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2002-10-30

R and R

What I'm reading and writing.

In my spare moments of late, I've been reading Steven Pinker's new book The Blank Slate. Fascinating stuff. It's a big book and I've got it out on loan from the Denver Public Library, so I'm not sure I'll finish it before my three weeks are up (I'm sure that others have requested it, so I doubt I'll be able to renew it). Pinker really lays into those who persist in thinking that human beings are infinitely malleable -- a blank slate on which can be written anything that society desires. Interestingly from my perspective as a Rand scholar, Ayn Rand had a lot in common here with leftist utopians: she loved to say that "man is being of self-made soul" and approvingly quoted the old Jesuit maxim "Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards." This would make a great topic for an essay about Rand. Maybe I'll write it someday -- it's just the kind of gadfly writing that I enjoy.

Speaking of Rand scholarship, I recently rewrote one section of my forthcoming paper on Zamyatin and Rand, inspired by my recent reading of the book Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's We by Brett Cooke. Cooke looks at the genre of dystopian novels from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, and argues that major commonalities between novels like Zamyatin's We, Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, and Rand's Anthem derive not from artistic emulation but from universals of human behavior and society. For example, in general human beings like to choose their mates, raise their own children, and share food with close relatives. Yet all dystopian novels violate these in-born preferences by portraying societies that enforce eugenics programs, state rearing of children, and communal eating arrangements. Such novels are highly symbolic, and the symbols they use hit some major evolutionary hot buttons for human beings. Cooke's perspective is intriguing and well-argued, and it ties in well with the subject of Pinker's book. So I brought a bit of this into my Zamyatin-Rand paper, which is forthcoming in next spring's number of the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. I may also have a short comment on Rand and progressive rock in that issue. And my paper comparing Abelard and Rand on the theory of concepts is in this fall's issue.

No, I'm not a scholar, but I play one on TV. :)

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

~ link ~

YAJU

Yet another Jabber update.

Lots going on this week on the Jabber front. Or lots of meetings, anyway. But they've been good meetings, honest! ;)

Yesterday we had a two-hour meeting of the JSF Board. In addition to breaking ground on the issue of the Jabber trademark, the Board approved the new version of the JSF's standards process (defined in JEP-0001) as well as the intellectual property rights policy that I wrote with help from Larry Lessig and Molly van Houweling. Minutes from the Board meeting are here.

Today we had a meeting of the JSF membership, mainly to ratify the voting results regarding acceptance of new members. We accepted 13 new members, which puts our total membership at 74 now. We also had some discussion about the Board meeting results, recent standards activity, and our IETF initiatives. Minutes are here.

And on Friday we'll have a meeting of the Jabber Council, at which presumably we'll discuss multi-user chat, service discovery, publish-subscribe, and lots of other goodies (and for which I'll keep the minutes again!). Speaking of multi-user chat, I finally issued a last call regarding my proposal, which means it will probably be presented for a Council vote in about 10 days.

In other Jabber news, Dizzy released version 0.2 of Nitro, his "explosive" client for Mac OS X (and he says version 0.3 might be released this weekend); WebMethods and Jabber Inc. announced a partnership to develop real-time notification services for financial companies; and discussion continues on the xmppwg mailing list in the run-up to our session at the 55th IETF meeting in Atlanta several weeks from now. I need to release new versions of our Internet-Drafts before Nov. 4 (next Monday), so I'll be rather busy between now and then.

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-10-30 at 18:38. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-24

Words4Nerds #10

Color my world.

This week's words all describe colors:

• viridescent -- green
• xanthous -- yellow
• cerulean -- sky-blue (from Latin caelo for the heavens)
• amaranthine -- deep or reddish purple
• vinaceous -- wine-red

Have a vinaceous weekend!

Next week: words for various shades of black and states of darkness.

Posted on 2002-10-24 at 22:18. File under language.

~ link ~

JANA

Still getting organized.

Earlier today I published JEP-0053, which defines the purpose and proposed functioning of the Jabber Assigned Names Authority -- the equivalent in our little Jabber universe of the IANA. As the Jabber protocol keeps expanding, we're definitely going to need something like this to keep things organized. I've also just added a section on "IANA and JANA Considerations" to JEP-0001 -- the version is progress is here. Oh, and I published yet another revision of JEP-0045 yesterday; if there are no strong objections on the standards-jig list, this is the version that will be proposed to the Jabber Council in a week or two. Finally.

Posted on 2002-10-24 at 22:03. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Going Mobile

Jabber and J2ME.

I've just found out about two new Jabber clients for J2ME-enabled mobile phones: SIM - Jabber Edition from StreamPath, and TipicME from Tipic. These are in addition to things like MiMessenger from Splendo. There are probably more such clients than I'm aware of...

