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Joel on Software

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #30

  Posted: November 20th, 2008, 9:53am MST

  

  Stack Overflow Podcast episode 30 is up, with special guest Richard White of UserVoice.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Diversity Sells!

  Posted: November 19th, 2008, 2:00am MST by Dr. Wes Browning

  One day I predict an African-American will be president of the United States of America and we'll all be rich.
  
  The change in America's image from a country that resists its diversity to one that welcomes it may have unforeseen benefits. Today I read a story that noted that after a decline following Sept. 11, 2001, the numbers of foreign students in the US are now surging again. The story contained this quote from a Chinese student: "In China you can seldom find people from the US, but in the US you find people from all over the world."
  
  Now, I'm all for diversity as much as the next liberal. But, you know, when the only sort of thing diversity means is a few hundred people of all different colors on a hilltop singing I'd Like to Buy The World A Coke shoulder to shoulder, it's pretty much reduced to the aesthetics associated with food pyramid posters and puppy dog calendars, and who gives a rat's ass? But you figure out a way to make money off it, you got something worth promoting.
  
  
  
  Rich and semi-rich Chinese neo-capitalists are paying for their sons and daughters to come to American Colleges, not because we have better schools, but because there's a shortage of diversity in China. A survey done in 1977 found that just 35 surnames accounted for 70% of the entire population of China. One in ten were Zhangs. Almost all of them speak Chinese! How do you get away from that? Send them to a school where people speak English and Spanglish, that's how!
  
  Diversity is a draw. There have been times in my life when I would have been willing to pay for some myself. For instance in 1978 I landed a plush job in Zürich, where they speak Swiss German. I'd studied two whole years of German in college, and even passed some of my classes. I figured it would come back to me when the natives started speaking German at my face. I was wrong. I had not fully understood the significance of the word "Swiss" in the expression "Swiss German." It's not that the Swiss speak German, it's that they speak something else, called Swiss German.
  
  Swiss German Lesson [Best one on YouTube!]
  
  
  
  I would have gladly shelled out extra bucks in college to pay for a Swiss German to teach me his language, had I known his language wasn't German, had I had foresight, and had I had the extra bucks to shell out. The fact that I hadn't had those particular items does not subtract from the fact that others had them (knowledge, foresight, bucks.) But there would not have been enough Swiss Germans to go around anyway, not in this country, so it wouldn't have mattered!
  
  Like Martin Luther King, Jr., I have a dream. His dream included the bit "that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood," and the business about rough places made plain that he cribbed off Isaiah. My dream is that the rest of the world will pay to see Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream happening, especially if they're allowed to take notes, and there are also Brazilians, Swiss Germans, and Ukrainians present at the table.
  
  Let's stop advertising America as a place to send "your poor your tired your huddled masses" to be assimilated and end up resembling some shade of Bruce Willis. Instead let's talk about our diversity portfolio. Let's bill ourselves as Diversity World, and get us some diversity action on the world market. Why should Belgians have all the money?
  
  We're about to have some Kenya in the White House. That in itself will draw more Kenyans. At a certain point that will position us to siphon off some serious African tourist trade.
  
  We need to start right now getting some souvenir shops up and running. Demand is going to be awesome.

Joel on Software

• 

  Anecdotes

  Posted: November 18th, 2008, 8:08pm MST

  

  Michiko Kakutani reviews Malcolm Gladwell's latest book in the New York Times: “Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme: the reader has no idea how representative such examples are, or how reliable — or dated — any particular study might be.”

  This review captures what's been driving me crazy over the last year... an unbelievable proliferation of anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works. Whether it's Thomas Friedman, who, it seems, cannot go a whole week without inventing a new fruit-based metaphor explaining everything about the entire modern world, all based on some random jibberish he misunderstood from a taxi driver in Kuala Lumpur, or Malcolm Gladwell with his weak theories on tipping points, crazy incorrect theories on first impressions, or utterly lunatic theories on experts, it all becomes insanely popular simply because the stories are fun and interesting and everybody wants to hear a good story. Spare me.

  Friedman and Gladwell's outsized, flat-world success has lead to a huge number of wannabes. I was really looking forward to reading Simplexity, because it sounded like an interesting topic, until I settled down with it tonight and discovered that it was chock-full of all those amusing bedtime stories about the map of the cholera plague in London in 1854, which I've heard a million times, and then suddenly I noticed (shock!) that not only was the author a journalist, not a scientist, but he was actually an editor at Time Magazine, which has an editorial method in which editors write stories based on notes submitted by reporters (the reporters don't write their own stories), so it's practically designed to get everything wrong, to insure that, no matter how ignorant the reporters are on an issue, they'll find someone who knows even less to write the actual story. Panicking, I began to flip through the book at random. There's that story about Don Norman and complicated user interfaces. Here he is reading Nassim Taleb. I've heard all these anecdotes! Stop, already! I threw the book away in frustration.

  This is the third one of the day. My business partner Jeff Atwood was busy extracting himself from the flamewars he started by writing an article on, of all things, NP-completeness, which is, actually, something that it's possible to know something about, because it's not a vague sociological hypotheticoncept like simplexiflatness or blinkoutliers, it's actually a real, important result from Computer Science, with a rigorous definition and lots of published papers, and poor Jeff got himself in something of a pickle by writing a book review when he hadn't read the book, and fortunately, he has comments on his blog, so his readers called him out on it.

  Now, I am not one to throw stones. Heck, I practically invented the formula of "tell a funny story and then get all serious and show how this is amusing anecdote just goes to show that (one thing|the other) is a universal truth." And everybody is like, oh yes! how true! and they link to it with approval, and it zooms to the top of Slashdot. And six years later, a new king arises who did not know Joel, and he writes up another amusing anecdote, really, it's the same anecdote, and he uses it to prove the exact opposite, and everyone is like, oh yes! how true! and it zooms to the top of Reddit.

  This is not the way to move science forward. On Sunday Dave Winer [partially] defined "great blogging" as "people talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course)." Can we get some more of that, please? Thanks.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Stevey's Blog Rants

• 

  Ejacs: a JavaScript interpreter for Emacs

  Posted: November 16th, 2008, 3:19pm MST by Steve Yegge

  So! I have all these cool things I want to write about, but I broke my thumbnail. Can you tell that's a long story? See, this summer I got excited about playing guitar again. I usually switch between all-guitar and all-piano every other year or so. This summer I dusted off the guitars and learned a bunch of pieces, and even composed one. I was prepping for — among other things — a

Joel on Software

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #29

  Posted: November 12th, 2008, 7:29pm MST

  

  

  In this week's Stack Overflow podcast, Jeff and I talk about video games, programming languages that aren't "in" English, and hiring great programmers.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Who's The Dog? You're the Dog!

