Category: VAULT Rants

Politically, I consider myself socially liberal and economically conservative. If I was to ascribe to a particular political party it would most likely be the libertarians. For example I am opposed to the Patriot Act I & II, opposed to the DCMA, generally favor legalizing drugs, oppose the death penalty, etc..

One of the social issues that has most upset me over the last half decade or so is the issue of copyright law and its implementation in the digital world. So, for anyone who would like to learn more about this subject; I strongly recommend to you Larry Lessig’s presentation Free Culture. Larry worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) for a number of years. If you are not willing to fight for your rights, be ready to loose them.

Linux developers have argued the benefits of any given language/toolkit sense the beginning of time.  One of the oldest debates is between Gnome/KDE.  As anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) can tell you I have a strong attraction to KDE because of its design strength and flexibility.  However I was not always a KDE fan.  I started as a Gnome user/developer when I first began on Linux.  At the time I thought Linux’s development tools (through my Gnome/Gtk experience) were pretty bad; but were getting better. 

Then, one day, I discovered KDE/QT and have never regretted the decision.  I went from thinking that Linux development was harder/worse than Win32 development to realizing that Linux/KDE/QT development was better than ANYTHING else out there.  Think that C#/.NET is nice?  .NET is a giant leap forward in Win32 development, but still way behind QT/KDE development!  Any who, I found a couple articles that I read, back in “the day”, that helped me decided to give KDE/QT a try and I wanted to pass them along.

• Toolkit Comparison — Compare Gtk to QT.  Its my experience that that 30% numbers specified are VERY conservative.
• Why I Left Gtkmm — Comments concerning one of the “better” C++ toolkits for Gnome.
• Gtkmm vs. Qt — Same author as above, more comments and responses to Gtkmm apologists.
• Why Qt — Third article by said author.  Random thoughts about his project, Gnome, KDE, Gtk+, Qt, C, and C++.
• More Qt — kuro5hin article on Qt.
• Why Program for KDE — Dispels some of the more popular KDE myths.

The New Criterion has a wonderful article discussing Julien Benda’s work, “La Trahison des clercs” (The treason of the intellectuals), and an extension of Benda’s work by Alain Finkielkraut titled, “La Défaite de la pensée” (The Undoing of Thought.)  I had heard of the term La Trahison des clercs, a kind of yuppie insult to post modern leaning college professors, but I was not actually familiar with the contents of the work. 

I found the article incredible interesting and will probably comment more on it at some other time, but what is most interesting to me is how this concept ties in with the idea of natural law (for example the destruction of diversity without a fundamental concept of the “universality of humanity”) and the effect that these concepts have on the implementation of free will.  I many ways this article acts like a philosophical discussion of the ideas presented in C.S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man.”

A comment by Jasan, in reply to my “News From a Blue State” post has prompted a reply that I would rather post here.  Jasan basically pointed out that –“it doesn’t prevent the mother from calling the cops – it prevents the mother from using the evidence she heard listening in on the second phone line as evidence in court.”  While technically this is true, in some jurisdictions calling the police with such a tip would actually be worse than not calling them; because any leads that occur based on illegally obtained evidence can invalidate the case.  But that is really not the point.

It is a ridiculous proposition to believe that an individual has a right to privacy when talking to a minor. A parents job is to protect their child, to the best of their ability, from the kind of negative external influences that are possible in just this kind of circumstance. Its freggin hard enough to protect you child from the filth that is available through modern mass communications. Now to take away the only tool that parents have to bring legal action against those who would do harm to those same children.

For 200 years we have made the conscious decision to protect a child from harm, even when it sacrifices their rights in the short term. We do this to give them a chance to develop into adults who can make their own sound decisions. Then we let them succeed or fail based on those decisions… but to protect a child’s “privacy” at the expense of their safety; before they even have the experience or mental capabilities to intelligently use those rights; is the very definition of irresponsible. Following this same logic, we should let the children stay with the adults they want to live with. Even if a court has decided that their drugged up, abusive, sexually molesting parents are unfit. Hey, the kid has a right to freedom of association. Or if a 9 year old wants to screw a 55 year old, well then who are we to stop them. How about giving 4 year olds guns? The parents shouldn’t have any say in such things, right?

The rights I have listed above are actually directly protected constitutional rights; unlike the implied constitutional interpretation that the “right to privacy” is. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in implied constitutional rights and I even support the “right to privacy”, but if we are fundamentally able to restrict the rights of children that are expressly defined by the constitution then why in the world would we protect an implied right.

