Slashdot Mirror
Tanenbaum Rebuts Ken Brown
Stephan Schulz writes "Andrew Tanenbaum has rebutted Ken Brown's reply to his original comments on the (in)famous AdTI report on Linux's origin. It's quite entertaining, and leaves little doubt (well, even less than before) that Brown is conciously twisting the truth. Choice excerpt: 'I'm pretty animated all the time. But I only get tense when people try to put words in my mouth. After half an hour of repeatedly answering the question "Could Linus have written the Linux kernel by himself?" in the affirmative, I was getting a bit irritated. ... People who know me would probably confirm that I do not suffer fools gladly.' I'd add that being called 'the good Professor' repeatedly would have me exploding in no time..."
So I guess this is the rebuttal to the rebuttal of the first rebuttal.. :-) Well done Andrew Tanenbaum!
Why doesn't KB just cut his losses and slink away before he's made a greater fool of, if that's possible. I suspect that his check has cleared the bank by now.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Last week we found out that Ken Brown was pregnant with Linus' love child, but this week may hold new meaning to their relationship. Will the relationship last? Or will it crumble to nothing before the masses. And find out who Ken may have been caught cheating with!
Tune in next week to find out!
Hmmm.
Anyone think we are watching a tennis match? Back and forth back and forth...
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
...and people wonder why I don't watch soap operas anymore. Who needs them with stuff like this in real life!
Oh wait, all those people are taken, it's a presidential election year here in the US.
I wonder what OJ Simpson thinks about all this....
I boycott signatures
Why, are you a lousy professor?
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I'd say being called, "the good Professor," would be preferrable to others, say for example, "the Nutty Professor."
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
No. That was the rebutal. This is the rebutal to the rebutal of the rebutal. Do try to keep up.
"'Linux is a leprosy; ...'
This statement is not grammatically, politically, or factually correct."
Is it just me, or does Professor Tanenbaum really seem like the man lately?
In his own words:
"It would be skewed and bias to only quote people that are anti-Linux or anti-open source. I have done this for years..."
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the
headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on its face.
The egg, looking a bit p*ssed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says,
"Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question!"
ABOUT TUX
Ballmer: The Open Source is strong with this one
Gates: The son of Linus must not become a Coder
Ballmer: He will join us, or die, my master.
And yes, my money would be on Linus. He probably knows that Finnish kung-fu...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I couldn't have summed it up better myself :)
Oh, I note on their home page that you can submit a study idea to them. How about a study into why Ken Brown is an incompetent researcher?
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
KB has already done the "could not have done it at that age" argument. His next book will instead argue that Mozart was simply small and diminutive, which allowed him to lie about his age to the King of England. He was really 35 at the time.
"A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself."
Is anyone else hoping that AdTI mentions Hitler or the Nazis so that this discussion can be officially over?
Please, no need to be so polite. Tell us how you REALLY feel!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
"The United States is the home of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, an internationally respected agency ..."
Is the USPTO is even *nationally* respected any longer?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
There needs to be new moderation categories. Let's start with:
Ignorant, Vague, Paranoid Fear Mongering
and
Legitimate, but ultimately unfounded, concern.
And I think it is obvious what category "these sinister forces" belong in.
No, I think it's time that *Linus* cuts his losses and slinks away. I mean, seriously, look at what Brown brought to the table this time: "In a recent ZDNet interview(6), he denies having the Lions notes. This is also unbelievable to AdTI."
It's time that Linus fold. Brown clearly has him by the teeth and isn't going to let go until Linux admits what has been so clearly proven to us. Linus must reveal his theft of code from Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny immediately.
I suggest that Brown establish a team in cooperation with the United Nations called UNOPUS (United Nations Office for the Prevention of Un-proprietary of Software), with the goal of getting Linus to turn over precisely where he stole his code from. Linus must immediately grant them access to his house at all times, as well as pay their salaries. He must provide an errorless full and complete accounting of his coding activities dating back to the 1980s; any contradictions found should be used as an excuse to sieze his property and jail him.
His past activities show that we have no reason to trust that Linus's interests are legitimate. His failure to hand over where he stole his code from is further evidence of his guilt; if he would simply hand it over, the penalties would be much less severe. Linus is a threat to our way of life and must be stopped.
Brown should then, if Linus refuses to state where he stole his code from, Brown should give him a 48 hours ultimatum to hand over the rights of Linux to SCO, or face retribution.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
> These petty squabbles with lines like "I do not suffer fools gladly" is why MS dominates.
MS dominates because they suffer fools gladly?
That alone would keep me from reading his book.
But the article was funny. I can't wait to see the relationship between the bunny and the Minix.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
It should be clear to anyone and everyone that Dennis Ritchie did not create the C Programming language.
