Meeting the needs - 09:00 CST, 2/20/12 (Sniper)

I played around with the LittleBigPlanet 2 editor over the weekend, and the quality of design that went into the widgets is astounding-- you can tell they really thought through the various possible scenarios that people would want to implement in levels. With zero coding, you can make almost any kind of game you want.

Then I come to work today and am working on a Sharepoint 2010 site-- I get the exact opposite impression from Sharepoint; there are dozens of web parts, but not a single one ever seems versatile enough to really do what I need it to do without extending it in code. In fact, the out-of-the-box behavior is often so ridiculously off-base that I wonder if it would ever meet anyone's needs.

Arguably, Media Molecule's task of making robust game creation with no code was a more difficult problem to solve than Microsoft's web site creation with no code.

I think Microsoft needs to hire the Media Molecule development team to make the next iteration of Sharepoint-- they'd do a much, much better job I think.

Palermo 5 Lazio 1 - 16:42 CST, 2/19/12 (Sniper)

Obviously, the number of injuries we've endured is absurd-- seemingly half the squad has been struck down, and as soon as someone comes back, someone else takes their place in the infirmary.

That said, this match felt like a Ballardini game-- we lost before we even stepped onto the pitch because of the way we were set up. Surely Reja could have come up with a better idea than moving Ledesma into a back three? Here is an obvious alternative:

Lulic, Dias, Sbraga (from the Primavera), Scaloni

Rather than introduce more uncertainty into the team with a goofy formation, why not play our usual 4-3-1-2 or 4-2-3-1, and just fill the gaps with Primavera players like I listed above? At least then it's all people in their natural positions, the formation is one that our players know inside and out, and it gives one of our youngsters a big opportunity.

Maybe Sbraga would have made a big mistake and conceded a game-losing goal, but at least there'd be the silver lining that he'd get experience, possibly have some nice moments as well. And I can just about guarantee that between a normal shape and having Ledesma in midfield, it wouldn't have been as bad as 5-1.

I'm guessing players like Macheda and Faraoni joked that the whole senior team could get wiped out Grande Torino-style, and they'd still not get a game. Based on today's evidence, they're probably right. It's no wonder they left!

Of course, this does boil to some degree down to Lotito and Tare's poor squad-building-- one would think with close to 40 players in the squad we would have some depth. But as it turns out...

Lazio 1 Atletico Madrid 3 - 14:12 CST, 2/16/12 (Sniper)

Yikes. Was "lucky" enough to be able to work from home today and half-watch the Atletico tie... what a disaster.

I was busy and didn't watch super closely, but my overall impression is that our 95 million Euro market value roster is completely out of its depth when facing a team worth almost twice that much-- 173 million Euros. Especially when you consider that our 95 million Euros is split across 30 players, versus only 22 for them. That's an average of 3.2 million Euros per player for our team, versus a whopping 7.9 million Euros per player for them. It's no wonder we were losing pretty much every individual matchup.

That lends some serious credence to my "quality versus quantity" argument; generally, better players beat crappier players, so you're better off with cream in the side, versus a large group of nobodies.

That said, with our injury fix this year that approach could have put us in a bind. On the other hand, you can't say our approach is that much better considering how poor the reserves-- such as Zauri and Stankevicius-- are. It's pretty clear our lousy quality depth cost us the game today, all three goals conceded were absurdly soft.

Zelda critique - 19:23 CST, 2/14/12 (Sniper)

What a wonderful critique of the Zelda series! I could write similar commentary about most of my favorite game series-- Sonic being the most obvious. Like the Zelda series, the first Sonic title was by far the best, and the series' custodians plucked the wrong gameplay elements for the modern titles, such as raw speed, while leaving behind the elements that actually made the Genesis games so good.

Of course, this guy has got it better than I do; at least Nintendo is still making half-way decent Zelda games. Most of my favorite games either never saw a sequel at all-- Guardian War, for instance-- or saw sequels that were so awful that it's better to pretend they never existed-- Star Control II, or One Must Fall: 2097 for example.

Amendment to flat tax proposal - 12:59 CST, 2/11/12 (Sniper)

I want to add one more argument to my flat tax proposal; I've been doing a lot of reading today about the Federal debt, and let me just say this: I thought before that we needed a balanced budget amendment-- I really think we need one now.

When the eventual GOP nominee is on stage, at a podium, next to Obama, all they need to do is go here, print this article and its charts out, hold them up and say, "I am not exaggerating our national debt problem-- the non-partisan Congresional Budget Office says that we need 'large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course'! And next to me, we have a president that added another 1.3 trillion to the national debt, just in the fiscal year 2012! He's in denial of the facts; the math doesn't lie! Go to Wikipedia and just do just twenty minutes of reading!"

