Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

How many movies do you own?

2012-01-19T08:15:00.001-06:00

Here's a magic trick. I can guess how many movies you own, without even knowing you.

Ready?

The answer: you don't "own" any.

But, I can hear you saying, I've got shelves full of movies. DVDs, Blu rays, even couple of boxes of old VHS tapes sitting in the garage.

Oh yeah? Well the next time you sit down to watch that old tape of Rocky Horror Picture Show, sit all the way through past the credits until the copyright notice comes up. It will read something like this:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: The copyright proprietors have licensed the material contained in this video-cassette for private and domestic use only and any other use or reproduction in whole or in part including the making of copies of the material or causing it to be transmitted to subscribers to a diffusion service or selling, letting or hire or other-wise dealing with it in whole or in part is strictly prohibited.

Seems you don't "own" it - you've been granted a license.

What's the difference?

A license grants you permission to do something - in the case of our tape, to watch it. At home. You don't have permission to watch it in your church basement, show it to patrons of your bar, make backup copies. If this was a DVD, you also wouldn't have permission to rip it to a file you could put on your tablet, smart phone or computer. Because you don't own it.

At least you can't do it legally.

If I own something, I can pretty much do whatever the hell I want to. If I want to spray-paint my car Day-Glo orange, I can do that. If I want to pull the radio out and install a CD player instead, I can.

Why can't I do that with the movie I bought last week? It's because even though I gave BestBuy $10, and got a case with a disk in it, I only own the physical object. I don't own what's on it.

Ask Lamar Smith what the hell that's all about.

The Internet was dark today

2012-01-18T22:05:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking.

What the hell indeed.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media.

Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means).

Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet.

In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website critical of it, can claim that using the company name is a violation of copyright and (without due process) have the site silenced. Absurd you say? We've already seen a long string of DCMA-related takedowns based on the flimsiest of legal logic.

It also allows judges to order websites be blocked and that requests to the site be inspected. That's *your* requests. It fundamentally changes the way the underlying technology works. Considering how well Congress works, do you really want to let them decide how the Internet works?

As Cory Doctorow put it, all to prevent someone from downloading the latest Ashton Kutchner movie.

Cory Doctorow explained what it was *really* about in a recent lecture entitled "The Coming War on General Computation." Here it is on YouTube:

Rather read it? There's a transcript available, too.

This may be the money quote:

And on the network side, attempts to make a network that can't beused for copyright infringement always converges with the surveillancemeasures that we know from repressive governments. So, SOPA, the U.S. StopOnline Piracy Act, bans tools like DNSSec because they can be used to defeatDNS blocking measures. And it blocks tools like Tor, because they can beused to circumvent IP blocking measures. In fact, the proponents of SOPA,the Motion Picture Association of America, circulated a memo, citingresearch that SOPA would probably work, because it uses the same measures asare used in Syria, China, and Uzbekistan, and they argued that thesemeasures are effective in those countries, and so they would work inAmerica, too!

My Libertarian friends finally got wind of this -- and that's good -- but they don't fully get it. They think this is just about the government encroaching on them. And while that's technically correct, in all their Libertarian Free Market daze, they've conveniently forgotten that it's a slice of Corporate America who's pushing for this piece of shit.

The good news is this issue has finally gained enough attention that our Elected Officials who put forth this turd have started back-pedaling their initial support, and are busily pontificating on how Piracy Is Bad, but This Legislation May Go Too Far.

Nice work, fellas.

Fear not, once the hubbub dies down the Forces of Evil will start working their lists again. Want to do something? Go to the EFF and sign their on-line petition.

As written in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, Congress is empowered

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Notice it says "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," not "to guarantee the ability of corporations to maximize profit."

My 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-02T14:35:00.000-06:00

Now that 2011 has come and gone, I've decided to take some time before heading back to work to come up with some New Year's resolutions for 2012. I've never had much luck in the past with keeping resolutions, so my first resolution is to only resolve to do things that I stand half a chance of achieving. That being said...

I resolve to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year. This sounds hard but isn't. What's hard is keeping it off. Amazon's MP3 store has a slew of weigh-loss auto-suggestion audio files which you listen to while going to sleep at night. I managed to lose about 10 pounds before the holidays doing this - time to get back on track.

I resolve to paint more. I've got a MFA in painting, and these days I hardly ever pick up a brush. To go along with that...

I resolve to clean out my studio and keep it clean. This means getting rid of a ridiculous amount of crap that currently live in my studio. The problem is that I'm a world class pack rat and I'm easily distracted -- a bad combo. The fact that a large percentage of my art has my personal clutter as subject matter doesn't help, either.

I resolve to write more. Writing blog posts doesn't count. A few years ago I wrote a novel (someday I'll self-publish it as an eBook). Since then I've made several starts on another but never got too far. This is the year for Book Two. I may even start going back to the writer's group I used to belong to.

I resolve to blog more regularly. This is in addition to starting a new novel. I tend to go in spurts with my blogging, and am not very disciplined, and when I do write something, more often then not it's a rant. No more rants. We'll see how long that lasts. Just to make it tougher...

I resolve not to argue about politics. The world is full enough as it is of opinionated blowhards. It being an election year, this one will be especially challenging. If I can't resist the urge to blog about something of a political nature, I further resolve to resist the urge to be rabidly partisan. And I'll avoid posting comments elsewhere altogether.

...So there you are. I'm set for failure!

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T13:11:00.001-06:00

Traditionally songs about Thanksgiving focus on the harvest and gathering of family: "Come Ye Thankful People Come," "We gather together," and so on.

Today, families are often far-flung and distant. This is the first year neither of my two sons will be coming home for Thanksgiving. The youngest is spending the holiday with a college friend in upstate New Jersey (the rural, "Garden State" part, not the petrochemical part), and the oldest is in Antarctica.

Though not really a Thanksgiving song, I've had the Beatles standard "In My Life," on my mind today; it's a song about looking back on the people we aren't with.

There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain

All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends
I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
[From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/beatles-lyrics/in-my-life-lyrics.html]
When I think of love as something new

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more

Happy Thanksgiving to you and those you hold dear.

Prominent User of the Internet, Congratulation

2011-11-07T11:07:00.001-06:00

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What to get your favorite Libertarian

2011-11-07T06:56:00.000-06:00

I noticed where the recent production of "Atlas Shrugged, Part 1," will be released on DVD and Blu ray tomorrow. Get ready to relive the excitement of the first third of Ayn Rand's colossal door stop again and again. Since I never saw it, (nor plan to), I'm hardly qualified to offer up any meaningful criticism. I'll leave that to the good reviewers on Amazon's website.

Not unsurprisingly, fans are once again using this a forum to accuse the professional critics who panned this epic of all sorts of dastardly liberal bias (imagine that). They've racked up the ratings to an average 4 stars (out of 5). Sample comment:

"The movie is well made - the quality is actually quite good. Acting was generally good to excellent. Camera work was good; although the low budget resulted in a missing camera angle here and there. Special effects were consistently well done.

The story, of course, is exceptional; and it is well-told in this movie."

Hmm...if you say so.

This is, of course, the first of 3 planned parts. It remains to be seen whether parts 2 and 3 will go straight to video. No word yet on when we can expect them. The good news here is that part 1 is only 97 minutes long.

Since Ayn Rand was famously an atheist, I'm not sure this is exactly an appropriate Christmas present, but that's your problem, not mine.

Child's Song - Tom Rush

2011-11-04T23:51:00.001-05:00

A couple of decades ago I was noodling around on my guitar and remembered a lick from a song my old high school buddy Chuck Niebling used to play. It had a lilting, slightly melancholy sound. The lyrics (I can never remember words) had something to do with leaving home. That's all I could recall about it.

I've played that 24 bar phrase on and off ever since; searching through the repertoires of every obscure and not so obscure 60's and 70's folkie I could think of -- to no avail. I've been totally stumped ... until today.

I was listening to a new download I'd gotten from Amazon featuring Jorma Kaukonen and David Bromberg (highly recommended, by the way) and was struck by a tune Bromberg sang. I went back to Amazon to check out some of his other CDs, clicked on a selection and --- OMG! MY MYSTERY SONG!

It was called "Child's Song," and was written by Canadian Murray McLaughlin.

More research revealed the version my friend Chuck had performed was by Tom Rush (I knew it!). Tom Rush, for those of you who have no gray in your beards, was one of the first wave of singer/songwriter folk artists who emerged in the early 1960's.

After listening I found out I had actually remembered the guitar part almost verbatim - even capoing up several frets.

I've got 2 sons, one a junior in college 1500 miles away, the other a recent graduate and on the other side of the globe. I think the reason I hadn't found this song before today was that it wasn't time for me to find it.

Enjoy. And if you're my age, have kids and get weepy listening to it, know that I'm a weepy old bastard, too.

Note: I hope I'm half as cool as Tom Rush when I'm 70.

Google Music

2011-10-22T12:47:00.000-05:00

I'd gotten an invite for Google Music a month or two ago but hadn't done much with it until recently. The other day I logged in again and started playing with it again. Here's a few notes for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

Here's the short version: Google Music is cloud-based music streaming service, which you can use to upload (I hesitate to say "store" for reasons I'll describe later) and playback MP3s. You get to store 20,000 files, apparently regardless of size. Right now it's in Beta with limited availability (get in line and wait for an invite). It's similar to what Amazon recently launched and what Apple seems to hope iCloud will be.

I don't want to call this "cloud storage," because, although you can upload music to play back, there's no way to natively download it - so you won't be using it to back up your music collection. So far it's a one-way street. That being said, I've seen a couple of Chrome plug-ins that will let you download your music, one...song...at...a...time. This needs to change - and soon.

Unlike Apple and Amazon, you can't buy music from Google - yet - but there's speculation that this is on its way. I would expect once they are selling music there will be provision to download it, or else this service is going to be pretty short-lived.

At this time, you can download an Android app for playback but no iPhone app, at least not from Google. Given the current lack of love between Google and Apple (and the fact this goes head-to-head against iCloud) I doubt we'll be seeing one anytime soon. The web app, though spartan in design, does an okay job on my iPhone and iPad. Still, with bandwidth caps on data plans, the whole notion of cloud players seems to have arrived a the party a little too late.

Back to the service itself.

Uploading music is done with a "Music Manager" application: you install it, tell it where your music lives, then let it start moving files. The good news: there are versions for Windows, MacOSX as well as .deb and .rpm based Linux distributions. Since I store my music on an Ubuntu Linux box, I went with the .deb version. It installed cleanly and easily.

Be forewarned, if you have a lot of music files, the upload process is going to take a while. I've got around 7,000 (lot's of free samplers from Amazon MP3 store) and after a day, I had about 1,000 moved over. You can set the bandwidth limit so as not to clog your broadband connection.

If you don't feel like spending a week or so uploading your files, you can populate your collection from a number of free files Google has made available. Don't scoff - there is some very good stuff in there, spanning a broad range of musical tastes. Besides it's free - try something you normally wouldn't listen to. To get a feel for what they are giving out, go to their Magnifier blog. There's also info about the Music Beta.

The browser interface used to manage your files is vintage Google design: clean and simple. You can view/sort by Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres, and New/Recent. You can also create playlists, auto playlists (based on rating or newly added), and "Instant Mixes," where you seed the playlist with a song and it generates a list, much like Pandora.

I haven't used iCloud, but compared to the Amazon Cloud-player, the interface seems a little rough around the edges. Also, with Amazon, you can store your purchase in their cloud storage AND download them. Not being able to download as well as upload seems a distinct failing for Google Music.

Still, this is the Beta phase, so I'm expecting a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking as time goes on. Google has a history of throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. Time will tell whether bandwidth caps on broadband and smartphone data plans kill this one.

A short editorial on the Martini

2011-10-17T06:57:00.001-05:00

Woot has a short video editorial on the subject of Martinis, to which I say, as a confirmed Martini drinker, "A - freaking - men."

Preach on, brother Beetle!

Dennis Ritchie -- the godfather of modern programming languages

2011-10-14T14:57:00.001-05:00

Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8, at age 70. Most people will say "huh," upon hearing his name. I'd argue he had a much greater influence on modern computing than the late Steve Jobs.

He developed C, the most widely used programming language in the world, while working at Bell Laboratories in the late 60's. He still has a home page at Bell Labs. While originally written to be used to create the Unix operating system (which Ritchie also developed, along with Ken Thompson), C is now used for writing software for computers, embedded devices, smart appliances, cellphones, consumer goods - everything from operating systems to applications to device drivers to...well, you name it. The beauty of C is that it can be compiled for any number of different platforms.

C gave rise to an number of variations and spin offs - C+, C++ (I'm not making this up) as well as directly and indirectly influencing the structure and syntax of a host of other modern programming languages, such as Java, PHP, Python, Perl, to name but a few. Without the C programming language there may well have been no Apple, much less iPhone. Steve Jobs would probably have been selling cars for a living.

Ritchie was the author (along with Brian Kerighan) of The C Programming Language (aka "K & R"), a thin volume first published in 1978 which is still in use. My youngest (the computer science major) used K & R as a textbook.

The Unix operating system (another of Dr Ritchie's great contributions) has also given rise to a number of offspring, most notably Linux, and is the underlying core OS of the Mac OS X operating system.

Dr Ritchie was honored numerous times for his advancements in the field of computing. He died after a prolonged illness - a true giant of our times.

Rest in peace, sir.

Bonus for the ubergeek: a paper Ritchie wrote a while back entitled The Development of the C Language. The photo above (circa 1972) is of Dennis Ritchie (standing) with Ken Thompson seated at the keyboard of a PDP-11.

The iOS 5 update

2011-10-13T22:25:00.001-05:00

Since I worked from home yesterday I ended up deciding it would be a good idea to upgrade my iDevices to iOS 5 the very first day it was available.

Remind me to never do that again.

Not surprisingly, everybody on this side of the space-time continuum made the same foolish choice. My first attempt to download the upgrade started by helpfully informing me it would take around 23 minute to download...then 29...then 38... Which was bad enough except when it finished, iTunes gave me a terse little error message that said, "there was a problem downloading" blah, blah.

Son of a bitch!

After several failed attempts (each longer than the last) I Googled the error message and speculated my anti-virus software was not playing nice with iTunes. Thank you Kaspersky. After disabling it I started the download process again, (it took about 90 minutes) and finally got my iPad updated. The whole process, with backing up, restoring, etc, took roughly 2 and a half to 3 hours.

Note to those who are curious: the iOS 5 upgrade is around 700 megabytes -- roughly the size of a CD.

With the upgrade of the iPad complete, I started my 3GS iPhone. Download time: 5 hours. I left it running and went to bed.

So, now that I've had about a day to play with both iPad and iPhone, here are my initial impressions.

Notification center - you can select what you want to notify you and where: out of the way at the top of the screen, on the lock screen, etc. I've got mine set up so I can flick the top of the screen and get a dropdown that shows weather conditions, stock prices, calendar entries for the day. Chat messages pop up in a bar at the top too when running in the background. This one's growing on me a bit.
iMessage center - this is turns out to be sort a cross between SMS and Blackberry messaging for the iPhone. If your contact has an iDevice and has registered and is on Wifi, this works like BBM. Otherwise, it's still the same old SMS messaging. Once some of my other friends and associated are hooked in, it may become more interesting..
Newstand - another way for Apple to sell me shit through iTunes. Yawn. If you were buying in-app subscriptions (I get WIRED this way) they may suddenly show up without warning in the Newstand.
Reminders - no way (so far) to integrate this with the Google Apps suite. It seems okay but I'm the kind of person who eventually ignores all my carefully set reminders.
Twitter - To use this it appears you have to set up the official Twitter client, which I don't particularly like. Not sure about this one. We'll see.
Camera - you can turn on a grid for compositional purposes, prefocus...sort of, and use the volume rocker as a shutter release now. Oh, and start the camera from the start screen. Double click the home button (like using iPod from the start screen) and you'll notice a camera icon near the bottom of the screen. Tap that and the camera app opens (a co-worker had to show me this today).
Photos - you can crop photos and do something they call "enhancing," which I'll be damned if I can see a difference after using. Oh, and add new albums! No longer *just* "Camera Roll." Or could you do that before? If so I never noticed. There's red-eye reduction but since my 3GS doesn't have a flash, this one's sort of pointless. You can use iCloud to store and sync photos across multiple iDevices.
Safari - tabs on the iPad, nothing on the iPhone (I could tell). One thing that's interesting is a "reader" function that pulls up a plain text presentation of what Safari thinks is the main content section. More useful than you'd think.
PC Free - since I just upgraded I don't need to upgrade again, but it sounds useful.
WiFi sync - haven't tried this.

Other news or changed stuff I didn't comment on before:

Videos - on the iPhone this has been split off from the old iPod player, which has been rebranded as...
Music - some significant changes here. Now just called "Music," with a new icon. One thing I like is the ability to stream music from iTunes to your iDevice, so you can play things from your music library that aren't necessarily on your device. If you have a lot of music but don't want to load everything you own on your iPhone this seems nice.
iTunes - music you buy from Apple automatically becomes available from your iCloud account.
iCloud - you can choose which of your applications to back up to iCloud. You get 5 GB free...with additional storage available at a relatively low cost. Warning: 5 GB goes fast. Signing up and setting up iCloud gets you an @me.com email address. Not that I much need yet another email address.
Find My Phone - this used to be only available to MobileMe users. Now that iCloud has essentially replaced this, any one can get on Find My Phone, which can be used to locate phones on linked accounts via GPS (on Google Maps), cause them to beep - even if they are set to silent, create a screen lock code remotely, and remotely wipe a lost device.

Even though I'm due a handset upgrade, I've about decided to stick with my 3GS for the short term. I may change my mind, but so far I've resisted the lure of the better camera and faster processor. As to Siri - well, it's apparently spawned a whole new category of internet humor.

A hypothetical question about the OWS protests

2011-10-11T14:25:00.001-05:00

I confess I know very little about the Occupy Wall Street protests that seem to have sprung up of late. What I do know is confined to what I picked up scanning a few headlines - a notoriously dangerous way to look for information. I don't really know what the point is (I have my suspicions), how many people are involved or exactly where the protests are taking place.

I gather that, while they may be noisy, they aren't violent - or else I'd have seen lots of headlines.

One banker is quoted as saying the protesters are, "a bunch of whiny people who are lazy or incompetent." Given Wall Street's antics over the last several years, having a banker call someone else whiny, lazy and incompetent seems the height of unintended irony.

As I was reflecting on all this, I thought of when a bunch of right wing right-to-carry protesters a couple of years back decided they needed to make their point by coming with weapons to a rally in a national park.

Let's assume, for the moment, they had every right to do this. The right wing media (FOX, etc) certainly insisted they did, as did Tea Partiers, Libertarians and more or less the entire Republican party - and I'm not going to argue otherwise.

My question is this: how would the same right wing media, Tea Partiers, Libertarians and Republicans play the story if the Occupy Wall Street protesters decide *they* would exercise their right-to-carry in front of our favorite Wall Street financial institutions? As long as they are law-abiding, right?

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Netflix to public: never mind

2011-10-10T21:22:00.000-05:00

I have to hand it to Netflix: they may be witless, but they aren't complete dunderheads. After the tidal wave of criticism from their customers and a free-falling stock price, they've figured out that just maybe they should not split the streaming and DVD-by-mail businesses asunder.

CEO Reed Hasting (how much longer will I be able to make that statement?) posted on the company blog today that:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

Bravo - that man must have an MBA.

So, again this plays out more and more like the saga of New Coke.

By the way, in case you've forgotten how that ended, Coke actually gained market by re-introducing Old Coke, er, Coke Classic. Other than looking clueless by tampering with a classic, the whole "fiasco" solidified Coke's place in the market.

So who's to say how ill-advised all this seems in the long run?

Consider: Netflix raises prices - customers bitch and talk about leaving the company. So Netflix essentially says, "Okay, we'll be two separate companies."

Suddenly all those bitching customers who made noise about using a different company are faced with the prospect of dealing with a separate/different company whether they want to or not. Separate accounts! Separate billing! Loss of all their carefully managed queues.

Oh no!!!

In my heart of hearts, I doubt Netflix management is so adept at strategizing they'd come up with something this Machiavellian. Still it's amusing to consider.

Stay tuned. There's at least one more act waiting to play out here.

The Top 100 Science Fiction And Fantasy Books

2011-10-09T11:58:00.001-05:00

My good friend, guitar-playing buddy and occasional debating partner The Whited Sepulchre posted the NPR Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Book list with annotations (I guess there is a lot of this going around) and challenged folks to do their version of the list. Despite his occasionally loathsome political opinions, the WS is extremely well-read (and now a published author!) so I found his list fascinating.

I used to read a lot of sci-fi when I was younger; not so much now. A lot of authors I enjoyed when younger I find tiresome now. Anyway, here's my list.

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm sorry - I've tried to read this probably 2 dozen times and never got any further than the first 30 pages. My first attempt was when I was 13, my last was when I was in my late 40's. Hugo Dyson, one of Tolkien's contemporaries is reported to have exclaimed: "Oh god! Not another fucking elf!"during a reading by Tolkien. I feel his pain.

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

There's a copy floating around the house one of my son's bought - someday I'll read it.

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

My wife's a librarian and has ready this - as has youngest son. But not me.

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

6. 1984, by George Orwell

Re-read this again a couple of years ago - closer to reality than we'd like to think. And all political parties (including Republican, Democrat, Tea Party and Libertarian) are guilty of the sins described. It's added countless terms to our shared vocabulary, including "Big Brother," "newspeak," and "thoughtcrime." By the way, the real title is "Nineteen Eighty-Four" - spelled out.

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

Read this years ago and enjoyed it but having re-read another of Bradbury's novels and found it a bit of a let down, I'm hesitant to risk harming the memory I have of this one. The concept is brilliant, but the irony of today is we don't need the government to destroy books, we'll do it ourselves to make room for more electronic gadgets.

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

I think I read the first two volumes but I don't remember much about it.

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Read this years ago (probably in high school). May be time to find a second hand copy.

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

Saw the movie, never read the book.

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Read this years ago (probably in high school). Easier going than Nineteen-Eighty Four, but no less pointed and pungent.

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

An entertaining read. Some claim this book launched the "cyberpunk" movement in sci-fi.

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

The recent movie was okay but the original - a graphic novel - is far superior. Dave Gibbons illustrated and the artwork is amazing. Author Alan Moore refuses to endorse any of the adaptations of his work, so yo I read tons of comic books as a kid and this fed my adult appetite. u typically won't see his name on the movie credits. To dismiss this as a comic book is criminal.

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

A series of short stories held together by a common theme, which gradually builds to a thought-provoking finale. The recent movie, while okay, did little more than recycle the title - it had nothing to do with this book, which is wonderful.

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Read this year ago, when it was sort of a hippie thing to do. Funny that the Libertarians now claim him as one of their own. Given some of the themes in other works I'd be surprised if the Tea Partiers and conservative Christian crowd would also adopt him.

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Read this in college and thought it was an amazing book (although Mother Night is still my favorite Vonnegut book).

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

This is the source material for the movie Blade Runner, which differed a great deal from the source. At the risk of pissing off fans, I'd say from purely a formal/stylistic point of view Philip K Dick is a pretty mediocre writer, but his books are so brimming with the most amazing ideas you quickly forget the quality of his writing. My favorite Dick book is A Scanner Darkly, also made in to a movie (as have a number of other of his works).

22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood

23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

Read it years ago - don't recall much about it other than it was not exactly like Kubrick's film.

25. The Stand, by Stephen King

26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Stephenson is probably one of my favorite authors these days, although his recent mega-novels are a bit much for my tastes. Snow Crash is an early work and great fun - witty, intelligent, and full of pop-culture references and just all around crazy shit. I guess you'd call it cyberpunk. Stephenson pulls in references from so many different sources it's hard to see how he pulls it off, but he does! Highly recommended.

27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

Read it years ago and enjoyed it. Like Asimov's I, Robot, it's a collection of thematically related short stories. In many ways Bradbury's short works are more satisfying to me than the longer ones (like Something Wicked This Way Comes), since his poetic style can get tiresome past a certain point.

28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

Another one I read while in college. Vonnegut can occasionally seem a little too slap-dash but this one stays on course. At his best, Vonnegut is very, very good.

29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

Read this when I lived in California several years after Kubrick's film version. A good read but I found myself constantly checking the glossary at the back of the book to follow the slang Burgess invented. "I was cured, alright!"

31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

Never read it - though experts aren't sure whether it is a paean to fascism or a parody of fascism. The movie fairly well sucked.

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

Read this years ago - a cautionary tale when monasteries are once again the caretakers of knowledge in post-atomic world where a new dark ages has arisen, and how that came to be. I remember it was full of gentle humor amidst cold-war concerns. Timely at the time of it's publication, I may need to re-read.

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

Read it years ago. The George Pal movie with Rod Taylor scared the be-jeebers out of me.

37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

Read the short story and later the expanded novelization. I remember crying the first time I read the short story.

39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings

42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

The first Neal Stephenson book I ever read, and it totally hooked me. Not quite as wildly fantastic as some of his earlier books but still -wow. It bounces back and forth between the present and WWII and finally ties the two story lines together. My libertarian friends ought to read this one.

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

Both of my sons have been huge Terry Pratchett fans, so there are lots of his books littering our household. Someday I'll have to read one.

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

See previous Pratchett comment above.

61. The Mote In God's Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

Probably my favorite of all Stephenson's novels. As is typical of his others, it's wildly inventive and entertaining. It's also got an emotional core that caught me completely by surprise. I think I read the last few chapters with tears in my eyes.

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

I re-read this a few years ago and didn't enjoy it near as much as I remember enjoying it the first time I read it. Bradbury's prose style was a little too self-consciously poetic for my taste; I found it tiresome and an effort to read.

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

A retelling of the Wizard of Oz saga from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. Thoroughly enjoyable and engaging.

81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

I love Stephenson but his later books are a little too massive for my occasionally short attention span. I have a copy of this but haven't read it yet.

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

Like some of his other books, a collection of related short-stories, which I find more enjoyable. Read it years ago.

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

RIP, Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T22:41:00.001-05:00

Just saw that Apple founder Steve Jobs passed away today. Sad but no shock, given his medical situation these last few years.

I was never much of an Apple fanboy, but there's no denying his impact on the world of computing. Facebook is currently awash with comments about his passing. I'll let others argue about his "genius," as well as his failings.

Though the Apple II and MacIntosh were groundbreaking devices, we may find that the iPhone (and its various offspring, including the iPod touch and iPad), ends up having a bigger impact on modern life, since it popularized the truly portable, hand-held personal computing device - something that could end up making desktops and laptops niche products.

A fascinating life, well-lived. The world will be a less interesting place without him.

iPhone 4S - does the S stand for "So What?"

2011-10-05T07:49:00.001-05:00

So Apple finally announced the iPhone du jour yesterday. Am I the only one out there who feels slightly underwhelmed?

Okay - these are the features most prominently displayed on the Apple website:

Faster processer - nice, but I never felt my 3GS was cripplingly slow. Meh.
Better camera - nice, but it's still a camera in a phone, with all the limitations that come with that. Slightly more compelling but still - meh.
Siri - voice commands. I tried Siri before Apple bought it and never found it all that useful. A gimmick. Note to Apple: I'm saying "meh," now - is there a command for that?
iOS5 - this is actually the most interesting thing being trumpeted as part of the new phone. Oh wait - I can get it as a free upgrade to my current phone in a few days. More on that below.
iCloud - sounds like this is an iOS5 thing. See above comment.

So I'm not seeing any reason to rush right out and replace my old 3GS. The biggest complaint I have with it is that battery life sucks. As to the iOS5 update, *that* I'm looking forward to. It is free, after all.

Just so you don't have to plow through Apple's elegant but overblown features page, here's what looks interesting (and not) about the iOS5 upgrade:

Notification center - sounds like a way of tracking in one place all those little popup reminders and things that seem to constantly be demanding your attention. Possibly useful - or not.
iMessage center - I love the text messaging feature of my iPhone. They've added it to iPod and iPad, as well as the ability to pick up conversations from one device and continue on another. My oldest son has an iPod but no phone - now I can get him in the conversation. This could be my favorite new feature.
Newstand - subscriptions to magazines! Another way for Apple to sell me shit through iTunes. Meh.
Reminders - I've got Google reminders already which I routinely ignore. Maybe useful to others - me: not so much. If I can connect it with my Google account (like I do with mail and contacts, I might be interested.
Twitter - I've already got multiple Twitter clients installed which work fine, thankyouverymuch. This ought to piss off the developers of those. Integrated with Safari, maps, photos, etc - hmm... We'll see.
Camera - this sounds like it has some useful new stuff, most of all the ability to start the camera from the lock screen. Couple that with...
Photos - some simple editing capability. I guess this make the camera hardware in the new phone more appealing. Still...
Safari - some minor improvement, including tabs on the iPad. Of course you could have had these with 3rd party browsers already. How Microsoft of you, Apple!
PC Free - now you can update without being tethered to your computer. Also: you don't need a PC to activate a new device. About time. Of course if you *do* need to sync with your PC, you can now use...
WiFi sync - this is another feature that sounds pretty useful. It's a pain in the ass to have physically connect to my computer to sync. I'd imagine there may still be times you'd need that hard-wired connection. Still, this should be good.
Airplay mirroring - if I had Apple TV this might mean something to me. As it is, not so much.

So, ignore the line for the new phone, but get ready to grab iOS5. Since I have both an iPhone and iPad, I'm looking forward to the upgrade. I think I can live without the iPhone 4S.

Free markets mean never having to say you're sorry

2011-10-02T22:43:00.002-05:00

You've got to hand it to the Koch Brothers (America's most secretive gazillionaires) - they really do believe in free markets.

I guess that's why they see no issue with selling millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism, according to a Bloomberg Markets investigation. Of course, they were careful to do this through various foreign subsidiaries they owned.

Is it okay to stab our nation in the back, as long as the Invisible Hand is holding the knife?

The Bloomberg article references numerous examples of the Kochs' general disregard for the law, including lying and outright theft of resources from federal lands (which means they are stealing from me and you). These are the people bankrolling numerous Libertarian and Tea Party organizations.Why dirty your hands when you can outsource the job?

By the way, Koch's consumer brands include Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacific LLC, which Koch owns, makes Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bath tissue. Guess it's time I found something else to wipe my ass with.

Jerry "Mr. Peppermint" Haynes

2011-09-27T09:01:00.001-05:00

Long before Mr Rogers made the scene, Mr. Peppermint entertained (and educated) the small fry of North Texas.

I note with sadness that Jerry Haynes, who created and played that character, passed away yesterday at age 84 of complications from Parkinson's disease. He started the role in 1961 on WFAA (the ABC affiliate for the area), wearing a red and white striped jacket and straw hat, and carrying a candy-striped cane. I was in first grade at the time.

As was the fashion at the time, he had a collection of stock characters, mostly puppets; the one I remember best was Mr. Wiggly Worm - performed by Haynes by sticking his finger up through the hole in the bottom of the box in which Mr. Wiggly Worm lived. Simple but amusing to us, his audience.

Wikipedia notes that through a quirk of fate and timing, Jerry Haynes was the first person to report the assassination of John F Kennedy on local news.

Haynes was born and raised in Dallas, graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School and trained as an actor in New York. In addition to playing Mr. Peppermint, he appeared in numerous films and television shows over the years, most produced in North Texas. He played minor roles in RoboCop (1987) and Boys Don't Cry (1999).

I bet you didn't know Jerry Haynes was also the father of Gibby Haynes, lead singer for the band The Butthole Surfers.

Rest in peace, Mr. Peppermint.

In which Google+ Blesses Me

2011-09-24T11:23:00.000-05:00

Okay - update to my unfortunate brush with the Google+ Identity Police.

My "old" identity, "Dr Ralph," did not past muster. Having read the reports of how Google+ was cracking down on fictitious identities, it came as no real surprise to discover they'd finally sniffed me out and suspended my Google profile, although the Gmail account associated with the account was untouched.

They *did* offer me an opportunity to edit my profile to come up with something less overtly fake. Amazingly, "Post Ralphaelite," was good enough (this is also the ID that Facebook found acceptable).

So I'm back.

Busted by the Google+ Identity Police

2011-09-20T20:59:00.001-05:00

Well, I suspected this would happen when I started hearing about Google+'s "Identity Policy." Boiled down, it says users must use their real name or a name they use in everyday life on their Google+ profile.

Yeah, well that's not going to happen here. Do you think I'm out of my mind?

So, for the record "Dr Ralph" did not meet their standard for real names. Am I surprised? Not particularly.

To their credit, Google does give you a chance to edit your profile so as to meet their standards. We'll just see if "Post Ralphaelite" passes muster. I have a feeling it may take several passes before I wiggle past their Identity Cop. For the record, Facebook didn't like "Dr Ralph," either.

Stay tuned.

Google+: now you don't need friends to join

2011-09-20T15:47:00.001-05:00

For the past 3 months or so, you needed an invitation from an existing member to join Google+. Not that this was much of a problem - there were numerous on-line presences that would extend an invite to anyone who emailed them and asked for one. A few enterprising souls attempted to sell them on eBay. Still, "by invitation only" gave the service the cachet of pseudo-exclusivity, much like Facebook in the early days.

No more!

Google announced on the Official Google Blog that, among the many other numbered improvements they've added, invitations are no longer required.

Take that, Facebook.

Most of the other improvements announced centered around the Hangout feature, which I've never used. By the way, my Google+ profile is shown on the right sidebar of the blog (at least until they catch wind of the fuzziness of my actual identity). Update: I've been busted by the Identity Police!

Netflix: suicide by stupidity

2011-09-20T13:29:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, Netflix was touted as a case study in the emerging world of dot-com startups.

Now it's an object lesson.

In case you've missed the drama, Netflix, not satisfied with pissing off its customer base by splitting its DVD-by-mail and streaming subscription services (net result: nearly doubling the cost for both services), continues its campaign by announcing the two services will be split into two distinct companies, with separate billing and customer accounts. If you were a Netflix customer and hadn't dropped one or the other service in the wake of the price boost, this will likely do the trick.

For those of you out there who were never customers, here's a little background. Netflix launched its original DVD-by-mail service in 1997 using a traditional $4 per rental model. By 1999, they'd moved to a subscription service that featured unlimited rentals without due dates or shipping fees (the different tiers of service revolved around how many disk at a time you could receive). Part of being a subscriber was building the queues of discs you wanted to see, and rating the discs you'd already seen.

Initially, streaming ("Watch Instantly") was thrown in for free. The available titles were but a small subset of the collection. We had the absolute cheapest level of service for a while - $5 a month - which included just 2 rentals a month and a fixed number of hours of streaming (I forget how many - few enough there was bitching in the household).

Fast forward to recent times.

After dropping the cheapest plans and jacking up the cost of the rest of the DVD-by-mail plans (all of which still included unlimited streaming), in July, Netflix announced (*TADA*) they were splitting streaming and by-mail plans. The cheapest plan (which we were on) was $9.99 a month before the split. After the spilt, it was $7.99 for DVDs and $6.99 for streaming, which meant the cost of the full service had jumped from $10 to $16 a month.

The video watching world howled its disapproval.

Subscriber numbers dropped by 4% (around 600,000 household), and their stock price fell by 45%.

Now, not content to merely shoot themselves in the foot, they've shot the other foot by announcing they are going to completely split the streaming and by-mail operations into two separate companies. Co-Founder and CEO Reed Hastings rolled out this news in an email to subscribers and a blog post entitled "An Explanation and Some Reflections," which starts out,

I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming, and the price changes.

Uh, Reed - you don't know the half of it. And this was before you announced your plans to split the companies. For some truly scorching feedback, scroll to the comments at the end of his article.

This whole thing is not without its share of rich ironies. Because they've decided the "Netflix" name will be retained for the streaming business, the old DVD business will be rebranded as "Qwikster." Unfortunately for the whole Social Media thing, the Twitter handle "Qwikster" is already occupied (sample Tweet: "Ima about mad as shyt I hit my head wit this wrench at my bros House haha n instead of being concerned he laughs :I wat a bro").

Whoops!

Perhaps a more ominously looming shadow is the fact that broadband ISPs have been moving to cap the bandwidth of formerly unlimited bandwidth accounts (I'm talking about you, AT&T). Streaming video is only attractive when there's no meter on internet service.

One can only assume this great divide was done with an eye to selling the DVD part of the business as quickly as possible. Why else tear a recognized brand name off of a venture that's going to need all the help it can get? I'd be willing to bet someone down the line is going to pick up this piece of the business for a song, but it may not be the next owner.

Before making these last couple of changes, Reed Hastings might have found it instructive to review the case study of the fiasco known as New Coke. He's about to replace it in business textbooks.

Zotera - browser tool for researchers

2011-09-15T11:50:00.001-05:00

Mozilla (who produces, among other things, the open source Firefox web browser) is running a promotion for "4 Tools for Back to School."

Among them is the browser extension Zotero, which is used to collect, manage and cite on-line research resources. It is a product of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, where Youngest Son is a Junior Computer Science major. Kudos to the team that produced it and congratulations for the deserved recognition - it is a very slick tool. Read more about Zotero at the Zotero site.

If you've never visited the Center for History and New Media website, check it out - Zotero is but one of many useful tools to be found there for historians, educators and scholars.

9/11 - Ten years later

2011-09-11T14:44:00.001-05:00

The word "anniversary" doesn't feel right - anniversaries are something I associate with joy.

I don't feel qualified to make any profound observations or pontificate on the significance of today. I'll leave that to others.

Instead, let me point you to a piece in the New York Times entitled "Mom's Last Lesson," written by a friend who lost his brother at the Pentagon that day.

Today's Doonesbury pretty much nailed it, too.

For the record, I'm leaving my TV off today, too. I rewatched that horrible footage way more than was healthy when it first aired.

Hugh Laurie is the Man

2011-09-10T12:56:00.002-05:00

If you know British actor Hugh Laurie primarily from his hit TV show House, you may be unaware of his previous role on the BBC production of "Jeeves and Wooster," based on the stories of P. G. Wodehouse (both the TV series and the books they were based on are hilarious).

Laurie was a comic genius in these, but he also displayed his musical talents, performing (in character as Bertie Wooster) novelty songs of the era. I was always left wanting just a little more.

I want no more!

The multi-talented Mr Laurie has released a CD entitled Let Them Talk inspired by his love of New Orleans blues. It is great stuff!!! I downloaded it from the Amazon MP3 store (my favorite source of downloaded music these days) and am marveling at the goodness of it all. He sings, plays guitar and piano, and is joined by a number of outstanding guests, such as Dr. John and Tom Jones. Hit his website for more info and some downloads.

Here's a sampling to give you a taste (I own a mahogany Martin like the one he's wailing on.

In case you were deprived of his performance as Bertie Wooster, here's Mr Laurie in his younger, pre-House days. The man's a freaking genius!

Obama FAILS

2011-09-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

My libertarian friends are fond of trumpeting all of the alleged failures of the Obama administration. For the record I find myself becoming disillusioned as well for his less than sterling performance in a few specific areas.

"Obamacare:" this was not healthcare reform - this was insurance re-form. What we needed was a single-payer system, like Canada. What we got was bullshit. I don't care what they say, this was a giant french-kiss to the leviathan that is the insurance industry in this country. FAIL.
Copyright and Intellectual Property issues: the Music and Movie industries (RIAA and MPAA) have lots of money and absolutely no shame.These are the people who have attempted to argue that the musicians who record albums produced "work for hire," who use their ratings system to lock out independent filmmakers, who use their army of attorneys to shut down websites without any sort of due process, who work to erode *your* rights under copyright law. Obama lined up beside this group of jackals early and continues to embrace and defend them. not to mention fill his administration with their hired hands. FAIL.
Patriot Act: surely one of the worst abuses to come out of the cynical and manipulative Bush administration. So what happened when it came time to sunset it? Obama signed a 3 year extension. FAIL.

Despite these appalling fails, chances are I'll vote for him again.

Have you seen the Republicans?

Another LOST moment...

2011-08-31T22:41:00.000-05:00

As previously noted, I've been re-watching the entire six season run of LOST. My soul-mate has patiently watched along side of me, though I know she'd rather be watching West Wing (or What Not To Wear).

In honor of my birthday last weekend we finished off the last season in a burst of weekend-consuming marathon viewing. I have to say it: Blu Ray is worth the money.

Sunday we watched the 2+ hour final episode, where the writers wrap up things as much as they are ever going to be wrapped up. By the time it's over, I'm in my weepy mode, from all the emotional twists of fate.

The credits roll. I wipe my eyes. "So what did you think?" I ask.

Long thoughtful pause on her side. "It was good," she says, choosing her words carefully. "There certainly was a lot of it to watch."

I guess I'll be watching the special features alone.

A LOST moment

2011-08-27T14:07:00.001-05:00

I've convinced my long-suffering wife to watch all six seasons of LOST (I preordered the gonzo boxed set as soon as it appeared on Amazon). We are now half-way through the final season and are still married.

The ABC website has the following little bonus clip they released at Comic Con this year, which will only make sense if you are a total fanboy like me and have seen the entire LOST run:

If it makes no sense, go back and review at ABC.com.

Hurricane Irene, Ron Paul and other blowhards

2011-08-27T11:44:00.003-05:00

What to do about Ron Paul?

Sometimes he makes absolute sense, other times it's like listening to your crazy uncle rant - you know, the one who goes off after a few drinks at Thanksgiving about how the Holocaust never really happened.

With Hurricane Irene heading up the Eastern Seaboard, he chose to spout off about how FEMA was just a drain on the economy and not necessary. "We should be like 1900," he said, referring to the great Galveston hurricane of that year.

For those of you unfamiliar with the 1900 Galveston hurricane, here's a little context which Dr. Paul conveniently failed to supply us with.

The storm, estimated to be a Category 4 hurricane, hit Galveston on September 8, 1900, with a resulting loss of life estimated at between 8,000 and 12,000. Over 3,600 homes were destroyed. Survivors lived in tents and shelters constructed from debris, and were without water service for 4 days.

The suggestion here is: why get the government involved? Let the survivors deal with the problem. In other words: its not my problem, it's your problem.

You may bet tempted to point out the mediocre response FEMA made in the aftermath to Katrina. And why was that? Possibly because George W Bush made FEMA a stepchild of the Department of Homeland Security and packed it with incompetent cronies ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!"). That's a little like dumping stale beer in the gas tank of your car then bitching about how rough the ride is. Spare me.

One of the factors in the huge loss of life in the 1900 Galveston hurricane was the lack of early storm tracking at the time. Curiously enough, one of many places where our Tea Party friends in Congress are cutting budgets (so the beleaguered Koch brothers can stay afloat) is to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will impact their ability to forecast severe weather events.

So for Ron Paul, living in filth and disease for weeks is just fine, as long as it keeps our taxes low. There's nothing like the clarity of vision that comes with being a lunatic.

Thanks to Salon.com, which has a excellent write-up on this. Also on Salon.com: What's the worst that could happen in a Ron Paul presidency?

My musical sins

2011-08-20T14:41:00.001-05:00

It's true: of late I've taken to hanging out in a bar on Sunday afternoons.

Wait, I'll explain: my friend and occasional debating partner, The Whited Sepulchre, has organized an acoustic guitar circle that meets on Sunday afternoons in The Corporate Image, a rather unpretentious watering hole over on the east side of Fort Worth.

I'm not sure if the name of this place is supposed to be ironic or not, but the bartender is friendly and more than appreciative of our musical musings.

We've done this about 4 Sundays now. It's great fun. There's four of us who could be called regulars and there's enough overlap in repertoire and musical taste that we all manage to play along, no matter who actually starts any given song. I borrowed a collection of harmonicas from youngest son and add a little harp when appropriate (or I can't figure out anything else to do).

The Whited Sepulchre, by the way, is a natural for this -- he's quite a guitar player with an engaging mike presence and is, as you may have guessed if you follow his blog, quite the musical story teller. He occasionally pretends to be Bob Roberts and I pretend not to notice.

In preparation for tomorrow, I decided to restring my ancient ugly Yamaha FG-230 12 string, which I haven't played in about 10 years. I think I last restrung this beast during the Clinton Administration.

Doing so has reminded me of an old musician's joke:

Q: How long does it take to get a 12 string in tune?
A: No one knows yet!

A short personal note

2011-08-20T14:18:00.001-05:00

For those of you who know me in the real world (or what passes for it), you may find the following link of some interest.

The rest of you, who've come here in search of technical advice or whining about politics, keep moving; nothing more to see.

Update: I fixed the link so it actually works now.

A Polite Society

2011-08-11T09:44:00.002-05:00

Lately I've heard a number of people (friends, acquaintances and strangers) toss out the line "an armed society is a polite society."

I wonder how many of them are aware this is a quote from the Robert Heinlein novel, Beyond This Horizon, first published as a two-part serial in 1942, and in novel form in 1948. Some context: in the novel, openly carrying weapons and dueling are the social norm; one can wear special clothing to opt out of this practice but to do so is to be relegated to second class status (you chickenshit bastard).

Some other things in the novel my gun-toting friends may not be aware of: in it the world has become such an economic utopia that working has become optional, and projects with no possibility of any economic return are favored above all else.

So, in other words: a fantasy.

The reality of the situation is that carrying a weapon doesn't make you more polite, it only serves to make other people more polite to you. That's not being polite - that's being intimidated.

Funny how the people who throw off this quote seem to think they are protecting freedom. Can they explain how your gun protects my right to free speech? - especially if I have to worry about you taking offense and challenging me to a duel (or just taking a shot at me)? And why must I be compelled to pack heat just to say what's on my mind?

No, a society that values and respects diversity and tolerance is a polite society. An armed society - something else.

Another Heinlein quote some folks need to hear: I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

Sesame Spice

2011-08-09T19:06:00.000-05:00

I admit it: I think the Isaiah Mustafa commercials for Old Spice are really funny and clever (can't escape those years in advertising).

Wired had a link to a Sesame Street Parody that's pretty funny -- see below.

Just in case you've been living under a rock for the last year, the original is here:

Farewell, Tree

2011-08-07T21:26:00.003-05:00

When the city told me the sycamore in front of the house needed to be cut down I had mixed feelings.

In my mind, sycamores are sort of junk trees -- about one step above hackberrys. They're prone to disease and messy, and will occasionally decide to drop limbs, and not just small ones. The one in question had been planted overly close to the driveway -- which was the issue: a street project meant new curbs and driveways. Not a good thing.

Honestly, I'd mused on the possibility of getting rid of it myself. Still, the sight of the big spray-painted X's on the trunk was a little dismaying.

Friday morning I got a message from the spouse that a tree service was truck parked in front of the house. Duh duh duuuhhh. By the time I got home...

The front yard, formerly shady, was now open and sunny. Very open. Very sunny. It was a little jarring.

The tree men reported the tree was about 60 years old. At one point there were lots of sycamores on our block but they had all gradually gotten sick and been cut down. Ours was the last of the lot. As compensation for our loss, we'll get a voucher for a couple of new "approved" type trees, and I'm leaning towards red oaks. We'll plant them some time in the fall.

I'll likely be dead before they are the same size as the tree we just cut down.

Because I wasn't around when this deed took place, I wasn't able to get a section of trunk to use as a memento. All that's left is the stump. I'm told the tree men (or one of their subcontractors) will be back some time to grind it away, leaving behind nothing to show it had ever been there.

Call me maudlin, but I keep thinking back to the Shel Silverstein book, The Giving Tree.

There are more important things to worry about than money

2011-07-30T11:54:00.002-05:00

The great circus sideshow that is our political process continues to be about the "debt ceiling." It's like the cliff-hanger ending at the end of a mediocre reality show. The self-aggrandizing and self-righteous Tea Party wing of the Republican party is hell-bent on driving the school bus off the cliff to make a point.

Stephen Colbert sums it up nicely:

Meanwhile, not a peep from much of anyone about such things as the tracking of American citizens via cell phones, warrantless wiretapping, or other Bush era shenanigans now taken over by the present administration (Wired has more on this). I guess the Tea Party is okay with this sort of thing as long as it doesn't raise anyone's taxes.

The Romans learned a long time ago the best way to distract the citizenry from the signs of their crumbling republic was with circuses. I'd say that lesson was not lost on our present elected officials.

Five or so reasons you'll want Google Plus

2011-07-27T23:58:00.001-05:00

I got a Google Plus invite a little while ago. In case you ignore some of the chatter in Geek Land, it's Google's latest attempt at Social Media. After trying it for a couple of weeks. my verdict: thumbs up.

It's still in "Field Testing," which means you can't just go and sign up - you need an invite from someone who's already in. Which is easier than it sounds. There are numerous sites that will send you an invite just for asking (just Google "Google Plus Invites."). Heck - even I will.

Why would you want to get Google Plus (or G+ as it is sometimes referred to)? Let me list a few reasons I see.

Biggest reason you'll like Google+ : "Circles."

Circles are how you organize the subtle balance that exists within your relationships. They allow a high degree of granularity in what you choose to show. By putting someone in a Circle, you define what you want to share with them. When you post something you choose who to share it with: Family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances or the public at large. Note: these are just sample Circles - you can create as many or as few as you want to mess with, and name them anything.

Adding someone to a circle does not tell them which circle they are in -- so no bruised feelings from Aunt Sally. They can see posts you've shared with them, but not that you've put them in the "Prudish Old Relatives" Circle. And you can add people to more than one circle.

Adding someone to a circle does not automatically reciprocate by placing you in someone circle. Aunt Sally might add you to her "Favorite Nephews" Circle, but you won't see any of her posts until you add her to a Circle, too. That's an important distinction, especially if you get an invite from someone expecting to automatically being set up to share stuff.

If you mark something Public, the whole world can see it -- friends and strangers alike. All they have to do is have you in a circle - any circle - and it will show up. You don't have to add them to a circle for them to be able to see it. In this way it's treads intriguingly close to Twitter territory. I'm waiting to see what the universe of mobile G+ apps looks like in the next 3 months.

If you are already using Gmail, G+ integrates nicely (and automatically) with your Gmail services. Google Chat can be done from the main G+ home page. It will also suggest people to invite from your Google Contacts. Your Picasa Web Account is also integrated (if you chose to make it so).

The other thing that I find deeply satisfying about Google+ is that I'm no longer bombarded with Farmwille accomplishments and related bullshit content. Sure you can turn those off in Facebook, but it takes some digging around, and Facebook doesn't make that sort of anti-social behaviour easy to get away with. Google+ has chosen instead to make this an environment for Adults.

A feature I haven't tried yet is the "Huddle," which sounds like a web cam / chat room sort of conglomeration.

There are downsides of course -- since technically it's still closed to people without invites, you'll find a lot of your friends aren't on G+ yet. The upside, if you want to look on the bright side, is the ratio of idiots to non-idiots favors Google Plus.

If you're already in and want to add me to a circle or follow me (I'll most likely reciprocate), go to my Google Profile and click "Add to Circle," then choose which circle to add me to. My Google Profile can be found at: https://plus.google.com/100277960733821127666/posts. It's still a little barren but I'm slowly adding more snarkiness.

Be a trail blazer!

Stealing elections the high-tech way

2011-07-26T15:24:00.001-05:00

George W Bush (arguably) stole the 2000 election thanks to that festering pustule of corruption known as the state of Florida. It was only the horror of 9-11 and our country's need to unite that he got away with such a blatant bit of thievery.

Well, say this for Dubya - he figured out he'd never get away with the same trick twice.

Why leave physical evidence (like actual ballots) when it's so much easier to steal the high-tech way. With the introduction of electronic voting and a dedicated group of criminal supporters, a person can swing a lost election and leave nary a hanging chad.

Read about how the 2004 election was stolen electronically by hacking voting machines in Ohio. Court filings are just now starting to reveal how it was done.

My (current) favorite HTML editor

2011-07-15T21:13:00.007-05:00

I've been writing HTML for about 17 years now, hard as that is to believe. I'm not a fan of WYSIWYG editors - I prefer to use text-based editors. It's how I learned, and as far as I'm concerned, usually easier.

After graduating from Notepad, the first editor I bought was something called WebEdit Pro, by Luckman. It had a clean, well-organized interface and I used it for several years before I discovered HomeSite.

HomeSite, originally developed by Nick Bradbury (who later went on to create TopStyle, still my favorite CSS editor) was acquired by Allaire, who sold it as a standalone editor, and as a repackaged editor for their flagship ColdFusion software.

Incidently, the original freeware version, Homesite 1.2 (written for Windows 95), is still out there on the web, though it's gotten harder to find. Its feature set is pretty basic, but it's still usable, and still has fans. Google it if you're curious.

I used various versions of HomeSite for a period covering close to 15 years, through Allaire, then Macromedia (who bundled it with Dreamweaver) to Adobe (after they acquired Macromedia). Finally Adobe put the knife to it -- the bastards. The copy I used was long out of support and I knew it was time to find a new favorite HTML editor.

Confession: I don't really like IDE's (Integrated Development Environment) type products. I just want a freaking text editor that makes it easy to write HTML. So that ruled out some highly praised and interesting products such as Eclipse, Aptana or Komodo-IDE, (although Komodo-Edit looks interesting). For a while I just used Notepad++, which, though "just" a text editor was a far cry from Windows Notepad application.

Then I started using BlueFish on my Linux box at home (it's the default KDE HTML editor), and discovered there existed a version for Windows. I had found my editor.

In many ways, BlueFish reminds me of the old HomeSite: buttons to insert tags, searching, file browser. The interface can be customized, if you have a preferred set of tasks. It also has a lot of support for PHP (which HomeSite did not) and a great feature: tag matching (I don't know about you, but keeping track of how may curly brackets you've got, and which closes which, drives me nuts). It's also got good auto tag completion, along with some contextual messages about tag usage. The feature set is rich without feeling bloated.

It's got its occasional bits of flakiness and rough edges, but overall it's stable and dependable. I'd used the Linux version on and off for about year and have been using the Windows version pretty solidly for the last 3 months at work. It's open source (and free), and versions exist for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

I can't remember the last time I launched HomeSite.

I think I've found its replacement.

When property rights trump all

2011-07-03T15:12:00.000-05:00

It's hard to speak in absolute terms about the Libertarians, since they come in so many flavors -- mostly bitter. They all claim to stand for individual liberty (duh), a goal which, like mom, apple pie, and the flag, is hard to argue with. In the past they proudly pointed to their support of social rights -- as manifested by such hot-button issues as abortion rights and gay rights.

Lately, as a result of in-breeding with Tea Partiers (why cousins shouldn't marry) they seem to have forgotten about all that. Rand Paul, scion of Ron Paul, and darling of the TeaLibertarians states, "I believe life begins at conception and it is the duty of our government to protect this life," and came out against same-sex marriage during his 2011 Senate campaign. Hardly the stuff of individual liberty.

So, what's left after social rights are gone?

Property rights. Yes, the Libertarians are all about property rights.

Property rights apparently trump civil rights. Said Paul, "A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."

Libertarians want to privatize as much of the public sector as possible. You connect the dots.

Here's the thing: when property rights trump all other rights, whoever has the most property has the most rights.

And the last time I checked, that was the textbook definition of Plutocracy.

Les Paul gets Googlefied

2011-06-09T15:00:00.001-05:00

Today's Google Doodle (on the main search page) commemorates guitar giant Les Paul (he would have been 96) with a playable online guitar -- that will record your musical stylings!

That's right -- hit the red record button, strum around, then copy the Google shortened URL to rehear your master piece.

Simply amazing!

Here's my brief experiment: http://goo.gl/doodle/iwP3

The master has nothing to fear from me.

More on Les Paul from the archive (written when he passed away) :

http://postralphaelite.blogspot.com/2009/08/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps.html

http://postralphaelite.blogspot.com/2009/08/while-my-guitar-gently-weeps-part-2.html

Thoughts on the upcoming Rapture

2011-05-20T16:51:00.002-05:00

Well, tomorrow is my sister's birthday. It's also supposed to be the end of the world.

That being the case, I've decided to put off doing my timesheets until Monday. Just in case.

To be a bit more specific, tomorrow is Judgement Day (according to those in the know), a.k.a, the Rapture, when around 3 million of the Elect will be taken up to heaven, leaving the rest of us behind...just like in those "Left Behind" novels.

It's always struck me as a bit presumptuous to assume one is part of the Elect. I'm actually sort of looking forward to seeing someone with one of those "In Case of the Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned," bumper stickers driving around on the day after, so I can say, "Hey, asshole, what happened? Soul Train pull out of the station without you?"

Now, I'll be the first to admit I won't be on that first flight out. No doubt I'll be undergoing some torment of the damned, but at least I'll be rid of those 3 million smug obnoxious jerks now drinking non-alcoholic Mai-Tais in the clouds above.

This could work out well -- maybe the Democrats will be able to retake the House of Representatives. And we'll be able to have liquor stores open on Sunday

I'm beginning to like this rapture thing more and more.

telehack.com : relive the pre-web net!

2011-05-14T12:08:00.001-05:00

Not to yet again brand myself as an ancient, but when I got my first computer (a Tandy Color Computer) the connected world was a much simpler place. I had a 300 baud modem and a CompuServe account which cost me an arm and a leg. This was around 1981. I soon discovered BBS's and saved a bunch of money.

This thing called the internet ran on leased 56K phone lines and one had to be at a research or defense facility or employed by the government or military to gain access to it. The "world wide web" wouldn't appear for another 10 years.

If you knew someone, you might have access to something a bit more connected than just a BBS. Around the time my oldest was born I had a sibling who worked at a local university and he gave me the dial in number for the library computer. With a little judicious poking around all sorts of interesting things could be found.

Telehack.com has put together a blast from the past - a javascript based emulator for that yesteryear of computing fun. Using your web-browser, you can log in, create an account and then hack into simulations of computers from by-gone times. Says the initial screen:

Telehack is a simulation of a stylized arpanet/usenet, circa 1985-1990. It is a full multi-user simulation, including 25,000 hosts and BBS's the early net, thousands of files from the era, a collection of adventure and IF games, a working BASIC interpreter with a library of programs to run, simulated historical users, and more.

It's an impressive feat! I wasted more time than I care to admit this morning. Be sure and check out the "wardial" and "porthack" commands, which let you simulate hacking into some of the 25,000 hosts they have recreated.

Note that the accounts you create, both on Telehack.com and the simulated hosts, don't stick around. If you close your browser and log in later you'll need to create the account again and re-hack any systems you had your way with. If you found this interesting, you may enjoy TEXTFILES.COM as well.

For the truly hard core, you can access the Telehack system via telnet as well.

Remember, real men use the command line.

Blogger takes it on the chin

2011-05-13T23:06:00.001-05:00

First Amazon, now Blogger. What's the world coming to?

I've been busy and almost missed it, but apparently Blogger has had some some "issues" over the last couple of days. For the unenlightened, "issues" is service provider code for "major fuck-ups."

I first became aware when my friend and debating partner the Whited Sepulchre posted something the other day about losing a post and noticed he'd posted something today about losing a bunch of comments (it had removed the snarky remark I made in response to the first post). I won't go into whether this is a good thing or not, but it did pique my curiosity.

According to Blogger, the issue was (as with Amazon) some sort of screw up during "routine" maintenance. Result: an avalanche of lost posts and comments. After 2 days they are working to restore these as quickly as possible. Speaking as a web professional, I can vouch for the fact it's those "routine" things that bite you in the ass the hardest.

Given my posting frequency and the fact that on a good day less than a dozen people visit this site, this had no effect to speak of on this blog. Sigh...

Killing two birds with one stone

2011-05-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

The punditocracy seems to agree that although the recent take-down of Osama bin Laden has bumped President Obama's poll numbers, this bump is likely to be short-lived because of lingering concerns over the state of the economy. At the same time there has been, since the previously-mentioned take-down, a low rumbling from some quarters about the lack of photographic or video documentation - not all of it from the frothing-at-the-mouth classes.

Even people I consider reasonable want to see pictures, dammit.

While enjoying a mint julep with one of my Republican friends yesterday (we were watching the Kentucky Derby), the pair of us came up with what I consider a brilliant idea that addresses both of Obama's issues.

Pay-per-view of the bin Laden raid!

There have been hints that videos and photos do exist, but that they are gruesome -- too gruesome for the public at large. So why not let people pay to see the carnage? Use the profits to pay for the War on Terror.

The adult US population is roughly 175,440,000. Charge $49.99 to watch a one-hour, one-time broadcast. Assume that only 10 percent of that group actually pays to watch (I'm guessing there would be watch parties which would reduce the number of paying customers).

$875 Million.

Add to that simultaneous overseas broadcasts. The European Union alone is half a billion -- if 10 percent of them watched, it would be another $2.5 Billion. And that's just if we charge the same as for US viewers. My thought is the rest of the world pay more. After all, the US taxpayer underwrote this whole thing -- they ought to get some kind of price break.

Would it cover the complete cost of the War on Terror? Hardly. But it would be a start.

As for me - I think I'll pass. I don't need to see pictures.

He's Dead

2011-05-02T11:45:00.001-05:00

About 10:25 last night, my friend Lee called with some stunning news: President Barack Obama was about to address the nation to inform us that US forces had killed Osama bin Laden. I ran and turned on the TV to confirm. NBC had broken into normal programming with a special report and was awaiting the president's arrival.

I went into the bedroom and told my wife, "They've killed bin Laden." My voice cracked as I said it.

We watched Obama in silence.

There was video of celebration in New York and in Washington, DC. "USA! USA!" chanted the crowds. It felt a little odd - like cheering a football victory instead of the death of a mass murderer. But I'm not going to judge anyone's reaction -- least of all people living in the epicenter of those horrific attacks almost 10 years ago.

My own response was less of joy, and more of satisfaction that at least a small measure of justice had been meted out. The death of this one evil monster can never outweigh the terrible loss inflicted on thousands of innocents, but it's better than nothing. I agree with Scott Simon's tweet, "I can't quite explain why I'm glad it was boots on the ground and not a drone that caught up with bin Laden, but I am-"

God bless the Navy Seals, who reportedly did the deed.

Will this end threats of terrorism here and abroad? Probably not. Joan Walsh at Salon asks, "Is this what closure feels like?" We will still have full-body scanners at airports tomorrow. And I'm waiting for the first wing-nut to spout off that bin Laden isn't really dead. Trust me, it will happen.

Still, I happened to put a random CD in the changer when I got in my car this morning and the first track was Cream playing "I'm So Glad."

It felt strangely appropriate.

Google Apps changes terms for free accounts

2011-04-29T10:54:00.001-05:00

I got an email from Google the other day that describes a change in terms for users of their Google Apps service. Previously the "free" tier let you have up to 50 users accounts for your domain. As of May 10, that will be dropped to 10 for new accounts. Says Google, "As of May 10, any organization that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users."

Although I can see the reasoning (small businesses were probably using the free personal account) but it's still sounds grasping. This will not affect existing accounts, so if you were planning to use Google Apps for your vanity domain, I'd get in there and do it now. That being said, even with only 10 accounts, Google Apps are pretty cool.

Amazon Web Services: Post-Mortem

2011-04-29T10:41:00.001-05:00

Amazon has finally released a detailed post-mortem that describes what happened during last week's outage at their Northern Virginia data center (US-EAST) and why it took so long to fix (short version: we screwed up and things snowballed out of control). It makes for a long, technical, but interesting read.

Complex systems make for complex failures.

Barnes and Noble to Microsoft: shove it

2011-04-28T12:59:00.001-05:00

Microsoft filed a suite against Barnes & Noble for alleged patent violations in their Nook reader - they take exception to the open-source Android OS that powers the Nook. Rather than humbly submitting, B&N has fired back a blistering response (PDF). You can read more about it on Groklaw. Most outstanding move was B&N's steadfast refusal to sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which Microsoft insisted on before outlining the specifics of their complaint against them.

Huh?

Here's a sample from B&N's response:

On information and belief, to perpetuate this scheme, Microsoft and its agents, including spokesman and chief executive officer Mr. Steven Ballmer, have publicly stated that through its patents Microsoft can dominate, control, and exclude from the market the AndroidTM Operating System, other open source operating systems, and open source applications such as Google Chrome. These statements are unjustified in view of the scope of Microsoft's patents. Moreover, neither Microsoft nor Mr. Ballmer has ever identified to the American public the basis for these grand assertions of dominance.
Without support or justification, Microsoft has communicated to the public through press releases and other public statements (including press releases relating to this very action) that the AndroidTM Operating System generally infringes Microsoft's patents, and that all device manufacturers employing the AndroidTM Operating System must either pay Microsoft's exorbitant licensing fees or face costly and protracted patent infringement litigation.

and...

...At the meeting, Microsoft alleged that the NookTM infringed six patents purportedly owned by Microsoft. Microsoft had prepared claim charts purportedly detailing the alleged infringement but insisted that it would only share the detailed claim charts if Barnes & Noble agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement ("NDA") that would cover the claim charts as well as all other aspects of the parties' discussions. Noting that the patents were public and that the infringement allegations pertained to Barnes & Noble's public product, Barnes & Noble refused to sign an NDA. Insisting that an NDA was necessary, Microsoft discussed the alleged infringement on a high- level basis only. Microsoft nevertheless maintained that it possessed patents sufficient to dominate and entirely preclude the use of the AndroidTM Operating System by the NookTM. Microsoft demanded an exorbitant royalty (on a per device basis) for a license to its patent portfolio for the NookTM device and at the end of the meeting Microsoft stated that it would demand an even higher per device royalty for any device that acted "more like a computer" as opposed to an eReader.

Microsoft proves once again they are the monopolistic choads they've always been - attempting to accomplish with their lawyers what they can't with their marketing people (never mind their software engineers). Barnes & Noble has asked for a jury trial - which ought to be fun.

I think I'll go buy a Color Nook just as a show of support.

A tip o' the hat to Groklaw for posting and to Slashdot for publicizing.

Stonewall Uprising on PBS

2011-04-27T23:33:00.001-05:00

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, an oppressed minority decided they'd taken all the shit they were going to and rose up against their persecutors. The scene of this uprising was the Stonewall Inn, a Mafia-owned bar in Greenwich Village in New York that catered to a primarily gay clientele.

The spark that ignited this was a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. The end result was 3 days of sometimes violent demonstrations against police persecution by patrons and neighborhood folk. In the words of one anonymous participant, "Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit... Predominantly, the theme (w)as, 'this shit has got to stop!'"

The Stonewall Riots are often identified as the beginning of the gay rights movement in America.

PBS recently aired an excellent documentary about this watershed event called Stonewall Uprising which can be viewed online (at the present) on the PBS website.

It should not be missed.

Watching it places current struggles for gay/lesbian/transgender rights in a whole new context. It is also a reminder of the real reason right-wing Republicans want to cut off funding to PBS.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Timeline for Amazon Web Services' Failure

2011-04-25T12:08:00.001-05:00

Here, in one easy-to-read place, is the timeline for Thursday's Amazon Web Services FAIL in their Northern Virginia data center. In case you are interested my phone started ringing at 3:15 AM, CST, about 20 minutes after the error (still not disclosed) that started this whole sorry mess.

Thursday April 21

1:41 AM PDT We are currently investigating latency and error rates with EBS volumes and connectivity issues reaching EC2 instances in the US-EAST-1 region.
2:18 AM PDT We can confirm connectivity errors impacting EC2 instances and increased latencies impacting EBS volumes in multiple availability zones in the US-EAST-1 region. Increased error rates are affecting EBS CreateVolume API calls. We continue to work towards resolution.
2:49 AM PDT We are continuing to see connectivity errors impacting EC2 instances, increased latencies impacting EBS volumes in multiple availability zones in the US-EAST-1 region, and increased error rates affecting EBS CreateVolume API calls. We are also experiencing delayed launches for EBS backed EC2 instances in affected availability zones in the US-EAST-1 region. We continue to work towards resolution.
3:20 AM PDT Delayed EC2 instance launches and EBS API error rates are recovering. We're continuing to work towards full resolution.
4:09 AM PDT EBS volume latency and API errors have recovered in one of the two impacted Availability Zones in US-EAST-1. We are continuing to work to resolve the issues in the second impacted Availability Zone. The errors, which started at 12:55AM PDT, began recovering at 2:55am PDT
5:02 AM PDT Latency has recovered for a portion of the impacted EBS volumes. We are continuing to work to resolve the remaining issues with EBS volume latency and error rates in a single Availability Zone.
6:09 AM PDT EBS API errors and volume latencies in the affected availability zone remain. We are continuing to work towards resolution.
6:59 AM PDT There has been a moderate increase in error rates for CreateVolume. This may impact the launch of new EBS-backed EC2 instances in multiple availability zones in the US-EAST-1 region. Launches of instance store AMIs are currently unaffected. We are continuing to work on resolving this issue.
7:40 AM PDT In addition to the EBS volume latencies, EBS-backed instances in the US-EAST-1 region are failing at a high rate. This is due to a high error rate for creating new volumes in this region.
8:54 AM PDT We'd like to provide additional color on what were working on right now (please note that we always know more and understand issues better after we fully recover and dive deep into the post mortem). A networking event early this morning triggered a large amount of re-mirroring of EBS volumes in US-EAST-1. This re-mirroring created a shortage of capacity in one of the US-EAST-1 Availability Zones, which impacted new EBS volume creation as well as the pace with which we could re-mirror and recover affected EBS volumes. Additionally, one of our internal control planes for EBS has become inundated such that it's difficult to create new EBS volumes and EBS backed instances. We are working as quickly as possible to add capacity to that one Availability Zone to speed up the re-mirroring, and working to restore the control plane issue. We're starting to see progress on these efforts, but are not there yet. We will continue to provide updates when we have them.
10:26 AM PDT We have made significant progress in stabilizing the affected EBS control plane service. EC2 API calls that do not involve EBS resources in the affected Availability Zone are now seeing significantly reduced failures and latency and are continuing to recover. We have also brought additional capacity online in the affected Availability Zone and stuck EBS volumes (those that were being remirrored) are beginning to recover. We cannot yet estimate when these volumes will be completely recovered, but we will provide an estimate as soon as we have sufficient data to estimate the recovery. We have all available resources working to restore full service functionality as soon as possible. We will continue to provide updates when we have them.
11:09 AM PDT A number of people have asked us for an ETA on when we'll be fully recovered. We deeply understand why this is important and promise to share this information as soon as we have an estimate that we believe is close to accurate. Our high-level ballpark right now is that the ETA is a few hours. We can assure you that all-hands are on deck to recover as quickly as possible. We will update the community as we have more information.
12:30 PM PDT We have observed successful new launches of EBS backed instances for the past 15 minutes in all but one of the availability zones in the US-EAST-1 Region. The team is continuing to work to recover the unavailable EBS volumes as quickly as possible.
1:48 PM PDT A single Availability Zone in the US-EAST-1 Region continues to experience problems launching EBS backed instances or creating volumes. All other Availability Zones are operating normally. Customers with snapshots of their affected volumes can re-launch their volumes and instances in another zone. We recommend customers do not target a specific Availability Zone when launching instances. We have updated our service to avoid placing any instances in the impaired zone for untargeted requests.
6:18 PM PDT Earlier today we shared our high level ETA for a full recovery. At this point, all Availability Zones except one have been functioning normally for the past 5 hours. We have stabilized the remaining Availability Zone, but recovery is taking longer than we originally expected. We have been working hard to add the capacity that will enable us to safely re-mirror the stuck volumes. We expect to incrementally recover stuck volumes over the coming hours, but believe it will likely be several more hours until a significant number of volumes fully recover and customers are able to create new EBS-backed instances in the affected Availability Zone. We will be providing more information here as soon as we have it.
Here are a couple of things that customers can do in the short term to work around these problems. Customers having problems contacting EC2 instances or with instances stuck shutting down/stopping can launch a replacement instance without targeting a specific Availability Zone. If you have EBS volumes stuck detaching/attaching and have taken snapshots, you can create new volumes from snapshots in one of the other Availability Zones. Customers with instances and/or volumes that appear to be unavailable should not try to recover them by rebooting, stopping, or detaching, as these actions will not currently work on resources in the affected zone.
10:58 PM PDT Just a short note to let you know that the team continues to be all-hands on deck trying to add capacity to the affected Availability Zone to re-mirror stuck volumes. It's taking us longer than we anticipated to add capacity to this fleet. When we have an updated ETA or meaningful new update, we will make sure to post it here. But, we can assure you that the team is working this hard and will do so as long as it takes to get this resolved.

Friday April 22

2:41 AM PDT We continue to make progress in restoring volumes but don't yet have an estimated time of recovery for the remainder of the affected volumes. We will continue to update this status and provide a time frame when available.
6:18 AM PDT We're starting to see more meaningful progress in restoring volumes (many have been restored in the last few hours) and expect this progress to continue over the next few hours. We expect that well reach a point where a minority of these stuck volumes will need to be restored with a more time consuming process, using backups made to S3 yesterday (these will have longer recovery times for the affected volumes). When we get to that point, we'll let folks know. As volumes are restored, they become available to running instances, however they will not be able to be detached until we enable the API commands in the affected Availability Zone.
8:49 AM PDT We continue to see progress in recovering volumes, and have heard many additional customers confirm that they're recovering. Our current estimate is that the majority of volumes will be recovered over the next 5 to 6 hours. As we mentioned in our last post, a smaller number of volumes will require a more time consuming process to recover, and we anticipate that those will take longer to recover. We will continue to keep everyone updated as we have additional information.
2:15 PM PDT In our last post at 8:49am PDT, we said that we anticipated that the majority of volumes "will be recovered over the next 5 to 6 hours." These volumes were recovered by ~1:30pm PDT. We mentioned that a "smaller number of volumes will require a more time consuming process to recover, and we anticipate that those will take longer to recover." We're now starting to work on those. We're also now working to enable customers to be able to launch EBS backed instances and create, delete, attach and detach EBS volumes in the affected Availability Zone. Our current estimate is that this will take 3-4 hours until full access is restored. We will continue to keep everyone updated as we have additional information.
6:27 PM PDT We're continuing to work on restoring the remaining affected volumes. The work we're doing to enable customers to be able to launch EBS backed instances and create, delete, attach and detach EBS volumes in the affected Availability Zone is taking considerably more time than we anticipated. The team is in the midst of troubleshooting a bottleneck in this process and we'll report back when we have more information to share on the timing of this functionality being fully restored.
9:11 PM PDT We wanted to give a more detailed update on the state of our recovery. At this point, we have recovered a large number of the stuck volumes and are in the process of recovering the remainder. We have added significant storage capacity to the cluster, and storage capacity is no longer a bottleneck to recovery. Some portion of these volumes have lost the connection to their instance, and are waiting to be connected before normal operations can resume. In order to re-establish this connection, we need to allow the instances in the affected Availability Zone to access the EC2 control plane service. There are a large number of control plane requests being generated by the system as we re-introduce instances and volumes. The load on our control plane is higher than we anticipated. We are re-introducing these instances slowly in order to moderate the load on the control plane and prevent it from becoming overloaded and affecting other functions. We are currently investigating several avenues to unblock this bottleneck and significantly increase the rate at which we can restore control plane access to volumes and instances-- and move toward a full recovery.
The team has been completely focused on restoring access to all customers, and as such has not yet been able to focus on performing a complete post mortem. Once our customers have been taken care of and are fully back up and running, we will post a detailed account of what happened, along with the corrective actions we are undertaking to ensure this doesnt happen again. Once we have additional information on the progress that is being made, we will post additional updates.

Saturday April 23

1:55 AM PDT We are continuing to work on unblocking the bottleneck that is limiting the speed with which we can re-establish connections between volumes and their instances. We will continue to keep everyone updated as we have additional information.
8:54 AM PDT We have made significant progress during the night in manually restoring the remaining stuck volumes, and are continuing to work through the remainder. Additionally we have removed some of the bottlenecks that were preventing us from allowing more instances to re-establish their connection with the stuck volumes, and the majority of those instances and volumes are now connected. We've encountered an additional issue that's preventing the recovery of the remainder of the connections from being established, but are making progress. Once we solve for this bottleneck, we will work on restoring full access for customers to the control plane.
11:54 AM PDT Quick update. We've tried a couple of ideas to remove the bottleneck in opening up the APIs, each time we've learned more but haven't yet solved the problem. We are making progress, but much more slowly than we'd hoped. Right now we're setting up more control plane components that should be capable of working through the backlog of attach/detach state changes for EBS volumes. These are coming online, and we've been seeing progress on the backlog, but it's still too early to tell how much this will accelerate the process for us.
For customers who are still waiting for restoration of the EBS control plane capability in the impacted AZ, or waiting for recovery of the remaining volumes, we understand that no information for hours at a time is difficult for you. We've been operating under the assumption that people prefer us to post only when we have new information. Think enough people have told us that they prefer to hear from us hourly (even if we don't have meaningful new information) that we're going to change our cadence and try to update hourly from here on out.
12:46 PM PDT We have completed setting up the additional control plane components and we are seeing good scaling of the system. We are now processing through the backlog of state changes and customer requests at a very quick rate. Barring any setbacks, we anticipate getting through the remainder of the backlog in the next hour. We will be in a brief hold after that, assessing whether we can proceed with reactivating the APIs.
1:49 PM PDT We've reduced the backlog of outstanding requests significantly and are now holding to assess whether everything looks good to take the next steps toward opening up API access.
2:48 PM PDT We have successfully completed processing the backlog of state changes between our control plane services and the degraded EBS cluster. We are now starting to slowly roll out changes that will re-enable the EBS APIs in the affected zone. Once that happens, requests to attach volumes and detach volumes will begin working. If that goes well, we will open up the zone to the remainder of the EBS APIs, including create volume and create snapshot. In parallel, we are continuing to manually recover the remainder of the stuck volumes. Once API functionality has been restored, we will post that update here.
3:43 PM PDT The API re-enablement is going well. Attach volume and detach volume requests will now work for many of the volumes in the affected zone. We are continuing to work on enabling access to all APIs.
4:42 PM PDT Attach and detach volume requests now work for all volumes that have been recovered. We are still manually recovering volumes in parallel, the APIs will still not work for any volume that has not been recovered yet. We are currently working to enable the ability for customers to create new volumes and snapshots in the affected zone.
5:51 PM PDT We have now fully enabled the create snapshots API in addition to the attach and detach volume APIs. Currently all APIs are enabled except for create volume which we are actively working on. We continue to work on restoring the remaining stuck volumes.
6:56 PM PDT The create volume API is now enabled. At this time all APIs are back up and working normally. We will be monitoring the service very closely, but at this time all EC2 and EBS APIs are operating normally in all Availability Zones. The majority of affected volumes have been recovered, and we are working hard to manually recover the remainder. Please note that if your volume has not yet been recovered, you will still not be able to write to your volume or successfully perform API calls on your volume until we have recovered it.
8:39 PM PDT We continue to see stability in the service and are confident now that that the service is operating normally for all API calls and all restored EBS volumes.
We mentioned before that the process to recover this remaining group of stuck volumes will take longer. We are being extra cautious in this recovery effort. We will continue to update you as we have additional information.
9:58 PM PDT Progress on recovering the remaining stuck volumes is proceeding slower than we anticipated. We are currently looking for ways in which we can speed up the process, and will keep you updated.
11:37 PM PDT The process of recovering the remaining stuck volumes continues to proceed slowly. We will continue to keep you updated as we make additional progress.

Sunday April 24

Apr 24, 1:38 AM PDT We are continuing to recover remaining stuck EBS volumes in the affected Availability Zone, and the pace of volume recovery is now steadily increasing. We will continue to keep you posted with regular updates.
Apr 24, 3:12 AM PDT The pace of recovery has begun to level out for the remaining group of stuck EBS volumes that require a more time-consuming recovery process. We continue to make progress and will provide additional updates on status as we work through the remaining volumes.
Apr 24, 5:05 AM PDT As detailed in previous updates, the vast majority of affected EBS volumes have been restored by this point, and we are working through a more time-consuming recovery process for remaining volumes. We have made steady progress on this front over the past few hours. If your volume is among those recently recovered, it should be accessible and usable without additional action.
Apr 24 7:22 AM PDT No significant updates to report at this time. We continue to make steady progress on recovering remaining affected EBS volumes and making them accessible to customers.
Apr 24, 9:59 AM PDT We continue to make steady progress on recovering remaining affected EBS volumes and making them accessible to customers. If your volume is not currently responsive, we recommend trying to detach and reattach it. In many cases that may restore your access.
Apr 24, 11:36 AM PDT The number of volumes yet to be restored continues to dwindle. If your volume is not currently responsive and your instance was booted from EBS, you may need to stop and restart your instance in order to restore connectivity.
Apr 24, 2:06 PM PDT We continue to make steady progress on recovering the remaining affected EBS volumes. We are now working on reaching out directly to the small set of customers with one of the remaining volumes yet to be restored.
7:35 PM PDT As we posted last night, EBS is now operating normally for all APIs and recovered EBS volumes. The vast majority of affected volumes have now been recovered. We're in the process of contacting a limited number of customers who have EBS volumes that have not yet recovered and will continue to work hard on restoring these remaining volumes.

If you believe you are still having issues related to this event and we have not contacted you tonight, please contact us here. In the "Service" field, please select Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. In the description field, please list the instance and volume IDs and describe the issue you're experiencing.

We are digging deeply into the root causes of this event and will post a detailed post mortem.

Atlas Snored

2011-04-23T16:04:00.002-05:00

Far be it from me to deny someone the joy of seeing a bad movie. There are plenty of films that I've gone out of my way to see that a mainstream audience would find utterly boring. That said, it is telling (in my mind) that my Libertarian friend, The Whited Sepulchre, starts out his "review" of Atlas Shrugged by exclaiming, "they didn't screw it up!" but by the end of it says, "they didn't totally screw it up."

In some circles this is known as damning with faint praise. I respect his honesty.

Other online reviews pretty much panned it. What was amusing was the comments by the True Believers, who were convinced in every case the reviewer was some liberal scoundrel for failing to see the film's elusive virtues. It never occurred to them that, politics aside, the film...just...sucked. Even my friend, the WS, admitted the screenplay, acting, directing, and effects were not particularly good.

So what's left? Ayn Rand's philosophy? Oh please.

Box Office Mojo tracks the sad decline of the ticket receipts: opening day, April 15: $630,000, averaging around $2,250 per theater, dropping off to an average of $458 per theater (for a total of $136,832) after less than a week. Friday it got the date-night bounce (now that's something to think about) and managed to pull in another $307,000, with a $660 theater average.

My advice, if you are planning to see this, better hurry. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is about to bitch-slap it into the next dimension.

This was, as you probably know, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. If Parts 2 and 3 actually get made I'm willing to bet they go straight to video.

The distributor, Rocky Mountain Pictures is a niche player - its films are primarily targeted to a broadly evangelical right-wing Christian audience. Its last big splash was Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a supposed documentary that purported to show how intelligent design advocates are persecuted. Atlas Shrugged has the same type of appeal to its audience that Christian-targeted films do -- the True Believers will watch it no matter how mediocre and will loudly defend it to those of us who haven't accepted their theology. The irony here of course is that Ayn Rand denounced religion and embraced atheism.

No -- I have no problem with lousy movies, it's lousy philosophy that gets my goat. Atlas Shrugged is not so much a movie as a tract for Rand's pseudo-religion of self-worship called Objectivism, which is the philosophical underpinning for Libertarianism. Says she:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Stripped of the florid prose: "Our highest moral calling is looking out for number 1."

Now, I've known a lot of self-absorbed, self-centered dicks in my life. Most of them were at least vaguely aware of their dickishness and acknowledged it. What drives me around the bend here is the attempt to wrap dickishness in some high-minded self-justified morality.

Just so there is no mistake: being a self-absorbed dick is being a self-absorbed dick, no matter how you rationalize it. Now, go fuck yourself.

"Who is John Galt?"

Who gives a shit?

Amazon - The Big Fail

2011-04-22T13:17:00.001-05:00

By now, if you keep up with all things geekish, you may have heard about Amazon's big outage yesterday. No - this wasn't their online store: this was their other business -- selling their excess capacity as "cloud computing" services.

So-called "cloud computing" (also known as utility computing) is all the rage today, and like a lot of things, it's not an entirely new thing. It works by setting up virtual machines in Amazon's massive datacenter. Usually everything works just dandy. But not yesterday.

I got a call from one of my internal customers in the UK at 3:00 AM (my employer, the Sisyphean Corp is a global operation) who, in a panicky voice, informed me his Amazon-hosted site was gone. I spent the next 15 hours working to recover it.

Amazon has not yet offered a detailed explanation of exactly what happened. My sources, however, have found the reason for all the trouble:

Freedom's just another word for wallowing in our own crap

2011-04-11T14:06:00.001-05:00

Gizmag (which I've not visited before) has an article entitled "EU plan to phase out 'conventionally fueled' cars by 2050," which describes a whitepaper outlining plans to reduce reliance on foreign oil imports, cut emissions by 60%, and increase the availability of public transportation.

Those damned socialists!

Of course we never need to worry about that happening here. Look at the uproar from the various factions of the Sorehead party when people proposed phasing out incandescent bulbs in favor of more energy-efficient light sources. Force them to give up their gas guzzlers?

Hell no!

No...we'd rather breath brown crap while creeping forward at 5 miles an hour on freeways that look like parking lots. And continue to destroy our shorelines and wilderness area by drilling for ever-dwindling oil reserves, while paying god-knows how much for a gallon for gas.

Because no one can tell *us* what to do!

Cactus comeback!

2011-04-10T16:03:00.003-05:00

We had several days with temperatures in the mid-teens this winter and the big stand of cactus in my side yard took a bit of a hit. But it's roaring back now.

Check the buds out on these:

I ended up potting several of the fallen which will end up on my deck eventually.

Glenn Beck: now what?

2011-04-10T08:29:00.002-05:00

Glenn Beck is now officially too crazy for Fox News.

Who'd a thunk it?

While the Washington Post trumpeted in its Entertainment section the split between Beck and Fox would "dissolve a 27-month marriage beset by outside pressures and internal tensions," the Fox News website tactfully noted in the Business News, "the show has been losing viewers recently."

Who says advertiser boycotts don't work?

Well, this is old news. What I'm wondering is what the Mad Prophet will do next? Radio is an obvious answer, but without Beck's visuals (chalkboard, tears, pacing the set), that's bound to get boring before long. Americans may have have a love affair with freak shows but they like to see the object of their affection in living color.

My prediction is this will play out as it does with other celebrity freak shows: escalating crazy (until the public gets bored with that), followed by a reboot of the story arc in the form of some sort of dramatic transition to get the ratings back up:checking in or out of rehab, a diagnosis of some mental issue that explains their previous wackiness, or religious or political conversion.

That or he'll off himself.

Given his history, none of the above would be a stretch. The next six months should be interesting.

In praise of back-roads

2011-03-13T13:21:00.004-05:00

I like most things about my job (good co-workers, appreciative boss) except one: my daily commute takes me from south of downtown Fort Worth into Denton County. I-35W is an awful road, regardless of the direction. Best case: I can make the run to or from my office in about 25 minutes. Worst case: it has taken me over 2 hours.

The official name of that system of roads known as the "Interstate" is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Its construction was authorized by an act of Congress in 1956 and its passage reflected the post-war, cold war mindset of the time. These "superhighways" were seen as a means for moving heavy military equipment from one side of the country to the other quickly in time of emergency. These days that emergency better be prepared to wait, because those roads are often parking lots.

After six year of slogging along at 10 mph, I finally decided to start exploring some alternative routes -- the back-roads.

Funny thing about most interstates: if you study them, they usually replace an older numbered route that's still there, either a state highway or other thoroughfare. As likely as not the old route is under-utilized, at least compared to drive-time traffic on the freeway.

Having alternatives keeps the monotony factor low. I often find myself in a time machine, exploring byways of once-thriving businesses that depended on traffic for their livelihoods, now sucked dry by the interstate. You know the places: old cottage style motels, cinderblock bars, fading truckstops and assorted non-franchise eateries. A reminder of our economic past, when most businesses were local and locally owned.

A good back-road route isn't necessarily faster, it's just saner. While it will likely include a few stop signs or traffic lights along the way, you aren't trapped on a controlled access road with no avenue of escape from the writhing snake of red taillights stretching before you. A good one will also occasionally cut back close enough to the freeway from time to time so you get some visual feedback (stopped cars as far as the eye can see) that validate the decision to bail.

Like the fisherman who is reluctant to reveal his favorite fishing spot, I'm not going to lay out my path. In fact, I've got several paths, which allows me to bail from the freeway at the place where it makes the most sense. I have a couple of traffic apps (free) on my iPhone, which give me a heads up on when and where I need to seek a different way home.

Even when traffic is moving, there are days when I just don't feel like putting up with the semis, pickups and SUVs all crowding around me at 70 mph. As Gandhi once said, "There is more to life than simply increasing its speed."

Tired of your daily commute? Try the scenic route.

A short reminder on why we have unions

2011-03-11T00:46:00.001-06:00

With all this business in Wisconsin and their union-busting governor, it's become quite popular amongst some to bitch about "the unions." For all of their faults, there are strong and compelling historic reasons for why unions exist.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, many who were trapped because the owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. The fire is often cited as a catalyst in shifting the public's sympathies in favor of labor reform.

PBS's American Experience series now has an excellent documentary entitled Triangle Fire that gives the background and events leading up to this tragedy. Watch it online and re-visit some of the rhetoric which is being bandied about these days by right-wing politicians (and I include Tea Partiers and self-styled libertarians in this group) and uber-rich business interests. They are making the same tired "private property" bullshit arguments the business criminals who locked the exits made a hundred years ago.

Full disclosure: I have never belonged to a union, nor do I desire to. I've seen unions do plenty of bone-headed things and make ridiculous demands. Just like the companies with whom they are negotiating. But I'm working a (nominal) five-day 40 hour work week because organized labor butted heads with company-hired thugs and goons years ago. I'm betting you are too.

Incidently, one of the unspoken reasons those same right-wing politicians and uber-rich business interests would love to de-fund PBS and NPR is because of broadcasts like Triangle Fire.

The Daily Read

2011-03-02T21:35:00.003-06:00

We are defined by our habits and god knows I'm a creature of habit. There are certain websites I go to almost daily, for information and entertainment. In no particular order, here's my daily reading list. This will go a long way to explaining why I hold the peculiar opinions that I do.

Slashdot.org
"News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters," is their tagline. Where else can you read about programming, intellectual property law, the latest video game or the politics of anti-terrorism? The stories are good, but the reader comments are where the real fun is. Geek cred at Slashdot can in part be determined by how low your user ID is (indicating how long you've had an account): mine is in the low 70,000's; account numbers are now in the millions range.

Comics Curmudgeon
Every few days Josh Fruhlinger waxes eloquently about ... oh hell, he waxes snarkily, about the daily funny pages. He spares no one. His favorites are the "soap opera" strips like Mary Worth, Rex Morgan, MD, and Apartment 3-G, which he skewers regularly (and affectionately). I'm in withdrawal on days when he doesn't post. Reader comments are also a hoot. Coincidentally, Mr. Fruhlinger is also a frequent Slashdot contributor.

Salon
This is a more recent favorite: news, entertainment, politics and the like. They have a decidedly liberal tilt, which (not surprisingly) doesn't bother me at all. I get email updates from them which I usually read in bed on my iPhone before getting up for coffee. There has been more than one morning when I arrived slightly late to my office because I had to finish some article before I got out of bed. A well-designed site with fresh, interesting content. Of course I go here every day.

My Yahoo!
Okay - a little explanation: I've had a Yahoo! account since the web ran on 14,400 modems. It hosts one of my two primary email addresses. Even though the user base seems to be composed largely of dirt clods (based on a random sampling of news story comments) their portal is easy to configure and has a lot of content options. Before I took up residence on Yahoo! (the exclamation mark is part of their name, by the way) my start page was on My Netscape. How old does that make me?

Infospigot: the Chronicles
I first met Dan Brekke, your host on Infospigot, my first day of class at Talala Elementary school, in Park Forest, Illinois. He's now a journalist at KQED in San Francisco. In addition to being a gifted writer, he's a fabulous photographer, and often posts pictures of things encountered during his days. Dan has the journalist's gift of making the most mundane of things seem fascinating. Blame him for whatever liberal tendencies you may detect in me.

Cracked
Okay, you may remember Cracked magazine from your youth as a slightly crappy knockoff of Mad magazine. Well, several ups and downs, owners and bankruptcies later, the printed version is no more. But the website is pretty damned funny, in a sophomoric sort of way. Their stock in trade is lists: 6 Things Social Networking Sites Need to Stop Doing, 5 Real Deleted Bible Scenes In Which Jesus Kicks Some Ass, The 7 Most Terrifying Sex Toys Ever Patented (hey, I never said it was Tolstoy). Meanwhile, Mad is now owned by DC Comics, which in turn is a division of Time-Warner - bo-ring. Give me Cracked.com's slightly ragged funk. A guilty pleasure.

Slickdeals
Lots of reader-reported sales, coupons, specials, and deals. Hey, everybody loves a bargain.

The Whited Sepulchre
What can I say - the Whited Sepulchre is a Libertarian evangelist, a political fundamentalist, a rabble-rouser of the first degree. I find him occasionally funny, mostly infuriating. I read him anyway, and fling my contrary opinions back in the comments. I actually know (in the Real World) this guy. Despite the fact that he and I are diametrically opposed on so many issues, in person he is a prince among men.

Well there you have it. What do you read every day?

Shills and Tools

2011-02-26T12:42:00.002-06:00

Okay, kids, today we are going to discuss the differences between being a shill and being a tool.

Wikitionary has a couple of definitions for "shill":

A person paid to endorse a product favorably, while pretending to be impartial.
An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game.

I was in advertising for years -- I am (sad to say) well acquainted with the art and science of shilling.

A classic example: back in the day, my then employer had as a client a very large brewery, which I shall call "A-B." When a proposal to require a 5 cent deposit on non-returnable bottles appeared as a referendum item on the Oregon ballot one election year, A-B took a very dim view, since they were a major producer of non-returnable bottles.

Their response? They set up and bankrolled some phony grassroots committee ("Citizens for Sensible Packaging" or some such bullshit) to oppose the measure. This is now referred to as "astro-turfing. A-B hired a "chairman" for this bogus organization, ran numerous slick newspaper and radio ads, all paid for by them and produced by us. Funding was also funnelled through us, the ad agency, to keep their finger prints invisible.

The "committee" and their paid employees were shills for A-B.

Among its other definitions, Wikitionary defines "tool" as:

Equipment used in a profession, e.g., tools of the trade.
Something to perform an operation; an instrument; a means.
A person or group which is used or controlled, usually unwittingly, by another person or group.

The unpaid volunteers who had been whipped up by this mockery were tools.

It after this that I realized I was going to hell.

We have exeellent example of shills and tools available for study right now.

Koch Industries, Inc. is an American private energy conglomerate involved in manufacturing, refining and distribution of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, and chemical technology equipment. They are also the second largest privately held company in the United States with an annual revenue in 2008 of about $98 billion.

Given the nature of their business you would be correct in assuming they are subject to many labor, environmental and safety regulations.. According to Wikipedia, Koch Industries was ranked 10th on the list of top US corporate air polluters in 2010 by the Political Economic Research Institute, and they have had a long history of fines for illegal dumping, poor safety practices and other misdeeds.

The Koch family is no stranger to using their considerable wealth to influence policy. Paterfamilias Fred C. Koch was a co-founder of the rabidly rightwing John Birch Society (an organization that would accuse President Eisenhower of being a Communist agent).

In addition to their lobbying activities on behalf of oil, gas, and chemical Industries , the various Koch family foundations fund a variety of organizations that just happen to oppose government regulations and collective bargaining for employees. Imagine that.

Charles Koch provided initial funding to launch the Cato Institute, a well-known Libertarian think tank, and his brother David sits on the board. It continues to receive funding from Koch family foundations and though supposedly non-partisan, argues positions that clearly benefit its contributors.

This is shilling.

Americans for Prosperity, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group is another benefactor of the Koch family's largesse -- over a million dollars. According to AFP literature, they promote economic policy that supports business, and restrains regulation by government. Translation: reducing regulation of the oil and gas industry. They also created a dummy organization (Patients United Now) which opposed the single-payer system in the recent healthcare reform debate (did I mention the Kochs' various healthcare interests?).

AFP has also played a key though covert role in the emerging Tea Party movement. Thought the Kochs' deny involvement, the money trail is there - they are major source of funding to the professional political operatives behind the scenes of the supposed grassroots tea party movement.

This is another example of shilling.

More recently in Wisconsin, candidate (now governor) Scott Walker received campaign funds from one of the Koch family PACs; later the AFP (remember them) lobbied for Walker's bill which proposed abolishing collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public sector employees (but not police and firefighters). In the past, the Koch's have donated over $17 million to groups opposing unions.

The Governor is a shill for the Kochs.

And finally, what of all those Tea Party volunteers, waving signs, screaming about Obama's birth certificate and unpaid Libertarian bloggers tirelessly hawking the party line?

They are tools.

Jeff Beck channels Les Paul

2011-02-22T22:45:00.002-06:00

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Jeff Beck proves he has no shame. And I mean that in the best possible way imaginable. His new album Rock 'n' Roll Party is subtitled "Honoring Les Paul," and it's like attending a freaking guitar seance.

I mean to say there are tracks that will give you chills.

For starters, there's How High the Moon, a Les Paul / Mary Ford standard. The Mary Ford part is filled with scary enough accuracy by Imelda May but the signature guitar riff will have you convinced the Godfather of the Electric Guitar has come back from the dead. After listening to Jeff Beck's track, check out this live performance by the late Mr. Paul and tell me I'm wrong. And the Beck track, while dead on, is bursting with manic rockstar energy.

There are other Paul standards also lovingly reconstructed with the aid of Imelda May. Even though most of the album is heavy on rockabilly vibe, the senses tingle when Beck's personality shines through. And shine it does. In addition to Imelda May, there are guest appearances by Brian Setzer (no slouch himself) and Gary U.S. Bonds.

By the way, Amazon is currently selling this as a download for $9.99; a bargain when you consider it includes 20 tracks - and not a throwaway in the lot. I downloaded it this morning and have listened to it 4 times already today.

In 1988, Jeff Beck inducted Les Paul into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He honors the late musician again with this album.

Note: that's *not* Beck doing the intro at the beginning of the clip.

My one and only Superbowl post (I promise)

2011-02-05T13:05:00.002-06:00

Normally I don't care a fig about the Superbowl.

Many's the time I don't actually know who's playing in it. Of late I'll learn just enough about the outcome to avoid appearing a complete dunce in post-game office discussions.

This year is different the game will be played in Jerry Jones' new monstrosity in Arlington, Texas. By way of illustration of the afore-mentioned Mr. Jones' ego, he's charging people $200 to watch the game on monitors in the stadium parking lot, and calling it the "Superbowl Experience." He's also going to include these pathetic dupes in the headcount for attendance.

This week, North Texas (as with much of the country) has been hit with crushing snow storms and low temperatures. The electric companies have dropped the ball and had to enforce rolling blackouts to households because demand exceeded capacity. Thursday night I flew in to DFW after a business trip and the pilot circled past Cowboy stadium -- all lit up like a fucking Christmas tree.

No blackouts here!

I rarely agree with my friend, The WhitedSepulchre, in matters related to politics, but when it comes to rants about Jerry Jones, he's dead on. While I can't endorse much else on his blog, read his take on our recent weather and the Superbowl -- the man is a god-damn Old Testament prophet.

I wasn't planning on watching the game but was informed this morning by my beloved wife that we are invited to a Superbowl party. Since normally I don't care much for pro football, deciding who to root for is problematic. My take is one has to have some reason, no matter how slim, to justify one's choice.

For some people this comes down to finances: they have money on the game. Left with no other criteria, I go with regional loyalty. With college games. I'll support a Texas team over a non-Texas team, a team from a bordering state over a non-bordering state -- you get the picture. Grudges (no matter how stupid or ancient) are allowed to be factored in. I will NEVER root for UT Austin after the 55-0 drubbing they gave TCU my freshman year.

Pro games are harder, but thanks to Mr. Jones, I will always support Dallas's opponent.

With this year's game, I had to dig deeper, but finally decided to root for the Green Bay Packers. While I have nothing in particular against the Steelers, Wisconsin borders Illinois and I lived for 10 years in the Chicago area. Even more compelling is they are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States.

Let the game begin!

Sarah Palin - registered trademark

2011-02-05T12:07:00.002-06:00

This just in from several sources: Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, failed vice-presidential candidate, political pundit and reality television star, is attempting to trademark herself. No, I am not kidding you.

Reuters helpfully points out, "Legal experts said it is relatively unusual for politicians to formally trademark their names because they are generally not associated with commercially valuable products or services." That has to be the money quote for the day.

Mainstream Republicans everywhere are probably heaving sighs of relief everywhere since this can be taken as a sign that ~~Sarah Palin~~ the former governor of Alaska has privately concluded she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being the 2012 GOP presidential candidate, much less a shot at actually getting elected.

Henceforth all speaking, campaigning, prophesying and general self-promotion should now be considered commercial activity, not political.

While it's doubtful that ~~Sarah Palin~~ the former governor of Alaska will actually succeed in her quest (latest setback: she, uh, forgot to sign the form), it is remotely possible.

To get in on the goldrush, you might want to jump in and register some internet domains that could be valuable in the upcoming Sarah-centric universe. I did a little research, and while I can't afford to speculate in domains (I'm already overextended), you might want to.

Not surprisingly,sarahpalin.com, sarahpalin.net and sarahpalin.org are already taken. Currently they are parked. It's hard to say for sure, but that would seem to be compelling evidence someone other that You Know Who has them. sarahpalin.com was registered on April 26. 2004, sarahpalin.net and sarahpalin.org were registered March 12, 2008. The fact that they are all registered with different registrars would also suggest this is the work of multiple individuals.

Ex-Governor: you snooze, you lose

The closest thing to an official site is sarahpac.com, which is the Sarah Political Action Committee site (her slush fund). sarahpac.org and sarahpac.net are parked, too, but since all three were created on the same day with the same registrar I'm willing to bet her organization secured them as well.

With all this prime real estate already taken, what's a domain squatter to do? Consider the following:

Embarracuda.com (and .org, .net) : This term was thrown around in the 2008 election and could make a comback
FormerAlaskaGovernor.com (and .org, .net) : Not exactly the most exciting, but descriptive
ExGovernorPalin.com (and .org, .net) : Not exactly the most exciting, but descriptive
SarahPalinIsAnIdiot.com (and .org, .net) : Not surprisingly, the .com is already taken but .net and .org are still loose - I would have thought someone on her team would have registered these as defensive measures. They will regret this failure to act, I predict
WhoIsSarahPalin.com (and .org, .net) : ALL GONE! No doubt the nod to "Who is John Galt" appealed to someone with Libertarian sympathies.
SheWhoMustNotBeNamed.com (and .org, .net) : I actually like this one - it plays with whole trademark thing and has a subtle Harry Potter wink as well.

Okay - I've done the research; it's up to you now.

Commercial plug: if you have more than a few domains you control or are a domain reseller, let me recommend you investigate the good folks at SRSPlus.com, a subsidiary of Network Solutions. While not the best solution for individual registrations, if you have multiple domains, they could save you money.

An open letter to the good people of Minnesota's 6th congressional district

2011-01-27T07:19:00.000-06:00

Can I be frank? What the hell were you thinking when you elected Michele Bachmann?

It's not clear whether she's a lying sociopath or just a freaking idiot (or both) -- based on the fact that she got a J.D. degree and managed to pass the bar exam I'm inclined to lean towards sociopath -- but seriously, she's an embarrassment to you. Or should be.

I'll ignore for the moment her promotion of creationism in public schools, her statement that "our children... are the prize for [the gay] community, they are specifically targeting our children," and other run of the mill right-wing nonsense she routinely spouts.

Instead just look at her recent speech in Iowa where she shares the alternate reality in which she lives:

Apparently in this other universe, our founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery instead of actually owning slaves. It's pretty bad when John McCain's daughter calls you a "poor man's Sarah Palin."

Ouch.

Now down here in Texas we know all about right-wing idiots (see Louie Gohmert for a random example) but most are not telegenic aging MILFs like Rep. Bachmann and so don't get as much media play -- the exception being, of course our own Governor Rick Perry, whose hair *is* prettier than Michele's.

But I expected more out of you, Minnesotans.

Please, if you need entertainment during those cold winter months, just get cable and wait for Michele and Sarah to duke it out on some reality TV show.

I'm counting on you, good people of Minnesota's 6th congressional district.

What losing presidential candidates do (Libertarian edition)

2011-01-24T13:38:00.001-06:00

Much has been said by some of my Libertarian friends about Al Gore's career as a shill for the global-warming crowd after losing the 2000 election to George W Bush.

Let's take a look at what Bob Barr, our latest losing Libertarian candidate for president, is doing now.

CNN has a story today about former Haitian dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who wants to use $5.7 million in frozen Swiss bank accounts belonging to a "family foundation" to help rebuild Haiti. Baby Doc, in case your Haitian history is a little rusty, inherited the position of President from his late father, "Papa Doc," in 1971 and held it for 15 years until his countrymen threw him out. While marginally better than Papa Doc, Baby Doc lived like a playboy, looted the struggling nation's treasury, and allowed his father's cronies to continue to run the country. Under his rule thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured.

Now representing the Former President of Haiti is Former Presidential Candidate Bob Barr. Responding to allegations against Duvalier of corruption, torture and murder, Barr replies "I deal with allegations all the time. They are the cheapest commodity on the market."

I guess this is an example of the free market's Invisible Hand.

It's called Yahoo for a reason

2011-01-11T13:26:00.000-06:00

Full disclosure: I've had a Yahoo! account for well over 10 years.

Yahoo got its start as "David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" only to be later renamed as Yahoo! by its creators, Jerry Yang and David Filo, a couple of Stanford grad students. While "Yahoo" was backronymed to stand for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," Yang and Filo admitted they were drawn to the earlier meaning of the word, coined by Jonathan Swift.

In his satiric novel Gulliver's Travels, Swift describes a race called "Yahoos" as savage and filthy, obsessed with "pretty stones." The term has come to mean a crude, thuggish uncultured yokel.

Want an example?

You need look no further than any random sampling of reader comments from pretty much any news story posted on the Yahoo portal, especially something like this weekend's shooting of a Member of Congress. The level of discourse to be found makes schoolyard brawling look statesman-like.

It's truly depressing to try and follow the threads on these...It's as if every mouth-breathing, cousin-fornicating clay-eater in America has surfaced from their subterranean lairs to spew paranoia, hate and raw sewage.

The worst of it? Even the points of view I might normally lean towards are wrapped in such puerile ignorance I just want to look away.

Yahoo - truly the least common denominator.

God help us all.

NBC gives TCU the bum's rush

2011-01-03T17:52:00.002-06:00

This happened a couple of days ago but I've been under the weather and it still gripes my ass.

If you were a loyal TCU fan (I'm an alumni) and foolishly chose to watch the Rose Bowl Parade on NBC / channel 5 here in the Dallas/Fort Worth television market you probably waited patiently to see the TCU float and Horned Frog marching band. Alas, you would have been rewarded with bitterness.

About 30 seconds before the Frogs came a marching, NBC decided to cut away for a couple of minutes of commercials, huzzah! After they return to parade coverage after pimping for their sponsors, you could hear the faint strains of the Horn Frogs fading into the distance.

FAIL!

All we get is about 5 seconds of a tape-delay insert shot. No float.

Booyah!

To which I say, "What the fuck?"

They had a list of the parade participants and the order in which they appeared - it's not like TCU snuck up on them. Some jack-leg producer just decided if ONE OF THE FUCKING SCHOOLS IN THE GAME was snubbed no one would care.

And even more ironically, it was the school that went on to win!

I went to the comments section of the NBC website to voice my displeasure and got back the standard "Thanking-you-for-sharing-but-this-email-goes-straight-to-our-trash" type auto-reply.

Folks in Fort Worth are using social media to organize a parade in honor of our reigning champions.

You can bet I won't be watching it on the NBC affiliate.

Merry Christmas, etc.

2010-12-25T09:26:00.000-06:00

It's Christmas Eve...I'm about to go off to a family gathering, but wanted to wish a Merry Christmas to all (unless, of course an alternative mid-winter holiday greeting is more appropriate). A special shout out to former 5th grade classmate Dan Brekke and blogging friends / occasional debating parties Nick Rowe, Whited Sepulchre, TarrantLibertyGuy, Stephen Smith, and all the rest!

I can't think of a better Christmas sentiment that the following, from the Colbert Christmas special a couple of years back...

A Colbert Christmas: Peace, Love and Understanding
www.colbertnation.com

War on Christmas, 2010 Edition

2010-12-08T08:37:00.001-06:00

Along with holly, mistletoe and Santa, the annual whining about the "War on Christmas" has arrived, heralding the official beginning of the holiday season. First Baptist of Dallas fires what may be the opening salvo this year.

My good friend and debating partner The Whited Sepulchre beat me to the punch this morning with a great post about their GrinchAlert website -- a light-hearted (haha) attempt to throw a little more intolerance and commercialism into the season. Don't tell WS that I agreed with him -- it will ruin his day.

There's not much more I have to say that I didn't say last year. I'm going to do my best not to allow this sort of nonsense to piss me off this year.

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (and Ladies).

In praise of dressing

2010-11-25T11:09:00.001-06:00

I was chatting with a colleague based in New England the other day and the topic turned to Thanksgiving.

"What kind of dressing do you make?" I asked. "Oyster?"

"No, just traditional," was her reply. I pressed her for details and it turns out traditional for her meant bread dressing.

When I was growing up, traditional meant cornbread dressing -- more specifically made from cornbread baked according to my East Texas granny's cornbread recipe. It is *not* the same as the cornbread dressing you'll get from most Thanksgiving venues.

Since my wife's family is from Chicago (though she was born in Ohio and grew up in Dallas) her Thankgiving tradition is for whitebread dressing. Hence at my table we have two types of dressing every year. She makes hers, I make mine.

One of my wife's best friends makes oyster dressing. Another makes chestnut dressing. This year I noticed (and bought) tamale dressing from the Central Market chef's case.

Unfortunately there are some in our national life that seem to think their traditions are the only correct ones. It's as if I tried to insist cornbread dressing was the only "correct" type of dressing to be served at Thanksgiving.

My point is this: we are a diverse and non-homogeneous nation. Our traditions embrace many cultures and are constantly evolving -- and that is what makes us great. What a boring place this would be otherwise.

None of us have a monopoly on what's the "correct" tradition. As in years past there will be cornbread and whitebread dressing on my table when we eat. And I'll eat a little (well, more than a little) of each. There will be raging carnivores and vegetarians. I've added the tamale dressing this year just to keep things interesting.

May you have a happy Thanksgiving this year, whether your family traditon be cornbread, whitebread or chestnut dressing; turkey, or ham, tofu or sushi, or what your family looks like: single, married, straight or gay.

It's not about what goes in your mouth, it's about what comes out of your heart.

TSA - a monster of our own making

2010-11-24T18:48:00.001-06:00

Youngest son reports that the security check at Dulles was no big deal, contrary to the breathless predictions only a couple of days ago. No protesters, no long lines, no junk. He said he wasn't even scanned. Yet another blown-out-of-proportion story; a product of our 24/7 news cycle and a cynical few on both sides who want to game for their own purposes.

Glenn Greenwald, while guilty of ramping up the amps in his Salon article, Government yells "Terrorism" to justify TSA procedures, has some pointed observations to make that pretty much leaves all the actors in this latest bit of Security Theater with eggs on their faces.

First the Transportation Safety Administration:

This is the all-justifying, cure-all solution for every problem: government officials run to the nearest media outlet they can find and anonymously scream "TERRORISM." No evidence is needed; the anonymity precludes all accountability; fear levels are quickly ratcheted up; and everything the Government wants to do then becomes justifiable in its name.

But lest you think the Republicans (and here I include Tea Party sympathizers) are on high moral ground:

In one corner we have the American Right, magically re-discovering their alleged belief in privacy and government restraint now that they see an opportunity to politically harm Obama by waving that flag once again. These, of course, are the very same people who spent the last decade cheering on every radical expansion of unchecked government authority and privacy destruction when it was their Party doing it -- ones far, far worse than these airport screening measures -- and who will undoubtedly do exactly the same thing the next time a Republican occupies the White House.

But there is plenty of bad faith to go around:

In the other corner, we have the Democrats, who -- in perfect unison -- would be screaming bloody murder about these methods and waving the Flag of Civil Liberties if George W. Bush were still President, as they would smell partisan advantage from doing so.

Finally, least you think the citizenry is the victim in all this, Greenwald delivers the knockout punch:

And then we have the indignant, put-upon American People. They're not angry that the Government had adopted inexcusably invasive and irrational security measures. They're just angry that, this time, it's being directed at them -- rather than those dark, exotic, foreign-seeming Muslims who deserve it, including their own fellow citizens. And if there were a successful bombing plot against a passenger jet, many of those most vocally objecting now would be leading the way in attacking the Government for not having kept them Safe, and would be demanding even more invasive measures -- just directed at those Other People, the Bad Dark People over there.

To quote (yet again), the late, great Walt Kelly, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Go to Salon and read Glenn Greenwald's whole post.

Lamest Apple announcement ever

2010-11-16T12:53:00.001-06:00

Yesterday the Apple website breathlessly teased us about an announcement to be made today that promised to change our world.

Today they revealed the Beatles are (finally) available on iTunes.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Don't get me wrong -- I like the Beatles, it's just that this has to be one of the lamest announcements ever.

While the history of the conspicuous absence of the Beatles audio library on iTunes is interesting, in a geeky sort of way, it's not like mp3's of Beatles songs weren't available on the web in great abundance (albeit through unauthorized channels). Any one possessing a CD, borrowed or otherwise, can rip Beatles tunes to their heart's delight. My iPhone is full of Beatles songs. So what?

All this means is now Apple (and whoever owns the rights to the catalog now) makes even more money off Beatlemania.

Yawn.

Cause and Effect: Election Day edition

2010-11-02T11:26:00.001-05:00

Here are a pair of seemingly unrelated links which, upon closer examination, explain a whole lot.

America the Ignorant

The Unbearable Stupidity of American Voters

Depressing...

Be sure and actually check out the links before telling me I'm an elitist liberal a**hole.

A question for my Libertarian friends

2010-11-01T23:45:00.006-05:00

On the eve of the 2010 elections, I find myself puzzled by the choices of some of my Libertarian friends.

They are lining up in droves behind Tea Party candidates: a mixed bag of wannabees characterized by angry anti-Washington rhetoric, mostly around the government spending and taxes (TEA = Taxed Enough Already). I'll ignore for now the obvious question of where these hot-heads were during the Bush years.

The Libertarians have always prided themselves on being fiscal conservatives and social progressives. Indeed, the banner from the Libertarian Party website says "Minimum Government, Maximum Freedom."

Hey, sounds good to me.

Their 2010 platform preamble goes on to say:

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

Which is why I'm confused.

Part of their platform says:

We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should not deny or abridge any individual's rights based on sex, wealth, race, color, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs.

Yet they are lining up behind candidates like Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller.

Rand Paul opposes to same-sex marriage and is calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. Sharon Angle built her campaign on anti-immigrant / anti-Muslim bigotry -- going so far as to suggest parts of the US, including communities in Texas, are operating under Sharia law. She's also come out opposing legalization of marijuana. Joe Miller claims he is "unequivocally pro-life." Never mind that he appears to be a compulsive liar (he first denied and later admitted misusing Fairbanks North Star Borough computers in 2008 and was suspended without pay and placed on administrative leave): he needs to buy a fucking razor. Christine O'Donnell lacks basic understanding of the constitutional basis for the separation of church and state (in addition to being, well, an idiot).

Despite Libertarian pronouncements that "no individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government," some Tea Partiers missed the memo: Rand Paul supporters restrained and stomped a 23 year old female protester (attacker Tim Profitt - a former campaign organizer - opined that *she* should apologize to him after he was booked for assault). Joe Miller's "private security force" handcuffed a journalist and detained him in handcuffs for about 20 minutes until Anchorage police arrived and told Miller's guards to release him.

I could go on about this merry band of pranksters, but why?

The willingness of some Libertarians to climb in bed with these knaves and fools leaves me questioning their supposed commitment to the social freedoms of which they so loudly boast. If the financial issues are all you really care about, just say so. This starts to look like a transparent attempt to deflect Berkeley Breathed's comment about Libertarians being "whiny tax-dodgers."

You might want to re-read your own platform before you get back to me. I'm looking forward to you losing some of that smug superiority.

Wisdom from our Frozen Brethren from the North (part 2)

2010-10-18T12:22:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail had a great piece by Canadian author Douglas Coupland, entitled "A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years" (see previous post).

Easily missed on the web version was Coupland's companion piece, "A glossary of new terms for a messed-up future." A random sampling:

Unwitting Permanence -- The notion that by, say, throwing a Coke bottle off a ship's deck and into the bottom of the Marianas Trench, that bottle will remain there, unambiguously, until the sun eats up the planet. Most of the world's landfills display Unwitting Permanence.
Time Snack -- Often annoying moments of pseudo-leisure created by computers when they stop to save a file or to search for software updates or, most likely, for no apparent reason.
Deselfing -- Willingly diluting one's sense of self and ego by plastering the Internet with as much information as possible.
Frankentime -- What time feels like when you realize that most of your life is spent working with and around a computer and the Internet.
Sin Fatigue -- Hearing about the sins of others ceases to be compelling. A condition most commonly experienced by religious and medical professionals, but increasingly in the Web-worn general population.
Attack Moderates -- A common political tactic used by members of extreme orthodoxies. By forcing people in the political middle to polarize over issues over which they don't feel polar, a desired end state is achieved – one in which the hyper-amplification of what was not very much to begin with creates a tone of hysteria amid daily cultural discourse. This hysteria becomes a political tool used by the instigators to push through agendas that would never have been possible in a non-hysterical situation.

Read the whole article: well worth your time (insightful and funny as hell).

A side note: I am now reading Coupland's The Gum Thief. So far it has not disappointed.

Wisdom from our Frozen Brethren to the North

2010-10-10T01:10:00.003-05:00

I'm in Toronto visiting eldest son for Canadian Thanksgiving.

The Globe and Mail had a great piece by Canadian author Douglas Coupland, entitled "A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years."

Some highlights:

It's going to get worse
The future is going to happen no matter what we do. The future will feel even faster than it does now
In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness
Expect less
People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s
The future of politics is the careful and effective implanting into the minds of voters images that can never be removed
We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves

Believe me, you owe it to yourself to read the entire piece.

Douglas Coupland has written numerous works of fiction, non-fiction, as well as worked as a visual designer. Before I leave Toronto I'm going to need to track down copies of some of his work.

Best Dilbert quote ever...

2010-10-07T06:45:00.001-05:00

Today's Dilbert hits a new high for colorful imagery and euphemism: "I'm an admin, you steaming log. The only thing that would inspire me is finding your corpse floating in my worst enemy's drinking water."

The man has a gift for words, that's for sure.

This is just plain wrong...

2010-10-06T08:24:00.001-05:00

Somewhere in Cupertino, a great disturbance in the Force is felt...

http://www.padgadget.com/2010/09/30/ipad-runs-windows-95/

Computer games back in the day

2010-10-03T10:59:00.000-05:00

It's a sad thing to see stuff you remember as cutting edge now relegated to nostalgia. But better there than forgotten altogether.

PCMag.com posted an amusing slideshow / feature entitled 12 Forgotten Online Games a couple of days ago. The kicker was these were all pre-internet

"What?" you say. "There was online before the internet?"

Indeed. Dial up services and games abounded, not to mention the grandfather of all community access, the BBS. I had, at various times, an AOL account (using the pre-Windows client), Delphi and CompuServe. And tons of BBS accounts.

I was never a huge gamer but I recalled several of the games mentioned in the PCMag story, primarily the BBS "door" games; I had an ongoing friendly rivalry with the SYSOP of the Cat's Eye BBS on his Tradewar 2000 game. I also wasted time on LORD (Lord of Red Dragon) and Planets.

My eldest son had a demo account (several, really) on The Realm, which he and one of his friends used to annoy the paying customers.

Feel like a time trip? Many of the games listed are still available in one or another form: several of the BBS door games can be played as web-based versions.

Dust off that 486 and your install disks for Window 3.1 and have fun!

Oracle gets bitch-slapped

2010-09-28T13:04:00.001-05:00

Oracle is a relentless devourer of technology companies -- especially competitors. One of their more recent victims has been Sun, the floundering purveyor of Java and the sponsor of OpenOffice.org, a popular open source alternative to Microsoft Office.

There is apparently little love lost between Oracle and the OpenOffice.org community. No doubt observing the unhappy fate of the OpenSolaris project, the OpenOffice.org folks have jumped ship, taking the project with them and setting up a new umbrella organization: the Document Foundation, and rechristening their application suite LibreOffice. They did publicly ask Oracle to donate the "OpenOffice" name to the fledgling group, but I suspect no one is holding their breath waiting for that to happen.

Much is made in some circles about how "evil" Microsoft supposedly is. Compared to Oracle, they're a bunch of freaking panty-waists. Founder Larry Ellison makes no bones about being a bad-ass. To steal a line, he's the prince of fucking darkness.

And I mean that as a complement.

Seen at the bookstore

2010-09-21T23:45:00.000-05:00

Who the hell are you calling a Dummy, you son of a bitch?

Answer me, before I kick the shit out of you!

Crooks or Cranks?

2010-09-19T13:04:00.002-05:00

Here's a philosophical question for you with real world implications.

Given a choice between ONLY one of the following two options, which would you choose?

Governed by criminals
Governed by lunatics

Speaking for myself, I'd choose the criminal element: they are at least predictable and on many occasions, their ruthless self-interest will align with mine.

If, on the other hand, you'd prefer to be governed by lunatics...well, you had your chance this weekend to show your support for the local members of the Flat Earth Society.

The choice is yours.

PS - Had enough of these whack jobs? There's hope for reasonable people again courtesy of the most trusted newscaster on television.

Gallop Poll: people are stupid

2010-09-13T13:26:00.001-05:00

In a finding that will surprise no one, a recent Gallop poll finds compelling evidence to support the theory there are a lot of stupid people out there.

If it's any consolation, Americans appear to be slightly less stupid than the English or Germans.

Need more evidence?

The Wubi Netbook

2010-09-09T22:47:00.002-05:00

I'd sort of been wanting a netbook for a while.

These dinky little toys will leave some disappointed who are looking for a cheap general purpose laptop. Understanding the design focus is on portability and battery life is key.

After shopping around, I finally took the plunge and got an Acer Aspire. It had a new-ish processor (the Atom N450), a 6-cell battery, 1 GB RAM (expandable to 2 GB by swapping the chip) and a 160 GB hard drive.

As with many netbooks, it came equipped with Windows 7 Starter Edition, a stripped down version for the modestly powered machines. 1 GB occasionally leaves it gasping for air. I'd made up my mind to dual boot to Linux before I'd even decided on a machine.

Enter Wubi.

Wubi (Windows UBuntu Installer) lets you install Ubuntu Linux using a Windows-based installer. No repartitioning, no finding an external CD/DVD drive, no blowing away Windows. Download the installer in Windows, run it, choose the edition you want to install and sit back and wait.

The installer creates a pseudo filesystem inside Windows, then downloads an iso image using Bit Torrent, and installs using the downloaded image. The process (depending on your connection speed) takes a little under a hour. If you have a iso image in the same directory as Wubi, it will use that to install (with a caveat -- more on that later).

Being a KDE man, I started off with Kubuntu Netbook Edition. I downloaded the latest iso (10.04.1) and hit the Wubi install button. You can create an installation of from 17 to 30 GB. Since I was using a pre-downloaded image things went along at a pretty rapid clip.

The interface was designed for the smaller screen of the netbook. Everything seemed to work well except for ... the WiFi connection. I could not get that sumbitch to connect. The wired connection worked perfectly.

After an extended period of non-success, I noticed my Googling results had several comments to the effect that Wifi on the Acer worked well with the Gnome Netbook edition but there was something busted about Kubuntu. I did what any self-respecting geek would have done after 12 hours: I bailed.

In attempting to install Ubuntu Netbook edition I encountered a 2nd gotcha which caused a number of failed install attempts: the version of Wubi used must match the release of Ubuntu you are attempting to install. If your downloaded iso doesn't match the version of Wubi used to install, it will attempt to bit torrent the correct version. In my case, I was using Wubi 10.04.1 with Ubuntu 10.04 (no final .1), which caused it to endlessly download Ubuntu 10.04.1 -- which did not exist. Those point releases count.

If I were picky I'd say the Wubi people should make this subtle fact a little more apparent on the website -- as well as include a list of older versions. Once I found a slightly older version on CNET, everything worked perfectly.

Though an avowed KDE man, the Gnome netbook interface works very well with the smaller screen size - so much so that I don't really miss KDE. Performance was much improved over Windows 7 Starter. Once I was connected to the home WiFi network I installed Skype and called the Canadian son.

Other than the minor glitches above, the Wubi experience is a great way to start off with Linux. You can still boot into Windows, and if you decide you want to uninstall it, you do that from Window's Add or Remove Software Control Panel. Using the Windows filesystem is maybe not the best way to set up Linux, but it works and it requires the least amount of screwing with your system.

Jailbreaking for Dummies (and other stupid iPhone tricks)

2010-08-06T08:45:00.001-05:00

Two days after getting his iPhone 3GS, my youngest (the reigning alpha geek in the household) had it jailbroken. Why? Because he could. Ever since he's been ragging on me to jailbreak mine.

I resisted the urge -- primarily because it seemed more hassle than I was willing to invest time in. Unlike some Apple Fanboys, I had no philosophical or aesthetic objections. And I didn't give a shit that Apple argued it was illegal (a specious argument the courts have now throw out). The process to perform jailbreaking can be somewhat convoluted, and frankly, I didn't feel like screwing with it.

Enter jailbreakme.com. Web-based jailbreaking.

Just go there in Safari on your iPhone, and follow the extremely simple instructions: slide the control that says "Slide to jailbreak," and wait.

The site cautions you to backup your phone before proceeding: always a good idea. The first time I tried, I was not successful (it happens). Not to worry -- just return to jailbreakme.com and try again. You may have to turn your phone off and on. There's an FAQ you may want to review as well.

Once complete, you'll reboot and notice a new icon for Cydia, which is where you get apps for your newly liberated phone.

You'll notice it isn't near as user-friendly as the iTunes App Store.

Which brings up the bigger topic: "Jailbreaking for Dummies" is a bit of a tease. Unless you're at least semi-technically competent, the jailbroken way of life is probably not for you. Even with this dead-simple method, using the Cydia app source and managing apps from it is significantly different from doing things the Apple way. You add and remove apps from Cydia -- none of this jiggling icons you delete shit.

And it needs to be said: the jailbreak has given you great power, including the power to completely hose up your phone. And while jailbreaking may now be legal, it will still void your warranty. Don't expect to get much sympathy from the smug bastards at the Genius Bar. That being said, if you screw the pooch here, you can still go into iTunes and do a restore and you're back to a stock phone.

