I am in my third week visiting Brisbane, Australia. I have always loved living here and this trip has been no exception. We are in our old house, our tenants having vacated just before we arrived. There was a lot of work to be done on the place, mostly due to the climate. Overgrown gardens needed trimming, mold grows fast when plumbing leaks, termites in a section of a retaining wall (but not the house!). Nothing unexpected for Brisbane. All of it is now repaired, along with much new paint. The house is feeling like the top property it is again.
Food has become quite expensive here. We were shocked at the prices! A simple sandwich and coffee is well over the ten dollar mark. Lunch at the tourist restaurant on top of Mount Coot-Tha for the four of us neared A$60! Even groceries for the month have been exorbitant.
Paul tells me that it is no longer reasonable to expect to rent a house here for a price which would cover a mortgage payment. That agrees with our experience. The combination of food prices and rental prices points to a real problem with the economy here. The weather is still beautiful, though!
We have had a wonderful time bush walking Mount Coot-Tha, Mount Warning and South Stradbroke Island. The Eumundi Markets are as good as always. Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and the Australia Zoo were big hits with the kids.
Brisbane remains a truly livable city, with its excellent bus service, walking trails and superb entertainment. It is a concern, though, that it may be becoming too expensive to live here.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
Hello, Redland
After years of viewing RDF through the Kowari lens, I have finally moved on. I wrote my first Semantic Web application using Redland today.
Redland, by Dave Beckett, built and installed easily on my Mac Powerbook G4, but I had trouble getting the Java and Python language bindings to build. For the moment, I'm settling on the Perl and Ruby bindings, which is what I mostly use in any case.
The application, for those interested, was a small prototype showing how Semantic Web techniques could be used to foster requirements traceability in software engineering. I automatically generated software collaboration graphs from code, then laid documentation RDF alongside. I used a single SPARQL query to show when the requirements required re-validation. The idea could become an interesting Eclipse plug-in.
Redland, by Dave Beckett, built and installed easily on my Mac Powerbook G4, but I had trouble getting the Java and Python language bindings to build. For the moment, I'm settling on the Perl and Ruby bindings, which is what I mostly use in any case.
The application, for those interested, was a small prototype showing how Semantic Web techniques could be used to foster requirements traceability in software engineering. I automatically generated software collaboration graphs from code, then laid documentation RDF alongside. I used a single SPARQL query to show when the requirements required re-validation. The idea could become an interesting Eclipse plug-in.
Monday, March 20, 2006
A Practitioner's View of Software Development
I've been asked to give a guest lecture tomorrow to the CSSE 3002 class (The Software Process) at the University of Queensland. The topic is "A practitioner's view of software development". Professor Dave Carrington wanted me to tell his software engineering students what they can expect in the real world and how to prepare for it.
The slides are available in PDF and PPT.
The slides are available in PDF and PPT.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
The End of an Age
Americans seem to treat our status as the world's most powerful country as given. Few recall that our ascendance to dominant superpower status occurred only after World War II. We squandered our good fortunes on a costly war in Vietnam, which resulted in President Nixon ceasing to back the US dollar with gold. That marked the first time in two millenia that the world did not have its most powerful currency backed by a scarce commodity. Instead, we moved it to being backed by simple goodwill.
Now, while our manufacturing has moved to China and the promised services boom has gone to India, we are squandering our remaining dollars on a costly war in Iraq. It should come as no surprise that the Euro countries now claim a larger economy and a more stable currency. Our days on top would seem to be numbered and we had better adjust our attitudes.
How long will it be before China catches up to the E.U. in total economic might? Less than a generation, that much is pretty certain. Then we will be at least number three.
Foriegn investments in US dollar bonds float our economy. They pay for our ballooning trade deficit and our overseas wars. What do you think will happen when those foriegn investors start to buy Euros instead? It is already starting to happen. We have less cash, less growth and less economic security than we think we have.
We used to claim the world's most populous city. New York is now number thirteen, behind Mumbai, Shaghai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Moscow, Delhi, Karachi, Istanbul, Beijing, Mexico City, Jakarta and Tokyo. Don't know where all of those are? You'd better learn, and knowing at least one of their languages wouldn't hurt, either.
I don't know about you, but I am rearing my children to be prepared for a world that is not centered on America. Are you?
Now, while our manufacturing has moved to China and the promised services boom has gone to India, we are squandering our remaining dollars on a costly war in Iraq. It should come as no surprise that the Euro countries now claim a larger economy and a more stable currency. Our days on top would seem to be numbered and we had better adjust our attitudes.
How long will it be before China catches up to the E.U. in total economic might? Less than a generation, that much is pretty certain. Then we will be at least number three.
