Did you know...

...that one of the four bills comprising the Alien and Sedition Acts is still in effect to this very day?!? I was rather surprised to hear that, myself, considering that, y'know, it was widely hated and largely dismissed as unconstitutional in 1800! Hell, even the Vice President at that time, an obscure guy named Thomas-friggin-Jefferson, said it was bullshit!

In case you're not familiar, the Alien and Sedition Acts gave the President, John Adams, the following rights, generally speaking:

1. "Naturalization" time (how long an immigrant has to live in the U.S. before they can become a citizen) was increased from five years to 14 years. (--the Naturalization Act)
2. The Prez could deport any alien considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States". (--the Alien Act)
3. The Prez could apprehend and deport any alien that is from a country which is at war with the U.S. (--the Alien Enemies Act)
4. And, my personal favorite, it became a criminal offense to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the federal government or its officials (Gee... I wonder which officials they were talking about...?). (--the Sedition Act)

The funniest thing (only funny thing?) about that last one, the Sedition Act, is that it had a specified term and was set to expire one day before the end of President Adams' term! How's that for coincidence?!?

Apparently, those laws caused some pretty bad times here in the Home of the Free. Adams had the Supreme Court in his pocket, along with all the politicians that we'd call "right wing" nowadays, and they strutted around Washington locking up anybody that didn't kiss up to them. Hell, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, a newspaper publisher, even died while "awaiting trial" for violating the Sedition Act (he didn't think very highly of Adams, it seems...).

One dude, Luther Baldwin, made a crack on Adams, a verbal crack on him, and ended up before the friggin' Supreme Court!  He was subsequently fined $100 (that's, what, enough money to buy a small island in 1790's money???), but it got worse. 

Another guy, David Brown, got some people together to help him set up a "liberty pole" (whatever the hell that is...) with some protest slogans on it, namely "peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President". Guess what he got? They fined him $4000 (HOLY S**T!!!), which he could not pay because he wasn't a friggin' tycoon, so they put him on trial. (I guess that, in those days, the option to buy your way out of trouble was much more open and accepted...) When he refused to identify those that had helped him, the judge fined him $480 and locked him up for 18 months. Take that constitutional rights!!!

Oh, and did I mention that only the criticisms of one political party, Adams' political party, were prosecuted?!? Funny that - they just ignored the trash-talking about officials from other parties.

I almost forgot to reveal which one is still in effect. Care to guess? ... Time's over - it's the Alien Enemies Act! You remember that whole "putting the Japanese in shitty prison camps" thing we did during World War II? Yeah, you can thank this one for that. You're welcome!

Interview: Google's F/OSS Boss

Some German tech site posted the transcription of an interview they did with one Chris DiBona, the Free/Open-Source Software boss at a little boutique tech shop called "Google" (perhaps you've heard of them...?). I found it to be pretty interesting, overall. It's not one of those "Micro$oft suxor - FreeBSD rulez!!!!1!" shit-slinging monkeyfests, which is a relief. Rather, it's an informative discussion about the tech and tools they use inside Google (including closed-source), as well as their approach to F/OSS licensing, contributions, etc, and how they came to adopt such an approach.

It's not Earth-shattering, it's not revolutionary, but it's a good read and that's enough. Feed the computer in your head - read it!!!

Google: "Android is the Linux desktop dream come true" - Suchmaschinen - derStandard.at › Web

(Did I mention that it's in English? Thought that was nice of them...)

Technology And Moral Panic

OK, call me lazy. Go ahead, really - say it out loud (so that your cube-mates question your fragile grip on reality) - "You are sooooooooooo friggin' lazy, James!" Why? Well, instead of expending the neural electricity to "think" or "write something", I'm just going to post a link to something someone else wrote. An Interweb version of "re-gifting", if you will...

Women And Children First: Technology And Moral Panic - Tech Europe - WSJ

But seriously, that right there is a really nice, short little op-ed eye-opener. Feed the computer in your head - read it!!!

Obligatory favorite quote:

There was some wonderful stuff about [railway trains] too in the U.S., that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour. Our uteruses would fly out of our bodies as they were accelerated to that speed.

Thank you, WSJ!!! Articles about flying uterii are always welcome here!

Word of the Day...

...is portmanteau. I don't know why, but I love that word. It gives my brain a stiffy.

Did you know...

...that the English word "essay" comes from the French "essai" which, itself, literally means "attempt", but came to be associated with the essay writing style when Michel de Montaigne published his book "Essais" in the 1500's? So, to recap - the word "essai" meant "attempt" in France way-back-when (and maybe still does?), then this dude wrote a book called "Attempts" ("Essais" in olde-arsed French), and since the book was long-as-hell, that long-as-hell writing style came to be known as the "essay". Next time you have to write an essay (for most of us, never), you can thank Michel. Etymology can really rock me off from time to time.

(Michel de Montaigne was a famous French Renaissance writer, and his full name is Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. His book "Essais" has been described as a "massive volume", and apparently writer-types consider him the father of Modern Skepticism, or something...)

Jimmy Carter Op-Ed / War on Drugs

Wait... Jimmy Carter? You mean, the "Jimmy Carter"???

