Richard Stallman has resigned from the Free Software Foundation and MIT

Meanwhile, everyone conveniently "forgets" that Donald Trump, "Prince" Philip and Stephen Hawking (among others) have all been accused of associating with Jeffrey Epstein to some degree... Most of them on a close, regular basis and some of them - notably "Prince" Philip and Donald Trump - have repeatedly had accusations of sexual misconduct made against them, often in the company of or courtesy of an arrangement by Jeffrey Epstein.

I haven't read Stallman's latest comments personally, but my understanding is that one of the comments which got him in hot water was a comment that suggested some of these chicks went into these situations of their own free will... Which is a perfectly valid - and very likely accurate - point (like it or not, most 12+ year old children of both sexes have a much better understanding of sex than they should, at least these days!).

And why is no one asking where the parents were, when these "vulnerable" chicks were flying around the world screwing rich and powerful people / "royalty"? If my daughter was that age and was flying around with a "prince" ad some wealthy dude in a private jet, I'd expect people to be asking some awfully big questions!

Couple of corrections:
--It's not prince Philip. It's prince Andrew, the Queen's younger son, prince Charles' younger brother. His niche in the family seems to be operating as a sort of trade ambassador for Britain, hobnobbing with arms dealers and whatnot; I've always thought he was on the sleazy side.
--Your understanding of the comments is incorrect. The core one that got him in hot water has been quoted here a couple of times:

We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him [Minsky] as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

I have now looked at the email chain some; he says further

We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex -- by Epstein. She was being harmed. But the details do affect whether, and to what extent, Minsky was responsible for that.

So what he was saying was, it's likely a girl would have been faking being willing even though she most likely wasn't actually willing. He was not suggesting Epstein wasn't coercing them. To the contrary, he says flat out that Epstein was.

You do seem to be suggesting that; I don't agree. The way it seems to have gone is, this stylish obviously rich woman would find these dirt poor kids and recruit them on the basis of being basically eye candy/service staff. It's not like there aren't plenty of people who do that with no sex attached. Then once they were on sites, usually distant from their homes and isolated, they'd be expected to do what the other kids were doing; Darth Epstein would be, in a more jolly way than Vader, "I am altering the deal; pray I don't alter it any further." It's not that hard to pressure most people once they're cut off and alone, let alone kids.
Presumably most of them didn't tell their parents just what was going down, just that they were making good (by the standards of dirt poor families) money. It's possible some parents made a stink and successfully got their kids back. It's possible some parents tried and were stonewalled, and if you're a poor person how are you going to expect it to play out if you try to get the cops to go after a billionaire? But sure, some of those parents probably sucked. Some of those parents were probably in jail. Not sure what makes that relevant though--what, it's OK if bad things happen to kids as long as they have bad parents? Predators aren't culpable, it's their victims' fault for not having better parents to defend them? I don't get it.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 September 2019 at 5:10 pm UTC

We truly live in a f*cked up world. Just like in the Orwell game. Destroy someone by publicizing a statement out of context. So easy!

2 + 2 = 5

Slightly off-topic, but ha, you should come to Australia... "1984" is alive and well here.

The way it seems to have gone is, this stylish obviously rich woman would find these dirt poor kids and recruit them on the basis of being basically eye candy/service staff. It's not like there aren't plenty of people who do that with no sex attached. Then once they were on sites, usually distant from their homes and isolated, they'd be expected to do what the other kids were doing; Darth Epstein would be, in a more jolly way than Vader, "I am altering the deal; pray I don't alter it any further." It's not that hard to pressure most people once they're cut off and alone, let alone kids.
Presumably most of them didn't tell their parents just what was going down, just that they were making good (by the standards of dirt poor families) money. It's possible some parents made a stink and successfully got their kids back. It's possible some parents tried and were stonewalled, and if you're a poor person how are you going to expect it to play out if you try to get the cops to go after a billionaire? But sure, some of those parents probably sucked. Some of those parents were probably in jail. Not sure what makes that relevant though--what, it's OK if bad things happen to kids as long as they have bad parents? Predators aren't culpable, it's their victims' fault for not having better parents to defend them? I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting the blame back onto the victims here and whilst we will never be privvy to the full facts, I do believe that at least some of these girls were carefully "encouraged" to participate in sexual misconduct with Epstein and his buddies, if not all of them (the girls)... With so much money and power at your disposal, I suspect it would be pretty easy to nudge people in the "right" direction.

My point that I was saying (at least for that part of my post), is that there are some pretty valid questions which need to be asked, and people are conveniently refusing to seek answers and / or are ignore these facts in favor of the little issues - such as some geek sitting at a desk who should know better than to comment on a highly controversial topic in his position...

Regarding the "parents" thing, I think it is unfair to blanket them all as being in jail or having abandoned these kids and whatnot, though that may be the case for some of them... In saying that, as I explained to my wife, the most likely scenario is that a lot of these parents simply "turned a blind eye" in hopes of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and the elite - it would not be the first time a parent (from any class of society) has neglected their moral and legal responsibilities in favor of such an outcome.

As a father, the thought of that makes me cringe, but sadly, it happens all the time, and the Epstein thing is not even that bad compared to what some "parents" do in the hopes of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and the elite.

The other issue is, and this is a tricky one, is the fact that a lot of people are simply ignoring the rather serious accusations against "Prince" Andrew, Donald Trump and various others who are wealthy and / or powerful...

What makes it "tricky"?

Well, look at his suicide... The entire thing is surrounded by "facts" that just don't match up, despite the fact that he was a high-profile prisoner in one of the most "secure" prisons in America.

And the fact that everyone is completely avoiding the topic of Epstein's buddies being participants in some or all of Epstein's activities, instead focussing on the smaller issues, such as a geek / academic who was silly enough to voice some controversial opinions about an already controversial topic.

It would be unrealistic to expect anything to come out of any investigation against Epstein's long list of wealthy and powerful buddies - this stuff happens all the time (you're kidding yourself if you think the wealthy / elite don't do this all the time!) and they don't get away with it for no reason... But that doesn't mean everyone needs to ignore the fact that this sort of thing was happening.


Last edited by Cyba.Cowboy on 19 September 2019 at 6:23 am UTC

We truly live in a f*cked up world. Just like in the Orwell game. Destroy someone by publicizing a statement out of context. So easy!

2 + 2 = 5

Slightly off-topic, but ha, you should come to Australia... "1984" is alive and well here.

The way it seems to have gone is, this stylish obviously rich woman would find these dirt poor kids and recruit them on the basis of being basically eye candy/service staff. It's not like there aren't plenty of people who do that with no sex attached. Then once they were on sites, usually distant from their homes and isolated, they'd be expected to do what the other kids were doing; Darth Epstein would be, in a more jolly way than Vader, "I am altering the deal; pray I don't alter it any further." It's not that hard to pressure most people once they're cut off and alone, let alone kids.
Presumably most of them didn't tell their parents just what was going down, just that they were making good (by the standards of dirt poor families) money. It's possible some parents made a stink and successfully got their kids back. It's possible some parents tried and were stonewalled, and if you're a poor person how are you going to expect it to play out if you try to get the cops to go after a billionaire? But sure, some of those parents probably sucked. Some of those parents were probably in jail. Not sure what makes that relevant though--what, it's OK if bad things happen to kids as long as they have bad parents? Predators aren't culpable, it's their victims' fault for not having better parents to defend them? I don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting the blame back onto the victims here and whilst we will never be privvy to the full facts, I do believe that at least some of these girls were carefully "encouraged" to participate in sexual misconduct with Epstein and his buddies, if not all of them (the girls)... With so much money and power at your disposal, I suspect it would be pretty easy to nudge people in the "right" direction.

