Sometimes I pop into #php on freenode, because I have a particular issue that I need to work out. I usually pop in when I have the question, spend 5-10 minutes formulating it, and attempt to answer at least 3 questions posed by other users while I am there. Usually by the time I am ready to ask my question, I already have my answer (by formulating the question properly) and I have helped 3 people out.

However, it is getting to the point where I don't actually want to be exposed to the geek-lunacy that is #php. The channel is the black sheep of the PHP support family, and I am not the only one to notice this either:

The next one, the “#php redirect effect,” is pretty irritating. On #apache, we attempt to be very helpful, and so we end up answering questions on a variety of topics which are, strictly speaking, off-topic. Invariably, however, when we refer someone to #php for questions which seem to be likely to be more in the experience of folks familiar with PHP, they say, that’s an Apache problem, and send them back to #apache. This is very irritating behaviour, and results in a lot of frustrated people with unanswered questions. There are indeed questions which are, strictly speaking, Apache questions. However, when they are configuration issues which would necessarily be more familiar to frequent users of PHP, it would be courteous if they were to be willing to handle those questions.

-- Dr. Bacchus's Journal Why we don't like PHP.

In fact, Dr. Bacchus goes on to talk about the philosophical differences between #apache and #php, and puts it quite rightly in another entry:

The self-important pedantry that inhabits most IRC channels is pathetic, not really something to boast about.

-- Dr.Bacchus's Journal IRC philosophies

It seems that as long as you're in with the #php clique, there is no problem if you decide to mumble about your latest apt-get problem, post ASCII pictures of bunnies with pancakes on their head or mumble incoherently about—well, whatever. But if you are a newbie, either to PHP or to the channel, watch out.

To a certain extent I can see where this comes from. The shear volume of requests for help about PostNuke, phpBB or apache must get into the realm of staggering. But the tempers there seem to be short. I usually see about 1-3 bans per visit, with a visit lasting anywhere between 1/2 an hour to 3 hours, which seems excessive. The philosophy of the channel is on target: "Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life." The implementation is totally screwed up. Again, to quote Dr. Bacchus:

...translated into a self-important newbie-hating pomposity that makes beginners feel stupid and timid about asking their questions. That’s counter-productive, and makes free/open source software seem like a pack of elitist blow-hards.

The big thing these days is Google's big step into china. People are not happy.

This comes right on the heels of Google fighting the US Department of Justice trying to get access to its records.

So we have:
A) Supporting a fascist regime... bad.
B) rejecting the US Governments spying on its own citizens... good.

All this from a company whose motto is "Don't be evil". Well to a certain extent, I am willing to cut some slack to Google. Maybe they are straight profiting from helping boots find human faces better (forever). However, maybe something else is happening here. Maybe, just maybe, by getting into the search game in china, Google is helping the free flow of information. Stop thinking about The Great Firewall of China as a burning stone barrier. Instead think of the free-flow of information as water, and The Great Firewall of China as a dam. If that dam were to be suddenly removed, then there is going to be some serious issues. When communism fell in Russia, think about how much turmoil there was. As I recall, an entire country that separated from the USSR, got involved in some kind of sketchy dealings and then went flat broke. We are talking about 1.3 BILLION human beings here. If suddenly Google were to step in with a free-for-all-search, what would happen?

Ultimately, Google isn't necessarily being evil when its offerings its search services to china. I'd like to take a "wait and see"approach. But who is to say that we're going to see, or recognize, any benefits of Google's presence? Or for that matter, any misfortune caused by it?

Harassing telemarketers is like yelling at an autistic or a McDonalds employee. They're easy targets, but it does effectively nothing. While yelling at someone with autism will rightly get you snubbed in most circles, yelling at or otherwise harassing telemarketers is not considered a bad thing to do in my various circles.

poor bastards.

