“Imperfect systems infuriate hackers,” observes Steven Levy, another warning I should have listened to before climbing into the car with Stallman. “This is one reason why hackers generally hate driving cars-the system of randomly programmed red lights and oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamn unnecessary [Levy’s emphasis] that the impulse is to rearrange signs, open up traffic-light control boxes . . . redesign the entire system.”
You have got to be kidding… Say that to the civil engineers who constantly monitor, test and improve the timings on traffic lights, and then try to see out of both eyes when you walk away… I can think of few things more destructive in a system like that than handing control of it to a bunch of busybody amateurs who think they could do better. Actually, that kind of reminds me of something…
If you have to stop at a red light, you already failed. A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.
He is the guy who screwed up the process of negotiating authorship rights (which are abused by large corps at the expense of the authors and the public) by tying up those who would argue for the benefits of shorter protection period spans in the crazy GNU/crusade.
We ended up with useless GNU/crap and no improvements to the copyright model.
A world without Stallman would be a world without FOSS, with infinite copyright that is only owned by the largest corporations. A where Mafia$oft has 100% marketshare in software (possibly the only entity who could legally create it) and the world being run by a dictator a la Bill Gates.
Stallman saved us all by having the balls to fight for FREEDOM. He could have choose being crazy rich, but he fights for ethical and ideals over money.
Really, intresting. So a perfect car does what exactly when it predicts the light in front of it will turn red? What possible advantage would predicting a change in lights confer to such a car?
“A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.”
I never realised such computing power was available to Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler or Henry Ford. Cars still need drivers, you pillock.
A FOSS car? Save us all from that. We’d have to pedal it to make it go and get out and push the sides to get it around corners. We’d probably have to take the gearbox apart and reassemble it to get reverse gear, too.
“Without him the concept of FOSS might not exist today.”
“A world without Stallman would be a world without FOSS”
No. Someone else would have come along. Unfortunately for FOSS, they got Stallman.
“He could have choose being crazy rich, but he fights for ethical and ideals over money.”
Neither of the LISP machine companys that sprang from MIT wanted him, so he’s probably not that good a programmer (they caught him lifting code while on this crusade to release a “free” version of their software), and/or he’s that much of an arsehole that no-one wanted to work with him.
“randomly programmed red lights”, “oddly laid out one-way streets”, “A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.”
Yeah, this is all hubristic nonsense of the highest order, spoken by self-styled know-it-all who don’t. Simply put, you will not get a 'no-red-light’ system of anything. For one thing, people still tend to start and end work at near the same time each day, and if you live in a city where the roads can actually handle peak-capacity, you are one of the lucky few.
Well, to be fair, maybe Stallman doesn’t realize there are actually tons of research and studies on traffic management and congestion management. Those books and studies aren’t open-sourced so there’s no ebook torrent for him to download, and there’s no online wiki for him to read. But given that he is still pretty much a college student, maybe he could stop by the college library and avail himself to some of the literature on the subject.
“I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Stallman in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough”
Ok, I would understand if he said “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Heidi Klum in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough.” or “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Jessica Biel in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough.”, but “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with freaking Stallman in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough”? What’s next, making out under the sunset with grand Stallman?
No, seriously, what’s the point of the story? That Stallman has a short temper? That he will go crazy on you if you unwittingly do something he considers “stupid”?
Anyways, I too was surprised that he drives. I thought he avoided cars like he avoids cellphones (because they “track” him).
—— “If somebody says or does something stupid, he’ll look them in the eye and say, `That’s stupid.’”
Someone should look at Stallman in the eye and say, “That’s stupid”.
““What possible advantage would predicting a change in lights confer to such a car?”
It would not have to wait at a red light?
Any more inquiries for Captain Obvious? “
Wow. you changed my quote when the original is there for everyone to see for themselves. The way you changed it suggests you don’t understand the question – I asked you what difference it would make to a car if it knew the lights in front of it were about to change? Unless it can control the lights, it will still have to stop. Unless of course it changed to a another, slower route. But that would rather defeat the goal, no?
