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From: sayre@cs.sunysb.edu (Johannes Sayre)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd,comp.sys.novell
Subject: Re: Put the Cannons Away: Vote YES on newsgroup reformation.
Date: 21 Feb 1995 18:57:51 GMT
Organization: State University of New York, Stony Brook (guest)
Lines: 159
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3idd3f$cng@newsserv.cs.sunysb.edu>
References: <3htgri$jbc@park.uvsc.edu> <kaleb.792882548@exalt> <3i00t3$2u3@park.uvsc.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: sbpub4.cs.sunysb.edu
[ In order to avoid {per,pro}secution of myself and others under S.314, I
have self-censored (only appropriate according to current social norms)
all profanity in the following to the point where the original foul and
indecent usages have been rendered unrecognizable for the average freshman
Republican congressman. I feel I am thereby contributing to maintaining
community standards in the spirit of this fine bill. But then the article
is about maintaining community standards... ]
An invitation to play straight man...
In article <3i00t3$2u3@park.uvsc.edu> Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
writes:
[stuff about the Usenet Cabal]
some cabals are good, some are bad.... :-) Is the government benevolent and
acting in the best interests of the people ?
I lost Chris Demetriou's article where he said it was reprehensible that the
*BSD operating systems were being called UNIX-derived.
What's really reprehensible is that the sociopolitical situation in the U.S. is
such that a bunch of cornh*ling sh*t-eaters can succeed in getting people to
waste time and energy defending themselves from the sh*t-eaters' expectorations
of "Nyaaah ! You used our word !!! And you didn't pay us for it ! It's OUR
word ! Like Korn Flaeks (TM) ! [Everything is a commodity after all.] If you
don't pay us or stop using our word, we're gonna sue you !!! Nyaaaahhhhh !!"
(If the reader is thinking at this point, "how naive", or "get over it", uhh,
I don't know, blow it out your *ss ? Something like that.)
Reminds me of the companies formed by groups of lawyers which bought up
marks on which licensing fees weren't being collected only to be able to sue
the people using them. Nothing wrong with lawyers, something wrong with the
system. But again, everything is a commodity and can be bought and sold.
In our little case, I betcha the people who did the original work, the
so-called "technical troops", didn't start this trend...
I have an idea. Is the name for the trademarked object, this brand of cereal,
the precise string "UNIX" in upper-case Latin characters ? If so, let's take
advantage of our fine case-sensitive systems, and just use "Unix" instead.
Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix
Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix Unix
Unix Unix Unix Unix.
See ? No trademarks.
We are, after all, talking about a class of operating systems, and not just
AT&T(tm)/USL(tm)/etc.'s instantiation of a member of the class, so we do want
to get this right... And everybody does seem to call them "uNiX".
If "Unix" doesn't work, how about "Notnix" ? "Yeah, I use a Notnix system at
work." Has a nice ring to it, no ? "Of _course_ it's not UNIX(tm), it's
_Notnix_ !" (Think I'll trademark the string in all case permutations & make
it freely available (can I do that with a trademark ?) before some *sshole
beats me to it & sues me for using his licensed mark.) Tastes great, less
susceptible to kernel bloat... Derived in concept but not in source from
UNIX(tm).
If we can get this to work, then the sh*t-eaters can go on rodgering each other
in the *ss until Doomsday, and the rest of us can stop donating energy to their
parasitic existence and get on with living creative, normal lives - kinda like
things were say, pre- circa mid-1990 ?
And finally, since an identification was asked for, I'll give you one:
(Readers getting bored hit 'n' now.)
It's a pyramid.
At the lowest (I won't use the suddenly connotation-laden "bottom") layer are
some of the poor, some of the old, many of the young, and many of the ignorant.
I.e. people with little access to material power. I'm thinking of the kind of
people who use the phrase "great men" in the same sentence as "Flush Rimbutt"
(did I mispell that ? Awww.) and "Newt Gingrich". (and without a negation in
the sentence, either - saw this on one of the alt. groups in a discussion of
the naughty postings there.) The kind of folks who vote for a new Congressman
every two years "cause he don't do nothin' and they're all the same anyway"
(heard this a lot last fall). They're mostly harmless and in any event can't
help themselves. The only problematic ones in this layer are the young ones
in baseball hats driving more or sometimes less expensive pickups, and the
older (ex-service ?) guys who still wear buzz-cuts (and baseball hats), both
of whom seem to be enthusiastic foot-soldiers for anyone claiming to be
interested in "maintainin' order and terdishnl values, 'n' bein' Strong". Like
cannon fodder throughout the ages, though, they don't operate with much
autonomy, and can be turned fairly easily. Given a champion of the caliber of
say FDR, most would do a fairly quick about-face.
The next layer is what I would call "the inconvenienced middle class".
Inconvenienced by crime, inconvenienced by taxes, inconvenienced by the poor,
just basically inconvenienced. They want those nasty problems to go away. Too
uninformed, poorly educated, self-satisfied, and with too short an attention
span to actually think about something larger than what's for dinner, they want
to make short work of anything that interferes with their petit bourgeois
(now I've done it) comfort. With a certain propensity for thinking of them-
selves as descendants of hardy pioneers and immigrants who could live lives of
rugged austerity and godliness just like their forbears did, and with a fair
amount of pragmatic greed, they are easy prey for cynical blathering about
a return to personal responsibility and simpler times, and promises that less
government will put more money in their pockets. There are no social problems
(because there's not much society to speak of), and we can all run about living
clean lives, chopping wood, hauling water and sewing by candlelight in the
evenings. They think the status quo is just fine, only threatened, and they'd
like more of it, and it deserves their earnest and often active protection.
At the top of this layer (only one more after this, I promise) is a sublayer
of people who can't quite get into all the simpler-times sh*t being
promulgated. They know it's sh*t, but the status quo holds different
attractions for them. Sandwiched in between the middle class and what used
to be called the ruling class before all inequality was eliminated from our
society, they are aware of institutional power and how it works to some
extent. They reap the material rewards of participating in the system at
the level that they do. Generally the folks I have in mind here are not
creative leaders, in fact they're the ones who get annoyed when you produce
something that is simply good, and want you to tone it down so that their
unfortunately more humble efforts can get some of the spotlight too. Here
we have people who are aware enough of how institutional power works to be
cynical about permitting its excesses and protecting their share, whatever
size it may be, of it.
The people at the top (oooo!) layer (see, I promised...) of the pyramid fit
standard notions of the rich and the influential. Thoroughly aware of how
worldwide political and economic power structures work, they often move in
international circles, are leading citizens, and at the highest levels operate
at a supergovernmental level - the commonplace restraints imposed by nation-
state government and observed by the less exalted classes are paid lip-service
to as long as they're not an inconvenience. (Yes, it _was_ the Trilateral
Commission.) The weaknesses and foibles of the lower layers are exploited to
keep them in their place, and to preserve the pyramid. The more the weaknesses
and foibles, and the pyramid, can be institutionalized and made self-perpetu-
ating, the better. Individual creative activity and individuality in general
are dangerous unless controlled, since they put people in touch with absolutes,
as opposed to the ultimately weak relative standards of the pyramid, and offer
a source of power alternative to and independent of the pyramid. The supreme,
overriding goal is preservation of the pyramid, since, as institutions will do,
it has attained a life of it own and by its existence justifies both the
continuation of that existence and also its perpetuation and growth. The
people who make up its layers form subcomponents of greater or lesser
awareness.
All this might sound like traditional (leftist ? too bad) dogma, except for
the fact that in the past few years the natives seem to have become restless
and also active - all the way up and down the pyramid. You notice it in ways
ranging from lawsuits designed to shore up apparently-threatened private
ownership rights to how free strangers in the street feel about letting you
know that you don't meet their standards for respectable appearance and
deportment. There's been a definite change in the wind which needs reversing.
There, I've given you an identification. Nope, it's not the Usenet Cabal.
Want "evidence" ? Well, I wouldn't call it that, rather "instances" (again !
hmmm... no, I am not an OOP evangelist. Probably not using the words right for
starters). Look around (maybe the next time someone urges you not to rock the
boat at work or sniffs at you in the supermarket). Depending on your leanings,
you may find that this schema works for you. Maybe this crowd is more worth
your attention than the Usenet Cabal ? Maybe you'll even find something to
ram down a c*rnholing sh*t-eater's throat. And in any event, awareness is
the first step to improvement. Have a good week.