Copyrighteous

So, I suppose it deserves mentioning here with my other projects. I recently helped write a book and the finish product ended up with my name on the top. The book seems to be selling quite well and has received good reviews so far. It's been in stores for over a month but I first saw it a couple days ago. It looks nice!

The book was a very collaborative effort and the real credit goes to all of other great folks who helped out with the writing, editing, and tech review. I wrote a few chapters and chunks and then acted a sort of conductor for most of the homestretch. Within the Debian community, the list of contributors included David Harris, Jaldhar Vyas, John Goerzen, and Micah Anderson. Jim Keogh and Kurt Wall also contributed chapters. Many editors, Sara Shlaer in particular, helped immensely.

The book is designed as an introduction to Debian and would be most appropriate for users with no Debian experience and even for folks that have never used GNU/Linux at all. That said, I learned things reading the other authors' chapters and have no trouble recommending it to more technical users.

You can buy the book at any number of places online.

At college, I was a frequent users of the college library's Inter-Library Loan (ILL). In the last few years, I have missed the feature sorely.

At last, I have returned to the academy. My license to ILL has been restored. It feels good.

I've mentioned before that I've always been interested in the way that fancy buildings have definite articles in their names. They also frequently have websites and fancy Latin names. I've never been able to live in such a building.

Until now.

So while the one bedroom apartment in Harvard Square, Cambridge that I'll be sharing with Mika, Cambridge not be too fancy. We're going to make sure that it sounds fancy. Without further ado, I give you:

The Acetarium

The website is complete with an rss feed of upcoming events and parties at the house and a strong recommendation from Paris Hilton.

I'm going to be carrying our couch and some boxes into the house this Saturday around midday and will have a crate of Corona for the occasion. If you are in Boston and you want to help out by riding an elevator for half an hour and enjoying a whole load of beer, please contact me about the timing. We'll have a good time.

Well, I'm in Boston now.

I called up NSTAR, the local gas and electricity provider, to have them schedule to transfer the utilities into my name so that they are not turned off when the previous tenant moves out.

The person on the phone asked, "do you want to transfer both the electricity and the gas into your name." While the idea responding with a no is mildly amusing, I'm not entirely sure that the question needed to be asked.

Although many people suggested that it was impossible, I am forced to admit that one of my greatest fears has come to pass. That's right, I am no longer the person in my apartment with the largest sunglasses.

My only consolation is that I remain, thanks to the generosity of Marcell Mars, the person with the longest-billed hat.

Last weekend, I attempted to fix an ailing member of my stable of IBM Model M keyboards after wearing out a buckling spring. I do this frequently enough that I have purchased both extra springs and a special tool for opening and closing the keyboard.

However, while popping heat rivets off the bottom of the keyboard, my hand slipped and I managed to lacerate the top of my right index finger's knuckle against the side of the steel backplate. It was a nasty cut. While I didn't get stitches, I probably should have.

Seth pointed out that this was a second order typing injury.

Since Sunday, my finger has been wrapped tightly in gauze and my finger has been in a series of homemade splints to keep the knuckle from bending under the cut. Typing without my right index finger is awkward and is straining my hand and causing soreness.

Seth suggested that this was a third order typing injury.

I'm less sure. It sounds a bit like a first order typing injury instigated by a second order injury. Perhaps though, this is just the natural process of typing injuries coming full circle.

Biella Coleman recently finished her dissertation in Anthropology after studying Free Software communities for most of a decade. It's a hefty tome and I'll admit that I have only read the chapter on Debian but I am definitely impressed. As many of my favorite arcade games would say, "CONGRATULATION!" Only one.

I think that a certain amount of "outside perspective" from people who are trained to observe, compare, and analyze social interactions can be an incredibly healthy and useful thing for a community. Since I'm interested in the social and political aspects of free software development, I have read more than my share of work from sociologists, anthropologists, and economists studying free software. I can say with whatever authority that gives me that Biella has one of the best understandings of Free Software of any "outsider" studying the field.

Of particular interest to me is her chapter on the cultivation of ethics within Debian. I think Debian folks should check it out if they are interested and have the time.

