%
"I want you guys to look at your computer screen, imagining the worst
 monster you can (the cacodeamon from Quake will do, just make him hairier
 and bigger and more MEAN), and think of me. Think of me like I am when I
 see a patch which isn't a pure bug-fix.

 If you're whimpering just _thinking_ about sending me a new feature,
 you're in the right mindframe. Keep that mindframe."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel.   In fact, nobody who
 expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will
 read even half.  Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about
 a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea.  None of the
 individual gnomes read all the postings either,  they just work together
 really well."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"And I doubt complaining to the author gets you anything but a free procmail
 rule."

	- Alan Cox on asking authors to document their code
%
"hairier and meaner.. you need to grow a beard Linus"

	- A bearded Alan Cox in response to Linus' "cacodaemon" post
%
"Linux doesn't support any sub-32-bit computers, and despite the occasional
 deranged people interested in retro-computing (ie Alan Cox) I doubt it
 seriously will.."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Innovation, innovate, and the concept of doing what everyone else did 20
 years ago are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other
 buzzwords, euphemisms, and blatant lies are trademarks of their respective
 owners."

	- James Simmons
%
"If I have trouble installing Linux, something is wrong. Very wrong."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I've just come to this group and I don't know what it's all about.
 I just feel it must be something really serious. Is it really ?"

	- H. J. Thomas on linux-activists
%
"I hope you will find the courage to keep on living
 despite the existence of this feature."

	- Richard Stallman
%
"Now I know why you say so little in person, you mouth is in a NOP because
 the brain is always inserting requests at the top of the list_head."

	- Andre Hedrick on Alan Cox
%
"Existence of programs that do the impossible is
 not a proof that that "impossible" is now possible."

	- Tigran Aivazian
%
"I suppose this is the Linus Torvalds version of Fermats Last Theorem :-)
 (Leaving people wondering "why" for hundreds of years...)"

	- Timmy Thorn on kernel/sched.c:schedule()
%
">So what is The Big Difference(tm) that make file streams
 >so much better than directories and so much different?

 I'll talk really slowly."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"If we can't keep this sort of thing out of the kernel, we might as well
 pack it up and go run Solaris."

	- Larry McVoy
%
"Jamie, you know how inappropriate it is to introduce facts in a
 discussion about ReiserFS, please refrain from that in the future."

	- Jes Sorenson

"Sorry, I will use [OFFTOPIC] for facts in future ;-)"

	- Jamie Lokier
%
"Since when has a dictator ever been benign?  I hear all this
 libertarian garbage being spouted from the "linux community",
 and then have people apparently celebrate the existance of a
 dictatorship..."

	- Michael W. Zappe
%
"Message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an
 excercise in computer science masturbation. It may feel good, but you
 don't actually get anything DONE."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Talk is cheap. Show me the code."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Think of it this way: threads are like salt, not like
 pasta. You like salt, I like salt, we all like salt. But we
 eat more pasta."

	- Larry McVoy
%
"THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we
 get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really 
 bad ideas.."

	- Linus Torvalds"
%
"I am getting pretty good at running diff and patch now" 

	- Jeff Merkey
%
"Hardware simply does not work like the manual says and no amount 
 of Zen contemplation will ever make you at one with a 3c905B 
 ethernet card."

	- Alan Cox
%
"Hard work now leads to less work full stop"

	- Alan Cox
%
"Thanks, and THIS time it really is fixed. I mean, how many times can we
 get it wrong? At some point, we just have to run out of really bad ideas.."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I am getting pretty good at running diff and patch now."

	- Jeff Merkey 
%
"I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's darwinism 
 in software development.  It's a cold, callous argument that says 
 that there are two kinds of people, and I'd rather not work with the 
 second kind. Live with it."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"The debugger is akin to giving the _rabbits_ a bazooka. The poor wolf
 doesn't get any sharper teeth.  Yeah, it sure helps against wolves. 
 They explode in pretty patterns of red drops flying _everywhere_. Cool.
 But it doesn't help against a rabbit gene pool that is slowly
 deteriorating because there is nothing to keep them from breeding, and no
 darwin to make sure that it's the fastest and strongest that breeds.
 You mentioned how NT has the nicest debugger out there. 
 Contemplate it."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"The lymbic system in my brain is so electrically active, it qualifies
 as a third brain.  Normal humans have two brains, left and right.

	- Jeff Merkey 
%
"Truncate - the never-ending story.  Makes me feel like a long
 Kurosawa movie.  But in this one the hero _will_ survive, or my
 name isn't Maxwell."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Yeah. Maybe we fixed truncate, and maybe we didn't. I've thought that we
 fixed it now several times, and I was always wrong. Time for some reverse
 psychology:

 I'm sure this one doesn't fix the truncate bug either.

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"And I'm right.  I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more
 right than I usually am." 

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I'm a bastard, and proud of it !"

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think
 otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that
 I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings
 or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better
 system."

 	- Linus Torvalds
%
  ___________________
 ( Linnnnnnnnnnnnnux )
  -------------------
    o                     ,        ,
     o                   /(        )`
      o                  \ \___   / |
      o                  /- _  `-/  '
      o                 (/\/ \ \   /\
      o                 / /   | `    \
      o                 O O   ) /    |
     o                  `-^--'`<     '
      .--.             (_.)  _  )   /
     |o_o |             `.___/`    /
     |:_/ |              `-----' /
    //<- \ \----.     __ / __   \
   (|  <- | )---|====O)))==) \) /====
  /'\ <- _/`\---'    `--' `.__,' \
  \___)=(___/            |        |
                           \       /
                     ______( (_  / \______
                   ,'  ,-----'   |        \
                   `--{__________)        \/
%
"Remind me not to fix mtrr.c after half a litre of wine in future."

	- Alan Cox
%
"I admit I've done too much playing around without understanding
 the issues involved over the last years as well, but it's time
 to stop reinventing the (sometimes octangular) wheel and learn
 everything from history which we can learn."

	- Rik van Riel
%
"I looked all over the place for an explanation. Elves and Gremlins."

	- Mike "Heisen who?" Galbraith
%
"I think it's wrong any of us should claim ideas for stuff
 that has been done already by other people. It's time to
 put away the wheel reinvention kit and LEARN FROM OTHER
 SYSTEMS and even from *shudder* books ;)"

	- Rik van Riel
%
"Its alt.conspiracy.kook time.
 Let me mention the Nazi's. Now can the thread die ?"

	- Alan Cox
%
Understatement of the century:
"Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating
 system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for
 386(486) AT clones"

	- Linus Torvalds, August 1991
%
"The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants."

	- Richard B. Johnson
%
"Quite frankly, I'd rather have a few people hate me deeply than apply
 stuff I don't like."

 	- Linus Torvalds
%
"The dead should not care about proper locking,
 those are realms of the living..."

	- Tigran Aivazian
%
"This, btw, is not something I would suggest you do in your living room.
 Getting a penguin to pee on demand is _messy_. We're talking yellow spots
 on the walls, on the ceiling, yea verily even behind the fridge. However.
 I would also advice against doing this outside - it may be a lot easier to
 clean up, but you're likely to get reported and arrested for public
 lewdness Never mind that you had a perfectly good explanation for it all."

