The Flow of Consciousness

A dream about a St. Patrick’s Day future

2010-03-18T19:36:01-07:00

I had an interesting dream last night. I dream most nights–in full color and sound, like a movie– but most dreams aren’t worthy of blog posts. This one is.

Obviously, I’ve embellished a little in my written account of it, but the scene and events would tell everything themselves if I could pull the images from my head and put them on YouTube like something out of the first Final Fantasy movie.

The setting was St. Patrick’s Day, sometime in the future by several years. Some friends, Brigette, and I walked into a bar. By the looks of it, it was probably Villa or the Crane Room, but that doesn’t matter. The door was tiny, like it was a ’20s speakeasy trying to be discreet.

The bouncer asked for our ID and our “(something)s”. It sounded like “privates” or “privies” or something like that. “Priv” something. Everybody produced not only their drivers licenses, but another card, as well. We showed them to the bouncer as we passed him, continuing in to enjoy the evening.

Finding no room to sit near the back like we prefer, we found a table very close to the front and within earshot and sight of the bouncer. We got our drinks and carried on.

Every now and then, someone would come in, show their ID to the bouncer, look really pissed off when the bouncer said something, turn around, and walk out of the bar. Sometimes a really drunk, attractive woman would plead with him, or a dude bigger than he would flex and he’d let them in.

I tuned in and listened once to what he was saying to one of the people he turned away.

“Honey, I can’t let you in. Federal law prevents us from serving alcohol to anyone on public insurance. We can’t serve you, and you’re not even supposed to drink. You could go to jail and we could get fined. Sorry, we can’t let you in here without proof that you’re not on public insurance.”

I shook my head and turned back to the conversation. The dream got worse, though.

A few minutes or hours later–it was immediately after in the dream, but who knows how long in the story, a guy in a trenchcoat walked into the bar. The bouncer stood up in front of him, but then the trenchcoat man produced something from his pocket. The bouncer tensed, perhaps thinking it was a gun, but I don’t understand why he didn’t react accordingly. Little did I know that he could see what I couldn’t.

The bouncer stepped aside and the trenchcoat man entered, with approximately four police officers in tow. Some people got quiet, and some people started to get really loud as they quickly tried to disburse.

Trenchcoat man cleared his throat. “Under the authority of the US government, we are federal agents enforcing the Healthy America Act,” he said. “We have evidence that a crime is being committed in this establishment and we have a warrant for search.”

He took of his hat and waved a badge in the air, as if the posse of cops behind him was insufficient proof of his authority and intent.

“We are acting lawfully. Each person must show proof of private health insurance or submit to a sobriety test as the law allows, in order to ensure compliance with the Act. You may recall that it’s illegal to consume alcohol if you rely on Uncle Sam to keep you healthy.”

The bartender made some gestures and left the bar, retreating into a back room with another bartender and a waitress in tow.

The cops started toward the crowd unassumingly. They each pulled out some kind of PDA.

Apparently accustomed to such searches, folks produced their “privies” — a private insurance card — so as not to be subjected to a breathalyzer test and subsequent herding into a paddy wagon. One of the cops and scanned a barcode on each. He walked away after a grunt.

The guys at the table next to us roused the rabble, though and refused to show anything. One screamed loudly about the civil rights and how he should be able to drink in peace without the government asking to see his “license to drink.” He and the others made some gestures and the cop started getting angry. He whipped out a Taser and a bunch of girls not far away screamed.

A mass of people stampeded toward the door. A tiny little door at the front of the bar.

It all went to hell in a handbasket after that. Details unnecessary.

Call my dreaming brain creative. Call it deceptively oversimplified. Call it needlessly worried and say that the government would never do something like that. Call it whatever you like.

I reflect on this dream and wonder if it’s a vision of the future. I make no warrant of clairvoyance. I’m not that type. This is merely a report of a dream I had.

Level 25: Nothing happens (Feliĉan Naskiĝtagon al mi!)

2010-03-12T10:01:55-08:00

I’m 25 today. Hooray. Nothing really happens when one turns 25, except that drop in car insurance rates. Work lunch today was macaroni and cheese and fish, with ice cream cake for dessert. I was pleased.

If you’re in downtown Pittsburgh tonight or tomorrow and know me, feel free to meet up with us as we meander about the Central Business District in preparation for dinner and tomorrow’s parade.

Unlocking Kazuya in Tekken 2 the easy way

2010-02-28T09:42:43-08:00

I’m a Tekken guy: am now and always have been. I never really got into other mainstream fighting games, such as Battle Arena Toshinden, Virtua Fighter, Dead or Alive, or Street Fighter. I did enjoy Mortal Kombat back in the day. I picked up Street Fighter IV at the behest of Shawn Wall and may even pick up Super Street Fighter IV when it comes out.

Kazuya Mishima

However, my true love is Tekken 2. Sure, the character stories are hilariously trite and the graphics of this PS1 game simply can’t compete with the visual feast that is Tekken 6.

Brigette and I bought the game from PSN shortly after I investigated and got a PS3 for Christmas. We’ve been playing for a few hours here and there, unlocking characters and enjoying playing a 15 year old game on a modern system.

Until last night, we hadn’t yet unlocked Kazuya, the villain of the game. Every site on the web says that one must beat the game undefeated (i.e., not using any continues) with a sub-boss character (e.g. Lee, Kuma, Wang, and the other unlockable characters). However, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Kazuya in Tekken 2

I tried for hours with Kuma, getting up to Stage 6 or 7 before being defeated. We were using single bout, 20 second rounds to do it—by "we", I mean Brigette and I switching off as our fingers got tired. We moved to Lee and got up to Stage 8, but couldn’t get past that fight. Eventually, I switched to Baek and really made some progress, getting to Kazyua on Stage 9 several times. During this, we switched to double bouts. This gave us an extra chance to learn from our mistakes and likely saved us time because we didn’t have to go back to Stage 1 every time we lost. Brigette took the controller at one point and switched back to Lee.

Finally, Brigette defeated Kazuya and moved on to the last fight against Devil. After a 19 second round, Devil offed her with his cheesy flyer laser beam eye attack. Frustrated, she almost reset the game. I kinda wanted to see Lee’s ending, so I urged her to fight Devil one more time. She defeated him handedly that round, a K.O. in ~10 seconds.

Disappointed, we continued trying to unlock Kazuya. About 20 minutes later, Brigette accidentally flipped too far in the character selection screen and realized that Kazuya was available!

It appears that one must only be undefeated through Kazuya in order to unlock him. After that, simply finish the game by defeating Devil. Apparently continuing on Devil doesn’t break the unlock.

If this works for you, please let me know. I can’t easily reproduce it myself.

Not so quick notes on the Apple iPad

2010-01-27T16:48:56-08:00

Apple iPad

I figure I’ll contribute to the noise and add my $0.02 about the Apple iPad, which was announced today with much fanfare.

Quick rundown for folks living under a rock who for some reason read my blog and no other news outlet:

9.7″ 1024×768 132ppi glass multitouch widescreen display
1 GHz Apple A4 processor/SoC
16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB flash storage
802.11b/g/n WiFi
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
3G model supports UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz, i.e., AT&T), GSM/EDGE (850, 900,1800, 1900 MHz)
Compass, cellular network location service (i.e., no GPS)
25 Whr battery, 10 hours battery life in use, one month standby
3.5″ headphone jack, speakers, mic
Standard Apple A/V format playback, H.264 video up to 720p
Access to Apple App Store, iTunes Music Store, and new iBookstore

The pricing is pretty good, too. The cheapest, a 16 GB without 3G, is $499. The most expensive, 64 GB with 3G, runs $829 + $30 monthly for 3G service. Kudos to Apple for negotiating a no-contract deal with AT&T. That’s right—iPad users are not locked into AT&T contractually. They’re just locked into AT&T if they want 3G service. Here’s hoping that T-Mobile springs up similar plans for folks who want T-Mobile and for whom EDGE service will suffice.

In theory, it’s pretty slick device. Lots of innovation, right?

