Had a minor incident with the grill, and the fat from the burgers. Fat dripped down into the grill, and started a minor grease fire which grew to be a bit larger than I would consider ideal. Ended up having to remove most of the hamburgers from the grill to remove the source of the fire’s fuel, except for one that had a rather intimidating wall of flame surrounding it. There may have been some infernal influence on those flames, I’m not sure.

Overall, great day, looking forward to the next year of life, fully expecting it to be at even more awesome than previous years (if that’s possible, I’m quite pleased with my life so far). 23 happens to be my lucky number, so we’ll see how that plays into things. ^_^

Start some coursework at BCIT on Monday. 0800-1200 for class, then work from 1215-2015. It’s going to be a long two weeks, I suppose. I expect the local coffee houses will appreciate the extra business.

And now, I must answer the call of sleep.

The situation is such that there are advantages to both sides. It is my position that self-taught individuals are more specialized in their chosen areas of expertise, at the cost of versatility.

Consider if you will: the range of exercises most Computer Science students undertake. Many of these are tasks that illustrate a particular concept, and will likely never be (directly) applied to any future work.

Many self-educated individuals will not take the time to study areas outside those that interest them (and why would they?). At the same time, such individuals are not wasting the time they save by not learning otherwise dull concepts. These are replaced with things that capture our attention, and hold it.

There are those who hold the view that those trained through traditional channels (universities, formal training programs, etc) are being ’shaped by the system to be drones’. While I think this is a bit extreme, I agree somewhat, though I think the defining factor is motivation, rather than environment. It just happens that most of those outside of traditional training models (the self-taught) share a common motive: Passion. We thirst for knowledge, and it is this that drives us to expand our understanding of a subject. An individual who enrolls in a training program, or structured study of a field may share this desire, though it can safely be assumed that not all who take a course do it for the knowledge alone. Many undertake such training to secure positions in a related field.

I believe that one who learns something to become employable is setting themselves up to be a drone. The mindset required to know that ‘I spent four years studying to get this job’ puts the individual in a position to be directed. The goal was to get the job, and to fill a specific role.

The self-taught individual is more often driven by passion for their art. Where a classically-trained developer may complete a project to the specfication, the passionate developer is more likely to infuse their work with that extra spark that makes it truly exceptional.

Those trained in a traditional sense are often more versatile than the passionate programmer, and may be stronger in a wider range of tasks, the self-taught developer is often unparalleled in his expertise in a select few areas.

The question I would pose is this: If you required critical brain surgery, who would you rather have do it? The surgeon who is very good at a range of operations? Or a neurosugeon who excels at his chosen field, but only at his chosen field?

Written in response to:

• 
  Who Needs a Computer Science Degree When There’s Wikipedia?
• University versus self-taught

Vista Gamer stems from the fact that my shiny new laptop came with Vista. Now, I’m not a Windows fan. This is plainly clear, but since the laptop that had the hardware I wanted didn’t have an option of not getting Vista, I accepted that I was screwed. And, since I now have a shiny licensed copy of Windows, I may as well use it to play my games. Saves me the hassle of tinkering with Wine… or does it?

I figured it’d be easy. Pop in a game or two, and have some fun. But no. Vista wants to play rough, and not be compatible with several of my games. I’m pleased with the performance of the ones that run, but disappointed that a large number of the online games I’ve wanted to play simply don’t run on Vista. Things like DEP killing nProtect, for example. I can’t fault Vista for that, really. nProtect is an invasive little process, and any half-decent security system should consider it’s behaviour (not the app itself, mind you) to be a threat.

Looking around, I couldn’t find a site around that told me what was compatible and what wasn’t. Sure, people mention things in forums, but I wanted a single place I could find the information. A starting point for my game compatibility research, much like Wikipedia is the starting point for a lot of questions that cross my mind.

Spent a bit of time struggling to find a domain that felt right, and went to bed without an answer. The next day, I checked a few more that struck me during lunch, and to my surprise, vistagamer.com was available (let this be a lesson to all of you “OMG, all the decent .coms are taken!” people. Even if you think it’ll be taken, check. You might be wrong).

So the site’s up and running, looks decent enough. A few games are in the list, and I’m looking for submissions for any experiences others have had with games working or not.

