Patrick McFarland, one of the outspoken critics of Rob Levin (lilo of Freenode/PDPC) and someone incredibly hell-bent on turning Freenode/OFTC into a high-school-esqe popularity contest, has posted what I would consider to be a load of crap on his blog about Rob Levin's passing.
"I was critical of his actions at times when he was alive,"
Translation: I made unsubstantiated accusations of tax fraud, embezzlement, and worse against Rob Levin on a regular basis.
"I just hope that since he’s gone now, Freenode can continue on without him there to lead anymore. I may have not agreed with his choices, but I don’t think there are any people out there that could have brought Freenode this far."
I also find this hard to believe, considering how often McFarland made it appear that he felt that quite possibly, lilo was the worst thing to ever happen to Freenode, and that he was also accusing Rob of demolishing projects and services through foot dragging and politics.
Note also that the reek of untruth of this post is tailed by the "No comments" flag, meaning McFarland doesn't really want anyone to call him out on this... even though one of the other things he's been critical of lilo about was one of censorship.
Now, I also felt that Spinhome was a little farcical (C'mon, a winnebago to keep an IRC operator mobile? That's overkill on the level of venture capitalism.) but I certainly wasn't getting this bent out of shape about it, since there wasn't a whole lot of donating towards this going on. Perhaps one day Freenode would have become important enough that such a thing would be warranted (which might well have been about the time they hit the $310K-mark on donations), but this sort of thing tends to be self-regulating (people don't donate to projects they feel are stupid) and attacking PDPC and Levin in the manner McFarland was engaging in was nothing but juvenile.
In closing, I find it very odd that even with the disinhibiting factor of the Internet, people still find it necessary to say things they don't believe for a moment as "last respects". McFarland should have just left well enough alone rather than make a cheap last-minute bid to try to pretend that he wasn't being a knobgoblin to a competing project.
For those of you who are, like me, awaiting November with bated breath for Nintendo to relax their deathgrip on the North American release of the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS, there may be yet another toy to play with in the meantime.
K-Byte and Lite-On (yep, them) are now making an IM appliance that's about the size of a pager with a LCD screen that jumps on available nearby WiFi connections and runs an IM client that talks on Yahoo, AIM, or MSN's networks. I've no idea if they have plans to make it able to support Jabber or not (this would be a clincher for me), but they've apparently managed to get them on the shelves at both Target and Best Buy for about $100 apiece.
(YouTube) Hey look, Fox News muckraking and ludicrously biased reporting!
Topic: Politics and Law
7:30 am EDT, Jul 28, 2006
If you ever had the slightest doubt that Fox News was reporting a load of biased sensationalism, well, let's just go ahead and remove that.
Someone put together a very nice bit showing just how far they went to take something from the Colbert Report not only out of context, but also re-cut it so as to omit key parts of what they were essentially quoting.
You know, in print it's kind of required to sprinkle a lot of "[...]" in text when you edit quotes but apparently no such requirement or even ethical consideration exists with television news. They might as well have printed "Senator Wexler was quoted as saying 'I [...] like to [...] have sex [...] with [...] my own sister'", but without the ellipses.
For the bonus points, here's also the link of Colbert firing a salvo back at the idiot morning programs for reporting incorrectly on the issue, using part of Fox's misbegotten video.
For the uninitiated, this is Senator Ted Stevens speaking before Congress, trying his best to explain Net Neutrality and his position on it, with music added in.
It took awhile to find just the MP3 but I did it. :)
Strange vandals deface billboard with an amusing message
Topic: Current Events
12:11 am EDT, Jul 12, 2006
Somewhat similar to the (almost unnoticed for years) renaming of a bridge in TN to be the "General E. Lee" bridge, vandals have completely replaced a billboard with a large, professional looking display reading "KING OF JEWS" and "KING OF BEERS".
For those of you out there who want a pet but have allergies, or are living in areas with pesky rules about importing "exotic" animals, or just want something really different for a housepet, well... You have your wish.
Congressman that sponsored 10 commandments bill asked to name the 10 commandments
Topic: Miscellaneous
4:16 am EDT, Jun 25, 2006
I suspect this might shed some light on why it is we have such an ethics problem in gov't. If they can't actually recite the Ten Commandments, how can they possibly be expected to adhere to them?
I don't know that this would be useful as a workstation "desktop", but as file organization of graphical and semi-graphical data goes, these guys seem to have hit a new plateau of utility. They've got a long video of an (apparently working) UI for the 3D representation of files as physical objects to factiltate cleaning up like one would their desk (if they ever cleaned their desk). There's some things it's not going to handle, but... Try not to think about the hand-jewelry too much. Some people are just born that way.
I strongly recommend you watch the YouTube video all the way through (especially you Mac users).
