Since I often need a copy of my emacs file somewhere where it’s not worth pulling my whole sysadmin git repository, I’m a gonna put my .emacs file here.  Maybe someone else will find it useful.  It basically does the following:

• makes my background color a little less harsh.
• enables syntax highlighting by default.
• makes the selected region highlighted (this behavior will be default in the next version of emacs, but I’m using 22.x at the moment).
• modify the tab width to 3.
• enable org mode
• make line numbering available (this is sometimes useful).

I’ll be keeping this up to date as my make changes…

;;-------------------------------------
;; Some preferences:
(set-background-color "antique white")
;; I want syntax highlighting by default.
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
;; I want to see the selected region (this will be default in v23).
(transient-mark-mode 1)
;; I like small indents.
(setq standard-indent 3);
(setq default-tab-width 3);
;; I don't want to see the splash screen.
(setq inhibit-startup-message t);

;;-----------------------------------------------
;; org mode setup
;;------------------------------------------------
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org\\'" . org-mode))

;;(global-set-key "\C-o" ctl-x-map)
(global-set-key [?\C-c ?l] 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)

;;---------------------------------------------------
;; For special packages:
;;---------------------------------------------------
;; Add local lisp folder to load-path
;;(setq load-path (append load-path (list "~/.emacs.d/elisp")))
;; sometimes line numbering is useful.
(require 'linum)

This is another thing I have to do rarely enough that I forget the commands, but often enough it’s worth keeping a note of it. I use git, ssh, scp, etc. all the damn time between various computers, and it’s stupid to keep entering passwords every time. You can get around this using ssh-agent.  The process is pretty short:

1. Generate a public key.  Logon to the host want to connect from:

    #ssh-keygen

   This generates a key pair (of type dsa), both of which are located in the .ssh directory.  The files will be id_dsa and id_dsa.pub.  The latter file is the public key, and the former the private key.  By copying the public key to the .ssh/, we provide ssh with an alternate means of confirming our access rights.  Rather than prompt for a password, it checks that the private key (client side) matches that of the server (public key).

2. Append the generated key to the servers .ssh/authorized_keys file.  The simplest way is:

   ssh-copy-id user_name@remote_host.org

That’s it.  Now you should be able to scp, ssh, or git (via ssh) to that machine without entering a password. You may have to enter the private key (the passphrase you provided when generating your key pairs) the first time you use ssh from the pc (this is the default behaviour on Fedora).
If you run into problems, this is discussed in more detail here.

So, another fantastic video over at TED. The talk title is “What separates us from the apes?”. It turns out it is our highly developed language. The talk goes over so much more though: environmental catastrophy, destruction of diversity, and of course our mad cruelty to animals. She’s a fantastically wise and observant person. A pretty attractive woman too.

I’ve been sharing some of my favourite videos over at TED with some of my friends, and I decided I should start advertising them over here. Below is an awesome one which I plan to apply to my own apartment. Particularly the mother in law plant. I’ll be putting 8 of those in the bedroom.

For my current position at Gecko-Research, I have to set up an online shop for their fledgling software retailing business.  Since they want to keep initial costs low, and since I prefer to use free software whenever reasonable, I started looking around for something gpl’d.  I decided on Zen-Cart since it seemed to have the most active community.  It’s apparently a branch of another project called osCommerce.  Both are gpl’d project, but neither are paritcularly open.  I suspect everything I’m about to say about Zen-Cart is true about osCommerce, but it’s conjecture, as I haven’t spent too much time investigating the issue.

I think I can say some things  specifically about Zen-Cart however.  The Zen Cart project seems to be suffering from a kind of schizophrenia.  I think the people currenlty running the project, and owning the trademark, really want to be selling proprietary, copyright software, but since they started with GPL’d code, they can’t.  Whether or not this the case, they certainly seem to be pretty frustrated.  It’s been years since they’ve had a release.  They keep promising more and more whenevery they finally do release again, but they keep pushing the release date forward, and the proposed release number up.  That’s always a bad sign.  It’s especially wierd in a free software project, because it’s just a cheesy marketing ploy: oh yeah it’s been years since we released anything, but that’s becuase we’re totally making huge changes.

The problem is they suffer from a lack of income, since their software is gpl’d you can download it for free.  That’s okay, but they refuse to accept the advantages that the gpl grants: namely you gain an active an helpful user body.  They seem to chase off anyone who tries to contribute.  For example, if you want to contribute to their documentation wiki, you have to send a PM to one of the adminstrators to ask for a wiki account.   There’s nowhere on the wiki that tells you this either (well there is now, i added it).  I had to post a message to a forum, and then follow a link someone sent in reply.  I had to tell them what I was interested in working on, and  had to respond to several antagonistic emails from one of the site admin when I tried to fix up a few other pages which were particularly rotten.  No wonder many of the pages haven’t been touched since 2005, and why the wiki is stagnating and largely useless.

