Fathers of Linux Revealed: Tooth Fairy & Santa Claus

An anonymous reader writes "The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, which published the results of their very thorough investigation today, turned out to be right. Linus really isn't the father of the Linux operating system. After having been found out, Linus had no choice but to admit -- this is what he has to say: 'Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.'"

mod DOWN the duplicate post Posters

[dnotj]

This isn't a dupe, we don't read the articles anymore, now we don't even ready the Posting. Wake up people, this is Linus' rebuttal.

Article Text: LW Slashdotted already

LinuxWorld Exclusive: Linus Torvalds Makes Startling Admission, Discloses *Real* Fathers of Linux May 17, 2004 Summary As only Linus Torvalds can, the undisputed - except by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute - inventor of Linux has as promised let LinuxWorld have his immediate comment on the AdTI's president's claims this morning that the parentage of Linux is in doubt. Read his startling admission exclusively here.

"Ok, I admit it. I was just a front-man for the real fathers of Linux, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus."

Thus begins a characteristically Torvaldsian e-mail to LinuxWorld News Desk sent by Linus Torvalds in response to our invitation to comment on the sensationalist claims this morning that he isn't, after all, the inventor of Linux.

"They (for obvious reasons) couldn't step forward to admit that they had gotten bitten by the computer bug, and had been developing a series of operating systems on their own during the off season. But when they started with Linux (which they originally called Freax - they do feel like outsiders, you know, and that's a whole sad story in itself), they felt that they could no longer just let it languish in obscurity. They started to look for a front-man, and since Santa Claus is from Finland and thus has connections to Helsinki University, and the tooth fairy claimed 'He's got good strong teeth,' I got selected."

"Since then," Torvalds continues, "I've lived a life of subterfuge, always afraid that somebody would find out the truth. I'm actually relieved that it's over, and that the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute has finally uncovered the lie. I can now go back to my chosen profession, the exploration of the fascinating mating dance of the common newt."

In a PS he adds:

"Btw, did you know that newts have more offspring if you play the harmonica to them during their mating rituals? It's true."

And in a PPS:

Btw, I do believe that somebody took over adti.net.

I don't think the Alexis de Tocqueville institute ever had humor (they certainly used to take themselves very seriously), but their site today is filled with jokes.

Maybe they forgot to pay their DNS registration fee, and some enterprising person decided to play a joke on them? Or maybe their clocks are running a month-and-a-half late?

Or is it really unintentional?

Linus

Re:all hail Linus

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It's a good thing Linus has a sense of humor. He might smite them down."

I wouldn't be sickened by this comment if it had been modded funny instead of insightful...

Re:But!

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't exist. Santa Clause is just the Easter Bunny in disguise.

Re:Stand-up.

[Zone-MR]

What do you mean it doesn't? The story is in the "It's funny, laugh" section.

Re:I'm curious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the tooth fairy be a mother? :/

On the Twilight Zone TV show, at least, the Tooth Fairy was male.

Re:Dishonest list?

[Rostin]

Commonly "soft" and "hard" (or some other appropriate adjectives) atheism are distinguished from one another and from agnosticism.

Agnosticism: We are incapable of knowing whether or not God exists

"hard" atheism: God does not exist

"soft" atheism: There is insufficient evidence to believe in God, or belief in God is irrational.

Re:Linus key quote and hackers.

[csnydermvpsoft]

Database last updated 17-May-2004 19:14:38 EDT.

Uhh... that's the timestamp for the last update of the entire .net (and maybe .com too) database - which has obviously been very recent.

Re:Dishonest list?

[benploni]

Wrong. Linus qualifies as an atheist by his own words.

From an interview in the November 1999 Linux Journal magazine:

Margie: How about religion?
Linus: Hmmmm, completely a-religious -- atheist.

Re:Dishonest list?

[ornil]

I'd like to point out that gnostic is not the opposite of an agnostic (or vice versa, if you prefer). Gnostics (according to OED) are

The designation given to certain heretical sects among the early Christians who claimed to have superior knowledge of things spiritual, and interpreted the sacred writings by a mystic philosophy

I have never seen it used in the sense of opposite to "agnostic" and OED only saw it once a long time ago.

Re:Horrible!

[dema]

You obviously don't watch Ren and Stimpy. The tooth fairy is one ugly little thing!

Re:Familiar pair for atheists.

