You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Thursday, October 4, 2007 Posted by

My conspirator Fitz and I have given a talk (about 12 times now!) called “How to Protect Your Open Source Project From Poisonous People”. (You can see the slides or watch the video.)

And today, we found an actual poisonous person in the Wild! His posts are textbook-classic; we should bottle him up and show him to Summer of Code students.

The scenario: a guy found some javascript bugs and/or confusing behaviors on a Google product. So he came to the mailing list that provides tech-support for the service and enumerated his complaints. The problem is, his attitude was so condescending and full of bile, he ended up attracting more attention to himself than to the bugs. If you search the net, you can see that this guy hangs out on various javascript lists, and does seem to be a javascript guru of some kind, so his criticisms are probably legit (and valuable!)… but putting on my psychologist hat, it’s pretty clear that his primary goal isn’t to report bugs. His goal is to get people riled up. I guess some people get a kick out of that.

Let’s examine his posts by beginning with what a reasonable, respectful person would say, and then compare that to what this person actually said.

What he meant to say

Hey folks, I found a lot of bugs when using this service. Is this the right place to report them?

What he actually said

This is the worst interface in history. Who designed this miserable thing?

Yes, this is actually how he started the thread. No actual bug reports, just a trolling insult to get people’s attention. Eventually after people posted some “OMG what a jerk” responses, he comes back:

What he meant to say

These bugs have frustrated me and made me not want to use the service. […] Here are some bugs I found: […] I’m suprised these bugs are present, given Google’s reputation for building web applications.

What he actually said

I’m sure I won’t [use the service]. I tried it out once and realized it was a typical piece of Google incompetence. […] For starters: [list of bugs] […] And as usual for Google, JavaScript errors appear randomly. How is it that a company this large that relies on the Web for everything can’t find competent Web developers? It boggles the mind.

Notice that he’s unable to simply enumerate the problems: he attempts to directly insult Google (and its employees) at every opportunity.

When somebody asks him to please “go elsewhere and spare us these useless, trolly comments”, his reply makes it clear that he’s deliberately looking for a fight. Rather than apologize for his attitude, he tells the person to screw off and asserts that he has the right to be a jerk anywhere, anytime:

I you don’t like it, then ignore it and read the next post. I’ll post where I feel like it.

When someone else (nicely) points out that his ranting just makes him look like an idiot, his response indicates that he thinks of his initial post as a sort of “gift” to the rest of us:

I posted one sentence to express my displeasure. Subsequent posts were replies to queries for details as Google’s clueless developers clearly wanted some direction. I’m sure they are glad I clued them in on some of the more odious aspects of this thing.

The guru has expressed his displeasure, and fired a shot across our bow! We better beg him for his thoughts… thank goodness he’s here to help us!

I’m proud the response from Jason, our lead UI developer. He completely ignores the troller’s attitude, and addresses only the criticisms themselves in a technical discussion. This is the proper way to deal with such folk: rather than feed the energy beast, extract bug reports calmly. If it becomes clear that no more bug reports are forthcoming, then simply detach from the conversation. These sorts of people just wither away when they’re no longer able to drum up attention.

The Long Road to Vegetarianism

Monday, October 1, 2007 Posted by

All my life I’ve had a secret wish to be a vegetarian. Hm, no, scratch that… but I’ve had the wish for at least the last twelve years, ever since I met my wife. Why? Because after over a decade of discussing and thinking about it, I’m persuaded that (1) it’s generally healthier, (2) it’s better for the planet, (3) it moots the entire issue of trying to define “animal cruelty”.

It all began when I met my wife in college. She told me she was a pescatarian. Well, actually, nobody used that word in 1995, but it’s basically someone who won’t eat any animals other than fish and seafood. I asked her if it was a moral/ethical issue for her (“meat is murder?”), and she calmly explained that she had stopped eating birds and mammals at age 13 because she didn’t want to support animal torture via “factory farms”. (At this point in my blog entry, I don’t have time to go into a long diversion about what factory farms are… but they are terrifying things that torture millions of animals and poison the environment. And they’re the norm for all animal farms; 99% of all meat you consume comes from them. To learn more, read the famous book Diet For a New America.)

I was horrified to learn about factory farming, but was also relieved that my wife didn’t actually believe that eating animals was a sin. I’ve always been of the opinion that there’s nothing inherently unethical about eating animals, considering that millions of years of evolution (and the planet’s entire biosphere) is based on the idea. What matters is the way in which you participate in the food chain. Do you do it respectfully, the way the Native Americans did? Or do you systematically torture creatures and destroy the planet in the process?

