Old School Vegas

The Cooler (DVD).

Beautifully photographed in an unvarnished Vegas, William H. Macy plays "the cooler" in an old-school casino. Employed by the Casino manager (Alec Baldwin), the cooler brings bad luck to a hot table or a gambler on a roll. The bad karma emanating from Macy is visceral. Everything in his life is dead or dying and his contract in Vegas is days from coming to a close. Then, a seemingly chance encounter with a cocktail waitress (Maria Bello) changes everything. They fall for each other - hard. And the cooler's dance with lady luck begins anew.

Plagued by a bunch of serious plot holes, the script is probably the weakest link in the film. Macy, Baldwin and Bello are each outstanding in their respective roles, salvaging - with sheer determination and skill - what could have been a disaster. Because they are so believable... we believe. In the possibilities that love brings... and lady luck.

DVD: The Cooler (2003)

THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE GREAT CALIPHATE

This is important. Seriously. All seven of my loyal readers: please email this to every person in your address book. This is Part One of Larry Abraham's Report. It is vital that you pass it on to others. Take a few moments to read it... and you will see why.

The war we are now facing did not begin on September 11, 2001, nor will it end with the peaceful transition to civilian authorities in Iraq, whenever that may be. In fact, Iraq is but a footnote in the bigger context of this encounter, but an important one none the less.

This war is what the Jihadists themselves are calling the “ Third Great Jihad” and are doing so within the framework of a time line which reaches back to the very creation of Islam in the Seventh century and their attempts to recreate the dynamics which gave rise to the religion in the first two hundred years of its existence.

No religion in history grew as fast, in its infancy, than did Islam and the reasons for this growth are not hard to explain when you understand what the world was like at the time of Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. The Western Roman Empire was in ruins and the Eastern Empire was based in Constantinople and trying desperately to keep the power of its early grandeur while transitioning to Christianity as a de facto state religion. The costs to the average person were unbearable as he was being required to meet the constantly rising taxes levied from the state along with the tithes coerced by the Church. What Islam offered was the “carrot or the sword”.

If you became a convert, your taxes were immediately eliminated, as was your tithe. If you didn’t, you faced death. The choice was not hard for most to make, unless you were a very devoted martyr in the making. At the beginning, even the theology was not too hard for most to swallow, considering that both Jewry and Christianity were given their due by the Prophet. There is but one God-Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet, as was Jesus, and the pre-Christian Jewish prophets of the Torah (old testament). Both were called “children of the book”, the book being the Koran, which replaced both the Old and New testaments for Christians and Jews.

With this practical approach to spreading the “word” Islam grew like wild fire, reaching out from the Saudi Arabian Peninsula in all directions. This early growth is what the Muslims call the “first” great Jihad and it met with little resistance until Charles Martel of France, the father of Charlemagne, stopped them in the battle of Tours in France, after they had firmly established the religion on the Iberian peninsula. This first onslaught against the West continued in various forms and at various times until Islam was finally driven out of Spain in 1492 at the battle of Granada.

The “second great jihad” came with the Ottoman Turks. This empire succeeded in bringing about the downfall of Constantinople as a Christian stronghold and an end to Roman hegemony in all of its forms. The Ottoman Empire was Islam’s most successful expansion of territory even though the religion itself had fractured into warring sects and bitter rivalries with each claiming the ultimate truths in “the ways of the Prophet”. By 1683 the Ottomans had suffered a series of defeats on both land and sea and the final and failed attempt to capture Vienna set the stage for the collapse of any further territorial ambitions and Islam shrunk into various sheikhdoms, emir dominated principalities, and roving tribes of nomads.

However, by this time a growing anti-western sentiment, blaming its internal failures on anyone but themselves, was taking hold and setting the stage for a new revival know has Wahhabism which came into full bloom under the House of Saud on the Arabian peninsula shortly before the onset of WWI. It is this Wahhabi version of Islam which has infected the religion itself, now finding adherents in almost all branches and sects, especially the Shiites. What this sect calls for is the complete and total rejection of anything and everything which is not based in the original teachings of The Prophet and it finds its most glaring practice in the policies of the Afgani Taliban or the Shiite practices of the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Its Ali Pasha (Field Marshall) is now known as Osama bin Laden, the leader of the “third Jihad”.

