On a beautiful October afternoon, what could possibly be better than zombies rampaging in the streets of Fremont?
Posted by protected static as random at 10:24 PM UTC
October 29th, 2005
Braaaainnnsss…
Republic Dogs
Saw this ages ago, but when it resurfaced on Making Light, I had to share – Plato’s Republic as done by Quentin Tarantino:
Aristotle: What kind of argument is that? Your theory of the forms rests on an arbitrary and vicious act of violence.
Socrates: [Draws his gun.] Aristotle, you’re Plato’s student, I respect you, but I will put fucking bullets through your heart if you don’t take back what you said about me being violent now!
Aristotle: [Also drawing gun] You shoot, you’ll be dining with Lord Hades tonight. I repeat. You kill me, your ass is eating pomegranite fucking casserole for the rest of eternity.
Alcibiades: Shit, man, you’re acting like a bunch of fuckin’ Spartans. Am I the only philosopher around here?
Socrates and Aristotle: [To Alcibiades] Shut up!
Alcibiades: Guys, guys, calm down. Look, I’ve got it. Let’s have a symposium — we can all drink wine and make speeches in praise of love.
Aristotle: What are you, some kind of pansy?
Socrates: Shoot that dipshit.
[Socrates and Aristotle turn in unison and shoot Alcibiades, then turn back and again aim at each other.]
Indeed…
October 27th, 2005
I is smart
| You Passed 8th Grade Math |
 Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct! |
[thanks to Chris Sells (I won't tell anyone I beat you Chris, I promise ;-)]
October 26th, 2005
Annnn-ti-ci… … … …
…PA-TION!
That’s all… I feel better now.
Posted by protected static as politics, random at 1:49 PM UTC
2000 2001
…and counting. Go. Click. See what 2000 looks like.
[26-Oct-05 9:40 AM PDT updated to add links to latest casualty report and to change the title accordingly]
Posted by protected static as politics at 8:38 AM UTC
October 25th, 2005
This is standing up?
I’m want to scream. I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of bubblegum.
Why?
Well, let’s see… I know that Daily Kos isn’t a fair sampling of Democrats, but I do think that as site membership has increased, the sentiments expressed there have been become more and more representative of the Democratic Party overall. Let’s review the majority reaction to recent events on that site, shall we?
1. Observing the 2,000th US military fatality in Iraq: “Oh, we don’t want to do that – that’d be exploitive…”
2. Observing Rosa Parks death to point out the GOP’s hypocrisy on racial issues: “Oh, we don’t want to do that – that’d be exploitive…”
So may I ask… What the fuck do you want to react to? Or are you just going to hope that Fitzgerald’s indictments bring down the Bush White House so you can spend 2006 and 2008 going “Well, we didn’t get indicted, they did.”.
And these people wonder why there are voters out there who don’t see any difference between the 2 parties…
Posted by protected static as politics at 7:51 AM UTC
October 24th, 2005
30-second science blogging – Wired’s coverage of NASA’s space elevator contest
The article is available here.
With the flick of a switch, a searchlight beam illuminated a photovoltaic array, and a prototype space elevator called Snow Star One lifted off the ground. As the humble assemblage of solar cells, metal braces and off-the-shelf rollers rose slowly from the launch pad and up a long blue tether, a small crowd of spectators let out a boisterous cheer.
The contraption, designed by University of British Columbia undergrads Steve Jones and Damir Hot, didn’t get very far — it managed to wriggle its way just 15 feet up the 200-foot-long tether before stalling out. But as the first competitor in the inaugural Space Elevator Games, even that modest performance was enough to cause a quite stir in the still-embryonic space elevator community.
[...]
Spaceward [(the non-profit foundation overseeing the competition)] board member Michael Laine, president of a Bremerton, Washington-based company called LiftPort that is seeking to commercialize space-elevator technology, noted that next year’s games will up the ante considerably. While the already daunting thresholds will be set even higher, there will also be more money to entice competitors — $100,000 for first prize, $40,000 for second and $10,000 for third.
“I think that next year is going to be big,” Laine said. “It’s going to be harder, but I think there’s going to be lots of people that rise to the challenge. We’re at the beginning of something really great.”
When I mentally compare these steps with what I can only imagine would be involved in actually building an elevator, I can’t help but think of Langley’s Aerodromes compared to an F-22 Raptor or the JSF.
I wonder what Langley would say about the JSF? Despite being an ‘early adopter’ of powered, heavier-than-air flight, would he have laughed at the idea of carbon composites, ceramic laminates, titanium components, and a top speed of Mach 1.8?
Posted by protected static as 30-second science blogging, geek at 10:42 PM UTC
“Are you going to stand up?”
Rosa Parks: 1913-2005
“Are you going to stand up?”
So spoke a bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955; in the seat, a woman determined to stay where she was entitled. That we should all have the courage of our convictions to stand as Rosa Parks stood up against Jim Crow. To the end, she was an example for us all. I’m not religious, but certainly a moment of silence is in order for Mrs. Parks.
