Microsoft throws down the gauntlet against Google

The Windows Live beta is out. I gotta say, it's pretty damn nice, and I think the UI is actually better than Google's. I haven't figured out yet how good the search results though. Is it...is it possible Microsoft might actually make a decent product?...*faint*

Worrying about the gene pool

Frankly, I'm more worried about Tucker Carlson reproducing than I am about trekkies reproducing, but nontheless this interview about trekkie dating sites is funny. (Use IE as Firefox doesn't seem to render properly)

Why blogs are just one more corruptible media source

Have I really failed to post for the last two weeks? I'm lame. I'm also busy visiting grad schools, but I'm lame nonetheless.

(Aside for those who care: I got into University of Washington, Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, UC San Diego, and UWisconsin at Madison. I got dicked by Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, and MIT. That's a whole other story. I think I got a lukewarm rec from one of my rec writers, which is fucking lame and an utter breach of protocol...you tell someone you're not comfortable writing them a good rec; you don't write them a bad rec. I was pissed about it [and still am], but oh well. I got into good schools anyway, which of course is a testament to my awesomeness. I was not keen on Stanford or Berkeley to begin with. It has been suggested to me that the Stanford guys make poor advisors. And Berkeley's strengths these days are more in databases and networking than systems, which is my area. I was pissed/dejected about not getting into MIT as I did want to go there, but I've also had increasing evidence that it is dysfunctionally competitive, so it's probably just as well I don't end up there. My theory on Princeton is that I just wasn't a good fit there, which is reasonable.

I'm reserving judgment on the places I did get into until I visit them all, but I suspect I'll end up at University of Washington. I'm not thrilled with the idea of going back to Seattle as it kind of feels like a step backwards, but oh well. I think grad school in Seattle will be different than working in a dysfunctional job at Microsoft in Seattle.)

Anyway, moving on, I was not at all surprised to see a New York Times article about shady relationships between PR firms and bloggers. This is the problem with blogs as news sources. There is virtually no accountability on the part of bloggers for either the accuracy of their post or citation of their sources. The degree to which bloggers have power as a news source is exactly the degree to which they will be manipulated by PR entities whether government or corporate.

Just wait. Coming soon: "The Iconoclast Blog: Exposing the Truths Other Media Are Afraid To Talk About! (Brought to you by Wal-Mart)"

Depressed yet? :)

The lost film of Don Hertzfeldt of Billy's Balloon fame

All I can say is drugs must have been involved.

Unintelligible lyrics

Well, what can _you_ come up with from that incomprehensible mess?

That's it

Oooh yeah...rub your Bible, baby...you have a dirty little Bible, don't you? Yeah...

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Google...

...to the elite club of evil mega-corporations. :)

Shit.

I just realized that Tom Lantos is _my_ congressman. Fuck.

He might be getting a letter from me. On the other hand, I'm very lazy, so probably not.

Lantos and the China tech debacle

Lantos is being a dick. Did he just bring Google, Microsoft, and Cisco in front of the Senate to publicly shame them? What an asshole. Particularly given, as per my previous post, these companies have exactly zero leverage with the Chinese government. If they had refused to comply with Chinese authorities, China would have said, "Fine. Fuck you, round-eye." and gone off and done it anyway. Is every consumer who buys Chinese-made goods supposed to be ashamed too? They are just as culpable if not more so for supporting the Chinese regime.

Anyway, he's a dick. That's all I'm saying.

Apple is not switching to Windows

Apple is not switching to Windows. Ever. This may be the single dumbest article in a major magazine I have ever read.

A new and exciting way Republicans are dumb

I meant to comment on the move to block US companies from having servers in China when it first came out...

Two Republican lawmakers want to make a law preventing US companies from, essentially, having operations in countries where governments have "repressive regimes." This is stupid. It might possibly make sense for countries that do not have the technological capability to create equivalent technologies on their own, but this is not the case in China. These lawmakers are assuming that little, helpless China would actually be hurt in any way by not having access to big-strong-economic-powerhouse-US firms for internet development, and that's bull honkey. If Google (or Microsoft) aren't allowed to do business in China, China will simply home-grow the equivalent technology. They honestly would not give much of a shit. The only people hurt here would be the US tech companies and the US government to the degree they would get a share of revenues from China (who, let's remember, we have a gigantic trade deficit with). Moreover, don't you think getting China to build their infrastructure using US technologies gives you more leverage in the long run than making an idiotic and short-sighted moral stand now?

Idiots. I understand it's all a political stunt, but still...idiots.

Intel is evil

I'm really beginning to think that Intel is, in fact, more evil than Microsoft (and since when is Skype evil?!). AMD is pretty much strictly better than them, and yet they somehow manage to bully people (*cough* Dell *cough*) into signing exclusive deals with them.

Not only is it not a challenge to Darwinism, it isn't new

It's called Punctuated Equilibrium, and it's been around for quite a while.

Too good not to share

Stupid Jim Gray

I wish I would quit discovering people much smarter than I am had already had my half-baked ideas years ago.

(It's very technical, and I don't expect you to suffer through it unless you're a CS person...but the gist is that Jim Gray used an nVidia GPU to sort an astronomical database really bloody fast by transforming the sort operations into what would normally be graphical texture mapping operations that 3D games like to do)

Google as Big Brother

So, ask yourself: if Microsoft were replicating the files on your home computer on their servers instead of Google, how would you feel about it?

I don't know how I feel about the issue yet...there are advantages to having a company that is full-time responsible for enabling ubiquitous access to my data. They can worry about backup, network availability, provisioning for storage, etc. But I also think it's worth worrying about having a single company storing your data in one place along with everyone elses as it makes it way too easy for them or any NSA schmuck to go poking around in it.

It's conceivable that your data could be indexed in such a way that _only you_ could search it, but that takes away all incentive for Google to be involved because then they can't target you for advertising. :)

Nooooooo!!

Terrible, terrible idea! Did I mention terrible? For the love of god, don't fucking do it!

So much for principles

Jesus Christ...this really is the Japanese internment camps of the modern era. They might even be worse.

Quick note on the budget (or lack thereof)

Bush's budget is idiotic. I mean, I knew it would be idiotic, but it's idiotic. Even ignoring the omnipresent ridiculousness of trying to deal with Katrina cleanup (aside: here's an idea: don't rebuilt New Orleans! It's a fucking terrible place for a city! Hmmph.), wage a "war," and yet somehow incur massive tax cuts simultaneously, my more immediate objection is the continued use of "supplementary budget requests" to finance Iraq. Just fucking stop it, okay? It was cute the first time (and by cute, I mean it was a disingenuous political sleight of hand that would make even the most morally constipated used car salesman shiver with unease), but it's getting old. If I make a "budget" for myself that doesn't include car payments and rent, that isn't really so much of a "budget" as it is a "laughably incomplete list of shit I need to spend money on that gives me no idea the actual state of my finances." PUT THE FUCKING WAR ON THE BOOKS, DAMNIT. Own up to the fact you guys have fucked the budget worse than even Reagan could have dreamed of in his most vivid Cold War/Star Wars wet dream.

Fuck.

