Linus Torvalds: Pearls before swine | Hacker News Reader

Linus Torvalds: Pearls before swine

torvalds-family.blogspot.com

410 pointsbrianwillis132 comments

I've done stuff that normal people would consider ubercool - doing illegal raves, run one of the hottest bars in Ibiza, throwing parties for the jetset.

When seen from the outside it looks amazing - you get to talk to models, you get free booze, get in for free at all the clubs and have sex with models.

The thing that nobody tells you is that it's hard work. Most of the actors that go to the oscars aren't there to get drunk or laid, for them it's a chance to talk shop with their colleauges. When James Cameron is talking to Natalie Portman he isn't chatting her up, he's trying to get her to star in his new movie. If, by accident, John Cusack gets drunk at one of the clubs he gets into for free he'll be all over the tabloids and he won't get that next role, so he can't do it.

A friend of mine just came back from a tour with a known rock-band. They worked hard from nine in the morning until after midnight six days a week. The last day of the week they just wanted to get home to their families. No screwing around with models, no getting drunk and no clubbing. Just hard work. The rockstar life is mostly something the media makes up.

Remember that the grass is always greener on the other side. Or as Brad Pitt once said "Fame's a bitch man"

I've read Slash's autobiography. It describes his life exactly as one, that is not in the know, would imagine it. That was in the eighties & nineties. Maybe times are different now.

I can only comment based on my own observations, but I see two explanations:

1) Slash is an outlier. I'm sure there are rockstars and actors that spend most of their time doing drugs and chatting up models. There are probably people like this in all fields of life.

2) His public persona is greatly enhanced by writing an autobiography that portrays him as true rock'n roll. It's great marketing.

The truth is probaly somewhere in between.

Henry Rollins has a monologue about this sort of thing he did for his spoken word tours. The one time some hot groupie takes all of her clothes off and knocks on his hotel room door, he's freaked out by some news story and afraid to come to his door! The only reason he knows about it is because of another band member that spotted her.

I play Irish Trad, and I'm as far from a rockstar as you can get, and even I had a groupie once. Once. It was a good one, though. We literally broke the bed. Nuff said.

Unless you know them really well, and you're actually good friends (not acquaintances) just stay the frack away from roadies. Some of them are utter scumbags and their wanna-be ism drives them to do rotten stuff. (Like invite me and my two cool, cute female friends to an "after party" where I end up being slipped a mickey and shoved to the side like luggage and one of my friends winds up with herpes. True story.)

EDIT: No, I didn't wind up with a sore butt and herpes too, thank God.

Isn't a rockstar by definition an outlier?

That's the marketing.

Exactly. Probably the most hedonistic period of my life was when I was employed by an insurance company. 9 hours per day of mind-numbing tedium followed by a few crazy hours afterwards. If I was to write a book about those days, I'm guessing the form filing, claims handling and endless insurance exams would fill very little space. To an outsider it might seem that insurance is very rock & roll.

As an aside, I know many musicians. No one you'll have heard of but a few of them are doing quite well here and could be on their way somewhere. They all have full time jobs and work like dogs. They'll drive 300 miles to do a show and be back to the office at 9am the next morning. To watch them when they're 'on' though, you'd think they led the carefree live of a rock star.

>Maybe times are different now.

Yes - the music industry is doing significantly worse. I wonder how this leaves everyone.

Try Keith Richard's "Life" - things are definitely different now.. sigh Real rocknroll is just too good to be true nowadays.

On the other hand, there is Charlie Sheen

And a variety of other Hollywood or other entertainment supserstars who are definitely not "on the clock" 24x7. A lot of entertainers don't need to kiss ass, and some don't care to.

"I exercise regularly. I eat moderate amounts of healthy food. I make sure to get plenty of rest. I see my doctor once a year and my dentist twice a year. I floss every night. I've had chest x-rays, cardio stress tests, EKG's and colonoscopies. I see a psychologist and have a variety of hobbies to reduce stress. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. I don't have crazy, reckless sex with strangers.

If Charlie Sheen outlives me, I'm gonna be really pissed."

From Chuck Lorre, producer of Two and Half Men. http://chucklorre.com/index.php?p=329

The guy who had a good run, ran down his good-will, and then got his whole team fired?

Winning. One dying brain cell at a time.

I remember some article about the band Elastica. They were on top of the charts, on the covers of magazines, they were "it." In contrast to the popstar image, they stayed in the hotel room, played Scrabble, went to bed early.

Rush did that first.