Play games on Vista? Check out Vista Gamer. While we can’t make Vista suck any less for gaming, we can at least know that a game doesn’t work before we waste 3GB of bandwidth downloading it (seriously, these online multiplayer games should have their requirements listed on the site. Even if the game is free, wasted bandwidth doesn’t benefit anyone).

Considering everything that’s happened with Libertas Infinitum (or the lack of happenings, depending on how you approach it), I wanted to do something to help others with similar visions. I’ll continue with Libertas Infinitum, and while that develops I’d love to see more independant developers start building their dreams.

If anything, now is the best time for new developers to get involved. As the internet has evolved, the potential for collaboration has blossomed into something amazing, and the resources available for small teams are mature and stable: Web-accessible revision control, free distribution channels, and open source development tools and frameworks all serve to lower the barrier to entry, or even eliminate it entirely.

Silent Arcade is a site dedicated to empowering those developers through knowledge. Check it out.

Note: This is not speculation. Rogers’ Vice President of Communications, Taanta Gupta has confirmed that they are experimenting with this technique ( via Wired ).

What this means is that they are embedding additional content in web pages served to their clients, without explicit permission. This is not something clients can opt into. As a privacy-aware netizen, I find this to be a blatant abuse of any Internet Service Provider’s power, for a number of reasons.

Security

When I connect to a site, my browser requests a page from the server hosting that site. I expect that the page I receive is the one that the server sent to me. What Rogers is doing breaks this implicit trust. As a user, I can no longer have faith in the authenticity of a page I view, because it may have been modified somewhere between the server that generated the page, and me.

Such action (when initiated by an individual) is considered malicious activity, and controversial at best. When a telecommunications carrier is responsible, it is also illegal.

Part II, Section 36 of the Telecommunications Act states:

[Content of messages]

36. Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.

Privacy

The example above illustrates this capability being used to send targetted messages to clients regarding their accounts. Two important details can be determined from this: That Rogers is in fact actively monitoring data that passes through their network (so as to not inject arbitrary code into incompatible content types) and that they are linking these data sessions to individual client accounts. It is hardly a distant thought for them to be tracking the sites a client visits, and constructing a profile about that user from that data. Again, this is done without explicit consent from their users.

Potential Impact

Right now, this technology is being used to send ‘useful’ (but intrusive) messages to clients. In the future, it would not be unexpected for Rogers to add ‘relevant data’ to pages, or deliver contextual advertising (and they would likely make a killing from it). It is possible that this capability could be used to push software onto the PCs of their users. Though local security policies would likely prevent this, it would be simple enough to install a browser addon from the Internet Setup software that bypassed the usual security measures by considering such content to be ‘trusted’. In the case of users who opt not to use the setup software, such an addon could be installed by exploiting any one of the vulnerabilities in their given browser (most commonly Internet Explorer). A user would not even have to go to a specific site, as the needed data could be embedded in any page.

In a more sinister scenario, it is also possible that Rogers could modify the owner attribute on existing on-page advertisements, effectively stealing that ad revenue from the page owners. Since this would occur after the page was generated, but prior to it being served to the client’s browser, there would be no way for the site owner to notice this (since it is common for users to have ad-blocking software installed locally, many site owners expect a certain portion of viewers to not receive the advertisements), and no way for the client to determine it either.

Extending this a bit further, it is not difficult to envision an entity with these capabilities modifying other content on-page. Altering unfavourable commentary regarding themselves, censoring content, adding content to pages and generally discrediting the validity of the web.

Some of these examples seem unlikely, others not so much. Only time will tell, but if we do not voice our concerns, if we do not defend our rights to privacy, anonymity, and security, a bleak future is all the more probable.

Note: This page should be should be served to you via HTTPS, ensuring that such content-modification schemes are ineffective.

We’ve all done it, and its bad enough when you’re maintaining your own code… but if you are working with other developers (or if someone may one day be working with your code), the ‘dirty hack now, fix it later’ way of coding is simply not acceptable.

Source is meant to be read by human beings. Disregarding this truth is the first step on a dark path. Taking the time to do it right the first time pays off fast.