Hardware-wise, I pronounce that Apple has done it again. It’s a new idea, a new form-factor, a new audience. Apple’s going after the folks who love e-book readers and who maybe need to do some typing every now and then. They’re going after the on-the-go designer, or presenter, or other person who would benefit from having, essentially, the capabilities of the iPhone but with a larger screen and faster processor.

Apple iPad Case

Apple iPad Keyboard Dock

There’s a few accessories for it, including a keyboard dock and a case. The case doubles as a bit of a stand, as well. The dock gives the user a keyboard (it’s not clear to me whether or not the keyboard is included) with which to type in programs such as a new mobile edition of iWork for the iPad. It’s a novel idea, but not terribly innovative. It has an audio jack for in-place speakers and likely relies on a USB keyboard or, more likely, Bluetooth.

Unfortunately, it lacks several things it could really use:

Web cam, front-facing or user facing — no Skype video, folks
GPS — there has to be room inside for it, and it would make the device truly mobile like the iPhone
Lid — I understand that this is where the “upsell upsell upsell” case comes in, but I would have really liked to see some kind of lid or carrier. ZAGG will no doubt have a screen protector for the iPad immediately.
USB ports — sayonara, expandability

Hardware-wise, I’d buy it if I had a use for it. It’s slim, mobile, and the battery lasts forever. Package up a mobile Bluetooth keyboard, and I’d have a nice on-the-go machine for CES or something.

That’s where the good ends. If you’re an Apple fanboy, now’s the time to go elsewhere.

36" hoops and enough room for your iPad

It’s the software which makes it irrelevant to me. It’s a giant iPhone without voice capability. Or, it’s a giant iPod Touch with 3G data capability. Or, it’s a music player in which the only jeans it would be found are JNCO jeans.

It’s an embedded device, as far as I’m concerned, with its own ecosystem (as giant as it may be, given that iPhone apps run on it, too). The books from the iBookstore are DRM-locked to the device, and there’s been no indication if Apple will allow books purchased on it to be transferred to new devices or to desktop machines.

Another big missing feature: Adobe Flash. No Hulu, no web sites which use Flash. This lack makes it somewhat useless as a laptop replacement computer.

Worst of all, and the real deal killer for anyone who would use the iPad in place of a real computer: no multitasking. That means that you can’t listen to Last.fm or Pandora while working on a paper; locally stored music only. AFAIK, there’s not a VoIP calling application on the App Store yet, and there likely won’t ever be, so forget using the iPad as a call center of any kind.

Could Apple figure out multitasking for the iPhone OS, thereby quashing this point and silencing the Android fanboys (myself included) who constantly berate iPhone users on their inability to check email while listening to Internet music while surfing the web while reading a book and not losing place when switching between any of these? Sure, Apple could. Then iPhone and iPad users would realize that their little snappy device is no longer snappy when they try to run more than one or two apps a time.

Oh, how I could go on and on about such a fun topic as multitasking and its necessity to any computer user expecting a real computer experience.

So, software-wise, Apple fails on the iPad software-wise. Had it been granted Mac OS X privileges, plus the camera, I think it could sway a lot more people. It would be a great platform for we Linux geeks to hack upon, and I can’t wait to see what the open source community tries to do with it.

More evidence of the Jobsian Nation’s collective disappointment: my company is comprised of tens of Apple fanboys, and I only heard one or two saying that they’d get the iPad.

Kudos to Apple for actually using its P.A. Semi property—I was hoping to see something out of it.

TL;DR

Apple iPad is great hardware, but the software makes it stupid. I won’t buy one, likely ever.

If you don’t mind being locked to the Apple ecosystem, go for it. I’d love to play with it, just not bring it home and take care of it.

Engadget has a good hands on of the iPad. Mashable has a great discussion, too, and we’re in agreement on a major disappointment: “It’s an unprecedented win for closed computing.” If you’ve seen some other good articles, post them in the comments.

2009 Year in Review: Writing, stocks, coding, and more

2010-01-02T13:30:19-08:00

I didn’t blog as much as I would have liked to this year, mostly because of my crazy busyness.

My article on how to install Gears on 64-bit Linux continues to see quite a bit of traffic. I even host a copy of Gears, even though it’s likely out of date. Also in the Linux vein, my articles on how to buy DRM-free music online with Amazon MP3 on Linux and Android were moderately popular. I wrote an article on how to add CACert root certificates to Chromium on Linux and it sees more traffic than most of my other posts combined.

