Today I thought I would talk a little about my opinions on zoning. This comes out of the fact that my fiancé and I are looking for a house and being a good citizen I make sure I am doing my homework. The philosophical concept behind property is that at some point in time all land was without an owner. Then someone came along and invested effort into the land by marking it, and making it their own. Let me modify this a little and say land did not have an owner until a group of people banded together and formed a nation. At that point that nation owns the rights to that land. This nation then grants citizens the right to claim the land for themselves and in turn the new owners of the land must pay property taxes.

Sounds good right? Well then there are the issues of zoning. Zoning is in my opinion unconstitutional. I am well aware of Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co. so let’s look at this more closely. The constitution says:

• All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

When someone enters into ownership of the land the land becomes their property to do with as they please. By zoning against certain uses of the land the town is depriving its citizens without due process of law. The Supreme Court obviously did not agree with me. They made the argument that zoning is legal because of police powers emanating from the general welfare clause of the constitution. Being a conservative with libertarian leanings this is an absurd statement. It sounds a lot like the socialists Lenin and Hitler. (Small side note, unlike you were told in school fascism is not conservative. Lookup Jonah Goldberg.) Let me put it another way. Zoning is supposedly for a general welfare. What is good is defined by the community standard. If someone has 100 junk cars in their yard the community standard says that’s bad. I happen to agree with that community standard and would hate a neighbor who had that much junk in their yard but the fact remains its someone’s right to have their own property. And no, just because it decreases your property value does not mean its infringing on your rights. When you pay property taxes you receive a cube of space from the state to do with as you please. Or at least this is how it should be. Much genocide was done for the 'common good'. Yes one is much more hideous than the other but let not infringe on even the smallest of our rights. Let us be like our ancestors who wanted to live free or die.

Today I wanted to talk about one of my pet peeves, root logins. For those of you not familiar with what a root login is, in UNIX land when you log into your computer you login to as a user with certain privileges. Normally you login with a regular user such as 'mokon'. If you want to do a special thing that requires special privileges you type sudo su. This is similar to how Windows Vista and above has an administrative user and how when you do something that requires higher privileges a popup appears.

So what is my pet peeve about root logins. Google root logins and you will see what I mean. Whenever someone asks how do I enable root logins (normally on Ubunto) you hear fifty people echoing ROOT LOGINS ARE EVIL, DON’T DO IT, YOU WILL BREAK THE INTERNET, AHHHHHHH. Ok, I am being a little dramatic here, but my point is they often don’t tell the person how to do it, opting to tell them why they shouldn’t do it. Even though many people say in their posts, I know this is dangerous, but I want to do it anyways.

These people are right; it is inherently more dangerous to be a root user than a regular user. I mean as root I can do 'rm –rf /'. And since we are on the topic of danger, don’t go for a jog, it’s dangerous. A pit bull might attack you, you might sprain an ankle, or a kidnapper might grab you. Just because something has its risks doesn’t me it shouldn’t be done. It simplifies ones life to login as root and be done with it, able to run any programs desired. This is versus sudoing all commands or logging in a as normal user and then logging in via sudo su. Yes it’s a minor difference but let people do it. It’s their computer, if they download a virus it’s their fault, they will have to fix it.

When Windows Vista was released one of the biggest complaints was UAC. Sudo is analogous to UAC. People will be annoyed if they have to do additional things. I for one disabled UAC after around 30 seconds of using Vista. Yes UAC is more secure but I really don’t care, it was annoying me. And by the way, I have been virus free for as long as I can remember even though I don’t run a virus scan. It comes down to if you are a smart user you can run with elevated privileges and not have to worry about security most of the time. Since it is more insecure yes the might get malware, so they should run a scanner every month or so. Since it is more insecure yes they might get a virus, so just back everything up regularly. Let the user decide for themselves. Yes that means many people will fall down, but that’s what Linux is about. If they want a nice fluffy world with pillows everywhere limiting themselves, they can go to Apple products (Yes that’s an article I need to write sometime soon).

So in conclusion I just want to make the point linux distros need to stop limiting root login. I first saw it with Ubunto and to say the least I wasn’t happy. Now my main disto, Fedora, is doing it as well. Yes I can disable it, but at the very least make it an install time advanced setting.

