February 5, 2004

Mother of Mercy, Can This Be the End of Tux!

It seems like only yesterday.... in fact it was yesterday that we were wondering if THIS could be a metaphor for The Meaning of Life. But now we know the secret subtext of the Yeti batting the Penguin for distance. How could we have been so blind?

This mysterious web page which has brought so many hours of senseless but pleasurable fritter to so many millions is actually, yes, a CRY FOR HELP from our beloved Tux, the Linux Penguin.

Yes, it came to me like a diamond bullet through the center of my skull (or an acid flashback), that what we are seeing when we see the Yeti, the White Ape, the *ALBINO* snowman whack the "Anonymous Penguin" is a message from somewhere deep within the corporate labyrinth that is IBM. The message? That Tux is going to be sent to sleep with the Taco Bell chihuahua.

Think about it. Since IBM started making this big deal about being "Open," have you seen beak or feather of Tux? You have not. Instead, you've seen only the silent adventures of a strangely mute nordic Albino of dubious gender coupled only with the ominous promise that "Linux is Growing."

The tout of "open software" is one thing when it is sung by the likes of Richard Stallman, quite another when it becomes a corporate message at the Superbowl.

It's clear that the old fishbait-and-switcheroo of the corporate marketing gill-netters at IBM are out to deep-six Tux, and that some programmer, some Tux mole within IBM is trying to get the word out.

Do you doubt it? Here are some screen grabs from this evening's email to me after I had run a search deep into the root of IBM's Linux web farm. They came in with the sender marked as "MAILER-DAEMON@aol.com." I wasn't fooled. I opened them. And just before my laptop melted in my lap, the attachments told "The Tale of Tux:

Attachment 1:
linuxout.jpg

Attachment 2:
linuxIN.jpg

Attachment 3:
tuxout.jpg
This... THIS... is the shocking inner meaning behind all this penguin bashing that's been going on. I leave it to those with more skill at hacking than I to save the little penguin from his fate.

Remember: If IBM can replace Tux, it is only a question of time before it reformats your hard drive. That which is open can always be closed.

Posted by Vanderleun at February 5, 2004 12:54 AM | TrackBack
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