'Mauro, SHUT THE F**K UP!'

The week's chatter has provided fewer gems than usual and a lot more "Look at this great new product I launched at CES", but luckily you can always rely on Linus Torvalds to come out with a zinger. The Linux kernel developer pulled no punches when Red Hat's Mauro Carvalho Chehab tried to pass off a bug in the kernel as …

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hell Fire Belief"

...crazies...

[steps quietly away]

[Mike Brown]

Re: "Hell Fire Belief"

going the religious route actually destroyed any chance they had to fight the rfid tag. If they hadnt called it thr "mark of the beast", which is ludicrous, and just went for the privacy and freedom route they may have something.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Mike brown - Re: "Hell Fire Belief"

Got there before me. The RFID thing is repulsive regardless of one's beliefs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @Mike brown - "Hell Fire Belief"

You know, 'beast' is only one letter away from 'breast'. How is this relevant? I doubt it is, but it's kinda funny.

[JCitizen]

Re: "Hell Fire Belief"

Ha! What I'm wondering is how do they know it isn't the mark of the Lord? Christians need to read their Bible before going off half cocked. Perhaps the little girl could have been one of the glorious 144,000!!

Oh Well! Missed opportunity that one!

[John G Imrie]

Linus

I'm quite happy with Linus Torvalds outburst. If only the makers of commercial software had this robust approach to admitting bugs in their code.

[wowfood]

Re: Linus

they aren't bugs, they're features.

[Dr. Mouse]

Re: Linus

I agree.

You produce software A, and expose features which are used by software B.

You make a change to A which stops B from working*.

There is a bug in A, not B. You need to fix it.

*Obviously, this does not include features which have been deprecated and scheduled for removal.

[Annihilator]

Re: Linus

"If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs"

Following from Dr Mouse about software deprecation, what if a user programme was exploiting a live bug and a kernel patch fixed the erroneous behaviour - can we blame the user programs then?

[dogged]

Mistranslation? More like outright invention

Given that Elop's Spanish isn't up to an interview, it was conducted in English.

As such, Nokia retain an English transcript.

That transcript is here, hosted by WMPowerUser.

"Anything's possible"? He never said it. Or anything remotely like it.

[Steve Graham]

kernel oops

Changes by that same developer broke my USB television stick a few versions back, until I discovered new Make options that only appeared if you enabled building of modules for remote controls (I don't have a remote control).

[James Micallef]

McAfee giveaway discrimination?

" I began giving these away as presents to select people – government employees, police officers, cabinet minister’s assistants, girlfriends of powerful men, boyfriends of powerful women "

...what about the powerful men's boyfriends and the powerful women's girlfriends??

[Marvin the Martian]

Re: McAfee giveaway discrimination?

Not in south america.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I don't particularly like linux, but I definitely like Torvalds.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish he'd take the guy that broke ext4 to task

They changed the hash – and although largely transparent to userland, it did break GlusterFS. Maybe other things too?

So, if you change the kernel and something in userland no longer works, that's a bug in the kernel right? Even Linus seems to agree, at least when it comes to PulseAudio.

I'd really like to see Linus drop the F-bomb on the guy that made that change.

[Vic]

Re: I wish he'd take the guy that broke ext4 to task

> I'd really like to see Linus drop the F-bomb on the guy that made that change.

I'd really like to see Linus drop the F-bomb on the guy that made ext4. It's really not good on laptops[1] that lose power unexpectedly...

Vic.

[1] More specifically, I don't think it's appropriate to run ext4 as a root FS on any machine that's not going to be attended by an experienced sysad. ext3 would almost always clean itself up, even if it bellyached while it did it. ext4 drops you to a root shell and expects you to sort it out yourself - an annoyance for me, a show-stopper for others :-(

[Syldra]

RFID

Actually, I quite like the idea of following the students when at school. The school is responsible for the kids and if a student says he goes to the bathroom but doesn't and goes somewhere and has an accident, I'm sure the parents would come and say "How come you let him go to <insert dangerous place> ?". It's far less invasive than cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: RFID

You know they'd just leave their comm badges in their quarters and take a shuttle off the ship anywa-- hang on, what were we talking about again?

[Annihilator]

@Syldra

By the same extension I guess you support state RFID tracking of children when at home then? Using your same story:

" The parent is responsible for their kids and if a child says he goes to the park but doesn't and goes somewhere and has an accident, I'm sure the social services would come and say "How come you let him go to <insert dangerous place> ?". It's far less invasive than cameras too."