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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... "
... is the 'w' in 'Dworkin' silent?
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?
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?
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*
Spread the RC luvin'
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
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?
May we never see th
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There's MIT, Stanford... anywhere else that Billy has seen fit to leave his mark?
The DOJ in Washington, DC?"Abandon all hope ye who use Outlook Express"
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
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
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.
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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.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.
I saw him pissing on the side of the Supreme Court Building in DC a few weeks back...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
There are a few RMSes there, and on a news site an acronym should never be used without using the full form first.
though it was a pretty obscure attempt at it. Maybe a [sarcasm][/sarcasm] would've helped.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Considering many of his 'donations' are Windows PC's and Microsoft software...
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.
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.
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
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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."
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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?
Rumor has it they caught him because of a VERY suspicious charge:
;]
He ordered several boxed Linux distros
Don't forget Mary Gates Hall at the University of Washington. Named after his mother, of course.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
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.
The Gates of Hell?
That's at Stanford.
This Like That - fun with words!
Well, you can't spell "Hey" for starts.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
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.
sic transit gloria mundi
"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.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
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.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
Query: does the Bill Gates Building have....Windows?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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...