The Great Cognitive Escape

Learning Java for first time programmers

2012-01-02T20:21:00.000-08:00

I'm designing a course for first time programmers to learn Java. Here are some useful resources I found that I like:

Interactive Tutorials

Introduction to Computer Science using Java (Bradley Kjell)

Lecture Notes

Introduction to Programming in Java (MIT OCW)

Textbooks

Think Java: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (Allen B. Downey) - suitable for AP Computer Science, so suitable for younger students
Introduction to Programming Using Java, Sixth Edition (David J. Eck) - link not working for me right now but I've heard good things about it
Introduction to Programming in Java (Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne) - contains case studies connected to real scientific or business uses, but means requires students to have a more advanced math background more suitable for 2nd+ year university undergrad students.

Web Mobile App Development Tools and Libraries

2012-01-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

Here's some tools and libraries that look interesting for web development, mobile App development, etc.

To begin, Firefox and Chrome, of course, are the browsers of choice for a web developer.

Tools for Firefox

Firefox has tons of tools for web developers! Take special note of:

If using Firebug, then also take special note of Acebug, FireRainbow.

Tools for Chrome

Chrome is younger and has less tools, but many web developers prefer Chrome over Firefox. And there are definitely tools:

JavaScript Validator

When programming in JavaScript, you must use JSLint to validate that the JavaScript you wrote conforms to modern recommended idioms.

You can run JSLint on the command line locally if the JSLint program is set up correctly based on the JSLint source files. But then a JavaScript interpreter outside of the browser is required, such as node.js, Rhino, or spidermonkey. Another, more convenient, possibility is to use the jslint4java wrapper program.

Libraries

dust.js has been selected by LinkedIn recently as their templating engine to unify the way web pages designed in HTML and CSS gets filled with data generated by other server based programs written in various languages including Java, Grails, and JRuby. It is free and open source (looks like MIT license)

PhoneGap is a free and open source (Apache License) library for writing cross-mobile-platform HTML5 app to access technologies native to the mobile platform (vs. programs being stuck in the browser).

For building gesture/touch-enabled UI for cross-mobile-platform Apps, there is jQuery Mobile, which is a very young project still, and is free and open source: dual licensed under MIT and GPL2. There is also Sencha Touch, a more mature library that is free and open source, cross-licensed under GPL3, a modified GPL3, a free (as in beer) commercial software license, and a paid commercial OEM license.

You might also need a library to add MVC or MVVM structure to your App. For that, consider Backbone.js (MVC) or Knockout.js (MVVM).

For everything else, there's jQuery.

See also:

Resources for Learning Web Development (JavaScript, jQuery)

2011-12-31T19:00:00.000-08:00

Assuming you have some working knowledge of HTML and CSS, then learning to program behaviours into web pages requires learning JavaScript, and here's resources I've looked into to help you learn JavaScript programming:

eBooks and paper Books
By "books", I mean "Bound Optimally Organized Knowledge". It's organized for structured learning and completeness.

Books I've looked into (literally) and would give at least a 4 out of 5 stars for:

Books that look promising based on the "cover" only:

Interactive Tutorials
Tutorials are organized for structured learning, often in a hands-on manner, but usually leaves gaps in knowledge. Interactive tutorials have a turn-based prompting mechanics to it.

Codecademy.com
Eloquent JavaScript also comes in an older and less edited, but free, interactive, and digital form

Video Lessons
Like books, but easier to digest for the non-readers. Usually not a source for completeness in information, but completeness can be found in video lectures (though those are often less interesting than short video lessons).

I'm really looking forward to seeing Khan Academy update its Computer Science videos with ones based on JavaScript (rather than the current Python). That seems to be their plan according to John Resig, Dean of Open Source and head of JavaScript development at Khan Academy (see JavaScript as a First Language).

Blog Posts

Usually entertaining, with incomplete information, but can be useful, especially for working examples.

Bibliography
I put these links up to give more information. These are ordered by what I found interesting or useful (from most to least).

Background
Notice this post isn't a "86 top resources" post. I've put a lot of time and effort into filtering out less desirable resources.

Although I have some working knowledge of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, etc., from long ago, I decided to see about learning the latest in web development. I asked myself:

Suppose I was totally new to web development, what do I need to learn?

It turns out much has changed, but the essential technologies for web design, web-based software development ("web App" development), and "mobile App" development (if based on web technologies), are still JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

If you have never done web development before, then you have to start somewhere, and I think "somewhere" is:

JavaScript using modern idioms
jQuery JavaScript library
HTML in the form of XHTML1.1, but with an eye towards HTML5
CSS in the 2.1 version, but looking towards CSS3 as well

Yes, HTML5 and CSS3 are the future, but the future isn't now - not quite just yet in terms of browser support and browser adoption.

Transferring a Canadian domain to Namecheap from Go Daddy for a Blogger custom domain

2011-12-30T01:11:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of recent news about Go Daddy's missteps in terms of the SOPA legislation in the USA. I'm in Canada, but I can't help but also notice the Go Daddy business and political policies aren't terribly aligned with the business and political policies of my business practice. Plus Go Daddy's services are focused on the up-sell than actually servicing my business needs, so I decided to transfer my domains from Go Daddy to Namecheap.

Here's the short of how I transferred the domain of this blog from Go Daddy to Namecheap, and how I had to reset things for Blogger custom domain to continue to work.

Note that doing this will cause a bit of down time for your domain name!
Steps are pretty simple to transfer the domain:

Ensure your domain is unlocked at Go Daddy. Locking disallows transferral.
Get an EPP code from Go Daddy for your domain. You'll need to go into the control panel of your domain at Go Daddy, and click on the "Authorization Code: Send by Email" link [1]. Make sure your email is up to date for that domain!
Go to Namecheap.com and go to "Transfer a Domain", and follow instructions to provide your domain and the EPP code. Namecheap will take care of the rest!

Wait until you have email confirmation from Namecheap, the CIRA, and Go Daddy that the transfer happened.

Next, you'll have to reconfigure your DNS settings.

Enter the "Manage Domains" control panel for your domain at Namecheap.
Click on "Transfer DNS to Webhost" and transfer your domain to use Namecheap's Domain Name Servers (DNS). You'll know you've done this when you have the option to click on "All Host Records" in the left navigation bar.
Go to "All Host Records", and one option is to change the records to look like what's shown at Setting Blogger Custom Domain Using Namecheap.

