Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Sometimes we have to work at the raw edge of what we know, and that’s a pretty scary feeling. If you are good at what you do, then you will be asked to push that envelope fairly often — always pushing a little further out into space that needs exploring. Ideally, you are able to do that in a way that isn’t too public.

When you have colleagues pairing with you, in the next room or in the next chair or only a chat session away, you have more security for doing public things. You can vet your ideas with intelligent, experienced people - or at least pool your analytic skills in group “what-if” thinking. Then your steps are a little more sure (there is wisdom in many counselors).

Sometimes, however, you have to go it alone, and the edge is frightening. When you are there, you become frightened that you will make errors, that you will be left with nothing to contribute, that you won’t have the answer (even an obvious one) when it is needed. It’s equally frightening if you are only at the edge of /your/ knowledge, and other people not available to you have the information you need. You can get lost in “what does X know that i don’t?” and “how would Y do this?” and “how do I know if this is the right thing to do”. Borrowing from a popular sci-fi book series: “fear is the mind-killer.”

I think that the Lord meant it when he said “It is not good for man to be alone.”

I think that generally the best we have to offer people is our transparency. We don’t need to keep up a front as if we were the world’s leading expert on the world. Sometimes we all have to just be human, and in being human we must be frank about our situation. But along with being frank, we have to keep pushing forward.

I think it takes a fair amount of prayer and support and hope to push the lonely edge, or maybe only for people as weak and broken as me. Sometimes the support and hope are harder to find.

Software you don’t pay for is not necessarily “free”. This is an item I’m having to explain far too often, because people think that “free software” and “open source” are about cost. That’s not what we’re talking about.

I’ve said that Java wasn’t free and open, and people have looked at me funny and dismissed me as a nut. But it’s true. The terms “free” and “open” are far richer than casual use would have you believe.

Open means what the Open Source Definition says it means. It’s not a long read, and not wrapped in obstruse legal terms. It’s a few minutes perusal, and I even gave the annotated version to help the reader understand.
The open software definition comes from the Debian Free Software Guidelines, a meaningful and influential document.

Free means whatever the free software definition says it means.

It isn’t free if it’s owned and controlled — or if it means that you are owned for having used it. Free software is freed, liberated, released, unclenched, available to anyone who wants to have a copy. A lot of “free” ($) software isn’t free (!!) at all.

My friends at TFUG send me a link to a tuxmachines article about a free gaming LiveCd called SuperGamer 1.

Okay, if you’ve been looking for an excuse to play with linux, this should suffice — it’s just playing and barely any linux at all. You should just pop it into your drive and boot — if you’re set to boot from cd (and you should be) it should all be automatic. It won’t mess with your installed operating system (other than making it jealous).

Download via bittorrent and be kind by letting it serve fragments to others for a while before shutting it down.

It’s a good thing that these guys were not around when radio got its start. Or television. Or movies.

Well, I guess it is even worse than that. They want total control. Apparently playing their music out of order (disaggregating) is like stealing now, too. I can hear the ad now:

You wouldn’t steal a radio
You wouldn’t steal a car
Listening to music in unapproved order is stealing.
Think about it! But not too hard, because, like, it’s a vacuous argument.

It’s not about money. It’s not about mindshare. It’s about control.

Richard Stallman makes it clear that java is still not particularly free, and not particularly open. Nor is there any indication that it will be. Nice that it’s available for Debian, etc, but not as nice as it would be if they would open up their hearts just a bit and let the community that made them wealthy and famous have some control.

I am not saying that I want one, but this is cool. I am all in favor of a laptop for children and for the poor. In related news, I spent most of the day in a park that was built specifically for the poor of Munich. Englisher Garden originally had potato gardens and pigs running around.
I think highly of people who use their talents and wealth and influence to help those who are short on the latter two of the three.

Linux is available for free, and was chosen for this device. I’m a little sorry it wasn’t my favorite distribution (friends don’t let friends use red-hat package manager).

And I have fond thoughts for those who spend time and bandwidth making pictures available when cool things like this are happening.

Thanks all!

I just saw an article on copyright trouble in Germany. This seems crazy, raiding all these homes. If the evidence were all that good, why was the raid necessary? Doesn’t this seem like a crazy way to treat something that is at most an offense against a commercial entity’s business model. It’s not like they were cooking up crack or trafficking in human slavery or building bombs. This is the most ridiculous use of force.

I think that trading copyrighted goods should be a civil matter, handed in a civil way with lawsuits and C&D orders and the like. I don’t think that we should take the police away from more important matters in order to make them deputies of the recording industry. This is uneven response.

Let the police do their real work.

Dave showed me this interesting article about how language shapes thought, even when it’s a programming language. . I laughed at this bit:

His programming languages of choice did not give him the vocabulary to express a particular idea, so he considered that idea uninteresting.

That’s kinda human, isn’t it? I joke about people who divide up human knowledge into two camps: the things one already knows, and the things not worth knowing. It’s an ugly viewpoint, as if the world had nothing else to teach. But I think in the article the idea is more like “open/closed principle”, where a programmer’s mind is open to extension but closed to modification.

… as if another was needed.

They televise the Berlin airshow. When do you see complete coverage of the Oshkosh Fly-In or the Dayton air show?

Oh, and they make Frameworks guitars. And in Bavaria, the best pretzels on earth. I just love the pretzels.

I need to learn the language. It really is a great country.

I got my Blackberry finally. It means a lot to me, but mostly that I’m going to be always-in-contact. The net and email is cool, but the idea that I’ll be in communication with peers and family while away is better. My old phone was seriously less functional, especially wrt European cell standards (GSM).

Sadly, I can’t do much with a BlackBerry from Linux (my main OS) because of a lack of driver support. If you find yourself in similar straits, you might consider the RIM BlackBerry Linux USB Driver Support Petition. Why not? It couldn’t hurt.

I guess we should/could write to RIM. I wonder what address is appropriate? And I wonder if they’re already intending to have some kind of support for this in the near future? It would be cool if they’re cooperating and we’re just impatient.

Suing to slow the progress of Vista has got to be the most unnecessary move of the year.

If they only spent as much effort producing good software as they do trying to hurt legitimate businesses, they wouldn’t have so many problems with antitrust.

I guess it’s not enough to make more money than any other business (and most governments) on earth, you have to also make sure that nobody else tastes any success as well.

M$: Try making good software instead. It would be a nice change.

Don’t be afraid of Naked PCs. They’re not a threat, not a lewd act of public indecency. They’re a good price for a good product, and a good way to get our PC prices lowered.

I think we should be happy to see these Naked PCs. They let us choose what OS to run (after all, you know, there are many good ones to choose from). It is easily in my own best interest to get a good PC cheap and install the operating system of my choice (generally Debian Linux) but I could be convinced to use a BSD or BeOS, or maybe even some really whacky alternative OS.

However, someone wants to convince you that there is no legitimate reason to buy a naked PC except to install Windows, in clear violation of the End-User License Agreement (that thing where they threaten you, and you just click “okay” and ignore them).

Don’t violate your EULA. Install something else.

I see reports that people are unhappy with Vonage, but I don’t know who those people are. I could not possibly be happier. My calls are inexpensive, my service and sound are excellent, and I don’t ever have a dropped call.

Better yet, my international calling (family calling me overseas) last month was trivial. I really mean trivial. I could not possibly be happier.

Note, I’m not associated with V other than as a paying subscriber. They don’t even know that I like them so much.

Vonage rocks. Don’t be afraid to switch over.

I know Schultmc will love this one: There’s a howto listed over at SlashDot for streaming video from MythTV to your 3G cell phone.

Now you can watch your 70s sitcoms at greater expense than ever before.

I think probably that most of the trouble we deal with is best handled with a good combination of wisdom, courage, patience, and prayer. And I fear that lacking any one of these, most of our problems will just get worse. Drop wisdom and one becomes foolhardy. Drop courage and nothing changes. Drop patience and you find yourself acting too hastily, even if your are otherwise wise and courageous. And then there’s prayer… partly because some problems are too big for us, and partly because we need to ask for patience, courage, and wisdom.

There’s a door in the stairwell, and a sign on the door says “this door must remain closed at all times.” So I started wondering, why did they install a door there if you’re never to open it?

I got two CDs at the same time (from CdConnection.com). The first is Stanley Clarke And Friends: Live At The Greek, and the other is the Japanese export of Larry Carlton’s Fire Wire.

I listened to the Clarke album first, and it is as wonderful as you would expect, coming from such an all-star band and featuring some great standards (”All Blues”, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, “School Days”, etc). It was against this backdrop that I listened to Fire Wire, and it suffered a little by comparison. Certainly it would be hard to follow Stanley&Friends.

The first listening had me wondering what Larry was up to, especially with the third song “Naked Truth”. It is almost celtic played with some buzzy distorted overdrive, and goes “naked” (unaccompanied) for a while before kicking in some supporting drums and keys. It’s more down-tempo and “straight” than a lot of the music on the album. I was surprised to hear it so early in the album, I think.

After a second listening I realized that this album really is something wonderful. It’s not like other guitar-centric albums. It’s certainly a long walk from work with jazz standards, the polished finesse of his light jazz work, or the Lukather shredfests. It’s simpler and still has a profound feel. These may be the new standards down the road. And I can sure imagine Dirty Donna’s House Party taking its place in the next two-guitar jam album.

The Sapphire Blue horn section comes along with Larry this time. I think it’s a good choice. They really do add some punch to the sound. I’m a sucker for a good horn section in a rockin’ band (hence my love for Five Iron Frenzy).

I try not to compare Larry Carlton to other guitarists, even when he plays side-by-side with them (Larry & Lee (Ritenour), No Substitutions (with Steve Lukather). I was resisting the urge to compare Larry with Jeff Beck while listening to this album.

While some cats are turning out echoes of earlier work, Larry Carlton is turning out albums like Sapphire Blue and Fire Wire. Far from threadbare, I think he’s making music as good or better than ever. I’m looking forward to somehow catching him live in concert.

Now is a good time to become a Larry fan.