A lot of it isn’t even hard to do. Naming your variables clearly consumes mere seconds, and pays off immediately by reducing the amount of documentation you need to write. For example, naming an object scd1 rather than OverviewMenu creates the need for documentation that could have been avoided. If you append an item to scd1, someone looking at your code may need to figure out what scd1 actually does to understand that, while appending an item to OverviewMenu probably means you’re adding an item to the menu. The code documents itself.

Indenting your code properly is trivial to accomplish (and all but the most primitive editors make it very easy to do without thinking about it), and it simplifies understanding program flow.

Doing it the ‘easy’ way now, with the intent of fixing it later is almost always a recipe for trouble, and more often than not it creates more work for you very quickly. Now you have ugly code that needs to be fixed, and replacing it can take longer than it would have to write it well in the first place. Besides, why write something just to throw it out? Your time should be worth more than that.

If you happen to be writing web code, don’t create JavaScript functions or complex code inside event handlers, or apply inline styles your HTML. JavaScript has functions, and the style tag exists to be used. There are reasons for these things, part of which is making it easy to manage your code.

If it’s worth doing at all, it should be worth doing right. Please, don’t create more work than you need to for yourself, and other developers.

Given that both projects are games, a potential for confusion was recognized, and discussion on a new name began. Some titles that didn’t make the cut were…

• Manifest Destiny
• Conquest of Fate
• Seven Sorrows
• Empires Return
• Return
• Bloodlines
• Land of War
• Revenge of the Sho’dai
• Free Play
• Freedom
• Liberty
• Redemption
• Sovereign
• Libertas
• Logos
• Terrenus

By a unanimous vote, the name Libertas Infinitum was decided on. This name was formed from three comments:

• Name submission of ‘Libertas‘ by Jacob Hardin.
• Concept submission of ‘Free Play‘ from myself, Chris Olstrom.
• Suggestion from Matt Maclellan to work ‘Eternal‘ into the title.

Links have been redirected by 301, all content available at http://www.firebrand-entertainment.com/libertas-infinitum/.

The intent of this project is to produce a game that incorporates the ideas of the players from the beginning. This will be released free to the community, as both client and server software. Source will be available for modification and review, as it should be.

What is asked of the community is this: Tell us what you want, and help build it. The documentation is in a wiki format, and a source repository is in place, both to facilitate open collaboration.

Affiliate programs provide a fair mechanism for profit-sharing, to the benefit of all. Referrers and the company itself benefit in the most direct sense: revenue; and the benefit extends beyond that. Increased income means more reliability for the users. It facilitates the purchase of new hardware, covers unexpected expenses, and allows for growth benefitting every client, regardless of their involvement in referring new signups.

At EclipseHosters.com, we’re taking that added revenue, and giving it back to the community. Effective immediately, every new client that signs up without a referral will have that referral randomly assigned to someone on the same plan that they are signing up for.

Example

Lisa is looking for hosting, and finds EclipseHosters.com on Google. After reviewing the available options, she picks out a Full plan ($15.00/mo, referal credit of $1.50). Since the referral is not assigned, the system selects someone else with a Full plan, and attributes the credit to Dave. He now earns $1.50 monthly for that referral.

In this example, Dave was not required to do any work. He was rewarded (on an ongoing basis, no less) simply for having chosen EclipseHosters.com as his hosting provider.

That is the EclipseHosters difference.

Where is the line drawn, then? He asks about software phoning home, and the sorts of data that are appropriate to report, specifically inquiring about license keys, version reporting, and installation identifiers. Responding to each…

License Keys

A license key would be perfectly acceptable by my standards. It isn’t personally identifiable information that the content owner doesn’t already have. Any information a license key can provide was likely provided in order to get said key, right?

Software Version

A software version is non-intrusive as well, since the same information is reported by most updating systems, to ensure patches get distributed to those who need them, unless the updater just queries the current version number, and compares it locally against your installed version. (On a side note, I would be interested to know how prevalent these methods are.)

Unique Installation Identifiers

A unique installation ID, though… since that information serves to identify the user (or the installation), and isn’t directly provided to the content author, and serves minimal benefit (if any) to the end user… it just feels like data mining.

How to respond in the event of more active installs than issued keys?

Regarding a threshold for disabling license keys, that really depends on how the disabling occurs. If it’s automatic, then it is probably too aggressive to disable the keys for limited apparent piracy. Especially if your software is targeted at a corporate audience. Anything that slams the brakes on productivity is a good reason to start looking for another product.

