Author Archives: Josh

Save the internet, or: How I learned to stop reading BoingBoing and love the blog.

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STOP SOPA, SAVE THE INTERNET – Boing Boing.

Wow! Big deal! Hugely important! And one of the biggest “blogs” on the internet decided to talk about it!
You’re one of the biggest blogs around, commanding giant respect and readership. It’s great that you decide to talk about issues, but where’s the “Click here to find out how to contact your representative”? Apparently you care enough to copy-paste content from another blog, (At least that’s what I think you did? But you didn’t link to it so I’m not sure.) but not enough to help your giant readership figure out what to do to help? I call that failure.

Let’s hit that other point a bit more too. I don’t know what content on this page is actually Cory Doctorow’s writing and opinion and what is simply a copy-paste from someone else. I’m pretty sure that the dark background is the “block quote” style, so I think this entire article is simply a copy-pasta job.

Maybe there’s a place for something like boingboing, something that’s more stream-of-consciousness blather than actual blogging. Being considered one of the “big blogs” though and then doing crap like this just leeches respectability from every blog out there that’s trying to be significant, newsworthy, or relevant. Not that I don’t believe there’s a place for stream-of-consciousness, but take a look at something like Scalzi’s Whatever blog for an example how you can be a serious blogger as well as do things like post pictures of bacon taped to cats. I’m just not sure I’ve ever found enough redeeming value in boingboing to offset the damage I think they do. Dear boingboing: You are the reason the internet generation is ADD and apathetic. Stop it.

tl;dr: I actually stopped reading BoingBoing a long time ago. You probably should too. 🙂 Now go write to your representative and save the internet!

Also, yes, I know that I didn’t post a “how to take action” link either. But this post isn’t a call to action for anything other than unsubscribing from boingboing so I think I get a pass. I may try and write more about saving the internet later.

So tired of computers right now…

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Every computer I have is being a pain in my ass. Lion is buggy and requires reboots all the time, Snow Leopard eats more RAM than the computer has available, Bodhi Linux got wiped off the laptop because I really dislike being 2 versions out of date on everything, Arch Linux is an awesome idea, but if I can’t even easily set up my WiFi then you’re probably doing it wrong. Gentoo on my G4 is actually pretty stable and working well ironically, but it’s not using wifi or X.
And, just to be fair, windows is right out too. I used it on and off on my Thinkpad for a little while. I hate the window manager, and getting it working and maintained is at least equally as complicated as Linux, so why would I bother?
I may have to go back to Ubuntu, even though I’m really sort of tired of APT package management, just because it at least works. Although previous experience tells me that it doesn’t work nearly as cleanly when you like using alternative desktop environments, as I do.

DAMMIT people, how did we let it get to this?! The current state of computers being so highly polarized to one side or the other of the “Arcane <–> Appliance” scale that it’s insane. Arch Linux really did sound like a good idea to me when I was looking at distros. A basic system that lets you plug in the tools you want to build the system you need. Yes please. However the state of things is just feels so broken. The fragmentation inherent in the open source community is simultaneously one of it’s greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses. I shouldn’t need to install 5 different tools and figure out how to get them all to work together just to get my wifi connected. (Never mind having to choose which of several options I want for any of those 5 tools.) There’s been a lot of attempts at standardization over the years and these are great, but it’s still a long way from being something that “just works”. Ubuntu is the best distro around for this, but the cost in freedoms and ability to customize and tweak is something I had been hoping to avoid.

Here’s a good example: Ubuntu at least recognizes my keyboard properly. I thought Arch was just disliking Apple keyboards, but when installing on my Thinkpad it’s also kind of wonky. (Backspace not working in vim, function keys being recognized properly, etc..) Never had trouble with that on Ubuntu.

Where’s the operating system that aims to provide a usable functional base, NOT have a “blue screen” based installer that makes you learn partition your disk by hand? I want a clean install that includes a working network management daemon, automatically gets uses DHCP when I plug an ethernet cable in, mounts my removable media nicely, has X configured for my video card, gives me a choice of window managers to use to suit my personal needs and taste, and provides a package management system that lets me keep my system up to date and manage source based or “outside the official tree” installs cleanly as well?

I see why the slide towards “computing appliance” is such a big push. Making software that works and gives users choices is *HARD*. Building a coherent system that works and gives users the choices they need requires focus and coordination, often things that open source unfortunately lacks.

There’s gotta be some middle ground though. Even we reasonably hardcore nerds sometimes want to just sit down, join a wifi network, and write some code…

Orphanage/Orphan’s Destiny – Robert Buettner

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Once bitten twice shy right? I recently bemoaned having trusted the author blurb on the front cover of a book. Well, I did it again, and this time it worked out. So much for that theory.