Alternatively, here's the Host Records settings I use:
1. I like to have the "blog" sub-domain point to the URL ghs.google.com using a CNAME record.
2. The "www" host name points to the blog.carsoncheng.ca as a URL (redirect) record.
3. And the "@" host name (which means literally no host name, i.e. the bare carsoncheng.ca URL) points also to the blog.carsoncheng.ca as a URL (redirect) record.
4. TTL are all set to 1800.

Finally, ensure Blogger is set up to use your custom domain name. For me, since I use the blog.carsoncheng.ca URL as the sub-domain with the CNAME record set to point to ghs.google.com, I follow Google's instructions to set that as the URL to host this blog.

The settings at Blogger or Google's servers can take up to an hour to update its records, and in the mean time, your domain might not work.

Namecheap has more information about how to set Host Records. Google offers a way for you to double check what your CNAME record looks like.

[1] Godaddy EPP Code

Passing Giants

2011-12-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

Here's a list of deaths I find notable:

David Rumelhart - 1942 Jun 12 to 2011 Mar 13
- Pioneer in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and connectionist artificial neural networks

Jack Layton - 1950 Jul 18 to 2011 Aug 22
- Leader of the NDP, the Official Opposition of Canada

Steve Jobs - 1955 Feb 24 to 2011 Oct 5
- Co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. and NeXT Inc., and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios

Dennis Ritchie - 1941 Sep 9 to 2011 Oct 12
- Creator of the C programming language, and co-creator of UNIX

John McCarthy - 1927 Sep 4 to 2011 Oct 24
- Pioneer in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and creator of the Lisp programming language

Learn Python instead of Java as your first language

2011-11-22T21:47:00.001-08:00

I'm struggling with figuring out which programming language to teach students would provide the most effective learning experience.

It's easy to find tons of statistics showing how Java is the most popular language with tons of community and books, etc. That, however, doesn't say very much about the learning experience of the student at all, or what the students will come away with.

I found the following from a respected hacker in the community, for example:

"For example, if your company wants to write some software, it might seem a prudent choice to write it in Java. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages.

"Business types prefer the most popular languages because they view languages as standards. They don't want to bet the company on Betamax. The thing about languages, though, is that they're not just standards. If you have to move bits over a network, by all means use TCP/IP. But a programming language isn't just a format. A programming language is a medium of expression.

"I've read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular language. As a standard, you couldn't wish for more. But as a medium of expression, you could do a lot better. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero." (Great Hackers, Paul Graham, 2004)

So essentially, the idea here is that if you choose a language based on whether it's the popular "standard", you've lost sight of the fact that programming is very much an art, and the language is a medium of expression — why would anyone wish upon students the torture of a lesser blub language?

Java is becoming the new Cobol since 2007. So of course it's popular, but we probably wouldn't want students learning Cobol as their first language now either.

The better language is Python, according to the best hackers in the community known to Graham (and he knows plenty, given what he does as his "day job" now).

Consider this, also from a respected hacker in the community:

"If you don't know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy; it is very powerful and flexible and well suited for large projects.

"I used to recommend Java as a good language to learn early, but this critique has changed my mind (search for “The Pitfalls of Java as a First Programming Language” within it). A hacker cannot, as they devastatingly put it “approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store”; you have to know what the components actually do." (How To Become A Hacker, Eric S. Raymond, 2008)

Here the essential idea, I think, is that Java can help you build stuff, but it doesn't help you very much in learning to think and express your thoughts programmatically. Being good at putting together code in Java that uses what other people have written doesn't help you solve problems better in a hacking or engineering kind of way.

It gets worse for Java according to this critique, as ESR mentioned in the quote above, which details failings of teaching Java at the University undergrad level.

But I am interested in this question in terms of high school students. The difference for high schools is that they may offer an AP or IB program, which may mandate the use of Java for their exams. In that case, of course for the sake of writing an exam, Java must be taught.

Looking longer term, however, teaching Java as a first language in high school raises lots of questions (some already answered above).

When you teach a grade 10 student, remember that this student is only about 14 or 15 years old. Three years of high school and four years of undergrad later, the student might be entering the job market seven years after learning their first programming language. That's seven years! Who knows what the world will become by then in the computing industry.

All we can say is what we can see in front of us:

Native programs on Windows will increasingly be written in C# and C++/CLR.
Native programs on Mac OS X will continue to be written in Objective-C
Native Apps on iOS for iPads, iPods, and iPhones, will continue to be written in Objective-C.
Web development in an Ajax style with the LAMP stack, especially with the continual support for HTML5 in browsers, will continue to stress the need for JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and one of Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby.
Apps for iOS or other tablets or smart phones written using web development technologies will probably continue to be popular, and would use the same mix of JavaScript, HTML, etc. as web development.
Java is popular in the so-called "enterprise" space, and also for Android OS for tablets and smart phones. But note that Android is a Linux OS (it's not GNU/Linux, but it is using the Linux kernel), so the kernel is programmed in C/C++, and you can program Apps for Android in most languages now, including: C/C++, Python, and Ruby. In fact, Android technically doesn't even run a Java VM, as Java is just a language used to program for the Dalvik VM — an issue Google has had to defend in court against Oracle.

From that perspective, popularity of Java is irrelevant. If a student wants to develop for Macs, they need to know Objective-C. If a student wants to develop for Windows, they need to know C# or C++. For Web, they need JavaScript, and possibly one other language (which could be Java, but there are many options here, including JavaScript too, by the way). For Android, there are many options to choose from.

All in all, it's almost like learning C is the best as a first language if career or "real-world" is at issue!

But that ignores the learning involved in a first language. Students need to learn to think in a way that can be expressed easily with pseudo-code — that's really the most important thing to learn as a beginning computer science student.

As Peter Norvig found, Python was much closer to pseudo-code than Java (and in fact, he found his attempt at re-writing AIMA examples from Lisp to Java to be "largely unsuccessful. Java was too verbose, and the differences between the pseudocode in the book and the Java code was too large").

With the above information at hand, I think it's clear that the choice of Java as a first language is simply not the most effective. As for what language to teach instead? Well, there's Python. MIT chose Python as their first language to teach undergrads — if it's good enough for MIT, it's good enough for me!

