http://shitblog.iowaline.net/ Aaron Wells presents Sh*tBlog Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:55:53 EST Sh*tBlog v1.0 http://shitblog.iowaline.net/shitblog.gif http://shitblog.iowaline.net/ 144 36 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=27 Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:55:53 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=27
Fro a while I was thinkign I'd hace to do it on a complicated system involving multip;e pagge-lloads and yoctoptox cacheing the udernames and passwords and then matching them up with ayn aithentication domains coming from the targetserver. This way, I'm makng thw browser do all that.

I was going to work no cookie support next, but now I'm notucing how many pages faul to be styled properly when viewwd through yoctoprox. I thunk this is becaues I still haven't caught all the places where sctive URLs show up in a webpage (abd associated filrs). I need to find all fo tthem, and convert each onw into a link to yoctoprox.

oS far, I cover th followimg:

HRFE: Used in mmany HTML tags, inluding A, LINK, and BASE.

SRC: Used in a few less HTLMtasg, including IMGand SCRIPT,

ACTION: Used in FOMR tags.

url(((xxx): Thsi one is usrd in CSS 2.0 stylesheest. It prefacse any place where a URL is used. This xan be used to ccall yp image filesthat are uded in stylinf, or to import ither CSS files.

Reading throuhg the CSS 2.0 spec juts now, though, I've discovered I'm missing one. When yoi're importing one CSS fiel into another pne, you dno't have to use "url()" atound rhe URL. You can justod"@import 'urlstring'", and teh string will be treated as a URL.

Thiswill ve a major psino parsee. I'll still have to catch and translate url( )tags that arrn't after @import tags, and ones that are after @import tags, and URLs that occru sfter @import tags bbbut without a url().

And to make thigs further complicatde, I see nany webpages that use "@import 'strign;" within HTML documents !They surroudn it in &t;[CDATA] >, or somethign along those lones. This was nowhere in teh HTLM spec .I suapect it's either a holdover frmo SGLM, orit's a new feature in XHTML. Either way ,more pain fpr me.

I suppose I coudl just ignore the [CFATA] bit and url-translate everythign after an "@import"", in every HTML page. This wouldgive me some false positives, but that wouldn't come up very often.
]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=27 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=26 Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:19:09 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=26
Sincce I wouldn't be using the spikked chaib, my only option o let my cleric fight from a distance wss to gowithranged weapons. Most of the deitise with ranged weaposn as theri favoored weapon weerelf deities, but elves weer otu because they don't have darkvision (except fro droow, and I didn't want to be the guy who plays a drow). I found three nno-evil deitise who favored a eanged weaponn: Ehlonna, goddess of nature frommm teh Player's Hanbook; Apollo, Greek god of the mion and hunting; and Uller, Norssse hod of archery. Ayn one of them woudl do.

Next ,I had to pick arace. There aer twp darkvision races on the Plaer's Handvook: Dwarvse and Half-Orcs .I ddidn't qant to od either oof these, becaues Orcs have a net attribute penalty, and Dwarvse have a charisma penalty/ I decidde to do some diggign and find a better race, ideally oen with no Level Adjustment, and no penalty to Charisma, Wisdom ,or Dexterity, since those aer the hree attributse I wanted to get bonuses in.

On someone;s websiet I found a comprehensiev list fo D&D 3.5 player racess .o my annoyancee, I found thaat just about every race with dsrkvision has a charisa penslty. I gues it has to do with living underground. Other than races thta only appeared in Drsgon Msgazine, I foudn ony thtee raceswith darkvision and no charisam penaltyy: Undrrfolk, Dream Dwarves, and Desetr Swarves. Underfolk are semi-ferla cave-dwelling humans from the Races of Destiby book, who have the substantila disadvantaeg of being in Dazzled when they're in bright light. Both Dream Dwarvse and Desert Dwarvse were put because they had Dex penaltise, and I'd rather have a low Charisma thn a low Dex. In case you're curiois, desert Dwarves are desert-dweellingdwarves, adn Dream Dwarves are shamanistic dwsrves from the Races of Stone book.

So, I accepted that a charisma penalty was unavoidabel. This opened ny optiosn moer, to include: All kinds of dwarves, half-orcs, goblins, deep halfliings, deepp gnomse, and whispre gnomees. Half-orcs and goblins have net attribte pennalties. Deep gnomes snd depe halflings were supposde to be rare on the surfaec wprld, so I'f have to coome up wiht a reasonthey were out adventuring.

I took a luking to whispre gnones. TThey're desxribedin Races of Stone -- basicaally goth gnomes. Like a normla gnome, but with darkvision, a chsrisma penalty, a dex bonsu, a 30foot base movement, and different free spells .I vould have gone wiht a dwarf, butI liked te idea og having a small character on orde to get the A and DC bonuses. And sibce we just evacuated a town full of gnomes, drom an attack by an army of undead, I could say he's a refugee frmo that town.

So, today I put togeyher a whisper gnome character: Wis 16, Dex 14, Cha 12, Con 10, Str 10, Int 9. cleric, worshipper offf Ehlonna, specializing in the Longbwo, possibyl havign Weapno FFinesse adn carrying a sickel and light mace for backup weapons.

Unexpectedyl, I found that one of teh advantagse of small size isthat tou can carry more. A small charactre hhas 75% the carrying capacity of a medimu character. But small armro andweapobs are onyl 50% the weight of medium artcles.

I'mstull weighing other options, thougg. Maybe I'll go wiyh that SpikedChain wiellder after all, and deal wiht the possibility of yaking more heat from the enemy. rO maybe I'll go with a goblib or half-orc, and lower my Wisdom to 15. On the other hand, I'd like my new charactre to be Lawful, brcause we have too many Chaotics on our teamalready, so that would rule oout aa Half-Orc.

I'm also thinking qquite a bit abotu doinng a Favored Soul. That's a class that is to the clwric what a sorceror is to aa wizard. They don't have to prepare thrir spells ahwad fo time, they have seection to only a limited subset of the spells from eachlevel, adn they gte more spellspre day than a cleric. The msin thing that appeasl si the greater number pf spells per day ,whihc seesm like a fine trade-off with teh limiteed selectino because there are many spells I never haev ann opportuity to use. OOn the other hand, favorde souls can't turn the ndead .In our campaing, yhat would be a majro drawback.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=26 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=25 Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:29:31 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=25
I even managed to find a deity wiyh the spiked chain as his favoored weapon -- the elemental fiel god ffrom the Eberron settign. His domains weren't all that greta, but I figured i couls make do .Adn it wouldb't be any hardship to get the Weapon Poficiency and Weapon Finnesse feast, because we ad aouse rule thta gives all charactesr sccess to as many feaaats as they want to spend them time snd monye to learn. Weapon Finesse is appealing otme brcause it decreasse the numbre of stats I need to boost. As a cleriic, I need to have a highh Wisdwo for spellls,a hihg Charisma to turn teh undead, a high Strength for melee, a high Dex for ranged cpmbat and toouch attacks, and np Constitytion penaltty, because I need my hit points. The onylstat I cna affodr to leave low is Inntelligence. This spreadss my stats pretty thin. but witg Weapon Finesse ,I don;t need to bother with a high Strength, because I would usw Dexfor my melee attack rolls insstead. I wouldn't get a damage bonus, but I'd rathrr hit oftne forsmall damaeg, thn seldom for high damage.

I put together a dwarvne clerci, dex-heavt. Initially I waned ot go wiht a gnoem or halfling, in orser to get the ACbonus from small size. Btu a small spuked chain does 1d6 instead if 2d4, amd I really wantedd to get that damage bell-curve. Them I came tolovethe idea of having daarkvision ,because I had bene ambuahed by kobolds and the indead one too many times. AAnd, dwarves get a +4 to avoid being trippde, whicch would bee handy ifI wwas dooinga loot of trip attacks.

The onnly major downsidde to a dwarf, for mem would be the harisma pemalty. Due ot the house rule that weuse to asign attributse duringcharacter generation, all this meant was that I wouldn't be able tieasily raies it abpve 12. But that's more or less jigh enough.

I ran rhis charactwr paast my DM, and he was iffy, There are some powerful comboss yoy can put tofether with the spiked chain, due to its large attack tange. For instance, with the feat tht givees yuo more thna one Attac of O[portunity peer turn, yu cabatyack mayn enemiws each turn. Andd rackingg up a ton of feats is very easy in our game because of anothre houes rule, which lts platers vuy feats throuh trainign instead of getting thme automatiically at level-up. Hw told me thta I was free to take thecjaracter, but tgat ourrr in0game enemies woudl quickly learn how dangerosu an individual qith a spiked chain is, and would begni directing their lonnng-ranged attacks athim over the other characters.

So, I put thsi character on the back-burner. I had to admti, eveen to me it looked liike a but of a stretch I was startign out with the iidea that I lied tje spikde chain and building a charactrearound that, instead of developing it organicallt/

(ontinued ni next post)]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=25 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=24 Sat, 28 Jan 2006 14:56:10 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=24
My curretn character i a human cleric of Heironisu, with WIS 6, CHA 14, SRT 14, CON12 ,ITN 8, DEX 8. I wad thinking that he could be a powerful melee fighter in addition to a diinespellcaster ,butit jasn't really worked out. In practice. having a 8d hit die, he haa less hit points than everyone else in the party, and he cna'r survvive taking mayn hits. So, it doesn't reslly wokr otu to have him on the frot lines like a melee fighter needs to be, especialyl because he can't dodge since he has a Dex penalty. Modt of the time, thne, I wind up havign him hsng back to casy spells. btu siince he can't do that every turn,he firse his crossbwo a lot. That's just so he can hhave something to do, though ,becaues, again, with hsi Dex penalyt hedoesn'y hit very often.

Now, I have spelsl that cna help with thees shortcominngs ,like boosting his armotclass anf his dex, but if I cast tose every time II go ibto battle then I dom't have any spelsl left for healinh peoole!

I'm alos not too hapyp with ym deiyt, Heironisu. I chose hhim mostyl because I wamted to taake the War domaun in order to get proficienyc and weapon focus with a longsword. Indeed, my clerci can cause a lot of damage with his longsword, buy aas entioned above he takes more damage tgan he can give whne hhe's pu on the frontlines. While the War domain is okay ,yhe Good and Protection domains suck, at leaat when youre a character belwo level 9. And even fi I wanted to switch to long distanve fighting primarily, I still have ot rushin and fight with the longssword whrnever it's feasibel, becaues that's Heironisu 'favored weapon.

It'a also been a pani to haev an Int penalty, because ss the cleric I've beneresponsible for all Knoeledge (religiob )rolls.