I worked in record stores for a couple of years a long time ago, and we'd have musicians come in to make appearances or shop for music or whatever.

One of the more interesting visits was Winger, a mid-range hair metal band of the era. They were extremely polite, very well informed about the business of their tour when I talked with them, and they bought a good number of 50s era jazz cds to listen to in their bus.

I heard a bit from Alice Cooper on NPR recently, about how he was the inspiration for younger musicians to shock audiences with fake blood and satan worship, but then he'd meet those guys back stage, they were all like, "mr cooper, I'm so honored to meet you. this is my mom. she baked you some cookies."

"One of the most fascinating things about Milwaukee is that it's the only major American city ever to have elected three socialist mayors."

>they bought a good number of 50s era jazz cds to listen to in their bus.

It's may be because Rod Morgenstien (their drummer) is basically a Jazz Fusion musician.

... Keith Richard is another outlier, based on his book. Though he does mention the hard work, he also describes lots of debauchery.

I just finished his book as well, and he does mention long work sessions and the hard slog of being on the road, but there are plenty of months (and years) where he is "living it up" in Tangiers, Jamaica, the South of France, etc. Sounded to me like he lives a pretty sweet life.

Your friend is there to work so the band doesn't have to.

My friends opened for Weezer and I helped them with guitars on stage. The whole thing was hilarious to us. We just pointed and people did whatever we asked.

Also, all those guys (Weezer + Angels and Airwaves) mostly took their family on tour and hid in their catered rooms til it was time to come out.

run one of the hottest bars in Ibiza

Most of the actors that go to the oscars

Sorry, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to compare "running a bar on Ibiza" to "running for the oscars"?

Yes, chatting up Natalie Portman may be considered "hard work" by some, but then again...

John Cusack gets drunk at one of the clubs he gets into for free he'll be all over the tabloids and he won't get that next role, so he can't do it.

What a cruel world where a poor hollywood millionaire can't even get drunk in public.

"run one of the hottest bars in Ibiza"

"Sorry, but isn't it a bit of a stretch to compare "running a bar on Ibiza" to "running for the oscars"?"

No. Ibiza is to the European house scene (which is huge) what the Oscars are for movies. Except that the season in Ibiza is several months, of course.

I was a rather highly paid consultant at a young age with zero debt to my name out of school. Therefore, I was fortunate enough at the age of 22-24 to be able to afford random lavish vacations (Cannes, Prague, Miami, Vegas, etc) and lived in Germany and NYC for some time. I would do the whole "bottle and models" type gig every once in awhile, although barely part of my regular routine. There is something about being a geek in those settings that is, hmmmmm, I don't know, rewarding?

my uninformed opinion; I wouldn't be surprised if a decent number of celebrities aren't the most hard-working and party a decent amount. 2 things first I'm sure that behind the Aces and hard working underachievers there are those who are famous and don't mind coasting and trusting to luck for long stretches rather then looking for opportunities at every corner. Second having a family and being serious about being part of it probably limits your time significantly but there are those who don't have families or don't invest a decent amount of time in their families.

This post put a big stupid grin on my face, just imagining him walking around, and nobody knowing who he is. Him being far more influential and more important than most people in the room, and yet having trouble explaining what he does.

It sounds like a family reunion trying to remember people names and telling everyone you make web sites for a living.

Though it's getting easier to explain what he does--Android phones are everywhere these days.

But Android is only a small part of why he is influential and important, it is the most visible I suppose.

"Well, I've created the operating system that runs about every 5th smartphone". "Well, and some other things".

In the US Android is up to about 1/3 of smartphones these days.

Have you ever tried to explain to someone who is not an engineer what the relationship between 'a phone' and 'Android' is? Coincidentally I've tried twice over the last 3 weeks - both times concluded, after 15 minutes, with them concluding 'oh, so it doesn't matter much, right, all phones have it, it's just different between different phones'.

Eh... yes, I suppose...

Related - my wife and I cracked up last night that the special effects engineers were relegated to a 30 second montage with Marisa Tomei so as not to ruin the rest of the show for the beautiful people :)

Although to be fair, the beautiful people are the only reason those engineers get even 30 seconds of primetime TV. See: thousands of engineers doing equally awesome things not related to showbiz.

Not really. Visual effects are a bigger 'star' than any individual actor nowadays.

Also, 'equally awesome' needs to be qualified. Most of the engineers working in film could get paid far more working in other industries but do it because it can be fantastically rewarding. Disclaimer: I am one of these.

You don't see "A movie by Douglas Trumbull" much... Not even "A movie by Industrial Light and Magic" (which would be most of them).

