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If UNIX Were a Religion
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Charles Stross has written a very clever article where he describes the religious metaphor he uses with non-technical folks to explain the relationship between Mac OS X and UNIX. There is one true religion in operating systems says Stross and it is UNIX although there's also an earlier, older, more arcane religion with far fewer followers, MULTICS, from which UNIX sprang as a stripped-down rules-deficient heresy. If MULTICS is Judaism then UNIX is Christianity. By the mid-1970s there were two main sects: AT&T UNIX, which we may liken unto the Roman Catholic Church, and BSD UNIX, which we may approximate to the Orthodox Churches. In an attempt to control the schisms, the faithful defined a common interoperating subset of the one true religion that all could agree on—the Nicene Creed of UNIX which is probably POSIX. Stross says that today the biggest church in the whole of UNIX is Mac OS X, which rests on the bedrock of Orthodox BSD but "has added an incredible, towering superstructure of fiercely guarded APIs and proprietary user interface stuff that renders it all but unrecognizable to followers of the Catholic AT&T path." But lo, in the late 1980s, UNIX succumbed to the sins of venality, demanding too much money from the faithful and so, in 1991 Linus Torvalds nailed his famous source code release to the cathedral door and kicked off the Reformation. 'The Linux wars were brutal and unforgiving and Linux itself splintered into a myriad of fractious Protestant churches, from the Red Hat wearing Lutherans to the Ubuntu Baptists.' More recently, a deviant faith has sprung from Linux. 'Android is the Church of Latter Day Saints of UNIX: hard-working, sober, evangelizing the public, and growing at a ferocious rate. There are some strange fundamentalist Mormon Android churches living in walled communities under the banners of Samsung and Amazon, but for the most part the prosperous worship at the Church of Google.' Stross notes that as with all religion, those sects with most in common are the ones who hold the most vicious grudges against one another. 'Is that clear?'"
If it was a religion? if???
I didn't realise this was up for a debate about this.
Now I'm going to fetch my copy of the old testament (ANSI version) and read a few verses.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Oh lookie, a navel-gazing extended, tortured analogy, and even worse, an unfunny to say nothing of uninsightful one.
.. if you remember that - kind of fun
What would BeOS and Haiku be listed as? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I guess that explains why I always feel the urge to do a security audit before Yom Kippur.
I guess Arch Linux (my current OS of choice) doesn't fit in this ungodly mess of doctrines, with the gluttonous pacman and all.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
But lo, in the late 1980s, UNIX succumbed to the sins of venality, demanding too much money from the faithful and so, in 1991 Linus Torvalds nailed his famous source code release to the cathedral door and kicked off the Reformation.
It was Andrew Tanenbaum who showed the initiative to create a UNIX compatible royalty free OS for the purpose of teaching, Torvalds Linux is surely a derivative of that initiative if not a direct derivative of the Minix book which inspired him. Torvalds deserves a lot of credit for Linux but i think Tanenbaum deserves to have the credit for enabling so many people to learn about UNIX like systems without paying absurd amounts to AT&T.
Must be Windows, maybe just the church of windows ME.
That took elements common to Judaism and Christianity and fused them into an aggressive hegemonising philosophy that brooked no opposition. Where does that fit into the anology?
(Having only read the summary, I don't know if Stross had the nerve to bring them in to the discussion for fear of upsetting people. They can be very touchy at times...)
Any chance of anything bar another Linux masturbation article.
http://blog.aegisub.org/2008/12/if-programming-languages-were-religions.html
The analogy is a logical one, since religion is a form of software.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Microsoft would be the church of Scientology!
Buddhism? Hinduism? Scientology? Rastafarianism?
(One can't say Islam, b'cos whereas Islam spread wherever it could, Windows largely refused to leave its x86 home)
Maybe the Westboro Baptist Church...
And Windows 8 is Scientology.
can ibe the FIRST POSTER against religion in foss. most scientists are one of rge following: anarchist agnostic pagan or just generally spiritual. why do we have ro bring christianity into it as a metaphor?
Ok, what's the point of this stressed metaphor? It doesn't make it easier to remember anything, it doesn't help in understanding anything (largely because the various splits, etc. happened for entirely different reasons), it adds a completely unnecessary layer of indirection and, quite honestly, I find the comparison insulting.
