If I understand this letter correctly, you have to be either from the US, Taiwan, Germany, Czech Republic or Spain to take part of this offering. Additionally, you can be from Japan, Finland, Norway, UK, Italy and Poland, but the number of people they will allow from those countries are limited and served on a first-come-first-served basis.
That pretty much depends on the company. The only company that has done this before was Red Hat. I got their letter, but I didn't get any letter from VA, but I'd think that VA cut down on the number of people receiving the letter. It would help if you were lucky and were a big contributor in some GNU/Linux-related area.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this. Too bad that I didn't get it, but you really can't blame them. Our community is growing so large that it's hard to keep track of even the smallest percentage of it:-)
Perhaps we should put dates on them? As you say, most of these are very old. We collected them mostly from various GNU disks. Some of it dates more than 10 years back. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this dates back to when prep.ai.mit.edu was a VAX 11/750. For those of you interested in a little history; prep was (in the early 1980's) a VAX 11/750 designed to to run a large plotter for VLSI plots. It only needed to do this a few days ever year, so rms "adopted" the spare cycles for GNU work. People generally thought that RMS was doing GNU Emacs work on it, which was true of course and accounted for the disk space used, but the machine also had all other GNU material and users on it.
Actually, this problem occurs in other scenarios too, such as if the subject is supposed to climb a ladder, climb a rock, crawl under a fence or jump off a high building. The solutions is rather obvious; you don't simulate this. Atleast not using mechanical devices. Can you imagine how complex a machine would be that would allow the subject to do any two of the previous mentioned actions? I expect the game industry will try to do something similar to this anyway because it would heighten the experience and earn them more money. The real problem, however, will remain, and what you probably should do is hook up electrodes to your brain to pick up movement and simulate feelings and sensations. I admit that there's probably quite a few years until we can do that (which is why the game industry will try other things first), but I think that's where we're ultimately heading.
To the best of my knowledge, XFce is not part of the GNU project. I don't find any mention of it in the GNU records and that usually indicates that either someone has forgotten to add them, or they're simply not part of the GNU project.
No, that's not true. If Miguel would sell his applications, provided they are free software, people would still buy them from him (even when they can get it cheaper from someone else) because they want to further the development of the product. The normal rules of economics don't apply to free software.
The PDP1 had a display.. sort of.. It was one of the most interesting things about it compared to the TX-0 that the MIT hackers had used before. It was actually more like a older oscilloscope and I can't imagine that it was very easy to do anything useful with it. Steve Russell apparently apparently spent close to a month getting a tiny dot on the screen that you could move with the controls.
Until some time ago, I used the same password as the username. Not kidding. I got a few visits that way, people mailing me from my own account saying "Cool! Hey, your foo script didn't work like it should, I fixed it for you", and the like. People who want to do bad things seems to be lame enough never to just knock on the door and try the handle. I'd like to still have the same scheme on some systems, but people in general are paranoid enough so that I choose strong passwords so that they will still be friends with me. I must say though that I find it much easier to restore a backup every once in a long while, than to use all the paranoid security that people force upon me. I even secured my own computer and removed the guest/guest, system/manager and login/password accounts, which had been there for, well, forever really. So either way; how do I remember the passwords these days? Well, it's not only passwords, it's bank account codes and other codes too that goes with all plastic cards you get. I'm sorry to say that there really isn't any great trick to it. The mind can easily store atleast 20-30 more secure passwords (and probably even more), even if you change them regularly. To memorize a new password, I write it down on a piece of paper and try to attach images of the characters to the paper in my mind. If you attach graphical images, sometimes even smell perhaps, you will most probably remember it far longer than you need to.
I'm not too interested in these news at all. In ways, I think that these proprietary vendors harm the future development of our beloved system. So why is this? Primarily because I see that the same problems that exists on other systems are now coming to ours. Soon enough, what we have won't be THAT much different. Perhaps the most harmful trend is when people make copies of these proprietary programs to share with their friends. Suddenly the industry will turn to them and call them pirates. In our community, we try to teach people that sharing software with your friends is the right thing to do. Now, we'll have hunters doing their best to enforce upon us the idea that this is as bad as murdering and robbing people on high seas.
What happens next is at some point in the near future, the award committee sits down and considers all the nominees and selects a winner based in part by the comments that was received together with the nominations. After that we'll probably see an award ceremony before long.
I am somewhat confused. What war are people talking about here? Browser war? Sure, we could lose that. No big deal really. We've already "won" the war against proprietary software -- we've built a wholly free operating system. I don't think we were ever at war though, not that I could see anyway.
I think people are confused as to what free software is about. Free software is not about bringing down Microsoft, or any other company creating proprietary software, it's not about getting GNU/Linux on all computers world-wide either. The goal was and still is to create a wholly free operating system. I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?
Even after the Internet boom, we will still have computers around, so I'd still be doing what I am doing today; making sure that people can use a computer without losing their freedom with proprietary software. Sure, I've thought about giving up on it all and become a farmer. While I would probably be very happy doing that, I'd not be doing what I do best and I wouldn't feel good about that.
