2008

Posted on December 31, 2008

Good f#@$ing riddance.

One Way To Tell You’re Officially A Grown-Up

Posted on December 24, 2008

When you’re more excited about seeing how other folks react to the gifts you got for them than you are about seeing what they got for you.

HOWTO: Run Ubuntu 8.10 On the Asus Eee PC 1000

Posted on December 18, 2008

For many years I’ve been wanting a laptop but I’ve never been able to justify spending $2000 for one, so the emergence of the “netbook” category — lightweight laptops with limited power for a lower price — has been welcome.

After evaluating the current netbook options I finally pulled the trigger and bought myself an Asus Eee PC 1000, on which I’m typing this entry. It’s a little larger than the original crop of netbooks, which I liked because it meant it came with a near-full-size keyboard. I touch type so super-cramped keyboards are a pain.

The Eee 1000 comes preloaded with a special customized version of Xandros Linux, but since I run Ubuntu at home I wanted to do the same on my Eee. This turned out to be a little more complicated than I’d hoped it would be, since the bundled Xandros has been tuned by Asus to work with the Eee’s hardware, and generic Ubuntu has not. Now that I’ve got these issues resolved, I thought I’d write up how I did it in case it might help others who want to do the same thing.

The current version of Ubuntu when this was written was Ubuntu 8.10, “Intrepid Ibex“. Some or all of the steps below may be different if you use a different Ubuntu release. I’m told the process with Ubuntu 8.04 (“Hardy Heron”) is pretty much the same, but I can’t speak to that from experience.

Warning: geekery follows. If you’re not into that sort of thing, here is a video of a cat riding a Roomba.

Start with stock Ubuntu, not Ubuntu Eee

There is a special modified version of Ubuntu out there called Ubuntu Eee (update: since I wrote this, Ubuntu Eee’s name has changed to “Easy Peasy“, but it’s the same product) that claims to be a one-step solution to running Ubuntu on your Eee. My advice: skip it. I started this process by wiping the Eee’s disk and installing Ubuntu Eee; I then spent several days trying to fix a range of problems, mostly related to connecting wireless networks, without success.

Frustrated with this process, I wiped the disk again and replaced with the “stock” Ubuntu distribution rather than the “customized” Ubuntu Eee. Surprisingly, this proved to cause fewer headaches than Ubuntu Eee did. So my advice is to not even bother with Ubuntu Eee; whatever good points it brings to the table are outweighed by its problems.

The Eee doesn’t come with an optical drive, so you’ll need to get the Ubuntu base files onto a USB stick in order to install it. There’s a tool called UNetBootin that makes this stupid easy. If you have an ISO image of the Ubuntu CD, it can take the files from there; if you don’t, it can download them for you automatically. Either way you end up with a USB stick you can boot and install Ubuntu from. (Note: you’ll need a stick with at least 1GB of free space.)

Once you’ve prepared your USB stick, just plug it into the Eee and reboot. When you see the Asus splash screen, start hitting Esc until you get a menu of available disks to boot from. One of these will be your USB stick. Select that one and you’ll see the familiar Ubuntu loading screens. From there, just follow the menu prompts to reformat your drives and install Ubuntu.

One note on installation — the sales literature for the Eee 1000 say it comes with a 40GB solid-state disk, but this is, strictly speaking, not true; it comes with a fixed 8GB solid state disk, and a 32GB flash memory card. In practical terms this is no big deal since you do in fact have 40GB of usable storage, but for maximum performance you want to ensure you install the OS onto the 8GB SSD rather than the flash card. To simplify keeping track of what files went where, I set the mount point for the 8GB SSD (/dev/sda1) as / and the mount point for the flash card (/dev/sdb1) as /home. This lets me put all my media files on the flash card just by dumping them in my home directory, while installed applications and the base OS go on the SSD.

Install customized kernel

Once you’ve got Ubuntu installed, you’ll find it runs OK but that some of the Eee’s hardware components, like the wifi radio, don’t work, because the stock Ubuntu kernel doesn’t include support for them.

Thankfully, a helpful fellow named Adam McDaniel has taken on maintaining a version of the Ubuntu kernel that does include support for these devices. So your next step will be to replace your stock kernel with Adam’s souped-up version.

This may sound like a frighteningly technical task but it’s actually really easy — and it leverages the APT packaging system, so it’s easy to undo if you should ever want to, and updates will automatically flow to your system as they are released. Just follow Adam’s clearly written instructions for your Ubuntu release (Intrepid instructions, Hardy instructions) and you’ll be all set.

Note: once you’ve got the kernel installed you may find your webcam and Bluetooth radio still don’t work. This is because some Eees leave the factory with these devices disabled in the BIOS. Switch them on in the BIOS menu and you’ll be good to go.

Disable IPv6

At this point you’ll notice that your Eee is able to reliably connect to some, but not all, wireless access points. Why should this be, you will wonder.

