Tag test.
Trying out the new Tag system that requires me to update from the LJ website, since Deepest Sender (my Firefox extension for LJ-updates) (obviously) does not support it yet ("Bastards!" - 
int, DS creator and maintainer).
So I'll talk about random OS stuff here.
Neal Stephenson, in his essay In The Beginning Was The Command Line, compared various OSes to various cars and other vehicles. (It's available somewhere online, but I'm too lazy to find a link.) Below is more or less his analogy and my own personal spin on it.
Microsoft is a huge auto dealership that got its start from selling three-speed bicycles, easily fixed and cheap, and this philosophy of it not being perfect or even good but good enough, as well as having support that is Good Enough and upgrades that are Good Enough, has continued all the way to this day, and has also made it the biggest, richest auto dealership around, selling ugly but functional station wagons and Off-Road Vehicles.
Apple is a rather smaller auto dealership, and it has had the "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" sign hung up for so long that it's yellowing and curled. They sell sleek Euro-style sedans, with their innards sealed so tightly that how they work is a bit of a mystery to the drivers, and they sell it at exorbitant rates. But they're friendly and pretty, and if something does happen to break down (which isn't often), the techies will shake your hand and slap you on the back and take you out for a drink at the local pub, laughing and joking, and everyone's good buddies and best friends and when they give you back your car, it's working great again. You don't know how they did it, but they did.
And then there's Linux, which is not a dealership at all, but rather a motley collection of tents and yurts and teepees and geodesic domes all arranged by consensus, and it's kind of hard to tell what they're selling, but it looks like tanks. These are the modern, high-tech tanks, and better than tanks, since they're light and maneuverable enough to use on normal streets and even put the Apple Euro sedans to shame, use as much fuel as a subcompact car, and they almost never break down. Best of all, they're absolutely free, and anyone who wants one can just pick one up and drive it away.
(Neal also mentioned BeOS, which are like really cheap but incredibly stylish Batmobiles. But I have no experience with them, so I'm not going to be including them here.)
Now, most people just walk to the Microsoft dealership and drive away with a station wagon, which is considered the Base Value of everything, since they've sold their station wagons to 95% of the world. These station wagons break down very often, but generally a good kicking will start them up again, and driving is incredibly simple and, with a bit of practice, quite intuitive. Driving schools all use the station wagons for their driving tests, so if you know how to drive, you know how to drive the Microsoft station wagons. When you get your driver's licence, it's fairly expensive, but that's because they throw in a station wagon in the cost. Also, everything works when applied to the station wagon, like new wheels, a new steering wheel, a new stereo, whatever.
But let's say someone has heard that these station wagons break down way too often, and he wants to know what the other dealerships are like. So he takes a stroll over to the Apple dealership, and looks at the prices. If he hasn't been scared away by that yet, he looks at the options available: some of the newer stereos which can pick up all the newest stations are supported, but if you want to listen to the other not-so-popular stations, well, you're out of luck... unless you ask them to make it such that the sleek, stylish sedan pretends to be a station wagon. Which defeats the purpose, really, since the customer can just walk over to the Microsoft dealership and get a station wagon for real.
Those who do buy these sedans often flaunt them at every opportune moment, showing off the polish and glitter of the chassis, and snidely remarking on how much better it is than the station wagons that the countless philistines seem inexplicably fond of. It is not so much a car as a way of life.
Now, assume that the customer is put off by the price or the mysterious innards or some other factor of the Apple sedans. Then he has some representative from the Linux dealership scream into a bullhorn in his face about their invulnerable, all-purpose, free tanks.
Since every single person in that dealership has bullhorns, he figures that maybe they have a point. So he wanders over, and discovers that the only reason they stay afloat, selling free tanks, is that every single one of them is a volunteer.
The customer climbs into a tank, and discovers that there is no instruction manual. Everything is in unfamiliar places, wires and circuitry are sticking out in some places, and in some cases the only way to get the tank started is to find two unmarked wires and cross them, haystack-needle style. Poking his head out of the tank, the customer realizes that every single tank is different, with their own proponents and advertisers, and the only thing they all have in common is that they are tanks.
A wild-eyed dealer shoves what looks like an instruction manual, eight hundred pages thick, in the customer's face. Upon opening it, the customer sees an insane jumble of notes and gibberish, diagrams layered upon diagrams, detailing every single working of the tank, but very little on how to actually drive it. Timidly asking about it results in the dealer screaming through a bullhorn for the customer to read the manual, before taking said manual and slapping the customer around with it.
The customer staggers away, into the arms of another dealer. This dealer soothes the customer, pats him on the back, and shows him a tank that looks something like a station wagon, but with tank-like properties. There is a whole row of these tanks, with varying station wagon designs. The problem is, it's not free: the more like station wagons they are, obviously minus most of the drawbacks, the more expensive they are, until they cost more or less the same as a station wagon.
The customer wanders around dazedly, until he finds a free tank surrounded by mechanics who grudgingly agree to teach him how to use it. The tank looks a bit like a station wagon, and the customer asks if he can install the stereo he likes in it.
The mechanics shake their heads. They're all working for free, and so they prioritize what goes in the tank and what the tank can accept by what they think is important. And they do not think that the stereo is at all important. After all, you don't need a stereo while driving, right? And that stereo is popular with the Microsoft scum anyway. We don't want anything to do with their kind.
Defeated, the customer heads back to the Microsoft dealership. There, he is served by professionally detached automatons, nameless and faceless, who stare at him oddly when he asks for extra features, but nevertheless deliver unto him a station wagon that is exactly the same as every other.
