Month: August 2007

Sadly true?

The boys at Sadly No! are going mad at the antics of “Jane Galt” in her new gig at The Atlantic.

The amazingly self-centered Darwinism of these people — libertarians, objectivists, whatever — boils down to an abdication of what most of us call humanity in favor of a basic law of the jungle or savannah. They don’t want to make decisions based on anything other than pre-economic reasons. Luck doesn’t exist in their world, unless it’s good, like an Ivy League diploma, straight white teeth, and a full head of hair. Ashthma or diabetes are treatable diseases for most of us, but for some, they are death sentences. Here’s what I left over at S,N!

I’m not as smart of the rest of y’all but here’s an idea to mull over.

If man is the animal that can make choices and decisions, meaning we’re not constantly in the hunter/gatherer/predator mode and can enjoy things like leisure, art, sport, etc. what does it say about people like McMegan who seem to want life to be stripped down to its animal basics?

I really think they — I suspect there are others who “think” like her — want life to be boiled to down to what it was on the African savannah millions of years ago. They don’t want to make decisions about the welfare of others. They won’t be drawn into valuing a singer or bard as a member of the community, if he doesn’t hunt or support himself. The old and infirm? Leave ’em for the lions. The young and sickly? Why should we carry them? Love? Empathy? Sympathy? Who needs these human traits (even if we’re learning that they’re not even exclusive to mammal, let alone humans)?

If they’d rather die, they should do it and decrease the surplus population. Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?

I have to wonder if these people were ever sick and who took the time to care for them?

I wonder if her parents gave serious thought to the utility and future economic value of feeding and raising her? Or did they just do it because that’s what parents do?

managing young computer users

My young users have some access to the wonders of the cybernetic world, but on a time-limited basis. As you might imagine if you ever were or have a child, getting them to quit when the time comes is a chore.

Turns out Mac OS X has some hooks to let you manage that without having to get involved.

Apple supports login and logout hooks that allow actions to be tied to login and logout events, as olde skoole users might have used in the UNIX shell.

The first two steps are not optional, but pretty well documented. You need to edit /etc/ttys and make some changes to the system defaults.

The change to /etc/ttys is here: I have left the original line in the file, commented out, in case I need to roll back. So look for the second line (without the # in column 1) and add the first line. Make sure you don’t add any hard returns or newlines (I think pico does so be careful if you use that).


#console "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" vt100 on secure
console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow -LoginHook /usr/local/bin/loginscript" vt100 on secure
#console "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow" vt100 on secure onoption="/usr/libexec/getty std.9600"

Then you need to decide what to call your login script (/usr/local/bin/loginscript seems like a good choice). Replace the obvious placeholder with that and run that command.

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /path/to/script

So far so good.

The loginscript or hook is simple:

#!/bin/bash
# login script

username=${1}
if [ $username = "mom|dad" ]; then
exit
else
exec /usr/local/bin/timeout.sh &
fi

NB: scripts or executables that run as loginhooks block the rest of the user’s session until they complete. So the actual timing and warning stuff takes place in the script called by the loginhook. Substitute unfettered usernames as needed.

And this is the script itself. It’s a first cut, so there are some optimizations that could be made (some refactoring into functions is obvious) but it works as it is. It’s a mélange of bash and applescript, so I am not sure how you replicate this elsewhere.

Take your own best hold on it and see what you come up with.

#/bin/bash
username=`/usr/bin/whoami`
/usr/bin/logger $username logged in
/usr/bin/osascript -e "set Volume 2"
/usr/bin/say "you have 25 minutes. Enjoy"
/bin/sleep 900
/usr/bin/osascript -e "set Volume 2"
/usr/bin/say "5 minutes left"
/bin/sleep 240
/usr/bin/osascript -e "set Volume 2"
/usr/bin/say "1 minute left"
/bin/sleep 60
/usr/bin/say "buh bye now"
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to log out'
/usr/bin/logger $username logged out

There are lots of resources on this, Google can help you find them, but this example should serve as a good launching point for your own experiments. Leave any tips or gotchas in comments: I’m sure there are more improvements than I can see.

not sure about this

War is the Force That Gives Us Meaning:

In his narrative poem, Genesis, Frederick Turner includes the passage:

Those who say war is hell tell only half
the story – the other half is joy.

There’s something to this. The point is, it’s a problem. War is beguiling. Even those of us who have spent years opposing this war, and the next one, are testament to this. We could be writing every day about tax policy or drug laws or health care policy or Lindsay Lohan. We write about war because it’s important, but also because it’s fascinating. Even as we abhor it we are mesmerized.

Is it war or is it just the intensity of the experience that makes it so beguiling/fascinating? It certainly rules out intelligent design of killing other people is the most rewarding experience a designer has in mind for us.

failing to plan is planning to fail, urban edition

Liveability | Where the grass is greener | Economist.com:
Picture 9

While liveability considers factors of recreational and cultural activity, the “big city buzz” can hamper the scores of some cities, although not to the extent that a city will present significant challenges. Global centres such as New York, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong and Paris may find themselves let down precisely because of their size and attractiveness. Traffic congestion and higher crime rates associated with large urban centres have, to some extent, offset the obvious cultural gains of living in such locations.

Fancy that: urban design and planning, including growth management, are good things (hey, it’s the market speaking, not me: must be true). Good, reliable transportation, quality services, and — look at the list — scenic locations all factor in. It would be interesting to see where various US cities fit that list, since none of them make the top 10 (or the bottom 10, of course).

[via]

not only that

Full feeds: helping us help you:

Ted Leung: “[If you don’t use full feeds] there’s less chance that I will hit command-control-‘ to pop your post’s permalink into Pukka where I can quickly tag it and stick it into del.icio.us, where it can be immortalized as important, seen by my del.icio.us network, and pumped into my blog and tumblog. In other words, you make it hard for people like me to help you.”

But I may not even click through to Read The Whole Thingâ„¢.

Partial/excerpted feeds mean more page views, if people click through, and perhaps more ad views. As much good as ad views do me, I can’t be bothered.