[D-community-offtopic] sad but true, Linux sucks, a bit

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2014-01-17 at 08:50 -0500, Celejar wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:07:55 +0100
> Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2014-01-16 at 12:05 -0700, Robert Holtzman wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 06:58:11PM +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2014-01-16 at 17:36 +0000, Iain M Conochie wrote:
> > > > > Gazing into my crystal ball, there will be a 3D interface that will
> > > > > blow us all away, and the kids will laugh at us for using a mouse /
> > > > > keyboard.
> > > > 
> > > > Not necessarily! We eat using classic knifes since several hundred years
> > > > and btw. a good knife isn't produced by a computer controlled machine,
> > > > but handcrafted by a craftsman.
> > > 
> > > But these, sure as hell, aren't sold in grocery stores.
> > 
> > Correct! And I suspect that it isn't allowed to sell and buy a good
> > knife in Germany anymore without a "firearms licence" (this joke doesn't
> > work in German, we don't have a "firearms licence", here it's called
> > "weapon license"). IOW to get a good pastry chef's knife you need the
> > same "weapon license" you need for a katana or pump gun. So people are
> > used to use carp to cut a steak and they win the impression, that
> > computer controlled machines can punch out good tools ... they simply
> > don't know how good the quality of tools was just a few decades ago and
> > they believe all the hype that in the digital age everything is better.
> > It simply isn't better, quality of technology nowadays is as worse as it
> > never was before, let alone social quality. When did they build the
> > first katana ;)?
> 
> Your references to the katana illustrate a problem with your argument:
> the supposed superlativeness of the katana is apparently something of a
> myth, and the necessity for all that cool-sounding folding of the metal
> was simply due to the Japanese use of inferior pig-iron - IOW, the craft
> of katana forging was largely about compensation for inferior
> technology:
> 
> http://swordsmithvs.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/katana-vs-european-swords/
> http://www.thearma.org/essays/longsword-and-katana.html
> http://www.cracked.com/article_20634_6-things-movies-get-wrong-about-swords-an-inside-look.html
> http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KatanasAreJustBetter
> 
> Celejar

I don't say that the katana is the best sword ever, I quasi said that a
handcrafted sword is better than a computer controlled assembly line
sword. I didn't read those articles, sorry, but I'm aware that the
western smithies aren't less good than the eastern. However, JFTR, many
scalpels are rounded like a katana, because a rounded form has got a
minimal point and a straight form a large surface. Better for cutting is
a minimal point than a large surface, but this also could be made by
computer controlled machines. A computer controlled machine can not
_feel_ the correct points to forge steel, humans can. I'm from the
Ruhrgebiet, a German coal and steel region.