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Now that your position has been decimated by history, you could focus your efforts on one of my pet peeves that's been appearing a lot on HN: "binary blob" Typ
by koide 14y ago
Now that your position has been decimated by history, you could focus your efforts on one of my pet peeves that's been appearing a lot on HN: "binary blob"
Type either "blob" or "binary lob." PLEASE!
- jcurbo 14y agoWhat? The b in blob does not stand for binary.
- kijiki 14y agoBinary Large OBject.
- kijiki 14y agoSee also: CLOB: Character Large OBject. Most (traditional) relational database servers do not support arbitrary sized (often >255 bytes) fields in a single row. The solution was to have a separate Large OBject heap, and store references to those LOBs in the actual rows. Starkey claims that he invented the term, and that the acronym is actually a backronym. I've heard conflicting stories on that score.
- tedunangst 14y agoHe invented a word in use since the 15th century? Wowza.
- ars 14y agoIt does. But I'm kinda curious what you thought it stood for?
- tedunangst 14y agoThat's like asking, what does the c in curious stand for?
- jcurbo 14y agoIt doesn't stand for anything in normal speech. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/blob?q=blob http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/blob?q=blob In the context of 'binary blob' I think it would be clear it just means an amorphous mass of bits and not some Jargon File definition (which in turn is clearly a play on the regular word in itself).
- Adrock 14y agohttp://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/BLOB.html http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/BLOB.html
- monochromatic 14y agoWait, what? What does "binary lob" mean?
- koide 14y agoA binary large object, of course. I expected most people here to know this. I've been proven wrong.
- cturner 14y agoI had no idea. I thought it was just a fun word in the tradition of bits and bytes. It had an internal logic - you'd have datatypes for things, and then you had this catch-all amorphous type called the blob. It's a great name.
- koide 14y agoI would say it's even better if you omit "binary" even in the case you are not using an acronym.
- viscanti 14y agoBinary Large OBject
- ufo 14y agoBut "blob" is a real word, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
- koide 14y agoWhen people are using the phrase "binary blob" they are not actually picturing an amoeba-like evil alien, they are just talking about a big bunch of bytes. Many times without a negative connotation at all. I understand better the origin of the confusion, though.
- dkersten 14y agoWhen people are using the phrase "binary blob" they are not actually picturing an amoeba-like evil alien I am! I didn't even know blob was meant to be an acronym (or, in fact, anything other than what the word "blob" suggests) before this discussion, so, to me, binary blob always meant binary lump of goo-like stuff.
- mistercow 14y agoI don't think the "blob" in "binary blob" is the same as the database "BLOB" type. Rather, the word "blob" is chosen for its negative connotations and has the typical layman meaning.
- tedunangst 14y agoYes. http://www.openbsd.org/39.html http://www.openbsd.org/39.html Does that look like a "binary large object" to you?
- koide 14y agoIf you actually go into the lyrics of the song: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39 you'll see he's talking about blobs exactly as binary large objects. He never uses the phrase "binary blob". He's just talking about of how are blobs in drivers evil for BSD, taking advantage of the evil amoeba concept.
- tedunangst 14y agoI can assure you that nobody in the openbsd project is using blob as an acronym. To be clear, a binary blob is so named because it's an amorphous lump (as opposed to source code, which has structure). [I agree, the word binary is redundant (nobody complains about source blobs), but not because it's an acronym. The phrase "unfree blob" would also be redundant, since blobs are unfree by definition.]
- koide 14y agoIf you agree that binary is redundant, that's enough for me. Although I wonder how the word blob came to be used in BSD. You don't happen to have the first use in some mailing list archive? Anyway, BSD's usage is not actually the general use of the word, as you can see in the link I've posted somewhere else in this nitpicking thread, people usually mean a bunch of bytes, without connotation.
- koide 14y ago