vttoth

I am a software developer and author of computer books. I also work on some problems in theoretical physics. For more information, please visit my personal Web site at http://www.vttoth.com/.

Whatever it is you can’t not do

Hungary, Politics, Religion, Society No Responses »

Sep 272015

There is an unforgettable line in one of my favorite movies, Cloud Atlas: “You have to do whatever it is you can’t not do.” Or another quote from the same movie, same character: “Just trying to understand why we keep making the same mistakes… over and over.”

I am reminded of these lines regularly these days as I feel compelled to respond to the occasional (but sadly, ever more frequent) hateful, xenophobic memes, videos or articles shared by friends or family online, mainly on Facebook. Shares that perpetuate the message that the current (truly unprecedented) wave of immigrants in Europe represents an existential threat to European civilization; that the migrants themselves are frauds, uncultured, unruly, uncivilized subhumans. Untermenschen.

No, my dear friends and family members, it is not my intent to insult anybody but when I am confronted with such propaganda, I just cannot stay silent anymore. I will not be a silent accomplice. I can’t not speak up. I do not wish to anger you, but these thoughts must be challenged.

These propaganda pieces are becoming ever more sophisticated. Whether they ridicule the immigrants’ religion (let them it pork cracklings!) or their mysery and exhaustion (they are dirty! They leave trash everywhere!) the basic message remains the same: these people are somehow lesser human beings, who should be feared, despised and shunned but better yet, turned back to wherever they came from.

The memes and videos are reminiscent of the Nazi-era propaganda masterpiece, Der Ewige Jude, a full-length “documentary” movie from 1940 that similarly dehumanized Jews, presenting them as a threat to Western civilization. The message must have had some traction: after all, it was enlightened Western nations who turned away ships carrying Jewish refugees, ultimately sending them back into the arms of the Nazis.

I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind, no matter how carefully I craft my words. But I cannot stay silent. I hope I am not losing any friends, but if it happens, happens: I reached the point where staying silent is no longer an option.

Another friend (one I haven’t lost yet!) told me a while back that unless I am ready to welcome refugees into my own house, I should keep my mouth shut. Well… nope. That’s like saying that back in the 1930s, the only Germans who earned the right to speak up against the regime were the ones who were sheltering Jews. This is an obviously phoney argument. I will not keep my mouth shut.

Yet another friend suggested that this is all the Hungarian government’s fault, that their propaganda is indeed far-reaching if it can jeopardize friendships on another continent. If only… but no, xenophobia and hate propaganda are not a uniquely Hungarian thing. Long before the present migrant crisis, I was already engaging in lengthy arguments, e.g., with American friends who told me that any apparent racism I see is the blacks’ own doing, they’re the ones who perpetuate racial conflict for whatever nefarious reasons. Or that Islamophobia is justified as Muslims would oppress us with Sharia law if only they were given the chance. Needless to say, I could not possibly agree.

Go ahead, think what you want. Conclude if you wish that I am just being naive, blinded by political correctness or confused by drinking too much from the jar of liberal kool-aid. That is your prerogative. Still… I can’t not speak up.

Again, forgive me. I am not trying to be a contrarian. It is not confrontation that I seek. It is my conscience that compels me to react: some thoughts just cannot go unchallenged, even if I have no real hope of achieving anything.

Too much security

Computer Security, Personal No Responses »

Sep 212015

Today, I spent a couple of hours trying to sort out why a Joomla! Web site, which worked perfectly on my Slackware Linux server, was misbehaving on CentOS 7.

The reason was simple yet complicated. Simple because it was a result of a secure CentOS 7 installation with SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) fully enabled. Complicated because…

Well, I tried to comprehend some weird behavior. The Apache Web server, for instance, was able to read some files but not others; even when the files in question were identical in content and had (seemingly) identical permissions.

Of course part of it was my inexperience: I do not usually manage SELinux hosts. So I was searching for answers online. But this is where the experience turned really alarming.

You see, almost all the “solutions” that I came across advocated severely weakening SELinux or disabling it altogether.

Since I was really not inclined to do either on a host that I do not own, I did not give up until I found the proper solution. Nonetheless, it made me wonder about the usefulness of overly complicated security models like SELinux or the advanced ACLs of Windows.