And so the customer drives off, in his smoking, unreliable, ugly, rattling, familiar station wagon, while looking at the stylish, snooty, expensive sedan to the left of him, and the looming, invulnerable, free tank zooming off to the right.
int, DS creator and maintainer).So I'll talk about random OS stuff here.
Neal Stephenson, in his essay In The Beginning Was The Command Line, compared various OSes to various cars and other vehicles. (It's available somewhere online, but I'm too lazy to find a link.) Below is more or less his analogy and my own personal spin on it.
Microsoft is a huge auto dealership that got its start from selling three-speed bicycles, easily fixed and cheap, and this philosophy of it not being perfect or even good but good enough, as well as having support that is Good Enough and upgrades that are Good Enough, has continued all the way to this day, and has also made it the biggest, richest auto dealership around, selling ugly but functional station wagons and Off-Road Vehicles.
Apple is a rather smaller auto dealership, and it has had the "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS" sign hung up for so long that it's yellowing and curled. They sell sleek Euro-style sedans, with their innards sealed so tightly that how they work is a bit of a mystery to the drivers, and they sell it at exorbitant rates. But they're friendly and pretty, and if something does happen to break down (which isn't often), the techies will shake your hand and slap you on the back and take you out for a drink at the local pub, laughing and joking, and everyone's good buddies and best friends and when they give you back your car, it's working great again. You don't know how they did it, but they did.
And then there's Linux, which is not a dealership at all, but rather a motley collection of tents and yurts and teepees and geodesic domes all arranged by consensus, and it's kind of hard to tell what they're selling, but it looks like tanks. These are the modern, high-tech tanks, and better than tanks, since they're light and maneuverable enough to use on normal streets and even put the Apple Euro sedans to shame, use as much fuel as a subcompact car, and they almost never break down. Best of all, they're absolutely free, and anyone who wants one can just pick one up and drive it away.
(Neal also mentioned BeOS, which are like really cheap but incredibly stylish Batmobiles. But I have no experience with them, so I'm not going to be including them here.)
Now, most people just walk to the Microsoft dealership and drive away with a station wagon, which is considered the Base Value of everything, since they've sold their station wagons to 95% of the world. These station wagons break down very often, but generally a good kicking will start them up again, and driving is incredibly simple and, with a bit of practice, quite intuitive. Driving schools all use the station wagons for their driving tests, so if you know how to drive, you know how to drive the Microsoft station wagons. When you get your driver's licence, it's fairly expensive, but that's because they throw in a station wagon in the cost. Also, everything works when applied to the station wagon, like new wheels, a new steering wheel, a new stereo, whatever.
But let's say someone has heard that these station wagons break down way too often, and he wants to know what the other dealerships are like. So he takes a stroll over to the Apple dealership, and looks at the prices. If he hasn't been scared away by that yet, he looks at the options available: some of the newer stereos which can pick up all the newest stations are supported, but if you want to listen to the other not-so-popular stations, well, you're out of luck... unless you ask them to make it such that the sleek, stylish sedan pretends to be a station wagon. Which defeats the purpose, really, since the customer can just walk over to the Microsoft dealership and get a station wagon for real.
Those who do buy these sedans often flaunt them at every opportune moment, showing off the polish and glitter of the chassis, and snidely remarking on how much better it is than the station wagons that the countless philistines seem inexplicably fond of. It is not so much a car as a way of life.
Now, assume that the customer is put off by the price or the mysterious innards or some other factor of the Apple sedans. Then he has some representative from the Linux dealership scream into a bullhorn in his face about their invulnerable, all-purpose, free tanks.
Since every single person in that dealership has bullhorns, he figures that maybe they have a point. So he wanders over, and discovers that the only reason they stay afloat, selling free tanks, is that every single one of them is a volunteer.
The customer climbs into a tank, and discovers that there is no instruction manual. Everything is in unfamiliar places, wires and circuitry are sticking out in some places, and in some cases the only way to get the tank started is to find two unmarked wires and cross them, haystack-needle style. Poking his head out of the tank, the customer realizes that every single tank is different, with their own proponents and advertisers, and the only thing they all have in common is that they are tanks.
A wild-eyed dealer shoves what looks like an instruction manual, eight hundred pages thick, in the customer's face. Upon opening it, the customer sees an insane jumble of notes and gibberish, diagrams layered upon diagrams, detailing every single working of the tank, but very little on how to actually drive it. Timidly asking about it results in the dealer screaming through a bullhorn for the customer to read the manual, before taking said manual and slapping the customer around with it.
The customer staggers away, into the arms of another dealer. This dealer soothes the customer, pats him on the back, and shows him a tank that looks something like a station wagon, but with tank-like properties. There is a whole row of these tanks, with varying station wagon designs. The problem is, it's not free: the more like station wagons they are, obviously minus most of the drawbacks, the more expensive they are, until they cost more or less the same as a station wagon.
The customer wanders around dazedly, until he finds a free tank surrounded by mechanics who grudgingly agree to teach him how to use it. The tank looks a bit like a station wagon, and the customer asks if he can install the stereo he likes in it.
The mechanics shake their heads. They're all working for free, and so they prioritize what goes in the tank and what the tank can accept by what they think is important. And they do not think that the stereo is at all important. After all, you don't need a stereo while driving, right? And that stereo is popular with the Microsoft scum anyway. We don't want anything to do with their kind.
Defeated, the customer heads back to the Microsoft dealership. There, he is served by professionally detached automatons, nameless and faceless, who stare at him oddly when he asks for extra features, but nevertheless deliver unto him a station wagon that is exactly the same as every other.
And so the customer drives off, in his smoking, unreliable, ugly, rattling, familiar station wagon, while looking at the stylish, snooty, expensive sedan to the left of him, and the looming, invulnerable, free tank zooming off to the right.