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2002-08-31

Sayonara, LP

I'm outta here.

Spineless.

Two weeks ago, I expressed hope that I wouldn't have to add that adjective to my description of the Libertarian Party (specifically the Colorado branch). But now I do, because, as Ari Armstrong reports, the Board of the Colorado LP has voted to retain Rick Stanley as its candidate for U.S. Senate this year (there's coverage also in the Rocky Mountain News). You might as well write off the Colorado LP now, because it has sold its soul (the National LP did that years ago -- it's finally trickling down to the state level). I'll be changing my voter registration from Libertarian to Independent forthwith. I'm especially disappointed in Board members James Vance, Tony Ryan, and Walter Schlomer for abstaining. At least those who voted to retain have made it clear that they value power and media attention over libertarian principles and civilized discourse. Those who abstained showed only that they lack the integrity necessary to take a stand, even when the issues are so clear and the ethical stakes are so high.

Spineless.

Posted on 2002-08-31 at 20:27. File under politics.

~ link ~

2002-08-30

Jabber + IETF

Reporting on the reporting.

CNET is running an excellent, accurate article about the possibility of a Jabber working group within the IETF. Fascinating reading for those of us directly involved. :)

Posted on 2002-08-30 at 14:36. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-29

Remembrance

Three years ago today.

My father died three years ago today. Shortly thereafter I wrote a poem about him. I still remember.

Posted on 2002-08-29 at 21:56. File under personal.

~ link ~

2002-08-27

Brief Comment

A few links for the curious.

OK, a number of Jabber people have asked me whether my last post is related to an email I sent to Jabber developers about Integrity Messenger. Yes. You can learn more by reading this thread, comparing this screenshot to that one, and sifting through the jdev logs for yesterday and today. It's a bizarre story, only partly captured in the links provided above. Perhaps I'll write more about it sometime, but for now I'm tired of it, and in any case the parties involved seem to be slowly working it out. Or so I hope...

Posted on 2002-08-27 at 16:46. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-26

fly.swat()

On the Flies of the Marketplace.

I started to write a lengthy blog entry about a truly bizarre experience I had today out on the periphery of the Jabber community. Then I remembered the sage advice that Friedrich Nietzsche gives in Also Sprach Zarathustra:

Where solitude ceases, the marketplace begins; and where the marketplace begins, the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of the poisonous flies begins.... Flee into your solitude! You have lived too close to the small and the miserable.... No longer raise your arm against them. Numberless are they, yet it is not your destiny to be a fly-swatter.

Posted on 2002-08-26 at 22:24. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-25

2020 Vision

Looking ahead without looking forward.

Sometimes I wish I could blithely float along on the tranquil surface of the sea of ignorance. Unfortunately, I'm not constitutionally capable of doing so. Instead, I alternate between soaring high above the surface to broaden my perspective on things, and diving far below to deepen my understanding of human experience. Lately I've been doing a little of both, mainly with regard to extrapolation of current trends into the not-too-distant future. And much as I would love to be optimistic (as is my wont), I find myself quite depressed about the direction of the world, and particularly my home-country, the USA.

To focus my thinking, I've been trying to imagine what life, especially American life, will be like in the year 2020. Only hindsight is 20/20, and prognostication is notoriously imprecise, but extrapolating from current trends may give us some clues. For example, barring extreme changes in social and economic organization, we will continue to benefit from the power of technological innovation, which if anything will become even more pronounced. I'm not about to make specific predictions regarding those changes (since even ten years ago no one except a few visionaries could have foreseen the rise and influence of the Internet), but I do know that nowadays twenty years is a long time, and that things like ubiquitous computing, nanotechnology, and genomic engineering won't stay hidden in laboratories forever. Perhaps the only certainty here is the old cliche: expect the unexpected.

Here is another near-certainty: changes in human nature are glacial compared to changes in technology. I don't discount the practical power of knowledge in more humanistic disciplines such as psychology, nor do I dispute that human behavior can change radically over time, even from one generation to the next. But human nature, that mysterious bundle of drives and instincts and hopes and fears, remains, I think, remarkably consistent. There will always be people who are lazy or irresponsible, people who lust for power, people who steal or even murder -- just as there will always be people who are honest, productive, respectful, peaceful.

