Apathy Sketchpad

This is a real error box I got today. It amused me greatly, and only slightly worried and offended me.

How great is that?

I have, of late, been writing my own forum script, which I intend to use on this site and am considering releasing as open-source because I’m not selfish. So as such, the new forum is now officially open at http://forum.apathysketchpad.com.

It features no admin panel, because they’re too easily hacked and in any case I prefer to hack the database in PHPMyAdmin and hack the behaviour in the PHP files, so I’ve made all the code as readable and abstracted as I could to make this easier. It also features fully native support for all kinds of cunning levels of sticky threads, closed threads and Anarchy Boards that just aren’t possible in most forum scripts. It’s based heavily on the CMS I made for RealVG, and it takes a very different approach to most forum scripts, not least because I don’t see the point in spending a lot of time producing something that already exists. It’s very well suited to small site run by people who know their way around PHP (such as this one), but less well suited to large sites with many staff members (as they’d all need FTP and PHPMyAdmin access to administer it) or sites run by people who don’t know their way around a web server (because they’ll not be able to set it up, not least because there’s no installer at the moment). Since it has no admin panel, no session IDs (cookies are required), and checks your password on every page, it is, as far as I know, totally secure. I’ve little doubt there’ll be a hole in there somewhere, but keeping things simple and well abstracted is always the best way to keep them secure, and I think I’ve done that fairly well.

Other features I intend to add are email thread subscriptions, Facebook style user “walls” and the ability to email users who say they don’t mind (but not private messages because I don’t see the point), and some kind of file attachment system. And a “forgot my password” link, because they’re always useful. Also there are a lot of extra fields like “edited by” links that will need adding to the skin.

So feel free to register and post there, but do bear in mind that me and Testing Jeff will just spam mercilessly until the beta is over. And feel free also to request features and report bugs — that’s what beta is for. Such reports should be in my email inbox, comments on this post, or in the special beta test subforum.

The old forum will stay where it is indefinitely, though it won’t be reopened (for the forseeable future). I’ll update the various links later, and possibly put a notice on the old forum explaining where the new one is.

There. I’ve said it.

Reason being, my phpBB forum keeps getting hacked, by morons no less, because it features the world most insecure admin panel. I don’t know if you’ve ever clicked the “administration panel” link at the bottom of a phpBB forum. It’s a tiny link at the bottom of pages which is only displayed to administrators and anyone else who wants to see it badly enough. When you click it, a large button appears saying “please don’t click here if you are a hacker”, and clicking it automatically takes you to the admin page. The admin page has three options: ban users, change the kind of captcha you use, and change the index page to say “Joo hav been hacked by Captain Awesome’s CyberDweeb Klan” and play shitty music. I understand phpBB employ people specially to compose this music.

Whatever the reasons behind this insane design philosophy, the result is that phpBB is a total chunk of crap. So what I’m doing is writing my own forum script. My forum script is better than phpBB. Sure, I’ve not added any way for users to register, so I’m the only person who can post, but that’s one better than phpBB, since I’ve had to take away phpBB’s access to my database, so even I can’t post there without doing it via PhpMyAdmin. Secondly, it is impossible to hack the admin panel on my forum script, because it hasn’t got one. Nor does it have a moderator’s panel that can delete all the threads at once. That’s just asking for trouble in my opinion. And you don’t need these things. At least, I don’t.

phpBB is, I think aimed at people who want a cheap forum for their website and want to have a team of moderators and admins watching over it and doing handy things. Mine isn’t. Mine is aimed squarely at me. It does things my way. If you want to change the look, you change the PHP files. If you want to edit the forum list, you use PhpMyAdmin. If you want to ban a user, PhpMyAdmin. If you want to delete a load of threads at once, PhpMyAdmin.

It’s a much better system. It’s more flexible than phpBB’s mod controls (which are useless at best) and it’s infinitely more secure. Once it’s up and running, my new forum will be at forum.apathysketchpad.com. Well, it’s up there now but it’s nothing but meaningless testing banter at the moment, so there’s little point in looking at it (though I’ve no doubt someone will).

I don’t really understand phpBB. I’ve looked at the source and it’s crazy. The database is split across a hundred things; they take away your RegExp and give you a rubbish asterisk system, which the code then turns back into RegExp. The posts are stored across two tables. The whole thing is just madness in a jar.

