It’s time to charge NASA with solving the Oil Leak. Let’s give them a deadline: they have 60 days to solve the problem. Let’s give them motivation: solve the problem or you are all fired. Let’s give them a budget, say, 5 Billion Dollars—one quarter of the money that BP has socked away. Let them go at it. This will solve our problems, one way or another.

Why NASA? This is an organization that is used to working remotely—an organization that was once used to solving problems with duct tape and coffee filters. They are the smartest (wo)men in the room. If anyone can solve it, NASA can.

And if they can’t? Then they don’t deserve their 17 Billion dollar annual budget. NASA, remember, can’t even get people to space anymore. If they can’t plug a drain at the bottom of a big bathtub, then disband the organization. Fire everyone. I’m sure they would get snapped up by, say, BP. I hear they are hiring people with hole plugging experience. Alberta could hire a few too, to get the old Alberta Space Program started.

But if they can—if NASA can save the Gulf—then there’s a chance they may be able to save all of us, say, when the big asteroid inevitably comes. Heck—there’s a chance they’ll be able to put a man in space again one day (though I wouldn’t hold my breath).

Two birds. One stone. No Losers.

Go.

“Transit Customer Use Only”

Calgary Transit, are you kidding me?

I can only assume some poor co-op student was assigned the enviable task of finding out why transit garbage cans were filling up so quickly.

Co-op: I’ve found the problem, sir. Garbage from non-transit customers.

Middle Management: How do you know they weren’t customers?

Co-op: DNA Testing. We profile all our users now. Would you like to see your refuse history, sir?

Somewhere along the way, the problem of overfull poubelles made it up to some manager’s desk.

Manager: Non-customer garbage! How do we put a stop to this insanity!

Middle Manager: Well, we could pick the garbage up more frequently

Manager: Nonsense! That would require some kind of dedicated vehicle, with some kind of regular route and schedule. We operate Transit! What do we know about such things?

Middle Manager: Ok. how about making the cans bigger?

Manager: Nonsense. We standardized on this size so we could use kitchen-sized bags. What else have you got?

Middle Manager: Uh, multiple cans? Maybe one for recyclables?

Manager: Idiot! What kind of services do you think we run around here?

Middle Manager: Public services, sir?

And of course, I must assume a committee was struck:

Committee zombie #1: After a careful analysis of the problem, our only choice is to implement some kind of RFID-based access control on the garbage cans.

Committee zombie #2: I’ve read that user education campaigns have had excellent success in other jurisdictions.

Committee zombie #3: What about biometrics?

In the end, I can only assume a detailed report was prepared, filled with approaches for handling the great bus-stop garbage crisis. The decision was swift.

Manager: Ah! A well-researched report. Several of these proposals are very forward-thinking—very “out of the box.”

Middle Manager: So, what have you decided on, sir?

Manager: None of it. Too expensive. What do you think about stickers?

It’s enough to make you want to strangle someone at City Hall. If the garbage isn’t going into Calgary Transit garbage cans—usually the only convenient garbage cans along public roadways—where is it going?

Think about that next time you step in a pile of dog poop, Mr. Manager. It’s not mine, honest.

Yes, I’m willing to say it—and yes, now, when Apple is poised to revolutionize computing again, making everything touchable, mobile, and user-unservicable. I imagine, Gruber’s going to mock me, and big Steve is going to order my phone remotely bricked. I don’t care, because I get the distinctive evil vibe that I remember all-too-well from before. Back in the early days. Back before Microsoft destroyed the software business.

Yes, the iPad is cool. Yes, I own both an iPhone and a Macbook. Hell, I own an AppleTV—in Canada, where nobody ever bothers signing content deals. Apple technology can be fantastic. The attention to detail is (almost always) excellent. The stuff just works (unless it doesn’t), and Apple to mess with the status quo (which is fun unless you were depending on it to, say, make a living).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Apple stock is going to tank anytime soon. Apple is at the top of their game right now. But they have passed the point of no return. They have the evil gene, and they have started to use it. Write a story Apple doesn’t like? The cops will be breaking down your door and seizing your livelihood. (Would they do the same if it was my cellphone that was stolen, I wonder?)

I’m from the old school. I want to bend the computer to my will. I want to make it do things that I dream up. Like any toy, I want to take the thing apart, figure out how it works, and then make it do things it was never intended to do. Until recently, my toys have been designed for this. But now, Apple’s putting the kybosh on. Apple is welding the hood shut. You may have seen this, part of the latest revision to the iPhone/iPad developer’s agreement:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

What this means, in English, is that wanna-be hackers like me have to do things Apple’s way. We can’t do things the way we want to do them. We can’t use the tools we want to use. Built a great shim later to your favourite programming language? Tough. When Apple says jump, you jump, or they take their toys away from you.

This behavior is evil. Big Steve has been spinning the issue to be about protecting the poor users from “poor quality apps,” but this is hilariously dishonest. If you want to protect me from garbage apps, how about issuing a refund when I discover the app I just purchased is a buggy piece of (natively-compiled) garbage with rigged reviews? It’s not about the end-user. It’s not even about controlling the end-user experience. it’s about maximizing profit. It’s about ruthlessly controlling every aspect of the device. It’s about shutting out third-party software developers (developers that helped Apple become the company that they are today). Changing the developer license two days before a product launch isn’t business—it’s spite. Blatantly stealing design ideas when you like them, but litigating the hell out of anyone who does the same to you—that’s evil.

Apple, you are not infallible. You get things wrong all the time. Until you started welding cases shut, your battery life sucked. Your laptop wall warts are horribly shoddy. You build Faraday cages around your computers. Your word processor don’t have auto-save. You don’t build computers anymore, so much as multipurpose media devices. So far, your products are cool enough that people overlook their glaring flaws, but cool will only get you so far.

The Fonz was cool once. Then he jumped that shark. History repeats.

1. Are you against Global Warming?
2. Why?

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a particular debate on the pros and cons of global warming. Sure, I’ve heard lots of clashes on the subject of whether it is occurring, and how much I’m expected to pay for it, but the battle between deniers and scaremongers is not the topic for today. Today’s topic is about what happens if it gets warmer—specifically, what happens if it gets warmer in Canada.

I don’t live near a desert. In fact, most of my country is too darn cold to live in. I’m not particularly worried about wildfires, because there’s just not that much vegetation up here to endanger me. Oceans rising? I live 1000m above sea level, and let’s be honest: a canal system can only help Vancouver traffic. In short, I’m not sure most of the conventional arguments against global warming apply to me, or my countrymen. So far, the single most damaging effect of global warming on this country seems to be a potential decrease in our polar bear population, and folks, nobody but the bears care. If our northern residents need something to eat, perhaps they could switch to the regular bears that would be happy as clams to migrate north, if only it wasn’t so darned cold.

I’ve been to warm places. You know—fun equatorial places where the temperature never drops into anything I would consider amenable to sleeping. Aren’t those places teeming with life? Have you been up north lately? Teeming isn’t the right word. We could use some more teeming. That means we need it warmer.

From what I can ascertain, here’s what global warming would bring to Canada:

• longer growing seasons,
• more usable farmland,
• reduced heating costs,
• northern shipping routes.

That all seems like it would be good for us. The situation seems even more clear if you look at it the other way. If we were to work hard to reverse the effects of global warming—that is, if we were to achieve global cooling—couldn’t that be really, really bad for us? To steal a quote from my favourite ex-Byte columnist, “I’d rather have longer growing seasons in Saskatchewan than a hundred feet of ice over Winnipeg.” An ice age seems like a bad, bad thing. Are we sure we want to tinker with that possibility?

Of course, I’m sure our esteemed leaders have all thought of this. I’m sure there’s a darned good reason for Canadians to lobby for shorter growing seasons, less farmland, higher heating bills, and a potential ice age. I just don’t know what that reason is.

Do you?

I hadn’t actually listened to Ann Coulter much before. Like many others, I had heard the occasional sound-bite. Unlike many others, I didn’t consider these one-liners enough to form an opinion. I have a pretty simple opinion on free speech. To paraphrase someone paraphrasing Voltaire:

I disagree with what you say but will defend to death your right to say it.

Voltaire didn’t actually utter this phrase—that was Evelyn Beatrice Hall (under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre)—but fact-checking is sooo pre-Google. In fact, Voltaire said something closer to:

Think for yourself, and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

I didn’t bother checking that one either. It turns out that it is far easier to make something up on the internet than to properly attribute a quote—like this one: as Voltaire famously said,[1]

You have the right to speak, but I have the right to think you are an idiot.

Now, I’m a little old fashioned. As such, I tend to reserve my idiot pronouncements until after I’ve let someone embarrass themselves. That’s how I found myself actually attending the Ann Coulter talk. Well, that and an email RSVP. Apparently, none of the protesters had bothered to respond themselves. They stood outside, occasionally pounding on doors or windows, and making insulting commentary to people as they came and went.

Back to being a bigot. That word got tossed around a lot last week. Like any word, if you repeat it enough times, it eventually becomes just a weird-sounding set of syllables. By the time the talk came around, I had forgotten the word’s meaning entirely, so I fired up my trusty Mac dictionary widget:

bigot |’bigət| (noun) a person who is bigoted.

Apparently the Mac dictionary editors missed the class on not-using-the-word-you-are-defining-in-your-definition. A few clicks later, I got this:

bigoted |’bigətid| (adjective) obstinately convinced of the superiority or correctness of one’s own opinions and prejudiced against those who hold different opinions : a bigoted group of reactionaries.

If this dictionary is to be trusted, then absolutely, I agree. Ann Coulter is a bigot. Of course, so are the protesters gathered outside the talk. So am I, for that matter, though primarily against Aberzombies.

Actually, Ann had a joke about bigots:

“The Democrats call us bigots because we to clamp down on illegal immigration. So enforcing the border makes us bigots? Mexico enforces its border with Guatemala. I guess that makes Mexicans bigots. So why are we letting bigots into our country?”

Let’s look up another word:

irony |’īrənē ; ‘iərnē | (noun) the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

An example of irony would be the following: using your right to free speech to insist that someone not be allowed to speak. Except I don’t think the protesters were being intentionally funny.

Canada has a funny notion of the right to free speech. In Ann Coulter’s own words, free speech has a long history in this country, “going all the way back to this morning.” We have this curious notion of “hate” speech—words so vile, so cancerous, so mind-alteringly evil that we must prohibit their utterance by anyone, under penalty of law. I’m not sure how we came up with this curious notion, nor how we go about defining such a thing. I do know that this notion is the principal means by which disagreeable speech is curtailed around here. I hate censorship. Is that hate speech?

According to my Mac, hate is defined—complete with ironic example—as:

hate |hāt| (verb [ trans. ]) feel intense or passionate dislike for (someone) : he was particularly hated by the extreme right.

I took this to mean that “hate speech” is any speech designed to provoke intense or passionate dislike for someone. Sort of like what the protesters were trying to accomplish. The sword cuts both ways. As was pointed out by someone during Ann Coulter’s introduction, “if you want freedom of speech, you have to be prepared to give it to your worst enemy.”

In the end, the talk was pretty inoffensive—

• About half of it was just funny. Ann Coulter is a comedian. If you have ever bothered to listen to more than a single sound bite, you would realized this. Her stuff is funny: occasionally offensive, but then, so is most comedy.

• About a quarter of it was pretty good commentary, specifically, on free speech, on media bias, and on the perils of political correctness. These are important issues—ones that deserve revisiting on a regular basis.

• The other quarter of it was kooky silliness. For instance, Ann knows nothing of Canada, it’s history, or its demographics. Does this bother me? No. If she wants to talk about things she has no clue about, she is free to make herself look silly. I don’t mind.

Closed-mindedness is an awful thing. For those of you who feel compelled to campaign against someone’s right to speak, maybe it’s time to focus less on what people should be allowed to say, and more on what’s actually being said.

Of course, that would require actually listening. Voltaire probably has a quote about that too, but I don’t feel like making another one up.

[1] Yes, I made this up.

Let me admit, I’m not exactly a huge figure skating fan (far, far from it), but once again, the crowd says “perfect.” The commentators say “perfect,” and the judges say “I liked the fallin’ down Russians instead.”

Call me a worthless idealist, but the Olympic picture I’ve always carried around in my head is one of athletic prowess. Slice the field up into a bunch of events, and whoever is the best in any given one gets a shiny medal. Sure, this depends on somebody’s definition of best, but that can’t be too hard to come up with, can it? We’re talking athleticism. It’s quantitative. First one over the line wins.

Yeah. I’m funny.

The Olympics, of course, have little to do with athletic prowess. Perhaps when everyone still competed naked things were different, but now it’s an entertainment product, just like all the other pro sports that I used to like. (Come to think of it, competing naked is a pretty appealing marketing plan. I’m sure one of the new cable channels will latch onto that one in the near future.)

An entertainment product has to have crowd appeal, and though first one across the line works for me, it’s obviously not enough for his royal-majesty-highness-right-honorable-big-studmuffin IOC Chair, or whatever he’s making people call him these days. Crowd appeal requires judged events, it is said, so judged events we get.

Consider the ski jump, of all things. If ever there was an opportunity for an event to be based on good-old quantitative results, I would have figured the ski jump was it. Ski down hill. Jump off cliff. Measure distance at impact zone. Clean up bloody mess if required.

Of course, it isn’t quantitative. That’s not entertaining enough.

In the K-90, you have style points. The style points, it would seem, are based on comparing your form with the ideal ski jumping form. The ideal form, of course, is the form which—in theory—would cause the ski jumper to jump the farthest. If this was true, then the person with the best style should fly the farthest, and win the event.

But, as I watched the K-90 gold medalist miss the silver medalist’s mark by four metres, the irony began to beat its way into my head. When my grade 10 gym teacher told me that there were no points for second place, he wasn’t being entirely truthful. There are, and they’re called style points.

And when the Russians won the figure skating gold, well, I just had to laugh. Apparently all five people in the world who thought it was a better performance were on that judging panel. Way to go, folks. You’ve brought some real class to the sport.

The only thing funnier is going to be when his-royal-whatchamacallit IOC Chair declares these games, the judging-scandal-wrought, bribe-the-hosting-panel games, the “best games ever.” Best by who’s measure?

I bet it’s the figure skating judges that decide.

Date: Saturday, February 2, 2002
From: Randy Wooding <randywooding@yahoo.com>
Subject: Reply.

Recently, I was browsing the internet and lo and behold I came across our private transmissions about the letter to our President.

You must have way too much time on your hands. My careers [sic] in banking is none of your concern. Furthermore, this address is for my personal use.

My connection to the Cabinet in Washington is also not of your concern.

Good day.

Randy T. Wooding

Date: Monday, February 5, 2002
From: Evan Spence
Subject: Re: Reply.

Howdy, Mr. Wooding. After a few months off, we had begun to think you had left us for good. Not so! If you stumbled across our “transmissions” you were probably doing a web search on yourself, yes? A little vain perhaps, but sometimes quite fun. You’ll be happy to know a search on the term “Randy Wooding” on both Google and Yahoo will lead you straight back to the pd.o. And that’s really no surprise, because our previous Mailbag piece is one of our most popular pages. You’re a star! As for your concerns, please let me address them in sequence.