Track the number of active installs for a given key, yes. Flag the key, absolutely. Disable it… manually?

Even better, locate the contact info for the offending keys, and send a friendly notification to them, offering the purchase of additional keys at a volume discount appropriate to the number of excess installations. This turns piracy into a potential sale.

The majority of this post (excepting the introduction and headings) was originally featured here as a comment on Marc’s Musings.

In addition, an affiliate campaign such as this is probably the safest (in terms of risk vs reward) single investment we could undertake in regards to marketing. It offers us the assurance that we do not throw away money on ads that may not pan out, and it frees us from the ancient marketing formula of X sales from Y visitors who clicked on Y out of Z ads that were paid for.

Let’s assume some optimistic numbers here, to illustrate the point. 1 in 20 visitors makes a purchase of $8 (5% conversion rate), and 1 in 100 ‘impressions’ clicks an ad (1% click-thru rate), and the cost of the ads is $5 per 1000 impressions…

Based on these numbers, a $50 advertising budget should result in 50,000 ads, or 500 visitors. 1 in 20 buys, which should mean 25 sales. At $8 each, $200 in revenue has been generated from $50 in advertising. A 4:1 return, which (depending on the market) can be good, or not so hot. Viewed from slightly different angle, it cost 25% of the value of each sale to acquire it.

That is assuming good results, which would require a solid ad with highly visible placement on the right site. It can go a lot worse: At a conversion rate of 1%, $40 in revenue is generated from $50 in advertising. A loss, even before processing fees.

Pay-Per-Impression and Pay-Per-Click models are a crapshoot because of this. The amount of resources invested into devising the right ads, and finding the right sites for them (this step is largely automated by most of todays popular advertising systems), not to mention the series of trial runs that need to be done to learn what works, and what doesn’t (for each product, no less)… all of this translates into risk, and potentially unrecoverable expense.

An affiliate campaign offers a different approach. On the surface, it is a way to Pay-Per-Result. Any leads that do not result in sales, cost nothing. Affiliates assume the risks of advertising, and are free to exercise creativity with little to no restraint.

The only expense occurs when a sale is made, effectively increasing the price of a given transaction. Additionally, there is the cost of tracking and managing affiliates, their payouts, and details such as conversion rates, and average revenue per unit sold. This is a management expense, which is not directly recoverable.

To simplify, affiliate programs require expenditure to build and maintain, but allow for a very predictable Cost-Per-Sale. PPC or PPI advertising requires similar costs (though more controllable), but Cost-Per-Sale can be difficult to accurately determine beforehand, and may vary greatly during multiple runs of the same ad.

The problem? 0 is the ‘disabled’ option in our billing system. So a $0.00 price disables the payment frequency. Since the frequency is disabled, it doesn’t apply a billing cycle.

As for the invoices, billing software is designed to do just that, bill. When the amount of an invoice is $0.00, it assumes that it is a temporary thing (due to overpayment, credits on the account, etc), and generates an invoice with the details. There is an option for ‘Free Account’, which prevents this. However, if this is selected, it sets the payment frequency to ‘never’. So when a client upgrades to a paid package, it never bills for it.

How to fix these problems? Change disabled to -1, instead of 0. Or add a flag somewhere. That solves the first two. Add a configuration option for ‘Do not generate invoice for $0.00′, or again, set a conditional flag somewhere.

Is this a bug or programming error in any way? I don’t believe so. I think it reflects a design decision, and a conflict between that design, and how the software is being used. Most commercial billing systems are not intended to support transactions of less than $0.01.

What does this mean to existing users? You may, from time to time, receive email from either WTF, or EclipseHosters.com. Your accounts have been assigned unique ID numbers, and enrolled in the EclipseHosters.com Sales Program. The details of this program can be found in an email you should have received, or in the knowledgebase. Support requests will be handled through the support center, rather than by email. You will have access to web-based tools to streamline the management of your site, and empower you to do more with the resources you have. At any time, you may opt to upgrade to one of the packages offered by EclipseHosters.com, though it is not required.

What does this mean to WhatTheFork.org itself? It allows us to return to our roots, and focus on the community again, while EclipseHosters.com takes care of our clients.

