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The 2000 Beanies

Voting Begins for $100k Beanie Awards 93

Posted by CmdrTaco from the giving-away-money-is-a-gas-gas dept.
So the 2000 Beanie Awards have now entered phase two: Intense Voting. The nominees have been chosen in each category by you readers, and now you get to choose who wins the money in exciting catagories like 'Best Designed Interface in a non graphical application' and 'Best Newbie Helper'. Each category has a discussion so you can talk about your choices all you want. You may change your vote whenever you like. And the final winners will be announced at LinuxWorld in NY in feb.
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Voting Begins for $100k Beanie Awards More

Voting Begins for $100k Beanie Awards

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  • No. It's in MASS. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    > Really, I appreciate it so much that you voted for me in MASS

    Not to be anal...ok, well it is a kinda anal, but shouldn't that be en masse?

    Actually, I think he was referring to his supporters from Boston, Cambridge, Cape Cod, etc.

  • Who's this "Abstain" fellow that made his way into every category? He must have stuffed the polls! ;)

    --synaptik
    If you want to flame me, do so here [slashdot.org].
  • I would've voted for pico, but I use "nano" now.. :^) It's an awesome GPLed clone of pico, but with search/replace and line-goto features. Check it out here [plattsburgh.edu]..

    -- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
  • I agree....some even have a series of Broadway Musicals as well ;)

    It's a real shame because there were quite a few nominations for _genuine_ unsung heros who have really made a difference to the project they worked on. I guess that this is the nature of the beast though. If they are unsung heros then people are hardly going to recognise them or their work..... :(
  • Are they listed from most nominated to least nominated
    to abstain or what?
  • Not to bring any negativity to the beanies, but, quite honestly, they seem like a big waste. The idea in itself is fantastic and I don't see anything wrong with it, but it just seems as if this whole thing was thrown together without much thought, planning, or consideration. Has it come to the point where the open source community is so blinded by the current fame and wealth that we can just throw 100k around like it's nothing?

    I can't help but think that if more planning, and perhaps a voting system NOT based off the slashdot code (ie., a whole website devoted to the voting) would have been a lot more effecient. Perhaps even some hype before the final announcement. It just doesn't feel wholehearted in the sense that very few people actually care. I know I read "Beanie Awards" and thought to myself, "bla, what the hell is this?". After fumbling through the awkward voting section for a while it didn't seem worth my time. I can't help but think how many others were turned off / simply don't even know what this is all about...

    peace,
  • I really love how the voting page looks like total shit in Netscape 3.04, really great work guys. Same thing as the preferences page.

    take a look:
    http://members.xoom.com/edutrocity/borked.jpg

    MoNsTeR
  • And why should i vote for this person/group/piece of software in every single category. conspiracy, i think

  • You haven't studied your INTERCAL [tuxedo.org] manual... ABSTAIN FROM is a keyword in that wonderful language.

    No, I don't say that you should try to write anything useful in intercal, but "he who knows the most programming languages when he dies wins" :-)

  • I'm curious as to turnout in the Beanie Awards. This forum sure isn't very popular, which leads me to believe the poll isn't either... and I am not seeing a votecount as we get in the standard polls. And I just managed to first-post on something like three of the category forums... they're deserted.

    Would someone in charge care to let us see a running turnout tally?
  • The article says the nominees were chosen "by you readers", but there seems to be a murky grey area between the nominations and what got onto the ballot.

    Actually, there are a ballot that you filled out to nominate your choices. The discussions with the stories were just that, discussions. They had no weight in the actual nominations. This was run a little different from the interviews, I may mention.

    -Brent
  • Why the f* can one only see (I am not talking about voting) the nominees when logged in?

    Well, you have to be logged in to vote, because otherwise someone would abuse the voting. And if you can't vote, there's really not much point in knowing what the nominees are, are there?

    -Brent

  • Are you kidding? I use the Abstain kernel module every day :)

  • Alan Cox
    David Dawes
    Donald Becker
    Jordan K. Hubbard
    Brian Paul

    Of course, I know who AC is, but who are the others?
  • Yup, I'm surprised too... I nominated him...
  • Too bad Mindcraft wasn't an option for the FUD though. I nominated them, would have voted for them...
    Too true. Mindcraft was definitely the FUD story of the year.

