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Richard Stallman Falls Ill At Conference
itwbennett writes "Stallman, 59, was speaking at the North Campus of the Polytechnic University of Cataluna when he started to feel ill and called for a doctor. It was originally reported in the Spanish press that Stallman was hypertensive, but it is not yet known what his eventual health status was, just that he left the building later under his own power." He is apparently okay and any significant confirmed updates will be posted here.
Sounds like he is going to GNU/Hell
I am not fan of RMS ideas, but really should you use a first post to insult the man?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Richard Stallman Falls the 3rd is?
Isn't it wonderful that a a capital I looks like a small L? It adds a little 'puzzle element' whilst reading therefore adding more spice to life.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Do you really hold the "first post" to such high standards on the internet?
Face it, lots of people in our field die young. Being fat and sitting around all day is not good. I hope it's nothing and he's ok but likewise I wouldn't be that surprised. Just as I wouldn't be that surprised if someone said Gabe Newell had a heart attack. We've got some really awesome people we're risking losing early do to choices of a career.
Shame it can be a fun and healthy career.
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing." - June 2006
That was just a big misunderstanding. He thought he was talking about people who really like feet.
Stallman on the stretcher https://twitter.com/#!/Cribstopper/status/200641059389313024/photo/1/large
RMS has spent his life fighting for your rights. And when he gets sick all you can do is pile dirt on him? Sure he has some strange views on some things, but in all cases he pushes for greater personal freedom and less corporate ownership of 'ideas' and less government interference in personal lives.
RMS has aspergers, and so, has dificulties on empathy.
He uses the Logic all times, without understanding emotional reactions from people around.
And, unless you are a hipocryte yourself, you must acknowledge that from a pure logic point of view, he's right.
For every one of the "crimes" he sustained should be legal, there was a anciant civilization (or more), that endure more time than our punny one, that allowed it.
You would be astonished if you had, in fact, paid attention on college. The Greeks worth special mention here.
It is actually a good idea to visit webpages that way. If he wants to refer to the source material later he can. Webpages and websites are so dynamic often content is lost, while e-mail can be stored basically indefinitely. If Ballmer was treated with a machine using Linux would he be a hypocrite since he calls the GPL a virus?
He probably has GNUmonia.
Stallman's view is that proprietary software is bad for the user, not that it has some amorphous badness to it that infects everyone in the world. Stallman presumably owns neither the ambulance nor the hospital, so he is not the user. If the people who do own them are using proprietary software, that's their own problem. It'll be they who will be forced to pay thousands of dollars for security updates or whatever, not Stallman.
Notice that the post you are replying to (several paragraphs long and containing a number of links) was posted the very same minute as the story.
Not the first time such a thing has happened to today with posts that seem to be putting forward a particular agenda.
We are all hypocrites in our own way, including you. I'm not a fan of Stallman's ideology and never have been, but a difference in opinion is no reason to kick a man when he's down.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There are 3 ways of doing it, all legitimate. You can subscribe and see the posts early. You can see the posts on firehose and guess which stories will make the front page. Or you can just be aware of the tech news stories of the day, and predict what will come up that way.
Write your opinion.
Then you need to wait for the story to come up. Possibly using a webpage change monitoring app with built in search. Or maybe just by lurking.
Or course you'd only go to that effort if you're either very keen to get moderated up on slashdot and get lots of replies. Or if you really care about the topic really strongly.
And Slashdot is full or both of those kinds of people. Although the specific topic they obsess about varies.
Everyone here that posts has an agenda to put forward.
So, (and this is not the first time) it never ceases to amaze me that the response of some contingent of the Slashdot audience is to dig through his blog and use the worst two comments you can find to smear dirt upon him. He's a libertarian, and yes, if you take Libertarainism to its logical extreme, you might indeed believe that anything that doesn't hurt someone else should be legal. Nobody is accusing him of performing these acts, only of believing that freedom really means all possible freedom.
Like RMS, I'm getting old, and travel a lot to do talks. If I fall ill or get hit by a car, I hope you turkeys never find out.
Bruce Perens.
yes, it's obvious for a three-year old, and stallman would agree with you. it's less obvious for 15, 16, 17 and 18; hence the various conflicting laws by jurisdiction.
let me rephrase what you said, "sexual coercion is evil and unethical, pure and simple." pedophilia is just a specific case.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
See Article 134 of the United States Military Code of Justice. Military officers are still tried and prosecuted for adultery - there have been cases in the last few years.
Bruce Perens.
This. I disagree with this end game, and most of his ideology. I'm posting this on an iPad for god's sake.
Yet. I hope he gets better. I hope he can make me see the light or vice a versa. I hope we can continue having this debate. I think some never ending debates bring us down, this one, however, brings us up.
