Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 18:08:44 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 18:08:35 -0500 Received: from dsl254-112-233.nyc1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([216.254.112.233]:32920 "EHLO snark.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 18:08:20 -0500 Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 17:55:30 -0500 From: "Eric S. Raymond" To: Stephen Satchell Cc: Rik van Riel , David Garfield , Linux Kernel List Subject: Re: Configure.help editorial policy Message-ID: <20011221175530.A16568@thyrsus.com> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com Mail-Followup-To: "Eric S. Raymond" , Stephen Satchell , Rik van Riel , David Garfield , Linux Kernel List In-Reply-To: <20011221134034.B11147@thyrsus.com> <4.3.2.7.2.20011221140707.00c0e290@10.1.1.42> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011221140707.00c0e290@10.1.1.42>; from list@fluent2.pyramid.net on Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 02:53:50PM -0800 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Stephen Satchell : > What kills me is that people forget the origin of KB as a standard > designation for "kilobyte" in the first place. Does anyone remember the > KSR-33 teletype, the early dot-matrix printers, and other output devices > that output only upper-case characters? Maybe you youngsters don't recall > that lower-case character devices were EXPENSIVE -- I still have a TI > Silent 700 terminal that did output lower-case when connected to systems > that understood the full ASCII alphabet, but those systems were few and far > between in business applications -- upper-case-only was "good enough." How > about tab machines that never did have lower-case, such as the 407 printing > accounting machine? That's right, kids. And furthermore, we had to walk to the computer center uphill. Both ways. In the snow. Empty out the chad buckets twice a day. And crimp backplane wires with our teeth, while the machine was *on*! > So here we are, campers, arguing about abbreviations when in fact there is > no real NEED for abbreviations outside of the config symbol space. Why not > just take the few extra bytes (they are not a penny each anymore) to spell > out what you really mean? Alas, this is not a solution -- because expanding all the abbrevs would just get us into the argument over "kilobytes" vs. "kibibytes". And, while I can just barely make myself choke down "KiB" for the sake of clarity, "kibibytes" is beyond my tolerance. Aaarrggghhh.... -- Eric S. Raymond All governments are more or less combinations against the people. . .and as rulers have no more virtue than the ruled. . . the power of government can only be kept within its constituted bounds by the display of a power equal to itself, the collected sentiment of the people. -- Benjamin Franklin Bache, in a Phildelphia Aurora editorial 1794 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/