Get Rid of the TSA Before They Kill Us

Posted on 2012-11-27 by jcs

As regular readers know, we here at Irreal are not fans of the TSA. Apparently, Charles Kenny at BloombergBusinessweek isn’t a fan either. He’s posted an article entitled Airport Security Is Killing Us in which he makes the case that the TSA has made air travel so unpleasant that increasing numbers of people are foregoing it in favor of driving whenever they can. The problem is that driving is much more dangerous than flying and causes far more fatalities, with or without terrorists.

Consider: of the 150,000 murders in the U.S. between 9/11 and the end of 2010, Islamic extremism accounted for less than 3 dozen. World wide, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic extremism accounted for between 200 and 400 deaths yearly. Just in the U.S., more people die in their bathtubs every year.

Yet despite the minuscule chances of being killed by a terrorist, the TSA managed to spend $580 billion between 2001 and 2011 without catching a single terrorist. Much of that has been spent with little thought or analysis as to how it might be used effectively.

Meanwhile, TSA actions have resulted in increased driving and the concomitant rise in traffic fatalities. Kenny reports on a study by Cornell University suggesting that the increase amounts to an additional 242 traffic deaths per month, greatly eclipsing the death toll of 9/11 itself.

Read Kenny’s article. It’s interesting, persuasive, and has links to the sources for all the statistics that I’ve mentioned here.

Afterword

Rick Falkvinge over at Falkvinge on Infopolicy has crunched the numbers for Europe and comes up with some interesting results:

  • For the years 2000–2009, an average of about 40 people per year died as a result of terrorism (and over half of those were due to a single incident in Spain in 2004).
  • Fives times as many people die every year due to drownings in bathtubs.
  • Six times as many people die every year from falling off chairs.
  • Twenty times as many people die very year from falling out of bed.
  • Over a hundred times as many people die every year from falling down the stairs.

Alas, as Falkvinge points out, politicians will merely use these statistics to say, “See? It’s working.”

Update: or → of

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Using the Keypad

Posted on 2012-11-26 by jcs

Xah Lee has an interesting post on defining keys to open frequently used files (search for 2012-11-21). The idea is that you add lines like

(global-set-key (kbd "<kp-7> <kp-3>") (lambda () "" (interactive) (find-file "~/web/ergoemacs_org/emacs/blog.html")))

for each of the files that you access frequently. That way, you can open the file quickly by pressing just 2 keys.

It’s a cute idea but not one I’d use. That’s because Lee and I have slightly different Emacs work flows. Lee says he likes to close files when he’s finished with them. I, on the other hand, tend to leave files open and occasionally cull files that I’m no longer using. Lee’s idea makes sense for him because he is always opening those files. I rarely have to open the files I use all the time because I keep them open—even across Emacs invocations—so I don’t really need a super efficient way to open them.

Still, I found the post useful because it reminded me that using the keypad is a way to get access to about 15 unused keys for binding to commands. I’ve never thought too much about that because I’m almost always on one of my Macs and their keyboards don’t have a separate keypad. What they do have is a virtual keypad on the regular keyboard that is accessed by the function key. Thus, <kp-2> is accessed by pressing 【fn+k】 and that’s not much harder than, say, 【Ctrl+k】 other than for a slightly longer reach for the 【fn】 key.

So, there are two takeaways from Lee’s post:

  1. If you have a work flow like Lee’s, you might find it useful to add a list of keybindings to open frequently accessed files to your .emacs or init.el file.
  2. Don’t forget about the keypad (even if you’re on a Mac) as a source of keys suitable for binding to frequently used commands.
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Debating Copyright Without the RSC

Posted on 2012-11-25 by jcs

I recently wrote about an excellent policy brief published by the Republican Study Committee that discussed copyright. Sadly, the RSC withdrew the brief within 24 hours after heavy complaints from lobbyists for big media. Now, Techdirt, which also covered the initial story, has taken on the task of continuing the debate that the Republicans (and, of course, the wholly-owned Democrats) are afraid to hold.

They are planning a series of posts that discuss the points raised in the original brief. Follow the above link for the first installment. This is a discussion that we desperately need to have. Big media is rampaging around in the china shop causing all sorts of damage: suing their customers, pushing for Internet destroying laws, and all manner of other actions familiar to us all.

