Daily Telegraph headline:
Hay Festival 2011: ex-CIA man claims Barack Obama 'doesn't have a clue'
The real story: it's Michael Scheuer restating that no Western leaders have a clue and that we could largely end the terrorist threat by dumping Israel and the House of Saud and pulling out of Afghanistan. Naturally I thought reading the headline that I'd get some right-wing attack on Obama for not torturing enough prisoners or something. Instead I got a left-wing attack on the United States and Britain.
So, is this bias on the part of the headline writer trying to spin this into an anti-Obama story? Or is it the headline writer trying to trick right-wing readers into exposing themselves to a point of view they'd usually roundly ignore?
The Daily Telegraph is a conservative paper, but it is a British conservative paper. I guess anti-Obama Tories might be anti-militaristic too. It was Labour that was gungho for Iraq, after all.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
One thing Wolfram Alpha is great for...
is doing calculations with big numbers. Unlike Google, which always only gives you an exponentiated number,Wolfram Alpha gives you the real number too (and writes it out for you in English!). Much more useful for those of us who aren't math majors.
Most Americans more worried about deficit than default
That means that most Americans are either ignorant (whatever they may say) or very short-sighted or both. The consequences of letting the deficit spending continue unchecked this year can be fixed next year. Interest rates are at rock bottom, so the deficit isn't a huge problem...yet. On the other hand, if we default this year, we can't just fix it. It'll make financing our debt (which is currently five percent of our Federal budget) much more expensive and will drive up interest rates in general.
I doubt it will come to that. I still believe that the big money at the top of the GOP pyramid has more power than the foot soldiery at the bottom. Boehner isn't going to screw them over and Obama certainly doesn't want a default going into reelection. A deal will certainly be reached, but it may end up coming down to the wire. Again.
One of the defects of our political culture is that it simultaneously gives, at times, the out-of-power party the motivation and the ability to screw things up. The President usually gets the blame when things go badly. Great Britain, on the other hand, has no such problem. When a party's in government it has to take responsibility and when it isn't it can't do anything.
I doubt it will come to that. I still believe that the big money at the top of the GOP pyramid has more power than the foot soldiery at the bottom. Boehner isn't going to screw them over and Obama certainly doesn't want a default going into reelection. A deal will certainly be reached, but it may end up coming down to the wire. Again.
One of the defects of our political culture is that it simultaneously gives, at times, the out-of-power party the motivation and the ability to screw things up. The President usually gets the blame when things go badly. Great Britain, on the other hand, has no such problem. When a party's in government it has to take responsibility and when it isn't it can't do anything.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The Secret Service has a Twitter account?
Wow. I had no idea. Cutting him off from the official account seems appropriate. I do hope that the Right doesn't press this issue and try to get the poor guy fired, though. That would be ridiculous.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Square Enix post a large loss
There were some pretty insightful comments on the Slashdot article, actually. I don't agree with what some have said that they haven't released any good games since the merger (Final Fantasy XII was fantastic--fully worthy of the Final Fantasy brand even though it didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game), but they are right on the money with these:
I always thought that making MMOs part of the main series was a bad decision. Releasing one that clearly wasn't close to ready was a truly idiotic one. More's the pity, because they actually got Nobuo Uematsu to come back to do the score for that game.
Final Fantasy VII still has a massive fanbase. I'm one of the rare people who actually thought Final Fantasy VIII was better than VII, but even I would be enthusiastic for a VII remake on the PS3 a la the demo they released a few years back. Besides, of all the Final Fantasy games, VII seems most in need of a remake. It was their first foray into 3D graphics and the results did not age well at all.
They need to kill FFXIV (Score:2)
Who knows exactly how much FFXIV is costing them in development costs and server costs, but that ship has sailed. There's no point sinking money into something that will never turn a profit.
It's been seven months now. The improvements the game has made are minor at best. (The two biggest are that leveling combat classes is now possible, and that the market place works. Not well, mind you, but it works.) If you ask anyone playing whether or not you should, they'll tell you flat-out it isn't worth it.
This is not the sign of a game on the road to profitability. With every week that goes by, the ability to earn new players goes down.
Once they've stopped throwing money at a failed game, then they can start worrying about creating new games that people actually want to play.
But first, they've got to stop the bleeding.
