[ale] How old is this list?
Tod Fassl
fassl.tod at gmail.com
Wed Feb 3 22:33:17 EST 2021
Man, you got it. I have yet to meet one of these kids who wasn't
delightful to work with. They just love math, analytics, computing. But
every one of them does the same annoying thing. "I'm working on an
implementation of Frackenholt's Theorum and I think I've discovered a
bug in the gnu C compiler. What? You haven't heard of Frackenholt's
Theorum? Wow. I thought everybody would have heard of Frackenholt's
Theorum."
No, see, you are a grad student in Math. If what you were doing was
common place, they wouldn't give you a Ph.D for that. 99.999999 percent
of the people on this planet have never heard of Frackenholt's Theorum.
And 99% of mathematicians haven't heard of it either. But the good news
is that there's no bug in the C compiler. Lets take a look at your code.
The good news for me is that most of the time, I don't have to
understand Frackenholt's Theorum to figure out what's wrong with their
code. But it's getting harder all the time. There are just so many more
people working on solving problems through math on computers. Once you
start looking for it, almost everything looks like a analytics problem.
The boundries have been pushed so hard in the past few years. It's
really exciting. It's of huge importance for the entire human race. But
it makes my job hard.
On 2/3/21 4:51 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> The 20-something geniuses are impressive. What they lack in experience
> they over compensate for with enthusiasm and an ability to nearly
> instantly absorb new tech that I have to sweat over.
>
> Your experience on the road underscores a need to replace 2-ton death
> machines with something better and well separated from living
> creatures in the high to medium density areas from urban to suburbs.
>
> I plan to use some of my retired time playing D&D and Magic The
> Gathering again. It's been too long.
>
> On February 3, 2021 12:24:13 PM EST, Tod Fassl via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
>
> I manage the research cluster for the math dept at a Big Ten
> university. I'm retiring partly because I can, partly because keeping up
> with 20-something math geniuses is too hard at my age, and because I'm
> blind. Being blind is a drag. I'm a distance runner, rock climber, very
> active in my community. But imagine your typical bad day -- spill coffee
> on yourself, miss your bus, 271 messages in your inbox, etc. Then
> imagine adding blindness to that. I've been run down by inattentive
> drivers twice in the last 2 years. I mean hit and knocked down by
> somebody on their phone when I was in a crosswalk with a green light. My
> guide dog lost some teeth the last time. I just had some road rash but
> the next time I had to get to my office, I found myself shaking when I
> had to cross at that intersection. I got over it eventually but stuff
> like that wears you down. I'm tired of being superman, of being fearless.
>
>
> I intend to work on open-source projects for the blind after I retire. I
> have a program where you can treat a normal keyboard like a braille
> keyboard and create brf (braille format) text files. I'm also working on
> the world's first fully blind accessible Dungeons & Dragon's module. And
> I'll probably work on bug fixes in the Linux screen reader, orca.
>
>
>
>
> On 2/2/21 11:48 AM, Jon "maddog" Hall via Ale wrote:
>
> The Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts were a group of mostly
> university students who loved (GNU). There are still web
> pages existent at ale.org that tell much of the history. The
> group founded in December of 1994, and in those days the first
> thing you did was form a mailing list, so I would assume that
> this list or something deeply connected to it started at that
> time. The Atlanta Linux Showcase started in 1996. If I
> remember correctly it was held on the Georgia Tech Campus the
> first year, at the Apparel Mart downtown in 1998, The Cobb
> Galleria in 1999 and 2000. In 2001 the original organizers had
> all graduated and were busy with jobs, buying houses, etc. and
> the USENIX organization took it over. USENIX made four
> gigantic mistakes: o they renamed it to the Annual Linux
> Showcase o they moved it to Oakland, California in November,
> 2001 o they tried to take a free (as in beer) event and charge
> 350 dollars for it o they allowed Osama Bin-Laden to crash
> airplanes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
> When USENIX had not sold a single reservation within three
> weeks of the event, I convinced them to make it free and about
> 300-400 people showed up, but USENIX never produced another
> Linux only show. The ale.org web site is still there, with
> just a few 404s. If you want to see what the original events
> were like there are even some pictures. It is nice that the
> mailing list is still active. The Linux group that I started
> in 1994 and ran for ten years also has a mailing list, but it
> is much less active than yours. Congratulations to Tod for
> thinking about retiring....I still have too much fun and I
> will retire with my mouse still clutched in my cold, dead
> hands. Peace and love, maddog
>
> On 02/02/2021 10:50 AM Paul Manno via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote: There are probably still some of us lurking here
> who were around when the list was first created and who
> helped create those Atlanta Linux Showcase shows. In
> either case, I am not going to even try to think about
> when I started using either Linux or UNIX... LoL On Tue,
> Feb 2, 2021 at 9:59 AM Larry Johnson via Ale < ale at ale.org
> <mailto:ale at ale.org>> wrote: My memory isn't great as I'm
> about to turn 70, but I first installed Linux in early
> 1995, and seem to remember signing up for the list not
> long thereafter. Which means I might have been a lurker
> for around 25 years. On 2/2/21 8:47 AM, Robert Reese via
> Ale wrote:
>
> Hi Tod, Monday, February 1, 2021, 12:19:30 PM, you wrote:
>
> Am I misremembering? Because I think I got on this
> list when I
>
> was in grad school which would have been in the mid-late
> 90s. The reason I'm asking is that I am thinking of
> retiring. I was a really old grad student and now I'm
> retiring early. Even so. Is it possible I've been on this
> list my entire professional career?
>
> I'd say it's entirely possible. I joined in the late
> 90's also. Cheers, Robert Reese~
>
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> Cheers, Robert~
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> --
> Computers amplify human error
> Super computers are really cool
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