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2002-07-31

Flamage

Boom.

Well, what a way to end the month -- with an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness flame war! Don your asbestos suit before reading things like pgmillard's reply to Adam Theo on the members list or the jdev log containing a heated discussion between dizzyd and theo (scroll way down). Nothing like a flame war to get the juices flowing. Actually sometimes it's good to let the emotion explode -- it's like an electrical buildup that needs to be discharged. I don't necessarily see it as unhealthy -- it's like a controlled burn to prevent a massive forest fire. And hey, at least people get passionate about Jabber! :)

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 22:02. File under jabber.

~ link ~

RSS-ing

Alternate meta tags and such.

My friend Eliot just pointed me to updated information about the link tag on dive into mark's weblog. Seems I was such an early adopter of this feature that I missed the later refinements. But now I'm in compliance, so Eliot can successfully use all those cool bookmarklet features in AmphetaDesk. :)

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 21:38. File under technology.

~ link ~

Pub-sub Redux

Another JEP.

As mentioned in today's JSF meeting (the log is entertaining), I've received another JEP about pub-sub protocols in Jabber. Until I convert it to XML from MS-HTML (ick!), you can check it out here. Permanent URL to follow soon!

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 16:54. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Grok

A good word.

A friend of mine used the word 'grok' the other day, which reminded me how much I like the word. Sure it's a relative neologism (having been coined by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land), but what other word denotes intimate and exhaustive knowledge?

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 16:42. File under society.

~ link ~

Editorial License

Recent activities in my role as JEP Editor.

Yesterday I introduced a new wrinkle in the Jabber Enhancement Proposal (JEP) process within the Jabber Software Foundation: a "call for experience" to gather feedback before we advance a standards-track protocol change from Draft to Final. I've issued two such calls: one for jabber:x:data (the Jabber equivalent of HTML forms) and another for jabber:iq:rpc (an implementation of remote procedure calls over Jabber). It will be good to gather feedback from developers who have implemented these protocols before I present them to the Jabber Council again.

Also yesterday I had to step in and clarify the messy situation regarding one of our recent JEPs, since the co-authors have come to a disagreement regarding the direction of their proposed protocol. Sigh. It's fun to be the JEP Editor. At least Dizzy appreciates me. :)

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 09:23. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Nonagenarians for Freedom

Milton Friedman turns 90.

Today is Milton Friedman's 90th birthday. Ed Crane of the Cato Institute has written a tribute.

Posted on 2002-07-31 at 09:19. File under politics.

~ link ~

2002-07-30

A Martial Air

More disturbing news.

Well, I simply can't write about Jabber 100% of the time, since in the greater scheme of things an open IM system is admittedly rather unimportant. Much more important is the fact that we may well be living through the transition of American society from freedom to fascism. For instance, this article in the Sydney Herald reports that the foundations have been laid for the imposition of martial law in the USA. All that talk about the repeal or "reform" of the Posse Comitatus Act is looking pretty ominous.

Posted on 2002-07-30 at 21:52. File under politics.

~ link ~

AIM-ing for Trouble

Doc Searls on instant messaging and "the case against Case".

It seems that various journalists and bloggers are asking for the head of Steve Case now that the market is essentially valuing AOL at zero (it's Time Warner that contains all the value in that combination). Doc Searls points out that AOL's crown jewel is AOL Instant Messenger (a.k.a. AIM), which is bound to be commodotized by the Jabber protocol (or some other open protocol). One of the reasons proprietary IM providers such as AOL and MSN prefer SIMPLE is that the specs are so vague that they can say they're compliant with the spec while maintaining a proprietary system and foiling interoperability of the kind that would be afforded by a truly open and non-opaque protocol. It's that transparency thing again.

Posted on 2002-07-30 at 07:28. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-07-29

Electioneering

Boards and Councils and Members, oh my!

Seems to be election season in the Jabber world. Less than a month from now, the members of the Jabber Software Foundation will elect new technical leadership in the form of the Jabber Council and new business leadership in the form of the Board of Directors. The Council election process has culled the field down to 14 candidates for the final 9 positions, and each of the remaining candidates has written a position paper. Today I posted to the members mailing list about the Board elections, including my vision for the Board and a call for volunteers. Then in September or October we'll have "open enrollment" for new members again. Busy!

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 22:02. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Poetic Justice

On posting some poems by John Enright.

The other day John Enright sent me some poems, so this evening I posted them at the website of my literary webzine. John was the first person to publish any of my poems back in the pages of the long-defunct magazine Nomos, and he's one of my very favorite poets, so it's only just that I publish his work. Perhaps someday (after I finish my Jabber book!) I'll print a book of John's poems. But that's for someday, not today or the near future....

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 21:51. File under literature.

~ link ~

OpenThought

Domain for sale.

As part of the general cleanup-in-progress around here, I just moved my dictionary of philosophy over to saint-andre.com, which means OpenThought.org is now available. It's a cool domain name but I can't justify owning it anymore. Contact me if you're interested in taking it over.

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 21:17. File under personal.

~ link ~

Dreamy

DreamHost now offering hosted Jabber servers.

I received a Jabber message just now from an address at DreamHost. It seems that this smart hosting company is now offering the capability for any user to run their own Jabber chat server. It's about time! DreamHost hosts almost 50,000 domains, so this might make a lot of folks give Jabber a try. Awesome!

