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July 4th, 2009
 | 08:30 pm - Ah, Star Trek.
Since it's the 4th of July, they've decided to run The Omega Glory. Because really, TOS is at its best when it's inducing blunt metaphor trauma with a large piece of ham.
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June 30th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 29th, 2009
| 05:23 pm - On Debian and Mono
Lately, the typical flamewars that consume the Debian mailing lists have spilled over into the Linux subreddit. Like a moth to a flame, I am attracted to such flamewars, simply because I find them amusing for brief periods of time. No, they don’t provide information–flamewars are utterly devoid of such things.
However, I must say that I’m rather disappointed in Richard Stallman. His comments on the current debacle in the Debian community read as no more informed on the issue than those of the average Reddit troll. I generally expect better commentary from him, including not just technical details when applicable, but also a good philosophical argument behind his positions. This case simply lacks either.
In fact, his comments are fairly typical of any Mono discussion: on one side, you have Mono’s developers and the community that writes stuff in C# intended for Linux platforms, and on the other, you have people who suffer from the Free/Open Source version of Not Invented Here Syndrome. The fact is that Mono implements a standard (ISO/IEC 23270) written originally by Microsoft–a company as far from the free and open source community as possible yet still be in the business of making software. Those of us who just want to use best of breed applications (like Tomboy, which is the application in question, as well as Gnome-Do), and occasionally ensure cross-compatibility on Linux for a program written originally against the .NET stack, are caught in the middle.
I’ll be honest and say that I have absolutely no connection to the Debian project, and I am not entirely informed about the technical merits and faults of Mono as a development platform. However, I am someone who has been on the Internet for a very long time, and as such, I’ve learned from experience how to deal with trolls.
The fact is that Microsoft is not some supernatural entity, as some free/open source zealots would have you think. They are a corporation of humans, run by idiots. (Interestingly, I’ve found that their junior managers have no clue why the senior management is so heavy handed on free/open source software in general, particularly when their competition is very specifically the operating system projects: Linux, the BSDs, Haiku, and ReactOS.) Since the corporation is run by idiots, they have a tendency to troll the Internet, making grandiose claims of patent infringement by Linux (note that they’re talking about the folks at the Linux project specifically, not the distributors). Since they’ve been at this for several years now, and haven’t filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Linus Torvalds or any Linux distributor, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that Microsoft’s claims are about as good as most legal claims made on the Internet, and as such, they can be reasonably ignored. At the very least, patents are only good for 19 years in America, and as such only have a limited amount of time to put up or shut up.
In any case, these are claims against Linux. Mono is not a part of Linux. It is not now, nor has it ever been, a part of the Linux project. Even if someone includes Mono in their distro, it is not a part of Linux. If Microsoft decides to sue over the distribution of Mono, that distributor can simply send out an update removing it (and any software depending on it) from their system.
The other claim I hear against Mono is that it is “bloat”. Under the same objections, any required language runtime is bloat, and we should be running without operating systems and rebooting out computers for each new program we run. While I have heard some criticisms of the virtual machine model of compiler infrastructure, that particular model is the one that prevails amongst compiler makers today, and the accusation can be made of pretty much any language not supported by the GNU Compiler Collection.
In short, I haven’t heard a good technical argument against Mono, but rather Microsoft originated FUD (which Mr. Stallman should know better than to spread) and a vague accusation.
On the other hand, I’ve not heard a good argument for the inclusion of Mono, either. Yes, Tomboy needs it. There’s a work alike called Gnote, made by someone with way too much free time on his hands and far too little imagination (I mean, really, a strict port of another program into a less portable language? What is the point?) that could be used just as easily without adding any infrastructure to the default install of Debian. Yes, Gnome-Do is totally awesome (particularly for those of us with a Mac background who remember Quicksilver–a project mostly superseded at this time by Google’s Quick Search Box, which was made by the same person after being hired by Google). Yes, Mono is a first class citizen in the Gnome world. So are C and Python, languages whose runtime is already in the default install of ever Linux distro, with good reasons (libc is required to run any Unix-like kernel, and Python is necessary for a large number of system maintenance scripts). Gnome’s decision to support Mono as well is good for developers, but without compelling and exclusive applications written against those bindings, what’s the point?
Unless and until the community can have a mature discussion about the technical merits of Mono and any software that requires it, discussing its inclusion in the default installation of one of the most important (and wanky) Linux distros is out of the question, and such people need to refrain from comment on the situation as they are obviously woefully uninformed about the topic of discussion.
But hey, this is the Internet. When has self restraint ever been expected of discourse here?
Current Music: AzuriteReaction playing Skullcrusher Mountain on YouTube
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June 28th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 27th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 26th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 25th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 24th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 23rd, 2009
| 12:13 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 22nd, 2009
| 07:33 pm - In which I admit to watching too much YouTube
YouTube has become my primary means of entertainment. Sure, I'll occasionally do Hulu for what most people watch on teevee, but let's face it: most of the crap on television is just that. However, watching people drink blenderized hamburgers never loses its charm.