I wasn’t as active in the open source community as I would have liked, but I did make some contributions to Gwibber, Astrid, Celtx, and Lernid. I mentioned the first three in my Launchpad activity update. The latter is a newer development by Jono Bacon. I contributed the entire Esperanto translation less than two days after it was available on Launchpad. I have no way of verifying it, but I think that the Esperanto translation was the first complete non-English variant translation available.

I recently wrote two brief articles on how to automate some tasks on Facebook. One was how to rapidly expunge friend suggestions, and the other was how to select all friends in a friend select dialog.

I met Tom Dickson of Will It Blend? fame at CES last year. He was really cool and friendly.

I also wrote a few articles on politics, my favorite being A Comment on Socialism Defined, a comment left on a friend’s blog, Strike the Root!. I’ll not go into how much I think Obama and his friends have screwed up the country already (it’s not all been bad—he has done some good things). That’s something for another article.

A new hobby this year for me has been stock trading. I’d saved up some money and decided to use some skills I learned in middle school to make a buck or two on the stock market. Ironically, not 12 hours after I blogged about my flagship stock being up near 200%, that stock, SPNG, dropped 27.66% in one day, costing me $23,000 of value on a $10,000 investment in 65 minutes. It recovered, and I still made out with a profit, but I learned a very, very valuable set of lessons. I still kick myself occasionally because of this and probably will for a long time. My goal of getting into stocks was to generate enough money that I could pay off my student loans really quickly. I could have paid off more than 2/3 and I didn’t cash out when I should have.

I did meet many, many new people in the stock world, especially Stockguy22 and the Bulls on Wall Street crew. I said goodbye to StockTwits after I was temporarily banned for cheering on Vonage (VG) when it was less than 50 cents, riding it to 80 cents, and cashing out. They called it a worthless, crappy penny stock. A few weeks later, it spiked to ~2.20 and has been above a dollar since. HA!

I got some neat advice from friends while considering the purchase of a MacBook Pro (which I got and love) and the acquisition of a PS3 (which I did get).

The biggest changes in my life were in my location and work. I got a new job in March at Vivísimo, a search platform maker in Pittsburgh–I even wrote a post on the corporate blog! I moved in with some friends in May, but realizing we were a little cramped, I moved into a new apartment in July (I didn’t write about that!).

I wrote more than 28 articles for Bob Buskirk’s ThinkComputers. My favorites were the Masscool MP-1371RS Media Player and QNAP TS-809 Pro network attached storage device. I use the former alongside my PS3 for video formats my PS3 can’t stream from the latter. The NAS has become the central storage hub for all of my computers, replacing the QNAP TS-109 Pro I reviewed two years ago.

BIOS LEVEL was fairly inactive this year, largely because of a major server outage from May to August. I did write an article on the Orbita Mouse, which I still use to this day at work. I did record and post several videos from Ohio Linuxfest 2009, including Linux Journal editor Shawn Powers’s keynote, Jorge Castro’s talk on building a community around an open source project, and more on licensing, making money from open source, democratized design, and talking to policymakers and legislators about open source. All Ohio Linuxfest videos with a write-up are available on BIOS LEVEL, or on BIOS LEVEL’s Blip.tv channel.

Jon Daniel and I spend most of November cranking out a beta version of Profyle.at, a personal profile directory service. We’re not entirely finished yet, but sign up for our Profyle.at beta and you’ll likely get in! We want to help people find you on the Internet so your friends and family can follow you on whatever sites and networks you like the most. We pitched for funding and didn’t get it, but were cordially invited to present again during the next round in a month.

Brigette and I are still together, and going strong. We’ve spent most of her winter break together, driving throughout western PA to be with friends and family, too. She’s been working on her web site for her beagle and vizsla show dogs, Glade Mill Sporting & Hound. She’s come a long way, from using a completely WYSIWYG editor to redoing it with a mix of code and WYSIWYG with Adobe Dreamweaver. I’m eager to see what she’s planning for it.