As if I didn't have enough reasons to be pissed at the Bush White House

I was listening to the domestic spying hearings on NPR this morning, and (of course) listening to Gonzales pissed me off, as did listening to the sympathetic Republicans on the panel. I think all the Republican senators, particularly the ones from the states in the middle of the country that tend to be large and rectangular (Brownback, Coburn, etc.) should be fitted with collars that give them an electric shock every time they mention 9/11. Once again, boys and girls, "Hey! Remember 9/11?" is not a response to, "Umm, why exactly did you think that conducting surveillance against US citizens without a warrant was legal, and if you thought you needed to do it, why didn't you get the law changed so you could?" Republicans don't seem to get this. Mentioning 9/11 seems to be an almost reflexive response to any criticism. Hence, I think they need some form of psychological conditioning to train them out of it, and my preference would be something involving painful electrocution.

As for Gonzales, he at least was actually responding to the legal issues, albeit with contradictory and nonsensical responses. The Administration's position is that, well, yes, so technically FISA says we have to get a warrant (details, details), but it provides a back door for "legislation that dictates otherwise," and you should have known we'd want to conduct warrantless spying when you passed the PATRIOT act despite the fact that neither PATRIOT nor any other war authorization legislation ever said jack shit about anything even remotely related to warrantless spying.

Gonzales/Bush's argument strikes me as roughly equivalent to saying, "Well, mom, you said I could go play at Billy's, and you must have known that there's a strip club in the same town that Billy lives in, so in effect you told me I could go to the strip club."

Gonzales is such a douchebag. I at least enjoyed hearing Durban take him to task on issuing contradictory statements.

Gonzales: "We didn't violate FISA."
Durban: "But the Justice Department just last week issued a memorandum saying that FISA was too restrictive and the executive was forced to supercede it!"
Gonzales: "These are not the droids you are looking for."

I hate the neocons. I really do.

On the shitful state of video games

Since it's 3 am and I'm having my usual bout of insomnia, I thought this might be an appropriate time to comment on the shitful state of video games.

My generation was the first generation to really grow up with video games. Nintendo and I came of age together, and as my voice was awkwardly breaking and loved ones were not-so-subtly suggesting that it might be time to start using deodorant, so too was Mario taking his first mushroom-squishing hops and was Link taking his first sips of healing potions in his eternel quest to save Zelda. It was the Eden of video games, and everything was pure and new, and we lived in blissful ignorance of how crapitudinous the industry would eventually become.

The graphics on those games sucked. They unavoidably sucked. So you had no choice but to actually focus on the design of the game. Gameplay was actually important. True, the standard was lower because people had never seen anything like those games, short of Space Invaders and Pac Man, but still...you couldn't blow hundreds or thousands of man-hours on getting the shadows of your gun just right even if you wanted to. So you actually had to design the fucking game.

Fast-forward to the modern day. Everything nowadays is either a ridiculous and increasingly pointless arms race in 3D graphics or a junkie-like reliance on franchises (NFL, NBA, Grand Theft Auto, etc.), and it pisses me off. Moreover, I think it pisses a lot of people off. The gamer community is getting fed up with the same shit. It's a community that by its very nature consists of thrill seekers, and the problem with thrill seekers is that their reaction to things attenuates quickly, and they need something new. So of course feeding them yet another goddamn First Person Shooter is eventually going to bore them to tears. There are thousands of them now, and they're all the fucking same. It's all just Doom or Unreal all over again with cosmetic modifications. If it's not Doom, it's Final Fantasy dressed in fancier clothing. Or, if you're lucky, it's Warcraft. That's it. Those three lineages cover most of the games out there, and it covered them five years ago.

Every so often, a new game does indeed come along, and when it does, it tends to sell amazingly well. The first instance of this was Myst. Myst was such a success because it threw away fancy interfaces in favor of creating a totally immersive, meticulously detailed virtual world and a gripping, dramatic storyline. It was new, and it had nearly universal appeal. Sure, it bored some people, but it was so simple that anyone could play it straight out of the box, and it was addictive. And it was the best-selling game of all time for a while.

...Until the next breakthrough came along: The Sims. Here again was, finally, a fundamentally new idea in gaming. It wasn't combat-based, but it also wasn't the quintessentially isolated world that Myst and other RPGs created. It was the first genuinely social game, and it was one of the first games that ever hooked women. The objective, the rules, and the gameplay were fundamentally different from anything else anyone had ever done. It had a vague similarity to SimCity, but it included that oh-so-important social aspect that drew girls into its addictive little world. And to my knowledge, nothing has yet surpassed its sales numbers.

What's my point? Basically, that I'm waiting for the next breakthrough game, and looking at the shape of the gaming industry, I'm beginning to despair at it. In some ways World of Warcraft is the next Big Thing(tm). The first-person RPG has been done before, but Blizzard made the game a masterpiece by meticulously planning their online experience, and it has its players entranced. And they're making a shitload of money. It is, after all, a publisher's wet dream: a game that continues to draw income for as long as a player plays, and moreover the publisher continues to have control over the game even after it's released, so he has a way to easily tweak the world to keep the players coming back, credit cards in hand.

So yes, there is an online dimension to gaming that is in its infancy, and maybe that's where we'll see the really cool stuff in the next few years. I have high hopes for Xbox Live...it has the possibility to set the standard for online game play. But still...in a time when graphics hardware manufacturers are in the same kind of arms race that processor manufacturers were engaged in a few years ago, the game publishers are being seduced by the excited ramblings of their marketers who are telling them that they can sell a zillion copies of anything if they can produce a shinier demo reel than their competitors. "Oooh! Look at the shiny explosions! Look how that guy fell off that ledge! The kids will love it!"

But they won't, and they don't. Ignore the graphics for a moment. Game play on these games hasn't evolved one iota in at least eight years. This is stupid. There's no reason other than a lack of trying and an unwillingness to try something new. One of the many half-baked ideas I have in the back of my head is to look at using the immense power of modern gaming hardware to enhance the game play of games rather than the visuals. At core, all graphics hardware does is accelerate certain mathematical transformations that happen to be useful for painting pictures. I'll bet you could use the same hardware to do some really cool shit with either the AI or with non-linear storylines. I dunno...maybe not. But either way, the field is ripe to create a genuinely new game instead of the billionth iteration of rehashed games from the mid 90s. And whoever does it will be rolling in money while the other idiots are left whining about lagging game sales of a game that was supposed to be a hit because, "...it was the sequel to a well-received game, it had the violent aesthetic of the popular Grand Theft Auto series, and it featured licensed songs from name acts like DMX and Public Enemy."

Ugh. How fucking retarded are these guys? Just reading that sentence makes me want to punch the CEO of Activision in the face in service to the remote hope that I might be able to knock even the tiniest morsel of stupid out of him.

Probably the least effective reassurance ever

Turns out the warrantless eavesdropping the Bush administration has been conducting "only targets Al-Qaeda." Well my fears are certainly allayed, aren't yours? Glad we cleared that up.

[Idiots.]

Hover Couch!!!!!!!

It's like something out of my dreams!!! There are even pictures and videos!

Bleh

This thingy on wasps and zombie roaches may be the most disturbing thing I've ever read.

Valuable medical lessons

"Latex paint, despite being thick and creamy, does not coat your stomach and provide the same relief as pepto bismol."

Famous friends

Look! My friend Aubrey is famous!

He might be on to something

Indeed, what's wrong with having an entirely online existence?

(Disclaimer: As a general rule, never, ever believe or buy into anything Mr. Satchel Rage says. Ever. His siren song leads only to self-destruction and despair, or at best a protracted stay in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. And in this case the loti are, by and large, microwavable burritos. And yes, I think I'm done with the cliched mythology references. He does play a mean game of Buck Hunter though...)

