Can you propose an alternative? I'm considering converting my blog to a static site with Octopress/Jekyll and need a commenting mechanism. I dislike Disqus as a user, but I know of no self-hosted alternative.

What's wrong with Disqus?

One disadvantage is since the comments are inserted with Javascript, certain robots have a hard time parsing them.

Other disadvantages:

You're handing over control of your user base to a third party. Some people don't like Disqus tracking them all over the web.