These security solutions were designed by experts and expert committees. I have no reason to believe that they are not technically excellent. But security has two sides: it’s as much about technology as it is about people. People that include impatient users and inadequately trained or simply overworked system administrators.

System administrators who often “solve” a problem by disabling security altogether, rather than act as I have, research the problem, and not do anything until they fully understand the issue and the most appropriate solution.

The simple user/group/world security model of UNIX systems may lack flexibility but it is easy to conceptualize and for which it is easy to develop a good intuition. Few competent administrators would ever consider solving an access control problem by suggesting the use of 0777 as the default permission for all affected files and folders. (OK, I have seen a few who advocated just that, but I would not call these folks “competent.”)

A complex security model like SELinux, however, is difficult to learn and comprehend fully. Cryptic error messages only confound users and administrators alike. So we should not be surprised when administrators take the easy way out. Which, in a situation similar to mine, often means disabling the enhanced security features altogether. Unless their managers are themselves well trained and security conscious, they will even praise the administrator who comes up with such a quick “solution”. After all, security never helps anyone solve their problems; by its nature, it becomes visible only for its absence, and only when your systems are under attack. By then, it’s obviously too late of course.

So the next time you set up a system with proper security, think about the consequences of implementing a security model that is too complex and non-intuitive. And keep in mind that what you are securing is not merely a bunch of networked computers; people are very much part of the system, too. The security technology that is used must be compatible with both the hardware and the humans operating the hardware. A technically inferior solution that is more likely to be used and implemented properly by users and administrators beats a technically superior solution that users and administrators routinely work around to accomplish their daily tasks.

In short… sometimes, less is more indeed.

Arctic Shipwreck

Personal, Programming No Responses »

Sep 212015

Back in my misguided youth, I spent a couple of years developing game programs for the Commodore 64.

It all started in 1982, when a friend of mine and I dropped by at the office of a newly formed company, Novotrade. We heard somewhere that these folks have a new personal computer in their possession, one with a whopping 64 kilobytes of random access memory (an almost unheard-of amount at the time), and they are looking for programmers.

It was all true. The Commodore 64 was there and they were indeed looking for talented programmers. Thus we got to meet Ferenc Szatmári (a physicist-inventor who later on had a profound influence on my life) and others, who explained the deal: Novotrade was about to enter into a business relationship with a British company, the idea being that Hungarian programmers will be writing game software for Commmodore’s brand new personal computer. As part of this arrangement, a prototype Commodore 64 (of West German manufacture, with serial number 000002) was already there, available for us to study.

As it is well known, the Commodore 64 went on to become one of the most successful personal computers of all time. Our games did not fare that well; truth to tell, they weren’t that great. The games we ended up developing were “chosen by committee,” so to speak, from game ideas sent in by the public in response to a Novotrade-managed contest. Still… we were proud of introducing some rather novel programming techniques. Specifically, highly efficient graphic algorithms were developed by two of our teammates, Imre Kováts and Márton Sághegyi, which allowed us to create 3D-ish full screen animations like a moving horizon or a floating iceberg.

Floating iceberg? Yes… one of our games was called Arctic Shipwreck, and it required the player to balance an iceberg by moving a friendly mammoth around while trying to avoid stepping on some poor survivors of a shipwreck… until rescue arrived. Oh, and there was a rather nasty bird of prey, too, that occasionally came and plucked a survivor for lunch.

Not very entertaining, to be honest. Yet for some reason, this game remains much liked by the dwindling community of Commodore 64 enthusiasts. Most recently, it was featured in a nice German-language article on TrueGamer.de; the author of that article, Boris Kretzinger, also interviewed me via e-mail for C64 Scene, an electronic magazine published in the form of Commodore 64 disk images (!).

Hungary, land of shame

Hungary, Politics No Responses »

Sep 082015

It is true that my country of birth, Hungary, is under unprecedented pressure as a wave of immigrants Europe has not seen since the end of WW2 is sweeping through its borders.

But the Hungarian government’s response is nothing short of despicable, and sadly, they have all too many supporters among nationalists or political opportunists.

Here are a few gems from recent days.

The Guardian decided to call prime minister Viktor Orban simply “Orban the awful“, referring specifically to the treatment of refugees at the Keleti train station in Budapest, but more generally, to Orban’s policies that have been consistently undemocratic, contrary to European values, and downright undermining a united European response, e.g., to the Ukraine crisis as he is cozying up with another dictator in the making, Vladimir Putin. To their credit, The Guardian do point out though that Orban’s policies find support among other Eastern European leaders (leading to a possibly widening rift between Eastern and Western Europe) and meanwhile, many well-meaning Hungarians decided to step in where the government wouldn’t, offering significant help to the refugees flooding the country. They did so despite the fact that sometimes, they received death threats from other “proud Hungarians”.

The Guardian also commented on the Christian duty to help the unfortunate, and how this duty is neglected by Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo. Erdo declared that helping refugees would amount to breaking the law on human trafficking. This happened two days before Pope Francis declared that it is the duty of every Catholic to help refugees… I wonder if the Pope and the Cardinal had a conversation since.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s prime minister made another astonishing statement. Referring to Western European plans to introduce a refugee quota system, he declared that: “Hungary is not requesting the relocation throughout Europe” of the country’s Roma population. Rather, “when they begin a journey to Canada, we ask them to stay.” Sadly, I have a feeling that humanity can be clearly divided into two groups: some people understand clearly that only a racist bigot says such things, whereas others feel that Orban is speaking the truth and that only brainwashed liberal retards don’t see the obvious. So while I belong firmly to the former group, I have a feeling that convincing the latter is a lost cause already. Very few racist bigots actually know that they are racist bigots… most take offense when you tell them that they are. But I feel that the time for mincing words is over.

Finally, to top off the list of events from these last few wonderful days, here is a glorious video of a reporter working for a far-right Hungarian television station, tripping a refugee father carrying a child:

Bravo. Must be a proud day for Hungary.

Go Uber, bugger off, taxi drivers

Local Ottawa, Transportation 2 Responses »

Sep 082015

I used to be sympathetic to the woes of taxi drivers in face of the semi-legal competition represented by Uber, and ambivalent about Uber’s ambitions.

This is no longer the case.

If taxi drivers really think that it is kosher to protest (not even about Uber this time, but about an airport pickup fee) by blocking the road to Ottawa airport…

I guess, it’s your way, dear taxi drivers, of telling us, citizens of Ottawa, to get screwed. Well… screw you, too. The sooner Uber kills your obsolete business model with scarce overpriced licenses, old and smelly taxis, taxi drivers with limited English or French and limited knowledge of the city who nonetheless yak or text on the phone while driving, the better. Good riddance. You just lost all my sympathy, and I guess I am not alone. From now on, it’s Uber for me.

Texting while driving

Transportation No Responses »

Sep 012015

CTV Morning had a poll today: will higher fines deter you from texting and driving?

I answered no, without hesitation.

You see, I don’t need higher fines to deter me from texting and driving. I may be stupid at times, but I am not suicidal.

Comrade Harper’s economics

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Aug 282015

The latest edition of The Globe and Mail‘s Report on Business magazine has a lengthy article discussing the economic performance of the Harper government. Short version: spin matters more than actual performance. Thus the Liberals lost the election in 2006 despite having one of the best economic track records in Canada’s history, while until recently, Mr. Harper has been able to portray himself as the savior of the Canadian economy despite the fact that its actual performance is the worst, at the very least, since the end of WW2.

To stress their point about propaganda and a bad economy, the print edition of the article had a wonderful illustration, depicting Mr. Harper in the classic pose of Joseph Stalin. For some reason, this picture didn’t appear to have found its way to the online edition, but never mind, that’s what scanners are for.

Of course, Harper’s economy is just one of the topics that I have written about in my Cats for Harper blog; sadly, disappointingly few people bothered to register, never mind vote. Hey, my liberal-minded friends! Get off your… tushies and start awarding the cats!

Featured on XKCD

Personal, Physics, Pop culture, Space No Responses »

Aug 282015

Hey, I just noticed that our resolution of the Pioneer anomaly made it to an xkcd comic:

Wow. Who knows, if things continue like this, we might even end up on The Simpsons or The Big Bang Theory.

Broken Windows 10 Start Menu

Computers No Responses »

Aug 212015

Looks like just as I was about to heap more praise on Microsoft’s latest operating system, I ran into an issue of almost showstopper quality: half my programs don’t show up in the Start Menu, and the Start Menu itself is confusing, dare I say broken, even when it works as intended.

One of the Big Deals about Windows 10 was that it restored the Start Menu, taken away by the brain-dead design decisions that went into Windows 8.

But it is a different kind of a start menu. It combines the traditional Start Menu functionality with the tiles of Windows 8. But that’s okay… the tiles can be quite nice, once you get used to them.

What is a bit harder to get used to is how programs vanish from the Start Menu’s All apps option, or never show up there in the first place. Oh, and you cannot search for them either.

The cause: supposedly, some programming genius at Microsoft hard-coded a 512-program limit into the cache database that feeds this new Start Menu. (I say supposedly because some folks report issues even with fewer programs than 512.) What a …

A fix may or may not be on its way. It certainly hasn’t been released yet. I hope it will be released soon, but it still does not solve another, rather major annoyance associated with the new Start Menu: how it flattened multi-level menus.

In the old Start Menu, you may have had a folder named Games, under which you had, say, a folder named Betrayal at Krondor, with a command “Graphic mode setup”. Next, Myst Uru, with “Graphic mode setup”. Or Redneck Rampage, with “Graphic mode setup”. (These are some actual GOG.com game examples.)

In the new Start Menu, you have the Games folder, under which you get

with no indication as to which is which.

What kind of a moron thought that this would be a good idea?

I have used Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 on a laptop for over two years now and I put up with its Start Menu-less nonsense, resisting the urge to install a third-party product that restores this functionality. But I am beginning to realize that a broken Start Menu is worse than no Start Menu at all. So… classicshell.net, here I come.

Jacob Bekenstein

Physics No Responses »

Aug 182015

I woke up this morning to the news that Mexican-Israeli physicist Jacob Bekenstein died two days ago, at the age of 68, in Helsinki, Finland. I saw nothing about the cause of death.

Bekenstein’s work is well known to folks dealing with gravity theory. Two of his contributions stand out in particular.

First, Bekenstein was first to suggest that black holes should have entropy. His work, along with that of Stephen Hawking, led to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula \(S=kc^3A/4G\hbar\), relating the black hole’s surface area \(A\) to its entropy \(S\) using the speed of light \(c\), the gravitational constant \(G\), the reduced Planck constant \(\hbar\) and Boltzmann’s constant \(k\). With this work, the science of black hole thermodynamics was born, leading to all kinds of questions about the nature of black holes and the connection between thermodynamics and gravity, many of which remain unanswered to this day.

Bekenstein’s second contribution was to turn Morehai Milgrom’s MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) into a respectable relativitistic theory. The MOND paradigm is about replacing Newton’s law relating force \(({\mathbf F})\), mass \((m)\) and acceleration \(({\mathbf a})\), \({\mathbf F}=m{\mathbf a}\), with the modified law \({\mathbf F}=\mu(a/a_0)m{\mathbf a}\), where all we know about the function \(\mu(x)\) is that \(\lim_{x\to 0}\mu(x)=x\) and \(\lim_{x\to\infty}\mu(x)=1\). Surprisingly, the right choice of \(a_0\) results in an acceleration law that explains the anomalous rotation of galaxies without the need for dark matter. However, in this form, MOND is theoretically ugly: it is a formula that violates basic conservation laws, including the consevation of energy, for instance. Bekenstein’s TeVeS (Tensor-Vector-Scalar) gravity theory provides a general relativistic framework for MOND, one that does respect basic conservation laws, yet reproduces the MOND acceleration formula in the low energy limit.

I never met Jacob Bekenstein, and now I never will. A pity. May he rest in peace.

Accidental history

Books, History No Responses »

Aug 182015

Having grown up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, I had a thoroughly Marxist education in history during my grade school and high school years. A central tenet of Marxist history is the concept of “historical inevitability”: that great historic upheavals are a result not of individual heroism or foolishness, but of great socio-economic currents that create change.

I was reminded of this conflict between the “dialectical materialist” vs. the “romantic” view of history while I was reading a superb piece of historical science fiction, Ben Elton’s Time and Time Again. A story in which the protagonist time travels from 2024 to 1914 to change history, prevent The Great War, and make the world a better place. Things of course don’t exactly go as planned (or maybe they go according to plan a little too well?) but I cannot say much about the book without revealing the plot, so I won’t.

But the book, as well as one of the reviews I found on Amazon, made me think of how some of the most fundamental sequences of events in the 20th century were far from inevitable: rather, they were series of astoundingly improbable events, inept bungling that any half-competent publisher would reject as too incredible if submitted in the form of a manuscript of historical fiction.

First, the main event in Elton’s book: the Sarajevo assassination. Think of it: the Serbian organization, The Black Hand, positions not one, not two, but six separate assassins (some sources mention seven, but the seventh conspirator was the recruiter) along the arch duke’s planned route. Meanwhile, the arch duke arrives by train and immediately loses his security detail due to a mix-up as a result of which local police officers took their place in one of the cars.

The sequence of events begins when the first assassin fails to act. The second, too, fails to act. The third finally does act and throws his bomb, which bounces off the arch duke’s car, only to explode underneath the next car, wounding more than a dozen people. This would-be assassin swallows an expired cyanide capsule and jumps into the river, which happened to be only five inches deep at the moment… so he fails to die. The remaining three assassins, too, fail to act as the rest of the motorcade passes by them at high speed.

So then the Austrian general in charge changes the route for the afternoon… and fails to inform the arch duke’s driver. Who then makes a wrong turn, comes to a stop and stalls the car right in front of one of the would-be assassins from earlier that day, Gavrilo Princip. Princip was there ostensibly because he hoped to complete his mission during the arch duke’s return journey, but for all we know, he gave up already and was just getting a sandwich at Schiller’s Deli when the target was so conveniently presented to him. And then he took out his gun and managed to kill both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie with a single bullet each. And thus the life of an arch duke who believed in increased federalism, in modernizing the Monarchy, came to an abrupt end, along with that of his beloved wife, despised and routinely humiliated by the court in Vienna for being outside of the arch duke’s rank. Franz Ferdinand’s last words were, reportedly, “Sopherl! Sopherl! Stirb nicht! Bleib’ am Leben für unsere Kinder!” (“Sophie! Sophie! Don’t die! Stay alive for our children!”)

And thus, world history changed and The War to End All Wars began a few short weeks later. Empires crumbled, murderous ideologies were born. A second world war and at least a hundred million deaths later, the world settled into the uneasy but surprisingly long-lasting peace of the Cold War, a peace that lasts to this day, bringing unprecedented prosperity to billions. Who knows what would have happened if Franz Ferdinand did not die on June 28, 1914?

The second bungled event that came to mind was the accidental fall of the Iron Curtain on November 9, 1989. (Astonishingly for me personally, just over three years after I left Hungary as a political refugee, having concluded that I saw no chance of “regime change” behind the Iron Curtain anytime soon, certainly not within a generation.)

The events that led directly to the collapse of the Berlin Wall began in Hungary a few months earlier, when my country of birth decided not to intervene as thousands of East German citizens crossed the border into Austria. Initially, the East German government responded by tightening its regime of exit visas, banning travel for its citizens first to Hungary and later, to Czechoslovakia. Nonetheless, unprecedented mass demonstrations followed in East Germany, with crowds rallying to the words “Wir wollen raus!” (“We want out!”) The East German government decided to take the bold step of allowing severely regulated private travel to the West.

The new regulations were to take effect the next day, but this was not communicated to Günter Schabowski, East Berlin’s party boss who was only handed a brief note announcing the changes moments before giving a press conference. Having made the announcement, in response to a question from a journalist, he stated that as far as he knew, the new regulations liberalizing travel are to take effect immediately, without delay, and involved border crossings along the Berlin Wall.

Almost immediately, crowds of East Germans began gathering at the Wall, demanding the opening of the gates. As no-one among East Germany’s leaders was prepared to order the use of lethal force, finally the commander of one of the border crossings yielded, and the border was thrown wide open.

Less than a year later, the state of East Germany ceased to exist.

