Superstitious users and the FreeBSD logo

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-November/006642.html

by haileys • 15 years ago

169 132 15 years ago

lists.freebsd.org

scythe• 15 years ago

The abstract demon head at the top of the page?

bjg2• 15 years ago

Probably one of the "Powered By" logo's http://www.freebsd.org/art.html#POWERED-BY

spicyj• 15 years ago

http://www.freebsd.org/logo.html

loopdoend• 15 years ago

FreeBSD now with more horns less devil. Allow me to play devil's advocate for a second here... wait. What I mean is, the devil's in the details with logo design, seriously. Just be careful not to insult the pious, there'll be hell to pay.

Actually, it would appear the abstracted logo on their page is under a stricter license and requires permission to use, IANAL.

JohnnyBrown2• 15 years ago

I don't understand what he's asking for at then end:

| Is there artwork that doesn't include horned creatures that might offend the ignorant or superstitious?

as in, I still want to offend her, but also want to change the logo?

whatusername• 15 years ago

I think it was intended like this: that doesn't include "horned creatures that might offend the ignorant or superstitious"?

saulrh• 15 years ago

Misparse; you're reading "artwork that (doesn't include horned creatures) [and] (that might offend)", but it's intended as "artwork that (doesn't include (horned creatures that might offend))".

JohnnyBrown2• 15 years ago

thanks

bjg2• 15 years ago

I read it as the author wanting to still display some sort of badge to credit the hotspot as being powered by freebsd but without the possibility of offending the customers...

For example, one of the old badges without bestie the mascot. http://www.antbomb.com/sources/powered_by_freebsd.gif

jrockway2• 15 years ago

Everything will offend someone. This person probably had a bad day and would have complained about something else (and threatened not to stay) if the BSD logo hadn't distracted her first.

Self-censorship to appease the tiny number of people that are crazy is the worst form of censorship. There is no appeals process and you can't measure whether or not your censorship is effective. All you're left with is a world that consists only of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I don't want to live in that world.

Don't change your personality because one person might not like you. Is it worth making the world a worse place just to get a measly thousand bucks?

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

Is it worth making the world a worse place just to get a measly thousand bucks?

Removing the "Powered By" makes the world a worse place?

I am inclined to agree with one of the later emails in the thread; "Powered By <blank>" doesn't really belong on end-user pages in the first place.

jrockway2• 15 years ago

I think the person who originally designed the page was proud that he was using FreeBSD and he decided that he wanted to share this information with the world. Doing so would make him happy; perhaps he imagined that a FreeBSD user would one day see the logo and enjoy his life a little bit more because he connected, although indirectly, with another in his tribe.

Little decisions like this are what make you human. Don't let your fears and inhibitions turn you into a robot because some interview with Steve Jobs said not to put "powered by..." logos on stuff. Do what feels right in your heart. Enjoy life first and figure out how to make money without compromising your humanity.

vacri4• 15 years ago

It's on a login page, presumably operated by the ISP if they're the ones responsible for the logo content. Under that condition, why should they be prevented from advertising what technology they use? Should they also be forbidden from using their own name?

azanar• 15 years ago

Is it worth making the world a worse place just to get a measly thousand bucks?

I think it depends on whether the person set to net a thousand bucks would agree with you on whether censoring a mascot makes the world a worse place, or whether they think censoring the mascot brings the world, such as it is, into relief.

It may not be that most people would care about the daemon turned devil. But that can be all the more incentive to just do what the vocal minority wants. No one else really cares, and that is as much about making the world a bad place as the person who actively insists on censorship. So why should you make an effort against a disinterested population?

I agree with you, but I think it is important to realize that there are varying degrees of both willfulness and jadedness that can make an argument like "you're selling the world out" fall flat. As much as I find a lack of resistance from people toward the censorship calls of others, apathy and jadedness are far more often the cause than agreeing that something ought to be censored.

