Remember the Kyoto Accords?

The US (and its current president) has taken a lot of heat for not ratifying the Kyoto Accords. Yesterday, Michael Barone wrote that, in fact, European countries will not meet their emissions targets. It seems that outside of the United States, the developed nations of the world are just paying lip service to the Kyoto Accords, and those two up and coming juggernauts, China and India, don’t even have to do that much. So, it looks like, in all practicality, the Kyoto Accords are dead. It’s time to put together a rational strategy for worldwide environmental protection.

And don’t talk to be about global warming. Groan.

11/3/2005 9:44:45 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Open Source's Silver Revolution

Bob Cringely has an interesting article on the effect of boomer retirement on the Open Source industry.

It’s an interesting read. By and large, the Open Source community has been the home of the young, since they have a lot of time on their hands and way too much enthusiasm .

However, with baby boomers entering retirement, there will be a growing number of experienced developers with time on their hands. This could really shake things up. While I haven’t been a big fan of the Open Source movement (until recently), I have deep roots in its precursor, the Shareware/Freeware movement of the early ‘80s. And I think I better understand the various motivations in the Open Source community today. That being said, it boggles my mind what armies of experienced software developers could do to the entire software industry by just doing what comes naturally to them.

10/31/2005 10:06:59 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Hey Alan!
It would sure help if you provided a link to the INCOSE document you’re talking about! Never mind, I’ll find it <grumble>…
10/28/2005 2:03:46 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

SWEBOK: The Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge

Alan and I have been talking about SWEBOK recently, and he’s got some entries in his blog about this. Now, I’m skeptical. The parties involved don’t have a great track record when it comes to Agile Development, and I’ve become convinced over the past year that this is definitely the future trend in software development.

I’m also skeptical of licensing efforts for Software Engineers. While I agree that something has to be done to improve the general skill level of software engineers, every licensing model I’ve seen has felt more like formalized cronyism than any realistic effort to set a minimal level of ability. Frankly, how can we do this without first agreeing on just what this minimal level is?  I guess that this is where SWEBOK comes in. However, I suspect that its more aimed at the government contracting world, and to a lesser extent the governmental oversight world (FDA & FAA). These SEI/CMM based systems are more concerned with making auditing of a software product easy than producing quality software inexpensively.

I guess I’m going to have to spend more time reading SWEBOK stuff to at least debunk it effectively …

10/28/2005 2:02:38 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

Bye bye Harriet
So, Harriet Miers pulled her nomination. What a relief. It was becoming pretty obvious that the only people that wanted her confirmation were the Democrats.  We’ll see who the President nominates next. I suspect that the next time, it’ll go the other way: it’ll be someone with solid right wing credentials that the Democrats (and the media) hate.
10/28/2005 1:48:59 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

It's been quiet, maybe TOO quiet...
So, Alan pointed out to me the other day that it’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and he missed it. Sometimes it feels like I’m shouting down a well, though I have to admit that the shouting itself can be satisfying. It feels good to know that someone is paying attention. Now, I’ve just got to come up with something to say!
10/28/2005 1:36:30 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  general

A Positive Sign

Laurel’s TV Picks just reported a positive sign for Commander in Chief: Steven Bochco is taking over the production of the show, and most of the previous writing staff is out. The Bochco episodes won’t be seen until November, but I think its a positive sign for the show.

The show’s been wallowing in significantly poor writing, with gigantic gaps in the show’s premise. I’m hoping that Bochco can live up to the potential of the show.

10/18/2005 1:31:16 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [1]  TV

Liberalism? What Liberalism?

A while back, I talked about my desire to explore contemporary Liberalism in America. My idea was that Liberalism had gotten a bad rap from the right, and so I needed to investigate the roots of the belief in order to figure out just who were the standard bearers for Liberalism in the 21st century, and just what was their agenda.

Contrary to what you haven’t read here, I didn’t give up on this. As it turns out, while I’ve gotten a pretty good education on American Liberalism and how its different from classical / worldwide liberalism, I haven’t found any real sign that it exists in America today.

So, my conclusion is that American Liberalism is dead. Of course, so is American Conservatism. There are no groups that either understand or support these movements today. Certainly, we have Democrats and Republicans, but it would be naive in the extreme to say that the Democrats are Liberal and the Republicans are Conservative. Because that’s not true.

10/7/2005 8:37:20 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

How can so many people miss the point?

There’s been a lot of buzz today about Bill Bennett’s Freakanomics quote / comment regarding raising the abortion rate among african americans to reduce the crime rate (for the record, he calls this “morally reprehensible”). Everyone (both right and left) are focusing on whether or not he was advocating african american abortions as a crime prevention tool.

