Geeks for Obama: Tim O'Reilly's endorsement

Tim O'Reilly is a big name in the geek world. His eponymous publishing house has sold some of the best programming books for many years.

In a radical departure from his usual writing, he's published a stirring endorsement of Barack Obama.

Geeks tend to be libertarian to centrist sorts, though substantially less religious than the average American. (I'm far more concerned with the 'problem of the weak' than most American geeks.) My tribe should have been a natural constituency for McCain.

The old, pre-Palin, non-demented McCain.

Instead, donation reports from Google, Apple, Microsoft and my own employer show that 80% of geeks support Obama. Not coincidentally, the Economist's world-wide reader survey found that 80% of US registered Economist readers support Obama.

O'Reilly fits right into this picture.

Microsoft lessons from Target Trutech and my fancy JBL

Two years ago I spent far too much money on a fancy JBL iPod clock radio.

It was defective by design. My 3G b&w iPod wouldn't always start when the alarm went off. Later model iPods would always start, but they played a random tune (known defect of this device). The embedded OS crashed randomly, typically every few weeks. It's pain to reset when there's a 9V battery backup installed, so I gave up on the battery backup. The time and alarm configuration is cryptic to begin with, and there are many combinatorials to get wrong.

In the meantime I bought my 10 yo a $8 house brand Target Trutech clock radio. It's been very reliable, despite extreme abuse.

Tonight I threw in the towel. I bought another $8 "Trutech" for our room. It's very simple to program, the 9V battery backup works, the radio even makes some noise and the power adapter is quite compact.

I thought about paying more than $8, but my pre-JBL clock radio was a $90 SONY CD player/radio that died after about 10 months of gentle use.

In the 21st century there's no particular correlation between price and quality, and most brand names are meaningless. (Apple being the obvious exception.)

Today one can either buy the very cheapest device and save money, or buy a luxury brand (Apple, Bose, ?) and expect some support. The great middle is gone.

Speaking of which, Target is selling $300 ASUS "netbooks" that run Linux and bundle OpenOffice. They include a 4 GB solid state "drive" and 512MB of memory with embedded wireless. Within a year they'll sell for $200 and have 8 GB of storage and 1GB of memory.

Microsoft is not a luxury brand.

2009 will be an ugly year for Microsoft.

Mainstream media wearies of calling McCain on his lying

A not so good development.

McCain/Palin lying has been so regular and sustained it's no longer "news". It's "dog bits man" and thus not reported by big media.

ABC is an exception, but the 'Carved B' hoax is getting a complete pass. FactCheck.org is routinely calling the lies, but they're running out of euphemisms and migrating to descriptions like "whopper". Alas, they're not mainstream.

I put Obama's chances at no more than 50%, so this is not a good time for the big buys to stop pointing out that Palin and McCain are non-stop liars.

Was Babbage's computer truly forgotten?

In Our Time 's Ada Lovelace program, by necessity, involved quite a bit of discussion of Charles Babbage. Babbage, with some help from Lovelace, imagined a good portion of the computing machine that Turing and others would later build.

Melvyn's guests felt that there wasn't a direct connection between Babbage (1830)  and Turing (1945), that Babbage's contributions were essentially lost to science.

This seems a bit odd, as the Wikipedia article on Babbage mentions that his son created six difference engines. To this I can add an additional note from my library. I have a copy of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed), which includes an article on Babbage and one on Calculating Machines. I've scanned all of the former and portions of the latter (PDF 8MB [1]). (See also the "love to know" 1911 project , but their article doesn't match my copy. Microsoft apparently republished the encyclopedia in 1995.)

Briefly, the article on Babbage focuses on his mathematical pursuits, including an essay deploring the decline of science in 19th century England (some things never change). The article describes both the Difference and Analytic engines much as we understand them now, though it misses the significance of the programming design. The article on Calculating Machines praises the Difference Engine as a real device with well understood principles, but states that the Analytical Engine did not progress beyond sketches. It does, however, refer interested readers to a comprehensive book by Babbage's son.

I'm left with the impression that Melvyn's guests understated the extent to which portions of Babbage's work survived into the 20th century.

[1] OS X Black and White PDFs are vastly larger than Adobe's B&W PDFs.

Apple blocks Opera Mini from the iPhone

This is why we iPhone users must encourage everyone to buy a Google Android gPhone ...

Opera Sings an Ode to Browsers Everywhere - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

... For smartphones, Opera Mobile is a full-featured browser that can display most Web sites. Handset makers pay Opera about 50 cents to $1 per copy for each phone made with the browser on it.

For less sophisticated phones and slower networks, it offers Opera Mini, which takes advantage of a server computer, run by Opera, to handle the processing of Web pages. The server then sends a simplified version of each page to the phone in a compressed form.

Because that makes for much faster browsing no matter what the phone and network, Mr. von Tetzchner said, Opera Mini is increasingly popular on smartphones, even those that use the latest third-generation, or 3G, wireless data networks.

“3G isn’t really that fast,” he said. “We try to deal with the real world.”

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser...

Wouldn't you like to have the choice of a Opera Mobile? Google Android customers will have that choice.

Apple needs the lash of competition to be a barely tolerable companion.

Great news: brain speed increases to age 39

I figured brain speed peaked at 25, so 39 is great news ..

Slashdot | Brains Work Best At Age of 39

... Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles are reporting that while some people may think 'life begins at 40,' all it seems to do is slow down. According to recent research, at age 39 our brain reaches its peak speed, and it's all downhill after that...

Why the negative spin? This is kind of nice.

So now I have the brain of a 29 yo .... (assuming a normal curve decline, which is probably optimistic).

If you're told you can't vote -- call 866-OUR-VOTE

The good guys are ready for the big fight. They've got a strike team standing by to fight GOP voter suppression attacks ...

Do you know what to do? (Scripting News)

... Call 866- OUR-VOTE or go to 866OURVOTE.org to get information on where to vote and the facts on your right to vote. A trained team of advisors is available to help you resolve your problem...

The Singularity University

It's easy to mock this group, not least because of the wealth and power of some of the attendees ...

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: This post will self-destruct in five minutes

... On Saturday, September 20, 2008, a carefully selected group of the tech world's best and brightest assembled in a windowless conference room at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley - barely a mile from the Googleplex as the rocket flies - to discuss preparations for our impending post-human future. This was the founding meeting of Singularity University, an academic institution whose mission, as founder Dr. Peter Diamandis told the elite audience, would be 'to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies (bio, nano, info, etc); and to apply, focus and guide these to the best benefit of humanity and its environment.'...

The group is keeping a low profile, for obvious reasons. Neither Vernor Vinge nor Bill Joy attended.

When it comes to the "rapture of the nerds" I hold the middle ground. I fear the era of transcendent non-biological minds, but I think it's beyond 2060. Unlike Nicholas Carr, I'll avoid the easy sarcasm. I'm glad they're thinking about the problem. Maybe they'll figure out how we could create an artificial mind that wouldn't be, for example, insane or murderous.

Winning for the wrong reasons

If Obama/Biden win, which I still cannot believe, we will ask whether America saved itself for the right reasons or the wrong reasons.

The right reason would be that the American people cleared the cobwebs away. That we became serious. That we all recognized the corruption, the lies, the cruelty, the stupidity (oh the stupidity), the brutality and the greed of the 1996-2008 GOP.

The right reason would be that we became ashamed of our panicked response to the attacks of 9/11, that we saw all the blood and gold we've spilled like water.

The right reason would be that we wanted a new start, and to find out what the GOP has really done.

Then there's the wrong reason.

The wrong reason is that we're still pithed, but we're semi-blindly doing the right thing as a reaction to the news of the past weeks and the disastrous Sarah Palin.

Paul Krugman seems to think we'll make the right choice for the right reasons. Brad DeLong thinks we're making the right choice for the wrong reasons ...

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong:

.... I think voters would like to be serious, but don't know how. And the media doesn't provide them with a way to be serious--serving as trusted intermediaries to tell Americans about candidates' likely policies and their likely effects is the last thing from reporters' minds. Recall New York Times editor Jill Abramson's sorry excuse that the Times hadn't run stories about issues because the reporters competent to cover policy substance were all dragged off to write about the financial crisis.

Paul is optimistic about the future of the press corps. I am not. I think that the Republican slime machine and their friends the Heathers in the press corps will be back--that this year the normal rules of political-journalistic slime have been temporarily interrupted.

We do, I think, still live in Nixonland...

I'm with DeLong on this one. We have not come to terms with our mistakes. In fact, we could very easily elect Palin/McCain and continue the long descent.

I'm not proud. I gave up on that when Bush was re-elected. I'll accept doing the right thing for the wrong reasons -- but I'll go easy on celebrating America's recovery. That's years away at best, and it's no sure thing.

The thoughtful slime mold

So you think you understand thought?

the physics arXiv blog: Slime Mould intelligence points to a new model of AI

...Suddenly, you’ve got a new kind of AI on your hands and the origins of cellular intelligence don’t seem so obscure, after all...

No, you don't understand thought at all.

Now about the google-mind ...

Jay Cooke State Park - MN

We do well with road trips. Better than one might expect. Our latest 2 day road trip to Duluth Minnesota was another triumph, not the least because we couldn't get a room in Duluth.

Too many tourists.

Instead we ended up in Cloquet, a lumber town that reminds me of Williamsport, Pennsylvania -- where we did our residency. It's an interesting town in its own right, but our kids didn't allow us to explore the remarkable used book store we passed by (in the old town, up the hill, in a beautiful old building).

We got lucky on the drive from Cloquet to Duluth. We opted for the road less traveled, and that took us through Jay Cooke state park.

Wow. How did we miss this gem? Try following the river with Google Earth, and visit the photos you find. I want to try the suspension bridge over the Saint Louis River (lots of hydro power, so hardly pristine, but still fascinating). It's about 2-3 hours north of the Twin Cities, so easy to visit.

Looks like some superb cross country skiing there. If I'm very careful I might be able to turn my 6 yo daughter into a cross-country skier -- and then I'd have a case for a trip!

Frank Rich: white guys aren't all bad

I was reading in Politico that the last Democrat to win a majority of white non-Hispanic Americans was Lyndon Johnson.

Before the civil rights movement.

I'm melanin-deprived so that's one of my tribes. I can't even claim a Jewish-exemption (white non-Hispanic Jews do vote Democrat). Yeah, I'm sort of Korean by adoption, but I still get sun burn from incandescent lights.

No wonder, in my heart, I still believe Palin/McCain will win -- albeit at a hideous cost. It comes with my tribe.

Frank Rich, also a member of the inheritors of sin, tries to tell the world we're not all bad ...

Frank Rich - In Defense of White Americans - NYTimes.com

... Nor is America’s remaining racism all that it once was, or that the McCain camp has been hoping for it to be. There are even “racists for Obama,” as Politico labels the phenomenon: White Americans whose distrust of black people in general crumbles when they actually get to know specific black people, including a presidential candidate who extends a genuine helping hand in a time of national crisis.

The original “racist for Obama,” after all, was none other than Obama’s own white, Kansas-raised grandmother, the gravely ill Madelyn Dunham, whom he visited in Hawaii on Friday. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama wrote of how shaken he was when he learned of her overwhelming fear of black men on the street. But he weighed that reality against his unshakeable love for her and hers for him, and he got past it...

In a similar vein, it's instructive to google on "voting for the ni**er", but I wouldn't mark that as an entirely positive sign of euro-enlightenment.

It will be a good thing for civilization when my tribe becomes just another American minority. Not too long now ...

When John McCain became George Wallace

It hasn't been a good week for John McCain.

Sarah Palin spent more on new outfits than most of his voters make in two years. Her make-up artist earns many times what they earn.

He needed some good news. News that would help him get, say, Pennsylvania.

So when the head of is Pennsylvania campaign called with a miraculous gift, a woman attacked by a big black man who carved the letter B on her face, McCain jumped at it.

Palin phoned the young victim. McCain phoned her. His campaign manager called journalists with all the racy details.

On that day John McCain became George Wallace, the tactical race baiter. He'd abandoned the last shreds of honor in a lunge for the brass ring.

It might have worked. It still might work.

Problem is, 2008 Pennsylvania is not 1960 Alabama. The police were not duped. The public was obviously more skeptical than McCain. Within a day or so the "victim" confessed. She'd faked the whole thing.

McCain's Pennsylvania control went into desperate damage control spin. Their spin is even less convincing than the original story ...

Talking Points Memo | Time for Answers

... As Greg Sargent reported yesterday, McCain Pennsylvania communications director Peter Feldman pushed reporters on a highly incendiary version of Todd's hoax -- providing reporters with quotes from the fictitious attacker and telling them the the "B" scratched on Todd's face stood for "Barack." As the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson aptly put it, Feldman's actions showed "not just a willingness to believe it but an eagerness to incite a ... racial backlash against the Obama campaign."

Our reporting did not find any direct evidence that the McCain campaign's national headquarters played a role pushing the story.

However, the national campaign has now come forward and lied about what happened in Pennsylvania. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers has now told NBC that alleged quotes from the McCain campaign in early reports of the story were actually the product of "sloppy reporting" and that they were actually quotes from the Pittsburgh police.

This is simply not credible.

Initial reports specifically quote the McCain campaign. And at least two sources involved in the contemporaneous reporting have come forward and said on the record that the quotes came directly from the McCain campaign. To believe that two separate local news organizations made the identical mistake with the same quotes and are now both covering it up is simply not credible. But that is what Rogers is now claiming....

... Gov. Palin did call Todd after the purported attack, as did Sen. McCain. And news of these calls was provided to the press.

The involvement of the candidates and specifically the release of such information -- which was clearly intended to bump up interest in the story -- shows some level of involvement by the national campaign...

I think I know how Obama will handle this.

He'll be gracious and dignified. He'll express his sympathy to the young woman and her family. He'll extend his forgiveness.

There's no better way to twist the knife.

I've said for weeks that I expected McCain to win this, and for Palin to become President within six months.

Now I'm not so sure. Now I'm ready to say it could go either way.

If McCain wins though, he'll have destroyed the village he wanted to save.

Only Shakespeare could do justice to the tragedy of John McCain.

Wassup 2008 - wonderful campaign fodder

I'd never seen the original beer commercial.

Sadly, I've now seen it. I had to figure out where the vastly better 2008 version came from: YouTube - Wassup 2008.

Diamonds from coal.

Lessons from the faked Todd attack

The unhappy young woman who claimed a big black man carved a 'B' on her face has admitted she made everything up.

She'll face charges from the Pittsburgh police, who were neither deceived nor amused.

We learned a few things however.

Matt Drudge was very keen on the story, he believed it immediately and deeply. Matt Drudge is a racist idiot.

Michelle Malkin is less stupid that Matt Drudge. Who knew? She wasn't fooled.

McCain and Palin both personally called Todd. They are desperate ... and credulous.

A Fox news exec said proof the story was false would doom McCain's bid -- because it would show he was so desperate he'd resort to race baiting.

He was right about playing into race baiting. In a rational nation this would indeed doom Palin/McCain, but that's not our world.