Author Archives: Josh

On data ownership…

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Something I’ve been working on in my programming projects recently is ways to allow users to use their data from outside my service, and to take the data they have in services I create elsewhere.
In the new era portability is king. If you don’t allow users to use their data how they want, your service is utterly useless and doomed to failure.

Whoa there, you say, them’s some big bold words! If it sounds like I’m including the large portion of current generation products people are familiar with as the target of my wrath, you’re right on the money. Let’s take a look at a recent real life example, MobileMe.

MobileMe offers some excellent syncing tools for those of us with Macs and iPhones. Over-the-air (push!) syncing of contacts and calendars is a great tool, especially for those of us with a desktop, a laptop, an iPhone, and an iPod Touch all trying to stay perfectly in sync. However that’s exactly where the scope of the tool ends. Want to share contacts/calendars with someone else as “joint ownership”? Screwed! Can’t do it. So MobileMe loses one user/evangelist to Google, where I can choose to allow another user to collaboratively edit my calendar. MobileMe ends up in the trash heap because the data I give it can only be used in the ways that MobileMe wants me to use it, and I have different ideas.
Google also frustrates me though because I would very much like to set up a group of shared contacts between Bev and my accounts so we could maintain contact synchronization, but that’s not supported through them either. I have a huge store of data, and I can’t even grant another user ACCESS to it. This is full of fail.

Obviously one of the core problem with this is common language. There has to be a standard protocol that is used for each type of data in order for sharing to really work. For inter-service data (like sharing contacts with another user of the same system) there really is no excuse however.

There is another form of data usage to consider beyond just sharing. A good example of the type of thing I’m thinking of is WebHooks, but I’m not completely convinced on their implementation.
A current example of the concept would be posting? to an online forum that lets you “follow” the thread. When you post you can check the box for “email me when someone replies”. Now whenever someone posts something you get a notification. WebHooks is like that, except instead of providing a simple email notification it allows you to provide a URL and a notification is posted to that URL. The notification contains whetever data the application designer wants it to. This may seem like a power-user feature, but once the concept is widely accepted it allows you to let websites (and the datasets they contain) to interact with each other in fabulous new ways.

This starts with us, the application designers. And this is why I’m so hot and bothered about the idea. If I don’t design my own applications to allow the sort of data interactions that I want from other websites I use. Once again though, the problem is standards. How do you output the data? Do you create your own refspec for the specific website/application? Where do you draw the lines?

Once again, the problem is standards. There’s no reason why any user should have both MobileMe contacts and google contacts. Ideally either service should allow the user to use, not just “import”, contacts from the other.

We’re not there yet, and I understand how people scoff at this idea, but I’ll say it again. Data portability and access is king. If you don’t let your users get to the data they’ve entrusted to you and use it in the ways that they want to use it, they’re going to abandon you.

Nothing to see here…?

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I’ve just deleted 3 draft posts, the oldest of which was from 2 months ago.

Here’s what happens when I “blog”. I have a situation or an idea that I find really interesting, and I write about it. Then I decide that I want to expand on it a bit. I maybe do a tiny bit of research, or think things through a bit. Then I make it longer and more thoughtful, trying to draw interesting parallels or point out strange things…

Then I delete it because it is long, it wanders, it’s uninteresting, and it just rehashes everything everyone has heard everywhere else. Nothing valuable to add, nothing truly unique to contribute, and nobody really wants anything like that anyway it seems.

So, you miss out on my rant about the parallels between gun control and health care, (wherin I cleverly coined the phrase “happiness is a cold gun”, which I was actually rather proud of..) my thoughtful ramble on why my job is utterly horrible for me even though I actually love it (wherein I rambled somewhat about geekiness and why we interact with people the way we do), and a truly utterly boring post regarding the state of television shows these days.

So, I’m blogging, really.. It’s just such utter crap that I never actually hit post, thus saving you all the effort of reading it. And then I decide to post something like this. wheee

You know, half an hour ago I was almost ready to re-install facebook and twitter on my phone and perhaps start interacting with the world again. Then I sat down to finish one of the drafts I had, now I just want to delete everything and close accounts and sites everywhere. What a weird turn…
Maybe this is how society dies?

Conservatives and the Golden Rule(s). What’s the deal?!

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It seems to me that there are two golden rules that are in direct conflict with each other, and I’m not sure how conservatives reconcile it.

Rule 1) “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Rule 2) “He who has the gold makes the rules”

The real question is, why do “conservative” and “Christian” show up next to each other? They should be mutually exclusive! Conservative philosophy teaches that you should take care of yourself and that money is the only force capable of incentivizing people to act other than in their own best interests, and amassing piles of it is the proper approach to life. Christian philosophy teaches that “the love of money is the root of all evil”, and that you should be nice to people because it’s the right thing to do.

