Microsoft: scared or stupid?

With a reactionary title like that, you might imagine that I have a hard-hitting article full of insights and interviews and evidence.

Microsoft has released a beta version of their next OS, imaginatively dubbed "Windows 7." I actually don't mind the name that much; I think that XP and Vista are silly names for versioned software. "What version are your running?" "Butter Hammer Pecan Movement!" Naturally, everybody and their dog wants to see about the next version of Windows; chances are that they will have to, anyway, once Redmond stops supporting their OS of choice or their hardware fails or their machine gets too old and crusty.

For quite a few years now, people have used peer-to-peer programs, applications, and networks to transfer large amounts of data semi-anonymously. Remember Napster in the Bad Old Days? Nowadays, most people use BitTorrent to transfer large files, and rightfully so; the algorithm is pretty efficient and makes great use of limited network bandwidth by spreading around the traffic burden in a sensical manner. A lot of Linux distros have used BitTorrent, since they operate on a limited budget and bandwidth costs. I know that other projects use BT to spread around large media files.

Also there's something about piracy and porn. Whatever.

So either Microsoft doesn't want to use BitTorrent (if so, my guess is NIH syndrome- look at Silverlight, their response to Flash) or they don't know about it (seems amazingly unlikely, but possible; perhaps the decision-makers don't get good info). Folks are using BT to distribute the Windows 7 beta anyway. Be nice to legitimize it, right?

I'm at a loss.

Last post (of the year)

2008 was a rough year for famous people. We lost:

Majel Barrett
Algis Budrys
George Carlin
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
Michael Crichton
Alan Dargin
Deep Throat
Bo Diddley
Bobby Fischer
George Francis
Estelle Getty
Gary Gygax
Isaac Hayes
Charlton Heston
Sir Edmund Hillary
Albert Hoffman
Eartha Kitt
Don LaFontaine
Heath Ledger
Bernie Mac
Dick Martin
Paul Newman
Bettie Page
Randy Pausch
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

..and others known, unknown, and forgotten. I'm not going to link to a handy explanation of anyone; I'll let you spend the time to type their names into your search engine of choice.

I know that a friend's father-in-law just died; I found out that another friend is pregnant.

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
—Shakespeare, Sonnet 12

Less than six hours to go to the end of 2008. Happy New Year, and many more.

Human animals

I spent a few hours this evening tearing out awful clown wallpaper from the back bedroom with my lovely wife.

Who doesn't love matching wallplate hardware?














Please note these matching, handmade (!) curtains.

Several people have told me that "it never ends" once you buy a house. Some have a honey-do list, some have a Ma & Pa Kettle list. Why do people feel compelled to remodel, redesign, rework, redecorate, or replace things in their home? We do not adapt to our environment. Humans are the animal that adapts their environment to themselves.

This is why Cat and I used an engineered enzyme in the form of a blue goo to remove the vestiges of a stranger's taste in wall covering.

Election eve

""I am a committed radical. I am against nearly everything." — Adrian Mole

I just ran through the Political Compass, reminding myself that we do not have a simple one-dimensional political spectrum. Where do you fall?

Fundamentally, I'm more for personal freedom and civil liberties, smaller government, and more technology to improve our life. I had a nice long laundry list of wishes hopes and dreams, many of them irrational and unrealistic, but I then remembered that I'm a state employee and have restrictions.

I don't think anyone other than a nominee from the two parties really has a chance of attaining office. I don't really think that my vote matters, given the electoral college. I'm still going to vote tomorrow.

DPRK

Yes, I mean North Korea.

I came across this stealth documentary while checking up on a forthcoming expansion for a board game.

I am shamefully ignorant of history. The most exposure I have to the DPRK is via the National Security Decision-Making Game and the Team America: World Police movie.

Time to hit Wikipedia, I suppose.

George Carlin, dead today

It's a terrible thing, and an awful way to start the day.


I need something to make me laugh.

Four buck gas

The Fool brings up a good point. Four buck gas means we'll finally see the economic pressure to look at different kinds of energy, at mass transit and at other transportation options.

Maybe no flying car in the near future, but some of the car companies are stopping or slowing down their production of less efficient vehicles. I'll bet we see more hybrid vehicles, more thought to engineering for efficiency.

Solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power. We have energy falling out of the sky, we just need to pick it up and use it. You don't sound like a tree-hugging, flower-chewing, skyclad, hippy loon these days if you talk about "alternative energy."

