librefm://community/loved

Last night, for the first time, Harry Dean Stanton sang backup vocals on The Weight.

I am betting that Luakit will be more usable than Uzbl within a week. I am also betting that I will hear chirping about Luakit not integrating with the Monkeysphere, and though I agree that this is a problem, it seems to be difficult to solve.

To do it correctly, one would need hooks or callbacks in WebKitGTK+, which, in turn, would need support in LibSoup, which would probably then need support in GnuTLS.

Since apparently this will take years of bickering to accomplish, perhaps some sort of hack is called for. I suppose one could, for each HTTPS URL visited, make an OOB connection, download the certificate, and then run it through Monkeysphere validation, before then letting WebKitGTK+ make another connection and download (hopefully the same) certificate a second time.

This strikes me as ugly and problematic. Ideas?

Some things I intended to work on last week but did not:

• deets
• luakit
• armhf
• posh
• MTA fare helper Android app
• replying to an email

Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
BogoMIPS        : 799.53
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc08
CPU revision    : 5

Hardware        : Genesi Efika MX
Revision        : 51030
Serial          : 0000000000000000`


             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        482740      44836     437904          0       4672      21104
-/+ buffers/cache:      19060     463680
Swap:            0          0          0


Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0b95:772a ASIX Electronics Corp. 
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13d3:3273 IMC Networks 802.11 n/g/b Wireless LAN USB Mini-Card
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1a40:0101 TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Things not to do if you want to be a good person:

• Complain privately to another person about vis public behavior
• Attempt to mediate between members of a group of which ve is also a member
• Defend anyone in a position of power for abusing that power
• Emotionally blackmail a group with a threatened resignation

One of my readers writes in that ve thinks that an egomaniac I may have mentioned previously would get upset about a perceived lack of proper attribution because ve views vis bit of code like vis offspring.

This causes me to immediately have flashbacks of poor parenting in public. Many times I have seen adults pay no attention to their children who are misbehaving, perhaps smearing chocolate on a stranger's dress or gnawing on a stranger's leg, and if such a victim either attempts surrogate parenting by kicking ver in the teeth or petitioning the parent to do something about ver, said parent will become very angry and indignant that anyone would impugn vis skills or dedication.

So when I see some coder not patch vis buggy code for over three years, yet still find enough time to be a sanctimonious prick and think that ve has the right to tell people how ve should be treated and how the code should be modified by others, I think there are better ways to view that metaphor.

On the other hand, I don't know any parents who neglect their kid for 3 years and then still want to actively direct childrearing, unless perhaps they're paying a governess.

Some time ago, someone posted to a development mailing list about a piece of code, Cc:ing some people who had modified the code in recent past. Within hours, the original author replied to complain about not being Cc'd.

Several thoughts went through my mind:

• Is this man a walking colostomy bag?
• Why is this clown proud of his code? It is sloppy and riddled with bugs, and half of the changes made to it by other people have been obvious fixes.
• Why did his parents not raise him better? Doesn't he realize that demanding recognition in this way makes him a bad person?

This is Free Software, and people are motivated by all kinds of factors. Some bad reasons include

• Recognition, praise, or other Community ego-stroking
• Gaining a competitive advantage for one's for-profit business
• Line items on one's CV
• Finding a husband
• Accumulating increased influence in other communities

Looking at it through an Open Source lens, all these bad reasons are good reasons. For whatever motives, people are getting work done and accomplishing things. Of course, there are always an irritating number of hangers-on, and people who do not actually achieve much but are filled with such self-importance that they believe they deserve to be highly influential through sheer force of will, and the majority of the Community will concede this influence to them due to a variety of flaws in the Human Condition, but I digress.

It would be nice if everyone had motives that were pure and good, especially since at least 90% of problems in Free Software projects are due to ego issues, but when the world works, the world works. So I am happy to get code contributions for whatever reason (assuming there are no strings attached). The problem I have is when people insist that their bad reasons are legitimate and should be catered to and accommodated by others.

% sudo fw_printenv | sed 's/^/sudo fw_setenv /;s/=/ "/;s/$/"/;'

sudo fw_setenv bootcmd "setenv ethact egiga0; ${x_bootcmd_ethernet}; setenv ethact egiga1; ${x_bootcmd_ethernet}; ${x_bootcmd_usb}; ${x_bootcmd_kernel}; setenv bootargs ${x_bootargs} ${x_bootargs_root}; bootm 0x6400000;"
sudo fw_setenv bootdelay "3"
sudo fw_setenv baudrate "115200"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_ethernet "ping 192.168.2.1"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_usb "usb start"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootcmd_kernel "nand read.e 0x6400000 0x100000 0x400000"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootargs "console=ttyS0,115200"
sudo fw_setenv x_bootargs_root "ubi.mtd=2 root=ubi0:rootfs rootfstype=ubifs"
sudo fw_setenv stdin "serial"
sudo fw_setenv stdout "serial"
sudo fw_setenv stderr "serial"
sudo fw_setenv ethact "egiga0"
sudo fw_setenv ethaddr "00:99:99:99:99:99"
sudo fw_setenv eth1addr "00:99:99:99:99:98"

I am staring at three different “plug” computers and wondering how many more will appear.

They are in varying states of Debianness: all are running squeeze, but the GuruPlug is the only one that's “pure”. The SheevaPlug is running a wacky version of U-Boot, because the u-boot package in Debian can't cope with the SD card device. Hopefully this can be fixed some year.

Worse yet is the FreeAgent DockStar, which is running a foreign kernel and two (TWO) foreign U-Boots (the first one chains to the second one which then boots off a USB stick). Unfortunately I'm afraid to correct these things because, unlike the other two, it is not a developer board, and messing it up would mean trying to deal with 3.3V RS-232 or something equally unpleasant. As it is, bricking one of the plugs where I actually have serial/JTAG causes enough emotional turmoil.

If you find yourself trying to pre-empt accusations of unfairness by coming up with plausible explanations, this should be a clear and obvious indication that you are about to do something unfair and wrong.

If you are being accused of unfairness and are trying to think of ways to defend against this criticism, it means you probably already have done something unfair and wrong.

It also means that you probably have too much power.