In my watchings, I've found that a number of YouTube entertainers collaborate frequently. After a few days of watching, I came to the realization that there must be a Kevin Bacon of this particular medium: one to whom I can connect any other participant through appearances in the same video within six steps.
However, when I found the nexus of the YouTube entertainer community (mathematically speaking), I was mildly disappointed (though incredibly amused) to find that it's actually a shared channel: vlogbrothers1. As such, I'm fairly certain I can connect pretty much any two YouTubers to either Hank or John Green in six YouTube videos or less. I call it "Six Degrees of Brotherhood 2.0". Sure, I've got videos up, but let's face it, I don't participate in video-making culture, and instead was either going for something akin to the 2girls1cup reaction videos (in one case, I notably overact to a goat giving birth...in reverse) or computer screencasts intended for the edification of fellow students.
I personally blame the Brothers Green's centrality to the YouTube entertainment community due to the size, age, and general attention whore nature of their fanbase. Sure, John is over 30, and by YouTube standards, a senior citizen (Hank is the younger of the two, but is not much behind him), but their content will generally appeal to the high school and college age crowd2.
"What about the vidders?" I hear you ask. "Surely they're a part of this community you're referencing." Indeed, they are, and they don't generally appear in their own videos (based on my understanding of vidders). I'm not sure how to treat them: they're not the performers that you see in the vlogging, comedy, and stunt channels, but they certainly need to be included somehow, particularly since I know I can connect the gamers in to the rest of the network using E3 videos (Lisa Nova has done collabs with fallofautumdistro, in whose videos both John and Hank have made appearances).
Now, to debunk the myth that Ashton Kutcher is actually at the center of Twitter.
1. The pitch for their channel goes as follows: it's like lonelygirl15, but unscripted, with grown men, and without the whole Thelema business going on (though I know that the New York times printed suspicions that the titular character's parents were, in fact, scilons3).
2. Given that John is actually a young adult author in real life, this shouldn't be surprising I'm thinking that I should probably read Looking for Alaska (in your pants) and An Abundance of Katherines (in your pants), if only to get the remaining in-jokes (the first couple of seasons of their channel make significantly more sense if you read Paper Towns (in your pants) beforehand, considering that John's writing the book through the first year).
3. Given that Scientology is a more fraudulent branch of the Thelema family tree, this actually makes sense.
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| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 21st, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 20th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 19th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 18th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 17th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 16th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 15th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 14th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 13th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 12th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 11th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 10th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 9th, 2009
| 12:10 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 8th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 6th, 2009
| 12:49 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 5th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 4th, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 3rd, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 2nd, 2009
| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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June 1st, 2009
| 04:45 pm
Harmonix posted their first trailer for their next big game, The Beatles: Rock Band. From the footage, this game is going to be exactly as awesome as the name implies.
Of course, I must wonder if there will be DLC (please please please).
Current Location: video games
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| 11:33 am
The whole world needs to suffer. If I had my way, the whole of humanity would be tortured regularly, as a punishment for their crimes, including but not limited to their very existence.
Death is too nice for people. No, they need to be set aflame and made to burn, though only to the point of debilitating pain. They need to be beaten to a pulp on a regular basis. They need to be stripped of everything.
You don't deserve comfort, as it invariably comes at the expense of another.
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| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 31st, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 30th, 2009
| 12:09 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 29th, 2009
| 12:10 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 28th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 27th, 2009
| 10:45 pm - New website
I'm going to try this whole web site thing again. I've got the domain name photosinensis.net (the old .com one is currently about to relapse, so I'll give it a couple of months and see if I can't re-snag it) registered, and I've got dynamic DNS service purchased for the next two years.
Tomorrow, I'll be setting up the box on which everything will go. It's my old Linux box that's served me valiantly now for an ungodly number of years, but it still runs like a champ. I'm thinking that I'll actually just create the service it'll run myself, probably using Django or Rails. In any case, it should have my sample code up in a week's time, and hopefully will also have some blogging abilities (though I'll probably just embed LJ to start).
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| 12:08 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 26th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 25th, 2009
| 12:07 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 24th, 2009
| 12:10 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 23rd, 2009
| 12:10 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 22nd, 2009
| 12:21 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 21st, 2009
| 01:38 am - From hormiga on reddit
I must not LOL.
The lulz are the mind-killer.
The lulz are the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my lulz.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the lulz have gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
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| 12:17 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 20th, 2009
| 12:13 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 19th, 2009
| 11:54 am
Rarely is a crazed Hitler the voice of reason. Here is a glimpse at one of those moments.
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| 12:11 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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May 18th, 2009
| 12:11 am - And now, a word from Twitter
Sometimes, you've just got to be a twit. This is what I was up to today.
Have you been corrupted?
Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
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