When alleged copyright infringers face 45 years imprisonment and are arrested with the aid of assault rifles and helicopters, you don’t need to be a deep thinker to understand that things are out of control. It really is past time to start having a serious discussion about this. Perhaps Techdirt’s efforts will be the start of that discussion.

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The Y-Combinator

Posted on 2012-11-24 by jcs

Jim Weirich, of Neo gave a really nice talk on The Y-Combinator at RubyConf2012. Given the venue, the examples are, of course, in Ruby but you should have no difficulty following them: I know no Ruby at all but was able to understand the code easily. The harder part is following some of the ideas—especially the functional refactorings—that may be unfamiliar to you.

Not to worry, Weirich has a series of posts based on the talk that covers the same material so you can go over it at a slower pace after you watch the talk to fill in anything you missed. Currently only two of the three posts are up but they cover the background material that you need to understand the rest of the talk. The posts are very lucid and stand on their own well.

If you’ve ever wondered what the Y-Combinator is (other than an angel investor) and what it’s used for, this talk is an excellent introduction. Weirich is an engaging and entertaining speaker and the material is very interesting. Again, don’t be scared away by Ruby: the examples are easy to follow.

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Why We Use IDEs

Posted on 2012-11-23 by jcs

Wille Faler over at recursivity.com has a nice post on IDEs and why we need them. His take is that if you need an IDE it’s because of shortcomings in the language you’re using. He has in mind, of course, Java but it’s a good general principle. Languages like C, Lisp, Python, Ruby, etc. don’t need IDEs; they’re relatively simple and small and most of them have a REPL available that makes interactive development easy and rewarding. Even in C, which does not, of course, have a REPL, development is straightforward and any of the standard editors can easily integrate the compile/edit/debug cycle.

To be clear, neither Faler not I claim that using an IDE is bad; only that if you claim you need one to do your work then that’s an indication of problems with the language you’re using. There’s some interesting (and heated) discussion in the comments including the question of what, exactly, constitutes an IDE. Does Emacs with its language awareness and ability to send code directly to the REPL count? Faler says no. He clarifies that he was mostly thinking about IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ that are targeted at a single language and duplicate functionality that could reside in a REPL or build system.

If you’re interested in the question of what constitutes a good tool for development, you might find the post and comments interesting. I know I did.

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Bashisms

Posted on 2012-11-22 by jcs

Russell Power over at rjpower.org has a nice post on some Bash tricks. Despite over 20 years of Bash use I learned something new. It turns out that if you type【Ctrl+x Ctrl+e】Bash will bring up an editor session that allows you to edit the control line. The editor called is specified by FCEDIT if set, then EDITOR, and then defaults to Emacs. This will do the right thing for almost everybody. Almost everyone sets EDITOR and almost no one sets FCEDIT so【Ctrl+x Ctrl+e】 will do the right thing for most people.

This isn’t the type of thing you use everyday but if you have a complicated command line that fails and you want to change it a bit this is a nice way of doing it. All the powers of Emacs on your command line. What’s not to like? And don’t forget the other tips—also useful.

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SICP and Why It Matters

Posted on 2012-11-21 by jcs

Brian Harvey, who has been teaching the Berkeley SICP course for 25 years has an interesting and moving tribute to the famous Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, which he calls the best computer science book in the world. Irreal readers who have been around for a while know that that’s a sentiment that I share.

The tribute was written in 2011 at the request of the Boston Globe to celebrate the 150th anniversary of MIT. They asked Harvey to explain the significance of SICP for an article on the most important innovations developed there. He praises the book for its stubborn refusal to waste the better part of a semester learning the syntax of some computer language instead of focusing on what matters: the fundamental idea of abstraction. Part of what allowed that, of course, was the use of Scheme. I remember reading an article by Sussman—long before I learned Scheme or even really knew what it was—that they never bothered explicitly teaching Scheme in the course. They just used it and students picked it up as they went along. Harvey says that he spends the first half hour on notation and then doesn’t bother with explicitly teaching the language.

