Three of our candidates (and our current president) are agitating for yet another war in the Middle East, despite never having been attacked by Iran.

Three of our candidates (and our current president) are happy that the government claims authority to imprison you indefinitely, without trial or lawyer or any recourse whatsoever, simply by accusation that you are a terrorist.

Three of our candidates (and our current president) are willing to take that further and kill you, anywhere in the world, without trial, based purely on accusations.

Three of our candidates (and our current president) are fine with snooping into your spending and reading history, without a warrant and in secret, just to check if you are a criminal.

Three of our candidates (and our current president) think the best place to make intrusive, controlling decisions, is in a body governing more than three hundred million people of incredibly diverse cultures, beliefs, and personal circumstances.

Three of our candidates (and our current president) believe the government always knows best, even while the government is blatantly violating basic principles we all learned as children (do unto others, don’t live beyond your means, admit mistakes and accept the consequences).

Three of our candidates (and our current president) believe that more government is always the answer, regardless of the problem, and regardless of whether a problem even exists.

Now is the time to vote for the one candidate who considers you to be a human being, in full possession of your faculties and your own opinions and beliefs about how your life should be lived. Now is the time to vote for Ron Paul.

This is not the fault of TDD.

TDD should be irrelevant to your design process. The only demand TDD puts on your design is the same demand any testing-heavy process would: extensive use of dependency injection to make unit testing with mocks easier. You should already have architected your module to match your requirements, before you ever write one line of code. Take the time to do your design in a deep way, before you start coding, and you will save yourself much time later.

TDD is not there to make your design better or to show you where your architecture needs to be rethought. TDD is there to ensure as you go that you are fulfilling the plan you already came up with, and not introducing other factors. TDD is a check, not a solution. Use it right, and you will reap the benefits of more stable code, more reliable extensibility, and fewer bugs getting to your users. Just don’t expect it to do your work for you.

I finally did it. I resisted through the first two generations (not entirely voluntarily), but I am now the proud father of a third-generation iPad. Having spent the last three days in essentially constant interaction with the device, I consider myself well-prepared to review it.

Mine is the 32-GB, wifi-only model, in black. I see no need to spring for the 4G version; if I’m using the iPad, I’m probably near wifi anyway.

All in all, I am incredibly satisfied with the iPad. My previous computing environment has been my iPhone, a Dell Mini 9 netbook, and a homebuilt desktop PC back in my study, running Ubuntu. Since I got my iPhone in October, the netbook has increasingly been relegated to a closet, as much of its utility has been usurped by the phone. The iPad puts the nail in the coffin, doing everything the netbook could and more, without being saddled with the comparatively tiny screen of my iPhone.

I mainly used the netbook for couch media consumption (catching up on feeds and social media while watching sitcoms with my wife, etc), and went to the PC in my study for production (coding, writing blog posts, and so on). This weekend, that dynamic changed a bit. The iPad does all the media consumption activities adroitly, of course. Between the browser and activity-specific apps (Netflix, Feeddler RSS, and such), my infovore habits are well-fed. At the same time, the iPad is perfectly workable for production. I wrote multiple blog posts on it this weekend, with no real hindrances. The on-screen keyboard is surprisingly easy to get used to, and the iOS spellchecker is good at catching the few mistakes that get through; I feel like I have not lost any speed at all, compared to a full desktop keyboard. One complaint is that it could have more punctuation on the primary keyboard, under long-presses or the shift key; writing HTML tags was painful, since < and > are two layers deep in the symbols menu.

The screen is beautiful. I saw little to no pixelization; only in a few apps that obviously used raster graphics and fonts instead of vector (SpringPad, I’m looking at you!). Even the few iPhone apps I have installed look quite nice in the 2x zoom.

The battery lasts a suitably long time. I opened the iPad’s box at about 2:30 on Friday afternoon, and used it straight through without charging until I went to bed at 1:00 am, when it still had 10-20% charge remaining. Saturday and Sunday brought similar experiences. The downside of such capacity, though, is in charging time. I can plug my iPhone in over lunch, and it will fully charge from nearly empty. The iPad only gained 10-20% charge in that same time; it will need charged every night to avoid the hassle during the day. This is expected, especially if you look at iFixit’s teardown and see that the tablet is essentially a giant battery (see step 21) with a touchscreen strapped to it, but it needs to be a consideration.