First, what ever gave you the idea our communications were private? We published an open letter on an open web server, and you sent us an unsolicited opinion. Sounds like fair fodder to me. Perhaps you should read the pd.o terms of use.

Second, it’s not that we have a lot of time on our hands, it’s that we choose to judiciously spend our Tuesdays in deep contemplation of beer, rants, and boot sectors. You have to make time for the important stuff, Mr. Wooding. You would fall under the category of rant.

As for your alleged career in international banking being none of our concern, all I can say is you brought it up. The same goes for your alleged connections to the Bush administration, with the added caveat that not only did you bring them up, you actually threatened us with them. To wit:

“Therefore, I warn you now, I hold great power and authority in the United States and other nations abroad, and will seek to find you if you continue such behavior. I will not tolerate such activities that you originate [sic]. Futhermore [sic] a copy of this e-mail and letter you sent will be forwarded to local authorities and the FBI.”

Now, we’re generally pacifists, but we also subscribe to a policy of no quarter in the face of aggression directed toward us. So let me now be perfectly clear, since you seem to have no concept of satire, or tongue-in-cheek humour. You wrote a mocked-up email making pseudo-menacing comments. How did we react? We responded point by point, publicly. You took us up on that, piling on with more comments such as “You at this time would have no idea what that is because you are not in the international banking sector.” We replied, but you never answered our two most pointed questions:

Why is the FBI in the pocket of an alleged international banker? [and]…why would a banker be in the pay of the FBI?

So now you’re back. We’re happy to have you, but please don’t act indignant, and don’t play hurt.

Most of all, don’t ever comment on our grammar.

P.S. How’s school in Illinois, Mr. Banker?

I wasn’t going to do it. I wasn’t going to go spouting off on another “I hate computers” rant this week. I got that out of my system a couple of weeks ago. “This week I’m going to be different,” I thought. “This week I’m going to be original.” And then, I started cleaning.

As I was emptying a box of crap in my basement, I came across a couple of old floppies labelled “Website.” Curious, I stuck one in a drive. I’ll be damned if I didn’t come across my old home page. No, I’m not going to show it to you. Looking at it gives me the same sort of feeling I get when seeing pictures of my old High School hairstyles. No, most of Kjell’s Happy Home Page is going to rot in the bit bucket for a bit longer yet. Most, that is, except the rant that started it all.

This is the first rant I ever posted on a web page. It was five years ago. Grunge was still cool. Microsoft was still relevant. Music still came on CDs. It was like the dark ages.

And I was still mad at computers.

Apple ][s, Software Bloat, and Productivity.

or, Why Software Sucks

Are you anxiously holding your breath waiting for Microsoft's new Office 97 to come out? I know I am. I just can't wait to see how much less productive it makes me.

I mean, c'mon. How much more productive am I now than back in the days of the Apple ][? My current computer, a Pentium 75 with a ridiculous 96 megs of RAM is thousands and thousands of times faster than my Apple ][. Think of all the wondrous things we can do with that additional processing power. Think of how much we can store in that ridiculous 96 megs of RAM. Think of how much data I can store on my gigantic 2.1 gigabyte hard drive.

I've done my thinking, and the answer is “not much.”

In the old days, I could run my integrated office suite (Appleworks) in exactly 75 kilobytes of memory. That left me 53K to hold my document. Know what? I never ran out of memory. Nowadays I have 750 times that, and I keep a swap file around, just in case that isn't enough.

In the old days, the only time I ever lost data was when I inadvertently kicked the plug out of the power bar while stretching my legs. Nowadays, my software crashes all the time—inevitably taking with it all the data since my last save. I've heard people genuinely impressed that “Windows only crashed once today.” Congratulations.

In the old days, When I wanted to analyse a trend in some data, I plugged them into a spreadsheet thought a little about the numbers, and got my answers. Nowadays I'm required to waste at least an hour getting the tables to “look good” in fourteen colours before asking the charting Wizard to generate a graph. (The rest of the day can be spent tweaking the resulting graph.)

So what—am I just some embittered Generation-Xer with an 80s fixation? (Well, yes, but that's not the point of this particular rant). What will it take to make all this fantastic technology actually make my job easier? I think the answer is to make the technology go away.

Software today has become an end in itself. Spreadsheets have thousands of pre-made charts, so it is necessary to include a chart in every document. Word Processors afford us 700 ways to change the layout of our document, so we must tweak it until we have used most of them. Presentation software exists, so we must translate every new idea and proposal into endless streams of four-bullet/one graphic Powerpoint slides.

So what do we do? Ditch software. Ditch Operating Systems. Forget this ridiculous idea that applications are entities in their own right. Turn the computer back into a tool. Let the technology fade into the background.

Or maybe I should just go back to my Apple ][…

The more things change…

Hon. Dave Bronconnier

Mayor of Calgary
City of Calgary
Box 2100, Stn “M”
Calgary, AB
T2P 2M5

Hon. Ralph Klein

Premier of Alberta
307, 10800 – 97 Ave
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B7

Rt. Hon. Jean Chretien

Prime Minister of Canada
Rm 309-S,
Centre Block
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6

Howdy.

I would like to share with all of you my terrible, shameful secret:

I would like every level of government to subsidize Canadian hockey teams.

There. I’ve said it. My deep, dark secret. I would like the federal, provincial and municipal taxpayers to give money, by whatever means, to the millionaire owners and players, so that my team won’t leave for a warmer climate.

This doesn’t have to be cold hard cash on the nail. Assistance can come in many other forms: Skip the property tax, give them a share of Sports Select revenues, or build sexy new arenas. (Actually, I’m fairly sure the existing rinks are perfectly satisfactory, and I’d be a little saddened to see the Flames leave the Saddledome. Contrary to popular belief, the ’Dome is a pretty cool place to watch a hockey game.)

I look at it like this:

If a government doesn’t spend the money helping out my team, that same money is not going to make it back into my pocket. As an otherwise rational libertarian, I don’t expect the government to do anything on my behalf, and once the money has left my hands, it’s gone for good. So I don’t really care about any of the other so-called good causes on which they could blow their wad.

I love my hockey team. They haven’t been especially strong in recent years, for a number of reasons, but I don’t mind so much. I like the ritual of driving downtown, parking for free outside the Chrysler grocery, walking up the C-Train ramp with the rest of the inbound fans, past the scalpers looking to ‘buy’ tickets, and into that unique, undulating, perfectly circular home of the 1989 Stanley Cup champions.

It’s quiet in there, and corporate, and it’s a long way up to the $15 nosebleed section, but how many cities can actually boast a $15 NHL ticket? The long walk up also means a long walk down during the first intermission for the ritual malted, but at least the line at the ice cream counter no longer takes an entire intermission.

I was eight years old when Nelson Skalbania moved the Flames to Calgary, so I don’t have a very good grasp of what the city was like without the hockey team. I’m sure the city and the people would change little in the absence of the Red Shirts, but we would lose a portion of our otherwise meagre pageantry. My Calgary Flames tenth year anniversary year book is now itself over ten years old, so we’re starting to accumulate a pretty decent amount of history. This year the franchise turns 30.

Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Ottawa are four teams which cannot be accused of being reckless with their finances. Year after year they make fiscally prudent moves, while doing their best to preserve their cores of young, talented players. It hasn’t been a great success for most, but at least Ottawa is ascendant. Toronto and Vancouver can probably afford to be a little more spendthrift, but the Canucks have that penchant for losing. Money, hockey, whatever.