Posted on 2002-10-24 at 16:45. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-23

Chandler and Jabber and iChat, Oh My!

More news from the Jabber front.

Reaction continues to be positive to the unveiling of Mitch Kapor's Chandler project to dethrone MS Outlook -- CNET reports and Dan Gilmour weighs in as well. Rumor also has it that Apple's iChat may soon officially support Jabber, too.

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-10-23 at 15:09. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-20

The Outlook

The next app killer?

This could be huge. It seems that a team of smart people led by Lotus 1-2-3 developer Mitch Kapor (and including original MacOS builder Andy Hertzfeld) has decided to come together under the rubric of the Open Source Applications Foundation to create a personal information manager that not only blows away the competition but is fully open-source. Their product will integrate email, calendaring, contacts, to-do lists, and the like, thus aiming squarely at outdoing everyone's favorite application, MS Outlook. Now, I use pine for mail and vi for my to-do list, so you might think I wouldn't be excited about this. But the intriguing part here is calendaring -- there simply isn't a good calendaring application out there, and Kapor et al. are the ones to build it. Plus here's the real kicker, at least for a certified Jabber fanatic like me: they're using Jabber as one of their six core technologies! One obvious result: "integrated Instant Messaging and presence management" is part of their feature set. But I suspect that they will also use Jabber to enable "remote peer-to-peer browsing of others' data", implement publish-subscribe functions like "automatic updating of information from remote sources", and maybe even do "file and document sharing". Their mission is inspiring, their architecture looks solid, and Mitch Kapor seems to be doing this for the right reasons. So believe it or not I'm about to willingly sign up for more mailing lists. And I'll be following Mitch Kapor's weblog religiously for the foreseeable future.

This could be huge.

Posted on 2002-10-20 at 20:38. File under technology.

~ link ~

Frozen

Still MUC-ing around.

OK, with the release of version 0.16 a few hours ago, I think JEP-0045 is now complete with regard to features and frozen with regard to protocol. Hopefully those who've implemented it can now catch their breath and I can soon submit this proposal to the Jabber Council.

Posted on 2002-10-20 at 20:06. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-18

Freedom's Plow

Setting an American classic to music.

In my spare moments of late, I've been revisiting a project that I've long wanted to complete: writing a setting for voice and guitar of Langston Hughes's long poem Freedom's Plow. Some years ago I wrote a tentative melody for the first three stanzas. In the last few weeks I've refined that and also written music for the next two stanzas. As befits the words, my setting starts out slowly and quietly. The first three stanzas are just a vocal line doubled by guitar, with a simple guitar accompaniment for the second two stanzas. What I've written so far clocks in at around six minutes, which means the complete piece will probably be at least 15 minutes long, perhaps even 20. In addition to the first five stanzas, I have a tenative treament of the (long) sixth stanza (beginning "Down into the earth went the plow") and some well-worked out ideas for the following section quoting Jefferson, Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass. But I need to figure out a transition from that to the part that quotes the old folk song Keep Your Hand on the Plow (the only version I own is on Bob Dylan's first album -- I think I need to hear a few others, such as that on Mahalia Jackson Live at Newport 1958). I would like the song to build up throughout, but we'll see if that is sustainable; a lull might be in order for the stanza that begins "America is a dream" (perhaps even including the previous stanza about the aftermath of the Civil War). Setting such a long poem to music requires some planning in order to pull it off. We'll see if I succeed.

Posted on 2002-10-18 at 21:59. File under music.

~ link ~

Jazz Friday

Another tradition in the making.

It's funny how these traditions get started. First it was Words of the Week. Now it's Jazz Fridays. Last Friday I brought one of my favorite jazz recordings into the office: Cannonball Adderly's Somethin' Else. It quickly made the rounds at the office and was eventually returned on Monday morning. At least one copy was purchased over the weekend by a convert to this incredible recording. The personnel have something do with it: in addition to the ostensible bandleader, the session featured Mile Davis on trumpet, Hank Jones on piano (more on him in a minute), Sam Jones on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. And the playing is so joyous and relaxed that it's hard not to like what you hear. All in all, truly somethin' else.

This week there was a call for more, so I brought in Abbey Lincoln's 1991 release You Gotta Pay the Band -- another of my favorites, with some delectable playing by Stan Getz on saxophone (his final studio recordings) and Hank Jones on piano, not to mention fine songwriting and singing by Lincoln herself (I especially love the haunting tune "Bird Alone").

So it seems that another tradition may be forming here. Unfortunately I own fewer jazz CDs than there are words in English, so I'm not sure how long I can keep this up....

