Current Intrepid Ibex Wallpaper Considered Harmful

[Raphael J. Schmid]

The current Intrepid Ibex wallpaper shows something that might resemble a human skull. Until now I had thought it was just the Beta wallpaper, but after its prominent display at http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/everything_you_need_know_about_ubuntu_810_intrepid_ibex I wonder if Ubuntu are actually planning on having it ship as the default wallpaper in 8.10.

If that is indeed the case, I would like to ask you to reconsider.

The looks of the skull are somewhat scary - actually, the longer you look at the wallpaper, the more scary it seems and the more you wonder what it (a) might have to do with Ubuntu and (b) what Ubuntu might be trying to communicate with it. Since Ubuntu is "Linux for human beings", one might wonder if Intrepid Ibex is "the Ubuntu version for the afterlife", and as I might add, the Stovokor version of afterlife at that.

Please, can we have something as the 8.10 wallpaper that has less potential of throwing a bad light on Ubuntu?

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Could you please explain where you got a human skull out of a goat's body with horns and ears protruding from its head?

[Michael Rooney (mrooney)]

No matter how hard I look I can't really see a skull; it seems obviously an Ibex to me.

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

Aha! So an Ibex is an animal. Now that I _know_ that, my brain can also _see_ an Ibex in that background picture. But words like "Ibex" are not necessarily the ones tought to English students outside English-speaking countries. That's the thing with how we perceive abstract pictures (which I think the wallpaper clearly is). This might be very similar to the young-girl-old-woman-illusion (for example, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-OldWomanIllusion.html).

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

Maybe a little explanation on how to see the skull might help. Mackenzie, Mike: below where you saw the antlers (?) of the ibex first is a brighter area. This is where I saw the empty part of the skull (where the brain would be). Where you see the eye of the ibex, I see the eyehole of the skull as well. Below the eye/eyehole, I see the open mouth/jaw of the skull. Can you see it now?

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

For what it's worth, drake (a type of duck), eft (a newt, like a lizard), and gibbon (a kind of monkey or ape) aren't ones your average English-speaker knows either. I think most of us end up consulting a dictionary when the next animal is announced. They're always animals, though.

This is an ibex: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/pix/lazoo/Ibex-m.jpg

[Melissa Draper (melissa)]

It looks like a coffee stain to me.

Forget the skull, I'd like to protest against the obvious wanton spillage of this important caffeinated beverage. Spilled coffee makes me cry.

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

Thanks for the lovely photography of that Ibex, Mackenzie. Of course they're all animals, and of course you look them up in a dictionary - *eventually*! You can't be serious in expecting any Ubuntu user around the world to look up the next releases' animal "first thing in the morning" upon the release being announced, though?

In this case, it just so happened that I hadn't yet looked up "ibex", and knowing what a heron was hadn't exactly helped my non-native-English brain in interpreting the wallpaper correctly.

It's good to know though that possible issues of intercultural misunderstanding are taken so seriously in the Ubuntu community.

Irony aside, have you taken a look at http://mathworld.wolfram.com/YoungGirl-OldWomanIllusion.html ? Because I really think that goes a long way towards explaining why I'm not trying to make fun of anybody or anything here.

And if I should have offended the creator of this wallpaper (I get a feeling that might be one of the above respondents), I'd like to apologise because that was certainly not the intention - actually it's very skillfully, and as I am sure, thoughtfully, executed.

[Sarah Kowalik (hobbsee-deactivatedaccount)]

rapha wrote:
> Thanks for the lovely photography of that Ibex, Mackenzie. Of course
> they're all animals, and of course you look them up in a dictionary -
> *eventually*! You can't be serious in expecting any Ubuntu user around
> the world to look up the next releases' animal "first thing in the
> morning" upon the release being announced, though?

Well, fortunately, all the release notes, etc, refer to it as Ubuntu
8.10 (they used 8.04 LTS for hardy, etc). So, any Ubuntu user around
the world is likely to go "oh, Ubuntu 8.10, time to upgrade" or similar,
and perhaps not even find out about the codenames at all. The only
likely way that they would would be if they a) looked at the
repositories in use, and saw that they referred to 'intrepid', and/or b)
tried to add more.

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

Sarah, please read my original post again. I have absolutely no problems with English code names for the releases. The problem is that if you don't know what an ibex is, you can mistake the current Ubuntu 8.10 wallpaper for a skull, which then might have a number of further implications.

[Sarah Kowalik (hobbsee-deactivatedaccount)]

rapha wrote:
> Sarah, please read my original post again. I have absolutely no problems
> with English code names for the releases. The problem is that if you
> don't know what an ibex is, you can mistake the current Ubuntu 8.10
> wallpaper for a skull, which then might have a number of further
> implications.

I've actually been asking various people on IRC about this today. Very
few of them are thinking it could be a skull - in fact, all of them
required it to be pointed out, and the vast majority of them still don't
think it really looks like a skull after close observation. As you saw
above, most people thought it was an animal, and one thought it was a
coffee cup. I'm sure that if anyone stared at it for a sufficient
amount of time, they could come up with something else it was - but
equally, they could do this for other wallpapers too.

Either way, it won't change for release. Sorry.

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1012917&cid=25570813

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

http://osnews.com/thread?335671

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

On Thu, 2008-10-30 at 19:21 +0000, rapha wrote:
> http://osnews.com/thread?335671

Well wouldn't that joke go along with Melissa or Sarah (forget which) 's
assertion that it's a coffee stain?

[Raphael J. Schmid (raphael-j-schmid)]

Could be, alright. Could also be taken as a sign that maybe the wallpaper is a bit too abstract/unclear afterall. The /. comment even speaks of blood...

I don't understand what was wrong with the style that Hardy Heron's wallpaper was done in. That much clearlier showed a heron than this one shows an ibex.

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Oh, I do think Hardy's was the best wallpaper I've ever seen on Ubuntu.
But I still don't think this looks like a skull, except in that "once
someone tells you exactly what to look for, it's kind-of-there-ish" way.