Jimmy Carter sets the stage

The strategy for this “holy war” did not begin with the planning of the destruction of the World Trade Center. It began with the plans for toppling the Shah of Iran back in the early 1970’s and culminated with his exile in 1979. With his plans and programs to “westernize” his country, along with his close ties to the U.S. and subdued acceptance of the State of Israel, the Shah was the soft target.
Thanks, in large part to the hypocritical and disastrous policies of the Jimmy Carter State Department the revolution was set into motion, the Shah was deposed, his arm forces scattered or murdered and stage one was complete. The Third Jihad now had a base of operations and the oil wealth to support its grand design or what they call the “Great Caliphate”.

The Great Caliphate

What this design calls for is the replacement of all secular leadership in any country with Muslim majorities. This would include, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, all the Emirates, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and finally what they call the “occupied territory” Israel.
As a part of this strategy, forces of the jihad will infiltrate governments and the military as a prelude to taking control, once the secular leadership is ousted or assassinated. Such was the case in Lebanon leading to the Syrian occupation and what was attempted in Egypt with the murder of Anwar Sadat, along with the multiple attempts on the lives of Hussein in Jordan, Mubarak of Egypt and Musharraf in Pakistan. Pakistan is a particular prize because of its nuclear weapons.

The long-range strategy of the Third Jihad counts on three strategic goals. 1. The U.S. withdrawing from the region just as it did in Southeast Asia, following Vietnam. 2. Taking control of the oil wealth in the Muslim countries, which would be upwards to 75% of known reserves, and 3. Using nuclear weapons or other WMDs to annihilate Israel. A further outcome of successfully achieving these objectives would be to place the United Nations as the sole arbiter in East/West negotiations.

Evidence of the Bush Administration awareness of this plan is found in the facts that immediately following the 9/11 attack, their first move was to shore up Pakistan and Egypt, believing that these two would be the next targets for al Qaeda while Americans focused on the disaster in New York. The administration also knew that the most important objective was to send a loud and clear message that the U.S. was in the region to stay, not only to shore up our allies but to send a message to the Jihadists. The attack on Afghanistan was necessary to break-up a secure al Qaeda base of operations and put their leadership on the run or in prison.

Why Iraq?

The war on Iraq also met a very strategic necessity in that no one knew how much collaboration existed between Saddam Hussein and the master planners of the Third Jihad or his willingness to hand off WMDs to terrorist groups including the PLO in Israel. What was known, were serious indications of on-going collaboration, as Saddam funneled money to families of suicide bombers attacking the Israelis and others in Kuwait.

What the U.S. needed to establish was a significant base of operations smack dab in the middle of the Islamic world, in a location which effectively cut it in half. Iraq was the ideal target for this and a host of other strategic reasons.

Leadership of various anti-American groups both here and abroad understood the vital nature of the Bush initiative and thus launched their demonstrations, world-wide, to “Stop The War”. Failing this, they also laid plans to build a political campaign inside the country, with the War in Iraq as a plebiscite, using a little know politician as the thrust point; Howard Dean. This helps to explain how quickly the Radical Left moved into the Dean campaign with both people and money, creating what the clueless media called the “Dean Phenomenon”.

By building on the left-wing base in the Democrat party and the “Hate Bush” liberals, the campaign has already resulted in a consensus among the aspirants, minus Joe Lieberman, to withdraw the U.S. from Iraq and turn the operation over to the U.N. And, if past is prologue, i.e. Vietnam, once the U.S. leaves it will not go back under any circumstances, possibly even the destruction of Israel.

Should George W. Bush be defeated in November and a new administration come to power we could expect to see the dominoes start to fall in the secular Islamic countries and The Clash of Civilizations would then become a life changing event in all of our lives.

What surprised the Jihadists following the 9/11 attack was how American sentiment mobilized around the president and a profound sense of patriotism spread across the country They were not expecting this reaction, based on what had happened in the past, nor were they expecting the determined resolve of the President himself. I believe that this is one of the reasons we have not had any further attacks within our borders. They are content to wait, just as one of their tactical mentors, V.I. Lenin admonished…”two steps forward, one step back”.

A couple of additional events serve as valuable footnotes to the current circumstances we face: the destruction of the human assets factor of the CIA during the Carter presidency, presided over by the late Senator Frank Church and Carter’s CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner. This fact has plagued our intelligence agencies right up to this very day with consequences which are now obvious. Jimmy Carter is the one man who must bear the bulk of the responsibility for setting the stage of the Third Jihad. Americans should find little comfort in how the Democrat contenders constantly seek the “advice and counsel” of this despicable little hypocrite who now prances around with his Nobel Prize, while attacking President Bush with almost as much venom as his fellow Nobel Laureate, Yassir Arafat.

