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Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

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Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#31

Post by kamaal »

bfrs wrote: post #29

Can someone help me understand what the purpose of this is: I have several free web browsers on my laptop, but I generally do not look at web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites operated for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me.

I think its because he always has higher priorities than browsing the net. Or may be he needs some information to take a decision or for something he needs to do later.

So he just puts it on a email queue. Later he can access that information from his mail box and take a look at that information.

Most important people, have better things to do than browsing site all day. Infact some people even ask me to mail them some stuff I tell them is interesting and then they go back to that at their convenience.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#32

Post by billpatrianakos »

mrtron wrote: post #21

I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms. Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views which I find refreshing. I also think that this type of boycott…

That's the thing. You said it. Not many will see his motivations unless he spells it out and the man is an awful communicator in that he can't go two words without putting someone off. Unfortunately he's a bit of an extremist. At least that's how he presents himself. So I doubt younger folks will get where he's coming from. I'm 25 and I've read about Stallmam for only the past five years and I can tell you that what he stands for sounds great in theory but unfortunately he's not too good at showing us how to reconcile that theory with reality. I don't think kids younger than me will ever get Stallmam. As far as I see he becomes more irrelevant in the eyes of each passing generation. Not that he's irrelevant, just that he's seen that way as you go younger.

And I'd totally be willing to try out the first sex robot.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#33

Post by bobsil1 »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #32
mrtron wrote: post #21

I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms. Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views which I find refreshing. I also think that this type of boycott…

That's the thing. You said it. Not many will see his motivations unless he spells it out and the man is an awful communicator in that he can't go two words without putting someone off. Unfortunately he's a bit of an extremist. At least that's how he presents himself. So I doubt younger folks will get where he's coming from. I'm 25 and I've read about Stallmam for only the past five years and I can tell you that what…

He sounds like a religious fundamentalist, or an Amish farmer. What a limiting worldview.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#34

Post by bfrs »

I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python.

Lisp experts, what does this mean? As far as I can tell, Python has pretty good REPL facilities.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#35

Post by chrischen »

officialchicken wrote: post #16
billpatrianakos wrote: post #10

Oh boy. RMS wrote yet another opinion that we just have to read. I'll be hated for this but I must state the obvious. This is a list of really boring opinions. Interesting for rms fanatics but many are barely explained and most aren't realistic to actually try out unless you want to be a software philosopher for a living. Did people just see Stallman in the title and up vote? Come on.

I was surprised to see that there were no rules whatsoever on the consumption/conservation of energy (nutritional or electrical) - such as avoidance of corn flakes encumbered by Montasano patents. i.e. "I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol"

Well this page is specific to how he does his computing.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#36

Post by mrtron »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #32
mrtron wrote: post #21

I think it is really tough for younger people to realize that technology can be seen as a highly dangerous in different forms. Instead of trashing his principles, perhaps try to see the motivation behind them. I respect anyone who establishes their own code and adheres firmly to it. RMS meets this criteria. He is also very open and honest about his views which I find refreshing. I also think that this type of boycott…

That's the thing. You said it. Not many will see his motivations unless he spells it out and the man is an awful communicator in that he can't go two words without putting someone off. Unfortunately he's a bit of an extremist. At least that's how he presents himself. So I doubt younger folks will get where he's coming from. I'm 25 and I've read about Stallmam for only the past five years and I can tell you that what…

He is an extremist and puts many people off with what he says.

That is the point. He doesn't need to change his approach or principles. His actions are still in line with what he says.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#37

Post by why-el »

ajross wrote: post #20
dill_day wrote: post #14

I skimmed documentation of Python after people told me it was fundametally similar to Lisp. My conclusion is that that is not so. When you start Lisp, it does `read', `eval', and `print', all of which are missing in Python. Could someone explain what he means? (Did Python not have a repl when he wrote that?)

Python's read doesn't return a s-expression, nor does its print take one; they just use strings. It's eval likewise takes a string. The part missing that lisp has is the inspectable data structure containing an arbitrary parse tree and function result.

I am curious, would Ruby be a good fit in this case? With its irb and all.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#38

Post by ajross »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #25
ajross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I count three of you now who cared enough to post here mocking him.

Not mocking. Definitely being a little sarcastic. But why do we have to get into a holy war over Stallman. You know as well as I do that what I said is true but unfortunately Stallman's cult following absolutely must punish anyone who points out the obvious. So I said what I needed to. I was actually being sincere, not trying to outright mock him for the sake of mocking him.

Like most people, I find Stallman strange. His methods are quirky, and his language grating. He alienates his allies more often than his enemies. He picks fights at the wrong times. He stands behind principle in circumstances where it clearly hurts his cause.

But... he's right. Almost always, he's right. He's made a 40 year career now of being right: often decades before the rest of us figure it out. That's enough for me to cut him as much slack as he wants.

Nattering detractors like you have been around for almost as long as he has. I used to be one 15 years ago (when, damn it, I was sure he was going to tank the coming open source revolution; except he didn't, and he was right). He just draws that kind of attention.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#39

Post by kellishaver »

bfrs wrote: post #29

Can someone help me understand what the purpose of this is: I have several free web browsers on my laptop, but I generally do not look at web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites operated for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me.

Does anyone have any idea what program he's using for this?

I would suspect that it's because he feels browsing web pages doesn't need to be instant, in a lot of cases, and he can just fetch pages via email and read them later at his leisure, and also have a convenient archive of them.

Re: Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing

#40

Post by homosaur »

sgt wrote: post #15

I did however find this comment quite interesting. He recommends Lisp to beginner programmers. Honestly this makes me want to play with Lisp (I do just about every other popular language but I've never done Lisp): "The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most o…

Several Lisp dialects like Scheme and Clojure are still going strong. It's a very useful language to learn even in 2012.
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