    I also found elm(1) missing for best curses UI... shoulda been a write-in kinda thing.

    Oh, well. Not like I'm getting a beanie anyway.... :)

  • Oh, yes, Tom can be harsh. But, as someone who tries to help on the Perl-Win32 list when I can (which isn't that often, alas), the constant "I haven't read the docs, but you better help me now!" wears on me, and I've only been helping a little for a couple of months. Imagine doing it, as Tom has, for years...
    And we are all, too, human, I know. I started posting from my new job, and got one of Tom's auto-mails about HTML posting. Took me many more tries to finally convince Outlook to fix the problem. I think Tom's a guy, and forgive me for thinking in his place, who wants to help those who help themselves. And I'd rather he did that, then not help at all. If his attitude grates on some, well, perhaps one should read before one posts, and accept advice from those more in-the-know then oneself.
    And you must recall, Perl's not like Linux. People know they are doing something big when they attack Linux, and seem to realize that they need to check out some fine reading first. And most folks have a friend to help them.
    Not so with Perl. At a guess, about once every couple of weeks there is a "I installed Perl on Windows, I double-clicked on the perl.exe, and a DOS box came up for a second, then disappeared! WHAT DO I DO NOW?"
    Read. Please. They have no idea, no clue, no concept. Luckily, some can be informed. Others, though, seem to want you to fly over to their desk and write the programs for you. And those types are what drive Tom nuts, I suspect. :)
  • Agreed.

    I probably abstained from 50% of the choices, because I know that I am not remotely qualified to judge (having never used a wm or x -- that is about 40% right there).

    There is a 'correct' choice for unsung hero though; just take a look at the choices, and then remember where you heard/saw the name. If it was in the media, they probably aren't unsung. If it is in the init code for ... well, you get the poin t :-)
  • ...to Abstain.

    Just please be sure to vote for me! I could use the .1M.
    --
  • How can you have a "Favorite Slashdot Poster" award without UART as one of the candidates? Of course, I mighta still voted for BOredAtWork, but UART certainly has more of a clue than that other candidate, AC.

    it needed to be said.
  • For the domain hogger award, I think Apple would have been in that category. Anyone remember when some kid from Canada bought a domain and made a little page for the iMac? Apple interrogated him and made him hand over the domain or sue him, or something like that. It's a friggen kid! If that ain't domain hogging, I don't know what is.
  • I was hoping to vote for the little penguins in the "most deserving of $2000" category.


  • I nominated Havoc. IMHO, he's the greatest newbie helper around. Every time I have a GTK or GDK question he is around to help and has always given me the answer to every stupid question I've asked. Havoc is not known very well outside the developer community but is the main reason that a lot of GTK-related software exists.
  • hmmm.... bah!

    I am voting intensely for things that I have barely heard of. I mean, If I've heard of one thing, but not the other, it's better, right? I've never used Linux, but I voted on every topic!

    Sorry, man. You're fighting a losing battle.

  • So if Microsoft wins one of the Why the Hell Not's, is CowboyNeal really going to hug Bill Gates? Will there be a webcast we can watch? :)

    --
    foof

  • When i was a newbie, Pico helped me. Now that i know what i'm doing, Pico grows. What more do you want? I love pico. - - 0 0 ___ \_/ PICO!! (bye the way, what does pico stand for? Pine...?)
  • Hey, why can you abstain from the Hemos award? It should be the only choice.
  • Alan Cox is the #2 Kernel man by almost all accounts.

    Donald Becker is the man behind most of the Ethernet drivers and the ever-popular Beowulf.
  • In the "intense voting" ballot, I noted that OpenBSD was left out of the "most improved project" category (even though it was mentioned several times in the discussion and arguably is. Likewise, Brian Behlendorf was left out of the "unsung heroes" category, Tim O'Reilly out of the "advocate" category, and the BSD Daemon Girl -- definitely among the best dressed and most attractive open source advocates -- out of the "best dressed" category. (None of the nominees in this last category is in any way remarkable -- except for RMS, who might gain votes cast in jest.) I still want to vote for these people. Why aren't they on the ballot?

    --Brett Glass

  • Since none of the current candidates are particularly interesting, I'd like to nominate the BSD Daemon Girl as a write-in candidate for the "Best Dressed" award. As the picture at http://www.gci-net.com/~u sers/f/fluke/comdex/bsdgirl1.jpg [gci-net.com] shows, she very much deserves the honor -- certainly more than any candidate on the ballot.
  • This was confusing, IMHO, and caused bad results. Most readers (including myself!) were given the impression that postings in the discussion were equivalent to nominations.

    The result is a rather disappointing ballot. Some of the best candidates mentioned in the discussion are not on it.

    Since Andover is likely spending about $150,000 on this project ($100,000 in awards plus around $50,000 on space at the conference, promotion, employee time, etc.), it is a shame to see that they're not getting their money's worth -- and neither are their readers. If you spend enough on awards to buy a decent house, you ought to have a big ballot with lots of good choices.

    They can turn this around by allowing write-ins and/or expanding the ballot and encouraging readers to go back and consider the new choices. (This is the Internet, after all; nothing's immutable.)

    Unless this changes, expect a lot of people to vote "Abstain.... Abstain.... Abstain...."Well, it's not my first choice, but at least I recognize this one...." Abstain.... "I don't know who this one is, but the name's cool...." Abstain...."

    --Brett Glass

  • Weren't the choices open nomination? As in, they're basically *all* write-ins, if you'd written them in during the nomination period?
  • Wouldn't it be really ironic if Hemos came in second?
    Don't worry Hemos, I voted for you :)

    kwsNI
  • I have every right to vote.

    ----------------
    The reason the US DOJ is going to break Microsoft into 3 separate companies is to see how long it takes the largest of these 3 to expand and crush the other two.

  • good point. poor little oily guys.

  • I bet I'll get at least a few of the prizes. I can sure use the money.

  • 'It' being tiny foam balls or whatever. Beanie Babies can bring in immense profit for those who want to work at it, but it ain't worth the time or effort in my opinion. Might as well take up day trading. At least I KNOW I might go bankrupt by the end of the day...

    Beanie Babies and Pokemon could be put in the same category: Narcotics. Nobody wants them, but HAS to have them to 'survive'. I think Garfield said it best; "I don't know, even if I did know, I don't think I want to know." All this fuss over a bunch of tiny stuffed figures is a waste of time and money (unless you are a professional collector, then you're wasting your life, in my opinion). It's sad actually... but it's something we as consumers have to deal with. God, just thinking about this stuff makes my head hurt... I need some Nuprin...

    The Gray Wolf
  • Well actually I'm French and I translated straight to English, that's why ...
  • Ok, if anyone named CowboyNeal attempts to hug me, he's going to get himself hit. Hard.

    How about some of that cash, instead of a man-thing and a beanie...? :-)

    --

  • assuming it wasnt something like road salt.
  • I'm disappointed, especially in the big prize area. I wish more effort was put into giving the money to people who don't have an corporate support. Let's look at some of the various canidates:

    GNOME - funded by RedHat
    Wine - funded by Corel
    Mozilla - funded by AOL
    XMMS - funded by OSS

    Not that these projects deserve recognition, but come on! Now the whole "best open source book" topic makes me cringe. Who does the money go to? The author? The publisher?

    I just want to see more projects succeed. These projects have gotten what they deserve. I just want to see new projects grow.
  • It is silly to speculate about whether someone who is giving away their own money are or can "cheat". Also, the first step was not a vote, it was a nomination.
  • Yes, he would have been perfect for the award. Apart from his i18n work, he has done a lot of work maintaining various GNU utilities of the kind that everyone uses, but few people think about.
  • Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module

    Actually, I voted for the projects where I think the money will do most good to the community as a whole. This may be against the spirit on one level (it is not what the question states), but probably in the spirit at another level (it helps the open source community).

    Unsung Hero

    Here, I removed the names that pop up constantly, and checked that the remaining person had done somthing worthwhile.

    Best Open Source-Related Book

    Here, I chose the one whose authors and creation best fitted with my idea of open source.

