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... "

Comments

irony

[Anonymous Coward]

ah the irony is just to delicous

Re:irony

[VampireByte]

Well, you can't spell "Hey" for starts.

Re:irony

[pilgrim23]

Query: does the Bill Gates Building have....Windows?

Re:irony

[DennisInDallas]

"too" delicous, but yes... ironic just the same. I await in inevitable poetic justice with baited breath

What other Gates buildings are there?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's MIT, Stanford... anywhere else that Billy has seen fit to leave his mark?

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[Anonymous Coward]

... named after Gates' and Ballmer's mothers respectively

Even their mothers have buildings named after them! This is insane.

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[Maestro4k]

• There's MIT, Stanford... anywhere else that Billy has seen fit to leave his mark?

The DOJ in Washington, DC?

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[bgeer]

The Gates of Hell?

"Abandon all hope ye who use Outlook Express"

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[sTalking_Goat]

I saw him pissing on the side of the Supreme Court Building in DC a few weeks back...

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[Juiblex]

Cambridge:
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.ht ml

+ Pennsilvania:
http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/mapsBldgs/view_map .php3?id=401

+ 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/ch9/9c hap-37.htm


= University Building Monopoly !!!!

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[zulux]

Even their mothers have buildings named after them! This is insane.

That's because they can't name the buildings after their fathers. It wouldn't look good to name the building "UPS-Man and Pool-Boy Building."

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[lantius]

+ Washington:
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:

+Washington
http://www.washington.edu/classroom/EventReservati ons/mgh.html

+Washington (in the Paul G. Allen CSE building)
http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/tour/05_gate s_commons.html

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.

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[frostman]

The Gates of Hell?

That's at Stanford.

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[the gnat]

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.

I grew up in Seattle, and Gates' mother is rememebered quite fondly; there's a Mary Gates drive not far from my parents' house and the university. I think she was very involved in assorted philanthropic causes. So if Gates wants to name stuff after his mom, good for him. And, more generally, if he wants to donate to university CS departments, more power to them. Any quality university - or at least one with gobs of money already, like Harvard or MIT - will continue to make its own decisions, and not let big donors tell them what software to use. (No, really - Yale notoriously turned down or returned large donations because the donors wanted too much control over how it was spent. This was before Yale was quite as rich as it is now.)

People do need to remember, however, that Gates isn't exactly a self-made man; he had pretty big helping hand from mommy and daddy, and went to the nicest private school in Washington state.

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[perlchild]

= University Building Monopoly !!!!

Not quite, but the smaller universities may not have a dedicated comp sci building, and it makes no sense for Bill Gates to fund a math building does it? We'd figure out how much money he "really" has...

ok, puny humor this morning I should know better than to attempt this before coffee

Re:What other Gates buildings are there?

[jazman_777]

If all it takes to get money for facilities is to slap somebody's name on it - then I'm all for that.

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).

As a former playground bully, I want to know

[potcrackpot]

... is the 'w' in 'Dworkin' silent?

Re:As a former playground bully, I want to know

[Minna Kirai]

When you make jokes at someone's mother its a petty thing to do.

Yes, playground bullies are indeed petty. Thanks for the insight!

Re:As a former playground bully, I want to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of names, does anyone know what the "H" stands for in William H. Gates?

Hitler.

Re:As a former playground bully, I want to know

[harvardian]

The quick Harvard wit already picked up on that one. Everybody on campus (other than the CS majors) calls the building "Max Dork".

I'm not kidding :-P

Re:As a former playground bully, I want to know

[Mr. Piddle]

from playground bully to slashdot-reading nerd? Sounds a bit unlikely to me...

He would bully people by taunting them with the names of all the known radioactive isotopes and chasing them while reciting all the stepping numbers of Intel CPUs. Not all bullies use fists, you know.

Use punctuation

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

How does this attempt to retain solidarity with the OSS community? The entire post is one gigantic run-on sentence, so maybe I am not reading it correctly?

Re:Use punctuation

[agoliveira]

Hmmm... maybe it's a typo because I read it as "Harvard, in a laughable attempt..." :)

Re:Use punctuation

[Savatte]

dude this is slashdot we dont use any types of punctuation marks because we are too busy coding where do you think you are elementary school

how stupid

[AnonymousCowheart]

How stupid can you be? In the article, it says he stole the credit card numbers to prove how insecure things were. If that wasn't enough, he emailed the info to NBCi. Why do these people think that they're the "good guys" when they do this?

Re:how stupid

[theLOUDroom]

How stupid can you be? In the article, it says he stole the credit card numbers to prove how insecure things were. If that wasn't enough, he emailed the info to NBCi. Why do these people think that they're the "good guys" when they do this?

He is right though. The credit card system is ridiculously insecure, and we all pay for it in one way or another.

There's no reason someone I buy $20 worth of pizza from should have all the information necessary to charge an arbitrary amount of money to my credit card for the next few years.

The technology exists for us to all have keyring-sized computers which employ public-private key crypto. This would mean I would authorize a one-time trasfer of $20 to the pizza place, and in order for them to be able to charge me again, I would need to give them a totally new transaction key.

Why isn't the credit card system being replaced? Who knows.....but it's silly and stupid.

I should never have to give anyone my bank account or credit card number. These days, it should all be handled using transaction keys with authorize a specfic amount, in a certain direction, to a specfic account, on a certain date.

I'm not defending this guy, I just think the current credit card system it totally stupid from a security point of view.

Re:how stupid

[broeman]

I remember back in the late 80's and early 90's here in Denmark (some European country :P) where crackers were plenty (today there is only scriptkiddies left, thank you MS).

Many of those got to prison for one or two years, and afterwards got a nicely paid job at a large computer security company, if they didn't start it themselves. I remember the medias always telling this, and actually indirectly encouraging more people to do cracking (or spawning even more scriptkiddies), just to prove security holes. Pretty much ironic, but these people are probably the best for this kind of job.

