Monthly Archives: April 2005

Some People Agree with Me

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It’s not easy being the angry son-of-a-bitch that my coworkers claim I am. It is a rarity that anyone sides with me when I get into one of my rants. I suppose that might be because agreeing with me will likely only lengthen the time that I bitch about something. But regardless of the reason it’s difficult to go on complaining when no one agrees with you. Well, I found a post by someone who is very respected in the technology community who actually whole-heartedly agrees with something that I have said. Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification (amongst many other accomplishments), recently wrote about his dislike for the word ‘solution’. To quote his post (which is so short that this quote is like half his post), “This is so freaking retarded, can there be a living human being who believes anyone will be more willing to drop the $450 on their box because it’s described as a ‘storage solution’?” That is pretty much my argument as well. When I read something that describes a product as a ‘solution’ I feel like someone is trying to push feces down my throat. When someone uses the word ‘solution’ I assume that they either think that I am a total idiot or that their product fills no real purpose and thus can only be labelled with the word ‘solution’. Everything is a solution. I wouldn’t use the word ‘solution’ to describe a product because I wouldn’t want a potential customer to think that I consider them an idiot, and I would rather explain the exact purpose my product serves instead of making it look like it serves no exact purpose at all.

On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and how much the overall situation really sucks right now. We’re in a quagmire of legality and lawsuits that basically puts a sleeper hold on our culture and allows record companies to own practically everything that is recorded. I wish I had more time to expand on this topic, but if you want to understand how I feel, give this panel discussion with Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweety a listen. Brandon describes it as the “shadier side of online piracy” and I can’t disagree more. I believe that what Jeff Tweety and Lawrence Lessig are talking about has very little to do with online piracy and it certainly doesn’t “tell you it’s not so bad”. Lawrence Lessig actually attacks people who pirate music and other content because it muddies the argument. The worldwide discussion about this should not be about online piracy because the cost of music and the availability of it isn’t really the problem. The problem that I see is that the wrong people end up owning copyrights that last nearly forever and it isn’t very easy to build on past art. I personally have stopped downloading music that is not licensed in a way that makes doing so legal. This decision was not an easy one and it is something that everyone has to decide for themselves. I don’t want to push my ideas on anyone. However, while I am actually buying CDs now, I’m also very much in favor of artists using things like the creative commons to license their work in a way that makes the most sense for them both financially and creatively.

I wish I had more time to expand on my ideas. I’m sure I will at some point. But, Nak got tickets to yet another Mets game today and we’re leaving in just a little bit. I took 2 pictures last night that are available on my flickr account. Nak had a great quote last night. After we both finished eating footlong chili dogs he said, “I felt like a porn star eating that thing”. Classic.

I’m Not Angry, I Swear

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I literally have a list of things I want to talk about. I wrote all of the things that I want to talk about down on a piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in my pocket. I’m going to try and hit each of these points real quick so I can more easily convince myself that people are reading this. Here goes.

Homophobia bothers me. It really boggles the mind. In all honesty, you would think that I would appreciate homophobia a little more because it makes it easier to identify people that I want nothing to do with. You might as well be wearing an “I don’t have original thoughts” hat on your head – that’s the thing that contains your brain, which in turn contains all of those borrowed ideas that you have. Whenever the topic of gay rights comes up at work, I pretty much just have to keep my mouth shut. It bothers me so much that I don’t think I can keep myself from directly insulting people. So, I hold it all in and write it in my blog, so that people that agree with me can read it. Am I somehow failing the gay community by not defending their obvious right to touch whomever’s naughty parts that they want? I suppose – and I feel pretty bad about that. Just one more quick point while I’m on this topic. It doesn’t matter if people are born gay, if they’re somehow influenced to be gay or if they make a conscience decision to be gay. It’s still none of your fucking business who they want to hug and what they want to kiss. I have very liberal views on sexuality and I don’t think it’s something that is as weird as people think it is. I think that humans are drawn towards sexuality in general. This could be another whole blog post, so just suffice it to say that I don’t think we live in a black and white world. I don’t think that there are 3 sexuality camps (straight, bisexual, homosexual). I think there’s a gradient from one side to the other and I think the majority of people would not fall at the polls if they would only allow themselves.

Alright, moving on. I have a problem with barriers that people place between themselves and the world. It’s hard for me to exactly describe what I mean, but I’m going to try. I don’t like it when people make it seem like they’re better at something than they really are. I don’t like it when people never mention things about themselves that they fear others might not like. I want unadulterated honesty from everyone that I know. I know that I can’t really expect this from people, but I’m ultimately not interested in the person that you’re presenting to me. I want to meet the person behind the curtain. Sometimes people even hide from themselves. Sticking with my ‘man behind the curtain’ metaphor, if the man behind the curtain looks in the mirror and sees what he’s presenting to others, he’s pretty screwed. How sad must it be to get to the point where you can’t discern traits that are actually yours from traits you’ve adopted for show. Individuals aren’t the only ones who are guilty of this. Companies are the all-time victors when it comes to the ‘only look at what I show you’ game. This is part of the reason that I like open source software so much. Try and get a company to tell you all of the things that are wrong with their product. Good luck. All of this is out there in the open in the open source world and it benefits both the product and the consumer. I’m kind of getting off on a rant here, but it bothers me when I’m looking at someone and I feel like I’m looking through one of those shower doors at them. I guess the biggest culprit is pride. Being proud of yourself and your accomplishments is awesome and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, being too proud to identify your weaknesses is bad for the soul.

