Blogs

(from graphjam, via reddit)

The shit ass economy claims another victim, and this one will hit close to home for a lot of geeks. Topps announced that "WizKids will immediately cease operations and discontinue its product lines."

Allow me to be the first to say (on this blog, anyway) well, shit.

WizKids Games is an awesome company. They're best known for their Heroclix and Horrorclix games, but my personal favorite is their Pirates game. Pirates packs an entire game into something the size of a pack of trading cards, including Dinky Dungeons-esque dice. It's really fun to play, and scales well with gamers of varying experience levels.

HeroClix and HorrorClix are really fun tabletop minis games that take all the bookkeeping and stats of a wargame and put them right into the base of the figures. I got Nolan into 40K via HeroClix when he was in 6th or 7th grade, and I've heard similar tales from countless other Geekdads. As I write this, a HorrorClix Great Cthulhu sits on top of the bookcase behind me, keeping watch over everything I do, ready to devour me if I ever slack off.

I don't know anything about the business behind this decision, but I wonder if this has more to do with Topps consolidating and returning a focus to trading cards, instead of WizKids' games not selling well or enjoying popularity among gamers. In fact, I kind of hope that's the case. According to GeekDad, "Topps will immediately pursue strategic alternatives so that viable brands and properties, including HeroClix, can continue without noticeable disruption." Hopefully, gamers won't experience much of a disruption, but I'm sure the people who work at WizKids and lost their jobs will notice one, and that sucks. I've been lucky enough to meet several WizKids employees, and they're all great people.

I hope that WizKids will find a way to stay together and keep putting out their unique games, not only because they're fun on their own, but because they are perfect entry points for GamerDads like me, who have a vested interest in creating the capital-G Gamers of tomorrow.

I Propelled this story earlier today. If you're a propeller member, would you Prop it for me?

I just received this phishing letter, I liked it simply because it was so remarkably brazen:

--

Dear Webmail User,

This message was sent automatically by a program on Webmail which periodically checks the size of inbox, where new messages are received. The program is run weekly to ensure no one's inbox grows too large. If your inbox becomes too large, you will be unable to receive new email.

Just before this message was sent, you had 18 Megabytes (MB) or more of messages stored in your inbox on Webmail. To help us re-set your SPACE on our database prior to maintain our INBOX, you must reply

to this e-mail and enter your Current UserID: ( ) and

Password ( ) Select server ( ) if any

You will continue to receive this warning message periodically if your

inbox size continues to be between 18 and 20 MB. If your inbox size grows

to 20 MB, then a program on Webmail will move your oldest

email to a folder in your home directory to ensure that you will

continue to be able to receive incoming email. You will be notified by email

that this has taken place. If your inbox grows to 25 MB, you will be unable to

receive new email as it will be returned to the sender.After you read a

message, it is best to REPLY and SAVE it to another folder.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Webmail Help Desk

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

3webXS HiSpeed Dial-up...surf up to 5x faster than regular dial-up alone...

just $14.90/mo...visit www.get3web.com for details

The email was in plain text from “Webmail Service Support [general@3web.net]” (I don’t feel bad about including their real email address on a post on the web, after all they deserve to get spam, right?

As I said, I thought it was remarkably brazen and very low budget.  Why bother trying to set up a domain when you can get the victim to send you their credentials by email :).

I rocked. =)

I turned my Drupal-based project over to a new team member. It was in great shape: the new branch passed all my old regression tests, the deployment script still worked, and the module that I'd partially implemented was well-documented with my notes. I was so glad that I'd invested the time in writing tests, tools, and documentation. I was also glad I insisted on using doxygen for low-level documentation instead of (gack!) Microsoft Word, as doxygen gave us call graphs and caller graphs for free. I checked on the team members today to see if there was anything else they needed in order to work effectively, and it looks like everyone's happy.