Lastly, we should not expect to see any meaningful cooperation from Western Europe, especially the French.

Since failing to protect their own interests in Algeria by turning the country over to the first of the Arab terrorists, Amid Ben Bella, the country itself is now occupied by Islamic immigrants totally twenty percent of the population.

We are in the battle of our lives which will go on for many years possibly even generations. If we fail to understand what we are facing or falter in the challenge of “knowing our enemy” the results will be catastrophic...

This was Part One of Larry Abraham's report. Part Two can be found here: THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS AND THE GREAT CALIPHATE

Hazing

Treasonous. That's how I would define the Yemeni Television Network (oops, I mean CBS) release of the POW mistreatment photos. Yes, the information needed to get to those in power. Yes, the soldiers who played roles in the mistreatment should be disciplined to the full text of the UCMJ. But the photos did not need to be released to the world to accomplish these goals. Let's face the truth: for the most part, these incidents looked no more harmful than some serious fraternity hazing incidents. But it's all about the politics today, and not about the lives of our men and women serving overseas.

Those who released the Abu Ghraib prison pictures have endangered the lives of our POW's in the hands of Iraqi militiamen. If Matt Maupin and other POW's are found to have come to harm after the release of these photos, their families should sue the media outlets that dispensed them. Their single-minded agenda to further the Democratic cause -- with no rhyme or reason about the information they disclose -- is painfully obvious. I can assure you that the Iraqi militia will not be hazing their prisoners.

Beating the Captchas

Few weeks ago, I wrote about captchas. Captchas are the little tests that Yahoo and other sites employ to verify that new mail accounts are being created by humans, not bots. Spammers like to use bots to create boatloads of free mail-sending accounts, leveraging the infrastructure paid for by Yahoo and other providers.

Well, no one ever said these spammers were stupid. Annoying and persistent, yes. Stupid, no. Here's a new method they're using to beat the captchas.

...To open an e-mail account, the applicant is asked to read the word in the Captcha graphic and type it into an application form. Because the disguised word is virtually impossible for a computer to read, spammers need a human to intervene, which ruins their automation process.

However, as first noted in the Boing Boing blog earlier this year, some spammers have found an ingenious way to bypass the Captcha protection.

First, the spammers open and advertise a Web site containing pornography. Visitors to the porn site are asked to enter the word contained in a Captcha graphic before they are granted access. In the background, spammers have already used scripts to automate the Web mail accounts opening process to the point where they need a human to 'read' the Captcha graphics. The Captcha graphics from the Web mail site are transferred to the porn site, where the porn consumers interpret the Captcha words. As soon as they enter the correct word, the script can complete its application process and the visitors are rewarded with free porn...

Whoaaa... did someone say free porn? ... ... ...I was kidding.

Porn gets spammers past Hotmail, Yahoo barriers

Dumber than a bag o' hammers

Frickin' ridiculous. Saw Survivor tonight. And, yes, Big Tom is definitely a few sandwiches shy of a picnic. Let's do the math, Tom:

Amber + Rob + Tom = No money for Tom
Rupert + Jenna + Tom = Possibility of money for Tom

Q: Tom, so why did you vote for Jenna and not Amber?
A: Ah starred en uh-liance wit Rob n ah nevah wuz gonna back out on nat. Ah cain't tolerate none of dat deception lahk what Rupert wuz gon' do. Nah, thazz not for me. Ah cain't hannle 'at one li'l bit. Ah ain't gonna blah blah blah... [unintelligible gibberish]

This is less a "Survivor All-Stars" and more a "Survivor Half-Wits". And the red-neck half-wits I know are all pissed-off at Tom. Apparently, he's giving them a bad name.

Smokin' ass spinners? Checkety check

T pimped his own damn ride. I suppose driving around in the Boxster S must have highlighted all of the limitations of his everyday car, a Toyota Solara. Thus, without engaging Vanilla Ice, an MTV camera crew, or a glue-huffing "sound department" of River City Customs, he embarked on a journey of pimpitization.

The results are admirable. And frightening. You won't hear me saying that the Solara is a chick ride anymore.

MTV ain't got nothin' on me

PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers!

The ultimate movie about sales is Glengarry Glen Ross. With a juggernaut of a cast and the most incisive script ever created in this genre, it is painfully realistic to watch. And the penultimate scene in this ultimate movie is Blake's visit to the sales force.

Blake: These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. To you, these are gold; you do not get these. Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. ...