My only warnings to Debianistas are about the length and the language. This is a paper written to impress anthropologists. In particular, it's written to impress a committee of anthropologists who got to decide whether Biella would get a doctorate. Basically, this means jargon, references, and a style of writing that is perhaps only totally transparent to other anthropologists. That said, Biella has put effort into making it "translucent" to the rest of us and has mostly succeeded but folks should still be warned. It's definitely worth a read.

While book shopping this weekend I found a copy of Parts of the Body in the Later Germanic Dialects by William Denny Baskett and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1920. The book is in strikingly good condition and could almost pass for new. It's not nearly as well thumbed as one might expect such an indispensable reference book to be.

The preface reads:

This investigation deals with the words for the body and its parts in the later Germanic dialects. Its object is to show how these words came to have their present meaning rather than to show the original meaning.

The book is merely a list -- 139 pages and one per line -- of words for body parts in later Germanic dialects. By my estimate, I now have a list of ~150 words for "penis" in dialects of German (circa 1920 of course), several dozen ways to describe double chins, and many choices of ways to describe body parts in later Germanic dialics that I cannot describe in English.

I paid one dollar for the book. A much more worn softcover copy seems to be on sale by an antiquarian book dealer for closer to twenty-five dollars so it appears that I got a good deal. To me however, such a book is priceless.

It's an old adage that "lightning never strikes twice." It's becoming increasingly clear to me with time that this is bullshit.

Last week, the switch in my building (and everything plugged into it) was struck by lightning for the second time this year. Last time my whole computer needed to be replaced. This time, it was only the on-board Ethernet that seems to be fried. It means that my workstation is a much less effective router now but it beats buying a new computer.

Wikipedia has this to say about the whole thing:

The saying "lightning never strikes twice in the same place" is frequently disproven. The Empire State Building is struck by lightning on average 25 times each year, and was once struck 15 times in 15 minutes.

The Wikipedia page authors' were also quick to dispel another hypothesis that, I'll admit, had crossed my mind:

Some repeat lightning strike victims claim that lightning can choose its target, although this theory is entirely disregarded by the scientific community.

To Everyone

Many people already know this but I thought I would make a more "public" announcement so everyone knows.

In about two weeks, I'll be leaving Canonical Ltd. to return to academia at the MIT Media Lab. I'll be in Walter Bender's Electronic Publishing research group working with Marvin Minskey and others.

I'll be doing as-yet-undecided research at the lab and I've got a number of very attractive options to choose from or try to balance. One of these is Negroponte's $100 Laptop Project which, for a number of reasons, seems like an incredible opportunity.

To the Ubuntu Community

Of course, by no means does leaving Canonical mean I will be leaving the Ubuntu community. On the contrary, I intend to continue my work with the community council, play a leadership and/or advisory role in the budding Ubuntu Foundation, and suspect I will even be able to raise my involvement in a couple other technical and non-technical areas of Ubuntu that my work for Canonical sometimes left little time for. I don't think anyone, except maybe folks from the business side of Canonical, will be seeing much less of me and many of you will probably be seeing more. I will no longer be involved in the distribution of CDs so email info@shipit.ubuntu.com and not me if you have a question along these lines. :)

I think that in a number of ways, this is actually a very good thing for the Ubuntu community. Not everyone realizes this but both top governance committees in Ubuntu -- the Ubuntu Community Council and the Technical Board -- are made up of Mark Shuttleworth and people he employs. While our community is less than one year old and this is unavoidable in the process of bootstrapping a young community like Ubuntu, this fact has made me increasingly uncomfortable over the last year.

I think that through a departure from Canonical and a sustained role on the council, I can help introduce real community and institutionally independent involvement at the highest level of our project. I believe that I can help Ubuntu grow as project distinct from and in symbiosis with Canonical in a ways that I couldn't -- for symbolic reasons if nothing else -- while my rent was being paid by Mark.

To Bostonians

Going to MIT means I'm also going to be returning from New York City to Boston, Massachusetts. Mika and I will be living in Harvard Square, Cambridge and already have a place. Since I seem to have no social life distinct from my free software life, I will probably be seeing some of you much more often. If you're in the area and I don't talk to you regularly yet, contact me and we'll get together.