Selecting all friends in a Facebook select friends dialog

2009-12-10T19:55:31-08:00

Let’s say you’re on an event page on Facebook and you want to select all of your friends. Click on “Invite People to Come” and you’ll see the friend selection dialog pop up. Once it’s up, copy and paste this little Javascript gem into the URL bar of your browser:

javascript:e=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var f in e){if(typeof e[f] === 'object'){fs.click(e[f]);}}

This will select everyone. Be warned, though, that if you computer is slow or you have a lot of friends, it could take a while. It took about a second on my MacBook Pro with a 2.53 GHz Core2Duo.

Another technology consideration: Whither PS3?

2009-11-19T14:21:25-08:00

Regardless whether he acquisition may be via self-purchase or via a generous, collaborative Christmas effort, I’m considering acquiring a Playstation 3.

I’ve been considering it for quite some time, actually. The format war is won, with Blu-ray the victor. While I’m not terribly keen of Sony’s dominance, I do acknowledge the market success of the format. This success is primarily evident in Amazon’s stonking great Blu-ray deals as of late.

I’m not one much for purchasing movies, as evident by my relatively small DVD collection (~20-30, most were $5 deals or gifts). I tend to buy something when I know it will have replay value, or I want to buy it to support the genre, director, or other such thing. I find that most of my purchases also tend to be action movies wherein sound or visuals play a large part of the experience.

Given Blu-ray’s high quality visuals and high fidelity audio, it seems prudent to consider my future purchases in this format rather than the ubiquitous DVD format. My TV, a Vizio 32″, is 720p, so I’d be able to take advantage of the HD format provided by Blu-ray.

As for a player, it makes the most sense to consider a Playstation 3 instead of a standalone Blu-ray player. I know that devices in the latter category are falling in price and have recently become cheaper than a Playstation 3, which, for the longest time, was the cheapest Blu-ray player. However, given the fact that I do on occasion play video games, it seems that a Playstation 3 would be of greater value to me despite the added cost.

I originally considered a PS3 60 GB edition, the higher-end package of the first edition of the unit. Like the lesser, 20GB package of the first edition, the 60GB packed hardware PS2 compatibility, but added a wireless adapter and the larger hard drive. Subsequent revisions of the console eventually removed PS2 compatibility, much to the chagrin of hardcore backwards compatibility fanboys such as myself.

The newest version of the PS3, the Slim, is more power and space efficient, but sacrifices the ability to run Linux—something all previous editions could do. I really want to be able to do this, but after a conversation with Shawn Powers on Twitter (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), I decided that a PS3 Slim might be more efficient for me (9, 10).

Linux on the PS3 seems to be not what it’s chalked up to be, and the likelihood of me actually ever buying and playing a PS2 game is to slim that it’s probably just not worth it. Also, the new Slim costs $299, and a used 60GB costs ~$250. A $50 difference? For that price, I could go get a used PS2 and have full hardware compatibility.

What will I go for first? Probably Blu-ray movies. I’m really interested in the new Star Trek movie on Blu-ray, as it’s not only a visual and auditory feast, but a great story with ton of reply value. I also wouldn’t mind getting Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and a few other recently released action and science fiction movies. There are a few PS3 games I wouldn’t mind trying, plus the Playstation network is free and has all kinds of tie-ins with Netflix, etc.

I imagine that I’d probably stick to DVD for older movies; movies which were filmed before digital production was the norm. There might be a few which have been remastered and would be worth it, but I’ll likely rely on others’ reviews to decide whether or not the potential premium cost for Blu-ray is worth it.

I guess, then, that the point of this blog post is to call for other arguments. Talk me into or out of a PS3. Remember that I’m not a huge gamer any more, so main attractor is the Blu-ray player.

13″ MacBook Pro: I choose you

2009-10-17T13:39:09-07:00

A month ago, I mused purchasing a 13″ MacBook Pro. My primary reasons for considering the MBP were the freedom of OS choice, “seeing what all the fuss is about,” premium hardware for just a couple hundred dollars more, excellent customer support, and a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Approximately a week after writing the post, a friend let me know of a rare deal: a friend of his who just so happens to be an Apple authorized reseller was in jeopardy of losing her authorization because her sales were really low. In order to meet her goal, she was selling Apple hardware at cost. You can’t beat cost! Combine that ~$300 savings with putting the purchase on a credit card with excellent rewards, and it would put me over the edge of my reward amount needed to get myself with a free flight worth about $400.

