As I was stumbling through the internet a moment ago I came across an interesting photo of an underwater restaurant that is enclosed entirely in glass such that the diners have a constantly changing view of underwater life while they eat. Looked really cool. There was the obligatory comment as the third or so on the page:

“Definitely photoshopped. I can tell by the pixels, and I’ve seen a lot of ’shops in my time.”

Given the fact that goons are known for stockpiling clubs and hunting dead horses for years at a time, the comment should come as no surprise to anyone. But I just thought of something, three little letters that are like gold to any business: “EAV”.

EAV stands for Equivalent Ad Value. When companies get positive face time on large networks such as a news network or paper or a highly trafficked website, they are essentially getting ad space for free. And it’s extremely valuable ad space, because it is placed in content spaces where people are actually looking to read the content. Here’s an example: My company, TripAdvisor, got mentioned a couple months back in the show “The Office”. If anyone remembers, it’s the episode where Dwight Schrute opens an Agrotourism Bed and Breakfast at Schrute Farms. Its page is still at tripadvisor, and the clip is up at both tripadvisor and youtube. The mention cost us very little, but the value of it is exceptionally high, since it is in front of millions of people across the US who watch the show.

for an even better, slightly less biased example, Research In Motion says it estimates that it had millions of dollars of EAV from the whole “Barackberry” debacle, and I’d believe it. Think of him what you will, there is no denying our President’s intelligence and simultaneous stardom, and if he uses a RiM smartphone, then hell, shouldn’t I look into it. They paid nothing for that plug, and they didn’t even expect or look for it. The fact that Obama didn’t actually use a blackberry doesn’t matter at all.

So now we go back to this meme: it seems there are like 20 goons or farkers or the like who spend hours a day going across thousands of websites and delivering equivalent ad value to Adobe with this tired joke, and you know what? They hit all the highest trafficked images first. I’ll bet it’s worth tons.

I said, “I really can’t give out that information, but you can send a message to their email address–they’re extremely quick at getting back to people.” I gave her the aforementioned address.

She responded callously: “Well, I spoke to”–and proceeded to name mispronunciations of several of my more senior coworkers–” and Raja, who I actually met in person recently”–here she probably meant a coworker of mine named Raju–” so my contacts are all in engineering, but can you cut me a break here and direct me to someone in IT?”

When I again declined to give her any specific information of my coworkers, she asked, “Your office is–the Boston office, you’re in, what, Needham, right?”

And here I had the overwhelming temptation to say something I did not say, but am convinced would have been the right thing:

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I have to stop you right there. You’re not very good at this–I know, I know, cold calling is hard–but it sounds like you just incorrectly read off everyone listed on my LinkedIn profile. You should take a little time to try to pronounce names–like Raju. That’s an Indian name, and means something completely different from the word ‘Raja’, which means ‘King’, and was incedentally the name of the tiger from Disney’s Alladin. You should also sound confident in more details, like the name of my company, the location of my office, et cetera. I’m not going to ask you who you’re calling for; I can’t do anything for you anyway, but you should convince yourself before you call that my company needs what you’re selling. Give it another try with someone else on LinkedIn, I’m sure you’ll do great. Have a nice day, ma’am.”

Instead I was more direct, and simply told her I couldn’t give out any information further than the address I’d already given her.

One day I am going to be an old man who shouts inanities at telemarketers.

I look forward to that day with great relish.

def url_get_field ( url, field )
  m=/.*[&?]#{field}=(.+?)(&.*)/.match(url)
  n=/.*[&?]#{field}=(.+)/.match(url)
  if !m.nil?
    return m[1]
  elsif !n.nil?
    return n[1]
  else
    return ""
  end
end

def url_set_field ( url, field, value )
  m=/(.*[&?]#{field}=)(.+?)(&.*)/.match(url)
  n=/(.*[&?]#{field}=)(.+)/.match(url)
  if !m.nil?
    url = m[1] + value + m[3]
  elsif !n.nil?
    url = n[1] + value
  else
    unless /.+[?&].+?=.+/.match(url).nil?
      url = url + '&'
    else
      url = url + '?'
    end
    url = url + field + "=" + value
  end
  url
end

def url_remove_field ( url, field )
  m=/(.*)([&?])(#{field}=(.+?))(&(.*))/.match(url)
  n=/(.*)([&?])(#{field}=(.+))/.match(url)
  unless m.nil?
    url = m[1] + m[2] + m[6]
  else
    url = n[1] unless n.nil?
  end
  url
end

