[Usenet, but may predATe it] flame wars over {religious issues}. The paper by Danny Cohen thAT popularised the terms big-endian and little-endian was entitled "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included Emacs vs. vi, my personal computer vs. everyone else' s personal computer, ITS vs. Unix, Unix vs. VMS, BSD Unix vs. USG Unix, C vs. Pascal, C vs. Fortran, etc., ad nauseam. The characteristic thAT distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is thAT in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural ATtachments as objective technical evaluATions. See also theology. [Jargon File]