Rants & Raves
The GNU Economy
Your short February article on Alan Cox referred to the Linux operating system ("Lieutenant Kernel," Wired 9.02, page 79). There is no such thing: The system you have in mind is a version of GNU.
As the piece's title indicates, Linux is actually a kernel, one of the essential components of an operating system. Linux is typically used in combination with the GNU operating system. We began developing GNU in 1984, and by 1991 it was almost finished - only the kernel was lacking. Linux, started by Linus Torvalds in 1991, filled the last gap; the combination, the GNU-Linux operating system, is what people use today.
Calling the system Linux not only fails to give us credit but also conveys an inaccurate picture of the system's origin and development, and leads to confusion about the difference between a kernel and a whole system. You can help clarify all these matters by distinguishing between Linux - the kernel - and GNU-Linux, the operating system.
Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Senior editor Paul Boutin responds: Despite GNU's undeniable contribution to Linux, the proposed name "GNU-Linux" has never gained widespread acceptance or usage. That said, Mr. Stallman rightly clarifies the difference between the kernel and the operating system.
Fuels Rush In
I couldn't help but chuckle while reading your account of technology in the world of Formula One racing ("Formula 2001," Wired 9.03, page 130). What an irony - banks of telemetry and engineers monitoring something as antiquated as a reciprocating piston engine! While the cars are undoubtedly very sophisticated, one can't escape that they are bound to a 19th-century technology. Wouldn't it be fascinating if Formula One opened up the rule books to new technology? For example, instead of specifying the size, displacement, and other aspects of engines, why not simply specify a per-race allotment of a particular fuel, and let teams use whatever technology they like to propel their cars?
Think how exciting the competition between gas turbines and fuel cells would be! If things got too fast or scary, the fuel allotment could be cut. Opening up the rules would take us back to the pioneering days of early auto racing, when the teams were still figuring out the basics of how to make a fast car.
Duncan Parks
dsmparks@u.washington.edu
Last Word
As a former BigWords employee, I like Matt Johnson and am grateful that I had the opportunity to be part of an exciting Internet venture, despite all the naysayers with 20/20 hindsight who are now saying "I told you" ("Crash Course," Wired 9.03, page 92). But the reality your article presented was of a former CEO in denial. When Johnson writes his book, I hope he devotes a chapter to the many people he failed to listen to and forgot he was accountable to - people who believed in him and were cast aside as casualties of his personal adventure.
Your article paints a picture of a brilliant fundraiser who failed to gain any personal depth from this experience. I am saddened to have to finally recognize this.
Jennifer H. Doohan
jdoohan@pacbell.net
Hanging Together
While the ContemporaryArtProject is an honorable approach to bring art to techies, it is an extremely elitist venture: $15,000 a year is anything but populist ("Rent-a-Rauschenberg," Wired 9.03, page 78).
In 1970, Berlin's senate helped open the Artothek (www.nbk.org), an art library that lends paintings to citizens interested in decorating their homes with otherwise unaffordable art. It features works by prominent artists such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, and Wolf Vostell, with more than 3,300 paintings in total. The cost? A laughable 1 deutsche mark (about 45 cents) per month. Given this, there is no way for me to see how the CAP is an interesting idea; it's just another new economy nonprofit bubble.
Marcus Polke
mpolkeathome@aol.com
Baran the Man
It's been a while - this is the first I've read of Paul Baran since 1981 or '82 ("Founding Father," Wired 9.03, page 144). Back then, I was working on a dissertation about Videotext. I thought that the powerhouse of commercial television would seize the new technology and eventually lead the information revolution. Lots of things would have had to happen, but I believed that network TV would see the light when cable and telephone seemed not to care, and when IBM and DEC wanted nothing to do with the consumer. Can you believe it? I thought the information revolution would be an East Coast phenomenon.
Remember, at that time newspapers and network news organizations were strong. Practically no one had computer terminals at home, and cable television amounted to perhaps 12 channels and cost an outrageous $5 per month.
I tried to visit with Baran once - at a conference in Toronto, I think. Because I was a lowly student, I could not afford the entrance fee to get into the conference hall. I remember standing outside the hall, hoping for a interview, but I never got to meet him - indeed, I never saw what he looked like until I read your article.
Baran was the man as far as I was concerned. I read what he had to say, and watched a revolution that he foretold take place before my eyes.
Thank you, Paul Baran, for everything. Perhaps we'll meet yet; I'd like to know what to expect in 2010.
Gary Smyth
gsmyth@sgi.net
Big Earth Society
The gradualist uniformitarians are a strong sect within academia; they object quite heavily to any form of catastrophic-based change on our planet ("Master of the Universe," Wired 9.03, page 164). When reality doesn't jibe with their dogma - in cases such as the frozen Siberian mammoths, the unfossilized seashells littering the Andes near the Peruvian altiplano, the Calaveras skull - they ignore it.
By contrast, catastrophism is discounted if it fails to explain even one phenomenon brought up against it. By definition, a catastrophe isn't gradual or uniform. I believe that the expansion that Neal Adams is looking for happens in spurts, much as the Himalayas and the Sierra arose practically overnight. The evidence suggests that both of those mountain chains popped up at the same time, in less than a hundred years. The mechanisms for mountain building are for the most part dormant in the present era, vulcanism excluded. So the very existence of mountains would seem to refute most gradualist theories, or the mountains don't exist as we know them. Who are you going to believe: the scientists or your own eyes?
The theory of meteorites was ridiculed by science for ages - it was considered foolish to think that rocks just floated aimlessly around in space. It wasn't until the 1700s, when a meteorite was recovered from its fall in full view of assembled European scientists, that they began to believe such things just might be real.
Robert Minier
imperium@mac.com
Value Ad
I wouldn't want anyone to know my browsing history, but would it really be a bad thing to receive advertisements that were pertinent to my interests ("In-Box Invasion," Wired 9.03, page 87)? I think that there has to be a better solution to the privacy problem. Browsers ought to provide a specific, user-controlled database of information that etailers can access to obtain user profiles. Then users could reveal as much or as little as they want about themselves. But of course, we really don't know what's best for us - we're only consumers, after all.
Brad Landers
bradl@knightbacon.com
Heart of the Deal
Just finished the excellent piece on George Boutros ("Shut Up and Deal," Wired 9.03, page 118). Is there any difference between Boutros the man and Boutros the dealmaker?
Did the author detect that Boutros has any kind of moral compass by which he lives his life? The hard-nosed asshole persona is woven throughout the piece, but I wonder: If and when Boutros contemplates the meaning of life and his role in it, does he have any standards to rely on? Is Boutros' life empty, and if so, are his family mere props in his life drama?
After reading the piece, I felt kind of sad for him, but then realized that it was a business profile and the personal elements were the seasoning, not the main course. But then I thought, It's difficult to behave one way in the business world and another way elsewhere, and I got kind of sad for him all over again.
So what about this guy? Is there anything inside him besides the drive for the deal?
Mr. Boutros, life is about the relationships we make, the standards we live by, and the love that we share. There is something better to devote your heart, mind, and soul to.
Eric Gubelman
kegubelman@aol.com
Undo
Crack Illustrators: John Bolton and Sean Phillips created the artwork for Devin Grayson's User (Street Cred, Wired 9.04, page 214).
Send your Rants & Raves to:
Email: rants@wiredmag.com
Snail mail: Wired, PO Box 78470 San Francisco, CA 94107-8470
Editorial guidelines: guidelines@wiredmag.com
Editorial correspondence: editor@wiredmag.com
