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.

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.

Phil Plait, of Bad Astronomy fame, gave an outstanding talk at the yearly skeptic’s conference known as TAM. The video is at the end of this post, and is well worth the 30 minutes of your time it will take to watch: it’s called “Don’t Be A Dick”.

I whole-heartedly agree with Plait’s core points, but I’d like to expand on them just a little bit.

I think that many people, when arguing a point, tend to forget that there is a difference between respect for a belief and respect for a person who holds that belief. It’s not a compete dichotomy — when a person promotes a false, harmful belief despite it having been shown to be clearly wrong, that person does and should lose the respect of thinking people.

However, most people who hold irrational beliefs are decent, intelligent people; and to Plait’s credit, he correctly points out that attacking, insulting, or deriding them is both pointless and kind of a dick move. Pointless because instead of helping those people, you’ve merely enraged them (and probably caused them to clutch their belief even more tightly). And a dick move because the only value is that you’ve made yourself feel better at the expense of a fellow human. Instead, you can choose to show respect for that person even if you cannot respect their belief.

The path to addressing an irrational belief is argument: and the only good reason to argue with someone is that you genuinely care about them. If we genuinely care about our fellow human beings, we can forgive them for having irrational beliefs. That does not mean treating such beliefs as valid; quite the contrary, it means taking the time to understand and thoroughly — even passionately — argue against them. However, it also means respecting the person we’re arguing with enough to avoid name-calling and vitriol.

Belittling people just because they hold — or even defend — an irrational belief is hypocritical; we’ve all held an irrational belief from time to time. And besides that, it makes you into nothing more than a bully. But if you can respect people enough to forgive their belief, you can avoid being a dick to them. And if you can do that, you might just be able to persuade them that their belief is irrational. And, in the end, isn’t that the whole point?

Phil Plait – Don’t Be A Dick from JREF on Vimeo.

api-status.com tracks dozens of APIs and tells you if they’re up, having performance issues, or are completely down. (via, i think, andre) – kottke

There is only one proper response to this idea. Is there an API for that?