 	- Linus Torvalds on sprinkling holy penguin pee
%
"No bugs were harmed in the preparation of this patch.  
 It's just me fartarsing around."

 	- Andrew Morton
%
"... and don't ask me about the extraneous parenthesis. I bet some LISP
 programmer felt alone and decided to make it a bit more homey."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"I would suggest you to read through the following book and files:
	* Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming"
	* Documentation/CodingStyle
	* drivers/net/aironet4500_proc.c
 and consider, erm, discrepancies. On the second thought, reading K&R
 might also be useful. IOW, no offense, but your C is bad beyond belief."

 	- Al Viro
%
"You are welcome to your opinion. I've got this great bridge to sell you too."

	- Alan Cox to someone recommending the NVidia drivers
%
"It's just that I was born with a highly developed case of Altzheimers, and
 I have trouble keeping details around in my head for more than about five
 minutes."

 	- Linus Torvalds on bug tracking
%
"Linux kernel development is dominated by a hacker ethos, in which
 external documentation is held in contempt, and even code comments
 are viewed with suspicion."

 	- Jerry Epplin
%
Alan Cox  <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Running with page aging convinces me that 2.2.19 we need to sort some 
> of the vm issues out badly, and make it faster than 2.4test 8)

Ahh.. The challenge is out!

You and me. Mano a mano. 

		Linus
%
> Is there anything else I can contribute?

The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.

Please boot 2.2.18pre24 (not pre25) on the machine and send me its DMI strings
printed at boot time. I'll add it to the 'stupid morons who cant program and
wouldnt know QA if it hit them on the head with a mallet' list

	- Alan Cox on BIOS bugs
%
"Looks clean and obviously correct to me, but then _everything_ I write
 always looks obviously correct yo me."

	- Linus
%

"Call me stupid [ Chorus: "You're stupid, Linus" ], but I actually compiled
 and booted this remotely."

	- Linus
%
"I'll bet you $5 USD (and these days, that's about a gadzillion Euros) that
 this explains it."

	- Linus
%
"If I need to put content identification in, well guess what - thats a list
   ((my_name "Hello") (his_name "Foo"))
 and XML is simply lisp done wrong."

	- Alan Cox
%
"Rusty? Help me out, and I won't ever call "netfilter" a heap of stinking
 dung again. Do we have a deal?"

	- Linus
%
"Please see the posting on l-k today "[NEW DRIVER] New user space serial port"
 which does just what you want.  Just-in-time kernel development has arrived."

	- Andreas Dilger
%
> around line mm/vmscan.c:487 that says:

Yeah, yeah, it's 7PM Christmas Eve over there, and you're in the middle of
your Christmas dinner. You might feel that it's unreasonable of me to ask
you to test out my latest crazy idea.

How selfish of you.

Get back there in front of the computer NOW. Christmas can wait.

		Linus "the Grinch" Torvalds
%
> I can just imagine Xmas at the Torvalds residence, with their annual
> tradition of having the kids scream... But dad, other kids have the l
> lights strung around the trees, not the computer....

I don't think you get the full picture. I suspect what gets strung up on the
trees at Christmas if Linus does too much hacking is ... Linus

	- Alan Cox
%
"A computer is a state machine.
 Threads are for people who can't program state machines."

	- Alan Cox
%
"In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are 
 different."

	- Larry McVoy
%
"After 40 Terabytes, your fingers start to hurt."

	- David Miller on typing
%
"Oh, well. Not everybody can be as goodlooking as me. It's a curse."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"And I have to say that I absolutely despise the BSD people.  They did
 sendfile() after both Linux and HP-UX had done it, and they must have
 known about both implementations.  And they chose the HP-UX braindamage,
 and even brag about the fact that they were stupid and didn't understand
 TCP_CORK (they don't say so in those exact words, of course - they just
 show that they were stupid and clueless by the things they brag about)."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"> I am using the Intel PCI backplane with default etchlink/jumper
 > configuration and the EBSA285 configured as host bridge.

 I'd suggest that you check, double check, triple check, take a photo of
 the links and put it up on the web and get someone else to check all
 the link settings on the EBSA285 card."

 	- Russell King on linux-arm-kernel
%
"I hold open source people to higher standards. They are supposed to be 
 the people who do programming because it's an art-form, not because it's 
 their job."

 	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Once you realize that documentation should be laughed at, peed upon, put 
 on fire, and just ridiculed in general, THEN, and only then, have you reached 
 the level where you can safely read it and try to use it to actually implement
 a driver."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"Just wait. My crystal ball is infallible."

	- Linus Torvalds
%
"And no, the driver is not a virus nor a trojan nor does it have any
 intelligence to suddenly decide to write things when it isn't asked to..."

 	- Anton Altaparmakov on the NTFS driver
%
"Wichert> Why would anyone want to do this?
 
 Probably because it's a completely stupid idea that serves no purpose
 whatsoever."

 	- Jes Sorenson on moving copyright headers to footers
%
"Maybe a good analogy is that drivers are to hardware companies like
 excrements are to living creatures: in order to stay alive, they have
 to produce them, but you don't put much love into their production,
 and their internals (like their development) may be a little
 disgusting."

	- Werner Almesberger
%
> Is there an API or other means to determine what video card, namely the
> chipset, that the user has installed on his machine?

On a modern X86 machine use the PCI/AGP bus data. On a PS/2 use the MCA bus
data. On nubus use the nubus probe data. On old style ISA bus PCs done a
large pointy hat and spend several years reading arcane and forbidden
scrolls

	- Alan Cox on hardware probing
%
"An innovation a day keeps the monopolist away"

	- Alan Cox when releasing linux-2.4.1ac19
%
Unix has this thing called "directories", which make it possible
for you to have multiple files with the same name on your disk.

	- Rik van Riel explaining the concept of directories
%
<movement> hmm, all you kernel hackers spending too much time adding
           fortunes instead of important stuff :)

	- John Levon trying to grasp kernel hacking reality
%
Alan Cox wrote:
> RFC1122 also requires that your protocol stack SHOULD be able to leap tall
> buldings at a single bound of course...

And, of course my protocol stack does :) It is also a floor wax, AND a
dessert topping!-)

	- Rick Jones trying to sell his protocol stack
%
<WeirdArms> erikm: bugger alan cox on a chip, I want alan cox in a book ;)

	- Adam Wiggins on #kernelnewbies
%
<matton> it might be broken?
<al> matton: sigh... all software sucks, but usually there are symptomes
     beyond "it doesn't work"

	- Al Viro on #kernelnewbies
%
        He's back. And this time he's got a chainsaw.

	- Al Viro announcing per-process namespaces on lkml
%
"Guys, if you want a large subtree in /proc - whack yourself over the head
 until you realize that you want an fs of your own. I'll be more than
 happy to help with both parts."
	- Al Viro
%
Alan Cox wrote:
> In theory however i2o is a standard and all i2o works alike. In practice i2o
> is a pseudo standard and nobody seems to interpret the spec the same way, the
> implementations all tend to have bugs and the hardware sometimes does too.

