configure: error: --with-ssl was given, but GNUTLS is not available.

Naturally, that error comes up because GNUTLS is not on OS X 10.7. Happily, you can ask wget to use openssl instead.

./configure --with-ssl=openssl
make
sudo make install

The flag for configure will make all your GNUTLS problems go away.

Users who “live in” Emacs don’t get trapped paying for software upgrades just so they can continue to do their work or use their data.  They don’t get told that their older computers are no longer supported (there’s a ten-year-old laptop in my living room right now that easily runs the latest version of Emacs).  They don’t have to ponder the cost in time and treasure of switching operating systems.  And they generally don’t have to worry about license agreements, proprietary file formats, or DRM.  Emacs—and programs like it—may require a little more from their users, but in return they offer a remarkable escape hatch from proprietary lock-in and planned obsolescence. - Thoughts on Learning Emacs

I will usually prefer to stand outside in the rain if the alternative is a standing under a roof that comes with house rules. That’s why I carry an umbrella and check the weather before I leave my house.

Blogging was a direct attack on MSM hegemony at both the micro (fisking) and macro levels (explanation space). I just don’t see Twitter as the same threat. It is a flood of unmermorable chatter that is easy to ignore. Blogging had the potential to break the power of the MSM guild. Bloggers, at their best, presented arguments. Arguments can both change minds on the immediate subject and undermine the credibilty of those establishment pundits who present weak cases on a regular basis.

-Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?

Twitter is an example of a relatively new medium. When information was expensive to transmit, it tended to be sent in large batches. For examples, books, newspapers, magazines, letters, etc.. When transmission became cheap with the internet, at first we made cheaper versions of what we already had with handcrafted web pages and their blog successors. I think it took a while for the internet to sink in (I think this still hasn’t happened, BTW) and Twitter was a natural outgrowth of the trend of cheap communication. If you can transmit as often as you like, why not just send out messages arbitrarily often? As tweets are more of a creature of the internet, and not a cheaper and faster version of a pre-internet form, I assume that Twitter doesn’t feel like competition to journalists. A blog can do what traditional periodicals can and blogs also have several advantages that periodicals are just now starting to catch-up with (mostly by launching blogs). Twitter is just different and can feel like a compliment to the “Old Media”.

All that said, if you’re as skeptical of traditional media as I am, then you can read the message of the blog post I link to above and remember that blogs are still the medium that can offer what the “Old Media” either can’t or won’t provide. Help save the world, read and write blogs!

“Austin is like the oasis in zombie movies.”

There’s more to it, of course. The overall unreality of life in Austin (and also the heat) over time wears on smarter people, it seems. I know it wears on me. I’ve seen a lot of very capable programmers leave town in the three years we’ve been here and I don’t expect the outward flow to stop. Austin is a small town and has a lot to offer, especially if you like to have mindless fun. Over time, though, ambition is a liability here and the ambitious seem to recognize that.

The Archive Team is really doing good work. In addition to the actual back-ups they are making, they are also reminding us all that the web is made by actual people. Those people deserve dignity and respect and that means their web sites do, too. This video is one of the most humane things I’ve ever seen on the internet. I wish I saw more of it and I’m going to try to remember that I should show more humanity as well.

“They say their goal is to gather all the knowledge in the world in one place, but really their goal is to gather all of the people in the world and sell them.”

“Real names, they say, turn out to be the names on your driver’s license and your passport and your credit cards so that they can track you. Are you happy to be a product?”

- Don Norman on Google, via GigaOm

Google Plus is a case of Google becoming what it is. Google’s business strategy has never been dignified, but it used to be largely invisible. There are many things people will go along with, so long as we don’t have to pay too much attention to it. Google Plus provoked some people into paying more attention to Google’s strategy and now what used to be invisible is slowly becoming the dominant fact in the conventional wisdom about Google.

If you’ve been following Y-Combinator for a while, you’re probably already familiar with what Jessica says about how they work and what they do. As a thirty-something guy, I appreciate that she takes the time to clarify that they not only fund young, male hackers, but also old people like me.

I’ve read that these changes give users more control and make Facebook “better”, but all this post did was remind me that when I put my information into Facebook, Facebook makes the final decision about how it’s displayed.

We are living in a world of accelerating addictiveness and increasingly I think the only way (likely lonely, squirming, and eccentric as Paul alludes) we’ll get things done is the continuous directed practice and improvement of willpower, productivity, flow, and exercising thereof.

- Tantek Çelik, The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow

It’s an excellent essay, but it could stand to be five times as long and draw out its points with more information and analysis. I plan to spend time diving into the various wiki pages he links to later this weekend.