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America's CTO: We have a winner

The people's choice vs Larry

How (and why) America voted

While Reiser captured some of the vital Linux demographic, there were pragmatic reasons for voting Hans. As Jeff Zahourek put it: "We could pay prison wages! This last bright point saves Obama the trouble of justifying a stupendous salary for Lessig."

Reader Gordon elaborated: "Already in a furnished suite; already has security and will be enforced; where most our government belongs; pay scale per area is affordable; green transportation for short commute willing work force to train and experiment new rules on."

Bill Richardson said he couldn't wait for a Reiser CTO-ship.

"All filesystems other than reiserfs4 would be illegal, and anyone who objects would be sent to gitmo. Trial by jury would be replaced with internet flame wars. The 'I think she's hiding' defense would be a valid one. I can't wait."

"He's killed far fewer than Cheney," points out Ronald P.

The ability to make a tiger disappear seems to be sadly underrated by most readers, although Siegfried and Roy had their loyal followers:

"Outside of CTO, they will be able to give prez Obama insight in the Russians and Chinese, who are the top tiger-disappearers (as well as anything else rare and alive) in the world," wrote Marvin the Martian.

Shane Dempsey had a great suggestion: "As you don't provide Al Gore as a candidate to reinvent the internet, Siegfried and Roy are the only sensible option. Another alternative is a virtual CTO representing a hive mind of random editors. If only the IETF made RFCs available as anonymous wikis! They SHOULD do this.

"Or a reality TV show where each of the candidates has to respond to various IT challenges like formatting a table correctly in Word or improving BGP. It's a serious position so the selection process should be rigorous."

"If Siegfried and Roy can make a tiger disappear, what's to say they can't do the same for spam?" asked Vasantha Crabb, hopefully - but that's the kind of optimism we like to see.

The colourful Jeff Merkey too, received a consistent stream of support. No fewer than 20.5 per cent of Merkey voters mentioned "breasts".

But Dziuba was an acclaimed winner, and his talents were well explained by Steven Raith. "His press releases will be technically accurate enough to be useful, and sweary enough to be entertaining. As a side note, you can mentally cross people in the office off of the 'who to go to the pub with' by their reaction to his work."

"I'd cast my vote (or two, or three!) in a heartbeat for anyone who can use profanity in such eloquent and poetic ways. That he knows a thing or two about IT is a major plus!" echoes James.

And the victor's response?

"I'm 24...how long until I can take my pension?"

Cheers, Ted.®

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