Rms has his bag stolen in Argentina
devthought.com
devthought.com
Edit: you guys might be right about the troll thing. I'm terribly confused now as I must confess I agree with a troll..
Perhaps that shouldn't be necessary, but if you rank spreading certain opinions higher than being able to spread them in a certain way, then you'll have to choose. I usually choose adjusting my communication to be more effective in spreading the opinion.
Of course some people can't be reasoned with, but if you communicate effectively, you will find most people can be reasoned with.
I must admit that I relax a little when I enter an academic environment.
I have one of those wallets that have little straps that hook over your belt, and then you put the wallet inside your trousers. Works for me.
That said, I do like the idea (suggested elsewhere) of pooling some money to get him a new one right away.
The article is not about rms, but about the venue where the celebrity got robbed.
I believe he is currently traveling through South America to give FOSS talks in many universities. I believe part of the issue is that because of this very details, it puts an end to his trip which has been rough and marked by health issues.
What I don't understand is why the post's author dares mentioning how RMS reacted. A bit of decency is always a nice thing to have, not to mention due respect.
Having personally met RMS and knowing other persons that have the same type of condition, I would say that those people need some respect in the way they handle emotions and other social artifacts.
Simply throwing a verb doesn't give enough depth for a correct understanding. In that regard, it's disrespectful.
It seems that his laptop was also stolen, which led to the cancelling of some lectures. That to me would have been a better article headline (i.e. "rms lectures cancelled due to computer theft).
"How can Richard Stallman getting his bag stolen be that interesting a story?", I thought, as I read the headline. "I guess I should read the story, there must be, in the details, some more important point about how the bag was stolen or what it contains that has broader relevance!"
... turns out, nope. He just had his bag stolen. Y'know, that sucks and all, but I'm still not sure why I'm supposed to care. Richard Stallman didn't care when I got my bag stolen.
Would Steve Jobs have come to any of our funerals? Doubtful. That didn't stop literally the entire front page from being filled with articles about his passing.
They're celebrities in our little community. For better or worse, people want to know when painful, wonderful or otherwise-interesting things happen to celebrities.
Check out a copy of "People" or another celebrity gossip magazine next time you're at the grocery store. Same thing, but for a different community of people.
You may be immune to celebrity-fascination, but most people aren't and that's just how the world is. Get over it.
Edit: What the heck? What's wrong with what I suggested?
Here's one, though I'm not sure if it's the correct version: http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.htm...
Also I found it on Amazon, with Prime: http://www.amazon.com/Screen-Lemote-Yeeloong-8101_B-Netbook/... $450.
If one of the known / trusted HN elders decides to pool the money, this seems doable.
Now before some might get the wrong idea (that it would be easy to be an rms if financial worries were taken care of), rms had a job teaching before he got the award and was already doing these speeches.
As an aside, in my opinion it makes his dedication even more admirable. It would be easy for him to decide that he's done enough for Free Software, gets himself a nice seaside property to retire on and tend to his RSI, instead of speaking around the world, getting mocked and willfully misrepresented in the press, and apparently get his stuff stolen. But he doesn't, because his work is important. He's quite the character, warts and all, but he does have character.
Shouldn't a laptop like the Thinkpad X60 or T60 with Coreboot installed fulfill that requirement? They are supported according to the coreboot site.
Are there any other potential problems I'm not thinking of? Possibly a firmware issue with the Intel chipset?
Oh well. The interview is from 2010 though.
I disagree, I think his evangelism is dangerous and offensive. He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.
Now building a business with these constraint is not — as far as I know — a solved business model in the general case, but saying that RMS wants developers to "give their product for free" is a complete and absolute misrepresentation of his position.
My option is that RMS is going to far in his opposition to commercial software and in his zeal for freedom he sometimes promotes choices which I (and many others) disagree with. But his contributions are still great, despite all the disagreement.
Which is completely irrelevant to what you quoted.
> He goes around telling programmers that they should give their code for free
So I take it you have never looked at his writing or heart him speak, and only repeat fifth-hand earsay? Because if there's one thing RMS does not do it's tell people they should "give their code for free". RMS has (and talks about) issues with freedom-less software, not with paid software.
> and he belittles anyone who doesn't follow his advice.
