Brief History Of Linux (#5)
English Flame War
The idea behind Slashdot-style discussions is not new; it dates back to
London in 1699. A newspaper that regularly printed Letters To The Editor
sparked a heated debate over the question, "When would the 18th Century
actually begin, 1700 or 1701?" The controversy quickly became a matter of
pride; learned aristocrats argued for the correct date, 1701, while others
maintained that it was really 1700. Another sizable third of participants
asked, "Who cares?"
Ordinarily such a trivial matter would have died down, except that one
1700er, fed up with the snobbest 1701 rhetoric of the educated class,
tracked down one letter-writer and hurled a flaming log into his manor
house in spite. The resulting fire was quickly doused, but the practice
known as the "flame war" had been born. More flames were exchanged between
other 1700ers and 1701ers for several days, until the Monarch sent out
royal troops to end the flamage.
English Flame War
The idea behind Slashdot-style discussions is not new; it dates back to
London in 1699. A newspaper that regularly printed Letters To The Editor
sparked a heated debate over the question, "When would the 18th Century
actually begin, 1700 or 1701?" The controversy quickly became a matter of
pride; learned aristocrats argued for the correct date, 1701, while others
maintained that it was really 1700. Another sizable third of participants
asked, "Who cares?"
Ordinarily such a trivial matter would have died down, except that one
1700er, fed up with the snobbest 1701 rhetoric of the educated class,
tracked down one letter-writer and hurled a flaming log into his manor
house in spite. The resulting fire was quickly doused, but the practice
known as the "flame war" had been born. More flames were exchanged between
other 1700ers and 1701ers for several days, until the Monarch sent out
royal troops to end the flamage.
Related:
- Treaty of Helsinki Signed
HELSINKI, FINLAND -- A cease-fire in the flame war between Linux and
FreeBSD has been reached.
A group of two dozen Linux and FreeBSD zealots met... - bug n.
An unwanted and unintended property of a program or
piece of hardware,
esp. one that causes it to malfunction. Antonym... - flame
[at MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole']
1.
vi. To post an email message intended to insult and... - Brief History Of Linux (#2)
Hammurabi's Open-Source Code
Hammurabi became king of Babylonia around 1750BC.
Under his reign, a sophisticated legal code developed... - foo /foo/
1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. [very
common] Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely
anything,
esp. programs and files (esp. scratch files). 3. First... - bit-paired keyboard n.,obs.
(alt. `bit-shift
keyboard') A non-standard keyboard layout that seems to have
originated with the Teletype ASR-33 and remained common for several
years on early computer equipment.
The ASR-33 was a mechanical device (see EOU), so... - saga n.
[WPI] A cuspy but bogus raving story about N
random broken people.
Here is a classic example of the saga form, as told... - Brief History Of Linux (#25)
By the mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless geeks
fled Redmond monopolistic oppression,
Armonk cluelessness, and Cupertino click-and-drool... - Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource.
If you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place...
