Cav's Place

I watched the Europa League draw earlier and just have to throw this out here and ask what kind of mockery was that? They used a computer to do something, then set 24 ties by just drawing a few numbers to pair groups of teams in some order that was arrived at in ways that probably only they understood, and yet at the end drew the remaining five ties one by one? Seriously, who came up with that stupid idea and why did they bother to still try to make some sort of “show” out of it?
If they wanted to have a computer make the draw, they could have had a computer make the draw, start to end. If they wanted to still draw them one by one, they definitely could have drawn them one by one, though it’d have taken quite a while. And if they wanted to use this method of assigning a certain order of the teams in each group to a number and just draw the numbers to speed up the process, they could have done that for all teams and in a transparent way, which would have implied 24 numbers in each pot, to cover all the options, and reusing said numbers for each group, not removing them from the bowl. But what happened there made no sense whatsoever…
The only way I can imagine it working, particularly considering the fact that they didn’t reuse any numbers, is that the computer did make the draw and the numbers pulled out of the pots were just a little show, with no relevance whatsoever. Or perhaps they could have acted as the random seed for the computer program that made the draw, I guess that may be one other explanation, but then I once again get back to the fact that they were removed from the pot after being drawn once, which is at the very least questionable in this scenario. Not to mention that I find no reason for them to use one method for 24 ties and another for the remaining five.

Granted, I don’t like the fact that luck plays such a large part in the process either way, so would prefer to do without draws as much as possible, or at least to find and implement fair methods to greatly reduce the number of different options for each team to be drawn against. One simple way to do that would be to simply pair the teams according to their coefficients, perhaps after splitting them into seeded and unseeded according to the strength of the top divisions of the countries they represent and the positions they finished the previous season on, to at least somewhat lessen the penalties new teams will suffer under such a system. Or, at least in the Europa League, they could be placed into groups strictly according to geographic criteria and then paired as well as possible according to their coefficients while still avoiding matches between teams from the same country, which will also result in a more inclusive group stage as well.

But I only wanted to express some confusion here. If I get past that and start listing solutions, I’ll have to once again go through the various plans I made for these competitions over the years, when my mind happened to want to work on this sort of thing, and probably update them according to any changes that have taken place since I last wrote down such a plan, apparently two years ago, which is hardly what I feel like doing at the moment. I’m sure I will do it sooner or later, and perhaps eventually post something about it here as well, like I did in the past for the Romanian championship or the World Cup, but it won’t be today.

Later edit: Yes, I believe I figured out how it actually worked, with four groups of six and no changes in the position of the teams, but that makes it no less of a mockery, considering the low overall importance of the draw itself, which clearly was largely just a show in this scenario.

I’ve been thinking about writing something about the latest events in Egypt since last week, when Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were removed from power, and actually meant to write it at the start of this week, but here we are, on Sunday, with the post still not written. As a result, since I mean to at least write it now if I couldn’t get myself to do so earlier, this will be another rushed post, less detailed than it should be and without links. If you happen to read it and somehow don’t know the details of what’s going on over there, feel free to search for more information on your own, as it’s extremely easy to find.

I won’t get into the whole discussion about whether it is a coup or not, partly because, although the military didn’t openly take power for itself, for all practical purposes it is, and partly because it’s not particularly relevant. What matters is that those who needed to be removed from power were removed swiftly and without bloodshed, and that the country received another chance. How much of a chance that is and what exactly will be done with it is another matter entirely.
Granted, removing someone from power when they shouldn’t have been allowed to take power in the first place, regardless of how free and fair the elections were considered to have been, isn’t exactly something to brag about, but fixing a mistake after a year is still better than not fixing it. Fixing a mistake by making others, however, is not acceptable, yet this is exactly what the Egyptian military and those it appointed as interim rulers certainly seem to keep doing after the initial intervention.

The first move I disagreed with was arresting Mohamed Morsi, followed of course by all the other arrests of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the warrants issued for those who went into hiding. Yes, allowing them to remain free and make public appearances would have caused even more of their supporters to gather around them and would have most probably resulted in a greater number of clashes and casualties, but that would have been their fault and would have reduced their credibility even further, in Egypt as well as abroad, while arresting them brings back memories of the Mubarak regime and may well reduce the support for the interim rulers, forcing whoever will be elected after this period is over to struggle to regain all of this lost confidence.
Worse, however, is the killing of protesters, at least without clear and complete footage proving the military’s side of the story. I, as an external observer, don’t care that a country’s military claims that they responded to an attack staged by a group of terrorists that came out of a larger group of otherwise peaceful protesters. I have heard that too many times and the result of going down that path can be seen in Syria for more than two years now, so if a country’s armed forces make such a claim, I expect them to back it with irrefutable evidence… And I also expect them to have better ways to deal with such situations, if true, than shooting at groups of people and, even if entirely by accident, killing protesters, regardless of which side they’re on.

