Bookmarking "In the Beginning... Was the Command Line"

Now reading Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning… Was the Command Line. It’s very different from what I expected when I ran against a reference to it in Eric Raymond’s Open Minds, Open Source. Had I a better idea what it was, I probably wouldn’t have started reading it in the first place, but once there I can’t leave it halfway. It’s worth checking out the SF writings of Neal Stephenson too.

Whatever, the following piece made me laugh:

We like plain dealings and straightforward transactions in America. If you go to Egypt and, say, take a taxi somewhere, you become a part of the taxi driver’s life; he refuses to take your money because it would demean your friendship, he follows you around town, and weeps hot tears when you get in some other guy’s taxi. You end up meeting his kids at some point, and have to devote all sort of ingenuity to finding some way to compensate him without insulting his honor. It is exhausting. Sometimes you just want a simple Manhattan-style taxi ride.