Excellent statement about basic privacy

From Bill Maher's ongoing "New Rules" bit.  A great summary of why it's still important.

One of the best Mr. Show bits

Some hilarious social commentary from an amazing show back in the 90s that nobody seems to know about.

Pope and US Military agree on something: global warming

That was not expected.

John Oliver's excellent Net Neutrality review

Very well done breakdown and very informative.  Also, nice to see that his show is essentially doing a more in depth Daily Show.

Balance in the media

It's David Mitchell and it's British so I didn't get some of the political references, but I think the message crosses boundaries.

The new lynch mob

This is a terrific example of how a court of law and lawyers is a imperfect but obviously better way to find justice when -- not surprisingly -- social media just can't.  Something to keep in mind if someone ever goes after you in this format.

PowerPoint 2010 trick: large "hook" arrow

I spent SO much time trying to get very long, very thin arrows in PowerPoint to look the way I wanted (more like Visio) and finally found out the gimmick: giving the program real things to connect to.

This may be obvious to everyone else but it took me quite a while to come up with.

Edit: Left off the link, updated.

PowerPoint 2010 trick: file comparison

I know I haven't done anything like this before, but I came up with a quick PowerPoint trick on how to do a comparison between PowerPoint files when PowerPoint's own compare function won't work.  Hopefully someone will benefit from this.

EDIT: Sorry, I thought the file linked.  Updated.

US approaching or already an Oligarchy

After the Citizens United decision followed by the next campaign finance decision, I had started to give up on the idea that the US was a democracy anymore.  The ability to make unlimited campaign contributions effectively dries up any notion of grass roots efforts.  200 people with various agendas giving you $20 is nonsense compared to one person (and one agenda) giving you $100,000.  I just can't see a way around that reality.

Anyway, a depressing study seems to add to this:

The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy." (source)

Slashdot article on this.  What's an Oligarchy?

Flash game: Zombie Defense Agency

Played a great flash game called "Zombie Defense Agency" and took down some notes while playing...


Strategy

• Use flame tower in areas with lots of area to cover.  The zombies move faster as a result of the flame so this can be counterproductive if
• Going up in levels is great for increasing tower range and density of damage.  So if you come across a level with very little room, the answer isn't more towers, it's better ones.  I used level 4 towers up until _.
• Zombies already on the map don't react to the "make an opening - close an opening" strategy (destroy a tower and then bring it back to block off access as they approach).  However, zombies NOT on the screen WILL do this.
• Furthermore, in later levels, the sort of "turtle" looking monsters are able to smash through a new tower.  So definitely don't try this mid-process.
• When upgrading, don't upgrade a tower past it's useful range.

I can't tell the difference between a level 4 shotgun tower and a lightning tower.  I guess some zombies are resistant to the electricity?  Their stats are the same but the shotgun tower costs 4x more.
The Heat Wave tower is also an area-of-effect tower.


Fairly obvious suggestions

• Its always best to have a range of towers for a range of different enemies.
• Setup "slow" towers apart from one another at places along the route as the slowing effect wears off.  I couldn't see any compounding effect from slow towers near each other.
• The basic $50 towers are mostly just walls.  However, they aren't bad in terms of range so if one ends up in the middle of the map, feel free to upgrade it rather than sell.
• If you keep hitting "next" the zombies will group up.  This is fine but you'll want the grenade tower for area-of-effect damage and you'll also want to quickly upgrade towers as zombies pass by.

Almost all tower defense games

• Put short range towers in corners, ideally so that the zombies have to walk ALL the way around them, thus maximizing power-to-area ratio.
• Always use natural obstacles to your advantage to increase the distance the zombies have to travel.  The only exception to this is healing targets, for which this might be counterproductive.  I think in this game they're the all-black zombies.
• Setup towers where they can group up nicely.  This helps use all your towers as much as possible while enemies are in proximity.  This is often the center of the screen, but if there isn't a clear center, just pick a good open area to create a choke point.
• Sniper towers (slow shooting, high range, high damage) should be posted in the middle of a larger maze area to get the maximum number of shots fired against enemies.  Try to set these up towards the exit to let other towers filter down to the big enemies.  In this game, that tower is called the photon beam.

Wishlist

• More levels!
• Sometimes I can't seem to click "off " a tower after selecting
• Ability to turn off music, but keep other sounds
• Some kind of note that one of the levels has a very different physic than previous games (zombies cross paths.  Same with the following level.  You can't block either path.
• Ability to change Flash quality level (it's set to high quality by default and there's no way to change for slower machines or if you want to save power for  process running in the background.
• When hovering mouse over "upgrade" it should list what will happen IF you click it and then go back to the actual value when not hovering.
• Call it "leveling up" when you get options for new towers, upgraded towers, or better starting cash.  It's confusing.
• On the score screen, some note next to score describing how many zombies were stopped vs. destroyed

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

It's an inadequate obituary, but as good as any.  At least two of his performances affected me in a very personal and direct way.

Abusive Job Interviews

These things exist and they're complete nonsense.  It wasn't yelling as in the article, but I'm happy to now report on the clowns (Qvinci) who "interviewed" me.  I even had the opportunity to work with these guys years later and turned it down because of the sort of ugly, cannibalizing corporate culture I had already seen.

If it happens to you, just walk away.  Remember the No Assholes Rule.

A better left vs. right

An excellent conversation on American conservatism and liberalism with Jon Stewart and Charles Krauthammer.

Addressing the war on the poor

The "war on" headline isn't just provocative, they're the words of a GOP governor from Ohio in a refreshing appearance of Republican centrism.  I saw a resurgence of this during the Bush Jr. administration where Republicans were increasingly talking about helping the poor as part of their religious beliefs (usually Christian), but largely this has faded with the push by Tea Party conservatism.  It's nice to see again.  Thank you, Mr. Kasich.