One huge downside of iOS is the lack of user accounts. I can understand ignoring that feature for a phone OS, but the iPad is advertised as a post-PC device; one thing that all PC OSes (including OSX) do quite well, is separating concerns by different users. I can install the apps I want to see, and my wife can install hers, and we don’t have to step on each other’s toes to do it. No such luck on the iPad. For instance, we are both caught up in the Draw Something craze, and both want to use the iPad to play it (due to the far larger screen than our iPhones), but there’s no easy way to do that. We ended up installing both the paid and free versions of the app, and each signed into one version to use it.

The new iPad is, of course, very fast and smooth-feeling. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns, even compared to similar tasks on a desktop PC. everything just works, and it does so quickly.

As a final negative, the audio is very quiet. Even in a silent room, alone, I have trouble hearing some things. The speaker does seem designed to take advantage of acoustics if you have the tablet laying on the right kind of surface, but on my couch that isn’t always available.

Verdict: I am pretty much in love with my iPad. My netbook has become completely superfluous, and I am even less likely to sequester myself at my desk for production. I now have instant access to nearly any data source in a manageable form-factor on a beautiful display and with little regard for outside power sources. What’s not to love?

Subsidiarity
This concept holds that government should be handled at the lowest level possible; higher levels of government hold a “subsidiary” position, dealing only with those things the lower levels couldn’t handle. This is reflected in the Constitution itself; the Framers chose those things they doubted a state’s ability to handle (inter-state commerce, foreign relations, military defense from foreign invasion), and a few that were too important to allow the states to decide (protection of natural rights from government interference). These things were given to the federal government to administer; everything else was given, in the 10th Amendment, to the states to deal with. Ron Paul is the only candidate with a bold plan to actually begin returning the federal government to its Constitutional authority, and allow the states to resume their responsibilities.

Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country. – Ronald Reagan

Just War
This doctrine holds that the only just war is a reactive war – a just government shall never be the aggressor. Unfortunately, American politicians tend to disagree: Every other GOP candidate, and even our nominally anti-war Democrat president, are in favor of preemptive war against Iran, or any other country they think might have nuclear weapons, or that they think might, maybe, attack the US (or Israel). Ron Paul is the only one who thinks that maybe, just maybe, it would be intrinsically morally wrong to attack a people who have yet done us no harm. This is probably one reason Paul gets more donations from active duty military service-people than all the other candidates combined; our soldiers know they shouldn’t be where they are, and don’t want this trend of senseless, illegal wars to continue. Ron Paul is also, quite rightly, in favor of a strong military for national defense; in the occasion where we must defend ourselves, we should be able to do so.

Right to Life
Ron Paul is a career OB-GYN. He has delivered over 4000 babies. He is staunchly pro-life, and has actually legitimately worked to end abortions, and return the power regarding them to the states. Abortion is a criminal issue, just like any other murder, administration over which the Constitution says goes to the states.

Government out of Marriage
Ron Paul personally believes in marriage between a man and a woman. However, he also recognizes that the government has no business interfering with an inherently religious institution. What business is it to Washington who you “marry,” regardless of who recognizes the marriage? If government must have some record for taxes, or HIPPAA, or what have you, then fine: there are ways to do that without interfering in this institution.

Racist Drug War
The US incarcerates more young black males than any other country. In fact, the US incarcerates more people of any type, in proportion, than any other country (this includes authoritarian states like China). This stems from the fact that the US prison population is about 75% made up of non-violent “criminals,” guilty of “crimes” in which there was no victim at all. Drug crimes. The federal government’s 4-decade-long “War Against Drugs” has wasted billions of dollars. It has swelled our prison population to the point our prisons cannot handle it; California recently just let a bunch of people go, since there was no room for them. It has directly given rise to violent inner-city gangs, who could not support themselves if there was no black market in drugs. And finally, it has produced no reduction in drug use whatsoever, while giving rise to ever-more-unhealthy drugs as the safer ones are made illegal. Ron Paul will work to end this senseless “war” on substances, reducing government expense and waste as he reduces the pointless prison population, increasing your personal freedoms in the process.

Economics
I confess: I am not an expert in economics. I could not sit down to a debate about the finer points about Keynesian and Austrian economics. However, I can see that Ron Paul predicted the housing collapse way back in 2003. I can see that he is the only candidate who convincingly argues against living beyond our means (and backs it up with his voting record). This is what the American people have been seeking for decades, and politicians have paid it mere lip service. Ron Paul is the first one who shows a history of actually trying on this subject. He’s on to something – note how any economics questions in debates have the other candidates parroting the things Paul has been saying for years.

Electability
This is the lowest of my priorities, but luckily it favors Ron Paul as well. Of all the GOP contenders, Ron Paul consistently polls the best against President Obama — he has the best chance of winning the general election of them all. He pulls in important issues for Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists, rather than meekly toeing any one party line for the votes. He can be trusted to act according to his principles and stated beliefs, because he has already been doing so for decades (check his voting record). He won’t drop his campaign promises on the floor as soon as he wins the election, like so many presidents seem fond of doing.

The bottom line is this. If you love everything our presidents have done for the past twenty-plus years (Clinton, Bush, and Obama), then by all means vote for Romney or Santorum or Gingrich. If, on the other hand, you would like to see meaningful change in the way your government deals with you, if you want to see a visible decrease in government interference with your natural rights, if you actively want a smaller government, and the lower taxes and increased freedom that entails, then you must, in good conscience, vote for Representative Ron Paul.

Here are the books:

Sam Jones’s favorite books »

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Primary:
Stephen King — From a Buick 8
Elizabeth Kostova — The Historian
Robert A. Heinlein — Stranger in a Strange Land
Kurt Vonnegut — Slaughterhouse-Five
Richard Adams — Watership Down
Joseph Heller — Catch-22
Scott Hahn — A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture
J. D. Salinger — The Catcher in the Rye
Henry Petroski — The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance
Terry Pratchett — Going Postal
Iain M. Banks — Matter
Stephen King — On Writing

Alternates:
Margaret Atwood — The Handmaid’s Tale
F. Scott Fitzgerald — The Great Gatsby

I think I have a decent mix of genres, some hard and easy books. The Historian and Stranger in a Strange Land were on last year’s list, but I didn’t get around to them. And yes, I do have a history of the pencil on my list as a book I’ve wanted to read for some time…

Should be fun! I’ll be keeping track on my 2012 Reading page here, and you can also follow my reading updates on Goodreads.

Harry Turtledove — How Few Remain
The first novel in Turtledove’s Southern Victory alternate history series. Basically: What if Robert E. Lee’s messenger had never lost Special Order 191, the details of the South’s invasion which Union soldiers found and then used to stop the army’s march? What if the Confederacy had then gone on to win the Civil War? This reads like I imagine any historical novel might — I could see the events in this series being straight up historical fiction. I went on to read the next novel in the series, which details WWI in this altered timeline. I own the rest of the series and hope to revisit it this year.

Alan’s father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine—he kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune teller, and an island. He only had two or three family portraits, but he treasured them, even if outsiders who saw them often mistook them for landscapes. There was one where his family stood on his father’s slopes, Mom out in the open for a rare exception, a long tail of extension cords snaking away from her to the cave and the diesel generator’s three-prong outlet. He hung it over the mantel, using two hooks and a level to make sure that it came out perfectly even.

Walter M. Miller Jr. — A Canticle for Leibowitz
After a devastating nuclear war, a Catholic monastery in the American Southwest devotes itself to preserving what scientific knowledge can be saved from pre-war humanity, through the rebuilding of civilization over the centuries following the war. Quite well-written, especially as this is the only novel Miller published in his lifetime. Notable for presenting Christianity mostly favorably in a science fiction. That was nice. A sequel was written, but published posthumously some thirty years after Canticle; I hope to read it soon. I hear Miller became disenchanted with the Church over the intervening decades and it shows, so we shall see how it turned out.

Cory Doctorow — Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
This book was… interesting. Two plots – one about setting Toronto up with a free, collectively-run public WiFi net. The other about Alan’s [or Adam's or Adrian's] less… conventional… history. I’ve shared paragraph from early in the first chapter to the right.

Scott Westerfeld — Uglies
Excellent YA dystopian fiction. A few centuries in the future, humans mostly live in environmentally-friendly, post-scarcity cities. An age-based caste system divides the children and young adults from the rest of society; at the age of sixteen, young Uglies undergo cosmetic surgery to become Pretties and join the city proper, where they spend most of their time on partying and other recreational activities. But all [dun dun dunnnnn] is not as it seems.

Judith Lindbergh — The Thrall’s Tale
The Viking colonization of Greenland, as told from a slaves point of view. Very much not your typical rollicking Viking fiction of raids and battle-glory; a good counterpoint to The Long Ships, one of my favorite books and another that you should check out. The most interesting aspect of this book [to me] was actually the writing style. Lindbergh writes almost as if this is a poem without line breaks; there is a fascinating rhythm to her prose that had me nodding my head with the beat as I read.

