Posts

This message to the Interesting People list describes a spam problem that started for me over the weekend – tons of bounces from AOL after a spammer started sending spam that appeared to come from my domain.

Dave Johnson has an item on a couple of new Java books that look like worthwhile additions to my library. I already use most of the stuff covered in the books pretty well, but they look like they’d enable me to consolidate my knowledge a little bit and probably pick up a number of tips that would make me a more effective developer. Of course, that would entail not only buying them but also reading them … ...

Looks like the mainstream IT press is discovering the other side of offshoring. (The one where in the real world it doesn’t really save you that much money.) I’ve been learning some things about offshoring lately and for me it has been a huge pain. One huge problem is the lack of interpersonal context between the players, combined with time zone differences, and cultural and language barriers. They all conspire to make it a lot harder to get things done. Any little ego and pecking order issues that are parts of every project can also become magnified by the distance as well. ...

After reading this, I’m no longer going to make fun of my wife for her obsessive use of a paper shredder and insistence on dropping off all our outgoing mail but greeting cards at the post office.

Johnny Cash, RIP. You have your favorites and then you have your favorites. And Johnny Cash has been one of the latter ever since I was a little kid.

Kevin Kelly wrote up a good recommendation of the two PBS back in time documentaries, Frontier House and 1900 House. I watched both of them and agree with him completely. Whenever I see environmentalists and anti-globalization activists talking about the glory and dignity of subsistence farming, I think back on these shows and wonder if they really have any idea what they’re talking about. (Neither of them featured farming, really, but both depict the trials and tribulations of life not that long ago.) Watching these shows gives you an idea just how freeing the conveniences of modern life are in terms of letting us pursue the activities that bring us joy. Kelly doesn’t mention Manor House, another documentary in the same vein. It was excellent as well, and focused mainly on the class structure of Edwardian Britain. In 1900 House and Frontier House, women made up the lower class, and were subjected to a life of nearly constant labor. In Manor House, there’s a set of servants that do incredible amounts of work to enable the genteel lifestyle enjoyed by the family chosen to portray the manor born. (Original link via Kottke.) Update: Rebecca Blood catches me in a bit of sloppy writing with regard to subsistence farming, and distinguishes between sustainability and subsistence. The point I made above was extremely unnuanced. Obviously sustainable agriculture (and manufacturing, and energy production, and living in general) is essential if we’re to have a future as a race. I had a more general “anti-progress” sentiment in mind when I wrote that, and I agree that it’s not that widely held by environmentalists. ...

Much attention has been paid lately to the supposed benefits of letting the value of China’s renminbi float against the dollar. China has kept its currency stable against the dollar for the past decade or so, and if it were to let it float, it would probably appreciate by around 25%. This, of course, would make imported goods from China much more expensive (and could potentially prevent China from continuing to buy up heaps of US debt, something the Bush administration wouldn’t want). Brad DeLong mentions today that revaluing the renminbi would lower US unemployment by 0.1% of over two years. Blaming China may make people feel good, but it’s not going to put Americans back to work. ...

I don’t have a whole lot to say today about what happened two years ago on this date. A few days ago I watched 7 Days in September, a memorial compiled from video taken by 29 professional and amateur film makers at the time of the event. What I learned is that the wounds are still very raw for me, more so than I would have expected.

The SCO v Linux battle seems to have devolved into a war of open letters. Darl McBride wrote an annoying open letter to the “open source community” the other day that I didn’t bother to link to, and now Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Linus Torvalds have all responded.

eclipse.org: PDE Does Plug-ins. An introduction to developing Eclipse plug-ins.