Democrats like to say that Republicans are fact-deprived, but on this particular issue it looks the other way around to me. Obama presumably sat at the table through a ridiculously detailed presentation of this material by the CBO, and is still increasing the deficit at a pace ridiculously outpacing our ability to repay our existing debt-- in other words, increasing it much faster than GDP is growing.

And if this argument continues to fall on deaf public ears, boy does that make a case for my flat tax proposal-- maybe the only way people will acknowledge this problem is if they actually start paying taxes, first off, and are getting hit with a 25% effective rate too. I think people would pretty readily start calling for reduced government spending and, in turn, lower taxes. But it's easy to support large government spending when you don't have to pay for it.

The worst thing to do-- unfairness of disproportionately burdening the "wealthy" aside even-- is to continue to hide the problem from the public with our current tax code. The country will fall apart and people won't even see it coming. It's extremely disingenuous.

2012 federal budget analysis - 11:28 CST, 2/11/12 (Sniper)

Obama's policies in an election year are a bit closer to what I'd like to see. Too bad he's not a bit more rational the rest of the time? Here is my take on his budget proposal.


What I like

• Reduced military spending by pulling brigades out of European bases is a great idea, I would go further and close most of those bases
• Let the "Bush" tax cuts for high-income earners expire
• Lowering corporate tax rates

What I don't like

• A 1.3 trillion dollar fiscal deficit is just too much, plain and simple; that number needs to be much, much lower-- preferably breaking even, or even running a surplus so we can start to pay off some of our existing debt before we have runaway inflation

What I have mixed feelings about

• The "Buffett Rule"; the idea of making the wealthy pay the same tax rate as everyone else is awesome. But why not just implement a flat tax, like I proposed earlier? That idea doesn't unfairly single anyone out-- "class warfare" if you will-- and would also help reform entitlements
• Introduce tax breaks for the middle class; rather than say "ok, everyone gets the same goofy deductions", why not say "no one gets the goofy deductions" and just get rid of them?
• The "American Jobs Act"; some of the provisions, like reducing the social security tax and cutting business payroll taxes in half, are great ideas. Others, like the "infrastructure bank", are exactly the kinds of dangerous, bubble-creating government interference that created the housing bubble, the student loan bubble, etc. And rather than drop 25 billion in tax dollars to modernize public schools, why not just privatize education completely, and let the schools modernize themselves according to free market forces?

A miracle? - 15:07 CST, 2/10/12 (Sniper)

I love a lot of our players, but in the last six or seven years, I've simply thought we're really just not that good of a team. I mentioned a few posts ago that I think Reja should be replaced, but there is strong evidence to back him-- comparing our squad's market value to our place in the table makes Reja look like a miracle worker!

A case for a flat tax - 13:37 CST, 2/10/12 (Sniper)

I've had a couple of people recently ask me about why I'm in favor of a flat tax, coupled with throwing out the existing tax code completely. There are two facets to my explanation.


The widening income gap

As has been well publicized, the gap between the top 1% of earners in our country and everyone else is becoming a real problem. Republicans explain it away, for the terribly obvious reason that the market sets the wages-- and I agree wholeheartedly on that specific argument! There are nearly infinite useful examples to prove this point; "who am I to say who is overpaid-- lots of people would say I am, or you are, it's all relative", and "if a CEO can get me a 50 million dollar return, paying him 15 million makes complete business sense" are just a couple from a myriad of common-sense responses.

And most importantly, the same people who would like "special" taxes-- basically penalties-- for people who make an arbitrary amount of money would be the same people that would cry foul if the same logic was applied to them. "Wealth redistribution" is just not fair, whether the victim is someone who makes 20 million dollars a year, 50 thousand, or 10 thousand.

Unlike the Republicans however, I acknowledge the income gap as a serious problem. And this flaw might actually be a problem with capitalism itself, as Marx, among others, predicted. Marx's prescriptions were disastrous-- just go ask members of the former Soviet Union how socialism worked out for them-- but the people on the top of the income ladder in a capitalistic society do seem to reap the rewards disproportionately.

So the challenge is this: how do we get the wealthy to pay more than they already do, without doing ridiculous things like punishing them for their success? And the answer, of course, is a flat tax, coupled with a closing of all of the deductions that those at the top of the income ladder currently use to lower their effective tax rate.

