Richard Stallman Facts

[topaz]

One of the newer geek memes seems to be coming up with new variants on Chuck Norris Facts:

Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
The chief export of Chuck Norris is Pain.
Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves.

etc.  For example, see Bruce Schneier Facts:

There are no finite state machines. There are only a series of states that Bruce Schneier allows to exist.
Bruce Schneier knows the state of Schroedinger's cat.
All infinite sets are countable -- by Bruce Schneier.
In a fight between Ron Rivest and Adi Shamir, the winner would be Bruce Schneier.

The latest addition I have found are Richard Stallman Facts, most of which are pretty stupid but some of which entertained me:

Whenever Richard Stallman points at a Windows computer, it segfaults.
Richard Stallman wrote a program that divides by zero.
Richard Stallman's compiler is afraid to report errors.
Richard Stallman doesn't write programs, they write themselves out of reverence.
Richard Stallman can make infinite loops end.
Richard Stallman's first words were actually syscalls.
Richard Stallman gets 9 bits to the byte.
Richard Stallman can tell you if your program will halt.
All your base are belong to Richard Stallman.

But maybe the best one of all, for pure subtlety:

Richard Stallman wrote Emacs.

Comments

[bethr.livejournal.com]

I've had significant contact with Mr. Stallman, back in the day, and here are some real ones:

Richard Stallman chews on his hair when he eats.
Richard Stallman has "pleasure cards" instead of business cards.
Richard Stallman is afraid of houseplants and large trees.
Richard Stallman, for whatever reason, still has a long line of lovely young geeky women ready to be his companion.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

He was our houseguest once. We're familiar with the concepts :-)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Richard Stallman may not touch my breasts.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/675jj/comments/

is hysterical (and is now the # 1 search return, but this post is still #3.)

[laura47.livejournal.com]

this post is the first google hit for "stallman facts"

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Don't know if it's real or a plant, but who cares: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/533096562.html

[lhn.livejournal.com]

A very similar ad is on stallman.org, minus the picture, so it appears to be real enough. I didn't realize he was only 54. (I've only been peripherally aware of him, but his persona seemed to be equal parts grand old man, cranky old guy, and crazy old dude as far back as the 80s.)

[fj.livejournal.com]

Richard Stallman doesn't browse the web, he has a wget daemon email him back the URL he sends.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

Richard Stallman's beard is made of parentheses.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think whether I met him. There was somebody really strange named Richard at MIT ca. 1978.

But there were probably a thousand really strange people named Richard at MIT ca. 1978.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Could you have met him at our place? He and a friend stayed over with us for 24 hours or so...

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I don't remember that. So probably not.

[sine.livejournal.com]

richard stallman is the emacsfather of a friend's child. an extremely geeky guy (he wrote a floating-point processor for intercal just for fun) and his gf had a baby girl four years ago, and her name is alice violet emacs (surname) (surname). they met him and mentioned this, and he appointed himself her emacsfather. (i think i've got the details straight).

[keyne.livejournal.com]

That's ... warped.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Wait. She's Vi Emacs?

[jss]

I am so pissed at myself for not seeing that until you pointed it out.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

If it helps, it took me some time to realize that "Alice" was probably chosen intentionally as well. She's always sending those encrypted messages to Bob, you know...

(I was side-tracked by wondering what AVE__ might spell.)

[sine.livejournal.com]

here's her father's email to stallman. i was wrong -- it's editorfather:

http://www.stallman.org/editorfather.html

Her
mother, Laura Hardyman, wanted to give her a middle name of Violet,
after one of the child's grandmothers. I told that, while I
appreciated the sentiment, I simply couldn't bring myself to agree to
giving her a middle name of Vi! Not, that is, unless she was given a
second middle name of Emacs for balance.

i said he was a big ol geek.

[khedron.livejournal.com]

That is definitely the geekiest thing I've read in a long time.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I'm not pissed. I'm disgusted with myself for not seeing it.

A friend of mine and former coworker used to live in the Virgin Islands, and because he still maintained a presence there he had the right to get a .vi domain for some nominal amount of money. I begged and pleaded with him to register emacs.vi. He wouldn't take me up on it.

[jss]

The solution is obvious: Instead of moving into the Commons you should move to the Virgin Islands and get the domain before moving back to MA.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

well, i worked for him for about 6 years.

i can tell you lots of (real) facts, some of which might be more (and others of which would definitely be less) amusing than the above...

[renniekins.livejournal.com]

Bruce Schneier once convinced me to eat jellyfish.


(he's a friend of friends...)

It tasted weird.