Posted 4:22 PM by Floyd

Michele Catalano is taking nominations for the best video game made before 1995 (the "pre-Playstation era"). After listing my candidates, I decided that I had to hear some Evil Otto quotes. A little Googling led me to the Digital Press Sound Archives. When I play these sounds, I am 16 years old:

• A Defender materializes.
  
• A Gorf player dies. Soon to be followed by "You Are Space Cadet", and your friends making fun of you.
  
• Sinistar scared the hell out of me.
  
• QBert is the Swedish Chef's autistic little brother.
  
• The humanoid must not escape! (Yes, it's Evil Otto, from Berzerk.)
  

Posted 2:23 PM by Floyd

The wisdom of the Drug Czar and his minions never ceases:

"If, in the end, sport is only about the best pharmacology, then we should have robots competing against one another instead of humans."
-- Dr. Andrea Barthwell, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, on the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes.

To paraphrase Strong Bad: "Dr. Barthwell, I'm not even gonna call you Dr. Barthwell. I'ma call you shithead." Barry Bonds is the greatest active baseball player. His job consists of deciding whether to swing at a little ball thrown at nearly 100 mph from 60 feet away, and if so, to hit it so that one of nine defensive players cannot catch it. Barry Bonds gets on base half the time. So, Shithead, if Bonds' ability is due solely to his big bulging biceps, then why has professional baseball not been taken over by bodybuilding stars and professional wrestlers?

Posted 2:57 PM by Floyd

The Mercury News reports on a spat between the downtown San Jose merchants' association and a trendy new development called Santana Row. Sherry and I went to Santana Row a few weeks back. It's a single street off Stevens Creek Boulevard in west San Jose, across the road from the huge Valley Fair mall (which I believe is now called Westgate). Santana Row has a Borders (which always means at least half an hour of bliss for me), several trendy restaurants and nightclubs, and upscale retail stores. (The retail is fairly expensive and specialized, but it makes for good window-shopping.)

The downtown folks make it sound as if they had a thriving business, and then Santana Row came along and kidnapped all their customers. In reality the malls killed downtown 40 years ago. San Jose has a Gordon Biersch microbrewery, a few mildly amusing attractions, and a nightlife which is constantly in flux and usually lame.

Don't believe me; listen to what the downtown proponents say:

But downtown boosters can count the reasons. Along with fine restaurants and happening nightclubs, downtown is home to San Jose's greatest cultural amenities, including the Center for the Performing Arts, the Rep theater, the Children's Discovery Museum and the Tech Museum of Innovation.

The performing arts scene in San Jose is second-rate; concerts and performances are just as likely to be at the Flint Center in Cupertino as downtown. (The San Jose Symphony went belly-up a year ago, to give you an example of the "cultural amenities" supported by the South Bay.) The Children's Discovery Museum is a huge play center -- an engaging place for anyone under ten years old, but it's hard to imagine hipsters forgoing Blowfish Sushi for the opportunity to play fireman. The Tech Museum is superficial; I went there five years ago with an adult, and we were bored silly. And neither place is open at night.

Posted 11:16 AM by Floyd

While reading TMQ author Gregg Easterbrook's blog ("Not Even Mentioning Jews Since October 2003"), I came across an ad for Tom Cruise's new movie, The Last Samurai. Cruise wears a goatee, which makes him look incredibly ... not Japanese.

Word is that Tom's Scientologist pals rigged up a sound system for his movie takes that allegedly make his voice deeper. Maybe they also provided the cameras with special lens filters that were supposed to Cruise's features more Oriental.

Update: Mentioned this to a co-worker at lunch and he said that Cruise's character was supposed to be a Westerner. Oops. Joke's on me. Fortunately I ran into a guy on the street who gave me a personality test and said that I could use "cybernetics" to make my dumb ideas look really smart...

Posted 10:38 AM by Floyd

In 2000 America elected a "conservative pro-market" Republican to replace the incumbent president, a "liberal socialist" Democrat. In March 2002 this president decided to prove his fidelity to small government by imposing steel tariffs, as a means of pandering to states inhabited by steel corporations. As anyone could have predicted, this outraged other nations and threatened to spark a trade war, so the "pro-market" president had to back off and eliminate the tariffs.

This will presumably infuriate the steel-producing states -- and with such perfect timing, just eleven months before the 2004 presidential election! If Bush had refused to implement the tariffs in the first place in 2002, then the whole flap would have blown over by now. Better to refuse to do someone a favor than to give them a boon and then take it away.

