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"One of the great white hopes of the part of the Unix world that never liked X Windows was Sun's NeWS."

I searched Wikipedia and found that "Great White Hope is a nickname or epithet originally applied to boxers who were the hope of the "White Race" to beat African American boxer Jack Johnson."

That seems an odd way to characterize the situation.

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"great white hope" is an English idiom. While originally having racist connotations, it's entered common usage and is no longer tied to racism, or anything in particular.

It makes sense when you consider that white people were wringing their hands because they were convinced of their total superiority.

While obviously more benign, there is inherent bigotry in the “X sucks and the better solution is Y or Z and why won’t they catch on?” mindset. Surely this next technology will take over from the unacceptable popular one.

(Edited because QuickPath has a long way to go before it’s as functional as Swype)

Actually, the predecessor to X was called W. And many people have proposed the next version of X should be called Y, because X12 wasn't different enough, and some even have suggested skipping Y and going directly to Z to get even more distance from X. But the one thing they all agree on is that X sucks.

I was using X in the sense of a variable, sorry.

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