What made me buy the iPhone

I've developed a hate (not love-hate, just hate) relationship with my phone - the AT&T Tilt - over the last 18 months, to the degree where I was seriously considering moving to the extremely closed Apple platform. Now, you must realize that for me to agree to all of Apple's conditions on using one of their stupid devices - be it iPod, Mac, iPhone or whatever - is a momentous feat. I despise close platforms. I particularly despise Apple for being by far the worst offender in this arena. Apple is far, far worse than Microsoft has ever been, just not as successful, thus enjoying the underdog status. However, from the perspective of "evil towards end users", Apple certainly ranks way, way up there. Bill Gates never reached Steve Jobs' ankles when it comes to that, but he never had the latter's charisma, either.

Anyway, putting all that aside, the iPhone is a damn fine machine. I've been resisting mightily, hoping fervently that something that even parallels it from a usability perspective hits the market, but having recently seen the Pre and Android, I was not impressed. The new iPhone 3GS is simply a step above.

But still I resisted.

Then today I was sitting in an office of one of my clients, frustrated as usual with my Tilt, when the discussion veered unexpectedly towards hamsters. That's when one of the guys got a silly grin on his face, pulled out his iPhone, and proceeded to run the silliest, most brilliantly hilarious application I've seen in ages. It's called Smack Talk, and it's basically a poorly animated hamster that speaks your words back to you in a high pitched voice. Pointless, useless... and so damn funny and addictive.

So I finished my day, went to the AT&T store, and bought one. Got home, opened an iTunes account, and 99 cents later, I have my own silly hamster.

It's the software, silly.

Can't wait to show it to the kids.

First!

This simply does not happen often... anyway, and honestly I'm not sure why but it excited me to no end so I wanted to share it with you.

More on pollution

You can sometimes find interesting articles in the darnedest of places...

That would Esquire August 2009 with a frank discussion about global warming - which is worth reading on an introductory level.

This also happens to tie into my other recent linking.

Finale

I gave her my heart
she wanted more;
I showed her her heart
she said "no more".

I showed her my love
she didn't buy it
I placed in her my trust
she didn't want it.

I stood by to help
and support
trying to prove
fervently hoping
to somehow hold on
for I had glimpsed
her softness
her magic
and a love that
could know
no bounds.

And then
she says "you lie"
she says
"you really meant nothing,
we really had nothing"
she says "I'm done,
now,
and forever more".

And she adds
"it's how it's always been,
and will be,
all those hateful words,
they were intended
to strike
and hurt
and cause you pain
so I can feel
that you're with me
in a pain that's my own".

And now she's gone
not before making certain
merely minutes after
to let me know
that her freedom and magic
and spirit
and joy
are regained
and are whole.

And my heart is shattered
and my spirit is sunk
and my dignity gone
and I have nowhere to go
and through the pain
and the tears
of love undone
the memory of her eyes
her look of amazement
her sense of joy
her desire, and passion,
and lust,
and calm
in my arms
and at being with me
make it unbearable

Fool I have been
Nowhere to hide
no way to breath
nowhere to go.

Another Ubuntu tip: upgrade virtualbox OSE to PUEL

If, like me, you try to keep up with Ubuntu releases, meaning you upgrade not just when the long-term support releases come out but when the revisions do as well, you may have run into a similar problem I recently did: namely, that Virtualbox (the nifty virtual machine manager) can get messed up during an upgrade.

The reason as to it gets messed up is, from what I understand, simply that it does not get installed by default. Thus you usually have to reincarnate it on your upgraded operating system.

That is of course easy enough to do, but recently when I moved to Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04), and reinstalled vbox, I could not bring up USB devices again in the my virtual machines.

I looked all over and could sort of kinda find some information pertaining to this, but as is sometimes usual in the Linux world, some things are so darn simple that no one bothers to write them down properly. After all, what kind of stupid would a user have to be to not figure this simple thing out?

So as another public service, here is my contribution to the world of stupid users, me included. If your virtualbox is no longer working with USB devices (note: this implies that it used to work with USB!), and you recently upgraded, I hope this helps you solve the problem.

