Eric Raymond has popularized the Ghandi quote (“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”) in the context of the open source movement. Danny O’Brien had a great keynote at OSCON on this topic. I was thinking about the parallels of the open source movement to the [...]

When I was in junior high, I had a class called Problems of Civilization (today it would probably be called Social Studies). One of the things I learned was that the Roman Empire collapsed because of plumbing. You see, the word plumbing comes from the Latin plumbum which means lead; plumbing was made of lead. [...]

The latest issue of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing has an article entitled Between Expert and Lay — talking about the blurring of boundaries between amateur tinkerers and professionals. The article used the word Pro-Am to describe this blend. I had never heard the word before. It is not a new coinage. [...]

Gina’s on the Warren program. Perhaps I’d better explain that one. It isn’t actually the Warren program, we just call it that. It’s actually the Apex Fitness program. It’s just that the guy we work with at our local gym is called Warren. As people are wont to, we prefer the personal touch to the [...]