There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it’s basically impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its being touched by a gay program. — Eric Allman, about Sendmail.

So, I was once asked, ok more than once, is there much of a gay presence in the world of geekdom? Well, there is not much of one, but there is one. Today, on IRC someone pasted a pretty funny quote made by Eric Allman, the author of Sendmail (an important Intenet mail routing program) about his gay identity. It is *hilarious.*

It reminded me of the queer theory (Judith Butler, 1997) I used in a small discussion of the nature of FOSS licensing, although I could not call the GPL queer ( queer in relation to copyright, that is) as I orginally wanted to; but after more thinking, the GPL is much more like a gay license because it attempt to normalize itself by integrating free speech discourse. This is what I wrote in my dissertation (due in 3 days) about it, minus any reference to queer or gay:

[..]
Even when developers don’t explicitly address normative IP law during discussion, the copyleft and related FOSS licensing inherently invokes and calls attention to its opposite, the law of copyright and IP law. Queer, linguistic, and anthropological theory has demonstrated that any naturalized proposition (like hetreosexuality) or social fact both presupposes and ultimately propagates what it excludes (Butler 1997; Derrida; Graeber 2001, 2004). David Graeber sees a creative potential in all social concepts and artifacts, a

So I recently wrote about the importance of crisis for sustaining an active ethical life. Since then, I have finished the section using a real life Debian example (many to choose from, thanks Debian!) but since it is too long to post here, I only want to provide a description of the paradox that crisis induces: a state of unity in disunity.

Below is a short description of the crisis I describe in the chapter (perhaps later I will tell the full strory here but for those Debian developers that read, they I am sure will know I am talking about the infamous Vancouver Prospectus). I have also included a *very* accurate and *scientific* figure of the emotional state of the crisis. Unlike sociologists, economists, and psychologists, anthropologists ar WIMPS, we just don’t exploit frequently enough the force of representational data like charts and pictures. I say we should. I say let’s assert our right to point to “figure 1″ and represent the social world we write in a glossy picture or a chart with lots of arrows of causation and attribution. Ok, let’s see how.

*****
[...]

….. I was awed by the cascade of responses that emerged from one email. Before addressing its content, it is first worth describing the emotive and social atmosphere of utter paradox that arose, in which synchronicity sat alongside unsettling discordance. The project was in one of the most pronounced moments of synchronicity that I had seen in a long time. Hundreds and hundreds of developers gave their due attention in the form of voluminous writings

So Sato is a Puerto Rican street mongrel and while clearly the dog about to be portrayed ain’t no pure bred mutt, he is a Roaming Sato in so far as he can skate. Bitchin’

Once in a while I receive a piece of spam whose combination of words in the subject header I think would make for some very fine poetry or a really cool name like:

Jitterbug sparkle sauerkraut.

“Hi, Tony, my name is Jitterbug Sparkle Sauerkraut…. Yes indeed I was raised in a macrobiotic-eating circus-hippy farm in the backwaters of Vermont run by a band of fun loving, tree-hugging, houligans who loved to make huge vats of crunchy, zingy, sauerkraut, which we gave freely to anyone who wanted.”

System administrators are really thier own breed of people.
Firely independent, they exude a cowboy sensibility, a lone ranger, who fixes the server crash with nothing short of arrogant bravado.

So apparently, some of the HOTTEST sys admins (ie, hot as in can administer a box with no problem) have a little help from the red man below:

It has long been a widely-acknowledged fact among the System Administrator community that fixes to broken servers involve what is commonly known as “Voodoo” — That is, illlogical sequences of actions which, despite their apparent stochiastic reasoning, nevertheless seem to fix the problem at hand.

We here at Satanic SysAdmins suggest a more “scientific”, quantifiable approach. We maintain that there are definite, easily laid-out steps which can resolve various daily problems with a minimum of fuss. All it takes is absolute compliance to these simple instructions and unswerving devotion to our Lord and Master, Lucifer Light-Bringer.

You can muck around with jumper and software settings for hours, but in our experience, the most simple and direct solution involves the ritual sacrifice of a domesticated fowl, i.e. the common chicken or duck. Under a full moon, slay the chicken with a Tongan war club. Setting parapherneilia like candles, bells, and naked nubile dancers is recommended but not obligatory. Drip the blood of the newly-slain beast onto a Tibetan prayer scarf, and wrap said scarf around…

I have been somewhat absent on this blog as of late in part because of teaching responsibilities and I think my absence will only grow more apparent (to be explained soon).

In class this week we read some material on crypto and privacy such as Database Nation, and Steven Levy’s Cryto Rebels. The student response papers really grappled with the many complex issues surrounding ‘privacy’ which as one student noted is such a catch all term that it does not do justice (often in fact occludes) to the very diverse issues that get tagged onto it.

So one student in his response paper decided to tell an ironic story about downloading PGP, worth sharing (with permission of course)..

9:05AM: I download the PGP installer from www.pgp.com and install the encryption program. I am surprised by the interface

Need a jolt? Well take a look at THE HASSELHOFFIAN RECURSION. Yes, I agree with you, this is somewhat obscene, speaking of which, a court just declared banning”horror porn” unconstitutional. I am not sure if the Hasselhoffian Recursion counts as horror porn even if at one level it is horrifying.

And it is not even Thanksgiving yet… Clearly people have too much time on their hands but I have a feeling that a lot of this work gets done at “work…” The few times I had a job inside the fortress of florescent light (office-landia), it amazed me how much down time there was. In fact, Friday was useless, a near zero day of productivity. Anyway I am glad something may be coming out of it.

I bought some broccoli at the store and lo and behold, they were adorned with shower caps. I kid you not, –> shower caps, to protect the “heads” from whatever things screw up broccolli. It was sort of amusing and somewhat strange but I guess no more strange than the long list of consumer goods/services that are dreamt up for purposes of customer satisfaction, appeasement, and denial.

But the best part about this new packaging innovation is now I can, finally, shower with my beloved, my broccoli.

Mika and Mako not only have wonderfully strange similar sounding names, they are quite adpet at making a fine, humorous photoblog about thier HOT date and the way that Mako resolved the problem of The Recalcitrant Cork.

And what I love about this expose is that it is so hackish. Not only devilishly humors, it also is accompanied by Technical Notes

Thus while pragmatic and efficient, it is presented with gusto, style, grace, and humor. Indeed, hackish.

ps– and note the classic pun