Now it’s easy enough to do! check this out:

irb(main):160:0> url = 'http://pigsflew.com'
=> "http://pigsflew.com"
irb(main):161:0> url = url_set_field( url, 'test', 'omg' )
=> "http://pigsflew.com?test=omg"
irb(main):162:0> url = url_set_field( url, 'archives', '526')
=> "http://pigsflew.com?test=omg&archives=526"
irb(main):163:0> url_get_field( url, 'test' )
=> "omg"
irb(main):164:0> url_remove_field( url, 'test' )
=> "http://pigsflew.com?archives=526"
irb(main):165:0>

The problem of oil is multifaceted. As of right now, it is the most reliable, portable, and easily producible energy source on earth. The issue is that it isn’t ours. Sure, we have some oil of our own, and we can increase drilling to use it, but then we’re just competitors in a giant game of oil, and make no mistake, we will lose that game.

Going back, the United States has been very lucky. In World War II when supremacy had to be measured by firepower, we were on top because we could produce better firepower faster and in more quantity than anyone else–and our firepower that was just waiting to be used was considerably more than most of the other players in the war could even build. And we produced the Atomic Bomb, which demonstrated our prowess.

In the Cold War, when supremacy was measured by information and scientific prowess, we created satellites that mapped out every square inch of any place we thought might create a problem for us. Our central intelligence agency had files that grew quicker than the KGB could ever know. And we put a man on the moon to show that nobody could beat the scientific pace of this country.

The next moon landing, the next atomic bomb, my friends, is energy independence. We can’t do this by using our own oil, because while we can sell weapons and space technology to our friends and use those infrastructures to keep ourselves on top, we can’t use oil to that end. What we need is our own power source, one pioneered by and held by the United States. One that not only solves our problems, but we can sell it to our friends, and keep from our enemies, one that produces more income for our country, and reduces the GDP of our enemies who would otherwise compete, and pose a threat to our supremacy.

We need a scientific miracle. And the only way to get scientific miracles is to do what we did with the lunar landing: Contract it out.

What we should do is offer a multi-billion dollar semi-exclusive contract to the first United-States company that develops a decent working alternative to Oil for portable and potent energy generation and storage, and agrees to deploy it in ten major cities across the country. When those cities’ demand for oil drops dramatically without significant cost increase to the average citizen, other countries around the world will look covetously at us for our ability to create what we need within our own borders.

What I mean by multi-billion dollar semi-exclusive contract: we are offering a competing company a fixed amount to offset their research and development for such an energy source, plus the energy demands of the United States for a set period of time exclusively to one company. We won’t let you gouge us, we’ll have to oversee your pricing models once your done, but you’ll be allowed to be a five year monopoly on the energy business. The one provision is that you will not be allowed to sell the technology outside of the United States, though you are free to market energy produced by said technology. Any intellectual property you produce will be jointly controlled by your company and the US Military, and should be considered top secret except for your company’s production and domestic distribution needs.

We need to stay on top. If we don’t do this then in twenty years or so, it might be India or China in the world’s center seat, and we will optimistically end up where Russia is now.

Now is where I get political: The policies of Senator McCain and Governor Palin are not terrible policies for the best of times. Work at defenses, decrease the budget, support the industry–fine. However these are not the best of times. Obama and Biden have policies that will cost money. They will in some ways be unpopular, and some things won’t even go through the Legislature. But it is imperative that they take the white house, because theirs is the path that (at least) will not take us away from US Supremacy. McCain will focus on the defense system–which was important in World War II, but is no longer meaningful in a world where there are at least 5 countries (the permanent members of the security council) that are known to have the capability of leveling entire countries without incredible difficulty. We are also pretty damned certain that there are others with that capacity too. Let’s face it, anyone who attempts to challenge the United States to a fair fight is completely stupid. So they won’t fight fair.