I started a new Drupal-based project on Tuesday, and I brought the habits and tools I picked up during the previous project. The features I've been working on now have nice little tests. I've automated more of the install and testing process. I also spent some time scrubbing my old deployment scripts, and I sent them to the person who just started as the release engineer for the project. Things are going well. =)

I still haven't met another Linux-based Drupal developer within IBM, though. =| No matter - maybe I'll eventually inspire people to give it a try!

I helped Aaron Kim and Bernie Michalik out with a workshop for a major insurance company. I seem to be their go-to idea-generator, which is awesome fun. I love coming up with a range of ideas based on what I've seen, what I'd like to see, what technology makes possible, and so on. I think Aaron exaggerated when he said I come up with hundreds of ideas, but it _is_ a lot of fun for me. I get to play with all sorts of combinations of interesting things. I attended part of the workshop, too, and I shared a couple of stories.

I also found myself gathering resources this week. I handled a number of requests for information on new employees, Gen Y, social networking research, and other topics, and people were very happy with the information and people I pointed them to. I get a lot of questions because people know I'm interested in these things, and I love handling those questions because each question gives me an opportunity to organize more information in a coherent way. I get to build on top of other things I've done before! =)

So that was this week: I turned over my old project (in a way that made me happy), hit the ground running (in a way that also made me happy), helped generate lots of ideas (and that made me happy too), and answered lots of questions (happy happy happy). Oh, and I sewed a pajama top out of red fleece. (Happy _and_ warm!) =)

Next week: More Drupal work, a Government 2.0 panel, a dinner party with some family friends, and maybe the pajama bottoms…

Hey guess what? I'm writing the Geek in Review for the Suicide Girls Newswire again. Instead of a weekly column, it'll be monthly, and a new column will go up on the second Wednesday of every month.

Today's column is called "... when the MCP was just a chess program."

The earliest video games didn't just encourage us to use our imaginations when we played them, they forced us to. Yar's Revenge, the best-selling original title on the Atari 2600, has simple yet entertaining gameplay, but it was supported by an extraordinarily rich backstory, turning it into one chapter in an epic struggle for cosmic justice. When I was 9, I wasn't just chipping away at the shield while I readied my Zorlon cannon; I was helping the Yar extract revenge on the Qotile for the destruction of their planet, Razak IV, as illustrated in the comic that came with the game.

When I was 10 or 11, I arranged a TV tray, a dining room chair, and a worn blanket to make a small tent in front of our 24-inch TV set. I carefully moved our Atari 400 onto the tray and plugged Star Raiders into the cartridge slot. I flipped the power on, picked up the joystick, and booted up my imagination as I sat in the command chair of my very own space ship. For the next hour, I was a member of the Atarian Starship Fleet. I was all that stood between the Zylon Empire and the destruction of humanity. Through my cockpit’s viewscreen (developed at great expense by the RCA corporation back on Earth) I blasted Zylon starships and Zylon basestars, and I would have defeated them all, if my meddling mother hadn’t made me stop and eat dinner!

When I was writing the GiR before, the powers that be at SG always made sure the newswire was SFW. As far as I know, they're still doing that, but your corporate firewall probably doesn't know or care, so consider yourself warned about reading at work.

A few months ago, my dad gave me a copy of a James Michener book called The Eagle and the Raven. "Read the introduction," my dad said. "I think it will speak to you."

He was right. The introduction was all about how Michener saved everything he cut out of his novels, and described how the book I held in my hands was born from material he'd cut out of a different book he'd written years before. I never throw away anything, and it was spiffy to read that one of my behaviors as a writer is mimicked by someone who probably cut more words out of his novels than I'll write in my entire life. I thought about this earlier today when I came across a file called introduction.odt, which I assume it was going to be an introduction to something, at some time:

When I was twenty or twenty-one, I read an interview with Joel Hodgson, one of the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was asked about the uncommonly high number of obscure references and jokes that were lost on a large portion of the audience. Those obscure jokes were one of the main reasons I loved MST3K so much, so I paid very close attention when Joel said that they didn’t ask themselves, “Will anyone get this joke?” but instead they said to each other, “the right people will get this joke.” That philosophy was and continues to be a very strong influence in my writing, so

and then it just ends. I can't remember where I was going with this, or what it was for (I didn't check the date stamp on the file before I reflexively saved it after opening it this afternoon) but it remains true: MST3K was a huge influence on me during some of my formative years.

