Interesting point for entrepeneurs

MR points to an item by Paul Atkins that indicated Apple Computers was considered too risky to do an IPO in some states.

Stories from my life

A guy with whom I'm playing an online computer game commented to me: "As a programmer you already know, there is no such thing as a "random" glitch".

There may be a cause, but things can look pretty random. I had to fly down to North Carolina once because a system we had written for a large company (controlling vending machines that took credit cards) started randomly charging customers $0 for some of the purchases (which were NOT $0).

I remember the flight well, because I had a cold and the cabin was unpressurized, and I arrived weak and pale with blood trickling out of my ears after some of the worst pain I've ever experienced. The guy in charge of the computer that was running my program whom I was rushing to see was unable to see me at first because an Ebay auction on some collectible was in the end stages, but finally I got to see the system.

After hours of comparing my input logs to the output we were generating, and trying to figure out HOW my program could possibly produce such nonsense - and running the program in a test mode with the same input to try to reproduce the problem - I was ready to tear my hair out.

I wrote a quick test program that did simple arithmetic and logged the output. It worked fine. I went to my hotel room in despair and left it running.

The next day, I checked the output log of the test program and found that for several minute-long periods the computer would add 1 and 1 and arrive at 0.

The computer they were using to run my program was really a collection of a large set of processing units, and processes could be run by any one of these - when my process was run on a defective unit, it produced defective results.

When I asked them how this could possibly have been going on undetected, they explained that the system ran diagnostics continuously, but the results were sent to a display that was itself no longer working, so they hadn't checked in months. Probably higher priority Ebay auctions.

Our president explained to me that it would be bad for company relations if I killed anybody. In retrospect, it might have been worth it.

One of the downsides of not having gay marriage....

...that I've heard described has been that married couples get fewer restrictions when visiting each other in a health care situation. But I never quite thought that a couple that was not married would be separated like THIS.

"According to the suit, when Harold, Greene’s partner of 20 years, fell ill, the county refused to let Greene visit him in the hospital, despite the couple’s meticulous efforts to name one another in their wills, powers of attorney, and medical directive documents."

One wonders whether even if there HAD been a marriage whether things would have gone any better...but in any case, it is shocking that this sort of thing could be going on even nowadays.

A soul is a terrible thing to waste....

....but to promise it in exchange for a computer game is pretty reasonable.

The April Fool's joke made the point that nobody actually reads those online agreements. Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

Quote of the day

Blonde chick to friend: So I ran into that guy and confronted him. I was like, "why didn't you say hi to me last Friday? I know you saw me, but you didn't say anything. Listen, if you're going to sleep with me Thursday night, you can't just not say hi to me on Friday. I know it's common for a lot of businessmen to sleep with prostitutes and then ignore them the next day when they see them on the street, but they pay them. If you're going to ignore me, fine... but I expect a check in the mail."
- Overheard in New York

How happy is happy enough?

Well, if you're not there yet, Badakesuyo tweets how to move in the right direction.

How gay is gay enough?

In a bizarre development, 3 athletes ruled insufficiently gay are suing to have the determination overturned, as well as reinstatement of their standing and money damages.

At one point during the proceedings, the lawsuit alleges, one of the plaintiffs was told: "This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series."

Quote of the Day

"Learning Icelandic is like getting a tattoo on your arse: it’s time consuming, painful, and you rarely get a chance to show it off."
- via Language Log

Don't try this at home!

MR always has the best links, and this one to "20 Homemade Things That Shouldn’t Be Home-Made" is well worth a look. The scaffolding and the child seat are especially cringe-inducing.

Other recent posts and links by MR include hiring an evil clown to stalk your children, porn magazines for the blind, the fact that a fat "freak" of the past who toured the world because of his size would look unexceptional today, John Cleese explaining the advantages of extremism, and a look-back at last years "hard" words from the New York Times (Maybe next year's will be out soon?).

Not to mention an interesting look at the unexpected directions causality can take.

Update: And, of course, unconventional but respectable names for beer.

Cliff Notes for Movies!

Via Prettier Than Napoleon, who used "ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications." as her post title, Uncomfortable Plot Summaries tells you everything you need to know about the movies, but you might not recognize the movie without thinking a bit.

My three favorites:

BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST: Mel Gibson fulfills fantasy of showing a Jew beaten to a bloody pulp and killed on-screen.
TWILIGHT: Girl gives up college for stalker.

King Kong Theory - book review

A short read, and I recommend it - an interesting view on rape, pornography, prostitution, and gender roles from a woman who has had experience with all of these. Her name is Virginie Despentes, and she writes "as one of the leftovers, one of those weirdos, the ones who shave their heads, those who don't know how to dress, those who worry that they stink...", and for "men who don't want to protect, men who would like to be protective but don't know where to start, men who don't know how to fight, those who cry easily...." The translation from the French was obviously done by a Brit, where "pissed" means "drunk" rather than "angry", and "fag" means "cigarette".

She was raped by three men while she was hitchhiking with another woman. Part of her concern afterward was how unmentionable it was:

The few times - mostly very pissed - when I have wanted to tell this story, have I used the word? Never. The few times I have attempted to talk about it, I'd skirted around the word "rape": "assaulted", "mixed up", "in a tight corner", "hassled"....whatever. As long as the aggression is not called "rape", the attack loses its specificity, can be compared with other attacks, like getting mugged, picked up by the cops, held for questioning, beaten. This short-sighted strategy does have advantages, because as soon as you name your rape as a rape, the women-controlling mechanisms suddenly swing into action: do you want everyone to know what happened to you? Do you want everyone to see you as a woman who has been subject to that? And in any case you must be a total slut to have escaped alive. Any woman who values her dignity would rather die.

Beyond the actual fact of the rape, she felt oppressed because she felt that society would place a greater importance on "the thrusts of those three idiots" than on her fear for her very survival. Not until four years later, when she read an interview with Camille Paglia, did she appreciate her own strength. She doesn't remember the exact words, but Paglia said something like "It's an inevitable danger, a danger that women need to take into account and run the risk of encountering, if they want to leave their homes and move around freely. If it happens to you then pick yourself up, dust yourself down and move on. If that's too scary for you, then you'd better stay at home with Mummy and manicure your nails." Her reaction was negative at first, but when it sunk in, "For the first time, someone was valuing the ability to get over it, instead of lying down obligingly in the anthology of trauma. Someone was devaluing rape, its impact and consequences. This did not invalidate any part of what happened, or efface anything of what we learnt that night."

Later she worked for a while as a prostitute, which she rated as an overall positive experience - the biggest negatives were the expectation of society: "I am not trying to argue that in any conditions, and for any woman, this kind of work is innocuous. But with the modern-day economic world being what it is - cold and pitiless warfare - banning the practice of prostitution within an appropriate legal framework is actively preventing the female class from making a decent living and turning a profit from its very stigmatisation."

Her take on pornography is also pro-sex and anti-society: "Pornography hits the blind corner of reason. It directly addresses our primitive fantasies, bypassing words and thought, The hard-on or wetness comes first; wondering why follows on behind. Self-censorship reactions are shaken. Porn images don't give us any choice: here's what turns you on, here's what makes you respond. Porn shows us the buttons to press to turn ourselves on. And that is porn's greatest strength, its almost mystical dimension. And also what literally horrifies the anti-porn crusaders. They reject being told directly about their own desire, reject being made to know things about themselves that they have chosen to suppress and ignore."

While I don't always agree with her beliefs (she ascribes almost all our constraints to our society, and I believe that there is a biological component to all this that she seems to reject), she is willing to look at facts and feelings straight on. An honest look like that is worth sharing.

And if you buy it from this link, I'd actually earn a few pennies:

Quote of the day

"Iceland's last wish: to have its ashes scattered all over Europe"
- a tweet

Update: Do you know how to pronounce that glacier? Apparently nobody else outside of iceland does, either!

Obama pardons Bernie Madoff!

I wouldn't believe this if it were from any source less reputable than Forbes!

Yet one more reason to diet?

Wish I remember how I got this link to give an appropriate hat tip, but it looks genuine.

Funny in hindsight....

The sign is pretty good, but I like the commentary even better.

The perils of superstition....

I am sometimes concerned that some of my friends put too much faith into romantic little oddities such as astrology. But at least they don't usually perform human sacrifices in order to improve their product, although I suppose one should admire the dedication....

"Living with crazy buttocks"

In a previous year's "Oddest Book Title" contest, the winner was the title above. This year it is “Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes”.

HT MR

Towards a richer vocabulary.....

Isn't that what they called it in the Readers' Digest? Anyway, I don't think they had
prostidude a male prostitute

If you follow the link to Language Log, you will also learn why you might enjoy "warmed spring salad greens with prostitutes".

Quote of the day

"Applying for my first job, I realized I had to be creative in listing my few qualifications. Asked about additional schooling and training, I answered truthfully that I had spent three years in computer programming classes. I got the job. I had neglected to mention that I took the same course for three years before I passed."
- Chi Flat Iron

Linked by the captivating Penelope Trunk...

... who was herself linked by the legendary MR.

Although her link is about pig sex, so what with that and bouncing nude, it is probably a very good thing I am not actively trying to shape a personal "brand".