  Posted: November 12th, 2008, 2:00am MST by Dr. Wes Browning

  The incoming president is shopping for a dog for his two daughters. After the election was all over, the tears of joy were wiped away, and the spilled champagne mopped up, the media looked around for new news, and came up with this. It's so great not to be forced to write about torture, war, and economic disaster, for a change. Let's talk about hypoallergenic dogs!
  
  I think I'm like most Americans, in that I did not know there was such a thing as a hypoallergenic dog. I'd heard of hypoallergenic earring studs and hypoallergenic soap. I wear hypoallergenic socks. But the thought that I could get a hypoallergenic dog never crossed my mind. I've looked it up and I've found out that one of the reasons I've never thought of such a thing is that the only really hypoallergenic dog is a bare naked dog. My mind resisted the thought simply because my mind revolted against the idea of calling any sort of naked furless quadruped a dog.
  
  Then I remembered how, in the 90s, about 2 years after Utne Reader declared Belltown the 7th hippest neighborhood in America and it had fully ceased to be true, the place was overrun with people stringing along minute little hairless things that I used to call "long-legged rats." Their owners referred to them as dogs.
  
  Here's what I'm thinking. Obama is just not funny enough by himself. I need me some funny stuff in the White House. He got me Joe Biden, and I thank him for that, but even Joe Biden isn't all that funny. He's no Sarah Palin. But a hairless live ferret morsel passing for a dog you can carry around in a coffee mug, that's a hoot.
  
  Barack to the kids: 'Here's the dog I promised you! Now remember, you need to put him back in his thimble when guests are over, which will be all the time now; otherwise people will think we have rats. Oh, and here's one Swedish meatball. The lickings from it should feed him for a month."
  
  The bottom line is, they don't really make hypoallergenic dogs, they only make hypo-dogs. They're less allergenic because there's less of them. This could be a great metaphor informing Belltown, Seattle, and America.
  
  Greg Nickels wants Seattle to be a major business center and he figures businesses won't locate here if there's homeless people everywhere you look. That's never stopped businesses from locating in New York, San Francisco, or Chicago (home of Boeing), all three of which I have been to and know have at least as much visible homelessness as Seattle does. But let's forget that and accept the premise that visible homelessness would prevent us from being The Big Apple Bye & Bye that we've always wanted to be. We should then be striving to make Seattle hypo-homeless.
  
  That way, in boardrooms all across the US there can be conversations that go: "Gosh, I had to see a homeless person on my way to our offices on the 70th floor of our skyscraper. How awful! Can't we do something about that?" "Why yes, I was looking on Craigslist for an ugly dog and I noticed that Seattle is up for sale, and it's listed as hypo-homeless." "That's great! Let's sell this skyscraper and buy a new one in Seattle, and work there."
  
  In reality, this is America, not the United Arab Emirates. In America, there is no such thing as a hypo-homeless city. The closest thing to a hypo-homeless city in the world is Dubai, which passes its wealth out among its citizens, so that not one is poor by any standard. That will not happen here, even with the socialist in the White House.
  
  [Right: Some would say Dubai can afford to be so socialistic.]
  
  So, the only real way that Seattle can be hypo-homeless, is for her to be hypo-urban. Without sharing the wealth that is created on the backs of our citizens and from their resources, we can only have less homelessness than other American cities by being less city.

Joel on Software

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #28

  Posted: November 6th, 2008, 7:00am MST

  

  Corey reviews the podcasts Jeff and I are doing, under the title Jeff Atwood is Trying to Kill Me: “The trip from Chicago to Detroit was without homicidal incident. The only harbinger of what was to come was that I could sense a growing irritation in myself towards Jeff Atwood. Why? Because Jeff just couldn't keep up with the pace of Joel's conversational tennis.”

  Ha! Take that, Jeff “Atwood,” if that's even your real name, you homicidal maniac!

  Anyway, sorry I haven't been posting as much here on the blog. As Corey discovered, the action is all on the podcast. This week, Jeff and I go through the colors. Azure and Orange feature prominently.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Truman Defeats McCain

  Posted: November 5th, 2008, 2:00am MST by Dr. Wes Browning

  Wow! Wasn't that election a surprise? Who could have guessed Truman would win?
  
  OK, so it's 6 AM the Monday before as I write this and I think I know who will win the presidency, but don't know for a fact. So what do I do, send this column out as a letter to Future World?
  
  I did that once. Back in 1971, as I was about to head off to grad school, I wrote a letter to my self of ten years later, and stuck it in a "time capsule," with a note to myself to open it in 1981. I did that, and found all this crap about the Viet Nam War and Nixon that made absolutely no sense. The 1971-me seemed to think the 1981-me would be either dead in a rice paddy or living in a colony on Mars.
  
  Sometimes I prognosticate well. In the Spring of 1978 I starting telling people there would be a revolution in Iran soon. I guessed that much sitting in the UW Husky Cafeteria, overhearing visiting Iranian students try to explain their country's politics to other foreign students. Events six months and after would indicate I outdid the CIA and the National Security Agency on that one.
  
  On the other hand I was sure Hubert Humphrey would beat Nixon in '68. It was the last significant cash bet I ever made in my life. I still owe some guy $20. I figure he'll never collect, since he probably died in a rice paddy, possibly the same year.
  
  [Right: I'm convinced that Humphrey would have won in '68 if he hadn't been tickled pink all the time.]
  
  Just 8 years ago I half-believed Nader supporters' claims that if Bush won the 2000 election and people saw how he governed 2000 to 2004, the Republicans would lose in 2004 for sure. He won; they saw; they voted him back in anyway. All his mistakes made them want him more. He screws up so much we suffer the worst single terrorist act in the world on his watch, and people wanted him back "to protect us from terrorism." How do you predict that kind of cosmically-proportioned mass stupidity? It's like trying to guess which way a football will bounce. America isn't round.
  
  Speaking of things not round, one of my heroes, Benoit Mandelbrot, touched upon this very subject a week ago on PBS, the same day the Fed cut the overnight interest rate to 1%. He basically said we're living in a chaotic economy. In other words, the world economy is not round, so you don't know which way it will bounce. (Mandelbrot is the expert on things such as are highly not round.)
  