I booked my flight and hotel for my trip to Germany. For those few people that I haven’t told, I’m attending GUADEC (Gnome Users And Developers European Conference). It’s going to be a blast. I’m going over there entirely by myself. I’m leaving May 25th @ 9pm, I arrive in Germany the next day @ 1:20pm their time. I’ll check into my hotel and have 2 and a half full days of dicking around in Europe before the conference. I’m going to try and jet out to Paris for a day during this thing. That may become complicated because the train ride from Stuttgart to Paris seems to be 6 hours long at its fastest. But, if I can leave Stuttgart at 5:45am, I’ll get to Paris by noon. Then, I can spend about 11 hours in Paris before jumping back on a train around 11pm and getting back to Stuttgart around 6am. So, I would pretty much have to do all of my sleeping on the train. But, when am I going to get back to Europe? Do I really want to go over there, see Stuttgart and then come home? If I have the chance to spend some time in Paris, even if its just a few hours, I think I should give it a shot. The conference lasts 3 days (May 29 – May 31) and I fly home June 1st. Germany is 7 hours ahead of us – so jet lag should be exciting. I’m all kinds of excited about this. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it more as it approaches and I’ll most likely be blogging from Germany as well.

Alright, this is the last thing for now. I spoke with Jamie for a bit last night. It’s so weird to talk to her. There are really two things that upset me about our conversation. The first thing is that she’s dating someone. Now, hear me out. That isn’t the real problem. I want nothing more than for Jamie to meet someone whom she really likes and enjoys spending time with. But, the guy that she met (I don’t know who it is and I think that’s for the better) doesn’t seem to be the best guy for her. It’s probably not fair for me to speak about her personal affairs in a public forum like this, so I’m not going to say much more. But, from the limited amount of information I’ve gotten from her, I don’t think he’ll have an overall positive impact on her life. Which really should be the absolute minimum requirement of spending any time with someone. But, that isn’t really my decision to make, so I digress. The other thing that bothers me is more of a realization that I’ve made about my own feelings than anything that actually happened during our phone conversation. I would love to expand on my thoughts here, but I don’t think I should. I should probably just put them in an email and send them over to Jamie, because she’s really the only person that this involves. But, the 1000-foot view of this is that I don’t think Jamie and I fit together very well for the last few years we were together. It’s unfortunate, and that’s what had me bummed out pretty bad last night. After we got off of the phone I was in the crappiest mood and just went to sleep early.

Thanks for listening to my various rants. I’m pretty sure the guys at work are getting tired of hearing me run off on rants about things that most people deem to be unimportant. They call be angry. Well, they call me an “angry gnome” to be specific. I don’t think I’m angry – I just think that I expect more from the world than it is offering right now. Do you hear that, world? I’m disappointed. I think you an do better.

The Sugary Smell of Spring Time

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Judging from the title you might think that this post is going to be about how it’s spring time and the flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping. I guess that could be what this post is about, but it’s not. This post is going to be about abstinence only sex education. Now, you’ve probably already heard (or can quickly figure out) all of the arguments for and against abstinence sexual education. But, I think I have something else to bring to the table.

The basic idea behind abstinence only sex ed is that kids should wait until marriage to have sex. By doing that you don’t have to worry about a lot of things like getting STDs, getting pregnant, or any of a number of other nasties. The sane side of the argument basically wants to give kids the most information possible so that they can make informed decisions about their lives. They argue that you basically have to assume that some kids are going to have sex and that it would be better to have them informed enough to protect themselves.

I was thinking about why conservatives are so upset that kids are having sex. I really haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s pretty clear that it’s not entirely about protecting them from disease and pregnancy. There’s something that makes parents want their children to not have sex. If it was possible to absolutely guarantee that sex would not cause STDs and not induce pregnancy, I believe that parents would still not want their children to have sex until they were married (or at least well into their 20s). Maybe they’re just jealous. Lord knows they have something to be jealous of.

This brings me to what I’ve been thinking about recently. I really can’t think of anything more pure than being a teenager under the sheets with a beautiful girl. I’m sure it goes the same way for girls also. I know that the nights that I spent figuring things out as a 16 year old will probably be the most real moments of my life. Thinking back now, I don’t know that you can be more alive than that. Now, I don’t know why you would want your kid to miss out on something like that. I know it’s hard to see your kid like they’re a real person (hell, it can be hard to see anyone else as a real person), but they are. Clearly they deserve to have the opportunity to make memories like this. I just don’t know what it is that makes a parent so afraid of their child having sex. I think STDs and pregnancy are definitely part of it, but I think there is something else. If anyone can think of a real reason why, please let me know. Maybe it’s just that the bible says it’s naughty. But, even non-religious parents seem to feel the same way. Maybe I’m missing something obvious – feel free to comment.

Create like it’s 1790

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Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Stanford University. He chairs the Creative Commons Project and is on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for the Public Domain. He has also written three books about culture, technology, and the laws that tend to mess them up. In short, he has done many things to try and keep our culture from being owned by giant media companies. There is a flash movie/presentation thing available that I think everyone who is interested in the creation of culture and technology should see. The audio of the flash movie is Lessig giving a talk at the 2002 O’Reilly Open Source Convention. The video of the flash movie is a recreation of the slides that he showed during the talk. The state of patents and over-zealous copyrights is something that I am very concerned about. Really, I think it is something that everyone has a vested interest in (it is our culture after all). So, take ten minutes and watch the flash movie. Some more information and material relating to the talk is also available.

So, instead of just telling people how much I like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and what they’re doing, I decided I should actually do something to help. So, I just donated $100 to the EFF. Now I actually feel like I’m part of the solution. It’s not enough to just sit around and rely on other people to take care of things that are important to you.