I remember the big hoopla that conservatives (blame the parents not the guns) and liberals (blame the parents not the kids) made about the Columbine Massacre because the parents did not pay attention to the actions of their kids. There have been a half a dozen cases where “Columbine” like attacks were thwarted by parents listening in to telephone conversations. If this ruling were in place in those circumstances then the police could be prepared to stop the kids, but they could not bring any “attempted” charges against them (i.e. They could charge them with possession of a weapon on school property but not for attempted murder) because the tip they used to identify the threat was obtained illegally. In fact in some jurisdictions ALL charges would have to be dropped because of how the evidence was obtained.

This same ruling has dramatic ramifications to other forms of communication. It effectively states that (although you can monitor the actions of your kids on the Internet) you cannot reasonable expect to get police protection if you discover that a pedophile has been talking about picking up your kid during school… and even if the police decide to watch your kid they CANNOT LEGALLY STOP the pedophile before he does anything illegal.

More than one person has already pointed out that it is generally totalitarian regimes that pursue the rights of children over the protection of children and the rights of parents. Things like the Hitler youth did this because its so easy to TAKE ADVANTAGE of children and exploit them to their own ends. No, this ruling is ridiculous in the extreme. It does huge amounts of damage to those that would work to help children; and in doing so creates a bastion of safety for pedophiles in the very homes of the children that this ruling is suppose to help.

It looks like Wal-Mart and the top 3 record labels are in a battle over the price of CD’s.  All I can say is GOOD!  Its about time that someone point out that CD’s (which are much cheaper to produce than cassette tapes, but cost more) are way overpriced for what you get.  I can buy a new DVD for less than the cost of the latest 50 cent album.  Think of it this way: DVD’s cost more to make, the content costs more to make, the amount of content is significantly more… so which “product” costs more on the store shelves?  CD’s.  It will be nice to see one monopoly take care of another monopoly.

Recent debate has exploded concerning the place of Catholicism in politics.  Senator John Kerry is the first Catholic presidential candidate sense the Roe vs Wade decision in 1973.  Historically, Rome has held abortion to be the single greatest moral & social issue in modern history (placing it in similar category as the Holocaust.)  Senator Kerry is a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade, supporting it through all 3 trimesters (including “partial-birth” abortions), and even supporting minors right to abortion without parental notification.  This position sits “badly” with many practicing Catholics who see Kerry’s duality as an affront to the very institution they hold dear.

There are, however, a number of Catholic voters, who disagree with Roe v. Wade, that consider Kerry’s position on abortion to be an unfortunate downside to an otherwise superior candidate.  A position that effectively must be pursued to even be considered as a candidate for nomination in the Democratic Party.  These Catholics often don’t see the abortion issue as a deal breaker; citing other Catholic issues of importance that are supported by Kerry; but not supported by President Bush (like the death penalty and the war in Iraq.)

At first the abortion vs. death penalty (or Iraq for that matter) comparison seems ridiculous. More abortions happen in 3 hours than all the death penalty punishments carried out in an entire year. How can the two position possibly be compared, let alone be used as justification for ignoring Senator Kerry’s abortion position? But the comparison is made and even defended. The argument goes something like this 1) murder is murder; 2) whether a state murders one person or 100 people, its still murder; 3) therefor, its not the number of murders thats important but the fact that both candidates support state sponsor murder.

Well, my wife has convinced me to stop telling people, who make this argument, what kind of moron they are and actually bring doctrine proof of their moronity. The best resource I have found (besides New Advent which I have mentioned previously) is The Holy See, the on line location of the Vatican Archives.  It contains links to just about every public statement any Pope has made in the last 30 years.  Anyone doing Catholic research on abortion should (at the very least) read Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae.  No doubt I will be writing more about this topic later.  Considering that one out of every five people in America consider them selfs Catholic, it will no doubt be a bigger and bigger issue in the upcoming election.

Roger replied to my Media Bias post with a very interesting position. Interesting enough that my response because a post in itself that I wanted to share.

well, my position is that the media is really in the service of global capital. People may think it is unbiased, or that it is too liberal or whatever. The problem isn’t in its ideology, per se–but in the way it focuses on particular problems and elevates particular ideas to the expense of others. And almost always, this is why people don’t really see the protests happening everyday against Iraq and against the way the War on Terror is being run, this is done in the service of keeping the global media conglomerates making money. So, what we need isn’t an unbiased news source–this is absolutely impossible–what we need is to democratize news making. To make it absolutely obvious that what we see when people report the news is always seen through a particular eye. I think that projects such as indynews.org–where anyone can send a report in and be shown on an international web site is probably where we need to go. Not in the direction of unbiased news, but in the direction of a news that is brought to us by people aware of and giving their positionality as limited human beings with biases.

