The passing of a legend

(Please bear with me as to the tardiness of this post.  I know it's about 2 months late in the coming, but I've been busy.)

October, 2011 saw the loss of one of the most important and influential computer minds of this generation.

I'm not talking about Steve Jobs.  Whoooooooooah, no.

I will concede that he had a major influence in the computer world, but let's face hard reality.  Apple Computer, Co. was instrumental in bringing the PC to the masses, thanks to the Woz and his engineering genius.  Steve Jobs, on the other hand, was a salesman, a go-getter, effectively the face of Apple, but not the mind.  Woz was lacking in the inter-personnel department; the reclusive, creative Ying to Job's Yang.  However, the reality is Jobs brought nothing to the table technologically.  He had the business mind and charisma to brand and market.

What this means is, and I hate to break this to you, but Steve Jobs didn't invent the iPod.  He was the whip cracker over a group of extremely intelligent group of people.  The people who actually did the work.

No, the person I'm referring to is Dennis Ritchie.  The creator of the C programming language and a key developer of the Unix operating system.  Without his contributions, you wouldn't have Mac OS X and your shiny new iPad would look a lot different.

Dennis Ritchie, or dmr, was found in his residence a week after Steve Jobs died.  Of course, most of the sobbing, the accolades and the fanfare went to Jobs, leaving Ritchie's passing rather obscured.  Few outside the technological field even knew his name, yet his work has impacted every person who has ever touched an electronic device.  And I mean that quite literally.  The same cannot be said of Steve Jobs.

This, of course, is typical.  Its the loudest, most conspicuous people that get the attention, while often the real innovators stand back from the limelight, preferring to do the work so that the loud ones can continue in their ostentatious ways.

Case in point...how many people would actually get a reply from Steve Jobs if they had sent him an email?  Yet, dmr frequently responded to questions or requests for clarification regarding Unix questions.

So, for anyone who has ever laughed uncontrollably from this unintentionally hilarious scene, let's remember the nerds, the people who actually contributed to the computing world.  Not just the ones who sold it.

He got an 'F' in Analogies

As you have probably heard, Hank Williams, Jr. masterfully crafted an analogical comparison between Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler.  (This is sarcasm folks.  Calm down.)

Now, as everyone knows, it's never OK to use a Hitler/Nazi comparison on broadcast TV unless 99.5% of the network's audience equally reviles that person.  In fact, unless you're on MTV (or Fox News if it's a right wing statement), you generally must never say anything slightly controversial.

The best part of this is, ESPN didn't fire Hank Williams, Jr.  No no no no no...Hank quit.

I'm sorry...that's not the best part.  The BEST part is, and I quote, "(ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment".

Now boys and girls, pay close attention, because this is what happens when you rely on your 4th grade understanding of the First Amendment.  Don't let this happen to you and learn from this, because when you grow up and enter the real world, knowing what the First Amendment actually protects is very important.

For those of you who don't know, the First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

In simpler terms, it says that you have freedom of speech and Congress can't prevent you from saying or printing it.  It does not say that you have the right to say whatever stupid drivel that first enters your brain and do so with no consequences.  Hank has the right to say stupid stuff.  ESPN also has the right to choose whomever it wants associated with its name.  ESPN is a business, not your vehicle for spewing nonsense, and if it feels you are a liability then they have every right to protect the image of their brand name.

There's also another consideration.  Not all speech is protected.  There are some very notable exceptions to the freedom of speech (defamation; time, place and manner restrictions; child pornography; commercial speech; etc.).  This means you can't yell 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater (unless there actually IS a fire), you can't print in a newspaper that your boss is a thief (unless he's an attorney), you can't advertise that your Chinese food is MSG-free if you're liberally sprinkling Ac'cent on it, so on and so forth.

(This isn't a comprehensive list of exceptions, and there are even exceptions to the exceptions.  What I'm trying to say is...don't take this as legal advise.  I'm probably getting into enough trouble with this post as it is.  All I need is for one of you guys to go out there and say something stupid, point the finger at me and say 'but he said it's ok!').

One of these exceptions is Radio and Television, due to the "scarcity rationale'' (i.e. there are more people wanting to say stupid stuff than there are wavelengths available to carry it).  ESPN is regulated by the FCC.  While I doubt the FCC will pull ESPN's license for a Hitler comparison, they can't simply cater to an escalated lack of prudence to any future gems that Hank decides to bring up.

So remember friends, there are very important lessons to be learned here:

1) Say what you want, but not on your employer's dime.
2) Be prepared to face the consequences of what you say.
3) The Lions are awesome this season.  Deal with it Dallas and Chicago.

Oh, I understand completely.

Doctors tell us she'll be alright.

An open letter

Dear Hackers of the World,

I get it.  You want to bring down the man.  But seriously, enough.

You're making it a pain to log into Netflix on my PS3.  I can't download games.  Now, I'm gonna have to wait even longer.