They’ll buy us. With oil.

I read in the paper the other day, yet another voter remarking their impression that “A vote for Hillary is just another vote for Bill, and he’s had his chance.” This common logic must be absolutely infuriating for you. Over the years you have shown yourself an incredibly intelligent, accomplished, and affluent woman in your own right, and just a quick glance at your Wikipedia entry (a dubious source perhaps, but the citations on that article are too many to re-list here), shows a list of feats so incredible that I am ashamed for those that would only recognize the feats of your husband.

According to the article, you had repeatedly denied Bill your hand in marriage before eventually consenting. When you did eventually marry, it states that you “still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that [your] separate identity would be lost and that [your] accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else’s.” (Wikipedia.org)

While I do not claim to have done the due dilligence of checking the article’s sources, nor have I read your book, I now wish that I had, and will go purchase a copy of “Living History” immediately. If, however, the words in this article are true, then it must absolutely sting to know that your fears have come to light for many Americans, and only because you selflessly helped to campaign for your husband when you were still an active and well respected lawyer.

Madame Senator, you have more than earned the respect of myself, and of the nation, and I wish you only the best luck as you continue your campaign for the Presidency.

Thank you,

Adrian Sud

Television Viewers.

Now in reality, I watch exactly two television shows that have not been cancelled, and two television shows besides. The two that aren’t over yet are Heroes (NBC) and Battlestar: Galactica (Sci-Fi). The two that are were Firefly (FOX) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC). Given this fact I really don’t consider myself a television viewer.

Therefore, let me explain why I’m mad at you people:

It’s because of Studio 60. Aaron Sorkin’s amazing talent for blindingly crisp dialog aside, this was an amazing show with a fantastic cast, and a solid concept. I could get mad that the show was taken off the air, but it was taken off the air when it just… failed to draw audiences.

Now, Firefly failed to draw audiences, but to be frank, it was never given an honest shot, what with multiple changes in its time slot, last minute reordering of episodes, and frankly poor advertising.

Studio 60 was given more than an honest shot.

Actually, it was given the slot before prime time, right there with Heroes, a dumb but extremely entertaining show I expect to stay on the air for quite a while. Studio 60 had a decent opening audience which faltered immediately, and continued to flounder, even when NBC tried to get people back into the show by having Masi Oka (plays Hiro on Heroes) make a cameo. It sputtered and they pulled it.

The problem was the show was smart. It was based on the premise that the fictional broadcasting company NBS was banking on American audiences not being “too dumb” for good television. The real thing was that NBC itself was banking on the same proposition, and we as audiences let them down. We showed them that we are indeed too dumb for good television.

So there you are, everyone who tuned in at 10 to watch that first season of Heroes but missed the good stuff that was on at 9pm, I’m mad at you tonight.

(oh, I’m extremely glad I own the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip Complete Series.)

They wrote that these machines are supposed to select and aim at a target, and “[wait] only for a human to pull the trigger.” Except that sometimes, “these machines start firing mysteriously on their own.”

They call it a software glitch. A malfunction. The problem I have with these terms is that, similar to the term “accident” in a traffic collision, they tend to imply no one is to blame.

I submit that somewhere, some programmer is to blame. If you write code, no matter how trivial, your job is to ensure the efficiency, consistency, and most of all the accuracy of your code. To fail in this regard can be tantamount to negligent homicide.

Coding errors can cause great cost; in the simplest of projects, this cost may only be in time, but soon that cost becomes money. In greater projects, it might be personal possessions, or public relations, or in still greater projects, lives.

