Author: David T. Macknet

Goodbye Glasgow

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August 21, 2011

5:50 pm

13 Comments on Goodbye Glasgow

Glasgow

Hayford Mills 001

We’re settling into our new home. Our first impression: we’ve just had the best night’s sleep we’ve had in several years. Even though the house is in chaos, we’re still taking the time to relax, look out the windows, and enjoy the peace of not living in the middle of the city.

The kitchen is in disarray, so there won’t be much in the way of experimental cooking taking place until we can manage to pack up the dishes and tchotchkes which came with the house. Yes: this house came fully furnished … and apparently the owner has a penchant for decorating, because there are even spare decorations tucked away in drawers throughout the house. So, rather than simply unpacking, we’re doing a mix: unpacking our things and packing hers up to load into the garage.

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When we’re not tripping over boxes in the kitchen, though, we’re looking out at our garden … and realizing that we really do need to get organized so that we can have a few meals out there before the weather turns cold and mucky again. This morning the table was in full sun, but it was still too chilly to be out there without coats, which are packed somewhere still. We figure that the unpacking will take a few weeks. Hopefully we’ll get some use out of the space before Winter sets in.

Tomorrow morning we’ll be walking to D’s work – a walk of just under a mile, one way. Between our home and work is all residential, with a footbridge over the motorway. There are no shops, nor even any major roads to cross except for via that footbridge. It’s an amazing difference from where we’d been.

Cambusbarron itself has only five or six shops for the few thousand people who live here. We’ve gone to the opposite extreme from Glasgow: from a huge, sprawling, filthy city to a tiny village. We believe we’re seeing a better side of Scotland.

The sun is streaming into the living room, and we’re feeling lazy. The unpacking can wait awhile – there are books to read, and maybe even naps to be taken.

-D & T

42 Months. On to Greener Pastures (literally – they’re behind the new house)

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August 14, 2011

8:31 pm

5 Comments on 42 Months. On to Greener Pastures (literally – they’re behind the new house)

Glasgow

View from Skypark 178

So, now that the PhD thing is winding down (when will it end?!), I’ve gotten myself a new job: Lead Developer and Technical Architect at Cloud Street, Ltd.. Today was my last day at V.Ships. I’ve been with them half-time for the past 42 months (yes, I’ve counted), leaving behind a massive legacy of code: more than 60,000 lines of Visual Basic .NET code and more than 20,000 lines of Transact SQL code just for one project. Skip the next paragraph if you’re not into the details of what makes a programmer (read: technical writer) happy.

I’ve spent the past two weeks handing that code over to another developer and enjoyed the time immensely. Consider it a code review but with the incentive that if the other guy doesn’t understand it, well, he’s either going to need to email me for an explanation or he’s going to have to spend some time to figure it out. It’s a massive code-base, most of it hand-coded. One stored procedure alone is nearly 5,000 lines of code. To top it off: many of the stored procedures perform operations on entire sets of data rather than operations on individual rows. Set-based operations are some of the most mind-bending things to do in a database, particularly when using things like set multiplication (a.k.a. Cartesian Products). Not only are there set-based operations, but there are binary operations that I truly struggled to explain (but which drive the whole application). The user interface uses inheritance, polymorphism, overrides, shadowing, multithreading … basically, any Object-Oriented technique you can think of (except for being able to inherit from multiple base classes – stupid .NET!), the UI uses. All in all, I’m very proud of the code-base, and truly had fun watching somebody else try to grasp the complicated concepts involved in it. Best of all, I guess, is that it’s used around the world, every day, and has helped the business reduce their invoice payment and issuing process from more than a month to something like 1/2 of an hour; that’s best for the company, but to me, the production of elegant, efficient, useful code is the payoff. Having someone else appreciate it is a tremendous validation of my efforts.