What's your agenda?  You hate being able to use your PS3?  You decided that you wanted to become Templars for the cause of Micro$oft and the XB360 (boy, who woulda thunk.  Hackers for M$)?

Please.  Go do something productive.  Quit interfering with my downtime.

Love, The Poor, Innocent Victims of Cyberspace.

Really? Official?

I cannot turn on the radio for any length of time without hearing a commercial about Jameson Whiskey being the 'official' drink of St. Patrick's Day.

I wonder what Jameson had to do to get an endorsement from the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland?  I mean, granted, you cannot think about church without immediately thinking about Jameson, but to be the 'official' drink, is there an application process?  Were there other drinks in the running?  I'm pretty sure that the competition between Jameson and Guinness was fierce.  Twitter bombs may have been involved.

This will really shake up the establishment.  Probably haven't seen anything this shocking since McDonald's attempted to steal the 'official dinner of Christmas' title from KFC.  I guess having the Shamrock Shake wasn't enough for them.

Can't we all just get along?  All this fighting is detracting from the real meaning of St. Patrick's Day; finding an excuse to wear silly green hats and drinking one's self into a slobbering stupor.

All this ranting has made me hungry for some chicken.

A little souvenir from that terrible year

1990.

I was a Sophomore in high school.  I can't say I particularly liked high school, a feeling shared by most people on the low end of the high school social spectrum.  But, there were three good things to come from that year (there might have been more, but I can't think of them at the moment).

First, The Trash Can Sinatras released the album Cake.  Although I cannot say they are my favorite musical group (their follow up album kinda stunk), they did produce my favorite album ever.  I enjoy all the songs on it, I never tire of it, and if I'm stuck someplace, left with my mind to wander, I will usually go through this entire album in my head.

It was in the shower tonight that I started thinking about the second good thing to come from 1990.  On the same day that I purchased Cake, I picked up another album called Cloudcuckooland from the indie brit group, The Lightning Seeds.  Although I was willing to shell out the money to have Cake make the transition from cassette tape to CD, Cloudcuckooland had no such honor.  It's entirely possible that I have the cassette tape stored somewhere, but I have long since lost the means to play it (I haven't owned a cassette player since my last car died in 2006).

As I perused through iTunes looking for Cloudcuckooland (sadly, all of Ian Broudie's earlier work has been boiled down to a "best of" album), I started thinking about the third good thing to come from 1990; Reading Writing & Arithmetic by The Sundays.  (Very obscure piece of trivia, but the 'Reading' in the album title is pronounced RED-ing, as in the band's hometown, Reading, Berkshire, England).  Of the three bands, this one is the one I felt the most guilty for not keeping up with, as I almost completely forgot about them.

As I Googled for information about their current status, I stumbled across this blog about Ingrid Michaelson and her album, Girls & Boys.  I haven't had a chance to listen to the entire album, but I did sample all the songs on iTunes and I have to say I was impressed.

Then I noticed the date of the album release...2007.

I guess the one good thing about being in high school is that your ear is a lot closer to the ground when it comes to music.  There was no way I would have let 3+ years pass on something that piqued my interest this way.

I shouldn't let this get to me too much, though.  It's that same disconnection that has kept me from hearing the latest Britney Spears song.

Would you like frys with that?

I maintain that the French fry container is an engineering masterpiece.  Think about it; the moment you drive away from the drive-through window, what's the first thing you do?  You reach for a fry or three.  Sometimes a handfull, just to maximize the payload and reduce the extra travel time from bag to mouth.  If the frys were in any way encapsulated within the container, it would seriously impede the process.

I've also come to the conclusion that this act is not voluntary.  It's a reflex reaction that human beings have when in close proximity to a container of French frys.  But, you may ask, what if you actually want to eat some of your frys WITH your meal?  At the current rate of consumption, if your destination is any farther than five miles from the drive-through from where you picked up your vittles, there's only a 1 in 4,549 chance that you will make it there with any frys left over.

(I have the math that helped me come to those odds.  I'll post it at a later date.)

This dilemma is resolved with the engineering genius of the fry container.  The large, open-ended orifice both allows for on-the-spot consumption, but it also allows for release of a portion of your frys into the bag.  The released frys will find their way to the bottom of the bag and out of reach from the consumer, thus preserving an amount of frys for later consumption, presumably with your meal.  This act is facilitated when the restaurateur loads the fry container orifice down.  In a typical scenario, approximately half of the frys escape the container confines before either the consumer re-orients the frys in the bag, or a napkin plugs the orifice, thus preventing further fry egress.

FYI, Carls Jr. has a burger called The Big Carl.  It's supposed to be a competition to the McDonald's Big Mac (though since I'm not too keen on McDonalds, its difficult to compare).  I thought that the 'Big' in the title would be a marketing ploy.  As it turns out, the burgers are actually quite large.  Thought you should know.