The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis (the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was killed) is here; the Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute is here.
[edited 25-Oct-05 9:15 AM PDT to add the following paragraph] I wanted to add a link to this, a diary on MyLeftWing.com that reminds us that Rosa Parks’ resistance was not an accident: she was a long-time member of the NAACP prior to 1955, and had previously refused to stand up on buses during the 1940s. None of this happened overnight, and none of this was accidental, both points that are likely to be glossed over (if not ignored entirely) in the self-serving hagiographies that will come out over the next few days and weeks.
[thanks to billmon for the reminder, and to The Smoking Gun for the photo]
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:11 PM UTC
1-year!
Wow… A full year of successfully lowering the signal-to-noise ratio of the Internet, even if only by the most minute fractions. From such humble beginnings and all that rot.
Posted by protected static as random at 10:26 AM UTC
Behold! The power of XML!
<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<bite attr=”me”/>
Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?
(saw this on /. late last week… I don’t remember where)
Now I need a weekend to recover from my weekend
Oy. Let’s see: Thursday was chaperoning The Boy’s field trip to see spawning salmon in the Cedar River in Renton – fun, but tiring. Each kindergarten student is paired with a 5th grade ‘buddy’, and man, are 5th-grade boys and girls different species, or what? But it was pretty cool, kind of like watching a National Geographic special come to life. (Yes, it’s a small pic – I cropped it from the original which is on a password-protected Yahoo!Groups site… If it was just me and The Boy, I’d probably post it, but since it isn’t…)
Next, on to Friday: Bauhaus at the Paramount! Mini-non-review posted here – shorter version == great show, don’t miss it if you can help it, I think I’m getting too old for this nonsense.
Saturday was a Forced Outdoor Recreation day: took The Boy to Meridian Playground for some mandatory steam release time. It’s a decent walk there from our house, so he was pretty pooped by the time we got back. Beautiful day, saw some bald eagles, including one that flew pretty low right over the park.
And Sunday? Sunday was the Great Pumpkin Massacre of Ought-Five, at this point practically enshrined as an annual ritual… This year, as last, we went to Remlinger Farms in Carnation, WA, along with the same family we vacationed with. Remlinger’s a little more expensive than some pumpkin places, but they have professional-grade carnival rides for the kids at no addn’l charge, and their pumpkin prices are pretty reasonable. IIRC, some of the ‘cheaper’ sites wind up being about as expensive (if not more) once you add up their additional charges for rides or attractions, and their per-pound price of pumpkins. While it was on the cold and raw side, the rain held off until just before we were ready to leave.
And now I wonder why my brain is frozen in neutral…
[Updated 24-Oct-05 10:40 AM PDT to add JPEG from field trip]
Posted by protected static as random at 10:09 AM UTC
October 23rd, 2005
From the “People should know better by now department”
One of the blogs in my RSS aggregator is Builder UK. Why the UK version of the site? Well, first off I think it’s a better site than its American counterpart, which appears to do little more for programming-related content than regurgitate articles from the faux-Libertarian TechRepublic.com. Second, seeing as how I live and work with Microsoft technologies in the middle of the Microsoft heartland – and as I’ve mentioned previously, MSFT is one of our clients – I thought it’d be good to get some perspectives from outside the immediate sphere of influence of the Borg. Third, I like an international perspective on tech news just as much as I like getting an international slant on non-tech news.
But they’ve recently endangered their position with an amazingly dumb article, VB6 Tip: Make the most of Variants.
Some quick background: the ‘Variant’ data type in Visual Basic is an all-purpose data type. It can hold anything without choking: strings, numbers, object references. And it’s a memory pig: since it doesn’t know what the maximum amount of memory is that it’ll need to hold its contents, it grabs a largish chunk and waits for the data to come in.
True/False, requiring 1 bit of memory? Sure, you could use it for that, and eventually, at some point in the future, the variable will release all that extra memory. But not right away – you see, it could still be something else. And we don’t want to give up that buffer, just in case. Now, there are some valid reasons why you might want to use such a data type – but you better have a bloody well-thought out reason for it.
The Variant data type is one reason among many why so many programmers look down their nose at Visual Basic – you don’t have to think as hard about what you’re doing, because VB’ll make guesses for you. Worse, I’ve seen code that declared variables as variants, and then used one or two variables as catch-alls. Need a number? No problem. A string? Sure! A Word document? You betcha! All with one variable!
Whenever I helped review resumes for VB6 programmers, there were 3 things in a code sample that would instantly get a resume tossed on the No Fucking Way pile:
Remember how I said VB will make guesses for you? It’ll do even better than that – if you don’t require variables to be explicitly declared, it’ll create them for you at run-time. A typo in a variable name all of a sudden becomes a new, legitimate variable. I’ve seen very expensive pieces of custom software all of a sudden break when ‘Option Explicit’ was turned on.
