Virtual Thought

I just found out that Octavia Butler, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, died on February 24, 2006. BoingBoing has a nice entry about her passing.

Mrs. Butler’s novel Dawn opened my eyes about science fiction, politics, race, self-determination, freedom, imperialism… it is such a varied and subtle book that I would recommend to anyone, sci-fi fan or no. It literally changed my life.

Lillith Iyapo survives the human race’s descent into near self-destruction only to learn that a race of interstellar gene manipulator’s have determined that humans are, by nature, doomed… this race will entirely rule the future of humankind and forcefully entertwine their genetic futures whether the human races wants to or not. Humans have no choice: they must be reborn into a new world entirely re-created by the Oonkali in their image of perfection, by their rules, under their aegis… in fact, the aliens have redefined what it means to be human. Humans cannot go backward, cannot rebel in any macro sense. They just have to adopt these new identities and gestalt them with some new idea of self-determination that, hopefully, does not include armageddon. Can they do it?

Thank you Octavia Butler. I owe you so much!

Where would I be without my faithful news outlets dutifully reporting that cats like birds?

Okay, that’s not entirely true… the article is about the recent cat death in Germany. The cat had eaten a bird infected with H5N1 bird flu and consequently sickened and died.

But with photos like these, I just had to poke fun:

Yes. Thank you. I know cats like birds.

In this struggle to have up-to-the-minute news coverage of every little detail because of the transparency afforded by electronic, “new” media I think our more traditional news outlets are flailing and flapping around like flu-addled birds trying to provide us with the detail they think we want. Heck, maybe we think we want it.

I get really nervous when we apply supply-and-demand economics to the news… is it really okay to give us what we want, all the time? Isn’t that how we get Jerry Springer-style sensationalism that focuses entirely too much on couples whose names abbreviate is cute ways (Bennifer, Brangelina, Jessinick… I made that last one up) instead of real issues like the horrible, unjust war in Iraq, the corruption that is increasingly evident in the highest echelons of government, the global warming we brought upon ourselves that we are still denying?

Cats like birds indeed.

Hooray for Paul Graham. Neat essays by a guy who is sometimes The Man and sometimes really arrogant. Have you also read Hackers Are Nothing Like Painters?

I just re-read How to Do What You Love and it’s pretty inspiring. Go read it… it’s not just for computer geeks like me. My big problem with the essay comes about halfway through:

Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.

Bullshit. Of course people write papers for fun; it’s called structured thinking. This is akin to English majors who look at the CS majors and think, “No one writes programs for fun!” Thinking without structure (be it programs, essays, journal entries, music, discussions with friends… basically, medial expressions) is, well, wanking.

Other than that bit of anti-intellectualism, the essay is a great expression of my goal of answering the question, “And what do you do?” with a big ol’ smile.

Wikipedia: Information You Can Use.

Microsoft wins FAT patent case.

In an IP law infected world, what does this mean? Potentially, that Linux won’t be able to use FAT as a filesystem and therefore will only be able to interoperate with Windows filesystems through Windows OSes. It means that all the USB drives of the world just got a little bit more complex, a little more expensive. It means that a small host of helpful, free utilities might have to license the filesystem use from Microsoft.

Godammit. Who did this protect exactly? Microsoft. Who was billions of dollars to ensure that IP legislation stays current and aggressive through donations to key legislators? Microsoft. Who gets hurt by the lack of innovation this widespread, general kind of protection this patent provides? Consumers. You might be thinking, “Well, Microsoft did innovate and invent that filesystem. They deserve to be compensated for their hard work commensurate to their effort and dilligence. After all, I would want that kind of protection should I ever invent anything.”

Wrong. Guess what: We don’t live in a free market. Your products don’t get to compete fairly for two reasons:

1. Late-era capitalism combined with post-scarcity commodities. Digital goods are not scarce. Digital means of production are not scarce. In fact, filesystem innovation at the level of FAT is not scarce. What is, exactly? Time. Right, right… the resource in a digital age. But guess what? If you measure the amount of time spent on developing FAT with an adjusted ruler (adjusting for the current speed of technology development) you’ll find that the time spent was probably only a few minutes. How much is that worth now? Are FAT royalties going to be adjusted to that level? Can a free software advocate walk up to Microsoft, give them $100, and declare that the royalties for FAT have been paid?
2. Influence of capital. If I pay you $5 to influece your decision, is that fair? If large, corporate bodies that are content providers lobby Congress incessantly with large amounts of money, is that fair? I’m not one to argue that “fair” necessarily needs to be a part of the marketplace; however, if you think the market is going to reward your commensurately reward your efforts based solely on those efforts you are sadly mistaken.

My scream of frustration goes here.

Moments like these are why I have a blog.

In a semi-random poke around iTunes I discovered two bands… one that is pretty cool and one that I absolutely fucking adore. Freezepop has won my heart and stolen my soul. What a great band. Jesus. “parlez-vous freezepop?” is running on loop in my head. It’s like this band’s very existence in this universe made a small hole in my brain… and now that I’ve found them the hole is filled with plasticky synth-pop effervescence.

Then there’s this:

I need to hang onto that.

Then there’s this:

This guy rules. Go check him out.

I’m gonna go play with the twenty or so free VSTIs I just downloaded…

It seems that all manner of whacked-out conspiracies were on display on digg.com today.

Among them was this article that asked, Were these brutal beatings inspired by video games? The article’s answer can be found in the last sentence:

Man’s inhumanity to man and his compulsion to pick up a blunt weapon have been around since caveman days. Given the recent tragedy, is the presence of baseball bat weapons in games like the Grand Theft Auto series and The Warriors an instance of art imitating life, or life imitating art?

That says, “No,” to me. “No, video games do not make people kill other people.”

However, as you can see in the first comment after the story, some flaming idiots) do not agree. I can’t wait to see what this clueless loser) does next.

Saw a great image of the famous Bigfoot walk movie stabilized which is very cool. Makes me want to take those images, create a stretched version of the landscape that is entirely visible, and have Bigfoot walk across that. Hmm…

And read an interesting post about how the NSA finds us and what software they use. Very, very interesting…