5 ms·

I think I'm on the side of the general non-sysadmin population here. I used to get the BSD magazine, and I got a puzzled look or two from the neighbors. I just

I think I'm on the side of the general non-sysadmin population here. I used to get the BSD magazine, and I got a puzzled look or two from the neighbors. I just said "oh that, it's a computer thing". No big deal. But how would you feel if you ran into your neighbor at the mailboxes and they were getting magazines with swastikas on them? How about if you went to use the hotel network and the sign-in page said "Powered By" and a picture of a guy in a white hood standing under a burning cross? You might feel a little weird about it too. There is a language of symbolism and iconography that exists in Western cultures. This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. It developed this meaning long, long before some guys in a computer lab chose to use it to represent something completely unrelated, as some kind of visual pun. It's as if they were intentionally trying to be confusing. So cut it out with all the snickering about "look at all the dumb superstitious people who can't wrap their heads around a daemon process". This is the kind of antisocial behavior that gives nerds an image problem.

nessus42 15y ago
I take it that you think that celebrating Halloween is also "antisocial"? Plenty of people I know might dress up on as a daemon or devil on Halloween, but few people would dress up as a Nazi.
- jcitme 15y ago
  I spent last halloween at Stanford, and saw a notable number of Nazis... Not sure if the represents the general populace, but still.
- mixmax 15y ago
  This whole debacle is about culture. The reason it's acceptable to dress up as a deamon but not as a nazi at halloween is cultural. There are deamons and depictions of the devil in many churches, the holiest of the holy places if you believe in that sort of thing. Tha's fine because they're there for a cultural and historical reason, while a deamon one a splash screen doesn't have any religious or historical reason for being there. Is it logical? No. Is it the way the world works? Yes.
  - nessus42 15y ago
    It is NOT the way the world works. I spent my childhood being exposed to plenty of cartoon devils on TV, both in TV commercials and in cartoons aimed at children. Devils are mascots of products; e.g., Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. Cartoony devils are completely and utterly mainstream, and those who take offense at them are utterly out of the mainstream. Anyone who gets freaked out by a cartoon devil falls into precisely the same category as those who get freaked out by Halloween and who object to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as pagan idolatry. There is no reason that anyone should pander to these folks, except as far as it might affect your bottom line, if that so happens to be your primary concern.
    - marshray 15y ago
      Not everyone grows up spending more time watching TV than participating in church. Not everyone looks at the world the same way as you do. It doesn't mean they're crazy. You should try to see things from the other person's point of view, without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with it. And if you didn't know the Easter Bunny actually did originate from paganisim then you're simply uninformed. I can't explain why Western Christianity incorporates such symbols in some instances and would consider them "pagan idolatry" in others.
      - nessus42 15y ago
        Did I ever say the word "crazy"? Terribly misguided is more like it. They can live in their misguided world, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have any obligation to bend over backwards for them. Btw, I'm quite aware that the Easter Bunny has pagan origins. Unlike you, I can also explain why some variants of Christianity coopt such symbolism and some abhor it. This has a lot to do with the continuing feud between Catholicism and some types of Protestantism. The Catholic Church a long time ago decided that it was better to "embrace and extend" the competing pagan religions rather than try to extinguish them.
alberich 15y ago
Easy fix, remove the logo from the splash page if you know people get offended and you worry about it. People seem to get offended by almost everything. It is not FreeBSD's fault if people are so intolerant to the point of running away from a hotel because they saw something that they don't even want to know what it means... this is called prejudice, and this is an even more antisocial behaviour than sticking to a friendly looking daemon logo.
nivloc 15y ago
No it's not. If it were really a problem, Betty Crocker wouldn't sell Devil's Food Cake mix, and there would be no Red Devil firecrackers. Odds are this person is being ridiculous, and had no intention of actually paying for the $1,000 stay.
darklajid 15y ago
I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post. Coming from a country that sometimes gets a bad reputation for limiting free speech: I know at least one country part of the 'western culture' where swastikas are (generalizing) illegal. Please list a country where tiny horned figures are illegal. I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?), but I guess those aren't a good example either. Are you seriously comparing a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war b) a far-right, violent, terrorist (acc. to Wikipedia, depending on local legislation?) organization with c) a comic style image that might be connected by viewers with a fictional character representing (guessing here, didn't read the novel) all evil? Everyone is free to have their own belief. But you sure overstate the problem here..
- fedd 15y ago
  i guess he's talking about people who seriously compare a violent regime that killed people with magazines with images of colourful trucks in india decorated with kali, swastikas, skulls etc
- tripzilch 15y ago
  > I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post. Not "invoking Godwin's Law" if it's actually relevant. It'd be different if he'd have said "these fundie Christians are like nazis". And the actual Godwin's Law is even different and isn't "invoked". Look it up. I think comparison with a swastika is perfectly reasonable and not at all gratuitous, for being an icon/imagery that evokes strong emotions in many people (myself included). BTW that doesn't mean I agree with the comparison, because I don't, for similar reasons as you state. But referring to "Godwin's Law" in a discussion where the swastika actually is a relevant comparison pisses me off.
- marshray 15y ago
  I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?), Yes, in the US South that is an unambiguous symbol of the KKK and racist violence. It's even recent enough to be in living memory for older people. Are you seriously comparing a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war No, I'm not comparing the acts of one party (the actual Nazis) with the acts of another party (programmers at Berkely) or with a mythological motif. I'm saying that the programmers at Berkley chose a symbol which already had a specific meaning and was thus guaranteed to be confusing. Nerds have a negative stereotype of being passive aggressive, pointlessly confusing, making inside jokes at others' expense, and generally making others look stupid.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D. I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil. I do, however, know quite a few people who are offended by Christian religious symbols for all the cruelty they stand for, both historically and for them personally. And by the way, ridiculing the devil has a great tradition, that has never meant to worship the devil. In fact, Satanists might well consider it antisocial to use the devil in this way. I think calling any of this antisocial is totally bizarre regardless of any religous beliefs.
- itmag 15y ago
  Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D. Yes, as opposed to 15th century Spanish sys-admin villagers. :)
  - davidw 15y ago
    They've got their hands full trying to keep some moron from attacking the windmills they run.
- Terretta 15y ago
  I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil. Then either you don't live in America, or you don't know many devout evangelicals. know quite a few people who are offended So that settle it: you're not keeping company with average "heartland" Americans. You self-select the people you know, so using people you know as a general population sample is usually flawed.
  - Duff 15y ago
    Many folks on the coasts are unaware of how wacky some crazy religious people are. Fundamentalism is a southern and rural phenomenon in the US. I live in New York. There are definitely crazy religious people here, but not enough of them that they can strut their stuff in public and carry on with the crazy nonsense that you see in the South or Midwest. Also, we have enough cultural and religious diversity that fundamentalists dominating school boards or town/city governments wouldn't fly. (We get machine politics and union domination instead)
Confusion 15y ago
This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. What image would that be? If you mean 'the image Christian folks have when they do not realize what the Bible actually says about Satan', then you are trivially right. From the Bible itself, it's a complete mystery where the redness, horns, tail and pitchfork come from. The visual image a Christian should have of Satan, is that of an angel. That Satan looks Good and sounds convincing is essential to his capacity to lead even good Christians astray and is therefore his scariest property. When you bring those visual characteristics, redness, horns, a tail, a pitchfork, into play, you automatically bring the history of those characteristics with it. In which case the image could also represent some of the playful, naughty daemons in that history[1]. Opposing such images as being Satanic in nature is a display of utter ignorance that we shouldn't bow to. It has nothing to do with daemon processes or nerds. [1] I must add that, with those associations in mind (the most benign I can think of), I have never understood the choice for this mascot. I feel it doesn't make FreeBSD look serious enough.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  True. This is a more accurate description of the biblical Satan: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/GustaveDoreParadiseLostSatanProfile.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/GustaveDo... Only difference with an angel is that the feather wings are replaced with bat-like wings. I was going to say that the horns (and goat-legs) came from "demonizing" the Horned God/Pan/etc deities from Paganism. But looking it up (check Wikipedia on Satan, Devil, Pan, Horned God for references), it turns out that this demonization occurred mostly in the late as the early 19th century, while the image of a horned Devil occurs at least as early as the 13th century. Interestingly, the image of The Devil in the early 18th century Tarot of Marseille seems to have branched antlers, not horns. And that's just a cursory investigation, the complete story is probably much more complicated than that :) There's some stuff involving the Knights Templar vs ancient Pagan imagery, but I'm done with Wikipedia for the moment :-)
  - arethuza 15y ago
    I can't resist nitpicking about this: How can you have an accurate description of a fictional character?
corin_ 15y ago
> magazines with swastikas on them? So, so different. Otherwise being a holocaust denier is no worse than being an atheist (a devil denier!). One image relates to actual terrible beliefs and behaviours, one relates to supersticion.
morsch 15y ago
Oh please. It's the kind of antisocial behaviour that gives religious fundamentalists an image problem, a well deserved one at that.
tripzilch 15y ago
