Eric's Internal Dialog

I caught this on Attack of the Show tonight. Please enjoy the following video. Cobra '08

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzrd6eVAsjA

"Yes, we shall."

On the flipside, I was discussing the innumerable ways that the G.I. Joe movie is a rough sell to much of the world, and at least 51% of American voters. I offer you the narration from the original G.I. Joe movie intro.

"G.I.Joe is the codename for America's daring, highly trained special mission force. It's purpose: to defend human freedom against cobra, a rutheless terrorist organization determnined to rule the world."

That, in combination with the following video (made 13 years before 9/11, by the way) should illustrate the point sufficiently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN034sBeF4c&feature=related

Just replace "Cobra" with "Al-Qaeda", and you pretty much have George W. Bush's foreign policy over the past 8 years.

Knowing is half the battle. Yo joe.

-Eric

You're all familiar with the comic book movie mantra by now to be repeated before the opening credits of every beloved comic franchise brought to the big screen: "Please don't suck. Please don't suck. Please don't suck."

Well, for the first time since Spiderman 2, it worked. I won't bother reviewing Iron Man. Here's what you need to know.

1) Old Shell Head is treated very well by Favreau and Downey. Never has a comic-book character been so nailed by an actor. I was more afraid for this movie letting me down than I was for The Lord of the Rings. I was wrong to worry.

2) True to the book, Stark is his own worst enemy. He's the one comic-book character that was defined by the strength of his own character, and not defined by his arch-villain. This takes a smart writer, evident by the periods of time when the book suffered in it's history under lesser authors. Luckily, Favreau's writers were up to the task, and wrote dialogue and plot suitable for Stark. There may be no line better than "Gimmie a scotch. I'm starving."

3) Also true to the book, you see more of Tony Stark than you do of Iron Man. This may disappoint some summer-action-movie hunters, but not any fans of the book.

4) If you have ever read a marvel comic book in your life, YOU MUST STAY FOR THE SCENE AFTER THE CLOSING CREDITS. Trust me. This bodes well for Marvel having control of their properties instead of the movie studios. Any chance they can buy back X-men like they did with The Hulk and fix it?

Some of the great actors are a bit underserved by their roles (Howard and Paltrow don't get a ton of play given their talent), but I'm not worried about them falling into the "Cyclops Abyss" a la X-men. They are clearly going to get to shine in the sequels (they've all signed on for a 3 picture deal) and this franchise, unlike many others, only gets better after you tell the requisite Origin story.

Do yourself a favor and go catch this movie. It's holding at a very respectable 94% on the Rotten Tomatoes "tomatometer", and it doesn't get much better than that.

Official scoop - this week Blizzard secured the domain name "diablo3.com". Aww yeah, let the anticipation begin! Given the average speed of a Blizzard release, expect to see this sometime in Q3 2017.

Also, SWG is free for former subscribers this month. I logged in last night. As usual, the best part is the long wait to login while John Williams music gets your heart pumping. Then the interface comes up and you log out.

It has been 2 months since I have officially rid myself of any MMO subscriptions. I don't even have the shakes anymore. If anyone had a free trial subscription to Pirates of the Burning Seas, I'd be willing to give it a whirl however.

This has been your gaming community service announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Thomas Jefferson Hates Each and Every One Of You.

 

Anyone interested in seeing "In Search of Mozart" at the DFT in April.

Click here for details and dates...

http://www.dia.org/dft/item.asp?webitemid=1336

And let me know if you're interested.

--Looking Back on 2008 in Shame--

First, with all the flack that's going around about the Democratic Primary slugfest, here's what I'd like to see. I'd like to see all the super-delegates get together and say, in one resounding voice, the following:

1) "We love this primary fight. We hope it goes all the way to the convention. We want every opinion voiced and every voter heard. We will not supress democracy for the sake of appearing to have a clear winner, or triumphant champion. Politics is a fierce business, and sometimes it is less-than-pretty, but to have such a strong field competing against each other is a sign of the strength of our party."

2) "BUT.... If you two can't play nice, talk about real issues, and show some respect for each other and your party, we're going to immediately grant all of our super-votes to the candidate who *doesn't* stoop to name calling. So help me God, I'll turn this convention around and take you all back home if you don't behave."

Not that this will ever happen. The Democrats, at heart, like appearances and dislike competition. Especially friendly competition. Every opponent is simply evil and closed-minded. Even other Democrats.

I hope that in some future campaign, we may hear ideas like the above expressed. But our nation is clearly not quite ready for it.




We have a bright political future to look forward to. In it:

• Government is transparent
• Voters are treated like investors instead of consumers
• Citizens have a voice that refuses to go unheard
• Citizens are positive and constructive towards our government, because we have a stake in it every day, not just in election years, or as members of a broad demographic in a poll
• Ideas about good governance comes from the Citizens and bubbles upward, not from the politicians from the top-down
• Electoral success depends on motivating people, not donors, because people can't be swayed by an increasingly irrelevant broadcast media

I can't wait to see you all there.

Politically, I like to think that I'm nothing if not "philosophically consistent". (This, by the way, is probably why I have a hang-up when it comes to both major parties).

But I've been wrestling with myself over Net Neutrality. I'm sure you've heard next to nothing on this issue from our presidential hopefuls, so here's a brief recap.

The Internet protocol was originally specified that all traffic was to be forwarded on a "best-effort per packet basis." This means that, on the Internet, a packet of data is a packet of data, and all intermediate hosts (the stops along the way between the data's sender and it's receiver) were to attempt to deliver it without any prejudice to it's content. For a very long time, this was a non-issue. It simply meant that you could not pick which sources or destinations got preference from you. In the 25 years since the writing of this protocol, something happened that nobody had forseen. Computers and routers became so fast that they could perform "stateful packet filtering" or "packet-shaping". This means that the routers were fast enough to crack open your packets and look at the type of information they were carrying. If your traffic type was deemed "less important" by the router, it could queue it up and send "more important" data first. This is a terribly handy tool for businesses concerned with their own data (it's positively essential for Voice-over-IP phones), and so is generally regarded as A Good Thing.

However, the big Internet Service Providers decided that they wanted to start doing it to their customers. They claim that it can boost the efficiency of their systems, and allow more favored traffic the right-of-way on their networks, even if that traffic didn't originate, or wasn't destined for, one of their customers. (It's just along for the ride on their infrastructure - the primary method of all Internet traffic). Detractors (myself among them) say that this amounts to censorship, and Comcast proved us correct when independent tests showed that they were blocking or delaying trasmission of BitTorrent packets, the chief method of Point-to-Point filesharing between end users. We defenders of Net Neutrailty further postulate that allowing ISPs and common carriers to packet-shape traffic will render the Internet into a more broadcast like medium, with "desirable" traffic from major media sources getting prime treatment, while "undesirable" traffic, from the likes of individuals, would get held up or lost. This in turn would turn us back into proper consumers of corporate-approved traffic, with individual voices squelched in favor of established media outlets, many of which are owned or affiliated with providers.

I'm looking at you, AOL Time Warner. *points menacingly*

Okay, so it's clear that I'm strongly in favor of Net Neutrality, Yet, at first glance, it doesn't seem to jibe with my generally Free Market libertarianism. This may not bother your average elected official, who eats philosophical inconsistencies each morning for breakfast, but it's been nagging the hell outta me. If there's one thing I've learned is that, usually, even my instincts are rational. So when I came to what apeared to me to be an irrational paradox from two rational arguements (Net Neutrality is Good. Free Markets are Good. Net Neutrality is limiting to the Free Market), I decided to rethink the whole issue, and determine whether my analysis was flawed, or my conclusions.

Finally, on the way home from Easter dinner today, it came to me. Are there any circumstances under which I believe that government oversight should step in and correct markets? As it turns out, this is a pretty easy question for me to answer. Yes, there are. Governments should only interfere with markets for three reasons.

1) To prevent coercion by fraud: Corporate entities should not be able to misrepresent themselves or their products to the consumer. Advertising doesn't count as fraud to the more cynical among you. This doesn't seem to apply to Net Neutrality, though. The ISPs aren't lying about what they want to do.