Headline: Even MORE Men are Pigs

Last night my wife, brother-in-law and I went to The Tulsa Rib Co. for some fall-off-the-bone ribs and a pitcher of Sam Adams.  Although I wouldn't classify it as the happiest day of my life, it ranks up there somewhere in the top 30.  I ate like a pig.

The ribs were pork.  Does that make me a cannibal?

I guess I can live with that.

Headline: Men are Pigs

Earlier today I was scouring Facebook for a picture of a person who will soon be receiving the business end of a lawsuit.  In my searches, I came across a fanpage for a woman named Debrahlee Lorenzana.  For those who may not be familiar with her, perhaps the following article will help.  I'll wait here while you read:

READ ME, BUT PLEASE COME BACK

Glad to have you back.

I actually kind of hate myself for sending you to that link, because that article represents one of my bigger pet peeves: Taking a complex legal issue and reducing it to a 20-point Helvetica headline.

It's not that I have a problem with headlines.  Or with Helvetica for that matter.  It's that over 2000 people have probably formulated their opinion about this complex issue based on the 11-word headline and a rather one-sided article.

I'm sure the reporter who wrote the story tried to get as much information as he could from Citibank for the story, and I sympathize for him.  Huge corporations are notoriously silent when it comes to commenting on legal issues.  Unfortunately, the Internet age has reduced everyone's attention span to about 14 seconds and modern news media has to cater to that in order to make any money.

Here's the problem.  Even if people read the entire article (which I'm pretty sure most of those 'fans' on the page have not), there's still not enough information in that article to make an informed decision.  People will simply jump straight to the conclusion that the headline draws them to...that a woman was fired for being too hot.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a moment.

Citibank management asks Ms. Lorenzana not to wear certain articles of clothing that highlight certain...features...of her physique.  She believes this is inappropriate because other women are wearing similar styles of clothing.  I don't know what Ms. Lorenzana was wearing to the office, but the problem is, you can take clothes that look conservative and appropriate on one person, but put the same clothes on another and it becomes inappropriate.  What would be tasteful on Meg Ryan would make Sofía Vergara look as naughty as Britney Spears in a schoolgirl outfit.

The article also mentions that supervisors brought to Ms. Lorenzana's attention that her outfits were "too distracting" to her male colleagues and supervisors.  Say what you want about a woman's outfit, but if several men are complaining that it's distracting, then you know it's distracting.  Now, obviously I don't know about all the conversations that took place between management and Ms. Lorenzana, but is it beyond the realm of possibility that Ms. Lorenzana may have had an 'I can wear what I want' attitude which management got sick of dealing with?

Finally, she requested a department transfer, but (I'm ripping this straight from the article)

"matters didn't improve at the next branch, where she was chided for failing to recruit new customers. She was axed in August."

You know, if only management would let her wear what she wanted, she could have brought her numbers up.

Now, I could be completely wrong and Ms. Lorenzana could be completely justified in her action.  And I did say I was playing devil's advocate.  But you see, that's the problem.  There isn't enough information to formulate an informed opinion.  Every argument I brought up is purely from conjecture, but they are possible arguments.  Yet because of a headline people are lending this woman their support.

This over-simplification of legal issues in headline news is exemplified by the infamous McDonald's Hot Coffee case.  Problem is, the case that had become the rallying cry for tort reform actually was very meritorious, though most people formulated their opinion simply by reading the headline and thinking "Boy, our legal system is messed up".

(Note:  Our legal system IS messed up, but this is not the case to cite as an argument.)

My point is, don't let the media formulate an opinion for you.  Especially if that opinion is based heavily on a one-sided argument.  If something seems too sensational to believe, it probably is.  Unfortunately we may never know the outcome of this issue, but I'm certain, in a very Andy Warhol sort of way, that Ms. Lorenzana will find a new career path out of this.

Emo Much?

FYI, I have commented before on the upcoming Spider-Man reboot.  The studio has since released a photo:

You have GOT to be KIDDING me.  Please tell me this is a red herring intended to throw the masses off-guard?  That in 2012, Sony Studios will throw their collective hands up and say "Ha ha!  Fooled ya!  Now, let's show you the REAL Spider-Man movie that we made"?

Unfortunately, it looks like our new Peter Parker will be strutting around in a black shirt, so tight that it appears to be spray painted onto his body, long sleeved to conceal the self-inflicted cuts on his arm.  Chances are, his iPod will be filled with My Chemical Romance and he'll cry while listening to it.  Forget about any epic climax against The Lizard...he'll be too busy laughing at him.  Peter will run away crying because his feelings are hurt.

Heck, it even looks like the spider on his chest is crying.

To this, I would like to award Sony Studios with the Facepalm Award:

Thank you for destroying our childhood memories of Spider-Man.  Now we can move on with our lives.