That means no more 13.9% effective tax rates for the Mitt Romneys of the country because of low capital gains rates.

Believe me, I'm all for low corporate taxes. But individuals don't create jobs-- their companies do. We should do away with all favoritism towards those at the top of the ladder. And that will turn around the widening income gap.


Entitlement reform

I'm sure everyone has heard of this concept called the "poverty trap". Our current system-- where 47% of households don't pay a penny in Federal income tax, and get a boatload of tax payer-subsidized welfare benefits on top of it-- is designed so that it makes economic sense for people to not climb the income ladder.

I have a close family member that wanted to start a house cleaning business. But because she gets so many deductions and tax credits, she actually makes money from her tax return! So it makes more economic sense for her to live in poverty than it does to start her own business. Contrary to what Republicans might occasionally imply, people at the bottom of the income ladder aren't stupid: they're smart! They know how to do napkin math just like anyone else.

There is only one word for a system like that: broken.

There is one other point I need to bring up before I get to the meat of the matter; for every dollar we pay in Federal taxes, we lose about two cents from that dollar to administrative overhead. That in itself isn't disastrous, but then if you go on to take just a few moments to compare the rate of return for public sector-based investment, such as the social security program, versus the rate of return in even the most conservative private sector investment, the difference is astounding. In social security's example, you pay into it substantially your entire life, and live below the poverty level when you retire.

Suddenly, public sector investment isn't just about a minor negative rate of return-- the potential for wealth destruction adds up in a hurry.

Faced with this fact, it generally makes sense to keep as much money in the private sector, where wealth can be created, versus in the public sector where it is destroyed.

Of course, there are some things that we simply have to accept wealth destruction on account of; anti-trust regulation, protecting our military interests, maintaining our currency, making sure our food and water is safe, keeping our interstate roads and bridges in repair, among other things. But we should be awfully careful to keep this list of obligations as limited as we can, especially when we can solve problems in the private sector and generate wealth in the process. Which, by the way, is the very definition of what capitalism does and why it works-- it generates wealth, and on its back we have become the most wealthy country in the history of human civilization.

So now let's turn back to the poverty trap by looking at another practical example-- the tax-subsidized food stamps program, which works like this: I hand the government a dollar, and they hand me back 98 cents to go buy groceries.

Any sane person would look at that arrangement and laugh-- it doesn't make any sense! Why not just let me keep the dollar? And on top of the lost two cents, maybe I could have turned that dollar into two dollars, or five dollars, or ten dollars?

However, if someone else hands over a dollar, and the government turns to me with the other hand to give me 98 cents, I'm not seeing this as the pointless, wasteful, and rather silly exercise that it is. Because I don't have visibility into the loss of wealth generation opportunity, it appears to me that I'm just getting money handed to be out of the ether! Sounds like a pretty good deal!

A flat tax solves this problem, because everyone would pay at least something in taxes. Suddenly, it would be my dollar getting squandered, and at that point, it becomes pretty apparent to me that we can do better as a society.

And most importantly, I would avoid going on the system in the first place if I could help it. Why? Because a flat tax is, well, flat. The only thing such a system incentivizes is moving up the ladder. Goodbye povery trap.


A flat tax should be a bi-partisan no-brainer

In the end, a flat tax coupled with a complete reform of the existing code addresses an issue that the Democrats hold as being the most pressing problem facing our country today-- the widening income gap-- while simultaneously reforming entitlements, which is near or at the top of the GOP agenda. A flat tax is something that not only has a lot for both sides to like, but such a system also means that United States citizens collectively win.

Is this site for real? - 12:28 CST, 2/10/12 (Sniper)

I stumbled across this site last night, still trying to figure out if it's a joke or not.

One guy-- who seems like he hasn't had a macroeconomics class since 1960 mind you-- wrote all of these articles making these bizarre leaps of logic that don't make any sense, and then pawns them off as either "truth", or "satirization of the liberals", I'm not sure which.

For example, he wrote an article that goes minute-by-minute through the life of a hypothetical United States citizen, saying things like "you flip your light switch and your house doesn't burn down-- all thanks to government regulation!", or "You drink water and don't get poisoned-- thank goodness for big government!" He uses "examples" like these to then make the giant leap of logic that if the FDA is a good thing, for instance, then all government regulation must be a good thing-- we need more government!

Another example is that he tries to correlate deficit spending with prosperity. And of all examples, he picks this one: we had debt 120% of GDP after WWII, and look how prosperous the 1960s and 70s were!

Um, dude, the Keynesian economic model was proven false and completely superseded about forty years ago-- I think you're a little bit behind the times. Just as a reminder, in 1978 we had double digit inflation, and double digit unemployment. The Keynesian model couldn't even account for the situation because it thought inflation and unemployment were inversely related.

And if that wasn't enough, in another article he goes through some bogus "math" to try to prove that the public sector is just as efficient as the private sector. And because of that, why not just have government run everything?

Er, didn't the Soviets try that? Go take a look at Michael Heller's "The Gridlock Economy" for some insight into how that system turned out.

Of course, I apologize if the site is, in fact, meant to be satirical-- it really is quite humorous.

Genoa 3 Lazio 2 - 07:49 CST, 2/05/12 (Sniper)

If there was any doubt before, there shouldn't be now-- we should replace Reja if we can find a suitable alternative.

Consistency has been completely lost; a 4-0 loss to Siena, then a 2-0 win over Atalanta, then a 2-1 loss to Inter, followed by a couple of nice wins, but now today a ridiculous loss to Genoa 3-2. To look at it another way, how could the same team that manhandled Milan a few days ago look so completely out-of-sorts against a team with half of Milan's quality?

While you could pin the inconsistency on injuries, I just see too many mental mistakes happening, and too many players racing around playing on their own. It reminds me of the end of Delio Rossi's time with the club-- the players are no longer following the vision of the manager.

Speaking of today's game specifically, were our players drugged, or what? I can't even remember all of the times our players fell over, including on Genoa's third goal. I haven't seen footing lost that many times in a match by one team in my entire life.

What's disappointing is that Genoa are a pretty dreadful outfit-- a mentally fit squad would have easily been able to overcome Palacio's one-in-a-million flick for the first goal.

Piracy and imagination - 14:30 CST, 2/04/12 (Sniper)

Wonderful article here about online piracy, one of the best articles on the topic I've read. And since he hits on some interesting parallels with the video game industry as well-- such as ballooning budgets-- it's no surprise that the solution proposed is to take a page from said video game industry's playbook: Steam.

Speaking of video games, I thought this was kind of sad-- Derek and I are always talking about how games that let you fill in the gaps with your imagination are more appealing, and to hear a game designer of Sid Meier's pedigree say that it isn't possible because most people don't have imaginations, or aren't willing to put in the effort, is disappointing.

Mercato - 19:14 CST, 1/31/12 (Sniper)

I respect Antonio Candreva as a player, but why does it bother me to no end that he's been such an outspoken Romanista in the past? And now he's playing in our side?

Of course, maybe I should be laughing; he said this today: "I can not wait to start this new adventure, arriving in a top club...". Boy, those Roma supporters sure are loyal, aren't they?

In other mercato news, I actually think Lotito did the right thing by snubbing CSKA in the Honda deal-- they wanted full price, in cash up front, for an injured player, after they had already declined all of our previous offers, such as exchanging Carrizo as part of the deal? Doesn't negotiating mean meeting the other party in the middle?

Was kind of bummed to see Cisse go, I wish him the best. But as it is, with his lack of technical ability, he was just never going to cut it in Italian football. And now Kozak-- who is genuinely a superstar in the making I think-- will get more opportunities.

Chievo 0 Lazio 3 - 10:12 CST, 1/29/12 (Sniper)

Great result in the end, although the scoreline ridiculously flatters us; we looked completely out of sorts in the first half, and Lulic alone should have scored three goals, missing a completely open goal twice, plus a couple of other chances.

Woeful finishing like that deserves to be punished. But the three points does us a world of good, in any event.

Motivating Lazio players is NP-hard - 18:18 CST, 1/26/12 (Sniper)

It makes me laugh and smile to hear a game described as "NP-hard". What a neat idea!

Also, Reja needs to go-- nothing against him personally, but unless you've got huge amounts of funds and an Alex Ferguson, you pretty much need to switch managers every two or three years, just to keep things fresh. And it's clearly that time with Reja-- we've looked positively stale now for several games in a row, inluding today's loss to Milan's B (or C) side. Kind of embarrassing really.

On a positive note, we might have Honda and Krasic in the side in the next few days! I can't help but feel that Lotito is still just throwing darts at the wall when constructing a team, but at least he's going after quality players.

And in other football-related news, a new editorial of mine just went live on IMS, check it out!

Big profile agreement - 20:20 CST, 1/19/12 (Sniper)

It's worth noting that Hideo Kojima agrees with me about the death of creativity in gaming.

'Wharf scoring change - 20:24 CST, 1/18/12 (Sniper)

I made a significant change to the 'Wharf today-- all views on the site now display my review scores on a five-star scale, as opposed to out of ten like before.