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 20:16. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Debian Bug

Typing 'apt-get install jabber'...

I hadn't tried the Debian package of the jabberd server until today (I've always just built it from source). I run unstable so no problems for me, but someone poked me about problems he was experiencing on stable. Turns out there's a bug (#138530 to be exact) in the Debian stable package. So watch out, Debianistas! Or upgrade to the unstable package for your Jabber server.

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 17:02. File under technology.

~ link ~

Forbes Mention

Are journalists paid to get it only partly right?

Colorado blogger Stewart Vardman just pointed me to an article in Forbes magazine about instant messaging. Too bad Forbes gets it only half right when they say Jabber is a "small company". Sure there's a small company called Jabber Inc., but journalists ignore the Jabber open-source movement at their peril. Small companies come and small companies go, but open-source movements have this habit (annoying to some, liberating to others) of overwhelming those who would try to control the future. It's not for nothing that people call Jabber the Linux of instant messaging....

Posted on 2002-07-29 at 16:16. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-07-28

Booking It

On writing The Jabber Handbook.

As some readers of this weblog are aware, for some time now I have been under contract to write a book about Jabber. For one reason or another I have made little progress on the book until now. The main reason I've been so slow about writing it is that I have had a great deal of difficulty reconciling the activity of writing a book destined for copyrighted publication with the activity of maintaining and improving all the open documentation I've created over the years. My primary commitment is to the open-source community, and over the past 2+ years I have gained a great deal of stature and influence in the Jabber world. It's just not appropriate for someone in my position to keep information closed off from use by the rest of the community. Every time I have started to work on the book in earnest, this ethical dilemma has made itself felt within me and I have unconsciously performed a kind of work slowdown!

So you can imagine my relief and excitement when, talking to my editor the other day, he suggested that we publish my book in the HP Open Source Series edited by Bruce Perens. All of the books published in this series are made available under the Open Publication License, which means I can work on the book without guilt. I get to create a kick-ass publication, and make it available to the community at the same time. It's the best of both worlds, and I am deeply grateful to Prentice Hall for giving me this opportunity.

Now, to work!

Posted on 2002-07-28 at 22:03. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Focus

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

This evening I've been unsubscribing from mailing lists left and right, clearing out old mail, and generally streamlining my interactions with the world at large. Why? Because I am giving renewed focus to writing a book about Jabber. More on that in the next post. But just so you know, this renewed focus means that this weblog is about to get extraordinarily boring. I won't be taking note of hilarious articles in The Onion. I won't be reflecting on the Free State Project or replying to WalterInDenver and Diana Hsieh about the Libertarian Party. I won't be ranting and raving about how Hollywood wants to hack your computer. I won't be celebrating promising new weblogs. I won't be joining critically-important debates about the value of independent music and how to support it and the wonderful musicians who are CARP-free. I won't be reflecting on the blogosphere and how it has hit the big-time. I won't be sharing my disgust about the probably unconstitutional (and certainly unconscionable) activities of the U.S. government.

So what am I going to be writing about? As far as my limited attention span will allow me, I'm going to be focusing on "all Jabber, all the time". Nothing but IM. You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the Jabberverse.

Yes, I know it's boring, but it's oh-so-necessary.

Dare to be dull, baby!

Posted on 2002-07-28 at 21:31. File under personal.

~ link ~

2002-07-24

Domestic Tranquility?

One more step towards authoritarianism.

And here I thought TIPS (the new government informer program) was bad. George II has now proposed that the military be authorized to intervene in the domestic affairs of the nation. This means (as incredibly precocious high-schooler Amanda Bowen explains) that we're getting awfully close to crossing the line from participating in a republic to serving under an empire.

Posted on 2002-07-24 at 23:03. File under politics.

~ link ~

Beastly

Another lexicographical excursus.

Yum, I just found this page containing a big list of collective nouns for animals. Reminded me of a poem I wrote along those lines once. But really I was looking for Latin-derived adjectives for various animals. You know canine and feline and bovine and equine, but do you know lupine and taurine and ursine and porcine? I do, but until now I didn't know anguine and ranine and lapine and murine. Words are fun. :)

Posted on 2002-07-24 at 13:57. File under language.

~ link ~

Interoperability

More fun in the IM world.

The Register is running a fine and accurate article about the state of interoperability between AOL's AIM service and the rest of the instant messaging universe. Here's an educational quote:

In the face of criticism from users and rival IM service providers such as Yahoo! Inc and Microsoft Corp, AOL has long maintained that its stalling on interoperable IM is aimed at protecting the security and privacy of its millions of users, as well as the performance of its own AIM network.

I have my doubts about AOL's protestations of protecting the security and privacy of its users, but I can definitely believe that they're shielding their network from greater load (and their developers from having to work on interoperability). My understanding is that AOL's IM servers are pretty inefficient. :)

Posted on 2002-07-24 at 09:35. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-07-23

Yes, Indeed

A concert report.

On a lark, I went to a concert by Yes last night in Denver. I've seen them several times in the last two years and have heard them play some amazing pieces of music (the highlight for me this time was "South Side of the Sky"). Although I enjoyed the show and I'm always impressed by their musicianship, I think this will be the last Yes concert I attend -- I get more out of listening to their recordings than paying way too much to hear them live. While I recognize that there can be a certain magic in the live experience, I tend to agree with Glenn Gould about the superiority of recorded music.

