A thoughtful commenter objected in a procedural way to my open letter to Chris Dodd. He praised the letter and affirmed that I spoke for him in it, but said:
Month: February 2012
From Dave in my basement
Dave Taht is in my basement trying to use GPSD to set up NTP-independent time service on an WNDR3700 router, and having some problems. I’m upstairs teaching GPSD to emit a clock-drift message – both projects are because we’re trying to build a monitoring framework for accuracy-checking NTP. The following IRC exchange ensues: [11:31] dtaht2… Continue reading From Dave in my basement
An Open Letter to Chris Dodd
Mr. Dodd, I hear you’ve just given a speech in which you said “Hollywood is pro-technology and pro-Internet.” It seems you’re looking for interlocutors among the coalition that defeated SOPA and PIPA, and are looking for some politically feasible compromise that will do something against the problem of Internet piracy as you believe you understand… Continue reading An Open Letter to Chris Dodd
The Grey Lady weeps for Peter Gleick
So, all last week on one of my favorite mailing lists I was hearing various climate alarmists crowing about a document leak from the Heartland Institute that supposedly prooooved that it (and by extension all other anthropogenic-global-warming skeptics) was engaging in a nefarious campaign to suppress its opponents and trash the teaching of science in… Continue reading The Grey Lady weeps for Peter Gleick
Super Star Trek 2.1
I guess it’s paleo-game theme week. For your retrocomputing pleasure, here’s my Python forward-port of the 1973 University of Texas FORTRAN Trek game: Super Star Trek. Anybody old enough to remember TTYs probably played this on one. While it has accreted some features over time, it’s still functionally pretty close to the original FORTRAN Star… Continue reading Super Star Trek 2.1
VMS Empire 1.9 released
Recent discussion of the 4X game Eclipse reminded me of a responsibility. I’ve just shipped VMS Empire 1.9. This is a close descendent of the original solitaire Empire computer game that was the ur-ancestor of all 4X computer games, including Civilization and Master of Orion.
Eclipse: raising the bar for the 4X game
I’m a big fan of the game genre called “4X” – “explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate.”. I’ve been playing these ever since the ur-progenitor of the genre in the 1980s, Empire, and I actually still maintain an open-source C version of that game. Civilization is my favorite computer game ever, and by what I hear… Continue reading Eclipse: raising the bar for the 4X game
Generative science
I’m thinking about writing another book. I won’t disclose the title or topic yet, but there’s a bit of research for it I think can be usefully crowdsourced, and may also give a clue about the book for those of you interested. I’ve written before about the difference between descriptive and generative theories. To recap… Continue reading Generative science
I’ve settled on “Admired”
I’ve settled on Brad Thomas’s “Admired” with the light white skin as the new theme for this blog. It’s a relatively new theme and is being actively maintained with a support forum. which relieves my main worry about my old Live Steam theme – it’s not going to fall out of sync with the WordPress… Continue reading I’ve settled on “Admired”
Admire this?
Regulars: If you’re seeing the blog’s main page with a blue bar across the top, directly below the title, then you’re probably seeing the “Admire” theme. It’s an improvement over TwentyEleven, and I’ve figured out how to disable comment nesting. Let me know what you think: is this an improvement over the old Live Steam… Continue reading Admire this?
Reverting to the old theme…
I’m reverting to the old theme to see if I can fit some of the new features in it. I agree the new theme was too whitespace-heavy, and comment nesting was not working out as well as I’d hoped. I haven’t been able to figure out how to get rid of the huge right margin… Continue reading Reverting to the old theme…
The Smartphone Wars: The market share scramble and Apple’s long con
Mobile phone carriers have a crappy record of strategic planning – the history of the industry is rife with massive overinvestment in services consumers didn’t actually want, partly redeemed by massive unanticipated revenue from accidents of technology (I’m looking at you, SMS!). I’ve explained elsewhere that inflation-adjusted carrier ROI is negative. Even so, the latest… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: The market share scramble and Apple’s long con
Hold on to your hats…
Hold on to your hats, I’m going to be experimenting with some theme and sidebar changes for the blog. Don’t be surprised if it looks different than you’re used to…
Does “Corporation X” follow the hacker way?
Got a query from a journalist today working on a major story about a certain large corporation that’s been much in the news lately. Seems the corporation’s founder has been talking up his organization’s allegiance to “the hacker way”, and she not unreasonably wanted my opinion as to whether or not this was complete horse-puckey.… Continue reading Does “Corporation X” follow the hacker way?