Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

anders.unix.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 259 posts

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#181

Post by augusto-moura »

adalacelove wrote: post #57
Almondsetat wrote: post #24

RMS to me is really a curious case. He doesn't know how to install GNU+Linux and relies on others to do it. He doesn't know how to take a screenshot, and I remember reading other snippets from him about not knowing how to perform other basic tasks.

Most screenshots for these well known guys are quite boring. Coincidence? I think if you want to be good at something you need focus.

They are just old school. When you learn coding before GUIs were mainstream, you don't care that much about exciting UIs.

Heck, Kernighan was one of the original developers of Unix. In 2015 he was already coding for more than 40-50 years, more time than most from Hacker News are alive. The only constant from that time is the terminal, so no wonder most people in the post gravitate towards that

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#182

Post by FireBeyond »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #173
jll29 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met RMS at a lunch in his honor at an Edinburgh vegetarian restaurant with very high ranking scholars/academics present, after an invited talk of his. Everyone was talking, eating, drinking and having a good time, whereas he was sitting at the head of the table doing email on his ThinkPad (yes, in text mode). So I walked up, I introduced myself and asked a question about the freedom of _data_ versus the freedom of…

I put him up for the night on my sofa once. When you do this, you get his "rider". Google it, it's real, it's infamous for the "don't buy me a parrot" section. Anyway, in that, he makes clear that if people at dinner are not interested in talking about free software, he's going to pull out his laptop and get on with his work relating to free software. He doesn't care about fancy food, drinks, etc. - he wants to raise…

> I've seen him not being super nice to other people who were trying to have a conversation with him, not because he's not a nice person (I found him quite personable one on one), but it seems to me that he struggles to know how to behave around people who don't know how to just talk to him about things he wants to talk about.

I'd argue that while he may be nice, it's also generally considered impolite to be someone who "only talks to him about the things he wants to talk about". It's meant to be a two-way street, generally. Someone who only wants to talk about what -they- are interested in, not what their conversation partner is interested in is not being nice or polite.

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#183

Post by prmoustache »

kirubakaran wrote: post #156
jll29 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met RMS at a lunch in his honor at an Edinburgh vegetarian restaurant with very high ranking scholars/academics present, after an invited talk of his. Everyone was talking, eating, drinking and having a good time, whereas he was sitting at the head of the table doing email on his ThinkPad (yes, in text mode). So I walked up, I introduced myself and asked a question about the freedom of _data_ versus the freedom of…

Ha I finally got it once I realized it's not about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk

I am pretty sure his choice of words was a conscious decision to do the pun.

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#184

Post by FireBeyond »

dijit wrote: post #161
tedggh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few autistic people including one of my nephews. They are different in some ways particularly when they are very young and are still struggling with expressing their emotions. But none of them are arrogant and disrespectful. I think you can be autistic and also a jerk, one doesn’t justify the other.

I'm going to be rude now, but I don't mean it to be taken that way. "I know a guy with a leg missing, and he can still run, so clearly someone who has lost their legs is able". I have had the discussion a bunch of times, I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people. Yes, some autistic people can mask quite well, and, some are mild cases. But the…

> I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people.

I'm going to say that your definition of "severely autistic" is actually mild to moderate at worst.

The definition of "severely autistic" I know of and have seen in personal experience (family) and in my career has nothing to do with "masking" and such.

It's being a late teenager who is effectively non-verbal, who wore diapers until age 12, who has an "anchoring dog", a 150lb Newfoundland that was trained from birth with audio recordings of him screaming or tantrums, that acts both as an emotional support, but as a literal anchor - tethered to him so that when, as many severely autistic people do, he starts to wander based on internal stimuli - the dog can just sit down and tense up and say "Not unless you plan on dragging a very large dog with you that is trained to stay still when it notices you walking away from your family".

Things along those lines.

> they don't even become aware that they're being rude unless they spend active effort in first identifying, then understanding, then trying to fix it.

This is demonstrably not RMS. He is quite aware of this, and quite openly states he has no intention of apologizing for it, let alone "fixing it".

