Today I heard someone say, "apparently, it's not visible. Clearly, a confused statement.

I haven't blogged recently and have been somewhat quiet and out of touch over the last few weeks more generally. I've certainly been busy but have also been trying to find words to describe the recent death of my friend and colleague, Push Singh. Push was a next-door neighbor at the Media Lab, an academic neighbor in the Electronic Publishing research group, and a neighbor in my building at home. If you've come to parties at the Acetarium, chances are you met him. Push was an up-and-coming AI researcher and something of a protege of Marvin Minsky. He had recently accepted an appointment to the MIT Faculty starting next year. His loss has come as quite a shock to everyone, to say the very least. Last Thursday was the last of several organized memorial services for Push and it now seems that its time for those of us effected by his death to get back to our lives. Rather than poorly summarizing Push and his impact on me here, I can point you some of the things that I and others said about him on a wiki page we have created to collect remembrances and in the obituary published in MIT Tech Talk. Push will be missed and I will continue to mourn his loss.

I saw an advertisement for PubCon today. It merely listed their name and their slogan/motto/catchphrase: "We start where other conferences finish." I thought about that for a second until I figured it out. Where do other conferences finish? Obviously, they finish at the pub! Hell, any decent conference will they finish in the pub not just once but every night. What a great idea! Why not just avoid the whole conference bit altogether and just go to the pub in big groups of like-minded people! It turns out, it's just some gathering for anyone "involved in the production, marketing, or management of a internet web site." Very disappointing. I will not go. You shouldn't either. If I remember and have time when PubCon is Boston (unlikely, remind me if you like the idea) -- April 18-20, 2006 -- I will try to organize my own PubCon, which will actually start where other conferences (including PubCon it turns out) finish.

I submitted the following proposal for a talk at Debconf6:

This talk offers a "Debian Themed" quick tour through the academic, legal, and business worlds. It overs insight into what everyone outside of Debian is saying about, doing with, and learning from the Debian project. In doing so, it hopes to give Debian participants some insight into fields and areas that they are largely unfamiliar with (e.g., management, sociology, anthropology, economics, computer supported collaborative work, etc.). It illuminates what others -- especially academics -- find useful or inspiring about the project and to facilitate self-reflection and self-improvement within Debian. It reflects on the impact that Debian has had in the world beyond the Debian project and, in particular, in those areas that many Debian developers may not be familiar with.

The good news is that the proposal was accepted. The bad news is that this means I actually have to finish doing the research to make the talk happen. To make the talk excellent, I wanted to solicit examples from you, great Debian community. I've already got my own list but I'd like to hear what you think I should talk about? What I'm not looking for is examples of people or organizations that use Debian. This talk is not about people who use the OS or the people who build it. This is about people who have learned from Debian as a community. Primarily, I'm looking for academic publications on Debian. However, anyone who has learned and designed a system or community based on such a paper or from observation would be good as well. People who use or have learned from our voting structure might be a good example as would communities with a Debian-derived social contract. Software engineering research is fair game. Be creative but remember that I've got a limited time on the podium and may be forced into the unpleasant position of being ruthlessly selective. Please add examples to this wiki page or just email mako@debian.org. That's if for now and I'll see you in... Umm... Oaxtepec.

I don't think I ever blogged about the time I saw an ambulance being jump-started by another ambulance. I laughed at the time but the situation made me very uneasy. Nobody wants to see something they depend upon in crucial moments in such a pathetic state. In the future, I think they should do these sort of jump-starts indoors. Of course, it did answer one question. An ambulance's ambulance is, it turns out, just another ambulance.

Who ever said that the rewards of free software hacking are immaterial? Last summer, I described how Debian hackers traveling through 106 Haven in New York tended to leave leave with lighter bags than they arrived with. After the GPLv3 kick-off a couple weeks ago, I can say the Acetarium's visitors have been no less generous. That said, Mika and I are not as confident in our ability to identify the owners of misplaced items. Perhaps you can help. They say that the sum can be greater than its parts. Mika has discovered that this may, in fact, be the case with the Acetarium's lost and found. If you recognize this man is or can lay claim to any of his parts or possessions, please contact me and help us get him home.

I just created a stub in Wikipedia for the Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. I will visit the Music Library today for more information on this wonderfuly named instrument. If you have more information already, please contribute to the page.

I've been spending what is increasingly clearly too much time reading the news lately and think it might have a negative impact on my intelligence. Here's one example of why I think this, taken from local news:

A teenager accused of going on a rampage at a gay bar with a hatchet and a gun sometimes glorified Nazism and had a swastika tattoo but never previously expressed any prejudice toward gays, friends say.

I'm sure he was the tolerant, sensitive, pro-gay-rights, secure-in-his-own sexuality kind of Nazi. Thanks Forbes for filling us in. Even if his friends are in fact ignorant enough to believe this, I'm don't see how this is newsworthy. Here's another bit from international news

The United States is expelling a Venezuelan diplomat after the Caracas government Thursday ordered an American naval attach to depart for alleged spying. ... State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack did not accuse Figueredo of any wrongdoing and did not explain why she was designated for expulsion other than to say she was the "most appropriate" choice. McCormack said the United States does not like to engage in what he termed "tit-for-tat diplomatic games," but said that Venezuela initiated the action and U.S. officials were forced to respond.