This coming Monday means a new start, at a new company, where I’ll be able to have an impact. The company is switching over from building their user interfaces in Microsoft Access to building things in .NET. As their lead developer / technical architect I get to shape how development will be done, and to help build a code-base which will be used for years to come. Best of all, though, is that they’re a consultancy: I’ll be able to build a variety of software, hand it over to the clients, and not have to deal much with support of those applications. So, it’ll be a combination of teaching programming techniques and creating new applications – truly, I’m looking forward to it.

Next weekend we move up to Cambusbarron, to a townhouse which looks out over a greenbelt. There will not be people fighting outside our bedroom window. There will not be cars trying to get into a petrol station. There will not be people singing as they make their way home from the pub at 3 a.m. Anyone who’s familiar with the area says that we’ll have trouble sleeping because it will be too quiet. Watch us! The house is less than a mile from the office, most of which is on quiet, residential streets. The house has double-paned windows (it was built around 2000), it has thermostats (yes!), and it has a garden. The change, from living in Glasgow, is truly radical. We’re looking forward to it immensely!

So, it’s now Friday evening, we’re settling in to have a quiet evening, and will be spending the weekend packing things up for the move. Radical change is in store for us, and we’re looking forward to it. After living in the current flat for over 2 years, it’s about time to have someplace new, to have different things to photograph, and to get back to living quiet lives.

I will miss seeing the people absailing down the side of the building washing windows in the rain, though. What a job!

-D

Religion, Secularism & Etc: thoughts for a Friday

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August 12, 2011

10:53 am

8 Comments on Religion, Secularism & Etc: thoughts for a Friday

Uncategorized

2001 Santa Rosa 002

You’ll forgive us if we stray from merely reporting on our lives sometimes to just giving you a taste of what we’re thinking about. These days, now that D.’s Big Paper is done (mostly – the supervisors are still reading it one last time before it goes to committee), he still finds that he tends to think in… er, paragraphs. He reads widely and thinks a lot, and generally confines himself to sharing articles and thoughts with T. — and now you.

Aren’t you lucky?

So, we happened across an article entitled, “Going Godless: Does Secularism Make People More Ethical?” Awesome title, and certain to grab attention. Go away, now, and read it. Then we’ll discuss.

  *hums Jeopardy! theme*

OK, good, you’re back. The gist of the piece, for those people who apparently cannot follow directions (shame, you non-readers), is a discussion of religion in various places, the fact that many religions are losing adherents, and the question of whether or not rejecting organized religion makes one more ethical. The article explores a report made by The Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College, Connecticut.

The upshot of the study from the Institute: no, rejecting organized religion doesn’t make one more ethical at all, or at least that hasn’t been proven. It’s not a cause/effect issue. However the study directed up researcher Barry Kosmin did find that the secular people polled were more ethically inclined than the religious people polled. So, what is it about the “secularists” which caused them to be more ethical? Perhaps it’s their having actually thought about what makes something “right” or “wrong.” Belief, after all, doesn’t constitute “knowledge” – case in point: just because you believe in UFO’s doesn’t make them real, does it?

Perhaps critical thinkers (regardless of whether they be atheist / agnostic / religious) are more ethical. Maybe those who actually consider whether something is right or wrong are more ethical because they have gone beyond the “belief” stage and into the “knowing” stage of personal knowledge: they have gone through a process of reasoning, which is different from just believing something. Now, granted, you don’t want to reason your way through something like gravity – you’d better just believe in it, or you’ll be broken and bruised before you know it. Somethings do require belief – but maybe we believe strongly in gravity because we’ve seen some small examples of its truths. Does that follow in religious or secular thought?

Hummingbird 08

When you’re a child, you have to take everyone’s word for how the world works. Whether it’s your schoolmates or your parents, pretty much everyone who sounds like they’re an authority is, at least for five or ten minutes, believed. However, as an adult, many people struggle with the idea of accepting the opinion of some dudes (yes – they were all men) who wrote several thousands of years ago about how they felt the world should work — and many times advocating stoning for those who didn’t agree. Should adults – religious or non – accept anybody’s opinion on what is “right?”

