All posts by rbowen

Violence in Haiti reaching US audiences

After 11 days, the rebellion in Haiti is finally arriving in the US media. Seems that France might send in troops. The USA seems to be intent on not stating its position, which is probably just as well, given that the USA is primarily responsible for the mess that the country is in. After destroying the vestiges of an economy with the embargo, and putting a disliked man back in office with military force in 1994, it seems that the best position for the US to take would be to admit that we don’t know what’s best for the country. Sort of the least of the available evils that we can commit.

Meanwhile, Boston.com paints the leader of the rebellion as a drunken fool who is not really sure how he rose to this position. It really doesn’t seem like there’s any good solution to the problem.

See no evil, think no evil

apparently we need to be protected from being able to see symbols, because, obviously, being able to use a swastika in a font will make us evil. It never ceases to amaze me that people can get so worked up about things like this. Make sure you also purge fonts of hammers and sickles, crescents, crosses (and plus signs, while you’re at it. And perhaps the letter t), and any other symbol that might draw people into evil.

Yes, the swastika symbolized a great evil. However, it’s very orwellian to think that its presence in a font is to be avoided. I can’t even begin to get my mind around why someone would think that this is necessary.

Compare, if you will, HammerSickleStuff.com and Swastika.com. If one of them makes you angry and the other does not, you might want to read a few more history books. By all means, read Night, by Elie Weisel, but also read Abyss of Despair by Yeven Metzulah.

And to the folks that get so wrapped up in hating a symbol like the swastika, I can only ask what they are doing about the ethnic killing in central Africa, which does not even pretend to be for a nobler reason, but is unabashedly about one people hating another. By all means, fight your harmless, insignifigant, symbolic battles, but try to recall why it was important to defeat the power behind the swastika, and that the swastika itself was not the enemy.

How it is …

Here’s a little trap
That sometimes catches everyone
When today’s as far as we can see
Faith in bright tomorrows
giving way to resignation
That’s how it is – how it’s going to be

It’s such a cloudy day
Seems we’ll never see the sun
Or feel the day has possibilities
Frozen in the moment –
the lack of imagination
Between how it is and how it ought to be

Here’s a little trap
That sometimes trips up everyone
When we tire of our own company
Sometimes we’re the last to see beyond the day’s frustrations
That’s how it is – how it’s going to be

It’s such a cloudy day
Seems we’ll never see the sun
I feel the day is all uncertainty
Burning in the moment – trapped by the desperation
Between how it is and how it ought to be

Foot upon the stair
Shoulder to the wheel
You can’t tell yourself not to care
You can’t tell yourself how to feel

That’s how it is
Another cloudy day

(“How it is”, from “Vapor Trails” by Rush. 2002 – PriceScan.com )

Christmas Carol

I watched “A Christmas Carol” yesterday. Twice. First, I watched Allistair Sim’s version, from 1951, and then Patrick Stewart’s version from 1999.

Of course, I had seen the Sim one before. It’s been around for a while. It is pretty good, except that it takes a great deal of liberty with the story, adding huge bits about how Scrooge came into business, and squeezed Fezziwig out – stuff that’s not even suggested in the book. And they change Belle’s name to Alice and make her a worker in a homeless shelter, rather than a mother of a dozen or so kids frolicking around the christmas tree.

I had not sen the Stewart version before. Wow. It was truly amazing. Stewart has a knowledge of the story that few other people have. He’s been doing a live reading/enactment of the story for more than 10 years now, and knows the story inside and out. He takes a few liberties with the story, but only those which help to explain a few of the more obscure details to a modern audience. The only thing that I really didn’t care for was the narration, which was injected a few times to fill in some details, and was the voice of Fred. Somehow it didn’t seem right to have Fred narrating it. Also of great interest to me was the graveyard scene, which borrows something from the Mickey Mouse version of the story! I’ve not seen this bit put into the story by anyone else, and so it immediately brought to mind Scrooge McDuck. That was somewhat distracting, but I suppose that it was still a very effective addition, even though it is also not mentioned in the book. Finally, I *REALLY* liked the end of the Christmas Past scene. I feel that it is one of the most symbolic bits of the entire story, and it has never been shown in any other movie rendition.

Yes, I’m being vague, because I don’t want to give away the good parts to anyone who might end up seeing this version. If you want to watch a Christmas Carol movie, this is the one to see. Absolutely fabulous, and more true to the spirit of the story than any other that I have yet seen. And I have … um … several.

Windows code leaks. Who cares?

So it appears that the sourcecode for Windows got leaked. I’m finding the reactions to this to be very odd. I suppose it’s a direct consequence of my Open Source mindset, but I don’t get what the big deal is.

Sure, there will be lots of eyes on the code, and they will find bugs. Surely this is a good thing? Yeah, there will be a big surge in viruses in the next couple years. Of course, that assumes that Microsoft sits around and does nothing for the next two years. Seems to me that this incident will (or at least should) encourage Microsoft to do an actual full-scale code audit, and find those very same things that the “hackers” would find.

There are just two ways that this thing concerns me about this, and neither one of them has to do with negative impact on Microsoft.

First, it seems abundantly clear to me that Microsoft will take this incident and use it as the excuse for the next 50 security problems that are discovered. And, therefore, as “proof” that their policy of closed source equals security.

Second, we’re going to see lawsuits in the next 2 years where Microsoft identifies code in Linux, added after February 10, 2004, which are either copied from, or influenced by, the Windows source code. And, as absurd as this is, it will be used to have, as Microsoft would say, a chilling effect on innovation.

So, no, this is not bad for Microsoft. They stand only to benefit, both in improvements to their source, and in avenues for their slimy lawyers to put the squeeze on the Open Source community. Anything you hear to the contrary is marketing spin.

OSCon

OSCon is almost upon us. The deadline for submitting talks was the 9th, and now we have one week to select which talks will go on the schedule. I have 4 tutorials and 4 tutorial slots, so no problem there. But for talks, I have 24 talks and 12 slots. I’m trying to be completely objective. By which I mean that I’m trying to select speakers who are fun at parties, so that I can have a good time at OSCon. 😉

Hypocrisy starting to annoy me

As you may be aware (but are probably not, since the US media doesn’t think it’s particularly important) a rebel uprising in Haiti is starting to look pretty serious.

Ah, but get this. The US government, in its infinite wisdom, has stepped in and put the whole thing in perspective. Ready for this? The infiinitely sagacious Richard Boucher says that, by resisting the uprising, the Hatian government is contributing to the violence.

Um. Yeah. That’s what governments tend to do when there are uprisings. They resist them. Did you skip history class in school? You know, all the bits where the USA supports nations in suppressing their rebel uprisings?

What alarms me is that this sounds like the US government giving their polite excuses for not joining this particular party, even though they invited the guest of honor, who, surprise, suddenly nobody likes. (Where “suddenly” means since around 2000 when Mr Aristide rose to power.)

No, I don’t expect the US to rush down there and bail them out. But it would be nice if they didn’t feel the need to disparage the government’s attempts to put down the uprising.

6 years old

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

— A.A. Milne

My little person turned six today, which is practically all grown up. She says that, although being 5 was a lot of fun, she is having a lot of fun being six too.