More on the BSD daemon, who may or may not be named "Beastie": http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/daemon.html http://www.mckusick.com/beastie/ http://www.beastie.com/ And a hilarious story about Texans and the BSD daemon from the old Usenet archives, circa 1989: http://www.lemis.com/grog/whyadaemon.html Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/04/01/religious-leaders-warn/ I should point out that I wrote a daemon to update the Politech web site and RSS feed every so often. I just haven't named him (her? it?) yet. -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Religious leaders warn of Apple Computer's "Satanic" daemon, Darwin ties Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 08:14:25 -0700 From: Chris May <chris@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <424CE27F.6010200@private> It is April Fools, no doubt. I did have one church whose router I was configuring take issue with the concept of daemons, when I was explaining NAT. They requested I use the term 'angel' instead. -c Declan McCullagh wrote: > [Let's hope this is a joke! --Declan] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Religious leaders warn of Apple Computer's "Satanic" daemon, Darwin ties Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 14:50:47 +0800 (WST) From: Shayne O'Neill <shayne@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> CC: politech@private References: <424CE27F.6010200@private> The daemon symbol is fairly easy to explain, and shouldnt necessarily be seen as an endorsement of satanism or whatnot. In computer parlance , a 'daemon' is a process that sits in the background and manipulates data out of view of the user. For instance, shuffling email from the email store to and from the network, or perhaps serving web pages. It could of easily of been called an 'angel', but somewhere in IT history thats what it was called. The BSD operating systems, as do most OS's , are mostly used as servers, and therefore largely are involved with maintaining an environment for the smooth operation of these 'daemon' processes. Thus, perhaps inadvisedly, they adopted a little demon character as a mascot. It should be understood that this is not intended as a slur on Christianity (or indeed Islam, Judaism or any religion that proposes the existance of malevolent spirits) but simply saying 'BSD is good at running daemon processes like web servers'. Since much of the OS/X operating system has derived from BSD, one would assume the 'darwin' core has used a modified version of the BSD logo out of respect for its origins. Unfortunately for Apple , this in combination with the reference to Darwin (OS/X is an evolution along the line from previous OS's , thus Darwin) it could indeed be interpreted as anti religious, even if that was not the intention. Regardless, renaming darwin to 'Paley' would be seen as an acnowledgment of stone age thinking. Bowing to a ludite minority in the US to the detriment of over a hundred years of solid global scientific consensus does indeed seem a little absurd. Apple perhaps just needs to come up with a mascot that avoids the topic altogether. The old Mac smiley face is still wonderfull. Shayne. (Proud athiest!) -- I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad. - Jack Handey (And now, Deep thoughts) -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Religious leaders warn of Apple Computer's "Satanic" daemon, Darwin ties Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 06:22:02 -0600 From: Jim Smilanich <jim.smilanich@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <424CE27F.6010200@private> No joke. Over the years, the Christian wackos have been slowly discovering the BSD devil and daemons. Each time one of them does, he (always a he for some reason) posts on his blog that there is an evil influence in the computer world that must be avoided at all costs. However, mainstream Christians ignore the blather and continue to buy whatever they feel is appropriate for their needs. Right now, the religious right is feeling their oats. They think that just because they were a factor in getting Bush re-elected, they will be able to impose their all of their beliefs on Americans, regardless of how silly they are. Witness the reaction to the Schiavo case. Anyhow, the sillier they get the better, as far as I'm concerned. They'll be relegated back to the fringe just that much faster. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Religious leaders warn of Apple Computer's "Satanic" daemon, Darwin ties Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 20:42:26 -0500 From: R. Emory Lundberg <emory@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <424CE27F.6010200@private> On Apr 1, 2005, at 12:56 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote: > [Let's hope this is a joke! --Declan] I'm sure someone else already told you about this; I don't know if its a "joke" exactly, but the websites with this argument have been around for quite some time. I don't know if the guy is a whackjob or really thinks such things, but it isn't an April 1 "prank" in the usual sense of the word, since its been there for so long :) _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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