For Torvalds, The Revolution Was Fun

El gato winced when he heard harpercollins was publishing a celebritys autobiography titled “Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.” “I bet its the inspiring story of how lil Britney Spears left Kentwood, La., to become a teen music phenomenon,” assumed the remedial-reading Ragamuffin.

Imagine the Katts chagrin when a pal informed him it was the title for a tome chronicling the life of fun-loving Finnish Linux inventor Linus Torvalds. “Next youll tell me George W. Bush is really the president,” cackled the unconvinced Kitty.

The perplexed Puss came back to reality when he heard how a Midwestern institute of higher education had two laptops stolen that had been sent to IBM for repair via Airborne Express.

Although the packages had been signed for by IBM, the company claimed Airborne was at fault. The university was then shocked to find out one of the missing machines had been sold on eBay. Seems the buyer politely called and asked if they needed any of the data that was still on the unit. The good news: IBM shifted gears and decided to replace the lost computers with two refurbished models. The bad news: One of the units was buggy and had to be sent back into the Airborne abyss.

An insider at Oracle tells the Tabby that, a few months ago, a department at the worlds second-largest software maker decided it needed a new Web server. After pricing and comparing models, it settled on one for $5,000. According to the tattler, the submitted purchase request came back denied by none other than head honcho Larry Ellison himself. The purchase was deemed an unnecessary expense, and Ellison told the team to piggyback on someone elses Web server, claims the Katt crony. “Boy, who would have thought Gates biggest rival would engage in such micro management?” wondered the Furball.

In another part of the e-biz galaxy, His Hirsuteness heard that Victor Nichols, fresh from vacating the president and CEO post of e-commerce software and services company Vicor, will soon officially be announced as CIO of application development for Wells Fargo Services Corp. “From driver to riding virtual shotgun; kinda says something about the centralization of Internet development within the financial services industry,” laughed the Lynx.

The tawny Tomcat was still mulling over the title of Linus memoirs when he wondered if dot-com CEO Robert Ewalds original business plan might have also been titled “Just for Fun.” “When your company is called E-Stamp and you announce that youre getting out of the postage business,” fretted the Furry One, “youd better hope your stockholders dont go postal.” E-Stamps new focus will be Web-based supply chain management apps.