What kinds of traits and behaviors predominate depends on the full context of laws, institutions, values, ideas, and practices in a certain society. That is an enormous context to grasp, which is why "sciences" such as history and sociology are so slippery. But I think one can attempt to understand such a context by carefully observing and immersing oneself in a society. To the extent possible in my busy life, I attempt to do that with respect to American society. Yet the more I see and reflect, the less sanguine I become about the future of the place Lincoln thought was the "last, best hope of man on earth".

More and more, I see laws that presume guilt over innocence, that are passed for the sake of large government and commercial interests at the expense of the individual, that encourage one person to lie about and snitch on another, that are just plain frivolous (but that thereby further tighten the web of increasingly arbitrary control); that are, in short, unbecoming of a free people. I see institutions that encourage a crushing consensus of conformity, a culture of dependence, and the loss of responsibility and self-reliance in all areas of living. I see not values but their antithesis, a kind of amorphous fog of apathy and disillusionment. I see not the healthy intellectual ferment found in a free marketplace of ideas, but pressure to swim in the mainstream lest one rock the boat by expressing a thought that could be taken to criticize "what everyone knows" about everything from the environment to relations between the sexes to international politics. And I see practices, especially among those in power, that increasingly resemble the words and deeds of socio-political movements that were once thought to have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

My favorite dictionary defines as follows the type of political system that seems to be on the way, and that in many respects has perhaps already arrived:

A system of government characterized by rigid one-party rule, forcible suppression of the opposition, the retention of private owneship under centralized government control, belligerent nationalism, and the glorification of war.

The word defined thereby? Fascism.

Posted on 2002-08-25 at 16:56. File under society.

~ link ~

2002-08-22

Alaska Redux

Old news from the Last Frontier.

I recently received an email from Mark Chryson, chairman of the Alaskan Independence Party, who read my recent post about Alaska. Mr. Chryson reports that the acquisition of Alaska by the USA is even more tangled than I had supposed. It turns out that Russia, from whom the USA "bought" Alaska in 1867, never owned Alaska in the first place! He also claims that what Russia sold was the Russian Trading Company (or Russian America Company), including its trading rights to Alaska and the 540 acres of land the company owned -- not the other 365 million acres of land in Alaska. Uncle Sam promptly sold the Russian Trading Company to San Francisco merchants Lewis Gerstle and Lewis Sloss, and claimed all the land.

So how did the supposed purchase of all Alaska come about? I just did a little research by consulting Google. As explained here, in 1863 the Russian Navy sent ships to New York harbor and harbors on the West Coast to discourage Great Britain from interfering in the Civil War:

In 1863, Great Britain, using an insurrection in Poland as her pretext, again decided to put together an anti-Russian alliance. Russia responded by defending the Gulf of Finland and also dispatching cruisers. The Atlantic squadron of Rear Admiral Lesovsky, including the screw-frigates Alexander Nevsky, Oslyabya, Peresvet, the corvettes Vityaz and Varyag and the clipper Almaz, arrived in New York. At approximately the same time, Popov's squadron of propeller corvettes Bogatyr, Kalevala, Rynda and the clippers Abrek and Gaydamak gathered at ports on the west coast of the United States. This American "expedition" enabled the Russian fleet to achieve two objectives. Firstly, Great Britain did not continue its naval struggle with Russia because the British perceived a very real threat at sea. Second, by their presence, Russian seamen were able to support the United States in its struggle with the Confederacy.

As further noted on this page (which contains a great many details about the entire chronology):

The crowning period of humanist U.S.-Russian collaboration was during the Lincoln administration, when a wartime alliance between the United States and Russia was negotiated by U.S. Ambassador to Russia Cassius Clay (1861-1862 and 1863-1869). This is a chapter of American history which is no longer known today by Americans: It was Russia's military weight and threats of reprisals against Britain and France, that prevented any British-led intervention against the Union.