If, like me, you love SICP or you use and like Scheme, you should read Harvey’s tribute. It serves to remind us what a wonderful book it is and how revolutionary it was—and is—as a vehicle for learning about computer science.

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Republicans: Copyright Skeptics?

Posted on 2012-11-20 by jcs

See the afterward below for the latest information on this.

Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, a group blog by conservative lawyers, Stewart Baker writes that Republicans are repudiating 40 years of tougher copyright laws. If that’s true it can only be good news for sanity and common sense. But what evidence is there for this change of heart?

Baker points to a Republican Study Committee Policy Brief that discusses the problems with current copyright law and recommends some solutions. The report is an interesting read. It first explores three widely held beliefs about copyright, all of which are false:

  1. The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content.
  2. Copyright is free market capitalism at work.
  3. Copyright, as currently constituted, leads to the greatest amount of innovation and productivity.

Next, the report lists some of the distorting effects of copyright law. Irreal readers will be familiar with these but it’s nice to see that politicos are coming to recognize them as well.

Finally, the report discusses some reforms:

  1. Rewriting of the statutory damages laws to be proportionate and sensible.
  2. Expanded fair use.
  3. Punishment of false copyright claims.
  4. Limitation of copyright terms and the creation of disincentives for renewal.

Regardless of your political persuasion, you will, I think, find this brief compelling. Definitely worth your time.

Afterward

I wrote this on Saturday. By the end of the day the brief had already been withdrawn1. Techdirt (and lots of others) are reporting that Paul Teller, the RSC executive director, has released a memo withdrawing the brief and claiming that it was published “without adequate review.” Techdirt finds that claim silly. They say that everything posted on the RSC website goes through the same full review. What really happened here, they say, is that big media went ballistic and the RSC caved. I really don’t understand this. It’s not like big media is suddenly going to start supporting Republicans.

I held off publishing in the hopes that sanity would reassert itself at the RSC but I guess that’s not happening. I’ll leave the political analysis to others but I don’t see how the Republicans gain by looking like craven toadies for big media. I sure see a lot of ways they get hurt though. The original document is still worth a read; you can find a copy of it here.

Footnotes:

1 Providing yet another confirmation of Betteridge’s law.

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Amazon and DRM

Posted on 2012-11-19 by jcs

Over at Attendly.com John Birmingham has a provocative article entitled When It Comes To DRM, Amazon Is A Bottom Feeding Hell Beast. That is, to put it mildly, a bit hyperbolic but Birmingham has a serious point. A point that we’ve made here before: DRM is allowing Amazon to establish a virtual monopoly in ebooks.

Unlike many commenting on the situation, Birmingham has some skin in the game. He’s a fiction author who, one would think, has a lot to lose from people copying his books without paying. Indeed, he starts his article with a story of a women who had so enjoyed one of his early books that she photocopied parts of it and gave the copies to her friends. At the time he was not pleased but decided in the end that she probably earned him a couple of new readers. As Tim O’Reilly says, the typical author’s problem is not piracy but obscurity.

Regardless, he’s come to realize that the main effect of DRM is to make Amazon into a monopolist by trapping people in the Kindle ecosystem. Much the same can be said, of course, for Apple iBooks and the Barnes and Noble Nook ecosystems. Still, it is Amazon that everyone worries about. Notice who’s benefiting here. It’s not the authors and it’s not the publishers; it’s Amazon.

It is, then, an absurd irony that the authors and publishers are the ones insisting on DRM. Birmingham, for his part, is having no more of it and is now selling his books without DRM. We can only hope that the publishers will get on board before it’s too late.

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Xah’s Unicode Gallery

Posted on 2012-11-18 by jcs

Speaking of Unicode, as I did yesterday, Xah Lee has updated and rearranged all his pages dealing with Unicode and added a single, unified Unicode Gallery & Tutorial index page. I really like this because it provides a single page that serves as a portal to a vast amount of information about Unicode.

If, like me, you don’t use the rarer Unicode symbols everyday, this is a good resource to bookmark. If you are an Emacs user who often needs specialized Unicode characters, Lee lists some tools that may help. Regardless, it’s worth looking at the page just to see what’s there in case you need it later.

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