Steven Brust is a big tease.
His most recent Vlad Taltos novel is full of tease for two reasons:
Summer crept up behind me and has been beating my about the head and
shoulders all week. It's hot (95+ F / 35 C in the shade). I've been
slowly adapting back to hot-weather mode, but with the suddenness of the
onslaught, it's been hard to keep up.
It's easy to get annoyed at hot weather -- like one of pterry's trolls, I
know I am a tenth as good a coder in the summer. And I choose not to have
air conditioning at home, so if I need to get back to peak performance for
something, I have walk downtown to the coffee shop or library or someplace
air-conditioned.
But this weather is good for the bigger, longer-term thoughts (aka lazing
about). And I know I can adapt. Yesterday I hiked in to Abrams Falls, and
the heat didn't bother me at all, and just made sitting and meditating
under the falls even better. Then I climbed up to the top of the falls and
waded all the way back up the creek.
Today, I got out in the peak heat of the day and hauled in and unpacked
300 pounds of gear. More on that in a few days..
Sound Juicer "Harder Now With Higher Speed" 2.23.0 has finally been released.. Tarballs
are available on
burtonini.com, or from
the GNOME
FTP servers. Hot new features!
![[Mast]](http://mjr.towers.org.uk/writing/reflections/attachments/mastsm.jpg "Mast")
(Is this a network?)
Terry Lane
asked:
"Do you know of any reason why someone would suggest we consider placing blogs on more than one server? I think his main concern would be related to SEO and - I'm assuming here - Google."There are some small reasons, mainly about various sorts of reliability: what if the server catches fire, what if someone filters out adverts from the server, what if the server gets labelled as a spammer or splogger, and so on... but I believe they're outweighed by ease of management and having all your site on one server. If the search engines label your IP address as a spammer, you can get another IP address as a short-term fix, but in general, the search engines are always a major threat to a blog-based business. If they label one server as a spammer, I think it would take the guys at google or whatever about 0.1 seconds to spot the link to another server. The best tactic is to avoid looking like a spam source in the first place... I guess if you're hosting several blogs on shared servers, like I do, splitting your blogs across several servers is a good idea for those reasons, which is part of why I do it... In any case, make sure you download backups in case your hosting goes like this:- The Planet (EV1) Data Center Catches Fire - 9000 Servers Offline If a blog becomes really popular, the usual tactics of mirroring and distributed load-balanced hosting can be used, but I don't think that was the question here. Even after all those, I can't think of any real killer reasons to split a blog across multiple servers if you're on your own dedicated server already. Have I missed a reason?
Another awards show took place today but nobody is paying any attention to that. All of Hollywoods elite can be found at the King Plaza Buffet in Jersey City for the 80th annual Things Jaldhar Discovered Last Year That Every Else Knew About Already Awards. (Known in the industry as "the Golden Sombreros") Here is a list of the winners.
Game: Hungry Hungry Hippos This game is awesome! But don't play with three year olds. They cheat.
Book: Discworld series by Terry Prachett When The Color Of Magic came out in 1983, I dismissed it as merely "The Hichhikers Guide to Mordor" but last year I read it again and this time it grew on me. Since then I've been steadily reading the whole series since June at an average of one a week.
Music: Rammstein Smell the umlauts! I have no idea what they are actually going on about but this is what Metal is supposed to sound like.
Mental Condition: Oedipus Complex All of sudden last October or so, my son started screaming and crying whenever I got anywhere near my wife and he would cling to her like the proverbial limpet. Then three months later, just as suddenly, he stopped. Very strange, not to mention creepy.
Linux command: grep --color=auto Everyone knows GNU ls can be colorized but did you know the same is true of GNU grep? I didn't. Why wasn't I informed of this earlier?
L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award: Coke Zero I used to drink way more Coke than was good for me so I decided to give it up. Diet sodas don't taste very good so I was resigned to not drinking soda at all. Luckily for me Coke Zero has no calories or sodium but does have caffeine and a taste like actual Coca-Cola. Perfect!
Confessor - Terry Goodkind's last novel in the Sword of Truth series.
Brilliant.
Exceptionally Brilliant.
Well worth waiting for, and the annoyance of 'Chainfire' itself which seemed to go nowhere despite its length.
In the last week, I have been witness to and part of many conversations and probably one of my favorite ones was about coffee. My friend reasoned that coffee is as wonderful as it is because of its dependability (unlike, for example, your relatives). You know that for a moderate sum of money, you can drink a drink that makes you happy, alert, and, for some of us, allows us to face the rest of the day on an even keel. It is pure comfort that derives from a form of almost ritualistic dependability.
This morning, as I was sipping my coffee, I came across a short blog post by Stanley Fish who certainly does not make me as happy as my morning cup of joe, but I do admire him for his dependability and consistency when it comes to reporting on matters of liberalism. For over 20 years he has dependably written on the quandaries and limit of liberal political ideology and his most recent installment, which focuses primarily on a new book by Paul Starr, is no different.
Well, his conclusion strikes just a little differently than the tone of some of his previous works.
In the past (or perhaps in some of his longer academic works), Fish’s solution to the problem of competing ideologies is that there are no solutions, just incommensurable ideologies and you gotta sort of duke it out, and the strong man/woman/group wins (see Terry Eagleton for this characterization of Fish’s work. But the ending to this piece is subtly different, a tone and stance I rather prefer:
So again, what to do? Lilla s answer is pragmatic rather than philosophical (and all the better for that). All we can do, he says, is cope ; that is, employ a succession of ad hoc, provisional strategies that take advantage of, and try to extend, moments of perceived mutual self-interest and practical accommodation. We need to recognize that coping is the order of the day, not defending high principles. Now there s a principle we can live with, maybe.
