Calvin and Hobbes

Why Calvin and Hobbes stands head and shoulders above almost all other newspaper comic strips:

And it's really a shame that it's so difficult to quantify this strip's greatness. I can confidently state that Calvin & Hobbes outclasses the rest of the comic strip world more than anything else has ever outclassed the rest of its medium. Sans this strip, the industry is characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a Family Circus kid misunderstanding the meaning of a word, or an overweight father playing golf while telling jokes such as I LIKE GOLF and GOLF IS HARD. It's a medium that doesn't really deserve something as good as Calvin & Hobbes, but it got it anyway, and the newspaper-reading world was made a better place by it.

You really have to admire a comic strip author in the U.S.A. who has his six-year-old protagonist describe himself thusly:

He's one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice!

Flame Warriors of the Net

What sort of Flame Warrior are you?

The Nuisance of Facts

Overheard at a private party in Brooklyn:

20-something Intellectual: Facts are such a distraction from the essence of what's really happening.

"I reject your reality, and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Best-worst horror movies

Cracked tells us about the eleven must-see horror movies which are so bad they're good. Like Return of the Living Dead:

It has the coolest zombies ever. Forget 28 Days Later, this was the original fast-zombie movie. Not only that, they talk. In fact, to my knowledge, this is the only zombie movie that actually features the zombies saying "Braaaaaains!" which may make it worth seeing in itself. Also, there's a scene in which, after the zombies have killed and eaten a group of paramedics, a zombie grabs the CB radio in the ambulance and insists that the dispatcher "Send...more...paramedics!"

Convenience more important than price

Ed Felten at Freedom To Tinker discusses evidence that people choose to download songs from file-sharing sites, not because they are free of cost, but because they are more convenient and free of Digital Restrictions Management software:

In explaining the popularity of Napster and other file-sharing systems, commentators have often overemphasized the price factor and underestimated convenience. Here we see students given the option of a free subscription service, and passing it up to use another free (though illegal) system, or a for-pay system that is more convenient than the free one.

(Emphasis added.)

Rogue scientist's method

The Onion is reporting on a rogue scientist who has rejected induction, logic and verification in favour of "calling test results as he sees them, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary".

"But if you want your results fast and with some flair, then come with me and I'll prove that the boiling point of water is actually 547 degrees Fahrenheit."

Pete the dolt just gets funnier and funnier

I recently posted about Pete the wingnut who used a satirical article from The Onion as evidence of the depravity of women who have abortions.

Pete's at it again. After it was pointed out to him that The Onion is satire and that "Caroline Weber" is not a real person. Does Pete say mea culpa and hide his head for being so humorless that he didn't realise that after reading the first paragraph?

No. He defends his post:

because I meet women like her in the field all the time

Yeah, sure you do. Because women just love those uterine contractions.

Since Pete asks us to call him a dolt, it would be rude of me to do otherwise.

Recording Industry vs The People

Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman, two lawyers from New York, have a blog Recording Industry vs The People which records the legally dubious war being waged by the RIAA against music fans and computer users -- with, it seems, the full approval of the US Department of Justice.

Of particular note is How the RIAA Litigation Process Works.

In a nutshell, the RIAA plays fast and loose with both the intent and letter of the law. Defendants are sued without any investigation, let alone evidence that they violated copyright. Defendants have included people who have never even used a computer, or have never engaged in illegal file-sharing. In many cases, no music downloading even took place. The RIAA games the system, turning it into a unfair case where the defendant is denied a fair trial.

On occasion, the RIAA's own technical witnesses have admitted that as far as they knew, the only downloads that ever took place off the defendants' computers were when they, the witness, copied files off the computer. You'd think that admission alone would be enough to sink the lawsuit, but in the lottery of the American justice system, not necessarily. Just because no crime took place doesn't mean that the defendant doesn't have to suffer for committing it.

