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November 25, 2004
Happy Thanksgiving!
Today I celebrate by..... doing homework! Yes oh so exciting. Anyways the new fad seems to be deep flash frying whole turkeys in huge vats of oil. You know what happens when you put a little bit of a frozen object with some condensation on it in a pan of frying oil right? Well multiply that by 1000 or so and you have your turkey bomb. My advice: don't do it! I watched a neighbor's house burn down last winter because of their attempt at this stunt. Anyways here's a little email my mom sent me which I guess is ironically funny:
The Fried Turkey Tale
Dear Mom,
I hope you and dad are having a Happy Thanksgiving. This year we decided to do something a bit different and fry our turkey whole. I am in a newsgroup on the Internet that just could not say enough about how great they taste fried. I even got a recipe from one of the members. It went something like this:
1 turkey plucked and gutted - leave feet for holding turkey 5 gal bucket peanut oil. 1 extra large deep fryer heated to 500 degrees.
That didn't sound too complicated, and even though I've had several Kitchen disasters in the past, I thought this would be a festive way to celebrate Thanksgiving. Besides, we could do the deed outside on our wooden deck to avoid making a big mess in the kitchen. What could go wrong? I couldn't find a turkey with feet at the grocery store. The butcher thought I was crazy and suggested I try one of the nice frozen one that was on sale. I figured a meat man should know, so I got one.
Have you ever tried to thaw out a frozen turkey? It's a weeklong job. I figured the hot grease would do the trick anyhow, so why worry. Have you priced peanut oil lately? I decided some of the other stuff would work just as good. After all, cooking oil is cooking oil. I managed to get the oil in the pot just fine. Heating it was a bit tricky as it kept smoking and bubbling. But since we were outside, I thought the smoke wouldn't hurt anything.
Now this is the part you won't believe! I threw that sucker in the pot And when the thing thawed out the oil boiled over on the wooden deck and Caught the deck on fire! We got the garden hose to put it out. Who would know not to put water on a grease fire?
It didn't really matter anyhow. In all the excitement I forgot to watch The cooking thermometer and the grease must have become too hot. I was inside the house looking for the fire extinguisher when I heard the explosion. Have you ever seen a mushroom cloud? It was incredible! After the fire department left, we decided to eat dinner out next year.
Not only was our Thanksgiving dinner ruined, but the deck burned down
and took half the garage with it. The dog will be just fine when his fur grows back. We've always wanted a Mexican hairless dog anyhow.
The fire department told us they make a lot of house calls about this time of the year from people frying turkeys who don't know what they are doing. Like, is it my fault that the grease was cheap and the stupid turkey wouldn't thaw out? They need to put consumer-warning labels on turkeys!
Speaking of the turkey, we are still looking for it. I think it may
have blown to bits as we've looked all over the neighborhood. If you see a turkey shaped cloud of ash circling the earth, that's probably it. By the way, you may see us on the evening news on TV. A lot of people thought it was a terrorist attack. I only hope we have not been reported to the FBI.
Anyhow, I just want to let you know that we are all fine. I don't think the house will be fixed for a while since there is a lot of smoke damage. We are moving to a motel. Do you think we could come to your house for Christmas this year? You were not planning on frying a turkey, were you?
Happy Thanksgiving, baked or fried.
Posted by Plocmstart at 12:15 PM | Comments (1)
November 22, 2004
Supersize Me
So I just got done watching the documentary "Supersize Me" where the perfectly healthy guy decides to live off of just what he can buy at McDonalds for 30 days to see what happens to his health. As we can probably expect, his health went down rather rapidly and his weight went up quickly. He put himself in danger of a couple life-threatening diseases by taking his eating habits to the extreme, and to prove a point. At the same time he brought up some other items that are wrong, and I'll just take a moment to comment on them (along with my rather drastic methods of fixing them).
Lobbyists. What are they good for? They tell our representatives what they think is right for us, but who are they really looking out for? Apparently not us. Why is it legal for some company to pay someone to go to DC and hound (and sometimes give hand-outs for) someone that's supposed to represent me to do what he wants, which is what some large powerful (money=power) corporation wants?
So let's make lobbying illegal. Sure it'll cut out those few "good" lobbyists that want what's good for us in general, but aren't they still just working for another corporation or organization with their own ideas that just happen to be good overall? But oh no where will our representatives get their information from? How will they know how to vote on various bills? Where will the basis for their thought process come from? Hmmmmm... well how about using that platform they got voted on as a basis for once? Or how about going back to hometown A or polling city B to get a idea of what the general, real American public really wants? Of course this means Americans will have to be up on what's really going on with these bills and such and might have to do some reading of their own. But is it really that bad to have some insight and involvement in this large governing body that is deciding what you can and can't do and how to go about doing it?