  In fact the Federal reserve cut that interest rate without knowing what effect it could have. It seemed like a good idea, because it's helped ease us out of recessions in the past. But we're in a credit crunch. How do you encourage credit by making it worth less to the creditor? I don't know! And neither does your government! They're flying blind!
  
  I'm going to make one small effort to predict something, in spite of my own and Mandelbrot's warnings.
  
  Right now the 10-year interest rates for US government notes, adjusted for current inflation, is negative 1%. I'm going to predict that if that doesn't turn around by next fall, we will then be looking back at our current economic condition and calling it good.
  
  I may not know which way a football will bounce, but I know what happens if you toss it down a well.
  
  For Extra Negative Credit
  
  1. Try to predict something really important, like global warming. Now, before doing anything else, try to predict the opposite of what you predicted the first time. Next, try to predict which of your predictions is better. Show your work, in detail, with footnotes and bibliography. Nothing got better, did it? Welcome to Science!
  
  2. Where's my jet-car? Where's my anti-gravity suit? Where's my 3D tele-smell-a-vision?
  
  3. Can you understand stupidity without having personally experienced it? Think carefully before you answer.

Gibson Blog

• 

  THE LADY'S SINGING, FOLKS

  Posted: November 4th, 2008, 1:16pm MST by Bill

  Yep !
• 

  DEMOCRACY

  Posted: November 4th, 2008, 12:01pm MST by Bill

  Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen .

Joel on Software

• 

  The Unproven Path

  Posted: November 3rd, 2008, 4:01pm MST

  

  “As for what this all means, I'm still trying to figure that out. I abandoned seven long-held principles about business and software engineering, and nothing terrible happened.”

  From my latest Inc. column: The Unproven Path

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #27

  Posted: November 1st, 2008, 9:34pm MDT

  

  Our guests on this week's Stack Overflow Podcast are the founders of Reddit, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.

  By the way, Jeff recently upgraded the database server from Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to 2008, and found pretty conclusively that 2008 has a new architecture for full text search which is significantly slower than it was in 2005. Something to be careful about if you're thinking of upgrading to 2008.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Gibson Blog

• 

  THE GRAND ELEPHANT OF LES MACHINES DE L'ILE (AND THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN)

  Posted: November 1st, 2008, 7:15pm MDT by Bill

  My daughter and I are in Nantes, preparing to return to Paris after attending Utopiales, Nantes' extremely pleasant international festival of science fiction, now in its ninth year.
  
  Yesterday we visted Les Machines de l’Ile (Island Machines), which surely must be the single most exquisitely steampunk site on the plenet, and rode the Grand Elephant .
  
  This morning, as my daughter called me for breakfast, I woke from a dream in which someone was enthusiastically comparing the (in my dream) triumphant Obama campaign to the Grand Elephant and its forty-some tonnes of moving parts (party-mascot irony evidently being lost on the logic of dream).
  
  Are you planning to vote for Obama? Let me advise you to do what it takes, Tuesday, to do that. Don't be a part of that part of the electorate that, for whatever reason, intends to vote, but doesn't. Whichever way this election goes, you will not want to journey into your personal future, the future of the United States, or the future of the world, without having cast your vote in this election. If I know anything about the future, I know that. Either way, you will not want to have not been a cog, however microscopic, however essential, in this magnificent and beautifully-intentioned mechanism. If you've already taken advantage of early voting (of which I am a huge fan) and have the time to do so, please help as many others as you can to vote. Whatever the outcome, you will always count yourself a better person for having done so.
  
  And as Kos says, leave everything on the road.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  I've Stock in Friendship!

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  My latest obsession: I've gone from doing a couple hundred sudoku per day to spending way too much time trying to invite friends to a certain internet social network.
  
  Actually, that's a little misleading. I'm really building a virtual fiefdom as "Knight Wes" and I'm trying to man and woman my fiefdom with vassals so I may better raid and pillage other less prepared fiefdoms and become a Baron, then Count, then King, and eventually Emperor of The Known World. Inviting friends to the certain internet social network is just part of my evil plan of ultimate conquest.
  
  Happily, world events are playing into my hands. This morning it looks like we're in for some more bad news in the stock market -- good news for me!
  
  You see, I don't have a whole lot of rich friends. I can count my rich friends with my thumbs. They talk to me in alternate decades, usually from a distance. They never treat me to lunch. They won't give me their cell phone numbers. When I get them on the regular phone, it's all "Wes who?" and "Can't talk now, I'm buying Rhode Island", or a voice says, "I'm in San Tropé right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, I'll answer it next Spring."
  
  For a long time, I thought the problem was I just wasn't trying hard enough to make friends with rich people. I needed to get out more and travel among the stinking rich. So I went to art openings and concerts and loitered in airports next to guys in suits and Italian shoes, with good teeth, checked luggage, cuff links, and briefcases. I brought offerings of Grey Poupon. I carried conspicuous copies of the Wall Street Journal. Eventually, I had to accept that the real problem was the stinking rich weren't trying hard enough to make friends with me. In fact, they weren't trying at all.
  
  All that's set to change. Sure, the government is bailing out the super rich, so I'm probably never going to be friends with Charles Schwab. But that still leaves a whole lot of "low hanging fruit" out on a limb and dropping. And that means, I won't have to bother with all the "cross-class" alliance business we love to do here at Real Change. Instead of me reaching out to the other classes, the other classes will come to me!
  
  A report this morning noted the recent sharp increase in homelessness and said nearly half are middle class people homeless for the first time. Well, then, they aren't middle class any more, are they? I have a new pool of friends! And I'm not yet ready to write off all the billionaires either. I'm sure Bill Gates has no need of a parachute -- he can do a power landing in any economic crisis -- but I'm not so positive that the rest of his gang hasn't overused their credit lines buying toys.
  
  Our future may be one of poverty and despair, but, hey! Look on the bright side! Everything will get simpler!
  
  In poverty, choices narrow, and life gets much simpler. At Christmas, for example, what do you get the kids to play with? Before, you had to choose between My Baby's First Cadillac and My Baby's First Summer Cottage. Now the choice is between My Baby's First Stick and My Baby's First Fistful of Nothing. Before, planning dinner could take hours and would often require the services of a paid professional staff. Now, it's "I've got a can opener, and you've got a can of garbanzos and a spoon, so let's eat."
  
  When that happens, my Grey Poupon is going to start looking pretty damn fine. "These garbanzos sure could use some spicing up." "Have you tried them with Grey Poupon?" "Why no, I have not." "Well, if you'll be my friend, I'll let you have some."
  
  Then, I will have them where I want them, ready to become my vassals.

Stevey's Blog Rants

• 

  A programmer's view of the Universe, part 1: The fish

  Posted: October 28th, 2008, 3:52pm MDT by Steve Yegge

  I write a column for computer programmers called "Stevey's Blog Rants." It's basically a magazine column — I publish to it about once a month. The average length of my articles is about 12 pages, although they can range anywhere from 4 to 40 pages, depending on how I'm feeling. But for precedent, don't think blogs: think of Reader's Digest. The blog format sets the wrong expectations. Hence

Gibson Blog

• 

  UNDECIDED

  Posted: October 26th, 2008, 10:22am MDT by Bill

  Just arrived in Paris, to find that my wife has sent the following, from the current issue of The New Yorker (October 27, 2008 - page 43), David Sedaris writing in "Shouts and Murmurs". I'm too jet-lagged to managed a proper link, but, really this says it all:
  
  'I don't know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. "Who are they?" the news anchors ask. "And how might they determine the outcome of this election?"
  
  Then you'll see this man or woman -- someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. "Well, Charlie," they say, "I've gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can't seem to make up my mind!" Some insist that there's very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they're with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.
  
  I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
  
  To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with broken glass in it?"
  
  To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.'
• 

  WASSUP 2008

  Posted: October 24th, 2008, 11:25am MDT by Bill

  "Change." .
• 

  SONG FOR SARAH: I WANT TO REAR MY LITTLE HEAD

  Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 11:20am MDT by Bill

  The heartbreaking, heartbroken genius that is Boris and Vlad .

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Mayor Fails Sherbert Test

  Posted: October 22nd, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  Let's talk about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)!
  
  A 1963 Supreme Court case decided that a Ms. Sherbert who was fired for not working on her Sabbath day was entitled to unemployment benefits, establishing the 4 part "Sherbert Test" to help courts determine when religious freedom trumps a law: If 1) a belief is sincere and if 2) the law places a significant burden on the practice of the belief, then the government must prove 3) it's acting in furtherance of a "compelling state interest," and 4) it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion. If 1) and 2) hold and 3) and 4) can't be proved by the government, then the government needs to step off.
  
  Well, that decision, made by a liberal 1963 court, was whittled away by later liberal courts appointed by different presidents. So finally Congress had no choice but to pass the RFRA in 1993 to get their Sherbert back.
  
  Why do I, Wes Browning, care? I'm getting to that.
  
  First, in 2007, the Justice Department ruled, without notifying me personally, that the RFRA meant that the government can go ahead and give my tax money to faith-based organizations that only hire people of their own religious persuasions, even though the same Congress that passed the RFRA specifically said no to the practice. The Justice Department said, basically, a general vague yes from Congress that they like overturns a specific clear no that they don't like. If the Justice Department's Mommy said "you don't always have to do what Billy wants," and also said "don't hit Billy," the Justice department would decide it could do what Billy didn't want, namely punch Billy silly.
  
  It so happens it's against MY religion to give one dime of my taxes to any organization that only hires Christians to do charity work that Animists could do just as well. But the Justice Department decided that my religious claim on how MY money is spent in MY name doesn't mean SQUAT, because these religious charities that can collect all the money they want from public donations TAX-FREE would be SERIOUSLY burdened by not having my money, too.
  
  [Left: This animist can label and stuff envelopes for a donation drive as well as any Baptist or Presbyterian. All he needs is a chance to prove himself.]
  
  Well, OK, I'm not going to be a sore loser. So long as that same low bar applies everywhere.
  
  Last week, Nickelsville, the world's pinkest tent city that wants to be a shantytown, was forced onto the parking lot of University Christian Church, northwest of the University of Washington, by the persecution of Mayor Nickels and his administration. You'd think they'd be safe on church land. But Nickels has told the church and everyone else concerned that putting Nickelsville up in the parking lot violates Seattle's land use laws.
  
  What does Sherbert say? Let's see.
  
  1) Does host sincerely believe that their religion requires they give sanctuary to the poor? Yes. It's in their Bible.
  
  2) Would making the church clear the parking lot of tents, or produce a replacement parking lot within days, significantly hinder the practice of said belief? Duh! (It might be different if they were granted a reasonable amount of time to provide alternative off-street parking, but Nickels is in a big hurry. He's got to screw'm while he's got the itch.)
  
  3) Does the state, i.e. the city, have a compelling interest? They have an interest in ensuring that people can park on the streets. But compelling? Parking? Compared to survival? Give me a break.
  
  4) Is evicting Nickelsville and/or fining everyone involved $150 the least restriction of the church's freedom to exercise its beliefs in this case?
  
  Hardly. If a mission that only hires Christians can have my taxes, and never pay them back, there's no reason the city can't let a church limit my parking for a lousy month or two, for the sake of homeless people, when every developer in town can do the same for the sake of building bigger and better homes for the rich.
  
  Nickels needs to step off.

Stevey's Blog Rants

• 

  The Universal Design Pattern

  Posted: October 19th, 2008, 9:06pm MDT by Steve Yegge

    This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance. — Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach Note: Today's entry is a technical article: it isn't funny. At least not intentionally. Update, Oct 20th 2008: I've added an Updates section, where I'll try to track significant responses, at least for a week or so. There are three entries so far. Contents

Gibson Blog

• 

  I'M NOT PESSIMISTIC EITHER

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 10:47am MDT by Bill

  
  
  I identify fully with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster !
  
  [Thanks to Paul McCauley for the photograph.]

Paul Graham: Unofficial RSS Feed

• 

  Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

  Posted: October 16th, 2008, 1:39pm MDT

  "If you're the right sort of person, you'll win even in a bad economy. And if you're not, a good economy won't save you. Someone who thinks 'I better not start a startup now, because the economy is so bad' is making the same mistake as the people who thought during the Bubble 'all I have to do is start a startup, and I'll be rich.'"
  
  
  Ad: "Hackers & Painters" by Paul Graham

Gibson Blog

• 

  PALIN/WURZELBACHER 2012!

  Posted: October 16th, 2008, 5:52am MDT by Bill

  Joe the Plumber. (They might want to consider calling it the Palin/Plumber campaign, actually)
  
  It just makes so much sense, on so many levels, and actually manages to up the national fuckedness factor from where I judge it to stand today. Which is more of a stretch than ever, really.
  