So the point is? Aside from "because we can"? What am I missing that makes this blog-level nonsense frontpage-worthy?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Whilst Torvalds is Calvin - the one who pulled the logic of the previous reformers together to create a complete system.
Religion is, and has always been, the main way humans self-organise and coordinate on a large scale. Modern civilisation has its advantages, but one drawback is that the rules are too numerous, can only really be understood by experts and is open to abuse by vested interests. Religion also has these shortcomings, but is generally much simpler in nature. We have a few thousand years of religious history to study how that part of human psychology works, and it is not surprising to see religious behaviour emerging naturally in secular aspects of life. (Fans following a football team are probably an excellent source of examples here.)
John_Chalisque
Didn't read the article, but the summary made me laugh!
plans to use POT (Personal Open Terminal) on saveyourasp.com have been upended
i love it! you hit the nail on the head. what i can't get, is the unchallenged success of android! it's such a bloated piece of junk, with a shaky architecture at best. how damned hard is it to plop a managed code environment on an ARM with some graphics libraries?
Wumo
I still prefer my automotive analogy. Because manual transmission is a religion, too.
How Ya Gonna Get 'Em Down On The Manual Farm?
Driving Instructor Philip Guo poses a similar question: 'How ya gonna get 'em down on a manual transmission after they've used a slush-box?' Convincing driving students from automatic culture to toss aside decades of advances in transmissions for a stick shift is a tough sell, Guo notes, and one that's made even more difficult when the instructors feel the advantages are self-evident. 'Just waving their arms and shouting "because, because RACECAR!!!" isn't going to cut it,' he advises. Guo's tips for success? 'You need to gently introduce students to why these tools will eventually make them more productive in the long run,' Guo suggests, 'even though there is a steep learning curve at the outset. Start slow, be supportive along the way, and don't disparage the automatic transmissions that they are accustomed to using, no matter how limited you think those tools are. Bridge the two cultures.'"
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
> the most vicious grudges
Stross is probably hinting at this Emo Phillips joke:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=print_topic;f=61;t=000011
Windows = Islam
Haiku = Scientology
Minix is pretty close to Linux, so if Linux is the Protestant Church, Minix would be Lutheran? Or like BSD, it could have a bit of Eastern Orthodoxy in it?
We need this guy as secretary of education!
For providing an analogoy that makes the history of ( some ) religions clear to them.
The "grudges" that most Christian denominations hold against each other, if one can even call them grudges by now, are by and large substantially less the fighting over operating systems by geeks. The Catholics officially regard baptized Protestants as Catholics who are out of communion with Rome. The term is "separated brethren," not "those damn heretics" now. Likewise, most Protestant denominations, even conservative ones, may harshly criticize the Catholic Church on issues of doctrine but regard observant Catholics as fellow Christians. The level of animosity is significantly less except on the outliers than Stross realizes, but then as far as I know he's an atheist and like most atheists he tends to think far too highly of his knowledge of religion especially Christianity.
No need for this comparison. Computers actually exist and there is no doubt about it.
It maps quite well to my own path: I started out with Solaris, but seeing how much such Unices dabbled in simony and venality, I "went protestant", and am a hardcore Linux-Calvinist now ( Slackware, Fuduntu, xfce et al. being the grounds of my daily toil.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
" He's not the messiah. He's a very naughty boy!"....
It's only a metaphor, but holds surprisingly well. Worryingly well. So well that we, if we claim to be modern enlightened people, should have some kind of response.
But what? Switching operating systems - like switching religions - involves a lot of work if you do it properly. Unlike religion it is possible to "worship" two or more OSes, but many people find that an inefficient way to work. So how can we avoid unwarranted faith in our way of doing things, fighting between neighbouring factions, and all the other destructive forces that religions suffer from?
The Linux kernel does a good job of holding all the myriad Linuxes together: all need the kernel to evolve and improve, but none can afford to implement those changes alone. Android and iOS have opened peoples eyes to other ways of interacting with computers and rendered the Windows-Mac conflict less important.
Technology evolves, preventing us from stagnating and developing unchangeable "holy" rules. It's a natural human tendency to break into tribal factions, but it seems that technological progress puts a damper on this, forcing us to widen our horizons and helping us to work together. Suddenly progress seems more important than ever.