That's a pretty good description of standards in general, at least
when it comes to hardware :-)

	- Jens Axboe's interpretation of standards
%
/* Allow the packet buffer size to be overridden by know-it-alls. */

	- comment from drivers/net/ne.c
%
/* strangest things ever said, #6, to alan cox: "...and remember, alan
 * - no monkeybusiness.  remember, i sleep nude and we dont want to
 * give rachel the shock of her life..." */

	- comment in the Crack 5 source, file src/util/kickdict.c
%
/* First check any supplied i/o locations. User knows best. <cough> */

	- comment from drivers/net/ne.c
%
David Brownell wrote:
> AMD told me I'd need an NDA to learn their workaround, and I've not
> pursued it. (Does anyone already know what kind of NDA they use?)

It varies depending on the info. They may well be able to sort out a sane
NDA with you. If they dont want to then I guess it would be best if the
ohci driver printing a message explaining the component has an undocumented
errata fix, gave AMD's phone number and refused to load..

	- Alan Cox
%
	/* Sun, you just can't beat me, you just can't.  Stop trying,
	 * give up.  I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit
	 * out of you, game over, lights out.
	 */

	- comment from arch/sparc/lib/checksum.S
%
"The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants."

	- Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
%
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> The 'C' language can order structure members anyway it wants.

You are an idiot.

	- Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
%
        /* So there I am, in the middle of my `netfilter-is-wonderful'
           talk in Sydney, and someone asks `What happens if you try
           to enlarge a 64k packet here?'.  I think I said something
           eloquent like `fuck'. */

	- comment from net/ipc4/netfilter/ip_nat_ftp.c
%
I will pop a nasty patch to get you through the almost death, but it is
nasty and not the preferred unknow solution.

	- Andre Hedrik on linux-kernel
%
Alan Olsen wrote:
> things correctly they have enhanced Wake-on-LAN to allow you to do
> things like reset the machine, update the BIOS and such by sending
> magic packets which are interpreted by the network card. Or maybe I am

Normally 'sending magic packets resets the machine' is considered a feature
reported to bugtraq. The alert stuff I have seen is more akin to sending SNMP
traps for things like people opening the lid, or fan failure

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
cp -a fs/ext{2,69}
cp -a include/linux/ext{2,69}_fs.h
cp -a include/linux/ext{2,69}_fs_i.h
cp -a include/linux/ext{2,69}_fs_sb.h
for i in fs/ext69/* include/linux/ext69*; do
        vi '-cse ext|%s/(ext|EXT)2/\169/g|x' $i;
done
vi '-c/EXT/|y|pu|s/2/69/|s/Second/FUBAR/|x' fs/Config.in
vi '-c/ext2/|y|pu|s/ext2/ext69/g|//|y|pu|&g|//|y|pu|&g|//|y|pu|&g|x' \
  include/linux/fs.h

had done the trick last time I needed something like that, but that was long
time ago...

	- Al Viro explaining some simple commands on linux-kernel
%
Actually you would still need the other fixes otherwise you might as well put
the root password in /etc/motd

	- Alan Cox pointing out some security holes in binfmt_misc
%
I retain the right to change my mind, as always. Le Linus e mobile.

	- Linus Torvalds
%
Steve Underwood wrote:
> Dave Miller wrote:
> > alterity wrote:
> > > Haven't seen a post for sometime from the usually prolific Mr Cox.
> > > What's the gossip?
> >
> > They needed some help from him to position Mir for it's
> > final descent.
>
> Strange. I thought his key skill was stopping things from crashing!

This crash was inevitable, he's just making sure the disks get
sync'd.

	- Dave Miller on linux-kernel
%
Andries Brouwer wrote:
> Linux is unreliable.
> That is bad.

Since your definition of reliability is a mathematical abstraction requiring
infinite storage why don't you start by inventing infinitely large SDRAM
chips, then get back to us ?

	- Alan Cox
%
I have a simple rule in life: If I don't understand something, it must be bad.

	- Linus Torvalds
%
/me thinks ext2 code is more effectively encrypted than DVDs are ;)

	- Andrew Ebling on #kernelnewbies
%
But I have a holy crusade. I dislike waste. I dislike over-engineering. I
absolutely detest the "because we can" mentality. I think small is
beautiful, and the guildeline should always be that performance and size
are more important than features.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Dennis wrote:
> whatever you do dont buy a gigabit card with a small buffer and 32bits.
> 32bits isnt enough to do gigabit, even with a large buffer.

Never underestimate what will come out of Taiwan in massive quantities
:)

	- Jeff Garzik about gigabit ethernet cards on linux-kernel
%
Bruno Avila wrote:
>        I can't find this anywhere. What is the version of the tools to
> compile linux kernel 0.0.0.1 (../Historic)? And where can i find them?  

Well, first you have to find a good source of obsidean, a couple of sharp
rocks, and some flint...

	- Alan Olsen on linux-kernel
%
In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.

	- Linus Torvalds
%
The only recomendation is "dont".

	- Alan Cox giving some recommendations for binary-only drivers
%
Thou shalt not put policy into the kernel.

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
The policy is not to have policy. It works as well in kernel design as politics.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Another hour, another error report...

	- Eric S. Raymond on linux-kernel
%
This is probably the first and last time I will openly agree for someone
to tell me were to go, and do it ;-).

	- Andre Hedrick on linux-kernel
%
David Wagner wrote:
> Is this a bad coding?

Yes. Not to mention side effects, it's just plain ugly. Anyone who invents
identifiers of _that_ level of ugliness should be forced to read them
aloud for a week or so, until somebody will shoot him out of mercy.
Out of curiosity: who was the author? It looks unusually nasty, even for
SGI.

	- Al Viro on coding style
%
You know, if you really do not understand the implications of
running everything with permissions equivalent to root - get
the hell out of any UNIX-related programming until you learn.

	- Al Viro explaining the merits of doing everything as root
%
Do one thing and do it well.

	- Andrew Grover, ACPI maintainer on Linux-power.
%
We could be way simpler if we didn't try to be so flexible.

	- Andrew Grover, ACPI maintainer on Linux-power.
%
ACPI - it's too late to improve it - it's the standard

	- Andrew Grover, ACPI maintainer on Linux-power.
%
Yes, we're all anti-american terrorists who plan to make the
US economy collapse by inventing lots of new words which will
have to be added to the dictionary, making the US economy
unable to support the ever-growing dictionaries and ensuring   
the Americans will be unable to (learn to) spell, leaving them
dead in the water if there's ever a linguistic war between
them and the UK.

	- Rik van Riel explaining the real reason behind spelling
	  mistakes in the linux kernel
%
My opinions always matter :-)

	- Dan Malek on the linuxppc-embedded list
%
You don't get out much, do you :-)?  Lighten up a little, this
is supposed to be fun.......We could argue all day, but there was
lots of computer work done before PCI and PCs.  I'm more than old
enough to know, so just leave it at that.......

