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Stallman resigns under pressure from CSAIL and FSF.

by Dan Cross

Richard Stallman, known colloquially as 'RMS', has resigned from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Free Software Foundation, after making comments defending Jeffrey Epstein, the late sexual predator. Those comments sparked wide-spread outrage across the MIT community and beyond. https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September_2019_(Resignat… https://www.fsf.org/news/richard-m-stallman-resigns - Dan C.

5 years, 9 months

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Re: [COFF] Stallman resigns under pressure from CSAIL and FSF.

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Larry McVoy > If it really was just about his views, his views have been consistent > for a long time and MIT didn't care. The outrage over Epstein is so un-balanced I have a strong desire to vomit. Not that I have any feeling at all that Epstein didn't deserve what he got. My disgust is that Roman Polanksi, who did exactly the same thing to a 13-year old, was defended and lionized by a long list of entertainment world figures after his arrest in Switzerland - many of whom are now falling all over themselves to condemn Epstein. If and when the mob howling over Epstein takes out after Polanki in the exact same manner, then I'll take them seriously. Until then, they're a bunch of virtue-signalling cretins. Noel

5 years, 9 months

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Eternal September

by Dave Horsfall

'Twas back in 1993 when AOL joined USENET (I don't have an exact date) and the joint was never the same since... Me too! These days, of course, it's been taken over by the spammer scum. -- Dave

5 years, 10 months

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Happy birthday, John Mauchly!

by Dave Horsfall

We gained computer pioneer John Mauchly on this day in 1907; he was best known as the co-inventor of ENIAC, one of the world's first computers. -- Dave

5 years, 10 months

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Minsky and Epstein

by John P. Linderman

Two names I never expected to appear in one article. <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/business/media/mit-jeffrey-epstein.html?…> Very sad, whether true or not. I knew Minsky in the way students know their professors. He was on my thesis committee. I liked and admired him.

5 years, 10 months

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Happy birthday, Marvin Minsky!

by Dave Horsfall

We gained Marvin Minsky on this day in 1927; he was an AI researcher, computer scientist, invented neural networks etc, and is now thought to be cryogenically preserved. -- Dave

5 years, 11 months

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Happy birthday, WWW!

by Dave Horsfall

In 1991 Tim Berners-Lee outlined plans for something he called the "world wide web". -- Dave

5 years, 11 months

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Harvard Mk I

by Dave Horsfall

Dedicated on this day in 1944, it was conceived by Dr. Howard Aiken; the Wikipedia entry for it has a fascinating history, and it's a wonder that it worked at all! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I -- Dave

5 years, 11 months

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In Memoriam: Edsger Dijkstra, and happy birthday Jon Postel!

by Dave Horsfall

We lost computer pioneer Edsger Dijkstra in 2002; he gave us ALGOL, structured programming, semaphores, and ranted against the GOTO statement (much to the distress of the Fortranites and their spaghetti coding). Oh, and a certain Prof. Goto used to complain that everybody wanted to eliminate him :-) However, we gained Jon Postel in 1943; with umpteen RFCs to his name, he could pretty much be described as the Father of the Internet (but note that he edited most of the RFCs, not authored them, but deserves credit all the same). -- Dave

5 years, 11 months

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In memoriam: Per Brinch Hansen

by Dave Horsfall

We lost him in 2007; he was known for working with monitors and concurrent programming etc, and authored "Operating System Principles" and "The Architecture of Concurrent Programs". -- Dave

5 years, 11 months

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