My son was entering middle school, and we asked him what kind of a girlfriend he thought he'd have. And I swear to god this is what he said: "Of course nobody wants an ugly girlfriend, but it's more important for a girl to be smart than beautiful. It'd be better to go out with an ordinary looking girl that you like than a beautiful idiot."

Of course, that was back when he was 12, before the hormones really kicked in.

Having bean a lead developer in a company that was an Oracle reseller (pretty much a necessity in some markets), your characterization of Oracle is partly wrong; the part that isn't wrong is a gross oversimplification.

I've visited some of the places where Oracle's developers work, and as you might expect I am (or rather *was*) pretty familiar with their product. Trust me, they pour an almost unthinkable amount of money into developing unique and useful technology. As you might suspect they don't do it out of the goodness of their heart; they don't even do it out of pride in the product. They do it in order to encourage large, institutional customers to make their systems dependent on features they can only get from Oracle.

There's good and bad aspects to this lock-in strategy. Some of the things Oracle simply does better than anyone else, such as transaction isolation (in an ACID environment). When you develop and test on Oracle, you can pretty much proceed like the user has exclusive access to the database -- no worrying about things like dirty reads or the like (although the DBA had better make sure he's allocated enough rollback segments). It's nice, but not critical; but it also makes switching to a different RDBMS inconvenient. Oracle has gone farther down this path than you probably ever imagined, right up to creating something they call "virtual private databases" -- super-long duration wrapping transactions that persist across database connections and function something like a fork in a source control system. I've known *very* large data acquisition and management operations (e.g. a commercial vendor of worldwide street data for GIS) that depend on capabilities they can *only* get from Oracle.

There are some things about Oracle I really like, like their transaction log management tools, which make it easy to find a past set of changes to your data and undo them with a wave of your magic wand, as if they never happened. For me that's a killer feature. On the other hand they've also done sleazy, bottom-feeder things to lock clients in, like making the way their JDBC drivers handle BLOBs incompatible with everyone else. They may have fixed that, but I don't think it was accidental this annoying incompatibility persisted so long.

I've also visited Oracle sales offices, and know about how they handle "channel" sales. It's all very numbers driven. Oracle's corporate culture is that they don't care about the customer, once he's good and locked in. Oracle's licensing is very complex, it take days of study to figure out what you're allowed to do with your Oracle installation. If a customer makes a mistake he doesn't get any slack; he's got to pay up fast. On the flip side, if a customer accidentally spends five or ten times what he needs (very easy to do), or if he licenses his installation in a way that won't allow for the growth he needs to plan for (also very easy to do), nobody is going to tell him. He's a sucker, and they've got quarterly targets to meet. It flies in the face of most people's instincts to treat customers this way.

Frankly, I find Oracle's corporate values detestable; but it's possible to work with them. They make sure it's *always* possible to work with them, because they want your money. But *don't* expect your Oracle salesman or reseller to take care of you, to look out for you, to warn you if you are about to make a mistake that's in their favor, or to have pity on you if such a mistake leaves you strapped over a barrel. Oracle's business strategy is *built* upon exploiting locked-in customers. You must approach a relationship with Oracle in a defensive posture -- as indeed you should with any agreement other than free software licenses.

Well, I don't know about engineering simulations, but I've worked with systems that did public health simulations. What laymen *think* a computer model can do is predict the future. And maybe in some cases a model can come close to doing that. But the real value of models is to generate questions and hypotheses for investigation.

The problem with models is that they're only as good as the input data you feed them, and in many cases the data is unknowable or based on assumptions you aren't sure of. And that leads to a practical application of a model. You don't say, "I know that X is true, therefore Y will or will not happen" because you almost certainly don't know everything you'd need to know to make such a positive prediction. Rather, you say, "If you are worried about Y, you'd better check on X."

Tthat Halliburton destroyed the documentation when it knew that documentation was needed for the DWH investigation makes me wonder whether simulation results suggested Transocean (the operators of DWH) ought to be paying attention to certain preventable factors that contributed to the disaster. Even if that didn't let Transocean off the hook, it might change the distribution of damages and fines paid by the responsible parties.

It's not just lawyers. I've tried for years to get my writer friends to use some form of version control, but in vain. One of the great benefits of version control is makes it safe to try radical things with your codebase (e.g. novel or story) because even without branching you can simply recall the state of your work at any point in the past.

I myself used a literate programming tool to generate manuscripts, synopses, excerpts, and even alternate versions, but eventually I gave up because the dominant workflow task in writing, other than sitting down and banging out text, is exchanging manuscripts in MS Word format.

Newsflash: People write major systems in Java that work pretty well. People do mission critical, bet-the-company stuff in Java, and it works. *Your* mileage may vary, but it always does.

This doesn't mean it' the best choice for everything, because *nothing's* the best choice for everything

And it doesn't mean Java doesn't have serious flaws. There's something deeply ingrained in Java that encourages over-engineering. But every language has its pitfalls.

Psst... I live in Massachusetts, where we have had Obamacare since back when it was Romneycare (but after it was Bob Dolecare). The sky has not fallen. Initially there has been some supply pressure as people who were priced out of the market for certain services (adolescent mental health care was a biggy) lined up to get services they could now afford. That's a problem, but not an entirely a bad thing.

People always piss and moan about change, but change was coming in health care, even without Obamacare. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend change wasn't coming, but health care spending as a percent of GDP rose from about 5% of GDP in 1960 to 17.9% of GDP in 2009. That's twice what socialist paradise Sweden pays. Do you think things would remain the same when spending reached 25% of GDP? 30%? Or even remained at 17.9%?

Err... by your argument adding stupid members to a group or deleting smart ones would shift the IQ scale so that the 50th percentile (IQ=100) would move to a new, lower test score.

In any case, everyone understands what the summary actually means. Any given version of test is calibrated with a certain sample at a certain point in time. Over time, if the underlying population's score on the test changes, their IQ *score* as reported by tests calibrated by old sample populations changes as well.

Oh, I'm very used to that style of exposition. I see it all the time in manuscripts I'm critiquing, and I nearly always mark it to be cut.

To be fair, movies are a different medium, and this kind of voice-over background briefing has the advantage that it takes up the minimum possible number of minutes on screen. My point is that it was crude storytelling, but effective given that the audience has come for spectacle with the bare minimum of story needed to hold it together.

The problem with heavy-handed narrative briefings is that they have no entertainment value in themselves. They're just something you have to get through. George Lucas managed to turn that into a "you've got to be kidding" moment in the first (EP IV) Star Wars movie, and it became a franchise signature. It was a deliberately retro touch, a nod to crude but action packed serials of the 30s and 40s. If everyone opened their movies that way, it wouldn't be so charming.

First act exposition is a tough nut to crack in science fiction, though. Pacific Rim's screenwriters made the right choice for that movie, but it's not going to stand out as brilliant writing. It was competent, disciplined writing.

You aren't up to date with what's happened in publishing in the last several years.

Traditional publishers aren't spending what they used to on these things. In marketing in particular, authors are expected to do a lot more of the heavy lifting. Even fiction authors are expected to maintain a "platform" today -- something that you used to need only for non-fiction. I have a friend who published three novels last year, and she spends more time on her blogging and social media marketing than she does writing.

As for fixed costs, I'd estimate story and copy editing costs on a typical 100K word genre novel to be well under five thousand dollars these days. Not much goes into book design either -- except for cover art. And standard contracts don't give any premium to the author for ebooks, which are cheaper to produce and "stock". All this adds up to publishers breaking even on a much smaller number of books than they needed even a few years ago.

And this kind of penny-pinching works. If you read Publisher's Weekly, you'd know 2012 was a banner year for publisher profits. All that stuff you've heard about ebooks paralyzing traditional publishers with fright is hooey. Maybe back in 2007 or 2008, but they've got the angles figured now.

I'll ignore your arrogance for a moment. What I know about the business is what I've gleaned from my author friends, who have had over ten books published in the last two years, one of which made the NY Times best seller list. Your point about linear inches is neither here nor there, since bookstores in the last year or two have been using POD to make much more efficient use of each linear inch. It is possible that *some* bookstores may not have figured this out.

Nothing is difficult to grasp, if you realize publishing is a different ball game than it was even five years ago. To use a baseball analogy, publishes are still hitting home runs with their A listers, but they're paying much more attention to "small ball" with their down list authors.

It's one of those technological ironies. Bookstores can stock more titles than they used to, but they're stocking the same *kind* of titles. That's an unexpected result.

So, are you going to buy a copy of Pacific Rim when it comes out on DVD? Are you going to buy the soundtrack? Are you going to watch it again at least every year or so? Ten years from now are you going to nag your friends who haven't seen it?

"Mediocre" is often used as a nice way of saying bad, but I'm not using it that way. I really mean "mediocre", in the sense of "adequate". You go to a summer blockbuster movie to be entertained, and if you are entertained, then it is at least mediocre.

As for nostalgia, that doesn't apply here. As I said I've been going back and reading the classics *critically*, and finding numerous craft problems in them. I can tell you a lot of things that are technically wrong with the writing in Lord of the Rings, a book that I love and have re-read every year or two for the last thirty years. My point is that greatness and not making mistakes are two different things.

As for Forbidden Planet, this makes my point. In production values and special effects it can't hold a candle to Pacific Rim, a movie which spares no expense and uses cutting edge technology. But ten years from now I guarantee I won't remember Pacific Rim, yet if I discover one of my friends hasn't seen Forbidden Planet I will pester him until he watches it. And it won't be because I've forgotten how cheesy Forbidden Planet was.

I dunno about survivorship bias. Some of the books I've been re-reading are out of print and hard to find. In any case, I'm not saying the best books today can't hold a candle to what was published forty year ago. Not at all. The remains as it was. But you have to understand the changes that have gone on in traditional publishing. Yes, ebooks are a big deal, but an even bigger deal is print on demand.

It used to be that publishers had to take a big risk publishing anyone who wasn't an A-list author. The way it worked is that the publisher would do a big print run. They'd send cases of the book to bookstores, who'd put them on the shelves. After awhile if all the copies didn't sell, the bookstores would ship back the unsold copies and the publisher would pulp them. All very expensive.

It doesn't work that way any longer. It's now feasible and affordable to do much smaller print runs, and bookstores can order a few copies of a book, then if those copies sell order a few more copies. This has two big effects. First, it's a lot less *intrinsically* risky to publish an author than it was ten or twenty years ago. This means you don't need balls to be a publisher these days. You still make money on the blockbusters that fly off the shelves, but you can also make money on a mediocre, me-too book.

The second big effect is that bookstores can stock more authors. All things being equal, that should mean there's a lot more diversity in books on bookstore shelves -- but there isn't. Instead there's more authors doing more of the same. And these second tier authors are not by any means *bad*. The craft standard for these stories is very high, probably higher than run-of-the-mill stories forty years ago. It's just that as a whole it's more of the same old thing.

This isn't the author's fault; an author writes whatever appeals to him, then tries to get an editor to pick it up. It's the agents, editors and booksellers who selectwhat the public finally sees, and by in large that is well-crafted stories that bear a striking resemblance to some blockbuster franchise. This is not because anyone expects to duplicate the success of the Sookie Stackhouse or Twilight stories. They know quite well that's not going to happen with a "me too" story. What they're looking for is something that can sell a modest number of copies to fans of the big franchises and turn a small but reliable profit. That's a strategy that wasn't possible twenty years ago.

Movies of course are looking for blockbusters, but the essential similarity is that the producers are often combining well-known elements in an attempt to generate sure-fire profits.

Well, I saw "Pacific Rim", and it wan't a shitty movie. It wasn't a great movie, either. It was mediocre, in a particular way that seems to be becoming more common as businesses begin to feel more confident crunching the numbers on a work of art. It's happening in publishing too, as second tier authors churn out clones of The Dresden Files, Sookie Stackhouse, The Hunger Games, and of course, Twilight. The formula is "Like X but with Y" -- e.g. "Like Twilight, but with zombies." Some literary agents are even asking for this kind of summation in query letters.

I think this is because on a spreadsheet at least, it looks like you can make money without risk these days, if you just get the formula right. Usually these mediocre "me-too" books and movies aren't bad; in fact they often display a high degree of a certain kind of perfection -- the kind of perfection that consists of not making too many major mistakes.

Take "Pacific Rim". It's high-concept -- giant monsters vs. giant robots -- and the script and director work hard to deliver exactly what is promised. No time is wasted on back story or set-up; the exposition is somewhat crude and artless, but it is calculated to take the minimum time possible to get the viewer to the giant robot action. You have to admire the high level of artistic discipline required to predictably churn out something serviceably mediocre, but it means that you won't get something great. If *all* you're looking for in a movie is CGI battles between giant robots and monsters, it'd be hard to improve on "Pacific Rim"; it's just that most of us, even mecha-loving geeks, kind of appreciate a story that has a bit more creative excitement in it.

I've made something of an effort over the last couple of years to go back and re-read many classic sci-fi novels from the 40s - 80s, and almost without exception the great stories break some canons of taste. If you read a great novel critically, you'll almost always see that it has structural or artistic flaws; rules are broken, but so that the story can reach levels you can't get to by adhering strictly to a formula. I don't know as much about cinema as I do about books, but I bet it's much the same: you've got to be willing to try some things that are wrong, or questionable at least, to rise above mediocrity.

Oh, there's no question *life* can adapt to these changes. The question is whether certain economies with enormous assets located in coastal regions can survive. 39% of Americans, for example, live in coastal counties. Although for political reasons that figure includes counties bordering the Great Lakes (America's "North Coast"), nonetheless the assets the US economy has enormous assets on the coast.

Of course *rate* makes a big difference. The extreme upper level IPCC estimate for sea level rise by 2100 is 2m; that would be an economic disaster. We'd probably abandon much of the Gulf Coast, and most East Coast cities would require massive flood control projects. The same rise over two hundred years would have the same results, but it would happen over many more generations and would probably feel a lot less like a disaster.

Life is adaptable, and humanity is among the most adaptable species on the planet. There is no prospect of human extinction under any conceivable climate change scenario, what we are looking at is human misery and economic dislocation. The Great Depression and WW2 combined weren't even a blip on the species survival radar, but they packed an enormous load of human suffering. The difference between 75cm and 2m sea level rise over a century is the difference between a serious ongoing economic concern and a long-running disaster.

It's not the magnitude of change we have to worry about, it's the *rate*.

Overpriced death-trap it may be, but the F-22 is an elegant tool designed to do a single thing well: wrest control of European airspace from the Soviet Union.

which is content. You're not experts in DRM, so trying to roll your own is only going to be a PITA for you, and your customers, while hardly impeding anyone who wants to pirate.

This means if you want a solution with DRM, you're going to publish through somebody who is doing DRM'd electronic distribution. That means Amazon's Kindle Publisher, the equivalent Barnes and Noble program, iTunes, or Kobo. The trickiest thing will be figuring out whose terms of use give you the most opportunity to recapture revenue.

If you're publishing a paper magazine, chances are you are heavily into Adobe already. It would make sense to see what they're offering in terms of electronic distribution and DRM infrastructure to their magazine publishing customers. I'd be willing to bet they've got a solution targeted right at your kind of outfit, because you are hardly unique in your predicament.

If DRM isn't that critical a concern for you, you might think outside the magazine publisher's box and go right to social media. I know that a number of publications are offering Facebook apps, and again because you are hardly unique in your situation I'd bet there's a way to capture advertising revenue through a Facebook app. Going this route you probably won't be able to keep folks from copying chunks of text from your magazine for their own purposes; that could be an issue for some of your contributors. That said, it's so convenient for users that wholesale piracy of the latest stuff probably won't be a practical concern for you.