Lord Monckton

Love this guy and his many videos. The linked comment is far superior to the article he is responding to. The video is great and anyone that finds this to be damning evidence that he can't even debate a child clearly was unable to understand anything he was saying.


When I was in elementary school I was told by my teacher that if we didn't turn off the lights when we left the room that green house gases that reflected light away from the earth was going to cause the next ice age and everyone was going to freeze to death, but that it wasn't just us, we needed to tell everyone to turn off the lights and use less energy if we were to save the planet. It was scary, right up until I was told it was all still true, that the green house gases were making the planet hot, and we were all going to die because food would stop growing. The proof was that a glacier had broken somewhere and glaciers aren't supposed to break.

Why is it so "radical" or "extreme" to believe that we are all fine, the earth is fine, and people just need to calm the fuck down? Pollution is real and everyone can take responsibility for local pollution. But there is no global crisis that demands a world government to control the planets CO2 emissions. CO2? Really? There is more credibility to the Dihydrogen Monoxide crysis.

Pray for Obama

To me, the most terrifying thing Obama ever said was that the founding fathers / Constitution lacked the insight to empower the President / Federal Government to bring peace and equality to the American people. He doesn't just lack an understanding of the principles of limited government, but seems to measure the greatness of a country by the size of its bureaucracy. This also seems to be his practice. Not that I would set him too far aside from some past presidents, but he really brings attention to it like never before.

You say that he would never be a Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or Mao, but for what we can look back upon as having been so terrible, they were not so greatly criticized while in power. Most of them achieved the level of power they did because they were beloved by their people, devoted to their ideology. To my understanding, the principle of conservative values is government should only be powerful enough to enable people to take responsibility for their own lives and collectively for each individual to protect their own private property. People can be rational when it comes to decisions that will affect their own lives because they alone bare the responsibility. When others are granted the power to make decisions for other people and their lives, it is only well intended without consequences for the decision maker. None of those "monsters" of history would be who they were if not for the idealists that empowered and enabled them. So I don't think it is a question of whether or not Obama is any of those people so much as whether or not he is being enabled and empowered by an ideology only all too similar of a history we were asked to "never forget".

(note: I will post a link to the video when I find it)

Stealing great titles: War is Peace (Too bad the author couldn't steal something else better)

I love crap like this about how our democracy is threatened by the free exercise of speech and the press. It is fun to compare pro censorship literature of the past 100 years to today and see how their tactics have improved, but always coming back to how people need to be protected from themselves, and from their own ignorance. The best part is that of course they are never talking about the reader; the reader is smart because they are reading their article. It is all those other people out there that don't read or can't understand the brilliance that is Lawrence M. Krauss that are the idiots out there we could help so much if they would just do what we say, and read what we write. After all, this is Scientific American.

My Health Care is fine. I like my doctor, and I don't think under any condition I will ever "like" hospitals (oh well). In my experience, government is just the biggest corporation around, and like many monopolies once powerful enough rarely needs to listen to the customer to keep conducting business as it pleases. Academia tells us that government is the voice of the people, but the reality of which person is being heard leaves a lot to be desired.

I think there is a lot that could be done to improve health care in the United States and the world for that matter. In my understanding of the bills as I have read them and listening to the range of opinions on specific issues, I do not like any of the proposals getting serious attention. I am very skeptical that this congress will be able to produce a decent bill. I would be more open minded if congress would at least begin by looking at some of the many social welfare programs and regulations concerning health care that have not been as effective as intended.

The fanaticism in this debate, as the author likes to put it, is the idea that something must hurriedly be passed, whatever it is. "Death Panel" is a buzz word no matter who says it that relates to actual fear (rational or otherwise) some can't easily dismiss, and controversies over how specific provisions of the various bill provisions will actually be interpreted and executed (no pun intended).

And if the scientific method as a whole is going to be brought into this debate, let us consider some principles of engineering. Great designs, in reality, are only as good as they can be explained. If a majority of people can not be more greatly persuaded by truth than by lies, maybe some of the burden lies on you to improve your documentation if not also the design itself. Blaming the reader, investor, or customer for simply not understanding your brilliance is a cop out. And if there really is an emergency, all the more reason for due diligence, not blind faith.

In response to some of the comments made by readers of the article:

"Where is the proof?"

I believe, at least, he is regurgitating quotes by right wing extremists have taken from Congressional Research Services Health Care Reform: An Introduction by Bob Lyke, April 2009 (http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40517_20090414.pdf), you know, the one and only AUTHORITY Congress uses to determine the cost and impact of bills. I would hope and am fairly certain that someone in congress uses other sources for information in the debate. But simply going by my understanding of the above article, if CRS says more people will be left without coverage, costs will go up, and there is no reason to believe quality will improve, should not we all just take them at their word? Despite the fact that I would agree with their position, I do not support centralization of information dispensation. It is worth pointing out, but no justification for censorship of less authoritative opposition.

Who to blame when you lose an argument you got to define?

In response to rocknog on 11/09/2009

I don't understand why religion keeps being brought into the gay marriage debate. If marriage is a religious thing, then government shouldn't be involved in any marriage. I don't understand how opponents of gay marriage can get around that contradiction.

Maybe they oppose States hijacking marriage and despite the fact that it won't change, they don't want the state further redefining marriage while in their trust. Remember, if you oppose federal control (support state rights / 10 amendment), you are a racist, and if you support individuality, personal responsibility, or anything theoretically covered by the 9th amendment (and I say theory because as far as I know, nothing has ever been supported on 9th amendment ground), then you must be a devil worshiping anarchist.

I think marriage means too many different things to too many different people and that the only people that have much any understanding of what marriage means with regard to the "state definition" is divorce lawyers. I think there should be no such thing as marriage as defined by the state because it is a loaded word. I bet if they could only call it domestic partnership that more people would actually take the time to read the contract.

People tend to ignore conservative arguments against states hijacking things for their own purposes and are generally written off as paranoid wackos, but for once "gay marriage" turned a lot of heads. And as with all the other issues they try to get attention, things such as facts makes most peoples brains go numb such that the debate evolved into who could make the most emotionally compelling argument.

One side came forward with the beautiful and happy peace loving argument of "Hate is not a Family Value". Simple, and perfect... one might think, until one rebukes with "Your tax dollars are going to be spent to teach preschoolers about anal sex". Both have nothing to do with the law, but at the point that this hit, coming back with "Civil rights... something... I think" just couldn't work.

Once you pull a Godwin/Alinsky and you let it define the fight, you just can't ever go back to a rational argument, and further, you can't cry when your opponent ends up with the bigger, more impressive tower of bullshit.

So, three cheers for Big Government democracy? Where are all the gays thrilled that the system works? Hmm...

FMOSS (Free market open source software)

With all the comments being fairly similar, going to present the other side as I see it.

Linux exists in a particular environment where INDIVIDUALS selfishly develop what THEY need for their own purposes. A person who needs a piece of software for their own purposes and successfully develops what they need has not only had their needs met, but also created intellectual wealth. The sharing of that wealth even by a single individual is positive.

The volume of wealth is so great, and the foundation so solid, that anyone with a computer and Internet access can take from the pool, ATTEMPT to improve on it, share their insight (whatever the form) and you get a positive sum of wealth.

This model, unlike any other, is INFINITELY scalable.

One problem may be approached by n people. The more people looking at the problem, the greater the chance of producing the ideal solution. Relatively no individual has the ability to STOP independent competitive solutions by any means than rationally demonstrating the superiority of their ideas.

There are "problems" with this model, but in my opinion, the nasty and poisonous perception of this model is that progress is zero-sum. I don't know if I could list in my lifetime how many ways anyone with that belief could be wrong, so let me make it very simple and clear.

WHAT I DO IN MY FREE TIME FOR MY OWN PURPOSE IS NONE OF YOUR F***ING BUSINESS any further than your freedom to do with and improve upon in your own way as you see fit what I choose to return to the community by either choice, or expected by the terms of the Gnu GPL.

You can not CONSCRIPT me into producing what YOU want, you can only enable me or discourage me to continue to contribute as I choose.

One of the articles criticisms, which seems to be a recurring themes of articles that like to tell people how they should be spending their time, is that of the number of distributions out there. Think about this: Why do people create distributions?

Is it because there are not enough of them? ... no

Is it because other distributions are going the wrong direction? ... maybe?

Is it because other distributions don't meet their needs? ... seems to be their perception at least

Is it because they feel like it?

BINGO!

Creating, maintaining, and promoting a particular distribution is a LOT of work (in my observation and from talking to people that have done it) But if you could make them not do what they want to do with their time, you really think they are going to magically do what you want instead?

What is amazing is that people left to their own devices (no pun intended) to do as they please, their minds begin to open to "what is possible in the spirit of playful cleverness".

Getting people to not do what you do not need doesn't make more for you. If you need more, there are three basic solutions: 1) wait and hope someone with with more initiative, motive, skill, etc 2) read a book and develop it yourself, or 3) Provide an incentive such as money to encourage someone with the skill to do it for you.

This is not an argument against team work, but just the same this article isn't an encouragement of team work either. Encouragement of teamwork involves 1) identifying a specific problem 2) defining the scope in which you wish to address that problem 3) outline a solution and develop a functional prototype that demonstrates why not only you have a good solution, but that your solution is better than other solutions (or non solutions) 4) Use your product from step 3 and actually demonstrate to people why they should expend their time and energy working on YOUR project, and technically 5) pick from those people you wish to bring onto the core of your team.

Final point: Teams and Communities do not exist for their own sake; they exist because it serves the voluntarily consenting members of them. If you want a centrally controlled, managed, and developed system that democratically considers the needs of everyone equally, such a project already exists. It is called Windows.

Cannonical / Mark Shuttlesworth provides something very specific: A platform and location for people to freely collaborate and exchange ideas while providing a face, in a sense, to a very distributed community. Thankfully, Mark has the wisdom to understand his role and learned the lessons of many other FlOSS projects come and gone and never abused his position of a role model to dictate how Linux should inspire anyone.

All projects stand on their merit alone, and as one hobby / amateur programmer, I hope I am not alone in hope that this state of anarchy never changes.

More fun with CSS and Javascript

This one was just weird... whatever

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      function d2h(d){return d.toString(16);}
    </script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    var x=0;
    var y=0;
    var z=0;
    var c=0;
    for (z=0; z<=300; z++)
    {
      if ((Math.floor(Math.random()*2)) == 0)
      {
      x=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*1100));
      y=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*2)*600);
      }
      else
      {
      x=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*2)*1100);
      y=Math.floor(Math.random()*100 + Math.floor(Math.random()*600));
      }
      c=d2h(Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215))
      document.write("<p style=\"height:1; position:fixed; top:" + y + "px; left:" + x + "px; color:#" + c + "\">Happy Birthday!</p>");
      document.write("<p style=\"float:left; height:0px\">" + Math.random() + "</p>");
      document.write("<p style=\"float:right; height:0px\">" + Math.random() + "</p><br /><br />");
    }
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

My first javascript

So evidently this is a bit too complicated for me to get into blogger in any kind of reasonable way. Layouts and all that stuff... blah! Anyway, if anyone wants to check it out, here it is:

granite.png
black.png

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
   <style type="text/css">
   img
   {
     float:left;
     height:20px;
     width:20px;
     margin:0px;
     padding-top:0px;
     padding-bottom:0px;
     padding-right:0px;
     padding-left:0px;
   }
   br
   {
     clear:both;
   }
   </style>
   <script type="text/javascript">
     var t=0;
     function mouseOver(imgID)
     {
       t+=1
       document.getElementById(imgID).src ="granite.png";
       var r=setTimeout(function(){document.getElementById(imgID).src ='black.png';},t); // Thank you Rogi!
     }
   </script>
 </head>
 <body>
   <script type="text/javascript">
     var c=0;
     for (c = 0; c <= 255; c++)
     { 
       if (c % 16 == 0)
       {
         document.write("<br />");
       }
       document.write("<img src=\"black.png\" id=\"" + c + "\" onmouseOver=\"mouseOver(" + c + ")\">");
     }
   </script>
   <br />
 </body>
</html>

Havn't we seen this before?

Proof that government needs to get their stinkin' noses out of business. 1) AIDS medications are VERY expensive, so it makes sense to discriminate against pre-existing conditions, otherwise it is a service plan, not an insurance policy. Affordable service plans should be affordable, but they are still totally different. 2) She wasn't looking for an insurance policy to protect her against AIDS, which sadly she is at abnormally higher risk, but a health insurance policy for her general health and well-being in the future. 3) I would speculate that while she may still be concerned about the AIDS herself that she would be willing to buy a policy that excluded treatment coverage of AIDS if she contracted the disease, and of course subsequent harm that may be caused by the disease. If she is still HIV free in 3 years, have them take a look at her health and keep to their word of coverage without the exemption. You could probably get a bit of a cheaper rate considering you are not buying insurance against it, and they are happier to let you pay a little more when you do want the insurance again.

Now the million dollar question here is why hasn't this been thought of before? TRICK QUESTION! It has been and while the insurance companies would love to tailor your policies to exactly your needs, it is illegal. ILLEGAL! Not big bad insurance companies stopping you, but the law! Who writes the law? The government, sticking their noses in where they don't belong.

Why did the government do this? Well it was to protect people against the big evil insurance companies that were making it too complicated for people to understand what they were buying. So they made all health insurance virtually identical so people wouldn't get confused. For example, some people wanted catastrophic illness insurance, but then complained that it didn't cover antibiotics for ear infections. The really sad stories were those that bought health service plans like checkups, medication discounts, broken arm insurance, but NOT catastrophic illness insurance, and then got very sick. I remember a story of a guy that had a health service plan he bought for his whole family. After having paid premiums for him, his wife, and 12 year old daughter every month for over 12 years, his daughter was sadly diagnosed with brain cancer. The father was devastated when he "discovered" that the plan he had been paying into his daughters entire life wasn't going to help her when she was sick because as the insurance company said that while they were sorry about his daughters illness, brain cancer wasn't covered by the policy.

This story and many others like it were important anecdotes to support health care reform in the 80's. Insurance companies were demonized for selling predatory policies, and the government made insurance policies "regular", in addition to other regulations.

So maybe, like last time, instead of outlawing "confusing" policies, give people the resources necessary to make informed decisions, because no matter what the law is, if you are paying hundreds of dollars a month to someone, government, business, friend, whatever, and you don't know what it is really for, you are going to be totally screwed. And nobody loves to keep bigger secrets about how they do business for you a secret than government.

This article proves to me that government can't do anything right and need to get out of places they don't belong like economics. Actually, there are a few things the federal government might be able to do reasonably well. I think someone wrote them down once in a blog or something. Here's the link if interested: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

And just to note, making trade regular and regulating trade or planning the economy are NOT the same thing open to interpretation as one group of people see fit when it pleases them. If you don't like the constitution, repeal it... of wait, already being done. Never mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40

CSS sure is strange

This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test

This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test

This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test

This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test

This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test
This is a test

So spending some time today checking out CSS, and evidently you can just add CSS styles to the header in the template if you edit the full template in html. Pretty cool. Wow, you sure can do some goofy stuff with CSS. :) However, the pages can not be previewed :(

Questionable motives?

Found an awesome article I hope gets some attention. In the comments there is an argument that a better explanation for the boom in film production has been a reduction in cost (i'll assume due to digital editing and cheap high quality storage). Sent this letter and hope to hear back, but in the mean time if anyone else has some thoughts on the issue would love to hear them. Anyway... the letter:

You left a comment on the article "Harvard Study Finds Weaker Copyright Protection Has Benefited Society" that makes me more interested in where you were coming from. While I would agree that the cost of production has significantly dropped, I don't necessarily see where that means the author is incorrect. This article was a summary of a summary, and while I didn't look at the original article, let alone the data, I fel you are making quite a leap with your statement. Is there at least a reasonable argument that despite "massive piracy" that "harm" has NOT been inflicted considering that, as you state, growth in the film production market, even if not the film industry, has continued to grow as the cost of production has dropped? And considering the purpose of copyright law, and in particular the HUGE recent expansions to copyright law since WWII which imo were quite questionable in the first place, hasn't scientific progress and the digital age mostly advanced IN SPITE of many of those "protections" revealing that for the most part the law has been to revealed to have really caused more harm than "prevented"?