I can relate to this. Fortunately, my employer doesn't care much what the servers are called so I've taken it upon myself to give them describing names. At home, I use names from The Belgariad because the traits in some of the characters can relate somewhat to the computer itself. Who would not instantly get a grasp of what the computer beldin must look like?
Back to work then; I will be naming workstations too, and there I'm thinking of a general theme per room such as a book and the computers having names from that theme or book. For the servers, I'm giving them more descriptive names that explains what the computer is and does. Some examples are crash-and-burn which actually COULD be a Win98 station with a CD-RW, but it's in fact the name I use for installations I work with, play with, throw in the floor and in general aren't very nice too. The server which will hold the WinNT profiles is ofcourse named profiler and my laptop to which I tunnel an IP-number to whereever I am is called circuitous-route.
Oh dear. We've seen articles like this before, but I just think it's funny that they even attempt something like it. For me personally, some of the features they list can be attractive traits in a woman, but there are certainly others too, more important. It's not the same for everyone either; there can be a mileswide difference between two geeks and the traits they find attracting.
Having said that, I should also note that I've been in situations, I don't know how many times, where a girl has asked me what I did for a living. I answer truthfully and say that I'm a computer programmer and a system administrator. Most of the time, you can almost see the faintest interest die instantly when she hears that. I suppose I could say that I also like writing, cooking and hiking, but I tend to think that if computers turns someone off, it's probably not someone I would like to get to know better anyway.
Anyway, my point being somewhat of the line that people should probably just accept who they are. When Mr. or Miss right comes knocking, he/she will look deep enough to see the true you.
Of course, I have no idea if that's really what happens, but it's a nice thought anyway:-)
"[...] for a group of healthy college-age males, there was remarkably little discussion of a topic which commonly obsesses groups of that composition. Females. Though some hackers led somewhat active social lives, the key figures in TMRC-PDP hacking had locked themselves into what would be called 'bachelor mode.' It was easy to fall into -- for one thing -- as opposed to the hopelessly random problems in a human relationship -- which made hacking particularly attractive. But an even weightier factor was the hackers' impression that computing was much more/important/ than getting involved in a romantic relationship. It was a question of priorities. Hacking had replaced sex in their lives."
I'm not convinced that there are such a thing as a hacker ethics, but once you've gotten past that notion, I found the book a very good read. I should probably also note that RMS recently published his 1983 biography on his home page. It's somewhat related to the chapter on him in the book since it was written just the year before the book was published, and, I think, just before the idea of GNU came into light.
Slashdot Mirror
If I understand this letter correctly, you have to be either from the US, Taiwan, Germany, Czech Republic or Spain to take part of this offering. Additionally, you can be from Japan, Finland, Norway, UK, Italy and Poland, but the number of people they will allow from those countries are limited and served on a first-come-first-served basis.
That pretty much depends on the company. The only company that has done this before was Red Hat. I got their letter, but I didn't get any letter from VA, but I'd think that VA cut down on the number of people receiving the letter. It would help if you were lucky and were a big contributor in some GNU/Linux-related area.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing this. Too bad that I didn't get it, but you really can't blame them. Our community is growing so large that it's hard to keep track of even the smallest percentage of it :-)
Perhaps we should put dates on them? As you say, most of these are very old. We collected them mostly from various GNU disks. Some of it dates more than 10 years back. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this dates back to when prep.ai.mit.edu was a VAX 11/750. For those of you interested in a little history; prep was (in the early 1980's) a VAX 11/750 designed to to run a large plotter for VLSI plots. It only needed to do this a few days ever year, so rms "adopted" the spare cycles for GNU work. People generally thought that RMS was doing GNU Emacs work on it, which was true of course and accounted for the disk space used, but the machine also had all other GNU material and users on it.
This is interesting. I hope that Novell's license makes their software free software.
Actually, this problem occurs in other scenarios too, such as if the subject is supposed to climb a ladder, climb a rock, crawl under a fence or jump off a high building. The solutions is rather obvious; you don't simulate this. Atleast not using mechanical devices. Can you imagine how complex a machine would be that would allow the subject to do any two of the previous mentioned actions? I expect the game industry will try to do something similar to this anyway because it would heighten the experience and earn them more money.
The real problem, however, will remain, and what you probably should do is hook up electrodes to your brain to pick up movement and simulate feelings and sensations. I admit that there's probably quite a few years until we can do that (which is why the game industry will try other things first), but I think that's where we're ultimately heading.
If there exists a God, he or she probably pipe the prayers through 'sort|uniq' first.
To the best of my knowledge, XFce is not part of the GNU project. I don't find any mention of it in the GNU records and that usually indicates that either someone has forgotten to add them, or they're simply not part of the GNU project.
No, that's not true. If Miguel would sell his applications, provided they are free software, people would still buy them from him (even when they can get it cheaper from someone else) because they want to further the development of the product. The normal rules of economics don't apply to free software.