He's a quirky and socially maladjusted but sweet man.
Come on RMS! Pull through!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
last i heard Darl Mcbride was rushed to hospital with an erection thats reportedly lasted well over an hour now.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Great, now could you please explain what 15-18 year olds have to do with pedophilia, which is the sexual preference for prepubescent children?
"Average" pubescent developments (ability to ejaculate in boys, and menarche in girls) occur about age 12-13, and this actually occurs somewhat after the onset of puberty, as puberty is the "process" of maturation in an individual from a child's body into an adult's body, and other physiological changes are required before those milestones may be reached.
A sexual attraction for prepubescents thus implies that they are somewhere younger than age 12, and more likely several years younger than that. Not 15-18 years old.
The point is, in the power differential between an adult and a prepubescent child, no "informed consent" is possible. I guess the problem is that Stallman has never mentally and emotionally matured beyond the 12 or 13 year old phase himself, and so he doesn't understand this power difference, which is, I suppose, a common affliction where Aspies are involved. Pedophiles are predators, plain and simple. Ephebophiles (the proper term for a sexual attraction for young-but-pubescent teens, generally held to be in the 14-18-ish bracket) are sometimes (I'd argue often, except for the "of the same age range as the partner") predators as well - man-children who are incapable of having an adult relationship, and so they prey on easily manipulated and influenced teens.
Here's an easy rule of thumb for the Aspies who like to argue that banging 14 year olds is acceptable behavior for a 27 year old man:
((your age/2) + 7) = minimum acceptable age of partner.
That's the youngest acceptable age of a suitable partner for any adult over the age of 18. You go below that age, and you're looking REALLY fucking creepy, you are *probably* a damaged Lost Boy incapable of having an adult relationship, and there's a *good* chance you're downright predatory. For those of you who are spitting Cheeto crumbs of rage at the screen while mashing the "Reply to This" link right now: seek help.
Everyone here that posts has an agenda to put forward.
So, what is your agenda?
He fell GNU/ill
Looking through the comments, I'm reminded again why I visit this site less and less. I think this might just be my final post here. This site is a shadow of what it was when I joined, and I came along fairly late...
Also, pedophilia is about attraction to prepubescent children which is hardly what a 15,16 or 17 year old is.
Depends on the country you live in. A while ago, there was a big fuss about an american 16(?) year old (boy/girl?) that sent naked pictures of herself to a boyfriend. There are also some scandals with teachers and 16/17 year-old students, so I'd guess its not that black-and-white.
Your rights maybe, but not my rights. I'm better served by public domain open source, both when I've released software as open source and when I've used others open source.
GPL has only ever restricted what I want to do with open source software, not given me more freedom.
The idea that he's fought for my rights is laughable.
Except GIMP. GIMP is by far the easiest tool to use in its genre of software. It is amazing how many people left Photoshop in droves with this last release that gave us the advanced technology of the single window interface.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
So, I was offended by those comments, too.
Bruce Perens.
Not everyone on /. is like that. Many of us quiet readers idolize folks like RMS and you, Bruce.
-brian
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Which compiler does BSD use for everything? And who wrote that initially? Who wrote a number of utilities that went along with it? Who wrote the GPL? Sure, RMS hasn't done any cool GUI apps or really any notable apps in 20 years. He moved on to running FSF and advocating his philosophy. He built the foundation for something big. It was actually the Open Source "movement" that freeloaded on the idea with a shitload of "approved" licenses.
I do agree that he should stick to his free software philosophy and perhaps anti-DRM stance (tech freedom?) and stay out of more social and political issues.
RMS has aspergers, and so, has dificulties on empathy.
He uses the Logic all times, without understanding emotional reactions from people around.
And, unless you are a hipocryte yourself, you must acknowledge that from a pure logic point of view, he's right.
The illegality of bestiality is just as legally sound as any animal cruelty laws, because animals can't consent. Consent requires speech, moral development and sexual maturation.
It's well established medically that incest should be illegal because it leads to horrific birth defects, just as society shouldn't condone polygamy because it leads to a shortage of women and then pedophilia.
And while there is room for reforms (a 17 year old who has sex with a 16 year old is not a pedophile) pedophilia should be illegal because children can't consent. Children lack moral development and sexual maturation; yes, people develop at different rates and the ages we pick are arbitrary. That just means the laws are imperfect, it doesn't mean that the fundamental basis of the laws is unsound.
And just as you have a right to do what you will with your body, you have a right to be sure that your remains won't be defiled, so necrophilia is out. Unless someone _actually_ specified in their will, "if you ever get a hankering, yeah, that kind of hankering, please feel free to bone my corpse." And if any funeral home was willing to accommodate those wishes, you've just made an outstanding case for cremation.