Anyway, it’s a usefull enough codebase that I’m going to use it and not start from scratch.  But for the sake of my work colleagues, I think it’s important I document some of the issues I had to deal with to get our shop up and running properly.  I would prefer to do this in the zen cart wiki or forums, but my impression is I have to be fairly careful what I say over there, or I’ll just get banned.    Thus I’ll be posting a bunch of aritcles on the subject here, whenever there’s something I, or my colleagues might need access to in the future, particularly when I think that information might be more generally useful. I’ve also had some thoughts regarding the nature of working on a distributed, and particularly a free project, and how to keep it from staggering like the Zen Cart project seems to be doing.  In other words, I’ll be doing a little venting here as well.  So I”ve made a category for the subject.

There is an excellent comment on the jail sentence for the Pirate Bay founders, and the criminal charges against philosophy professor Horcio Potel available here: http://isoc.ph/portal/2009/04/isoc-philippines-statement-on-pirate-bay

Wow, this is just fantastic. I’m so glad someone cobbled this together. It’s a perfect little piece. Notice how the weaker Schiff’s antagonists positions are, the more they take a ridiculing antagonistic stance. At one point, when Schiff is predicting perfectly what’s going to happen, the commentator says “Okay Peter, I know you want to continue with your expose of Santa Claus”…

Keep this in mind whenever you see an empty suit ridiculing someone’s ideas. Sarcasm and ad hominem attacks are common weapons that they reach for when they don’t have any facts or evidence to back them up.

In a fantastic demonstration of how much our national attitude to marijuana prohibition has changed in the short time since president Obama was elected, there was a serious discussion regardling the legalization of marijuana on CNBC.

Rob Kampia does a fantastic job in his media appearances.  He always comes across as calm, rational, and well informed.  Unfortunately these debate forums are atrocious when it comes to doing any kind of real analysis of an issue, as the participants simply don’t get enough time to challenge conveniently accepted falsehoods.

So I thought I’d point out the misinformation and disingenuity on the part of Asa Hutchinson which Rob didn’t have the opportunity to specifically address:

“Legalizing will expand use”.  Quoth mister Hutchinson:

The question is whether it should be expanded or legalized, absolutely not.  If you look at harmful drugs, whether it’s tobacco or other hard drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, the objective of society is to reduce the use of harmful drugs.  If you legalize another harmful drug the question is will it expand use and avaiability?  The answer is absolutely yes!  Why would you want to do that?

In this statement, Mr. Hutchinson lumps marijuana, cocain and methamphetamine together. This is a common ploy trying to create the mental association of harm with marijuana, despite the fact that marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine are vastly different from one another with respect to their levels of harm. But mr. Kampia is right to simply ignore this, as it is a red herring.

The real lie is the statement that legalizing a drug will lead to an increase in the use of a drug. Mr Kampia makes a valid comparison to Alcohol prohibition, which the announcer fails to fathom. What Mr. Kampia is saying is prohibition does not reduce cannabis use. Since prohibtion has been put in place, marijuana use in America has increased, not decreased. 30 years of a draconian war on drugs have not helped either. On the other hand, Holland, where marijuana can be legally bought, sold and smoked, has lower cannabis consumption than its neighboring countries, where Marijuana is illegal. Oh, and  Decriminalization has also had a positive influence on Portugal’s drug problem.. In other words, prohibition does no good, only harm.

“The population resists the the legalisation of marijuana”

Thus far in the last 8 years they have not been successful in changing the law. In fact Alaska decriminalized Marijuana, when they saw it became a huge problem they adjusted the law and recriminalized it. And so the population still resists the legalization of marijuana. But it’s a public decision, but whenever you talk about the cost benefit, first of all the figures on enforcement thats applies across the board whether it’s all illegal drugs. If you legalize one drug you’ve still got enforcement coss on the whole vast range of methamphetamine, other uh, illegal drugs.

I think the strategy here is “if you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit”. Put more cynically, in order to defend an indefensible policy, a common tactic is to lie so many times ina given statement, that its challenging for your debate opponent to respond intelligently — they just don’t know where to start.
The anouncer penetrates his bullshit on the cost front. I’d just like to point out: look there’s that anaology to the methamphetamine boogyman. Who cares that legalizing marijuana would free up resources for methamphetmine combat? Who cares that evidence suggests that treatment and counceling would probably do more good at combating methamphetamine use than criminal processes?