There's also JavaScript, if students want to do something with the web browser. I hear that Khan Academy has chosen to redo their Computer Science videos with JavaScript as the language, but that's just hear-say.

Addendum: Not long after I wrote this, I read Bad code plagues business applications, especially Java ones, where it discusses a study that found Java Enterprise Edition applications have the greatest number of problems in terms of bad coding practices that affect stability, and performance. Should this news affect how we view Java in terms of what to teach students?

Hackers are Builders and Creators

2011-11-20T17:23:00.001-08:00

A note to students on ethics in becoming a member of the Computing Science and Information Technology community.

Nowadays, news, media, and films like to say "hacking" to mean "gain access to a computer system illegally" --- but this meaning is used only by the main stream who don't understand what it means to program a computer.

To Computer Engineers and Scientists, "hack" is jargon to essentially mean "make something work".

Consider what these sentences mean:

"Hack something together"
- To shape or create something by crude or ruthless strokes (e.g. "hacking out new election districts" [3])

"He just couldn't hack it at the new job"
- He can't manage the new job successfully [3].

"Hack through it"
- Cut through with repeated irregular blows [3].

Those sentences use the older meanings of "hack" but are perfectly applicable to computer programming ... if you understand what it means to program.

If you don't, and if the only times you hear about programmers is when they do bad things, then it's understandable why you might think hacking is a bad thing.

This misunderstanding started in "Around 1980, when the news media took notice of hackers, they fixated on one narrow aspect of real hacking: the security breaking which some hackers occasionally did. They ignored all the rest of hacking, and took the term to mean breaking security, no more and no less. The media have since spread that definition, disregarding our attempts to correct them. As a result, most people have a mistaken idea of what we hackers actually do and what we think." (Richard M. Stallman) [6].

That's true especially when the main stream media starts making movies that portray hacking as negative and hackers as "computer-kid-as-elite-rebel" [4].

Films that propagate this include Hackers (1995), Swordfish (2001), and The Social Network (2010).

In response to the portrayal of himself in The Social Network, Zuckerberg says: "They [film makers] just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things" (Mark Zuckerberg) [2].

"When we say 'hacker', there's this whole definition that engineers have for themselves ... where to hack something means to build something very quickly. In one night, you can sit down and you could churn out a lot of code and at the end you have a product" (Mark Zuckerberg) [1].

Hackers create and build things.

"There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades... The members of this culture originated the term 'hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work...

"There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers ... Real hackers call these people 'crackers' and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word 'hacker' to describe crackers...

"The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them." (Eric S Raymond) [5].

ESR is a rather famous author and advocate of open source software, which have been created by various hackers, including luminaries like Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds.

"Great hackers also generally insist on using open source software. Not just because it's better, but because it gives them more control. Good hackers insist on control. This is part of what makes them good hackers: when something's broken, they need to fix it." (Paul Graham) [7]

Hackers create, build, and fix things.

"A 'computer hacker,' then, is someone who lives and breathes computers, who knows all about computers, who can get a computer to do anything." (Harvey) [8].

But it's pointless to argue about the "true" meaning of a word --- meanings are not things that can be true or false. But understanding the main stream meaning versus the jargon meaning amongst computer professionals should help you understand that the wider hacker community is interested in fixing, creating, and building things.

Sometimes, some of them build things that sell under brands like Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Facebook.

Hackers are generally bored by breaking or stealing other people's things because it takes time away from building or creating cool stuff.

The only "special case" is with computer security researchers who likes to break computer systems, but they do that to learn how to fix, create, or build stronger and better systems. By the way, they break computer systems they create or control themselves, not other people's systems.

It's like automotive engineers performing crash tests on cars to learn how to build safer cars --- but they crash their own cars, not other people's!

Hackers who break into other people's computer systems are like automotive engineers who crash or break into other people's cars --- they're called criminals.

References:

[1] Mark Zuckerberg --- Facebook, Part 1 - watch from 1:09 to 3:30 (video at YouTube)

[2] Zuckerberg strikes back at The Social Network

[3] Merriam-Webster Dictionary

[4] Gleiberman, Owen (October 6, 1995). "Hackers". Entertainment Weekly.

[5] How to Become a Hacker

[6] On Hacking

[7] Great Hackers

[8] What is a Hacker?

Skype auto-renewed my subscription without my explicit instruction

2011-11-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

I'm not too happy with Skype right now auto-renewing my subscription in a very rude, almost "scam"-like, kind of way.

A year ago, I bought into a one-year subscription with them. Their only way of buying in is, apparently, to have it auto-renew. So technically, I gave them legal permission to renew my subscription.

But any legitimate business should have the common human decency to remind the customer that the subscription will be renewed, say, a month ahead of the actual renewal date, especially for year-long subscriptions. This gives the customer a chance to change the renewed subscription (maybe the customer wants a more expensive subscription, for example!).

Instead, Skype sneakily renews the subscription silently, then only afterwards tells the customer of it. No way to back out of it or change the subscription before renewal.

By the way, if you try to cancel the auto-renewal, the only way appears to be to cancel the subscription, and they use very scary language to suggest that doing so would cancel the service plan already in place.

Fortunately, they let you set the renewal to be charged to a Paypal account. Once you do that, you can delete the stored credit card information without them complaining. (This is under the "Settings and extras" > "Payment settings".)
You don't even need to enter any Paypal account information, so you can safely delete the credit card information, and make it not possible for them to silently torpedo you with a bill next year or whenever.

I was seriously thinking of changing my subscription with them (that would've probably given them more of my money) since things have been working reasonably well, but now that they stealthily auto-renewed my subscription without my explicit instruction to do so within a reasonable time-frame of the renewal date (12 months ago is not reasonable)... well, I'll just take my business elsewhere and get the extra VoIP services I need probably cheaper too.

There's no reason why a confident business needs to sneak a bill on its customers in the name of convenient auto-renewal. Had they given me a friendly reminder, I would've kept my business with them anyway.

In the grand scheme of things though, I'm not worth very much money to them (well, none of us individually are), so their accounting people probably figured it'd be okay to exploit its subscribers this way to ensure a higher number of paid subscriptions. Too bad...

Inflated expectations: Are students living in a dream?

2011-11-06T01:02:00.000-07:00

There's a big gap between what young adults expect versus what they really will get in their lives.