Today I am going to talk about one’s web presence. You probably have heard about someone who got fired because of a Facebook post or the like. In reaction to this I have heard people getting rid of their Facebook or refusing to ever get one in the first place. I think these people are taking the wrong approach. You see I’m sure people have been fired from their job for something they did off the clock. Perhaps someone went out to dinner at the 99 and a co-worker overheard them talking about their boss. Does this mean we should just stay locked up in our house and never go out? No! The problem is not with going outside and having fun, or having a Facebook. Any respectable employer expects their employees to have a life outside of work. It makes them more productive employees. Rather the problem is with what is being done. It’s stupid to go out and talk about your boss behind their back. Likewise it’s stupid to have a status update about them and yes it’s also stupid to get stone drunk whether or not pictures of it get uploaded to Facebook.

With that established I want to propose a radical idea. That being control of one’s web presence to the benefit of one’s career. Ok, maybe it isn’t that radical, rather it is common sense. Whenever you post something on Facebook think of it as putting it on your resume. Now, given that Facebook is for personal information let it show that personal side of your life. Did you go skydiving last week? Well pictures of that show you are an adventurous person willing to take risks. An employer would love to see that you do things outside of work. Or perhaps you found out this cool feature in C++. Post about it. It shows you are an active programmer even outside of work. I have been using Facebook as my example in this post, but this extends to all web presence whether that is your personal website or postings on a forum. Use them to your advantage. Not having (and Using!) Facebook says to me you are behind the times. But if you do have a Facebook and I see a wonderful personality that tells me there is a great potential employee there.

Today I was thinking about a few signs you should look out for in anyone’s arguments for anything.

According to Research (No Citation): This is one of my favorite ones. In fact it comes from growing up with one of my brothers who shall remain nameless. This normally happens in the case of a casual debate around lunch where someone claims to have done research on a topic. Whether it is about history, to physics, to psychology, someone will always have read up on the topic and yet they don’t have sources. More than half the time people who do this are speaking of the cuff, inventing research as they go along. As the saying goes, 79.9% of all statistics are made up on the spot. The same goes for research.

According to Research (Citation Included): Perhaps a little more dangerous is the research that comes with a citation. A sad truth is research can be manipulated to say just about anything. Ever heard of the two studies about eggs? One says they are good for you, and the other says they are bad for you (Citation Not Included). Just because someone says its true doesn’t mean it is. This is especially true in sciences that are not well defined (think biology or the social sciences).Logic gaps in mathematical research are easier to see, but when it comes to empirical sciences, conclusions are often based on biased opinions. Also, consider the quality of the research. Was it Computer Science work published in Social Sciences journal? Was it from a wiki page, an undergraduate, or the foremost expert in a field? Also consider your knowledge level. Is this a field you know little about? If it is perhaps you need to pay extra attention before letting the well crafted speeches of others convince you one way or another.

The Truth!: Did you catch me in the last section where I said a sad truth is? Well that’s the next sign to watch out for. It is an amazing effective convincing technique to put nice words like THE TRUTH next to your opinions. As long as the reader doesn’t see a glaring untruth, a reader will often accept what is said as fact. To be an informed reader/listener don’t take what the writer/speaker says for granted

Science versus Cavemen We are in an age of reason, and with if someone can relate the opposing ideas to “non-science” then the uninformed reader is more likely to believe.

Everyone BelievesI’m sure everyone here has at one time or another felt like they were the only one at a table that believes anything. I’m a right-wing Christian and creationist so I have certainly had my fair share of these moments. As is often cited, just because everyone thinks the world is flat, doesn’t make it so. Always have a critical mind but never dismiss some idea because of your criticism before you have given it a fair shot in the arena of ideas.

Hitler If you know of Godwin’s law you know what I am talking about. I would like to present also, though that if someone presents Godwin’s law as a reason why they are right, they are probably wrong and the comparison to Hitler is probably correct.

I am sure I’ll come up with a ton more signs just as I post this, but for now this is good enough. In conclusion according to my research and according to research by Smith and Doe (2009) the scientific truth is you should watch out for these signs in any argument. If you don’t you are obviously being a fascist and everyone disagrees with you. ;-)

With the New Year upon us I am going to try and start posting more. My topic today is Richard Stallman, aka rms. Let me start by saying I have nothing against open source software. I use it all the time, and I must say, the fact that it is free makes it awesome. My use, however, is based out of practicality given my circumstances, not some ideology (Well I guess if we want to be technical my ideology would be pragmatism then. Also, one can take pragmatism too far, and therefore one does need to take a stand at some point, but that’s outside of the scope of this post). Let’s look at two examples; first with browsers I use Google Chrome. I use Chrome because it truly is very fast (Try it out if you have no already!). It also fits me better. When I browse the web I want the website to be my focus, not the browser itself. Chrome is also non-intrusive on my web experience. I use Chrome because it works better for my circumstances.

For a second example with my mail client I use Outlook. Once again this is because Outlook fits my needs better. The integration it has with a calendar, contact list, and task list is superior to Thunderbird 2, Evolution, Pine, and Emacs. I tried all of them, Outlook won. Outlook is a bloated piece of software that crashes every now and again, but the feature set it has works for what I need it for. That reminds me, Thunderbird 3 came out recently. I need to give it a shot.

The interesting fact is when I say I use and like Outlook and other Windows products I get labeled as being a Microsoft fanboy. I’ll defend myself by saying I am not a fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. Microsoft does good and bad, just like every company and human on the planet. The people that swear their life by XYZ are the real fanboys. I do not swear my life by Microsoft.

My point of going on this rabbit trail before hitting my main topic of rms, is that Stallman is simply a Free Software Movement fanboy. He is blinded by his ideology and to put it bluntly is he is blatantly unscientific. I did a bit of Googleing and found these outrageous statements rms has made:

This first one comes from the GNU su man page.

23.6.1 Why GNU su does not support the ‘wheel’ group

(This section is by Richard Stallman.)

Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest. The “wheel group” feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.



(Another man page quote) This program does not support a "wheel group" that restricts who can su to super-user accounts, because that can help fascist system administrators hold unwarranted power over other users.

Yup, you read that right. I did not make it up. Now, I’m the first person to joke about wishing we never had passwords, because let’s be honest if you don’t have priv keys setup it can be annoying to type them in each and every time. The fact of the matter is there are evil people out there. Passwords prevent them from doing evil things most of the time. Having someone in charge isn’t not fascism, is just plain old good practices. America is a republic, not a democracy. We elect representatives. If it was a democracy I would be going to DC and voting on whether Bella the cow gets grain from the government or not. I don’t have time for that, that’s why we have a representative democracy, aka republic. I elect someone who basically has my views and he/she votes on my behalf.

Another one of rms’s outrageous comments recently was made in relation to the GNOME project. The thread is quite entertaining to read, but then again it demonstrates someone who is a fanatic and is not reasonable. If you read Stallman’s comments on mono you will find some that you can’t help but shake your head too. Stallman must think Microsoft is full of Trolls and Gnomes that eat children for dinner. Continuing with this idea, there is a popular picture saying, “When you program open source, you’re programming communism”. Now, of course that statement is outrageous. I’ve helped on open source projects and I am anything but a communist. It does stem from a seed of truth though. It is fair to say the Free Software Movement at times has hints of communism. They are idealistic, saying everyone is nice and won’t ever try to make a virus. We should all own all computers: to each according to his need and from each according to his means. Does that sound familiar? Open source is cool and I love a lot of what comes out of it. The Free Software Movement on the other hand is a fanatical ideology that should be avoided. Don’t publish you code under the GNU licenses. There are many other good ones out there like the Apache, Mozilla, Eclipse, or my favorite, the MIT/X11 licenses.

Let’s end on a happy note, go to this site

Just to update everyone on my website I will have it switched over soon. I just need to finish the article and media section. The new url is http://windows.mokon.net. My sorta updated resume is on there.

It it also worth nothing I was award the highly competitive CEPS Graduate Fellowship this year. I am very grateful for this!

It's been a long time since I have posted here, I've been out straight in school now that I have started my masters, but I have been working on updating my website a bit. I have been teaching myselfe C# and the .NET framework and once I have completed it this site will be updated, but until then here is a link where you can preview my site. Enjoy!

For those who don't know Tony Snow, FOX News anchor, Presidental Press Secretary, and much more, just died a few days ago. On FOX they had a quote that I thought was very nice.

The True Gentleman
John Walter Wayland
Published in the American Citizen, 1930
The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds
from good will and an acute sense of propriety
and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies;
who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty,
the obscure man of his obscurity,
or any man of his inferiority or deformity;
who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another;
who does not flatter wealth,
cringe before power,
or boast of his own possessions or achievements;
who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy;
whose deed follows his word;
who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own;
and who appears well in any company;
a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

I’ve uploaded some pictures of my Paris trip along with a short write up on it. Enjoy!

I just applied for grad. school and I thought I’d post my personal statement here. You may want to read my College Application Essay before you read this once since it will give you context. Enjoy!