State of the Union: Bored

I didn't really expect anything different, but the State of the Union address is really, really boring. Bush isn't saying anything. So far I've got:

• Terrorism: Bad
• Democracy: Good
• Unrelatedly, Hamas should stop blowing stuff up
• Support our troops
• Strong ecomony: Good
• Government waste: Bad
• Doing something about social security and medicare costs, which constitute over 60% of the budget, might be a good idea.
• We should talk about that. We'll even include the Democrats. At least, you know, in the talking part. Probably not in the doing stuff part though.
• Secure the border
• Expensive healthcare: Bad
• We use oil. God put all the oil underneath mean people. This seems bad.
• Corn is good.
• I had this dream where we had magical cars that ran, not on oil, but on dreams. Wouldn't that be cool?
• Math and Science: Good
• Funding basic science seems like a good idea. Maybe we shouldn't have cut all that research spending. To be fair, we had to make a token effort to make it look like we were paying for the tax cuts.
• Being nice: Good.
• Yay Sandra Day O'Connor.
• Life: Good.
• Ethics: Good.
• Staying in school: Good.
• Rebuilding Gulf Coast: Good.
• HIV: Bad.
• Americans: Good.

The only really controversial things he's said are:

• Immigrants: necessary
• The tax cuts that we made temporary so that it wouldn't explode budget estimates should (surprise!) be made permanent
• We will cut the deficit in half by 2009. Somehow. We didn't tell you before, but we have a magic powder that will do this that we got from a pixie.
• We're helping the poor and sick. No, really, I swear. Just don't ask me for evidence of it.
• Your doctor's bill and prescriptions are expensive because your doctor gets sued a lot.
• Teenagers are having fewer abortions because we told them not to have sex.
• People spend a lot of time worrying about courts that don't tell gay people God hates them.
• 'Member how I put two new members on the Supreme Court? That was cool.
• I like my wife. You should let her do stuff.
• Church groups who have never dealt with AIDS education seem the best people to deal with the problem, don't you think? They seem to have a firm grasp on reality, I've found.
• I'm like MLK.

Curious to see if the rebuttal will say anything more substantial. If I had to guess, I'd go with "no."

Sony ain't got shit

Let me go on record right now as saying that any Xbox Live competitor Sony comes up with will be utter crap, at least in comparison. Ignoring the fact that Microsoft has been working on Live for many years now, the mere fact that Microsoft is a software company and Sony isn't means they are facing a near insuperable barrier to entry out of the gate.

For fuck's sake. Literally.

Can we please just fire-bomb Kansas and start over with a less retarded population?

Jesus: "I will survive!"

Wrong on so many levels.

(yes, I've been at Google Video again...)

Grad school admission dates

(A rare personal information about me post...)

For those that have asked, I actually bothered to go look on various schools' admissions pages and found that notifications generally go out late February/early March.

Also, I realized I really need to go update my work web page. Sigh. I really hate personal web pages, to be honest. They usually contain all kinds of personal information that no one really cares about. I hope the various admissions committees are too busy to bother looking at applicant web pages.

Well, Conservatives certainly are organized...I'll give them that

Why is it that Democrats (or liberals, since they're not really the same...probably part of the problem from the get-go) are fundamentally unable to organize such well-oiled and powerful networks? I am not merely lamenting here...I genuinely would like to know. Is it that the liberal base is too diverse a group, and trying to get them to cooperate on a wide, far-reaching agenda is like herding cats? Is it that every dinky little interest group is too myopically focused on their particular issue that they are politically unable to see the forest through the trees? Maybe it's simply that Conservatives had a 20-year head start on them...I don't know.

I would love to be able to blame a Conservative conspiracy, and certainly there is a fundamental funding disparity, but I don't think that's the critical factor. There is a fundamental disorganization on the part of groups on the Left that seems to be their own doing (and, of course, undoing). Each individual group (ACLU, PFAW, Planned Parenthood, Move On, etc. etc. etc.) seems reasonably organized on their own, but they are totally incapable of cooperating. There had to have been points on which the Federalists and the Religious Right disagreed, but they seem to have done a damn good job of getting shit done nonetheless. What gives?

Maybe it's that liberals are still not in the mindset of a minority and remain focused on how most of America is stupid (which, admittedly, it is) and how they are losing to tactics rather than policy. Maybe it's that they have to become as cynical as the Right have and stop worrying about ethics, morality, or any other such pesky issues of conscience and do whatever it takes to wrest control of the country back, even if that means outright lying (strategically) to the electorate. Seems to have done wonders for the neocons. Their only problem was that once they finally got what they wanted, it turned out to have been a fundamentally terrible idea, and in fact such a disaster in practice that even they haven't really been able to cover it up.

Only the beginning

This is what will happen if any schmuck can edit a Wikipedia entry.

In contrast...

This hurts me. Very, very deeply. I just died a little inside.

I'm...I'm going to need a minute here

I...I just...whew...umm...yeah, can you come back to me?

(I think that's the closest I'll ever be able to get to watching porn at work...god bless you Carmen Electra)

Holy hell

Now _that's_ fucking public transportation!

There are no words to describe this

Axel F...insanity test...annoying frog...I got nuthin'.

Update: There's a BBC story, and there's an album. I shit you not.

Debate is pointless

Not surprising, but here's the evidence: people ignore evidence.

I've always regarded debate as ultimately pointless except insofar as it's good practice at debating.

Google censoring results

How's that whole "Don't be evil" motto working out for you guys?

From a technical and business perspective, Google has been doing some amazing shit. But from a corporate culture perspective, it's a goddamn scary cult sometimes. One of these years Google is going to slam into middle age at approximately a bazillion miles an hour, and they won't have any fucking idea how to cope with it.

"Shit...we're a big, stagnant, amoral corporation. We've become Microsoft. Fuck."

What?!

"We Black" is going away?!

Oh, so profoundly delicious

This doesn't even need a snide comment. It speaks for itself.

Some quality Amazon reviews

Amazon is becoming a good source of entertainment...

Search engines as leeches

I would retitle this article, "Why Google's stock price is so high."

Therapy in a pill

Major traumatic event in your life? Here! Take this pill!

"You've got..."

"...herpes!"

It's a good idea, but man...can you imagine getting an e-card from them? There are so many delicious possibilities for doing that tastelessly.

"Ever wondered what it would be like for it to burn when you pee?"
"Hypothetically, how would you feel about oozing sores on your genitals?"
"Clap on!..."
"After a night of freaky sex, I hope you're well rested/But just as a thought, you might want to get tested..."
"We want to give you oral...antibiotics!"
"Herpes: the gift that keeps on giving..."
"You've got three letters. The first is H, and the last one is V. Is the middle one P or I? Find out!..."
"Ever heard that song 'Tainted Love'?..."

Etc...

Web 3.0

I was amused by this quippy rant against Web 2.0 culture. If you don't know what Web 2.0 is, count yourself lucky, and try not to learn until the hype passes.

Fuck Scalia

Forget anything I may have said about any judicial principles I was under the delusion Scalia was loyal to. Is there any more basic test of state's rights and limited government than assisted suicide?

Ah yes

Welcome to the Internet of the future. So much for our current democratic panacea. Say hello to the market forces that have thus-far been supressed in the name of incubating a new market.

Remember your economics, boys and girls: in the long run, you never get something for nothing.

