Friday, March 28, 2014

High hypocrisy at Techrights - some things just never change


Herr Doktor Schestowitz published another one of his bizarre pieces today, where he claims to suddenly like Mark Shuttleworth because, apparently "he sounds more like Richard Stallman". Problem is, the internets never forgets. Let me quote from today's jewel:

Mark Shuttleworth is a fascinating and charismatic man ... In recent years many tried to portray him as a greedy exploiter — a narrative we rejected and fought back against

Well now. That sure doesn't sound like you, Roy. Because if I remember correctly, you were keen on ridiculing Shuttleworth in your "IRC Proceedings", the same way you've insulted countless open source and free software advocates over the years because they don't pray to the same little gods:


But wait, don't even get me started on this:

Do not trust opportunist billionaires saying they’re out to get other billionaires. You would be fodder in their Turf Wars. I should have known this even a decade ago. At the moment, Mr. Shuttleworth seems to be part of that "dick-sucking" contest/competition which Torvalds alluded to. He had been saying a lot of positive things about Microsoft recently, so he turned from pretending to be “against Microsoft” to “working with Microsoft”. What a sellout, what a weak compass of principles.

Ohsnap. But hell, this is no different from all of your other insults and attacks on people who have actually contributed something to free culture, unlike you and your friends. Indeed, if I remember correctly (and I do), you've even claimed Canonical wanted to "silence" you, and let's not forget the attacks on Jono Bacon.

If you think people will forget what you've done simply because you post thousands of articles, you're wrong. You're the worst kind of hypocrite - the one who knows he's lying but doesn't give a shit because he figures no one will figure it out. Well, you're wrong. Time to call me "stalker" I guess.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Military hardware pr0n: Red Flag mass launch at Nellis AFB

A fascinating video I found on YouTube shows aircraft involved in the Red Flag 09 exercise during what is called a “mass launch”, which means exactly that: aircraft are pushed out of revetments and hangars out into the runways one after the other in a carefully choreographed dance that can take as much as three hours.

Red Flag is a readiness and training exercise run in different phases every fiscal year by the US Air Force’s 57th Wing out of Nellis AFB in Nevada. Aside from US Air Force, Marine, Army and Navy aircraft, other allied nations also take part with their hardware. This helps everyone get along together when the going gets tough. This is similar to the SFTI (aka TOPGUN) exercises run by the Navy out of NAS Fallon (back when “that movie” was released, TOPGUN was held at NAS Miramar).

The scramble progression is the usual heavy-read-blue sequence, with the large aircraft (support and ground attack) heading out first, followed by most of the “red” aggressor aircraft (used to simulate the enemy) and then the bulk of the “blue” forces. I spied:

  • 1 E-3 Sentry
  • 1 E-8 JSTARs
  • B-1B Lancers
  • B-2 Spirits
  • F-16Ns of the 18th, 64th and 56th aggressor squadrons
  • F-22 Raptors (which look like futuristic flying saucers compared to everything else)
  • F-15Es (ground attack variant of the F-15)
  • F-16Cs (Blue)
  • Marine AV-8B Harriers, poor little slow fugly things (I kid, some of my best friends are Marine aviators)

On this other video there are a couple of French (I think) AMXs as well as B-52G bombers and F-15C aggressors. The aggressor aircraft can be identified by their naval or desert camouflage paint schemes, used to mimic mostly Russian aircraft like the SU-27, MiG-29 and MiG-24.

Interestingly enough I did not see any Blue F-15s, I suppose because they’ve been supplanted by the F-22s. Too bad we only have enough of those for about 4 hours of any hot war against a capable adversary, but then the USAF is known for its shit for brains acquisitions, unlike the Navy (yay).

The one and only time I had the privilege to attend a Red Flag back in 1998 (the Dutch Air Force was there in force, IIRC) the Air Force was still flying F-4 Phantoms and F-111 Aardvarks. I didn’t know they let people stand in the middle of the grid at Nellis and take videos. I should probably try to get in on that action one of these days. If you’ve ever felt a jet engine go full MIL 30 feet away you probably know what I’m talking about.

