Fail Loop

This gem is part of a code (C#) example that we got from a vendor recently. This exact same pattern appears multiple times in the example.

It stands out because it does manage work correctly...

using (FileStream rdr = new FileStream(contentInfo.FullName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.ReadWrite))
{                    {
    index = 1;
    while (true)
    {
        long offset = (index - 1) * chunkSize;
        long remaining = contentInfo.Length - offset;
        if (remaining < 1) break; // Stop processing, at the end of the file

        // stuff that doesn't ever touch the index variable 

        index++;
    }
}

How Apple Will Lose the Mobile Computing Race

I've heard several people say that "Apple is the new Microsoft". These people are wrong; dead wrong.

Apple is the new Apple. They've not changed in the last 20 years, not even a little bit.

Google is the new Microsoft, and Apple is going to lose the mobile device market to Google the exact same way it lost the desktop market to Microsoft 20 years ago.

How is this going to happen? First you have to know the history.

Let me tell you a little story...

Back in the 80's there were two companies; Apple and Microsoft. Suddenly Apple comes out with a magic new product way ahead of the competition. Enter the Macintosh. The Mac was guaranteed to change personal computing forever, and everyone knew it before the Mac even hit the shelves. There was media hype and gobs of nerd excitement well in advance of the Mac's debut. And the Mac delivered spectacularly on all of its promises.

But Apple insisted on near complete control of the entire platform; hardware and soft. They were terrified that someone else might come along and spoil the pure awesome.

Apple used deliberately unusual hardware, and controlled it with an iron fist. Only Apple and a few licensees were allowed to make Mac hardware. The 3rd party accessory market was as restricted as Apple could make it too.

Programmers could make applications for the Mac of course, but Apple maintained tight control over how applications used the hardware and interacted with the OS. Developers played in the sandbox, but it was Apple and select partners that created the majority of useful Mac software.

Apple was also territorial about who could sell their precious. Macs were distributed mostly through select retail partners. Anyone else that wanted to sell a Mac paid full retail price --which made it very hard to compete with Apple's preferred retailers.

Because Apple had tight control end-to-end, the Mac was a very stable and reliable computer. Most of the software was also high quality, which made the Mac a joy to use.

On the other side, you had Microsoft. They weren't really a hardware company though. They concentrated on making a decent operating system and left the hardware to other companies that specialized in that sort of thing.

There was a lot of compromise and cooperation between Microsoft and the hardware makers though, of which there were many. They created a large market with a wide range of different systems, each with different capabilities, quality, and prices. Microsoft just did what they could to make sure that Windows worked reasonably well with whatever crazy-ass hardware the other guys came up with.

Microsoft made a decent enough OS, but what they did really well was make programming languages, compilers, and development tools --all that stuff you need in order to make software for the regular folks. Microsoft made it easy to develop applications for Windows, and they stayed out of the way as much as possible. They didn't put up a fight when developers released software to compete with Microsoft's own, and they didn't stop developers from extending the operating system itself in new and unusual directions.

Microsoft was later than Apple in coming out with a good GUI based OS. Windows wasn't too pretty nor much fun compared to the Mac; especially at first. But PCs were cheaper, and came in a variety that fit different people's needs and budgets. The most important thing was that a Windows PC could do everything that a Mac could, though not always with the elegance of the Mac. People often preferred a Mac, but they could (and did) settle for PCs instead.

In the end, what killed Apple the first time around was Apple's own paranoia. All by itself, Apple couldn't evolve the Mac hardware nor the OS fast enough to keep up with a young and rapidly changing personal computer market.

All Microsoft had to do was try and keep up while other companies raced forward with new ideas.

Now jump forward 20 years.

There are two companies; Apple and Google. Suddenly Apple comes out with a magic new product way ahead of the competition. Enter the iPhone. The iPhone was guaranteed to change mobile computing forever, and everyone knew it before the iPhone even hit the shelves. There was media hype and gobs of nerd excitement well in advance of the iPhone's debut; and the iPhone delivered spectacularly on all of its promises.

But Apple insists on near complete control of the entire platform; hardware and soft. They are terrified that someone else might come along and spoil the pure awesome.

Apple uses deliberately unusual hardware, and they control it with an iron fist. Only apple is allowed to make iPhones, and the 3rd party accessory market is as restricted as Apple can make it.

Programmers can (and do) make applications for the iPhone of course, but Apple maintains near complete control over how those applications use the hardware and interact with the OS. Developers are allowed to play in the sandbox only if they use the specific tools that apple permits. Apple and a few select partners make the majority of the useful iPhone apps. Most developers that make apps to competes with Apple's own are denied access to the app store; which is the only way users can obtain apps for the iPhone. Apple will even deny an app if they just don't like what it does.

Apple is territorial about who sells their precious. The iPhone is (currently) only distributed through one network in the U.S., and apple exerts enormous control over how that network does business. AT&T had to wait to roll out 3G services until there was an iPhone that also supported it. There were other mobile phones sold by AT&T that had  3G support as much as a full year before, and AT&T had deployed the network hardware long before Apple's 3G iPhone came out.

Because Apple is in such tight control, the iPhone is a very stable and reliable smartphone. Most of the software is also of high quality, which makes the iPhone a joy to use.

On the other side, you have Google. They aren't really a hardware company though. They make a good mobile operating system, but have left most of the hardware in the hands of companies that specialized in that sort of thing.

There is a lot of compromise and cooperation between Google and the many hardware makers. They have created large market with a wide range of different Android phones with different capabilities, quality, and price. Google just does what it can to make sure the Android OS works reasonably well with whatever crazy-ass hardware the other guys come up with.

Google makes a good mobile OS, but what they do really well is provide cloud services --services developers can use to make useful mobile software for the regular folks. Google makes it easy to build applications for Android, and supply much of the cloud services free of charge. They stay out of the way as much as possible, but give developers a way to distribute software through a centralized app store, with very few restrictions. Apps can also be obtained through independent channels too. Google doesn't put up a fight when developers release software to compete with Google's own products, and they don't stop developers from extending the Android OS in new and unusual directions.

Google was later than Apple with a smartphone. Android isn't quite as pretty compared to the iPhone; though it is rapidly getting there. Android phones are cheaper, available for nearly any network, and come in a wide variety of forms to fit different people's needs and budgets. And the important thing is that an Android Phone can do anything that an iPhone can; sometimes even with the same elegance as the iPhone. People often prefer the iPhone, but they can (and do) settle for Android phones instead.

In the end, what will kill Apple the second time around is Apple's own paranoia. All by itself, Apple cannot evolve the iPhone fast enough to keep up a young and rapidly changing mobile computing market. Their treatment of developers is pushing them to other platforms fast.

All Google has to do is try and keep up while other hardware and software companies race forward with new ideas.

This same exact pattern of behavior is repeated with the new iPad.

The situations are so similar it is almost insane that Apple can't see their own doom coming.

There are some major differences between now and 20 years ago, but none of them bode well for Apple.

Google is in a much more competitive position than Microsoft was 20 years ago, and Android is a much better product to pit against the iPhone than Windows was against the Mac.

Perhaps the biggest difference between now and then though is that Apple wasn't crapping all over their software developers back then. Apple did limit developers in some ways, but never in the arrogant and insulting way they do now... and especially not through any legal or contract trickery like the iPhone developer agreement.

