The reactions to my posting on the economic case against the GPL reminded me yet again why failure to understand basic economics often becomes more toxic in people who think they understand a bit about the subject. In this mini-essay, I’ll take a look at the most important (and misleading) of the superficially clever arguments [...]

I’m installing the WordPress IntenseDebate plugin. Commenting may have glitches for an hour or two, after which will have plenty of new features including comment threading and reply by email..

In a recent O’Reilly interview, Richard Stallman utters an anathema against software-as-a-service arrangements, calling them “non-free” and saying “you must not use it!” It would be easy to parody RMS’s style of uttering grave moralistic sonorities as though he were the Pope speaking ex-cathedra, but I’m going to resist the temptation because I think [...]

Is open-source development a more efficient system of software production than the closed-source system? I think the answer is probably “yes”, and that it follows the GNU GPL is probably doing us more harm than good.

It is quite difficult to get banned from commenting on my blog, but some – I think a grand total of about four out of a number of commenters well into the thousands over the last seven years – have managed it. With sufficient hard work and dedication, you too can join this select group.

OK, this is big news. A research team has worked out a way to nearly triple the efficiency of the Fischer-Tropsch process.

In a 2002 blog entry, Imperialists by necessity?, I wrote:

There is precedent [for civilizing barbarians by force]; the British did a pretty good job of civilizing India and we did a spectacularly effective one on Japan. And the U.S. would be well equipped to do it again; our economy is now so large that we [...]

A friend directed me to a comment thread over at the Volokh Conspiracy, a blog I occasionally read and considerably respect. The response I ended up writing is substantial enough that I think it’s worth posting here.