For those of you very few who are Michael Hoppal fans, I now have (another) new website. Meet The One-Year Tightrope: a blog about balancing life with living, e.g. business and health.
A New Venture
December 17th, 2009 by Michael Hoppal
Why Software Should Have Owners
October 7th, 2009 by Michael HoppalA brief notice: I am a huge fan of free (as in speech) software. Don’t hang me without reading this – all of this.
On the GNU Foundation’s website is an article by Richard Stallman, one of the open source movement’s more vocal celebrities, entitled Why Software Should Not Have Owners.
Stallman became somewhat of an MVP by being well-heard. His voice was one of the major so-called war drums in the movement against proprietary software, but has now become an obvious target for naysayers, due to his tendency to embellish arguments with somewhat melodramatic language. Examples are found all over the aforementioned article, including:
It’s elementary that laws don’t decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, in the 1950s, it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong.
I find this comparison – open source opponents v. racists – unnecessary. I believe it actually hurts our case, as it is no secret that those who lack logos tend to go for pathos. In Stallman’s soap-box moment, the attempt at pathos can quickly turn to bathos (For those of you who have forgotten English 102, bathos is, in Twitter form, drama turned humorous or ridiculous due to overstatement or hyperbole).
I believe software should have owners. Read more about Why Software Should Have Owners
Rule #796: Don’t Encourage Them
October 6th, 2009 by Michael HoppalAs one of my many interests, I feel etiquette and manners deserve a spot on this website. Why? Because I suck at coming up with new and interesting things to say, this blog is already all over the map in terms of topics, and because this is the first relevant thing I’ve thought to say on this blog for a while and it looks lonely. So I have begun a new series: Rules of Etiquette.
For my first entry, I have chosen rule #796, which concerns writing on the Internet and spam.
GNDETIRRTAWLS: Coining a Term
September 23rd, 2009 by Michael HoppalI was sitting with my darling and watching Family Guy last night. On this particular episode, the main characters get (Yes, Econ professor, I like MLA) into trouble, crazy hi-jinx ensue, things happen, and eventually, the family finds resolve and things return to normal. Fans right now are trying to figure out which of the hundreds of episodes I could possibly be talking about, but that’s beside the point.
I realized how many volumes it speaks about me that the high point of my day and article-inspiring material came from watching a show. So I decided to be more exciting.
And what do exciting, confident, slightly arrogant people do? They coin their own terms. I skipped the Tyra brand of crazy (Like “smize”) and went with something more practical: GNDETIRRTAWLS.
“It Was a Foot”
September 22nd, 2009 by Michael HoppalI had a marketing revelation, even though I’m not a marketer. Also, open source nerds and fans of semi-schadenfreude-tastic narrative should similarly enjoy the following post. And just for that, I’m going to make you click the link to
Saying Hello
September 19th, 2009 by Michael HoppalHello, my name is Michael, and this is my blog, where I will be totally 100% absolutely completely professional at all times. Such as.
At the time of this writing, my interests include web development, writing and editing, marketing, business, accounting (as hard as that may be to believe), and, most of all, programming.
Right now, the last one is the most important to me. You see, my ultimate goal at this point is to win a Turing award, aka “The Nobel Prize of Computers.” This goal came about a few years ago, when I first read about what it was, realized I was a nerd and should goal-set as such, and picked up my first book about programming.
While my “competition” (strictly speaking about my peers, of course) probably began programming a decade ago when Windows 98 was released. That means they’ve had a lot of time to learn. Fortunately, with the ever-changing nature of programming, that also probably means they have a lot of BASIC to un-learn.
So, dear reader, take note to revisit, for I will cover a lot here, including everything you’ve read above, as well as my quest for a job and my experiences as I begin writing my very own game engine (It should be ready in about 20 years or so, give or take).