Yesterday, I was standing on the pier by San Marco enjoying the view. I thought, what I nice place for a photo, so I pulled my camera out of my bag. I played around with angles a bit. I was leaning against a light post to steady myself, and I snapped a shot. In the exact moment I clicked the shutter, almost as if the very fabric of time and space had begun to fold in on itself, a seagull, who had been sitting on the light above me, crapped on my camera. If that's not a sound indication of my photographic skills, I don't know what is.

Now, I wait at the train station in Innsbruck...why you may ask? It seems when a porter says something in German/English (or maybe Esperanto?) that sounds like get off the train here, you better double check, or else you could be stuck in Innsbruck for two hours waiting for the next train...I'm just sayin'.

a definition of surreal: Waking up at 3:00 AM in a hotel in Munich, turning on the TV, and watching Hogan's Heroes dubbed in German.

There seems to be a lot of budging going on in Germany. On almost every line I'm cued up in there is someone pushing up from behind me or bumping shoulders with me. I'd like to think that the German people want to get just that much closer to the magic that is Mark. Some might say that I'm just a big lumbering American bumping into people, whatever...

I'm sitting in an internet cafe at the Westbahnhof train station (waiting for a train), on the overhead speakers they are playing Hotel California unplugged...A tear slips from my eye, and I think this is what freedom is all about...Hotel California unplugged stretching accross the atlantic so people in Austria can realize how mediocre the Eagles are...

I arrived in Vienna on Monday, and to validate all my Mothers fears, I was immediately apprehended at the Wien Mitte station, and taken to a concentration camp...If this note gets out via carrier pigeon...tell my ma I love her...

Viva La France!

I figured since only about six thousand people have weighed in on Six Apart's new pricing structure for the latest version of Movable Type, I thought I'd throw my *two cents in the ring.

First a little history: I have installed MT (Movable Type) for many a user. I have implemented fairly complex configurations of the tool, and I find its plugin architecture simple and elegant. I think it is a fine tool, and as an implementer of MT, I have nothing but nice things to say about it.

That said, it always irked me that they gave the software away for free (for personal use), and yet would not release the source under a GPL or open source license. I talked to a handful of people about this point, end users, developers and even people who were familiar with the Six Apart developers themselves. All gave me different reasons why they felt the licensing was the way it was, and most defended it's licensing. I concluded it was basically about a desire to keep control over the source and to be able to leverage said source for monetary gain. Mind you, this does not make me a genius by any stretch of the imagination. This is how commercial software companies have been doing business since the dawn of time.

So, Six Apart was giving away MT for personal use, letting schleps like me and my friends use said software to publish terabytes of drivel regarding our summer travel plans, how much we hate or love some movie or Microsoft or How shocked we were to see Janet's boob while viewing it over and over again on the internet. However, they never even implied that this was open source or GPL code, and they charged for commercial use of the product. It was clearly a commercial product with a very low fee for personal use. In this case $0.00.

We fast forward a few years, and oddly enough Six Apart releases a new version of MT, and changes their pricing structure. They are actually charging more that $0.00 for said product. People are shocked. Cries are heard throughout the internet (ok, really just a group of self involved weblog authors who spend too much time on the web posting and reading posts and need to get out of the house where the sun will instantly incinerate my their pasty white flesh).

People are upset about having to pay. However, Six Apart never said they weren't going to charge. Actually, they said way in advance of MT 3.0 that they were going to charge. It's not like they lied. People are complaining about the price, but in the commercial software world the price for what they offer is well below the industry norm.

Oddly enough a commercial company that exists in this world to turn a profit is charging for their product. Go figure. So what do I do now you may ask...Gina and Mark may just have some answers...

- - -

* the actual cost of said opinion may vary depending on changing economic factors and length and innocuousness of said opinion, but will never exceed two cents in value.

We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can’t persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we’d better reexamine our reasoning.

-Robert McNamara, The Fog of War

Another year passes, and a disturbing cake. I'm not sure what the blood writing is supposed to mean, but if you chant it three times while facing north you will summon the devil.

Those aren't candles by the way, they are used syringes.

We will not walk in fear...We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

...

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it -- and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Edward R. Murrow
See it Now (CBS-TV, March 9, 1954)
'A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy'

I’ve worked at dotcom-type companies full of liberal arts majors with no software experience or training who nevertheless were convinced that they knew how to manage software teams and design user interfaces. This is weird, because nobody thinks they know how to remove a burst appendix, or rebuild a car engine, unless they actually know how to do it, but for some reason there are all these people floating around who think they know everything there is to know about software development.

- Joel Spolsky forward to Coder to Developer

apparently I like the taste of the Licorice Gallery

An interesting article about the perception of George W. Bush's stupidity, a history of laziness and second rate achievement and his distain for intellectualism.

Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

The Misunderestimated Man