Looking At Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

 Computing  No Responses »
Nov 022009
 

So I quickly install the CD in a virtual machine, login, get delayed by doing something with a passphrase, install the “guest additions”, and reboot. But why doesn’t Ubuntu include the drivers for various different virtual machine environments ? It would certainly make it easier to quickly setup a machine to test the feasibility of switching or upgrading.

One tiny little niggle with the first boot – the passphrase request to “unlock” the encrypted drive (I wanted to say “unencrypt” there but of course it doesn’t actually do that) is a little less than obvious. It should perhaps be a little more “in your face” – a popup. And of course the new Ubuntu boot straight into X might look a little prettier than the previous mechanism, but it isn’t quite “geeky” enough for me (my OSX machines are set to boot in verbose mode to scare those who think the command line is scary). This new startup is supposedly significantly quicker than previous releases; I’m afraid I didn’t notice. Perhaps it is of concern more to others than to me, but I rarely restart my machines – my somewhat less than totally reliable main machine has been up for 7 days, so a faster boot time is not of great significance to me.

I couldn’t seem to find anything to tweak the desktop effects settings. Perhaps not that important, but sort of peculiar. I dare say there’s an addon to do that.

I next dove into “Software Centre” to find a couple of applications that I use, but couldn’t. Admittedly they are somewhat towards the geeky side of things, but they are not that unpopular (zsh and enlightenment). Dropping to a terminal window and they were quickly found using apt-cache. Perhaps the Software Centre intentionally hides things to make the default list of new application choices a little less scary ? Maybe, but it needs an easily found button to say “show more”. Of course the Synaptic package manager can still be found, so this isn’t a real problem although having two ways of installing/removing software could be.

After I installed my favourite window manager (Enlightenment for now), I went on to try setting it up in my usual way with a .xsession file. No luck! It seems that Ubuntu’s version of gdm has accidentally (?) removed this functionality. This is quite a serious problem for those who like to run seriously customised environments. Perhaps not Ubuntu’s major audience, but it seems rather unfortunate to remove this functionality as it will seriously annoy those like me who prefer their own environment.

Going back to the default environment, I take a quick look at Firefox to realise that there is no Flash plugin. A dive into the Software Centre fixes that, although it would have been nice to be taken through a “wizard” when starting Firefox for the first time to suggest installing a number of proprietary extensions (and explain why they are not installed by default). Not that it does not install with a good selection already, but a browser without flash is perhaps not what people are expecting (although there are advantages in not having flash or turning it on only for those pages you want it turned on for).

Browsing through the settings, and I find the theme browser which does not really offer much choice by default – you have to install some additional themes. The choice of backgrounds is fine, although I’m not too sure why the frog was included (I chose the falling coffee). The most obvious improvement here, would be to include a hint on how to include your own photos as a background – quite possibly the first thing that many want to do! At least the Font tab defaults to using a method of rendering suitable for LCD panels (I’m not sure if this is new with the Koala).

In the keyboard preferences, the Layout options are somewhat confusing. Admittedly the number of options here is bound to make it more confusing, and those who choose “Layout Options” are likely to be self-educated to some degree. However it may be worth looking again at how the options are described. Oddly enough the Mouse preferences shows an option to “Show mouse pointer position when Control is pressed” but does not allow you to enable it!

Going through the applications, most (without extensive testing) seem fine. However Empathy (the replacement for the Pidgin instant messaging client) does seem a little on the flaky side with a few “misfeatures” – for instance the “Room” dialog box is a little immature and it is not obvious what you should do with it. Are you supposed to know some sort of “server name” ? Seems a little odd.

This may get added to when I find the time and patience to do more, but I am sure there are plenty of other far more complete looks at Ubuntu 9.10 out there!

Professor Nutt’s Attack on UK Drugs Policy

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 012009
 

It is now clear that the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is in danger of disintegration as additional members seem to be considering (or have) resigned in protest at the sacking of Professor Nutt and the seemingly arbitrary decisions made by the Government on the use of recreational drug use.  There has long been a suspicion that the Government’s (all UK governments and not just the most recent one!) decisions on which drugs should be legal and which ones illegal, is based more on which ones are acceptable to the establishment and which ones are not.

The UK’s system of drugs laws is based around three classes of drugs (A, B, and C) with a decreasing scale of punishments for misuse from the harshest for the use of the most harmful drugs (class A) to the lightest punishment for the least harmful (class C). Or rather it should be.

Both the classification of Ecstasy (as class A) and the re-classification of cannabis (from C to B) were made by ignoring the scientific advice and paying more attention to media hysteria. Both are classified higher than the risk of taking them justifies. What other drugs have been classified inappropriately?

If the government wants to make arbitrary decisions on drugs classifications, they need to get honest and get rid of the whole classification system. And they need to stop taking advice from scientists – taking advice and then ignoring it wastes a great deal of time on those who formulate the advice, and if the advice is ignored there is no point in getting it.

Alternatively, the government needs to accept the advice of the experts and get the politicians out of the loop. Even to go so far as to include legal drugs into the classification system. For instance why are not alcohol and tobacco not classified appropriately ? They could be classified according to their harm with a special note that they are legal for practical reasons.