That would make Windows users Atheist yes?
Malignantly spreading, leaving a wake of destruction with nothing of value in its place. Where this breaks down is that there are not lots of people declaring that those who propose virus scanners, firewalls, etc. are slimy virus-a-phobes and that many systems have been trashed by Window, Linux, etc.
Isn't POSIX the religion at the core? Even windows is posix!
Everyone knows BSD is equivalent to pagan devil worship, I mean just look at the logo.
It took a real world war to end the airplane's patent wars. - Fâché Rouge -
I'm sure a lot of people will take the android thing as a slight being associated with Mormon, so I'm not sure why he avoided the analogy that the whole thing was begging: Apple as Islam. Someone else said Microsoft as Scientology which was a good one as well.
The caliphate of Microsoft? There is no god but Windows and Bill Gates is his prophet?
Personally I think Apple simply made a open source project its own just like Google is doing. Must be nice to have a lot a people put in a lot of personal time and then have a mega company capitalize on your work. Seems like Unix and Linux have given plenty of fuel for the launch of new operating systems and yet these endeavors have really contributed so little back to the very free and open sources they came from. But the other question is, would Unix be anywhere now without Apple and would Linux still be a hobby OS without Google?
ANY social movement can be "explained" by a religion metaphor.
And why isn't religion explained by a metaphor with UNIX worth saying "worryingly so" about the fit?
What ISN'T in the metaphor, and must surely be the thing you decry, is the blind faith and dogma, which is only vestigial in terms of the OS, even compared to the mainstream rather than fundamentalist religions.
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
In kernel as it is in user.
I'm sorry, but my kharma just ran over your dogma.
"...Stross notes that as with all religion, those sects with most in common are the ones who hold the most vicious grudges against one another. 'Is that clear?'"
Yeah, it's all clear, except for the part where you fail to mention the hundreds of millions of lives lost fighting over religious indifference that mankind has had to deal with since the dawn of religion itself.
Kind of like trying to listen to a 19-year old kid talk about how he's been to war and "seen hell" because he finished his Call of Duty campaign.
Needless to say, some analogies don't fit well on the most obvious levels, and may be rather offensive to those who have dealt with the real thing. Violence is one of the primary drivers behind many people shunning religion altogether.
Interesting analogy nonetheless, but honestly, these kinds of overlays work pretty well even if you're comparing it to comic book superheros. Try it, and you'll see. When it comes to fighting and violence, it's obvious mankind excels at that shit, and we draw parallels even in Disney productions.
Nah, Windows is more like Scientology.
The true atheists would say it's all garbage. Jef Raskin was one:
"We have a whole valley full of people talking UNIX versus MS-DOS. What do you need any of that for? Just throw it all out; get rid of all that nonsense. Maybe you need it for computer scientists, but for people who want to get something done, no. Do you need an operating system? No."
No religion is complete without a good martyr.
Although the analogy of religion seems apt for UNIX, when I think of religion in software, I think first of the Free Software movement. That seems to whip up the most religious fervor among its acolytes, and seems to result in the most persecution of heretics (like me).
Free Software has it's own savior figure, Richard Stallman, and its own Law, the GPL. It even has an apostle, Linus Torvalds, to popularize the movement, though he is a strange sort of apostle who doesn't seem to believe in everything the savior of the movement propounds. (Unlike Jesus and Paul, Richard and Linus are contemporaries, so there is more opportunity for disagreement.)
The current era of Free Software is like the Spanish Inquisition, where anyone who dares to consider any other idea (e.g., use a BSD-style license, or think that "freedom" has very little to do with software, so the primary value of "free" software is that you don't have to pay for it), gets put to the rack - at least here at Slashdot.
I found this out the hard way early in my career posting here when my Karma went negative after just *one* unflattering post about RMS. Now, I realize that we heretics must either keep our mouths shut or post as...
-Apostate Coward
Excellent. It shows the same patterns of human behavior from religion to computers, no doubt the same story repeats itself. I'm a true believer.
RMS would be more like John the Baptist.
By their rantings against those they disagree with, even if the disagreement is in some cases justified, Theo DeRadt and/or Linus Torvalds would be closer to WBC's leadership. Not RMS.