So, I bought a stock mid-level 13″ MacBook Pro, the one with a 2.53 GHz Core2Duo, 4 GB of DDR3, and a 250 GB HDD. I did get AppleCare and a remote, although the remote was backordered and mysteriously hasn’t arrived yet (should hear why on Monday).

My thoughts?

Summary

I’ll never go back. Apple has a solid hardware product with bells and whistles which themselves make me glad I bought it, plus a slick operating system which appeases my desire for an easy-to-use, on-the-go environment.

TL;DR version

and it had been on for ~20 minutes

Hardware. Seven hours of battery life. Seriously. I got right around that many hours the day I took this screenshot about a week after I bought it. The multitouch touchpad with its gestures are amazing and have seriously changed how I use a touchpad–even more once I enabled tap-to-click I miss them when I use a non-Mac laptop. The magnetic power cord connector should be on every computer: it’s saved my ass twice now. The graphics card is enough to handle Left4Dead with most of the settings on medium, and it’ll certainly handle the older games and casual games I tend to play more often these days. The screen color is amazing and the keyboard is the most welcoming keyboard I’ve ever used. This is the first line of Mac laptops with an SD card reader, and that’s indispensable for me these days with the dog show photography I’ve been doing.

Downsides? I’m not too hot about the non-removable battery, but I’ve never needed a second battery even on my old Averatec which had approximately two hours of battery life. Apple made a data-driven design decision when choosing this path. I’ve not heard many complains except from people who are resistant to change. Folks who really need another battery can suffice for the hour-long charge time while plugged into something like a HyperMac battery. I also wish it had a real microphone port, but how often do I actually use a microphone? Never. The built-in mic is sufficient for almost everything I’d ever use it for. I’m also not too hot about the lack of a DVI or HDMI port and a mini-Displayport instead, but it’s another data-driven design decision and technically Displayport is a better standard for video. I ordered an adapter from Amazon; it’ll arrive this week.

Software. Mac OS X isn’t new to me. I used 10.5 on Jon’s Macbook when I borrowed it for a few months last year, and used 10.1 back in high school. It’s not a huge adjustment for me, so I’ll not go over such nuances. However, there are a few things I must highlight, primarily so that Linux folks like myself can mirror these features in Ubuntu, Fedora, and the like.

Time Machine is indispensible. I configured Time Machine to work with my QNAP NAS and it backs up regularly. The whole system! Efficiently! Recoverably! With an excellent interface for both setup and browsing and recovery. rdiff-backup pulls this off on Linux, but there’s no “don’t make me thing” GUI for it like there is for Time Machine.

Drag-and-drop installation of programs has always been one of my favorite things about OSX. No complicated installer program with click-through EULAs, no broken packages or forced upgrades. Sure, the packages are larger because of universal binaries and statically linked libraries, but I’d rather take up another 10 MB if it means I can simply drop an icon in a directory to install it, or move it to the recycle bin to remove it. I’ve been using iUseThis to track my used programs and combining it with AppFresh for version updates.

OSX is just Unix-y enough for a lot of the stuff I do. MacPorts gives me access to a lot of utilities, especially Synergy, which allows me to use the mouse and keyboard of one computer on another via a network connection. I’ve also used it for up-to-date Python and other scripting and development tools. I use Visor to give me a drop-down, Quake-style terminal in which I do lots of command line stuff, primarily via an SSH connection to one of my many Linux computers.

Perhaps one of the most care-free benefits of OSX for me is painless hibernate, sleep, and suspend. I can shut the lid and forget about it. I’ve rebooted the Mac maybe thrice in the month I’ve had it (outside of OSX updates). I’ve never seen Linux or Windows hibernate/suspend working this well on any hardware.