Heinlein would have enjoyed this exciting homage to Starship Troopers… The near future Buettner paints is as believable as it is terrible. — Joe Haldeman

Well damn. Haldeman, the author of Forever War, thinks that this is on the level of Starship Troopers? That I will believe. In fact I put off reading the first book until I had the entire series. Boy am I glad I did that. I read book one, couldn’t put it down, read book two, realized I had a midterm coming up, and proceeded to painfully put book three back on the shelf until further notice. Aaaaaargh.

I could possibly see rating this series up there with Forever War, Starship Troopers, and Armor. I have a few problems with it, but it is an utterly enjoyable read. I think it lacks some of the deeper meanings are found in some of my other favorites. I would actually put this somewhere between Haldeman/Heinlein/Steakley and Webber/Ringo. It’s not pure fun fluff, but it’s not really that deep. At least not yet. It does have some of the things that I usually complain about, characters just falling into convenient circumstances, things so unbelievably lucky that suspension of disbelief doesn’t quite work… I’m willing to let it pass though due to mitigating circumstances. The action is not only fun, but believable, the science is believable, and the concepts realistic and possible. There are perhaps some underlying messages and lessons to learn, but it just hasn’t hit me as hard as Armor. I suppose not every book can be up to that level, but I really do enjoy books that encourage me to think differently or question things. I do like the worldbuilding though. Not quite post-apocalyptic yet, the mid-apocalyptic setting is realistic and interesting, although once again not terribly deep.

Whatever I may think about this series, it is indeed eminently readable. I will be undertaking to read the next three books as soon as possible. Very seldom do I find such a page-turner like this that I just can’t bring myself to put down. If it keeps up I believe this series will likely earn a permanent place on my bookshelf under the “Enjoyable, could easily read again” category.

Our [lounge] had a manual Foosball table with one of the little men broken off, a tray of yesterday’s mess-hall cookies, coffee, and ancient orange furniture covered in the skin of animals so extinct I’d never heard of them. Really. I read the labels. “Naugahyde.”

Eats, Shoots & Leaves ! – Lynne Truss

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There are books that you know you’ll like, there are books you’re not sure about, and then there are books that you’re truly suspicious about. Now, when you come across a book with the subtitle “A zero tolerance approach to punctuation” I think it’s fair to immediately move towards the “whoa there nelly, what’s this?” side of the equation.

I am here to tell you that BOY HOWDY, THAT WOULD BE A MISTAKE!!!

This book is amazing. 100% first page to last page. That’s 204 pages of perfect, hilarious, informative, educational fun.
I can hear your skepticism, don’t worry. A book about punctuation, can it really be that good? Let me convince you:

Consider the difference between the following:

“Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

and:

“Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”

Now, huge doctrinal differences hang on the placing of this comma. The first version, which is how Protestants interpret the passage (Luke, xxiii, 43), lightly skips over the whole unpleasant business of Purgatory and takes the crucified thief straight to heaven with Our Lord. The second promises Paradise at some later date (to be confirmed, as it were) and leaves Purgatory nicely in the picture for the Catholics, who believe in it. Similarly, it is argued that the Authorised Version of the Bible (and by extension Handel’s Messiah) misleads on the true interpretation of Isaiah xl, 3. Once again consider the difference:

“The Voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”
and
“The voice of him that crieth: In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord”

Also:

“Comfort ye my people”
(Please go and comfort my people)
and
“Comfort ye, my people”
(Just cheer up you lot; it might never happen)

Of course, if Hebrew or any other ancient languages had included punctuation (in the case of Hebrew, a few vowels might have been nice as well), two thousand years of scriptural exegesis need never have occurred, and a lot of clever, dandruffy people could definitely have spent more time in the fresh air.

It goes on from there, and gets even better as we learn that indeed, not only did they fail to have punctuation, but that theyevenleftoutthespaces. (theybelieveddifficultyinreading (argh, I’ll stop!) encouraged healthy meditation and the glorification of God. Something about how your heart lifted in praise once you figured out what the heck you were looking at.

Now, given the quote there I really shouldn’t need to convince you any further. This is a book you should read. However I would like to continue to try and wax eloquent about just how much I think you should read it. Do you really know how to use a comma? I mean really know? How about actually using an ellipses correctly rather than just indicating that you’re trailing off… Do you avoid semicolons because you believe that they are “middle class” or perhaps dangerously addictive? This book will solve all those problems for you.