Nothing is more trite than comparing the evolution of X to the evolution of Y. But, please, why compare something useful (UNIX) to something useless (Religion)? Its journalistic masturbation. No one enjoys articles like this more than the person who wrote it in the first place.
What other people think of me is none of my business
It seems that in every field of human knowledge, there are fundamentalists.
"We hold no crazy beliefs, such as equating proprietary software with slavery."
Neither does RMS.
But what about Microsoft and GPL is a virus? That's a crazy belief you hold.
"We see a product we like, we use it"
Unless it's GPL 3 then it's refused to be in the store. Or it's called a funny name. Or isn't PRECISELY THE SAME as the propriatory Office/Photoshop/AD, in which case it is worthless.
"and don't mind paying money for it"
Niether does RMS. Indeed in the"pay what you like", the average payment is highest for FOSS, next highest for Apple and least for Microsoft users. And piracy is so rampant, according to even Microsoft itself, that it has to make you endure horrendous hoops to jump through to stop all you people taking the stuff without paying for it....
" If a better product comes along for a reasonable price, we switch. Simple as that."
Unless it's GPL, in which case you make up what defines a "better product" so that you can claim it doesn't count.
See also the "TCO" claims.
Funny. I viewed Western Religion vs. Software the other way around.
First, there was Judaism 1.0, a legacy operating system which, although innovative and stable, was limited in its distribution and market appeal because it was restricted to running only on a platform born into the tribe. Then, Judaism 2.0 was created, rebranded and given a new name, Christianity. After a fitful initial release involving predatory competitors who employed large stadiums, crucifixion and lions to undermine encroachments on their market sector, Christianity soon achieved widespread distribution on a wide variety of platforms, acquiring great market share which it retains to this day. Notably, both Judaism 1.0 and Christianity have undergone many revisions and refinements and have been forked numerous times. Perhaps the most market-impactful revision was the release of Judaism 3.0, Protestantism. Protestantism dramatically reduced institutional support costs by relegating clergy to advisory roles instead of gate-keepers and eventually incorporated features allowing for wealth creation without sinning. The combination of great wealth creation and platform flexibility provided by Judaism 3.x has given Protestantism an out-sized influence in the world, although, strangely, many users of Judaism 3.x have either abandoned Judaism altogether or adopted a fork which negates the very features which made Judaism so influential in the first place.
"The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach -- if not the kingdom of Heaven -- the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation."
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html
No non-technical person would ever, ever, ever ask about the relationship between OSX and UNIX so this mostly strikes me as masturbatory nerd in-joking rather than a useful explanation for a question someone who doesn't already know the answer to would ask.
I’ll start by saying that I like Mormonism (from a distance) because every single Mormon I’ve met was really really nice. Although, “saccharine” comes to mind for some of them. I’ve read things by former mormons who complained that mental illness like depression is verboten in Mormonism such that you basically have to pretend to be really really happy all the time, even if you need medical treatment. But that’s probably a biased source. I applied to work at Brigham Young (among countless other schools), and I had to swear to never have coffee, tea, or other “hot drinks.” I looked this up, and their rules make absolutely no sense.
Anyhow, the summary makes it look like this guy really really likes Mormonism. Is he a mormon? He loves Android and elaborates on how hard-working and sober they are.
What’s interesting about Mormonism is its relatively recent history and what we know about it. WIth other religions, the “facts” are lost to history such that it’s very difficult to prove those details to be false. Not so with Mormonism, which developed in recorded history. Basically, watch the relevant South Park episode. It tells you everything you need to know.
That being said, the “facts” of a religion aren’t necessarily a deal-breaker. If someone claims the details of their scriptures to be historical fact, I roll my eyes. But if you take it as allegory, you can get good philosophy (and some bad philosophy) out. (Think of religious scriptures and traditions as a product of cultural natural selection, where sometimes some of the bad ideas have been filtered out over time.) For instance, ancient Hebrews had a disctinct pattern of taking someone else’s legends and modifying them heavily to add a moral message (whether or not we agree with the message). So, the Genesis flood story was a rewrite of the earlier story of Atra-Hasis. Other religions do this just as heavily. With Mormonism, I can let it go because it seems to be mostly beneficial, while Scientology (I hesitate to mention Scientology as a religion, because it’s really a Ponzi scheme, but they want to call it a religion) is evil and obviously a self-parody.
