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The intro reminded me of the "Everything that can be invented has been invented" comment by Charles H. Duell in 1899 and the rest of it made feel like I was reading a hip-hop cover of Eric Raymond's Cathredral & the Bazaar with a few verses left out.

I don't understand the significance of this term. Can someone explain?

See The Jargon File's definition:

"The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant 'concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term)."

I don't understand the significance of this term. Can someone explain?

See The Jargon File's definition:

"The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant 'concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term)."

"Aside from academics is there any reason whatsoever that anyone on earth would ever want to attempt to operate this?" My answer

Donald Knuth. Donald F'ing Knuth, geek idol, computer scientist and gift to anagrammatists everywhere. Yet another of the secular saints of the Eric Raymond crowd, and writer of TeX and Metafont, the typesetting and font design programs which lie behind half the computer books in existence (specifically, the poorly typeset half in the ugly fonts). Writer of the as yet unfinished meisterwerk of algorithm design, "The Art of Computer Programming". The avuncular figure who gave many of today's prominent "hackers" their big break. An example to us all.

Hooey. While some might think it a little poor for us to be picking on a man in the autumn of his years who has done little actual direct physical harm to others, the raison d'etre of adequacy.org is to puncture overinflated reputations, and Knuth's is one of the windiest. Every single plank of his rickety edifice seems to be based on the massive intellectual inferiority complex of the geek nation; their belief that because they don't understand something, it must be difficult. Put it this way; in our opinion, the main reason that the Art of Computer Programming remains unfinished is that when the truth gets out about Knuth, the fact that he hasn't finished his book is the only reason anyone will want to recusitate him.

TeX and Metafont

According to the Jargon File, "Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer Programming" (see Knuth, also bible). In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years."

I'm sorry. Readers who are sane, or who have sane acquaintances, or who are not familiar with the wilder shores of computer programmers and their personality diseases, may not quite have taken in that last passage. For their benefit, I'll repeat it, in bold, and with a hyperlink to the source so that they can independently verify that I didn't make it up to slander Knuth.

Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer Programming" (see Knuth, also bible). In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years.

So in other words, Knuth is the kind of guy who would rather spend eight years locked away in a stinky computer lab, than pick up the phone once to complain to his typesetters and tell them to do it properly. Rather than trouble himself with five minutes of human interaction, he spent eight years snivelling over a keyboard. That's the calibre of individual we're dealing with here.

It completely beggars belief. For reference, here's how I would address this problem; brrring brrring, hello, typesetting department, jsm here, could you sort out the typesetting in my book please it's a disgrace, certainly sir, goodbye. Total time taken, five minutes max. By my calculations, this method is approximately 2,522,880 times more efficient than Knuth's. I say "approximately" because I didn't allow for leap years. I didn't allow for leap years because it's completely unimportant and a purely illustrative statistic in any case. That's an example of a "proportionate amount of effort", by the way; spending eight years correcting a typing error isn't. Not that you can do something so simple as correct a typing error in TeX without first committing an 800 page manual to memory. It's a Turing-complete language, you see, highly useful for people who want to solve the Halting Problem every time they need to change their line spacing, but how

Well, I got the idea from Here, where the OSI decided to create a different definition than any of the Free Software definitions, including both the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) upon which the OSI definition was derived from and the FSF's Free Software Definition

If the weren't different, the OSI wouldn't be making up different definitions, would they?

I don't see INTERCAL on there anywhere. Of course since it was written to be different from all existing languages, it can be kinda hard to fit in a language tree.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

Gorilla arm.

If they want me to believe their product contains no malware, spyware or adware, there is exactly one way they can convince me. And that's the same way that RMS, Linus and ESR convinced me that their software is clean.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Btw, part of the troll is to get the dates wrong just to see if some anal-retentive process slave checks to see if they're correct. Thanks for falling for that; you're the first.

Looks like Eric finally accepted the job offer from Microsoft.

