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RMS to Move Into Bill Gates Building Today
In anonymous reader writes "RMS will be moving his office to the new William H. Gates building at MIT's Stata Center starting today. This marks the end of MIT's use of building NE43, which housed the LCS and AI labs (now combined into CSAIL).
On a strangely unrelated note, shortly after Harvard, in a laudable attempt to retain solidarity with the Open Source community, dedicated the Maxwell Dworkin building (named after Gates' and Ballmer's mothers respectively), Gates' credit card was hacked. After all, they did have his mother's maiden name... "
As the parent poster mentions, these are often the people who have actually directly paid for them. This is nothing new. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie was not universally popular in his day, but we remember him today for his bequests, not for example his smashing of the union during the 1892 Homestead strike.
Gates' credit card was hacked ...
The hack -- by Curador -- took place in 2000.
See: PBS Interview with Curador.
-kgj
-kgj
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And to top if off, he's now the most generous philanthropist too. His foundation, focused on fighting disease and promoting education will leave a bigger and longer lasting legacy than his business accomplishments.
I hesitate to call Gates a true philanthropist, as I remember how he was highly criticized by others for not doing much. Finally he started doing more philanthropy, but it took a lot of public humiliation to get him to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the way it all came about it looks like Gates is just giving away money to save face, not because he truly believes in or cares about any of the causes he gives to.Dude, its called funding. At UW (Washington), we needed a new building, which was going to run around $70 million. The state was willing to put up $25 mil, which left a lot left to cover. So, when I come in in the mornings, I go to the Paul Allen Center, cross the Microsoft Artium, go down the elevator to the Baxtor Lab (or something, I forget this part).... This in addition to the Bill and Melinda Gates Commons, numerous name plates et cetera. Yeah, its kinda wierd, but well, we have a world class building for Computer Science and Engineering.
http://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-discuss /2004-March/000077.html
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Give me a break. As much as I can't stand Microsoft's business tactics, Bill Gates has given several hundred thousand dollars per day to charity, amortized over his entire lifetime. What have you done?
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Yes, he hasn't been an employee for twenty years or so, but he still has an office here.
Cambridge:
t ml
p .php3?id=401
c hap-37.htm
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/UoCCL/intro/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/site-maps/gates.html
+ Washington:
http://www.law.washington.edu/GatesHall/
+ Stanford:
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/keller/gates-map.h
+ Pennsilvania:
http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/mapsBldgs/view_ma
+ MIT:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V119/N20/20lcs.20n.html
+ RIBA:
http://www.riba.org/go/RIBA/About/About_162.html
+ Southern Indiana:
http://www.usi.edu/visit/map/housing.asp
+ Michigan:
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/admin/prov/facbook/ch9/9
= University Building Monopoly !!!!
Basically he quit but they never made him move out and he still has offices there. Among other places it is mentioned here.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N30/rms.30n.html
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
And the building referenced was dedicated in 1999. So the summary was truthful, if not exactly timely.
For hard facts see transcripts of the antitrust trials. They will inform exactly which tactics made Microsoft guilty of abusing their monopoly position. Then look at the industry and observe how little has changed. Are OEM computer manufacturers allowed to ship computers with desktop icons for competitors products but not for Microsoft products? Have file formats and network protocol APIs been made freely available for interoperation? Are userland applications still being bundled into core system libraries? Are they using APIs which are not documented and thus not available to makers of competing products?
Don't forget Mary Gates Hall at the University of Washington. Named after his mother, of course.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
http://www.law.washington.edu/GatesHall/
Actually, that's Gates, Sr. He's not exactly a poor man at all.
On the other hand, we also have:
+Washingtoni ons/mgh.html
http://www.washington.edu/classroom/EventReservat
+Washington (in the Paul G. Allen CSE building)e s_commons.html
http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/tour/05_gat
Of course, it's no surprise. Just about every building on campus is named after fantastically wealthy people. Gates is just the newest generation, and others will come after. If all it takes to get money for facilities is to slap somebody's name on it - then I'm all for that.
It would be nice if slashdot didn't partake in the sensationalisim that tends to pervade the media. The reason I say this is is that the summary reads "Gates' credit card was hacked. After all, they did have his mother's maiden name... "
If the moderators had read the article, they would have noted that Gates card number was not USED for anything, but that some stupid kid had it in his posession. And it's linked to a list of names stolen sometime in the past. As a result the kid was picked up by the FBI. Nothing actually happened concerning gates card.
Bah.
Well IE vs. Netscape isn't from a TV show, it's reality. Perhaps you weren't paying attention when it all happenned, or weren't on the net then, but MS really did leverage their Windows monopoly and IE to drive Netscape's business into the gutter. It wasn't just giving IE away for free, after all a free product that sucks won't always win the market-place. It was exclusive deals with OEMs not allowing them to have Netscape pre-installed on machines, it was Windows making it easier and easier to use IE, at the same time making it harder to use Netscape. Sometimes you had to hold your tounge right and hope it was the correct phase of the moon to get Netscape to be the default browser, and even then every time you applied a security update of any kind you were likely to find IE had been mysteriously changed to your default browser again. Windows at least seemed to become less tolerant of Netscape running on it, while IE was unstable and crashed a lot, Netscape started crashing MORE after MS decided they wanted the browser market. Can I PROVE that MS intentionally made Windows crash more if it saw Netscape running? No, but I witnessed the events, and found myself eventually forced to give up on running Netscape because IE crashed my computers less, not because I thought it was a superior browser. I seriously doubt that Netscape started coding their browser worse after IE was competing with them.
There's also the current issue with Windows Media Player. Tried to find anything else out there to compete with it? Quicktime and Real both don't work quite right with formats outside their native ones. I spent a week hunting for an alternative media player with AVI and Mpeg files that I could do playlists with at one point. Even though I found one to meet my needs, it amounted to nothing more than a skin over Windows Media Player, as WMP did all the decoding and playback underneath. Media Player also conveniently doesn't support codecs other than MS-approved ones. While it will play DivX, XviD, etc, you have to put in the work yourself to find the codecs, install them, and so on. Not surprisingly most mainstream sites don't use those codecs for any video. (And I'm talking about the current versions of DivX which are legit and not hacked versions.) This quite effectively kills the market for alternate codecs. When's the last time you saw a computer from an OEM arrive with RealOne and/or Quicktime already installed? I haven't seen one yet myself, and given past history, I would not be surprised to find that MS is making sure it doesn't happen with their OEM agreements. Again I can't prove that, since OEM agreements are subject to confidentiality agreements. Handy how that works.
Microsoft also has used its OEM agreements to try to stifle Linux, at least in the past. It did come out during the whole DOJ trial process that MS had forbid OEMs to have computers dual-boot on shipment at one point. Even if an OEM wanted to install dual OSs, the customer would have to put in the work to make it possible to boot into anything other than Windows. XP will (at least sometimes) overwrite your MBR where LILO (or whatever loader you use) is, forcing your computer back to single-boot, MS-only status. And try to buy a computer from an OEM, even a local one, without the OS on. You can get Windows on it for around $100, or you can pay around $100 labor. Either way you pay the same price for the computer, effectively making you pay for Windows even if you don't get it. I ran into this first back around 1998. The guy at the place admitted to me it was due to their MS OEM agreement. I ended up getting Windows on the machine and wiping it, I figured I might as well get the bloody software if I had to pay for it no matter what, even if I didn't use
I got double charged, at a pizza place incedentially, in one of those new "instant check" tranactions where they just use your checking account number to get your money.
Whoa.
