DoctorMo's Blog

I really like the idea of test suites, they give me a positive feeling that the code I’m making is probably going to do what it’s supposed to do. Not only that, but I feel far more confident about hacking the code to pieces in a random fit of creative genius if I know I can run a set of unit tests at the end and make sure all my designed APIs still work from the outside.

But why should I feel so good about tests? Isn’t writing the tests just like writing the code? except for the second time?

Well the logic of tests may mean that you have to do all the same kinds of logic, but it’s not really the same logic. You’re telling the computer what you expect to happen, not what happens. Take the analogy given in the title: If you were to carve/sculpt a masterpiece, you could be expected to gain some great notoriety for being a genius artist; alas much like code without tests it’s a one shot deal. As soon as you try and change the work, change it’s material and reproduce it for more customers you suddenly find yourself with lots of work making, remaking, fixing and refixing.

Any hired programmer will recognize the situation. Conversely software with complete testing (of all three kinds) will be much more like a mold, given any language with enough consistent code you could fill the mold many times to arrive at the same quality as before. The tests aren’t the same as the original sculpting, they’re much more like the framework that shows how to reproduce the work with ever tighter testing resulting in ever more accurate reproduction.

This assumes of course you imagine programming cycles as if they were mass production units.

Enough waffle! what do you think?

I came across an idea about how machines interact with people while watching some TV. They were joking about Sat-Nav devices and all the silly voices they can make when it occurred to me that Sat-Nav devices are indeed replacing our natural abilities to navigate and know where we are and how to move around in our urban areas. (Most of us have long since lost our ability to know where we are and how to get around in the wild)

This is an example of a device which replaces a natural talent so well, that we find we don’t need our mental functions any more. But of course the one great evil of this is that we no longer know how to operate without them, thus Sat-Nav will always be required by people who use Sat-Nav a lot. (forgetting of course people who couldn’t operate at all until Sat-Nav came into being)

So what’s the alternative to technological replacement? I think one idea is technological reinforcement; the idea that the best technology improves the human operator through it’s use. Take Wikipedia; the fear is that no one will never need to remember anything and we’ll all forget to remember everything. But using Wikipedia seems to do the opposite, reinforcing information and making us more certain about some of the billions of facts we can hold in our heads. (but maybe it hasn’t been around long enough to show it’s effect)

So this got me thinking about what I would like a Sat-Nav device to do, to help me reinforce and hone my skills navigating the streets. Partly it could help by always stating the names of the roads when you’re in a local or frequently visited place. “Turn Left” is an instruction but “Turn Left at Washington Street” is educational and reinforcing if I take that route a lot. The information is certainly being presented at the right time for me to combine it with other sensory information so I can call it back up later. Another idea is to mention the absolute direction, North, South etc so we get a feel for the absolute direction we’re traveling in.

Of course none of this might work, so to test we could see how Sat-Nav devices effect people’s ability to judge medium and long distances. Most devices mention how many yards/meters it is until a junction so it’s already going into our heads and reinforcing something in there, but maybe we can’t process it because we don’t really have a sense of speed (in a car, I do on my bike of course). Maybe the brain just throws all the information away, but I find that hard to believe since brains are really good at learning to understand all sorts of data.

What do you think?

Ubuntu gets bad rep for having releases which have an unfortunate number of bugs which is partly due to the higher number of users and partly due to the size of the testing community compared to user number. But give me a flakey Ubuntu release any day of the week compared to Android…

This new phone I have (Samsung Vibrent) I love, it does a bunch of useful things and has been one of the first devices I was excited to own and test out. So don’t get me wrong when I say:

I’m mightily annoyed that I can’t upgrade it from Android 2.1; at least Canonical doesn’t stop me upgrading Ubuntu even if it will break, at least they don’t stop the community getting involved to fix issues with getting the latests and greatest software working on the latest and greatest hardware. This is particularly poignant since the GPS on this phone under Android 2.1 is known to have a serious bug which can place with hundreds of meters away from your location. Bit of a flaw there.

Anyway, I’m stuck because tmobile, samsung and google all have their own little plans for what I should be allowed to do with my phone and how much they want to put into upgrades for phones they’ve already sold. I am now as convinced as ever that the mobile phone sector is not the greatest opportunity for linux, but the greatest danger to freedom if we as a community can not hold tightly onto some of out even basic rights to install what we like, modify as we like and mess up our stuff and paint it black like the punks of yore.

Update: I wanted to make clear that this is a rooted phone, but what use is that for installing upgrades to devices when there are no releases, no installers or guides. It’s pretty much every man for himself and everyone must be a programmer to get these things upgraded. The phone networks and manufacturers have created a drag on the economy with this sort of thing and I have half a mind to say that it should be illegal to put any sort of lock on any sort of hardware or software owned by the customer.

Your thoughts?

God damn this game and it’s attractive graphics and addictive game play physics.

There is another game that we designers and game players could learn from when it comes to addictive and attractive qualities in software interfaces. I mean take a look at the way the interface is laid out:

It’s a selection of levels, you can see how many you’ve got to go through, enjoy, it’s not too many like a giant block of levels like you would see if every level was present at the same time. And most importantly it’s cute and attractive with drawn graphics on everything and decorating every space.

Your thoughts?

Taking the day off really from doing much… or I would be if only I hadn’t booked myself solid with community work. Alas it never ends.

I did have a wonderful breakfast and dinner made by my lovely wife who I adore. And not just for occasions like this, but these warmest of events do fire the whole adoration somewhat more than say a ham sandwich would.

So you’re an admin eh, and you find yourself out of work or just down on your luck?

Perhaps there is a way to satisfy the hunger that small businesses have for properly maintained systems by using the cloud, the power of the canny businessman and Free and Open Source software and target customers which none of the big dogs are chasing. Basically the plan is this:

Use your nouse to get together a bunch of SMEs, charities or other orgs and nail down some simple requirements for services they could very much do with having. Sign them up for a time share in yourself or some other sys admins that could do with the cash and set them up everything from email and authentication to storage and version control.

No service is too complex for FOSS and no help page too long to read to get the job done.

With the cloud you can set each of your customers up with their own dedicated and secure “machine” and run their services in non conflicting ways. The users are happy because they have all their services delivered by contactable and usually local businesses in a way that doesn’t open them up to much of a security problem (if you do it right of course). And sys admins are happy because they get to eat more than pot noodle and beans on toast.

Extra bonus points for hosting it in a very reliable location and super extra bonus points if you have terms in your contract with your customer that allow them to move providers and take their instances with them.

Your Thoughts?

P.S. I just got back from Orlando and UDS so my brain _is_ a bit fried and this entry isn’t as edited or refined as some of my readers are starting to expect.

To celebrate the 500th member of the Ubuntu DeviantArt group. I’ve put together some stats for Operating System Use based on self stated use on profile pages:

Windows 7/Vista/XP – 410,000 (76.9%)
Mac – 87,700 (16.3%)
Ubuntu – 20,300 (3.7%)
Linux – 16,000 (3%)
Total: 533,300

These results were compiled by using a strict google search for deviantArt profile pages with the “Operating System: X” as a term. The number of found results were given as the size of the population. Windows and Ubuntu varients (XP/Vista/7) and (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu) where folded in.

Kubuntu actually accounts for 25% (5k) of the artists who use Ubuntu. 5% use Lubuntu and Xubuntu with the rest saying they use just Ubuntu (not specifying).

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have equal populations with 100k each, 210k is left for windows xp users.

We have a long way to go to attract for artists and creators to Ubuntu and making the open source ecosystem of tools the creators choice for their work. Although these stats may not be reliable, only half a million users out of an estimated 9 million deviantArt users had specified what os they use on their profile page.

Note: Linux is a compound of “Linux”: 3,700, Slackware: 3,160, openSuSE: 2,970, Red Hat: 1,220, Debian: 937, Fedora: 344

Your thoughts?