Part of the argument for yelling at them is "If they don't want to be yelled at, they shouldn't take such an evil job in the first place". Well there are a few problems with that. First off, not everyone has the luxury to choose jobs based on your code of ethics. The second problem is a sense of scale: in the list of jobs that are evil, telemarketer isn't really high up. The marketing droid who figured that telemarketing would be a great way to make money is way higher. Evil Oil Executive Corporate Overlord is even higher still.

When ever a telemarketer calls me, I always put on my "Who the fuck are you and why are you calling me" voice, that automagically gets them on guard, then I politely tell them that I am not interested and hang up. If they really bug you, ask to be put on their do-not-call list. Again, politely. I mean, I know that telemarketers are annoying as fuck. But the individual calling you isn't singling you out. It is the marketing droid who figured you fit their target demographics that has singled you out instead.

Food for thought.

Traci sent me this link to A Slow Communication Manifesto wherein the author describes how the speed of the information we transmit somehow causes us problems like the one he illustrates:

The other day I was trapped in an interminable meeting with eight other captives and, looking around the table I thought, "We could have avoided this if two weeks ago someone would have just got up, walked down the hall and talked through the problem." Instead, what brought us together in our unhappy task that day was an angry email. Within two hours of the author hitting SEND, enough people had been copied on it that the "To:" list had ballooned to 12, and the email thread grew longer and increasingly heated as each new volley was fired. By the time the entire mess hit the inbox of a VP, the top line in the body read, "no way im changing the numrbers." (Is it just me or isn’t there something uniquely menacing about lower case messages with bad spelling and no punctuation?)

I have a fundamental problem with this, and it can be boiled down to a well known saying: "A poor workman blames his tools" In this case, the initial thinking is right. The problem might have been avoided by walking down the hall, and talked through the problem. Instead, emails are sent and the problem gets blown out of proportion. This is a case of not using the right tool for the job. Not a case of our-fast-life-is-spinning-out-of-control.

He then goes on to make a loose analogy between fast food and so-called fast communication. "Both can be bland, too accessible and potentially dangerous to one’s health. They can clog, corrode and corrupt, and lead to a complete stoppage of vital systems. They may eventually lead to cravings for something real and natural. And oh, how I crave civil discourse.". Except we are given very little in the way of reasons why 'fast communication' is bland, too accessible and dangerous to one's health.

However, there is at least a little glimmer of truth to what he is saying, Internet communication (email, IM, Web Forums, Wiki, etc.) all have the problem that a lot of the 'subliminal channel' of information is lost. We are reduced to using smilies to convey a rage of non-verbal communications. Sarcasm is good example, you can hear a snide sarcastic voice over a friendly-jab-sarcastic voice easily. It is much more difficult to extract the intent, and sometimes even the sarcasm from written communication.

Part of the beauty of electronic communication is that it leaves a paper trail that is (hopefully!) backed up. You can always refer to it if you need to, and unlike dead trees, it can be restored when thrown in the trash. It can be organized and searched at a much faster pace then pulp-based communications. I would rather click on the "find" button and type in a search term, then try and find that term in 200 separate pieces of paper. Voice communication, once spoken, is lost forever. Ultimately A good communicator will realize this and work with the deficiencies and strengths presented by electronic communication, by doing things like avoiding sarcasm and emotionally charged language, using good subject lines, revising the document before hitting send, using the spell checker and peppering the document with keywords for fast searching and retrieval.

Here are a few of my responses to the manifesto:

We are enslaved by our cellphones and PDA's

No we aren't. We are enslaved by the need to answer our cellphones, and our need to constantly check our PDA's. The only people who can truly claim being 'enslaved' by their cellphones are people who are on-call. They choose this slavery by taking a job that requires it in the first place. Look, if you don't want to be enslaved by your cellphone, use a ringtone that is quiet and non-disruptive and learn to ignore it. It isn't that hard.

Communication should rid itself of speed before civility is reduced to extinction

If you are referring to the time it takes to communicate, yes. If you are referring to the time it takes said communication to get from point A to point B, no. People should strive to be clearer and more civil in their electronic communication.

