Talk:Jon Hall (programmer)

Is "mad dog" nicname sincere and proper?
After attending a conference he held at Drexel University on behalf of the College of Arts and Sciences, he explained why he was given his nickname of "Maddog". I am hesitant to post the official reason, as I only caught the last half of the conversation, and don't have sufficient data, however, his name was not given to him by students.

A former employer, who was British, described him as a mad dog, after his rather overwhelming reaction to another "specialist" who was called to repair a main UNIX terminal. He bagan to repair this machine by opening the manual to page one, and reading. Hall was infuriated that the administration would pay this person a large quantity of money per hour to start reading on page one (the thank you for purchasing page); especially when he had the technical ability to resolve the problem, but not the administrative access. He 'removed' the person from the terminal and vocalized his opinion.

The reasons for hesitation are: I cannot confirm his sincerity in this matter (could be a joke); cannot confirm the location, nor persons involved.

Any input would be appreciated.
 * The behaviour you describe sounds about right for someone with that type of beard. --Tim1988 talk 17:11, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I met him about 2 years ago and this doesn't seem that out of place or unreasonable however I don't know. 68.221.204.15 23:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I met him several years ago, and I definitely remember him telling the story you mentioned. I don't know whether or not it is the source of his nickname, however. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.74.87.117 (talk) 23:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Bearded hippie.
Jon is the archtypical bearded, long haired Unix guru, and a role model of sorts for that group. I was trying to figure out a way to add that fact without sounding like a troll.

Meanings
quote: "... promote the Linux operating system. ... "

If I am not mistaken, Linux is the kernel, GNU is the OS or you could say GNU with Linux

maddog
i'm from Poland, sorry for bad english i think that maddog is bad, beacuse it suposed to be Maddog yes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.201.209.162 (talk) 15 October 2006
 * The non-capitalized form "maddog" comes from the way Unix users would log in to computer systems, and how it looked in computer communications (newsgroups, IRC, email). That's why he is known by this form.  It is not a mistake and he in fact uses this himself, which you can see on his YouTube channel. MJKazin (talk) 20:33, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I spent some time with Jon Hall in a bar in 2001...
We discussed graphical tool kits of all things. He was a GTK+ fan, and I preferred Qt. This was before Qt had the GPL license added. Long story short, he mentioned that he had gone on vacation at some tropical island. He said that if we ever went there, to look for a woman whose name I forget. According to him, she can do amazing things to your body which you never thought were possible. For the life of me, I can't remember the island or her name... It really caught me off guard, going from talking about computer stuff to island sex. :-)

63.88.93.150 (talk) 18:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Jon is an excellent story teller. If you ever buy him a good beer or some good whiskey, he will tell you all kinds of great stories.  Try getting him to tell you his Grace Hopper stories sometime. --flyhighplato (talk) 22:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

License plate
I think the reference to the vanity license plate should be removed. It's not encyclopedic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baravalle (talk • contribs) 12:22, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks like there is no opposition - removing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baravalle (talk • contribs) 17:22, 3 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I missed your earlier comment. As you see, I disagree; his license plate is quite well iknown within a certain subset of the world, and mention is certainly encyclopedic for this article - I have returned it, and changed the reference so that it's not dead. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 22:01, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

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