Despite the argument that the framers of the constitution couldn't have imagined a digital age, I DO think that they understood a thing about tyranny, censorship, and human progress if you look the history of human progress.

I would argue that it was book piracy, by way of the printing press was the most direct cause of the enlightenment. Why should bit torrent be any different?

Disney built its empire on piracy. Not to completely excuse that necessarily, but isn't hypocrisy just a tad ironic, if not at least questionable?

Anyway, you had an strong opinion, so I was curious about your thoughts on some other levels, if they are things you have thought about.

Hope to hear from you,
Keith

And responding to another comment...

@Misterbull.com

Your examples are "illegal" channels compared to traditional "all rights reserved" channels. If work is shared freely on those sites either hap-hazardly or more officially by affixing a Creative Commons licence to the work, then isn't that exactly a "weakening" of copyright law (at least in ways that big industry would have you believe) and piracy (again, as industry trys to convince us)?

Further, the great technologies, like the Internet itself, is dominatingly freely shared technology that was a collaborative effort where the creators knew that open access to information is the core of human progress, and that if what you are creating is what is most important, then sharing it freely is the best thing you can do for everybody; from tcp/ip to apache and Underwriter Laboratories and Open Group, these companies represent a core of all of the technology you argue are "other factors" that you attempt to use to explain away the contributions of a culture that rejects the ownership and monopolistic control of culture (pirates) when they are really one in the same. These big companies are more and more taking from the free culture pool, and because it has been allowed (particularly the way Berkeley has treated its patents), they have also become more successful.

And yet they still chant the same mantra that was rightfully rejected with the Statute of Anne. Current Copyright law was written by and for the purpose of supporting a particular type of distribution. Their past successes have granted them the kind of wealth that lets you buy the law that while being in conflict with the people and an abomination to the social contract means they have only bought themselves an extra decade or two as powerful lords have typically done.

The current copyright law is anti-artist, anti-consumer, and maybe worst of all, anti-culture. Anyone who SAYS otherwise either makes a lot of money through the exploitation of the current system, or really doesn't read much in the way of history after what is presented to them by The Ad Council.

On Polyamory

I think all relationships are a challenge, but as a philosophy, the idea is that love is not divided between the people that you care about. I believe loving yourself is the first step in being a healthy person for someone else to love and if after that you can "be yourself" then every person you meet can be an opportunity to learn and grow.

Life is difficult enough with its natural challenges; unnatural barriers make it unnaturally more difficult. There are two very important things I get in my marriage that I could not get if we were monogamous. The first, the ability to trust another as you would trust yourself; I put this as a kind of 'rejection' of the golden rule. This is the real test of trust that requires complete honesty and no "fake" tests of faith, if you know what I mean.

The second is an ability to see myself more objectively in a relationship; only in multiple relationships can I see the difference between me and the relationship with another.

Ok, a third thing: When you meet somebody, they had a life before you. Hopefully if you have fallen in love with someone it is because of who they have been and all their experiences they have gathered in their lifetime before their life became intertwined with yours. While my wife and I would each say that we could not imagine our lives having not met, we still embrace that we are independently great people and love watching the other continue to grow and love right up until the time that we met. If all of that made us who we are today, perfect for each other, how could one try and say "stop being who you are, I like who you are right now"? I consider that such a discredit to our experience. I believe all my past relationships, good and bad, helped me become who I am today, and continuing that search for all the love the world has to offer can only teach me how to be a better partner for my wife, and anyone else who chooses to be a part of that. :)

Adding this cause I am sure some would find it controversial, and I am very curious what others may think. This was (as above) a comment left on a youtube video.

Relationships are a challenge, no matter what the philosophy. In the western world, there is an indoctrination leaning towards mono as much as there is towards being hetero.

What you end up with is not only an unhealthy conflict between personal philosophies regarding love, which can fail a relationship, but worse, an incompatibility in ability to communicate through it. Not to be elitist, but imho, gay and poly think more about why they are who they are for reasons 'normals' can't understand.

The Holy Trinity

Trinitarians, the atheist beloved cousin:

<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
/| The Father is our ignorance once we have been humbled.                          |/
/|                                                                                 |/
/| The Son is our culture that teaches us by example and that we posses            |/
/| to give to freely.                                                              |/
/|                                                                                 |/
/| The Holy Spirit is the eternal material world we might ever hope to understand, |/
/| that we communicate with and shape in every action and thought of               |/
/| our limited existence.                                                          |/
<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Quick, whose driving the bus?

I blame the Republicrats. There, easy. Were going to hell and all we can do is argue about who is driving the bus. My non-partisan secular position is that the government is a business just like any other, always trying to sell you one thing or another. No surprise most people love their representative and loathe congress. What did you expect? The only thing that makes government different from any other business is that under the social contract we give the government the unlimited authorisation of violence in the course of its legal action. It is no wonder that as 'legal' has become an epistemological blur that that the governments morally justified monopolistic use of violence has just become a cost of getting the job done.

The most revealing is how easy it is to be accused of ideolatery to even attempt to reference the Constitution as a reason why congress shouldn't do something. People seem to think "Well, if it's a good idea, why shouldn't Congress have the power to make it happen?" Well, even throwing out the entire idea limited government proposed by the founders as having been too long ago to matter today, can't we see plenty of examples as necessary outside the US to see that only creates trouble?

If you think "Well, were better cause this is AMERICA!", then fine, but then why in such a freaking hurry to change it?

I am proud of Mr. Obama and his ambition for the nation, and his ability to get people to rally together for a cause, and to cross many political lines to get people to work together in new and creative ways. But without going into the specifics of the thing that he has said or done that I support or criticise, if there is anybody with the slightest bit of respect for him, you need to stand up and explain to him the half he has TOTALLY WRONG.

How's this? Does Michelle Obama look like a sheep that just lies there and says "yes sir", or more like the kind of woman willing to get into a good healthy adrenaline fueled debate with the man when they disagree? What do you think makes that relationship work?

I find it sickeningly ironic that in that respect conservatives have a better relationship with Obama than his own party. I guess it is just sad then that there is no real conservative party to represent the position,but I guess it just goes to show that great Americans will always be the individual.

Chinese Proverb on piracy?

Got this in an email recently. I bet Thomas Jefferson would agree:


'When Someone shares something of value with you, and you benefit from it , you have a moral obligation to share it with others.'

Scary or funny?

I don't know if this is scary or funny. As a soap opera, it would be pretty funny. If this was an episode of Law & Order, I would be laughing my ass off. They are talking about the US Dollar. To put 9 trillion dollars into perspective, in 2007 there were only $1.5 trillion in circulation. If you have any 'money' (aka federal reserve notes) in your wallet, pull them out and take a look at a few of them and think about what you are really holding there.

The one comfort is you don't need to worry about running away anywhere... cause there is nowhere to go. Maybe another comfort is that you arn't technically any more screwed than anyone else, so nothing to really worry about, right?

So either way, funny or scary, get in a good laugh while you can...

Why I think al a carte cable programming is a bad idea for everyone

Note: this was a response to someone complaining about their $30/month cable bill.

While I can understand your argument in principle, I think you are overvaluing the royalties paid by the cable company to content providers as a portion of the cost to bring that content to you. For the most part the only cost to the cable company is channel integration. I would bet that maintenance of that database is nominal. Content providers make their money off of commercials, but after that, cable companies are pirates of that content. If I remember correctly, the settlement that came from those cases was that cable companies would be required to provide some number of public broadcasting channels for some number of stations they pirate. So after they have built this giant content pipe, they regulate who does and does not connect to their giant data stream in a very simple way, on or off, with very little exception. The exceptions are 1) content where per channel royalties exist (HBO, Cinemax, Encore, whatever), and 2) per program royalties channels(pay-per-view). I would expect that there is some speculation going on and the cable companies pay bulk block rates, bringing the channels cheaper to you (assuming you could even get them some other way) and likely making decent money on the side. BUT, the real business of the cable company is not the content, but the pipe. So cable companies pay for almost nothing but the initial infrastructure cost (plus the bureaucracy involved in that), then customer service, billing, and technicians and the such. One product and one price means low overhead and extremely competitive. One the cost of the infrastructure is paid off, then the money is REALLY good.