  If this dream ticket seems hopelessly far-fetched, to you, just remember that Karl Rove and I are both huge Borges fans.

Joel on Software

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #26

  Posted: October 15th, 2008, 9:34pm MDT

  

  On this week's Stack Overflow Podcast, Jeff and I devote the episode to questions from listeners.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Jails Are Seattle's Future

  Posted: October 15th, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  There's been a lot of talk recently about Seattle's need for a municipal jail. But not everything has been said on the subject that could be said. For example, no one has suggested that the new jail could be designed with futuristic sweeping curved lines, stand 600 feet up, be painted orange, and revolve, and so be a lovely tourist attraction and Seattle icon. Even though a new jail would create many new jobs and require new housing and supporting retail, no one has said there should be a street car going there. No one has come up with a good slogan, like "Invest In Your Future -- Invest In Prisons."
  
  [Above: Without one of these, how are people supposed to get there?]
  
  I'm going to say those things and more. I'm going to tell you what no one else at Real Change wants you to hear: We need this new jail!
  
  Real Change doesn't want you to know that jailing people is Seattle's last hope to have a surviving economy and clean empty streets. Real Change doesn't want you to know that scapegoating the poor for the problems of the middle-class pays.
  
  Now, right away, I'm sure that some of you liberal losers are thinking, "Wouldn't it be cheaper to build more traditional shelters, rather than spend all that money on constructing and maintaining a jail complex?" On the surface, that sounds sensible. The city is paying, right now, just about $10 per person per day for shelter and transitional housing, while just the maintenance cost of a new jail is expected to be more than $110 per person per day. But when you scratch deeper it sounds like mairzy doats and dozy doats. Scratch deeper than that, and it takes your arm off.
  
  What did I just tell you in the first paragraph? This is Seattle's chance to create a whole new thriving industry! We've been Jet City. We've been Amazon Central. We've been Latteville. Now we can be Jail Town, USA!
  
  [Left: Jail made Elvis famous. Elvis made the Seattle World's Fair famous. The Seattle World's Fair made Seattle famous. Therefore Jails already have made Seattle famous. Let's cut out the middlemen!]
  
  There are only two things we have to do to guarantee our preeminence as the world's greatest jailers, and we are well our way to accomplishing both of them.
  
  First, we need lots more misdemeanants. This is being arranged. Our mayor is finding new ways to enforce bad laws. Using methods that were pioneered in the Deep South during the Reconstruction, Mayor Nickels has been finding innovative ways to make the inescapable conditions of homelessness illegal. Meanwhile, our president and congress have done us the favor of ensuring that we will have an ever-increasing number of homeless people to convict. It has been estimated that by the end of 2012 every formerly housed single man, woman, and child in Seattle who does not have a high-level government job will have been foreclosed upon, or be a barista.
  
  We need to make more drugs and herbs illegal. I recommend aspirin, tylenol, and ibuprofen; that will make it more illegal than ever to hurt. We need to expand the no-smoking ordinance to prohibit smoking anywhere within 25 feet of a hard surface, and we need to enforce it with jail time, and add a three-strikes provision.
  
  Second, we need funding for it. We need funding to build it, funding to keep it going, and extra funding to line the pockets of the lobbyists for it, to make it worth their while.
  
  We can do this, too, Seattle! We just have to think big! We have to become the experts on jailing that the world comes to see and learn from! We have make Seattle synonymous not with gray skies, but with gray bars.
  
  Let's get Rem Koolhaus to design it. Let's build a world-class park around it, and charge for tours. Let's build a new college to train incarceration professionals and to teach politicians how to write laws that can't fail to be broken.
  
  Century 21 has been used. Let's call it Century 22, and dazzle America and the rest of the World with our vision, our innovation, and the experience we will have achieved.

Joel on Software

• 

  Sins of Commissions

  Posted: October 10th, 2008, 3:34pm MDT

  

  “A couple of years ago, I went into a big-box shoe store and bought a pair of sneakers. At the checkout counter, the cashier grabbed a can of that bogus silicone spray stores always try to up-sell you. It's supposed to make sneakers shiny and waterproof, but it doesn't seem to do anything.”

  From my latest Inc. column: Sins of Commissions

  My dad emailed to add:

  The same problem arises when you set measurable incentives (money for better test results) in educational policies like No Child Left Behind.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #25

  Posted: October 9th, 2008, 10:00pm MDT

  

  This week's Stack Overflow Podcast features special guest star and programming blogger superhero Steve Yegge. It's a terrific conversation about working at Google, marketing your ideas, and programming languages... one of the most interesting podcasts yet. 

  In the spirit of Steve's extremely long blog posts, we ran about 15 minutes long this week.

  

  In the past, Jeff and I have had some audio problems using Skype to record the podcast--mainly, dropouts when we talk over each other. I set up a bunch of new gear which seems to have finally fixed this problem. Here's a description of the new podcasting setup.

   

   

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Gibson Blog

• 

  FAILURE OF IMAGINATION

  Posted: October 9th, 2008, 3:04am MDT by Bill

  The opposite of the Clock of the Long Now.

Joel on Software

• 

  Hair on fire

  Posted: October 8th, 2008, 10:54am MDT

  

  On August 17th, Jason, a student in our software management training program, read a post by Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire:

  "Here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire (I have no direct experience in this area, but I'm told that hair flammability is quite urgent).

  "Do nothing except finish the project. Hey, you could have been on vacation, so it's okay to neglect everything else, to put your email on vacation autorespond and your phone on voice mail and to beg off on the sleepy weekly all-hands meeting and to avoid the interactions with those that might say no...

  "And then finish it. Finish the website or the manuscript or business plan or the suite of tools."

  At the time, the Copilot team had spent a couple of months stuck in a bizarre Moby Dick-style obsessive hunt to fix a very obscure bug in a very rare edge case in some code which nobody would ever see. There was a loooong period of time there where every once in a while I would ask Ben what was going on and he would say, "we should have AutoUpdate done today." I didn't know what AutoUpdate was, but the eleventh time I heard that it was going to be done "today" I started to detect a pattern.

  

  When Jason read Seth's motivational post, probably after drinking a little bit ttoooo mmuucchh ccooffffee, he got really excited by this idea, and quickly sold Ben and Tyler, the developers, that they should try something. In their weakened state from an exhausting chase after one very annoying bug, they probably could have been convinced that it was a good idea to try hang gliding from the roof of our office building to the Statue of Liberty, so they went along with it.