God is pissed

Hey, maybe He's pissed off because every idiot pundit and political figure you can think of seems to have the audacity to think they have any fucking clue what He's thinking. You ever think of that?

Oh for fuck's sake

You're not serious, are you? Jesus and video games? Really?

The absurdity of ad absurdum

Do I even need to tell you how absurd this rant on DRM versus Security is? No. But I'm going to anyway. Or at least, I want to address the "issues" Mr. Yodaiken raises as I think it's an interesting intellectual exercise.

1. This issue is the "analog hole" issue. Except it's not. You always lose some amount of fidelity when you convert to or from analog and digital. But plugging the audio out from your computer back into the audio in and recording a piece of DRM'd music still sounds decent, and that scares the RIAA and the MPAA. They'd prefer it if everything but the speakers dealt in digital, because then everything could be mandated to carry DRM protections. But that's a damn far cry from having a security camera shut off when it recognizes a copy-protected image. That's quite simply a ridiculous extreme that wouldn't serve as a means to perpetrate mass-infringement, and therefore wouldn't have such idiotic protections on it, and it's paranoid to think anyone would ever propose such a thing.
2. This is a minor software problem. One answer is simply that in a world of media appliances, the frequency with which you will be replacing individual hardware components will be very low. When's the last time you replaced a video card in your Tivo?
3. You always have to determine where the DRM boundary is, and where it will be placed will be dictated by common sense. You don't care about DRM on a blood test machine...you care about DRM on a patient's medical records. Will any idiot set up a system where a DRM-sensitive database refuses to accept non-DRM'd blood data? No. That's retarded. You'll have a system where the blood data will be inserted into a patient's medical records, _then_ protected with digital rights.
4. This is an age-old legal issue that really has nothing to do with DRM. These are the same sorts of issues that arise when you have legal wrangling over a paper copy of something, or in fact any object that cannot be easily duplicated. All DRM does is turn something that is easily copied or transferred into something that is not.
5. What?? Is using a media player in a manufacturing system a big concern for people?
6. This is another stupid objection. You don't install random pieces of software on systems that have hard real-time demands. You don't do that now, let alone in a DRM world. What hospital allows people to install file-sharing software on heart monitors, for fuck's sake?! If a system that had hard real-time demands needed DRM for some reason, it would be built in from the get go and designed not to interfere with the scheduling.
7. Seriously, what world is this guy living in? Software for home entertainment or offices is vastly different from software that controls planes and ICUs, and the latter has vastly more stringent demands on creation and maintenance actions. You don't have some jerkoff installing "something cool" he found on the web on an ICU computer.
8. I refuse to address this point as it's a) too much like previous points, and b) too stupid.
9. Viruses are pieces of software that subvert the intended functions of the piece of software they are infecting, therefore the effects of a virus are inherently unstable and unpredictable. What does this have to do with DRM?
10. Remote verification of license integrity is a separate issue from DRM (or, in other words, nothing says that a DRM scheme involves outside checks). Ergo, again, this has nothing to do with DRM.
11. Hooks to be used by viruses is more an issue of OS security than it is DRM.

You know, on retrospect, that exercise felt like an utter waste of time. I really want to debate someone who has more intelligent points to make.

Dangers of marriage

Yeah...pretty well articulates my fears relating to marriage...add in the slave to kids and mortgage thing, and that's about right...

Maryland health care bill

Liberal though I am, I'm not sure making WalMart pay at least 8% of their payroll is necessarily a good idea. It's the supply-side that needs to be addressed, not necessarily the demand-side. Making WalMart pay more may just cause their insurers to charge more, in which case you're simply shifting money from WalMart to an HMO without improving anyone's benefits.

If you're going to interfere with a market, make sure the ultimate effect you will have is the one you want.

Confirmation hearing annoyance

I just have to mention that I've been listening to a bunch of the Alito hearings, and every time I do I get more annoyed. Not necessarily because Alito is a conservative fucktard (which he is), but because he doesn't answer a single goddamn question. I know this is not something that is particular to Alito and that every modern nominee does his best to dodge questions, but it's still infuriating. It's like confirmation hearings have become an idiotic game of cat and mouse where the opposition party attempts to ask hard questions and the nominee does his damndest to avoid answering all of them at all costs. Alito wouldn't even answer basic yes or no questions like "Do you think that term limits or age caps should be imposed on federal judges?" There are three fucking answers to that question: yes, no, or I'm not sure. "There are many different views on that" is not a fucking answer!

Mouse sadism

"Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation."

These guys really need a less morbid hobby.

The United Freemasons

Ever flown United and wondered what those "Global Services" people they talk about in announcements are? Wonder no more. Instead, consider being creeped out.

Fiscal responsibility

Seriously, if you're a conservative, I don't want to hear any shit from you about government spending before you give me an appropriately incensed condemnation of the Iraq war as being both stupid and costly. We could pay for all the government pork that both sides despise, let alone those "expensive" controversial social programs there's disagreement about, several times over with the amount of money that's been frittered away on this war.

What's wrong with this picture?

Well, it's an article about Enron, and a picture of Enron, and yet something seems amiss...

On judicial activism

Having seen this headline on Alito, I felt the need to comment. And by felt the need to comment, I mean that I don't want to work and this seems a reasonable way to procrastinate.

Complaints about judicial activism are stupid, plain and simple. "Judicial activism" is merely Republican code for "not agreeing with us." Moreover, it's a dangerous fallacy to profess a belief in a single, totally objective interpretation of law. It just doesn't exist, and to convince people that it does is to convince them that one particular viewpoint is an indisputable truth, which, much as the conservative Congressional majority would like us to believe, it isn't.

Judges are not administrators, and they were never meant to be. That is, it is not the case that the law is entirely prescriptive, and judges are there merely to unquestioningly administer those prescriptions. Reality, and consequently law, are simply too complex for that to be the case. It is unavoidable that a judge must attempt to discern intent behind a set of laws and rule accordingly. The difference between rule of law and prejudicial magistrates is that a judge is supposed to base his or her judgments on an academic interpretation of law and precedent rather than his or her own personal opinions about either the specific case or the issue at hand. It is unavoidable, however, that a judge's opinions about particular judicial principles shape his or her judgments, and that is has it should be. Though Scalia is generally a sleaze, and he should never be forgiven for his prejudice in the Bush v. Gore case, it is to his credit that he dissented to the majority opinion that upheld the federal government's priority in regulation of marijuana use in California. I'm sure, being the conservative douchebag he is, he hates the idea of legalized marijuana, but he felt compelled to rule in favor of it based on his belief in limited government and states' rights. That's how judges are supposed to operate.

It is frustrating, then, to see all this rhetoric about "judicial activism" surrounding Alito. It's quite simply the wrong fucking debate. The issue is not whether Alito will dispassionately administer the law "as it is written." The Supreme Court by its very nature addresses issues where the law is murky, and decisions will necessarily be based upon larger issues and concerns. Therefore, what people _should_ be looking at is what Alito's views on the Constitution are, and what larger principles he adheres to when making decisions. And the evidence is compelling that he believes in an extremely limited governmental power to regulate, well, anything, as well as an interpretation of fundamental Constitutional principles that is so narrow as not to be applicable to modern issues (a la abortion) the way Scalia and Thomas do. And it is on that fact, not his supposed "activism," that he should be filibustered as an extremist.

(As an aside, this op-ed by George Will, who is often a right-wing douchebag, was surprisingly cogent. Probably that's because the one area I tend to agree with Conservatives [that is, true, academically honest Conservatives] is on the value of meritocracy over democracy...people are basically dumb and quite often leaving decision-making up to them is a terrible idea)

Oh hell

Please tell me Sharon's stroke isn't going to turn into another Shiavo incident.

Once more

Didn't they already make this, and wasn't it called Blade?

In case you were wondering

Bush is still a douche.

Return of Futurama

It seems Futurama will be following in Family Guy's footsteps.

This suggests to me that the initial failure of both Futurama and Family Guy rest not on those shows' respective creators and writers but squarely on the shoulders of the idiots in charge of scheduling at Fox. Fucking 'tards.

Urges

Believe it or not, you're probably better off as a consumer going with Microsoft's Urge music service over iTunes. Heresy, I know, but let me explain...

Apple makes virtually no money on iTunes. In fact, virtually nobody makes money on music services because consumers generally aren't willing to pay that much for individual songs, and what they will pay is pretty much exactly what the RIAA is willing to sell the licenses for. The reason, then, that Apple even bothers with iTunes is one reason and one reason only: to sell iPods. And guess what? If iTunes exists solely to support iPod sales, do you think Apple will ever open up their DRM-protected audio format to other music players? Nope!

In contrast, Microsoft's Urge will undoubtedly be supported by Windows Mobile and Windows media licenses, which means that Microsoft has an incentive to have as many different devices be able to access the service as possible. So, in fact, you'll (probably) have more options with Urge than you will with iTunes. Fancy that.

But yes, I know...Microsoft is evil, Apple only does things that are pure and true, blah blah blah. Do you people have any idea the premiums Apple gets on their hardware? It's ridiculous, and it's totally unjustifiable by anything but zealotry.

A goddamn waste of money

I saw this story on people in Missouri (who no doubt have nothing better to do) finding the largest known prime number, and I couldn't help but think about what an utter waste of time, money, and resources it was.

I am, of course, as big a nerd as they come, but calculating large prime numbers seems stupid and pointless to me. I don't think we really gain anything from it. It doesn't advance crypto research or anything like that, and it's not really much of an engineering feat to do it. It just takes a really long time.

I did a quick back of the hand calculation with a researcher here, and we estimated that, given about 10 cents per kilowatt per hour, the 700 compute years it took to calculate the prime would cost somewhere between $100k to $300k.

That's a fuck of a lot of money to pay for a prime number.

Cool! Or hot. Or rather, both.

Seems plausible to me...wonder if it has any future.

I am increasingly of the opinion that the world really doesn't have an energy crisis and never truly will. There's a fucking huge (and I mean fucking _HUGE_) perpetual thermonuclear explosion going on not 8 light-minutes from our goofy little blue orb that's generating more energy than we could ever hope to consume. The problem is converting it to something usable in an efficient and cheap way.

The amount of power potentially available from solar, wind, and geothermal sources is copious and renewable. There's enough power out there to power your car, your house, your pda, your xbox, your blender, your fridge, your a/c, your microwave, and even your cat for fuck's sake...that's not the issue. The issue is that all our equipment is geared towards the combustion of fossil fuels, and that's very difficult (and costly) to change. Now, if we didn't have assholes like Ted Stevens in Congress who want to drill in ANWR for their own personal amusement and profit (they saute baby seals in petrochemicals...I've seen it!), we might actually embark on a prudent plan for developing such technologies and switching over to them. But, instead, because Americans are lazy and their politicians are corrupt, we're going to bury our heads in the sand and keep using oil until there isn't a drop left and then panic. Oh, we'll have plenty of energy, but we won't be able to use it. Like having a potato gun but no potatoes. Or Barbies. Or anything else one launches with a potato gun. Kittens. Whatever.

Dear god...sensible legislation!

From Wisconsin, no less!

Though I have business issues with the open source movement, this kind of legislation is just plain common sense. Computer scientists have been screaming since the whole electronic voting debacle that you have to have a paper trail for something as important as voting, and for transparency reason the "blueprints" for the voting software need to be viewable by the public. I mean, fucking "duh."

On a related topic, I realized the other day that there's kind of an inherent tension between patents and open source. As I've said before, I think freely available source code for commercial software is generally, with a few exceptions, a good thing. It allows for external evaluation and better compatibility between programs. I part company with open source, however, when it comes to the "free software" movement because, well, it's stupid, or at the very least counter-productive. But I've rambled about that topic before.

In my ideal world, you shouldn't need to hide your code in order to protect your inventions or business model. Things like copyright should prohibit you from using a piece of commercial software willy-nilly without paying for it because, all things being equal, the law should prohibit actions you could potentially take rather than fundamentally strip your ability to take those actions in the first place. It's the difference between having speed limits and putting a speed regulator in your car that prevents you from going more the 65 mph. One is a sensible world, the other downright Orwellian (no really...it's definitionally Orwellian...read "1984").

The problem is that such a world depends on protections of intellectual property, or in other words, the degree to which allowing anyone and everyone to look at your code does not jeapordize your incentive to develop a piece of software is directly correlated with the strength of intellectual property law, i.e., patents. But we've already said that the state of patent law in this country is ridiculous. Well, fuck. I guess you can't win.

Anyway, I stand by my assertion that IP law needs to be drastically more intelligent. Copyright is actually generally okay (except for its duration, which is unjustifiably long...80 years? Really? How much protection does Mickey need?), and is a good way to prevent outright theft of code. Patents are trickier...at the very least, the bar needs to be much higher ("one-click" is something that Sling Blade "french fried potaters" guy could have thought up while watching tv...that is _not_ a significant invention), and idiotic protections of things like business practices need to go. That was a pandora's box that never should have been opened.

But, of course, we have a government that goes to the highest bidder, so until Microsoft and the other tech giants decide to really put their muscle behind reforming patent law, it ain't changing any time soon.

Ha!

I stayed up for no apparent reason and solved an "evil" difficulty Sudoku. So there. Ah-pthththbbbtttt.

A quick addendum to the argument for universal health care

It occurred to me...utterly randomly...after a recent debate on if and how Walmart's decision to change their job descriptions in order to deter the elderly from seeking employment with the company (since it cost the company more in benefits to hire such people) amounted to discrimination, that implementing universal healthcare would essentially sidestep the issue.

The reason that Walmart wanted to deter the elderly from applying was largely health care costs. The problem, regardless of how moral you regard such a move, is that Walmart has to shoulder some of the cost of the elderly's health care. If the cost were on the state instead, there's no incremental cost to Walmart, and they have no more incentive to discriminate in the first place. Granted, there are other similar costs of having the elderly employed (more sick days, etc.), but I think it would help.

See? Problem solved. I'm a genius.

Agreed: worst name ever

She really is a biatch.

A serious moral question

Why is it okay to shoot whales to put them out of their misery but not okay to give old, very sick people a painless way to die? Why is human suffering less important than whales'?

BusinessWeek op-ed on the broken state of US patent law

BusinessWeek has a slightly more evidence-backed argument against the current state of patent law in the US than I have herein made.

On expected values and game strategies

See, I haven't done a truly nerdy/academic posting in a while, so I figure it's time, especially since my mother has taken up Sudoku (has anyone not at this point?).

Speaking of whom, her same bizarre self (who insisted I teach her how to play Texas Hold 'em over the holidays...I have this terrible image of her exclaiming "Read 'em and weep boys! Woo hooo! Kiss the pretty ladies...oh yeah..." *shudder*) introduced me to "Deal or No Deal," a deceptively simple little game show.