We need to use our fossil fuels for plastics, not power.

Best Lifehack Ever

I just unsubscribed from Lifehacker- that's some 300+ unread posts I don't have to think I need to read to stay informed.

In a few weeks, I'll reexamine and see if I miss it.

What makes a good game?

A few days ago, I played Junta (BGG, BUY ME!) for the first time. I've had this game on my radar for years, one of the older classics from the 80s (really 1978) that I had heard about but had never personally played.

I didn't love the game. I'm not sure it got a fair shake at the table. Pushing around chits and looking at old badly worded perforated cards didn't help my enjoyment factor- let's just say I'm spoiled by games with real components. I know that I want to give it another go at some point, because I'm pretty convinced there's a good game in there somewhere. But all that is beside the point.

A bit more research on BGG turned up a great quote from Filip Wiltgren:

Up until, say, 2 years ago [2004] I thought that Junta was an OK game.

But playing Junta at a gaming club was a real eye opener for me. I went from a tight gaming group where every game was good to an environment where I didn't know the players very well. And I discovered that a good game is a game that can be played with people you don't particularily know/care about and still be fun - it's when the game itself is fun, not the company playing it.

There is a ton a truth in that quote.

When you can pick up a game — hell, any activity — and enjoy it with your friends, that's super awesome and congrats. But a shared activity does not a good game make- I learned this lesson to my embarrasment about a year and a half ago, when I tried to play a game that came out of several episodes of 1000 Blank White Cards (BGG, WP) with a group of relative strangers who didn't get any of the references.

I like this reminder; It's a good wake-up call.

A few quickies

I recently found a little lifehacky site to offload birthday reminders. I want to avoid forgetting things, so feel free to enter your birthday (year optional, if you're shy) and have a machine kick me annually so I won't forget. Yes, I'm sure some of you would like a machine to kick me at some regular interval. [EDIT: link fixed]

You may have heard of a game variously called Werewolf or Mafia (BGG, WP). It's a social game, with one side trying to win over the other. Evidently, middle schoolers in New England can't handle the truth. Heaven forbid that children are exposed to anything potentially disturbing! [EDIT: link fixed also]

The Picayune has a nicely uplifting Post-K tale (alternate link) about a couple who opened a restaurant I want to explore, Cafe Arabesque.

Save the users

It's a hack that works. I woke up this morning with a rant, ready to blog.

Let's say you work as a professional typist. I don't mean in the 1950s-secretary sense of the word, but I mean a person who types for a living. One who types hundreds of words per minute, knows dozens of layout programs, eats word processor manuals for lunch, and can hand-tune the margins on a vintage IBM Selectric... not just someone who knows the difference between a hyphen, an emdash and an endash.

Now let's say that you, the professional typist, get a call from someone who wants to pay you to type up a research paper as per your regular freelance rates. This person is your client, or possibly just a customer.

Now let's say that you, the professional typist, work for a large organization that pays you for your capacity to type things. One of your coworkers in a different department sends a project your way- let's say the transcription of a presentation given at a conference. Unless money changes place, this person is not your customer, not your client. Yall are just coworkers.

Sometime in the eighties, corporate flacks, inundated with anti-drug messages, decided that they didn't like the connotation of "user" when applied to their employees, and started the disturbing trend of referring to "customers" rather than "users."

I can appreciate wanting IT monkeys to provide better customer service to users, but that does not make customers out of your users! There's a whole different relationship implied between a customer and a provider that is wholly inappropriate for the workplace.

The customer is always right, but the user doesn't know what they need. I don't mean that people need up-selling, but that quite literally a user doesn't — and shouldn't — know what they need to use their computers and systems. It's not their role and not their job to know that the one server connects to the other server via this-and-such encryption protocol because it's regulated by the Fed's TLA branch. They simply need to use their tools they need to do their job.

It's just plain wrong. It's the wrong word. Drives me crazy. Whenever I hear someone in a Corporate IT position say, "customer," I have to ask, "Do you mean the end-user?" Some IT positions are customer-facing, and some aren't. The person one supports is not unnecessarily one's customer.



Most importantly, I dreamt this rant- so the blog-a-day-slash-NaNoWriMo hack is working.

Race and demographics, conventional conventions

I found this post in my drafts, dated 9/7/06, a year after Katrina and once again at Dragon*Con in Atlanta. I didn't publish it originally because of its brevity and incompleteness. I didn't change much.