2) The prevent coercion by force: At first glance, this is a pretty weak argument for Net Neutrality. I have some limited choice as to what Internet Service Provider I choose. Of course, if you run a few traceroutes to some different internet sites, check and see how often the same common carriers come up along the way. The argument gets stronger when you see how much traffic is routed through just a few carriers, any one of which could packet-shape your data into a trickle. Still, this isn't strong enough to settle my unease with my logical paradox.

3) To prevent predatory monopolistic effects: Bingo! I found what was bothering me. The ISPs aren't acting as competitive agencies fighting to provide the best services to their clients, they are acting in concert as an oligopoly to preserve a traditional market structure that is becoming obsolete, but is much preferable to them. Centralized broadcast media is challenged directly by independent and instantaneous access to publication through the Internet by individuals. They'd all be much happier if they could turn your web browser into a TV set, and feed you the content and advertising that they find most advantageous, and could leverage with their other business interests. If you think this sounds cynical, look at an AOL (Time Warner) subscriber's default homepage. Or Road Runner (Also Time Warner). Comcast. Name a major provider, and look at the internet experience they provide out of the box. It's built to hammer you with their ads and services every time you start up your browser. Hell, this isn't new. The music and movie industries have been collectively fighting a paradigm shift in their market with almost the exact same techniques. People want quick cheap and easy access to only the music they like, delivered right to their desktop. The technology can provide it, but the publishers wanted to protect their profits and maintain a grip on the editorial content of thier industry. The pick the music the radio plays, and them put Digital Rights Managment into their proprietary audio formats, so they can meet this demand halfway, or lose thier shirts to pirated MP3s.

Monopolies (and oligopolies) are an anathema to the Free Market, even though some technologies naturally drift towards them due to factors I won't go into here. But when those oligopolies combine to effectively force you into abiding by their provisions because they control the common carrier infrastructure, you can no longer avoid them with market choices. They own the infrastructure, they can feed you what's good for them, not what you choose. That is coercion by force, and it's a coercion agreed upon by corporate entities in their own collective best interest. That is when governments have to step in to protect against monopolistic practices.

And that is how I reconciled my perceived problems between the Free Market and Net Neutrality, reasserted my philosophical consistency, and reaffirmed my faith in my own rational instincts.

Damn you Brandon for bringing Portal over.

I know the Orange Box has some other games on it that, you know, I've heard of, and been told I should play. Like Half-Life 2, the MOST IMPORTANT VIDEOGAME EVER.

However, to me, the only game on that disc, on my 360, or IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, is Portal.

For your listening pleasure, Enjoy the GladOS soundboard. So you can talk to GladOS. Like you did before she tried to kill you.

http://soundboard.com/sb/gameboysp13.aspx

It includes the "still alive" song, which might be my favorite song ever written. "There is research to be done on the people who are still alive".

In the meantime, I'm going back to the game. I hear they're having a party for me. I'm looking forward to the cake.

Okay, the Sunday talk circuit was painful for me today. It's all horse-race politics, with the respective camps speaking clearly off their assigned talking points--their brain-wave patterns flat-lined by adherence to the Party Message[tm].

I'm looking at you, James Carville! *points*

Now, I don't have a terrible stake in who wins the Democratic Primary. They're effectively identical on policy, and Obama's Lofty Vision vs. Clinton's Ruthless Machivellianism pretty much cancel each other out in the "getting shit done" department. So basically all the rage and furor of the various supporters is largely about which identity-group-hive-mind they've decided to join. Since I don't have any White Guilt, and don't have any Male Guilt, I'm completely indifferent. (At this point, I'm happy because any president is better than what we've had for the past 8 years). So about these MI and FL votes....

Sure, the voters got screwed, but not like that's something new. In FL, the state GOP bumped the primary up by tying the primary date change to a bill that no one was going to let fail, so I can see some griping there. Of course, all the FL Dems went right along with it, thinking that, per usual, the race was going to be over if they didn't get in before Super-Fat-Tuesday. (Little did they know). But in MI, this is all squarely on the shoulders of the Democrats. Debbie Dingell and Company thumb their noses as the DNC and say "I dare you not to count us". The DNC says "fine", nerfs the Michigan primary, and asks the nominees to refrain from campaigning there. Obama, being the stand-up sort of rule-follower that he is obliges to the point of not putting his name on the ticket. Clinton, of course, *does*. Clinton wins massively in MI, because a ton of Obama-supporters flop over in our open primary to vote for McCain or Romney, since their primary *doesn't count*, theire candidate *isn't on the ticket*, and they're deathly afraid of Mike Huckabee. This all seems rational to me. Especially the part about being deathly afraid of Huckabee.