Posted on 2002-07-23 at 22:19. File under music.

~ link ~

Informers Again

More thoughts on our informer nation.

Jack Rain has posted a thoughtful, sensitive article about George II's "TIPS" program for setting up a network of government informers throughout the land of the once-free. I'm not as sanguine as he is that TIPS is dead, though -- if our "leaders" in D.C. really want this, they'll make it happen whether or not the general public objects.

Posted on 2002-07-23 at 22:08. File under politics.

~ link ~

Thoreau

156 years ago today.

Thanks to Moira, I was just reminded that on this day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for not paying his poll tax. He wrote:

I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

Posted on 2002-07-23 at 16:26. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-07-21

LP III

More libertarian reflections.

The conversation between libertarians and Randians continues here in Colorado. In my last post on the topic, I mentioned that I'd received an email from Ari Armstrong of the Colorado Freedom Report. Because his comments were contained in a private email message, I did not feel free to discuss them in my weblog. However, Ari has now posted an extended consideration of the issues, so I'm happy to link to his essay and reply in kind.

First, a factual error: in framing the discussion, Ari states that I am Objectivist (that's the "official" self-description for Randians, although I think the latter term is more accurate, which is why I use it in my postings). Although I read an extreme amount of Ayn Rand in my teenage years and I used to consider myself an adherent of her school, I have not considered or called myself an Objectivist for many years. At this point I am, if anything, a Rand scholar, since I do continue to publish essays about her work and its place in intellectual history. (Naturally, just because I don't consider myself a Randian doesn't necessarily mean in reality I'm not a Randian; but I'll leave answering that question up to biographers and intellectual historians, if I ever rate discussion by such.)

Ari's thoughts contain a healthy realism about political movements. He notes that progressive movements tend to contain more than their share of free-thinkers, who may also be "free-doers" in many areas of life (and those areas may include the use of recreational substances). He also notes that small movements "tend to attract the nuts, those who just don't fit in anywhere else and want to move to a smaller pond" (I'm not sure it's fair to call such people "nuts", but I do think this phenomenon lends the libertarian movement a rather motley appearance). Yet his most important point is this:

Yet we needn't treat any group as if it were an undifferentiated whole. And what's most important are the ideas, not the people who claim membership in the group.

I wholeheartedly agree that no group is an undifferentiated whole; after all, just about the only "ism" I'll still own up to is individualism. Yet the principle of individualism does not exclude drawing conclusions about the tendencies exhibited by a group of individuals. After years of experience with both Randians and libertarians, I've drawn some broad conclusions about what individuals who self-describe using these two labels tend to be like (not ignoring that there are exceptions and sub-groups and hardliners vs. moderates and so on). And I've drawn even stronger conclusions regarding some of the established institutions within the Randian and libertarian worlds, such as the Institute for Ayn Rand Studies, The Objectivist Center, the Cato Institute, and the Libertarian Party. And specifically I've come to rather negative conclusions about the LP, based on several years of active involvement and many more years of interested observation. Unfortunately, at this point I think the onus of proof is on those who would argue that the LP is a positive and productive vehicle for freedom, given that one could spend one's time and energy on the kinds of efforts I discussed in my last post. As I say, I wish the reality were otherwise, because I don't like feeling politically homeless; but the "commitment to reason, rational persuasion, and honest self-criticism" that Ari notes is fundamental to both Randianism and libertarianism leads me to these conclusions based on the evidence I've accumulated over a span of many years.

Putting aside the particulars of party politics, Ari also addresses the issue of the appropriate relationship between theory and practice (or philosophers and activists) in political movements. Actually WalterInDenver raised this first, and Diana Hsieh discusses it at length, too. I was a philosophy major so perhaps my views are suspect, but I do agree with Diana that theorists are too often comfortable in their thinking chairs and don't even try to imagine the life of an activist. My concern with the libertarian movement is not that people within it are a-philosophical, but that in the main they are anti-government rather than pro-freedom, negative rather than positive, lacking a well-thought-out and well-presented vision of the benefits of a fully free society. In my experience this objection extends to Randians as well, although Rand herself at least protrayed a positive ideal in her novels (despite the fact that it is often mixed in with a great deal of vitriol and negativity).

To me the fight for freedom is a progressive movement, indeed a modern extension of the progressivism that brought civil rights to minorities in the USA. Some libertarians and Randians hark back to the 19th century, but I see that as deeply wrongheaded. The fight for freedom is a fight for the future and for human progress (material, scientific, political, ethical, spiritual). It is, as today's progressives claim, about peace and justice: "If you want peace, work for justice." Yet a specifically libertarian progressivism further recognizes that "If you want justice, work for freedom." It is the job of libertarians to work out what that means, to show how freedom is a truly and radically progressive cause in the 21st century. I have not seen libertarians do a good job of that, but then again I haven't quite done so either. Perhaps, to use the terminology of open-source software, this is an itch that I need to scratch....

Posted on 2002-07-21 at 21:37. File under politics.

~ link ~

Personal Questions

A quote from Nietzsche.

