A reader suggested that I should take a look at an article I wrote back in 1997, Five Myths of New Media, and consider how those predictions panned out. Good idea, here goes…
Category Archives: General
Why Barack Obama sets off my “Never Again!” alarms
OK, I’ll admit it: six months ago I was very near buying into the whole Obama thing. That was when he was in his post-racial phase — before Jeremiah Wright, back when voting for Obama seemed like a way of putting an end to the unhealthy obsessiveness about race that disfigures liberal politics.
The Heller ruling and the 2008 elections
I’ve had time to think about the impact of the Heller ruling on the 2008 elections now, and I’m concluding that a pro-gun-rights ruling with a 5-4 split was absolutely the worst possible outcome for Barack Obama’s campaign.
A victory for civil rights
I’ve just read the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Heller handgun-ban case, issued this morning. It’s a somewhat better result than I was expecting.
I’m unstealthing
Yes,. there is a good reason that I disappeared for two years. As soon as a certain lawsuit now in court wraps up, I’ll even be able to explain it in detail.
But I’m back to blogging. Starting now.
My Comment Policy
I deleted a coment this morning.
This is not something I normally do, except for comments that are both anonymous and content-free — abuse and invective do not count as ‘content’ for this purpose. The comment I deleted this morning was not anonymous, and it could be argued that there was some content in it.
However, the content (if any) was drowned in a sewer-main’s worth of crude insults hurled by one respondent at another. I will not tolerate this, even when the insult-hurler is nominally on ‘my’ side of an issue.
Armed And Dangerous is not a public square and “free speech” standards do not apply here. If you have nothing to contribute to debate over the things I write about, I can and will cut you off at the knees. This applies to those who broadly agree with me as well as those who disagree. (If anything, I give my opponents a little more leeway than my allies.)
In my own small way, I’m trying to defend civilization here. So keep it civil. Or else.
Evidently, I am lightning.
|
You Are Lightning |
![]() Beautiful yet dangerous People will stop and watch you when you appear Even though you’re capable of random violence You are best known for: your power Your dominant state: performing |
This is incorrect in one respect. I do not engage in random violence.
Look over there…
I haven’t posted for a while because my blogging energy has been going to the debate over at
Cato Unbound. I may write an essay about Gramscian damage
in the near future, however.
Is “Open Source Media” an abuse of the term?
A correspondent wrote me to
object to the fact that
that-which-was-Pajamas-Media has launched as “Open Source Media”.
Help with WordPress
This is a request for help from my readers. I’m trying to find out how to hack WP so that it will never insert <br> tags in my entries. I want it to ignore hard newlines, treating them as soft.
WordPress theme designers annoy the crap out of me
Having discovered that my WordPress 1.5 upgrade broke the CSS and
customized template I had designed for WordPress 1.2, I’ve been
shopping for a new theme at the WRC Theme
Viewer site. I’m looking for something clean and simple that I
can customize to my taste.
Having browsed through over a hundred and fifty themes, I’m left with one
burning question in my mind: why are 90% of these themes designed by
utter pinheads who don’t understand basic Web concepts like letting the
viewer control the presentation?
I’ve ranted about the drooling idiocy of pixel-sized fonts before.
Many of these themes not only make that mistake (which hoses anyone in
a screen with a DPI different from the designer’s), they cram the
content into boxes or vertical bands that don’t resize when you
widen or narrow the browser.
There are a handful of honorable exceptions: Clasikue. Anarchy.
Curtains up. Dixie Belle. Elvgren. Flex. Fullwidth. Gentle
Calm. Gila. Greenwood. Ice. The three “Journalized” themes. Man-ja.
Operate. Placidwide. Psycho. Rampart. RohitKumar.org.
Sixties. Steam. But by and large, almost all of the more than 250
themes at this site (and elsewhere I’ve looked) make the same basic,
unforgiveable error. They treat the display like fancy paper under
the control of the theme designer rather than allowing the
user’s preferences to control font sizes and the width of the
display area.
