Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Linux Advocacy Crackdown SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week. According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise." McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received the pink slip." The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's security cameras showing McAdams in action. In one scene, he takes a whole stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section, an area of the store rarely visited by computer users. In another, McAdams can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large, eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the store. Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading "DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98. McAdams disputes his bosses accusations. "If he would spend more time actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change." | |
Attack of the Tuxissa Virus What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history. The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair", modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines. "It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked through the Tuxissa virus source code. "This virus goes well beyond the feeble troublemaking of Melissa. It actually configures a UMSDOS partition on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down version of Slackware Linux." The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important Message About Windows Security". The text of the body says, "I want to let you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT, Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your system against these attacks. Visit these sites for more information..." The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free software. Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy. The "Anonymous Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution". | |
The War Against Linux A significant obstacle on the path to Linux World Domination has emerged. A reactionary grass-roots movement has formed to fight, as they call it, "The War Against Linux". This movement, code-named "LinSux", is composed of people (mostly Microsoft stockholders and commercial software developers) who want to maintain the status quo. They are fighting back against the rise of Linux and free software which they see as a threat to their financial independence. The most damaging attack the LinSux folks have launched is "Three Mile Island", a Windows macro virus designed to inflict damage on computers that contain a partition devoted to a non-Microsoft OS. When the victim computer is booted into Windows, the virus activates and deletes any non-Microsoft partitions. Ironically, the many security flaws in Windows allow the virus to damage alternative operating systems but leave Windows unscathed. "The War Against Linux" has also been fought in more subtle ways. Time-tested methods of Linux advocacy have been turned into subtle forms of anti-Linux advocacy by the LinSux crowd. MSCEs are smuggling NT boxes into companies that predominantly use Linux or Unix. LinSux "freedom fighters" are rearranging books and software boxes on store shelves so that Microsoft offerings are displayed more prominently. | |
Evolution Of A Linux User: The 11 Stages Towards Getting A Life 0. Microserf - Your life revolves around Windows and you worship Bill Gates and his innovative company. 1. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt... About Microsoft - You encounter a growing number of problems with Microsoft solutions, shaking your world-view 2. FUD... About Linux - After hearing about this new Linux thing, you take the plunge, but are unimpressed by the nerdware OS. 3. Born-Again Microserf - You rededicate your life to Microsoft worship 4. Disgruntled User - Microsoft software keeps screwing you over, and you're not going to take it anymore! 5. A Religious Experience - You successfully install Linux, and are left breathless at its elegance. No more Windows for you! 6. Linux Convert - You continue to fall in love with the new system 7. Linux Zealot - You dedicate your life to Linux World Domination... and it shows! You go beyond mere advocacy to sheer zealotry. 8. Back To Reality - Forces out of your control compel you to return to using Windows and Office 9. Enlightened Linux User - You become 100% Microsoft free after finding ways to overcome the need for Microsoft bloatware 10.Get A Life - You become a millionaire after your Linux portal is acquired; you move to a small tropical island and get a life | |
Brief History Of Linux (#25) By the mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless geeks fled Redmond monopolistic oppression, Armonk cluelessness, and Cupertino click-and-drool reality distortion fields. By late 1991 there was an informal Linux User Group in Finland, although its primary focus was Linux advocacy, not drinking beer and telling Microsoft jokes as most do today. Kernel development continued at a steady clip, with more and more people joining in and hoping that their patches would be accepted by the Benevolent Dictator himself. To have a patch accepted by Linus was like winning the Nobel Prize, but to face rejection was like being rejected from Clown College. The reputation game certainly sparked some flame wars. One of the most memorable crisis was over the behavior of the delete and backspace keys. A certain faction of hackers wanted the Backspace key to actually backspace and the Delete key to actually delete. Linus wasn't too keen on the proposed changes; "It Works For Me(tm)" is all he said. Some observers now think Linus was pulling rank to get back at the unknown hacker who managed to slip a patch by him that replaced the "Kernel panic" error with "Kernel panic: Linus probably fscked it all up again". | |
World Domination, One CPU Cycle At A Time Forget about searching for alien signals or prime numbers. The real distributed computing application is "Domination@World", a program to advocate Linux and Apache to every website in the world that uses Windows and IIS. The goal of the project is to probe every IP number to determine what kind of platform each Net-connected machine is running. "That's a tall order... we need lots of computers running our Domination@World clients to help probe every nook and cranny of the Net," explained Mr. Zell Litt, the project head. After the probing is complete, the second phase calls for the data to be cross-referenced with the InterNIC whois database. "This way we'll have the names, addresses, and phone numbers for every Windows-using system administrator on the planet," Zell gloated. "That's when the fun begins." The "fun" part involves LART (Linux Advocacy & Re-education Training), a plan for extreme advocacy. As part of LART, each Linux User Group will receive a list of the Windows-using weenies in their region. The LUG will then be able to employ various advocacy techniques, ranging from a soft-sell approach (sending the target a free Linux CD in the mail) all the way to "LARTcon 5" (cracking into their system and forcibly installing Linux). | |
The Blue Screen Of Advocacy The Federal Bureau of Investigation & Privacy Violations has issued a national advisory warning computer stores to be on the lookout for the "Bluescreen Bandits". These extreme Linux zealots go from store to store and from computer to computer typing in "C:\CON\CON" and causing the demo machines to crash and display the Blue Screen Of Death. Efforts to apprehend the bandits have so far been unsuccessful. The outlaws were caught on tape at a CompUSSR location in Southern California, but in an ironic twist, the surveillance system bluescreened just before the penguinistas came into clear view. "We don't have many clues. It's not clear whether a small group is behind the bluescreen vandalism, or whether hundreds or even thousands of geek zealots are involved," said the manager of a Capacitor City store. The manager has good reason to be upset. The bluescreen raid was the top story in the local newspaper and quickly became a hot topic of discussion. As a result, the local school board halted its controversial plans to migrate their computers from Macs to PCs. | |
In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do. -- Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy |