Now that there is not one, but two publicly available WEP cracking programs Airsnort
(written in C++) and WEPCrack (written in PERL), 802.11b is looking worse all the time. Given WEP's inherent insecurity, Bluetooth looks all the more attractive.
Woz would be one of my top picks. If you restrict the domain of the question down to 'computers', Woz might not have been the *most* relevant (Turing, Ritchie, etc), but he was definitely near the top of the list in style (closely followed by Linus IMHO). Woz is a guy I can relate to, most of the other 'greats' have been so idealized that it's hard to get a feel for their personalities. Not that my views of Woz aren't tinted by all the lore surrounding him, but he has always come across as a very human, as well as a brilliant hacker in the best sense of the word.
Whether or not he is one of the top ten geeks of the millenium I couldn't say, but he ought to at least get an honorable mention. And if your talking style alone, without overmuch regard to impact, he might even be number 1.
Read the three articles about the two keynote speaches. Notice that two are very positive toward Linus, while one goes out of it's way to use highly out of context remarks to make Linus look like some bitter Microsoft basher. It also mentions how Bill didn't mention Linux, sort of insinuating that he 'Stayed above the frey'. Hmm... Perhaps it is the fact that the third article is from MS-NBC. I really don't like being paranoid, but the spin seems SO blatent. Just thought I'd point that out, since my own first reaction on reading the MS-NBC article was 'DOH, Linus is making himself look like an idiot'. However I realized afer looking into in more detail that the reality was probably much closer to 'Linus looked good, MS-NBC is spinning his words to make him look like an idiot'. I hate it when the news is owned by everone's favorite monopoly.
Hmm... I see ESR getting flammed a lot, and RMS perhaps less, but still to some degree. When was the last time anyone remember Linus getting flammed? Why is it that Linus seems to remain unscathed?
There are probably a couple of reasons. The biggest I think is simply the fact that unlike ESR and RMS, he's not an egotist. I admire him greatly for that. I know that if I were in his position I would have a hard time being as humble as he seems to be. He also seems very reasonable, not overly reactive. ESR is REACTING to the flamers, yelling back, although in a much more civilazed manor perhaps, but you can still see the 'Shame on all of you evil people for flamming be, you should all go home and feel guilty', between the lines. It is true that were a very hostile culture, especially toward anyone trying to be a 'leader', but I've always seen the hacker culture as sort of anarchistic, we dont really go for leaders. Just do your own thing, share, and it will all work itself out in the end. That seems to be the route Linus is taking, no politics, no marketing, just do what you do and it will work out, build a better operating system and they will come. They have. Yes, to some extent I would like to see Linux embraced by the corporate world, so I could use it at work, but really, I dont know if I want to see it embraced by the corporate world because it's marketed better, I'd like to see it win because it's better technology. Maybe that will never happen, maybe corporations need marketing to convince them. After all the only thing that keeps Microsoft going so well is marketing (oh yeah, and that pesky monopoly thing). Still, I dont want leaders and I dont want marketing. I dont want a movement, or a revolution. I want good software, free software. I write software because I enjoy it, I use linux because it's good. Nothing else matters. Go ahead and flame ESR, or dont, it really doesnt matter. He's done really cool things in the past (Jargon File, Cathedral and the Bazzaz), but right now, all he does is marketing, and marketing I could do without.
Sorry for the randomness and lack or paragraph structure, I'm not feeling very organized today
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Now that there is not one, but two publicly available WEP cracking programs Airsnort (written in C++) and WEPCrack (written in PERL), 802.11b is looking worse all the time. Given WEP's inherent insecurity, Bluetooth looks all the more attractive.
Woz would be one of my top picks. If you restrict the domain of the question down to 'computers', Woz might not have been the *most* relevant (Turing, Ritchie, etc), but he was definitely near the top of the list in style (closely followed by Linus IMHO). Woz is a guy I can relate to, most of the other 'greats' have been so idealized that it's hard to get a feel for their personalities. Not that my views of Woz aren't tinted by all the lore surrounding him, but he has always come across as a very human, as well as a brilliant hacker in the best sense of the word.
Whether or not he is one of the top ten geeks of the millenium I couldn't say, but he ought to at least get an honorable mention. And if your talking style alone, without overmuch regard to impact, he might even be number 1.
Read the three articles about the two keynote speaches. Notice that two are very positive toward Linus, while one goes out of it's way to use highly out of context remarks to make Linus look like some bitter Microsoft basher. It also mentions how Bill didn't mention Linux, sort of insinuating that he 'Stayed above the frey'. Hmm... Perhaps it is the fact that the third article is from MS-NBC. I really don't like being paranoid, but the spin seems SO blatent. Just thought I'd point that out, since my own first reaction on reading the MS-NBC article was 'DOH, Linus is making himself look like an idiot'. However I realized afer looking into in more detail that the reality was probably much closer to 'Linus looked good, MS-NBC is spinning his words to make him look like an idiot'. I hate it when the news is owned by everone's favorite monopoly.
Hmm... I see ESR getting flammed a lot, and RMS perhaps less, but still to some degree. When was the last time anyone remember Linus getting flammed? Why is it that Linus seems to remain unscathed?
There are probably a couple of reasons. The biggest I think is simply the fact that unlike ESR and RMS, he's not an egotist. I admire him greatly for that. I know that if I were in his position I would have a hard time being as humble as he seems to be. He also seems very reasonable, not overly reactive. ESR is REACTING to the flamers, yelling back, although in a much more civilazed manor perhaps, but you can still see the 'Shame on all of you evil people for flamming be, you should all go home and feel guilty', between the lines. It is true that were a very hostile culture, especially toward anyone trying to be a 'leader', but I've always seen the hacker culture as sort of anarchistic, we dont really go for leaders. Just do your own thing, share, and it will all work itself out in the end. That seems to be the route Linus is taking, no politics, no marketing, just do what you do and it will work out, build a better operating system and they will come. They have. Yes, to some extent I would like to see Linux embraced by the corporate world, so I could use it at work, but really, I dont know if I want to see it embraced by the corporate world because it's marketed better, I'd like to see it win because it's better technology. Maybe that will never happen, maybe corporations need marketing to convince them. After all the only thing that keeps Microsoft going so well is marketing (oh yeah, and that pesky monopoly thing). Still, I dont want leaders and I dont want marketing. I dont want a movement, or a revolution. I want good software, free software. I write software because I enjoy it, I use linux because it's good. Nothing else matters. Go ahead and flame ESR, or dont, it really doesnt matter. He's done really cool things in the past (Jargon File, Cathedral and the Bazzaz), but right now, all he does is marketing, and marketing I could do without.
Sorry for the randomness and lack or paragraph structure, I'm not feeling very organized today