Mac-Carbon-0.82 has been released. Download it from the CPAN or SF.net.
(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)
Changes:
* v0.82, 4 October 2009
More Makefile.PL fixes. Try to catch 64-bit-only perls. Fix bug introduced
in 0.81 for older gcc 4's.
Posted using release by brian d foy.
Well, granted, I am not shaking in my Keen sandals over this, but it seems the elves over at the ELF have been stepping things up. First there was the KRKO radio tower, resulting in millions of dollars of damage. Senator Val Stevens warned this could lead to escalation, and a new threat purporting to be from the ELF says likewise.
Like many extremists, the ELF hates the rule of law, and wants to push their views on everyone else regardless of how many votes are against them, or whose rights they violate. Their press release from the KRKO crime included this insanity: "When all legal channels of opposition have been exhausted, concerned citizens have to take action into their own hands to protect life and the planet."
Their childishly spraypainted message on buildings in Maltby last week read: "If you continue to risk killing children, mother earth and her creations, all your holdings are targets. Rise up earth children, ever, ever, ever, ever so carefully."
Then it went from merely idiotic, to a little creepy: "Authentic ELF? Ask ATF/FBI about restricted water mains. Little water, better burn." It seems to me they are claiming that they encourage out-of-control fires.
It's a generally good rule of thumb that if someone values trees or fish more than human life and livlihood, they aren't playing with a full deck.
Sure, we can make fun of their low intelligence, including the fact that their own press release on their own web site points to the wrong web site (using
Stevens said, "They don't care about what harm they do. We need a state law that recognizes these people for the monsters they are." She pushed for tougher sentences -- right now many of these crimes are punishable by only a year in jail -- and a state registry for convicted terrorists.
I don't know what the law should be, or whether it should be changed, but I do know these people should be found and locked up for a very long time. Such sociopaths, when they've proven to be a danger to society, should not be allowed in society, obviously; this includes those providing aid to the terrorists, such as Jason Crawford and Tomas Peterson, with their work for the ELF Press Office. And every nation should be willing to prosecute or extradict them, as most would with other terrorists.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Mac-Carbon-0.81 has been released. Download it from the CPAN.
(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)
Changes:
* v0.81, 26 September 2009
Fixes for building on 64-bit perls and Mac OS X 10.6. Build should now work
on any perl, whether self-built or system perl (unless your perl is 64-bit
only), and tests should run under 32-bit mode.
Other miscellaneous test fixes.
When FactCheck.org came out a few years ago, I liked most of what they did. But in the last year, I simply don't even care what they say anymore, because so much of it so poorly done.
Take this recent example. The question is: "Did Obama change his back-to-school speech in response to pressure from conservatives?" The answer they give is: "One exercise in the accompanying lesson plan was reworded."
That's the wrong answer. The correct answer is, at the very least, "the White House claims the text was not substantively altered in response to any pressure." The lesson plan information is a footnote; it is not the answer to the question. FactCheck's Jess Henig gives nearly 500 words of response in the full answer, but almost half of those were about the lesson plan, which isn't the point. And four-fifths of what's left is explaining that "well, this happened under other Presidents too."
The only part of the response actually addressing the question is these 43 words, less than a tenth of the entire answer: White House spokesman Tommy Vietor told us that the speech itself had not been substantively changed: "The President's speech was always going to be about talking with students about the importance of working hard, staying in school and taking responsibility for their education."
Which, of course, implies that maybe it was changed, at least a little bit, in response to criticism. And yet Henig doesn't put that in the answer.
You can find examples like this almost every day. FactCheck just cannot be trusted as long as it puts out such careless junk.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Federal government mandates for health insurance violate the Constitution in several ways.
The most obvious is the Tenth Amendment: Congress has no authority, implied or expressed, to force everyone to get health insurance. Therefore it cannot do it. And no, please don't say "general welfare," as this was never intended to be a grant of power, but a description of the powers to follow in Article I, Section 8. And no, please don't say "regulating interstate commerce," because regulating commerce is not similar to forcing everyone to engage in a particular commercial act.
There's also the Fourth Amendment. I have the right to be secure in my papers: the government has no right to know if I even have health insurance.
Then there's the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments: I cannot have my liberty taken away from without due process. This is admittedly the shakiest of my claims for historical reasons, due to the unfortunate slippery slope of history, but it seems to me that I should have to be proven to have done something wrong in order to have my liberty taken from me.
Perhaps the strongest claim, however, is that the First Amendment guarantees the freedom of association. The Supreme Court has held that this necessarily also implies the freedom to not associate. If I dislike all insurance companies and choose to not associate with them, that is my constitutional right. Similarly, I may decide that having insurance (entirely, or when I have more important uses for the money, such as donating it to an anti-sex slavery charity) is against my religious beliefs.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Has there ever, in our history, been a mandate on all Americans?
