Amusing Year-End Blog Meme

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So, 2005 in Cities:

  • Houston, TX
  • Jackson, MS*
  • Chicago, IL
  • Sarasota, FL
  • Louisville, KY*
  • New Braunfels, TX
  • Hattiesburg, MS
  • Galveston, TX
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Mendocino, CA
  • NYC, NY
  • Albany, NY

(The idea is Kottke’s; tag, you’re it.)

The other Microsoft dude is even GEEKIER

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Paul Allen, forevermore the lesser-know MS founder, is nevertheless a very, very rich man. He spends his money in amusing ways; one pursuit is PDPPlanet.com a computer history website. Perhaps the coolest aspect of this is that you can, via the site, apply for and receive an account on one of the systems — either a DECsystem-10 or an XKL-Toad-1.

Wow. So, who’s up for a little TOPS hacking? (Via BoingBoing.)

Kottke Writes Letters

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In re: the Mac-Intel thing, we first find this, which is funny and familiar, since it looks like Mr Kottke bought at almost exactly the same time we did.

Of course, we assume he’s very tongue-in-cheek there, and that he knew, as we did, that MacWorld was coming up, and that he made his buying decision based on a number of factors. We further suspect that we may share as many as two such factors: first, that we needed the purchase in the 2005 tax year; and second, that we prefer not to be on the leading edge of a such a huge change.

Even so, the cries of Five! Times! Faster! might make us sadder if it weren’t for certain voices of reason. (In other words, those claims are based on some very biased tests geared toward multiprocessor (or dual-core) machines, and shouldn’t be used to compare performance of single-processor boxes to multi-processor ones.)

More Shenanigans on Cory Maye

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Remember Cory? He’s the guy who shot and killed a home invader who happened to be a cop serving a no-knock warrant on the wrong house. He’s on Mississippi’s death row.

Well, the part-time public defender who’s been working on his case has apparently irritated the Prentiss, MS, altermen by doing so, as they’ve fired him for doing so. Way to go, Prentiss! (Said attorney will continue to represent Maye; he just won’t be the PD anymore.)

What tools.

Amateur Archeology, Ukrainian Style

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A woman near Kiev has been doing some minor exploring and excavation of the WWII battlefields around the area. Her findings and pictures are worth your time, even if her written english isn’t quite perfect (it’s better than your Russian, we wager). Among the abandoned bunkers she finds all manner of rifles, pistols, grenades, and other more mundane detritus of war there — as well as, disturbingly, evidence of the staggering number of casualties from the battle half a century ago.

In which we are shocked — SHOCKED! — at good customer service from a wireless vendor

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Last January, my company decided to standardize on a single wireless vendor. This makes sense, since most don’t charge for in-network calls. We went with Cingular, and I had the opportunity to get a new wireless toy. Yay!

I got a Blackberry, since it was cheap. Well, cheap it was, and also unusable for my needs. (The biggest dealbreaker was that since we’re not stupid enough to run Exchange, the actual email intergration is pretty hopeless. It doesn’t do IMAP — in fact, it doesn’t really have a client of its own at all; it just syncs to the feature-free server at RIM. One of the upshots of this is that all messages from the Blackberry must come from the same address, and you get no copies of that message in your “sent” box unless you CC yourself manually. It’s a hopeless tool that’s succeeded largely because people haven’t seen better. Add to this the immature nature of its PIM apps, and you’ve got a tool I can’t use.) No problem; Cingular had a regret policy that allowed me to swap it for a Treo 650, so I did. (Actually, we kept the Blackberry and passed it on to the marketing dude.)

A month later I got a HUGE bill, whereupon I noticed a couple things:

  • For some reason, data plans are different, and using the Treo on a BB plan resulted in HUGE overage fees; and
  • They’d put me on a 2-year contract, which was contrary to what I told my corporate rep, improbably named “Tivarri”.

A phone call to Tivarri got both straightened out (complete with lots of charge reversals), or so I thought. (Yes, Tivarri had checked the box for 2-year-committment, and I hadn’t noticed before, so that’s kinda sketchy, but she said she’d fix it — and since I paid full price for the Treo, there was no reason to suspect she hadn’t.)

Well, turns out the Treo isn’t the best phone in the world. In fact, it’s a crappy phone. It’s also a crappy Palm, compared to the other dedicated Palm devices out there. What it’s good at is “being both in one box,” but only at the expense of being so poor at either other job that you’d never pick it under any other circumstances. The real dealkillers, though, were the phone complaints. Its signal strength is typically very weak (even when other Cingular phones are doing fine), its volume is too low, etc. By late summer I was pretty Done with the Treo, and willing to move back to separate devices.