  • ...just a shame I didn't get listed. :) Next time, I might have to do something worth getting listed -for-. :)

    Most of the "Unsung Heros" were a bit surprising, though. I -kind- of think most of them not only get sung about, they practically have their own operas about them. Whoever nominated them should look up "unsung", sometime. It does -not- mean "most popular", "best known", or "all-time celebrity".

    Having said that, I think these awards are a great idea, and that the nominations put forward were great! Can we do this again, next month?

  • Personally, I've outgrown Pico at this point, and I thoroughly dislike how, although it's open-source, it's not Free. You can distribute patches against the code, but you can't distribute modified code or binaries compiled from it. Very annoying. It's also not nearly configurable enough for my needs; when I'm doing any real work, I just use Emacs (though I use vi for quick jobs and email).

    In any case, as the subject says, PICO == PIne COmposer. I don't believe Pilot (the sucky PINE-style directory browser) stands for anything. While we're at it, PINE stands for two things; the official name is "Program for Internet News and Email," but as every real UNIX-head knows, it's really "PINE Is Not ELM," which expands to "PINE Is Not ELM Is Not ELectronic Mail" and so forth. Yay. Depending on how you parse it, it might end up meaning, to you anyway, "${PINE} is not Electronic Mail;" I don't know what PINE is supposed to be then.

    I just use Mutt nowadays though. I got sick of PINE changing its semantics and doing evil stuff behind my back (such as suddenly deciding, when the university admins upgraded to 4.10, to use the broken, not-very-well-hidden-at-all ~/mbox file instead of just keeping stuff in my nice, quota-free /var/spool/mail file). Now my stuff goes exactly where I want it, and I could still use PICO for editing if I wanted (but I don't, so I just use vim instead).
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a . [nmsu.edu]

  • Yeah, this is a funny comment. Not true, though. A good dose of tchrist is the very thing a newbie needs to get them thinking for themselves. No, really! I learned Unix from The Unix Programming Environment, which I think is the book equivalent of tc: "here's the gen, now go figure!".
  • Now, I know you guys aren't taking this seriously, but with the money you've laid out I might expect some amount of responsibility. Why have we gone through multiple stages of voting? How can we be assured this isn't some kind of hoax? Slashdot seems to be near the epicenter of all kinds of debates and the opinions made by it carry weight within the community. As I've previously mentioned, this is going to frustrate and alienate many people who feel "left out". And you'll note that now we've gone from any selection to just a few. I find that suspect - I don't know how many people voted for "RMS" and "Richard Stallman". Did we combine them? How can you assure us of this?

    In short, what have you done to ensure that who we vote for *really is* who we get? Where are the exit polls to give independant input?

  • Keep in mind the bag must be open for this to be effective and the wound must be about the size of your chest... in which case learning to program is probably not your highest priority. =)

  • Isn't that amazing? And yet, people still expect newbies to read the copious amounts of (free|installed by default| amazingly complete)+ documentation compiled, written, and maintained by Tom.

    --
  • Well, allow me to rant.

    "Now, which award are we going to give Linus this month?"

    Folks are nominating the same old people and projects over and over again, and this award is no exception, despite its original announcement.

    Yes, I am a little disappointed that David Hinds and his great PCMCIA kernel modules have not been selected in either category.

    He *is* an unsung hero (now that he hasn't been selected, he's an even more unsung hero ;-). Those people selected in this category don't quite fit. Some of them even have fan pages and people are actually spending time reading their personal diary.

    I am also unhappy with the kernel module selection. With the exception of Video4Linux, none of them are ready for prime time yet and still *need* to improve.

    Oh my.

    ------------------
  • This was confusing, IMHO, and caused bad results. Most readers (including myself!) were given the impression that postings in the discussion were equivalent to nominations.

    Somehow I got that feeling that that's what people were thinking :( Well, this is /.'s first time at this. I guess we should give them a margin of error. Hopefully they'll learn a few lessons for next time.

    -Brent
  • How can you have a "Favorite Slashdot Poster" award without Signal 11 as one of the candidates? Of course, I mighta still voted for BOredAtWork, but Signal 11 certainly has more of a clue than that other candidate, AC.
  • Whoever nominated them should look up "unsung", sometime. It does -not- mean "most popular", "best known", or "all-time celebrity".

