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• Small print

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
  
  Cartoon artwork created with Stripgenerator; dialogue copy/pasted from #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode.
  

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Today, I learned through twitter and CNET that LimeWire did not steal $75 trillion from starving artists after all. They settled with the RIAA for pocket cash worth $105 million instead. The sum is still probably big enough to stop you from copying that floppy. Or not. Who knows!

The funny thing in the CNET article was a photo of the RIAA’s victorious (I suppose) legal team exiting the honorable (I guess) United States Federal Court, lead by RIAA’s Senior Vice President of Litigation, Jennifer Pariser. Here they are, courtesy of CNET, photo blatantly stolen linked to:

I was amused by the fact that the RIAA has a litigation officer at the VP level, and wondered out loud on #ubuntu-offtopic whether or not they have an any artistic execs that high up the corporate ladder. Faithful to modern journalistic ethic, I can’t be arsed to check but instead I’ll just say: probably not. You can quote me as saying I think “the lawyers are more high than the artists in the RIAA.”

bazhang also noted a nice symbiosis between government and the Hot Air industry:

Very deep.

The best part of free software is community support of course. Whatever your problem, someone will surely be able and willing to help. However, not all problems can be helped in support channels. Most importantly, almost no problem has been successfully fixed in #ubuntu-offtopic! mc44 disagrees with topyli and gord, but that’s just what he does.

Sometimes, new people /join #ubuntu-offtopic. They do! Some of them are directed from #ubuntu because they are chatting away on subjects that don’t belong to a support channel. Sometimes malicious friends tell them that #ubuntu-offtopic is lots of fun and thus trick them to /join as a practical joke. Most of the time, I suspect it’s just a simple typo in the /join command, or perhaps an elusive Pidgin bug.

Sadly, most people never read the channel topic upon /joining, which is very sad and leads to a lot of confusion. Then again, some people are so devoted that they even check the topic on #ubuntu-offtopic. Go figure! Naturally, those who are not familiar with the channel culture and do read the topic, will be very confused. For the past few months (since April at least), the #ubuntu-offtopic topic has contained the greeting, “Welcome to the new, more optimized #ubuntu-offtopic!” which has caused some nervous giggles and a lot of questions. Since #ubuntu-offtopic regulars never answer a question (at least seriously), I decided to try and take a stab at this mystery.

(Disclaimer: please do not take this as a promise of public parsing of any other parts of the topic at this or any future article. I can try for my standard, very high, consultation fee, but the gratis public service only covers this one freebie.)

Some people speculate that the “optimization” of #ubuntu-offtopic is a friendly jab at the famously efficient build process of Gentoo binaries. Others claim that it refers to the quality of conversation on the channel, very thoroughly stripped of sanity, detached of any real phenomena, and lack of requirements to coherent language. Some say it’s just a random thought added to the topic by an unstable operator on a Monday. All of these are very plausible and educated guesses.

However, my extensive empirical studies have lead me to conclude that the optimized nature of #ubuntu-offtopic refers to this ambitious vision developed by rww and mc44:

Sadly, we have not really seen this optimization effort bear fruit. Channel regulars keep blabbering pretty much as inefficiently as before, and new users almost never take the time to investigate the optimization algorithm. Instead, they are content with just having a short laugh at the topic and join the discussion about LOLcats, comparative flashlight brightness, popular music and the evils of proprietary software.

The failure of a majority of users to adopt this very efficient mode of conversation might be due to reluctance to search for suitable XKCD strips to express their point of view, and the extra work required on the receiving side of communication for checking the corresponding strip. Granted, this presents a fairly steep learning curve in the beginning, but anyone can see how highly effective our offtopic chatter would be after all the comics are memorized. Think about the reduced workload and bandwidth savings on freenode’s servers if idle chatter is conducted using the rww/mc44/xkcd protocol! These savings could be redirected for the benefit of support and development channels, and everybody wins. As a side effect, one of the greatest winners would be Randall and the XKCD web site. Think about the increase in page views!

I say, laziness is no excuse for inefficiency!

Today, jay_davis taught freebse and topyli valuable truths. I feel obliged to share this wisdom with the community, so that we can all sleep better now.

Release early, release often. We all know how free software maintains its superior quality over closed models of software production. The Mertonian ideal of scientific progress relies on the same principle. Snuxoll also knows this, and decided to submit some work in progress to peer review, and Gary was kind enough to provide very constructive criticism. This is what makes us so great!

Update Nov 18: added linkage.

We’re living in confusing and perilous times, and they (you know, they) will try to silence us all the time. Nobody expects the spanish isquisition, make no mistake. This is why we need more heroes like recon.

Featuring recon, gord, and topyli.

Update, Oct 8: recon, feeling he looks better in real life than in my vision, delivered this modified version of the cartoon:

First time the tales get a little touch of a human artist. Thanks, recon!

One of the strong points of using free systems such as Linux and Ubuntu in particular is the community support. When you have a bug to report, or a question to ask, you don’t have to call Microsoft and hope somebody will care. We care! This was demonstrated on #ubuntu-offtopic today. DrNick1 asked a question, topyli and NickGarvey helped immediately.