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Occupy wall street: Thou doth protest too much

2011-11-22T02:48:00.000+02:00

The occupy wall street movement has gained considerable traction in getting many people together towards a single goal. The problem is that there is no single goal. The occupy wall street protesters are having serious trouble giving a list of demands to the powers that be.

Their major complaint
The major complaint of the protesters is the elephant in the room. The rich of the world own the world. The free market capitilism that seeked to emphasize property rights and give everyone a chance to flourish has failed the world, and we seem to be right back and stuck with the medieval class system.

Let me explain:
In the days before the now you were born into a class, unable to escape because that is what you were. You were bound to take on the trade of your parents and there was no other option. Indeed we all got a chance when that changed. Anyone could become hugely rich and succesful right?

NO! The answer to this question is of course a little more complicated than that. The real problem is that being born into a rich family still has massive advantages. Nepotism, "who you know", vast amounts of resources to explore and try new things all contribute to the thrones of the upper classes.

However it is very true that many of the rich didn't start out in rich families. Old money is not squarely to blame. I think there is an essential problem with society. We emphasize idea people who are obsessively hard workers. Middle class folks with different values lack one or both of those qualities. Not everyone wants to slave to huge amounts of money, even if they don't want to admit it. Many will tell you that this bias is fair, and to a large degree it is. The problem comes when the rich become insanely and ridicoulously rich.

The rich are generally good for the economy. Rich people get more rich by keeping their money in circulation, making risky investments and creating employment. It is almost as if the rich are necesary. A rich person may employ 5 maids, a butler, a baby sitter, a chef, a pilot, and thousands of employees of their businesses. They create jobs and pay massive amounts of tax. So what is the problem?

The problem comes because a rich person, though having vast amounts of wealth, still pays a relatively low taxes. Taxes are something that are calculated on a per person basis. Though the percentages may be similar to medium income groups, the rich hardly feel the pinch of taxes.

The problem is then reduced to one of fairness. Is it fair that a small percentage of the world's population controls the vast majority of the world's wealth? Fairness is a tough question because many of the rich work extremely hard for their money. Many of them worked hard and became qualified so they could be rich.

They don't work harder than a single mother who has to support 2 children. It is infinitely difficult to describe fairness in economic terms. Should we be giving more money to single mothers who work as waitresses?

The goals of social evolution say no. We want to be better off. The rich have an area affect that is supposed to leave us better off. A rich man may own a fast food chain that employs thousands of single mothers. This blurs logic and even common sense.

But it still doesn't feel fair. To us sitting here in the middle class it doesn't feel fair. Watching people on tv taking shits on golden toilets while we worry about our retirement surely doesn't feel fair.

I apologise for the bunch of little paragraphs, but I myself am failing to rationalise the movement that is occupy wall street. It stinks of desperation and seems void of real solutions. Their requests for free college education seems to be a good ideal, but other than that some of the economic unreform they propose is stupid, because it will reverse all the progress we have made as a modern global scoiety.

As I've said before, I agree with free education and to an extent with free healthcare, but I also believe that one will feed the other. Free education will mean more doctors. More doctors will mean more met demand for doctors. Consequently healthcare will be cheaper, because there are ample amounts of healthcare professionals to meet demand. More educated populations will have more educators, and this will mean cheaper education that will have positive results. Why don't we have more universities. Maybe it's because we don't have enough educators to fill the gaps.

The core of any society in my opinion is education. The more educated a population is the less pay will be given to the educated because there is a healthy market of proffesionals. More open business practices will result in more businesses, stiffer price competition and less exploitation.

Further more I believe that one of the ideals of any constitution should be property ownership. This is a rather lofty ideal, because it's unrealistic to give property away. Maybe there should be more control over property markets. Without property ownership it is difficult to pass wealth from generation to generation. If there is inadequate infrastructure and zoning property markets get flooded with demand. The real estate market booms and the elite property owners take advantage of those lower down in the chain. There is a trickling effect with those at the mid level of the middle class getting stuck in infinite debt in the attempt to own property or never owning property and leaking their hard earned money into rentals.

Should we possibly say that the rental charges of properties may only be a certain percentage of the value of property, or a formula involving current debt owed on a property, linked with the value?

The truth is that buying a property and paying the minimal bond installments will currently mean paying almost double for a property. Should the interest charged not be underwritten like insurance? What I mean is, instead of fixed interest rates interest is calculated based on the individual risk of a buyer, coupled with property value and growth? If a bond is about carrying risk then surely this could be a solution!

I guess the only remaining elephant in the room is whether we should be taxing the rich more. I think that the answer is to a large extent yes. I would say that any asset, product and service should be given a standard value attained through a calculation. A set of needs based goods and services should be determined, and all these needs based goods should have a standard price. Instead of throwing away the free market system, such needs based goods should carry a profit tax where such profit is above the standard calculated value. Excemptions could exist, for instance if such goods or services offer other luxury accompanying servcices, or exclusivity as the goal of the needs based product. For instance a toilet is a neccesity, but one made of gold should not be considered a needs based good and should be excempt. Other excemptions could include a reinvestment exclusion, where profits are exclusively reinvested for growth of the business or the product that will benefit the consumer.

Luxury goods are unaffected by these policies. The reinvestment excemption encourages growth of production capacity and discourages exploitation. The profit margin tax that businesses pay should be published publicly, so that consumers are aware of the level of exploitation that they are exposed to. The bad publicity will also serve as discouragement for exploitation. Because the tax taxes profits, it is impossible for businesses to pass the taxes onto consumers, because increasing prices will increase the taxes.

Needs based goods will be cheaper, and consumers will have a choice to spend more on luxry goods. A farmer that sells butter could sell butter as a luxury product, provided that the product deviates substantially from the production of regular butter, and it can be shown to be as such. Normal butter however cannot be claimed as a luxury item due to it's similar production method to other normal butter. If a block of butter of 200 grams is defined as having a profit margin of 10%, butter charged at a 15% profit margin can have 3% taxed away. Shops like woolworths can claim luxury butter, based on production or packaging methods, allowing exclusivity to still thrive.

A further effect of this will be that producers of goods who have found massive efficiency improvements will be forced to pass these advantages onto consumers. If a butter maker has found a way to make artificial butter in a factory at extremely low cost they will not be able to charge the same amount for that butter as a normal butter maker. There is still an incentive to increase efficiency, because efficiency drives increases in production capacity. More bread, butter and milk for cheaper.

This method could drive privatisation, because essential services and goods won't be exploited by the rich. The providers of these goods could still be rich, but for the right reasons. The burning question you might have is what this tax will feul, because privatisation sure will mean reduction in personal taxes in favour of citizens choosing and paying for private services themselves. Some things can't be privatised. Governments still need to provide healthcare and education for the poor, social programs and grants for important medical and other research, a police service, a military service and infrastructure. But I digress.

There are two kinds of rich folks, and we should always remember that. There are those that became rich by taxing essential goods with massive profit margins, and those that innovated and changed the world for good.

The point that I am making is that if we are exploited on needs based goods and services such as housing, medical care and education we all get screwed, except for those right at the top licking the cream off of captive markets our unhappines and feelings of unfairness and gaps in wealth will only grow stronger, to breaking point.

Asking government to provide needs based goods with tax money may not be such a good idea either, because it centralises industries and could close the doors to innovation. Governments face no immediate competition, and their incompetence in many things is generally tolerated, not prefferred.

There are other social problems that need to be dealt with. It is my opinion that there should either be no sale of bad goods or services, or that they should be taxed into oblivion. Homeopaths, churches, liquid weight loss products and all other manners of pseudo scientific or religious systems do not add anything to the economy, because what they sell hold no real benefits. If you want the placebo effect you should get it from real doctors. If we continue to let people pour money into these bad investments in health and well being we will see decline in the way we live.

Camping out on a street seems like an extremely dumb idea to me. Even though my ideas above may seem stupid to someone well versed in ecomomics, my point is that we should think more radically without pointlessly excerising freedom of speech to make unrealistic demands. The credit problems were not caused by too much available credit, but too much use of it. People want to be better off but then they don't save for retirement or buy stupid crap. A little bit of personal responsibility would have a gone a long way. A little bit of education and constructive debate would have gone much further. A camp out fueled by idiotic confusion and lack of personal responsibility will get nobody anywhere.

Over engineering and paranoid delusions

2011-07-27T01:52:00.000+02:00

I think the mind is an interesting computer. Probably the best computer around with the highest error number. Our minds are so bad that we had to build computers to formalise our logic. Our minds are so good that we still cannot understand or mimic them with computers.

Some of the major problems occur when the human mind talks to the computer. The battle ground for this war of logic versus association occurs in none other than the mind of a programmer.

Most programmers (including myself) cannot write long drawn out stretches of code without making some syntax errors, more runtime errors and some nasty logic errors. When we see our mistakes they are obvious. After all, you cannot argue against the cold logic of flowing electrons through semiconductors.

Eventually we come to an agreement with our computer pals. Things work kinda... it goes well... for a while.

This is where paranoia sets in. We all indulge in occasional paranoia and this is normal. Most of us set it aside and move on. Some of us move into padded one bedroom apartments. The rest try to cover every possible outcome the universe has to offer with complicated programming.

"What if the database server is off?" "What if the DNS fails?" "What if this process is interrupted half way by a server crash?"

I Will not deny that some of the questions above are valid. The context of where they are valid is worth noting however. Most systems for instance assume that their database is there. Just let them crash.

Why would I say such a thing?

If you write code for every conceivable outcome and 5% of those situations do actually occur, you have written 95% of useless code. I've seen this. I've done this.

A prime example of this psychotic behaviour represents itself when a programmer decides that external systems should not be trusted. These external actors call functionality in your system, but because of your lack of trust you validate every single byte of data they send. Your code swells to ridiculous proportions. Your paranoid delusions suck you into a world of confusion and madness, and you start to distrust your own code, and the code written by those after you. You write in checks for everything. You picture your code being discovered and studied by hyper intelligent energy beings from the distant future. You've done. You've written a bug free program!

You release your rock solid unbreakable monster state machine into the world and as you lay back in your chair and watch how it goes, something bad happens. One of the checks you are doing is causing perfectly valid system behaviour to be devoured as error. Because checks are just logical branches and not crashes you roll up into a little ball and suck your thumb while frantically wading through thousands of lines of code to find the culprit. You debug n levels deep to find nothing, because now you are sure it is one of your checks.

Days are spent in caffeine induced stupour searching for the smoking gun, and nights are spent tossing and turning while debugging strings of cheese in your dreams. You wake up with hunches and lay down at night with disappointment.

Finally, after blaming yourself, you find an incorrect configuration setting. The day is saved, but you will never be the same. You hang your head in shame as you sneak past people wanting to ask you if you found that difficult bug.

The moral of the story is now clear. ONLY do what is necessary. Accomplish this first. Plan for obvious outcomes, not for unlikely ones. A perfect parralel comes from a snippet of code that did it's rounds on the web:

if (true == false) { panic(); }

I learned this lesson fairly early on by reading and debugging other peoples' code. I have done this myself as well, blaming my checking code when something that was completely unrelated caused the problem. I have also written checks that broke everything.

GUIDs are bad mkay

2011-07-27T01:00:00.001+02:00

A globally unique identifier is a unique reference number used as an identifier in computer software. The term GUID also is used for Microsoft's implementation of the Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) standard.
The value of a GUID is represented as a 32-character hexadecimal string, such as {21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}, and is usually stored as a 128-bit integer. The total number of unique keys is 2¹²⁸ or 3.4×10³⁸. This number is so large that the probability of the same number being generated randomly twice is negligible.
Still, certain techniques have been developed to help ensure that GUID numbers are not duplicated (see Algorithm below). - From Wikipedia/GUID

I have quite often seen the practice of GUIDs being used in databases as primary keys. Much has been written against this practice, but I felt that more voices are louder, so I am also going to chime in. GUIDs are good for a few things:

Making your database incomprehensible

I Once worked on a database that used GUIDs. The biggest problem is that when your inspecting the tables with your eyeballs GUIDs are long scary numbers. You have to do some funky trick where you remember the beginning and the end. If it's a transactional table, then god help you. This will not allow you to write quick selects though, and you will have to copy and paste it everywhere you go. If it is your primary key then your even worse off, because you have to join on them, and you will have a bunch of them lying around in your table structure. It will look all FBI and shit, but that's where the fun ends... REALLY!

Making your database slow

GUIDs as keys are nasty. The DBMS has to work with 32 character hex values instead of ints. Ouch. Indexes on GUIDs then will be huge, and primary keys default to being indexes. So generally a bad idea.

Adding no value whatsoever

Have you ever wondered why your bank account number is not a GUID? The reason is quite simple. You could make a mistake and choose someone else's bank account number. With check digits there is no such problem, because you will have to mess up both specific numbers in the sequence and the check digit at the end. If data integrity and validation is your goal, then check digits are the way to go, not GUIDs

Making your database look like it was written by rainman

An over engineered database looks ugly, works ugly, and is a PITA to maintain because you need to be a savant to keep the mental overhead while your working. GUIds though all unique, also have a nasty quality of looking the same. I know you can level that same argument against normal auto ids, but I'm sure there is an easy way around that. With a GUID appending a character at runtime will not make it more legible. If you are giving users these numbers then you will see that most people are more sand dweebs than rain men when it comes to remembering, repeating, or even copying down extremely long letter/number combinations.

End?

Before you embark on the wonderful journey of GUID think about it carefully. Do you really really really need identifiers that are globally unique? Does that warm feeling of having planned for the most random and unforeseeable eventuality really make it worth the sacrifice?

So what else?

If you're working with a transactional table, you can use normal auto identities. If your auto identities are for something sensitive like bank account numbers, make check digits. If you have a lookup table and want to ensure an identifier for each record make it text based and put a unique key on it like ChecqueAccount, SavingsAccount etc... That will guard you from auto id renumbering and save you the pain of having to look up your lookups so to speak when working with them in code.

Finally end?

I sometimes look at tables using GUIDs and wonder whether there were really good reasons to use them. After close inspection I have not found one good use for them. Identifiers live in a world of context. Your ID number does not make sense when you dial it on your telephone, and your dentist's practice number will not be used as your bank account number when you transfer funds. Human error is a big problem with users especially, something that check digits prevent. GUIDs however seem to make it easier to make a mistake and more difficult to remember the numbers themselves. Nobody is served well by the security. Unless you are using it for security purposes, in which case you just wasted 5 minutes of your life reading this

Linux is unstoppable

2011-02-01T02:27:00.000+02:00

I like to think about Linux, because it represents something that you can only understand once you start to use it. It represents progress and inginuity in the face of complete opposition. It survives despite never coming out on top. It's the competitor that never seems to run out of steam and give up. It's not driven down by market analysis or trends. But... why is that?