Naturally these "services" were not offered for free. Mr. Chryson told me that the Russian government demanded a large sum of gold in payment for the protection provided during the Civil War, but I have not yet been able to find evidence of that "smoking gun" (further research required -- this page may provide some clues). However, it's not surprising that in 1867, less than two years after the Russian navy withdrew from American ports and after extensive negotiations and communication between the Russian and American governments, the U.S. government purchased Russia's interests in Alaska for $7.2 million in gold. I get the sense that digging out the true story here might be a good project for some history major looking for a thesis topic -- or for me when I have more time.

On a happier note, isn't that Alaskan flag beautiful?

Posted on 2002-08-22 at 19:56. File under politics.

~ link ~

Communications Glue

More uptake in the Jabber world.

Jabber rolls on. Today CNET reports that IBM is using Jabber to build a wireless IM network for emergency communications in the Washington, DC, area. Why did IBM choose Jabber? Because, as Kent Blossom (director of safety and security systems for IBM) explains, "They did not want to be hooked into any proprietary system." Good thinking.

Why doesn't Jabber lock you in? Because it's a way of connecting people and applications across all sorts of disparate networks and operating systems. In today's Suitwatch, Doc Searls quotes David Sifry (co-founder of Linuxcare and CTO of Sputnik) on just this point: "I believe that communications glue like SOAP, XML-RPC and Jabber are vital infrastructure for the next generation of applications." Couldn't have said it better myself!

Posted on 2002-08-22 at 15:25. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-21

Yes, Bot...

Working on memberbot.

I've been working on memberbot again -- the Jabber bot I wrote in Python on top of jabber.py to do things like take surveys among the elected members of the Jabber Software Foundation. I've even set up a project on JabberStudio so that JSF members can report bugs and request features. I plan to add the code to CVS soon, too (once I clean it up a wee bit). Coding is fun, even if I'm not very good at it. :)

Posted on 2002-08-21 at 17:28. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Who Owns the Air? (Part II)

More on intellectual property rights and the Jabber protocol.

My first post of this month pointed to an email I sent about the ownership (or lack thereof) of the Jabber protocol. In it, I argued that no one owns the protocol -- that it is as free as air. I also apologized if I ever gave the impression that the Jabber Software Foundation owned the protocol. Yet in revisiting the current draft version of the JSF's IPR policy, I noticed that indeed I had asserted that the JSF owns the protocol. So I must apologize, and seek to make amends.

Specifically, the IPR policy draft talks about people being able to copyright or patent a protocol extension. Yet this is highly questionable to me, because no one (not even the JSF) owns or can assert ownership over the protocol. So right now I think that any given Jabber Enhancement Proposal needs to acknowledge that the protocol described in the JEP is free (==public domain?), and that all anyone can assert rights to is either documentation of the protocol (the JEP itself, which I think needs to be copyrighted by the JSF) or a specific implementation of the protocol (which implementation can be licensed according to the software license -- open or closed, public or private, free or unfree -- chosen by the code's creator).

So that's where I stand right now. But I need to think about it some more....

Posted on 2002-08-21 at 11:28. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-19

news.ak

Happenings on the Last Frontier.

The Anchorage Daily News is running an article about the candidates running for governor of Alaska from within the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). The fact that Alaska even has a party dedicated to independence is intriguing. No coverage in today's editions of the Fairbanks News-Miner or the Juneau Empire, but I'll keep an eye on them from time to time, as well. I'm not sure if the AIP knows about the Free State Project, but the two deserve an introduction.

Yes, it's easy for someone in the USA to support independence for Padania, Scotland, Flanders, Tibet, or Quebec. The test comes when there are legitimate arguments for independence within one's own borders. For instance, most Americans don't know or care that the Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown by agents of the U.S. government in 1893 and that Hawaii was annexed in 1898, leading to over one hundred years of "fraternal assistance" from Uncle Sam (the Nation of Hawaii site lays out the issues). Similarly, most Americans don't know or care that, in clear contravention of U.N. policies, Alaska was not given a choice in 1958 between independence, remaining a territory, commonwealth status, or statehood. And that's putting aside the question of how Alaska was Russia's to sell to the USA in 1867. Hmm, perhaps 2008 (the 50th anniversity of the previous vote) would be a good time to hold a plebiscite on the question of independence? I still think a story about the secession of Alaska would make a great novel!

