03 October 2015
Little strikes fear in the hearts and minds of music production engineers like upgrading to a new version of Mac OS X. Will their precious (and often expensive) music software applications continue to work as expected, or will they fail in some unforeseen catastrophic way?
I usually wait months — if not years — before upgrading to a new OS X release, but since I do work not only with music but also with software development, I wanted a newer version of Apple Xcode, which I had been delaying installing for the past year, concerned about upgrading my operating system to OS X Yosemite. When Apple released OS X El Capitan earlier this week, I figured I might as well jump all the way to El Capitan, and fight whatever software update battles may lie ahead.
So how did things turn out?
- Avid Sibelius First 6: The “lite” version of Avid Sibelius, I have been running this for several years. I was pleasantly surprised to find no problems running this under El Capitan.
- Avid Pro Tools 10: With Avid up to Pro Tools 12 now, I strongly suspected that Pro Tools 10 might explode in some horrific way, and, with credit card in hand, was prepared to upgrade if necessary. Again though, I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. As was reported under OS X Yosemite, there are some minor graphical glitches when browsing menus, but that problem is reasonably surmounted. Otherwise the software seems to work as expected. I recorded a quick demonstration piece in Pro Tools, which also exercised Native Instruments Kontakt 5, Addictive Drums, and Valhalla Room reverb.
- Adobe Lightroom 5: Not an audio application, but another major piece of software that I use frequently. No issues under El Capitan that I can see.
[In every case, the software had already been installed as of my previous Mac OS X Mavericks setup, which I upgraded to El Capitan. I have heard that at least some older Avid software won’t install from scratch on El Capitan.]
The biggest surprise was when I turned on my Focusrite Saffire PRO 40 audio interface, and the Saffire mix control software on the computer failed to see the hardware unit. Focusrite’s website claims that the Saffire PRO 40 works under OS X El Capitan with the latest Saffire MixControl 3.6 software, which I installed, so what was wrong?
I eventually found a helpful tidbit elsewhere on Focusrite’s website that explains, when upgrading MixControl software, there is an old library file that you need to manually delete before the hardware connection works properly. I followed the instructions, and all was well.
The bottom line: I could easily continue using all of the old software applications that I have tried so far under OS X El Capitan without significant issue. I will probably upgrade to Pro Tools 12 (or possibly move to another DAW package) soon, but Pro Tools 10 is still quite functional, so no hurry.
21 September 2015
After thoroughly enjoying Donald McCaig’s book Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men, I just finished reading a sort of sequel, The Dog Wars: How the Border Collie Battled the American Kennel Club.
Never having come across reason to believe otherwise, I had thought of the AKC as a respectable organization that advances knowledge of dogs and promotes their well-being. I cheerfully accepted AKC STAR Puppy status on behalf of my own border collie after she completed a puppy training class. So I started reading this book under the assumption that border collie owners “battled” the AKC in an effort to make the AKC recognize and accept their dog breed. In fact, most United States border collie owners — at least those who gave the matter any thought at all — were adamantly against border collies being officially recognized by the AKC.
Border collies have traditionally been working dogs, bred especially with sheep herding in mind. For most of their history, little if any regard was given to what they color they were, how big they were, what manners they had, or any attributes at all except how well they did at herding sheep. Could your dog excel at this task? Then that dog might as well be a border collie. [I personally imagine that, at an old-school sheepdog trial, even a pig might have been more welcomed than some might have us believe…]
The main official function of the AKC has long been to maintain registrations of dogs, for the purpose of demonstrating that a dog was “pure” in breed, and of some particular lineage. In practice, McCaig describes, many activities of the AKC revolve around hosting show events that are driven by exhibiting dogs for their appearance and physical attributes as opposed to for what they can do. At best, breeding dogs for appearance can hinder their specialized behaviors (like herding sheep), as such traits do not necessarily go hand-in-hand, genetically speaking. But worse, breeding dogs for appearance can introduce physical malaties, resulting in dogs with sundry genetic diseases.
As in his previous book, author McCaig himself played a role in the story, as he was significantly involved in spearheading an effort to prevent the AKC from accepting dog registrations of border collies, lest the working utility of the breed be diminished and the risk of poor genetic health be increased. The Dog Wars paints a picture of an utterly idiotic American Kennel Club, which seems to not be able to care any less about the long-term well-being of border collies, and which seems to, for reasons not made clear (either to us the readers or, apparently, to McCaig) stubbornly insist upon incorporating border collies into its ranks.
Over several years in the early 1990s, McCaig sought legal counsel and assistance, and help from existing border collie registration associations which concurred that little or no good was likely to come from the AKC accepting their dogs. Unfortunately, the story comes to a somewhat anti-climactic ending when one of the three major border collie registrars seems, while agreeable to the cause, insufficiently interested in providing their support until after the AKC had already started registering border collies. The legal plan fizzled out with nothing further to be done.
But while the border collie proponents may have lost the war with the AKC, they won plenty of smaller battles, and still did much good. Through publishing articles about their cause in newspapers nationwide, and eventually gathering attention from national television news programs, their concerns about breeding dogs purely for appearance became more widespread. Public interest in “pure-bred” dogs decreased, and acceptance of dogs of “lesser” pedigree rose. In the end, while the American Kennel Club began registering border collies, most border collie owners ignored the AKC, and continued using the long-established border collie registrars, and attending their own self-governed sheep herding events rather than joining the AKC shows. So much of the risk that McCaig and company were concerned about was mitigated not by winning their plea against the AKC, but by better educating the people whose dogs might have otherwise been negatively impacted.