You cant keep a good idea down. In the midst of BSD litigation Linux was born, and the concept of a free operating system slowly grew, and it's growth continues to this day. The concept of free software brings it continuity and makes it unlike it's competitors. When Microsoft builds a new version of Windows it is like running a marathon. Their old version has to live and generate enough revenue for them to hold out to releasing a new version. Linux is more like relay. If someone drops the torch there is always someone else to pick it up and run with it.

Another advantage that Linux has is that it's never the final answer. Windows 7 will be what it is up until the point where they release version 8. In that time ubuntu will have had at least 3 releases and if you count the releases of other distributions it starts counting up... quite a lot. If you count the releases of individual pieces of software, that number becomes astronomical. If there is a bug in the final version of a distribution, there is a much better chance that it will be fixed than there is with any commercial competitor.

If you've read the above and didn't just skip to this paragraph you are thinking that I am full of shit, because if you look at reality, and you compare it with what I said above, it makes sense, but Linux is not ahead in the race. not by long shot. You are right on that point, but there is a reason for all of this.

I am not going to bore you with the common "not enough support from 3rd parties" problem that Linux suffers from. This has been discussed ad nauseum in many articles before this one.

There are two lesser discussed problems in the world of Linux. The first is that Linux, when percieved as an end to end replacement for general purpose desktop computing, is a massively modular system. A typical Linux distribution has a seemingly endless list of components that have to interact with each other and play nicely together.

If you follow Linux in the news you will see that this is a violent war of peace, where everyone wants to get along but struggle to find the terms to do so. GTK and QT has been a good example of this. If you launch a GTK application next to a QT or KDE application, you can see there is a war of paradigms being fought right on your desktop. This has a severely detrimental effect on usability. Things are getting better and opinions are slowly shifting, but this competition between modules is part of the nature of how Linux lives on... and on... and on...

The better toolkit will have a growing developer base, very possibly at the expense of the not so good one. Slowly the old one will become obsolete and the new one will emerge as the winner. If the new one can stay fresh, structured and relevant as time moves on it will survive, if it falls behind another new competitor will come in and slowly chip away at the incumbent system's support base. This creates an evolutionary eco system, where obsolence is minimized, but it creates periods of violent transition, with fighting, incompatibilities, programs that depend on different modules and sometimes both, which swells up the super-system as a whole and can have a bad effect on users. So Linux must renew itself to stay alive, but at the same time remain stable enough to win the hearts and minds of the masses.

A second problem that Linux suffers from immensely is the fact that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Some links in the stack are more interesting and easier to work on than others, which explains why Linux has a beautiful base(paid for by commercial interests) and a wealthy high level eco system, because mp3 players are easier and more fun to code than say a graphics driver.

Some parts of the system get neglected and the folks higher up in the stack cannot fix them. The lack of attention in the middle makes some parts difficult to work with.

I believe that both of the above mentioned problems are being solved. The massive modularity is being eased out by slowly integrating disparite systems. Like seeing Qt theming on GTK applications so that they blend in. It is very possible that in the future applications will decide which file dialogs and notification systems to use based on user preference, rather than the original toolkit used to create the application, based on a standardized interface to communicate with such a dialog. This is happening already. An example of this kind of thinking can be found in Phonon. A developer using Phonon does not care how music or videos get played, he just says "play" and the framework figures out which sound system to use. As more of these translators step in beautiful elegant modularity is created, and the bottom of the stack doesnt screw with the top so much anymore.

The solution to the second problem is a little more complicated. What needs to happen is that only the most difficult parts of these mid level systems should stay difficult. And all the rest should be easy to work with and maintain. If I decided to take part in programming something in my free time, I don't want to wade through all the levels and reading endless amounts of documentation to get started. I want to begin on the level of abstraction that I am interested in, and all other levels of abstraction should remain above and below me without disturbing me(too much).

I think that Linux fails to attract other developers because there still seems to be a steep learning curve to get up and running. If Potential new developers could just fire up their IDEs and load up a project instantly, with automatic set up, I think more curious eyes and itchy fingers will contribute to the world that is Linux.

South Africa is in a political crisis(again)

2010-09-16T18:39:00.000+02:00

the problem with cencorship is ******** ******** ** ****** ***.

I feel that at this point I need to speak out, as a patriotic South African who believes that patriotism is a love for your country and countrymen, and not the politicians and dictators that govern it. For those who are not in the know on the issue I will summarize the 2 main points in the "debate". The South African ruling party, the ANC is trying to pass 2 piecies of legislation...

The Protection Of Information Bill
This bill is meant to enable government to classify any piece of information they see fit all the way down to municipal level. This legislation enables the government to imprison whistleblowers in government and the journalists that report on these things to be jailed for up to 25 years.

One of the main problems with the legislation is how they define information to include letters, faxes...snip... opinions. They actually want to make opinions classifiable. Authors and media bodies around the world are freaking out because this will effectively disable freedom of speech in South Africa.

The second problem is something they call "National interest" which is something defined as anything that hampers the advancement of the republic. Defining national interest by law scholars and courts will be difficult... but who needs them right, when you create a judge->jury->executionor

The Media Appeals Tribunal
The media appeals tribunal I will admit is something that I know less about. This watchdog body will answer directly to parliament and its incumbents. So effectively this means that the government decides whether they like the news or not and if they don't they send the journalists to jail.

But it's unconstitutional
We will see whether the constitution of our country, which is touted as the most progressive one in the world, is a valid document or just lip service from a regime kleptocrats that have been destroying this country for the past sixteen years, just after the wounds that were still open after the world renowned "apartheid".

Like all African countries, we are ruled by lying stealing motherfuckers who can convince uneducated masses that what they do for them is best. To make matters worse the majority of the electorate still vote based on skin colour, except now most of them are voting for their so-called liberators because they are black.

South Africa was a beacon of hope in the failed continent. We came up with some clever stuff. Our military used to be one of the finest, now even they are pathetic. Everything has slowly fallen apart, but now it is becoming blatantly obvious that my beloved homeland has become a disaster zone.

The revolution(s) are coming

2010-09-09T23:32:00.001+02:00

The world is on the brink of a major change. [citation needed].

The new printing press
The printing press triggered a major change because now suddenly people from all walks of life had access to books. The internet is the new printing press. It just skips the step between the authors mind, the publisher, the editor, the distribution channels and the shops that sell the damn things. It is instant knowledge at your fingertips.

There are still some who wonder, but many people have learnt to "google it" . This change might seem insignificant, until you start digging in the internet. You find Wikipedia, which informs you about anything. When someone gives you a soundbite about Ghandi you search the internet to see if there is any weight to their statement. The internet makes it cheap to learn new things if you can afford it and makes it cheap to be a skeptic. You get to question that which you usually would have taken for granted because you either had no way to disprove it, or it was too low priority to make you drive to the library and see whether the information was accurate.

The internet also breeds a lot of bad information, but what I have seen is that right tends to have more search results than wrong. It is not surprising that you will find the right info on .edu sights and the wrong info on Pastor McLyingbitchMotherFucker's blog website where he explains that in addition to creationism being true, aliens like to stick lollipops up our asses when we are not looking because they find the taste of our poop most pleasing. This grouping of bad information certainly seems intentional, but the purveyors of bullshit don't realise how they are screwing themselves over by including all their ridiculous beliefs on their 1995 animated gif black background magenta comic sans text nightmare website.

The industrial revolution 2.0
The industrial revolution was triggered by the water frame, which essentially ended up making those spinning wheels from that other stupid fairy tale redundant. What followed was mass industrialization of just about everything that people used to do for fun and profit. This caused chaos as it meant many people losing their jobs, over urbanization due to factories needing thousands of workers doing menial repetitive stress injury inducing jobs.

We are now experiencing another industrial revolution. Things that used to be done on paper is now being done by computers. Important functions are now being done by computers. How many people do online banking? Or should I ask how many people still do their banking at the bank? Where are the folks that filled those job positions? They have moved on, but a major change or revolution can happen at any time, rendering people redundant and costing jobs. The savings will be moved onto the consumer... NOT!!! Banks will charge more. They are increasing profit after all. The super rich will have another way to be super rich, by letting machines do peoples' work and not letting their customers win some of the advantages.

The textile industry will see another industrial revolution when robots start to make clothing. Yup... Clothing is still made in Chinese sweat shops, but if a robot can make clothes, who needs China? Just build your own robot factory and throw some yarn at the damn thing. 2000000 jeans are poured out the next day. What will happen to those sweat shop workers? Well just look at what happened to the workers in the last industrial revolutions... it aint pretty, but at least it's temporary.

An industrial revolution should trigger a major uptick in education. Because people these days cannot depend on spinning wheels or become blacksmiths, they have to go all the way through high school to be useful in society. After the next industrial revolution you will have to have a university degree in order to be useful. If you have one now, congratulations, you are safe. If you don't your job might become obsolete.

The energy sector is currently our biggest problem. We still rely on fossil feuls. Our alternatives are not that great at the moment(except maybe for nuclear power). When we figure out how to make efficient batteries that are small we will be able to store unused power for later use.A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having. And an industrial revolution without massive amounts of energy to drive it is a non-event. Once we solve this problem we will be able to move on with our lives, and no longer worry about powering our world. In the future we will take electricity for granted because we will not even need to know it exists to use it. All our devices and machines will use power that they get from the air. That's a topic for another story however.

One of most difficult things to produce in the world is food. Cows run around mooing and pooing everywhere and eating all the grass... farting methane merrily along the way. If we can manufacture meat from stem cells we can industrialize farming! Imagine getting a steak that was grown in a meat factory. No animal cruelty there. Just some stem cells used to grow meat. The cool thing about cells is that if you give them the right chemicals they will replicate. So what you can have is chemical energy to create food. This means that food can be really cheap, disease free and produced from premium genetic stock.

The social revolution
The net result of all of the above is a social revolution. Smarter people make smarter choices, the world moves forward and we look back on ourselves in our previous state and think of it as primitive. I lived in the time where cellular phones did not exist. We got by, but you often had to ask someone whether they would be home at a certain time because you wanted to phone them, you had to arrange to meet someone somewhere, and if there was some misunderstanding there was no way to correct it. Fun times. Once I forgot that my mother was not picking me up from school and waited one and a half hours for her to pick me up.

My grandparents still took 2 days to travel 80kms into town, because they did it in a horse cart. The wheels of revolution were already spinning up.

The pyramid of needs that I posted in a previous article will mean that more people will closer to the top than to the bottom. It can be truly great, but be prepared for the evil elements of this world to somehow find a way to make our lives miserable in this futuristic utopia.

Patent Law: The revolution is coming!

2010-09-09T19:48:00.000+02:00

Copyright law is an issue I think about from time to time,living in an era where you can make (near) perfect copies of any original work it is no surprise that this issue has become a popular one. The current way that things are going is pointing toward a stand off. The major players in the copyright versus the common folks with broadband internet.

Let's back up a bit into classic economics. When I create a new product the typical pattern is that I have to produce copies of it. So I created a toothbrush that automatically applies toothpaste. Initially my costs are extremely high and my production is driven by a huge bank loan and sleepless nights. I sell many copies before Imake any tooth brushes. This is so that I don't make too many that I cannot sell. I build my factory, lay out the machinery, and start producing toothbrushes.

Because of the initial cost the very first order is really expensive. But there are people willing to pay for this cutting edge product and I make enough sales to pay back my loan and then some. Then I am faced with a choice.

At this point my production costs become significantly lower. I can make a larger profit by selling the same goods at the same price as before. Because I am the only producer of this product i control supply of it. The best way for me to go is to smoothly increase production volume and smoothly decrease prices. I use a good part of my profits to increase my output and then engage in profit taking. I am doing this for a very good reason. Any day colfresh, a prominent tooth brush making company, can decide to grab my idea and make millions of these tooth brushes at a much lower cost because they have larger production volume. I do not want this to happen because it will sink my business. But what if I could get a law passed that will only allow me to create this product?

Say hello to patents. A patent will protect me while my business is growing. It will offer protection to the bank who I have lent money from and to potential investors. I can stop a competitor from creating the same product for a limited amount of time so that I can get the idea launched. That is what patent law is for.

If I don't act on it, or otherwise sell the patent to a company that will, it will expire and everyone will get my idea for free. The reason for this is that even though ideas are cool, they are pretty fucking worthless. But lobby groups for patent law don't see things that way. They have found a hole in the patent system and they are extremely ready to exploit it at every opportunity.

They push out ideas into patents constantly and then refuse to act on those ideas, instead waiting for others to have the same idea, act on it, and then they sue claiming that the idea was stolen from them. Even if it was, acting on an idea is worth much more than the idea itself.

The act of turning an idea into a product or service is entrepeneurshp or business and consists of getting money, planning, hiring people, marketing the product etc... patent trolling consists of creating a patent, suing and then reaping the profits without any of the intermediate steps.

To make matters worse there are so many ideas you will realise that any idea you have has already been patented by someone else, and you are simply lucky if you don't get sued. Sometimes they will lie in wait until your product has become extremely successful before they sue, because it's more profitable to sue you when you are successful.

Not only do these companies not take part in the actual work of developing an idea into something with actual value, they also avoid all the risk. They let others take a risk with an idea they are aware of and if they see it succeeding they simply sue to get a slice of a pie that they knew the recipe to, but did not bake. It is a pure insult to hard working people that patents are used to make free money.

Litigation is costly, and I have a feeling that many settle out of court because they simply want to avoid the mess of a law system that favours the couch potato. I have seen ideas that I had had before being implemented. Of course I did not have patents on them, but the fact that someone else had the same idea proves something.

The human race lives in a global village that by becoming bigger is becoming smaller. Our thoughts converge and connect the same dots to come up with new ideas. How can it be fair that somebody who had an idea and acted on it, should pay someone who had the same idea, but only registered it as HIS idea. He is the god of that idea, even though other's thoughts converge to make the same conclusions that result in the creation of that idea.

The most indefensible concept behind patent law is patent law pertaining to the medical world. Every little medical discovery, however small, is patented. When new researchers come along they have to make sure not to step on patents in the minefield of patents that already exist.

Essentially the medical companies sitting on these patents and not developing products based on them are choosing not to potentially save lives so that they can make more money. There is no price on human health, unless you are one of these assholes.

"You mentioned revolution in your title... did you forget?" Nope. The revolution started when people started to give back software to communities for free. I am typing this in forefox on kubuntu. Both free and open source. If these philosophies make it into medicine we might have hope in the future.