If you have a right to engage in a contract, you implicitly have a right for that contract to be legally binding because otherwise you don't actually have a contract. Ergo, adultery, the violation of a contract, has to be illegal for a person to have a right to actually marry. Sex outside of marriage is not illegal in any Western nation, so it's rather beside the point.
As to sex outside of marriage in other customs... well, say if you're a Muslim, of course, you believe that the angel Gabriel came down to Muhammed and dictated precisely how you were supposed to live your life. So from a purely logical point of view, you're a Muslim and you've accepted that it's the indisputable word of God delivered by a divine being and recorded in a perfect language, ergo, it's true.
Logic really only works if your premises aren't bullshit.
For every one of the "crimes" he sustained should be legal, there was a anciant civilization (or more), that endure more time than our punny one, that allowed it.
No, usually there was an ancient civilization accused of such practices by their neighbors, it's rare to find ancient civilizations that boasted of doing truly perverse things themselves, or the physical evidence of it. It's not like it doesn't still happen. For instance, do you think the Chinese are actually grinding up babies and trying to sell the pills to Koreans, as the South Koreans have recently alleged? Might it be more plausible that South Korean officials are spreading rumors about Chinese corruption?
Sure. He was shitty about Steve jobs' death.
But a man's life is in the balance here. Let's try to understand the gravity here.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The agent comes into the room, closing the door behind them, and walks up to the front of the room. There is a large desk, and behind it is a large chair, turned to face the window.
The agent stops in front of the desk and waits. "Reporting, sir."
The chair does not move, but a voice comes from the unseen occupant. "Is it done?"
"Yes sir." The agent stands stock still, as several laser dots play over his chest, head and groin. "I mixed the first half of the binary agent in the bottled water at the hotel. No one else should be affected."
"I see. And the second half?"
"I placed that on the end of his underarm deodorant." The agent smiled at his own ingenuity.
There was a sigh from the chair. "Ah. I suppose that explains it, then."
"Sir?"
The chair slowly turned around. It was bright outside, so the occupant was lit from behind, and impossible to see. "He's alive. He's currently at the hospital and doing well."
The agent fidgeted. "Sir, I.." One of the lasers came close to his eyeball, giving him pause.
"He is a geek, agent. Geeks do not use deodorant. Or soap, for that matter." There was a soft clicking of buttons on a phone console being pressed.
"Begging your pardon sir, but you do." All of the laser dots jumped, as if shocked. In the shadowed chair, a pair of Giorgio Armani glasses gleamed in utter silence.
"Indeed I do." There were a few more soft taps, then a final tap, and the laser sights on the agent began to wink out. "Fair enough, agent. Good try, at least. And good recovery."
"Thank you, sir." The agent let his breath out slowly.
"Yes, I like to think I learned a few things from Steve, before he died." The chair began to turn again. "The receptionist will have your payment. We'll have use for you again, I'm sure."
The agent nodded. "Thank you, sir." He turned sharply on his heel and left the room, closing the door behind him. At the desk, the chair slowly turned to face the Redmond skyline.
"Another time, Richard."
[End Of Line]
I don't see eye to eye with RMS on a lot of things, and I was appalled by his reaction to the death of Steve Jobs, but I certainly hope nothing is seriously wrong with him. There's no doubt he's contributed a lot to technology and it'd be sad to see something happen to him. I like to think heaven has its place for tech visionaries, though. Get well soon, RMS. (One more thing-- not trying to really be funny or condescending here, but I think maybe he should avoid eating toe jam from now on, or whatever he pulled off his foot that time...)
--Z
GCC may be "mountains of mediocre code", but a) how many people can churn out code like that? and b) that mediocre code has allowed other programmers to produce free software.
RMS has spent his life fighting for your rights.
No. Richard Stallman has spent most of his adult life:
He shares a disturbing number of qualities with your average cult leader.
It was only until many other more reasonable voices and non-FSF software appeared that the open source movement gained traction. And what was his response? Continual bitterness, which has shown up in him demanding Linux be called GNU/Linux.
While revered by some geeks, he's almost completely ignored by government, academia, and industry and not taken seriously by anyone with power in any of them. He is a sociopathic egomaniac, and while I wish to hell he'd retire to a small corner of the world - I don't want it to be because of poor health, and I hope he's better soon.
Please help metamoderate.
Making people of the internet realise that they are wrong, obviously :)
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There are also places in the world where adultery is illegal. The punishment for women can even be death. It's one of the major women's rights issues world wide.
I'm posting this on an iPad for god's sake.
And of course the iPad is running iOS and apps build with XCode wich uses gcc as the compiler backend. No GNU, no iPad.