Completely different from a credit card. Don't use "instant check" crap (frankly, don't use checks at all if you can help it) and don't use fake VISA/MC cards (the check cards, which are tied directly to your banking account). They don't have the same consumer protections that credit cards do. In the case of the former there's no requirements for any consumer protection whatsoever. Double charge? Too damn bad. Overcharge? That's nice. Bad information reported? Well, you can fight that one, but have fun! In all cases the consumer is presumed wrong and the system infallible. In the case of the check cards, most claim to have the protections of the credit cards, but they don't. Not really. If something is falsely charged to a check card they have up to 10 working days to resolve it. In the meantime, you're out the money -- hope you still have enough to cover your mortgage, car payment, etc. in the meantime. And if, after 10 days, they rule against you there's pretty much jack shit you can do at that point.
q[If not for the accountant at the pizza place I would have been forced to pay the extra money or have my credit rating ruined.]q
And if this had been a real credit card transaction then they would've had to show two distinct authorizations on the account. And most pizza places have you sign the credit swipe when you get your pizza, so they would've had to show two signatures as well. (And if they don't have you sign, well, then they better be prepared for a higher number of chargebacks from the credit card company). See the difference yet?
BFD.
How'd he get that $20 billion? That matters even more.
That's about it. I was at Georgia Tech, and a buddy asked the President of the school at the opening of a new building, not yet named after someone, 'what would it take to get my name up there?' The answer was $X (can't recall the amount, maybe $500,000).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
MIT just has a different security model than most businesses. At MIT, the security is usually at the office door, rather than at the front door. I consider this to be a good thing, since it allows students to more easily interact with professors and researchers, and for researchers and professors who work in different buildings to more easily interact with each other.
The Computer Science labs at MIT, as opposed to the main campus of MIT, for a long time have used the front-door security model because they've been in rented space, rather than on the MIT campus proper. Now that they've moved to the campus, where they belong, I should think that they would want join the main MIT culture in their security model too.
|>oug
As someone else has pointed out, the Stata center (which is the new building complex housing CSAIL) contains both the Gates tower and the Dreyfoos tower. However, the poster incorrecly stated that RMS will be in the Dreyfoos tower. In fact he is in the space between the two towers - known as the "warehouse" space (for reasons which escape me).
:-)
Office location in the Stata Center can be identified by letters attached to the office number. Stallman's office is 32-381, here:
http://www.csail.mit.edu/resources/maps/3/381.gif
(I'm right across the hall, in 32-386.) A Gates office would be, e.g., 32-G585. A Dreyfoos office would be, e.g., 32-D585. Yes, as someone else pointed out, we have a holodeck.
Most of us are hoping / assuming that, like almost all other buildings at MIT, the new building(s) will be referred to by number, not by name.
IMHO MIT missed a great opportunity to influence the world for the better by publicly snubbing Gates' offer to fund (a small part of) the new building. But, I'm told, that's just not the way things work...
I'm really not sure why you don't understand that he HAS NOT GIVEN 20 BILLION DOLLARS. He's granted endowments. That's it. Look ONLY at the ACTUAL dollars ACTUALLY paid out in a year. Everything else will confuse your poor little mind, like it already has.
He didn't start the company from scratch. Read up on the history. He bought dos (he had lots of money to do it with), and the people who were going to sell a DOS system to IBM didn't show up to their appointment (they were fishing instead, I believe?). IBM was pissed, Gates was more or less standing there, and the rest is history. Once he owned the OS, the whole world was locked into his upgrade path forever (or, until now at least). IBM was not legally permitted to promote their own OS (OS/2) because of their losses in monopoly court. No one at the time realized the power of the OS, either - had the guys that missed their appt that morning with IBM actually been there, THEY would have been the ultra-rich ones. Its no more complicated than that.
There was no building from scratch. He started with his parent's millions, and someone else's OS. Nothing scratch about that. That's a minor point anyway.
The main point is that I've been simply quantifying his generosity...I use the same words to say that to drill it in...and have demonstrated that he's not anywhere near the most generous anything.
I donate, as I've already explained, a FAR higher percentage of both my net worth, and my disposable income, than he does every year. HE HAS NOT DONATED 1/3 HIS NET WORTH. Get that through your thick little skull. Read his own damn website for all the proof you'll need.