Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: The Beanies Return; Who Deserves Recognition for 2014?
It's been a long time since Slashdot has awarded the Beanies -- nearly 15 years, in fact. But there's no time like the present, especially since tomorrow edges on the new year, and in early 2015 we'd like to offer a Beanie once again, to recognize and honor your favorite person, people (or project; keep reading) of the past year. Rather than a fine-grained list of categories like in 2000, though, this time around we're keeping it simple: we can always complicate things later, if warranted. So, please nominate below whoever you think most deserves kudos for the last twelve months. Is it ...
- Edward Snowden, for the impact his leaks (though they began in 2013) have continued to make? (Or William Binney, for similar reasons?)
- Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzay, who fought a difficult battle for children's right to an education?
- Telescope popularizer John Dobson, who died earlier this year at the age of 98, after bringing space a little more down to earth for many thousands of people?
- May-Britt Moser, her husband Edvard Moser, and John O'Keefe for their discoveries about how the brain navigates through the world?
- Eben Upton, whose little educational hardware project has bloomed into millions and millions of cheap, hackable Linux computers?
- How about Maryam Mirazkhani, the first woman to become a Fields medalist?
- Theo de Raadt, who stepped in with replacement project LibreSSL soon after cracks appeared in OpenSSL, and who's been helming the OpenBSD project since 1995?
- The ESA team that landed a probe on a comet, or the ISRO engineers who managed to send a probe to Mars on a shoestring budget?
- Anita Sarkeesian, for helping draw attention to undue harassment faced by women in the video game world?
- Someone relatively quiet or obscure who's nonetheless made the world better through some kind of interesting innovation or contribution?
Read on below to see how you can take part, and then nominate your favorite in the comments below.
A few guidelines to make this work:- Please use the title of your post well; in the form "Name: Description of why they're deserving." (Example: "Harold Ramis: Goodbye, and thanks for all the laughs.") That way, your title can help organize the discussion, and will be easy to scan for. (That's how we'll look to credit the first one to suggest a candidate, as well.)
- Speaking of which: please scan the other suggestions first; if you find there one you'd like to argue for or against, better to do it there, rather than start a new thread.
- Please name an actual person, or a specific group of people, so we can send your choice -- or a representative, as appropriate -- some kind of token (to wit, a beanie). But be as creative as you want: the names listed above are just starting points.
- Explain why your choice deserves to be lauded, with links and words; underrated heroes are welcome. If there's a relevant Slashdot story to link to, so much the better, but it's no requirement. Make it clear why your favorite deserves recognition for 2014, even if it's for contributions that started longer ago. Feel free to nominate yourself, but the same guidelines apply.
- Accentuate the positive. We figure beanies sent to Keith Alexander, John Brennan, or Kim Jong Un won't get worn very often. Maybe there can be some anti-Beanies down the road, but for now, name the good guys, of whatever variety.
- You need not be logged in to take part -- anonymous entries are welcome. However, because of comment thresholds, among other reasons, logged in comments may carry more weight.
We'll winnow down the suggestions below into a short list for further consideration -- and perhaps toss in a few more options to boot -- and aim to come up with a deserving new Beanie recipient (possibly more than one) before the first new moon of 2015.
Submit away.
You are going to put someone who whines about cyberbullies on the same list as the first woman to win a Fields medal?
I recommend Edward Snowden, for being the first to demonstrate that Theo de Raadt isn't too paranoid.
(I say this with great respect for Theo's amazing work over the years)
Nobel Peace prize winner that actually tries to do some good.
Was shot in the head, recovered, and is now fighting for what is right at the risk of her life.
I see no debate on this one.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...and for once again demonstrating that just because something sounds like tinfoil-hattery doesn't mean it isn't true.
As for Sarkeesian, I say we arrange for a debate between her and Theo de Raadt.
Whether he was a traitor or a patriot depends on whether you consider the US government a god-like entity that can do no wrong or one somewhat more human and flawed that requires checks and bounds.
