The GIGO Buffer

I've contemplated doing this for a while, and after a conversation at work this past week, I've decided to actually implement it.

Presenting, a GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) Buffer. Implemented in Python, and won't work on Windows (because really, that whole OS is basically a giant GIGO buffer).

#!/usr/bin/env python

class GIGO_Buffer:
 """
 Implementation of a Garbage In, Garbage Out buffer.
 """

 def push(self, element):
   """
   Push data into the buffer.
  
   @param element: Data to add to the buffer.
   """
   return

 def pop(self, len):
   """
   Pop data from the buffer.
  
   @param len: Number of bytes of data to pop from the buffer.
   @returns len bytes of data from the buffer.
   """
   data = open('/dev/urandom', 'r')
   rval = data.read(len)
   data.close()
   return rval

More Bad Ideas from the Airline Industry

Here's why this is a bad idea:

First, for at least the short term, checking in will take longer as people argue with the agents about the fee. Plus, there will be confusion about who pays the fee and who doesn't. Sure, they lay it out pretty clearly on their web site, but do we really expect all their front line agents to know all the details? And we know customers don't read.

Second, it will make security lines longer as more people who might have otherwise checked a bag now try to bring it through as a carry on to avoid paying the fee. People like me who would check through their liquid stuff will now have to have it as one more thing to pull out of the back and place in a separate bin along with my shoes, laptop, and sweater/coat.

Third, boarding will take longer while people try to find room for all that stuff they didn't check. People trying to stuff it in the overhead bin, figure out how to get it under their seat, and finally having to check it through anyway.

The ultra-low-cost carriers like Ryanair, Allegiant, and the late, unmissed Skybus can get away with this because their fares are so low that I actually buy the argument that they're simply operating on an a la carte model where you pay for the services you want. I have a harder time buying that argument from American, where we won't be seeing the fares going down (and most people won't notice if they keep the fares lower by doing this in lieu of simply raising fares) and their fares aren't and won't be substantially different from their competitors.

We'll Miss You

1946-2008

Leopard: The Cat is Out of the Bag

Yeah, yeah. That's not original at all.

Rawr.

So I've had Leopard running on my G5 for a few hours, and here are some thoughts.

Before I installed Leopard, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my system onto an external FireWire hard drive that will ultimately become my Time Machine backup drive. This turned out to be a good thing, as the installation turned out to be a bit of a hairy experience. I initially attempted to do an Archive and Install, however during the process I got a message that installation had failed. I tried again, this time doing an Erase and Install, and got the same error. I dug out my original Power Mac G5 DVD and ran the Apple Hardware Test. Sure enough, it reported problems with memory. I pulled the two 512MB modules I had added a while back, reverting to the original 512MB of RAM. These modules were warranty replacements for my original pair which had gone bad, and I didn't really want to have to replace them again. Sure enough, this time the install succeeded. After the system was up and running, I put the extra memory modules back in and so far no problems.

During the install process, there was the option to copy my information over from an external hard drive; a feature I had used before when I replaced my iBook with a PowerBook, only this time I would be using just the hard drive rather than a Mac in FireWire target disk mode. The copy took a while, but when it was done I was up and running again, just the same as if I had done an Archive and Install -- except that the Previous System was tucked away on another disk rather than on the same disk. The only hitch was that it had trouble copying over the software for my Microsoft keyboard; I was able to grab that off of their web site and reinstall it without much difficulty.

Once I got things up and running, things seemed to work fine. I did have to update the Xiph QuickTime Components to get Ogg files to play properly in iTunes. One time Firefox got suck behind the other windows; quitting and relaunching fixed that. Chax doesn't work yet; while I no longer need it to get tabbed chats in iChat, I do miss having the buddy list automatically resize itself to be just long enough to show all my online contacts like Adium does. I'd use Adium for everything, except that I do use the video feature, and now expect to use screen sharing as well.

Thanks to a post on the InsanelyMac forum, I found the new nebula background that is used on the login screen. It's DefaultDesktop.jpg in /System/Library/CoreServices. I wanted to use it as my desktop, so I opened up the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences panel and dragged it into the little graphic well. Why Apple didn't just put it in with the other default desktop pictures, I'm not sure.