I will happily cheer my team through this down cycle, missing the playoffs, looking for next year, spring after spring. But I cherish the possibility of knowing there always will be a next year, and that some day, the Flames will come out on top.

So please listen, Dave, Ralph and Jean: I know you all think you’ve got better things on which to spend your money. And please note that I said your money. I lay no further claim on any portion of those ill-gotten funds. But since you don’t seem to want to spend it on optional extras like replacement hardware for the Sea King helicopters, or high speed transit infrastructure, how about cutting a cheque to the teams in red, blue, and whatever colour Vancouver is wearing these days?

Yours truly,

Evan Spence

Responses

February 4, 2002

Dear Mr. Spence:

I wish to acknowledge your January 22, 2002 letter regarding government funding for Canadian hockey teams.

I have noted your comments and have taken the liberty of forwarding a copy of your correspondence to the Honourable Ron Stevens, Minister of Gaming, for his review and further response on behalf of the Alberta government. Please be assured that you will be receiving a reply in the very near future.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Klein

cc:

Honourable Ron Stevens, Q.C.
Don Tannas, M.L.A, Highwood

February 27, 2002

Dear Mr. Spence:

Your letter of January 22, 2002 to Premier Klein regarding assistance for Alberta’s NHL teams, has been referred to me for response on behalf of the Alberta government.

I certainly appreciate your support for the lottery product (Breakaway to Win) dedicated to assisting the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers. The government committed its assistance to the teams without drawing tax dollars, and without reducing the benefits currently received by the Alberta Lottery Fund recipients. Our involvement was leveraged by the strong support of both Calgary and Edmonton and from other communities across Alberta.

The lottery tickets are scheduled for sales launches twice annually (January and October) with all marketing and promotions being provided by the two teams. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission (AGLC) is making the tickets available through more than 2,000 lottery ticket retailers across Alberta. While the estimated lottery revenue to the teams ($3 million) is not expected to solve all the funding requirements, it will assist their operations considerably.

The Cities of Calgary and Edmonton have also provided generous support for their teams. I expect they will provide you with further information in that regard.

We have received very positive feedback on this lottery initiative and I believe we’ve achieved a “win-win” situation for the communities and the teams. We believe any small market teams in Canada could adopt the Alberta model in their communities.

Thanks again for providing your comments and your interest in this matter.

Yours truly,

Ron Stevens, QC
Minister

copy:

Honourable Ralph Klein, Premier
Don Tannas, MLA Highwood

Arthur C. Clarke once said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

He’s right, of course. The problem is that almost nobody is capable of creating advanced technology anymore. The original computers were magic. They let us do things we didn’t know were possible. After a while, though, the magic wore off. Innovation slowed, and usability languished. The computer revolution has become a deathmarch, and I want out.

Deconstruction of a Beige Box

My computer is a mini-tower. These things aren’t designed to go on your desk, so I presume they’re meant for the floor. This is an ideal location to be

1. Kicked by me while I’m typing.
2. Shocked repeatedly by my pets as they walk by.

Not that fitting on the desk is really a consideration, because honestly, it’s so damned loud I want it as far away from me as possible.

Into this box I occasionally have to insert a floppy disk or CD. These controls are on the front of the computer, so the front has to be within arm’s reach of me. Given that my legs have to go somewhere, this reduces the placement of the big, ugly box to a small arc somewhere underneath my desk.

The other important parts, including my hot-swappable USB cables, are on the back of the computer. Keyboards, mice, monitors, power, Ethernet, serial, and parallel connections all go into the back. I really love crawling under my desk to plug IN my digital camera. It’s a real joy.

Looking on top of my desk, I notice a few things about the way these components are laid out. My mouse, which is only ever more than eight inches away from my keyboard has to have a five-foot long cable on it, because it has to plug into the back of my computer. My keyboard, which is never more that a foot away from my monitor also has to have a five-foot cord on it, in order to reach the back of the PC. The monitor needs a four-foot cord, as do the speakers. This tangle of wiring extends behind my desk into the dark depths below, inevitably within range of my feet whenever I stretch them out.

About 30 seconds of usability analysis tells me the following: Someone needs to take the floppy, CD, power switch, keyboard jack, mouse jack, volume knob, audio jacks, and USB ports, incorporate them into the base of the monitor, and attach them by a looooong cord to the noisy parts of the system. This isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t happening.

The industry is thinking inside a beige box, and it’s driving me nuts.

Plastic Fantastic

I suppose, to be fair, I should really talk about Apple. Apple comes close to breaking the mold, at least in its current incarnation (or iNcarnation). They do a pretty good job of keeping their eye on the usability ball. They don’t always get it right, (Hockey puck mouse anyone?), but at least they make an effort. Their last few iterations of hardware have been so appealing to me that I’ve been thinking about actually buying one. Of course, this would spell instant death for Apple, as if I’m inclined to buy it, it must be so far out of the mainstream as to be irrelevant. (OS/2 anyone?)

What’s particularly amusing about the Apple situation has been the rest of the industry’s response to Apple’s recent successes; to add nonfunctional transparent plastic to everything! Usability doesn’t figure into it at all. Just keep doing what you’re doing, but in transparent plastic.

Let me spell it out. Apple is attacking the usability problem. They’re putting the parts people use in the places where they want to use them. They’re taking the parts that confuse people and either simplifying them, or getting rid of them entirely. They’re concerned with aesthetics, and they’re making the technology invisible.

And invisible is how technology is supposed to be

I want my M-TiVo

If you’ve ever spent any time with TiVo unit, you’ll see what I’m trying to get at. The remarkable thing about a TiVo is that it simply works. It does its job so well, in fact, that after spending 20 minutes with one I wondered why anyone would want to get along without one. TiVo is remarkable. TiVo is usable.

And TiVo is a computer.

You’d never know it. Because the TiVo designers attacked usability, and won. Sure, they’ve stuffed themselves back into their box, forgot that usability is ongoing, and designed a lacklustre followup, but the original one was a gem. It was a worthwhile application of advanced technology.

It’s almost magical.

I’m here to knock Sunshine off that pedestal.

Parking and Lineups

We went to Sunshine three times during our return to Alberta last month. Our first visit was on a weekend, the next on a holiday, and the last on a week day. From my observations on these days, I can say that Sunshine has an overcrowding problem.

Due to the narrow, constrained aspect of the base, parking usually involves a space that is literally out of sight of the gondola and ticket office, and either humping the distance à pied, or catch a “convenient” people-mover tractor.

There are enormous lineups at the ticket counter, rental booth (thank Jebus I don’t rent), and the new high-speed gondola. And even though Sunshine promised the elimination of gondola lineups, we waited at least as long as at the old lift on each of the three days.

As for gondola travel time,there was a slight improvement. The old six-person gondola took an hour and a half. The new eight-body lift takes slightly less than that.

The Sunshine triple play of parking, lineups and gondola ride means that on our best day it took us only an hour to get to the actual ski hill. By comparison it takes only a little over an hour to drive to Sunshine from Calgary, which is the one thing going for that hill. But the same is true of Norquay, Fortress and Nakiska.

Lifts

Once on the hill you have easy access to the high speed detachable Angel Express quad lift, which whisks you to exactly nowhere, from which you can take precisely zero runs, although there’s a great run-out to get you to another high speed quad, Continental Divide, which then takes you to one run, and then the run-out again.

With all this talk of detachable quads, you might be inclined to think Sunshine’s terrain is well serviced, and if you read their snow report, your belief would be confirmed: 92 of 92 runs open, 12 of 12 lifts operating.

At first, I thought a total of 12 lifts seemed optimistic, but I counted them up (while sitting on a lift, between run-outs), and there truly are that many. Here’s the list:

1. Angel Express Quad
2. Continental Divide Express Quad
3. Standish Double
4. Strawbaby Double
5. Jackrabbit Quad
6. Goat’s Eye Express Quad
7. Wawa T-bar
8. Wolverine Express Quad Haul-Back
9. Tee-Pee Town Double
10. The magic carpet beside Strawbaby
11. The magic carpet beside Wawa
12. The gondola

Yes, the gondola counts as a lift. Bravo, Sunshine.

Now to count the lifts that service useful terrain:

1. Divide
2. Angel, to get to Divide
3. Standish

That’s as many lifts as Fortress, if you don’t count the latter’s two T-bars. Not bad!

I refuse to include Goat’s Eye mountain in any tally of Sunshine, because my concept of a run does not include chutes demarcated by snow fences. Goat’s Eye is also perpetually windy and icy. The only people on Goat’s Eye are season ticket holders from Edmonton who think Sunshine is the cat’s ass, because they don’t know any better. There will be no further discussion of Goat’s Eye.

Mountain

Let’s talk about Sunshine’s terrain. First, you should know that I ski, so traversing is not an issue for me. However, I usually slide exclusively with snowboarders, so we’re quite selective about the pitch of the runs we take, to minimize the amount of unstrapping and huffing going on at the end of the run, and consequent waiting on my part.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the Standish chair, every single run at Sunshine finishes with a slow, flat run-out. What’s worse is the merging of two enormous collector trails just above Divide, where the speed nuts and GORBIES literally collide, resulting in more unstrapping, huffing and waiting.

From the top of the Divide lift, you can see the bright, silent majesty of the Rockies laid out below, with serviced terrain to the north, and snow covered meadows opening up to the south. One glance proves that this space would be one of the most entertaining and versatile recreational areas in Alberta. On a snowmobile.

You don’t have to hike out at the bottom of Standish, and there’s interesting runs off it too. Additionally, since the quads are more popular with typical patrons, there’s fewer people with whom to collide on the Standish side.

I have a soft spot for Standish. It reminds me of earlier, better times at many mountains, before the quads, lineups and CDN$60 lift tickets ruined the sport. But the problem with the Standish double is that the lift runs parallel to the short slope of the mountain. The grain of the hill is wrong, so while the lift runs over there, you want to ski down here. What you wind up doing is skiing down a ways, then over, then down, then over again. It makes for very short, disjointed runs, and it’s hard to even get your heart rate up.

Treeline

I love tree skiing. It’s all about the suddenness of it, and the opportunity to discover some patches of snow the hordes and groomers haven’t yet defaced. Sunshine is largely above the tree line. Need I say more?

Gouging

For those of us who bring lunch, there’s no way to keep it in the car to retrieve later in the day. (See the Gondola section, above.) You have to rent a locker in the impossibly crowded day lodge. The alternative is to shell out $25 for burger-and-fries fare. No thanks. I guess I could wear a backpack all day like the teenagers do, but after seeing that woman dangling off the chair last week, I think I’ve decided to choose life instead.

A pitcher of beer, domestic or imported, is $18.25. Sunshine is not alone in the ranks of ski hills gouging in their lounges, but it doesn’t help, either. Service at their base restaurant is atrocious, too. Be sure to give the machined hot chocolate a miss.

Perhaps I should now concentrate on factors dearer to real skiers and snowboarders, and less on minor grievances only yuppie posers care about anyway.

Conditions

By the end of any given year, Sunshine has the largest accumulated base, and since they don’t manufacture a flake of it, I can safely conclude that it must snow there. Unfortunately, I’ve never been there on a big snow day. (In the name of full disclosure, you should know that I’ve probably only made a little over a dozen trips to Sunshine in my 23 years of skiing. So perhaps one big snow day is too much to ask for that few attempts. My dad, however, assures me the bowl off what used to be Brewster is fan-freaking-tastic when it dumps. My interjection, not his.)

Fair enough, but this defence is weak. Any hill is fantastic under a foot of new snow. The test is how well that hill stands up to extended droughts.

Sunshine fails this because because of two factors: volume and wind.

Volume

When you only have a handful of interesting runs off of even fewer serviceable lifts, 7,000+ people a day for a couple of weeks will stomp that coverage straight into the gravel.

By contrast, Fernie Alpine Resort née Snow Valley now handles similar volumes with much less degradation of their skiable slopes. How? More, better terrain. Thousands of skiers a day for three weeks can’t ski off Fernie’s coverage. I know, because I was there before New Year’s on day 21, and still managed to find plenty of soft, chopped manna. It was the best day of the season.

Sunshine, however, on day 16 after their big dump, was little more than snow fences, hard pack and shale.

Wind

To make matters worse, the lack of tree protection on most of Sunshine’s runs means what snow remains after the hordes are through is either nicely sculpted into little frozen waves, or blown to Saskatchewan.

Not only does the wind make the chairs miserable, it drastically reduces the range of the hill. Picture this: snow fence, shale, narrow skiable zone, snow fence, etcetera. Some bowl!

Patrons

I think it has something to do with the $60 price of admission, but the crowds at the base of the hill are pushy and inconsiderate, not at all what I would consider appropriate skier or snowboarder etiquette. For example: I was kneeling down adjusting the bindings on my wife’s snowboard. Four feet from me a young man was standing in his skis, perpendicular to the slope of the hill. Within the span of ten seconds two skiers flew between us. The first was going so fast he hopped over the backs of this guy’s skis. Someone around me gasped and exclaimed “Jesus, did you see that?” The second guy was not quite so quick, and skied firmly right over the backs of the skis. I was astonished. We weren’t 20 feet from the racks of skis and snowboards in front of the day lodge, and these guys were blowing past us at Mach I. I shouted some advice after the second guy, who had stopped at the racks of gear. “Hey, that’s horseshit!” He stared dumbly back. No apology to the guy who’s skis he marked. No cognisance he had done anything wrong. He turned stupidly away. Maybe breakneck speeds in constricted spaces make you moronic. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

Perhaps there are circumstances where it’s necessary to ski over, or ride up the backs of someone’s skis, but I have never, ever, found it necessary. Not when I was snow ploughing at six, stem christie-ing at 12, or mashing painfully at 16. So for the down-at-full-speed, in-line-at-all-costs crowd, hear this: the bottom of the run is not for sliding. It’s occupied by pedestrians, children and beginners. There are people facing away from you, others making equipment adjustments, and still others just daydreaming. Slow down. Kapische?

Light

As if all this weren’t enough, take the flat hard snow, the flat dull terrain, and add to it flat, useless, light.

Half of the time Sunshine is bathed in brilliant, blinding light, the likes of which you wouldn’t see this side of Provence. The other half of the time however, the cloud cover eliminates all distinction on the surface of the snow. This is partly a benefit, because it makes a sort of reverse space mountain roller coaster out of the many run-outs, but have you ever tried pounding down moguls you couldn’t see?

If you think your goggles or your cool wrap-arounds can save you, you’re mistaken. The contrast is actually better without. Lovely day.

One Special Shout-Out

I know it’s crowded in the day lodge, and the tables are packed ridiculously close. The seats have terrible, evil little elementary school backs, and there’s only one microwave. But to skier buddy who filled up his two cups of water, then walked away leaving the tap running: Please buzz back to your home world and stop deliberately damaging our water table. Pig.

Inhale

Have I left out anything?

How about the moratorium on any improvements to the whole mess by a meddling Sheila Copps? Yes, that’s right. Sunshine is in Banff National Park, so on top of the $10 per car additional charge, there’s the knowledge that no matter how bad the situation on the mountain gets, our inspired Heritage Minister will ensure the owners can’t do anything about it. Very nice.