In some languages, you can declare a variable like this: “int foo, bar;” – there, you’ve just declared that you’ll need 2 integer values named foo and bar. It therefore isn’t uncommon to see this in VB6 code: “Dim foo, bar As Integer”. Guess what? It doesn’t work that way, but it doesn’t throw an exception of any kind. bar is an integer, sure, but guess what foo is? It’s a (wait for it)… Variant!
If you haven’t bothered to think through what types of data you were working with, how can I be sure that you’ve thought through your code? Toss, toss, toss… NFW.
By itself, this article isn’t enough to get me to delete my RSS feed – but they’re definitely on probation.
Posted by protected static as geek, programming at 10:51 PM UTC
October 21st, 2005
30-second science blogging – an “X-Prize”-lite for the space elevator concept
While I don’t think this represents any kind of radical change in NASA’s approach to space, I do find it heartening that they’re at least willing to entertain (and reward) something other than the strap-a-mofo-huge-rocket-to-your-ass-and-cross-your-fingers philosophy they’ve embraced since, oh, forever.
Please note that no disrespect is intended towards those who actually strap those mofo-rockets to their collective asses – but since we’ve come to learn that rocket-powered space flight is so inefficient (certainly, rocket-powered flight from the bottom of a gravity well), you’d think we’d have given something else a whirl by now. It isn’t like there’s been a shortage of ideas or anything.
Posted by protected static as 30-second science blogging, geek at 9:15 AM UTC
October 20th, 2005
It’s a holiday in Cambodia Syria
[updated 20-Oct-05 8:40AM PDT to add attribution; my bad. - ps]
No, it doesn’t scan as well as Jello’s original, but still…
Evidently Secretary of State Rice’s influence on our military policy only covers air strikes, given the rumors (and off-the-record statements by Administration officials) that US ground troops have engaged Syrian forces in combat – on the Syrian side of the Iraqi/Syrian border.
An editorial in this morning’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by former US Ambassador Dan Simpson (associate editor of the PP-G) lays it out in blunt terms:
The parallel with the Vietnam War, where a Nixon administration deeply involved in a losing war expanded the conflict — fruitlessly in the event — to neighboring Cambodia, is obvious. The end result was not changed in Vietnam; Cambodia itself was plunged into dangerous chaos, which climaxed in the killing fields, where an estimated 1 million Cambodians died as a result of internal conflict.
On the U.S. side, no declaration of war preceded the invasion of Syria, in spite of the requirements of the War Powers Act of 1973. There is no indication that the Congress was involved in the decision to go in. If members were briefed, none of them have chosen to share that important information with the American people. Presumably, the Bush administration’s intention is simply to add any casualties of the Syrian conflict to those of the war in Iraq, which now stand at more than 1,970. The financial cost of expanding the war to Syria would also presumably be added to the cost of the Iraq war, now estimated at $201 billion.
The Bush administration would claim that it is expanding the war in Iraq into Syria to try to bring it to an end, the kind of screwy non-logic that kept us in Vietnam for a decade and cost 58,193 American lives in the end.
Santayana… history… lessons… ‘doomed to repeat’… Anyone? Anyone? It just seems fitting to end this with lyrics from another song by the DK’s – their version of I Fought the Law:
The law don’t mean shit if you’ve got the right friends
That’s how the country’s run
Twinkies are the best friend I’ve ever had
I fought the law
And I won
[thanks to dKos readers roxtar and jfern for bringing this to everyone's attention]
(back to top)
Posted by protected static as politics at 8:03 AM UTC
October 19th, 2005
Writer’s cramp
Brain cramp, that is.
You see, I’ve got a bunch of essays sitting in my blogger dashboard as drafts: a piece on decentralized information processing/decision-making (think Wisdom of Crowds), something on science education in the US today, a long-ish philisophical rant about a tempest in the teapot that is the video game community, an observation about the pace of technology and society.
Drafts. All of them.
Oh, and just to keep a balance in my life, this is cramping my fiction on slow memory leak, which has a bunch of stalled-out pieces. I even have a half-written essay on monsters and society waiting to be posted to The Myster of the Haunted Vampire as well. For now, they sit lumpen and lifeless, half-formed clay homunculi waiting for the rabbi to place truth on their foreheads. My ideas are outpacing my abilities, and dammit, I don’t like it.
Eh. It’s frustrating, but I’ll deal… It isn’t like I’m depending upon this for my income or anything, which is a Good Thing.
So until my expository writing gets back up to snuff, atrophied as it is by years of coding and memo writing (fortunately of late, far more of the former than the latter, but still quite fatal for creative writing), I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with a diet that consists of irregularly regurgitated bits and snippets of the content of others mixed with the occasional larger free-form nugget of extemporaneous ranting. I’m sure Jakob Nielsen wouldn’t approve, but I’ll just have to live with that disappointment too.
Posted by protected static as random at 8:32 AM UTC