Accessibility of Presidential Debates

I don't have a cable subscription, but I do have an interest in the 2016 presidential debates, so I figured I would just go to the CNBC web site to livestream tonight's debate. To my chagrin, I was presented with a "sign in with your cable provider" screen when I tried to actually watch the event.

It seems strange to me that people should have to pay to watch events that are entirely dedicated to helping them choose who to vote for. The whole situation is begging for accusations of allowing only the rich/successful to vote. Usually I'm not a fan of allowing the government to tinker with media management, but I wish the hosts of political debates were required to make the event freely watchable.

Stop the updates, I want to get off

There are rumors that Microsoft is going to move to a subscription model for Windows licensing in which every machine will just get new versions of the OS as they come. I can't know whether those rumors are true or not, but I do know that there are programs and companies with that licensing model, and that with Windows 10 Microsoft is approaching an OS that automatically updates itself without any choice from the user.

I am not at all OK with that.

There is no reason a computer should require an Internet connection to function. Operating systems are not like cable subscriptions; the only service being provided - updates - is not strictly necessary. If I buy something, and I pay for it, then I should own it, and not have to change what I own whenever some company thinks I should.

If, for whatever reason, I don't like the next version of a program or OS, I should be free to keep the version I have - the one I bought and paid for. If I happen to like a later version, I'll happily pay for it, but that's my choice.

Lojban StackExchange Site Proposal

The StackExchange network is composed of moderated, community-run Q&A sites, each with a defined scope. New sites are added through a democratic process, in a place called Area 51. (Yes, really. But not that Area 51.) Currently, there is a proposal to create a site about the Lojban language. I think that would be really neat, so I participated in the proposal's definition phase. It is now in the commitment phase, so it needs people that are in effect signing up for the private beta.

If you're interested, visit the proposal and commit!

How are you going to pay for that?

People like to make and talk about plans for things they want to do. That's great - planning is always helpful - but it's easy to slip from strategizing into shopping. I recently watched a certain political event, and I noticed a theme of promising things that would require all sorts of extra revenue to implement. (Of course, the other party has been guilty of this too.) How are they going to pay for that? I have no idea.

The FTC team I am mentoring is currently trying to put together a plan, but they keep slipping into lists of features (some of which will be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to implement along with other important features), completely ignoring the reality that somebody has to figure out how to make it work. Lots of things that look easy when part of a ten-point "plan" will turn out unexpectedly thorny in practice. Make a plan, not a shopping list.

Delivering feel-good speeches about miraculous government programs and writing about all the amazing things a robot will do might appease constituents and impress coaches, but you will be in serious trouble if you try to carry out the cardboard-mockup plan before the details are figured out.

Remembering Mundane Tasks

Every night, I need to perform a certain task: closing the chicken coop so no predators can get in and eat the chickens. I've closed that door every night for years, and it's totally routine by now, so it's not surprising that I can't always recall the act of closure after I get back in the house. Sometimes I go back out later to check whether I really closed it, and I almost always have, but there were a couple times that I forgot.

I find that the best way to remember the completion of a mundane task is to do something irregular shortly after it. For example, I might go out of my way slightly to hop over a piece of stray wood while leaving the area. Then if I wonder whether I actually closed the door, I remember "oh, there was that log by the door", and continue my activities without worry.

The Peace Sign

It seems some people are really looking for something to be offended at.

Take, for instance, the peace sign. It started being a thing during the Cold War. I have met people that are offended by it because they think it looks like a broken cross and is therefore an assault on Christianity.

Well, it's not.

The peace sign stands for Nuclear Disarmament - the chords on the circle represent flag semaphore signals. The low diagonals are the N, and the vertical line is the D. Nuclear disarmament would, theoretically, lead to peace, hence the name "peace sign."

One could make a case about the possibility of symbols being co-opted for something other than their intended purpose. (Obligatory example: the swastika.) But the peace sign is still used for something like its intended purpose - "peace."

Relevant, and hilarious: Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone

Student Hunger Drive Kickoff 2015

The Quad City Student Hunger Drive, in which my high school participates, had its kickoff tonight. Our National Honor Society chapter, plus a couple of other interested students, spent the last few weeks preparing our entry into the annual skit competition. In our skit, we follow choreographed motions around the stage holding boxes with letters on them while singers in the foreground sing our parody of some popular song (I forget which) until the end, when we stack the boxes in such a way that the letters on them spell "River Bend", the name of the food bank backing up the QC Student Hunger Drive.

I noticed that almost every skit was composed of a parody of a popular song sung by a handful of people and some movement from the rest. Maybe the other schools saw that we won last year with that arrangement and followed the model. Though some were thoroughly entertaining, it got a little cheap after a while. In my opinion, the most powerful skit was the one without any spoken or sung words, only a solemn tune in the background. Food was handed over and a sign with "actions speak louder than words" was held up.

After all the skits concluded, the judges deliberated for a moment, and produced a proclamation that there was a tie - involving my school - for first place. Each school performed its skit again, and the winner was determined by the loudness of the cheers. We lost that tiebreak and the two-ton bonus from Hy-Vee went in full to the other school, but we were satisfied with our own performance.

Efficiency in the Unconscious

It's fairly well known that the human mind continues working on problems even when not consciously thinking about them. It is also known that with practice, a "feel" for the task - an intuition - can be developed. Explicitly thinking about every aspect of the task every time it is performed would reduce effectiveness dramatically. It follows that it is advantageous to move thinking processes to the unconscious mind, where the results can come together with a minimum of conscious effort and stress.

The distinction between Windows user mode and kernel mode comes to mind here. User mode is the CPU mode in which normal processes - personal apps and most OS components - function. Kernel mode accesses the hardware more or less directly and works in ways not visible to user-mode code. The team responsible for IIS (Internet Information Services, a web server) at Microsoft made the decision to move much of the functionality into kernel mode because it is so much faster, but not understandable from the conscious (user mode) side.

Practicing complex tasks eventually gets them into the mind's kernel mode. Though what happens there might not be expressible in user mode (in words), it has access to more resources and power.