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Stephen Fry Helps GNU Celebrate 25th Birthday
Virgil Tibbs writes "The GNU operating system is turning 25 this year, and the Free Software Foundation has kicked off its month-long celebration of the anniversary by releasing 'Happy Birthday to GNU,' a short film featuring the English humorist, actor, novelist and filmmaker Stephen Fry. In the five-minute film, Fry compares the free software operating system to 'good science' and contrasts it with the 'kind of tyranny' imposed by the proprietary software produced by companies like Microsoft and Apple that it replaces. He encourages people to use free GNU/Linux distributions like gNewSense and free software generally, for freedom's sake."
Thick idiots are the worst.
Of course, this is also the Stephen Fry who paid dearly for his rash idealism in "V for Vendetta". Did he learn nothing?
Is he by any chance related to Philip J. Fry?
Make mine a stiff one Stephen.
thank god he's advising the public to use gNewSense instead of something they might find difficult to get along with
When I read "The GNU operating system" I thought it meant Hurd. In fact Hurd is only 24 years old, and is evidently still not ready for production use. When will this baby grow up!
Absolutely. It's been 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote down that he was going to make a "GNU operating system", and he still hasn't made one.
My birthday isn't based on when my mother wrote to my father telling her she was going to go off and get pregnant by a cab driver called Terry.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
That's a good question. Lets use a car analogy to better understand it.
If you build a car out of 25 year old parts, does that make the car 25 years old?
How about, if you build a car out of parts designed 25 years ago that are continuously updated, would it be a 25 year old car?
I know you're joking, but I'm bored and my boss is not in the office yet.
The proper name is Gnu/Tube since it is using Gnu content.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
To be young and idealistic. Don't worry GNU, the world will break you by 30.
I loved the fact that they actually described that GNU meant 'GNU is Not UNIX'. Stephen Fry goes on to say that 'it's a bit like Unix, but not quite'. The Windows user is sitting there asking, what the fuck is Unix?
Oh, and Alan Davies would recommend compiling Slackware with no help from the community as a good way to get started.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Adams was particularly keen on hand held computers, as he thought he might be able to write his books whilst having a bath.
You can trivially replace the kernel.
You, Sir, are a significantly better programmer than I am.
Really, the problem is both names are inadequate. However, given the choice, I prefer GNU.
As a Mennonite, I have a serious problem with anything named after a human being such a central part of my life. It smacks too much of idolatry.
As a free software advocate, I have a problem with naming such a wide-reaching project with so many contributors after a single man. Something like Debian is a little better, since at least it's a tribute to two people.
On the other hand, we have an operating system named after a wildebeest. Actually, I was going to end this on a note that something like "humanity towards others" really makes the most sense for a FOSS OS (that would be Ubuntu for those of you just tuning in.) However, Wildebeest sounds like something I could get behind. That's a good name.
From the Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 license page:
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
I'd take that to mean that transcoding to place on YouTube is explicitly allowed. In fact, reading the actual license terms, it appears that "webcasting" is explicitly allowed provided the entire clip is included, so I'd take that to mean that transcoding is OK.
The missing copyright notice and lack of link to the license, on the other hand, would seem to be in violation...
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and as with all legal advice on Slashdot, this is just mindless speculation by someone who's never taken a law class. Well, except for that one law class I did take, but I can't remember what it was about, so I guess it doesn't count.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.
I'm really delighted to see this. Fry's been on my list of "ten humans most entitled to space on this planet" for a long, long time (since Professor Donald Trefusis, in fact) but his sad devotion to that ancient religion (Apple) has long niggled at me. Welcome to the fold, Stephen, may your code always be Free! :)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
If you watch any porn films, you consent to taking part in all future films.
And Stallman is in every film.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;