A Place For My Thoughts :: gWaldo

On PIPA and SOPA and a NYS Senator

2012-01-18T21:31:00.000-05:00

New Yorkers, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is a cosponsor of PIPA, which along with SOPA, constitute some of the most distasteful pro-corporation (at the expense of the public) legislation to be brought through the process to become law ever.

In August of 2011, I contacted her via her website to warn of the dangers of SOPA and PIPA. Regretfully I do not have the transcript of what I originally sent her.

On November 3rd, 2011, I received this reply:

Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns.

I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at http://gillibrand.senate.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely,

Kirsten E. Gillibrand
United States Senator

I was floored. I had no idea that she was in support of this awful rights-shattering legislation. So I sat and stewed on it for awhile. On November 16th, after mentally composing and rewriting (and probably seeing a well-written article for inspiration, if not outright copied), I sent the following, to which I have received no reply:

Ms. Senator,
I believe that your backing of this bill is well-intentioned, but ultimately misinformed. As written, PROTECT-IP and SOPA betray more than a decade of US policy and advocacy of Internet freedom by establishing a censorship system not only reminiscent of, but actually implemented by countries that we perceive as non-free - specifically Iran and China.

Please consult with the EFF (eff.org) about this before voting.

I understand that you want to protect American interests, but that includes the non-corporation populace, who is fundamentally underrepresented in this matter.

I sincerely hope that your sources of information regarding this issue are not Industry Lobbyists. Copyright is a contract between the creators and the public; creators are supposed to get a monopoly on their work for a period of time, but when that time expires, those works are supposed to be released into the public domain to become part of our shared culture.

Respectfully Submitted

In the meantime, her Twitter stream has been relatively quiet about the rights of private citizens and their concerns over censorship.

Today, around 5pm:

Thx for your views on #PIPA. I agree there are real concerns with the current legislation & I'm working to make impt changes to the bill.

and

We must work to strike a balance btw ending online piracy to protect #NY #jobs & ensuring Internet freedom so our tech commty can flourish.

and before that, on January 12th:

Thx to all who've contacted me on #PIPA. Plsd @SenatorLeahy has addressed concerns & improved bill re: DNS provisions.

but back as far as July, no more mentions of "PIPA" or "Piracy", and nothing at all on "SOPA".

I really do believe that she attempts to do what she believes is right, and I hope that it is just that she is ignorant and misinformed of the implications. But as many have said before, and more eloquently than I, this is horrifically bad rights-and-due-process-stealing legislation.

Sadly, her recent words strike me as meaningless, wishy-washy, not-quite backpedaling meant to appease the masses. I don't get a sense that she understands the implications, or cares to.

As Joshua Timberman so eloquently put it:

Let's stop lying to ourselves and call legislation "bipartisan" when it reflects the actual parties: The People and The Corporate Interests.

-Waldo

On Unnecessary Distinctions, part 2

2011-11-03T08:01:00.000-04:00

I'm an ex-Marine.

Marines, stop whining about the word "ex-". "Former" & "Ex" mean the same damn thing. In fact, for a culture that celebrates acronyms and shorthand slang, I'm surprised that so many get caught up by this meaningless distinction.

In fact, "Former" is worse, because it's an extra syllable and three extra characters that you have to write or type. Marines are all about efficiency, so this meaningless distinction baffles me.

Marines, stop getting your collective panties in a bunch about this.

-Waldo

On Expectations and the iPhone4S

2011-10-07T07:03:00.002-04:00

I kept having this discussion in separate places, so I thought that I'd make it a post.

---

I fail to see what isn't to love about the new phone. Aside from the price, screen and case being the same, the battery life is increased, and processor, graphics, and storage are all doubled. Twice as much as the iPhone4.

Nobody has been able to give me a reason not to love the iPhone4S except that the number is "wrong" or that people can't immediately tell how cool you are so you'll have to answer "not an iPhone4; a 4S."

I'm really beginning to feel sorry for Apple, because apparently iPhone5 is going to be wide panned unless it has a built-in jetpack, transmits via Ansible, and is powered by Cold-Fusion.

If you're still unimpressed, look at your car. This years model is not twice as fast *and* more energy-efficient. Still no? Look at any desktop or laptop. Last years' comparable model was not Half of this years. Show me any product or industry that has done this.

If you don't want to spend the money on this year's model, then don't spend the money. And say that. Nobody is going to fault you for that. However, saying that this model isn't impressive or calling it "rushed" is insulting to the Engineers who made it possible.

The Screen has also been brought up as a 'meh' by some people. They want bigger. I've had people hold up the iPhone Retina Display (and apps' automatic conversion) and the iPad up as examples of Apple "just taking care of it." The iPhone4's Retina display has double the vertical and horizontal resolution of the previous iPhones (4x the pixels). (Take a square, draw an equilateral cross in it and you now have 4 squares.) Apple can't make the pixels bigger and still keep the idea of the "Retina Display". They also can't "just" (there's that word again...) add more pixels without either making Developers miserable or making things look awful by trying to auto-handle apps. The iPad was different; it could run an iPhone app at native size in the iPad, but it looks like a single playing card on a blank table, or scale it up to twice the size, so it now looks like a huge blurry playing card with an awkward border around it. And have you used an iPhone-only app on an iPad? It's just awkward if not ugly.