Maybe… no, actually. Surprised? You might be, considering that many of you know us to be religious people. However, if you, like everyone else on earth have a.) freedom of choice, b.) the ability to think, you can think things through and weigh all of the possibilities, and come up with your own opinions. Whether that makes you a “secularist” or not, well, maybe that’s entirely a matter of labeling. After all, religious people can read and study and still think for themselves.

Despite the study, maybe there isn’t such a gap between “religious” and “secular” people. Some religions ask people to believe things which are untrue or which just aren’t ethical by any meaning of the word — as a matter of belief. Consider the ministers, who, each time there’s a natural disaster, bring up some weird correlation between that nation and somehow displeasing God. Really? And where is their proof? But their members are expected to believe without any facts… and often they do, going along wholeheartedly with disparaging a people who are already beaten down and suffering from fire, earthquake, tsunami, or floods. That we don’t agree with the blind-belief thing doesn’t mean that we endorse disbelieving in God – not by any means – but it sometimes seems like those of us who believe in thinking as well as God are vanishingly few.

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The study lists secular beliefs as things like believing in supporting the environment, treating people of different gender and ethnicities with kindness beyond tolerance, and opposing war. One really weird thing the study noted is that many secular people have more knowledge about religious beliefs than religious people. …hm. Which reminds us of a quote:

They’re trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous. – Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

To recap: We believe in God. However, we believe that ethics should be considered, contemplated, and should be coherent. Does that make us “secularists?” Or simply thinking human beings? It just doesn’t seem very wise – or Godly – to fear thinking. But for some people, the very idea spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

And that’s our thoughts for a Friday afternoon.

Now, talk amongst yourselves…

-D & T

Copyright, Patent, and why Software doesn’t fit

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August 2, 2011

1:27 pm

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Links

I missed an article about Patents in my last “Links” post. Patents are about to become a bigger problem quotes from two historically-significant inventors: Benjamin Franklin and Johannes Salk. With regards to his stove, Ben Franklin refused to enforce his patent, saying:

“That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.”

Salk, when asked, “Who owns the patent on this vaccine [against Polio]?” replied:

“Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

In the copyright and patent systems, copyright has to do with “creative works” which include such odd creatures as “graphic designs” and “trademarks” and even concepts. Patent has also to do with concepts, and extends to such nonphysical things as software, which is … distinctly odd, so far as I can see, particularly since software code isn’t really a physical device, and is words; yet software code isn’t really words, it’s a set of instructions, very much like a recipe, and recipes are not protected by either patent or copyright.

For me, the problem in fitting software into either copyright or patent comes down to this: what is “the essence” of what is being protected?

In a copyrighted work, the owner is allowed to sell that work. Now, “that work” is what, exactly? In the case of printed music, “that work” is actually the typography – it is not the notes; after all, how can you copyright notes? In the case of performed music, it is actually any recording made which is subject to copyright, not the performance itself (although there may be restrictions regarding recording, as dictated by other laws, etc.). In the case of a printed work, “that work” is the words themselves and not the typography. These “creative works” are covered by copyright and not by patents. In the case of copyrighted works, what’s protected is a creative work which is an end product constructed by a human being.

Patents cover things: a special typographical process, a special recording device. Patents are similar to copyrights in that they protect the owner for a period of time, with the specific intent that the owner use that time to use the device to make money. Patents, though, should not cover the same types of creative works as copyright; the intent of each system is different. In the case of patented works, patents are issued on the design of a product such that the product which fulfills that design is what is protected from anyone else using that same design. This is where the two systems really differ: copyright is about end products generated by humans, patent is about designs for end products.

So, where does software fit into the picture? Software is patented, currently, so … nobody can copy the same set of instructions as protected by patent. This is where “obvious” comes into play, because software patents should cover source-code (the “design” for the product) and that source-code should not be “obvious” to anyone else in a similar line of work. But when you consider that 1) any given computer language is designed to operate in a certain way and 2) any given task to be performed by an application is very likely to be an “obvious solution” to such a problem, well, how can a patent be issued?