The revolution is a rather strange one... and is actually part of another pet theory of mine. What it comes down to is that the super rich will lose their source of unlimited money and be forced to find other ways to steal from the rest of us.

The philosophy of introspection

2010-08-22T17:36:00.000+02:00

The root of consciousness lies in our ability to look in the mirror and realise that we are seeing ourselves. Have you seen an animal look in the mirror and try to attack or befriend the image they see? They do not know that they are looking at themselves. From a very young age we as humans pose before the mirror, knowing that image is us. This is what seperates us from beasts.

If we do not look at ourselves we will become unaware of what we are, why we are here and what it is that makes us... well... us. We have failed to stay conscious beings. Many humans do not look in the mirror anymore. They have become beasts. They no longer inspect the systems that make them human, or inhuman. The ego is the barrier. The narcisist will do everything in his power to protect his ego. Failure to protect his ego will surely result in death.

Our narcisistic culture has provided us with something new. Images that are supposed to reflect who we want to be. No longer do we look in mirrors. We see who we want to be in magazines, movies and billbaords. We have become a herd. We have lost our individuality in favor of pleasing others, so that we can grow our egos. Our Gods are actors, our priests are talk show hosts, and our lives are empty shells of what we could be.

I don't know why I have gone off into this tangential thinking of late, but I feel it is a coming together of my frustration with humanity. Why can't we kill these Gods? Why can't we dispose of these idols? Why can't we decide what we want to be by looking at ourselves and seeing what is wrong? Fix it. We can't fix it... we are moving into the new dark age, the age where intellectuality is evil and governments are Gods of morality, telling us what they think we should be doing, and putting our opinions under house arrest.

We have appointed these dictators, because we are too afraid to think and decide for ourselves. Look back on your life. Have you sold your dreams for a big screen tv? Have you lost your will to become something more, something better? Have you lost your self control and morality and handed it over to someone else to become of the gatekeeper of your existence. Oprah is your opinion, Rhema is your morality, sportsmen are your achievements. You have failed to be anything more than nothing. You have become a beast, in herd where the witches must be burnt.

They blaspheme and talk of freedom, you don't want that. You would rather be safe. Have safe opinions, have no enemies. Live life to procreate. Live life to force your dreams onto your offspring, because you failed to be what you really wanted to be.

The clock is ticking. You have only a few years left in your life. You can choose to seek the truth or accept the lies of others. Why do you live? What is it that makes you not wonder whether your Oprah or your Rhema is wrong.

They are wrong. They are the sickness that infests your soul, telling you what to think and to believe.

I don't really know where all this is coming from, but it seems to be flowing out of me. I wish I could save you. I see you suffering and toiling to become mediocre everyday, failing to reject the lies you live your life by. It makesyou happy that you are this way. Stand naked in front of you mirror. Now stand there. Now look at yourself. Really inspect every inch of what you are outside. This is you. Now ask yourself how much of what you believe is really yours. Is it yours or is it that of the television, your parents, your ministers, your idiot Gods you see on tv. If you have nothing, there is still a chance to change. There is still a chance to challenge them. Get those fuckers out of your head. They are poison. Oprah is selling books. Rhema is selling religion. Why is it that they are so great when they are selling you a truth. The truth cannot be bought and sold. It can only be acquired by those who are willing to suffer the pain of knowing it, and only those who are willing to live with the pain of watching others deny it.

I am not selling you an opinion. I am asking you to formulate your own. I am asking you tell everyone to their face to "FUCK OFF". Everyone who has ever shoved something down your throat. Vomit it back at them. Vomit their own bile back at them, and free yourself to build your own morals, your own opinions and your own reality. The reality as close as possible to the true reality. There is only one true reality, and the seekers of it are on the tangent getting ever closer.

Become sentient. I challenge you. Don't let these prefabricated opinions be ejaculated into your ears, making you deaf to the truth. There is only one truth, and nobody knows what it really is. But the only righteous path is the path to finding it.

The doctrine

2010-08-22T01:52:00.001+02:00

We are constrained by the boundaries of our knowledge.We are inmates imprisoned by our own ignorance. If only we knew how to get out. If only we knew what it is we needed to know to be able to free ourselves from this prison. Freedom therefore can only be attained through knowledge.

I have spent some time this evening reading about the Übermensch, a concept constructed by Friedrich Nietzsche. The Übermensch sees his predecessor as primitive, much how we see primates now. Why is this? Is it really true that one day we will look upon ourselves in the past and see monkeys? I think this is already happening. Those who have been liberated through knowledge see the ignorance of society as a herd of ridiculous animals, sub sentients who do not know what it is they need to know to free themselves. I wish I had intended my statement above in a funny or condescending way, but it is the most tragic story of modern society.

For some reason many people try to live their lives by learning as little as possible and getting the most out of life, never realising that lacking in knowledge can only be a path to tragedy. They are the lowest common denominator, they move in the path of least resistence and the only thing they can ever hope to attain in life is mediocrity. Television and religion sell them the products to convince them that having these things will set them free. Having these things will uplift them out of their abyss of nothingness.

The willful ignorance that they subscribe to numbs their neurons to such an extent that they start to believe that they have attained enough knowledge to live their lives to the fullest. They subscribe to faith that tells them that their pointless existence will be superseded by a glorious afterlife, leaving them to hope for their own deaths. I cannot begin to describe the sadness I feel for humanity.

This faith gives them oversimplified versions of reality, that make them all knowing, even though they really know nothing. The tragedy becomes even more apparent when you see intelligent people stuck in this prison of ignorance.

I have never thought of myself as being intelligent. I have a strange craving for knowledge. An inherent curiosity about things. I believe that this is what characterizes the human race. We all have this curiosity to know more, to see more, to feel more, but we are indoctrinated by a culture that discourages interesting things, labeling them as boring.

Intellectuals are seen as inferior; heretics, unable to subscribe to dogmatism that forces curiosity out of their very beings. "Do not question God" they say. "God works in mysterious ways" they say. Don't dare ask why or you will be a blasphemer. "Don't play God" they say, because discovering the mysteries of nature is undermining his authority. "Don't blaspheme" they say, because even though God is an omnipotent and omniscient being, his feelings get hurt really easily, and you will be eternally damned for using his name.

I, and all those who choose to question are already the damned. We have chosen to be unholy in order to discover the universe and uncover the secrets of life. We are forced to accept the doctrine of the imbecile and treat those that subscribe to it as our equals. The truth is that there is only tolerance. We see them as inferior and they see us as inferior. They have to die to prove they are right, whilst our philosophy is sound in life. We have to hide the truth to protect ourselves from religious onslaught. How ironic is it that the unbeliever becomes the one who suffers religious persecution.

If you want to free yourself from these chains your ego must die. You must realise that all knowledge is sacred, and that any resistance to it is the root of ignorance. At first you will not know what it is you need to know. You will just have to start gaining knowledge. As you gain knowledge your perspective will change. The world will become a different place. Mysteries will have deep spirals of explanations that take you ever closer to becoming all knowing. You will never be all knowing, but this is the goal you can set if you want to become free. You must break down all mental barriers of knowledge in order to ascend to the next level of wisdom. The knowledge you gain will guide and make you wiser. This will enable you to know what you need to know in order to be free.

With every step you take the path will become more grueling, and more lonely. The darker it becomes the more visible the stars will be, and the more of the universe you will see. Eventually you might look back and see nobody behind you, everyone has fallen too far behind. But we are here and we are waiting for you, creating the future and becoming more than human. Gods amongst men.

Pioneer One: Review

2010-07-31T17:04:00.001+02:00

When watching american TV shows you often find the same formulas and patterns repeated ad nauseum. For example:

If we don't swear we can make it PG and win more viewers.
Don't rock the boat with radical ideas.
Make everything artifical. Think of the offices and computers in CSI*
Create flawless characters that are heroes. Their only shortfalls are their complete awesomeness. They never make mistakes.
Water down emotions. Even though modern shows have relatively good acting characters display singular emotional paths and ignore the complexities of human emotions. Maybe this is to avoid confusing the audience?
Make the smartest things easy to understand. This is when a character constructs a perfect winning plan and it works flawlessly with minor clever tricks and no contingency plans.
Create flat characters who have a mission and usually succeed straight out or fail
Create characters that change so often that it is hard to figure out who they are. They are so mixed in with good and bad that ultimately you can't tell anymore. See Heroes

Some shows have beaten many of these problems. I would have to say Battlestar Galactica(The reboot) has interesting characters that keep their personalities but still sway in decisions based on dramatic irony.

Pioneer one makesa few break throughs. The sets seem kind of boring in the sense of that's pretty much what an office looks like with pens lying around and thats a kitchen with dirty washing etc... It feels much like a reality show because of the (arguably) shoddy camera work and the way that people are not constantly throwing one liners and opening little cute envelopes of wisdom. The characters depth are reached not through their dialogue as much as through their obvious emotions. Things seem quite believable and there is no huge show of outburst emotion or some grand effect to keep people watching.

I think pioneer one is just that. A pioneering vision of what kind of programming we want to see in the future. Something between the ungaurded emotions and useless banter we see in reality shows and a good story. I feel that in a sense Battlestar Galactica also hit a home run with many of these techniques. I hope that Pioneer one will also be a show where we can relate to characters that are real and have no ultrahuman traits that we are used to seeing in television in general.

I hope that the show can keep on it's current course with a story that contains ample variety but not too much. Heroes completely botched up their story by introducing multiple time travel plots, more and more characters with sometimes silly and confusing powers and failures to give any character a depth of integrity that can be relied on.

The story line seems to be quite believable but still fictional. There is a stretch of the imagination but not something ridicoulous where you find your self thinking "oh fuck no, come on!". The acting was much better than I had expected it to be. Some characters were slightly slippy but then again some people are slightly slippy. You could very easily believe that someone could be exactly the way that they are protrayed, and the actors don't seem uncomfortable with their characters.

I believe that some parts could have been done better but I also think that any intelligent viewer of any program could find things they would like to improve on. I think people feel especially entitled to give an opinion since they know that the show was made with a small budget on creative commons.

The biggest lack I see is that there are slight veerings off of the story line which might leave some less attentive viewers bored. Driving a story line too hard can make the difference between a compelling story and a boring one. Getting the pace just right is difficult and many high budget shows even miss this mark, sometimes intentionally to get viewers to want to watch again.

I have a lot of hope for this series. I think it keeps artistic integrity without being obscure and it has a very sincere feel to it, something that is often lacking from the TV shows we are used to.

One thing I would also like to emphasize is that I would like to see the next episode. There was not one part where I felt that feeling of strange embarresment you feel when seeing bad acting or ridicoulous entertainment. It feels interesting and real and worth while to follow. I would rather just say that than go on about the music, the camera work, the outifts of actors, dialogue etc... because in the end the sum of the parts should form a coherence that makes the whole feel whole, leaving you to not think too deeply about minor details.

Here's a link to the show's official site: http://www.pioneerone.tv/

*I abhore CSI because I am a fan of forensics documentaries. You don't often see people coming to the right answers immediately and the resources they have are limited. Cases sometimes take years to solve because technology still has to catch up. Currently criminal identification systems can take from hours to days to figure out if a finger print is linked to a specific criminal. More often than not it is more than one piece of evidince that links the criminal to the crime and the work is tedious and not so flashy as our CSI crime fighters make it look.

Success?

2010-06-08T23:34:00.001+02:00

Are you successful?
Do you feel depressed because your not attaining your goals?
THEN YOU NEED TO READ THIS ARTICLE...

Success is a personal thing, and you choose when you have attained it. We all have goals in life and reaching them can be difficult because the nature in most of us is not to succeed, but to expect more from ourselves constantly. If you reach a point of success you will find yourself wanting more.

If my goal was to make millions(which I do confess it is) I may never attain that goal and go through life feeling unhappy because of my bank balance, but if I re-adjust that goal to say I want to make R 10 000 then when I attain it I reach a milestone. That milestone is important because it motivates me and it gives me breather from my goal of millions. Setting checkpoints in your path to your goal is very important. You will be unhappy if you bite of more than you can chew.

My method for setting goals is simple. I gather up information if necessary and think to myself how quickly I could reach a goal if I put my all into it. Then I take that milestone and scale it down to what I think I could reach comfortably. Then depending on the priority level I will add a bit more or remove a little. The result is that low priority goals(like learning a new language) I can take at a steady pace and high priority goals(like paying off my debt) I can put lots of energy into.

The biggest problem with success is that we are constantly haunted by a picture perfect version of someone else's success. What am I talking about? I am talking about advertisements for beer. If you watch many advertisements for beer in South Africa you will see a rich guy wearing a suit, arriving in an expensive car, then being overrun by women and friends. Surely the advertiser knows his market. which is really fucking sad. This image of success is pathetic. It doesn't reflect any real person, and if it does it only reflects a brief moment of the life of such a person. Most avid beer drinkers are more likely to become fat burping slobs if they choose to drink a lot of beer.

Look now to the man in his hammock on the beach working on his laptop. Who in the fuck would take a laptop to the beach. Furthermore who can comfortably operate a laptop in a hammock? They are trying to convey that this stock photo gilette jaw man model guy as so successful that he relaxes while he works and spends most of his days on the beach with his laptop... What fucking image of success is this? It is the suck part I guess. Either go to the office, or go to the beach. But don't try some bastard fuck of bad ergonomics and sand in your dvd rom along with napping in a hammock. This is a perfect example of how people want to have their cake and eat it too.

The media loves to sell us these images of airbrushed models that look successful, happy and healthy with shimmering white teeth. They try to project an image on us that we can never fulfill unless we become empty headed models ourselves and pose for the part of the successful beach hammock business man.

The cardinal rule of success is to ignore those around you and choose what the fuck you want. If your friends all have children, and you don't want children, don't have children. If your friends all drive expensive cars and you would rather buy a shrubbery, fuck them. Buy a shrubbery! You will feel successful if you reach the success that you want, and not that other people want.

Indoctrination for the nation

2010-06-08T23:18:00.001+02:00

I just had an a-ha moment. No I didn't start to sing wake me up before you go... but it does link in I guess... just a little.

I have always wondered how really well educated folks could fall prey to dogmatism and bullshit beliefs. Now I have (possibly) found the answer. Consider the following:

If I teach a 5 year old particle physics and microbiology, anthropology etc and then try to teach that child about religion at the age of 10, surely that child will be quite confused. Surely that child will be skeptical if after teaching him about things that have factual explanations, giving a completely contradictory and irrational alternative explanation to the mysteries of life.

I often see very intelligent people with very dumb beliefs. I am not sniping at religion only, there are many silly beliefs like new age medicine or breaking mirrors that sometimes ruin an otherwise wonderful mind. The answer may lie in the way that mind's foundations were laid. Before I understood the science of life I was told the religious version. Obviously as a child you don't require endless proof, you don't need citations and you certainly don't have any (significant amount of) money that can be taken from you. You become comfortable with these beliefs and choose to keep them. As you grow older and learn more your beliefs are not fully adjusted according to new knowledge gained. Instead you try to explain the irrational in order to keep that part of your brain alive.

Another answer lies in the laziness of the human brain. Unlike a computer, given a calculation several times we will cease to calculate the answer, and rather pull it up from memory. We learn most things once and then repeat them throughout our lives strengthening the neural pathways that allow for these calculations to take place. We do not rethink everything every time we need to figure something out. This is neural network thinking. We build up a neural network that makes us increasingly efficient the more we practice something. We are even at the stage of human social evolution that we can start building computers that think in this way.

The fundamental problem lies with finding the incorrect answer to a question, but being told that it is correct constantly. This reaffirms the correctness of the statement whether it is true or not. I often do not believe in things people tell me, but after a few people tell me the same thing I have to force myself to research the subject so that I do not get tempted to believe a fact that may be incorrect. I pride myself in being a skeptic but sometimes still fall into the trap of blind belief.

The day I decided to become a skeptic I started to methodically(as much as I could) rethink everything that I was ever taught. My very first question was. What is the truth? The answer I came to after thinking for a while is that the truth is reality. If you see things for what they are, then you see the truth. If you see things for what you want them to be, you live in a fantasy world and all of your existence becomes a form of a lie, constantly retelling itself to others to strengthen its cloak over reality.

Rethinking everything is a very painful exercise, which involves admitting to lies and the fruits that those lies promise to bare.

Religion != Morality

2010-06-02T21:41:00.000+02:00

A common argument for religion is that religion provides a moral base, and that without god(s) man can define what is good and bad using his desires, and not the greater good. Religious folks make a direct link between sin and punishment. So this means that their reason for not committing sins is so that God will not punish them, and their reason for dismissing atheistic morality is that they believe that atheists do not believe that God will punish them for wrongdoings. That is 100% correct. ding ding ding! So atheists can just do whatever the hell they want right? How can these people have morals...

Well. I am an atheist. I have morals. I have carefully thought them through and looked for a basis to put my morals on. If i had to have commandments for myself they would be:

Don't harm yourself
Don't harm others
Protect your freedom and the freedom of others
Try to make the world a better place without breaking the other rules
Be honest to yourself and others, even if it causes pain
Don't take shit from anybody

Even though these seem good at first the first four could turn you into a whimpering pacifist. Sometimes you need to hurt someone to defend yourself. Sometimes you need to put someone in jail and take away the freedom that they abuse. The first 4 rules are for a perfect world. The last 2 are for the real world where you make mistakes and other people also do. Then you should be honest so you can take responsibility for your actions. Why?

Responsibility is what morals are really about. If you dodge responsibility for your ill actions constantly you won't be punished for them. You can steal and get away with it. Really. No jail time. But if you give yourself up you have to rethink your plan of action. Honesty will not always lead to morality however, but it's a damn good start. If you are honest with yourself and others you will see the damage that your actions are causing. This pain is the punishment you need to keep you from doing bad things.

If you accept to feel sympathy and empathy for others you will see how your actions have hurt them. You don't need a god to tell you that. You don't need to be struck by lightning. In fact God's punishment would be particularly useless because most of us make so many little transgressions that it could be hard to tell what we're being punished for. If God came from the heavens and said: "See. I made a bee sting you because you were rude to that shop attendant. Now don't do it again!" Then it would make sense. But God's punishment has made religion sick.

I know that some church goers think that people get cancer because they were unfaithful or because they did a dodgy business deal. This moral absolutism is what drives fundamentalists to crusade for their version of morality. I'd love to know that whether God told them to beat up homosexuals and kill abortion doctors.

But I already know the answer to that. Mr preacher told them that. And those that are susceptible to fundamentalist teachings make it their mission to enforce God's law. And the more passive believers end up saying "good! they deserved it. damned sinners!".

Most people when constructing their own moral systems will come up with nearly the same morals they would have had under religion. They just don't know it. When they are religious these actions are sins, but when they make their own moral framework it becomes perfectly okay. So if I was a gay christian it wouldn't make me any less gay, but I might then believe that my feelings for the same sex are sinful. If I followed my own path to morality it might not be, because I am not hurting anyone else.

The plight of a skeptic

2010-05-20T00:34:00.000+02:00

It is no surprise that most of society are not skeptical. Where's my proof you ask? Spammers and scammers are the biggest reason. People fall for this dumb shit because they are not skeptical. "Wow I've won the british lottery, and I didn't even buy a ticket!!!!"... anyway, with my point proven I will carry on.

There is a certain resentment from people in general against skeptics. There are various reasons for this. One of them is the awe of mystery. Religion, ghosts, aliens, conspiracies, new age medicine and all these things create an element of mystery in life. People don't know how they work but find it quite exciting that they might, and therefore they create a little fantasy world where these things are indeed possible. Most bullshit beliefs work on our emotions. These beliefs puzzle us, entice us and promise us better lives, without solid scientific evidence. When you start inspecting them, the mystery starts looking like playing pretend on the playground.

Sometimes when you call someone out on their beliefs you feel like your telling a child that that box and blanket is not a real house, they are not really spiderman, or that santa isn't real. As we grow up life becomes less of a mystery and people lose faith in childhood beliefs, which creates a whole new market to fill the gap.

A mature skeptic can appreciate fantasy, but has a clear line of division between belief and fantasy. This clarity comes from a single thought: "I no longer want to believe, I want to be convinced". Most people misunderstand this philosiphy and see skeptics as thinking "I no longer want to believe, and I cannot be convinced". To be convinced as a skeptic you require proof, and not just any proof. As you grow as a skeptical thinker you realise that some forms of proof are unacceptable. Common belief is not proof, correlation is not causation, anecdotes are shitty methods of proof. Sentences like "1 in ten people prefer". Is that ten percent of the world's population? Is that one person out of ten people you asked? What is it really?

The scientific community have pretty much perfected the art of skepticism, even though some scientists are still caught cherry picking data and trying to force certain outcomes.

The problem with the scientific community is that people tend to view intellectuality with some skepticism. There is a distrust of science and a fear of the unknown. "I am not a scientist or a super rich guy, I'm just a basement inventor who found this amazing way of running my car on water! YES! PURE WATER. Now I'm selling my invention, but be careful, because the big corporations don't want you to know this. You are prive to this secret of mine, you only have to pay this much!". People use these statements to sell their nonsense by convincing people that they will not talk scientific gibberish and aren't really out to make a buck. They reel people in with fear and the feeling of being ignorant. If you are ignorant to physics someone can tell you that an object traveling at a constant velocity in a vacuum will decelerate without any forces acting upon it. You might believe it because you trust that person or it sounds pretty official, or you read it on the web. It's simply not true.

Churches make tons of money for selling religion. If you believe in something that's your choice, but if you start throwing cash at it and that money isn't going to a good cause then I have to interject. If your giving money to a church why not give it to a charity that helps children in need, or animals, or that does cancer research? Is it really more important that the church gets a bigger building with big billboards telling people to go to the church?

Skepticism should at least start when you open your wallet. At that point you should think things through very carefully.

Skepticism will take away certain elements of mystery in life, but on the other hand it will add new mysteries. Science and technology are fact. hobbies. If you dedicate time to these things you will find vasts amounts of mystery in the next level of understanding, and it's attainable with visible reproducible results. In knowledge and intellectuality lie the greatest mysteries of life itself. Those mysteries are waiting to be solved by you!

Germ Paranoia and Why we still get the flu every damn winter.

2010-05-19T23:44:00.001+02:00

Don't like touching things in public? Don't like sitting on public toilet seats? Well I've got news for you. Your paranoid, and your wasting your time avoiding things that are for the most part not dangerous. The 3 second rule is also a nonpoint. Why?

Well... germs ... for the most part like warm wet places. Such as your mouth. You have germs in your mouth that are perfectly harmless, but they're there. A toilet seat is cold and dry and usually does not provide a good place for these little fellas to cultivate.

The worst part about germ paranoia is that if we should be paranoid, we should be more paranoid about the flu.

The worst thing you can do when you have flu is to cough on your hands. Why? Because that's how you spread germs. You should be coughing into your sleeve. That way the virus doesnt contaminate everything you touch with your hands. Your hands aren't exactly sponges either, so much of the virus will escape through the vapour in your cough. Observe:

What about bubonic plague?

If you see how people lived in the era of the bubonic plague you will understand why they couldn't stop the disease. The disease was carried by fleas hitching a ride on rats. Because people were dirty in those days and seemed to have a lot of rats and fleas, the plague spread like wildfire, killing millions.
The plague won't ever happen in the first world for one simple reason. Quarantine. If the plague hits us today a quarantine will be imposed and people will stay home until the disease disappears. It's method of spreading is obsolete. We no longer have fleas biting us constantly and we no longer allow rats to run around in our houses. Our water is clean and we bathe daily. The only reasonable way for a modern disease to spread is through the air.
So how do we stop this? How do we stop the common cold and fl?. These little fuckers have been around since forever, and like mosquitoes and flies, don't seem to want to give up on pissing us off every year when their in season.

What to do?
It doesn't matter if you don't touch toilet seats because your more likely to get flu from people coughing. If you can stop the flu's primary mechanism of spreading, you stop the flu. And if your in the peak of a flu take some sick leave. Some people can be affected very badly if they get infected because of other diseases that they might have. So if you don't infect other people you might be saving lives. Flu might always pop up in winter, but we need to find out where and why. If everyone is a zombie it's hard to find the original zombie, so keeping healthy is important. If we can kill flu alone we can save thousands of lives every year, and live in a more healthy productive society. Maybe one year in the future we can decide to limit our human contact by using the internet to communicate, shop and work. Then we can nip this little fucker in the bud.

Version 1.0 vs. Version 0.1

2010-05-17T23:11:00.000+02:00

When I started programming my goal was to go the extra mile. I wanted to add that little bit to every project that would make it shine out, that would make it more powerful, flexible or unique. I wanted to create gold. 1.0 . It's been only ~3 years in software development and I've realised that this approach of mine, though noble, does not work. Today I was looking at some code I wrote last year. The problem I am having with it is that it doesn't solve the primary problem it set out to solve in the first place. It solved many secondary problems that made it's predecessor impractical, but created a weird set of it's own issues that are hard to solve by themselves.

Somewhere between then(last year) and now I have realized that programming is about managing complexity. You can only solve a primary problem by solving all the secondary problems that that problem creates. If your not careful secondary solutions come with their own set of problems and essentially you get caught in an infinite loop of solving problems, gracefully veering away from the primary problem you set out to solve in the first place.

There is an exception to this rule. I remember the very first programs I wrote that were simple, small, easy to maintain, and the problems they solved actually were part of the initial problem statement.

Therein lies the answer. Simple, small and easy to maintain. Simple problems have simple solutions, and they are easy to solve with small amounts of code, easy to maintain because once you've debuggered them they work for a very long time. This is because their simplicity makes them less sensitive to change, which drives you all the way to coupling and cohesion if you want to be technical about it. If you have a simple class that converts a dataset to xml, it will be resistant to the change of database back-end and not care at all about what's being done with the resulting data. These simple general solutions result in loose coupling, a very good thing.

On a system scale, adding new features means adding complexity. Managing complexity is then in part about saying no to new features. This sounds a lot like scope definition doesn't it? The narrower the scope of a project is the quicker it will get out there and the better it will be to maintain it. If you have not gotten one, you should define a broad scope statement for your project. "This system maintains client contact details" is an example. Try to determine this by talking to the people who it's for on all levels. People might see overlap and try to get you to bend the system into all kinds of other uses, but remember that this bending usually involves in breaking, and often times the breaking of a system's original purpose.

If your not in a decision maker's position the best thing to have is not decision making power, but firepower. Your ammo is the statement above. "If I do this thing, it might result in that thing being affected". In a complex IT ecosystem you see this happening all the time. "Hey we can just do that!" ... fast forward two days later: "Shit this thing is causing this other thing to commit suicide".

What I've seen is that giving people more than they want is nice, but giving them exactly what they want is even better, especially if you focused on that task in such a way that the original purpose of the system is met with near perfection.

Whether your in the process of designing, scoping, planning, or construction of a software project complexity will be attacking you from all angles.

Vibrasphere?

2010-01-08T19:31:00.001+02:00

If you think that the best Sweden had to offer was Abba... you are mistaken. The best thing to come out of Sweden is an ambient trance duo named Vibrasphere. I'm not going to waste your time with details. For that there is a Wikipedia article.

I considered writing an album review but I thought it would be too sudden. I would first have to explain what Vibrasphere is. Since you can't sum up an artist with one genre I will say three. ambient, trance, psychedelic. But that doesn't say much. Anyone can slap those labels on their music. What Vibrasphere is, is an imaginative journey of the mind and a sweet syrup flowing into your ear canals. The names of the songs might give you a better idea of where this music will take you. :
Baltic Resonance
Sudden Comfort
Decade
Dewdrops

The names of the tracks serve as adjectives to describe this superb act. The music is rhythmic without being repetitive. The big spaced reverbs are beautiful combined with the mellow but strong basslines. In short, listening to Vibrasphere is like going on a holiday somewhere deep in nature where you feel like you are going somewhere but you are in fact in the middle of nowhere, but content with it.

With trance there are little snippets that make a trance track, and Vibrasphere places theirs well and doesn't overwhelm the listener. You can listen to Vibrasphere while your napping on the couch or when your doing intense work. The music will not take your full attention but rather massage your ear canals whilst you go about other things.

I feel that somehow I haven't laid enough praise on yet... but I don't want to overdo it. The best thing to do is to check this mostly undiscovered gem out for yourself.

How to spot a quack (website)

2009-11-19T22:14:00.002+02:00

Quackery is the worst form of pseudo-science. Quacks create false hope and take money from people who are sick and desperate. We have all been the victims of this. Oxygen pills, multivitamins, herbal remedies. But how do you spot these bastards. Simple. Just go to their website. There are signs

1. Catchy product/company name

Whats in a name? Well, the names of these products are not boring like ibumol or panafcort. Names like gene enhancer or cellustore. I'm just making things up because i dont want to use real names. Real medicines are made by adcock ingram and aspen. Not very exciting names.