In terms of educational attainment, I think the vast majority of high school students in Canada expect to get a high school diploma, at the least. A vast majority of them probably want to go to college too (78% according to ACT in Spring 2004, but that's in USA, though it's probably roughly similar in Canada).

But looking at just the Canadian population, between the ages of 20 to 24 years, by highest certificate, diploma or degree attained in 2006, we see that based on the 2006 Census, only:

43.3% (896 570 out of 2 071 895) achieved some kind of post-secondary qualification (trades certificate, diploma below bachelor level, PhD, etc.)
35.9% (744 375 out of 2 071 895) achieved some kind of college, CEGEP or other non-university certificate or diploma, or university certificate, diploma or degree
16.6% (344 795 out of 2 071 895) achieved some kind of university certificate, diploma or degree
42.9% (889 275 out of 2 071 895) achieved only a high school certificate or equivalent
13.8% (286 050 out of 2 071 895) achieved no certificate, diploma or degree at all

So roughly 78% or so expect to get a college or higher degree, but only 35.9% actually get anything of the sort.

In fact, more students achieved only a high school certificate or equivalent (42.9%) than actually attained their dream of a college or higher degree. And 56.7% of students will have achieved at most just a high school certificate or equivalent.

Even for those students who enter university. Of those who are planning to get an engineering or science degree, "Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students ... end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree" (Why Science Majors Change Their Minds), "That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students...are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors" (ibid.).

Now in terms of earnings expectation, "On average, students expect to earn over $70,000 ... and almost three quarters expect to purchase a home within ten years" (BCSC News Release 2011 Oct 31).

That's the expectation of students surveyed, and "Over 90% of those surveyed were enrolled in post secondary courses" (ibid.), all according to the National Report Card on Youth Financial Literacy from the British Columbia Securities Commission.

The actual average income of 25 to 29-year-olds with post-secondary degrees, according to the 2006 census, is actually $31 648, while only 42% of them will own homes (Financial Post).

The contrast between expectation and reality is stark. It's like young adults are living in a dream, where they'll go on to college, make big money, and own a home. In fact, the vast majority won't.

Some of the complaints from people at Occupy XYZ protests seems to show their bewilderment when they arrive at adulthood only to find their dream was just that, a dream. Matt Gurney, for example, attributes this to financial illiteracy and teachers who, he claims, are financially illiterate themselves due to their "well-above average salary, spectacular benefits, generous defined benefit pensions".

Matt is, of course, factually wrong - at least in part. Teachers in Calgary, for example, don't have defined benefit pensions. And even if students were financially literate to the point of understanding budgets, taxes, and income statistics, it still may not change their expectations of what they will get. The reverse is, by the way, also possible --- students can have expectations that are in line with reality without being financially literate --- they are orthogonal issues.

Why? For the same reason some very smart people buy lottery tickets --- "I expect I will win at some point". They simply have irrational expectations. We're human, and that's normal.

I'm reminded of something a financial advisor said to me though. A large part of his job was to manage clients' expectations.

What students, children, teens, and young adults need --- if we want them to have more reasonable expectations of their future --- is to have their expectations managed. That's the job of parents and teachers.

To what extent should parents and teachers manage their children's and students' expectations? That's another issue altogether.

How to Mount FileVault SparseBundle in Mac OS X 10.3.9

2011-10-30T16:38:00.000-07:00

Imagine you have an encrypted home folder in Mac OS X 10.6 on your laptop. Now your laptop breaks down, but you were able to copy your home folder into an external hard drive from /Users/YourName which, unfortunately, holds just a YourName.sparsebundle folder.

You know your data is encrypted into that YourName.sparsebundle folder of files. Now you want to retrieve your encrypted data on your other older Mac computer, which only has Mac OS X 10.3.9 installed. You do have a Mac OS X 10.6 install disc though.

What to do?

What you'd do is find out that hdiutil on Mac OS X 10.3.9 is too old and can't open SparseBundle disk images at all, encrypted or not. The earliest version of Mac OS X that can is 10.5 according to the man pages.

The solution is to boot up your old Mac with the Mac OS X 10.6 installation disc.

If your iMac is as old as mine, it'll complain that it can't install 10.6 on that computer, but it will give you the option to restore the computer from Time Machine (or reboot).

Click on restore, which will then allow you to access the greyed out menu bar items. You'll want to select Terminal.

From there, use the Mac OS X 10.6 version of hdiutil like so:

hdiutil attach -readonly path/to/YourName.sparsebundle

It will ask you for the password, which I presume you still remember.

It will then print out some info, including the /Volume/location to where it mounted the disk image!

Then I hope you know how to use bash in the Terminal to cd to that directory, and cp -a /Volume/location /iMac/hard-drive/destination to copy recursively everything inside your encrypted home to a new unencrypted location where you can access it normally after a reboot.

Once copying is complete, just reboot the computer and remove the 10.6 install disc. You'll have your data at /iMac/hard-drive/destination or wherever you had copied it.

References:

Effortless Embedding of Videos

2011-10-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

If you don't want to post to hosted video solutions (like YouTube), and want the video to look nice and embedded into an HTML file, here's some thoughts:

If the video is MP4 format. Use a Flash based MP4 player embedded into HTML. See:

Otherwise, convert the video to FLV (Flash Video) format and again use a Flash based player. I had one on my computer. One of these days I'll post how I used to do that, but why bother? If you can convert videos to FLV, you can just as well convert to MP4 and use the above solution!

CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software for Windows 7 64 bit

2011-10-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

I hear Camtasia by TechSmith is great, but I want a lower cost solution for screen recording. Some options include Jing, free and also from TechSmith, but that can only record 5 minutes and output to SWF files (not AVI - unless you pay for it). Another option is CamStudio.

Strangely, CamStudio's main page lets you download the 2.0 version, which I gather is the last stable release version.

There are also two, more recent, beta versions: 2.5 and 2.6. The 2.6 beta version didn't work for me - something to do with side-by-side configuration errors.

But the CamStudio 2.5 beta 1 version works for me in Windows 7 64 bit! Well, with some fiddling. You'll need to download and install some files to make it work:

Specifically, you'll need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64) .

Also, you'll need to download the mfc71.dll file from CamStudio, and also the Msvcp71.dll And Msvcr71.dll files from either CamStudio's dev page again, or from Addictive Tips page (but do not follow Addictive Tips' instructions - see below).

Where do you place Mfc71.dll, Msvcp71.dll, and Msvcr71.dll? You place it into your CamStudio folder, i.e. the same folder containing the CamStudio's Producer and Recorder programs.

Do NOT follow the instructions in the Addictive Tips page on installing those three .dll files though. Microsoft specifically advises to place them into your application program's folder.

Have fun screen recording!

Dentist wants my money, so how can I trust him?

2011-08-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

Much of dental treatments and examinations in BC and Alberta (Canada) are paid for in a fee for service model of business. Increasingly, when I see a dentist, I notice they seem to be fairly eager at recommending me things that cost me money. This issue has been bugging me for a long time.

For example, I'm told I should consider getting an electric toothbrush. Incidentally, the dental office sells electric toothbrushes.

Another example: I'm told I grind my teeth at night and should get a night guard, even though my previous dentist, who saw me not months earlier, never diagnosed me as needing one. When the dentist realized that my insurance doesn't cover getting their super expensive night guard, and that I'm unwilling to pay out of pocket, the dentist suggested I get a cheap one from a drug store, but to make sure to come back to the dental office to get it fitted by them (presumably the fitting will cost either me or the insurance company). Incidentally, the previous dentist was older and probably had no debt, but the new dentist is younger and probably has debts to pay off.

There are other examples of these kinds of up-selling type behaviour, and I'm growing increasingly skeptical. How can I know whether my dentist is telling me X because he really has my best interest in mind, when I know X will line his pocket with my money? Worse is that I'm not even remotely qualified to know whether X really is in my best interest or not.

I don't want to get into a debate about what health delivery and payment system is best. I just wanted to note that in the current system of dentistry, it's hard to ever trust that the dentist is thinking of me instead of my money.

Of course, this latest research suggests that there's no question: the doc is thinking of my money.

Stop Skype Auto Gain Control of the Mic on Mac OS X

2011-08-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Skype has got to introduce a GUI element to turn off the Automatic Gain Control (AGC) of the Mic on Mac OS X. I'm not sure if the newer versions of Skype has this feature, but I'm using Skype 2.8.0.866 on Mac OS X 10.6, and the way to stop AGC is as follows:

Open the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Skype (this is in your own user folder's Library folder, not the whole system one).
Open the file shared.xml
Find the text string <VoiceEng>
Underneath that string, add a new line with the text <AGC>0</AGC>
Click on the Apple logo in your menu bar
Open System Preferences...
Click on the Sound preference pane
Click on the Input tab
Find the Input volume slider and drag the slider all the way to the right (or to wherever you desire)
Done!

If you keep the Sound preference pane open at all times while using Skype, you should be able to monitor whether the Input volume slider (representing the mic's gain) moves around automatically or not.

(edit: I was asked to provide a screenshot, but then the screenshot would be just all text anyway, so I'll show a bigger snippet of what the shared.xml file should look like here.

Originally, it may look like this:

... various text ...
<VoiceEng>
   <MicBoost>
... various other text ...

Change it to look like this:

... various text ...
<VoiceEng>
   <AGC>0</AGC>
   <MicBoost>
... various other text ...

Hope that helps.)

I can't believe Skype never thought to include the option to set the gain manually. Sometimes, when the user finds the other party can't hear them talk (e.g. when there is a lot of background noise), they will talk louder into the mic, since doing that on a real phone will increase how loud the other party will perceive the user's voice to be. But with AGC on, speaking louder into the mic causes it to automatically reduce the gain, making it impossible to compensate for a noisy environment! Very frustrating...

Presentation Mode on Mac OS X

2011-08-03T18:32:00.000-07:00

Need to make sure your Mac computer doesn't go to sleep or dim screen when doing a presentation? I used Caffeine, and it was excellent. Did exactly what it was supposed to.

In addition, I suggest you turn off automatic Software Update in your System Preferences to make sure no random dialog box pops up during your presentation.

LaTeX Beamer package: dual screen mode incompatible with Textpos package

2011-08-02T20:37:00.000-07:00

Took me a while to figure out that when using the Beamer LaTeX package, the "show notes on second screen" dual-screen option and the Textpos package cannot be both used together simultaneously.

See this bug report.

US Supreme Court on Peer Grading

2011-07-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'm always surprised by what I learn or see from reading Supreme Court rulings. This time, I find an extremely succinct explanation of the positive impact of having students mark each others' test papers:

Correcting a classmate’s work can be as much a part of the assignment as taking the test itself. It is a way to teach material again in a new context, and it helps show students how to assist and respect fellow pupils. By explaining the answers to the class as the students correct the papers, the teacher not only reinforces the lesson but also discovers whether the students have understood the material and are ready to move on.
— Owasso v. Falvo

Is Ammyy Behind the Scammy Phone Call?

2011-07-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

My friend just relayed to me this funny story of receiving a very scammy phone call recently.

Bottom line:
Someone with a thick Indian accent called my friend, claiming to be from "Windows Service System" based in "Otwa, the Canada state", claiming that they detected on my friend's computer many malicious malware, and wanted to show my friend these malicious files by asking him to download and run this "Ammyy Admin" software. Based on the content of the phone conversation, and subsequent online checking, it's pretty safe to say the Indian sounding fellow's end-game is to get remote access to my friend's computer, and to force him to cough up money to "fix" the computer. If you get such a call, just hang up on them.

Some general details:
The Telus phone company is aware of the scam, according to the Telus phone operator, and the operator's advice was to just hang up on them. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre [1] is aware as well, and have published a bulletin on this. The internet chatter on this is loud and clear that this scammy type phone call is popular and old.

How the call went down:
The fellow with the Indian accent (let's call him Ishaan - not his real name) called my friend (let's call him Greg - not real name either). Ishaan says he's calling from "Windows Service System, service provider of Windows", and he's calling because he's "getting regular pop-up alerts about how [Greg's] hard drive is about to crash-down due to malicious files".

Greg plays along, asking what Ishaan wants him to do. Ishaan wants to show Greg all the corrupted files, and asked Greg to use the Windows Run command (Win + r) to run "inf". Ishaan asks Greg if he sees all these files ending in "inf", and asked how many files there are, because (Ishaan claims) they are the corrupted files and usually it's okay to have 20 to 25 corrupted files, but if it's 1200 to 1500 then it's very bad.

