I think I’ve realized something today:
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Fun services to create with BitTorrent and RSS
What could be a good term to use for a combination of Broadcatching and Appcasting?
Broadappcatching?
I guess it would be a good term to describe the syndication of software packages, software release notes and patches over the Internet-dependent BitTorrent file-sharing protocol using RSS.
Of course, this would seem like overkill from the face of it, but with the currently-developing proposal-stage DebTorrent protocol that combines Debian/Ubuntu’s apt-get with BitTorrent for a decentralized software distribution method, why not combine it with RSS’s <enclosure> tag to deliver the goods automatically and visibly, especially if the software (usually the alphas and betas) is being updated and downloaded on a frequent basis?
A dialogue with Peter Saint-Andre on libertarianism in the city
Peter Saint-Andre of Denver, Colorado, is a software developer and Director of Standards at Jabber, Inc. He has also contributed to the Jabber/XMPP open instant messaging protocol and developer community since 1999; he currently serves as Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation. His blog is at stpeter.im.
Continue reading A dialogue with Peter Saint-Andre on libertarianism in the city
Pregnancy as punishment
Here in Georgia, it is considered ideal to kick your teenage child out of the house if she has a baby (the baby goes as well). Or was that in the 1950’s?
So while the hue that is being raised about Obama’s "pregnany as punishment for pre-marital sex" comments in light of Palin’s own familial issue is in full swing within the conservative media, I wonder about how secret abortions were historically seen as a necessary reproductive restriction, by parents in the 19th and 20th centuries, in order to 1) clandestinely conform to the prevailing Victorian morality (without resorting to contraceptives) and 2) to extricate their daughter – and by extension, her family – of the burden.
So if the conservatives want to return Victorian morality to constitutional status, then why can’t those who would otherwise prefer to conform to such morailty take such measures as abortion (as painful as it is) in order to conform?
I’m not an advocate for abortion and I’m not for Obama or McCain, but I don’t trust the reactions of the conservatives against the commentary as being all that altruistic ("for the sake of the unborn"). Some people see having children out of wedlock as a punishment for engaging in a rush-of-the-moment decision. Those who are "pro-life" are demanding a recognition of the distinction between a punishment and a consequence (an unfortunate consequence) for the designation of pregnancy out of wedlock, but how can there be such a distinction given that someone like Palin’s daughter wasn’t expecting a pregnancy when she was knocked up by her boyfriend?
IMO, the only way that this could be considered a punishment for Pain’s daughter is that she knew that there was a risk of pregnancy and still did the "do" regardless of the potential consequences. But how can we assume that a knowledge of this poential consequence was running through Bristol’s head at the time of this action?
We don’t. So we, the third parties, honestly can’t say that this is a punishment.
But if Obama has regularly educated his two daughters about the potential consequences, and then they engage in the "do" out of wedlock as minors without protection, then….well…..that’s a punishment.
However, if they do become pregnant, then – in the ideal of the women’s reproductive rights movement – it should be their own and exclusive decision on whether or not they’d engage in a procedure to abort the baby in the first trimester, neither the demand (or refusal) of the pregnancy’s other contributor (since it is left to wonder whether or not he will even stay on to raise the child) nor the parents of either participant.
So if Obama should be criticized over the content of his comments, then such criticism is best directed against his insistence that the pregnancy is a punishment from his prespective as the potential grandfather of a child out of wedlock, even if his daughter is residing in his house at the time of pregnancy. He’s not the mother of a uterus (he doesn’t even have a uterus), so it would seem fairly out of place for him to determine whether any pregnancy, even that of his own descendant, should be aborted.
Comparison of Closets: sexuality and racism/ethnocentrism
The closet. The Wikipedia article addresses it from a sexual viewpoint (which, historically, has been the primary viewpoint associated with any discussion of the closet), where it, as a terminology, is usually used to described repressed sexual behavior or interests.
So, if coming out of the sexual closet is seen as a good thing in the LGBT rights (and reclamation) movement, then why is racism or unrealistic racially/ethnically-based expectations not given the same treatment when the racism is alledgedly "closeted"?
"Closet racism" is seen as being just as pernicious as open and visible racism, or at least that’s what we’ve heard so much within the last few years concerning its nature; it came to prominence with the gaffes that surrounded the presidential campaign, usually involving Obama and/or Clinton(s) in an (in)direct way. This, I think, should be differentiated from "latent racism" in that while the "closet" is supposedly apparent in a continuous drip-drip sequence, the "latent" is so hidden from view that the bearer is not even aware that it exists, but can open it inadvertently in a more-than-obvious manner, thus landing the bearer in PR hot water.
The assumption is that those who are "closet racists" hide their own personal reservations or private outrages concerning race or ethnicity from public view for the sake of expediency, pleasing of a status quo, or winning a competition with a squeaky-slean record of affable accord with a ethnoracially-diverse population.
But I wonder: do we *really* want the "closet racists" to come out, be honest and flaunt ethnoracism with pride? Is the closet a good thing or a bad thing when it hides the stereotypes that are held by the bearer? Should we make an effort to extricate "closet racists" from office or places of power when it is assumed that those who are closeted may make their feelings known in the form of policies that affect millions or billions of people both in and out of the country?
But then, what to do when we have ethnoracially-based reservations, outrages and stereotypes of all types that wouldn’t let us make friends or get into places of prominence if they were made known or obvious?
Are we like the conservative caricature of Obama? Are we ticking time bombs who’ll, at some point, explode with an admiration for Hitler’s genocidal policies and a hard-on for military attire and weapon-brandishing, who’ll exhude a paternalistic violence and repression akin to what was seen in Milligram’s experiment, who’ll exhude some latent fear about the Jews taking over the world?
And what can we do about closet racism? Should it be made open to the public for naming-and-shaming purposes? How do we address it?
