News You Can Bruise for 2003 April 18

Members of Congress.
They've got powers.
They fight crime.

I call it "The Supermajority".

I don't mention the silly animal-themed codenames I give to NewsBruiser releases in the Freshmeat announcements, both out of my general neurotic distaste for tall poppy self-promotion (notice how the 'get NYCB via email' box is way at the bottom of Crummy's front page, and how NewsBruiser didn't even have a Freshmeat entry for the first four years of its existence) and because I had a vague feeling that the Freshmeat team would just edit out such frivolity. My vague feeling was vaguely justified with the most recent NewsBruiser release, as the Freshmeat team changed "round out the release" at the end of my announcement to the blander "were also added in this release." Perhaps it was merely an attempt to rid Freshmeat announcements of cliches; but then why stop at the announcements? Why not reject entire software packages for being cliched?[0]

All of this is completely irrelevant to the fact that NewsBruiser now has an entry in the prestigious FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory (UNESCO? They just got involved, apparently.)

[0] Actually, I am kidding. Before my initial NewsBruiser submission was approved, I was interrogated by the Freshmeat admins as to what was so great about NewsBruiser that they should put up another pointer to a weblog program. I think this is a good idea, and I think Freshmeat's reputation for being a repository of pointers to useless, unfinished software is mainly because they don't want to go back and deal with all the packages they added in pre-interrogation days. I check the new packages on Freshmeat every couple weeks for Software Roundup, and even the stuff I'm not interested in is pretty original. Compare SourceForge, which doesn't even care.

I was never into G.I. Joe as a kid, so perhaps my outsider's perspective is what allows me to notice what no one else seems to see or care about, which is there are two completely different lines of G.I. Joe toys. There's the line of large dolls with realistic gear, a line depicting soldiers from the history of modern warfare. Then there's the line of unrealistic four-inch action figures with ridiculous names like Sgt. Hacker and Chief Torpedo, who fight the equally ridiculous Cobra Commander without ever having to answer to the brass or pesky Congressional subcomittees. Since to me, "same brand" == "officially compatible", I can't help but picture the scene in which Duke (the leader of the G.I. Joe team; there is no actual "G.I. Joe", which I suppose makes sense) is introducing some new recruits:

"Fellas, we've got some new Joes just out of boot camp. I'd like you to give a big G.I. Joe welcome to Blowtorch, who'll be heading up our pyrotechnics efforts.

"Also new to our team is Cross Hair, an expert sniper. He'll be working on disabling the COBRA network of spy satellites.

"And this is Private First Class Jimmy Hightower. He's eleven feet tall, and he speaks Navajo."