What would have happened if Schabowski had been better informed? If the East German state had been able to assert its authority and managed to maintain order at its border crossings? Or conversely, what if they had the guts to give the order to fire? Would there have been a bloody revolution? Would Germany still be divided today? What would the European Union look like?

The date of November 9 is famous for another reason, by the way. It was on this day in 1918 that Imperial Germany ceased to exist with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ruler who probably bore the most responsibility for turning the 1914 Sarajevo crisis into an all encompassing World War.

Astonishingly, the last surviving member of the conspiracy to kill Franz Ferdinand, Vaso Čubrilović, lived to the ripe old age of 93 and passed away in the year of German reunification, in 1990.

Readily electioneering

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Aug 182015

I don’t think I ever did this before: putting an election campaign video in my blog. But I am truly disgusted by the Conservative Party’s negative advertising campaign (those “not ready” ads about Justin Trudeau). So here is the Liberal response:

Finally, here is the Justin Trudeau that we have been waiting for… I just hope he can be like this more often.

Nekulturny

Politics No Responses »

Aug 172015

The Russian word nekulturny (некультурный), meaning uncivilized, uncultured, was used often in Soviet times by USSR citizens to describe disagreeable behavior, especially on behalf of foreigners. (Implying perhaps a mix of xenophobia and a sense of cultural superiority. Or whatever.)

Today, I feel compelled to use this word and accuse Mr. Putin and his crony government of being nekulturny.

You see, it is one thing to institute a retaliatory import ban in response to Western trade sanctions, even if it means hardships for your own citizens, in the form of rising food prices.

But to bulldoze tons of good quality food into a landfill? That is nekulturny indeed.

Are you trying to imply, Mr. Putin, just like your propagandist predecessors from Soviet times, that Russia has no poverty, no hunger, no soup kitchens? I don’t believe you. You see, even the richest countries have poor people: people who were unlucky, whose lives derailed for whatever reason. And Russia is far from being among the richest countries.

You could have confiscated all that food, punished all the illicit importers, and then like a benevolent tsar or dictator, you could have offered the freshly confiscated food to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food banks or orphanages, who would have welcomed your assistance with gratitude.

But no, you had to demonstrate that you are a macho tough guy. Shirtless in the Russian winter, fighting polar bears and flying jet fighters. And destroying food.

Nekulturny indeed, Mr. Putin.

The admirable Trump

Politics, Pop culture No Responses »

Aug 152015

The more I watch Donald Trump’s performance as an American presidential candidate, the more I admire him.

trump-hair

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t identify with his views. I don’t want him to become President of the United States; in fact, I am quite certain that it would be a disaster for both the US and the world as a whole.

But I admire his performance, intellectually speaking, the same way one admires the flawless performance of a professional athlete or performer.

Trump’s performances are perfect. He radiates an “I am in it to win” attitude, making it clear that coming in second is not an option he would even contemplate. (Recently, a reporter asked Trump if he would consider a vice-presidential nomination should his bid for the presidency fail. Instead of answering, Trump just dismissed the journalist and moved on to the next question.)

His presence on the television screen is mesmerizing. He is not a politician reading a prepared speech in which he himself does not believe at some nondescript campaign location. He is having a conversation with you, the viewer, and he is passionate about everything he says. And he doesn’t care if his words are misunderstood or twisted.

In a certain way, Trump reminds me of Adolf Hitler. Not the Hitler of wartime or postwar caricatures, but the Hitler of the 1920s or 1930s, admired even by some of his opponents for his charisma, his abilities as a public speaker, the manner in which he almost hypnotized his audience. This is precisely what Trump does and oh, is he ever good at it!

And he is fearless and made of Teflon. It seems that no criticism can harm him. He even uses his billionaire status to his advantage (notably, his supporters are predominantly low-income) when he explains that because he is loaded, his campaign or for that matter, his presidency, will not be held hostage by lobbyists.

I have begun to consider seriously the possibility that not only will Trump be the Republican candidate but that he will actually beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. I like Clinton, but next to Trump, she will look like a junior apprentice in TV debates.

What will Trump’s America be like? I don’t know, but I expect the worst.

Windows 10 impressions

Computers, Personal No Responses »

Aug 152015

In the last few days, I upgraded two of my laptops to Windows 10. So far, I have been most impressed by the results.

The first laptop is my current “travel” laptop, an ASUS X202E. It is a touchscreen notebook that originally came with Windows 8. I got it real cheap just over two years ago. It turned out to be a much better machine than I expected (despite Windows 8!) so I invested a little extra money and upgraded it with a solid state drive. I also upgraded it to Windows 8.1 when it became available.

The second laptop is closer to five years old I think, an old LG netbook with an Intel Atom processor and only 1 GB RAM, with Windows 7 Starter. I bought it because it was tiny (I like small machines) and real cheap. I used it for a few years as my travel laptop, great for presentations, e-mail, or connecting back to my main desktop via Remote Desktop, but not much else.

The Windows 10 upgrade became available on both machines a few days ago (although I had to fight with the LG netbook a little bit to make it happen; the reasons were unrelated, a bad driver that interfered with the machine in other ways, too.)

To make a long story short: the upgrade ran flawlessly on both machines.

On the ASUS, after the upgrade my touchpad was not responding, but before I could begin investigating the reason, a dialog popped up and informed me that the touchpad driver is being upgraded and indeed, after a reboot, the touchpad was working fine again. All my settings were properly preserved, including an add-on (8GadgetPack) that restored the Windows VISTA/Windows 7 style on-screen gadgets that I have become quite fond of, and which Microsoft removed from later versions of Windows, ostensibly for security reasons.

Encouraged by this, I also started the upgrade process on the netbook. My expectations were not high: I was quite prepared for it to fail on this somewhat obsolete machine. But no… it did not fail. It completed the upgrade sooner than I expected and once again, everything worked just fine. The netbook, of course, remains an underpowered machine, but after it finished configuring itself and its initial indexing tasks ran to completion, the machine became reasonably responsive.

All in all, kudos to Microsoft. This upgrade process through Windows Update far exceeded my expectations. And Windows 10 finally corrects the misguided design decisions of Windows 8. The best way to summarize my Windows 10 impressions is this: on a machine without a touch screen, you don’t miss the touch screen.

EDIT: I almost forgot one thing: the much-criticized privacy settings in Windows 10. Unsurprisingly, “free” comes with strings attached: by default, Microsoft collects a lot of information from your computer. Many of these settings can be turned off (make sure that during the installation process, you don’t accept the defaults) but there are concerns that even with the settings off, Microsoft collects some information that they really shouldn’t. How concerned should we be? After all, if you turn on the “OK Google” feature in your Chrome browser, Google becomes an invisible listener to every conversation in the room. So perhaps it’s true that the era of privacy is over. Still… I turned most of those settings off. Even if it does not protect my privacy, at least it saves a little bit of network bandwidth…

Liberal or NDP?

Canada, Personal, Politics No Responses »

Aug 102015

I was once a conservative voter. I voted for the Progressive Conservative party even when virtually no-one else did. I even voted for Kim Campbell back when the PC party was reduced to two seats in Parliament in an historic defeat.

But that was then. Today, we have a party that is conservative in name only: its label has been hijacked by right-wing radicals. The political sins of this government are innumerable, and I wonder if there are enough cats in the world for Mr. Harper (a cat lover) to adopt as a form atonement.

In the past few elections, I voted Liberal. I actually like our MP, Mauril Bélanger, and I was reasonably comfortable with the Liberal Party’s center-right stance.

On the other hand, I was quite disappointed with Mr. Trudeau’s stance on C-51 and his general lack of charisma. The NDP’s Mr. Mulcair, on the other hand, is quite charismatic, and to the extent that I followed it, his performance as Leader of the Opposition was impressive.

So, I hesitate. Liberal or NDP? I am also inclined to vote “strategically”, as I consider both these parties far preferable to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. But I’d still like to know what I am voting for.

Which is why, when the link showed up in my Facebook feed, I decided to complete a questionnaire by isidewith.com, only to find out that both the Liberal Party and the NDP are a close match for my political views:

So far so good, but the rest of this list of parties alarms me. A 75% match with the Green Party I can live with, but the Communists, at 70%? What’s wrong with me (or this survey)? If anything, I’d have thought that my views are more Libertarian, but there I only got a 44% match. As for the Conservatives though, the 7% match does not surprise me: as I said above, this party is conservative in name only.