The answer is that Ubuntu sets up your wireless radio to use IPv6 by default. The problem is that lots of access points in places like airports and coffee shops — you know, the sorts of places that were the reasons you bought the damn laptop in the first place — are IPv4 only.

Defaulting to IPv6 is sensible from a future-proofing perspective, but it means that you will have problems connecting to access points that are IPv4 only. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea, it just appears to be The Way Things Are. (I have had the same problem on some new Windows laptops that are configured to default to IPv6, so no bitching about Linux, please.)

Follow the instructions here to turn off IPv6 on your Eee. There are other methods described on that page, but these are the ones that worked for me.

Install Eee Control Panel

The default Linux that comes with the Eee has a bunch of nifty options to let you do things like throttle down the CPU to conserve battery power. Unfortunately, stock Ubuntu doesn’t come with anything like that, so we need an add-on to bring those features back.

I use Grigori Goronzy’s eee-control-tray for this, as it’s easy to install and provides an easy-to-use tray menu for these functions. Here’s how to install eee-control-tray.

And you’re done!

There’s other customizations you can make (like, for example, replacing Ubuntu’s anemic network manager with WICD to make it easier to browse and log on to local wireless networks), but the steps above should get all the core hardware working for you in Ubuntu.

Enjoy your Eee!

Talk Me Down

Posted on December 9, 2008

Disclaimer: This is a question for the geeks among you. If you’re not a geek, don’t be surprised if this post makes no damn sense whatsoever.

Having gotten that out of the way:

I run Ubuntu on my PC at home for everything except gaming. I’ve generally been very happy with it. Last month they released a new version (Ubuntu 8.10, “Intrepid Ibex”) which promises a ton of new goodies.

However, I don’t really run Ubuntu per se. I run Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu. I’ve preferred KDE to GNOME for years, so this seemed like a natural thing to do.

However, as I contemplate making the upgrade to 8.10 I find myself thinking of switching to plain old Ubuntu and GNOME rather than staying on board with Kubuntu and KDE. There are two main reasons why:

1. It feels like Ubuntu and GNOME get most of Canonical’s attention, and Kubuntu is more of an afterthought. There’s fit and finish issues with Kubuntu that I don’t see when I sit in front of an Ubuntu workstation. It just feels… unfinished, somehow.

2. KDE4.

To expand on point #2: Kubuntu 8.10 is the first release that requires you to switch from KDE 3.x to KDE 4. In previous releases, KDE4 was optional; now it’s not just the default, it’s mandatory.

And the thing is, if I believe what I read, KDE4 is a bit of a train wreck.

The incompleteness, which will likely frustrate some users, gives KDE 4.0 the feel something akin to a technical preview rather than a production-ready release. The developers frame the 4.0 release as a first step towards creating their envisioned “KDE 4” platform. The foundation is now in place and much more, they say, will follow soon.

Supposedly many of the crash bugs and other outright busted parts of KDE4 were fixed in the most recent release, KDE 4.1, which is the version that ships with Intrepid. But it still feels like taking a giant leap into the dark — especially given that once you make the upgrade, there’s no way to roll back to KDE3 if you suffer upgrader’s remorse.

So why not just move to GNOME and be done with it? I still love a lot of things about KDE, that’s why. I love how powerful the Konqueror file manager is (seriously, if all you’ve ever used is Windows Explorer, Konqueror is like getting a love note from the future). I love KIO-slaves. I love Amarok.

But I don’t know how much of that love will still be relevant in the Brave New World of KDE4. Konqueror has been thrown overboard in favor of Dolphin, a file manager that feels like it’s designed for ADD sufferers. Amarok 2 (the KDE4 edition of this outstanding music manager) isn’t ready yet. And do KIO-slaves even still exist in the KDE4 universe? I have no idea.

Of course, none of that stuff is available in GNOME, either (except Amarok). But GNOME is, you know, stable. It works. It’s not trying to push desktop computing through a Great Leap Forward. And it sure feels like it’s getting a hell of a lot more attention from Canonical than KDE is.

So here’s what I want to know — if you use KDE, have you made the Great Leap Forward to KDE4 yet? How did it go for you? Were the gains worth the pain? And how does it stack up to GNOME in your experience?

Inquiring minds want to know…

One Way To Tell If You Are Cheap

Posted on November 10, 2008

If you try to buy a $450 computer online and your credit card company locks your account because a purchase that large looks “suspicious”.

It’s the JWM 2008 Election Prediction Contest!

Posted on October 27, 2008

Longtime Readers™ of this blog know that every two years we have a little contest to mark election time. (Here’s links to the 2004 and 2006 editions.) And the winner of the contest gets a nice little prize.

Well, it’s that time again, so welcome to the 2008 Just Well Mixed Election Prediction Contest!