I'm slowly working my way through all the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. So far this year I've read or re-read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Twilight of the Idols, and Antichrist. I'm now reading Daybreak for the first time. Here's a passage from today's reading that struck me as especially valuable (section 196: a mini-dialogue that shows Nietzsche had full appreciation for dialectics, which in the previous section he had called "the fencing-art of conversation"):

The most personal questions of truth. -- 'What am I really doing? And why am I doing it?' -- that is the questino of truth which one is not taught in our present system of education and that is consequently not asked; we have no time for it. On the other hand, to talk of buffooneries with children and not of the truth, to talk of compliments to women who are later to become mothers and not of the truth, to talk of their future and their pleasures to young people and not of the truth -- we always have time and inclinations for that! -- But what, after all, are seventy years! -- they run on and are soon over; it matters so little whether the wave knows how and whither it flows! Indeed, it could be a sign of prudence not to know it. -- 'Admitted: but not even to ask after it is not a sign of possessing much pride; our education does not make people proud.' -- So much the better. -- 'Really?'

(BTW, that is in the translation by R.J. Hollingdale from Cambridge University Press. I really must improve my German so I can at least verify the accuracy of the translations I read, as I do with material from Greek and Latin. Never trust translations -- even mine!)

Posted on 2002-07-21 at 20:13. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-07-19

The Organizational Imperative

To transparency and beyond.

Dave Winer picks up the transparency thread. He writes:

From this point we'll get much better information about how companies are doing. Stock options as we knew them, are over. Salaries and benefits matter. Transparent management. Time to ride the Cluetrain, for real. Companies must make identifiable products for real people that they communicate with honestly, directly and openly.

Along the same lines, today Jer posted a copy of Nolan Bushnell's manifesto from the early days of Atari.

I think corporations simply have a hard time with transparency. They're all about being closed. Those within it see the corporation as a living organism (defend the cell walls!). I call this the organizational imperative: the organization takes on a life of its own and those involved begin to feed the organization at the expense of their own professed principles. There is always the temptation to think that the special organization one is involved in can overcome these problems, or that by working from the inside one can change one's favorite organization. Yet such notions ignore reality. An organization is what it is for various reasons of intention, history, personnel, and simple survival. Organizations take on a life of their own, and individuals who support them or work within them inevitably begin to value that which helps the organization more highly than that which helps the ideas or goals or persons who are the intended recipients of the organization's influence. One begins to believe that higher profits, more customers, membership growth, larger budgets, wider influence, more media mentions, and the like have value in themselves because they contribute to the life of the organization. And thus the organizational imperative takes over.

It's a sad story, but I've seen it repeated enough times to know that the imperative is extraordinarily difficult to resist, and that it's not the fault or intention of those involved. At this point I consider it a fact of reality, and simply work in and around it.

Posted on 2002-07-19 at 21:06. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

LP Again

More libertarian reflections.

I've received several replies to my recent comments on the Libertarian Party. WalterInDenver (whose permalinks are broken, else I'd link to the specific post) urges me not to give up on the LP so easily (I also received an email from Ari Armstrong of the outstanding Colorado Freedom Report).

To address Walter's point, I've actually given the LP quite a chance. In the mid-1990s, I was strongly involved in the New Jersey LP. Around the same time, I wrote probably the first essay encouraging Randians to support and get involved in the libertarian movement and the LP in particular. However, after several years of devoting a lot of time to the LP, I became disenchanted -- with party standardbearer Harry Browne and his calls for "Freedom Now!" (which struck me as a perfect encapsulation of Rand's observation that libertarians are "hippies of the right"), with poor organization and communication, with endless competition to show each other which party member was more radical and uncompromising, with a corrupt party headquarters in the District of Columbia, and with a seeming inability to learn from experience. At this point the one word I associate with the LP is "feckless". I don't like to say that because I really wish there were a party I could support, but it's true.

Part of the conclusion I've come to regarding American politics is that the two-party system is deeply engrained in the American psyche. The barriers to entry into the political system (e.g., ballot requirements) are nasty and likely unconstitutional, but they're here to stay. There's no way the two big parties will ever let smaller parties into the national debates. The "first-past-the-post" elections in the U.S. militate against success by third parties. Basically, the deck is stacked unless one of the big parties stumbles really badly (as the Whigs did in the 1850s) and another party forms to replace the dying party. Given the fact that libertarian ideas just don't seem to resonate with the vast majority of Americans, I doubt that electoral success is likely for the LP.

So what's the answer? Naturally there is value in educating people about the importance of freedom as well as in scholarly research within history, political philosophy, sociology, and the like, but the payoff is necessarily long-term. The most successful freedom-oriented organization I've found (and just about the only one I support) is the Institute for Justice, which fights encroachments on freedom in the courts based on application of the Constititution to modern problems (they take a targeted approach to the issues and have really helped to change the climate of opinion about economic freedom, school choice, and several other topics). It's also important, I think, to exercise one's rights; for example, the more people exercise their Second Amendment rights, the less likely it is that politicians will press for gun control (and this has already happened, with the Democrats having dropped the issue). So activities that encourage independence and the exercise of individual rights can change the political climate -- these might include encouraging or engaging in entrepreneurship, private investment, publishing (do you think millions of bloggers would stand for internet censorship?), firearms ownership (sorry to shock non-American readers!), homeschooling, buying hemp products, reading banned books, and so on. Ad hoc movements to pass targeted ballot initiatives and referenda can advance a pro-freedom agenda more quickly than waiting for the LP to gain a legislative majority in 2036 or whatever. And for those with strong stomachs who feel they simply must pursue elective office, the best approach (I think) is to run as an independent or even within one of the two major parties, so that one can at least get elected and try to change the system from within. So I think there is much that one can do to advance human freedom, and those strategies are on the whole much more successful than attempting to build a third party.

