Blackmoor Vituperative

There is an amusing and not-too-far-off screed at JIVEMagazine.com called The Complex and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars Fandom. I do not agree with everything he says (I loved Knights Of The Old Republic and the Clone Wars cartoons, and Lucas did not make Luke and Leia siblings “from the beginning”), but he pegs the major points. I particularly like this line:

Every true Star Wars fan is a Luke Skywalker, looking at his twisted, evil father, and somehow seeing good.

The Wave Magazine presented a field guide for testing if the San Francisco mayoral candidates were human or not.

Turns out that San Francisco elected a replicant — not even a top of the line replicant, just a Nexus 5 (Gavin Newsom).

But seriously, you can tell by looking at him that he isn’t human. That hair is a dead giveaway.

Okay, I have had enough. HTML mail is the primary vector for trojans and viruses, and the vast majority of it is spam even if it doesn’t carry a virus payload (and what little isn’t spam is nonsense from clueless users who probably shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer to begin with).

This crap is overflowing my inbox and it’s the cause of untold numbers of zombie computers spreading spam like the plague. So I want to reject it at the gateway so that it never reaches me or my users.

I’m not sure how to do that yet, but it has to be possible.

Enough is enough: I am going to kill HTML mail.

Several years ago, I ran a series of games I called “Scooby Cthulhu”. Daphne and Her Dog could have taken place in that universe.

Anakin Skywalker is not Darth Vader. Darth Vader killed Luke Skywalker’s father. If (and I do mean if) Luke’s father was named “Anakin”, that Anakin died years before the events in Star Wars (not “Episode whatever” — just Star Wars).

Anakin Skywalker is just some asshole in a Darth Vader costume.

And “Darth” is not a title. “Darth” is Darth Vader’s first name. It’s no more a title than “Luke” is. When Obi-Wan met Darth Vader for the last time on the Death Star, he didn’t call him “Anakin”, or “Lord Vader” — he called him “Darth”, because they were friends once, and that’s the name Obi-Wan knew him by. He called him by his first name because they were on first-name basis.

Pretty much every major plot point introduced after the original Star Wars is inane. Luke is Lleia’s brother? Inane. Darth Vader is Luke’s father? Inane. Darth Vader built C-3PO? Are you kidding me? Why not make Obi-Wan into Chewbacca’s father and Han Solo into R2-D2’s long lost twin, while we’re at it? Or wait: Obi-Wan could be Lando Calrissian in disguise (or vice versa)! You never see them both at the same time….

When Highlander 2 came out, revealing that immortals all come from the planet Zeist, Highlander fans were smart enough to realize that this was ridiculous, and they rejected it. If only Star Wars fans were that intelligent. If only George Lucas were that intelligent.

The Star Wars franchise started great, and got worse with each sequel. It has a lot in common with the Planet Of The Apes franchise, although of course Planet Of The Apes is relatively free of the pretentious bullshit that has accrued around the Star Wars franchise like so much guano.

At long last, the final draft of the GNU GPLv3 (General Public License, version 3) is out. While companies and attorneys are taking their time in reacting to this latest version, two of the GPLv3’s three primary authors have shared their opinions on the almost-completed work.

In a public letter, “Why Upgrade to GPL Version 3,” Richard M. Stallman, the GPL’s chief author and founder, opens by explaining why open-source developers should upgrade their programs to the new Version 3 GPL. In the past, prominent Linux developers objected to the new license. More recently, a Microsoft-sponsored study claimed that open-source programmers actually don’t want GPLv3-style patent protection.

In response to such concerns, Stallman stated that “Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development.”

While the ultimate answer for making “software development safe is to abolish software patents,” that’s beyond what the GPLv3 can do, according to Stallman. Instead, he said, “the explicit patent license of GPLv3 makes sure companies that use the GPL to give users the four freedoms cannot turn around and use their patents to tell some users ‘That doesn’t include you.’ It also stops them from colluding with other patent holders to do this.”

(from Linux-Watch, GPLv3 authors comment on final draft)

On May 31, Red Hat’s sponsored and community supported open source Fedora Project released the latest version of its distribution: Fedora 7. Besides being a cutting edge Linux distribution, it features a new build capability that enables users to create their own custom distributions.

Fedora 7 now boasts a completely open-source build process that greatly simplifies the creation of appliances and distributions that can be targeted to meet individual needs.

Max Spevack, leader of the Fedora Project, stated: “With our new open source build process, our community of contributors will enjoy much greater influence and authority in advancing Fedora. The ability to create appliances to suit very particular user needs is incredibly powerful.”

[…]

In addition, Fedora now supports live CD, DVDs, and USB devices. Spevack believes that this capability, combined with the new development toolchain, will make Fedora very popular with those that want to create software appliances.

[…]

In addition to the new, open build system and live media support, Fedora 7 supports KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and Qemu virtualization technologies, as well as Xen. The Fedora graphical virtualization manager can be used to manage all of its virtualization programs.

(from Linux-Watch, Highly flexible Fedora 7 Linux arrives)

Time to upgrade my servers again… 🙂