Maëlys McArdle

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New Laptop & Windows 8

So I got my tax refund the other day, and I promptly purchased two items: new shoes to replace my ripped-in-four-places boots, and a new laptop. It’s an 11.6″ Acer V5, which was on sale at FutureShop for $379.

The laptop came installed with Windows 8 – more on that later. In any case, I replaced it with the latest version of the popular Linux distribution Xubuntu. To pretty it up, I installed the Cinnamon desktop environment and Docky. The end result is pretty and functional.

After installing Linux, everything worked out of the box. Bluetooth, wifi, sound – even my networked printer was detected. The only exception was the brightness buttons weren’t doing anything. That was resolved by adding a line to a file (“acpi_backlight=vendor” to the grub configuration.)

I also installed Windows 7 inside of VirtualBox so that I could get the occasional Windows-only thing running like Netflix. I was able to get the American Netflix selection by setting the DNS servers inside of Windows to those run by Unblock-Us.

For the above screenshot, the left window is in Linux while the right one is in Windows. I get the best of both worlds running together thanks to VirtualBox’s seamless mode.

The laptop itself is great. It has a low-power Intel Core i3-2365, 4GB of RAM, and 500GB hard drive space. It also has 802.11n dual-band wifi, gigabit ethernet, a multi-finger touchpad, USB 3.0, and VGA+HDMI out. The machine is small with its 11.6″ screen, and so quite light.

The included processor is powerful enough to run Netflix on Windows smoothly, yet energy efficient enough to have the whole system be relatively cool to the touch. It isn’t anywhere near as powerful as a top-end mobile processor, but that’s irrelevant since it fully meets my needs. I also don’t need the thin profile or other luxuries afforded by today’s ultrabooks.

Going back to Windows 8, it’s a pretty solid operating system. But it isn’t at all suitable for laptops and computers lacking a touch screen. It’s designed to keep things far apart to make it more usable with a finger – which is the opposite of what’s ideal for those controlling a mouse pointer.

Furthermore, Windows 8 is very much of the smartphone design philosophy: few options and intuitive. That means that most of the stuff I like to do with a laptop, which involves exerting granularity, are not available outright. You need to take extra steps and jump design paradigms. This is great for my parents and those who want a computer that’s easier to use, but not so ideal for myself.

I think what you’ll see are most applications migrating to this new iPhone-esque design philosophy. I can’t imagine how more applications that need all those options will shed their apparent complexity to make the jump, but that’s more a lack of imagination on my behalf. I’m sure most people thought the same when the transition from command-line to graphical interfaces was happening during the eighties.

March 25, 2013
Bill C-279

I was in Parliament the other day, to attend the vote on the third reading of Bill C-279 in the House of Commons. It passed, despite the Conservative Party being near-unanimous in its opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I stand today to present, on behalf of thousands of people who sent these to my office, petitions in opposition to Bill C-279, otherwise known as “the bathroom bill”, that would give transgendered men access to women’s public washroom facilities. These constituents feel that it is the duty of the House of Commons to protect and safeguard our children from any exposure and harm that would come from giving a man access to women’s public washroom facilities.

Rob Anders, Conservative MP from Calgary West

It wasn’t all good news. Gender expression was taken out of the bill. If you’re not familiar with gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality, I like to refer people to the Genderbread Person.

This bill passed by a hairline: 149 for, 137 against. It was a long time coming. Former MP Bill Siksay had spent many years trying to get such a bill through, only to have them die due to elections. Three times he had tabled that bill.

Let’s be clear. When we talk about awful statistics with regards to “LGBT” people, it’s disproportionately represented by the “T” – and even more represented for trans women of colour. While this bill won’t change the minds of Canadians overnight, it is a small cog that facilitates a shift.

I know too many people who are no longer with us. I know too many people who have tried to leave. I know too many people who lost their families. This isn’t the exception, it’s almost the fucking norm.

That Conservative MP openly called trans women a threat to women and children. Pedophiles, apparently. And this is so accepted, so normal, that no one bats an eye. No one calls him on it. If he was objecting to Jews or people of colour using a washroom – there’d be an outrage.

But just like homophobic discourse is still acceptable today (see opposition to Manitoba’s anti-bullying bill), so too is transphobia. So yeah, I think this bill’s power isn’t so much the legislative repercussions, but the message it sends.

March 22, 2013
Policing Bodies

I was asked how I was doing the other day.

I confided in the person that for all the obstacles I had been facing at that time, I was actually feeling pretty damn good. There had been a development in my personal life which was really fantastic – but I couldn’t tell her what it was.

Doing so would have meant that I’d come out a second time. And I am not yet ready to face the potential consequences of such revelations. Thankfully, and I’m deeply appreciative of this, she was fine with my lack of elaboration.

My hesitation is due from bad experiences coming out on this, even within gay/lesbian circles. It shouldn’t have to be like this. News about how I’ve come to know myself better and evolve shouldn’t be met with derision.

But we live in a society that’s terribly oppressive of those that make their body their own. That defy this society’s script as it pertains to relationships, gender roles, gender expression, sexuality, weight, and all other matters that relate to one’s body. Sexism, which is so omnipresent as to become invisible, is a big part of this.

