Veronica Mars is coming back

Damn. How did I miss this? A KickStarter project raised more than five million dollars to bring back Veronica Mars and all her friends in a feature film.

Can't wait.

Is it just me, or is KickStarter one of the biggest new things on the internet since eBay?

How to Defend Against Zombies

I've been thinking about how a small community, such as the one seen in season 3 of The Walking Dead, should defend itself against the zombie threat. It's not a simple problem; in the film 28 Weeks Later, we see a well-equipped defense plan fail catastrophically.

To begin with, I think it is foolish to rely on any one mechanism. Any system can fail; we aren't omniscient. It is therefore important to have defense in depth -- multiple levels of (quite different) protection, so no one system has to work perfectly.

What I have in mind are four increasingly fine-grained levels of defense.

At the top is a town guard, responsible for protecting the entire community. They are organized full-timers responsible for securing the perimeter. They set up barriers; they patrol the surrounding area; they stand guard. They also make sure that anyone entering isn't likely to be infected. And finally, they have a well-protected command center that can communicate with other defense elements and coordinate a response if things go badly wrong.

The next level down is something like a very hard-core neighborhood watch, responsible for protecting smaller areas. Their mission is containing the problem if it is already inside the town and mounting an organized response. They might have alarm systems, barriers that can be moved into place to seal off the neighborhood, and specific plans for an armed response if the infected are already inside. They also have a means of communicating with the command center mentioned above, probably using handheld radios.

The third level of defense is at the household level. The goal here is to ensure that for most people, getting indoors and securing the entrances is realistically effective. That way, non-combatants can get out of the way, to safety. Most people would be highly motivated to do this, but many would benefit from at least some advice and some might need actual assistance. (This would not be optional, since a poorly-protected household is a potential source of more walkers, and as such is a danger to others.)

Finally, at the most fine-grained level, would be individual defense. It would be enormously useful if most people were not simply easy meat for the walkers, but could offer credible resistance at least one-on-one. To that end, make sure that all able-bodied adults have basic training in how to fight a walker, and encourage them to keep a weapon (a club or hatchet, say) handy.

Together, these four telescoping levels of protection keep out the walkers if possible, and enable the community to resist tenaciously if they have already gotten in.

Stop Talking About Resources

Once of the nastier terms in current management jargon is the word resources. It means people, in the sense of workers, employees, or staff. If a manager is talking to his director about the project being late because he doesn't have enough workers to do everything that needs doing, he might complain about not having enough resources to do the job.

This usage has two problems. First, resources is a very broad word. It could refer to time, equipment, raw materials, expertise, or labour. The reader or listener has to infer which of these is the actual problem. Second, resources is often used in the sense of natural resources, such as forests, minerals, fresh water, and hydroelectric potential. All of these are inanimate -- they are things -- which means that talking about people as resources is talking about them as though they were just plain stuff, like dirt on the ground. This is the very essence of dehumanization, which is a very bad thing indeed.

So, what to do? Avoid the word resources when talking about people. Say what you really need. Do you need more engineers? Librarians? Bricklayers? Be as specific as possible. If you absolutely must be more general than that, say you need people. And if you are so high up that it all fades into a general get-things-done-ness, say you need money.

My Work Daydream

1. Learn all kinds of old computing technology: OS/360, IMS, CICS, RPG-III, JCL, Cobol, PL/I; all the old stuff no one has picked up a text-book for in thirty years.
2. Set myself up as a consultant in old tech.
3. Charge slowpoke companies that couldn't be bothered to upgrade their aging systems every bloody penny the market will bear.

It might not be fun. The iOS punks would snark something fierce. But I'd flip them the bird from my Lamborghini.

No, scratch that. I'd have my manservant do it.

Borealis

Here's something interesting.

Borealis could have been a Canadian TV series about a barkeep/customs-official/MMA-fighter (yeah, really!) trying to keep things on the level in a small town in the Arctic after the ice has melted and a half-dozen nations are in a mad scramble for resources in the newly opened Arctic Ocean.

A pilot for the series was produced, but at the last minute the network decided not to go ahead with the series, so the pilot is all we have. But it's very watchable even on its own. Have a look.

Here's the link.

Rhodesia 1976

Here's a fascinating historical document, a 1976 news report from Rhodesia. For those who don't know, Rhodesia was a part of the British colonial possessions in Africa until the local government declared unilateral independence in 1965 rather than submit to the UK's terms of departure, which required one-man-one-vote, which would have put the a black government in power. Rhodesia was isolated politically, and fought a long guerrilla war against black nationalists backed by the Soviet Union and China, until final surrender in 1979. Rhodesia then became Zimbabwe.

Things did not go well for Zimbabwe; Robert Mugabe eventually turned flat-out tyrant, and the country is now one of the poorest in the world.

I can't quite read the reporters' accents, but one of the interviews mentions Australia, so I think that's where the report is from.

How it should work

-- Hello, I'm having a problem with my internet connection.
-- OK, try clicking on the up-and-down arrows in your browser to refresh your page.
-- Yeah, I'm not in IE and I already tried that half an hour ago. According to the modem diagnostics...
-- If that doesn't work, click on the X in the top right corner of the window...
-- ... Yeah, I already restarted fifteen minutes ago. Look, I think...
-- The next step is to restart your computer. Go to the bottom left corner...
-- I am a professional engineer and formally request exemption from elementary assistance.
-- ...
-- ...
-- Authenticate now.
-- So, when the buckled girder lets down the grinding span,
   'The blame of loss, or murder, is laid upon the man.
-- ...
-- ...
-- Pass phrase accepted. What distro are you running, and what is Wireshark telling you?

In the beginning was the command line

"What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own."
-- Neal Stephenson, "In the Beginning was the Command Line"

Interesting Problems

Why can't I have interesting problems like this?

Basically what happened yesterday is i drank an entire bottle of whiskey, stabbed myself in the hand (not my drawing hand), had some kind of delirious breakdown in the hospital, got stitched up and sent back home.
Today I go to see the hand surgeon about my hand and a therapist about my emotions.

I think this is where I'm supposed to make an ironic comment about artistic types. Or maybe pseudo-ironic; it's hard to keep track.

Canada: all about the hockey

The Wikipedia entry on Ice Hockey has some interesting stats about the popularity of hockey in various countries. (Follow the link and scroll down to "Number of Registered Players by Country.") Canada is first with 572,411, the US is second with 500,579, and then there's a whole lot of nothing until we come to the Czech Republic at 100,668. Canada is also first in the portion of the population that plays the game.

I had not realized Canada was quite so dominant. But still, it's kind of depressing that the US can almost match us in their fourth-most popular sport.