> But how would you feel if you ran into your neighbor at the mailboxes and they were getting magazines with swastikas on them? Depends. If it was the actual red/white/black Nazi design, I'd definitely ask about it and he'd have to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he is receiving these magazines--and then I'd believe him knowing that actual neo-Nazis never apologize or make excuses but will be frank and confronting about their beliefs and the ones that aren't also tend to make sure their neighbours don't see their propaganda mail. However, you can't compare that to a cartoon devil in sneakers. If that computer screen had displayed Powered by <image of a pentagram with a goats head in a circle with occult symbols> then, yeah, I couldn't blame anyone for at least wondering if they might be Satan-worshippers :) And if fundie Christians want to get all offended and freak out at Satanists, I'm going to say, have at it. While actual Satanists are generally rather harmless, they are also generally enormous pricks. It might even give me short pause and wonder whether I'd reconsider staying at that hotel, but in the end the potential for hilarity would probably win out. No, this is more like: Your neighbour receives a magazine with a swastika on it that doesn't actually have anything to do with Nazis, like maybe he is a Hindu. Just like the BSD logo doesn't have anything to do with the devil or satan, but is a play on the word "daemon". In that case, maybe you don't know it, you ask him, he tells you, and since the magazine says Modern Hindu Magazine (health & lifestyle for the modern Hindu!) and the swastika is yellow with orange, you figure that he's probably not a neo-Nazi.
Lagged2Death 15y ago
There is a language of symbolism and iconography that exists in Western cultures. This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. It developed this meaning long, long before some guys in a computer lab chose to use it to represent something completely unrelated... Yes and no. Sure, the iconography has a history. No, "some guys in a computer lab" are hardly the first or only people to use the iconography for "something completely unrelated." Do the same people who are offended by the BSD Daemon get all bent out of shape over the many devil and demon themed sports teams and other organizations that exist? http://www.thesundevils.com/ http://www.thesundevils.com/ http://bluedevils.org/ http://bluedevils.org/ http://devils.nhl.com/ http://devils.nhl.com/ http://duke.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Duke_Blue_Devils/browse/ http://duke.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Duke_Blue_Devils/browse/ Or by the existence of devil-themed consumer goods? http://www.reddevil.com/ http://www.reddevil.com/ http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+devils http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+devils Why should computer geeks be singled out for this sort of abuse?
- marshray 15y ago
  Yes, there are indeed lots of people who are bothered by it. You are quick to accuse them of getting "all bent of of shape" about it, but in fact the vast majority of them understand the idea of a mascot and don't complain. Sports mascots seem to be established as an exception. Sports teams seem to like to project an irreverent image. Duke, in fact, started as a religious school. Methodists are pretty cool about not getting "all bent of of shape" like that. You don't have to go back in time very far to find people who wouldn't understand the idea of having a mascot for a computer operating system. Thus, it was not established as an objection.
  - marshray 15y ago
    s/objection/exception/
  - Lagged2Death 15y ago
    I didn't accuse anyone of getting "bent out of shape," the phrase was part of a non-rhetorical question. I think the phrase is warranted in light of the story here. The more I think about the mascot issue, the less sense it makes to me that a person who truly believed it was morally wrong to invoke the Devil would allow such an exception. The fact that a crowd of 10,000 screaming fans is (arguably) doing something very much akin to worshiping the mascot just makes it about 100,000x worse.
jlarocco 15y ago
I'm not so sure the problem is with "the general non-sysadmin population." Most adults have the common sense to differentiate a whimsical logo from some kind of nefarious symbolism. Also, there's a flaw in your comparisons. Nazis were real, and they killed millions of people. The KKK is real and they terrorized people for decades. Demons and devils are purely imaginary.
- dkokelley 15y ago
  I assure you that demons and devils are as real to Christians as Nazis were to Poland.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    Some Christians. No need to paint an entire religion in crazy.
    - dkokelley 15y ago
      Really? I think the devil is a pretty significant part of Christianity.
      - marshray 15y ago
        The great majority of Christians that I have met would not be particularly focused on or attached to the idea of the devil taking on a physical incarnation (i.e., becoming physically 'real' like people in Germany and Poland). But if you brought it up, they might agree with the idea that the acts of the Nazis were influenced/encouraged/sponsored by evil spiritual forces to cause mass suffering of humanity.
tptacek 15y ago
Marsh, there are evangelical Christian families who happily dress their kids up as devils for Halloween. This simply isn't about religion; it's about the fact that in a society of 300 million people, even a teeny tiny percentage of crazy people is still a lot of people, and you're bound to run into some of them.
- marshray 15y ago
  Yeah. There are also a lot of families who quietly choose to dress their kids as angels, pumpkins, or any of the other things that are not in direct conflict with their religion. Around here there are also large churches which put on "fall harvest festivals" as an alternative to Halloween. Makes it sound even more pagan if you ask me!