A firm defence of civil discourse is the only way to oppose the lunacy that is Fast Communication.

A firm defence of civil discourse is the only way to oppose insane communication. Insane communication can happen regardless of the media chosen, be it 'fast' or 'slow', it is rather the care that is taken in to crafting the communication that counts.

May intelligent conversation, thoughtful exchange, and carefully constructed prose save us from the delusion that causes us to mistake frenzy for legitimate activity.

I.e. Take your time crafting emails. Isn't this just good advice? Instead of a subject line like "no way im changing the numrbers" try "Changing the numbers is against my ethical code." or what not.

In reality what we're talking about here is patience. Take the time to craft the email (or blog entry) rather then whipping it off, and you will come to more success in your written communications. Blaming email because the sender didn't think about what she sent is like blaming a F2F for the person shooting their mouth off. The individual has a communication deficiency that needs to be dealt with, not the medium.

Anyway, it was an interesting article, and it got me thinking. Which is good, cause I haven't blogged in awhile. Been too busy playing with BunnyWiki. Which again, I remind you, is an open-season wiki, so by all means go and play on it, and create your own wiki with it!

By virtue of the Tortoises fast tongue, Achilles languishes in jail, having been captured by the coppers Silva and Gould. Suddenly he has a rather unexpected visitor...

Achilles: Why... why... Mr Tortoise! How did you get in here?
Tortoise: Easy, I walked through the front door you see.
Achilles: Now thats now what I mean!
Tortoise: You're quite right. The warden let me in to talk to you. But have a care, he has cameras and microphones set up everywhere! So we shouldn't talk about why you are in here.
Achilles: Ooohhh that Warden Hoff Dougstadter, he is so horribly oppressive! Why every night...

The Tortoise stares up and the ceiling significantly

Achilles: But... ah... what ever shall we talk about?
Tortoise: Well, when we last had a chat, we were having a conversation about the Goldbach Conjecture, where Mr. Goldbach said "at least it seems that every number that is greater than 2 is the sum of three primes". I think today we're going to talk about something else we can do with primes. Encryption!
Achilles: My, this seems rather out of character for you Mr. Tortoise. Very cloak and Dagger!
Tortoise: Ah, but my dear Achilles, we have been trotted out my a writer of far less calibre then our beloved Hofstadter or Mr. Carrol. So be prepared for much shenanigans.
Achilles: Speaking of shenanigans, your grammar seems to have gotten a lot worse!
Tortoise: ...
Achilles: You were saying about cryptography?
Tortoise: Yes. Right. Well then. Cryptography.
Achilles: But why would anyone like your or I need cryptography? I mean, I have nothing to hide. In fact, I maintain that any lawful and productive member of society really has no reason to hide anything from anyone! Except that nasty Warden. Why I...
Tortoise: Ahh Achilles?
Achilles: And by nasty, i mean that purely in the homo-erotic sense...
Tortoise: I always knew there was something about you Greeks. But the question of why anyone, especially law abiding and productive citizens would need cryptography is a good one, and it can only be answered by another question: How much do you value your privacy, and how much will you do so in the future?
Achilles: Oh pshaw. I value my privacy very much in fact, but my mail just isn't worth reading, present circumstances excepted of course.
Tortoise: Ah, but therein lies the rub! We never truly know what kind of circumstances we are going to be in, and then we're well and truly stuck. Why, imagine if we were to exchange details on a cryptosystem, then we would be showing the beloved Warden that we do in fact have something to hide.
Achilles: Which we don't.
Tortoise: Right.
Achilles: But couldn't we just use the power of our minds, and talk about a cryptosystem in code, and that way we wouldn't get found out?
Tortoise: Well, not anymore. But that kind of cryptography has been known to work. You will remember that the Romans used a system similar to that, were messages were passed back and forth between Ceaser and his generals by slips of paper hidden in a walking stick. The messages are said to be sent through the 'subliminal channel', it is also called steganography. No a days there are ways to encode text inside of images, or other similar things.
Achilles: Ahh yes, I remember! Just like we used the Skytale to send messages back and forth!
Tortoise: Right, we could use steganography to hide messages, to one another, but they could easily be found out, and it is hard not to arrouse suspicion.

The Tortoise leans in and starts whispering to Achilles

Tortoise: Another method might be disinformation. I might tell you that I am going to break you out of the jail tonight at 3:00 AM, knowing that the Warden Doug is listening, and come at 4:30 instead, or maybe 2:00!
Achilles: Are you really going to break me out?
Tortoise: Don't be silly!

The Tortoise straightens up, and resumes talking

Tortoise: I find steganography to be rather crude however. It is like depending on just the lock of the jail door to keep you locked away in this cell, when the key could be anywhere, why even hung up on a hook next to us! It lacks grace. I prefer the sweet company of numbers to keep my secrets safe!
Achilles: But surely numbers can be figured out, especially by competent mathematicians.
Tortoise: As sure as the sun rises my friend! However, as I alluded to earlier, the numbers we are talking about are not small. No, not small in deed! Most modern cryptosystems deal with astronomically huge numbers.
Achilles: But how does it all work?
Tortoise: Well, public key encryption, which is one of the easiest and best methods found so far, works by finding things called One Way Functions. A function is simply a mathematical recipe to bake a number. A one way function is a recipe that one you bake, you can't un-bake it.
Achilles: So when you bake a cake, you can't really turn it back into sugar, flower, almonds...
Tortoise: Exactly! Mmmm.. Almonds.
Achilles: So what is an example of our cryptographic cake?
Tortoise: Well, one way is to take a very large composite number—the product of 2 or more prime numbers, so 16 is a composite number with 2, 4 and 8 being its prime factors because 2 x 8 is 16, and 4 x 4 is also 16. Anyway, This composite number becomes your 'public key' that you can share with the world. Now, if I want to send you a sekrut message, I just encrypt the message using your public key. Now to read the message, you would need to decrypt the message using your 'private key'.
Achilles: But what is my private key?
Tortoise: Well, the private key is a prime number that makes up the composite number of your public key. In our example, it is either 2, 4 or 8. But real cryptosystems use much larger composites.
Achilles: How big?
Tortoise: Oh, 340,282,367....
Achilles: Oh pshaw thats not very big at all!
Tortoise: with 30 zeros after it.
Achilles: Oh....
Tortoise: And that is just to store credit cards. Cryptographers use a short hand when talking about such big keys, they call it 128 bit encryption, because 2 to the power of 128 equals that very big number. There is one set of cryptographic tools called Gnu Privacy Guard that suggests using a 1024 bits for the key..
Achilles: I am afraid to ask, but just how big is that?
Tortoise: To tell you the truth, I don't know the exact number, but my estimate would be 1-with-308-zeros-after-it. To give you a sense of scale, the observable universe has approximately 1-with-79-zeros number of atoms.
Achilles: ...
Tortoise: So you see, your messages are quite safe for the time being.
Achilles: Oh you tricky Tortoise, you aren't going to get me this time! The time being? What is that supposed to mean?
Tortoise: well, you see, once Quantum Computers hit the scene, then dealing with such large numbers won't be as big a deal. But there is still time for that to happen yet. And while quantum computers will make the process easier, it probably wont make it easy. But the rumor is that the biggest and strongest spy orginizations can't even break that kind of encryption!

At this point, the Warden bursts through the door to stop this conversation, only to find both Achilles and The Tortoise gone, replaced with animatronic versions of themselves

Hoff Dougstadter yelling over the animatronic voices: Silva! Gould! Where is that Achilles! And that turtle! I know he is up to something!
Silva: I'm sorry sir, but I didn't see anyone leave except the turtle.
Hoff Dougstadter: Well, AFTER HIM!
Gould: But sir, we could never catch up to him.
Hoff Dougstadter: What?!? He is a turtle!
Gould: Well, there is this bloke Zeno, right?