The best part however, is that you will laugh while you learn. Really laugh. Lynne Truss is an amazing writer, and really does give you the information in a way that will stick with you. This is not dry, this is not boring, and this is very educational. I was already one of those people hates seeing quotes on signs like:

“Drivers” turn off your engines

(No kidding, this is on a sign I walk by every day. If I only had some green paint…)

Having read this book however I now recognize that not only am I not alone, but there are many other horrible grammatical errors common to signs and headlines everywhere!

This book was loaned to me and I will now have to return it, however I may need to pick up my own copy! I will leave you with the following quote, which has a handwritten exclamation point from the gentleman who loaned it to me. I couldn’t agree more with that thought. I would’ve used a highlighter.

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: with her, man is nothing.

The Lost Years of Merlin – T.A. Barron

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I’ve always been a fan of the Merlin mythology, so this trilogy seemed like one that I would likely enjoy, I just never got around to reading it. Madeleine L’Engle has a quote on the front, it has to be good right?

Well, I got through the first book. Now, don’t get me wrong, living trees, giant spiders, a tiny giant, that’s all fun and games! What I can not get over though is writing that just falls from one place to the next. Looking for a mythical creature nobody has seen in years? Literally falling into it’s cave is a bit predictable.

I’m tempted to call this sort of rigidly predictable on-the-rails writing “YA”, but to do so would be a disservice to some amazing YA books that have been written. I think the real problem is that a book like this just doesn’t challenge you, doesn’t make you think at all. I definitely love the mythology, and the creative retelling is interesting, but just not interesting enough to invest the time in the last two books. I think someone at Powells might like them a bit better. One of these days I’ll learn to stop trusting the blurbs by other authors. 🙂

The little man glared at me, pink eyes shining. “I is no dwarf, I is a giant!” his pride seemed to melt away “I is just a very very very small giant.”

Being a fanboy is no excuse

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Reading through some news recently and I found this article by TUAW proclaiming that “OSX and iOS are not jails”. Now, this is indeed on The Unofficial Apple Weblog we’re talking about here so a bit of fanboyism is certainly to be expected -and I’m a fan too after all-, but this one really got under my skin. The author not only completely misunderstands the concept, but goes well out of his way to use logical fallacy to attempt to justify himself.

I understand the whole “I was in the navy, the closest thing to Jail that you can get” concept. Yes, you were in a situation with highly restricted freedom, and couldn’t leave. You volunteered for that though, knowing what it meant. I’m afraid I just don’t see any good parallels. Pure sensationalism.
The car analogy though, that one has some meat on it! I don’t buy the argument that the fact that the Toyota is better because you don’t know how to do anything to it, and the Impala was worse because you could tinker. Sure, you may like the Toyota, but how are you going to feel when there’s only one mechanic in town who has the special tools required to work on it, and he charges 10 times more per hour than anyone else? That’s the inevitable conclusion of the world you’re claiming you’d prefer to live in. Did you think it through that far?

This is also where the entire argument of “I just want it to work” falls flat on it’s face. Looking at this and saying “clearly the act of making cars more difficult to work on improves them” is an ignorant oversimplification of the issue, yet that’s exactly what people are willing to do in the software world. It’s easy to imagine that complexity equals simplicity, but rarely is that truly the case. The UNIX philosophy shows us that a bunch of small components that do one thing well working together can create incredibly powerful systems. It may be true that it takes a genius to understand the simplicity of UNIX, but I find that more likely caused by the fact that the focus was never placed on increasing understanding for average users. That’s another rant however.
Is it really that hard to imagine a situation where your car was made out of simple components that were easily manufactured and user-replaceable? No doubt designing such systems is far more complex, but it’s certainly not impossible. Computer systems or cars, “I just want it to work” is not the opposite of “I want to be able to tweak it on my own”, they aren’t separate points on a spectrum, please stop pretending that they’re mutually exclusive.

There is one idea put forth that I do sort of? agree with though: Living in a modern society means trading some of your freedoms in for the conveniences and protections of the society. Yes, you pay your taxes in exchange for a police force that presumably keeps your neighborhood from becoming a war zone. So it goes with the “jail”. You’re paying your tax to Apple in order to get protection from things that inconvenience you, like malware, viruses, and poor battery life. And to some users this is going to be worth it. My grandmother (Sorry Oma!) is the perfect user for an iPad, and she certainly is greatly benefited by the protections offered. While it’s true that she will never personally miss the freedoms sacrificed, she also won’t benefit from any potential gains made by the larger community.

