From kragen@dnaco.net Tue Sep 29 21:43:38 1998 Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 21:43:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: "Bradley M. Kuhn" cc: talk@clug.org Subject: Re: RMS wins a round: In-Reply-To: <19980929204250.I30376@ebb.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Status: O X-Status: On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > > It depends on what you mean by the word "Linux" -- the OS or the > > kernel. Most people mean the OS. > > The majority isn't always right (That's the major downside of a > republic. :). Well, no matter how much people believe that the Earth is flat, it doesn't make a bit of difference -- the earth remains obstinately spherical, and effects of that reality can be observed all over the place. No matter what the fraction of people in the harbor who believe the sea to be flat or mildly concave, the mast of the ship is still the last thing to disappear over the horizon. But some things we think of as ``reality'' are just socially constructed. The meanings of words are socially constructed; it is simply not an objective fact that ``enormity'' doesn't mean enormous size, or that it does. It's simply a matter of opinion. When it comes to socially-constructed ``reality'' like language, it is pointless to argue who's really right. We can argue about what the majority believes, or what some powerful person or group believes, or what you and I believe, but wit doesn't make any sense to argue about what the meaning ``really'' is. So the statement ``The majority isn't always right'' -- with regard to the meaning of the word ``Linux'' -- is false in one sense, tautological in another, and meaningless in a third. For in one sense, the majority *is* always right; in another sense, *nothing* is always right; in a third, the concepts of ``right'' and ``wrong'' do not apply here. Kragen (every statement is true in one sense, false in another sense, and both true and false in a third sense) -- Kragen Sitaker A well designed system must take people into account. . . . It's hard to build a system that provides strong authentication on top of systems that can be penetrated by knowing someone's mother's maiden name. -- Schneier