This guy has some beautiful high-res pictures of Red Flag 07-2, which still featured the F-117 stealth “fighter” (more like slow tactical bomber), EA-6B Prowlers, A-10s and RAF Tornados. Very cool.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Roy Schestowitz explains the Free Software business model, and why “open source” is bad

http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2007/11/18/open-source-term-corrupted/

If you call yourself “Open Source” and you also fulfill the conditions of Free software, then you are encouraged to rename and change your identity. Set yourself apart from the crowd that is too dense for you to be seen.

[…]

Case of point: The “assembly required” business model is among those that make open source software quite repellent and fuels FUD against it. Examples include quite a few popular packages (maybe even Asterisk). They really ought to learn from Red Hat’s model, but that said, Red Hat has, at some stage, made deliberate errors to earn money from support. It was a long time ago and it’s possibly just a rumour.

[…]

This post is not a statement favouring BSD/GPL ans saying that it’s a case of “all or nothing at all”. It’s close to this though. There are exceptions to all of this however.

Setting the standard that would later be showcased in BoycottNovell.

Awesome spam from Nigeria


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And a full bird, no less. God bless America.
Monday, April 11, 2011

Kindle book roundup for April 2011 (Zombies, Sci-Fi, apocalypse and war)

 

I’ve been reading a lot of Kindle books lately and I know there’s a lot of geeks out there that enjoy the same kind of haughty literature as I do, so I figured I’d share.

First off though, I’m a big fan of zombie fiction. Not the ridiculous, campy kind, but the good, gritty, post-apocalyptic kind. If that’s your kettle of corn, without further adieu or review I highly recommend J.L. Bourne’s Day by Day Armageddon and its sequel Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile. Then there’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. These are the cream of the crop in my opinion, and worth every penny. But since these two authors are not writing any more books at the moment, and having nearly exhausted my collection of military history and philosophy tomes, I have been forced to find other good stuff to read, which I list below for your (possible) enjoyment.

Comments and more reading recommendations are always welcome!

 

The Windup Girl

The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi
Amazon Kindle edition

I can’t spell his name despite being 1/15th Italian (or so my mom says), but Paolo Bacigalupi is my new favorite author. This man is a genius. He has created a superbly dystopian post-everything world where people are besieged by lack of food, lack of fuel, lack of love and lack of morality. In short, the kind of world we like our post-apocalyptic stories to develop.

The Windup Girl is a story about a man. You might find this odd, but it’s true. It’s the story of a man. Well, actually two or three men. Maybe. You can tell a book is good when you have trouble pinning down the true protagonist of the story. Is it the down-on-his-luck refugee that struggles to survive against pervasive racial discrimination and laments what he has lost? Is it his employer, the outsider that moves around in a bubble of privilege yet finds himself in constant peril and doubt about his ultimate purpose? Is it the swashbuckling homegrown hero that fights against threats both foreign and domestic? Or is it the namesake of the story, a genetic construct with unusual inner beauty doomed to an existence of humiliation and pain?

Against the background of a world that now struggles to sustain its human parasites who have brought most foul doom upon themselves, Bacigalupi develops the characters and the plot with near-exquisite precision. He is concerned with man-made disasters, rather than the more mundane natural ones. The familiar minutiae of the post-apocalyptic environment is all there. His technological acumen is without parallel; his synthetic terminology pristine. He imagines people use genetically engineered beasts to wind special springs, which are then used to expend energy and power vehicles and machines, a latter-day version of our chemical batteries. Potential energy is measured in the amount of calories required to generate it. Computers are powered by foot pedals, like old sewing machines. And that’s just the beginning. The backdrop of widespread famine and plagues brought upon by runaway genetic meddling of our food supply is breathtaking. One assumes this book was not exactly well received over at Monsanto headquarters. And the ways people and nations cope with these problems are surprising and breathtaking as well. Toss in the isolation brought upon by the contraction of civilization for want of fossil fuels and you have a winner here. There’s no other way to put it. The breadth and depth of this book are truly amazing.

Have a Kindle? Go download this book. Don’t have a Kindle? Order the dead tree edition. Go get it now, I’m not kidding. Unlike some of the other books here, this one is a plausible look at our possible future.