I always thought that making MMOs part of the main series was a bad decision. Releasing one that clearly wasn't close to ready was a truly idiotic one. More's the pity, because they actually got Nobuo Uematsu to come back to do the score for that game.
They've been sitting on remaking FF7 for years. $150 million would probably be covered by just the initial release if they were to produce an updated version with modern tech.
Not that I care either way--I hated that game and pay less attention to Square with each year. But they _could_ do it any time if they only wanted to.
Final Fantasy VII still has a massive fanbase. I'm one of the rare people who actually thought Final Fantasy VIII was better than VII, but even I would be enthusiastic for a VII remake on the PS3 a la the demo they released a few years back. Besides, of all the Final Fantasy games, VII seems most in need of a remake. It was their first foray into 3D graphics and the results did not age well at all.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
UK newspapers are famous for headline's being deceptive
Actually, I've seen many that have only the most tenuous connection (if even that) to either the story or reality itself. This one isn't bad, but it's still misleading:
Tories 'demand and like' spending cuts, says Clegg
What he actually said was that some Tory voters might demand and like the spending cuts. If that statement is enough to strain the coalition further, that unquestionably true statement, then the government will likely fall within the year (and the fixed-term parliament bill won't save it: votes of no confidence remain, only there will be a 14 day grace period for a new government to be formed before an election is triggered. That government must have a majority willing to vote confidence in it). British Conservatives aren't the anti-government fanatics today's Republicans are (or pretend to be), but I'm sure a sizable portion of their staunch supporters are "shrink the government" types who would want to cut the government even if it possessed a magic tree that grew money for free without any taxation.
Tories 'demand and like' spending cuts, says Clegg
What he actually said was that some Tory voters might demand and like the spending cuts. If that statement is enough to strain the coalition further, that unquestionably true statement, then the government will likely fall within the year (and the fixed-term parliament bill won't save it: votes of no confidence remain, only there will be a 14 day grace period for a new government to be formed before an election is triggered. That government must have a majority willing to vote confidence in it). British Conservatives aren't the anti-government fanatics today's Republicans are (or pretend to be), but I'm sure a sizable portion of their staunch supporters are "shrink the government" types who would want to cut the government even if it possessed a magic tree that grew money for free without any taxation.
Wow. An episode of FLOSS Weekly that's interesting!
Usually they just talk about some random incredibly-niche open source project that almost no one even in the open source world is interested in with someone involved in the project. This time they don't have a guest and so (glory of glories!) they're actually just chatting about current events in the open source world, including products I use or am actually interested in using. Amazing.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Ugh. Microsoft to buy Skype
I wonder how long it will take them to kill the Linux version. And quite possibly ruin the product. At least there are alternatives.
Ubuntu aims for 200m users. Good luck with that
If tablet PCs take off, then they might be decently positioned to do that since that's what Unity seems designed for (as many Slashdotters have pointed out). That's incredibly unlikely to happen. Tablet PCs have been around for a long, long time and went nowhere. The iPad is successful because it isn't a tablet PC; it's a tablet, period, in other words a giant smart phone running a modified smart phone OS on an ARM chip. Does anyone really want to run Ubuntu, a desktop OS, on an ARM-based tablet? Doubtful.
The death of GNOME 2 and the move to Unity is really making me really resent KDE's permanent obtuseness when it comes to drag 'n' drop (i.e., forcing the user to choose what to do with a file every blasted time instead of moving it if its within a filesystem like all sane UIs do). I guess I'll give XFCE a try when I'm forced for upgrade my current system.
The death of GNOME 2 and the move to Unity is really making me really resent KDE's permanent obtuseness when it comes to drag 'n' drop (i.e., forcing the user to choose what to do with a file every blasted time instead of moving it if its within a filesystem like all sane UIs do). I guess I'll give XFCE a try when I'm forced for upgrade my current system.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
First a swingstate, now a bellwether: are they nuts?
Virginia as a bellwether of Obama's reelection chances? You've got to be kidding me. Obama was only the second Democrat to carry Virginia in over fifty years. Unlike California's switch to solid blue with the 1992 election, this was a fluke. Maybe if Obama has a small landslide reelection he'll take Virginia too mainly on the strength of black turnout, but otherwise it's going Republican in 2012 whether Obama gets reelected or not.
