Garret Wilson Blog

PostgreSQL is one of the oldest, most powerful, and arguably one of the most complicated databases to administer. It is the power user's database. Paradoxically its installation on Windows, in trying to ease deployment, makes system configuration so "plug-and-play" that almost no one seems to know how to make even the tiniest deviances from the default installation configuration. I've went through the pain of researching and experimentation, and it turns out that a moderate power user can relatively easily create extremely flexible PostgreSQL configurations on Windows, if only someone were to write down how to do it.

In any list of "must-have software", gushing editors invariably include Audacity (currently at version 2.0.5), an audio editor that supposedly is as good or better as the for-pay big-boys. Perhaps its audio engine is powerful and flexible. Unfortunately, like so many other free, open-source projects, it utterly fails when it comes to usability.

Browser support for Devanagari (the script used to write Hindi) has come a long way in the last decade. When I started writing my Devanagari tutorial back in 1998, I had to edit images of each Devanagari character, as Unicode support in most operating systems was merely a fancy idea and browser display of Devanagari characters was only a pipe dream. In 2013, all the major operating systems support Unicode, and all the major browsers display Devanagari characters. Even Devanagari joining rules are followed, such as automatically joining व and ा to form वा. But there are still little wrinkles left to be worked out.

Sam Harris, positioning himself as an intellectual, asks a question: in this age of tolerance, are some believe systems so inherently incorrect and moreover, dangerous, that we should not hesitate to denounce them categorically? Harris answers with a resounding "yes", but his response goes beyond resounding and turns into a screaming rant. Harris proposes that religious faith, besides being absurd, is by the admissions of its own teachings intolerant and the source of much violence. Harris proposes that whatever positive things are brought about by spirituality can be replaced by some ambiguous spiritual experiences Harris attempts to reconstitute in scientific terms. While any of these points could stimulate legitimate intellectual inquiries, in The End of Faith Harris instead falls victim to the knee-jerk reactionism prevalent after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Primarily targeting Muslims, he plays the armchair dictator and manages to create a Secular Religion of Intolerance that provides its own witch hunt against the faithful.

I read today that a Japanese politician has declared it was "necessary" during World War II to force 200,000 or so women to become sex slaves for soldiers as so-called "comfort women". My first thought was, "Well, that's pretty much what God commanded in the Bible in Numbers 31", except that in God's case he also commanded everyone captured who was not going to become a sex slave be killed. God only wanted the virgins kept as war booty (no pun intended), and got sort of irritated when the other women weren't immediately slaughtered. This wasn't the first the first or last time God advocated (I mean "commanded", of course) genocide and other war crimes. Maybe former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who was just found guilty of genocide, should just say that God told him to do it.