News You Can Bruise for 2000 May 30

NTK Link (it works now).

When we last left our hero[0], "Hello world" worked, as did "Hello 5", but "Hello 0.4" did not, since the JVM handles floats in a weird way which I have yet to take into account. I don't have time to work on it this morning, since I have to read my stupid news clippings for my stupid Oceans discussion. I can say that because I'm fairly sure that no one connected with my Oceans class will ever read this. Man, I hate that discussion. It's not because of the people. The professor and the TA are both excellent. I just hate talking about news clippings.

[0] "our hero" being Conan the Barbarian, of course.

I found an essay on the ethical motivation behind BSD-type licensing. Good timing, as many of the collab.net people like that kind of license. I don't care one way or the other. If someone's going to pay me to write non-copylefted free software, I'll do it. In actual fact, someone is going to pay me. Therefore, I'll do it.

My collab.net interview was my only interview which consisted in part of debating the merits of BSD-type vs. GPL licenses.

That essay also has a lucid explanation of what the GPL actually requires: "that software authors should be required to make their source code available to the same extent that they make the object code available."

Interviewer: I'm talking with the Ralph Nader of the film industry, Ray (not Art) Carney. A real consumer advocate! Tell me, Ray, what did you think about movies like Forrest Gump, Schindler's List, and Pulp Fiction?

Ray Carney: Those movies were crap.

Interviewer: But a lot of people liked those movies a lot.

Ray Carney: They were still crap. What people need is movies like John Cassavetes' Faces.

Interviewer: But a lot of people walk out of Cassavetes' movies because they're so depressing.

Ray Carney: It doesn't matter. That's what people need, and if people had any sense they'd realize it.

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At times I don't think the term "consumer advocate" is appropriate for Mr. Carney, and at other times I think that it's perfectly appropriate.

I can't believe I {ate the whole thing, got an A- on that philosophy paper}. For four years now I've been writing terrible college papers, and, with only one left to go, I've yet to get less than a B- on a paper. Some people might say that this empirically demonstrates that my papers are not terrible. I scoff at such people.

In high school and junior high I wrote great papers, but my standards were much lower. I wrote great poetry then, too.