windows 7 hates foreigners

I had to install a Microsoft OS recently so I could get remote access to work.  That being the case I got some Windows 7 action going and for the most part, I don't hate it.  It's got a couple MS type irritations; having to screw around to load an unsigned driver was annoying but at least I understand why they did that.  What I have yet to understand is the Windows undying devotion to the QWERTY keyboard layout.  Yeah it's the most common but there's no shortage of alternatives, and while MS seems to understand people want the choice of something else, they also seem to really want users to hang on to QWERTY despite their stated preferences.

For reasons I can't explain, no matter how completely I remove the US QWERTY keyboard layout, it still shows up in the language bar.  So I hide the language bar, no big deal right?  Except no matter how many times I disable the hotkeys for switching input languages I still randomly find the keys switching back to QWERTY under my fingers without warning.  I've locked myself out of my VPN access to work twice now and at least one website by unknowingly mistyping passwords when my fingers were hitting what I thought were the right keys but which Windows had shuffled on me.

I booted up Ubuntu so I could show a screenshot of how it's done properly, but it seems there is nothing to see.  Yeah because when you have only one keyboard layout selected, go figure, the language bar hides itself and the hotkeys disable themselves.

I'll update this if I figure out how to fix things, but in the meantime suggestions are welcome.

/rant.

currency, economics, and trolls

I recently read on the Pirate Party of Canada forums that the EFF has begun accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that's seen some steady growth of late.  I read a little about Bitcoin when it popped up in my newsreader in the summer but having little understanding of either cryptography or economics my interest wandered quickly.  When I read through the replies however it seemed some people had strong concerns about such a currency being widely adopted, and one vocal protester seemed well informed on the subject so I began "discussing" it with him.  My mistake.

(the troll, do not feed it!)

After a bit of back and forth it became clear that my troll was either unwilling or unable to provide a sound argument for any of his positions that didn't eventually fall back on ubiquitous corporate evil doing and one world governments.  Still interested, I took my curiosity to another forum I frequent hoping to find some well reasoned opinions on the matter.  During the discourse that took place there I was directed to an interesting paper describing the failure of gold backed currencies, educated about the Nixon Shock, and the foolishness of engaging trolls.  (A friend who works in parliament messaged me on Facebook later to advise I run and don't look back "They're all kooks. Flee!").

Normally the story above wouldn't wind up here, but I've included it because since then with a bit of economy on the brain I've been paying more attention to such topics while surfing.  There seems to be a lot of interest in alternative open economic models lately that strike me as interesting if a bit over my head.  For the curious, here's a brief overview of some of the concepts, a short video about money, wealth, and creation of value including links to several projects in the problem space, and a free book + wiki "The Wealth of Networks" about the influence of social production on markets.

Also worth checking out; DYNDY.  I still haven't worked out exactly what it is, but they seem to be sniffing out and examining all manner of alternative and complementary currency systems.  Check out this post for an overview of a presentation about themselves at a recent conference in Amsterdam.

I really have no idea what all this buzzing might mean if anything, but I do find it intriguing. If you have any suggestions about reading material pertaining to backed vs fiat economics or alternative models please drop a comment. I am vastly under informed on the topic and would like to change that.

space isn't just big, it's weird too

Today I found myself reading about Zarmina and how people might one day fling themselves toward it at a large fraction of c by sticking a firecracker worth about 1.8 x 10^25 Joules of energy on the end of the ISS and lighting it up.  Cool beans.

This lead me to an interesting clickfest at Wikipedia where I hopped from current and upcoming exoplanet surveys, to finding distances and pinpointing objects with various coordinate systems where I had a flash back to the movie Contact (yes I read the book, of course it was better). I then wound my way round to the bigger items of interest like the age of the universe and the size of the observable universe where I found something crazy. It was so crazy my mind stumbed, fell, got up and dusted itself off then immediately fell again and stayed there in the dirt for a moment trying to decide what to do next.

Now to preface this I should say that I read some time ago that it is thought by some that when travelling the universe, as when travelling the surface of the Earth, you could pick a direction and travel in it and eventually if you kept at it long enough you'd find yourself back where you started.  Conceptually it makes sense to us on a planetary scale but I suppose you need a certain amount of years seated before a blackboard discussing planes and vectors and toroids and so on before it starts making sense with the whole universe.  I took it at face value that it was one theory that smart folks had given some thought to and went about my business. 

Then today I read this:

"It is also possible that the (physical) Universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the Universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different."

Roll that thought around your noodle for a while.  Weird right?

Anyway the article goes on to say that this idea was disputed this summer by some very clever sounding folks in their article "Observable circles-in-the-sky in flat universes".  If it makes any sense to you by all means please direct me to a pre-chewed version, I haven't the chops for such stuff.

sound reasoning

Some friends and I were chatting while bringing a few things from their car up to their apartment last night, and having a heated debate when suddenly, shit got real.

him: Oh yeah?

me: Yeah!

him: Wanna bet?  How much?

me: Umm ... no?

her: Ohhhh, suddenly he doesn't sound so sure!

him: See as soon as there's money he thinks I'm right.  Surprise surprise!

me: Whoa hey wait a minute, I never said I think you're right.

him: So, let's put some cash on it big guy.

me: No see because I suspect I may be wrong, that's not even close to thinking you're right.  Different things entirely.

him: You're an idiot.

her: *nods*

I stand by my flawless logic.

rob salmond? omg i know that guy!

In an effort to become a proper narcissistic jerk, I recently purchased salmond.ca.  This should help with the very common problem of people mistaking me for a BC lawyer with three kids or a University of Michigan assistant professor of political science.

All the feeds and bookmarks should now be redirecting to rob.salmond.ca, but for those of you who've been finding your way here by googling "phrostuff" (ahem, mom) you'll want to stop doing that.

If you happen to have found your way here by googling your own surname and are interested in contributing your piece of the Canadian arm of the Salmond family, by all means get in touch and I'll be happy to help.