Software patents also don’t seem quite to fit into the “patents” system because frequently the patent granted isn’t upon source-code, but upon higher-level concepts such as “streaming video to a mobile phone.” The source-code never comes into play; rather, the idea is what is being protected, which is quite silly: how can an idea be non-obvious, and how can it be that such patents are issued without detailed designs for making them work (i.e., the source-code)?

Perhaps source-code, which seeks to solve a certain problem, should be granted copyright instead? Well … this comes up against the problem that source-code doesn’t really seem like a creative work in the same way as, say, a novel would. Also, because source-code is subject to a very limited set of grammar and syntax, and is actually a set of instructions for a finished product rather than a finished product in and of itself, source-code seems more like something which would fall under a patent.

However, if source-code is patented, it would need to meet the non-obvious criterion, which it certainly does not.

There’s also the last perversion of the software patent system which is what upsets most: software patents aren’t used to make things for sale which provide income; rather, they are used to prevent others from doing so or to extort massive amounts of cash from those who try.

Software patents should not be valid. Software copyrights should not be, either. Software source-code does not fit into the existing system, period.

In expanding the patent and copyright systems to overlap, the definition of each has been blurred beyond the intent of the terms, and laws have been stretched to “protect” the “owners” of such ideas.

How is it that one can “own” an idea (or a recipe)? Well, one may enslave the people who try to make use of it, or may brutalize them into financial ruin. Such is a very common use of modern copyright and patent law: the suppression of ideas.

-D

Links

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August 1, 2011

8:04 pm

1 Comment on Links

Links

Well, folks, so much for the idea of getting these out more frequently, so this is a bit of a long bunch of links. It seems I’m going to need to rethink how I go about putting these links together, or perhaps to find some means of compiling comments simultaneously with saving links, so that it’s easier to get a post together from a bunch of links. I’m not sure where I’ll go with it, but I’ll get around to re-writing the script which aggregates them for me at some point so that I can pull my comments together.
Continue reading “Links” →

Photo Information

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July 29, 2011

8:13 pm

3 Comments on Photo Information

Photography

It is with great regret that I’ve set Flickr to hide the EXIF information from our photos. This has been forced by the fact that the U.S. will be trying to use this information to be evil. I’ll be looking into removing all of our EXIF information from Flickr. What a horror. I’d like to tell you what aperture / exposure I used … but I can’t remove the other information from the photos. So, I’ll be stripping it all from the photos from this point forward. I. Am. So. Incensed. I cannot even express the level of anger.

-D

Caution Raised Ironworks

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July 28, 2011

9:26 am

2 Comments on Caution Raised Ironworks

Glasgow

Charing Cross 560

Charing Cross 562

I wonder about this city. Really, I do. There have been some truly horrible potholes around the block, on my way to work. I’ve almost been hit by a car, which skidded after hitting one of them. Finally, after many months of enduring the potholes, the city has gotten around to repairing the road damage (only after having installed two new bike-lanes, mind you!).

I wonder about this city, though, not because they’re lame about repairing potholes, nor because they install bike lanes before they repair obvious damage to existing roads, but because they lay asphalt over top of utility covers. Yes, that’s right: they lay asphalt over top of utility access and then go back and have to cut away the freshly-laid asphalt.

Seems that there could be a solution to this, no? No. Makes work, I suppose.

-D

Patent? Copyright? Oh, no you didn’t!

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July 27, 2011

8:25 pm

3 Comments on Patent? Copyright? Oh, no you didn’t!

Rant

Greenock BW 05

I’m disturbed a bit after having read this article: http://www.chicagolawyermagazine.com/Articles/2011/07/01/infotechcolumn-07-2011.aspx. Read the last paragraph and think upon what it really means for those of us who write code.