Pump Six

Pump Six
Paolo Bacigalupi
Amazon Kindle edition

You know all the praise I piled on Paolo Bacigalupi just now? Well, this is just more of the same prime stuff, FSM bless him. Pump Six is actually a collection of short stories set pretty much in the same dystopian universe as The Windup Girl, including one that offers some background to Windup Girl itself. I cannot help but hope that some of these (nay, all of these) will eventually be made into full-fledged books.

What more can I say? Read it.

The Walk

The Walk
Lee Goldberg
Amazon Kindle edition

An entertaining short story about the end of the world, as seen from the eyes of an entertainment executive in Los Angeles who is trying to make his way home after disaster strikes. A very good read with plenty of survival action, good humor, a clever twist and a great ending.

One

One
Conrad Williams
Amazon Kindle edition

Are you happy? Well, if you want to stop being happy and descend into the depths of depression, then this is the book for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. One is an innovative take on the old end of the world+zombie apocalypse yarn that will keep you clicking that “Next” button until the end. Williams is a good storyteller, and his twist on how the dead come back from the dead will definitely surprise you. That the origins and cause of the apocalypse are left unexplained is irrelevant, really. It’s that well written.

I have but two problems with this book. One (no pun intended), the author at times delves too much into the protagonist’s attachment to his family. While this is the driving force behind much of what happens in the story, at times the remembrance sections tend to get old. They tug at your heartstrings (especially if you have children), but they do get a bit old.

Second, it’s damn depressing. Did I mention it’s depressing? Except at the very end, and maybe even there as well. Don’t get me wrong, this depressing slant is a big part of what makes the book a good read. It’s the result of the author’s exceedingly stark take on what humanity and our world may become after a global disaster. But it’s still depressing. In a good kind of way. The book also gets progressively more sinister, as if everything that came before wasn’t quite sinister enough.

Depressing or not, this is an excellent read, which I highly recommend.

Scar Night

Scar Night
Alan Campbell
Amazon Kindle edition

I don’t do much fantasy beyond The Lord of the Rings and Roger Zelazny’s Avalon chronicles, and I don’t do much Sci-Fi beyond the classics: Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Niven et. al. And maybe Vernor Vinge. So when someone recommended this book to me saying that it was a fantasy and Sci-Fi hybrid, I was hesitant. I downloaded the sample, and by the time I got to the last page I was desperately clicking “Buy this book”. Yeah, it’s that good.

Scar Night is a weird story about a weird city that exists under weird circumstances in a weird world. It is inhabited by weird people who pray to weird gods and fight against other weird people.

Are you sold? No? Well, like I said, there’s a city. It’s suspended over what seems to be a bottomless chasm. Suspended – get this – by chains. That’s right, chains. And then there are angels, which are not really what you think. There are massive war machines, putatively left over after some unnamed apocalypse. There’s a whole industrial/steampunk feel that doesn’t overwhelm. There’s humor and despair. Organized religion makes an appearance as usual. There’s love and family and violence and genetic tinkering and more angels and devils and a whole bunch of other amazingly clever stuff, all woven into the story rather masterfully by Campbell. The gritty ambience of the story is just unbelievably well done. Can’t tell you anymore though, I’ll give stuff away.

I enjoyed this book enormously even though I’m a Sci-Fi and fantasy hipster. Recommended.

The Strain

The Strain
Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro
Amazon Kindle edition

“You have to read this book” they said.
“Really? What’s it about?” I said.
“Vampires!”
“Meh”

But lo and behold, here we are. A story by none other than Guillermo del Toro in collaboration with Chuck Hogan, The Strain is about vampires, yes. In a sense. It’s also a sort of zombie apocalypse yarn. What it isn’t though, is one of those trite vampire treatises. This ain’t no Twilight. The authors do an excellent job of building up the story, develop the characters (all of which are loveable) and explain the backstory.

Yes, vampires. No, it doesn’t matter. You’ll like it.

Summer of the Apocalypse

Summer of the Apocalypse
James van Pelt
Amazon Kindle edition

James van Pelt tells the story of a man at the twilight of his years, facing the realities of a disintegrating civilization after a calamity that reduced it (almost) to the Bronze age, and his desire to ensure that man does not go quietly into the night as little more than a strange species of hairless foraging apes.

