Dogs of War

2006-03-14T15:32:00Z

In Canada, specifically the province of Ontario (where I live), and in the USA, specifically the state of Ohio, various dog-attacks have caused the respective legislatures of these places to enact laws specifically forbidding the ownership of Pit-Bulls. Clayton Ruby, Canada's wanna-be equivalent of either Ralph Nader or William F. Kunstler, or perhaps both, is now contesting the Ontario law that bans ownership of Pit-Bulls. In every direction, I deem this wrong: the ban in the first place, Ruby's grounds for contesting it in the second place, and failure on both sides to recognize the issue in the third place.

A little background... several times, in both Ohio and Ontario, Pit-Bulls have assaulted and/or murdered children, and in one case an adult postal worker. The knee-jerk reaction is to blame the dog in question. As someone who has helped train German Shepherds for utility-grade duty (i.e., work as a guard dog in various places such as wrecking yards), I can testify that it all depends upon how the dog was educated. This leads necessarily to a discussion of the educator of said dog. Some educators choose to have a particularly vicious dog; some choose to have a selectively vicious dog. A case in point. I once hosted a party, to which my friend Paul and his dog Bette attended. Bette lounged in the corner while the humans chatted. At one point, Paul said, "There's someone in the room who shouldn't be here", and because Paul was looking at me, Bette leapt out of the corner and lunged directly at me, jaws wide and teeth ready. She did NOT bite me; she merely stated that one more move would result in a bite. (Paul chose to look at me for this demonstration because I was acquainted with the turf; others might have soiled their pants.)

Paul is in my opinion a supremely good educator of dogs. I have seen many of his dogs, and without exception they are wonderful companions, excellent frisbee players, and when necessary, they will die defending you.

Back to the legal issues.

1. To ban a species of dog is equivalent to banning a race/nationality from immigrating.
2. To terminate the life of a dog because he or she seriously wounded or killed a human is to miss the point in the most fundamental sense.

On the first point, there can be no rebuttal. Statistics convincingly demonstrate that the dogs responsible for most attacks are not recognized as breeds such as Pit-Bull, Weimaraner, Shepherd, etc., but rather that vague category known as "Other" or "Mixed". Therefore, to ban a breed is equivalent to saying, "Jamaicans are the source of all crime; therefore ban them."

On the second point, assuming that a dog has been found guilty of the offence, the fault lies with the owner of the dog, not the dog. It would be most interesting to hear the dog-owners respond to this argument. Either they would agree, or deny that they have control and authority over their dogs. Should they agree to the latter proposition, then they have no grounds to object to the eradication of their loved ones. Should they agree to the former, then they should have no objection to my real proposal here:

The owner of a dog should be charged with said dog's crimes as if the owner him/herself committed them. Your dog attacks and kills or maims a person, and it is as if you did it.

This, I suggest, is the intelligent way to handle the problem of canine violence. You, as "owner" (actually I prefer the term "responsible companion") of a dog, are responsible for all said dog's actions, and legally accountable. Your dog attacks or maims or kills a postal-person, and you pay the price.

This echoes Confucius, who argued that when a child commits a crime, hold the parents responsible. On that dictum, I have no issues either.

Artful

Evaluation Software

2006-03-08T19:23:00Z

Fuller’s Fifth Law: always bite the hand that feeds. In dutiful obeisance to my own laws, I have chosen to vilify the sponsor of my blog, Red Gate, whose evaluation software makes, in my opinion, a foolish mistake.

Before I explain why, let me ask, How many hours did you work last week, and the week before? And how many hours do you expect to work in the coming week.

Fuller’s Eleventh Law: Emergencies are punctuated by even greater Emergencies.

Therefore, any software firm whose target market is developers (in the broadest sense – that is, including DBAs, middle-tier developers, fat-client developers and website developers) should not offer time-trial evaluations. To do so is to reveal marketing unrecognition. The most important thing about this target market (meaning you and me) is that we are overworked and backed against a wall filled with knives). How could any marketing person assume that I have time in the next N days to examine her software offering? Only by completely misunderstanding my sad position in life.

I cannot remember my child’s name, nor my wife’s. I got home at midnight the past three days in a row, and headed back on the 7:30am train to Toronto.

March 31^st is a drop-deadline. (Have you ever paused to consider why it is called a deadline? If you fail to meet it, drop dead.) We have to finish, else there goes our software career and from here on in, it’s killing baby seals for the rest of our lives – a fraction of the wage, and a lot more dry-cleaning. (A joke, perhaps a little too Canadian for you, but think about it: this baby seal walks into a club.)

To the marketing team at Red Gate and numerous other vendors proffer offer ostensible solutions to my abundant problems: wake up! A timeline evaluation copy is – let me phrase this as gently as possible – asinine. Even if it’s 30 days, it’s asinine.

Change your evaluation model to “number of uses”. I don’t care which number you choose, but get away from the time-line view of this. Wake up and smell the coffee. You want me to license your product. I want to be convinced that it solves some problem(s) of mine.

Realize that before I get around to testing your evaluation copy, I must kill three alligators and wrestle two pigs to the ground. Predicting the unpredictable is – well – asinine. “How long do you think it will take to fix the unforeseen problems?” I could invoke Werner Heisenberg, but what manager do you know that has read him or even comprehended the Uncertainty Principle?

This is not rocket science. There are several established (i.e. buy it) solutions to the eval-copy problem. For developers, the date-sensitive solution is the least appropriate; number-of-uses makes much more sense, and also displays a sensitivity to the situation in which virtually all developers find themselves – too many tasks and not enough time to make the deadline, let alone discover the cool products that might help win the war.

In keeping with Fuller’s Fifth Law, I point out that Red Gate is one of my targets in this missive. Therefore I suggest to the hand that feeds, Ask your own developers how much time they have to investigate potentially useful products. Trust them, if you don’t trust me.

Since this is my first blog courtesy Red Gate, I wanted to demonstrate that RG has expressly stated that I will not be expurgated. The obvious conclusion was that I should test this alleged guarantee. This blog is the test. Should it survive, then in subsequent blogs I shall tell you, dear reader, all the sordid details of the personal lives of the Red Gate development team. Clearly they have no lives, else why would they be writing tools for you, who has an even more pitiful life? And why would I be telling you all this, unless I had an even more pitiful life?

Just because you're paranoiac doesn't mean don't have enemies, or in this case, just because my life is even more pitiful than that of the Red Gate developers doesn't mean that I am wrong.

In certain cases, time-limited software evaluations make sense -- but not in the case of software whose market is developers. Red Gate’s marketing folks have stumbled on this, but they are hardly alone. I could name a hundred firms who have made the same mistake, and I could name a couple who know their target market and have chosen to offer “number-of-uses” evaluation copies.

The latter group make me feel warm and fuzzy. They understand the pressures that I face, and they appreciate that I might download the evaluation today and not even open it for three weeks – not because I am not interested, but because Berlin is burning.

I haven’t even got time to make love with my spouse, let alone use your evaluation copy in the next 14 days. Think “number-of-uses” not “number-of-days”.

Arthur,

Son of Uther Pendragon,

Defeater of the Saxons,

Lord over Alllllll England,

And King of the Dorks.

(c.f. Monty Python)

Arthur Fuller

Dogs of War

Evaluation Software