• Copy image from camera (or other source)
• Execute hashconvert.pl, a simple script to convert filenames into their MD5 Hash value (this helps prevent duplicate files, and ensures a unique filename for every image).
• Execute mkthumbs.sh, which generates thumbnails, moves them into /reduced/, and creates a symbolic link from t_OriginalHash.jpg to /reduced/ThumbnailHash.jpg.
• Either write the HTML to add the image to the gallery by hand, or enter the filename and caption data into a locally-stored MySQL database, and generate the equivalent HTML with ipg.php (a script designed to do this).
• Append this code to index.html
• Execute publish.sh, which syncs the local copy of the site with the live one.

This process has been simplified by the new engine. It is now:

• Copy image from camera (or other source)
• Navigate to http://gallery.izzypants.com.
• Click ‘Add Image’, and select the file to upload.
• Type in a caption, and press submit.
• The rest of the work is done automagically.

This means less effort to produce the same end result.

It’ll be awhile before there is any form of sizeable community, but it will happen, I’m sure. All it needs is some good posts, and a few regulars.

I’m toying with the idea of a text ad or something being added to generate a small amount of revenue. We’ll see how that goes, though. I’ve always hated advertising on my sites.

http://bbs.whatthefork.org

– Jean Atchison, Language Change: Progress or Decay?, p. 4

Many communities have been hit by the plague of idiocy that runs rampant through the pixelated streets of the metaverse. Avatars mangle their speech, and justify it by claiming that it ’saves time’. Perhaps it does, however the half-second one might save is outweighed by the several seconds (or more) that the reader must take to decipher this garbage. The practice of (ab)using netspeak is tremendously selfish.

Assume that a decent post will be read by one hundred people (in reality it will likely be read by many times this, but conservative estimates make for better debates).

Someone having minor experience with keyboards can reach 20 words per minute, an average typist reaches about 30 to 45 (usually the minimum required for dispatch positions and other typing jobs), while advanced typists work at speeds above 60. ^[1]

This means that an inexperienced typist can enter approximately one word every three seconds, an average typist one word every two to 1.3 seconds, and an experienced typist can enter upwards of one word per second.

If the poster reduces their keystrokes per post by 15% by using netspeak (’txt-tlk’) and an average post is 300 characters, or 60 words long (a generous estimate), 45 keystrokes, or 7 words are saved. This translates to the following time savings, based on the skill of the typist:

• Inexperienced, 21 seconds.
• Average, 9.1-14 seconds.
• Experienced, less than 7 seconds.

Educated adults read at 200-350 wpm, at best 400 wpm for full comprehension.^[1]

What impact does netspeak have on reading comprehension? It is hard to say, but if it takes approximately one minute for the average adept reader to read an average post, and we postulate that an additional five seconds of time are required to decipher this mangled syntax, ten readers will consume fifty seconds of time, and one hundred will consume five hundred seconds of otherwise productive time deciphering the post.

• For an inexperienced typist, readers cumulatively waste 23.8 times more time deciphering than the typist saves.
• For an average typist, readers waste 35.7 to 54.9 times the typist’s savings.
• For an experienced typist, readers are required to spend 71.4 times the amount of time the typist saved, deciphering the mangled language.

Please, don’t waste other people’s time.

Citations

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute

This writing was originally featured here, on Gaia Online.

Regarding public discussion

Forums encourage more people to engage in discussion, by exposing the topic of conversation to a wider audience than MSN could target. Allowing for the use of group chats, each person still needs to be invited to participate.

IRC is a bit more suited to public discussion, for similar reasons, but its realtime interaction, rather than persistent nature of the web leads to rapid topic decay. With everything happening live, a given topic may last for a few hours at best on any instant chat medium.

On the web however, a solid topic may generate weeks of discussion, if not more, as users can return to a topic at any time, whenever it is convenient for them to do so. Likewise, new users may jump into an existing discussion, and revive a topic that has not been active in days.

Regarding private discussion

Most forums are platform-neutral. It is no less convenient to chat for a Mac user with Safari, a Windows user with Internet Explorer, or a Linux user with Firefox. Anyone with a browser that supports cookies (and ideally, javascript, Flash, and images for the full experience) can interact.

