Month: March 2004

Some Bright Morning

The memorial service, on Saturday the 27th of March, began with music (Bach, by a string trio), followed by an invocation from Psalms. Then the woman with the string bass, the man with the fiddle, and the man with a banjo came up and played “I’ll Fly Away.” Then people shared stories, and at the end as people left, the string trio played “Sheep May Safely Graze.”

I talked about how when I was little I wanted to be like David because he was a race car driver, and that’s what every kid wants. But as I grew up, and grew away from wanting to race cars, I learned to admire him for other reasons, and I still want to be like him.

My brother read from the Torah: apparently the section he’d been assigned for his bar mitzvah was also the portion for the day that David died. It was a list of instructions for how to build the ark of the covenant: it shall be made of acacia-wood, and it shall be so many cubits by so many cubits, on and on. Joel said that when he was thirteen, he had a terrible time coming up with some sort of exegesis for this to be read before the entire congregation, but now, he really understands it: God loves precision engineering.

At the end of the program they printed his motto, “there is never enough time, there is never enough money, and nothing ever fits.” True to form, when he was taken away in the hearse, he was too tall for it and they had to bend him awkwardly.

Patents, Hardware, Monopoly

1. Software patents blow. This endless debate about C# and .NET in GNOME is a huge waste of time– the hackers would rather be coding, I’m sure, or debating the technical merits of various languages, than worrying about the legality of their actions. The very idea that it might be a crime or even a civil infingement to create something new is by itself upsetting, but the fact that engineers have to play lawyer before creating new tools is very upsetting indeed.

2. Eric: When I said I needed a more serious machine than my Mac, I did not mean that Macs are non-serious machines. This laptop has served me well; however, it’s old and slow and for work I need to use an x86 system running SUSE 9.x and XD-Unstable. So, this machine, while great for most tasks, is not well-suited to me specifically.

3. MSFT has sponsored something of a furore over the EU decision to fine it and demand various behavior modifications. It insists that such demands from a foreign nation are a threat to US soverignty and to US-based international business. Bullshit. Businesses are always required to comply with local laws; that’s one of the challenges of being a multinational business and it’s not a new one. MSFT has a very clear choice if it does not want to meet the EU anti-trust strictures: stop doing business in Europe.

Weekend Linkage

Another Slate article on gay marriage and portrayal of gay men, and it points to what looks like the worst possible show ever, Playing It Straight, which is as you might imagine a test of how straight a gay man can act. If he’s straight-acting enough, he’ll get a million dollars, and not get beat up in the locker room after school! Hurrah!

Anti-Mel Fashion, which is to say, The Fashion of the Christ. Favorite headline recently: Zombies Drive Christ From Box Office.

In Chville this weekend, visiting family. Having Brainshare behind me is like a weight off my shoulders; now I feel like I can actually get some work done: helping arrange blog-based communities of ideas within the company, working with the docs people from Provo and Nuremburg, etc. etc.

Bad Software Names

5: Pan, formerly known as the “Pimp-Ass Newsreader.” I’ve put it last in the list because it’s an issue the developers recognized and fixed.

4: Novel, a Linux clone of Novell’s client32. Deliberately confusing trademark violations are a sure way to win corporate goodwill for your independent project.

3: SLOX, the Exchange replacement. For starters, it includes the competitor’s name, “Exchange.” Secondly, it sounds like a sexually transmitted disease: “Dude, you slept with Inga? No wonder you got SLOX!”

2: GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. I always find it a good idea to use an offensive and derogatory term to name my products.

1: sux, the “su” wrapper that transfers a user’s X permissions as they become another user. Let’s just say it sux.

Financial Foresight

Seems obvious to me, but children just seem like a luxury most people just shouldn’t indulge in. I mean, you can do quite well making not much money if you’re only supporting yourself. But feeding eight people on a minimum wage salary? Not bloody likely.

The solutions, of course, are difficult. If we “care about the children” we’ll increase aid to families with dependent children, but then the “personal responsibility” right complains about “welfare queens” and “abuse of the system,” and the childless cranks like me tend to get annoyed that all their money is going to support people too irresponsible to use a rubber.

Frankly, I don’t have kids and don’t plan to, but I still find the Child-Free Movement, like the QuirkyAlone movement, incredibly annoying. Being single and childless is not a “movement.” I have no problem paying my education taxes, or helping out when my co-workers have sick kids, because I know those kids will be paying for my retirement. That’s the intergenerational commitment that the childfree selfishly ignore. Still, I wish people would think twice before, as it were, pulling the trigger and bringing one more miserable squalling child into this world. It’s not like the kid will be grateful or anything.