Maybe finding a way to convince these apathetic ones that the world isn't beyond redemption would go a long way to convincing people that these things are worth fighting against, but I am still trying to find a reliable and repeatable way to do that. I will always be the seemingly naive optimist I suppose.

ck22• 15 years ago

It wasn't a bad day, it's proselytizing, aka "my belief system is better than yours so I am going to attempt to impose it everywhere because I am better than you".

You've never experienced a door-to-door religion salesperson?

njharman• 15 years ago

One of the most important business lessons.

"Some customers aren't worth having."

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

Yes, but in this case the hotel is the customer, and the hotel is doing nothing wrong in asking about the issue.

vog2• 15 years ago

Indeed, if the hotels care about those customers, they should probably simply adjust the starting page, which might be a good idea anyway (e.g., putting the hotel logo on the page).

It might be more sensible to ask for simpler customization facilities than to ask a project to change or hide their logo for everyone.

signa11• 15 years ago

http://rmitz.org/freebsd.daemon.html

anonymous• 15 years ago

I refuse to stay in the same hotel as women who do not have their hair covered!

You are not responsible for their outrage.

'First they came for the hotspots with devil logos on them, and I did not speak up, for I am not a devil logo.'

geoka9• 15 years ago

Here's a similar (and funny) story: http://rmitz.org/freebsd.daemon.html

forbes• 15 years ago

Sounds like a business opportunity. The customer might be willing to pay more for Wi-Fi that is not powered by Satan, and more again if it was powered by God. I'd choose Wi-Fi that is 'Powered by Science!' - the best Wi-Fi of them all.

alexmat• 15 years ago

All Wi-Fi is powered by science. I'll pay you a million bucks if you can show me a Wi-Fi router powered by Jesus.

scarlson• 15 years ago

There's a chasm of difference between a router that's powered by Jesus and one that claims to be powered by Jesus.

Customer's only need to believe it's so, much like the case presented in the internet being powered by the devil.

Anyways, off to brand "Holy Routers" with an image of Buddy Christ as our logo. "Why bother with other routers, ours have the divine connection."

swah3• 15 years ago

I just opened mine and could not find science, please help.

reinhardt• 15 years ago

I LaughedOutLouder with this than the OP. You Sir are a true entrepreneur!

marshray18• 15 years ago

I think I'm on the side of the general non-sysadmin population here.

I used to get the BSD magazine, and I got a puzzled look or two from the neighbors. I just said "oh that, it's a computer thing". No big deal.

But how would you feel if you ran into your neighbor at the mailboxes and they were getting magazines with swastikas on them? How about if you went to use the hotel network and the sign-in page said "Powered By" and a picture of a guy in a white hood standing under a burning cross? You might feel a little weird about it too.

There is a language of symbolism and iconography that exists in Western cultures. This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. It developed this meaning long, long before some guys in a computer lab chose to use it to represent something completely unrelated, as some kind of visual pun. It's as if they were intentionally trying to be confusing.

So cut it out with all the snickering about "look at all the dumb superstitious people who can't wrap their heads around a daemon process".

This is the kind of antisocial behavior that gives nerds an image problem.

nessus423• 15 years ago

I take it that you think that celebrating Halloween is also "antisocial"? Plenty of people I know might dress up on as a daemon or devil on Halloween, but few people would dress up as a Nazi.

mixmax• 15 years ago

This whole debacle is about culture. The reason it's acceptable to dress up as a deamon but not as a nazi at halloween is cultural. There are deamons and depictions of the devil in many churches, the holiest of the holy places if you believe in that sort of thing. Tha's fine because they're there for a cultural and historical reason, while a deamon one a splash screen doesn't have any religious or historical reason for being there.

Is it logical? No.

Is it the way the world works? Yes.

alberich• 15 years ago

Easy fix, remove the logo from the splash page if you know people get offended and you worry about it.

People seem to get offended by almost everything. It is not FreeBSD's fault if people are so intolerant to the point of running away from a hotel because they saw something that they don't even want to know what it means... this is called prejudice, and this is an even more antisocial behaviour than sticking to a friendly looking daemon logo.

nivloc• 15 years ago

No it's not. If it were really a problem, Betty Crocker wouldn't sell Devil's Food Cake mix, and there would be no Red Devil firecrackers.