Apple is also much more blatantly motivated by pure monetary greed. Twenty years ago, it felt like the Mac more about a vision of excellence, making a better tomorrow, being different, and enabling new and wonderful possibilities. The iPhone today though is clearly just a cash cow. Apple's every legal and marketing move is so transparently profit motivated that it doesn't even fool kindergarteners.

There is no greater vision behind the iPhone like there was the Mac; behind the iPhone it's just dollar signs, abused developers, and shackled customers.

So long Sci Fi Channel, but I doubt you will be missed...

The Sci Fi Channel has always been one of the most confusing failures in American Television. Now, they have decided that the reason for the suckitude must just be the name of the channel.

So they are changing the name to "Syfy". Somehow they think that this move will make their crappy shows appeal to a broader range of people.

Reading an article at TV Week about I have to say, the reason this network sucks has never been clearer...

Thinking back on the successes of the Sci Fi channel, and there are some, you end up with a list that goes a little like this (in no apparent order):

• Stargate (and variants)


• Battlestar Galactica


• Dune (mini-series)


• Eureka

They also had a lot of successes with second-run shows like Doctor Who. But there is one thing that all of these have in common.... they are actually Science Fiction shows.

In the article one of the founders, Mr Brooks, says this:

"We spent a lot of time in the ’90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it’s called Sci Fi"

Oh!

I noticed!

While the Sci Fi channel was making cash from a couple of decent first run Sci Fi shows,They were dumping all their time and money into funding the absolute most amazingly bad screenplays I've ever even heard of.

I mean... "Mansquito"!

WTF?

And that bastardization of Earthsea?

My 9th grade creative writing class wrote better screenplays than that... and I went to public school in a backwoods part South Carolina!

So yeah, we noticed the distance between your network and Sci Fi... really... we did.

Mr Brooks also had this to say:

"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular"

You know... I get the distinct impression that the problem with the Sci Fi channel isn't that the market doesn't like Sci Fi shows, the problem is that the management at the Sci Fi channel themselves don't like Sci Fi shows.

I think one of the commenters from the TVWeek article (posted by "tijir") said it best:

Kind of funny, some of the biggest shows on television would be a perfect fit on Sci Fi. I'm talking about Heroes, Terminator Sara Conner Chronicals, Chuck, Fringe, and Smallville. Showing that "general" audiences like fantasy/sci fi programming and the one channel that could give it to them big time is "re-branding" itself as siffy.

So Sci Fi managment... go ahead and change the name. It isn't as if the Sci Fi channel has actually been helping put decent content on the air anyway. The few successful shows you've had would have been just as well off, if not better off, on other networks anyway.

I do not expect your network to survive the name change, but after over a decade of watching you guys shit all over the genre you were named after I don't think I care if you make it or not anyway.

I'm just annoyed that someone actually got paid real money to mismanage an entire network for so long.

Should I hate Orson Scott Card?

Card opposes gay marriage... should I avoid reading his brilliant fiction books? WTF!?!?

In a recent entry over at "geekdad", one of wired's so-called blogs, Matt Blum wrote a piece contrasting his love of the book Ender's Game with his hatred for the book's author, Orson Scott Card. The source of the problem seems to be that Card has, especially in more recent years, been a very vocal opponent of gay marriage. We can find Orson's viewpoint very clearly stated in a piece that was published on the Mormon Times web site.

On one side of the argument we have a brilliant writer that makes a convincing and logical argument and on the other we have a hyper-reactionary hate monger that simply cannot deal with opinions that differ from his own.

Sadly, in this case the hate monger is Matt Blum.

For the most part, Matt is struggling with a problem that faces a lot of people in a celebrity obsessed internet culture. Any person of any minor fame will have their entire personal life splattered all over the place... and what we often find is that the people behind great works are not always good people. The knowledge sometimes impacts our ability to appreciate the work itself.

But in this case, what I find truly annoying is how Matt and many similar people treat Orson Scott Card, especially over his opposition to gay marriage.

Matt seems to have bought into the left-wing activist's propaganda machine which preaches that it is wrong to even question the whole "gay rights" thing, especially in regards to gay marriage. He has other views that I can pick on in this piece too.

...about anti-semitism!

Contrary to the opinions of the political correctness crowd, including Matt, many people have legitimate complaints about Jews, Jewish culture, the Nation of Israel, etc.

Just because the Jewish people were treated badly in Germany half a century ago doesn't give them a free ride to be forgiven for being ass-hats today. There is a lot to dislike and disapprove of in Jewish politics and culture, just as there is in any culture.

Pointing out those flaws doesn't make you an evil bastard. But here in the home of free speech Jews appear to have earned a permanent “get out of jail free” card.

Anyone that says anything even mildly disapproving about anything that can be related to the Jewish is instantly flagged an anti-Semite... which is apparently something REALLY bad despite the fact that no one seems to actually know what exactly a semite might be... but everyone here sure does knows that you are a truly evil fucker if you aren't down with the semites!

He is quick to label anyone that disagrees with anything Jewish in nature as an anti-Semite...  with the expected references to Nazi Germany of course.

By the end of his post, matt resorted to just picking on Sean Connery for a statement that he made in 1987 (where he offered the opinion that there were some cases where it was OK to slap a woman with limited force)... a viewpoint I can disagree with in general, but that did made sense in the original context of Sean's interview... it certainly wasn't as offensive as it was made out to be in the resulting media spin.

There are at least a few legitimate arguments to be made opposing gay marriage and Orson Scott Card successfully makes one of those. Card even managed to makes his point without having to bring in the religious angle, which is admirable considering his audience was Mormon and it would have been much simpler for him to just play the God angle.

But Card didn't do that, and that is part of the reason why Card is such a fantastic writer. Instead he breaks into history, politics, law, and science to make a rational argument in support of his opinion (something you don't often see from the religious right these days).

I'm sure the underlying reason that Card is so passionate about this topic is motivated by his own religious views, but unlike most religiously motivated bull-shit out there, Card's argument holds some water when it is held up to non-religious analysis.

I disagree with Card's overall viewpoint of course. I personally don't see the merit in ANY form of state recognition of marriage, gay or straight. Card does talk intelligently about why there is a legal idea of marriage though:

 "The laws concerning marriage did not create marriage, they merely attempted to solve problems in such areas as inheritance, property, paternity, divorce, adoption and so on."

Card is a smart guy, but in my opinion he missed a vital point... the areas of "inheritance, property, paternity, divorce, adoption and so on" do not need to be solved via legal recognition of marriage. It could just as easily be solved via standard contract and tort law.

Ironically there is already precedent for this in the legal system. Prenuptial agreements are an example of how contract law is used to extend and/or modify the standard rules of legal marriage. Divorce agreements are another example.

As it stands though, the existing legal institute of marriage is extremely discriminatory and unjust towards a sizeable group of citizens. It is as repressive to these people as slavery was towards black Americans. I would argue that legal marriage law is also highly discriminatory towards heterosexual people that just aren't married or don't want to be. Certainly the tax system punishes single members of our society very harshly indeed.

But I still respect Card's argument. It is well thought out, logical, and well presented. Which brings us back to Matt's problem... what do you do when a creator of great work holds personal opinions that you strongly disagree with?

