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Season's Givings?
DevanJedi asks: "Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time around his computer, I have compiled a list of entities that have made my geek life easier, in the past year. Which other projects does Slashdot believe to be worthy of praise, money, recognition, developer time or general applause?"
Apparently your server wasn't quite ready for the Slashdot effect.
I sometimes also give money to middle-class white geeks running software projects that benefit other middle-class white geeks because I want those projects to continue to exist. (I am, after all, a middle-class white geek.) But I don't delude myself into thinking that this is "charity" because when I give money to these projects, I benefit in that the project that produces something that I use is going to be able to advance faster.
For example, giving money to the gnome people isn't "charity" unless you do not use gnome yourself.
The cake is a pie
The site's dead, so I can't tell if this was on the list, but defintely everyone should consider donating to the eff. They have done so much good work protecting our digital rights and hopefully they'll be able to continue in the future.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Season's Givings
Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time with around his computer, these are the entities that have made my life easier in the past year and deserve all the recognition, money and general fulfillment of all Amazon Wish List desires:
* Firefox : This has undoubtedly been the year of Firefox. If you aren't using it yet... what are you waiting for? With plugins, extensions, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and the fact that it's free and open for all make it the IE-killer that we've all been waiting for.
Get FireFox | Get Involved | Donate
* Wikipedia If this year was the year of Firefox, then Wikipedia was a close second. This is the largest single resource of information ever created by men. They are having their quarterly fund drive; please give generously. Become a contributor; and editor. Many people believe they don't know enough or need to be an expert in order to contribute meaningfully. You don't have to be. I'm no expert and I've written about my home town, my college, my favorite sports team, and other random stuff I find errors or omissions in. Give it a try and enjoy.
* OpenOffice.org : By providing a viable, free and open option to the over-priced monopoly of MS Office, OO.o has shown us a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.
Contribute
* Fedora : The low-hassle Linux distribution that I've been using for a year or so; a worthy successor to the Red Hat name; easy to get up and running in addition to or in place of that MS OS of yesterday. Contribute
* Gnucash : This year, there was life before Gnucash and then there was life after Gnucash. And life after has been undoubtedly better. This is a smash free and open source personal (and small business) financial accounting tool that blows everything else out of the water- mainly because it's free and extensible to do what you want it to. Gnucash, you've changed my life for the better. I may not save more money than I used to, but at least I know what I'm not saving money on.
Contribute
* Emacs : Emacs, you complete me. 'nuff said.
Contribute
* Adium : There was a time when I would have multiple messenger applications running at the same time. Then came Gaim. There was a time when Gaim was ugly; then came Adium, a tremendous messenger client for the Mac OS that looks great, is extensible (has great plugins) and is free/open.
Donate (donate link at bottom of page)
* NetNewsWire : This piece of software is one of the great RSS readers of the world (for the Mac). In the new year, I will be buying the full version. Easy to use, great to look at and powerful under the hood; this is the app that made turned me into an RSS junky.
* Fink : Fink allows Mac OS to be more Unixey than it already is. With easy to install ports of all major UNIX/Linux packages through the command-line or GUI interface, Mac OS X without Fink is like Windows without Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
* Brattle : The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. is in trouble. If they can't put together enough funding to pay past debts and future leases, they will be closed by February 2006. This is unacceptable- the Brattle is one of few truly independent movie theatres in the country. Without Brattle I would have never seen Casablanca on the big screen and would not have the opportunity to see the 1930s Kin
http://www.childsplaycharity.org/
I have a close friend who works on the Board of our food bank here in N. Texas. She says give MONEY. As they can buy food for around 17 cents/pound in bulk from the mfgs and/or the Regional Food Bank. I can't think of anything in the Grocery store you can buy at that price. The list you provided is good, but add in Infant Formula/Baby Food, Powdered Milk, Hot Cereals (Oatmeal, Grits, Cream of Wheat), Salt/Pepper, Sugar, Condiments. Frozen Meats (such as those on-sale frozen Turkeys) are also good as they can feed a family for a week with one of those!