NorbiznessThe Left:

After tabulating my hunches, it looks like the 1997-1998 season (#9) is a prime candidate for the first season where the bad significantly outweighed the good. The first three episodes are the Homer in New York, the two Principal Skinners, the screedy “Homer gets a gun” episode, Homer coaching the pee-wee football team (featuring a crossover with the new King of the Hill show)… all terrible. However, this isn’t when Mike Scully took over for Conan O’Brien, a popular theory among people even geekier than I… according to this interview, he started in Season #5 (1993-1994).

This will, no doubt, hearten those of us who feel exactly as Norbizness does, especially in relation to the deplorable 4F19. Read comments for other suggestions, none of which I can really disagree with (except anyone who says that any episode after season 8 was any good; they’re lying sacks of crap smoking high-quality dope).

I probably take the Simpsons too seriously. Probably.

While taxiing around CYVR yesterday afternoon, I happened to see a bunch of JetsGo Fokker F-100s sitting on a faraway corner of the ramp, engines and windshields covered. It seemed sad to see these planes mothballed, the way the boneyard at Davis-Montham seems kind of sad, and a little unfair that the airline biz is so harsh, but then I remembered something I read in the March 14 edition of AvWeb’s newswire:

Jetsgo said its business is no longer viable because it is deeply in debt and its airfares are well below cost. The company blamed intense competition from other carriers, especially WestJet, for its financial woes. Clive Beddoe, CEO of WestJet, told reporters he was not surprised to see Jetsgo fail, because Jetsgo owner Michel Leblanc had told him he would undercut every fare WestJet had until he filled his airplanes.

It’s probably worth noting that JetsGo was Leblanc’s seventh airline.

“Well, I hate to say that that’s not a very good business model that works,” Beddoe said.

Beddoe should be given some kind of award for tact and understatement.

“99% of journalists, and the public at large, think that science is
just one rather boring topic for “Crossfire”-style argumentation,
where there’s one side screaming one set of lies and the other side
screaming another and everyone hates America and/or babies and now
here’s some ads for Matt Damon movies and dick pills. Admittedly, you
have to be a howling retard with all the intellectual curiosity God
gave a Sea Monkey to think this way, but let me introduce you to your
fellow human beings.” —The Poor Man

The application of this point to “discussions” about Terri Schiavo is left as an exercise to the reader.

Hey, remember this?

Remember the browser war between Netscape and Microsoft? Well forget it. The Web browser itself is about to croak. And good riddance. In its place … broader and deeper new interfaces for electronic media are being born. BackWeb and PointCast, propelled by hot young Silicon Valley start-ups. Constellation and Active Desktop, spawned in the engineering labs of the browser kings. And from the content companies, prototypes powered by underlying new technologies – Castanet, ActiveX, and Java.

What they share are ways to move seamlessly between media you steer (interactive) and media that steer you (passive). They promote media that merrily slip across channels, guiding human attention as it skips from desktop screen to phonetop screen to a car windshield. These new interfaces work with existing media, such as TV, yet they also work on hyperlinked text. But most important, they work on the emerging universe of networked media that are spreading across the telecosm.

Use this moment to stop laughing hysterically. Seriously. They said this with a straight face, once upon a time. People thought this was a good idea.

I couldn’t tell you what Castanet was, nor do I care enough to spend the five seconds with Google to look it up. ActiveX has mostly become a security hole, and Java.. well, what can I say about Java that hasn’t been said elsewhere before? Java on the client side will still, in 2005, run a reasonable chance of crashing at least the VM if not the entire browser session; Java on the server side will, in 2005, kinda sorta work, assuming you make it live inside something like Oracle (where it might only crash an instance of the database manager, if you’re lucky).

I think it’s instructive that most of the really bad ideas from the 1990s — push technology, crappy VoD services, entry portals on Web pages — essentially revolved around the idea that you could get a user to allow you to lead him around by the nose. When that turned out not to be true, business models and assumptions that were thought to be manifestly correct ended up being more or less incorrect. That makes me happy, though I’m not sure I could tell you why. It’s also instructive when you realize how fully out of touch those Wired guys really once upon a time, and it makes you kinda wonder why you ever listened to them in the first place.

My transformation into one of the k00l k1dz of the 1nternet continues apace: I signed up for a Gmail account tonight. In my defense, my longstanding ISP of choice is making noise like they want to get rid of my favorite e-mail client (accessed via shell, of course) and I’m not sure they understand that I want them to replace elm and its antiquated mailbox format with mutt and its much nicer maildir mailbox format. Well, let’s be honest: I don’t really care about mailbox format, but they do; elm doesn’t do what they want it to, so they want to get rid of it, and if they’re going to keep me as a customer, I need to have shell access. Which more or less means mutt.