2. Sensational headline

"Amazing discovery!" "Scientific breakthrough!" "The cure they don't want you to know about". They go in all guns blazing with marketing drivel. At this point they are already using extremely subjective language and you should already be worried. Remember that medicine is not sensational, and if it is it usually comes with a huge price tag and a prescription, its not ordered off some dodgy website.

3. Website looks like crap

If I was approached to develop a website I would not do it if it was something I thought was a scam. It could ruin my reputation. So these websites usually look like crap. Graphics from the nineties, bad layout with lots text in different sizes scattered everywhere. Normal professional websites for medicines will have lots of menus and a clear contact page where you can contact the company. These quack websites also seem to like to want to squeeze every bit of information onto one page. I think they may be trying to take advantage of information overload.

4. There are only a few products, or only one

If there is only one product which is prominently displayed it can be a very bad sign. If that product is then pitched throughout the whole website that is bad.

5. There is a picture of some guy

This guy is a PHD with 50 degrees and he developed this product. He is super awesome and pretty handsome too. You can buy his books and dvds here too. Real medicine is developed by scores of different people doing research and testing and funding it, there is no one hero.

6. Lots and lots of testimonials

Jim from Ottowa swears by this product and now he no longer has back pain after using it for 2 months. There are usually tons of testimonials you can read. The fact is that in many cases these people simply don't exist. In some cases they do, but there are many reasons why anecdotes do not prove anything.

7. Cures everything

These quack medicines cure everything from back pains to cancer to depression to insomnia to asthma. There is a very long list of things it helps for. Most medicines are designed to target specific illnesses because that means they are more potent and more effective. Sometimes meds get mixed, like ephedrine and aspirin for a flu or whatever, but almost no medicine heals everything.

8. Its all natural and there are no risks

Normal medicine has risks because it is potent. If you drink an effective laxative you will shit yourself, and side effects may include dehydration. You can overdose on normal medicine because it has an effect. Things that have no effects like water you can have a lot of and it will do noting.

In conclusion

When you read these websites think to yourself: are they trying to convince me that it works? Are they trying to sell this to me or are they just presenting a product? Are they encouraging me to talk to my doctor? Normal medicine sites will not push their products, doctors do that for them. They wont sell this thing to you over the Internet. If you think you have nothing to lose think again. When you give these assholes money they will exploit people that are really sick, and that have more than likely already been bankrupted by medical bills. They have to make a choice between real doctors that can help but have not cured them and this bogus crap they found on-line. Quacks are amongst the sickest bastards on earth because they sell false hope to people who are suffering.
I hope that you will tell your friends if they are being conned by quackery, because with reason and skepticism we can make the world a better place.

Finance for the masses

2009-11-12T23:17:00.001+02:00

My goal is to become debt free and obligation free financially. So far so good. Here are some rules of thumb that im following

Avoid contracts
Cellular providers typically offer 2 year contracts. They will give you a brand new phone every two years if you just stick with them, but don't think for a second that this is a good thing. I have a top up R250 airtime per month contract. I can increase this amount but I cant decrease it. If prices come down and i dont call that much anymore I will lose money and be forced to make calls. But all is well because my contract is expiring, which means i can switch to a lower option or go to a new provider if there is a better price offered somewhere. But of course the bastards phoned me reminding me that I can upgrade... NO THANKS!! JUST SAY NO! Gym contracts can even be worse considering many people get gym contracts thinking that because they pay they will go. This is not true. I am convinced that gyms make the most money off of people that don't even go there.

Banks are your enemy
A week before my cellular provider phoned me my bank phoned me. I am saving up for my holiday and have quite a bit of cash in my account. Now they want it. Banks are not your friend. They will advertise people running in fields with butterflies but the truth is that they want your money, and they want you to be a slave to their debts. When you see that banker driving around in an aston martin, think about how you are paying for it by being stupid and using a credit card.

Pay off your car
Your car debt is the worst debt, because while you are having this debt it is near impossible to have any investment that can recouperate the lost amount of money on interest. If you pay more on your car loan some of that interest will be refunded to you. This is better than any investment you can make during your loan period. The worst part is that your car is depreciating at such a phenominal rate that you can never get that money back. The bank will tell you that you can skip payments of get balloon payments for lower installments. Dont fall for it, just pay it off. Cheaper cars are also good. In my opinion the most luxurious car is a 2.0 liter with aircon and leather seats, if your paying for anything more you are wasting your money.

Make sure your investments beat inflation
This one is simple. Inflation is 6.5%, your savings account gets you 5% interest. Even if you save money you are losing money. Keep this in mind when you invest money and remember that if you still have credit card debt and car debt your investments are a dead loss because your money is being sucked out of you by debt.

Control risk factors.
Alot of people think they can bareback life by not having insurance or having meager insurance. Get decent insurance coverage for health and your assets. Make sure you have a nest egg to pay your excesses as well. Some may think that self insurance is an option. Let me give an example of why this is not a good idea. Sure you can save enough money to buy a new car if your car is written off or stolen, but bad things sometimes happen in threes. So you buy your new car and wham you write it off on the first tree. With insurance your risks are covered at a cost, but it is one that is certainly worth it.

Don't let marketing get you
Many of us get spammed with messages telling us that you can now get something for much cheaper. The only problem with this is that specials have a place in any business. For instance I can have a special on razor blades in my supermarket and then push up the price of bread and milk at the same time. The consumer thinks they are saving but they end up walking out with a full trolley of groceries and what's worse they are under the illusion that they saved money so they buy more.

Compare prices and products
Shops are like candy stores. Candy is colourful, you walk into a candy store and shovel up the stuff that looks yummy. Electronics shops are the same thing. They will have beautiful televisions and cameras and whatever you want, but on their terms. People buy things just like that, and I have made this mistake before. Go online and search for the thing you want or need. Then compare specifications versus price and look at reviews. Reviews will often tell you how good the quality is of something. Bang for you buck is usually what im looking for. You can even do something crazy like say: search google for "hd tv" "bang for your buck". These are products that somehow are good quality and are pretty cheap too. When youve found the product you want look for the place with the best price and service. So when you find the item for the cheapest price then try to find reviews for the seller. If the seller has bad reviews go up to the next cheapest one, until you find the right price from the right place.

Pay cash and ask for discount!
Stores allow for credit but they are very happy when you fork out a wad of cash and pay on the spot. EFT with online stores is a good idea(since its more secure than credit cards). If you are paying cash and there is no cash price for something ask for discount. If the item is very expensive and you have a larger wad of cash they will be more willing to give discount.

Think before you buy!
When you initially want something there is a rush of goodiness you feel and the happiness with having the item. Allow a few days to pass and then really really think about. How about the lower end model? Will you really use that feature all the time? I know that mercs will turn their headlights as you take a corner but honestly I have never had a problem with my hyundai going around corners at night. Also remember that those cars always tend to go around mountain passes which most of us don't go around too often.

Don't buy that software!
Buying software can be smart if your using it every day. It can make your life more productive. But consider open source alternatives. This software is free and even though in many cases it may not have all the fancy features it often does the job very well. There is a site where you can check open source alternatives: www.osalt.com

Don't turn needs into wants
When you need something like a new cellphone don't go and buy the most expensive one you can find. Instead justfy every single feature of every single one you consider. For starters think about how you use the phone you have. Cell phones with GPS are pointless, because teh screens are mostly too small to help you navigate in your car. Whats worse is that a normal cell phone and a GPS is cheaper. Cell phone cameras are also terrible, so dont think your buying a camera. Your family photos wont look so good because of the limits of miniturisation of phone cameras. Consider buying a digital camera.

Don't buy cheap
You can go to a cheap clothing store and buy your entire wardrobe for next to nothing. Cheap clothing does not generally look good because somehow the fabric is cut and sown awkwardly. The colours will fade quickly and youll find yourself replacing it very quickly.

Buy the right price stuff
There are three groups of consumers. Those with too little money, those with enough money and those with too much money. Those with little buy cheap stuff thats unreliable and fails them. But they need it now and maybe is not so bad if their break light dangles from the bumper when they are struggling to feed themselves. Rich folks buy things that are exclusive. Please note that these things don't actually reflect quality. There is very little difference between R200 whiskey and R2000 whiskey, and the difference is largely psychosomatic denial on the part of those that buy the expensive stuff. People who have enough money and are serious buyers create a market for quality goods at reasonable prices. Dont try to be rich, its disappointing. Once I had a R600 bottle of champagne just for the heck of it. I realised afterward that an R80 bottle tastes better to me, and that the R600 one tastes much closer to a R30 bottle.

Vote with your money
If you are going to a store and their prices are ridiculous, don't buy there. Walk out. If everyone thinks this way then prices will come down. The truth is that business try to charge the maximum and the sad reality is that people like paying that much, so the shafting continues.

Conclusion
I hope that these tips are useful to someone, although I doubt that anyone reads this blog. I still like writing it though :)

KDE 4.3 - A thing of beauty

2009-10-06T17:35:00.000+02:00

KDE's normal Air look doesn't do it for me. I need something more serene. i stare at a computer screen all day so my idea of a nice desktop has to remind me of nature. Here it is:

In case your wondering:
Wallpaper: From interfacelift.com
Plasma theme: Mist
Clock widget: 2d clock superkaramba( i wish there was a plasma equiv)
Plasma Idgets/plasmoids:
- Ktorrent
- Now playing
- RSSNow
- Customizable weather plasmoid

Works for me :)

The fact is that i dont care that linux doesnt do things so nicely... because KDE looks so awesome doing nothing. Sure Im a serious computer user with serious needs. I guess here i am just geeking out. When i say serious i mean I produce music and there is no serious daw or support for my sound interface... For my PIM needs and entertainment KDE is perfect.

-

The Pattern

2009-09-27T22:44:00.000+02:00

Introduction

In the technology world innovation is the first step to creating new technology, but that's only the start. When technology becomes mature it is a different beast, and it can be hard to pin down when it is mature. There is however a pattern that is being followed by technology during its growing up phase.

Phase 1: Innovation

The first step in any new technology is when it is created. This step is when it is innovative and people start jumping on the bandwagon. For my example I will use the personal computer. When personal computers were first created they were cool and new. A good idea. At this stage people are reluctant and the uptake is slow.

Phase 2: Competition

The competition phase is when the technology becomes more viable and more companies or entities start develop their own spin off. Now people are buying pc's from vendor x,y,z etc. This is a bad growth stage because each entity makes a unique product and most of the products have unique form factors, unique systems that make them possible etcetera. They don't work together nicely across the different types or spin-offs.The idea in this stage is to establish a market leader. Whoever makes the best product wins(in a perfect world). In the real world it is the product that has the best marketing and the best shady tactics for kicking competition in the balls.

Phase 3: Chaos

At this stage many different systems are running but are unable to talk with each other or work together. Frustration grows and people want systems that are the same, but different. In the context of a PC you could compare it to having a system running dos, and another running Unix. You cant run Unix applications n DOS, and you can't run DOS applications in Unix. At this stage standardisation can take place next, ad should, but often it doesn't.

Phase 4: A winner emerges

In the case of operating systems for PCs Windows won the battle and most people started using windows. Suddenly everyone could communicate and there was a de facto standard. Competition is crushed and everyone seems pretty happy.

Phase 5: More competition

At this stage alternatives to the mainstream are developed and they make effort to interoperate with the de facto standard. Suddenly choice is there, but it is hard to make the choice because it has to play nicely with the de facto standard. Wine and Samba are some examples of Linux trying to play nice with Windows.Wine fights the good fight but suffers tremendously. In this phase the competitors try to topple the de-facto standard in order to move to the next phase.

Phase 6: Standardisation

Because the de facto standard tries to make the rules the alternatives gain enough ground to make rules of their own. They make an effort to work together to make their own standards. The leader of the pack(Like Windows) now has to either choose to play along or to try and make their won standard win(OOXML vs ODF). This transformation is slow, but the real standard will usually win because people realise the value of the open standard eventually and want to make it easy to switch between alternatives based on their needs and not some scary vendor lock in.

Phase 7: Commoditisation

At this stage it doesn't matter which alternative you use anymore, because they all play nicely together and conform to open standards. This is what is happening with browsers now. These days you can (almost)choose between browsers for what they offer and not what they support because they all support the same technology. This is when a technology is really mature and real competition flourishes.

Rinse and repeat

In open source the 5th phase falls away and is rather followed by standardisation and commoditisation. In both open and closed development the cycles starts from the beginning again with innovation. The cycle is quicker when open technology is involved because there is no need to keep a standard if it is obsolete. When I was dreaming up these phases I did realise that it doesn't always happen exactly like this, although the model seems quite solid to me. The browser wars make it work and also the operating system wars. Linux is and Mac are gaining traction and other operating systems are also popping up seemingly out of nowehere. This phase is long and painful and the winner is still undecided. Some application vendors are already making multi-platform applications because they want to cater to the chaos.

Spamming yourself

2009-09-27T22:13:00.000+02:00

The internet brings us social networking and information at our fingertips. Or does it? The truth is that you can search your ass off for something the one day and not find it. Two days later you try again with different search terms and you get it. The web is just that. A web of information, and I dont mean a beautiful orb web. The web is currently more like a web woven by a spider on caffeine: Observe:

What this means

This means that we search in multiple places for the same things, we sign up to multiple websites for different things and end up with many different accounts at different places spamming us with updates in our inboxes. Luckily e-mail clients have evolved to a point where we can filter and categorise our mail, but the web itself fails to keep itself organized.

Why?

The internet is about data exchange. The web is about data presentation. Often we are interested in the data so we go to the web to have it displayed. The displays are however inconsistent and spread all over the place. Now if we just had access to the data in a uniform display... if only. This is where aggregators and data APIs step in. The problem with these things is that they are few and far between, and their implementations are different. So we cant just plug one application into multiple internet sites and suck information into our own user interfaces. A desktop application running multiple forum sites which you are on will for instance work much faster than a website that you have to go to. It just pulls the data from the various sites. The interface and functions are the same. It's easy to work with.

I Know I bitch alot

I know I bitch alot about the web vs the desktop. The reason is that standards do matter. One standard like RSS has made a big difference in the usability of websites. Now you can see updates to your favourite sites very easily, without loading all the pages. Now imagine if facebook and other sites worked similarly. Why are the web and the desktop seperate in the first place? Why are we constantly booting up our computers just to launch a browser to do what is important when the softare we have should be capable of that. How can we achieve that?

Dynamic UIs and Scripted applications

What makes the web the web is 2 things:
- Dynamic user interfaces that are stored at a single place and can be updated centrally
- Dynamic code that runs on a central server
So why cant desktop applications do the same? There were attempts at this. Java was one, but failed to an extent because java application where big downloads if they had to happen every time. Ad revenue is a big driver for internet sites. With apis and local running applications ads might dissappear, leaving no revenue stream for websites.

