Windows 7 Gets a Thumbs Up from Linus Torvalds

Didn't even dream such a day would dawn, did you ? Now here is the father of Linux posing before a Windows 7 stall in Japan with a thumbs up sign.

The story behind the picture

The occasion was a Linux Symposium held in Japan in which Linus Torvalds was an attendee. Microsoft knowing about the Linux Symposium erected a Windows 7 promotion booth right across the venue.

During the break, when Linus Torvalds was dragged to the Windows 7 booth by a few of his buddies, he chose to pose as seen in the picture.

If you are wondering, No! Linus didn't buy a copy of Windows 7.

Source of News : Engadget
Photo Credits : Chris @ Japan Linux Symposium

How do astronauts go to bathroom in outer space

A NASA engineer answers one of the age-old questions every kid has: What happens when you go to the bathroom in outer space? A little insight into zero-gravity toilet design.

Humor : Correlation between drug dealers and geeks

Who knew there was a correlation between a drug dealer and a geek. Now that I think of it, there are striking similarities between the two divergent groups that makes me ponder about how geeky I could be without hazarding an association with drug dealers. Ha ha.

If you don't know what I am talking about then you should definitely read the following article.

Nursery Rhyme Video - Humor

Here is a Nursery rhyme video in which, a lovely lass working in a flower shop help avert a crime. Produced and directed by an Australian named Michael Demosthenous. This video of about 8 Minutes duration won the Best Short Film award in the NAFA Film Festival. What struck me the most was the play of words that has been inter weaved into the plot.

I doubled up laughing when I watched this nursery rhyme video clip. You would too, it's that funny.

Humor: A hilarious job profile for a System administrator

I came across this very humorous post for a job related to system administrators or web programmers. And the job description goes thus ...

We are seeking some poor, misguided fool to be paid next to nothing for a fulltime position doing highly skilled system administration work and rearend penetration testing in a mixed Windows 2000 and Linux environment. We lost our last IT worker because he found a higher paying job standing in front of Subway while dressed as a sandwich.

Skills required:

* at LEAST ten years experience in the administration of Windows 2000

* administration of Linux
* speak with animals
* SQL Server/MySQL
...

Read the rest of the job description at craiglist - you will love it ;-).

Humor: Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It...

I can't for the life of me understand what it is with this image associated with a geek. I mean, when somebody mentions a so and so is a geek, immediately, it conjures up in your mind a person who is married to his computer, wearing horn rimmed glasses with thick lens and squinting at a monitor for the major part he is awake. Oh yeah, a geek can never and I mean NEVER be a woman let alone find it easy to date a woman. It is really hilarious to see entire cartoon strip series being created which revolves around this stereotype of a geek.

Craiglist has a interesting write up where a female lists 15 reasons why it is a good decision to date a geek and even marry him. While it doesn't do anything to diminish the negative image of a geek, it is quite entertaining and humorous as well.

Humor: Is your son a computer hacker ? Check for these symptoms ...

Today I stumbled upon this very interesting article where a concerned parent lists the signs to watch out for in your kids to guard against them turning into *gasp* hackers...

Here are a couple of gems from the article...

If your son has requested a new "processor" from a company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the security features that American processor makers, such as Intel, use to prevent hacking.

and still further ...

There are, unfortunately, many hacking manuals available in bookshops today. A few titles to be on the lookout for are: ... "Programming with Perl" by Timothy O'Reilly; "Geeks" by Jon Katz; "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling; ... and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond. If you find any of these hacking manuals in your child's possession, confiscate them immediately.

Even the good old Linux has not been spared.

The way the article has been written, makes it is clear that it is meant to humor the person reading it. Then again, some of those who do not know the A,B,Cs... of computers might really fall for what has been written there. Read the full article to get a good laugh.

Humor - Get your ABC's of Linux right

Recently, one of my friends shared with me this rather funny ode to Linux which was passed on to him by a friend of his, which I am in turn sharing with you. So without much ado, here is the rhyming ode to Linux ...

A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.

I noticed one error in the third line of the poem though, which is that Linux does not use the cc compiler, rather it uses gcc. But apart from that, this is a nice compilation.