It’s ridiculous that we would disparage people for taking ownership over their own selves. For entering into non-monogamous relationships, for being read as male and wearing a dress, for young adults fucking someone twice their age, for being HIV+ and having sex, for refusing to pass on fucked up notions of gender to the next generation. We don’t care that these are acts of the self or between consenting adults. They’ve defied the script, and that’s enough.

We judge them. We hurt them. We kick them out of our homes. We deny them jobs. We don’t let them get a roof. We make fun of them in the street. We turn them away from shelters. We make them the subject of newspaper articles. We downright hunt them. We rape them, then blame it on the fact that they didn’t follow the script – it’s because of the clothes you wore! Yes, we police bodies like nobody’s business.

There is no public discourse about how this is all really fucked up. The best we get is about how some aspects of it are fucked up – gay rights, trans rights, fat shaming – and that’s important. We don’t want to erase narratives. It’s in addition to that that this other picture needs to be deconstructed.

Not that we’re even making the great strides that we the privileged have been patting ourselves on the back over. This country barely tolerates the most arguably acceptable of these deviations, gay rights, in it’s most mundane of forms: the homonormative marriage. A third of Canadians in 2012 still opposed same-sex marriage, including more than half of Albertans. Ten years after they saw that no, the sanctity of their own marriage wasn’t magically diminished because two people they don’t know got married.

It’s fucking oppressive shit, and it doesn’t bode well for an end to this policing of bodies in the near future. There’ll be more minor wins, here and there, but until we finally take a step back and realize that the whole system needs to be smashed, we will perpetually justify our own existence against this most restrictive of scripts.

End Note: Are you a straight cisgendered monogamous couple? Fucking eh! That’s great! The point isn’t that that’s bad, it’s that this society does not tolerate anything else.

Baked Good of the Day: Vegan Coconut Milk Truffles. This was a joint effort with a friend and turned out absolutely delicious.

March 16, 2013
SimCity, DRM, and Ownership

The newest game in the SimCity franchise was released a few days ago, and it’s been a bit of a disaster. I’ve included a screenshot from Amazon’s product page below: a thousand five hundred people gave it one star out of five, while only thirty-eight gave it five stars.

The reason for the upset is that the anti-piracy measures included with the game has prevented everyone who spent $60 to get it from playing it. But only legitimate customers are blocked this way – the pirates, having that removed from their version, don’t face any such issues.

It’s not the kind of reward-value scheme you want to promote, especially when you want to make people think they own what they bought.

Customers don’t own any content that’s protected with DRM of course. If you have to ask someone else permission to use something every time you want to use it, which is what this does, you don’t own it. If that other party reserves the right to remove your access to that thing permanently, you don’t own it. Ironically, only the pirates are the ones who get to have ownership.

There’s confusion around this point, and I think that stems from the fact that we quietly transitioned from a model where we had anti-piracy measures but owned content (CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, older games) to anti-piracy measures with no ownership (Blu-Ray players, iTunes, modern games). The price point and language meanwhile never changed to reflect this shift.

DRM isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It enables economic frameworks where use of the media is meant to be transient – take streaming audio and online rentals. It can also work for games and more permanent access to content, as long as it’s clear you don’t own anything.

We need to stop letting companies claim that you can buy these items from them, because you don’t. You’re getting a license from them. If you did own it, you wouldn’t be threatened with a lawsuit if you showed people how to change it so that you didn’t have to ask their permission to use it every time. If you did own it, then you could use it whether or not this other party said yes or no. If you did own it, you could sell it or pass it to someone else.

At the same time, I get the problem that DRM is trying to solve: preventing illicit duplication with a simple computer. So it may be that a consequence of doing business in this medium is to include such measures – but we must then end our use of this false language of ownership. Meanwhile, companies need to think of the customer, such that they are not punished for buying content. That means smarter ways to implement DRM, like Valve’s STEAM.

Or perhaps more radically trusting them with ownership, and not including any such measures. There are people who pay, people who won’t, and people who won’t if they can help it. Then it becomes a matter of reducing that third category in favour of the first. Hardly an easy task, but I see signs of success here particularly in the pay-first-to-develop model of KickStarter projects, rather than the pay-on-completion of the traditional production cycle.

Finally, I think there needs to be a recognition that piracy isn’t entirely bad. That it spreads human creativity and ingenuity, and frees resources for other things. A modern library, where libraries have failed. To recognize that the negative aspects around it arise from denying due compensation to those who put themselves out to create their work. The rise of affordable commercial solutions like Netflix and Songza has done a good deal to address both access and compensation, and this is only the beginning.

Baking project of the day: waffles using the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls (regular size), and pizza in a cast iron pan.

March 9, 2013
Brownie in a Mug
I whip these up whenever I need a little comfort. I’ve tried a few brownie-in-a-mug recipes before, but it was the one posted on Instructables that I liked best, with an additional chocolate sauce topping.

Brownie
- 4 Tbsp Flour
- 4 Tbsp Sugar
- 2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
- 2 Tbsp Oil
- 2 Tbsp Water
Chocolate Sauce
- 2 Tbsp Sugar
- 1 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
- 1 Tbsp Boiled Water
Instructions
1. Boil some water.
2. Combine the dry ingredients for the brownie in a mug. Then mix in the wet ingredients.
3. Place the mug in a microwave for 90 seconds.
4. In a separate mug, combine the ingredients for the chocolate sauce, using the water you boiled.
5. When the brownie is done in the microwave, pour the sauce over top and serve.
March 6, 2013