entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I'm sure that you didn't mean to sound like this, but your recent entry about lunch at work comes across as if you're practically peer-pressuring coworkers to lunch together, which can't be a good thing.  How do you deal with introverts or people with Asperger syndrome?  It's good to welcome new people, and encourage social behavior (especially because lunch should be a real break and not simply the time of the day when you eat at your desk).  But if i worked with you, your use of the words "not negotiable" for the concept of eating with your coworkers doesn't make me want to have lunch with you.

Paul Graham has written some interesting and enjoyable essays over the last few years.  Peter da Silva pointed me at his latest, where he starts off by pointing out the ways that Yahoo! failed to grab a commanding lead in the Internet game and takes a tangent into companies where hacker culture is key.  At first i was engaged with what he was saying, probably in no small part because of confirmation bias, but then it became more of a matter of him saying, "Companies with hacker culture are awesome because good hackers write good software," without actually supporting his case; the longer i examine the essay, the more it reads like selection bias and circular reasoning: "Yahoo! had no hacker culture and sucks; Google has hacker culture and rules.  Ergo, hacker culture leads to success."

What also really got me going was a paragraph that Tom Fawcett pointed out.

Probably the most impressive commitment I've heard to having a hacker-centric culture came from Mark Zuckerberg, when he spoke at Startup School in 2007. He said that in the early days Facebook made a point of hiring programmers even for jobs that would not ordinarily consist of programming, like HR and marketing.

This is quite frankly the stupidest thing i've read in quite some time and falls right in line with Zuckerberg's hubris.  That's not a commitment to hacker culture; that's falling prey to your blind spots.  Having hackers work with HR and Marketing is a good idea; having them work in those departments is delusional.

There's no doubt that, when your company's product depends on the work of programmers, the vast majority of which fall culturally under the hacker umbrella, it behooves management to foster that culture in order to maximize their return from their employees.  But to go from that to implying that companies that let the inmates run the asylum reap the most benefits is at best wishful thinking and at worst foolish.

There's a second half to my response to Graham's essay which i'll write once i wake up from my nap.

torkington: RMS: "Copyright a tyranny that is intolerable, unenforceable, and must be changed."
ronebofh: we really need an RMS bingo game. or drinking game. probably both.

Fap on! *fap* *fap* Fap off! *fap* *fap* Fap on, fap off... the Fapper.

I think that the Kindle is a complete failure.  How the hell do you start a fire with this thing?

If you ever wondered how Jeph Loeb got a job writing Batman, Warren Ellis found his submission letter.

During the "don't ask don't tell" repeal hoohah back in March, i learned a new historical tidbit: the US Civil War started because the Union wanted to station gay soldiers at Fort Sumter.

The Vatican is a rogue nation run by people who systematically protect pedophiles worldwide; it's time to invade and provoke regime change.

When i see the iPod silhouette ads, i amuse myself by thinking that they depict people who've just been shot.

How to get from Wank to Fucking in about 3 hours.

analogue n. a conversation that originates from the talker's behind.

To the woman in the red Volvo station wagon with the "A GODLESS NATION CANNOT REMAIN FREE" bumper sticker: die in a fire.

Pandora has given me more music to enjoy, which is great, but it's also given me a lot of the reviews from the All Music Guide, which ranges from the interesting to the banal, from all of which the most salient fact emerged: Stephen Thomas Erlewine is an enormous wanker.

I look forward to a time when the Porny Presentation Bingo card goes unused at a technical conference. (via infotropism)

rone: Hmm, the production mail server is running an ancient version of Postfix. I need a newer version that supports milters. But this version of CentOS doesn't have a newer version of Postfix in its yum repository. Well, perhaps some enterprising person on the Net has filled my need. Let's ask Google.

Google: Here you go, a mailing list archive for CentOS.

Person with my same need: Hey, mailing list. Anyone have an RPM that fits my needs that i can use with yum?

Filthy nerd #1: If this is a dedicated mailserver, i prefer installing postfix from source.

Filthy nerd #2: If you are going to compile everything, why not use Gentoo?

rone: I am going to set these motherfuckers on fire.

Some of you might dismiss bitrot as a quaint element of hacker folklore, but you'd be WRONG WRONG WRONG.

j4 created lolbrarians, and ewx found this tattoo.

If i were an applications developer, i'd totally want my job title to be "Feature Creep".

A Google search for "fuck the webbys" yields a single hit.  This is preposterous; in a world filled with vapid awards, the Webbys make the Grammys seem meaningful and accurate.  Fuck the Webbys, and fuck the IADAS.

Foxtrot explains Web 2.0.

For the 2% of people without the latest and greatest version of Flash, i give you the cartoon in glorious PNG format: