http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf [I'll start this by reiterating that these are my own thoughts, and have nothing whatever to do with Red Hat.] This presentation is great overview of the counterintuitive influence of intellectual rights laws on the fashion industry. It's also cogent argument against the fiction that innovation only happens in the context of property. It's … Continue reading Johanna Blakely on Free Culture, Fashion, and CentOS
Category: What I’m Thinking About
Big and small things I’m working on.
Adding feeds to rss2email via Firefox
I posted a while ago about giving up Google Reader in favor of rss2email. There are many wonderful things about getting your news feeds via email, but subscribing to new feeds in rss2email is a little clunky. Ideally, you could click on that handsome RSS icon in the status bar of your browser and have … Continue reading Adding feeds to rss2email via Firefox
Future Proof Your Software Practice With Open Source
Here's a presentation I did for Washington Technology. I don't remember doing this, but it's nice that they recorded it in the very open ogg format. Future Proof Your Software Practice With Open Source
Remembering Roger Lane
Roger Lane passed away last week. I knew him as the impossibly level-headed and fair-minded mourning father of Jodie Lane. Although we had common cause in the months immediately following her death, we didn't talk much. He was concerned with his and his family's healing, and I was preoccupied with the reform efforts. We didn't … Continue reading Remembering Roger Lane
Good design is hard on all of us.
Tim Lee is, for my money, one of the most reasonable and thoughtful tech policy essayists we have. His latest, "Open User Interfaces Suck" got my attention, because he hits me right where I live. In his usual, respectful, level-headed way, he claims that open systems (like the open source development process I love so … Continue reading Good design is hard on all of us.
Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.
Over the last couple years, many of us involved with open source in government have had discussions about what it means for citizen coders to become involved in state, local and federal efforts. There are all kinds of legal, ethical, and logistics questions that haven't been answered. Everyone seems to be solving them individually, but … Continue reading Citizen and government collaboration: let’s work it out.
SCAP: Computer Security for the Rest of Us
I'm setting up a new computer. I get through the registration screens, install my software, change my wallpaper, and everything's working fine. I'm left, though, with a lingering, uneasy feeling: I don't know if this machine is secure. I'm a computer guy, so I know how to set up strong passwords and firewalls, but I'm … Continue reading SCAP: Computer Security for the Rest of Us
“Patches Welcome”
It's a phrase you'll hear often in the open source community: "patches welcome". It's sometimes earnest, sometimes passive-aggressive. It's a cultural norm that's tough but fair: you've voiced an opinion, and now you need to back up that opinion with working code. Without code, it's just a distraction. It's an important component of what makes … Continue reading “Patches Welcome”
The government doesn’t look good naked.
So 19 months into the Open Government Directive, we seem to have a backlash. The government has spent millions of dollars collecting, organizing, and cataloging its data to make it more available to the public. An unprecedented effort. Some of this data is frivolous, some of it is valuable, but I think we can all agree … Continue reading The government doesn’t look good naked.
The future of the government forges
The GSA is currently planning forge.gov, which is widely assumed to be based on forge.mil, the much-discussed collaboration platform from the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. forge.mil is a pretty incredible idea: a single destination for testing, certification, and software development in the Defense Department. It sounds obvious, but the idea remains revolutionary. For … Continue reading The future of the government forges
a technology job is no excuse 