Cormac McCarthy — The Road
Not a single quotation mark anywhere! The writing style was unusual enough to keep my attention, and the father’s relationship with his son is heartwarming. A good post-apocalyptic world without the all-out action feel you get from post-apocalyptic movies.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Aldous Huxley — Brave New World
This book could easily be read as a straight metaphor for modern American society. Americans, like the residents of Brave New World, tend to live in a panem et circenses fashion: with plentiful food and quick-access entertainment and consumerism, who really cares what’s really happening in the world? Worried about the future? Take another dose of soma or watch the latest American Idol.

Frank Herbert — Dune
One of those seminal science fiction works which seem to be required reading [literally: my sister-in-law is required to read it for her science fiction literature class], yet which I managed to reach the age of 27 without picking up. I am glad I finally got around to it; as with much good scifi, Dune paints a broad, beautiful landscape of a setting for its events. Also, the “Litany Against Fear” is one of those little poetic… things… that I love about good science fiction/space opera.

Ursula K. Le Guin — Rocannon’s World
A good medieval fiction — set on another planet in an interstellar society in the midst of a civil war. The first novel of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, I mainly picked this up to work my way up to the more famous books in the series [The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed], but I ended up really enjoying Rocannon’s World and the other short novels leading up to the heavy hitters. In fact, I have been struggling to get immersed in Left Hand, but I had no trouble at all whipping through the preceding books with joy.

I quite liked all nine books I read, which is nice. Several were the beginning of series which I then finished out or at least continued.

Without further ado, here are the books I finished:

Sam Jones’s favorite books »

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Harry Turtledove — How Few Remain
Walter M. Miller Jr. — A Canticle for Liebowitz
Cory Doctorow — Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Scott Westerfeld — Uglies
Judith Lindbergh — The Thrall’s Tale
Cormac McCarthy — The Road
Aldous Huxley — Brave New World
Frank Herbert — Dune
Ursula K. Le Guin — Rocannon’s World

Stay tuned for my 2012 list!

I decided to remote into my home computer, my eight-year-old son was on so I figured I would mess with him.

Is SpaceX Changing the Rocket Equation?

569 days after he was arrested, detained, and held in isolation, Bradley Manning gets a date in court for a pre-trial hearing to see if the government has enough evidence to charge him. (via The Agitator)

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — C. S. Lewis

“A great misconception: the idea that cash changing hands is the only measure of a payment”

Many people would say that since I have not paid for these services, I have no right to complain about them or work to get the companies to change them. A common refrain is: “It’s free – if you don’t like it, don’t use it.” This is wrong and illustrates a great misconception: the idea that cash changing hands is the only measure of a payment. These people apparently believe these services are created as a charitable gift to the world. Something everyone needs to understand is this: you are not Google’s customer, or Facebook’s customer, or any other ad-based website’s customer. You are their product; they sell your eyes and screen real estate to advertisers, their real customers. The free service you use is there to get you to the site where you will see the ads. So that’s one way you pay the service back: ad impressions (and clicks if you like the ad).

At the same time, every piece of data I store in these services is analyzed. Every Facebook post, every email I send or receive, is checked over to get an idea of what I like and how best to advertise to me, and also aggregated to get a feel for the whole market — invaluable data for advertisers. This is another way I pay the service back: loads of personal data to be mined to sell more ads.

“If someone can share with most of their friends by posting on a service, but has to inform me separately… they won’t bother. I’ll just be out of the loop.”

Finally, especially in the case of social networking (but also for any tangential site that happens to have the concept of “friends”), my very presence on the site is a massive incentive for my circle of friends and acquaintances to join. What use would Facebook have if I didn’t know anyone there? This is also a nail in the coffin of “just don’t use the service”: what real alternative is there to Facebook? If I leave Facebook for G+, I lose most of Facebook’s utility since only a fraction of my friends are on G+. In the real world, systems inter-operate; I can leave my cell phone company for another, and still call the same people I used to; not so on the Web. This leaves the option of just not using that class of service at all, but these very same services are rapidly making fall-back impossible. In danah boyd’s article about G+’s “real name” policy (the comments on which are why I am writing this post), sapphire paw leaves this comment: “If someone can share with most of their friends by posting on a service, but has to inform me separately… they won’t bother. I’ll just be out of the loop.”

Note that the third point (my presence as incentive to join) is another way for the companies to use the content I generate; if I didn’t post to Facebook, then the value of my presence plummets as if I were not there at all.

So I have listed here three concrete ways in which I pay a free service like GMail and G+ and Facebook for the use of their services. This gives me all the justification I need to haggle, to complain, to try to change aspects of these services, just as I would in any other business transaction.