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Linus Torvalds Announces Autobiography
Keith Whitsitt wrote in to say that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is writing his autobiography. Published by HarperCollins, co-authored by David Diamond, entitled "Just for Fun:The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary". The article is pretty funny, talking about how it will reflect Torvalds "Quirky irreverent personality" as well as how it will be about business, Linus, and Linux. Hell I'll read it, but isn't Linus a bit young for the autobiography? I keep pitching my epic space opera about alien robots who infest our planet and live off celebrities dryer lint to various publishers, but nobody wants to publish a book written by a leader of mexican food, and starring a hero named Litmus VanCenturfuge and his sidekick Pipet Jerks. I keep telling them my parents would buy copies. I bet Linus will sell copies to people besides his parents.
How about Penguin?
No.
Linus has played and continues to play a part in starting a revolution in computing. Whether he did that by "reimplmenting a 30 year old OS" or by having entirely new ideas or by redecorating his house, or by shaving his head, or by anything else at all is unimportant.
The undenyable fact is that the way people (including individuals and businesses) view computers and their operating systems is changing. This is due in part to the work of Linus. That makes him a revolutionary.
Thompson and Richtie are more like visionarys than revolutionaries (acciedental or otherwise) to me. (as is RMS for that matter)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
This will be the chapter where the world is first exposed to your true arrogance, your insecurities,your odd behaviorisms, and all that stuff you didn't want them to see initially. Just think about how they will react. Getting that monkey off your back has to be a taste of true freedom that will enable you do go that much farther next time. This is a critical step in character development for the character of you in the real biography.
I say that whoever signed this deal also extends one to Stallman. I know that cat has some stories to tell.
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Linus - The Action Figure
Linus - The Breakfast Cereal
Linus - The Fragrance
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HarperCollins? Couldn't he have picked a better publisher? As far as I'm concerned, HarperCollins has the worst reputation for publishing tabloid quality books of any publisher that I know.
If I recall correctly, HarperCollins published Canter and Siegel's book, "How to make a fortune on the information superhighway". Canter and Siegel were the green card attorneys that "invented" spamming to newsgroups. They ruined usenet for everyone. And HarperCollins published their book, explaining how to do it.
I still have my original Joel Furr "Green Card" T-Shirt.
--
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
So, reimplmenting a 30 year old OS is revolutionary now?
Thompson and Richtie may be revolutionaries for designing unix in the first place, but redoing someone elses work hardly seems revolutionary.
Heck, someone is going to call Gjs Van Sant's Psycho original next...
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I think that Linus should do what Greenspun did when negotiating the rights to his book "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing". The publisher got to put the book in print, but Greenspun retained the right to put the book online. Brilliant, I say. Linus should do the same.