Death Is Bad

Alright I admit it – part of yesterday’s post on un-unpinning a tab in Chrome was a set up for today’s post. Because just a few days after that I started using a shiny new Android phone, and, well… I posted this Facebook rant after my first texting experience.

 “WTF is with software nowadays being so fucking un-customizable? I now have an android smartphone, and the native android smilie icons are UGLY as SHIT. (it’s a smiling green pile of puke!) Turns out there’s no option to replace them, or even just plain TURN THEM OFF. I have to go download a separate messaging app. Is this non-customization a thing now? Is this how we do software? I guess everyone got so used to Facebook just forcing bullshit on us that we don’t even question this crap. I don’t even…!!! ARRR!”

Yes, I know it’s a First World Problems rant. My recent frustration with Chrome not including simple things in its Options boiled over. Normally I wouldn’t publicize something like that in a permanent, searchable format. But this is just one more example in a trend of Crass Sloppiness. Very rarely does anyone care anymore that code is sloppy. I’m nowhere close to the first person to notice this, but it’s becoming ridiculous. Yes, bugs are hard to find, applying rigorous standards takes discipline and good leadership, and crap software is cheaper to produce – especially when you outsource the beta testing to your initial customers! MicroSoft’s era of shitty software has made us callous to these problems. What’s the first solution to every software problem? Right – reboot the damn machine. Is your computer running poorly? Well what do you expect if you haven’t power-cycled it in a day? Something crashed? Eh, just reload it. Nobody cares anymore. And if the users don’t care, why should the developers?

This has led to such a shitty work ethic that now even simple things like having the option to turn off or undo an intrusive feature is not included. How lazy do you have to be to not put in that option? How much Not-Giving-A-Fuck does a boss have to have to let that slide?

And since we are all computer users, this attitude of “Well, doesn’t matter if it runs well, as long as it kinda works, now let me get back to my cat vids” seems to have permeated all of society. I took my car in to three different places because it developed a rough idle and has lost a small but non-trivial bit of gas mileage. All three times I’ve gotten a shrug and “I dunno… it seems to be running though.” Yes, I know it’s running, but it’s performing sub-optimally, and apparently it’s not actually your job to give a fuck? I wish I knew a mechanic who actually had some pride in his work and passion for his job.

Ever since the dawn of tool use, human advancement has relied on ever greater attention to precision and perfection. This reversal when it comes to software is more than just a bit worrying. As Charles Stross has pointed out, we don’t use analog machines anymore. We don’t use telephones – we talk into computers, that transmit data to other computers, which then turn that data back into sound to play for the guy on the other end of the line. We don’t drive cars – we manipulate the input devices on large, rolling computers-with-engines, which use that input to drive us where we want to go. We don’t turn keys in locks – we identify ourselves via chips to computers that control the door locks. If software keeps getting more bloated and leaky and “good enough”, and both users and developers stop caring that it works cleanly, not going to space today may be the least of our problems.

A friend attended the Nov 5^th Million Mask March. I did not, as the previous two marches I’d attended recently didn’t really seem have any impact. We walked around and shouted for a bit, inconvenienced some vehicle traffic around the capital building, and then dispersed and everything was forgotten. Also, it was taking place on a work day, during & directly after work hours. I could take the day off if I wanted to, but for the reason mentioned, I didn’t have any motivation to do that.

Boy do I regret that decision.

Apparently, Anonymous actually has drawn the attention of The Powers That Be. My friend returned from the event very rattled. Practically terrified, actually. The streets had been filled with police. Not just regular police either (although they were in abundance), but Riot Police in full riot gear, and brandishing rifles. Empty buses were called out to block sight to the protester’s held signs (wtf??). She witnessed several incidents of police harassment, where pigs would push people further onto the sidewalk and yell threats. Incitements to resist, basically. She did not personally witness arrests, but they did occur.

For anyone who advocates for social change, there is nothing worse than being ignored. Somehow Anonymous have made themselves a player. A relatively small protest of idealistic young kids, which was cleared with the government beforehand and which was entirely peaceful, warranted a severe police presence. The people in power were worried – they devoted thought and energy into suppressing this march, and quite a bit of resources (I’m sure that sort of deployment isn’t cheap). This is absolutely where you want to be. I will most definitely be participating in the next Nov 5^th march, and likely in other Anonymous actions between now and then.

This is what my friend posted about the event the next day:

Remember, remember the 5th of November.
Oh, I will remember. I will remember it as the day I learned that America was no longer free. I will remember it as the day I gathered peacefully with fellow citizens, only to be threatened, harassed and terrorized by the very police force that is supposed to serve and protect us. I will remember that my local government reacts to a gathering of 200 peaceful protesters with 200 officers in riot gear and riffles. I will remember who the real terrorists are. November 5th is the day I learned who is really attacking our freedoms (hint: they do not live over seas).
But what I will try to remember most is that they are scared of us. Why were those military style forces brought against unarmed civilians? Because we are right, because we are trying to demand that we once again have a government that is BY the people, FOR the people and OF the people. They have taken the power from the people. We want our country back, and that makes them so scared they call in the military against their own citizens. We will get our Republic back. Expect us.

Further reporting on this can be found at Westword

(all photos via Travis Garcia)

I didn’t intend to comment on this because I thought it was just plain silly, but someone engaged me, so here’s why I can’t get excited over Rand Paul’s “plagiarism”.

I think people are confusing plagiarism with reading a wikipedia movie synopsis. One is stealing someone else’s work and claiming it as your own – it’s immoral, unethical, and often actionable. The other is the moral equivalent of reading aloud from the back of the DVD case. It’s… whatever.