HOW IT WORKS

• This post will be open for comments between now and midnight the day before Election Day (November 3, 2008).
• Like the Constitution, this contest doesn’t give a damn about the popular vote — all we care about is the Electoral College. So, to play, leave a comment on this post predicting the number of Electoral College votes you believe Barack Obama and John McCain will each win on Election Day. (More info on the Electoral College process below.) This means that the minimal acceptable entry would be a comment along the lines of “Obama 333, McCain 205” — though you’re encouraged to share how you came up with your prediction!
• The winner will be the commenter whose prediction is the closest to the actual result. The only thing that will count will be your EV totals for each candidate, not how you reached them. In other words, a prediction of 20 EVs won by winning Ohio and one predicting 20 EVs won by winning Minnesota and Wisconsin (10 each) are equivalent for judging purposes.
• If multiple people should submit the same prediction, and that prediction should be correct, they will all be sent a tiebreaker question by e-mail on the day after Election Day and given 24 hours to answer it. The first person to answer correctly wins.
• If you submit your prediction and then decide later you want to change it, go ahead and post another comment with your updated prediction — I’ll take the comment you submitted with the most recent timestamp as your final prediction.

THE PRIZE

In the past, I’ve given away games as the prize for this contest, but that tends to disadvantage players who aren’t running Windows or don’t like games. So this year I’m making it simpler: I’ll donate $25 in the winner’s name to VerifiedVoting.org, an organization fighting to ensure that American elections are conducted in a reliable and publicly verifiable manner. (In other words, no more Florida 2000s, and no more crazy-ass Diebold machines.)

ABOUT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROCESS

• There are a total of 538 Electoral College votes available. (Learn more about the Electoral College.)
• To win the Presidency, a candidate must receive a majority of these votes. A “majority” is defined as 50% of the votes plus one, which for a total of 538 means that a minimum of 270 is required to claim victory.
• Each state receives a number of Electoral College votes equal to the number of Members of Congress (Representatives plus Senators) it has. Because states get seats in the House of Representatives based on their population, this means that states with large populations end up with more Electoral College votes than do states with small populations.
• Other states with smaller populations are nonetheless important because they are “battleground states”. These are states where theoretically either candidate could convince a majority of the population to vote for him. These states are important because they are the only places where a candidate can win new Electoral College votes — getting more votes in a state that already favors his candidacy doesn’t impact the College in any way. Battleground states in 2008 include Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Indiana.
• Most states allocate their electoral votes in “winner-take-all” fashion, meaning the winner of the popular vote in that state receives all the state’s EVs. However, two states — Maine and Nebraska — allocate their EVs by Congressional district instead, meaning that the winner of the popular vote in each district receives 1 of the state’s electoral votes. This can result in the candidates splitting those states’ EVs between them.

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

• Electoral-vote.com has complete projections for all fifty states, updated daily based on the most recent polling data.
• FiveThirtyEight.com and Pollster.com also have up-to-date polling data you can use to see where each state is trending.
• CNN has an interactive Electoral Map Calculator that lets you set how you think each state will go and then tells you how it impacts the overall distribution of EVs. Very useful for running “what-if” scenarios.

So that’s how it works. The comments are open. How do you think this thing is gonna shake out?

UPDATE (Nov. 2): From the “wow, that takes ENORMOUS balls” department, statistician Bruce Nash goes so far as to not only predict who will win each state, but exactly what time each state will be called as well:

(Skip ahead to 6:30 or so if you don’t care about his methodology and just want to see the predictions.)

UPDATE (Nov. 5): Long night. Winner announcement coming soon.

UPDATE (Nov. 6): Has Missouri announced an official winner yet? The unofficial counts on their Web site show McCain winning the state narrowly but I have yet to see an official announcement from them, and all the news orgs still have it as too close to call on their maps…

UPDATE (Nov. 7): And we have a winner: Amber Sparks, who predicted Obama 354, McCain 184. Obama actually did a little better than that — he’s currently at 364, and depending on how Missouri and the 1 EV for Omaha, Nebraska eventually go he could go up to 376 — but since everyone else thought he’d pick up even less, Amber’s optimism wins the day. Congratulations, Amber! My contribution to Verified Voting in your name is on its way.

If You Haven’t Contributed to the Obama Campaign Yet

Posted on October 16, 2008

… here’s a good excuse:

Type designer Jonathan Hoefler put together this incredible poster as part of the Artists for Obama series.

5,000 numbered copies are being offered for sale at $60 each. That’s a very reasonable price for a cool piece of design, and 100% of your $60 goes to help Barack Obama get this country back on the right track.

I’ve ordered mine. What are you waiting for?

Mount & Blade

Posted on October 5, 2008

Longtime Readers know that I occasionally write here about games that I find particularly interesting and/or impressive. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t share a few words about Mount & Blade, which is easily one of the most engrossing games I’ve encountered in years.

By looking at the screenshots you might think that Mount & Blade is yet another fantasy role-playing game, with elves and wizards and what not, but it’s not. Instead, it’s focused like a laser beam on one particular goal: providing gamers with a realistic (yet still fun) model of combat in a medieval world.