Be afraid: it's a game show on CNBC.

Anyway, the game is simple: you, as a contestant, are presented with 26 suitcases guarded by beautiful models (too thin for me, but that's another rant). Not really guarded, mind you...you don't get attacked by a frothing but beautiful woman if you get too close...that would be cool if unsanitary...rather, guarded in the Vanna White sense of standing near for no apparent reason. Each suitcase contains a dollar amount, generally between one cent and one million dollars, and these amounts are all listed on a board. The amounts are at standard, currency-like denominations. Unfortunately, the cash itself isn't in the case, which is something I think they should do...at the moment it's just sparkly signs like on that plebian game show The Price is Right. Pshaw. We cannot be bothered to consort with the peasants. You! Fetch me the Wall Street Journal! You! And you! Fight to the death!

Where was I? Oh yeah. So you pick a suitcase but don't open it. That's your suitecase, and you get the amount of money listed in it unless during the course of the game you do something to fuck it up. Now the game begins. You start by picking 6 cases to open. The pretty ladies do so, and 6 values get removed from the board. Then the "banker" calls and offers you some amount of money based on what's left on the board. If you take it, you get the cash you were offered, and the game stops. Otherwise, you keep going, open another 5 cases, and repeat.

This cycle continues, with the number of cases you have to open in the intervening period decreasing each time until you are only opening one at a time, until you stop the game by taking the deal or until you reject the deal offered to you with two values left on the board, in which case you open your case and get whatever value is in there.

What value gets offered by the banker, you may ask? Well, they don't tell you. In game terms, it's the value the banker is willing to pay to stop you from going forward and potentially extracting more money out of him. More mathematically, it seems to be some percentage of the average amount left on the board (I'm thinking about 60% of the average of what's on the board). Probably the formula is a little more complicated than that, but it's a good estimate.

So I spent waaay waaay too much time last night, while I couldn't sleep, trying to figure out what the ideal strategy for this game is. I quickly realized there is a problem.

In game theoretic terms, the optimal strategy is to never accept the deal and to always take what's in your case. Here's why: at any given stage of the game, the expected value of what's in your case is going to be the average of the values left on the board, yet we just said you will be offered some percentage of the average of what's left on the board, ergo, you should always reject the deal. Ergo, if you always reject the deal, you'll eventually open your briefcase.

Here's the rub though: the expected value, especially of a game like this, tells you only in aggregate what the payoff of a game will be. That is, if a million people play the game, the average payoff of all of them will be the expected value of the game. Great! Except for one thing. You're not a million people. You're one person, and you get one chance to play the game. For you, an offer of $200k might be worth more than a 1/3 chance of $1 million and a 2/3 chance of $0.

So, I haven't quite figured out how to reconcile that. I haven't figured out how to reason about the ideal strategy for a single instance of a game. I have a feeling there will be scads of information about this in the options trading literature and I'll have a "duh" moment when I find it, but for now I'm left scratching my head. I could also ask the lab's game theorist, but I think he'll tell me I'm stupid. That seems to happen a lot.

Incidentally, my pseudo-strategy is to reject the deal so long as it's likely (i.e., >50% probability) that you can make the average value of the board go up in some subsequent round. Specifically, if it's likely that there will be a tile greater than or equal to $100k on the board when you're done choosing, keep going. Try it yourself.

Interesting experiment for the procrastinating: play some relatively large number of games (greater than 26...like 30 or 50...or more!) always declining the deal. Keep track of your aggregate score. Then do the same thing with my strategy (or your own) and see how you do. My guess would be that your average is going to be higher in the playing-to-the-end strategy, but other metrics like your minimum payout, standard deviation of your scores, number of payouts less than, say, $50k, etc. will likely be better with my strategy.

I should probably go to bed now, huh?

Dumb things said in tech in 2005

All I can say is...d'oh!

"You'll be damned to burn in eternal hellfire if you watch it, but otherwise a good movie..."

"'We're not going to go out and protest it because it would probably play into the marketing plans of the producers,' he said. 'They'd say, the Christian right is opposed to this movie, so you really, really, really want to see it.'"

Fuck...they're learning. It's scary when otherwise delusional fringe groups have brief moments of insight into the real world.

...And you thought "You've got mail!" was bad

"You've been indicted!"

...And the winner of the most nauseating new cable channel is:

The Smile of a Child Network!

Two rants for the price of one!

So, I haven't yet commented on the NYC transit strike yet. This was not simply due to laziness (though certainly that delicious sin played a role)...I wanted to read a bit about what was going on before I passed judgment (I do that sometimes...I don't know why since no one else seems to). It certainly looked from the casual observer's perspective that the union leaders were just being douchebags. And to some degree they were.

But allow me to take a short but important detour: In the process of trying to read up on this issue, I found it surprisingly and infuriatingly difficult to find any fucking information about the points of contention in the strike. I had to go to the TWU home page to get an explanation of what they were pissed about, and I have yet to find a concise description of the MTA's position. The news organizations have been fucking useless on this issue, even the New York Times.

Have all reporters become such pussies that they're afraid to report _anything_ substantial related to a controversial issue? Is the safer "human interest" bullshit stories all you nadless writers have left? Get some fucking balls and don't waste my goddamn time by writing an article about the woman who had never seen the ground above the subway in Manhattan before and FUCKING TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON! I am more pissed about this than I am about anything related to the strike. Were you people jerking off all the way through journalism school? Is "who," "what," "when," "how," and most-bloody-importantly "_WHY_" such difficult concepts to master? Do you fuckwits honestly think it's reporting when you tell me how someone feels about walking through the cold? Here, I'll help you: it sucks and it makes your nipples chafe! There! Are you happy? Stop fondling the coin purse of the Everyman and do some fucking reporting, you fucking coddled and overpaid assholes! Jesus.
I hope you choke on your goddamn espressos, douchebags.

Ah hem. Moving on...

Okay...my take on the strike: partially justified, but stupid nonetheless. I sympathize with the union...I really do. They're being dicked over the same way most of the middle class is being dicked over, and in particular they're being dicked over by dishonest and irresponsible Republican leaders. Basically, here's what happened:

Long, long ago, in a governor's mansion far, far away, a happy little Republican named George Pataki had the brilliant realization that people like you better when you give them stuff, and in particular rich people like you when you give them stuff, and they tend to give you stuff in return. "Awesome!" little Pataki thought to himself. "I can make everybody happy!" So he frittered away a massive amount of money...some tax cuts here, some salary increases and pension contribution reductions there, and pretty soon he was deep in Republican Red (I just thought of that...see, Republican states are "red," and so is a "deep, gaping accounting deficit," and Republicans these days are retarded and have the fiscal responsibility of a teenage valley girl, so, see, "Republican Red"...haha...I'm a genius! Go forth. Use it).

However, to his great surprise, Mr. Pataki suddenly found himself with a pension funding crunch several years later. "Hmm..." he thought to himself, "well, we can't actually take money from the people who have it because they are the ones who are going to elect me when I seek higher office...if only there were a group I don't like anyway that can't really do anything about it if I screw them over..."

