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GeekNights 20100822 - Zealotry in the Tech World
Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the zealots of the tech world. We also discuss the sad failure of law to keep up with a world where technology has enabled many hobbies to also generate trivial revenue (as evidenced by one poor blogger) and the possible coming of peak helium.
We also happily announce that the musical act for the Friday PAX Late Show is...
- Rym's Thing - New New York Skyscraper
- Scott's Thing - You Drive What?!?
Comments
Geeknights 20100822 - Tech Zealotry and the Gnu Hurd
Expanded Show Notes - Show Run Time: 01:00:06
Time | Notes
---------+----------------------------------------------------------
00:00:00 | Intro
00:00:28 | Opening Chit-Chat
| - Tech professionals in NYC
| - What fixes a broken wireless network?
| - Meta - Musical act announcement will be later in the show
00:02:30 | News
| - Helium reserves in the USA and the short-sightedness of depleting the reserve
| - Comparison to diamond cartels like DeBeers and how we shouldn't sell off all the helium
| - One would think people would be investing in long futures for helium
| - Discussion of how commodities trading works
| - Bloggers required to get a business license in Philadelphia
| - Antiquated laws can't keep up with current hobbies that produce trivial income
| - The legislature has a vested interest in enforcing a law that has no purpose other than to generate a revenue
| - This will cause more people to NOT file this income and in the long run cost the government more money
| - Discussion of e-File and how it was potentially destructive to tax businesses
| - If technology was used properly and there weren't laws propping up businesses there would be massive unemployment
| - But jobs would be recreated in other value-added businesses
| - Which should we do about the whole thing? Rym presents a false dichotomy
| - There should be a trivial business license you can get from the government
00:24:48 | Things of the Day
| Scott - You Drive What?!?
| - Pics of cars that are worse than some ricers
| Rym - Public Comments on the new New York skyscraper
| - Other people should have no say in what goes in the neighborhood near them
00:31:54 | Meta Moment
| - Book Club: The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury
| - PAX Prime - Labor Day weekend!
| - PAX Late Night - Alex Albrecht, Jon St. John, members of Rooster Teeth
| - PAX Late Show musical act is... Molly23
| - PAX Advice from Scott:
| - - PAX main events are packed and will only seat about 2500 people this year
| - - If you don't have a wristband, everything is supposed to be simulcast in the queue room
| - - Just watch it from the queue room
| - NYCC/NYAF October 8
00:37:50 | Main Topic
| - There are fanboys in the world, specifically in the realm of technology
| - Rym: Religious debates were the first fanboy arguments
| - Discussion about how the Internet breeds fanboys about everything
| - Rym: Apple fanboys aren't on the radar when it comes to the GNU/Linux people
| - Scott postulates that the fanboys from Slashdot have migrated to Reddit
| - This is one of the things holding back open technology - when people refuse to compromise on stupid little things
| - Examples: Java libraries, perl versus python, emacs versus vi
| - Open source - example, the "purity" of Ubuntu and how it doesn't do X, Y, and Z
| - Wouldn't having something that just works be better than a half-assed solution?
| - Rym recounts a tale of a zealot for the Aladdin license
| - In open source, productivity almost always wins
| - There is an amount of work that is required, however
| - Younger tech workers don't care about the old zealotries but have new ones
| - New Zealots: GUI vs. Command Line, Mac vs. Windows
| - No, X doesn't suck, it only sucks for you in your specific situation.
| - The new technology is to blame for a lot of the new zealotries
| - The new abstractions have brought more superficial arguments into play
| - People are resistant to change even in the face of evidence of a better method
| - People should use the defaults and learn to change themselves
| - Dealing with zealots:
| - 1. Let them have their way or leave it up to the person in charge
| - 2. For the GNU/Linux type that would correct you to their way, just laugh at them and say "whatever"
| - 3. Fight zealotry with productivity
| - 4. Change yourself, not the computer
| - 5. Learn to adapt to what is required of you
| - Majority of developers out there are Java, but they don't know how to actually program
| - They just know Java - they are not coders, they are overly-specific
| - The majority of IT people out there are like this
| - Discussion of how schools try to teach CS and IT these days
| - Don't try to push your preference on anyone else
| - Don't be the zealot guy
00:59:07 | Outro
Because I didn't have any balanced 1/4"patch cables handy, I used the same old unbalanced ones we were using with the old setup to get the Firewire interface up. (The new rig supports balanced patches, but the old one did not).
But, these cables had straight ends, requiring 90* adaptors. Of my six adaptors, two of them were discovered to have physical defects causing capacitance to build up in the audio line through them. Capacitive problems have a sort of audio signature that is unmistakable when encountered, which I finally noticed last night, allowing me to find the problem.
But, they do not occur all the time for various reasons. The noise gates cut out the crucial pop that would have led me to the problem earlier, and there had originally been a second problem due to a bad XLR cable. I had turned off the noise gates last night (for an unrelated reason) and got lucky.
My signal testing used constant tones (I was looking for broad connection problems), and happened to be beyond the threshold to trigger this particular problem in our setup.
I've thrown the faulty adaptors away, and will use the good ones that remain until I get my new patches.
The noise gates prevented me from, when hearing the problem in an already recorded show, immediately recognizing it as a capacitance issue. The gates cut out the key part of the artifacting that would have made it obvious.
I certainly didn't test with the gates on.
The whole situation is pretty ridiculous but not surprising. I'm a tax accountant in Philadelphia and I'm aware that attempts to collect fees and taxes like this have been happening across the city for every reason imaginable. The city is broke and is hoping everyone will just pay the license fee out of fear. More than likely these $300 business license notices could be ignored but ultimately the small amount of income didn't really have to be reported to begin with.
As for having a website where you can file all your taxes online sans H&R Block, it already exists. I filed my federal taxes online for the past two years for free (although there might be a fee for higher income returns). Every state is different but PA's website allows you to file online for free as well. I know the IRS has been trying to reduce the influence of Block and similar services over the years by cutting down on what they can actually do for a taxpayer. In college I worked for a local tax preparation company and evey year they had to cut back their services due to new legislation so it may be possible that we'll eventually get to a place like what you were talking about.
/tax nerd
Anyway great show, keep up the good work!
EDIT: Looks like some enterprising Slashdotters crunched the numbers on helium production by way of fusion. Here's the Cliff Notes: We best start mining for more helium, or we're totally fucked.
How about the Carstache?
Heh, if you open a Carstache tab next to this forum tab, the favicons look like cousins.