MOTD

So, after purchasing a regear kit, realizing that I can open up the gearbox after all, shaving off the fill ports on the inside of the gearbox (bad design), and remembering where I put that bottle of gear oil, my Shay finally runs. I put it on the club's layout and it only stalled occasionally. I think the PWM inherent in runing an analog loco on a DCC track actually helped the running.

I also took a few pictures of it pulling a bi-level enclosed autorack, you know, just 'cause. Of course, I took them on film, so it'll be another three years before I finish up this roll, and then several weeks before I actually bring it to a developer, and then who knows when I'll get it to a scanner.

I like using MH even though some "features" of it are weird and/or somewhat tarded. It's just crazy, and I've really started getting into it. Anyway several Frank Chu sightings this week prompted me to write a script that allows me to post messages to the <a href="http://tastytronic.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rocket-society">Rocket Society</a> quickly.

<a href="http://zork.net/~sam/chu-sighting">chu-sighting</a>

There's a new transcript of an RMS LISP talk up on gnu.org. Some choice tidbits:

on TECO:

Actually, there were some rather sophisticated facilities; I think that Lisp got its unwind-protect facility from TECO.

on EMACS LISP features:

I implemented Common Lisp once on the Lisp machine, and I'm not all that happy with it. One thing I don't like terribly much is keyword arguments. They don't seem quite Lispy to me; I'll do it sometimes but I minimize the times when I do that.

So, <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> is available online, under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/">Attribution-NonCommercial</a> license. You can get the whole thing on <a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/">this page</a>, or <a href="http://www.legaltorrents.com/bit/freeculture.zip.torrent">download it through BitTorrent</a> on <a href="http://www.legaltorrents.com/">Legal Torrents</a>.

Let me take this moment to point out that I was TOTALLY WRONG, and that Double-L comes through again. Go go Larry Lessig!

tee with compression:

#!/bin/bash

tee >( gzip -c9 > $1 )

So, I always feel like saying "So, here's the plan:" and then going on to outlining some complex plan. The problem is that I can never think of a plan to outline. Not even a pointless nonsensical one.

Bah.

So, in the 10 years or so since I've been in model railroading, two major changes occurred. First off, DCC is all over the place now, which I think is really great. The other major change is that the Kadee magne-matic coupler patents expired. So now everybody has their own magnetic couplers. And some of them really suck, and some of them don't, but they're nearly all plastic. Which is good, because some model makers like to have a solid metal bit going from coupler pocket to coupler pocket (and to a rail, if it's a loco).

Ah, so, according to <a href="http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/archive/2003/04/">this press release</a>, Dr. Lessig "will release" his first two books, as well as his "next book", under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyright/">Founders' Copyright</a> dedication. That's the semi-license that dedicates a work to the public domain in 14 or 28 years -- either the same or double the original copyright duration in the USA.

I'm not sure if the press release counts as such a dedication, or if there's some other document showing that the work has been dedicated. But, hey: free-as-in-freedom book in 2018! or 2032! Hooray!

Does anyone know if the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1594200068/103-2417280-5147030?v=glance">new book</a> by <a href="http://www.lessig.org/">Larry Lessig</a> is available under a <a href="http://www.creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> license or any other freely-distributable agreement?

Dr. Lessig has two other books -- <i><a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/code/">Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace</a></i> and <i><a href="http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/future/">The Future of Ideas</a></i>. AFAICT, neither one is freely downloadable or redistributable.

If this is true, why? Is Open Content just for losers and nobodies who can't sell their books or music or films or photos to a "real" publisher? Or is it more important to get out the message of Free Culture than to practice it? Does Dr. Lessig have some personal, economic or political reason not to publish his own books under CC licenses?

I realize that it's probably hard to sell the idea of having a book freely redistributable to a major publisher like <a href="http://us.penguingroup.com/">Penguin</a>. But if people like Dr. Lessig don't make that effort, it's harder for people like me or you to do it when the time comes. When I want to publish my novels as Open Content, it'd be nice to have some precedent.

I dunno; looking over the list of <a href="http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people">staff and directors</a> of Creative Commons, I don't see anyone but <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/">Eric Eldred</a> with even a tiny bit of experience publishing Free Content. Why the fuck not?