I agree with Roger to the extent that, fundamentally the main stream press is in the business to entertain as much as they are in the business to inform. Profit seeking news outlets must attract visitors to stay in business and as such have a tendency to promote news stories that attract the most attention. Protests,foreign relations, and foreign news do not generally interest people as much as,say… how many husbands JLO has had. I don’t, however, believe there is anything wrong (or for that matter immoral) with seeking profit, attracting visitors, or being a “global media conglomerate.”

Democratizing the news making process sounds like a fairly positive way to diversify the news coverage. It can be a useful tool for expanding amount of news that people have access to. In fact, fundamentally the Internet has created this very condition. It has expanded the amount of information available to people and has give many people (who would not otherwise be able to) a vehicle for presenting their positionality as a limited human being with biases. This blog is proof of that functionality. This open, cheep, and widely available publishing agent has freed people from the condition of “having” to get their news from a few select organizations that have the financial capabilities to provide daily news from around the world. And the world is better off for this.

The downside of democratizing news (or information for that matter) is “noise.” Democracy, in any form, is inherently inefficient. There is tons of duplication, waist, and just plain bad information. While inefficiency is a small price to pay for democracy (especially in the entity that has the most power to control our everyday lives, i.e. government), it has a cost non-the-less. Most people who use the net are easily aware of the diverse and abundant amount information available to them on the Internet. The problem isn’t that the information exists but that its so difficult to get the specific information you need.

Another side effect of democratizing news is that the people presenting news have a tendency to be attracted to those “publishers” to which they have something in common with. You invariable get groups of news outlets with similar topics, opinions, and biases. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that to get a broad and balanced overview of the news you will have to use multiple sources. In this environment even mainstream news outlets have their place. They work as a kind of reference point for people’s news gathering campaign. It is my guess that even Roger visits NPR or the New York Times once in a while.

I guess my point is that the “democratize news making” process has already begun. It is not a goal for the future but a process that must be refined in the present. Its existence does not negate the usefulness of the “global media conglomerate”, but it does negate the “need” for people to depend on it. And just like democracy in our government, the responsibility of taking advantage of these alternative news sources falls on individuals.

This is a working draft of a direct response to John Siracusa’s article about the Spacial Finder. This resource, on one of my all-time favorite tech sites ever (my forum login dates from 1999), has been used as the reference for many a spacial interface argument. I believe its an interesting article but fundamentally flawed in a couple ways.

John’s article on ARS has been used as the definitive guide to spatiality sense he wrote the darn thing over a year ago. To this day I believe that loyal ARS reading Gnome developers made the abrupt decision to ruin their UI, based almost entirely on that article.

The “Why Spatial?” section of his document attempts to argue the virtues of the Spacial Interface by providing 4 standards of usability. But a couple of the characteristics of his standard of usability are misidentified. For example:

Ease of learning: John says that the strongest characteristic of “ease of learning” comes from its adherence to physical laws, but this is obviously not the true. Swimming is something that totally adheres to physical laws, but I still had to take swimming lessons. Simplicity is what makes for “ease of learning.” Take a wall mounted type light switch for example. People who have never used one often misunderstand what it does and is for, but once they accidentally flick-the-switch; they understand its entire functionality and almost certainly never forget how to use it. They may not know what it DOES but they certainly understand how to use it. Its seem fairly obvious when you think about it, if you want something to be easy to learn; make it very simple to use. Let me give another example. Touch-less hand driers you find in U.S. bathrooms operate via motion sensors. They defy most everyday physical laws but once a person starts trying to mess with it, they very quickly figure out how to activate/use it. Again simplicity and not adherence to physical laws makes them easy to learn.

Memorability: The article goes on to say that door knobs and light switches do not move or change on their own, making their location and operation easy to remember.. This makes a lot of sense when you first hear it but the reality of memorability is much simpler. Consistency is the key here. My best friends house has all of the light switches at hip level. They did this because they wanted the light switches to be reachable by their children when they were very young. I spent years of my life in that house but I never got used to the location of the switches. Even after I got used to reaching DOWN for the switches I would still miss the switch (on the first try) because it was such a non-consistent movement when compared to every other house I had ever been it. Not only does consistency aid in memorability but it allows you to easily transfer knowledge from one learned experience to another. To take the light switch analogy again; once a person learns how to work a light switch they can work almost an light switch they will ever run into. Just as long as those light switches are fairly similar to the one they learned on. Consistency is what makes for memorability and can be achieve in many more important ways than simply physical location.

