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Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 17:55:30 -0500
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
To: Stephen Satchell <list@fluent2.pyramid.net>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@conectiva.com.br>,
        David Garfield <garfield@irving.iisd.sra.com>,
        Linux Kernel List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Configure.help editorial policy
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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
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Stephen Satchell <list@fluent2.pyramid.net>:
> 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....
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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
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