nessus42 15y ago

I take it that you think that celebrating Halloween is also "antisocial"? Plenty of people I know might dress up on as a daemon or devil on Halloween, but few people would dress up as a Nazi.

jcitme 15y ago
I spent last halloween at Stanford, and saw a notable number of Nazis... Not sure if the represents the general populace, but still.
mixmax 15y ago
This whole debacle is about culture. The reason it's acceptable to dress up as a deamon but not as a nazi at halloween is cultural. There are deamons and depictions of the devil in many churches, the holiest of the holy places if you believe in that sort of thing. Tha's fine because they're there for a cultural and historical reason, while a deamon one a splash screen doesn't have any religious or historical reason for being there. Is it logical? No. Is it the way the world works? Yes.
- nessus42 15y ago
  It is NOT the way the world works. I spent my childhood being exposed to plenty of cartoon devils on TV, both in TV commercials and in cartoons aimed at children. Devils are mascots of products; e.g., Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. Cartoony devils are completely and utterly mainstream, and those who take offense at them are utterly out of the mainstream. Anyone who gets freaked out by a cartoon devil falls into precisely the same category as those who get freaked out by Halloween and who object to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as pagan idolatry. There is no reason that anyone should pander to these folks, except as far as it might affect your bottom line, if that so happens to be your primary concern.
  - marshray 15y ago
    Not everyone grows up spending more time watching TV than participating in church. Not everyone looks at the world the same way as you do. It doesn't mean they're crazy. You should try to see things from the other person's point of view, without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with it. And if you didn't know the Easter Bunny actually did originate from paganisim then you're simply uninformed. I can't explain why Western Christianity incorporates such symbols in some instances and would consider them "pagan idolatry" in others.
    - nessus42 15y ago
      Did I ever say the word "crazy"? Terribly misguided is more like it. They can live in their misguided world, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have any obligation to bend over backwards for them. Btw, I'm quite aware that the Easter Bunny has pagan origins. Unlike you, I can also explain why some variants of Christianity coopt such symbolism and some abhor it. This has a lot to do with the continuing feud between Catholicism and some types of Protestantism. The Catholic Church a long time ago decided that it was better to "embrace and extend" the competing pagan religions rather than try to extinguish them.