It’s the web, you morons! Stop wasting readers’ screen
space with frames and diapered borders. They have better use for
their pixels than all that frou-frou crap.
Microsoft’s Worst Nightmare?
A commenter writes, in reference to my letter to the Microsoft
recruiter,
BTW, I think abrogating to yourself the status of MS’s worst
nightmare might be seen as presumptious, considering that FLOSS
depends on a big community, and a lot of what FLOSS is about precedes
your 97 work, but far be it from me to try to teach ESR strategy.
Um. You meant “arrogating”, I think. A few words about that…
Microsoft tries to recruit me
The following is, verbatim, a letter I received a few minutes ago
from a Microsoft recruiter.
Love and Severus Snape
OK, I’ve read “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and enjoyed it
I have a theory about what will happen in Book 7. Potential spoilers
about Book 6 follow!.
Upgrading to WordPress
The WordPress update is now complete. Unfortunately, I deleted some recent comments while clearing out comment spam. Comment spam is now blocked using
a simple and clever method which I will not disclose in public.
CBS and SCO Charge: Bush stole Unix!
OREM, UTAH — In a startling and unexpected joint press conference, CBS
and SCO, Inc. charged today that President George W. Bush had
conspired with IBM to steal Unix code while Linus Torvalds was AWOL
from the Finnish army.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the podium, Dan Rather and Darl McBride
flourished what they said was documentary proof, in the form of source
code listings found in a wastebasket at Texas Air National Guard
offices.
Open-source hackers and bloggers immediately questioned the report. “In
1972 Linus was like, three years old!” one Slashdotter commented. “I could
be wrong, but I don’t think they let toddlers into the Finnish army”. Others
pointed out that the listings were laser-printed on sheet-fed paper
using a technology not available in any form until 1978 and not deployed
by the Texas Air National Guard until after 1984. The Linux operating
system was launched in 1991.
“We at CBS have consulted numerous experts and believe these to be accurate,”
Dan Rather said, “but it doesn’t really matter whether or not they are
authentic. George W. Bush’s role in flouting the intellectual-property laws
of this country must be fully investigated. It’s not the nature of the
evidence, it’s the seriousness of the charges!”
“SCO is seeking additional discovery from IBM,” added Darl McBride.
“We have confidence that if we can just get our hands on every IBM
code listing from the dawn of time and depose every IBM employee
living or dead, we will be able to drag this case out long enough to
swing not just the the 2004 elections but the 2008 ones as well!”
In related news, the Kerry campaign — still struggling to rebut
charges of computer illiteracy raised by the Swift Vets’ searing
expose “Unfit for COMMAND.COM” — is rumored to have received a
donation from Bill Gates that included both a large wad of cash and
all known remaining copies of “Microsoft Bob”. Spokepersons could not
be reached for comment.
Da Big Snow
Yup, the blizzard is big. Here in eastern Pennsylvania we’ve had over a foot of snow and
a lot of drifting today. I shoveled my driveway. I’m going to be stiff tomorrow.
The Prudential interview
I’ve spent a lot of time and effort since 1997 developing effective propaganda tactics for
reaching the business world on behalf of the hacker community — among other things, by
popularizing the term ‘open source’. If you want to grok how this is done, read
my October 15 interview with a bunch of Prudential Securities investors.
Pay attention to style as well as content. This is the language you have to learn to speak
to reach the people who write big checks. It’s not very complicated, if you just bear in mind
that these people are obsessed with two things: risk management and return on investment. As they should be — it’s their job.
Re: My Photo
Thanks, all of you, for the compliments. The last thing I expected was to become a geek pinup!
Cathy Raymond
Jack needs a girlfriend

“Free Love”, eh? Well, that would explain a lot. Jack must have been the dude I saw
damn near run into a doorframe yesterday because he was checking out my wife Cathy so intently he forgot to watch where he
was going. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
