Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 26 September 2002

# 2 AM

The FSF has released a lengthy FAQ on why, in their opinion, one should speak of "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux."

I don't wish to address that issue, but I do want to respond to one of their questions:

"Why not just say "Linux is the GNU kernel" and release some existing version of GNU/Linux under the name "GNU"?"

It might have been a good idea to adopt Linux as the GNU kernel back in 1992. If we had realized, then, how long it would take to get the GNU Hurd to work, we might have done that. (Alas, that is hindsight.) Today, with the GNU Hurd working, it would not make sense to do this. We don't want to release a GNU/Linux system as "GNU", because we are getting ready to package and release the real GNU system.

There is another reason why we don't want to take some existing version of GNU/Linux and relabel it as "GNU": that would be somewhat like making a version the GNU system and labeling it "Linux".

I take issue with the description of the Hurd as a working kernel. It's never going to be efficient, nor has adequate attention been paid to security; features have been thrown in for no good reason; all the interesting things that the Hurd claimed to make possible are also possible with the Linux kernel. It is my personal opinion that the Hurd should be scrapped immediately, and the resources currently devoted to its development redirected to work on Linux or EROS. The latter is an interesting experimental kernel, which genuinely does have capabilities (no pun intended) that Linux lacks; further, serious attention has been paid to elegance, efficiency, and security.

# 1:15 AM

more politics

Very interesting two-part article in the Sierra Times: "Dis-Mything 9-11: Is The USA PATRIOT Act Patriotic?" (part 1, part 2). I smell kookery in both the article and the Sierra Times generally. For instance, Mr. White refers to a "hard money clause" of the Constitution, which he implies made the 1933 Act abolishing the gold standard unconstitutional. There is a sentence in the Constitution which could be described as a hard money clause (in article I, section 10, paragraph 1) but it does not make that Act unconstitutional. It is a restriction on the powers of the individual states, not of Congress; it's clearly intended to ensure that the states do not issue their own currencies (as they did under the Articles of Confederation).

A few paragraphs before that, in section 8, Congress is given unrestricted power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof," without any mention of what material the coin must be made of, or what if anything its value must be backed by. There is no justification for an assertion that the Constitution requires a hard currency.

However, that's a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent pair of articles. Mr. White is correct to object to legislation passed without due consideration, and to the PATRIOT Act specifically. I would like to encourage all my readers who are resident in the USA to sign the online petition for its repeal.

Another good article is in this week's SF Weekly: Matt Smith reports on a professional architect's conclusions about the most effective ways to respond to the destruction of the World Trad Center. Apparently simple and cheap-to-implement changes to the fire codes could ensure that skyscrapers can be evacuated safely in the event of another such disaster.

media

Also in this week's SF Weekly is a review of Das Experiment, a German movie based on the 1971 Stanford prison experiment. It sounds well worth seeing.

In last week's SF Weekly there was a feature article on why the Bay Area has stopped producing big-time rock bands. I especially want to call your attention to the segment beginning on page two, "This Band Should Be Your Life," profiling the Pattern. This is a new, happening band that deserves more attention. I've downloaded their MP3s and I like what I hear. They're playing Slim's in San Francisco on October 7th; I think I'll go.

from the out-of-total-left-field dept.

I'm walking home today and some guy buttonholes me and asks where he can score some pot. What I wanna know is, where did he get the idea that clean-shaven T-shirt-and-jeans white-boy me knows where to score pot? Maybe it's the ponytail.