From: John Cowan (jcowan@reutershealth.com)
Date: Fri Jun 27 2003 - 12:48:15 EDT
Karljürgen Feuerherm scripsit:
> > The use of
> > the backslash character in DOS/Windows systems as a path separator is
> > arguably a mistake
>
> I hardly think so. It was a matter of a necessary alternative. It could only
> be viewed as a mistake on the assumption that somehow the Unix way was
> defacto 'correct'.
Pick your own mistake, then. Another good case I thought of this morning
are the national boundaries in Africa, which have little or nothing to
do with the realities on the ground. But (with one exception) all African
nation-states treat them as sacred, because the results of full-scale
border rectification would be nothing less than a world war.
> > > Several people have expressed reasons why this can't be (practically) be
> > > done--which mainly seem to stem from political concerns.
> >
> > All concerns involving human beings -- ho bios politikos -- are political
> > in some sense.
>
> Of course. But that just trivializes the comment.
I took your reference to "political concerns" to be trivializing the
concerns, and pointed out that the very notion of "concern" is a political
one. If there were no stakes, we could change Unicode daily according to
the best current notion of technical excellence.
Truth cannot conflict with truth, but interest can and commonly does
conflict with interest.
> Indeed. And for some more than others. Kludges tend to be, in my experience,
> penny-wise and pound foolish. So if you like, I'll restate my point as 'pay
> me now, or pay me (probably more) later'.
"Alienate major customers now, or alienate a relatively small customer now."
-- But that, he realized, was a foolish John Cowan thought; as no one knew better than he jcowan@reutershealth.com that the Wall had no other side. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan --Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness"
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