But these events will determine the future of a country while also influencing the entire region and the way in which certain issues are dealt with in the rest of the world as well, so, as insensitive as it sounds, there are things to worry about that are far more important than arrests and killings. I’m referring to deciding who can be elected in a position of authority and how, enforcing the separation of Church and State and, of course, the particular risk of radicalizing certain Islamists who had so far remained relatively silent, hoping that their views, with the possible exception of the particularly extreme ones, will be enforced through methods that are generally considered democratic.
This last issue has been frequently mentioned in recent analyses, and for good reason. However, the fact that this risk is so real is a good thing from where I’m standing, because religion must be a strictly personal choice and have no influence whatsoever on laws or political decisions. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Paganism, Atheism or anything else; no belief system should be allowed to have any influence on the lives of those who didn’t freely choose to adhere to it, so anything that gives people who disagree with this statement hope that their views will be forced upon others needs to be stamped out, along with those who can’t accept this, regardless or where it happens or how.
Yet this is not what’s actually being done in Egypt now, is it? Or, all right, at this particular moment the Salafists, who are actually a far bigger problem than even the Muslim Brotherhood as far as their objectives are concerned, are no longer taking part in the negotiations, but that’s because they pulled out after the army killed protesters, likely in an attempt to gather even moderate Islamists around them and increase their influence in the end. However, before pulling out they blocked two nominations for the office of Prime Minister, proving that the other forces are definitely willing to allow them to continue shaping the future of Egypt, while at the same time those same forces didn’t even consult the leaders of the masses of largely secular protesters who triggered this entire chain of events!

Of course, you’ll say that this isn’t so much about religion, the economy and the fact that Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood were starting to entrench themselves, becoming authoritarian, playing a much bigger role, but I always dismiss the economic concerns, seeing as the entire system needs to be destroyed in order for a fair one to be built upon its ashes. The authoritarianism is a different matter, but while authoritarian rulers need not be religious, rulers who are heavily influenced in their decisions by religious beliefs are usually authoritarian.
As such, I think that, if Egyptians want to avoid finding themselves in a similar or worse situation a year or two from now, removing any influence of religion from politics should be the first order of business, regardless of the risks involved. Past that, a more transparent and participative system must be developed and enforced, and leaders who will strive to guarantee the rights of all to live as they please as long as they do not undeservedly harm others or the environment must be appointed, regardless of what percentage of the population will support or oppose them… But that is a message for the entire world, not only for Egypt.

Another July 12 rolls past, the eighth I spend thinking of what might have been… Not that I don’t do that on most other days as well, but this and September 27 are at another level and at least there’s a clear reason for it, which I guess my mind wanted to make a point of with the terrible dream I had just before waking up.
Meant to try to write something longer, but if I couldn’t do it on other days, how could I hope to do it now? You see that I hardly manage anything on here anymore, and it’s not even because I’m writing more in my story either, as that’s going extremely poorly as well. But I guess it’s surprising that I somehow manage to keep writing at all after close to eight years in a state that makes it seem too much to even keep breathing at times, and probably about five of not even having a reason to want a reason to want to try anything anymore. At the same time, since some certainly manage to turn pain into extraordinary art, it may not have that much to do with that after all.

Otherwise, something’s being done behind the building here yet again, with another small area cleared of plants, apparently to bury some equipment there, and I keep hearing chainsaws. This last part probably has to do with the mayor’s plans, as after a storm he was saying that 1500 trees supposedly need to be cut down in this sector due to being in danger of falling, though he admitted than none of the over 100 trees that actually did fall were on this list, and that the campaign to prune all the others needs to continue. Unfortunately, the problem with this latter part is that the workers obviously believe that grooming a tree means chopping away more than half of its branches, and in some cases nearly all of them, leaving almost stripped trunks behind…
And on yet another note, since this seems to be turning into something of a personal update despite the fact that it feels terribly wrong to mix other issues into something posted on July 12, I ended up being banned from MobyGames a few days ago due to submitting spam and posting insulting forum posts in an attempt to finally get someone to look into my conflict with that moron of an approver that keeps sending so many of my submissions back for idiotic reasons, so I guess that’s yet one more thing I couldn’t do right… The strategy might have been somewhat productive after all, since the matter seems to have at least received some attention now and I was told someone will finally look into it and see who was right and what should be done, but I’m still the one who got banned and I have no idea whether I’ll be allowed back or what this means for all the pending submissions I had.

