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Auto Accident at SANE Conference Kills One

Posted by michael on from the turn-down-a-glass dept.

Several people have submitted news from SANE 2004 that a car crash involving several Free Software developers has killed one and injured two others. Richard Stallman was in the car earlier but apparently had been dropped off prior to the accident.

5 of 542 comments (clear)

  1. I'm shivering... by smari · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Shit. I know one of those guys. It's messed up to read something like that on /.

    1. Re:I'm shivering... by plover · · Score: 5, Interesting
      [ Warning: never ask an old guy about the past, he's likely to answer you. ]

      My mistake, we met 24 years ago, not 25. It was on the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium's (MECC) mainframe. It was a CDC Cyber 72 that was operated on behalf of all the schools in Minnesota. We had 110 baud modems with acoustic couplers and teletypes. Many (all?) of the community colleges, public high schools and even some of the elementary schools had a terminal or two tucked away in a math or science room somewhere. MECC also had an email application, and the "list" command would list all of the email accounts. (Just picture typing "list" and getting a list of all valid email addresses today!)

      MECC was huge in Minnesota schools in the 1970s. Today, they're probably best remembered for having produced educational games such as Oregon Trail and Odell Lake. But back then, having computer access in public schools was a novel concept, and most of those of us who became computer nerds have all done quite well for ourselves. There are even a few MECCies here on Slashdot.

      One day, I found an email from someone named "SWEETHEART" (we didn't have lower case back then :-) who found my username funny. We began exchanging emails, we moved our conversations to some of the "talk" programs (these programs were the great-grandparents of IRC, only with nicer interfaces) and exchanged phone numbers. Eventually, we met, started going out, and now we've been married 20 years with a 16-year-old hacker son to show for it.

      It was a different time; definitely a more innocent era. The only people with access to the computers were students -- we didn't worry about predators or pedophiles.

      --
      John
  2. For those of you wondering... by Mentorix · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hans Bakker was the organizer of several NE2000 camps. Ne2000 is a yearly event where about 200 people show up with their tents/campers/caravans and plug into the network, it's a fairly open source oriented happening. I've seen and spoken Hans around there although I wasn't a close friend of him or anything. He has also participated in several open source projects.

    The people involved in this car accident are all from the same fairly big group of "young" open source fans in The Netherlands that keep contact with each other over IRC and also IRL. Therefore I'm not surprised that this story was submitted by several readers. I hope this explains why it is important, I know I was shocked and saddened by the loss.

  3. Sorry, better formatting by Omni-Cognate · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's a lovely poem, by Eden Philpotts. I think it makes a very appropriate dept.

    GHOSTIES AT THE WEDDING.

    Turn down a glass afore his place;
    Draw up the dog-eared chair;
    For though we shall not see his face,
    I think he will be here
    Our wedding day to share.

    Turn up the glass where she would be
    And put a red rose there.
    Her quick, grey eyes we cannot see,
    But weren't they everywhere,
    And shall not they be here?

    Though them old blids are in the grave
    And their good light's gone out,
    We'd sooner their kind ghosties have
    Than all the living rout
    As will be there no doubt.

    For some are dead as cannot die.
    Some flown as cannot flee.
    You still do fancy 'em near by.
    'Tis so with him and she,
    At any rate to we.

    --

    "The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."

  4. Re:I am deeply sorry for the loss of life by ihaddsl · · Score: 5, Interesting

    However, with all of the SUV bashing you see on this site, it should be mentioned that they are the safest vehicles on the road.

    Bullshit.

    While it's true that if you are in a huge SUV and hit a car, the SUV will come off better, the overall safety picture is not good for SUV drivers.

    The additional mass also has downsides. In single vehicle accidents it's better to have less mass as there is less energy to dissipate. According to the NHTSA, single vehicle accidents accounted for only 18% of crashes, but 44% of fatalities.

    Larger vehicles have longer stopping distances, increasing the likelyhood of a crash.

    Also figures from the NHSTA show that SUV fatality rates are 11% higher than cars.

    According to those statistics, the safest vehicles are minivans, with a fatality rate of 2.76 per billion miles travelled, 2nd were large cars, with a rate of 3.3 fatalities per billion miles. The largest SUV's came in 3rd with 3.79 fatalities per billion miles

    time to adjust your review mirror methinks