They’ve Already Won
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the terrorists have already won. Apparently now it's a terrorist act to buy a large quantity of cell phones. Oh, and it helps if your ethnic background is Middle-Eastern as well. Such bullshit.
Drunk and Sober
The BBC has a couple amusing articles on the five stages of drunkenness, followed by the five stages of sobering up. Funny stuff.
Misc Stuff
I'm currently working on a new, more minimalist design for my website. It's not finished yet, but you can preview it here.
I actually did a little hacking on Xfmedia earlier this week. Unfortunately I find myself forgetting fine details of the direction I wanted to take with the reorg, so I feel like it'll be a while before I really jump into it hardcore again. On the other hand, I'm having second thoughts about parts of that document, so maybe it's a good thing that I'm re-evaluating and possibly redesigning some portions.
I attempted to update Xfce Bugzilla to 2.22.0 yesterday, but running checksetup.pl failed with some weird error about the parameter 'languages' not existing. I messed with it for a little while, but ended up downgrading back to the latest stable in the 2.20 series.
I'm also working on a Xfce debugging guide for people with crashes or unexplained behavior who want to help out. I'm seriously getting tired of answering the same "how do I get a backtrace?" questions. I'm also tired of people posting straces in bug reports. While an strace might be the easiest thing to get, and it may look impressive in the amount of output it generates, in my experience it's useless in fixing most crash bugs. A stack dump at the crash from the debugger is really the best way to go. Bonus points if it's done on a debug build with symbols unstripped and no compiler optimisations. Double bonus points if the supporting libraries have debugging information too.
Anyway, this guide isn't finished yet, but I'd appreciate some feedback. Already I see it's gotten way too wordy and long. Probably some parts of it should be broken down into concrete steps instead of paragraphs, and maybe it should be separated out into two separate guides, one being more of a FAQ to help figure out what part of Xfce crashed, and the other more of a generic how-to on gdb. Not sure yet. As I said, comments (either here or via email) are appreciated.
Mental Weirdness
Interesting. From Slashdot:
I find that when spending too much time looking at the same code, it starts becoming 'vague' and I feel as if I'm in a fugue. It's akin to the same thing as writing a story or some e-mail and thinking that you've misspelled the words 'it' or 'and'. It may very well be correct, but it looks foreign and you try to fix something that isn't broken.
That's so weird. Something similar happens to me sometimes, but with spoken words. Occasionally when I'm speaking, a word will just sound very strange and out of place -- almost foreign. If I stop and think about it, and repeat it a few times, it just doesn't sound right, like I'm trying to pronounce a word I've never said before, and I'm not getting it quite right. It's usually a simple word, like "toast". If I let it go, and think about it hours later, everything's fine, but if I keep at it, it all seems to get much stranger.
I guess it's good to know I'm not the only one with weird language issues sometimes.
What Not to Say
A phrase you never want to see in a bug report assigned to you: "Please correct this issue." Really? Because bug reports are actually just a forum for people to complain, and me to just stare at and think, "Hahaha, look at all the people with problems; let them suffer!"? Because I'm somehow beholden to you to make everything all right? Try some tact and learn some manners, moron.
Sorry, I'm just a bit cranky this morning, and that set me off.
World Cup Madness
Those of you who haven't seen the World Cup final yet but are planning to watch it and don't want to be spoiled will want to stop reading now.
What a boring, poorly-played match on Sunday.
Overall, the knockout rounds were pretty enjoyable. Most matches in the round of 16 were at least interesting: Argentina beating Mexico after extra time (a match I still need to wach), Italy's last-minute dubious penalty win against Australia, Portugal's card-filled clash with the Netherlands, and France's surprising win against Spain.
The quarterfinals had some moments: Germany's penalty shootout win against a heartbroken Argentina, England's poor performance and loss during a shootout against Portugal, Italy's thorough trouncing of the Ukraine, and France's surprise (and most satisfying, if I say so myself) win against five-time champions Brazil.
The semis were even more amazing. Italy and Germany neck and neck throughout regulation play, only for Italy to turn it around with two goals in the last few minutes of extra time. France comfortably shutting down Portugal with a single goal off a penalty kick midway through the first half.