  To keep focused, Jason instituted daily scrum-like standup meetings. It took about three weeks to get to code complete and about three more weeks of testing and polishing, but lo and behold, it's here: Copilot OneClick!

  Copilot was originally optimized to be the easiest way to provide temporary, ad-hoc tech support over the internet. It's a remote desktop system that's focused on ease of use, with nothing to install, so it's perfect for tech support departments that just need to get onto a customer's system remotely to fix problems, without asking the customer to install software, change firewall settings, etc. etc.

  OneClick is a new feature that allows you to install Copilot on the computers you connect to most frequently, and makes re-connecting to those computers a breeze. It's a huge step forward in usability.

  So, thanks, Seth Godin, for the motivation. Now if I could just get the contractor working on our office to read Seth's blog...

  PS. Since the summer, we've added a lot of other small features, which I haven't reported here. There's a new monthly $19.95 flat rate plan. Weekends are now totally free (ideal for helping your family and friends). There's also a free 15 day trial. The best way to keep up with these things is to subscribe to the Copilot Blog.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• 

  Hair on fire

  Posted: October 8th, 2008, 10:54am MDT

  

  On August 17th, Jason, a student in our software management training program, read a post by Seth Godin, marketing guru extraordinaire:

  "Here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire (I have no direct experience in this area, but I'm told that hair flammability is quite urgent).

  "Do nothing except finish the project. Hey, you could have been on vacation, so it's okay to neglect everything else, to put your email on vacation autorespond and your phone on voice mail and to beg off on the sleepy weekly all-hands meeting and to avoid the interactions with those that might say no...

  "And then finish it. Finish the website or the manuscript or business plan or the suite of tools."

  At the time, the Copilot team had spent a couple of months stuck in a bizarre Moby Dick-style obsessive hunt to fix a very obscure bug in a very rare edge case in some code which nobody would ever see. There was a loooong period of time there where every once in a while I would ask Ben what was going on and he would say, "we should have AutoUpdate done today." I didn't know what AutoUpdate was, but the eleventh time I heard that it was going to be done "today" I started to detect a pattern.

  

  When Jason read Seth's motivational post, probably after drinking a little bit ttoooo mmuucchh ccooffffee, he got really excited by this idea, and quickly sold Ben and Tyler, the developers, that they should try something. In their weakened state from an exhausting chase after one very annoying bug, they probably could have been convinced that it was a good idea to try hang gliding from the roof of our office building to the Statue of Liberty, so they went along with it.

  To keep focused, Jason instituted daily scrum-like standup meetings. It took about three weeks to get to code complete and about three more weeks of testing and polishing, but lo and behold, it's here: Copilot OneClick!

  Copilot was originally optimized to be the easiest way to provide temporary, ad-hoc tech support over the internet. It's a remote desktop system that's focused on ease of use, with nothing to install, so it's perfect for tech support departments that just need to get onto a customer's system remotely to fix problems, without asking the customer to install software, change firewall settings, etc. etc.

  OneClick is a new feature that allows you to install Copilot on the computers you connect to most frequently, and makes re-connecting to those computers a breeze. It's a huge step forward in usability.

  So, thanks, Seth Godin, for the motivation. Now if I could just get the contractor working on our office to read Seth's blog...

  PS. Since the summer, we've added a lot of other small features, which I haven't reported here. There's a new monthly $19.95 flat rate plan. Weekends are now totally free (ideal for helping your family and friends). There's also a free 15 day trial. The best way to keep up with these things is to subscribe to the Copilot Blog.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  I'm So Privileged

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 8:03pm MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  Greg Nickels [our mayor] has me so royally peeved, I'm tempted to just write "Greg Nickels is an arrogant, narcissistic, fool" 75 times and turn that in. I've been told by the editor I could get away with that sort of thing. He's said no one would notice any difference in the quality of my writing, so "what the hell."
  
  I won't though, because I wouldn't want to abuse my free speech privilege. Sarah Palin, who aspires to be Vice President of the United States, a job that requires upholding our Constitution, has reminded us lately that freedom of speech is a privilege that the press should not abuse. Indeed, I clearly recall how in 8th grade history we learned the first ten amendments to the Constitution (they formed what was called the Bill of Privileges), and that the first privilege listed after the Privilege of Religion was the Privilege of Freedom of Speech.
  
  Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.
  
  [Right: Some women peaceably assembled to ask politely to be granted privilege to vote. "Please, sirs, with sugar on top!"]
  
  Our activist Supreme Court, abusing its privilege to interpret the Constitution, declared decades ago that people retain privileges of association, asserting they could not otherwise exercise their speech and assembly privileges. Palin has clearly understood how wrong this is.
  
  When Palin accused Barack Obama of associating "with terrorists who targeted our own country" she referred to the fact that Bill Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground when Obama was 8, and Barack Obama have both worked on the same two non-profit boards. Palin would regard that as an abuse of the privilege of association.
  
  She's absolutely right. Suppose I'm helping put out a fire, at, say, a kindergarten, and I know that the guy passing me buckets of water is none other than Bill Ayers, who blew up a critical Pentagon file-cabinet once. I should walk away from that fire because associating with known terrorists is always wrong, wrong, wrong. The kindergarteners would understand, when they got older, if they weren't burned to a crisp. If they were burned to a crisp, they'd have to ask themselves in the afterlife what the heck were they doing going to a kindergarten in the same neighborhood with a known terrorist?
  
  [Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]
  
  As if just to show you don't have to be republican to have the same kind of grasp of law on privilege as Sarah Palin, this past weekend the administration of our Democratic Mayor Greg Nickels put out a Notice of Land Use Violation threatening to fine a long list of individuals and associations for their support of Nickelsville, at least one of whom was listed for the sole crime of having emailed his support to another of them.
  
  The Notice of Violation notably lists SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless grassroots organization that was NOT responsible for Nickelsville, as a supporter, and includes mention of its Vancouver, Washington, office. But the Vancouver WA office is that of an entirely different organization that just happens to have the name Share.
  
  Therefore Nickels carries Sarah Palin's thinking a step further. Not only should people not do good things if the wrong people join in, they should also pay for having the wrong name. Again, this is as it should be. Share House, Vancouver, started in 1977. SHARE/WHEEL started in 1990. Share House has had 18 of its 31 years in existence to change its name. They have totally abused their privilege of name-having.
  
  But Nickels went too far listing John and Jane Doe as "Persons Responsible For The Violations".
  