Odds are this person is being ridiculous, and had no intention of actually paying for the $1,000 stay.

darklajid2• 15 years ago

I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post.

Coming from a country that sometimes gets a bad reputation for limiting free speech: I know at least one country part of the 'western culture' where swastikas are (generalizing) illegal. Please list a country where tiny horned figures are illegal.

I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?), but I guess those aren't a good example either.

Are you seriously comparing

a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war

b) a far-right, violent, terrorist (acc. to Wikipedia, depending on local legislation?) organization

with

c) a comic style image that might be connected by viewers with a fictional character representing (guessing here, didn't read the novel) all evil?

Everyone is free to have their own belief. But you sure overstate the problem here..

fedd4• 15 years ago

i guess he's talking about people who seriously compare a violent regime that killed people with magazines with images of colourful trucks in india decorated with kali, swastikas, skulls etc

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

> I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post.

Not "invoking Godwin's Law" if it's actually relevant. It'd be different if he'd have said "these fundie Christians are like nazis".

And the actual Godwin's Law is even different and isn't "invoked". Look it up.

I think comparison with a swastika is perfectly reasonable and not at all gratuitous, for being an icon/imagery that evokes strong emotions in many people (myself included). BTW that doesn't mean I agree with the comparison, because I don't, for similar reasons as you state. But referring to "Godwin's Law" in a discussion where the swastika actually is a relevant comparison pisses me off.

marshray18• 15 years ago

I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?),

Yes, in the US South that is an unambiguous symbol of the KKK and racist violence. It's even recent enough to be in living memory for older people.

Are you seriously comparing a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war

No, I'm not comparing the acts of one party (the actual Nazis) with the acts of another party (programmers at Berkely) or with a mythological motif.

I'm saying that the programmers at Berkley chose a symbol which already had a specific meaning and was thus guaranteed to be confusing.

Nerds have a negative stereotype of being passive aggressive, pointlessly confusing, making inside jokes at others' expense, and generally making others look stupid.

fauigerzigerk2• 15 years ago

Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D.

I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil.

I do, however, know quite a few people who are offended by Christian religious symbols for all the cruelty they stand for, both historically and for them personally.

And by the way, ridiculing the devil has a great tradition, that has never meant to worship the devil. In fact, Satanists might well consider it antisocial to use the devil in this way.

I think calling any of this antisocial is totally bizarre regardless of any religous beliefs.

itmag• 15 years ago

Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D.

Yes, as opposed to 15th century Spanish sys-admin villagers.

Terretta2• 15 years ago

I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil.

Then either you don't live in America, or you don't know many devout evangelicals.

know quite a few people who are offended

So that settle it: you're not keeping company with average "heartland" Americans. You self-select the people you know, so using people you know as a general population sample is usually flawed.

Confusion• 15 years ago

  This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning.

What image would that be? If you mean 'the image Christian folks have when they do not realize what the Bible actually says about Satan', then you are trivially right. From the Bible itself, it's a complete mystery where the redness, horns, tail and pitchfork come from. The visual image a Christian should have of Satan, is that of an angel. That Satan looks Good and sounds convincing is essential to his capacity to lead even good Christians astray and is therefore his scariest property.

When you bring those visual characteristics, redness, horns, a tail, a pitchfork, into play, you automatically bring the history of those characteristics with it. In which case the image could also represent some of the playful, naughty daemons in that history[1]. Opposing such images as being Satanic in nature is a display of utter ignorance that we shouldn't bow to. It has nothing to do with daemon processes or nerds.

[1] I must add that, with those associations in mind (the most benign I can think of), I have never understood the choice for this mascot. I feel it doesn't make FreeBSD look serious enough.

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

True. This is a more accurate description of the biblical Satan:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/GustaveDo...

Only difference with an angel is that the feather wings are replaced with bat-like wings.

