Mac Apps I Can’t Live Without Revisited

In the months since I posted about the apps that keep me tethered to the Mac platform, I have discovered some alternatives. Here’s a quick rundown of what I have tried and liked.

• In place of Exposé, use Compiz – Compiz is incredible. There’s eyecandy, of course, but there’s also keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures that do everything Exposé and Spaces can do and then some. Verdict? Upgrade.

• In place of Quicksilver, use Gnome-Do – Gnome-Do isn’t quite as powerful as Quicksilver, but as an application launcher it’s on par with Launchy. Verdict? Slight downgrade.
• In place of Visor, use Guake – Guake matches Visor feature for feature and even has a way of adding a shortcut to take the terminal window fullscreen. A bit superfluous in the presence of the Ctrl+Alt+F1-6 short cuts, but it can do that. Verdict? Slight upgrade.

I’m still missing equivalents for Better Touch Tool and Bowtie, but supposedly Maverick Meerkat has support for the Magic Trackpad. I’ll get around to testing those at some point in the near future. On the Bowtie front, Clementine and the presence of media keys on my ThinkPads make things a bit easier, so I’m not quite so actively searching for a replacement on this front.

A new thing to add to my list is AppleScript. I’ve discovered the powerful combination of Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes and FastScripts. I realize though that most of this could be replicated with Python and Quod Libet, but this is just so much easier.

Will I be abandoning the Mac? Eventually. I don’t know that I like the way the wind is blowing with potential changes in Lion, but I do know that when the time comes, I could make the switch to commodity hardware and Linux and not suffer any serious performance hits. I’ve always been pragmatic in my choice of tools for working, but it’s a good feeling when you can afford to be high-minded sometimes.

Ask An Atheist

In honor of National Ask An Atheist Day, I’m going to let this be an open post for people to ask me anything. As long as you’re not asking for money. I won’t be answering those questions.

“The Henry Rollins Effect” – What Happens When You Think Your Hero Sold Out

The recent Verizon commercials have had a disturbingly familiar quality to them. For me, it was the voice of Henry Rollins. It’s no secret that I have been a huge fan of Henry Rollins since I was an impressionable teenager. It’s also no secret that I have something of a deep-seated dislike for Verizon after a long string of negative customer service experiences. My first thoughts were along the lines of “Rollins sold out!” Then I took a step back and thought about it more seriously. He was doing a voice-over. He wasn’t appearing on camera as himself shilling Doritos like some kind of hack comic or something. I have forgiven Mr. Rollins for this imaginary transgression against me, but it has me thinking about what it means to sell out and how that affects artistic credibility.

Let’s start with some comedians. George Carlin famously hung a lantern on his role as a spokesman for 10-10-220 in his bit “Advertising Lullaby.” I think he managed to keep his crediblity as an artist and as a commentator by acknowledging the fact that in the real world shit is complicated and it can lead to cognitive dissonance.

Jay Leno was called out on the commercial above by Bill Hicks in his bit “Artistic Roll Call.” Leno took a lot of shit from the comedic community in the early ’90s. Rightfully or not depends on your perspective. Taking Hicks’ hard line perspective, Leno was worshipping Mammon. He didn’t need the money since he had the cushy Tonight Show gig when he did those Doritos commercials, but he did them anyway. I think this hurts Leno’s credibility as an artist, but can we articulate why this is the case?

In the case of comedy and music, I think it’s a bit more clear cut. In any profession where you have a platform to make incisive statements about the world, and especially when your public persona is built on those kinds of incisive statements, it can cause the public to question what you’ve said. If you’ll endorse a product for money, you’re being clear about how loose you’ll play with your words. How trustworthy can you be with all that you’ve said before, if you’ll hock Doritos at the drop of a hat? And I think this is a unique quandary for musicians and comedians. Do athletes, models, or actors take this credibility hit when they do commercials? I don’t think so. As I said, when your public persona is based on taking shots at the establishment or claiming that what you do is pure and an art, you’ll take a hit in your credibility when you admit that you’re just like everyone else.

