I’m a huge fan of google desktop for OS X. I have hoards of pdf documents scattered around my hard drive (mostly docs for TeX macro packages installed with my TeXLive distribution) and google desktop is an awesomely useful way to look for whatever documentation I need. Frankly I think this is what spotlight should have been¹.

Unfortunately one problem many people have with google desktop for mac is that it sometimes uses a bunch of system resources while indexing. I’ve seen lots of complaints about this on various mac sites but no solutions so I’ll post what I found made a big difference in case it helps anyone else.

Go to /Library/LaunchDaemons and open com.google.Desktop.Daemon.plist in Property List Editor (you probably need to change the permissions first so you will be able to save it). Now add two new keys at the Top level.

Nice

Number: 19

LowPriorityIO

Boolean: Yes

When you reboot the slowdown from indexing should be a lot less bothersome. Unfortunately what inspired me to make this post was I just had to repeat this modification when desktop upgraded itself and overwrote this plist. I’m not sure why google desktop doesn’t do this by default but it seems to work for me.

So the big political story of the day is the discovery that a big democratic donor may have an outstanding felony conviction. Unsurprisingly Barack, Hillary and the major political figures who accepted his money have all expressed their shock at this revelation¹ and pledged to forfeit his donations to charity. Now in one sense it makes sense for politicians to give up these sort of ‘tainted’ donations. In any campaign these tainted donations are only a tiny percentage of donations and some voters would be turned off if they didn’t. What doesn’t make sense is why voters look more favorably on candidates who give up these sorts of donations. In fact if Barack had refused to give up the money (for the right reasons) I probably would have switched my support to him and I think it’s downright irrational to think worse of a candidate because they don’t return the money.

After all the candidates presumably believe that money is better spent facilitating their election than by being given to charity² and obviously they aren’t just using a donor’s sketchy past as an excuse to funnel campaign donations to charity. Now when the concern is improper influence this sort of response makes sense. If candidates have to return any money that might appear to be an attempt to influence them they will have less incentive to sell their influence. However, it seems implausible to me that the voter’s concern is that Hsu is trying to buy a pardon, no president pardons enough people to make this a worthwhile patronage system, and even if so you would expect the candidates to merely set the money aside and accept it if Hsu turns out not to get sent to jail.

The best that can be said is that the candidates are making it clear they don’t approve of the donors actions but it’s pretty silly to think that accepting someone’s money is an endorsement of their lifestyle. If we thought that the Hsu donation should hardly be at the top of the list. It gets even more weird when you consider the canidates who plan to return Hsu’s money only if he is found guilty. What do they think that this shows the country would be better off if Hsu had more moeny?

Since voters probably would dislike a candidate who didn’t give up these sorts of donations I can’t really hold it against any of the candidates for giving the money up. However, with Barack in particular I would have been a lot more inclined to believe his rhetoric about being less driven by these sorts of ‘cynical’ vote counting concerns as well as believing he could reason out the costs and benefits rather than just going with naively idealistic feelings³. I just hope all the candidates made this decision for cynical reasons since it would be really troubling to think that our next president would put some weird superstition about tainted money over the best interests of humanity.

Sigh, yet another proof that direct voting is a horrible way to choose national leaders.

Senator Craig (R-Idaho) was recently arrested in the men’s restroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on charges of “Interference with Privacy” and “Disorderly Conduct”. Now I recommend everyone read the accusations since it’s pretty funny to hear about a republican senator soliciting gay sex in an airport restroom but I’m baffled and slightly disturbed by the charges. If the officer in the case is to be believed Senator Craig seems to have acted in a way that strongly suggests he was trying to solicit anonymous gay sex in the restroom but how does this qualify as either interference with privacy or disorderly conduct?

The relevant parts of the interference with privacy statute forbid the following behavior:

(1) surreptitiously gazes, stares, or peeps in the window or other aperture of a sleeping room in a hotel, as defined in section 327.70 subdivision 3, a tanning booth, or other place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts, as defined in section 609.341, subdivision 5, or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts; and (2) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the occupant

Yes, some courts have (reasonably) ruled that peeking into restroom stalls to catch a glimpse of someone’s privates qualifies as an offense under this provision. However, Senator Craig obviously did not peek into the stall “with the intent to intrude or interfere with the privacy of the occupant.” Just the opposite, Craig presumably peeked into that stall in an attempt to avoid embarrassing the occupant (and himself) with an unwanted solicitation for gay sex and was likely hoping to see someone fully clothed (and therefore occupying the stall for other reasons)¹.

The relevant parts of the disorderly conduct statute read as follows:

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor: … (3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

In my opinion the breadth of this statute and the qualification “reasonably” make it unconstitutionally vague. Furthermore the fact that the statute criminalizes merely “offensive” conduct that is likely to “reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment” means it runs afoul of the first amendment as well. After all chanting “abortion is murder” outside of a family planning facility is offensive conduct that reasonably arouses anger and resentment. Still, even if we ignore these problems and try to offer a ‘reasonable’ interpretation of this law that doesn’t include behavior that obviously wasn’t intended to be criminalized I don’t think it supports a charge against Senator Craig.

