Why? The author might be a vile racist, but his site is the source for this collection. The link posted here just strips the editor's introduction[0] which I personally found valuable.
Because of the paradox of tolerance, and because you might not wanna connect to an extremist's website. You could argue you don't wanna read their writings either but AFAICT the writing is solid.
He's long passed into the "live long enough to see yourself become the villain" phase. He holds views on racial politics and race-intelligence issues whose evidence chain has been provably traced to "white-shoe racists", racist thinkers like Charles Murray with a patina of intellectualism and scientific rigor.
Links to actual villainy would be convincing. You know what isn’t? Claims that he espouses opinions which was also held by some other person who might have been bad in some way.
It's really telling that you included the bit about guns and gun rights in support of your assertion that he's racist. It reads more like you're upset with his politics overall?
> So you tolerate his racism because you like his politics? Or is tolerating racism part of your politics too?
From the start this thread is because I questioned the description of him as a racist, so I clearly don't believe he's a racist. Tolerating racism is very much not a part of my politics, or your accusation of him being a racist wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Obviously.
Still not sure why you've consistently tried to cast phrases that disagree with you politically but have absolutely no bearing to race as racist in tone, somehow. At least this last set of quotes, minus the context, facially _appear_ to be racist. That's an improvement! I couldn't substantiate the first couple. He could plausibly have just made the originals disappear, but at this point I'm losing interest. If he was a racist, and a presumably unapologetic one, why is it not in his blog, and why is his blog in stark contrast to your claims?
"""
Let’s start with a strict and careful definition: A racist is a
person who makes unjustified assumptions about the behavior or
character of individuals based on beliefs about group racial
differences.
I think racism, in this sense, is an unequivocally bad thing. I
think most decent human beings would agree with me. But if we’re
going to define racism as a bad thing, then it has to be a behavior
based on unjustified assumptions, because otherwise there
could be times when the fear of an accusation of racism could prevent
people from seeking or speaking the truth.
There are looser definitions abroad. Some people think it is
racist merely to believe there are significant differences
between racial groups. But that is an abuse of the term, because it
means that believing the objective truth, without any intent to use it
to prejudge individuals, can make you a racist.
"""
You're continuing to act as if you hate his politics and refuse to read what he writes in good faith, and fail to cite quotes. I guess from the previous discussions this is a pet project of yours. Calling out problems and explicitly trying to figure out solutions where everyone is on equal footing is the opposite of racism.
For my own pet project: Public school systems are failing to teach effectively but it disproportionately impacts minorities due to systemic income inequality (suburbs with 'good schools' being richer). (My mom thinks this is done on purpose and stems from old-school racists still upset about desegregation, and lately I think she's right - too many inner city schools are turning people out without even the ability to read for it to be an accident.)
In your worldview, ESR would be giddy about this and want it to continue. Does that really seem like something he would agree with, to you?
From my reading of his blog, I can't really see my way to a world where he would. He seems like a libertarian/egalitarian that would want to improve education for everyone, so it's very difficult to see how you're getting to your conclusions, nevermind try them on for size.
I love these. Maybe someone can help me locate a hacker koan I once read, but can't seem to find anywhere... it was a particularly humorous dig at java-style object oriented programming in a corporate environment; the novice spends their day lugging an object all through the corporation, peeling off layer after layer, only to find an empty method returning nothing.
Somehow I can't find it, or the collection it was in, anywhere... maybe this rings a bell with anyone.
> “And how many hours would you require to implement and debug that C program?” asked Nubi.
How about "How many hours would you require to write the shell script so that it handles all allowed file names appropriately?". As far as I am concerned the classes of errors are certainly different, but shell scripts have their own pitfalls.
Just yesterday I came across a one-liner that didn't work as soon as the filename had a space in the filename.
The original koan has a monk asking "What is Buddha?" With the Master's response being "This flax weighs 3 pounds", referring to the flax in his garment. The koan is intended to point out the practical nature of the Buddhist religion. Buddha to the master is all the things he does as part of his worship, and there are practical aspects to that worship such as buying 3 lb of flax. "Buddha is as Buddha does".
Unix nature being "3 lb of VAX", the most popular hardware running Unix at the time, suggests that practicality is more important than idealistic purism. Tigers like to stay on the ground but sometimes they jump in the air so saying "tigers are creatures of the ground" have exceptions that make sense. A similar idea applies to eagles. These exceptions are part of nature.
Exceptions to the rule in favor of practicality are okay and still make sense. These exceptions are still part of Unix nature.
Restating the koan: The UNIX way values both simplicity of implementation and correct behaviour in all circumstances. These values are often in tension. You must not follow these values blindly. They apply only at the right time.
I know the traditional Unix worse-is-better philosophy holds simplicity of implementation as a higher goal than consistency of interface. I don't know how that ties into tigers and VAXen, though.
I read a similarly themed koan recently where the novice wants to do various things with the shell, and the master tells him that's not what shell is for, and at the end the novice proposes something in exasperation which is essentially to use pipes to combine a bunch of commands, and the master say yes, use shell for that. I may be getting parts of it wrong. Csn anyone point me to this one? I can't find it.