I don't think so. He stepped aside to get some more time to work in his projects like: fetchmail, and... hm... and...yeah.

Why does everyone keep forgetting about the most important project? I've heard that Eric went to Thailand to finally get some empirical data for his HOWTO.

That's not funny, it's insightful. Raymond is reputedly a big gun nut.

There is no such thing as a "gun nut"

Eric's Gun Nut Page: "Yes, I cheerfully refer to myself as a gun nut." -- Eric S. Raymond.

That's not funny, it's insightful. Raymond is reputedly a big gun nut.

There is no such thing as a "gun nut"

Eric's Gun Nut Page: "Yes, I cheerfully refer to myself as a gun nut." -- Eric S. Raymond.

Yeah, and as everyone knows, all gun owners are automatically psychotic murderers.

No, but ESR is psychotic for completely unrelated reasons.

Are you sure? He seems nice.

No, you just need a clue-by-four.

Huh. Interesting to reread ESR's Take My Job, Please! essay, now that he is stepping aside.

Check out Sex Tips for Geeks

Actually, the essays in this section, as well as much of his other writing, make very interesting reading. I think this one can only be found via the site-map.

Also, optimizing compilers have very nearly caught up with human assembly programmers

I write shareware for the Mac in my spare time, and I'm asked occasionally why I don't GPL the thing and give it away. The reason why I refuse to do this is because I've invested a lot of my time and energy into this software and I want just compensation for my time. I do not feel that ESR's notion of "egoboo" would be a worthwhile payment for the sweat equity I've put into my software.

You can find free, open source applications out there that compete directly with my app, but they simply don't have the level of polish and dedication that you can see in the commercial variants (which includes, but is not limited to, mine).

Do they look like rock stars? No. More like 1980s rap stars. Who looks like rock stars then? Kernel hackers. OS hackers look like church music stars and hacker anthropologists look like movie stars. As you see, all of the hackers look like stars, but only kernel hackers look like rock stars, except those who look like sport stars. If you have any other "Ask Slashdot" questions, you know where to find me.

Uhm, no. Everything in a base install, even if not turned on, has undergone a code audit... I'm fairly certain that the OpenBSD versions of sendmail, bind, and "the webserver formerly known as Apache" have all had many security-related patches applied, not all of which were accepted back into their respective main code branches.

Anyway, for a Cluefull User I highly recommend OpenBSD - the documentation kicks ass, and the user community is great at helping those that help themselves (i.e. as long as you've done your homework, they've always been quick to help).

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and its imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains the market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

"Geek" is a way of being. Sere here for a description of what makes you a geek (or hacker, in the language of this lexicon). People don't become geeks because they want to be part of the geek crowd. They become geeks because certain things appeal to them.

On Usenet it is bad manners to correct someone over bad grammer and bad spelling.

It's also bad manners to not point out bad grammar and spelling when somebody is flamed for it and they don't realise. He was, in essence, laughing behind your back. I merely pointed out why.

Using bad grammar and spelling means a hell of a lot of people will automatically assume you are an idiot. When you have your mistakes pointed out and you tell everyone you don't care to learn how to speak properly, pretty much everybody with a clue will begin to ignore you.

Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language

One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September

It looks like September did end, after all.

For those who don't get it:

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that- never-ended.html

This whole stem cell fiasco has been a hammer to pound President Bush on the head, and I think every sane human out there has seen it for what it is

Yes Bush is being hammered on this issue, and rightfully so IMHO. I do not think that is the purpose of the issue, though. This is a complicated issue with many diverse opinions. Implying that only the people who agree with you are sane is an example of why we aren't finding a common ground. Leave the rhetoric out of it, please.

Let's stop politicizing science and just approach it with objectivity and skepticism for once, folks.