Posted on 2002-08-19 at 12:49. File under politics.

~ link ~

2002-08-16

LP Redux

A political tangent.

Back in May I blogged about some pseudo-libertarian loony named Rick Stanley, who at the time was seeking to represent the Colorado LP in this year's U.S. Senate race. In response to my email messages (I'm registered Libertarian and therefore considered a member of the party), local LP officials invited me to attend the party's convention and vote against him if I didn't support him. Considering that at the time Stanley had asserted the decidedly non-libertarian position that sitting politicians (whom he assumed were guilty until proved innocent) deserve capital punishment, I found their response intolerably mild. Well, it turns out Stanley received the LP's endorsement, and since the convention has been spouting ever more venomous opinions that are clearly at odds with the LP's principle of non-initiation of force. Now, as Ari Armstrong reports at the Colorado Freedom Report, the LP Board will soon hold a hearing to remove or retain Stanley as its candidate in this year's elections. This kind of internecine conflict is one reason I stand by my opinion: the LP is feckless. I just hope I won't have to add spineless to the list of descriptive adjectives.

Posted on 2002-08-16 at 21:47. File under politics.

~ link ~

Morning Reading

qmacro.news.

Cool, it seems that this blog's RSS file is included among all the news that's fit to poll over at DJ Adams' site. I can't help but wonder if DJ had a hand in the new tcp.im script that Dave Winer just announced; this code enables Radio Userland to function as a Jabber client or server. Sweet!

Posted on 2002-08-16 at 21:21. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-15

JEP Cleanup

Boring but necessary.

As described in this post, I made some time this evening to clean up almost all the Jabber Enhancement Proposals, since the version numbers were inconsistent. Now we have consistent numbering. I also beefed up the status notes on the JEP list page. Not very exciting, but hopefully an improvement.

Posted on 2002-08-15 at 22:51. File under jabber.

~ link ~

affero

Contributing to Jabber.

I just found out about affero, a service that enables people to contribute to non-profit organizations as a result of the fine service provided on email lists such as those we host on jabber.org. This is definitely something we need to investigate so that people can contribute to the Jabber Software Foundation.

Posted on 2002-08-15 at 15:20. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-14

Prague Under Water

Links about the Prague floods.

I found this page (quite comprehensive) about the flooding in Prague. The Prague Post has good coverage as well. Having been in Prague just two months ago, this hits all too close to home for me. At least I'm getting daily reports from my Jabber friends over there.

Posted on 2002-08-14 at 22:28. File under society.

~ link ~

It's the Bylaw!

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

I just posted some revised information about the upcoming JSF elections and annual meeting. Sigh. These bylaws are a pain, though necessary.

Posted on 2002-08-14 at 22:24. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-12

IM Anarchy

More talk about Jabber.

Journalist Jack Schofield of The Guardian was kind enough to send me the URL for the article that he published last Thursday after he interviewed me ten days ago. Unfortunately a few inaccuracies crept in somewhere along the line, since the article states that Jabber is a peer-to-peer system rather than a client-server system, implies that Jabber doesn't do presence (it certainly does!) simply because it does not maintain one unified database of all Jabber users (granted, I didn't explain the niceties of Jabber's user "rosters" and its presence subscription model), and sets up a false dichotomy between DNS and presence, which are actually orthogonal to each other (using DNS means you don't have a flat address space but rather tap into the power of domain names -- we surely can, and in Jabber already do, share presence across domains). But that's the risk of trying to get one's story out into the world -- there's always the possibility of miscommunication.

Posted on 2002-08-12 at 21:40. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Recharged

Jumping back into Jabber.

Wow, these vacations are rather fun. I went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean at Popham Beach, canoeing and blueberry picking on Lake Maranacook, sailing with my friend Rick Stinchfield on Lake Winnipesaukee (where we had to start up the engine on his 15-foot sailboat when the wind died and the Mount Washington started bearing down on us!), took in a performance of Henry V at the Theatre at Monmouth, read a few books (including Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and SF author Ken Macleod's 1999 novel The Sky Road), and -- well, you get the picture. In a word, I'm feeling pretty darn relaxed. :)

But now it's back to work. I'm sure there's a ton to catch up on, since the Jabber Council and Board elections are coming up next week, among other things. Before jumping into all that, this evening I think I'll take it easy and catch up on happenings out there in the blogosphere.

Posted on 2002-08-12 at 20:21. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-04

Maine-ly Gone

Yet another vacation!

I'm heading off to Maine first thing tomorrow morning, where I'll be out of contact with computers yet again. So no bloggage until August 12th or thereabouts. Be good!

Posted on 2002-08-04 at 22:03. File under personal.

~ link ~

Jabber Interview #5

Turning the spotlight on Ryan Eatmon.

I'm trying to publish a Jabber Interview every month so that people don't forget about the personal side of the project. The latest interview is with Ryan Eatmon -- check it out!

Posted on 2002-08-04 at 21:58. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Board Update

More about the elections for JSF Board.

I just posted several new position papers for candidates in the elections for JSF Board. I'm really happy with the quality of the people who have stepped up to run -- I can't wait to work with the new Board (and Council) in moving Jabber forward on all fronts. Let's roll up our sleeves and get going! Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-08-04 at 21:42. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Pub-Sub Redux

Yet another pub-sub JEP.

I just published JEP-0040, entitled "Jabber Robust Publish-Subscribe". Yes, yet another JEP related to building publish-subscribe systems in Jabber. We've got to solve this problem in the next few months, and in a way that makes further forward progress possible. Those Council candidates had better be ready to roll up their sleeves!

Posted on 2002-08-04 at 20:48. File under jabber.

~ link ~

The Setting Sun and the Rising Sun

A philosopher's legacy.

What is the best, strongest, most honest intellectual bequest that can be left by any thinker? I speculate on that in a journal entry for today.

Posted on 2002-08-04 at 20:17. File under philosophy.

~ link ~

2002-08-02

Interview

Talking about Jabber.

A friendly journalist at The Guardian gave me a call today and we had a wide-ranging chat about directions in the world of instant messaging. My understanding is that his article will be published in the "Online" section of next Thursday's edition, so keep an eye out. Perhaps he'll even see fit to mention Jabber. :)

Posted on 2002-08-02 at 16:43. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Words4Nerds #4

Another version of Words of the Week.

Once you start a tradition, it's hard to stop -- people have expectations! So this week I was shoehorned into creating another installment of "words of the week" on my whiteboard at work. This week's theme is words of strong emotion (well, except for Friday's word -- needed something calm and peaceful after all that Sturm und Drang):

• ululate (v.) -- to howl or wail, especially in lamentation
• dolorous (adj.) -- deeply sad or despondent
• splenetic (adj.) -- extremely angry
• apoplectic (adj.) -- ditto
• ataraxia (n.) -- mental and emotional tranquility

Posted on 2002-08-02 at 14:01. File under language.

~ link ~

More Code

Some recent Jabber-related code releases.

The folks at Jabber Inc. have released new binaries of their Server Connection Manager software for connectivity between Jabber servers. Updated sourcecode is slated to follow shortly. (Full disclosure: Jabber Inc. generously pays my salary, even though I work exclusively on the affairs of the Jabber Software Foundation.)

Also, despite the best efforts of our friends at Yahoo! to thwart connections from anything but approved software, the open-source community soldiers on. Specifically, Paul Curtis has been working on a new Yahoo Transport; word has it that the CVS version is in good working order, and look for a release version soon. (Update: the tarball is here!)

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-08-02 at 13:45. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Delegation

Control freaks anonymous.

Man, it's hard for a control freak like me to let go. However, last night Justin Kirby (a.k.a. Zion) of OpenAether convinced me I need to offload some Jabber tasks, so I gave him permissions to help out with administration of the Jabber mailing lists. Slight progress, I know, but the first part of the cure is to admit you have a problem. :)

Posted on 2002-08-02 at 09:14. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-08-01

Who Owns the Air?

Thoughts on the Jabber protocol.

I just posted a message to the members@jabber.org mailing list in which I argue that no one actually owns the Jabber protocol -- it's as free as air. The post is a rather philosophical screed if you go in for that kind of thing. :) Check it out here.

Posted on 2002-08-01 at 15:09. File under jabber.

~ link ~

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