
The Origin of the word Daemon - Void_
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Daemon.html
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billybob
I've always wondered about this.

Also: I pronounce "daemon" as "DAY-mun," as opposed to "demon", which I
pronounce "DEE-mun." Do the rest of you make this distinction?

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troels
Yes, I do. The only problem then, is how to pronounce Damon, as in Matt.

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damoncali
As an authority on the subject, I submit that since "Damon" is pronounced Day-
mun, that "daemon" must be pronounced Dee-mun, as it's just an alternate
spelling of "demon".

But mostly I just want to stop being confused whenever someone says "daemon"
around the office, and I think they're talking to me.

~~~
Osiris
Typically in English, an e after a vowel indicates the vowel should make a
hard sound rather than soft. So looking at it that way, Daemon should have a
hard a (like the name of the letter), thus DAY-mon.

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loevborg
So Unix daemons are descendants of Maxwell's daemon. But we need not forget
that Maxwell's demon is part of a long series of philosophical thought
experiments, including Laplace's demon and Descartes's malin génie. In Ancient
Greek "daimōn" just means God or Deity without the connotation of evil.

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Symmetry
It seems to me like the word "genie" in modern English(from the same root I
suspect) gets across the idea very well without all the misleading
associations.

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smcl
Genie is from the arabic "jinn"

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Symmetry
I decided to actually look it up, and according to an etymology dictionary:
"1650s, "tutelary spirit," from Fr. génie, from L. genius (see genius); used
in French translation of "Arabian Nights" to render Arabic jinni, singular of
jinn, which it accidentally resembled, and attested in English with this sense
from 1748."

On the other hand, my above post absolutely deserved to be downvoted because
it is entirely unclear that I meant "The same root as 'malin génie' (evil
genius in the 16th century sense of 'genious' as an inspirational spirit) as
opposed to demon.

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smcl
Downvoting seems a little harsh for just getting a conjecture incorrect - you
get an upvote from me for being inquisitive

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danielsoneg
That the term originates with Maxwell's Daemon, which is fundamentally an
entropy-reducing agent, is rather apropos - would that all our daemons
performed so well.

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Scriptor
I'd be interested in the quantum mechanics explanation of how the daemon
reduces entropy. When I discussed the thought experiment with some friends we
simply concluded that the very act of sorting the molecules is introducing
outside energy into the system allowing local entropy to be reduced, just like
any other machine. The total entropy of the universe would stay the same and
the laws of thermodynamics are still intact.

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rdtsc
Even more interesting the outside energy also includes information, as it is
needed to figure out which are the slow and the fast molecules.

But in the end it is a bogus idea (even as a thought experiment) since quantum
mechanics comes into play in real life.

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coliveira
For some time I though that the word deamon was used because it has to fork
processes, and in western imagery forks are associated to demons.

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eneveu
Funny coincidence. I've just started reading "Daemon", the technotriller by
Daniel Suarez.

Great book so far (currently around page 130). I usually only read while
commuting (2 hours / day), but this book is so exciting, I found myself
reading it at home too.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28technothriller_series...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28technothriller_series%29)

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turar
Sometimes daemons can turn into zombies too. The magical world of Unix. :)

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pasbesoin
If you want to take things further, there are arguments that "demon" comes
from the area that is now more or less India, and that the negativity
associated now associated with the term "in the west" was created as part of
the struggle of one religion to dominate over another (likely corresponding to
the desire of one polity to dominate over the other(s)... but my memory gets
even fuzzier at this point).

Anyway, I, too, pronounce it "daemon". I find this makes a useful distinction;
also, I figure why insult the processes from which I'm hoping to receive good
things. ;-)

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dspillett
_> and that the negativity associated now associated with the term "in the
west" was created as part of the struggle of one religion to dominate over
another_

Many things that the west considers evil in that way comes from other
religions (mainly the large number of "nature" religions that get lumped under
the banner of "pagan") and is that way from the early days of Christianity as
it marched through Europe.

The cloven feet of the devil and other spawn of hell, as commonly depicted,
are thought to originally have been a reference to Pan by the Christian
artists of the day.

It isn't just evil: even more friendly imaginary come from similar
backgrounds: the Easter bunny and hunting eggs at Easter are references back
to "Pagan" rituals/gods - as groups converted to Christianity they kept some
of their old festivals and such (in a more and more bastardised form as time
passed).

Most of what we in the west do at the back end of December has (or had
originally) very little to do with Christianity (even ignoring the fair chunk
of it came about in the last century or two). There were many "pagan"
festivals around that time, mostly of the form of some sort of thanks giving
(thanking their Gods or other forces for allowing them to survive past the
shortest days of the year, or congratulating themselves for the same), but
until 800-and-something AD the Christians didn't mark the birth of Christ at
that time. The ceremonies at Easter were (and largely still are) far far more
important to them.

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atsaloli
<http://admin.com/samples/Daemons.pdf> has the term originating at CTSS at MIT
in the early 60's.

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Osiris
Has no one mentioned the absolutely horrid brown on green color scheme? I need
to use developer tools to change the page so I can actually read it!

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alanthonyc
That's what readability is for.

<https://www.readability.com/>

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cafard
daemon goes back well before Socrates; one finds it in Homer, sometimes with a
negative implication, sometimes neutrally.

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strickjb
I just noticed my alma mater hosted this article. Let's go Hokies!!

