[LAD] [ANNOUNCE] Safe real-time on the desktop by default; Desktop/audio RT developers, read this!

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Fons Adriaensen<fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 03:35:06PM +0200, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>
>> Where's the unix in everyone of us? ConsoleKit for example, rpm -q
>> summarizes it as "System daemon for tracking users, sessions and seats"
>
> The 'seats' is pure managerese. The term was probably invented by
> some MBA considering that employees are just numbers and don't
> deserve any form of working space they can personalize, but just
> a 'seat'.

i believe that in this context, the term actually comes from academic
computing environments, in which, indeed, computer users did not have
any personal space at all, but simply sat down wherever there was "a
seat", often in a library or campus computing center. as a sysadmin,
you were tracking "seats" more than individuals that you knew and
interacted with. in fact, this terminology might never have come about
were it not for the way that unix allowed computing costs to come down
and universities and colleges to provide more open access to the
systems.

i very much doubt if any MBA was involved at all.