	- Dan Malek on the linuxppc-embedded list
%
You want brutality and heuristics?  I'll give you brutality and heuristics...

	- Eric S. Raymond on linux-kernel
%
The thing looks obvious, but I'd rather not apply it to my tree until
somebody sends me the above back as a tested patch.. Call me a sissy.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said,
"If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you
know, we have a lot of lawyers."

	- from a New York Times article about Microsoft vs GPL licensing
%
I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie.
He may have been dead for almost three hundred years,
but despite that he stinks up the room less.

	- Linus Torvalds on Craig Mundie's "shared source" speech.
%
You can extend EXTRAVERSION infinitely, but after the first 10 or so
characters, it starts to get silly.

	- Russell King on linux-kernel
%
<tik-tok> Hi all, I'm having problems with my 2.2.19 kernel build I'm
	trying to create my ramdisk and I get the following error
	message "All your loopback devices are in use!"  can anyone help?
<phillips> All your loopback devices are belong to us!

	- Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies
%
<klak> I need some help, I upgraded my kernel and on a reboot I get this error
          message kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt-464c, errno
          = 8 can anyone help?
<spinoli> from /usr/include/asm/errno.h
<spinoli> #define ENOEXEC          8      /* Exec format error */
<spinoli> not that that necessarily tells you much ;)

	- from #kernelnewbies
%
I can see the intent.

I can also see that the code doesn't match up to the intent.

I call that a bug. You don't. Fine.

	- Linus Torvalds rejecting a patch on linux-kernel
%
Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> It's a "tomorrow" thing. Ten hours it too long to stare at a
> screen.

Sissy!

	- Jens Axboe on linux-kernel
%
Okay. I am now awake. I will now try the kernel thread. Looks
simple.

	- Richard Johnson on linux-kernel
%
IOW, "not a tty" used to mean "WTF are you using ioctls here?"

	- Al Viro explaining ENOTTY on linux-kernel
%
Oh, I believe they do..........but, I haven't been wrong lately,
so maybe it's my turn again :-).

	- Dan Malek on linuxppc-embedded
%
if (!cost_analysis) goto darwinism;

	- Mike Galbraith explaining economics on linux-kernel
%
Were they afraid that "e" being the most widely used letter in
the English language was going to war out thir xpnsiv kyboards if
thy usd it all th tim?

	- Mike A. Harris on linux-kernel
%
Ha.  For once you're both wrong but not where you are thinking.

	- Larry McVoy to Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Nvidia driver loaded - bugs to nvidia. vmware loaded bugs to vmware,
both loaded, god help you, nobody else will

	- Alan Cox explaining where to send bug reports for binary-only drivers
%
... but giving people the power to do even silly things is what Linux
is all about.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Sysadmin and editors. The holy wars of UNIX.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
It should be a case of "Just plug in a new kernel, and suddenly your
existing filesystem just allows you to do more! 20% more for the same
price! AND we'll throw in this useful ginzu knife for just 4.95 for
shipping and handling. Absolutely free!"

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> It should be a case of "Just plug in a new kernel, and suddenly your
> existing filesystem just allows you to do more! 20% more for the same
> price! AND we'll throw in this useful ginzu knife for just 4.95 for  
> shipping and handling. Absolutely free!"

...Linus demonstrates why American culture is a bad influence on you.

	- Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
%
Please, don't mix _that_ flamewar into the thread, OK?

	- Al Viro in an almost-flamewar on linux-kernel
%
It's a mistake to think that a directory has to be a directory.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
(at this point the lecture turns into why APIs exist and should be used,
and it gets more boring from there...)

	- Jeff Garzik explaining the PCI API on linux-kernel
%
Because you want to win benchmarketing exercises, not demonstrate that your
architecture has any value in the real world whatsoever.  Because you know
that you can induce people with financial approval to make stupid and
irrational decisions based on irrelevant data.

	- Rodger Donaldson about benchmarking on linux-kernel
%
It should be fixed, but it won't be easy and it won't be fast. If you want
to help - wonderful. But keep in mind that it will take months of wading
through the ugliest code we have in the tree. If you've got a weak stomach -
stay out. I've been there and it's not a nice place.

	- Al Viro on fixing drivers
%
Basically, ioctl's will _never_ be done right, because of the way people
think about them. They are a back door. They are by design typeless and
without rules. They are, in fact, the Microsoft of UNIX.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Let's _not_ bring that into this thread, OK?

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Step #1 in programming: understand people.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Sorry about the rant - I've just spent a couple of hours wading through
the piles of excrements in drivers/*. Ouch.

	- Al Viro about ugly code in device drivers on linux-kernel
%
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Ehh.. Telling people "don't do that" simply doesn't work. Not if they can
> do it easily anyway. Things really don't get fixed unless people have a
> certain pain-level to induce it to get fixed.

Umm... How about the following:  you hit delete on patches that introduce
new ioctls, I help to provide required level of pain.  Deal?

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
        "MIME, oh mime, how I hate thee.  Let me stick pins in you to
         count the ways..." -- Ben LaHaise
%
And I hate redundancy, and having different functions for the same thing.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Hope this helps some, sorry for not being able to do a brain dump.

	- Mike Stump helping a clueless user on the gcc mailing list
%
<ed__> riel: if it were a vax, gcc would probably be an opcode

	- excerpt from #kernelnewbies
%
Code like that would not pass through anybody's yuck-o-meter.

	- Linus Torvalds about design on linux-kernel
%
If you _really_ feel this strongly about the bug, you could
either try to increase the number of hours a day for all of
us or you could talk to my boss about hiring me as a consultant
to fix the problem for you on an emergency basis :)

	- Rik van Riel explaining what to do against kernel bugs
%
        What the guy was doing was having a bad case of optical rectitus.
That would be typical of a "reseller" (AKA Salesman).  Most would not
even have a CLUE that the cards were based on the tulip chipset / driver.

	- Michael Warf on linux-kernel
%
It has always been the policy that format conversions go in user space.
The kernel is an arbitrator of resources it is not a shit bucket for
solving other peoples incompetence.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
<sadie> ata: do you get some help from promise while developing the patch ?
<ata> sadie: pass me a toke of what ever you are smokin'

	- Andre Hedrik on #kernelnewbies
%
> Not that the kernel list is the best place to bring this up, but NVIDIA
> would NOT be on that list.  They are by far one of the best companies out
> there providing support for their cards.  I bought my GF2 for exactly that
> reason too....

Sure. I spent much happy time telling people to report bugs to nvidia because
their closed drivers mean that only nvidia can debug all the crashes people
see with them loaded - at least some of which dont occur without the modules

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
<phillips> as a perl god, just tell me how to find any string with
           kernel-doc on it
<phillips> I'll trade for some heavyduty vfs consulting one day ;-)

	- Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies
%
Patches benefit all mankind. Products benefit the vendor.

