@ -14,6 +14,41 @@ Some metrics traditionally used to measure bloat include **[lines of source code
Despite this there isn't any completely objective measure that would say "this software has exactly X % of bloat", bloat is something judged based on what we need/want, what tradeoffs we prefer etc. The answer to "how much bloat" there is depends on the answer to **"what really is bloat?"**. To answer this question most accurately we can't limit ourselves to simplifications such as [lines of code](loc.md) or number of package dependencies -- though these are very good estimates for most practical purposes, a more accurate insight is obtained by carefully asking what *burdens* and *difficulties* of ANY kind come with given technology, and also whether and how much of a necessary evil they are. Realize for example that if your software doesn't technically require package X to run or be compiled, package X may be [de facto](de_facto.md) required for your software to exist and work (e.g. a pure multiplayer game client won't have the server as a dependency, but it will be useless without a server, so de facto all bloat present in the server is now in a wider sense also the client's burden). So if you've found a program that's short and uses no libraries, you still have to check whether the language it is written in isn't bloated itself, whether the program relies on running on a complex platform that cannot be implemented without bloat, whether some highly complex piece of hardware (e.g. [GPU](gpu.md) or 8GB of [RAM](ram.md)) is required, whether it relies on some complex Internet service etc. You can probably best judge the amount of bloat most objectively by asking the following: if our current technology instantly disappeared, how hard would it be to make this piece of technology work again? This will inevitably lead you to investigating how hard it would be to implement all the dependencies etc.
For a quick overview let us average some data over time -- the table that follows shows growth of system requirements and sizes and averages them to give an estimate of bloat ratio with respect to the first row. Please note some data in the table may not be completely accurate, interpolation/extrapolation was used for missing values, we're only making an estimate after all, but still notice our computing resource usage already grew almost 200 times despite computers being generally slower and less responsive.
| year | avg. webpage size (KB) | Windows min RAM MB/CPU MHz/HDD MB | Debian min RAM MB/HDD MB | FPS game min RAM MB/CPU MHz/HDD MB | Blender (win zip KB) | % of base |
One of a very frequent questions you may hear a noob ask is **"How can bloat limit software freedom if such software has a [free](free_software.md) (or "[FOSS](foss.md)") [license](license.md)?"** Bloat [de-facto](de_facto.md) limits some of the four essential freedoms (to use, study, modify and share) required for a software to be free. A free license grants these freedoms legally, but if some of those freedoms are subsequently limited by other circumstances, the software becomes effectively less free. It is important to realize that **complexity itself goes against [freedom](freedom.md)** because a more complex system will inevitably reduce the number of people being able to execute freedoms such as modifying the software (the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a trivial program is much greater than the number of programmers being able to understand and modify a highly complex million [LOC](loc.md) program). This is not any made up reason, it is actually happening and many from the free software community try to address the issue, see e.g. [HyperbolaBSD](hyperbolabsd.md) policies on accepting packages which rejects a lot of popular "legally free" software on grounds of being bloat ([systemd](systemd.md), dbus, zstd, protobuf, [mono](mono.md), https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:incompatible_packages). As the number of people being able to execute the basic freedom drops, we're approaching the scenario in which the software is de-facto controlled by a small number of people who can (e.g. due to the cost) effectively study, modify and maintain the program -- and a program that is controlled by a small group of people (e.g. a corporation) is by definition [proprietary](proprietary.md). If there is a web browser that has a free license but you, a lone programmer, can't afford to study it, modify it significantly and maintain it, and your friends aren't able to do that either, when the only one who can practically do this is the developer of the browser himself and perhaps a few other rich corporations that can pay dozens of full time programmers, then such browser cannot be considered free as it won't be shaped to benefit you, the user, but rather the developer, a corporation.
**How much bloat can we tolerate?** We are basically trying to get the most for the least price. The following diagram attempts to give an answer:
@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ Some notable things feminists managed to achieve are:
- Men are pushed to forming fascist counter movement such as [MGTOW](mgtow.md).
