We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

The good, the bad and the ugly

We have belatedly started adding additional links to a great many interesting blogs in the Samizdata.net sidebar (31 added so far today). More will be added later tonight as well as culling a few inactive ones.

Samizdata technical problems

As you may have noticed, Samizdata has been having technical problems for the last two days.

We are looking for new hosting arrangements but we have just put a short term ‘fix’ in place which should get us up and running for now, so do not fear, we are not about to go belly-up!

Hopefully normal output will resume shortly!

We are back!

Our faithful readers may have noticed that Samizdata.net was down. Hopefully, the problem is fixed now and we shall be blogging our hearts out… from a critically rational libertarian perspective, obviously.

Some of us have also joined the ranks of warbloggers at The Command Post as we collectively surf the breaking news.

Click for on-target news

An eerie hush…

As the London based Samizdatistas are meeting for a booze up at the Black Widow Pub on Gloucester Road this evening, there may be a lack of new articles tonight.

Christmas supper is nigh!

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Saddam-free New Year!

Merry Christmas

Season’s greetings to all our readers from all of us at Samizdata.net!

Computer woes

Two of my blog-colleagues are struck down with computer-related grief.

Natalie Solent, who has been unable to blog since last Saturday, has asked Samizdata.net to pass on to as many of her regular readers as we can reach that she has not abandoned them on purpose, but has been wrenched away from them, by an attempt to upgrade from Windows Complicated to Windows Even More Complicated which has proved to be very complicated indeed. But she will be back, just as soon as it’s all sorted.

And if you’re wondering why it’s techno-moron me telling you this rather than Perry de Havilland, well as you may have guessed already from his recent blog-silence, he too is having computer-related troubles, this time involving a hardware failure. It isn’t going to be too expensive (it’s one of the small connecting boxes rather than the big box itself which has collapsed), but the problem is proving to be time consuming, while Perry queues with other afflicted souls for the services of his computer-guru. He too is doing all he can to get back on line.

Be Prepared

Yes, I was briefly an Explorer Scout… but that’s not what I’m writing about.

Given the article posted by Natalie I think Samizdata needs to think ahead of the Statist curve. I too find this so far beyond my worst nightmares that I am near speechless – or whatever one calls the blogged word.

If anyone out there has their own server on a high bandwidth link and could work with Samizdata.net to set up a mirror and in the worst case scenario, free hosting, it would be much appreciated.

Here, for the Infidels, I repeat The Holy Word of The Goddess Liberty, (Praised be Her Name!) which I Worship above All Others and whose Word is not respected in the UK:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

– US 1st Amendment

So take this Tranzi Scum!:

Victory to Israel! Hang Saddam! Shoot the Guantanamo terrorists! A HARM in every Al Qaeda’s SUV! Nuke the Chechens! The only good al Qaeda is a Dead al Qaeda.

Thank you for your kind patience.

Ground control to Instapundit…

In case anyone else has noticed… there seems to be a failure of DNS for Glenn Reynolds Instapundit. The company “DNS Services” seems to not be answering queries. He is still reachable by IP

I wonder if he realizes it… HEY GLENN, IF YOU FLUSH YOUR LOCAL CACHE YOU MIGHT LOSE TOUCH WITH YOUR SERVER!!!

Later… 0400 GMT: All seems well again over at Instapundit.

Men At Work

Our Debian Linux-based server is undergoing a software update this afternoon (GMT) so please excuse us if any problems arise. Remote system upgrades are always “interesting” affairs.

Time passes…

All clear. Other than one near disaster with a critical library that got automatically de-installed when it shouldn’t, all seems to have gone smoothly.

Sudden lack of bloggage

Due to the Libertarian Alliance conference in London, there will be rather less posted on Samizdata until Monday.

New! Improved!

We updated to a newer release of Movable Type around 1800 GMT today. If you commented on something around that time and it was lost during the shuffle, please accept our apologies!