The MST3K crew reunited recently to give an interview to my old stomping grounds, The AV Club, and in it, Joel said:

No one was saying, "Don't put that in, no one will get that." We had a very open architecture in the writing room. The only person that could remove any joke was basically an individual who said, "I have a problem with that joke, it offends me." And then we would throw it out, no questions asked.

I'm doubt that Joel or anyone from MST3K will see this, but I want to publicly thank them all, not just for entertaining me during the exciting rock climbing portion of my youth, but for inspiring me to never worry about trying to be all things to all people.

I got some important work done today, and I'm going to celebrate by watching something from the 20th anniversary box set, probably First Spaceship on Venus .

Oh, while I'm talking about MST3K: People who can make this happen, please get Lost Continent and Rocketship X-M onto DVD, mmmkay? I haven't seen them since 1990, and after waiting all this time, my lungs are aching for air.

Rachmaninov's Prelude in C# minor, Op. 3, No. 2, performed as it is written, by classical music comedy duo Igudesman & Joo.

I tried to learn that piece once. I didn't last long.

The phenomenon I call priority inflation has spread to product planning documents as well. Back in the old days, there were three priority levels:

• Priority 1: must have. If you don't accomplish a priority 1 item, you may as well just cancel the project because it ain't shipping.
• Priority 2: should have. If you don't accomplish a priority 2 item, the product is significantly weaker, but you can still ship it.
• Priority 3: nice to have. If you don't accomplish a priority 3 item, it's not quite as awesome as it could have been, but it's still a good product.

Over the past few years, I've seen a shift in the labelling of priorities in planning documents. A new priority has been introduced: Priority Zero. Nobody has explained to me what Priority 0 means, but I assume somebody invented it to emphasize that the feature is even more critical than priority 1. Mind you, I'm not sure what could be more important to a project than "If we don't do this, we're all fired." Maybe "If we don't do this, the earth will explode."

As you might expect, priority inflation has a trickle-down effect. People whose features had been assigned priority 1 said, "Hey, how come my feature isn't priority 0? It's just as critical as that other guy's feature." Soon, everything that was priority 1 got reclassified as priority 0. Nature abhors a vacuum, so all the priority 2 items got reclassified as priority 1, and the priority 3 items got reclassified as priority 2.

In the end, nothing changed aside from the names on the buckets. It's been years since I've seen a planning document with any priority 3 items. It's all zero, one, and two now.

Wait, I lied. The meaning of the last bucket (the former priority 3, now named priority 2) has changed. It used to be things that would be nice to have, but now it appears to be used for something other people suggested which I didn't think was important, but I didn't want to be mean and reject it outright, so I'm listing it here to make those people feel better and showing that their "voice was heard," but don't kid yourself; we're not going to do it. In other words, priority 2 means No.

I give it three years before somebody decides that an issue is even more critical than priority 0 and labels it Priority −1.

Epilogue: After I originally wrote this entry, I've learned that some teams have indeed come up with a priority level even more important than Priority 0. It's called Priority Now.

Three things today:

1. I'm pretty sure I'm not a prima dona, but I've been prima dona-adjacent plenty of times in the course of my acting career. Because of my extensive experience with prima donas, I was able to advise John Scalzi on the matter yesterday, via an IM conversation that he's reprinted on his blog:

Me: I just want to burnish my credentials as an insufferable prima donna, you know?

Wil: Dude. Come spend some time with me. Learn at the feet of a master.

Me: “Fix me pot pie!”

Wil: Good, but try: “Are you fucking kidding me? Where’s my pot pie?”

“I came all the way here, and you can’t even make a fucking pot pie?”

Then you sort of shake your head, like you’re really disappointed.

Yes, I'll be at LosCon, but probably for only the one panel with John. If there's a sudden and unexpected explosion of Awesome next weekend, that's probably why.

2. While Propelling this morning, I came across one of the single greatest things I've ever seen in my life: The Genesis of Doctor Who, from the BBC Archives:

Explore the origins of a TV legend with this collection of documents and images. It's now the number one family favourite, but 'Doctor Who' had a difficult birth, emerging from the imagination of some of BBC Drama's top minds.

Here, we tell the story of the creation of 'Doctor Who' from the very beginning, starting with a report on the possibility of making science fiction for television and leading up to the moment a new drama series is announced in the pages of 'Radio Times'.

Please prop this story at Propeller. I'd kind of like to keep my corporate overlords over there happy, for the usual reasons.

3. Since I first turned it on, iTunes Genius has been the opposite of the generally accepted definition of genius. Instead of it, I've relied on totally random shuffle to amuse myself when I'm not listening to one of my many carefully-designed playlists (all those years making mixtapes paid off, apparently.) I kept checking back, in the hopes that it would get a little closer to awesome, and recently, the Genius playlists have been considerably smarter and more useful (as I figured they would be, as they aggregated more user data). Today, Genius said, "Hey, you have this playlist with New Order, Sonic Youth, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Jam? You'll totally like the soundtrack to Marie Antoinette." I took a look, and iTunes Genius was totally right. As I said on Twitter, I'm late to the party, and I have no desire to see the movie, but you can do a lot worse than the soundtrack to Marie Antoinette.

That's probably it for today. I'm racing against yet another deadline on yet another awesome project that I can't wait to announce.

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.

Last time, I mentioned that eventually everything is top priority. A similar topic is what I'm calling priority inflation, which takes more than one form.

Today's priority inflation is the introduction of new "top priority" items. (Chris Becker has some thoughts on this topic as well.)

"XYZ is very important to our project. Please make it your top priority." A few weeks later, "ABC is very important to our project. It should take priority over all other issues." When this happens, I like to ask, "Is this even more important than XYZ?" I've done it so much that my management has changed the way it introduces new top priorities: Instead of just saying "Please make ABC your top priority," they list out all the existing top priorities... in priority order.

ABC is very important to our project. There are just a handful of ABC issues remaining, and we would like to close them out by the end of the month. If you have an ABC issue, please make it your top priority. To summarize:

1. ABC issues.
2. XYZ issues.
3. DEF issues.

   I like this approach because it forces management to understand and acknowledge where their priorities are. If you're going to ship a product, you have to make hard choices, and one of them is deciding where your priorities are.

   If everything is top priority, then nothing is top priority.

   Update: Sometimes, the answer to "Is this even more important than XYZ?" was "No, XYZ is still more important than ABC." So it's not a gimme that if somebody says that ABC is top priority, it replaces what used to be the top priority. That's why it's important to keep track.

This morning, the CRTC issued its much-anticipated ruling in the CAIP v. Bell case, the first major case to test the legality of Internet throttling.  The Commission denied CAIP's application, ruling that Bell treated all of its customers (retail and wholesale) in the same throttled manner.  This points to the challenge in this case - it was not about discriminatory network practices per se, but rather about wholesale shaping in a specific context. 

Bell comes out a winner in this round. The Commission found that there was network congestion due to P2P usage and that some network management is required to address it.  Moreover, it rejected the competition concerns noting that there was no evidence that Bell's action had lessened competition and it concluded that reducing speeds does not rise to the level of controlling content.

While the CRTC's decision to permit Bell's throttling practices is disappointing in the short term - and seems to place Canada on a different track from the U.S. - the decision is not a total loss for net neutrality supporters as the Commission made a clear commitment to addressing the issue of net neutrality and network management in a formal proceeding in July 2009.  Indeed, it is important not to lose sight of how much has changed in the past year. 