“Hubristic” is the perfect word for it- it’s just that kind of amateurishness that makes most FOSS such a steaming pile of crap.
Well, I’d love to see Adam’s magic car predict when an elderly pedestrian pushes the walk-signal activator and turns the light red. Will it look up his prescription history at Rite-Aid and try to determine when she runs out of arthritis pills and goes to walk to the pharmacy?
Here’s the thing about our road systems. They have to accommodate everyone, even when their goals conflict somewhat. Everybody can’t have a green light simultaneously. You drive along X street, I drive along Y avenue at the same time. They cross at a light. We both want to continue straight along our roads. We both can’t have a green light. Let’s throw in pedestrians, who want to get where they’re going without being killed, and residents who would rather not have you going down the street at 68 MPH, and this is why you have to prioritize and compromise.
I suspect that if RMS ever gets control of the traffic management facilities in Boston, he’d optimize it so he could get to MIT or wherever he goes just nicely, but ruin it for everybody else to has to commute and travel though Massachusetts.
Thinking it’d be possible to even build a traffic system with no red lights is ridiculous. Computer hardware and software mimics traffic, yet process still have to wait for each other to finish before continuing. This is some of the fundamental principles of threading, and, to a lesser extend, bandwidth.
To believe that you could make a car that would never hit a red light is like believing you can write a piece of software that will never have it’s thread blocked.
Actually, it’s one of the fundamental principles of scheduling.
But then, Adam has only ever encountered the tricky subject of scheduling at a Prestigious University (straight As — they must have Moody’s marking the exams for them) and through Linux. The latter, as we all know, has lousy schedulers.
Which one? There’s O(1), which was replaced by Completely Fair in the 2.6 kernel, and then sort of unreplaced and … at this point I’m confused.
The only things I know are that
(1) The CFS is some sort of hackfest based on packet schedulers, and according to Wikipedia1 it isn’t even very fair, having a bound of O(n) rather than O(log n). Given the typical number of processes (n) on a Linux system, this strikes me as significant. (2) Quite a lot of people don’t like it. (3) It is (laughably) designed to optimize for desktops/workstations. Why?
It also seems to be a shining example of the ninny “mechanism, not policy” mantra. Sorry, but when I run a desktop (or probably even a server these days) I want “policy, not mechanism.”
And what sort of an OS takes until 2.6 to get its scheduler right, anyhow?
“My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.”
Even when you agree with the principle, you feel soiled by the explicit, full-frontal, bearded sanctimony.
“Ireland proposes a law to require priests to tell the police if they hear a confession of sexual abuse of children.
“I think this goes too far. The privilege of communications with certain sorts of advisors, and not solely religious ones, is important for society. Once word of this law gets around, most of those guilty will simply not tell priests about this. Or they will confess anonymously in a church in a city they don’t live in.”
The man really does open himself up, doesn’t he?
I’m sorry, but I don’t regard the (spurious) confidentiality of the Confessional to be in any way at the same level as confidentially with your lawyer or with your psychologist. (I’m not even sure about the latter, but I’ll accept it.)
If somebody told me that they’d abused a child in the last ten years, then hell yes I’d report them.
Comments
Thanks for posting this.
“Imperfect systems infuriate hackers,” observes Steven Levy, another warning I should have listened to before climbing into the car with Stallman. “This is one reason why hackers generally hate driving cars-the system of randomly programmed red lights and oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamn unnecessary [Levy’s emphasis] that the impulse is to rearrange signs, open up traffic-light control boxes . . . redesign the entire system.”
SO TRUE!!
You’re welcome, little man.
Feel free to climb into a car with Stallman any time. I’m sure he’s perfectly safe.
I’m amazed they let Stallman drive…
That’s an awesome book in general. Stallman is a hero. Without him the concept of FOSS might not exist today.
“randomly programmed red lights”
RANDOMLY PROGRAMMED RED LIGHTS?
You have got to be kidding… Say that to the civil engineers who constantly monitor, test and improve the timings on traffic lights, and then try to see out of both eyes when you walk away… I can think of few things more destructive in a system like that than handing control of it to a bunch of busybody amateurs who think they could do better. Actually, that kind of reminds me of something…
If you have to stop at a red light, you already failed. A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.