Cultures like 2600, CCC, cDc are not only experimenting chaos-theories, but also contributing to more secure computing. Testing is the only way to find security lacks.

Re:how stupid

[Mmm coffee]

For christ's sakes, must absolutely _everything_ be turned into some anti-MS rant?! Someone gets Gate's CC info and people try to spin it into being MS's fault. This is totally and completely bullshit. There are tons of serious reasons to speak out against the Microsoft, when you go off on them by trying to spin something this idiotic all you do is make everyone else who has valid points look like idiots in relation.

Nobody cares about them being ruled a monopoly anymore becuase of the mindless drones going "Linux raa, Microsoft boo" in Orwelian duckspeak every time they open their mouths. I exclusively use a copy of GNU/Linux I built myself and even I find this crap to be aggrivating! You want to help the forces that are working against Microsoft? Shut up. Just shut. The. Fuck. Up. To say that it's Bill's fault that his CC numbers is stolen is on the same level as saying that a girl diserved to get raped for wearing a sexy dress. Asshole or not, he is the victim and not the perpetrator.

So goddamn tired of the Linux zealots that it makes me ashamed to know I am one.... sheesh...

Screw Anonymous Coward. Kill my karma. I don't give a fsck.

Re:how stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

"Also I don't buy pizza with a credit card. Jesus man, don't you have an ATM near by."

Cash is a hassle; you have to keep track of how many slips of paper you have in your wallet. Credit card? It's always right there with me.

Plus, with my Discover and American Express, I get some tiny percentage back, so by buying that $20 pizza, I earn a few cents back.

Not having to deal with maintaining an inventory of cash _and_ a discount on everything I buy? That's a deal in my book.

Plus, as long as I pay my bill on time, it's free; I don't carry a balance, so I don't get charged interest.

AND, it builds good credit for me, so I'll have a better rating when I want to do something larger (i.e. buy a house)

So to recap:
1) Reuse a piece of plastic, rather than having to keep track of and replenish a supply of paper
2) Get money back. Sure, it's small, but $100 a year is better than $0.
3) It improves my credit rating.

Yeah, that makes me want to run to the ATM.

Re:how stupid

[pyros]

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?

Re:how stupid

[bangular]

I've dealt with this kind of thing before.

This is usually how the situtation goes. Grey hat hacker bored/is curious. Picks a target and goes to town. Finds security vulneribilities and emails them to whatever contact info is available. 9 times out of 10, no response. Other contact attempts usually follow and those in charge either don't understand, don't care, understaffed, or contact info out of date. The problem goes unfixed an the hacker moves on.

This cycle goes on and turns the grey hat more and more black hat. It's rarely a pure act for the bettering of human kind, but it's rarely (except for script kiddies and 13 year olds) intentionally malicious. It's mostly for the curiousity and they are willing to report what they find. The more the hacker is ignored the more they go from simply finding areas where problems could exist, to exploiting problems. People need to stop ignoring the grey hats who report possible problems because they turn into black hats who will embarass you on the grandest of scales.

Not saying I condone exploits in this manner, but the only thing people seem to respond to is embarassment. Then it's scape goat time. Pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't help anyone. They are going to be punished for reporting the problem. What will this tell others? Don't report the problem. Contact parties in Russia and sell them the card numbers. Cracking down on them doesn't stop them, it just makes them uncooperative.

Re:how stupid

[shreak]

And this affects me how? I just might be convinced to care if the vendor passed on the savings to me for using cash, but they don't.

And guess what. They don't want me using cash. Sure there's a 1.5% - 3% premium for using a CC, but then they don't have to manage cash in the store. This includes the risk of cashier theft, Store robbery and deposit robbery. Any CC purchase is done and paid with very little risk of theft.

So I'll keep using my CC for all purchases, big or small. Thanks.

Now, if the $1 coin were accepted in more vending machines I might be convinced to carry those...

=Shreak

Re:how stupid

[Maestro4k]

• Ummm what does this refer to. I hear this crap a lot, but there is ussually no hard findings to back it up. All I normally get is IE vs. Netscape, or some reference to "The Pirates of Silicon Valley". Hard facts from a made for TV movie. lol.

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

Re:how stupid

[Zathrus]

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?

Re:how stupid

[Com2Kid]

• 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,

Well I was on the net then. Netscape 4.x sucked, most ISPs gave out Netscape 3.x and even in the begining 4.x to all their users, but as time went on:

• Netscape kept changing how plugins where handled. Their "centralized" page for downloading plugins was horribly unorganized and always being altered to some other unorganized scheme
• Crashed. Continiously. Horribly.
• Used an outdated rendering engine that required the complete page be downloaded before it could be rendered. Ick.
• Generally sucked, was slow, unstable, and ate up RAM. This was on any platform!

Internet Explorer in comparison:

• Had a smaller memory footprint (more or less ^_^ )
• Had a slimmer UI
• Had a single unified way of installing plugins (even if in retrospect it also, years later, allowed for the proliferation of spyware and adware, oops! At least it worked at the time!)
• Was quick to boot (yah yah so it was integrated with the OS, nobody was stopping Netscape from loading up a minimalistic framework at boot time to allow for reduced delay upon starting the program!)
• Had a modern rendering engine

It took the Mozilla project years to remove all the cruft that existed in Netscape 4.x (maybe it would have been better if they had started from the 3.x code instead. . . .), and just recently (within the last year and a half or so) has FireFox (and FireBird before that) been able to compete with IE for sheer speed and memory usage.

FireFox is actually a superior browser to IE in many respect, I still use IE because I am so acustom to hitting WindowKey-E to open an explorer window which I then hit F4 to go to the URL line and enter a site address. Browser/OS integration rocks, like it or not, it IS what the users want!