Okay aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? If we can skip the raceway conditions on Highway 2 with the duelling SUVs, or Sunshine’s predilection for erroneously reporting all runs as open, and the mandatory danger funnel run, then that’s about it.

I guess it could be worse. It could be a Charlie Locke hill.

For some, New Year’s is a time of renewal. It’s the passing of the old and the welcoming of the new. For others, it is a chance to reflect on past doings, and make positive changes for the future. For me, it’s typically about wearing a silly hat, getting plastered on cheap champagne and decorating someone’s car, sidewalk, or bathroom with vomit.

But in addition to these quaint little rituals, New Year’s has another long-standing tradition associated with it:

The New Year’s Resolution.

Being a guy who has just spent the last 528-or-so Tuesdays quaffing a pint, I’m fairly well inclined to follow traditions; even if those traditions involve making up a long list of unattainable goals and swearing absolutely that this time will be different.

Of course, also being a founding father of the Pint Day School of Sarcasm and Irony, means that I uphold this tradition with perhaps a wee bit more cynicism than the average bear. At least, that’s what I would have you believe.

So without further ado, here are my resolutions for the year 2002:

I resolve…

• Not to start another company for at least 12 months, no matter how badly the Pint Day 50 needs padding.

• To move my Savings from Chartered Banks to Chartered Mattresses. The interest rate is almost as good, and the fees are considerably lower.

• To stop trusting high-tech companies who owe me money. Apparently, a handshake is only worth the paper it printed on.

• To actually finish my three-year bathroom renovation project. Good things take time, but I really need to take a shower.

• To occasionally rant about something that isn’t copyright related. (This one’s for you, Jason)

• To hawk all the useless crap in my house on eBay. Buyer pays shipping, and you don’t have to sit in your garage all weekend.

• Three Little Words: Alberta Space Program.

• To actually finish a home renovation project with less than five trips to the Hardware Store.

• To maintain a regular regime of exercise and good eating until at least mid-January.

*To teach the citizens of the world, once and for all, how to use a merge lane.

• And finally, so I have at least one attainable goal for the year, I resolve to mock, incite, harass, generally and dish out a prosaic helping of whoop-ass every second Tuesday to all those in the world who deserve it. Take cover Arizona. Pint Day is coming to play.

Oh, and a happy new year to you all, too.

Postscript, 2009

I finally finished the bathroom. This year…

Judging from my last post, you might think I’m scraping the bottom of my barrel o’ rage. I thought it might then be wise to break off a piece today. Enjoy.

I learned unexpectedly a couple of weeks ago that the company for which I used to work, ENMAX Corporation, had just fired a very well-respected compatriot of mine. Truthfully, this termination had been brewing for several years — one of those continuing differences of philosophy. I’m not angry or disappointed for my friend, since he will easily land himself in a better position. Rather, I’m bitterly disappointed at what this means for the utility he leaves behind.

I have a convoluted history at ENMAX. I was first a short-term consultant, whose contract was eventually extended to over a year. Then I became a full employee, a term which lasted only nine months, after which it was back to consulting for a final year. A strange, trying and wonderful journey that wouldn’t have happened had it not been for my now-departed colleague. (The remainder of this rant is going to be problematic if I don’t use any proper names, but since I want to be mindful of ENMAX’s privacy, I will substitute a pseudonym. From here forward I will refer to my esteemed contemporary as Mr. White.)

Without several early, lengthy conversations with Mr. White, I would never have joined ENMAX as a full time bitch, er, employee. What made the difference? Simply, I could understand that Mr. White was: fair-minded, principled, open to input, and practical. He was a man for whom I could comfortably and confidently work, knowing if we shared the same outlook and desired outcomes he would back my decisions. Mr. White could be universally counted upon for support.

Remarkably, I never worked in his department, but I carried his torch wherever I worked in the corporation, because I knew he stood for the most important principle: reason.

Mr. White was not the only employee at ENMAX dedicated to the reasoned pursuit of rational outcomes. He had an entire cast of dedicated staff who went to the wall—and well beyond—on his behalf. To an individual, these co-workers were followers of Mr. White’s philosophy of real solutions according to concrete principles.

So now that he’s gone, I say to his replacement, “Unless your name is John Galt, good luck engendering that sort of loyalty and dedication.”

So. Mr. White is well and away, lighting his torch for someone else. His followers are now free of the largest remaining reason to stay in their current positions. This just sounds like another typical rats-leaving-sinking-ship scenario, doesn’t it?

So what’s got my pantyhose in a knot? Look at what this means for ENMAX: a man spends several years in a pitched battled to defend his principles of reason. When his corporate adversaries finally sack him, it sends a clear message. The corporation stands for principles of un-reason. By any standard, Mr. White received exemplary performance from his staff. Empirically, his goals were intelligent, substantial, achievable and approved. So his removal from the company can only come as a result of irrational and subjective theatrics.

Unfortunately, ENMAX is rife with this sort of politik. This comes as no surprise to any of us that have worked in organizations larger than—say—two people. But what is so freaking irritating, and so unjustifiably wrong, is that this type of politik garbage is ruining an electric utility that has to be governed by sober reason. The delirious followers of mystical unreason that are running ENMAX have fired the one man among them who could have hauled their asses back to reality.

I would never knock the goals of Alberta’s electric system deregulation. (Although I reserve comment on some of the details.) But the resulting problem at ENMAX has been the shifting emphasis toward the marketing drones, and away from the thing they do best: delivering electrons.

This does not mean I believe ENMAX was greatest when they were The City Of Calgary Electric System. ENMAX will be greatest when they fully separate their operations into appropriate working categories: physical things people care about (poles, substations, bucket trucks, flowing electrons), and ephemeral fluff (press releases, marketing promos, glad-handing). The physical-things company, which will hopefully assume a mature, low key name like Calgary Electric Plant & Maintenance Inc.—a name so dull no marketer would touch it with a ten foot cell-phone antennae—can then go about its sensible business without distraction from the do-lunch crowd.

And maybe, just maybe, if they get down on both knees and cross his palm with gold, they can entice Mr. White to return and be their I.T. Director.

I have no illusions that anything I say here is particularly unique or earth-shattering. Oh sure, I amuse the hell out of myself, but in the era of the blog, there is too much content to go around already. This is why I’m not particularly concerned about monetizing this silly little hobby of mine. pintday.org is awash in a sea of mediocre content (theirs, of course. Our content is gold). If I tried to charge for my stuff, I could pretty much guarantee myself an audience of zero—a significant step down from our usual audience of two. Hello, mom.

I give this stuff away because I want to get my content out there—I want people to read it. I can’t make people like it, but if I can get my stuff in front of them, at least I might make them think a little. Occasionally, I many even prompt them to respond. And while this dialogue is a tiny little splash in the large pond of the Computer Internet, it is a splash nonetheless. My voice has been heard. I know it’s true—I got the fax.

It’s a little reassuring, then that no sooner do I arrive into my new vocation (Academia), when I discover that the very same fight is going on in the hallowed halls of our ivory towers—they call it open access. It seems that the traditional avenues of publication—the so-called scholarly journals—are no longer meeting the needs of those published within. It seems most journals require the author to hand over their copyright. In many cases, the authors aren’t even allowed to post a copy of their work on their own web site. Peer review or not, locking information away in an ivory tower so expensive that even University Libraries are starting to turn you away is no way to get noticed when information is increasingly available for free. And really, your research means nothing if nobody reads it. Remember books? Neither do the latest crop of undergrads. If Google doesn’t know about it, it never happened.