Blake: We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize?
[Holds up prize]
Blake: Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired...

Blake: Your name is 'your wanting', and you can't play the man's game, you can't close them, and then tell your wife your troubles. 'Cause only one thing counts in this world: get them to sign on the line which is dotted. You hear me you f**kin' faggots? ...

Blake: A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing...

Dave Moss: Who are you? What's your name?
Blake: You see this watch? You see this watch?
Dave Moss: Yeah.
Blake: That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy, I don't give a sh*t. Good father, f**k you. Go home"...

Blake: You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* sh*t, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*.
Shelley Levene: The leads are weak.
Blake: "The leads are weak." The f**king leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years...
Dave Moss: What's your name?
Blake: F**k you. That's my name.
[Moss laughs]
Blake: You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. *That's* my name...

Dave Moss: We don't gotta sit here and listen to this.
Blake: You CERTAINLY don't pal, 'cause the good news is - you're fired...

Blake: PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN. Coffee is for closers. I don't see any closers here...

Blake: And to answer you question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and fire your f**king ass because a loser is a loser.

Memorable Quotes from Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

TLA Hell

I'm worried... yes, worried... about acronym overlap. Three-letter-acronyms (TLAs) are propagating so fast that overlap is not only inevitable... it's already happened in every sector of life. Consider the following "identical" TLAs. Not only are they in the same genus, say, "Computer Software and Networking", but they're also in the same species ("Information Security"):

MAC - mandatory access control
MAC - media access control (e.g., "MAC address")
MAC - message authentication code

There are probably a few more MACs in the ballgame as well. Confusing, eh? How do we remedy this situation? I recommend FLAs for all technology-related subjects. Four-letter-acronyms. Let's say we just ask for... no, demand, that all TLAs are converted to FLAs. And that any new acronyms are FLAs. For instance:

MAAC - mandatory access control (pronounced: may-ack)
MACA - media access control (pr: mack-ah)
MEAC - message authentication code (pr: mee-ack)

Couldn't be simpler, eh? ;-) And the penalty for non-compliance? Anyone found violating the TLA rule must create an index of all existing TLAs. The only problem: we have to get everyone off of saying "TLA" or "FLA" because... what happens when we get to "five-letter-acronym"?

Ah, a meta-overlap!

"We know the truth"

Tis some powerful stuff: The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth released this note in the National Review, signed by 189 of Kerry's fellow veterans.

May 4, 2004

Senator Kerry,

We write from our common heritage as veterans of duty aboard Swift Boats in the Vietnam War. Indeed, you should note that a substantial number of those men who served directly with you during your four month tour in Vietnam have signed this letter.

It is our collective judgment that, upon your return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war.

We believe you continue this conduct today, albeit by changing from an anti-war to a "war hero" status. You now seek to clad yourself in the very medals that you disdainfully threw away in the early years of your political career. In the process, we believe you continue a deception as to your own conduct through such tactics as the disclosure of only carefully screened portions of your military records. Both then and now, we have concluded that you have deceived the public, and in the process have betrayed honorable men, to further your personal political goals...

...Specifically, we the undersigned formally request that you authorize the Department of the Navy to independently release your military records (through your execution of Standard Form 180), complete and unaltered, including your military medical records...

...Senator Kerry, we were there. We know the truth. We have been silent long enough. The stakes are too great, not only for America in general but, most importantly, for those who have followed us into service in Iraq and Afghanistan. We call upon you to provide a full, accurate accounting of your conduct in Vietnam.

Respectfully,

Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann, USN ... other signatories follow...

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth & John Kerry on National Review Online

Software Registration

From JOS' discussion board, a developer asks how best to prevent piracy of his application:

I am trying to come up with a software registration system. I am debating whether it is good or not to lock the application to a single PC (if possible at all)... I have a few methods in mind for registration...

* One registration method requires you to be connected to the internet. The connection might be needed for a few seconds either the first time you run the app, or every time you run it. This essentially is to make sure only one copy of the registration code is alive at any given point. So if you distribute the app to your friends, all of you can't run it at the same time.

* Another method requires me to generate a different (unique) binary everytime someone buys the app. I am not sure how I would send this binary to the customer though. I guess I would create it automatically, and then create a link only for that customer to download as soon as the credit card info is entered (i.e. the sale is closed). After the app is downloaded, the binary and the link will be deleted. This looks pretty involved though.

So based on your experience, what kinds of "maintenance" headaches would these methods create? I am pretty new to this registration stuff. I wish I didn't have to deal with it, but looks like I have to...

