Ones and Zeros

The big word this year seems to be bipartisan.  Am I the only one who’s not concerned with this?  I want the right policies to do the right things to solve our country’s problems without creating new problems a couple years from now.  This isn’t bipartisan, this is thoughtful and realistic thinking with all the best knowledge and information we have on the subject.

Bipartisan is figuring out how to satisfy all the extremists, no matter how unfounded, illogical, crazy, and unscientific their opinions are.  I don’t care about that

I know we always won’t get it right, our information isn’t - can’t - be accurate enough for that.  There’s just too many variables.  But trying to please every nutjob in the country and on the radio and cable channels is not only a thankless job, but an impossible one.  Focus on “correct”, that’s hard enough.

Just a comment on Virginia.  We now have Bob McDonnell as governor who’s celebrating the Confederacy for the whole month of April (one day wouldn’t do!) while trying to avoid the messy issue that the Confederacy was formed to fight FOR slavery.  What strange worldview and mindset is this guy from when he thinks this sort of racist behavior is appropriate?

Either he’s very ignorant of a key part of our country’s and our state’s history, or he’s a racist and liar.  In either case he’s not fit to be govenor.

And then there’s the Virginia Attorney General.  He’s planning to sue the US government about health care reform.  Health care reform is supported by the majority of Americans in poll after poll.  The Virginia demographics are reasonably representative of the country and it’s reasonable to assume that the national polls on health care reform are mirrored in the state.  So Ken Cuccinelli is subverting the will of the people that he represents in suing the federal government.

Cuccinelli and McDonnell are also using the state government to rescind and rollback protections for gays.  That’s what they started with when they got into office.

So in a few short years Virginia has gone from an up and coming cosmopolitan state to a racist southern holdout fighting against it’s own best interests.

But then these sorts of things happen:

 A Wisconsin district attorney is urging schools to drop their sex-education programs, warning that the teachers involved could be arrested if they follow a new state law requiring them to instruct students on how to use condoms and other contraceptives….

So teachers who have a significant level of responsibility and who are often underpaid and dumped on, are now possibly subject to legal action of a type that could end their career.  And what for?  For following the state law that the Wisconsin DA is sworn to uphold.

The DA Scott Southworth considers the law a “sick and shameful piece of legislation” that encourages illegal sex among minors.  So he’s taking it out on the teachers instead of the legislature or governor. What is it with these far-right wing conservatives?  It’s clear that their support of the country and the constitution is selective to the laws they like and the legal process be damned.

Cory Doctorow and Joel Johnson are debating the closed vs open source issue with respect to the Apple iPad and the Apple software ecosystem.  Cory says he’s not buying an iPad and he doesn’t think anyone should.  That we shouldn’t buy devices that force us only to be consumers, we need to buy products that let us take them apart, customize them, and fix them.  For computers like the iPad, this means to write software outside the DRM box as well.

Joel, on the other hand, points out here that computers becoming consumer appliances is a good thing.  That we don’t want to have to tinker with everything we buy and use, that just being able to use something efficiently and cleanly is a wonderful thing to do.  And that for complex devices, locking the design and internal access down is one way to do that.  Cory and Joel both are making the issues clear so people have a better chance at choosing the techno-ecosystem they want to play with.

They’re both right in a way.  Cory and Joel both are making the issues clear so people have a better chance at choosing the techno-ecosystem they want to play with. We have to make our choices as to what we’re willing to live with.  Apple’s created an ecosystem that’s much larger than the device.  That they’re able to do this in a closed way is impressive. I’ve discussed that before.  When you buy an iPad, iPhone, or iPod you’re buying into that ecosystem.  As a consumer that may be worth it to you, it is to Joel.  It’s not worth it to Cory.  And as a developer there are rules that I have to follow to play in that system too.

But there are rules for consumers and developers in the open source ecosystem too.  Those rules are  unwritten social rules perhaps, or ways of working dictated by the nature of open source projects: installation, updates, system management.  In the end the finished open source product typically requires more tinkering than many would like to see simply because there’s no overriding corporate authority driving a more unified approach.  (I’ve used Linux since the mid-1990s, written software for it, and written a kernel mod (a driver).  I like it and it’s great for my purposes, but requires tinkering.) Those open source rules more reached more collectively than the Apple ones, but as an independent developer I have as much effect on them as I do on Apple’s rules generally.

Basically, you have to decide what you want to deal with.  Sometimes I choose ease-of-use and pay the DRM penalty, sometimes I choose open-source and pay the tinkering penalty.  Trying to use either one for everything would be like trying to use a hammer in place of every tool in my tool box.