Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 15:03:09 +0100 (CET) From: Svein Halvor Halvorsen <svein.h@lvor.halvorsen.cc> To: Fafa Diliha Romanova <fteg@london.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Stupid ASCII loader prompt Message-ID: <20050313142855.I67860@maren.thelosingend.net> In-Reply-To: <20050313104132.A5CA04BE6D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com> References: <20050313104132.A5CA04BE6D@ws1-1.us4.outblaze.com>
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* Fafa Diliha Romanova [2005-03-13 05:41 -0500]
> > It's not a demon, but a daemon.
>
> demon
> n 1: one of the evil spirits of traditional Jewish and Christian
> belief [syn: {devil}, {fiend}, {daemon}, {daimon}]
Firstly, I'd like to say that you of course are free to remove the "devil"
if it offends you. But that beeing said; the fact that the word "deamon"
(or "demon" for that matter) is used in some contexts to mean something
evil, does not necessarily make the word (or the image of it) evil too.
It's all about what connotation you put on the word.
E.g. to make a file world read-writable you would type "chmod 666 file".
Even though the number 666 is the number of the devil, the number itself
is not evil. Just as little as the command is evil, or someone who types
it. It's just a number. Put whatever meaning into it you like!
(If, on the other hand, you would put the number inside a pentagram
written in blood on some dark stone alter, I would not think the number
was meant to be harmless by the writer.)
Originally "daemon" just meant something like "spirit". Then it became a
certain kind (an evil one) of spirit in some religions. In other places
and other contexts (i.e. the FreeBSD community, et.al) that transformation
does however not hold true! This makes it irrelevant to bring up these
dictionary "definitions", as they both are all equally true and false. The
dictionary does not define a language, it describes it's use. If "deamon"
in some groups is used to mean "evil spirit", while in others to mean
spirit as in "servant", they are both true!
However, noone can deny the fact that Beastie *could* be interpreted as an
image of something evil, and that it often does. One should therefore be
careful when using the Beastie before an audience you don't know.
(That beeing said, one could never be guaranteed not to offend anyone. The
apple could easily be thought of as a symbol of the original sin. And the
window I'm sure could also be interpreted in some way that would offend
someone. This is especially true for words and names, where a word could
means something completely different in two languages.)
Svein Halvor
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