My ideals are broad but center around a theme of libertarianism; I vote Libertarian, don't support wars unless attacked, and I value civil liberties over the Bush administration's idea of "security". Thomas Jefferson is the person I most agree with. I identify myself as a Bright but don't particularly care what I am labeled as: atheist, humanist, free-thinker, all of them describe me.
I speak French at an intermediate level and love the ideas behind Esperanto (if not the language itself). A lot of this stems from my interest in communication; I love the idea of a precise grammar and unambiguous language. I identify strongly with the French ideal of searching for le mot juste.
I can program if need be in C, Obj-C, C++ (boo), and Java. I am interested in XML-based standards (like the Resource Description Framework) and wish they were used more often. Speaking of such, I support the OASIS OpenDocument format and dislike Microsoft's cruftyOOXML. I like software licensed under the GPL or LGPL but I don't view closed-source software as "wrong".
I bought an iBook in 2004 and fell in love with Mac OS X. So many good ideas are collected in one operating system that it's a pleasure to use. I was even happier to discover that most of the ideas I loved in OS X (Services menu, the Dock, Bundles, Objective-C, Property lists, a logical filesystem hierarchy, ad infinitum) were inherited from NEXTSTEP, and thus could be found in GNUstep. I dream of a full-fledged GNUstep distro as the best computing environment.
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