I was going to say that the horns (and goat-legs) came from "demonizing" the Horned God/Pan/etc deities from Paganism. But looking it up (check Wikipedia on Satan, Devil, Pan, Horned God for references), it turns out that this demonization occurred mostly in the late as the early 19th century, while the image of a horned Devil occurs at least as early as the 13th century. Interestingly, the image of The Devil in the early 18th century Tarot of Marseille seems to have branched antlers, not horns.

And that's just a cursory investigation, the complete story is probably much more complicated than that :) There's some stuff involving the Knights Templar vs ancient Pagan imagery, but I'm done with Wikipedia for the moment :-)

marshray18• 15 years ago

What image would that be?

The image that they interpret in their minds. Not what it says in the literal Bible, or on Wikipedia.

I'm sure there's a great deal of depth and diversity and religious scholarship on the topic of devils, Satan, etc.

What they all tend to agree is that this figure represents a direct conflict with God. All Christians (and plenty of other major religions) are thus in opposition to it, by definition.

corin_• 15 years ago

> magazines with swastikas on them?

So, so different. Otherwise being a holocaust denier is no worse than being an atheist (a devil denier!).

One image relates to actual terrible beliefs and behaviours, one relates to supersticion.

morsch• 15 years ago

Oh please. It's the kind of antisocial behaviour that gives religious fundamentalists an image problem, a well deserved one at that.

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

> But how would you feel if you ran into your neighbor at the mailboxes and they were getting magazines with swastikas on them?

Depends. If it was the actual red/white/black Nazi design, I'd definitely ask about it and he'd have to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he is receiving these magazines--and then I'd believe him knowing that actual neo-Nazis never apologize or make excuses but will be frank and confronting about their beliefs and the ones that aren't also tend to make sure their neighbours don't see their propaganda mail.

However, you can't compare that to a cartoon devil in sneakers. If that computer screen had displayed Powered by <image of a pentagram with a goats head in a circle with occult symbols> then, yeah, I couldn't blame anyone for at least wondering if they might be Satan-worshippers :) And if fundie Christians want to get all offended and freak out at Satanists, I'm going to say, have at it. While actual Satanists are generally rather harmless, they are also generally enormous pricks. It might even give me short pause and wonder whether I'd reconsider staying at that hotel, but in the end the potential for hilarity would probably win out.

No, this is more like: Your neighbour receives a magazine with a swastika on it that doesn't actually have anything to do with Nazis, like maybe he is a Hindu. Just like the BSD logo doesn't have anything to do with the devil or satan, but is a play on the word "daemon". In that case, maybe you don't know it, you ask him, he tells you, and since the magazine says Modern Hindu Magazine (health & lifestyle for the modern Hindu!) and the swastika is yellow with orange, you figure that he's probably not a neo-Nazi.

Lagged2Death3• 15 years ago

There is a language of symbolism and iconography that exists in Western cultures. This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. It developed this meaning long, long before some guys in a computer lab chose to use it to represent something completely unrelated...

Yes and no. Sure, the iconography has a history. No, "some guys in a computer lab" are hardly the first or only people to use the iconography for "something completely unrelated."

Do the same people who are offended by the BSD Daemon get all bent out of shape over the many devil and demon themed sports teams and other organizations that exist?

http://www.thesundevils.com/

http://bluedevils.org/

http://devils.nhl.com/

http://duke.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Duke_Blue_Devils/browse/

Or by the existence of devil-themed consumer goods?

http://www.reddevil.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+devils

Why should computer geeks be singled out for this sort of abuse?

marshray18• 15 years ago

Yes, there are indeed lots of people who are bothered by it. You are quick to accuse them of getting "all bent of of shape" about it, but in fact the vast majority of them understand the idea of a mascot and don't complain.

Sports mascots seem to be established as an exception. Sports teams seem to like to project an irreverent image. Duke, in fact, started as a religious school. Methodists are pretty cool about not getting "all bent of of shape" like that.