And MS has never "locked" anybody out from replacing Explorer entirely, it is quite easy to change Windows shells, in fact a number of companies specialize in doing exactly that! Nobody has created a new integrated file manager / web browser yet (or if they have, it has yet to become main stream) but MS is not keeping anybody from doing so. For all the Win9x OSs, it was a simple one line alteration to change interfaces (and in fact for awhile I had command.com as my interface instead of Explorer), and with the NT line it is just a simple registery alteration.

• Netscape started crashing MORE after MS decided they wanted the browser market.

Netscape 4.x sucked. Period. 4.7 sucked even more. 3.x never had problems, before or after MS entered the market. 4.x was bloatware, and even some ex-Netscape employees have said such, it just sucked.

• 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.

You've got to be an idiot then, either that or the WORST google user ever.

BSPlayer solves all your problems.

Most sane Media players on Windows use DirectShow and VFW, meaning ALL media players can play ALL formats of video, except for those formats that refuse to write a DirectShow or VFW decoder. (such as Real and Sorenson (the codec most often used for quicktime).

Winamp also works, but I would really like a way to dock just the video window on the screen and have the rest of the interface dissapear (I think there is an option for that somewhere but. . . .)

As it is I use Windows Media Player 6.2 (start-->Run, type in m

Re:how stupid

[An Onerous Coward]

You're mixing up your timeframes here. Sure you can buy OS-free computers right now (if you look really, really hard). But back when Microsoft was fighting the browser war, it was virtually impossible to get a Windows-free computer from any computer distributor.

By the time Netscape 6 was released, the Browser wars had been over for years.

"You mean a distibutor tried to leverage it's market power to make sure the retailers were only installing it's product, umm that is a damn good idea, it's called sales and marketing, we do it in the damn ceramics industry, so I'd expect every other industry to do it too. Tires, oil, transmissions, electronics, car audio. No one bitches about that shit."

No, it's called market tying, and yes, it is illegal. Especially for a monopoly. If you want to sell computers to a wide range of customers, you have to be able to provide Microsoft Windows. If, in order to provide Windows you must sign an agreement to include Internet Explorer (and you further have to refuse to provide alternatives), then that is an illegal abuse of a monopoly by Microsoft.

Prior to the antitrust ruling, this is precisely what they did.

"But media player works well, and comes with the OS, why would i want to go to something else

Why indeed? You've just demonstrated the power of a monopoly to perpetuate itself.

I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[BurKaZoiD]

Gray says he is actually the good guy. He said "I just wanted to prove how insecure these sites are. I have done the honest thing, but I have been ignored."

That's like shooting someone just to prove how unsafe firearms are.

*shakes head*

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[gormanly]

4, Insightful? FFS. Using the CC numbers to buy yourself a small country might be vaguely similar, but if you think it's equivalent you're showing very little regard for the value of a human life.

Picking up a gun you saw/found on a fairground ride and waiving it around shouting "Look, gun!" would be a closer firearms analogy...

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[LoudMusic]

Gray says he is actually the good guy. He said "I just wanted to prove how insecure these sites are. I have done the honest thing, but I have been ignored."

That's like shooting someone just to prove how unsafe firearms are.

I disagree. Hacking is one thing, and I believe his statement is correct. However, using the information he obtained for illegal acts is just stupid. If he can hack a credit company he needs to apply for a job.

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[diablobynight]

How do you know there was no damage? Can you not look beyond the murder part of what he said, and see that he was implying that you have no right to break a law to prove a point like this. And what point did he prove? No public system is unhackable. Just like any house can be broken into and any bank vault can be cracked.
He had no right to do what he did. No right whatsoever. Come break into my house to prove how easy it is, don't steal anything, just break into my house and call my cell from my home phone, and I'll prove how happy I am you showed me my security hole by putting two .45 caliber holes in your chest.

There isn't enough rope in the world to show hackers how much we love them

For instance I had to put up an anonymous FTP for one day. It is dumb I know, but the user needed to upload something from home, didn't know their home IP off hand and didn't understand log ons and that stuff from the FTP end. SO I did it, I allowed anonymous upload to my FTP, and guess what i got, undeletable folders in my ftp folder, so that some guy could use me as a mirror for files on his warez site.
your right they showed me the error of my ways, but truth is I knew the error, I just hoped no one would be such a jerk as to have no respect for other peoples property. Hackers are vandals, I can piss in your mailbox, throw shit at your door, there are lots of things I can do, and probably not get caught to prove I can do them, but I don't, because I don't want to screw with other peoples shit. I have respect for other peoples property.

Hackers probably read their sisters Diaries and say she shouldn't have left it somewhere where I could find it.
It's oppurtunism at it's worst, and they make me sick.

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[Beatbyte]

if there was damage, the recovery from the damage is the cost that they should have spent securing the system in the first place. i guarantee an accountant showed the cost of a better system and it was turned down for the "OK" version that didn't cost as much.

you just CANT halfass storing financial data. and if it takes someone breaking into it to make it secure, then so be it.

just don't act like its comparable to murdering someone to prove a point.

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[actiondan]

Okay, so all the hackers that plan to send their results to the company in question or the press stop hacking.

What are we left with then - just the hackers who are in it for the money. The ones who won't reveal what they have done and so probably won't ever get found out.

In fact, treating all hackers as malicious criminals, even if they 'do the right thing' after the event, is likely to dissuade them from coming forward with information about how they get into system. The black hats will have a field day.

Society needs people to test its security without malicious intent. It needs journalists to try to sneak weapons onto planes to expose poor airport security, it needs hackers who don't just siphon off the cash, it needs protesters trying to get into government buildings to hang banners. Without all of these people, the systems would be up against malicious attacks only and many security holes would stay open for long enough for real damage to be done.

