Copying William Gillis (linkage)

via William Gillis: Shawn Wilbur has made Liberty (1881-1908), one of the most important Anarchist publications, available as PDFs in an archive. Should be interesting and fun. (Post on Human Iterations)

also via Gillis: LOLTheorists. My favorite (that would be Adam Smith, btw):

The Man Who Played Wii

There once was a man who played Wii
All day and all night, to his glee.
"Wii Sports and Big Brain,
I just love 'em!" he'd 'splain,
"I only stop when I have to go pee!"

Cleaning and Painting

So Steve and I have been working diligently on preparing his condo for our habitation come the end of July. We were originally going to start on July 1, but not only were we distracted by our brand-new Device of Distraction (the Wii), Steve's tenants weren't out yet (even though we had asked them in April to be out by July 1). They weren't, in fact, out when we arrived on Wednesday, although they were in the process of leaving. It's fortunate for them that they never paid a deposit or anything, because we spend 5 hours cleaning just the kitchen and the living room that day. And not cleaning as in "vacuuming, mopping and steam cleaning". Oh no. Cleaning as in "putting into trash bags the mounds of garbage left laying around". 6 trash bags Wednesday. We came back on Friday for another 5 hours of 'cleaning', resulting in 8 more trash bags. You don't want to know what the bathroom was like.

Yesterday, though, we were finally able to get some actual work done. With the help of Steve's stepdad, we tore up the carpet in what will be the office, painted it and the hallway, and cleaned (as in mopping and using bleach) the bathroom and the kitchen. Today we're planning on painting the kitchen and the bathroom (and any more touchup on the area we've already painted), and getting the bedroom ready to paint. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to lay the flooring in the next week or so, so that we can start moving stuff from the apartment down. It's a tight schedule, but I think we'll make it.

Article Links for a Hot and Humid Tuesday

Magic Ink: Information Software and the Graphical Interface - Everyone involved in making software should read this.

Social Software and the Politics of Groups - Interesting short article discussing how software developers design for a single user, not for groups, and how this can affect the success or failure of that group's goals.

Representation Versus Depiction - An old (in web terms) essay about the differences and advantages of representation (eg, text, icons) vs. depiction (eg, photographs).

Eben Moglen's "The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3"

From the introduction at James Eaton-Lee's transcription of Moglen's speech:

On the 26th June 2007, Eben Moglen gave a talk on "The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3" hosted by the Scottish Society of Computers and Law, at the Edinburgh University School of Law. This was a highly interesting talk, and particularly topical, since the official release date for GPLv3 was just 3 days later, on Friday the 29th of June 2007.

-- http://jeremiad.org/moglen.shtml

I read the transcription on Groklaw, but there's also one on James Eaton-Lee's site (linked above) and one that's harder to read on the Internet Archive. There's also a video if you have the bandwidth.

Please take the opportunity to read it; Moglen's speech covers much more than merely the GPLv3 and the software industry, but also the changing world we live in.

Obama fails vocabulary test, note sent home to parents

So, apparently democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama doesn't understand the meaning of 'grave', 'breech' and 'intentional'. To the back of the class, Mr. Obama.

In this article from the International Herald-Tribune, says,

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out list of political shortcomings he sees in the Bush administration but said he opposes impeachment for either President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

...

"I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president's authority," he said.

Excuse me?

Also, what about the horrible violations of the Geneva Convention? All the human rights abuses and torture and all that? Dunno, seems like those might be reasonable grounds for impeachment and/or execution for war crimes. I'm just sayin'.

It's just as well, though, since he didn't really stand a chance anyway.

GPLv3 released

And, it's done. Version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) has been released.

IMSLP: Viola Sonata, Op.49 (Rubinstein, Anton)

Hidey-ho, neighborinos!

Yesterday, I uploaded Anton Rubinstein's Viola Sonata, Op. 49. There are two files: the piano score (34pg, 2.8MB), and the viola part (9pg, 705KB). Enjoy!

"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace"

danah boyd (web site http://www.danah.org/) presents an interesting discussion of American class divisions, their effect on social networking site usage, and vice-versa. "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace".

Lawrence Lessig Changes Direction

In a recent blog post, Lawrence Lessig announced that he will be shifting his focus away from "IP" ('Intellectual Property', better called 'Intellectual Monopoly' or 'Intellectual Privilege') towards fighting the corruption endemic in the system of government. Best of luck to him.

You should also read Lessig's blog (added to the blogroll) because he's really that awesome. :-)

A Note to Speaker Pelosi

Not that I actually believe it will make any difference, but on the off-chance that it does, I sent the following message to Speaker Pelosi today.

Speaker Pelosi,

It is far beyond time to impeach. The continuing disregard that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, their staffs and others in the administration show for not only human rights, common decency and the Geneva Convention but also the Constitution of this Union indicate that they are unfit for service. They should be handed to the Hague for war crimes, but instead they are allowed to flout their power while the Congress stands by and makes idle threats to remove funding and more and more evidence of the horrors they have enacted is revealed.

Stop playing games, Speaker Pelosi. Stop playing politics. Every day wasted is an affront to humanity, yours and mine and everyone else's.

Sincerely,

Geoffrey Lehr