You don't have to go back in time very far to find people who wouldn't understand the idea of having a mascot for a computer operating system. Thus, it was not established as an objection.

astine• 15 years ago

When I was a young child my family had a "Dirt Devil" brand vacuum cleaner. My mother put some masking tape over the "Devil" part of the vacuum's logo because she was uncomfortable with the word. She certainly wouldn't do the same today, but just to be clear, FreeBSD isn't singled out as much as you think.

jlarocco• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure the problem is with "the general non-sysadmin population." Most adults have the common sense to differentiate a whimsical logo from some kind of nefarious symbolism.

Also, there's a flaw in your comparisons. Nazis were real, and they killed millions of people. The KKK is real and they terrorized people for decades. Demons and devils are purely imaginary.

dkokelley2• 15 years ago

I assure you that demons and devils are as real to Christians as Nazis were to Poland.

tptacek4• 15 years ago

Marsh, there are evangelical Christian families who happily dress their kids up as devils for Halloween. This simply isn't about religion; it's about the fact that in a society of 300 million people, even a teeny tiny percentage of crazy people is still a lot of people, and you're bound to run into some of them.

marshray18• 15 years ago

Yeah. There are also a lot of families who quietly choose to dress their kids as angels, pumpkins, or any of the other things that are not in direct conflict with their religion.

Around here there are also large churches which put on "fall harvest festivals" as an alternative to Halloween. Makes it sound even more pagan if you ask me!

scommab• 15 years ago

the FreeBSD devil is so cutesy I find it hard to believe someone would be that offended. And it's not like "the devil" is some sort of huge taboo in the US, it is often used in relatively benign product's names.

Some example "demonic" products off the top of my head

- New Jersey Devils (NHL team)

- Dirt Devil (a vacuum)

- Devil's food cake (a popular dessert)

webspiderus• 15 years ago

also often used for school mascots, at places such as Duke, my high school, and many others surely.

lloeki• 15 years ago

Not to mention Daredevil and Hellboy. I suppose one could find them offensive, somehow (at this rate, I really could suppose anything)

fedd4• 15 years ago

which demonstrated that the West gradually moves to satanism for a long time!

(joke! joke-joke-joke! show tolerance before downvoting)

vog2• 15 years ago

+1 for the joke, -1 for lamenting about downvoting.

peteretep2• 15 years ago

I think some fundies would have a problem with it specifically because it's cutesy - I remember reading people being anti Harry Potter because it trivialized what they saw as black, satanic magic

adbge• 15 years ago

To be fair, though, they would have an even bigger problem with it if it wasn't cutesy. They have a problem with it because they believe it's satanic, not because it's cutesy.

Take your Harry Potter example. The people who are anti-Harry Potter aren't really against it because it trivializes black magic. That's just a rationalization. These people certainly don't support something like the works of Aleister Crowley, even though they're much more serious about their treatment of the occult. They're against it because it contains -- in their view -- black, satanic magic.

m_for_monkey• 15 years ago

Maybe choose one of these (NSFW!):

http://freebsd-image-gallery.netcode.pl/?gallery=Daemonette

peteforde2• 15 years ago

Penn Jillette is correct: nobody has the "right to not be offended".

I think that it's deeply unfair to compare the BSD daemon logo to a swastika, unless you believe that open source is communism that robs pro-America operating systems like Windows.

The woman at the hotel speaks of abuse from seeing this symbol, but who apologizes for my abuse at the hands of the deeply irrational? It's not my fault that so many people choose to take their spiritual beliefs so far past zealotry that something so inconsequential as a logo would upset them, and yet it's somehow my problem because I'm apparently supposed to be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to not offend people who believe in bullshit.

These people would never extend me the same courtesy if I asked them to remove their Christian jewellery. I'd be laughed off if I phoned the front desk of a hotel freaking out that someone put a Gideon bible in my drawer.

