2.6
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Archive of posts filed under the free software category.
Battling Comment Spam
Assuming the blog comment spammers are stupid, lazy or both (reasonable assumptions, at least for starters), I’ve added a simple hack to keep their automated instruments of vile torture at bay. We’ll see how long this works. (A thought: Is there any kind of torture that isn’t vile?)
Why I Love Free Software, Pt. XCVI
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Open Access University Press
Kudos to Cornell University for the launch of the Open Access University Press. University press-type books will be made freely available on line, and can be purchased through on-demand publishing. This leverages technology to perform the function university presses were always intended to achieve – making high-quality academic information available to the people who need …
Planet Malkovich
Abe Fettig helpfully pointed me to instructions on creating topic-based RSS feeds in Movable Type, allowing a solution to the Planet Malkovich problem. So with Abe’s help, I herewith am now able (if I cut and pasted correctly – man I love the commons that is free/open software) to offer category-based RSS feeds. It’s rather …
Bugfix
I love it when my bugs are fixed.
McCance
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On Lisp
The issue of Lisp is, I think, an empirical one. Back when GNOME made the move away from Sawfish for Metacity, at about the same time Sun came aboard, one of the wingnuts on Slashdot made a pejorative comment about the Sun programmers, questioning their abilities if they couldn’t handle the Lisp required to maintain …
In Which I Contribute to Free Software
So in honor of Luis’ birthday, yesterday I closed a bug. And we’re not talking about something cheap and easy, like using the dupfinder to zap one away. No, this bug required me to actually apply a patch. (OK, it was a patch submitted by a user, but still….) Happy birthday, Luis. update 2/29: In …
What will people do with this computer?
Seth Nickell’s point about the distinction between what people will do with a computer, versus what they could do is the perfect antidote to the endless “they crippled my window manager” arguments. The arguments seem to have lessened thanks to stern management of GNOME’s goals, but Seth’s thermostat example is a classic if needed for …
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