[ music | Depeche Mode – I Want It All ]

It’s very simple. Debian currently values their name and logo, and you can’t use it willy nilly without their permission. Same goes for Mozilla and their Firefox trademark. Now, so far Debian has been using the Firefox trademark with permission from Mozilla. It was a lax permission, and the rules of that permission have changed. The rules did not change to be mean, or to be arbitrary, but due to the fact that the law states trademark holders must defend their trademarks or lose them. Adobe asks you not to call photo editing “Photoshopping”; Google asks you not to say “Googled” when you went to a search engine; Xerox barely managed to hold on to their name due to aggressive marketing, which is why you probably get documents photocopied instead of xeroxed. Mozilla must do the same, and the problem that Debian is running into is they want to heavily edit the codebase to the Mozilla foundation’s flagship browser, essentially creating their own product, and yet still call it “Firefox”. You can’t have it both ways.

There is a branding “switch” built into the Firefox codebase. Turn it on, and the the official logos and names are used. Turn it off, and you can build your own branded browser automatically with almost no extra effort. Debian broke this switch (knowingly, this wasn’t an accident, it was broken because they “needed” to make various other edits) and wound up hardcoding the Mozilla trademarks into the Debian browser. Rather than doing what other vendors do, rebranding it, Debian is pitching a fit because Mozilla is saying, “Look, we need to fix this situation. Stop using the trademarks, or start following these updated rules.” Had Debian not broken the branding switch, this would be incredibly easy for Debian to fix, just flip the switch and call the browser Iceweasel or Doodyhead or BigDaddy or whatever they want to call it. But they broke the switch, and painted themselves into a corner, and want to blame Mozilla.

Stop whining. We had to change the name from Phoenix because of Phoenix BIOS’s products. We changed the name from Firebird because of the Firebird project. We changed the Mac based browser Camino from the former name of Chimera. Those were all legit requests. When Firebird was picked, it was a logical choice, but poorly researched. The fiasco after that and the response by both the Firebird project and Mozilla were incredibly poor, but it was resolved in the only logical fashion. As of now, Debian is being asked the same thing. Please follow the rules we have for our name or change the name of your product. The code itself is as free as it always was. The issue is not about code, it’s about protected names, identities that users attach to one product and organization.

Otherwise, I’m going to launch a line of manure-based fertilizer called Debian, with the slogan, “We’re so full of shit, it’s like getting ten pounds of manure in a five pound bag!” and of course, I’ll slap the official Debian logo on the bag. After all, valuable and trusted legally-protected identities want to be free!

[ music | Imogen Heap – The Moment I Said It ]

I always loved this hour of the day/night/what-have-you. Right now it’s ten to five a.m., 54 degrees out, and foggy. There’s just something about it tha tmakes the perfect endcap to whatever kind of day I had, good or bad. Sitting up in the wee hours, chatting with a friend or three, watching the world sleep. It makes me feel powerful in the sense that there’s a whole nothing day ready to dawn, I can see and feel it coming. It really makes the idea of a life stretching out before me palpable. It’s one of the few times I can look around a find some genuine hope, a feeling not ginned up nor blindly clung to for the sake of mental health. There really is another day coming, life goes on.

It’s been one of the roughest years yet so far, and it’s not over, but frankly I think rock bottom was hit, and is receeding at an increasing rate. You can sit and think about how you’d take various forms of bad news, but you’re never right. I really assumed I’d take certain things a lot harder before I could move on, but I didn’t. That shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. For a mere moment, it was, “Holy shit.” But a beat later it was, “Well, ok, so, where do we go next?” Unchangable situations are just that, unchangable, so don’t waste your time complaining. The faster you get on dealing with it the easier it is. I guess the old advice is correct, just rip the bandage right off and get it over with.

I still love the nights, too. I think I’m almost ready to start finding someone to share them with, too. Almost, I’m not that mature yet. 😉

[ music | Johnny Cash – Cry Cry Cry ]

I don’t know exactly what’s up with it at the moment. Looks like Grok forgot to renew it. I’ve fired off an email, and hopefully will get ahold of him or his wife ASAP…

[ music | In Denial – Pet Shop Boys ]Ok, look people. I do not have pictures of Kari Byron nude. Anywhere. Ever. The rash of outdated links you’re following was a gag, and they weren’t even of Kari to start with. Yes, she’s gorgeous, no she’s not naked. Hell, I think she’s even married. The pics you were lured here with are of the British model Alex Sim Wise. Go Google her if you want the photos that USED to be here. They’re gone now. DO NOT ASK ME FOR THEM.