"The Unix-nature is simple and empty. Because it is simple and empty, it is more powerful than a typhoon."
Millions of people are being lured astray by the Poettering Heresy, which denies the Simplicity of Unix.
Anathema sit.
Captcha: abstain
what would it stand for?
I thought UNIX would be more like Sikhi: /dev/ji/guru/nanak /dev/ji/guru/angad /dev/ji/guru/ramdas ...
If Richard Stallman insists on living as Keshdhari, he needs to tie pagh! Then people will start accusing him of SANITY FAILURE saying "He's got it wrapped too tightly!"
Jihad infected Kernel caused the CHILDREN processes to be killed by BRICKING the Hardware.
Without unshorn hair and network analysis tools come not before me.
Why was MSDOS banned in India on the basis of communalism?
Sikh error reading Drive C: [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [B]adal?
When all is said and done, I cringe every time I hear the term "UNIX guru". I listen closely for the talwar to be drawn from the scabbard--KSHHHHHHHHHEEEENG!
Anyone up for making a Co-exist bumper sticker with the BSD, OS X, Windows and Linux logos? My art skills suck, but I can host the image for everyone!
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Whats this about the International SLAughter Machine?
"What, then, is GNU?" asked the student.
Master Foo replied: "GNU also embodies the essence of Unix in the form of all things that surround its Kernel with the most intimacy, however, GNU's Not Unix"
How does this whole thing about LInux be a religion set with the "Cathedral and the Bazaar?" Now I'm confused. How can Linux be a religion when it was developed in a Bazaar?
I don't get it?
Have you compiled your kernel today??
VMS is the real thing handed down from Almighty God on the lesser known stone tablets and entrusted to Dave Cutler.
VMS is the one true operating system. Accept no substitutes less you be disappointed!
I'm offended that Ubuntu would be associated with my religion.
Mormonism would be a better analogy for the false prophet that gave us Ubuntu.
But Sikhism is nowhere near as fragmented as UNIX
halt
kill all
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm a programmer, a former Protestant, and now an Orthodox Clergyman. I found this article to be very entertaining. Now I know why I've always liked BSD and OS X.
I'm inspired to read one of Charlie Stross' books.
Proverbs 21:19
According to Microsoft,
"Though shalt not have any OS's other than Microsoft"
"Though shalt not covet thy neighbor's more stable and faster OS"
"Though shalt spend one day a week defragging, scanning, and fixing thy Microsoft OS"
It would be 1995 and I would be reading this article on Usenet.
Sorry, but that's just brilliant.
It truly is fortune-worthy.
This has helped me understand Christianity. (Unix history I have lived through)
Unlike religion it is possible to "worship" two or more OSes
Ah but at a fundamental level you can only have one endianess at a time and, unless you return to the source, it's hard to switch!
Stallman is the Anti-Pope. All hail GNU!
[iconv --from-code=utf-7]
All aboard rms' ark!
Get it right.
would be Lucifer in the 9th circle of hell.
VMS forever. Far more secure, far easier to use, far more features, and has an excellent built-in file system.
Multics may be dead but its genetic material lives on. Indeed some of the recessive genes, long dormant, are resurfacing. Android tries to implement capability based security, but as Android is typically layered on top of an operating system (usually Linux) that does not natively support capabilities from the hardware on up, Android can't really enforce capability based mandatory access controls. The L4 microkernels, OTOH, do... and they offer a fine base for virtualization frameworks in which more familiar OSes (and "bare metal" apps) can be hosted. So I chant horrific syllables by moonlight at forgotten altars of the Old Ones...
Sorry... somebody had to say it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hussites must be early forms of windows; after being rudely defenestrated you land in he crap.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Charlie admits that Judaism is still alive and MULTICS is not. He should have gone with Zoroastrianism, even older. (Actually, writer Paul William Roberts found a tiny community of Zoroastrians in Iran a few decades back.) But then a few of us still remember MULTICS with some affection and it still affects our designs. The University of Calgary was sucked into the belief that MULTICS was a great future back in the 70s and ran one of the largest-ever installations of it, in user-count at least. (They were also taken in by ADA and ran some courses and assignments in it for a while.)