The developers of Mount & Blade, a couple in Turkey, wrote it as a labor of love born from their frustration with the cartoony worlds typically depicted in fantasy games. In these games, beefy heroes swing gigantic broadswords as if they weighed nothing, stopping periodically to quaff health potions that magically bind up their wounds. It’s a familiar oeuvre, but one that bears little resemblance to how medieval battles were actually fought.

So in their game, they went in the opposite direction, focusing on the mechanics of medieval conflict. In Mount & Blade, when you fight someone, you find yourself quickly falling into the rhythm of thrust-and-parry that will be familiar to anyone who has watched fencers in action. You can’t just click frantically on your opponent; you have to parry his blows while watching his stance, waiting for an opening — for a moment when there’s a part of his body that he can’t easily cover with sword or shield — and then launch your own blow in that opening before he can recover. The game’s control scheme makes this all quite fluid and natural; with a little practice it becomes second nature.

Which is good, because mastering the basics of the sword is just the beginning. The game starts you off as a lone adventurer in the medieval land of Calradia, but you quickly discover that running around alone is a good way to get killed by a band of marauding highwaymen. (Even the best swordsman can’t fight five enemies at once.) So, as you travel from town to town, the game gives you opportunities to build up your own band of warriors. These bands start small, but they can grow quickly as your fame increases. And that means when your band takes the field against another band, you can easily find yourself in the middle of a swirling melee with 100 or more warriors battling it out.

And in such a melee, you find, the man on horseback is king. If you acquire a horse, you suddenly realize exactly why knights ruled the medieval European battlefield; you can charge through a horde of foot soldiers, cutting them down with swings of your sword, without taking a scratch. And if your horse is charging with enough speed, it becomes a weapon in itself, its hooves trampling any poor unfortunate pike-wielding peasant who finds himself in your way.

Beyond just swords, the game models a wide range of medieval weaponry, including pikes, staves, axes, bows, and crossbows. Each class of weapon has its own unique style of use and its own strengths and weaknesses. Archery is realistically complex, with arrows being blown about by the wind and crossbows taking forever to reload. As a result, choosing a weapon that fits your fighting style and then mastering it is a very rewarding experience.

The game layers on top of this combat model a “sandbox” strategic mode, in which you can go anywhere, picking up quests and companions along the way. There are no set objectives in Mount & Blade, no defined way to win; you choose your goals and then set about achieving them. Maybe you want to be crowned king of one of Calradia’s five nations; or build a band of raiders, looting and burning everything in sight; or rake in cash by trading goods and build a fortune. Like other “sandbox” games (think Grand Theft Auto III or Sid Meier’s Pirates!), it’s up to you what “winning” Mount & Blade means.

The complete package is a radically addictive game that I can recommend without reservation. And it’s reasonably priced to boot — $30.

If you want to try out Mount & Blade, you can download it for free from the developers’ site and give it a spin. The demo version lets you play with no restrictions until your character reaches level 6, at which point you must buy an activation code to keep playing. (The code costs the same as buying the game in a box at a store, so there’s no risk in trying before you buy.) That gives you plenty of room to explore the world of Mount & Blade and discover for yourself why it’s so compelling.

Things I Should Have Blogged At The Time

Posted on September 29, 2008

On Friday night I considered making the following prediction:

By 9AM on Monday, September 29, my bank, Wachovia, will have become the next bank to fail.

… based on stories like this one that emerged late last week about Wachovia frantically looking for someone to buy them the way JP Morgan Chase bought Washington Mutual.

(As you can imagine, since I have pretty much every penny I’ve ever earned in accounts at Wachovia, I have been reading stories like those quite closely.)

Sure enough, I turn on the computer this morning and find that I was right:

Citigroup Inc. will acquire the banking operations of Wachovia Corp., one of the nation’s largest banks, in a deal facilitated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Citigroup will absorb up to $42 billion of losses in the deal, with the FDIC covering any remaining losses, the government agency said Monday. Citigroup also will grant the FDIC $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants.

… but I get no points for foresight on this one since I was too lazy to actually sit down and blog the prediction. Shoot.

At least it looks like my money is safe; I guess I’ll just have to be content with that!

UPDATE (Noon): Buried in its coverage, the Washington Post explains what took Wachovia down:

The company bought its troubles in 2006 with the $25 billion acquisition of Golden West Financial, a major mortgage lender based in California. Golden West specialized in “option” mortgage loans, which allow customers to pay less than the maximum each month, as on a credit card.

(Emphasis mine)

How could anyone have foreseen that ending badly? Jeez Louise. That’s such a bad business decision, I’m just in awe.

Maybe You Can Explain This

Posted on September 12, 2008

… because I sure can’t.

Yesterday I came home and discovered a menu from a take-out joint jammed into my door. Not a big surprise, happens all the time. But I took the time to flip through this one and found… this:

In the section titled “Chicken Wings”, there’s a footnote: “Ask for Mumble Sauce if you like.”