So what you pay now is a per month connection fee that for the most part is a portion of the cost to build the system that brings the content to you. Now al a carte is a request to take a very simple system and make it relatively very complicated. More equipment to control and regulate what each customer gets, these systems would of course be much more software based compared to the very dumb light switch service=on/off situation right now. The number of switches now is one per customer, based on did they pay the bill. You are proposing changing that to a number of switches equal to the number of possible customers multiplied by the number of possible channels they ever hope for the system to support (needs to be scalable). The handling of the switches would need to be related an exponentially more complicated billing system very likely bringing in security issues. Think Sigma6, in general, more things involved is always more thing to go wrong. No offense to anyone who works as a technician for a cable company, but at present it really doesn't take much of a rocket scientist to operate these networks, and even if you would disagree, you are talking about increasing the level of technical knowledge by a maintenance exponentially, meaning significantly more training, and significantly higher salaries.

So an exponentially more complicated system that personally I can only imagine would be exponentially more expensive to operate so they can more carefully micromanage their billing scheme based on something that doesn't even impact them. The only cost thing they really pay for and bill you for is infrastructure and maintenance! Why should they care at all which channels you watch? If anything, just for the sake of simplicity alone, they should just meter the time you spend watching tv per television. I think that would correlate much better than which stations you watch with regard to what costs are actually incurred by the cable company, and just embed that into the cost of the installation and you end of with a system that isn't any more expensive on the whole across the entire customer base.

Is $30 really so much? You think it would even be possible to design and implement a system where it would even be reasonable to bring you one channel for < $30/month? I would bet that an al a carte system would have a surcharge of at least $30/month before you even get any channels. The reality is that you would be paying more to get less; the necessary attraction for such a system would have to be exponential, and I would bet there are not even that many people out there that don't have cable to make offsetting the cost even feasible.

The best system to reduce the cost to the customer = ( total cost to design and build + per year cost of maintenance * number of years desired to break even) all divided by ( number of years desired to break even * anticipated number of customers ) + necessary dividends to attract the necessary number of investors. From there, once the infrastructure is paid for, the extra revenue can be used to expand into other markets. Now, dividends are going to be directly related to investor confidence which leaves customer price to be set by the price people are willing to pay that maximizes gross income, since the cost per customer is effectively negligible (this is also why they are pretty cool with letting you not pay your bill for awhile is they can keep billing you, and whatever maximizes gross income over time is their priority). This in turn tells the company the amount of time it will take for the cable company to break even. That number is directly related to risk because technology goes obsolete, and they need to cover that infrastructure cost first. So if time to break even comes out to 5 years, then likely they would say "Build it!", if it comes out to 50 years, they are likely going to say "lets do it somewhere else", cause more then likely they are investing their own money as well. Further, that time to break even will determine the exponential rate at which their market grows, and with that capital and dividends will rise over time.

Yeah, so in short, I don't think you are paying what you think you are paying, and al a carte programming is just a really bad idea for everybody.

copyright infringement is not theft

The linked article is really awesome, and not wanting to loose track of it, posting it here. I think it has one of the most clear and concise explanations on the whole "infringement is theft" and how it is a very one sided argument by people that DO NOT PRODUCE, but instead an out dated rich group of middlemen trying to buy their relevancy back into a marketplace that DOES NOT WANT THEM!

Rosa Parks v. Random college student downloading bad movie

Social Contract Theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society. REF

Hobbes argues that we will do ANYTHING to avoid the State of Nature and will always, rationally, pick absolute authority.

This could not be told better, from the same article:

According to Locke, the State of Nature, the natural condition of mankind, is a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct one's life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others. This does not mean, however, that it is a state of license: one is not free to do anything at all one pleases, or even anything that one judges to be in one’s interest. The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. The State of Nature is pre-political, but it is not pre-moral. Persons are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, which is on Locke’s view the basis of all morality, and given to us by God, commands that we not harm others with regards to their "life, health, liberty, or possessions" (par. 6). Because we all belong equally to God, and because we cannot take away that which is rightfully His, we are prohibited from harming one another. So, the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests and plans, free from interference, and, because of the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it imposes upon persons, it is relatively peaceful.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:

Humans are essentially free, and were free in the State of Nature, but the ‘progress' of civilization has substituted subservience to others for that freedom, through dependence, economic and social inequalities, and the extent to which we judge ourselves through comparisons with others. Since a return to the State of Nature is neither feasible nor desirable, the purpose of politics is to restore freedom to us, thereby reconciling who we truly and essentially are with how we live together. So, this is the fundamental philosophical problem that The Social Contract seeks to address: how can we be free and live together? Or, put another way, how can we live together without succumbing to the force and coercion of others? We can do so, Rousseau maintains, by submitting our individual, particular wills to the collective or general will, created through agreement with other free and equal persons. Like Hobbes and Locke before him, and in contrast to the ancient philosophers, all men are made by nature to be equals, therefore no one has a natural right to govern others, and therefore the only justified authority is the authority that is generated out of agreements or covenants.

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison on Shay's Rebellion (a violent opposition by ~1200 farmers regarding free trade agreements with Spain on the Mississippi River. Farmers feared the agreement would affirm sovereignty of Spanish traders):

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. REF

In another letter criticizing the (not yet ratified) constitution:

I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land... The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression.REF

In another letter Jefferson states:

since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas Specifically on the topic of copyright, just in case you didn't know, Madison said:With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government.

Jefferson, with good insight to the importance of the individual in an age of enlightenment, had many theories about appropriate copyright terms. If you are interested, check out more of the discussions between Jefferson and Madison; he actually makes arguments using actuarial tables (that personally, I don't think account for enough, but gives an idea of what he was thinking) of between 14 and 19 years. The following, unamended, continues to be in our constitution:

Article 1, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. REF

The clause itself is clearly taken, as much policy was set at the time, from earlier century English common law, Statute of Anne, 1710:

An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or
Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.

Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing, Reprinting, and Publishing, or causing to be Printed, Reprinted, and Published Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors or Proprietors of such Books and Writings, to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families: For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books; May it please Your Majesty, that it may be Enacted, and be it Enacted by the Queens most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That from and after the [1710], the Author of any Book or Books already Printed ... shall have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and Books for the Term of [21] Years ... and no longer; and that the Author of any Book or Books already Composed and not Printed and Published, or that shall hereafter be Composed, and his Assignee, or Assigns, shall have the sole Liberty of Printing and Reprinting such Book and Books for [14 years].REF.

It took over 60 years for the courts to settle how to interpret Anne with regard to unpublished works. In Donaldson v. Beckett in 1774, court ruled that copyright for unpublished works would be perpetual, but null immediately following first publication. REF

You can see that the scope of copyright was such that it was agreement between book publishers and artists, exclusively. This philosophy, social contract, of ideas and artistry in relation to distribution rights continued with very little revision up until the end of WWII. For the history of influences and changes in the scope of copyright law from then to today in the United States, I would highly recommend the book Free Culture. For a more European view, and broader history of Copyright law back to the beginnings of the written word, I would highly recommend Steal This Film part II which covers in some great detail the violent persecution of Gutenberg and the publishers that followed him.

Short version each of those, people have always tried to control the spread of ideas, and copyright today is not what it was very recently.

Copyright of the past represented proper, social contract; copyright was an agreement between two groups of people that mutually benefit from each other, but could not agree, and such disagreement was causing harm to each.

Some would like to believe that the law is that which you can write on paper, in the same way people were convinced for a long time that the King was appointed by God. Violate the word of the paper, violate the law; violate the word of the King, you are violating God.

In a republic, we elect representatives to serve our best interests at our will, as our Declaration affirms. Through manipulation and corruption, our representatives have violated their oath of office to protect and serve the Constitution, what it represents, and what was intended by its authors. But these were not just documents that were revered, but the work of philosophers that were torn with the thought of leaving a nation that they loved dearly, that they regarded as the greatest nation on the earth, but did not love them in return with the same respect. They moved on to form their own government, under fear of death, and fear of a return to a natural state.

So our OP may not be a lawyer, publisher, artist, politician, author, inventor, lobbyist, or any other character we identify with on the battlefield of copyright reform.

But he is a human being. He is a human being. Maybe not one that revers the law, but enjoys a civilized society. He did not break the law because he has contempt for the ordered society, but because he knows by instinct that his natural right as a human being to learn has been violated; he has returned to his natural state because there is no social contract to guide him.

