Baaa-d moooo-ve: Debian Linux depicts intimate cow-sheep action in ASCII artwork Linux distro Debian is under fire for distributing a software package containing an "ASCII representation of zoophilia." Specifically, a sheep shagging a cow. According to a bug report filed this month, Debian user Felicia Hummel installed a package called "cowsay", which renders text in speech or thought balloons with ASCII …
If it wasn't for the file name then it could be seen primarily as a cow standing by the side of a sheep.
The Romans knew how to do this sort of thing. After excavation at Pompeii/Herculaneum the elites locked a sculpture of Pan in their museum's secret room - for their viewing only.
In 2013 it was loaned to the British Museum who put an "under14" bar on unaccompanied children.
NSFW:
"In 2013 it was loaned to the British Museum who put an "under14" bar on unaccompanied children."
Correction : The article states that the museum will display it to everyone. It's only Naples that put the under 14 ban into place.
The Times reports that the museum "is determined to display" the object in plain sight, "rather than hidden" behind a curtain or in a "museum secretum" – a restricted area for those aged over 14 in the Naples Museum.
So she's ok with cowsay -f head-in which is a human with their head in the Cows rear?
Ascii 'art' was funny for about 10 minutes in 91 when we still used VT52s. Fines please for all usage of Ascii art with Animals and speech bubbles.
I'm all for Post-Irony its the Post-Irony Irony i can't handle.
This was a Uni and for Fortran/C development fronting an 11/750/780 . DOS machines were around but they didn't have the software like NAG...
The VT52 was a green on black display. We had some VT100s (black/white screen) around which were much desired, i remember it had an updated curses lib and escape codes that allowed x,y positioning.
To this day can't handle dark VS themes, just too much like a VT52 :-)
"To this day can't handle dark VS themes, just too much like a VT52 :-)"
My aversion to dark themes stems from MS-DOS days rather than the VT series. I could still handle VTs long after Windows 95 and NT arrived.
1991? I recall being exposed to ASCII art at an MOD research site back in 1977. The pictures were either of naked women or Royal Navy weapon systems, including one which was both i.e. a naked girl and a strategically placed and obviously not to scale Mk 8 torpedo. I was still in my teens ..... so it was funny.
"You were still using VT52s in 1991? I was using a VT101 and that felt pretty antiquated even then..."
Out PDP delivered in 1977 came with VT52s. The new terminals we got in 1979 were VT100s.
1986 and I was using VT220s, which had a much better keyboard, with a full row of 20 function keys (though the first 4 or 5 were reserved for hardware setup).
1991 and the latest was the V420, maybe by then the VT520. The VT525 I used in 1996 was the best of the lot, but quickly superseded by X11 capable displays.
Ascii 'art' was funny for about 10 minutes in 91 when we still used VT52s.
Just 10 minutes???
Either you were more amused by jangling keys and the mobile over your crib
Or you have no sense of humour and creativity and would rather be staring at columns of numbers in Lotus 1-2-3, flickering at low resolution even during your lunch hour.
Most here at El Reg are grumpy and cynical, granted, but most have at least some sense of nostalgia.
Creative and sense of humour? Subjective, you decide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRdD1Wo-jcw
think that covers both :-)
What mainly annoys me is usage of things that were done out of necessity at the time since there was no effing choice, now used in a 'funny' ironic way.
Much like eating spam fritters and wearing string for a belt.
It's not so much the issue what you are offended by, it's simply a package that should be optional by default because not all people are alike. It doesn't matter what criteria you use, sense of humour, religion, tolerance - it's a long list but it still summarises as "can we please keep 'fun' stuff optional?"
This is IMHO not directly about people taking offence, this is simply being a tad more considerate. By all means, leave it as an option. For instance, I like some "off" fortunes as well but I would never dream on leaving that in a production or desktop build.
It's correctly labelled a bug, as in "wrong default". The sky isn't falling, but something escaped. Let's fix that. Not much to see here, and nothing is going to blow up unless someone chooses to make it an big issue. Patch and move on, and maybe alert to accidentally install "off" packages that are best removed unless the user accepts the ramifications of that decision. Next.
That's exactly how MS deal with all the ascii porn in Windows.
I suggest doing a quick search of what was the default magic number in some of the Azure/HyperV code which had to be open sourced so it can be distributed as a part of Linux. Hint - it was not the well known "0xdeadbeefdeadbeef" value.
