Hey computer guy, listen to your mom!

I feel qualified to talk about this because I’ve been guilty of it to one degree or another over the years (as people close to me can attest), though as time goes on I try (and I think I succeed) about getting better at it. I think the issue exists in all professions (Leah and I had a conversation about it occurring in the design industry), but I think its especially prevalent in the technology industry.

I’m speaking of elitist, condescending, and just plain rude attitudes amongst those with (and without) knowledge of computers. These attitudes are far ranging. At one end of the spectrum is the “script kiddie”, who while annoying I find least irritating of the bunch. These are basically kids (regardless of age) who want to feel accepted into an underground culture, and also feel like they have a specialized knowledge that the majority of others don’t have. I honestly feel that this group isn’t emotionally capable of understanding how plain silly they are, usually because they’re young (pre)teens and aren’t mature enough yet. Yes, they use 1337 speak and claim to be amazing digital rogues because they download prepackaged exploits and post on message boards. They’re annoying, and I think any damage they cause should be taken as seriously, but they’re still growing up and we all started from a point less than we are now.

Moving up the scale, we come to the average tech person working in the support industry. I’ve worked in and around the tech support industry for a number of years now, and overall I’ve been lucky with the people (now friends) I’ve worked with, but I know a lot of glorified power users who make the end user feel like idiots because they don’t know how to clear their cache or defrag a disk. Granted – being in tech support is extremely frustrating sometimes, and there ARE a lot of end users out there that are slow, rude, or just don’t want to try. You have to blow off steam sometimes. But, the thing to remember is – the average end user isn’t interested in the inner workings of a computer – nor should they be. The computer is a tool, and while you should have basic knowledge of the tool you’re working with, the moment you start focusing more on the tool than the job you’re using it for, there’s a problem. If you’re working in tech support, your job is to know that tool inside and out. The end user’s is not. Blow off steam behind closed doors with your buds, respect yourself with rude users (civility is a two way street), but if a person’s just having a hard time, be patient and not “Nick the Computer Guy” (SNL).

At the end, we have “hackers” as the media has coined them, but often called “crackers” by those that are supposedly more mature. This is the group I really have my major beef with. I’ve been programming since I could read a C64 BASIC book, I know languages in the double digits, circuit design, ran a BBS and a large IRC network for years, exploited systems (in a different life), written a compiler, a file system, designed vlanned and routed networks with thousands of nodes, designed countless databases and an e-commerce system that pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I’m big into scientific computing for neural network simulations and cryptoanalysis. I’m no slouch when it comes to computer science. And I know this, and yes, sometimes I get a big head about it. But I try (and I might do this unknowingly, but I honestly try) never to make someone else feel bad or take advantage of someone else because of what I know.

*EVERYONE* has strengths. I’ve always wanted to learn more about automotive repair, but I just can’t get into it. I’m dumb when it comes to anything past basic car stuff. I can’t retain facts about recent history, I just can’t get interested about it. There are countless things that I’m both not good at and/or don’t want to be good at. Just as there are a lot of people out there that don’t know what a buffer overrun is, or how to analyze machine code with a debugger. We’re no more “important” because we know the difference between a stack and a heap. The excuse that all information should be free and open, and especially entitled to those in the know is such a pile of crap. If you’re really interested in how a lock works, buy a book on it, read about it on the Internet, buy one and dissect it, pick your own locks. You don’t need to go to someone else’s house, pick their lock, rummage around their house, then leave. If the kind of lock you’re interested in isn’t available or is too expensive – tough. Contrary to popular belief in certain circles, “knowledge” isn’t some inherent right that trumps any other. If you make the argument that there is such a thing as inherent rights, then privacy is just as big as knowledge – even when the person doesn’t have the aptitude to protect their privacy. Sure – it’s nice if someone shares their work with you, they help you learn, and you can be friends and life is great. But it’s also okay to put a lot of work into something and keep it for yourself sometimes too. It’s your right as the person who created it. I love open source software, I’m a big fan of Linux and have run it for 10+ years- but I also support myself by programming, both through my full time job and after work. And it’s not open source code, it’s closed and it’s mine, and I sell it. And perhaps someone could learn something from it, but they don’t have an inherent right to. They can if I offer it, but until I say “look at this”, they don’t have a right to take the most non-invasive peek at it. And no matter how smart you are, and no matter how many systems you’ve broken into, it doesn’t change the fact that intrusion is intrusion. A really good burglar is still a burglar. Not taking anything doesn’t change the fact that you still broke into the house. And because the home owner doesn’t have the knowledge or money to build a great security system doesn’t make it any more right.

