61 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
61 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
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by staff writers
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Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars
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``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System
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Administrators' Guide''. Already an industry non-classic, the new
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version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux
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system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of
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acknowledgements in the introduction.
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The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the
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corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project. ``We at the LDP feel
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that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work
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would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director
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of LDP, Inc.
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The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a
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copyright that allows modification. ``More dough,'' explains the author.
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Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will
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probably remain free. ``Even more dough,'' promises the author.
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The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96
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versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about.
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Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of
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Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited
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Helsinki several times this year. Despite of this, Linus Torvalds,
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author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is
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not worried. ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he
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explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.''
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The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information
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Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President. The ISHW
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is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show
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that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before
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the first prototypes are ready. Asked whether he was worried about the
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foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president
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said, ``Finland? Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told
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anyone yet. They're great at building model airplanes as well. And _I_
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can spell potato.'' House representatives are not mollified, however,
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wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska.
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Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock
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market for weeks. Several major publishing houses reached an all time
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low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the
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publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius. The negotiations did not work
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out, tough. ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen
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at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable
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of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks,
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preferring to communicate via e-mail. ``He kept muttering something
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about jiffies and pegs,'' they say.
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The central Superhighway site called ``sunsite.unc.edu''
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collapsed in the morning before the release. News about the release had
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been leaked by a German hacker group, Harmonious Hardware Hackers, who
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had cracked into the author's computer earlier in the week. They had
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got the release date wrong by one day, and caused dozens of eager fans
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to connect to the sunsite computer at the wrong time. ``No computer can
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handle that kind of stress,'' explained the mourning sunsite manager,
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Erik Troan. ``The spinning disks made the whole computer jump, and
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finally it crashed through the floor to the basement.'' Luckily,
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repairs were swift and the computer was working again the same evening.
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``Thank God we were able to buy enough needles and thread and patch it
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together without major problems.'' The site has also installed a new
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throttle on the network pipe, allowing at most four clients at the same
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time, thus making a new crash less likely. ``The book is now in our
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Incoming folder'', says Troan, ``and you're all welcome to come and get it.''
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