Downsides? There aren’t many. Sometimes I get frustrated when I can’t find an OSX analogue for a Linux program I’ve used. I have yet to find a decent microblogging client which I like as much as Gwibber on Linux. Despite being written in the highly-portable Python language, Gwibber depends on a few things that OSX just doesn’t provide. I’ve tried Tweetdeck, Nambu, Spry, and a host of others, but just can’t find the feature set I want (eveything most clients have, plus Identica, Facebook, and Flickr plugins). Twirl comes the closest, so I’ve been using it. Eventbox is showing promise as it becomes Socialite, but I’ve yet to actually see it in action.

I’ll eventually get around to trying out Virtualbox’s 3D acceleration for some Windows games, or Wine and WineBottler for some others.

A major problem I have with my OS choices is that I like to tinker. OSX gives me the freedom to tinker with a lot of things, but its defaults suffice for almost everything. I think it’ll be more difficult for me to screw up OSX than it is for me to screw up Linux or Windows.

TL;DR summary:

I’m pleased with my purchase and haven’t had the buyer’s remorse I’ve had sometimes when making such a giant purchase. The MacBook Pro laptop was designed with both low-level and power users in mind, and I highly appreciate it. It’s just enough to not be too much.

How to rapidly expunge Facebook’s Friend Suggestions

2009-10-03T07:13:49-07:00

I really admire Facebook’s Friend Suggestions feature. It has on rare occasion shown someone to whom I’d really like to connect. Most of the time, though, it shows people who I don’t know at all and have maybe one mutual friend. So, it’s largely useless to me.

However, being the often mindless user, when I see a suggestion that may be relevant to my interests, I do visit the full friend suggestion page and see if there are any others. Rarely am I presented with anyone to whom I find a dreadful desire to connect. I still feel obligated to click that damned little [X] as if to say, “I don’t know this person.” Unfortunately, I have to repeat this approximately 25 times in order to full expunge this list of people.

So, I decided to write a little script which takes care of clicking that button for me. Navigate to the Find Friends page on Facebook and execute this script in your Firebug console. Or, prefix it with javascript: and execute it in the URL bar.

d = document.getElementsByClassName("fg_action_hide"); for (var i in d){ d[i].onclick() }

The first part gets an array (a list) of all of the clickable elements with that class, the class used to denote the [X]. The next part loops over them and executes each’s onclick() function just like as if you’d clicked it yourself.

Please note that I tested this ONLY on Firefox and Chromium, but it should work on any modern browser (read: anything but IE).

A comment on Socialism Defined

2009-10-02T15:04:19-07:00

I originally posted this as a comment on Strike the Root!, but thought it relevant enough to be posted here as a full entry unto itself. It might be easier to understand it if you read it in context in the entry “Socialism Defined”. This comment in response to another comment which is very much anti-capitalism.

However, it’s important to consider the value of the land owner to the worker. If the worker were solely responsible for taking care of the land, machinery, and other tools of the trade, then that worker would be far less productive.

Let’s muse upon this. In the ideal situation, the worker creates something of value to others. He continues doing so, using his own equipment, land, and resources. He receives in its entirety all earnings from his labor, and uses those earnings to invest in more land, equipment, and resources. His investment provides income to no one, because he is doing everything himself. He is a producer, not a consumer.

He realizes that if he pays another person to gather resources, to construct equipment, to prepare land, he can spend more time producing the actual product himself. So, he sacrifices a portion of his earnings in exchange for a needed product or service.

He continues to realize the value of relying on others to do the tasks he’d rather not do (vendors) so that he can spend more time doing what he does want to do.

Eventually, he arrives at the point where the only things he does for his enterprise are coordinate these vendors and produce his product. He’s able to find a balance between the earnings he keeps for himself (profits) and the earnings he sacrifices (expenses) so that he can spend the optimal amount of time producing a product.

As in any industry, he’s bound to encounter both competitors and aspiring competitors. He proposes this to them: “I’ll reduce your expenses by permitting you to use my resources. You get more profit because you can spend more time producing and less time coordinating vendors. All I ask in return is a small portion of your profits, as I act as a vendor because I coordinate vendors, and I do the things you’d rather not do, such as care for the equipment, facilities, and land, and I actually sell the product.”