Unfortunately, there’s always been one big obstacle between me and vegetarianism: I love meat. I was raised in a meat-centric U.S. culture, doubled by a meat-centric Jewish culture of deli-cured delicacies. My childhood and teen years are peppered with fondly-told stories of how much meat I ate at various events. The taste is in my mouth… I drool when driving by the hot-dog factory, despite my knowing of what disgusting animal parts are poured into a hot dog. When I want to really celebrate, I still have initial thoughts of finding a fancy steak somewhere. In a nutshell, whenever I’ve experimented with vegetarianism, I’ve always crumbled after a week or two, like a nicotine addict reaching back for one more cigarette. It’s embarrassing. (People are sometimes surprised when they find out that we’re raising our kid pescatarian; I think of it as an act of mercy, sparing him from a lifetime of guilty cravings.)

However, there’s finally some hope to my story.

When I moved in with my wife, I learned to live by the rules of her kitchen and house. Her rule was simple: no meat in the house, ever. Throughout our marriage, we’ve kept that rule as our own personalized sort of ‘kosher’ law, and our friends are all aware of it and respect the rule when they come over. Why would I go along with this rule, you might wonder, when I’m not a vegetarian myself? Easy. It’s a nice halfway-point towards my ideal. If I can’t go totally pescatarian like my wife, I can at least dramatically reduce my meat intake. I’ve learned to cook without meat, order meatless dishes for take-in, and just eat meat “outside the house” when the opportunity arises. It simplifies our domestic life as well: no need to worry about my accidentally cooking food with meat, or whether or not I can share my meals with my spouse and son. And because our guests respect the rule at parties and such… well, that’s ten fewer Mu Shu Beef entrees ordered from the local Chinese restaurant, which nudges our economy just a bit more away from meat. Hooray.

Still, though, I’ve become less satisfied with this halfway point. I still eat meat for lunch every weekday (whether it be at a restaurant, or Google feeding me lunch)… and the ethics of eating tortured animals has slowly been gnawing at me over the years.

So my latest experiment is to do what my friend Karl Fogel did: become a pescatarian who only eats untortured meat. This decision has no effect on my domestic life, where I eat 2/3rds of my meals. But it’s made eating food outside the home much more tricky. The fundamental problem is: how do you define animal cruelty? No doubt my vegan friends would describe any sort of meat consumption as inherently cruel, but I’ve already explained how I disagree with that. Well gee, you say, what about all those corporations advertising “free range” animal products? Aren’t I the target for their marketing?

Sure, but while the U.S. Government may have tough standards defining “organic”, they’re really flimsy on defining “free range”. The realm of animal cruelty is a big fuzzy space. If a chicken is allowed out of its tiny cage (just barely big enough to hold it) for 5 minutes a day, to walk around in a 3’x 3′ pen exposed to the sun, is it now a “free range” chicken that lays “free range” eggs? There’s barely any regulation on this stuff.

I was hoping that Whole Foods would be my refuge. I’ve heard all sorts of great rumors about how Whole Foods only sells free-range meat. But when I went to their meat counter last weekend, I found no labels on any products. The phrases “organic”, “local”, and “free range” were nowhere to be seen. When I asked the butchers behind the counter where the various meats came from (“which farm? how was it raised?”), they all hemmed and hawed and scratched their heads. (“I think some of it comes from um… Arizona? No, maybe Colorado?”) The only literature they were able to give me was a generic brochure talking about how the company had created a whole new foundation to increase animal compassion in farming techniques. Hooray and applause for Whole Foods, but… that still dosen’t tell me whether their hamburger is cruelty-free. Even the Information Desk was unable to help me.

When I got home and did some Googling, I found out that Whole Foods only buys meat from farms that meet some pretty hard-core requirements. The farms can’t use hormones or antibiotics on the animals, nor fed animal by-products. The whole system must be heavily documented and re-audited each year. The thing that stood out, though, was the requirement that “the time on a feedlot cannot be more than one-third of the animal’s life.” Hm. Two-thirds of a life grazing freely in a field, but one-third of one’s life in a feedlot? A feedlot is basically thousands of cows crammed into a giant lot of hard-packed dirt. It’s hard to move, there’s nothing to graze on, and the animals are force-fed grain to give their muscle tissue more fatty “marbling”, something they’re not evolved to eat at all. Once again, Whole Food’s definition of “compassion” is just one point along a fuzzy scale, and I’m not sure it’s compassionate enough for me. It makes my quest for humane meat all the more challenging. :-/

My wife imparted words of wisdom to me. She works Heifer International, a huge non-profit organization that teaches sustainable agriculture to impoverished communities around the planet. As you might expect, a number of their employees are either vegetarian, or at least extremely conscious about eating sustainable, ethical, locally-produced food. For most of her co-workers, the general rule of thumb is: if the cook can’t tell you exactly where the animal came from (i.e. “Joe Blow’s farm, 7 miles northwest of here”), they won’t eat it.