Perhaps they could increase the screen resolution of the phone, and allow apps that aren't scaled to handle that run surrounded with a black border. But the Retina display is only a year old, and making Devs rush about re-sizing their apps (where they don't have to redo all of their artwork!) this soon is a bit much. It's likely that screens will change in the future, and perhaps this is how it will happen, but now is (obviously) not the time.

Never mind that software has always been Apple's big differentiator.

-Waldo

Chef Explosion

2011-08-10T14:28:00.002-04:00

Here at Agora, we use a product from Opscode called Chef to manage our server environments. Chef allows us to reliably manage our infrastructure by providing us with the ability to write code that describes how a server should be configured. While not perfect, it has served us well.

Chef leverages CouchDB for it's datastore. CouchDB is "NoSQL" database product, similar in concept to MongoDB. CouchDB provides a lot of features and usability, but as a tradeoff for versioning, speed, and convenience it sacrifices disk space. In OpsCode's documentation, they do helpfully point out in the "CouchDB Administration for Chef Server" page that you should periodically run a Compaction. Basically what this does is remove some of the older versions of documents.

Following their advice, we set it up as a weekly cron (in our Cron cookbook, naturally), and so it looks like this:


cron 'Compact Chef DB' do
  user 'nobody'
  weekday '1'
  hour '4'
  minute '0'
  command 'curl -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact'
end

which results in a crontab entry that looks like this:


# Chef Name: Compact Chef DB
0 4 * * 1 curl -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact

One fine summer morning I came in one morning to several thousand emails saying "Chef Run Failed." This, as you may understand, severely degraded my opinion of the morning.

Cue the Swedish Chef crying "Bork Bork Bork!"

After I determined that a full disk was the problem and deleting an old unneeded backup file to get some headroom, I found that the biggest contributor was the /var/lib/couchdb/0.10.0/.chef_design directory.


root@chefserver:/var/lib/couchdb/0.10.0/.chef_design# ls -lh
total 96G
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb  30M 2011-07-21 18:26 07ccb0c12664d1f1ca746003182b521a.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 1.7G 2011-05-11 12:03 178087e2a7c06ff437482555acf60bab.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.5G 2011-07-22 08:24 18757f7428c465dd0504ac3d5d7ce577.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.9G 2011-07-22 08:24 367772ed026257ff1f88a1011576c9c3.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 6.6M 2011-07-21 15:52 3970d32b6acb424bb4d19684bdf9aff1.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.6M 2011-07-22 08:11 91188e3c7d61bdf079eee6ca719be05c.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 6.0G 2011-03-16 16:44 9f39fce5f578a23cc8cad7b3fe9b8ce9.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 1.4G 2011-07-22 08:24 af280ad217f6edca6276d1d1bcbc069d.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb  19G 2011-05-11 12:00 b96879fe1377e2b91f228109f3aac384.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 565K 2011-07-20 09:31 be708387555557a5b4886292346da6bb.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 3.0M 2011-07-20 11:27 d381d1f4b207dc3d9624720a7e88f881.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb  51G 2011-07-22 08:20 fe06cf9119d23dd7fec2492b79e7ebef.view

I was surprised that there was so much disk use, since we had been running the Chef Compactions, and expected this kind of thing to be taken care of. Wondering if it was throwing some kind of error that we weren't seeing (since it's running as a cron), I ran it manually:


root@chefserver:~# curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_view_cleanup
{"ok":true}

Which yielded:


root@chefserver:/var/lib/couchdb/0.10.0/.chef_design# ls -lh
total 70G
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb  30M 2011-07-22 08:43 07ccb0c12664d1f1ca746003182b521a.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.5G 2011-07-22 08:43 18757f7428c465dd0504ac3d5d7ce577.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.9G 2011-07-22 08:43 367772ed026257ff1f88a1011576c9c3.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 6.6M 2011-07-22 08:43 3970d32b6acb424bb4d19684bdf9aff1.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb   51 2011-07-22 08:42 7bbcbf585caef33abc0733282f40a22a.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 8.6M 2011-07-22 08:43 91188e3c7d61bdf079eee6ca719be05c.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 1.4G 2011-07-22 08:42 af280ad217f6edca6276d1d1bcbc069d.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 573K 2011-07-22 08:43 be708387555557a5b4886292346da6bb.view
-rw-rw-r-- 1 couchdb couchdb 3.0M 2011-07-22 08:43 d381d1f4b207dc3d9624720a7e88f881.view
-rw-r--r-- 1 couchdb couchdb  51G 2011-07-22 08:26 fe06cf9119d23dd7fec2492b79e7ebef.view

Well, that was a significant but only partial win. Why do I still have 70GB in .view files?

What Opscode hasn't told us about is that CouchDB has a thing called "Views", and these can - over time - come to take up space. A lot of space. (CouchDB views are the "primary tool used for querying and reporting on CouchDB documents" according to the CouchDB Wiki.) Opscode also hadn't mentioned that CouchDB says that these, too, need to be compacted.

The good folks on the internet, notably the CouchDB docs and a question on StackOverflow "CouchDB .view file growing out of control".

