Linus Torvalds interview on CNN

[Paul King]

This takes things a bit further off-topic, but I don't have a lot of respect for 
infowars.com. I know Alex Jones has been interviewed with a straight face on CNN, 
so that gives him and infowars respectability; and also his take on the 9-11 
events haven't been *too* inconsistent with what I have seen elsewhere; but his 
views on historical and political events can sometimes be utterly batty, which 
undermines his whole effort.

You don't need to go to infowars to prove that CNN cowtows to advertisers at 
times; you can check out less whacko sites such as www.fair.org, who have been 
keeping track of the news media for years.

As for the interview, I found it a light read. I like to hear Torvalds express 
his attitude toward M$ and see that it is not an aggressive or negative attitude. 
While I am not a fan of M$, and could say all manner of negative things about it, 
I see him as trying to take the high road, and to raise the profile of Linux as a 
good OS in its own right, which would remain true whether M$ existed or not. 

I disagree that the interviewer was necessarily clueless. To me, he was 
respecting the fact that a typical CNN audience are not made up of uber-geeks and 
ninja programmers; but mostly of average people who want to learn more about the 
world around them. Coming from a point of view of Linux cluelessness and general 
curiosity about Linux was a deliberate interview tactic to get basic information 
across to the public. While it may reflect *actual* cluelessness is a different 
matter, but IMO, that didn't come across.

Paul King

On 19 May 2006 at 18:26, Rick Tomaschuk spaketh these wourdes:

> I think CNN not only reports the news but also like newspapers can
> appear to manipulate the news to their own (advertisers) benefits.
> See http://www.infowars.com
> 
> On Fri, 2006-05-19 at 14:09 -0500, Sy Ali wrote:
> > On 5/19/06, Jason Shein <jason-xgs8i/e9EeWTtA8H5PvdGCwD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > > Good to see more exposure in the mainstream media.
> > >
> > > http://edition.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/05/18/global.office.linustorvalds/
> > 
> > It was a comfortable and relaxed read.  I'm glad it didn't get too
> > silly/political.  Some of the questions were.. uninformed (purposely
> > or otherwise, they were odd).  Linus definitely has nice calm attitude
> > to it all.
> > 
> > Of course, with that forum I wouldn't have expected questions like "do
> > you regret using a macrokernel design?"
> > --
> > The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
> > TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> > How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
> -- 
> http://www.TorontoNUI.ca
> 
> 
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml
> 
> __________ NOD32 1.1549 (20060519) Information __________
> 
> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> http://www.eset.com
> 
> 


--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml