Chaos Magnet

Stealth disco

I used to work in an advertising agency, and I can vouch for the long hours and the need for tension reducers.
Stealth Disco is the act of basically dancing behind coworkers without their knowledge. Check it out.

Software requirements

Sometimes I wish I could get out of work this way. Today's Dilbert

Strapless evening gowns and the IgNobel prize

The first significant computer program I ever wrote was in high school, and it was an analysis of the text of A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown (apparently from the book of the same name). Despite the risque nature of handing this task to high-school students -- I know I'd complain if my son had this assignment -- I was irrevocably hooked on The Journal of Irreproducable Results. The editor has gone on to found the Ig Nobel awards, presented to "honor" achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced," and now he's got a new book: The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research. Can't wait to check this one out.

The Freedom Calendar

Freedom doesn't mean what it used to. Check out the Freedom calendar.

The 100th monkey

I'm a big proponent of the holographic nature of the universe, in which everything is connected, even if we can't see it or even imagine it. The Hundredth Monkey is a philosophy in which knowledge becomes universal when a certain number of people learn it. It'd be nice if a) it were true and b) we could pass along some reasonable thought to enough people to make the world a little less screwed up.

Moon power

Now here's an idea in the why-didn't-I-think-of-that department: Norway gets electrical power from rising and falling tides

Taxi drivers have bigger brains

I considered driving a cab for a while, but when I really needed the job, the only cab companies around were those that leased you the cab. In other words, you paid them $75/day or whatever it was, and kept the money you made. Call me crazy, but I'm not really up for a job where you can actually lose money. Now it looks like I might have missed out on an opportunity, as it seems that taxi drivers have bigger brains.

No excuse for bad spelling

I received the following from one of my oldest friends today. (As per usual, if you're the author and want me to take it down, let me know.)

-------------

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat
ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs
is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter
by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?

Memories of fish

When I was a kid, I lived in New York City, and every Sunday, my dad would go out and get "appetizing." Now, appetizing, in case this is a word that is either regional or (more likely) peculiar to my family, is a whole range of food, including bagels, cream cheese, and various fish, including sable, creamed pickled herring, and lox heads and wings.

Now, if you've never heard of them, lox heads and wings are not what they sound like. Lox, as you may know, is smoked salmon, and most of the time it's cut into thin slices and put on cream cheese and bagels. That means that when they fillet the salmon, they have to cut off the bony art near the head (the lox head) and the part around the fins (the lox wings).

Lox heads and wings are really hard to eat, and eating them is how I got my reputation for liking food that's a challenge. They've got a lot of bone and cartilage in them, and after I've eaten a few of them, I practically need a shower to get rid of the lox smell.

When I was very little, my dad would go down to the lower east side of Manhattan and get a garbage bag full of heads and wings -- well, it seemed like a garbage bag to a five year old -- for free, since they were going to throw them out anyway. Eventually, they figured out that people actually wanted them, and my dad paid a quarter a piece. Nowadays, if you can even find them, they charge you by the pound -- the full price for lox. Suffice it to say that I don't get them much anymore.

But I did develop a taste for sushi, and when I did, salmon was a natural choice. Of course, I don't get out for sushi much either -- most authors don't make tons of money, no matter what it looks like -- so I have to content myself with the occasional fillet of salmon picked up at the grocery store. It's good, it's heathly -- lots of Omega-3, so it's brain food, which I definitely need -- and with a generous dose of salt, it tastes a lot like lox.

Lately I've had a craving for salmon, so I was thrilled when I walked into Wal-Mart and found an entire freezer case of whole salmon. (Well, beheaded, cleaned whole salmon.) They were frozen, but they were huge -- about two feet long, in fact. And at all of $5.94 each, it was a deal I just couldn't pass up.

Trouble was, I had no idea how to fillet a salmon. I followed the directions and thawed it in the refrigerator like a good boy, but absolutely mangled the thing when I tried to fillet it. Oh, I cut off the one side OK, but in trying to remove the rib bones, I muffed it, but good. So imagine my surprise (and pleasure) to find Salmon University's How to fillet a salmon. Too bad I didn't think to look it up earlier! I've still got the other side of the fish to fillet, so we'll see if I do any better with that one.

But it still won't be the same as having my dad come home with a bag of heads and wings.

A little peace

My wife practically had to get me in a headlock to make me take a look at this little site, but it was worth the effort. It's a little corny, yes, but if you can get past that and really think about what it's saying, it's a nice break from the ordinary, more cynical view of life.

Time flies like an arrow...

... fruit flies like a banana. Or so the old saying goes. (Does anybody remember the old Intergalactic Trading Company? Are they even still around?)

Last week was a killer, productivity-wise. A whole day at the doctor's with my father-in-law, a 2 hour trip to the oral surgeon to get fitted for a splint for my TMJ, laundry, financial machinations, and, of course, the debacle with getting my car fixed. (Finally financed the repair.)

I did get to see a fantastic Irish band, Inchicore. They were terrific -- better than their CD suggests, actually -- and the place was also livened up by the presence of a group of drunken Scottish soccer hooligans.

So after working through the weekend (when I wasn't getting the yard ready for a real estate agent to look at the house) I'm still behind one tutorial, one reference guide update, three XML webog entries, and a book proposal.

And so the week begins!

A little clarity

Daniel Drezner's posting got me really thinking about what it is that bothers me about this whole overseas outsourcing thing.

Let me make something clear.

I'm not opposed to spreading the wealth, so-to-speak, by providing jobs overseas, necessarily. What bothers me is the dishonesty about it. OK, you're doing it to boost the bottom line. Fine. Just don't try and tell us that it's to boost sales (ie, Boeing) or that we're going to like it, really.

Jon, who has "worked in and through the waves of global outsourcing first in the Engineering and Construction industry and most recently in the IT industry" probably put it best in his comment on Drezner's original post: "I do agree that the gains from this trend will benefit American corporations. However the benefit will not extend to the consumer and most certainly not to those displaced US employees suddenly finding a barren market for their career skills and expertise within the US.

Corporations will get the profit of the less costly operating and production costs found off-shore, which wealth will be re-distributed in executive incentive and bonus packages, certainly in no way returned to those US employees no longer employed. And the Administration’s support for reduced corporate taxation further lessen the degree to which the fruits of this labor will be reintegrated in a manner beneficial to the populace at large. The fantasy that US corporations will adopt as SOP and offer released workers “ex-employment” insurance is exactly that – a fantasy."

Pareto-improving moves

Daniel Drezner suggests that I don't understand that in some cases one person can be made better off without someone else being made worse off. Of course I understand that. I just don't think that moving high-paying tech jobs overseas is one of those situations. And looking at the first few comments on his posting, it looks like I'm not the only one who thinks the likelihood of companies buying "targeted insurance products" to cushion the effects to workers displaced is, to say the least, unlikely.

Drezner quotes the report's suggestion that "at least theoretically, displaced U.S. workers will find new jobs in more dynamic industries." Why do I suspect that's double-speak for "lower paying jobs somewhere else"? Sure, a coder can get a job flipping burgers, but is that really an improvement for anybody but corporate shareholders?

So no, I don't understand how this is good for American workers. I'll tell you what else I don't understand. I don't understand how you can tell me that effectively eliminating overtime will create more jobs, when it's now cheaper to have fewer workers and make them work longer hours. I don't understand how a member of Congress can say that poor working families don't deserve a tax credit because they pay no taxes, when a much larger portion of their income goes to gasoline taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes that don't scale based on economic class.

I don't understand why we as Americans, we have allowed ourselves to become so complacent to what is clearly unfair.

Maybe it's just that John Dickinson was right, as quoted in 1776: "A poor man will fight to the death to protect the possibility of becoming rich, rather than face the reality of being poor."

I hope not.

(Additional note: Daniel Drezner actually has an impressive CV. I'll definitely be checking out some of his other writing.)

A $.30 bushing on a $375 cable

My car is in the shop today, and will likely stay there until at least Monday. It may stay there longer than that. Oh, it's not that the parts aren't available, or that the shop doesn't have time to fix it. The problem is that my beloved 1996 Saturn, which has given me very little trouble in the 150,000 plus miles that I've driven it, has a bad bushing in the shifter. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with cars, or with bushings (as I was when the day began) a bushing is typically a small, round, piece of plastic that goes around a piece metal that rotates, filling some of the same function that ball bearings might.

At first I was relieved to find out that the reason I couldn't shift my car out of third was not the linkage inside the transmission after all, but rather a problem with the shifter itself. After all, it's got to be cheaper to take apart the center console than the transmission, right?

Well, yes, that's true. But apparently Saturn has seen fit to take this small piece of plastic and provide it only attached to the clutch cable. Price for the clutch cable? $375. Oh, and another hour or four to install it, since it's got to be threaded up through the dashboard and over to the transmission.

Total cost to repair the one inch piece of plastic? $750.

I have no light in my radio for the same reason: a $600 job to replace the entire wiring harness. I decided I can live without the light. And it's not just cars, either. I once had to replace an entire laptop motherboard because the power supply jack got loose. (Thankfully, it was a warranty repair, but still...)

Why do companies DO this? And why do we let them?!?

An open request to Saturn: Why, oh, why, would you design something like this so that a simple repair becomes so darn complicated?

[Update: This entry has more comments than any other post on this blog, with lots of great information on how to fix this problem without spending an arm and a leg. Now, if you scroll down, you'll see a description from "HA-Y-N Saturn" of a particularly ingenious fix. He's given me permission to post the photo. (Forgive me for not just adding it to a comment, but MT won't let me, for obvious reasons.)]

Fame vs. Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content

I've never read a Clay Shirky essay that wasn't interesting. This one, Shirky: Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content, talks about why micropayments for content will likely continue to fail, and why that's not necessarily a Bad Thing.

RIAA shoots itself in the foot

The RIAA is preparing for an even more massive onslaught of lawsuits against individual file sharers. One so-called "pirate" is challenging the subpoena of her records, but probably won't get far. The Electronic Frontier Foundation will let you search to see if you're being subpoenaed. The database has 1145 subpoenas at the time of this writing. The effect? According to this SFGate article, "an independent digital media industry analyst, said the 'fear factor' caused usage of file-sharing programs to drop about 22 percent in the seven weeks after the RIAA announced its plans to sue individuals." So that's a victory for the RIAA, right?

Well, not exactly. "Yet Leigh noted industry sales reports show the drop in CD sales accelerated during the same period." In other words, they've pissed off their customers. Basically, people are saying, "I'm not going to buy your product anyway."

It's sad, really. I used to think file sharing was great, because I'm one of those people who would actually listen to the music and then buy it. But I've seen my son's generation adopt an "everything's free" mind-set, which is wrong too.

Stop alien abductions

Some days you just can't take things seriously. Stop alien abductions with a thought screen helmet.

Ian Clarke on Freenet and his decision to leave the USA

Years ago, I was part of Mojo Nation, a network that provided a decentralized system of file storage. The idea was interesting, with users getting "tokens" for providing either bandwidth or storage, or whatever. The interesting part was that there was no way to tell what information was being stored on your system. Each document was broken up into pieces, and multiple copies of each piece were distributed over multiple machines. Kind of like an anti-censorship version of the internet, where any one node could be taken down and not effect the integrity of the available data. Overall, I liked the concept, though I was uncomfortable with the idea that I might be inadvertantly providing access to child pornography. Eventually the network collapsed -- or at least I think it did -- and I stopped thinking about it.

But freedom's on my mind a lot lately. I'd never looked into it, but apparently FreeNet is a lot like it, as a distributed system that stymies censorship. But now its founder, Ian Clarke is leaving the USA. Why?

Several reasons really. Firstly, because the work I am doing now doesn't really require me to be in any particular location, I could probably work from the North Pole if I had a fast Internet connection. Secondly, because I don't like living in a country where, as a non-citizen, I am considered less deserving of justice than American citizens. Thirdly, because I feel that the direction intellectual property is being taken in this country, such as with the DMCA and software patents, make innovation much more difficult and risky here, particularly in the P2P space. There are many things I like about the US, but it just doesn't make sense to be here any more.

Thing is, freedom is an elusive thing. Let's go back to my original problem with Mojo Nation for a moment. What about the idea that criminal activities can take place on such a system, or even child pornography? Clarke:

Free speech doesn't exist if people are only free to say what you consider to be decent or true. Few would tolerate the mandatory installation of police cameras in private homes, even though it could prevent all forms of child abuse, and domestic violence. Are those that might oppose such a scheme to be considered advocates of child abuse? The rationale behind Freenet is discussed in more detail on our philosophy page.

Security Testing Methodology

I am, I will admit, sadly inadequate when it comes to security. I'm not a hacker (in either the white hat or black hat sense) and never have been, and have little exposure to the rigors of security testing, as any system administrator who's worked with me can attest. So I'm looking forward to the ISECOM Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual. "As a professional standard, it includes the rules of engagement, the ethics for the professional tester, the legalities of security testing, and a comprehensive set of the tests themselves." We'll see.

Free e-books

I've been a big fan of Project Gutenberg for a long time. Project Gutenberg contains the complete text of classic (and not so classic, to be honest) books that are in the public domain. Although that seems like it's not a big deal, lots of books like those by Arthur Conan Doyle and Lewis Carroll are part of the archive. Now Planet PDF has free PDF versions of books by authors such as Charles Dickens and H.G. Wells.

It's definitely a good way to keep these titles from being lost altogether, and you can help. PG runs a distributed proofreading site, where you can take five minutes and proofread a page or two.

Firefly at the movies!

