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| Linus Torvalds goes off on Linux and Git |
| By Thom Holwerda, submitted by MOS6510 on 2012-09-27 18:44:53 |
| "I was in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and happened to spot Linus Torvalds sitting alone at a window table. I asked the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git source code control system if I could join him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talked about programming and programmers." Editor's Note: We've realized it's unclear whether this is a satirical interview or not. We don't know, so YMMV. |
|
| That super-complex text editor |
| By tidux on 2012-09-27 18:51:45 |
| I found it: http://www.gnu.org/software/emac... |
 - Score: 5 |
| What is the point... |
| By galvanash on 2012-09-27 18:59:21 |
|
...of linking to a completely fictitious interview? Or more importantly, what is the point of writing it? I don't get it. Anyone who knows Linus would immediately know this is not him. I know the article is marked as "satire", but other than that is appears completely sincere - there is nothing even remotely funny about it. Is someone actually trying to "smear" Linus? The motivation to do this is just totally lost on me. |
| - Score: 13 |
| RE: That super-complex text editor |
| By Bill Shooter of Bul on 2012-09-27 19:04:19 |
|
Sort of. https://plus.google.com/+LinusTor... microemacs is his thing. |
| - Score: 3 |
| By BeamishBoy on 2012-09-27 19:20:48 |
| I've been amazed by two things related to this over the past few days: (1) the speed at which the article has spread around Twitter, being retweeted by loads of people who think it's a genuine interview, and (2) the number of people who subsequently claim that they were in on the joke all along when they posted/tweeted/linked to it. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: What is the point... |
| By BeamishBoy on 2012-09-27 19:21:50 |
|
> I know the article is marked as "satire", but other than that is appears completely sincere - there is nothing even remotely funny about it. Perhaps, but there's more than a grain of truth to his comments about Git and whatever happens to be flavour of the month in terms of programming languages. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: What is the point... |
| By No it isnt on 2012-09-27 19:57:05 |
|
It started off pretty well, comparing programmer types to hipsters. There's some truth in it. Then the writer went out of ideas, and put claims like "[distros are] all pretty much the same thing warmed over", as if something like Archlinux doesn't keep the indie cred of anything you have to install through the command line. Git being too hard to use? That's just silly. Satire works when it tells the truth in a jarring way, not when it's just dumb. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE: What is the point... |
| By -pekr- on 2012-09-27 19:57:31 |
|
No sense of humour? Or you got yourself caught? Well, I think that Thom might directly mark the news as a satire/fun/humour, and everything would be OK. Other than that, in the past I liked the interview with C++ creator, which many believed, is a genuine too :-) http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/I... |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: What is the point... |
| By galvanash on 2012-09-27 20:15:21 |
|
> Perhaps, but there's more than a grain of truth to his comments about Git and whatever happens to be flavour of the month in terms of programming languages. Maybe... But that is kind of the point. Linus is not and never has been interested in "flavor of the month" thinking. Git might be looked upon as fashionable by some of the "Black t-shirt" crowd as the author puts it, but I think that even Linus would say if you pick your RCS based on it being "fashionable" your an idiot... I'm just saying the satire doesn't seem to work in this case... To me for satire to work you have to attribute some questionable words into someones mouth that your intended audience would think might come out of it - or alternately something so completely ridiculous that you immediately know they would never say it. Almost everything he has Linus saying in this piece is ridiculous - but only if you are familiar with his personality. Maybe I'm just not getting it. I could see someone saying this stuff - just not Linus. I just think that most people reading in would probably not understand it as satire... In hindsight maybe that is the point. It seems to me to be more of a poorly timed April Fools joke than a true satire. Edited 2012-09-27 20:28 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: What is the point... |
| By galvanash on 2012-09-27 20:20:26 |
| I do have a sense of humor... That is why I'm complaining about this - it isn't funny. I like good satire - this is so bad it doesn't even resemble satire. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE[3]: What is the point... |
| By leppi on 2012-09-27 20:36:55 |
|
Ya, I agree -- It wasn't funny, or enlightening, or... anything else that satire usually is. I'm not sure what it was supposed to be honestly. I guess humor is sometimes very specific. I do think that this has been re-tweeted mostly because people thought this was an actual interview. (opinion) |
| - Score: 4 |
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