Our man has his first employee, and has become management. In another way, the employee is also the employer, because, in a way, the employee pays the employer to provide the equipment, land, and resources so that the employee can produce the product.

This carries on ad infinitum until our man has become The Man, because he spends more time coordinating vendors and managing employees than actually producing a product. Should not he be compensated for his work coordinating these vendors and selling the product?

The key here is that all of this interaction is willing. If at any point any person is wholly unwilling, it becomes slavery.

Government works similarly. Citizens, or, really, signatories of some agreement forming a government, federation, coalition, or other such body of people, sacrifice a portion of their earnings so that they can pay a vendor to do the things they don’t want to do. These things include caring for the land of the government, and the equipment and resources required to do so. Laws became necessary to protect the rights of citizens from abrogation by other citizens (and, arguably, the choice deities for the realm) and to ensure that the commons of the government fall not into tragedy (see Tragedy of the Commons).

The people who provide these services are vendors to the government. We call them firefighters and law enforcement (police, code enforcers, etc.).

The factor differentiating our man’s enterprise from our model government is that government need not generate a profit. It is merely a cost center financed by those who willingly and gladly pay to have others take care of the things they’d rather not do. In this way, the government is the employee of the citizens, and the government may employ citizens who are vendors.

There’s another observation to be made here: the government is only paying its vendors/employees in return for a service. Also, the citizens are willingly sacrificing a portion of their earnings in order to finance their government, which employs willing vendors, who provide a product (or a service) to the government.

The government can only spend as much of these earnings as it has, but it can request that citizens contribute more. Citizens who are willing contribute more, those who are not willing voice their opinion. Both sides look to the original agreement and successive laws for direction and decide who gets their way: the government or the citizens. If the government gets its way, citizens must contribute more or cease participation in the government.

You can see the problem here. Our laws have been written so that it’s impossible to leave the government because of a disagreement. Instead, we subject ourselves to this oppression, contribute more of our earnings, and hope that we can alter the government so as to reduce the contributions, by an outright reduction or a reduction in the use of vendors employed by the government, thus a reduction in the services which the government provides to the citizens.

The “exploitation of the worker” occurs when The Man takes more than his share and does not provide sufficient value to the employee, and the employee is unwilling or unable to right the situation, or feels that there is nothing wrong with the arrangement when outside observers disagree. It’s a tragedy of capitalism caused by greed, a human factor which can only be controlled through education of moral values (religious and non-religious, although the former seems to be easier to use) and self-determination.

The “exploitation of the citizen”, their sentiment that taxes are thievery, occurs similarly to exploitation of the worker: the citizen is unwilling or unable to right the situation, or feels that there is nothing wrong with government when outside observers disagree.

Fortunately, the government of the United States is set up in a way in which the citizens employ a vendor who represents their interests in the government–a representative and/or senator. Like our man’s enterprise, if the citizens do not like the product of that vendor (here, laws which care for the lands, equipment, and resources of the government, and protect the rights of the citizens), they can choose a different vendor.

Unfortunately, altruism plays a larger factor in government than in our man’s enterprise. If the man realizes that a portion of his business is failing, he can choose to stop producing the product (see the argument of the square wheel versus the round wheel). The government does not have a product, and thus has nothing which it can or needs to stop producing.

However, if the citizens decide that they want to provide vendors with earnings without that vendor having provided any service or product to the government, and direct the government to ask citizens to contribute more of their earnings in order to compensate these vendors who have provided no value through a product or service, these citizens and their government are edging toward socialism.

The justification is that these vendors, who are likely citizens with who are unable or unwilling to provide a service or produce a product, are of value to the citizens or government on some inexplicable, immeasurable level: altruism.

This is all well and good, until a citizen decides that a vendor is not of value and should not receive earnings, as the vendor has provided no value to the citizen, even by proxy of the government.

Our modern government has grown to a size where “exploitation of the citizen” is commonplace because of the peoples’ unwillingness, inability to let their voice be heard; to choose a new vendor who represents their interests and philosophies. They’ve lost hope. Because of this, they call their government thieves, because the government takes valuables from unwilling contributors and redistributes those valuables to those who are unable or unwilling to provide some value in measurable terms.