Personal patches

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd at online.fr> writes:

> I barely knew Limbaugh's name before coming to the US.

Some people don't care for USA-centric entries.  I could come up with
many other categories of entries that many people would prefer be
removed or at least segregated.

> Why should FreeBSD give an international pulpit to some little-known
> ignorant American broadcaster?

Because it's considered to be very wrong to push someone away from a
pulpit when he's speaking.  Especially when another FreeBSD committer
walked him to the pulpit and other FreeBSD users want him to be heard.

Too many people care too much about who's speaking rather than about
what's being said.  But for that reason at least, I can see how
Limbaugh's "Truths" wouldn't be as offensive to those outside the USA.
The fortune system probably should be redesigned so that entries could
get multiple tags like "offensive to some", "humorous to some",
"Euro-centric", etc.

BTW, as an occasional listener and former fan of Limbaugh's since
1988, I find that your characterizations of him as little-known,
ignorant, stupid, bigoted, and unhumorous are all generally false and
are made in a blatant and hateful manner that is harmful to the
purposes of this forum.  He has made it easy enough for you to
disparage him without resort to such nasty tactics.  (I say "former
fan" because I think he should be socially punished for having hurt
his Cause as he has.  As for legal punishments, I hold the common
libertarian position.)

> Would a random idiot hack from, say, Japan, Norway, or
> other countries with FreeBSD contributors, make it to the fortune
> files?

As long as he's found a translator, like Friedrich Nietzsche did.

> It may be an "offensive" fortune file but that doesn't mean
> offensiveness is the only criterion for inclusion.  

So what are the criterion?  Where should the line be drawn (in a space
with many more than two dimensions)?  The manpage describes the
entries with the terms "hopefully interesting", "adage", "epigram",
"maxims", and "sayings".  There's no requirement for humor.
Limbaugh's "Undeniable Truths of Life" surely qualify, even if many
people (including me) would label many of them as uninteresting, in
spite of the fact that the thought has been interesting enough for
people to argue about for thousands of years.  The requirement for
offensiveness is well-met by the mere fact that they carry Limbaugh's
name, as shown so well in this chat thread.

My main problem with the file is with the "balance" of the file.  One
entry uncharacteristicly uses "my brother-in-law" as the butt of a
joke, while the bulk of such entries use someone like Ronald Reagan
and only a few use someone like Jimmy Carter. (I say "like" because
Reagan appears 18 times while Carter never appears.)  But I suppose
the imbalance approximates the attitudes of committers who are prone
to caring about such expressions of opinion as the fortunes program.


"Let he who is without humility make the first deletion."