Undoubtedly, there is illegal file-sharing taking place somewhere -- the RIAA hasn't invented that claim out of nothing. (They have however undoubtedly invented the figures they claim for financial losses due to file-sharing.) However, the lawsuits seem to be based on the idea that, since the crime of copyright infringement occurred somewhere, somebody has to be punished for it, and it is hardly necessary to bother making sure that the person punished is the person who committed the crime.

Unfortunately, it seems that between the DoJ taking the attitude that giant corporations like the RIAA can do no wrong, and individual judges with imperfect understanding of copyright law and even worse understanding of the technology involved, the RIAA has a nice little money-spinner going for them. In an example that is unusual only for the judge's honesty, in Interscope v. Duty, the judge denied the motion to dismissal, not because he agreed with the RIAA, but because he admitted he didn't understood the technology well enough to tell whether or not there was a case to answer.

I was going to say the lawsuits were a winner for the RIAA, but since the stated aim of the lawsuits is to discourage file-sharing, and file-sharing is even more prevalent now than before the lawsuits began, they certainly aren't having the effect the RIAA says they want. They are, however, bringing in a bucketload of money into the RIAA's coffers -- with absolutely no indication that one single cent of that money ends up being paid to the artists the RIAA claims to represent.

Also worth reading is Andrew Harden's warm-and-fuzzy guest op-ed, Between the RIAA and a Hard Place. Much of Harden's op-ed comes perilously close to soppy computer-hugging (which doesn't make it wrong, merely unconvincing to hard-headed politicians and judges) but, if nothing else, it is important for his explanation of why the RIAA's tactics threaten virtually every computer user in the world:

In the case of Elektra v. Barker, attorneys for the Recording Industry Association of America have made the argument that simply having a "Shared" folder on your computer can be considered grounds for infringement and, by extension, prosecution. [...]

The problem with this is that nearly every PC in use right now, running a modern operating system like, for example, Microsoft Windows XP, has a "Shared" folder on it. In fact, it might even have several. But you know who created these folders? Not the people using them, not some fiendish Internet pirates (sans eye patch and cool boat), but rather, Microsoft itself.

The RIAA has successfully fooled judges into imagining that "file-sharing" is just another word for "copyright infringement". But it isn't. The RIAA might like to believe that they are the only copyright holders in the world, but they aren't. File-sharing is just what it says: a way of sharing files between computers. It can be used to share your own files from one computer to another, which is not infringement, or it can be used to infringe copyright. It is dishonest of the RIAA's lawyers to suggest that the mere presense of file-sharing technology is evidence of a crime; and it will be disasterous if they get their wish to make it a criminal offence to even possess so-called "anti-circumvention" tools.

Cthulhu

A couple of interesting post-Lovecraft Cthulhu stories I've stumbled across.

The first is an interview with the Old One himself (itself?): "I, Cthulhu" by Neil Gaiman. Also known as What’s A Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing In A Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9’ S, Longitude 126° 43’ W)?

The second, here, is a novelette by Charles Stross about a Cold War arms race with a difference. Nuclear bombs are the definite lesser of evils here.

It's official: satire is now dead

And it was murdered by Pete.

Pete's written a rant about the evils of abortion, and guess what his primary source is?

The Onion.

Oh lordy lordy lordy. If Pete wasn't so deadly serious, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing.

Now, some folks might think that poor old Pete is guilty of nothing more than failing to read the whole "essay" in The Onion. But no... Pete actually quotes the supposed author as saying:

I realize there are those who will condemn me to hell for what I'm about to do. Well, I don't care what they say: It's worth it for all the fun and laughs I'm going to have at the clinic.

Is it possible that Pete's eyes glazed over the bit where "Caroline Weber" described the "fun" she was so looking forward to?

I seriously cannot wait for all the hemorrhaging and the uterine contractions.

Or maybe, since it involves real hard words with four syllables, perhaps he just didn't understand it. (What is a uterine anyway? Something to do with pickup trucks?)

