If you are homophobic, you probably want to stop reading now. Just go to the next blog, or dial up Fox News, because the rest of this blog entry will not be satisfying for you. Do not worry, you will be able to read my next blog, just not this one. What is going on? Today I wrote an essay on...
For the past several days people have been tweeting at me (and Linus) to change the license of Linux to forbid the kernel's use for war. These tweets were due to the issue of Linux being used in the drones of the US Military. I tweeted back “Do not blame the tool”, but I think that answer was...
Many of you know that I am involved with events called “Campus Party”, which started sixteen years ago in Spain and have spread out to Latin America. Briefly, Campus Party events bring together between 7,000 and 10,000 “campuseros” who live in tents under a gigantic roof, supplied with large...
The Titanic is probably the most discussed ship of all times. On the 100th anniversary of its sinking I went to see the 1953 classic movie “Titanic” with Clifton Web, Barbara Stanwyck and a very young Robert Wagner at our local “arts” theater, the Wilton Town Hall Theater. The movie was free...
Just when you think the copyright and patent laws have reached their peak, more atrocities whack you in the face. After all these years I find out that according to US patent law (35 U.S.C. 161 Patents for Plants) my grandmother was a thief! My grandmother loved plants. Every year seed...
Over the weekend of October 8th a giant of computer science died. Like a lot of really great people in the field, he died without a lot of fanfare, most of his friends and colleagues finding out about his death several days later. I heard about his death last night from a post by Rob Pike, and...
A few months ago I went to Campus Party in Spain. I have blogged about Campus Party before, so I will not spend a lot of time and space here on that topic. I will tell you about a young man, Luis Iván Cuende García, who was fifteen years old when I met him but who had released his own...
Imagine working in one of the most beautiful places in the world, high on a bluff in front of the magnificent Flatirons in Boulder, Colorado. Also imagine working in pure research dedicated to helping us understand the weather and climate that make up our environment, and finally imagine working...
One of the great pleasures of helping to represent the Free Software community is to meet a lot of young people who have done some amazing things. Often in my talks I show a slide of some of the young people I have met in the fifteen years since I met Linus Torvalds and became involved with...
I am a big fan of Star Trek. I do not consider myself a “Trekie”, but I do enjoy the show and thought a lot about what the writers put into it. For example, on Star Trek the interaction with the computer was not only through the one interface of keyboard and mouse. If you were walking down...
“What about Sex?” the woman sitting across from me at the dinner table asked. I felt my face start to flush. She was about my age, and fairly attractive. I, of course, am unmarried, and therefore “available”. However, her husband was sitting next to me...... “She is afraid that these young...
They are at it again. The closed source companies are attacking open source, using similar tactics that they always use. This time they are using “associations of professionals” (sometimes called "lobbyists") to declare that Open Source is a failure in the software marketplace. They started in...
Over the past forty years I have written a lot about my mother and father, who were called “Mom&Pop(TM)”. They were the perfect examples of the average person who is befuddled by electronic devices and their controls. Their inability to use even the most rudimentary electronic devices has...
I believe that one of the measures of an adult is to have the ability to admit “I was wrong”. While I am not happy when I am wrong, I take pride in the fact that I often give people the benefit of the doubt, and when I am wrong I freely admit it. I believe that once you admit your mistake, and...
I just learned that Kenneth Olsen, one of the founders of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), died on February 6th, 2011 at the age off 84. From now on I will refer to him in this article as “KO”, as did most people who worked at DEC. At DEC no one had to ask who you were talking about when...
