Foundation

I made a little image for RS today because Leon Wolf needed it for his article. I think I’m happy with the result:

I listened in to part of Senator John McCain’s Blogger Call this morning, briefly taking on the role of the amateur reporter with the personal goal of searching for a reason to be content with the possibility that McCain could be the Republican nominee this year.

I intended to ask a question, actually, but he effectively answered me before I got a chance to ask. In discussing issues related to Michigan (as he was coming to us from Grand Rapids, making a run through the state before going next to South Carolina), he brought up an agreement the UAW recently made to cover long-term medical costs for its members. This is relevant because he said that in Washington, he intends to work with Democrats in the way the UAW and auto workers worked to solve that problem.

That’s a deep answer, and is worth unpacking.

As a long time opponent of the Senator, my first inclination is to take that statement as proof of everything I’ve disliked in his record as Senator. The conventional wisdom being that the UAW always gets what it wants, and the auto makers cave even when it costs them their ability to compete in the market.

I think there’s more to it than that, though. A Republican President and a Democratic Congress in a sense have a relationship much like that of GM, Ford, and the UAW. Both sides have goals, those goals often conflict, and their relationship is reasonably modeled by the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma of game theory, where cooperation benefits everyone more than antagonism, but if one side cooperates and the other antagonizes, the defector wins big, leading to a situation where everyone defects and is worse off.

UAW has exploited this well. Because it deals with more than one company, it negotiates with them all, and as soon as one is convinced to cooperate, it exploits that and forces the result onto the other employers. It has the advantage of unity, so it tends to win.

So in this sense, it is President McCain who would play the role of the UAW to the Senate’s GM and the House’s Ford. He being the sole voice of the executive branch can simultaneously negotiate and compromise with the Senate and the House, take the best of the two deals, and press the other house to accept the better deal! He’ll still be compromising, and following the model that has served him well in getting his way in the Senate, but basic game theory will carry the day for him in a way that it can’t for the divided team.

This analysis actually causes me to reconsider whether a McCain Presidency would split the party as much as I’ve long believed it would. He still has the problem of illegal immigration, and he addressed that in his call by emphasizing his endorsement by Governor Tom Ridge as being a man who is “committed to securing the borders.” But we can survive a division on that issue, as proven by the fact that we already are split on that issue by President Bush, so I now believe that President McCain would not split us the way Senator McCain has, and so I no longer oppose his nomination.

I watched the first three episodes (two yesterday, hey, no keyboard, and one tonight). I was surprised. With NBC and all, I expected the worst. But the hype and trash talk and all that is much less than I thought it would be, and the show… actually feels like American Gladiators.

It’s worth it just to watch the treadmill at the end of the Eliminator notch kill after kill, just like in the original series after the treadmill was moved to the end. Having the classic events returned is just a bonus.

I just hope they get rid of the fire swimming part of the Eliminator, and add Atlasphere.

It’s Schwarzenegger and Núñez working on the budget.

California Governor Schwarzenegger is dealing with a self-made budget crisis (I told you so, and so did Assembly Republicans), as Gray Davis-level spending increases have led to a budget deficit just as large as the one Gray Davis left behind. He’s planning to deal with it by calling an emergency, which can force the legislature to pass a bill to re-balance the budget. He’s formally calling for spending cuts, but the Democrats want to raise taxes.

So guess what? Sacramento Republicans are signing a no-tax pledge, says the San Diego Union-Tribune and Republican votes would be needed for any Democrat-led tax plan. And we know they’re going to try for a tax hike. Just compare these statements from Speaker Fabian Núñez of LA and Republican Leader Michael Villines of Fresno. First the Republican side:

Assembly Republicans look forward to working with the Governor and our colleagues in the Legislature to address California’s growing fiscal crisis. Our state faces a projected $14 billion budget deficit and the recent passage of a $14 billion government-run health care program will make California’s fiscal problems even worse.

State spending has grown by 44 percent over the last 4 years. Hardworking Californians should not be forced to pay for the fiscal mismanagement of the Democrat party. When California families don’t have enough money to make ends meet, they assess their priorities, save for the future, and live within their means. Their state government should be required to do the same.

As we have said before, our state does not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem and it must stop. Make no mistake, Assembly Republicans will not consider tax increases as a solution to California’s overspending problem.

I hope this special session on California’s fiscal crisis will bring all sides together to craft much-needed budget reforms that will prevent similar situations in the future. Only by reducing spending, living within our means and reforming the budget process will we bring California back.

Villines is nice and direct, identifying the problem and the solution. But Núñez is anything but:

The governor’s decision to declare a fiscal emergency recognizes the serious ongoing imbalance between the services Californians require and the resources available to fund them. Prior to the governor’s official declaration, I will be conferring with the Chair of the Budget Committee and other members of the Assembly as we prepare to do our part to address these problems. The Assembly is committed to working with the administration and the Senate. Now is not the time for drawing any lines in the sand or for hyperpartisan posturing that will make potential solutions more difficult to achieve. As I have noted previously, this state of fiscal emergency should strengthen our resolve to tackle major threats to the state’s general fund and economic well being by fixing our broken health care system and blunting the impact of the foreclosure crisis.