Posted on 2002-10-18 at 21:16. File under music.

~ link ~

Jepping

More MUC madness.

I just published version 0.15 of JEP-0045, which defines a protocol for multi-user chat (MUC) in Jabber. This JEP has definitely gone where no JEP has gone before. :) Over 2800 lines of text and 94 examples, plus a few tables and state charts and such. It's huge. But it's finally going to seriously improve groupchat in Jabber, and put it above IRC in terms of functionality, I think. Some brave Jabber client developers have been adding support for MUC to Jabber clients like Exodus, Rival, and Tkabber. And David Sutton has been faithfully tracking changes to this JEP in his mu-conference component. Thanks to these pioneers, MUC will be rolled out sooner rather than later, which is just awesome.

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-10-18 at 17:24. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Words4Nerds #9

Some interesting characters.

Ever wonder what the official names are for some of the familiar characters on your keyboard or the less common marks you see on the printed page? This week's words fill you in....

• octothorpe - the beloved '#' character goes by many names: pound sign, hash mark, sharp, scratch, etc.; my favorite is 'octothorpe' (the story behind the name is here)
• solidus - the typesetting folks use this word as a name for '/'; naturally '\' is a reverse solidus :)
• virgule - another name for the solidus
• dieresis - the '¨' (umlaut) mark when used to note that a vowel is pronounced separately from the preceding vowel (most commonly seen in the word naïve)
• cedilla - the '¸' mark used in words like aperçu and garçon; this is my favorite, since there is a Greek connection: cedilla means "little zeta" and is a vestige of the days when a 'z' (Greek ζ) was placed after the 'c' to denote an 's' sound

Posted on 2002-10-18 at 17:19. File under language.

~ link ~

2002-10-13

Sunday Progress

More progress on the Jabber front.

I spent most of today on two Jabber-related activities (yesterday I mostly puttered around fixing up some relatively minor website problems). The first was version 0.9 of JEP-0045, and this time I really do think it's awfully close to being ready for submission to the Jabber Council. Can't wait to issue a Last Call for comments on this one! Also today I wrote a brief project roadmap for the Jabber Manual. I tried to keep the schedule realistic given that I'll probably be the one writing most of the content. Now awaiting feedback from the relevant mailing lists (jabbermanual and translation.

Posted on 2002-10-13 at 20:51. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-11

Jabber Update

Phew!

The work of a Jabber fanatic never stops. I just published the minutes from this morning's meeting of the Jabber Council. Also this evening I performed some major surgery on JEP-0030 based on a late-afternoon discussion I had with Joe Hildebrand (changes not released yet since we'd like to chat IRL with Peter Millard about it first). I can't even recount all the stuff I did this week, but I know I released a version or two of JEP-0045, rewrote JEP-0001 (which defines the JSF's standards process -- the updated version is temporarily parked here), cleared out some old JEPs based on a Council vote, processed and announced several new JEPs, continued working on a new IPR policy for the JSF, populated all the existing JSF members in a database so we can vote on new applicants next week, continued working on the new jabber.org website, and so on.

This weekend I need to formulate a proposed change list for the Internet-Drafts I authored and also provide some much-needed guidance to the JabberManual project -- especially the translation teams, which are raring to go. We have volunteers to translate the Jabber docs from English into Spanish, Russian, French, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, German, Farsi (Iranian), Dutch, Finnish, and Polish, with others probably on the way. They're waiting for instructions so I need to create a roadmap we can work from. Vitaly Ostanin sent a great post full of helpful advice regarding internationalization of documentation, which I need to follow up on before finishing the roadmap.

But it's 21:40 on a Friday evening so I think I'll relax for just a little while here before starting up again tomorrow. :)

Posted on 2002-10-11 at 21:41. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Words4Nerds #8

Sounding things out.

The "words of the week" this time all have to do with sound:

• susurrus - a soft whispering, murmuring, or rustling sound
• tintinnabular - having to do with the ringing of bells
• stentorian - having a voice like Stentor, the herald of the Greek army in The Iliad, who had the voice of 50 men
• plangent - beating or reverberating with a loud or deep sound
• sibilance - the condition or quality of producing a hissing sound

Posted on 2002-10-11 at 08:56. File under language.

~ link ~

2002-10-06

LILO

Links in, links out.