And that’s what hurts when you hear “Black Dog,” “Revolution,” or “Are You Experienced?” in a commercial. That’s what hurts when you see Willie Nelson in a Taco Bell commercial or hear Henry Rollins talking about “America’s fastest 3G network.” It’s that you realize that someone you admired or idolized is just like you.

But at the same time, they’re just like you.

Gurus, Wizards, and Computers – A Brief Semantic Battle

I hate being referred to as a “guru.”

This is something I hear in work on a regular basis. “This is Rory. He’s our computer guru.” “Hey, you’re a Mac guru, aren’t you?” This irks me to no end because of my firm stance that “words mean things™.” A guru is a Hindu holy man, or more generically a holy man in any of the languages in the Indo-Aryan language family. Granted, it’s literally someone who imparts knowledge or is a teacher, but that doesn’t change the fact this usage belies some subliminal thought patterns that aren’t terribly helpful.

It hinges on implied Orientalism. The East is an exotic, inscrutable place. Computers are an exotic, inscrutable thing to a lot of people. See where I’m going with this? People are unwittingly setting themselves up for perpetual failure on this one. If you think that you need someone to help you understand computer, then you will. If you think that you’ll never understand computers, then you won’t.

On the other hand, wizard bothers me slightly less. Wizard, or its little brother “wiz/whiz,” has a different connotation. In our culture it implies someone who has devoted himself (or herself) to arcane things, hiding in isolation, acting with borderline fanatical dedication. This is definitely an accurate description of a lot of people I know. While it still has a certain sense of apartness, it feels different to me since it’s not an appropriation from a different culture.

I think I spend too much time in metacognition.

Anti-Virus and Macs – Why I Don’t Bother

As the Mac OS continues to gain market and mindshare, there seems to be this idea that it is both necessary and desirable to maintain antivirus on one’s system. I believe this is based on a mistaken idea that all of the security that one enjoys with Mac OS X is via “security through obscurity.” The idea being that since Macs only make up a relatively tiny majority of the overall market, no one is going to bother writing viruses for the platform. That is, quite simply, hogwash.

Let’s begin by discussing what it truly means to rely upon security through obscurity. Security through obscurity means that you leave Telnet open, but on a non-standard port. This can certainly be part of an in-depth strategy, but it should never be the last or only line of defense.

If you know anything about POSIX compliant systems, you know that since they are multi-user by design, they don’t suffer from the same sorts of security flaws that Windows does since it is still at its core a single user OS. Windows is based on a paradigm that never had networking in mind whereas Mac OS X and Linux have their roots in the original Unix systems that were specifically designed to limit access and prevent unauthorized escalation of administrative privileges.

Most Windows malware spreads via unauthorized privilege escalation. While keeping the discussion short, I will say that one of the worst ideas in computing was Microsoft deciding that it would be a brilliant idea to use the built-in web browser as the file system browser. Security flaws in Internet Explorer then become system-wide issues since the web browser process can make changes to important system files causing massive headaches for the end user and their tech support.

What makes POSIX OSes like Mac OS X and Linux different is that processes have limited access to the OS itself without someone invoking administrative rights. Granted there are assorted bugs that allow for privilege escalation, but these days those are less plentiful than they used to be, at least as far as the core OS is concerned.

How many Mac viruses are there in the wild at this point? The answer is still none. There are more than a few trojans and there were some rather well hyped zero day exploits like Pwn2Own, but strictly speaking there are no viruses or worms in the wild that impact OS X. Beyond that, viruses as we traditionally think of them are on the way out. There’s no money for criminal gangs in such things. The real money is in phishing scams and spyware, which can affect you regardless of your platform if you’re not careful.

The End of An Experiment

This weekend, my infatuation with netbooks as production computers ended. As noted here, I have been using a Hackintosh’d Lenovo S10e as my primary home machine since late August. I liked it very much. I still think it’s an awesome little machine that’s great for its size, but that’s the problem.