So good on you, academia. Keep fighting the good fight. Write. Publish. Give away. But don’t forget to tell ‘em that the pd.o sent you. After all, we did it first. I saw it on the Computer Internet, so it must be true.

Fences didn’t seem very important anymore. Not much did. I wanted to call Liv and Tom, but I knew they weren’t home, and I couldn’t think of any words to say that would be of comfort. It seems weird; I’m usually full of words, but nothing I had to say seemed real or right enough.

I didn’t quite make it home. I found myself in Shopper’s Drug Mart; the one that is open late next to my house. I was standing in the greeting card aisle surrounded by Birthdays, Weddings, and Christmas messages. I stood there a long time. I couldn’t remember what the sad cards were called. I eventually found them down in the corner—sympathy cards.

I’ve never much liked cards. I prefer a person’s own words. At times like this though, words are hard to come by. For me, they just wouldn’t come out. I needed someone else to speak for me. As I read the messages on the cards and I thought of Tommy and of Rose, I realized no message could ever be right. I thought of brothers, of sons, of family, and of mortality. I thought of the things I don’t want to consider, and realized that one day I might have to. I stayed there a long time, holding a card, eyes shut. I stayed until I could open them again; until some of the redness had left them.

I didn’t know you that well, Rick. I got out of Okotoks a long time ago—the Big City seemed to suit my 7-second attention span better than small towns—but what I did know I couldn’t help but like. You always greeted me with a great booming hello; always smiling, always cheerful. When I went digging for dirt on you for Liv and Tom’s wedding, I couldn’t find any, because there simply wasn’t any. You were a constant in the lives of those who knew you, and you were loved.

Your funeral is in a couple of days. I’ll be there, thinking about your big, booming hellos. I’ll be thinking about family, and about mortality. I’ll be thinking of greeting cards and words. And in case the words fail me again, let me say this now:

Farewell, Rick. You will be missed by all.

London is tricky, because it’s the ancestral motherland of our culture. Expectations are high when you go there.

Naturally, we were sick while we were there, and tired by the time we got back. As a result, we were a little cool when it came to talking about our trip. So in case people were given the notion we weren’t impressed by London, I prepared this list to demonstrate otherwise.

And since Kjell is too pegged to take the podium this week, and I’m too drained from being pegged last week, I’ve trotted it out of my grab bag of pre-written prose and am presenting it fully repurposed as this week’s content. It’s not much of a rant, but I’m not pissed off at anyone today. (When Kjell gets back up to fighting weight, I’m sure he’s got a good story or two to break off.)

London is great.

London My Way:

• We walked half way down and jaywalked across the Albert Bridge at night.
• We ate pancakes at nine in the evening at a Dutch restaurant in Chelsea.
• I have a picture of the underside of London Bridge, from the shore.
• The cafeteria in the Tower of London was the best meal we were served, and perhaps the best sandwich I’ve ever eaten.
• Soho sprawls, and we wound up there the first weekend without really knowing where we had gone.
• Wherever we went, the chips were excellent.
• We found a brilliant Marks & Spencer microwavable Indian smorgasborg.
• I bought socks and underwear at M&S too.
• European cars everywhere. No trucks, no SUVs.
• There’s a special Mark Rothko room at the Tate Modern. It’s built to the artist’s dimensions. It proves why you should listen to the artists.
• I bought two Cheap Day Returns to Arundel.
• Admittedly, I thanked God for Starbucks, who could supply me with an actual drip coffee. Not a white coffee, or Americano, but real filtered stuff.
• My buddy Bradford took us to the Founder’s Arms, because he thought it was a nice place with a good view, and it had been on my list of pubs to see for something like five years. I love the synchronicity.
• Austin taxis, inexplicably cool.

See anything I missed? Shoot me a note and I’ll consider adding it here. (I can see it now: the pd.o Guide to London.) Just be sure never to mention that cursed Underground.

“If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.” —Mark Twain

These are awful.

It’s not the subject matter: beautiful works by Zumthor, Ando and Kahn spring readily to mind. It’s the delivery that’s insulting and rude. How so? The majority of my peers insist on demonstrating they’ve done volumes of research, so I get to hear it all. Unabridged.

The styles of presentation vary from Ben-Stein-reading-from-notebook to motivational-speaker, but the presentations remain tedious and exhausting. They run way over duration, sometimes double or triple their budgeted time. This rushes the rest of the material, and sets us all behind schedule.

“If your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” —Henry J. Kaiser

Since this is a rant about brevity, I’ll cut to the point by shouting out my peers and anyone else who thinks I really care to hear how much they’ve read.

Have a point, make it, then shut the hell up.

I don’t care how much you know. If you talk incessantly, I have to shut you out after a fixed amount of time, and I stop learning.

Brevity is preparation. Brevity is knowledge. Brevity is respect.

Out.

(American writer and poet Dorothy Parker also indicated that brevity is the soul of lingerie, but now would be a bad time to digress.)

“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.” — Thomas Jefferson

Tom and I have been thinking about what it is that I do here.

Every couple of weeks, I have the opportunity to mouth off about something on this humble little forum called the pd.o. Some people call the resulting prose Intellectual Property. Others dub it content. We at the pd.o usually just refer to it as fodder. Regardless of nomenclature, the fact that I make this prose available to you, the teeming Internet masses, raises a few questions. Namely, what am I trying to accomplish here, and what can you do with it once I’ve posted it?

At one point, Evan released most of the content at pintday.org (and it’s more commercial brother, codetalker.com) under the terms of the GNUFDL. Later, in a fit of of slobbering IProp-induced rage, I debuted the KJPL. In case you missed it, this debut was largely sarcasm. I don’t actually want your children, unless they don’t eat much and have a penchant for housecleaning. What I do want is to write—to create something without all the strings that are increasingly attached to this ethereal entity we call prose. I want to give something away, in hopes someone else out there is willing to do the same.

In short, I want to participate in an IP gift culture.

A few short years ago, there wouldn’t have been much question about it. Posting something on a web site constituted a desire to share what was posted. Asserting a copyright was enough—overkill even, since such a thing is implicit in most jurisdictions. Today, however, in the era of shrink-wrap and click-through licenses for everything including pets, copyrights seem inexorably linked with licenses. Text cannot be “free” unless it has an acceptable license.txt accompanying it. At least, that’s what they say.

Well, who am I to argue with them?

This brings me to the question of this rant: what are you, our faithful reader, allowed to do with my prose now that I have posted it here?

First, let me assert this: I’m not expecting to ever get paid for this. That doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my copyright, however. I want to maintain creative control over my prose. I want the right to change it—to allow it to evolve over time (This is exactly the exercise we have been undertaking with out recent sabbatical from the pode—it’s our chance to take a breather and update some of our dusty old material). Also, I want the right to keep you from changing it. These are my words, and my opinions. Sure, Evan will fix the inevitable typos that the intern missed, but the content itself is mine, and I don’t want anyone changing my words and attributing the resulting mess back to me. I have enough mess of my own—check the archives.

Having said that, I’m not particularly interested in restricting copying of my prose. I write this stuff on the off-chance that someone will read it. I want to get my content out there. I want people to read it. I can’t make people like it, of course, but if I can get my stuff in front of them, at least I might provoke a response.

Finally, and most importantly, though I’m not expecting to ever get paid for this, I’m certainly not going to let you get paid, at least, not without permission.

So there you have it. I write because I want to. My words are a gift to the intellectual commons. Read them, share them, even respond to them. Just don’t change them or try to sell them—the gift horse gets a little ornery under those circumstances.