Our dear Speaker prefers to dance around without specifically saying what he wants to do, except for his highly careful reference to “threats to the state’s general fund.” He wants to raise revenue.

So yes, I love California Republicans. I just wish we could elect a Governor someday.

False alarm. The RIAA isn’t THAT dumb, apparently. Just almost.

Well, being without a keyboard for a week, I couldn’t work on money making projects, online political activism, or a whole lot else. So, I played Phantom Brave, and just this morning got done with the last thing there is to do in the game, apparently. My conclusion: It’s a good game that could have been great had they taken their time.

I still think La Pucelle is the best game of the series, but Phantom Brave had a good shot at beating that. Plot-wise the game went right back to the old formula, with interesting characters and an engaging plot, as opposed to Disgaea’s silliness up front with a melodramatic end.

System wise, Phantom Brave is interesting in that Nippon Ichi got ambitious while paring down a lot of Disgaea’s ambition. The Item World’s complexities are long gone, replaced by the much simpler fusion system. Equipment slots are gone; each character may carry one item now. The assembly (or equivalent) is axed. Acquiring jobs comes from defeating them, and not from some mystical set of events.

But there’s complexity, I say? Yes. Phantom Brave ditched both the combat map’s grid and the team turn system. Instead, characters are free to move arbitrarily on the plane, and likewise have more flexibility in the vertical direction as well. This allowed them to add sliding and bouncing effects to the maps, which would have been great except that the movement system could not handle them. The problem was that the movement AI just choked badly quite often, especially on bouncy maps.

I guess the bugs evened out, sometimes being a great break for me because the AI would be at a severe disadvantage, and sometimes hurting me badly because they’d cause a turn to be completely wasted, but this game was not quite ready to ship. I know the new combat is complicated and of course completely new to Nippon Ichi, but this needed more testing.

Another bug comes in the turn system. Even though turns are supposed to be based on an individual character’s speed, adding more characters to a team (via confining) could cause a character to get more turns. I routinely summoned Ash just to get a free turn for Marone after Ash’s Quick Attack turn. This effect only magnified when my ‘build team’ of four other characters also got Quick Attack.

Also, if you make changes to Phantom Island and then start a new chapter by going to the mailbox, those changes sometimes would be lost.

The Disgaea stuff was fun, too, and the final, final, final battle was a worthy one, even though because I had Ash and Marone with equipment made from level 9999 items, and their own levels over 2500, I won it in two turns (one Omega Thunder from Marone, and one InvisiSlash from Ash for the win).

So overall, I came away mixed about the game. It was a good concept, but felt rushed in execution. Still, though, I plan to pick up the fourth in the series to see if it’s more polished. Not that I ever again expect the polish of La Pucelle.

I ended up getting the Adesso for $40 bought for me, not this expensive but very nice looking alternative.

But I’m back!

Last night I foolishly spilled on and broke my keyboard. Not an expense I need right now, but it’s unavoidable now. So now, while using the alpha page of the Kana palette to input very slowly what I cannot (bcikrsvxz plus some numbers and punctuation), I solicit suggestions for replacements.

Requirements: Split layout, because anything else kills my wrists from being bent into place. USB connection. Preference: Mac layout.

I found the Adesso Intellimedia Pro MAC Ergonomic Keyboard for 50, which is probably the lower limit on price, but maybe someone can surprise me.

Thank you.

Moe Lane points out some RIAA lunacy:

Hi. Do you own a MP3 player? Do you use it for car trips, gym visits, commutes, or just as a substitute for a rather bulky stereo system? Do you have any of your legally bought CDs on that MP3 player? WAIT! Don’t answer that last one, because if the answer’s “yes” and some lawyer for the RIAA sees it, they’ll sue you for copyright infringement.

I am not making this up:

What’s funny is that Foxtrot hit the DMCA today on a similar issue:

Jason: I can’t wait for Congress to get back to work.
Peter: Why’s that?

Jason: Imagine you’re a lawmaker, and you’ve got an iPod or Zune as a Christmas Gift…

Jason: What’s the first thing you’ll want to do? Why, transfer your music and video collections onto it, of course.

Jason: But wait! There’s a problem! While it’s legal to copy music from your CDs onto the device, it’s not legal to do the same thing with your DVDs! Noooooooo!

Jason: And whose fault is that? YOURS. Because you voted for the stupid Digital Millennium Copyright Act back in 1998.

Jason: Naturally, your first order of business next month will be to repeal that boondoggle.
Peter: What makes you think they all got iPods for Christmas! Andrea: Which one of you kids charged $85 thousand worth of stuff with my Visa?!?