  We know what he's doing. He's getting ready to fine everybody who so much as wrote a letter to the editor in support of Nickelsville, $150 a day, every day it exists.
  
  Now we need everyone who cares about Nickelsville and the RIGHT of homeless people to survive to declare themselves to be John or Jane Doe -- I am John Doe.
  
  [Below: I already posted this on my other blog Run Off, but it's worth posting again.]
  
  Spartacus [I now think the subtitles are in Turkish.]
  
  

Joel on Software

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #24

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 8:32am MDT

  

  The whole Stack Overflow team got together in person at Fog Creek's shiny new office in New York City for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com, which is up as this week's podcast.

  Shanah Tovah u-Metuka!

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #24

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 8:32am MDT

  

  The whole Stack Overflow team got together in person at Fog Creek's shiny new office in New York City for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com, which is up as this week's podcast.

  Shanah Tovah u-Metuka!

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Adventures at Nickelsville

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  Back in the 60s I was a rally chaser. Missing a rally or a march would be like missing an episode of Star Trek. An enormous sense of grief would come over me, made worse by the knowledge that there would be no summer reruns in the case of the rallies and marches.
  
  
  [Above: May 5, 1970. I was there. The Yellow Indicatrix tells you where. I am NOT between the other protesters and the Tac Squad. I am on the northbound on-ramp. No friend of head trauma, I.]
  
  Now, though, I just want to sit in my little corner in my tiny room and watch the world go by on CNN and the internet. When a public gathering presents an opportunity to be arrested it only strengthens my resolve to hide out in my room, owing to desmoteriophobia (fear of dungeons).
  
  Not all of us have such fear. Saturday I opened up the Seattle P-I to find none other than my beloved Anitra "Smiling Buddha" Freeman gazing blissfully up at a policeman about to haul her radical-hippy ass off to jail. The possibility that this time they could just leave her there and forget to tell anyone either did not occur to her, or it goosed her, or she'd gone batspit crazy and thought the policeman was Wilford Brimley come to take her to Antarea, where she'd be young forever, and learn break-dancing from Don Ameche.
  
  Anitra was getting arrested for refusing to leave alleged city land upon which Nickelsville had been set up. You may recall that two weeks ago Nickelsville was a homeless peoples' shantytown only in potentia. On Friday of last week it was very much concrete, and as Mayor Nickels wanted it to return to being an abstract idea, he sent the police to try to make it so.
  
  Before Anitra got arrested there was a scene, broadcast on KING TV, of her telling residents of Nickelsville ("Nickelodeons") three options the police had laid out. I've watched the video over and over, trying to figure out the logic of the three options. It sounds like what she said the police were saying was the Nickelodeons' options were EITHER 1) stay and be arrested OR 2) go away and not be arrested, OR 3) go away with shipoopy, and no kiss.
  
  I was actually there to witness that episode and the subsequent 22 arrests, in spite of my aforementioned phobia, because I'd spent the night before boiling peanuts for my sweetheart not considering that, what with her spending the night in a fuchsia tent at Nickelsville and then surely wanting to stick around to be jailed, and me without a teleportation device, I would have to go there to deliver her the peanuts. So I went, and it was just coincidence that the police vans were arriving from the donut shop just the same time I arrived by bus.
  
  It's the story of my life. I boil some peanuts for someone, then I think, oops, got to deliver the peanuts. I get there just as the cops do. Oh, look, doggies!
  
  It all worked out half well though. I did not get arrested. Anitra got caught and released. Governor Gregoire granted a reprieve to Nickelsville itself, letting the Nickelodeons cram as many tents onto a state owned parking lot as could fit, out of reach of the mayor. I got to talk to the people the mayor sent from Human Services to refer Nickelodeons to "proper" shelter in the system, and I tried to find out how they could do that with a straight face knowing that the shelters are full every night. Answer: they don't think about that. They just pass out referral cards to whoever takes them and call it a job done.
  
  Here's your irony adventure: Some people took the cards and went to be referred to the shelter that the mayor keeps saying is there for them, and the referral agency gave them bus tickets and sent them back to Nickelsville!
  
  Greg Nickels is like the owner of a row boat trying to bail it out with a Dixie cup after it's already sunk in 10 feet of water. Greg Nickels is a fool.

Stevey's Blog Rants

• 

  The Bellic School of Management Training

  Posted: September 28th, 2008, 5:08pm MDT by Steve Yegge

  I haven't been blogging much this summer. Mostly it's because all my free time has been spent engaged in an important research project called "What Would Niko Bellic Do?" I've been enrolled in a high-quality Management Scenario Simulator with the unconventional name "Grand Theft Auto IV", probably some sort of inside joke, and I've been going through all its Developer Management training

Gibson Blog

• 

  AMBIENT WATCH

  Posted: September 25th, 2008, 3:23am MDT by Bill

  Jack Womack's Ambient takes place in 2012 doesn't it?
• 

  DIRECTOR WOMACK INDEED

  Posted: September 24th, 2008, 6:49am MDT by Bill

  I was wondering when Director Womack would surface again.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Use Protection

  Posted: September 24th, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  I don't know what to say. I can't not be sardonic. It's too fahrfürfrappen easy. Seven hundred billion dollars! The Bushter wants to have seven hundred billion dollars of OUR money, to save the fortunes of very, VERY important rich people, without whom our economy (the machine that cranks out our wealth) would supposedly not be possible.
  
  [Below: That's 7,000,000 of these.]
  
  Well, you know, for the sake of MY wealth and all, I'd just as soon we keep the seven hundred billion dollars, if you don't mind, bitte, danke schön! Auf wiedersehen, vaya con Dios, amigo! Thank you very frappen much!
  
  Our presidente seems to be under the wildly mistaken assumption that we would all be extremely alarmed if the prices of housing steeply plummeted in this country. Actually, this is far from the case. In fact, I would like very much to be able to buy a house for a dollar. I HAVE a dollar. I would not like to buy a house for 650,000 dollars, because I do not have that many. So if housing prices dropped from what they are now (a zillion per house, on average) to a dollar per house, on average, I'd go so far as propose we change the Constitution to be able to re-elect Bush as presidente, over and over again, until the Rapture.
  
  That won't happen (the housing price drop), because nothing the presidente, nor the Republicans in general, nor Democrats are talking about doing about all this, involves making the price of housing lower. They're all about protecting the mortgage industry, and failing that, homeowners. Nobody gives a damn about home non-owners. Nobody's even TALKING about home non-owners. EXCEPT ME! DO I HAVE TO DO IT ALL?
  
