We’ve all heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech, and now more information is going to come out, leading to a wave of media speculation, blog postings (my bad), and calls for emotionally-driven action.

So, how will you react?

Will you use this incident as a stalking horse for your issue of choice, as the gun-control and pro-gun lobbies are doing?

Will you demand immediate, emotion-fueled legislation aimed at preventing another event just like this, forgetting that almost every other tragedy will be very little like this one?

Will you point your finger at everyone, demanding that someone who is alive and can feel your revenge take some part of the fall?

Will you forget, next time, that none of the quick fixes you demanded this time made a difference?

Will you remember that we live in the safest, least-violent epoch in human history, with lower violent crime rates and murder rates than humanity has enjoyed at any time in history?

Will you glue yourself to the television, to WikiPedia, to Metafilter, to Google News, to Little Green Footballs, to the Virginia Tech website, to CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox, thereby providing validation to those that would use their homicidal urges as a cry for attention?

Will you make no difference at all?

There are times, however, that merit a vigorous negative response.

I’m taking two project courses in school this semester; Cmput 414, which is a graphics and multimedia course with a heavy algorithmic programming component, and Cmput 401, a software engineering course and the focus of this rant.

Software Engineering is, according to Wikipedia, “is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software.” Among other things, it requires the application of good design practices to the development of code, and following beneficial design standards.

So, I have to ask, why is it that people taking this fucking course cannot do something as basic as grok that it is fundamentally bad practice to add public methods to hidden implementing classes instead of using the goddamned design?! I spent three days nailing down, and countless hours tuning up, the data model for our project application, only to have one of my fellow team members simply come along and, instead of reading the goddamned documentation, which I provided as a first step, add new hooks into the mechanism, just to get at the information in a way that is not only wrong, but disables some nice and (I thought) needed functionality.

I have spent the last hour looking over his code, marveling at the glorious unification of layers that, according to good design practices, should ever remain separate — the intermingling of UI code and logic that I’d already written elsewhere, better was a real high point for me.

Gods.

I cannot wait to get back to full time work with people who know more than I do, so that instead of raging at the pathetic efforts of people whose skills are not even up to the level of an academic programmer, I can instead find faults with my own approaches, be told that I’m doing it wrong, and learn how to do it better.

What I’m actually posting on is an excellent interview with Maynard James Keenan (of Tool) at the Onion AV Club.

The quote that really got me is this one:

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don’t know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how [I feel about it]. But I couldn’t responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I’m just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

He’s quite a guy, one with whom I’ve no doubt that I could argue for days.

The next two weeks, I’ll be posting unadorned links of interest. Enjoy!

I have not been so enamoured of it, I have to regretfully confess, and I have — reluctantly, since I paid for it — returned to the arms of Camino.

OmniWeb is pretty decent, with more than a few nice features built in: It’s tabbed browser model includes a thumbnail-sized preview of the page in the tab, so that you can see where you’re going. It uses a modified version of the Apple WebKit, which means that it behaves in ways very similar to Safari, including using true Cocoa widgets for web page input. This is a selling point because much of OSX’s user experience stems from the system-wide integration of applications and services, all of which depend on the builtin behaviour of the UI widgets.

OmniWeb’s flaws, however, made themselves known to me throughout the beta. I was more than willing to wait for them to resolve themselves during the beta process, but at this point, they have released the final version of 5.5, and still they’re not fixed.

One problem was stability. With a great many tabs open, containing images or pages, OmniWeb slows to a crawl. This isn’t too surprising, because RAM ain’t cheap, but it could be smarter about keeping tabs in memory or allowing them to be paged. Add into this mix a high likelihood of crashing when under load, and you have a very irritating situation.

The worst problem, however, seems to be the fault of WebKit, not OmniWeb itself, although their claim that they use a modified version suggests improvements, when I have a sneaking suspicion it means “older version”. If you use Gmail, and who doesn’t these days, then you’ve noticed that when you create a mail message and press ‘tab, enter’ from the edit box it sends the message. Kind of a reflex by now.

That doesn’t work in OmniWeb, not at all.

Now, there’s a tradeoff to be made, here, of course — OmniWeb and Safari have native widgets, which means that — for example — the keystrokes I use in editing text elsewhere on the system work consistently, a bit of polish that does not apply to Camino or Firefox. It’s features are many and fabulous, but it shouldn’t be final with that set of issues.

The first one is cell phones. As discussed on the waiter rant a few days ago, and spotted via MetaFilter (where else?) people have a bizarre love-hate relationship with cell phones, and more generally with their users. On the one hand, it’s leading to a change in social norms, as people start having conversations that could, at best, be viewed as debatably appropriate for public consumption in subways, busses, restaurants, and other places.