What the hell is Mumble Sauce?

UPDATE (11AM): And my friend Joe Dailey has the answer — it’s apparently a local-to-DC condiment served by local take-out places, similar to duck sauce and known variously as “mambo”, “mumbo”, and “mumble” sauce. You learn something new every day!

Still At Large

Posted on September 11, 2008

… after seven years.

Into the Marsh

Posted on September 7, 2008

All summer, I’ve been taking my bike out on the trails of Northern Virginia. There’s lots of great, well-maintained trails in this region, so there’s no shortage of options to choose from.

One I come back to on a fairly regular basis is the Mount Vernon Trail, which runs from D.C. through Old Town Alexandria and then all the way down to George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. It’s a long ride to get all the way down there — 13 miles each way if you leave from where I live — so I’ve been working up to it by taking progressively longer rides each time I head out that way.

Today I rode out farther than I had before (about nine miles down the trail), and along the way I discovered the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve, which the trail runs right by. It’s really stunning, and it’s startling because one minute you’re riding along past the usual trees-and-grass, and the next you’re riding along a bridge with cattails that are literally taller than I am waving on either side. It’s like you’ve been transported into a nature documentary.

Stumbling across this was one of those “hey, cool!” moments that you occasionally have in life, so I figured I should get a picture. It doesn’t really do the place justice but here you go anyway.

I’ve been hoping that I’d be able to ride all the way down to Mount Vernon and back before the summer ended, but given that it’s September already that’s looking unlikely. But even if I have to wait till next year for that, it’s still been a worthwhile experience, not least because of moments like this.

Good News or Bad News? No Idea

Posted on August 22, 2008

Did you ever get a bit of news that got you all excited and happy? And then you learned more about it and wondered if that was the appropriate reaction or not?

That’s kind of how I felt when I learned that a major Hollywood figure is backing a movie on the life of Bill Hicks — one of my personal comic heroes, a legendarily angry and ascerbic performer who died of cancer in 1994 at the too-young age of 32.

While he never broke out into the mainstream in his short life, his take-no-prisoners approach to comedy was hugely influential among other performers and inspired a host of others who went on to fame and fortune. As an example, here’s a famous bit of his, about marketing:

And here’s another one, this about how not everything about drugs is bad:

So when I heard that there might be a Bill Hicks biopic in the works, I practically jumped for joy.

And then I found out who the “major Hollywood figure” is who is behind the project, and who would presumably star in it — Russell Crowe:

RUSSELL Crowe is looking forward to bonus time in Australia after the postponement of filming for his next project, Nottingham…

“I have another project based on the life of comedian Bill Hicks, which is going from treatment to draft stage with Kiwi writer Mark Staufer.”

It is understood he is considering playing the main role of Hicks — a controversial and brilliant American comedian who battled drug and alcohol abuse before dying from cancer at 32.

Dear God. Russell Crowe as Bill Hicks? It’s hard to wrap your head around, but the comedy blog Dead Frog is cautiously optimistic:

My first thought, and perhaps yours as well, when I heard this was “Hmm. Can I think of a role where I thought Crowe was particularly funny?”

Nope. As always, I can see that as both an advantage and a disadvantage. Obviously we have no idea if portraying someone as darkly funny as Hicks is in Crowe’s wheelhouse but if it is, what an explosive and enjoyable surprise it’ll be. Another advantage, Hicks, though a funny man, wasn’t a clown. He’s a serious figure in comedy and probably the kind of comic who’d be a great fit for a more dramatic actor.

But what makes me optimistic is that Crowe and his screenwriters seem to want to work closely with those who knew Hicks best, specifically Hicks’ frequent collaborator Kevin Booth.

New York Magazine is less cheery:

True, Hicks and Crowe both seem to have had an affinity for alcohol and picking fights with strangers, but Hicks might agree that a commercial biopic comes pretty close to “suckin’ Satan’s pecker.”

Adding to the sense that this is a total crapshoot is the fact that the screenwriter Crowe said was working on the script, Mark Staufer, appears to have only one film to his credit — a yet-to-be-released picture entitled Dolce’s Inferno. I’ve told you before about how important the screenwriter is to the quality of a movie, so it doesn’t inspire confidence when you can’t find anything else the guy has written to look at.

How will it turn out? Who knows. I guess we’ll find out if and when it ever hits theaters. I hope it’s good, though — Hicks’ memory deserves nothing less.

P.S. I don’t usually talk about work on this blog, but all next week I’m going to be at the Democratic Convention in Denver, so posting here will be light (not like it hasn’t been light the last couple of weeks anyway, I know). I will be blogging the convention at CtW Connect, so if you want to follow my experiences at the convention, that’s the place to be next week.

