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Richard Stallman on The Setup

richard.stallman.usesthis.com

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Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#81

Post by dagw »

elblanco wrote: post #77
dagw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the interview he only has an internet connection two or three times a day at most. In that sort of scenario his set up kind of makes sense. If I only had short bursts of internet connections during the day I'd probably also set up a system where I could queue up URLs to be automatically downloaded for offline reading next time I had a connection.

You're missing the point. why does he have such limited connectivity?

Whatever the reason I doubt it has anything to do with closed software or his free software philosophy. There are plenty of completely Free ways to get online. Perhaps he lives in a place where you can't get broadband, and only bothers to dial up a couple of times a day. Or perhaps he simply doesn't want a permanent Internet connection because he doesn't feel a need for it.

Actually there have been at least a couple of threads about working without internet on a some of the RV/nomad threads here, and based on those I'm considering trying pulling the plug on my internet connection for 4 hours at a time when working to see what it will do be my ability to focus on the task at hand and not get distracted by hacker news. Perhaps Stallman has a similar approach.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#82

Post by bingaman »

axod wrote: post #66
ptomato wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm pretty sure that is an attempt to remain mostly-distraction free and not waste time on the internet. There are (several) entirely open source/free browsers he would use if that was the issue.

The internet does have some useful productive things on it as well as time wasting devices :/ For a start it's pretty useful for documentation.

That's what wget -r is for.

Pretty sure Stallman isn't going to show up in this thread ;)

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#83

Post by rms »

krobertson wrote: post #58
bitdiddle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh don't be silly, "real people"? Richard Stallman is as real as it gets. He's a decent programmer from what I can tell from emacs. Note that there is a distinction between open source and free software. I think it's important to not conflate the two, which I see a lot these days (in the real world :) I predict 500 years from now people will remember him. They won't remember Bill Gates. Without googling try to recall…

If you go up to any person on the street today and ask who Bill Gates is, they'll more than likely know who. You average person would have no idea who Richard Stallman. If your average person doesn't know who he is today, I doubt that'll change to being more noteworthy in 500 years.

GNU is a lot more likely to be around in 500 years than Microsoft or Windows.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#84

Post by wildjim »

gaius wrote: post #61
motters wrote: post #4

It sounds as if he operates in batch mode with regard to communication.

"I also have not net connection much of the time" Even that's quirky, when you can hardly buy a phone without Internet capability these days. You have to be deliberately avoiding a connection.

Is it really? Don't you get sick of being "always on" sometimes?

Perhaps the averse reactions here have something to do with too many of us living in densely populated/over-populated or even over-stimulated environments; the short-attention-span generation?

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#85

Post by ZeroGravitas »

elblanco wrote: post #54
sailormoon wrote: post #22

Ironic that the only laptop running free software from top to bottom is made in China. Pretty cool little computers they make too. Check out this: http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=134&id=675 RMB¥1699, that's about AUD$295 or USD $265. Or if you prefer the iMac form factor: http://www.lemote.com/bencandy.php?fid=136&id=849 WTF is with the name of that PHP script though.

Right, apparently free software is more important than actual freedom in Stallman's mind.

Where was your computer built?

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#86

Post by ZeroGravitas »

axod wrote: post #59
idiopathic wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the (welcome) move to web architecture, free software is not as important as free data, i.e. the freedom to move your data to another provider. We may all be slaves, but we should have the freedom to choose our master. Like you, I would also rather that website owners had real incentives to please their users. I disagree on the solution: data lock-in _removes_ the website owner's incentive, instead they can just…

Good point, and I agree. People should always be free to get at the data they have on a website, and move to an alternative website. That's certainly something worth fighting for.

Is locked in data really a bad thing?

We all have to make money somehow. I'd rather website owners had real incentive to please their users, and being able to make money is a good incentive.

I don't see how free data can really be relevant on the web. If facebook want to do something to drive users away, or ristrict users freedom, that's up to them. If they do it enough, someone else will setup a rival website that pleases users better. How does free data fit into this? I don't think it does. Most website is simple enough that you don't need free data. Any one of us could clone facebook's massive social network if we had enough time and determination. Letting users own their data is certainly a nice thing to do, and I'm sure we'd be lost without our own data, but I think it makes less sense on the web.

As I've said before, I don't use X because its data is free, I use it because it's free, and there are people behind it who care.

I think that's all that matters really.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#87

Post by radu_floricica »

asb wrote: post #15
motters wrote: post #4

It sounds as if he operates in batch mode with regard to communication.

In 2007 at least, he opted to use a demon to email him pages rather than browse the web: For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time. http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/

I hope it's a joke. I actually did this some 12 years ago. We only had email access at my high school, and I used to browse ftp sites by email. With emails being sent only twice a day. I leaned pretty quickly that all the good stuff is in /pub... saved me a full day of browsing.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#88

Post by rbanffy »

elblanco wrote: post #75
elblanco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I refuse to call it GNU/Linux. By pure lines of source it should be called X.org/Linux.

Apparently HN is refusing to let me reply to you. So I'm doing it here. The point of saying X.org/Linux is that I could form some ridiculous argument that would require a completely different naming convention. Why don't we call all cars Benz/Cars since Karl Benz holds much of the work that makes cars go? Or all helicopters Da Vinci/Helicopters? Because it's silliness. Calling something GNU/Linux is silly nonsense RM…

Actually it makes perfect sense. Most Linux systems are a collection of GNU tools on top of the Linux kernel. This "bunch of crap" forms the basis of a lot of internet infrastructure you take for granted. Also, saying the GNU compilers have a short lifespan is, well... Perhaps they do, in geological terms. Seriously, GCC existed since like ever.

My personal setup could be called Gnome/Xorg/GNU/Linux, but if people complain about GNU/Linux I guess my letter soup won't fly. Debian is packaging something that is called GNU/kFreeBSD, a GNU userland on top of a FreeBSD kernel. Nexenta could be called GNU/OpenSolaris (in fact, there are lots of GNU tools in OpenSolaris right now).

Operating systems, from kernel to shell, are usually conceptually very simple, with tons of hard work on top of simple concepts. This simplicity, specially in the case of Unix, allowed it to be continuously reinvented for 40 years in a way it's still a modern OS. I really wish we had HAL/OS (maybe Microsoft can expand the Milo and Kate demo into one) and full-blown human-level AI agents, but the world didn't take any turn into that direction. Unix, in its many incarnations, is still the OS to imitate. And the GNU tools, be it on top of a BSD/Mach kernel (as in OSX) or the Linux kernel is more or less what comes to mind when someone says "Unix".

That is quite an impressive accomplishment.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#89

Post by rbanffy »

elblanco wrote: post #77
dagw wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the interview he only has an internet connection two or three times a day at most. In that sort of scenario his set up kind of makes sense. If I only had short bursts of internet connections during the day I'd probably also set up a system where I could queue up URLs to be automatically downloaded for offline reading next time I had a connection.

You're missing the point. why does he have such limited connectivity?

When I have a tight deadline, blocking Google Reader, HN and Slashdot increases my productivity by a couple orders of magnitude.

Re: Richard Stallman on The Setup

#90

Post by rbanffy »

bmj wrote: post #37
rbanffy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't know about the yeeloong, though. Interesting device. It seems to be very slow, has a small RAM and just a couple gigabytes of storage. I would love the idea of a Windows-proof computer I could use, but this is still not it. The larger one looks promising.

Which, based on what RMS describes, is perfectly fine for his needs.

Well... It's not for me. I can't recommend it.
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