We use a paid registration code for our Personal Edition download (free, but some advanced features expire after a trial period). The code gets emailed to the user automatically after a purchase.

When the user enters the registration code into the client software, the program will attempt to report back to the central server. This report includes the code, the internal and external IP addresses, user-name, and other basic registration information. If the user isn't online, the program will wait a few days and try again later.

If we receive multiple notifications from a bunch of different IPs that all use the same code, we know some piracy has occurred. We gently notify the original purchaser that they are responsible for distribution of the code... and that's usually as far as it gets.

The Joel on Software Forum - Software Registration

Just bootstrap it

Excellent article on starting up a software company on the cheap.

Greg Gianforte thinks he knows the single best way to launch a business. Here's his secret: "Bootstrap it."

That's how Gianforte launched his first company, software maker Brightwork Development Inc., in 1986. Eight years later he and his partners sold the business to McAfee Associates for more than $10 million -- a move that enabled Gianforte to retire to Bozeman, Mont., at age 33. After realizing that he couldn't spend the rest of his life fly-fishing, Gianforte started his second major venture, RightNow Technologies Inc. In almost five years, RightNow has grown from a spare bedroom in Gianforte's home to 230 employees and $30 million in sales. So it's understandable that he might think that he's onto something good here...

Start with Nothing

Sound Focus

From MIT's Tech Review, a fascinating description of emerging focused sound technologies. Imagine four people sitting in a car, each listening to their own personalized music, but without headphones!

...two inventors are each staking claim to a new audio technology that corporate customers say will have a huge market within the next five years. Known as directional sound, it uses an ultrasound emitter to shoot a laserlike beam of audible sound so focused that only people inside a narrow path can hear it. “It’s phenomenal,” says Simon Beesley, an audio marketing manager for Sony’s European business division. So far Sony has sold just a handful of directional-sound systems for specialty installations in stores and other locations, but ultimately, says Beesley, “Without question, this is going to be a billion-dollar-plus product.” ...

The Sound War

Degree of Difficulty

The debate occurs frequently: which sport is the most difficult? ESPN's analysis comes up with a clear winner.

We sized them up. We measured them, top to bottom. We've done our own Tale of the Tape, and we've come to a surprising conclusion. Pound for pound, the toughest sport in the world is: Boxing. The Sweet Science...

...But don't take our word for it. Take the word of our panel of experts, a group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail...

Their chart is pretty interesting. They were very quantitative about the selection process, taking ten athletic variables: endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, durability, hand-eye coordination and analytic aptitude. The top ten were:

1) Boxing
2) Ice hockey
3) Football
4) Basketball
5) Wrestling
6) Martial Arts
7) Tennis
8) Gymnastics
9) Baseball/softball
10) Soccer

Interested in the bottom five? Hint: Golf didn't make it, it was #51.

56) Curling
57) Bowling
58) Shooting
59) Billiards
60) Fishing

ESPN.com: Sport Skills Difficulty Rankings

Deadwood

The Deadwood message board has some classic lines that rival the show's best. Deadwood, for those of you who don't subscribe to HBO, is a fantastically written mini-series. It's based on true events that took place in what became Deadwood, SD during the days of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. The central character of the "camp" is Al Swearingen, played brilliantly by Ian McShane (you may remember him from Sexy Beast). He's a vicious, money-hungry SOB who owns the combined saloon, whorehouse and casino. History recalls that he made between $5,000 and $10,000 a day from his operation in Deadwood. That's probably the current equivalent of $500,000 to $1,000,000 -- a day.

"As a base of operations, it is f**king hard to beat a saloon.", Al Swearengen

Swearingen, talking about the 'Hoopleheads': “Sometimes I wish we could just hit 'em over the head, rob 'em, and throw their bodies in the creek."
Tolliver, feigning horror: "But that would be wrong. ”

From the messageboard:
> Does anyone know what "hooplehead" means with any f**king certitude?
> Near's I can figure, a hooplehead is an ignorant, backwoods, dim-witted, slow-thinking, muddle-headed, addle-brained, limp-d**k, dumb-ass c**ksucker.
> But we use the term with great affection around here.

Deadwood Message Board

My Top Ten Tips for Avoiding a Fraudulent Antique

For you antique collectors out there: my top ten tips for avoiding a fraudulent antique:

1) If you purchase nineteenth century stationary or business cards like this one:

Scotsman Hotel Scotsman Montana Jason Purdy, Proprietor www.hotelscotsman.com

Look for a URL. If a web address is included, the item is probably not genuine.

