G+

Ten million users in 16 days. That's impressive.

Hardly an accident:

* Apparently Google is paying minor celebrities to post and participate. Perhaps that's what's behind Linus and Wil posting so much?

* They also seem to be reallocating resources internally base on what I'm seeing in public employee posts. For example, Steve Yegge was apparently asked to work on social stuff.

* Google seems almost Microsoftesque in it's persistence in this area. GChat, Orkut, and Buzz come to mind and I think they are going to keep at it until they get it right. Unlike Microsoft, they seem willing to try totally new approaches instead of forcefully evolving their old products when they don't work or get uptake.

Be interesting to see if GOOG's application developer governance and user privacy enforcement will be less lazy and evil than FB's.

In any case, Google Plus is a smidge rough yet but it's growing on me.

Information Heroes

There are people that are heroic in that they run in to burning buildings. There are people that are heroic in other ways.

Various MAFIAA member organizations have a business model that cannot survive in the face of current technology and market disruptions. Same goes for the academic publishing societies.

If this guy is legally posting this stuff, he is a hero because he's trying to change the world.

Government has begun to keep some few records online but that time will come too.

Truth in Headlines - Pretty Please?

Wow, talk about swallowing one side's messaging whole.

He wasn't fleeing his job. That's just totally absurd and untrue. Senator Hansen was doing his job by using the rules to block a vote. Blocking a vote by denying supporters a quorum is a tried and true parliamentary move. Even Honest Abe tried to do it once.

"Voters say Hansen was Right, VanderLeest Wrong"? After all, it was VanderLeest who kept trying to frame this as a referendum. But then that doesn't tell the whole story either, does it. I suppose the chore of writing headlines isn't particularly easy in the understaffed newsrooms of today but could I ask that you please value honesty over attention getting in the future?

Run for the Middle

Dear Governor,

Your recent run for the middle is way too little and way too late. A significant portion of the population believes you lied your way in to office and, frankly, they have a point. A not quite as significant chunk of the population genuinely questions your sanity. Yes, that is how far outside expectations you went and people are angry. Very angry.

Your political capital account is overspent in to dark red negative territory. I can imagine genuine acts of honest governing-- bold moves to the center that would help. I cannot imagine your base support would survive that. So, you'll undertake token actions and blow them up in the press. You've painted yourself in to an extreme right corner and now you'll have to live with it, Governor. I look forward to voting against you early next year.

These are big issues and the the ideas and alternatives should have been genuinely and honestly discussed in the public square. Had your rhetoric been even a bit closer to what you planned to do you might still be governor. But either way, had your campaign poetry actually had anything to do with your Governing prose, you wouldn't be losing your party's Senate majority and facing recall.

Sincerely,

Dan

G+

I'll tell you, I like how G+ Circles work better than FB Friends lists.

That and I trust Google more, much more, as a company.

Won't you join me on Google Plus?

Goodbye

Thinking

of

you

and your family. I'll miss you.

Lethal vs Non-Lethal force

I have never been able to wrap my head around the situation where a handful of cops gun down a suspect brandishing a knife. You see it in the news from time to time. I understand that the police are trained to do it but it's always seemed absurdly excessive to me. Why doesn't one officer just tackle the guy from behind? Is it risky? Sure. Is killing the guy a better choice, NO!

It seems to me a camera in every pocket is going to force the police to become more nuanced in their responses. First off, people in authority are going to have to recognize the peoples rights to record them. Second, once this all captures the public's imagination-- and police abuse of wiretapping laws to supress their methods will eventually cause that-- the debate will begin. In fact, I think those helmet cams the London Drunk Police wear are fantastic. No matter who does the recording it will become the norm to more clearly document how situations go down. Many people will realize there are many options between cuff and shoot. There have to be more training options and tools made available to officers.

Bad Code

Unfortunately this looks familiar:

try {
DoProcessReceipts();
}
catch (Exception) { }

A C++ variant of this that drove me absolutely nuts was:

catch( ... )
{
// Do nothing
}


This sort of weak programming gets the code past QA but invariably turns in to a cluster-frack of debugging later on. My experience debugging is that it almost always becomes more difficult to track down a bug when the code intentionally swallows related errors.

So, what's the solution? Well, you could make an empty control block throw a warning. That might help some people be more responsible but I suspect a greater portion would simply do something worse like this:

catch( ... )
{
int x = 0;
}

At the end of the day I want to build stable tools that help people get stuff done. Most developers, even those in the field for money instead of passion, want to do a good job. But "doing it right" must be balanced against "getting it done" and there's the rub.

Not every exception needs to be captured and handled in the frame where it occurs but sometimes it does make sense. Look at the big picture in the code but also look at the business situation. Catch the error in the appropriate frame, catch the appropriate types, and record them every. single. time. Given the inevitability of bogus data from bad error handling on a long running process, it may better over the long run to simply crash and use a dump on the ab-end to fix the bug instead of leaving a process with fubar state running. It all depends on the business needs and technical situation. Please take a minute to think it through. It is better for everyone involved to talk it through with a colleague and build a better program in the short run. If you don't, I promise you that someone-- maybe you-- will be stuck picking back through that code trying to figure out what keeps randomly failing.

Lyme Disease in E WI

Be careful out there when you are camping!

I wonder if there is some sort of bird seed (additive?) that acts as a flea and tick repellent for birds and squirrels in the yard?