Sapere Aude
Month: December 2002
AOL is getting into weblogs?
Weblogs, over the last several years, have migrated to replace, in some cases, people’s home pages. It’s natural that the blog and the home page would combine. And when you remember that AOL has the largest collection of home pages in the world, it kinda gets interesting.
should we be afraid? will the relevance / discovery fabric be strong enough to withstand such an influx? does rss scale that much? are aol users a good demography for creative self-expression?
john rawls, political philosopher extraordinaire, is no more. his masterpiece “a theory of justice” is the best thing i got out of a relationship a couple years back. i want to revisit it, heeding Hilary Putnam: the smarter you get, the smarter it gets.
The first of these decapitated criminals being conveyed to the apartment provided for my experiments, in the neighborhood of the place of execution, the head was first subjected to the Galvanic action. For this purpose I had constructed a pile consisting of 100 pieces of silver and zinc. Having moistened the inside of the ears with salt water, I formed an arc with 2 metallic wires, which, proceeding from the 2 ears, were applied, one to the summit and the other to the bottom of the pile. When this communication was established, I observed strong contractions in the muscles of the face, which were contorted in so irregular a manner that they exhibited the appearance of the most horrid grimaces. The action of the eye-lids was exceedingly striking, though less sensible in the human head than in that of an ox.
Last summer she went with a friend from her hometown of Pittsburgh to a Silver Ring Thing. These popular free events meld music videos, pyrotechnics and live teen comedy sketches with dire warnings about STDs. Attendees can buy a silver ring and a Bible for $12. Then, at the conclusion of the program, as techno music blares, they recite a pledge of abstinence and don their rings. “My friend, who’s also a virgin, said I needed to go so I could get a ring. It was fun, like the music and everything. And afterwards they had a dance and a bonfire.”
more power to you, lenee! why don’t you keep it up all your life, and spare us with your offspring.
Clarisa Doval leads the way: having your own interesting people mailing list, Dan Farber style, is worth the hassle, she tells me. Setting up a list will be very easy. More challenging: Selecting interesting people, and getting the list going.
serendip@abstrakt.ch it shall be. I’m thinking of starting with a group of maybe 5 persons. The timid state of blogs in .ch (20 and counting, out of which 4 are written by friends) doesn’t lend itself to lively stream of consciousness exchange, but what do I know.
is pretty spiffy, yet overcrowded with overzealous shoppers. devout christians though, with stores to match.
2002-12-10: alright, i actually had a great time in madrid. so please excuse me while i blog some of the finer moments..
saw lots of art!
learned about ancient cockrings
witnessed the travails of old
went huh?
mi casa es su casa
was wined and dined
fortunately my thesis, rather than collecting dust, continues to inspire others. today i got a mail:
I read your master thesis entitled “A Framework For Open Source Projects”. It struck me in an uncanny way. I recently began working on a project in which the goal is to improve process for open software. My motivation is that I have contributed to projects and was amazed at the poor processes they used, and I think this is a way that I can really help out open source.
The project home page is hoot.tigris.org. The reason I was amazed at your paper is that you point out MANY ideas that I have been thinking about and actually have evidence or references to back them up. In some cases you stated word for word what I have been thinking, and what I want to improve.
I would also like to invite you to be a part of the project, at any level you desire. By that I mean just sitting on the dev list and making comments from time to time, or actually making major decisions and being a member of the “core team of developers”.
when i looked at the open source landscape, the community’s infatuation with tools was readily apparent. everything was basically a tools problem, and if your project sucked, it must be because you were not using the latest and greatest (ftp/web/irc/mail/nntp/scm/bugtracker/forum/wiki) software. efforts to raise the bar by quality-enabling tools are noble and worthy, but i feel they will fail to do much good because only the good developers would use them. this is why i focused on general education about open source processes and pitfalls more than specific instances or tool support, and i still believe there is a bigger gain by educating the masses about some key concepts rather than by making them use better tools without the proper theoretical insights. i will therefore continue to spread my thesis, and probably even help out with commentary on the hoot project, but probably wont tie myself too tightly to it, even though i laud the effort.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 