	- Richard Gooch on linux-kernel
%
#undef THISSUCKS /* Only for 2.2 */
#ifdef THISSUCKS
#include <linux/pipe_fs_i.h>
#endif

	- from include/linux/jffs2_fs_i.h
%
#define JFFS2_MAGIC_BITMASK 0x1985
#define KSAMTIB_CIGAM_2SFFJ 0x5981 /* For detecting wrong-endian fs */

	- from include/linux/jffs2.h
%
/*
 * At first I thought these guys were on crack, but then I discovered the
 * LART. 
 */

	- comment from include/linux/mtd/cfi_endian.h
%
Anyone releasing binary only modules does so having made their own appropriate
risk assessment and having talked (I hope) to their insurers

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
The kernel is intended as the arbiter between userspace and hardware,
and userspace and userspace.  Format conversion has nothing to do with
arbitration.

	- Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
%
I also never expected Intel to dispose of themselves in such
a cute way.

	- Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
%
No. Sell the card to a windows user buy a cheap taiwanese mass market ethernet  and spend the rest on the faster CPU. I bet that is more cost effective for
DES performance..

	- Alan Cox not recommending NICs with built-in crypto engines
%
But in my experience you have a better chance of getting a straight answer out
of a politician than intels networking folks. Maybe they have reformed

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
<JALH> lxrbot, whereis olaf?
<lxrbot> olaf is Not used
* JALH runs
<Russ|werk> JALH: why
<Russ|werk> its not like you did something like this:
<Russ|werk> lxrbot, whereis lubrication
<lxrbot> lubrication is Not used
<JALH> muwhaha
<Russ|werk> then...it would be time to run

	- abusing lxrbot on #kernelnewbies
%
<erikm> cleartape: kernels don't do magic, they just implement mechanisms

	- Erik Mouw on #kernelnewbies
%
... and for absolute majority of programmers additional shared objects mean
additional fsckup sources.  I don't trust them to write correct async code.
OK, so I don't trust the majority of programmers to find their dicks if
you take their Visual Masturbation Aid++ away, but that's another story -
I'm talking about otherwise clued people, not burger-flippers armed with
Foo For Complete Dummies in 24 Hours.

	- Al Viro about multi-threading on linux-kernel
%
> There's not a court in the civilised world that would uphold the GPL in that
> scenario.

Yes but the concern is the USA 8)

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Drivers are a more complex issue. I'm not opposed to binary only drivers,
providing its easy to tell they are there and dump all bug reports about them.
Freedom generally includes the right to give up freedom. I'll tell people its
a bad idea but once they get caught, well it was their right to do so...

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Basically, I want people to know that when they use binary-only modules,
it's THEIR problem.  I want people to know that in their bones, and I
want it shouted out from the rooftops.  I want people to wake up in a
cold sweat every once in a while if they use binary-only modules. 

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
I'm not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV.

	- Linus Torvalds on the gcc mailing list
%
Linus, Alan - Please apply the following self-explanatory patch.

+       /* LynuxWorks are politely reminded that removing copyright
+          notices is an offence under the Copyright Design and
+          Patents Act 1988, and under equivalent non-UK law in
+          accordance with the Berne Convention. */
+       printk("Portions (C) 2000, 2001 Red Hat, Inc.\n");

	- David Woodhouse on linux-kernel
%
There seems to be a bug in the mail routing again. It may be related to the
recent problem with ditto copier history outbreaks on Linux S/390 and the
infamous 'pdp-11 memory subsystem' article routing bug that plagued
comp.os.minix once.

In the meantime can people check that their mailer hasnt spontaneously added
linux-kernel to their history articles before posting them ?

	- Alan Cox about off topic cross posting on lkml
%
        Hurd and architecture in one sentence? Uh-oh...

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Microsoft is like a mountain with their installed base.  Like it
or not, no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow
to it.

	- Jeff Merkey on linux-advoca^Wkernel
%
The fact that it takes more code to parse and interpret ACPI than it does to
route traffic on the internet backbones should be a hint something is badly
wrong either in ACPI the spec, ACPI the implenentation or both.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
  If you really want to know where you stand, it'll cost you around
  $15K and that, in my opinion, is fine. If it isn't worth $15K to
  protect your code then it is worth so little to you that there really
  is no good reason not to just GPL it from the start.

	- Larry McVoy on GPL licensing issues
%
> >
> > Wait. Don't you mean:

Yes. Just ignore me when I show extreme signs of Alzheimers.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
As you point out below, contract law is also involved.  Add the DMCA,
UCITA, and Bush 2.0 to the mix, and any lawyer who says he actually
knows what's legal is lying.

	- Ian Pilcher on Microsoft "shared source" licensing
%
Of course, some people consider hidden bugs to _be_ fixed. I don't believe
in that particulat philosophy myself.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Would you like to code up this, test it and send it to me?

Btw, good debugging!

                Linus "lazy is my middle name" Torvalds
%
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> Who thought Tux should have been an Eel,
<mikkei> Although he was a fine programmer,
<mikkei> He called the little penguin,
<mikkei> A veritably ugly hack,
<mikkei> But they all laughed and said "He's on crack!"
<mikkei>  
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> At whose feet the newbies would kneel,
<mikkei> Each and every day, one newbie would say:
<mikkei> "Make my patch the Patch of the Month."
<mikkei> But Riel, saying no with a negative, "hummpfh"
<mikkei> Would say "fsck off" to the newbies's dismay.

	- Anonymous on #kernelnewbies
%
Of course the writer of this is Polish and the drives are Hungarian ...

	- Alan Cox on hard disk problems
%
Let me explain it to you slowly:

Disks.  Write.  One.  Write.  At.  A.  Time.

	- Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
%
Q: I like to dynamically load buggy drivers into the kernel because that is
what kernel developers like me do for fun, how can I better avoid data
corruption when doing this and using ReiserFS?

A: Do sync before insmod.  (Alan Cox's good suggestion.)

	- Hans Reiser on linux-kernel
%
The thing that really pisses me off about ReiserFS from time to time
is not the "FS" part...

	- Henning Schmiedehausen on linux-kernel
%
It's not broken, you silly boy.

	- Linus Torvalds offending people on the gcc mailing list
%
> Linus seems to be getting a little emotional in this discussion but swearing
> does not replace data.

Hey, I called people silly, not <censored>. You must have a very low
tolerance ;)

	- Linus Torvalds about offending people on the gcc mailing list
%
James Simmons wrote:
> Crap can work. Given enough thrust pigs will fly, but it's not necessary a
> good idea.                                 [ Alexander Viro on linux-kernel ]

Watch the attributions.

With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine.
However, this is not necessarily a good idea.
It is hard to be sure where they are going to land,
and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
        From RFC1925, R Callon, 1996.

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Looks nice to me but about the only way you are likely to get Linus to take
in kernel debugging patches is to turn them into hex and disguise them as USB
firmware ;)

	- Alan Cox's guide on submitting Linux patches, today:
		chapter #3, kernel debuggers
%
With the current ACPI code in my test boxes it seems to be no worse than
APM, unfortunately it would be hard to be worse.

	- Alan Cox on the ACPI mailing list
%
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Or are they just trying to strongarm the move to the horrid ACPI tables?

