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Comment by ldfdr | Hacker News Reader

You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language.

This is part of the reason some URMs can't get ahead in US corporate culture.

Yes, Linus does swear a lot, and uses aggressive language. That's part of his style, his culture, and how he communicates.

No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers.

If you made a mistake, the BSD communities would write you off. The Linux community would tell you what you did wrong, and how to fix it, even if they used harsh language to do so.

The Linux culture is also quite meritocratic. It doesn't matter how you communicate, or how incompetent you were a year ago. If you're doing good technical work today, you're welcome. More than other cultures, arguments are taken at technical face value, not by who makes them.

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> You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences.

I disagree. We always can simply claim 'it's a cultural difference' as an excuse, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't make the behavior acceptable. Mature people in every culture look to show respect to others. If someone insulted me and said that, I'd think they were irresponsible and a bit slippery.

I've lived in some of the places you mention, and my experiences don't match your descriptions. People, as they are are everywhere, are generally polite and respectful. They may have some different ways of doing it, but those fundamentals are universal in my experience.

People naturally and quickly divine social norms from those around them.When I travel internationally, I learn and respect the social rules of the places I go. On a sports team, perhaps we pat each other on the butt; I don't do that in an office and say 'it's a cultural difference'. I may kiss familiar women on the cheek to greet them in my culture, but I wouldn't presume to do it in others. Travelers who don't learn the local norms are called "ugly", as in 'the Ugly American". Even entering a new work environment, I learn the social norms; those who don't look incompetent and rude.

How long have the people cited in this thread been in the professional IT culture? If they didn't have their positions of authority and instead had a boss in a company, my guess is that they would very quickly find a way to be polite. My guess is that they are polite with their spouses and kids; their in-laws, etc.

I think it's disingenuous to try to appeal to what you see as the norms of "professional IT culture" when Linus founded the Linux community, and with it, its culture. I think invoking the "Ugly American" concept when discussing this is interesting because saying that Linus and the Linux community should conform to "professional IT culture" at large seems emblematic of that mentality. Linus started a community and gets a disproportionate influence in setting its norms as a part of that.

That comment seems to assume that if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea. Not all behavior is relatively the same; good and bad don't depend on what the majority likes to do. Lots of people in the business world are condescending toward women; that doesn't make it good or acceptable. In a different context, civil rights exist to protect the minority from the majority.

My point in the GP was that the claim of 'cultural differences' isn't valid; we all learn and adjust to new cultural norms easily, and very few cultures, if any, have the norm of disrespect.

Your arguments are internally inconsistent. Up one level, you argue that newcomers should adapt to the norms of different cultures, rather than expecting everybody to conform to their own expectations (fine). rpcastanga points out that Linus is behaving according to the norms of the linux community culture, and by your own argument newcomers should adapt to that culture rather than demanding Linus conform to "professional IT culture". You then turn around and complain about the fallacy of "if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea". See the contradiction?

As far as I can tell you have not successfully argued that Linus / the linux community have no norm of respect. Other commenters have pointed out that the community does in fact have norms of respect, but that those norms include a clause along the lines of "if you bullshit and command a position where you are expected to know better, you may be bluntly called out on it".

Hi,

> Up one level, you argue that newcomers should adapt to the norms of different cultures

My point was that newcomers can and do adopt norms quickly and easily. Therefore, bad behavior isn't due to 'cultural differences'; those are easily overcome.

> Your arguments are internally inconsistent

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. I'm afraid I am, myself, internally inconsistent. It's glorious. You should try it.

> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Sure, but making sure your defence of your argument doesn't contradict your argument can hardly be considered to be a foolish consistency.

I agree with you in general, but the 'Torvalds swears' thing that sparked the GP's comment, it is such a trope. He actually is a nice guy and has spent a lot of time patiently explaining things to people - it's just that those comments don't get plastered across gossipy tech websites.

Furthermore, if you think that bosses of companies are polite, you really need to work at more companies, because there's quite a lot of variance. There's a lot of bosses out there with very rough manners. And hell, in some places it was (still is?) someone standard to take business meetings at strip bars.