- Men actually being nice to women, e.g. holding a door open for them, is seen as hostility.
- Actual good achievements of women are now dismissed because everyone supposes the success was fabricated as part of ever present feminist propaganda, hurting the few truly skilled women.
- Women look and behave like men.
- Women refuse to have children.
- Even if a woman has a child, she has it late and doesn't take proper care of it, all because she is supposed to pursue a career and compete with men.
- Women refuse to date men, men are depressed and commit [suicides](suicide.md) (see [incel](incel.md)).
@ -39,6 +40,6 @@ Some notable things feminists managed to achieve are:
{ [LMAO](lmao.md), **a supposed woman writer who won 1 million euro prize turned out to actually be three men writers**, see Carmen Mola :) Also the recent "historically first all female space walk" during which they managed to lose $100K worth of equipment :D ~drummyfish }
Part of the success of feminism is also [capitalism](capitalism.md) -- women with priviledges, e.g. those of not having to work as much as men, are not accepted under capitalism; everyone has to be exploited as much as possible, everyone has to be a work slave. Therefore capitalist propaganda promotes ideas such as "women not having to work is oppression by men and something a woman should be ashamed of", which is of course laughable, but with enough brainwashing anything can be established, even the most ridiculous and obvious bullshit.
Part of the success of feminism is also [capitalism](capitalism.md) -- women with privileges, e.g. those of not having to work as much as men, are not accepted under capitalism; everyone has to be exploited as much as possible, everyone has to be a work slave. Therefore capitalist propaganda promotes ideas such as "women not having to work is oppression by men and something a woman should be ashamed of", which is of course laughable, but with enough brainwashing anything can be established, even the most ridiculous and obvious bullshit.
Apparently in Korea feminists already practice segregation, they separate parking spots for men and women so as to prevent women bumping into men or meeting a man late at night because allegedly men are more aggressive and dangerous. Now this is pretty ridiculous, this is exactly the same as if they separated e.g. parking lots for black and white people because black people are statistically more often involved in crime, you wouldn't want to meet them at night. So, do we still want to pretend feminists are not fascist?
@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ The term *infinity* has two slightly distinct meanings:
It could be argued that potential infinity is really the reason for the existence of true, high level mathematics as we know it, as that is concerned with constructing mathematical [proofs](proof.md) -- such proofs are needed anywhere where there exist infinitely many possibilities, as if there was only a finite number of possibilities, we could simply enumerate and check them all without much thinking (e.g. with the help of a [computer](computer.md)). For example to confirm [Fermat's Last Theorem](fermats_last_theorem) ("for whole numbers and *n > 2* the equation *a^n + b^n = c^n* doesn't have a solution") we need a logical proof because there are infinitely many numbers; if there were only finitely many numbers, we could simply check them all and see if the theorem holds. So infinity, in a sense, is really what forces mathematicians to think.
**Is infinity a [number](number.md)?** Usually no, but it depends on the context. Infinity is not a [real number](real_number.md) (which we usually understand by the term "number") because that would break the nice [field](field.md) structure of real numbers, so the safe implicit answer to the question is no, infinity is not a traditional number, it is rather a concept closely related to numbers. However infinity may sometimes behave like a number and we may want to treat it so -- see for example [transfinite numbers](transfinite_number.md) that are used to work with infinite sets and the numbers can be thought of as "sort of infinity numbers", though they mostly live in a separate realm from the traditional numbers. Also for example the result of computing a [limit](limit.md) may be a real number but also infinity; so ultimately everything depends on our definition of what number is and we can declare infinity to be a number in some systems, for example there exists so called *extended real number line* which consists of real numbers and plus/minus infinity, which ARE treated as numbers.