...and thus you end up in the nice little pissing-match-I-mean-contract-negotiation we find ourselves in. The strike is basically a "fuck you too." The "fuck you" that inspired the "fuck you too" was first and foremost trying to take the budget shortfall out of union workers' pockets, and secondly drastically increasing pension contributions in the MTA's offer for no apparent reason other than to piss the union off. Knowing a "fuck you" when he saw it, Toussaint invoked the one reciprocal "fuck you" he had at his disposal: a transit strike.

So was it justified? Well, sort of. The union, as I said, had gotten major pension contribution rollbacks several years earlier. And they don't really have a right to complain about the retirement age being bumped up from 55 since, really, who the fuck else gets a retirement age that low? And they're paid pretty well.

At the same time, they were being asked to pony up for something that wasn't their fault, and what they were asking for was essentially pocket change compared to other shit (like tax cuts) the government had happily paid for, not to mention the fact that the MTA was running a nice little surplus. That would piss me off too. How would you like it if some wealthy douchebag came in and tried to take money from you because a) it would play well to his political base, and b) because he and other wealthy douchebags had fucked up the budget in the first place. I'd be goddamn livid.

However, it's fairly obvious at this point that striking was absolutely the wrong move. It's now cost the union several million in fines and driven public opinion sharply...and I mean SHARPLY...against it. They've pissed everybody off and gotten nothing for their trouble. It seems all that money would have been much better spent on a public relations campaign. Granted, even that might not have worked since modern America seems to believe that mismanagement is a desirable trait in a public official so long as he won't let gay people get married and that an economy doesn't work unless those without a college education get ass-raped as much as humanly possible. Because hell...if an Indian guy living on dirt under a thatched roof can live off $1.25 a day, so can our workers! If they don't like it, they should...umm...start an entrepreneurial venture marketing...their dirt...in their free time after their 12 hour shift...and make money so they're not poor...because see they must have chosen to be poor...or something. Yeah. Go Jesus! Support our troops.

Anyway...seems to be the death throes of a fading union movement. Robber baron 20's, here we come! Child labor laws are for pussies! Etc. But yeah...I'd be pissed if I lived in New York too. I mean, your life sucks...why should those fuckers get to make your life suck _more_ just because their life sucks too? You should at least get to make their life suck somehow...seems only fair...

I do love me some beating up boy scouts

This is the most simple yet satisfying game I've played in a while.

Today's douchebag of liberty

...is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska!

"'Nothing is more germane and essential to national defense than energy,' Stevens said. 'Extreme environmentalists think it (ANWR) is their playground.'

"Stevens warned if ANWR is dropped from the defense bill, he would seek to delete other items attached to it such as funding for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, the bird flu pandemic and a program that helps poor families pay heating bills."

...and in further interviews, Stevens propped a puppy up in front of the camera, held a .37 magnum held to its head, cocked it, and was heard to say, "I'll do it...I swear to god, I'll do it..."

(Wow...that guy really is a douchebag!)

Richard Stallman is an idiot

I swear, every time I read an interview with Richard Stallman, I get more pissed at him.

Both the acronym "GNU" and the labelling of his "4 freedoms" from "0 to 3" are so telling of the way he looks at the world. Both are computer science jokes: "GNU" because it is a recursive definition (GNU = GNU is Not UNIX...what does the G stand for? GNU. What does GNU stand for? GNU is Not Unix...etc. Yes, this is funny if you do computer programming. Or rather, it was the very first time someone thought of it 20 years ago. Today it's obnoxious and annoying), and the "4 freedoms" because they are numbered the way programmers would number things, namely as indices into arrays (...and arrays used to be pointers into memory, and the indices were offsets to the base of the array, so to get to the first element, you had to use offset 0, hence computer scientists count starting at 0...see? Haha. So funny. I know.)

Anyway, point being, Stallman is a hopeless nerd that finds it impossible to view the world from the point of view of a normal person. So Richie, grow the fuck up. No one has ever "subjugated" anyone using a computer program, okay? Made their lives annoying? Sure. But let's not get hyperbolic here. Talk to someone who was in a japanese internment camp about subjugation. Then explain to them how their experience is like having to use a proprietary operating system. With any luck, you'll be punched in the face. Maybe it will knock some sense into you.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are actual benefits to not being able to tinker with a computer you own. The Xbox is a fantastic example of this principle. The Xbox creators went to a fantastic amount of trouble to make it difficult (if not downright impossible...that remains to be seen) to hack the xbox, going even so far as to design special, encrypted hardware. Why? To protect the IP rights and revenue streams of big evil video game developers, sure, but also to prevent cheating, pure and simple. The future of video games is online, and a small number of people hell-bent on cheating can absolutely ruin an online game. Ask Evercrack whores.

See, bits aren't just bits any more. The higher-level structure imposed on those bits is increasingly important. A video game structures bits into a game with arbitrary rules that are important to the game. Being able to futz with the lower-level bit structures is equivalent to breaking the rules of the game, and hence it is cheating. Thus, to maintain the integrity of the game, it's important that end-users not be able to fuck with their machines. And if you ask players, I think they'd be perfectly willing to give up the ability to fuck with their software if it meant guaranteeing a level playing field in an online game.

So Stallman...seriously...shut up. I'm tired of hearing you. There are benefits of open source that I think need to be better integrated into proprietary systems, certainly. But so long as you're waddling around spewing ideological nonsense, we're not going to get anywhere. At least as long as people listen to you.

On Hoochie-mamas

I started watching VH1's documentary on hip-hop video girls, and I quickly had to turn it off.

I have limited sympathy for these girls. They were framing the issue with the same kind of grave narration and tragedy music that would more befit a subject that generates that "I think I'm going to be ill" feeling deservedly, like child pornography (don't worry...that's not a link to child porn...it's just a link to a disturbing New York Times article, I promise), but I'm sorry...as a controversy it's a non-starter.

The supposed issue is that the girls in hip-hop videos are leered at, asked to perform sexual favors for the stars and their entourages, are generally degraded, etc. Normally this might be a problem, but here's the thing: why exactly am I supposed to feel sorry for you if you're actively seeking out a job that by its very nature treats you like nothing more than a sexual object, and you find, to your inexplicable astonishment, that you are treated like a sexual object in the context of that job? Seriously...grow the fuck up. The industry itself is exploitative. If you don't want to be exploited, go do something else. It's really that simple. I swear. There are some girls who are total groupies and are willing to sell their bodies in order to have the opportunity to bask in the periphery of stars' limelights. Fine. But I don't want to hear them bitch about it. You got what you paid for. Deal.

As for the "desperate mothers who are just trying to pay the bills," it's essentially a completely a disingenuous argument. Okay, so she's a poor single mom who can't make ends meet. She's desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Where does hip-hop and its objectifying culture figure into this? If you took away the option to be a hip-hop girl, she'd do something else desperate. Would you feel better if she turned to prostitution? Stripping? Insurance fraud? What's an acceptable level of desperation? What would you feel okay about her doing given that she's currently unable to pay her bills and support her child? The solution is to have adequately funded welfare programs that make sure she doesn't need to do this desperate shit. Anything short of that is a dishonest plea for sympathy on the part of the documentarian.

Anyway...just pissed me off, and I need something to do for the half hour it takes for Ambien to kick in. There are so many genuine scandals out there at the moment...why focus on this ridiculous one? (I know...ratings...sigh)

Shocking!

Rich people are stingy?! Surely not...next you'll be suggesting that capitalism can't cure all the world's ills...

*speechless and laughing*

Now THAT'S a MasterCard commercial!