I got sick of people saying how much they hate game review scoring out of scales of ten, or one hundred, and how strongly people dislike seeing scores for different game segments, such as graphics, sound, etc. I realized yesterday that I could change how my scores were presented to people by simply modifying the views, and leaving the database and the rest of the site's code alone. It turned out rather spiffy I think.

The only caveat is that it makes my score inflation more noticable. I partially countered that by multiplying below average scores by the site's average-- that way, games that I truly thought were bad will never sneak into the rounding with four stars, for instance.

The real solution to that problem would be for me to play and review games that I suspect are total junk-- as it is, I tend to only play, and thus review, games that I predict will be good, and that I will like. I just don't have the time or energy to review "bad" games, unless it's by accident.

More on reviews versus critique - 19:08 CST, 1/17/12 (Sniper)

I couldn't agree with this more. In fact, when I set out to review a game, the very first thing I do is identify what the game is setting out to do. Then, I rate the game according to how close it was to achieving that goal.

I will occasionally bring up a deficiency if the title suffers from it disproportionately compared to other titles in its genre, and even if that deficiency is a staple of the genre. But I keep that kind of analysis to a minimum in my reviews.

Lazio 2 Atalanta 0 - 07:36 CST, 1/15/12 (Sniper)

Great battling win today, if we'd had this attitude we'd have beaten Siena. We desperately need more creativity in midfield however; Jonathan Wilson points out that if you shut down the single playmaker in a 4-3-1-2, you shut down the system-- without Mauri we lack a secondary threat to Hernanes.

Balancing act of capitalism - 12:44 CST, 1/13/12 (Sniper)

This article's author brings up an interesting point: is it possible that we can return to a form of capitalism that is not purely shareholder-centric, and that has an eye towards the bigger picture, such as the firm's responsibility towards society as a whole? And if so, should we?

I recognized another negative outcome of totally shareholder-centric attitudes back when I wrote this editorial, but didn't have the space to weave it in-- capitalism of the past thirty or so years tends not to create "great art", because with the sole focus on ROI, the business sense is in not taking very many risks, which leads to endless derivatives and clones of things that came before.

As pathetic as it was to watch sixty thousand government-employed North Koreans perform choreography for (virtually) the sole benefit of tourist Shane Smith in the "Vice Guide to North Korea", part of me appreciated what an amazing spectacle that was, and observed how the capitalism of today would never create something like that because the ROI was negative.

Those that read my political views know that I am borderline libertarian when it comes to economic views. But I do think it would be fantastic if a sort of groundswell movement among capitalists formed, whereby they would look just a little less at the bottom line, and a little more towards progressing humanity, costs be damned. Maybe the "invisible hand" is guiding us a bit astray?

Less is more - 18:44 CST, 1/12/12 (Sniper)

For all their supposed focus on developer productivity, I was reminded twice in the last two weeks that super complex frameworks like Java and .Net are often worse in that regard than more simple solutions, like PHP or Python.

A couple of weeks ago, after six weeks of down-time and thirty or more hours of effort from three different people, we finally managed to successfully re-deploy a component that hadn't otherwise been deployed in a couple of years. One of the key pieces of that solution? At some point, Microsoft decided that "key container" references should be in the web.config instead of the project definition files. It was one of the strangest, most bizarre and obscure things I'd ever seen. And it prevented us from getting our job done! I thought it couldn't get worse.

But then today I was trying to get this Javascript and CSS compression framework-- "Cassette"-- to work in an old web project I inherited. After hours of fumbling around with why their goofy HTTP handler wasn't working, I stumbled on the solution: I needed to add this bizarro XML snippet to the project's web.config that would set this "runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests" variable to true. What the hell does that variable even do, and why would it suddenly cause this HTTP handler to work? Hell, I don't even know what "managed modules" are, and why I would want them all to run for every request as the variable name implies, and I've been writing .Net code for seven years. But it fixed the issue.

.Net and Java marketing material make it sound like even idiots can write computer code using their frameworks. But I think it's just the opposite-- you have to have an eidetic memory to memorize all of their truly strange and obscure idiosyncrasies!

Languages and frameworks like Perl, Ruby, Python, and PHP may not always have the fanciest tools and IDEs, but at least when I write code in them I spend 100% of my time solving actual problems. Versus Java and .Net, where every half an hour of gained productivity due to superior tools is offset by hours of hand-wringing trying to solve problems like the above.