Efficiency and Satisfaction are both admirable goals of usability but are not specific traits to the realm of spatiality. In fact simplicity and consistency are not specific to the realm of spatiality. Simplicity and consistency are traits pursued in mathematics, science, engineering, philosophy, and even religion. Usability then gets advanced by following universal rules of understanding instead of some limiting subset of spacial rules. Again, this makes a great deal of sense when you consider it. Things will be most usable if they follow rules (or models if you like) that already fit into the way we are designed to do things. This is very similar to what John Spatiality is part of those rules

An on OSnews discusses the much complained about spatial Nautilus found in the most recent version of Gnome. The argument basically goes like this; 1) computers can be difficult for new users, 2) adding real-life-alike (their words not mine) interfaces, i.e. making things in a computer environment more like real life, helps overcome these difficulties, 3) spacial file management allows users to treat windows like actual folder “objects” making them more real-life-alike, and finally 4) this makes spacial file management easier for users to interact with.

Trying desperately to contain my disdain for the mind numbing ignorance of said spatiality; I will attempt to explain why this understanding of UI is… shale we say “flawed.”

1.) Almost everything new is difficult until you understand how to use it. Just imagine trying to explain how to drive a car to someone who has never done anything but walk. “You start off by checking your vehicle’s mirrors and buckling your safety belt. Turn the car key (assuming your car using a key) clockwise to start the car, while simultaneously applying foot pressure to the car break. Stop turning the car key once the vehicle engine begins running. Put the car in the appropriate gear for desired movement….” My 3 year old daughter prefers crayons because they are “easier” to use than pencils (darn things have those erasers, are way to thin, and you have to sharpen them for the love of GOD.)

2.) Limiting interface advantages by making them act more like other interfaces REDUCES their usability. It does not increase it. I wish my frigging TV still had a dial! Why? Because a dial is a whole lot easier to use than having to press and/or hold down a damn volume button. Dials take advantage of the users wrist movements to allow quick, easy, and accurate adjustment of object with a range of possible values. How many of you remember when Apple QuickTime had a volume dial? Seriously it had a frigging dial. Like my flexible wrist movement helps a whole lot on a dang mouse. Most users resolved to adjusting the volume by clicking on the top of the dial, pulling the mouse in a semi-round fashion, letting go of the mouse, repeat 50 frigging times.

3.) How about the spacial folder metaphor? The windows remember their placement, and each folder opened opens a new window with file placement, window sizes, and window placement all remembered. God knows I got a frigging computer because I just loved having 2500 fscking folders open at the same time on my “real” desk; moving paper from one folder to another. Now I can live this joy in the electronic age too! Hey while we are at it why don’t we remove the copy and paste functionality. There’s an entirely electronic metaphor that is simply making my life too easy. The modern computer user interface was designed to take advantage of the computer environments strengths.

4.) Things like drop-down menus, shortcuts, icons, and tree views are all electronic representations of functionality that have no real-life-alike equivalent (just imagine trying to implement a drop down menu on paper.) Tons of research and development were spent to discover UI elements that would be fairly simple to understand but would still take full advantage of the electronic environments strengths. Use our drop down menu for an example. A more real-life-alike representation would be to have a full list of all drop down menu options with a radio button beside them. But once you have taught someone how to use a drop down menu, they have little trouble using it later on. The new element is now both a space and time advantage over the more real-life-alike radio button list. The best way to make a UI that users will easily interface with is to take use the environments advantages in a consistent and user friendly way. To teach the how to use a functionally clear file manager that does not relay on old metaphors to try and gain a temporary learned advantage. To teach the person how to use the pencil; not remove the pencil eraser, make it shorter, and remove all the wood.

There is a reason that Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and Xerox all abandoned the spacial metaphor within the file manager. Steve Jobs may have said it best when he said, œThe problem with the spacial finder is that it causes all users to become janitors.

As everyone already knows, this weekend the greatest President to hold office in my lifetime has passed away. Many times in our countries history God has blessed us by having the right person, in the right place, at the right time. During his time, Ronald Reagan was that person. I can honestly say that this world is better off now than it would have been without Ronald Wilson Reagan as President.