They are certainly involved in the latter but whether this is related  or
a seperate evil empire scheme is open to question

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Most EULA's are not legal contracts. In civilised countries the right to
disassemble is enshrined in law (ironically it comes in Europe from trying  
to keep car manufacturers from running monopolistic scams not from the
software people doing the same)

In the USA its a lot less clear. You can find laws explicitly claiming both,
and since US law is primarily about who has loads of money, its a bit
irrelevant

	- Alan Cox explaining EULA's on linux-kernel
%
Alan Cox wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > And quite frankly, if your disk can push 50MB/s through a 1kB
> > non-contiguous filesystem, then my name is Bugs Bunny.
>
> Hi Bugs 8), previously Frodo Rabbit, .. I think you watch too much kids tv
> 8)

Three kids will do that to you. Some day, you too will be there.

	- Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
        When devfs went into the tree, the word was "at least it will
make people look at the code".  Well, it did.  Veni, vidi, vomere.

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
> valerie kernel: mtrr: your CPUs had inconsistent variable MTRR settings
> valerie kernel: mtrr: probably your BIOS does not setup all CPUs

It indicates your bios authors can't read standards. Thats a quite normal
state of affairs, so common that the kernel cleans up after them

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
<Russ> I think the linux 2.4 VM is broken...it says, "warning, your memory
       is not optimized, click here to get memturbo". Is riel aware of
       this problem?

	- Russ Dill on #kernelnewbies
%
<JALH> regex are more than some crappy posix thing
<JALH> they are an art form

	- Marc Zealey on #kernelnewbies
%
[ Hey, I can have long discussions by myself. I don't need you guys to
  answer me at all.

  This must be what senility feels like. Linus "doddering fool" Torvalds ]
%
Re-sending is always the right thing to do. Sometimes it takes a few
times, and you can add a small exasperated message at the top by the third
time ("Don't you love me any more?").

	- Linus Torvalds about sending patches to him
%
Remember: the biggest mistake to do is to overdesign. The road to hell is
paved with good intentions.

	- Linus on linux-kernel
%
Also, I've been getting a _lot_ of patches, and if yours didn't show up
it's because I got too many. Never fear, there's always tomorrow. Except
in this case it's "in a week or two".

	- Linus Torvalds announcing his holiday on linux-kernel
%
I recall hearing that highly-classified data must be destroyed by
physically shredding the medium.  Yes, throw your disk drive in the
shredder!  (Just imagine the class of machinery required to digest an RA81
HDA.)

	- Mark Wood on linux-kernel
%
> The only idea is that 2.4.x kernel turns off cache (L1 & L2) on
> processor (on my cpu). How can I check it? Any ideas?

We don't touch the caches like that. First guess is to disable the ACPI
support, because we've seen that do a million bogus things

	- Alan Cox explaining the merits of ACPI on linux-kernel
%
> ...  but i could not found any source code or
> information in Internet.

How strange. The kernel source code is definitely on the internet, and
definitely contains drivers that implement internal layering -
nrdev, shaper, the sync cards, isdn

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
> ...  And aren't you one of the Preists of Text in
> /proc -- those of the belief in managing everything with 'cat' and 'vi'.

No. That would be Al Viro.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Ricky Beam wrote:
> So basically, you had no fucking clue

Since you're the expert, why won't we all wait for
YOUR patch to fix the problem? ;)

	- Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
%
Russell King wrote:
> I'll look into it, produce a patch, but I'm not a VM hacker.

You know what a pte is so you're a VM hacker ;-)

	- Daniel Phillips on linux-kernel
%
I believe the Committee for the Preservation of Welsh Poetry are pretty
settled on the -ac tree. Aren't they doing an audio CD of Alan reciting
the TCP/IP stack sources?

	- Rich Hohensee on linux-kernel
%
That reminds me, I have to add this config entry to kbuild.   

CONFIG_LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH
  Use Welsh

	- Keith Owens on linux-kernel
%
> Wouldn't it have made more sense to make the 'len' parameter an unsigned int?

Oh yes.   

And wouldn't it be nicer if the sky was pink, and God came personally down
to earth and stopped all wrans and made you king?

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel?
%
> Sorry, at this point we are not allowed to publish the source code of the
> lcs and qeth drivers (due to the use of confidential hardware interface
> specifications).  We make those modules available only in binary form
> on our developerWorks web site.
> 
Gosh. I didn't know you guys were so advanced that you didn't use
an electronic hardware interface! Your 'hardware interface specifications'
use magnetohydrodynamics, and they are top-secret, right?

	- Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
%
Linus Torvalds wrote:
> How the h*ll did you happen to actually notice this?

Some combination of blind luck, curiosity, pride, and Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder...

	- John Byrne on linux-kernel
%
You're so full of shit that it's incredible.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Well, I have done sparc assembly in my time (remember Dave Sitsky and
I did a port of the kernel to the ultrasparc running in 32-bit mode
before you did the sparc64 port) but the stuff you're doing in there
isn't just assembly, it's magic assembly. ;)

	- Paul Mackerras admiring Dave Miller's assembly on linux-kernel
%
> That is reimplementing file system functionality in user space. 
> I'm in doubts that this is considered good design...

Keeping things out of the kernel is good design. Your block indirections
are no different to other database formats. Perhaps you think we should
have fsql_operation() and libdb in kernel 8)

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Todays reading is from RFC990 in the book of Reynolds & Postel, page number 6

And the IETF spake thusly

[...]

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
What is it about so many mail system authors and lacking sense of humour.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Now for the Sacrifices.

At this point, I'd like to sacrifice a Red Hat Linux 6.2 CD to Alan Cox.

I would also like to sacrifice Minix 1.3(?) installation diskettes to
Linus Torvalds.

I perform these sacrifices in the hope that enlightenment comes to me.

	- Nicholas Knight on linux-kernel
%
But hey, at the end of the day, numbers rule.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
/*
 *  Check for clue free BIOS implementations who use
 *  the following QA technique
 *
 *      [ Write BIOS Code ]<------
 *               |                ^
 *      < Does it Compile >----N--
 *               |Y               ^
 *      < Does it Boot Win98 >-N--
 *               |Y
 *           [Ship It]
 *
 */

	- comment from arch/i386/kernel/dmi_scan.c
%
<Peaker> the difference between theory and practice is just a lot of work

	- from #offtopic (the offtopic chat channel of #kernelnewbies)
%
Anyway, Zen And Art Of Feeding Patches Into Tree is a topic for a different
thread...

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Eric Biederman wrote:
> That added to the fact that last time someone ran the numbers linux
> was considerably faster than the BSD for mm type operations when not 
> swapping.  And this is the common case.

"Linux VM works wonderfully when nobody is using it"

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> (infact I never had a single report), but well we'll verify that in

Richard, is that you?  What had you done with real Andrea?

	- Al Viro trying to beat two people with one cluebat
%
As I'm sure you're all aware, being experts in userland programming, that   
the above obviously cannot work and is totally bogus.

	- Russell King on linux-kernel
%
I don't suffer from stallmanellosis

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
... mindreading equipment is currently classified CIA property at
best (hello echelon!)

