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The Anti-Linux-IPO Howto

Mike writes "The Anti-Linux-IPO Howto, it's pretty funny. Want to write an article that is Anti-Linux or an Anti-IPO article with little thought and research? Well, then The Anti-Linux-IPO Howto is for you." One of the funniest things I've read in weeks.

49 comments

  1. Sad... But that is all true. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know it was meant to be humerous, but the sad truth, everything there is true. Well, except the highly sarcastic ones.. But all the Linux's weaknesses are pretty much laid out in that article perfectly.

    1. Re:Sad... But that is all true. by Overt+Coward · · Score: 1
      I'm not sure this is what the original poster meant, but it's true that all those things are said by so-called "journalists" about Linux. Obviously they can't all be true.

      Well, actually they can, but only from a variety of reference points. One author couldn't state all of them at the same time. Whether any of them are actually true depends entirely on your own personal viewpoint and expectations. There will always be someone who can defend any of those statements about anything, let alone Linux.

    2. Re:Sad... But that is all true. by S.Herring · · Score: 1

      *blink*

      everything in there is true?

      even

      'is not fragmented enough.
      is too fragmented.
      changes too much.
      doesn't change enough. '?

  2. You mud-sucking pond scum! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I eat crap like you for breakfast!

    You eat NT for breakfast?

  3. It's just like a real IPO. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's even funnier if you'd already read Red Hat's IPO filing with the SEC.

  4. Re:Gerald Holmes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is definetely very funny! Man, just at the end of the week TWO bellyachingfunny articles! Great!!!!

    "linux was made by some junior high and elementary school kids too, and they are all in jail now because they hacked into the pentagon so there wont be any more linus operating system updates but whereas Bill Gates is loved by the federal govenrment and is an updstanding citizen who whould never brake no lawas"

    Hilarious!

  5. Re:Gerald Holmes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow. You people are not the brightest candles at the picnic are you. Not exactly rocket surgeons, if you get my drift.

    How could you possibly for a second even consider that to be a serious page by a MS devotee? Are you daft?

    I'm generally a fan of NT (and Linux) but I have to admit it was kind of a funny page, even if it was written by an anti-MS nerd.

  6. Re:Billy-Bob by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The NT OS proper supports the '/' delimiter. Get a clue with the retreaded 'DOS uses backslashes! hehehe' comments.

    Giddyup.

  7. very funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, right.

  8. Quote of the year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You know that your dealing with someone that isn't worth argueing with when they come out with a quote like:

    "Just forget those fortune 500 companies that IDC surveyed. Those International Data Corp. guys were paid off by Eric Raymond."

    I have actually seen perform some of the other things that Paul Ferris has in his mock howto, but where did this one come from?? :)

  9. Re:Gerald Holmes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only failing of this page is, its not updated enough!

    Now imagine that guy updated his page daily? I'd seriously hurt myself from laughing too hard.

  10. communism irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    well, communism is about a central economy. the so-called information economy is not an economy. you give an idea to a friend, you still have that idea. not the same for a sandwich. that's why copyrights were invented: to transform the infosphere into an economy. it is currently failing.

    what you are talking about is anarchism, which based on the principle that a person should have control over his/her own life. Anarchists seek successful social patterns that naturally avoid central control.

    Open-Source is anarchism that works.

  11. enough with the communism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You people that keep comparing the Open Source community to communism apparently do not have much of a clue about what communism is. Communism is NOT about freedom. It is about one group, namely the government, owning all property and industry, and "sharing" it among the people *however they see fit*. We have seen that this model fails miserably.
    The fundamental thing is that communism is anti-freedom. The entire idea behind Open Source software is freedom, namely the freedom of the source code.
    Actually, if you must try to match an economic model with the Open Source model, capitalism is the closest fit. Capitalism is about free enterprise. Individuals may decide how their inventions or products are published or marketed. Making a program GPL, or some other similar license, is a decision that the programmer is free to make.

  12. Dude. You eat crap for breakfast? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .

  13. well actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It doesn't matter what it is in theory. It matters what it is in practice. The USSR is not the only example. Try communist China.

  14. That bastard! by volsung · · Score: 3
    He actually was trying to be funny! Doesn't he know there are some things you just don't joke about?! The correct spelling of Torvalds is our sacred duty, not to be trivialized by some twit who probably can't even create an ext2 partition with a hex editor! I think I'll go flame that satanic pod-scum jerk right now!