This is not the first time something like this has happened. I am reminded of the infamous Therac-25, which between 1985 and 1987 was involved in at least five deaths due to poor interface design and failure to sanitize inputs. The Northeast Blackout of 2003, caused by a race condition in power monitoring software. The MIM-104 Patriot whose failure resulted in the deaths of 28 soldiers in Saudi Arabia in 1991 due to an error in time synchronization.

These are our responsibilities, laid upon us by virtue of our interest in the technologies which run our world today and those that will tomorrow: To provide value through technology by relieving stresses in tasks, or by relieving those tasks altogether, and to protect ourselves and our fellow man from those very technologies we create, and to the best of our abilities, from himself.

~Pigsflew

According to Reisinger, linux has either three directions from here: 1. Become super user-friendly at the expense of the tweakability and under-the-hood capacity of linux, 2. go back to “linux’ roots” and follow Linus Torvalds, or (and here I quote) 3. “face a “civil war” that could lead to total Linux annihilation.”

I’d like to present something to you. In the good old days of the Microsoft world, we had MSDOS, a relabeled version of the “Quick and Dirty Operating System”, QDOS. In this world, everything was configurable. You could do anything you wanted. Unfortunately, because doing anything complicated took too many steps, people didn’t often do much. This is why they developed (following Apple), Windows. Now Windows didn’t do much, but what it did do was easier and more honed to human beings than was the command prompt.

Windows took a step further from that with WinXP and Vista, wherein the command prompt, while still there, is crippled to the point of being barely usable.

On the other hand, Apple’s newest, OSX, is a BSD-derivative operating system, and while it has a fully functional and exceptionally usable GUI, it also has a complete shell available to the user, with approximately all the tools from Linux/BSD available.

This “civil war” Reisinger presents is a fear that’s ungrounded. I am an Ubuntu user. This is because the simple tasks that I perform on a daily basis, as well as the setup tasks that prepare the machine to meet my standards, are made extremely easy for me, and with minimal interference. It’s important to me that the terminal remain always available to me, that I can still write and run bash scripts, that, when it’s faster to do so, I can still fire up a shell.

But I shouldn’t be forced to.

This is where the dichotomy becomes entirely flawed. There is nothing that says an operating system can not be both oriented toward usability, and fundamentally malleable. A person should be able to fire up an application and have it, within reasonable tolerances, do what he or she expects. This is a mark of a conscientious programmer; any code which is not designed with, or with the ability to have, a GUI attached should be viewed as nearly wasted code.

Linux’ roots are the same place that any other operating system’s roots are: a collection of applications and machine code which enables the user to utilize the capabilities of the machine. An operating system which does not do this is an unfinished operating system.

Unlike any other operating system, we can keep working together to finish Linux.

I want other people to use Ubuntu. I’ve been putting up posters, wearing stickers, giving out burned copies, telling people about it, I’ve been evangelizing this because as an OS, Ubuntu is almost finished. It’s friendly, it’s usable, and I don’t have to hold a newcomer’s hand quite as hard to get them into it. It’s not about money, because I can’t, don’t, and won’t ask for any–and I don’t think Canonical ever will either.

What I want is users. I want a whole boatload of us. I want enough of us out there that choose Linux over non-*nix that open source libraries start getting used to reach us. I want games designed by corporations in OpenGL2, rather than DirectX. I want applications to be released using Mono instead of .Net; I want these things to happen so that anyone, anywhere, on any operating system–Even Windows!–can use everyone else’s software. And that’s only plausible if we get attention.

So I applaud Mozilla for providing the best cross-platform browser and email client, Canonical for the easiest Linux distribution, HP for their open printer drivers, System76 and Dell for providing preinstalled machines, Blizzard for already releasing OpenGL games (like World of Warcraft), and all other companies that stand behind the choice of the user.

And I seriously pity anyone who didn’t go.

They had jugglers. Live music. The best jungle gym ever. There were playpen balls and random toys. There was a mattress that got signed by Randall and I jumped off the jungle gym onto it. There was a dancing velociraptor. There was a dancing velociraptor.

This was amazing.