Yes, I know about the Gmail and privacy issues. I know how much webmail sucks. I know all of these things, and then some. But at the time it seemed like a reasonable thing to do, and it seemed like something sensible, and I always have the option of not using it, and… now I have it, and that’s the end of the discussion. So in addition to my half-dozen other e-mail addresses, I’m now also dochazmat@ (you know the rest; if you don’t know the rest, chances are I don’t want to talk to you, because you strike me as a clueless person).

As for why I don’t POP my mail over and keep it locally… well, I have more important/useful things to do with my time than fight with one of: sendmail/qmail/exim/MTA-of-doom. Trust me on this; I don’t get paid to do that crap anymore, and even if I did, I think I’d still outsource the mail management to someone else, because… it’s a real pain in the ass.

Incidentally, I think this is a hilariously useful (and very generous) service. If you’ve got some spare invites kicking around, or you’re looking for one of your own, why not drop in and say hello?

… in Soviet Russia, drink finished you. (Apologies to suppressingfire for stealing his joke, but it was just so damn funny..)

Okay, let’s go over the ground rules.
You can’t leave first until you chug a beer.
Any man scoring has to chug a beer.
You have to chug a beer at the top of all odd-numbered innings.
Oh, and the fourth inning is the beer inning.

I’ve been thinking about 8F13 lately because there’s been some discussion of setting up a softball tournament in the semi-near future, and it would be really nice if it were to be played according to Springfield rules. But in re-watching 8F13, it occurred to me that it’s perhaps my favorite piece of baseball popular culture ever. Sure, every baseball movie ever made has its defenders: My father gets all weepy at The Natural, I’m quite fond of the dialogue and the feel of Bull Durham, and you can even find fans of silly movies like It Happens Every Spring (like, say, me). The best baseball movie, for my money, is one that hilariously few people have ever seen, probably because it ran on HBO and nowhere else — 61*.

But how I love 8F13! It’s truly a thing of beauty, and I smile every time it comes up in syndication because I know it (like so many other Simpsons episodes) so well. And because it was so clearly a product of the writers’ love of baseball, and takes such joy in the game, and the things that are glorious about the game (the personalities, for the most part). And the players — how good were they when they were recruited to play on Mr. Burns’ team?

(Sadly, I’m reduced to using the triple crown stats and stupid countings, because Baseball Reference doesn’t feature EqA or other more useful metrics.)

1B Don Mattingly was a Yankee in 1992 (and in every other year of his career). He hit .288/.327/.416/, 184 H, 86 RBI, 14 HR.

2B Steve Sax spent 1992 with the Chicago White Sox, putting up a season line of .236/.290/.317 in 567 AB. 134 H, 47 RBI, 4 HR.

3B Wade Boggs was lured away from the Red Sox in a season where he hit .259/.353/.358 in 514 AB with 133 H, 50 RBI, and 7 HR.

SS Ozzie Smith played for St. Louis that year (duh), putting up a .295/.367/.342 line in 518 AB, good for 153 H and 31 RBI. Don’t ask about his home runs in 1992, or any other year for that matter.

LF Jose Canseco was traded halfway through 1992, splitting time between Oakland and Texas; his season line was .244/.344/.456 with 107 H, 26 HR, and 87 RBI. There’s no word in the official history of the nuclear plant team whether Jose injected the other players with steroids (though I can’t imagine the nerve tonic did anyone any good).

CF Ken Griffey, Jr. was, of course, playing for Seattle in 1992 and having an excellent year. .308/.361/.535. I look at that SLG and just gape — Griffey’s been injured so much lately, I tend to forget what an amazing ballplayer he was at his peak, and mourn what could have been. Should have been. 174 H, 27 HR, 103 RBI.

Our nemesis in RF, Darryl Strawberry, had a short season in 1992, playing for the Dodgers. In spite of his nine home run performance, which does not show up in official histories, Strawberry put up at .237/.322/.385 line; 37 H and 5 HR, with 25 RBI.

I’m still kind of amazed that Mike Scioscia was tapped to be Burns’ starting catcher. In what would be his final season as a player, he put up a .221/.286/.282 line with 77 H, 24 RBI, 3 HR. I think his career as a manager is more distinguished than his career as a catcher.

And then there’s Roger Clemens. In 1992, pitching for Boston, he put up an 18-11 record with a 2.41 ERA in 246.7 IP and striking out 208. Clemens and Griffey are the only two players still actually playing baseball — Griffey is unquestionably worse, but Clemens.. might actually have been better in 2004 than he was in 1992.

So what would a contemporary Burns team look like today? You could debate this at lengths, but if I were Burns and out to beat Ari, I’d say..

1B Albert Pujols
2B Mark Loretta
3B Adrian Beltre
SS Alex Rodriguez
LF Barry Bonds
CF Carlos Beltran
RF Ichiro!
C Ivan Rodriguez
DH Edgar Martinez
RHP Randy Johnson

I pick Edgar not because 2004 was a great season for him, but because.. damnit, it’s Edgar. And we love him. I note that the other Mariners on this team are not there solely because they’re Mariners, but because they actually are the best at their position in the league right now. Which is kind of a neat feeling, knowing we’ve got a killer RF and a kick-ass 3B.

26 days to opening day.

It was pointed out to me in e-mail that I came awfully close to sounding like a warblogger there in my last post. This was entirely accidental. I would like to state for the record that I do not in any way, shape, or form endorse that kind of language use. Moreover, I would like to publicly decry the tendency of contemporary discussions to devolve into something resembling the expository passages of a bad Tom Clancy novel with the requisite use of indecipherable acronyms and annoying jargon. RAMCC! AMRAAM! CENTCOM! Ick.

Sorry for the confusion. I think I was just amused at the discovery of a highly useful tool for aviation nerds who are too cheap to buy the civilian versions from the FAA or Jepp (that would be, uh, me).

I’m not sure why I’m surprised by this, but it turns out the Department of Defense’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has a collection of terminal instrument procedures for Baghdad International, among other airfields in that part of the world. A surprisingly large number of these airports have TACAN approaches — TACAN being a particularly military type of navigational aid (and a temporary one, at that). “The security situation,” DoD says, “is such that the only radio navigational aid in Iraq that has been flight inspected for civil use is the Baghdad VOR. All current radio navigational aids are temporary military assets.” The moral is, apparently, “get a GPS and hope your airport of choice has a published GPS approach.” Or, alternatively, “don’t fly in Iraq. Still.”

If you poke around the site for a little while, you get a little disappointed at how, uh, blandly repetitive some of the documents are. The planning file for Iraq, for instance, does not contain any information labeled “DANGER: DO NOT FLY HERE UNDER PENALTY OF AMRAAM,” nor does it say “LANDINGS AT THIS AIRPORT AT OWN RISK” or even “YOU MUST HAVE PERMISSION FROM CENTCOM OR SOMEBODY SPECIAL TO FLY HERE.” Instead, the most prohibitive it gets is a warning that you can’t fly VFR in Iraq if you’re not military; you have to file and fly IFR if you’re going to be operating commercial or civil (!) aircraft in the country. Somehow, I doubt Iraq’s GA lobby is going to be too bent out of shape over this. (Does Iraq even have a general aviation constituency?)

To get that kind of warning, you have to visit the Regional Air Movement Coordination Center that deals with the airspace in and around both Afghanistan and Iraq. And there, they come right out and tell you: “All operators are warned that there are ongoing military operations in Iraq and non-military flight operations could be at significant risk. There are continuing reports of indiscriminate missile and small arms attacks on aircraft operating in Iraq. Operators undertake flights within the BAGHDAD FIR at their own risk.” The RAMCC publishes their own airspace information guide, which is a 229-page guide that is at once ridiculously dull and hilariously frightening. I think the funniest thing you’ll find in the guide is a requirement to sign and file a waiver form before operating aircraft in Iraq, forever releasing a whole host of agencies of liability should one of Moqtada’s boys shove a SAM up your exhaust pipe. It’s kind of interesting, actually, that the RAMCC exists at all — DoD came up with the idea during that whole Balkan thing to coordinate aircraft movement in a small area, and then to provide interm guidance and stability while the involved countries rebuilt their air navigation capabilities. ATS might seem like a fairly trivial kind of infrastructure, but it’s still important, and one that no one seems to think about.

(Also, I learned that Iraq’s aviation authority is called the General Establishment of Civil Aviation. How cool izzat? Great name, guys.)

Also of note — unrelated to this, but still fun to read — is the official participants guide for the US Antarctic Program, most of which will be redundant if you’ve spent any sort of quality time over at Big Dead Place.

Back when the world was young and the Internet still held lots of promise, and I was still stupid enough to read Wired (this would have been about 1994 or so, for those of you keeping track of these things), I stumbled on a Backlash column that said, basically, the information superhighway (gag me with a fork) was a big fat joke:

All the headlines about the digital, interactive, 500-channel, multi-megamedia blow-your-socks-off future are pure hype. Yes, all the wild Wall Street, through-the-roof, Crazy Eddie, cornucopia, shout-it-out-loud promo jobs are pure greed. It’s all a joke.

It’s now official. I’m announcing the beginning of convergence backlash. There will be no convergence. There will be no 500-channel future. There will be no US$3 trillion mother of all industries. There will be no virtual sex. There will be no infobahn. None of it – at least not the way you’ve been reading about it.

Sure the technologies are real. Digital compression and digi-tal phone lines are real. Those 100-MIPS micros are real. Multimedia and high-speed networks are real. In fact, the technology is so real that it’s almost obvious. Unfortunately, the businesses to exploit these technologies are anything but obvious.

The item itself is more about the topological and technological realities of cable vs. POTS as a method of driving bandwidth into the home, and it was more or less accurate in 1994. What’s weird is that it’s still accurate today — Telus still isn’t in the business of providing video on demand, and Shaw isn’t really in the business of providing dial tone (notwithstanding recent forays into that particular biz-ness^*). While both are manifestly in the business of providing ridiculously cheap loss-leading consumer-grade bandwidth, the convergence we all expected to happen hasn’t happened yet. And it’s a decade later! Moreover, there’s no sign it’s going to happen anytime soon; I think most people have figured that out. Every time I hear someone talk about VoD or streaming HDTV or whatever delivered over broadband, and about how the technology to make this work is “just around the corner,” I think to myself: It was just around the corner in 1994, in 1997, in 2001…

(We did up with the 200+ channel universe, but what no one had predicted was that most of those 200 channels would suck. Hard.)

Apparently, “turning the corner” means the same thing for fans of convergence as it does for fans of questionable foreign policy adventures. And you plan to have that insurgency under control when, precisely? Right around the time the OC-192 lands on my doorstep, and doesn’t cost more than $80/month. Got it. I’ll get right on holding my breath. And really, how reliable is your Internet connection? Mine’s pretty good, but I freely admit that while Shaw periodically goes down on me (on average, once or twice a month that I notice, for fairly long periods (like, more than 2 hours)), I’ve yet to pick up my phone and not get a dial tone^**. Ever. I mean, in my entire life. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, because I know it does, but really, when was the last time your landline phone didn’t work?

Nothing ever really changes. And it seems like we’re doomed to repeat the last decade over and over again. Remember the Communications Decency Act, and the other unconstitutional legislative piles of crud that were foisted onna Innernet by Congress and well-meaning politicians pandering to a paranoid and hysterical electorate? Guess what! It’s back:

The Utah governor is deciding whether to sign a bill that would require Internet providers to block Web sites deemed pornographic and that could also target e-mail providers and search engines.

Late Wednesday night, the Utah Senate approved controversial legislation that would create an official list of Web sites with publicly available material found to be “harmful to minors.” Internet providers in Utah must offer their customers a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges.

No word on whether “unplug your cable” counts as an approved method of blocking sites deemed pornographic. There’s also no word on whether this is Yet Another Opening Battle in the Looming War on Obscenity, now prosecuted by those brilliant guys who brought you the war on terrah. Jesus, my head hurts.

How can we make 2005 more like 1994? We’ve already got a pundit class announcing the end of something as we know it (back then: broadcasting and telephones; today: journalism). We’ve got scary government regulators lurking provocatively in the shadows, like the Russian army, waiting to pounce and kick the shit out of everyone (back then: porn and privacy; today: porn, privacy, and political speech). We’ve got piles of people crowding onto the network at a seemingly exponential rate (which is confusing, because you’d think we’d eventually run out of morons), each of them convinced they’re doing something revolutionary and dramatic and life-changing. What else do we need to turn back the clock and really re-live Internet hype once more? Oh! Oh! I know! Let’s fight the crypto wars all over again! It’ll be so retro, and cool, and we can all feel like a persecuted minority once more, and shout “cyber rights NOW!” like it means something, and.. oh, never mind. I don’t have the energy^***.

And here I was, naive enough to think that we’d reached the point where the network might just be a tool, no more, no less. Bah.

* I freely admit to being intrigued by this service and would like to know more about it, assuming they ever get it out of Calgary. Unlimited long distance and my phone system for $55/month on top of my existing cable bills? w00t, baby, w00t.

** Assuming, of course, that I’ve paid my bill.

*** My tentative list of names for the blog that will inevitably follow Under a Blackened Sky: “Wanker With a Weblog,” “Digital Curmudgeon,” and “Get the Fuck Offa My Network, You Arriviste Punks.”