Derailment
A Train Of Thought That Jumped The Track

I love the Fail Blog, as my wife can attest. I particularly like the grammar- and spelling-related entries, like this one. I'd also add one of my own pet peeves, apostrophes for noun plurals. This goes far beyond the classic "it's/its" that many people get wrong. I'm talking about using apostrophes to make all kinds of other things plural, like Oreo's or Wednesday's. Where do people get this idea? I never saw it when I was in high school (at least, as far as I can remember.) I first heard of it during a news writing course in college and ever since I notice it everywhere.

Today I gave a technical presentation at the $DAYJOB about ZFS. ZFS rocks my world. As a sysadmin, I use it literally every day, and have been since it debuted in Solaris 10 more than 2 years ago. It makes data storage simple yet powerful. I wanted to share what I've learned, and why I think ZFS is so cool.

Slides

Ed Felten's latest post on his "Freedom to Tinker" blog, entitled What's the Cyber in Cyber-Security?, looks at the roots of the prefix "cyber" that has become ubiquitous in the public mind. I love finding out the origins of terms that we all take for granted and about which we don't usually think in depth. Thanks, Ed.

Ben Franklin's famous quote about liberty versus safety frames Bruce Schneier's latest column for Wired, in which he sums up post-9/11 politics as a false dichotomy between security and privacy. As is typical for Bruce's writing, it is full of links to supporting information and is well worth your time to explore.

We do indeed have a reason to be terrified in this country-- we should be terrified that our republic may well be undone by the very government that exists to safeguard it. As long as we're quoting 18th-century luminaries, I'll add another favorite. In a 1783 speech to the House of Commons, Prime Minister William Pitt said:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

I couldn't agree more.

Where's my jetpack?

Happy 2008. We're a little behind, you know. We're supposed to be going to Jupiter by 2010. As it stands, we might make it to Mars in my lifetime. Apparently we're too busy with all the other pressing matters before us.