Germany, disappointed with the end of their run to the finals, nevertheless put on an impressive performance to defeat Portugal in the 3rd-place match, almost shutting them out 3-1. If nothing else, Germany deserved to be in the final based on spirit alone (though their play wasn't too shabby either).
But the final... oh the final.
I was a bit torn going in. On one hand, I'd come to like and respect the French team. Zidane's work as captain really kept the team working together like clockwork. They really excel in ball-handling skills, and their goalkepper is top-notch.
And Italy... I may only be quarter Italian, but that's the part of my heritage I've always identified with most. The Azzurri had played well to get all the way to the final, though at times using some questionable tactics. Either way, they're a group of players who work well together and really pushed themselves hard to get as far as they had.
But the match was absolutely awful. First a questionable penalty-mark goal for France in the first 10 minutes, followed by a brilliant header goal off a corner kick 10 minutes later for Italy. Italy started out very strong, beating France 70/30 on possession alone in much of the first half. But after the second goal of the match, everyone started getting sloppy. France's play deteriorated as well. This continued through the second half. Perotta and Totti -- who had served Italy well in previous games -- were performing poorly and were taken off. Later, Camoranesi was subbed out to bring in Del Piero. For France, Vieira was injured and pulled out midway through the second half.
Then we went into extra time. Everyone was tired. Ribery ran himself into the ground and was subbed out. Henry suffered an injury or cramp or something, and was taken out. Zidane was hit in the shoulder, but continued playing despite what appeared to be a significant amount of pain.
And then the madness began. Off the play, Zidane head-butts Matterazzi. Video playback seems to indicate he was provoked, but how could he lose control so completely? He's said the World Cup would be his last games, and he'd retire afterwards. How could he let himself leave in disgrace? The referee didn't see the foul, but Zidane was sent off with a red card after a consultation with the fourth official on the sidelines, who had seen what had happened.
Of course, at this point, 10 minutes left in extra time, things pretty much fell apart. France weren't coordinated enough without Zidane (not to mention being pissed off), and Italy were just too tired to put together a goal-scoring play, so they settled on delaying long enough to bring the game to penalties.
Italy made all their shots. France missed one. Ironically (and sadly), the miss was a crossbar hit from striker Trezeguet, who probably wouldn't have been in the penalty lineup had Zidane not been sent off.
I wouldn't say the match was boring. Not at all; it was the World Cup final, after all. But neither team played at their best, and the ending was marred by the horrible -- yet rightful -- ejection of one of the sport's most celebrated current players, in his last match as a professional.
At any rate, I annoyingly only saw 25 of the 64 matches, due in part to my lack of cable and thus lack of ESPN. I saw very few in the initial group stage, so there are several teams I hadn't seen play at all. Fortunately I was able to see all but one of the 16 knockout-round matches, one of which I downloaded and plan to watch when I get a chance, since I read it was a pretty good game (Argentina vs. Mexico).
Ah well. I'm looking forward to South Africa in 2010. Maybe the US can make it to the knockout round next time. And maybe I'll have the time and money to be able to go there and see a couple matches. That would rock.
Xfce 4.4beta2 Released!
We're pleased to announce the release of the second beta of the upcoming Xfce 4.4.0 release.
Check out the list of changes, and head over to the downloads.
Net Neutrality
I'm not the first to write about this, but there's an excellent article over at the Washington Post advocating network neutrality, written by Lawrence Lessig.
I kinda go back and forth on this issue. I'm not really sure that net neutrality needs to be codified into law. We certainly have enough ridiculous regulations on the books, and I don't think this one's a great idea. The market really does tend to sort itself out eventually.
What I don't want to see is legislation specifically authorising different types of a tiered Internet. Then again, why would you really need this legislation? In the absence of legislation banning tiered service, can't the ISPs and backbone operators do whatever they want? (Unless there's some Random Telecom Act that currently prohibits this.)
Anyway, it's nice to see a piece like this in one of the nation's most popular newspapers. It just shows that technology rights issues are finally moving into the mainstream, where I think they belong.
What Kind of Blogger Are You?
[](http://spuriousinterrupt.org/mirror/rehab356.jpg)
(Found here.)