In his natural state, he pursued the culture that was right in front of him, sought to gather information that would serve him in whatever manner that information does.

The result? Many of the social contracts that he had made voluntarily, consensually, and in good faith are void. For words paid for to be written on paper without respect for the law that were not further respected by the OP, he would be denied the right to participate in civilized society; his school, his home. We will now deny him the right to be a civilized member of society.

By contrast, Rosa Parks rode the bus. The 'law' at the time said that if you want to ride the bus, you could sit where ever you wanted, unless you were non-white when a white person was on the bus. Then, white people could sit wherever they wanted, but non-whites had to sit in the back. Just as Homor Plessy had been paid by the then ACLU provide a test case to challenge the 'separate but equal' doctrine, so was Rosa Parks. In each case they LOST. Separate being inherently unequal was not brought forward and won until MUCH later in Brown v. Board of Education. The biggest difference here was that a young child is strongly influenced by the necessity to go to a very far school rather than one that is near, not because of their intelligence, but the color of their skin. This fight was WON. But back to 1955...

So the ACLU working with many others needed a way to get to the courts. Conspiring to make a point, on the designated day planned ahead of time, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person after the bus driver asked her to move. She was arrested and made an example of by the ACLU. The courts did not favor with her, but it got enough peoples attention to do something else. The bus systems in Montgomery, despite being favorable to white passengers, was greatly dependent on the patronage of non-white passengers. Thus, the Montgomery Bus Boycotts began. Non-whites (and some whites as well) in a joint campaign with the ACLU and other civil liberties groups demonstrated the mutual benefit of a more proper social contract between non-whites and the society. Hobbes says that humans will do anything to avoid returning to their natural state, but personally, I see this as the free market being the true and righteous judge in this case: people had to pick between walking, or riding segregated buses by their rules, the buses (for sake of simplicity) can either meet the demands of non-whites by giving color-blind accommodations, or go on the assumption that they could continue to operate without the patronage of those that are boycotting figuring also they probably would not enjoy walking for so long. Well, the buses tried to operate for awhile, but were unable to continue and were forced to change. Shutting down the bus system was also an option, but not one whites willing to deal with.

So yeah, in so many words, they have a lot in common. Of course they are different, different people, different places, but the ground they share is strong. The OP may not be getting paid by the ACLU to make some kind of point, and didn't go into the situation to make some kind of big political scene with lawyers in tow.

Societies don't exist for their own sake. They are there to serve. If I buy a bus ticket, I don't care where I sit so long as it is in a seat. If the buses are so crowded that I do not get a seat, I am going to be pissed. Back to basics; for people to want to cooperate together as a team, each person much "bring something to the table". The butcher and the cowboy can work together for mutual benefit. The blacksmith and the miner can work together for mutual benefit. The farmer and the brewer are each better off forging a relationship with their neighbor in this respect. Get them all together for a party, who needs more than steak and beer, with the blacksmiths mug, and the miners coal for the barbecue, who could resist such a great evening after a glorious day of working in your trade so obviously appreciated by your community. Add to this situation the musician. All great parties recorded in history have had music. If this musician comes to the party, you will see me leap from my seat to bring that fellow a hot steak and a cold beer, and I know no friend that would not do the same.

But the man who would damn me for singing his song so shall be damned from ever sitting at my table.

Criticize me all you like for being untalented and tone deaf; music is not my labor.

If you don't want your work "pirated", that's easy. Keep it to your damned self. I stand by that position morally, justly, and in the right, even if it takes a little while for the "law" to catch up.

Oh, and one last thing; Fuck You Jack Valenti.

Liberal = anti-freedom

Great article with no surprises. People want things to get better, but not every situation can be made better by giving up your freedom to choice and personal responsibility by creating some huge government monster to manage it for everybody.

People think that intrusive government meddling can be good if it is just regulated and regulated and regulated, but the problem is that it just can't work. Mommy and daddy government can't ever come up with good policies to create a perfect utopia. Anyway, just wanted to share more than rant. Enjoy.

Ayn Rand

An argument I read today from ingrenyonchera on youtube:

I agree completely that this woman was too idealistic. While it's all well and good to defend the rights of an individual, a world where it's every man for himself would result in a collapse and reversal of everything we've built up over the years.

... I'm not saying what we have now is the perfect solution, but the way forward IS FORWARD, not backwards - and I meet too many philosophers (who mostly just uphold the views of other philosophers like this) who don't seem to understand this.

Your argument is that rational egoism fails because man is ultimately evil. So somehow that puts you in favor big government? Forgive me for not following your logic here.

If man is ultimately evil, then that only supports the argument that collectively working preserving individual liberty is the only purpose government can serve without being corrosive to its own objective.

The alternative is that people are good, and government is only as efficient as it can operate on a premise of perfect knowledge.

Big government can only be intentionally harmful, or deleteriously inefficient. Take your pick. This does not even begin to address the issue of corruption.

Ubuquity for Firefox

Just how badly can an awkwardly phrased sentence be lost in translation?
きまり悪そうに言えばどれだけひどい文章の翻訳で失われるのですか？
ما ضاع في الترجمة من الجملة أن تكون أسوأ بكثير الحرج؟
Потерянные в переводе приговор будет гораздо хуже, смущение?
Perduts en la traducció de la frase seria molt menys compromès?
Tabt i oversættelsen af sanktionen ville være langt mindre engageret?
Perdu dans la traduction de la phrase sera beaucoup moins engagé?
אבד בתרגום המשפט יהיו הרבה פחות עסוקים?
Zapomenuté překlad hodnocení bude mnohem méně vytížených?
Forget the score will be much less busy? it


Simple phrases are simple to translate
単純なフレーズに簡単に翻訳している
من السهل ترجمة هذه العبارة البسيطة
Легко перевести эту простую фразу
קל לתרגם את זה פשוט ביטוי
Je snadné překládat jednoduché věty
Jest łatwa do przetłumaczenia proste zdanie
Ito ay madaling isalin ang isang simpleng pangungusap
It is easy to translate a simple sentence

Ok, I cheated, but Ubiquity for firefox is still really cool. Lots of cool tools to make for a powerful web experience. I'll write more about it later after I have played with it more.

Digital Literacy: Comparing iPhone and Desktop Linux adoption

Apple selling many iPhone and grabbing a decent market chunk can't be used to show Linux has somehow failed. Apple convinced insecure and wannabe nerds (and some real nerds too) that a big shiny new gadget will make them look cool. The Linux Community is trying to convince people that enjoy finger painting and story-time that reading and writing are valuable skills that that can benefit you throughout your entire life.

I am sure this sounds like typical fanboyism, but have you ever listened to someones excuses for not wanting to learn to read, write, or learn basic algebra? It is the same excuses: It won't be relevant to the career I want, I get along just fine speaking, that's just for smart people. Well, how is it that Linux can be both demonized for being inferior AND only for the really smart computer genius type. Might it be worth a moment to try and see what they see? Honestly, that is what convinced me that despite the fact that it was HARD, and there were things I had to LEARN or even REMEMBER, it was about communicating, building, developing, and working together in a radically different way. I think it took me about a year to get comfortable with Linux, several more before I really began to see why it is used in all the places that it is, and why people feel so passionately about it.

Some people see a computer as a fancy typewriter for papers, a canvas for painting a picture, and an easier way to send letters and pictures than via snail mail. digital music is just another way to listen to music. For all those old things done in new ways, there is something uniquely special that can be expressed through a computer that isn't just a digital form of the same old thing in a different way. There is something uniquely powerful that enables people to fundamentally work different, and only Linux is where people can share instantly and unlimitedly the tools to express yourself and communicate with the world DIFFERENTLY.

Sure, Microsoft and Apple let you push the button, but just like reading and writing, no matter how good the story is told, don't think that is any kind of substitute. You just aren't talking about the same thing. It isn't digital literacy.

But don't worry, sure I am making a big deal out of nothing. You can already read and write, and computers are really just like books where it is easier to fix mistakes without wasting paper. There are nerds out there that take care of this stuff so that normal people can use them like books. Doubt learning how they work would ever be something worth anything to the 'normal' user.


I stopped paying attention when it went from "The year of Linux" to "The year of the Linux Desktop". Didn't anyone notice what happened in between? Further, The Year of the Linux Desktop was 2004 with the release of openSuse. The Year of Linux was 1997 with the Internet. If you care about being literate in a digital age, you know about Linux.