If I Was tasked with solving the problem

I would make an application framework that allowed developers to write applications stored on a central server that are downloaded once and used many times. The applications script would be written in python and/or javascript and would be cached locally until an update to the application is issued. There would be an option to run some script server side(for security reasons maybe or to do something like upload files to the server).

I believe that there are frameworks and ideas trying to solve this problem currently. Like Adobe AIR and and others... I don't know if these will take off and what the implication will be for web applications.

And there goes more of my rabbling

Software Development Blah blah blah

2009-09-03T21:58:00.000+02:00

Sometimes when I read things like "LINQ to XML guide with IEnumerable usage for maximal" it all starts to blur into blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....

Sometimes I think to myself whether programming is really what I want to do in life... You know... I learn so many useless things... so much blah blah blah...

Don't get me wrong. I love programming. I just don't like all the bullshit associated with it. Good clean beautiful design is better than "XML AJAX LINQ XAML Interface!!!" I mean for fuck's sake!

This shit just drives me up the wall when I read it... It makes me feel stupid in a way... but when I think deeper I realise that it is stupid... not me. It seems that programming has become all about syntactic sugar and killer features, rather than good solid design and thoughtful methods There should be no need for fancy acronyms and programs written in 5 languages that are just CRUD forms...

Sigh... such is life...
Fucked if you do... fucked if you don't

So I finally tried Ubuntu

2009-08-07T00:11:00.000+02:00

I have always liked FreeBSD... sure it was hard to set up but i really like it. It's a rock solid fast operating system and it feels more well thought out than Linux to me. The problem is that over the years Ubuntu has gained traction which left me with the obligation to try Linux again.

The last time i used Linux

The last time I used Linux was Redhat 8. Yeah that was a long time ago. RedHat 7.2 was really cool and I upgraded for the new flashy icons and everything... I think. The problem I had with it was that RPM was just impossible for me, and no dependencies were downloaded automatically. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it drove me nuts. This drove me away from Linux because on FreeBSD i had ports and packages working for me in no time. I eventually moved to PC-BSD which is awesome(Especially PBI), but the problem was that I don't want to keep reinstalling it. My windows reinstalls would kill my boot loader, and my DVD rom was broken. I couldn't reinstall from the DVD. So I decided to give Kubuntu a try.

Bad rap

Kubuntu is apparently a pretty bad KDE distribution. Now I am not sure if this is due to KPackageKit(which is an awfull package manager) or what, but it worked pretty kewl for me.

Wine

Wine is a great piece of software... but sadly none of the software I use seems to run on it. I tried running Max Payne 2. It took really long to load and hanged eventually. Command & Conquer tiberium wars didnt even install. Visual Studio 2005 also hung at install time. This means that I will be booting into Linux to erm... surf the web and check mail... oh and play with Linux. I Installed urban terror on Linux and there was no sound. No surprise it works in Windows... Sound is a huge issue in Linux at the moment... I am sure it will be addressed just as most graphics card and input device problems were also solved.

Sound problems

Now I am sure alot of people have sound problems in Linux. My sound card is a EMU 0404 USB ASIO audio interface. Its basically a professional sound interface that lets me plug my guitar in and record on the fly and add software sound effects. Its really cool. Linux in general have not tackled this use case so I was left pretty much high and dry. The funny thing is that it works, but the sample rate is wrong. I tried in vain to get alsa to correct the sample rate and eventually gave up. This in turn meant I had to use the cheapie sound card I bought for use with FreeBSD(Server operating systems cant be expected to have support for pro soundcards).

I searched the web and learnt about alsa configuration and the like, tried different forum entry suggestions and nothing worked for me. I hung around in the alsa channel on freenode repeating my question but nobody knew. The worst part is that only one out of about 5 peoples' questions were answered when I was in there. I know people are busy but it's sad to see the free support system fall apart like that.

If only Creative would acknowledge Linux and make drivers for it. The problem is they won't, because there isn't any decent software out there compared to Windows and Mac counterparts. I checked out Ardour which had a vague resemblance to Cubase, but without VST instruments and a piano roll? I couldn't get a beep out of it. If there was a brilliant DAW for Linux then maybe Creative would make drivers, but how do you create a Brilliant DAW without an existing market... You don't.

The end result of the sound problem is that when I boot into Windows I have to unplug my speakers very uncomfortably from the back of my pc and plug it into my EMU. This makes me lazy and then I don't want to boot back into Linux. Its stupid I know but Windows does everything I need and currently Kubuntu is merely a toy.

Should you try it?

Yes you should... for the following reasons.
- You can feel safer doing your banking and web surfing because you are less likely to pick up malware(if at all)
- If windows breaks you can just boot up Kubuntu and still do what it is that's important.
- Open office is not that bad for casual use. You can use it to do most of your normal officy tasks.
- Playing music and videos doesn't seem to be an issue at all so you if your a mediaphile it might be perfect for you. There are also lots of power user applications that let you burn cd's, edit videos, manage photos and so on. Once again all your stuff will be safe here.
- If you boot into windows only to use certain applications your windows installation will last longer.

A final note

Using Linux doesn't have to be an exclusive thing. I have heard of many users that have dumped their windows partitions and installed Linux, only to be disappointed. Change is slow without revolution, but it is happening. Freedom is important when you use your computer. Why?

Think about it this way. If you keep using the same product all your life the people who sell it to you can charge whatever they want and do whatever they want because you rely on them. Even if you pirate that software, you are still dependant on it. It owns your mind to an extent. Using something just because it's free is stupid, but as you can see above you don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are uses for Linux. You can use both Windows and Linux. That way you will stand up and be counted as someone who wants to keep their mind free.

* PS. I know this writing is bad but I am just going off on a tangent and dont really seem to care.

The top 10 lie

2009-06-30T17:08:00.000+02:00

Why don't people pay for online content? Why do they just run off and download the stuff. The reason is the fact that it's so readily available. People know instinctively that its bullshit to pay for things that can be duplicated
cost free. You can't fight common sense.

If you ask me I would say there could be a market for delivering unique and unpopular content. If the Green Apple Splatters, a local band in Indonesia has an album out that has limited distribution, delivering it to a world wide niche audience could be profitable, considering that that is where community driven Bittorrent falls short. A global niche market can be huge, considering the reach of the internet. But not big enough to have the content readily available to file sharers. The torrents are seedless.

The top 10 lie that I'm referring to in the title of this post refers to the way that big content controls what we like. They shove these top 10 lists in our face and tell us that poke her face is the best fucking song ever conceived and we should all buy that album. The result is that it's shared on a file sharing network, and there are 3 million sources for the song. Why then pay for it?

The truth about content is that there is so much brilliant content out there that caters for just about every musical taste. There are some brilliant musicians that never get played on the radio, and their torrents have no seeds. They just don't have a wide audience and are often not as good looking as the RIAA pop stars.

They also don't give a shit whether they have an audience or not. They like making the style they make and fuck everyone else.

Sounds Utopian I know, but it's out there.

Nobody reads this blog

2009-06-23T21:47:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I wonder why I come here every now and then and write something here. The main reason is actually that I want to practice writing. It would have been nice if someone came along and read it... but what the hell.

I have a lot on my mind and half the things I think about I never get down on paper. Many of my ideas don't reach anyone. My thoughts are very much my own. I am an introvert and nothing can change that... so maybe an introvert's blog is only for him-/her-self.

It is my wish however that the messages on my blog reaches someone and helps them. I realise that my blog is mostly opinion and unverified crap, but maybe it will make sense to someone. I wrote the piece about bad developers because I have had to work with them and their code. I want people to truly look carefully before they just hire a developer. I want to save you the pain. Get it?

Another thing I wanted with this blog was to open peoples eyes a little. There is so much bullshit floating around and it's unbelievable how people just eat the shit up. I haven't gotten around to writing about these things though, partly because I don't want people to find my name under it.

Some time ago I realised that many people choose denial. When you give them the truth they will spit in your face. My long journey towards the truth has gotten me to denounce many of my former beliefs, including Christianity. I used to be a believer as they say. The problem with me came when I learned about science and the natural world. The first big change was that my religion became flexible. I started to believe that the bible was an account of real events made inaccurately by primitive people. This introduced problems such as:

Did Jesus really walk on water? Maybe he was surfing? Maybe he was a magician?

As my knowledge grew and I found out that Christianity was a mixture of elements from different religions my questioning of the whole religion came. In my last prayer I asked God to let me find him through knowledge, and not blind faith.

I realise that according to religious doctrine questioning God is wrong, but I came to the conclusion that I should following a simple logical path. Jesus said we should go to God like children. Children believe anything you tell them, and that is what much of the religious doctrine is based on. However there is another explanation of this exact same idea. Children ask questions. Children are inquisitive and want to learn about the world. They believe what their parents tell them because they believe their parents are accurate sources of information.

I also thought that if God loved me and made me inquisitive and skeptical by nature, it would be unfair for me to not find him when people who accept everything at face value do. I was careful and skeptical since I was a small boy. That quality of my personality has just grown stronger and stronger to the point where I don't trust any information at face value anymore.

An example of my skepticism is the advice people give me. I have been having stomach problems for the past 2 years or so, and people have given me advice regarding my problems. Quite a few people blamed my consumption of energy drinks. Red Bull was the culprit. I did some Wikipedia and Google research and found the exact opposite. Red Bull taken in moderation is really good for you! They put things in there that are good for you so that your body can feel better. That and a ton of caffeine. People seemed to force their medical advice on me and make me feel guilty for my lifestyle.

They great thing about being skeptical in the 21'st century is that you don't have to go to the library to confirm your mistrust in an idea. You can quickly search the web or Wikipedia and find the answer. People believe the wildest shit with no good proof... for instance...

-

We have toxins in our bodies

.. err yeah... we excrete them daily. Toxins don't make us tired and unhappy, it's our shitty high stress lifestyles.
-

Modern medicine is bad, we should take herbs and use acupuncture.

Please for fuck's sake if you feel sick go and see real doctors and take real medicine. Be suspicious of your doctor recommends or tries to sell herbal or new age shit.
-

Religion

1 pair of each species on the planet decides to get on one boat and lives there for 40 days while the earth is covered in water. Come now... if the entire earth is covered in water... where did it all go afterwords?

I really wish the world would wake up and smell the concrete. There are so many lies and bullshit being swung by the religious zealots and the greedy assholes who are trying to rip us off and sell us nothing. I sincerely hope that the internet will breed more skeptics, and that we together can create a world where everyone decides for themselves. Of all ideals I realize that this one is probably the most unrealistic.

KDE 3.5 vs KDE 4

2009-06-23T21:20:00.000+02:00

About three years ago when I was a student I downloaded PC-BSD. I loved the operating system, the applications and used it for six months, barely ever booting into windows. PC-BSD was running KDE 3.5.x. This version of KDE was the best desktop experience I have ever had. Everything felt so well integrated and useful.

I could link IM accounts in kopete with my address book which then linked to KMail and konqueror. It was great fun and really pleasant. I liked everything about it.

Enter KDE4

Unlike the disappointed masses of KDE users my outlook on KDE 4 was... KDE 4.5 should be great! After all I used KDE 3.5

Some of the arguments raised against the KDE4 design were
- Developers shouldn't design programs for end users, they don't know what end users want
- Icons on your desktop is the best way
- We don't need eye candy... we need functionality

This is all a load of shit. Why? Let me explain.

Developers can't design programs/interfaces etc

The initial developer of an open source program is usually the user of the program. This means that developers are developing for an end user, mainly themselves. Ease of use is important because your writing the program for yourself. You don't want to fish in menus and struggle to operate your own program. More importantly if you release it to the public you want it to be easy to use and intuitive so that more people will use it and less people will request support. I agree that some developers cannot design interfaces. That is true, but it is not a personal quality of all developers.

Icons on your desktop

I am guilty. I used icons on my desktop extensively. The problem is that they are really part of a problem paradigm. I have files and launchers on my desktop, 2 things that are not related. It's easy to park things on your desktop. You will work faster if you right click and create a new file right there. You will however ultimately end up with a shit load of unused and unorganized crap. This is not a problem of power users. End users suffer the most. They don't clean the crap up and instead leave everything there to rot.

We don't need no eye candy

We are not robots. We fall in love with people who we think are pretty. We decorate our homes with art and colours. Now you seriously want to come and tell me you want a shitty 90s looking desktop, as long as everything works. Offices suck because of the boring colours and fluorescent lighting. We are more productive when we are stimulated by beauty. Smooth animation and subtle design beauty will make us more productive than crude looking unnatural interfaces.

The high horse

If you spend some time on the web reading comments and blogs on various web sites you realize how everyone on the internet knows better than everyone else. In the case of KDE4 vs KDE 3.5, every second idiot had to come out and spew crap out of their mouths because all the clever people making KDE were dumb according to them.

All of this because the .0 release wasn't on par with KDE 3.5 functionality. It seems more and more like the internet is overrun with the same ignorant fickle people that hate everything new and contradictory to their ideas.

The bad programmer

2009-06-08T17:56:00.000+02:00

I have only been a "real world" for about 2 years now. A large part of these 2 years have been maintaining a system which was given to me. The code base was (and still is to some extent) retarded. Much of my work has been rework of another person's shit.

Businesses don't seem to realize how idiot programmers can fuck up and get away with it. Managers don't know shit right? Bad programmers are bad because they aren't taught better or don't care... this results in the 3 distinct types of bad programmers. If you think you know another category I am missing, please inform me, because I realize that my assumptions are vague and my descriptions are general.

Type 1 Bad programmer: The Noob

The noob is fresh out of college or has just learned to program. They often have the best intentions but fail at the simplest programming tasks. I too was a noob doing dumb shit that I now wish I could go back and fix, but can't.

Noobs are obvious to spot and they don't usually hide the fact that they don't know what they are doing. They can change, unfortunately the code they leave behind can cause disasters. They will often try to do something that has already been done. They work with basic subsets of advanced programming, and they still struggle a bit to be consistent. As a programmer of only 2 years some of these traits are still in my system... just considerably less.

What I wanted and what all noobs want is a mentor. Someone to guide them to excellence.

Type 2 Bad Programmer: The apathetic programmer

The guy who just does his job. Nothing more. Sometimes less. Enough to get by. Ehh it works... you know?

These people don't care about programming. They get no joy out of paradigms, principles, or algorithms. They often join the league of programming wanting that big paycheck, or just having found nothing else. They don't care about conventions. Their code is messy and half witted. You can feel the apathy. Some of them know how to but don't care, but most of them don't care to know anything. When you explain something they turn into nodding brick walls. You feel embarrassed by their apathy towards that which you love.