To Canonical

I've said this already but I think a good job is about working with and for good people and I can say without hesitation that Canonial is best job I've ever had. It's been a complete pleasure and I won't be surprised at all if I find myself back with Canonical again in a couple years.

To Boston Debianistas

It's simple really: Get ready to show those New Yorkers that despite the fact that our subways are clean, look like toys and close at midnight, our bars close at two, our milkshakes are in no way actually milkshakes and our international airport is comparatively tiny, we can still have a way better Debian Social Scene.

As I mentioned recently, in what became a small European tour, I gave a number of versions of a technical talk based around a paper on Ubuntu and the way we build our distribution on top of Debian.

To Fork Or Not To Fork, was presented at LinuxTag, Libre Software Meeting and What The Hack. As I said last time, the talk describes some aspects the way that Ubuntu is developed as a Debian derivative and some reasons folks from a wide range of different Free Software projects might be able to learn something from our experience.

The talk is aimed at a rather technical audience of free software developers. Hopefully, this fills a void by acting as an Ubuntu talk that is more technical than the standard Introduction to Ubuntu without limiting its appeal to only current or prospective Ubuntu developers.

Although I gave this talk several times, I'm just including a single set of notes and slides. These are the versions from the third presentation at What The Hack. You can get the talk slides and notes in the formats listed below.

Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

Enrico Zini suggested that I don't stir up stinking shit unless I want it to keep stinking. I find that he's almost always right so I'll try to keep this short as I ignore his advice.

A number of people didn't see the humor in my pledge. I was, in fact, joking around to make a point. I thought the fact that it was phrased as a pledge would reveal the joke. If you want to do something strongly enough that you might create a pledge, just do it instead of risking action on the interest or apathy of others. Pledges -- and especially pledges of this sort -- are silly in this respect and I didn't think people would take my pledge so seriously.

In terms of my point, Joey Hess was right. My point was bigger than Andrew and it wasn't fair to pick on him to make a point. I apologize to Andrew and to anyone else offended.

Those concerned about killfiling may have missed the comment where I revealed that I don't actually killfile. If we can achieve the maturity to not respond to messages when we read them as provocations (whether they were intended that way not), killfiles are unnecessary. I think we should all grow up a little bit. That was the point and I apologize if it didn't get across.

But I realize that talk is cheap. So to end this saga on the absurd note it was supposed to start on I've gone ahead and started another pledge...

"I will never start another pledgebank.com pledge to killfile anyone but only if 50 others will agree not to create such pledges as well."

—Benjamin Mako Hill

You can sign up for the pledge here.

My IRC nick-highlighting is such so that today, all messages directed toward a new person named imako on #ubuntu triggered my attention. While this is easy to fix, it made me consider how frustrating IRC with nick-highlighting must be if you have a nick that is also a common word in a language you communicate in.

I spent a few moments on Freenode today with nicks including the, and, is, it, to, an, as and a.

I was surprised that everyone of those nicks was registered with the nick server. I was not surprised that all were available at the time I tried and that all but the and and had been untouched for the better part of the year.

Let's face it, if your nick was it, you wouldn't enjoy IRC very much either.

There are at least two things funny about this (non-staged) desktop screenshot that a friend took a year or so ago:

The background image is a picture of myself and my brother Nate. We were cold and less than completely comfortable and trying to convey this feeling through body language.

The first funny thing is the degree to which my friend has embraced the Windows folder naming conventions as illustrated by this closeup:

I'll let you all speculate about what the funny things might be on your own.

I will killfile Andrew Suffield so I do not recieve Debian list email from him but only if 100 other people on Debian lists will too.

-— Benjamin Mako Hill

I have created a pledge over at PledgeBank with the title above and am looking for your support. Here's the explanatory text:

If you read the Debian private email list, you understand my immediate motivation for starting this pledge. If you do not but interact with the Debian community in other ways, there's a good chance you can come up with many other examples of why agreeing to pledge might be a good idea.

I think the Debian project would be a better place if people stopped responding to comments that, in effect and often in intent, are little more than provocations, put-downs, and trolls. Andrew Suffield's emails to Debian lists fall in this category all to often.

