Here he is, 70, under chemo, giving a speech. He keeps being a force of nature. May he recover well, or at least have long enjoyable years ahead. He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. He has built incredible software, defined important stuff and kicked our asses in the right direction.
> He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, Can you explain what you mean?
Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
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Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#572Here he is, 70, under chemo, giving a speech. He keeps being a force of nature. May he recover well, or at least have long enjoyable years ahead. He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. He has built incredible software, defined important stuff and kicked our asses in the right direction.
> He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. Arguably that describes most people ever considered heroes. Just look at the controversy of anyone who ever had a statue made of them I think to change the world you have to be somewhat not of it - you have to rebel against social norms. The people who rebel against social norms don't just rebel against the right ones but also are wrong s…
There has to be some truth to this.
However, you don't need to make women uneasy (among other things) to promote free software.
His heroic work on free software shall not shield him from criticism about other aspects of him.
Reacting because accepting bullshit from heroes is widespread but dangerous (not saying you are doing it).
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#573I hope he’s able to manage it well (since the prognosis is good) and is around for a lot longer. We need absolutists like him who go to extremes and are known widely. For a few moments, leave aside his personality and what people have said about his behavior or hygiene. If he hadn’t been there, our world would’ve been a lot different and a lot poorer. A visionary is what he was and is. While the Free part of FOSS is…
The idealists had it right about global warming too. It's our own incapability to be idealists that will inevitably and ultimately bring about the worst case scenario for global warming.
The idealists have it right today.
Global warming is one ecological problem out of dozens and we'll economically outscale it even if we don´t do anything special about it. Damage to human health and infrastructure plus spending in adaptation will be a steady drag that will be much slower than our increasing ability to withstand its effects.
In the meantime, we have tons of global and local issues caused by human activity that have next to nothing to do with global warming: destruction of natural habitats; invasive species; overfishing; plastics; toxic and/or long life chemicals/medicines... We have a couple of resource issues coming up: cobalt, helium, rare earths; hydrocarbs; hell even copper might become a problem soon-ish... We are faced with the effects of being able to reliably control our own reproduction, a revolution that we're absolutely not ready for as a species and that requires us to rethink a 100.000 years old societal structure pretty much from scratch. We will soon have the technology to concentrate power and security into the hands of an ever-shrinking minority pretty much to the point that any violent rebellion of any amount of normal people will fail. Again that's a first for any social species.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other side, back in college to earn extra money, I was his typist for around 10 hours (3 or so hours at a stint), meaning he sat diagonally behind me, reading the screen I was typing on. The only thing I noticed was his hair was a little wild. That was a few decades ago, so perhaps things have changed, but he was well within normal odor back in the early 90s.
What were you typing for him?
Everything. He would sit behind me and dictate keystrokes (mostly driving emacs, of course) to do email, edit code, and generally operate the computer. I don't want to talk about someone else's medical situation, but I think it's well-enough-known that rms had a period of RSI so severe that he was barred from using a keyboard to let his wrists/hands recover.
A few hours in a row of hearing and typing C-Space C-u 2 4 M-w C-x C-b C-y C-x C-s is exhausting. It was also amusing (in retrospect) to get a polite-enough admonishment to "don't think about what the keystrokes are doing; please just type what I say" when he could tell that I was slowing down because I was paying too much attention to what the intent behind the keystrokes was.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#575Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…
what we really need, is for "engineering" as a discipline to rise to the same status as arts and sciences.
computer science is not real. computers are not found in nature. they're not a natural object, hence the methodology of study (from a philosophy of science standpoint) cannot be the same.
similarly to how math is not subjected to experimentation; but to intelligibility (a modern math proof is accepted if mathematical "peers" understand it and agree with it). so can't computer be subjected to experimentation as a matter of studying them. they're not found they're made. so the "experimentation" is really end-to-end testings; a philosophically distinct practice from a physics experiment (which is often just measuring something extremely precisely)
maybe I should ponder on the "philosophy of chemistry" which also blurs this line between "making" and "experimenting"???
you jest about making a religion (which funnily RMS also does); but recall that Academia (and RMS is an academic) was started by religions, which means if there's a faculty of computers, then it already IS a church... an academic church 2.0
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
Communism refers to at least two separate things: the theory and the reality. That's basically what you just said, right?
No. This is a very bad summary of what I carefully tried to make, that completely misses the point. I'm sorry I was not clear enough, but I'm afraid I won't be able to express myself better so I'll just leave it at that. You are free to make this point if you want, just don't make it look like it comes from me because it doesn't.
Cool I'll make the point then.
I've learned about communism from two types of sources. Philosophy books and history books, and the takeaways are quite different.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Linux desktop is better than ever (in fact, I am switching to it the first time in a few days! I just need to setup some things first) Sadly, the enshittification has also taken over parts of the Linux desktop as well though. For example, the mobile-first, flat-everything user-hostile design. (like gnome) Dark themes were not common while skeuomorphism was mainstream, they are only in demand right now because vie…
I don't get why people complain about gnome so much. I don't like it either - so i don't use it. There are like a billion options for linux desktop.
Because it's a huge part of the linux desktop, that's why. Sure, there are alternatives, but the range of alternatives is only ever shrinking.
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are two different things: - the MIT mailing list discussion of a few years ago where he got a lot of flakes for what I indeed believe was a lot of misunderstanding. He seemed reasonable to me, but you really need subtle and careful reading to notice this. It was easy to misread and understand the contrary of was he thinks. I think he should have refrained from participating in this discussion though. Wh…
> I don't think he is misogynistic (many examples on stallman.org supports the opposite) Intent, outcome and self-image can drift apart quite substantially. Few misogynists would consider themselves as such. Usually because misogynist behavior is still considered normal by quite a few people and pushback against the status quo comes at a social cost.
Fully agree, except for sexism ≠ misogyny
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#579Stallman's character is one of the reasons I have repeatedly considered establishing some kind of "Church of Computing", i.e. an organized "religion" solely to secure religious protections and rights as they apply to the modern world. For example, the right not to have to use some random company's app to interact with a government agency or a public school (and agree to said company's EULA, etc). It only takes a few…
You refuse to learn something because you are afraid that that thing might change and require you to learn new things? Maybe this isn’t the best industry for you.
I refuse to learn anything about any propietary technologies unless you pay me for every minute I spend doing it. and I'll probably get right on to forgetting it if you stop paying me, but won't really cuz my memory and experience are mine and Severance (tv series) is still fiction
Re: Richard Stallman reveals he has cancer in the GNU 40 Hacker Meeting talk [video]
#580Here he is, 70, under chemo, giving a speech. He keeps being a force of nature. May he recover well, or at least have long enjoyable years ahead. He has/had arguable/unacceptable behavior, but I believe we strongly owe him. He has built incredible software, defined important stuff and kicked our asses in the right direction.
He's also been the victim of some pretty vile smear campaigns and is still going on. I know if I was the target of the crap he got, I wouldn't want to continue doing anything anymore.
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