Tired puppy in Paradise... Not the dogs – me! I've finished planting all those trees, but now I've got some seriously tired arms :) I did most of the really hard work in the cool morning hours, which helped – but I've been going at it hard since 7:30 this morning, with just a couple of breaks. I'm not used to doing this much hard work with my upper body, and I'm really feeling it.
On the other hand: trees! Bushes! We now have a small grove of five 15' to 20' tall paper birches (3" trunks), three well-positioned weeping willows, 10' high and the same across, and a rough group of six purple lilac. The lilacs are small – 2 gallon pots, 30" tall plants, but they look very vigorous and healthy, and root-bound in the pots. Two of the willows are on either side of our driveway as you pull in off the highway; once they have a few years of growth they'll make a fine entrance. The third is in a gap in the row of trees alongside the irrigation canal, where a black willow was felled by lightning some years ago. All three willows are within 10' of the irrigation canal (which is unlined; water seeps through its sides), so they should be very happy about the water situation.
In a related development, I asked the folks at Zollinger's for a reference to a quality sprinkler installer, and they came through. I contacted that fellow today, and he'll be out here next week to scope out the job. I'm thinking of a three-phased approach: one for all our lawn and landscaped area south of our driveway, two for the shed, and three for the lawn and landscaping around our house, once we've finished our planned construction and have it landscaped. I currently irrigate with a combination of 3" diameter aluminum “hand line” and hoses with sprinklers. I'm looking ahead a bit, to the day when that is an intimidating amount of work because of my age. I'm probably good for another 5 to 10 years, but I want to get that taken care of before I can't do it any more :)
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Given a choice of laughing or crying...
Given a choice of laughing or crying ... I'll laugh, then cry. My mom sends along this additional piece of Putin v. Obama fun:
Negotiating with Obama...
Negotiating with Obama... I've seen this before, but I don't think I've posted it. Via my Macified, pistol-packing, big Scrabble word making mama:
Negotiating with Obama is like playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over all the pieces, shits on the board and then struts around like it won the game.Now Snopes tells me that Putin didn't actually say this, and the pigeon chess meme has been floating around for at least 10 years. But no matter – it's completely plausible that Putin would say this. Fake, but real!
--Vladimir Putin
The Arctic Ocean is warming!
The Arctic Ocean is warming! My brother Scott emailed me this:
Then his email casually mentions that this is a report published in the Washington Post, on November 2, 1922!
A quick look on Snopes (where would we all be without that wonderful site?!) told me it was real – but also that the story isn't quite as simple as it sounds. No matter, it's still a fun story and a good example of the fallibility of prognostication...
The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulate, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the Gulf Stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelt which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
A quick look on Snopes (where would we all be without that wonderful site?!) told me it was real – but also that the story isn't quite as simple as it sounds. No matter, it's still a fun story and a good example of the fallibility of prognostication...
Migratory birds...
Migratory birds... I just found this great resource for when to expect migratory birds in any particular area.
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... I spent most of the day yesterday planting trees. The crew from Zollinger's showed up right on time, at 9 am, in a big truck with an even bigger trailer – and 39 trees and shrubs for us. They have a nifty little rubber-tracked forklift that makes moving even the larger trees really easy. In under an hour, they had placed the eight large trees (weeping willows and paper birches) in their holes (which I'd already dug) and unloaded the potted plants (lilacs and sumac). Then they gave me a gallon of their famous cider (delicious!), picked up a check, and took off.
Now it was my turn. I needed to position the trees, fill in the holes, clean up the grass (where it had dirt piled on it), and water the trees. I couldn't finish it all yesterday; it was too much work for my poor old body to do. I did get all the tree roots covered, and three of the trees are completely finished. That leaves me with five to do today, but three of those are not on the grass, so there's no cleanup (which is actually the hardest part of the entire job!). I'll finish off the big trees today, and hopefully get the lilacs in as well. They're in little two-gallon pots, so they're a piece of cake to plant.
Yesterday while I was working out in the yard, I saw a few interesting things (photos below).
The flowers were pretty splashes of colors in the fall. The yellow flower was about the size of a quarter; the violet/blue ones about the size of a match head. The fellow in the middle is a rattlesnake – first one we've seen on our property. But it was a teensy little rattlesnake, only about 9 or 10 inches long and very zippy. After I chased it all over the yard, it got tired and stopped – and then very vigorously tried to attack my boot :) Debbie was all for me killing it (worried about our dogs), but I know from my reading and from talking with our vet that rattlesnake bites on dogs are very rare for dogs in the valley – and not particularly threatening, as the rattlesnakes here are less venomous than the ones we had down in California.
Finally, I'll leave you with this. The photo at right I took last night as we were leaving our dinner at Jack's pizza (wonderful as always). The display in that window clearly says “LEER”, and to the right of that is the word “READ” written sideways. You can see that LEER has a sort of Mexican motif to it. What's up with that? Well, it turns out that “leer” is Spanish for “read”. It doesn't mean what my dirty old man's mind thought it meant. And here I thought I was going to be surprised by an unexpected aspect of Mormon culture!
Now it was my turn. I needed to position the trees, fill in the holes, clean up the grass (where it had dirt piled on it), and water the trees. I couldn't finish it all yesterday; it was too much work for my poor old body to do. I did get all the tree roots covered, and three of the trees are completely finished. That leaves me with five to do today, but three of those are not on the grass, so there's no cleanup (which is actually the hardest part of the entire job!). I'll finish off the big trees today, and hopefully get the lilacs in as well. They're in little two-gallon pots, so they're a piece of cake to plant.
Yesterday while I was working out in the yard, I saw a few interesting things (photos below).
The flowers were pretty splashes of colors in the fall. The yellow flower was about the size of a quarter; the violet/blue ones about the size of a match head. The fellow in the middle is a rattlesnake – first one we've seen on our property. But it was a teensy little rattlesnake, only about 9 or 10 inches long and very zippy. After I chased it all over the yard, it got tired and stopped – and then very vigorously tried to attack my boot :) Debbie was all for me killing it (worried about our dogs), but I know from my reading and from talking with our vet that rattlesnake bites on dogs are very rare for dogs in the valley – and not particularly threatening, as the rattlesnakes here are less venomous than the ones we had down in California.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... A few photos from our walk yesterday morning, with a beautiful giant full moon:
Somehow the moon doesn't look as large in those photos as it did in real life :) I sure wish they could fit a nice zoom lens into the iPhone. Most of the time the wide angle lens is exactly what you want, but I'd have liked about a 150mm for those first two shots...
This morning I went out to the shed to fire up the tractor. I'm getting ready for the delivery of some trees, and the backhoe is my tool of choice for moving dirt. As I approached the shed, I noticed this great big spider hanging on the side. I've never seen a spider that looked like this (click the photos below to embiggen them). Anybody have a clue what it is?
Update: I think I found it, by searching for similar images on Google Images. I think it's Araneus gemma, aka the cat-faced spider.
The tree guys just called, and they're on the way. I'm expecting to be quite tired by tonight :)
Somehow the moon doesn't look as large in those photos as it did in real life :) I sure wish they could fit a nice zoom lens into the iPhone. Most of the time the wide angle lens is exactly what you want, but I'd have liked about a 150mm for those first two shots...
This morning I went out to the shed to fire up the tractor. I'm getting ready for the delivery of some trees, and the backhoe is my tool of choice for moving dirt. As I approached the shed, I noticed this great big spider hanging on the side. I've never seen a spider that looked like this (click the photos below to embiggen them). Anybody have a clue what it is?
Update: I think I found it, by searching for similar images on Google Images. I think it's Araneus gemma, aka the cat-faced spider.
The tree guys just called, and they're on the way. I'm expecting to be quite tired by tonight :)
Meanwhile, back at comet 67P...
Sure looks like water was involved, doesn't it?
Steve McIntyre follows the money...
Steve McIntyre follows the money ... and it ain't purty: Shukla's Gold...
Our neighbors win an award...
...the family was selected by the community and recognized for doing the most to create awareness for Down syndrome in the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation Cache County Chapter. The Lawrences received the award Saturday at the American West Heritage Center as part of the annual Buddy Walk event, according to Utah Down Syndrome Foundation Cache County Chapter advertising director Donnell Owen.Great people abound here in Paradise...
Monday, September 28, 2015
“They are us.”
“They are us.” This article bemoans the know-nothing politicians running for President (in both parties) and then drops the hammer of doom by saying:
Many years ago I read a science fiction story (I've forgotten the name of the story or its author) with the premise that human society was becoming increasingly stratified between a small educated, intelligent group of elites and the masses of relatively stupid, celebrity-addled, substance-less drones. The latter survived only by mooching from the former, and eventually the elites got tired of it and started shipping all the drones off to Venus. The mechanism wasn't practical, but the motivation certainly was plausible.
One of the passages in that story talked about how the drones' desire for fast, sporty cars was satisfied in part by electronically generated sound that simulated the engine noise they expected. A few years ago I first read that car manufacturers are actually doing that today.
Maybe our elites should start shipping the drones somewhere...
They are us.Yes, they are. Which is why I'm not optimistic about the U.S. maintaining its leadership in the world over the long term, and not optimistic about the world in general over the longer term.
Many years ago I read a science fiction story (I've forgotten the name of the story or its author) with the premise that human society was becoming increasingly stratified between a small educated, intelligent group of elites and the masses of relatively stupid, celebrity-addled, substance-less drones. The latter survived only by mooching from the former, and eventually the elites got tired of it and started shipping all the drones off to Venus. The mechanism wasn't practical, but the motivation certainly was plausible.
One of the passages in that story talked about how the drones' desire for fast, sporty cars was satisfied in part by electronically generated sound that simulated the engine noise they expected. A few years ago I first read that car manufacturers are actually doing that today.
Maybe our elites should start shipping the drones somewhere...
Lots of human languages are going extinct...
Lots of human languages are going extinct... That's generally presented as a bad thing, but I don't understand why that's so. It seems to me that the more easily we members of the human species can communicate with each other, the better. I suspect we're inevitably headed in the direction of one universal language, though my guess is that that won't happen for centuries...
Douglas Crockford is...
Douglas Crockford is ... some combination of a friendly lunatic, a national treasure, and JavaScript guru extraordinaire. If he didn't exist, someone would have to invent him! Now look what he's done...
Are floppy disks dead?
Are floppy disks dead? No. Will they ever die? Maybe not.
My six years in the U.S. Navy gives me a deep appreciation for the way that the military can preserve a technology far beyond anyone's reasonable expectation. I served on a ship (USS Long Beach CGN-9) in the '70s that proudly used vacuum tubes, magnetic core memories, Baudot teletypes, vector graphics on storage tubes, mechanical analog computers for missile targeting, and sound-powered phones – all the while calling itself a showcase for advanced technology. Of course they still have floppies!
My six years in the U.S. Navy gives me a deep appreciation for the way that the military can preserve a technology far beyond anyone's reasonable expectation. I served on a ship (USS Long Beach CGN-9) in the '70s that proudly used vacuum tubes, magnetic core memories, Baudot teletypes, vector graphics on storage tubes, mechanical analog computers for missile targeting, and sound-powered phones – all the while calling itself a showcase for advanced technology. Of course they still have floppies!
Perceptual image compression...
Perceptual image compression... Flickr recently rolled out this new JPEG encoder, and this article tells a bit of the behind-the-scenes work that went into it (note to the geekophobes: it's not very technical). They've automated something that I (and many others!) have done by hand: tweaked various “knobs” on JPEG encoders to get an image that was significantly compressed, but not degraded in perceived quality. It's that “perceived” bit that makes this hard, because the impacts of compression artifacts on visual perception are unobvious and subtle – as the Flickr team discovered!
One little factoid from the article that I particularly enjoyed: when people were shown identical images side-by-side, they only called them identical about two thirds of the time. Perception is tricky!
One little factoid from the article that I particularly enjoyed: when people were shown identical images side-by-side, they only called them identical about two thirds of the time. Perception is tricky!
Correlation is not causation...
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Porcupine reservoir trip...
Porcupine reservoir trip... We took a jaunt up there this evening to see what the fall color and wildlife were like. There were lots of people there, mostly to see the second Kokanee running. There wasn't much in the way of fall color, and the only wildlife we saw was a solitary hawk.
Oh, well...
The more data comes back...
Sometimes it's really amazing...
Sometimes it's really amazing ... how long a software bug can exist before someone finds and fixes it. Google, in this case...
Paradise ponders...
We did have one interesting wildlife spotting: a pair of northern harriers (female in the photo above right, not mine, alas). What first caught our attention was that they were perching on the ground – very odd behavior for a hawk. My first theory was that they were migrants, and ordinarily lived on the tundra where there were no trees. Wrong theory – these raptors are just crazy and like to perch where they're very vulnerable, on the ground. They're incredibly agile flyers for their size, hunting near the ground and performing aerial stunts every few seconds. This was one of the easiest-to-identify raptors I've ever run into, mostly thanks to that distinctive white band on its tail...
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... In The Onion, reporting on the pope's visit to Philadelphia:
For my readers who don't already know this: I grew up alarmingly close to Philadelphia, so I know it well. Except for the Franklin Institute, soft pretzels with mustard, and Philly steak sandwiches, it has no redeeming value that I know of.