Suppose I pick up my girlfriend at the airport and while waiting for our bags I verbalize my intention to anally violate her as soon as we get home. Now this might lack class and be somewhat rude but surely it isn’t the sort of conduct that the legislature meant to include in their definition of disorderly conduct. Even if my girlfriend’s friend is present and I let her know she is welcome to join in it still doesn’t qualify as disorderly conduct, even if she is offended by the offer. In short even unwanted solicitations to engage in sexual activity aren’t enough to qualify as disorderly conduct². The fact that Senator Craig was suggesting an illegal act (indecent exposure/public sex) isn’t relevant since only the conduct Craig actually engaged in is relevant to this statute. The only thing that distinguishes Senator Craig’s solicitation from those we are certain don’t qualify as illegal activity is the greater distaste many people have for the sort of sex he suggested. So not only would this charge likely be dismissed by the court (at least on appeal) it should be obvious even to the police that it’s bogus.

Now some sites are already gloating about a reactionary senator getting caught soliciting anonymous gay sex, and I can’t deny feeling a certain satisfaction myself, but I’m horrified at the behavior of the police in bringing these sorts of charges. Unfortunately, do to the embarrassing nature of the accusations I suspect most of those charged plead guilty like Senator Craig and try and make the charges disappear. Now I agree we might want to discourage anonymous sex in airport restrooms (though I’m suspect we could put our police officers to better uses) but that’s not an excuse to charge people with what amounts to a crime of ‘being disgusting.’

Fair treatment and freedom from puritanical moral impulses requires that we don’t enforce, or better yet make, laws which penalize some vague notion of acting inappropriately. If you want to charge people for soliciting (but not having) anonymous sex in public restrooms you need to pass a law against it. Most certainly we shouldn’t have our police going around and charging people for things the police should damn well know aren’t really illegal and counting on embarrassment to make sure they don’t protest. That is blackmail and harassment not good police work.

UPDATE: Apparently I’m not the only one who feels like this.

So today I received an email from the Chancellor Breslauer setting out UC Berkeley’s policy on students who have a religious or extra-curricular conflict with an exam or other important event in class. Now a uniform policy like this is quite welcome, it gives instructors clear guidance and makes sure students can plan their other obligations without having to worry about what sort of professors they get this year. What I find objectionable about it is the differences in the way it treats religious ‘obligations’ and sports trips. Here is what the email says about religion:

In compliance with Education code, Section 92640(a), it is the official policy of the University of California at Berkeley to permit any student to undergo a test or examination, without penalty, at a time when that activity would not violate the student’s religious creed, unless administering the examination at an alternative time would impose an undue hardship which could not reasonably have been avoided. Requests to accommodate a student’s religious creed by scheduling tests or examinations at alternative times shall be submitted directly to the faculty member responsible for administering the examination. Reasonable common sense, judgment and the pursuit of mutual goodwill should result in the positive resolution of scheduling conflicts. The regular campus appeals process applies if a mutually satisfactory arrangement cannot be achieved.

Here is what the email says about musical or sports trips:

-It is the instructor’s responsibility to give students a schedule, available on the syllabus in the first week of instruction, of all class sessions, exams, tests, project deadlines, field trips, and any other required class activities. -It is the student’s responsibility to notify the instructor(s) in writing by the second week of the semester of any potential conflict and to recommend a solution, with the understanding that an earlier deadline or date of examination may be the most practicable solution. -It is the student’s responsibility to inform him/herself about material missed because of an absence, whether or not she or he has been formally excused.

The clear sense these rules convey is that the instructor is expected to bend their rules if they might create difficulty or hardship for someone who wishes to respect a religious obligation but that a student who is going to be absent for some other extra-curricular activity undertakes a greater obligation if they want to miss class. Now one might justify such a policy on the grounds that some athletes or musicians are going to be out of town on a large number of dates or that religion is more important to people. However, it would be easy to give every student a certain number of absences they can exercise using the easier standard and there are many students who are more casual about the religious observances they ask to be excused for then athletes are about their games.

Worse it seems that students are given no allowance for non-official extra-curricular activities. Even if the student is really into launching rockets and the annual rocketing event is his favorite thing to do it appears the instructor doesn’t have to give him any accommodation as it isn’t an official school sponsored event. On the other hand someone who thinks ‘yah, I might as well go to church today’ gets all the accommodations mentioned above.

Anyway I don’t mean to critisize the Chancellor, his hands are tied by California law, but merely to point out the way in which non-believers (or even casual church goers) are treated as second class citizens. The things that we may really really care about get no accomodation while just someone has a ridiculous belief about some historical event we have to bend over to accommodate them. Now I fully understand that the potential for religious discrimination is great but if we weren’t implicitly endorsing religion as something more important than say a rocketry hobby we would use some fully neutral policy that gave everyone the chance to do what they really cared about.

