Filler 9

On the upside, I have just delivered the first feature-complete version of that stupid Flash project I've griped about on so many previous occasions. I'd say it's now officially in beta. There've been new builds going back and forth at least daily for the last week and a half, but this is the first time I can genuinely say my to do list for it is clear since the wretched thing first hove into view, like Godzilla slouching towards Tokyo, all those months ago.

Of course, new bug reports will start stacking up tomorrow, but I won't care because for the next 3 days I'm off on another aerobics course. This time it's Step Choreography, which will likely be pretty plodding and tedious (you may recall I gave advance warning a few weeks ago of the whining to come) but will, I am fairly certain, involve no contact with Macromedia products in any way, shape or form, so as far as I'm concerned it's all good.

Those of you familiar with Flash may well be blinking at some of the above. Months? Builds? Beta? Bug reports? And all I can say in response is, yes, I know. I do, honestly, appreciate the theory of using the right tool for the job, but somehow I have spent a lot of my career not doing it. It's really not my fault; I like to consider what is possible. But I really should know by now not to do so within earshot of, shall we say, the managerial class.

"Well I guess the ActionScript interpreter is a Turing machine, so there's no theoretical reason why one couldn't implement a Commodore 64 emulator with it, although the performance would probably be pretty lousy..."

THWAP!

Shut the fuck up, Matthew! What is the matter with you? Never, never, say anything like that, not ever, under any circumstances, not even if you're in a fucking soundproof booth, not even if you're on another planet and there's a million miles of empty vacuum between you and the nearest pointy-haired boss, that sort of idea is just not meant to be uttered, it's not even meant to be thought, no matter how idly amusing it might seem at the time. How idly amused are you going to be when you're actually being asked to do it? Hmmm?

Exactly.

If loose lips sink ships, I sometimes feel like mine are the fucking Bermuda Triangle.

Obviously, I haven't been implementing a Flash C64 emulator. That would be stupid.

Ahem.

Meanwhile, on the downside, I've started getting a few comment spams here lately. Although this isn't quite the first time, it's the first time it has looked like a trend. You go months without one, it's easy to think your blog has somehow slipped beneath the spammers' radar.

Like usenet and email spam before it, this stuff really pisses me off no end. The fundamental odiousness of the whole spam enterprise really defies my ability to describe. It's the sort of thing that brings out the extremist in me, since it is so clearly an expression of laissez-faire free market capitalism. What spammers of all kinds are saying -- and it has been said so often before by greedy individuals and greedy corporations and greedy governments -- is this: everything in the world is just a resource to be exploited for commercial gain.

No it fucking isn't!

I realize that, objectively speaking, comment spam must be one of the most trivial and unimportant consequences of this worldview. Who cares that a bunch of soft, middle class, dilettante bloggers are being taken advantage of, that their delicate social networks are being poisoned by avaricious fuckwits with no conscience? There a people starving around the world, dying of curable diseases, being raped and tortured to death by psychopaths whose regimes are propped up by big business; there are species becoming extinct, landscapes being stripmined, biosystems pillaged.

How many dead babies is a spam-free blog worth? Not bloody many, really.

But still, it is part of the same continuum. The spammer mindset is the sweatshop mindest, the oil company mindset, the pharmaceutical corporation mindset. The WTO mindset. The IMF mindset. The mindset that says: it is not just selfish, not just illegal, but morally wrong to try to prevent other people from making money off you. That says: selling is the only valid activity in the world.

(Well fuck me: looks like the old hippy upbringing hasn't completely deserted me after all.)

Anyway, the point is this. Blogging isn't about selling. It may be a fundamentally worthless activity, but at least it's a fundamentally generous one. We may not contribute anything especially useful, but at least we contribute; even uselessness has its place. While the spammers are toxic parasites who can't even comprehend the notion of contribution, who in their all-consuming greed would deprive us of even our uselessness.

And that's disgusting. Not as disgusting as withholding basic medical treatments from people who might live long productive lives but can't at this moment contribute to your shareholders' dividends. Not as disgusting as funding the murder of people who just want to live their own lives free from your profiteering. But disgusting all the same.

Anyway. I guess it's probably time to install MT-Blacklist.
Posted by matt at November 12, 2003 07:30 PM