Capacity For Self Deception

Someone should start a broad catalog of memes, not just pop-culture memes. Google book search shows our "capacity for self deception" going back to the 19th century.

Though it's easier to demonstrate this for criminals, it also applies to the best of us.

We Need Core Data

Something like Apple's new Core Data data-model-framework is long overdue, but we need a standard, free, cross-platform implementation.

The hierarchical filesystem is not meeting our needs. For all of our documents, we want:

• easy persistence
• undo and redo
• gui prototyping
• revision control
• transactions
• search
• annotation
  

(Core Data only provides the first few features.)

This new API can't handle behavior and stay language/platform independent. That is, it can't support the object oriented approach of only allowing access to state through member functions.

On the other hand, it would be nice to use regular oop languages to specify the model.

Justification of Python Sequence Subscripts

Which notation should be used for slicing a subsequence of m through n items?

1. myseq[ m : n ]
2. myseq[ m : n+1 ]
3. myseq[ m-1 : n ]
4. myseq[ m-1 : n+1 ]

#3 and #4 are silly, because they're inconsistent with the natural way to refer to a single item myseq[m].

Perl uses #1, which is wrong because you can't iterate down to an empty subsequence with myseq[m:m]. Representing this with myseq[m:m-1] is clearly evil, and it breaks completely for m = 0.

The rationale for indices starting from 0 instead of 1 isn't as strong: that representing the whole list as myseq[0:len(myseq)] is "nicer" than representing it as myseq[1:len(myseq)+1]. Perl doesn't even have this rationale :).

Ironically, reverse indices in python do go from 1 to n+1, or rather from -1 to -(n+1). This is fortuitous, because representing reversed(myseq) with myseq[-1::-1] is nicer than representing it with myseq[0::-1].

inspired by a note from Dykstra

Type, Effect, and Inference

Effect systems are nice for the same reasons that Type systems are nice, and they're also a big win for concurrency and for encapsulation. Effects, as I understand them, allow specifying how code reads and writes state.

If you're wondering how to convince people to create even more code annotation, don't worry; we'll be able to infer effect information from the code itself, just as we can infer type information from the code itself.

Even with perfect inference, explicit annotation will be useful for external data and for specifying contracts.

RDF and the WWW

Just had an epiphany: RDF is very similar to the world wide web.

They're both edge-labelled directed graphs.

Though people generally aren't so careful with their link texts, these are just like RDF predicates. The linking page is the subject, and the linked page is the object.

Tomboy and the Future

Tomboy is an excellent program for linux.

It looks like a simple implementation of post-it notes, but it has a few features which make it wonderful:

• automatic save
• ability to easily link any text to a new note (sort of like a wiki)
  
• fast full search
• clickable web links

There are more features that'd yield incredible power:

1. "who links to me?" button
2. ability to list nodes that are linked to by all of a set of nodes
3. ability to open a node by path, with autocompletion
   
4. "publish" button, for a single node or for a group of nodes
   
5. ability to manage the graph graphically

#2 would enable the now fashionable folksonomy functionality.
#3 would replace bookmarks.
#4 would implement a blog authoring tool.
#5 would give you a mindmap.

This stuff shouldn't be in a particular application, but should be available to the whole system. It'll be great if this notes application demonstrates of the power of the approach, and motivates people to implement it more widely.

Corporate Personhood

Here's my attempt to distill the issue of corporate personhood. The best book on the subject that I've seen is The Corporation : The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, by Joel Bakan.

Corporations are disproportionately powerful, because they concentrate huge amounts of money and therefore political influence. Is this good or bad? On the one hand, "what's good for GE is good for America." On the other hand, corporations by law must pursue no objective over maximizing shareholder value. This means externalizing costs whenever possible. For example, a corporation sells 100,000,000 widgets whose use will kill 100 people. That corporation may not legally settle for a smaller profit in order to make its widgets safer, and thereby save the 100 people. (The "what's good for GE" proponents may counter that the public sector makes such cold-hearted calculations all the time, and that the economic activity of the widgets is part of the "rising tide that lifts all boats," making the whole society wealthier and safer.)

What does this have to do with "corporate personhood?" Corporations concentrate huge amounts of capital, but they defuse almost all responsibility. When a corporation makes a million dollars, that money is shared by all its owners. When a corporation kills a person, that guilt is claimed by no one.

Though a corporation is fundamentally no more than a financial partnership, the existence of the corporate entity insulates its officers from morality and from the law. A bad action could spring from the combined actions of many members of a corporation, though none of the individual actions is bad. Even when a single member performs a bad action on behalf of the corporation, it's difficult to detect and prosecute. This insulation itself encourages bad behavior, because members' responsibility to the corporation is more pressing than their responsibility to the society and its laws.