Over the weekend, the criticisms of Professor Nutt can be split into two.

The first criticism is that he shouldn’t have said what he said as a government advisor. Well I’m sure Professor Nutt knows this, knew he would be sacked for saying what he said, and felt that he had to say it anyway. He has certainly managed to ignite a debate on the subject.

The second criticism is that he is wrong that drugs such as cannabis are less harmful than the drugs they are classified with. First of all Professor Nutt was not saying that cannabis is harmless; he was saying that it’s harm does not justify it being classified as class B (it should be C instead). Secondly those criticising him seem to think that their personal (bad) experience with cannabis invalidates the scientific evidence.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientific evidence (on drug use) is about moving beyond personal experience both good and bad, and getting to the truth on the level of risk. There are many who would claim that cannabis is harmless because it hasn’t caused them any harm (man), and some who would claim it is very harmful because it has harmed them. Both are wrong – cannabis is harmful, but the amount of harm considering the number of users is very low.

As an analogy, the use of aspirin can cause stomach ulcers, stomach bleeding, and tinnitus. Rather extreme for curing a little headache! Perhaps aspirin should be banned ? Of course not – the benefit far outweighs the risk.

In an ideal world, the current fuss over Professor Nutt’s lecture and drugs policy will result in seeing some sanity in drug prohibition – perhaps even we would see the legalisation of drugs (prohibition probably causes far more harm to society as a whole than the harm resulting from drug use). However it is more likely that we will see more gross stupidity.

Battlestar Galactica on Blueray

 Media  No Responses »
Oct 312009
 

Well the story is fine, the cinematography as good as you would expect from a large budget show (although there’s a little too much digital noise in some of the darker scenes), the sound excellent. What’s not to like ?

The formatting of the BD disks themselves of course. Whilst the actual content is pretty good, the way that it has been put together sucks. You can tell those putting it together tried pretty hard to make the blueray experience feature filled, but they forgot the one real reason why people buy boxed sets. They buy them to watch the show.

And too much gets in the way of that :-

  • There’s an especially irritating piracy warning. If I dare to pirate the disks, the FBI will apparently use extraordinary rendition to kidnap me from the UK and fine me $250,000! If there is anything more irritating than those pointless anti-piracy messages, then it is an anti-piracy message that has not been “localised” – people get more than a little annoyed by US-orientated messages.
  • We get an annoying little message from the director about how good the disks are. This would be bad enough if it only appeared without our requesting it once, but it seems to show up every time you change the disc for the next one!
  • Similarly when you start playing an episode on a new disc, you get an annoying pop-up warning you that certain features will only work if you have a recent blueray player. It is the wrong place! If certain features won’t work it will be noticeable more in the menu than in the playback!

Human Rights, Human Wrongs

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 312009
 

Just been watching a certain episode of Battlestar Galactica involving the attempted rape of a prisoner. A machine prisoner – a “toaster”, so that’s alright isn’t it ?

Well perhaps not.

Considering the morality of a bunch of mythical rapists in a TV programme set in a mythical universe with technology that is impossible at our current understanding of science is kind of kinky, but it does cover something that we will have to consider sooner or later. Quite possibly sooner than we think.

Are people making robotic sex toys ? Quite possibly. How “intelligent” are these possible robots? Not intelligent at all according to the current state of the art. But if machine intelligence is possible (in the future), will someone ever make an intelligent sex toy ? Almost certainly.

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At what point do we start to consider whether it is right to use an intelligent sex toy that has decided it doesn’t want to ? Before it is possible, or after it has happened ? I would say we need to consider such things now before they happen.

To me it is perfectly plain that anything that is sufficiently intelligent to understand what is happening and to express a wish that it not take place, is entitled to have their wishes respected. Or to put it another way, anyone who is capable of ‘raping’ a machine is not the kind of person many would feel safe around.

We are used to the idea that we need to respect the rights of other humans and that anyone that does not is sick in some way. But are those rights given because the subject is human or because they are sapient (by which I mean intelligent to the level of humans) ? Not an easy question to answer because almost by definition, the terms are current interchangeable. But that may not always be the case.

At present, either an intelligent machine or an intelligent alien presumably has no rights on this planet – it is perfectly legal to rob, kill, or rape them. This is analogous to the situation in the past where some people were under the impression that some segments of the human race were less deserving of rights than others. Whilst denying non-human sapients rights is not racist, it still feels wrong.

Of course such an entity would have to respect our rights in addition to us respecting their rights. Perhaps that should be the condition of full sapient rights – the ability to respect the rights of others.

I say full sapient rights because there are another category of rights that we need to consider and be aware of – sentient rights. For more information on this, see the very worthwhile Great Ape Project.

Cross Apogee Pen

 General  No Responses »
Oct 282009
 

So I decided to treat myself to a decent pen for a change. A Cross Apogee rollerball (specifically with gel ink which I’m a very big fan of) …

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It is a little fatter than I’m used to but it is already feeling pretty comfortable. It is a heavy pen, enhancing the feeling of quality. If you are considering getting a decent pen, the Apogee could well be a decent candidate.

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