What I like about his ending is that it acknowledges there are times when compromise is possible, where a common meeting ground can be forged, however provisional these may be. As someone interested in the politics of consensus and accommodation, I think it is important to recognize that human beings are not simply molded by one set of values but are are often dwelling within various systems (of sometimes contradictory) values. And it is because of this multiplicity that forms of accommodation and consensus emerge and can emerge, signaling a more hopeful politics that derive not from abstract adherence to precept such as tolerance, but from the far messier realm of actual life experience.
"I see--Redarded Terrorist--ok. So this Gareth fellow is making a comparison with smarter, more intelligent terrorist that was the IRA. Which kind of says that everyone should be far less afraid of the current crop of folks and yet the media, as it does so well, inflates their dangerousness for the sake of ... well, beats me. Oh, maybe it help Tony get a job ;-) If the IRA came to the US, what color (or is that colour) code would their activities get on our terror scale as opposed to these Tardorrists?"How about Emerald Green? More seriously, I think it's entirely fair to suggest we should fear this lot less than the often-USian-funded Provisional IRA, or local groups like animal liberationists. Those didn't just attack the big cities - it was everywhere, an attempt at terrorism. I lived about three miles outside Milton Keynes, then a fairly small midlands city, which was firebombed by both those groups. Ultimately, it didn't work. Most people weren't terrified. We carried on regardless. The government may be over-hyping this threat to ride in a new load of "expensive and ineffective" Security Theatre measures, like ID cards. Some media is sceptical, but the Murdoch-run media is mostly complicit, which is hardly surprising given the historic relationship. We should not let these "tardorrists" change our way of life, yet that is exactly what our spineless politicians seem to be doing. Let's continue as before: beware, but be happy. Update: niq comments:
"Recommended reading: Terry Pratchett "Interesting Times". Written before "9/11" and set in the wrong part of the world, but nevertheless beautifully relevant."
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For those of us worried about inculcating our children with an appropriately developed sense of irony to get them through the next century, TMBG is the perfect prescription. We can play our kids these new albums and rest assured that our kids will eventually appreciate Terry Gilliam, Ze Frank, John Belushi, and the like. And learn the alphabet (mp3) (ogg) while they’re at it:
F is far too fussy and only eats with fancy wine(Please note the Cake tribute — which is interesting, since Cake was undoubtedly influence by TMBG.) (If you don’t get the joke, it’s “soda.”) The target audience, of course, is still “us” — those of us over 30, who are more likely to actually purchase music rather than copy it. It’s an interesting reversal of the more typical marketing plan which involves getting kids to nag their parents to buy things. It thus makes a lot of sense that TMBG is selling tracks direct online from their website in unencumbered formats — $9.99/album in MP3 format, or $11.99/album as FLAC files. An extra two bucks for lossless audio? Of course I’ll buy that! You should too.
G eats only gourmet but never can decide
H burns food so horrible
all I tastes is smoke
J just likes drinking juice
and K drinks only soda
"Since all CC licences allow NC copying and distribution, any DRM that limits copying in any way is a breach. Or any DRM as it is also known. And since the CC licenses all support fair use and DreAm (an oxymoronic idea that I thought had died of lack of interest) restricts it, that's another problem. Not to mention how harmful electronic enforcement of CC licenses would be."That's an argument I've heard from several CC supporters, but I don't accept it: fair use is inconsistent globally. What is fair use in the USA might not be fair dealing in England, or the other way around. As to whether any DRM is possible under CC licences, there's the small matter of Lessig's "praise for better DRM" which seems to acknowledge the existance of TPMs that restrict in a CC-OK way. Rob continues:
"Mako's arguments are a rehash of ones that were considered in depth when the debate was happening. Terry covered most of them [in an article on a magazine web site]"Maybe the points Mako presents were considered, maybe they weren't, but it's very hard to tell from the limited transparency of CC. I think the points are clear, direct and difficult to argue against - that may be why it's so hard to get a good debate with CC about this. What's more, Terry Hancock's article is a rehash of his old list posts. I think Terry's points were all covered in mailing list discussions and they don't even try to make a case for the TPM-ban in CC-BY. I like recycling, but it's disappointing to see people use the press to recycle old threads. Also, I don't find it particularly surprising if someone writing for a magazine web site isn't entirely comfortable with some forms of redistribution. Rob finishes with:
"And I would add that, as someone who has installed GNU/Linux on my iPod, who has recently read the Yellow Dog Linux announcement for the PS3, who uses their PS2 as a CD and DVD player, and whose son seems to get MP3s, images and movies onto his PSP OK, I do not understand the argument that the best way of "helping" users is to help third parties trap them under DRM regimes rather than assisting users in installing and using free software."Maybe that's not understandable because it's not an argument that's used, except as a straw man by pro-format-discriminators? Personally, I think it's a pretty poor show that you have an iPod, PSP and so on - weren't Apple's and Sony's DRM-mania well-known when they were bought? Which brings me on to why I feel locked-media distribution is worthwhile: educating people to make better device choices next time. I bought an Ogg player this time - hearing Cory Doctorow's talks as MP3 was partly why. If CC 2.0 had had an aggressive-patent ban similar to CC 3.0's TPM ban, maybe that wouldn't have happened.
Next.