Copyrighteous spokesman Benjamin Mako Hill reminds McCormack of the definition of "tit-for-tat diplomatic games."

My friend Radu uses memoryaid as his IM name. I added his nick to Bitlbee several days ago but had to take advantage of Bitlbee's "rename" functionality to do a little rename memoryaid radu. I couldn't remember that Radu was the person behind that nick.

I've finally recovered from hosting a significant (in quality and also in quantity) chunk of the GPLv3 conference in the Acetarium. Over the last week, I've taken some time to reflect on and digest some of the license itself and, more importantly I think, the process by which it the license is being evaluated. While most of us try not talk about the products of our digestion, I've put together an essay with some of my thoughts on the issue. In particular, I talk about what I think is really at stake in the GPL revisions process and how we, as a community, can best proceed to the best possible license. The article is currently a feature on Newsforge. Comments and feedback are welcome!

Authors who name their software using a one-word combination of the language the software is written in followed by a word that describes functionality are advertising their own unoriginality. Such names are slightly more acceptable when describing libraries where the language might actually matter. Then again, I might just be trying to rationalize RubyVote. RubyVote, of course, is the very descriptive, accurate, and uninspired name of a new election methods library I've just written and released in on RubyForge. Here's the short description:

An election methods and voting systems library written in Ruby. It provides a simple, consistent and well documented interface to a number of preferential, positional, and traditional election and voting methods.

Yes. Condorcet and Cloneproof-SSD are supported. The homepage and project pages, both of which are also descriptive, accurate, and uninspired, can be found here:

• Homepage: http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org
• Project Page: http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyvote

The software is distributed under the GNU GPL.

Last weekend I was in New York again which meant that I had an opportunity to engage in what was, while I was living there, tied with Belgian beer for the status of my favorite vice: one dollar books. One of my more intriguing finds was a Grave Matters: a book consisting wholly of epitaphs. The book was a fun and very quick read In terms of the content, the epitaphs are more than able to speak for themselves. A sampling might include... There are people who seems glad to go, like Lydia Snow:

Gladly I quit this vile, decrepit clay,

To rise in endless youth, in endless day.

Wellfleet, Massachusetts 1816

There are folks like John Young or Richard Hind whose epitaphs are written by "friends" who were being perhaps a bit too honest:

JOHN YOUNG

Those who knew him best deplored him most.

[unverified]

Here lies the body of Richard Hind,

Who was neither ingenious, sober, or kind.

Chestnut, England, c. 1880

There are epitaphs that are just plain confusing like Nicholas Round's:

Here lies the body of Nicholas Round

Who was lost at sea & never found.

Great Yamouth, England, c. 1790

Additionally, the book is full of warnings and clever rhymes -- not of all which seem completely appropriate for a gravestone. While I still suspect it's a little premature, I'd like to borrow from Thomas Greenhill at least in part for my own epitaph:

Earth to earth's shovel up is shut,

A Hill into a Hole is put.

alias psudo=fakeroot

I've recently been speaking quite a bit about people who are principled, and sometimes not so principled, about free software. Now, I'm not convinced that name calling has ever done any movement much good but I won't let that stop me when I want a few concise way to describe different groups of unprincipled, hypocritical, struggling, or just plain confused free software users -- at least not when it's all in good fun. I do not, as I've mentioned before, consider myself immune from either my criticism or my epithets. To appreciate either term, you merely must recognize that the term FLOSS is often used to mean Free, Libre and Open Source Software. The first great term is the brilliant neologism flip-flosser, a creation of Dafydd Harries. It is perfect for describing the on-again off-again free software user. My own addition is the more edgy flosstitute: an solid poke at anyone willing to sell out their principles and their movement for a little political good will or a slicker desktop.

I was very pleased to hear that my recent scribblings on free software and principles managed to get some air time on the last LugRadio broadcast (46:30 into the broadcast). I was even more pleased when I listened to the show. Not everyone agreed with my argument, my tactics or my motivations but they, as a group, managed to uncover many of the metaphors and lines of thought that led to my writing the piece in the first place. More importantly, they engaged in exactly the type of discussion that I hoped to prompt. I'll embarrassingly admit that it was my first time listening to the show. I tend to not be a fan of recorded speech in general as it strikes me as an inefficient use of bandwidth (both mental and DSL). That said, I have to admit that the show sounds like a whole lot of fun!

<@biella> I can't speak for biella, but... Oh, I think you can.

And now, for a visual pun about the king of fruits:

I have no desire to be famous. Of course, I wouldn't mind if people didn't think of (a rather lecherous) someone else when they heard my name.

Someone suggested that I was a perfectionist yesterday. The truth is very much the opposite. I'm an imperfectionist.