1. I’d like to have my own office.
2. I’d like to own my own washer and dryer.

I’m almost 30 years old and I can’t decide whether this humble, privileged, pathetic, or just plain strange. I feel sort of like a character in a Franzen novel. One thing I do know is that if I had my own office I wouldn’t have to put up with how chatty the lab is, and I’d probably work at home a lot less. While I’m working towards my own office, I’ve purchased the following stopgap measure:

Sadly, there’s no similar stopgap for proper laundering.

Can I release a non-free program that’s designed to load a GPL-covered plug-in?
It depends on how the program invokes its plug-ins. If the program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, then the plug-ins are separate programs, so the license of the plug-in makes no requirements about the main program.

Leaving aside the vague term “plugin” the standard being set here is that as long as your program is using system calls (e.g. fork + exec) to execute the underlying GPLv2 code, your code is free from any GPLv2 restrictions. So a natural strategy to embrace and extend open source without contributing to the evolution of that source is through judicious use of system calls.

I sort of already knew this, but it was nice having it confirmed. But this leads to an interesting question, can you license code such that a fork + exec is not a sufficient mechanism for avoiding license restrictions? What would the software world look like if GPLv2 worked that way?

[The future being now, even being burned out is in absolute terms milder than in any other time in history, so much so that the violent metaphor of being burned is gradually being replace by the gentle hollowed out feeling of being excavated slowly by the meager compulsions of the self.]

We are naturally informational creatures, curiously seeking the new. For most I think this is balanced by social needs, which intervene, demand attention, and absolve the other sins. For me, the social needs run antithetical to my compulsions, compounding them, confounding any sense of moderation. I find comfort in blogging the backwaters, but Facebook is somehow terrifying.

I’m working on this I suppose, trying to trick myself into performing the kinds of tasks that are normally just the simple consequence of rigorous self control. The pageview count for other websites visited while trying to compile this modest entry must now run into the hundreds, even with the natural compressing effect of a semi-organized RSS feed reader. For some people I guess, they compensate by “finding ways to make things fun” or by “doing something else,” as if these two paths aren’t the result of the privilege of birth, biology, or spectacularly raw good fortune.

Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. This post has a lot of good info. The fact that the Cactus Cafe is now under control of KUT makes this KUT’s problem. From my perspective, the important battle has already been won. That said, I was curious enough to look up the salaries of each of the two contenders for the management position:

Cameron Smith: $83,400*
Griff Luneburg: $38,628^

Given the salary disparities, it is hard to understand why Cameron Smith even wants the job. It is even harder to imagine that Griff Luneburg’s salary was really breaking the bank of the Texas Union budget. Honestly, when I discovered the salary discrepancy here my whole understanding of what is really going on was turned upside down. Now I’m not sure what to think.

* Cameron Smith has reportedly already quit as assistant director of Texas Performing Arts.

^ How does that salary even make sense for a guy with friends like these?

Update: And the new manager is … none of the above.

[Aside: I recall how the DMCA looked like the devils work when it was being drafted, but in retrospect that law looks like a smart compromise compared to what certain content producers are clamoring for now. Better to pass some kind of network neutrality compromise soon because in ten years deals that pass muster with special interests will look much worse for you and I. It's sort of sad that the key to dealing with special interests is for forward thinking politicians and policy experts to get legislation out the door before special interests can even figure out what they want.]

More generally, I feel like we are all just sort of tiredly waiting for the inevitable. The established rhythms of 21st century capitalism may objectively advance the state of the art, but I think we all know how oligopolies leave behind frustrated consumers as they pursue various kinds of short sighted strategies in the absence of any real competition amid conditions of regulatory capture.

We are transitioning from a virtuous cycle where engineering innovation drives profits to depressing spiral where profits are derived from business school tricks like market segmentation and cost cutting. It was fun while it lasted.

(via)

Logorama on Vimeo.

[Also note that if iPhones are sort of crappy as phones, AT&T willingness to take the heat on connectivity issues may explain Apple's hesitant approach to pushing the iPhone on alternative carriers.]

As of this writing, Carmon’s post has generated almost 1,000 comments and nearly 90,000 page views. It’s a prime example of the feminist blogosphere’s tendency to tap into the market force of what I’ve come to think of as “outrage world”—the regularly occurring firestorms stirred up on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs like Jezebel and also, to a lesser degree, Slate‘s own XX Factor and Salon‘s Broadsheet. They’re ignited by writers who are pushing readers to feel what the writers claim is righteously indignant rage but which is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy business. But they promote the exact opposite of progressive thought and rational discourse, and the comment wars they elicit almost inevitably devolve into didactic one-upsmanship and faux-feminist cliché. The vibe is less sisterhood-is-powerful than middle-school clique in-fight, with anyone who dares to step outside of chalk-drawn lines delimiting what’s “empowering” and “anti-feminist” inevitably getting flamed and shamed to bits. Paradoxically, in the midst of all the deeply felt concern about women’s sexual and professional freedom to look and be however they want, it’s considered de rigueur to criticize anyone, like Munn, who dares to seem to want to sexually attract men.

The post causing all the controversy is here. The Daily Show responds here. If you’re interested in learning more about feminism, I’d recommend avoiding the blogs and starting with any of the numerous articles at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.