Just some Punq

THE CONTINENT.

FRANCE.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Paris, February 4.

   What should you think of there being at this moment in France a set of people who, in our nineteenth century, improving upon their predecessors of the great revolution, would put the existnce of the Supreme Being to the vote? Yet here is what passed but a very few days ago: Prince Napoleon, wishing to draw about him the notabilities of the free-thinking and republican coterie, gave a dinner at the Frères Provençeaux to seven persons, among whom were Madame George Sad, Mérimce, and Proudhon, the famous inventor of the formula “All Property is a Theft.” During dinner a vast deal of discussion upon religious and philosophical doctrines took place, and a wonderful deal of atheistic nonsense was expended, without, as you may conceive, any conclusion being attained. At last one of the guests (neither of those whom I have named) proposed that the opinions of the seven persons present should be taken by a vote upon this plain question — “Is there or is there not a Divine Being?” The impiety was actually committed; seven little rolls of paper were deposited in a hat after each guest had written down yes or no upon the inside. Six noes came out! and the seventh was a piece of blank paper. Many comments and jokes were made upon the undecided individual who had not ventured upon either affirmation or negation; and at last Proudhon, who (like all young Napoleon’s intimates) has his perfect freedom of speech with his imperial friend, turning to the Prince, said, “Monseigneur, this is your doing, and it is not fair.” The prince denied at first; objected that the secrecy of the vote was sacred; tried to get out of the scrape as best he might; but at last, pressed by his accuser, ended by avowing that the unwritten bit of paper, expressive of neither no nor yes, was in truth is, and he added, “To be candid, I have two contradictory opinions thereupon: when I am in the plenitude of my reasoning faculties, and when my intellect sees clear and straight before me, I say No without any hesitation; and then again there are times when doubts overtake me, when I really do not like to assume the responsibility of a denial, and when I am quite capable of saying Yes. Now, remembering these alternations of doubt and inclination to believe, I thought it on the whole safer and even more honest to say nothing at all, and therefor I put in a blank vote.” The five others too the prince’s excuses very well, only laughing and seeming unconcerned; but Proudhon, with a peculiar sort of smile that he has, and that may be held to mean anything you choose (provided it be bad), held up his hand, saying, “Ah! Monseigneur, Monseigneur! after all, then, you are but a false brother.”

Retyped from 6 February 1856: Putting God to the vote

Merlin Mann has shared an interesting idea for sharing sensitive information over e-mail without going through the hassles of learning to use e-mail encryption… and getting all your recipients to use the same scheme as you.

• Zip your files
• Put the zip file in your Dropbox ‘Public’ folder
• Email the file link, not the file

Originally from practicallyefficient

Merlin adds a bunch of extra “security” features that are mostly aimed at limiting the amount of time something is available (use a Hazel rule to clean up the files after a time) and making the URL to a file harder to just guess (e.g. by generating a password from 1Password and using it as the file name).

While those aren’t bad pieces of advice, per se, it’s pretty easy to write a script to pull everything out of someone’s public Dropbox folder on a schedule… so those pieces of advice don’t have all that much security value.

You can up the ante a bit by password-protecting the ZIP file; on a Mac (OS X) or Linux machine:

zip -ejr zipfilename.zip DirectoryOrFileToCompress

Of course, cracking zip passwords isn’t terribly hard, but it’s another step people have to go through, and at least the ZIP is still supported on every modern OS.

If you and your recipient are both on OS X, you can easily create an encrypted Disk Image file to share on Dropbox. If you’re not both on OS X, and you’ll be doing this a lot, you can create encrypted disk images using the wonderful and free TrueCrypt. It’s a bit to set up on OS X (especially if you already use MacFUSE for something), and creating the image each time can be a little annoying, so it’s not great for one-off stuff.

And, of course, you can use GnuPG to encrypt the files — it supports password-based (i.e. symmetric) encryption, so you needed mess about with keys. To do this easily:

• On OS X, use the GPGTools Installer, then also install GPGFileTool for drag-n-drop file encryption/decryption

• On Windows, use Gpg4win. Just right-click a file you want to encrypt, select GPGee->Encrypt (Symmetric) and follow the prompts.

Ultimately, it’s just not hard to actually use encryption with just a little setup. Just remember that all of these methods generate a password — don’t put your password in an e-mail with the link to the file: email the link and text the password.

There has been quite a bit of attention given to technology as a divisive force in our lives; much ado about people checking email or talking on a mobile phone at generally inappropriate times (such as at dinner with a companion). Some of this is quite reasonable criticism — our culture hasn’t entirely adapted well-established etiquette to newer technology, and some people do in fact use their gadgets as an excuse for what would otherwise be unconscionable behavior.

And yet, it seems that a certain class of people fall prey to extending this observation in a way that demonizes the technology itself. An oft-repeated message whose original author I can’t reliably find calls attention to this:

How come the guy reading a book at a park bench doesn’t come under the same scrutiny as the guy checking his email at the park bench?

Chris Bowler writes in response:

The guy reading the book, even if in a public space, is usually there for that very reason. He wants to read a book and has chosen an attractive, comfortable place to do so. He’s made the decision to give his attention to this activity and is following through on it.

The guy checking his email comes under scrutiny because most likely he’s come to the park for some other reason. But rather than devote his attention to that reason, he’s fragmenting his attention and checking his email (Twitter, RSS, Facebook etc.) while also giving his attention to the primary reason for being there. He is in fact doing performing both activities less well than he would if focused on one at a time.

What’s interesting to me is the assumption carried here; that the piece of technology one holds in one’s hands — in this case, something like an iPhone instead of a printed and bound volume of words — must imply intent.

I’ve been in both situations described by the subject comment. That is, I’ve been engrossed in a book while on a park bench next to someone checking their e-mail; and I’ve been the guy with my iPhone out checking e-mail next to someone who is reading a book. In both cases, the entire purpose of my going to the park was to be in a pleasant place while I absorbed information. That is, when I bring my iPhone to the park and check e-mail, it’s because I need to check my e-mail, and the park is a far more pleasant venue than my office.

But whenever I bring my iPhone to the park, I run the very real risk that someone will glower at me, or perhaps even confront me with “get your head out of your phone!” Is it because they think I’m in the park for some other reason, and I’m letting the world go by? I don’t think so.

What makes more sense to me is that clearly doing something most people consider “work” violates many people’s sense of propriety because work is something you’re supposed to do at work. Until recently, the people who did work while not in their place of work — aside from those whose work requires them to work in various places — were people who obsessed about their work to the point that it subsumed all other aspects of their lives. When someone sees someone in a places that’s for recreation, it seems somehow wrong that they’re doing work there.

Which leads to what is, in my mind, a better question: how is my choice to work from a park bench worse than a college student’s choice to study out on a blanket in the grass?

I was inspired by MinimalMac writing on Sparrow, to share my experience with said application.

On a whim, I had purchased Sparrow, which was linked from (I think) DaringFireball, before seeing the above-linked commentary; after only a short time using it, I’m a big fan. But it’s not obvious from Sparrow’s site why it’s awesome (at least to me), so…

Summary

Definitely a 1.0 application. The key features work outstandingly well, with overall good polish; but there are little nits throughout. For example, there is a preference for deciding whether the Sparrow icon will appear in the menubar, the dock, or both. It doesn’t work correctly.

That said, it’s an incredibly efficient way to deal with mail. I’ve removed Mail.app after using Sparrow for only a day.

Some details

1. Sparrow starts up incredibly quickly; on my machine, about 30% faster than Mail.app with the same accounts configured.

2. With the message preview pane opened, processing email (ala the Inbox Zero method) is almost too easy. Keyboard shortcuts are provided for everything, and you have the option of using the same keyboard shortcuts as the GMail web application, if you’re used to that (this is off by default). There are some nice little touches for processing: for example, the Backspace or Delete keys archive messages, while Cmd-Backspace moves them to GMail’s trash — this latter is Finder’s behavior, and so is very easy to remember.

3. Replying in full is relatively easy, but the “quick reply” feature is incredibly convenient for dealing with those messages that require only a short answer or simple acknowledgment.

4. Using From: aliases (which I use to handle mail to organizational addresses, which may forward elsewhere when I hand off duties) is incredibly simple, and has very smart defaults.

5. Using multiple GMail accounts (I have a separate one for work) is also well-thought out, allowing for clear, easy (optionally keyboard-driven) switching between accounts.

6. The interface is wonderfully minimal — the controls largely stay out of your way and let you focus on the messages themselves.

Conclusion

This is the first time I’ve ever paid for a Mail application. For GMail use, I find this one far superior to all of Mail.app, Entourage, Outlook, and the GMail web app. That said, there are definitely tiny annoyances that need to be worked out (though the developers are responsive to support emails, which helps). Even so, it’s so good, and helps me be so efficient — while staying nicely out of my way — that I don’t hesitate to recommend it.

If you’re not a GMail user, it’s not ready for you yet, but you can look forward to 1.1, which will add support for generic IMAP accounts.

The Kindle is a wonderful reading device, with just a couple of small problems:

1. The copy protection (DRM) on Amazon’s books means that you’re tied forever to the Kindle, and if Amazon ever gets out of the eBook business — or stops selling the Kindle — you could lose all your books when your Kindle eventually wears out.
2. Though the Kindle supports free books from places like Gutenberg and Feedbooks, it can be somewhat annoying to manage a large collection of those books.

The solution to both, it turns out, is the wonderful eBook library manager known as Calibre.

Managing your eBook library

Calibre makes managing your eBook library easy. You can have a large library of books and easily transfer them between your computer and Kindle. This means it’s simple to have only the books you want to carry with you on your Kindle, which makes it a much more useful reading device.

Calibre works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X — download your copy of Calibre.