Well, first, it probably doesn't help to come off as a total ass-hole like Matt did. I mean, by the end of his post he devolved into plain and simple name-calling.

How very mature Mr. geekdad, what a role model for your kids!

The geekdad "blog" over at wired is generally aimed at parents. In my opinion most of the writers over there seem to have some really silly ideas on parenting. These are the kind of parents that are shoved so far up their kid's ass that their kids will turn out to be worthless adults that just live in their geekdad's basement until they're 40... but since the blog does aim at parents, it brings up the question:

Should let you kids read a work if the person that created it also teaches ideas you don't agree with, or even find outright hostile, immoral, etc?

Well... you can be a narrow minded ass-hole and just steer your kids clear of such works... protecting them and making sure they grow up to believe only what you want them to. Or you might choose to teach them how to fucking think for themselves so they can make up their own minds when it comes to contentious political issues...

So I recommend you burn all of Card's books and add his name to your fucking net-nanny firewall or whatever...

I'm not advertising for you...

The South Carolina DVM expects to use my car's license plate to advertise for the state... we'll see about that!

Every few years the state of South Carolina sends me a new license plate. For some reason, they just can't pick a color and design and stick with it. But this time... they have really managed to pissed me off.

Here is the new license plate that arrived in the mail yesterday.

First of all, I don't give a rat's ass about the plate being pretty. I was fine with the plain white & blue plates with the high-visibility red font they used to use in the 80's. The purpose of the plate is to give police a way to identify the car. That's all it has to do. But if they want to spend my tax dollars making it all pretty then that's OK with me.

What gripes my ass though is that "TRAVEL2SC.COM" written at the bottom of the plate.  Never mind that it's in all upper-case... it's the idea of having it there at all that pisses me off.

I don't mind branding to some extent. If you make some physical thing that I buy and you want to have your name on it then that's fine as long as your branding isn't over-the-top annoying and doesn't negatively impact the usefulness of the thing you brand. Take my car for example... it has the Toyota logo on front and back, and on back the word "Toyota" and the model of the car. That's fine with me. If someone looking at my car likes it, they might find it useful to know what kind of car it is so they can see about getting one themselves. I always like to be able to look at other people's car and know what kind it is too.

Same with most things and branding... as long as you keep it kinda subtle, tactful, and out of the way.

Advertising is a different matter though. I fucking refuse to advertise for you, especially not for free.

Take my car as an example again. I went to several car lots before I bought my car. One of them had a car that I liked, but it had a big-ass steel logo for the car dealer bolted onto the back. The dealer logo was actually larger than all the Toyota logos combined. I asked them if they could order me the car without the logo or remove the logo and "repair" the hole that the bolts would have left.

They looked at me funny and said they couldn't do that. So I told him that the only way I'd buy his car is if he gave me $100/month each month I owned it or knocked off $7200 off the price ($100/month times the 6 years I'd financed the car for). He laughed thinking I was joking... so I got up and walked out of the sales office.

I ended up buying the same car from a dealership that had a simple "sticker" logo that I could remove. I made sure they knew that the only reason I bought their car instead of the other guy was because I could remove the logo.

Its just a thing with me. I will allow you to brand my stuff if you can do it tactfully... but I'm not running around throwing someone else's name in everyone's face. That's why I don't buy a lot of name-brand clothing lines. If your logo is the prominent feature of the shirt, then fuck-off! You aren't charging me $20 to $40 for a shirt AND getting me to do your advertising for you.

But in this case with the license plates, it is even more offensive to me. The state requires that I have a license plate, and I have no alternative vendor I can go to get a plate from. I could buy a "custom" license plate from the state that doesn't have advertising on it... but why should I have to pay $50 more for the "privledge" of dodging having to do the governments dirty advertising.

In the end... duct tape came to the rescue:

I'm serious... I will not advertise for you. I don't give a damn if you are the government or my mom. If you want me to advertise for you.... pay me!

C Snobs

Recently, I ran across one of the many little spats that develop between bloggers. This time it was between Alastair Rankine of girtby.net and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror.

It's the typical spat.

One blogger decides that another blogger is no longer writing what they want to read. Rather than just unsubscribe, they write a big public post about why they have decided to unsubscribe and why the other blogger sucks.

And, as is typical of these kinds of spats, the blog post starts by talking about how they don't normally slam on people they unsubscribe from... then they slam on them anyway.

Sigh....

Anyway... you can read the spat at the two links below if you want... but the details aren't that important to what I have to say.

Rankine's post:

Atwood's reply:

What really got my attention in reading Rankine's part of this train-wreck (this is the nerd version of Jerry Springer right here) was that Rankine jumped Atwood's shit for not knowing C. In fact, he went as far as to say that by not knowing C, Atwood was not credible as a programmer.

Every time I see this opinion put forth by otherwise smart programmers it makes me foam at the mouth in rage and frustration.

This isn't a minority opinion in my experience.

I see this "must know C" prejudice all the time. I've even been passed over after a job interview had revealed my lack of a C background. There isn't any telling how many interviews I didn't even get to attend because my resume lacked C/C++ (even though I've never applied for a C/C++ dev position).

I also see this idea put forth by people that I otherwise respect... even Joel Spolsky, a hero of mine, makes a big deal out of knowing C. In his legendary advise to college students article  #2 on his list is "Learn C before graduating".

He even gives an amazing (in terms of stupidity if you ask me) example:

"...if you can't explain why while (*s++ = *t++); copies a string, or if that isn't the most natural thing in the world to you, well, you're programming based on superstition, as far as I'm concerned"

So how does knowing this help me write better C#? This doesn't directly apply in C#. Wouldn't it be better if I knew how C# does string stuff, which mechanisms are more efficient in specific cases, and why?

I could take Joel's advice and go off wasting my time learning C. Then, like him, I'd be able to translate my C# concepts into C in order to understand how it all works under the hood... or I can just learn how C# works and skip the C translation step. Both are valid approaches, but I think it's unfair and narrow minded to discount my ability to understand what goes on under the hood just because I lack a formal C background.

I'm not saying that knowing C would hurt me. In fact, I've often wished I had the patience to go back and learn C. But honestly, writing in C makes me want to die. How did any of those old C guys actually get anything done?

Besides, if everyone based their understanding of higher level languages on C then where is the diversity? In some ways, my understanding of some areas of C# is actually better than that of people with C backgrounds precisely because I DON'T have a C background.

While Joel has good reasons for preferring C experience in his employees due to the kind of development his company does, that doesn't map well to other areas of the programming field.

I do asp.net web applications. When I'm hiring, I'd MUCH rather you have a solid understanding of how IIS works internally. I don't care if you can write a fancy-pants sorting algorithm in C. I trust that the .NET framework guys will work out most of that anyway. As long as you understand the internals of C# or VB and the .NET framework you'll do fine in my field without knowing any straight C at all.

When someone like Rankine makes such a prejudicial assumption about an otherwise competent person based just their lacking a C background... well... it strikes me about the same as the racial prejudices I've had to hear all my life.

See, I live in the Deep South of the USA where all Mexicans are illegal, all black men have 15 kids by 5 different women, and all Arabs are terrorists. Here most narrow minded ass-holes blame their minimum wage income on the irrefutable fact that non-English speaking illegal Mexicans have stolen all the jobs. While everyone here complain that Mexicans should be wasting their time learning English instead working, the Mexicans are working their asses off, getting shit done, and getting paid.

