Open source means not stopping

This recent Coding Horror column by Jeff Atwood expands on a Joel Spolsky discussion, where it’s pointed out good programmers program cause they love it, not because of the pay or anything else.  I’d take that discussion a step farther and use open source programming as an example; people do it because they want to; because they don’t want to stop thinking about solving problems even when they aren’t at work.

There’s a parallel here that I’ll make between programming and ‘normal’ art; artists and designers do the same thing when they get home too.

Lots of new code

So much that I’m doing bullet points:

BSDTalk 168: iXsystems and an anniversary

BSDTalk has apparently hit 3 years!  An excellent milestone.  Oh, and the latest version is an 17-minute interview with Michael Lauth, the iXsystems CEO.

iXsystems is working on a “BSD Laptop“, which is an interesting idea; it was hinted at during one of Will Backman’s live podcasts from NYCBSDCon, I think it was.  My first reaction to the idea is to think “Oh, you can just buy any laptop for that”.  My second reaction is to look at the 3 laptops in the room with me that can’t quite boot any BSD flavor, and change my mind.

@Play Pixel Journeys: dnd

The GameSetWatch column Pixel Journeys, by the same fellow who writes the @Play columns I often link to, has a writeup about dnd, an early role-playing game (but kind of a roguelike!) I’ve never heard of on a computer system I’ve never heard of.   Just reading about gives me that wierd feeling like the first time I encountered VMS.