Greg says there's 1335 files, and Ishaan very emotively and almost sadly states "oh my god, could you imagine all of those files corrupted on your PC. It is very close to crashing down and hammering down your hard drive". Ishaan asks Greg to very carefully close the window so it doesn't make it worse.

(Aside: Crashing down? Hammering? You just can't make this stuff up!)

Next, Ishaan asks Greg to open the Run window again to type in the Ammyy web site URL (which I purposely will not link to here, but it's easy to find their .com URL). Ishaan wants Greg to click the big button that downloads and runs this "AMMYY_Admin.exe" program. And "what does this program do?", Greg asked. Well, it "Connects [Ishaan] to [Greg's] computer so [Ishaan] can show [Greg his] damaged files", of course.

Here's the thing. Greg has a Mac running Mac OS X. There is no Windows Run command. Greg's just been jawboning the whole thing all alone, despite the fact Ishaan kept asking Greg to tell him what he sees on screen. So at this point, Greg can't really go on anymore since he has no idea what the Ammyy program looks like when it runs (since it can't run in Mac OS X).

Instead, Greg "starts" getting suspicious and asks Ishaan where he's calling from, since Greg "has" a Dell computer and Ishaan isn't calling from Dell. Ishaan replies he's calling from "Otwa". It took some back and forth before Ishaan clarified it's "Otwa, a Canada state" (!). And does Greg have to pay anything for this service? Ishaan insists it's free.

Well, at this point, Greg asks if he can bring his computer in to get it fixed in person, because he "doesn't feel comfortable fixing it himself - what if he breaks something!" But Ishaan insists that Greg "cannot bring the computer in to fix, because it can only be done online. The damage is inside your computer", you see.

Anyhow, Greg kept insisting on bringing the computer in to have it fixed, and not a few seconds later, Ishaan hangs up on Greg.

No doubt, had this went down with someone less skeptical of unsolicited phone calls from someone offering free service — someone who doesn't realize how ridiculous it is to call someone in Canada and tell them that "Otwa" is a Canadian "state" — the result would've been at least a computer getting completely taken over remotely (and then credit card or personal information might be easily stolen and sold for identity theft purposes), and a credit card would've been charged to "fix" the computer for amounts the CAFC bulletin reports range from $35 to $469.

My Rant:
I went checking online afterwards to see what's up with this scammy deed. Apparently, Norton Safe Web reports the site is "OK" and "SAFE", even though the community rating is 1.4/5 based on user reviews stating it is a "SCAM". Why? According to some, the Ammyy software itself is legitimate and not malware.

But this scammy type call is so apparently widespread that any legitimate company should display some kind of prominent warning on their web site — the lack of prominent warning is evidence the web site itself is maybe not legitimate in my eyes. In fact, the support forums linked to from Ammyy has a number of posts discussing how Ammyy is being used as parts of these scammy calls, but the replies from the Ammyy administrators gives me the feeling that they are blaming the potential victims for answering these calls rather than being responsible professionals and post a clear warning on the front of the web site regarding these alleged scams. Also, it seems many posts on the forum are spam posts, which again makes me wonder how legitimate, professional, or real that company really is.

Then I went searching on Google for the Ammyy software and again Google doesn't warn that the site is malicious or anything. I guess if the web site technically doesn't contain malware, then Google and Norton will say it's "safe" even though it's used as a component of a larger scammy scheme.

As I mentioned above, Greg informed the Telus phone operator of the call right away, and the operator's advice is to just hang up. Great. So all scammers get a pass I guess unless someone actually gets hurt, then the hurt party can call in the cops and it's out of the phone company's hands. But the coppers can't do much since the call is probably placed out of the country anyway, so all they can do is put up a CAFC bulletin. Wonderful stuff.

[1] I'm always weary of official sites with URLs that's hard to "know" or verify as being legitimate. There is, however, a link to the CAFC from the RCMP's Scams and Fraud page.

What Latin Phrases to Italicize in Formal Writing?

2011-07-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

When writing formally, you'll probably have to use some Latin or other foreign words or phrases, like "e.g.", "viz.", "inter alia", "etc.", etc. Do you italicize them? Or do you not? Actually, some you do italicize, while others you don't. So how do you figure out which is which?

The rule of thumb is, if the word or short phrase has been so commonly used in English writing that it's immediately recognizable to an English reader, meaning the word or phrase has been assimilated into current English usage, then don't italicize it (i.e. it is anglicized and should be set in roman). If the phrase is an abbreviation of a Latin phrase, also don't italicize it. Finally, don't italicize foreign proper names, foreign names of people, institutions, places, etc., and also usually not for foreign quotation.

Otherwise, italicize the word or phrase to show that it's foreign. When writing italicized foreign words or phrases, make sure to put in the appropriate accents and diacritical marks (this means that for German nouns, the initial letter is capitalized.

But which words or short phrases are commonly used in English enough not to be italicized? It could be a tough call. To help you, here's a compiled listing of frequently used foreign phrases and whether to italicize them:

Common Foreign (e.g. Latin) Phrases and Whether to Italicize Them
Do Italicize	Don't Italicize
ex ante Länder carte blanche cabinet (French type) de jure* in camera glasnost intifada loya jirga Mitbestimmung papabile perestroika ujamaa coup de foudre	e.g. etc. et al. et seq. ibid. i.e. NB op. cit. ad hoc ad infinitum inter alia per capita per se role pro forma status quo café alias detour ad hoc apartheid a priori a propos avant-garde bona fide bourgeois coup d'état de facto de jure* elite en masse en route in situ machismo nouveau riche parvenu pogrom post mortem putsch raison d'être realpolitik status quo vice versa vis-à-vis

* There is a conflict in the sources I consulted on whether to italicize "de jure", so I'm going to cop out and just say you should decide based on your own judgement of which geographic region and reading level the audience community you are writing for comes from.

If a word or phrase isn't in the above list, check the New Oxford dictionary for writers and editors for whether or not to italicize it, or check to see if the word or phrase is in the Merriam-Webster Online (if it is, don't italicize it).

The above listing was compiled from the following three sources, which are my "go to" sources for all my formal writing style guide needs because they are free and professional:

Full export of your blog in Blogger for backup and migration

2011-05-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

If you use Blogger, you may sometimes want to backup or move your blog data outside of Blogger. To do this, you'd normally log into your Blogger blog, go to the Settings tab, click on Export blog at the top of the page, then click the big orange Download Blog button.