I am not usually in favor of European attempts to hamstring the Bush administration, but in this case Dubya got exactly what he deserved:

The EU carefully chose its target list to cover a range of products from oranges to pajamas that would inflict maximum political pain in key swing states that Bush is hoping to win in next year's presidential race.

(Interesting random side note: The graph associated with the article lists the top steel-producing states or regions, for some reason grouping clusters of states together. What do you think is the top steel-producing state? It turns out to be not Ohio, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania, but Indiana. The graph's emphasis on regions makes a second and third place listing impossible. Here is an Ohio steel industry blurb from 1999 ("On the Steel Front") that lists states by value of steel sold. At that point Ohio was just ahead of Indiana; third and fourth were Pennsylvania and Illinois. Interestingly, Washington was seventh, just behind Alabama. West Virginia was nowhere to be seen, but it's possible that West Virginians commute to Ohio and Pennsyvania to work in steel mills, or that all of these statistics are somewhat meaningless because they focus on the location of corporate headquarters rather than the location of the mills themselves.)

Posted 2:53 PM by Floyd

Merde in France reports on our friends the French. Remember the French? They're a wise, peace-loving people who refused to help America fight terrorists -- but more in sorrow than in anger.

Rank and hateful anti-Americanism is now standard fare in French mass media. Paris Match trumpets 'Iraq: Exclusive, Our reporters were with the rebel commandos who hit the DHL cargo plane. They fired missles at the Airbus'. A slideshow is proudly displayed on their website and the images have been showcased on nightly news shows. French journalists lead the resistance against nasty American GIs! Sing the Marseillaise! As the French Army (oxymoron since 1940) is incapable of crossing over into Boondockistan to kick ass on a few illiterate bandits, France sends its fudgepacking journalists to play doctor with a bunch of thugs who are of the same breed currently rampaging in their own suburbs back home.

Paris Match is not some fringe commie rag; it's a popular mass market magazine, available at your local Borders.

(Interesting sidenote: Merde in France is a bilingual blog. The author's translation of "Boondockistan" is "Pétaoushnokistan". I'm not sure how much of that word to chop off to produce the word for "boondocks".)

Posted 4:21 PM by Floyd

A nifty toy: The Social Security Administration allows you to display popularity of first names. You can query a name and see its rank in names given to children since 1990 (though only if it is in the top 1000). I did not expect "Floyd" to be among the top 1000, but lo and behold:

Year of birth	Rank
1997	964
1996	991
1995	918
1994	803
1993	714
1992	774
1991	674
1990	655

(After 1997 Floyd was no longer one of the 1000 most popular first names.)

Other great names have fallen by the wayside. Whither Shaquille?

Year of birth	Rank
1996	635
1995	424
1994	230
1993	185
1992	433
1991	743

Talk about fickle! Ten years ago Shaquille was a big guy just out of college who played on a mediocre team and couldn't hit free throws. Now he's a three-time national champion, and no one wants him as a namesake. If you're going to name your kid after a hoops player, shouldn't you wait to see whether he establishes a productive career? "Dad, why was I named Sam?" "Son, Sam Bowie was over seven feet tall and one of the greatest players in college basketball. But in his first pro season he fell down and fractured his leg."

(Update: Archaic preposition changed from "whence" to "whither" at the instigation of Aaron Haspel.)

Posted 1:10 PM by Floyd

Thanksgiving weekend gave the Mercury News letter writers a few extra days to sharpen their, um, pointy heads.

I applaud President Bush for spending Thanksgiving with our brave and much beleaguered troops in Iraq. But I'm saddened by a major opportunity forgone.

Bush could surely have included a few sentences of outreach in his remarks, along these lines:

``This year, the American celebration of Thanksgiving and the great Muslim feast of fast-breaking fell on two successive days. I was struck by our two peoples' giving thanks and praise together, for all our blessings, to the one God in whom we Peoples of the Book both believe. On the occasion of the two feasts, America wishes you happiness and peace, and many happy returns.''

Thirty-five seconds. I really don't think that would have been too long. And it would have done much to defuse the problem of the execrable Lt. Gen. William Boykin, which is taken very seriously indeed in the Muslim world.

David A. Appling
Morgan Hill

When I first read this on Sunday I was annoyed by Appling's assumption that everyone in America was a Yahweh worshipper. What about the Buddhists? What about the atheists? Also, try to imagine how much this sham attempt at ecumenicalism would irritate people who were actually religious. "Hey Muslims, heard you were stuffing your faces today too. Here in America we always eat too much, but on Thanksgiving we really eat too much. Then we drag ourselves to our couches and watch sports. Is that what religion is all about or what? Want some ham?"

