Category: VAULT Rants

I have been getting inquiries into my opinion of President Bush and, more specifically, why I am probably not going to be voting for him. I have a article I am currently writing that will delve into more details concerning my current political leanings but for now here is the short list. Things that Bush has done that bother me:

1. No Child Left Behind – Because its unconstitutional.
2. Medicare Reform Act – Because its the largest entitlement program in 30 years.
3. Legal Status for Illegal immigrants – Because you don’t reward illegal behavior.
4. McCain-Feingold – Because it made it illegal for me to express negative views about a candidate during certain parts of an election.
5. Patriot Act I – Because it trampled on the rights that it was suppost to protect.
6. Patriot Act II – See above.. only worse.
7. Ashcroft rewards Microsoft for being a monopoly – Because Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave.
8. American citizens as enemy combatants – Because the constitution is suppost to protect ALL citizens of the US. Regardless of our crimes.
9. Deficit spending – Because Republicans used to be considered fiscally responsible.

Things that Bush has done that don’t bother me:

1. The War in Iraq – Everyone thought they had WMD. Think 9/11 with mustard gas.
2. Tax cuts – I don’t have a problem with tax cuts, just with excessive spending.
3. The economy – Anyone who gives Bush a hard time about the economy is either an ignorant fool or trying to score political points. The economy is the one thing Bush handled VERY well.
4. World displeasure with the US – Its not the job of the President to do what is best for the world; just for the USA. When was the last time France acted in the best interest of the US?

Jason pointed me to this article drafted by Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs Diocese. The synopsis of the letter is that Catholics should not vote for politicians who oppose abortion and gay marriage, going so far as to they may not receive Holy Communion.

This triggered a response by Democratic members of Congress calling the letter “deeply hurtful” and “miring the Church in partisan politics.” The general consensus by Democratic members of Congress is that the letter is hypocritical in as much as it fails to mention other Catholic positions like the War in Iraq and the death penalty.

Now totally ignoring the gay marriage issue (because I have discussed it before), I think the point that is being made about abortion, as opposed to the death penalty or Iraq, is that to the Catholic Church abortion involves the murder of about 1.2 million children a year. Thats an estimated 35 million children sense the roe vs. wade decision. The death penalty, with a couple hundred murders a year, pales in comparison. In Iraq the US has lost about 750 soldiers in the last year. Thats about as many people killed as are aborted every five hours.

From the vantage point of the Catholic Church, abortion amounts to an institutionalized holocaust. I believe its reasonable for the church to allow disagreement on most issues while drawing a line against this particular issue. If abortion is considered by the Catholic Church to be the single most pressing issue in the world today (which it does) then its not hypocritical to expect Catholics to support candidates that uphold life.

Over the course of the last thirty years the Democratic party has steadily been loosing the Catholic vote to the Republicans. This is in spite of a long tradition of civic responsibility to the poor and social justice. Why? The long and the short answer is Abortion. You would be amazed at the number of times the Priest at my old church advocated social programs that assist the livelihood of the poor– and then tell you to vote for the pro-life candidate. Its hard to talk about civic responsibility while ignoring the murder of a million-two children every year.

For anyone who does not already know Six Apart has changed the license for Movable Type. Movable Type is the software that I run for Vault, Mike’s Blog, Virtual Memory, and The Rockwire. My problem (and this is my error and not anyone Else’s) is that I honestly didn’t stop to think about Movable Type being non-free.

Non-Free software has bit me in the ass before, and I should be more diligent in making sure that I don’t use it. Slowly I am gonna begin migrating this blog over to something else, something GPL, something that will not bit me in the ass for using (and donating too.)

This is a good time to point out a certain misconception about the Gnu Public License. Its a popular myth to believe that the GPL is viral in nature. This is fundamentally untrue. The GPL simply states that if you use GPL’ed code you must A) make your changes and/or improvements GPL’ed too, or B) not distribute it until the GPL code is removed. This is no different than any other license in punishment for violation. If you use Microsoft code without permission, or in violation of their license, you will be forced to remove the offending code and probably sued.

Fundamentally the purpose of the GPL is to allow developers to create software without worrying that their software will be fixed/improved without getting to use those fixes/improvements themselves. Its a “I’ll share if everyone who changes my software shares too…” license. It also guarantees that no-one will forcibly change the rights you have to the software. For a great explanation of why this is so valuable check out this blog post talking about the Movable Type situation.