alberich 15y ago

Easy fix, remove the logo from the splash page if you know people get offended and you worry about it. People seem to get offended by almost everything. It is not FreeBSD's fault if people are so intolerant to the point of running away from a hotel because they saw something that they don't even want to know what it means... this is called prejudice, and this is an even more antisocial behaviour than sticking to a friendly looking daemon logo.

nivloc 15y ago

No it's not. If it were really a problem, Betty Crocker wouldn't sell Devil's Food Cake mix, and there would be no Red Devil firecrackers. Odds are this person is being ridiculous, and had no intention of actually paying for the $1,000 stay.

darklajid 15y ago

I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post. Coming from a country that sometimes gets a bad reputation for limiting free speech: I know at least one country part of the 'western culture' where swastikas are (generalizing) illegal. Please list a country where tiny horned figures are illegal. I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?), but I guess those aren't a good example either. Are you seriously comparing a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war b) a far-right, violent, terrorist (acc. to Wikipedia, depending on local legislation?) organization with c) a comic style image that might be connected by viewers with a fictional character representing (guessing here, didn't read the novel) all evil? Everyone is free to have their own belief. But you sure overstate the problem here..

fedd 15y ago
i guess he's talking about people who seriously compare a violent regime that killed people with magazines with images of colourful trucks in india decorated with kali, swastikas, skulls etc
tripzilch 15y ago
> I was surprised that you invoked Godwin's Law on a first level post. Not "invoking Godwin's Law" if it's actually relevant. It'd be different if he'd have said "these fundie Christians are like nazis". And the actual Godwin's Law is even different and isn't "invoked". Look it up. I think comparison with a swastika is perfectly reasonable and not at all gratuitous, for being an icon/imagery that evokes strong emotions in many people (myself included). BTW that doesn't mean I agree with the comparison, because I don't, for similar reasons as you state. But referring to "Godwin's Law" in a discussion where the swastika actually is a relevant comparison pisses me off.
marshray 15y ago
I don't know about the 'white hood w/ burning cross' reference (I assume KKK?), Yes, in the US South that is an unambiguous symbol of the KKK and racist violence. It's even recent enough to be in living memory for older people. Are you seriously comparing a) a regime that killed millions of people and started the 2nd world war No, I'm not comparing the acts of one party (the actual Nazis) with the acts of another party (programmers at Berkely) or with a mythological motif. I'm saying that the programmers at Berkley chose a symbol which already had a specific meaning and was thus guaranteed to be confusing. Nerds have a negative stereotype of being passive aggressive, pointlessly confusing, making inside jokes at others' expense, and generally making others look stupid.

fauigerzigerk 15y ago

Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D. I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil. I do, however, know quite a few people who are offended by Christian religious symbols for all the cruelty they stand for, both historically and for them personally. And by the way, ridiculing the devil has a great tradition, that has never meant to worship the devil. In fact, Satanists might well consider it antisocial to use the devil in this way. I think calling any of this antisocial is totally bizarre regardless of any religous beliefs.

itmag 15y ago
Sounds like you're talking about the general non-sysadmin population of a spanish village in 1400 A.D. Yes, as opposed to 15th century Spanish sys-admin villagers. :)
- davidw 15y ago
  They've got their hands full trying to keep some moron from attacking the windmills they run.
Terretta 15y ago
I don't know a single religious person that would seriously take a cartoon character with horns to symbolize some kind of pact with the devil. Then either you don't live in America, or you don't know many devout evangelicals. know quite a few people who are offended So that settle it: you're not keeping company with average "heartland" Americans. You self-select the people you know, so using people you know as a general population sample is usually flawed.
- Duff 15y ago
  Many folks on the coasts are unaware of how wacky some crazy religious people are. Fundamentalism is a southern and rural phenomenon in the US. I live in New York. There are definitely crazy religious people here, but not enough of them that they can strut their stuff in public and carry on with the crazy nonsense that you see in the South or Midwest. Also, we have enough cultural and religious diversity that fundamentalists dominating school boards or town/city governments wouldn't fly. (We get machine politics and union domination instead)

Confusion 15y ago

This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. What image would that be? If you mean 'the image Christian folks have when they do not realize what the Bible actually says about Satan', then you are trivially right. From the Bible itself, it's a complete mystery where the redness, horns, tail and pitchfork come from. The visual image a Christian should have of Satan, is that of an angel. That Satan looks Good and sounds convincing is essential to his capacity to lead even good Christians astray and is therefore his scariest property. When you bring those visual characteristics, redness, horns, a tail, a pitchfork, into play, you automatically bring the history of those characteristics with it. In which case the image could also represent some of the playful, naughty daemons in that history[1]. Opposing such images as being Satanic in nature is a display of utter ignorance that we shouldn't bow to. It has nothing to do with daemon processes or nerds. [1] I must add that, with those associations in mind (the most benign I can think of), I have never understood the choice for this mascot. I feel it doesn't make FreeBSD look serious enough.

tripzilch 15y ago
True. This is a more accurate description of the biblical Satan: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/GustaveDoreParadiseLostSatanProfile.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/GustaveDo... Only difference with an angel is that the feather wings are replaced with bat-like wings. I was going to say that the horns (and goat-legs) came from "demonizing" the Horned God/Pan/etc deities from Paganism. But looking it up (check Wikipedia on Satan, Devil, Pan, Horned God for references), it turns out that this demonization occurred mostly in the late as the early 19th century, while the image of a horned Devil occurs at least as early as the 13th century. Interestingly, the image of The Devil in the early 18th century Tarot of Marseille seems to have branched antlers, not horns. And that's just a cursory investigation, the complete story is probably much more complicated than that :) There's some stuff involving the Knights Templar vs ancient Pagan imagery, but I'm done with Wikipedia for the moment :-)
- arethuza 15y ago
  I can't resist nitpicking about this: How can you have an accurate description of a fictional character?

corin_ 15y ago

> magazines with swastikas on them? So, so different. Otherwise being a holocaust denier is no worse than being an atheist (a devil denier!). One image relates to actual terrible beliefs and behaviours, one relates to supersticion.

morsch 15y ago

Oh please. It's the kind of antisocial behaviour that gives religious fundamentalists an image problem, a well deserved one at that.

tripzilch 15y ago

> But how would you feel if you ran into your neighbor at the mailboxes and they were getting magazines with swastikas on them? Depends. If it was the actual red/white/black Nazi design, I'd definitely ask about it and he'd have to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he is receiving these magazines--and then I'd believe him knowing that actual neo-Nazis never apologize or make excuses but will be frank and confronting about their beliefs and the ones that aren't also tend to make sure their neighbours don't see their propaganda mail. However, you can't compare that to a cartoon devil in sneakers. If that computer screen had displayed Powered by <image of a pentagram with a goats head in a circle with occult symbols> then, yeah, I couldn't blame anyone for at least wondering if they might be Satan-worshippers :) And if fundie Christians want to get all offended and freak out at Satanists, I'm going to say, have at it. While actual Satanists are generally rather harmless, they are also generally enormous pricks. It might even give me short pause and wonder whether I'd reconsider staying at that hotel, but in the end the potential for hilarity would probably win out. No, this is more like: Your neighbour receives a magazine with a swastika on it that doesn't actually have anything to do with Nazis, like maybe he is a Hindu. Just like the BSD logo doesn't have anything to do with the devil or satan, but is a play on the word "daemon". In that case, maybe you don't know it, you ask him, he tells you, and since the magazine says Modern Hindu Magazine (health & lifestyle for the modern Hindu!) and the swastika is yellow with orange, you figure that he's probably not a neo-Nazi.