**Is infinity a [number](number.md)?** Usually no, but it depends on the context. Infinity is not a [real number](real_number.md) (which we usually understand by the term "number"), nor does it belong to any traditionally used set of numbers like integers or rational numbers, because including infinity would break the mathematical structure of these sets (e.g. real numbers would seize to be a [field](field.md)), so the safe implicit answer to the question is no, infinity is not a traditional number, it is rather a concept closely related to numbers. However infinity may sometimes behave like a number and we may want to treat it so, so there also exist "special" number sets that include it -- see for example [transfinite numbers](transfinite_number.md) that are used to work with infinite sets and the numbers can be thought of as "sort of infinity numbers", but again, they are separated from the realm of the "traditional" numbers. This comes to play for example when computing [limits](limit.md) with which we want to be able to get infinity as a result. The first infinite ordinal number **[omega](omega.md)** is often seen as "the infinity number", but this always comes with asterisks, with infinities we have to start distinguishing between cardinal and ordinal numbers, we have to define all the basic operations again, check if they actually work, we also may have to give up some convenient assumptions we could use before as a tradeoff and so on. So ultimately everything depends on our definition of what number is and we can declare infinity to be a number in some systems, see also *extended real number line* and so on.
An important term related to the term *infinite* is **[infinitesimal](infinitesimal.md)**, or *infinitely small*, a concept very important e.g. for [calculus](calculus.md). While the "traditional" concept of infinity looks beyond the greatest numbers imaginable, the concept of infinitely small is about being able to divide (or "zoom in", see also [fractals](fractal.md)) without end; for example in the realm of [real numbers](real_number.md) we may start at number 1 and keep moving closer and closer towards zero without ever reaching the "smallest nonzero number", as no matter how close to zero we are, we may always divide our distance by two. A term also related to this is [limit](limit.md), which helps us explore values "infinitely close", "infinitely far" etc.
An important term related to the term *infinite* is **[infinitesimal](infinitesimal.md)**, or *infinitely small*, a concept very important e.g. for [calculus](calculus.md). While the "traditional" concept of infinity looks beyond the greatest numbers imaginable, the concept of infinitely small is about being able to divide (or "zoom in", see also [fractals](fractal.md)) without end, i.e. it appears while we start dividing by infinity -- this is important for [limits](limit.md) with which we explore values of functions that get "infinitely close" to some value without actually reaching it.
When treated as [cardinality](cardinality.md) (i.e. size of a [set](set.md)), we conclude that **there are many infinities, some larger than others**, for example there are infinitely many [rational numbers](rational_number.md) and infinitely many [real numbers](real_number.md), but in a sense there are more real numbers than rational ones -- this is very counter intuitive, but nevertheless was proven by [Georg Cantor](cantor.md) in 1874. He showed that it is possible to create a 1 to 1 pairing of natural numbers and rational numbers and so that these sets are of the same size -- he called this kind of infinity **[countable](countable.md)** -- then he showed it is not possible to make such pairing with real numbers and so that there are more real numbers than rational ones -- he called this kind of infinity **[uncountable](uncountable.md)**. Furthermore this hierarchy of "larger and larger infinities" goes on forever, as for any set we can always create a set with larger cardinality e.g. by taking its [power set](power_set.md) (a set of all subsets).
Maintenance is [shitty](shit.md) [work](work.md) whose goal is just to keep a piece of technology functioning without otherwise changing it. Maintenance is extremely expensive, tiresome and enslaves humans to machines -- we try to minimize maintenance cost as much as possible! Good programs should go to great lengths in effort to becoming highly [future-proof](future_proof.md) and [suckless](suckless.md) in order to avoid high maintenance cost.
Maintenance is [shitty](shit.md) [work](work.md) whose goal is just to keep a piece of technology functioning without otherwise changing it. Maintenance is extremely expensive, tiresome and enslaves humans to machines -- we try to minimize maintenance cost as much as possible! Good programs should go to great lengths in effort to becoming highly [future-proof](future_proof.md) and [suckless](suckless.md) in order to avoid high maintenance cost. Always [finish](finished.md) your programs so that you don't have to maintain them anymore.