After concluding his prepared remarks, the pope reportedly led the congregation in a prayer for God to rain cleansing fire and brimstone over the city and then salt the smoldering Earth so that no wickedness could ever again arise in its place.This is from an article titled “Horrified Pope Calls Philadelphia Humanity’s Greatest Sin Against God”. Ha!
For my readers who don't already know this: I grew up alarmingly close to Philadelphia, so I know it well. Except for the Franklin Institute, soft pretzels with mustard, and Philly steak sandwiches, it has no redeeming value that I know of.
Greatest regex trick ever?
Greatest regex trick ever? Well, maybe. It's a pretty darned good one, anyway. I used regexes extensively in my last job (with ServiceNow), in both Java and JavaScript. I used variations on this trick several times, often together with another favorite “trick” of mine: using functions for the replacement value (both Java and JavaScript support this)...
No sign of Bucky (updated)...
No sign of Bucky (updated)... Shortly after making the post below, the boys (Miki and Race) and I went out for our walk. As we walked over the irrigation canal bridge in our driveway, we heard splashing just south of us. Sure enough, there was Bucky, hopping down into the canal for a drink, then back up to get away from us. He's fine!
We haven't seen him - the injured buck in our front yard - for several days now. We're hoping he's ok, but ... Cache County is a dangerous place for a buck in hunting season...
We haven't seen him - the injured buck in our front yard - for several days now. We're hoping he's ok, but ... Cache County is a dangerous place for a buck in hunting season...
Scientists didn't really know what to expect...
Friday, September 25, 2015
Good food is really hard to beet!
Good food is really hard to beet! Our neighbor Tim D. came over a couple days ago with a bag full of fresh vegetables from his garden. Among those vegetables were a nice bunch of beets. Debbie doesn't really like beets, but I love them, so these were all mine. This afternoon I cleaned them up, plopped them in a saucepan, and boiled them until they were nicely done. For the last 10 minutes or so, I threw in a couple nice sausages. After draining them, I roughly cut up the beets, threw some lovely butter at them, and chowed down. What a great lunch!
Next up: a zip-lock bag full of fresh corn, cut off the ear. This was delivered to us yesterday by a gaggle of four little girls (ages about 6 through 10), the daughters of our neighbor Nikki L. and her sister, who brought the corn over and then demanded to see all our animals :) Debbie was happy to accommodate them, and while I was busy digging holes they were down in our cattery playing with the seven cats down there...
Next up: a zip-lock bag full of fresh corn, cut off the ear. This was delivered to us yesterday by a gaggle of four little girls (ages about 6 through 10), the daughters of our neighbor Nikki L. and her sister, who brought the corn over and then demanded to see all our animals :) Debbie was happy to accommodate them, and while I was busy digging holes they were down in our cattery playing with the seven cats down there...
The smell of new-mown hay in Paradise...
Hill of Crosses...
WWII colorized photo collection...
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Paradise ponders...
Paradise ponders... Yesterday I dug five more big holes (4' square, 30" deep) where our paper birches will be planted next Tuesday. I did most of the digging with my little Kubota B26 backhoe, then cleaned up each hole with a shovel. As I was doing this work, my thoughts wandered to memories of my dad. He dug a lot of holes in his lifetime, to plant shrubs and trees. So far as I know, he always dug them entirely by hand, with nothing more than a simple shovel. I suspect he'd have scoffed at my backhoe. He loved the physical exertion of digging holes; it was therapeutic for him. When he was worried or tense, his habit was to go out and do something relatively mindless and physically difficult – and more often than not, that meant digging holes. You might not think there was much skill to digging a hole, but if you'd ever watched him, you'd know that wasn't true. If he was digging in good, loamy, rock-free soil, his actions looked like they were choreographed. His shovel took precisely sized, perfectly placed bites out of the soil. With a single economical motion, the shovel would be emptied into exactly the right place – without the tiniest bit of an extra joule being expended. My efforts as a child, and perhaps even more so as an adult, were lame and pathetic by comparison. He'd have enjoyed digging holes in Paradise, and I'll bet that only a shovel would be involved...
When I finished digging holes, we hopped into our truck and headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to gawk at the fall color, and hopefully to see some wildlife. On the way out, as I was hungry, we stopped at McDonald's so I could try the “McRib” sandwich. The only reason I wanted to try it was that several people I know rave about it – and I don't know anyone who raves about a McDonald's hamburger. So I got my McRib, and I ate it, but ... I'm never going to get another one. The meat was bland, so bland I couldn't even tell it was pork. Mystery meat. The barbecue sauce was more sugar than anything else – disgustingly sweet, slightly chemically tasting, without the slightest bit of interesting quality at all. Blegh!
Fortunately the fall color in the canyon more than made up for the bad taste in my mouth. Some photos below, all iPhone and none of them do it justice:
We're going back again on Saturday evening, even though it's the weekend (lots more of those pesky people!) when more color should have migrated to lower altitudes.
We did see some wildlife as well, particularly three does with single fawns. Two of those fawns were still very young, obviously late births. They were weaned, but still had spots and alarmingly little fat for the season. They need to fatten up fast, or move down to where there's food all winter, or they'll be at risk.
This morning we made our first visit to the “new” Crumb Brothers, which opened this past Saturday. We got there at 7 am, when they open their doors. We both had croque madame (with Emmental cheese), with a biscotti for “dessert”. We found out that our favorite bread (sunflower seed) will be baked fresh every Wednesday and Friday, available at 11 am. We'll be back for that!
After we returned, with me in a croque madame coma, the boys (Miki and Race) and I headed out for our morning walk. I managed to find yet another route variation, which pleased the dogs. They get visibly more excited whenever we turn in a new direction. Somehow they know all the places we've ever been before, and when we're going somewhere new. The Clawson dairy folks mowed two big alfalfa fields a few days ago, and the windrows are still down drying. This morning there were hawks perched all around those fields, with more hawks hunting for voles in low swoops, often no more than a couple feet from the ground. We saw several of them make catches, and several others eating catches they'd already made. Happy hawks, not-so-happy voles. I'm ok with that :)
Some photos of our walk:
When I finished digging holes, we hopped into our truck and headed up Blacksmith Fork Canyon to gawk at the fall color, and hopefully to see some wildlife. On the way out, as I was hungry, we stopped at McDonald's so I could try the “McRib” sandwich. The only reason I wanted to try it was that several people I know rave about it – and I don't know anyone who raves about a McDonald's hamburger. So I got my McRib, and I ate it, but ... I'm never going to get another one. The meat was bland, so bland I couldn't even tell it was pork. Mystery meat. The barbecue sauce was more sugar than anything else – disgustingly sweet, slightly chemically tasting, without the slightest bit of interesting quality at all. Blegh!
Fortunately the fall color in the canyon more than made up for the bad taste in my mouth. Some photos below, all iPhone and none of them do it justice:
We're going back again on Saturday evening, even though it's the weekend (lots more of those pesky people!) when more color should have migrated to lower altitudes.
We did see some wildlife as well, particularly three does with single fawns. Two of those fawns were still very young, obviously late births. They were weaned, but still had spots and alarmingly little fat for the season. They need to fatten up fast, or move down to where there's food all winter, or they'll be at risk.
This morning we made our first visit to the “new” Crumb Brothers, which opened this past Saturday. We got there at 7 am, when they open their doors. We both had croque madame (with Emmental cheese), with a biscotti for “dessert”. We found out that our favorite bread (sunflower seed) will be baked fresh every Wednesday and Friday, available at 11 am. We'll be back for that!
After we returned, with me in a croque madame coma, the boys (Miki and Race) and I headed out for our morning walk. I managed to find yet another route variation, which pleased the dogs. They get visibly more excited whenever we turn in a new direction. Somehow they know all the places we've ever been before, and when we're going somewhere new. The Clawson dairy folks mowed two big alfalfa fields a few days ago, and the windrows are still down drying. This morning there were hawks perched all around those fields, with more hawks hunting for voles in low swoops, often no more than a couple feet from the ground. We saw several of them make catches, and several others eating catches they'd already made. Happy hawks, not-so-happy voles. I'm ok with that :)
Some photos of our walk:
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Farm machinery...
This chart nicely summarizes...
This chart nicely summarizes ... one of the best arguments against anthropogenic global warming: that temperatures are not, in fact, at alarming levels (or headed there). Click the chart to embiggen; go here for the supporting article. The chart covers the entire span of human civilization, and it's obvious at a glance that we're not in a particularly warm period right now (at right on the graph) – in fact, quite the reverse.
If you're wondering why the temperatures are reading negative °C, it's because (a) that's the temperature of the ice core drilled from Greenland ice sheets, and (b) scientists use Celsius temperature scales. Just for your reference, in °F that right-hand scale would read from -19°F to -27°F.
There's debate about how good a proxy Greenland ice sheets are for global temperatures (in other words, how well they correlate). There's no debate, though, on whether the ice cores from those sheets are a better proxy than tree rings: they are, most certainly.
If you're wondering why the temperatures are reading negative °C, it's because (a) that's the temperature of the ice core drilled from Greenland ice sheets, and (b) scientists use Celsius temperature scales. Just for your reference, in °F that right-hand scale would read from -19°F to -27°F.
There's debate about how good a proxy Greenland ice sheets are for global temperatures (in other words, how well they correlate). There's no debate, though, on whether the ice cores from those sheets are a better proxy than tree rings: they are, most certainly.
Quote of the day...
Quote of the day... Professor Eben Moglen, of Columbia University's law school:
I'm also a proponent of open source software, but I don't think that Mr. Moglen's argument is entirely supportable, nor is it as simple as he makes it out to be.
Consider, for example, his assertion that “you can’t inspect” proprietary software. That's clearly not true – a government inspection agency (merely writing that sends shivers down my spine!) could be given access to proprietary code by appropriate legislation. I think that would be a disastrous addition of friction to the software development process, and I am not proposing that. I'm merely pointing out a flaw in Mr. Moglen's argument. Slightly more subtly, it's already true today that if someone files suit against a company alleging that their software caused injury or damage, the plaintiffs will be able to get at the source code through the legal discovery process (that happened in the infamous Toyota acceleration case, for example). I'm not sure that's any better than the government agency approach, but it again belies Mr. Moglen's assertion (even if it is an after-the-fact inspection). But if his argument is really that it would be better, from some cosmic perspective, to have the source code available to one and all for safety and reliability inspections, well then I completely agree. In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I'm a proponent of open source software in the first place.
But there's another element that Mr. Moglen basically ignores, and that is the protection of the proprietary software developer's economic interest in that software that was developed. Modern software is often so complex that reverse-engineering it is prohibitively expensive. The firmware in an automobile is a great example of this – the object code (the stuff the computer itself understands, the result of compiling the source code) may be dozens or even hundreds of megabytes in size. Reverse-engineering a chunk of code that big would cost millions of dollars and take years. The source code is therefore a valuable economic asset to the manufacturer. It is not shipped with every car, and competitors have no legal way to steal it. Open source software, however, is by its very nature “open” – anyone at all, including one's competitors, and freely look at it. If a car manufacturer were to develop key algorithms that made its cars run better, then making those algorithms available to its competitors – for free – is not a particularly smart business move. It would be like a restaurant famous for its unique dishes giving away the recipes for them to all the other restaurants. Not going to happen.
I don't have any magical answers here. It's a genuinely tough problem, balancing the considerations of safety, reliability, and the very real economic interest of the manufacturers. If we were to simply legislate that all manufacturers using software or firmware had to make that open source, it's hard to imagine the manufacturers would continue investing the millions of dollars they currently spend every year to develop the wonderful new features we all love. Would Apple have developed iTunes if they then had to give the code to their competitors? I think not! Would a car manufacturer invest in firmware that gave its engines better fuel efficiency if they then had to give it to their competitors? Why on earth would they? There's no gain to them.
Hard questions, and nobody has perfect answers for them. Those perfect answers probably don't exist...
Proprietary software is an unsafe building material. You can’t inspect it.Mr. Moglen is a proponent of open source software, and the argument he so eloquently makes is that the secret nature of proprietary software makes it impossible for either individuals or government agencies to inspect it.
I'm also a proponent of open source software, but I don't think that Mr. Moglen's argument is entirely supportable, nor is it as simple as he makes it out to be.
Consider, for example, his assertion that “you can’t inspect” proprietary software. That's clearly not true – a government inspection agency (merely writing that sends shivers down my spine!) could be given access to proprietary code by appropriate legislation. I think that would be a disastrous addition of friction to the software development process, and I am not proposing that. I'm merely pointing out a flaw in Mr. Moglen's argument. Slightly more subtly, it's already true today that if someone files suit against a company alleging that their software caused injury or damage, the plaintiffs will be able to get at the source code through the legal discovery process (that happened in the infamous Toyota acceleration case, for example). I'm not sure that's any better than the government agency approach, but it again belies Mr. Moglen's assertion (even if it is an after-the-fact inspection). But if his argument is really that it would be better, from some cosmic perspective, to have the source code available to one and all for safety and reliability inspections, well then I completely agree. In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I'm a proponent of open source software in the first place.
