BALUG-Talk September 2019

balug-talk@lists.balug.org

6 participants
4 discussions

10 types
by Rick Moen 16 Oct '19

16 Oct '19

At yesterday's BALUG meeting, someone hauled out an old chestnut: There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't. -- Unknown I mentioned that there were a couple of responses to that, that I had converted to .signature files. The first was by a poster named Ron Fabre on the Linux Users of Victoria (Melbourne) mailing list (whose comment I .sigged): -- Cheers, There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who Rick Moen know ternary, those who don't, and those who are now rick(a)linuxmafia.com looking for their dictionaries. -- Ron Fabre McQ! (4x80) Being also on that mailing list, I couldn't help doing meta-commentary: -- Cheers, There are 10 types of people in this world, those who know quaternary, Rick Moen those who only recently figured out Ron Fabre's "ternary" .sig, those who're completely confused, and those who hate self-referential jokes. I also like: There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data and There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand hexadecimal and f the rest. and Q. Why do mathematicians confuse Halloween and Christmas? A. Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.

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Richard M. Stallman has resigned from FSF and from MIT CSAIL
by Rick Moen 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

tl;dr: https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns In the wake of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, controvery arose about dealings between him and the (also now-late) MIT AI scientist Marvin Minsky, and about MIT administration actions related to Epstein. Richard M. Stallman is intimately associated with not just the Free Software Foundation (that he created) but with MIT CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) operation. Fairly recently, there was a discussion on one of CSAIL's unadvertised and privately archived mailing lists, csail-related, where Stallman posted comments.[1] Those comments (mostly about matters peripheral to the late Dr. Minsky) became known to MIT alumna, grad student, and mechanical engineer Selam Jie Gano, who is said to have been sent them by a subscriber. Ms. Gano was very incensed by Stallman's views that she asserted were, among other things, 'defending Epstein'. She publishes an essay on Medium entitled 'Remove Richard Stallman. And everyone else horrible in tech': https://medium.com/@selamie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec210794 She also provided what is asserted to be the entire thread to Vice.com's regular 'Motherboard' feature, which published a rather inaccurate piece based largely on her allegations, though providing a curated copy of the mailing list thread with all participant names except Stallman's blacked out. Article: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-… Direct link to Vice.com/Motherboard's curated thread copy: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-09132019142056-0001.html?em… Quite a number of other outfits have picked up the story in various ways. Stallman responded by objecting (with perfect justification, as far as I can see) that in no way was he defending Epstein; that this is just not at all what he said. The persons now running Software Freedom Conservancy took advantage of this squalor by 'calling for' Richard to retire from the free software organisation & movement he created (unsigned because they have _that_ little moral backbone). https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/sep/16/rms-does-not-speak-for-us/ There was also pressure for Richard to resign from his position at CSAIL (where ISTR he's been Visiting Professor). He has now done so, citing 'pressure on MIT' -- along with resigning as President and Board of Directors member at Free Software Foundation. IMO, this affair (e.g., things like the unsigned editorial from the jackals at Software Freedom Conservancy) has opportunism written all over it. One of the less-sucky bits of news/analysis (apparently just before things came to a head) was here: https://fudzilla.com/news/49393-stallman-defends-himself-over-epstein-comme… https://lwn.net/ have not yet caught up with events, and can be expected as usual to be guarded to a fault when they do. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/ has some discussion, but likewise has not caught up with events. [1] None of what I'm writing here imply endorsement of Richard's assertions in the mailing list thread, by the way. In fact, I very much do not concur with some, and would have, among other things, politely corrected his factually incorrect understanding of the legal concept of 'assault'. -- Cheers, Views expressed are my own. Rick Moen rick(a)linuxmafia.com McQ! (4x80)

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Re: [BALUG-Talk] 10 types
by aaronco36 20 Sep '19

20 Sep '19

Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote: There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand hexadecimal and f the rest. Also saw the following variant: There are 10 kinds of people in the world: the 1 who understands hexadecimal and f the rest. aaronco36(a)sdf.org ---

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Re: [BALUG-Talk] [BALUG-Announce] Re: BALUG: meeting: Tu 2019-09-17 & other BALUG News
by aaronco36 17 Sep '19

17 Sep '19

Another trending topic that tonight's BALUG meeting attendees might consider discussing in-person is that of o RMS's controversial resignation from FSF and from MIT CSAIL. See at least these earlier BALUG-Talk posts before this one, today, at ... - https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000174.html - https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000175.html - https://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk/2019-September/000176.html aaronco36(a)sdf.org ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 20:31:53 -0700 From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> > REMINDER: BALUG MEETING TOMORROW!: > From: "Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> > To: BALUG-Announce <balug-announce(a)lists.balug.org> > Subject: BALUG: meeting: Tu 2019-09-17 & other BALUG News > ------------------------------ > For our 2019-09-17 (3rd Tuesday) BALUG meeting: > We don't have a specific speaker/presentation lined up for this meeting, > however ... > Bring topics/questions you'd like to discuss - many interesting > discussions/meetings happen that way. > We may well also discuss some topical item(s) at least some of us have > been working on or poking about recently, e.g.: > o WordPress - site migrations, self-hosting, plugins, backup, ... > o DNS, DNSSEC, AAAA & CAA records, letencrypt.org & certs, etc. > o virtualization & live (host) migrations > o automatic web site updates, shell/scripting languages, crontab/at/... > o Lists, forums, & management thereof > o [L]UG management, dos/don'ts, venues, ...

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BALUG-Talk September 2019