I say the following not with condescension, but more as a plea: we all have our strengths, we all have our weaknesses. But we also all have to live in this world together, so instead of making someone else feel dumb, or taking advantage of them because you have a skill they don’t and you want something – try just being nice, patient, thoughtful, and respectful. Say your pleases and your thank yous, and don’t take without asking. Listen to your mother, the lessons you learned at 4 still hold true.

Photoshop: Mac vs PC

In my job I run into a number of people who are vehement Mac users. While a Mac with OS X is not my machine and OS of choice, I understand everyone has a personal preference. Hell, we’d all be running Amigas with some strange AmigaOS/Linux hybrid if I had my way.

A large portion of this Mac group in my workplace are art and graphic design people. I have conversations with a number of them every once in a while regarding why they like the Mac above the PC, and while I always hope it comes down to personal preference, more often than not the conversations follows this unfortunate trend:

Me: “So why do you like Macs?”

Them: “It’s better for graphics applications, that’s why virtually all schools and organizations use them”

Me: “What applications do you use?”

Them: “Photoshop (and other Adobe products)”

Me: “Don’t they make Photoshop for Windows?”

Them: “Yes, but it runs better on the Mac”

Me: “In what way?”

Them: “Its faster, less clunky, crashes less”

This is where it always breaks down. Apparently, “The Mac” is just faster than “The PC” running Photoshop. It doesn’t matter what processor you have, the amount of memory, hard drive speed, or fragmentation, etc, the Mac will always win. Thank goodness I have this 350 mhz G3, I’ll keep that as my Photoshop computer and remove the software from my dual core AMD 5600. I’m being sarcastic obviously, but as far as speed goes, I would love to see benchmarks of Photoshop operations on a PC vs Mac. And here’s the stipulation which is where many benchmarks crumble (on both sides), use equipment that’s equal from a cost perspective. Don’t use my example of two 2.8ghz cores vs 1 350mhz core – to sway either side. Spec out a PC from Dell, and a Mac of the same cost from Apple, and run benchmarks.

And as for the “clunky” or “crashes more” argument, I completely throw this out. I have seen both unstable PCs and Macs, both computers have an OS that allows files to get corrupted and deleted, both have fragmentation issues, both use hardware that can fail, both crash. I’m not a graphic design person by any means, but I’ve put a number of hours in using Photoshop on both a Mac and a PC, and I can tell you I get a spinning beach ball of death as much as I get segfaults on my Windows box.

If you like a computer or an OS, just say it’s a personal preference. It saves this myth from getting any bigger, and stops causing headaches for IT and business departments trying to support two platforms and justifying a larger budget.

A Non-deterministic Universe

I don’t buy it! Maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand the math, but I’ve yet to hear a proof (that I understand) that proves that quantum mechanics yields nondeterministic results. Hidden variable or local realism or whatever – I don’t know what the contrary theory should be, and maybe its just the computer scientist in me, but I can’t understand how ultimately, at the most minute level, something is indeterminate. To me that seems to throw causality away, and I refuse to believe the universe doesn’t operate completely on causality at every level. The moment you say, even at the most ultra-nano-scopic level, that causality doesn’t take place, you throw all the rules of logic away, and anything can happen. I just don’t get how logically someone could support the position that something happens with absolutely no cause. And talk about probability all you want, eventually, you get to the point where particle X exists at point 5.13645322 instead of at point 5.13645323 – well, what caused that .00000001 difference? Nothing? It just happened for no reason? I don’t buy it! I don’t understand how you can defend such a position with the same logic you use to support the equations that supposedly went to suggest such an idea.

I say we live in a deterministic universe. I say if we rewound the big VHS tape of existence and replayed it, everything would play out exactly the same every single time, to each and every particle. EAT THAT FREE WILL

O’ BBS, where art thou?

For a number of Internet denizens, the “Information Superhighway” as we used to call it has always been a part of reality. For others, there was a clean segue from an offline world to an online one. Large online services started popping up, and many people found a doorway from AOL onto the Internet.

Some of us, however, started out in the online world in a different way. We used Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), which were small to medium sized “online services” that someone would run on his or her computer. The software would sit there waiting for phone calls, and people would dial with their modems into various BBSes and send mail, post messages, download files, play online games, chat, etc.

It’s a technology that I still think about and miss quite a bit. I always try to put my finger on exactly what it is about the BBS that I miss, and why the Internet always comes up short for me, at least in regards to the feelings I had for this now ancient online technology.

I thin it’s a combination of things. First, I started using BBSes around age 12 – it was a time in my life that I was really getting seriously into PCs (I had only had a C64 up until then), and the whole x86 world was a strange new land with so much to learn. BBSes were a doorway to both see new ways of using this technology, as well as talk with people much more knowledgeable than I was at that age. The idea of going “online” was still a fairly unknown and “computer elitist” activity, only those really in the know got online. It wasn’t an activity the average person would perform, it was the stuff of movies and urban myth.

I think, however, the biggest piece of it was the kind of community that existed on the BBSes. While the Internet is amazing, allowing people to talk to anyone in the world instantly, there was a kind of close-knit, cozy atmosphere to a BBS. For the most part, to avoid long distance telephone charges, people only dialed BBSes in their local area code. Because of that reason, the people you saw online were people that lived close by to you in real life. There were only a handful of BBSes in the area, as opposed to millions of websites. Everyone knew each BBS and the person who ran it (The SysOp or System Operator), knew what kind of capabilities it had and the history of it. And everyone pretty much knew each other. Perhaps it was different in bigger cities, but in my area, we had maybe 12 BBSes at a time with an overall user base of perhaps 130 people. We didn’t all like each other, but we all knew about each other, had our friends and our inner groups. Hell, since we were all in the same area, we used to have cookouts and other meetups, sometimes getting together to go to a computer show or meeting at someones house. I met a lot of friends on the BBSes.

I think the technology itself also added to the atmosphere. On the Internet, you jump from website to website, basically looking at a page, posting text here and there, but for the most part it is a browsing experience, hence the term “Web Browser”. On a BBS, you connected to a BBS, you were “inside” of it, selecting different options and interacting every step of the way. If you chatted with someone, you could opt to see what they were typing as they were typing it, it was all very up close and personal, very connected. For whatever reason, with all its marvel and speed and ability, the Internet just hasn’t achieved that for me. I think a number of services like virtual worlds and whatnot might attempt at it, but the BBS provided this atmosphere without the need to recreate something, ala Second Life or MMORPGs.

While there are still a handful of BBSes out there, most run now as telnet services off the Internet, the era is gone. For me, the speed, efficiency, and abilities of the Internet have forever changed the way I look at online life, and I don’t think I could go back to BBSes, which is sad – I’m just too used to being able to Google anything I can possibly think of. I do hope, however, that I can find ways of recapturing those same feelings with the Internet that I felt on BBSes.

As a post script to this article, there was a great documentary released a couple years ago that is dedicated to the BBS and the life around it – you can purchase it off Amazon.

Anyone else out there a former BBS user? In memory of my little board, here is a screen shot of the welcome screen I’ve saved over all these years.

Handle: Orson

My BBS: The Pig Pen BBS, run from 92-94 in York, ME and Portsmouth, NH (207 and 603 area code, respectively)

GRAAHH! ….. BOING

That was my day. Frustration, depression, and bouncing back. On the days when it’s not ruining my life, having an extreme drive (emotional, not car) can be nice, especially for the purposes of EXPLODING THROUGH LIFE’S CRAP. BRING IT UNIVERSE, AIN’T NOTHIN GONNA BREAK MY STRIDE.

Yes, I honestly believe that.

A while ago Leah made the decision to become vegan, and since then we’ve had a number of conversations about it. Mostly it’s just me playfully giving her a hard time, though I do completely respect her choice – I think the reasons for it make sense. She comes at it from a stance that many farms treat their animals horribly and thus we shouldn’t support said farms. Since the vast majority make up this group, it’s almost a guarantee that if you’re eating an animal product, it was treated poorly. Though there are exceptions as noted by the Humane Farm Animal Care organization (http://www.certifiedhumane.org). While I’m not ready to take the vegan plunge, I would like to eat more off this list to better support humane farms over megafarms interested in the buck.

One of the things I’ve always kidded Leah about is something I actually do feel strongly about. The extremist end of humane treatment toward animals are the animal rights people who do not believe animals should be killed at all. Aside from any arguments against this, I believe if you’re going to extend rights to life past humans, you shouldn’t stop at animals, they should extend to plant (and fungi, protista, and monera) life as well.

I was doing research tonight and came along this blog post from veganfreaks (http://veganfreaks.org/index.php?id=38). It kind of pissed me off (as much as a random Internet post can). It was an animals right vegan who had run into people attacking his/her ideas with the idea of plant rights. Now while I’m sure there are people out there who will look for any side of an argument to be against radical thinking, there ARE people out there that consider all life to be equal.

It would have been pure lunacy a few hundred years ago to say a pig had rights. Yes, I’m sure you can find some reference to someone saying so, but the vast majority of society would think the idea of animal rights insane. Now such an idea is common place for a good number of people. However, mention plant rights and people think you’re just trying to be argumentative. Regardless of how species centric I think it is to say a life form doesn’t “matter” as much if it doesn’t have a nervous system, if that truly was an argument, what would be the problem in killing a stunned or anesthetized animal who led a free life? The argument is either the animal feels pain, or the animal has inherent rights. If its because of pain, numb it first and give it a good life, ala humane animal treatment. If its because the animal has inherent rights to live, then so by God does my little mushroom friend. And yes, I honestly believe that. I think it’s shameful and hypocritical to have a strong moral stance on one life and criticize someone for having a strong stance on another.

I honestly believe that all life has equal importance, as shown by nature and the circle of life. Besides the thousands of reasons we need plants, they have living cells, eat, have offspring, the same as any dog or human. It is no more inherently right to eat a carrot than a porkchop. It’s just easier to justify because the carrot doesn’t have a brain to feel pain. However, the easiest path is not always the right one – as any vegan knows who deals with difficult menu selections, giving up favorite foods, or criticism from other people.

It is impossible not to kill life. Our autonomic functions kill microscopic life constantly. Eating and drinking, regardless of choice of food, will always kill life in one way or another – survival of one life is always at the expense of others. It seems to me the most honest, natural, and sensible choice is to eat all life equally, in an omnivorous fashion. What’s important is this statement is outside how animals are treated – treatment of animals should be humane, regardless of if they are eaten or not. And I support Leah and people like her who boycott those who do not treat animals properly. I do not believe it is an issue of consumption – it is an issue of respecting life. People cannot always separate these two ideas. I support a world that supports life equally and eats life equally, for we all come from and return to the same Earth. And while I’ve already gotten the “eating equally” thing down, it’s time to work on the “supporting equally”. I invite anyone who eats meat like me to take a look at that website at the top to eat least eat meat/eggs/dairy that was treated well. Every little bit helps.

(And yes, I support artificial life as well)

I Go Walking After Midnight

You know, it’s too bad that (as a general rule) it’s more dangerous to go out late at night. Everything is so peaceful and calming at night if you can get past the drunks and that instinct of being slightly more on edge. I had to go get something out of my car last night around 3am, and by that time the bars were all closed and everything was very quiet. The trees were just rustling slightly and the street lamps were making a nice glow over everything and it was like a whole different place.

What, did your mom buy you a ‘puter for Christmas?

So, after 7 years or so, I figured it was finally time to get a new machine. My old one technically still worked fine, but parts of the motherboard had melted/burnt, which kept causing video cards to fry, and I always had streaks across the screen, had to keep the case open as all the fans were crap, blah blah. So, I figured now was the time! And, I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well get some nice stuff. Not the best possible computer in the world, but it’s a pretty nice one.

First I spec’d out cases and went wite Apevia’s X-Qpack2 with aluminum trim. Its a nice micro-atx case with clear sides and LED fans. The clear case and fans were just for fun, but I really wanted a small case. I used to be into mega enormous cases, but these days I’m sick of huge amounts of equipment and crap all over the place. I just wanted a small but functional case. This one was small but also had 2 5 1/4 drive bays, 1 3 1/2 and 2 internals, plus a 500 watt power supply, room for 4 full-sized expansion slots, and temperature read outs on the front.

Next I got a Gigabyte motherboard with AM2 socket with basic on board ethernet/video/sound, I didn’t need anything fancy there. I’m getting a new video card and dont care about anything better than basic sound and 100 meg ethernet, though it supports 6.1 surround. I have a lot of applications I run on this machine, a lot of services and whatnot, so I wanted something fast – I went with an AMD Athlon64 X2 5600+, that’s two 64-bit 2.6 ghz cores, and got 2 gigs of crucial 800mhz RAM. The thing smokkkesss under Debian. I got a nice DVD multirecorder and a 3.5 floppy/SD/CF/SM reader. I kept my preexisting 300 gig SATA-2 drive and Hauppauge PVR-350, and the G15 keyboard Ryan gave me (see previous post).
Oh, and my favorite part, the new Samsung 22″ widescreen. I can’t say how much I love this screen.

So it’s all been together for a couple weeks, all my software is finally configured and running. Here are some pictures.

The screen looks fuzzy and dark here, but it is just the angle and the camera, its amazingly bright and crisp. I have the old 17″ on the side for my second monitor.

When the lights go out!

Its hard to get an idea of the size of the screen without backing up a bit. It takes up about half the desk, width wise. Depth wise its nothing!

And finally a shot of the side in the dark again, close up!

So as I said, its running Debian in native 64 bits, and when I say that, I mean everything. One of the great advantages of open source is packages compiled for 64 bits. I have the PVR up and running recording shows, the G15 keyboard working with stats on the LCD (as can be seen), the latest NVidia drivers with the monitor running at 1680×1050, OpenGL hardware enabled. I have my external USB2 500 gig harddrive (for backup purposes) hooked up with auto-power down enabled so it will stop spinning after 10 minutes. I also have it working well with my Brother multifunction unit, it both prints and scans, over the network, with no issues.

Also nice, I cut all my other machines out (except my laptop, I have it on a docking station now when not on the go to use it via remote desktop for programming). But I was sick of my big-ass server taking up room just to have a file server and IIS box with SQL/ASP for development. I figure why do that when I have a speedy machine and vmware-server is free? So I installed a virtual Win 2003 box on this box, the thing boots in 6 seconds, its absolutely insane. But I have Jormungand (My physical Debian box) doing all the server stuff now apart from IIS/SQL/ASP. I have it hosting samba windows shares for my laptop to use if necessary, and also shares out its network connection to my laser printer.

And a really nice surprise, and something that made me order a new video card today – I’ve been playing around more with Wine lately which I haven’t for a long time as its always tended to let me down. Well, pretty much everything I’ve thrown at it its been able to run without too many problems. After a few tweaks I have it running Steam (Half Life 2/DM, Counter Strike, etc), World of Warcraft and WarCraft III. I’m going to be installed Civ IV soon. The built in video is good, but now that I know this thing can play games and I don’t need a separate Windows box, I ordered a BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC2 with 384 megs of RAM. I was going to get more RAM, but the price isn’t worth it considering I won’t be doing any HD with it. The thing is going to rock though, I can’t wait. I was recording a show, transcoding an episode of Doctor Who, listening to music and playing Half Life 2: Death Match with no issues, it was insane.

It’s pretty exciting for me, since I’ve never really had a nice machine before. I have to enjoy it while it lasts!

Montreal

Every time I visit that city I remember why I like it so much. I had a good trip with Leah there this weekend. As an unexpected but nice surprise, Le Festival des Films du Monde was going on, and we got to watch one of the “Cinema Under the Stars”, an outdoor screening of a film outside during the evening. We watched “L’Odyssee d’Alice Tremblay” which was pretty funny and unique. Despite sitting on stone steps the whole time, it was fun. Leah got lots of pictures, I got none! Can’t wait to get back soon.

I hope the smoking man’s in this one!

As dorky as it may sound, there are few things more relaxing for me than popping in an X-Files DVD and doing some light programming. Maybe it’s the mood created by the mystery and darkness of the show mixed in with the mystique of coding, or maybe nerdly things just relax me. Regardless, I’m glad I have these little things in life to calm me down after weeks from hell.