Would you argue it was Michael Bay's name that convinced people to buy tickets for Transformers? Or Sigourney Weavers name on Avatar? I suggest examining the all time box office records:

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

Neither Michael Bay nor Sigourney Weaver have much involvement with special effects.

And, actually, what convinced me to see Avatar were the special effects. And there wouldn't be enough special effects in the world to convince me to go to a movie theater to watch Transformers.

Sorry, there seems to be some confusion. I'm trying to suggest that the majority of blockbusters aren't star lead anymore, they're visual effects lead. Perhaps people aren't interested in seeing effects engineers receiving awards, but they're certainly interested in seeing our work.

I think that, these days, we can take special effects for granted - every movie will have them and they will be mostly great - and undetectable. It takes an expert to be impressed by Avatar and how sunlight filters through foliage and skin. As special effects approach reality, it takes a trained eye will be able to differentiate the great from the groundbreaking.

Maybe compelling story is the key factor here. I don't believe kids went to see Transformers for the effects - all they wanted was to be entertained.

Right, but the reason most people watch award shows has nothing to do with the movies themselves.

marisa tomei IS beautiful :)

Him being far more influential and more important than most people in the room, and yet having trouble explaining what he does.

That's not true. There were many people in that room who were critical parts of multibillion dollar franchises. So critical that if that person fell ill the franchise would have to stop. If Linus fell ill Linux would continue relatively unchanged.

  > If Linus fell ill Linux would continue relatively unchanged.

Linux development on the other hand... Linus is still the Steve Jobs of the Linux kernel world, so far as I understand it.

The Steve Jobs, minus the tantrums, random firings, and black mock turtlenecks.

I hear he can be pretty critical though, especially if you ask him to port his work to a more "modern" language.

Minus the random firings and black mock turtlenecks. Not so much minus the tantrums.

Linus wouldn't be Linus without the tantrums and smiting.

       imagining him walking around, and nobody knowing who he is

Consider this was the Oscar; imagine the same thing happening to an actor walking around at a Linux conference.

      Him being far more influential and more important than 
      most people in the room

Out of all people, I would think that geeks / hackers can recognize the importance of art for society. If anything I wish more Natalie Portmans were around; as soon enough we'll end up like in Idiocracy with people watching 90 mins of a big ass farting.

So stop with the condescending attitude, please.

I am, perhaps because I am programmer, more inclined to think that a person who created and now runs the most important piece of open source software is more important, to the world, then the person who plays a character in a movie. Which is all my opinion of course, and no more valid or invalid then yours.

I apologize if I came off condescending, the arts are super important to me.

"Hi, I'm Linus"

"Nice to meet you Linus. What do you do?"

"I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal"

"Really?"

"People know me."

"Well I'm very happy for you."

"I'm very important. The internet runs off my software and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

"So, are you excited? That movie about you is up for quite a few Oscars!"

"Wow, how much does your software cost?"

"Well, I just give it away for free"

"So, its kind of like Windows? That was free with my kid's laptop."

Sounds like he doesn't know how to present himself. "So what do you do?" "Have you heard of linux?" I'm SURE they'd say yes, it's in wallmart, even. so, "yeah, that's for computers!" "yeah. i made that. most of the web runs on it too."

I'm not sure what crazy world you live in, but if I asked a random person "Have you heard of Linux?" odds are it's "no".

The "regular world" is a really long way from the tech industry.

Maybe you hang out in the wrong circles, but even my non-engineering friends (art and history majors) know about Linux, free software, and the basics of copyleft. Maybe that's at least in part due to my interests in explaining it, but these really aren't things that are exclusively understood by technophiles.

"So here's a shout-out to my new BFF's Jon Hamm and DJ."

Can someone please make it happen that Linus gets an appearance in Season 5 of Mad Men? He could play an IBM salesman or something like that...

Get over to Reddit. They're good at making things like that happen.

It just occurred to me that if I'd gone to the "Night before the Oscars" party, Linus would have been the only one I'm 100% certain I would have recognized and been certain about his name.

Hello, my name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Leenucks.

Oh, no wonder no one has heard of it. Oh well, RMS has it harder "I made Ga neeew plus lin ex?"

SLASH LINUX. SLASH. -rms

RMS at the party might have been a sight more interesting than Linus...

You wouldn't believe it but for many of us non-native english speakers, his pronounciation is obvious and sounding naturally, while the "english'ized" one is funny if not ridiculous.. ;)

That's true, first time I heard it when applying for an internship, I had hard time to understand what the interviewer is talking about. Now I watch more conference videos.

You're right. Once I learned about "Latin vowels" a lot of things fell into place in regards to pronouncing foreign names and places.

This goes far outside of just the Latin-derived languages. We use the Latin alphabet, after all. So if the language can be written with this alphabet somehow (even if the locals don't usually use it), there's a pretty good chance that you should assume they use the Latin vowels, too.

No guarantees, but I've managed to surprise more than a few people by pronouncing things correctly.

The difference is that most languages don't reduce so many vowels to schwas. If you just pronounce the vowels, you'll do much better with non-English words. And assume i = ee, a = ah, etc.

I live next door to a celebrity chef. When I met him, he comes up to me, introduces himself like he's running for office, then there's this pause because he's waiting for the typical "regular guy meets celebrity" reaction. "Haven't you heard of me?"

Nope sorry. As far as I'm concerned you're just my neighbor who doesn't walk his dog and lets the yard fill up with dog poop.

I much prefer attitudes like Annie Lennox, who once said something about how it's nice to do your own laundry for a change.

I met Billy Bob Thornton in a bar in Minneapolis one night. I'd worked a long day and was walking back to my hotel room, when I looked over to my left and saw Billy Bob sitting at a bar with 2 or 3 other people. Well I went in and grabbed a seat right next to him, ordered some food (wish I hadn't, kind of rude) and eavesdropped on his conversation. They were talking about baby names of all things. I knew a joke about baby names, so I nonchalantly told my joke to a guy whom I later learned was Billy Bob's manager, who told Billy Bob that he had to hear my joke. Billy Bob turned toward me with the biggest grin I've ever seen and all I could think was "Don't screw up. He won an Academy Award!" I somehow nailed my joke and Billy Bob shook my hand as he introduced himself, "I'm Billy." I must have said something boring afterwards because Billy politely returned to his previous conversation. That was ok by me, Billy made my week just sharing a moment of his time and being a nice guy. Glad I met him instead of your celebrity chef neighbor.

Billy's a pretty nice guy, whatever his eccentricities. Was his band playing in Minneapolis?

Yes he was there promoting an album.

Was the ordering food the rudeness or the eavesdropping?

This is the socially exceptable form of eavesdropping. You know, where you make it obvious you are eavesdropping and then enter the conversation.

The food. I ordered pasta primavera and its aroma filled the room.

The grocery store nearest to my house happens to be right across from the Saints' training facility [1]. It's not uncommon to spot a player in there every now and then. I mostly ignore them as I'm not a die-hard fan, and well, I wouldn't want random people bothering me while I was shopping either.

[1] http://goo.gl/EBitf (sorry, direct maps links are gigantic)

"Tove pissed off Warren Beatty by asking his name not just once, but twice" is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while.

Reminds me of when a fanatical Mariners fan friend of mine came across Alex Rodriguez and another player. She promptly went running up to the pair and exclaimed "Oh my God!! Dan Wilson!!!!!"

I'm surprised she didn't spit on A-Rod.

He was absolutely livid. This was back when he still played for the Mariners, in case that wasn't clear. I would have paid anything to have seen his facial expression.

Which, in the end is why we couldn't keep him. Sigh.

Odd down vote. I was just saying he left Seattle, then Texas because he wanted to be in the limelight. Sheesh!

Must be something about Alex Rodriguez...

When the guy showed up at the same country club in Miami my father asked him if he played for the Dolphins...

I think I've fallen into an alternate universe. I could swear Warren Beatty died just after 'Dick Tracy' came out.

Who did die at about that time?

Adelle Beatty?

Pavel Cherenkov, Lewis Mumford, Aaron Copeland, Sammy Davis Jr, Jim Henson, Leonard Bernstein, BF Skinner, Greta Garbo, Roald Dahl ...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=who+died+in+1990%3F

Major points to her.

Wow, Linus sleeps 9 hours a night -- maybe the health gurus are right when they say more sleep makes you more productive.

That's some flawless reasoning.

The maybe saves it.

Anyone remember Blake Ross’ reaction blog post to the Time 100 dinner he was invited to? His website (blakeross.com) has been taken offline and I wasn’t able to quickly find the post via the Wayback Machine.

Hah, didn't expect to see that while reading this thread. The post is here, although it's missing CSS and the images from that evening: http://web.archive.org/web/20060613002629/http://blakeross.c...

Was definitely a crazy night. I enjoyed reading Linus' post.

Mind my asking why you took down your site? I know you hadn’t posted much for years, but I always enjoyed your writing.

BTW, some news from today that's relevant :) http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=748155473273&set=...

Yeah, I just saw your tweet about this — what a crazy coincidence, a 5-year-old blog post mentioning red-carpeting in front of Will Smith dragged up as you announce another meeting.

FYI you can't read that without logging in (which I can't).

I ran out of time to write, and then -- to be frank -- I forgot to pay my web hosting bill. Was pretty bummed to lose all that writing, thank god for the wayback machine. I hope to restart my blog in the near future.

Made me happy to read!

Here it is with the CSS and images:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080708195924/http://www.b...

For more nerd out of water action, there is a Penny Arcade TV episode focusing on Gabe and Tycho's invitation to the Time 100 dinner. Not a lot of footage of the actual event for practical reasons, I'd imagine.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/119/

well, sounds like a progress. Linus, the top-geek, finally got invited there. That means recognition if not from Hollywood circles, yet from a circle near it.

Apparently that's the first and only blog post that Linus has given the label 'FULL RETARD'.

I just wondered how many of the films that were up for oscars used linux in the production process? (editing, CG, sound, etc.)

If the movie featured any sort of CGI, they most likely used Linux at least for the rendering. Windows licences for your entire render farm are expensive.

Autodesk's Maya (A 3D animation modeling and rendering package) is fairly dominant in the movie industry, actually won a full Oscar in 2002, and is entirely tri-platform.

Probably none at all for editing and sound, and all of them for visual effects.

Not that I'm a huge fan of Linus (though I love his operating system), but I'd rather chat with him than anyone else at the Oscars... unless RMS happens to be there.

To most people, Linus Torvalds is probably "that evil guy on Lost".

Linus (Lie-ness), not Torvalds

I would be in the same boat. I actually like a lot of movies but I am so disinterested in the kind of celebrity idol worship that most are that I don't remember the names of a lot of actors/actresses.

I reserve all my idol worshipping for linus

"since geeks in general are seen as the crème de la crème of society". Strange statement, my impression is that geeks don't receive at all enough credits. Every average legal or doctor is a super star compared to a geek at least in Italy. It is also embarrassing for a society to put on the TV screen everybody but not the guy that created software that really is running the internet. Linux and Git are huge.

Sarcasm.

Ok, thank you, completely missed the point :)

I read your comment and all I could think was "See? It happens to other people, too!" :-) (I'm in Italy too btw)

Pretty sure he intended sarcasm when he said that.

I guess programmers seem more geeky? Lawyers and Doctors can be geeks too.

That's a pretty good life actually, not being bothered by people outside of his field constantly.

The title reminded me of "The Fountainhead" quote. Or is it a common one?

Glad to know this that Linus had a good time. His contribution to software are undoubtedly great. But I don't understand what this article has to do with 'hacking' and why is this the most highly rated 'news' article today.

"since geeks in general are seen as the crème de la crème of society"

He must be living on a different planet than mine.

Yes, on one that has sarcasm.

he sounds depressed

Really? How?

Hey shouldn't it be Linus's blog? You would only write Linus' blog if you were indicating plural possessive such as indicating that it is the Linus family's blog. Not sure about this one. Could it possibly be that Linus Torvalds made a mistake? I think so.

Either Linus's or Linus' is acceptable in current English usage. Source: "James's hat (James' hat is also acceptable" http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/

Think of every crucial system running Linux... It seems that this story is backwards. He should be the celebrity, all these idiots were just in front of a camera at some point.

Please. I agree that our celebrity-focused culture is idiotic, and Linus has accomplished more than most of us ever hope to, but calling actors "idiots" is insulting. Most of them work hard just like we do (some harder), and are quite good at their job.

After all, are you not entertained?

Remember, it's cool to affect a proud lack of knowledge in many areas ("football, what's that?") but to not know about famous people or things in computing is simply a sin.

It would be funny to ask someone who was affecting that something like "Then what have you accomplished?" See I could picture Linus being completely oblivious to celebrity, there's a seriously big deal that he came up with while he was busy not watching popular movies.

If the person saying "oh football what's that?" hasn't actually done anything really impressive then what are they doing if too busy to notice pop culture? Just living in a cave and staring at the shadows?!

> what are they doing if too busy to notice pop culture? Just living in a cave and staring at the shadows?!

If they're doing that, then they're doing philosophy.

Or they're a suburban home dweller with cable and a 50" flatscreen.

Sir, this is the Oscar. The Nobel Prize is in room 6F.

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