OK, so I went ego surfing. Not much else to do when you're overtired and have had a bit too much wine with dinner. In addition to the usual plethora of Jabber links, I found some fine sites like Swannie's Blog (it's good to know that someone other than me and David Sutton is interested in JEP-0045) and Khava (who claims that I'm "practically an Objectivist legend"). It's a bit weird sometimes to straddle the two worlds of Jabber software and Randian scholarship -- some people know me from one or the other, but very few (probably only Ted O'Connor) know me from both. Then there are those who know me from worlds in which I'm even less active, such as poetry and music. Speaking of music, right now I'm listening to the piano pieces that Jeffrey Lindon wrote based on seven of my Urban Haiku. I continue to enjoy them a lot (you can download several of them at Jeffrey's mp3.com page). One of these years I'll record some of the music I've written -- my solo guitar works will come first, after which I'll do my songs. I promise, I really do!

Posted on 2002-10-06 at 21:41. File under personal.

~ link ~

Jabbering On

More Sunday progress.

I can't recall the last time I didn't work on Sunday. It's a productive day of the week -- very few distractions, especially if I don't log into my Jabber account. :) Earlier today I created a list of code libraries for the new jabber.org website (still need to add some details, and I also need to create a server comparison page). I've also completed version 0.7.2 of JEP-0045, which I hope contains the final revisions before I send it to the Jabber Council for advancement from Experimental to Draft status. David Sutton says he hopes to have a functional implementation by the end of next week, which would be great since groupchat has been lacking in Jabber forever.

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-10-06 at 16:03. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Feed Your Head

So many books, so little time.

I finally put together a reading list to keep track of all the books I want to explore. Seems to contain a preponderance of books on biology and epistemology right now. Once I get more time I'll be hitting inter-library loan pretty hard, I think. :)

Posted on 2002-10-06 at 09:24. File under personal.

~ link ~

2002-10-03

Words4Nerds #7

Weird words from the dismal science.

Last week's words were as follows:

• autarky -- economic self-sufficiency, usually as applied to nations (not to be confused with autarchy = absolute power)
• praxeology -- the study of human action
• syndicalism -- worker ownership of the means of production, especially through the mediation of trade unions
• fungible -- the quality of being replaceable by like goods (e.g., bushels of wheat are fungible, since one is as good as another)
• monopsony -- the situation in which there is only one buyer for a good or service

Posted on 2002-10-03 at 22:59. File under language.

~ link ~

GC Redux

More on multi-user chat.

I just released version 0.7 of JEP-0045 describing a protocol for multi-user chat in Jabber. It's getting close.

Posted on 2002-10-03 at 22:50. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-02

What's in a Name?

Thoughts on Jabber and XMPP.

Early this morning I posted some thoughts on XMPP and Jabber. XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is an alternate moniker for the Jabber protocol, but I'm proposing that we define XMPP as the underlying transport protocol (XML Streams plus SASL, TLS, and the core data elements), thus reserving Jabber for the applications built on top of XMPP. Think of it this way: XMPP is to Jabber as HTTP is to Web. Feedback has been good so far in the Jabber community. Now we have to figure out how to make it happen.

Posted on 2002-10-02 at 21:13. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2002-10-01

Goodbye Monadnock

Suspending operations for a while.

Part of the fallout from updating www.jabber.org has been the need to finally pull the plug on JabberCentral, which my friend Justin Mecham has provided as a service to the Jabber community for well over two years (with a little help from me, mostly to keep the news up to date). Working with Justin to come to this decision has set me to thinking about a community site that I've run since 1997, namely the Monadnock Review. I haven't spent much time on the site at all in over a year, which is disappointing to me but not surprising given how busy I am with Jabber. More disappointing is that the site has never fulfilled its avowed purpose of building a community of thinkers and artists and readers who wish to do justice to joy and reason and meaning in life. I can count on one hand the number of contributors with whom I'm in even semi-regular contact. Some of them have dropped off the face of the earth (where are you, Alan Tucker?). Others barely even stopped by in the first place, or have simply moved on. So the naked fact is that I have built no community, and haven't even created any friendships. Perhaps I haven't put enough time into the site, which is why I'm going to put it into a state of suspended animation rather than kill it off outright. Maybe next year or the year after I'll have time to do it right. But now and for the foreseeable future, time will be my most precious commodity. So, goodbye Monadnock.

Posted on 2002-10-01 at 21:12. File under personal.

~ link ~

.planning

Playing catch-up once again.

I've been working so hard on the new jabber.org website that I hadn't realized quite how much other work has piled up of late. So this morning I added about eight new items to my .plan file (also available if you do 'finger stpeter@jabberstudio.org', though the cron job that updates it runs only once a day). Sigh. I really need to learn to delegate more, which is partly what I'm doing by opening up the JabberManual project to other contributors (and to translators as well).

Posted on 2002-10-01 at 21:02. File under jabber.

~ link ~

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