This little bit of sleight-of-hand makes use of a couple of exploits which you can bank on Apple fixing in short order, especially since some jokester performed the web-based jailbreak on a display phone at an Apple store (it's that easy). So, while jailbreakme.com works for versions of iOS up to 4.0.1, don't expect it to work on the next firmware upgrade. Most jailbreakers wait for the re-breaking of each firmware version before performing their upgrades.

Looking for a little trip off the Apple Ranch but not quite ready to void your warranty? Visit www.openappmkt.com and sample some of their wares. These are web-based apps (which means they run in Safari) but they are pretty slick and work checking out.

Enjoy!

If it's legal, do we still call it "jailbreaking?"

2010-07-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

The US Courts have declared that "jailbreaking" your iPhone is a perfectly legal activity.

Apple has been waving its corporate arms and screaming that jailbreaking is illegal -- citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- and making apocalyptic predictions of "potentially catastrophic" cyberattacks by hordes of iPhone-wielding cyber terrorists.

The courts said, "Uh, no."

While Apple is free to declare that jailbreaking voids warranties, it's not against the law. I guess all those Android-toting desperados are now free to switch carriers once their contracts run out, since the iPhone is obviously a much better platform for their nefarious deeds.

You can thank the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this latest bit of sanity in the world of corporate nonsense.

Consumer Reports calls bullshit on Apple

2010-07-13T13:59:00.001-05:00

Perhaps you've read Apple's explanation about the recent "problem" with the iPhone 4's antenna. After user reports that the signal strength bottomed out (causing dropped calls) when the device was held a certain way, Apple issued a statement that the problem was not with the antenna but instead with the software used to report signal strength. Oh, and there's a patch for that in the works.

Not so fast, says Consumer Reports, who declines to recommend Apple's latest wonder because of the problem. Seems their tests reveal it is a problem with the antenna after all. A design flaw, for crissake. Consumer Reports goes on to say problems with dropped calls maybe be more the fault of the iPhone than of much-maligned carrier AT&T.

The comments from Apple owners on the story are typically shrill: "Is this an attempt by CR to increase circulation at Apple's expense? It sure looks like it," and "I am so tired of people putting down my iphone 4." How pathetic.

In another interesting twist, TUAW is reporting that Apple support forum moderators are deleting all discussion threads that relate to the Consumer Report story.

I like my iPhone (3GS) but I have no use whatsoever for Apple.

Linux fixes what Windows breaks

2010-07-12T23:04:00.000-05:00

The youngest son had malfunctioning Free Agent external hard drive that had been acting flaky (I will never buy another Seagate drive). Did he pull it without "safely ejecting?" Hell, I don't know.

All I do know is the problems started when he started using it with his Windows Vista laptop.

Finally it got to the point where his machine and my Windows XP box refused to acknowledge it. Plugging it in would, 3 out of 4 times, cause my machine to freeze. It had, in fact, become useless.

So I offered to try and fix it, and recover the files if possible. The worst that could happen would be the drive would be unusable. Like it already was.

I plugged it into my Linux box (Kubuntu 9.04) and fired up gparted. Using this I was able to identify the correct device -- /dev/sdb1. Inserting it automatically created a mount point in /media, although it did not automount it. I mounted the drive on /media/FreeAgent using the command:

sudo mount -t /dev/sdb1 /media/FreeAgentNow I could view the contents of the drive. If you have trouble, make sure you have package ntfs-3g. While you're at it, install ntfsprogs (you'll need this for some operations. To install, run:

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g ntfsprogsI may have been able to move the files off the hard drive using the file manager window but instead chose to go in on the command line. After creating a temp directory, I used the mv command to pull things over as a series of directories.

Once I'd copied everything, I started gparted again, and this time, after selecting the correct drive, deleted and recreated the partition, then reformatted to NTFS. I did some minor testing but things looked okay. Your mileage may vary.

To wrap up this process, I copied the files back from the Linux temp directory to the newly formatted drive. Son now reports the drive no longer locks up the system.

One caveat: many external drive manufacturers now include a very small maintenance partition with some tools. Copy these if they are important or use them. Otherwise, kiss them good-bye. I've never put much faith in these myself..

iPhone: the iOS4 upgrade

2010-06-23T08:58:00.001-05:00

So of course I had to be one of the first to install the iOS4 upgrade to my iPhone 3GS. Here are first impressions (your mileage may vary).

First off, an iTunes upgrade is necessary (of course). That wasn't bad but did fail the first time. I'm wondering if there was a great crush of folks waiting to do this that caused the problem. There are a few differences in a couple of screens I noticed, but since I seldom use iTunes other than upgrading my phone and occasionally loading new music I'm hardly qualified to speak on the subject.

iTunes cheerfully informed me there was a new version of the firmware available; did I want to upgrade. Then the ritual acceptance of new terms and conditions.

The upgrade itself was slow but not outrageous. Then came the phone backup. I stopped checking at 5 hours and just set my alarm for the middle of the night. A co-worker later told me that for whatever reason the app "Stanza" can cause glacially slow backups. If you have it, consider uninstalling, at least temporarily.

When I checked again at 3 AM, everything was done. Hooray!

Backgrounds

First thing I notice when I restarted: the home screen background now matched my lock screen background. These two screens can be set independently of each other from the Photos app. Select a photo, go to "Use as wallpaper," scale it, and then hit "Set." You can set it as lock screen, home screen or both. Slightly useless but hey -- we all like to customize stuff we look at.

I suspect a new boom business in creating artsy backgrounds will emerge from the iPhone biosphere.

Folders

Best new feature, hands down: folders.

I had about a dozen screens of miscellaneous apps, and try as I may, there was no good way to organize that wasn't a pain in the ass in some way. Do you group them by category? Most used? No matter what I did, I found myself constantly flipping through 6 or 7 screens to get to the one I wanted.

Folders change all that. I'm down from 11 to 4 screens. I've got 2 screens that feature half folders / half most used apps, and a couple of screens yet to be sorted. The folders are grouped by app type / category. I'm now at most 3 gestures away from the majority of my apps. One minor limitation is that each folder will hold a maximum of a dozen apps, so if you are app crazy like me, you may wind up with multiple folders for a given category.

I had to Google to find how to create folders (no in-phone documentation) but it's fairly easy: hold down an icon until it goes into jiggle mode, then drag and drop one icon onto another you want in the same group. A folder title will be suggested (appears to be from the App Store category) but you can easily change the default title.

Once the folder is created, you can drag and drop new app icons into the group. Once you hit 12, if you try and add another it will simply not go into the folder. Like the app icons, folders can be dragged and dropped where ever. Finally, folders cannot contain sub-folders.

Email

If (like me) you have multiple inboxes, checking your mail can be a bit laborious. Now, in addition to the individual inboxes, you have a consolidated inbox with all your mail. Not insanely great, but certainly nice.

Other

I haven't had a chance to check out support for bluetooth keyboards (while this initially sounds cool, on further reflection I'm thinking: why? Probably mostly an iPad thing). I noticed something for tethering in the settings but haven't tried it and suspect I never will. If I needed to get online with my laptop that bad, I'd find a Starbucks with WiFi -- I suspect 3G internet on a laptop would be one step removed from dialup. Maybe not -- but I doubt AT&T is going to let this happen for free.

Final thoughts

Youngest son has been after me to jailbreak my phone for a while. With this I see even less reason to do so. Again, your mileage may vary.

Note: will try and post some screenshots this evening.

The Toys have still got it

2010-06-21T00:09:00.002-05:00

For Fathers Day today we caught Toy Story 3.

It was a heck of a show - the guys at Pixar have not lost their touch. We re-watched the Toy Story on blu ray a couple of weeks ago to prepare ourselves. While the original was groundbreaking in its day, the years since have seen amazing strides in computer animation.

Yet despite the technical tour-de-force (see it in 3D if possible), Pixar continues to show the world its real strength is in writing and directing. It's laugh out loud funny. Yet without giving away thing critical, let me say the theater was filled with the sound of choked-back sobs by the end of the show.

Hell, I'm not ashamed to admit I was a weepy bastard.

We see a couple of sides of Buzz Lightyear we haven't seen before. And new character Ken (Barbie's boyfriend) puts on some moves I would have never thought possible. And if (like me) you have college students you'll find it especially bittersweet.

So go see it - it's a great film. The 3D part is gravy on top of the excellent storytelling.

You'll laugh, you'll cry. You'll love it.

You'll understand "Death by monkey."

POF

2010-06-03T20:45:00.001-05:00

I write to enquire in confidence, that we can jointly do some legal stock transfer trading together based on a Joint Venture.

The principal amount of the POF is $100M I have already worked out modalities to execute the transfer, hence I seek for your consent if interested.

khoza.

...In which Tom Tomorrow puts context on BP's little screw up

2010-05-31T23:31:00.000-05:00

Tom Tomorrow (real name: Dan Perkins), is the creator of the comic This Modern World.

Read his recent strip, "What could possibly go wrong?" to understand why we now have millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. And bitch-slap some sense into the next person who acts like this is no big deal.

LOST - it only ends once...

2010-05-26T07:10:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday was the LOST-o-thon: 2 hours of recap/interviews with cast and producers, followed by the 2 1/2 hour finale. And if you wanted to hang around long enough, another hour entirely devoted to LOST on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It was exhausting.

Reactions have been mixed.

Much of Slashdot-dom hated it. They wanted ANSWERS, god-dammit. And while quite a few long time mysteries were addressed, not all were. So freaking what?

A lot of how I processed the finale (as well as the show as whole) is based on things I learned and taught as a once and future painter. I've learned to appreciate and celebrate the power of ambiguity. Works of great art (if television can be art) engage the viewer/audience in the creative process. The viewer essentially finishes the work by layering on their personal interpretation or meaning, based on their life and experiences. Giving people explicit answers shuts off that dialog.

In the days that followed, there has been much discussion about what it all meant in the final analysis. Think that would happen if everything had been spoon-fed to us by the writers? And when some type of answer to a mystery was given, as often as not, the reaction was, "is that all?"

Another bitching point has been that there was a bunch of stuff over the course of the six year run that was filler that never really meant anything or went anywhere.

Lord yes. Consider the worthless tangent of Nikki and Paulo.

Again, taking a lesson from my teaching days, most great art is moments of brilliance held together by competency. Nikki and Paulo were filler, but competently done. Why was that story arc there in the first place? Who knows? Who cares?

Through much of the 2 1/2 hours of the finale I was all misty-eyed. By the time of the big pay-off at the end (if you watched, you know what I'm talking about) I was weeping like a little girl. No apologies.

In the final analysis (mine anyway) it was a good -- sometimes great -- 6 years. Some seasons were better than others, some shows were better than others. Whatever else you can say, it wasn't boring.

Like most of JJ Abram's shows I've watched, it was ultimately a character-driven show. Which is why so many people responded. We care more about the people than the mysteries. And the finale, as well as the show as a whole, delivered in spades.

I've already pre-ordered my copy of the 6 season blu-ray boxed set.

Bonus: here's a video oldest son sent me. Enjoy, as you go through LOST withdrawal.

My Daily Prayer

2010-05-18T07:29:00.001-05:00

Dear God,

Don't let stupid people piss me off.

Rinse and repeat.

Would somebody put Adobe out of their misery?

2010-05-13T14:59:00.001-05:00

The whole Apple vs. Adobe soap opera continues. When will somebody cancel this show?

The latest installment comes from Adobe, who's now running full pages ads in the Wall Street Journal and posting open letters. The latest is entitled, "Our thoughts on open markets."

As the founders of Adobe, we believe open markets are in the best interest of developers, content owners, and consumers. Freedom of choice on the web has unleashed an explosion of content and transformed how we work, learn, communicate, and, ultimately, express ourselves.

Yeah right.

This is because (sniff) Apple won't support Flash on the iPod/iPad/iPhone. Oh boo hoo. Guess what: when I use the Lynx browser on the console of my Linux box I get no Flash support either.

More significantly, the Adobe EULA for Flash forbids anyone who has installed their Flash tools or plugin from working on Flash technologies. It is a closed, proprietary platform. Closed: not open.

As far as open markets, Apple's position on Flash is well-known, in large part thanks to Adobe's pissing and moaning and threats to sue. If Flash support is important, consumers have other devices they can choose from. No one is forcing them to buy iPads. I don't much care for the amount of control Apple places on its various devices, but by golly, that's their business. And no one is forcing anyone to buy Apple's stuff.

Notice that Adobe has chosen to air their differences in the Wall Street Journal, rather than some tech publication? That's because this isn't a technical issue: it's a financial issue -- for Adobe.

Adobe -- you want open? Open up Flash. More specifically, open source the Flash player. That way anyone can improve it, including Apple.

By the way, while you're at it, why don't you open source Photoshop?

Patent Absurdity

2010-05-02T15:19:00.000-05:00

Ever hear how Amazon managed to patent the idea of "One-Click Shopping?" That's right -- they were granted a patent for the idea of pre-entering your credit card info so when you clicked on the "Buy Now" button, you didn't have to re-enter all your financial data. When Barnes and Noble later offered a similar service, Amazon sued for (get this) patent infringement.

Years later, large chunks of the original broad patent were thrown out, but not without a lot of money being flushed down the toilet that is occasionally our legal system. The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent.

This sort of nonsense abounds.

A couple of weeks ago, a new short documentary was released on-line entitled, "Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system." In it, independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini looks at how our current patent system has managed to screw by issuing patents on the flimsiest of premises and the history of how this sorry state of affairs has arisen.

Download or stream the video (Ogg Theora format) or view at DailyMotion (no YouTube version currently available that I am aware of).

Lawrence Lessig has written extensively on the current sorry state of software patents, copyright abuse and intellectual property, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). If this sort of thing concerns you, I'd advise you to see what they have to say.

You own the jelly but who owns the jelly jar?

2010-05-02T11:28:00.005-05:00

Imagine you were a guitar player. You're no Leo Kottke, but you can hold your own on open mike night at the local bar. How would feel if you discovered, buried in the fine print in the owner's manual that came with your Martin D-15, something that said you could only perform with said guitar for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes?

Or suppose you were an artist - a painter - and discovered the brushes you used to paint your last masterpiece came with the same restriction: for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes only? Or a writer, with the same restrictions on anything that came out of your word-processor?

Freaking ridiculous, eh?

Guess what, all you photographers shooting digital video, your camera may have the same restriction. It's about the technology used to encode the video (the "codec").

OS News (one of my favorite technology sites) has a long article about the licensing restrictions placed on one of the more commonly used codecs -- h.264. Author Eugenia Loli-Queru does a fairly brilliant job of describing the situation. You can thank MPEG-LA, a firm that advertises itself as "packager of patent pools," as being responsible for this particular piece of nonsense.

While you may think you control any content you create, MPEG-LA controls the container that holds the content. And without a key to the container, you're screwed.

Of course, you're under no obligation to buy a camera that uses this encumbered technology, but good luck finding one that doesn't use it, or advertises the fact that it uses it in the first place. It's not the sort of thing manufacturers advertise on the packaging.

The real problem is our patent/copyright/trademark laws, and the whole abomination that has morphed into the concept of "intellectual property." As usual, greed and self-interested parties with lots of influence (and money) fuel most of this.

Lawrence Lessig has written extensively on the current sorry state of software patents, copyright abuse and intellectual property, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). If this sort of thing concerns you, I'd advise you to see what they have to say.

In the meantime, got a camera that records video?

Check the fine print.

Thanks yet again to Slashdot for the tipoff!

Late breaking news, part 2: Tea Partiers are "racially resentful"

2010-04-28T08:21:00.001-05:00

News flash: the sun rose in the east.

And in other headlines, a survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality finds that Tea Partiers are "racially resentful." Is this a fancy way of saying black people piss them off? Which is another way of saying they are racists?

Hmm...I wonder.

Tie this with the recent poll which found this same group of grumpy white people thought "the Obama administration favors blacks over whites."

Newsweek has more information, if you are finding this hard to believe.

Just to show they don't play favorites, the TP'ers also disliked Latinos.

Why jailbreak your iPhone when you can do this?

2010-04-22T09:11:00.001-05:00

This just in: a clever person out there has managed to successfully hack his iPhone so it will boot into Google's Android OS (which also means -- he's made it boot into Linux!).

Apparently he's only got this working on an older iPhone (not 3G or 3GS) but by golly -- the fact he's done it at all is pretty astonishing. There's an embedded YouTube video that demos this unnatural act in all its perverse wonderment.

Somewhere there is a great disturbance in the Force.

Thanks again to Slashdot for bringing this to my attention.

Gizmodo on the new iPhone

2010-04-19T12:04:00.001-05:00

In an oddly serendipitous set of circumstances, Gizmodo "found" what they claim is a prototype for the new iPhone in a bar in Redwood City.The real deal is scheduled to be launched this June. By the time they got their hands on the prototype, the owner had remotely killed it, but they do have a number of photos, as well as descriptions.

My impression is the styling is heavily influenced by the iPad, including an aluminum band around the perimeter. Although I won't be rushing out to buy one (not until my AT&T contract expires anyway) it appears to be a handsome device. I will be upgrading to the 4.0 firmware once they make it available for the 3GS.

Check it out, fanboy!

In other iPhoney news, the beta release of the 4.0 firmware has already been jailbroken.

Late breaking news: Tea Partiers are angry old white people

2010-04-14T23:15:00.002-05:00

The latest CBS/New York Times poll reveals this shocking information: people who identify themselves as members of the Tea Party movement are, for the most part, angry old white people who watch Fox News.

In other news, scientists expect the sun to rise in the east tomorrow.

Here's a snapshot of your basic Tea Party sympathizer/supporter:

75% are over 45 years old
95% identify themselves as Republicans or "Independents" (ha!)
73% say they are conservatives
89% are white
63% say they get most of their political and current events news from the Fox News Channel

More interesting takes on reality from the Tea Party:

92% think the country is on the wrong track
59% think President Obama was born in another country (30%) or say they don't know (29%)
52% say too much is made of the problems facing black people
25% think the Obama administration favors blacks over whites
When pressed for why they objected to Obama, 19% said "they just didn't like him."

Shocked? I know I was.

More analysis here (even snarkier than me).

I never know whether to laugh or cry.