If we are racist, do we keep it to ourselves? Or not?
FAP post-mortem
FAP closed early this morning, with all contents deleted and replaced by the infamous "RickRoll" video from YouTube. The private last-minute negotiations for acquisition fell through, according to both Ekigyuu and Belliachi.
This, however, was an interesting development.
So now the questions about the acquisition can be (partly and temporarily) laid to rest. However, it will be interesting to see how others will make use of Ekigyuu’s "openFAP" server software (openFAP is not an official name for the project, since Ekigyuu hasn’t even named it).
EDIT: The codename is Guava, and both it and the fAPI will be released under the GPL.
On FAP
Furry Art Pile, ran by Ekigyuu (noodlesandbeef ) achieved a bit of notoriety on August 27th with the announcement of its closure (slated for tomorrow, September 1st). This announcement engendered both severe criticism from commenters on both his journal and that of the
furryartpile community (and respondent criticism from friends and associates of ekigyuu that the critics were "whiny furfaggots") and lots of interest in the acquisition of the site from such people as toribelliachi, owner of MyFursona (myfursona )(although Ekigyuu denied that the site would be sold or given to new management). Ekigyuu has also expressed interest in releasing a source code version of the site’s server software under an open source license (maybe the GPL?) to allow others to build their own web galleries.
This happening, on the eve of the initially-intended date of closure, raises more questions, IMO, than answers.
- Will the release of the FAP source code to open source development include the release of the fAPI within?
- Is it true that Ekigyuu’s keeping open the site for another two weeks to find new managers in clandestine negotiations, according to Tori?
- Does Tori’s age and British citizenship prevent him from accessing, let alone administering, a website with adult content contained therein?
- Why the sudden announcement within days of the runout of donations?
- And, given the proximity of time between the announcement and the planned date of closure, as well as the likelyhood that donations were being given to Ekigyuu during the month of August, is it really true that the possibly-ample donations are to run out at the end of the month?
- A question asked by several commenters on his blog: Why would Ekigyuu expressly deny or resist handing the site over to new management on the rationale that it is his "baby" and "portfolio", and that he’d rather end its existence on his watch rather than hand it over to another party?
I think that we won’t find out the answers to such questions for a while. But it is, to me, interesting to see the oncoming politics unfold.
Plus, editing the relevant WikiFur article to take all of this into account (even after they deleted the News post for undisclosed reasons nevermind per below) is fun to do.
Free Animation License rough draft
Admittedly, it sucks at the moment, but I’ve written out a rough draft of the Free Animation License.
Have a looksee; it will certainly change with further additions.
Also, this is meant to cover any imagery that may be used in an animation or slideshow, hence the inclusion of several different image media. However, I especially intend this to be used for SVG animations, since such animations are completely text-based and text-editable (in other words, you should pull up an SVG file like this and open up the “Page Source” window for it in either Firefox or Opera).
In other words, this license is meant to be more like a combination of the GNU Free Documentation license (GFDL, used for text publications, especially Wikipedia) and the Free Art license when applied to text-based graphic animation (2D or 3D), and less like any of the Creative Commons licenses, which have found greater exposure as licenses of choice for those who want free publicity for, I guess you could call it, “binary media”, or media that is processed and manipulated by the machine (most music and graphics files) rather than by text (anything XML based).
Programmers and non-programmers in FOSS
So free software is about freedom, not choice (which comes in a distant second place of consideration in the development of FOSS). Can this be interpreted as “freedom for developers” vs. “choice for users”?
I’ve drawn from the continual debate between the “whiny users” and the “volunteer developers” that free software – particularly that which is licensed under the GPL and other copyleft licenses – bring more long-term benefits to the programmers than it does to non-programmer users. It provides programmers with the right to observe, tinker within, and redistribute source code, as they are usually the only ones who have any long-term interest in the source code’s composition.
But the non-programmer users? As far as the programmers are concerned, f**k the non-programmers; they don’t deserve anything, and are expendable…unless they pay up.
My final Friday of boredom
So this is the first summer off that I’ve had in two years. And it’s coming to an end on Monday, when I re-start college at Macon State.
Of course, I can’t say that this was the most enjoyable summer. It was spent almost entirely in the house, although
- I was able to see two of my nieces for the first time since 1993
- I was able to start a job as a private tutor for my mother’s doctor’s children.
- I can also say that this was the summer where I started using Ubuntu on a semi-constant basis. 8.04 LTS works, although some things remain a mystery to me about it (like how it doesn’t quiet down when it boots into the splash login).
- The iPod touch that I have in my pocket became increasingly useful to me (via jailbreaking, of course) over the summer.
- I faced my own concept of spirituality, and finally said some things that I wanted to say about God, monotheism, and anti-semitism for a long time. Still don’t know if going an alternative way will be all that easy.
- I saw the Zimbabwe crisis and associated victims slide a few inches further down the toilet.
- I switched from cow milk to goat milk.
- I came up with new ideas.
- I almost saw a ghetto catfight in an aisle of Wal-Mart, but saw almost all the entire staff of McDonalds run out of the kitchen to see it happen.
- I saw a tropical-strength storm hit our area and Macon torn apart by it. Wish I had a camera the night after the storm passed over.
- Finally realized that African-American comedy isn’t all that funny in retrospect. It’s either too true or realistic, too totalitarian or too preachy.
- I watched Absolute Boy
- I was examined for hemorrhoids for the first time. It felt….weird and cold.
So yeah, it was alright for a first summer out of school.
Hope that next summer will be just as interesting.
In the meantime, besides school, I don’t know what to expect out of the coming months. There are a few intentions and hopes, such as going to AWA in Marietta next month with a proper costume (maybe an Asian-themed fursuit?), but other than that….who knows?