I guess it's fair that all you C snobs can watch those ignorant non-C speaking savages steal all your jobs too.

while (*bigot++ = *asshole++);//see, natural isn't it?

Experts Exchange - please go fuck-off and die already!

As a programmer, my number one tool for getting out of a tough bind is a quick google search.

Developers are chatty, and we have about a million different forums, blogs, wikis, example sites, source projects, etc. When I'm having a problem with my code, chances are that there have been many other programmers that have already found a solution, and some of them probably posted answers online somewhere.

But, in any given search, you are bound to get at least a few links to this place called "Experts Exchange".

Note: I'm not linking to Experts Exchange... this is deliberate...

Nothing about the text of the google result will stand out as being an Experts Exchange related site... it'll just have a reasonable title and an excerpt that suggests it as a good place to look.

So I click the link.

And then I see the Experts Exchange page.

...  and then I just want to fucking KILL the bastards that run this fucking sham of a site!!!

The idea of Experts Exchange itself isn't so bad. A subscription based community of IT professionals working together to create a database of answers to IT related issues.

No problem in theory...

In practice though, they gimmick the big search engines like Google into returning their pages knowing that those answers are NOT going to be on the page when the user follows the link. This technique is called 'cloaking', and I am annoyed that Google doesn't remove experts exchange from their indexes for such a blatantly deceptive tactic.

The trick is against Google's own guidelines even.

My second problem is that the quality of the actual answers on experts exchange is retardedly bad. Certainly not worth paying a monthly subscription fee.

But what annoys me most is just how much of my time I've wasted having to back-track after falling for yet another worthless experts exchange link. It happens at least two or three times a day... sometimes more.

And it gets old... really old...

If I ever do finally go postal, then I'll be stopping by the offices of Experts Exchange pretty early in the tour...

FDA - Information Terrorism for Epileptics

Caress (who posted about this too) and I came across this report on CNN yesterday. Since then I've seen it reported at least a dozen other places on TV and around the net.

The FDA has issued an advisory designed to needlessly scare the shit out of epileptics and healthcare professionals treating epileptics.

According to the FDA advisory, epileptic treatment drugs cause people to commit suicide!

Check this shit out:

Data from 199 placebo-controlled clinical studies covering eleven different antiepileptic drugs were reviewed and analyzed for reports of suicidal behavior (completed suicides, suicide attempts and preparatory acts) and suicidal ideation...

The analysis included a total of 43,892 patients ages five and older (27,863 in drug treatment groups and 16,029 in placebo groups).

In the FDA’s analysis, patients receiving antiepileptic drugs had approximately twice the risk of suicidal behavior or ideation (0.43%) compared to patients receiving placebo (0.22%)....

Four of the patients who were taking one of the antiepileptic drugs committed suicide, whereas none of the patients in the placebo group did.

That's right... 0.2% more suicidal behaviors were reported among people taking a brain chemical altering drug to treat a debilitating brain disorder.

Holy shit!

Warn everyone about the pending health apocalypse before its too late!

Epileptics must stop taking their drugs immediately or they might die!!!

I know several epileptics, including my own sister, and one thing I can say for certain is that having epilepsy sucks ass!

In ANY study of epilepsy, it shouldn't surprise anyone to find suicidal behavior to be a real problem.

What surprises me about this particular study is the unbelievably low number of "reported suicidal behavior" incidents overall.  Oddly enough, the number of reported suicidal behaviors in the FDA's study is lower than the National Institute of Mental Health's reported rate of suicidal behaviors in the general population.

That should be a big clue as to just how unreliable the FDA study's conclusion is!

Even with so many subjects being analyzed, a number like 0.2% is beyond ridiculously small...it is irrelevant.

Come-the-fuck-on!

0.2% ?

WTF!?!?

It isn't as if healthcare professionals don't already KNOW that suicidal behavior is something to watch for in epileptics... telling them that treating epileptics with drugs makes them "twice as likely" to commit suicide is just plain irresponsible.

But what pisses me off more than the FDA wasting my tax dollars pointlessly making a big deal out of nothing, is that the major news outlets are also picking it up and presenting it as news.

The news outlets certainly haven't bothered to use common sense in reading the report. Nope... they just see the "twice as likely" part and report that part!

The reason this is such a problem in my opinion is that  one of the worst problems related to epilepsy is that so many epileptics don't take their medication.

Ask any police officer or EMS worker how they feel about epileptics!

They fucking HATE epileptics.

That's because so many of them don't take their meds and end up killing or injuring themselves or someone else. Often untreated epileptics are scraped off the road after a car wrecks... and often others get hurt in the process too.

This really is a BIG problem that doesn't get near enough attention... instead everyone is too busy talking about titty-cancer and buying autism awareness ribbons.

There are lots of reasons epileptics stop taking their drugs, and most of them I can't blame them for. I am pretty sure that if I were epileptic I'd probably consider going off my treatment too.

The medications have side effects that are often worse than the epilepsy itself. Some turn you into a zombie, some make you groggy, some make it hard to concentrate, and some fuck your memory up worse than Alzheimer's.

The medications are also very expensive and many epileptics just can't afford them, especially the better drugs that have fewer side-effects. This problem is made worse due to the limited employment options for epileptics and their resulting lower incomes. And that doesn't get into the fact that many insurances don't cover the drugs for pre-existing conditions like this one.

Some just refuse their meds because they don't want to admit they have epilepsy because it estranges them from friends and family. I've known at least a couple of closet epileptics that refused to even get medical tests because they knew they'd lose their drivers license. I even knew one that drove race-cars and if they got diagnosed they'd get booted out of the race circuit... better to just gamble that you wont have a major seizure when anyone is looking.

But now, thanks to the FDA's crack research team, epileptics have one more reason to refuse their drugs... the false assertion that the drugs will make them kill themselves.

Fucking good job FDA!

Why is my phone bill so high?

When you think about the U.S. phone system, you have to be amazed! Copper and fiber wires running all over the country connecting nearly every home and business, plus all the equipment in between that makes the magic happen. Its massive and staggering in both scale and complexity.

All that infrastructure cost a fortune to create, but it must also be enormously expensive to maintain and keep up with too.

So when you think that a phone line only cost between $20 and $30 a month, it really is a pretty sweet price tag.

In contrast, cellular networks must be dirt-ass cheap to both create and operate.

Sure, you have to have lots of towers and connect them all via fiber or copper wire... but that is nothing compared to the sheer scale and fagility of the old system of wires.

Upgrading and maintaining the cell networks has to be far easier than sending technicians out to each individual home every time something needs connecting, breaks, or when construction crews dig up some back-woods line somewhere.

And never forget that once upon a time the phone companies were only able to sell one phone line per household. But cell networks can sell one phone line for each member of each household. So the entire size of their market is much larger than the size of the old phone market.

So why then does my cell plan cost $80 per line?

Sure I have data services, but I had that on my land-line once for only $10 extra and it worked a hell of a lot faster than my cell phone's connection.

My cell phone is portable and more convenient than my land line, but the wireless aspect is what should be saving my phone company an embarassingly large amount of money.

I can call the entire U.S. on my cell phone without paying any extra, but that doesn't cost the carrier significantly more than a local call does either.