Among our findings we came upon this link to the Compaction page in the CouchDB Documentation.

My compatriot Jeff Hagadorn and I were both looking into identifing the design view names, and he beat me to the solution:


bash -c \'for x in checksums clients cookbooks data_bags environments id_map nodes roles sandboxes users; do curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact/$x ; done\'

(I had found a posting on the couchdbkit Google Group describing a script a user had written to solve this very problem here, if you prefer a Python-based solution which doesn't require you to know your view names.)

After doing that, our disk was in a much healthier state, and our chef-db-compact recipe now looks like this:


cron 'Compact Chef DB' do
  user 'nobody'
  weekday '1'
  hour '4'
  minute '0'
  command 'curl -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact'
end

cron 'Compact Chef Views' do
  user 'nobody'
  weekday '1'
  hour '5'
  minutes '0'
  command 'bash -c \'for x in checksums clients cookbooks data_bags environments id_map nodes roles sandboxes users; do curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact/$x ; done\''
end

which produces a crontab that looks like this:


# Chef Name: Compact Chef DB
0 4 * * 1 curl -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact
# Chef Name: Compact Chef Views
0 5 * * 1 bash -c 'for x in checksums clients cookbooks data_bags environments id_map nodes roles sandboxes users; do curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:5984/chef/_compact/$x ; done'

Now, you may suggest that we mount this location on a separate disk. The answer is that we had. /var/lib/couchdb is a separate 100GB physical disk. The problem was that /var/log is on the / partition, and that is only a 7GB disk. Once the views had filled their disk, the couchdb and chef logfiles had swelled with errors, and even mighty logrotate could only held them off for so long.

Bear in mind that there was no impact to Production during this event; the only outcome was that new changes would not have been able to be pushed out via Chef, and a couple of filled inboxes. Nevertheless, this highlighted some of our flaws. The most important of which is that our monitoring of the server was imperfect, and we missed the alerts that the CouchDB disk was filling. Had we not missed those alerts we could have diagnosed this before it was a problem.

As an aside, in addition to just alerting when disk reaches a certain capacity, you should also watch for sudden increases in utilization. If a particular disk normally runs at 20% capacity, but overnight a logfile swells the disk to 73%, it won't trigger your "75% Full" alert, but there is very likely a problem. One way to solve this is to record a "previous percentage" and compare that to the "current percentage" and alert in the event that there is a sudden increase.

(NOTE: Server Names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

UPDATE: I'm notified by the Senior Systems Admin at Opscode that they have added these compactions to the chef-server recipe. Their implementation is quite a bit different than ours, but no matter.

NOTE: This has been republished here with permission from my employer. Original post here

-Waldo
@gwaldo

On Being Disingenuous and Not Actually Solving Piracy

2011-08-03T18:04:00.003-04:00

A musician that I have previously enjoyed wanted to fund a new album, and decided to do so through Kickstarter.com. I happily contributed my $25, and was among the earliest contributors on October 30th. The $20,000 funding goal for the album completed on December 12th. (It just barely completed funding on the day of the deadline.)

For those who don't know, "Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine" is a cover band who plays popular music in a swing / lounge style.

Later that day, a survey was posted on the Kickstarter page asking for mailing addresses (a common practice in Kickstarter for the shipping of completed physical goods). I am not certain about the exact wording or details (as it has all been removed from the site by the poster), but we also had to click a checkbox swearing to the effect that we would not Pirate or Rip the CD that we'd helped fund. There were some objections to this, as many (including myself) found it to be rude and inconsiderate. The next day, he posted an update to the Kickstarter project page that reads:

To all Backers who purchased a CD:

If you are NOT willing to "agree" to the required "copyright" terms, please contact us via email with your reasons. We will do our best to help.

Thank you.

Lounge Mart
Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine

I'd expressed my dissatisfaction on the comment page and on his Facebook page. Some time later, all of the users' comments had been deleted (leaving his own), and he had blocked my account from making comments on his Facebook posts and Wall. I don't care to look for his indirect replies on Facebook (none were addressed directly to me), but my impression of them had been "This is my stuff, I can do what I want, and if you don't like, you can suck it. Real fans don't disagree with me."

Let me say that he is entirely within his rights to do these things. These are his pages to do with as he pleases.

But I think he did the wrong things.

At some time in July (on or before the 20th), long after funding had been completed and the album was due to ship (the original post reads: "LET IT BRIE" CD PRE-ORDERS WILL SHIP IN JULY 2011.), I received a notification from PayPal that he was cancelling my order and refunding my payment. Emails to his support email address went unanswered, as did a comment on his Kickstarter page (except for another user who'd wanted to know the same thing.) Further emails got not response.

Two days ago, on August 1st, he sent another update offering an additional album for $3, and you could save on shipping because they'd package them together. Paying into this finally got a response after this, too, was refunded.