I live in a relatively sane place and I consciously avoid going to places where it's socially acceptable to burden rationale behaviour with uncontested religious observance. They can believe what they believe and I'll continue to sleep through Sunday mornings. But the apologists who are smart enough to know better? Those folks should know better than to fall into such an obvious slippery slope.

TL;DR: I'm an atheist and I want a refund because someone put a Christian bible in my hotel room. Why are you laughing?

whalesalad• 15 years ago

"I'm an atheist and I want a refund because someone put a Christian bible in my hotel room. Why are you laughing?"

Zing. Very good example.

fedd4• 15 years ago

atheists generally don't give a damn to books or symbols otherwise they are idealists in fact

peteretep2• 15 years ago

Terrible example because no-one actually gives a shit, where it's pretty clear some people - with money to spend - do give a shit about the devil.

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

> I think that it's deeply unfair to compare the BSD daemon logo to a swastika

where was this said? I didn't find it in the thread.

petsos• 15 years ago

Search for swastika in this page (the HN thread not the linked thread).

wisty• 15 years ago

You are missing the point. Stupid customers have the right to be stupid.

If you tell the hotel that you are offended by the bible in your drawer they will most likely apologize, remove the offending item, then either put it back when you are gone or simply leave it under the counter in case another nutter wants it back.

If you deal with 20 customers who are representative of the US as a whole, you will deal with about 1 who has been severely mentally ill in the last 12 months. 1% of the adult US population is APD (Antisocial Personality Disorder, which includes psychopaths, and could otherwise be refereed to as Asshole Personality Disorder). About 1% are schizophrenic. About 1% are autistic. And about 18% have had an anxiety disorder in the last 12 months (probably more if you are in New York), and quite a few are religious.

You can't worry about treading on toes. People will complain, unless you are more boring than IBM. When customers complain, you politely agree, attempt to help them, then forget what they said.

They have the right to be offended. Fortunately, we have to right not to care.

peteforde2• 15 years ago

For those of you who, like me, would rather not have a book of Christian fables that have incited murderous instincts in people for thousands of years left in their hotel room I heartily recommend The Jupiter Hotel in Portland, OR.

They instead go with a recent issue of Dwell and a copy of Don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements. I read it and did not feel like killing anyone!

robinhouston• 15 years ago

There is an insightful comment from Tom Limoncelli later in the thread:

“This is yet another reason why it was brilliant for Linux to have a Penguin as their logo. Up until then all Unix imagery was counter-productive to wide adoption: It was mostly wizards (a reminder that Unix is difficult to use and only understood by few) or devils (which is just plain confusing to the 99.99% of the planet that hasn't taken Operating Systems 101 in college).

This is not a new thing. This story is probably older than a lot of people on this mailing list: http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/daemon.html

(and I heard Laura tell the story once in person)

Tom”

umarmung• 15 years ago

That link is worth the giggle. Thanks :)

America makes all other rich nation's provincials look like Einsteins!

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

I get the whole daemon thing, but isn't the cartoon devil basically the standard, modern Christian image of Satan, plus some cuteness?

Personally, I think the logo has outlived its usefulness. The cartoon devil doesn't mean much to me, and vastly less to normal people, and the horned sphere is just... weird.

nakkali_kuere• 15 years ago

Swastika is a Hindu sign not Nazi.

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

Yeah no, it's both really.

jsilence2• 15 years ago

I am absolutely flabberghasted that we ("we" as in "we the society") actually have to discuss topics like this.

Seriously? The world does not have any other problems?

swah3• 15 years ago

Its an opportunity for bashing on religious people, and those are always welcome in here.

mrcharles• 15 years ago

No, it is an opportunity to highlight that there are people in this world who are unreasonably irrational, and who feel they should have a right to force their (borderline crazy) views on others.

ck22• 15 years ago

The symbol of christianity is horribly offensive if you think about it (it commemorates someone being tortured to death) but if you want to live in a supposedly "free" society you best learn to not offend and not be easily offended.