Re:I love it...script kiddies ultimate defense

[the_mad_poster]

And here we go again. Again with the "It's all the hackers to blame" crap.

You know what? Chances are good these kids stole a DB full of plaintext card numbers. Why not arrest the idiots that stored them that way and didn't thoroughly test the system as accomplices?

For you jackasses out there who just scream bloody murder about these stupid kiddies, does it not once occur to you that maybe if you'd have done it right in the first place you wouldn't even have to worry about it? Ashcroft wants to make examples out of these poor kids who were being stupid because YOU dumbasses couldn't take the time to encrypt the credit cards as if it wasn't bad enough that you're storing them in the first place?

Here's a thought for you mindnumbingly dimwitted morons who think this "lock em up and throw away the key" mentality is worth shit: how many people are stealing these databases and NOT GETTING CAUGHT? Make examples of stupid kids all you want. While they go to jail and you sit there with your smug grin while you watch it on CNN your crappy little system is just as insecure as it was when they broke it the first time. So, who's stealing it NOW and are you going to be able to catch them this time? Or, better yet, are you even going to KNOW? Nobody's system ever got any more secure because they set some dumb kid up for a 20 year stint in the Federal...

Gates' Credit Card

[RobertTaylor]

What did they order with it? And did Bill notice 100 being spent out of his 1,000,000,000,000,000.... bank account?

My Auction:Pan Tilt Ethernet Webcam, UK!

Re:Gates' Credit Card

[Xenographic]

Rumor has it they caught him because of a VERY suspicious charge:

He ordered several boxed Linux distros ;]

Re:Curious

[amigoro]

From the website in the post: Bill Gates donates $20 million for new LCS building MIT Tech Talk April 14, 1999

Does that answer your question?

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Revision to the song

[Ed Avis]

Typical - you fund a shiny new building but no sooner is it in use than some bearded hippy moves in and lowers the property values.

Hoarders may pay to fund new buildings,
that is true, hackers, that is true.
But they cannot choose their neighbours.
That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

Re:Revision to the song

[jdreed1024]

He doesn't want to move in there, don't worry:

http://lists.csail.mit.edu/pipermail/csail-discuss /2004-March/000077.html

Re:Revision to the song

[Zachary Kessin]

IF someone were to ask me to key them into a secured area that they didn't have access to I would say no. There may be reasons that the building has security you know. I don't know all of them but for those of us in the real world things like pass cards are a frequent fact of life. And if it was RMS doubly so.

Re:Revision to the song

[nessus42]

but after years of working across the street from this location, I can absolutely attest that indiscrimnately letting people in the building out of some doctrinaire "hacker" ideal is a poor idea. Not because of secrecy but because they'll steal my CDs or computer peripherals.

I work at MIT half a block from the new building. During the day, my building is unlocked and anyone can enter and walk around in it. The vast majority of MIT is operated this way, and it is a good thing. No one has ever stolen my CD's or my computer periperhals, though I do have to be careful to lock my office door when I leave it, even to go to the bathroom.

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

Support RMS, buy Microsoft products!

[valentyn]

No way... so by buying Microsoftware, we supported the FSF?

Re:Support RMS, buy Microsoft products!

[chadjg]

I've never had the fortune of meeting Mr. Stallman, but I'm asuming he has some sense of humor. I'm a still very new to the GNU/Linux scene, but I can appreciate the guy's work.

I say we find out what his official title is and print him up some business cards with the building name in extra bold print. It'll either give him a chuckle every time he hands one out or make his head explode.

This is an all around good deal I think. Mr. Gates gets to do good as he sees it and get some PR and RMS gets a nice place to do his work in. One of them will eventually eat the other's lunch anyway.

Facinating about the credit card bit

[downix]

I think the term about those kids that felt that they were doing the "right thing" that is most apt is "shoot the messenger." Some young kids uncover security holes that could lead into millions of fraud if not patched, and then tell the authorities, let's arrest the kids. Makes it less likely that some good samaritin will do the same in the future, leaving security holes open for those less ethical to actually steal the money!

What's next, arresting the kid that stuck his finger into the dike?

Re:Facinating about the credit card bit

[Maestro4k]

• I think the term about those kids that felt that they were doing the "right thing" that is most apt is "shoot the messenger." Some young kids uncover security holes that could lead into millions of fraud if not patched, and then tell the authorities, let's arrest the kids. Makes it less likely that some good samaritin will do the same in the future, leaving security holes open for those less ethical to actually steal the money!

This is a bit different than just finding security holes and reporting them. They actually gained access to the credit card numbers and (persumably) account information for many accounts. They didn't just find and report the holes, they exploited them, THEN reported them. This would be akin to you noticing your neighbor left the keys in his car and you decided to take it for a ride before telling him about it.

Re:Facinating about the credit card bit

[entrigant]

This would be akin to you noticing your neighbor left the keys in his car and you decided to take it for a ride before telling him about it.

Oh shit! That's illegal?!

Their mothers' names...

[Patik]

...make me think "Maximus Dorkus", which makes me think of Pilate's fwiends' names in "Life of Brian".

Harvard solidiarity?

[0x0d0a]

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)

I'm sure I'm just missing something here, but how does naming a building after the mothers of the cofounders of Microsoft build solidiarity with the OSS community in the least?

Re:Harvard solidiarity?

[forand]

I think it might have been a very bad attempt at sarcasm.

Re:Harvard solidiarity?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an example of irony used for humorous effect.

Another example is the fact that Slashdot readers rated your question as "Score: 5, Insightful".

Re:Forget MIT

[ivan256]

Just curious, do you happen to know more MIT grads and undergrads in general?

When the last company I worked for went out of business I ended up cleaning out the hiring engineering manager's file cabinet. He had three resume folders: Employee referrals, MIT grads, and Other. There's still something to be said for the MIT name.