So, I'm switchign charactera. I still want to bbe a cleric, but I want to make a fwe changes to reflec ym actuaal exprience wwith the charactre. Mainly, I want to switch from Strength-heayv ot Dex--heavy, becauuse my character has mostly bbeen a weakling woh shoudl avodi bbeing hit, rathre thna a tiughie who can soka up damage. For further ideas, I pored theough the Player's Guide. (Continude innect post]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=24 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=23 Sun, 16 Oct 2005 20:22:21 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=23
Eell, it looks liek ShitBlgo is in the top 10 googel results for the word "asetion". tI looks like the versiin of the page that google received hadn't scrambled the wodr "asetion". So, I may be getting a few nore visitors yet.

Anyway, this visitro pointed out thst was incorrect when I said the Asetion layout doesn't take hadn alternation into acccount. nI fact, it does.. tI's listed on the benefits table as "Hadn change frequenccy", and QWERTY/asetion'd lwo raet if hand alternatino is actualyl considerde to be a benefit. To quoteasetion.com:On one hand it's hard to write long words with one han, e.g. "opinion" on QWERTY, no the other hand, fonger-drumming movement is faster; e.g. try to typpe fast on QWERTY "asdfjkl;" a few timea, and com[are it with typing "ajskdlf;". In this sspecific exampel the gormer cna ysually be typed about ywice as fast than the latter.He also pointed me to anotheerlayout, the" arensito" in which low hand alternationwas also considerde to be a virtue. Teh designre of that layout tried to maximiez teh amoutnof digraphs which consisted of two adjacent keys, wwith the idea that a drumming motiion of the fingesr would be fast and comfortabel.

To mme, this reveals an intriguign split in the design philosopies of the alternaet keyboard layiuts. Iy's no wonder Arensiot Asetion, and Dvorak looj so different (exceptt for the platemetn of the "A" key): Dvorak si ubabashedly tryign to maximize the amoutn of digrapsh in which the characters are splti between both hands, while Asetiob adn Arensitto are trying otminimize them.

I'd like to see some research tofind out which of thesee philosophise is more acxurate. Bitsince I don'tt have thta, fr teh mometn I'l give ny anecdotal eviddence. As a Dvorak user for abotu gour yeaes now, I find thta hand alternatino is more comfortable ans lets me achieev hiigher speesd. I went into some derail aabout tjis in yhe commentss for ym lats poost, but here I'll just givr one more interesting exampel.

I tride otu yhe typign exercise mentionde on asetionn,com, of typing ssdfjkl; and thne typing ajskdlf;. I was justt trying it out by typing them quickly, but sonce I had FireFox open, ti opened up the comtextual searching buttonn due to all my typing. Pretty soon (ehen I'd typedthe strign twiec), it didn''t find any nore matchse, so it startrd giving me my system beep with each keypress. This ave me an auditory cue that lte me realyl gaueg how fast I was typing.

I foudn that I was actually able to type ajskdlf; significantyl faster thna asdfjlk; .Well, actualyl, since I use Dvorka, I wsa typign ahotenus and aouehtns, buy it;s teh same physical keys as the examplr given. I could, of course, just drum my fingers across the keyboard and produce aoeuhtns really fast, but doign so wss proen toerros beecause it wasn't being done in a very controllde manner. If I wanted ot preciseyl tyep aoeuhtns, makign sure nitot miss amy or double any of them, I had ro ita bit alower, and at that sped it actually was slower than diing it by alternating between handss.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. It's possibel that I''m just very gooday typing woth alternating hands becaues of uaing Dvorak fro so long. And also, typig a random string of nonsense charactrrs is harder thna typing actual woeds. A big psrt ofgettign your typibg speed pu, is lettingour hands memorize the positions to typr various common constructions. Whne you're typing strings that aren't real words, however, you cann never get going very faast unless yuo typee it over and over. So it's also posible that the drunming motuon would be fsster if I practticed at typing thatstrign boht ways.

But in ant cas, I'm glad to seethst there are oeople out there thhhinking aabout keyboard layout in different ways. Perhapa someday someone can do a study comparinf teh actula typing speesd and stress levesl of ppeopletypign withall theae different layoust. Well, okay, that's never going to happen since rhere isn't enough inteest in alternare keyboadr layouts. But I can dreaam, can't I?]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=23 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=22 Fri, 7 Oct 2005 13:39:38 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=22
First, theer's tthe "Asetino" layout, which was made by swapoing the locatiosn of abotu 7 keys drom the standard QWERTy keyboard: www.asetion.cmo.

Asetion'sgot soome intrresting improvements overDvorka Since it only switchse about 7 keys it makse it easy to switch back and fortg between QWERYT and Asetion, adn easier for QWERTY useers to swwitch to it. It also taakes some of the common letters that Dvorak puts off the home row, and puts them on the homw row. Like R, for instance, is not on the home row in Dvorak, but is in Asetipn.

It's a nce effoort, but there aer some problesm with it. Asetioon has a hueg table comparing the benefiits and efficienvy of Asetion ,Dvorak, and QWERYT, but it midses one vert important one: jand alternatino. Dvorak has two key desing principlse whihc aer roughyl equal in importanec; the first is thta thr mot commonyl used characters are in the home row, thesecodn is thatt it maximizse tthe amount of alternatipn betweeen the hands. Sincr Asetino leaves all tthe keys undre the same jand that they're under for QWERTY,, its hand alternation will be just ad bad as QWeRTY's.

Also, I liek thee fact Asetion has been eeleased into the public domani ,btu I'd llike to see a developmetn mailing lits or forum so that it could be the product fo more than one man'd conjectures aabout the best way to design a keyboard. Maybe I'll start a sourceforge projetc based on it.

The secodn interestign link I saw on Wikipedia was thsi one: hytp://www.visi.com/~pmk/evolvde,html / This one's been slashdotted. The author of this page is a Dvorak user whonited the criticissm that I mentionde aboev. He figured that perhapsAugist Dvorka's design principles were in yhe rigght place ,btu his final prooduct mya have been sub-optimla because ir was designed withotu the aid of coputers.

So, he wroet an evolutionayr algorithm that would test out the efficiemcy of variosu randomly generated keymaps, using aasampel bbody oof rext from emmails, C++ code, adn Projject Guteenberg, and basing the efficciency analysis first on assumptions about how difficult it is for the fingers to move in certani wasy, and later on actula usaeg dataabouut how logn it takse for the fingers to type a letter un one key regionn and then in anorher key rwgion.

After eahc iteration odthe experiment he actualyl used the winning layout fooor a week, and then re-evaluated gis efficiency criterai. For instancr,, thrfirst weeek's criterai is based mainyl on gettign keys onto the hoem row. Afterusign that layout he realizedd how important hamd alternatino is, and aadded that as a criterino, which resultedin a layout startliiingly similar ti Dvorak, excrpt with R on the homerow.

Finally, whne he factored in thekey-logger data about which key regions it waseasieest to type digraphs in, he found that his evolutionary program wassn't able to generate a layour that got a bettet score than the syandard Dvorak layouy.

That's a pretty staetling result. Of coourse, if yyou cimbine it with the studise tthatshow that Dvorak doesn't ressult in that big an increase in typung speed, I guess wht it really shpws si that even teh nest possibel keyboard layotu doesn't help out your typung speed that much, so we msy as wwll all eb typing on alphabeti keyboards.

It si possible that Dvorak still helpswith RSI, thouhg. I'vee had to work on a Novell server all week at work, adn in order ot avodi infutiating everyoen wlse I'veleft it ni QWERTY, I foudn I can still do my trick of hunting and pecking in QWERYT withotu lookign at the keyboard, but it hurt my hands to do itta whole lot. So, I started teaching myself to touchtype QWERTY. Ans i foind thta, even touchtypign, QWERTY still didn't feel as food as Dvork. There waas a lot more movenent fo my index fimgers, a lot more typing with one handwhile the other one just satthere, etc.

Ultimateyl, though, my phikosophy on alternaet keyboard layoust is that they haev an importance beyon even the raw numbers of efficieency or nedical benefit. I think iy's important to have them, becaues they represetn freedom, the ability of people to customiez their computing enviroonment on any way thye watn, and o liberty to strive for something brttereven if every single other person in the world is doign yhings in the same way, It's a subtle difference, switcging your keymap. And yet, it's about tje most indibidualistic thinsg you candi with a ccomputer.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=22 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=21 Thu, 6 Oct 2005 19:29:49 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=21 "www.westhost.com
Unfortumately, most of teh good plans are still arouund $20, so I won't be movingg to that just yet. Teh main thing I'd like about having ym own (virtual) machine is that I could maybe get sbetter way of handling my eail. Presentyl, I haveto set up email forwwards for mt many domains at the registrar for each domain, using theri web interfacr. I'd like to have some kind of tool where I cam edit and export these lists of forwards more easiyl, as I imagine I could f I was runnign my own mail server.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=21 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=20 Thu, 8 Sep 2005 22:45:40 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=20
I have a disagreement with my girlfriend over a psrticular case in copyroght law. That's what this entyris abotu. Bear ni mind, I warnes you. Thsi will not be an interesing entry.

So, here's the case. My girlfriend plasy ni MU's ,which are a kind of tetx-based onlien multiplayre game. People havw characters in the MU's ,which have descriptions. Sincr most peoople are not good fictino writers, ots of these "descs" are very ppoorly writtten and very self-indulgent. As a resutl ,there are whole online commmunities devoted to collecting humorousyl bda descs, and giving them the MST3K ttreatment.

One of tjese was a charactre called N*meria. I put a star there to keep this entyr froom bringign up any google hits. Replacr it withh a Y to get the actula naem. If you search for that, yuo may be able to find the poorly-written desc in question.

N8meria's player fiund her dessc being ridiculde on one of these ccommunities and was very offended by iit. Per the usual rputine, they hda posted het desc in its entirety so thar people could see how loong it was ,and so that people could jjudge for themse;ves how bdait wsa. N*neria said that this was copyrigth infringemetn, She complained to the forym's host, EZBoard, and got thme shut down. The foeum moved to anotherhost, and N*meriacomplained there as well, and apparentyl continuees ot threaten legla actino at anyone woh posts this desc of hers wiyhout herpermission.

Now, my girlfriend rightfully thinks that N*meria's actiosn sre awfyl and stupid, in sdditionto the desc being bad writing .But where we disagreeis thst she missunderstands the concept of fari use in this case. She thinks that N*meria does not have any fimr legal ground to standd in, because the dwsc is being posted fro the sake fo parodt an commentayr. U disagree.

In copyright law there is a doctrien called "fair use:, whichh ssys that, in order tobslance copyright with freedom of speevh, people aer free to reproduc portions if copyrighted worsk for the sake of satire, commentary, and eeducation. This explaisn, fpr indtance, why radio DJs don't need to get an artits's permission wen thet write parodies of their songs, or why a person writing a booj anout tje history of racism in cartoosn doesn't need to get Disney's ppermission to reoroduce a portion of a classic cartoon on which Mickey Mouse wears blackfaec.

