F9 installation screenshot

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 22:40 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le mercredi 30 avril 2008 à 14:57 -0500, Callum Lerwick a écrit :
> > On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 09:52 +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> > > I, for one was glad when those (and previous redneck jokes) were
> > > kicked out of the installer. The text and imagery used were just too
> > > US-centric to be comfortable, and got old fast.
> > 
> > It's a two way street.
> > 
> > Yes, it's cool to hate America these days. I'm no fan of our current
> > foreign policy myself. But it is still rather insulting in many circles
> > that you paint all Americans as being rednecks like you just did.
> 
> Since you seem not to have gotten the reference, one of the ancient Red
> Hat releases bragged about Redneck support in its image/text install
> train. I can tell you this had a terrible effect on people that were
> installing for another locale and found out half the needed pieces for
> this locale were missing (but that's ok, Redneck is in, who actually
> needs more than English+Redneck).

IIRC (maybe someone who was there can correct me), back in the early
days of Red Hat Linux (like 3.0.3 or something), the first experiment in
i18n was to create the Redneck locale (was it Donnie Barnes who was the
Carolina native who was the target of that little joke?).  The staff
thought it was amusing enough that they left it in as a language option
in the installer, so you saw all the dialog boxes translated from
English to Redneck.

I (transplanted Yankee) thought it was kind of amusing at the time, but
I suppose it doesn't really have a place in a polished, professional,
worldwide distro.

> 
> So get a grip. Everyone is not seing the world through and American eye.
> American junk food industry imagery is not a positive image everywhere.
> American cultural references and priorities are not shared by most of
> the world.
> 
> That does not mean the world is seething with American haters. Indeed
> the "if you don't aspire to be copycat Americans you must hate us" is
> another typical American world-view that can be terribly annoying to
> non-Americans (including to people who have a generally positive viex of
> the USA).
> 
> Smart international organisations have nothing to win in draping
> themselves in American symbols and imagery (or Chinese symbols and
> imagery or French symbols and imagery, etc). You win hearth by
> emphasising your local presence and if you can't do it you better
> project a bland and neutral image.

My spell-checker is complaining about some of your 's''s 8^).

> 
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs