Category: books

A friend suggested I read this: Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]:

The “Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy” that I want to share with you today are pillars of a free economy. We can differ on exactly how any one of them may apply to a given issue of the day, but the principles themselves, I believe, are settled truths. They are not original with me; I’ve simply collected them in one place. They are not the only pillars of a free economy or the only settled truths, but they do comprise a pretty powerful package. In my belief, if every cornerstone of every state and federal building were emblazoned with these principles-and more importantly, if every legislator understood and attempted to be faithful to them-we’d be a much stronger, much freer, more prosperous, and far better governed people.

Read the whole thing, as the worthies say. The précis is:

1. Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
2. What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
3. Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people
4. If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.
5. Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
6. Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you’ve got.
7. Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

Continue reading “what libertarian shares with communism”

Relative Openness of Mapping APIs:

I’m interested in drilling down on the question of why Google Maps has become the platform of choice for location mashups, rather than Yahoo! or Microsoft or MapQuest. Was it just being in the right place at the right time, and getting the momentum, or is there something about the API or the terms of service? There are hundreds of Google Maps mashups versus tens of mashups for Yahoo! Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth, and only one for MapQuest.

I asked Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, co-authors of Mapping Hacks and Google Maps Hacks this same question yesterday. Schuyler replied with some thoughts, which he’s since blogged on mappinghacks.com. But I’d love to know more. Why are you guys continuing to choose Google maps? What features, if any, would competitors have to add, to get you to switch?

As heard on NPR: http://www.platial.com/ For a useful example, click here.
So is it reasonable to expect the API to stay open and free?

My answer to Tim’s question is that Google has such a huge amount of mindshare, more than Yahoo (5 years ago, Yahoo might have had it, but now?), and certainly more than MapQuest. A look at their interfaces helps explain why as well.

Atlanta always wanted to be world-class city, another New York, when we lived there. I expect some people knew it would come with a cost but I wonder if even they think this is worth it?

Yuck:

ATLANTA (Reuters) – In a sleazy hotel room, “Brittany,” then aged 16 and drugged into oblivion, waited for the men to arrive. Her pimps sent as many as 17 clients an evening through the door.

A “john” could even pre-book the pretty young blonde for $1,000 a night, sometimes flying in and then flying out from a nearby airport.None of this happened in Bangkok or Costa Rica, places that have become synonymous with sex tourism and underage sex.

It took place in Atlanta, the buckle of the U.S. Bible Belt, where the world’s busiest passenger airport provides a cheaper, more convenient and safer underage sex destination for men seeking girls as young as 10.

“Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family,” said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia.

A new federal law passed in 2003 ensures that American sex tourists landing on foreign soil and hiring prostitutes under the age of 18 can get 30 years in prison.

But in Georgia, punishment for pimping or soliciting sex with a girl under 18 is only five to 20 years, according to Deborah Espy, the Deputy District Attorney of Fulton County.

Add your own thoughts about sanctimony, hypocrisy, etc in comments.

Got some pinhole images back today. Ballard Camera does E6 processing and scanning, making it a one-stop deal.

The pictures are here in all their light-leaking glory. The fact that it’s a red leak makes me think it’s something to do with the counter window (which is red). It’s on the other side of the frame, though. The leak fogs the film in the lower left corner, upper right on the image. Bah, so much for my spatial reasoning. It’s right under the counter window. It seems like a simple fix: if I can get some felt to encircle the window to ensure no light leaves that circle, I should be OK.

Interestingly, the red blotches are not always visible on these thumbnails.

I also can’t work out the vignetting on the opposite side, what blocks that corner.
On the plus side, the daylight exposures look good. Some of the shady ones are too dark. More light/longer exposure times. Some kind of tripod rig is going to have to happen, as well.

Stopped in at my local Apple Store to gape in amaze at the new stuff.

This is what the new built-in camera on the new iMac does for me.

Those Intel iMacs and minis are painfully snappy . . . .

Now playing: Four Horsemen by The Clash from the album “London Calling” | Get it

Such is the mention of DRM to Cory Doctorow . . . 😉

DRM shortens iPod battery life:

Cory Doctorow: Playing DRM-crippled music will shorten the battery life of your music-player. Listening to DRMed iTunes songs on an iPod shortens the battery life by eight percent; playing back WMA-crippled files on a device from Creative Labs can knock 25 percent off the life of your device’s battery. The extra battery-drain is attributed to the computation necessary to decrypt the files and verify their licenses.

This is not a real comparison, and if you read the whole article, it isn’t clear that anyone has compared AAC files head to head, DRM vs non-DRM, to see if the discrepancy is due to the license data or just a more complex algorithm.

He may be right, but he sure does jump out on these things pretty quickly. DRM is bad enough on it’s own “merits” w/o throwing out potentially misleading claims.

I read this bit this morning and recalled my attempts to upload or otherwise add to the database. I couldn’t figure it out. It would be nice if the MusicBrainz DB could just accept playlists from iTunes, since that’s where a lot of metadat already lives.

I created an account and poked around with no success. Maybe there were instructions I missed somehow.

It’s not a big deal, since I have the data already, either from GraceNote or my own efforts. But giving back should be easier, shouldn’t it?

MusicBrainz free metadata service gets even better:

Cory Doctorow: A nonprofit service that adds meta-data like song-name and artist to digital music has just signed a deal to get access to an even larger database of meta-data and a better algorithm for figuring out which song is which.
MetaBrainz is a charitable nonprofit that produces MusicBrainz, a free and open alternative to Gracenote’s CDDB data, which is only available on restrictive and cumbersome terms. The Gracenote database was built by volunteers, but the company then fenced off the product of all that volunteer effort and sold it off to the highest bidders.

MusicBrainz’s latest deal with MusicIP gives the charity access to a sophisticated fingerprinting algorithm as well as a much larger set of meta-data, making it an even more effective competitor to Gracenote.

<update> Well, as often happens, I looked this over once more and found out how to do it. It’s pretty tedious so I expect there are some tools I’m not aware of (geeks don’t do tedium very well). But I was able to enter/import a 2 CD release successfully (Symphony no.2 in C minor, “Resurrection” Disc 1 and 2). I’ll see if I can then match it against what I have on file here and see if it works or not.

Now playing: Permafrost by Magazine from the album “Rays And Hail 1978-1981” | Get it

I have been playing with indexes in MySQL today, and found a good example of their benefits:

select request_uri, count(request_uri) as count from access_log group by request_uri order by count desc limit 25;

coughed up results thusly:

25 rows in set (10 min 38.19 sec)

This is against a table with 329,000 rows.

With the addition of this:

alter table access_log add index request_uri_index (request_uri);

we get these results:

25 rows in set (26.98 sec)

Not blinding fast, but a considerable improvement.
Continue reading “indexes”