Basing the rights of the corporation on the rights of the person gives corporations additional power. The law gives individuals various rights to protect them from the power of the state (e.g. the Bill of Rights). Sharing these rights with corporations gives them even more power. Treating people and corporations the same allows using a rhetoric of "freedom" to weaken and eliminate regulation, when regulation is the best tool for making corporations consider important externalities, and the only way to correct market failures.

Emulating maxdepth for Solaris find

Say you want to find files in the top level of a directory that meet a certain condition (e.g. haven't been accessed for at least three days).

GNU find can do this with "-maxdepth 1", but Solaris find can't. To get the same functionality for Solaris find, you can use this hack:
find /some/path/. \( -type d -a \! -name . -prune \) -o -type f -print

That is, first prune all directories that aren't named ".", then print the names of the remaining files. It's important that the path be "/some/path/." instead of "/some/path", because that's what enables special treatment for the top level directory.

Partial Replacing Lambda?

Wonder if partial functions are going to replace lambda in python3000.

partial(operator.add, 1) isn't such an attractive substitute for lambda x: x+1, but that's more about operator than it is about partial().

Maybe partial()+1 should be supported using operator overloading. It'd be especially nice to be able to do partial()+x+y instead of partial(operator.add, x+y)

This form should probably be a differently named built-in, but built-ins aren't cheap, and the no argument constructor isn't otherwise meangingful.

Humble and Smart

The more you learn about something, the more you realize how little you know about it.

This isn't just philosophy; when people know nothing about a thing, they assume that there's "nothing to it". Then they confidently make decisions based on incomplete information. (It could be because interesting elements exploit the interplay of the simple and the complex. Or it could just be because small details aren't visible at a distance.)

Paradoxically, bright people are more susceptible to this thinking. Bright people are accustomed to quickly understanding ideas outside of their field of expertise, and this understanding is often superior to experts'. A bright person can start to believe (subconsciously) that much of the work in a field is characterized by lack of understanding.

This has ramifications for religious leadership. That religious leaders have insight into issues not technically within the sphere of religious practice is a doctrine of Judaism, and probably other religions as well. It's only logical; following Judaism is about living wisely, and someone with a deeper understanding of Judaism should have attained greater wisdom. In order to be truly wise, however, a person must be aware of his limitations. Maybe this awareness can be achieved by encountering sufficiently dramatic examples (for example the abuse cases involving religious leaders in recent years), or maybe it requires learning a little bit about alot of different things.

(It is troubling to think that G-d confers special wisdom in a way that is completely independent of the natural working of the world. For one thing, thinking that you've got supernatural aid from G-d certainly exacerbates the problem described above. For another, there is no good way to tell when you got it, and when you don't. "Trust in God, but steer away from the rocks", applies here as well.

At any rate, I don't think Judaism encourages completely ignoring the rules of the physical world. There's a gemara in niddah that gives advice about achieving various goals; in each case the gemara advises both acting according to natural way of the world, and also praying for success. In this era characterized by hester panim ("G-d hiding His face"), we certainly shouldn't abdicate the responsibility to do our hishtadlus (effort), especially where other people are involved.)

Idiomatic Python

Programming languages, like human languages, each have their own idiomatic usage. Though there are many different ways to express a single thing, some patterns of expression just feel much more natural.

The idiomatic style of python is beautiful.

Here's an example. You'd like to allow categorizing emails using their subjects, by prefixing the normal subject with the category and a colon. So for a message with subject "game on tuesday", you could use subject "sports: game on tuesday". If no category is specified, you'd like to use "misc". Here's the Pythonic way to do it:

try:
       category, subject = headers['Subject'].split(':')
except:
       category, subject = 'misc', headers['Subject']

There are a few different features at work here:

• "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission"
• Exceptions are used heavily
• Language support for collections is simple and easy
  

"Startups" and Small Businesses

At least since the dot-com bubble, the idea of the startup has been enshrouded in glamor. Most recently Paul Graham posted How to Start a Startup, but his advice is for dot-com-bubble type startups. He suggests that starting a company means compressing a career of 40 years into 4, and assumes that every new business will either flop or become an industry giant.

It could be that when Graham says "startup", he means a company that would rather flop than settle for staying small. Only talking about these startups is strange for a few reasons. Many companies consider themselves successful without making a public stock offering, or being bought out for piles of cash. How about creating a successful small company first, on the way to becoming an industry giant later? And which ideas and strategies are appropriate for which goal? These questions are a lot more relevant today than how to handle a Venture Capitalist imposed CEO.

After all, though more people are employed by big companies, there are many more small companies than big ones.

Note to Future Self

Whenever I put something down in an unusual place, there's a strong chance I will "lose" it.

Hopefully when I'm older I'll look back at this note and realize that I'm not going senile.

Ipod Shuffle for Lectures

The IPod Shuffle is a wonderful device. One more feature would make it perfect for listening to lecture series (or books on tape or language courses), without bloating its wonderfully simple interface.