So what am I actually getting for all that extra money? The cell phone doesn't do anything I couldn't do with my land line, and much of it the land line did better.

I guess the only reason my cell phone bill is $80 is because customers are willing to pay that much.

Its too bad the artificial barriers to entry are so high in the cell business. If entry wasn't controlled by so much regulation and real competition was allowed into the cell market I wonder how much my phone bill would be now?

Train or Checkpoint?

Caress made the ultimate statement while playing The Darkness for XBOX 360 the other day.

"They really should put a checkpoint at the end of the tunnel!"
 
-- Caress Redd

I agree...  they really should...

Akamai MSDN Download Manager sucks!

 Richard's Braindump: Problems with the new MSDN Download Manager

I agree with Richard, the new MSDN download manager is worse than horrid. I've ran into every one of the problems reported but these in particular really chap my ass:

• Close IE and the download manager closes. It asks you if you really want to close it, but it doesn't matter what you say... it will close anyway. When you re-open it, your download will be corrupt and you'll have to start over again from the beginning.
    
• It'll just randomly tell you it can't download because of persistent network problems... and you can't resume because your file is corrupt.
   
• If you have pop-up blocking on in IE 7 (which is the default) you might never get the download manager installed. It pops up a new browser window, which IE blocks, then the main page refreshes so fast you never see the notification that there was a blocked pop-up.

I have additional complaints too.

• Adding additional files to the download manager sometimes (and by "sometimes" I mean "nearly always") closes the download manager... which as we discussed already, corrupts any files it was already downloading.
   
• Manually pausing a download also usually corrupts it.
    
• When it asks if you want to start the download all over again, and you say yes, it usually can't... so you have to remove the file from the manager, go back to the MSDN page then re-click the link.... which will close your download manger and corrupt the rest of your files!

And even if they fix these major technical problems, there are other issues I have with it:

• Files are either downloading, or paused. There isn't a way to put them in any particular order in the queue and download them sequentially... so if you want to pull in 5 files, but you want 1 file immediately, then the rest to finish up whenever you have to pause all the downloads except the one, wait on it to finish, then manually resume the others.
   
• There doesn't appear to be any mechanisms in place to allow you to throttle how much bandwidth it uses.
   
• It allocates the disk space before the download starts. I HATE that. If you only have 1gig downloaded so far, it should not be taking up 4gig on my hard drive. When I'm low on disk space I can't start the download and have it coming down while I go and clean up some drive space. I have to clean up the space before I can start downloading. Minor issue, but still annoying.

Seriously, this thing is a total piece of shit... Why can't you just give me a damned link?

I have a download manager than works really good. I can control what files come down, in what order, how much bandwidth to use, and how many files to work on at a time (I use ReGet for those of you that may be curious).

Come on, just give me a regular old hyperlink or put it up on an FTP or something.

Considering that an MSDN Premium Team Suite subscription costs $10,000 up-front and around $3500/year for renewal fees,  it isn't too much to ask for is it?

Microsoft Money... still sucking...

The world of personal finance software is one of my least favorite. Anyone developing in this market has a tough job. People are idiots, and personal finance itself is especially designed to cleverly imitate real accounting yet completely fail to make any logical sense at all.

So I am never surprised at the crazy junk I see in personal finance software. The system it targets is moronic in the extreme, and the target user is assumed to equal that standard. 

But I'm a special idiot... one that uses Microsoft Money. I have tried Quicken, but I find their junk just a tad more annoying than MS Money but for different reasons. I also detest Qicken's license terms and marketing strategies. In contrast, Microsoft's lack of strategy in the personal finance market is quite refreshing. So I keep using MS Money even though I hate it.

The most annoying thing about MS Money is that they somehow makes it mandatory to upgrade to the new version every year. Somehow the old version just ends up "breaking" over time until you eventually get pissed enough to upgrade. I have no idea how they manage this, but eventually my old copy just sorta stops working right. Last time it was the fact that it wouldn't work after a patch for IE came out (and no fix available for the old version naturally). This time it just stopped being able to talk to my bank one day.

Every time I upgrade, I end up being amazed at how little was actually improved, or even changed from the previous version and equally amazed at just how many annoying "features" are still exactly as annoying as before. There always seem to be a couple of things I really like that manage to disappear from each version, and one or two new features show up that I don't care about at all. So each time I curse myself for forking over yet another $50 instead of just taking the time to put together my own spreadsheet in Excel... but I still I upgrade anyway.

Among my biggest complaints is the default "basic" checking account register. It completely lacks seriously important features, features I'd consider quite "basic"...  like the fact that it is missing the entire right-click menu and has no obvious alternatives for useful things like creating a reoccurring bill from an entry in the register, or marking transaction as reconciled, etc. It is also not obvious that you are even in a "basic" mode, nor that there an "advanced" mode that you could be using instead. Sure, there is a "Basic Register" icon, complete with text label at the top of the page, but it blends in so well that I never even noticed it until someone pointed it out to me. The "basic" mode just make the application feel like a piece of crap that doesn't do much of anything.

Fortunately, I do know about advanced mode, despite not having noticed the icon. I know this because I had used older versions where the advanced features were enabled by default. When I first upgraded to a version with the "basic" register and saw that those features had gone missing, I located how to enable them again via the online help. But the "advanced" register isn't exactly "advanced".  It just adds a few minor details to the list of transactions, turns on the right-click menu, and that's about it. But getting advanced mode enabled sure does requires an hell of an advanced level of skill. That icon at the top of the page isn't even clickable to toggle the mode! Instead, enabling the advanced register remains something that I have to look up in the online "help" feature each time because it is cleverly hidden deep within the not-so-fun "options" section of the program. Fortunately the online "help" is one of the few really well done parts of the application, and provides clear instructions for how to enable the missing functionality.

Then MS Money has the "basic" bills tracking system as the default too. In a misguided fit of "simplification", the developers of the default bills tracker helpfully allow you to choose to pay a bill using automatic payment (a.k.a. Bill Pay), electronic payment (e-pay), or by writing a check... But they thought that a "direct draft" bill was just too fucking complicated for the "basic" user, so that option isn't available unless you turn on the advanced bill tracking system. It's almost like they missed the fact that nearly every utility company on the planet pushes direct draft payment options like it was high-grade cocaine... Even people like me that prefer a push payment system over a pull payment system often end up with one or two drafts each month. In my case, some of my utilities actually give a discount if you agree to let them draft your payment. But, according to the crack MS Money development team I now know that only "advanced" users would need direct draft as a bill payment option. Thanks guys.

Then you have odd shit. Like the fact that, even in basic mode, MS Money encourages you to track your gross pay, taxes, withholdings, etc. from your paycheck. Most average joe home-users are obviously people that need to track the exact amount of their 401K deductions, but they would never need anything as advanced as fucking direct draft!

Anyway..

I find this "basic" vs. "advanced" thing to be a very obvious sign of poor UI design. After-all, it isn't as if there are THAT many "advanced" things you can do. Seems to be there should be just one account register, and just one bill tracking system. Then, by using good UI design, the software can helpfully arrange commands in a way that isn't confusing. The saddest thing is, the "advanced" register and bill tracking systems are actually quite easy to use once you figure out how to enable them. But most average joe home-users will never even learn that there is an advanced mode at all, much less get it turned on. Instead, most people would just think MS Money sucks and would not bother to use it... and, after asking around, this seems to be exactly what most people really do think.

