Dear Internet: stop posting about not posting

Have you noticed that bloggers are always making excuses for not posting enough? I'd like to fill in all you bloggers on a secret: Nobody Cares.

I tried to read an article about Nexus One today, and the writer stops the story to talk about not posting enough, and then promises to post more. Promising to "get better" is even worse; it just leads to more apologies when the writer fails.

Here's why you all need to stop masturbating about post frequency:

1. Your reader has never heard of you. He has no idea how often you post and doesn't care. It's a world-wide-web of linked hypertext, and traffic comes from all over the place.

2. Your reader came here for a reason (in this case, for your thoughts about Nexus One). When you start talking about your blogging practices instead, you've failed to deliver on topic and they will leave.

The iphone sucks

I'm still waiting for the world to release a cellphone that isn't missing any features. I spent some time using the iphone this month, and it's completely great - but it will continue to frustrate me, as long as it has all of these issues:

∙ Proprietary plug only for data (please can we have standard USB)
∙ Proprietary plug only for power (please can we have standard USB)
∙ Not USB disk (flash drive)
∙ Proprietary software for music interface (just let me drag/drop my mp3s ok?)
∙ One-way-only image transfer

∙ Horrible keyboard. Why not use rotating screen for big wide keyboard?
∙ Missing native apps: googletalk, latitude. The browser hacks don't cut it.

Next I'd like to try out an Android phone. I really like keyboards with actual physical buttons.

Pre-launch product hype is a mistake

I don't understand why marketers try to create product hype before launch dates. By advertising, posting reviews, and posting youtube videos of products before their release date, they just ensure I never buy.

Why? I have a life, and that life does not involve managing consumer product release dates.

I have responsibilities at work, and I manage them with Outlook, attask.com,and subversion. I have responsibilities at home that I manage with Excel, google docs, IMs, and a whiteboard on my fridge. I'm busy. I don't want another tool to manage future books, movies, music, and games.

...so when I hear an author on NPR discuss his new book, I check amazon.com to buy it. If it's not released yet, then we're done: he missed a sale. This happens a lot. Why don't they release products before they try to talk us into buying them? Do Sears salesman spend 20 minutes talking you into buying an appliance, then refuse to sell it to you? No, because that would be stupid.

I just saw a vid of gyromancer and it looks great*. I have my wallet out. ...but I can't buy it, because it's set to release "Q4 2009". They should have held the video until then. It's old news by the time it hits the shelves, which means fewer sales.

*all I ask is that they release it in English on PC.

Careers in video gaming

I think that, when I was a teenager and I assumed that jobs in creating video games were practically impossible to score, I was completely wrong about the future. I think I missed the point that, as more humans reach adulthood having been raised on videogames, the audience for games would rapidly increase which would make a bigger market for Valve, Blizzard, and the indie houses to develop more games.

I also didn't expect the increase in gaming platforms. Let me elaborate:

There became commonly 3 consoles from any competing vendor that are active: current gen (PS3), last gen but still generating active sales (PS2), handheld (PSP) - multiply that by as many vendors as can stay in the market (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo currently).

Add in the computer/OS platforms (Win32, MacOS, *nix).

Then add the new entry: miscellaneous personal digital devices. These are devices that can game even though they aren't built for it. Cell phones dominate this category, but PDAs, GPS, other devices can be treated similarly. Hell, I've seen donkey kong on a digicam.

Finally, new budgets for games have allowed an increase in quality/complexity that allow much larger teams to work on any one title. All of this spells out a ton more jobs in video gaming than earlier decades.

Now I think it would have been not only reasonable, but insightful for me to have angled for a career in making video games, even if I can't build 3D engines like John Carmack.

I got to thinking about this after reading an Offworld article predicting a near future where all people are gamers, just as all people are exposed to the other major forms of artistic media: music, movies, books.

This is going to be a lot of work

This wikipedia article is about 1001 albums to listen to before you die.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Albums_You_Must_Hear_Before_You_Die

This seems like just a monumental amount of work.  I'm thinking I'll need a google doc list to check off what I've heard, and it will take years.

The evils of fiction

About reading, a coworker once told me "I don't understand why anyone reads fiction. What's the point? It's all made up. I only read nonfiction."

I thought this was amazing. The logical extension of this would be to never look at artwork, avoid almost all music, certainly never watch a film or a play. After all, that stuff is all made up. All of these types of art an extension of story-telling: fiction.

I'm picturing this guy making a ruckus at a comedy club:

"So, a priest and a rabbi are on a boat ..."
"You mean a priest, a rabbi, and a stand-up comic, right? Since you must have been there to witness this happening? Otherwise I want my money back."

Ode to Courier New

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
fixed-width fonts maintain spacing for easily readable tables despite the rendering application,
and variable-width fonts are pretty but not very functional for engineers.

Thanks Courier New.
(Spaces weather changes in rendering applications much better than tab characters, too. Courier+spacebar=legible crossplatform tables. yay.)

What I'm Reading Now: Nothing, dammit

So I've been without an audiobook ever since I finished Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, which I really liked and my wife really meh'd*.

This was the last audiobook I had burned, and I haven't made it to the library for another. This is driving my crazy on my commutes. I'm spending 1.5+ hours on the road daily with nothing but the radio, and the radio is failing me.

My sports radio station (KNBR680) is full of commercials and often letting idiots call in with terrible stories. I like NPR a lot, but they frequently decide to do long stories on obscure, uninteresting topics. ...or they'll review some weird musician that blends african drums with banshee screams and computer-generated white noise - and they will love it, which has to be a blatant lie. I'm still waiting for them to review a plain old rock band or pop artist and say it's fun to listen to.

I need some audiobooks.

*Yes, you can meh nouns. See wiktionary. She meh'd this book as she called each outcome predictable, which spoiled all the tension & mystery, but then admitted she may have read it a previous time in her youth.

Republicans want it both ways

I don't understand why the conservatives are so wishy-washy about oversight. When it comes to our schools, they want teachers on a short leash: No Child Left Behind has huge oversight, rigorous testing, and a centralized curriculum, leaving educators little room to use their judgement & expertise to teach their own students the things they are ready for in a method that's best for them.

However, when it comes to business, we get bills like the first 700 billion dollar bailout bill, we get language that grants spending power to an appointed individual with no oversight, restrictions, or reports.

Why does our congress trust CFOs and businessmen with $700bil of our money, but they don't trust our schoolteachers with their paltry portion of the $56bil spent annually on education? [citation] Maybe our schoolteachers aren't contributing to politicians campaign funds the way wall street can.

Powell endorses Obama, bloggers make fools of themselves

The top headline on Reddit today: Powell's Endorsement of Obama Proves Race Will Play Major Role in Election ( link here ).

I think that's bullshit, and I bet Colin Powell is particularly angry to see these comments. Basically, no African-American can support Barack without being accused of doing so because of race, just as no woman could support Hilary Clinton in the primaries without being accused as doing so because of sex. While some voters certainly do use those associations as reasons to pick candidates, that accusation should not be made toward any individual without supporting evidence.

My viewing of Powell's comments about the race this morning showed him giving evidence to the contrary, specifically listing issues that he had with the McCain campaign. (youtube video)

This blogger, Daniel Zanoza, goes further by claiming that Powell should endorse McCain because they are both military men and both Republicans. It's amazing to me that people like Zanoza think voters should support a candidate that's most like them socially, instead of picking a candidate that is likely to make the best decisions for our nation with respect to real issues like the economy, warfare, energy policy, and health care.

If America voted the way Mr. Zanoza proposed, Hank Hill would be our commander-in-chief.

Buy Low, Sell High

Warren Buffet gets it. He says:

"I’ve been buying American stocks. ... Why? A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful."

It's like what I've been telling friends - that anyone with any cash available to do so should jump on this weak market now, before confidence returns and prices are restored to previous levels. Warren says this too:

"Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. ... What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

On usability and the telephone ring

Last week xkcd had a great post of something I've been lecturing on for years. I've staunchly argued that all phones, mobile or otherwise, should emit a sound like a ringing bell when there is an incoming call. The Comic:



The issue is that the ringing bell sound has been the only option for the entire history of the device, including of a century of human usage. It's extremely easy to recognize that sound, even for very small children, and even in a crowd of other noise. All of society knows how to recognize it, what it means, and how to respond.

Enter: the custom ringtone, which obliterates all of that excellent usability. My wife puts a top-40 hit on her phone, and when we hear it at the mall on the PA system, she reaches for her purse. When her phone rings in the car, she turns down the stereo. It's a mess.

If you need custom tones because you just can't bear to let AT&T only collect their standard $50/month from you, and you must fill their coffers with a few bucks every time you like a new song, then please indulge yourselves by assigning tones to SMS, email, PTT, alarm, IM, and other alerts. Those don't have a rich history of standard usage to destroy.

Americans greatest fear: The Truth

I had to laugh today when my daughter & I were flipping through a catalogue of Halloween costumes. On a page full of Halloween props, I caught these labels for sale:



Note the very first label, which I like to think is the most scary thing available: not the red blood, spider venom, embalming juice, or the virus that makes humans become zombies, no - those aren't scary enough to lead with. The most frightening juice there is the truth serum. [scream!]

Yes, the scariest thing we can imagine is our friends, family, and peers hearing us tell the truth. Are our secrets really that bad, America?

1st Presidential Debate

I've been watching it on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-nNIEduEOw I'm trying to be unbiased - which is easy, since I haven't investigated much into either candidates platform, so I'm genuinely eager to hear their opinions.

At 20:00 in, John McCain says "I want to provide a tax break of $5,000 so every American family can buy their own health care..." That scares me - does he want to set the precedent that the individual buys his health care, not the business or government?

I checked with Kaiser recently, when my business changed their health plan and I was suddenly faced with many more expensive options. I found the cheapest plan they had available for my standard-sized (or even small) family of four cost over $10,000 per year. Note that's the cheapest available kaiser plan, and that's just to enroll. Of course I'd still pay more than that every time I visited, or needed drugs, or had any procedures - it's not 100% coverage with no deductible.

That $5k won't help me care for my 3 dependants. Furthermore it would only be a change for people right now - in future years, new employees won't have a before/after picture to see a $5k tax break. They will just start new jobs at new salaries, where businesses are not concerned about their health, and they'll have 100% of the burden on them immediately.

Recycling Traffic

Oops. I created a paper recycling box in my office, hoping to encourage others to do the same (since a very high percentage of office waste is cardboard/paper recyclable).

All I've seemed to do is increase foot traffic in my office as people visit me to drop their papers in my recycling box. hmm.

Two spaces after period killed by HTML

This MLA page talks about how single-spacing after period is becoming more common and should be considered the standard in writing: http://www.mla.org/style_faq3

I wonder if HTML helped the downfall of double-spacing after period. Before the majority of the web was created by html-generators, authors typed their content in HTML markup that ignored whitespace beyond a single space, without explicit use of a non-breaking-space code ( ).

It could be that the wealth of websites whose users's browsers refused to render more than one space helped make single-spacing more common and accepted.

An interesting aside: Wikipedia is a very specific about spacing, quoting the standard spacing after a period as 1 em. I'm always surprised when wikipedia shows me extremely well-documented details, formalities, and histories of topics that I took completely for granted.

Senator accuses cell carriers of price-fixing on SMS pricing

Wow, this is great. Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl is basically accusing cell carriers of price-fixing on SMS fees.

I don't use SMS and don't like it - but that's because my smartphone groks email and IM. I understand SMS for the majority of cell users who don't have these capabilities.

...but whether or not I use a service, I don't like to see the public getting gouged, and I always thought it was nuts that I could get tons of (or even unlimited) minutes to talk time at a fixed low rate but have to pay a few dimes for every SMS message. The carrier's cost of SMS is a few bytes per message, and doesn't have to be transmitted at a constant rate. However, a voice call requires multiple kilobytes per second on a secured, reliable, constant rate of transmission - that's a significantly higher burden on the carrier's network than an SMS.

Clearly SMS charges are a sham. ...now, it could be the case that cell providers prop up low monthly fees with SMS fees. If so, reducing or eliminating SMS fees would increase monthly fees - but at least you would be paying the right amount for the right service.

