Personal, Society

A failure of society

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Monday I was trapped on a bus for a good 15 minutes. I think the story was fairly simple: Some little old lady didn’t pay her fare. The bus stopped at the Bellevue Highway station, a little bus stop on the highway, about a city block’s walk from a park+ride. A bunch of people got on, and slipping between people was this little old chinese lady. Now, I’m fairly certain she didn’t pay the fare: I was somewhat looking up, and I did see her slip past. I don’t think she even noticed the fare collector, though.

She wanders to the back of the bus, everyone sits down or finds a handhold, and prepares to move. The bus driver shuts the doors. And doesn’t move. Just sits there. After a little bit, people started to notice that we weren’t moving, but nobody did anything (Including I). Finally, the driver got out of the bus, and a police officer got on. He walked back, talked briefly to the woman, and then escorted her off the bus.

Now, all in all, this was not a horrible result. No violence, no angry yelling. But, at the same time, there was no human interaction. There was only a sort of cold machine-logic to it. The busdriver didn’t even attempt to explain the issue to either the cause or any of the rest of the passengers. And, probably, he couldn’t, by law or union rules.

Now think of it this way: This bus was filled with business commuters. I was the least dressed person on the bus, and was wearing a nice leather jacket and a collared shirt. Most everyone else was in a business suit. Further, it was a double-long bus. Every seat was filled, and there were multiple people standing.  Every one of these people was 15 minutes later to work that morning. Over a $2.25 bus fare, and probably a misunderstanding of one at that! Society has built safety buffers so that there are not “incidents”, but at the cost of far more than the incidents could ever be. If this were downtown LA, maybe the caution would be warranted. But this was Bellevue, Washington, and the “criminal” was a little old asian lady to boot.

A very wise webcomic author once described a risk/reward chart for crime: The amount you gain from the crime, the chance of succeeding, the fines/jail time if you get caught. It’s important to balance it so that the risk*failure chance is slightly greater than the gain*chance of not getting caught. The chance for not getting caught sneaking onto the bus is relatively high, but the gain is so low it’s barely worth bothering with.

There are two courses of action that are fairly obvious, and produce better results: Either A) The driver went on with the trip, calling a metrocop to meet us at the next station or b) The driver said something, casing her to either Pay the Fare, get off, or worst case, I woulda just paid it for her! It’s $2.25. It’s simply not worth the bother.

Personal

Stupid Mail.app

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Mail.app decided it wanted to download all my messages again today. Fscking Sucks. But, I am a Coder! So, I spent a half hour playing with it, and figured out a solution to convince Mail.app it had already downloaded all the messages in my inbox.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to fixing your list of downloaded messages. It requires using the terminal. If you’re not comfortable with that, you’re probably out of luck.

First, you’ll need to grab you UID list from your mailserver. If you’re OK with connecting unsecured, simply fire up telnet, and connect to your mailserver on port 110. If you want SSL, it’s a little harder, but there’s actually a relatively painless way.  Use “openssl sclient -connect <mailserver>:995 -crlf”

Once connected, type “user <username>”, then “pass <password>”. If you’ve connected successfuly, it’ll respond “+OK”. They type UIDL, and it’ll return a list of message UIDs. Copy-Paste that to a textfile.

Next up, grab a copy of my script: It writes the proper plist file for your messages. http://thomashahn.is-a-geek.com/fixUidls.txt

Rename that file to fixUidls.php, and chmod u+x it. Then, run it with the parameters “<inputUidFile> <outputUidFile>”. Don’t save this directly over your current UID file, just in case.

Once you’ve got the new UID file, copy it to “~/Library/Mail/<Account>/MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2” First, though, you should rename the file already there (if there is one) to .old.

When you next open up Mail.app, it shouldn’t download anything! Hurrah!

Society, Writing

A Cause, and suspension of disbelief.

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There exists a book entitled “An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa“. For several years, it was considered the authortative work on the customs and culture of what we now consider Taiwan in Britain. This amuses me to no end. The customs and culture described within are little short of ridiculous. In one section, it claims that “Men walked naked except for a gold or silver plate to cover their privates”. Yet, it was taken, if not seriously, to be worthy of curiosity by many educated gentry. True, it’s writer and backer did much to help with this claim: His strange habits included eating raw meat and sleeping upright in  a chair, and was good at arguing the point. Still, even as a novelty, one must wonder how people were willing to suspend their disbelief to play such a game.

It is my intention to find a copy of, scan in high detail, and transcribe this gem of  hoaxery. It’s an important historical document: It’s author and the claims within are referenced in “A Modest Proposal”. It’s also an interesting view of what a large world it seemed in the early 1700’s, and what people were willing to accept.