It is right and fitting......

[MrIrwin]

That the Bill Gates building is the home of "Artificial" intelligence. Perhaps now we will see The Borg incorporated in Emacs.

Not to sound mean but...

[Anonym1ty]

Why does this just cause a picture in my mind of someone's long lost childhood friend showing up at your door after being kicked out by his wife and broke with no job?

I know that isn't what it's all about, but that was the the first picture that popped into my head.

Hrmmm.

[theM_xl]

Okay, so taking Bill Gates' credit card resulted in 3 million dollar in damages. Assuming that figure's actually correct, anyone want to bet those sites are still insecure? :)

Re:Curious

[rgmoore]

You haven't been paying very careful attention to University naming practices, have you? Most universities will name a building whatever the donor who gives it to them says to name it. If Bill Gates wants a building name after himself, his mother, or his favorite pet goldfish from when he was six, any school in the country will oblige him as long as he's writing the check. Besides, you could easily argue that there's a certain pleasant irony in taking a big chunk of money from Mr. Gates and using it to build a facility where the researchers will be doing work that will benefit Free Software.

Buildings tend to be named after major donors...

[blorg]

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.

Curador's Hack circa 2000

[handy_vandal]

Gates' credit card was hacked ...

The hack -- by Curador -- took place in 2000.

See: PBS Interview with Curador.

-kgj

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[Minna Kirai]

Here's a guy who started a company from scratch,

From birth, William Gates III was a millionaire. (Trust fund from wealthy parents). The lowest net-worth he's ever experienced is greater than the highest an average American can ever expect.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[Maestro4k]

• 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.

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

What's sad is bill Gates has donated well over twenty billion dollars to charities, including his own and you all still bitch and moan and call him the great satan because he doesn't want you to see his source code. That's about 1/3 of his total net worth. In contrast, how much has our Vice President Dick Cheney donated to charity....a staggering 1%.

I'm posting AC because judging by your +4 insigtful score the mods are abusing their moderation points again and I don't feel like taking the karma hit.

Bill Gates Credit Cards

[MCZapf]

I just can't imagine Bill Gates having a credit card. It seems so... ordinary. I always imagined that billionaires had payment methods beyond mere credit cards - like an assistant with a suitcase full of diamonds or something.

Re:Bill Gates Credit Cards

[MalachiConstant]

Well, there is the mythical American Express Black Card for the superrich. Is that swanky enough?

Explains why gnu.org was down

[GillBates0]

I posted a link to gnu.org in one of last week's stories...but it was down - for atleast 2-3 days. A reply to my comment explained that it was because gnu.org is down because the MIT CSAIL (Comp Sci and AI Lab), was moving to The Stata Center.

Apparently, lots of machines (including gnu.org and debian mirrors) were being moved, which caused a significant outage.

Pretty ironic about RMS moving to William H Gates building :(

Damn that building is ugly.

[tgd]

I have a window cube looking out in the direction of the building, and it never ceases to amaze me how ungodly ugly the building is.

And the worst part is my only other option is to look at my computer and do work, using this ungodly awful Windows system.

Unless I go fooz, I can't get away from looking at Gates' handiwork. Ugh

Funny Story

[Princess Die]

I work at Harvard and was talking to one of the deans about the Maxwell Dworkin building. He mentioned that they used the [assembly] code for DOS (they went into the archives from when Bill G was at H) as an abstract pattern for a wall mural. I asked him whether anyone had checked the code to see if there where any buffer overflow vulnerabilities. It could make the building susceptible to a worm attack. He didn't get it. Conversation ended abruptly.

Re:Funny Story

[Charlton Heston]

I also have a funny story. I visited Santa Fe a year ago and stopped to look at the merchandise of a man selling Indian jewelry on the main square downtown. One of the things he was selling was bolo ties.

Making conversation, I said "Isaac Asimov was known to have worn a bolo tie."

And he replied "Well tell him to get down here and buy some ties from me."

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[the_womble]

he's now the most generous philanthropist too

How generous: give some money away AFTER you have ruthlessly and greedily made more than you could possibly actually use yourself.

I prefer Jesus' view of what constitutes generosity to yours.

Re:Forget MIT

[ivan256]

WPI was well on it's way to having a good rep before they started pushing their certificate programs. Now I feel the weight of my student loans crushing me even more every time I see one of their commercials and know that the value of my degree is slowly dropping...

Just thank god....

[Captain Rotundo]

its not the Linus Torvalds building.... all we'd hear for the next two years would be some insane analogy about how it would be like Thomas Jefferson moving into the "George Washington, founding document authors complex" - maybe even something more absurd.

I kid RMS...

Re:Curious

[batura]

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.

RMS = Richard Stallman?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few RMSes there, and on a news site an acronym should never be used without using the full form first.

Re:RMS = Richard Stallman?

[tommck]

You're worshipping at the FSF's altar and you ask them to define RMS?

Let me guess... you're new here?

Re:RMS = Richard Stallman?

[Araneas]

Root Mean Square
Royal Merchant Ship
Royal Meterological Society
Royal Microscopical Society
or my favourite in this context:

Microsoft Windows(R) Rights Management Services (RMS)

Wait this is dangerous

[JohnGrahamCumming]

Microsoft could have filled the building with special bugging devices that would enable them to get their hands on the code that RMS is writing.

Oh wait.

It's called sarcasm

[GillBates0]

though it was a pretty obscure attempt at it. Maybe a [sarcasm][/sarcasm] would've helped.

Re:Curious

[SnappleMaster]

"taking a big chunk of money from Mr. Gates"

Good morning, Microsoft-basher. Please smell the coffee, open your eyes, and realize that Gates has GIVEN (where do you get take from???) more money to an assortment of charities and institutions that you will ever see in your life. Yes, I know you hate him but let's face it he's a smart guy and now that he has more money than God he's pretty damn generous with it.