I keep seeing this message over and over as Boston moves into the week before samhain, you know that Irish/Celtic time of the year when the vale between the living and the dead is at it’s thinnest. When you’re likely to hear the wail of lenanshee or be visited by long lost relatives.

this is the time to be scared our of your pants, mourn the passing of friends or respect the life of the spirits. There is very little jollity in this Christmas sense to be had. And jet these plastic jerks keep trying to make Halloween into some Clinton card picturesque event that you’ll remember with nostalgia when you’re all grown up.

If you want to have a chilly spine this samhain then pop on over to Celtic Darkness and read some of this years stories: http://celticdarkness.com/stories.html

And comment here about what you think about plastic eventing.

In a recent yahoo blog post about Apple in the hock for patent infringement here. The story itself is fairly typical of the growing nuclear destruction that’s going on in the technology world, as meaningless patents are created and enforced on purely mental and mathematical designs and not inventions in the useful arts as was originally bargained for in that sort of Faustian way societies do sometimes.

What gets me is the language and manner of the commentators. Yes I know I shouldn’t let someone on the internet who is wrong keep me up all night. But these people are not just wrong, they’re wrong headed even when fighting each other.

Firslty we have the Apple fans. People who don’t just buy Apple products, they believe in Apple’s reasons for existing in much the way Simon Sinek describes. They don’t want to hear about Apple offending anyone or being immoral or perhaps even doing something as base as stealing. These comments are blandly giving Apple a pass for no other reason than them being Apple and the maker of the beloved products. No other reason.

Then we move onto the other set of people. The “every idea is owned” brigade that think that patents are for “encouraging innovation” and that using ideas or inventing similar ideas in the process of working on problems are somehow theft. Parents aren’t for encouraging innovation, they’re for ensuring inventions are documented in the public domain so progress isn’t locked away behind trade secretes.

It’s also not theft. Stealing is the re-appropriation of a fixed property, the possession moves. Copying ideas (even if you DID copy ideas instead of just inventing the same ones again) can’t be stealing because the idea is still in your head and not just in mine. The copying process means it _can’t_ be theft.

Patents are a social agreement who’s time is past. Society no longer gains anything from them and I have no faith in their original purpose. No inventor or programmer reads patents, they don’t ensure the progress of inventions any more. Sure software patents shouldn’t have ever existed, but more than that patents in all other areas have caused major problems and just silly regressions in progress and standardisation.

You thoughts?

I wanted to take this comment I made in an email and post it to my blog. I’m fairly principled and I try my best with all sorts of things. There is something about principles which I think is not well understood and I’d like to offer a tentative explanation:

Principles are a view of the world which can be seen to be idealistic, they are in their nature the very way in which given the way you understand the world to work you could see things being made better and more ideal. Ideals are not always practical, you have to deal with real world issues that are not ideal.

Practicalism isn’t a principle, it’s the ways real world problems can be solved. You use your principles to weigh up the cost of actions that solve the problem. You do _not_ replace your principles wholesale with a view that cheapens and makes light of principles in general but instead use them to dialectically make new and creative solutions to the problems.

Free and Open Source as a principle: It’s both a long term practical benefit (investment) and a universal social good which respects users and brings down the cost of computer software development. I would say that FOSS is one of those unique common sense type principles that have immediate and far reaching effects. The difficulty with spreading the ideas and philosophies are not due to the general public not being able to understand, but instead relate to how tightly vested interests hold onto their own principles about the appropriateness of their product’s terms.

All these things have cultural and political consequences in my view. You don’t have to be a raving supporter or a crazy Ubuntu advocate. I think just being more aware of exactly what the proposition is and why proprietary software is very costly and not worth your time would be very valuable in bringing about a cultural shift.

Thank you for reading my ramble, what are your thoughts? Am I talking out of my hat again? Should I be less concerned with the adoption of practicalism as a principle?