Hey Nerds, I Hate H.P. Lovecraft

You heard me right: I hate H.P. Lovecraft. His writing is terrible, which is perhaps why he wasn't appreciated during his lifetime. It's as if Nathaniel Hawthorne rewrote the Greek classics. The stories are so drawn out and tedious. He pays minute attention to details like architecture, culture, and language while at the same time ignoring plot pacing and development. The man uses the "deus ex" construct like it's going out of style! Oh, and don't get me started on his vocabulary. Here's a handful of his over- and mis-used words:

1. Terrible
2. Horrible
3. Blasphemous
4. Unspeakable
5. Cyclopean
6. Infernal
7. Foul
8. Basalt

And don't try to justify his bad writing by saying, "Oh, but look at all the great writers he influence." So? That's doesn't somehow make his stuff lovable. Just because Quentin Tarrentino was influenced by all kinds of schlock material that doesn't make those movies any better. There. I've had my say.

Skip to the Future

There are several "hot" technologies out right now that I'm making a conscious decision to avoid. The problem is that they're not really innovative, and will soon be subsumed by other, better technologies. Let's examine a few, shall we?

Apparently the Blu-Ray media format recently won the next-format wars. Actually, both formats were losers. That's because the "HD" (high-definition) was the real key, and not what it was being stored on. In fact, physical media is going to become increasingly irrelevant as downloads take over as the primary means of content distribution. I'm not going to buy a Blu-Ray player. Partly that's because they're so insanely expensive still. And the prices went up once retailers knew they had the consumer by the short and curlies! I'll build a home media computer with networked storage and streaming instead.

And then there's those new "energy saving" compact fluorescent light bulbs. They're significantly more expensive than the regular incandescent light bulbs. So they're energy savings take quite a while before they pay off the difference. And then there's the fact that their light isn't appealing to everyone. I'm going to hold off and wait for LED light bulbs to come on the market. LEDs consume little energy and they're not toxic waste. Yeah. Compact fluorescent require special handling and disposal methods. Oh, and don't break one on the floor!

Spafford Completeness

Eugene "Spaf" Spafford is a professor of computer science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He is well known for being an early researcher into computer security (and the lack thereof). Needless to say he doesn't suffer from a shortage of work.

If you make the mistake of sending Spaf an email with a Microsoft Word attachment you'll receive a quick (indeed both instant and automated) response admonishing you for using document formats that allow for code execution. It is quite foolish to mix the two. But it also strikes upon a more fundamental truth: executing code is the root of all computer insecurity.

Thus was born the concept of the Spaf machine. It is similar in conception to the Turing machine, but quite different. The first principle of a Spaf machine is that only read operations are allowed. The second, and final, principle of a Spaf machine is that the tape is initialized to a random value. How that randomness is selected, what constitutes sufficiently random data, and where socks go in a dryer are all fluff questions best saved for a hash bar in Amsterdam.

"So what?" you might say. "All it does is read random bits. That's useless!" Au contraire! You are apparently not familiar with the idea of the infinite monkeys. Our application states that given enough time a Spaf machine would successfully render every email you would ever receive. But it would not execute a single bit of code! It is the first truly secure machine!

And Ye Shall Know Him by His Power Tie

Can't decide who to vote for yet in the American presidential election? I can! But for those of you less-able proles I'll provide you with a short list from which you can pick. Make your mark heavy and dark with your extra large crayons!

Lord Voldemort. Keeping it simple. Strong anti-muggle agenda. Doesn't listen to the Death Eater lobby.

Max. Psychotic lagomorph with a hound dog, crime-fighting partner. What's a lagomorph? I don't know either. But you're already on the Internet so why don't you go find out?

Cthulhu. You can't possible be able to pronounce this blasphemous name. But humans were never expect to comprehend the infinite horrors of the Ancients.

Darth Vader. In these uncertain times feel secure in knowing that that isn't a moon. It's a space station.

Huxley Sez

Aldous Huxley once said:

And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing … a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.

I submit that he was referencing reality television. He was more prescient than H.G. Wells!

Roger Clemens Versus the World

As I listened to NPR today report on the baseball steroid hearings I came to a conclusion. The problem right now is that Clemens' old physical trainer and also a former teammate are saying that The Rocket shot up with steroids and human growth hormone (HGH). But Roger comes right back with the untouchable, "No I didn't!" The problem comes down to the fact that the committee has (as far as I understand it) no legal power to compel the type of evidence discovery as is necessary to prove anything here. For instance, the trainer claims to have kept syringes and bloody cotton balls he used when injecting Roger. Can those be tested? Can the committee require Clemens to submit to a DNA test? No! So it all becomes one person's word against another. After realizing that I suddenly lost all interest.

Cinco Anos

I have a theory I would like to put forward. My theory is that no television show should run longer than five seasons. The Japanese are much better at this than us Americans. The reason for this is that once you have a fixed frame of reference you can properly pace your story arc(s). Look at shows that violate my theory: Stargate, Star Trek: Voyager, et.al. Everything gets repetitive and cyclical. The freshness is lost. And speaking of Lost they're the one show above any other that influenced my development of this highly scientific piece of work. Ponder these thoughts and reflect in their truth.