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
The kernel is not there to cover up for usermode programmers inability
to get things right. It has enough to do covering up for the hardware folk

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
> If you took my patch for it, PLEASE don't send it for inclusion; it's an
> evil hack and no longer needed when Intel fixes the bug in their 440GX bios.

"when" is not a word I find useful about most bios bugs. Try "if" or
"less likely that being hit on the head by an asteroid"

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
With the current lunatic US congress proposals on security, crypto and
building big brother into all PC's I'd say allowing non GPL security modules
is positively dangerous to the well being of non US citizens

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
> Yes *please*! Finally we could introduce proper support for 64-bit
> inode numbers too!

Right.  As soon as userland is audited for places where it uses int
for storing inode numbers - just a couple of months after MS fixes
all security holes in their software.  By then we'll need 128bit time_t,
though...

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
Cuba is within small boat distance. I thought it was going to be twenty
years before the direction changed, now Im not so sure

	- Alan Cox on crazy US computer security laws
%
Catastrophic failure of the IDE cable???.
What are you doing to the poor thing, jumping on it?

	- Beau Kuiper on linux-kernel
%
Let's start with conslutants who kept pushing crap into said network.
And continue with those who had bred tons of worthless "certified"
wankers pretending to be sysadmins, driving the wages down and replacing
clued people with illiterate trash.  Getting rid of script kiddies is
nice, but fsckwits who are directly responsible for current situation
should be first against the wall.

	- Al Viro on virus attacks
%
> Can you explain this behaviour?

Yes
--
Alan

[Oh wait you want to know why...]

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
PnPBIOS is a PC specific affliction. Other platforms have more elegantly
designed but even buggier solutions

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
This is a BP6 FAQ.  Try increasing the voltage to your CPUs by .1V, or
by taking the BP6 and introducing it to a hammer.  Either should be an
improvement.

	- Benjamian LaHaise not recommending the Abit BP6 motherboard on lkml
%
objdump -h `modprobe -l` | sed -ne '/__ksym/h;$b1;\:^/:!d;:1;x;s/:.*//p;'

Gotta love those sed hieroglyphics :-)

	- Keith Owens on linux-kernel
%
I actually use the trees I release and I want to keep my machines working

	- Alan Cox recommending his -ac trees on linux-kernel
%
<viro> "scanf is tough" -- programmer Barbie...

	- Al Viro on #kernelnewbies
%
In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd  
people.

	- Linus on MAP_COPY
%
Now, somebody who _isn't_ stupid (and that, of course, is me), immediately
goes "well, _duh_, why don't you speed up read() instead?".

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
I guess thinking about the implications will come when
the Hurd people seriously start porting their beast to
other microkernels, say L4 ;)

This should be a spectacle worth watching (from a safe
distance).

	- Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
%
Aren't we lucky our documentation is so sparse noone can accuse us of being
inconsistent? 8)

	- Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
%
I would suggest re-naming "rmbdd()". I _assume_ that "dd" stands for "data 
dependent", but quite frankly, "rmbdd" looks like the standard IBM "we
lost every vowel ever invented" kind of assembly lanaguage to me.

I'm sure that having programmed PPC assembly language, you find it very
natural (IBM motto: "We found five vowels hiding in a corner, and we used
them _all_ for the 'eieio' instruction so that we wouldn't have to use
them anywhere else").

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
	(IBM motto: "We found five vowels hiding in a corner, and we used
them _all_ for the 'eieio' instruction so that we wouldn't have to use
them anywhere else").

	[...]

(IBM motto: "If you can't read our assembly language, you must be
borderline dyslexic, and we don't want you to mess with it anyway").

	[...]

(IBM motto: "TEN vowels? Don't you know vowels are scrd?")

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
(But Intel has redefined the memory ordering so many times that they might
redefine it in the future too and say that dependent loads are ok. I
suspect most of the definitions are of the type "Oh, it used to be ok in
the implementation even though it wasn't defined, and it turns out that
Windows doesn't work if we change it, so we'll define darkness to be the
new standard"..)

	- Linus Torvalds
%
Oh, and before people start telling me that RCU was successfully used in
AIX/projectX/xxxx/etc, you have to realize that I don't give a rats *ss
about the fact that there are OS's out there that are "more scalable".

	- Linus Torvalds
%
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable"
systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in
them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being
really bad even on one".

	- Linus Torvalds
%
In the same world where Vomit-Making System is elegant, SGI "designs" are
and NT is The Wave Of Future(tm).  Pardon me, but I'll stay in our universe
and away from the drugs of such power.

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
What would you expect to gain from XIP besides being buzzword
compliant?

	- Erik Mouw on linux-arm-kernel
%
>       I got a kernel crash when dial up. But I am using 
> 2.4.0-rmk1 and pppd-2.4.1. Is there any known ppp problem 
> in that release? Will it help if I upgrade my kernel?  

Who knows, we're now many versions ahead, many bugs have been fixed, and
a lot of work has been done.

	- Russell King on linux-arm-kernel
%
>    In short, now you need filesystem versioning at a per-page level etc.

*ding* *ding* *ding* we have a near winner.  Remember, folks, Hurd had been
started by people who not only don't understand UNIX, but detest it.
ITS/TWENEX refugees.  And semantics in question comes from there -
they had "open and make sure that anyone who tries to modify will get
a new version, leaving one we'd opened unchanged".

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
HP LaserJetIII wrote:
> How to turn off faucet?
> 
Now that's a good one! Somebody's mucking with my print-server.
Sorry. I'm gonna get my gun....

	- Richard Johnson on linux-kernel
%
Carrots work on rabbits, they don't work on hungry weasels.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Attached is buzby.c, the command

  buzby -poll  

sends sanity commands to the DSP every two seconds to, errrr, keep it
from going insane. Works with the wife too :-)

	- Derek Mulcahy on tuxscreen-devel
%
:) Even an (ex)girlfriend of mine said that Linux is much better than Windows,
because of the messages on boot ("superb cyber feeling a'la Matrix :)").

	- Gábor Lénárt on linux-kernel
%
Oh, come on.  Every government is right on some issues.  Proof:                 
                                                                                
        For every government X there is at least one government Y such that X
would claim that Y is a bunch of corrupt assholes.  Since every government     
is  a bunch of corrupt assholes, every government is right at least in one     
of its claims.

	- Al Viro discussing politics on linux-kernel
%
But I do know, that an Alan at home, co-working with his under-ground
cluster of gnomes, does a hell-of-a-lot more good for free software
than an Alan in a US-prison as yet another victim of "justice".

	- David Weinehall discussing the DMCA/SSSCA on linux-kernel
%
Please use an explicit test - I know gcc suggest just an extra set of
parenthesis, but I'm personally convinced that is just because some gcc
people have been damaged by too much LISP.

	- Linus Torvalds discussing gcc requirements on linux-kernel
%
If Nvidia would like to pay me as much as Microsoft is paid for driver
certification then I might be able to find the time

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Chris Rumpf wrote:
> I would like to join this mailing list.

you want all of us to give you a call saying you're welcome ??