MULTICS was the only system I ever used that had the very cool and effective accounts/login design of two-parts to your login: your personal ID and your project ID. Your personal ID stayed permanently, but might lack all resources for years; your compiler course would come with one project-ID that would give you enough resources for that course; your database course would be a different project ID. Your access levels to various files, etc might change with which project ID you used, but your home directory was always yours because of your personal ID. It was cool. There were a few babies tossed with the bathwater when MULTICS was simplified down to Unix...
http://churchofbsd.blogspot.com/2010/12/why-church-of-bsd.html
http://www.unixprogram.com/churchofbsd/
And why is it that when I was in DOS, then Windows, finally Unix/Solaris/Tru64/Linux, at the slightest mention of any difficulty, or sometimes without that, is it that Macaholic fanboys instantly jump in to Proclaim the TRVTH that Jobs had three tables handed down to him from Babbage Himself, and how all other o/ses are second class citizens at best, and beneath notice (like part-time undergrads or roaches) at worst?
And they didn't change their tone when Macs went from OS9 to OS/X/BSD Unix....
mark, wondering if there's a 12 step program for Macaholics we can send them to, since they
have money to burn on overpriced hardware
The joyous jousts of the emacs and vi users towards each uther are funny indeed. One says something which the other refuted, and many times this will be quite humorous.
Yet, I would warn you of taking this too serious. Because when you start believing that emacs is anywhere near the competence and utility as vi, well, let's suffice to say that madness lies that way. I've seen grown men crying after seeing the error of their ways.
Now, mind, I'm not saying you can't use emacs. It's a free country, you can use any editor you want. But when you look deep into your heart, you know you can't enter heaven when you do. This is not debated.
I work with Angstrom Linux. I guess that makes me a Quaker. Lots of little do-it-yourself communities.
--Lee Daniel Crocker : http://www.etceterology.com My life is in the public domain.
I'd rather think RMS is Jesus. Giving his life for the greater good, and all that.
Not really kidding either...
It's possible if you are christian too. Plenty of christian polytheists such as those who believe in trinity where you got three gods.
Yes, trinity people have three gods because they have three different the three gods have different specialties such as ghost: making everything work, nursing power, the engine. Father: the creator, builder and whatnot. Son: the judge who will judge you on the day of judgement.
In all the other monotheistic religions all those attributes are gods and belong to one lone god i.e. not shared.
the topic it describes would be an acre of bread.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The metaphor is not very compelling. A lot more could be done with the OS/religion metaphor, but too many people think all religions are Christianity.
Looking at the summary to the article, one of the biggest flaws in the metaphor is that the Catholic/Orthodox split happened 100's of years after the Council of Nicea.
I'm used to seeing Unix be the Bazaar, not eh Cathedral.
Given the conversation I had on the corp shuttle home from one of the high cathedrals of these churches today, I have no choice but to a) laugh my damn ass off and b) wish my NDA weren't so effectively enforced. Let it be said that this topic is near and dear to those in the trenches, including some who were deep in the early church of BSD and those now going to the Catholic Tower.
All this is power struggle between religions, but where is faith? What is a Unix user supposed to believe in?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Windows ME?
fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Torvalds, and stuffed Penguin plushies!
http://superfineapostate.blogspot.com/2011/12/why-im-not-unitarian-universalist.html
If Unix were a religion then AT&T would surely be Satan! For rebelling and abandoning unix.... Honestly, somebody really had WAY too much time on their hands.. Somebody give Charlie Stross a job please ;-)
Religion? Useless? That is a statement with a lot of evidence to the contrary. To start with, the United States existence is pretty much thanks to religion.
very useful. And they find religious people even more so.
I consider myself something of a conservative Christian; even holding the view that homosexual behaviour is wrong*. I just Googled "Westboro Baptist Church" and wish I hadn't. That is one of the most disturbing and deeply offensive things I have ever come across. They are depraved, and so clearly serving evil; my heart goes out to them. How do you help people like that?
(No, /. isn't really the forum for this, but I felt the need to express a bit of my indignation.)