Philosophers and stoned college students have long been intrigued by the idea that we could be living in some kind of simulation but I was surprised to see this idea mentioned in the New York Times ¹. The NYT article summarizes this paper by philosopher Nick Bostrom who has also created a webpage with links to background reading, depictions of simulation scenarios in the media² and even someone’s wiki about ’simulism’³. The paper, while interesting and notable for getting into the New York Times, doesn’t say anything really new. It merely fleshes out the argument that if we believe that simulated individuals would have real experiences and that it is likely that humans will create many simulations of humanities past then you should assign a high probability to the proposition that you are actually being simulated.

While my intuition is that the idea behind this argument is correct I think the argument Professor Bostrom gives isn’t quite right. In particular the focus on what human civilizations are likely to do and ancestor simulation seems all wrong. There is no reason why totally alien beings could not simulate people nor to believe that our simulated universe resembles the real one in which the simulation is running much less that we are an earlier stage of the simulators history. Later I might think about how to fix this point but what made me want to write this post was the comment in the NYT that you could get out of the argument by either denying strong AI (a simulation wouldn’t be conscious) or by assigning a low probability to the chances that human beings will progress far enough to run such simulations.

This reminded me of the post I wrote a year ago about Sleeping Beauty in The Matrix arguing that a widely accepted solution to the sleeping beauty problem also implied we should believe the universe creates infinitely many individuals with the same memories and experiences as we have. Of course intuitively I think the conclusion of this argument is total crap but it’s tough to figure out why it’s wrong⁴. In short I think there is something very subtle going on in these sort of arguments that I don’t yet understand. If I ever figure it out I will post but until then I’m remaining skeptical.

A couple times recently I’ve noticed that my iphone battery was unexpectedly drained; surprising given that normal usage hadn’t yet reduced me even to half power. I was pretty worried that something was wrong with my new phone for a short while but after struggling with google I discovered apple’s inconspicuous warning that leaving your iphone plugged into a sleeping computer can drain the batteries. iTunes 7.3 adds the ‘feature’ of silently refusing to enter sleep mode with a connected iphone but this doesn’t help if you plug in your phone while the lid is closed. What I couldn’t find mentioned anywhere is the fact that the power brick will drain the battery as well if left unplugged. I figured I’d post a warning just so no one gets worried that their expensive new phone is (seriously) broken.

Personally I think this bug is a bit more annoying than the battery drain caused by a sleeping laptop. I didn’t have any particular reason to plug my phone into a closed laptop so it won’t be any difficulty to avoid doing so in the future. However, it’s quite common for people to unplug electronic devices to free up an outlet and those people might not always be me. I kinda doubt that this issue can be solved by a firmware update but hopefully apple can replace the power bricks with something that works around this problem. At the very least they should warn people about connecting an iphone to an unplugged power brick.

I still love my iphone and think it’s the most amazing handheld gadget I’ve ever seen but that’s no reason not to acknowledge its flaws. I really dislike the emotional fans who resist even the slightest suggestion that their favorite product isn’t perfect and I’m not going to become one no matter how cool the iphone may be.

In my last two posts I talked a bit about gender fairness. At least to some readers what I said wasn’t very clear so I thought I would take the opportunity to clarify my thoughts on the subject. I’m still working out my opinions on some of these issues so don’t assume my views here are set in stone.

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So in my last post I complained about the bad insubstantial coverage of gender fairness in the workplace. Just a few hours after I posted I heard a story on NPR about a study showing that not only do women negotiate less for their salaries but they recieve greater social punishment when they do negotiate. This story, also found here is exactly the sort of substantive information that I wanted to see. It reviews a study showing that women incur a greater social cost by asking for higher pay than men do. It appears that men are substantially less put off by men asking for a higher salary than they are for women doing so while women are put off by both.

Since this is such a long post I’ll offer my thoughts on this study and the broader question of gender equity after the break.

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Every once in awhile I see an article about women in IT linked from slashdot or on another site I browse. Now if such articles described real discrimination or genuine unfair practices they would be an important contribution toward gender equity. However, this article like most of those I run across describes the difficulty many women in CS/IT have with work life balance or the pressure they feel at being one of only a few women. Now I don’t know how much genuine discrimination persists in a field like IT but presenting what appears to be perfectly fair treatment as if it was gender discrimination trivializes any discrimination that might be occurring and makes sure that people see anti-discrimination efforts as pure political correctness.

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A few days ago I wrote up a quick tip about how to fix the double dollar sign problem with textmate syntax highlighting for LaTeX. This fixed one problem but whenever I typed something like $\blah$ I’d end up with $\$ on the screen at some point and the slash would escape the second dollar sign causing textmate to believe math mode extended to wherever the next dollar sign occurred. Read on if you want tips on solving this issue as well.

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