But there's another element that Mr. Moglen basically ignores, and that is the protection of the proprietary software developer's economic interest in that software that was developed. Modern software is often so complex that reverse-engineering it is prohibitively expensive. The firmware in an automobile is a great example of this – the object code (the stuff the computer itself understands, the result of compiling the source code) may be dozens or even hundreds of megabytes in size. Reverse-engineering a chunk of code that big would cost millions of dollars and take years. The source code is therefore a valuable economic asset to the manufacturer. It is not shipped with every car, and competitors have no legal way to steal it. Open source software, however, is by its very nature “open” – anyone at all, including one's competitors, and freely look at it. If a car manufacturer were to develop key algorithms that made its cars run better, then making those algorithms available to its competitors – for free – is not a particularly smart business move. It would be like a restaurant famous for its unique dishes giving away the recipes for them to all the other restaurants. Not going to happen.
I don't have any magical answers here. It's a genuinely tough problem, balancing the considerations of safety, reliability, and the very real economic interest of the manufacturers. If we were to simply legislate that all manufacturers using software or firmware had to make that open source, it's hard to imagine the manufacturers would continue investing the millions of dollars they currently spend every year to develop the wonderful new features we all love. Would Apple have developed iTunes if they then had to give the code to their competitors? I think not! Would a car manufacturer invest in firmware that gave its engines better fuel efficiency if they then had to give it to their competitors? Why on earth would they? There's no gain to them.
Hard questions, and nobody has perfect answers for them. Those perfect answers probably don't exist...
Got $46M burning a hole in your pocket?
It's one of the last big pieces of wild America left on the market...
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
2016 presidential election resource...
2016 presidential election resource... I hope this page keeps working through the election! It's a breakdown of the current odds from Betfair, a large British betting company. Since the government shut down the U.S.-based sites, the polls have been our best source of information – and they, of course, are notoriously biased and inaccurate. The betting markets are far better, and even though these markets are British, historically they've been more accurate than U.S. polls...
Afternoon in Paradise...
Afternoon in Paradise... This morning I found out that the trees we've ordered will be here next Tuesday. Those trees include three fairly large weeping willows, five quite large paper birches, six lilacs, and 25 sumacs in five gallon pots. That means we need some holes dug :) This afternoon I dug the holes for the three willows, four feet across and two feet deep. Tomorrow I'll tackle the birches.
The big, beautiful field of alfalfa east of us is being mowed today (first three photos below). Two machines – the same two I posted photos of a few days ago – were making quick work of it. When I took the two photos of the mower in action, I was surprised to see that the driver was a young woman, perhaps 19 or 20 years old. When she saw me taking photos, I got a big smile and a friendly wave. I really shouldn't be surprised to see that, as it's quite normal here for the girls and women on farms to do the much of the same work as the men. The only areas that seem to be “male only” are those that genuinely need the muscles, such as moving hand line around. Anyway, she was whipping that monster machine around like an expert!
The last photo is something you should all be jealous of. It's two tomatoes from my neighbor's (Tim D.) garden, cleaned and chopped, and a nice dollop of Duke's mayonnaise. That's some mighty fine eating, let me tell you!
The big, beautiful field of alfalfa east of us is being mowed today (first three photos below). Two machines – the same two I posted photos of a few days ago – were making quick work of it. When I took the two photos of the mower in action, I was surprised to see that the driver was a young woman, perhaps 19 or 20 years old. When she saw me taking photos, I got a big smile and a friendly wave. I really shouldn't be surprised to see that, as it's quite normal here for the girls and women on farms to do the much of the same work as the men. The only areas that seem to be “male only” are those that genuinely need the muscles, such as moving hand line around. Anyway, she was whipping that monster machine around like an expert!
The last photo is something you should all be jealous of. It's two tomatoes from my neighbor's (Tim D.) garden, cleaned and chopped, and a nice dollop of Duke's mayonnaise. That's some mighty fine eating, let me tell you!
Morning in Paradise...
Morning in Paradise... Well, I had a nice photo from our morning walk to share, but my iPhone's battery chose this moment to croak. I can't even connect to my computer! There's a chore for me today: take my phone into the service outfit in Logan. Oh, well...