Similarly, I once worked support at an agricultural telemetry start-up, and swearing was part of the job. Our clients were mostly farmers, and swearing (if they were swearing) helped put them at ease and let us get on with the job.

Linus doesn't swear because it's "his culture." He swears to put people down. There's a difference between using harsh language casually to talk about something, and using that kind of language to talk down a person or their work. Linus does the latter. Not only that, but he openly admits it.

I don't understand why there's confusion on that score. He knows what he's doing, he knows it's dickish, he does it anyway because people let him, and legions leap to his defense for it. It flabbergasts me, to be honest.

That's why he's a jerk, and that's why it's unacceptable.

Unacceptable by who? Some universal morality? Come on.

Unacceptable for communication in a professional setting in North America or Europe. I don't buy the argument that it's acceptable to behave as he does in the workplace in Finland any more than it's acceptable in the US or any other such country.

It's also just generally a disrespectful way to treat other human beings, and that is pretty universal, actually.

But to be frank, I think that context was perfectly clear in my post.

I'm an Armenian living in Texas and his communication is completely acceptable to me. If anything the standard American corporate professional speak pisses me off when matters get serious. Why don't we embrace that different things work for different people and there is no communication standard to be imposed per continent or even culture?

I think you're conflating corporatespeak/not being direct with being rude. Compare these three statements:

"There's a problem with the function you wrote. I need you to fix it tonight." "The function you wrote is non-optimal for our goals. Please reconsider and reevaluate when you get a chance." "You fucked up that function. Fix up your shit NOW."

The first is "standard professionalspeak." It's clear, direct, gets the point across. It isn't rude. The second is worthless corporatespeak. The third is rude and dickish. It's also how Linus tends to communicate.

I agree the second is not great, but would you really prefer the third to the first?

My point is that you can be totally direct and clear about what must be done without being nasty to the person doing the work, and that is the ideal. I don't think there are many cultures that would prioritize being mean over being direct, but if yours does, I'd be curious to understand what advantage you think that confers.

Further, if we're going to embrace different communication styles, then I would say the onus is on people to learn to communicate inoffensively, not to learn to accept offensive communication.

The third statement would have been totally acceptable in my last team's slack channel. We all respected each other as both friends and developers so language of that sort was absolutely accepted. Sure, as an outsider it might seem brusque but for someone familiar with the team it was clearly camaraderie.

Talking about language without context is meaningless and so I try not to judge Linus off of a few publicly available emails. My Australian friends will refer to each other with language that is shocking to me as an American, but I acknowledge the context aound it and don't write them off as assholes because of it.

It's not "a few public emails." It's many, many examples over many, many years from a massive, high-volume email list that represents the bulk of the work done on the Linux kernel.

It's clear from the very public, recurrent fallout from Linus's behavior that it is not a matter of camaraderie or simple outsider misunderstanding. I agree, context matters. It's precisely because of the context that this language is not tolerable. The LKML is not a private Slack channel for friends.

Absolutely, among friends, such talk is generally tolerated and isn't a sign of rudeness or disrespect. My friends and I do the same thing in private channels. But in public in a professional setting is not at all the place for that.

Compared to how many emails he sends in total, it is barely even a few. By and large, you will not find a more friendly maintainer. If you keep ignoring him while trying to get something into his project, he will get rude.

And this is the funny thing about it. Even the people he "explodes" on usually get a lot of friendly "stop" messages from him well before any inflammatory message comes out. Only real exceptions I can think of is that he will meet an insult with an insult. Which, ironically, can go a decent way to making everyone else feel safer in the environment.

Edit to add: I do want to quickly add that as much praise as I can offer Linus in this regard, Knuth really is on another level. I do not intend to compare them.

> We all respected each other as both friends ...

> My Australian friends will ...

There's a common thread here: if you already know for sure that someone has respect and/or affection for you, harsh language from them just reinforces that, precisely because talking that way to a stranger or acquaintance is hostile.

The way I see it, the whole point of communication is that people use a medium (like speech or writing) to get each other on the same wavelength. If in my head I'm thinking "I fucked up this function. I probably need to fix up my shit NOW", and the next person's reaction matches it, we are on the same wavelength. We can thus be more than the sum of our parts.