A coward, however, he is most assuredly not, for it takes some huge pair of balls to go up against a government which you have just discovered through objective evidence will stop at nothing, neither legal nor illegal, moral nor immoral, just nor unjust, to wreak vengeance.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Well, we made him into a fugitive, so what did you expect? Now he has to earn his keep somehow. I'm waiting now for someone to tell me that they'd like to count trees or kill themselves rather than eke out a living by giving minimal assistance to your 'hosts'? That's a BS argument on its face.
This is a problem of US government creation, not Snowden's. We forced him into a very bad solution set. Give up his integrity or hang the extent of the surveillance out for public view. Just shows you how weak-willed the rest are...or entirely lacking in integrity.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'd echo this vote. I also like how Neil Degrasse Tyson has managed to essentially debuff race as an issue to be a giant in his field. His pursuit of science to leave behind the shortcomings of mankind in a bid to better understand the Universe in which we live is admirable. We watch riots over Ferguson, Mo while he's watching quasars and postulating the effects of gravity in environments unheard of on our planet. That's inspirational.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
and making the world really understand what goes on in Washington
See, this attitude is the problem. It's not about whether or not you truly have something to hide. It's about whether or not your government could use its unfettered access to your personal communications to associate you or your circumstance with its profile of an "enemy" or a "criminal" without regard for context. It could be something as simple as placing you at the scene of or finding motive for a crime you had nothing to do with, so you find yourself the target of an investigation, or facing an indictment. Even if you win the trial (because it turns out their evidence was only circumstantial and not enough to convict), your life is ruined. Your friends and family will suspect you may actually have been guilty. You will lose your job. You'll be out legal fees. Or it could be something along the lines of building a profile about you and putting you on the top secret "terrorist watch list" because you once made a joke in an IM to a close friend that met some automated criteria. Or maybe over time the criteria that associates somebody with a terrorist changes, and the government starts targeting people who closely fit your political beliefs, geographic region, ethnicity, religion or circle of friends. Perhaps you won't even know this until you try to board a flight, or exercise a constitutional right. Not to mention there are over 4000 crimes in the US code alone. Are you 100% certain you have never broken any of these statutes? Further, even if you trust your government not to abuse this data, our government has shown the world that it's ok to spy on its citizens because it even does that itself. It's a welcome for any other nation, friend or foe, to likewise intercept, datamine and correlate online behavior for building profiles on American citizens.
I'm not an expert, but I play one on slashdot.
IMO the primary reason she doesn't give credit to others isn't to plagiarize, but to keep the audience in the echo chamber. Comments and ratings (i.e. any public feedback) are always disabled on her vids, so linking or mentioning any other creators runs the risk of exposing her viewers to other opinions and communities (especially after those other creators find out who she is and what she does).
The funny part is that one of the few times she apparently did have to create her own footage, it was to go out of her way to kill two strippers in Hitman and drag their bodies all over each other (which no one else wants to do).
John Dobson spent a large part of his life giving to the community. He helped bring amateur astronomy to the masses, and inspired many to not only build their own scopes but make discoveries that the "big boys" did not. He opened the universe to everyone.
... he had an agenda, and his agenda was not to surface the NSA's illegal activities in the US, his agenda was to burn down the NSA completely.
If that actually was his agenda, then I am doubly pleased with him and nominate him for two Beanies and a Nobel (category doesn't seem to matter much to that committee).
The NSA must be burned to the ground and the ground salted. It can not be repaired, it can not be cured, it can not fulfill any part of its nominal mission. It is corrupt to the core, and so secretive and so well-funded that it can not be fixed. An organization whose representatives routinely lie to Congress and get away with it is completely and totally out of control. It must be ended. It must be hunted down. It must be extinguished. Its installations must be destroyed, its cash accounts must be seized, its assets must be auctioned off. It is a plague upon the Earth, and the sooner it is gone, the sooner the dignity of humanity can be repaired, even a little.
If Edward Snowden helped even a little with that task, he is a hero worthy of awards far more notable than Slashdot's editors can bestow.