It was too small. The keyboard was too small. The trackpad was way too small. Most importantly, the 1024×576 screen was unacceptably small. It’s bordering on impossible to be productive with a screen that size. I have been reminded that vertical pixels are the most important ones. I am now writing this on my T42 with its luxuriously expansive 15″ 1400×1050 screen and it’s like night and day.

The best part, though, is the keyboard.

The Truth About Censorship

There has been a lot of flap over the “pedophilia guide” that was until recently available on Amazon’s self-publishing section. A lot of value-laden language has been thrown about. I’m not going to add to that except to say that I don’t believe that we can make ideas that we don’t like go away by banning them, censoring them, or otherwise making them taboo. It doesn’t happen. Ideas have memetic strength that allows their propagation despite restrictions on media. That is the nature of ideas, as I see it, but that is a topic for another day.

What got me was the recurring phrase “If it’s not the government doing it, then it’s not censorship.” That is a false assertion and severe underestimation of the power wielded by corporations.

Did Amazon engage in censorship? I’m going to say that they probably didn’t. This book was in violation of the Terms of Service for their self-publishing mechanism. This is an area that probably doesn’t get an awful lot of active policing, so it would appear that the fact that it became available is an oversight on someone’s part. Furthermore, as a private entity, they are well within their rights to restrict how and for what purposes their services are used. Did they do the correct thing in this case? From a business perspective, and let’s be honest that Amazon is first and foremost a business, yes, they did the correct thing. Was it right? My hacker “information wants to be free” self says that no, it wasn’t, but I’m understanding. Who wants to be know for standing up for free speech in the context of something that produces such a visceral reaction of disgust as pedophilia? Not a for-profit business. That’s for damned sure.

So if censorship is a red herring in this particular instance, the question then becomes, where can censorship come into play in the private sector?

Let’s start by making an important distinction between two types of censorship. There is de jure censorship. This is the sort of censorship that occurs in repressive regimes like those in China and Saudi Arabia. The government has entities that are actively engaged in deeming what is and isn’t appropriate for the masses. There is also de facto censorship. This is when private organizations engage in activities that limit the activities of its members. For example, the Motion Picture Association of America engages in a particularly insidious sort of de facto censorship of the major movie studios in America. A particularly insightful and compelling analysis of this takes place in This Film Is Not Yet Rated which is available through Netflix streaming. As such, I will not recapitulate the whole of Kirby Dick’s argumentation, but suffice it to say that black box processes like the MPAA’s are effectively censorship because of the fact that standards are not published and ratings are decided on the whim of the review board.

Other examples? How else can private entities engage in censorship? Let’s go back to the Amazon example. If no one else will publish the text in question, there is a de facto censorship in play. If no one is willing to publish a text, it has been censored by corporations. I’ve also heard “it’s just capitalism at work.” This is true, but that doesn’t remedy the fact that an idea has been judged unworthy of propagation. Now, in the age of the Internet this is becoming less and less of a concern. Ideas can propagate wholly outside of traditional distribution channels and it does. However, when ideas are judged to be distasteful, they are pushed underground. This can be dangerous in the case of pedophilia by pushing things further away from mainstream and causing the conflation of terms. Pedophile is not an inclusive group of child molesters. Pedophiles do molest children, but pedophile is not a synonym for child molester. Not understanding this distinction could potentially create a class of thought criminals. Thoughts may lead to actions, but they do no harm in and of themselves. I have yet to murder anyone through thought alone.

Yes, the Constitution applies only to the government. Yes, free speech is limited (and should be). However, that doesn’t excuse dismissals of actions of private actors along those lines. Whenever an actor makes a moral judgment (and there are plenty of moral judgments in the examples above), they should be subject to criticism. Despite claims to the contrary, no one has a monopoly on morality.

As an atheist, as a kinky individual, as an intellectual, as an empiricist, as a hacker, as a holder any one of a number of other ideological positions, I could be considered a thought criminal depending on who got to make the laws. As such, I believe in staunchly defending the rights of intellectual freedom, even when those ideas are personally distasteful to me. It is even more important in cases like that since few people are willing to do so.