But after my annoyance had passed I began to wonder about "People of the Book." The reference is to the declaration in the Koran that Jews and Christians are "people of the book" and should not be persecuted. Is there really anything to this? I suspect not, any more than some randomly selected phrase pulled out of the Bible would tell you whether you were likely to get along with Christians or Jews. All sacred books are to some extent ambiguous and self-contradictory, and anyway people are very good at ignoring inconvenient proscriptions. If it really was a religious duty for Muslims to respect Jews and Christians, why do Arab countries televise such copious amounts of vile anti-semitism?

Here's what Arab Muslims think of Christians and Jews in the real world:

I've spent a number of years in the middle east in various countries. I like to think that I have had a good relationship with muslim co-workers. We had numerous discussions on political subjects. Always, I came away with the impression that all is permitted to dar al islam.

Forget this "people of the book" bullshit. Learn the phrase "dar al Islam" instead.

Posted 5:46 PM by Floyd

Open-source evangelist and all-round ubergeek Eric S. Raymond was interviewed by Prudential Securities investors, who peppered him with questions on open source development and Linux. Evan Kirchhoff and I have been debating/commiserating about the software development process; a great deal of what Eric says is relevant to our conversation:

Brent Thill: So when you talk about the coordination of the open-source community, you know, you've mentioned that it's developed into a world class operating system. Linux has been developed by part time hacking by several thousand developers. One of the biggest misperceptions I think in the community right now is how do you manage a process like that? And when you talk to Red Hat, they can't even tell you when the 2.6 kernel is coming. So how do you manage the opposite end consumption expectations of when these features are going to come?

Eric Raymond: Well, let's dispose of an illusion first. There's a false comparison here. When people say, how do you manage open-source software, they're implicitly assuming that closed-source software can be managed. This is a belief that is actually false. Things take as long as they take. You can set deadlines in closed-source software, but our record at being able to fix both deadlines and a ship date is very, very poor.

There's a folk theorem that over 70% of projects fail either during their development phase or are not accepted by customers after delivery. That's a really shocking failure rate. And what it goes back to is this inability that any development system, whether closed source or open source has to simultaneously set deadlines and ship dates for anything as complex as software.

So that's one background fact to keep in mind when you ask, how do we get open-source software produced on a deadline? The reality is we can't get closed-source software produced on a deadline. When you try, generally what you get is a pile of crap that falls apart the moment somebody pokes it. So that's one thing to bear in mind.

When you ask, how do you manage open-source software, I'll continue that thread by saying that you manage it rationally the same way you manage closed-source software, which is to accept that you can set one of two things. You can either prioritize features and set a ship date and say, we'll take the features that are done by this ship date, or you can say, this is a set of features that I need, wake me when it's done. And open-source and closed-source software rationally are both managed by the same rule, which is: pick one of those.

Posted 2:54 PM by Floyd

Gweetings, One and Evewyone!

I see that I have a massive influx of traffic from Evan Kirchhoff's blog. New readers of The Declarer will benefit from this biographical post -- featuring patented <UL> technology!

• I am a 36-year-old software developer. I went to Purdue University, graduated in December 1989, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I have lived ever since. Currently I live with my wife Sherry (Yi Chen) in a house in Sky Londa. Sky Londa is redwood country, at the top of the ridge that forms the spine of the San Mateo peninsula.
  
  
• I am an avid bridge player. My skill level is probably good Flight B or poor Flight A. There is a local club in Palo Alto that has good games, and I play there once or twice a week. I partner Sherry (whom I taught to play) and my friends Eric and Scott. Occasionally I post interesting hands or boast of my victories.
  
  
• I also play various board games such as Settlers of Cataan and Bohnanza. I play the computer game Civilization III, and have made some scenarios. These activities don't usually make their way into the blog, except for random asides about how I would rather be playing Civ III than working or cleaning house or whatever.
  
  
• I read Michael Lewis' "Moneyball" and as a result became an Oakland A's fan. If you had shown up here two months earlier you would have seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there will be little A's posting until next season begins in April. Otherwise I have little interest in sports.
  
  
• I am a fan of the online comics Achewood and Homestar Runner (who is the source of the title quote).
  
  
• I watch very little TV, and see maybe two movies a year.
  
  
• I am an anarcho-capitalist, which is to say a libertarian.
  
  
• I often make fun of the San Jose Mercury News and the deranged people who write its letters to the editor.
  
  
• I frequently post in the comments of blogs belonging to Aaron Haspel, Michele Catalano, and San Jose Mercury technology columnist Dan Gillmor.
  