Two Ways to Get RSS feeds for Twitter Timelines
It is really a shame that Twitter removed the ability to subscribe to an individual users timeline RSS feed on the page (either through a button on the page or through metadata that produces the RSS icon in the address bar). Here's a pessimistic blog post on what this forebodes for the future of RSS. The good thing is that the feeds still work and there are fairly painless ways to find them:
- Use "Add a Subscription" in Google Reader and paste in the old-style address of the user's profile page. To get the old-style url, just remove the slash-shebang (/#!) from the current url (e.g., http://twitter.com/#!/isaachummel becomes http://twitter.com/isaachummel).
- Search for the person's twitter handle in Google Reader. The feed should appear even if no one has ever subscribed to it (way to go Google Reader!). To find the feed search feature in Google Reader, select Browse for Stuff and then click on search at the top of the page. Or just click this link.
- Follow this blog post's instructions.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Anti-evolution proposal makes mockery of science
It is only one guy's submission, so maybe it's not time to get too excited (yet), but this is still stunning:
One submission has come from a company called International Databases, LLC. It's a one-man operation run by Stephen Sample, who says he has a degree in evolutionary biology and taught at the high school and junior college levels for 15 years.
The material he submitted consists of eight modules dealing with current issues in biology and ecology. Most are well within the mainstream scientific consensus. But there are two that deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the "null hypothesis" is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case.
That makes a mockery of the scientific method (and half-way decent theology too). The null hypothesis is not "a wizard did it" (I'm not mocking religion here: he said the intelligence is not necessarily God). If that had been the baseline, modern western civilization would not have come into being (and you wouldn't have a computer or electronic device to read this on). The null hypothesis is simply that that theory is not true.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Tim Pawlenty has proven not to be a serious candidate
I think he just shot his presidential campaign squarely in the head by appearing in this circus. Not a single one of them were ever serious contenders for the 2012 election (I'd never even heard of Herman Cain before). You know you shouldn't have agreed to attend a debate when heroin and hookers become the focus of press attention.
To the Paulites: look, I like Ron Paul as much as the next guy (well, as much as the next guy who thinks he's crackpot, but the kind of crackpot that every legislative body ought to have a few of!), but he's about as likely to be president or even be nominated as Dennis Kucinich.
To the Paulites: look, I like Ron Paul as much as the next guy (well, as much as the next guy who thinks he's crackpot, but the kind of crackpot that every legislative body ought to have a few of!), but he's about as likely to be president or even be nominated as Dennis Kucinich.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Ah, the joys of instant news
I thought this headline was peculiar:
This sort of thing used to happen a lot in the print world too, though. It still does from time to time, of course. Fortunately, now it can be fixed instantly. When I clicked through, the headline was normal.
This sort of thing used to happen a lot in the print world too, though. It still does from time to time, of course. Fortunately, now it can be fixed instantly. When I clicked through, the headline was normal.
New Links
I've added a bevy of new links to the sidebar (if you can't see it, click on Home in the top bar). They are mainly various Open Source resources, including the unofficial LibreOffice web forums, which considering The Document Foundations unwillingness to provide a web forum itself, is something that the LibreOffice community should support. Mozilla (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) users had to create their own web forums too in the form of mozillaZine.
Giganews sued
The lawsuit looks like bull to me (admittedly based on a TorrentFreak article), but this isn't exactly shocking. Giganews, and pretty much all other massive bandwidth Usenet providers, real business is helping users pirate content, though done in a way that still provides them safe harbor cover. Come on, anyone with any plan beyond the $4.99 plan is going to be used for binaries (and I'd be shocked into catatonia if they were getting most of their money from that plan), and what binary files would anyone want to download from Usenet? It's an incredible kludgy way to share files. The answer is: things that would get taken down or get you sued if they were distributed over less complicated and error-prone channels, i.e., pirated material (and porn, but the most of that is pirated too).
Look, any attempt to shut them down or hold them responsible would set a horrible precedent that would have a chilling effect on Internet freedom for years to come, but let's call a spade a spade.
Look, any attempt to shut them down or hold them responsible would set a horrible precedent that would have a chilling effect on Internet freedom for years to come, but let's call a spade a spade.
