In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave

A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.

Interesting things happen along borders - transitions - not in the middle where everything is the same.

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.

How could your cover be blown in Canada? Why even bother going dark there? How could you tell?

Unix is not so much an operating system as an oral history.