So December rolls around, and Cingular’s having this sale on RAZRs, which is the phone I want. I call to verify that I can upgrade, and they tell me no, my contract isn’t up until NEXT January. Um, WTF?

I explained all the above, and that the corporate rep was supposed to have fixed this last winter, and the nice lady at Cingular gives me no bullshit and says she’ll follow up by today.

Today the phone rings, and it’s some other dude at Cingular following up FOR the nice lady because she’d out sick. I give a summary of the situation, he reads the notes, and says he’ll call me back in a little while.

And HE DID. All taken care of. My contract is now up for renewal, and I can have the December deal on the RAZR despite it being January. Cool. We hang up. I call a store, check availability, and plan to drop by around 5. My phone rings again. It’s Nice Dude again, wanting to tell me that because of the run-around, they’re putting a $50 credit on my account.

No yelling. No bullshit. No real runaround, honestly. Tivarri should’ve gotten it right last January, but I also should have noticed she put me down for 2 years, so it’s partly on me, too. Even so, they fixed it AND then threw money at me, and with minimal effort on my part, and after years of dwindling quality in customer support interactions across the board, it’s nice to experience GOOD customer care for a change.

What “Pastoring” apparently means in parts of Tulsa

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Lonnie Latham, a highly-placed member of the Southern Baptist Convention was busted on lewdness charges for trying to pick up a plainclothes cop outside an Oklahoma City hotel.

From the article:

Latham, who has spoken out against homosexuality, asked the officer to join him in his hotel room for oral sex. Latham was arrested and his 2005 Mercedes automobile was impounded, [police Capt. Jeffrey] Becker said. Calls to Latham at his church were not immediately returned Wednesday. When he left jail, he said: “I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police.” The arrest took place in the parking lot of the Habana Inn, which is in an area where the public has complained about male prostitutes flagging down cars, Becker said. The plainclothes officers was investigating these complaints.

Damn Right

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Go read this right now. Here’s a bit:

When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it? He admitted it. But instead of expressing regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and–going even more boldly on the offensive–that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a “shameful act.” As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses “inherent” authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?

Where does this lead us? Schell goes on:

The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush’s abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war (“war of choice,” in today’s euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.

Bush must be stopped. If he does not stop, he must be impeached. His doctrines and actions endanger our country far more than bin Laden ever has.

Predictions

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Every year, Ed Felton over at Freedom-To-Tinker makes some predictions. This year, his list includes an event we’ve been saying was coming for a while:

(19) A name-brand database vendor will go bust, unable to compete against open source.

The power of tools like PostgreSQL is undeniable, and the growing popularity of its rival MySQL has definitely made it safe to pilot or deploy with an open-source database instead of paying big bucks to Oracle and the like. We’ve seen what can be done with these tools, and it makes us wonder why the hell someone would BUY something like SQL Server.

Still, we’re not sure a vendor bust is in the cards for 2007. Collapse takes time, and so far I don’t think the FOSS options have grown quite enough yet. However, Felton is usually more right than wrong, and there’s no denying that this year will see PSQL and MYSQL take more market share from their commercial competitors. The effects of that market grab will definitely be interesting.

Maybe that trophy went to the wrong fella after all

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In any case, the big trophy comes to Austin for the first time in 35 years: Texas 41, USC 38.

Aside from points, perhaps the most telling stats are these:

  • USC total yards: 574
  • UT QB and Heisman runner-up Vince Young total yards: 467 (200 rushing, 267 passing)

Actually, since we’re posting other stats, we’ll also provide this:

  • Heisman trophies won by active USC players: 2 (Bush this year; Leinart last year)
  • Heisman trophies won by active Texas players: 0.

(We’ll join the chorus once again pointing out, however, that the USC Trojans were not in fact competing for 3 in a row. They were the winners last year (despite Auburn’s record), but there were TWO champs the year before. LSU, much as it pains us to say it, was the other “title” holder that year.)

Sweet Fancy Moses! That’s bad code!

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Or, “How looking at bad code makes us realize we’re not bad coders.”

We’re pretty sure we’ve talked about The Daily WTF before, but today’s addition is pretty gawdawful. (The extra “w” makes it worse.)

Earlier today, we had a conversation with another geek about TDWTF and its implications for the trade. We here at Heathen have never been enaged in pure development, so we know our skills aren’t tip-top. We do, however, feel competent — and sites like that makes us feel even better.

