The Good, The Bad and the Neutral

I happed upon a moral quandry the other day that lead me to really think about my constitution (term borrowed from D&D). I believe there are 3 constitutions in the real world. Law, Neutral and Chaos. Not everybody fits into just one of these boxes (some do though). My theory (not necessarily mine) is that people might not (should not?) be considered evil if they fail to act against "evil" deeds and people should not necessarily be considered good if they do no evil. The third box which is neutral, is really there for all the apathetic people of the world. I consider myself on the Law side of Neutral, where as most people I know are on the Neutral side of Law.

The dilemma is one of a friend of mine, lets call him Humphrey, who works for a software company. Recently, he was working remotely and found he could access other computers on his network, more specifically the computers of the CEO, CFO and HR Head. He could access every file on their machine and a tremendous amount of personal data. Now he was VPN'ed in and has an account on their network, but he still thinks that these people are exposing a tremendous amount of personal data. He asked me if he should tell these people to lock up their machines. Now, I told him, what if they asked why he tried to access their machines? And he didn't know. There definitely seemed to be a possibility for him to be fired for exposing this, but there was also a possibility for him to be lionized or treated as a hero. He asked me what he should do, because he felt personally that not revealing this fact was tantamount to negligence.

I described to him the following breakdown and asked him to describe:
The best and worst case if he told.
1. Best Case: He would be thanked, and he could sleep at night
2. Worst Case: He would be fired for attempting to access other peoples machines

The best and worst case if he remained silent
3. Best Case: Nothing happens
4. Worst Case: Personal data is breached, but he does not have any liability in the matter.

Then I asked him to look at all of these possibilities and decide which was more desirable.
He listed them from least desirable to most desirable.
2. 4. 3. 1.

2 was worse than 4 and 1 was better than 3. Since 2 has a higher probability than 4 and 1 is only marginally better than 3, I recommended that he go the "not tell" approach.

This is a very mathematical view of the situation, but the real problem is the question of is 2 really worse than 4? Is self preservation better than the greater good and does this make you Neutral or Law?

On Girls, Boys and Transformers

My son received a transformer toy the other day for his birthday. The toy transforms between a robot and a hovercraft. Both my daughter (3) and son (5) play with the toy, however my daughter prefers it to be in its humanoid form where she calls it her baby robot and puts a blanket on it, and changes its diaper and gives it food, where my son prefers it to be in the hovercraft where his Hulk toy can ride on it, and shoot the lasers and blow stuff up. The difference between boys and girls is hard wired: boys are destructive and girls are nurturing.

Money and Happiness

I realized today that money does buy you happiness, but only if your unhappiness is caused by a lack of money.

On Lego and Turds

Yesterday I was playing LEGOs with my 3 year old daughter. We are trying to convince her that going on the toilet is much better in the long-run than going in a diaper. She started to make a lego changing table to changer her lego baby's diaper. So I decided to make a lego toilet for her lego baby. Once I was done with the TURBO PLOP 2000(tm), she starts to take the tiny one-piece legos and put them in the lego toilet and says..."I'm putting lego turds in the lego toilet"

On a Mosque at Ground Zero

I have been thinking about this whole Mosque at ground Zero thing. I wouldn't say I stand on any particular side of the debate, such that it is one, but the way I see it is as follows:
On the one side, yes, America values freedom of religion as a principle of the founding fathers, and allowing this Mosque to be built is really about standing up for this principle.
In addition to this, "At" Ground Zero really means two blocks away and is there really a spacial statute of limitations (i.e. what is the exact the radius around the site that should be considered "sacred ground"). Are there other businesses that should be "forbidden" from being constructed within this "sacred radius"?