Personal

I

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Here’s a little about me. It’s taken from what I get from typing I into the firefox search bar: A list of searches I have done that start with I.

I KISSED YOUR LIPS AND I TASTED BLOOD
I am a beautiful animal, I am destroyer of worlds
i attack the gazebo
i think so brain but
idlerpg
in the year of our lord 1994 we conquered the floor
inma no ranbu
invoid
ip over dns tunneling
irssi messgage level
irssi script
irssi trout
issaquah post office

Comics, Personal

Khoo

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I always express my satisfaction with a simple phrase: “Coo”. At one point, it was, as most children once used, “Cool”, but in a horrible holiday accident, it was left with no ‘l’. I’ve used the word in almost every conversation I’ve had since. It rolls off the tongue.

Most anyone you meet wants to be great. They aspire to be the one on all the magazines. To be the life of the party. To lead people. I can’t say that thought isn’t appealing. It’s NICE to have power and prestige.

On the other hand, what I really am more satisfied with is being the “Right-Hand-Man”. I like having someone to defer to, if I feel I’m not qualified to make a decision. I also like feeling like I am part of a bigger picture. I’d rather not be a cog in the geartrain, as I like to be able to see that bigger picture, but one or two rungs down feels like the best place for me.

One of the people I most admire is Robert Khoo. He’s the PA right-hand-man. He’s more than that, actually: He makes things get done. He saved PA from Gabe and Tycho, who’re funnymen, and not businesspeople (Somebody needs to be Sluggy’s Khoo). He made PAX run. And he’s a cool guy.

That’s my inspiration. One of these days, when I’m the CTO or Vice President of a major corporation, someone will ask how my career has been. It’ll be a one word answer: “Khoo”.

Personal

Utopia in Modern Fiction

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Freehold and Manna

I’ve read two interesting books recently, Freehold, by Michael Z. Williamson, and Manna, by Marshall Brain. Both are sci-fi, by the old sense of the phrase: They describe life in as it has been changed by science, not simply using science as a way to suspend disbelief for fantasy.

Both follow in the tradition of Thomas More’s original work in a lot of ways. They’re written in the tone of strangers trying to comprehend the world they’ve been thrust into. This sets up the debate: The newcomers cannot comprehend how the utopian society functions, while the utopians cannot understand how the newcomer’s society functions. The simple case of culture shock sets up the conflict that drives the discussion.

Manna is very blunt in it’s setup for discussion: it starts in the near future, and follows an everyman through the changes to society by the advancements made in AI. The creation of an automated management system for low-level work, like fast food, starts the United States on a downward spiral as more and more people lose their jobs to “Efficiency” of Manna (the AI software). The protagonist loses his job, is placed in a government sponsored shelter run by robots, and then is rescued by workers from “The Australia Project”, whom he has an invite to via his father. Upon arrival in Australia, he finds a semi communist utopia, with each person getting a stipend weekly to spend on whatever they may wish, and robots doing all the work.

Freehold is much closer to the more modern sci-fi action genre, with the main character instead being on the run from her (obviously corrupt) government. She escapes to the libertarian state of Freehold, the only colony world that is not under UN control and therefore out to capture her. She finds that guns are common, crime isn’t, and free market capitalism makes her most dull skills hot commodities. She has trouble adjusting, though, to the laissez-faire method of government.

The problem with both stories is the assumptions they make: Their Utopian methods of society simply work. On Freehold, guns are common, but they’re never raised in anger. In Monna, software prevents people from acting rashly, but it never malfunctions and it never misses. Both works critical flaw is that their societies function, as unrealistic as they are. Why isn’t the Australia project ruled by a succession of very good hackers who use the neural implants to enforce their rule? Everyone’s body can be remote controlled by software. Why isn’t Freehold particularly prone to desperate or depressed people on shooting rampages? Guns are common and there’s no state sponsored charity to help those who fall on their face. Assumptions are made about human nature that, while I would like to believe, have little basis in reality.

Monna’s Australia Project is a Communist society at it’s core: Robots do all the work, and everyone shares equally of their bounty. Freehold is the very definition of capitalist: Everyone is engaged in a constant money struggle. Both, however, rely on humans being fundamentally good as their core premise, and technology is simply a catalyst for humans to reach their full potential for good.

And, as optimistic as I am, I’m not sure of such. But good, evil, or neutral, both Freehold and Monna lay out an interesting debate over societal ideals and the nature of mankind.

Ted's Excellent Adventure.