Also, just because it's "recommended", doesn't mean to say you *have* to install it - it's still optional. By installing something which clearly states it may offend, you waive any and all rights to bitch and moan you've been offended by the content of such a package.
Some people recommend Chrome as the default browser. I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole for that. The only version of Chrome I would ever install is in Linux, and even then it's used purely for Netflix.
No, that's a plain dependency. There's nothing recommended about them. If something requires a dependency to install, it will be automatically selected. And that method isn't restricted to the Debian-esques... it's a method use by all distros. and those of the BSD persuasion. Deselect the dependency, and it will go ahead and deselect what selected it in the first place. And if it can't find said dependency, it won't install at all, unless you force it to, and break the resulting package.
Dependencies are things that are mandatory for packages to work. The main package itself, can be "recommended", while its dependencies, are not. They just get selected automatically when a package that depends on them is selected for install. Nothing recommended about that - the whole point of recommending something is that it's an option, otherwise why call it a recommendation?
This is why cowsay-off, and it's fortunes counterpart are optional. They are not necessary for their respective packages to run. Which is why they a) give the user an appropriate disclaimer, so they can make a conscious decision of whether to install something guaranteed to offend someone; and b) are optional.
" No, that's a plain dependency. There's nothing recommended about them. If something requires a dependency to install, it will be automatically selected. And that method isn't restricted to the Debian-esques... it's a method use by all distros."
Did you read the article? It clearly points out that the issue arises because Debian installs recommended packages silently out-of-the-box. You have to specifically configure it not to do that. You can criticise the OS makers for their choice, but "recommend" is semantic metadata, and I don't think there's any specific suggested action.
" Debian user Felicia Hummel installed a package called "cowsay", [...]. But with default settings of "install suggests" enabled, a controversial second "recommends" package called "cowsay-off" was also installed. "
"Some people recommend Chrome as the default browser. I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole for that. The only version of Chrome I would ever install is in Linux, and even then it's used purely for Netflix."
The other reason for Chome
Is to open a webapp in an undecorated window. (no toolbars etc as a UI)
I wish firefox could do that without kiosk plugins.
Indeed, nothing "graphic" in that image, could be interpreted in a very innocuous way.
I blame excessively dirty minds.
I could have a photo of 2 tangerines and a banana and give it a cheeky file name, it would be "filth" if the mind of the viewer only, similarly photo with 2 fried eggs and a kebab (Sarah Lucas homage) and a naughty title would still not be offensive.
Over the years, I've noticed that there appear to be a few people on the internet who have too much time on their hands.
Would society not be better served by using them as slave labour to do useful things, like say my cleaning. Or building a giant wall to keep him out, and making Piers Morgan pay for it.
Or maybe polishing the moon, to get all those ugly dark spots cleaned off it.
Or burying Birmingham under 50ft of soil...
$ sudo apt install cowsay-off -y
$ cowsay -l
Cow files in /usr/share/cowsay/cows:
apt beavis.zen bong bud-frogs bunny calvin cheese cock cower daemon default dragon dragon-and-cow duck elephant elephant-in-snake eyes flaming-sheep ghostbusters gnu head-in hellokitty kiss kitty koala kosh luke-koala mech-and-cow meow milk moofasa moose mutilated pony pony-smaller ren sheep skeleton snowman sodomized-sheep stegosaurus stimpy suse three-eyes turkey turtle tux unipony unipony-smaller vader vader-koala www
$ echo "Join the Dark Side" | cowsay -f vader-koala
I recall a beta release of Chef had all console output in cowsay :-)
IIRC typical Penguin lifespan is 15-20 years. So that would have to be an elderly "actor" (model?)
OK, Tux himself was apparently "born" in 1996 (This is why we have Wikipedia, right?), so is beating the odds (or maybe something else in his classic seated pose, but it's hard to tell in typical ASCII-Art resolution)
There is martinsay the jellyfish: https://github.com/Aversiste/martinesay
Can cowsay be used for purposes other than just ascii art?
I always thought that the cow in cowsay was somehow linked to "copy on write" COW.
And I found it odd that if you tried to remove the cowsay package in Linux Mint it would also remove the Cinnamon desktop as well leaving you with a raw ubuntu desktop.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
