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[Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete


From: Heinz Mezera
Subject: [Pan-users] Thumbs up for Duncan! (wasRe: How to use Numeric Pad 'Delete' key)
Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 13:56:40 +0200

I'll be 72 next week, so that's the time Duncan is looking into the
future.
Without Duncan's in depth and detailed explanations (and patience to do
this again and again) I would have stopped using Pan a long time ago.
Reading his posts is a very well spent time!

Thx 2 Duncan,
Heinz

On Fre, 2016-05-20 at 06:17 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> Lacrocivious Acrophosist posted on Fri, 20 May 2016 04:17:51 +0000 as
> excerpted:
> 
> > 
> > But there is a center of gravity for the Pan project, and now it
> > moves
> > back to that center, as it has done for decades. That center is
> > Duncan.
> > 
> > Without Duncan, Pan would not have survived the lean times that
> > have
> > come more than a few times during Pan's history. Duncan embodies
> > the
> > institutional history of the project, groks the evolution and
> > intricacies of Pan in ways that are unique and probably without
> > peer,
> > and for decades now he has offered quality help to anyone who asks
> > for
> > it.
> > 
> > Duncan is Pan's rock against the tides of entropy, and Pan is the
> > better
> > for it. Is it odd to offer such praise to a non-developer? I don't
> > think
> > so. Every project needs glue, and continuity, and Duncan has and
> > continues to provide that, and I for one am very glad he does.
> Thanks.  That is powerful, man!
> 
> In all humbleness I had thought somewhat the same myself from time
> to 
> time.  Those months and years without a pan dev do get lonely and
> there 
> was a time when I was actually beginning to wonder if it was time to 
> uninstall pan and shut off the lights on my way out.  But
> fortunately, 
> KHaley, and then Petr Kovar and Heinrich Mueller, came along, and we
> even 
> got some pretty huge and long on the drawing board features, so pan
> is in 
> better shape now than it ever was.  And in part, they had something
> to 
> come along /to/, because I was still here as a community nucleus
> around 
> which a community could re-form.  =:^)
> 
> But it's hugely different coming from someone else, and the way you
> put 
> it was powerful enough I was even tearing up to some extent!
> 
> I'll be 50 next year, and while I expect and hope I'll still be
> around 
> FLOSS and even pan 20 or 30 years from now, when I'm in my 70s (dare
>
> even think 80s?)...  Imagine some 80-year-old with a walker or
> wheelchair 
> in a nursing home running gentoo, and on some mailing list for the
> pimp-
> ass-gopher-client...  In 30 years that could be me, still holding
> forth 
> on the possibly otherwise long abandoned list for the pimp-ass-
> newsreader, which he's running in some container or VM with an old 
> platform as it just doesn't work on wayland 2046 and won't build with
> gcc 
> 53!
> 
> (Much as today I still run the only slaveryware app I still run on
> my 
> computer, the old 1993 DOS edition Master of Orion, in the DOSBox
> DOS 
> emulator.  And given my rate of usage, if they're still around then,
>
> may still be using my current $50 TB block account from astroweb,
> too.  
> Most of my news usage is actually text, on gmane's list2news
> servers.)
> 
> Pimp-Ass Newsreader.  It's been a long time since I mentioned what
> pan 
> actually originally stood for.  Back before the C++ rewrite that was 
> introduced as 0.90, I used to insist that the proper form was always
> all-
> caps, PAN, because it was an acronym.  But the term pimp-ass isn't 
> exactly politically correct these days, and I took the opportunity
> the 
> 0.90 rewrite introduction presented to switch my self-consistency to
> the 
> lower-case pan, which is after all both easier to type, and the
> actual 
> name of the executable.
> 
> ... Now /what/ were you saying about pan historian?...  =:^)
> 
> 
> Anyway, I've been thinking.  I'm old enough now, reality suggest I'm
> not 
> going to learn C/C++ and be a good developer, as I had hoped years
> ago 
> when I switched to Linux.  And I may or may not eventually switch
> jobs 
> and be a Linux sysadmin, professionally as well as literally
> adminning my 
> home systems as I've been doing now since the 16-bit DOS and DOS-
> based MS 
> Windows era.
> 
> But you know, just as the Linux and programs I run are the work of 
> literally thousands of people and multiple millions of person-hours,
> both 
> developer, and artist and documentor and list regular answering my 
> questions and those of others, I really have made a direct difference
> in 
> at least hundreds of people's lives, if not thousands (there are
> more 
> lurkers and people later finding answers via google than many
> appreciate, 
> and indirectly, counting the folks that depend on the systems whose 
> admins I have helped, in the MS groups before the turn of the century
> and 
> on the Linux lists like the btrfs list I'm on now after, it could be
> tens 
> of thousands).
> 
> But it's not just me.  It's all the devs and artists and documentors
> and 
> regulars on the lists, that have helped me and others, just as I too
> have 
> done.  It's all that, that makes the FLOSS community.
> 
> And I may be just one person in that community of hundreds of
> thousands, 
> but I'm proud to be able to say I've done my part.
> 
> And you know what, no matter where or when I die, and no matter what
> my 
> eulogy states if I'm not just some other unidentified dead guy ITRW
> (in 
> the real world)...
> 
> I know that somewhere, someone online is going to be wondering what 
> happened to that Duncan fellow, and missing his help and
> explanations.
> 
> And *THAT*, along with pan continuing to live today, is my *REAL*
> eulogy!
> 
> Thanks for giving me a glimpse of it, just now.  As I said, it's
> powerful 
> stuff.
> 
> And what it has given me is the best feeling in the world![1]
> 
> Now if you will excuse me, there's this liquid on my face I gotta
> deal 
> with (for about the forth or fifth time writing this)...
> 
> ---
> [1] I remember the first time I caught that high.  I was still back
> on 
> the MS IE groups, and someone had been on vacation, to come back and
> see 
> partial quotes of something I had written, but not my original post,
> as 
> it had unfortunately already expired.  They asked for a /repost/.
> 
> A repost from !me!!  Anybody that has been on newsgroups for
> awhile... if 
> people are asking for reposts, you've hit it big, and can rightly
> claim 
> to be among the elite of the elite among posters from that
> group.  And 
> they were asking for reposts of !my!! posts!
> 
> I was walking on air for a week!
> 
> Of course this one's a bit different, particularly given where I took
> it, 
> but it's every bit as powerful!
> 
> I've some real-world challenges (no I'm not sick, thanks, but moving,
> the 
> landlady sold the the property to the city to make way, so the
> renters 
> including me gotta move, but at least the city's paying for the
> move) 
> coming up, but this will stay with me thru them.
> 



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