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reviewing blog comments and links

It seems that the swik.net site is mirroring all my blog posts. The site seems to be doing some good things in terms of spreading information about free software and has a good presentation that makes such information easy to read. Also having a backup of my blog posts also could be handy if blogger ever does the wrong thing.

However it is a little annoying that when I write a blog post that refers to one of my older posts it will get a link back to swik.net. This is an annoyance for readers who want to see posts that link to mine from outside my blog. So I’ve been deleting those links when I notice them.

Also someone from Brazil has been linking to my posts, which is a good thing. Their blog also causes my blog to list theirs as a link which is also fine. However the problem is that their blog seems to detect me as being from an English speaking country and gives me an English version of the blog (rather than the presumably Portuguese version that has the link to my article). Assuming that someone speaks English because they reside in Australia is a bad idea, and breaking links is a worse one. So I’ve been deleting those links from my blog as they are of no use to people who are detected as English speakers (which comprises the vast majority of my blog readers). When someone blogs about one of my posts I want to see what they wrote, even if all that I can read are the parts that are quoted from me!

Finally I’ve been deleting some comments containing URLs. It seems that there are quite a few people trying to advertise their businesses by posting comments that bear some vague relation to a blog post with their company’s URL included. You have to try harder than that if you want to promote yourself on my blog.

cheap big TFT monitor

I just received the latest Dell advert, they are offering a 22 inch monitor with 1680×1050 resolution for $499 including delivery! This is a great deal, I’ve got the same model of monitor at home (I paid $750 for it almost six months ago) and have been totally satisfied. The same monitor with a $499 price is amazing value.

In the past I blogged about the benefits of larger monitors for software development. Now these benefits are available to most computer users in first-world countries.

Now that 1680×1050 is commonly available I expect to see higher resolution monitors dropping in price, at the $800 and $1200 price-points there will need to be something better than that.

The next development will be new software to take advantage of this. One thing that I have heard of is a window manager that splits the display into two halves (in this case they would be 840×1050 resolution). The benefit of having this configuration (according to the people who use it) is that for maximising a window will make it take half the physical screen. This means that you could have a debugger in one half of the screen and your application in the other, to “maximise” the application would not occlude the debugger. Or you could have a web browser and a MUA each using half a screen.

Of course the same result could be achieved by getting two physical displays, but this requires a graphics card that supports “twin-head” operation, and the purchase price of two displays (which will add up to more than $500).

Splitting a screen into two virtual displays is not something that would suit my working patterns. For a lot of my work I just have a screen filled with as many Xterms as will fit. For the GUI stuff I am happy to manually resize things. Maybe a KDE addition that would allow one “Desktop” to be split while another isn’t would work.

A final impediment to splitting the screen is that 840 pixels is not enough to correctly display all web sites (many of which are designed for 1024×768). Maybe if I had a split desktop with an icon on the title-bar of the window to unsplit it for one particular window then it would work.

Another use for a large display is virtualisation. I previously blogged about how to use Xephyr to run multiple X sessions on one display, as Xen is now supported in all Linux distributions and KVM and other
virtualisation technologies are also being developed there should be a lot of demand to have multiple virtual machine GUI displays on one desktop (although you could probably do this by manually sizing the windows).

These are just some wild ideas, I have no plans to write the code for any of them, so it’ll be a matter of whatever is desired by the people who write the code or pay them. But one thing is certain, the low prices of such monitors will drive new research into how to use them effectively. New technology to effectively use large displays will then drive demand for even larger displays (as will the people who just want to get something better and more expansive than their neighbours). I wonder when we will get to the stage when people are satisfied. For basic office applications commodity PC hardware has far surpassed what is needed for people to do their work.

Geek Social Fallacies

At this URL I found a mirror of the Geek Social Fallacies, as they seem difficult to find I decided to mirror them on my blog. Someone please let me know if there is an authoritative source I can point to instead.

Five Geek Social Fallacies (Dec 2, 2003)

Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies — ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other.

Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It’s difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It’s my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction.

I want to note that I’m not trying to say that every geek subscribes to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea with a different amount of zeal.

In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I’ve identified. There are likely more.

Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil

GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them.

In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high popularity games. However, in its pathological form, GSF1 prevents its carrier from participating in — or tolerating — the exclusion of anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the prospective excludee may be.

As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20% merely tolerate. If GSF1 exists in sufficient concentration — and it usually does — it is impossible to expel a person who actively detracts from every social event. GSF1 protocol permits you not to invite someone you don’t like to a given event, but if someone spills the beans and our hypothetical Cat Piss Man invites himself, there is no recourse. You must put up with him, or you will be an Evil Ostracizer and might as well go out for the football team.

This phenomenon has a number of unpleasant consequences. For one thing, it actively hinders the wider acceptance of geek-related activities: I don’t know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood, but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt. For another, when nothing smacking of social selectiveness can be discussed in public, people inevitably begin to organize activities in secret. These conspiracies often lead to more problems down the line, and the end result is as juvenile as anything a seventh-grader ever dreamed of.

Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am

The origins of GSF2 are closely allied to the origins of GSF1. After being victimized by social exclusion, many geeks experience their “tribe” as a non-judgmental haven where they can take refuge from the cruel world outside.

This seems straightforward and reasonable. It’s important for people to have a space where they feel safe and accepted. Ideally, everyone’s social group would be a safe haven. When people who rely too heavily upon that refuge feel insecure in that haven, however, a commendable ideal mutates into its pathological form, GSF2.

Carriers of GSF2 believe that since a friend accepts them as they are, anyone who criticizes them is not their friend. Thus, they can’t take criticism from friends — criticism is experienced as a treacherous betrayal of the friendship, no matter how inappropriate the criticized behavior may be.

Conversely, most carriers will never criticize a friend under any circumstances; the duty to be supportive trumps any impulse to point out unacceptable behavior.

GSF2 has extensive consequences within a group. Its presence in substantial quantity within a social group vastly increases the group’s conflict-averseness. People spend hours debating how to deal with conflicts, because they know (or sometimes merely fear) that the other person involved is a GSF2 carrier, and any attempt to confront them directly will only make things worse. As a result, people let grudges brew much longer than is healthy, and they spend absurd amounts of time deconstructing their interpersonal dramas in search of a back way out of a dilemma.

Ironically, GSF2 carriers often take criticism from coworkers, supervisors, and mentors quite well; those individuals aren’t friends, and aren’t expected to accept the carrier unconditionally.

Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All

Valuing friendships is a fine and worthy thing. When taken to an unhealthy extreme, however, GSF3 can manifest itself.

Like GSF2, GSF3 is a “friendship test” fallacy: in this case, the carrier believes that any failure by a friend to put the interests of the friendship above all else means that they aren’t really a friend at all. It should be obvious that there are a million ways that this can be a problem for the carrier’s friends, but the most common one is a situation where friends’ interests conflict — if, for example, one friend asks you to keep a secret from another friend. If both friends are GSF3 carriers, you’re screwed — the first one will feel betrayed if you reveal the secret, and the other will feel betrayed if you don’t. Your only hope is to keep the second friend from finding out, which is difficult if the secret in question was a party that a lot of people went to.

GSF3 can be costly for the carrier as well. They often sacrifice work, family, and romantic obligations at the altar of friendship. In the end, the carrier has a great circle of friends, but not a lot else to show for their life. This is one reason why so many geek circles include people whose sole redeeming quality is loyalty: it’s hard not to honor someone who goes to such lengths to be there for a friend, however destructive they may be in other respects.

Individual carriers sometimes have exceptions to GSF3, which allow friends to place a certain protected class of people or things above friendship in a pinch: “significant others” is a common protected class, as is “work”.

Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive

Every carrier of GSF4 has, at some point, said:
“Wouldn’t it be great to get all my groups of friends into one place for one big happy party?!”