The PDP1 had a display.. sort of.. It was one of the most interesting things about it compared to the TX-0 that the MIT hackers had used before. It was actually more like a older oscilloscope and I can't imagine that it was very easy to do anything useful with it. Steve Russell apparently apparently spent close to a month getting a tiny dot on the screen that you could move with the controls.
RMS was at Tsinghua University in China to speak about free software in October.
Until some time ago, I used the same password as the username. Not kidding. I got a few visits that way, people mailing me from my own account saying "Cool! Hey, your foo script didn't work like it should, I fixed it for you", and the like. People who want to do bad things seems to be lame enough never to just knock on the door and try the handle.
I'd like to still have the same scheme on some systems, but people in general are paranoid enough so that I choose strong passwords so that they will still be friends with me. I must say though that I find it much easier to restore a backup every once in a long while, than to use all the paranoid security that people force upon me. I even secured my own computer and removed the guest/guest, system/manager and login/password accounts, which had been there for, well, forever really.
So either way; how do I remember the passwords these days? Well, it's not only passwords, it's bank account codes and other codes too that goes with all plastic cards you get. I'm sorry to say that there really isn't any great trick to it. The mind can easily store atleast 20-30 more secure passwords (and probably even more), even if you change them regularly. To memorize a new password, I write it down on a piece of paper and try to attach images of the characters to the paper in my mind. If you attach graphical images, sometimes even smell perhaps, you will most probably remember it far longer than you need to.
I'm not too interested in these news at all. In ways, I think that these proprietary vendors harm the future development of our beloved system.
So why is this? Primarily because I see that the same problems that exists on other systems are now coming to ours. Soon enough, what we have won't be THAT much different. Perhaps the most harmful trend is when people make copies of these proprietary programs to share with their friends. Suddenly the industry will turn to them and call them pirates. In our community, we try to teach people that sharing software with your friends is the right thing to do. Now, we'll have hunters doing their best to enforce upon us the idea that this is as bad as murdering and robbing people on high seas.
You should be able to find people working on GNU software on the GNU Who's Who List.
What happens next is at some point in the near future, the award committee sits down and considers all the nominees and selects a winner based in part by the comments that was received together with the nominations. After that we'll probably see an award ceremony before long.
Either way, fixed that and one other typo. And you're right; the reason given for the nomination of Bill Gates was something akin to what you wrote.
I'd like to remind everyone of the article that Richard Stallman wrote about possible demands that could be made of Microsoft if they would lose.
I think people are confused as to what free software is about. Free software is not about bringing down Microsoft, or any other company creating proprietary software, it's not about getting GNU/Linux on all computers world-wide either. The goal was and still is to create a wholly free operating system. I get the feeling that people in our community feel threatened by proprietary software and I don't understand that reasoning. I use exclusively free software on my systems (except for ssh, but that will hopefully change soon); I have no need for proprietary software, so why should I feel threatened by it?
Even after the Internet boom, we will still have computers around, so I'd still be doing what I am doing today; making sure that people can use a computer without losing their freedom with proprietary software.
Sure, I've thought about giving up on it all and become a farmer. While I would probably be very happy doing that, I'd not be doing what I do best and I wouldn't feel good about that.
Back to work then; I will be naming workstations too, and there I'm thinking of a general theme per room such as a book and the computers having names from that theme or book. For the servers, I'm giving them more descriptive names that explains what the computer is and does. Some examples are crash-and-burn which actually COULD be a Win98 station with a CD-RW, but it's in fact the name I use for installations I work with, play with, throw in the floor and in general aren't very nice too. The server which will hold the WinNT profiles is ofcourse named profiler and my laptop to which I tunnel an IP-number to whereever I am is called circuitous-route.
Err.. I'm not sure about others, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be with someone who "just put out".
Having said that, I should also note that I've been in situations, I don't know how many times, where a girl has asked me what I did for a living. I answer truthfully and say that I'm a computer programmer and a system administrator. Most of the time, you can almost see the faintest interest die instantly when she hears that. I suppose I could say that I also like writing, cooking and hiking, but I tend to think that if computers turns someone off, it's probably not someone I would like to get to know better anyway.
Anyway, my point being somewhat of the line that people should probably just accept who they are. When Mr. or Miss right comes knocking, he/she will look deep enough to see the true you.
Of course, I have no idea if that's really what happens, but it's a nice thought anyway
Though some hackers led somewhat active social lives, the key figures in TMRC-PDP hacking had locked themselves into what would be called 'bachelor mode.' It was easy to fall into -- for one thing -- as opposed to the hopelessly random problems in a human relationship -- which made hacking particularly attractive. But an even weightier factor was the hackers' impression that computing was much more
Hacking had replaced sex in their lives."
- Steven Levy, Hackers - Heroes of the computer revolution
I'm not convinced that there are such a thing as a hacker ethics, but once you've gotten past that notion, I found the book a very good read.
I should probably also note that RMS recently published his 1983 biography on his home page. It's somewhat related to the chapter on him in the book since it was written just the year before the book was published, and, I think, just before the idea of GNU came into light.
I'm going to do just that. When my next paycheck comes through the door next week, I'll ask the FSF to get $29,95 from my credit card.