I’ve been doing some serious redesign work on GPSD recently. I had planned to do a blog posting about lessons learned, but the result grew enough length and structure to turn into an actual technical paper. You can read it here; comments and criticism will be welcomed. Note, everything described in the paper has already… Continue reading GPSD-NG: A Case Study in Application Protocol Evolution
A Midsummer’s Light Posting
I’ve not been blogging much lately for two reasons. One: vacation. I went to sword camp (formally, “Polaris Summer Weapons Retreat”) again this year, had great time with friends, learned how to fight using a glaive (a form of bladed polearm). Two: heavy technical work. I’ve been designing and implementing a new protocol for GPSD;… Continue reading A Midsummer’s Light Posting
In which I am thankful for Barack Obama’s election
I’ve been trying to buy a gun recently, a better carry weapon (and by “better” I mean more concealable than what I have now and in my favorite caliber). My friends, I am here to tell you that this is an awful time to be in the market for a firearm; they are scarce and… Continue reading In which I am thankful for Barack Obama’s election
Political Economics 101: A Dialog
Attached is a slightly cleaned-up transcript of an IRC conversation I had last night during which I tried to teach political economics 101 to a well-intentioned person I know who describes himself as a “socialist” (though, from the way he reacted, perhaps not for much longer). It went better than one might have expected. I… Continue reading Political Economics 101: A Dialog
The Hand-Reared Cat
In a recent comment, I wrote: Oddly enough, our cat often does come when called, and is rather good at figuring out what humans want and doing it. A few days ago a photographer came out here to take snaps of me for an AP story on NedaNet and was quite startled when I asked… Continue reading The Hand-Reared Cat
RFI on 1911-pattern carry guns
This is a bleg for information on 1911-pattern handguns optimized for concealed carry. Since receiving my most recent death threat, I’ve been carrying a Glock .40 pretty continuously. The .40 is an excellent weapon, but has two drawbacks from my point of view. One is that it has a 5-inch barrel and a relatively wide… Continue reading RFI on 1911-pattern carry guns
Misconstruing Mussolini
I’ve been reviewing the history of fascism recently, because the Republic of Iran has many structural features in common with fascism and I think the history of fascism in Europe holds lessons about its future. And recently I ran across a quote beloved of American leftists in an email signature: From Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should… Continue reading Misconstruing Mussolini
“This is massacre! This is genocide! This is Hitler!”
Listen to this CNN interview with an eyewitness to the Baharestan Square Massacre. If it does not freeze your blood, you are no longer part of any community of human feeling I can recognize. I am, as of now, DONE with people who say we shouldn’t “impose American values” or “promote democracy” in the Middle… Continue reading “This is massacre! This is genocide! This is Hitler!”
Dispatches from the Iranian cyberfront
I’ve spent the last seventeen hours living inside a cyberpunk novel. A libertarian cyberpunk novel. It’s been a weird and awesome experience. Within an hour after I received a plea for help from Iran, a regular commenter on this blog recruited me into a hacker network that has been forming to support the democratic Iranian… Continue reading Dispatches from the Iranian cyberfront
A plea from Iran
I received an email that deeply moved me a few moments ago. I’m going to reproduce it here exactly, except that (as requested) I am omitting the name of the sender. Because I think I’m going to need a term of reference for him, I am substituting the name of a legendary Persian hero. My… Continue reading A plea from Iran
Responding to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Overcoming Bias”
This was originally email to Eliezer Yudkowsky about his excellent and thought-provoking blog Overcoming Bias (actually, the links here are to the older newer Less Wrong, which has been re-indexed at Overcoming Bias). Eliezer encouraged me to publish this commentary; I have provided HTML markup and fixed some typos. Warning: the following may be heavy… Continue reading Responding to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Overcoming Bias”
Reinventing Homosexuality
I’ve recently been reviewing what I know about the historical evidence for how homosexuality has been viewed in other times and places, and doing a bit of additional research into the area. This, which is partly a response to comments by my regulars on some recent essays here, has led me to an interesting perspective… Continue reading Reinventing Homosexuality
How to Type with a Foreign Accent
I spend a lot of time on IRC channels and discussion forums where many of the users are not native speakers of English. Recently one of these expressed surprise when I observed: “You type with a foreign accent. What is your birth language?” He knew, of course, about speaking English with an accent, but he… Continue reading How to Type with a Foreign Accent
Protective camouflage and holy victims
Today I’m going to repeat a story from the blog Alas! and discuss it, because…well, the author does not seem to have grasped the actual implications of what he wrote. It’s what I think of as a “holy victim” narrative, but the actual lesson is not, perhaps, what the author intended.
We are not sheep
I had a breakthrough moment last night. It was on the IRC channel for one of my projects. The developers, and the IRC’s regulars, are a small and tight-knit group. By a coincidence completely unrelated to the nature of the project, we’re all firearms fanciers who take a firm line on Second Amendment rights. Occasionally… Continue reading We are not sheep
Extreme punctuation pedantry
Most people don’t know that there are two different philosophical camps that differ about how to do correct punctuation in English. This has been on my mind lately because of some questions I have been asked by non-native speakers on the Battle for Wesnoth development list, where I am the resident English pedant. The rules… Continue reading Extreme punctuation pedantry
The Economist: Open-source software has won the argument
Well, yes. I’m kind of wondering why they didn’t figure that out sooner. They had the data; I’ve probably been quoted in The Economist more often than any other single magazine. Except maybe Linux Journal.
Computer Language Trends in 2009
Six years ago, in The Art of Unix Programming, I observed some interesting trends in the deployment of programming languages. One Christer Nyfält mailed me this morning reporting that he had followed up by collecting the analogous statistics from SourceForge for present time. Here’s what he said (lightly copy-edited as his English is a bit… Continue reading Computer Language Trends in 2009
Some Iron Laws of Political Economics
Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action, highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the entire population. The result… Continue reading Some Iron Laws of Political Economics
Objective Evidence
This weekend, at Balticon (the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention) I got to play a bit with an infrared-sensing webcam. These turn out not to be very difficult to construct, because CCDs are sensitive well into the IR range. The normal filter blocks IR but passes visible light; by replacing it with fully exposed film stock,… Continue reading Objective Evidence