Political views, version 2.0 - 14:21 CST, 1/07/12 (Sniper)

In spite of the facts that I've always acknowledged the political landscape as something important to follow, and that I've assumed it was a topic I would find interesting, I had not put in the effort to learn much about politics until the summer of 2011.

A few months after my new-found interest in the American political scene, I decided to put in writing some of my viewpoints on various issues. I have been revising, and will continue to revise, these views as I learn more over time.

General culture: I tend to favor systems that provide a minimal amount of structure, and then step back to let things happen organically. I believe America at its best should be a country where anyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps and achieve greatness, through hard work and ingenuity. I believe that we're pretty much there right now, which is great. Further, America should be about equal opportunity, not equality. Government should trust people to make sound decisions and try to stay out of their hair as much as possible.

State versus Federal power: When things are equal, the default bias should always be towards local government, and away from centralized government.

Fiscal policy: Pass a balanced budget ammendment, but allow for an override via a vast, bi-partisan majority in both the house and the senate, in the event of a total emergency. Follow Benjamin Franklin's message: "The burden of debt is as destructive to human freedom as subjugation by conquest." Pass legislation that enforces audits of the Federal Reserve. Form a commitee to investigate how to safely privatize or re-privatize all government-sponsored enterprises, such as Freddie Mac. Certain things like owning a home should be a privilege, not a right-- trying to artificially influence the markets creates bubbles.

Foreign policy: Retract Cold War containment policies. Plan for responsible withdrawl of troops from all around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Follow Thomas Jefferson's advice: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none." Close our military bases all over the world except where they are needed. Continue to be proactive in protecting our interests, but let economics drive foreign policy, and only pursue highest priorities directly with military force; depend on subterfuge and clever diplomacy to handle the vast majority of issues.

Energy policy: Pursue established forms of energy-- oil and natural gas-- in equal measure with "alternative" energy through subsidies. Subsidies are a terrible idea generally because they circumvent the market and create bubbles, but in this case the market is not going to react quickly enough to the environmental duress our scientists have proven we're placing on the planet.

Technology policy: Keep the internet free-as-in-speech and open as much as possible, even if cultural evolution suffers; we've opened the can of worms and there is no way back now. This means that net neutrality is a must, and legislation like SOPA is a catastrophically bad idea.

Tax reform: Flatten the tax and broaden the base; introduce a flat tax and eliminate all deductions and loopholes. It's the only approach that is simple, consistent, and fair.

Copyright and patent law reform: Reduce copyright protection to twenty years, period, no exceptions. Reduce patent protection to ten years, period, no exceptions. Force the US Patent Office to check for obviousness as well as prior art. Develop very strict guidelines as to what a patentable invention really is. Instruct Patent Office to not be afraid of backlog; do not grant patents just because the workload is too high. Develop affiliation rules, and only allow for one hundred patent applications from affiliated parties per year. Use the freed up time and money to do audits to enforce the affiliation rules. Have US Patent Office enter all granted patents into an outsourced, open database so inventors can know if they are infringing on a patent; that problem will also be lessened because of the lower volume of granted patents due to the new policies.

Education reform: Dramatically scale back the scope of the department of education. The department's new duties should only include the analysis of mandatory, standardized testing, with penalties to states with poor test scores. Pass legislation that gradually phases out the public school system and replaces it with state-wide systems that pool property taxes and distribute them in the form of vouchers that parents can use towards any private school of their choosing. Include a clause that allows for states to opt out of this mandate and pursue their own education program if they so choose. Take some of the money saved via the reduction of the education department and offer it in the form of grants to encourage the formation of new private and charter schools. Repeal the "No child left behind" act; those laws do nothing but attempt to artificially simulate, at great cost, what the market would do much more swiftly and efficiently on its own.

Health care reform: Do exactly the opposite of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"; talk to health insurance providers and issue legislation that would lower their costs, not introduce beaurocracy that would increase their costs. Do everything possible to broaden the base of health care provider options for consumers in order to introduce price competition among providers. To further help people afford health insurance, issue tax credits such as described in the H.R. 3400 legislation.

Social security reform: Offer all citizens under the age of 35 the option to place their money into personal retirement accounts. Raise the retirement age and cut benefits until program is economically self-sufficient. Put a rule in place that bars politicians from robbing from the trust fund.

Military reform: Create a lean, efficient military that focuses on surveillance and counter-terrorism; the days of superpowers fighting massive ground campaigns with gigantic, ground-based armies are over.