I'm so excited! My favorite TV show of all time, Firefly, is going to be a movie. I connected with this show in a way that I have not connected with anything -- well, anything fictional! -- since I saw Star Wars when I was nine. Totally different feeling, of course. Star Wars was, in many ways, an excercise in optimism and empowerment. (Well, the original on its own, anyway.) Firefly is almost the opposite, a last, desperate grab at some kind of freedom in the fact of crushing defeat.

But somehow, somehow Joss Whedon put together an ensemble of characters and a universe that just reaches out and grabs you. Hard.

I get so frustrated when people talk about the show being a failure. A couple of months ago TV Guide was talking about how Sci Fi was so thrilled with the ratings of Stargate SG-1. It's their top-rated show. Something like a million people a week are watching it. Big, fat, hairy deal. When Firefly was at it's lowest, FOUR TIMES that many people were watching it.

Well, now we're getting a movie, and December 9 Firefly -- The Complete Series is out on DVD. I can't wait!

Off-shoring as a win-win?

You know, I really don't have anything against Indian programmers or call centers, or anything like that, but I've got to take issue with a report that calls the sending of 3.3 million high-paying technical jobs overseas a "win-win" situation. A McKinsey Global Institute report, Offshoring: Is it a Win-Win Game? makes just that claim, on the theory that the US companies that pay $6/hour to an Indian programmer instead of $60/hour to a US programmer will have all of this extra money to pour back into the economy. Oh, and those 3.3 million workers? (Or non-workers, as the case may be...) "Targeted insurance products managed by businesses could be one way to lessen the pain to workers. This approach could help provide wages for those who lose jobs because of offshoring for an acceptable period of time. Given the large surpluses generated from offshoring, programs to address the impact on workers are feasible." Um ... excuse me, but if companies were interested in lessening pain to their workers, they wouldn't lay them off in the first place. This isn't about stimulating the economy, it's about the impossible cycle of growth a corporation has to maintain to keep it's stock price up.

Don't it just figure

In the next two days, we're supposed to get between 10 and 15 inches of rain. That's a lot of water. So naturally, the cuppola has gotten knocked off my roof, leaving a 2x2 hole for the water to pour into my attic (and eventually, my garage). And just to complete my week, I had to have my car towed home because, it seems, the linkage is busted. The one inside the transmission, of course.

Well, at least I was able to throw a tarp over the hole in my roof and staple-gun it up there, so I won't have to worry about ceilings collapsing.

Eolas vs Microsoft

Been keeping track of the Eolas vs. Microsoft judgement? The one where Microsoft was actually slapped with a judgement worth half a BILLION dollars? It concerns you, you know. Eolas claims to have invented plugins, and Microsoft is talking about modifying IE to account for the judgement.

I commented on original judgement and prior art issues over on my InformIT XML blog.

A new look at Batman?

I am cautiously excited at the idea that we may get a new Batman movie from Christopher Nolan. Nolan is the mind behind Memento, so I have some hopes that it will be a dark, moody, psychological look at a man who is, essentially, on the edge of sanity. But on the other hand, look what happened to The Hulk ...

Save the 2004 election

Sorry, it's not 57,000 voters, it's 89,300 voters who were illegally removed from the Florida rolls. And there's no evidence that they've been added back on. I don't know if I'd (yet) compare Bush to Hitler, but I heartily agree that We Must Stop Bush From Stealing the 2004 Election.

President Dick Cheney

When Bush the First was in office with Quayle the buffoon as Vice President, the scariest words in Washington were "Barbara, I don't feel well." This time around, it seemed more efficient to have the buffoon take the top spot, with the mastermind behind him. The Smirking Chimp apparently agrees. Note Cheney's title.

Lynching by laptop

The idea that we are going to move to computerized voting scares the crap out of me, specifically because I work on computers. Now, after less than one election cycle since Bush's "Help American vote" initiative mandated electronic voting, we see that not only doesn't it work, it blatantly doesn't work. Add to this the requirement that all states "clean up" their voting rolls using the same methods that disenfranchised 57,000 innocent peope in Florida during the 2000 election and you've got Lynching by Laptop.

(NOTE: This article gives a different number of voters than another that shows 89,300 innocent voters disenfranchised.)

When your child is missing

May you never need this: When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide

The end of the 40 hour work week

Welcome to Bush's logic: By removing the requirement to pay overtime, employers will hire more people. Excuse me?!? The only way employers are going to hire more people is if it's cheaper than making the people you already have do everything by working longer and longer hours. If you have five people and one of them leaves (or better, is fired) why replace him or her when you can just give the other 4 another 10 hours of work to do? Well, Bush has done it anyway. Millions of workers have now been labeled "managers" or "skilled advsiors", labeling them as "exempt" from overtime rules. Oh, and a "skilled advisor" is anybody who learned their trade in the military. Hi, veterans! Welcome to the 80 hour work week!