A Good Reason Not to Take Greyhound

Posted on August 7, 2008

Because you meet the most interesting people:

TORONTO – Greyhound has scrapped an ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel after one of its passengers was accused of beheading and cannibalizing another traveler…

Vince Weiguang Li, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2004, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean. He has yet to enter a plea.

Thirty-seven passengers were aboard the Greyhound from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, as it traveled at night along a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway about 12 miles from Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. Witnesses said Li attacked McLean unprovoked, stabbing him dozens of times.

As horrified passengers fled the bus, Li severed McLean’s head, displaying it to some of the passengers outside the bus, witnesses said.

A police officer at the scene reported seeing the attacker hacking off pieces of the victim’s body and eating them, according to a police report.

In Case You Hadn’t Already Figured This Out

Posted on July 29, 2008

… real life is nothing at all like a romantic comedy.

Sleep Tight, America, Your Air Force is Awake!

Posted on July 24, 2008

Well, most of it, anyway:

Three ballistic missile crew members in North Dakota fell asleep while holding classified launch code devices this month, triggering an investigation by military and National Security Agency experts, the Air Force said Thursday.

The probe found that the missile launch codes were outdated and remained secure at all times. But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that had already put the service under intense scrutiny…

The three crew members, who are in the 91st Missile Wing, were in the missile alert facility about 70 miles from Minot. That facility includes crew rest areas and sits above the underground control center where the actual keys can be turned to launch the ballistic missiles.

Officials said the three officers were behind locked doors and had with them the old code components, which are large classified devices that allow the crew to communicate with the missiles. Launch codes are part of the component, and the devices were described as large, metal boxes.

[Air Force spokesman Col. Dewey] Ford said they were waiting to get back to base “and they fell asleep.”

It is not clear how long they were asleep.

It’s Annoying Being Right All the Time

Posted on July 22, 2008

I’ve seen lots of notes around the blogosphere pointing out how cool this is. And it is definitely quite cool.

It’s extra satisfying to see it because I predicted it five years ago.

So the lesson is, if you want to find out what’s going to happen in the future, listen when I talk to you 😉

History Repeating

Posted on July 21, 2008

You may not know this if you’re not a geek and don’t follow these things obsessively, but there’s a bit of an earthquake going on in the world of laptop computers.

Laptops have traditionally come in two basic forms: small, sleek and expensive ($2000+), or big, clunky and cheap ($1000 or less). But last year Taiwanese vendor Asus blew that model all to hell by releasing the EEE PC, a super-small, super-sleek notebook PC about the size of a hardcover book that started at just $350. In a market where laptops the size of the EEE typically run closer to $2,500, this was a real game-changer.

(How did they do it? By scaling back on the amount of processing power and storage in the machine. The EEE isn’t powerful enough to replace your desktop; it’s really optimized for simple tasks like Web surfing, e-mail, and basic office tasks. But, surprise surprise, most people only use their laptop for Web surfing, e-mail, and basic office tasks, so the extra power isn’t missed.)

Predictably, the EEE was a huge hit, and now other vendors are sniffing around at producing similar machines as well. Some, like the MSI Wind, have already reached the market, and others are soon to arrive, including one from Dell.

So I was a bit surprised to see the New York Times reporting that “Smaller PCs Cause Worry for Industry“:

The personal computer industry is poised to sell tens of millions of small, energy-efficient Internet-centric devices. Curiously, some of the biggest companies in the business consider this bad news.

In a tale of sales success breeding resentment, computer companies are wary of the new breed of computers because their low price could threaten PC makers’ already thin profit margins.

Yes, while Asus is making hay trying to keep up with the demand for EEE PCs, more established laptop vendors are holding off from offering their own versions out of fear that these new cheap machines will eat into sales of conventional laptops:

“When I talk to PC vendors, the No. 1 question I get is, how do I compete with these netbooks when what we really want to do is sell PCs that cost a lot more money?” said J. P. Gownder, an analyst with Forrester Research…

“We’re sitting on the sidelines not because we’re lazy. We’re sitting on the sidelines because even if this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn’t add up,” said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management for Fujitsu. “It’s a product that essentially has no margin.”

Why do I mention this? Because it is deeply ironic. The personal computer, after all, was not born as a high-margin business — it was born as a super-cheap alternative to the minicomputer, a class of machines that dominated data processing in the 1970s. Where a PC might sell for $5,000, a minicomputer’s price, reflecting its far greater power, could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The first PCs had so little processing power compared to minis that they were widely derided as little more than cheap toys, suitable for dinking around with at home, perhaps, but not for Serious Business.

As tiny startups like Apple churned out PCs, the dominant minicomputer vendors, companies like Control Data, Honeywell, DEC, and Wang, all chose not to compete with them. Why? Because the margins on a personal computer sale were much lower than the margins on a minicomputer sale. They feared (rightly) that if PCs became popular, their minicomputer business would die — and with it the fat profit margins they’d grown accustomed to.

Of course, we all know how that story ended; today the market for computers is dominated by the companies that bet on the PC, and the companies that tried to hold back the tide either became irrelevant or went out of business altogether. When was the last time you met someone who did their work on a system from Control Data? When was the last time you met someone who even knew the name Control Data?

And if one wanted to, one could go back even further and see how the minicomputer vendors were themselves once the scrappy insurgents, peddling cheaper alternatives to the mainframes offered by the IBMs of the world, whose price ran in the millions and whose per-sale margins were even higher than those in the world of minis.

If the history of computers teaches any lesson, it is this: if two alternative products both meet a basic performance baseline, the cheaper alternative always wins. It may take time; when a new, cheaper alternative to the status quo first emerges, it’s usually underpowered, more of a proof of concept than anything else, and it takes a few revisions before it matures into a product that’s ready for the mass market. The Apple I, for example, wasn’t compelling enough to take the world by storm. But it helped prove that there was a market for the personal computer, and its follow-on, the Apple II, was capable enough to strike the first serious blow at the dominance of the minicomputer in business IT. When IBM looked past its fear of cannibalizing its mini business to produce the IBM PC, the death knell for the mini had been rung.

That’s why it’s so ironic that some personal computer vendors — whose entire business was built on replacing expensive, high-margin hardware with cheap, commodity low-margin hardware sold in volume — should suddenly decide that there is such a thing as “too cheap” after all, and hope to kill off the new paradigm by refusing to shift to it. Do they not know the history of their own business? Do they not know the fate of every other computer company that has tried to fight “cheap and simple” by ignoring it rather than adapting to it?

As the saying goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Those vendors who are hoping the days of the $2,000 laptop will last forever would be well advised to ponder that.

Marking Time Dept.

Posted on July 19, 2008

I’m 33 today.

That’s all, really.

iPhone: Just Say No

Posted on July 11, 2008

With fanboys everywhere in the middle of a collective nerdgasm over the release of the iPhone 3G, it’s good to see the Free Software Foundation offering a reality check:

The 5 real reasons to avoid iPhone 3G:

• iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.
• iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
• iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
• iPhone won’t play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
• iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software — like the FreeRunner.

For more info on the iPhone and DRM, here’s a good New York Times article on the subject from when the device was first launched.

It’s George Carlin’s World, We Just Live in It

Posted on June 23, 2008

George Carlin died yesterday:

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.

There have been a lot of tributes to Carlin’s spectacular career today. But the one thing I don’t see many people mentioning is that George Carlin is one of the few people who could genuinely claim to have changed the culture he lived in.

Consider. When Carlin was just starting out, he attended the now-legendary show at Chicago’s Gate of Horn at which Lenny Bruce — the spectacular comic who directly challenged American middle-class morality — was hauled off stage to jail by the cops. Bruce’s crime? Telling jokes about religion. That was it; that was enough to get you locked up in 1962 in America. (The cops hauled Carlin off that night too, just for being in the place and refusing to produce ID on command.)

The system that struck them both that night drove Lenny Bruce to an early grave, but George Carlin spent the rest of his life taking it on, pushing its boundaries, forcing us to redefine the acceptable. He built a routine, “Filthy Words“, in which he discussed the seven words you weren’t allowed to say on television, that prompted a crackdown by the FCC — a crackdown which was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, putting the question of whether or not the government had the power to regulate “indecent” speech on the national agenda.

Carlin’s detractors were fond of writing him off as a shock jockey, someone out to get some cheap laughs by saying dirty words. But to say that was to miss the real meaning of Carlin’s work. He didn’t just throw around shocking language for effect — he deployed it like a general deploys his artillery, precisely targeted to strike the enemy where the most damage can be done. He was out to make a point, not just to get a laugh.

And it’s hard to argue that he was anything but successful. Today the culture has shifted dramatically from the days when Lenny Bruce could get locked up just for teasing organized religion on a nightclub stage. Indeed, by the 1990s, Carlin and others could take on the same targets much more sharply and directly, and nobody batted an eye.

Carlin’s philosophy and sensibility have become so much a part of the “conventional wisdom” that it’s easy to miss just how groundbreaking they were when he started out. He truly was a leader — a leader pushing society towards a new openness, a new frankness. And he lived long enough to see society catch up with his vision.

The culture we live in today — a culture in which free expression thrives, without fear of legal repercussion — didn’t exist when George Carlin began his career; Lenny Bruce’s life and death stand as mute testament to that. Beyond a few visionaries like Bruce, nobody even imagined it could exist. But Carlin and his contemporaries dragged society kicking and screaming along behind them by the sheer force of their wit and personality.

George Carlin was a legend. He will be sorely missed.

The Big Picture

Posted on June 19, 2008

Boston.com, the Web site of the Boston Globe, has started a new blog titled “The Big Picture” that focuses solely on presenting news photographs in very large format with impressive detail. The results are uniformly stunning. Check it out.