Wish I had made the effort to learn earlier, but guess just happy to be there. Having been there, there is just no way to explain to an adult illiterate person the value of learning how to read and write. I know it sounds elitist, but it really just struck me today how similar the arguments are. Think about it.

RPM v. DEB

RPMs and DEBs are just different. While I am a fan of apt-get, they make a lot of assumptions and take away from a lot of the configurability that an rpm allows. Of course, the same old argument between Linuc and Windows in general, is that it is whether or not it is useful to the average individual to take the time to learn the difference, and as usual no, but just the same, that is no reason to take such configurability away. Most people never install anything ever, especially not system "stuff". So where is the line? Each to their own :)

I find it funny, and a little sad when I hear people trying to tell other people what to do or how to standardize Linux. If you make hardware and you would like your hardware to work with other peoples hardware, and both pieces of hardware are in development, then there is room to suggest a standard and find some way for your stuff to work together in the end. On the otherhand, if someone writes a great program, but only specifies dependencies in a README, but never bothers to package it, you have three(ish) basic options: 1) Deal with the fact that it isn't package and compile it yourself. 2) wait for someone to package it for your system, then install it, or 3) Package it yourself.

Not to make it out to be more work than it is, but packaging takes time and effort. From what I have seen, programmers are almost always a different group of people from package maintainers. Any project that packages its own software likely has the job of just package maintenance.

deb packages are also very configurable. I don't think there is anything they can't do. Technically, there is nothing in its design to stop someone from a deb package running the binary every time you install it and never actually installing anything. Just the same, debs can install repositories, it just isn't standard to do that. Personally, I think it is better to let people choose whether or not they want their installed third party software to be self maintaining along with the rest of the system. If there is a repo, make note of it on the website and in the documentation. All a deb has is metadata, install script, uninstall script, and files. This means debs can do anything scripts and files can do. :) as for what apt-get does is store the metadata such that it can know what script sets have already been run, and if others need to be run, etc. The limits comes down to what the package maintainer chooses to put in their install script.

rpms are easier to build and maintain. debs are much more of a pain in the ass. debs are convenient for the vast majority of users, and they are a lot of work. Would deb users like to see every project out there have a deb available? Of course! But at the sacrifice of development time, or your own? Even if debs were "always better in every way", you are only talking about an end product and not the time that went into putting it together.

So whenever I hear someone say "I wish there was a deb", I say "Your probably not alone, why don't you go do that! Never done package maintenance? Wonderful, here's the manual and if next week you are still confused, i'd be happy to walk you through it."

Linux is about personal responsibility that can ideally easily benefit everyone, imo. Not everyone can really handle that.

Morality and principles of capital punishment

I have weighed all the difference evidence and such out there regarding the death penalty and such as I found it difficult to decide what to support and its relationship to my own philosophy. In the end, I think it is unjustifiably expensive, and horribly immoral, but not immoral for what I might call "the typical reasons". I think it is immoral that a person that was not a victim is the executioner, and the sterile atmosphere trying to make it appear so "humane" is just disgusting. The state has a compelling interest in justice because we pay them through taxes to be the benevolent and fair moderator, and if a person has possibly committed a crime that morally justifies death, the state should get to make the final decision, but them actually doing the killing is wrong.

I like what (I have been lead to believe is true) goes on in Japan. Honor killings. If you have been dishonored or wronged in such a way that means the criminal deserves death, they can issue you a permit, more or less, to hunt that person down and kill them. THAT is honorable. THAT is humane. THAT is moral. It isn't a "bad dog" that needs to be put down, this is a living human being that deserves to DIE! Let a man (or woman) in such a position face their death with some dignity, and the face of the person they wronged be it with a rope around their neck, or a knife swiftly jabbing into them. Let that face be the last thing they see before meeting their maker up close and personal. Not behind some sterile glass where the "victim" sits right along site the criminals lawyer. What a sick and pathetic situation for both parties.

Making the family responsible for the execution of an individual not only puts responsibility where it should lie and make them accountable for their accusations, but could also brig a type of closure better then some damn shrink is going to give them helping them "talk about their problem".

If you are morally object to killing the person yourself, or none of the members of the family will kill them, or possible closest friend (maybe put that in a will? In the event of my murder, I entrust the undersigned to avenge my death. Hmm...) then the person should get life imprisonment. Further, if the victim is against honor killing / death penalty or the such, then no revenge death can be granted.

Why is is that justifiable homicide can be a defense, but only after the fact? Premeditated justifiable homicide can only be committed by the state? That just doesn't seem right.

Free is hard *whine*

Liberty and personal responsibility are strange beasts that in todays world of regulations and bailouts, such ideas are foreign at best.

On the Mac vs. Linux argument, a leaked presentation by Steve Ballmer showed that from their own internal research, Linux and pirated windows is what hits them the hardest. Just in desktop space alone, 1 of 4 copies of windows are pirated, and Linux on the desktop outnumbers mac by more than 2 to 1.

Linux is particularly strange because anything that could be called marketing just doesn't operate in the way we have been trained to look at it. Ubuntu and Linux in general make solid baby steps, and with regard to anything that is important to you, that is actively being developed, the speed of development is blindingly fast. How many times in alpha would you report a bug only to have the problem fixed and an update available within < 24 hours. Scary. But if you are just standing back waiting to see how it is going to look different, it is unlikely you will see much.

Microsoft taks about great this, and great that, and while I was reasonably happy with XP (till SP2), there really wasn't anything XP ever offered that couldn't be got from 98 and 2000. It was great they brought them together, and I am sure it was a lot of work, but even from 98/2000 to 7... has WHAT you do changed really changed so much? I see many changes in how things are done, but not what is done... at least in so far as what Microsoft actually does. For what I do, the tools provided for Linux, and particularly Ubuntu, let me do more things in more creative ways where the time saved due directly to the efforts of the developers is greatly appreciated. The more I get involved in development, the more I am amazed how many projects are one person in a MASSIVE bottom up structure. Put in a little effort, and it is easy to have a direct influence... assuming you can actually make a constructive contribution.

Windows does give a great amount of comfort and stability. If something doesn't work, there may be one thing to try, and after that, your done. Anything breaks, just reinstall. Very easy and simple. In Linux, one is always drowning in possibilities. If something doesn't work, there is unlimited number ways to go about resolving the issue, and if it is broken, you never really know if it will be fixed tomorrow, a year from now, or never. Some people just can't and don't want that type of close relationship with their computer.

Windows is like riding the bus, and Linux is like owning a car... in too many ways.

and imo, Mac is like the trolley at Disneyland.

Why Linux sucks?

It is a strange world, I'll admit. One thing that I tell people looking at adoption is "get ready to relearn everything you thought you knew about your computer". I find your signature particularly ironic because I think Linux philosophy has many close parallels to the philosophy of conservatism and virtually immune to the damning effects of democracy.

One of the things that I feel has hurt Windows over the years is that Microsoft has lost touch with what works. Development is strongly driven by criticism, and what people want is what they will get. This is most apparent in Vista where their top down development model was strongly influenced by user feedback. It SEEMS like a great idea, and honestly it is almost difficult to understand why it failed so miserably.

This is where Linux takes almost the opposite approach, but 'approach' seems to imply a type of central control that does not exist, but looking past that; Linux is COMPLETELY decentralized. Not only is development bottom-up, but so is influence, criticism, standards, motivation, and anything that might be interpreted as 'marketing'. With the money being removed from the structure of Linux development, it is really one of the purest / idealistic forms of liberty to have ever existed. While today I don't think many fundamentally understand the difference between Liberty and Anarchy, I think many are dumbfounded that a pure merit based system that completely relies on personally responsibility could have accomplished anything. I consider myself a pretty hard core libertarian compared to some (but that may have something to do with living in California), but as I get more involved in Ubuntu development, I often don't understand why anything developed this way doesn't just cause all my hardware to burst into flames.

