Stallman and GNU/Linux, was Re: [Sussex] BBC Video Downloads

[Nic James Ferrier]

Steve Dobson <steve at dobson.org> writes:

> Nic Ferrier said:
>>                                       Professionals have the right to
>> try to force back the meaning of words. 
>
> Who died and made you King?  This country is not a dictatorship, we use
> a form of democracy here, and as such if the majority stand up and 
> demand a thing it tends to happen.  Governments have made u-turns when
> the wishes of the majority become clear.

No one made me King. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that language
reflects society. Yes, it is dynamic. Yes, it changes. Yes, the most
widespread use of the word should be acceptable.

But word use changes for a number of reasons. One of the ways it
changes is that people reach a deeper understanding of a subject.

To me, drawing a distinction between a kernel and an operating system
is useful, at least part of the time. So I make the distinction and
draw people's attention to it.


> But most of the processing that goes on with a web interface goes on in the
> server.  It is the web server that connects to the database (often on the
> same machine).  The advantages of a web interface is that you only have to
> admin the application on one central system (or a small cluster of them).
> A decentralisation system would have the application running on lots of
> different computers, with web technology it is only a standards complaint
> browser (that can be used for all web applications) that needs to be installed
> or an application user's machine.  That is what I meant be centralisation
> and I stand by that meaning.

But the web is way more complex than that. You can't think of a web
browser as a dumb terminal. Part of the RESTfull design pattern is
client side script, there is also client side XSLT and CSS. And
extension functions doing smart stuff with data. An application like
Amazon or EBay can be said to be a massively distributed, shared
processing system.

-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs