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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum

After reading about the new 10GB ethernet switches from Cisco and hearing about the severed submarine cables disrupting the Middle East, the germane sneakernet quote came to mind.

And yea, that is the same Tanenbaum who emailed Linus Torvalds and let Linus know that his new kernel project wouldn’t work. See the text of the old debate.

Over the past few years I have discussed the half-truths that proponents of publicly-financed stadiums promote in their press releases. [See: 1 2 3]

I currently live in a city of 1.5 million that is set to host the World Games next year. The various sporting events are sanctioned by the official Olympic committee as it is used as a proving ground for new Olympic events in the future.

While one of the stipulations of hosting the World Games involves not constructing new stadiums (the facilities already have to exist), somehow that message was mistranslated to the politicos here.

A couple blocks away from my school I can see the construction crews walk around on the scaffolding of a new taxpayer-financed stadium. While the ballyhooed Solar Stadium is relatively “green,” I can think of a million other useful things that could be done with that money, including: give it back to the taxpayer.

Yesterday, in an op-ed with The Philadelphia Inquirer professor Rick Eckstein makes the case for why building stadiums never generates the revenue promised by its proponents:

There’s only one problem with this scenario. It’s not true. Never has been. They do come, but cities are not saved. Over the past two decades, academic research has generated literally hundreds of articles and books empirically challenging the alleged economic wonders of new stadiums, even when they’re part of larger development schemes. I have been studying and writing about publicly financed stadiums for more than 10 years and cannot name a single stadium project that has delivered on its original grandiose economic promises, although they do bring benefits to team owners, sports leagues and sometimes players.

There are many reasons why this same song and dance plays out. Arguably the number one reason is that only privately financed endeavors have the incentive to design and develop an enterprise that is profitable.

On the other hand, government construction projects do not have to be effecient or even profitable because they are financed by faceless taxpayers who are typically disenfranchised and unable to reverse the political tide.

For the record, while I enjoy watching and participating in athletic events, I don’t think it is fair to use taxpayer funds for - anything in general - let alone entertainment purposes.

If the political class is going to dole out the dishonest revenues on public projects, how about filling in the potholes on Fumin, Yucheng, Mingcheng or Boai? Or investing in dust-blocking barriers that can be placed around construction zones? Or actually completing the metro? What point is there of hosting tens of thousands of tourists and athletes when the surrounding infrastructure falls apart under the current load?

For more on sport subsidies, see the following Cato publications: 1 2 3 (all in pdf).

Via CoyoteBlog

You may be familiar with Richard Feynman’s commencement speech to Caltech three decades ago regarding cargo cults.

In a nutshell, cargo cults gained their name for building a mythical, sometimes religious set of rituals to recreate and summon the cargo ships and planes that landed on their remote Pacific islands during World War II.

And while most of them have gone the way of the dodo, some have developed increasingly intricate theologies.

Two years ago Smithsonian Magazine detailed one such tribe in Vanuata that not only has thrived, but has also spawned a splinter group.

It includes a messiah, John Frum, an nebulous if non-existent American soldier who promised he will return one day with wealth and opulence. Many even still pray to him and believe he will return very soon.

Among othe quotes, a zinger can be found at the end. The journalist notes that even though many islanders pray that Frum and others will return, this has not occurred:

As we look down into John Frum’s fiery Tanna home, I remind him that not only does he not have an outboard motor from America, but that all the devotees’ other prayers have been, so far, in vain. “John promised you much cargo more than 60 years ago, and none has come,â€? I point out. “So why do you keep faith with him? Why do you still believe in him?â€?

Chief Isaac shoots me an amused look. “You Christians have been waiting 2,000 years for Jesus to return to earth,â€? he says, “and you haven’t given up hope.â€?

Way too funny, yet for proponents of any religion, it underscores many of the flawed thinking behind their own belief systems.

See also: Life of Brian and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Due to the relative anonymity of the internets, some participants in flame wars act like they have 12″ steel cocks.

I know that sounds crude, but if you have ever spent even a short amount of time on a forum or USENET group, you will invariably come across the various archetypes illustrated in Flame Warriors.

