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"While his software accomplishments may be looked down upon by some, it was his role as a free thinker and a spiritual leader of the open source movement that was his greatest accomplishment"

Well, the problem is he has spent a long time bragging about his software accomplishments, trying for decades to craft this image of himself as an effortless universal programming genius who understands it on a deep level, when his actual achievements don't merit that image in the slightest. Which wouldn't be so bad by itself if he wasn't just a nasty, arrogant, racist, misogynist, islamophobic guy as well who also tries to paint himself as this supermacho badass; some of his self-congratulatory writing is so over-the-top that it suggests a need for mental health professionals intervention.

But talking about the manufactured evidence that supposedly incriminated Iraq in the eyes of the hypocritical invaders (Chinese military occupation and genocide in Tibet seems to be perfectly acceptable for both Blair & Bush!), it's the story of the one mentally unstable Iraqi refugee, a pathological liar nicknamed Curveball, that explains how crazy unverified rumours were processed into "undeniable facts" by the wannabe aggressor regimes.

In the run-up to the war and long into the invasion the "wholly-embedded" US media was scarily jingoistic so it is a minor relief that the "patriotic" war-journalism has finally given way to some soul- and fact-searching.

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball' The Iraqi informant's German handlers say they had told U.S. officials that his information was 'not proven,' and were shocked when President Bush and Colin L. Powell used it in key prewar speeches. (LA Times, November 20, 2005)

It is a long and detailed chronicle of an empire hell-bent on starting a war, and how media-massaged 88% popularity ratings make it easy for the most hapless of Führers to manipulate the state machinery and the populace of "the greatest democracy".

I wonder how many americans are still boycotting produce from the democratic and anti-war Old Europe but have no trouble buying Chinese imports and thereby aiding and abetting the oppressive and expansionist dictatorship there? Actually almost the whole planet was against the war but the fact that some sycophantic governments took decision to participate in the "grand coalition of the billing" against the popular opinion camouflaged that fact from the american public for a while. Meanwhile the Chinese state propaganda machine is still having a field day reporting about the American military quaqmire while the Communist Party is busy creating alliances with anti-Bush developing countries around the globe.

The most unfortunate long-term result of that American uni-lateralism may not be the civil war and splitting of Iraq into smaller ethno-religious states but the split between the USA and Europe which will benefit the Sino-Russian neo-imperial block. With moral-free business ties reigning supreme so far above the so-called "western values of freedom and democracy" that it isn't even funny, the politically bullied or already occupied neighbours of those authoritarian powers will be the biggest losers in this sad saga started by a handful of neo-cons backed by the american religious far-right.

Who is this Raymond guy, and why should we care what he has to say?
Surely you can't mean this ESR fellow?

ESR, shut the fuck up, you've done your good deeds, now don't start destroying it all just because you're not in the spotlight anymore.

Another ring-wing wingnut/racist jerk-off raises its ugly head on
slashdot -- film at 11. What the fuck happened to this place?
Why can't you all just fuck off and go have pissing contests with
your weird little leader? Huh?

Oh, fuck, another ESR
fanboy. Why don't you and Eric spend some quality time pissing on
each other, or whatever it is you alpha-fags do exactly, and leave
the rest of us in peace?

many people believe that once you are an expert or extremely succesful in one area, you are suddenly an expert or very knowledgeable in many, many areas

"Eric Raymond responds": but was he actually *asked*?

Lisp is great *despite* the fact that the pompous blowhard ESR has something good to say about it.

If Raymond is such an elite hacker, how come he didn't fix this by now? Talk is cheap. Shut up and show us the code, Eric!

Eric S Raymond? Who he? Do you mean this Eric S Raymond?

Fear not, knowledgeable people, and learn quite how full of shit ESR is.

Here is a copy of the image in question.
Doodle
...Bill Gates unstable and a poor leader? I don't see it.

In the southern city of Basra, police said Thursday they had arrested five Arab foreign fighters who escaped from Fallujah with plans to attack coalition troops and Iraqi police in the south.

The five - two Saudis, two Tunisians and a Libyan, were arrested Wednesday night at a checkpoint north of Basra, police said.

What have you written ?

There is one thing Kerry can (and almost certainly will) do that is important - he'll get some of the neocons a little further from power. I consider those people to be dangerous.

Though I take anything written by an anonymous author claiming to have inside information with a grain of salt, this article is a pretty interesting take on what may happen in a second Bush administration.

"Today I am one of the senior technical cadre that makes the Internet work, and a core Linux and open-source developer."

---Eric S. Raymond

Not sure whether it has been posted here before but here's an interesting point of view on ESR : It's about things he claims and things he obviously has not done : "The Emperor Has No Clothes"

The Emperor Has No Clothes.

"Take Eric Raymond's advice"... and NUKE THE ARAB WORLD NOW!! Yeah, right. Dude, the emperor has no clothes.

The fact that Bush has oil ties is irrelevant. Has the U.S. taken a SINGLE DOLLAR from Iraqi oil? No. Therefore your tinfoil-hat theory is nothing but hyperbole.

Er, did i say that? No, i didn't. Was i implying that the occupation of Iraq was a consequence of the Admin's plans for consolidation of their startegic presence in Central Asia? Yep.

I believe the adminstration absolutely believed the weapons were there, and that it is pretty embarrassing that they haven't found any stockpiles.