"If you are an American/live in this country, you must do this."
I am against all mandates on people. It's one thing to say, "if you want to drive, you must have auto insurance." It's completely another to say, "if you are alive, you must have health insurance." The comparison is fundamentally dishonest. The government, quite literally, has no right to force people into a particular action simply because they exist.
That goes for the military draft, especially. But it only applied to healthy males of a certain age. Obama and the Democrats are, for the first time, attempting to put such a mandate on all Americans.
It obviously should be ruled unconstitutional, since the federal government has no right to do this. But even apart from the constitutional questions, why aren't we having a debate about whether or not we want to have a country that forces all people to do something, just because those people are alive?
More practically (though not more important), I am especially angered by the fact that the reason why the mandate exists in Obama's plan is not what he says. He says it is so that if something happens to you, then you won't leech of society for your problems. Then why not allow means testing or other opt-out options?
Every expert, for many years, who has pushed individual mandates for health insurance has said the same thing: individual mandates exist because the people who don't have health insurance (who can afford it) overwhelmingly make a personal economic decision that it is better for themselves to not pay for health insurance: they save money doing it. Their money spent on insurance is not used for themselves, it's used for other people. This makes the pool of money smaller, and the percent per capita going to care larger.
So, therefore, the experts say, the mandate, by forcing the people who do not need insurance to pay into insurance, increases the pool of money without significantly increasing the amount of money being paid out.
It is a tax, for the explicit purpose of wealth redistribution: to take money from you, and give it to someone else who needs health care.
Obviously, Obama is lying when he says this is not a tax, and that it does not violate his campaign promise to not increase taxes on people who make less than $250K. But I care less about that than the fact that he is lying about the reason for this tax: he says it is about paying for me if I get sick, but it's really about Obama hoping that I won't get sick, so my money will be paying for other people.
Individual health insurance mandates are about wealth redistribution, pure and simple. It is a literally unprecedented act against American liberty, with the sole goal of forcing people to pay into a system they won't use, so they can pay for other people who do use it.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
I have to wonder if someone is being honest when they say that they aren't paying attention to a major scandal centered around an organization they worked for, and with, their entire career -- especially when Congress is cutting off all funds for that organization. So it is with President Obama and ACORN when he said yesterday, "You know, it's -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money."
If ACORN had not canceled its "Prosperity Forum" in Everett last week, I wonder how many of the Democrats scheduled to show up would've been there. Maybe none; maybe that is why it was canceled. We don't know.
But we do know that they are closely tied to ACORN.
I am not saying they knew about or condoned any of these terrible things ACORN has done. I am not playing guilt by association. Rather, I am condemning the attempt of many Democrats, especially President Obama, to pretend they aren't associated: to distance themselves in order to avoid questions of potential guilt.
Just look at the Everett ACORN office itself for plenty of examples. It's a place called the Labor Temple, at 2812 Lombard Avenue. What else is there? Well, for starters, a bunch of unions. And the Snohomish County Democrats.
Democratic state legislators from the 38th District (Mike Sells and John McCoy) and the 44th District (Hans Dunshee) call 2812 Lombard in Everett their home. Their offices are on the same floor as ACORN. Funny how they couldn't make it to a meeting down the hall from their offices, right after the scandal broke.
Governor Gregoire went there while campaigning.
Even President Obama's campaign office was there.
Look, if ACORN or its employees do some terrible things -- like, for example, attempt to aid and abet child sex slavery, or commit nationwide acts of voter registration fraud -- condemn them. Vote to defund them or investigate them as necessary. We won't hold it against you for knowing them. But don't pretend you don't know them.
ONE MORE THING
Speaking of voting to defund ACORN, I want to know what Rep. Rick Larsen (WA-2) thinks is important. He said that voting to defund ACORN is not a good use of Congress' time. "We have issues facing this country about job creation, about protecting jobs like those at ALCOA, like increasing access to health care, increasing access to higher education, that frankly deserve more attention from a member of Congress," Larsen said. "Somebody has to stand up and make a statement about what are the important issues facing this country."
All of those are important. I agree. But I submit that a few minutes of your time to cut off a visibly corrupt organization like ACORN -- especially since the debate was over and you were simply voting at that point -- is worthwhile. We're not talking about meaningless resolutions here, like H.Res. 484: Expressing support for designation of June 10th as "National Pipeline Safety Day" and H.Res. 652: Recognizing the 150th anniversary of the Pig War crisis, both of which were sponsored by Larsen this year.
