I don’t really have a horse in this race, but seeing this post on 10 reasons why Java sucks, I felt compelled to respond. Several of the points I agree with (IDEs cause brain rot- I have experimental evidence)- but two in particular I have to mention as being egregiously wrong, and wrong in a way that makes me think the author knows diddly about software development. And a couple of the others really deserve honorable mention.

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Check out LOLTHULU. Here’s some highlights:

• I HAS A COLR / IT FROM BYOND SPASE
• OH HI / I HELP WIF UR KILLIN
• I HAS A ELDRITCH SIGIL

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I went to my first meeting at Saint Paul Lodge #3. It’s a Traditional Observance lodge, and (from what I understand) the founding lodge of the Masonic Restoration Foundation.

It was awesome. Not just “a good lodge exprience”, or “a lodge with a lot of brotherhood”, but awesome. Literally awe-inspiring. And it was the first lodge I’ve ever attended which made sense of the ritual: the solemnity and the dignity and the calls to self-reflection and the focus on education were exalted in the ritual, but I had found them achingly lacking in practicalities. That was not the case at Saint Paul #3, and the genuine sense of brotherhood and strength were great.

If you are thinking about joining the freemasons, or if you are a freemason yourself, I suggest you seek out your local TO lodge. Next time you are in a city with an MRF lodge, you owe it to yourself to attend their meeting. Just don’t forget your tux!

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I’ve been talking to some people at Minnesota Public Radio about this. They’ve got this question for me, which I thought I’d share with the world at large:

And there was one more thing I was going to ask you. Well, a couple actually. We have a few other segments we are working on and I was wondering if you knew anyone who may be a good fit for them. We are looking for someone who is an expert at helping someone clean up their Internet image. Say if there is some bad stuff about you on the internet and you want to bury that so prospective dates or employers don’t see it, who do you go to? Also, we want to talk with someone who has been hounded by something about them on the Internet. Maybe it’s something stupid they posted years ago that has come back to haunt them or maybe it’s something someone else posted about them, but whatever it is, it’s something they wish they could take down from the web. If you have any thoughts of people who would be good to talk to for either segment, please let me know. If not, that’s totally cool.

Drop a comment (and use your real e-mail address) here if you know such a person, and I’ll hook you up.

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Raganwald’s points out this interview with Richard Stallman, in which RMS says:

Copyrights exist, and I have opinions about copyright law. Patents also exist, but patent law is almost completely different from copyright law. My opinions about patent law are also completely different from my opinions about copyright law. Trademark law exists too and it has nothing at all in common with copyright law or patent law. If you want to think clearly about any of these laws, the first step is firmly insisting on treating them as three different subjects.

If you say something about “intellectual property,” you are trying to generalize about three laws that are totally different. Whatever you say will be a foolish over-generalization, because that term only leads to such. I’ve decided to avoid that pitfall by never using the term. [See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.]

Stallman argues, both in the above article and in this article, that the biggest problem with the term “Intellectual Property” is that it overgeneralizes- combining three different sets of laws under one broad umbrella. I respectfully disagree- the problem with the term is that it is deliberately deceiving. Rant to follow.

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