We must not confuse dissent from disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another, we will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason. If we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, we will remember we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who dared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose … to keep silent or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom where ever it still exists in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The[se] actions … have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And who’s fault is that? Not really his, he didn’t create this situation of fear he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right, the fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night, and good luck.
Trick quiz: when was this said? 50 years ago, or today? Either almost works, which is a little bit scary.
Caught up with an old friend tonight, who wrote this – so much like real life.
age by Mark Mironer
Now my thirties have almost been spent
And I wonder just where the years went.
When I ponder their worth
I reflect on the birth
Of my children, with naught to repent.
Many classmates can easily claim
They’ve been showered with fortune and fame.
Then I grumble, “not me”
Til I look round and see
Those kids who are bearing my name.
Then I’ll think back on diapers and drool,
Or the time that I’ve spent at their school,
And the games that we’ve played.
Do you think that I’d trade
That for dollars? I’m not such fool.
Be sure to checkout the OEDILF for more wordplay!
Not that it’s a big loss, but still, that’s where I saw the first LoTR on opening day – took half day off of work to see the first general matinee showing in the area.
“Loews Assembly Square theater’s days are numbered; Ron Newman has confirmed with the manager that the theater will close after regular operations on Monday, January 15.”
Via UniversalHub, which I’m now reading from derspatchel.
As Steve said about why it’s important to keep funding high-level physics research:
“Archaeologists can’t threaten to work abroad on antimatter weapons if their funding proposal to dig up a Roman house gets turned down.”
An excellent argument for needing to understand the whole picture when thinking about funding.
Plus I was just happy to see I was finally picked up by Planet Apache, and wanted to prove I was reading it too.
So – what do you think your FLOSS / open source community thinks about &BigCo;? Have any quantifiable data or surveys I can see?
I’m writing a work paper about how open source communities view participation by large corporations in their communities and code, with the hope that it can improve that kind of participation. Not that there aren’t plenty of great examples of corporate and FLOSS groups cooperation, to mutual and equitable benefit. But there’s still plenty of room for improvement, some in convincing some groups in industry of the benefit to collaboration, and a lot of room in educating corporate employees, managers, and teams in the best ways to participate in groups outside their corporate structure.
I first want to review any existing surveys that have been going around various FLOSS communities lately – so if anyone has pointers to that kind of quantifiable data, I’d love to view them. My focus is my personal involvement with the ASF, but data about other major groups is appreciated as well.
In the spirit of the ASF, any raw data I collect or preliminary analysis will be released under an ASF license. The final paper is likely to be confidential, since I want to tailor it to my employer’s needs, obviously.
Technorati Tags: asf apache survey floss
The ApacheCon EU Call for Papers ends very soon – but you still have time to submit a paper! All we need at this date is a topic and an abstract paragraph, so there’s still plenty of time to fill one in.
Note that ApacheCon traditionally has a reasonably generous speaker package, meaning that it’s usually easy to convince managers to pay for it. And as a bonus, Queen’s Day (a major national holiday in the Netherlands) is the day immediately before the conference, so it’s a great excuse to go.
See http://apachecon.com/ for all the details about ApacheCon Europe, to be held May 1-4 at the newly-opened Movenpick Hotel, Amsterdam. Registration for the conference (with big early registration discounts) will open fairly soon as well.
2006 Word of the year, as noted by (respected? heh) http://www.americandialect.org/ organization. Although it feels topical, it’s actually quite a good candidate for a word of the year (immaterial of the actual social impact of the granting organization), since Pluto has been part of our world’s vocabularly for quite some time now. It really is a change, even if it is a technical distinction.
“To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto …”
… in global warming! At least the past week or so in the Boston area certainly makes you think about it. I mean, I fully expect a 60 degF day here in Boston in January: it’s a tradition. If you’re lucky, you can play hooky from work long enough to both enjoy an after-lunch walk, and quickly wash your car in your own driveway.
But after no snow for the Christmas holiday, we just had nearly a week of over 50′s temps, and two record highs including one of 68! Plus no snow in any of the local forecasts. Something is wrong here, and you think about all those SUV’s that aren’t being driven to NH or VT because it’s not worth paying to ski yet…
Oh my gods.
Oh. My. Gods.
I know what it is. We’re being punished.
Remember the Curse (Bambino, not Pearl or Rabbit)? All the things we said about it? Like H**L would freeze over when that happened?
Well, the devil may have taken his time about it, but instead of letting H**L freeze over, he’s decided to make it come to Boston. Expect higher temperatures daily until we’ve paid our penance for that Series flag…