Keep a close eye on your rights… no one else will.

I have had a chip on my shoulder for the 2.x series Gnome since its inception. The design decision to go with “less is more” was possibly the worst decision in desktop Linux history because it assumes that users want simplicity and the cost trade off for it is flexibility. Thankfully we have another choice when it comes to the Linux desktop.

What encouraged this rant is an article by Computer World that lambastes Gnome for some of these decisions. Good article, bad DE.

This article from the New York Times talks about the slow slide of American technology dominance as the world becomes more advanced. The article is from the NYT so take it with a grain of salt, but the tracking numbers referenced are interesting.

One of my college professors was a lead engineer for the critical path data on the U.S. Super-conducting Super-collider when the government canceled the project. His statement at the time was “this will put the Europeans in the lead in particle physics research for the next 50 years.” Politicians in the U.S. (over the last 50 years) have been thinking more and more in the short term, and I am afraid we are starting to reap the rewards of our inaction.

Humanity has an unfortunate propensity to mistake its own shortcomings for those of society and the world.  It, therefore, pursues in exuberance to change the world; because its more comfortable than changing itself.

Gay marriage is a difficult topic to talk about without getting a great number of people upset. It also has a tendency to be a very divisive issue with which to discuss. I have decided (for better or worse) my current opinion of the subject. Please feel free to comment and add your thoughts to the discussion. As with so many controversial topics, the need to discuss it rationally is just as important as the topic itself.

There has been a great deal of talk lately about the proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriages. The basics of the amendment work like this “marriage” would be defined as a union between a two consenting adults, one male and one female; and that such a definition would not be redefined by state or federal laws. The amendment would leave open the question of civil unions; allowing for the possibility to make all laws pertaining to marriages also apply to civil unions. Fundamentally the constitutional amendment simply enforce the Jedo-Christian definition of Marriage federally.

Personally, I have been wrestling with this issue for a while. Here are some of the problems I am trying to work out. Fundamentally I have several core values that touch on this subject. Notice that I said core values because non of the following beliefs is expressly guaranteed by the constitution.

1) I believe it is absolutely wrong for the federal government to discriminate against someone (from a legal and judicial standpoint) because of their sexual preference.

2) I do not believe that a country can judicially accept a “separate but equal” understanding of the law (i.e. have the same legal rights but just not call it “marriage”) and maintain true equality.

3) I believe marriage to be a sacramental religious institution between a man and a woman. Not a man and a man, woman and woman, man and child, woman and several men, woman and child, man and several women, man and animal, or woman and animal.

4) I do not believe that you can successfully redefine marriage without destroying the fundamental nature of marriage.

Within the boundaries of the current pro-gay-marriage/anti-gay-marriage discussion these views would seem to stand in stark contrast to one another. They surely don’t support the baning of gay unions but they don’t support the institutionalization of traditional marriage for the gay community. What is also most interesting is that I believe most Americans agree with above points. That general agreement concerning the rights of individual and the rights of our institutions is what is making this discussion so difficult.

The anti-gay rights movement has tried to paint this debate as a battle of good vs evil, moral vs immoral. This outlook, however, is based on a moral view of the world that is not shared by all people. In addition it totally ignores a problem that has to be reconciled with: that we are refusing legal and judicial rights to a group of people because of who they are. This blatant disregard for the legal equality of mankind cannot go ignored. Choosing to ignore (or worse legislate) this inequality is no better than acceptance of slavery in this country. Banning all forms of gay marriage would totally ignore beliefs 1 and 2 listed above. Do we sacrifice half of our countries values to save the other half?

The pro-gay rights movement has attempted to make this an issue of discrimination. While this may be true it totally ignores the fact that most Americans are religious and have the right not to have their beliefs, ideas, and institutions redefined for them. Remember that we are talking about an institution that existed before the government did. Marriage is historically a religious institution and the government has no right to legislate the structure of religious institutions. In addition, if we truly put away all of our biases (i.e what kinds of unions are right and wrong) what is to keep us from redefining marriage to mean a union between a man and a dog, or an adult and a child. Legalizing all forms of gay marriage would ignore beliefs 3 and 4 listed above. Again I ask you, do we sacrifice half of our countries values to save the other half?

