> lots of cultures the world over think political correctness itself as silly and/or prudish.

Kudos to that. I find it hilarious, and very sad at the same time, that Americans can't say policeman/policewoman any more, and that they have at least 4, maybe more, words for for different values of "fat" (overweight, fat, obese, morbidly obese, ...). In Slovenia, one is just fat, maybe very fat.

Making a big deal out of irrelevant things... Now, someone that is not "tall" is "vertically challenged"? I mean, what's wrong with being short?

The point that "politically correct" people are missing is that you cannot really make someone "feel bad", because they already feel bad. You can only make them "feel worse" with your comments.

And the fact that you can get arrested/denied entry to the US because of Twitter messages, that's just fascist (England is in that club as well).

Cool. I hope your Paki dyke mom dies of AIDS! LOL, am I right?

I just can't believe that Linus' comment was made to be entertaining or is seen to be entertaining. The point of this kind of invective, as far as I understand, is for Linus to say:

"Shut up and go away, I don't want to hear any rebuttal or any other point of view, because I have waaaay more experience than you do, I know that I'm right, and I don't have time for it."

Basically: he's asserting his right as the "benevolent dictator" of Linux.

Which is fine by me until it goes so far as telling people to kill themselves. That seems unnecessarily and extremely harsh to me (guess it's just an American thing, maybe...), and it seems like something that would be said by a pure psychopath (or a comedian, or a young schoolyard bully).

I understand he doesn't mean "kill yourself" literally, of course.

Though I've always assumed that when he calls people morons, braindead, idiots, etc., he really means those things. Right? Although I can tolerate those things just fine, I'd be really interested to learn if other people interpret those things as not meant literally.

People should actually cheer to this expression of the open source spirit. Like in 'if you find a bug, fix it', he proposes to you to kill yourself if you cause one. Nothing special. Off course, if this were corporate software, they would send somebody to your house to kill you, which might be more convenient.