Anyway, the conversation got us thinking about what makes a good developer, and how that works, and how you can tell if you suck or not, and this fell out of the dialog:

I’m leary of anyone who says “…. and therefore I’m a good programmer,” but I might cautiously suggest that anybody who, as I do, looks back over older code they’ve written and realizes it needs to be better and then fixes it is probably at least passable, and by this I mean “better than most based on what we see of the trade at dailywtf.” What kills most bad coders may be a simple sort of incuriosity about how things could be better. Like, spending days reinventing wheels, which seems to be a theme at DWTF. [OtherGeek]: Larry Wall says good programmers exhibit laziness, impatience, and hubris. Exactly. I’ve amused many clients by discussing the need to be “lazy enough”. [OtherGeek]: The key point being that lazy people have the sense to say “there has to be an easier way to do this”. Right. This sometimes leads to spending a day writing a routine to accomplish something programmatically that you could have done manually in an hour, but that’s ok.

Food for thought, anyway.

More on the wiretaps

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This Miami Herald columnist (Robert Steinback) is spot on:

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn’t win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help. If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden’s attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution — and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it — I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled. Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat — and expect America to be pleased by this — I would have thought our nation’s sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated. If I had been informed that our nation’s leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas — and call such procedures necessary for the nation’s security — I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them. If someone had predicted the president’s staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marine Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy — and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy — I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy. That’s no America I know, I would have argued. We’re too strong, and we’ve been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

There’s more. Read the whole thing.

2005 in Review

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We’re reposting this from Atrios because more people need to read it:

2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative. The issue is simple: Bush has declared that one man has the right to make the law whenever, in his determination, national security warrants it. While even I can understand the necessity of broad executive powers in emergency situations, we aren’t anywhere close to being in one of those. If Bush decides that personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head is in fact necessary for national security, then no one can object. The fact that he has not, as far as we know, done any such thing does not matter in the slightest. By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn’t (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability. It’s a mystery why Russert and the gang can giggle over their little roundtables, essentially ignoring what amounts to a military coup by our own president. He’s asserted the authority of commander in chief over the entire country, and not just the military to which the constitution grants him such authority. Yes, we hope and generally assume that this temper tantrum by our boy king will pass in 3 years, that the his overreach will not have long lasting effects, that the crisis will pass. 2005 was the year the president declared he was the law, and few of our elite opinion makers and shapers bothered to notice, or care.

Sounds like a pretty good barometer to us

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From here:

The true measure of a nation’s morality is how it operates its secret services.

Sure, it’s really just another way to point out that ethics and honesty matter most when you think nobody’s looking. Everybody plays nice when the lights are on. How you act when you think nobody will find out is the real test, and we’re flunking on that one. Just ask this guy.

Moments for Inappropriate Humor, 2006 Edition

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Today, we’re writing documentation. Specifically, we’re documenting the sixty bazillion (yes) packages and such built into our product. (It appears Java cannot wipe its own ass without including sixty bazillion (yes) frameworks, packages, etc.)

Towards the end of the list, we find one whose name amuses us, and we wonder how wrong it would be to include the following definition and license data instead of the stuff found here:

Saxon
British heavy metal band. Uses little-known “bad artistic license.” No known reasonable or appropriate uses outside dark basements filled with pimply middle school (male) nerds and, optionally, D&D paraphernalia. Inclusion with more than one installation of the product at best unwise and at worst impossible.

Amusingly, the band is actually the second real listing returned by Google. The first is the XSLT tool. This makes us giggle.

Record Labels Cutting Off Nose, Spiting Face

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BoingBoing and Pandagon both have coverage of the following insert in the new Coldplay CD:
insert

Of course, these rules are only visible after you’ve paid for the CD and brought it home, and as the disc’s rules say, “Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return or refund,” so if you don’t like the rules, that’s tough. What are the other rules? Here are some gems: “This CD can’t be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3” and “This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs.” BoingBoing

We’ve no clue if they’ve broken the CD so it won’t play right or not; the copy we have at Heathen Central was purchased long ago, and we had no trouble ripping the tracks at all. Even if it’s just sabre rattling, though, a big “fuck you” to any buyer who wants to play it on an iPod, or any CD player they want, or some DVD players, or whatever. There’s got to be more to this, but that’s all we got for now.

Time for more time

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Today will be one second longer than a normal day, as the International Earth Rotation Service has declared the need for a leap second to keep everything in sync. This means that 2005 Dec 31 23:59:59 will be followed by 2005 Dec 23:59:60, which will in turn give way to 2006 Jan 01 00:00:00. Cool!

There’s more on this over at JWZ’s place; check it out. Also, how cool is it that there’s something called the “International Earth Rotation Service?”