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#185

Post by prmoustache »

dijit wrote: post #161
tedggh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few autistic people including one of my nephews. They are different in some ways particularly when they are very young and are still struggling with expressing their emotions. But none of them are arrogant and disrespectful. I think you can be autistic and also a jerk, one doesn’t justify the other.

I'm going to be rude now, but I don't mean it to be taken that way. "I know a guy with a leg missing, and he can still run, so clearly someone who has lost their legs is able". I have had the discussion a bunch of times, I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people. Yes, some autistic people can mask quite well, and, some are mild cases. But the…

I am not diagnosed as autistic and also have trouble understanding why people can call my interactions rude as I just tend to try to be honest and precise.

It just happens that I don't like hypocrisy.

I am not an antisocial and consider myself a very polite person and will often say hello and wish a good day to strangers when I am riding my bicycle in the trails or walking in a village / small town.

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#186

Post by FireBeyond »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #176
jasongill wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met RMS at the Atlanta Linux Showcase in 1998. In the area with vendor booths in the lobby area of the show, he had laid down a blanket and was sitting in the middle with his legs crossed. He had printed copies of man pages printed and stapled together with covers laid out in front of him. I walked up and introduced myself and said that I was a big fan, appreciated his hard work, etc. He looked at me coldly and jus…

He's gotta have a weird thing with his feet. My old boss saw him at a talking event here in Orlando, and he said he was picking skin off his toes or something weird the entire time he was talking. He's the hero we needed but probably deserve (as punishment for being bad humans).

Better than the televised interview panel he did where not only was he doing that, he then appeared to eat the skin flakes on multiple occasions...

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#187

Post by dijit »

FireBeyond wrote: post #184
dijit wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to be rude now, but I don't mean it to be taken that way. "I know a guy with a leg missing, and he can still run, so clearly someone who has lost their legs is able". I have had the discussion a bunch of times, I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people. Yes, some autistic people can mask quite well, and, some are mild cases. But the…

> I'm beginning to think that nobody other than me has spent a significant amount of time with severely autistic people. I'm going to say that your definition of "severely autistic" is actually mild to moderate at worst. The definition of "severely autistic" I know of and have seen in personal experience (family) and in my career has nothing to do with "masking" and such. It's being a late teenager who is effectively…

The “severe” autism that I used to experience, at least the most severe that I experienced was non-verbal, sometimes with violent outbursts.

But of course there’s a whole range.

What concerns me though is that when I’m on the internet, people talk about autism like it’s a quirky character flaw that can be overridden with moderate effort.

Which feels criminally ignorant.

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#188

Post by Sophira »

shevy-java wrote: post #44
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't know how to make a screenshot" - what a fucking star.

It is a strange answer because I use an alias to a ruby script ("shot") which just wraps imagemagick mostly. So I don't understand the "I don't know how to make a screenshot" part of RMS really. He seems to never fully understood why python or ruby are useful.

He was using text mode at the time in 2002. The term has something of a technical meaning that he was likely referencing. To be precise:

1. He was using a virtual console (ie. what you get when you press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and similar if using X), not an X terminal.

2. The virtual console was very likely not using a framebuffer (which would be a graphics mode), but was in fact just the Linux kernel's standard text mode output for virtual consoles, using the BIOS font.

Making a screenshot of such a text mode as a graphics file is actually not really something you can do. For the most part, the best you can do is to synthesize an equivalent image from scratch by rendering the text using another program.

That's likely what he meant when he said that he didn't know how to do a screenshot. Yes, it's overly specific, and the person who asked was probably just wanting to see what he was looking at on the monitor, which wouldnt require an exact pixel-for-pixel copy, but there you go.

Re: Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)

#190

Post by prmoustache »

gentooflux wrote: post #3

RMS could have taken a photo of his screen, or done something cheeky like dump his screen to a padded ASCII text file and submitted that. Stick in the mud.

The few photos he has on his own website have been taken by others. I doubt he even owns a camera.

I don't think the second answer even qualify as a screenshot nor why he should do that upon random request by strangers.

Post reply on HN