My point that I was saying (at least for that part of my post), is that there are some pretty valid questions which need to be asked, and people are conveniently refusing to seek answers and / or are ignore these facts in favor of the little issues - such as some geek sitting at a desk who should know better than to comment on a highly controversial topic in his position...

Regarding the "parents" thing, I think it is unfair to blanket them all as being in jail or having abandoned these kids and whatnot, though that may be the case for some of them... In saying that, as I explained to my wife, the most likely scenario is that a lot of these parents simply "turned a blind eye" in hopes of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and the elite - it would not be the first time a parent (from any class of society) has neglected their moral and legal responsibilities in favor of such an outcome.

As a father, the thought of that makes me cringe, but sadly, it happens all the time, and the Epstein thing is not even that bad compared to what some "parents" do in the hopes of rubbing shoulders with the wealthy and the elite.

The other issue is, and this is a tricky one, is the fact that a lot of people are simply ignoring the rather serious accusations against "Prince" Andrew, Donald Trump and various others who are wealthy and / or powerful...

What makes it "tricky"?

Well, look at his suicide... The entire thing is surrounded by "facts" that just don't match up, despite the fact that he was a high-profile prisoner in one of the most "secure" prisons in America.

And the fact that everyone is completely avoiding the topic of Epstein's buddies being participants in some or all of Epstein's activities, instead focussing on the smaller issues, such as a geek / academic who was silly enough to voice some controversial opinions about an already controversial topic.

It would be unrealistic to expect anything to come out of any investigation against Epstein's long list of wealthy and powerful buddies - this stuff happens all the time (you're kidding yourself if you think the wealthy / elite don't do this all the time!) and they don't get away with it for no reason... But that doesn't mean everyone needs to ignore the fact that this sort of thing was happening.

I tend to view Epstein as a symptom of wider problems. And yeah, consider that he was doing his crap for years, getting a rep for his parties and so on, and as far as I can make out none of the attendees ever denounced him. Too much concentrated wealth and power gives those wealthy and powerful the ability to control other people, too much distance between upper classes and the rest makes those upper classes dehumanize the rest of us. The concentration is getting higher, the distance is getting larger. So Epstein types will be out there doing that kind of thing because they can, and because they don't see us as human but just something to be exploited. Consider the phrase "human resources" and think about what it actually means. Epstein individually was just the tip of the iceberg.

How can I filter out these kind of not (really) gaming related topics?

I filter out topics I'm not interested in by reading the article's title. Works pretty well.

Yeah sure, but I'm asking specifically about the control panel settings.

I think if Liam added a NON-GAMING tag, and added it to articles like this one, then it would solve Dubigrasi's issue (Not wishing to view non-gaming articles.)

Yes, that's basically what I asked for.
Through the use of tags, any reader of this site can adjust the content of what he wants/needs to see.
Yeah sure, you can choose not to read what you don't need. But the functionality is there for a reason, and is already used for other topics.
You're an AMD user and not interested of Nvidia drivers/software related news?...use the Nvidia tag to filter out those news.
You do only native gaming and don't wanna hear about Proton?...use the SteamPlay tag, and so on.
Or of course, you can use tags to specifically search for the same subjects. Is just a handy option to have.

So I don't think is an unreasonable request for a tag in this case. What actually the tag name would be, that's up to Liam.

Such discussion and requests need to be made in the forum where it can be seen properly, not buried in the article comments please.

Such discussion and requests need to be made in the forum where it can be seen properly, not buried in the article comments please.

Ok, thanks, I'll do that.

> Frankly, I think that's tin-foil hat level stuff there.

Ohh Liam... poor guy. I give you Red Hat:

Red Hate

Red Hat urges the FSF board to seize the opportunity during its current leadership succession by appointing a president and members of its board that are more diverse, including from a national, racial and gender perspective.

Wolves be a circlin kids. Lot of unemployed ex management types who are used to being overpaid PHB's smell blood.

You cut out all context, so I'll put it back in:
"I simply can't understand how it is possible that such companies like MS or Apple can even get a seat at FSF?! Something bad is going on IMHO."

So, how does what you linked refer in any way, shape or form to "such companies like MS or Apple can even get a seat at FSF"? It's about diversity in the FSF.

It took a characterization of his remarks in a disturbing twisted way to finally get rid of him.
But his real remarks, and harassment should have been enough to get rid of him 20 years ago.
It's been more than 20 years of disturbing sexual, harassing, and disparaging remarks made by him.
Honestly never should have gotten to this point, he should have been removed and fired many many years ago.

The truly disturbing part is that people, are acting like the BS that went down in the news cycle means he did nothing wrong.
It's okay to appreciate his work and devotion to the Free Software Movement, and still not want him to be celebrated due to his sexual harassment, and disturbing ideas that got ignored for years due to the culture he was a part of.

It took a characterization of his remarks in a disturbing twisted way to finally get rid of him.
But his real remarks, and harassment should have been enough to get rid of him 20 years ago.
It's been more than 20 years of disturbing sexual, harassing, and disparaging remarks made by him.
Honestly never should have gotten to this point, he should have been removed and fired many many years ago.

The truly disturbing part is that people, are acting like the BS that went down in the news cycle means he did nothing wrong.
It's okay to appreciate his work and devotion to the Free Software Movement, and still not want him to be celebrated due to his sexual harassment, and disturbing ideas that got ignored for years due to the culture he was a part of.

RMS harassed other people? What did he do to others? Is there any source on that? And what do you mean with "culture he was part of"? What kind of culture?

Another victim of cancel culture...

Nobody who uses the phrase "cancel culture" with a straight face can be taken seriously. Off to the kids table with you.

QED. This is a hallmark of cancel culture, there is no discussion, simply personal attacks, sometimes quite vicious ones. Some subjects cannot be discussed. Some opinions cannot be uttered. This is the new, more radical form of making something taboo. It has grave personal consequences.

Stallman lost his jobs because he said something that could be considered a defense of a well known convicted sex offender. He would have lost his jobs 30 years ago for saying the same.

Losing his jobs had nothing to do with any modern day cancel culture and everything to do with our society's eternal vilification of rapist, paedophiles and sex offenders. As you said, "some opinions cannot be offered" and defending a sex offender is one.

I'm sure Stallman will rail against societies closed mindedness but he won't find may defenders.

Stallman lost his jobs because he said something that could be considered a defense of a well known convicted sex offender.

Well, except it couldn't. He was very very unequivocal about the well known convicted sex offender being a horrible rapist. He said something that could be considered a defence of Marvin Minsky, who as far as I know was not a well known convicted sex offender. His entire argument was that Minsky might not have known just how horrible Epstein was being. That is not a defence of Epstein and cannot be considered one without a massive dose of intellectual dishonesty.
Now, he may be wrong--frankly, I think it would take some world class naivete for a Minsky to think this girl is throwing herself at him because she's a huge groupie for aging AI research pioneers. But that's a somewhat different issue.

He would have lost his jobs 30 years ago for saying the same.

Quite likely. Rush to judgment without looking at the facts is not a new thing under the sun. But it wouldn't have been right 30 years ago, either.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 22 September 2019 at 6:38 pm UTC

It took a characterization of his remarks in a disturbing twisted way to finally get rid of him.
But his real remarks, and harassment should have been enough to get rid of him 20 years ago.
It's been more than 20 years of disturbing sexual, harassing, and disparaging remarks made by him.
Honestly never should have gotten to this point, he should have been removed and fired many many years ago.

The truly disturbing part is that people, are acting like the BS that went down in the news cycle means he did nothing wrong.
It's okay to appreciate his work and devotion to the Free Software Movement, and still not want him to be celebrated due to his sexual harassment, and disturbing ideas that got ignored for years due to the culture he was a part of.

RMS harassed other people? What did he do to others? Is there any source on that? And what do you mean with "culture he was part of"? What kind of culture?

Back in 2006, at a conference a young woman asked about changes happening and the implications of the "business" on a GNU project he had some kind of personal interest in.
His response was something about her being a dumb blond, and later implied that she won't get far if she is not showing more of her body and other skills. This would be laughed at by most of the men. At that same place he would make a graphic comment about sex and a specific thing that had to do with coding.
Why would any of this ever have a "source"? There was no reason for the people that condoned that kind of BS to make it into a news story, par for the course.
He also has a long history of insulting people who don't share his absolutist position, ad sharing opinions that are not appropriate in any public place.
He should not have ever been allowed to be a spokesperson with any power, due to his unfiltered personal skills.

I respect his passion, and his drive to make the world a better place, and improve the Free Software Movement.
But he is a terrible person, who never should have been given a position of power and influence.
My opinion is based on one moment, and what could easily be dismissed as gossip, but it has a solid foundation for me to believe most of the disgusting things he said and did for much of his life.

[...]

Stallman is not wrong about the fact that laws about this topic are different in different countries. Where I live, Austria, consent between a 17 year old and a much older person is legally possible, unless there is a situation of power or money involved.

Which there clearly was. It's hard to argue that a 70-years old academics has no authority over any 17-years old girl. The distinction is made so that you can have someone 19 and someone 17 having sex without problem.

That wasn't what he argued though. He wrote:

Does it really? I think it is morally absurd to define "rape" in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.

I think the existence of a dispute about that supports my point that the term "sexual assault" is slippery, so we ought to use more concrete terms when accusing anyone.

That's arguing specifically about using the terms "rape" and "sexual assault" for cases where both parties are consenting and wouldn't be doing anything illegal if they were doing it in a different country.
As others have said, you need to see this through the eyes of a pedantic and leave the rest of the case out of the discussion of this specific point.

It's not as if he doesn't have a point here; if a 19 year old American has consensual sex with a 17 year old while travelling in Europe, should that also be called rape? Disregarding the rest of the case, I can certainly see his argument.

Back in 2006, at a conference a young woman asked about changes happening and the implications of the "business" on a GNU project he had some kind of personal interest in.
His response was something about her being a dumb blond, and later implied that she won't get far if she is not showing more of her body and other skills.

I'm not going to believe that the actual and real RMS said these things and meant it like that. I would if you tell me he wore his St. Ignucius outfit at that moment and showed his odd humor. But I'm not going to believe this without a source on that. And with source I don't mean yet another article with vague third party knowledge. You're right. Not everything has a definitive written and archived source. That means that not everything is documented, but this works both ways. Until I happen to know that this actually took place, I'm going to disregard it as a rumor.

You're free to believe anything about anyone, of course. We all are.

But I think we shouldn't ignore the fact that despite this being almost always a sincere concern, there are also those who are just hiding their intentionally malign anti-societal behavior behind pretending to be a victim of some global mass movement of silencing and censorship. I do get it that some people sincerely feel this way.

It's in our best interests to submit to the will of the majority or law, but it isn't always to our benefit, personally or to the rest of humanity, in the long run. We need more in-depth discussions and scientific testing to discover how we can best do things. Something offensive to someone is bound to come up during this process, but if we falter at the 'wrong' words or ideas, we can't progress our thinking any further, because going against what was formerly 'normal' is sometimes the starting point of new discoveries.

I honestly don't know how far censorship is being promoted, but it seems like it's been gradually increasing online for some time. People call it a global mass movement because it really appears to be. I mean, who among us would want to publicly profess a like of the "wrong" political candidate, even to our families and friends? Maybe we tell no one. Maybe we'd lie right to the faces of our loved ones because we're afraid.

That some people even contemplate these things is a bad sign.