one small voice

stpeter's blog on jabber, technology, history, philosophy, et alia

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2003-05-30

Standards

POGE again.

Dizzy pointed me to a weblog entry from Jim Waldo (chief architect of Jini) in which he argues that standards aren't all they're cracked up to be. He draws a helpful distinction between de facto standards that evolve in the Internet community, and de jure standards that are designed by committees. A good example is SMTP vs. X.400. Evolved standards tend to exemplify the Principle of Good Enough (as Doc Searls calls it), whereas designed standards tend to be over-designed (can you say "analysis paralysis"?). Personally I think we see the same thing in the instant messaging standards race. Our beloved XMPP evolved in the Jabber open-source community and my job as editor of the XMPP Internet-Drafts has mostly been a matter of describing the existing protocols -- as Jim Waldo says, "writing them down was a documentation job that either got it right or missed the mark". As far as I can see, the SIMPLE protocols are de jure standards that are overly complex (in fact, a recent Internet-Draft that attempts to show how all the pieces of SIMPLE fit together runs to 30 pages and most of it consists of the letters "TDB" -- I saw a message on the SIMPLE mailing list which said that this summary document is a great idea but it might have to be split into multiple documents!). A few days ago, Joe Hildebrand and I answered questions about IM standards (along with SIP/SIMPLE expert Jonathan Rosenberg) in a real-time debate sponsored by InfoWorld magazine (the archive is here). It was a wild hour of furious typing, in which Joe and I presented our view of the IM standards landscape (some of which I'd previously talked about in my recent article for O'Reilly). The main thing to me is that XMPP is an established technology that is architecturally sound and simple to deploy (with tens of thousands of servers, thousands of developers, and millions of users), whereas SIMPLE is a new, incomplete technology that uses a signalling protocol for data transport and that is quite complex to deploy. But of course I'm biased.

Posted on 2003-05-30 at 14:18. File under technology.

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The Word

Website addiction alert!

On the way back from a post-lunch stroll, a co-worker and I jaywalked across an intersection, which got me thinking about the origins of the term "jaywalking". A quick Google search yields the following:

Back in the 1800's, country bumpkins visiting the city were called "jays" probably because bluejays are loud, brightly-colored and not-very-bright birds. Now, before the bluejay lobby gets on my tail about that characterization, allow me to point out that "jay" has been used as a synonym for "simpleton" since the 1500's, so it's a bit late to protest. In any case, these out-of-town "jays" were famous for being clueless. They wandered all over the city, gawked at the big buildings, bought the 19th century equivalent of "Cats" t-shirts, and blundered right into traffic whenever they felt like crossing the street. By the early 1900's, paying no attention to traffic signals or crosswalks was known as "jaywalking."

The source is word-detective.com, which appears to be a highly addictive website, at least for a word maven like me. Surf at your peril!

Posted on 2003-05-30 at 13:41. File under language.

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Feeling Cool

Global warming? That's so nineties!

A friend recently pointed me to this site, which argues that far from experiencing global warming, the world is on the cusp of a new Ice Age. Hey, it's been a good ten thousand years since the last one, dontcha think it's time for a cool-down? :-)

Posted on 2003-05-30 at 13:35. File under society.

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2003-05-28

The Race

On standards for IM.

Cathleen Moore of InfoWorld has written a balanced overview of the IM standards "race" between SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP/Jabber. Where it will end, nobody knows....

However, I do know that, as a Gartner analyst once said: "Watching the instant messaging marketplace is like seeing whether Ford or Chrysler will invent the assembly line first. The stakes are that high."

Posted on 2003-05-28 at 09:26. File under jabber.

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The Call

XMPP to WGLC.

Lisa Dusseault, co-chair of the XMPP WG, issued a working group last call yesterday for the four main Internet-Drafts defining the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (a.k.a. XMPP). Now is the time for Jabberites to review these documents carefully and provide feedback regarding their accuracy, since we will be building applications on top of these protocols for a long time to come.

Posted on 2003-05-28 at 09:21. File under jabber.

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2003-05-14

Principles

Toward a new Jeffersonianism.

I used to be a rabidly ideological libertarian (well, Randian, but libertarianism kind of falls out of that). However, over time I find that I become less attached to ideology and more attached to working pragmatically based on what I think of as Jeffersonian principles.

This requires explanation.

Ayn Rand once called libertarians "hippies of the Right". More recently I've heard them described as "Republicans who smoke dope". The essentially ideological bent of much libertarianism was brought home to me several years ago when I happened to see a television commercial for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne, in which the candidate petulantly demanded "Freedom Now!" like some peace protester or a union member on a picket line.

While I am all in favor of freedom, insisting on immediate and total liberty is a form of stamping one's foot at reality, because the reality of human society and political culture is that one can't change everything all at once. The best one can do is to cleave to certain principles and act according to those principles. That doesn't mean selling out -- it means recognizing what is possible in the current context. It may even mean aiming for the impossible, along the lines of Vaclav Havel's dictum that "politics is the art of the impossible". But it also means not expecting (let alone demanding) immediate changes. (These comments are connected to a weblog entry from 15 months ago, in which I paradoxically stated that most people are too pluralistic to feel comfortable with utopian libertarianism, despite the fact that a libertarian utopia would be pluralistic. More on that some other time.)