How do these people resolve these two things?! I would very much like someone to explain to me how these two philosophies are anything other than mutually exclusive. They are matter and anti-matter, they should not be able to exist together. I can’t figure it out.

Liberals and Guns: What’s the deal?

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Attention Liberals! I am with you, I agree with you, we are for the same things. For the most part I think we completely own the high road here. You’re not the ones attempting to destroy the future of our civilization simply because you’re bitter about political losses, and you’re not the ones trying to cover our racism in a thin veil of indignation.

Why though, is intellectual dishonesty okay when it comes to guns? Do you not understand that your glib mockery makes you look completely inept and hardens the attitudes anyone who might be on the fence against you?

Number one: You know nothing. Stop using the words “machine gun” and “automatic weapon”. This causes anyone who knows anything to think you are stupid. Automatic weapons/machine-guns are illegal on a federal level, and nobody was carrying any of those. Please understand what you are talking about before you open your mouth, otherwise you’re really no better than the uninformed propaganda-spewing FOX hosts we do so enjoy making fun of.

Number two: Isn’t being open-minded sort of something we’re trying for? Isn’t not being arbitrarily hateful to an entire class of people sort of one of the platforms we’re attempting to stand on? I’m completely willing to agree with you that some of the people out there carrying assault rifles to meetings may just be crazy anarchist militia members, and I don’t much care for those people any more than you do. Is it that hard for you to allow for the possibility that not everyone carrying a gun IS a crazy anarchist militia member though? Owning and/or carrying a gun does not mean that someone wants to kill your dog. Let’s keep in mind the differences between causation and correlation here.

Number three: What’s so bad about guns anyway? There have been discussions on many interesting issues such as gun rights, health care, NASA funding, and making fun of FOX hosts, and I think it’s been enjoyable for everyone. Would it surprise and terrify you to learn that during many of those conversations there was a gun present? You really shouldn’t assume that just because someone is on your side that they’re as biased as you are. Admittedly it may not have been an assault rifle, and hopefully you never knew of it’s existence, but the point was that it was there. Does that change the validity or value of the conversations?

I know that one of the standard responses is “Concealed isn’t the same as visible”. I call bullshit. Carrying visible vs carry concealed should not make a difference to anything other than the tactical approach of the carrier. When you sit across a table in a restaurant from someone discussing your view on health care you have to allow for the possibility that they may in fact be carrying a gun. You must allow for this possibility. How does knowing that they’re carrying a gun make things any worse? If they’re the type of person who you fear might do you physical harm because they disagree with you, you shouldn’t probably be having dinner with them in either case!

For anyone still concerned with the very concept of someone carrying a gun, that is a different issue which we should discuss separately. (I would refer you to Dave Grossman’s “On Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves” as an entry point to this discussion.)

It’s also worth noting that I believe that a weapon is only a tool. A gun may be a more powerful tool, but in the end it’s no different than the difference between a spring rake and a shovel. Different tools, different jobs. Guns are not evil, people are evil. Go ahead and say “look at those crazy loonies!”, but reasoning that they are crazy loonies because they have guns is intellectually dishonest. An evil person will perform evil acts, by gun, by knife, or by fist, just as a good person will perform good acts using whatever tools they have available. A person is a weapon, when they so choose to apply themselves.

The point that I am trying to make here is that fanatically clinging to “guns are evil” completely ruins your credibility as an seeker of change and truth, and makes you appear to be as closed-minded as any racist. Yep, I’ll happily say it. Discrimination based on “you’re different than I am” is equally bad, no matter what that difference is.

I’m white, I’m tall, and I use and carry many variety of tools. Which of these do you think is okay to hate and deride me for?

A thought on Morality and Justice

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Watching an interesting documentary about the european sex slave “industry”. Apparently in Turkey if a girl escapes from her pimp and gets to the police she’s got a pretty decent chance of having the police return her to her pimp. The life these girls are subjected to is horrible, and the apparently a blind eye is turned in large portions of the world.

In very many cases the pimps who are perpetrating these are very clear cut, very easily identified, and there is no possible question of their intentional commission of unquestionably evil acts. Kidnapping, slavery, abuse, sexual exploitation, are these gray areas in any possible way? When someone who has kidnapped hundreds of people is not even pursued by the police, and another is given 5-years probation, is there any question that something must be done?

Hypothetical situation: A large security firm, or even nation, decides to take care of the issue and sends in teams to black-bag these unquestionably guilty people. (Leave them dead on the floor, or “extradite” them to a prison somewhere for the rest of their lives, take your pick.)

Clearly this violates the right of the host nation, which could be an act of war, which which is bad. Ignore that part. Maybe the nation never finds out.

