and religious ramifications."
So political correctness has made it to open source.
Oy!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
There is a cash prize of US $100.00 for the winning entry.
With the dollar going the way it is it'll cost me more to bank the cheque than it is worth over here!
--
This sig is inoffensive.
*not* the BSD devil, check out the link given in the story.
Several people have posted (in the usual /. manner) that they don't see an issue with the devil, it's a cartoon, right wing religious wackos, etc. Well its not the devil, it's what the devils are doing. The devils are in a pose that mimics one that is usually associated with valour and the giving of ones life for "liberty" (whether or not you agree that this particular pose does or not is for another discussion). So now you have a logo that uses characters associated with negative deeds (the devil, cartoon or not) in the place of men associated with honor and self sacrafice. Given the current events, I could see how this logo, while passing under the radar for many years, is now suddenly considered inappropriate.
I can understand how many would find it inappropriate, which is unfortunate because for those who've been around the BSD and the computer scene for a while know exactly what the logo is trying to represent and it's quite accurate in that regard.
No, it doesn't. It's a cartoon devil. It doesn't offend anyone. Really. Unless you're one of those freaks who won't let their kids watch Scoobie-doo because it's got ghosts in it. Trust me. If it were hanging on a cross or wearing a turban, *then* maybe it'd need changing.
It has nothing to do with the devils. It's a cartoon of a statue in which american soldiers are planting an american flag. That makes it culturally biased.
Although you have to be an idiot to be offended by it, loads of people (especially in some 'liberated' countries) are suchs type of idiots and there is no reason to get into this unnecessary type of trouble
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Pentium
It is called "Pentium" because it is the fifth in the 80x86 line. It would have been called the 80586 had a US court not ruled that you can't trademark a number.
The successors are the Pentium Pro and Pentium II.
The following Pentium variants all belong to "x86 Family 6", as reported by "Microsoft Windows" when identifying the CPU:
Model Name
1 Pentium Pro
2 ?
3 Pentium II
4 ?
5, 6 Celeron or Pentium II
7 Pentium III
8 Celeron uPGA2 or Mobile Pentium III
The name was chosen because of difficulties Intel had in trademarking a number. It suggests the number five (implying 586) while (according to Intel) conveying a meaning of strength "like
titanium".
Intel did not stick to this convention when naming its P6 processor the Pentium Pro; many believe this is due to difficulties in selling a chip with "sex" in its name. Successor chips have been
called `Pentium II' and `Pentium III'.
Sorry, the above comments I pirate it off - http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pentium
The last paragraph is more closely related to NetBSD (or all BSDs in general) problem. I read an article somewhere years ago that, Intel actually engaged a consulting firm in order to come out with a name for suitable for the 586. One of the criterias was that it must be something not offensive in any languages spoken worldwide.
Call it political correctness, but you don't offend anyone if you can help it. Especially a wold class entity doing business worldwide.
NetBSD, is an entity that transact with people all over the world. People from all walks of life. Personally, I love the BSD daemon, kinda cute.. But I'm sure it is not the OS of choice for some/most religious organization.. Esp. those conservative ones who have yet to discover fire.
Well, if they decide on a new logo in order not to offend the sensibilities of 'potential' customers, why not indeed?
Regards all and everyone - peace!
Will sys-admin for food
> It's a devil.
It's not, it's a daemon. A friendly helper that lives inside your computer serving websites, answering your spam and being fingered. Really, if I had to put up with all that it'd be enough to make me grow horns and a tail!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Beastie, although he is really a BSD thing in general, is most associated with FreeBSD. OpenBSD adopted Puff the Blowfish and it is instantly recognizable as obsd. I think NetBSD design submitters ought to choose a new animal - perhaps a stingray, a lobster, a crab, or some other creature that can defend itself - and go for it. Then NetBSD will have some individual recognizable identity to those outside the BSD aware.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm an OS of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
And I was 'round when Gary Kildall
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Bill Gates
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around Digital
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed VMS and its decendents
The VAXen screamed in vain
I rode my way
through USLs day
when the lawsuit raged
and the licenses stank
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the OSes they made
I shouted out,
Who killed System V?
When after all
It was you and me
etc... my apology to the Rolling Stones..
However, these angry troll/devil hybrids in sneakers trampling over what appears to be a lot of desktop computer hardware however, is evidently what is found in need of an update.
I can list a few likely reasons for changing this, off the top of my head:
One thing is that devils is a somewhat religious device, not found in all religions.
Then there is the aesthetics of this. The logo is just kinda ugly. These guys are not all that different in appearance from some football hooligans... and after all, there is a strong element of marketing here, whether we like it or not. Would you want to buy an operating systems from these guys?
Political correctness or accusations of same, marketing and aestetics aside, I would say it is just as much that the design of the monitors is becoming dated, since many of us now have relatively skinny LCDs, not fat CRT-based ones. If nothing else, the logo is becoming tecnically dated.
All these could, individually, be considered warrants for change.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Can be found here...
(and let us not get into the discussion on wheter the picture is fake or not, that's offtopic)
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
...and they didn't even tell me.
Way to gout out of your way there, Net BSD. After years of loyal servitude, this is how you treat me.
Cue The Sun...
Last I checked the US wasn't a theocracy...
When was the last time you checked?
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Demon comes from the greek word diamon, or, more accurately delta-iota-alpha-mu-omicron-nu, depending on how it's declined. That's singular nominative (i think).
In helenistic greek, i.e. around the time of the peloponnesian wars, the word diamon meant sort of "guardian spirit", but implying that it could be either a mischievous spirit or a malevolent spirit. To blame things on a kakodiamon was to say that you had bad luck, and imply that you must be plagued by a mischievous diamon.
