Re: [OFF TOPIC] Linus Torvalds, the man of the century
On Sat, Apr 11, 1998 at 12:05:59PM +0200, Orn E. Hansen wrote:
>
> Þann 10-Apr-98 skrifar Marcus Brinkmann:
> >
> > Total Percent
> > richard rogers 636494 7.42
> > henry ford 555916 6.48
> > douglas macarthur 474770 5.53
> > bill gates 468605 5.46 <--- We can beat this poor rating!
> > howard hughes 351237 4.09
> > vehbi koc 350473 4.08
> > steve jobs 336439 3.92
> > murat arslan 205791 2.40
> >
> Voting for Linus Tolrvalds is not a good idea. The man is not a Titan,
> in any sense of the word... even less than Bill Gates.
>
> Making such silly votes, is sure to disrubt the balance and help put
> Bill Gates up on the list, or is *that* your intent? to make your
> favourite maggot "Bill Gates" the Titan of the century? Do you have the
> "hots" for the man?
>
> People like Henry Ford, and Douglas McArthur are far greater Titans,
> who are among those candidates people *should* spend their votes on. Not
> on anal jokes, just because they have the "hots" for'em.
Dear Orn!
I can't take this at all serious. It is interesting that the top 10 are
mostly identical to the people suggested at the request form. It is also
interesting, that most people are of the western world.
What is a TITAN anyway? The people that had the most influence on me are
certainly not going to win (and it would be hard to tell you who they are). I
also don't believe in the "good of the masses", and laugh at people trying
to find out the importance of people by *voting*. Most people on this world
don't have a telephone, not even mentioning net access. A good part of them
never have touched a phone. Please also consider, that a good part of the
people that lived at the beginning of this century are dead and can't participate.
It may even come out that the best actor was young Leonardo...
I consider such voting as meaningless, unimportant and irrational. If it can
serve to push Linux forward, it has at least one good effect.
Paul Huygen wrote:
> I agree. Moreover, I think the "man of the century" list is a silly
> one, with its emphasis on captains of industry. I think that for
> instance scientists like Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein or Watson
> Crick, who founded the knowledge on which our technology is based,
> should rather deserve a place on this list. Without quantum mechanics
> there would be no micro-electronics, and thus no microsoft and no
> Linux. One could even reason that people like Hitler or Stalin,
> horrible as they are, could be nominated as man of the year, because
> they caused the political structure and the power structure of the
> world to be as it is now (post-cold-war).
Here you are realizing a side effect of the irrationality of such a voting.
Such voting forms are mostly interesting from a psychological point of view
(anbalyzing the behaviour of the voting masses).
> Concerning Linus Torvalds I would like to make another remark: He
> certainly is an outstanding person, having created the Linux kernel
> and devoting his energy into the successfull consistent development of Linux
> itself. On the other hand, one could reason that Linux is there
> because the Free Software Foundation was there with GNU. The Linux
> Kernel is only one (OK, vital) part of the complex system that
> Linux is. I think that, if the Free Software Foundation did not exist
> when Linus developed the Linux kernel, Linux itself would not have
> come into existence. Therefore, if I had to vote for the most
> important person concerning Linux, it would be possible that I would rather
> vote for Richard Stallman.
Alas, Linus has better publicity than Richard, which makes me think of the
people that are making this publicity. I consider RMS's work a lot more
important than Linus's (HURD would have been coming anyway, and it would
probably have been better), but he is a good counterpart. It is good to have
more than one centrum of interests. It would be interesting to have both on
top of the list, though ;)
BTW: I consider the people who take voting will have difficulties with
spelling. (rms or richard stallman or richard m. stallman?).
It is interesting though that some people take this seriously.
Marcus
who knows that forecasts are manipulated and doesn't believe any statistic
he didn't faked himself
--
"Rhubarb is no Egyptian god." Debian GNU/Linux finger brinkmd@
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