Corporations. They get what they want (see Lobbyists). Who keeps them in check? Well besides the laws they're supposed to follow (and occasionally ignore) hopefully they could keep themselves in check. Apparently this is a hard job and nobody wants to do it. I read an article last week from the wife of an EA Games employee who is a software programmer. Apparently he is a salaried employee who expected to have an enjoyable job making what anyone would think is exciting: sports video games. Apparently the EA work ethic borders on slavery though. Being forced to work what was somewhere near 80 hours per week and getting no compensation for his extra 40 hours of work, he expected to either keep showing up or quit. The only difference between slavery and this job is that he can actually leave. But then of course being unemployed doesn't help much, especially when he must be so exhausted that a couple weeks of sleep is probably required before he can even think about looking for another job. Is this how they got the price per game lowered by about $10? If it is, I think I'll keep paying the higher price for the sanity of the software engineers out there.
But there is a trend lately, largely in the software and gaming industry where small companies just don't cut it anymore and large corporations either buy up or shut down the small studios. Then what we end up with is 2 or 3 major corporations all competing in the same arenas with roughly the same ideas which are also driven by the media. So what happened to the innovation? In the last month I can think of three major games that have come out, all by a different group. Halo 2, Doom 3, and Half Life 2. All first person shooters with basically more interactive play and better graphics. Variety? In Halo 2 I shoot aliens and zombies. In Doom 3 I shoot dead things (zombies?). In Half Life 2 I shoot...? I'm not sure since I haven't played it yet. Looks like people and robots from what I have seen though.
Variety anyone? Look elsewhere. This also goes for the rest of the entertainment industry. In an attempt at being creative I've seen my childhood cartoons bastardized into CGI representations of Scooby Doo, Garfield, and from what I hear possibly Fat Albert in the future too. Don't get my wrong CGI can be cool, but animation is another thing, and the way these movies are marketed it seems like there's an attempt to squeeze every penny out of these images I grew up with having no ambition to go buy the Garfield soundtrack or Happy Meal or whatever other silly thing they stamp these icons' names on today. Innovation? Not in re-inventing old cartoons. Not in reproducing old 70's shows in the form of movies either. You know what I mean. The first couple were OK, but now it's getting monotonous....
Alright, a lot of complaining and not a lot of solutions there. That's never a good thing. Guess I need some cheese with that wine. So here's your cheese. Let's have the major corporations fund smaller studios rather than assimilating them into the mega-conglomerate. Break up these mega-giants into smaller, more innovative groups. Sure there'll be resistance, but what's new there. If you're used to getting up at 8:30am and someone says you have to be up at 8:15 from now on sure you'll complain too. It's a little more work at first, but after a little while 8:15 is a way of life. It's the new you. Get used to it.
One good example (though amazingly so) is AOL. I heard that they are actually breaking up into three or so smaller groups in order to become more focused on their various markets. I'm not sure about the more focused part, but the ability to split up allows them to have a somewhat separate identity and possibly think in different ways to benefit each group. A step in the right direction.
Technology. For those who know how to use it, great stuff. For those who don't, oh man this is totally a tough time and it'd be easier to just say no to allowing any use of it that doesn't seem right to me, since I can't figure out a way to make this work for both of us. If industry acted this way throughout history we'd never manage to get electricity in all our homes, telephone service, TVs, radios, vehicles, and so on. So why is there this strong resistance for large corporations to accept technology for what it is today?
First there is this problem in defining exactly what software is. Software isn't something you can wrap your arms around. It's not something you go to the shop and get fixed when it gets dented. It's not something you paint another color when you're tired of the current one. Software is this abstract thing. When boiled down to the fundamental level software is a set of mathematical formulas created to operate within a specific set of machinery to perform specific functions. The mathematical formulas are the program code itself, which is developed and created by someone from their ideas. So it's someone's ideas in action within this machine. So can you patent it? The US government seems to think so. Thus what I will call the Intellectual Property Wars of the early 21st Century have begun. It's now boiled down to "I came up with idea X and implemented it first so now it's MINE" patent system. But there's only so many ways to add 1+1, and when things get abstracted to the point of patenting a process where boxes are connected with "wires" to define a system in software then we're going to have maybe 2 or 3 flowchart programs total available if everything software-based is patented (NI Labview vs. MATLAB Simulink). So maybe this whole patent thing is going too far. What did historical mathematicians do when they discovered the latest greatest formulas and theorems. From what I can tell in many math texts they are made available to the public, and many are well know for their contributions in this field. So why can't the world of "applied math through software" be the same? Instead of coming up with a way to solve your problem, abstracting it, and then patenting your abstraction so no one can do something similar, why not share some ideas with the world in order to better serve the general public? Sure you may lose a little money because person X didn't pay you for having a similar idea, but I'm sure if your idea is really that great people will buy enough of your product to put food on the table and maybe even afford that new plasma TV you've been working so hard for. This would also benefit these small companies who are 1. not making as much money, 2. can't afford to spend time and money patenting everything, and 3. are afraid to put out any new software for fear of being sued for breaching upon a large corporation's patents which they didn't even know existed. Is this really happening? You betcha.