Shrinking middle class: This is a real problem, but I have not yet heard of a fair solution from Republicans or Democrats, so we'll stay the course. Markets set the wages of everyone, from truck drivers to commodity traders to CEOs, no one is paid "too much" or "too little". And people who propose singling out the "rich" with extra tax burdens would be the first to cry foul if the same logic was applied to them.

Gay marriage: This is a decision best left up to the states. Since homosexuality is genetic, I favor renaming "marriage" to "civil union" at the state level. Allow any two human beings to obtain a union.

Abortion: Life begins at conception. As such, create a Federal mandate to make abortion illegal, except in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life.

Siena 4 Lazio 0 - 13:08 CST, 1/07/12 (Sniper)

I know every team has their bad patches-- believe me, I've seen more than my fair share of clunker Lazio games over the years. But this was in the top three worst performances I've ever seen the club put in; we looked every bit as out of sorts as Ballardini's teams of a few years ago.

Yes, we were missing five starters in Marchetti, Dias, Konko, Hernanes, and Mauri; in a sport where one player can completely transform a side, missing five players can be catastrophic-- especially when three of the reserves in the forms of Stankevicius, Biava, and Scaloni were solely responsible for all four goals conceded, plus our going a man down.

At the same time however, Reja didn't do us any favors by switching systems to the 4-4-2, and he also did not have his team in the proper mindset-- the only player that didn't look like he was still on vacation was Klose. And when it comes down to it, he's the only player in the entire 36-man squad that's truly a great player, the rest of our team is sort of mid-table material, maybe a little better in some cases, such as Hernanes.

But it's not worth rehashing for the millionth time Lotito's inability to build a truly balanced squad. Time to push on and see if we can right the ship against Atalanta next week.

Walk the walk - 18:51 CST, 1/02/12 (Sniper)

"This is why you should support Android (not Google, but Android), even if you prefer the iPhone. This is why you should support Linux, even if you use Windows. This is why you should support Apache, even if you run IIS. There's going to be a point where being Free/open is no longer a fun perk, but a necessity (Source)."

Already done-- except that I am also using the aforementioned technologies, and have been for years-- I walk the walk.

Missed chance for public domain - 11:46 CST, 1/01/12 (Sniper)

What a pity. And explain to me how someone is supposed to commercially exploit an artistic work after they're dead? Our current copyright law makes no sense.

If big media companies want legislation like SOPA, I would counter with this: "Fine, you can have a modified version of SOPA-- but in exchange, copyright law will be changed so that works are 'protected' for a maximum of 20 years; no exceptions, and no renewals."

If you can't commercially exploit something in twenty years, it should go into the public domain, end of story.

Vita shows us the way, inadvertantly? - 16:50 CST, 12/30/11 (Sniper)

While it's silly to call the Vita a flop seeing as how it's only been on the market for two weeks, and only in one region-- Japan-- at that, I do think this article sounds an alarm bell of the same magnitude that Sony should be ringing in their headquarters.

I wouldn't be surprised if, after six months, it will be clear that the market has declared that the device and its games are too expensive.

I hate to sound like a broken record having made points similar to these over and over throughout the past few years, but it would be nice to see someone try to follow these principles, they may just work:

1. The focus should be less about the hardware: video game systems just need to get the basics right. Make sure the device has a physical dpad and buttons, and that they work -- hello Microsoft; and if it's a handheld, it still has to have physical buttons, plus a basic touch screen with reasonable pixel density. Anything more will just raise the price of the hardware too much.


2. The focus should be more about the software: people will buy a system if it has good games. Game development teams need to be ten people, not one or two hundred. This will prevent the kinds of "design by committee" problems that cause current game projects to lack in creativity-- see the "why crowdsourcing could never make the iPad" arguments if you don't understand this dilemma.


3. Future consoles and handhelds should be no more than 150 or 200 USD: if the system just sticks to the basics and doesn't get too fancy, 150 USD should be an achievable price point.


4. Game budgets need to be 300 thousand USD, not 60 million USD. The logic then follows that game prices should be 20 USD, not 1 USD or 50 USD. Too cheap and the games lack production value-- see Android and iOS games-- while too expensive means people will only buy games in established franchises; why risk 50 USD of my hard-earned money on a game I'm not sure I'll like?


5. Studios need to ignore the internet-- Gamerankings and Metacritic especially. They need to think up fresh, truly novel and innovative game ideas, in as much isolation as they can garner-- see my previous article for more explanation. Smaller development budgets mean that studios can take risks without betting the farm.