So now, those who voted for a Republican can't revote, meaning that, effectively, only Clinton's supporters would be allowed to vote in the "really-for-sure-we-mean-it-this-time" primaries. Is there a defense for this *at all* from anyone who's sole motivation is anything other than electing Hillary Clinton? This is my very serious question, not only for my Capital-D Democrat friends, but anyone who has a stake in the Democratic nominee (i.e. all the independent voters who are supporting a Democrat this term).

My real commentary on this is that I find this whole debacle to be very telling of the Democrat mindset. (In bold text, you'll find the ideas and habits that I think are inherent to Democrats.) After the mess in '68 produced by a collision of indentity groups internal to the party, they invent Super-Delegates[tm] to give the party some measure of top-down control over the messy practice of elections, which they can't trust because it's dynamic and not planned.

In order to impose some semblence of top-down controls on this process, they build an overly-complicated set of rules, made to assuage the unpredictible and dynamic nature of thier constituents, who may need the party leadership's help, because their constituents don't know what's best. Of course, they only weight the Super-Delegates[tm] enough to mitigate damage, as opposed to imposing totalitarian control of the party, because they're at odds with themselves between two poles. On on hand, they ideally want to believe wholeheartedly in democracy, on the other, they want to establish a well-planned and efficient process of centralized control, because they don't have faith in the populace. In short, the populace needs looking after by those who know better, like thoughful and loving parents. So, the primary-date-setting, the Super-Delegates, and the inability to follow their own poorly-contrived and overly-complicated rules, leads to a massive House of Cards that comes crashing down when it produces the exact effect that they were trying to mitigate in the first place -- a slug-fest between worthy candidates, and a rift between identity groups in the party.

The Republicans, it seems to me, facing the same problems, would just this business play out, ThunderDome-style, and accept that some races internal to the party are going to be close ones. Let the better person win. Sometimes, this leads to a real split in the party, so be it. They survived Teddy Roosevelt, so... carry on.

I remarked that with the passing of Jeff Healey and Gary Gygax, I was going to lose another respected figure soon, as these things tend to come in threes. This week, Arthur C. Clark (author of _2001: A Space Odyssey_, and _Childhood's End_, among countless other great works) passed away.

R.I.P. A.C.C.

Sad to see the last of the "Big Three" scifi writers go, as we had already lost Heinlein in '88 and Asimov in '92.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18784732

So now that the consensus is in (mostly) that the production, transportation, and consumption of Ethanol has net increase in production of greenhouse gasses, not to mention other ancillary environmental effects, how will the broadbased political support for it flow? The first thought that occurred to me was that the Democrats and Republicans will flop sides on the issue, but after further introspection and research, I don't think that's the case. (Though it would be entertaining as hell.)

To be sure, the Republicans will latch onto it, considering the new borrow-and invest conservatism that has blossomed under George W. Bush. It's largely home grown, and now that oil is a burden on the economy *and* a national security liability, the GOP will be looking for a way off the stuff. Democrats won't abandon it, even though it's worse for the environment (at present). The strong argument is that Ethanol production and consumption is in its infancy, and advances in technique will get it into our cars with greater efficiency and less ecological damage in the not-to-distant future. The weak (read, "cynical") arguement, is that nobody is as good as Democrats at hiding from hard data when it doesn't support a pet conclusion, so they'll just ignore this information and love it anyway.

So that means that Ethanol is the way of the future, regardless of which side of the aisle you're on. Expect these effects in the near-term:

1) Ecological damage from the increased clearcutting of third world natural areas to make room for suddenly more lucrative crops.

2) Increased prices at the pump to amortize the cost of developing more efficient transport systems to get ethanol to your corner gas station. (Ethanol can't be pumped into pipelines, it has to be shipped in containers.)

