rants.org

Breaking news from James Vasile:
Scientists going back to Galileo have secretly abused corpses in the pursuit of knowledge. Researchers studying the Atlantic Ocean garbage patch have been throwing dead pigs into the sea just to see what happens next. Yes, that’s shocking and gross, but just like in the Whitewater scandal, it’s the [...]

I just read an interesting post on Gabriella Coleman’s blog: The Hacker as Troller and Trickster, in which she points out that the “trickster” character of myth is increasingly embodied — non-mythically, non-allegorically, but in glorious corporeality — by the hackers around us, and by the trolls and all the other anonymity-encouraged occasional pranksters that make the Internet what [...]

I will always revere the Red Vic movie house because I saw my first Bruce Lee movie there. Now, an event almost as important is about to take place:
Nina Paley’s beautiful animated film Sita Sings the Blues will be playing at the Red Vic for three nights next week:

Tues, [...]

I meant to post this earlier. But hey, I suck, so I’m posting it now instead, the night before the class:

As part of Ubuntu Developer Week, I’m teaching a class on How to get started hacking Launchpad, at 20.00 UTC on Thursday, 28 Jan. If you’re a Launchpad user, come join us! [...]

From the post at QuestionCopyright.org:
Calling all law students (or at least the ones who weren’t planning to work for the RIAA later):
We’re looking for a legal intern — someone interested in learning more about copyright law and using it to promote freedom.
We have several projects right now with legal components, and expect more in the [...]

(Graph from Robert Orenstein, by way of Jim Blandy.)
A recent conversation on an open source mailing list reminded of two fallacies I’d been wanting to write about. (And what is a domain like “rants.org” for, if not the debunking of fallacies?)
The first fallacy is that bugs are bad, or rather, that growth in the [...]

This is embarrassing — I meant to post this more than half a year ago, and apparently forgot to click “publish” on the draft. Now it’s old news, but I’ll post it anyway. Maybe some people will go out and buy the book, which is a lot of fun to read.
O’Reilly released a [...]

Happy New Year!
My New Year’s Resolution: Inbox Zero.
0
(Wish me luck.)

(Reposted from QuestionCopyright.org…)

The award-winning (and freely licensed) film Sita Sings the Blues will have a week-long run in New York City’s IFC Film Center, December 25th – 31st!
This is a full theatrical run, with 7-8 screenings a day. The filmmaker, Nina Paley (who is now Artist-in-Residence at QuestionCopyright.org), will be doing Q&A after the 8:25pm show [...]

Sometimes I have to trade information with people I’ve never met. I know who they are, in the sense that I know what they’re working on, why we’re collaborating, etc. But I wouldn’t recognize their face or voice. Occasionally, the information we’re trading is sensitive — news of a software security vulnerability, for example, [...]