Lagged2Death 15y ago

There is a language of symbolism and iconography that exists in Western cultures. This image of a demon/devil/satan has a relatively coherent meaning. It developed this meaning long, long before some guys in a computer lab chose to use it to represent something completely unrelated... Yes and no. Sure, the iconography has a history. No, "some guys in a computer lab" are hardly the first or only people to use the iconography for "something completely unrelated." Do the same people who are offended by the BSD Daemon get all bent out of shape over the many devil and demon themed sports teams and other organizations that exist? http://www.thesundevils.com/ http://www.thesundevils.com/ http://bluedevils.org/ http://bluedevils.org/ http://devils.nhl.com/ http://devils.nhl.com/ http://duke.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Duke_Blue_Devils/browse/ http://duke.fanatics.com/COLLEGE_Duke_Blue_Devils/browse/ Or by the existence of devil-themed consumer goods? http://www.reddevil.com/ http://www.reddevil.com/ http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+devils http://www.google.com/search?q=yellow+devils Why should computer geeks be singled out for this sort of abuse?

marshray 15y ago
Yes, there are indeed lots of people who are bothered by it. You are quick to accuse them of getting "all bent of of shape" about it, but in fact the vast majority of them understand the idea of a mascot and don't complain. Sports mascots seem to be established as an exception. Sports teams seem to like to project an irreverent image. Duke, in fact, started as a religious school. Methodists are pretty cool about not getting "all bent of of shape" like that. You don't have to go back in time very far to find people who wouldn't understand the idea of having a mascot for a computer operating system. Thus, it was not established as an objection.
- marshray 15y ago
  s/objection/exception/
- Lagged2Death 15y ago
  I didn't accuse anyone of getting "bent out of shape," the phrase was part of a non-rhetorical question. I think the phrase is warranted in light of the story here. The more I think about the mascot issue, the less sense it makes to me that a person who truly believed it was morally wrong to invoke the Devil would allow such an exception. The fact that a crowd of 10,000 screaming fans is (arguably) doing something very much akin to worshiping the mascot just makes it about 100,000x worse.

jlarocco 15y ago

I'm not so sure the problem is with "the general non-sysadmin population." Most adults have the common sense to differentiate a whimsical logo from some kind of nefarious symbolism. Also, there's a flaw in your comparisons. Nazis were real, and they killed millions of people. The KKK is real and they terrorized people for decades. Demons and devils are purely imaginary.

dkokelley 15y ago
I assure you that demons and devils are as real to Christians as Nazis were to Poland.
- mbreese 15y ago
  Some Christians. No need to paint an entire religion in crazy.
  - dkokelley 15y ago
    Really? I think the devil is a pretty significant part of Christianity.
    - marshray 15y ago
      The great majority of Christians that I have met would not be particularly focused on or attached to the idea of the devil taking on a physical incarnation (i.e., becoming physically 'real' like people in Germany and Poland). But if you brought it up, they might agree with the idea that the acts of the Nazis were influenced/encouraged/sponsored by evil spiritual forces to cause mass suffering of humanity.

tptacek 15y ago

Marsh, there are evangelical Christian families who happily dress their kids up as devils for Halloween. This simply isn't about religion; it's about the fact that in a society of 300 million people, even a teeny tiny percentage of crazy people is still a lot of people, and you're bound to run into some of them.

marshray 15y ago
Yeah. There are also a lot of families who quietly choose to dress their kids as angels, pumpkins, or any of the other things that are not in direct conflict with their religion. Around here there are also large churches which put on "fall harvest festivals" as an alternative to Halloween. Makes it sound even more pagan if you ask me!