Summer of the Apocalypse is an enjoyable read all around. The author goes back and forward in time, explaining the causes of the pandemic that nearly wiped out humanity and his efforts to reach a book repository to save it, therefore ensuring that the remnants of his tribe can regain prosperity through the use of lost knowledge. The protagonist is one of the few “old timers” still alive who as a child lived through the catastrophe and has a very different view on things than the younger generations, which grew up without electricity, cars, TV, the Internet or lolcats (perhaps not a bad thing). He wants to prevent children from dying of formerly curable diseases. He wants people to turn to science instead of superstition. He wants to redeem himself in the eyes of his family, and wants his family to also redeem themselves to him. Lots of popular culture references and reminiscing about the time when getting to the next city took three hours instead of three weeks and Star Wars was in theaters near you.

A good book with a well-developed message of conservation, harmony with nature and the importance of self-reliance. The ending though will perhaps leave you in a bit of a meh, but the rest is worth it.

Brainbox

Brainbox
Christian Cantrell
Amazon Kindle edition

A short story from Christian Cantrell about a post-apocalyptic world fighting its own demons, which are personified by genetically-enhanced cyborgs (created by us, of course). A bit heavy on the military side, but well developed and a fine read. This is $0.99, by the way.

The Compound

The Compound
S.A. Bodeen
Amazon Kindle edition

S.A. Bodeen weaves a good yarn with the story of a wealthy family forced to take refuge in a bunker after some kind of apocalyptic event. The dynamics between the characters are a joy to read, the mechanics of survival are well developed and the twist at the end will surprise you, although one does see it coming a bit earlier. A good book.

Swarm

Swarm
B.V. Larson
Amazon Kindle edition

A cross between the War of the Worlds and Battlestar Galactica, Swarm is a bit heavy on the military angle but worth a read nonetheless, if nothing else because the characters are so well developed. Sometime in the present, a bunch of seemingly evil spaceships descend on Earth and start kidnapping people, presumably to engage in anal probing (ugh, sorry). Then come a set of different ships with a set of different intentions. The twist comes early but everything is nursed along very well by the author. The constant deadpan humor makes a good contrast with the main character’s emotional pain, and the struggle to survive by the motley lucky (or unlucky) few that hold the Earth’s future in their hands will keep you turning the page. Overall a good book.

Immortality

Immortality
Kevin Bohacz
Amazon Kindle edition

This one is actually a zombie book, surprise. Kevin Bohacz is really good at developing the plot and characters, and putting them in one perilous situation after another while the world disintegrates around them. The twists and turns will keep you going until the end. Really, just a damn good zombie book. Definitely recommended.

2184

2184
Martin Parish
Amazon Kindle edition

2184 refers to the year in which this story takes place. In this world there’s been a war between genetically enhanced humans (essentially an evolutionary jump in the Homo sapiens line) and the “mongrels”, who are not enhanced but rather just plain old people like you and I. Basically, Humanity 2.0 has been released and they’re not supporting the previous version.

Parish develops the story with aplomb, introducing us slowly to the very different (and in some ways not so much) world where a minority of “better” people hold sway over the inferior and unlucky ones. If this sounds a bit like Apartheid then you’re in the right channel, except that this is much more sinister. The survival of the lesser species we know and love is at stake here.

The main character is a normal guy with typical issues who is thrust into an impossible situation despite his efforts to remain unseen and unnoticed, like the good little mouse contemporary common sense teaches he should be, as a mongrel. Plucked from his home in post-apocalyptic London and sent to a brutal work camp (yes, there’s that parallel as well) in the incongruously idyllic British countryside, he struggles to survive and maintain his own human essence. He picks up an unlikely sidekick along the way, as well as a secret that might set Humanity 1.0 free from oppression if only he can find the strength to use it. Then comes the voyage back home to what he knows and loves, which is expectedly epic and entertaining. Almost Homeric.

Ultimately 2184 is a story about selfishness, and readers will see why at the end of the book. I must confess this was rather underwhelming, but after a bit of thought I decided that the book should not be dismissed based solely on that. It’s a good story, well told and enjoyable. Recommended.