With that idea in mind, I will admit to eating meat twice in the last month. First, I bought some buffalo-burgers that came from a specially-advertised farm I could read about. Today, I went and ordered a pork burrito from Chipotle Yes, you read right: the scary burrito fast-food-chain that was once secretly owned by McDonalds. Despite my general revulsion to fast-food, their website actually tells you about their standards for raising pork, and when you walk into the restaurant, there are signs that say exactly which farm it came from!

Net result: I think I’ll be able to survive as a full-time pescatarian, provided I’m able to get a once-every-two-weeks “meat fix” from a source that I’ve ethically pre-screened. It’s going well so far. My drastic reduction in meat consumption also has me feeling lighter and healthier than I have in years. The planet is being slightly less ravaged by my decrease in consumption, and even when I do eat meat, I have no ethical qualms at all.

As a postscript and reward for reading this far: a fascinating book related to local food production is The Ominvore’s Dilemma. It really makes you aware of how we produce food, and why it matters what you eat.

Carcinoids

Sunday, September 30, 2007 Posted by

I’m here at a Carcinoid conference in Norfolk, VA.

Carcinoids are a form of very-slow growing tumors that are “sort of” malignant — they fall into a blurry zone. They’re a special type of neuroendocrine tumor (NET) that usually appear in the GI tract (intestines, stomach, pancreas, liver). What makes them dangerous is that, being growths of of the neuroendocrine system, they eventually start to produce all sorts of nasty excess hormones. The excess hormones make people feel ill in various vague ways, and thus it usually takes many years before doctors diagnose the problem. They’re bad news in the sense that there’s no known cure: the most common treatments are usually injected counter-hormones to hold the tumors in stasis and/or counter the excess hormones being released. But yes, it’s still a terminal illness. Eventually, over many years, the excess hormones cause other organs to fail.

It took my mom at least eight years before her symptoms were properly diagnosed, and she’s been fighting the disease for the last six. As one of her caretakers, it was good for me to come to the conference and learn more about the disease.

Here’s the main thing I learned: the field of medicine is a big fuzzy space. Doctors may present a unified front when it comes to knowledge, but there are huuuuuge areas of medicine that still aren’t figured out. The media is usually focused on the pathetic state of U.S. health care system, or what the latest trendy health threat or cure is… but down at the most fundamental level, medicine is just another branch of science full of scientists making guesses and doing experiments.

This fact really goes against the whole culture we’re used to of “your doctor knows best, just do what she says.” When people are diagnosed with this rare disease, it usually takes many years before they get a correct diagnosis. And even then, a lot of doctors and oncologists are freaked out by patients being self-taught Carcinoid experts, when most of the medical establishment has barely heard of it.

This conference is crawling with a mixture of doctors and patients, and the presentations are really varied. Some of them are just medical researchers summarizing their latest experimients, reading long strings of jargon out loud (presumably to other researchers), while ‘normal’ folks fall asleep. Other presentations are geared to patients, with entertaining, grandstanding doctors cracking jokes and dispensing general advice.

Because the place is crawling with doctors, it’s fascinating to watch them interact. It seems like doctor-culture likes to make a sport out of diagnosing problems. Doctors love to quiz each other: at bars, in the hall, and especially in their presentations: “Hey! Here’s a case study: what would you do if a patient reported symptoms X, Y, Z?” They love to debate the possibilities, then reveal the magic door and show what actually happened. I’m suprised they didn’t start keeping score!

On the way home, I’m getting a crabcake at the airport.

Broadband

Thursday, September 27, 2007 Posted by

Best thing about broadband: grandpa getting to talk to grandson.

Bust the Rut

Thursday, September 13, 2007 Posted by

A friend of mine from my regular Friday night jam tipped me off to a once-per-month bluegrass jam at the Montrose Saloon. So last night I thought “what the heck” and showed up at 8pm. The place was a smoky, smelly dive bar, but cute and friendly at the same time. There were lots of regulars hanging out and drinking at the bar, and only two guys on stage with guitars. They were plenty friendly and excited to have a newcomer, but said people wouldn’t trickle in for a while. So I walked around the block for 30 minutes, came back, and now there were four guys on stage with guitars.

At this point, I started to get worried — was this going to be one of those 8-guitars-and-1-banjo jams? But soon more interesting instruments started trickling in the door: a fiddle player, a mando player, a dobro player, and an upright bass player. Awesome! We started playing simple bluegrass tunes, and I stood in the back of the group just following along by ear, keeping simple rhythm. They kept trying to get me to step forward and solo… but c’mon, I just a newb, playing a bunch of songs I’ve never heard before, with a bunch of people I’ve never met before, in front of an audience of 30 people. I mean, hey… solo? No pressure or anything!