Agreed. Unfortunately, the issue is considered a moral issue for many, which makes it both a) political b) impossible to keep objective. By its very nature it is a subjective debate. Remember that it was President Bush who first politicized the issue on a national level by banning federal funding of new fetal stem cell lines. It was brilliant political strategy. It is a polarizing issue and one that plays to the neo-cons political strengths.

And please, when science starts stretching the bounds of morality, let's make the right decision to limit science and not limit morality.

That should be the whole point of the debate. Science has always stretched the boundaries of morality. Usually there is a furor, then acceptance, then a moving on to the next boundary. Ask Galileo, Darwin, etc. What scares many of us,is that many sincere people think of morality as an Absolute delivered from on high, and not a growing and changing societal standard.

That's what makes us different from the research that German and Japanese scientists did in WWII.

Congratulations, you have just activated Godwin's Law. You lose.

I.V.

foo-ey.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done

As a sophomore at Garfield HS in Seattle, I can't say this guy seems to know what he's talking about. Kids should do this, kids should do that. Yeah, it's all good and well to say it, but what's good for us in the long run isn't always the most attractive option - and sometimes, it's not the one that'll raise my grades or get me into a good college, which is precisely what I need to get done.

In several classes my grade is a low C/high D... It's not that I can't do the work, it's that I don't want to do it because a good part of it simply doesn't interest me and isn't applicable to my chosen career path.

I'd love to stay in the computer workshop all day and write C code or work on the openMosix cluster that I and two fellow nerds are trying to set up. The fact of the matter is that I have to go to class, and learn silly things like history.

Don't get me wrong, some [catb.org] history [wikipedia.org] (and much more than just those two things) is extremely fascinating. Most that I do learn, however, is not something important to being a "concerned citizen" or good programmer/Hacker and I forget it within several months or weeks of learning it.

Necessary evils, yes. But I believe that a good part of the time I spend in class is wasted on me.

Monday, March 04, 2002. Eric was just wondering how the singing magnets work, but not finding any satisfying explanation on Google and Wikipedia, he decided to finish one of the emails he was just writing. It seemed like a good idea to not think about science for a while and concentrate on something else.

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Monday, March 04, 2002. Eric was just wondering how the singing magnets work, but not finding any satisfying explanation on Google and Wikipedia, he decided to finish one of the emails he was just writing. It seemed like a good idea to not think about science for a while and concentrate on something else.

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Monday, March 04, 2002. Eric was just wondering how the singing magnets work, but not finding any satisfying explanation on Google and Wikipedia, he decided to finish one of the emails he was just writing. It seemed like a good idea to not think about science for a while and concentrate on something else.

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Monday, March 04, 2002

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Monday, March 04, 2002

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Monday, March 04, 2002

I do the club scene a lot, some say I am a good dancer. I enjoy having a few drinks, usually ale or mead, and I have been known to cause a scene now and then...

Eric paused, breathing heavily. He'd never done this before and he wanted to make sure all of his best qualities were included in this email.

I am a geek, to be frank, and I enjoy hacking UNIX and maintaining Open Source programs such as Fetchmail and a bevy of FAQs regarding 386 sound internals and role-playing games. I've been doing this for 15 years though I've never held a job in my life.

Eric wondered if this woman he had found on match.com would be impressed with his talents. He decided to put more detail into the message.

I recently drove 24 hours straight, with but two stops for gasoline, from Eastern PA to Kansas City in an effort to destroy my two arch-nemeses. I would have succeeded except that I blew a head gasket as I was about to shoot one of them from my moving car on Route 69. I am an excellent shot and love guns in general.

Eric pondered for a moment, wringing out his soaked handkerchief, and continued with his typing.

So what languages do you know? I fancy myself quite an accomplished amateur linguist and know Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic inside and out. I often compose little riddles in them for fun and mental exercise. In fact, I'll include one for you now!