However, since responses that quote unecessarily provocative messages are visible by folks who have ignored the sender, blocking email from a person (also known as killfiling) only works if done en-mass.

While Andrew is by no means the only person whose comments have a disruptive effect on Debian lists, he is a one example of a person whose negative effect outweighs his positive contributions in the minds of many. While those fulfilling this pledge would miss Andrew's positive contributions on the lists, I believe it would be worth it.

The point of course, is not to pick on Andrew Suffield. It's just that his behavior makes him a good example.

The point is to raise a little awareness about (and get a few names behind) the feeling that messages that are not intending to troll can have the identical effects -- and that perhaps the best policy is to treat them accordingly. If the only outcome is that people understand this, it will have been a success.

You can sign up for the pledge at: http://www.pledgebank.com/killfileandrew

I've been perplexed for quite a while by the fact that in a lot of areas (in academia in particular but may other places as well), people try to explain free software or open source and it's freeness or openness in very reductionist or essential terms. The argument can start with some variation of one of these statements (or something similar in spirit):

• "Free Software is inherently anti-capitalist."
• "Open Source is an example of pure uninhibited capitalism."
• "Free Software provides a model through which we can put limits on capitalism."

I touched on this issue in a talk I gave at LSM in 2003 called Lessons from Libre Software Political and Ethical Practice and then even managed to write it up in what became a published journal article with Biella Coleman.

Well the folks at Libroscope ran another track at LSM in Dijon this year and they managed to talk me into opening the theme with an attemp to give a practitioner's view of freedom in free software and the important role it has played in the movement as a way of deflating the reductionist and essentialist analyses I alluded to above and explaining how they are neither completely wrong, nor completely correct.

You can get the talk slides and notes in the formats listed below.

Slides:

• HTML
• PDF
• OpenOffice Impress Source

Talk Notes:

• HTML
• reStructured Text Source

Greg Pomerantz recently purchased a light bulb called a "black body bulb." When he told me this, I misheard him and thought he said he had purchased a "black hole bulb."

A small electrically-powered black hole that could be installed into a lamp is not only more technically challenging than building a light bulb. It is also, when you think about it, exactly what a light bulb isn't.

At LinuxTag, Libre Software Meeting and What The Hack, I gave different versions of a developer-oriented talk on the way that Ubuntu is developed and the reason folks from a wide range of different Free Software projects might be able to learn something from it. I will export and post the slides and notes for those talks in one big lump at some point in the next week.

However, the best way for those that missed the talks to get informed on the issue may be to read the article titled To Fork Or Not To Fork: Lessons From Ubuntu and Debian (the same as the talks) which was published in the LinuxTag conference proceedings.

In the essay I explore the experience of the Ubuntu project in building a distro on top of Debian. I argue that the scale of certain free software projects are forcing developers toward a new kind of forking using technologies like distributed version control and host of other technical and social tools and processes and look at some of the early successes and failures of Ubuntu in this regard. I also describes some of the techniques in question and argue for the techniques' applicability and importance in a wide range of free software projects.

If others think it's a good idea and if I can find somewhere appropriate, I may be interested in publishing a version this article in a magazine or journal. If you know of a place where this article might be welcomed, please contact me.

You can can currently pull the article down in the following formats:

• HTML
• DocBook XML Source

Many people have probably followed the plight of the Russian sailors stranded 190 meters under water in a mini-sub. It was nice to see militaries around the world put aside their differences and come to the mariners' aid.

But it's worth pointing out this article lest anyone believe that the air of camaraderie in crises diminished the sense of machismo, competition, and old fashion "mine is bigger than yours" boosterism that is so central to our militaries. I quote:

Britain, responding to a request from the Russians, was sending a Scorpio remote-controlled underwater vehicle capable of descending 925 meters.

A U.S. Navy spokesman said a Super Scorpio, an unmanned deep diving submarine capable of reaching a depth of 1,515 meters, would be airlifted to the scene from San Diego naval base in California.

I'm glad to see that nobody was distracted from singing the praises of their expensive toys' 900 meter plus diving capabilities by the fact that the stranded mini-sub in question was only 190 meters below the surface. It's a shame that the British did not have time to arrange for an "Ultra-Scorpio." Something like that could have really saved the day.