The book is also peppered with side-stories about dogs (mostly border collies, of course) that don’t have anything in particular to do with the main theme of going up against the American Kennel Club. In a poignant style typical of his previous book, McCaig shares about his border collie Silk whose life was drawing to a close. She was not particularly discerning about food, and had little interest for toys. What could he possibly do to make her feel more appreciated, more loved?
Silk liked it when [my wife] took her on solo walks because, in a four dog pack, it was a privilege to be walked alone. I took her out for training. I’d stand in the middle of our flock and signal her: go left, go right. I’d show her the bottom of my palms: lie down. I’d signal her to walk up on her sheep; when they broke, she’d cover them. The old, deaf, dying dog ran around the sheep until her tongue hung out.
Afterwards, she’d come up to me for a pat and she was quite pleased with herself: “Aren’t I such a good sheepdog?” …
All that we can give a dog that the dog will value is our time.
Is the AKC of today the same misguided organization that McCaig tells us about? My limited experience with them as been positive, and this book describes events that took place twenty-some years ago. Judge for yourself, but beware judges — AKC or otherwise — who value your dog’s appearance over your dog’s health, or the health of the entire breed.
10 September 2015
Friend and former classmate Josh Renaud was recently interviewed on sundry topics related to Atari computers and electronic bulletin board systems. I never got into the BBS scene much myself, but Josh’s enthusiasm nevertheless conjures up feelings of nostalgia for the exciting early days of personal computing.
A much enjoyable and educational interview, well worth a listen!
07 July 2015
Dovetailing into last week’s musings about the need for computer science education as part of standard school curriculum, a group of researchers at and around MIT have published a new report on the topic of law enforcement’s need for access to private (personal or corporate) data. While this need may be valid, how to implement it in acceptable way is not necessarily obvious, and lawmakers need to think through a number of important questions.
One particularly interesting passage, highlighting the value of understanding computer science in the public sphere:
With people’s lives and liberties increasingly online, the question of whether to support law enforcement demands for guaranteed access to private information has a special urgency, and must be evaluated with clarity. From a public policy perspective, there is an argument for giving law enforcement the best possible tools to investigate crime, subject to due process and the rule of law. But a careful scientific analysis of the likely impact of such demands must distinguish what might be desirable from what is technically possible. In this regard, a proposal to regulate encryption and guarantee law enforcement access centrally feels rather like a proposal to require that all airplanes can be controlled from the ground. While this might be desirable in the case of a hijacking or a suicidal pilot, a clear-eyed assessment of how one could design such a capability reveals enormous technical and operational complexity, international scope, large costs, and massive risks — so much so that such proposals, though occasionally made, are not really taken seriously.
We have shown that current law enforcement demands for exceptional access would likely entail very substantial security risks, engineering costs, and collateral damage. If policy-makers believe it is still necessary to consider exceptional access mandates, there are technical, operational, and legal questions that must be answered in detail before legislation is drafted.
Legislators need to understand technical topics related to information security and privacy in order to write and vote on legislation in a rational way. Citizen constituents need to understand these same topics in order to do their part in voicing their opinions to their representatives and in voting them into or out of office.
More: read the report.
27 June 2015
The Des Moines Register reports that the state of Iowa is contemplating requiring computer science coursework as part of its core high school curriculum. The team of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics experts who is recommending this to the state claim that requiring computer science coursework in Iowa high schools is a “very bold recommendation”.
The article quotes various people making statements about what this computer science coursework would tentatively include, suggesting that their rough plan is to convey to students
- how computer systems work
- how to write computer programs
- computer science topics that reflect current industry needs
The first two points have been making appearances in K-12 education at least since the 1980s, in the form of Seymour Papert’s methodologies using Logo and Turtle programming, and more recently through the MIT Media Lab’s Scratch programming initiative. [I myself was introduced to computer programming at least in part in an elementary school Logo/Turtle programming class circa 1990.]
The third point sounds delightful, but, if formalized into published curricula, might be impractical. Core computer science knowledge like data structures, algorithms, and automata theory are always in style, but keeping up with the cool, hip programming languages and tools is evidently a challenge for textbook authors and for the teachers who adopt their books. This has been true in college-level computer science academia, and I imagine it would be at least as true at the high school level. It might be easier to pick some reasonably current set of technologies, like maybe Python (24 years old), Subversion (14 years old), and GNU Emacs (30 years old), and assume that the ideas behind those technologies will still be relevant when the students graduate.
[How do college computer science graduates cope with having not been taught the most current languages and tools of the trade? Despite new things coming out at a frenzied pace, programming languages that actually see much real-world use are still catching up with the core ideas of languages like Lisp (57 years old) and ML (42 years old), while typically retaining a great deal of syntax in common with C (43 years old). Learning those three languages, or some other set of similar languages, gives abstract knowledge more than sufficient to pick up any language the software development industry is likely to throw at its practitioners for the foreseeable future. For that matter, you could probably still spend a fifty-year-long career writing code in nothing but C, if you tried!]
An understanding of computer systems ought to permeate much serious decision-making in society; while some of these students may indeed discover their vocational calling in a high school computer science class, even non-programmers should wield enough computer science knowledge to make sound decisions on election day, if nothing else. So cheers to all of the state education departments who are requiring the next generation to learn a bit of computer science! But at the same time, I wonder, after all of the K-12 computer science education groundwork that was laid in the 1980’s… why did this take so long?