*intentionally vague, and why this is AC
Does this means that Computer Scientists nail their Thesis on the Door? Maybe lisp is talking in tongues, or maybe that is perl with regular expressions. There are many other AWK-ward metaphors. And what about the serpent? Maybe it was python in the garden of Eden, and the devil, Microsoft and Bill Gates, stole the idea of the shell is called it DOS-shell, a stolen and corrupt version of the Bourne Shell.
Unfortunately, the seeds of Satan have been implanted by using the Portable Assembler C.
Now U.S. General Staff have their Cyber Warfare Domain from the use of C.
Folks, we have been pwned. By us learning C they have done it.
c.f. "ping of death".
I remember that post where someone categorized all the programming languages into the different religions. C was Judism, C++ was Christiantiy, Islam was Java, and he went on from there with a short explanation for how they were similar. Funny stuff.
But I like the flavor of it if not the content. Using a fire and brimestone style of preaching when handing out typical programming advice makes it interesting.
Verily I say unto thee, in the 1,388,683,865th second of our lord Unix, that when problems arise from the mired deep and dwell amongst the trembling users that ye shall get to yon source, blessed be it's revisions, and from the source ye shall see what troubles you.
Git ye to the source! Worship not at the closed cathedral of the proprietary, but walk amongst your fellows in the open Bazaar. Sleep not on the most holy of release days but rise early and release yon source often. And as the sun rises and falls ye shall release the next day and the day after. Often shall thee release least the curse of sleep lie your project low into the depths of hibernation and behind the veil of life.
One and only one task shall your program perform, and perform well, for the many headed feature hydra is a dark beast, ever creeping, ever crossing, never shall it's requirements sleep.
War not with the water buffalo for theirs is an enlightened path. Holy ones to be revered. Freely ranging over the plains, unyoked by the licenses of yore.
And war not amongst yourselves. The emancipated emacs and the virtuous vi can co-exist in peace and unity. Lay down your flames and live in harmony.
(Hmmmm... I should probably stay away from the term "Unity" now that it's that horrible thing in Ubuntu. Seriously, fuck those guys.)
If Unix is a religion then Microsoft must be a cult..... One standard party line. Devoted followers who shun and even castigate "non believers" An unproven and flawed philosophy that is adhered to as law. finally a lunatic leader who tends to see the world through "unique insight". Yep, Microsoft is a Cult! they even have the Purple coolaid (windows update) taken daily it steals your life and soul. If I had a penny for each minute of productivity lost collectively by windows Update, well I'd have a lot of pennies! HAH
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Religion describes the framework of how people and worship deity and interact with each other. Worship is any act that proclaims or recognises the worth of something. You can almost literally call it religion.
I decided that my freedom was worth more than the insecurity of Windows, ergo, I left the fold, I succumbed to being a freeman.
As I freeman, I entered the new world, the world where I became an independent landowner in the new world. My nearest Synagogue, Temple, Church, Monastry, Mosque was only available if I spoke or worshipped in Android, Ubuntu, Fedora, or some other smaller denomination.
Pride makes me reluctant to go back. Ergo, I am staying, that is remaining as a freeman, using one of the top 5 distributions posted on Distrowatch.
And I am creating my own brainwashing. But stupidly, I have replaced Microsoft for Google. Both want their hands in my pocket. More things are different, more they are the same.
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Happy New Year
Leslie
(-42 with the windchill, your choice of F or C (they meet at -40)
It would have to support recursion...
Naamdari, Nirankari, Ravidasia, Radha Soami, Yogi BHajan 3HOism, please don't forget every other paKHandi baba in the Punj
Sikh error reading drive C: [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [B]adal?
Sikh error reading drive C: [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [K]P-cut-the-word-S Gill?
Sikh error reading drive C: [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [B]aba Baljit *** Daduwal?
Sikh error reading drive C: [A]bort, [R]etry, [I]gnore, [D]usht Nang *** *** Phoola?
[runs to Gatka closet and retrieves mace and electrician's gloves]
Fwooo-Fwooo-Fwoooo-Fwooo-CRASH! Fwooo-Fwooo-Fwoooo-Fwooo-CRASH! Fwooo-Fwooo-Fwoooo-Fwooo-CRASH!
This is how we fix computer infected with the Congress Virus [SoniaGandhi]!