    Maybe the one with the least nunmber of votes should win.
  • Pico is nice for editing config files, but not extendible enough when your really using it a lot on C/PERL/whatever files. But they didn't list jed :-(
  • Honestly, can someone help me change my impression of him?

    Sure.

    Several months ago, I was a newbie in a couple Perl newsgroups (but not a newbie to programming in general) -- and all I thought of him was "pompus ass".

    Of course, before I can help to change your mind, you first have to tell why you think the way you do. What makes you think he's a "pompus ass"?

    Within the first week of watching the groups, I saw a listing of his supposed kill list including keywords that would pretty much nuke 95% of newbie messages.

    Perhaps if you flag your postings with "NEWBIE", "PERL 4", "WINDOWS" or similar things, you get nuked. For that matter, I do the same as well. But if you post a Perl question, chose an appropriate subject, and can be bothered to look at the manual and FAQ first, you would have had a pretty good chance of getting your question answered by Tom. Of course, I speak in the past tense. All the whining of the form "why don't you spoon feed me?" have made Tom follow Larry Walls way, and he no longer posts in clp.misc. Which is a big loss, specially for newbies.

    IMO, that's not what newbie help is about.

    Then, do tell us, what is newbie help about?

    -- Abigail

  • That's why I voted for PHP.

    It's getting more and more popular without major corporate funding. It's a terrific language, too. Especially for people like me who were raised on C (printf, yay).

    If anybody deserves it (in the list anyway, but that's a whole other can of worms), it's them.
  • LiViD [linuxvideo.org] may very well be the most important consumer open-source project being undertaken. Linux simply won't be able to be competitive as a mainstream consumer OS without eye-candy like DVD playback.

    Time is also a key issue here. The sooner DVD playback finds it's way into Red Hat and other distributions, the more difficult it will be for the MPAA and the DVDCCA to convince a judge to ban the project.

    Here's an excerpt from a recent MPAA court filing [2600.com]:
    DeCSS remains (for the moment) a "hacker phenomenon." One of our principal concerns is that, in the absence of a judicial finding that DeCSS is illegal, its use will become more widespread. ... There is even the risk that DeCSS would be commercialized and offered to the general public, either in the form of retail software or as part of a DVD player

    Let's make the MPAA's fears come true!
  • Tom Christiansen? LOL!!!

    Okay, he's a good author (or has really good editors), and he knows a lot -- but I've seen rants in Perl newsgroups that probably scare newbies away forever (or at least make them very afraid to ask anything).

    IMO, that's not what newbie help is about.

    Maybe I've missed his efforts elsewhere, or maybe he was just joking -- but I don't remember seeing any 's.

    Honestly, can someone help me change my impression of him?

    Several months ago, I was a newbie in a couple Perl newsgroups (but not a newbie to programming in general) -- and all I thought of him was "pompus ass".

    Within the first week of watching the groups, I saw a listing of his supposed kill list including keywords that would pretty much nuke 95% of newbie messages.

    -- CP
  • What makes you think he's a "pompus ass"?

    It was just an overall impression derived from reading hundreds of his posts. The technical content was there of course, but there often was an underlying "tone" that just wasn't necessary (IMHO). If I had the time, I could do some searching on Deja -- but I think you know what I'm talking about (at least one other person posted a message similar to mine here, so I know I'm not totally out to lunch).

    Perhaps if you flag your postings with "NEWBIE", "PERL 4", "WINDOWS" or similar things, you get nuked.

    Obviously, people can nuke whatever they want -- it's their choice. But remember my comment was posted specifically in response to Tom's nomination as "Best newbie helper". Having a kill file heavily optimized to eliminate newbie posts (and flaunting that fact in the newsgroup) seems to counter that nomination, IMHO.

    "PERL 4", I can understand.

    "Windows" is questionable -- Perl can obviously be used under Windows; although I can understand if he doesn't want to deal with the platform-specific issues.

    "Newbie"? If he wants to help newbies, why the heck is that in there? The message never gets seen because the person is being honest?

    IIRC, he also kills messages that were posted with any known Windows news client. I don't understand the point there. Okay, maybe he hates Windows -- many of us do. Could it be possible that this "newbie" isn't up to speed on *nix clients yet? Hmmm? Maybe they have to use Windows at work or whatever?