On the flip side, you can only get so far making people do things they don't want to do. In Linux, If I want something that doesn't exist, it is my personal responsibility to develop it or get it developed. Yelling at the computer and flaming message boards only gets you so far, and it should be of little surprise that no one is intimidated let alone motivated to rush out on their free time fix that issue for you. At the end of the day, someone must actually write the code, and do all the things that are involved in getting that code to you, and in by far MOST cases, writing a code patch and emailing it to you won't be good enough. You don't want me to code it; if you use Ubuntu, you want me to write a blue print, register the appropriate branch, put together a team, write the code, debug it, test it, share it, get it reviewed, revise it, propose for merge, voted on and approved, merge, package, and integrate into repository; and as if that wasn't good enough, you want it for your platform, back-ported, automatically updated on your system, and then maintained indefinitely. Sorry, but the only way I am doing that in my free time, for free, is that I really want it myself, and even then, if we disagree, if I am stuck doing all the work, I am going to implement and design parts however I feel like.

So while it may seem really rude or a brush off when people say "do it yourself", it isn't that they are heartless or lazy, I think they are really trying to save you some effort. If you consider the greatly consolidated steps mentioned above as 'X', and 'Y' as the amount of effort it may take to convince someone else to do the work, does it really need to be explained that 'X < X + Y', ALWAYS. The common defense is that 'X' is somehow less for a seasoned developer than for a novice / non-programmer. Sure, but why is that a problem for the developer? Further, which programmer specifically subsidize your ignorance? Are you asking me to do it? Hmm.. let me check my inbox... nope; let me check my launchpad account for new blueprints or teams I have been subscribed to... nope. *Whew* well that was a relief. You must have been talking about someone else.

If you don't want to develop, and you don't manage a team and pay for development, and you kinda just want it to work, people will be happy to let you know that a that level of influence, and that level of personal responsibility, that level of merit earns you "whatever exists". No one dictates these rules, it is just nature. Imagine being stranded on an island, whose responsibility is it that you survive? If ALL your faith is in the coast guard to come bail you out, you could put all your effort into waiting patiently, screaming at the sky, or setting the island ablaze to get their attention. Any of those things may very well be effective. In this brave new world we live in, you will likely be lucky enough to be picked up on a big brother satellite that will see your movement and come out to investigate what you are doing there before you even realize you aren't in Hawaii. But what if they DON'T rescue you? Is your last dying breath going to be made writing a letter to your senator via bottle, explaining your martyrism to poor naval patrol? And while after you are long dead and there is some boat out there named in your honor, maybe you could have taken a little effort to just see what kind of resources are available on the island that could be out to use to start a new life for yourself.

Yeah, personal responsibility is a bitch that way sometimes, huh?

The thing I find interesting is that all bureaucracy is optional. There are great standards, and the only punishment for not following them are completely intrinsic; rare are there real rules with real consequences compared to so many things are fake rules with fake consequences made up by people in the name of "the greater good". Sovereignty and liberty are strange creatures.

If all this seems somewhere between 'too much work' or 'fan boy drivel', and personal responsibility is unrealistic or just a buzz word, then it really doesn't matter what OS you pick and more than your vote actually means anything in an election. It will always come down to picking the lesser of two evils, and being upset either way.

And really, in such a case, I'll agree that Linux is likely your worst possible choice.

Interesting...

Global warming hysteria finally cooling down

The article linked above is really great. I listened to the global cooling debate and later the global warming debate to a point I finally had to look at what everyone was talking about. I looked into data on global temperatures and atmospheric changes and various theories and it seemed easy to see that for hundreds of years it has been understood that seasonal droughts and what was apparently a 28 year cycle of global warming and cooling was the direct cause of the electromagnetic cycle of the sun. The sun's plasma is a giant magnet that swirls and spins, twisting its magnetic field until it snaps, resetting things back to a more stable state, and the cycle repeats. The earliest evidence of this was shown in the relationship between drought seasons / global warming and sun spots. The fields "snapping" is seen in solar flares when the "magnetic pathways" (for lack of a better word) expand beyond the surface of the sun, and plasma following these pathways flare up, cool, and fall back to the sun leaving a dim mark we call a sun spot.

I have received some criticism for this belief, I think some believing I am uncaring to the earth. On the contrary, I think it is more harmful to spread lies about the way things work. I think we should be kind to the environment and stop polluting it as much as we are, but responding to bogus science about man made global warming with extreme measures to manipulate the political and economic environment can only do harm.

Note: Too see video of all presentations from the 2009 conference, click here.

I was never really into music, until I got to middle school where you needed to know music to be cool. But listening to the radio didn't give me the right information, and the range of music just blew.

Then one day came Napster.

I started downloading everything, lyrics, album info and such and really got to get to know music, I was able to buy all the right stuff and amassed a good size collection (as much as one can at that age working odd jobs and saving lunch money)

I'd share the music with my friends, and tell them about artists I had heard, and get them to buy a copy too.

Then Metallica put out a really crappy CD. I loved their other stuff.. and I was pretty satisfied with the ones I already owned. Then THEY attacked Napster, and actually won. No surprise really, but I said **** them, and went back to listening to the radio for new music. Never bought another album again.

Today, what I see in person is in such conflict with these stupid cases. The Statute of Anne was much more sensible in so many ways. It makes sense it was written in our constitution that there needed to be limits on copyright in order to promote science and useful arts. I hang out with a log of musicians, and spend a lot of at open mics and drum circles. The music is about the music, and people live to share.

I used to copy music I liked, but I discovered I was wasting my time. Why should I promote the music written by people that don't even believe in music the way I do. Now, I use Jamendo, and when I meet an artist, and they tell me about their beliefs, I point them in the direction of creative commons.

I promote music by artists that love music the way I do. Same reason to use Linux; it is software for people that love computers, not people that found a way to make a buck at exploiting the stupidity of others. Linux is a community where everyone is given equal access to everything possible because that is the best way for new creativity to spawn, and in return the people that put in their time and effort "working for Linux" get what they want in return: Not the money to possibly afford the title of the day, but again, everything the community has to offer.

With Linux, the more I give, the more I learn, and the more I get in return.

I don't buy indy labels because I don't go to music stores. If I buy an album, I get the hand drawn, signed, one of a kind from the artist himself. One time I was listening to a guy on a street corner in Santa Cruz, California (BIG music / punk / hippy city) playing a Cello. I listened for about 2 hours, struck up a conversation with the guy, and ended up buying him a new set of strings. Still, the best concert I have ever heard.

I know it will never happen. Who ever is in power will always fight to keep the system the same because it worked for them. People will thrive in ANY environment because humans are amazing that way... but what I support is make it the best environment to promote culture, music, and education by making information distribution as awesome as possible with better Internet and better protocols like bit torrent. It is the library of the digital age.

After that, THEN let the scum of the earth come crawling out from under their rocks and find a way to exploit it and squeeze as many pennies out of the system as possible through market research and providing something unique.

You say people being able to give things away for free is communism. I say you got it all wrong. Sharing is at the heart of humanity. Communism is going to the government and making a law to put fake rules into place that allow you to control a system no matter how many people it hurts. Copyright is government trying to control the system.

Why do we still have libraries, and where did they come from? What are they for? Don't they just promote mass piracy? Were libraries only "acceptable" because they are hard to get to and inconvenient? Poor and low on money? Or were they meant to encourage thought and education for free to the best that the technology of the day could provide?

Well, today we have the Internet. It is revolutionizing the way people think and share. It is going to kill the library, but only because every adult and child in the world is going to have direct access the greatest library in history.

Do you think we could survive in such a world? Know what, I think we can. This is why Peter Sunde is a hero of the day. He is the great librarian of the 21st century, and we should give him praise for his vision, a vision I support with all my heart.

Long Live The Pirate Bay!

Why doesn't Microsoft have a site like ubuntuforums.org?

It would never work, at least not exactly. Its a political thing. Basically, who wants to give their time and energy away for free to help with something Microsoft is paid to do? M$ makes money, while EVERYTHING that is Gnu/Linux is created for someone's personal use and given away for free that others that create will be willing to share in the same way. Additionally, if you make a good program for yourself and share it for free, there is a good chance people will repay you through contributions of bug fixes, additional features, or maybe a really big thank you.

When was the last time you think anyone took the time to write Bill Gates and say "Thank you Bill for making a really great operating system for my computer". Not likely, cause why bother, you got your OS, M$ got their money, no more reason to really talk to each other.