Rental store installed spyware on laptop
It even took pictures through the webcam without the renters knowledge and consent. This really is an outrageous invasion of privacy, whatever the justifications offered. Looks like my mother wasn't being excessively cautious when she asked me to physically disable her rented laptop's camera (I cut out a piece of black paper from an envelope and taped it over the camera using transparent tape).
Steve Gibson said a little while ago on Security Now being recorded right now that laptop camera's ought to have a physical shutter that the user must open and close manually. I second that. But what about the microphone? Would a shutter work for that or is that something no one can fix without cracking the laptop case? It doesn't seem that the microphone was used in this case--maybe that would've broken wiretapping laws--but built-in microphones are even more of a privacy risk both inherently and because they are harder to completely thwart.
Steve Gibson said a little while ago on Security Now being recorded right now that laptop camera's ought to have a physical shutter that the user must open and close manually. I second that. But what about the microphone? Would a shutter work for that or is that something no one can fix without cracking the laptop case? It doesn't seem that the microphone was used in this case--maybe that would've broken wiretapping laws--but built-in microphones are even more of a privacy risk both inherently and because they are harder to completely thwart.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
New Yahoo Mail
Spending a few minutes on it, I think it's an improvement. It has all the new features you've come to expect from Yahoo Mail but finally looks un-OddPosty and like a more conventional webmail service. It's a good fusion. The ads are also less obnoxious than before, bringing Yahoo to the same level as the new Hotmail (though both are still quite obnoxious--AdBlocker is still justified IMHO).
I'm still sticking with Gmail, though, for a plethora of reasons. My backup mail, also, will continue to be Hotmail, mainly because Yahoo continues to lack one crucial feature: the ability to keep HTTPS on throughout the session. This is particularly important because I like to POP all my Gmail to my backup account and I'm not about to send my Gmail password over plaintext.
I'm still sticking with Gmail, though, for a plethora of reasons. My backup mail, also, will continue to be Hotmail, mainly because Yahoo continues to lack one crucial feature: the ability to keep HTTPS on throughout the session. This is particularly important because I like to POP all my Gmail to my backup account and I'm not about to send my Gmail password over plaintext.
Whither OpenOffice?
Now that Oracle has (after the introduction of LibreOffice and The Document Foundation) decided to make OpenOffice a community-based project, what will happen in the world free StarOffice derivatives? I can see three possibilities:
Options 1 and 2 seem the most likely. A fourth possibility is that The Document Foundation receives the OpenOffice brand and decides to kill it. That is too stupid to consider.
Update: A commenter made a good point below about the reliability of the usage statistic:
- OpenOffice successfully transfers to The Document Foundation and LibreOffice is merged back into OpenOffice under the OpenOffice name. I strongly suspect that The Document Foundation would undergo major changes in that case.
- OpenOffice becomes its own successful project. In that case, LibreOffice and The Document Foundation die on the vine. Not only would the advantage of the OpenOffice name be nearly insurmountable, the LibreOffice community is mired in excessive open source zeal and geek elitism (the bitter opposition by a large segment of said community to the introduction of web forums--because "mailing lists are better"--is only one example of that). Reading the LibreOffice lists, one would never guess that the overwhelming majority of OpenOffice downloads are for Windows. Linux comes in third behind Mac OS X and far, far, far behind Windows. And if you think that's just because Linux users have all gone to LibreOffice, think again (web snapshot for June of last year, pre-LibreOffice).
- Oracle manages to hamstring community-driven OpenOffice somehow. In that case LibreOffice either gets its act together, or it doesn't. If it does, it could supplant OpenOffice. Otherwise, free Star Office-derivatives will languish.
Options 1 and 2 seem the most likely. A fourth possibility is that The Document Foundation receives the OpenOffice brand and decides to kill it. That is too stupid to consider.
Update: A commenter made a good point below about the reliability of the usage statistic:
Your figure for how many people use OpenOffice is bogus. Linux users get their copy of OpenOffice bundled in their distro; they don't need to download it. So unless you throw in all the copies distributed via Linux distros, your figures mean nothing.Okay, so the ~90% OpenOffice.org for Windows download figure doesn't reflect the overall share of Windows OpenOffice.org. It does still show that there are a huge number of OpenOffice.org Windows users even if we can't be sure how much of the OpenOffice.org install base they represent.
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