Glass Shards

With the formal release of Windows 7 by MegaHard, the folks at Lifehacker held a straw poll last week of their reader’s favorite OS. [Link] Now, even while acknowledging that we have to expect the population to be quite skewed from the species as a whole, after all most humans are highly acomputeric, [1] this chart is quite intriguing:[2]

 

The intriguing part is that something of order 0.27 of the responding (sample) population does not use Windows, at least as a favorite OS. If this were the situation with the species as a whole then MegaHard’s Lanchestrian monopoly would be defunct!

I also find it worthy of consideration that XP still enjoys about twice the usage as VISTA and about the same as Linux.

[1]  Computer/information illiterate. The average computer user, a MegaHard mind serf, think that being able to log in, use a browser to run a Gooey search, send and receive email  via Outlook, and use a spreadsheet or key a memo is computer literacy. There are cases on record from the nineteenth century in Amerika where slaves considered being permitted to decide whether or not to wear their (only) shirt was a freedom.
[2] Yes, I did almost use the “I” word there. 

information, computers, operating system, humans

She who did Work

Today is the birthday anniversary of Marie Sklodowska Curie, information courtesy of the Britannica folks. [Link] If you are old enough to have had an analog watch with glow-in-the-dark hands and numerals, then it was because of the work of Marie and her husband Pierre. Supposedly her interred remains also glow.

She is what is sometimes called a ‘twofer’, signifying that she won two Nobel prizes, one in chemistry and another in physics. The first she shared with her husband who died early under the wheels of a beer wain.

Despite the wrangle Hollywood has made of her, she is ample evidence of what is good in the species.

chemistry, physics, science, radioactivity

The Weakness of Humans

Courtesy of U Chicago, some statistics.[Link] They deal with changes in the beliefs, at least as indicated by a survey, of Americans between 1964 (or slightly later) and now.

• Belief in deity but not a personal deity: 0.05 -> 0.10;
• Belief in deity: 0.99 -> 0.92;
• Never attend services: 0.09 -> 0.22;
• Organizational non-affiliation: 0.05 -> 0.16;
• Daily prayer: 052 -> 0.59;
• Afterlife belief: 0.69 -> 0.72;

From these statistics it may be anticipated that the evangelical will become even more paranoid, frantic, and obnoxious. That the nation is becoming more rational and perceptive is a surprise but a good one.

That rationality seems to be at a premium here in Greater Metropolitan Arab where the number of churches outnumbers all other forms of businesses (slightly). One can only shudder at the tax revenue lost to the city and county by mysticism.

This also gives pause to reflect on the difference between Order and Organization. Humans want the former; it is programmed into us somehow, probably part of being intelligent. I decline the question of whether that search for order is an accident of nature or the purpose of deity acting. I do reflect however that all too often we humans are unable,[1] or unwilling, or just too lazy to comprehend order and instead substitute organization. Even I have a yearning to get books into cases, or, at least stacks instead of piles, and papers into all manner of box or container. Why, I even stash laptops and bricks in cases.

But too much of our lives is given over to slavish membership or subscription in organization. Organized religion is the epitome of this serfdom. Members are often discouraged from thinking outside strictly defined gutters; if thinking is even permitted. Non-belief organizations are often as bad. Scant wonder so many consider they employment to be a burden and a curse rtaher than a source of growth and enjoyment.

We lose sight of the idea that organization should be for the purpose of comprehending order, not of being ordered about.

[1]  To repeat the sweatshirt cliche, ‘What part of the Quantum Mechanics don’t you understand?” recognizing that the joke is that any of us, even an SCP who has done QM for two score years, can understand very little of QM. The astute can do the maths and note the correlation with observable reality and muse on the whichness of the why, but understand?

Paleosex

Miscegenation. Such an underused word these days when relativism has become the rule and morality has become spatial.

The Neandertal genome project has produced some furor in the media. Seems that researchers at the Max Planck Institut have opined that neandertals and sapiens did indeed have sexual congress. [Link] At issue, happily is the question of whether the offspring, assuming there were such, contributed to the modern sapiens genome.

Did I miss something here? Has some tryst site been discovered? Are there pictures? Or is this one of those dataless pronouncements made occasionally by overconcentrating scientists?

Not that I am adverse to the theory. In my mind it rather makes more sense for sapiens and neandertals to have had congress than not. That is opinion, no data. And I am not a biologist nor an anthropologist. But I am at sea a bit on how one can make definite statement without data? Or is science different in Europe?

The only way I can hypothesize getting to this is to have not only the neandertal and modern sapiens genomes, but the ancient sapiens genome as well. And then if it does develop that part of the modern sapiens genome is due to neandertal DNA, then we may reasonable, evidentially, infer sapiens-neandertal congress via Occam’s Razor.

But don’t tell the Cabots or the Lodges.

The Stuff of Hope

Hope, now, is that we can survive the current administration.

Faceless in Arab

Monday is back to gym day where I normally listen to a podcast of CBC’s “The Best of Ideas”. I listen to a disproportionate fraction of CBC podcasts not because I think the Canadians have it right and we here in the Yankee republic have it wrong, just that I have not found any Amerikan podcasts good enough to take over the niche in the time environment.

It is also a matter of common knowledge to those few, those happy few, who regularly visit here that I am a bit critical of the media. Hence it will come as a bit of a surprise today, to these, at least, that I am going to say a few good things about a journalist. The podcast this morning was one from back at the end of August – I do tend to stockpile the things for lean periods when the casters go on holiday, said holidays being of excessive and indecent length. The subject was the presentation of the Dalton Camp lecture by Kenneth Whyte. [Link] Dalton Camp is a discorporated journalist who was evidently a kultur hero in Canada, Kenneth Whyte is the editor of a magazine – not one I read – and has recently published a book on William Randolph Hurst.

What impressed me with Whyte’s presentation was its candor and, to me, at least, accuracy. The latter is as subjective an assessment as the former since no data was offered. So at worst, Mr. Whyte entertains the same prejudices and observations as myself, except in greater depth, and at best he, and I, are accurate in our observations.

The core of Mr. Whyte’s discourse, or at least the part that I let filter through to my attention and consideration, may be paraphrased as vellum versus paper. I mention this because it is an often forgotten aspect of the previous information revolution, the one largely attributed to Gutenberg. What we tend to overlook is that that revolution was made possible by the inexpensive availability of paper.  The availability of cheap printing would have not made the difference it did without cheap paper. So in a sense we may say that paper forced out vellum.

The media (as opposed to journalism) model of the Twentieth century is one where the bulk of the cost of media, mostly newspapers but including wireless and television as well, is bourne by advertisers rather than consumers. In the case of the electromagnetic transmission media, all of the cost is bourne by advertisers except for public media. What Mr. Whyte reminded me of, rather embarassingly since it is one of my favorite socio-economic models, is that this means the advertisers tell the media how to behave and that behavior is banal journalism so as not to distract the consumers from the propaganda being fed them from the advertisers. Thank you, Mr. Whyte.

He then went on to explain that the demise of newspapers flows from that banality in that it destroyed the loyalty of the readers. That in itself would not do in newspapers however, as evidenced by their survival through the Twentieth century. What ultimately destroys them is other, faster ways of getting the news. Certainly newspaper readership has declined in proportion to the proliferation of electromagnetic transmission. But what has accelerated this has been the internet, the paper as it were. And evidently this is a case of newspapers being rock, internet being paper.

Another thing Mr. Whyte mentioned was that one of reasons for failure, part of the banality, was that newspapers became faceless. I was struck with how accurate this is. Certainly the Huntsville Times is faceless to us outside the city limits of Huntsville, Nawth Alibam’s Shining City on the Hill. But I suspect that the Huntsville Times is faceless even inside the city limits. Not so the Arab Tribune. Except for the few who only sleep here and have no life in Arab, everyone knows of the Tribune. They know where its offices are, who at least some of the people are who write for it. In this a canny strategy becomes apparent.

But  I am worried. The Tribune has begun to let slip that it already plans to discontinue its paper existence. Not a strange thing in this day, but seemingly a blow to destroy its deliberate association. Once the Tribune is only on the web will it too go away?

Trick or Treat or Thumbs?

Last night was All Hallows Eve and once more FD SCP and I had no callers. Just as well as I was reminded this morning as I did my morning rounds of blogs and comics. This one epitomizes our experiences with the holy day:

humans, society, insanity,

Fungible Crap

While mewling of the banality of society it strikes that perhaps some diversion may be attained by reviewing the lees of this weeks brew of articles. Research from Brigham Young U has been interpreted as indicating that cleanliness may not be next to deityness but seems to be the influence of morality. [Link] My first thought on this is how much is it influenced by the temperament of the region’s denizens, recalling my own experiences when visiting Salt Lake City and experiencing a feeling of oppression akin to that described during the reign of the Fourth Reich. My second thought was that this is somewhat ho-hum since it is purely Maslovian: if one is comfortable and happy then one is naturally higher on the heirarchy and more likely to take action that is atruistic and/or counter-survival in nature.

It also seems that MegaHard has a new approach to continued existence – selling computers with only MegaHard crapware on them. [Link] Crapware has a singularly fungiblemeaning in that whatever the individual and/or the individual’s organization consider to be crapware is. In my household, Windows is doubly crapware in that FD SCP likes it not because it conflicts with her PFAFF sewing software, despite the fact that the sewing software will execute on no other OS. In effect Windows serves in the office of a human to cancer for this software. I, on the other hand, like neither. The sewing software is the embodiment of its creators, who rank with the architects of the great tyrranies of Tellurian history in what they have created. Windows is a coffle of extraordinary length and resilience. It binds humanity in its stupidity and banality. So the idea that MegaHard is improving its sociel and financial status by selling computers graced without the additions of other vendors that is commonly viewed as craware but leaving on their own merx sterci – Windows and Office and whatever else emerges from their latifundae is on a par with slave merchants who advertise that theyr merchandise has no disease or blemish.

Bah! Enough tripe. What matters in our banal society is that day light savings onus has ended for the (calendar) year and we may now cope with another period while our diurnal rhythms adapt.

Pretext of Absence

The folks at Britannica remind me that today is the birthday anniversary of the fusion bomb, [Link] so this seems an auspicious time to take up the blogging perversion anew. Those few, those happy few, to paraphrase Billy Rattlelance, who frequent the blog have noticed my comments have been absent the last couple of days. Part of that has been preoccupation with the mundanity of computers. For those who follow the seasons of Linux, a biannual[1] version update of Ubuntu was issued this week [Link] And while I have not yet begun that activity of installing this update, 9.10, I have been and still am doing various things to get to the state where I may actually install this pearl of rare price on my Ubuntu boxes. Some of these modifications are of a software nature, but others are hardware upgrades that have been deferred because they involve sitting on floor and while getting down is tractable, rising again from is almost not. The rationale, of course, is that one does not combine two risks into one given that most hardware is peverse and requires twiddling to get to work, happily a less frustrating undertaking with Linux than Windows, and hence one does not combine that with the necessary twiddling with a new OS, or even a version update lest one be left with smoke and ashes. Kadish has been said for more than one computer in my youth for that error.

The other reason for scant blogging has been that, in and amidst the waits while hardware and software do their interminable thing, was the realization that society, having become assymptotically global, has become banal. The popularity of social web sites has demonstrated this amply. Look at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and see what the tenor of conversation and discussion is. It is banal. An article I read several years ago, for which I lack the reference, predicted this sorry turn of affairs, claiming that while population rose logistically, positions of meaning in society rose logarithmically. Hence the vast population of the planet, which by its numbers dominates the social sites, has nothing meaningful to do nor any expectation of anything meaningful to accomplish. The tenor of society is no longer improvement in knowledge or understanding or even relations among humans, but the constrained banality of individual existence. Theordore Cleaver has been inundated by Edward Haskell; deeds have been whelmed by experiences; and serfdom has been reinvented with a finality that is alarming.

Of course, it is very easy to think dark thought when one is diddling with the innards of computers. Scant wonder that surgeons and automobile mechanics fit poorly in society at any time, and that those who alter reality, or our perception of it, are alienated and haunted. In some strange sense social inertia is conserved and when one disrupts it that conservation is added to one’s burdens.

[1]  Ah! A lovely word. In that it has opposite meanings, being either a frequency of twice a year or once every two years. In this case, the former.

Open Government

I have been cogitating lately on the matter of literacy. Part of this arises from working with APS to mentor high shul physics students and answering their questions, an amazing number of which run to “maths! Yuck!” and I have to get off on the three basic literacies:

• reading and writing (actual literacy);
• maths (numeracy or calculicity); and
• coding (computericity?).

Most adults in the Yankee republic, and I include high shul students in this population sample, are to some degree literate, say 0.6-0.8 or thereabouts. Most can read, at least enough to puzzle out commercial signs and correspondence ,like email, tweets, IMs, and the like. About 0.5 actually read and perhaps half of that fraction actually can write. And as dismal as those numbers seem in modern, enlightened, college attended Amerikan society, the fractions for the math and code literate are even smaller.

If we define maths literacy, calculicity, as being able to do calculus, the 0.9 of the population is acalculate even based on granting them qualification by merely taking (and passing) an introductory calculus course. Most who have that certification forget industriously on the wish that maths are unnecessary after high shul. Coding literacy, computericity, may be defined as being able to write a program, in any language, that will input n numbers, add them up, and divide by n, and output that average. Likewise, the fraction of the population that is computericity is about 0.1. Interestingly, the fraction of overlap of those who are calculate and computerate is about 0.5, and almost all of these people are also able to read and (sorta) write.

I am not going to go down the path that those who are not multiply literate are disadvantaged or handicapped in some fashion, but I am going to link to the second aspect of why I have been thinking on this. Yesterday I read an (as usual) excellent blot by Matt Asay on how DoD (the Yankee military apparat) is ‘fostering’ open source usage. [Link] Despite the protestations, I have my serious, perhaps cynical doubts. After all, I did work for the Yankee army, and occasionally DoD, for a third of a century.

One of the ways that organizations control their members is by restricting their literacy. The most common is reading and writing restrictions. Members of organizations are expected, taught, to write in ‘proper’ forms, read only permitted material, and not waste time on material that is deemed by the organization to be detrimental to the organization. The DoD is a rats warren of this type of restriction.

But the restrictions that are less visible are those on calculicity and computericity. A few examples seem most appropriate. Back when the Y2K scare was rampant, the software gestapo visited me and told me that I could not use any of my software that wasn’t on the official approved Y2K compliant list until I had demonstrated to a review board that the software was Y2K compliant and the board had officially approved it. Long story made short, all of my demonstrations were ignored, nothing was approved, and I went for a year without any nerd software as I weathered the storm and won through to after the ’singularity’ and could buy new software.

Second example. One of the pieces of nerd software I needed was a symbolic algebra engine. The one I liked best as did the folks I worked with was MAPLE. This program suffered two bureaucratic stigmata: it was not on the ‘approved’ – read MegaHard produced – software and it was sold by a company outside the Yankee republic. To pay the annual maintenance fee I had to have approval from the software gestapo to but a pariah client and approval from the purchasing polezei to buy outside the Yankee republic. When I first got the software it took a year to get these two approvals so as soon as I paid for this year’s license I started getting approval for next year’s. By the time I retired the time had increased to two years.

The same software gestapo also certifies who can write code. If you are not certified by attending a couple of years of official military shuls, you are not allowed to write so much as a macro in EXCEL, much less real code. This combination of code restriction and nerd software restriction results in a turn over every year of 0.05 of the nerds who work in DoD. No wonder the Yankee government is fast becoming brain dead.

So when someone tells me the DoD is fostering open source I have to find galgenhumor in the statement. One of the aspects of open software is that you have free access to software you need and can write or modify freely to do what needs be done. That is the antithesis of contemporary government policy. My cynical suspicion is that the government, DoD at least, is embracing ‘open source’ so that they can mandate their own repositories are the only ones accessible to their members and thereby restrict what clients may be used. Oh, and only ‘certified’ folks get to be root and superuser.

Dictatorship by Synaptic, a perversion as evil as I can imagine.

government, tyranny, organization, control