1. Pick a bar, or have a bar pick you.
2. Sit down, take off your jacket, and grab a beer mat.
3. Order your pint, according to the following order of preference:
   1. In-house brewed real ale
   2. In-house brewed ale
   3. Real ale
   4. Real ale, not hand-drawn
   5. Local craft beer
   6. Guinness
   7. Any Belgian national brand
   8. Gin
4. Wait patiently for your beer and the arrival of the remaining members of the congregation, if any.
5. Make productive small talk about the mechanics of your day or week. No ranting is permitted until the pints arrive.
6. Politely thank the nice waitress or boy-waitress for your pint.
7. Now that your pint has arrived:
   1. Appreciate its fullness as it rests momentarily, resplendent on its beer mat.
   2. Observe its rich, slightly murky colour and genuinely foamy head.
   3. Pick it up. There’s nothing like the heft of a full pint: the potential, the pleasure, the satisfaction, it’s essential Tuesdayness.
   4. Smell it. Don’t sip! Inhale deeply. Close your eyes if it helps, or if you’re of that persuasion.
   5. Have a taste. Don’t sip! Take a nice, long, mouth-filling pull. Don’t swallow! Hold it in your mouth and notice the feel. Sense the natural carbonation on your tongue. (That would be carbonation due to a secondary fermentation of residual sugars in the serving vessel, not from the artificial injection of a blanket of carbon dioxide as a preservative. Obviously.) While it’s in your mouth, take a moment to notice the smell again. Half your sense of taste is dithered by the smell. Are you getting the full flowery flavour of the hops as they work their way through your nasal passages? If not, we recommend ordering a more significantly dry-hopped pint next time. If none are available, we recommend patronizing a more significantly dry-hopped bar in the future. If you don’t like dry-hopped beer, or are afflicted by some inexplicable aversion to IBUs, we recommend home brewing for a few years, as that eventually makes hop heads out of everyone. But we digress.
   6. Swallow! Man! How long were you going to hold that beer in your mouth? It’s for drinking, not gargling.
   7. Don’t you love how bitter that is, and how it lingers with you at the back of your throat? You should be able to taste a good pint right through until the following Tuesday morning. (Craft brewers: can you hear this? Crank up the dry-hopping, Warp Factor 9.)
   8. This is the easy part: Drink as many beer as it takes to feel human again. If you have trouble thinking this is easy, then we can only recommend you invest some time in becoming a little more free. One good way to do this would be to visit the scrolls and read every article archived there. We think it’s sound life advice, and even if you don’t agree, it will hone your senses of cynicism, irreverence and satire. And that can’t be all bad.
   9. Remember to savour the last sip. Your pint is a compleat experience, and should be enjoyed in its entirety. You wouldn’t eat nine-tenths of a Eucharist, would you? So just make sure the bus-boy, or girl–bus-boy doesn’t grab the glass with that last little bit in it. Be vigilant.
8. Engage in the weekly discourses. All observers are guaranteed an unrestricted five minute period in which they are permitted to rage about their day at work, their week at school, traffic, the dickheads in Ottawa, or whatever comes up. This is the cathartic component of Pint Day. Do not omit this step. If you’re observing alone, write these out. You have been warned: skip this at your own risk. (The Pint Day Saints absolve themselves of any responsibility for your existence whether you do this or not.)
9. Done? Time to go home? Work tomorrow? Or maybe a big assignment or exam? Go ahead. Be free and productive, but not before remembering to tip well. Your financial situation doesn’t come in to play, and neither does the quality of service. (If you observe regularly, the latter should never be a problem. The former may be.) In other words, shelve your pathetic excuses, and lay out. As Live once so elegantly put it, “Leave some change behind.” If you can afford to drink, you can afford to be courteously served.

See you next Tuesday. We’ll be here.

“Let’s see. I have a bill that contains some pretty contentious stuff. I want to get it passed without any serious debate. I know, I’ll title it PATRIOT Act so that that anyone voting No is clearly a filthy, un-American traitor!”

Brilliant! But what did the act contain? Here’s a quick summary, care of the EFF:

[the Patriot act includes] Dramatic increases to the scope and penalties of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

This includes:

• raising the maximum penalty for violations to 10 years (from 5) for a first offense and 20 years (from 10) for a second offense;

• ensuring that violators only need to intend to cause damage generally, not intend to cause damage or other specified harm over the $5,000 statutory damage threshold;

• allows aggregation of damages to different computers over a year to reach the $5,000 threshold;

• enhance punishment for violations involving any (not just $5,000) damage to a government computer involved in criminal justice or the military;

• include damage to foreign computers involved in US interstate commerce;

• include state law offenses as priors for sentencing;

• expand definition of loss to expressly include time spent investigating, responding, for damage assessment and for restoration.

The PATRIOT Act covers a lot of ground, but two of the more significant things it accomplishes is giving the US Government the right to spy on its citizens’ internet activities without a warrant, and forcing anyone convicted of a violent crime to place their DNA in a central database.

The problem here isn’t intention—it’s practice. Realistically, at least one, if not both of these topics should have generate at least a little debate. Due to timing and nomenclature, however, no real debate ensued. Even ignoring these “pesky little Rights and Freedoms issues,” however, this Act puts the most minor of computer-related crimes on par with terrorism—$5,000 damages, over the course of a year, including time spent investigating. Is there any activity that could possibly be excluded under that definition?

The definition of “terrorist act” deserves some serious consideration. Conceptually, it is simple—terrorist acts are defined as large-scale attacks against a population or its infrastructure; i.e. the power grid, the phone network, or even cellphones—but attacks against “the internet?” Is “I can’t get to yahoo.com really on par with blowing up California’s power plants?

Terrorist acts are designed to provoke widespread fear and panic. Is waking up and discovering that your Web Site has been defaced going to make you afraid to send your children to school?

Think about this. Some idiot 12-year old sends out mail with the contents:

To: dumbass@wherever.com
From: "A trusted source" <satan@hackyourass.net>
Subject: This is not a virus!

This is not a hoax. Run the attached program called
**format_my_hard_drive_and_mail_myself to_all_your_friends.exe**
to see Anna Kournikova naked.

and when you click on it, suddenly, the neighbour’s kid has committed a crime on par with taking down the towers. This isn’t terrorism—it’s idiocy. And if $5,000 worth of investigation time later they actually throw that neighbour kid in jail, I would go as far as to say they are locking up the wrong idiot.

My real problems with PATRIOT and other such legistlation are threefold.

First, these bills are getting fast tracked through their respective Congresses and Parliaments. They effectively have a yellow post-it on top saying “Vote Yes, or you are siding with the Terrorists.” Fundamental changes to our rights and freedoms deserve debate. That’s how democracy is supposed to work.

Second, everyone and their dog is tacking on their pet piece of legislation into these bills. Consider the issue of DNA samples for violent offenders. I’m not a big fan of rapists either, but what is this doing in the terrorism bill? What good is DNA from a suicide bomber?

Changes in how the $5,000 in damages for felony computer crimes is beyond ridiculous. If the “crime” under consideration is causing damages that hover around the $5,000 mark (including “time spent investigating, responding, for damage assessment and for restoration”) then I’m pretty sure we can rule out terrorism. In fact, I’m pretty sure the crime should have the word petty- prepended to it.

Finally—and this is the real kicker—these and other laws relating to technology all seem to be written by 60-year-old grey hairs who just haven’t “been able to get the hang of them computer things yet.” These people don’t understand the technology they are legislating. They can’t—they’re afraid of it!

And perhaps that’s where the terrorism comes in: “Computers terrify me. Let’s legislate them out of existence!”

One upon a time, the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Now we have to fear everything. Do you get the impression the terrorists have already won?