Stephan
So do I. To a large part I think he's lost touch with reality and is busy tilting at windmills that nobody else can see. Yes, I use Linux on my computers because I don't see any reason to pay for an OS, pay for applications and then pay a different company for more applications to keep my computer free of malware, especially when I can get an equally good OS and applications for free. But unlike some people, I'm not a fanatic about it. I'm not going to try to push anybody else into Linux unless they're already interested in it. If asked, I'll tell them that whatever OS does what they want the way they like it is the best one for them. I can't imagine RMS doing that, and that's one of the things I don't like about him.
Having said that, I was saddened to hear that he's sick and I hope that it's nothing serious. 59 is much too young for us to lose him, because even though I don't agree with him, he keeps saying things that need to be said and bringing up ideas that need to be discussed.
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Actually, NEXTSTEP was written in Objective C, w/o using gcc, and gcc would not have been necessary in creating Darwin and OS-X either. Apple did happen to use them when it didn't have a problem w/ GPL2. But after GCC was moved to GPL3, not just Apple, but other organizations, like FreeBSD, started Clang and are moving to it, while others, like OpenBSD, stayed w/ a version of GCC that was still GPL2, and would probably fork it under the same license. So soon, the bragging rights of the GPL would be largely eroded, if not eliminated.
Of course we're not going to pile dirt on him when he's sick. That would be stupid. You don't put the dirt on top until he actually dies.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
So don't use GPL software and stop bitching. If someone published software under the GPL, they clearly meant for anyone modifying the software to release their modifications, they didn't intend for someone to come along and steal their code for a proprietary application. If you don't want to release your modifications, you're free to use proprietary software, BSD software or contact the copyright owners and request a special license.
As someone who has met RMS personally (if briefly), I can confirm, without any joking around or (too much) trolling that he is indeed a fat, smelly, angry hippy prophet. Mad love to the guy, but I did wonder at the time how long he could go on like that.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yes, I use Linux on my computers because I don't see any reason to pay for an OS, pay for applications and then pay a different company for more applications to keep my computer free of malware, especially when I can get an equally good OS and applications for free. But unlike some people, I'm not a fanatic about it.
What you clearly don't get is that much of the reason you can get a good OS and applications for free is the GPL, for which you can thank RMS. I remember what it was like to install *BSD before the various BSDs were shamed into modernity by Linux. No thanks, you can have that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most users are not programmers, and therefore, don't give a rat's ass about source code.
They also don't care about their rights, which is what the GPL is about, until they are inconvenienced by their lack. That doesn't mean that their rights aren't important.
The GPL is about the rights of users, not about the users' ability to get the source code. The former requires more than the latter; the latter is simply a means of securing the former.
I don't know enough to root my own Nook Simple Touch, but the availability of the source code permitted Nookdevs to do the same, and I benefit from not being locked in to the software stack (B&N apps) preloaded onto my device. Your argument doesn't hold water. Or shit.
By making it all but impossible to make money out of liberated software in a manner that the FSF approves,
[citation needed]
Just because YOU can't manage it doesn't mean that it's impossible or even difficult. It just means you can't get your head around it.
Stallman has done more damage than good to users of software.
[citation needed] again. You're making a lot of declarative statements and then leaving them unsupported. Support them, or admit your prejudice.
The Open Source people have done good in limiting the damage
Fucking Microsoft is Open Source in many cases. So was SunOS4, in practice, although they clamped down on SunOS5 sources. The Open Source people have mostly done a good job at claiming victory where there is none, and at claiming trademarks they don't own, not to mention designing their logo to make it look like they hold trademarks they don't hold. Frankly, they are today riding RMS' coattails. Their world would barely exist without him. Normal people run Linux today, they run it on tablets and they run it on laptops and they run it on desktops and it is on more and more embedded devices every day. Remember the old days of BSD? A few neckbeards in poorly-cleaned offices and apartments dominated the scene. I know some of them personally, but have fallen out of touch — I'm a Linux user and they are fanatics. They actually think less of you if you don't run BSD. That's prejudice, kind of like yours.
or else, all that the world would have had would have been closed-source software.
[citation needed]
The GPL has been the motivation behind many of the projects we hold dearest, including GCC, which pretty much none of these would exist without. You have a completely backwards view of the situation: Everything you said is wrong.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And of course the iPad is running iOS and apps build with XCode wich uses gcc as the compiler backend
iOS has never used gcc. The early iPhones used llvm-gcc, which used gcc for parsing and LLVM for code generation. By the time the iPad was released, the parser had been replaced by clang, so gcc is not involved at all, neither is the GNU linker.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not everyone on /. is like that. Many of us quiet readers idolize folks like RMS and you, Bruce.
-brian
And some of us quiet readers just have a lot of respect for guys like you (which is not exactly the same as "idolize").
Stallman heads the Free Software Foundation, and I agree that they need both a new leader, and a new name. Call it Liberated Software Committee
Software liberation association?