Or so it seems to me right now -- I've been known to change my mind about political matters quite a bit in the past. :)

Posted on 2002-07-19 at 20:00. File under politics.

~ link ~

Words4Nerds, Volume 3

Another version of "Words of the Week".

After a week of hiking in the mountains of Wyoming, I decided to devote this week's lexicographical excursus to geographical terms of (mostly) Anglo-Saxon origin. Here they are:

• tarn -- a small mountain lake
• tor -- a rocky hill
• rill -- a small stream or rivulet
• bight -- a bend in a coastline forming a large open bay
• hummock -- a low, rounded knoll or hillock

Posted on 2002-07-19 at 19:36. File under language.

~ link ~

jabber.tv

Jabber comes to the small screen.

Even though I don't watch TV (well, occasionally), I can't help but be excited by this story in Linux Journal. It seems that Sylvania has developed an HDTV system that runs on top of Linux and includes a Jabber-based IM client. Check it out!

Posted on 2002-07-19 at 10:49. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-07-17

Prescience or Senescence?

Does blogging help stave off Alzheimer's?

Wired is reporting that blogging helps Alzheimer's patients cope with their affliction; among other things it helps them "recall tasks completed and milestones past". And here I thought I was the only one who used a weblog as a glorified filing system! I definitely find that writing things down helps me remember them, and I can always grep through the XML source files to find what I'm looking for. I guess I'm "ahead of my time", as it were -- either that, or I'm facing the early onset of Alzheimer's.... :)

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 22:01. File under society.

~ link ~

Stocks vs. Bonds

Questioning conventional investment wisdom.

An article in Forbes raises some questions about the old argument that historically stocks have done better than bonds, or at least about the future applicability of that argument. Turns out that most of the historical advantage accrued because stocks used to pay healthy dividends -- and those days are over. This could have major implications for investing strategies.

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 21:52. File under society.

~ link ~

Jabber Docs

Yes, they need work.

Jonathan Pobst also mocked up a new docs page. This has spurred some renewed thinking on my part about Jabber documentation. Yes, I know, it's no good. I know better than anyone else. Ideally we'd have something like the Jabber equivalent of the PHP Manual, along the lines of the Jabber Documentation Project proposed by the peripatetic DJ Adams. Yes, we need this. Unfortunately Jabber is more diverse than something like PHP, so we'd need to fold in things like the Jabber User Guide, the jabberd howto, an overview such as contained in my old Jabber Techology Overview, a protocol reference such as that included in the IETF drafts, guides to writing clients and server components, and some sample code for the various Jabber libraries out there (Perl, Python, C++, etc.). It's a big job but absolutely necessary. Guess I'd better get to work.

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 17:25. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Singularity

More prog rock.

I was listening to the CD "Color of Space" from local prog-rock band Singularity today so I decided to check out their website. Found some clips from the new recording and discovered that the release date is August 6th, which happens to be my birthday. Here's hoping the new release lives up to CoS. Gotta support independent musicians!

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 17:11. File under music.

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Dvorak in America

A tale of musical influence.

While in Prague I caught the tail end of a TV show about Antonin Dvorak's time in America. Dvorak was fascinated with American folk music (Negro spirituals, etc.) and worked tirelessly to encourage his students to develop from such sources a native art music. His students are virtually unknown today, but the students of his students include Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland. You can find a bit of the story here. A topic for further reading, I think.

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 17:03. File under music.

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Reader's Choice

Make your Linux voice heard.

The annual Linux Journal Readers' Choice poll is taking place. Make sure to vote for Jabber, even though they have it listed under "IM Client", which Jabber isn't. It would be better to have a Linux Jabber client listed, such as Gabber (my favorite!).

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 16:44. File under jabber.

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Internet Radio, R.I.P.

More reasons for lamentation.

The ever-watchful Doc Searls has filed his latest report on the murder of Internet radio by the powers-that-be. Depressing.

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 15:55. File under technology.

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Facelift

Talking about updating the jabber.org website.

Jabber lurker Jonathan Pobst has stirred things up by posting a mock-up for a new jabber.org website. The current site is something that I put together in a hurry back when we split off JabberStudio and it's definitely not something I'm wedded to. I like Jonathan's design a lot -- it borrows a lot from JabberCentral so it's no suprise that it looks good -- Justin does great work! Seems like all parties concerned are psyched about updating the site and integrating the good features of JabberCentral (which would probably be deprecated in the process). We'll hold a Jabber conference about it tomorrow night and dig in soon. I need to put some good thinking into the organization of the documentation, though....

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 15:04. File under jabber.

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Making Headlines

More on Jabber and RSS.

Cool, my friend Ben here at work tuned me in to the Jabber headline service offered by the good people at Rifetech in Calgary, Alberta. You can now receive a Jabber message every time I update my blog, but subscribing to stpeter@rss.rifetech.com in your favorite Jabber client. Rock on! (Added benefit: source is available.)

Posted on 2002-07-17 at 10:38. File under jabber.

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2002-07-16

LP Redux

Further thoughts on America's feckless political party.

Sadly, I must agree with Diana Hsieh's report on the Colorado Libertarian Party convention. There's a reason the LP is so feckless: they don't have a positive program of any kind, and they're more interested in legalizing drugs than in clear thinking or creative achievement. I played guitar at the opening reception, and during that time two people came up to me and asked me if I wanted a joint. Hey, I'm all in favor of decriminalizing drug possession and the War on Drugs is deeply harmful to society, but I've never even so much as smoked a cigarette and there are a lot better things to do with one's all-too-brief span on earth than smoke weed. Yet another reason I still feel politically homeless.

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 22:18. File under politics.

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Futurism

Ho-hum.

Walked on down to the Tattered Cover after lunch today and leafed through a copy of a magazine called The Futurist, which is published by the World Future Society. I found the article on Neo-Modernist Utopianism mildly interesting. But gosh darn some people can make the future seem awfully boring! And that WFS website looks like something from 1996. Plus they talk seriously about the Segway. Gimme a break!

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 22:09. File under society.

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Jabber Roundup

Elections, BOFs, and more!

The election process has started for Jabber Council, with nominations pouring in from JSF members all over the planet. Next we need to get our act together regarding JSF Board members -- I've put together a roles & responsibilities description here, and unlike the Jabber Council you don't need to be a member to be on the Board. BTW, prospective board member Harold Gottschalk has arranged for a Jabber BOF at OSCON. Thanks, heg! (Oh yeah, and don't miss tomorrow's JSF meeting.)

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 21:21. File under jabber.

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Slashing BEEP

A fun discussion.

The topic of BEEP came up on Slashdot yesterday, and a fun discussion ensued. There is one interesting post about BEEP and Jabber. I'd reply but I don't know quite what to say....

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 21:11. File under technology.

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IETF Debrief

A report from the protocol front.

Straight from Japan, hildjj and mrose just gave us a little debriefing on the IETF BOF. ChatBot logged the whole thing here (search for "IETF debrief"). Stay tuned for more news as it happens!

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 21:00. File under jabber.

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Disco Redux

More on jabber:iq:disco.

I just sent out a new version (0.9) of the spec for the proposed jabber:iq:disco namespace. Have at it on the Standards JIG mailing list.

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 20:33. File under jabber.

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news.nl

News from the Low Countries

I asked my Dutch friend ralphm what's been going in The Netherlands and he Jabbered me links to some news sites. I'll have to check these out when I feel that need to know about Nederland:

• expatica.com
• Netherlands Info Services
• Dutch News Digest
• nu.nl (uit Nederlands)

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 09:51. File under society.

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More TIPS

To insure performance?

The Washington Times weighs in on the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (a.k.a. Operation TIPS). (As does an unknown high school student.) Scary stuff.

Posted on 2002-07-16 at 09:38. File under politics.

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2002-07-15

Informer Nation

One small step for government stooges, one giant leap for American authoritarianism.

News comes today that the U.S. Federal government has begun recruiting a projected 4% of Americans to spy on the rest of us. It's all in the name of "homeland security", so naturally we needn't worry about the possibility of false accusations, incentives for hearsay rather than facts, or a midnight visit from our all-wise authorities (complete with a ninja-clad SWAT team who isn't polite enough to knock). Really, it's all quite harmless, even though the USA will have a higher percentage of informants than communist East Germany did at the height of the Stasi secret police. I'm from the government and I'm here to help you!

And here I thought the USA Patriot Act was bad: at least that heinous piece of legislation didn't turn citizen against citizen. With each passing day I become less sanguine about the future of American freedom.

Posted on 2002-07-15 at 20:43. File under politics.

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2002-07-14

Sigh

Another reason why I'm a post-Randian.

I meant to note this one a few weeks back, but things were busy. My old philosophy and literature teacher Andy Bernstein (I studied with him at the long-defunct American Renaissance School) has posted a public apology for the apostasy of having written something for publication in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (a.k.a. JARS). Those who've never read Ayn Rand might not understand the irony here, but it's heavy indeed. Rand was an advocate of reason and individualism, but you'd never know it from the near Maoist cult of personality that's been created by her true believers. Sad. Even sadder is that it was Andy who (probably unwittingly) cured me of my Randian dogmatism many moons ago. And yes, for the record, I have two articles forthcoming in JARS. Although I'm no longer a Randian, I still find her thought fascinating and worth discussing in a scholarly fashion -- something the true believers avoid for the sake of a specious intellectual hygiene. So much for reason and individualism.

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 21:57. File under philosophy.

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Flatland

A fable for one and all.

Yay, an illustrated version of E.A. Abbott's Flatland is available online. Thanks to Moira for the link. Plus it's Theodore Roethke week over at Moira's blog -- he's one of my favorite poets!

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 21:51. File under literature.

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Gold: White and Yellow

Cringley vs. Palladium, Round Two.

Robert X. Cringley takes another swing at heavyweight champion Microsoft and its Palladium initiative. Favorite quote:

Forget the flow of music and movies through your computer, and wake up to the flow that really counts, the flow of money. Put Palladium on every computer, and whoever controls Palladium controls the flow of money in the world. Wasn't that the real point of .NET? Would Microsoft really pursue .NET without a corollary hardware strategy? I don't think so.

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 21:43. File under technology.

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The Best Defense

Why Hitler and Mussolini left Switzerland alone.

This is just plain cool. Swiss neutrality has nothing to do with pacifism, it has to do with a love for liberty. Here's to small countries with a will to survive in freedom!

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 21:23. File under politics.

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Independence Day

A realistic vision of liberty.

I just found a good article on pursuing more realistic strategies for freedom. The first half of the article contains some sound reasoning that led me to think the author was going to talk about the Free State Project. He comes tantalizingly close, but in the second half of his article he showed that he is still tied to pursuing national goals through the Libertarian Party, which I consider wrongheaded given the fact that the LP has been essentially feckless since its founding 30 years ago.

The author's reasoning about electing a small number of freedom-oriented legislators in order to tip the balance in a specific legislative body makes sense. And he seems to assume (realistically enough) that such a legislative body could not be the U.S. House or Senate, but rather a legislature in "a small to medium state". Makes sense to me. However, one problem with past and present LP efforts, at least as far as I can see, is that they have not targetted any specific state. Rather, the LP has pursued a scattershot approach, with a few good candidates running in any one state in any one year. It would be more productive to run a number of strong candidates in each state. Unfortunately, freedom-minded people (or at least freedom-minded activists) are spread so thinly throughout the United States that the LP is never able to find enough strong candidates in any one state to have a chance of tipping the balance. One solution would be for a relatively large number of freedom-minded people to relocate to one state. This state could then serve as an example to other states, or as a refuge of last resort should the national government turn even more strongly authoritarian. Such a strategy is a logical extension of the reasoning in this article, and is a probably the most realistic strategy for liberty in our lifetimes (try to turn around a small state first, not the QE2 of federal government). Happily, the FSP is a thriving movement that is directed at just such a goal. Whether it turns out to be successful is another matter, but at this point it's starting to shake things up and at least has the advantage of pursuing a realistic strategy, rather than the failed strategies of the LP.

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 20:45. File under politics.

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Looking Ahead

Thoughts on speculative fiction.

While on vacation I read some older fiction (Willa Cather's O Pioneers!) and some more recent work by Ursula K. Le Guin. I like Le Guin's writings, although I find them a bit maddening (or, sin of sins, boring) at times. She also engages in some worthwhile reflections on science fiction or, as I like to call it, speculative fiction. Le Guin is right that SF does not merely extrapolate from current trends, but rather speculates about what the future might be like. Yet sometimes I wish that SF stories would extrapolate, in the sense of writing about near-future events rather than just far futures in which interstellar travel and communication are givens. How did humans get to the point where crossing the interstellar deeps was normal? What were the first steps in that direction -- L5 habitations, space arks, Mars colonization, what? How did such events relate to human history on Earth? Perhaps it's harder to write stories set in the near future precisely because it's necessary to speculate about the near future of Earth as well, and recent history has been so fast-paced and disruptive that it's difficult to know what aspects of human life will be like in even 50 years, let alone 100 or 200 or 500 years. I was thinking about this the other day while waiting outside Bonnie Brae Ice Cream -- this neighborhood and the stores in it didn't even exist 65 years ago, so it's hard for me to imagine what this area of Denver will be like in another 65 years. And that's just one little street corner. Multiply that by hundreds of countries, thousands of languages, millions of towns, and billions of people. Suddenly extrapolation looks awfully challenging.

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 13:31. File under literature.

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TANSTAAFL

Further thoughts on free music downloads.

While I was wandering about in the wilds of Wyoming, everyone and their uncle linked to a must-read article on free music downloading by songwriter Janis Ian. Not only can Janis write great songs, but she can think clearly about some difficult issues. Her answer to the premise that "the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading"? Horsefeathers! "There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary." She points to Baen Free Library (see related article) and the SWFA as examples to emulate from the science-fiction scene. She calls on musical artists to speak out against the rapacious record industry. Better yet would be to boycott the industry entirely and do an end-run around the oligopolistic big music companies and their indentured-servitude contracts. Not that I'd ever get the opportunity, but I'd never sign such a contract, and you can be sure that most or all of my music will be available for free download when I finally get around to recording it. Whenever that is....

That said, I must say I do find it a bit disturbing the extent to which people of my acquaintance are comfortable downloading songs to their heart's content and never seeking to compensate the songwriter or performer. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I believe in the musician's right to earn something from his or her hard work. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and to expect musicians to create and produce with no reward is deeply short-sighted. I just don't know what the answer is.

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 13:04. File under music.

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RSS Again

Need those headlines!

Shane McChesney is talking about RSS, specifically the autogeneration of RSS (what he calls "RSS without writers"). I really need to start coding on the Jabber RSS component I started designing. I guess I'll wait until the next version of JECL is released (hopefully soon!). My Dutch friend Ralph Meijer pointed me to the new JabRSS project created by Christof Meerwald. The Jabber/RSS connection is one of those interesting intersections that Shane talks about when he describes the open-source ecosystem. So it won't hurt to have several implementations that help weave this web. Hopefully we can integrate RSS into a generalized publish-subscribe system before long, too. Stay tuned for details on that front. :-)

Posted on 2002-07-14 at 12:13. File under technology.

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2002-07-13

Digital Heraclitus

On impermanence.

Eric Snowdeal is linking to an article entitled The Digital Dark Age, which argues that most of the data on computers today will be lost, resulting in a gap in the historical record. I doubt things are that serious (and most of what's on computers deserves to be lost anyway), but the archiving issue is an interesting one. Once again transparency and openness are part of the answer: your data is much more likely to survive if it's an open file-format like HTML as opposed to MS Word or PowerPoint.

One side point of the article is worth more thought: impermanence by design in our software and most other creative products. The folks at the Long Now Foundation like to talk about long-term thinking (they're building a clock that will go bong once every 10,000 years!), but we don't need to go that far to stretch our time horizons. The folks at Microsoft scoff at Unix because it's a 30-year-old operating system. Um, perhaps that's a good thing? It's withstood the test of time. It's not the latest fashion, as Doc Searls would say. Why not design things with the long view in mind?

I've been listening to the music of Duke Ellington this evening. In the Duke Ellington centennial broadcast on WKCR, Phil Schaap said something that stuck with me: that 500 years from now people will probably have forgotten about most of the figures of jazz music, but they'll still be listening to the music of Duke Ellington. Heraclitus said you can't step in the same river twice (actually he said "Upon those that step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow"). Yet there are, if you will, rocks and boulders that stand fast in the midst of the rushing waters of time. We call them classics, and they are built to endure. Certainly few of us will create anything that will become a classic. But it's something to aspire to.

Posted on 2002-07-13 at 21:26. File under technology.

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Transparency

Clearly superior.

The latest SuitWatch is out from the ever-insightful Doc Searls. (I already told you to subscribe, didn't I?) Doc reflects on the virtues of transparency -- it may indeed be a killer virtue, as he says. Certainly the lack of transparency is a killer, as Enron and WorldCom have discovered. I really think Doc is on to something here. He makes a connection to the failure of the Segway: Dean Kamen was so secretive that, despite the media buzz (naturally ephemeral, given the short attention span of journalists), people couldn't really learn about his invention. This is why Doc is right to connect transparency with infrastructure: something can't become pervasive unless people understand it. For example, you can't understand Windows because it's closed, private, and opaque, which is why people don't trust it (yes, the root meaning of opaque is "shady"). But Linux and Unix are open, public, and transparent, which means you can dig in and understand them.

There are some "interesting" tensions between transparency and privacy. Civil libertarians are understandably queasy about spy cameras in public places, but perhaps the best solution is to make access to the resulting video totally public rather than available only to the "authorities". One of the problems with more pervasive monitoring is that you still need someone to sift through all that information. But if we open up access to everyone, we'll find anomalies more reliably (this is a corollary of the open-source law that "with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"). Rather than oppose information (which after all "wants to be free"), libertarians would be better off fighting for transparency.

Posted on 2002-07-13 at 20:53. File under technology.

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Heresy

Say, you want a revolution?

As the Turkish government slowly falls apart, there are continued stirrings of reform in Iran. Those who fomented Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 have been clinging to power for the last 5 years even though reformers have been elected to the Presidency and to majorities in the parliament. Every revolution turns reactionary eventually: it's as true in thought and culture (as witness, among others, the modernist and Chomskyan revolutions) as it is in politics. Yevgeny Zamyatin realized this soon after the Russian Revolution: "The world is kept alive only by heretics."

Posted on 2002-07-13 at 20:28. File under society.

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Small is Beautiful?

On pervasive computing.

Thanks to Paul Hsiesh over at GeekPress, I just found a fascinating article on pervasive computing and the coming "mesh" of small (indeed, invisible) computing devices that will be embedded in just about anything of value. Check it out for a vision of the future.

Posted on 2002-07-13 at 20:10. File under technology.

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2002-07-10

A Trip

Reflections on the Cowboy State.

Wyoming, from which I just returned on vacation, is a funny place. The best I can figure, the most advanced parts of the state are about 30 years behind the times. Saratoga, one of the towns we stayed in and home of my favorite hot springs, is more like 40 years behind the times. Some Wyoming hamlets, such as Jeffrey City, haven't changed at all since the Great Depression, it seems. The other place we stayed was a cabin in the near-wilderness of the Beartooth Mountains, which I'd say was perhaps 60 or 70 years out of date. Don't get me wrong, these places have electricity and refrigerators and such, but that's about it. Our cabin was nearly equidistant from Cody, Wyoming (population 8,000) and Red Lodge, Montana (population 2,000), but it was at least 90 minutes from either of those towns to the cabin, and there is nothing in between except some of the most wild country I've ever seen, either on the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway (photos) or the even more hair-raising Beartooth Scenic Byway (photos).

For whatever reason, Wyoming seems to be almost deliberately out of date and "primitive". It's a rough state, and they're not about to soften the edges up there, since Wyoming folks have a real frontier attitude. Sometime I'll post a blog entry about the new frontier (the American West) vs. the old frontier (which in my experience is best found in northern New England, since Americans "escaped" there before the West was settled, which lends places like Maine something of a continuing frontier feeling). But I don't have time to post about that right now, so I'll have to do so some other time.

Posted on 2002-07-10 at 21:30. File under personal.

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Pictures

Actually, they're not worth a thousand words....

Here are some recent pictures of me: one of me playing guitar at the Colorado LP Convention and another of me lounging at the Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash.

Posted on 2002-07-10 at 18:27. File under personal.

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Back

Catching up.

There's lots of blogging I'd like to do, but work piled up while I was in Wyoming, so I'll try to blog in spurts. More soon.

Posted on 2002-07-10 at 18:15. File under personal.

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