They are content doing the most mundane task over and over again, not caring to automate.

Type 3: The Guru/Hacker/Pro

This is the worst of the worst. These are the arrogant fuckers that think they know everything. They pride themselves in originality. To the trained eye this originality looks like someone tried the longest possible way to the most trivial things. Their biggest problem is that they are too arrogant to accept any corrections and believe their code is the best. Since nobody can understand their code they can claim that other programmers are inferior. They have no people skills. Once you have hired this guy you have to keep him employed for life, or be willing to throw away very single line of over engineered crap he has written.

Conclusion

Be very wary when hiring a solo programmer to start your new projects. You are at the mercy of their design. Hire programmers very carefully. Don't assume that programmers don't need people skills. People who understand people will write code that people can understand.

A great idea can be a great project, but with bad code it is like a house without foundations where hot and cold water taps are randomly swapped and mislabeled. You will get burnt!

The source code of your projects are like an investment. A good investment will grow and give you profit, whilst a bad one will cause you to have to bail out when it's the worst possible time.

The traits of a good programmer

Good programmers are open minded and discuss their solutions. They like to build big structures out of big parts. They are bridge engineers, creating modular piers and then moving them into place. Good programmers enjoy programming, and their eyes light up when they find out something new. They will constantly look for something new and interesting. They are honest about their own code. They improve their own code. They are keen learners and look for new skills that could help them. They know regular expressions because they couldn't resist learning what they are.

Removing BOM(Byte order marker) characters from your Aspx Pages

2009-03-24T22:30:00.000+02:00

The Problem

I recently had a painful problem. I had written a python script to parse aspx files and add a user control, replace some controls with other ones and do a huge batch operation. Everything worked ok, until I started seeing a funny sequence of characters in my pages when I was debugging: ï»¿

After googling those exact character I discovered that this is a BOM character. A Byte Order Marker character is used in Unicode files to denote the byte order. As in: is it little Indian… err endian or big endian. Python obviously did this when editing the files. The really neat thing is that Visual Studio did not display these characters. Instead if I could find the invisible character and delete it, Visual Studio would stall for a few seconds and when I save the file it would bitch about the encoding changing and source control. But this was in the lucky cases. In most cases tracking down the visible character was difficult, and Visual Studio didn’t want to delete it. I left gaps of no characters between tags, and that’s where it was. Yes visual studio is an idiot I guess.

The Solution

Notepad2. A freeware editor that has no R&D department behind it, no intellisense, and no really fancy features. Today it was better than visual studio. Opening the offending file in Notepad2 I could already see the character encoding in the status bar. UTF-8. Choose File->Encoding->ANSI and then File->Save and the BOM suddenly shows up, but as a question mark(?). Delete the character and voila!

If you want to get notepad2 you can grab it at : http://www.flos-freeware.ch/ .

The Windows Music Player Battle

2009-03-18T21:53:00.000+02:00

Since there is growing competition with music players on Windows lately, I decided to shop around and try them out. Can they replace Winamp? How does foobar2000, iTunes and Songbird measure up to the great Winamp?

I am an avid music listener with a large collection of music. To manage that I need a good media player. Before I start I'd like to say who is the current champion and long time player on my desktop. Winamp. There is a reason I don't want to use Winamp anymore. Winamp seperates playlist from media library and makes the media library a sort of addon. New players have a singular interface where all your controls and media is. The multi window thing just doesnt do it for me anymore. So I decided on this round of installing Windows XP for the millionth time, that I would shop around. The first contender:

Songbird

First impressions

Songbird looks promising and there has been a lot of hype about it online. There seems to be quite a community around it and there are plugins and skins to choose from. Everything from the website to the installation looks sharp and well done with pretty artwork.

Interface

The interface is nothing amazing, but then I wanted a tool, not a piece of art. I did however curiously download 2 themes that looked good on the plug in site, but looked pretty bland when I applied them. Also like Firefox(which is also XUL driven) the application needs to restart to load themes and plugins. This is a bit of a pain.

Usability

This was the deal breaker for me. I added some files to my library which worked quite nicely, and set folder monitoring to on. In Winamp this passively load new music into your library. In Songbird this eats up the entire UI and makes the program unresponsive with a modal "Adding files to library..." dialog in the middle of the screen. So you cant do anything when your loading music into the library. Right clicking and getting album art is a gamble. It may show a dialog or it might just do nothing with no indication of failure(that I could see). I could live with most of these things. What I couldn't live with was the fact that scrolling through my list of music was sluggish. And so I uninstalled Songbird.

Conclusion

I don't want to knock Songbird down. After all it is a relatively young player. It has a lot of promise. May I will try 1.x when the performance issues have been sorted out.

Foobar2000

First impressions

Foobar is a very small minimal player. It's pretty fast and snappy and has all the necessary elements for a good music player. It's not as impressive as the others, but it gets the job done.

Interface

Foobar has the bare basics in user interface elements with no flashy anything. It does however not look bad either. Theres not much to say but it works great.

Usability

The user interface for Foobar is complex. There are settings that I don't care about in the preferences and things I will never set. I guess this is nice for someone who needs these features but I don't. I liked the flexible UI but couldn't really find my media library, even though I added folders to it. Usability is not so much an issue in Foobar as it does what it needs to simply.

Conclusion

My problem with Foobar was that it didn't support Last FM, and it didn't have a nice media library. It looks like it's more geared toward old style "add files to playlist" usage. It is however a great player and I feel like I don't want to uninstall it.

iTunes

First Impressions

Apple always has quite a bit of polish on their products. And this makes all their stuff well... pretty impressive. My first fear of iTunes was that it would be too apple-y. The download was rather large, 69 megs(coincidence?).

Interface

The first thing I did was try to see if I could change the default skin. It's not that I don't like Apple's brushed metal fetish, it's just that I like things to be a bit more consistent with my desktop. I couldn't find any such option. I also had this big fat message saying Genius sidebar is not available in my country. No problem. I probably won't miss it(since I don't know what it is.) Coverflow view is really impressive. I am really liking this interface

Usability

iTunes decided it would be a good idea to convert all my WMA files. I agreed since I hate WMA. Trying to download album art required me to sign up for an iTunes store account. When I was doing this I was slapped a EULA that if printed could wipe out at least one hectare of trees. And now it's time to uninstall. If I want to use get cover art I need a credit card to get an account. Screw it, I'm not getting a credit card just for that.

Conclusion

This really sucks. It seems like a very nice player. Being impressed with cover flow I would have really liked to use it with album covers, but Apple seems to want a credit card for that. This player is made for Apple, and not for the user... sadly. They want me to buy songs from them, so never mind that then.

And the winner is...

Winamp by a landslide. Winamp still reigns supreme on Windows. Songbird has a chance of competing, but will probably have more market penetration on Linux. I wanted to list Amarok 2 here, but having tested it on Windows I wasn't convinced. The user interface in 2.0 took a strange turn and I can't live with that yet. KDE applications are still too unstable on Windows anyways.

It sucks that I set out to replace Winamp and ended up using it. I guess it really does kick the Lama's ass, and all the other Windows music players' asses too.

Why dislike VB (.Net)?

2009-03-13T00:35:00.001+02:00

When I first started programming with VB. Net I hated it. Then after university I started to understand it, and now I am fully aware of many of it's features. Hating a .Net language is like hating car because of it's colour, because after its been CLR'd, the language effectively loses it's identity. This is because all languages in .Net use .Net libraries and functions, and have to adapt to the .Net way of doing things. But syntactically some arguments remain... so why do developers hate VB so much?

The Default Argument In Favour Of VB
Vb .net has one feature C# lacks. Vb .Net has default arguments. The C# team(or whatever) decided that default arguments where not a good idea...

Why? Well they have their reasons:
http://blogs.msdn.com/csharpfaq/archive/2004/03/07/85556.aspx

But if you read the comments in that post you can clearly see that this was a mistake.
One that VB does not make.

And a brief rebuttal from someone at D:
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/23279.html

VB .Net 9+ has all the features of C# and in some cases it's a bit easier to use... but one of the main problems with VB is it's legacy.

mid, trim, right, left and even rem are still valid in VB .Net 9. VB 6 Programmers come to .Net and write shitty second rate half aborted VB6 mixed with some object orientation abuse. That is those who are not interested in learning the .Net framework or proper OOP.

The Skill Pool
The skills legacy does make VB attractive, because they can draw from a larger skills pool. VB's got a lot more old hands. C# kiddies(like myself) are still relatively inexperienced, and those who are are rare.

VB <> Standard
Another VB problem is standards. VB is a rebel by design. It's a very stupid language for that reason. After th 400th time End If becomes kind of redundant, but Microsoft has the solution to this problem. Automate text entry! So before you know it your sitting with huge chunks of meaningless keywords. Other language's syntax are much more aligned with C, the base of modern programming.

The <> character is also not a popular choice for not, and writing out the keywords may not be either.

One Liners
The thing that pisses me off the most is that the language parser is very unforgiving. Everything has to happen on one line or else... you have to put a _ at the end of the line. This has been fixed to some extent in VB 10, because it's a stupid limitation with no value whatsoever, but my fear is that remnants might remain. This causes lazy developers to shove everything into one line, and makes long concatenated strings especially tedious.

Conclude()
The conclusion of using VB for almost 2 years on the job is that I don't recommend anyone to it as a learning language. It seems to attract the wrong kind of programmer in many cases. A little bit of syntax can go a long way, and a language like VB is not syntactically sound or pleasing. The final nail in the coffin is that when you learn C# you will have the advantage of being able to adapt easier to Java, C and C++, with VB, your left with pretty much nothing.

The sad part here is that default arguments is the only defense I could think of for VB. VB is my bread and butter, and so I guess I owe it at least a bit of thanks.

Regular expression find and replace with Visual Studio

2009-03-04T18:53:00.000+02:00

Recently I had an interesting problem. I had functions in the form of:

func(param, param2)

I had to replace func with func2 which didnt take param 2, but only func 2 where param 2 was equal to a certain value, say ... x. Param was completely unpredictable , except that it was a string.

Regular expressions saved the day:

regex: {func1\("}{.+}{", x\)}

replacement string: newFunc("\1")

func1("aaasdds", x)
func1("Goodbye cruel world!!!! :(", x)

becomes...

newFunc("aaasdds")
newFunc("Goodbye cruel world!!!! :(")

By creating groups with the curly brackets {} you can replace only certain parts of a string, and match things around it.

The nice thing I've noticed about the . character is that it matches until your next match string. Meaning you can put just about anything in a string and still pull it out of a function call. Even the string below is matched:

func1("Goodbye cruel ""world!!!! :(""", x)

In python you can use re.sub. There is a slight difference here though. The groups must be contained in round brackets().

IF you are a developer and are ever confronted with a batch of string replacements, and you do not use regex... you sir, are an idiot and your the torture of the mundane work is your fault only....

Web vs. Desktop: The Stupidity continues

2009-02-24T22:05:00.000+02:00

Just to be perfectly clear: "The Web" is not a platform. "Cloud computing" is a bullshit term for web services and so is "SOA". All these things are a web. An entanglement of different technologies to solve the same basic problem set. What I'm raging about is of course the movement from traditional desktop applications to web applications. There are several reasons I despise the "web platform", which I will outline here and people will probably hate me for it.

The web is a web of usability disasters.
Traditionally the www was about displaying information, then it became about filling in forms, and somewhere along the way some idiot decided it would be a good idea to write full fledged applications on it. The results vary... and every web application suffers from usability ills. In a platform dependent application there are standards. File, edit, view, window, help for instance. In a web environment these things are strewn in random places on web pages. Blogger works with tabs and there are some things in it's editor that don't work with other online editors, and the inconsistency goes on and on.

You don't have to download and install it...
Yes you do... everytime you load a page. You can say what you want, but you can never convince me that a request->download->render cycle is faster than a native toolkit drawing controls on a form. Therefore there will always be delays when you use a web interface, which doesn't seem so bad right? Consider an application like GMail. You search your mail and a little waiting icon appears as you type and it searches. How amazing! But on a native desktop application this happens instantly, and you don't even think about it.

But how do you deploy desktop applications... its impossible weh!
No it isn't. This is a very common argument I hear second rate developers(first rate web devs) make. Look at Firefox. How many times did you download it. Once. How many times did you install it. Once. How many times did you update it. Never, it updates itself and all it's extensions. It targets multiple platforms too, throwing that argument out of the window as well. Firefox is certainly not the exception, applications have been self updating for quite some time and targeting multiple platforms for a while.

The speed limit is 60... let's all go 6
One thing that makes the web craze really silly is the fact that modern computers are so powerful. Those resources don't go to waste. Browsers eat up system resources to get all those web pages displaying correctly, because thats essentially all a browser does. However those resources could be used to make your interfaces snappy as hell, with cached instant data filtering and grouping, 3D applications and other amazing things. The web strangles modern computers, that try to render the huge differing interfaces with huge differing technologies all pasted together in a mish mash effort to create something usable.

Web Programmings sucks
I am a web developer and I hate it. There is always some complicated way to do something that is supposed to be really simple. Nothing is ever simple with web applications. CSS design is not simple, ASP .Net page cycles are not simple, the DOM is certainly not simple(considering how non standard it is and how messy js can get). The whole mix of Javascript + CSS + HTML + leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I wish I could have the hours of my life back that I spent trying to get some image to move 3 pixels left and fuckign stay there.

Conclusion
The problems in web applications are already solved by desktop applications. There is no reason why desktop applications cant do the same as web applications. Sure they can be a little thinner in many cases and have less overhead, but shoving them into a web page makes life confusing for developers and end users.

Software Design: The easy way is complicated

2008-12-17T19:17:00.000+02:00

Wait... WHAT?

A programmer may find it easier to copy and paste a statement 10 times than to use a for loop if they have not done a for loop at least several times in the given language. The fact remains that tedious and repetitive work is easier than work that constantly differs by a large degree.

The real life story

A colleague of mine once made me change back something I had added, because she wanted to "keep things simple". What is it she wanted to change you ask? I had created a simple class with constant strings to name session variables(.Net). This way you could easily find troubles with session variables being misset or accidentally reused for something else, because instead of strings they are simple. One problem that arose is that the debugger refused to display the value of the session variable or use it in any expression, and thus it was removed, but at a cost.

What cost?

The costs are debugging and testing time. Keeping your code centralized is an important aspect of good design. If this was untrue there would be a sink in one room, and a toilet in the other. This would mean you can take a shit, but you have to walk accross the hall to wash your hands. Oversimplification of a problem requires narrowing of the problem domain, which means that you will be solving more oversimplified problems later. It can actually get to a point where renaming a variable can take days, and break entire system which rely on it.

