It's fairly clear that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode… Your nascent developer community needs to have something runnable and testable to play with.

When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the forseeable future.Eric S. Raymond¹

there are a lot of projects that miss this critical point. it's disappointing when you find a promising-sounding project on the web and its latest release turns out to not even compile let alone run. being a good open source denizen, you look through the source with hopes of contributing a fix but there are problems at the most basic levels—this program doesn't need a patch, it needs a rewrite. you've just wasted the last hour.

this is damaging to open source. outside of a few well-populated categories, a person is more likely to find a broken or half-finished mess of code than even a half-useful library. it would be better to not waste their time and let them write their own solution that they can release once it fulfills their needs.

after finishing Ghost in the Shell S.A.C. from start to finish for the first time, and with the memory of Cowboy Bebop and Firefly¹ in mind, I realized why I intensely dislike shows like Battlestar Galactica and The Office.

the characters in shows I enjoy are excellent people in exceptional situations. they do not suffer from stupid miscommunications, traffic jams, or mismanagement. they can think at least as fast as you, so you don't find yourself shouting "HE'S THE MURDERER DON'T TRUST HIM!" at your television. I don't enjoy these uncomfortable feelings—embarrassment on behalf of a fictional character isn't entertainment. I leave the room when these shows are on; I can not stand them.

if I wanted to watch characters with normal personalities in normal situations ruining unsuspecting people's lives with their incompetence, I'd sit in on a seven hour catered meeting populated by nodding suits and led by incomprehensible charts and spreadsheets².

this bullshit happens often enough in real life that I don't want it as entertainment. it's depressing and obnoxious, not entertaining.

from The New York Times, a neat infographic:

note how the number of edges emanating from a company is an indicator of its health¹. Kodak has been dying since the commoditization of the digital camera. Nokia started to crumble when the iPhone went global. conversely, HTC is doin' all right—they even split last year.

filing lawsuits is an indicator that you've lost your innovative edge. losing the lead, you're exploiting what's left out of your inventions and legacy until you've finally converted all your integrity into bankruptcy. the news will enjoy adding their spin as well, further complicating things.
whether founded or not, these impressions taint your reputation. they damage your business.

Can you name a company you admire that spends its time enforcing patents, instead of innovating? Remember the pirate flag you flew over Apple's headquarters when you were building the Mac? Is Apple part of the Navy now?Wil Shipley

who cares if someone took your ideas to build a competing product? that's how the market works. build the better product—it can't be hard if all your competition can only manage plagiarism.

I hope this passes soon so we can get back to creating the future.

as part of my quest to maximise my life's SNR, I've been thinking about email. I don't think any other form of textual communication has so much verbiage.

let's start with an example of a great email:

Subject: Re: Avia Wildflower Triathlons News
From: Joe
To: Keith
Cc: Ken, Cindy, Scott

Oh, don't worry about the beer - that was more an offhand remark than
anything else. If y'all weren't planning to bring any, don't bring one
just on my account.

clean, simple, concise. what's missing? the signature.

this comic by The Oatmeal has a few people I follow nodding, but I disagree that this is the way it has to be.

there's no reason the phone has to be so bad. unlike other things, it's possible to fix with effort from just one of the players.

I just tried to join battle.net. it's been years since I've used it.

but some problems with my password:

1. Your password must contain at least one alphabetic and one numeric character.

   and? are you saying that this DFA cannot possibly generate a secure password?

   

2. Wrong characters entered. Please enter valid punctuation(!"#$%).

   you're kidding, right? what's wrong with a hyphen? or é?

3. Your password must be between eight and sixteen characters in length.

   I have an idea. how about I type a password, and you hash it and shut up. this is ridiculous.

whenever I run into restrictions like this I question the service's ability to handle passwords securely.

it makes me sad that the friends I think would make the best parents are against having children of their own. likewise of the people I know that want to or will (on purpose or by accident) have children, very few strike me as having good parenting potential.

yet another reason why the world sucks. not that it matters, we aren't here very long in the grand scheme of things.

don't look at me, I don't know either. these thoughts just strike me sometimes.