The Didact, in his excellent Memorial Day wrapup for Monday, reminded me that I wanted to cover this commentary by Razorfist on Intellectual Property. The Didact notes: I used to be a libertardian, so I had a lot of sympathy for the idea of doing away with IP rights entirely, but I was never fully convinced by the arguments against IP. Looking at the arguments given by the Razorfist, he makes a very compelling case that the product of a man's mind is indeed his property. And I agree with him. I do think that reasonable limits have to be…
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A While back I'd written a post on safety being important, but not the most important thing. Safety has to serve repeatably getting things done, and is not an ultimate virtue in and of itself. Put another way, there is a difference between staying alive, and living. Every choice involves risks, and one of the most common causes of death is slipping in the shower or bathtub. A guy can die as a result of simply falling over in his house and hitting his head. While I'm not in the "just a flu" or "it doesn't exist" crowd - there's…
Over at Peter Grants blog, he links to the story of the triton submarines, capable of getting to the deepest parts of the world, period. It's a fascinating read. I certainly never wanted my boat to go that deep - it would be a one-way ride.…
If you recognize the not-quite-Chris Foss image gracing this article, you've likely spent a few hours lost in a truly groundbreaking game called Homeworld - one which, a few years back, had been released in a "remastered" version that took the original game, ships, adn strategy and dressed them up with much more detailed models and texture maps. Well, it looks like a new iteration of the game is on its way. For those of you not familiar with the game, the below does a decent job of reviewing why the game was good, in terms of story, art production,…
I recently spotted this tweet: As a kid I remember watching a documentary about how we do not know how to build somethings our ancestors built and I thought it was ridiculous. This video explains process knowledge in the best way. — Yemi Johnson (@yemi_uc) April 20, 2020 I've made the point before - it is less efficient, in a bottom-line, quarter-to-quarter profit margin way to maintain process knowledge of everything you use and depend on. Yet, you can't afford to not maintain that knowledge. This goes to computer manufacturing, steel manufacturing, and even something as mundane as customer…
While I had plenty of experience with MySQL and similar databases, I've started learning the ins and outs of MongoDB, and with the appropriate explanation, now "get" why NoSQL is becoming popular. It's pretty straightforward for anyone who's worked with Python dictionaries or JavaScript objects before. That said, my project scope has changed. I'm going to skip doing Python/Flask first. It boils down to the fact that I don't want to mess in multiple languages, and that, despite liking python a lot more, I have a lot more experience coding javascript due to time previously spent doing websites. Incidentally,…
Eric wrote a good post on the sad goings on at the Open Source Initiative. The article, and comments are, as usual, worth reading (even when I disagree with Eric, which is not so much, here). The historian Robert Conquest once wrote: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” Today I learned that the Open Source Initiative has reached that point of bureaucratization. I – OSI’s co-founder and its president for its first six years – was kicked off their lists for being too rhetorically…
Cataline over at the Dark Herald recommended that if you want a computer upgrade, get it now. No big deal it happens every year. Vendors plan for it by stocking up their inventory. Nobody really likes stocking up their inventory since it ties up a lot of capital in way that can’t be quickly liquidated at need. But it has to be done and once fabrication starts up again the inventories smooth out as the surplus starts to run low. This year the fabrication plants didn’t start up again. Shortly, and I do mean very, very shortly the…