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.
... and only being remembered [by the really stupid plebe] for his really cool shirt !
What about Bennett Haselton, for always so graciously providing his view?
You are going to put someone who whines about cyberbullies on the same list as the first woman to win a Fields medal?
Lets be fair here. Yes there might be some need for attention to women in game development. But if you make a kickstarter for 12 videos about the plight of women in video games, get a lot more than your goal required and then only make 6 (and only 3 of the 12 topics covered), its more like a fraud than caring about women in video games. Never mind many other fishy things like suggesting they are a not for profit but them only having become so long after the kickstarter, when it became useful because they took copyrighted materials.
I personally think that The fine young capitalists has done a lot more for women in video games than Anita will ever do. Its nice to point out there are only very few female game designers and AAA games aimed specifically at women, its better to directly enable women to become part of the club.
'nuff said.
Ezekiel 23:20
Christ, even the asshole nominating him for the least prestigious award in history can't even remember where he landed a probe...
I know a lot of young amateurs with our club own a worthwhile scope because of Dobson's innovations. I hated to see him go. He made good equipment affordable and he spent a lot of evenings out on urban street corners, giving the curious a chance to see something they may never have been able to otherwise while asking nothing in return. He also ran a pretty serious lecture circuit that a lot of small astronomy groups took advantage of.
He may not have had the most notable achievements from an overall view of the field of contenders but he did it selflessly. He's the Mother Theresa of astronomy as far as I'm concerned.
From a developer's perspective, for 2014 I'd suggest Miguel de Icaza. From his Mono roots he built Xamarin for cross-platform mobile development, and appears to have been a force in the NET Open Sourcing.
I disagree entirely. He was/is a patriot. I was all over Manning for being a traitor, based on motive and the actions he/she took. I'm a Republican and have been for a long time.
Snowden was doing us a favor and sacrificed a nice cushy life for that. I have a hard time calling a person who did that a traitor. The fact that he's holed up in Russia speaks volumes toward where the United States has gone wrong with extraconstitutional surveillance and paramilitary action after 9/11. We used to be the place where political prisoners fled to, rather than away from.
The country I grew up in wouldn't tolerate what is going on right now with renditions, endless war composed of drone strikes and literally unfettered domestic surveillance.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
Before we go and mark Anita for sainthood, has anyone actually watched her videos? She literally pisses on virtually everything as being demeaning to women. If I had to go by the things she said, I would be convinced that there was a definite conspiracy to hold women down and subjugate them through companies failed attempts to incorporate girls toys (Legos), or to suck as a feminine heroine (Hunger Games) or any other medium to try and reach out to girls for inspiration. And I'd be damn convinced that the Founding Fathers of the US were a gang of men bent on male domination, why else would the Washington Monument be such a phallic symbol? Honestly, I think Anita suffers from some kind of gender-based delusion and has spent far to many years in "Women's Studies". My daughter played Lego's as a young girl and was more than willing to build a space ship right along side the boys. And you know what, I thought the flowers on the spaceship were pretty darn cute.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Theo de Raadt for no other reason than he is Theo de Raadt.
Trolling is a art,
...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.
Like him or not, call him hero or traitor... there is no way 'round observing the sowing of universal mistrust of governments he has instilled in our populace.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm sure everyone here knows who he is. In my opinion, hes the most eloquent, humorous, reasonable, and personable ambassador from a hard core scientific discipline of this generation. Watch cosmos if you haven't already. His ability to break it down for the layman while preserving the incredible spectacle of the universe is right there with all the Carl Sagans of the past. And....he did it on Fox of all places!
oops, I don't really know where the "moon" came from as I kept thinking about a "comet" :-/
...then its definitely because the Patriarchy are still working to suppress women's voices.
And if you're not part of the Patriarchy then you should be contributing to Anita's Kickstarter.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
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 mean seriously, is there any other person who has left a larger mark on the world this year? He's put his life on the line, angering the largest world power in order to reveal a bewilderingly sprawling surveillance network spying on its own citizens with a complete lack of ethics and oversight. He will not be able to step into most of the Western world for years to come because of his honesty and moral code. Everyone has heard of his revelations and we are still not done with them.
and making the world really understand what goes on in Washington
Actually, the person who deserves the beanie is the slashdot coder who implements a true account deletion, a way to delete an account and all comments. That is what slashdot truly needs.
As a workaround, maybe think before you post to save yourself from potential embarrassment years down the road?
How is it that we got a Church Committee, limited as its gains were, back in the 70s and then zilch now?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Not listed above, but probably should be: Appelbaum is one of the authors of the Spiegel article linked here the other day (https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/12/28/2054228/snowden-documents-show-how-well-nsa-codebreakers-can-pry), a Tor developer, security researcher more generally, and generally a smart-ass, in a non-pejorative sense. He's been (after his involvement was outed) a sort of diplomatic bridge to Wikileaks, and helped found San Francisco hackerspace Noisebridge. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... - and any slashdot story about Tor, and many of the ones about Wikileaks ;)
Don't know if it was this past year or from 2013 into this year but he captured the attention of many people who forgot about space.
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).
Christ, even the asshole nominating him for the least prestigious award in history can't even remember where he landed a probe...
It happens when the only thing the geek remembers are the leather clad babes with guns on his tee shirt.
Maybe it's because I grew up in Pasadena, home of Caltech, mother ship of science nerdery, but I recognized Taylor's type immediately. Take a look at him: the dorky eyeglasses, the beard that's not really hip enough to be hipster, the elaborate tattoos that spill out from under that shirt all the way to Taylor's wrists. The man even had a tattoo of the Rosetta landing needled onto his leg back in January! And garish casual shirts of all kinds are part of his everyday wardrobe. Matt Taylor could be a character in ''The Big Bang Theory.''
And part of Science Nerd culture seems to be that if your brain is big enough, it's OK for you to dress for every single occasion as though you were pondering the theory of relativity while walking your dog. So Matt Taylor donned completely inappropriate wear -- inappropriate because a scientist ought to dress professionally when presenting his work to the public, which is not the same as messing around in a lab.
The real problem with Rosetta scientist's inappropriate shirt
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.
Nah, Sarkeesian was a hack before the whole gamer gate thing even started.
Gamergate itself has clearly done more good than Sarkeesian ever hoped to.
It exposed nepotism and collusion in games journalism.
It got Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) some long-overdue apologies for hit pieces run against him.
https://twitter.com/iamDavidWi...
http://www.gamepolitics.com/20...
http://www.zenofdesign.com/in-...
Oh, you didn't hear about that? Well, I guess the same corrupt media (and the mainstream media, in turn) didn't report it, so, like whoever's in charge of Slashdot, we should pretend it never happened. You know, the same way we pretend that Snowden did no good because the corrupt NSA (and the Executive and Congress in turn) never acknowledged it.
And it's forcing Gawker to revise its policies to comply with updated FTC guidelines, which the FTC acknowledges came about because of Gamergate's OperationUV.
Damn, look at all these journalists, forced to be ethical against their will. If the media ever covers it, they'll probably invent some new term for the headlines, like "Ethics Rape."
Oh enough, if a woman wore that kind of clothing during the interview, even if it was a shirt covered in pictures of hunky men, the usual talking heads bobbing up and down showering her with praise would have to wrestle with the thirsty white knights to bray the most approval. You go girl, fight that patriarchy!
Bigotry of all sorts needs to be rooted out, especially the spreading boil that is feminism.
... 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.