Tread lightly on the things of earth

I realized today ~anyone can experience the benefits of version control without needing a webhosting account. Because an account at Unfuddle.com provides your own Subversion repository — to which you have unfettered http access — as one piece of even their low-end free account. (Granted, the free account is constrained to 15MB storage.)

Of course, for people already knowledgeable about version control and full-service webhosting, this is no big deal. But I notice there are lots of people for whom version control of everyday documents is a new idea, and who’d have no idea how to begin even if they wanted to. This opens the door immediately.

I encountered Unfuddle for the first time today; for collaborative project management, it’s hugely compelling AFAICT. I just observe their generous provision of a Subversion repository to anyone who asks is beneficial all by itself.

Backstory: The handful of Windows users to whom I’ve shown the benefits of version control — especially Windows-integrated version control via the excellent (and also free) graphical client TortoiseSVN — have said, Dude, this is one of the most powerful tools you’ve ever turned me on to.

A little later …
I see that as of Sept. 26, 2006, another free starter Subversion hosting account is available from myVersionControl (announcement):

The outcome of all of this is that we are proud to be able to offer to everyone a fully featured subversion hosting account. All the features of the pay accounts are available, the only caveat being that you are restricted to a total file size of 4mb.

And of course, several other players also offer for-pay full-service Subversion hosting sans a free starter offering:

• Versionshelf (offers 30-day free trial)
• CVSDude [ah, I see provides 2MB storage for free]
• Wush.net

Disclaimer: I’ve always hosted my own version control tools (Subversion, SVK, Mercurial) so I can’t say I’m recommending any of these providers based on first-hand experience. I have however signed up for the free Unfuddle and myVersionControl plans to evaluate for future use and recommendation to others.

Concerning passage of yesterday’s U.S. torture legislation, a Friend whom I respect wrote —

You are, so long as this law is on the books, now in a dictatorship.

No deep thought is required to recognize he’s right:

If one person, or a small group of persons, can accuse then torture anyone he or she chooses and/or put the accused person in prison indefinitely without provision for due process under the law, then the result is indistinguishable from a dictatorship.

Think about what’s happened apart from its serious ethical, moral, and Constitutional implications. Look at it practically:

As an engineer, if I build an electrical, mechanical, or process flow system with a glaring single point of failure — as, in this case, hinging everything on the discernment and judgment of one human being, every one of whom is subject to error — then I’ll be drummed out of the engineering profession. And appropriately so: when any system depends on one breakable link to function, that link will eventually break. And when it does, the power grid fails, the bridge falls, the plane is misrouted to Fargo — or falls out of the sky.

Put another way:
In any complex system on which lives depend, wherein failure means fatal, there must always be failsafe upon failsafe upon failsafe. This legislation strips away all the failsafes.

If our democracy is to survive, this legislation cannot stand.

Resources:

• Senate Approves Broad New Rules to Try Detainees
• Rushing Off a Cliff, editorial listing bill’s flaws
• Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New Bill
• U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes on S. 3930
• S. 3930, Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PDF), Senate bill “to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes”

2006-10-19 update:
Mr. Bush signed this act into law on Tuesday, October 17, 2006.

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley reminds of James Madison’s alternative imagery about our system of government to mine about broken engineering design:

OLBERMANN: Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?

TURLEY: It does. And it’s a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn’t rely on their good motivations.

Now we must.

I remain surprised at the overlap between Calvin-influenced Protestant Christians for whom “the depravity of man [who is therefore dependent on God’s grace]” is a central doctrine — a doctrine I understand and am significantly influenced by — and those who support the party who supports this notion that the depraved human being — that is, any human being, present or future — occupying the office of President of the United States is immune from error.

Powerhouse commentary. Keith Olbermann delivers a tour de force comment on this loss of habeas corpus on the Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Countdown (alternate Quicktime version here).

I expect this video to achieve historical significance in future years in future classrooms. Well worth seeing now.

Wow, watching Keith Olbermann’s special comment tonight [“Are YOURS the actions of a true American?”] <deep breath> I felt for the first time in years <hairs standing on end> that the nuclear warhead of truth has finally been detonated inside the alien mothership.

What happens next is the slow-motion annihilation of this ship of death, its fiery chunks falling to earth, the sun washing the sky of its brooding malevolence, and just in the nick of time.

On the one hand, after year upon grinding year, saying this out loud now sounds like unwarranted hope. OTOH what I experienced during this comment I experienced viscerally, and to me an unconscious whole-body response like this reveals more has happened than just words being spoken.

PastorDan has it right about today’s U.S. torture legislation, “a Republican deal on terrorism trials and interrogations [that] would give President Bush wide latitude to interpret standards for prisoner treatment” (CBS News).

What is happening on Capitol Hill today is plainly evil. …
Anyone — anyone — who accommodates torture takes part in evil. That might not make us all equally responsible, but it does make us all guilty.

Yes: Torture is evil. This legislation is evil. Illegal, immoral, evil. There is no excuse for torture under any circumstance. There is no defense before God for accepting it.

For each of us, this is not a Republican/Democrat thing. It’s not a conservative/liberal thing. This is a human thing: are we, or aren’t we?

Unless we turn, all of us now, this spiritual cancer is going to kill us.

EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL EVIL.

God, help us turn from this evil. God, forgive us for being its host.

In response to yesterday’s Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) action message, The Senate Can Stop Torture, which points out that

Congress is in a bind. Many members of Congress are opposed to any legislation that would condone torture, secret prisons, or other programs that would undermine U.S. security, and violate the moral principles on which this nation was founded. But members of Congress are under pressure because the president is arguing that these techniques are necessary for the defense of the United States. Hearing from their constituents now could help them resolve this dilemma and do the right thing.

I respond, with full resolve, by writing my senators:

Dear Sen. _____:

I oppose torture with every ounce of Jesus-led spirit in me.

Therefore please do not vote to further U.S. use of torture, or to water down its definition, or to retroactively justify its illegal use in any way.

In fact, please act forcibly against torture — against every form of brutal, inhuman, and degrading treatment — and against use of secret prisons.

Very little in the world is black or white, but this is:

NO TORTURE.
NO EXCEPTIONS.

Thank you.

(FCNL is a “Quaker lobby in the public interest,” founded in 1943.)