Censorship
I submitted three quotes to the yearbook, each a different length, and each quoting Linus Torvalds. Apparently, senior quotes should be ’serious thoughts’. To someone who doesn’t know what ftp stands for, to someone who hasn’t a clue in the least who Linus is, and to someone who’s knowledge of computers barely stretches past pressing ’start to begin’, my quotes may seem ridiculously jocular, but to someone who knows that ftp stands for ‘File Transfer Protocol’, to someone who knows that Linus is Linus Torvalds, to someone who knows that Linus is a BDFL, and to someone who actually knows what a BDFL is, my quotes are actually quite serious. Does the title ‘Yearbook’ advisor give Mr. Goudreau the right to define serious? Apparently. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi in Episode six, “you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” Perhaps solemnity is a point of view. And perhaps from Mr. Goudreau’s “… point of view, the Jedi are evil!” (Darth Vader - Episode III).
I’m told my ambition doesn’t quite cut it either. Perhaps I am a little too ambitious. Getting a doctorate in math and conquering the world is a lot to do in only one life time, but who is Mr. Goudreau to crush my ambitions?
As a yearbook adviser, it is apparently his duty to ‘uphold the integrity of the yearbook.’ If my quote isn’t quite serious enough for the yearbook, and my ambition jeopardizes its integrity, he is free to remove it, but it is only fair to remove all of the equally ‘funny’ quotes as well.
More annoying than the fact that my quote cannot go in the yearbook while other quotes, equally laking in seriousness, will be posted, is the fact that mine will not be posted because a certain yearbook adviser is too lethargic to sit down in front of a computer, and run a few Google queries in order to better understand them, and too rigid to change his mind even when/if he does realize that his judgement of seriousness is largely incorrect in this matter. I am fine with my quotes being left out for a good reason, but I don’t consider a yearbook adviser’s lack of knowledge a good reason.
Quote 1:
My name is Linus, and I am your god.
Before you tell me that this quote isn’t serious, please read the thirteen-thousand Google search results for ‘worship of Linus Torvalds’. To quote Wikipedia, “Many Linux fans tend to worship Torvalds as a kind of god.” There you have it. “The Free Encyclopedia” verifies (as I knew it would…) the fact that Linus is a god figure. Saying this quote isn’t serious tells all the ‘Linus Worshipers’ out there that you think their idol is a joke. Linus Torvalds is not a joke.
Quote 2:
Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it
Mr. Goudreau doesn’t know what FTP is. He can’t put anything he doesn’t know in the yearbook. He’s human; there’s a lot he doesn’t know. A simple Google Query would tell him that FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Read in context, this quote is quite serious.
Quote 3:
When you say “I wrote a program that crashed Windows”, people just stare at you blankly and say “Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*”.
Again, taken in context, this quote is quite serious.
As for the ambition… I don’t just happen to have any old yearbooks lying around. If you have one, please comment with stupid/funny ambitions (and quotes) that jeopardize the integrity of the yearbook.
If your name is Mike, please click here. (I’m guessing that everyone will click there out of curiosity.)