The rant linked above, however, is interesting because in a lot of respects the person writing it is, from his other postings, a liberal-leaning individual who is having the classical conservative reaction to the new and different — he’s decrying it as destroying social institutions as though they have inherent value, as opposed to simply existing as a consequence of previous upheavals due to changing technologies and mores. I, on the other hand, tend to take things like the cell phone in stride. Sure, the definition of what is polite changes, but that’s been happening throughout the course of human history, from the vomitoriums at Roman binges to the straitlaced, repressive Victorian ear (in public, at least) to today, with our cell phones and our email.

So, in this respect, I fail the test of conservatism.

The second issue, the one that’s been ticking about my head for the longest, is the issue of the automatic transmission. I freely admit, I’m a stick in the mud on this one. It’s weird, because on one hand I’m in favour of letting machines do the work that machines are good enough at. I support automation, and the obsolescence of the manual labourer. I come down in favour of machine intelligences being developed to remove the likelihood, and reduce the probability of human error in complex tasks.

But, despite all of that, I cannot get over my strong preference for manual transmissions, and a subtle, but definitely present, sense of elitism when I realize that I am in a shrinking segment of the population that is comfortable with controlling more aspects of their vehicles. This is classical reactionary conservatism, decrying a change that is, at least by objective measures, beneficial to society on the basis that it is… different.

At this point, I imagine that readers are thinking: “Is he going anywhere with this?”

No.

He argues (and argues well, I might add) that a world where our expectations of privacy have eroded to the point of total worldwide information transparency, to a degree where secrecy is one of the few true crimes left in the world, would be a good thing. “Earth” is founded, vaguely, on this idea, and although its protagonist seeks secrecy for just reasons, Brin himself gives every indication that he believes privacy to be an anachronism, a legacy of humanity’s brutal rise into civilization, and one best left behind.

I do not agree.

Bruce Schneier wrote an article for Wired magazine a short time ago on the value of privacy that I think bears reading. He contends, and I agree, that even the off-the-cuff responses we have to that old saw (“If you’re not doing anything wrong, why do you care if someone is watching”) are misdirected. Saying “The definition of wrong is in the hands of the government, and it keeps changing,” or “If I’m not doing anything wrong, you have no cause to watch me” is an implicit admission that privacy is intended to protect wrong actions.

This is not, and should not, be the case. The right to privacy protects our ability to grow, learn, and change. It protects the essential dignity of a loner who would otherwise fear constant examination by a society he rejects. It forms a fundamental component of interpersonal relations, or should we all feel that we must have sex in full view of the world, lest we be violating someone else’s right to examine our every behaviour?

This claim upon the details of my life is specious, and unethical, and must stop.

This claim upon the details of your life is no more right than the claim made by a peeping tom that nobody is hurt if he only looks in through the window.

As Schneier quotes Cardinal Richelieu: “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.”

This must not become the way of our free society, lest our society cease to be free.

Asshats.

Oh, this isn’t going to be a “life story” sort of post. It’s more of a corny way of saying “Here’s what I’ve been up to over the last week.”

Char and I have been doing well, thanks for asking.

I’ve seen some pretty funny theatre in the last 24 hours, and a well-written play not too long before. The former is, of course, Die Nasty, and the latter is a Stuart Lemoine piece called The Velvet Shock. The play was enjoyable. A bit dark in humour, which I like, and with a hint of a happy, romantic ending. And a talented cast, bolstered in no small part by a skilled (and attractive!) supporting actress in the role of the niece.

I’ve come to a conclusion that, practically speaking, there is one thing that irks me more than anything else when dealing with friends. I don’t mind if plans change, and someone can’t do something with me that was planned. That’s cool. But in this age of mobile and ubiquitous communication, for christ’s sake, call me. Just dial a damned number and say “Sorry, Chris, I can’t make it to [thing].” Is it that bloody hard?

Grrr…

I just realized that the above complaint was the blog post that had been tickling about my head for the last day and a half. Glad to get that out of my system.

So, no big plans, really. I think I’m going to investigate writing my first serious OS X program, to do some bookkeeping and synchronization of my pair of ITunes libraries. Just metadata, I think, but you never know… I might get ambitious.

Yes, it’s going to be one of those posts.

There’s a couple of interesting incidents out in the wilds (I hesitate to say “hinterlands”, but mainly because I don’t think that way of Austria, and I don’t want to lump them in with the rest of the places at issue) of the world. You may have heard of them. There’s the (by now) infamous incident with the Danish editorial cartoons causing riots and bloodshed… Oh, sorry, no. Just to be clear, that bloodshed? Those riots? The threats? Those are the works of madmen, not cartoonists. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to differentiate the two.

Anyway… Back on track… There’s the cartoons, and then there’s this twit over in Austria, deliberately flouting their laws against Holocaust denial to promulgate bald-faced lies about the occurrence of the Nazi extermination of some large number of Jews.

So… What’s the most common refrain? Well, on one hand we have people who are all for freedom of speech, and then on the other hand we have people who are all for freedom of speech.

What the fuck, you ask?

Well, see, that last group “believe in free speech, but…”

Beware of anyone who prefaces a statement with that line. They probably don’t have your best interests at heart, and they’re a liar, to boot.

Here’s the skinny, and I know that this comes as no news to most of those that read here, but nonetheless: Free Speech means (and, in fact, rests firmly upon and is rendered meaningless without) the right to say things that terrify, disgust, demean, insult, and verbally violate all that you hold dear. The more offensive an utterance is, the more important it is that the speaker be free to say it, without fear of violence or of censorship. That isn’t to say that they should be immune to censure — that’s how mind-blowingly stupid pronouncements like “Auschwitz’s Crematorium Two, the site of half a million deaths, is ‘a mere legend’” should be greeted. Ridicule is another good response. As is simply ignoring the speaker. But silencing your critics is… well, there’s a couple of interesting 20^th century events that might be informative on the subject. I leave that, too, as an exercise for the reader.

In short, freedom of speech is not just freedom to agree with the people who have more guns.

There are two issues in connection with this issue that I would like to address. First, and most visible to all subscribers of the ISP services, is that — despite their claims to the contrary — companies like Shaw and Rogers lie to their customers when asked about the use of software that specifically restricts the speed of certain types of traffic (“Traffic shaping” software). From personal experience, I can tell you that this leads to frustration from the side of the customer, especially when I’m experiencing service delays with my competing VOIP service. This is a major issue, since Shaw is competing with Vonage for VOIP services, but Shaw is in a position to severely, and adversely, affect the quality of Vonage VOIP, something that is currently affecting me.

Secondly, the issue of network cost. The claim from Shaw, Telus, and Rogers is that their users are getting something for free, which is patently absurd. We PAY for the service that they provide, which is not e-mail and web, but is in fact a connection to the internet, which may include those services, as well as others, such as VOIP or streaming video to name two. The ISPs, if they want to get into the business of selecting which content providers should be permitted, should stop claiming to sell “unlimited” internet access.

Update

Nope, no luck. It’d have been great to be published, but it appears that I’m not witty enough. Bummer.

I’m watching the software piracy world being shaken up repeatedly by increasingly successful interventions in both distribution and production by the authorities of various nations, usually acting in the name of private, for-profit industry groups.

I’m seeing an ever-increasing degree of technical control exercised over the viewing and distribution of electronic media.

I’ve seen my ISP decide that they should clamp down on my use of the internet connection I’m paying for, and like others in the same business space, lie to me about what they’re doing.

It’s getting so that I’m going to have to start paying for everything.

And, to be honest, I’m pretty okay with that. Well, except for the traffic shaping shit from Shaw.

The thing of it is, I’m about to be in a position from which I can afford to pay for my software. Across the board. It’s kind of nice, actually. As discussed previously on this blog, I approve of software developers’ rights to charge for their creations, and have always had ethical issues with the means by which I have acquired them. Soon, that’ll be in the past. It’s already begun, in the sense that I’m starting to pay for the little shareware utilities that I use, and I foresee doing so in greater quantities as time passes. Couple that with increased reliance on Free/Open Source software, and I have realized that — at the moment — my computer at home is almost completely clean of illegitimate software. It’s a nice feeling.

The title of this post is a bit misleading — I’m not really being forced into ethical behaviour, here. It just so happens that concurrent with my own push to be more upstanding, the sources of my content are leaving me no other choice. It’s a valid statement, that ethical behaviour is meaningless without the option of behaving unethically. But I made my choice before it became impossible, and I feel that it makes me a better person.

So, the season of … well, whatever the season is of, to you … is come and mostly gone. Family was saw, presents sent and presented. I think that the Go board I got from Simon, along w/ the Calvin and Hobbes collection from Char are pretty much the standouts of the lot. Thanks, though, to all for the neato things. I hope my own gifts were appreciated as well. Surprisingly, the whole “giving” part of all of this is the best for me. Don’t get me wrong; I love getting stuff, too, but there’s something just fun about picking just the right gift for people.

In other news, it seems that work is not going to call me in over the week. This is bleeding great, as it means I can, um, work on some work-related programming

Ye gods, I’ve got strange ideas of “fun.”

For those who are into politics: Vote Conservative, damn it. Green is an acceptable second choice. Contemptible actions such as A) voting Liberal because you’re blind, deaf, and just plain dumb, therefore missing the rampant corruption, dishonesty, and arrogance of the last twelve years, or B) voting Liberal ‘strategically’, because Stephen Harper is just soo-o-o scary will result in… well, you getting the government you deserve. The problem is, if you do that, I get the government you deserve, too, and I deserve a better one. So get your shit together!

This rant brought to you by procrastination.