When the word was moved into other languages (i think it came to english via romance languages, stemming from latin), it changed to demon, and was christianized to mean "demon", i.e. servant of the dark lord (satan, not your boss, or bill gates, or $funny_guy_we_hate).
Yeah for me with my taking greek 1105. It was hard as crap, but wow, I learned a lot. For instance, this happened to a lot of words in greek. Take, for instance, the word that's used (at least in the new testamant in sinaiticus and the vatican codex) to mean "sin". In ancient greek, it meant "mistake" not "transgression". Although, I think that's one that the greeks had started to shift the meaning of before the christians got to it.
But, yeah, I've got this big thing for etymology, being 18 hours away from a history degree, and still eagerly taking every social sciences class I can fit in. For instance, when I see WindowsXP, I see windows, version christ. XP are the greek letters Chi Rho, which are the first letters of the word "christ", chi-rho-iota-sigma-tau-omicron-sigma. They're the letters constantine the great saw in the sky when he converted his army to christianity at the milvian bridge in 312(? i'm close, and i'm not looking it up).
Also, if you know a little greek, you know jack chick is full of shit in his Death Cookie tract, which says that IHS on the cookie that catholics eat at communion stand for Isis, Horus, and Seb, egyptian gods, and that it's pagan worship to be a catholic. Sorry, Chick, but IHS are the first three leters of jesus in greek, iota-eta-sigma-upsulon-sigma (remember, indiana jones and the last crusade? "Jehova starts with an I"? Yeah, there is no J in greek, it was Iota, in both jehova and jesus).
But, look, here, i've done rattled off my head for ever about nothing.
Just suffice it to say, when you see demon, you don't have to think servant of satan, from the pits of hell, sent to torment the true believing christians. It's just a spirit, who may have the attitude of a prankster.
~Will
sig?
I know that the conventional wisdom is:
But, in reality, NetBSD runs on so many platforms as a side effect of their stated policy to implement things the Right Way rather than ever relying on hacks.
NetBSD is one of the cleanest, most logical, and most innovative open source projects out there.
For example, NetBSD takes an insanely good idea (the FreeBSD ports collection) and makes it even better. Pkgsrc (NetBSD's answer to ports) is built in such a way that allows you to run it on Solaris, Linux, and a number of other operating systems. Plus it has a built-in package security auditing tool.
FreeBSD et al are moving toward NetBSD's innovative init system which in my mind combines the power of SysV and the ease of use of *BSD.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe NetBSD was the first OS anywhere to support ipv6.
NetBSD always seems to chug away in relative obscurity, with even BSD folk ignoring and misunderstanding it. Yeah, it's great for embedded work. Yeah, it'll run on almost anything. But it's also a really great workstation. And their uncompromising approach to quality and correct implementation make it a very stable and logical general purpose OS.
So, I for one welcome the new logo, and hope that it helps to bring NetBSD out of the shadows and allows my fellow open source users to enjoy another excellent operating system.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
> > ramifications.
> No, it doesn't. It's a cartoon devil.
No, it's not. It's a series of daemons putting up a flag, reminicent of the famous photo of Iwo Jima. Check the links.
> It doesn't offend anyone. Really.
I don't know, if I was Japanese, I'd probably be offended. A lot of American soldiers killed a lot of Japanese. When it was all over there were only 250 Japanese prisoners out of the original 22,000 defenders of the island. The rest were killed. General Kuribayashi commited suicide (hari kari). The Marines lost 7,000 killed and 19,000 wounded. International conflict is not comfortable thing to talk about, and not a good idea for a world-wide logo.
Also, have you ever heard the fates of these soldiers in that famous photo? Three of the men were killed in combat within days of the flag raising. Not exactly inspiring for a logo, either.
> If it were hanging on a cross or wearing a
> turban, *then* maybe it'd need changing.
Cross, probably. Turban? A lot of cultures have turbans. What's wrong with a turban? Keeps your hair up, head shaded from the sun, is a symbol of wisdom, and a cool place to store your cobra...! No, wait, skip the last one.
Not really. A swastika is the symbol of an organization that verifiably eradicated six million jews and similar numbers of gay people, Romany gypsies, etc.
Bah, learn proper history before commenting. The swastika is a Hindu holy symbol and associated with Ganesh, the Hindu god of good luck/fortune. It is also highly used by the Buddhists in the world since the arms symbolise the chain of rebirth and death. The four 'L's are associated with Life, Love, Luck, and Light.
In the World War Adolf Hitler was smart enough to take an established symbol like the Indian swastika and mirrored it and made it a symbol for the Nazis to be proud of. He did the same to the Napolean Iron Cross.
*wishing people who take their collective political correct heads our of their political correct arses, not everything revolves around the west and the middle east*
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
It's not just deeply religious people, or computer illiterate people, or people who leap quickly to stupid assumptions that make this logo a problem. First, the name isn't clear or catchy enough to be widely recognized, so the devil image becomes all most people have to go on. Imagine running across the person wearing a Duke Blue Devils sweatshirt, but the First word is "Forxgnarb", you've never heard the term before, there's no thing or place named that anywhere nearby, and when you ask what the blue devil stands for, the first things you hear are all about vaguely political issues, as seen by some small minority organization. How stupid is it really, to jump to the conclusion the sweatshirt wearer is in some cult?
NetBSD isn't going to get brand recognition from the word, just like Adidas didn't build brand recognition just on the word. It sounds too odd for that. Like Adidas, it's competing against words that have more relevance to the area (Microsoft sounded like computer stuff way back when it started, with words like software already paving the way for recognition - Nike is the greek goddess of victory, as most Olympic atheletes know).
If anything, the cuteness of the logo works against it more than an association with evil. It's a Warner Bros toon style devil. That's already saying "fine for home users, but would you trust a business to it?".
Who is John Cabal?