Weighted Obsolescence: Phone book season

Few things annoy me quite like having phone books delivered to my house. There was a time when the phone book was pretty important --a time when taking a decent sized ad out in the yellow pages was the difference between a successful small business and a fire-sale. But between the internet and 411, phone books are obsolete now.

There are still a small number of people, mostly older ones, that consider this whole internet thing to be a fad. They would still prefer a printed phone book... old habits. But for most people the phone book is just a huge waste of paper. And they must be terribly expensive. Someone has to spend large amounts of time composing the contents, doing the layouts, and overseeing a massive printing and distributing operation. The books have to be printed, and that's a LOT of printing. Then they have to be physically delivered, which must represent a truly staggering cost since each one is bulky, heavy, and has to be shipped individually to a different location. Massive costs, and massive waste. Wouldn't it be better to just charge a nominal fee to people that WANT a printed phone book, and just not bother the rest of us?

Despite the irrelevance of phone books though, there is an active war in the business between several different companies. Each of them has, for reasons that still elude me, decided that the phone company isn't qualified to maintain and distribute the directory of phone numbers. Instead, these motards decided that they could do a better job and that it is their moral imperative to bring competition to the phone book market!

So every year, I get two or three huge bricks of useless paper delivered to my door. Well, more precisely, delivered to some random part of my yard that I probably won't go into for at least four or five months after the phone book has been delivered to it... not actually delivered to the door you know. For reasons even more screwed up than the basic business plan, all of these companies decided that they had to deliver their brand of awesomeness at the same time of year.

So last week I got three massive, but irrelevant phone books littering my yard. Of course, by the time I noticed two of them, they had been sitting there collecting water and bugs for a few days making them even more massive. The water and bugs don't make the book any more useless though, that would be an impossibility given their very nature.

Its bad enough that I have to dispose of these relics of hate, but what REALLY chaps my ass is this... I don't have a phone line. In fact, there is not and NEVER has been a phone line at my address. So WHY do I get three damned phone directories that I wouldn't need even if I did have a phone?

You guys seriously need to talk to Maxxum. At least they put half-naked girls on the cover of the unsolicited, irrelevant crap they drop off at my house.

Stupid Crusade - Block Firefox to protect your revenue!

Seems someone out there really thinks that a browser that blocks ads is theft. So they've outright blocked all Mozilla Firefox browsers and are advocating others do the same.

Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.

Their message gets richer too... so check out the entire thing:

http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/

Never mind that ad-blocking is available for just about any browser, and most Mozilla users are savvy enough to work around being blocked... what boggles my mind is how these people think that blocking an entire browser will increase their ad revenue?

Of course, it seems clear that message is intended to drag the users into the politics of the issue, and is not an honest attempt to increase ad revenue. Sadly for them though, most users that see this message are going to be solidly on the other side of the argument... and pissed for being blocked!

Way to gain sympathy there guys!

Local Coffee Shops Suck - Go Starbucks!

I have many friends and acquaintances that "hate Starbucks". Hating Starbucks might even be more popular than hating Paris Hilton.

They all have their pet complains, usually about some isolated unfair trade practices or injustice carried out by some mid-level area manager or something. The argument always trends to wrap up with how local coffee shops suffer when Starbucks comes to town (the Wal-Mart argument).

But the sad fact of it is that any company that size will have ass-hats that occasionally do bad things. I try not to hold that against a company unless that kind of behavior becomes the executive policy of the company as a whole (which is why I don't hate Wal-Mart or Starbucks but do hate Disney and Apple).

Anyway...

Let me tell you why Starbucks kicks ass... aside from the fact that they actually serve a decent enough cup of coffee.

The reason Starbucks kicks ass is because they understand this that you can't stir a 20oz cup of hot liquid with a fucking 4 inch tall plastic stick!

Starbucks has big sticks that fit down into the cup all the way to the bottom without burning your fingers! Out of dozens of local shops I've been to in dozens of towns, maybe one or two have had sticks that are appropriate for their larger size cups.

You'd think that if your fucking business IS coffee, then you'd take the time to notice that 4 inches of stick does NOT-the-fuck fit into 10 inches of cup!

How god-damned hard is it to understand ?!?!

See, Starbucks pays attention to those little details.

They provide this level of service in EVERY store.

So... I don't have to wonder if I'll have a way to stir my shit when I get to Starbucks because ALL of their shops have good sticks.

I don't have to wonder if I'll be stuck trying to open half a dozen tiny little packets of sugar (which is always messy) because Starbucks has both packets AND a free-pour canister of sugar on the counter (I know... almost unbelievable!)

That is why Starbucks is killing your local coffee shop.  

Imaginary Usefulness

Few subjects frustrate me faster than mathematics. Math is an essential skill and a useful tool. But our school systems, secondary and primary both, totally fail to teach common sense along with it.

I’m constantly amazed at how many smart people are made stupid by an extensive education in Mathematics. Mostly this is because math is taught more as theory than applied science... especially in primary education. Through high-school most people learn a crap-ton of math theory and mechanics.  But there just aren’t many classes taught that apply math in a useful way. 

This leads to the question eventually asked in every math class, “when will I ever need to use this in the real world”. For higher math, anything above basic Algebra, the answer for most people is “probably never”.

That aside, the mechanics and theory still need to be taught so as to give students the possibility of going into a career where they could actually use higher math. A basic familiarity with more advanced math is useful to a sorta degree, but much more useful would be classes on the applied uses of math... classes that show how and when math is useful.  But what I’d like to see taught most is common sense.

For example, in my 10^th grade Algebra II class we spent about three straight weeks going over imaginary numbers. Ok, let me get this straight... due to the practical limitations of the universe this math cannot be done. But if you ignore that little rule, you can still use the mechanics of our math system and generate numbers that have no meaning... they are imaginary.

Umm... excuse me, but shouldn’t that be the fucking end of the lesson?!?!?  But NOOOOoooo!  After that we had to spend weeks working math problems that result in imaginary numbers. Then we had tests on how accurately we could solve these problems.

So, we are going to be tested on our ability to come up with accurate answers to a math problem where both the question and the answer have absolutely no meaning at all?

Why can’t I just answer “turd-jam” for all the questions and still get credit? After all, “turd-jam” has just as much meaning in context with the questions as the actual numerical “answer” would... and in 10^th grade it would have at least been funny, which is more useful than any other answer I might have derived. This is a classic example of the failure to apply common sense in math. As far as I can tell, the first major failure to teach common sense in math starts when they teach you the concept of negative numbers.  Numbers measure quantity. That’s fucking it... Quantity. The real usefulness of any math is in the question “quantity of what?” 

The only non-intuitive thing about quantity is the concept of zero, but this is fairly easy to explain to kids. Once zero is understood is becomes common sense. Zero also becomes the only non-positive number that remains meaningful. 

But negative numbers are NOT real. They cannot, and do not actually exist. If you solve a math problem, and the result is a negative number then all you have learned is that problem is flawed, you have incomplete information, and/or the number you produced is not a valid measure of anything that exists in the same context as the original question. Since the basis of the question was wrong, any number you derive no longer has any meaning and you should stop right there. If you continue with negative numbers then you are either just making shit up, or you are measuring something in a different context than the context assumed in the original question.... and you had better have a damned good idea what the new context of your answer is, or you are screwed! 