His citation of the status of Marijuana in Alaska is equally fascinating. There is no part of what he said that is truthful. As near as I can tell he was referring to this, but do your own research on the subject.
And of course his argument boils down to”look, pot’s illegal, it wouldn’t be illegal in a democracy if people didn’t want it to be illegal! So stop trying to make it legal!”. Baffle with bullshit. It’s such a fucking stupid argument it’s impossible to argue against it. It also completely ignores the fact that many states have decriminalized marijuana, but are suffering under federal policies.

“Prohibition saves lives”

If your motivation is to bring revenue to the government: legalize, regulate. But if your motivation is to reduce the usage, to save teenage lives, to reduce dependence, to strengthen our culture, then the cost is worth it and the revenue should not be a motivation.

Baldface lie, as I’ve pointed out above. I like that Rob Kampia points out the lie in his following line of bullshit about the health consquences of marijuana.

I love it that one of their commentators call marijuana a natural resource.

I stumbled on this quite by accident on the newsgroups.  Someone, posting as Annie, has been kind enough to translate an interview with Nobel Laureate (economics) Milton Friedman.  The interview was apparently first published in 1992, but I think it is still quite worth reading and referencing.  So I will reproduce the post in it in its entirety here.

Several people have requested that I post a translation of the Spiegel
interview in full:

“The drug war is lost”
Interview with the American Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman on
the legalization of the illicit drug market

Der Spiegel, 14/1992

Spiegel:  The United States puts out 12 billion dollars a year on its
all-out war on drugs, but victory seems farther away than ever.  Why is
that?

Friedman:  Why is it that the socialist government of the Soviet Union
was a disaster, and the GDR just as unsuccessful?

S:  We actually wanted to talk about the American drug-politik…

F:  …that carries all signs of a socialist program.  If a private
program falls apart, brings losses, then there’s lots of people losing
lots of money. Therefore they have a great interest in ending such a
program before it leads to ruin.  However a government, whose program
fails, must neither admit failure nor pay out of its own pocket.

S:  Is the anti-drug program, therefore, always going to escalate?

F:  The reaction to failed government programs is always the same:
People say it must be made only a little bit different, a little bit
bigger, a little bit more expensive.

S:  Since when have we seen this tendency?

F:  The War on Drugs was began with Richard Nixon in 1969.  That project
failed, but was put on the back burner for the next 17 years.  The War
on Drugs was started up again by Ronald Reagan.  He expanded it, especially
in Florida, but he couldn’t win, either.  Then came Mr. Bush, who declared
total war and appointed with much fanfare a drug czar named William Bennet.
S:  Who was in office for only 20 months.

F:  He stepped down after he told the whole world that the measures he
initiated had been a total success.  But that wasn’t the case.  Back in
1972 I predicted the failure of the Nixon Administration’s anti-drug
programs and recommended the legalization of all drugs.  I’ve not had
any indications that I should revise the judgements I’ve made at that
time.

S:  You share these opinions with former Secretary of State George Schultz
and columnist William F. Buckley.  They belong to a small group of
conservatives…

F:  …that group isn’t so small anymore; I’m not a conservative anyway,
never was one.  A conservative is someone who wants to leave things as
they are.  That’s not what I want.  I am a liberal, in the classic
European meaning of the word.

S:  Very well.  As a liberal, you recommend the legalization of drugs.

F:  I am against the prohibition as we have it and plead therefore, that
drugs be dealt with in just the same way alcohol and tobacco are.

S:  Which are legally for sale.

F:  With certain restrictions.  Alcohol can only be bought by persons of
a certain age, not during worship times and some places only from particular
government-run stores.

S:  Are these restrictions too broad for a free-market economist?

F:  It would be better to have the free market do the regulating. It can,
but it should not, be the role of the government to sell hard drugs, any
more than it should be to run a lottery or to promote gambling.

S:  Many states see a good source of income in that.

F:  That’s true unfortunately, but the state shouldn’t have any function
in a free market.  It should stick to a democratic and political direction.

S:  Implicit in the legalization of the drug market would be a change
in the corresponding laws.  Which of them do you expect to change first?

F:  The main problem is to clean out Congress, and then the leave the finer
regulations up to the states themselves.

S:  Who should produce the drugs?

F:  Those who can do it best — the pharmaceuticals industry.

S:  But they would only reluctantly produce products which cause addiction.

F:  What kind of nonsense are you telling me?  A big portion of the
pharmaceuticals on the market are addictive.  There are people who are
addicted to Aspirin, dependent on sleeping pills or won’t get by without
pain relievers.

S:  Where, in a legalized drug market, would the pharmaceuticals industry
obtain the necessary raw materials?

F:  That would be regulated by the free market.

S:  Can you imagine poppy fields in Kansas and Marijuana farms in
California?

F:  Why not?  Marijuana cultivation still goes on despite massive
eradication programs of the Marijuana Cops.  Marijuana plays a key roll in
the U.S. drug politik.  Although not a single case is known of a Marijauan
overdose leading to death, and dozens of scientific studies support
Marijuana as harmless, the War on Grass has been declared.

S:  Has the price of Marijuana gone up according to the laws of the
freemarket?

F:  Yes.  Compared with other drugs, Marijuana got to be considerably
more expensive, and cocaine and and then crack got to be cheaper.
The drug prohibition pushed the consumers from one harmless drug to
a very, very dangerous one.

S:  Would you make a legal distinction between, for example, cocaine
and marijuana in a free-market drug economy?

F:  I would treat they just the same as alcohol and cigareettes.  It’s
no crime to buy Schnaps, but it is to drive drunk.  It would be the same
with drugs.

S:  To use the alcohol market as an example:  Do you see “Light Heroin”
or a “Cocaine for Beginners” in special displays in your drugstores?

F:  Why not, we also have Light Beer and low-alcohol Wine.  For both of
those there’s a public market.  In this discussion, though, there’s one
thing you shouldn’t forget:  the real winner in a legalized drug market
is the consumer.  The legal drugs would be much cleaner, their active
ingredients indicated on the side of the package, the dangers of overdose
given also…

S:  …and the number of addicts will rise steeply, my friend.

F:  There’s not one single empirical study to support that argument.
The opposite is the case.  The cessation of alcohol prohibition led
to no increase of alcohol consumption in the long run.  Actually the
number of alcohol-related deaths fell, because the products were cleaner.
And since Marijuana was legalized in Holland, Marijuana abuse has gone
down, and similar data comes out of Alaska, where for one year now the
possession of Marijuana for personal use hasn’t been punished.

S:  Such arguments seem not to impress the drug warriors.

F:  Admittedly, other arguments are much stronger.  It’s safe to say
that the American inner cities are going down the drain as a result
of the current drug politik:  10,000 surplus deaths in the drug world
every year, the prisons are overflowing, and there’s little time left
for the sentencing of other crimes.  That’s happening apart from the
fact that the number of non-drug related crimes is rising.  Or it’s
It’s almost impossible to name a single positive result of the war
on drugs, and I haven’t even touched on the affects on Peru, Columbia,
and Panama…

S:  …where the Bush Administration has expanded its anti-drug war to.

F:  A completely unjustifiable undertaking.  We’ve destroyed these lands
with our own own soldiers, helicopters, and SWAT teams just because we
couldn’t enforce our own laws at home.

S:  The legalization of the American drug market would have considerable
economic consequences for countries like Columbia and Peru.

F:  Assuredly.  With our politik we’ve left these states to the production
of agricultural products like marijuana and coca, which go against their
long-term interests.  If we were to legalize the consumption of drugs
tomorrow, by tomorrow afternoon the price of Cocaine would drop like a
rock.

S:  And 10,000 people would lose their jobs.

F:  Be careful when you talk about unemployment.  What the farmers in Peru
get for their coca leaves they can’t distinguish from what they’d get under
a legalization.  I would rather have the farmers stay in business so they
can put the raw ingredients up for sale at some reasonable price like our
farmers.  The ones who will lose their jobs will be those who earn massive
profits from the drug trade — the members of the cartels, the smugglers
and the pushers.

S:  Also standing to earn is the state, which would tax legal drugslike it
does alcohol and cigarettes.

F:  Sure.  Though giving the state a new income source is not my intention
when I advocate legalization.

S:  Since the decade-long War on Drugs has brought no visible success, does
it follow that powerful people in and behind the political scene are gaining
money and influence by preventing its success?

F:  There exists every conceivable reason to believe that people who earn
money from the drug market will do everything they can to ensure their
source of income.  This is no example of a conspiracy theory, but the
forseeable relationships of members of a certain branch of industry.  That
pertains to the drug baron no differently than automobile tycoon.

S:  Wouldn’t legalization also bring dismay to the professional prosecutors?

F:  The prosecutor and the prosecuted have a common interest in the
drug war.  Prohibition assures a good livelihood to those who prohibit
the drugs and to those who deliver the drugs.  That also goes for the
prosecutors.  Their estates are being well-furnished, their incomesraised.
Fame and good careers are assured for them.

S:  Now that is starting to sound like a conspiracy theory.

F:  Not necessarily.  The [“pits”] of corruption are documentable and
growing.  You can be sure that when there’s a big pot of gold out there,
that there will be people who want to have it and who will put all other
interests aside to get it.