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Gamers, Upgrade your Systems
jbischof writes "Looking to upgrade your aging PC? Ace's Hardware has a new upgrade guide tailored specifically to gamers. The data shows exactly which upgrades - processor, motherboard, gfx card, or combination of the three - will give the best performance boost on all the latest and most popular games (according to their recent poll)."
On November 19, 1954, the career of Sammy Davis Jr. almost came to a sudden and tragic close. While driving to Los Angeles to record the title tune of the Universal International picture "Six Bridges to Cross", Sammy was the victim of an automobile smash-up and narrowly escaped death. He was so seriously injured that his left eye had to be removed. In spite of the terrible shock, Sammy rallied and went on with his work; he even insisted that he was the "luckiest guy in the world".
Since his accident, Sammy's courageous spirit and ever-growing talent have won him increasingly enthusiastic audiences. Let's hear it for Sammy Davis Jr. !
Celebrate Negro Month 2003 with Slashdot.
Or you could be the first person to bake an apple in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes... Wait, no you wouldn't...
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I'm enjoying my digital camera a lot and getting ready to get a bigger/better/geekier one. What components should I get to maximize Photoshop and such? Any sites that offer such advice?
Niggas have daddy bushes oil! IT be time for dat raice war! bitches!
Linux is a very flexible operating system which has been created almost purely by the help of generous volunteers and other people associated with it. It has slowly grown from being a mere branch of Minix to a massive contender in the kernel world, having an entire operating system associated with it and its name. It is perhaps one of the most important pieces of software available today, one of the most widely used, and yet there is a gaping hole in its history, a hole currently filled by fantasy. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that a lone graduate from a Central European country created the foundation for this kernel and continues working with it to this very day.
It amazes me that so many reputable people and organisations have fallen for the ridiculous myth that there is some sort of Finnish student who has single-handedly created something that threatens to overthrow the current software distribution system as we know it. I find it particularly absurd that he is lauded as some sort of super overlord throughout hackerdom. Even generally reliable sources have fallen for this ridiculous scam. The concept that one youth from Central Europe could sow the seed for an operating system which frightens Microsoft is risible at best. It has taken Microsoft a decade to produce an OS which is even reasonably reliable and stands alone. So what makes you think that in the short time span from 1991 to the present day that a fictional character could produce an operating system which is more stable than Windows? Microsoft themselves has had thousands of people developing Windows for over a decade and has only recently been able to achieve what Linux has. How could one youth do the same in even less time?
Obviously, this "Linus Torvalds" must be some sort of superhuman to have done such a thing. But we all know that there is no such thing as a superhuman Even Nietzsche acknowledged that we still had some way to go before attaining the status of the "Ubermensch". Whatever makes you think that an otherwise anonymous Finnish student would have achieved this status without anyone noticing? As such it must be plain for all to see that this "Linus Torvalds" is some sort of fabrication. It is the only way to explain why Linus keeps such a low profile, and that the main bit of evidence to even suggest his existence is the testimony of his mother and the strange posts "he" makes on obscure kernel hacking message boards. The fact that an entire community of "warez d00ds" and rabid Linux advocates has sprung up, proclaiming that "LUNIX RULEZZZ" is such a flimsy piece of circumstantial evidence that it must be discounted. But if "Linus Torvalds" does not actually exist, then who has conjured up his existence? There is only one possible person who could get away with such a fraud. Mikke Torvalds, "his" supposed birth parent.
Mrs. Torvalds may have a lot to say about her son, but this does not excuse the fact that he does not exist. When you consider this, is it genuinely surprising that she found him "easy to raise"? Of course, there is one immediate objection which will no doubt be raised. "If Linus Torvalds doesn't really exist," I hear you ask, "then who wrote Linux?" That is a good question, but it is very obvious to see who. If you take a look around here for a while, you will hear names like Alan Cox, Richard Stallman, and Eric Raymond being bandied about. Obviously, it is immensely skilled coders and hackers such as these people who have made the wonderful OS Linux what it is today. The person who first made that post on comp.os.minix was in fact Linus' mother, who, frustrated by the ludicrous restrictions imposed upon her by Minix, due to its tiny size as a teaching OS, posted a message under a partial pseudonym, asking for help building a new, free UNIX-like operating system. All she wanted was someone to help her use her PC to print out her recipes and work with a serial modem, but before she knew it she was in way over her head. Pretty soon Linux had reached version 1.0 and strangers like Tanenbaum were talking about and claiming it was obsolete; barely before it was even released.
Fortunately, Mikke had released the kernel under the GPL from the start, so she was able to dump it onto the shoulders of other people without arousing much suspicion at all from others. Now she only has to make periodic appearances on Usenet as her creation, "Linus", and the like to avoid arousing the interest of news-hungry geeks and hyperactive ZDNet reporters. "But what about the conferences and LUG visits?" you cry. "We have photographic evidence!" Well, that isn't Linus. Are you sure you'd like me to tell you who it is? OK. The person whom you have all been worshipping for eleven years is in fact Richard Stallman, a man simultaneously venerated and vilified by the Slashdot community. When Linux started to become more and more well-known and hit version 2.0, Mikke knew that she was in deep water and that her foolish hoax might be uncovered, so she decided to contact the most trustworthy man in the open source world. RMS was happy to cooperate especially when he knew that Linux had completely overwhelmed the Hurd project and that he might as well help; after all, if Linux was exposed as a giant falsification, mightn't his beloved GNU/Hurd project be considered a hoax also? Neither could take the chance of being discovered, and for that reason Stallman was perfectly happy to quickly purchase a cheap rubber mask and shave off some of his bodily hair.
If we take a quick look forward to the 2003, the present day, and GNU/Linux is very stealthily taking over the server and business markets, with famous Linux distributors even starting education Linux courses for children and adults alike. Mikke Torvalds' simple request has turned into a multi-million dollar industry, and Stallman's hobby and grand vision has actually begun to come to fruition, in addition to freeing thousands of people from the chains of proprietary software. This is why, despite the fact that Linus Torvalds is actually a figment of our collective imagination and a warped product of a Finnish liberal's fevered mind, we should all honour "him" for being a prime symbol of our steadfast belief and ability to do what must be done to reach our ultimate goal. May his memory live on forever.