I think the idea is to regulate places where the fraudsters, bluffers, and snake-oil salesman might resurface when their old haunting grounds are regulated. The current size of a sector doesn't rule it out. Venture capital seems pretty simple (invest in a company, make money if it succeeds) but mortgage lending is pretty simple, too (lend to a homebuyer, make money if he pays you back). If mortgage lending can be complexified until blatant frauds and wishful thinking can hide behind the sophistication, then perhaps venture capital could be turned into the next hot source of unlimited, guaranteed, completely illusory returns. And it would have plenty of political protection: it could cloak itself in the American dream of entrepreneurship like mortgage-backed abominations cloaked themselves in the American dream of home ownership.

That's not to say I think VCs should be regulated like hedge funds; in fact, I don't. I just wanted to explain why someone in DC, looking back at the mortgage mess and trying to imagine where the fatal combination of complexity, wishful thinking and fraud will come from, might think it's a good idea to regulate venture capitalists.

Marriage? How about dating? Sometimes you buy her dinner, sometimes you get laid. If one stops happening, the other stops too.

This quote really cracks me up, though:

If he had never previously recognized these patterns in humans, it's a safe bet he hasn't been putting them into practice. The poor guy must be really devoted to his research. Or his chimps.

Sheesh, time for me to quit for the day.

Yeah, people are quick to push back when the customer asks for something impossible or boring, but not when the customer requests something that is so FUN to geek out about. The fans will go first! Virtualization is the answer! SSDs, so much to argue about there! All so true, all so premature. It's true that the question says, "How do I provide a workstation that lasts 15 years?" but from a customer's point of view, a "workstation" is a working system they can use. You don't use hardware without software, so you can't talk about a workstation lasting 15 years until you know what kind of software you'll be running in 15 years. His father is NOT just asking for hardware that will last that long, or if he is, his question is based on incorrect assumptions that his son needs to discuss with him.

His father owns a share of the practice, or maybe the entire practice, and will sell his share to another veterinarian when he retires. Even if he has no sentimental attachment, he has an interesting in ensuring the future of the practice so he can get a good price for his share.

Veterinary software will be way ahead of medical software when it comes to online access, because vets don't have to worry about medical privacy regulations. A web presence for a veterinary practice just has to be a nice secure site. Soon enough a company that develops veterinary billing and management software will hire a summer intern to add a simple customer-facing web interface, and from there it will be simple to add interfaces for more and more functionality until the entire thing is web-based and can be hosted off-site. Frankly, if I was developing veterinary office software, I would be doing that right now, just so I could offer a cheaper and easier solution. (No need to do backups, no stress or hassle when PCs fail, cheaper training for new hires who have never seen any program other than a web browser, etc.) Sounds like a perfect product for cheapskates.

I'm sure he will be pleased to learn that by replacing all of his software, migrating all his client data from a legacy system to a radically different web application, and retraining all his staff, he can avoid spending a couple hundred bucks on new hardware.

No, this guy would not be thinking about such small change if he knew what was coming. Unless somebody develops specific migration support from the old DOS (!) software he's using to a modern application with web support, software upgrades and migration will cost him tens of thousands of dollars of his own time and his employees' time, plus thousands in software and support.

I bet the fear comes from the software side, not the hardware side. How easy is it to install the software? Does he know where the install disk for each piece of software are and whether they still work? How hard was it to get the software configured correctly in the first place? Can the configuration be migrated, or will they have to recreate it using trial and error? Does the database make it easy to migrate data from one database to another, or does that require a proprietary tool from a now-defunct company?

Heh, what are the odds that someone who hasn't experienced a failure in fifteen years even thinks about these issues? Or bothers to back up his data?

Your father might be in for a shock if he thinks he can keep running the same computer system for the next fifteen years. Almost all veterinary clinics have a web presence these days (if only contact info, a map, and some cute photos) so it's a cinch that in five years the bar will be raised to include real online functionality. Make an appointment, see when your dog is due for shots, see how much Poo-Poo weighed at his last checkup -- sounds nice, right? His current customers won't care if he falls behind, but without a steady stream of new customers, his practice will dwindle.

That means he needs to plan on new software. Software upgrades are much more painful and expensive than hardware upgrades, and new small business software has a way of running poorly on five-year-old machines. The next fifteen years will bring painful changes for his clinic's computer systems, much worse than simple hardware upgrades, and he is the one who will have to understand and deal with it. Of course, he might soon have the option of having his data and applications hosted elsewhere, so he might be able to keep the same hardware for the next fifteen years after all, but I don't think that scenario satisfies his current expectations.

Oops, to be fair, I have to add that the Guardian article suffers from the same critical omission. For some reason I thought both links were to the same article until another comment set me straight.

Or, instead of counting, perhaps the chicks maintained a rough mental estimate of how much "parent stuff" was behind each screen. With only five balls, about 20% of the "stuff" moved each time a ball moved, so it's not clear why counting would be necessary to pick the right screen. The interesting thing about counting is that it's discrete and precise, perhaps even symbolic, instead of a rough estimate of continuous quantity. By not explaining how the researchers proved that distinction, the BBC article left out the only thing that makes the experiment interesting. Quite disappointing.

VLC is an extremely sophisticated program for doing video transcoding, etc. It's a testament to the developers that it became known as a good way for regular people to watch videos, despite apparently never being intended for that role. It was never designed for regular use as a video player, and it shows. The UI throws up huge, complex dialogs without provocation -- for instance, when a naive user clicks "Open file" instead of "Quick open file." Despite all the complexity, a bunch of basic conveniences are missing, such as menu items for recently-viewed videos. There's a general lack of polish -- for instance, the progress indicator moves in bigger jumps than it should. The menu layout conforms to no precedent and no user expectations except VLC's own.

There's only one outright bug I know of, but it drives me crazy sometimes: if you want to click on the thingy that indicates where you are in the video and drag it back and forth, you can't just click on it. If you do, the video will jump backwards just as if you clicked on the progress bar to the lift of the indicator. You have to aim a little bit to the right. Usually I aim a couple of pixels to the right of the rightmost edge. That usually works, but sometimes the "sweet spot" is a little to the right or to the left of that spot. Also, while you drag it and right after you let go, the video does a Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Max Headroom shake.

All in all, it's a real testament to the technical quality of VLC that it has become so popular with the UI it has. As far as I can tell, most people know about and use VLC because one day they ran into a video file that only VLC handled properly. (For me it started a long time ago with mp4; now I use it for flv and whenever my other video players screw up a DVD menu system.) If all video players handled all files well, VLC would just be used for its more advanced features like transcoding, not for playback.

Thanks for the links. I'm pretty convinced that I "have" Avoidant Personality Disorder, in the sense that I fit the diagnostic criteria; I'm just not convinced it's a useful fact. However, I found a book in the books section on avoidantpersonality.com (Distancing by Martin Kantor) that makes the case for treating AvPD as a gestalt instead of as a collection of loosely related pathologies. I'll have to read it and see if I'm convinced.

As for therapy, you should research the legal dangers and get a grasp on the facts before using them as a reason to avoid therapy. Therapists see a lot of really screwed up, truly dangerous people. If they bothered getting people like us (avoidant, over thirty, no history of suicide attempts or major violence) committed for evaluation, they'd have to do it for the majority of their clients. That wouldn't be good for business.

But, you know, you are avoidant, and I've even seen non-avoidant people make weird excuses to avoid therapy. A doctor friend of mine claims he is afraid his medical license could be suspended if he entered therapy (despite the fact that he has no issues with violence, drug abuse, or personal integrity) or that he might be subject to investigation by the state licensing board. That doesn't even pass the laugh test -- probably half the doctors in every major city are in therapy, and for psychiatrists doing psychotherapy it's kind of a "best practice" to be in therapy oneself. I explained that to him, yet he still finds it a compelling reason to avoid therapy. So you're not in bad company if you're a little irrational that regard :-)

I know of Avoidant Personality Disorder and know I fit the diagnostic criteria, but aside from reading a few overviews I haven't researched it at all. I may have dismissed it prematurely, but it seemed like an arbitrary category that didn't carry any guidance for understanding or treating the condition. That probably reflects my bias: it seems to me that many psychiatric classifications are intuitive and convenient, but not supported by any theoretical or clinical justification. They're just invented to provide mental and linguistic frames of reference in an area where we can't discern any natural structure.

On the other hand, everything you said in your second paragraph except two things (testing friends' loyalty and making excuses to avoid going places with friends) is true of me, too, so maybe Avoidant Personality Disorder is a distinct disorder and not just an abritrary piece carved out of the pie. I should read more about it. Can you point me to anything?

Speaking of pointing people to places, get thee to a therapist, stat. You'll be glad you did. I got lucky and got a congenial one on the first try, but it's common and completely accepted to shop around a bit. If you have any doubts or questions about this, please ask. We can take the conversation to another channel if you want.

I did the hyphen-ass transform on that and got "like-ass burgers" which McDonald's will make sure you never have to give up.