Typical "[modern](modern.md)" capitalist/consumerist software (including most [free software](free_software)) is ridiculously bad at avoiding maintenance -- such programs will require one to many programmers maintaining it every single day and will become unrunnable in matter of months to years without this constant maintenance that just wastes time of great minds. I don't know what to say, this is just plainly fucked up.
Typical "[modern](modern.md)" capitalist/consumerist software (including most [free software](free_software)) is ridiculously bad at avoiding maintenance -- such programs will require one to many programmers maintaining it every single day and will become unrunnable in matter of months to years without this constant maintenance that just wastes time of great minds. I don't know what to say, this is just plainly fucked up. Modern mindset goes like this: you create it, you maintain it until you die, so as a programmer you are supposed to create just one, maybe two noteworthy programs during your lifetime. Never adopt this mindset -- create a finished program, send it to the world and move on.
{ I've seen so much talent wasted on maintenance. One example for all: I once asked the creator of my favorite libre game whether he had any other games because the one he made made me quite happy, he replied "no, maintaining this game already takes up all my time". That's the world we live in. Imagine a painter being able to create just one painting, a composer composing just one piece. ~drummyfish }
This is a list of myths and common misconceptions.
- **"[Java](java.md) is highly [portable](portability.md)"**; FALSE: While Java runs on several platforms, it's inefficiency and overhead of its extremely high level programming makes it unusable on devices with limited resources such as [embedded systems](embedded.md). Its [bloated](bloat.md) nature and high number of dependencies limit it to running on a few types of **mainstream** devices that are privileged to have the Java virtual machine implemented.
- **"[C](c.md) is not [portable](portability.md)"**; FALSE: C is extremely portable if written [correctly](lrs.md) (e.g. without dependencies), in fact it is probably the **most portable language in history** because firstly a C compiler is available for almost any platform -- a C compiler is one of the most essential things to have -- and secondly because C is extremely efficient and will run even on devices with extremely limited resources such as [embedded systems](embedded.md).
- **"[Capitalism](capitalism.md) fuels progress"**; FALSE: Monopolies that inevitably arise in capitalism want to forever prevent others from creating innovations that would make the subject of their business obsolete (e.g. fossil fuel businessmen will want to prevent electric cars). Of course, small businesses cannot compete with large corporations, therefore corporations win and keep the status quo. Small businesses can mostly only succeed in creating [bullshit](bullshit.md) that exists for its own sake (there is e.g. an online store selling literal shit) -- this we would not call a progress. Furthermore capitalism is against the important kind of progress such as social progress or education, because of course educated, independent and mature people would engage less in consumerism and even realize that capitalism is bad.
- **Feminism, LGBT, Antifa and similar are leftist movements**; FALSE: These are in fact [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md), fascist movements who don't care about true equality but rather privileges for a certain minority, just as the Italian fascist or Nazis did. This is proven by their [naming](name_matters.md) and means of operation such as violence, censorship, bullying etc. which are anti-equality.
- **FALSEHOOD: "[Java](java.md) is highly [portable](portability.md)"**: While Java runs on several platforms, it's inefficiency and overhead of its extremely high level programming makes it unusable on devices with limited resources such as [embedded systems](embedded.md). Its [bloated](bloat.md) nature and high number of dependencies limit it to running on a few types of **mainstream** devices that are privileged to have the Java virtual machine implemented.
- **FALSEHOOD: "[C](c.md) is not [portable](portability.md)"**: C is extremely portable if written [correctly](lrs.md) (e.g. without dependencies), in fact it is probably the **most portable language in history** because firstly a C compiler is available for almost any platform -- a C compiler is one of the most essential things to have -- and secondly because C is extremely efficient and will run even on devices with extremely limited resources such as [embedded systems](embedded.md).