Ok, I'll admit it

I'm impressed.

I'm a flip-flopper, yes, I'm the real flip-flopper, all you other flip-floppers...

"So, when I said he's 'innocent,' what I meant was that he's innocent unless someone says he's not innocent, in which case he's not innocent. Unless he is. In which case, he's innocent. Unless he's not. See? It all makes sense."

(douchebag.)

Penny Arcade on Wikipedia

It seems Penny Arcade shares my dislike of Wikipedia.

If you click on the news post, Tycho has a rant strikingly similar to one you, dear reader, have probably read in this here blog.

Best headline of the week

Yeah, I can see how the running out of runway would be a problem...

I won! (or at least, he lost)

To:	rivenmyst137@yahoo.com
From:	ended@ebay.com
Subject:	eBay Listing Removed (=LB &7144 JM5453383)
Date:	Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:31:56 PST

Dear Nicholas Murphy

Please be aware that the following auction-style listing:

Item Number -
Item Title - Microsoft Xbox 360 Core System - Game console

has been removed by eBay for violating of one or more of our policies.

Any offers or bids placed on this auction-style listing are now null and void. Because the auction was ended, you as a bidder are not required to complete the transaction. Since this is a listing violation, the seller is free to relist the item in the proper format. Should you wish to do so, you are free to bid on the item again if it is relisted.

Please review eBay's Listing Policies and User Agreement at the
following locations:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/policies.html

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html


We thank you in advance for your cooperation.


Regards,
eBay Trust & Safety

-----

Fucker.

Fun with Ebay!

So, I have resorted to Ebay to try to get my hands on an Xbox 360 before this weekend when "friends" will be emerging from the shadows to converge on my humble abode. Let's just say it hasn't gone according to plan.

The first snafu was when I bid on an item, was outbid, gave up, bid on another item, and suddenly got a notification that a bid had been rescinded and I had won the original item. Great. So now I have duplicate exposure.

As if that weren't bad enough, the item I suddenly found myself to have won turned out to be sold by a very stupid con man. Now, I knew the listing was sketchy...it was written in all caps with lots of misspellings, and it listed the shipping price as "$300," which I was optimistically hoping was a typo. But since the guy was local, I figured the worst that could happen would be that I piss off a scammer and he leaves bad feedback for me. No biggie.

So of course that's what ends up happening. Long story short, Captain Lobotomy repeatedly threatens me over email that he will report me as a "non-buyer" if I don't pony up the money within 24 hours. To which I reply, "How can I be a non-buyer when I've repeatedly offered to pay you? Just tell me where and when to meet you (or whomever) so I can give you the money and you can give me my xbox."

Basically, at this point, I've told him to give me my xbox or fuck off, and oh-by-the-way if you continue to threaten me, I'll report your ass to Ebay's abuse department, and you can have fun explaining the $300 shipping charge. And don't contact me again. Dick. I'm really hoping he doesn't bother to go through with filing a complaint, but since all the evidence up to this point suggests he's a fucktard, he probably will. Oh well. Just means I'll have to exchange some emails with Ebay. I'm really not terribly intimidated by going toe-to-toe with a guy who can't figure out the caps lock.

The really funny thing is that this has gotten me thinking about ways I could fuck with him. My first thought was that, if I weren't so lazy, he clearly has the net-savvy of a hamster, and he would easily succumb to a phishing attack. All I'd have to do would be to craft an email that looked like a notification from paypal that I had paid him. Then I could set up a rudimentary PayPal clone site somewhere, get him to log into it, and grab his password. It took me a while to figure out what I could do with that (besides the obvious transfer money out of his bank account), and I decided true poetic justice would be to buy another really expensive xbox off of ebay and pay for it with his account. It is so fucking tempting. Yeah, sure, it's "illegal," but still...very tempting.

Beyond that, the simpler forms of usual harassment are to sign him up for gay porn newsletters. Depending on how much of a dick he continues to be, he may well be getting some unexpected hot man-on-man action in his email. A whole lot of it, if possible.

Mmm...sweet, sweaty, homoerotic justice...

Triumph of American engineering

Can someone please explain to me why they could get this shit right 30 years ago but not now?

*amused*

I'm immensely amused that being "Pro-American" anywhere else in the world is like being Pro-French here.

Republicans are lame

It's just downright sleazy to not give Democratic senators access to Iraq intelligence and war information they're cleared to know, especially after claiming that they "had the same intelligence as the President did" when they voted to give the President the power to go to war.

And did I mention the Texas redistricting is going to be heard by the Supreme Court now? Nevermind that DeLay is still under indictment. As is Cheney's former chief of staff. And then there's this little looming ridiculousness. Hey guys: do a quick search for "Abe Fortas" if you want precedent for judicial filibusters. And while we're at it, stop giving us this shit about "up or down" votes. I'm fucking sick of it. It's not a principle the Republicans have ever stuck to, especially when they were out of power themselves. The Senate operates on obscure procedural details, and all kinds of stupid procedural hurdles are regularly invoked to prevent decent bills from ever being voted on. So seriously...just shut the fuck up, ok?

Republicans really are douchebags, you know that?

R.I.P. Richard Pryor

One of the great trinity of comedy (the others being Lenny Bruce and George Carlin) has fallen. We'll miss you, Richard. Jokes about monkey sex and setting yourself on fire just won't be the same...

Icon story

I don't remember whether I threw Icon Story on here before, but damn it's entertaining.

Yes, yes, he's a governor now

Words cannot possibly begin to describe how disturbing this video of Arnold in Rio is.

Silly Coulter

I stopped taking anything Coulter says seriously a long time ago. I really do think she's just saying things she knows are ridiculous to get attention.

I do love, "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am," though. Oh, Anne...silly, silly Anne...

D'oh!!!

Transcript of someone reading this article on the 100 Dumbest Moments in Business:

"D'oh!!! Sigh...well, I'm sure the next one won't be...
D'oh!!! Okay, the next one can't possibly be...
D'OH!! Oh for fuck's sake...how could they...why would you...Gaaahh!"

Home state pride!

Woo hoo! Go North Carolina!
(*sigh*)

Honestly, I don't particularly care. Personally, I'm against the death penalty, mostly because it's pointless. It's demonstrably not a deterrent, both statistically and logically. I mean, if you're fucked up enough to kill your wife and father-in-law in front of two of your children, do you honestly think you're actually going to say to yourself on the front porch, "You know, I'd really like to fuck up my wife and father-in-law in front of two of my children. I'd be okay with spending the rest of my life in prison, but you know, I'd really prefer not to be killed quickly by the state. Fuck it...nevermind. Stupid death penalty..."?

So clearly it's just bloodlust. People feel better if the stupid fuck is killed. Which, though fun, don't really have a place in law. Law is about maintaining order, deterring crime, and arguably rehabilitating criminals. And it's not like killing the guy is going to make the victims' families feel any better. Doesn't exactly bring back the victims, now does it? Doesn't even help them cope psychologically. Just kind of pisses us off that the guy killed people and we'd like to fuck with him. And that really isn't a good basis for a law, now is it?

That said, the number of executions that actually take place is so small, and the likely fraction of erroneous convictions within that small population is so small, that it seems kind of silly to get worked up about the issue from a public policy standpoint. It just doesn't have much of an impact on the crime rate or society in general one way or another. So while I think the idea in general is stupid, I don't really worry about it very much. Many more people die in the world every day for much stupider and more pointless reasons.