Renaissance Grrrl

...more valuable than the whole of his kingdom.

"Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?"

~Jane Austen

There's been a lot of talk about Peak Oil lately. Both on livejournal and elsewhere. For the record, with a strong interest towards sustainability, I do believe that peak oil is coming. I remember in seventh grade my biochemistry teacher told us all, children unknowing of politics, that within our lifetime — not soon, but within our lifetimes — that we would have to choose whether the remaining reserves of petrochemicals should be spent for power or for plastic.

It has even been suggested, for those who don't believe in peak, that it is largely irrelevant whether or not the notion matches objective physical reality because so long as people believe it to be the case they will act in accordance with that belief. But this is not what I'm here to talk with you about today.

(This post is something of a stub, but I figured I should get this much out there at least. A more thorough writing may come in the future.)

The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache? Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Amongst a consortium of others, Microsoft is leading the front line war against open source. Yeah, so what's new? What's new is that if they succeed the entire movement of open development will become illegal and open software will not run on computers that are legal to own. The devil is TCPA and they're funding it under the premise that it will protect us. But the only thing it protects is the old regime's stranglehold on the market[1], a stranglehold which demands that you never own anything lest you perform that most profane act of using it. They would but protect us from ourselves.

Some excerpts from the site linked above:

Edit, the second: Wikipedia has this to say about the matter. And Richard Stallman, however you feel about the man, has this.

Articles: The Globe and Mail, Yahoo. Others've responded more eloquently about it than I feel like right now. So check out what they've had to say: celtiak, paracelsus626.