Re:Curious

[vasqzr]

Considering many of his 'donations' are Windows PC's and Microsoft software...

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[squarooticus]

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?

Re:RMS still at MIT?

[SquadBoy]

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

Re:RMS still at MIT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, he hasn't been an employee for twenty years or so, but he still has an office here.


(Welcome to academia)

Re:Curador's Hack circa 2000

[vondo]

And the building referenced was dedicated in 1999. So the summary was truthful, if not exactly timely.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[dAzED1]

Troll :P Constant Bill-bashing is silly in its own right, but wanting to suck him off is far worse.

First, he never started from scratch. He was born very rich, then got even luckier.

Second, he donates less of a percentage of his disposable income than I do by FAR. In fact, I'd suggest that the average American donates a considerably higher percentage of their disposable income than he does. $20Mill is nothing to him - it would be like me handing out $40 over the course of a year to things (homeless, the church, Girl Scouts, whatever). $20Mill is 1/2000 of his worth. The average American is lucky to have a net worth in the 5 figures...most live paycheck to paycheck with 4 figure accounts (which means they only need to donate $10 a year to blow Bill to bits, percentage-wise), and make mortgage payments until they die.

There's also the tax benefits to the "foundation," which he sits on for further benefits (why just donate money, when you can start a foundation? and name it after yourself? and sit on the board?).

When most Americans would be fiscally devastated by a $1,000 unexpected expense, Bill could have a $100,000,000 unexpected expense and not change his lifestyle AT ALL.

The foundation, the scholarships, and everything else is all just PR for him, to make people dislike him less. And it works, obviously.

Third point: if he was truely being generous, his name wouldn't be on any buildings.

Fourth point: the "legacy" of his foundation will last only as long as his money is in it. Its done nothing all that substantial. His business finess though has made a very substantial impact on the planet, and will be remembered for a very long time.

How do we know it's Gates' Credit Card Number?

[mykepredko]

Hmmm... Clearly some testing is required.

Maybe if somebody could forward it, I could test it out by buying something that will prove that it is actually Gates' card.

I'm thinking that South Dakota should be adequate for this task.

myke

Rather appropriate

[fm6]

RMS is the classic schoolyard radical. He has all these social theories that he's never had to test in the real world, because he's spent his entire professional career subsisting on grant money.

Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with taking grant money. Just because something isn't economically sustainable, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. I just get very tired of the way the "Free Software" folk insist that they've transcended the evils of software "ownership". Which they've never actually done. Their bills are paid for by revenues from the very businesses they are too pure to work for.

So of course RMS now works in a building that was paid for by the license fees that Microsoft gouged out of hapless computer buyers. What could be more appropriate?

Re:Rather appropriate

[0x0d0a]

Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with taking grant money. Just because something isn't economically sustainable, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. I just get very tired of the way the "Free Software" folk insist that they've transcended the evils of software "ownership". Which they've never actually done. Their bills are paid for by revenues from the very businesses they are too pure to work for.

You know, it's not as if the lack of IP doesn't have prescedent for functioning. Art and science haven't had a form of property protection for most of mankind for most of our history, and knowledge production didn't stop.

Also, I'm unsure as to whether RMS actually has the burden of justifying the feasibility of Free Software in the current economic situation (I think it's doable, but suppose it isn't). Suppose that it took a tax, .2% of federal revenue (a tenth of what NASA gets) to ensure that Free software can be produced, and that the overall benefit to mankind is well in excess of the resources spent. It would be easy to provide for federal subsidies. (Note that I'm not suggesting any particular system, just proposing a hypothetical.)

If you want to take a strict free-market, no-academia business-only approach, very little useful research would ever be conducted, we would have fewer and lower-caliber instructors, etc.

Look at roads. Roads can't exist as a private enterprise either. But they're so damn useful that it's worth dropping our conventional economic model on the floor to do what's necessary to take advantage of them.

So of course RMS now works in a building that was paid for by the license fees that Microsoft gouged out of hapless computer buyers. What could be more appropriate?

What do you want to bet that the system that handles some of Mr. Gates' vast wealth has Free software somewhere in it? The influence of both RMS and Gates is both pervasive and common. I don't think you can draw anything useful from it.

Re:Rather appropriate

[stand]

RMS is the classic schoolyard radical. He has all these social theories that he's never had to test in the real world, because he's spent his entire professional career subsisting on grant money.

You seem to be laboring under the impression that grant money simply falls from the sky to anyone who asks for it.

Grant money is just as scare a resource and has as many competitors for it as, say venture capital funds. I'd say the two processes are quite similar, in fact, though the critieria for making awards is somewhat different.

To the extent that RMS may have subsisted on grant funds is a reflection of the fact that people think his ideas have merit within the very real marketplace thereof.

Re:Rather appropriate

[Brandybuck]

If you want to take a strict free-market, no-academia business-only approach...

Who says the free market can't have academia? While universities traditionally need wealthy patrons, those patrons don't have to be governments. Free markets would be irrelevant to academia only if academia provided goods and services that no one wanted.

Roads can't exist as a private enterprise either.

Completely false. Private roads do exist. The only reason they tend to be government institutions is because private concerns don't have the power of eminent domain to kick people out of their homesteads to make way for the new interstate. That's not to say that a network of private roads would be an easy system to set up, or that it would be problem free, but it is doable.

Re:Rather appropriate

[the drizzle]

Where are my mod points when I need 'em.