But they never teach that concept in school.

Let us use a practical example.

You own an appliance company. You have 1refrigerator in stock. A customer comes in and buys 4 refrigerators. How many refrigerators do you have left in stock?

If you answered negative three (-3), then just kill yourself now.

In-stock means “physically sitting in your warehouse”. If you walk back to the warehouse, I can only guarantee one thing... you, the fuck, will not see negative three refrigerators sitting back there.  The only meaningful answer to this question is “unknown”. How many refrigerators you have in stock after selling 4 of them depends on if you gave the customer the one fridge you had already, or if you are waiting to deliver all 4 fridges after your vendor deliveres them to you. The original problem contains insufficient information. When you walk back there, you will either see zero or one fridge in your warehouse... So when you see -3 in your answer, what it really means is that you are measuring the wrong thing. You don’t have -3 of anything. You may have +3 of something else, like refrigerators you need to order from a vendor, but that number is valid only in a different context, and only when the new context makes that number a positive number or zero. 

Which brings us back to imaginary numbers. How surprising is it that it is impossible to perform some mathematical operations when you are using numbers that simply mean you are working with values from a different context than the one your math problem represents? In the case of imaginary numbers you are working with numbers from a context that cannot exist at all, so you should just give the fuck up right there, rethink your math problem so that it addresses a real question in a meaningful context.

I see this junk all the time in programming. I get requests like, “I need a report that shows the number of brain cells left in my head”.

Sorry... but that report results in negative numbers and therefore has no useful meaning.

Why not ask a different question like “how many brain cells will I need to have implanted before I regain the ability to chew gum and walk at the same time?”.   Any math should answer a question in such a way that the answer has some useful meaning. If you are coding with negative numbers then your code measures the wrong thing. Flip something around so you are measuring things that exist. Your code will be easier to understand and will produce results that have more meaning.

With math, please always use common sense. Mechanics are neat, but you have to understand the “why” of your math, not just the “how”. That is especially true when you are making up math that gives answers that other people have to interpret.

World of Warcraft Idea

Though I game far less than I once did, I do play World of Warcraft. Not so much because it is the best game evar or anything (it is pretty good though), but more because there aren't any better out there that don't require massive and continuous commitments for my time.

One thing I always wondered though is why more games didn't learn from the old Jumpgate MOG (I refuse to use the longer acronyms, so MOG is Massive Online Game... that's as  much hype as you'll get from me). Like most games, especially MOGs, Jumpgate started a web site long before the game released. But from the start one thing really stood out about their web site. The site was linked very deeply into the actual game (in beta at the time). You could look up who was online, where, what they were doing, see statistics, and even manage your in game character a little.

Where the fuck is that feature in every game released since then? Jumpgate is years and years old... I don't even know how old. And it had deep integration with their game database back then.

What I'd love to see is WoW implement a way to actually log into the web site and see your character info, spend your talent points, talk to in game players (at least ones in your guild), and most of all... monitor and participate in the auction house. Man I'd love to be able to watch the AH for those rare items from work without having to actually log into the game itself (which is a sure way for the boss to know you aren't working :P).

Anyway... I do hope future games take some Qs from Jumpgate. Make your web site PART of the game... not just a bullshit marketing ad.

I hate your wiki!

I fucking hate your wiki! I'm serious. It makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a cheese grater.

The basic idea of Wiki is that you can slap up a site devoted to some topic, and then anyone interested in the site can post content. Users are encouraged to edit other user's content to make corrections, expand on the subject, ask questions, or whatever. The result of a well implemented wiki should be a living library of constantly evolving data with a community of people working together to maintain and grow it.

Technologically, a wiki is just a simple content management and publication system. It combines etiquette guidelines with simple text formatting rules to make authoring content as simple as possible. The concept is based on the idea of implementing "the simplest thing that can still work”, a design principle from extreme programming. The etiquette rules are easy to follow for any reasonably mature person. And most wiki systems maintain a version history of each page so you can see what has been changed (and sometimes even who made the changes).

There are many different wiki sites on all kinds of topics (including a massive encyclopedia project), but in actual practice most wiki sites are devoted to software projects. Wiki is especially popular with open source projects where the wiki acts as open source documentation. It is expected that the people that write code for the app will add to the wiki too. Users of the software are also asked to contribute to the wiki if they have insights that other users may find useful. Since I'm a developer, this is where I personally run into wiki sites most frequently.

The geek in me loves the simple elegance of wiki, and I'm a big fan of collaborative works and online communities too. But I have come to loath all things Wiki. The phrase "have you checked the Wiki?" makes me want to vomit.

No, I didn't check the fucking wiki!

The reason I didn't check the wiki is because the wiki sucks! It is a giant garbage heap of trivial shit that anyone who can spell "wiki" already knows. The answer to my question, if one of your lazy wikizens even bothered to add it to the wiki, is buried so deep in the tangled mess of irrelevant and obvious junk that it'd take me longer to find my answer than it would take me to correct every spelling error on the entire site. If I do find something vaguely like what I am looking for, it'll be based on a version of the software so old that the information will not be useful to anyone still alive. Of course, there will be a note by one of the developers related to the new version, but the note will be in indecipherable indian-pseudo-engrish. In an act of desperation, I'll try to follow one of the links to an external site only to find that the site was recently bought out by pumpkinfuckers.com where someone wants to hook me up with some horny house-wives and sell me Russian vioxx.

It's about this time that I reach for the cheese grater.

There seems to be one overriding (unwritten) rule in wiki-land. Every useful piece of content in the wiki must have an evil twin page. It works like this. I'll be snooping the wiki for information about some aspect of some software. I'll come across a page with good info. This page will have nothing to do with my immediate question. Two days later, I'll have a new problem and need to find that good page again. I KNOW the answer is on the wiki because I've seen it before. But a search, no matter how carefully crafted, will only turn up the evil twin page. The evil twin will have a simple bullet list of summary trivia almost but not quite related to my investigation. It'll also have 900 links to other pages in the wiki and a few vioxx-sponcered external links. But NOT ONE of those links will lead to the good page I'm looking for. Every other page in the wiki that references the topic will link to the evil twin page... except ONE... and that one page with the magic link will be the page in the wiki most unrelated to my question.

It is also a rule that every wiki has to devote 1/2 or more of the links to other sites that explain what a wiki is about. These sites are written by permanent residents of wonderland, who write prettily yet manage to miserably fail to explain the concept of wiki. These "about wiki" pages will all make wiki sound like some sort of deity, and that any involvement in wiki is a religious cult affair (this may be true). No where in these pages will anything about wiki actually make coherent sense.

There are a few other unpublished wiki rules:

• The most well documented topics on the wiki must be devoted to explaining the most obvious and mundane aspect.
   
• Any commonly asked about topic must have no less than 10 different pages explaining the topic in great detail, but every single one of them must provide completely contradictory information or be so outdated as to simply be misleading or confusing. You should also throw in a couple of pages on the topic that provide no useful information at all. This can be achieved by visiting a Denny’s about 5am on Friday night and collecting napkins with drunken scribbles all over them. Just post the contents of the napkins and make sure as many pages as possible sneak in a link to the drunken-dumb-dumb page.
   