3) Increased cost to the consumer for staple foods. We're already seeing this one, as farmers have switched to corn for fuel, and driven the price of wheat up drastically since 2005.

For the most part, these will likely be initial overhead costs as we move to renewable energy, and in my opinion, the national security advantages to getting us off foreign oil alone are worth the startup costs. That doesn't mean it's going to feel good in the pocketbook for the first 10 years or so, though.

Alright. Now that I got that out of my head, maybe I can go get some sleep.

Full Disclosure: My Ford F150 runs on E85 Flexfuel. Occasionally.

So in my blog-reading today I ran across someone who mentioned Homeric epithets.

These were mnemonic tricks used by Homer not only to indicate to the listener that they had been introduced to this character boefore, but a remind of what that character was. Moreover, they were chosen to help even out the meter of Homer's epic poems. They were usually picturesque, and always descriptive.

For instance, instead of simply saying "Rico", Homer may chose instead: "Swift Rico, catcher of rats". Often, he used many different epithets to describe a character at different moments in the poem, in accordance to his need to describe a particular scene, or to match meter in a particular stanza.

So in this vein, I ask each of you to surrender to me, epithets Homer would have used with your name, had you been the subject of an epic poem.

Eric:
- "Resourceful Eric"
- "Eric of many devices"
- "Eric, taster of many pleasures"
- "Vain Eric" (especially for starting this damned list)

Let's see what you've got, heroes!

Today marks the start of Discardia:

Discardia is celebrated by getting rid of stuff and ideas you no longer need. It's about letting go, abdicating from obligation and guilt, being true to the self you are now. Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load.

More here: http://www.metagrrrl.com/discardia/

So I'm celebrating by getting rid of all the clothes that I don't *love*. This is a big pile of my current clutter, and the easiset one for me to part with (I dread the day where I assault the outdated technology piled up in my house. I must have 30 computers in here.)

If you are celebrating Discardia, what are you going to start with?

I'm most pleased to find out that the Formula 1 season kicked off again today. I got the AGP on tape delay thanks to the Speed Network, so no one tell me who won for another hour-and-a-half.

I know you're all huge fans. :-)

I am an erratic TV watcher at best. I spend more time reading (online and dead-tree) than I do watching TV, but of course, there are some real gems that I don't catch consistently enough.

Thanks to NBC and Fox, that may change.

http://www.hulu.com

As well as having a nice selection of movies, I give you the A-to-Z of my favorite available shows, in their entirety, with limited commercial interruption. Many in 480p hi-def. In your browser. Hellz Yeah.

The Best of... A-to-Z:

The A-Team, Battlestar Galactica (both versions), Buffy, Chuck, Family Guy, Fantasy Island, Firefly, Futurama,  House, I Dream of Jeannie, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Johnny Sakko and his Flying Robot, Journeyman, Knight Rider, Lost in Space, Monk, Newsradio, The Office, The Practice, The Riches, Roswell, Scrubs, The Simpsons, The Tick.

That's just a small sample. Enjoy, junkies!

...Jeff Healey died yesterday at age 41.

This is a rough day.

As was best put by a post in another journal: "Gary Gygax failed his saving throw today."

It's a shame he can't reroll a new character. He was the father of modern gaming. Even though he never (intentionally) designed a video game, I shudder to think what video games today would be like without him. In Heaven, you always roll twenties.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87901434&ft=1&f=1001

So, in order to cut down the amount of high-tech geek posts here, and to make an effort to separate my personal ramblings from more serious and topical web-publishing, I've started a new blog on blogspot. It's a far more clean and professional blog space, and I will limit it to technical findings I've gleaned from around the internet, and my own personal experiences with them. The title is "The Tinker's Mind", and it can be found here:

http://thetinkersmind.blogspot.com/

If you want to grab it in RSS syndication, use this link:

http://thetinkersmind.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Enjoy!

Oh man, this trailer is the best of the bunch. Still loving the fact that in 1/3 of the trailer, Stark has a drink of some sort in his hand.

http://www.myspace.com/trailerpark

Say it with me....

Please don't suck. Please don't suck. Please don't suck.