Foriegn investments in US dollar bonds float our economy. They pay for our ballooning trade deficit and our overseas wars. What do you think will happen when those foriegn investors start to buy Euros instead? It is already starting to happen. We have less cash, less growth and less economic security than we think we have.
We used to claim the world's most populous city. New York is now number thirteen, behind Mumbai, Shaghai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Moscow, Delhi, Karachi, Istanbul, Beijing, Mexico City, Jakarta and Tokyo. Don't know where all of those are? You'd better learn, and knowing at least one of their languages wouldn't hurt, either.
I don't know about you, but I am rearing my children to be prepared for a world that is not centered on America. Are you?
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
A Tale of Two American Ideas
A Tale of Two American Ideas
My country 'tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty (and big business)
Of thee I sing
This slight modification to the lyrics of America by Samuel F. Smith ruins the rhyme and the tune, but achieves greater accuracy. The United States has thrived on the confluence of the two grand ideas of capitalism and individual liberty throughout its history. We cannot accurately speak of one without acknowledging the impact of the other.
I like to anthropomorphize these ideas, as it aids the memory and fosters understanding. Please allow me to introduce to you two American heroes, Orville Redenbacher and Robert Heinlein.
Orville Redenbacher was famous for passing on his key to success in business, "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." He set out to create the world's best popcorn by creating his own corn hybrid and ended up with the best selling popcorn brand in the U.S. Orville represents the power of focused greed, success by entrepreneurship and enterprising use of capitalist opportunities. Orville works the market.
Robert Heinlein was a disabled veteran of the U.S. Navy who became famous as a science fiction writer. He was a libertarian, a thoughtful man and one who believed in maximizing the growth of the individual. Heinlein is widely quoted on a range of topics, but the one I like to use to illustrate his core beliefs is this one:
What a difference! Orville counseled specialization and Robert vehemently denigrated it. Could these two ever learn to live together?
They did, of course. Even in the days leading up to the American Revolution, it was easy to find both forces at work. Jefferson, student of the enlightenment, promoted the concept of individual liberty, including religious tolerance. Businessman Washington, it is rumored, promoted military resistance to Britain partly to avoid financial ruin. The British were blocking the Westward expansion upon which he bet heavily.
The interplay between commerce and philosophy built America and made it fundamentally different from our English-speaking friends. Without America's abundant natural resources and the mercantile mindset we borrowed from the Dutch at New York, the American economy would surely have failed to achieve world dominance. Our drive toward liberty also played a crucial role. England was determined to suppress troublesome American colonists by restricting economic growth, including Westward expansion. Canadians and Australians remained primary industry producers for the crown while America industrialized, a factor as important for their late arrival to economic success as their relative lack of resources.
Clearly, America the pastoralist could not have driven the railroad West to the Pacific Ocean. Orville's friends drove the railroad to the sea while Robert's sought to make a better life for their children and themselves. The West was settled because it was in the best interest of both Orville and Robert to go there. There was no stopping our heroes when their interests were aligned.
World War II provided America an opportunity to demonstrate the power of this alliance to the world. American industrial might out-produced all other players, while American servicemen fought totalitarianism on all fronts. Dictators were brought low and America became a global power in a few short years, all because Orville and Robert were fighting on the same team.
Most of American history may be seen as an interplay of these ideas. Which dominated? Which was suppressed? They have played off of one another, sometimes complimentary, sometimes in conflict. And that brings me to globalization.
Globalization makes Orville happy, nay, ecstatic. He can find cheaper labor to produce his products. Even factoring in additional transportation costs result in savings that he can apply directly to the bottom line. What does Robert get from globalization? As far as I can tell, globalization just makes Robert nervous.
The political storm recently unleashed by the intended purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) by Dubai Ports World, a multinational corporation owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, highlights the differences between Orville and Robert. Orville can't think of a reason to say "no". Robert can and the answer is "security".
In other words, Robert was happy to put up with globalization because he thought it didn't concern him. Now he is becoming aware that it does. National strategic interests, such as the manufacturing capability necessary to maintain the world's strongest military (once dictated by law to require U.S.-based sourcing) and the control of the country's borders, are now recognized to be in jeopardy. They have been for some time, of course. Robert just didn't notice until recently.
Orville can justify the operation of U.S. ports by foreign terminal operators because it is good business. It does not make for good security. As George Orwell pointed out so neatly in 1984, today's political ally often becomes tomorrow's enemy. Globalized business dependencies simply last longer than political alliances.
Robert has noticed the way in which we treat China as a trading partner instead of the largest single threat to U.S. interests worldwide. China's rising oil consumption and its territorial aspirations, coupled with our reliance on its manufacturing infrastructure may make bin Laden's Al Qaeda look like the mosquito it is. The Soviet Union, in contrast, was defeated by a policy of isolation, not an intimate tying of economies.