First of all, the problem: Virtualbox has two different versions. One is the open-source version (called Virtualbox-OSE) and one is the closed-source SUN version (Virtualbox-PUEL). Unfortunately, the OSE version does not support USB. The closed-source one does. Even more unfortunately, the open-source one is the one that gets installed by default when you do try to install virtualbox.

Hence the solution is pretty simple: you need to "upgrade" or "update" your system from the OSE version to the PUEL version.

This can be done in several ways. The way I found that seems to work consistently is:

1) Go to the PUEL website and download the right version.
2) Open a terminal window (Alt-T will usually do the trick) (yes, you can do this with Synaptic too)
3) Remove virtualbox-ose by typing the command: "sudo apt-get remove virtualbox-ose" (note: this will not hurt your existing virtual machines; they will be preserved and reappear when you finish the update)
4) Remove all source packages by typing the command: "sudo apt-get autoremove"
5) This is the critical step that goes missing in many guides: purge both OSE and any other version on your system. You do this by typing "sudo apt-get purge virtual" and then pressing TAB once or twice until the system prompts you with the list of existing virtualbox packages below the command line. You will usually see only two: "virtualbox virtualbox-ose". You may see three if you've tried installing something else, like PUEL, before, and it would then show something like: "virtualbox virtualbox-ose virtualbox-3.0". Now you need to purge all of these except "virtualbox". You do this by simply completing the command and running it on all packages. For example, in the case where you find both OSE and 3.0, you would run the following two commands in succession: "sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-ose" and "sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-3.0".
6) Now, and only now, go back to the package you downloaded and install it (double-click should work fine, like in Windows).
7) Once the installation is done, go back to the terminal window, and type "sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup". This will recompile the kernel module.

That should do it. Drop a comment here if it works.

One more note: if your system complains that "vboxdrv" doesn't exist as part of that last command, rerun steps 5-7 (ONLY).

Freudian slip

So I was writing some code for a client today, and as part of the code I had to make a remote connection to a secured file exchange repository. As part of the upload, there are several triggers I could use, and one of them was to allow a multiple file upload to still continue uploading (rather than terminate) if one or more of those files don't complete successfully.

Why am I bringing this up?

Well, I was running this code to test it, and it threw back an "unknown argument" error, basically telling me I had something wrong in the structure of the code I was using. I stared at it and stared at it and just could not for the life of me figure it out.

Went out to lunch hoping my brain clears, came back and looked at it, and it jumped right at me.

See, the trigger is "/allowerrors".

The one I actually used was "/alloweros"

*HUGE GRIN*

Should I mention I'd been damn horny recently?

*tears in my eyes*

So I have recently been invited to a 20-year class reunion back in Israel, which means I had gotten in touch with a number of people I hadn't seen in decades, which is awesome and has made my Facebook account very happy.

Today I get an email from one of them; he has been searching through old stuff and found some old photos... including class photos from fourth, sixth, and ninth grades. He posted them online for us to check out.

Oh... my... god. Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. Wow. Talk about a major wave of nostalgia.

Excuse me while I blow my nose.

Cultural hypocrisy

So yesterday I had a chat with a friend about relationships, and as seems to be natural these days with anyone who knows my marriage is open, it turned to the whole issue of sexual fidelity and the yuck factor.

That is, when you speak to people, no matter how open-minded they want to appear, by and large it comes down to sex. Specifically, the question of how can you stand your spouse having sex with someone else? this seems to, by a large margin, be the number one reason for all the inevitable judgment.

So as we were going through this for the umpteenth time (for me anyway), I remembered something my wife said a few months back about a theoretical scenario that seems to put this question into focus. It goes more or less like this: say that two folks are married for 10 years, then suddenly the wife is involved in a horrible car accident, and while she lives, she becomes paralyzed from the neck down. Terrible tragedy.

The husband, however, loving her and being loyal, stays in the marriage and takes care of her, at what is generally perceived as a significant cost to himself. By the way, it's just as easy to flip the two around, it doesn't matter to the scenario, so don't come at me with some misogynistic double-talk.

Of course, due to these unfortunate circumstances, they can no longer have sex.

Now, the wife, being overwhelmed by his loyalty and love, "releases" him from his vow of fidelity, and allows him to go and satisfy his needs with other women. She allows him to have lovers, girlfriends, what have you, because she loves him dearly and can't bear to see him suffer because his needs aren't being met.

