Mr. G has left the building

On this, only too rare, occasion today when we hear some good and just news related to our federal government. I'd like to offer a few choice quotes from some very wise men:

• "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

  — Benjamin Franklin (on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania - 1759)

• "... rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual"

  — Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany - 1819)

• "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

  — James Madison (attributed to Madison, by his contemporaries)

• "Just because something is legal, doesn't make it right and just because something is illegal, doesn't make it wrong."

  — James P. Williams (my father, circa 1985)

Brad Fitzpatrick and the social graph

Mr. Fitzpatrick, formerly of Six Apart, has posted an essay to accompany some of his previous conference slides [pdf] on scaling and topological issues with online social networks. The thesis is that, along with Open ID, this relationship graph should be "service-ized" for ease of portability.

This concept would mesh wonderfully with a distributed trust metric such as the early efforts pioneered by Advogato.

Not going to play BioShock--ever

It's a shame that 2K is installing a rootkit with Bioshock. That, plus the limited (re)installation issues, means that it won't find a home on my gaming machine. It didn't have to be this way 2K and, no, I won't even bother registry hacking for the workaround. This is wrong on so many levels. Fuck you 2K. That is all.

Follow-Up: There appears to be some debate as to whether the version and configuration of the Sony SecuROM system installed by Bioshock actively prevents modification/de-activation by administrative users with normal system tools. For that matter, this whole issue has spawned a secondary debate as to the precise definition of "root-kit". Until I see evidence to the contrary, I'll still ban any/all implementations of SecuROM from my gaming box.

Most & Jack Black

I just can't say enough good things about the most pager. And for something completely different, this new Jack Black comedy looks absolutely hilarious. The Ghostbusters sequence killed me.