brainstorms

Friday April 15, 2005

register no longer registers.

there is something to be said for living upto [or downto] one's logo. the register used to be (by and large) incisive and smart (and somehow made me think this was dissonant with the logo) but have been slowly regressing back to its vulture character. [this is no doubt a result of increasing irrelevance in the face of blogtorrent. why would i really bother with register when there are sun bloggers and slashblot to read?]

latest evidence of this regression is the piece by andrew orlowski: torwalds knifes tridgell. there is little to be said for this nasty piece [an orlowski specialty] with its made-up quotes, except its title keyword is curiously apropos to the situation: bitkeeper issue seems to have produced enough knives for a large and bloody roman drama. alas it is discouraging to see so many are intended for torwalds...

O mighty Casar ! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?

[musical recommendation: the anne russell album, how to write your own gilbert and sullivan opera and the ring of the nibelungs(an analysis), sony masterworks, 1972.]

[addendum: an interesting discussion with larry on this topic is found in bmc's blog. i have heard bruce perens jumped in as well, with a big thud through another orlowski piece.]