    Okay, really that was hilarious! I loved it!

  15. If I remember correctly... by mce · · Score: 1
    ...sorry, no flames here, despite the subject :-)

    Anyway, if I remember correctly, some Micro$erf (possibly even the Big Micro$hief himself) once admitted that the biggest mi$take they made when concocting DOS, was to use \ instead of the then (already ;-) "widely" accepted /. Hmmm, while I hate the \ with a passion, I very much doubt the accuracy of the assesment, but that's another issue.

    I don't remember where I read that, though, only that it was many many moons ago.

    --

  16. Freakin' hilarious by gavinhall · · Score: 2

    Posted by Mike@ABC:

    What's that saying...? "It's funny because it's true." I'm just glad my editor hasn't told me to write a Red Hat IPO story yet.

  17. Re:Sad but True by sterwill · · Score: 1
    Wow, I'd skipped over that article the first time, but it's just one big error. Everything he says is incorrect, under-researched, or unrelated to his point.
    2- Consistency may be the "hobgoblin of small minds" but Oliver Wendell Holmes never wrote C-Code.
    And, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the quote "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", and wasn't it Ralpha Waldo Emerson's? This man doesn't know computers, doesn't know Unix, doesn't know copyright law or software licenses, certainly doesn't know a thing about Red Hat, and can't even remember English.
  18. Correction by sterwill · · Score: 1

    The quote in the previous message is in err. The author referred not to the words of "Ralpha Waldo Emerson", the nineteenth century Italian Unitarian transcendentalist, but to those of "Ralph," the American one. The Onion regrets this error.

  19. ROTFLMTO. by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
    Yippee. Excellent stuff!

    (BTW, I just wonder about that "well-defined roadmap" thing. Sure, it sounds great, but what does that mean? Designed By Commitee?)

  20. Re:Gerald Holmes by blue · · Score: 1

    I remember this being posted (as a comment) on Slashdot by the author on some Pirates of Silicon Valley article. ( http://www.fre eyellow.com:8080/members7/geraldholmes/MScartoon1. html)

  21. Re:Billy-Bob by Ben+Hutchings · · Score: 1

    Even DOS lets you use forward slashes, though most commands won't allow them at the beginning of a path. However, canonical path names use back slashes.

  22. Getting paid to use Windows by unitron · · Score: 1

    "Billy will find a way to pay people to take Windows, and still make money. "

    The scary part is that this is probably true.

    --

    I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  23. The beauty of the net by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

    is that, unlike real life, when you say something you haven't actually said it until you hit the 'send' button. The best thing to do is just wait until the pounding stops and the little demons in your head stop screaming, and then re-read what you've written. You'll never get First Post this way, but at least some poor soul won't be burn to a crisp unintentionally. Though admitedly, refraining from triumphantly hitting the send button as a final exclamation point on your wonderfull flame is a challenge in itself.

    God, I wish I could do that in R/L. :)

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  24. (**snicker**) by Bilbo · · Score: 1
    Pretty good. A little preachy at the end, but other than that, excellent. Does a good job poking fun at both sides of the flame war.

    I especially liked the Al Gore comments... ;-)

    --
    Your Servant, B. Baggins
  25. Re:Gerald Holmes by Bilbo · · Score: 1
    OK... I'm dense. Is this guy a bleeding idiot, or the greatest genious of all time? Either way, the site was good for a belly laugh (or a sob, if this is an acurate reflection of the average intellegence of most MS users.)

    (I would have guessed he was about 13 from the writing style, not 40-something)

    --
    Your Servant, B. Baggins
  26. Re:Sad but True by Bilbo · · Score: 1
    I have a feeling that this little HOWTO was prompted in large part by that very column. That column still stands as a classic in the annals of poor technical journalism for all its errors, misinterpretations and lack of thought.

    (BTW - Get a Grip. Blaming getting moderated down on the "new world order" is a poor excuse for shoddy writing.)

    --
    Your Servant, B. Baggins
  27. Re:Gerald Holmes by The+Anonymous+Cow · · Score: 1
    OK... I'm dense. Is this guy a bleeding idiot, or the greatest genious of all time?

    I believe the latter (or close to it). There's too much consistency in the misspellings and grammar for it to be anything but a parody.