So what are the principles that I advocate? I'd characterize them as follows:

Free markets and voluntary initiatives solve problems more effectively than government programs.
When government is (or seems) necessary, power and decisions should be as local as possible.
The hand of even local government should be as light as possible -- as Thomas Jefferson said, "That government is best which governs least."
Because "the power to tax is the power to destroy", government should be funded through user fees and the like -- and should never tax the fruits of individual labor.
When in doubt, honor the original "contract with America": the United States Constitution (including the complete Bill of Rights).

Taken together, these principles lead to some surprising conclusions:

Markets need to be free, so corporate welfare needs to be abolished (especially centralized corporate welfare, which encourages the growth of huge, faceless mega-corporations).
When local governments get too large, they should be split up into smaller units (call it "polis envy", but I think Aristotle was onto something when he said the ideal size of a city-state was 10,000 people -- though I'd prefer to see power vested in wards or neighborhoods of less than 500 people).
Politicians should govern from the bully pulpit and provide leadership in local community organizations rather than spending tax dollars and starting government programs.
The federal and even state governments should not have the power to tax: money should trickle up from local governments to higher levels, not the other way around.
Most functions performed by governments can be addressed more humanely and efficiently by businesses, non-profit organizations, and local volunteers -- including schools, parks, libraries, even safety and security.

Of course, I'm not directly involved in politics so it's easy for me to spout off about Jeffersonian principles. Maybe someday I'll put these ideas into practice by running for office -- but not while I'm working 14 hours a day on Jabber.

Posted on 2003-05-14 at 20:58. File under politics.

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2003-05-13

Getting Real

The latest in buzzword compliance.

I need to read Stowe Boyd's weblog more often. One of his recent posts is about the real-time enterprise, which seems to be a hot topic among the ITerati (heh, I think I just coined that term). Over in the Jabber community we're in the thick of shrinking timespans for things like messaging and workflow processing. Why send an email when you can IM? Why seek out an HTML form at some web page when an application can present a jabber:x:data form before your eyes in real time? Why attach a file to an email when you can zap one to a friend or colleague instantly from your IM client? Why send emails to a big group of people when you can do a real-time groupchat? We've been working on this stuff since 1999 in the Jabber community and keep cranking out extensions. Just wait until we finally get all the core functionality defined and implemented (we're still fixing things like file transfer, building generic publish-subscribe, etc.). So many applications beyond IM beckon -- whiteboarding, calendaring, real-time document editing, and much more. The fun has only just begun!

Posted on 2003-05-13 at 21:27. File under jabber.

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Sputnik

Jabber everywhere.

This is sweet! Stowe Boyd just pointed me to a post by Joi Ito about Sputnik, a new wireless access point that seemingly integrates Jabber for user authentication. As I posted in Joi's comments, I've been chatting with Dave Sifry of Sputnik for well over a year, but didn't realize exactly what he was up to with Sputnik until just now. Yes, Jabber is everywhere...

Posted on 2003-05-13 at 21:09. File under jabber.

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2003-05-11

2020 Vision

Some FreeState thoughts.

Jason Sorens, who started the Free State Project, recently observed on the FSP web forum that "the VIABILITY and CULTURE factors may be the ones ultimately determining the decision" about which candidate state to select. That set me to thinking...

Jason's research indicates that regionalist movements are most successful in areas from which central governments take more than they give. By this measure, NH comes out way ahead of every other candidate state (it gets only 71 cents for every dollar it sends to D.C.); WY gets $1.14 for every $1.00 it sends, ID $1.24, and Alaska a whopping $1.63 (to choose the four states I see as the leading contenders). The other viability measures in the spreadsheet are coastal access, an international border, and the percentage of Federally-owned land. Here again NH comes out ahead on the first two (it has both a coast and a border, whereas WY has neither, ID has one, though Alaska has both); and only 13% of NH is Federal land, whereas the numbers are WY 46%, ID 63%, and Alaska 67%. Now we can argue about how valuable these viability numbers are, and about whether there are other better measures, but on the measures we have NH comes out looking good.

As to culture, we have a lot of variables to choose from (too many, IMHO -- I'm not sure how strongly each of them is correlated with the overall freedom-orientation of the local political culture, and here again we can argue about them for hours, I'm sure). However, one thing that strikes me from having researched the matter a bit over the last few weeks is that NH does have a distinctive political culture. It has a unique system of checks and balances on the power of the Governor in the form of the elected Executive Council. It has a true citizen legislature that is effectively unpaid. It spends only 6.6% of "gross state product" on state and local government (lowest of any FSP state -- compare to 9.4% for WY, 9.5% for ID, and 9.7% for Alaska). It has a strong tradition of local decision-making in the form of town meetings. It really does seem to have a "government of the people", which I'm less confident of in a place like WY (where my understanding is that large mining and oil & gas interests exercise quite a bit of control at the state level -- they do pay most of the taxes in WY, after all, and "he who pays the piper calls the tune").