Marriage and Equality

Posted on June 17, 2008

The California Supreme Court’s decision to allow same-sex marriages in that state went into effect at 5:01PM on Monday, and gay couples have been rushing to the altar ever since.

I thought about writing something about this, but then I remembered that I wrote a post in this space four years ago titled “Confessions of a Moral Coward” that pretty much says everything I have to say on the subject. So I’ll just encourage you to read that instead.

In Case You Were Wondering What It Looks Like When $1.2 Billion Goes Up In Smoke

Posted on June 8, 2008

… here’s the answer:

(And here’s the full story, if you missed it back in February.)

Be Prepared

Posted on June 1, 2008

TIME Magazine’s cover story this week is one that everybody should read. So I’m going to give you an order: go read it, right now. I’ll still be here when you get done.

Here’s why the story is so important: it’s about why, when disaster strikes, some people die and other people live. And if you ever find yourself in such a situation, I want you to be in the latter category.

So what makes the difference? Turns out it’s the advice that every Boy Scout has been taught for nearly 100 years now: be prepared.

I know that when you hear advice like this, it’s easy to dismiss it with a roll of the eyes. Oh sure, you think, you want me to turn into one of those fruitcakes who hole up in a cabin in the woods with a hundred cases of ammunition to wait for the End Times.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about going overboard and trying to protect against every eventuality, no matter how unlikely. What I’m talking about is taking some basic, easy, inexpensive steps to protect yourself against common threats to life and limb.

The common thread in the survival stories TIME recounts is this: the people who survive had thought about how to survive. The people who died had not.

Why is this important? Because in a crisis situation, the easiest way to die is to freeze up — to do nothing. And the best way to avoid freezing up is to have some ideas in advance about what you would do if you were put at risk. If you can easily reach for those ideas without having to think them through for the first time under incredible pressure, you will be much, much more likely to survive than if you cannot.

Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about. Finding the answers to these questions will literally take you only a few minutes — but those few minutes could save your life.

• At work: Do you know where the fire exits are in your building? If you work in a multistory building, do you know how to reach the stairwell? Could you find it blindfolded if you had to? (If the building is on fire, smoke and panic will cut visibility way, way down.)
• Commuting: If you commute to work, and your method of commuting (car, train, bus, subway) disappeared, how would you get home? (Don’t say “I’d call someone on my cell phone”; in emergencies, the cell networks are commonly swamped with people trying to make that call.) If you work in a city, could you walk home if you had to? Do you know what route you would take?
• Traveling: If you’re traveling on a ship, do you know where the lifeboats are stored? If you’re on a plane, do you know where the nearest emergency exit is?
• At home: If the electricity was turned off to your residence suddenly and didn’t come back for a week, would you be able to survive? What about if the running water disappeared for a similar period? If your home or apartment caught fire and you had to leave immediately, what would you take with you? Could you find your important documents easily in such a situation?

These are all simple enough to answer “yes” to — and if you can’t answer “yes” today, a few minutes’ time will get you to the point where you can. Thinking through these precautions won’t cost you anything. But they can save lives.

These simple precautions can help you whether you are caught in a big crisis or a small one. On 9/11, for example, untold numbers died in the World Trade Center because they didn’t know how to find the stairwell and exit the building, or because they believed that instead of going down via the stairwell the wiser decision was to go up to the roof and wait for rescue by helicopter. (It wasn’t; rescuing people from a skyscraper by helicopter is very, very tricky. If you’re in a burning or otherwise threatened building it’s always safer to go down.) Some offices took the time to teach these facts to their people; those offices suffered far fewer casualties than the ones that did not.

But even in smaller-scale crises, a little thinking ahead can do you a lot of good. In 2003, for example, the town where I live (Alexandria, Virginia) was hit by a hurricane — Hurricane Isabel. Isabel was no Katrina, but it was a pretty bad storm, and it wreaked some substantial havoc in our community. After the storm blew through, our power was out for several days, and thanks to damage at the city’s water treatment plant, our water wasn’t safe to drink for nearly a week.

As you can imagine, this put a serious crimp in a lot of people’s ability to live. Water, especially, is a terrible thing to lose suddenly; we can live several days without food if we have to, but without water that time is cut down to hours. Thankfully, the city managed to bring in water from outside and distribute it to those who needed it. But I didn’t have to join the long queues for water because I’d learned as a child in Cairo (where the municipal water would often shut down for hours or even days with little warning) the wisdom of keeping a few days’ worth of canned food and bottled water on hand. Having those supplies handy meant that what could have been a major life disruption was, instead, only a minor inconvenience.

In a crisis, that’s where you want to be. That’s where I want you to be. And that’s why I urge you to read the TIME article and think about those questions I posed above.

Five years ago, I wrote in this space that “the antidote for terror is knowledge“. That’s as true today as it was then. So take a few minutes, get the knowledge and bank it away. Hopefully you will never need it — but if you ever do, you’ll be glad it’s there.