If he/she instead goes "There's a problem with the function you wrote", and in my head I need to go through the gymnastics of "I think he/she's basically saying that I fucked this function up and I need to fix my shit now", that adds a bit more effort to our communication.

Same is true in the reverse example of course.

Which is why people need to work with the right people, and there's no one-size-fits-all, especially when it comes to something as intricate as inter-person communications. Culture fit is real.

There is a scale of insincerity to rudeness. I've been in cultures where each of those is considered respectful and reasonable.

The onus is very much on corporate America to accept diversity. Right now, the only persons of color who are hired are ones who have mastered the culture, for example. That doesn't have much to do with technical skills. That's almost the definition of discrimination.

Respect has to do with how you feel towards a person. People can read through the language used, and as unprofessional as "Fix up your shit NOW" may sound, the details of body language, tone of voice, and facial expression can make that disdainful, angry, respectful, or any of many other things, depending on how you read it.

Someone living in Finland (Europe) I always would take the third comment over the first one. In the first one, someone passive-aggressively orders me to finish fixing my stuff today. What if the fix is complicated and takes a week?

To me "fix up your shit NOW" is more open-ended, and if the fix takes me a week then that's perfectly fine.

Wouldn't be HN without someone taking something far too literally to the detriment of the original point.

How about if we modified the first comment to say "I need you to fix it ASAP"? I can't honestly believe that you'd much rather take someone shouting at you and making you feel bad about yourself, than a direct manager who ALSO speaks his mind, but can do so in a controlled, adult manner.

If I do shit work, I want people to talk me down for it. And I don't think I'm alone in that, either. Just as you don't like being talked down to, I don't like it when people don't put me in my place for the sake of my feelings.

Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why.

"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do.

People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system.

And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it."

-- Linus Torvalds, 09/06/2000, LKML

"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended."

-- Linus, 2012.

Linus Torvalds on why he isn't nice: "I don't care about you."

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/linus-torvalds-on-wh...

There's this bizarre thing going on on HN, reddit, and other tech sites. We saw it with Linus and we see it again with Trump. Suddenly, all these people are making excuses for terrible behaviors and outrageous claims. Usually following a "he didn't really mean that" playbook of justifications like "productivity" or "politics" like either excuses acting like a child.

Why are we afraid to call people out on the shit they say? Is this some new level of political correctness? Or do we just see these people as something to project onto and dismiss anything counter to that?

No idea, but it seems we live in strange times where a man's own words are ignored for feel-good conclusions that have no merit or basis in reality.

It's not about political correctness. It's about what these people make you feel, and how you respond to it. People want to believe that somebody whom they like on one score - Linus's technical achievements, Donald Trump's ability to empathize with the working class and the poor - are likable on all scores.

It's much like the classic literary 'harsh father' figure - he may beat you, he may be strict, he may never show love, but he provides for the family and he teaches you to be moral, so everything he did must have been good. The beatings must have had a purpose. It's hard for us to accept that good and bad exist in the same person, and that somebody who does good things may also do very bad things, not just discretely, but often at the same time.

He's very clear in that he doesn't care about how you feel. If you understand that, and also you're ok with the idea that kernel's code quality is above everything, then join the team, else just use the product... or not.

I think your approach is reasonable, but lots of people on HN do not take it, and suggest that people who don't like it are the ones who are wrong. That is, they genuinely think the way he behaves should be aspired to. I agree that I can't change it myself, but that doesn't mean I support it.

There were many people greatly superior to Linus technically in the BSD community when Linux was wiping BSD's chronometers.

Has Linus Torvalds ever said anything offensive to you or anyone you know? It seems to me that the people complaining about his behavior basically don't have the standing to do so — they're attempting to police other people's interactions that didn't involve them.

(This is different from Donald Trump, where people have actually complained about being wronged by him, rather than complaining about an interaction between Trump and somebody else where neither party had any complaints. And this is ignoring how offensive it is to equate telling somebody to do their job better with sexual assault and racial discrimination.)