[ music | Morningwood – Easy ]

Want an old manual typewriter that you can hook up to a PC and be both retro-mod and cyberpunk at the same time? Let me know. I happen to have access to an old Underwood manual and a Smith Corona manual, both in excellent shape with their cases too. And my hardware hacker roots would love to convert one to a keyboard for you (for a fee, of course). Hit me up if you’re interested.

[ music | Badly Drawn Boy – Say It Again ]

The imminently talented (and cute as a button, redheaded) Neko Case was interviewed by Pitchfork back in April, I just now found it thanks to fak3r. In the interview she goes off on the rampant cheating of both artists and audiences by the prolific use of pitch-shifting and autotuning in modern pop.

Now, frankly, I think modern pop is crap anyway, but the point here is rather than actually working on their vocals, the artsts are both being cheated, and cheating their audience, by letting producers tweak the recordings with the equivalent of sonic Photoshop. Why is this cheating? Because these singers aren’t writing their material to start with, the lest they could do is actually learn to perform it, but they don’t. And you can hear the difference. It’s no longer even anything close to art, it’s just artificial. In the course of my life so far I have spent incredibly amounts of time practicing my singing, and it shows. I remember in high school I worked for weeks just to hit a single note in a song for an audition rather than change the key. And it paid off. I was a better performer for it.

You see, this cheats the audience too, because on tour these performers are just lip-synching to recordings, they’re not actually singing, because they can’t do it without the help of post-production. They didn’t put in the sweat-equity to be able to actually do the material justice, they faked it, and can’t back it up. So when you go to see a show, you’re being stiffed because you’re not getting what your’e paying for, you’re just paying to see them fake it for two hours.

And other artists who have put in the time and energy to better themselves get shafted because it no longer takes talent to break into the business, it just takes good marketing. And who wants to invest in creating a new brand when the old one can just be repackaged and autotuned into shape again?

[ music – They Might Be Giants – Planet of the Apes ]

“So we just pretend there’s no one home in the universe.”
“That’s it.”
“Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat?”

[ music | Johnny Cash – Hurt ]

And I don’t do anything in half measures. If it doesn’t hurt, you’re not doing it right.

[ music | Nine Inch Nails – Terrible Lie ]

This kind of stuff burns me up. It’s like no one every checks anything.

“… putting an end to Mozilla’s development of a 12-year browser line that went back to the original Netscape.”

Last I checked, the vast majority of whatever was left of “the original Netscape” died with Communicator and the abortive 5.0 code dump. Once the changeover to Gecko and Necko took place, the bulk of the original code was gone. So Mozilla didn’t kill a 12 year old codebase, Netscape killed a 4-5 year old codebase. Netscapes 6 and 7 were based on the Mozilla suite, and Netscape 8 was a hybrid of Firefox and the IE core.

Further:

“The end of the Mozilla suite puts a bookmark on the longest-running browser family, one that traces its genealogy to 1994, when Netscape Navigator was first released in beta (under the name Mosaic), through 1996-97’s Netscape Communicator suite, and into the 1998 decision to take Netscape open-source.”

Again, no. If anything, Mozilla.org is continuing the legacy of what was started by that brash young startup Netscape oh so long ago. Today’s Firefox can trace it’s lineage back to the original Netscape browser just as directly as Mozilla Suite can, since Firefox is still built on top of the Gecko core at the heart of the Suite, Netscapes 6, 7, and 8, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and others. Mozilla.org is the continuing generations of Netscape. If anything, today’s Mozilla Corp. is more “Netscape” than Netscape is now (a brand for AOL’s low cost dialup Internet service) or has been since 1998. They’re driving forward development of a cutting edge application, blazing a path that Microsoft once again is following, trying to catch up to the true innovators.

It makes for flashy copy, but it’s just wrong. Posting about the latest +0.0.1 and +0.0.0.1 releases isn’t sexy, but it’s more respectable than just making things up.

[ music | Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better ]

It’s spring, and time to cause panic! But rather than postulate about igniting the atmosphere with those new fangled atomic weapons, I’m just going to make my Dreamhost promocode doubly sweet. The discount is now twice what it was, $50 off any yearly plan, or $25, $30, or $40 off levels 1, 2, or 3 (respectively) for monthly plans. So if your current web host sucks (and if it’s not Dreamhost, it sucks) then this is the time to change over. I need to update the Webhost Shootout but it’s still valid. For the record, I’m currently paid up through November of 2007 and really have no plans on switching, if that is any kind of endoresement for you.

Previously, and more.