The IPod Shuffle should remember the current "song" after it's turned off.

So apparently this is supported for purchases from ITunes and Audible. In order to get it to work with anything else, you have to use faac to create .m4b files.

UPDATE: It works great. If you're using linux, get gnupod, mpg321, and faac. Then you can do something like:

mkdir /mnt/ipod 2>/dev/null
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/ipod
for mp3 in *.mp3
do
  m4b=${mp3%.*}.m4b
  mpg321 -w $mp3 | faac -b 10 -c 3500 - -o $m4b
  gnupod_addsong.pl -m /mnt/ipod $m4b
done
mktunes.pl -m /mnt/ipod
umount /mnt/ipod

Incidentally, it would be great if gnupod would expose a filesystem-type api to the ipod using fuse.

UPDATE#2: Don't use gnupod; use the iPod shuffle Database Builder.

Warn of Unsaved Changes Javascript

OK, this will get all the javascript out of my system. This one is intensely useful for web "applications". It warns the user if she tries to leave the form with unsubmitted changes, whether leaving by moving to a different page or by closing the window. It requires a recent firefox or ie browser.

<body onLoad="lookForChanges()" onBeforeUnload="return warnOfUnsavedChanges()">
<form>
<select name=a multiple>
 <option value=1>1
 <option value=2>2
 <option value=3>3
</select>
<input name=b value=123>
<input type=submit>
</form>

<script>
var changed = 0;
function recordChange() {
 changed = 1;
}
function recordChangeIfChangeKey(myevent) {
 if (myevent.which && !myevent.ctrlKey && !myevent.ctrlKey)
  recordChange(myevent);
}
function ignoreChange() {
 changed = 0;
}
function lookForChanges() {
 var origfunc;
 for (i = 0; i < document.forms.length; i++) {
  for (j = 0; j < document.forms[i].elements.length; j++) {
   var formField=document.forms[i].elements[j];
   var formFieldType=formField.type.toLowerCase();
   if (formFieldType == 'checkbox' || formFieldType == 'radio') {
    addHandler(formField, 'click', recordChange);
   } else if (formFieldType == 'text' || formFieldType == 'textarea') {
    if (formField.attachEvent) {
     addHandler(formField, 'keypress', recordChange);
    } else {
     addHandler(formField, 'keypress', recordChangeIfChangeKey);
    }
   } else if (formFieldType == 'select-multiple' || formFieldType == 'select-one') {
    addHandler(formField, 'change', recordChange);
   }
  }
  addHandler(document.forms[i], 'submit', ignoreChange);
 }
}
function warnOfUnsavedChanges() {
 if (changed) {
  if ("event" in window) //ie
   event.returnValue = 'You have unsaved changes on this page, which will be discarded if you leave now. Click "Cancel" in order to save them first.';
  else //netscape
   return false;
 }
}
function addHandler(target, eventName, handler) {
 if (target.attachEvent) {
  target.attachEvent('on'+eventName, handler);
 } else {
  target.addEventListener(eventName, handler, false);
 }
}
</script>

Telephone Shell Javascript Widget

Here's some javascript I wrote to coerce uniformly styled phone numbers. If you don't use any punctuation, it defaults to american style. You can enter unrestricted text after the number. You should be able to copy the following into an html file to try it out.

<form>
 phone #<input onkeypress="return phone_only(event)">
</form>

<script>
function phone_only(myevent) {
        mykey = myevent.keyCode || myevent.which; //ie||netscape
        myfield = myevent.srcElement || myevent.target; //ie||netscape
        if (mykey == 8) //backspace (netscape only)
                return true;
        f = myfield.value;
        g = myfield.value;
        ndigits = f.replace(/-/,'').length;
        ngroupdigits = g.replace(/.*-/,'').length;
        if (ndigits == 0) {
                if (50 <= mykey && mykey <= 57) { //2-9, can't start with 0 or 1
                        return true;
                } else {
                        return false;
                }
        } else if (ndigits <= 7) { //only need 2 hyphens: 123-456-7
                if (32 <= mykey && mykey <= 47 && ngroupdigits != 0) { //punctuation
                        myfield.value += "-";
                        return false;
                } else if (48 <= mykey && mykey <= 57) { //0-9
                        if ((ngroupdigits % 4) == 3) {
                                myfield.value += "-";
                        }
                        return true;
                } else {
                        return false;
                }
        } else {
                return true;
        }
}
</script>

Forms Support in Javascript, not Template

Turns out it's pretty simple to populate forms generically in javascript. This means that your template engine doesn't need special html forms support; you can just use a pair of templating "for" loops to create the javascript data structure. You could even grab the data using xmlhttprequest. Html made the the mess, so html can clean it up.

Here's an example form, followed by the code. You should be able to copy into a file and try it.