    --
    Moo!
  28. Gerald Holmes by The+Anonymous+Cow · · Score: 3
    This is the funniest site I've seen in a long time. Check it out.

    http://www.freeyellow.co m/members7/geraldholmes/index.html

    --
    Moo!
  29. CGI goodness by OWJones · · Score: 1

    The Anti-Linux CGI
    Yay for PERL and cut and paste. Enjoy.

  30. kinda funny by sallgeud · · Score: 3

    I thought the idea of bashing the fact that nobody ever gets the facts right when they bash linux or IPOs was funny, but I dislike the fact that it tries to portray linux as the supreme OS.

    I've noticed in my years of following stories on OSs and the comments posted about them, that the Linux crowd (and I know this it's the minority causing the majority to appear as such) is more voracious and illogical in their arguments whenever someone takes to bashing their OS (or kernel). I've written a few articles which bashed the reliability of NT compared to other more stable OSs like Solaris, FreeBSD, and BSDi. Only about 1% of the responants made a personal attack on me. Admitedly many of them lacked a good argument in their replies, but they did argue without namecalling and without mailbombing. So, one day I decided I'd write an article about how Linux is a stepping stone to more stable OSs (YES, Linux is not nearly as stable as Solaris, HP-UX, or most others). I realized later this was one of the biggest mistakes I could have possibly made. About 10% of the replies I received were personal attacks.

    So this article does make a good point that most poeple would fear writing an anti-Linux article because of the evilness perpetuated by the users.

    I will admit that the vast majority of Linux users are fairly well behaved and have good arguments as to why their OS/kernel is better. Most of the time they're right, but when someone finds that little part of Linux where some other non-Unix-like OS beats the living shit out of it, all of the violent majority pop their heads up and destroy what should be a very peaceful society.

    Open Source is much like communism... Everyone contributes for the good of the whole. It makes sense. I'm not a big fan of communism in government, but I think it's perfect for technology.

    So instead of being MS-hating people, maybe it would be good for us, as a group of users, to stop attacking those who are pro-MS and start using our time to make something better, in the spirit of communism.

    ok, hope that was confusing.

    Chad "Waiting for McCarthy" Kreimendahl

    1. Re:kinda funny by m3000 · · Score: 1

      >So instead of being MS-hating people, maybe it would be good for us, as a group of users, to stop attacking those who are pro-MS

      Hahahah that's a joke right? The day Slashdot stops flaming anyone who says anything good about Microsoft is the day that, well, it'll never happen so it doesn't matter.

  31. *Very* Funny by lisa · · Score: 1

    Usually, I find Linux humor quite dull and unoriginal, both in content and presentation. This was refreshingly hilarious!

    Nice job.

    -Lisa

  32. Automated article filtering by Ratface · · Score: 1

    If we actually persuade journos to use the How-To, then it would be pretty straightforward to write a spider to crawl the web, catalogue all the journalists who have written anti-Linux articles so that when MS is no more and Linux rules the world, they can be first up against the wall!

    (Or at least a clause could be written into the GPL that Linux is not to be distributed to people who have said nasty things about it).

    :-)

    --

    A little planning goes a long way...
  33. Sad but True by irix · · Score: 4

    Very funny :)

    Unfortunately, was obviously actually used by many clueless morons, including some unapologetic idiots at who write for Slashdot's new owners. :(

    I'm sure I'll be moderated down by the new world order.

    --

    Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
  34. swamp the comment page! by blandest · · Score: 1

    everyone go read the article and then post a comment, i bet they'll be surpised when they end up with 100+ comments for 1 article!

  35. dubass@andover by delmoi · · Score: 1

    That guys 'correction'(I have neither the time nor the inclination to look up the URL) or whatever, he basically lambasted /. for being a hangout of hackers and teenage sociopaths.

    Now Rob Malda is on the Andover board

    heh
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  36. um, why? by delmoi · · Score: 1

    do you mean the linuxtoday page?
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  37. that's not what comunism is ether by delmoi · · Score: 1

    that's stalinsm, or socialism. remember, there has *never* been a *true* comunist contry in the history of the world. "Union of Soviet *Socalist* republics", remember?

    Comunism is not in and of itself a bad thing, unfortunetly it's not actualy posible to implement.... capitalism, with *a little* control is generaly the best thing (IE anti-trust laws)
    _
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  38. That site is hilarious! by jfunk · · Score: 1

    Oh I loved it. I just *had* to send some fan mail:

    subject: Wow you rock!!!