Another example

If you don't use a for loop in your code, and copy and paste the same code snippet 30 times, you will most likely not have out of range indexes, and if your careful it will work perfectly. Then you leave the project and the next programmer comes along. They run into your hard coded loop and wonder: "Why did he do it this way?". They(and by they I mean me too, this is a real example) then have to sift through every single iteration making absolutely sure that there are no functional differences in any iteration. This almost bit me. A database field in a legacy system is limited to 10 characters. When the field names increment past 10, the last letter of the name is replaced by the 1 in the number. So you would have flag9, fla11 suffixing the field name. Another catch was that 10 was 0, so you would have a sequence: FLAG9, FLAG0, FLA11...

The problem was perfectly solvable with one for loop with 2 nested if statements. The programmer before me took the lazy route and made my route hell. I still worry a little if some business logic wasn't lost there, but I cry no tears for bad code. It needs to go. As soon as possible.

Complex implementation makes simple interface

To return to the copy and paste example, it is easy to copy and paste some little action everywhere you need it. A typical example is:

- Connect to Database
- Execute query
- Return result
- Close connection

Pasting snippets that do this is luckily not something I have seen often(except maybe in sloppy PHP). Writing a function that does the above will mean you never have to paste that snippet, and you can make global changes enhancing the way you data access layer functions.

Wrap up

I have seen many programmers wrestle with the same problem over and over again. I mean... I have seen the same programmer wrestle with the same problem he had a few days ago, because he solved the problem once, but did not wrap the answer up into a simple to remember way. In order to advance yourself and the systems you work on, you have to make sure you do the least work with maximum area effect.

Be rike the atom bomb, smaw bom, but spread rarge area.

Software Design: Getting it right the first time

2008-12-11T19:45:00.000+02:00

The longer you spend designing your software, the quicker you will write it... right? WRONG!

The best way to design software is to write it. Now I know that goes against the principles of good design, so let me say this: You need a fairly good design to start with, but one that is essentially an experiment. During this first version of your software you will start to notice that there are flaws in your design. This is what makes writing it so important. Your writing it to throw it away.
"Always be ready to throw (at least) one away" - Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month

I read somewhere that Microsoft uses this approach by making competing products.

Here's an interesting discussion on the topic: http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=26268

This will teach you important lessons in the next version. I think that version one should always be an attempt at a functional system, and version 2 should be a complete redesign addressing the problems with version 1 head on.

But WHY!!!? Why not perfect the first time?

The answers are simple. When you solve a problem set the first time you choose an angle of attack after some forethought. The angle of attack is based on assumptions you have made according to specification documents, users and the operating environment. Specifications being what they are(incomplete at best) change as the system evolves. The initial idea of how something should have worked may come under scrutiny only when it is actually being used.
During the detailed design of the software, including classes, modules, interfaces etc you make decisions on how things will branch out. What will remain static? What will change? These things are assumed, and quite often guessed completely wrong in the first iteration of the software lifecycle.
Your expertise need to change. When you first take on a new project you may know something about underlying business rules, but you are very likely not an expert. You essentially need to become an expert in the needs that a system has before you can start writing it. The problem is that the best way to become an expert is to write code for the application. You learn that babies cant jump over hedgehogs, and hedgehogs are allergic to babies, but only when they have salted peanuts. Before you know these things your business logic fails multiple times, and this may happen on the design level.

The programmers aversion to design

The programmer's aversion to design is natural, and not a failure. Wanting to accomplish the goal or see how the machinery will work is what a programmer can and should do, instead of meaningless speculation. I am by no means saying that no design should be done. There is useful design. A good database design that will work across different versions of your application is essential. Data anomalies and conversions are not easy problems, so it's best to get it right the first time.

I'm still skeptical about Microsoft

2008-11-08T23:09:00.000+02:00

Let's start by saying what everyone is saying. Microsoft has changed their ways right? Things are better now. They want interoperability. They went into an agreement with Novel for that reason! They are releasing software as open source and trying to make things interoperable with their software. They want to advance the software industry... hmmm. I don't think so.

Let's dig a little deeper shall we.

Past transgressions

If you still believe we should give that company a chance to redeem themselves. Take a look at these articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

It's not difficult to dig up dirt on this company. I let these articles speak for themselves. The only reason this company is still standing is because of their overwhelming market share. In my opinion these criminal activities should have lost them their support and power from the rest of the world. It's like suing a billionaire scammer for 1 million dollars and letting him carry on with scamming.

Interoperability

Boy what a mouth full. Microsoft is working with Novell and other Linux based companies now to get interoperability with other software. How did they strike this deal? By threatening Linux with patent lawsuits. Effectively they wanted to scare independent software vendors into dropping Linux in order to avoid lawsuits from them. Naughty naughty ms...

Open source strategy

Yeah right. Everyone was shocked when Microsoft made this move. I however knew what the effect was going to be. Microsoft wants to open source code to things that don't really matter, and if those things matter they want to sprinkle it with patents. Is Windows open source? Is Internet explorer open source? Is the .Net framework open source? Is visual studio open source? This software is their vendor lock in stronghold. Until they release the source code for them under unlimited licenses(or GPL like licenses) they have not changed their tune.

So where is Microsoft holding on to it's vendor lock in? The answer is actually not windows, but rather the .Net framework. Some might argue that mono is the answer to that. But mono has not made a significant impact or dent on the amount of Windows .Net developers. .Net suckers millions of developers into an easy to use framework. There's one catch, and this is where the sucker part comes in. .Net is Windows only. .Net changes at such a speed that I don't see a foreseeable way that the mono project can keep up.

But lolz ms gave a lot of money to the Apache foundation! And why do you suppose they do that? The apache license just happens to be very liberal. Microsoft wants to attract (sucker in) php developers to the windows platform. Maybe they can get Apache code to help them with that. I wouldn't be surprised. The Microsoft version of PHP will likely be just as stupid as iron python, which was from what I could tell python syntax shoe horned into .Net.

The conclusion

I know this is a very short article... I will very likely come and update it as my brain catches up with me. The conclusion is that a .Net developer running windows and reading Scott's blog, using SQL Server, Silverlight, and WPF is locked in. That developer actually deprives (him/her)self of the freedom to choose the right technologies, leaving them to shoe horn Microsoft products into every and any problem space. Microsoft has done so much damage in the past and is so wrought with bad noise, I'd rather not support them.

* Disclaimer: I write this article with no claims to facts, but only opinion based on my own knowledge, which may or may not be accurate. The intention of this article is as constructive criticism to the proponents of Microsoft and their customers, and not the company. All copyrights belong to their respective owners.

Panel position is everything: Getting your KDE4 Panel in the right place.

2008-11-05T20:15:00.000+02:00

KDE 4.1.2 Has an interesting panel. It seems to have a way of popping up in a random place on a random screen(if you run dual screen like I do).

When I fired up my new shiny KDE4 Desktop for the first time, my panel was stuck on my old 17" CRT, with no drag-n-drop way to get it to the other side. And yes I did click on the cashew and try everything until I was blue.

So without further a due:

run :

kdesu kwrite /home//.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc

The applets Configuration file

This configuration file contains the settings of all your plasma applets. Containments are: the desktop and the panel. You can add plasmoids(widgets) to it.

[Containments][1]
..
plugin=desktop

[Containments][1][Applets][23]
..
plugin=folderview

This means that folderview is nested in containment 1, the desktop.

Moving the panel

Now find your panel. It looks like this:

[Containments][26]
formfactor=2
geometry=0,-44,1980,38
immutability=1
location=4
plugin=panel
screen=0
zvalue=150

The settings above puts my panel at the bottom of my second screen, which is really my main screen. Changing the screen value should change where your panel is located. location is which edge of the screen your panel sticks to.

Here comes the tricky part. You've done your editing and you want to make your changes permanent. Saving the file and restarting X will not work. When plasma exits it will repopulate the file with it's current settings. We need to close plasma to save the settings.

Open a konsole and run the following command:

kquitapp plasma

Now save your plasma-appletsrc file and then run plasma from the konsole window. Your new settings should be there now.

Small tip... I had trouble working in that file... so I deleted everything except my desktop and my panel... there aren't that many widgets in this version of KDE, so it's no problem to just add them again.

I would like to hear about your experiences with the panel and the panel settings, and what works and doesn't. I can't exaclty remember how I got it right....

PC-BSD 7.01 - Review

2008-11-04T21:31:00.000+02:00

PC-BSD... 7

Installation

PC-BSD has a quick installer finishing the entire install in about 20-30 minutes. The installer is easy to use and fairly intuitive, the only problem I had was that it would only work in VESA mode, which is ok. I didn't like the pictures with the stereotypical people, but hey... it's only 20 minutes, so who cares. I opted for the full DVD which was about 1.7 GB. There isn't much software bundled with it, but some nice stuff is included.

Firefox 3
OpenOffice.org 2.4
Pidgin
VLC
Inkscape
GIMP
Amarok 1.4
Wine

That covers quite a few needs.

First Boot

Booting up and meeting my new KDE 4.1 desktop wasn't so bad, except only one screen was working right. Apparently the NVidia drivers are included in PC-BSD, but they didn't work for me, so I downloaded the new version. After installing it and running nvidia-xconfig --twinview (for my dual monitor setup) KDE was working great, even allowing me to put different wallpapers on each monitor.

Updates

After the desktop is up and running the PC-BSD update manager checks whether there are updates for your programs. If an update is found for either the system of a package you have the option of updating. This saves you from having to know when new versions of software come out so that you can go to the vendor sites to download them. So in no time I was running OpenOffice 3, Pidgin was updated, and some security patches and bug fixes were also applied... pretty sweet

Getting new software

I went to PBI dir to download some software. Neverball was first on the list so that I could test my graphics driver. Neverball is a pretty cool game too. I downloaded the PBI(Portable Bsd Installer, or Push Button, whatever) and double clicked on the file after download. The nice thing about it is that it also shows the Icon of the application... Sort of like Windows installers... well some of them... and not MSI. When you run the PBI you are asked to enter your root password. This is a really really good thing. If your family or girlfriend is using the pc that mean they cant just install any old thing... if you have the root password. This also means malware can't install itself.*

Look and feel

I am a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to looks. This is why the PC-BSD desktop was lacking for me a little. The Wallpaper was really nice looking, but I changed it because I like nature scenes, and KDE-Look has some really nice ones. The fonts were all sans seriffy. Easy to change yes, but for newcomers it might look a little disappointing. I think a little more attention should be paid to that. Also I think some kde settings wouldn't do harm, like disabling Kicker... just for now, until everyone adjusts and KDE 4 is more mature. Other than that everything looked and worked great.

* I realize there is no malware for FreeBSD or Linux... yet. I mention it here because it solves a problem by never letting the problem happen in the first place, and it is a fairly valid question when you are wary of Windows security.

I Hope the PC-BSD Team the best of luck and many thanks for such an awesome package.

The tech community is full of shit.

2008-07-16T01:01:00.000+02:00

The tech community is a collection of royal assholes who believe everything should only be done in one way. Their way. They constantly bicker amongst each other about which is the best OS, browser, media player etc... Everyone seems to be out shoving their opinion in other peoples faces. The "bloggers" seem to be the biggest proponents of this ignorant drivel. Just because you have a voice it doesn't mean you have to say something, so if you don't have something constructive to say why don't you shut the fuck up?

What bugs me the most is how people can attack free software. They may not use it, but they don't stop to consider that other people do, and that it is beneficial to society. When I write a utility I write it for myself. I don't give a crap if anyone else is going to like or use it. Most free software is written for one self I believe, you get nothing from the world out there really. If people start to criticize your hard work that you do for free, it is questionable whether you should do it at all.

I think the following will solve all the arguments... or start new ones...

Windows sucks, but it does what its supposed to.
OSx isn't the best things since sliced bread, but it ain't bad.
Linux/Unix is cool, but it still needs hardware vendor support and more users. Ironically without hardware vendor support it wont gain users, and without users it wont gain hardware vendor support.
FireFox is the best browser( you cant argue this point after seeing this : http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/ )

I could probably sit all night thinking of examples of common arguments, but these seem to reoccur constantly, to a point that it's irritating the shit out of me.

Session Variables Are Evil! Enter OO

2008-05-18T01:08:00.000+02:00

For those of us who learnt to program, one of the first things you learn is:

"Global variables should be avoided, and only used when absolutely necessary"

Session variables are global. In most web page designs, session variables are necessary. But they present the problem that they are global. If a system is large enough, there is a huge risk of Session variables being overwritten, introducing subtle bugs that are hard to find. Another problem with session variables is that they don't store type information, even though you can shove any type into them.

There is a solution to this problem. This creates a little programming overhead with lots of positive effect.

Step 1:
Create an abstract class with a public Session property. Add a constructor that takes an HttpSessionState object, then initialises the session property to point to it.

Step 2:
Create a derived class that inherits from class mentioned above. Give it a name that you can use as a session variable class name.

Step 3:
Add properties to the class with correct return types for session variables. Handles null checks and initialisation in the get method, assign to the session variable in the set method. Name the property the same name as the session variable.

Step 4:
Declare an instance of the class in your Page class.

Step 5:
Initialise the instance in your Page_Load method, using the parametrised constructor.

Step 6:
Reference the class instance to access your session variables, now type safe, null checked and optionally documented, with the added benefit of quick access via call tips in Visual Studio.

You could argue that this is a misuse of Objects, but it's better than global variables being abused. Also try to remember the effect of referencing the wrong key in your Session state. This will also make it easier for the next programmer to find his way around your session variables, and make you more conscientous when creating session variables.

Quality of information

2008-04-30T23:08:00.000+02:00

Since I am on holiday, and feel the uncontrollable urge to do something productive other than sit around and drink rum and cola, I started this blog. I don't like the Idea of blogs. I don't like the idea that millions of misinformed hack writers are able to publish bad information that other people suck on. We all know something, but by the time we write it down, the information is not what it was when we first acquired it. Consider exams...

You write an exam about something you read last night, and you still get it wrong. If you got 50% it means that 50% of the information you took in last night is now lost or corrupted. Lost information is not so bad, but corrupted information is evil. It should be a crime to pass on information unless you know it to be true, unless you verified it, and unless you yourself are able to answer to it.

So how do you judge?

It's simple for me. I disregard anything that is:

Misspelt
Has really bad grammar
Involves biased emotional statements

But the points above are just the beginning. Blogs are a bad place to get news. Most of the news you see is second hand, and polluted with the stench of malformed opinion.

So enough with the crap. I will try to make a few posts, and then there will be a silent time until I get my own internet connection.