same here. Linus is a man with strong opinions, so i guess the kind of language he uses helps reflects that.
and i find it funny that people get upset so much over it. some "political correctness" crap. look, you don't control what other people say or does, but you can control how that affects you. if you're going to seriously get upset about someone telling you to "kill yourself", you should get yourself a psychiatrist. because you really just might.
I find that a weak excuse. If you were to dine in an expensive restaurant, where one of their guests talked really loudly on his cell phone all night, disturbing the other guests, you wouldn't expect the waiter to tell you to "just ignore it" or "just don't be disturbed". At least I wouldn't.
I think you misunderstood my analogy. My point is, that obnoxious loud talking at a restaurant is as difficult to avoid as an interesting sounding link on a major tech news aggregator.
So what you want is freedom from people expressing their opinions on their personal blogs because you're paying a lot of money for this Internet, and damnit, you should get to enjoy it?
I believe Linus can express this particular opinion in a much more civilised way (especially since he has such a special position in the tech-world), just as the restaurant guest that's talking obnoxiously loud on his telephone could talk at a normal volume.
Where your analogy breaks down is that at a fancy restaurant, the restaurant is well within its rights to kick someone out for being disruptive--and your analogy did in fact imply that. Furthermore, if the restaurant won't do something about a disruptive customer, you really don't have much choice about the situation, unless you are willing to walk away from a significant amount of money, for which you had every reasonable expectation that you would be provided with an enjoyable and peaceful meal.
On the Internet, things are completely different. You can easily go read something else if you don't like what you are reading, and bad speech is best fought with more speech.
What I find to be most offensive are people who think that they have a right not to be offended.
i don't know if you noticed, but i wasn't making excuses. i'm just accepting how things are. don't impose your will to them and say things like it's "politically correct" to do so. because you can't, you can try. but that's not how the world works.
i hate politics like this. it gets in the way of what's really happening.
Regardless of wether you were making excuses or not, my point still stands, I think.
Ignoring the problem might be a good way to deal with situations like this on a personal level. I'd say it's probably the wisest thing to do, because, as you say, confronting him and trying to change his behaviour would only work counter-effective.
But it doesn't solve the problem, which in this case is Linus's exaggerated and (slightly?) offensive use of language. Even for ignoring a problem, it is necessary to first acknowledge there is one, or there won't be anything to ignore.
You can argue wether it should even be considered a problem (I think it should be), but unfortunately, the same "excuse" could be made: you can't change what people perceive as a problem or not.
and i find it funny that people get upset so much over it. some "political correctness" crap. look, you don't control what other people say or does, but you can control how that affects you. if you're going to seriously get upset about someone telling you to "kill yourself", you should get yourself a psychiatrist. because you really just might.