July 2009 archive

35 Percent!

A member of my community is frightened and disturbed by the results of this year's No Child Left Behind scores. Only 35 and 47 percent of 11th graders in two area high schools passed the math tests. In a letter to the local newspaper, he asks us to:

Imagine an airline pilot being correct 35 percent [...]

'Say Everything' by Scott Rosenberg

This is a great book. You should buy this book. And buy it through Amazon via that link or by clicking on the book cover image. Then I'll get a cut. But I'm not just shilling for this thing in a sordid attempt at (minuscule) personal profit. I really thought it was a [...]

O'Hare Gate C17

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

gedit bad behaviors

GNOME's gedit text editor is great, but I'm bugged by a couple of things:

If I pick a "recent" file from the File menu and the file is currently unavailable because it's on a file system that's not mounted, gedit takes the liberty of removing it from the recent files. Why not leave it there? Chances [...]

Mako: 'Taking a Principled Position on Software Freedom'

Great post today from Benjamin Mako Hill about free software advocacy and principles. It's not very long so you should just go read the whole thing for yourself, but here are a couple of choice parts:

One reason I tend to stay away from "open source" claims in my own advocacy is that I'm worried [...]

A Note About XHTML Validation of 'Moving to Freedom' Pages

I try to make standards-compliant web pages here at movingtofreedom.org. It appeals to my petty, detail-oriented side. The compiler in me loves it when W3C or xmllint or tidy reports a valid web page. A pass from xmllint or tidy, or the green "valid" result from W3C is like a pat on the head. Good [...]

Free Software (Briefly)

Free Software is software that you are free to share with your family, friends, and neighbors.
Isn't that a nice thing? It doesn't cost anything to make copies of digital information, and we have these wonderful machines and a worldwide network that are perfect for copying and sharing. Why not use these tools to freely share [...]

Free Culture (Briefly)

The free culture movement, according to a recent Wikipedia revision, is "a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works, using the Internet as well as other media. The movement objects to overly restrictive copyright laws, or completely reject the concepts of copyright and intellectual property, which many members of the [...]

Beware the Bronze Birch Borer

We're under attack! From the Bronze Birch Borer beetle. We trimmed off dead branches and removed the fourth trunk from this clump yesterday but couldn't reach the dead stuff at the top of one of the trees. Here's what it looks like when these guys get to your beloved paper birch and start killing it [...]