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