Perhaps Orville can justify our Chinese dependence by looking at the European model. After all, the first step toward the European Union was the European Coal and Steel Community, a way to grow the economies of post-War France and Germany without allowing either country to use their economic might to start another war. Surely, globalization will have a similar effect on U.S.-China relations? Sadly that is just not so.
European states have committed themselves to an "ever closer union", and have consistently, if slowly, given up sovereignty to do so. The U.S. and China rely on a laissez faire nearly-free market approach which does nothing to bind the warfighting abilities of the other. To think otherwise is naive in the extreme.
America's dependence on foreign oil is causing a similar split. Orville will adjust to market conditions. Robert feels exposed.
Robert's followers often come from the political right. And left. So do Orville's. The forces of capitalism and liberty cross party lines. They swing voters in the middle. When aligned, they can create the most powerful political, industrial and military juggernaut in the world. When they are opposed, they can rip our Congress and our foreign policy in two.
The solution to our current problem is simple. Let's get Orville and Robert on speaking terms. Fast. To do that, international business interests need to be tempered in the interests of national security and national security needs to be tempered in the interests of individual liberty.
My country 'tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty (and big business)
Of thee I sing
This slight modification to the lyrics of America by Samuel F. Smith ruins the rhyme and the tune, but achieves greater accuracy. The United States has thrived on the confluence of the two grand ideas of capitalism and individual liberty throughout its history. We cannot accurately speak of one without acknowledging the impact of the other.
I like to anthropomorphize these ideas, as it aids the memory and fosters understanding. Please allow me to introduce to you two American heroes, Orville Redenbacher and Robert Heinlein.
Orville Redenbacher was famous for passing on his key to success in business, "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." He set out to create the world's best popcorn by creating his own corn hybrid and ended up with the best selling popcorn brand in the U.S. Orville represents the power of focused greed, success by entrepreneurship and enterprising use of capitalist opportunities. Orville works the market.
Robert Heinlein was a disabled veteran of the U.S. Navy who became famous as a science fiction writer. He was a libertarian, a thoughtful man and one who believed in maximizing the growth of the individual. Heinlein is widely quoted on a range of topics, but the one I like to use to illustrate his core beliefs is this one:
- "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
What a difference! Orville counseled specialization and Robert vehemently denigrated it. Could these two ever learn to live together?
They did, of course. Even in the days leading up to the American Revolution, it was easy to find both forces at work. Jefferson, student of the enlightenment, promoted the concept of individual liberty, including religious tolerance. Businessman Washington, it is rumored, promoted military resistance to Britain partly to avoid financial ruin. The British were blocking the Westward expansion upon which he bet heavily.
The interplay between commerce and philosophy built America and made it fundamentally different from our English-speaking friends. Without America's abundant natural resources and the mercantile mindset we borrowed from the Dutch at New York, the American economy would surely have failed to achieve world dominance. Our drive toward liberty also played a crucial role. England was determined to suppress troublesome American colonists by restricting economic growth, including Westward expansion. Canadians and Australians remained primary industry producers for the crown while America industrialized, a factor as important for their late arrival to economic success as their relative lack of resources.
Clearly, America the pastoralist could not have driven the railroad West to the Pacific Ocean. Orville's friends drove the railroad to the sea while Robert's sought to make a better life for their children and themselves. The West was settled because it was in the best interest of both Orville and Robert to go there. There was no stopping our heroes when their interests were aligned.
World War II provided America an opportunity to demonstrate the power of this alliance to the world. American industrial might out-produced all other players, while American servicemen fought totalitarianism on all fronts. Dictators were brought low and America became a global power in a few short years, all because Orville and Robert were fighting on the same team.
Most of American history may be seen as an interplay of these ideas. Which dominated? Which was suppressed? They have played off of one another, sometimes complimentary, sometimes in conflict. And that brings me to globalization.
Globalization makes Orville happy, nay, ecstatic. He can find cheaper labor to produce his products. Even factoring in additional transportation costs result in savings that he can apply directly to the bottom line. What does Robert get from globalization? As far as I can tell, globalization just makes Robert nervous.
The political storm recently unleashed by the intended purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) by Dubai Ports World, a multinational corporation owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, highlights the differences between Orville and Robert. Orville can't think of a reason to say "no". Robert can and the answer is "security".
In other words, Robert was happy to put up with globalization because he thought it didn't concern him. Now he is becoming aware that it does. National strategic interests, such as the manufacturing capability necessary to maintain the world's strongest military (once dictated by law to require U.S.-based sourcing) and the control of the country's borders, are now recognized to be in jeopardy. They have been for some time, of course. Robert just didn't notice until recently.