  

Posted 11:45 AM by Floyd

Lowe's is attempting to build a home-improvement supply megastore in San Jose. America is a "free country" with "private property." That property can be bought and sold freely, but attempts to develop it are controlled so tightly as to make any socialist planner proud. If I want to add a room to my house, it's a political issue as I must seek the permission of the town of Woodside. And a large project such as Lowe's is a contentious political issue, involving San Jose's planning commission, city council, and public opinion.

One group that is throwing a spanner in the works is the local labor unions. Lowe's is using non-union labor for construction, so labor is using environmental issues as a stick with which to beat Lowe's. Also they are complaining that the store construction is "dumb growth with low-paying jobs". (Like it would be good for union members if all grocery stores were the expensive specialty retailer Whole Foods, and all restaurants had entree prices no lower than $25?)

I criticized the quoted article on my blog two weeks ago, but the people who are really beating the drum against cynical union nonsense are ... the San Jose Mercury News editorial writers! Yes, the Merc called shenanigans on just about every left-wing misunderstanding of economics and job growth:

But the most powerful opposition to the project comes from labor leaders, who failed to persuade the company to use only union contractors. To put pressure on Lowe's, the unions have taken up the banner of the environment -- but it's a sham. Nobody in the know is fooled.

Keeping Lowe's out over labor issues would be unconscionable.

The company puts construction work out to bid. Whoever makes the best offer, union or non-union, gets the work. That's fair.

As to long-term jobs, Lowe's will employ 200 people, 70 to 75 percent of them full-time with benefits. Wages will range from $9 to $23 an hour, according to Jim Manion, Lowe's senior site development manager. The average will be $14 an hour.

Will these jobs make anyone rich? No. Will any of the thousands of people who are unemployed in San Jose want to work at Lowe's? Just put up that ``Now hiring'' sign, and watch the lines form around the block.

And for good measure, the Merc was at it again today:

Just one example of unions driving up costs
Mercury News Editorial

There's a public cost when unions use trumped up environmental protests to delay a building project when what they really want is a labor agreement. But how do you put a dollar figure on that cost?

Here's one example.

Last week the San Jose Redevelopment Agency had to ask the city council for more money -- up to $24,500 -- to finish the environmental impact report on a downtown housing and commercial site near San Pedro Square.

Why?

Because a law firm hired by local unions filed such a voluminous challenge to the EIR -- the cover letter alone was 50 pages, single-spaced -- that answering them will take far more time for consultants than the initial $165,000 contract provided.

12/2 Update: The Merc won't let go! Yet another opinion piece was added today:

When unions use `greenmail'
LOWE'S PROJECT AND POWER PLANTS ARE CURRENT EXAMPLES
By Kevin Dayton

When the Santa Clara Building and Construction Trades Council used environmental objections against a proposed Lowe's home improvement store in San Jose, it used a relatively new strategy that has proven highly effective to win union control of privately funded construction work.

Gone are the days when construction unions could organize workers by persuading them to unite under union solidarity against an oppressive corporate regime. Today few people believe the dated language in the California Labor Code that ``the individual unorganized worker is helpless to exercise actual liberty of contract and to protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment.'' Only 20 percent of construction workers in California are represented by a union, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Since construction unions are not very successful in organizing workers through traditional methods, they now exploit government regulations to eliminate competition from capable and innovative ``merit shop'' non-union contractors and their employees. To win control of privately funded commercial, industrial and residential projects, unions use ``greenmail,'' objecting to environmental permits and delaying the approval of projects until the owners sign a union-only project labor agreement or some other union-only guarantee. This is the tactic unions are using against Lowe's.

Posted 10:49 AM by Floyd

Evan Kirchhoff, the 101-280 blogger, came to our house near 84-35 for a visit yesterday with his lovely friend Mary. Here is a list of our accomplishments:

• Number of cats that Mary found adorable: 4
  
• Number of cats who ignored Mary's cooing so they could jump on the feline-allergic Evan: 3
  
• Number of StrongBad emails viewed: 3
  
• Number of StrongBad email Easter Eggs found by Evan and Mary: 1. (It was new to me, which was somewhat embarrassing as I had just pompously expounded on how they could find all kinds of cool stuff if they waved the mouse around.)
  
• Amount of Sherry's Chinese food consumed: Roughly 6 pecks
  
• Number of board games played: 2
  
• Number of farmers in the same field when we played Carcassone: 11
  
• Number of beers consumed: 3
  
• Bottles of wine consumed: 1
  
• Small cups of coffee consumed: 67