<form>
<input name=a>
<input name=b type=checkbox value=x1>
<input name=b type=checkbox value=y1>
<input name=b type=checkbox value=z1>
<select name=c multiple>
 <option value=x2>X2
 <option value=y2>Y2
 <option value=z2>Z2
</select>
<button onClick="populateForm(this.form, {'a':'x0',b:['x1','z1'],'c':['x2','z2']}); return false">Populate</button>
<input type=reset>
</form>

<script>
function populateForm(myForm,myHash) {
     for (var k in myForm) {
             if (!(k in myForm) || !(k in myHash)) continue;
             if (typeof myHash[k] == 'string')
                     myHash[k] = [myHash[k]];
             if (myForm[k].type == 'text') {
                     myForm[k].value = myHash[k][0];
             } else {
                     var field = 'type' in myForm[k] && myForm[k].type.match('^select') ? 'selected' : 'checked';
                     var selected = Array();
                     for (var i=0; i<myHash[k].length; i++)
                             selected[myHash[k][i]] = 1;
                     for (var i=0; i<myForm[k].length; i++)
                             myForm[k][i][field] = myForm[k][i].value in selected;
             }
     }
}
</script>

Even More On Presentation Done Right

I changed my mind back; StringTemplate isn't the way to go.

Templates are neither necessary nor sufficient for separating model and view (presentation). Not necessary because the separation is really accomplished by the model/view protocol, and not sufficient because presentation code can always seep into the model code. In fact, the StringTemplate approach requires complex views to be implemented in the model code.

A great m/v separation may be achieved by just having separate code for model and for view, even in the same language. The only requirements are on the data passed from the model to the view:

1. it should be available before the view code runs
2. it should consist only of lists of lists, and lists of opaque objects

Flagrant violations are possible (like the view code writing to a database), but should be easy to spot. The view code isn't artificially limited; it can implement fancy animations or fractal decorations, for example.

It's probably worth noting explicitly that the view depends on the model and not vice versa.

Recent javascript interfaces from google seem to contradict requirement number one, but really they just use a lazy loaded model. The view treats the model as if it's present, but because of the model's prohibitive size, each piece is loaded only just before it's needed.

The StringTemplates author acknowledges that his solution is insufficient to keep view logic out of the model code. The model code could pass data like "the color red" to the view layer. Since StringTemplates is such a simple language, more complex view features must be implemented with the help of model code. Any possible document may be generated, but only with the help of the model code.

So if m/v separation isn't the point of templates, what is? Separation of roles. The roles of programmer and designer aren't necessarily performed by different people, but they do require different approaches. The designer role includes everything that can be done in a WYSIWYG editor, with all visible elements, "includes", and conditionals. As document formats evolve, this could become part of the normative editor functionality. CSS visibility could be hacked to support conditionals, and XInclude takes care of the rest.

Google Maps and Free Source

If you haven't already, check out Google Maps; it's extremely cool. Besides being a generally superior implementation of maps, it loads new maps without reloading the page in your browser, just like gmail. After you view a map, its pieces are cached by your browser. This means they're fast, and can be viewed even without an internet connection.

A yet un-remarked-upon feature of these "network applications" is how similar they are to free source. Though the intellectual property restrictions of google and of free source are just as strict as those of the most proprietary software vendor, the implementations of both google maps and GPL'ed code are available for anyone to poke at. GPL developers have so much faith in their model that they don't worry about commercial competitors, and google developers apparently have so much confidence in their own skills that they don't worry.

You already have free access to both the google maps client software and the map data. Without too much difficulty, you could extend either. For example, you could use the google client to view your own map data, you could run your own software on the map data (which is already cached on your pc), and people are already hacking new features onto the whole google maps solution.

The major change in these new applications is that the interface is exposed. With regular google search, you either have to use the Google Web APIs or else screenscrape the html pages. With a little reverse engineering of the new applications, you can access the same interface that's used as part of their normal functioning.

(The Google Web APIs limit developers to 1000 queries a day, and presumably a higher volume of screenscraping or access to the new APIs would get shut down by Google.)

The Internet Changing Everything

• Traditional categories of media become irrelevant

  Does a given piece of information belong in a book, an academic paper, a weekly magazine article, an editorial, a letter to the editor? The internet makes the distinctions increasingly irrelevant.
  

• The description of an idea may be canonicalized

  A web page is an expression of an idea that is universally available (at least theoretically). It's easy to refer to, and easy to maintain. The internet will one day provide a distributed wikipedia, in which every idea has a URI and page(s) containing all public human knowledge of that idea.
  

• The context of an idea may be completely specified

Traditional bibliographies are klunky in comparison. It will be possible to link a given piece of information with every other piece of information on which it relies. That metadata will itself be data, subject to easy analysis.

Apologies for early outline version.