2) If you purchase an ancient scroll written in Latin or Aramaic, have it translated. Phrases like "tee shot", "SUV" or "Donald Rumsfeld" are the giveaways you're looking for.

3) If buying a shroud purported to have been worn by one or more religious figures from antiquity, take a long whiff of the fabric. It should not smell Downy-fresh.

4) A presidential letter written during the Civil War should never appear on three-ring binder paper.

5) Carefully study any nineteenth century photographic portrait. You can be almost certain that the photo is a fraud if any of the subjects are wearing "Survivor Buffs".

6) If considering a sarchophagus with an enclosed mummy, the ribbons of mummy-cloth should be free of dry-cleaning tags.

7) A 1914 Stutz Bearcat automobile in original condition will not have halogen headlights, a neon-enhanced undercarriage or an exhaust "fart pipe".

8) Degas never painted on black velvet. Nor were his subjects ever card-playing pets.

9) While Da Vinci was one of the most magnificent intellects in history, I am almost certain that his manuscripts never included any Excel Macros.

10) While he was a brilliant orator and battlefield general, Ceasar never appeared on C-Span.

These tips should spare you the embarassment and shame so common in today's antiques marketplace.

The Rickshaw Effect

Ohio is one of the states that, because of its high smog levels, is required to perform an emissions check on vehicles. Thus, it falls to the populace to wait in line at various E-check stations until someone adjudicates your vehicle's tailpipe gas and takes a $20 bill from you for the effort.

Aside from the fact that approximately 90% of all vehicles on the road comply and that ozone levels have dropped 30% or more in Ohio, here's why it's a bad idea for our area:

Ohio is in a valley threaded with interstate highways. That means if everyone in the metro area sold their cars and used bikes and rickshaws for transportation, we would still be an EPA offender. That's because through-traffic using highways like I-64, I-70, I-71, I-75, I-74, etc. would still be belching out carbon monoxide while we rode in our rickshaws. We happen to be at the confluence of an incredibly well-traveled set of routes. That's why national - not local - standards are needed.

E-Check

Spin Zone

Some random musings on the state of the media:

1) Interesting how ABC News -- or, the New York bureau of Al Jazeera, as I like to call them -- chose to devote an entire Nightline to reading a roll call of American war dead. Pity they couldn't devote a similar show to reading the roster of WTC victims, Pentagon victims, or even the gassed Kurds and hundreds of thousands of Saddam's murdered subjects: 'Nightline' plan to read war dead riles some

2) Lots of left-leaning pundits expressed glee and mock consternation over Cheney accompanying Bush to the 9/11 Commission hearings ("...watch, I'll drink a glass of water while President Bush answers your questions..."). But I can't seem to find too many mentions of the fact that Clinton had both Sandy Berger and another White House staff member with him during his testimony. The name escapes me at the moment but, true to form, I can find approximately eighteen quadrillion references to Bush/Cheney's testimony in a Google News search but virtually none mentioning Clinton's posse.

3) During Condy Rice's testimony, a lot of media attention was focused on Bob Kerrey's "swatting a fly" comment. "Kerrey expressed frustration with Rice's references to President Bush being "tired of swatting flies" in dealing with overseas terror outbreaks. "What fly had he swatted?" Kerrey said. "We only swatted a fly once, on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterward. How the hell could he be tired?"... Kerrey said. "After the attack on the (USS) Cole in 2000, it would not have been a swatting of a fly. There were a lot of military plans in place in the Clinton administration."

Hmmm... nice try, Bob. After the USS Cole attack, Kerrey said... let's see... that he did not advocate a military response to that attack... instead, he gave a speech that the best thing the U.S. could do would be to address the threat represented by Iraq's leader, none other than Saddam Hussein. The transcipt (nor the media) does not record the color of Kerrey's face after this fact was pointed out to the commission: Rice delivers tough defense of administration

4) For that matter, the right-leaning Fox News can be overbearing and unbelievably tabloid at times. "Around the world in 80 seconds" is useful if you have the attention span of a parakeet. It's compelling if you're interested in, say, the kangaroo that dragged the tobacco farmer out of a burning barn or the tragicomic drama of a tractor-trailer smashing into a bus loaded with rodeo clowns. But if you're interested in hard news and analysis that is really fair and balanced, I'm not sure where you turn.

