> > be moderated. If not then anything that even vaugely relates
> > should be fine. When people start telling others what they can
> > or can't talk about then things just go to hell w/ flame wars
> > etc. A new list is great but
> <minor snip>
> Maybe I'm missing the obvious here, but what the fsck is it about US
> Politics that "even vaguely relates" to Linux? Please, humor me, this
> bemused Linux user is eager to learn...
> <snip>
>
> As you've noticed, politics is a very unusual topic. Everybody seems
> to have something to say. It is much tollerated, except when you
> disagree. And it's sad that anybody has to suffer exposure to it if
> they don't want to, let alone on this Linux group. And it has
> nothing to do with Linux, just with the survival of the human race.
I agree. To me, politics has no place in a Linux list. This is where we
learn the tricks of the trade for a computer operating system. The users
are generally not interested in 'my politician is better than your
politician', any more than they are interested in 'my God is better than
your God', or 'my color is better than your color', or "my sex is better
than your sex', or any other such bigotry. The closest we have here are the
'techie wars' of (for example) vi/pico/emacs, Windoze/Linux, etc., and even
they tend to suck, as the ferocity of the argument is generally inversely
proportional to the amount of hard evidence to back either side...
> I was flamed for posting something about the history of computing and
> how situations at that time influenced the development of GNU and
> eventually Linux. It's amused me at how long this political discussion
> has gone on and the turns it has taken, from funny to screaming curses.
> -Gary-
I for one was saddened by the flames you received for your 'history
lessons'. Why? Because I believe that Linux and the history of computing
are inextricably linked. It is a lot easier to understand Linux, and why
Linux is the way it is, if you have a good basic understanding of the
history of computing.
It also helps for programming. Those of us who can remember programming in
raw hex using a 25-key keypad with a 7-segment LED display on a machine with
only a few kilobytes of RAM know the importance of tight code. A lot of
today's programmers wouldn't believe the applications we could write in a
few kilobytes. Also, the tight code ran so much faster than today's
bloatware...
Oh well.
Regards,
Ozz.