Chewing on his tongue and squinting, Eric pushed his mind into overdrive and produced a beauty of a riddle on the spot:

Windeth I towarde the skye
I haveth eye but blinde am I

Pleased with his linguistic talents, undoubtedly matched by no one, Eric then asked his potential love-conquest:

Can you guess the answer to that? In case you can not, the correct answer is "my erect penis." I hope you enjoyed that; I do this sort of thing all the time.

Eric exhaled slowly and rubbed his belly. It was growling and no doubt wanted its nightly bottle of Jägermeister. He decided to finish up the email in anticipation of the coming alcoholic stupor.

Well I don't want to make this email too long -- I have a lot of responsibilities in real life to deal with. My role-playing group is coming over and we are spending the next week holed up in the forest near my home in character playing out a possible scenario from Beowulf. I need to get dressed up and I can not find my bear-claw mittens.

Eric wondered how to wrap up the email, something that would hook the lady on him and make her want more...

I hope we can meet and have sex. Despite my cerebral palsy, I am a monster in the sack! Maybe you'll get to see for yourself, LOLOLOL! ;-)

Love,
Eric S. Raymond

Next time please add links to something from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/graphics/ (there are nice pics with guns in the Raymond 007 series)
and from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/ (yes, those are actually Sex Tips For Geeks written by ESR! I fucking kid you not dude!)

Next time please add links to something from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/graphics/ (there are nice pics with guns in the Raymond 007 series)
and from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/ (yes, those are actually Sex Tips For Geeks written by ESR! I fucking kid you not dude!)

Next time please add links to something from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/graphics/ (there are nice pics with guns in the Raymond 007 series)
and from here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/ (yes, those are actually Sex Tips For Geeks written by ESR! I fucking kid you not dude!)

"Why can't the EPO button perform in the same manner as a door release for an emergency exit..."

Emergency Power Off (EPO) switches are primarilly a safety feature. If some person is being electrocuted, you hit the switch and the power dies so the person doesn't. You don't have time to wait in a situation like that. A person's life is considered more valuable then LiveJournal, which despite the name, isn't actually alive. (Insert comment about angst-ridden teen-age girls here.)

See also:

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/scram-switch.ht ml

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/Big-Red-Switch. html

"Why can't the EPO button perform in the same manner as a door release for an emergency exit..."

Emergency Power Off (EPO) switches are primarilly a safety feature. If some person is being electrocuted, you hit the switch and the power dies so the person doesn't. You don't have time to wait in a situation like that. A person's life is considered more valuable then LiveJournal, which despite the name, isn't actually alive. (Insert comment about angst-ridden teen-age girls here.)

See also:

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/scram-switch.ht ml

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/Big-Red-Switch. html

Maybe they should have put a cover over the damn button then. Morons.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

Before the my-format-is-better-than-your-format debate kicks into high gear, it should be said that the LSB intends to use the RPM format as a stop-gap measure

Of course, you know who is on record about how stop-gap measures "...have a way of staying around. Forever."

That's not even right. I have personally seen the term used well before CD-ROMs were in wide usage, and the Jargon File reports that it is old enough that "golden tape" was used.

What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of the fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

If there are less of these kind of users on the Net, then there is a decrease in the target audience of all the spam and spyware we put up with.

If we're lucky then eventually, we will even see an end to the Septermber that never ended...

Don't say you weren't thinking it!

Things you probably cant do nowadays but we did in high school (which was only 8 yrs ago) 1) Play with radioactive stuff

Play with radioactive stuff? Why not drink it! Oh, yeah, I remember the days when radioactive stuff was cool, trendy and good for you. On the other hand, it has been many years since then, but as far as I remember physics has never been "uncool" for me. Though apparently I was "uncool" for the bullies, but that's another story. And since I read the Sex Tips For Geeks by Eric S. Raymond I believe that I am not only cool, but actually quite a hot stud if you ask me. All in all, a very interesting article, but in my opinion it should pay more attention to social problems that the most intelligent kids face these days, as unfortunately many of us know from experience.