Three years ago as a senior in high school, I wrote my college application essay. In this essay, I used the analogy of how the school bus I had ridden for twelve years was a time machine carrying me through time. With my undergraduate education entering its last year, I will now take a moment to look at where my journey has taken me and forward toward the route I plan to take in the coming years.

Since I was a little child, I have been fascinated with the inner workings of everything around me. As I have gone through the undergraduate program in Computer Science here at the University of New Hampshire, I have noticed how well Computer Science fits into this intrigue. From the first days of classes, as Professor Johnson taught us how programming was simply taking the basics of logic and math and building upon them, to the senior electives I am now entering, I have thoroughly enjoyed Computer Science.

Yet the more one learns about computers it becomes clear that there is so much left to learn. This is the reason I would like to pursue a Master of Science in Computer Science. Looking over the senior electives one cannot help but notice courses with ‘Introduction to’ in their title. By pursing a Masters, I will be delving deeper into the catacombs of computers, going a few steps beyond the introduction.

In the short term, I hope to both increase my general knowledge within the field of Computer Science and form an area of specialty. While I have yet to take the introductory course in artificial intelligence at the university, I have been involved with the artificial intelligence group. In a Masters Degree Program, I plan to do research in this field for my thesis. Some areas I am looking into are path finding, both cooperative and single agent, and adversarial planning under uncertainty. My professional interests also include software design: specifically, object oriented methodology.

In the long term, I am looking to go into industry once I have my Masters. I feel applying the skills I have learned in a Masters Program will be invaluable to the field of Computer Science. Throughout college and high school, I have also been involved in the game media industry, having attended events around the world and working along side developers and publishers in the games industry. Through this and the expertise gained through my Masters, I plan on working in the game development industry. It is an industry that provides a rich environment for artificial intelligence applications.

Three years ago as a senior in high school, I wrote my college application essay. In this essay, I used the analogy of how the school bus I had ridden for twelve years was a time machine carrying me through time. With my undergraduate education entering its last year, I will now take a moment to look at where my journey has taken me and forward toward the route I plan to take in the coming years.

Since I was a little child, I have been fascinated with the inner workings of everything around me. As I have gone through the undergraduate program in Computer Science here at the University of New Hampshire, I have noticed how well Computer Science fits into this intrigue. From the first days of classes, as Professor Johnson taught us how programming was simply taking the basics of logic and math and building upon them, to the senior electives I am now entering, I have thoroughly enjoyed Computer Science.

Yet the more one learns about computers it becomes clear that there is so much left to learn. This is the reason I would like to pursue a Master of Science in Computer Science. Looking over the senior electives one cannot help but notice courses with ‘Introduction to’ in their title. By pursing a Masters, I will be delving deeper into the catacombs of computers, going a few steps beyond the introduction.

In the short term, I hope to both increase my general knowledge within the field of Computer Science and form an area of specialty. While I have yet to take the introductory course in artificial intelligence at the university, I have been involved with the artificial intelligence group. In a Masters Degree Program, I plan to do research in this field for my thesis. Some areas I am looking into are path finding, both cooperative and single agent, and adversarial planning under uncertainty. My professional interests also include software design: specifically, object oriented methodology.

In the long term, I am looking to go into industry once I have my Masters. I feel applying the skills I have learned in a Masters Program will be invaluable to the field of Computer Science. Throughout college and high school, I have also been involved in the game media industry, having attended events around the world and working along side developers and publishers in the games industry. Through this and the expertise gained through my Masters, I plan on working in the game development industry. It is an industry that provides a rich environment for artificial intelligence applications.

When I wrote the essay my senior year of high school I said I was exiting that bus and continuing my path wherever it led. Looking back, I was just stepping off that bus onto another: another time machine. Each day I still board a bus as I travel on the Campus Connector to the InterOperability Lab; exiting one bus just leads to another. Perhaps one day when I am going to work I will enter a bus or the subway and notice something different: the driver replaced by an artificial intelligence created by the skills taught here at the University of New Hampshire.

When I wrote the essay my senior year of high school I said I was exiting that bus and continuing my path wherever it led. Looking back, I was just stepping off that bus onto another: another time machine. Each day I still board a bus as I travel on the Campus Connector to the InterOperability Lab; exiting one bus just leads to another. Perhaps one day when I am going to work I will enter a bus or the subway and notice something different: the driver replaced by an artificial intelligence created by the skills taught here at the University of New Hampshire.

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