Finally I realized why they kept trying to get me to solo: they were spoiled. In walked another banjo player, apparently their “regular” banjo guy who they had mercifully failed to warn me about, in fear of scaring me away. This guy was fantastic, and familiar-looking. After his first solo, I realized that it was Dave Bragman, a banjo teacher from the Old Town School. He was also really nice to me… kept encouraging me to do solos, showing me various licks he was playing. I have to say, it was a rush to play in large group with another banjo player, trying to synchronize styles. It was also a great rush to play new music in front of an appreciative audience, and it was a breath of fresh air to work with other musicians. The whole experience reminds me that it’s good to get out of our ruts now and then!

Speaking of text adventures…

Thursday, September 6, 2007 Posted by

Back in my prior post, I was advertising a new text adventure I wrote for a contest. Wow, what a learning experience that was. My original goal was to learn the Inform programming language in a week, which was accomplished. But despite five friends beta-testing the game over a day or two, the game ended up being way too frustrating for most other players and judges.

Moral of the story? Learning the language doesn’t make you a good game designer, not any more than learning to chop vegetables makes you a good cook. I made all the classic newbie mistakes that first time text-adventure writers make. I’m busy working to clean them up and make the game more playable. I’ll do a new release at some point!

Text adventures really have gotten a bad rap among most gamers, though. It’s not really about “oh noes, where are my graphics?” — rather, it’s that most people aren’t aware of what the parser can and cannot understand. People who write (or play) the games have got the whole vocabulary ingrained, but not the general public. My friend Chris has a nice portrayal of his experience with text adventures:

The terrifying monster runs toward you!

> SHOOT GUN

What do you want to shoot the gun at?

> MONSTER

What about the monster?

> SHOOT MONSTER WITH GUN

I'm sorry, I didn't understand you.
The monster is getting closer!

> SHOOT MONSTER

What did you want to shoot the monster with?

> GUN

What do you want to do with the gun?

> EAT FLAMING DEATH

With a quick swoop, the monster scoops you up in his jaws.
*You have died*
Too bad, you should have shot the monster with your gun!

Text Adventure

Monday, August 6, 2007 Posted by

I wrote a text adventure. For a contest. It was fun. (You remember text adventures, right? Like Zork?)

The contest was to write ‘the beginning of a larger text adventure’. I was one of seven entries. If you want to try it out, you can download it from my interactive-fiction web page.

And Likewise…

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 Posted by
Comments closed

…don’t code like my brother!

You know what annoys me?

Sunday, July 1, 2007 Posted by

…when paper bills arrive pre-tri-folded (to fit in the envelope), and the “detachable stub” has a perforation that is just barely below the fold. It makes it impossible to just tear off the stub without the whole thing tearing into a mess.

I’m just sayin’.

The Beginning of the End

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 Posted by

Back in the 80’s, when I was in high school, I remember being introduced to PC clones. The whole PC third-party market was relatively new; IBM was the big dog, releasing new PCs (XT, AT, etc.) while a bunch of manufacturers sort of trailed behind and produced bits of cloned hardware you could use to build your own machine. I was particularly interested in tracking the progress of graphics standards. First IBM released “CGA graphics”, which was about 320×200 resolution. The manufacturers cloned it and started selling CGA cards. Then IBM later released “EGA graphics”, which was higher resolution and more colors. Again, the DIY market cloned that too… as well as the final “VGA” cards that IBM produced.

But then, something weird happened. This was the beginning of that famous shift where IBM started to fall, and lost its leadership position. I remember hobbyists starting to get impatient with the VGA standard, wanting higher resolution than 640×480. So the clone market started inventing ‘super VGA’ cards running at 1024×768 resolution… all incompatible chipsets and standards, of course… but at least there was interesting competition. Meanwhile, a year later, IBM released “XGA” as their own 1024×768 standard. And everyone ignored it. Why? It was technically inferior to the other SVGA standards (it used interlaced scanning, if I recall correctly.) I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, this is a big deal. It’s the beginning of the end for IBM.” And I was right! Many years and downsizings later, IBM managed to scrape through, but nobody thinks of them as a leading hardware manufacturer to imitate anymore. They’re lean, mean, and mostly about consulting these days. A different company.

Well, I just had that same moment again, reading this slashdot article. Microsoft releases Vista, and nothing happens. People aren’t upgrading. Nobody cares. Nobody wants it. Users are sick of the game. Microsoft is now begging users to upgrade.

Read my… er, blog: this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft.