is that all their rest areas along interstate highways have free wifi. I discovered this over the weekend. Very, very nifty.
Apparently I missed the news about this last year.
Monthly Archives: September 2005
ESR’s Bad Ideas
So I’ve been listening to some back episodes of The Linux Link Tech Show lately, and they’ve had a lot of insightful guests (the interview with Aaron Seigo of KDE was particularly excellent.)
They also talked to Eric S. Raymond in episode 95.
So here are some ESR quotes:
“A program that requires documentation is a design failure. . . If you need documentation, you have failed.” He said that in some cases, it may not be possible, but people should never give up on that goal.
I’d like to see him write something as easy and powerful as grep without documentation. How about a non-linear video editor, where there are some complex concepts at work?
He went on to describe how one might write a spreadsheet app without documentation. “The way to design a documentation-free spreadsheet is: the initial state of the spreadsheet is that every gesture that the user might make pops up a balloon prompt saying ‘This is what will happen if you confirm this.’ As they demonstrate knowledge of the interface, the balloons stop popping up, and are replaced by other baloons that say what they can do with other gestures.”
I have one word for that: AIEEEEEEEE.
This is worse than Microsoft Word with the paperclip. And ESR wants us to develop it.
Please, give people a simple quick reference card or something instead of annoying popups. Anything but the annoying popups! If I want to learn how to write a letter in word, I can go to the help system and learn how to write a letter there.
Argh.
Multiple Computer Use
I work frequently with four different machines. Two desktops, a laptop, and a tablet PC.
I want to be able to use programs in the same way across multiple machines and have state be preserved across them. For some things, I use unison. It works reasonably well for the KDE PIM apps and my Firefox bookmarks.
It doesn’t work well for things like NNTP readers (where article numbers vary from location to location) and aren’t easily fixed.
But then there are things like ipodder. It’s an otherwise nice program, but there is no good way to sync its ~/.ipodder between machines (especially if the download area is not to be synced.) Urgh. It gets all confused and messed up.
Sigh.
I wish more programs would think about this.
The Linux Link Tech Show
Probably the most unexpected result of purchasing a Motorola v551 phone is finding out about The Linux Link Tech Show. (One of the people involved had e-mailed me asking about bluetooth under Linux on that phone.)
I’ve listened to about 2 hours of back episodes now. It’s great. I can’t believe it’s been 2 years that they’ve been doing this and I just now learn of it.
They’ve invited me to be a guest on the show next Wednesday evening, September 21. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.
Plus, they’ve got an Asterisk setup. Always like the opportunity to do something cool with Asterisk.
Perl, Powered By Haskell
Autrijus Tang is well-known for developing the first working Perl 6 interpreter, Pugs. Pugs is written in Haskell, my new favorite language. Perl.com has an interview with Autrijus, and page 2 of that interview gets particularly interesting. Here are some quotes from Autrijus:
Haskell . . . is faster than C++, more concise than Perl, more regular than Python, more flexible than Ruby, more typeful than C#, more robust than Java, and has absolutely nothing in common with PHP.
(If it has nothing in common with PHP, it must be great, right?)
Haskell is a pure functional language optimised for conciseness and clarity. It handles infinite data structures natively, and offers rich types and function abstractions that give Haskell programs a strong declarative flavor–the entire Pugs compiler and runtime is under 3000 lines of code.
Most languages require you to pay a “language tax”: code that does nothing with the main algorithm, placed there only to make the computer happy. [Java, anyone? — jgoerzen]
On the other end of spectrum, we often shy away from abstracting huge legacy code because we are afraid of breaking the complex interplay of flow control and global and mutable variables. Besides, the paths leading to common targets of refactoring–those Design Patterns–are often non-obvious.
Because Haskell makes all side effects explicit, code can be refactored in a safe and automatic way. Indeed, you can ask a bot on #haskell to turn programs to its most abstracted form for you.
Go check out the interview (page 2) for more, including a demo program that Autrijus wrote to show off Haskell.
Thanks to metaperl for the link.
Some Airport Statistics
| Airport | Number of Gates | Annual Passengers (2000) | Wireless Internet Options Plainly Visible to Travelers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte, NC | 79 | 10,377,837 | None (checked all of Concourse A plus the atrium) |
| Atlanta, GA (Hartsfield) | 176 | 38,255,778 | None (and I walked almost the entire length of Concourse C to check) |
| Wichita, KS | 12 | 535,715 | Four free work centers throughout the airport, clearly marked, each offering four work areas complete with desk, chair, AC power, Ethernet connection, and wireless Internet access. Wireless connectivity extends into most gate areas as well. ESSID: “FREE”. |
Best $70 We’ve Spent In Quite Awhile
Today we got to see the first ever live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion from Kansas, at the Kansas State fair.
It was great to see the show in person (second time for me; I also saw it at Purdue back in 2001). All the jokes about Kansas were fun, too. And they even recovered fine when — I kid you not — the wind at the grandstand blew all their music, notes, and scripts away. Twice.