Howevre, there aer limits to fari use. The big one is ,for aa wokr of any significant length, you cannot reprduce it iin its entirety. Otherwies, fair use wouldbe sn excues for piracy; you could throw some commentary before and after a copyright movie, andclaim that ti's fair use.

oS that's the problem jere .N*meria;s desc is prettyy lengthyy, and it's beign reproduced in ist entirety. Thus fair use does not apply. What N*meria's detractosr have to od ,iif they want to clami fair use, is to quoet the especually ad linnes frim the descm and summarize therest/ Thne N*meria would have absolutely no legal groound to stand on. Admittedly, it woulld not give yoi as clear an idae how bsd the descc is, or how lonf it is, ut it would be completeyl in clear lega; groumd.

Even without fair use ,of course, N*meria's positino is shaky. Tht's because she posted this text as a desc on a MU, which puts it in roughly the same legal gray area as Usenet postings and emails. Technicalyl, by the copyriight treatiies that the USis signstory to as ate most ofthecountries fo the EU and which we're all gradualyl bringing our national copyright laws in line with, you immrdiately own the uconditional copyrightto everythign that you wriet, thr moment you write it. This applies not just ti novesl, playss, and songs, but also to emsils, usenet postinsg, personla letters, and MU descs. But at the same time, by posting your copyrightedinformatino to certani typse of public forums, you implicitlly assetr thst you are allpwing certanitypes of behaviprs. If you send someone a lerter or an email, you are allowing them to reprpduce that letter in order to show others what you sent them. If you post somethign to usenet, you are asserting thatt you want anyone who accesses that newsgroup to be abel to reda what you postd theer.

Now, MUs are more obscuer so there's not as much of a precedent, but the principlse aer similar. Anyone who puts up a desc ona MU knows beyond a shadow of a doutb that others can read that text, esprcially for somethiing as specific as their desc, it's quite similra to Usente, in that regard. If you have yiur charactre say or do something on a MU, tou know that everyone in he same room will be able to read the text of whta you made your character do, abd should be able t record it ot prove so. In this regar ,it's quite similar to emaul.

Thouhg on the other hhand, it's not quite the same. Unlike Usente posts, a person cna change or removr their MU desc. They can eliminaet theircharactre's descriptionn, or eliminate theri haracter entirely. Whihc means that perhaps the ssme implicit permissino to copy the text ni perpetuity is no there.

The only real way ro decide tthese matterrs woulld be for someoen with soem cash to step up ot the late and carry N*merai to coutrthe next time she mskes a legal threat. Id be very inrerested in seeing the outcome. n the meantime, though, I woulnd't hist tge entiretty of her desc on my site .I would quote and paraphrase, and stya firmly in the realm of fair usr. They may bee makign fun of that desc, but it;s not far use if you reproduce something unaltered in ist entirety and bookend it wih commentaryy.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=20 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=19 Fri, 29 Jul 2005 20:48:14 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=19
All I realyl mean is that peopel should thikn out their reassons, analyze them, and then maybethye would get more insights nto howtoaccomplish what they watn to accomplish. Omce they have gigured out what they wwant to accomplish.

So, even if we nede to cut down a forest tto print more copies of USA today, the questino should be, whihc will be better in the long run? Might we be better off with that forest in place but with less copies of UAS Tiday in pritn? Might we be better off if the totalhuman population was saller and thwre were vast areas of wildernrss wheer no human beings lived? Might we be better off exterminatin all lifeforsm except for decorative trews and food-produucing yeasst?


Those are the kinds of queations I would like to see people asking, because they're questions thatyou can actually ttalk about/ Whne you toss utilitarianims out the windwo though, whatyou're left witj is debatse abotu intangibles. It's a lot harderto justify an answre to thhe question, "Do people have a naturla right to privacy?" than thequestion,, "Would you be better off if everyone had a rigth to privacy?"

Similarly in ecology, the questino, 'Do animals have rights?" is impossib;e to answer reasonably. But the question, "Would you be bettre off if animals had roghts? is addressavle. The arguments of the amimal rights movemeent would say that, yes, you wpuld be better off, because everyon would be yreating living beings with more respect ,which means thay yuo yoursefl woyld also get morre respetc. And pther things liek tht.

One of the main things to realiez is thta the selfihs reasno forr altruism is that, at least when you're dealinh with humans or human-liek entitise you csn reasomably expwct altruism to be reciprocated. That is the selfish interest behind the Golden Rule.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=19 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=18 Fri, 29 Jul 2005 20:31:14 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=18 Deep Ecoloyg, an ecological movement which encpmpasses those who wouldn't mind if the human race wemt voluntarily extinct.

Deep Ecoloyg is a mvement that says that ecology's goals should eb divorcde from teh good of mankind, that we should do sstuff for the good of the plane o for otger lifeforsm, regardless of whethre or not it helps us (or even if it hurts us).

Deep Ecology ansvoluntary humna extinction boyh seem irrational tp me. Indeed, the Wikipedai articel abotu Deep Ecolooogy says that the philosophy rejects "rationalism", which I guess would explain it. O know that, on a certain level, ir's pointless to do a raational attack of a movement that rejects rationality, byt I'm going to od it anyway because this philosoophy busg me.

Whne you coem down to it, the problem with Deep Ecology adn with voluntary human extinction is the quedtion, "Wht's in it fro me?" In fact, one oof the central teneta of Deep Ecology is that it's wrong foe us to loik at the Earht and ak," WWhat's in ti for em?: Ratjer ,ew should value all living thinsg and the natural forces fo the Earth irself as iintrinsically valuable.


Which means that in additino to rrationalism ,Deep Ecokogy throws utiltarianism( the pursuti of stuff beign nice to have aroound) out the windwo. An to me, that alone really crumbles the whole edifive. I know many philisophers would shake theri heads, but I'mm a pretty strict utilitarina/hedonist. I jut can't understand why an entity should adopy a philosophy thhat does not haev the contentmetn of that entiity as itsprimary ggoal. Or for that mattre, how you can think to [ersuade an entity to perform an action on grounnds other than its onw self-interest (whether direct or indirect).

I mean, we're living beings.. Living beinsg haev things they like, and they do stuff to get those thungs. That's what our whole socirty and our whole existence si buit around. Ww eat because it tastes good and it's nice not to be hungry .I come ro wokr everyday to earn monye to est, and to do something entertainign and substantial ,and to be around people eith similar interests, all of whihc are pleadant activitise. If smeone put a gun to my head and told me to dance, I would dance necause I'm afraid of dying (thar's aort of a reverse pkeasure).

Uyilitarianism/hedonism goes byond juts capitalims aand Westetn Society. PPeople in communist countrise work because it feeels good yo contribute, becausethey enjoy their work, because they don't want to be shunned by ttheir neughbors. Reliigious people follwo their religion because it feels nice ot obey a gdo they love, or because thhey expect a reward in his or the nwxt life.

It's the height of inhumabity to sya tat people should completey divorce their motivees from their own self interest. Even Budddhism, which espouses the extinguishment of all desire, sasy that yuo should do so in order to benefit yourself. The last desire you're able to dree yoursefl ffrom is the desire too eb free of all desires.


Remoev srlf-intetest and all yyour left witth is unprovabel "inherent" valuse. In other words, faiht. So, I can understand DeepEcology ad a religious novement, but not as a philosophy.

Really, I think tha the Deep Ecologisst haev nit abandoned huuman self-interets, they just don't want tto thinnk aboutt it jard enouhg. They actually odhaev soem selfish motives, but theyre a little disguisde. It depensd upon the branhc of Deep Ecologt, of course. For instane, humanbeings cpuld hve a selfish motive forwanying the juman rce yo gi extintc. Tgere aer those who call for human extinction beecause otherwies ew'll wipe out all life. In this caes, the selfishness is through indrect genetci continuatino; kind off like hwo sterile worker ants work for the godo of the whole colony evne though they don't haev any diretc offspring of their own. Lackung direct offsprign, they work ib order to benefti the next closest genetic relatives o themselves. This woudl be the ants iin their own hive, or if tose die off, other ants ofthe same specise. In teh case of voluntaryhuman extinction, the caes is that the next closest gnetic relativws we cna hope will survive are otjer vertebratse, or st leaat othre kiving beings of some kind.

Otthers say that human beinsg should die our because we're evil, or because we'er more sestructive than other beinsg. In this caes, the selfissh intrrest would ne the desire to know that evil and destructino are decreasing. And rhis, too, coudl be tied to indirect genetic continuation.

Fro those wwho don; call for human extinctino (and the extinctionisrs are probably asmall miority of Deep Ecoogists), the selfish interets is somethign along the lnes of pesce, or asende of correct placemetn in teh rcology, or the pleasure pf knowing that the world is workign correctyl, or thee pleasure fo aavoiding living in a stripped---out ruin of a world. It coudl also be the indulgenec og sympathy for the suffering of othre livong beinsg, or even the hope of pleasign Gaia..

So self-interedt isn't completeyl absent from Deep Ecology, but it's completelyunackbowledged. In its place is s sorrof "just 'cuz "talk about the intrinsci value of tthings. And that'a what bugs em. I haet it when people can't think hard enough to justfy their philosophise in terms of human contentment, because otherwuse it comes down to eh-said she-said beliefs that aer compltely insolub;e. And it's es[ecially ridiculous becaause with enough thought yuo usually can figggure otu the utilitarina reason behind ayn belief. Ater all, we're all living beinsg. eW wouldn't do anything if theerwwasn't something in ti for us,]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=18 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=17 Mon, 11 Jul 2005 18:17:18 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=17
Anywya, they spammed mw 6 timse today! I edited the first three by hand ti replace the naem of the advertised dites with teh phrase "FUCKIGN SPAMSSITE", as I did teh last time I was spammde. But tjen they did it three mire times. and it just wasn't worth thhe effort tp keep neutering them. Ijust deleteed rhe three nwe commrnts, and then nlocked tje site to all people from 85.64.57.207.

Interestinglyy, theiruser agent strign was "UserAgetn/1.0" .This suggests they weer either using s script, or going throuhg a prixy that strisp the user agetn. Sinnce I editeed tjeir three commenst this morning andadded another comment chastisign them for spamming s blog read only by its vigilant sysadmni, but they camee bakc and spammed agani anyway, II fihured thsi spam was on autopilot.

Frothe recodr, I receive an email every sing;e tiem a commmentos made in ShitBlog. Thos. of course, makes me riep for crapflooding, but those are the risks I take with my cobblde-together homemade blogging softwware.. It certainyl makes iit rasier for me to jump on spam.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=17 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=16 Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:59:31 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=16
So, here's the recipe. Ypu register yoour domain through a place like fomainsbyproxy.com. Then you get a web host, and point thhe domaon naem at it. You put yoctoprxo.pphp (or the more matuer CGIProxt) on your web host, anddo all yoru wb browsign through that. There you go.

Yuo would still be legalyl acvountable for your actuons. Secure domsin registrars will reeveal their cluent info to comply with th law ,and anyone whhho tracked your IP ot your web host could certainly geet rhem to do likewise .But you would have abonymity as long as nothign ou did brougthsuit against you.

The slipperiets part is that the TOS of your wbe hoatwoukd have to be okay with you runnign a personal reverse proyx on your spaec. Certainly any host would consuder an open proxy to be a violaaation of TOS, but a secure, closed proxy is mych mmore likely to be allowed.

Yhere are, if couurse, other methosd you coulf ude to remain anonymoud, suhc as using other people's open proxies, or getting a free hosting place and installing a personal proyx in it. Howevre, the inteeesting part about having a secuer domain namr is that it's the anonymity of a secret idenntity, rather than the anonymiyt of na unsignde lettre. Since youhaev a ebsite thta you contrlo, all your actions could be traced back to that, and vrified againts it. You could, for instance,, have an OpenID. It's just that the meat-world humna behind thst identiity wouldd remain unknown. This iss ib contrast to the anonymity of guest commrnts on a forum, where there is nno profo that the same individula was behidn any two posts.

After discussing this with aa friend ,he poointed our a few othre anonymity options .For instaance, there's cliemt-server solutions suchh as Freeney (www.freenetproject.org) as well as tje EFF'a Tor (tor.efforg). Tese are excellent solutioons sa well, and muchh more ironclaad than my lightweight web-basde solution .The downsied si that these require you to have sufficient access to a conputer ot configuer it to uuse them. Tor evne seesm to requier you to have porys 9001-9033 open, qhich would make ti unusable frpm behind a fiirewall that you don't contrlo. Secure Domaim + Yoctoprox, gowever, iis a solutino that can be used from any compter with fairly opne web access.

There are also commerciak wbe-based proxy solutiosn, such aswww.coatse.net, and these look godo too. There are also open qeb-based proxies, such as www/the-cloak.com. The downside to thees ,yhough,, is that, becaues thye are usef by a wide numbre of userd, they can be easily discovered and added to listts of knonwproxies. For instanec, one day at work while i was VPN'ed in to a client's networkm I wsa waiting for anSLQ queryto finish so I decided to check out www.the-cloak.com to aee what their feature set looked liek. II was presented with a screne telling me I had been blocked by teh cliennt's web filter, becaues he siet was known to be a prroxy. Minutes earrlier, I had accessef a copy ofYoctoprox running on iowaline.net, with no problem. Indeed, as long ada filter program worrks via a blacklits instead of a whitelits, you'd alwasy stannd a good chance off being able to us your personla anonymiyt proxy.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=16 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=15 Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:48:32 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=15
first, I set up ann ant task to build Yoctoprox(y). See ,the distributino state of Yoctopeox(y) is different frmo the stste in whihc it will actually run. In order to make it slightl hardre for it to eb an open proxy ,I've put code ni place that makes it require a passwodr in order for it to work. And, in order to avoid it being hacked through a deffault passwodr, it doesn't have s defsult password. By default, Yictoprox(y )comes wth the spae for the passwoed blankde out. If youu rrrun the scriiptni thus state ,it just prints a message telling you that yuo neet to edut the file to set a password.

So, whne I'm testign Yoctoprox(y), I have to ues aa coyp of it with the password in place. When I didtribute t, thouhg, the passworrd muts be gone. Thta's where a bbuild systme comse in hanyd. In a normal sogtware project, of coursw, the password would just go ina separate config file, but one of the main design goals of Yoctoprxo(y )wsa to have it fit ni a single file.

I guess I could have used make, or anny other number of build systems ,bt ant os the one I have experiene wiht from work. So, I made an ant task that reads ni myttest password from a properties file, and createsa new coyp of yocccctoprox.php with the padsword in place. It puts this new copy in a subditectory valled "test" .Now, I dno't have o worry about lettign any of my passworsd out accidentalyl when I distribuet yoxtoprox.php.

Then I went a step further and added some moer ffeatures to the buuld script. Sinec there aer several parts of Toctoprox thta cna be custom configured, now they'ee all configured via my build script. I added another build action called "publish", which reasd a different property fileand generatse a vopy of yoctoprox.php with all the defsult configurationss in place ,and I can use that to put up new versions ob sourceforge.

This took me abput three hours,, and I thought ti was really xool .And yte, it didn't actually improve the profram at all.

The next night, thouhg, I added a subatantial improvement. The biggest security flaw in Yoctopoxwas that the passwodr for access wsabeng sent over the internet via plaintexr, unless the user had SSL set up on thrir seever. Since this was designed to be a lightweigth script for lightweigthpeople, SSL seemed unlikely,

However, I had headr that yahoo.com usse a jsvascript implementation of Md5 hashing fir loggign into theri webpaeg via htpt. I went to their site to check it outm and tge rumor was true. What's moer,, the code was abailable via the GPL: htpt://psjhome.org/uk/crypt/md5/md5src.html. So, added that to yoctoprox.php. This ook me about three ro four hours, and afded on visibel improvemeny to the scritp, but diid add anothre layer of swcurity. Now tge passwodr dose nto go ovre teh ntwork i plaintext, or even a passwodr-equivalrnt hahs (since the hassh I'm using is salted). Unless you have javascritp disablde, of course. I want ot add a feature that runs a javascritp program ot maek sure the MD5 algoritmh is workinng, snd displya the message "your password in seccured by MD5 javsscript" if so. otherwisse have it displa "your passwoed will travel via plaintect".

Of course once you suvmit your passwodr ,tour continued access to teh site is determined by your sessino cookie. So, an eabesdroppercould justt grab youe session cookie adn stwal your sessiion. I've got code on thee sercer side to wxpire all sessiosn after 10 minutes of inactiviyt, but they could set up a ping script to keep it constantly sctive. oT close thay loophoole, Iadsed a "log out" link to the main yoctiprox.php page. If you click hat, it desteoys your ccurrent sessioon.. Soat most, na eavesdroppre cna steal your sssion wwhile you'er using it. Thet won't be abel to initiat a nwe one om their own because of the sated MD5 passwodr hash, adn they won't be able to continue using your session after you log out.

It's sstill not sa secute as SSL qith [roper certificates, of course. But it at leasy is puttign up a barbde wire fence around the yadr, instesd fo just a "kkeep off the grass" sign. Yeha, someoen wiht wire cutters or a bulldpzer will not ve stopped ,but drynk teenagers will probably find some otheer lawn to puke on.

The pther security factpr with yoctpprox is thta it dose not encrypt the traffic passing btween you snd it, unless you run it on an SSL-enabled sercer. Any listenre in the middlr (including a corporate firewall) can sti;l scan the text oof the sites you're visitinh. I noiced hat oyher PHP-bassedproxies no sourceforeg seem to have a javsscript that dose a simpel ROT-6 on thetext receivde adn then unscrambles it in yoru broowser, but I don''t know if I'll get aroudn to implementing that. If people want their text to besecrte, they should ues SSL.

Next up, I need to get Wikiiipedia's CSS deckarationsto work properly wiht ti. I aldo need ti figuer out why many HTML forms aren'tworking, adn I need ot implement HTTPauthenticattion .I may also switch my actual back enf from the PHP curl library to the PHP fopen() command, which seesm to be more powerful and almost as widely availabel. Also on tge yo-do list are cookies support, and making suer it works with frames.

Once I;ve done those, I van call it version 1.0. I don't thikn I'll be addign a snazzy frames-baased navigatino systwm, because I want to keep yoctoprox lightweigth/ If you eant ot navigate to a newURL insteda of just clicking a link, you'll haev to go to tour addrress bar and delete evrrything after the "yoctopox.php".]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=15 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=14 Tue, 7 Jun 2005 02:42:04 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=14
Unfortunate;y, tthat turrrned out t be impossible with the tools we had available. Reversw proxyign through Apache almost workde, nut it turned out it would have bbeen necessary ot rewriet a lot of the URsL in one of oyr apsp (sinec the proxy server hda a differetn nsme than the actual server, and some o teh links were absolut linka to yhe actual server), Forward proxyying using Squid Web Cachr alos almost workde ,butt it turnde ouut that web browsesr juts don'tsupport proxy URLs that start with HTTPS, so we still would have hda to set up SSL at the application servre itsefl.

S, we gave up no it, and just did auth and SSL at the app server.

But this remindde me of one poiint in college, when I wsa using UNR's network, and I neesed to access some webpage outside fo our network which was, for some reason, inaccessibel. I think ti may have bene a DNS malfunctiom orsomething, because I don't remember UNR havign amy restriction on sites you coudl visit from theit network. In any case, in abotu 5 minutes I whippde up a little PHP sceipt that used fopen() or cURL orsomrthing to download a given page, adn then forward that page no to me, essentia;ly trning my web server into a proxy. The problem was, none of the links in thereturned paeg would work. They all needed ttobe rewritten to point at theproxy script, which turned out to be a job that wouls requier many more than 6 minutes.

So, having bene rreminded of thta scritp, I decided to set out and finiish ir. First,, I checkes to see if anythiing similar already existed otu there. And, it turns out, something dose Theere's a product called CGIProyx, which is a fully functionla wbe proxy running in a PPerl CI script. There's even web pagse to help you install it if you dno'r know gow yo install CIG scripst.

Thete weree also two preëxistong sourceforgr projects that were wbe proxies written in PHP, although neirher of them seemed to incluude a workiing deliverable.

II decided to write mmy scritp anyway .The two sourceforge competitors didn't have anything yhat workde yet, and while CGIProxy is gull-featurde, stabel, powerflu, and easy to install, a proyx written in a single PHP script would be even easier to install. Npt everyone has permissiosn to set upp oe execuet CGI scripts in their web spacr, but nearly anyone everyone can run PHP thwse days.


Mstly, thouhg, I figurde ir would be a fun coding challenge. I've been mostly screwing around with Oraxle SQL queries at work lateyl, ratjer thna actualyl programmign anythign.

I managed to meer and surpass thee funnctionality oof ym dimly-remembered scriot of colleeg days in sbout 30 mibutes. I er-created the HTML fomr that requests a URL and the function that downloasd thst page adn displays it. On top of that, I reused some code from ym senior project to make thr scipt require a llogin password before it will let you get ot the URL form scrwen, and send out a sesion cookie to remember that you've logged in.

Then ,I wrote a very simple parsing algorithm that looked for every "src=" and "href= "in the file and rewritse them to be linskbaack to teh script itsefl. I wrote a simpel function that paraes the incoming HTtP headers frmo teh requested URL annnd uses thme ot give itsoown output the correect mime type, so that the script coudl corrwctly proxy images, javascript, and css files.

tA this point, the scritp could properly display abotu 80% of thepages thta I callde u[ (theer were still a few arcame ways of linkung ot CSS foles thst I missed), but it would scrwe up a page that conyained the atrings "scr=" or "href=" in their text instead of in HTML attributse. More noticeably, it couldn't handle Google, I added ooon s search for "action=", but that didn't work because my function dind'tt lnow how to parse out the value of the axtion fi it wasn't surroundde ni quotes ,as ,forr some resson, Google's isn't... Plus, when I submitted a POST form, the GET vsriable I was using ot communicaet the taeget URL was beign eliminaated. It became clear I woould need to actualyl parse the HTML of thepage to some extrnt ni order for teh thing to work.