I fundamentally don’t believe that these protections are exclusive to the walled garden, for the same reason that I don’t believe that a Orwellian government is the only way to prevent crime. In fact, the idea that a computer system can be “curated” and yet still fully open isn’t even difficult to imagine, it already exists! Look at the Debian/Ubuntu model. The operating system and core packages are curated and confirmed to be good. You’re certainly welcome to go off the beaten path and do whatever you like from there, but you can easily and happily stick to what’s recommend if you’re not the adventurous sort. This is exactly opposite of Apple’s approach. “Thou shalt not, unless we tell you to” is the jail you’re living in, and for no particularly good reason other than that they want you to.

I don’t mind saying “If you don’t like it, just leave”. That’s fair. Let’s try to be intellectually honest about what the bigger picture is though. I would draw a parallel to saying “If you want to be safe then you’ll have to get naked at the airport”. It’s simply not true when you consider the full picture, and while you the user are certainly free to take the train/bus rather than the plane, is that really the world you want to be living in?

A slightly asthmatic cat

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Lion, the great new hope of the world and savior of all computing. Hear it roar! Or, as the case may be, perhaps rattle a bit in the lungs while it tries to take a breath and then a bit oh wheezing while the formerly concerned gazelle looks on in amusement.

You may guess that I’m not impressed. This would be an understatement. I have now upgraded two of my macs to Lion, and I can conclusively say, without a doubt in my mind, that Lion is the worst thing to happen to any mac I’ve ever owned, and that includes the one that got cracked in half. (at least that was repairable and it was all shiny again after the ordeal)

My G4 Powerbook doesn’t pinwheel-of-death this much even to this day, and I can’t believe the number of annoying little bugs hanging around. Wifi refusing to reconnect, “fast”-user-switching hanging at a gray screen for 2 minutes, the “input type” indicator at the login screen being utterly incorrect, keychain refusing to unlock or be repair, and network mounts failing to connect are some of the things that are clearly on the “bug” side of things. I’m willing to forgive the “we just lost our minds” details like iCal’s new interface, the fact that multi-monitor support is really not a priority, and maybe even fact that Spaces did a 180 from awesome to useless. The pinwheeling though, is just too much.

My laptop is a current model 15″ MBPro with 8GB of RAM. I’m not using legacy hardware here. It came with Snow Leopard but only had it for a couple weeks before the Lion upgrade. If it weren’t for the fact that my main purpose for this laptop is development I would go back to Snow Leopard in a heartbeat. I don’t think I’ve even really gotten any advantage out of the “new” features yet, and there certainly aren’t any that I would find myself missing if they were gone.

So, in short: my experience with Lion so far has been utterly underwhelming. I’m about to install the latest update on it and cross my fingers that things have been improved. Hopefully my Wifi doesn’t conk out halfway through the download. Let’s cross our fingers.
iCal is still gonna be painfully ugly though, and the new spaces is still going to be useless. Ah well, I guess that’s just more of an excuse to spend the time on my other laptop, a nice little 12.5″ Lenovo running Linux.

In a Top Gun mood

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Sitting working today at a Starbucks with a of the airspace around KPDX, and it looks like the Oregon Air Guard are out flying about in their F-15’s today. It’s not quite exactly right as far as aircraft go, but it’s close enough. Time to get some work done to the Top Gun soundtrack and dream about the sky.

The Anglo Files – Sarah Lyall

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This book isn’t actually mine, it was loaned to me by one of the nurses at my allergy clinic, and boy does it ever illustrate why I like hard-copy books and the people who say “I think you’ll love to read this”. Are you a fan of British television, humor, or culture in general? Then I highly recommend this book as it will give you some startling insights! After reading this book I feel like I have a better grasp of the culture and comedy in British shows that I watch. I have to say that I’m even more confused about cricket though.

The chapters on the House of Commons and the House of Lords are amazing, just amazing! The chapter about the newspaper industry is terrifying. Some of the things that amuse me so greatly about British humor appear to actually happen in real life as well, such as the following correction in a newspaper:

Yesterday was Wednesday, despite an assertion that it was once again Tuesday.

There are a lot of interesting observations though. I didn’t know that the illusionist David Blaine did so poorly in the UK, but apparently people who are confident and show-offish about themselves are really not looked on too kindly! Taunting a man locking himself in a box without food for a week with hamburgers hung beneath RC helicopters is both rather cruel, and really rather amusing.

I want to remember reading this book, because if I ever go to the UK I’m going to want to re-read it as a refresher course. As similar as we like to think we are to each other this book left me feeling that were I to go to the UK that driving on the wrong side of the road would be one of the more normal feeling things going on, and I think I’d need some additional help in becoming mentally prepared for dealing with the place. This book really seems like an interesting start to that.

I’m still seriously confused about cricket however.