But unless you also have allowed your blog feeds to "full", you'd only download a short portion of each of your blog entires (not so great for backups!).

To enable the "full" blog feed, again go to the Settings tab, then click on the Site Feed sub-tab, and then select Full in the drop-down menu next to the Allow Blog Feeds setting.

Reasons to learn math you'll never use

2011-05-09T05:42:00.000-07:00

The film, "An Education", is about the experience of a teenaged girl (Jenny) growing up, meeting an older man, and making decisions regarding pursuing school versus marriage. There is a passage near the end of the film that rather haunts me, especially the very last line (in bold below):

Jenny: Studying is hard and boring. Teaching is hard and boring. So, what you're telling me is to be bored, and then bored, and finally bored again, but this time for the rest of my life? This whole stupid country is bored! There's no life in it, or color, or fun! It's probably just as well the Russians are going to drop a nuclear bomb on us any day now. So my choice is to do something hard and boring, or to marry my... Jew, and go to Paris and Rome and listen to jazz, and read, and eat good food in nice restaurants, and have fun! It's not enough to educate us anymore Ms. Walters. You've got to tell us why you're doing it.

An Education

It strikes me that much of the frustration at all levels of education comes down to people having varying beliefs that are often contradictory, sometimes confused, and at other times missing altogether, about the purpose of education (and by that, I mean formal education in the school setting).

Some think education is for opening the mind of young people to the light of reason. Some believe education is essentially career and job skills training. Some think it is to "raise the kids" in the parenting sense, as though teachers are parents. Many think it's more or less pointless, but essential as a child caring service while the children's parents are out making a living. Some don't think about the question altogether, opting to do whatever the teachers say, as education is just traditionally "the thing to do".

The list of purposes ascribed to education by various people goes on...

These questions are especially difficult to answer in the context of math education. Except for a minority of students who end up going to university [1], most students will never get the chance to have to use the calculus, geometry, formal logic, proofs, etc, that they learned in primary and secondary schooling.

In fact, even for those students who do end up going to university, many of them will never get the chance to use all the maths they've learned either, as they end up in fields that are either not science, not quantitative, or just not very mathematical at all (many in engineering don't use all the maths they learn either!).

This means that years of schooling is spent teaching a lot of students a base of knowledge and skills that they will never find any use for. So why do we educate them, especially in the field of math and science, to the levels that we do? There are multiple possible ways to answer this question, and none of them are totally satisfactory to everyone.

For instance, at the social policy level of discussion, it might be argued that by educating as many students as possible to as high a level of math and scientific knowledge as possible, it gives society a much larger base of science and engineering minded young people to choose from to make into mature scientists, doctors, and engineers — to the ultimate benefit of the rest of society. Actually, that's essentially the reason why relatively small countries with a need for a strong military force, like Singapore and Israel, have a draft. Compulsory education is like compulsory military training, only the result is not a strong military force, but a strong intellectual force.

But appealing to the good of the rest of society is probably not a very good way to answer an individual student's question of why he or she, in particular, is being educated in math and science to such a high level of knowledge. This simply wouldn't fly: "Sally, you're being educated as you are being drafted into the intellectual work force, so that one day you can be economy fodder!"

Instead, I would suggest explaining the value of intellectual edification in math and science the same way you would explain why you went on a vacation to some exotic locale, why you went adventure traveling to some remote islands, or why you hiked up some tall mountain to a summit thousands have been to in the past.

That is, it's the challenge, the intellectual stimulation, the sense of adventure, the thrill of understanding eternal truths to the universe, the appreciation for beauty, etc, that makes learning math and science — even if it will never be used ever again — purposeful and meaningful.

It seems to me that these values listed here are what it means to have an interesting life — certainly to have an interesting intellectual life. It's these values that makes it possible to "make school the foundation of an interesting life" [2]. Perhaps these values form the essential core to answering the challenge from Jenny: ie, it's not enough to educate students anymore; perhaps they have to be enculturated to also value what makes life interesting.

[1] It seems that only 47.9% of persons age 18 to 21 are in college in the USA (in 2007, per statistics in form 264 from US Census), and college seems to include all kinds of trades and technical colleges. In Canada, only 26.3% of persons age 18 to 21 are in university (in 2006, per Statistics Canada figures shown over at HRSDC).

[2] See Learning to Love Your AP History Assignments for some tangentially related readings.

Things to remember as a professional

2011-05-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

Communication, communication, communication!

Feedback, feedback, feedback!

Energy, energy, energy!

As an educator, "I want to work. I want to build something"

2011-04-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

If you're following the news (see below*) of the education funding situation in Alberta, Canada, and especially of the news coming out of Calgary, you'll find a lot of very confusing and seemingly unreasonable things are going on. Due to the way the union negotiated contracts work, and the relatively reduced size of the budget, a lot of new or young teachers — and even some younger but experienced teachers — may find themselves without a job come September.

It should be noted that those contracts were negotiated and agreed upon by Alberta's Conservative government, and now the size of the budget is also controlled by the very same Conservative government! Is it not fair to say that the entire situation with the teacher layoffs has been engineered at the hands of the Conservative government? I wonder if they might, in one or two years, ratchet up the education funding just in time for the provincial elections that will likely occur in 2012.

In any case, the situation reminds me of a scene from Mad Men, when Don Draper says, "Who the hell is in charge? A bunch of accountants trying to make a dollar into a dollar ten? I want to work. I want to build something of my own. How do you not understand that?":

(or hear it here)

It will be a real shame if a lot of young teachers will be denied the opportunity to contribute to the building of a better and more educated citizenry, because the government wants to shave a penny's worth off each dollar**.

* Calgary’s public school board could cut 324 staff
Hundreds more teaching jobs to be cut by CBE
Provincial education funding falls short
A lesson in pettiness?: Province gives to education with one hand and takes away with the other
Rural students getting hosed

** The imagery evoked is what I want to convey; I don't know if the cuts to education will amount to more, equal, or less than 1% of the whole provincial budget.

Few notes on ergonomic keyboards and mouse

2011-04-09T02:13:00.000-07:00

I'm typing away at a lot of software programming and thesis writing, so having a good keyboard is a must. Here's two suggestions, both of which I've personally tried and has worked well for me. I wrote down a few notes for you to ponder.