Certainly he doesn't get satire or irony. And now he's murdered it for the rest of us.

Tough questions for the Entertainment Industry

The EFF is asking the entertainment industry some questions they don't want to answer, including:

• The RIAA has sued over 20,000 music fans for file sharing, who have on average paid a $3,750 settlement. That's over $75,000,000. Has any money collected from your lawsuits gone to pay actual artists? Where's all that money going?


• Major entertainment companies have repeatedly brought lawsuits to block new technologies, including the VCR, Digital Audio Tape recorders, the first MP3 player, the ReplayTV PVR, and now P2P software. Why is your industry so hostile to new technologies?


• Unlike the major record labels, many popular indie labels offer mp3 downloads through sites like eMusic. Why won't you let fans purchase mp3s as well?


• The major movie studios have been enjoying some of their most profitable years in history over the past five years. Can you cite to any specific studies that prove noncommercial file sharing among fans, as opposed to commercial DVD piracy, has hurt the studios' bottom line in any significant way?


• Is it legal for me to skip the commercials when I play back time-shifted TV recordings on my TiVo or other PVR? How is this different than getting up and going to the bathroom?


• Why are there region-code restrictions on DVDs? How does this prevent copyright infringement? Is it illegal for me to buy or and use a region-free DVD player, or to modify a DVD player to be region-free?

American Ayatollahs

Alternet is running a story about the ten richest religious organisations in the U.S.A.

Where Jesus Christ taught love, compassion and tolerance, to these Ayatollahs the message is more about hate than love and "tolerance" is a dirty word. While Jesus spent time with the poor, the sick, hated tax collectors and prostitutes, these would-be theocrats spend their time consorting with the rich and powerful and even murderous and corrupt foreign dictators. Jesus said to pay your taxes (render onto Caesar); these churches are all tax exempt.

Velcro as you've never seen it before

Unless, of course, you've already seen this photo somewhere else.



Link to photo of velcro being pulled apart.

Election fraud is the new black

Greg Palast reports on the suspiciously large number of spoiled and blank votes in the Mexican election. The pro-Bush candidate squeaked in with just 36.38% of the vote, barely one percentage point more than the opposition. Strangely enough, ChoicePoint Inc. -- the same company that helped purge Florida's voting rolls of Democrat voters -- was involved in the Mexican election as well, apparently paid for by the US Republican Party. Must be one of those coincidences, hey?

IT Support Anecdotes

Some hilarious anecdotes from the front lines of IT support:

• A help desk shift worker who received a wrong number call from a lady whose dog's testicles were enlarged. Instead of telling her she'd called the wrong number, he logged the call on the incident log, complete with full details of the advice he'd given her.


• A user who complained that his floppy disk drive was "eating disks". On investigation by the technician, he had been squeezing the disks into a tiny gap beneath the disk drive. On opening the PC's case, 20 or 30 disks tumbled out. "At what point did you figure out that this drive wasn't working?" asked the technician. "When I ran out of disks, I figured I'd better call for help."


• A lady who complained that her printer wasn't responding at all. She was told to switch the printer off and on again. She answered, "It's already off, do I need to switch it on before switching it off and on again?"


• The user who called up to say his "rabbit" was dead, because he couldn't move the pointer around the screen.


• The person who said his "broadbean" connection may be down.


• The user who called help desk to say his monitor was too dim. He was talked through changing the monitor's brightness and contrast, but that didn't help. The technician who was sent over to investigate took the sunglasses off the user's head and the monitor was fine.


• The female helpdesk operator who, when asked to lend a hand to move a bunch of 21" monitors, admitted "I can't even handle 17 inches", much to her workmate's (male and female alike) amusement.

See El Reg for more.

Who says Bush has no sense of irony?

Fifty years ago, Hungarian insurgents waged a bloody but unsuccessful uprising against foreign occupation by a superpower, the then USSR. In memory of that battle for self-determination, President Bush Jr visited Hungary last month.

According to the New York Times, Bush gave his own administration a sharp warning over Iraq:

"The lesson of the Hungarian experience is clear," Mr. Bush said.
"Liberty can be delayed, but it cannot be denied."

I think it is a fine thing that Bush is able to compare Hungary’s fight for independence with the Iraqi struggle for self-determination without foreign occupation.

Google on Click-Fraud

Google's CEO Eric Schmidt has an interesting take on click-fraud for online advertising: "let it happen".

Schmidt's argument is a purely economic one: the price of online advertisments will ultimately depend on the amount of fraud. As the amount of fraud increases, the price of the ads will drop, until they drop so low that it isn't worth the cheaters' efforts to commit fraud. In time, there will be an equilibrium state where the price is just low enough to make the amount of fraud bearable but not high enough to encourage more.

Eventually, the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline, because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks, in other words, the value of the ad declines, so over some amount of time, the system is in-fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution which is to let it happen.

Pretty standard Economics 101. From a purely economic point of view, Schmidt may be right... but I can imagine an awful lot of their customers are feeling quite nervous about now. Given that Google's bread-and-butter comes from online advertising, I'm thinking Schmidt is probably regretting saying what he did.

And on the other hand, he might be wrong about click-fraud not mattering. There is no real reason to imagine that the equilibrium point must be at some positive cost per ad. It may be that the equilibrium price is lower than Google's cost of supplying the ads, making it uneconomic for Google to provide that survice no matter how many advertisers they have; it might be that committing click-fraud becomes so cheap that it drives the equilibrium price all the way to zero. At the point that advertisers will surely reason that, no matter how cheap the ads are, if none of the clicks come from real people, it isn't worth paying even a penny for them. That would really do some damage to Google's business model.

25% of web users now using Firefox

Recent statistics from W3Counter show that Firefox's marketshare has now reached 25%. The top five distinct browsers are:

1. Internet Explorer 6.0 with 66%


2. Firefox 1.5 with 21%


3. Firefox 1.0 with 4%


4. Internet Explorer 7.0 with 1%


5. Safari 2.0 with 1%

The statistics are based on over one million distinct visits to more than one thousand different websites.

What I find amusing is that Netscape Navigator has completely fallen off the radar, with an insignificant marketshare, and yet corporate and government websites (always assuming they even acknowledge browers other than IE) continue to act as if Netscape was still important.

This also shows than any web designer who codes purely for IE is effectively treating one third of all users as unimportant. Maybe if IE held a 98% marketshare could that attitude be defended, but it certainly can't be now.

One last factor that should be considered... many web users set their browsers to identify itself as Internet Explorer. The main reason for doing this is to work around obnoxious websites that would work perfectly with multiple browsers, but explicitly check for non-IE browsers and kick them off the site. (Your browser is not recognised. Minimum system requirements are Internet Explorer... sort of nonsense.) So that figure of 25% for Firefox should be considered a minimum.

Link to the W3Counter report here.

And 200,000 geeks suddenly cry out...

...on seeing the IT Goddess calendar.

Sky-mice and somnambulant chickens

Despite having a backyard barely big enough to swing a cat, I have three pet chickens. After much labour, I finally finished putting up the chickenwire fence and bird-netting over the chicken enclosure. Take that sky-rats! Go and steal somebody else's food, you pigeons!

I had barely turned my back for 15 minutes when I discovered dozens of sky-mice in the chicken enclosure. I watched with absolute amazement as these mutant sparrows landed on the chickenwire, and then phased their bodies, passing their molecules through the steel molecules of the wire. I'm pretty sure that's the explanation -- I've looked at the sparrows, and they're too big to fit through the holes in the wire without phasing their molecular structure into an alternate dimension. At least that's how it looks to me.

So it's back to the drawing board. Fortunately the sky-rats don't have mutant superpowers.

And then last night, about midnight, I noticed that Bridget the white fluffy Silkie was sleep-walking. Go figure.