Chuck Moore had some thoughts on the number Pi.
The Brits took the hint and push out the door their cheap Rasberry Pi
While I was sipping on my delicious & priceless Green Tea ,
pondering if the number Tau equals twice as much as Chuck's Pi.

"This is going to sound really weird. Please understand that I am mentally ill; it's my job to be weird."
-- Jonathan Swift, The Convenient Hallucination

State of Washington v Michael David Crawford

Omnibus Hearing, Thursday, February 23, 9:00 AM, Downtown Vancouver, Washington

THAT IS TEN HOURS FROM NOW, FOLKS!

This Entreaty Goes Out to the Pacific Northwest Free Software, Open Source, Creative Commons, Slashdot, Mobile Portland as well as the
- NSFW! - Portland Sex Trade - NSFW! - Communities, Begging You to Demonstrate to Judge Stahnke That I, Michael David Crawford, Have Strong Ties to the Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon Communities.

Simply showing up in court on my behalf, without even speaking, let alone testifying in any way, might convince the Honorable Daniel Stahnke that I do not present a risk of Jumping Bail.

That would enable my desperately-anxious Mother, Patricia A. Crawford, to obtain a refund of the $50,000.00 Cash Bail she posted on my behalf, after I was arrested for living by the words of The Reverend Doctor Marting Luther King Junior, by complying with my "moral responsbility to disobey unjust laws", thereby staging a sit-in between the two halves of the folding front door the C-Tran #105 Salmon Creek Express at the Salmon Creek Park-and-Ride just North of Vancouver, for which I was arrested for Misdemeanor Disorderly Conduct on Friday, January 13.

I myself dialed 9-1-1 that the Emergency Dispatcher send a Deputy who might supply the belligerent and slothful bus driver and I some manner of amicable solution to our dispute over my assertion that he Suffered the Deadly Sin of Sloth for having the bright idea that it was better to drive a late bus completely devoid of passengers so as to make up for his extreme tardiness, than to transport two freezing cold public transport patrons who'd been waiting for the #105 for more than an hour.

For my contribution to today's social discourse, and despite my cry of "Don't Tase Me, Bro!", Clark County Sheriff's Deputy Prather - who I really do think the world of - jolted me once with his Taser, then, upon finding I was a Trained Professional Driving on a Closed Course - that is, that I am a Physicist and my father was a Electrical Engineer, and so do not regard even 800,000 Volt Alternating Current electrical shocks to not be that big a deal provided that shock's current is quite low, Tased me yet again, only to find me still refusing to get off that Damn bus unless he and Deputy Kerr grant my reasonable and polite request to place me under arrest.

I apologize, I would have posted early this morning had I not been hauled to a Nuthouse in an Ambulance because I'm the kind of Right-Thinking Citizen that rings up Emergency 9-1-1 when he has reason to believe that a profoundly psychotic person is well on their way to committing Vehicular Suicide or even Manslaughter.

Don't Even Get Me Started.

It Breaks Down Like This:

To celebrate Ash Wednesday this coming Wednesday, Feb 22nd, 2012, I had a good start in translating T.S.Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'. I am rather pleased with it so far

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Are you going to this fair ?
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.
Remember me to one who lives there
he once was a true love of mine.

I have often heard criticism of "negative campaigning" in the free software movement. "Negative" campaigns speak out against proprietary software as opposed to "positive" campaigns which instead speak of the benefits of software freedom. This essays unpacks some of the arguments against negativity and makes the argument that negative campaigns, in some forms, can play an critical and important role in free software advocacy.

Two days ago, gesslein announced his retirement, provisionally at least, from Advogato, saying No one can comment on my posts, and it doesn't seem to be reaching anyone.

This article is written in response to the Question and Answer phase
of the NHS Scotland Open Desktop Initiative.
From the initiative's abstract:

NHSScotland is currently in the process of developing a set of standards to
support the development and building of the NHS Scotland Open Desktop.

read about the sad news that Jeff Fox, Forth advocate, passed away on Chuck Moore's blog.

Spam is really a problem in many Wiki communities, often forcing at least temporary to restrict editing rights. Most of the recent attempts to find a solution focus around captchas and spam lists. Captchas may be efficient to some extent; the problem is that to make them unreadable for bots, they must be twisted enough to become also difficult for humans to read. Lists seem less and less efficient, often accumulating thousands of entries and still leaving enough gaps for spammers. Spammers frequently use the Wiki search box to check if there is already some spam on the site - this shows that Wiki may be purely maintained and they can add more. Hence it may make sense to implement the delayed indexing but it also delays indexing of legitimate content. Blocking IP addresses is also no longer useful due DHCP.

One of the solutions may be to use combined protection rather than relying on some single "killer" approach. The rationale is to make spammer to invest more and more work into building the spam bot. Requiring a complex bot does not make the attack impossible but may statistically eliminate significant percent of spammers that are not willing to invest enough resources.