Sun’s Bryan Cantrill still pulls out this old chestnut about why dtrace is supposed to be the one true way of instrumenting a system.

It makes some good points, but goes off on a wild strawman chase at this point:

For us, the answer was so clear that it was almost unspoken: we knew that we needed to develop a virtual machine that could act as a target instruction set for a custom compiler. Why was this the clear choice? Because the alternative — to execute user-specified code natively in the kernel — is untenable from a safety perspective.

This false dichotomy overlooks a third possibility – the one adopted by systemtap. Namely, we don’t run user-specified code natively in the kernel: we run code that is synthesized by our tool. This synthesized code includes much the same control/data checks as the dtrace virtual machine has to have. Actually, it has more, since our input scripting language is significantly more expressive.

Accepting these facts, one would have to dig deeper for essential differences – and deeper yet to exclude those that represent bugs and incomplete work rather than architectural limitations. But such a comparison takes more work.

A few months ago, Eric invented a little word game.

Since he knows spelling and vowels and stuff, this was a natural area. When he hears or says a surprising phrase (“wait here briefly”, “potty time”), he often comes back with a series of repetitions where the vowels cycle:

wait here
waat here
weet here
wiit here
woot here

Sometimes he goes on with this little gag for twenty seconds. What’s new is that we have started copying him, especially when he’s using the gag as a complaint. Yesterday, he realized that we’re goofing around too, and cackled:

You’re playing a word game!”

So, here’s a nearly 3-year-old who invents a word game; recognizes when someone else is playing the game; and correctly expresses that recognition. It almost makes up for the other madness begotten by a pair of little brats in the house.

The adage perfect is the enemy of the good, and its friend worse is better are well established. They have a pearl of truth, and pearl of evil in them.

The pearl of truth is well known – by aspiring toward perfection, one would make a mistake in skipping over the “good enough”. This is a good thing to keep in mind, yada yada yada.

The pearl of evil hits me frequently too. This one works by someone quoting the idea “worse is better” in order to rationalize a lousy solution to a critic. “You can’t have perfection — so put up with this.”

My pet peeve of the moment though is not from vocational sources, but from my own house. When we moved in, the previous resident left some good and some crummy appliances behind. One of them had to be replaced by them outright, before closing – it was so bad. Of course, you can predict what happened next: they bought the crappiest, cheapest replacement that they could. (We might have taken a more active approach in this part of the transaction, but oh well.)

So now, we have three bits of machinery that perform, well, lousy. But they’re not dead yet, and so we lack the urgency to get a replacement of an appropriate quality for our home. Sure, we can’t have perfection, but we can’t seem to have something good enough either. We’re sort of stuck with lousy.

Ontario Liberal minister Michael Bryant has found the secret to immortality. And it involves one of my favorite toys: handguns!

Yes, every human currently alive will stay alive, forever, if guns cease to exist. Good riddance, funeral parlors, cemetaries, undertakers, and overachievers. Hello, steep medical costs for the elderly, discontinuation of automatic retirement age, and a special big hello to the impending real estate crunch.
Or maybe, Bryant is only promising to outlaw funerals, not death. Oh, that stinks.

At great risk to me, our elder boy has reinvented swearing.

Yes, I can hear what you’re thinking. Frank must have spoken some bad words in front of Eric, and they’re coming back. You would be right and wrong. I did speak a “bad” word last year – “damn” – and Eric took to it right away. After some performances of the Evil Eye by the Lovely Spouse, and I knocked it off, and Eric hasn’t mentioned it since.

But now, he is encountering situations where some emotive exclamation is appropriate. He knocks into things; he inhales some water while swimming; he falls. Any self-aware human needs to have something to say at such times. As I have lost my liberty to properly train the boy, he’s come up with something himself. Of course, it’s a howler.

Un, deux, trois!

Sometimes, for a really bad smash-up, there is even a “quatre”. One’s pity for the brat is immediately overtaken by the absurdity. Admit it – what warm-blooded creature wouldn’t smile upon hearing a choking boy count in French?

Dear reader – have you an opinion on whether the boy should be allowed to continue improvising? Or shall we teach him a few of the gentler exclamations on the spectrum – like “d’oh!” or “darn” or “aw man!”?