RMS is the classic schoolyard radical. He has all these social theories that he's never had to test in the real world ... Just because something isn't economically sustainable, doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

RMS wrote GCC to test some of these theories. Since then it has become the most widely-available (# of platforms) compiler around, suitable for commercial work. Linux, in which RMS's GNU software plays an integral role, is a top-tier OS, and its development is eclipsing its competition. Saying RMS hasn't worked in the "real world" is irrelevant because many have embraced his vision and have had commercial success. It's also wrong -- read about the variety of companies he's consulted.

I just get very tired of the way the "Free Software" folk insist that they've transcended the evils of software "ownership". Which they've never actually done. Their bills are paid for by revenues from the very businesses they are too pure to work for.

The beauty of software is that it can be copied as a very very low cost. Why doesn't our current economic model embrace this principle? Hard to say, but RMS has dedicated his life to supporting a new model, in which everyone wins.

You clearly don't understand the almighty RMS. A lot of people don't and it's unfortunate. He is a stickler for details because someone has to be for the sake of the free software movement.

RMS envisions a world in which everyone uses a GNUish OS not just because its free but because its the best OS available. As more and more people discover Linux and how rewarding programming can be, its development will increase. Which OS has improved the most the past 3 - 7 years? Probably Mac OS (which has embraced free software to a degree) or Linux. Clearly NOT Windows.

The quality of free software, whose model was largely shaped by the RMS, is amazing nowadays. OpenOffice.org, XMMS, and Mozilla are fuggin smeet.

So of course RMS now works in a building that was paid for by the license fees that Microsoft gouged out of hapless computer buyers. What could be more appropriate?

Lordy lordy. Even if you don't get it, understand that RMS's passion is for nothing less than improving mankind as a whole. If a kid in India who happens to run across my old Pentium 500mhz (don't ask how -- i have no idea), why the hell shouldn't he get a free OS with all the latest software? What would be more appropriate will be RMS winning a Nobel Prize (w/ Linus) for improving the world just a little bit.

Alright thats enough preaching. But stop wasting your time insulting someone without any real argument.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[ivan256]

And that diniminishes my point, how?

Ever hear the saying "The first million is the hardest?"

I'm about the same age now as Bill Gates was when he started Microsoft. I wish I could be out starting a company instead of working to dig myself out of the debt that was created when I obtained an education. If I had a million dollars now, I bet I could turn it into 10 million in 8-9 years. Instead, I'll be lucky to have a half-million saved up by then, and if I do it will be as equity in a house, not as liquid assets.

I'm not trying to diminish his acomplishments, but you can't really hold him up as an icon for what anybody can achieve.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[pclminion]

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.

I'm pretty sure the people who have benefitted from his contributions don't care whether he cares. There's an alternate way of looking at this: Bill Gates donates to causes that he doesn't even care about. It sounds almost more philanthropic, put that way.

Personally, I'd prefer the big donors to be as minimally invested in any one ideology as possible. I don't want them to deeply care about causes. They should be concerned with helping people, in general.

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but Bill Gates' money has done more great things than I'll ever be able to accomplish.

Mary Gates

[lannocc]

Don't forget Mary Gates Hall at the University of Washington. Named after his mother, of course.

It's been said before...

[Zebra_X]

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.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[diablobynight]

He has contributed over 20 billion dollars. He stated the reason he doesn't just give it all to some great charity because there are no great charities. Look it up. Salvation army, and all the big charities blow over 50% of every dollar on overhead administration. So he is careful about how he gives away his money. And I wouldn't call 20 Billion, pocket change, even to Bill Gates.

Starting out rich isn't a free pass to doing well in business. Lets look, Paris Hilton, more wealthy than Billy boy, Certainly hasn't done her business any good.

George Bush, our president, couldn't hack it in business, hence the faltering of his oil company and every business he touches.

All the children of the wallmart fortune. Most of them are worthless, business is ruthless and to have done as well as Gates has, you have to be extremely intelligent. And I garantee you he is. Have a conversation with him someday. He's a very intelligent guy, despite what slashdot would have you believe.

Gates ain't all that and a bag of potato chips.

[Ithika]

How about you have a big cup of shut the hell up until you've donated a few billion to needy causes?

I fail to see how much he's given away has any bearing on the situation. He still has more money, by many many orders of magnitude, than me and everyone I personally know all put together. More than will pass through my and my acquaintances' hands in our lifetimes, I don't doubt. He's not going to want for money for the central heating in his dotage, is he? So pull him down off that pedestal, for God's sake.

He's a greedy and conniving man, with very little respect for the human race as far as I can tell. He does not deserve our admiration or our defence.

Re:Gates ain't all that and a bag of potato chips.

[SnappleMaster]

"very little respect for the human race"

Gates may not be an angel but wtf are you talking abot? Are you implying he is a sociopath, a mass-murderer, or what?

What have you done lately to demonstrate *your* "respect for the human race"?

And for the record, I have very little respect for the human race myself. Does that make me evil too? I guess not - I'm not uber-wealthy.

Re:Curious

[glwtta]

you all still bitch and moan and call him the great satan because he doesn't want you to see his source code.

Um, no, I bitch because he's committed the rest of his vast resources to destroying my livelihood (as a software developer).

Incidentally, are you seriously trying to make him look good by comparing him to Dick Cheney? There's a popularity contest that's hard to lose.

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[iamacat]

The fact is that before Bill Gates, there was no Microsoft, no employees, no product, no sales.

Well I give you one out of four here. There was, in fact no Microsoft, but people were employed, made products and sold them all the same. Monopoly is definitely reducing the total number of software jobs and products.

what an incredibly successful accomplishment it is

If you mean his personal accomplishment to make money for himself, then definitely. If you mean the contribution to society - well there is a good but crazily expensive word processor and a decent C++ development IDE. This doesn't make up for all the areas where they destroyed or diminished other companies - Apple *, Netscape, Real, Corel, Lotus - and stopped making improvements to their own product once they had all or most of the market.

Are you seriously implying that giving people a work environment where opening an e-mail message without any attachments wipes out your HD is an accomplishment?

* Yes, this one actually needed a wake up call from MS to make a better product. But now they do have one, and would be enourmously popular if not for MS monopoly. And cheaper too - high volume == low cost.

How about a copper coin?

[stomv]

This may sound corny, but I'm of the opinion that somebody who donates 10% of their meager substainance is far more generous than somebody that gives away 90% of his luxury, leaving him with, well, luxury.

It's nice that Gates is giving away money -- even if it was obtained dishonestly/unethically/illegally. However, to applaud his gifts is a bit silly methinks. The money he gives has little value to him, in the sense that it cannot be used to greatly improve his quality of life. Therefore, his gifts have cost him little.

So, from my perspective: he gives away plenty of money, but isn't at all generous with it.

Re:Bill Gates building

[TioHoltzman]

Hey asshole, how about a goddamn warning on a link like that?
Jesus, I've lost my apetite for weeks now.

Re:Curious

[Radical Rad]

What's sad is bill Gates has donated well over twenty billion dollars to charities

Gates has never donated that much to anything. It was only a few years back when he was exposed as a cheap skinflint for donating almost nothing, ever! Soon after he made a big deal out of offering ONE billion (over twenty years so that means about 50M per year) when his net worth was way over 100 billion. If I made a similar, oh so magnamimous, gesture I could beat Gates by throwing a handful of nickels to a Salvation Army Santa.

I'm posting AC because judging by your +4 insigtful score the mods are abusing their moderation points again and I don't feel like taking the karma hit.

No you are posting as AC because your post is a damn lie. As others have pointed out, even the actual donations that can be counted as coming from Gates are often in the form of Microsoft software (x full retail price) or PC's that come with Microsoft software pre-installed (and choosing which PC vendor to fill that contract can be used to get what you want in unrelated negotiations).

Re:From scratch?

[edremy]

I'm the same as you. I *didn't* start from scratch.

I had upper-middle class parents, a Mom who didn't work outside the home and who always had time for homework. I had a decent public school to go to, then an even better private one, followed by a college paid for by my folks. (Public, so I didn't need loans.)

Compare that to someone growing up in a single parent home, with that parent holding two jobs to pay the rent on a crappy apartment in a war zone. The nearby schools graduate kids who can barely read and have no college prep classes. College is funded totally by loans because they've got to work 40+ hours a week to live while going to school. After college, they've got a pile of debt to pay off-get a job now, no matter how bad. Failure doesn't mean that you go back and live with Daddy while you sort out your options, failure means going on welfare or being homeless.

You are I are blessed far beyond what you think. We've got the education, we've got the parents to bail us out if we get into serious trouble, we don't have to worry about Mom losing one of her two dead-end jobs and getting tossed out of her apartment. Gates was even more so- he *never* had to worry about money, even if MS tanked. He was a millionaire to start.

In grad school, I had a long discussion with my (black) roommate asking why there were huge numbers of blacks in med, law and engineering schools and less than 1% in my chemistry department. His answer: when you're the first kid to get this far, money matters. Money matters a *lot*- you're going to have to pay back a fortune. (And he commented that he needed to be able to give back to others as well- someone's got to help pull the other smart but forgotten kids out of the hole.) Chemistry is great for middle class white kids who can afford to not think about the bottom line.

From what you say, you've *never* had to really think about the bottom line. Neither have I. We're lucky.

Let me (hopefully) be the first to say....

[vranash]

RMS now has plans to daily enter Bill Gate's through the back door, and occasionally the front as well ;=P

Re:the story behind the story...

[Just Some Guy]

Privacy concerns aside, mechanical locks are established technology that works reliably.

I have some sympathy to that view, but I can also see the counterargument. My company just moved into a new building with a freshly-installed RFID key system. All employees had to hand in their old metal keys to the old building and get a new card or keyfob (their choice) to get into the new building.

In our application, the new keys increase security and increase trust of the employees. First, a metal key only supports authorization, not authentication or accounting (one "A" of "AAA"). It can let people in, but leaves no record who or when it allowed to pass. There is an obvious security advantage to RFID keys.

However, they also build a more trusting environment. If anything comes up missing overnight or over the weekend, it's trivial to know whom to start talking to - there's no shadow of doubt over the rest of the company. Since keys can be revoked at will, even new employees can be given the keys to the office without a loss of accountability, and lost keys can be disabled immediately.

I don't see any real downsides to the new system. It's easier to use (no fumbling for a specific key during bad weather), gives more control to the employeer, and gives more access to the employees. I respect RMS' opinion, but I just don't really agree with it here.

Inside looks better

[cpeikert]

Everyone likes to bash how ugly Stata is on the outside. I like the way it looks, but I can see how others might not.

But, you really should walk through the "Student Street" area before making up your mind. It's pretty breathtaking: a big, open hallway with various corners of other buildings (made of brick, reflective aluminum, glass) sticking through the ceiling at odd angles. Walls painted with several strong, basic hues. Classrooms with cool polka-dotted echo-proof wood panels all over the walls (though these might give a headache after awhile). Lots of swooping stairwells that take you up to places where external walls from another building cut through the glass ceiling and continue all the way through the floor.

It's like a carnival funhouse. Soon to be inhabited by the carnies.

They have a holodeck !

[The Famous Druid]

Check out the map at http://www.csail.mit.edu/resources/maps/3/381.gif

I'd be more than happy to bear the shame of the building name, if I got to spend my lunchtime on the holodeck !

Stallman is *NOT* moving into the Gates building!

[Bob Hearn]

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...

Re:Bill Gates: An American Hero

[dAzED1]

OOOOh....I see, so since I was just a simple 0311 that never got past e4, then that doesn't count. Gotcha. lol. Only officers count!

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.