California is trying to convince some of its prison inmates to volunteer to be sent to privately managed facilities in other states in order to ease overcrowding in its prisons. How do you encourage people to volunteer to be relocated to Tennessee? Two words: marketing video.

The conditional shuffle is a useful new coinage. Greg Sargent applies it to Tom Friedman’s support of the “surge” in Iraq, but it can be applied to all sorts of situations. Think about it the next time someone says they can support adding some huge new feature to the product, but only if QA can get it completely tested in three days.

By conditioning their support on a milestone that could never possibly be met, this person theoretically gives themselves an out when things don’t turn out as expected. When the feature gets added and the release is delayed by three months, the conditionalizer evades accountability by saying that they only supported it under certain conditions which were not met. Never mind the fact that it was foreseeable that those conditions were never going to be met.

The conditional shuffle. I like it.

One of my favorite writers on the topic of software development discusses one of my favorite pieces of software with its author. Here’s Allan Odgaard on the future of TextMate as a product:

So one option is to hire programmers and basically build a company. Is this something I want to do? Maybe, but running a company requires a steady cash flow. Hiring good programmers can be difficult, and hiring a bad programmer can turn out to be worse than not hire anyone at all, but you will rarely know in advance.

Ain’t that the truth.

The chief prosecutor in the United Kingdom, Sir Ken Macdonald, on the war on terror:

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, ‘soldiers’. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a ‘war on terror’, just as there can be no such thing as a ‘war on drugs’.

A prosecutor who’s not interested in increasing their own power is a refreshing thing to see.

By way of Bruce Schneier.

Many are photos taken by amateurs, the rights to which Microsoft purchased:

Creative Director Jenny Lam expanded the search to Flickr and contacted people who took really interesting pictures, asking them, “So, how would you like one of your photos included among the default wallpapers in Windows Vista?” The Flickr artists were excited to be a part of Windows Vista (one of them by an astonishing coincidence happened to be a beta tester), and after the lawyers had their say–because nothing is complete without lawyers getting involved–Microsoft sent the photographers on a commissioned photo shoot.

The memory card doors on Diebold voting machines are physically secured using a mailbox lock. Freedom to Tinker has the details on how you can make your own key:

According to published reports, nearly all the machines deployed around the country use the exact same key. Up to this point we’ve been careful not to say precisely which key or show the particular pattern of the cuts. The shape of a key is like a password — it only provides security if you keep it secret from the bad guys. We’ve tried to keep the shape secret so as not to make an attacker’s job even marginally easier, and you would expect a security-conscious vendor to do the same.

Not Diebold. Ross Kinard of SploitCast wrote to me last month to point out that Diebold offers the key for sale on their web site. Of course, they won’t sell it to just anybody — only Diebold account holders can order it online. However, as Ross observed, Diebold’s online store shows a detailed photograph of the key.

These are the same people who probably furnished your bank’s ATMs as well. Comforting.

Valentine’s Day is coming up, so I thought I’d post a little guide to romantic gift giving. For the longest time, I had no idea how to give a romantic gift, mainly because I didn’t understand what the word “romantic” means. I’m a guy who interfaces more with computers than with people, and who enjoys reading about economics and sports statistics. One day I was driving home from work and realized that the word “romantic” is an antonym of the word “practical” and suddenly a lot of things I had been missing became clear to me. For example, if you’re like me, you never understood why so many people find jewelry to be a wonderful gift to receive. Allow me to explain.

The first rule of romantic gift giving is that practical gifts are never romantic. Your significant other may need new snow boots, but snow boots are not romantic, unless they’re very fashionable and don’t actually keep your feet dry. It doesn’t matter how much the recipient wants the gift in question, if it’s a practical gift, you won’t get any credit for being romantic.

The second rule of romantic gift giving is that for a gift to be appreciated, it has to exceed expectations. That means that big events call for bigger gifts. One time I went to lunch at Taco Bell, and bought a stuffed chihuahua for less than five dollars. I gave it to my wife when I got home, and it turned out to be one my wife’s favorite gifts. Why? Because she didn’t expect to get anything at all and because it showed that I was thinking about her while I was at lunch at Taco Bell. I had no idea it would be well-received at the time, I just bought it because she liked those old commercials with the dog. Anyway, had I bought her a stuffed chihuahua from Taco Bell for our fifth wedding anniversary, I don’t think it would have made it into the gift hall of fame.

The third rule of gift giving is that a gift is a token of generosity. In other words, the more you sacrifice to give a gift, the more the recipient will appreciate it. You may get chided for absurdity, but everyone wants someone to behave absurdly on their behalf, at least occasionally. The nice thing about this rule is that for most recipients, effort is a substitute for cash. You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but you have to put a lot into the gift somehow. Spending a bit more than you can afford on a gift is romantic. Going out of your way to pick up that certain something is romantic. Handmade gifts are romantic.

Now it should be clear why jewelry is a romantic gift. Jewelry is completely impractical, as it’s simply an adornment. It is obviously expensive. The recipient can wear the jewelry and show other people that someone feels like they are worth sacrificing for. The trick with jewelry is managing expectations. If you buy too much jewelry, you’ll get yourself into a position where you can’t outdo yourself. Giving romantic gifts is all about outdoing yourself. As reliable as jewelry is as a romantic gift, it doesn’t work for me. My wife doesn’t wear jewelry.

That brings me to a final point. You have to account for taste. If you give an unexpected, generous, romantic gift that the recipient will hate, you won’t get yourself anywhere. That’s one area where I can’t help you out. Pay attention to what your significant other likes, and avoid giving gifts that strongly reflect personal taste. In other words, avoid purses and shoes, unless you have seen your significant other point at a specific item and say something to the effect of, “I love that but could never afford it.” We’ve all seen the movies where a romantic gentleman surprises a lady with a fancy dress to wear to dinner. That doesn’t work in real life.

A final warning: You know what they call people who are excessively romantic? Idiots. If you buy expensive gifts but you can’t pay your rent, only idiots will appreciate those gifts. Your goal for romantic gift giving should be to astound and surprise, not to keep the recipient up at night worrying about your poor judgement. Good luck!

In the comments of my post complaining about unwanted mouseover effects on Web pages yesterday, Dave Adams mentioned the NoScript add-on for Firefox. It turns of JavaScript for all domains except for those that you add to a whitelist. I’m normally in favor of using Web sites in the way that the publishers intend, but advertising has become so intrusive lately that I’m starting to change my philosophy. A few weeks ago I started using Flashblock again, and now I’ve added NoScript as well.

Between the two, I’m finding that pages load faster and that most Web sites are much easier to deal with. I feel a little bad because I’m viewing people’s content and screening out a lot of ads that help pay for that content, but I think I’ll get over it.

From the AP:

Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.

Spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM Corp., which is a big supporter of the open-source standard. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The sad thing is that Microsoft was very close to doing the right thing here. If Microsoft has legitimate corrections or additions for articles in Wikipedia, it should correct them, but it should do so in a transparent fashion.

Netflix is buying the movies and renting them anyway. Good for them.