Is it moral?

If a dog was running loose through a neighborhood biting people it would be put to sleep. Why should not we extend the same courtesy to humans who follow the same pattern of behavior? Could removal of such clear and present threats actually be a sign of a truly civilized society, interested in the well-being of all?

I would like to think on this further. If you have any suggested reading material or resources please leave a comment. There must be some wise philosophers who have muddled around this issue at some point.

Warehouse 13. Welcome to the stupid zone…

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We just watched the first episode of a new (?) “SyFy” show called Warehouse 13. Let me tell you what it is: Men in Black meets Eureka meets X-Files. With everything interesting from any of them taken out, a horrible special effects team (Look, when I *SAW* the green on the green screen you need to get a new job buddy), and writers who, based on their apparent belief that they’ve invented something new that nobody has ever done before,? may have just graduated 8th grade.

Beef #1: I don’t even NEED to watch the rest. I’ve seen it. After seeing this one episode I predict the following things will happen within the first few episodes: (I’m not including all the incredibly obvious “something bad happened in his past? HIS DAD DIED YOU MORONS” moments in the pilot.)

  • One of the team gets kidnapped. This causes team bonding all around and further cement the team’s new assignments.
  • Security issues. Someone sneaking around inside the warehouse, probably stealing stuff. It will likely be revealed later that they are exporting these artifacts as weapons, possibly to a competing government agency with some sort of cryptic (yet clearly nefarious) acronym for a name.
  • We will encounter an artifact causing people to behave scandalously. Sex sells, and we’ve gotta get it in soon! This being a scifi (oops! “SyFy”) show “scandalously” of course will mean perhaps a bit of heavy breathing, possibly someone in a shortish skirt. C’Mon, when the alien artifacts make your brain lean toward the pleasure center you get naked and have an orgy in town square until nobody can move a muscle. Nobody ever takes these artifacts seriously enough I say.
  • MOST likely, someone on the team will get into trouble somehow, once again causing lots of nice team bonding as everyone goes around trying to prove that their new best friend isn’t actually involved with nefarious-acronym agency stealing stuff. This is actually a re-hash of the kidnapping episode cleverly disguised. Sadly for the writing staff it’s an adaptation of the same script so they didn’t actually get paid for this one.

Beef #2: Is it really THAT hard to try and be a little original with your science/tech? My pal Big Frankie C commented on a recent post:

My beef is that writers always complain about how hard their job is, and it is a hard job, but they are very very lazy. Real science is every bit as entertaining as junk science, and is just a easy to film. The only place it is harder, is in the writing. If you’re writing a script, all you have to do is find a scientist (the internet works pretty good here) and you can get all the free advice you need.

I can’t even add to that. I KNOW your show is about paranormal, but can we perhaps just once try just one tiny little bit to have something plausible and/or possibly related to paranormal things in ways that we agree are not understood? Don’t use phrases like “pandora’s box” if you don’t want to look stupid okay? ONE well timed placement of the phrase “quantum entanglement” and I might be happy. Toss in a cat joke or two and heypresto, satisfaction. Pots that produce ferrets when you wish for something “impossible” bother me. If it grants wishes how can it be “impossible”? Hmmm? Schrodinger’s ferret? W.T.F?

In short: everyone involved with this show please quit your job and come become a homeless person here in portland for a year or so. Get some life experience, maybe a little perspective on the world. Stop pushing useless poorly created tripe on a public that very desperately needs a little bit of intelligence and original thought.

Look for my review of the movie “Moon” coming soon. I’ll give you a hint: it’ll be exactly the polar opposite attitude.

The next question, or: Robinson and Sturgeon! How could you go wrong?

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The latest episode of Spider Robinson’s podcast (Spider on the Web) is a reading of Theodore Sturgeon’s story “Slow Sculpture”.

I really don’t know what to say about it, so I shall ramble. If I were ever to be half so wise as either of these men I would be happy.
It’s possible that I like it because I can easily identify with the main character . It’s also possible that I like it because it’s a very good story, told by a very good narrator. (And author of his own right.) It won the Hugo and the Nebula both, so that’s saying something!

Go listen. I’ll wait!

While you were listening we watched a show about the life and times of various medieval castes. It’s interesting how much people in those times argued and discussed issues, thought about big things. Minstrels as political rabble-rousers keeping people informed of the news is kind of fun. Interesting how involved the average person was though. This is somewhat relevant actually, so let’s get back to the story!

One of the things I love about this era of SciFi is the way they take the things that are happening (or will happen) and present them in a way that makes you question the world. Good stories should make you think about something and relate what you’ve just learned to your real world. You should be able to identify with the characters, understand the issues facing them, and bring something back to your real world.
How often do you get that on CSI eh?