- **FALSEHOOD: "[Capitalism](capitalism.md) fuels progress"**: Monopolies that inevitably arise in capitalism want to forever prevent others from creating innovations that would make the subject of their business obsolete (e.g. fossil fuel businessmen will want to prevent electric cars). Of course, small businesses cannot compete with large corporations, therefore corporations win and keep the status quo. Small businesses can mostly only succeed in creating [bullshit](bullshit.md) that exists for its own sake (there is e.g. an online store selling literal shit) -- this we would not call a progress. Furthermore capitalism is against the important kind of progress such as social progress or education, because of course educated, independent and mature people would engage less in consumerism and even realize that capitalism is bad.
- **FALSEHOOD: "Feminism, LGBT, Antifa and similar are leftist movements"**: These are in fact [pseudoleftist](pseudoleft.md), fascist movements who don't care about true equality but rather privileges for a certain minority, just as the Italian fascist or Nazis did. This is proven by their [naming](name_matters.md) and means of operation such as violence, censorship, bullying etc. which are anti-equality.
- **FALSEHOOD: "Professional programmers are good programmers"**: The opposite is true, professionals are those who get paid for writing the [shittiest code](capitalist_software.md) imaginable, their aim is to make things quickly, satisfy metrics, they destroy and rape technology for profit and adhere to corporate [bullshit](bullshit.md). No skill beyond literacy is needed to do what they do, that's why we call them code monkeys, they don't and even cannot see programming as [art](art.md), they see it as something to be exploited for making living. Actual good programmer cannot psychologically bear doing this, so you cannot be a good and professional programmer at the same time, not in [21st century](21st_century.md).
@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ There is a controversial 1994 book called *The Bell Curve* that deals with diffe
It is useful to know the **differences in intellect** between different races (no matter whether the cause is genetic, cultural or other), though cultural and other traits linked to races may also play a big role. Of course, it is important to keep in mind intelligence isn't one dimensional, it's one of the most complex and complicated concepts we can be dealing with (remember the famous test that revealed that chimpanzees greatly outperform humans at certain intellectual tasks such as remembering the order of numbers seen for a very short period of time) and that other traits than raw intelligence may be equally or more important for good performance in intellectual tasks, e.g. personality traits such as curiosity (imagine a fast CPU running shit software versus slower CPU running good software). We can't generally simplify to a single measure such as [IQ](iq.md) score (though it can still give some rough ideas, IQ is not absolutely useless), but we can measure performance at different tasks. Let intelligence here mean simply the ability to perform well in the area of given art. And of course, there are smart and stupid people in any race, the general statements we make are just about statistics and probabilities.
The smartest races seem to be [Jews](jew.md) and [Asians](asian.md) (also found so by the book *Bell Curve* and many old books). Asians have always been regarded as having superior intelligence and their [religions](religion.md) and [culture](culture.md) also seem to be the most advanced, with very complex ideas (as opposed to e.g. Christianity based on trivial rules to blindly follow), closest to [nonviolence](nonviolence.md), [socialism](socialism.md) and true [science](science.md) (e.g. [Buddhism](buddhism.md)). There is no question about the intelligence of Jews, the greatest thinkers of all times were Jewish ([Richard Stallman](rms.md), [Einstein](einstein.md), [Marx](marx.md), [Chomsky](chomsky.md), even [Jesus](jesus.md) and others) -- the man often regarded as the smartest human in history, William James Sidis, was a Jew. Jews have dominated despite being a minority, they seem to have a very creative intelligence and some of them decide to gain further edge by giving up their morality (i.e. becoming [capitalist](capitalism.md)), while Asians are more mechanically inclined -- they can learn a skill and bring it to perfection with an extremely deep study and dedication. Closely following is the general white race (which according to studies is also seen as most physically attractive by all races): white people have of course absolutely dominated history and there is always that one white guy at the top even in areas more dominated by other races (e.g. Eminem in rap, Carlsen in chess, Grubby in Warcraft 3, ...), however whites are still primitive in many ways ([individualism](individualism.md), [fascism](fascism.md), violence, simple religions and cults, e.g. that of economy, money, simplified commandments of Christianity etc.). The African black race known as the *negro* is one of the least intelligent according to basically all literature -- this makes a lot of sense, the race has been oppressed and living in harsh conditions for centuries and millennia and didn't get much chance to evolve towards good performance in intellectual tasks, quite the opposite, those who were physically fit rather than smart were probably more likely to survive and reproduce as slaves or jungle people (even if white people split from