I like the look of the new dock. Until now, I'd always kept the dock set to hide unless I moved the mouse to the bottom of the screen. Which probably made sense back when I was using a 17" CRT (at probably 1034x768) like when I first installed Mac OS X 10.0. Since I'm now using a 21" LCD at 1600x1200, I think I can give up that little bit of space at the bottom. I'm not sure about the Stacks thing but I think I can get used to it. In the past, I've kept a copy of my Applications and user home folder in my dock for easy access. I'd right click on Applications to pick an application, and usually just click the home folder to open it in a Finder window. It seems to be taking a bit longer to find applications in the grid view than it did as a menu, since instead of just finding it vertically, I have to search both the right row and column in the grid. On the other hand, not having to scroll ought to be nice, so it balances out. I do prefer the grid view to the fan view; having the list curve off to the side seems rather useless.

I'm not wild about the new folder icon; I prefer the older ones. The new ones remind me of the rather ugly ones used in the default Fedora 7 desktop. Did someone decide that the 3D folder icons--which date back to the Copland project and ultimately appeared in Mac OS 8--have gone out of style?

I also saw some complaints about the transparent menu bar, but that doesn't seem to be bothering me. It seems pretty smart: Against a dark background, it is less transparent so it maintains good contrast with the black text.

I'm not wild about having document icons be previews. I usually turn this off in Konqueror. I normally use the column view, so all the icons are pretty small and they all look about the same. I'd much rather have a Word document icon for .docs, an Adobe Reader document icon for .pdfs, and so on, and use Quick Look to get a preview.

I'll wrap this post up with this thought: How come I haven't seen any Leopard Lolcats yet? Too obvious?

San Diego Fires

Just for anyone who might be concerned about me, my area of San Diego thus far isn't very badly affected. Some smoke in the air but that's it.

Taro Chips

I knew taro chips are tasty, but apparently they also have great taste in television:

HDTV

After stumbling across Pirates of the Caribbean last night on ABC, I realized that ABC is one of the channels I get an over the air HDTV signal from, so I switched from my cable input to that. And I have to say, HDTV looks a lot better.

As an aside, I've also been rather impressed by the side-by-side comparisons of DVD versus BluRay at stores like Best Buy and Circuit City. But I'm planning to wait until there's a clear winner in the BluRay versus HD-DVD format war (or players that can handle both formats become cheap) before moving from DVD to a new format.

Done Voting? Good. Pay More for Gas.

Sigh.

Guess all those conspiracy theorists that were saying gas prices were down just for the elections were true. They're already going up.

Where's my hydrogen-hybrid RX-8?

Tap, tap, tap...

Yes, I voted today. Yes, we had electronic voting machines. Yes, they were Diebold. Yes, they had voter verified paper trails. Yes, I used it.

Seemed to work pretty well. I didn't have any problems with the machine not registering my vote correctly, so I guess my machine was properly calibrated. I also went after work, so if there had been any issues hopefully they got worked out. They also had paper ballots for those who needed to cast a provisional ballot and I suspect if I asked I could have gone that route. Which I would have if they didn't have the paper trail.

The only potential problem I saw was that the paper trail was pretty narrow, so some of the issue titles were cut off. In particular I think all the judge confirmations looked the same.

Decisions, Decisions

Well, I was planning to vote to reelect Susan Davis, since she did vote against the Military Commissions Act (you know, the one that lets the President define what torture is), but then she went and supported a bill to prohibit joint-use at Miramar. I'm also not fond of the idea of the Republicans keeping control of the House.

I wonder what Davis' proposal is for an alternative solution to the airport. Does she really want to build an airport in Imperial County? Does she really want to dislocate many people in order to build a second runway at Lindbergh? Or does she prefer to keep the airport as is and watch Lindbergh get busier and busier, and hope that the problem just solves itself.

Which is wishful thinking, because it won't. We can't just demand airlines bring in larger planes, unless we want to alienate San Diego's largest airline, Southwest, which doesn't have anything bigger than it's current 737s. We can't rely on Orange County and LAX to relieve us, as they have their own capacity problems to deal with, and Ontario is no better alternative for us than it is for LAX.