  Home non-owners are Americans, too. Why does no one else ever point this out?
  
  Here's what's wrong with the Bush Administration. When they want to seize property from some poor jerk whose land is in the way of an interstate bypass or a CostCo, they just say "Eminent domain!" and "This is all you get in compensation," and, transaction completed. But when they want the junk assets of precious failing investment companies, it's, "Oh please, sirs, tell us how much you might require for your valuable investment properties, that they may be purchase-ed from you by our humble national government, using our peasants' accumulated pennies."
  
  George's plan asks for the same deal he asked from Congress re Iraq. He wants his Secretary of the Treasury to be authorized to do anything at all with the 700 billion. No limits. The future is uncertain. There are terrorists among us. This is a post-9-11 world. Constitutional checks and balances are outmoded in this climate of fear and terror. Saddam Hussein must be defeated at all costs. We only ask authorization to do what is necessary in these dangerous times.
  
  [Right: Forget those bankers, remember who our real enemy is.]
  
  The Democrats, whom I am ordinarily fond of associating with, have seized upon this as an issue, and I give them credit for doing so. Yes, (big applause) if this screw is inevitable, we MUST HAVE safeguards! Lordy, if this deal is going to go down, please, please, dear government, put on a condom before you do it.
  
  It's too much to ask either party, apparently, to demand that if we taxpayers spend that much for so-called junk properties, the properties be used for our benefit. Like, you know, ending our homelessness. Neither party seems capable of seeing that this crisis is an opportunity to end US homelessness in a year.
  
  Instead, both parties are talking about these failed mortgage assets as bad investments that must be made good, i.e. must be turned into money, in the short term. Rather than shelter, which could improve lives, which could create human welfare, which could generate national wealth. That would take altogether too long. It would take as long as slow moving human generations and slow growing pink flesh. We don't have time for the needs of flesh. We have to make a profit this quarter.

Gibson Blog

• 

  SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

  Posted: September 23rd, 2008, 6:29am MDT by Bill

  DEAR AMERICAN:
  
  I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.
  
  I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.
  
  I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.
  
  THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.
  
  PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.
  
  YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON
  
  ————————————————–
  
  
  
  --anonymous, via .
• 

  FIRE ON A DISTANT SHORE

  Posted: September 22nd, 2008, 8:45am MDT by Bill

  The view from Japan .

Joel on Software

• 

  Imaginary product

  Posted: September 19th, 2008, 11:41pm MDT

  

  Why doesn't somebody make this?

  • It's a power strip
  • It's a network hub
  • It's a USB hub
  • You clamp it onto the back of any desk

  This would make it easy to plug in laptops, USB peripherals, and all your rechargers at your desk without crawling around on the floor.

  (The photograph shows a product by Mockett which comes tantalizingly close, but which has knockouts for you to hardwire your own ports instead of built-in LAN and usb hubs.)

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• 

  Stack Overflow Podcast #22

  Posted: September 19th, 2008, 9:49am MDT

  

  In Episode #22 of the Stack Overflow podcast, Jeff and I talk to guest Josh Millard of MetaFilter about moderating community sites.

  Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Adventures in Bloggery

• 

  Nickels Makes History Repeat

  Posted: September 17th, 2008, 3:00am MDT by Dr. Wes Browning

  I have a column due by 9 AM this morning, and I've also promised Anitra "Not Acting On Behalf Of Anybody In Particular" Freeman that by the same time I'd read a book-length manifesto on Nickelsville that she wrote with a committee. Not being inclined to do needless work, I shall now attempt to combine the two efforts into one glorious slack-off.
  
  [Above Left: Anitra with acquaintance.]
  
  I've talked about Nickelsville here before but I've never spent an entire column on it. This is mainly due to the fact that it hasn't existed yet. I generally find that when I talk about that which is not, the results are even more obtuse than what you usually get when I talk about that which is.
  
  But Nickelsville is poised to be, probably before the next column is out, so it has achieved a degree of concreteness analogous to that of The Melting of the Polar Icecaps and The Rise of the Oceans Due to Global Warming, or The Great Stock Market Crash of 2008 (both expected later today).
  
  So what will Nickelsville be? It will be a Hooverville that is named after Greg Nickels, Seattle's mayor, rather than after Herbert Hoover, a former US President. In the Great Depression Seattle had a Hooverville, a shantytown built by homeless people. A lot of people then thought that Herbert Hoover was responsible for a lot of the Greatness of the Great Depression. So they named the shantytowns after him, the need for them being perceived to be partly his fault.
  
  Today, we don't just think Greg Nickels has a lot to do with how hard it is to survive homeless in Seattle, we know he does. We have listened to him talk a good talk about ending homelessness, while at the same time chasing homeless encampments all around the city and destroying survival gear wherever found. The message from Nickels is, we, the City of Seattle, will end homelessness in the abstract by 2014 (only: not really because the plan isn't to actually end homeless, but hah, hah, that's what we say about it, even though the plan itself says something entirely different, read the fine print), but concretely we will strip all the homeless that are forced outdoors for lack of adequate shelter of all their property, and leave them to the elements.
  
  So as those homeless people who wish to live band together into a shantytown, there is no question whose fault it all is. Nickelsville will be Nickels' fault. Without Greg Nickels and the homeless encampment sweeps he instigated, Nickelsville wouldn't be about to happen. As bad as George Bush is, there would not be a Bushville at this time. Until maybe next week, depending on how many multi-billion dollar financial greed factories file Chapter 11 this week.
  
  As Anitra and Friends' manifesto ably and concisely points out, Nickelsville will cost the City of Seattle nothing. To be less concise: it will not take money out of the general fund. It will not be built by city workers paid by taxpayers. The residents will build and maintain it with assistance from private donors. The city will not be billed for the labor.
  
  People are always saying, "Why don't homeless people ever do anything to help themselves?" Well, they do, everyday. They help themselves by barely surviving in spite of all the obstacles and all the persecution. It's understandable that people can't see that work of surviving, because it's scattered among thousands of personal stories.
  
  Nickelsville should make matters clearer. "What are homeless people doing to help themselves?" Nickelsville, for one thing.
  
  And if, as feared, the city tears Nickelsville down, that would help answer the follow-up question, "Why, if they are helping themselves, are they still homeless?"
  
  The first step in getting out of homelessness is finding a way to maintain and survive every day. If that first step is continually tripped up by the police power of a mayor, then there can never be a second step.