Brent’s Thoughts

For a while now various Judge and Court shows have been on television. It all started 4 billion years ago when Judge Wapner was on the air. Well it is possible that there were Court shows before this one, but I am not really doing a lot of research for this so pretend it is. Anyway, in the time that People’s Court left the air there was a rather large gap, where the world missed out on people’s problems and bitches being thrown out for the world to see in a court forum. Some would call this the golden age of television. Others would complain because they couldn’t get “expert” legal advice anymore for free. Of course there were still shows like Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake to keep people full of the gossip feeling.

Then there was OJ. Everyone thought this was the Trial of the Century, or at least the Network Executives thought so. I personally thought that Brown v. Board of Education or maybe The Scope Monkey Trials would have had a bigger effect on our country. Of couse that isn’t even talking about the NAZI commander trials or the trials to find Communists in America started by McCarthy. OH NO!!! OJ had a lot more effect on the world in general. Therefore the networks said they would show the trial from “beginning to end”. They thought this was a great idea, at least until they realized that the court process and system in general is a long drawn out process that often times contains lots of boring time spent doing legal things. They then realized that people were interested in what happened, but they didn’t want to sit through all the crap of watching the jury get picked and having people present real evidence. This was about the time Jerry Spring really started to hit big time with the fights and arguing.

Thus, Judge Judy was born. She fit the bill perfectly. Here you had a judge that did no reseach (a lot like this article) and didn’t really care to listen to the people too much. This left plenty of time for the people to argue with each other and for Judy to yell things like, “Do YOU think you are Smarter than me? Not on your best day!!” No matter if the person had a degree in astrophsyics from Harvard (not that Judy would take the time to ask). Instead of actually getting facts Judy would make her descisions based on which person used better english, which one stood correctly and which one would answer the above question with the answer, “No Mam, I don’t think I am smarter than you. I am sorry for trying to tell you my side of the case.”

So of course everyone realized that this was a stupid way to do things and no one watched… er, well maybe not I guess. Ok, OK!! We’re sheep. Baaaa, Baaaaa. Yeah we watched. Judy was a huge hit. Spawning a huge revivial of the Courtroom Drama shows. Suddenly we had all kinds of shows to pick from, Judge Joe Brown, Divorce Court, The Peoples Court, Animal Court (Starring Judge Wapner!!!), and Texas Justice. Hell, there even sprung up a whole television network for this stuff, called CourtTV. The People’s court came back with Ed Koch as the judge, and flopped. They then brought in Judy’s husband-ex-husband-husband-again Jerry. The problem was that he was too nice and actually bothered to look through the cases beforehand. This didn’t work so they dumped him and brought in another. This time they fit the bill with Judge Marilyn Milian. Though a few things were changed (such as the Spanish speaking and somewhat younger look) but the general bitchy-ness and reluctance to listen still shown through. This fit the bill and the show stayed.

So anyway where was I going with this? …Um…..Oh yeah, peoples desire to feel superior to others. That is what I think these shows are all about. People want to see other people up there and hear how stupid they sound and how the judge (whomever it may be) can make them seem more stupid. The shows aren’t about justice. They are instead about how best to show the downside to the people that are on there. This lets the audience feel that they are better than these people and that is what they want. Sure some people look at it purely from a logical stand-point but without a doubt before the episode is over part of your descision to personally rule for one or the other will be based on little more than which one looked better, used better english, and which one stood up the best. Why? Because, like the desire to feel better than most everyone else, that is part of human nature.

Long ago in a university far far away….

I told some friends of mine that someday I was going to write a book series on the Heroes of Computer Science. These books would be about the great stories of the Computer Science people. Not the normal stories about them writing cool operating systems or designing the killer apps for a modern day world, but instead the true stories about them in their alternate lives as heroes to the world and how they help save people. I cannot remember how this conversation started, but I can remember that I told Kristie Simpson that the first book would be about her. Since I doubt that I will ever actually write a book about this I think it is fair to welch on that a little and write some thoughts on a larger group.