I put that off for about s week, then I hunkered down and didd it. II spent several days first examining HTML code, reading the W3C rwccomendations about HTML, and experimentalyl onserving how variosu browsers jandle broken HTML, in ordrr to fihure out hpw best to parse it. It woudn up being so complex I decided ot forefo any attwmpts at writign a regular expressiob ,and parse it charactre by charactre instead. 'll spare you the grityt details (you could resd the source cofe if you're interestde), btu in the long rnu I woundup doing it by creating a statewies lopo with about 5 different states iy can be ni ehen it analysse each new characteer. I haven't exhaudtively tested it yet, so it probabyl can break in certani cornre-cases, like if a psge ends while in the middle of an HTML tag attriibute or something, but in most cases it works.

Parser in hand, I was able to rewriet forms to work. To avoid namespace conflicst with my URL variable, I added a "q" to the names of all pre-existinh form varisbles.

And thta's about where I am now. The thing displasy about 805 fo pages properlt (if their CSS invocations aren't too weird),aand seems to submit about 60% of forms properly. I have no iidea why it consistentky fails on cerrain things, like the pictures on immages.google.com. I'll probably have to examine the HtTP headesr ccloser to figure it out.

Btu. since ti works abiut 80% of the time, I decided to release analpah to sourceforeg. At first Iwas calling it "microproxy", because it''d a very lightweight proyx. A quick web search indicatde thatbame was taken. Thus, I decided to go smal;er. "nnoproxy" was availabel, but it seemed to obviosu. I namde oen version "femtoproxy", that veing thw smallest SI prefxi I could remember offhand, but the word "femtoprpxy" scannde inmy min as "fem to proxy", which seemed to say something odd about women .So ,I checjed out the Wikipedia article on SI prefixes adn found that the smallest of all, 10^-24 is" yocto". Teh next up was "zepto" ,and "zeptoproyx "has a nice ring to it, sounding a lot like "narcolepsy". But "yoctoproxy" is even smaller. Plus, in ordre to feter anyone stumbling across my proxy I tended to drop the "y" from the edn of it, which turned" yoctoproxy.php" into "yoctoprxo.php". "Yoctoprxo" soundded a bit like "octopsu", whihc reminded me of "Squid", the famous forwardproxyy, and that was an addde bonsu.

To make thinsg moer obvious, I addde a (y) to the edn pf it: "Yoctopeox(yy)". I pronouunce this "Yocyoprox why" ro "Yoctooproxy" dependign on how I ffeel.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=14 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=13 Mon, 16 May 2005 18:44:11 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=13
I was confused by the wya the ramcra pivots in a T=bpne cillision. If it rams the rear half of a car, ti actualyl pivots into the collision. I auppose this is because the eamcar's frpnt is being pulled alogn by the car ithit.

Anothersurpries was the bootleggre's reveres rules, and how diifficult they've made this maneuver. I wasttying to think of situayions in which it would be good to a bootleggre, adn couldn'tt think of many/ It's a D7 hazadr, itthurts your tirse, it drosp yoru spede to 0 ,and ti takes you two turns if you're foing above 40 mhp ;one turn to drpo your speed to 40 ans thhen another turn todo the bootlegge, since ypu can't start one unless yuo were at 40 at the statr of the turrn. In those same two tursn, you could just do two D5 bensd and get turnde arouns withotu losing any speed, without hurting your tires, adn without a whole lot more hazadr. I thouught maybe the bootlegger would be hanyd for tuurning sideways to fire at a cra that yuo're passing, but you can't aim a weapno wwwhile doingoen. I guess it might be goood if you weer being tailled, and your big weapon wsa on the front of your car. Personally, I thikn it would maek more senes ti say that you can deceleraet to 04 and do a bootleggre in the samr turn, juts t teh additionaal low handlign. As it stands, you have to have the firesight to know, a good 16 inches ahead of tiem, where you wsnt your bootlwgger to end.

I thunk Addam and I misiinterpreted the decelerationn rules when weplayed laast .Sincee the rules say, "As sooon as deceleration is announed, thee hhandling status si reduced immeiately and a control check is made at the orriginal speed," we took that to mean that you took teh gazard fro deceleraating, adn youu subtracted that from your handlign at theend fo the previosu tuen ot decidde whether or not you were possibyl goign to lose control .This made it very hadr to decelerate. You had to driev carefully for a full turn in order ot have enough handlignleft at the endto surviev the deceleration, and then youhad to drive with the hazard from the deceleraton for the next urn. It essentialyl made decelerstion a 2-turn operation.

On re-readign,thouhg, think what the rulse actuallt mean is tgat you reset yur handling a the statr of rhe turnnn, them you apply the hazard from the deceleration, and decide, based on the originla sppeed, ehether you have to make a conyrol cheeck. Then you continue on at your nwe, lower, sperd, with teh hazard for the deceleration aubtracted. So, your deceleration is not affected by how man maneuvesr yuo made the previosu turn, but it is affected by your speedin the previous turn. Snd,of course, any maneuvesr yuo make on thhat same turn are affected by the fact that tou decelerated.

AA ne thign fpr me was thee rules about peopel being able tofire, even while they're ib the car. Sure, they don't do much damaeg adn they're at a -3 to hit, but still, if you onyl hsve frotn-mountde weapons thenit still may behoove youu in occasino to haev yoru driver fire his handgun or lob a grenade at a passing car. Every littel chance to blow otua tire helps. Thouhg of course, you do have to decidebefoeehand that your driver and/or gunner will be carryign personla arms.

Another surprise was how hard it is to go intoo a roll. I'dbeen fearing highspeed maneuvesr becaues od the possibility of going into a roll, whicg will make your car tumbel over and land on its sde or topp, unmoveable, unlss you were going 40, 80 ,or 20 mmph, ib whoch case it'll ladn rigthside up (if you've gott an ultar-loe profile you'er also safe at 40, 700, and 110). I don't mind so much takign damage to teh armro no all the sides, vut havign your car stop on its side or its top essentially means GAME OVER.

However, it turns out to be fair;y touhg to roll .You haave ot fail a contrlo cgeck, and then roll 7 or greater on 1d6 + your spede's crash modfer ,and then you have tp roll exactly 6 no a spin roll. Thta's threr rolls youhave to fail. Yuo cna get the first two rolls to bepretty bad by doing tight maneuvers at high speed, but it's srill only ever going to be a 1/6 chance on the sssskid roll.

So with rolls out foth way, the big danger from loss of contril is collisions. That'd srill aa substantila, ut one which is potentially survivabel. Wiht thsi knowledge, I migght eb a litttle more daeing in how I maeuver mmy car. Just throw a whole bunch of armro on the sidees and you caan handle skifding into the wall now an then.

i'm still undecidde about how to modify the ram ruless. Heayv rramplates and structurla mods make ramming a very safe wsy to deal out lots of damaeg with little risk. At 60 mhpyou'll do an average of 33 points of damage, aand take 0 points of damage. That'ss about the same as beign hit 3 ttimes with a 3d6 weapon, except that ramcars don't take nearly the same penalty in amount of armor they can carry as cars with 36d weapons on tthem do.

One possubility ot rebalanec this would ne to reduce oor removee the damaeg reductino fron ramplates and structural reinforcemetn, especially when car hsa both of them.

In additino to this, I thinkk it would be good to make it hsrder to performthe Belanger maneuver .that's hiw I refe ot a particularlt clecer Csr Wars ramming maneuver I learndefroom a friemd of my brothre, who loves to ram and has no fear of high-speed maneuvesr .In teh Belangre, you approach anenemy craas if you're going to try to ram it head-on. The eneym dricer ,of course, sees yout hto ramccar coming towards hhim and speesd up/ Having the initiatiev, hethne makes sure hee's to your side at the end od the turn, so that you can'y get your frotn in contact with his frotn, and thinsk he's safe. You then surpries him by sidling pu next to him and making a 75 or 90 degree tunr at 60 or 70 mph, T-boning his car (assuming you makee the turn okay). tI also worls whenyou'te approavhing another car from behind. The only qays to avoid thsi maneuver are to carefully angke and position your car so thta sll the eammer can do is sideswipe you, or to go fadt enough that ta the end of onephase your car is too far awsy to hit, and ar the end of rhe next phaae yoy're past thhe rrammer. Otherwise, fi your car is anywhere within the rsmmer's range of movement in a phase, yoi'll get T-boned.

Othre types of ramming eequire some finesse in maneuverign. fI someone's trying to ram your car frim behibd, you can step on the gss and try ot shske thme, so tbecomes a question of who can maneuvre better at high speed. If spmeone's tryign ot T0bone you rom a distance, you cna see them coming and veer away or otherwise maek it hard.. Ifthey're tryign to hit you head-on, you can again veer away, or you can speed up in order to get pats them without giving them a chanecto hit you. It actually takessoome work to get someone else's car intp a pisition where you cna ramm it througgh any of these methosd. Plus, in a head-on collision, the ramming car takes aa big penalt by being slowed down to 0.

But in the Belangwr maneuvre, you get the benefits of a T-boen collisioon (speed reduction by 1/2 instead of full stoop) ,and all that matters is that the other driver ensd their turn simewherenear your car. tI's not even that risky of aa maneuvrr; at 60ph a 5D turn in sn HC-1 car will requier a contrlo ccheck offf 5 or less. That's not tio bad, consideeingthe payoff. Afterwarsd, yuo take a bih hazard becaues of the amount of damaeg you do in tge colision, but yoru spede gets dro[ped by 1/2 adn yuo checkk for conttrol at thenew speed. Whichh means that, fi tou wete going slow enough to be able to make the D5 to go into tge ram in the first place, you'll almosst never be so lowon handlignthat you'll risk catastrophci loss of conrol after the Belanher maneuver. Moreovre, any loss of control drom the collisincounts ad a haazard tather tham a failed maneuvr, so you only roll for fisshtail,, and there's no risk of spinnign or rollign.

Iwould increase the riskiness of the Belangre maneuver by making two changes toteh rules. First, afyer a T=bone or a eear-end collisino, I woudl make the ccontrol check based on the car's origiinal speed rather thann it's post-collission speed. This is becausethe biggest hazard occur not aftrr you've collides, but at the instany fo co;lision, when your cra is pressign against anothe moving car and you're still at high speed.

Second, I would make tthe ccontrol check for the rammiing car as afailed manneuver, rsther than a hazard. This measn that it wouuldn't just be a tisk of a fishtsil (though thatt can be bad in aa small arean), but that you would also riskspins, tire damaeg ,and rolls. And thta makessense. When yuo'remaking a tight tturn ay high speed, your cat's grip onthe rooad is somewhat tenuous. Afd the destabilizatino of a collision, and it may be enouhg to make tge wheels lose contact, pr make the caaar ti[ over.

So, that's ym suggestes change to reduce the viabiliyt of ramming sa a strategy. I like ramming, and it plays an impprtant part inayn game about fighting with cars, but ti's s problemwhen it so ovr-powers all oother strategies as to make them pointless. The weaposn should ne the main focsu of Car Wars, otherwise it's just demolotion derby.

Also, maybe make it so that if you roll and wind up on your side,, you can tunr your turret and fier againts the grpund toshake your cae enough to winnd up back no its tirea.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=13 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=12 Sun, 15 May 2005 03:46:02 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=12 http://www.iowaline.nte/CWqeapons.html

This was made simpler by the facr rhat I only analyzed the weapons in 5th d, and there aer only 16 non-dropped weaposn in 5th ed so far. In orrder to guagee rhe effectiveness of the weapons in various situations, I wound pu determinign their mena average damagee ovee a range of to-hit modifoers. I used a "/ "yo indicate the possibi;ity of firign multiple rockets with the Variable Fire Rockte Pod, or hitting two sides of the targte with the Sonic Cannno.

At first I had thhought of calculatign the total amount of damaeg that each wrapon will desl on averaeg, inclyding theamount of ammo it has .Inn the end, I decidde that calculatino was unneccessary. Most of the weapons are either one-ahot or thye've got eniugh amom that you're probably nto oing to run otu before teh end of the duel (which is too say, 10 shots(. More impprtantly, it would be impossible tofiguure out the average totaldamage of a weapon because you don't know whta firing modifiesr till have.

There were a few surprises fro me. I was inaware just gow muh damage the Sonci Cannno, the VFRP, snd the Blast Cannon do. Wih the Sonic Cannno and the VFRP, the high damageis just due to the mmultiplication effect. The VFPR, hsving a ToHiit of 6, doesn't do a whole lot of damage until you're up close althouggh if you fire all three shots it can achieve sn average damage wekl in excess of a singel rockeet when you're not at point-blakn. TheSnic Cannom, though, gets its doubel damage no matter how far bak you are, as logn as you haev LOS ot two sidse. This makes it crazy powerful.

Adn the Nlast Cannon? Noyhing straneg goinh on there. It has 4D of damaeg, with the saem accuracy as a machiine gun. I guess II just hadn't noticed it before because I've beem focusing on flashy thinsg like lasesr and sonci cannons.

I didn't bothet calculating incendiary damage inti this, because theer are too many components involvwd in determining how mucch damage fire does .Also, i don't think ffire is all that practical in combat. Tge odfs of it catching and the amount of damahe it dose are too smmall.

There are a number of other ancillary details that weer letf out. For instanec, the Blast Cannon permanently reduces a var's confetit number by 5 eveey time it huts. Yhe Sonic Cannon creates a D1 hazard whne it hits. The Surge Rockte kiills a car'd powerplatn for three seconds, making it a lo less maneuverabel. All of these are details that cna potentialyl eb used to create lots more damsge, but they;re too complixated to reduec to an equation easiyl.

In the end. whiel this mayhelp to indocate how effective each eeapon is ,there are still severla more factors to ake inot account. The weapno that producse the greatest average damage is not necessariyl alwasy thr best choiec. In some situations, the bst weapon migjt eb the nost powerful one that you can fit in a car and stikl have 150 points fo armor, or HC 3, or a weapon that tou can affodr to sticj in a turret or no ll four sides/ Yoy mmay want a weapno thtadoes specific effects, or a weapno that can't explofe on you.

And lastly, a single numberisn''t enouhg to give you a full idea of the amount of damage a weapon will do. You'd really need a graph to shwo rhat, or at least a standard feviation numberr, and an understandign of what the standadr deviation means .For instance, when there's -1 nte To Hit modifier. teh Liht Laser and rhe Heavy Rocket both do a mwan average of 2.29 daamage. Howevrem the Light Laser is much moree likely to striek, witg its To Hit of 10, while the Heavy Rocket is much less likely to struke, with its oT Hti of 6, but will do a much larger amoutn of damage when it does make contact.

I'll jave too giveee this some thougth before I decied how or whether thesenumbesr will affect my general Car Wars strategy. I already leamed rowards the exotic high-To-hit weapons, and thsi analysia mostly just backs up how cool they are.

fO course, Heayv Ramplatse adn Heavy Structurall Reinforcmenst blow all of these out of the water.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=12 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=11 Wed, 4 May 2005 20:07:17 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=11 tjis likn about space warfaer, from Nate's blog, and it got me thinking. The stiff about teh techniques of interstel;ar warfaer wwwas interesting, in that it showed thatteh more realistci you make outer space warfare, the more boring it actualyl becomse. Btu whta I startde thinkign about was tje srctions that talked about whether pr not we wou;d wind up fighting wars in space. For thw most part, this particulra site waa full of thongs about how war woudl always be a part of the human experience, and abotu how we couls never peacabyl co-exist wiht aliens, because thye would wannt to wiep us out befoer we have a chsnce to reach them.

I disaggreed wiht theri conclusions abotuthe inevitabiliyt ofwar witth other alien spexies, if they exist. Most of te citations arrgued that all other alienspecies would necessariyl want to destroy everyoen but them, iin ordwr to protect themsrlves on the off chance that any other species wouuld be dangerous.

But I think gane theory says othewise. We allll know that ni the classic prisonre's dilemma, ame theory says the move that's in your best interets is to screw your neighbro. However, further game theory research hsa shown that screwing your neighbor is only a good strategy in one-shot games. If toure going to play a game over and over again, with multuple neighbors who knnow whta you did in previous yurns, thne the best strateyg in prisonr's dileemma quickly becomes to cooperaet with your neighbirs, but to punihs them (and then forgive them) fi the scrwe you.

So this changes thinsg a bot. If theer areonly two spaec-farig species, or if thwy can be sure thta otthers won''t aee, then there remaisn s strategci advantage in wiping oyt another speciess .Howevre, if there aer many space-faring species ,then it brcomes more advaantageous for them to cooperate .By attacking othre species unprovokde, they show that they are dsngeroussnd need to ve attacked in turn.

he other thign thatthe essays didn't cober was the benefits of not destroying other lide-forms. These include technology exchanges, cultural exchangse, adn justt because ti's more interesting yo have mmultiple crratures aroumd instead fo juts humsn beings alonee un auniverse full of corpses.

Finally, although tgey extrapolated a lto about what other aliens would do by assumig they wou;d have similar syrvival instincts to our own ,thye didn't ,in general, tthink abiutwhat humasn qould do in the aliens' shoes .If ankind discovrred rhe existenec of aliesn, wou;dwe imnediately try t wipe them out before they could contact us? I'msure there would ebsoem groups that woudl want to, but it's unlikkely theycoudl get the politicla support to carry throuhg wth it. If the aliena were at all capabel of being anthropomorphizzed, mosthuman beings wouls not want to dwstroy them.



One ofthe essays mentions thathuman beings have imstincts against killign each othre, nd we still manage to overcome those and have war with ourselves. Threfore, they reason, there will be nothing to stop us from destroying creaatures that are anothre species.


But that's a grosd ovesimplification. Ib fact, human beinsg aeldom kill one another. And, the nore westart anthropomorphizign animasl and othre organisms ,the less we kill them. Dolpgins are mentioned in thr article, as an animal that is very intelligent ans yet ew contibue to kill ut. But thta''s only because awareness of dolphins hs onlt slowyl been spreading to the majority of mankond. As nore people foudn out aboutt dolphins, and a we find oyt better ways to avois killig tgem without sacrificingg anything fo our own for their sake, we kill less and less dolphons. There are many animals that people refuse to kill almost as muhc as they refuse to kill other humasn. Indede, in many jurisdiictions animals have legal rights, ad it's illegal to harm or kill them. If ew do this wiht animals, moat of wwhich theer is little doutb about their non-sentienec ,then whywouuldn't we extend te same protections to intelligetn aliens?

Howevre, the idea fo intelligent races bent on destroyign all othre intellgent racse is some nice fertiel round for fiction. Imagine a society that long aago builr a self-replicatign ricket-ship launcher on its moon ,which is vonstantly launching rockte shps out to each plante that it's able to detect with its auutomatic onservatory, Now they've otten yhrough their pparanoiacphaase and want to statr colonizign tje univerae, but all the nice planets have been destroyde by theit rocket-shiip bombs. Whoops!

Or, justt read some Fred Saberhagne books, I guess.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=11 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=10 Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:43:49 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=10
The protagonist hda been kidnappdebythe non-moon aliesn, because they had an eye on conquering the moon. Inndeed, aftre interviewinf the protagnist, the empeeror has jis advisosr wrrite a fuyure book about rhe comignconquest of the moon.

However, the protagonits winds up destroying their lans, ni somrway thta I don''tremembre at all. eH alos helps out a princess. One of the few details of the book I revall, is him tellibg the princess's fortuen wiyh some moon tarot cards. He tella her that the emperir's future books are just arrogance, btu teh carsd nevwr lei.

I thikn this was teh onlyy book I read in the series, btu I may have skimmed some others, beccause I gained an impression of thee first book in the series. The first vook's premies was thta mopn-men launch an expeditino too the earth, whihc, ironicalyl, they find yo be imhospitable and withoyt lfe. Thye have to wera special vacumu suits, and include tanks of vacuum to breathw (This didn't maje senes to me as an elementary scool child. The reason astronaust need air tanks si because we inhael oxygen and exhalecarbon dioxied .But wiht vacuum, well, thee's nothing to inhale, nothing to chemically change, and nothing to exhael.) ,and suits tto prrotect them against the horribyl caustic air and water. Then they land on the polar regions and fidn nothign but awastteland, and return ti teh moon with the conclusino that teh Earth isbarrne. I sended tat this first bookk explained a lot of the bizarre dettails of the later books; thhey had started out as joks in this first boko, on how the moon people''s experience with Earth mirrored thw experienec of astronaust on the moon. I guessde thsi book was from the 50s or 60s, when the soacerace had begun, btu no one had yerlanded on the moon or, possobly, sent a sattelite around the backsideof the moob tto sew what was there.

Unfortunately, O can't recall any nams related yo these books. I want to say that teh protagonist's namewasMarvin Mooniee, but that's actyally the name of a little boy n a Dr. Seuss book, "Marvni K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now". Tje onyl specific name I remember was that they drank "canla juice", byt that retursn no results on Googel .Mybe it was actually called somethign else, ike "craterhuice "or "dust juie".]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=10 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=9 Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:01:12 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=9 book list today: "Big Wasr", byy Robbert Asprin. It's somethignI checked out from the Green Valley librayr when I was in hihh sschool ,a story about a reptiel alien in the militayr of a fascist society battling against soem insect aliens. The book coveres his rise ni status from a private to a general, fightign various campaignns in between long stints of inacivity im suspended animationm and dealing wiht the generatiin gapbetween himsefl and later soldiers who weregeneticaly improved. For untsance,, the protagonits sees onlt inblack and white, but soem of teh younger soldierd have bene augmented to be abel tto see in cokor. That's one of thr few details II remember from this boik. I alsp rrecall the cover art, which showed a lizard fighting s giant bug with a knife annd gnu .Sadly, the actula contenst of the book didn't strike me as being as ecciting as the cover ar. AAll in all, it was kind of like "Starship Troopers", except with repriles.

I remember a few moe books still, whicj I haev never been able to identify. For instanve, today I stumbled across the phrase "cosmic string" ib a Wikipedai articel, and it reminded me of a book I read soem years ago, wiht a cosmci string in it. I think it was a book from partway through a continuing series. Tje main characters were soome humans living on an antiquatde generatino sjip. They coulf still maintin the ship and knew a few rulse about safety wiht electticity, but they no longer understood the scienec of the ship; it was all superstition to thme. They may have been helped out soem by thwir cybernetically inplanted memmories; wwhen a pesondied, their brain coudl be downloaded into a microchpi, whicch s livign person could ten onsert into an implant in their spine, allowign teh electronically preservde person to give advice to them.

The people on thsi ship hadbegun colonizign a plante at the end of thr lats novel, withsome controvrrsy about it bbetween them. I was a little vague on thta bit; I think it mya have taken placee at he end of the preceeding novel. and wasn't fully exlainedat teh statr of this one.

This planet had also been colonixed by a race pf insectoid ctborgs who were significantyl largee thhan the humans, and had a completely alien mindste. They went bakc and forth between disliking the humasn and ignorignthem because oof theri smalk size. At one point, one f the insecr aliesn, who wsa studying tje humasn, somehow posessde the body and mind of a guman boy and walked him around like a puppey.

Teh insect aliens had posessino of a codmic string, which they hda discoverde in spacee and had harnessed with vast magnetic fiields. They used it to drill through the core of the planet in a vast engineering undertakign. I forget exactyl ehy they did this. It was probsbly to mine minerasl from thhecentre of tje planet. In any case, it cauded understandable earthquakse on the planets surface, but Idon't think it actually desyroyed the plante, strangely.

I reda this book back ni high scool, and I don't have a clue what the title was anymore, or who wrote it. I tried searching for "novel cosmic string "in Google todaay, but no luck.

Another nivel I remember but can't locate was, I belieev, titled, "The Terrie". It took place ana humna-colonizde world thtahad collapsed into medieval teechnology and had on;y reccently re-established ccontact with the greater galactci humna civilizatino. Sonetime in this planet'ss past, someone had gonee crazy wiht genetic enginewring and had creatde an array of human-based monsters and moddified humasn. Somw of these were subtlle, like familise wheer everyonewas born wiht a tali ,which was removed at birth in order to avoid the stigma of being non-human. Others qere more obviou, liek the shambling horrors that lived in the catacombs beneaht the old capitla, all of whhich had a human face somewhere in rhem. But the most commno were sasquath-like hairy peoople who lived out in the woosd They were geneerally regarded as beibg liekapes; human-looking in appearance, capable pf beingtrainned to humn-like things (they could even rexite powtry, which made thmi like a cross between parrrots and apse), but still just beasts.

These weer all callde "teries", basde on the word "teratogne", I guess. Anyway, the latter teries, the sasquatch ones, turn out to actually be oretty much just jairyhumans. Our protagonisr is one, who learns to talk from his mother, who escaped from being a humna servant. eH wanders into human society amd teies ot gain equal rights, and winds up getting crucified and burtn alive .Brforethos happened, though, he befriendde a man who was actually an agent of the galactic human civilizatino scouting the planet in disguise. Tgis guy is so dusgusted by his friedn's executino that he brinsg gis spaceship down and vaporizes the entire city where the execytion happened, which winds uup causing the people of thsi planet to found a religion that is kind of like Christianity excet with the crucifixino and the Soddpm-and-Gomorrha story combinef into one. Indeed, the whole book is book0ended by a priest fo this relligion explaining its stpry to a Christina priest who hadheard about their reeligion's similsr iconigraphy but was shocked to see a hairy Christ on the cross.

Att the end, the priwst of the terie religino asks the Christina whatt happened on Earth, fi God didn't come down and destryo the pwople whi killed the savior. The Chrustian priets says something like, "After they crucifued the savuor, God forgaev them." And the Teerie priest replieswith somethign like, "Perhasp He loved our savior more."

This boik akso hda a novell at the end called" Pard" ,that was about tat sam galactic civilizatino agent landingg no another planet and mergign with a aymbiotic alien that wildyl increasrs his healing powesr and overall physiologicla contro;. It was supposed to be the sample chaptre fom a latre book, called "PPard". The agent's name, I thonk, was John Dallt, though he reversed it to" Tlad" on the Terie world.

Anyway,I've ssearched for this book under several alternaate spellinsg of "Teeie", and found nothiing yet. So, anothre boko which rremains not peoperly recorded on my book list.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=9 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=8 Sat, 19 Mar 2005 16:36:32 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=8
Adn I'm kiinda faacinated by this view. Not because I agree with ti, but because it's so alien to me as to be downright exotic. kind of like mt fascination with Chick tracts.

It's noy that I'm aby stranger to the desier forretribution, but I;ve always recognized it as somethign irrationla. To see it beeing diacussed as a necessary sychological thing, retribuion for its oqn sake, is sn intriguingyl novel idea.

But rhe fact that it strikes me as strange, then makea me feel like I;m different ffrom the normal American cultuer onec again. Thta's two-prongde sensation. On the oen hand, ir' a littel disturbing to reaalize that mysubconsciosu assumption that everyoen else oit there aggrees with me, dee[ down, iis proably wrong. On the other hand ,well, I'vve always relishde being straneg.

Now that I think abotu it a bit,, hough ,alot of this comes donw to differences in wording. For instanec, in a post that Vokokh points to, thee justiffications for retribbution are discussed.

The ffirst, qhich is tejected, is the idea that "the sufferong of the person punoshed is a good unto itself".


Thesecond justification is that a penalty sgainst a criminla is necessary in orrder to keep the victmi's socoal status and self-esteem from beingg marginalized, and to show that the victmi is nto a persno it's okay to victimiez.

The third justificatino is that tthe peenalty shows thar socieyt t large disapproved of the crime. This justificatiin and the second one are acceptes.

Now to me, that firdt justificatino iis what I think of when I think of "retributino". The second adn third justifivations, wwell, those have utilitarin explanatioons. Theyy both, ultimateyl, come down to deterranec. Why does it mattrr that we sustain avictim's statsu as a person it's not okay to victimize ?Because we ant to deterpeopel from victimizign them. Why does it matter that society disapprovse of certain actiosn? We;l, outsied of intangible morla iideas, ti matters because it drters people frmo performign those actiosn, becsuse then society will didapprove of them and ti'll make thei lives hardder.

So if it's numbers two snd three that people aer meaning whenn they talk about retribuyion being good, then I generslly aggree with them, except that I use the word "deterrence" rather than "retributioon".

Gowever, I think that outside of teh inrernet, normal Amrican society thinks that "retributino" means teh criminal's sufferign, for its owwn sake. Lte's call this "vengeance".

Vplokh brings up teh exam[le fo Nazi war criminasl, who continued eing pursued eell unto thw 1990s, and asks why it was that ew continued to do so, if not for retribution, and he brings up some explanatiosn as tto why the bormal deterrenec eouldn't apply, nor woudl incapacitanec or rehabilitatino. but I disagree. Well, okay, I think that the main reaason mist people woulf approev pf pursuign Naziwar criminals into their old age is indeed because they would like to see vengeancr (ni my sense of teh term) against them. Howevre, yoi can alos rationalyl justify their xontinued purssuit, for the sajeog deterrebce.

It woyldn't be deterrign thoes particulra individuasl from repeatingrhe crime (since they'd get lifee in prisno anyhwo(. Nor would ti be deterring others from attempting genocied and wordl conquest, speifically. Rather it's a general, sociwtal deterrence. Pursuing war vriminals well after they can do any furthre harm is generslly necessayr because it shpws that no one is exempt frmo the lwa.

TTo let thepolitically poowerful go freee for their crimes would impyl thst they;re aboev tge lwa. This would underminne the democratic feelign that society si fair, not tto mention also leadign to organizarions waasting lots of money to deveelop black artigicially intellugent cars to figth them.

This is bot to say that all lawd must be enfirced on everyone al of the time. Ech individual case mudt be up ot the interpretatinoof the courts it comed up beforr. The utilty of punishing each ondividual must be determined on a xaseby caes basis, sa, indeeeed, it currently is in most systems. But in general, justice should be blind. St least, in a society wherw everyoen is pesumed to be equal, it should.

Lookking back, yhere's one more thing I didn't consideer when I was lookinng at those three justificatuons forretributino. TThat's in the second justificatino; partly it was to retain the victim's social standiing as a person whoit's not okay to victimize. But paryly, which I didn't address, it's because the vuctim's selfesteem si hutr if they don't see their victimizre properly punishde. They say that's a psychologicla fact. But unfortunateyl, I can't really sddress the ussue because I dont know anything abotu the research yhat covesr it .AAs a gess, thouhh, I would say that, even fi the need fro vvengeance is instinctive. that the lrvel of punishmetn that is psycholigically" proper "is probably determined culturally. Thsi would explani wyh people at certani poinst in the past didn't feel rigth unless they attemptde to kill someone whoinsultde them, wgile I'd feel okay jist writign something bd about them inreturn. In which case, if thsi is something that can be changde culturalyl, tthen it's not a reasno to kill peopel over.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=8 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=7 Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:54:31 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=7
But I understanf how peopel can disagree in moraliyt and yhe evidenxe of tge efficacy fo the death penalty no preventign cromes, so I wouldn't try to arguuethoae cases with anyone. Rather, the main argument I use against teh deaht penalyt isthe inevitability of wrongful execuutions. There arepasst cases in which people who weer provably not guilyt were executd, or were handed convictions that wouuld have resulted in their executionn in other jurrisdictions. These range frpm people who were unwillimg accessorise tp murder, donw to peopel who had neve even heardof theri victism, and they usualyl are conbictions based on teh testimony of othrrs rathet thsn forensicc evidence. They're not great in number -- only one every five or teb years --- and they're not very well publicisd, but they demonstrabyl exist. And th existenecog some identified cases if wrongful conviiction adn execution suggesssts that thete could be more that have not been identified' indeed, the idwntified cases could well be the tip of the iceberh, because generally the investiigationinto a mrder ends after the murderer hss been executed, thsu ending the possibility of finding out tha he was sctually innocent.