So I’m doing it myself. Honestly, it seems like the only way sometimes.

I am a Christian. Though I am not a fundamentalist, I sincerely believe that anyone who fails to repent and trust in Jesus Christ will go to Hell. Is it ethical to respect the personal beliefs of others and basically let them go to Hell? Or should I warn them and risk upsetting them, not to mention the trouble I might cause for myself?

This was the question posed yesterday to The Times’ morality expert, or at least columnist, and offspring of unimaginative parents, Joe Joseph.

I don’t like Joseph very much. I think he generally tries to be funny rather than helpful and winds up being neither. I find his column little more use than an astrology column. Partly, I acknowledge, this is because the people who write to his column usually have rather stupid questions like “is it okay to commit insurance fraud?” or “can I still go to my son’s wedding even if I don’t have exactly the right kind of suit for a wedding, as dictated by the strict dresscodes of Victorian England?”, and he’s expected to stretch out “no, don’t be stupid” to an entire column. But in this case he’s been set an interesting moral dilemma, one which I’ve pondered myself from the other side, and been given a good opportunity to discuss the issue in a public forum.

So let’s see what he says.

In a live-and-let-live age, many would say that it’s no more your business to stop people from going to Hell, if that’s what they want to do, than it is to stop them going to Wyoming, or to a cinema to watch The Sound of Music for the 197th time or to visit a plastic surgeon clutching a photo of Ernest Borgnine and pleading, “Doc, I want you to make me look like THIS!”; just as it’s nobody else’s business to bully you with their belief that there is no Hell.

You’ll notice the phrase “many would say” creeping into that sentence, indicating that he has rambled on for about a third of his allotted space and utterly failed to express an opinion either way, although he has crammed in a selection of digs at people, places and films that he doesn’t like. But he still has a lot of space left, so let’s see what else he has to say on the subject.

In any case, perhaps you should be sceptical of people who swear that they are atheists and don’t believe in an afterlife. They may secretly be the most fervent believers of all: it may just be that they like to drive a hard bargain, and that they’re trying to see how much extra they can squeeze out of God in return for finally being won around to his whole Hell concept.

I had to re-read that when I first saw it because it honestly seemed more likely that I’d misread something than it was that a major newspaper had really printed those words in that order. It’s not helpful, and it’s actually a bit offensive. He has no basis for saying that and it’s nothing more than another feeble attempt to get a laugh out of someone’s genuine moral issues. And frankly, I think atheists have quite enough to put up with from the certifiably insane “atheists are intrinsically immoral” crowd without major newspapers (or at least the tat that falls out of them when you shake them) publishing advice that people should “be sceptical” of them in case they’re really just trying to pull a fast one over God.

Moreover, civility demands that we indulge other people’s religious beliefs every bit as tolerantly as we indulge their belief that they know how to crack the Middle East crisis, or that their hair actually looks good combed that way.

More jokes. And still no useful advice, since this is phrased so ambiguously that you can read it as “you should tell them” or “you should keep quiet”, depending on how vocal you are about people with stupid hair. So what major insight does he have for his last paragraph? Come on Joseph, this is your last chance to say something cogent and relevant. Don’t blow it! Don’t blow it…

Anyway, some people actively want to go to Hell.

He blew it.

Anyway, some people actively want to go to Hell. Machiavelli reckoned that the company would be much better there — “popes, kings, and princes, while in Heaven there are only beggars, monks, hermits and apostles”. And you have to admit this: when you watch people going to Hell, it often looks like they’re having a pretty good time making their way there, doesn’t it?

I mean, really. That’s a total of 329 words and he’s not even made a serious attempt to address the question at hand.

So here is my infinitely more helpful 57 word response:

These are the rules:

1. If you believe you can help someone avoid Hell then you should.
2. If they ask you to stop helping them then you should.
3. If they try to help you not waste your life attempting to please imaginary deities then you should accept that help in good faith (so to speak).

If Joseph responded like that he could fit two or three questions in each week, he’d get the job done quicker, and he’d offend far fewer people. And for bonus points, he’d end up with a much funnier column, because everyone knows the only reason anyone reads Modern Morals at all is to laugh at the ridiculous problems people have. Personally, I think it highly strange that people continue to send their questions to this idiot, so possibly they are all fabricated like the winners on Brainteaser.

I also think it highly strange that a column on morality should be written by someone whose apparent aim is to take cheap shots at irrelevant things rather than try to help people.

What I did at work today:

You know, as well as proper work. Obviously.

Update: Friz and I are wondering if it should be renamed The Tack Mahal. Thoughts?

I have uploaded two new sections today: the old Apathy Clan comics and the Code Factory. The former doesn’t have the accompanying spiels at the moment (and may not), but it does include the brand new 51st comic. The latter is lacking some entries the old one has. Some I’ve dropped as uninteresting, the others are coming soon. Also, some new programmes I’ve written since are coming.

Both sections are raw PHP at the moment, with no attempt made to make them look nice. I might decorate them in the future, but I equally might not.

Some time ago, you may remember, I was somewhat stranded in Manchester by a combination of a tree, a deadly storm, and an impressive display of incompetence from the good people at the National Express. If you haven’t read the previous account then you can either do so now and come back, or you can simply read the version I sent to the National Express here: Read the rest of this entry »

I have invented a new and massively useful bit of language based on a mathematical problem. The Halting Problem is one that relates to a hypothetical computer program which may or may not enter an infinite loop, and in general, the only way to know if it will is to try it. But of course, you can’t really ever find out that it won’t finish, because no matter how long it’s been running, it could still be just about to finish. It’s a problem.

I have noticed that this phenomenon is quite common, and I think the term “Halting Problem” should be applied to all such cases. A few examples might help explain what I mean:

The Free City Bus Halting Problem

Leeds council run a free bus that runs around the city centre. At any given point,  it is worth my while to wait for this bus if and only if it will arrive in the next ten minutes. But the only way to tell is by waiting, and once I’ve done that, it has become worth my while to wait up to another ten minutes. The bus may never come. It’s a problem.

The Steven Moffatt Halting Problem

Less common, this one. A friend of mine said he’d buy the DVDs of Coupling, but that he wouldn’t bother if Steven Moffatt made something new he could watch soon. But he may not. But then, he might wait and then my friend might buy the DVDs and the next day he might put out a new series. It’s a problem.

The Duke Nukem Forever Halting Problem

Duke Nukem Forever has been in development for a decade. It may never come out. Is it worth 3D Realms ditching it and cutting their losses, or should they soldier on, believing it will be released sometime before another decade has passed? They’ll never know unless they keep going, but if they do that they might work for another five years and still not know. It’s a problem.

The Monty Hallting Problem

A lot of gameshows have a mechanics whereby players slowly accumulate money, and then hilariously lose it all at once. Their ideal tactic is to keep going until just before they’d lose and then run. But they don’t know when that could be. It’s a problem.

BUSH ANNOUNCES SUCCESS OF NEW “HIGH-RESOLUTION” DOLLAR

President Bush hit back against critics of his economic policies in a press conference last night. He claimed that he had made good progress towards his goal of “a higher-resolution dollar”. Under previous administrations, he said, rounding errors crept into all business done with overseas partners. By reducing the size of the unit of currency, Bush explained, he had enabled it to be far more precise. “Imagine,” he said, “if the dollar was worth so much that you could by five beefburgers for a cent. How would you buy one beefburger? You’d have to buy five and throw four of them away. It’s like that. Now we can buy one beefburger and avoid having to give four of them back to other countries.”

THOUSANDS QUEUE UP IN OWN LIVING ROOMS TO BE FIRST TO RECEIVE LATEST XBOX LIVE ARCADE RELEASE

On Wednesday, gamers got their first look at Alien Hominid on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service, which allows users to download games directly to their Xbox 360 for a small fee. In anticipation of the release, many gamers had queued up beside their Xbox since Monday evening. One such person said “in our house you can never be sure when people will be using the TV. This was really the only way to be certain of getting the game as soon as I could.” He added that he had previously queued up for both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii console. “This is better than that,” he said, “because my Mum brings me food here.” Other gamers queued up in this way because they were worried about Microsoft “running out” of stocks of the game.