He likes the scheme.

Beaujolais for starting with a threaded example, but that while macro is bogus. The comments seem to range between "Y NOT UZ PERL HUK HUK HUK" and "Pardon me good sir, but wouldn't ML be more indubitable and minimize undue perspicacity?"

threaded-map is supafly, though.

So, I've been thinking about bug reports in the context of Free Software.

I had an experience recently with <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Groups</a>. I had experienced a bug (some incorrect instructions in a form email message), and being a good citizen I had sent a bug report to the listed bug report email address. I got back a form mail telling me to look on their support FAQ pages for "my" bug. Unable to find the bug, I found the closest one, and at the point where the page said, "Did this answer your question? Click here to contact us.", I clicked, filled in another form, and sent off the report.

I got back an automated email message with a copy of the FAQ I had just said didn't answer my message. This time, however, I had a tracking number on the email they sent me, so I responded with the actual information for the bug -- the third time I'd filed the report. This time around, I got a human being, who said someone would look into it.

I filed this bug <b>three times</b>, in three different ways, before a human being looked at it. It was a righteous bug. It was a real bug. It was well-defined and easy to fix. But, most of all, it was an <i>altruistic</i> bug report. I had nothing to gain from seeing this bug fixed: after all, I had already figured out that the text was incorrect. I just wanted to let someone know so they could improve their software and serve other customers better.

The whole thing kind of brought home how hostile Free Software developers are to bug reports. We tend to treat people who make bug reports as whinging babies asking for free tech support and more Zwieback crackers. But really bug reporters should be treated as what they are: good citizens of Freedonia, doing their small part to improve software quality and everybody's computer experience. They're not <b>asking</b> for help -- they're <b>offering</b> help.

When you think about it, a bug report is the culmination of quite a long bit of work. Anyone giving a shit enough to file a bug report is impressive indeed -- after all, they could just throw out the software and use something else. Instead, they figure out the email address or Web page or what have you to make the report, they isolate the bug and try to describe it -- a difficult task, ask any tester -- and try to follow it and advocate for it.

And what do FLOSS developers do to reward this initiative? We make <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/">horrendous</a> bug reporting interfaces. We write <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html">supercilious claptrap</a> about how bug reports have to come in "the right way". We insult bug reporters. We close bug reports if we don't understand them or can't replicate them. We're dickheads and jerks to people who are trying to help <b>us</b> make better software.

We should knock it off.

So I now have a Nalgene brand water bottle, made of non-leeching lexan. My big question is: where the hell do you put the water?

So, for those of you who haven't been paying attention lately, I've been slowly getting back into model railroading. I've been trying to go to the university's railroad club and seeing if I can help them out. They're doing kind of a modern/whatever-gets-donated era layout.

As far as my modeling, I can't really decide what I should go for. One option is a 1920s/30s era mountain line, as an excuse to use Shays and Heislers, limit the length of the rolling stock, and model crazy terrain. Or a modern electrified freight line, with overhead electrical power and no good prototypes. I've half-decided to go with the modern electric in HO and if I ever get enough time and garden to do the mountain line in G scale. Of course, I've already got some rolling stock for each choice and neither choice in HO, and an HO Shay, so I'm not really all sure.

So, y'know, I'm a big fan of <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/">Mozillur</a>, and have been since forever and ever. And I'm a big fan of Web Standards, and I think it's pretty cool that Mozillur handles Web standards so well. I mean, fuX0r, about time and all.

But I also think there are some pretty crucial Web standards that Mozilla ignores or handles poorly, and that it needs to do better.