Cliff, if you were listening, the bit about the bloggers for some reason made me think of you ;-)
I’d like to close this post with this, posted by NotInKansasAnymore to the discussion board for tonight’s broadcast:
You’re a true Kansan if:
1. You no longer associate bridges or rivers with water.
2. You have never met any celebrities (Bob Dole isn’t a celebrity;
he’s your neighbor.)
3. You know the meaning of Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
4 Your closest neighbor is more than a mile away and you can still
see him from your front porch.
5. You can properly pronounce Salina, Basehor, Cimmaron,
Schoenchen, Kechi and Osawatomie.
6. Going on vacation means going to Hutch to the fair or to Abilene
to Ike’s museum.
7. A traffic jam involves two cars staring each other down at a
four-way stop, each determined to be the most polite and let the
other go first.
8. A Mercedes Benz is not a status symbol. A Ford F10 4×4 is.
(Except in Johnson County)
9. You discover that in July it takes only 2 fingers to drive your
car.
10. The terms Sooners and Huskers cause hairs on the back of your
neck to stand up straight and your blood pressure to rise.
11 You have owned at least one belt buckle bigger than your fist.
12. You think people who complain about the wind and weather in
their states are SISSIES!
13. You are not surprised to find movie rentals, ammunition and
bait all in the same store.
14. You know that the true value of a parking space is not
determined by the distance to the door but by the availability of
shade.
15. You have been asked, “Where is Toto” more than once.
16. You had at least one summer job that was bucking bales or
custom cutting.
17. More than once you’ve made a beer run to another state.
18. You learned how to shoot a gun before you learned to multiply.
19. Your school classes have been canceled because of the cold.
20. You know in your heart that K-State can beat Oklahoma in
football.
21. Traffic congestion is ten cars waiting to pass a combine on the
highway.
22. You have had to switch from heat to A/C in the same day.
23. You know everything goes better with Ranch.
24. Your school classes have been canceled because of the heat.
25. You have ridden the school bus for more than an hour each way.
26. In August, you break a sweat the instant you step outside at
7:00 a.m.
27. You instantly know someone is from Johnson County when they
call everything west of Topeka… “Western” Kansas.
28. A tornado warning siren is your signal to go out in the yard
and look for a funnel.
29. You know the real way to pronounce the name of the river…
arKANSAS.
30. You think the opening day of pheasant season is a national
holiday.
31. “Vacation” means going to Kansas City or Wichita for the
weekend.
32. You measure distance in hours.
33. You know several people who have hit more than one deer.
34. You see people wearing hunting clothes at social events.
35. You install security lights on your house and garage and leave
both unlocked.
36 You think of the major food groups as beer, beef and beans.
37. You carry jumper cables in your car and make sure your better
half knows how to use them.
38. You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
39. You know the four seasons as: summer, road construction, still
summer, winter.
40. It takes you 3 hours to go to the store for one item even when
you’re in a rush because you have to stop and talk to everyone in town.
41. You lock the doors to your truck but leave the windows rolled
down.
42. You call sodas just plain ol’ “Pop”!!
43. FINALLY….. you are 100% Kansan if……….. You actually
understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends from
Kansas.
Hurricane Accountability
Take a look at this excellent post from Rhodent, full of first-hand hurricane experience. Lots of good points there.
But I’m going to disagree with two ;-)
First, I think that we’ve seen colossal failures at all levels of government. Congress should have appropriated the money to strengthen the levees years ago, when New Orleans officials first asked for it. The local authorities should have provided transportation out for people. The federal authorities should have been better positioned to help, and should have had more people on the ground (or at least dropping food from the air) sooner. There’s no excuse for the feds saying they can’t get food in when private groups could, or for saying they didn’t know anybody was in the convention center when it had been on the news for days. There’s also no excuse for the Louisiana emergency management services relying on cellphones for communication in a disaster.
Second, I think she’s right to say that the “blame game” (fingerpointing) is terrible. But I think that accountability is vital. The disaster is still in progress and lives are still at stake. If relief efforts are being so poorly managed that they are endangering people or prolonging suffering, then we need to remove these poor managers and replace them with good ones immediately. This *is* the time to see if the government is responding well and to do something about it if not. Not 6 months later when it won’t make as much difference to victims of the current disaster. When you see a problem, you should respond to it.
Lots of questions about FEMA Chief Brown
Very interesting stuff.
First, a Time investigation into his resume, including statements released by the White House at the time of his nomination. Many of them turn out to be not quite true. He also was fired from not just the horse association, but a law firm as well.
A report on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday included an interesting interview with a journalist that has done some work on the topic. Among the interesting quotes from Brown are: that he was never told that this hurricane could be any worse than others (untrue, according to the weather forecaster that briefed him), that FEMA had no way of knowing people were at the convention center in New Orleans until 3 days after the hurricane hit (Ted Koppel asked him, “Don’t you have TV? We’ve been reporting on this for days.”)
This guy sounds like a total liar to me. He should be fired immediately, and somebody competant put in charge of this operation.
NerdTV is HERE!
From PBS’s Bob Cringely, NerdTV episode 1 is here! The site describes it as “Charlie Rose for geeks.” You can download it online in one of many formats.
Episode 1 downloading now…