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Is Linux affiliated with the 4th Reich?


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:rolleyes:

 

Nope. If you've ever hung out with programmers the Linux crowd is about as far from any Reich as could be.

RobT

 

Famous Musical Quotes: "I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve" - Xavier Cugat

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Linux only poses a threat to software companies selling mediocre operating systems at prices that are way too high and who's succes depends solely on their marketing department.

 

Having said that, it's Microsoft who are probably the closest thing to a 4th reich yet, not the linux community.

 

IBM are quite smart to hop on the big buzz. In the long run it will probably take them a long way in the right direction.

Stirring shit up since 1968
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Originally posted by thisDude:

Have you seen those IBM commercials with the Aryian blond haired blue eyed Linux boy? The theme seems to be "shake up the system".

 

In all seriousness, do you think the open source community poses a threat to capitalism?

Okay, first of all...and no offense meant, really...but you've got WAY too much goddamned time on your hands to pull that out of a commercial. :D Some casting director somewhere picked this kid out of a lineup. I used to be an actor in commercials...I've seen it happen, LIVE.

 

Second: Have you ever seen Linus Torvalds? Blond, blue-eyed.

 

Theme? "Shake up the system"? Well, sure...why not? What does that have to do with Aryans?

I've upped my standards; now, up yours.
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I thought it was obvious that this was a joke :rolleyes: . You can't watch a single football game without seeing him. But that kid is kinda creepy and he seems to be getting older in the more recent commercials. Maybe they'll follow him his entire life or maybe he'll go the way of the Noid.

 

offramp said:

I used to be an actor in commercials...I've seen it happen, LIVE.
No kidding? Local, regional, national? What products or services were you pushing?
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Oh, mostly local and regional, back when I was in Indiana.

 

For one whole freakin' year, I had people coming up to me and saying "Hey, you're the canoe guy!!!", in reference to a tourism spot I was in.

 

Checks were good. :D

I've upped my standards; now, up yours.
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To try to answer the serious part of the question, no Linux is not a threat to capitalism! It's a boon to capitalism, for everyone except companies like Microsoft whose livelihood depends on software being proprietary. Got a great hi tech product you want to bring to market? Use Linux as the OS behind it, and you'll save yourself YEARS and potentially millions of dollars in R&D. You'll have an already proven, stable and completely configurable/modifiable OS as your basis. Starting a business and need to set up your office on a shoestring? Use Linux and open source software like OpenOffice, and your business can be up and running without having to pay huge software licensing fees.

 

Nor will you have to worry about constant worm and virus threats and other security holes that could cost your business tons of money. No one will hold your feet to the fire to upgrade your OS or software if you don't want to, and if and when you do, you will be using software that's been rigorously tested and improved upon by thousands of users and programmers who are up front with you about the state of the software. Beta means beta and stable means stable.

 

Plus, with the code being open there's no one who has central control of it. If a proprietary software company goes belly-up or changes their policy to something you can't live with, you're SOL. With open source, you still have complete control of your software assets, and usually some other support/distribution company arises to take up the slack.

 

I could go on, but I hope you're getting the picture.

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well said, all of you.

 

ThisDude, i see that it's a joke ;)

 

Speaking of Linus btw, i haven't met him in person nor exchanged email with him, but i've read a lot of interviews and a lot of his notes in the linux kernel source and on the Linux Kernel Mailing List.

 

Aside from being an excellent programmer, he's one helluva guy. He's confident, but not cocky, competent without being condenscending. He's got a great sense of humour, and he's real down to earth. He's honest to himself about his abilities and his project, and he won't bullshit you about stuff either.

 

He's done some amazing stuff, and he's way smart, and accomplished, yet you get the impression that he'd sit down, sip some suds and pass the time with you if he had the time && place. And talk about Linux, coding, computing, quantum physics, finnish rock bands or whatever.

 

He's just a cool guy.

 

(Not that it matters, but) I don't see Bill Gates or Steve Jobs doing this. Wozniak, yes, but not Jobs.

Dr. Seuss: The Original White Rapper

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WWND?

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Just a comment on the open source community as a whole: Pretty soon, no matter how many bells and whistles proprietory software adds, the increased productivity (if any) won't be worth the price of the upgrade. Already, the main incentive for businesses to upgrade is to be current and to have the ability to work with files created by newer versions of software.

 

Business schools are teaching IT professionals to be "software users" rather than programmers. The open source community may be a catalyst to shift the emphasis from IT guys making their living using specific software to IT guys making their living researching, gathering and compiling freely available source code to meet business needs.

 

In a little under a year, I've managed to do some amazing things with linux, php, mysql, and apache... amazing, considering I've had very little prior programming experience... nothing groundbreaking. Sure it would be faster and easier if I went out and bought some RAD software, but there is a certain sense of satisfaction I get from finally getting something to work. I imagine if businesses were free from the vise of proprietory software, they could pay IT guys more for their knowledge, rather than upgrades. In the words of Aristotle... "If I have seen fartther than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants".

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