MSN requires users to use specific software (while there are alternatives to Windows Live Messenger, such as Gaim, these clients often lack all the features of the ‘official’ ones).

Including chat protocols other than MSN, such as ICQ/AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, or IRC only further widens the rift. If one person uses MSN, and other uses AIM, one or more of them is inconvenienced in the process of creating yet another account for some service, and is burdened with the overhead of one more application running on their system.

For this reason above all else, forums are superior to IM.

This writing was originally featured here, on Gaia Online.

The glass is not half-full, nor is it half-empty. It is in need of a refill.

Rather than accepting events the way they are even when we know that they are not ideal, why not push to improve them? Take action, and ‘refill your glass’ (or the glass of another), so to speak. One could theorize that if enough people adopted this sort of mindset, the world we live in (meatspace, as it were) would be more enjoyable for everyone. Reduced levels of conflict, a stronger sense of community, and a greater sense of trust in those around us. How far-reaching would the effects of this be? The only way to find out is to do it, and see what happens.

This writing was originally featured here, on Gaia Online.

There is a certain level of elitism imposed by certain parts of this world, though. Passwords, subscription-based services, and ranked search results do chip away some of that equality. Service is denied to some not because of ethnicity, or religion, but because they either were unable to, or opted not to buy into a subscription-based offer. Favouritism is imposed with a myriad of search technologies. Some where being the most popular (measured by how many other popular entities talk reference you) brings favourable placement, which entices further referencing. Others being essentially bribe-based. Top ranking goes to the person who pays the most for it. Even passwords put a certain level of restriction on clientele: only those with the secret code phrase can enter, reminiscent of a den of pirates. If you don’t have the password, you are simply not welcome.

This writing was originally featured here, on Gaia Online.

Now, there’s a large group of IRC users out there, who use mIRC, and Windows. I’ll just ignore the Windows aspect of that, and pretend they’re all using WINE. Now, what makes X-Chat more desirable than mIRC? Let’s take a look, shall we?

With mIRC, you can write scripts in… mIRC-script. That’s about it. It’s limited, but some people have managed to do some pretty impressive things with it. Of course, if you look at the code for those amazing things, it’s usually harder to read than an awk-line.

Now, with X-Chat, you’ve got a bit of flexibility. Scripting is supported in… Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, and even DMDScript (aka JavaScript or ECMA-262). Hell, you you want to, you can use C or C++ to write plugins for X-Chat, including plugins to allow the use of any other language you’d like. That’s where the other plugins came from. Someone wanted support for it, so they added it. Which brings us to a lovely feature of X-Chat. It’s Open Source. It’s well-documented, and the code is all there for you to play with.

What else do we have…

Ah yes, coloured nicks, and marker lines. Convenient things that make it easy to keep track of who is talking, and remember where you stopped reading. Coloured nicks does exactly as the name implies. It assigns a colour to each person who talks, and whenever they talk in the future, their nick is highlighted in that colour (for those that dislike this, it is optional). The marker line just shows a little red line below the last line printed when the window lost focus. Easy to find your place!

Buttons. I don’t understand why this feature seems unique to X-Chat… all you have to do is type /addbutton , allowing you to have quick and easy access to the commands you use most often, and even allowing you to bind your scripts to buttons. Convenient!

I also love the away tracking, and the option to show hostnames next to nicks in the user list box (not recommend on FreeNode, though…).

Portability is also an issue for some. X-Chat runs on many platforms! Win32, Linux, BSD, and others! mIRC runs on… Win32. Oh, and other things if you fuck around with WINE or something. And even then, it runs really, really slowly.

For me, X-Chat is just the obvious choice. For casual IRC users, it’s perfect. For serious IRC junkies, script-writers and programmers, it’s perfect. You can use the languages you know, and if you don’t know them, you’re now equipped to learn them.

Why wait? Nothing to lose by trying it! Debian users, apt-get it, if you haven’t already. Gentoo users, there’s an ebuild for it. For those without a decent package manager (*cough* Slackware, RedHat, Slackware *cough*), grab the source and compile it. Win32 users… if you don’t feel like switching to a real OS, there’s a good build of it for Windows over at http://silenceisdefeat.org/~b0at/xchat/win32/ (I highly recommend SilvereX’s build).

This writing was originally featured here, on LiveJournal.