fogbound.net




Sun, 6 May 2012

My Fan Club

— SjG @ 3:20 pm

So the server that operates the security cameras at the house suddenly started making a nasty wheezy noise. The periodicity of the noise suggested a fan bearing going bad or running dry.

So I shut the machine down, and tore it apart. I disassembled and lubed the case- and power-supply fans. I put everything back together and fired up the machine, but the noise was still there. I tried to remove the CPU heat-sink fan, but it’s held in by plastic snappers, and I didn’t want to fight with them. In the end, I went on e-Bay and ordered replacement case- and power supply fans, along with a new CPU heat-sink / fan assembly.

The new stuff arrived Thursday, and I swapped out the old stuff. Then reassembled. The noise was still there. I started pulling my hair out.

Today, I was going to solve it, or die trying. I unplugged the hard drive and the CD drive. Still made the noise. I unplugged the case fan. Still made the noise. I unplugged the CPU heat-sink fan. Still made the noise. I physically moved the power supply away, while powering the chassis. At this point, there are no moving parts whatsoever within the chassis. Still noisy!

When I finally stopped punching the wall and kicking the cat, I leaned my head into the machine, and tried to find the source of the noise. And there it was. The crappy little graphics card’s heat sink has a fan in it, completely obscured from view. I pulled the card, tore it apart, and lubed the fan, and now, finally, the machine runs silently again.

I think if I ever rebuild the thing, it’s going to be 100% solid state.

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Fri, 20 Jan 2012

A Modest Proposal

— SjG @ 9:45 am

Property owners in the United States1 pay property tax. While it makes the Randists froth at the mouth, the reason for this is quite pragmatic: people pay for the infrastructure, defense, and other public services in their communities that support their property. The theory is that a homeowner, for example, has a vested interest in the neighborhood roads being maintained, in having an active fire department, and so on. Similarly, businesses rely on decent roads, an educated workforce, and similar services to do business. We all depend on law enforcement and our defense forces to keep us safe from criminals and the odd invasion.

With the exception of the aforementioned Randists and related lunatics, everyone agrees that the concept of property tax is reasonable. We may all argue about what falls within the realm of appropriate services or infrastructure, and we all feel that our own particular property tax burden is too great, but we agree that there are necessities that we need to help pay for.

Recent events (e.g., the SOPA/PIPA debacle) have brought intellectual property into the spotlight. Corporations owning music, film, and book copyrights are justly upset about the degree of “piracy” taking place on the Internet. While the numbers they present as their financial losses have been widely debunked, there are, in fact, actual losses. So they spend a lot of money lobbying and contributing to political campaigns, and we get fiascos like SOPA/PIPA.

Similarly, we have a patent system that’s wildly out of control. People can and do patent ideas that are …er… patently obvious, or tiny increments over widespread practice. Those patents are then used to suppress whole classes of technologies and programs. Technology companies like Apple, Unisys, and SCO are notoriously litigious, and have often succeeded in using the legal system to suppress competition via patents. Patent trolls or patent clearing houses leverage ridiculous patents to essentially blackmail programmers for ideas that can be found in textbooks. We see small players put out of business on a regular basis, often because they can’t afford to defend against spurious patent claims.

It got me thinking. As a homeowner, I pay annual taxes, commensurate with the value of my house. This money, in effect, pays to protect the value of my property.

The “Content Industry” (RIAA/MPAA) and technology companies claim a great deal of value for their intellectual property, but rely on public money to defend that value. Sure, they pay lawyers, but they use my public courts and (attempt to) pass ever more restrictive laws to protect their assets. A huge amount of government time and public money is wasted on these cases, and we find congress ignoring important issues to focus on extending copyright ad infinitum. The public cost due to lost innovation is staggering2. It’s time for the intellectual property owners to share the burden of that cost. It’s time for a tax on intellectual property.

Intellectual property is hard to appraise for value — thus the owner should be allowed to declare what that value is. The catch is that they will be taxed on that declared value. Like most other property taxes, the value will be appraised on a yearly basis, with limits on the maximum amount of change from one year to the next. If owners decide their property is worth a great deal, then they can pay a great deal to help defend it. If they decide it’s worth nothing, then they cannot claim huge damages when it is not protected and the property is infringed upon.

Intellectual Property Tax. It’s only fair.

1 Most countries have some form of property tax, even if it’s not exactly the same thing as in the US.
2 Patents are, by their nature, designed to foster innovation by giving owners a temporary monopoly. We agree to tweak an otherwise free market to encourage people and companies to invest time into research and development. This system only works if, in fact, the kinds of things that are granted this protection are actual innovations rather than mundane and obvious incremental improvements. As they exist today patents are largely abused, and actually end up preventing new ideas from reaching the market while increasing the cost of products that do.


Tue, 17 Jan 2012

Sign of the Times

— SjG @ 2:58 pm

I think it’s a sad, sad sign of the times that most Linux distros not only omit figlet from their standard installations, but often don’t even offer it in their package managers.

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Sun, 20 Nov 2011

The Magic of New Things

— SjG @ 9:26 am

We humans appear to be programmed for scarcity. We lust for high energy foods — sugars, fats, refined carbohydrates — even when we’re not hungry. Just thinking about donuts may be sufficient to trigger a rewarding brain chemistry reaction1. Similarly, we tend to gather possessions — often far more than we need. We don’t dispose of old, unused possessions because we’re sure we may need them some day. And we’ll often acquire things we don’t need because we anticipate they will be more difficult to obtain in the future. We don’t need them now, but there is the possibility that we will need them at some later time. As advertisers have learned, a quick way to make someone want something is to give the impression that the opportunity to have it is limited: buy now! So we do.

There is an obvious (and possibly even correct) evolution-based argument for the behaviors of scarcity. If a species spends 200,000 years struggling to survive in a minimal environment, those who hoard or are gluttonous may well have a survival advantage over those who don’t or aren’t. A few calories here or there could be the difference between life or death. An animal pelt could make the difference between freezing to death and surviving.

It turns out that there may be corollary programming that motivates us to seek out new and novel things. When we encounter new stimuli, we receive a short-duration boost of some of the same “reward” brain chemicals as we do from food or sex2. Again, a series of questionable evolutionary explanations can explain this: those who explore are more likely to discover untapped resources and thereby have a selective advantage, or perhaps those who try new things may discover new uses for already identified resources3.

So now we fast forward to our time of relative abundance. Modern society has exploited this set of unpatched vulnerabilities in our brain chemistry, and combined our programming for accumulation and our programming for novelty to create a consumer culture4. The fashion industry tells us we need new, novel shoes, while the computer industry tells us we need to upgrade to the latest versions of everything. We need to add new music to our collections every week, and try the latest McProcessedMeat sandwich, see new movies, learn the latest dance, and so on. Every Christmas, there’s the hot new toy that everyone needs to get, whether it was a Hula hoop, a Magic 8 Ball, a pet rock, Beanie Babies, Tickle-me Elmos, Cabbage Patch Kids, or a Furby.

Even outside of obsessive consumer culture, we’re fascinated by new things, especially if they fit into some familiar framework. There’s something tremendously exciting about receiving an unexpected letter or a package in the mail, often amplified if we can identify the sender. It can trigger the anticipation response, the accumulation response, and the novelty response all at once. What’s more, even virtual items evoke a similar emotional reaction: an email from a friend, or an incoming SMS or incoming instant message.

The Internet is rife with sources for these novelty and accumulation dopamine-hits. We subscribe addictively to news feeds. Countless companies like Facebook and Twitter capitalize on our desire for a stream of new-but-familiar snippets of information from and about our friends. Online games allow us to accumulate virtual goods (points, badges, titles, Linden Dollars, ISK) while we explore new environments. Our smart phones let us download new apps, and notify us daily of updates to our existing collection.

All of this finally brings me to my actual point, which involves the creative process. Why do people get such pleasure from creating new things? Perhaps the sense of satisfaction from making things is a combination of the reward-impulses discussed above. After all, when you make something, you end up with some increment over what you had before. This keys into the stockpiling instinct. What’s more, as you make things, you are provided with stream of exciting new things (especially as your skill level increases). Part of the act of creation is discovery5, which speaks directly to our desire for novelty.

Of course there are many additional reasons to create. There’s the need to express emotion. There’s the cultural status as an artist (or the absurd title “Maker”6). There is the struggle against boredom, or distraction from problems. There is simple necessity, in the case of inventions, followed by indolence (if necessity is the mother of invention, surely laziness is the father). Still, with the possible exception of inventions, I would argue that the desire to create in response to those reasons is rooted in the brain chemistry surrounding the magic of new things.

1 Well, in any case, anticipation of food (or other pleasures) are associated with release of “happy” brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamines.

2 I’m oversimplifying, as usual, but there is evidence that suggests that novel situations (and even the anticipation of novelty) both give us a lift.

3 It’s worth noting that these arguments have simple counter-arguments. Those who explore new places may be more likely to discover new resources, but they’re also more likely to be eaten by a hitherto unknown monster or contract a disease for which no prior immunity exists. The fun thing about evolution-based explanations is that they’re often simple, convincing, and wrong.

4 I’m sure someone will point out the US-centricity of these ideas, and I don’t deny it. While anecdotally, I’ve observed similar behaviors in people in places where I’ve traveled (including places which have significantly different cultures), I freely admit that I see things through the lens of my US culture. It’s also worth noting that in an environment of relative abundance, the tendencies encouraged by consumer culture can kill us, whether via obesity or being buried alive under our hoarded collections of National Geographic magazine and Royal Wedding commemorative plates.

5 As artist and teacher Penny Longpre once told me, “the difference between an artist and an amateur is that an artist knows which mistakes to keep.” Artists often refer to the paint or the clay having some kind of volition — a mind of its own. I think this is really the same thing. Whether it’s unintentional details or a result of the characteristics of the material, unexpected elements provide ideas during the creation process, which can then lead the work into new directions.

6 I’m overly sensitive to this self-congratulatory bit of culture. I’m not sure why every generation seems to think it has single-handedly invented music, sex, and everything else. The octogenarian down the street was no less creative in crafting his model railroad just because he didn’t call himself a “Maker,” and his wife was no less innovative when it came to improvising implements around the house even though she didn’t use the “DIY” acronym. People are resourceful and adaptive, and don’t need self-aggrandizing labels to legitimize their accomplishments.

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Fri, 11 Nov 2011

Imaginary Tech Conversation

— SjG @ 3:14 pm

Coder #1: Man, revision control sucks.
Coder #2: What? Are you insane?
Coder #1: Insane? I don’t think so.
Coder #2: How can you say revision control sucks, then?
Coder #1: Well, I’m stuck using SVN.
Coder #2: Subversion isn’t so bad. Especially with the new merge tracking stuff from version 1.5. It’s pretty easy to use.
Coder #1: Yeah, well, I stand by my assertion. It sucks.
Coder #2: Can you be more specific?
Coder #1: Have you tried using SVN in a mixed environment? Say Windows, Linux, and Mac OS?
Coder #2: It’s not going to be line-ending issues. Oh, I see. You’re talking about case-sensitive versus case-insensitive filesystems.
Coder #1: I wish it was that easy. That’s crappy, but you can work around it.
Coder #2: Then?
Coder #1: A riddle for you. When is UTF-8 not UTF-8?
Coder #2: Huh?
Coder #1: When it’s in a filename.
Coder #2: [clicks, reads]
Coder #1: But I guess if you don’t have any Macs or ZFS around, you’re fine.
Coder #2: Holy Linus on a unicycle! Well, I guess it’s back to dated tar files…
Coder #3: Use GIT, you IDIOT!