An Autumn Potpourri

The goldenrod is wilting, the leaves on the trees are changing into warm colors, and the fall is trying to change into cooler weather. Museum Days is over, and the Friends had its best Book Sale ever. (Thanks for visiting us, folks!)

Now I want to throw a mixed bag of rants out there.

technologica

r.i.p. steve jobs

It was evident, I suppose now, with the pancreatic cancer (which he treated with New-Age nonsense for nine months ➤) and the liver transplant and the emaciation, that Steven Jobs was not long for this world. But it was still a shock to me to learn that the Steve — the guy who made Pixar great, who revived Apple into a powerhouse media device company, and who had with both made Disney his dog — has died at age 56. ➤ Even his enemies are eulogizing him.

I figure that Apple itself will continue to run on inertia for awhile, resisting any attempt to seduce it from the Way of Jobs. Apple is the company that laughed off (joined by a chorus of techies and creatives who equally laughed off) that Gartner report five years ago, which advised that Apple let Dell build its hardware (even though Dell's hardware is poor) on the laughable assertion that Intel subsidizes Apple's parts.

BTW, even in death Jobs still attracts attention. ➤

the bitter cup of futility

Oracle has released ambitious plans for Java: the availability of an early access version of [Java Development Kit] 7 for the Mac OS, plans to bridge the gap between Java [Mobile Edition] and Java [Standard Edition], an approach to modularizing Java SE 8 that will rely on the Jigsaw platform, a new project that aims to use HTML5 to bring Java to Apple's iOS platform, the availability of JavaFX 2.0, a pending proposal to open source that technology, gearing up Java [Enterprise Edition] for the cloud and a delay in the release of Java 8. ➤

So what? Oracle's open-source initiatives have been tainted by its lawsuit with Google over the use of Java in the Android mobile operating system; its hamfisted manipulation of the Java Community Process, because of which the Apache Foundation quit in protest last year; its equally hamfisted handling of the OpenOffice.org project, all but killing the office productivity suite; and the continuing fears about the future of MySQL. You also have to take that bringing Java to iOS remark with a liter of doubt: It is dependent on Apple's good graces: Oracle is not in Apple's good graces: Java is supported only perfunctorily, and MySQL has been dropped from Mac OS X Lion.

the vanishing

I have just learned the following folks who have dropped out of the Internet:

why the lucky stiff ➤, the whimsical face of the Ruby programming language, had been gone from the Internet for over two years, vanishing on 19 August 2009. For the life of me I did not know that until I learned it researching the disappearance of another programmer (see below). I decided to download his seminal work, Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby on PDF, so I will have a copy in case that vanishes as well from the Web. (I must add that why is not inactive: His most recent work is Hackety Hack ➤ for children and non-programmers.)

I suspect that why's departure it might have something to do with the explosive departure of another Ruby programmer. Ζ, the creator of the Ruby-based Web server Mongrel, left the Ruby and Rails communities with a departure letter whose harshness was legendary but whose victims deserved it. (TechCrunch has the pertinent parts here. Caution: Foul language!) why was never mentioned in the letter, which was aimed at the creators of Rails, at certain other programmers, at companies who hire programmers like ζ and then treat them like dirt, and at companies like IBM and ThoughtWorks for using Rails in their scams and thus running Rails into the ground. Yeah, I know, the rant came out in late 2007, but it might be possible that why found that ζ was right all along and dropped out as well.

Ζ won over Rails in the end: Mongrel, as part of Rails' rival Merb, became part of the guts of the new Rails 3.0 this year.

Mark Pilgrim ➤, the author of Diving Into HTML5, dropped off the Internet much more recently, like a couple of days ago, leaving his Web site as a 410 Gone (resource is no longer, and will never again be, available) on the fourth day of the tenth month (cute!). ➤

And it is not just Mr. Pilgrim's Web sites: His accounts on Google+, Twitter and Github are gone, too. This caused a general panic among the hacking community, as Mr. Pilgrim is well known among them. Some have even reported him as a missing person to the police. But Mr. Pilgrim is alive, annoyed at the panic, and appears to have ditched the Internet due to some long-standing problem that evidently went over his head. (Maybe dealing with the ◊◊◊◊s that dwell on the Internet got to him; I'm sure they would get to me, which is why I rarely comment on blogs and turned off commenting on mine.) No matter: Diving Into HTML5 still exists (here: ➤). We should be content with that, and leave Mr. Pilgrim alone.

italiana

italian state threatens italian wikipedia

The Italian Parliament is debating whether to change a clause in its Wiretapping Law to force on any public forum in Italy a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image, without prior evaluation of such a claim by a judge, and even if the content is true or based on well-known facts.