On Aug 3, 2011, at 0:52, Lounge Mart Customer Service wrote:
>
> We have cancelled and refunded your LoungeMart orders and KickStarter pledges because of the comments (below) you posted on the KickStarter Project. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, and while we respect your right to your opinion, we do not wish to continue doing business with you.
>
> Thank you.
>
> MS
>
>
> "Dick, I love the music, which is why I was one of the first backers. I hate the spam, and your insulting copyright messages. Further, your comments on Facebook that amount to "Real Fans Don't Disagree" is a real dick move, not to mention blocking me from liking or commenting on your posts. I agree with Christopher Masto, entirely. The extreme copyright stance is overblown. Even if you're not targeting your fans with these messages, they're the majority of the people who see them. (Preaching to the choir, anyone?) If you would like to discuss, feel free to contact me. You have my info.)"
>
>
>
> At 08:45 AM 7/25/2011, you wrote:
>> I'm still looking for an explanation for this refund.
>>
>> -Me

(Note that he often goes by "Dick" in the albums and on stage, and was originally going to go by "Dick" instead of "Richard" as his stage name, but some objected to "Dick Cheese")

To which I replied:

Ah, I see. You can't bear for anyone to disagree with you; Not even a fan and willing investor. It's a bit disingenuous that you wait until the album is due to be released (and well after the funding was completed) before you found your High Horse and decided that you could be picky. It's pretty ironic that a Lounge Singer who does nothing but cover other artists' songs is especially touchy about Copyright.

Does that mean that you secure the rights for every song before you perform it, or do you claim that your rendition is legitimate under "Fair Use" under the Parody or Transformative interpretations?

So, a couple of interesting points from my perspective:

1) He's a lounge singer. Jazz is noted as being a musical genre rife with copy and imitation, but instead of litigation, it's part of the culture. "Hey, that thing you did was cool; let me try that." Lounge style is even more so.

2) He's a comedian. Comedy is also known for a lot of borrowing. ("Take my wife, please.")

3) He does no original work. His schtick is 'Lounge Covers of Popular Music'. Lyrics and melody remain largely unchanged, but the style is "swankified".

4) He is doing this to people who have INVESTED in a forthcoming, incomplete work.

5) He somehow thinks that clicking a checkbox is going to prevent piracy.

6) Preemptively accusing his fans / backers of piracy.

7) He thinks that by denying to sell a product that people actually wanted ("sight unseen", or rather "sound unheard", as it were) is going to keep them from wanting the thing.

8) He waited until the project was completed before deciding that he could afford to refund 'unsavory contributions.'

9) His actions demonstrate that he thinks that this is a good way to handle your fanbase.

I'm not entirely sure what he's trying to accomplish, besides pissing off fans. (Or at least former fans.) His prior antics had previously only annoyed me - there's a track in one of his albums where he takes a video camera away from a member of the audience and whines about 'infringing his copyright' - but I may stop listening altogether, now.

In short, it's obnoctious, and just about the least effective way to fight "piracy." This strikes me as disinginuity at it's best.

Maybe he's right; Perhaps "Real fans don't disagree", and I'm just not one...

In any case, who am I to tell him how to run his business...? (Besides a former customer, that is...)

-Waldo

Open Letter Regarding Army PT Footwear

2011-06-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

SGM McGruder,
I write as a concerned Veteran. While I left US Marine Corps in 2006, I try to keep abreast of the state of occurrences throughout our nation's military. ALARACT 239/2011 recently came to my attention banning the wear of Vibram's Five-Finger Shoes for wear with the IPFU or in Formation PT. What concerns me is that while there are reasons why they would be a poor choice for Unit/Formation PT, the reason cited was possibly the weakest reason.

Let's get this out of the way: Yes, they look like ape feet.

I can honestly say that in my eight years of active duty I never heard anybody comment on another's shoes except for their shine. Within the last couple of months I purchased my first pair of Vibram Five-Fingers (VFFs), and am still getting used to them. I've worn them as my main footwear almost exclusively since. Yes, people have commented on them on the street or at work, but, well, who cares? They are practical footwear made with the intention of promoting stronger lower-body and decreased pain. As you're still serving, I can be fairly certain that you don't see this, but we who serve age prematurely. I've come to realize that I can no longer accurately judge how old a civilian is. I've met too many people who I've mis-estimated their age by twenty years, because I'm used to a 40-year-old man often being stooped, with significant grey and wrinkles, and often a couple of knee or back surgeries. They usually look like they need to retire.

That's not normal. It comes from our lifestyle. Especially our exercise regimen.

If you want to know why and how barefoot running can be of benefit, I encourage you to read "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. If nothing else, it's an entertaining story and a quick read. (It's a good candidate for library checkout.)

But I'm not trying to preach the church of barefoot running; I'm trying to say that this is a stupid policy for the wrong reasons. First, at least in the Marine Corps, the PT Uniform isn't really a matter of "Professional Military Appearance." Yes, it's a uniform; you should look the same, but there's never been any mandate of style (running vs walking vs cross-training vs soccer vs tennis vs...), or even color. And there's a lot of room for "unprofessional appearance" there.

Next, the people who have this footwear are your prime athletes. They specifically and purposely found a place that sells these shoes, had a nearly custom fitting (as they're not sized the same as regular shoes), spent over $100 on them, and then learned to run differently because they want to do it better! These are people who want to enjoy running! They want to do more of it. They don't want to be a 30-something with arthritis in their knees, hips and back.