On the flip side, are they putting this mosque up as a way of saying sorry? I have yet to see an official apology from the "higher ups" of the Muslim Religion (do they have a Pope or a Head Imam?) for the acts of their extremists, and an avowal that their actions were not condoned, and should not be considered to be approved by the majority of Muslims. The fact that there is such an uproar to this construction, should not be taken lightly by the Muslim community, and while I support their right to exist, I would think that they would opt for the ..."Oh, its gonna make people upset? well, then I will just move it somewhere else", rather than the "Hey deal with it, this is America and I can do what I want within the law, and this is legal...yeah, its a jerk thing to do, but its legal, so there" attitude that they are displaying. While the actual people involved in this probably do not intend this as a "slap in the face", there are those few fundamentalists that will see this as one step closer to their domination, almost a little victory.

Geek Poems and other Random Stuff

I saw this poem on the internets today.
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my bases are belong to you.
</POEM>

I was thinking the other day about how much excess and wastage there is in the world, and then got onto thinking what the alternative is...hoarding, hoarding for re-use. So these are my options. Either hoard for re-use, take up all my time sorting junk for re-cycling, and keeping things for re-use....or throwing stuff and wasting, excessive consumption....there's no winning. The only strategy is just not to think about it.

Neat Tools and weird observations

First, a couple of shout-outs:

1. BricNinja for sending me the black base plate for my lego wrestler.
2. Matrix, a cool travel planning site

Second, a weird observation for those of you who watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, well, I watch it with my kids. Have you ever noticed that the 3D rendered Mickey Mouse's ears, never rotate with his head. Whether you are viewing him from the front or from the side, his ears are always facing forward.

This, my friends, is branding. "The Ears" is (intentional mis-grammar) the Disney logo, they must always face forward. So as this little mousculine control freak is strutting around telling people what to say, he is wearing the disney brand on his head....funny eh?

Daily LOLs

http://lolcode.com/
http://loltheist.com/

KTHXBYE

Beating my head against a wall

I have a friend, lets call him Bob. I am very interested in scientific topic X, which is commonly accepted scientific fact. Bob denies that enough evidence exists to prove that X is indeed a scientific fact, and insists that I read all sorts of literature to the contrary, which normally turns out to be extensively wordy, nitpicking and non-scientific.

Bob continues to send me things he has found on the internet, which I have gotten tired of reading because they are very long, and of no educational value. I have decided to ignore Bob in all communications of these sorts.

If I present an article to Bob, he either questions the source, questions the studies done in the source. He then sends me articles of questionable sources. There is such a wealth of evidence for X and I just don't have time to make a case for this. There are so many excellent books making an excellent case for X, yet Bob refuses to read any of them, and instead points to articles on how the authors of these books are somehow non-credible.

I know I will never "convert" bob, but how can I let him know that I just don't wish to discuss this with him, without him saying..."I win, ha ha", or without him using my abstention as further "proof" of the strength of his argument?

The Seagull and the pigeon

The other day I was walking home from work, and I saw two seemingly innocuous creatures, a seagull and a pigeon. The problem was, this Seagull had just attacked the pigeon and was trying to eat it....while it was still alive. The scene was just brutal, the confused pigeon struggled, while the seagull just kept picking him up, flying up a bit, and flying down and slamming the pigeon into the bricked walkway. The Seagull continued to do this down a flight of brick stairs. I didn't stay to watch.

This type of scene just takes one out of the humdrum of life and reminds one that there are still creatures out there where every day is a life or death struggle, eat or be eaten.

Mountains out of NAnt hills

I have been working with NAnt for a while now...a couple of months, and I just discovered a cool new trick. (I say new, but its new to me : )

using the property::get-value() function, I was able to double expand a property.
Here's an example.

<property name="environment" value="test">
<property name="path.test" value="my test path here">
<property name="path.prod" value="my prod path here">

for the final party trick, I came up with:
<property name="path" value="property::get-value('path.' + property::get-value('environment'))"/>

and it will evaluate either the path.test or the path.prod based on the value of the environment property.

Sensor Sensibility

We have an emotion sensor in our office.
You walk past it, and it says....
"Heyyy, you seem like you're having a bad day! Cheer up buddy, its not that bad".

To Blog or not to blog

I highly doubt people will find this interesting, but I have started to blog my pointless daily internal ramblings. I went to the doctor this morning. Had my ears pumped out. It was painless, but noisy. At least I can hear now.