To me, the real point is that he assumes (himself, not Freakanomics, not anyone else) that “poor equals black”. I just read a transcript of Mr Bennett’s radio show, where the statement was made, and he is the one that jumps from “poor person” to “black person”. Just how is this not a racist comment? Again, for the record, Steven Levitt, one of the authors of Freakanomics, says in his blog, that once economic factors are levelled, there is virtually no difference in crime rates between white people and black people.

Maybe I’m missing the point.

But, I don’t think so …

 

9/30/2005 2:20:28 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Boo (not a Haloween post)

For those interested in dynamic languages, or maybe just .NET programming languages, Scott Hanselman’s talking about Boo, a Python-like .NET language. I’m wondering if there’s some traction there…

 

9/30/2005 11:48:03 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  development

I Saw Commander In Chief

I watched Commander in Chief a couple of days ago, and (since I’m reading a review via Instapundit) I figured it was time to post my two cents.

First of all, I think that making the protagonist an independent is incredibly stupid. The premise is that the President selected Macenzie Allen, and independent (sheesh), to shore up his position with women. This completely ignores the fact that there are tons of female politicians actually in the Republican party. Contrary to what the great unwashed of Hollywood might think, the party must approve his selection of a Vice Presidential nominee. And there’s no way that a real independent is going to get the nod from either party. They could fix this in future scripts. It could turn out that she’s really an “independent” Republican rather than an Independent (as in no party affiliation). Frankly, I think it makes a much better story, because then the President has to balance party needs against her own values rather than just thumbing her nose at everybody.

That being said, there really hasn’t been any “screaming Liberalism” in the show (so far). And Geena Davis has been very “Presidential” in her demeanor in the first episode. Much more so than (groan) Jimmy Smitts on the West Wing (but that’s a different rant). Also the concentration on how Mac’s presidency affects her family brings something new to the screen, especially how her husband is dealing with being the (I don’t know what? First Gentleman? First Husband? What do you call the guy? Unneeded appendage?) husband of the President in a role previously held by women in a very traditional role.

All in all, the show definitely deserves another look. It’s not as good as the West Wing was at its prime, but its a heck of a lot better than the show is today (and Alan Alda should be elected over that lightweight, Jimmy Smitts!).

9/30/2005 8:34:39 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV

History Lesson

Yesterday, Michael Barone posted some comments regarding the shuttle program on his blog. He talks about how the shuttle technology is basically ‘70s technology stretched out to the 21st century, and how Gregg Easterbook wrote about this in 1980.

All I have to say is “bravo”. I’m old enough to remember the inception of the shuttle program (heck, I remember the first moonwalk). Even back then, the whole tile thing was considered faulty, but the US was tight on money and we went ahead and did it anyway. The cover blurb for the Washington Monthly issue that included Easterbook’s article exclaims “Beam Us Out of This Deathtrap, Scotty!”.  No one should be surprised about the problems we’ve been having with the shuttle lately. The surprise should be that we haven’t had more trouble over the years. If you listen to the NASA apologists the right way, what’s obvious is that the reason we didn’t see more problems before was that we were ignoring the existing problems (they say that the reason that we “see” more problems now is that we’re looking harder for problems  ).

Inexpensive space flight (relatively speaking) is a laudable goal, but this shouldn’t mean “cheap”.

9/29/2005 11:25:51 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics

Civics PS

Now that I’ve finished reading the article, it brings up an interesting point:

The government's position is strongly supported by the former high officials and ex-diplomats, among others. Their attorneys bluntly declared in a brief: "When treaties are at issue, the states disappear and the President and Senate act, in the words of the Supremacy Clause, with the sole 'Authority of the United States.'"

This would imply that, via the Supremacy Clause, the Federal government has the power to “negotiate away” any of our guaranteed rights. Sounds pretty un-American to me…

9/29/2005 9:20:49 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

A Civics conundrum

An article on SCOTUSBLOG raised an interesting question in my mind, probably core to the issue they’re talking about:

According to the Constitution, the Federal government, through the Executive branch, has the sole power to negotiate treaties. However, the power of the Federal government is limited, and there’s a whole slew of powers that are left to the states and to the people.

What happens if the Federal government signs a treaty that agrees to something for which they have no power to enforce? Who wins?

The short answer, I guess, is this is why we have a Supreme Court. The long (and decisive) answer, I expect, will be forthcoming from them when they hear the case.

As an aside, its official: John Roberts is the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hooray!

9/29/2005 9:13:12 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  politics | world affairs

Welcome Back!
Welcome back, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy! Lately, I’ve only been writing about the new shows on TV (at least as far as TV-themed postings go), but both of these shows were fabulous last night, better than anything new that’s been premiered so far. Who says that there’s nothing “good” on TV?
9/26/2005 8:42:04 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)      Comments [0]  TV