AMERICAN SOLDIERS ISSUED WITH SPECIAL “HARRYCARD”

The US military has issued all its troops with a credit card-sized photograph of Prince Harry, to make sure he is not harmed in any “friendly fire” incidents. The card carries a photograph of Harry in full battle uniform, which was chosen over a competing photograph of Harry at his passing out ceremony on the grounds that soldiers might be “unlikely to recognise the Prince in uniform based on a ceremonial photograph”. Some British soldiers have commented that it is unfair for Harry to get such special treatment, but most American troops have welcomed the move. One soldier told us, on condition of anonymity, “I think this is a good idea. Normally if we accidentally kill the odd British soldier we’re alright; the army protects us. But if we killed a Prince then the s**t would really hit the fan. We might even get demoted for that.” Producing and distributing the card has cost the US military over $5.4 billion.

An article in American Scientist the other day raised a topic I’ve thought about before. (In fact, it proposes an idea I’ve had before, which should give you some idea how revolutionary it isn’t.) Essentially, the idea is to so away with a thing called “Le Gran K”, which is not a breakfast cereal but is in fact a little metal object roughly the size and shape of a dimmer switch, which rather scarily weighs exactly a kilogram. (It’s also called “Le Grand Kilo”, but that sounded less like a cereal.) It’s scary because something that size has no business at all weighing anything like that much, but mostly because it’s rubbish.

I mean, it is, for all that it’s kept securely in a sealed container in a sealed container in a vault in a basement in France, still nothing more than a lump of metal. The old metre prototype was done away with in 1960 (and was made of the same stuff as Le Grand Kilo, so imagine how much it must weigh). Nobody’s really managed to build a Platinum-Iridium prototype for the second yet, but the point is that the other base units are all defined by properties of the universe, and not properties of French paperweights.

The idea for the kilogram, at least the one doing the rounds on the Internet this week, is to simply fix Avogadro’s number — to the layman, Avogadro’s number is the number of hydrogen atoms in a gram of hydrogen — and hence define the gram as the weight of that many hydrogen atoms. (Actually, the definitions use Carbon-12, and using other things messes it up because apparently if you split up an atom and weigh the parts they won’t add up to the weight of the original atom. Nuclear, eh? What’s it good for?)

In case you’re interested, the kilogram is the base unit, not the gram. According to Wikipedia, this is because of the French Revolution. Which makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose.

Anyway. There are a few other far more complicated proposals, and really the only advantage they have over this idea is that they end up with a kilogram slightly closer to the one we currently use. We’re talking millionths of a percent here. Other than that all the ideas are much the same, as far as I can tell. But the fact that this one is so ludicrously simple — a kilogram is the weight of 50,184,511,755,867,423,674,922,666-and-two-thirds unbound atoms of carbon 12 in the ground state (alright, point taken, but I still just defined it in one sentence) — makes it far more useful.

Really, simplicity isn’t the key so much as how easy it is to determine experimentally. In order to adopt a definition for a unit like a kilogram, we really need to know exactly what that definition is in some practical terms we can understand (unless you fancy counting out six hundred thousand billion billion atoms). Luckily, the experiments we currently use to try to pinpoint Avogadro’s Number would suddenly become experiments to calibrate scales to the correct definition of the kilogram. Much the same is true of all the “pick a constant, fix it, and define the kilogram from there” ideas.

But the bottom line, to me, is that it doesn’t matter which we pick. I like the idea of fixing Avogadro’s Number, but really I just want rid of Le Grand Kilo. It’s pathetic. Whatever definition we pick will be closer to the current mass of Le Grand Kilo than the mass of Le Grand Kilo will be in a hundred years. It’s lost 50 milligrams already, and nobody knows where they’ve gone. And that means that the kilogram is a smaller unit now than it was in 1890, because of course Le Grand Kilo is still, by definition, exactly one kilogram. (The authors of the Scientific American article say “This implies that by current measurement conventions, the mass of a single atom of carbon-12 is changing in time, whereas modern theory postulates that it remain constant.” This is meaningless drivel.) At least, we think it’s lost 50 milligrams. It’s hard to say, partly because it still, by definition, has exactly as many milligrams as it had to begin with, but mostly because what the hell are we supposed to measure it against?

Once we get rid of this archaic and rather silly definition, the metric system will finally be a complete system. Won’t that be nice? Then we can really lord it over those monkeys still using pounds and ounces. Also, they can raise some cash by sticking Le Grand Kilo on eBay. Think how much that would get.