If you groaned at that last paragraph, you may be a recovering GSF4 carrier.

GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they’re not, something is Very Wrong.

The milder form of GSF4 merely prevents the carrier from perceiving evidence to contradict it; a carrier will refuse to comprehend that two of their friends (or two groups of friends) don’t much care for each other, and will continue to try to bring them together at social events. They may even maintain that a full-scale vendetta is just a misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved if the principals would just sit down to talk it out.

A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another “friendship test” fallacy: if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends, then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who don’t get along, to simply drop one of them.

On the other side of the equation, a carrier who doesn’t like a friend of a friend will often get very passive-aggressive and covertly hostile to the friend of a friend, while vigorously maintaining that we’re one big happy family and everyone is friends.

GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know — asking a friend’s roommate’s ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it’s appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend.

Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier.

Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together

GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such.

This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation are far from unusual.

When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn’t really a problem. If, however, there are members who aren’t carriers, they may want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It’s hard to explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn’t mean that your friendship is in terrible danger.

For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception for gender-segregated events. I don’t know why.

Interactions

Each fallacy has its own set of unfortunate consequences, but frequently they become worse in interaction. GSF4 often develops into its more extreme form when paired with GSF5; if everyone does everything together, it’s much harder to maintain two friends who don’t get along. One will usually fall by the wayside.

Similarly, GSF1 and GSF5 can combine regrettably: when a failure to invite someone is equivalent to excluding them, you can’t even get away with not inviting Captain Halitosis along on the road trip. GSF3 can combine disastrously with the other “friendship test” fallacies; carriers may insist that their friends join them in snubbing someone who fails the test, which occasionally leads to a chain reaction which causes the carrier to eventually reject all of their friends. This is not healthy; fortunately, severe versions of GSF3 are rare.

Consequences

Dealing with the effects of social fallacies is an essential part of managing one’s social life among geeks, and this is much easier when one is aware of them and can identify which of your friends carry which fallacies. In the absence of this kind of awareness, three situations tend to arise when people come into contact with fallacies they don’t hold themselves.

Most common is simple conflict and hurt feelings. It’s hard for people to talk through these conflicts because they usually stem from fairly primal value clashes; a GSF3 carrier may not even be able to articulate why it was such a big deal that their non-carrier friend blew off their movie night.

Alternately, people often take on fallacies that are dominant in their social circle. If you join a group of GSF5 carriers, doing everything together is going to become a habit; if you spend enough time around GSF1 carriers, putting up with trolls is going to seem normal.

Less commonly, people form a sort of counter-fallacy which I call “Your Feelings, Your Problem”. YFYP carriers deal with other people’s fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a sort of exemption from the usual standards: “that’s just Dana”, and so on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole than angstful, it may be the way to go. It’s also remarkably easy to pull off in a GSF1-rich environment.

What Can I Do?

As I’ve said, I think that the best way to deal with social fallacies is to be aware of them, in yourself and in others. In yourself, you can try to deal with them; in others, understanding their behavior usually makes it less aggravating.

Social fallacies don’t make someone a bad person; on the contrary, they usually spring from the purest motives. But I believe they are worth deconstructing; in the long run, social fallacies cost a lot of stress and drama, to no real benefit. You can be tolerant without being indiscriminate, and you can be loyal to friends without being compulsive about it.

Hey, Are You Talking About Me?

If I know you, yeah, probably I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you; most of us carry a few fallacies. Myself, I struggle with GSF 1 and 2, and I used to have a bad case of 4 until a series of disastrous parties dispelled it.

I haven’t used any examples that refer to specific situations, if it has you worried. Any resemblances to geeks living or dead are coincidental.

Copyright 2003 Michael Suileabhain-Wilson. All rights reserved.

live.com – malware?