All the more so because many in the intelligence community keep saying that they did *not* believe that Hussein had re-started any of his bio/chem/nuke weapons programs. Read what Ray McGovern, Karen Kwiatkowsk, and Joseph Wilson, among others have to say in this regard. Note that i'm emphatically *not* communist/liberal/anti-capitalist. Read this essay by Chalmers Johnson for a bit of background if you don't understand where i'm coming from.

Nonetheless, the European attitude of appeasement and their support for terrorists like Yassar Arafat are inexcusable and ignorant.

I'll set aside the fact that Europe is a very crowded place which has seen more than its share of war - that's just too big a subject to get into here, and we're already *well* OT. Suffice to say that, sometimes, appeasement looks like the only likely way to survive for the moment. Look at all the shit that went down during and after the first world war. A fucking, bloody mess, that was. Sometimes, appeasement was pretty much all that could be hoped to work for the moment. And, while we're on the subject of appeasement, consider that the US, at various times, found more than enough reasons to side with some very ugly characters. Trying to tar Europe with that brush only reminds us of the US' actions in that regard.

And what's all this about terrorists? Oh, right - Hussein was the mastermind behind 9/11. Riiighht...

Just ask the victims on the trains in Madrid. (Don't even THINK of excusing those attacks as retaliation for the war in Iraq. Those were INNOCENT people.)

Fuck you, too. Where do you get off suggesting that that's my opinion on that. I find that extremely offensive.

When the theory and the data repeatedly disagree, discard the theory.

"I know ESR has been a big contributor to open source..."
There it is again! Where DOES this myth come from?

Who is this "we" that this ESR guy refers to?

He's developed and contributed to many Open Source/Free Software projects

[ESR] has developed and contributed to many Open Source projects.

Indeed, his many fine coding acheivements are described in The Emperor Has No Clothes ..... fascinating reading.

I think you overestimate what ESR has done for the "Open Source Community".

here's a link that explains what I mean:

http://esr.1accesshost.com/

ESR? Who he? Oh, this guy.

I cannot help thinking about Michael Moore's visit to the bomb factory in Columbine.

The article is from a US pundit commenting on fantasy violence in a US video game. Meanwhile, the US government is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in the form of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Although this is by far the biggest collection of weapons of mass destruction on the planet, it is investing billions in making these more leathal. Moreover, the US, as a whole, is a major exporter of weapons to other countries. Past customers include Saddam Hussein, who at the time was notorious for gassing his own people.

The US is currently involved in military operations in Iraq that most of the world regards as totally unjustified. It has dropped cluster bombs on civilians, uses the bombing of villages as a legitimate act of collective punishment, regularly shoots Iraqis at roadblocks, and is holding thousands of Iraqis secretly without giving them any right of habeas corpus. We can only fear that many of these prisoners are being tortured if not actually killed.

Maybe, US citizens should try to cut back a little on the real violence that they are carrying out before worrying their little heads about fantasy violence.

Yes, because ESR is so mature and objective.

Who should not use this emblem?

If you are either promoting somebody's product for money,

Why from you?

Because I maintain the How To Become A Hacker document, A Brief History of Hackerdom, the Jargon File, and am more or less the hackers' resident historian. It's my job to think of these things.

I figure a lot of people are going to say something along the lines of "to hell with this, we don't ALL need a logo",

No, I say I don't particularly want to be associated with ESR's ideas of being a hacker which, as that page shows, amount largely to taking credit for other's work.

That crazy gun-nut has done more for the OSS movement than you ever have or ever will, Mr. dhowells.

Not to butt in on your eloquent debate, but here's an interesting link concerning the above observation.

Actually fetchmail proves that he can code.

Or The Emperor Has No Clothes, even.

Quite so. More on the ESR myth

Oh, dear, another "ESR" groupie. Yes, Raymond wrote some stuff about this, but wouldn't it be more interesting to hear from someone who knows what he's talking about? Bruce Perens, for example.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

...are (admittedly controversial) articles that are posted on a major news web site, then taken off a few days later, like this one, or this other one. This is a dangerous trend, and asks a sensitive question: why "remove" stories instead of putting out counter-arguments? Freedom of speech has it that you can say anything (almost: libel and slander are not acceptable), but anyone can challenge what you say by bringing their own arguments to the discussion. Too often, though, the american media silences alternative viewpoints by excluding them from the debate, so that the public doesn't even know they existe. Case in point: how come Chomsky hasn't been invited to present his views about the 9/11 events on television? If his arguments are so weak as the conservative pundits claim, why not simply try to prove him wrong on the air? Well, there's a good answer to that: they can't, and they know it. So they just ignore his existence altogether, and immediately try to discredit him (without ever challenging his arguments) whenever he is mentioned. Quite revealing...

What I have found particularly striking is the extensive effort made to suppress this story.

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm,with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software,made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches.

This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA.

Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise,and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system. Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroftand FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned October 18th in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that -quote - "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect,a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties. Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel,

Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs,gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.

But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years,they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks.

A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concernsthat too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system.

I'm not sure how much of this story I believe, here are some other (mostly right-wing) sites that covered this:

• http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/1 8/224826.shtml
• http://www.mugu.com/pipermail/upstream-list/2001-D ecember/003993.html

The elite must be worried, so they need to tighten the grip on us. Too many people busy trying to figure out what really happened last September, and there is a real danger to the forces in power that democracy might break out.

--Mike--