I was reading some discussion of transactional integrity in relational databases. Now I've got AC/DC singing Dirty Reads Done Dirt Cheap in my head.

Ignore this if you don't care about IRC politics.

Now, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I generally believe that anyone who disagrees with me must be well-meaning but misguided. (Yes, I am this arrogant, but that's a post for another day). Then something like this happens.

In an attempt to guide the whole SorceryNet power-grabbing debacle in a more productive direction, I took a look at what the proponents of the charter changes said that they really wanted, and tried to find a way to accomplish those goals without tearing the whole place apart in the process.

I offered pretty much everythign they wanted. I dissolved the administrative structure. I divided the "power" between a larger number of people. I made it far, far easier for admins to (as a group) contradict someone that they didn't agree with. What I didn't do, was remove the provision that an admin has to follow the rules, and what I didn't do was add the ability for large tracts of policy to be decided in secret.

And guess what, I'm informed that they're still 100% against it. Funny, that. I guess all their posturing that they were trying to reform the place but retain its openness were, as we suspected, a bunch of crap. It just goes to show that the real meaning behind this discussion is that a couple of admins really hate the idea of anyone else being able to tell them what to do.

i jumped in the river and what did I see?
black-eyed angels swimming with me
a moon full of stars and astral cars
all the figures i used to see
all my lovers were there with me
all my past and futures
and we all went to heaven in a little row boat

there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

Just when you think SorceryNet can't go any further up shit creek, somebody gives the canoe another nudge.

Fred Brooks was right. You always have to throw the first one away.

I've been writing an IRC daemon. In Java. For absolutely no reason other than I felt like it. I was rocking along with it gradually, adding features, uploading a new jar file to sourceforge every month or so until I hit v0.17. 0.17 was missing quite a few vital commands, but it worked well with its two-thirds complete feature set. You could chat in private or run a channel.

Then I hit a brick wall. The problem was that in my rush to add features, I hadn't been leaving any supports behind me, and the moment I had to start tackling the complicated functions, it all started falling down around my ears. The code had become ugly. Every new feature I added was being hacked on, rather than fitting into a clean whole. I could easily have continued in this manner, but who wants to create something that's ugly? The program went several months without being worked on except in short spurts, during which I attempted to dig myself out of the hole I'd built, and just succeeded in losing track of which direction I was trying to dig. (Especially since I'd gone against all my XP instincts, and not coded any unit tests. (Bad boy!)

So today, I made the (probably foolhardy) decision to throw away just under 5000 lines of code and start again from scratch. I just wish I'd got the courage to do this earlier.

I have no comment, I just love the line "But his pants said otherwise".

Posted here more because I'm rather proud of how it came out, in an odd sort of way. :)

From cmiller@pastiche.org Sat Jul 7 17:58:23 2001
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 17:58:23 +1000
From: Charles Miller
To: [deleted]
Subject: Reality
User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i
X-Meow: Meow!
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Lines: 22

You were wrong. You could have found out you were wrong very easily, and saved yourself this embarrassment.

You were wrong. You made accusations without a shred of evidence, and you've backed yourself into a corner. The honourable course of action is that when you make a mistake, you admit to it. The honourable course of action is to permit the accused a right of reply in the forum in which they were accused. The honourable course of action is to apologise for wrongs that _you_ caused through _your_ paranoia.

You were wrong. You know you were wrong. The fact that you go to such lengths to make sure your post remains unopposed makes you the worst kind of liar.

You have some chance left to salvage at least a little respect.

Own up to your mistake.

Apologise.

Charles Miller

Someone has just come up with what is probably LiveJournal's first lunatic conspiracy theory. The only problem is that it revolves around Luthien and Pangea having agreed to conspire against someone. (This will be news to Luthien, who will only know who I'm talking about in five or six hours when she wakes up).

What an idiot.

My comment to his post, refuting every point of his wild theory was deleted within a minute. The accusatory post is still there.

What a coward.

Update:

He's made another post. I made another response. The response was once again deleted, and I was blocked from any further commenting. This reminds me of a five year old boy who knows he's wrong, but can only stand with his fingers in his ears whining "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

What a child.

MindManager really kicks ass.