Surprisingly, PBS' News Hour with Jim Lehrer might be the closest thing we have to truly thoughtful reporting. Alas, despite Joan Croc's $200 million bequest to PBS, their powers-that-be are still hitting up Washington's Left for their traditional grants while shilling coffee mugs and PBS "flair" for donations from the unwashed masses.

Team Enterprise

My old consulting buddy Shawn sent me a note. A little bit of background: after a stint consulting at P&G for the Information Security folks, Shawn was called up for activities in Afghanistan which he might tell you about someday over a beer. Now he's back, working for one of the largest defense contractors in the U.S. And, it appears, he's doing some fun stuff on the side. Shawn is a very bright engineer and developer, with a lot of experience in messaging, directories, and now, it would appear, spacecraft guidance systems. Here's the tail end of this message:

BTW, I'm also doing some independent research outside of work. I'm working with some associates (aerospace engineers, mechanical engineers, astrophysists, etc) on a team to build a design proposal for the Earth Return Vehicle used in future manned Mars mission. I'm responsible for design of command & data handling subsystem, computing architecture, infrastructure/environmental control net, and navigational system. I think we're seriously going to turn some heads with this one. Our team's website is http://www.spacemagnetics.com/teamenterprise/home/index.html. Check it out and tell everyone you know. Publicity and notoriety are worth 20% of the evaluation criteria for our proposal! So if you know of any contacts to media outlets/venues to do a press release (i.e. home-town news, radio, Internet mags, etc.) let me know.

Hey Shawn, I don't think the JVM license agreement allows you to use it on mission-critical stuff like spacecraft nav systems! ;-)

Team Enterprise

Village Voice: Kerry Must Go

I guess things are worse in the Kerry camp than I thought. The Village Voice, well known for their conservative viewpoint - not, writes:

Note to Democrats: it's not too late to draft someone—anyone—else... ...With the air gushing out of John Kerry's balloon, it may be only a matter of time until political insiders in Washington face the dread reality that the junior senator from Massachusetts doesn't have what it takes to win and has got to go. As arrogant and out of it as the Democratic political establishment is, even these pols know the party's got to have someone to run against George Bush...

Mondo: Kerry Must Go

BM... V

Mr. T's blog has an entertaining rant on a recent visit to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Seems he needed to perform the oh-so-simple task of converting a leased vehicle into an owned vehicle ("I OWNZ YOU NOW"). Hours later and one AK carbine short of an ABC News Special, he came away with his mission accomplished. Guess he doesn't know about the tiny, but very efficient, BMV office located in Montgomery. My all-time longest wait was maybe six minutes. If I didn't know better, I'da thought he was describing the Reichstag-like BMV in Watertown, Massachusetts. Ah, the memories. Good times. Good times.

Bureau of Motor Vehicles

Robbers Die Trying to Hold-Up Suicide Bomber

Lesson learned: never stick up a man wearing an explosives belt. Second lesson learned: never try to take the explosives belt off by force. Thanks to B for the link.

A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas claimed the “stickup men” worked for Israeli intelligence, while Palestinian security forces said the two were ordinary thieves.

Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel...

Robbers Die Trying to Hold-Up Suicide Bomber

Nine languages benchmarked

The following is a "Nine Language Performance Round-up, Benchmarking Math & File I/O". Accurate? Dunno. Interesting, though.

	int math	long math	double math	trig	I/O	TOTAL
Visual C++	9.6	18.8	6.4	3.5	10.5	48.8
Visual C#	9.7	23.9	17.7	4.1	9.9	65.3
gcc C	9.8	28.8	9.5	14.9	10.0	73.0
Visual Basic	9.8	23.7	17.7	4.1	30.7	85.9
Visual J#	9.6	23.9	17.5	4.2	35.1	90.4
Java 1.3.1	14.5	29.6	19.0	22.1	12.3	97.6
Java 1.4.2	9.3	20.2	6.5	57.1	10.1	103.1
Python/Psyco	29.7	615.4	100.4	13.1	10.5	769.1
Python	322.4	891.9	405.7	47.1	11.9	1679.0

 Benchmarking 9 languages

The Ghetto Mini-Pattern

No, this doesn't involve tales of Warsaw or Rick James. As a designer, architect or developer, have you ever been confronted with an unwieldy, nasty, fugly ball of application code that desperately needs a rewrite? Yet, there's too much working business logic to simply throw it away. Enter the Ghetto mini-pattern.

...Hide your ugly code inside a Ghetto. The ghetto is a single file or class where issues of code cleanliness do not apply. It is entered by reputable developers with no small amount of trepidation, and left as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it does the job, and it keeps the bad elements away from more cultured code...