    The more help these folks get in the *nix world, the more they'll use *nix, the more they'll like *nix -- the better chance they'll say "Goodbye" to Windows forever. Isn't that the goal?

    All the whining of the form "why don't you spoon feed me?"

    Yep, that's annoying. Anyone answering newsgroup messages gets fed up with it eventually.

    But remember we're talking about newbies here -- it's going to happen. Some newbies don't know where the FAQ's or HowTo's are. Those folks need a polite "that, along with a bunch of other good stuff is covered here: xxx.xxxx.xxx/xxx go check it out; it covers your question in far more detail than I can here".

    If you want to be voted "Best Newbie Helper" then you best have a spoon in your back pocket -- because you're going to need it every once in awhile, like it or not.

    The trick, of course, is to transition them off the spoon as quickly as possible. The really annoying people can be added to the kill file when appropriate.

    That, IMO, is a reasonable alternative to a broad stroke kill file that will nuke many (if not all) first posts by newbies (remember, we're talking about someone who actually wants to help newbies and get that coveted "Best newbie helper" beanie).

    Then, do tell us, what is newbie help about?

    I think I've covered it a bit, but I'll try to summarize: Making them feel welcome instead of chasing them away. Enhance their learning by pointing out applicable resources and encouraging them to use them. If a question is easy, go ahead and answer the damn thing (along with pointing out where similar answers can be found in the future). Often, more time is wasted flaming people than would be used to answer the damn question.

    In case you don't remember, there is a bit of a ramp with Perl -- I have all the references, but still stumble across conceptual problems once in a while that turn out to be really obvious once I find the answer.

    -- CP
  • Thank you for nominating us! We have a great team
    of people on the project and we are working hard
    to bring better video to Linux.

    Check us out at the LinuxWorld Expo. We have a
    booth in the .org pavillion.

  • Re:Help me out here: Who are the Unsung Heroes? (Score:3)

    by Ian Schmidt ( 6899 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @06:34AM (#1362274)
    Alan Cox - Linus' #2 man and maintainer of the stable kernels (2.2.x and 2.0.x).

    David Dawes - XFree86 leader

    Donald Becker - Wrote nearly ever ethernet driver in the kernel, invented Beowulf

    Jordan Hubbard - FreeBSD's leader

    Brian Paul - Wrote the Mesa OpenGL-alike library used by eg. Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc.

  • OK, I voted (Score:3)

    by tilly ( 7530 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @06:06AM (#1362275)
    Too bad Mindcraft wasn't an option for the FUD though. I nominated them, would have voted for them...

    Compared to their benchmarks, every other piece of FUD was second rate IMO.

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Re:Do the Decent Thing! (Score:3)

    by Silverfish ( 33092 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @09:23AM (#1362276)
    > Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module

    > Have you benchmarked it? Done regression testing? Checked the source for comments? No? Then abstain, 'cos you don't know!

    What is this nonsense? The concept that you have to be a programmer and look at source code, or run benchmarks to know how a module/project has improved is absurd!

    What about driving a car? "This car rides better than a Yugo. It's faster too." What? did you run fifth wheel tests on it to time accelerations? Did you measure suspension travel, and spring rates? No of course not. But you can tell whether something is better by using it:

    "Gee, before half my PCMCIA devices didn't work... now they all do"

    "Last time I tried GNOME it was barely useable, but now it has every feature I expect of an advanced window manager."

    I'd say those are improved....

    And don't forget that what's better/worse is an individual opinion! Just because you have one standard of evaluating something as better/worse doesn't mean that others feel the same things are important.

  • Vote for Pico! (Score:3)

    by A4Joy ( 54907 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @07:02AM (#1362277)
    Pico... the 'other' UNIX editor.

    It always seems to get lost among the constant vi vs. emacs holy wars, and the code is (fairly) easy to customize. A job ago, while working at an ISP, I had Pico customized eight ways to Sunday, with automatic comment block generation, line gotos and indentation of C code to my exacting, anal standards. It was fast and efficient and perfect for C coding.

    So what if it doesn't have all the features of emacs, or the power of vi? Emacs is like the kid with all the cool toys, and vi's the kid with the Lego. But you always liked to play with Pico best, because he's the kid with the big cardboard box that you would always turn into a little house or racecar. He's the most fun to play with. :-)

    ---
    Tempfiles fugit.

  • Abstain? (Score:3)

    by radja ( 58949 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @06:15AM (#1362278) Homepage
    Who's this abstain character?
    And why does he/she qualify for the Hemos award?

    //rdj

  • Write in candidates, explanations (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @07:24AM (#1362279)
    I know it's too late now, but I would like to see write in candidates as well next time. I'm more interested in hearing about who has done what for open source than I really am about who wins. Since the spaces aren't there on the forms, I'd be delighted to hear from people here about people who didn't make the list. They probably didn't have the chance for the widespread recognition necessary to win, but let's mention them publically anyway. I'll start.

    I nominated François Pinard, leader of the Free Translation Project [umontreal.ca] for the unsung hero award. He has managed to gather support for the project a little at a time and keep it going largely through his own effort. There are certainly plenty of translators working on many of the individual languages, but he has done the organizational work to connect software projects with translation teams. If you are competent to translate, especially into a minority language, one of the best ways I can think of to thank him is to join or form a translation team.

  • Not enough choices. (Score:3)

    by cruise ( 111380 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @07:21AM (#1362280) Homepage
    I feel that the choices in the different categories are too limited.

    What we have here is a popularity contest with well known names and is a very poor representation of the thousands of applications/authors/and groups which are out there.

    I don't deny that any of the listed people are worthy of the individiual awards, I just feel that the number of choices is too limited. There were lots of good nominations which did not make it to the vote cycle.

    This is not meant to be a flame, or perhaps it is... It just seems more and more that this place is becoming a clique culture and very unwelcoming to newcommers.

    For this reason, You'll find my vote for abstain in all categories as the nominees are not a fair representation of the many more canidates nominated. It seems more that /. is purchasing support from well knowns with this contest than awarding excellence (not that excellence is not rampant in the nominations..... Just my opinion and we all know how that goes..)




    They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen

  • Deny Hemos (Score:4)

    by ClarkBar ( 24397 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @06:14AM (#1362281)
    Hemos is shelfish by having the only sure win. Vote Abstain on the Hemos award. Don't let a single vote in for Hemos. Long live abstain!!!

  • Funniest Candidate... (Score:4)

    by mochaone ( 59034 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @06:51AM (#1362282)
    has to be Tom Christiansen under Best Newbie Helper. Unless they count his books as being a newbie helper, Tom Christiansen is about as helpful as throwing a bag of salt on an open wound.

    Thanks for making me laugh Slashdot gang!

  • Do the Decent Thing! (Score:5)

    by codemonkey_uk ( 105775 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @07:41AM (#1362283) Homepage

    Abstain when you don't know. Don't just go for the one that rings a bell, if you don't know, don't vote.

    Most Improved Open Source Project / Most Improved Kernel Module

    Have you benchmarked it? Done regression testing? Checked the source for comments? No? Then abstain, 'cos you don't know!

    Unsung Hero

    Do you know what each of these people has done? Have you done research to find out how "unsung" they actually are? (Alan Cox has been on TV - thats not unsung!)

    Best Open Source-Related Book

    Have you actually read *all* of these books? No? Well then don't vote, 'cos you don't know!

    I could go on, but your smart people, you know what I'm getting at. Don't just vote off the cuff, vote for what you know, and let those who are in the know's votes count by reducing the "noise" and keeping your uninformed opinion out of it. Like me.

    Oh, and before I get moderated down as an opiniated know it all, I've abstained on almost everyting, because I'm honest enough to say "I Don't Know".

    Thankyou for your time

    Thad

  • THANK YOU ALL GUYS!!!! (Score:5)

    by Abstain ( 139303 ) on Tuesday January 18, 2000 @07:58AM (#1362284) Homepage

    Really, I appreciate it so much that you voted for me in MASS! I'm almost crying! I called mom and she said, "son, I've never believe you'd make it, but now I'm proud of you!". Thank you all for all those votes! And I'd like to emphasize the fact that this is a team work, that nothing would have been possible without me, myself, and I!

    I plan to give most of the money to my crack dealer, who's in a dire need. THANKS AGAIN! (where's that pipe)

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