• You must link to the same page every time the name of the page is used, the author of the page is mentioned, or the content of that page is even hinted at. That way a page containing only five different links will appear to be an index for the library of congress. This will scare off most people before they truly comprehend just how damned useless your wiki is.
   
• You must avoid useful navigation at all costs.
   
• You must make sure that anyone moderating the site removes all content that is relevant within 1 day of posting. This is to make sure that any helpful contributor feels unwelcome and never posts again. Be sure you email the contributor and explain how their post was inappropriate (make up a reason). This is especially important for software wikis since it will spare the pride of your programmers by ensuring that they remain the most informative of your site's contributors even though they stopped updating the wiki 5 minutes after it was put online and have long since forgotten it was there.
   
• You must enlist the aid of at least one user who always posts something that starts like this: "I disagree with this because...” This user must update every page in the wiki, several times if necessary, so as to argue against any point previously made by another user. This user's posts must be condescending, irrelevant, and argue the most minute and irrelevant detail possible. This user should, if possible, be completely ignorant of the topic under discussion and constantly refer to open source, Linux, and must refer to Microsoft as M$.
     
• It is most useful to have a very pretty front page on the wiki with a nice clean and professional layout and design, but completely random layouts and color schemes on the rest of the pages in the site.
   
• You must make absolutely sure that you have a completely different menu and navigation system from any other wiki ever made. If your navigation fails to resemble any previously encountered anywhere on the internet then you get bonus points. Also, make sure the words and phrases used in any navigation system are the most obscure synonyms possible.
   
• Any search feature of the wiki must omit all of the useful content pages. It must also omit at least 30% of the evil twin pages just in case one of them accidentally links to a page someone would want to read. Don't worry about Google... Google's spiders will get so frustrated trying to navigate around your twisted redundant-link infested wiki that it'll give up long before it actually makes it to a page with useful content.

And that is why I hate, hate, HATE  your piece-of-shit wiki!

Where is my cheese grater?

Got 'em with a fax-back!

So, Caress tells me a story today about how her co-workers don't trust her. For background, she works at a security alarm company. For security reasons I can't name the company, lets just say it is a pretty big security franchise that rhymes with steamroll if you get really drunk.

Anyway, it fell on Caress's shoulders to order new electronic door passes for a customer. To do this she had to contact the parent office in a nearby city and have them make the passes and send them to her. She also asked for a list of the new pass codes (numbers) and who each code was to be assigned to (so she could make sure the right people get the right pass).

One employee at the parent office who we'll simply call Ms. Bee took Caress's issue, and then faxed her the requested list of codes.

Later another person at the parent office, who we'll call Jewel, came to the conclusion that Caress shouldn't be allowed access to those codes because she isn't certified in North Carolina (where the parent office is located).

Never mind that Caress is certified in South Carolina where her office and the customer are both located. These details are not directly relevant to the story.

So... anyway, Jewel calls Caress up and says something very much like this:

“You shouldn't have those codes, so I'm going to have to ask you to fax them back to me.”

<blink>

<blink>

Of course, Caress must not have been on her game today because her reply was:

“I'm going to make a copy first”

DRM doesn't whip the Llama's ass

I recently had occasion to deal with a DRM protected music file.

Now, I personally make it a policy not to purchase DRM protected content as a general rule. It isn't because I want to be able to copy a song and give it out to millions of people for free, nor because I object to big brother watching over my shoulder to see if I have “permission“ to do what I'm doing (though that does bother me quite a lot). It's mostly just because DRM protected files don't give me what I want.

When I buy music, I want to be able to play it on any device, anywhere, without having to jump through hoops and ask the person who supposedly "sold" it to me if I might copy it to a CD or to my portable music player, pretty please! I also don't want to have to bother with copying a single instance of a song out and back from one device to another each time that I want to listen to it on another player like some DRM schemes require. I want to have a copy on each player I might possibly use and be done with it. And I really don't like the way current DRM schemes allow some record company the right to change what I'm allowed to do anytime they wish, with my computer just blindly going along with whatever they decide.

So... Fuck DRM, that's what I say!

And come to think of it, this notion that I didn't really “buy“ the music, that I just paid for a “license“ to listen to it... that's total horse-shit too! I paid for a copy of the song. The way I see it, I own that copy. I don't so much care that the law doesn't see it that way, that's how I see it. It's my fucking CD, WMA, or MP3 that I paid for so if I want to copy it, translate it into another format, or jam it up my ass sideways; well, that's my business. Sure, it is illegal to give copies to all my friends, but if I choose to do that and get caught you can come and sue me for it. That's fine. But what I can't stomach is when the record companies set it up so that that *my* computer is supposed to stop me from copying music just because I *might* break a law. Or even worse, expect that my computer should inform the authorities if and when I do decide to break a law.

I'll tell you what! I'll license you this dollar in exchange for you licensing me that song. But under the terms of my license, you may not give or loan the dollar to anyone else, nor can you exchange the dollar for another currency. And while I'm at it, you have to ask me before you transfer that dollar from one bank account to another so that I can make sure you aren't doing something I don't like with my dollar, like gaining interest on it (the closest money equivalent to copying). And I also reserve the right to change what you are allowed to do with my dollar whenever I want to, or I can revoke your license to my dollar at any time for any reason at all, at which time you must destroy the dollar or return it to me. That sounds fair doesn't it?

But anyway, about the file... Kelly decided to buy from an online music store. She did this because the artist that wrote this one song doesn't write anything else anyone could possibly want to bother with (and I'm not too sure about this particular song either), so purchasing the entire CD was a bit expensive when you can just buy the one song online for under a dollar.

The file is, of course, a DRM protected WMA file.

Ah! A challenge!

I might not like the song that much, and I certainly didn't want a copy on my own system, but  I decided  that I was going to circumvent the copy protection in direct violation of the DMCA (sue me!) so that I can exercise Kelly's fair use rights (if they still exist) and copy the song as an MP3 file.

Of course I had no idea how to do this, me having no experience with DRM files and all, but I expected a quick google search would turn up a ripper in no time. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than I would have thought. There were a couple of commercial products that people on several forms claimed would do the trick. However, in most of these same forums, other people claimed that the product didn't work, or only worked with older DRM formats. I wasn't feeling like wasting $20 - $100 per application just to see if it might rip the $1 file I had. Most people in the forums suggested just playing the WMA file and using the sound card to re-record it in anther format. This sounded bothersome to me and I lacked the proper software for this option; besides many people indicated that this option often results in noticeable loss of quality.

Eventually though, I came across a particularly interesting forum where a user pointed out that the popular MP3 player Winamp could be used to convert the WMA into a standard WAV file (which of course then means that it would be trivial to convert the WAV to an MP3 later). Surprise! Winamp does have a way to do this. All you have to do is go into Winamp's options --> preferences, then go to the Output section and select the Nullsoft disk writer plug-in. After that, when you play the song in Winamp, instead of playing in the speakers, it plays the file into a WAV file that it jams a copy onto your hard drive. It is a slow process, and you can't hear the song while it is being played into a file... but it works great! I'm sure it wasn't the intended use of this feature to violate the DMCA by allowing Winamp to violate DRM (considering the feature is older than most DRM schemes anyway), but I'm glad it does so. Sure beats playing inspector gadget looking for a ripper.