In reality, despite the plethora of material available online, arguing in these venues is generally a waste of time. For instance, even if you believe your argument is cogent, kosher and filled with sexiness, at the end of the day your enemy is probably a 14 year old kid that plays on the Xbox all day in his parents basement. And thus, you will be griefed, trolled, and Godwined ad nauseum. Or as the eponymous site is called: SomethingAwful will undoubtedly occur.

In fact, I think the JRR Special Olympics photo sums up just about every debate that has traveled through the series of tubes.

With that said, let us turn to an odd brouhaha: John Romero versus Mike Wilson both of ION Storm fame (not to be confused with id).

I’m not going to really discuss the debate because (1) it is now over, (2) the colorful commentators in the various comments sections have much better one-liners than I can find from bathroom walls and (3) it is a fight between two video game developers. Lame.

Setting the stage

For some good background on what the two guys are bickering about I recommend perusing the book Masters of Doom and an older article from the Dallas Observer appropriately titled Stormy Weather.

I should also mention that two of my high school friends used to visit the ION offices back in the day and even played against the developers; let’s call them W&TT. They are brothers about the same age as my older brother and I. And based on their own observations and experiences, the info gleaned from the article and subsequent book are dead on. Mismanagement, egos, and shoddy work ethic was more abundant than an STD at Planned Parenthood.

The one time I personally met John Romero was at a large public LAN exhibition in the Spring of 2000 in downtown Dallas. The key event at the gaming party (yea, that is very dorky sounding) was the public unveiling of the hyped action game: Daikatana. John, who still had his iconic long hair, was its lead developer and participants at the event would have a chance to play against him in a deathmatch.

A friend of mine spotted John and Stevie Case (his girlfriend at the time) and we asked him to autograph the billete program we received at the door. Also standing next to John was a fellow by the name of Angel Munoz who is the creator of the Cyberathletic Professional League which managed the whole event.

Angel quipped that John should get used to having people ask him for autographs, because to quote Ron Burgundy: he was kind of a big deal.

We all parted and seemingly enjoyed the rest of the weekend festivities. As an aside the Tribes tournament my duct-tape “clan” played in was the highlight of my weekend as we didn’t suck nearly as bad as we thought. Nor did I.

At one point I did attempt to speak with Angel about an endeavor some of my friends were working on called AdreniLAN. It was essentially a game-oriented PC Bang placed along a busy freeway in North Dallas. It received its name largely through the efforts of a Vietnamese friend of mine who had also coordinated an audacious undertaking the previous year; let us call him HN.

HN and I were part of a pilot network engineering program in high school sponsored by Cisco. We spent three semesters training and studying for the CCNA (by and large it was a waste of time). At the tail end of our scholastic tenure, HN and several of his technical-minded friends put together a large LAN party in the high school cafeteria called AdreniLAN.

They procured switches, routers, and hubs capable of hosting/transporting several hundred participants. They had a dozen or so dedicated game servers, a redundant power system and even coordinated large pizza deliveries. These were no small feats for a group of highschool seniors that were strapped for cash. They even got Tiger Distributing and a couple other sponsors to throw in prizes (like computers and various accessories).

While there were a slew of various games being played over the network, Quake 2 was the game played in the main tournament. While I considered a number of my friends fantastic at the game (primarily because they kicked my ass), everyone was bested by legendary gamer Fatal1ty who eventually won the computer and of course, all of the hot chicks.

I mention all of this because when I attempted to speak with Angel at the CPL event a year later, he shrugged me off. As a side note, he is the proprietor of an online gaming site called Adrenaline Vault (like the names?).

While I never saw the email myself, Angel apparently had contacted one of my friends about the name HN had used for the PC Bang. Apparently Angel was not too thrilled or supportive, hence his apparent annoyance of my queries. And yet another friend (mormon!) of mine had also mentioned that when soliciting support for the high school event the year before, Angel was not too happy about the original AdreniLAN either. Maybe everyone just caught him on a bad hangover day.

Postmortem

Despite the fact that 8 years have gone by and I live half-way around the world, after seeing the John and Mike debate, it is nice to see that some things never change. Quite comforting.