Race and demographics. The hotel we stayed in had two large weddings and one even larger family reunion, each of different demographics. One wedding was generic middle-class white and the other was upper-class traditional Indian. The family reunion was black. The moment I walked into our hotel, I felt out of place and disconnected. I know that a person of Race X will feel out-of-place when then see only Race Y faces. Our brains work that way, and our society continues to encourage racial insularity.

Going to a con really wraps the members (always "membership"; rarely "attendee") together with a sense of community that cuts across traditional boundaries. But yet, looking at a random sampling of several hundred congoers yields a demographic nonetheless. Cat and I always succumb to "That Guy Syndrome," which sometimes also happens with B-list actors, but it comes down to saying to yourself, "Oh, look, it's that guy with the long dark hair and scraggly goatee with a bit of a paunch and wearing a black T-shirt with a witty in-joke. No, wait, I just described at least two dozen people I can see right now without turning my head."

But a new con is just around the corner. With 500 or so folks versus 40,000 or so, there's a much more intimate vibe. I missed this year's Dragon*Con; I'm not missing this year's BGG.Con.

Twitter?

Twitter is another one of these newfangled Web 2.0 sites that I only peripherally know about. In a nutshell, Twitter acts like a micromicro blog: You text or IM or email a more-or-less one-line status update. "What are you doing?" asks the site.

Wired has a good article suggesting that the aggregate data of Twitter has value to you- you can know what your people are up to in the gestalt. Go read that article.

If you use Twitter, tell me. I want to know what you're doing.

Firefly (the bug, not the show)

We saw fireflies in our courtyard last night. Amazingly cool. Just for a moment, I could see how our ancestors believed in fairies. Cat and I spent a little while looking at their erratic and pale green glow... following them, I even caught one for a fleeting moment.

A picture wouldn't do justice.

Just got paid today

...got me a pocket full of change.

I haven't had access enough to post to Blogger lately, for which I apologize. I've got some links and articles shared over in the sidebar.

For my RSS friends, please click on an ad or two, okay? If not, that's okay. You can still read my shared Google Reader items.

Speaking of ads, I've gotten something like less than forty bucks credit over at FunAgain, about four bucks at Amazon, and less than fifteen from Google Adsense. Hooray! You too can be famous on the internets and get paid for it... eventually, and in small amounts.

Disney and Fair Use

This article over on Wired has a link to a video mashup of Disney cartoons explaining fair use and copyright law. Oh, the irony alone. (YouTube, Quicktime stream, or download)

I haven't seen a response from Disney yet.

Thanks, Stanford!

MyStalk, a place for fiends

Today's title is inspired by this t-shirt, which still makes me grin. (This doesn't really count as shilling, incidentally. It's just context.)

Okay, yes, I broke down and did the MySpace thing. I can't even recall why- I suspect that someone had some content I wanted to look at and Bugmenot wasn't helpful.

While at the Nicks' place doing playtesting, MySpace came up and Nick (not Nick, but Nick) wanted to add me to his friend list. I'm not entirely sure why- I know that I only have an account really as a placeholder to point people to me, not as an active social networking venue. Yes, it would be nice if social networking really worked, but I think right now the notion needs some more evolution in the real world. At least people are used to it these days.

But social networking definitely can be abused, as evidenced by multiple "Candy wants to be your friend!" "Alexis wants to be your friend!" "Siobhan wants to be your friend!" "Heike V. Greenwood wants to be your friend!", and they all have the same cropped camwhore picture and color text to get you to clicky their linky. Nick's hilarious quote: "The porn bots are getting lazy."

I personally don't need MySpace or Friendster or Orkut or whatever. If you need to find me on teh internets, I leave big fat digital footprints as a consequence of my unique name. Joe Bag-of-Donuts or J. Random Coed probably do.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping

You may or may not know that the US Congress has passed a law changing Daylight Savings Time, giving us an extra month of DST this year. Update your computers, people. It starts on the 11th.

I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.

-- Robertson Davies, The diary of Samuel Marchbanks, Clarke, Irwin (1947), XIX, Sunday

Give me back my moonlight!

Grown men playing with balls

The Superbowl is today. (I don't care because the Saints aren't playing, but I hope the Bears lose.) I might watch the commercials, though.

Stealing a line from Marc, this game is like curfew for mundanes. There's no traffic, stores are empty, and you can get what you want done with no hassle.