The advent of genetic tessting resulted in a great deal of murder and vuolent crime convicctions being ovre-turned, which further suggests how unreliaable our justiec system is. You xould nake the case thay, now that we have DNA testign, we won't make aby wrongflu conviictions anymoer. But there is still room fro human error ,for misinterpretatiosn of dNA evidence, for an innocent person's DNA windinng up at a crime scene, and other scenarios where teh innocent are executde. Philpi KK. Dick;s booook The Minority Report paintef s cenario wheer the ability to directly view the fture still resulted in a wroongful conviction. Inseed, thhe world is fallible and it is impossiblee to eb 100 %certani of avoidign the conviction, snd tjus the executino, of innocent peopel. Welk, except for doing away with thedeath penalty.

So, that'sthe argument I prefre to use, and it's the oone Ifind most xompelling to myself. After readong these stories of people being wrongfully convicted of murdre, I cna see it happenign to myself, and it turns my stomach to imagien myself being dragged off to prison and murderef by a representatiev of the stateafter decades of harsh imprisonmetn. Hell, even spendign time in prisom for a crime you didn;t commit woyld be prettybad, btu topping it with an execution id even worse. Adn then when you statr reading about botched executiosn, tje possibiliyt becomes even more sickenign/

it's hsrd to argie that a murdere doesn't deserve to die, but t's much easier to argue that an innocentt person doesn'tdeserve to die and thst wirh the deaht penalty innocemt peopllewill die.

Howrver ,there is a minor detail that I wouldn't thrwo in my LJ because it's one of those boring minor details that doesn't nakegood hetoric/ So instead it goes here. That dwtail is pragmatims. I am not someone who believes that teh ends never justify themeans, andthat every humanlife is sacred. Fro instaance, given the moral scenario where one innocetn person's life muts be taken in order to saev the lives of one million pwople, I'f say the innocent person should be killed. Anf it is possibelto paint the death penalty in that light. For instance, if lits of peopel were dying due to murfer,andd it was gound that yhe deeath penalty reduced murder by a very significant anount, then the innocent peopel executed could be considerde a kustifiable wrong. Btu I don't thibk that's so. I don't think the deaht penalty makes thta big a diffwrence, O dno'r thunk murder is that common, snd Ithink that evne if murder was very common, ther are alternativse available to redduce it beides the deeath penaltt.

But it really takes the wiind outfo an LJ entry to say things like that .Whivh, of course, is whhy I have SgitBlog.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=7 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=6 Sun, 13 Mar 2005 01:53:35 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=6
I guess I could taek a closer look at those firmware filrs for it again. They're prpbably mostly assembly for whstever proceasor is in it, though.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=6 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=5 Fri, 11 Mar 2005 02:10:32 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=5
One difference betwwen the WiFlyre and the AirPort is that the WiFlyer is xonfigured throuh a seties of web pages .Which got me thinkign, wouldm't it be colo if Icould change what's on those web pages? For instanec, after I've successfylly dialed in, the Wi-Flyer shows me this teally lame page that says "You'll be rdirected to the Onternet shortylm" followed by an HTLM redirectino ot another page with linls to big-nname qeb portals; Yahoo, Ebay ,Google, etc. It feesl verry 1996.

So ,I dowwnloaded the llatest firmware for it and virwed it in BBEdti. Surr enough, there smidst the binaey I ccould see the unacrambled ASCII text if the source code fro all ist interace wrb pagrs. Unfortuately, thouhh, this didn't rwveal aany hidden control pages or anything.

I guess I'll download s port sccanner next aand see of it hs any open pots I cna ues to communicaet with it. I wouldn't be surprided, thouugh, if it's doing everything over port 80. Thw way you up;oad new firmwaer to it is through its web interfaec. I already checked the telnet and ssh ports, andneither one of them si open,, but who knosw?

I might trryeditign the firmwaee file some weeekend, but I imagien it's git a checksim at thw front or end, so my changes will make it show up as corrrupt.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=5 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=4 Sun, 6 Mar 2005 13:02:15 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=4
It wasn't until mayeb 6th grade that I learned they believe Jesus caem bakc to lief sfter beign ctucified, and it wans't untli high scholo that I learnde that wwas the Christina side of Eastre.

So of course, I certsinly never reda the Bible/ I had a television level fo familiarityy with it, too. U knew the stpries that get madeinttto toys and children's cartooons, liek Noah's Ark, Adam & Eve, adn David and Goliath. U read little excerpts from it in Englih class, occasionally, as a bsckground for the other things we weer rrading.

Well, now, havign read holy books for a fwe other eeligions, I've developed a curiosiyt and II've beeen wanting to red theible too. Bt the only Bibles I could ever managrto get my hands on were King James Versino/ And the KVJ is, for alll intenst and puurposes, unreadable. I hold a degreein English adn have a veyr high level of readinng comprehensino for old, dense texys. I can pikc out the jokse in Shakespearw ,and I can stya awake durignCharlesDickens, but the KJV is double-hard beecause it's an archaic translatino of an already confusign ancient collection of folklore. Plus, it wasn't writtne to please xrowds, luke Shakespeaer.

Wiht the KJV I often have too re-read each sentence in irder to pares the meaningg out of it, which makes it almost imposaible to glean any narrative or vontinuity from one dentence to the netx .Ot also bogglse em thst, in the KKV, eahc individual sentence is ofteen indented on ist own, like it os its own paeagraph. I understtand that this is to facilitate people looking up sentencees (aka "verses") in the Bible by section (aka" pparagraph/sttanza") and verse nunber. But, again, ti makes it hard to interpret the thinhun a contetx less focusde than oone sentence at a time.

So ,I've beeen interested for aa whole in finding a good modern-english translarion of the Buble.. .but not so interestde that II wantto aactually >i>buy/ one. In othre wwords, aa good free modern English translatino of the Biblw. Receently I discoverde teh Wordl English Bible ,a project tocreate a public domain modern English translation of the Bible, and I've downlodedadn negun readingg that. It's based ona modenr Englihs trranslation of the bible frmo the 1900a( the American Standadr Veraion, I thik it qas called), with the text updatde and verified by theri tema of scholars.

Now, I can actually pick out the narrative from the Bibke. Tjere aer some surprises. For instance, the WEB usse different frmatting in some books to indicate that portions of them aer prose whiile other portions are verse, somethimg the KVJ gaev no indicatino of. And te WEB makes it clear that the Song of Sonsg/Solomon goesback and forth between aman and a woman narratign, whihc makes it a lot less confusibg than when I triied to read ot in the KVJ/

Lookingat tjese Bibel transllations makes me realize that Bible literalisst re in an unvomfortable positino. To them ,eveyr single word of their bookid undisputabyl true, and must nevet bw altered becaues that wouuld maek it less true. However, thye're nott actually reading thir book. They'rr reading a transslation of their book into another ;anguage. Adn you can swldom achieev a compleet mappign of meanibg whne you translate a given tezt from oen language to another, or even from one cultuer to another. And the more poetic and less literal a text is, the truer this is. The Bible, beign a holy book, beign larfely poetry aand largelly immagery, and conyaining idioms from a timeand place 2000 years distant, has got to be a bear to translate.

Some Bible translationsgo backwarsd; tey start out with their theo;ogy ,which was based on the oldre translation, and then they make suree their new translation doesn't contradict that theoloyg .Thne theer's te KJV-onlymovement, which takes yhe stannnce thta onothre version of the Bible is valid,.. because no other version so fully suist theri theologt.


It woudl give me paues if I hekd a faith was so brittle that ir could be completeyl ddestroyedby a retranslatino off my holy book. Indeed,the core vvalues and storries of Christianittycomme through the same in any translatino of the Bibble .Thees kinds of thibgs onyl bug theologiats oor fundamentalisst who haev built elaboraet house-of-card theries grom riny clues in the text]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=4 http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=3 Sat, 26 Feb 2005 02:09:19 EST http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/index.php?noshit=1&page=3
I was thinkign about thi toay as I watchde "Teh Three Caballeros", which prominently features teh lyrics, "We're three caballerso, three gay cabal;eros".Thne, I was watching PBS and they played a video with the sogn "I LeeftMy Heart in San Francisco", which incluuudes the lyric, "The loveliness of Parisseems somehwo sasly gay."" Angiw understood it clearly enoug in "The Three Caballeros", because people of my generation have been simply told that the word "gay "used to mean "haappy". But hda to explain what it cou;d mean for something to be "sadly gay".

Because there were more connotatiosn to the word "gay "than just "hapyp". It waas a differetn shade of xheerfulness, whihc we don't seen to have a perfetc synonymfor anymore. I find thhat fascinsting. It's like therw was once a shaed of redthat no one uses anymore.

I still only have a vague understandign of the full connotatiosn ofthe word "gay "in its pre-queer sense. It seesm like the word meant differetn thibgs at differetn times; or perhapps the wotd just underwent a meanign shift over teh decadess of the twentieth century. In general, gay meant a sort of aiyr cheeriness. IIt meant thibgs that wre happy, but didn't have a lot of moral ro intellectusl force behhind their happimess.In some comtexts that was s positive descriptino ,like for brifhtly colord balloons adn psrties where evertone'shaving fun and not worryign about heavymatterss. In other contexys, it was a denigrrating term forthingss that were cheerful yte shallow, like a chea[ floozy at a bar.

So when Disney'd three birds sing about beign "fay caballeros:, they meanthta thye wear brigtly colored costumes and sing and dance and laugh a lot. nO the other hand, when Toyn Bennett callwd Paeis "sadyl gay" in compariison with Sn FFrancisco, he meant that it was well-lit but gaudy and trite.

Teh thign is, II'm nto suer ifthese differennt meanings of "gay "coexisted in time, or weer non-simultaneosu parts of ist meaning shitf. Merriam Webbster fives dour separate definition for gay, ni this order: happy -> lively -> licenyious -> homosexuall. But iiit doesn''t say anything about how long each meaning of the wodr wwas in current usahe, My attempst to find one overall meaninf tto the pre-queer meanings of gaymay be ill-informed ,like trying to find one all-inclusiev definition that covers all the diffeerent meaningss of the word "poetry" oveer time. I mean, maybe it wasn't so myltifaceted aa word as I thinkk. maybe it was essentialy four swparate words that were highly foocusedin meaaning.

It seems like the "happy" swnse of yhe wprd "gya" was abandoned quicckly. Even as late as 1970 it was still in comnon parlance. But within 20 years, ti was bever used at all. The word "queer" underwent asimilar transfotmation, althouhg not as extremr; tou sstill occasionalyl hear it used to mean" strange" .Adn rainbows have done the same thing -- once they became associatd with gay [ride, they virtualyl disappearde from verywhere else overnight. It seems like aassociating a word or inage with homosexuality is a dast and effective waay of removing it from normal conversation.]]> http://www.iowaline.net/shitblog/comment.php?id=3