Tobu• 15 years ago

Someone finally provided a 0% demonic, fundie-friendly logo:

http://box.jisko.net/i/de9679fd.png

Tharkun• 15 years ago

You'd better not tell these people about the satanic propaganda in firefox then! (about:mozilla)

Some people deserve a firm spanking, nothing more.

marshray18• 15 years ago

I actually think it's quite rude of Mozilla to mock people's religious texts like that. I certainly wouldn't do it.

AndyKelley3• 15 years ago

Whose religious text is this mocking? Text below:

Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.

from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9 (10th Edition)

vacri4• 15 years ago

The Name of the Rose is a movie about the crusade to eliminate humour and leave us with dour religiousness, and the inhumanity that ensues. Check it out.

tripzilch6• 15 years ago

I thought this comment was rather insightful:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-Novembe...

    As a former fundie myself (brief stint, I assure you!), I do
    have some sympathy for your hotel guests. Decades ago, in my
    teens, before I was fortunate enough to snap out of it, such
    a situation would have produced an *extreme* amount of
    anxiety. 

    I can only feel sorry for anyone who has lived their whole
    life that way. 

    There aren't many ways to help them, everything you say or
    do is processed via an elaborate shell script that basically
    amounts to this:

       sed -e 's/outside help/trick of the devel/'

    Poor people, really. If they weren't so dangerous &
    annoying, we ought to have sympathy for them. It really was
    a high-stress lifesytle. I'm thankful to have snapped out of
    it early on, lots of others aren't so lucky. It really is
    like a trap.

Especially the bit about "high-stress lifestyle". Because really, it's not just about being simply offended by imagery that is perceived as antagonistic to their religion, it's about getting completely worked up over a cartoon image of a devil, and truly believing that whoever put that there must be corrupted by Dark Forces.

It's kind of hard to come up with a non-Christian equivalent, maybe something like travelling to Asia, visiting a Hindu temple, and completely freaking out about the swastikas, because obviously this means that all Hindus are in fact Nazis. Or even more direct, refusing to book a hotel owned by Hindus that prominently display some swastika emblem behind the counter (as a good luck/prosperity charm).

Now imagine living with this delusion, you actually believe this, everybody trying to convince you otherwise is either sadly misguided, corrupted, or "one of them" and these swastikas are quite prevalent in Asia. You'd be living in a constant state of fear of Imaginary Nazis!

It's one of those things that is both funny and sad and amazing and pitiful, all at the same time.

Maybe another comparison, I know a couple of people that can completely freak out from simply seeing a picture of a spider, as much that if it's large and unexpected enough they will actually jump out of their chair and panic. A big difference is of course that these people are aware that their fear is irrational--that a picture cannot hurt them (well, apart from any physical reactions they bring about their own, of course).

oz• 15 years ago

I'm a former fundamentalist Christian who wrestled long and hard over this exact issue a few years ago. Allow me to elaborate:

There is a sizeable group of Christians who practice what is known as 'spiritual warfare.' Basically, this worldview sees the work of Satan in everything. Marital problems? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Financial woes? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." Problems at work? "Satan, I bind you in the name of Jesus Christ." 'Binding' the devil apparently dispatches angels who 'subdue' the demons responsible for your problem. Just watch TBN for an hour and you'll see what I'm talking about. For the first few months of my conversion, this is the subculture I was in.

I remember one day visiting the FreeBSD website (this is after refusing to use a computer for 1 month because the Internet was obviously a part of Satan's diabolic ploy to entrap mankind), and closing the tab when I saw Beastie. You see, in that culture, there is a meme that certain objects 'attract' demons. Listening to certain songs invites demonic infestation. Watching horror movies practically guarantees it.

I vowed then that I would never use FreeBSD. Even though benchmarks showed superior stability and SMP performance than Linux, I couldn't knowingly invite demons into my life like that! By Beastie...Tux, here I come.

Thankfully, I deconverted a few months later. But I understand where she is coming from. If she was one the 'warfare' crowd, she'd probably have spent the entire night in fervent prayer, battling the 'forces of darkness.' My mom, for example, would NOT have stayed in that hotel. Wouldn't happen.

