10 March 2009 - standardization

In my personal Linux distribution, /usr/local will be renamed /usr/lolcat so that the masses will subliminally grok its true nature. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today the topic is the tension between standardization, which allowed us to evolve fundamental adaptations like culture and language, and optimization for special cases, which means that we only have to patch the holes. And the first order of business is for everyone to standardize on my opinion, which is that each case must be considered independently.