There is a strong chance that this change will become law, as the Parliament's prime minister is a media mogul as ignorant and as hostile to the Internet as the Murdochs. Yet, if this change becomes law, the manifesto ➤, that has replaced the whole of the Italian Wikipedia site in protest, would become permanent — Italian Wikipedia will cease to exist. Evidently the protest blanking, which went through the fifth and into the sixth, has gotten the Italian media's attention.

italian injustice

I think, as I have always thought, that the Italian courts had it right the first time, that the American student did murder her British roommate. The Italians should not have let her go; but having done so, if the Italian courts ever find that they were right all along, then a murderess walks free and her victim's family is denied justice. The only consolation is that the American will never set foot in Europe again.

socialia

telemarketing on cellphones

In response to this attempt to introduce telemarketing calls into my cellphone with H.R. 3035 (well, the lobbyists claim otherwise, but once that bill becomes law, it is only a matter of time), I have written a letter to Dan Burton, my congressional representative, asking him to oppose the bill. I can only hope that this bill dies: I like my cellphone: I do not want to cancel my cellphone service: But if this bill becomes law, I will!

the occupation of wall street

There was a police riot last week against anti-finance protesters in New York ➤, and Google wastes news real estate to the Washington Monument, the owner of Godfather's Pizza, Ron Paul, Obama and his Hollywood wad … of political donation cash, SAT cheaters, and that murdered family of Indiana redneck druggies. The only people covering the riot is Techdirt ➤ ➤ and Slashdot ➤. Talk about loads of fark, Google! Get a grip!!

Of course, I wrote that last week, and the anti-finance protests have spread beyond New York, have swelled their ranks with students and union workers, and have forced the attention of NPR and Google itself.

global warming: you're too late

There were similar protests in Washington against a pipeline running straight through the center of the North American continent, from the Athabasca tar sands ➤ to the refineries of Texas. Most of the Rolling Stone article (13 October 2011, pp. 39-42) about the protests seemed to be about the protesters' night in a Washington prison. The rest of the article mentions Saudi Arabia and its seas of oil, a scientist claiming that the warming of the global climate was caused by burning all that Saudi oil. He apparently forgot all that American, British and Chinese coal.

The scientist also claimed that if Athabasca is opened up, it's essentially game over. I beg to differ: The game is already over. The climate is changing, and will continue to change. There is plenty of Saudi oil to burn; there is plenty of Chinese coal to burn; and nothing is going to change that because the rest of the world will blithely continue to run on cheap fossil fuel, no matter how much these people protest in Washington.

simpsonoj mortontaj

The moral failures of the Murdochs and their British newspapers this year has hurt NewsCorp really badly. While they deserve the pain they get, that pain is eaten its way into Fox Television and Fox Studios. The suits at the latter are trying to get the voice actors of The Simpsons to take a pay cut that would halve their salaries. The voice actors are willing in turn to take a 30% cut (bringing their salaries to pre-2008 levels) plus a tiny slice of the backend (merchandise, syndication, DVD sales). And that is for only one more season.

It is evident, however, that no matter what happens, this season or next, The Simpsons are finished. The animated series has become the Doctor Who of American television; and, as the BBC became tired of Doctor Who in the 1980's, Fox has become tired of The Simpsons today. That is the real meaning of unprofitable to those sick, sad suits.

the texts of wrath

I have always thought of the Westboro pseudo-Bapists ➤ as a bunch of insular Jew-hating whackos. Other Baptists denounce them; arch-conservative mouthpiece Bill O'Reilly denounces them; even the Ku Klux Klan denounces them. That is how antisocial they are. Worse, they befoul the name of God and the Christian faith by claiming to follow that faith in their vile actions. They do not even deserve to be called Baptists, so I called them Westborovians, following the way C.S. Lewis coined an adjective from the name of a former residence of his, Hillsboro → Hillsborovian.

I bring up the Westborovians because they plan to picket the funeral of Steve Jobs. ➤ Quoting Twitter message in full:

Westboro will picket his funeral.He[sic] had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin. MT @AP: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has died at 56.

Most of the human race does (and did) that; why not picket their funerals? Or are the Westborovians doing what everyone else accuses them of doing: Picketing famous people's funerals as publicity stunts?

When the wife of the chief Westborovian got dumped on for the message, she tried to defend herself:

Rebels mad cuz I used iPhone to tell you Steve Jobs is in hell. God created iPhone for that purpose! :)

Okay, the Southerners are angry at her; I do not know why. Okay, Steve Jobs is in hell; now, how about telling us something we don't know! And that last quip confirmed what Apple fen already know: God works at Apple. That makes me glad I am working the Mac side at the library. Thank you, O Lord! ;-).

Seriously, the behavior of the Westborovians is only going to get them a paragraph in some Messianic Age heresiography as a minor heresy — very minor, since the sect never went beyond the heresiarch's extended family. And yet, there are people out there just like them: I don't understand how people can act this way. Their souls will be delivered to eternal torment in Hell. We HAVE to keep trying to change them to prevent that! Those people never understand that acting and talking thus, as the Westborovians act and talk thus, only drives others away from them and into that very Maul.

Folks, you cannot change people; only God can change people; and He will do so only if the people want the change. Jobs was happy being the well-tailored alpha geek and executive that he was. There is no point dwelling on his being a total fool. Work out your own salvation first!