Yep, the Jimmy Carter, y'know, our President from '77 to '81 (not to mention Nobel Peace Prize winner), wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, and I want to tell you about it. Why? Well... wait - do you mean "Why do I want to tell you about it?", or "Why did he write it?" I assume that he wrote it because he enjoys writing and wants to share his thoughts. Why do I want to tell you about it? Same reasons. Great minds think alike...?

The title is "Call Off the Global Drug War". If that puts you off, then please calm down, take a deep breath, and consider the possibility, however remote, that you just might be wrong and/or misinformed. Open thine mind and read on, my fellow citizen.

Consider this - the War on Drugs has been going on for, what, 40 years now? I'm not even going to guess how many trillions of dollars it has cost, but rest assured that it's a-plenty. Now, how would you feel about America fighting a traditional, boots-n-bullets kind of war for 40 years (and counting - we're still waging war, my friend...), chewing up huge swaths of the national budget (and state budgets, city budgets, hell - household budgets!), and not making any progress? It's more than "not winning" - statistics (and common sense) tell us that we're actually losing! If this were a "real" war, politicians would be fired and protesters would fill the streets. But it's not a "real" war, it just costs money like one and kills people like one, so that makes it OK. WTF?!?

President Carter makes some good points, for sure. This is a thoughtful, substantive, even-keeled piece of op-ed goodness, not the hyper-opinionated "first shot" of a belligerent flame war. Give it a read! Just to give you a little taste of this piece and its tone, here is the opening paragraph:

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

There are a few other lines I'd like to copy here, some really tasty, choice statements from a former US Prez, but I'm not sure offhand what the limits are on copyright's fair use clause, and I don't want any beef with the NY Times lawyers. Call me a wuss. :-{P)

This whole "War on Drugs" mess is an important topic to me, as I have had several people very close to me, people that I really loved, as well as people that I just liked to hang out with, become casualties of the Drug War. Some of them are/were in prison or had long sentences in other kinds of jail. Several of them wrecked their lives (and the lives of those around them). A couple of them now occupy coffins. ALL of them were loving, caring, useful people and citizens that contributed to society before they got "on the wrong track". ALL of them had their problems magnified and expedited by the high cost, high risk, high violence, and high crime of obtaining drugs. ALL of them would have been real assets to our society if they were detoxed and rehabilitated, instead of thrown in jail and fined heavily. NONE of them have a criminal record for anything else, because they are not/were not criminals. NONE of them were helped at all in any way by the War on Drugs.

None of us are, either.

Local(ish) Music Man - Matt Kabus

Yo - just found another good one! This dude's name is Matt Kabus, and I think there's a complete band (?) called, surprisingly enough, the Matt Kabus Band. At any rate, he's from Atlanta and had posted an ad on Craig's List soliciting a Tally gig that would fit their schedule as they are traveling to another Florida gig. I wish I had a bar so that I could book these dudes!!!

Here's the CL post, in case you're interested...

http://tallahassee.craigslist.org/muc/2443447301.html

I Just Realized...

...that I need to shave the back of my neck. Looking kind of "knuckle-draggy" back there. Oops.

Virtual Functions

As a combat veteran very experienced professional software developer (server admin, network admin, change management nazi, DBA, architect, glorified typist, coffee lackey, punching bag, and whatever else needs to be done), the overwhelming majority of my career has been built using Microsoft stuff, most notably .NET. The main reason I (and others) have such a hard-on for .NET (or its archetype Java) is the managed runtime. To put it simply - no goofy "pointer arithmetic" for us humans to screw up! But, after all these years of building things inside the warm, loving safety of .NET's fertile womb, I've found myself sneaking closer and closer to the edge,  yearning to get right next to the metal. That's how I ended up finding the article for which this post was created:

12.5 - The virtual table

Until now, I had never really spent any time mulling over questions like "I wonder whether the implementation of a virtual function gets resolved at compile-time or at run-time?" or "I wonder if there is another human on this planet that gives a shit, much less wants to read a blog post about it?". But hey - today's a new day, and I decided to throw caution to the wind and run with it!

But seriously, that "part 12.5 out of some presumably multi-part C++ thing" up there is pretty friggin' sweet, if you ask me! (I know you didn't, so please STFU...) It explains the real, "under the hood" implementation of virtual functions in such a clear, concise, "plain-speak" manner that I left with a newly gained ability to picture it in my head, almost as a set of 3D puzzle pieces fits together. It is elegant simplicity at its finest. And you know those asshole interview questions about niche subtleties of polymorphism that nobody ever encounters in Real Life? Well, if it involves class foo overriding the virtual function of class bar, you'll never miss it again!

P.S. - I never knew that pretty much all functions in Java are virtual! Weird!?!?

Bands in Tallahassee

Hello, world! (Sorry, I couldn't resist...)

For my first blog post, I would like to congratulate the following two Tallahassee bands for being overwhelmingly approved by my snobby eardrums:

1. June in January
2. Fantome

I'm sure there are other good acts around town, but I don't know about them. I guess that makes me lame. Meh - I've been called worse...