From owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 8 12:36:00 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 33B0B16A4CE for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 12:36:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ns1.tiadon.com (SMTP.tiadon.com [69.27.132.161]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0BF943D49 for ; Thu, 8 Jan 2004 12:35:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from daleco.biz ([69.27.131.0]) by ns1.tiadon.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.0); Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:39:15 -0600 Message-ID: <3FFDBEE7.70408@daleco.biz> Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 14:34:47 -0600 From: "Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P." User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031124 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrew Predoehl References: <005601c3d61e$fcad88e0$0100007f@kafu.east.kz> In-Reply-To: <005601c3d61e$fcad88e0$0100007f@kafu.east.kz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jan 2004 20:39:16.0468 (UTC) FILETIME=[7BBEDB40:01C3D627] cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org 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 20:36:00 -0000 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... > >Andrew > >* e.g., from freebsd-mobile vol. 42 #1 msg 3, 5 Jan 2004. > > > PITA isn't too hard. If your American, anyway ... it starts out "Pain in the..." I'd recommend that you cruise Eric S. Raymond "Jargon File" for some of the lingo. Great stuff, and since you're interacting with hacker culture, it's a "must read." I wouldn't read it all at once, though, 'cause it's addictive...maybe bookmark it in your browser. ;) GEOM and SMP are technologies that are being implemented (more or less) in FreeBSD at the current time. GEOM is about disks/filesystems, but I don't know much about it. SMP is "symmetric multi-processing", IIRC. A WIKI is some acronym for a community-type/ cooperative web site, I think. Best try Google for that. As for a bikeshed disagreement, I believe that's also in the ESR I recommended to you. Basically, though, it's something like this...In any group of people, if you say you're going to build a great big skyscraper (or $foo), people will just sit and (therefore) silently give assent to your project, because they no nothing about skyscraper ($foo) building and assume that you do, hence they leave you alone, let you work, and generally keep their opinions to themselves. Conversely, everyone thinks that they know how to build a bikeshed...... Kevin Kinsey