“Stallman is a hero.”
Except that he isn’t.
He is the guy who screwed up the process of negotiating authorship rights (which are abused by large corps at the expense of the authors and the public) by tying up those who would argue for the benefits of shorter protection period spans in the crazy GNU/crusade.
We ended up with useless GNU/crap and no improvements to the copyright model.
A world without Stallman would be a world without FOSS, with infinite copyright that is only owned by the largest corporations. A where Mafia$oft has 100% marketshare in software (possibly the only entity who could legally create it) and the world being run by a dictator a la Bill Gates.
Stallman saved us all by having the balls to fight for FREEDOM. He could have choose being crazy rich, but he fights for ethical and ideals over money.
Really, intresting. So a perfect car does what exactly when it predicts the light in front of it will turn red? What possible advantage would predicting a change in lights confer to such a car?
FOSS. It is Faster Than Light. Even Light at the bottom end of the spectrum.
You know it makes sense.
“What possible advantage would predicting a change in lights confer to such a car?”
It would not have to wait at a red light?
Any more inquiries for Captain Obvious?
“A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.”
I never realised such computing power was available to Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler or Henry Ford. Cars still need drivers, you pillock.
A FOSS car? Save us all from that. We’d have to pedal it to make it go and get out and push the sides to get it around corners. We’d probably have to take the gearbox apart and reassemble it to get reverse gear, too.
“Without him the concept of FOSS might not exist today.”
“A world without Stallman would be a world without FOSS”
No. Someone else would have come along. Unfortunately for FOSS, they got Stallman.
“He could have choose being crazy rich, but he fights for ethical and ideals over money.”
Neither of the LISP machine companys that sprang from MIT wanted him, so he’s probably not that good a programmer (they caught him lifting code while on this crusade to release a “free” version of their software), and/or he’s that much of an arsehole that no-one wanted to work with him.
“Cars still need drivers”
No they don’t.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Fxp3HK6DI
Anything else, you “pillock”?
“randomly programmed red lights”, “oddly laid out one-way streets”, “A car designed by a computer scientist would be one that drives itself and never has to stop because it can perfectly predict red lights.”
Yeah, this is all hubristic nonsense of the highest order, spoken by self-styled know-it-all who don’t. Simply put, you will not get a 'no-red-light’ system of anything. For one thing, people still tend to start and end work at near the same time each day, and if you live in a city where the roads can actually handle peak-capacity, you are one of the lucky few.
Well, to be fair, maybe Stallman doesn’t realize there are actually tons of research and studies on traffic management and congestion management. Those books and studies aren’t open-sourced so there’s no ebook torrent for him to download, and there’s no online wiki for him to read. But given that he is still pretty much a college student, maybe he could stop by the college library and avail himself to some of the literature on the subject.
The guy who wrote this must be gay:
“I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Stallman in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough”
Ok, I would understand if he said “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Heidi Klum in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough.” or “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with Jessica Biel in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough.”, but “I find the fact that I am sitting in a car with freaking Stallman in the driver seat, in Maui no less, unbelievable enough”? What’s next, making out under the sunset with grand Stallman?
“The guy who wrote this must be gay”
Nah, I guess is that what Stallman is to this guy is what L. Ron Hubbard is to a Scientologist.
That also means that the guy is probably also a closet homosexual.
What is this I don’t even.
No, seriously, what’s the point of the story? That Stallman has a short temper? That he will go crazy on you if you unwittingly do something he considers “stupid”?
Anyways, I too was surprised that he drives. I thought he avoided cars like he avoids cellphones (because they “track” him).
——
“If somebody says or does something stupid, he’ll look them in the eye and say, `That’s stupid.’”
Someone should look at Stallman in the eye and say, “That’s stupid”.
““What possible advantage would predicting a change in lights confer to such a car?”
It would not have to wait at a red light?
Any more inquiries for Captain Obvious?
“
Wow. you changed my quote when the original is there for everyone to see for themselves. The way you changed it suggests you don’t understand the question – I asked you what difference it would make to a car if it knew the lights in front of it were about to change? Unless it can control the lights, it will still have to stop. Unless of course it changed to a another, slower route. But that would rather defeat the goal, no?
“Hubristic” is the perfect word for it- it’s just that kind of amateurishness that makes most FOSS such a steaming pile of crap.
http://bitquabit.com/post/one-which-i-call-out-hacker-news/
edit: oops I read the wrong part that you were quoting. The rest of my post still stands
Well, I’d love to see Adam’s magic car predict when an elderly pedestrian pushes the walk-signal activator and turns the light red. Will it look up his prescription history at Rite-Aid and try to determine when she runs out of arthritis pills and goes to walk to the pharmacy?
Here’s the thing about our road systems. They have to accommodate everyone, even when their goals conflict somewhat. Everybody can’t have a green light simultaneously. You drive along X street, I drive along Y avenue at the same time. They cross at a light. We both want to continue straight along our roads. We both can’t have a green light. Let’s throw in pedestrians, who want to get where they’re going without being killed, and residents who would rather not have you going down the street at 68 MPH, and this is why you have to prioritize and compromise.
I suspect that if RMS ever gets control of the traffic management facilities in Boston, he’d optimize it so he could get to MIT or wherever he goes just nicely, but ruin it for everybody else to has to commute and travel though Massachusetts.
Thinking it’d be possible to even build a traffic system with no red lights is ridiculous. Computer hardware and software mimics traffic, yet process still have to wait for each other to finish before continuing. This is some of the fundamental principles of threading, and, to a lesser extend, bandwidth.
To believe that you could make a car that would never hit a red light is like believing you can write a piece of software that will never have it’s thread blocked.
Actually, it’s one of the fundamental principles of scheduling.
But then, Adam has only ever encountered the tricky subject of scheduling at a Prestigious University (straight As — they must have Moody’s marking the exams for them) and through Linux. The latter, as we all know, has lousy schedulers.
Two of them.
Wasn’t the Linux scheduling system what Google replaced in Android and couldn’t push upstream because ESR said it wasn’t “in the spirit” or something?
Which one? There’s O(1), which was replaced by Completely Fair in the 2.6 kernel, and then sort of unreplaced and … at this point I’m confused.
The only things I know are that
(1) The CFS is some sort of hackfest based on packet schedulers, and according to Wikipedia1 it isn’t even very fair, having a bound of O(n) rather than O(log n). Given the typical number of processes (n) on a Linux system, this strikes me as significant.
(2) Quite a lot of people don’t like it.
(3) It is (laughably) designed to optimize for desktops/workstations. Why?
It also seems to be a shining example of the ninny “mechanism, not policy” mantra. Sorry, but when I run a desktop (or probably even a server these days) I want “policy, not mechanism.”
And what sort of an OS takes until 2.6 to get its scheduler right, anyhow?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Completely_Fair_Scheduler
“Anyways, I too was surprised that he drives. I thought he avoided cars like he avoids cellphones (because they “track” him).”
I spoke too soon: “Massachusetts plans to track car travel by scanning license plates from cop cars.”[1]
[1] http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#6_September_2011_(Massachusetts_plans)
“My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.”
Even when you agree with the principle, you feel soiled by the explicit, full-frontal, bearded sanctimony.
“Ireland proposes a law to require priests to tell the police if they hear a confession of sexual abuse of children.
“I think this goes too far. The privilege of communications with certain sorts of advisors, and not solely religious ones, is important for society. Once word of this law gets around, most of those guilty will simply not tell priests about this. Or they will confess anonymously in a church in a city they don’t live in.”
The man really does open himself up, doesn’t he?
I’m sorry, but I don’t regard the (spurious) confidentiality of the Confessional to be in any way at the same level as confidentially with your lawyer or with your psychologist. (I’m not even sure about the latter, but I’ll accept it.)
If somebody told me that they’d abused a child in the last ten years, then hell yes I’d report them.
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