    Wow, I'd like to try that micorsoft stuff but I can't because I live in Canada where no computers wes have and i a long-hair beacuse the government and police force us to and beat us daily.

    I only got to see the site by sneaking across the border into americer ands using the shiny metal coins given to me by friendly passerd-by (i a long-hair so theey thunk i wus homeless) on a "public internet terminal." I don't know much about that stuff but from what you say it's reallly realy good because billy discovered and invented i9t.

    I enjoyed it.


    Hehheh.

  39. Hilarious! by [bog-oh] · · Score: 2
    People won't develop these applications anyway, because :

    Linux uses /'s for directory separation and Windows uses \'s.

    Ah, what a laugh!

    --
    THIS IS PRE-ALPHA PRIVATE RELEASE CODE!!!
    DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU ARE A DEVELOPER.
    ALL IT DOES IS CRAS
  40. Re:Finally by anothernumber · · Score: 0

    Opps... wrong article!

  41. It DOES matter ... by fable2112 · · Score: 2


    Otherwise, words can be defined however someone feels like.

    In this particular instance, it matters because a lot of young idealistic folks get attracted to the principles contained in the Communist Manifesto, sign on with some radical organization or another (been there, done that -- the FBI probably has a massive file on me by now), and are told that what they read doesn't matter, it's only the bastardization that occurred thanks to Stalin that has any relevance.

    "Communist" becomes a synonym for "opinion that WE the American People disagree with." And then it gets completely meaningless.

    --
    "Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today ... but it wasn't anybody I knew" -The Moody Blues, "Dear Diar
  42. A mini How-to by fable2112 · · Score: 4


    This is a mini-How-to for how to flame a /. article:

    It helps if the subject line doesn't contain the actual flame. That way, you're less likely to be noticed and marked down by the moderators. Be subtle about this (but ONLY this) part of the flame.

    Suggested titles include:

    1. If I remember right:
    2. Go ahead and flame me, but
    3. I disagree, and this is why...
    4. No!
    5. I don't get it.

    Once you're in the body of the message, tell everyone why the article sucks.

    "I can't believe you posted this. It sucks, because (use one or more):

    1. It's NOT news for nerds!
    2. It confuses hackers with crackers.
    3. It glorifies cracking/cracking tools.
    4. It's a childish attempt at humor.
    5. It makes fun of something that is Sacred to Geeks (Star Wars, etc.)
    6. It is actively critical of something that is Sacred to Geeks.
    7. We've heard way too much about this topic as is; can't you talk about something else?
    8. It's knee-jerk liberalism.
    9. It's knee-jerk libertarianism.
    10. It's full of typos.
    11. Andover.net obviously made you post it.
    12. You just want to see your name in print!
    13. No one CARES. So shut up."

    Rant and rave a bit more, and then conclude with:

    1. Slashdot is really starting to suck. Remember the good old days?
    2. Now I remember why I hate the media. ALL of the media.
    3. Fire Jon Katz!
    4. I can't believe you people are so clueless.

    *grin* (Not that I'm advocating any of the above, mind you ...)

    --
    "Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today ... but it wasn't anybody I knew" -The Moody Blues, "Dear Diar
  43. None so blind, etc. by imac.usr · · Score: 1

    > li> causes blindness in laboratory tests with Mac users.

    Hmmmm. Well, I do have really bad eyesight. I can't even see the bullet in the list item.

    Re the screensaver issue: I wonder if somebody could convince Berkeley Systems to port After Dark to Linux?




    --
    I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
  44. Billy-Bob by MrEd · · Score: 1

    I'll bet Bill wakes up every day furious that the Internet uses /'s instead of \'s. All he needs are a few more Anti-Linux IPO articles and he'll be poised to propose a new standard of directory delineation and deliver the crippling blow to competition everywhere... :)

    --

    Wah!

  45. Re:That bastard! (spell checking - flame checking) by kiatoa · · Score: 1

    Hmmm... is "Torvalds" in the Ispell checker by default?

    Now is some enterprising hacker/coder could go out and write a "Flame checking" program. I know I could sure use it. Sometimes I see red so bad I don't even know I'm flaming. Make it one of those irritating active things that checks as you type.

    --
    90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
  46. Very Funny by BlackHat · · Score: 1

    I like the term "mud-sucking pond scum"
    It fits "The Bill" for me. [/:-)