[UserGoogol]

Larry Wall invented Perl. If that doesn't show the mind-twisting effect that religion can have on some people, I don't know what does.

Of course, Knuth is an absolutely wonderful computer scientist, so clearly religion goes either way.

Re:Bad Name - as usual

[wishus]

A truer definition of the word, "atheist", could then be, "Could care less if there is or is not a God -- so, quit arguing incessantly about it and pass the gravy!".

I think the actual definition is someone who believes there is no god. Compare to theist, monotheist, polytheist, pantheist, etc. Someone who does not know if there is a god or not is an agnostic - he professes no knowledge about the existence of a god.

Still, none of these words convey a sense of how evangelistic the believer is concerning his views.

Re:Famous scientist believers [Re:Familiar pair...

[benploni]

Lots of famous scientists were deeply religious. I never claimed otherwise. I merely expressed lack of surprise that Linus is not.

the word you are looking for is "agnostic"

[mzs]

I saw some of the other posts and I knew that there were people in the early Church called Gnostics that thought that there was a road of secret knowledge to understanding God and ultimate salvation or something. (Don't ask, nine years of religious educations...) It would make sense that an a-gnostic would be the opposite in some way. I was pleasantly surprised when I went to verify that with a web search. Check out the Word History [dictionary.com] for agnostic.

Word History: An agnostic does not deny the existence of God and heaven but holds that one cannot know for certain whether or not they exist. The term agnostic was fittingly coined by the 19th-century British scientist Thomas H. Huxley, who believed that only material phenomena were objects of exact knowledge. He made up the word from the prefix a-, meaning "without, not," as in amoral, and the noun Gnostic. Gnostic is related to the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge," which was used by early Christian writers to mean "higher, esoteric knowledge of spiritual things" hence, Gnostic referred to those with such knowledge. In coining the term agnostic, Huxley was considering as "Gnostics" a group of his fellow intellectuals"-ists," as he called them - who had eagerly embraced various doctrines or theories that explained the world to their satisfaction. Because he was a "man without a rag of a label to cover himself with," Huxley coined the term agnostic for himself, its first published use being in 1870.

Just goes to show, I can learn something new everyday...

adti.net on freebsd

[MySt1k]

from a post in the Comments of the article,

amomynous commented ... Funny that for all their railing against FOSS software, www.adti.net is served from FreeBSD [netcraft]. http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.adti .net I would think for all their MS schilling, they would go with their own recommendations.

Who is the ADTI ?

[sfjoe]

I picked a couple of names at semi-random (names that seemed to be fairly uncommon) and did a Google search. Apparently, the requirements to be a "Teacher Choice Fellow" are not high. Google had zero results for both Don Koniezco and
Marilyn Ketter Rittmeyer.
Interesting.

Re:Familiar pair for atheists.

[aussersterne]

There are no [yale.edu] shortage [duke.edu] of [nd.edu] top [ox.ac.uk] universities [uchicago.edu] that have excellent theology or divinity departments. Some of the world's most influential and interesting thinkers have been theologians.

As someone studying at one of these [uchicago.edu] top universities who has some familiarity with the Divinity school, I am going to humbly suggest that you might be surprised at the percentage of divinity students who are (gasp!) atheists.

To study religion is not the same thing as to want to be employed by it. The bulk of religion scholars want to be academics, not clergy, and they tend to study things like violence and religion, exploitation and religion, nationalism and religion, war and religion, mental illness and religion, history of religious conflict...

So yes, it's the study of religion at a top university, but by no means does this mean that all of these people hope someday to be pope.

Linus a Wodehouse fan?

[SilentT]

"I can now go back to my chosen profession, the exploration of the fascinating mating dance of the common newt. ... Btw, did you know that newts have more offspring if you play the harmonica to them during their mating rituals? It's true."

I wonder if Linus was alluding to P.G. Wodehouse [amazon.com] here. In some of Wodehouse's novels there is a character by the name of Finknottle (I think) who lives a lonely life in the country and is obsessed with newts. In one book (don't remember which...) he talks about the mating dance of the newt.

Re:Familiar pair for atheists.

[pNutz]

You're absolutely right. I seriously doubt there are enough divinity students around to fill up the clergy. I don't belive I've ever met a priest that majored in Divinity.
If you ask a priest what they major was in seminary, they'll most likely tell you Biology or some other science.
Ask one. They're nice people and generally open to discussions about religion in general.
A priest, though, not a pastor. They'll just throw a Bible at you.