the blacks relatively recently, a rapid change in environment also leads to a rapid change in evolution, even that of intelligence). However the more primitive, less intelligent races (blacks, indians etc.) were found by some to e.g. have significantly faster reaction times, which sometimes may be an advantage -- this is suspected to be cause be a tradeoff; the "smarter" races perform more complex processing of input information (in terms of computers: having a longer processing [pipeline](pipeline.md)) and so it takes longer, i.e. the more primitive individual acts more impulsively and therefore quicker. The 1892 book *Hereditary Genius* says that the black race is *about two grades* below the white race (nowadays the gap will most likely be lower). Hispanics were found to perform somewhere in between the white and black people. There isn't so much info about other races such as the red race or Eskimos, but they're probably similarly intelligent to the black race. The above mentioned book *Hereditary Genius* gives an intelligence of the Australian aboriginal race *at least one grade below that of the negro*, making possibly the dumbest race of all. The brown races are kind of complicated, Indian people have Asian genes and showed a great intellectual potential, e.g. in [chess](chess.md), [math](math.md), philosophy (nonviolence inherently connected to India is the most intellectually advanced philosophy), and lately also [computer science](compsci.md) (even though many would argue that "[pajeets](pajeet.md)" are just trained coding monkeys, really their compsci "universities" are mostly a meme); they may be at the similar level to Hispanics.
The smartest races seem to be [Jews](jew.md) and [Asians](asian.md) (also found so by the book *Bell Curve* and many old books). Asians have always been regarded as having superior intelligence and their [religions](religion.md) and [culture](culture.md) also seem to be the most advanced, with very complex ideas (as opposed to e.g. Christianity based on trivial rules to blindly follow), closest to [nonviolence](nonviolence.md), [socialism](socialism.md) and true [science](science.md) (e.g. [Buddhism](buddhism.md)). There is no question about the intelligence of Jews, the greatest thinkers of all times were Jewish ([Richard Stallman](rms.md), [Einstein](einstein.md), [Marx](marx.md), Freud, [Chomsky](chomsky.md), even [Jesus](jesus.md) and others) -- the man often regarded as the smartest human in history, William James Sidis, was a Jew. Jews have dominated despite being a minority, they seem to have a very creative intelligence and some of them decide to gain further edge by giving up their morality (i.e. becoming [capitalist](capitalism.md)), while Asians are more mechanically inclined -- they can learn a skill and bring it to perfection with an extremely deep study and dedication. Closely following is the general white race (which according to studies is also seen as most physically attractive by all races): white people have of course absolutely dominated history and there is always that one white guy at the top even in areas more dominated by other races (e.g. Eminem in rap, Carlsen in chess, Grubby in Warcraft 3, ...), however whites are still primitive in many ways ([individualism](individualism.md), [fascism](fascism.md), violence, simple religions and cults, e.g. that of economy, money, simplified commandments of Christianity etc.). The African black race known as the *negro* is one of the least intelligent according to basically all literature -- this makes a lot of sense, the race has been oppressed and living in harsh conditions for centuries and millennia and didn't get much chance to evolve towards good performance in intellectual tasks, quite the opposite, those who were physically fit rather than smart were probably more likely to survive and reproduce as slaves or jungle people (even if white people split from the blacks relatively recently, a rapid change in environment also leads to a rapid change in evolution, even that of intelligence). However the more primitive, less intelligent races (blacks, indians etc.) were found by some to e.g. have significantly faster reaction times, which sometimes may be an advantage -- this is suspected to be cause be a tradeoff; the "smarter" races perform more complex processing of input information (in terms of computers: having a longer processing [pipeline](pipeline.md)) and so it takes longer, i.e. the more primitive individual acts more impulsively and therefore quicker. The 1892 book *Hereditary Genius* says that the black race is *about two grades* below the white race (nowadays the gap will most likely be lower). Hispanics were found to perform somewhere in between the white and black people. There isn't so much info about other races such as the red race or Eskimos, but they're probably similarly intelligent to the black race. The above mentioned book *Hereditary Genius* gives an intelligence of the Australian aboriginal race *at least one grade below that of the negro*, making possibly the dumbest race of all. The brown races are kind of complicated, Indian people have Asian genes and showed a great intellectual potential, e.g. in [chess](chess.md), [math](math.md), philosophy (nonviolence inherently connected to India is the most intellectually advanced philosophy), and lately also [computer science](compsci.md) (even though many would argue that "[pajeets](pajeet.md)" are just trained coding monkeys, really their compsci "universities" are mostly a meme); they may be at the similar level to Hispanics.
