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Hay un limbo en todo amplificador. Un modo standby antes de encender la guitarra. Se trata de una especie de arranque suave que permite que la entrada de electricidad sea menos agresiva para las válvulas del amplificador. De alguna forma, se pone en este modo antes de encenderlo definitivamente para que las válvulas se vayan calentando y reciban la tensión de caldeo para los filamentos, que deben ir cogiendo temperatura hasta alcanzar la correcta para empezar a trabajar y, por tanto, sonar en las mejores condiciones. De lo contrario, el encendido dañaría los filamentos de las válvulas, que suelen tener una resistencia peor cuando están fríos. El modo standby no solo es un arranque progresivo, sino que es necesario para que el amplificador no se estropee.

Por tanto, un amplificador en standby es un limbo antes de que una banda de rock se ponga a tocar. Es la espera que se hace para, con la temperatura adecuada, poder ejecutar en conjunto la primera canción.

Supersubmarina está en ese modo. Modo standby. Un amplificador, como podría ser el Cagarrut que los unió, que todavía no puede sonar. Y nadie sabe cuándo podrá hacerlo o si se ha quedado averiado para siempre en ese modo standby.

— Algo que sirva como luz por Fernando Navarro (Página 52)

Our overnight success (1998).

With Sun Microsystems on board, Linux developments made their way from Internet discussions to the trade press. Outsiders were suddenly interested, but mostly technical outsiders. Then came IBM. By July, Informix announced that it would port its databases to Linux. Within weeks, from out of nowhere, Oracle followed suit.

Technical people, who had long known about Linux were being approached by their companies’ leaders who had been seeing articles about Linux in the trade press, or hearing about it. They would ask their technical folks what the fuss was all about. Then, once they learned the benefits, they would make the decision to have their servers run Linux.

It was rarely a decision based on the non-cost of Linux, because the software itself actually represents a small part of such an investment. The service and support are much more costly. What tended to sway the suits were the simple technical arguments: Linux was stronger than the competition, which consisted of Windows NT and the various flavors of Unix. And, importantly, people just hate having to do things the way Microsoft or anybody else says they have to do them. You can do things with Linux that you can’t do with the competition. The original people who used Linux did so because they could get access to sources in ways they couldn’t with commercial software.

— Just for fun por Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

V: The Beauty of #Programming

I don’t know how to really explain my fascination with programming, but I’ll try. To somebody who does it, it’s the most interesting thing in the world. It’s a game much more involved than chess, a game where you can make up your own rules and where the end result is whatever you can make of it. And yet, to the outside, it looks like the most boring thing on Earth. Part of the initial excitement in programming is easy to explain: just the fact that when you tell the computer to do something, it will do it. Unerringly. Forever. Without a complaint. And that’s interesting in itself. But blind obedience on its own, while initially fascinating, obviously does not make for a very likable companion. In fact, that part gets pretty boring fairly quickly. What makes programming so engaging is that, while you can make the computer do what you want, you have to figure out how. I’m personally convinced that computer science has a lot in common with physics. Both are about how the world works at a rather fundamental level. The difference, of course, is that while in physics you’re supposed to figure out how the world is made up, in computer science you create the world. Within the confines of the computer, you’re the creator. You get to ultimately control everything that happens. If you’re good enough, you can be God. On a small scale. And I’ve probably offended roughly half the population on Earth by saying so. But it’s true. You get to create your own world, and the only thing that limits what you can do are the capabilities of the machine—and, more and more often these days, your own abilities.

— Just for fun por Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

Birth of an OPERATING SYSTEM

So I spent close to $2,000 for the Sinclair QL. Most of what I did with it was one programming project after another. [..] What got me interested in operating systems: I bought a floppy controller so I wouldn’t have to use the microdrives, but the driver that came with the floppy controller was bad so I ended up writing my own. In the process of writing that I found some bugs in the operating system—or at least a discrepancy between what the documentation said the operating system would do and what it actually did. I found it because something I had written didn’t work. My code is always, um, perfect. So I knew it had to be something else, and I went in and disassembled the operating system.

— Just for fun por Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 14:12:27-0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds torvalds@transmeta.com To: David Diamond ddiamond@well.com

[..] Let’s cut a deal: If you think we can make a fun book, and more importantly if you think we can have fun making it, let’s go for it. You’d drag me (with family) camping [..] So maybe I wouldn’t read a book about me when it’s done, but at least I’d have fun with it.

— Just for fun por Linus Torvalds, David Diamond (Página 9)