Eccentric Flower:200909/Lets Random

In case you didn't see my comment elsewhere: All RSS-based LiveJournal feeds appear to be very broken and have been for days. I'm sending the RSS, but they're not picking it up. My thoughts on this matter are not fit for print, but I will offer a germane quote:

Kuzco: Okay, I admit it. Maybe I wasn't as nice as I should have been. But, Yzma, do you really want to kill me?
Yzma: Just think of it as you're being let go, that your life's going in a different direction, that your body's part of a permanent outplacement.
Kronk: Hey, that's kinda like what he said to you when you got fired.
Yzma: I know. It's called a "cruel irony" - like my dependence on you!

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As I passed through Harvard Yard today en route to lunch, I heard the cry of a hawk - or perhaps it was not a hawk, but it was definitely a bird of prey of some kind - up in the trees. Repeatedly. Loudly. I never saw the bird, but the bird definitely had things to say. I wasn't the only person who stopped and searched the skies.

Less than two minutes later, I nearly tripped over an extremely agitated squirrel crossing the sidewalk at high speed to get under a bush.

Coincidence? I think not.

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I think "cloud computing" is a stinking load of utter manurean extremely overhyped concept. What is cloud computing? Ask this question of one of the buzzwordeers and they will give you fifty words of jibber-jabber. You may then put out their eyes with a sharpened pencil. I give you permission. (First we will kill all the buzzwordeers. Then we will kill all the salesmen, if there are any left after the first round. Then middle management. Then the lawyers, unless they plead successfully for a stay of execution. Then ....)

But I digress. What is cloud computing? Cloud computing is when your stuff lives on a server somewhere else.

Really. That's all there is to it. Cloud computing is a way to try to make a concept sexier that you have probably been doing to one degree or another for years. If you use any sort of IMAP-based mail, your mail is living on a server somewhere, never on your local machines. Ditto an Exchange server (which may be set to use local folders, but synchronizes those against a central mail store Somewhere Else.) If you've ever used applications which run on a networked volume, you've used cloud computing.

Why coin this useless bit of new jargon? Damned if I know. But I do know that I just learned a lapsed high school friend of mine is the principal engineer for cloud computing tools at a Very Large Software Firm Which Shall Not Be Named Here, and this has given me a slight sinking feeling: Oh, look, another one who has gone over to the dark side.

I don't jargon. To me, jargon has condemned many a worthy project in my head, simply because I feel that if the project were truly worthy, it wouldn't need new buzzwords. I don't like to waste my time reading through a sales pitch to try to figure out what the technology actually is or does. Take Ajax. Useful tool, but it took me ages to figure out that all it means is integrating code or code-based controls directly into the HTML to make web pages whose content can change situationally and directly, without having to use the old CGI "submit page, draw it again" model. I was a little depressed when I figured this out and realized I was already doing this everywhere it would be useful to apply it, simply because it was the sane thing to do. I was hoping it would be something new and shiny. The obfuscation is deliberately designed to give a new label to old crap.

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Did you know that Nintendo got its start making hanafuda? They're pretty. It's a little tricky to learn the special cards so I can play Koi-Koi, but I'm getting there.

For people who are horrible at bidding games, like me, and who tend to underbid so they can be guaranteed of making bid, the sandbag rule in Spades is utter hell. Especially if your partner is a computer player who doesn't understand the idea of "okay, we made bid, now start playing tricks to lose" very well.

I'm better at Spades than I am at Hearts though.

Another interesting challenge (never mind how it comes up, although the preceding entry offers some explanation somewhere in there) is how fast you can lose a game of chess or shogi. It's not that I dislike either chess or shogi, it's just that they take too long to play. In how few moves can you utterly squander a game of chess against a not-very-clever opponent?