Just over one year, I wrote a column noting the need for greater ISP transparency in the wake of Rogers' admission that it engaged in traffic shaping.  At the time, net neutrality was viewed as a fringe issue in Canada without much political traction.  In the span of 13 months, there has been a major CRTC case, a private member's bill on net neutrality, a rally on Parliament Hill, the emergence of BitTorrent as distribution tool for broadcast content, a more vocal business community supporting net neutrality, and a gradual shift of this issue into the political mainstream.  In the United States, the change has been even more dramatic - an FCC ruling on the throttling activities, proposed legislation, the shift of net neutrality to wireless, and a President-elect who has been outspoken on the need to preserve net neutrality.

In other words, today's CRTC decision is not the final word on net neutrality in Canada, but rather the first word on it.  The Commission itself has opened the door to broader hearings on the issue next year, which may come alongside the new media hearings that also offer the opportunity to raise net neutrality concerns.  Moreover, if the Commission comes to the conclusion that these practices are consistent with current Canadian law, there is the likelihood of growing calls from within Parliament to change the law.

A year ago, the net neutrality debate focused on whether rules were needed. Today, the debate is changing from whether there should rules on network management to what those rules should be.  In fact, the Commission notes that as part of the hearing it "will try to establish the criteria to be used in the event that specific traffic management practices need to be authorized."  There is an emerging consensus on the easy issues -  no content blocking and better transparency of network management practices (the CRTC today required Bell to provide its wholesale customers with advanced notice of its plans).  We are in the early stages of the more difficult questions of what constitutes reasonable network management practices and the opening of a formal proceeding puts those tougher questions squarely on the table.

Update: The NDP's Charlie Angus responds.  Coverage from the CBC, Globe, Toronto Star, and Ars Technica.

I've struggled to put some eloquent words together all day, and I just can't make them work, so I'm just going to take the three that were important to me and put them down now: thank you, veterans.

Sites such as aircanada.com, pcfinancial.ca, and (horror of horrors!) torontopubliclibrary.ca had gotten _unbearably_ slow on Linux.

Here's how I fixed it (as root):

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

I love you, Ubuntu forums.

Actually, this is pretty cool. A phone that sets your head on fire. Most people charge extra for that.

Go ahead, make up your own joke.

I always crack a smile whenever I hear or read someone say that "XYZ is our top priority." The person may believe it at the moment they say it, but just wait a little while, and soon there will be a new top priority.

If you call the person out on their shifting priorities, they usually come up with some hand-waving explanation that the two "top" priorities are actually the same thing.

Last week, you said that customer satisfaction was our top priority, but just now you said that our employees' well-being is our top priority. Which one is the real top priority? In other words, which is more important, customer satisfaction or employee well-being?

"Well, you see, if our employees are happy and healthy, that shows itself in the quality of service we provide our customers, so the two are really facets of the same underlying issue. Which is our top priority."

But there can be a conflict between the two. For example, longer hours of operation improve customer service, but it also takes a toll on the workforce. Which goal is more important?

"That's an interesting question. Obviously we would work very hard to try to avoid such a conflict. I'm confident that my leadership team will be able to address both issues without having to sacrifice on either one."

Wait, now they are separate issues again? You said earlier that they were the same issue.

"I think I've answered your question. Anybody else have a question?"

The Governor-General is currently reading the Speech from the Throne, which sets the forthcoming legislative agenda, in the Senate.  The speech unsurprisingly includes reference to copyright reform:

Cultural creativity and innovation are vital not only to a lively Canadian cultural life, but also to Canada’s economic future. Our Government will proceed with legislation to modernize Canada’s copyright laws and ensure stronger protection for intellectual property.

The speech disappointingly does not reference anti-spam legislation, despite a commitment to introduce anti-spam laws during the election campaign.