Hell I don’t even know what I would write about, but I do know that we got a pretty good laugh out of coming up with all the people that we would start writing the books about. I mean can you picture Linus Torvaldus (creator of Linux) as the sword swinging barbarian in plate mail? Or how about Richard Stallman (creator of the GNU project) as a paladin? Maybe the two of them joining together to fight the evil Bill the Dragon? Does that not just seem like the goofy-ist thought process around? Well not even close for me. Of couse they would have to have their own good dragon, Tux. Maybe they would seek out the Wand of Ossis to aid the in their quest for a better world. Along the way they pick up a merry band of compatriots such as Alan Cox the Cleric, Rick vanRiel the forgetful Wizard, and the guy who created sourceforge as a dwarf. Heck maybe I do have something to write after all.

In truth this is somewhat of a sane attempt at foolishness compared to other stuff in the world I guess, but I cannot help but think about everyone’s general perception of computer people and how these stories would kick that in the butt just for the fun of doing it. I hope some day Mike Lamont gets to a chance to read these just for the kicks it might give him since he was the other one making the joke and I am sure that he will give me some more people to fit into it.

Well as usual I have spent little time writing in this so I now I have to catch everyone up. First AFNI has cut my legs out from under me while praising something that I created. I gave my speech on SMess and it seemed to go over well, but because my boss did not tell his boss and the people above him it became a political battle in Bloomington. One which I got punished because my boss screwed up. His logic was that if I wasn’t doing anything with linux then I wouldn’t be creating things that got him in trouble and thus he has told me to remove linux from everything at our center. It is made more interesting by the fact that during the presentation that I gave his boss stated that he didn’t care if I had linux machines at the center. So I am somewhat displeased over that. On to other topics though… I have since solidified Diablo from its state of limbo to a linux machine with a fairly nice setup. Several things have helped me to do this. First I picked up a copy of Railroad Tycoon (for Linux, by Loki) at Best Buy for 9 bucks and I am thoughly enjoying it. Second, the first of my hard drives that went defective came back and I have placed that in there to allow for more space. This has made me feel more comfortable with the machine. I also moved the ATI Radeaon card that I had back into since I am not running windows I don’t have to worry about the buggy drivers for it. Diablo finally lies in the state that I planned for it from the start. This leaves a couple things though. When I first built Diablo into what I am calling Version 1.8 the hard drive crashed and I purchased a new one. Later it crashed and I decided to send both of the messed up ones in to the respective companies. Now one is back and the other is on the way. Which means I will have a 60 Gig hard drive extra for the machines. Not particularly a bad problem, but an interesting one no the less. Also Just today I finished Halo on the normal level, so I am off to find some of the cool stuff in it to replay.

Well I had a blast yesterday. I spent a portion of the day over at Jeremiah’s playing Halo on my Xbox in co-op mode. It is awesome. Halo itself is a pretty cool game, but having someone else there to go through the missions with you and to yell, “AHHH Watchout behind you.” and cap a bunch of Flood and Covenant is a wonderful thing. This got me to thinking. Why aren’t more games this way? Some of the most fun I have had playing games is when I am playing them with someone else. When I was younger it was Todd and I that were playing them and we would have to switch off playing whatever it was. Then when I met Maxx we had a blast playing Myth II. This was the first game where you could play against the missions that I had ever played. There are tons and tons of games that allow you to play multiplayer, but almost all of them are you and a bunch of other people play some kinda CTF or Team based death match or something along those lines, but the games that are the real fun are the ones where it is you and your friends versus the bad guys. That is what Halo does for you, and it is truely a blast. Unfortunately, they didn’t take it to the next level. Some of the best aspects of Halo is the outdoor battles where there are all kinds a tanks and vehicles that you can involve in the battle. The battles themselves are just awesome as well even without the vehicles, but the vehicles add a level of fun to it, especially in co-op mode. So here is the thing. Ultimate squad based warfare. Setup a co-op mode for a bunch of players not just two. There were several instances in the game where it would be really cool to have fire squads that could roll across the maps. Imagine 6 or 7 of your friends in a room yelling and fighting against the mission goal. I think it would be pretty cool. Playing a game by yourself is fun, but playing a game with your friends is awesome if for no other reason than it makes cool stories to talk about to each other like, “Remember when you hit me with that tank… and I flew head first into a tree?”