Once Calibre is installed and running, simply plug in your Kindle using the USB cable that Amazon supplied for that purpose. Give Calibre a minute or two to realize that there’s a Kindle attached, and walk you through the first-time connection process.

After this, you’ll want to visit the preferences dialog, and choose the behavior section. Make sure that your preferred eBook format is set to MOBI, since Mobipocket is the underlying Amazon Kindle format.

You can now add books you’ve downloaded from free eBook providers to your Calibre library, and send them to your Kindle simply by clicking Send to Device. If you download a book that’s not already in MOBI format, you can right-click the book in your library, select Convert, and choose to make a MOBI-formatted book. This works great with HTML and ePub files… but it’s hit or miss with PDFs (depending on how much care the PDF authoring software took to preserve reasonable text flow).

You can also select your Kindle from the toolbar to see what books it has, and delete what you’re not reading, or transfer your Amazon-purchased books into your library. The Amazon-purchased books will still be protected by DRM, so they’ll only work on the Kindle you copied them from… unless you read the next section!

Removing DRM from Amazon eBooks

CAUTION: following the advice in this section may be illegal in your jurisdiction. I am not an attorney, so I cannot counsel you on this matter. Make sure you know the law before proceeding.

Amazon’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme is designed to make it a little harder to easily share copies of eBooks you’ve purchased with others. This is, on its face, quite reasonable — and as long as you own a Kindle and Amazon continues to provide the ability to register Kindles and re-download the books you’ve purchased, it works reasonably well.

Unfortunately, as long as the books you’ve purchased from Amazon have DRM, you can’t decide to ditch the Kindle and buy another eBook reader — you’d lose the ability to read all your books. And, if Amazon ever shuts down the Kindle service, like Wal-Mart did with their digital music store, you’d better hope your Kindle never gets lost or broken. Once Amazon no longer provides the service, you no longer have a reasonable backup of your books.

If you want to fix this problem, there is a collection of plugins for Calibre that can help you out. Download the deDRM tools from the link provided here.

Open the ZIP file you’ve downloaded, and unpack it into a folder you can find again. Open Calibre, visit the preferences, and select Plugins. Use the Add a new plugin button to add each Calibre plugin (they are ZIP files themselves) from the Calibre_plugins directory that was inside the tools ZIP file. (Note that the tools ZIP contains a lot more than the Calibre plugins; you can ignore the other stuff.)

Once all the plugins are added, you need to configure one of them. Still in the Plugins window, expand the File type plugins category, and find the K4PC, K4Mac, Kindle Mobi and Topaz DeDRM plugin. Double-click to configure. A window will pop up prompting you for your Kindle serial number (it’s on the back, and available in your Kindle settings on the Kindle device). If you have more than one, put commas between them.

Save settings and restart Calibre.

Now, when you attach your Kindle to Calibre, you can click the Kindle icon on Calibre’s toolbar, select an eBook you bought from Amazon, right-click, and select Add to library. Calibre will automatically convert the book to a DRM-free MOBI file and add it to your library. Should you ever need to buy a different reader, you now have a MOBI file that can either be read directly by your new device, or easily converted to another popular format.

Via DaringFireball, we get this snippet:

That Simultaneous Voice/Data Limitation

When Apple and Verizon announced their deal for the iPhone 4 last month, there was much hemming and hawing about a technical CDMA limitation: it doesn’t support simultaneous voice and data. My thought was: if this CDMA simultaneous voice-data restriction is a deal-breaker, how come we’ve never heard complaints about it from the 94 million existing Verizon customers?

… CDMA’s limitation only works one way: when you are on a call, you can’t use data. But when you are using data, calls come through. If you decline the call, data continues, almost uninterrupted. When you’re using the hotspot feature, if you accept a call, Wi-Fi clients receive no data for the duration of the call, but the Wi-Fi connection is not dropped. As soon as the call is ended, data resumes.

I haven’t run into a problem with this once in the week I’ve had the phone.

Mr. Gruber clearly doesn’t use the phone in a way where this limitation is important — and good for him, I suppose. But for people who use an iPhone more like I do, it is a problem. I use the iPhone extensively for work. This includes using it to research on-the-fly while I’m on a conference call, and using it to send information to other call participants. For me — and for many like me — not being able to use data while on the phone completely destroys the entire point of having a “smart phone”.

It’s a shame that Verizon’s network can’t support this feature; and I understand that for many people, it won’t be an issue. But it’s not so easy to dismiss as a non-issue for the rest of us.

This is possibly the best quote ever on either the topic of Emacs or the topic of Intelligent Design:

[Emacs] will be there when the icecaps melt and the cities drown, when humanity destroys itself in fire and zombies, when the roaches finally achieve sentience, take over, and begin using computers themselves – at which point its various Ctrl-Meta key-chords will seem not merely satisfyingly ergonomic for the typical arthropod, but also direct evidence for the universe’s Intelligent Design by some six-legged, multi-jointed God. — Kieran Healy on The Setup

Love it.