I'm not saying that NH is paradise on earth -- after all, they even have state liquor stores! If NH were already a Jeffersonian utopia, there would be no need for the FSP. But I do think that NH has retained more of Jeffersonian principles than any other state -- especially because it is less dependent on the central government, and has a smaller state and local government sector, than any other FSP candidate.

Naturally, we need to balance these viability and culture measures against population, which I continue to think is hugely important. I remain skeptical of the 20,000 activist number (or 1:64 ratio), because I'm not sure that the Quebec experience is applicable to the FreeState and I doubt that all 20k who sign up will be truly active (we'll be lucky if the 80-20 rule holds and 20% or 4,000 are active enough to show up at town meetings, run for office, or write letters to the editor). Of course, even 4,000 activists will dwarf the number of freedom activists in any state right now, so I think the results will be profound no matter where we go.

Finally, I'm glad to see the focus in this thread on the long term prospects for this project. Too many people on the forums and on various email lists seem to be expecting some kind of immediate "libertopia". It ain't gonna happen, folks, and to expect that is to set yourself up for immediate disappointment. The free state is a long-term project. It will be 2010 before the 20,000 have moved, and at least another 10 to 20 years before the efforts of those on the ground truly yield fruit -- i.e., it will take until 2020 or later to build a truly free society in the chosen state. So those who join the FSP and move to the FreeState and become active there really need to have "2020 vision" and realize that it will take years and years of often-small victories (and probably lots of setbacks along the way) in order to build what we trust will eventually become unstoppable momentum for freedom.

Posted on 2003-05-11 at 21:12. File under politics.

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2003-05-09

A Foolish Consistency

Emerson, too, was wise.

Relativists love to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson to the effect that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Unfortunately, as Julian Sanchez and Will Wilkinson observe, most people quote Emerson out of context. Julian quotes the entire paragraph in which the quote occurs, but I find that a longer passage from his essay Self-Reliance makes the meaning even clearer.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you, is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, -- under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, -- the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

BTW, May 25th will be the 200th anniversary of Emerson's birth. Be sure to celebrate!

Posted on 2003-05-09 at 21:23. File under philosophy.

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Consolidated Government

More Jeffersonian wisdom.

Jefferson was deeply in favor of keeping all power as localized as possible, and well understood the dangers of centralized government. For example, in a letter to Justice William Johnson (Oct. 27, 1822), he wrote:

What do you think of the state of parties at this time? An opinion prevails that there is no longer any distinction, that the republicans & Federalists are compleatly amalgamated but it is not so. The amalgamation is of name only, not of principle. All indeed call themselves by the name of Republicans, because that of Federalists was extinguished in the battle of New Orleans. But the truth is that finding that monarchy is a desperate wish in this country, they rally to the point which they think next best, a consolidated government. Their aim is now therefore to break down the rights reserved by the constitution to the states as a bulwark against that consolidation, the fear of which produced the whole of the opposition to the constitution at it's birth. Hence new Republicans in Congress, preaching the doctrines of the old Federalists, and the new nick-names of Ultras and Radicals. But I trust they will fail under the new, as the old name, and that the friends of the real constitution and union will prevail against consolidation, as they have done against monarchism. I scarcely know myself which is most to be deprecated, a consolidation, or dissolution of the states. The horrors of both are beyond the reach of human foresight.

In a later missive to Justice Johnson (June 12, 1823), he wrote more on the subject:

I have stated above, that the original objects of the federalists were, 1st, to warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy, and, 2d, to weaken the barriers of the State governments as coordinate powers. In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation, that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their second object, and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendancy. I have been blamed for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I answer by asking if a single State of the Union would have agreed to the constitution, had it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State, of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then, to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?

Jefferson maintains that the Federalists were closet monarchists, and that failing that they were in favor of consolidated, centralized government. America has steadfastly resisted monarchy, but it has done less well with regard to consolidated government. When something as localized as teaching and learning has a central authority (in the form of the Federal Department of Education), you know we're in trouble. Is it even possible now to reclaim local control?

Posted on 2003-05-09 at 21:12. File under politics.

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Party Thinking

A quote from Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

I never submitted the whole system of my opinion to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Posted on 2003-05-09 at 20:57. File under politics.

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Searching for Ragnar

Yes, it usually does begin with Ayn Rand.

While self-proclaimed libertarians debate the pros and cons of war, and even the benefits of a stateless society, Ari Armstrong goes searching for Ragnar Danneskjöld, the pirate-philosopher of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Posted on 2003-05-09 at 20:52. File under politics.

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2003-05-04

Stop the Drafts!

Internet-Drafts, that is.

Yow, I'm tired. I just finished 13 hours of non-stop work on the XMPP Internet-Drafts and happily announced availability of draft-ietf-xmpp-core-12 and draft-ietf-xmpp-im-11 to the XMPP WG mailing list. With every day that passes, I gain newfound respect for anyone whose I-D has become an RFC.

WGLC is my mantra.

Posted on 2003-05-04 at 22:06. File under jabber.

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