Many Americans realize the juxtaposition and have chosen banning gay marriage but legalizing civil unions because it addresses 3 of the 4 beliefs mentioned previously, more than the two most common solutions put forth by the pro/anti gay movement. In fact dangerously close to 2/3 of the country seems to leaning this way, making the passage of a constitutional amendment a real possibility. The problem here is that I am not willing to violate one of my core beliefs to save the other three. Ignoring value #2 would mean opening this country up to the possibility of bringing back the separate-but-equal laws of the pre-civil rights era. Even more so because this would constitutionally give a basis for separate-but-equal where any previous constitutional basis in its favor was simply implied. Banning marriage but legalizing civil unions seems just as unacceptable to me as the previous solutions.

So where does that leave us? We cannot ban gay marriage, we cannot legalize it, we cannot ban some form of civil union but legalize another. The only solution that I have been able to come to is one that I have heard almost nothing about (mostly because the two “sides” of his argument don’t want the public to realize there is another option.) We totally remove marriage from federal jurisdiction. This leaves the question of civil unions open to the federal government (a topic for discussion another day) but marriage must become state/citizen/private institution. This is actually the way it is now. States recognize marriage, not the federal government. But some federal programs do give special consideration to married couples and those provisions would need to be removed or given to civil unions (if the federal government chooses to recognize civil unions.)

A couple reasons why this solution looks so good to me (besides the fact that is conforms to all of the above listed values concerning gay marriage) is that it A) is coincides with another fundamental belief of mine: the less the federal government gets involved with my life, the better off my life is; B) the Constitution should not be altered unless absolutely necessary, and should never be altered to enforce social policy decisions (see Amendment XVII as an example); and C) its in perfect harmony with current Constitutional Law and the spirit of our founding fathers (i.e. Amendment I clause 1 & 2 and Amendment X.)

I don’t know if the solution I have presented is the best solution available; but it seems to address more concerns, with better equality, than other solutions presented by the current administration and the media. Maybe instead of trying to change the constitution to enforce our current social structures, we should read our constitution and see how it suggests handling it.

There are many of use currently using Redhat 9 that are in the market for a new Desktop OS.  The two that I am strongly considering at this venture are Mandrake and SUSE.  They both have a few things going for them:  no broken’ass KDE version installed;  mp3 support out-o-da-box; and they have not abadoned the desktop community!

 Here is a review (read the comments too, they have some nice mandrake tips) of Mandrake’s newest desktop OS.

In addition here is a quick review of  SUSE’s latest Linux offering.  The reviewer also makes a point I have been making for a long while.  The question is not IF Linux is ready for the desktop… the question is WHICH desktops are ready for Linux?

Inductive user interfaces (aka: IUI’s) or more commonly called “task-based” interfaces are a user interface (aka: UI) advancement that promotes “usage” or “tasks” over individual applications.

The article above talks about how Microsoft has promoted and been the most noticeable innovator of IUI’s. The reason I point the article out is because of an apparent “slight” to the Mac OSX community regarding the amount of innovation going into their OS. The author basically states that Mac OSX has done little or nothing (I would strongly support the use of the word nothing!) for UI advancement. This really bothers Mac users because they historically see themselves as the origin of all things innovative. And they were… once.

It’s a popular trend in the “literary computer expert world” to slight Microsoft for now comming out with a UI to the level of OSX. Some authors go so far as to say the Mac OSX is the “ultimage Unix desktop.” While many people believe the OSX is the most beautiful personal computer UI in existance… the reality of the matter is that it is less functional than OS9, less user-friendly than XP, less flexable than KDE,and less innovative than any of the above mentioned.

IUI’s is a wonderful advancement for the majority of end users (as long as power users do not loose their flexability), and one that should be promoted in all desktop UI’s. Denouncing it and rejecting it does nothing to help improve user interfaces. And makes those who ignore it look as ignorant as those who thought the internet was simply a fad.

James Pattern is an MIT student working on physical object interfaces to computers. There is a small QuickTime video on the site that shows some of his current work. 

Overall his studies look interesting, but they seem specifically aimed at CAD, CAM, design, and modeling.  Why?  Because the data entry technique most commonly employed by computer users (aka: the keyboard) is almost perfectly suited for human beings.  Humans have 10 fingers, but only 2 hands.  Thats why you will find that programmers almost universally prefer a good keyboard (with shortcuts for everything) to a mouse.

How many of you remember the UI from Minority Report.  Sure it was cool, but it was almost worthless from a user interface standpoint.  To access and search data you had to do full body movements that were a cross between a traffic officer and an aerobics instructor.  You even had to put on gloves to use the system… real user friendly.