When looking through my Webalizer stats recently I noticed that *.search.live.com is transferring about four times as much data from my domain than *.google.com. This wouldn’t concern me if I saw some people being referred to my site from live.com, however I see almost none, while google.com is responsible for referring about half the traffic to my site!

Then I looked through the aggregate stats for all web sites hosted on my ISP and noticed that live.com has three times the bandwidth use of google while not showing up in referrals.

I did a couple of test searches with live.com and it seems that one reason why I’m not getting hits is because the search engine just isn’t much good. The search string “bonnie++” does not return any links to my program on the first page (maybe live.com can’t handle a ‘+‘ character).

So I’m now wondering whether there is any reason to permit the live.com servers to use my bandwidth. It’s costing my ISP money for no apparent good cause.

In the past there was a previous MS search engine that I had to block because it’s attacks (which can not be described in any other way) were using half the web bandwidth of the entire ISP). This case is not so obviously an attack and I’m wondering whether I should permit it to continue for a while just in case they end up giving me some useful referrals.

Of course the other possibility is that if we all block their servers then the live.com results will become even more useless than they currently are and they’ll give up on the idea.

I look forward to comments on this issue.

tour of the Gigabyte motherboard factory

This article has some really interesting pictures of the Gigabyte motherboard and video card factory. Check it out!

buy free software developers dinner

In response to my post about buying dinner for developers (as an alternative to “professional networking sessions”) Kris notes that his company has been doing it for years. He goes a little further than I did in my post and advocates buying dinner for developers as a way of thanking them for their work.

I agree that buying dinner for people is a good way of thanking them for their work. I didn’t suggest it in my post though because I didn’t expect that there would be much interest in such things. I’m glad that Kris has proved me wrong. I’m not sure whether Kris was talking about personally buying dinner or getting his company to do so. In either case it’s a really good thing, and I encourage others to do the same!

right-side visual migraine

This afternoon I had another visual migraine. It was a little different from the previous ones in that it had more significant visual affects and in that it affected the right side of my vision. My central vision was OK, the left side was quite good, but the right side was mostly occluded by bright flashes. Closing my right eye seemed to make it a little better – apparently my right eye was more affected than my left. Previous visual migraines had only affected my central vision.

It happened shortly after going outside and it was a sunny afternoon, so maybe the bright light helped trigger it. The Australian optometrist chain OPSM advertise transitions – lenses that darken when exposes to UV light so they act as sun-glasses when outdoors, this sounds interesting (I don’t want to have prescription sun-glasses as well as regular glasses). However there is one concerning item in the advert – “protect your eyes from dazzling sunlight, harsh artificial lighting and the glare from computer screens“, I don’t want my glasses to go dark when I’m looking at a computer screen (a large portion of my waking hours)!

mac vs PC vs Linux

Apple has a series of funny commercials comparing the Macintosh with a PC running Windows. They are very well written and presented. I recommend viewing them for the amusement value (view them here – but you need Quicktime).

Novell has produced a few short parodies of those adverts, they don’t have the same production quality but are well written and not nearly as cheesy as I had feared (view them here). Novell’s ads are in OGG and MP3 format.

Update: A comment pointed me to this site which has other parodies of the Mac adverts. There is quite a bit of bad language and the parodies will offend some people in several ways. But they are amusing and do make some interesting points.

hybrid Porsche

The April 2007 issue of the RACV magazine announces that Porsche is working on a hybrid vehicle. It seems that the award-winning Lexus hybrid vehicle has demonstrated the value of hybrid petrol-electric technology for performance vehicles and that Porsche want to catch up.

The trend seems to be towards all vehicles that are desirable being available in either hybrid or Diesel variants, and we’ll probably see hybrid Diesel vehicles on Australian roads soon.

Trusted Solaris vs SE Linux

Karl MacMillan writes an interesting review of a Sun article about SE Linux. Not only does he correct errors in the Sun article but he also summarises some of the features of SE Linux design and terminology that we use. If you are interested in computer security and want to learn some of the basic concepts then Karl’s review is worth reading.