Meanwhile, even as I mull over the pros and cons of voting Liberal vs. NDP, I continue dreaming about a center-right party that favors rational thinking over ideology…

Harper’s cats

Canada, Cats, Personal, Politics 2 Responses »

Aug 082015

Today is International Cat Day (sadly, it is also the anniversary of the death of our beloved cat Szürke).

This means it is also a good opportunity to remind my (Canadian) friends of my Web site, http://catsforharper.ca/, which documents the sins of Stephen Harper’s government, and offers a means to vote by assigning a number of cats (between 1 and 9) that Mr. Harper would need to adopt to atone for each particular political sin.

I chose this whimsical way to express my disagreement with Mr. Harper, in part, because I do not believe in the politics of hate. I do not dislike Mr. Harper; I dislike (some of) his policies, and these are numerous enough for me to hope for either a Liberal or an NDP victory this fall. (Yes, I know, be careful what you wish for and all that…)

In any case, my friends, shame on all of you who have not yet registered, or registered but not yet voted. (Needless to say, if you ran into any technical issues while trying to register or vote, don’t hesitate to let me know. Oh, and in case it needs to be said, only I see your e-mail addresses when you register, and I have no plans to use your addresses to sell you penile enlargements or Nigerian investments.)

Shortest “international” bridge

Canada, Geography, Hungary No Responses »

Aug 082015

I was startled by this photo that appeared in today’s Globe and Mail:

I’ve heard about this bridge! Many decades ago, in Hungary. It was described to me as an international bridge between two islands, both owned by a Hungarian family who then declared the “no man’s land” in the middle of the bridge Hungarian territory.

Well… almost. The flag in the middle is indeed the flag of Hungary, but as for the rest…

The islands together are called Zavikon island (I guess the smaller island is just considered an appendage of the larger one) and they are indeed in the Thousands Islands region. They are indeed owned by a Hungarian family. However, both islands are north of the international border, i.e., they are both in Canada. So the flags on this footbridge are really symbolic, they do not reflect political reality. And no, you cannot claim the “no man’s land”, even if it exists along the international border between two states, in the name of a third.

I was nonetheless astonished to see that this bridge actually exists and that at least the part about the flags is, indeed, true.

Upside down over Seattle

Aviation, Hungary No Responses »

Aug 082015

This iconic photograph was snapped 60 years ago today from the window of a Boeing 707 prototype.

In case it’s unclear, that airplane is flying upside down. And no, it is not about to crash. It was just in the middle of an aerobatic maneuver called a “barrel roll”.

It was, at least for its test pilot, Alvin “Tex” Johnston, a perfectly normal demonstration of what his new airplane is capable of doing. His company’s CEO, Bill Allen, rather disagreed, but the 707 went on to become a great commercial success and the famous Seattle barrel roll became a matter of legend. I first heard about this barrel roll incident more than 30 years ago from my long gone friend Ferenc Szatmári, physicist, private pilot and storyteller extraordinaire.

Reportedly, Allen never really got over this incident; decades later, when he received a framed copy of the photograph above at his retirement banquet, the memento was accidentally left behind. Then again, if someone gave me a minor heart attack like that (after all, for Allen, the future of his entire company was at stake), I, too, may be inclined to hold a grudge.

Mercy and compassion

Politics, Religion No Responses »

Aug 082015

So here is what some devout Muslims do in the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, if you happen to hold and make public views with which they disagree: They hack you to death. All in the name of compassion and mercy, I am sure.

The latest victim of Islamic extremism is Niloy Neel, an atheist blogger from Bangladesh, who was hacked to death by a machete-wielding gang yesterday.

And Neel is not the first victim of this religion-inspired violence: He is the fourth victim this year, the fourth person killed for speaking out in favor of secularism, women’s rights, LGBT rights. No perpetrator has been charged yet in these murders, which indicates possible complicity on behalf of the authorities.

But my question is… why kill him? Did someone convince you that you will get 77 virgins in heaven or whatever if you did this? Is your faith (or is it your sexual identity?) really this unsecure that you must eliminate dissenting voices through murder? Or are you simply murderous thugs who use whatever excuse you can find to get your “fix”?

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