From owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 8 12:02:18 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 99C8116A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 12:02:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from zeus.acuson.com (ac17860.acuson.com [157.226.71.80]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1139643D67 for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 12:01:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from DavidJohnson@Siemens.com) Received: from mvaexch02 ([157.226.230.209]:4805 helo=mvaexch02.acuson.com) by zeus.acuson.com with esmtp (Exim 4.14) id 1AegLb-0005V0-3s; Thu, 08 Jan 2004 12:01:39 -0800 Received: by mvaexch02.acuson.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72) id ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:54:59 -0800 Received: from dhcp-46-107.acuson.com ([157.226.46.107]) by mvaexch01.acuson.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2657.72) id VDNN87N2; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:53:59 -0800 From: Johnson David To: Andrew Predoehl , freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Organization: Siemens Medical Systems Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:59:41 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 References: <005601c3d61e$fcad88e0$0100007f@kafu.east.kz> In-Reply-To: <005601c3d61e$fcad88e0$0100007f@kafu.east.kz> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200401081159.41767.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> X-Scanner: exiscan for exim4 (http://duncanthrax.net/exiscan/) *1AegLb-0005V0-3s*dwUXwS3nPJQ* Subject: Re: What are they talking about??? X-BeenThere: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Gathering place for new users List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 20:02:18 -0000 On Thursday 08 January 2004 09:05 am, Andrew Predoehl wrote: > Hello! I'm reading with some interest the tempest that's a-blowin' > on -chat, and as a newbie, I just got here and I'm wondering what the > heck these people are talking about. A few questions (not -questions > questions, just newbie questions): What's bikeshedding, or a > bikeshed disagreement? What's the heck are GEOM and SMP? What's a > WIKI? Anybody know a dictionary of these acronyms that I read all > the time? I can figure out 90% of them but some of them (like PITA*) > leave me mystified... Ha! Bikeshedding is discussed in the FreeBSD FAQ. As far as I know (AFAIK), this term is only used regularly in the BSD communities. In essence, it refers to a Bikeshed Construction Committee, where people who know nothing about building bikesheds argue over what color the bikeshed should be. They're not doing this to be destructive or argumentative, but they are keenly interested in bikesheds, but not knowing anything about it, fallback to discussions of colors. A good example would be a hypothetical group set up to create a GUI installer for FreeBSD. The group ends up imploding over arguments on Qt versus GTK+ versus FOX versus Tk, or shell versus perl versus python versus ruby. SMP is "symmetric multiprocessing", or systems with multiple CPUs. GEOM has something to do with a filesystem infrastructure. More info at the FreeBSD site. WIKI is a type of web site where users can edit the content. PITA means "pain in the ass", as in "these acronyms are a PITA!" David