Meanwhile you call him and his ideals "dangerous" and "offensive" for what you imagine are disagreements with your position?
I hope RMS has an enrypted backup of his data on his home server. It isn't that hard to do, even if you care deeply about privacy and freedom.
As for the rest of the stuff ... I really hope that the organizers can obtain the medicine for him in short order. It's the least they can do. The stolen passport does slow him down, but he should contact the nearest embassy or consulate and they can help him:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/emergencies/lostpassport...
The stolen laptop sadly is unlikely to be recovered. The conference organizers should buy one for him.
Does RMS actually have any money saved up, or just the bare essentials? A public figure like that should make quite a decent amount of money from speaking engagements.
Words fail me.
The bigger concern is the medicine. How does that work with prescription medicine outside the US?
The laptop is rather unique, so if someone pawned it you would think it could be hunted down.
Passport are simple to replace but Visas simply aren't replaced at all. He could get new Visas under no delay, unfortunately I don't think he has the right connections for that kind of "fast lane" service.
Such a shame.
If he'd actuallyh been robbed (as the headline stated) concern for his physical well-being would be entirely appropriate. That's what I meant by my comment.
He glared at me, I don't know how long.
Finally, "I haven't got a thousand here," he said.
"Name a compromise figure," I said.
After another pause, "It's larceny."
"Not if it's cash-and-carry, Charlie. So, call it."
"I might have five hundred in my safe."
"Get it."
Anyway, in the above case Corwin ("I") does in fact have a gun pointed at the doctor ("he") -- albeit the doctor's own gun -- and arguably that's dangerous enough that it goes from being "larceny" to outright robbery.
The word "rob" is particularly useful because lets the victim be used as the direct object. If you want to emphasize RMS as a victim of personal theft, that's the verb to use.
The baseball example is a figure of speech, not a description of an actual crime. This was a real crime.
Which is to say that I think he's probably mentally stable, but a bit strange by everyday standards.
That's a bit of a leap of faith from a second hand account from a comment on a blog that related the event. I think it's safer to assume for now that the person who made the comment is not a native speaker (due to his name, and, obviously, being present at the talk) and is describing someone acting out the "stupid, stupid! stupid. How could I be so careless!" routine combined with hitting your own head, which I believe is a fairly common way to express exasperation, as "punching himself in the head".
[...] when he's punching himself in the head publicly you
can't help but wonder if maybe we should reevaluate our
faith in his ideas [...]
There is a quote from the West Wing that rings in my ears whenever a public figure shows some kind of flaw and someone like you inevitably demands that flaw invalidates everything they stand for:
Because we’re all broken, every single one of us, and yet we pretend that we’re not. We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to this fantasy that there’s this perfect life and that our leaders should embody it. But if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plane than the rest of us, well we’re just asking to be deceived.
I'm not sure with whom or where you hang out, but I'd say Stallman is one of the most controversial figures in the world of software. Even people who mostly agree with his viewpoints often say he takes it too far.
FWIW, I don't think the author is a native speaker of English, and may mean something closer to "facepalm" than "beating the shit out of himself".
I had $0 in cash on me. It was quite frightening, even in one of the richest cities in world.
Everything worked out in the end, but it was the most I've been stressed out in a while.
(The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - G. B. Shaw)
It's interesting that he was at a conference, presumably speaking about what he always speaks about.
This means his bag and things were to advance his mission, which is kind of to advance a 'commons'.
it nicely illustrate's RMS's philosophy (gpl). Even though he was speaking to advance the public good, a private enterprizer took his bag, removing it from the commons he worked so hard to advance.
RMS's philosophy, code, and bags require the protection of law.
A serious question: what's the advantage of physical identity cards over digitally-signed documents + two-factor?
Medicine has no backup, but you can buy some more.
A passport has no backup. Fortunately, embassies can issue emergency passports, but Visas are lost.
If anything, I'm sure he was not sad for his laptop.
However, no backup, be it cloud-based or not, can get you back your stolen passport, money, or medicine. So I think you may be a bit out of line implying that RMS is crying merely over something that he could have saved if only he had been willing to compromise his deeply-held beliefs.
(Even the laptop itself may have been quite difficult to obtain, since if I recall correctly, RMS uses a specific laptop that has a completely free software stack, including firmware and such.)