Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Piccolo. If you haven't checked out Piccolo yet, what are you waiting for?  It's a very cool library for doing 2.5d user interfaces.  That's an interface that can zoom in and out, and do all kinds of Flash-like things.  I'd love to see what can be put together with it. I've been cooking an idea for a node-based user interface that uses Piccolo in part. Piccolo does more than just do zooming; it provides a framework for animation-based user interfaces in general.  By animation I don't mean UIs that have dancing monkeys; I mean a UI that shifts and moves and adapts, with context, to what the user needs. It's all about focus+context, and Piccolo is the means by which most Java programmers should be exploring this. If I never see another JTree, I'll be a happy man.  11:15:42 PM    comment []

Performance-based Patent Examination. If I have to read one more idiotic patent I'm going to scream.  Maybe I'll go ahead and scream anyway.  The problem, as I see it, is that these idiot examiners don't know what the word obvious means.  They also see to pretty much not feel like looking for any prior art.  And the people trying to get the patent certainly aren't going to point out any prior art that they know of -- not any more.  That would require something we call ethics, which used to exist, but no longer does. There are two things we can do to fix this.  First, tie the compensation system for patent examiners to accuracy.  If a patent they grant is ever overturned on prior art, their rating is reduced.  They get bonuses based on their ratings.  Second, allow prior art to be introduced at any time during the filing process.  The initial filing of the patent sets a mark in time for the invention.  It is then made public.  The public is then free to add any knowledge they may have of prior art.  This public comment period is a necessity to allow the vast, distributed processing power and knowledge of the internet to come into play. Why do we rely on one harried, stressed-out person to "examine" patents?  We all know there is no examination process.  Patents are simply checked to ensure that they have the right words in the right places, that they follow the correct forms.  Once you've got that, you're in. The process needs to be opened to the public. 6:30:36 PM    comment []

WMD and You. If you were a crazed dictator, sitting on top of 30 years of torture and oil revenue, pushing plastic army men and plastic canisters of VX across your little laminated maps, and the big bad Americans were coming to take it all away from you, wouldn't you consider using your WMD? This is the thing.  If Saddam Hussein had big stockpiles of the stuff and sees the 5th Division heading right for him, wouldn't that be the time to uncork the bottle and let the wind do its dirty work? WMD was never used against American forces.  I think there are a couple of possible explanations: There weren't any to use.  American intel got it wrong, Bush ignored the evidence, it's a war for oil, you know the litany of consequence this produces. Battlefield conditions made it impractical.  There are WMD, they're hidden, they were never used because it is actually pretty damn hard to deploy this stuff without hurting your own troops.  The lethality of gas agents is pretty minimal, and all you'd end up doing, really, is killing a few US troops and really pissing off the rest of them. The WMD were hidden in a place that made them strategically inaccessible.  This means they're still out there, being inaccessible at the governmental level, but accessible at the informal (read: terrorist) level.  This is a very bad scenario. WMD were never used because Saddam Hussein believed his commanders, who told him that he could win this one for Uday; those same commanders were, of course, so terrified of losing their heads that they probably said whatever they could to save their own asses.  The speed of the American advance confounded any attempt to use WMD. Saddam Hussein had a set of conditions that would trigger the use of WMD.  These conditions were never met because he was prematurely killed, or because he prematurely went to his bat cave to hide out.  The guys left behind decided their asses were worth more than Hussein's orders. The thing is, Hussein had a lot of notice.  He could have positioned WMD and made them usable in the war, if he had them.  He chose not to.  One possible scenario there is that my drawing out a conventional war and turning world opinion against Bush, he could lose the battles but win the endgame.  The endgame would remain winnable only if WMD were never used.  Using them would play into Bush's hands. My gut feel is that there are minimal or no WMD in Iraq.  If you were a crazy dictator, when would you have used your weapons of mass destruction? Stay tuned for part two of this story - the North Korean version.  Let's have another roll of the dice there, and see what the next crazy dictator will do!  Thank God For Television. Phillip Greenspun has been writing on this. 4:29:12 PM    comment []

Comments Now Available. Go ahead, make my day (punk). 10:51:21 AM    comment []

Mandatory Testing. It's tough for kids in schools these days.  Your whole high school career can boil down to a single test that, if you don't pass it, means you don't graduate.  Fail that, no matter what you've done before, and you're permanently marked for life as something of a failure.  At best, you can be the kid who "recovered", possibly from straight-As, and "made something of himself" after that. Obviously I think that having kids fail a grade for failing a state test isn't a good idea.  I do think it's a good idea to have the tests; I just think it's crazy to actually change a kid's life because of the results.  Aren't the grades the school is assigning to the kid supposed to be a good indicator?  The politicians who like mandatory testing should be subject to the same thing.  There ought to be state and federal knowledge tests for politicians.  After all, a basic knowledge of civics, national issues, and international affairs ought to be required.  I suspect that we'd weed out not a few politicians with a few simple tests!  So let's see that mandatory testing bill for congress.  Let's see them apply the same standard to themselves.  Of course the state and federal governments have been quite busy exempting themselves from the laws they impose on private industry; what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander.  When it comes to their own qualifications, why should they vary the formula? 10:50:21 AM    comment []

Guns and Butter. So why don't we have vending machines for guns, B? Right there on the street corner, next to the bar, conveniently available after fisticuffs with other patrons? I forgot -- guns don't kill people, people kill people, etc etc etc. Surely you can admit that it's all about access to firearms. Plus, it's about the kinds of firearms you have access to. Canada has nice low crime rates, overall. Very low gun death statistics. But, surprisingly high gun ownership rates. The difference -- handguns are strictly illegal. There isn''t any such thing as concealed carrying and nonsense like that. The reason there's a million handguns on the streets of this country is that there's an industry that's finding a way to keep pushing them. What percentage of gun usage is legitimate self-defense? Maybe one gangsta defending himself against another is legitimate self-defense, in your book. And Buckethead's reply: Current estimates indicate that defensive gun use instances (including brandishing, but not firing, a weapon) number in the millions per year. FBI statistics show that when civilians use guns in self defense, they shoot someone in error less than three percent of the time. Our well trained police officers'' error rate is four times higher. Criminals shoot the wrong person 100% of the time. Who do you want to have guns? Where concealed carry laws are enacted, violent crime drops. (And if the trend was already downward, it drops faster.) The reason there are millions of handguns in this country is also that there are millions of people like me who wish to own them. Crowing about low crime rates in Canada? How many people are up there, anyway? 10, 20? of course they have a lower crime rate. 12:44:14 AM    comment []