The Old Republic - 09:03 CST, 12/21/11 (Sniper)

I can't get over how good The Old Republic is. While 95% of the game's core mechanics are straight from WoW, the other 5% makes a big difference-- the fact that anyone can revive party members at any time, the fact that everyone has a sort of out-of-combat quick-healing ability, not to mention the party-based quest chat system, with holo-conference capabilities...

I would not say that this game is the jump over WoW that WoW was over Everquest, but at times it feels that way.

"No-sleep study" - 05:41 CST, 12/19/11 (Sniper)

Went in for an expensive "sleep study" procedure last night in an attempt to finally address my ongoing depression and fatigue problems-- and it was an unmitigated disaster; I slept a grand total of zero minutes the entire night, and finally just gave up and left.

They slop your body with goop and attach about five hundred wires to you. They then shove a not-so-aromatic chunk of plastic up your nose to monitor your breathing. Meanwhile, you're chained to the bed and can barely move at all much less get up to go to the bathroom-- a procedure which, by the way, requires the assistance of the "technician" on duty to unrig you from all of the straps, harnesses, and cabling, by which point you're completely woken up.

The worst experiences of my life-- being interrogated for three hours for a crime a family member committed but for which I was accused, my solitary attempt at autocross, every religious "retreat" I was forced to attend throughout elementary school-- all have one thing in common: they made me feel like a prisoner. And now I can add this event to my list.

As someone who can only fall asleep on his stomach, struggles to breath through his nose without any extra inhibitors, who gets up to use the bathroom multiple times a night, and who already is a total insomniac when there is pressure to fall asleep, the aforementioned attributes of the night, accompanied by the otherworldly levels of surveillance, meant that this is one procedure that was just not for me.

I don't so much mind the lost night, but my out-of-pocket expense will be over 300 USD. That's a lot of money for me, and I just took a match to it. Why I thought this "sleep study" would be a good idea in the first place is beyond the reconciliation of my hind-sight.

Lazio 2 Udinese 2 - 15:44 CST, 12/18/11 (Sniper)

Great performance today-- shame Kozak couldn't have gotten his leg out a second sooner at the very end!

Author has a sense of humor...? - 16:36 CST, 12/12/11 (Sniper)

As someone who follows Calcio so closely, I find that this article does a lot of misrepresentation, and in general paints a different picture than what is actually going on.

First off... Ass Roma, "lifelong obsession"? How nauseating! Tacopina needs a history lesson.

Along those lines, in the paragraph about trailing Juve by 12 points, the author should have appended to the end, "...and [trailing] Rome's first and best club, S.S. Lazio, by 11 points." Make that 10 points now-- the Romanistas wound up drawing 1-1 with Juve (Totti missed a second-half penalty :D ).

Seriously, the author's only mention of Lazio is calling them "another team" that Roma happens to share the stadium with? What a joke!

He should have woven Lazio into the article-- it's kind of an arms race right now between Roma's naive American owners and Lazio's-- admittedly-- jack ass president, Claudio Lotito, to see who can get their stadium first. Rome's mayor is a huge Lazio fan and apparently is trying to force through the approvals for Lotito's planned shopping center/stadium combo-- but Lotito blows so much hot air, it's difficult to know what to believe.

I don't have a crystal ball-- maybe in the long run the American franchise approach will work somehow in Italy. But at the moment? DiBenedetto has been a laughing stock in Italy. His first move? "We want to play like Barcelona", so he goes and hires Barcelona's youth coach-- and it's been a disaster. To people who follow Calcio, Roma's new owners seem so naive and clueless. It's got shades of the Jurgen Klinsmann USSF move actually, but even worse because Italian media and culture is so brutal, especially towards foreigners.

I have to admit, it's been delightful :)

The author also didn't mention that the only reason Italy fell below Germany in the UEFA rankings is because the coefficient is absurdly biased towards Platini's pet project, the "Europa" league-- a joke of a tournament. I saw numbers where a German club-- Wolfsburg a couple of seasons ago maybe?-- got almost as many coefficient points from the Europa League group stages as Barcelona did for winning the entire Champions League. I should see if I can dig that article up again.

If you look at the Champions League, Italian teams have done many, many times better than German clubs. What UEFA needs is two coefficients-- one for the Champions League, and one for the Europa League.

And the author should have taken bit more realistic tone-- maybe read some of the journalism in Italy to get some perspective?

Same problem, different area of media - 09:48 CST, 12/12/11 (Sniper)

Here is another article backing up my theory that we produce the same junk over and over these days, except in this case, the argument is applied to television and radio. From the article:

"The only response... is to take fewer risks with the content that you produce--thus producing what feels like more and more of the same old stuff."

Sound familiar?