Earlier today I was listening to some podcasts. The latest episode of Skeptoid and there were some ideas about why TV/Movie entertainment contains so much bad science. I agree with Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning. People just want to be entertained, and the people making the decisions about the entertaining are the ones who choose to allow thoughtless bad-science-filled tripe to become the order of the day. Don’t you think stories like Slow Sculpture are entertaining and interesting? Couldn’t we have stories like that as entertainment? I’m thinking of movies like Watchmen here, movies that actually may have some opportunity to make you think critically and analyze what you’re seeing.

Maybe I’m bitter and cynical, but it seems to me that people have no interest in what Sturgeon termed “Asking the next question”. Spider speaks on this issue often, including his indictment of humanities desire to return to space that you heard in this episode. (I highly recommend some of his other works on the topic. Look back through his podcast feed to the early episodes.) Why is it that people aren’t interested in things like returning to the moon? I would posit that it’s tied to the “just wanting to be entertained” issue. I shall try to write more eloquently on the subject someday.

Do you know that there was a monk (Eilmer of Malmesbury) who built himself wings, 900 years before the next manned flight? He flew 200 yards, and broke both his legs. But he said “It needs a tail!” and wanted to try again. Apparently his abbot forbade it. But he had it right! I find that amazing!

Ask the Next Question!

On the failure of tweets, RE: “TXTing”

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One of the core failures of Twitter is that it’s based around a flawed idea. Text Messages. 140 characters. Shorten everything and use slang. Sure it’s become cute to try and manage your communications in 140 character bursts, but WHY? Holy flaming fig trees, it’s just not needed! I mean,? you may as well base your internet service around telegrams sent via morse code. The text message is an outdated idea, well past it’s prime. It may serve some historical purpose, much like Morse Code still does, but it is irrelevant to the future. Would twitter be as fun if you had to use all upper case, couldn’t use punctuation or non-alphanumeric characters, and had to say “STOP” at the end of each thought?
“TODAY WORK SUCKED STOP SOMEONE ATE MY LUNCH STOP HASHTAG FML STOP” is lacking in so many ways… Locking your service to the rules of an outdated and useless medium just doesn’t seem smart!

What you say? “It’s used my billions of people across the world! How can it be outdated and useless?”
They use it because they can. Simple as that. The cell phone companies provide it, including it’s outdated limitations, because it’s what you’re used to and what they can charge for. Never mind that it would be trivial to replace every SMS client in new phones with a Jabber (XMPP) app and install Jabber->SMS gateways to support legacy systems. (Okay, maybe not “trivial”, but you certainly see my point..) XMPP is a FAR better protocol by any standard. The vast majority of phones released on the market today would easily support this sort of change, “smart” phones especially. (You could even transfer seamlessly from your mobile device, to your computer, and back to your mobile device, without ever missing a message!!!)

Quick history lesson, if you need it. SMS, the “Short Message Service” operates on the control channel of your cell phone. This is a special data channel your phone uses to keep in contact with the towers and is always operational. This allows your SMS messages to get through even in the most dire of coverage areas, and even when your phone is in use, but is also what “limits” it to the 140 (actually 160) characters. Yes, I will concede that these are useful things about SMS that do make it stand out somewhat. I still thing we can design our way around it’s limitations though. However, there is no incentive to do so because even new “web 2.0” companies (like Twitter) are observing the limits of SMS and working within them! There’s nobody out there saying “hey, could there maybe be a better way?”

But my hatred of corporate greed and tyranny isn’t my only reason here! My love of language and clear communication weighs in rather heavily!

I am extraordinarily tired of slang and shortened “can I buy a vowel please Pat” words being used where they’re utterly unnecessary. And SMS is almost completely to blame for this change.
Now I know I sound like your college English teacher, railing against the evils of today’s youth… However, I think we can all get behind the idea that anyone who shortens “email” to “eml” in a non-space-constrained forum (in this case, facebook post) is a raving git. It’s completely and utterly unnecessary and the gross misuse of these sorts of shortenings obfuscates countless messages every day! (And by perpetuating mythical 140 character limit, Twitter perpetuates the cycle of social decay..)

Perhaps I just can’t help myself. I like to understand what people are talking about, and I very much like it when they understand what I am talking about. English has enough screwed up about it as-is, no need to intentionally make it worse.

Also, stick it to the man. That cell phone company is overcharging you out the ASS for those 140 characters, for no reason other than they really really like taking your money. Don’t fight the future. Evolve or die.

4 more days…

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4 more days and I’m OUTTA here! It’s practically time to start packing!

I know for some people work gets harder the closer you get to a vacation, but for me it’s the opposite. C’Mon work, give me your best shot! Can’t hurt me, I’m almost freeee!