Currently, I use a Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. It's an ergonomic keyboard with a soft curve laterally, and no vertical curve (it lays flat). It's a wicked keyboard if your shoulder width is not so wide, because it has only that slight curve, rather than the dramatic curve of other ergonomic keyboards. It also has a light but distinctive touch, so it's easy to press the key down, but not so easy that you would accidentally "smoosh" a key down by accident. The key's travel — how far it travels from the start of pressing a key to bottoming out — is also quite short, so there's less finger motion required to type.

If the Comfort Curve 2000 doesn't fit your body type, you might want to try the Microsoft Natural Ergonomics Keyboard 4000. I've used that one before, and it's pretty good, but only if your shoulder width is wider than, well, mine is. Unfortunately, it's keys have a longer travel length, and its spacebar is a tad heavy to press down due to its design. If you're not used to the keyboard, your fingers may become tired and sore the first few times of prolonged usage, but at least for me, I get used to it soon after. I've used that for years before switching to the Comfort Curve 2000 model, and it was a good experience.

Unfortunately, both of those keyboards, at least when used on a Mac, optionally suggests that you install the Microsoft IntelliType software. The IntelliType software has been known to apparently cause a lot of kernel panics for on Mac OS X — on the order of once or twice a day even, when under heavy typing load. If you use Windows, then this is not an issue (I've used both of those keyboards under Windows XP and Windows 7, and they work well). If you use a Mac, you may find my previous post on the issue useful.

Now that you've got a keyboard, you'll probably want an ergonomic mouse too. I have a large hand, so small dinky mouse, even if ergonomically shaped, is no good for me in my experience. The perfectly sized mouse I've found is the Microsoft SideWinder X8. It's not technically an ergonomic mouse, but it's size and shape makes holding it easy. I've tried other ergonomic mouse before, but they were simply too small for my hand to grip comfortably.

The SideWinder X8 has 5 buttons (including the scrollwheel button). The scrollwheel has tilt function to scroll horizontally. It has three resolution settings for different speed of mouse cursor travel. It's rechargeable using AA rechargeable batteries, but it has a "base station" that it can recharge from so the batteries stay in the mouse. The connection with the base station is via a magnetically attached wire that can be unspooled so that the mouse can be used as though it's a wired mouse! The base station plugs into a USB port to draw power and to relay mouse instructions, so the computer doesn't need special set up. Having said that, you'll want Microsoft's IntelliPoint software installed or else all those buttons will be next to useless.

The X8 is the most comfortable pointing device I've used since the Kensington TurboBall Trackball I had long ago. Unfortunately, trackballs are out of fashion nowadays, and so good ones are hard to find, especially given that I want one that fits my hand well.

One final note about ergonomic mouse and keyboards. Try before you buy. Always. Reviews and descriptions, and even videos and 3D views, just doesn't tell you enough about how using those things with your hands feel. You have to put your hands on them, type a bunch of words and sentences, move the mouse around, click some buttons, etc, before you really can know if it fits you or not. Ergonomics is not a generic one-size-fits-all thing, but a personalized experiential thing. Have fun finding a good keyboard/mouse combo. Took me years.

Mac OS X Kernel Panics due to Microsoft IntelliType: Solution

2011-04-08T02:12:00.000-07:00

It seems all evidence [1] points to Microsoft IntelliType causes kernel panics on Macs. This seems to be a problem that has existed for a long while, from IntelliType versions 7 at least up to 8, and Mac OS X from 10.5 at least up to 10.6.

I learned this the hard way, having bought a Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 ergonomic keyboard. That's a wicked keyboard, by the way, if your shoulder width is not so wide, because it has only a slight curve, rather than the dramatic curve of other ergonomic keyboards. It also has a light but distinctive touch, so it's easy to press the key down, but not so easy that you would accidentally "smoosh" a key down by accident. The key's travel is also quite short, so it's less finger motion required to type.

Unfortunately, installing the IntelliType software seems to have caused kernel panics for my MacBook Pro on the order of once or twice a day (under heavy typing load. That meant I lost a lot of programming and typing of emails and reports. sigh

The solution is simple: uninstall IntelliType. The uninstaller is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. But that's not a very good solution by itself, because the Command/"Apple" and Option keys are reversed on Microsoft keyboards compared to Mac keyboards. So here's the other half of the solution:

For some reason, Apple's own Keyboard preference pane doesn't work for remapping the common keys. It's supposed to work, but it doesn't for me. No idea why.

What works is this:

You need KeyRemap4MacBook and maybe the PCKeyboardHack. They are free and open source software, it seems. Not the most user friendly, but quite easy to understand.

With KeyRemap4MacBook, you'll need to check off the following options (at least for my MacBook Pro laptop):

Don't remap an internal keyboard
Don't remap Apple's keyboards
Command_L to Option_L
Command_R to Option_R
Option_L to Command_L
Option_R to Command_R

That will get your Microsoft keyboard back to behaving more like a made-for-Mac keyboard.

I use the capslock key as an extra control key. For this option, you'll need PCKeyboardHack. In it, you'll need to check off the "Change Caps Lock" option, then double click on the keycode and change it to 59.

Problems solved!

The keyboards multimedia keys will still work, but the quick launch application keys won't. Oh well.

Further Implications

So after fixing your keyboard, let's talk about your Microsoft mouse, because you've probably got an awesome Microsoft mouse as well. I use a SideWinder X8, which is pretty much useless without the Microsoft IntelliPoint software. I'm happy to report that IntelliPoint doesn't cause kernel panics much...probably none even. It's been so rare, if ever, that I can't recall it crashing due only to having the mouse plugged in within the past 3+ months. However, YMMV, and the internet chatter suggest it may just cause kernel panics less often, say on the order of once every few months.

The fix I suggest above does have one implication though for the IntelliPoint settings: if you set your mouse button to press a key chord sequence, you'll have to set it pretending that the keys pressed are the ones on an external keyboard. So if you want the key sequence to be effectively Command+O, you'll have to set it to Option+O (using the suggested configuration above).

[1] All evidence means my personal experience with using the Mac with the Microsoft IntelliType software installed, and the Microsoft keyboard plugged in for 1.5 months, and comparing that with using the Mac without the Microsoft keyboard plugged in for another 2.5 months. Plus the reports of others from across the internets.