Seriously, I want to know which is more important for our Congress to address, Congressman: recognizing a bloodless "war" 150 years ago and expressing support for the designation of "National Pipeline Safety Day" -- which does not actually designate such a day, but merely expresses support for its designation -- or cutting off from taxpayer dollars an organization that systemically, nationally, committed voter registration fraud and attempted to aid and abet prostitution and child sex slavery?
Or did you already give us your answer?
[N.B. Apparently John Fund this morning also had an article called Acorn Who?, in the Wall Street Journal. I make no apologies for not changing my title when I saw his. Besides, mine has the proper capitalization. But his article is definitely worth reading.]
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
CHOCOLATE.
A lot. I like pie a lot. As long as it's chocolate. And no nuts.
I should add a check for 64-bit mode to the Mac-Carbon Makefile.PL. This will save a lot of hassle if I can give a nice error message, with a link to more information, up front.
I can't test this easily, though, since I don't yet have a 10.6 64-bit box (it's only on an original MacBook Pro, which is 32 bits). I will upgrade to Snow Leopard soon. I could try to make my own perl before then, but I don't know it would work the same way. So. If you want to help, now's your chance!
First thought is Config, but we all know Config can be flaky. For example, on my 32-bit box:
$ perl -V:use64bitall
use64bitall='define';
Doesn't really help. I don't know if $Config{intsize} would be 8 on a 64-bit perl. It's 4 on this 10.6 32-bit perl. I do know you should be able to call perl with VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT=yes to give you 32-bit perl, instead of the default 64-bit perl.
So anyway
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Please do test the aforementioned Mac-Carbon-0.80, and report it on RT if there's a problem. Please note that you MUST build under 32-bit mode, which is especially important if you are using the standard perl that comes with Mac OS X 10.6.
I've also got new versions of Mac::AppleEvents::Simple, Mac::OSA::Simple, and Mac::Glue coming out soon. I want to get Mac-Carbon well-tested out there first, though.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Mac-Carbon-0.80 has been released. Download it from the CPAN.
(Note: it may take time for the release to propagate to the various download mirrors.)
Changes:
* v0.80, 16 September 2009
Add notes for 64-bit perl
Bump all the version numbers
Fix a bunch of tests (nothing major, just make them work better)
Fix sound-env-var checking code for tests (no more sound tests
unless you ask for them with MAC_CARBON_SOUND, which was in the
last version, but the logic was broken)
Make CFStringRef typemap better
Remove high-bit characters from source files
Add new system version gestalt constants
Fix leak in Mac::Processes and Mac::Speech
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
On September 17, at 7 p.m., at the Everett Labor Temple at 2810 Lombard in Everett, ACORN is holding a "Prosperity Forum." Scheduled to speak are state legislators John McCoy, Mary Helen Roberts, and Mike Sells; Snohomoish County PUD Commissioner David Aldrich; and Snohomish County Councilman Mike Cooper. ACORN says on their flier that they will be helping people with food, baby supplies, health care, child care, energy bills, taxes, credit, and, of course mortgage help.
All you pimps and prostitutes, come on down tomorrow night!
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
This is just funny. Last week Congressman Bill Delahunt -- whose 10th Congressional District in Massachusetts now covers where I grew up -- was on NewsHour talking about Honduras with his colleague, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
He described Honduras as a "banana republic" (which is a stupid claim, but not the funny part) and she took offense, as one would. She says, "I think that's an insult to the people of Honduras." And he replies, "Then I dare say that you don't -- you're not that familiar with Latin America."
Bill, Ros-Lehtinen was born in Cuba, and her whole life has been active in Cuban political issues. Saying she is not that familiar with Latin America is like saying you're not that familiar with pasty white Irish Catholics.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
The default perl for Mac OS X 10.6 runs in 64-bit mode by default. The problem for Mac-Carbon is that significant portions of the Carbon API are unavailable to 64-bit programs on Mac OS X.
Perhaps a subset of the API could be made available to a 64-bit perl (for more information see Apple's "64-Bit Guide for Carbon Developers"), and might in the future, but it's simpler at this point to just run perl in 32-bit mode.
There's a few ways to do this. Most obviously, you could simply build a 32-bit perl. I always build my own perl, and I just compile it for 32 bits.
There's also two methods mentioned in L under Mac OS X 10.6: you can set an environment variable, or set a system preference. For the environment use:
VERSIONER_PERL_PREFER_32_BIT=yes
And for the system preference, execute this line in your terminal:
defaults write com.apple.versioner.perl Prefer-32-Bit -bool yes
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Elliptic paraboloids for sale.