Microsoft: I ALWAYS want to paste unformatted

Every time I past in an office doc, office carries the formatting over for me, which drives me nuts.

Consider a scenario: I copy from one doc where the font is 9 point garamond dark-blue italic, and paste in another doc where it's a title block of bold 14-point arial black, and office *carries over the formatting* and obliterates the point of copy/paste: saving time. I have to do more work fixing the formatting than the work I saved with copy paste.

Instead of reformatting, I often try to use a paste special where I can navigate a dialogue to specifically "paste unformatted", or I (faster, actually) launch notepad and paste then recopy paste, because notepad handily strips the formatting.

With all this work to copy a bit of text, why don't I just re-type my text at this point? I can do a lot at 80WPM and never have to touch the mouse. Copy/paste has been completely broken for me by Microsoft's attempts to make it more advanced.

What I'm reading now: The Tipping Point

I just wrapped up an audiobook of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". I really enjoyed my last read by the author ("Blink"). However, this one ended too fast - and the credits revealed that it was an abridged copy. I can't ever understand why people abridge books. Wikipedia takes a stab at it, claiming that a book might take 40 hours to listen to, where it can be abridged into a handy 2 hours. This makes no sense to me. I could spend less time on any task if I do a half-ass job of it. Why bother reading a book if not enjoy the whole thing?

The wikipedia article shows an example of what text is abridged:

A passage such as "John sped away in his automobile, a red 1967 Mustang he'd purchased from a junkyard and spent most of his college years restoring with his father" could be abridged to "John sped away in his car."

To me, this is a travesty. Those details are important. They help us learn who the characters are, what their history is, and that's what engages the reader to care about what happens to them. Everything interesting about a story can be abridged out, while they refine it down to just the actions people take and the words they spoke. It's the difference between reading Brideshead Revisited vs. a high school history book.

Now I'll have to get the hard-copy of The Tipping Point and re-read it, else feel I only skimmed a few pages.

Addicted to Oil

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times just wrote an opinion piece supporting an argument I've been making for years regarding the USA energy policy. People (and especially companies) are motivated primarily by money - so we won't try alternative energies, reduce pollution, or do anything else that's good for us unless it's cheaper than the alternative.

That's why Friedman wants to hear the president tell the public this:

Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/opinion/22friedman.html?hp

FTC: Here to protect consumers, after it protects business

I'm a little annoyed with the Federal Trade Commission for pulling the plug on their credit card review service for consumers. Months ago, when visiting their website, I found a comprehensive spreadsheet of available banks offering credit cards. The spreadsheet compared all the important details - APR, hidden fees, credit report rating necessary to acquired the card, et cetera.

Apparently it's all been yanked - now they just have tips for choosing cards. Why take this information down? If it's out of date, it should be updated. If there's no funding to update it, it should be marked as historical, but not deleted. I hope the reason is not because the FTC is more interested in protecting predatory lenders than consumers.

The FTC talks about avoiding credit card fraud, too, but I had a laugh at this instruction:

Carry your cards separately from your wallet, in a zippered compartment, a business card holder, or another small pouch.

Wait - a wallet is a "small pouch" with "compartments" and "card holders". They just defined a wallet for you to put your cards in, while telling you not to put your cards in your wallet. ...so I should just carry two wallets? ...and I should put a sign on one pocket telling pickpockets that I prefer if they steal the neutral wallet? good tip. Thanks, FTC.

I had my cards stolen by a thief once who made some charges to my account and used my identity to get credit on a number of purchases. You know what my biggest problem was? My bank decided I wasn't honest with them when I reported my card stolen, so they didn't follow the proper practices that would protect me. Instead they decided I had just lost my card, and issued a new one. Thanks, Wells Fargo. Customers love when you call them liars and don't take security seriously.

Matt Mullen (featuring RAGE)

It's hard enough to sort through all the mp3 tags as is - maintaining long filenames and ID3s that will sort out hierarchically through artist, album, track no, track title. I'm reaching filename restrictions because of long track titles that inevitable include "(featuring some dood)" appended to it.

I don't understand the "featuring" nonsense. Background singers are background singers. They don't get a place in the song title. Do artists feel they need to have some kind of "complete ticket", like an attractive vice-president balances a candidate, to increase album sales?

Boumediene v. Bush: justice Kennedy lays it down

I'm glad about the ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, and have been pleased with a few quotes I've seen from the opinion of the court written by justice Kennedy.

I've heard a lot of the opposing viewpoint, and want to list my thoughts below.

Here are some important source documents:

You can read the syllabus and the decision on the web: syllabus of Boumediene v. Bush

You can also see how the framers of the US government thought a fair society should be built, based on the Declaration of independence, the bill of rights, and the constitution.

Boumediene v Bush is about people captured in Afghanistan and abroad that the government says are dangerous and can be held indefinitely, without trial, and without the right of habeas corpus (to seek relief of illegal detention). Bush says it's legal because a majority-Republican congress passed a bill in 2005 that read:

the President is authorized “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned,authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

But the Bill of Right says:

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

And the declaration of independence says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

I read that to mean that, until we tear up the constitution, a person can't be imprisoned unless his crime is presented before a jury and he's given due process of law. Amendment 6 even guarantees the trial will be speedy and public (not secret tribunal).

Some would argue that these only apply to citizens, but I see no way of claiming a foreign person is less deserving of rights than a local - otherwise we don't hold those truths to be self-evident.

Others would argue that it makes allowances during times of war, but the USA is not at war with Afghanistan, and the petitioners are not citizens or soldiers of any nation with which the USA could be at war. If we were at war, then they are P.O.W.s. I cover that below.

If the government detains dangerous criminals, the government must have reason to believe they are criminals. They can show that reason (evidence) to a judge or jury and rule on their punishment if convicted. With no evidence, and no jury, there is nothing proving that the government is not detaining innocent people - this should be unacceptable to any reasonable person.

Some may argue that Guantanamo bay detainees are P.O.W.s and may be treated differently than citizens. However, the USA must actually be at war to hold prisoners of war. We're not at war. Some argue we're at war on Terror. We're not. Hostage-takers are terrorists. The police have been handling them since Hammurabi etched some laws on tablets. That's not war.

If there was a war on terror, the war would never be over, as there are always potential terrorists at home and abroad. That would completely eliminate the 5th amendment to the constitution. Article 7 states that an amendment may not be eliminated without a 2/3 vote in both houses of congress.

But we can play devil's advocate. Let's say Guantanamo bay detainees are POWs even though they aren't. That would mean they are subject to protections agreed upon at the third geneva convention:

They "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and "the following acts are and shall remain prohibited: violence to life and person; cruel treatment and torture; humiliating and degrading treatment; the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

It's clear that Guantanamo detainees are not having sentences carried out with judgment pronounced by a regular constituted court affording all judicial guaranties recognized by civilized people - a direct violation of the 3rd Geneva Convention.

The last argument left for conservatives is that the detainees are neither POWs nor citizens - they are enemy combatants. The International Criminal Tribunal disagrees (and so do I), citing it's interpretation of the Geneva conventions:

"Every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third [Geneva] Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth [Geneva] Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. There is no intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law."

George Bush can't just make up terms with which to classify people so that he can act outside of the law. It's a travesty that so many Americans think he can, and it's an assault on our constitution that over 40% of the supreme court thinks he can delete habeas corpus at will. Anyone who loves America should be outraged at our administrations attacks on America's core values.

Not a Singularitarian

I've been telling my friends for years that nanotechnology is the going to cause the end of the world (any programmer who has had to reboot a computer stuck in an ill-programmed infinite loop would be scared to death of nanobot designers. See Grey Goo.)

Wikipedia reinforced my claims by stating that "Many Singularitarians consider nanotechnology to be one of the greatest dangers facing humanity." That's on their page about Technological Singularity. Does that make me a Singularitarian?

I don't think so. I think that if Ray Kurzwiel's Singularity ever comes, it will be marked by rapid discoveries in science & tehnology because of human specialization & advanced tools, not because of the construction of advanced artificial intelligence. I suppose we could create advanced AI once we can completely reverse-engineer the human nervous system (and then synthesize it at high frequencies on electronic hardware), but I tend to think this complicated work would be a result of the singularity, not a cause of it.