	- elko@home.nl on linux-kernel
%
Dave I can produce equivalently valid microbenchmarks showing Linux works
much better with the scheduler disabled. They are worth about as much as
your benchmarks for that optimisation and they likewise ignore a slightly
important object known as "the big picture"

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Numbers talk, bullshit walks.

	- Dave Miller on linux-kernel
%
Interface definitions tend to be treated a little differently to "code". But
as I keep trying to beat into people - if you are going to mix GPL and non
GPL code see a lawyer - thats what they are there for

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
"scanf is tough" --- programmer Barbie...

	- Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
Come on Al, if you have real arguments let hear them, if you want to insult
people you gotta do better than that above.   :)

	- Jakob Østergaard poking Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
..... using XML would just be shooting birds with tactical nukes. E.g.
lots of fun, but a little expensive and not really necessary.

	- Jakob Østergaard about using XML in /proc file on linux-kernel
%
On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Martin Dalecki wrote:
> Every BASTARD out there telling the world, that parsing ASCII formatted
> files

What was your username, again?

	- Alexander Viro in BOFH mode on linux-kernel
%
So the current heuristic provably sucks. We have cold hard numbers, and
quite frankly, Al, there is very very little point in arguing against
numbers. It's silly. "Gimme an S, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K -
S-U-C-K". The current one sucks.

	- Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
%
Well we could simplify it further by putting all configuration options under
a single menu called "things".

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Subject: Re: Yet another design for /proc. Or actually /kernel.

> Here's my go at a new design for /proc. I designed it from a userland
> point of view and tried not to drown myself into details.

Did you have to change the subject line. It makes it harder to kill file
when people keep doing that
%
Your reasoning is ............................. (fill in the blank)

	- Russell King on the linux-arm mailing list
%
> There is an easy way for you, or even better, Linus to stop these discussions:
> Just say, in unambigous words, what kind of patch you would accept, if any. 

.procmailrc one would do nicely.

	- Al Viro on linux-kernel
%
> ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange has detected virus-infected attachment(s).
> Warning to sender. ScanMail detected a virus in an email attachment you sent.

You are an idiot! You have deleted a correctly-written important
shell-script. You, again, are an IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT, creep.

	- Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
%
Didn't you hear?  I think Linus broke the news awhile back: Alan has the
uncanny ability to fork() himself infinitely many times.  And he has no  
resource contention, so he scales O(1).

	- Robert Love on linux-kernel
%
> ... What will be next, maybe you disable to run non GPL
> executables under linux ?

Actually no. We are researching how to stop trolls posting to the kernel
list as our main AI project.

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Tim Schmielau wrote:
> the appended patch enables 32 bit linux boxes to display more than
> 497.1 days of uptime. No user land application changes are needed.

Thank you for doing this labor of love -

I will let you know how it goes sometime
after March 23, 2003 -

	- J Sloan on linux-kernel
%
Alexander Viro wrote:
> You mean that you are unable to read any of the core kernel source?
> That would explain a lot...

Were you born rude, or did you have to practice it?

	- Richard Gooch on linux-kernel
%
Microsoft likes to discard vulnerabilities by "no standard client
would do this."  No, and no "standard visitor" would apply a crowbar
to your patio door, either.

	- H. Peter Anvin on IE6 problems with linux servers
%
> Andrew explicitely did not want to use DMI scanner.

I didnt want intel to invent ACPI either. The realities in both cases dont
match the goals 

	- Alan Cox on the ACPI mailing list
%
Having your own personal custom language dialect might be tempting but it is 
normally something only the lisp community do.

	- Alan Cox on the linux-kernel mailing list
%
"90% of everything is crap", Its called Sturgeon's law 8)                     
One of the problems is indeed finding the good bits

	- Alan Cox
%
I have a better idea: force CONFIG_DEBUG_* if CONFIG_DEVFS_FS had
been set _and_ taint the kernel with new flag - Known_Crap

	- Al Viro on irc
%
Using a cluster to hide the fact that the underlying systems crash
regularly is an extremely dangerous way to manage a computing environment.

	- Matt Dillon in http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=153
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who think that MyVariableIsBiggerThanYourVariable is a
	good name

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who define a function with 42 arguments and body being
	return (foo == bar) ? TRUE : FALSE;

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who add 1001st broken implementation of memcmp(), call it
	FooTurdCompare and prepend it with 20x80 block comment.

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME
	and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one
	explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their,
	ahem, code).

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who use Hungarian notation for no good reason and come up
	with structure fields that sound like street names from R'Lyeh

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who introduce wrappers for standard kernel stuff - like,
	say it, typedef int Int32; and sprinkle their crap with
	per-architecture ifdefs.

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
	* buggers who think that cpp is Just The Thing and produce turds
	that would make srb cringe in disgust.

	- Alexander Viro on coding style
%
Alexander Viro wrote:
> Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
> wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
> commentary on said code...

Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this.  It's the only way
people learn quickly.  Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than
a cold shower of public humiliation :-)

	- Larry McVoy on linux-kernel
%
We need to teach Linus about "taste" in drivers. His core code taste is
impeccable, but I'm not fond of his driver taste ;)

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
<wli> sleep is such a waste of time

	- excerpt from #offtopic (the #kernelnewbies off-topic channel)
%
Sorry about off-topic.  I thought I was posting to Usenet.

	- William Park on linux-kernel
%
Davide Libenzi wrote:
> It's not easy to get this right anyway.

Balancing the pull and push mechanisms in the scheduler while trying
to predict the future?  "Not easy" is an excellent description.

	- Rusty Russell on linux-kernel
%
Sheesh... FreeBSD used to have a big advantage over Linux - relative lack
of clueless advocates. What a pity that it's gone...

	- Al Viro on c.u.b.freebsd.misc
%
Christoph, please remember that irony is not available between the Canadian
and Mexican border.... you are confusing them again 8)

	- Alan Cox on linux-kernel
%
Daniel Phillips wrote:
> Hi Dana,
> 
> Are you still interested in signing up for a kernel project?  I've got a good
> one I think would be perfect for you.

Hey Dana,

I have a long list of projects you can work on, too.  Let me know.

        Jeff

;-)

	- Jeff Garzik on linux-kernel
%
And there was much suffering among the people, for g++ was a necessity. And
one rose up from the mass and cried, "Lord Root, if thou canst not help us,
then call upon the gods of far gcc@gcc.gnu.org for among them are sages of
wisdom who may be of help!"

	- bug report from Sean Callanan send to the GCC mailing list
%
There is a bog-standard way to combine several files in one - cpio.  Or tar.
No need to bring Apple Shit-For-Design(tm)(r) when standard tools are quite
enough.

	- Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
Hey, considering that Ada has every single language feature ever imagined,
and probably some that nobody reasonably _should_ have imagined, I'm not
surprised.

	- Linus on the gcc mailing list
%
Where are the negative comments from Al? (Al _always_ has negative
comments and suggestions for improvements, don't try to say that he also
liked it unconditionally ;)

	- Linus Torvalds about Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
There is a word for that and that word is "crap".

	- Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
... and I'm quite sure that EMACS could do it easily.  Let's not talk  
about GNU bloatware, OK? 

	- Alexander Viro on linux-kernel
%