It is really interesting the relationship Sun Microsystems has with the OSS community. They give away a produce for free, and open the source. However, if you contribute, you can only make code suggestions, that may or may not go in, and Sun keeps total control. Lots of people use open office, but there is no real Open Office developer community because you can't really ever be part of a team. They are 'basic' open source, meeting the dictionary definition. They arn't putting their effort into community building. Ubuntu is quite the irony. Sun is open source and discourages community (passively) while Cannonical makes proprietary software (you can't get the code for the forums, or even help) but these closed tools are used to build community.

M$ having a site like this is like having a poetry jam where they charge admission: If you are going to read poetry, you want to get paid. But make it free and charge for drinks, but put in some comfy chairs, people will want to share for free just to be heard.

I love ubuntu. I do some programming, but nothing cool enough worth inclusion in Ubuntu. Maybe some day. I am AMAZED how much Gnu/Linux has become simply through a desire for nerds to share and help each other out. I WANT to be more a part of such a great community, but my experience and skill only put me at, hopefully, very knowledgeable user. So, I try and do support. I came on the forums for the first time in a long time and found I knew the answers to many of the questions people were asking. So I figured 'why not?'

Seriously, I get this whole, wonderfully incredible operating system and software that does everything I need that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars in proprietary software, and it is all given away in hopes that people will want to get involved.

Me helping any way I can makes me feel a part of that; it is how I can pay for my Linux just the way it was meant to be.

So this is my way of giving back. If there was a site like this for Microsoft (actually, there is, sort of. it is called Microsoft Knowledge Base) I, for one, wouldn't bother. I'd say "Already paid for it, let someone else do it". Why would I want to give my time away for free? This isn't free, I get Linux!

Open Movie Editor

Found a really awesome movie editor while looking through the ubuntu forums. As they put it:

a simple non-linear video editor
Open Movie Editor is designed to be a simple tool, that provides
basic movie making capabilities. It aims to be powerful enough
for the amateur movie artist, yet easy to use.

Very straight forward and easy to see what you are doing. the version released about a year ago allowed to you drag sound and video from your media directory to channels, split sound and video from files, and drag and drop images onto your time line. The latest version added a ton of transitions. Can even drag and drop svg titles.

And thanks to Fabrice Coutadeur, there are packages of the new version available for Ubuntu Hardy, intrepid, and jaunty for both 32 and 64 bit.

Highly recommended for video bloggers
https://launchpad.net/~fabricesp/+archive/ppa

The relationship of my two loves: Food and Linux

I like being able to see how things work. Windows is much more "the magic box that does computy stuff", where as in linux, even if you don't understand it all, it is there for you to see. Immersion is great for learning, and Linux organizes things in a good way to learn anything and everything you want. Windows trains you to click the mouse when a window pops up.

BASH, as others mentioned, is a wonderfully powerful language that has completely changed the way I work with my computer since I made a complete switch years ago now.

But personally, I love and live Gnu/Linux for cultural reasons. Sure, it is more secure, faster for near all tasks, but would I switch from a community of people that believe that the purpose of information is for it to be shared to paying someone that believes I should be in jail if I try to understand how things work? Hmm... no, doesn't really appeal.

I guess I think of Windows as a restaurant with really good food, but really rude service, and while you are reasonably satisfied with your experience, you can't help but notice the health department makes an uncomfortably large number of visits. But if you are careful, and have a lot of money, some of the best chefs in town offer their dishes here exclusively.

Linux is more like a farmers market filled with chefs whose greatest joy in life is for you to share their food and ideas. There is no limit, and everyone welcome. You can have all the food you want for free, and there seems to be this kind of rule that if you bring food, you are supposed to tell people what you put into it. If you use other peoples ingredients or change someone else's dish, then you must tell people what you put in it, and where you got the recipe from.

So people ask where to eat. Well, I think we are all really used to and understand the restaurant model, and paying ala cart. We even got special toilet paper every time we get food poisoning. On the other hand, there is an orgy out in the wilderness where they hope you know how to cook so you can share and play, but even if you don't know how to cook, or even know what a frying pan is, your still welcome, just be mindful the conversation may just be a little different then what you are used to.

So know what? I don't really care if that other place got the latest iron chef. Its expensive, and he usually never shows up anyway. They keep changing everything around every time they move, and make you keep buying things you already paid for. Not to mention there is a door charge before you even get any food, but that is usually part of the package deal anyway.

So maybe sometimes the food gets better, or even really amazing on a rare occasion. Maybe the food gets cheaper every once in awhile. If you are really lucky, maybe they fired that waitress that kept spitting in the food. That's wonderful... but know what, while I thought I was initially tempted by the free food and dreams of being a chef, I've found something of a community.

But it is nice to know that in addition to the great community, the food is actually better, even if you can't get everything out there.

A comment on Ways Beyong Empiricism

I see empiricism in a way as a clearly definable aspect of Rationalism. I do not believe any rationalist ascribes to pure empiricism any more than Cartesian philosophers ascribe solipsism. I think that is part of the beauty. I agree completely with your observation that all human truth is an merely an abstraction of truth even before we consider the implications and limits of language, but some abstraction results in group think, and other abstractions result in particle accelerators.

There is empirical evidence to show that empiricism is not a fundamentally complete construct for truth, but rationalism also says sometimes we just don't know. Rationalism is a powerful tool used recklessly with Occam's razor can cut up and justify any truth you like. In a way, it is still just a path. But, the difference from other philosophies like Christianity, rationalist, hopefully, reject any dogma, including science, for a pragmatism that says there are no limits to what we can discover.

When it comes to spiritual / supernatural beliefs, just try to keep it in perspective with what can really be known and how ideas can be communicated in absolute ways. Least for the sake of self evaluation and clear communication so you and others can really study it and improve. Keep in mind the potential of mathematics and study things that let you express yourself in challenging ways. With infinite knowledge out there, how can you know where you are going without really knowing where you are?

Idea #17763: Every program in Ubuntu is using different way of handling the same problem

Sorry, I think this is a really bad idea. Programs have an individual way of working. One of many problems I find with KDE is that there is obviously a standard way of doing things that almost nobody follows; there are extra menu items in nearly every application that are unused, but there because it is part of some standard.

The place this should actually be added is to glib or qt; give developers a simple "Add default components and configuration" type thing to the library so that default items will perform default actions such as exit. There could even be a simple way to integrate a 'new' item subroutine.

Sound cool? Well guess what, it already exists! There are always new tools and hot plates and SDK IDE skeletons to make things easier on developers.

I think maybe rather than see something and assume that just because it is different that there must be something wrong with it because it is "inconsistent". Personally, I pick my applications based on the interface. There is variety.

This has been an age old war, and I guess it will never die, but FOREVER it has always been "Which is better, vi or emacs?". The different is the interface, but in this case, everything is the interface!

Rather than criticizing the devs in their UI design, maybe give then a little credit and assume for a moment they put a little time and effort into their work and things are designed with a purpose to work best for their application.

My solution: Tell your friend that because the software is community developed, not only do individuals have the freedom to develop independently, but there is no marketing department trying to make everything look the same for the sake of making everything look the same. It is just one of the quirks of the organic nature of Gnu/Linux et al. Improvements are always coming about, but just like nature, evolution needs diversity to progress. Gnu/Linux is always evolving and that is part of what makes it great, rather than feeling stuck looking at doing everything the Windows way, or the Apple way. If you have ever felt like that choice left you deciding the lesser of two evils, Linux can be a breath of fresh air.

A friend and I were discussing the issue with paradigm shifts: They are not all of the sudden, no matter how much the new ideas may have appeared to have reached critical mass in your mind. Even after profound paradigm shifts, we can continue to try to stuff new ideas into old boxes; compartmentalizing the new data in the old ways. Usually that just doesn't work.

In this case, for a new user, it is probably a good opportunity to remind them to pay attention to the application they are using, and don't just start clicking at the mouse and keyboard thinking all applications are the same, unless investigation is the purpose at that moment; there is always an appropriate time and place.

For the more adventurous types, qt and glib are reasonably straight forward at least with regard to changing the name of menu item names or hot keys in fully developed applications. While there is always more you can do knowing more, encourage them to be pragmatic about looking for the key piece of code they want to change, and worry less about the parts that don't necessarily make sense. It isn't as scary as it sounds, and interfaces is a fun simple place to start that requires almost no previous programming experience, just a bit of imagination.