But this was too much already, especially since it wasn’t strictly on topic, so I’ll stop here and curl in a ball once again. Will probably pull down the blinds again too, as I had just pulled them up when it started raining, but now it stopped and there’s no reason for them to stay up anymore. Can’t put up with bright sunlight and definitely don’t want to see another little patch of Nature being ruined regardless of what day it is, so looking outside will only make a terrible day even worse.

The Internet Defense League is raising the “Cat Signal” tomorrow in support of Edward Snowden and of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, so if you have a site I’d like to ask you to take part as well, and also to take a look at all the other ways in which you could help and see what else you might be able to do.
I do hope the campaign code will work this time, though, because I put it up during their last campaign as well and nothing happened. Granted, at that time I only used the specific campaign code, which wasn’t yet made public now, and this time I’m using the automated “all campaigns” one, so let’s hope that’ll be good enough. If it’s not, I’ll probably be redirecting the whole site to a campaign page, probably just the one I linked to above, listing all the ways in which one can get involved, and turn the “Cat Signal” into a blackout, because this is too important to miss due to technical issues.

I should be writing a longer post in support of Snowden now, in fact I should have already done that some time ago, but I’ll let you read a good article I stumbled into a few hours ago and just say that, beyond what was actually revealed and the discussions and campaigns that have been triggered as a result of his actions, he has also given us another “face” of whistleblowing. Seeing as I’m not sure what, if anything, will come out of everything else and considering the situation Julian Assange is in and, more importantly, the problems caused so far by his personality and behavior, this may end up being the most important aspect of these recent events, as it may just kick a movement back into motion once again, help others come forward and maybe, just maybe, somehow get something done.

As announced back in March, Google Reader was shut down today. According to the message currently displayed when attempting to access the service, which also links to a list of alternatives, users who haven’t done so already will still be able to use Google Takeout to download a copy of their Google Reader data, likely to import into their new RSS reader of choice, until 12 PM PST on July 15. After that time, everything will be deleted.

From what I’m seeing, the vast majority of Google Reader users have now switched to Feedly, with the rest, myself included, spreading among a large number of other services, though it’ll remain to be seen how the new Digg Reader will change that situation over the coming weeks and months. Understandably, those services will currently be experiencing levels of traffic that they may not be equipped to handle just yet, which will probably be most noticeable for the smaller ones, while the newly launched ones are still likely to be struggling with bugs or features that aren’t yet implemented, so this is far from the best time to test them if you haven’t done so already, but things should get better in time, in part perhaps also because the traffic levels will be somewhat lower once those who have made accounts on multiple such services will make their final choice.

Seeing as I haven’t tested any except The Old Reader, which was the one I chose after going through a few articles comparing the options shortly after the initial announcement, I’m afraid I can’t help you compare if you’re still looking for another reader, but can point out that a bug in The Old Reader currently makes the page scroll to the clicked post regardless of the settings and one obvious thing that it lacks compared to Google Reader is the ability to manually refresh all feeds at once.
Admittedly, as their server status page reports, the spike in traffic is seriously straining their servers and everything is running significantly slower than it should at the moment, manual refresh commands possibly failing even on single feeds, so such an option couldn’t work at the moment even if it would exist, but perhaps things will improve with time. It is, after all, a small project maintained by a few people in their spare time, and partially with their own money, seeing as donations don’t cover the costs, and they were only reporting some 260000 users three weeks ago.
Of course, the first thing I looked for was a simple interface without too many features I won’t use getting in the way and with a look that won’t make me think it was designed with mobile devices in mind, but the fact that it is an independent project maintained by people you can definitely see as volunteers clearly weighed a lot in my decision to pick it back then as well. Unfortunately, this does make such problems far more likely and also greatly increases the risk of the whole thing eventually needing to be discontinued, so I’ll wait and see what happens, but do plan to stick with it if it won’t get worse.