When I think about code, I think that, well, I wrote it. Sure, I wrote it when I was employed by XXX company. They have it, they “own” it. But do I not, also, own it? Why is it that copyright / patent law should be able to dictate that my prior employer owns my code exclusively? Can I not also own that code? After all is said and done, they still have that code. They still get the benefit of using that code. Why should it be that they get to slap some other company for using the same concepts?

The next company I work for will need for me to build the same kinds of things that I built for the last company (after all, I focus on companies who need my services and skills, and I’m very skilled in a very narrow area). I’ll no doubt use the same methodology as I used for the previous employer. Am I violating copyright by using the concepts inside my own brain? According to U.S. copright law, well, yes, I am. I’m “stealing” from my previous company.

I wrote the code. I thought of the code. And now I’m “stealing” the code. No – I really don’t think so.

In “the days of old,” coders would bring their code with them. That was one of the reasons people hired old coders: they’d have a wealth of code when they came. Today, though, such things are copyrighted / patented, so that the “old coder” is essentially no different from the “young coder” except that the “old coder” is … well, older, more likely to die, or retire. How is this better for the world? How does this improve things?

Copyright / Patent Law is entirely broken. Its purposes have been subverted for the profit of a few and only serve the interests of those few.

Copy at will.

Creative commons license: attribution, non-commercial, derivatives OK.

-D

When to Photograph

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July 24, 2011

12:52 pm

4 Comments on When to Photograph

Photography

Greenock BW 05

Our friend over at Short Sights discusses whether it’s OK to take photographs, and the pressures on photographers by those who think it’s not OK to photograph something. It’s definitely a balancing act, knowing when it’s OK to photograph and when not. We’ve said that wherever we end up next I’m going to link up with a local paper & ask to take photos for them, just so that I can get a press pass – that might make some things better in the minds of those who complain. On the other hand, here in the UK that means that the photos I take would fall under a different section of the UK Data Protection Act … at least, if I were going to use them for commercial reasons.

I’ve had people come out and ask me about what I’m photographing (usually it’ll be the architecture), but mostly it seems that they’re interested in chatting about photography, rather than caring that I’m taking anything from them or that I shouldn’t be taking photos to begin with. There have been a few people who have complained in earnest, but they’ve generally been people without knowledge of the applicable laws. I usually approach them in several steps: 1) show them the picture I just took, 2) explain to them why I found it interesting, 3) explain to them that the Data Protection Act permits me to take such photos, 4) ask them if they want me to delete the photo (and then keep it anyway). Of course, when I’m speaking with them I’m careful to smile the “tourist smile” and to make sure that my accent sounds as “Hollywood” as possible: being a tourist seems to put people here in a different frame of mind and they’re much more helpful and forgiving.

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Of course, when I’m trying to take candid shots of people I’ll usually just shoot without aiming and hope that I get something decent (as in the three women from the help-desk where I work, out for lunch, to the right). Sometimes I’ll resort to using a remote shutter-release cable, with the release in my pocket, so that people don’t even see my hands near the shutter-releases on the camera. Other times I’ll use T’s wee camera, as it doesn’t make any noise while shooting. That’s not to say that I’m doing something which I think to be wrong – just that people get weird about photography sometimes, and it’s much easier to not have to go through the rigamarole of them noticing that I’m shooting.

Short Sights also mentions that there are some things which you’d feel obligated to photograph, such as a riot or something. For me, that has meant shooting such things as Orange Marches, here in Scotland. Mostly, though, I try to avoid anything of the sort, even though I have insurance on the camera equipment. And there are times when I know that I’d be putting myself in a bad spot for taking photos, particularly as the world seems a bit crazy about the whole “terrorism” thing and has turned to terrorizing photographers in turn.

As the technology gets better and smaller, though, I think that it’s going to be inevitable that people will be able to photograph anywhere, at any time. The only people who will be singled out and punished are those of us with the large cameras, even though the resolution on them is not so great as the newer, smaller ones. So, how can we change the perception that a large camera means something different than a point-and-shoot? Perhaps on the next upgrade I’ll go with something truly wee, just to avoid the controversy.

-D