Chapter 6

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Dr. Kriechman
In German, "kriechen" means "to creep" or "to crawl".

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Hermann Göring was right
Hermann Göring was the Nazi founder of the Gestapo. He is credited as saying, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning!" But he probably didn't say this. The line comes from the play Schlageter by Hanns Johst: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!"

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Linus himself
Linus Torvalds (b. 1969) is a Finnish American software engineer, who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel. His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.

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packet monkey
Someone who intentionally inundates a website or network with data packets, resulting in a denial-of-service situation for users of the attacked site or network. Packet monkeys typically use tools created and made available on the Internet by hackers. Unlike a script kiddy, a packet monkey leaves no clues as to who is making the exploit, making the identity of a packet monkey more difficult to trace. In addition, a denial-of-service attack can be launched on a wider scale than attacks performed by script kiddies, making them more difficult to investigate.

Hackers look down on packet monkeys and often describe them as "bottom feeders." Because a packet monkey uses tools created by others, the packet monkey has little understanding of the harm that may be caused. Typically, packet monkey exploits are random and without any purpose other than the thrill of making an effect. Source

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"Doing business as Streetlight People"
Reference to this lyric from the American rock band Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," from 1981:

Strangers, waiting, up and down
the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to
find emotion

Hiding, somewhere in the night

Slagiatt... vowel
???

As far as i can tell, there is no Italian word remotely like Slagiatt + a vowel. Benvolio (talk)

"like lyrics in an opera"
Opera singers routinely fail to enunciate words or syllables in the interest of hitting notes or making it all sound better.

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Wayne Gretzky Principle
Steve Jobs: “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.”

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Wells notice
The current Wells Fargo is a result of a 1998 merger between Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation and the original Wells Fargo. Although Norwest was the nominal survivor, the new company kept the Wells Fargo name to capitalize on the long history of the nationally recognized Wells Fargo name and its trademark stagecoach (the company's previous slogan, "The Next Stage," is likely a nod to the company's trademark). After the acquisition, the parent company kept its headquarters in San Francisco. The company's current tagline, "Together we'll go far" also references the stagecoach motif, its customers, and represents the company name itself in a transposed way (Wells Far-go = we'll[s] go-Far).

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Further Lane
Through the years East Hampton's wealth has evolved emanating out from the village taking over the farmland that had once been dominated by potato fields. The most dazzling row of mansions remains in the village of East Hampton on the closest road paralleling the ocean along Further Lane and Lily Pond Lane. Wikipedia entry

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che si duce
Italian greeting: "what's up?", "how's it going?".

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Nero d'Avola
A wine from Sicily.

Una furtiva lagrima
Famous aria (technically a "romanza") from the opera L'elisir d'amore, by Donizetti.

"Un gazz"
Italian, literally "dick," but used like the exclamation, "shit". Also employed by Pynchon in V.