Indeed, our suspicions about theSCO-MS connection are closer to to verifcation.

This has potential to be a battle and epic of dramatic proportions. Only time will tell whether its outcome will be wholesome or not..

wow
Kinyarwanda, the language spoken by most Rwandans, has no words for many basic technical and computing terms, including the very word “computer,” so when the group that started translating OpenOffice came to this, they decided on a new word:
“mudasobwa,” which roughly translates to “something or someone that does not make mistakes.”
link here

For those interested in reading an amusing and well written account about the SCO case, here it is (thanks Patrice!)

I.B.M. looks like the pretty good guy in all of this but indeed they of course do things that are typical of a corporate giant who makes big bucks off of patents. But really they should at least stick to technology patents and not the likes of How to Pay an Open Source Developer. Lame. Yeah they should just stick to what they do best software patents

First of all, SCO is 10 years too late in their lobbying efforts in congress to sully open source because it does not conform to the principle of copyright law and that wonderful DMCA, so it is bad unamerican shit,and will drive us back to the competitive middle ages. Open source will bring us down………….

What a farce. It is almost comical. I mean it is like outlawing the VCR after there were gazillions of users which is why the Supreme Court basically could not rule in unconstitutional back in the 80s. Why and how are they justifyin the money they are spending. Don’t they even realize how much open source software is out there? I mean can you imagine the migration nightmare if let’s say all of Apache servers had to come down and be replaced by something else?

Bad Move SCO. You are fueling the fire of a passion that is already passionate you dumb Silly nitwits.

What I love though is that this so brings into clear relief one of my main arguments about the power of open source politicallys speaking. It transformed what was a singular model of IP rights into a multiple one and SCO is desperately trying to make it singular again.

Also, who exactly is behind thi? I mean wouldn’t it just be so great from the perspective of “great stories”, (though so high schoolish which would never surprise me in this American nation of ours where so many interactions post high school still seem to exude the warring, cliqueish natire) if we found out that like Mr. Gates was conspiring and colluding with Mr. McBride so that SCO is the conduit for what MS sort of tried to do but failed? And then when caught, they would go down in monstrous flames, a moment mythologized as the apogee, the pinnacle of great hacker moments. One can fantasize, no? Heh

Texas produces a lot of bunk. We are reminded of this daily on the news thanks to our Sir President who carries the Texan signature of elongated drawl curbed by the extreme close-mindedness and nitwitedness of his less than pristine mind. But once in a while Texas produces a gem, the classic bodacious bent enlivening instead of frustrating through the idiosyncracies of Texas: Bruce Sterling. Many in the cyber, web, Internet, virtual et al world find him somewhat distasteful: arrogant, aloof, bawdy. Yet these are the reasons I like him. His distance adds force to his words which I happen act to perk up my nose and eyes as I read them.
Check out a pretty good recent
interview with BS..

So every once in awhile, I find a commnet on my blog from a stranger, like my now friend Niels from the Netherlands. He posted some comments before I went to the Netherlands for a month last year so we ended up meeting up and going on a nice though slightly coolish three day bike trip, which I am very fond of despite the rain and the bum knee.

Just yesterday someone unknown to me posted a comment on what is probabaly one of my favorite blog entries ever Life of the Mind, UHHH, I mean thigh which is apparently the first hit on google if you type “Life of the Mind” and Chicago.

So I wrote her and asked how it is she found my blog (as it is very strange and fascinating to find out how people navigate through such a space) and here is her response:

“How does DO I get sucked into voyeuristic web reading??? I DON’T KNOW. If I
did, I’d find a way to stop it. Seriously though, I was being very U of C, and
decided to look up the phrase “Life of the Mind” on google…because I was
bored. People who are active, physically accomplish things. I look up phrases
on Google. It’s the U of C way, really. So that’s how I stumbled on to the
log, and the precor bit was just hilarious. Actually, your blog is much larger
venture than I expected. It’s like the matured form of my high school website
on European History”

Little adventures and random connections. It is what makes a lot of the web still fun for me though I am do feel like I am battling time, time to keep up with it all…

Danny O’Brien of NTK is a purported total 100% disorganized mess but damn a great writer.

One of the things that interests him is how certain geeks organize to get things done and how they do so technically. He is going to start a small research project to collect the information and present it at a conference and he is asking for some help and suggestions for specimens.

This is a topic that has fascinated me throughout my research so I can’t wait to hear his results. But one thing I would have him look for are the “little” and minute practices of efficiency that might go unnoticed just because they are so so so second nature. The one thing I am thinking of is in particular is the keystroke. It amazes me how programmers and technical types are able to move about their environment almost entirely punching keys, avoiding entirely the rodent apparatus to their side. Switching windows, desktops, moving about text in a way that makes click, highlight, cut, and paste seem entirely at turtle speed modus operandi. I am enthralled by the damn keystroke and am only slowly getting the hang of it to move around in my own environment. I think that geeks embody forms of efficiency even when they might be outwardly disorganized!

Anyway, good luck to you Danny and yes, I would love to see a Soap Opera about geeks. You could star as the evil villian who would muck their almost perfect artistry of efficiency!

If there was a soap opera for geeks, it would be all about people juggling sixteen projects while filtering sixteen thousand emails on twenty monitors. It would be called “Shoulder Surf” and would be on at five in the morning and to save time it would be broadcast in fast-forward.

I still dont have an IP address to connect to ethernet in my office but I gave wireless a shot today and lo and behold, there was a connection! The joy, the joy of finding a wireless connection is a little like the feeling of Christmas morning as a kid. I hope that joy stays around……

The other day in the car, I realized that LaTeX was like one great social hack. It makes that which does not look clever and smart, look clever and smart, a point made here.

I wish there was a way to make moving feel a lot easier than it is and I guess there is one: $$$$$ But right now all I have is time and labor and not the green ones so I am swimming in dust, boxes, books, files, packing away, and I can’t say that I enjoy any of it right now.

Next time I give my IRC talk, I am going to show this 10 minute movie, The Parlor. I sort of ruined the surprise already but dowload and see it if you can.