Check out `man bc`. You will discover that there was a previous programming language that was written by a man named Brian Kernighan which bears striking similarities to what Mr. Ritchie would later call C.
Mr. Ritchie obviously copied wholesale from this language, with the intent to destroy the American economy, and was obviously in collusion with al-Qaeda.
Subsequent interactions between these two men were most likely based on the fact that Mr. Kernighan was ``conflicted and tense'' while in the presence of such a dangerous terrorist, and due to the fact that Mr. Kernighan was worried that his own language theft from B's predecessor, BCPL, and Martin Richards' language theft from CPL.
(Note, if you mod this, please don't mod it funny.)
I don't see why it is plausible for Canadian students to produce 16,000 lines a year but not plausible for Finnish students to produce 10,000 lines a year. It is just as cold in Finland as in Canada so programmers are never tempted to go outside.
But,
<whine>But it has to be hard!</whine> They may need to write (as has been mentioned) 10,000 lines of code in a year. That would be, gasp !, almost 28 lines of code per day. What programmer could possibly write that much code ? </SARCASM>
Personally, I've had programming exams that required me to write far more than 28 lines in an hour. And I do mean FAR.
Dean G.
The ground rules when talking to reporters or writers seem to be...
.
1. The story is already written in the writer's mind. They merely want you to supply some quotations to flesh out the "interesting" angle they have chosen
2. your comments can and will be bent to support the chosen angle.
3. some interviewers are dependent on "pushing people's buttons" to generate provocative or "sexed up" copy. If you fall into this trap, your response will become the quotable "sound bite" and the rest of your fine ideas will be pretty much buried.
The writer needs to characterize or "define" you in a word or two and if you can be induced to say something intemperate, there's the definition of yourself that you're going to see in print.
4. rebuttals and protests to the editor don't matter. Reporters and editors support their version steadfastly and with total impunity.
5. to avoid embarassment, interview with caution and be as bland and generous in your comments as you can.
'That's old. We're into this string now!'
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Marry me!
My favorite KB quote (completely pulled out of context, but not reworded a bit):
"It would be skewed and bias to only quote people that are anti-Linux or anti-open source. I have done this for years, and will continue to do so"
Linux 0.1 was totally different to Minix. Everyone I interviewed said Linus wrote Linux 0.1 himself. But Microsoft is paying me a lot of money to say otherwise. I love money, and don't care what I have to do to get it. Microsoft even gave me a copy of the same script Darl McBride is using. It's a literary masterpiece, and totally not derived from any other work ever. Look for the AdTI Review of Books, coming out soon. P.S. Anyone else notice how I didn't accuse Dennis Ritchie of remembering anything about Multics when he worked on Unix? That's because a friend of a friend of mine owns UNIX, and they would be upset if I slandered its provenance.
--
I wrote a book. All by myself. In less than six months.
SOFT WARS
Darth McBride: The Source is strong with this one
Emperor Bilgatine: The son of Linus must not become a Coder
Darth McBride: He will join us, or die, my master.
Ricstawaca the Wookie: ROOOOAAR!
Very funny, Ken, you can stop astroturfing now. :)
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Has anyone else noticed how eloquent and concise Tanenbaum's responses have been? I have many of the books he has written from when I was in school (and I enjoyed them all), but here he seems to take on an amazing writing persona. It's good to see him in top shape. Not to mention that he's so funny. There should be a book written about all of this.
Hmm, Doombob... Maybe he didn't write these rebuttals... His persona has changed says you. Hmmm...
- Ken Brown
I wonder what OJ Simpson thinks about all this....
Oh, I'm sure he's out there looking for the real author of the Linux kernal.
what a hoot. a guy using a web hosting service from one of the biggest users of open source to distribute broadsides condemning open source.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
One man couldn't possibly write so much crap in such a short time. I'm sure parts of it must be written by somebody else, and included in the Brown Book with or without permissions.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
From the k5 article (and Tanebaum's site):
AST: Who funds it?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
AST: Is SCO one of them? Is this about the SCO lawsuit?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
AST: Is Microsoft one of them?
KB: We have multiple funding sources
If only Tanenbaum had been a little more clever, there could have been these two extra lines:
AST: Is K-Mart one of them?
KB: No.
More important! Is it likely that a student (a single person) with no Tennis experience, without any use of written Tennis rules, could build a functioning Pong game in six months? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Every time I see this name, I read it as "toqueville" (maybe because I'm from Michigan). I keep picturing some little town in the northern part of the US or Canada where the whole population walks around wearing wool hats.
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duck tape to make them stop. ~G.M. Weilacher
Maybe we'll get a house guest that claims he bought Crystal Meth for Linus!
That would explain some of the filesystem bugs.
Just kidding, geez, don't flame me into the ground.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of THOSE - you could generate blue screens at an INCREDIBLE rate!!
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I think it was "Free University Compiler Kit".