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Fathers of Linux Revealed: Tooth Fairy & Santa Claus
An anonymous reader writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, which published the results of their very thorough investigation today, turned out to be right. Linus really isn't the father of the Linux operating system. After having been found out, Linus had no choice but to admit -- this is what he has to say: 'Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.'"
Only when you are sufficiently confident in your premises do you venture to be droll to your enemies, and make no mistake, the AdTi is Linus' enemy. The use of humour is simultaneously the ultimate statement of confidence and the ultimate put-down - it's a pre-generated sound-bite. It's a kick in the vitals. To all on the (winning) side of Linux, it's a rallying cry. Go Linus.
There's nothing more satisfying than placing your critics up on a pedestal and ripping them to shreds - the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, and it doesn;t depend on pointiness
What will be interesting is just how long the AdTI will remain a serious news source - the ultimate goal is obviously to get them to discredit themselves to such an extent that they can be held up as an example of how *not* to do it. Given their paymaster, the hopeless nature of their case, and the imperatives they must put forward each time, I think we have a significant chance of a sacrificial lamb in Linux' cause... Rope to hang themselves is what we want... Remember that
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It's true that Linux is an imitation of prior Unixes.
But remember folks,
Linux copying the behavior of various UNIXes is stealing, but Microsoft copying the behavior of the Mac or Xerox Star is not. And Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM PC BIOS is what caused the death of the PC industry!
Oh wait.
--LP
P.S. I'd be nervous if the press release said AdTI president and pundit Kenneth Brown was tracing the code... but it says he "traces the free software movement over three decades". Hrm, good luck there, Ken!
The Toqueville people say they are going to quote people like Dennis Ritchie and Richard Stallman. What those Ritchie and Stallman almost certainly told them is that Linux is a faithful re-implementation of Unix and thus not highly original or ground-breaking; also that Linus is often given credit for functionality that is not in the kernel (you know, the whole GNU/Linux flamewar). And all that's true. The problem is that the Toqueville people don't get that this is perfectly legitimate; the Posix standard that specifies the behavior of Unix-like systems is a public standard, the code is all original and there were no patents in the way.
Except for the best ones. Like Stanford's Donald Knuth , for example.
Or take the case of Reverend Thomas Bayes, the parish priest who discovered Bayes' theorem, on which modern machine learning/data mining relies so heavily, including spam filters named after him.
having compassion for those around you, which is something that a lot of scientists could sorely use.
OK, this is just an ignorant thing to say.
The fact that you're posting that ignorant comment means that neither you nor your parents died from a childhood disease. Thank a scientist.
In fact, it's not likely that you had any siblings that died in infancy. Thank a scientist.
And you probably more had more fat kids than undernourished in your school when you were a kid. Thank an agricultural scientist.
You probably had the opportunity to know your grandparents, since they probably lived to be about 75 years old or so. Thank a scientist.
You never had to worry about getting yellow fever from a mosquito bite. Thank a scientist.
When it gets dark out, you don't need to go to bed. You can stay up and read to get an education. Thank a scientist.
Hell, you can fricking educate yourself all day long. You don't have to scratch in the dirt just to eat. You've got the luxury of spending the first couple decades of your life just feeding your brain. Thank a whole shitload of scientists
I could go on and on and on, but it's the unvarnished truth that BILLIONS of people are alive today because of what scientists have done. On the other hand, religion's track record is so poor that when Mother Theresa provides a place for poor people to DIE, she's considered a saint.
I think you owe a lot of scientists quite a lot more than an apology, but I doubt they'll get it from you. Just like a bully in grade school, it's just too much damn fun to beat up the smart kid.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!