In the Free and Open Source Software world there are “events” and then there are Events, the capital meaning they are likely to be of interest cross-project. Although this concerns the Linux kernel specifically, I am sure it is of interest to many. Reported on Kernel Trap, Larry McVoy is dropping “free’ (as in beer) support of Bitkepper, the versioning system used by the kernel project and reportedly it helped to pump the kernel developement to an all time high.

Also worth reading is Linus Torvald’s statement, sarcasm and irony nicely pepppered in the text:

It’s not like my choice of BK has been entirely conflict-free (“No,
really? Do tell! Oh, you mean the gigabytes upon gigabytes of flames we
had?”), so in some sense this was inevitable, but I sure had hoped that it
would have happened only once there was a reasonable open-source
alternative. As it is, we’ll have to scramble for a while.

The politics and collaborative possibilities of version control systems and how the play out along the lines of free vs open, individualism vs collaboration, centralization vs distributed, etc are worthy of an entire dissertation. I don’t have enough of a love of the technology to do such a project but it is ripe, waiting to happen.

So so so I bought a watch for the first time in years. I guess it is because am feeling the pressure of time which is not that typical for a grad student since we can more or less make our schedules post ABD (All But Dissertation). And I am ABD, but also almost at ABDBAADD (All But Dissertation But Almost At Dissertation Defense) and I am feeling the effects of this BAADD.

My defense date is prolly going to be the last week of May which is exciting but unreal. 8 years of work reflected upon in 1.5 hours. I guess that is the nature of rituals: condensation, reflection, and (and hopefully though not so sure right now) celebration.

Recently, another anthropologist of the ether-world, Alexander Knorr wrote a blog entry about my work that I posted on DGI, his post entitled
biella in the maelstrom of complexity and confusion and he is right, that is pretty much where I am right now even though the original maelstrom was about hacker pragamtics, i.e. what they deal with in a prosaic sense with technology.

It was nice to disover his blog which is just one slice of an amazing research website the content and aesthetics in a complementary relationship. I look forward to reading his project on maxmod

But for now I guess I will make myself known here only when I can’t take the final sprint anymore…

If you want to look after the health of your house rodents, do make sure to eat organic food, and leave them lots of crumbs.

Everyone said, loud enough for the others to hear: “Look at the Emperor’s new clothes. They’re beautiful!” … “What a marvellous train!” A child, however, who had no important job and could only see things as his eyes showed them to him, went up to the carriage. “The Emperor is naked,” he said. ”

In the world of IP and politics, there is a now a child who says “The Emperor is naked” although it is not really a boy but a movement of laboring bodies who have chosen to produce software without the restrictions of IP law. In the process, and without stating it, they have punctured holes through the ossified assumptions justifying a regime that has only become more powerful and intrusive in the last twenty years. The logic is not so water tight anymore, water rushing through, a wave that more than anything has brought in debate over the future direction of IP law.

FOSS by acting like this kid, has not pronounced a blanket statement that has changed minds but has opened a debate and a debate it is. Along with the prolific rise of new technologies like p2p, the debate is ever more fiercer especially as different parties fight it out in America’s top court.

The coverage on the MGM vs. Grokster case in the mainstream news (look above) and the blogsphere has been steady and excellent. Worth checking out are Mako’s, and Timothy’s blog and Corante who have good on the ground summaries and all the right links.

What I was somewhat surprised by was at the NYT’s editorial “When David Steals Goliath’s Music.” It is as if the media relations staff from the Emperor’s entourage wrote it. Presenting the issue as in a black and white tone, this deserves a much more complicated hue of colors..

I am prone to the bad habit of liking sub-standard, low-brow movies, better if funny. But I do have standards, even if quite low. And tonight, one has fallen below the low bar Bong Water while the second met the bar, but got no higher (although the costumes were +++, teerific).

So I can’t remember the last time I woke up crying and so today when I woke up with a wet face stuck against a damp pillow after a horrid horrid nightmare, I was quite surprised. I had a dream that my childhood best friend was killed during her wedding (by some evil- doer and worse in the ocean) and then once dead was mostly gobbled by a bunch of hungry sharks. Since I chose not to attend the wedding, no one bothered to tell me she died, making me miss her funeral. When I found out of her death, I could not stop cyring until I woke up.

While thankfully none of my childhood friends have had this fate, many of them have tied the knot in the past year and I have missed two of those weddings because of various reasons, mostly having to do with time and money. Clearly missing these events has had more of a profound effect on me than I am willing to admit.

This has been one of the tougher years mostly because of my mom’s illness, leaving me with very little literal and at times emotional time for others. I feel like my friendships have suffered some and often this is because I am not so good at letting others know at the toll, time-wise and emotionally, that this can take on one, especially when finishing your dissertation (which also means you are broke).

So anyway, if I have missed your wedding or keep saying no to your invitations or am not reciprocating like Marcel Mauss tells me I should, well at least I still dream about my friends although I hope that the nightmares end, replaced with dreams of a lighter nature..

So India has moved to adopt a new patent law. Necessary to gain admittance in the WTO, it may act as a new hurdle and barrier for the delivery of low cost drugs in India. The news is pretty dismal, as is the reporting, which is pretty appalling. Either the new law is still in amorphous mode, many of the key provisions left unspecified, or reporters are doing a lackluster job (probably a bit of both).

For example in the New York Times article, the author explains:

“Under the new law, a maker of generics can apply to copy a patented drug, but only after it has been marketed for three years. In addition, the patent owner can object.”

“the patent owner can object…” And what may this mean? Of course they object. That is a given. But can they easily strike down the application nearly every time? Or just voice a resounding, NO WAY, keep away from my patents? I mean, of course the patent owner can object if the maker of generics must apply but a sense of the procedure of objection may help, a little.

So it has been a long time since I have taken a full day off of work/school/errands/teaching/moping-lounging etc. But since my friend Jake is in town, visiting the midst of a traveling spree, I decided to take the day off and do some serious hanging. The highlight of the day was going to see Body Worlds in Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. It was pretty fantastic, at once utterly intoxicating, at times a little gross, and always stunningly stark because of its evocative brilliance. Some of the human muscle meat, looks quite coarse. As M said, “just like beef jerkey” while other fragments of the body, like the arterial system, were presented as a delicate flowering network, the marvel being how mr. science-art man rendered the system in tact as much as the biological system itself.

The show is a little pricey but well worth the dollars although I would skip over the movie. Way too much cheese about the marvel of pregnancy.

So, being that Jake is a hacker-turned-photo-journalist, he has captured some really superb photos of Chicago including the exhibit, which he did undercover (amazingly because he has a large camera). So warning, there are a lot of pictures all on one page (299) so it will take a bit to load. But it is worth the wait. Make sure to scroll down to catch the corpses!

So, I am not going out much these days, having entered monk-mode as I wrap up this year. But But But I have already got my tix to see Roy Brown (warning his site makes my browser crash) a Puerto Rican folk singer and political activist who is playing Monday April 4th at Roberto Clemente High School in Humbolt Park. Sponspored by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center and the National Boricua Human rights Network, I encourage folks to go.

His songs are stunning to say the least and I am very happy that I will get to see him live. Here is a sample of one of my favorite songs, Descarga Number 51.

Has anyone every seen or read this book on this history of MIT hacker pranks? Not that I have comments or anything working so it is more rhetorical question than actual but if you love/hate it, do email me. Looks pretty interesting.