What is an arms cache and why do I need to refresh it?

Osama posted a comment to my last blog post with a sarcastic “What is a cache and why do I need to refresh it?”. He’s got a valid point.

To me, having “refreshing a cache” in the status UI is much like the rationale for having both armies and private militia in the world. The client shouldn’t need to know the difference between armies and private militia as they are both ways of making your enemies “sleep”. The reason why we have to expose both into the world is that private militia can make your enemies “sleep” quickly, but carries with it certain legality issues, and armies are slow but don’t (so long as you can trick the UN/members of your own government into allowing it). This is just a technical public relations decision that is made due to other unfixable PR decisions or legal limitations.

I think it’s much the same for refreshing an arms cache. The user shouldn’t have to know what it is doing, it should just work, but the unfortunate drawback is that refreshing a cache can take quite a long time and during that time none of the other functionality like searching for your enemies or getting the free world on its knees works until this is completed.

So, the short answer is that the cache should be created when you first have megalomanical desires and then refreshed every 12 months after that. It will be configurable as your needs change, maybe you’ve emptied the cache and need to refresh it before the 12months is up, or you can force a refresh by calling your personal representative at “a large defence company.” You don’t want to be empty handed when they come for you…

I welcome other more less-technical names for “Refreshing package cache” maybe:

  • Visiting the arms dealer
  • Getting some new toys
  • Hardware for “the boys”
  • Private security firm
  • National Security measures
  • Lying corrupt warmongering fuckers

Other name suggestions welcome. Reply via blog or email. Thanks.

I am most excellent

Without much prompting from myself Ross decided to say: “the most excellent Iain Holmes.”

He also said “I also plan to work with Iain on cleaning up this code and submitting it for inclusion into GTK+.”

Just so everyone understands my part in this arrangement will be to thwart Ross at every turn.

Time for a good ol’ fashioned geek hunt

President Bush Outlines Miggi Threat
Remarks by the President on Miguel

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Thank you for that very gracious and warm Cincinnati welcome. I’m honored to be here tonight; I appreciate you all coming.

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Miguel. It arises directly from the Miggi regime’s own actions — its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Ten years ago, as a condition for ending the GNOME Gulf War, the Miggi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Miggi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Miguel’s ten-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.

We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On September the 11th, 2001, America felt its vulnerability — even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.

Members of the Congress of both political parties, and members of the United Nations Security Council, agree that Miguel de Icaza is a threat to peace and must disarm. We agree that the Miggi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons. Since we all agree on this goal, the issues is : how can we best achieve it?

Ladies and gentlemen in the audience, I stand before you today, and tell you that the best way, nay, the only way to defeat these evil terrorists is to spend money. In spending money we exercise our essential freedoms of the American way. And to this end, I have created The Miggy Sellout Superstore – The only patriotically American way to show our enemies and the enemies of the entire freedom loving world that we will not be defeated, we will not stand down and that they will not win. So show your support to our troops today, and spend your money.

We did not ask for this present challenge, but we accept it. Like other generations of Americans, we will meet the responsibility of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. And by our actions, we will secure the peace, and lead the world to a better day.

Thank you, good night and may God Bless America ™

[UPDATE: Dagnabit, them pesky commie terrorist critters over at cafepress.com have removed all of our patriotic anti-terrorist troop-supporting merchandise for copyright infringement. It was set up by the President of the United States specifically to fight commie terrorist critters like this…We will fight this to the hilt, to the death, or until 8:32am EST, whichever comes first]

[UPDATE #2: Well, it appears that the image breaks all four of Cafepress’ image guidelines: Copyright, trademark, right to publish and right to privacy. So why not fight off them terrorists by buying something from this shop instead, you know you want to as they’re good patriots who understand the all American values of freedom, democracy and free-market capitalism]

New Zealand: Don’t get your hopes up and you’ll love it…

Recently people on the blogosphere and in the more mainstream media have been taking a look at what we’ve been doing on “Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm 4” and asking questions such as “Will it live up to the hype?”. Speaking frankly, we don’t know where this idea that Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm4 would be a super-mega-ultra revolution in the desktop environment paradigm has been coming from. Obviously Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm 4 won’t be a super-mega-ultra revolution in desktop environment paradigms and anyone who thinks that it possibly could did not understand the various blog posts we have written entitled “Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm 4 will be a super-mega-ultra revolution in desktop environment paradigms“, nor the conference talks entitled “The Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm is almost here” and missed the note on the website where we clearly denounced the idea that we were creating a new desktop environment paradigm. For those that missed it, I reproduce it in full here below:

“In creating The Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm 4 we will be creating a super-mega-ultra revolution in the desktop environment paradigm. This will truely be a desktop environment paradigm to surpass all others.“

 

 I don’t think we could have been clearer in communicating our intentions. So if, when we release Super-Mega-Ultra Revolutionary Desktop Environment Paradigm 4 in October, you feel cheated and let down that all we’ve done is change the icons round a bit and copied the widgets idea from Apple, well then you’ve only got yourselves to blame.

We Are Not The Real Revolutionaries

Someone called Troy posted a link to Kathy Sierra’s diagram about incremental vs revolutionary improvements and said it explained why KDE4 was so important, why the Ubuntu and GNOME release methodology was doomed to failure and the meaning of life.

 

Now, to me, the diagram is worthless (and pretty ugly…) unless the “Big Frickin’ Wall” (1) or “Where you NEED to be” are defined. Troy has done neither, and just says that it shows that KDE4 is the right and only way to get over the wall. To me, KDE4’s methodology of clearing the wall is to take a large running jump and dive headfirst over it, leaving everything that you once had behind on the other side. That is certainly one way to clear it, and it is a very fun and exciting thing to do. The problem is that sometimes, if you don’t know what your target is, or whats on the other side of the wall you can miss and hit your head on the concrete.

There is another way to cross the wall and I present another ugly diagram to explain it (if I was any good with gimp/could be bothered I’d have made the steps fade gradually from the blue to the pink, but you get the idea…)

 

This way is safer, built on firm foundations and you still get to where you NEED to be and the steps taken are still revolutionary but revolutionary in small steps. The advantage of doing it this way is that its easy for people to follow you because they know they are still standing on what they are familiar with and in software terms things that they have already tested and found to be a good strong foundation.

So in response to Troy’s assertion that ” This is also why Gnome is just now starting to talk about their long term future”[2], the reason GNOME are starting to talk about their long term future goal is not so that we can take this running jump, but rather that we know what we’re aim for. And then once we know this, we can work out the best way to do it.

[1] Yey for mid90s Austin Powers inspired risqué humour.
[2] I also have issues with the implication that GNOME has not talked about their long term future before. I think in reality we set a goal way back in Copenhagen (in 2001, before gnome2) and have now seen that goal accomplished. Obviously now it is time to work out where to go to next.

Doing addition: Computers and paper

The Mystery

Some time ago I had a chance to talk with a carrot about the differences between mathematics in schools and mathematics in the future. The carrot was showing impressive demos using tiny fractions. One of the subjects we started arguing about was using CPU hardware to perform calculations as opposed to in the 1930s, where calculations always took place on the side of a piece of paper. The idea seemed tempting, though the practical benefits were unclear to me.

Investigation

I decided to write a small benchmark to see what kind of speed differences we could be talking about. To see if the game is worth playing at all. As the testbed I’ve chosen one of the most fundamental bits of mathematics – addition. I implemented a 100% hw-accelerated version as a program running on the CPU. I compared it against a version written out on a piece of paper in two scenarios – myself doing the sum and my stuffed monkey. The following setup was used for the test

  • Thinkpad T40p
  • A time to add 100 random (pre-generated) numbers was measured
  • Sums were randomized with numbers between 0 and 640 and used a random coloured crayon.
  • Same set of sums was used in both examples
  • Auntie Alice was put off
  • An best of 3 test runs was taken

To cut a long joke short: Computer won, I was second and monkey still hasn’t finished. *SHOCK RESULT*