You don't have to get shit flung at you to know it's offensive.

Policing other people's interactions without the consent of any involved party is pure paternalism. What you think is shit being flung might be Tootsie Rolls to them, and it is not our place to tell these people how they have to feel.

Consent is irrellevant. We have a society specifically to police each other. And because we suck at both policing each other and achieving consensus and cooperation, we have government.

In terms of profanity, if someone says "man, I had a really shitty day today", that's not really harmful and doesn't have significant consequences. But when someone says "you are a real piece of shit", that is harmful, and does have consequences. It doesn't even matter how the recipient felt. The giver had an intent of harm that was driven probably by anger.

It's the verbal equivalent to punching someone in the nose. The aggressor got angry and they wanted to inflict pain, in order to try to affect change to a scenario or thing they wanted to be different (that's what anger is). And regardless of whether the recipient was hurt, we as a society say that letting out your anger at someone in this way is not acceptable, that you are not allowed to try to injure someone, whether they felt it or not. Obviously our laws are a lot more lax about speech than about physicality, but it's the exact same concept just in different mediums.

A woman may receive a sexist comment and not be bothered. But we agree not to tolerate it, whether or not she was bothered by it, because the concept, and the intention, are simply not acceptable in our society. The point is not to tell her what to feel, but to enforce our moral values as a society. If you don't like that, fuck you.

The other day, I tried an underhanded trick in a board game and won, and my friend said something along the lines of "You are a real piece of shit." She was really frustrated that I'd managed to trick her like that, but I knew there wasn't any real hatred underneath and I took it as a compliment. Would you harass my friend for our friendly banter, since the fact that we are both 100% OK with the conversation is irrelevant?

Yep. I would like to think I would be respectful in informing her I found her comment impolite, just like I would tell someone who said something sexist that their comment is unacceptable.

With all due respect, don't stick your nose unasked in other people's business.

Behavior like that makes me far more angry than rude comments.

"naughty words" are not synonymous with "rudeness". You can easily convey a message of contempt for the recipient with flowery, polite words, just as you can easily convey a message of fraternal love with rough words.

If someone told me to mind my language over a casual board game, I'd tell them to fuck off. A friendly jibe is just a friendly jibe, regardless of whether it had the word 'shit' in it or not. Words matter, but far less than intent does - and the intent of telling someone to clean up their act in a casual setting is that they're patronising you.

Replying to sibling, as nesting level reached:

This is a wonderful example of why human communication isn't only based on the semantic meaning of words. Flirting, sarcasm, irony - all would be lost to someone just parsing words, not being able to understand the finer communication on a subconscious level: Body language, rapport, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if people who would call someone out on that language have a higher chance on being diagnosed with autism or sociopathy - which in itself isn't bad at all, but it helpts being aware that communication between humans is apparently perceived completely differently by different groups.

We have a society specifically to police each other

Err, no we don't. We have a society specifically to co-exist with each other. Proactively policing each other actually reduces our ability to co-exist.

What you're talking about are ego defenses. And yes, it is in part projection. But the two cases are different.

When you see one person who is personally or socially powerful, and that person is a champion of one thing you strongly believe in, you will support that person in order to have that thing come to fruition, as long as the other things that person supports aren't too distateful to you. It's then necessary to defend that person so they can continue to be your champion - either out of ego, or purely to achieve your goals.

But when it's Linus, people don't defend him because they need to achieve something. They defend him mainly because of what he represents to them, and also for the work he does.

When it's Trump, people defend him because he's simply the most extreme choice possible. He makes you feel good, and that combined with anger becomes a positive feedback loop. He could murder someone and people would still find reason to cheer for it, not because they like what he does, but because of what he represents to them: extremism. (and now the thread is going to go down a political spiral... oh jeez, this poor thread)

If you want to join the marines, you'll be screamed at, verbally abused, and generally pushed to your limits. It has to be that way, they are training 18 year olds to run to the sound of gunfire and perform under fire and the threat of death. You must put up with it or you do not belong in that group.

At the other extreme, if you want to join your local flying club, you can expect to be treated courteously. If anyone treats you like an asshole, the problem is with them rather than you. It can be that way, because the group is not trying to achieve anything extreme, its just for enjoyment and largely social.

If you want to join in the white hot stream of activity surrounding one of the world's most important pieces of software, its not going to be like your flying club.

Its not quite the marines either, but it is a place where very complex stuff has to get done, urgently, absolutely correctly, in the face of hundreds or thousands of interjections and "what about" from more or less well-meaning contributors who just don't have or get the big picture in the same way the core of the group does. (Talking about Linus here, not Trump :)

Sometimes, such an environment functions better with a culture of abruptness and "take no shit" is built.

Its very unfortunate for anyone who aspires to join such a group that they have to put up with that. But sometimes we have to acknowledge that that "terrible behaviour" is part of what makes the group work. Not all clubs are suitable for all people.

It's software. Software. Programming. There is no tough mentality required to write good software. You do not have to be a dick to write good software. Ever.

I disagree. Some software projects require a tremendous amount of communication to accomplish any task of any measurable importance. If there are three reasonable people involved in this communication, being a dick is probably not required. If there are tens of thousands of individuals involved, you will either be forced to be less than polite to some of them or you will not accomplish anything.

Politely saying no takes time and effort, especially if communication isn't your strong point. If I'm walking down the street, I'll probably be pretty polite to the first homeless guy that asks me for a dollar. By the time the hundredth flags me down before I'm even halfway to my destination, I'll have boiled that initial polite response down to "Fuck off."

I agree with this, especially since a lot of people will interpret politeness as being a sign that your decision is negotiable.

That polite "No, because of X, Y, and Z" rapidly turns into "I have made up my mind, no" and then into "This is not a fucking debate, so no, and fuck you." very quickly, especially if you're dealing with a constant deluge of stupid requests.

I'm not going to judge Linus for his outbursts, as obviously his method seems to work pretty well.

It seems pretty clear to me.

"people who get offended should be offended"

He's saying that if you want to join the team, you should have a thick skin. It's his prerogative as project leader. Maybe in his view there's a correlation between thick skin and the abilities required for a kernel hacker.

"doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system."

The objective to make a solid kernel is above your feelings, his feeling and anybody else's feelings.

"I don't care"

Same as above: the kernel is above you.

Maybe the harsh language is a good filter. I'm sure there's less politics in the organization with a direct language vs. euphemisms for everything. Kernel programing is harsh.

You're reading a completely different hidden message in three separate sets of quotes spread out over a decade. At no time did he reference the kernel. Your idea is not clear, it's invented. And this idea you're pushing, that you have to be "tough" to develop for the kernel, is macho bullshit. It's software, not rugby.

Ever heard about irony? Or maybe nordic self-depreciation is not something the SV culture is able to parse.

*self-deprecation

Although IMO self-deprecation is often also self-depreciation, for some liberal interpretation of that word in this context, but I doubt that's what you meant.

My spellchecker got the better of me...

No worries, I thought the double meaning was at least somewhat amusing :)

Clear evidence of his self-deprecation is in the word that most of us say every day: git. His second major project was named with the philosophy "I named the first one after myself, so why not the second one?"

>No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers.

I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk.

Also keep in mind that BSD have legal challenges that GNU/Linux didn't so community is not the only reason why Linux won the popularity contest

You think Linux didn't have legal challenges? Where have you been since 2003?

The legal challenges were at very different points in their lifetimes. It's at least arguable that the legal issues associated with AT&T and BSD kept it from becoming as mainstream as it might have. (As did the somewhat splintered community.)

Linux OTOH was already well-established before the SCO suits.

I think BSD's biggest problem was all the fragmentation that they created for themselves, with FreeBSD and NetBSD and OpenBSD (and more).

BSDs legal challenges happened largely before Linux had any popularity, so the narrative that pins the blame for BSD's failure in the marketplace on its legal troubles seems hollow to me. The biggest lawsuit was settled in 1994, when Linux hit version 1.0 and Red Hat released its first version. FreeBSD 1.0 landed the previous year.

I don't really disagree. As you say, the legal issues with BSD had been largely resolved by the time there was a significantly growing market for x86 *nix. (It's also worth remembering that, at the time, a lot of people were assuming that market would just go to Windows anyway.)

I'm also inclined to think that fragmentation was a big part of why BSD didn't win out--not legal issues or licensing.

> I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk.

It's 100% a cultural difference. While you see it as personally aggressive and grating, a lot of people see "overly polite" language as a sign that you don't care about the topic being discussed and/or are trying to address an issue politically rather than by merits of a strong argument. Neither of these perceptions is really right or wrong, it just has to do with the perspective you have based on where you grew up and who you've interacted with the most.

From an engineering perspective it'd be optimal if everyone had the same universal expectations for how a conversation should be held, just like how it'd be optimal if everyone spoke the same language. People don't really work that way, though, and just like with languages we try to accommodate each other as much as possible and find middle grounds, etc.

When you say "trying to address an issue politically", that sort of implies a context in which you're pushing back against someone else who's already employed a more "Linus-like" approach.

That's not what the parent comment was suggesting. Someone like Knuth isn't accused of valuing politics over technical merit because he simply addresses technical merit in a polite way. I'm not one of the people who cares all that much that Linus is an ass to people on a mailing list, but it's ludicrous to suggest that his being an ass on a mailing list is necessary to convey a technical point.

I wouldn't say it's universally necessary, just like it's not universally necessary to speak any given language to convey information. We just all have our own natural ways of doing things and it's not necessarily productive to try to get everyone to force themselves into the same mode of communication. We all have the tendency to view our natural modes as superior in various ways but I don't think we should let that tendency lead us to try to coral others into conforming to our norms.

I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average.

He's a perfectionist and he seems to get distracted easily.

Like me, he seems to overly inured to the siren song of Force Multipliers (making other people more productive) and really should have spent more time practicing the craft.

If I had it to do over again I probably would have spent a little more time coding and a little less of it thinking in my late 20's to early 30's. It would make a broader group of people understand what I'm about. Especially bosses who don't understand that it would take three people to replace me, even though the majority of the team close more bugs than I do.

> I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average.

In fact, Donald Knuth is so below average from a productivity standpoint that there is an entire book published about books and papers that Donald Knuth published: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cp.html

Ah, I thought you had me there.

Aside from Art, the Tex books, his earlier work on computational complexity and the one on AI, isn't most of the rest of that his bound lecture notes?

His extremely long side rail into typography was mostly what I was talking about. Art was left unfinished that entire time.

You just posted a critique of the most prolific living computer scientist as not productive and then proceeded to compare yourself to him. Who are you? More to the point, how did you get to be so delusional?

Had a Program manager once who was the English Gentleman stereotype. No matter how ridiculously behind schedule someone was he could not confront anyone about it. He would just ask the same questions every week.

For six months I knew that we had a hardware driver problem on the target hardware that was causing the drive to be accessed at PATA speeds (3 MB/s max throughput stuck out from my time spent configuring Linux).

Finally, finally I convinced him to let me sit in on a call to the vendor (VxWorks) and in fifteen minutes we identified the problem and a feasible workaround. Old VxWorks, new bridge controller(?) backward compatible with one they DID support.

All because he couldn't say what needed to be said.

We got a nice 35% jump in the app after the next firmware upgrade.

My idea of the stereotypical English Gentleman as a program manager is someone who uses nice language and still makes it perfectly clear, after you have thought about it a little, that he's telling you to fuck off idiot.

Not someone who's not able to communicate.

We Americans are dense and don't always pick up on undertones of disappointment. Half of the program answered his questions as if they weren't loaded. It was painful to listen to after a year.

Here's an article which discusses some difficulty that British communication could be causing in diplomacy right now http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37799805

"You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language."

Being born in New York (City), still living close and working there, I have to smile at the distinction between "American inner city" and "parts of New York". It just reinforces our attitude that there is New York and then there is everywhere else!

Thank you!

Stop talking nonsense. The first version of Linux came around 1991-1992, with a plethora of GNU programs to be used on it. The oldests of the current open-source BSDs were released 1993. That's why Linux got any success at all.

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