A quick run-down of where they all are now:

- Angel was superficially a dick, though some of my friends that still attend those CPL events say he has become less socially retarded
- Daikatana was a financial fiasco and impossible to beat without cheat codes (the game design was incomplete)
- Stevie Case jumped the shark by posing in Playboy and broke up with John
- John, has since worked for numerous companies at various technical levels, yet never achieving the fame he had a decade ago
- AdreniLAN, the PC Bang, despite becoming an official CPL test center, folded after a couple of years
- HN, an autodidact, now works as a graphic artist in California
- W&TT were smart and chose not to go to college; their geek prowess paid off and they not only live debt free but rake in a good chunk of change at a dotcom
- Only 2 of the 20 Cisco participants became CCNA certified, I was not caliente enough to be one of them. The program was scrubbed several years later.
- And most importantly, playing video games is still the leading cause of virginity. Don’t let basement virginitus happen to your friends.

If you are ever in Taiwan or even Southeast Asia and are interested in visiting a quaint island embedded with Chinese culture, you might enjoy Liuchiu off the southwest coast of Taiwan (about 30 km from Kaohsiung).

I spent the weekend there and had a great time camping and sight seeing. It is an island made entirely of coral, thus while the beaches are fairly rough on the skin, the creature-friendly curves and divets makes for a photogenic snorkling adventure.

Engrish is prevalent and toddlers screamed a number of times when they saw me and my coworker (apparently they don’t get a whole lot of uber sexy Western visitors). Everything is fairly cheap and despite the language barrier shop owners really wanted your business (all of them would motion for us to come in and gave us the best seats).

Also, because it was far from the industrial factories on mainland China and Taiwan, the air was clear and smog free.

Oh, and the best part: last night we bumped into 15 travel agents from Hong Kong that were also visiting the locale for the first time. Upon learning that we were super cool Americans, they invited us to partake in drinking games and finger foods. I won’t name names, but let’s say that a couple local government officials definitely had their fill of beverages. We became chingu, and as a result were offered a gazillion discounted offers for flying throughout SE Asia.

Disclosure: the Taiwanese Tourism Board paid me 1 million USD to write this.

Three guys, a greenscreen, and some artistic talent have arguablly spelled the death of extras in filming epic battles. High school kids can now literally recreate entire war zones.

In order to get around in this town, just about everyone uses those dinky scooters you see extra large people driving around in on North American sidewalks.

Because of the stigma associated with them, I will probably have to forfeit my man card when I go back to America.

I say this because today, after a week of hailing cabs, buses and running around on foot, I bit the bullet and rented a beefy 50 cc scotter (the school actually requires that teachers have one).

While I was filling out the paperwork for it, the owner asked me if I was cold. I was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a tshirt… and was warm. She was freezing and as a result was wearing layers of clothes.

Apparently the cold front came in last night and it is a frosty 20 C (68 F) outside.

With freezing weather like this, I’m not sure if I can manage staying the whole month…

So earlier this week, after six months of living the life in Korea, I moved to Taiwan.

Taipei is a whole lot different than Seoul. Buildings are much shorter, pollution is much more noticeable and people seem to be generally more friendly… and everyone looks at you. They even bang a big old gong when you enter fancy restaurants (which feeds my unsatiable ego of self-importance).

I’m teaching again, but this time in the southern part of the island in Kaohsiung, which is actually in the tropics and feels like it too.

Aside from the language changes (Chinese is distinctive to even my untrained, Korean-oriented ear), the one thing I noticed in this bright internet cafe is that the kids play normal looking MMORPGs (3D instead of 2D). I know in the scheme of things that is probably the most important thing outsiders want to know about this place.

Oh, tomorrow is election day in Taiwan. You would love to see how the politicians raise awareness of their campaign. They drive around in parade-like fashion (20+ cars and ATVs) with loudspeakers and fireworks.

It is really kinda cool, especially since you have no idea what their views are (thus making them a mere showcase/entertainment). In fact, I am typing this in an internet cafe and I can see some of the fireworks going off now.