Yesterday afternoon, as planned, we headed out for dinner at Maddox. Debbie tried the turkey steak, and I had chopped lamb. Both of those were prepared basically like a hamburger patty, and both were very good. We'd have them again. But the star of the dinner was our dessert. Even though we were fairly full, we decided to try their pie. We've never had it, and several people have told us that it was good. They lied. It was way beyond good! We had a peach pie that was 95% peaches – fresh, with very little sugar added – and 5% pastry. It was topped with their homemade vanilla ice cream, but the truth is I barely noticed the ice cream. Those peaches were fantastic! That was one of the best pieces of peach pie I've ever had.
Then we went for a drive up toward Hardware Ranch. We were a bit early in the day for wildlife (we thought), but the sun was still well up so we'd thought we'd see the fall color nicely. Well, we certainly did see lots of beautiful fall color, especially in the upper half of the canyon. But we also saw quite a bit of wildlife. Lots of deer, a coyote (not far east of the dam), two beavers working away on their dams (right near hardware ranch itself), two kingfishers (gorgeous birds!), an osprey eating a small fish on top of a utility pole, and a close-up view of a dusky grouse (at right, not my photo). The latter we finally identified last night. The first time we saw some of these birds, we thought they were ptarmigan in summer plumage – but that made no sense, as they're way out of ptarmigan territory. Reading about them we discovered they have a very odd diet: the “needles” of fir trees and pine trees. Yuck!
When we got home, there was a buck in our front yard. We've seen this one before, nearly every day for the past few days. It's instantly identifiable, as one of his front legs is badly injured (looks like something wrong with his knee, from the way he limps). We think he's hiding out in the trees near our irrigation canal, then hobbling the short distance to our alfalfa field to chow down. He's going to have a tough time this winter, though there's a good chance that someone here will shoot him for the meat before then...
Yesterday afternoon, as planned, we headed out for dinner at Maddox. Debbie tried the turkey steak, and I had chopped lamb. Both of those were prepared basically like a hamburger patty, and both were very good. We'd have them again. But the star of the dinner was our dessert. Even though we were fairly full, we decided to try their pie. We've never had it, and several people have told us that it was good. They lied. It was way beyond good! We had a peach pie that was 95% peaches – fresh, with very little sugar added – and 5% pastry. It was topped with their homemade vanilla ice cream, but the truth is I barely noticed the ice cream. Those peaches were fantastic! That was one of the best pieces of peach pie I've ever had.
When we got home, there was a buck in our front yard. We've seen this one before, nearly every day for the past few days. It's instantly identifiable, as one of his front legs is badly injured (looks like something wrong with his knee, from the way he limps). We think he's hiding out in the trees near our irrigation canal, then hobbling the short distance to our alfalfa field to chow down. He's going to have a tough time this winter, though there's a good chance that someone here will shoot him for the meat before then...
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Morning walk in Paradise...
Morning walk in Paradise... We (Miki, Race, and I) left a bit later than we generally do, and went a bit further along a new route. This took us over a “dry hay” field, which you can see in the last two photos below (with two cute dogs!). The locals call any unirrigated field planted with alfalfa or grass a “dry hay” field. Usually these are fields that are impractical to irrigate, either because of their steepness or because they're too far from any source of water. In this case, neither applies; the slope is gentle and an irrigation canal runs along the field's eastern border. The density of the alfalfa plants suggests that at some point in the past this field was irrigated, but either the owner lost water rights or his interest, or it wasn't economically viable. It hasn't been cut this year at all, and the only grazing on it has been from deer and elk.
The first two photos show a beautiful irrigated alfalfa field that's quite close to the dry hay field. This field has been cut, raked, and baled twice this year already – and will most likely be cut this week for the last time this season. This hay goes to a dairy a few miles north of us, and they've collected a lot of hay this year.
We saw several hawks this morning, but nothing like the hawk density of the past few weeks. We also see no voles any more, and I suspect the former is caused by the latter. Something we did see in abundance: a small, yellow-green butterfly. They are everywhere in the fields. My beloved sunflowers are done for the year, I'm sure to the relief of my readers who have put up with 10,000 photos of them :)
The first two photos show a beautiful irrigated alfalfa field that's quite close to the dry hay field. This field has been cut, raked, and baled twice this year already – and will most likely be cut this week for the last time this season. This hay goes to a dairy a few miles north of us, and they've collected a lot of hay this year.
We saw several hawks this morning, but nothing like the hawk density of the past few weeks. We also see no voles any more, and I suspect the former is caused by the latter. Something we did see in abundance: a small, yellow-green butterfly. They are everywhere in the fields. My beloved sunflowers are done for the year, I'm sure to the relief of my readers who have put up with 10,000 photos of them :)
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