Oh man, do I have stories to tell!

For tidbits on my experiences on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611122 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202900

marshray18• 15 years ago

Thanks for that story.

It's probably important to point out that the majority of religious people are not in quite as deep as you were. But they might still be a little bothered by it.

tptacek4• 15 years ago

Are you really intending to imply that the majority of religious people would support eliminating the BSD daemon logo? Because that's obviously not true.

There are ~300MM in the US. If just 0.1% of them are nutty enough to pitch a fit over a cartoon character, that's still three hundred thousand nuts we have to deal with.

Meanwhile, the majority of US adults self-report as Christian. Most of these people are not nuts about depictions of demons, as evidenced by the fact that they aren't protesting DePaul (the largest Catholic university in the country) for naming their sports team "The Blue Demons".

lotharbot• 15 years ago

This could be better stated as "the majority of religious people do not have the same specific issues as you did". Recall that Christian Fundamentalism is a late 19th century movement, primarily in parts of the US and England, which has some unique doctrines that are rejected by the majority of Christians elsewhere in the world. Many of the rest of us are quite deep in our own religious traditions, but have no hangups whatsoever about cartoon devil logos.

emilis_info3• 15 years ago

So much bullshit in this thread...

First of all the logo: http://www.google.com/search?q=devil&tbm=isch Clearly an image of the devil. The pitchfork strengthens this meaning: http://www.symbols.com/old/encyclopedia/05/051.html

What is the devil?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil

So, the thing in FreeBSD logo is clearly considered to represent personalized evil by a lot of people. Denying the significance of this meaning is stupid and counter-productive.

Some of people take the issue of opposing evil very seriously and personally. As we all should (according to our understanding) -- whether it is poverty, poisoning of air and water, unethical business practices, corrupt officials, etc.

Now I believe the main cause that this story made the news is the 1000$ (potential?) loss for the hotel and some other demands from the customer. Other than that I doubt it would be considered important by the many people posting here.

The customer is called "superstitious". It is also noted that the customer and the complaining hotel owner are both women, while the ISP owner and his tech support person are both male. So we see the cliché of superstitious and irrational women against calm and rational men.

So yeah... ignoring the obvious, looking down on people based on their religious beliefs and sex, ignoring them unless the issue involves money...

Get over it. If you want more people to like FreeBSD -- change the logo. If you won't -- don't complain.

marshray18• 15 years ago

Some people are on a crusade to rid the world of the devil.

Some people are on a crusade to rid the world of censorship.

Some people are on a crusade to rid the world of closed-source software.

/me makes popcorn.

emilis_info3• 15 years ago

As much as USofA political and religious fundamentalism (on all sides) amuses and entertains me, a couple of things make me take it seriously:

1. USA has a very strong political power and exports its culture.

2. I am old enough to have witnessed the effects of state atheism personally and directly in my country. Atheism can be as stupid and evil as any other religion.

P.S. I come from Eastern Europe.

clark-kent2• 15 years ago

It's an image of a daemon not "the devil". Demons are only religious when used in a religious context. Demons also exist in the fantasy world of mythical creatures with fairies, witches, wizards, monsters, angels, dragons, vampires etc.

emilis_info3• 15 years ago

Have you followed the google images search link?

Also the pitchfork is an attribute of the devils in hell. It is not an attribute of daemons.

vacri4• 15 years ago

Speaking of bullshit in threads - you're projecting your own issues and not actually reading the account at hand. The female hotel manager is given tech credit in the story - she knows that BSD code is in many tech products, but weighed it up and decided not to tell the hotel guest. Nothing superstitious or irrational about the manager's conduct.

tptacek4• 15 years ago

Tempest in a teacup. The mascot of one of the largest Catholic universities in the world, DePaul, is a blue demon. Unlike FreeBSD, the Catholic school teams are actually called The Blue Demons.

There's nothing you can do about stupid people. They're always going to find something to object to.

Superstitious users and the FreeBSD logo

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