Alright, got the picture? hold it in your mind for a sec. Check your emotional reaction. For most people, it would run along the lines of "wow, what an amazing story". Maybe bring a tear or two to their eyes. What sacrifice. What love. What loyalty. Truly touching. 60 minutes will be knocking on the door in moments.

Are we still on the same page?

Good. Because this is where I am about to present a simple logical twist. These two nice folks had not been intimate with each other for a year before the accident. Why? who knows? shit happens. Their marriage, like many others, is strong but lacking in this particular respect. Nothing wrong with that, really (see my other essays on the topic). After all, I think all us married folks (at least) know that people grow in different ways, and it's pretty well established that sexual attachment to specific partners tends to ebb and flow (I would also suggest generally decrease) over time for most people, especially in conjunction with having already produced offspring. Men, in particular, seem to be wired for multiple sexual partners, although it is unclear whether that is physiological or simply cultural.

Still with me?

Before the accident, for the man to have had a lover would have been taboo, and caused severe negative reactions from most corners, even though the situation has not changed at all: he is wishing to fulfill needs that are not being met within the context of the marriage. Even more oddly, it doesn't seem to get any better if the wife agrees to his doing so before her accident; most people still get the same adverse reaction. It still does not seem to get better when I describe the scenario with the two flipped, or with the two allowing each other the same benefit, the reaction is for the most part still just as negative.

Now think about the bottom line here. For the man (or woman, in the flipped scenario) to have his (sexual) needs met in a societally approved fashion, his wife had to undergo a terrible personal tragedy.

Ouch.

In other words, societally we seem to be saying that in order for one person to attain personal happiness, it must come at a significant cost to another person.

May I politely inquire as to why?

It goes further than that. Most people's response to the above would be: they should have just gotten divorced (before the hypothetical accident). Again the specter of that trade - happiness for suffering - rears its ugly head. Divorce would indubitably cause suffering to both parties - they still love each other, are great friends, and terrific partners - as well as to their kids. And it would be completely unnecessary and counter-productive for everyone involved considering the solid marriage these two people share. All in the name of having their (sexual) needs met, frustrations reduced, and mutual happiness increased. Again we seem to not wish to allow them to be happier without incurring some cost to others.

What kinds of fucked up morals are these? is this really the value system and ladder we want to live by? I'll repeat again what all this really boils down to: as a society, we seem to have come to the conclusion that one person's happiness must come at another's suffering. Holy cynical mother of god.

I don't know about you, but personally, I don't really wish to follow this model.

The origins of depression.... and regulating financial institutions

I am lagging a bit in my reading of the Economist but I finally went through last week's on the plane today. Fantastic, as always - this is truly my only must-have magazine - but the reason I'm referring to it today is a column in the science section that was fascinating. Empirically, that is, based on my own experience, this idea about the engine of depression (the mental, not financial, kind) holds a lot of water.

The other thing I want to write a few words about is an idea that hit me on the plane as well about a neat way to think about regulation of financial markets. I won't go too deeply into the terminology, but it seems to me that a neat way to make sure that banks stay both competitive but still enjoy healthy franchise profits (thus keeping them conservative) is to borrow a concept from my favorite hobby, "german" or "euro" board games.

Indeed, pretty much all good eurogames include several "catch the leader" mechanisms. In board games, the idea is that if someone opens a big lead too quickly, the system is designed to make it more difficult for them to maintain this lead, thus keeping the game close. Well, as counterintuitive as it might sounds, this concept has tremendously appealing applications in the financial arena, and in any commercial arena in fact. In other words, if regulation is designed to incentivize innovation when a firm is still small but growing, but make it harder to keep growing beyond a certain size (for example, by enforcing stricter oversight and implementing higher capital requirements), we will in one fell swoop both encourage competition (which benefits the consumer), protect franchise profits (since the bigger banks will still be able to enjoy their position without worrying about their peers growing bigger still), AND remove most of the systemic risk that really large institutions create (since banks will find it harder to grow beyond a certain size).

The beauty of this is that the implementation is truly simple; I listed a couple of mechnisms above but with about half a dozen in total, we can achieve something that seems akin to a miracle - more or less free-market capitalism that encourages innovation and competition with much reduced (and eventually eliminated) systemic and bubble risk.