:Dust mite [to another]- So it’s said they believe a linguistically sensible moral being inhabits the entire area around a tree? Bloody suggestible, innit?
:Dust mite 2- Eh? I think I got NAT working so I can torrent Bruce Perens’ consciousness now. What about moral consistency; does that mean that the VM has a sort of lag to it, or that the sense of immediacy to needs is orthogonal to decisions along one’s mores?
:Dust mite- Well yes, as far as steadiness–what if I want port 7435 at odd strikes of the hour?–and yes, up to the cut-and-run-for-your-lives point.
:Dust mite 2- How long might we live, as mites? A cartoonist might utilize our host tree?
:Dust mite- Long enough to brood over the galleys without buying more webhosting, daresay.

Don’t force us to go medieval with the marital aids.

In reply to Emil Beinroth, no, making things better isn’t the drive behind the average person. Most people have to be really under durress or seriously uncomfortable before they fix or change something. Revolutions don’t start because the workers can’t receive all the channels on their TV. Revolutions start because the workers are unbearably repressed.

Geeks, on the other hand, must have everything just right. We must make everything better. If something isn’t good enough, we’ll make it better.

The problem is that we’re also arrogant. What your standard geek believes is correct and everybody else is plain wrong. This is why there are hundreds of Linux distros, for example.

The beauty of open source is that it brings such projects to the surface and also encourages collaborative working. This is why geeks + open source is a match made in heaven.

But geekdom isn’t perfect and this is what I think this comic strip has latched onto. Geeks are flawed in loads of annoying ways – even the good ones like Linus and RMS.

this could explain his appassionate defense of guns?

The only comment I’ve ever not approved was just another Bruce Perens request troll. Why would I choose to censor such comedy gold?

I need a disclaimer: comments on this site do not necessarily reflect the views of the brownshirt who runs it. they probably do though.

In reply to Randy Sparks:
Isn’t that the driving force behind everything we humans do apart from day-to-day survival?
To think that one could do or know something better than other people?
Galileo Galilei, Sokrates, Einstein, Franklin, Jefferson .. everyone! They all thought they knew something better than other people.

If this is meant as a sly attack on ESR for his robust, and entirely reasonable, attitude towards Islamic terrorism it is a failure. The attempt to bracket together Indians and Pakistanis and pretend that there is some “racial” objection by native Britons to persons from the subcontinent is dishonest and reflects nothing in reality. For the truth is that Sikhs and Hindus are notably successful in British society. However, Muslims do not integrate as well into British, or indeed any other non-Muslim societies, and (believe it or not) the problem is _not_ with everyone else. Moreover, the problem here is not “racial” but cultural. Some reading needed here, I think:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html