Increasing multiculturalism, globalization and mixing of the races will likely make all of this less and less relevant as time goes on -- races will blend greatly which may either help get rid of true [racism](racism.md), but also fuel it: many will oppose racial mixing, many will become more paranoid (as is already the case with Jews who are sometimes very hard to tell apart from whites) and eventually pure races will actually become a minority that may become target of reversed racism: a pale white guy in a room full of mixed people will stand out and likely get lynched (if not just for the fact of being different, then for social revenge). For now the differences in races are still greatly visible.
@ -36,3 +36,9 @@ Stallman has been critical of [capitalism](capitalism.md) though he probably isn
In the book *Free As In Freedom* it is also mentioned that **Stallman had aversion to passwords and secrecy in general** -- at MIT he used the username RMS with the same password so that other people could easily log in through his account and access [ARPANET](arpanet.md) (the predecessor of [Internet](internet.md)). Indeed, we applaud this, the "[security](security.md)" hysteria is killing the computing world.
As [anarchists](anarchism.md) we of course despise the idea of worshiping people, creating [heroes](hero_culture.md) and cults of personalities, but the enormous [historical](history.md) significance of Stallman has to be stressed as a plain and simple fact and though we may disagree with some of his methods and even opinions, it's as clear as it can be that he acted [selflessly](selflessness.md), in favor of all people -- something that can be said about very few, if anyone at all. Most other old time hackers, such as [Eric S. Ramyond](esr.md) and [Rob Pike](rob_pike.md) immediately abandoned all ideals of ethics and jumped the capitalist train with the first sight of money, Stallman stayed opposed to it, and for this he has our uttermost respect. Even though in our days his name is overshadowed in the mainstream by rich businessman and creators of commercially successful technology and even though we ourselves disagree with Stallman on some points, in the future [history](history.md) may well see Stallman as perhaps the greatest man of the software era, and rightfully so. Stallman isn't a mere creator of a commercially successful software product or a successful politician, he is an extremely morally strong philosopher, a great example to others, a prophet, someone who sees the truth and shows it to people -- he brilliantly foresaw the course of history and quickly defined ethics needed for the new era of mass available programmable computers at the right time, before the hammer hit. And not only that, he also basically alone established this ethics as a standard IN SPITE of all the world's [corporations](corporation.md) [fighting](fight_culture.md) back, in a field that back then was relatively obscure, unpopular in mainstream and hence not much supported by any mass media. He is also extremely unique in not pursuing self interest, in TRULY living his own philosophy, dedicating his whole life to his cause and refusing to give in even partially. All of this is at much higher level than simply becoming successful and famous within the contemporary capitalist system, his life effort is pure, true and timeless, unlike things achieved by pieces of shit such as [Steve Jobs](steve_jobs.md).
