I concentrated on work after my return to the keyboard last week and then spent much of the weekend reroofing a shed, so today was my first day catching up with the news. Here’s what I noticed:-
- One of my former sponsorees Adriaan Peeters was announced as a debian developer.
- Koha roles for the 3.2 release window were decided at a meeting last Friday – I’ve one public and one private task to do, which I’ll try to start today.
- PAYG iPhone will be an iWatering £400 – see Why I don’t want an iSomething for a view similar to mine. I’m using an old Sony Ericsson 3G phone rather than something like a Freerunner because I don’t have a good mobile telco yet and I don’t plan to start small device software hacking again yet – I tried once before and found it much harder than internet software.
- Tim Berners-Lee Announces World Wide Web Foundation – well, I guess we don’t know yet whether it will be fairer than the pay-to-play consortium.
- Facebook imposes site facelift which makes my fan run all the time (inefficient Javascript?), while LinkedIn launches advertising network – I’m looking for exit strategies from both of these now, but network effects keep sucking me back in.
- The Mozilla Corporation took another step in developing their obnoxious
“Free Software” EULA which is actually enforced by their very-non-free trademark and logo copyright licensing. It really does show that Debian Iceweasel and GNU Icecat are necessary. Ubuntu get punished for breaking ranks and accepting MozCorp’s non-free terms – Some day, it comes back in your face indeed. And I know it’s juvenile, but the suggestion on the bug report that they rename it “firecox” just to spite MozCorp made me laugh. I’m pretty angry that Mark Shuttleworth incorrectly claims that debian calls it Iceweasel “to belittle or demean” Mozilla, though. “Weasel” was posted here as a simple alternative to “rabbit”. rabbits have bad connotations in many cultures, as tricksters, cowards, disease-carriers, sex-maniacs, bringers of bad luck and so on, while weasels symbolise resurrection and bravery – except in US politics (“weasel words”) and Dilbert, oddly enough.
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5 comments so far
1 Peter De Wachter // Sep 16, 2008 at 12:27 pm
“weasels symbolise resurrection and bravery”
That’s the first time I’ve heard possitive associations for weasels. English has weasiling out of things. In Dutch there’s the expression “zo bang als een wezel” (as scared as a weasel).
2 MJ Ray // Sep 16, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Here’s a sample link for traditional weasel associations: http://ww2.netnitco.net/users/legend01/weasel.htm – but I expect there are many more.
As scared as a weasel? What does that mean? Weasels are notorious for attacking larger animals – not scared of much!
As you can tell from the single L in weaseling, that’s US English more than native English.
3 MJ Ray // Sep 16, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Interesting comment on the Web Foundation’s trustworthiness folly by Graham Jones. I’m pretty sceptical of most certification schemes (like GPs or Plain English), but I also see the point of labelling schemes (like food ingredients or Keyfacts financial documents) – I wonder which the Web Foundation is thinking of.
4 Peter De Wachter // Sep 16, 2008 at 6:28 pm
It does mean “being very easily scared”. I guess folklore doesn’t have to make sense
5 Pages tagged "rabbit" // Sep 16, 2008 at 10:57 pm
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