Name: The Ghetto

DARPA and P2P

"S" emailed me a hookup to this article in which DARPA is funding several efforts to improve P2P architectures for the raw processing power, bandwidth efficiencies, fault-tolerance in routing, and so forth.

Darpa is pushing toward a world of ultralow-cost, low-power, ad hoc mesh networks. The programs are part of a broad military drive toward ubiquitous computing based on next-generation networks, including RFID and wireless sensor nets...

DARPA looks past Ethernet, IP nets

Revenge trip

I just got back from seeing the film Man on Fire. The screen adaptation of the A.J. Quinnell novel has received mixed reviews, but I found it remained generally true to the spirit of the book.

Creasy (Denzel Washington) is a broken-down, alcoholic, ex-special forces assassin. Visiting his friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken) in Mexico City, he ends up taking a job as a bodyguard to make ends meet. A kidnapping spree has spread throughout Latin America and a wealthy young couple hires Creasy to fulfill the terms of a kidnap-insurance policy.

Pita (Dakota Fanning)'s spunk and unabashed friendliness slowly penetrate Creasy's veil of pain and alcoholism. Soon, he's not only protecting her, but is also coaching her at swimming and helping with studies. Then, in the turning point of the film, despite Creasy's quick-witted defense, Pita is kidnapped from her piano lesson and Creasy left for dead with multiple gunshot wounds.

Corrupt cops, mobsters, and other officials are all taking their cuts from the kidnapping game. As Creasy begins to recover, he sets off on the ultimate roadtrip of revenge. And all hell breaks loose.

I rated this film four stars. Tony Scott has to tone down the nausea-inducing quick cuts, fades, over-exposures, and other tricks of the trade. When he gets into story-telling mode, he does his best work, as Fanning and Washington are nearly perfect in their roles. Do yourself a service and read the books. Nothing matches the entire Creasy series.

A.J. Quinnell's Man on Fire


Stupid people, behaving stupidly

Jason Starr's Nothing Personal is a pure crime novel, plain and simple. Less noir and more documentary, it describes the lives of two families, the DePinos and the Sussmans. Joey DePino is a working stiff with a major league gambling problem and a violent loanshark after him. His wife, Melissa, is disenchanted with her life, especially as she sees friends like Leslie Sussman get ahead. Leslie is married to David, an ad exec, and living in a ritzy Upper East Side apartment.

But David's life isn't all peaches and cream. A beautiful Asian co-worker, with whom he's had an affair, has turned psychopathic. As Joey struggles to pay off his debts and David grapples with having his affair exposed, things go south in a hurry. And, typical of Starr's work, lives are lost in the process.

This is Starr's second book and, while not as cleverly plotted as Cold Caller, you'll get diabolical pleasure out of watching some stupid people do irrevocably stupid things. It's realistic, compelling stuff and Starr is a consistently entertaining author.

Jason Starr's Nothing Personal

No, I am Doug Ross

I received this email a few days ago:

from doug ross to doug ross,

dude...please work on your representation of a doug
ross. you are totally off base w/ how i am portrayed.
i'm slightly dorky but you have taken it to another
level. chill be cool. be doug ross. thank you.

another doug ross.

My response:

When you search for Doug Ross on Google... who do you come up with?

When you need a hard-core hacker for those tough-to-crack problems, who do you
go to?

When you need a "Doug Ross" with 18" guns, who do you ask for?

That's right... me. All other Doug Rosses I'm aware of use me as a role model.

:-)

--doug

Perfectionism vs. Good Enough

Assume for a minute that some definitions exist:

good enough: The fuzzy range of software goodness which your customers are willing to accept your product and pay the negotiated price.

perfectionism: The software goodness required by which your best developer would showcase her software in a trade journal.

So... Is there not room for both? I mean a healthy software environment should consist of a tension between perfectionism and good enough...

My response:

It's "prioritization", not "perfection". The trait I look for, aside from technical ability and communications skills, is simply the ability to prioritize.

Nothing is ever perfect. Of those facets of our jobs that demand attention, which should be dealt with first? THAT, my friends, is prioritization. And very few folks I've come across have that ability.

When you have 30 days to ship a product, the developer who can figure out which tasks _must_ be accomplished to ship in 30 days... and spec out the tasks in the right order... is worth his or her weight in gold.

It all comes down to getting working software in the hands of users. Prioritization, IMO, is the key.

perfectionism vs. good enough