<ul> <li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/">SMIL</a>. That's the integrated multimedia language, the W3C's answer to stupid MacroMedia Flash. It's been a W3C rec since 1998, but it's only been implemented in stupid RealPlayer and such. Why? Mozillur has this great infrastructure for downloading and displaying XML files like all getout. Why not SMIL? Why do I still have to look at puzzle-pieces in this day and age? Why are proprietary plugins still on the Web in 2004?</li> <li><a href="http://www.w3c.org/Graphics/SVG/">Scalable Vector Graphics</a>. Another great example of a well-defined W3C standard poorly executed. This one is for vector graphics, which is pretty damn cool, since they can be automated/animated with DOM, and you can put links in, and all kinds of stuff like that. Mozillur has SVG support in it, but it's based on some hacked up libraries, and it messes up all kinds of other things -- it'll crash Gnome, for example. So everybody turns it off. Why not fix it? There's quite a few SVG libraries out there, so why not use them?</li> <li><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/fonts.html#font-descriptions">Dynamic Web Fonts</a>. So, when Navigator became Mozilla, they stripped out the BitStream InstoFont Dynamic Web FontX0r technology, so it could all be Free Software and stuff. Which, like, fine, but nobody's bothered to go back in and re-implement dynamic Web fonts. It's part of the CSS spec, so it'd be nice to support it. Why not? C'mon.</li> </ul>

ANYWAYS, dumb things to think about this Monday morning.

The thing I don't get is how someone can go around with the name OrkutGuy and complain about people not using their real names.

Also, I didn't realize that studlycaps were automagically wikified here.

So, on Friday last, someone named "OrkutGuy" posted in the Orkut Design community about a new set of terms of service. Certain names were unacceptable, and mine ("Mr. Bad") was one of the examples.

So I got my service turned off on Monday morning. And, like, so what? Stupid Orkut. But it turns out tons of people are getting their asses kicked off orkut. So I'm not the only one. I guess they had a March 1st massacree.

Stupid Orkut. What do they care if people use pseudonyms? Ridiculous "real name" bull-honkey is what it is. I'd hope that by 2004 anyone who had the least bit of Internet savvy would have some kind of grasp of the fluidity of online identity.

I probably wouldn't have any fun on Orkut if I wasn't Mr. Bad. Nobody would know who I am. I've spent almost 10 years investing this identity with personality, connections, and reputation. I don't like being told that it's invalid.

Did I mention stupid Orkut?

So, like, three weeks ago, I got my first moderator points EVER on <a href="http://slashdot.org/">slarshdoat</a>. Which was kind of weird; although I've been reading /. since way back when, I've never really been much of a slashdot good citizen or anything. We're talking about 7 years as a total spectator on the /. social schene.

But then here I was, participating in the most talked-about moderation system on the World Wide Squirrel. Mr. Moderator and shit. Wow! Me! A moderator!

Yeah, I know, it's totally old-hat for most people. Pooh pooh, silly slarshdoat. BUT THEN IT HAPPENED TO ME! I'm no longer too cool for slarshdoat. I've got a JOB TO DO. I've got me some SOCIAL SOFTWARE to PARTICIPATE IN. So I decided to just get cracking.

First, I dutifully read the <a href="http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml">moderation guidelines</a>, and thought deep and hard about the tips presented there. I guess I'd have to be really fair and decent with my mod points, using the for the Greater Good and not just for my own self-aggrandizement.

And then I read that I could only have the points for 3 days. THREE DAYS!!?!? How am I supposed to have Rhadamanthus-like judgement in only THREE DAYS!?

So, then I was on a roll. Gotta hurry, gotta use up these points in three days! If I don't use 'em up, I'm gonna get in trouble. Don't wanna get reprimanded on my first day on the job! Gotta make a good first impression! Use those mod points briskly and well.

So I jumped into an article that was like 14 hours old, with 300 comments or so. Lots of stuff to mod, there! But it was already over-picked. Everything that was funny was already marked "Funny: 5", and everything that used the N-word was already at -1. I had no place in this conversation. Even the stuff that said "Moderators, mod this up!" had already modded to 5 or -1.

But then, as I was moping and worrying that I was never gonna be a good moderator, a NEW ARTICLE came out. Brand new! Like FIRST-POST new! And so I jumped in! And I changed some racist slur to a -1! And a joke to a +2! And then something, and something else! And then I hit moderate, and all my mod points were gone! Gah!

So, I guess what I'm saying is that being a Slashdot moderator is a job I take seriously for no good reason. Weirdly, I seem to get mod points every time I read the site, now. I'm like the Best Moderator Ever and I'm just blessed with mod points. I feel like I've set off some cheatcode somewhere.