Alright. So now that there's some things to chew on I should probably get going on my mound of work that's waiting for me. Maybe next month I'll have an update that doesn't involve thinking about things that need fixed in the "real world."
Posted by Plocmstart at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2004
Election Day
So today is the big election day, the day everyone has been waiting for. The day every registered voter is supposed to try to fit into their schedule to go some random place and supposedly choose who they want to rule this country next, and other miscellaneous stuff. But of course, since it appears to be such a close race between the two major parties' candidates that no one is sure who will win.
And this makes it hard for the election system to work. And a major question that should come to our minds is why?
These election problems seem to be more emphasized in recent years, but have they always been there and we just weren't as aware of them? If they are new, what has caused them to appear? If not, what can be done to rid the system of them? These are all logical questions that should have an answer to those who are capable of cause and effect reasoning. But what solutions have we come up with in the recent years?
Apparently the only thing that was done in the past was send swarms of lawyers from each major political party to sue various entities responsible for counting votes in order to get the result they want. From a news article on CNN yesterday, it appears that this again is the favored solution to the problem. But is this really a logical solution? What does this prove?
In America the news, major corporations, and even households have shown that the way to get the results you want you have to sue someone else. So why not extend this reasoning to the election system? When my candidate doesn't get elected, I'll just sue whoever didn't get my candidate elected and then they'll buckle under pressure and I'll get the results I want. Is this really democratic? What happened to the majority vote wins? Can we count on the people in charge, especially lawyers, to count when they run out of fingers and toes?
So with the problem and its current solution well-defined, is it possible to reason some causes of the flaws in the system? Let's give it a shot....
First of all, the system is supposedly anonymous. I'm not sure how anonymous the system really is considering I've voted via absentee ballot for many years. The materials that arrive in the mail have my name and a specific bar-coded number on them. The ballot itself doesn't have any identifying information on it though, so I can assume the system is anonymous as far as keeping track of what I voted for, but not anonymous in keeping track of if I voted or not.
This system should work relatively well as long as it isn't abused. Unfortunately it is. Fake voter registration cards, people using deceased person's IDs, and the possibility of election officials doing the unthinkable could all come into play. When people get involved in the system, things are bound to get messed up at some point, and it takes time to verify all incoming information with other databases to filter out the filth.
The system attempts to make voting as real-time as possible, but this in itself is a major flaw. This need for instant results seems to be a constant drive behind the technology used in the voting system. Before the age of electronics votes had to be hand-counted, results were relayed across the country via methods considered painfully slow by today's standards, and the final announcement was not made for days or weeks after voting had occured. So if the people back then were satisfied in waiting for information to be properly tallied until a final announcement was made, why couldn't we do the same? Due to the rush to make a decision, America was forced to wait over a month in the pervious presidential election for a final answer anyways.
Then comes the issue of data integrity. Electronic voting machines have proved that this problem is a bit more difficult to solve in a world where it would be expected that a machine would have no political affiliations and produce unbiased results. Again people enter into the equation though. Machines don't operate as expected, data is left easily alterable by hand, poor choices are made on how to solve problems.
So with some issues defined, how about some possible solutions to the problems?
The first two issues go hand in hand. Make the election system not so real-time, but so much more accurate. Give the system time to verify all votes correspond to an actual living person, and that person hasn't managed to vote more than once. Verification has the problem of losing some anonymity though. If someone is found to be dead or defrauded the system in some other way, that person's votes need to still be attached to their name so they can be removed from the final tally. Is this a price Americans are willing to pay for a system that doesn't defraud themselves?
The solution may lie directly in the problem of electronics though. It would be easy for a machine to give an unbiased look at each person's identity, then remove errant votes from the tally when a person has attempted to cheat the system. Human interaction may be necessary here, but only as a check of proper functionality.
A system of this sort only works if it works right though. This goes back to the idea of "test, test, and then test some more." Software would have to be robust, with no corners cut to prove to voters that it works properly and flawlessly. The software should also be open source, or at least available to anyone who wishes to view the code to verify its operation. Finally the system should still produce hardcopy results of each person's vote. Electronic data is gone at the flip of a switch, whereas hardcopy data requires much more effort to make disappear, especially unnoticed.
Hopefully ideas such as these may one day be properly implemented, and the American ideals will change from suing for instant gratification to patience to allow for quality results. Is the government capable of this sort of transition?
Posted by Plocmstart at 2:21 PM | Comments (0)