Barefoot running requires you to run with a different stride, shorter and faster steps landing on the midsole or ball of your foot. For me it's like sprinting but slower and for longer distances. This makes it inappropriate for Formation Runs, because it's impossible for an individual to run with the cadence. But this is true of all minimalist running shoes, whether or not the front is a solid piece or five toes. I encourage you to try to run barefoot more than 20 feet by landing on your heel. If you can take more than three strides doing it, there's probably something wrong with your nervous system, because the shock of the first landing should make you stop. If the policy had said something specific about formation runs (boots-and-utes, anyone?), that would have been something different. But this is banning the use of better equipment for your best athletes who were going to exercise wearing their Army colors.

Because somebody is squeamish about seeing toes.

Feel free to contact me about this.

Respectfully Submitted,
Harold "Waldo" Grunenwald
Ex-Marine (because saying "former" is stupid; it means the same thing)

A Public Service Announcement

2011-06-25T15:35:00.001-04:00

Public Service Announcement: Mullets are not making a comeback. Stop it.

-Waldo

On "Evil Companies"

2011-06-23T17:30:00.001-04:00

I keep seeing a theme circling tech circles, and that is a hint (or more) that making a profit is bad, and companies who make money from you are evil.

Stop it.

If you paid money for a product or service, and are happy with it, then be happy. If not, review their customer service / returns policy, complain and attempt to initiate a return, and move on with life. If that company doesn't change how they do things and/or your needs do not change to match what they provide, don't be a patron.

Apple makes money hand-over-fist by providing products and services that many people enjoy. If you're not one of them, don't give them money.

Last week I was at a tech conference, and one of the keynote speakers was a VP of Facebook. Facebook is enjoyed by most of it's active users. They voluntarily share info with Facebook, and in return they get easy access to their network of friends, and (depending on whether or not you choose to get value from it) receive or put-up-with advertisements. That's their business model. They provide a service for free (in terms of cash), and provide their customers with a framework for communication and interaction, and thus entertainment. During the keynote, the VP played a video about a woman who'd been hit by the recent hurricanes. When the dust settled, at first glance her neighborhood was riddled with debris. When more closely examined, she noticed that they were pictures of other peoples' families, childrens' toys, heirlooms, letters, etc. She thought that, like her with all of the things that she was missing, those people would want their tangible memories returned to them in order to help restore a sense of normalcy. So she started a Facebook group. Individuals took photos of items, added them to the group, and people could claim or identify individual items from anything posted.

Without Facebook (or something similar with those capabilities), this would have been largely unsuccessful, if not impossible.

But somebody at that conference posted (verbatim): "How much money did @Facebook make on traffic "helping" connect people in the wake of the Alabama tornados shown in ad @ #velocityconf?"

My response was "I don't see that that matters..." http://twitter.com/gwaldo/status/81404040486985728

First, Facebook didn't cause the disaster. They also didn't charge for their service or this feature. Nothing about their operation or billing changed in response to the disaster except to ensure that the site kept running. Business as usual. If the objection was that they made an advertisement, it was pretty tasteful, and displayed an example of how their site had been used by real people for something important to them.

If they should have stopped receiving payments for that natural occurrence (a series of tornadoes), I ask what natural occurrences they should stop receiving payments for. Earthquakes? Tsunamis? Volcanic eruptions? Solar Flares? Supernovae? Hail, snow, and rain? Tides?

At what point does your argument become ridiculous? To me, it's the beginning.

-Waldo

On Project Managers

2011-06-09T20:18:00.000-04:00

Three-Year-Olds are natural Project Managers; You spend more time talking about what you're doing than actually doing it. (Unless you yell at them.)

-Waldo

On Comparisons

2011-05-30T20:56:00.001-04:00

I've been reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (and is being completed by Brandon Sanderson) since the late 1990's, and have recently started re-reading the series now that it is almost completed so that I have entire story in recent memory. I have started the series multiple times, but had run out of published books. By the time the next book would come out, I'd have forgotten many of the plot points. Truth be told, I'm starting to wear on many of the points of the series; there seems to be a lot of time re-establishing characters from book-to-book. This is there for good reason, but when you read the series from start-to-finish, it's just repetitive.

But something else has bothered me for some time, and that's one of the review quotes on most (if not all) of the novels. In a New York Times review, it was said "Robert Jordan has come to dominiate the world Tolkien began to reveal."

Were I Jordan, I would find this absolutely insulting.

If they were to replace the word "world" with "genre", that would be acceptable. But they don't. They imply that it's the same setting. Sure it's possible that it's one huge planet with massive continents, and the Tolkien stories (of which there are many, and they are expansive!), and it's possible that Rand and Frodo could meet up at some point! (Mind, I haven't yet finished the story.)

While we're at it, why not include the Earthsea stories, the Forgotten Realms, and for good measure include the varied lands of at least one of Moorcock's Eternal Champion incarnations in for good measure?!

I can only assume that Jordan didn't have any say into the cover design. I'd be flattered to have my works compared to Tolkien's in terms of richness or quality! But to imply that it's a continuation of the same world, when he's obviously taken such pains to build a rich and unique history and culture just strikes me as insulting.

But as I said, I haven't yet completed the series, but if at the end, Rand meets up with Frodo and Galadriel, I'm going to burn my copies of the series. And probably Tor's Headquarters as well...

-Waldo

On Memorial Day

2011-05-29T09:35:00.003-04:00

Before Memorial Day begins, I'd like to get this out of the way: don't thank the Veterans. We have a day for that - it's called Veteran's Day. Memorial Day isn't about us.

We came home.

If you want to thank someone, thank a household who has an empty place at their table.

-Waldo

A Knife Review

2011-05-16T23:14:00.003-04:00

I have never owned a perfect knife.

But I have had a couple that I love dearly. The first I discovered at a flea market was a Phillipines Barong, with "Phillipines 1945" with some artwork chiseled into the side. It was mine for $40. Ebony handle carved into what I think was a dragon to the Philipino people, slight surface rust that I was able to clean to a beautiful patina. It was almost exactly the same length as a Ka-Bar, but just over half the weight, and the sexy curvature of the blade gave it more cutting surface than a Ka-Bar. The balance was impeccable. The sheath was unique. It'd been neglected and was brittle, but some loving application of oil returned it's lustre. The knife evoked such feelings of power and joy that are hard to explain, and understandably hard to understand unless you've held a tool made for your hand. Sadly, this knife was lost. I think in Pennsylvania on an ill-fated trip one Easter weekend. Also sadly, this is the closest to perfection that I think I've ever owned.

Along with my barong, I lost a Ka-Bar. They were together at the time. I didn't hold any special affection for that Ka-Bar - it didn't stand a chance along my barong. I did, however, purchase another Ka-Bar that I took to war. I had long since sharpened the edge to a perfect mirror's edge, and with the skillful application of some 550 cord, made the sheath more useful and convenient than it comes stock. This knife, with it's oiled leather handle and sheath, stamped "USMC", makes me feel my Marine Corps' heritage. It came back from Iraq with me, marked but still useful.

Sometime in the preparation for my deployment, I purchased a Kershaw Echo. A Ken Onion design of AUS8A steel, is a sight for the hands. While a far cry from the feel of my barong, it's organic curves simply makes it feel good in my hand. Point up or down, it feels an extension of my hand. It's heavy. The handle (a nylon / glass mixture, I believe) and full tang makes it very solid. The balance is in the hand; you don't throw this knife. (Like any knife, with the requisite knowledge and experience it could be thrown, and well, but this is the one to keep on you...) But I find that wearing a belt-knife gets you sidelong looks...

On the topic of Multi-Tools, I've owned several. Either after Boot Camp or MCT, I purchased a Gerber. The flip-out kind, with NeedleNose Pliers. I remember somebody specifically telling me to get the NeedleNose, and they couldn't have been more right. As a bonus, the tools all opened from the middle and locked via a sliding mechanism at the end of each handle. I had those for several years, and got a lot of great use from them. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that I lost them. I really loved this tool

When I won Marine of the Quarter, along with a Meritorious Corporal promotion and a very nice plaque, I'd been awarded a Leatherman. I still had the Gerber, and the Leatherman probably would have seemed a nice tool on it's own, it couldn't compare to my Gerber. It was smaller and lighter than my Gerber with a pretty equivalent tool selection, but it just didn't feel as rugged. This proved itself true when I broke it in Iraq.

Which leads me to my final Multi-Tool to date. I wanted another Gerber, and at Matt Burton's recommendation, I got one with Spring-Loaded pliers, the Legend. He said that they'd change my life (or at least my view of such things). I was skeptical, but in the end it proved that he was right. (I'd thought that I was getting by just fine without the springs. Silly me...) These were more expensive than I'd planned originally, and took a LOOONG time to get to me. In fact, they took so long that I only needed to use them a couple of times before leaving Iraq! With that said, six years later, and I still have this pair, and still love them. They provide a comfort in knowing that when I put it on my belt, I can meet most common tool needs in comfort.

I've carried a variety of folding knives pretty much since the day I got out of Boot Camp, if not sooner. Most have them have been Gerbers. I've owned at least three Gerber EZ-Out knives. Since Nate McCallum showed me how to open it one-handed, I was in love. A strong curved top and tip, followed by wicked serrations, this was a lightweight knife that took care of the daily needs well. It, too, felt reasonably good in the hand point up or down. The weak point was the handle - it was a flexible plastic. It helped to keep the weight down, but it was pretty flexible. Though, keep in mind that this knife was balanced so that it could be easily thrown as well.

At some point, I got something a little less viscious-looking than the EZ-Out and went with another Gerber folder. I never knew what this one was called, but it was a more-conventional-looking knife. Black-painted half-serrated blade, slightly gold-colored rubberized handle. I had a couple of these that served well, but were ultimately forgettable.

While looking for my next everyday-carry knife, I saw an impressive-looking Buck folder at a counter. At my usual purchase price, but letting the Buck name reputation get the better of me, I bought it. It was heavy and sturdy, but it really was not a good knife. Sadly, I carried this thing around for a few years before realizing that I don't like it! The first thing that I noticed was that there was little-to-no care taken to the comfort and fit to the hand. Somehow I let this go... Second, it became apparent that whoever designed the clip had never worn the fucking thing in his pocket for a normal day - I kept snagging the stupid thing on everything. Worse, instead of just bending the clip, it tore gouges of everything it caught on! Eventually I realized that if I ever got into a situation where I had to depend on this knife for my life and safety, I'd have to worry about the clip gouging out my hand!

Faced with this realization, I went back to a knife that I really liked. I saw that Kershaw does have a foldout knife that looks spiritually related to the Echo that I dearly love, in the Blackout. Another Ken Onion design in 1550ST steel, with my favored half-serration, this knife is pretty lovely. The grip weighs less than I'd expected; the tang of the Echo is a higher proportion of the weight than I'd expected. This is not a deal-breaker. Especially when you find that the blade is spring-assisted! I can't express the simple joy that this little feature brings! And this knife comes with quite possibly the finest shipping edge that I've ever seen. I really like this knife, but there is a minor flaw - the handle. There's simply too much handle. I took my Dremel to the handle opposite the liner-lock to make it easier to disengage the liner lock (you should be able to easily close the blade), and to make the thumb-stud a little easier to get to. Also, after I'd put the dremel away for the night, I realized that the thumb-ridges on the back of the blade are likewise almost completely covered by the plastic (where it's prominent on both top and bottom on the Echo), and there are NO ridges on the bottom (where your thumb would be in a blade-down hold)! I have yet to make these grip modifications, but I will soon. With all of this said, I am very happy with my Blackout, and so far highly recommend it.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Swiss Army Knives. Per my Father's recommendation, I think that every SA knife that I've owned was a Tinker. Two blades, two flat and a Phillips screwdriver, and an awl. All useful. I think I've owned at least three of these things, the first being a black Boy Scouts edition. I've always loved these for their versatility, but I've always been concerned at the flexilbity of the steel. But still, it's hard to go wrong with a Swiss Army Tinker.

On White Box Computers

2011-05-12T13:08:00.000-04:00

TechRepublic recently ran an article "Why consultants should not sell generic PCs and servers", which my "shame company" (the regret on my resume - my first job out of the Marine Corps) desperately needs to read.

For years, they've been selling 'white box' servers by Seneca Data to their clients. The main reason was that the owner was on Seneca Data's Board of Advisors. (He apparently never advised them to "stop selling us shit", "stop being stupid about fixing the broken shit you send us", and later "stop charging more than retail to your business partner.") It used to be that we would get a moderate discount for buying things from them (5-10% usually) versus buying from that paragon of deals , Staples. But at one point, Seneca Data determined that we were no longer spending sufficient money with them to warrant discounts, so they started quoting us about 10+% over Staples or Best Buy prices for things like laserjet printers. The servers that they sold were technically cheaper for equivalent specs, however they left out little things like redundant power supplies and hot-swappable hard drives and power supplies, which are little things that come included on all but the most bottom-line of name-brand servers.

They also left out little things like compatible drivers, crash-free machines (upon delivery), and firmware that didn't run the fans at full speed for the entire time the server was on. Without exaggerating I can say that that particular incident, the server was louder than my phone's ring, and the department supervisor dismissed it as "not that bad", then retreated to his office on the other side of a partition wall and closed his office door.

Then, good luck getting somebody useful on the phone - support and the personal touch are supposed benefits from using a local company. I got a lot more of the personal touch (but I wished they'd consider using lube once in a while) than I did actual Support. It took a ridiculous amount of time to get anything fixed through them.

Don't get me wrong; working at EXEControl wasn't all bad. Just most of it. I learned plenty of valuable lessons there, but sadly they were mostly anti-patterns.

(This, by no means is a complete account of everything that is wrong at that company. I'm honestly surprised that they still exist. But let us say that companies don't publish their newsletter when they don't have anything good to say...)

-Waldo

On Figureheads

2011-05-02T12:19:00.003-04:00

On the day that it is announced that Osama Bin Laden has been killed, I see a lot of celebratory comments, cheering and questions like "can we dismantle the TSA now?". These are all short-sighted.

I hate to point out that OBL was one person, and at best, a figurehead. This does not mean terrorism will end. It is actually likely that while OBL wasn't important to daily operations or even strategy, his death will likely cause a resurgence of "activity". That's not to say that this wouldn't have happened whether caused by failing organs or a double-tap, or that it's a bad thing that he's gone.

While I largely think that the TSA oversteps the bounds of reasonableness and good sense, and is spending money and effort on the wrong things (for a prime example Israel's approach to airport security), the idea that one man's death means that a need for Security goes away is ludicrous.

This all demonstrates a remarkable short-sightedness that makes me incredibly frustrated with the American Mind.

-Waldo

On The Other Side of the Story

2011-04-11T08:37:00.002-04:00

Perhaps there's more to Pac-Man than we've been led to believe.

What if Pac-Man is really the story about an indigenous tribe who finds it's livelihood threatened when a foreign explorer encounters their land, proceeds to consume all of their natural resources, and periodically encounters a powerful psychoactive drug which sends it into a homicidal (cannibalistic?) frenzy.

...or perhaps it's just Pac-Man...

-Waldo

Pinging Windows Server 2008

2011-04-06T15:39:00.000-04:00

By default, the Windows Server 2008 firewall is on. Fine, but by default it blocks ICMP (a.k.a. ping), which is bad/stupid. To enable, go into the Firewall (Control Panel --> System and Security --> Windows Firewall) and edit it so that it allows (wait for it) "File and Printer Sharing". No, I'm not kidding.

-Waldo

On the March of Progress (Mac OS X Lion)

2011-02-28T21:38:00.000-05:00

(Originally a letter to my MUG)

Keep in mind that this is the first beta released, so this may change, but according to Apple Insider these are not included in Lion:

Front Row:

Mildly surprising, but I don't know many people who use it. I love it, but I don't think I've used it more than a handful of times in the past few years. If you really miss the functionality, there are several alternative Media Center Solutions (such as XBMC, MythTV, Boxee, etc.)

Java Runtime Environment:

File this under "Not Our Product". Just like Flash, it doesn't need to be bundled. Apple including it means that it only gets updated when Apple gets around to it. Besides, Apple's made no qualms about not caring about Java. (See: Cocoa Development in Java.) If you want it, (like Flash) you can get it from the vendor.

Rosetta:

File under "Dropping the Dead Weight". Rosetta is the environment that allows you to run PPC-compiled apps on your Intel Mac. Like the Moto 68k emulation on PPCs, and the Dodo, it's time to go extinct. The Intel Macs were released almost five years ago now. It's time to bid a fond farewell. (In other words, find an app released in the last 5 years...)

The topic of the March of Progress has come up before, but I'd prefer to not see that one again.... As always, nobody is forcing you to update or upgrade; if your apps and files do everything that you want them to, and don't want to upgrade, don't. But please heed the warning that you will lose support. (As a sign of the times, YouTube dropped support for IE6 this past year. Google be Praised!) For the non-developers, each every additional platform that you support means loads of testing and bugfixes that aren't going to apply to current platforms. This is time that could otherwise be spent on more dedicated testing and bugfixes, and more importantly features! Keep in mind, too, that it's not just Intel vs PPC; It's Snow Leopard x86, Leopard x86, Leopard PPC, Tiger x86, Tiger PPC, and so on... (Truly diligent testing does multiple pieces of hardware per platform, but I think I've proven my point. If you want more info, there's an oldish article describing Microsoft's Mac Lab)

Happy Updating!

Waldo

Fun Fact

2011-01-24T08:29:00.000-05:00

Fun fact:

A Volkswagen Jetta will not start when it is -10 deg F.

(Ask me how I know that.)

-Waldo

A Reminder

2010-12-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

Let's not forget, America:

"Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave."

-Waldo

On Creationism and Crooked Cops

2010-12-20T18:02:00.001-05:00

It just occurred to me that Creationism casts God in the role of a crooked cop who plants evidence!

(I so need to visit that museum...)

-Waldo

On Facebook for iPhone

2010-12-14T21:12:00.001-05:00

I don't live on Facebook. On average, I'll check it a couple times a day, and almost always on my iPhone. This means that when I do check it, I often have many messages to look back on. (I usually look back as far as I'd previously seen.)

Unfortunately, their display algorithm sucks. Any time a post, comment, or like comes in (or it just feels like refreshing), it completely refreshes the view and scrolls to the top of the list. Even if you are multiple load-sets of messages in, it will reload you back to the top.

This. Sucks.

It wouldn't be so bad if it would return you to your last position, or if it didn't take so damn long, even over wifi. But it is bad.

Facebook for iPhone devs, look at the official Twitter app. They handle it perfectly. I was amazed.

New messages are loaded above your current view without disturbing your view position.

Fixing that alone will make me happy. Aside from the stability fixes (which were very welcome and necessary, I could do without another layout change (which seems to happen on nearly every update.)

-Waldo

On Religion vs Science vs Policy

2010-11-23T13:52:00.000-05:00

Please, Oh PLEASE, do not allow John Shimkus become the head of the Energy & Commerce Committee! Watch the video:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/11/new_house_climate_czar.php

-Waldo

Be Calm, Be Polite, and Have a Plan

2010-11-23T11:42:00.000-05:00

This is how you do it:

You Don’t Need to See His Identification

-Waldo

On Security

2010-11-17T17:28:00.002-05:00

I love this:

"Israelification"

"Huh... So, security is more about the people than their objects? Who'd'a thunk it?!"

Honestly, unless Evil MacGyver is on the plane, I really don't think that shampoo, toothpaste, hand sanitizer and baby formula are a threat to National Security. Nor will a good groping or X-Ray Glasses detect a cocaine-mule bomb. Somebody who knows what they're doing can do as much damage with a pen as with a knife, if they even need a manual weapon at all.

Can we stop the madness? Who is this security theatre for, anyway? Who benefits besides bureaucrats and the screeners?

-Waldo

Here is a copy of the UCSF Biochemistry and Biophysics letter warning of the possible/potential/unknown/unstudied effects of the scanners on human physiology, with helpful highlighting. (Courtesy of Isaac Z. Schlueter)

H.P. Lovecraft on Republicans

2010-11-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

Remarkably prescient:

“As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

-H. P. Lovecraft, 1936

(though I wouldn't necessarily limit it to one political party...)