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Major Linux Hardware Donor Is a CNN "Hero"
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Oct 02, 2007 05:52 PM
from the making-a-difference dept.
from the making-a-difference dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "James Burgett of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center calls himself a 'tattooed freak' and a recovering drug addict, but CNN is calling him a hero (video) for diverting tons of computers from landfills, installing Ubuntu Linux on them, and giving them out to schools, non-profits, and poor people. Burgett's filmed interview is currently leading a CNN contest among videos of 'ordinary people' whom CNN considers everyday heroes, narrowly edging out the video of a man who is saving gorillas from extinction. In his interview, Burgett points out that the people working for him are also recovering drug addicts or recovering mental illness patients." Update: 10/02 23:46 GMT by KD : Reader stefanlasiewski posted a journal article describing how, bewilderingly, the state of California is threatening to shut down Burgett's ACCRC.
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Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Weird (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Ubuntu will find some way to show their appreciation to the runner up in their "Gracious Gorilla" release.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Funny)
He realized he'd hit bottom... (Score:5, Funny)
(just kidding...keep up the great work!).
Re:He realized he'd hit bottom... (Score:5, Funny)
Good for him. Good for the schools. Good for Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Helping out schools. Cool
Helping the environment. Cool (though some in the "movement" would gripe about the electricity consumed).
Linux. Uber cool!
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
And it's not like he's hurting the knowledge about the gorilla program because I hadn't hear of either until today. If it weren't a guy installing linux (but instead a woman making sandwiches for hungry orphans) then it would have never made it on slashdot.
So, we can call it a win for both.
Re:But (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
I see it that way, too. But the (American, at least) culture is focused on Winners and Losers to the extent that such rich meditations as yours are easy to miss. Slashdot clearly (witness the comment list) reflects this attitude, but it is nice to see more light and less heat on occasion. Thanks.
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely just Americans. Or something. What was that all about?
Anyway, here's the real issue: humans have a natural bias to assume a zero-sum game first, even where none exists. It's the source of all envy. Maybe it was a good survival trait back in the poor, nasty, brutish, and short days when competition over resources was fierce, but it's clearly maladaptive now.
You don't have to be crazy.. (Score:5, Funny)
but it helps!
sorry... old joke...couldn't resist
I know (Score:5, Funny)
Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
First, on a personal level, for taking control of his life back.
Second, on an environmental level, for saving unnecessary rubbish from a landfill somewhere.
Third, on a charitable level, for donating the results of his work.
Fourth, on an economic level, for using free software and cast-off hardware to do something useful.
Fifth, on a geek level, for using Linux to do it.
My hat's off to you, sir.
He says vote for someone else ;) (Score:5, Informative)
"Vote for the gorillas. 25 grand and fame that id probably just piss away anyway is not worth a specie.".
Nice honest opinion from the Hero.
Re:He says vote for someone else ;) (Score:5, Funny)
This guy really is heroic!! James, you have my vote!
California doesn't like him.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Life imitates art. Unbelievable. (Score:5, Interesting)
>
>The Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency has issued the ACCRC a violation that could make it very hard for the group to stay in business. And, quite frankly, that's a damned shame.
And when I wrote Natalie's Restaurant [slashdot.org] more than two years ago, I thought it was fiction. Shit, the only thing I got wrong was that I imagined a San Francisco bureaucrat, as opposed to a Berkeley bureaucrat, and that my imaginararily-awkwardly-named "California Computer Recycling Use Fee Commission" wasn't long enough to match the actual bureaucracy's name (namely the "Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency").
Because nobody, not even in the Bay Area, could be so dumb as to suggest that tossing a bunch of working hardware into a container ship bound for a crusher/smelter in China, was somehow a "more green" solution than reusing (and giving away) perfectly functional hardware so that it doesn't go into the waste stream in the first place.
But then again, that's the difference between recycling as done by folks like the ACCRC - which is interested in reducing and reusing as well as recycling - and recycling as done by a government bureaucrat, to whom the only "green" that matters is how many taxpayer dollars can be milked out of an operation.
So we'll sing it again when it comes 'round on the guitar.
Can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, diggin' through their closets and attics, findin' somethin' that still works, and givin' it to someone who ain't got one? And friends, they may think it's a movement...
Re:Life imitates art. Unbelievable. (Score:5, Informative)
Similar... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Terminology (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone that distributes Linux to the masses (Score:5, Funny)
Or as we call them on Slashdot, 'Linux System Administrators'.
Re:Anyone that distributes Linux to the masses (Score:5, Insightful)
You are plain wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, the refurbished computers that are granted by ACCRC to nonprofits and needy individuals are granted free of cost. Zero. No dollars.
If the recipient is not happy with the free computer they received, they can return it for no charge. Again, it's free at the ACCRC.
There's no mandatory recycling fee either for disposing or receiving a recycled computer. There is a recycling fee assessed to the purchase of new monitors by a reseller. You basically pay your recycling fee when you buy your monitor. This is similar to car batteries. That said, if you don't buy a new monitor, and instead say receive a free monitor from an organization like ACCRC, you pay nothing.