[rescue] MipsPro Compilers

[dave at cca.org]

chris at chrisbyrne.com writes:

>I met Richard Feynman once. He made me fel like a total fscking moron, and a
>complete genius at the same time. He's been a personal hero of mine ever
>since.

>Wherever you are Dick, we know you're laughing

>I've also met RMS on numerous occaisons none of which were more than vaguely
>computer related (I used to hang around MIT a lot). He's a seriously odd
>guy, certainly very intelligent and more than a bit insane with a healthy
>bit of arrogant self righteousness and larger piece of self loathing thrown
>in. Honestly I tend to think of him as the computer worlds version of Karl
>Marx. I.E. Engels had the more well formed ideas and was the better writer,
>and Lenin, Trotsky etc... actually did something about them, but Marx got
>his name on the door.

>And this whole GNU/Linux thing is bullshit. A good portion of modern UNIX
>tools are based on GNU work but he doesnt insist that all the other OS's
>have his name in front, just the one that gets all the media attention (and
>yes as far as he's concerned he IS the GNU project. It's his). Oh and Bill
>Joy doesnt insist that all BSD based *nixes bear his name now does he? but
>he did more for UNIX than Stallman ever did.

>I give the FSF and the GNU project massive amounts of credit. Without them
>we'd all probably be stuck with propietary OS's and proprietary tools. There
>is no way Linus would have written that kernel, or any of the free BSD based
>systems would have survived if there werent a large body of free
>applications available to use them, and the state of UNIX in general would
>be much worse off. But there is really no excuse for this blatant publicity
>grab over the past three years.

I'm a huge fan of the FSF, but I agree with everything you said.

My only personal encounter with RMS was that around a year ago I did a
nice abstract version of the FSF logo, and milled it into a couple of
brass plates. Very artsy, but I think they looked nice.  I sent him a
URL to a JPG and said if he liked it I'd send him one.  Since they are
really abstract, many (most?) people don't like them, so I wanted him
to see a photo first.

He didn't look at the JPG, just said, "Sure, send it!".

I sent it. He didn't like it. 

I could have sent it to someone else who would have liked it, if
he had bothered to look at the URL I sent him...

(Which was: http://www.cca.org/dave/images-art/gnu1.jpg)

But I'm actually typing this message on an NCD x terminal which is
cast-off (UNUSED!) FSF gear, so I like that... :-)

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
-------- "I prefer the ridiculous to the sublime." - James Chance ---------