Seriously, should he have mixed around some of the words? That was stupid bullshit back in high school, and it hasn’t gotten any less bullshitty now that we’re adults. He has not stolen any ideas – there were no ideas to be stolen. Copying words does not necessarily entail stealing ideas. That which is immoral is the theft of ideas and presenting them as one’s own. Passing along information by reciting words is not that.

Note that plagiarism is something I do care about greatly (being one who tries to produce original intellectual content myself), and I despise any motherfucker who commits it. So when I say “who cares” it’s because I don’t consider it plagiarism, and not because I don’t care about actual plagiarism.  my position is – what he did isn’t plagiarism, so I don’t care. People who do care simply don’t understand why plagiarism is bad (or they pretend to care to score political points, which I suspect is more common).

I think really thinking about the question “Why is plagiarism bad?” will reveal why the simple copying of words is not necessarily plagiarism, and why the old high school trick of mixing up the word order and/or swapping a couple words with synonyms IS STILL plagiarism, even if it gets past the teacher’s “did he copy the exact wording?” test.

[here I was given a couple examples and asked to make clarifications]

Reviews aren’t the same as synopsis. Yahtzee’s reviews create something new and unique. They allow people who find they have taste similar to his to decide whether they want to invest the time and money a new game would require, or whether that would be better spent elsewhere. In addition, Yahtzee has the added bonus of providing lots of great unique humor (but that is by no means necessary).

A synopsis is a quick bare-bones summary of what a movie is about. All synopses (synopsi? synopsises?) of a particular work will by necessity be extremely similar. There’s nothing particularly unique about them, and there’s very little practical difference between writing your own synopsis and reading one that already exists.

I suppose exceptions would exist for very out-of-the-box synopses that introduce new ideas and make the reader think. Such as the Wizard of Oz one.

[claim is made that the Twilight books have “nothing original in them” and therefore copying them in full wouldn’t be plagiarism as a reducto ad absurdum]

That’s obviously false, it’s an original work even if it simply retreads lots of ground already covered by others in similar ways. But all art is extrapolations from prior influences. That’s precisely why you shouldn’t cry “plagiarism” when ideas aren’t actually being stolen and presented as the work of the thief. Sometimes people working in the same area under similar influences will make strikingly similar products. Should Lady Gaga be sued because Alejandro is so much like Don’t Turn Around? I’m willing to grant that she may have never even heard the original song, yet look how close they turned out. This sort of legal trolling will result in all art being destroyed.

I’ll note that this also happens with some frequency in the scientific fields – many discoveries are made near-simultaneous among people who never collaborated. Most famously, Darwin was nearly scooped by Wallace. When the surrounding level of knowledge gets to a certain point, and our technology reaches a certain level, some discoveries are inevitable. This isn’t due to any sort of malfeasance, it’s simply the environment forcing the result.

When your “influences” (or “environment”) is literally “this one movie and nothing else” and your process is “create a brief summary” – all the products that result will be nearly identical. Honestly, would it have made the news if he’d used the summary on the box rather than Wikipedia? Methinks not.

This is basically just another version of patent trolling. You can’t claim new intellectual work in a basic synopsis any more than you can claim that an “online shopping cart” is a protected patent. (by which I mean to say that you can get lawyers to argue it, but you can’t do it while retaining any moral integrity).

My employer encourages philanthropy among their employees (which is awesome). Every year they have a week where employees are encourages to volunteer for various organizations during the work day, while still drawing full pay! Some of those organizations even come to our place of work to make this volunteering as convenient as possible. So last week, as part of one such charity endeavor, I saw in our lunch room nearly a dozen people tying two blankets together, over and over.

I don’t want to sound scrooge-like, but this seemed like an absolutely terrible charity.

To clarify: two moderately-thick pieces of cloth about 3’x3’ were placed one atop the other. The edges were then cut into strips about 1 inch wide and 4 inches long all along all four sides. The strips were then knotted together by hand, to form a single piece of cloth that was twice the previous thickness, about 2.5’x2.5’ in dimension.

I’m not one to say that poor people must dress in rags. I despise those assholes who say “Well you have a refrigerator and a cell phone, why the hell are you getting food aid?”. Poor people can have nice things too.

And perhaps there is some benefit to having a single double-thickness blanket rather than two single-thickness blankets. OK, you lose the ability to have less covering on warm nights, and you lose some square footage. But the blankets won’t get tangled up with each other, and one won’t slip off to the side or to the floor, so maybe that is worth the trade-off.

But this blanket-tying process was an incredibly time-intensive project. A pair of people would be laboring manually at these and producing maybe one every half hour. My SO pointed out that the introduction of a sewing machine would easily quintuple production, and save on lost square footage. It wouldn’t be as pretty, but I don’t think that’s as much of a concern as children shivering from the cold at night. A minor efficiency upgrade would provide warmth to 125 kids rather than 25 kids – I don’t think the aesthetics can compensate for that much lost utility.

Or one could simply give those families two blankets.

This charity seems to have provided almost NO appreciable improvement over the alternative of giving two un-joined blankets, but managed to soak up over 100 man-hours of volunteer labor. I have no idea how much good 100 man-hours of unskilled minimal labor can produce, but I’m willing to wager is more than “almost nothing”. This charity has taken away volunteer hours that could have gone to actual charities that do good. It is an Un-Charity.

I didn’t say anything (which is why I’m blogging instead) because I don’t want to be the asshole in the office. My co-workers who volunteered for this had good intentions. My employer was certainly trying to do a good thing as well. But seriously, why does it make me such a huge prick to point out that sometimes it’s important to say “fuck the intentions” and look at the actual outcomes? This is basically just way of making middle-class people feel warm and fuzzy that they’re so philanthropic, at the cost of actual philanthropy!

I can hear Robin Hanson sighing.