mahiwaga

Still reading The History of the Hobbit by John D. Rateliff. There have been loony theories around the Internet which ponder whether the Arkenstone from The Hobbit is in fact a Silmaril.

Interestingly, while the Arkenstone may not actually be a Silmaril, it shares a lot of characteristics with the holy jewels, and these similarities are unlikely to be an accident, since Tolkien was working on The Hobbit simultaneously as he continued to elucidate the stories of his legendarium.

And in Tolkien’s version of the Quenta written in Old English, he writes the following (translated by Ratecliff):

Here through cunning craft/artistic skill the Noldor elves devised and created many gems, and Fëanor the Noldor lord wrought the Silmarils, that were holy stones: Eorclanstánas or Arkenstones.

Anil Dash objects to the subtle mockery that Apple throws towards Windows, and I do see his point. It’s yet another sign of “immaturity”, in the same vein of the shit-talking found in the Mac vc PC ads.

But I think its a little overstated. If you can’t take a little joke at your expense, that’s just sad. It’s not your religion. It’s not your ethnic background. It’s just the OS you choose to run.

(And, yeah, while Linux can support SMB shares, the protocol is extraordinarily slow and ugly. If you’re going to run a *nix box, I suggest NFS, which, with the correct software, is supported even in Windows. And if you don’t need Windows at all, then even AFP performs better than SMB in Linux.)

Sure, maybe it’s a sign of “immaturity.” But I think that’s a good thing. God help us if Steve-o sells out to the corporate culture of naming software releases by cryptic two or three letter acronyms like NT or ME or XP. I like the OS X release names. For one thing, it’s not like there are hundreds of Mac OS X variants.

• 10.0 Cheetah
• 10.1 Puma
• 10.2 Jaguar
• 10.3 Panther
• 10.4 Tiger
• 10.5 Leopard

That’s just six releases since 2001.

Compare that to the six variants of Windows Vista:

• Windows Vista Starter
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Yeah. That’s not confusing at all.

Frankly, I’m fond of the snide attitude against Microsoft, and the corporate culture in general. It’s something that Apple and the Open Source movement have in common.

I first encountered the phenomenon of weird release names back when I started playing with Linux. The distro I used the most was Red Hat, from version 6.0 to Fedora Core 7.

• 6.0 Hedwig
• 6.1 Cartman
• 6.2 Zoot
• 7.0 Guinness
• 7.1 Seawolf
• 7.2 Enigma
• 7.3 Valhalla
• 8.0 Psyche
• 9.0 Shrike
• Fedora Core 1 Yarrow
• Fedora Core 2 Tettnang
• Fedora Core 3 Heidelberg
• Fedora Core 4 Stentz
• Fedora Core 5 Bordeaux
• Fedora Core 6 Zod
• Fedora Core 7 Moonshine

The most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, uses a similarly obscure but evocative naming scheme:

• 6.06.1 Dapper Drake
• 6.10 Edgy Eft
• 7.04 Feisty Fawn
• 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

Now, bear in mind, Apple’s main target demographic is not the musty corporate halls of Wall Street or the confines of the IRS. (With regards to Red Hat, their Enterprise releases are more sedately named.) The kind of corporations that probably use Macs make movies or publish magazines, and even more users work for medium-to-small design shops. The cultures of these places don’t necessarily place a lot of importance on what the suits might call “maturity.” A great number of us just like using a more human OS that actually functions, and if the OS makers want to have their little joke, who cares? We’re physicians, teachers, union organizers, students, lawyers, scientists. Our lives are not predicated on the newest IT buzzword, and if we actually recognize what a BSOD looks like, you only have Microsoft to blame for making it such a familiar sight.

As I shot down the I-5 listening to my iPod, this song came up, bringing up memories from my first year in college, way back in 1994-1995

To quote Mos Def, “A lot of things have changed. A lot of things have not.”

But the song is “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree, and the most vivid memory is hanging out at the Berkeley Marina, and gazing at the hills to the east, and the Campanile towering in the distance.

We used to go to the marina to get away from campus, and sometimes we’d fly kites.

you gotta be bad
you gotta be bold
you gotta be wiser
you gotta be hard
you gotta be tough
you gotta be stronger
you gotta be cool
you gotta be calm
you gotta stay together
all I know all I know love will save the day

It still remains to be seen if the U.S. can be salvaged from the claws of totalitarianism, but I remember the dark days of the botched 2000 election, when the Supreme Court stripped the people of their sovereignty and selected the guy who didn’t win the election, and I remember the cynical use of the destruction of the WTC as an excuse to foment war in Iraq.

I was against the war from the onset, and I despaired because it seemed that everyone supported the war, or didn’t care. As Karl Rove committed treason against Valerie Plame, as W and Darth Vader Cheney blatantly lied to the American public, I remember thinking that we were screwed as a nation, and that the fall of the Republic was at hand.

But then I remember when the tide began to shift.

The first thing that made realize that the neocons weren’t going to be able to just steamroll the U.S. into a fascist state was when I heard a radio station in Chicago play “Changes” by Tupac Shakur, interspersed with the bullshit that W and company were feeding us. Whoever made the decision to play it was brave, at a time when it seemed that just questioning the joker sitting in the Oval Office would land you in Gitmo.

The lines that sent shivers up and down my spine were these:

And still I see no changes.
Can’t a brother get a little peace?
It’s war on the streets and the war in the Middle East
Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs
so the police can bother me

The prophetic words about war in Iraq were eerie. The song was released in 1998, and Tupac had already been killed in 1996. I know it’s not that remarkable of a prediction, considering that the Middle East has been wracked with turmoil for a long time, but it still hit me.

Around that time, the protests against the war started. Progressive bloggers started to make their mark on the blogosphere, providing a welcome counterpoint to the right wing hacks and shills.

The war to take back our country is far from over, but at least it’s being fought.

To quote Andre the Giant, “I hope we win!”