I’m still not going to talk about my attack on the forge infrastructure problems quite yet; the software is coming along nicely, but I intend to announce only after it handles its fourth forge type (yes, that was a tease). But I will say this: I now think I know what the future of forges… Continue reading The future of software forges
Hacker superstitions about software licensing
Hackers have a lot of odd superstitions about software licensing. I was reminded of this recently when a project maintainer asked me whether he needed to get a sign-off from each and every one of his contributors before switching from Apache v1 to Apache v2. Here’s what I told him: My opinion is this. Under… Continue reading Hacker superstitions about software licensing
Fearing what might be true
I am not generally unhappy with my model of how the universe works. Yes, it would be pleasant if there really were a beneficient creator-god and an afterlife; it would be nice if “good government” were actually a sustainable possibility rather than a fond but deluded hope in the minds of statists; it would be… Continue reading Fearing what might be true
Public Space in Cyberspace
Following my post Condemning Censorship, Even of Werewolves, a great many people took me for task for trying to make a principled distinction between public space and private space, and tangled that up with a lot of confusion about the distinction between “public” and “state-owned” space. Here I’ll attempt to shed some light on the… Continue reading Public Space in Cyberspace
Condemning Censorship, Even of Werewolves
Thomas Paine once wrote: “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” Paine’s truth is not idealistic handwaving, it is brutal pragmatism. Justifications for censorship, even the best-intentioned kind, have a way of… Continue reading Condemning Censorship, Even of Werewolves
How Not To Tackle the Mess around Forges
In my previous two posts I have diagnosed a significant weakness in the open-source infrastructure. The architecture of the code behind the major SourceForge-descended hosting sites is rotten, with all kinds of nasty consequences — data seriously jailed, poor or completely absent capabilities near scripting and project migration. I said I was going to do… Continue reading How Not To Tackle the Mess around Forges
Looking Deeper into Forges, And Not Liking What I See
In my previous post, Three Systemic Problems With Open-Source Hosting Sites I identified some missing features that create serious brittleness in or project-hosting infrastructure. The question naturally arises, why don’t existing hosting systems already have these facilities? I have looked into this question, actually examining the codebases of Savane and GForge/FusionForge, and the answer appears… Continue reading Looking Deeper into Forges, And Not Liking What I See
Three Systemic Problems with Open-Source Hosting Sites
I’ve been off the air for several days due to a hosting-site failure last Friday. After several months of deteriorating performance and various services being sporadically inaccessible, Berlios’s webspace went 404 and the Subversion repositories stopped working…taking my GPSD project down with them. I had every reason to fear this might be permanent, and spent… Continue reading Three Systemic Problems with Open-Source Hosting Sites
Raymond & Polanski vs. “Mr. Society”
In my previous post, Why Artists Defend Roman Polanki, I analyzed the flap over the Roman Polanski arrest as a case of artists arguing for a privilege to behave like shitheels without being held to account for it. I advanced this as an explanation because I think it covers the facts better than some of… Continue reading Raymond & Polanski vs. “Mr. Society”
Why artists defend Roman Polanski
In 1977, Roman Polanski drugged, raped, and sodomized a 13-year-old girl. When he believed a sort-of-plea-bargain was about to come unstuck, he took it on the lam. He lived the high life in this self-imposed exile for thirty years, until busted in Switzerland recently. Now various of the usual suspects on the right wing’s enemies… Continue reading Why artists defend Roman Polanski
Mighty aches from little ACORN’s fall
In all the foofaraw surrounding the ACORN scandals, there is a huge important consequence of them understood – but not spoken – by everyone who follows politics as a blood sport. This story describing conditions in Michigan and tallying up some recent ACORN convictions for electoral fraud is an indicator. And, on top of Obama’s… Continue reading Mighty aches from little ACORN’s fall
Uncivil society and the collapse of the nomenklatura
A few moments ago, I read a review of a new book, Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, and the following sentences jumped out at me: This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.†The Communists borrowed… Continue reading Uncivil society and the collapse of the nomenklatura
Not long before the end
In California Dreamin’ I wrote: The U.S. as a whole will almost certainly face [California’s structural deficit] problem before the end of Barack Obama’s administration in 2012. Social Security obligations were due to exceed collections in 2013; even before Obama quadrupled the federal deficit this meant a giant blazing meteorite was already hurtling straight at… Continue reading Not long before the end
This blog got wormed
This blog is one of many that got hit late last week by a particularly nasty and invasive worm targeting WordPress sites. (No, it wasn’t a botched upgrade, as I saw at least one commenter speculate.) The first symptoms showed up either late Thursday or early Friday of last week, when links from the main… Continue reading This blog got wormed
Let these two asses be set to grind corn!
In The Book of Lies, the diabolically brilliant occultist Alesteir Crowley once wrote: “Explain this happening!” “It must have a natural cause!” “It must have a supernatural cause!” Let these two asses be set to grind corn! In the original, there is a sort of grouping bracket connecting the second and third lines lines and… Continue reading Let these two asses be set to grind corn!
From radical evil to farce in two generations
There just isn’t any better marker for the fundamental narcissism of today’s left-wing politics that this: That’s Che Guevara’s granddaughter, Lydia, We are told that she posed semi-nude to promote vegetarianism and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. There are so many levels of wrongness and unintended irony here that it’s hard to know… Continue reading From radical evil to farce in two generations
“The new literacy” ain’t so new
Today, Wired magazine gives us an article, Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, busting the supposedly conventional wisdom that cellphones, social networking, and the Internet in general have accelerated the decline of writing skills. The author says we’re actually in an age of rising literacy unparalleled since classical Greece. Er, what?
In which I learn that I am vindicated…
This morning I had the delightful “I was right all along!” experience of learning that the one grammatical bugaboo in my life is probably bogus. The next time a copy-editor invokes it on me I shall gleefully kick him or her in the snout…
Quiddity has a qualia all its own
I changed my mind about a significant philosophical issue today, and in the process parted ways with a thinker I’ve been a serious fan of for a couple of decades now. The issue is raised by a thought experiment, of which I was previously unaware, called Mary’s Room. The simplest way of getting involved the… Continue reading Quiddity has a qualia all its own
Dr. William Short’s “Viking Weapons and Combat”: A Review
I expected to enjoy Dr. William Short’s Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques (Westholme Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59416-076-9), and I was not disappointed. I am a historical fencer and martial artist who has spent many hours sparring with weapons very similar to those Dr. Short describes, and I have long had an active interest in the… Continue reading Dr. William Short’s “Viking Weapons and Combat”: A Review