Orville can justify the operation of U.S. ports by foreign terminal operators because it is good business. It does not make for good security. As George Orwell pointed out so neatly in 1984, today's political ally often becomes tomorrow's enemy. Globalized business dependencies simply last longer than political alliances.
Robert has noticed the way in which we treat China as a trading partner instead of the largest single threat to U.S. interests worldwide. China's rising oil consumption and its territorial aspirations, coupled with our reliance on its manufacturing infrastructure may make bin Laden's Al Qaeda look like the mosquito it is. The Soviet Union, in contrast, was defeated by a policy of isolation, not an intimate tying of economies.
Perhaps Orville can justify our Chinese dependence by looking at the European model. After all, the first step toward the European Union was the European Coal and Steel Community, a way to grow the economies of post-War France and Germany without allowing either country to use their economic might to start another war. Surely, globalization will have a similar effect on U.S.-China relations? Sadly that is just not so.
European states have committed themselves to an "ever closer union", and have consistently, if slowly, given up sovereignty to do so. The U.S. and China rely on a laissez faire nearly-free market approach which does nothing to bind the warfighting abilities of the other. To think otherwise is naive in the extreme.
America's dependence on foreign oil is causing a similar split. Orville will adjust to market conditions. Robert feels exposed.
Robert's followers often come from the political right. And left. So do Orville's. The forces of capitalism and liberty cross party lines. They swing voters in the middle. When aligned, they can create the most powerful political, industrial and military juggernaut in the world. When they are opposed, they can rip our Congress and our foreign policy in two.
The solution to our current problem is simple. Let's get Orville and Robert on speaking terms. Fast. To do that, international business interests need to be tempered in the interests of national security and national security needs to be tempered in the interests of individual liberty.
An Opportunity for Mischief
Hmm. I spent a bit of time today attempting to find the URL for Dubai Ports World, the UAE government-owned company attempting to buy P&O. It was a bit hard to find because of all the news stories relating to it. In looking, I stumbled across the fact that dubaiportsworld.com is available.
Is anyone reading this with fewer scrupples than I? Perhaps a former employee of The Onion?
The real URL for Dubai Ports World is http://www.dpiterminals.com/.
Is anyone reading this with fewer scrupples than I? Perhaps a former employee of The Onion?
The real URL for Dubai Ports World is http://www.dpiterminals.com/.
Bernadette is Fine
Bernadette's nose (reported broken in an earlier post) is healing nicely following visits to an ENT and her chiropractor. Thanks to all who expressed condolences!
Sunday, February 26, 2006
A Week with the Far Right
Last week was, umm, interesting. On the weekend, I went to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina to see a Marine friend who had just returned from a year in Iraq. Later in the week, I attended the monthly meeting of the Potomac Arms Collectors Association.
My friends are on both sides of the deep political divide that is early twenty-first century America. This particular week, I caught up with those on the far, far right. Christian, xenophobic, nationalist, steadfast, unwavering, gallant. Like us all, both good and bad, right and wrong.
Mark was my childhood friend. I have known him for (gasp!) 31 years. He joined the Marines when I joined the Navy and we even billeted together twice on the USS Blue Ridge during the formerly annual Team Spirit amphibious exercises off Korea. He stayed in Korea and works for the Army as a civil servant and serves in the Marine Reserves. I have taken my family to visit his in Korea and we get together whenever we can. He was called to active duty last year and went to Iraq as an advisor to an Iraqi battalion. Last weekend, he came back to the US to drop his combat gear before heading home to Seoul. I drove to Camp Lejeune to see him.
Mark had told me by email a week in advance that he thought he would arrive at Lejeune on a certain Friday at 3:30 PM. I know how the military works (slowly!), so I arrived in the area about 6:30 PM, checked into a hotel and waited. Mark called my cell phone at 1:30 AM, showed up by taxi at 2:00 AM and we talked for a couple of hours.
Mark was clearly processing a tremendous affront to his sensibilities. He shot no one and was not shot. Still, his vehicle (an aging Panhard armored car, not a HMMWV) was hit twice by improvised explosive devices and he spent some time sheltering from mortar fire. The thing that bothered him most, though, was the mortuary duty for his Marines and Iraqi colleagues.
He had to be on base and ready to go at 7, so we called it quits at 4 and I drive him back to his barracks. Camp Lejeune is big and I put 35 miles on my car getting there and back from a hotel that was only two miles outside the gate.
I slept in Sunday morning, knowing he would be working all day. Patience was the name of the game. There is no rushing a bureaucracy that size. I did some writing on a paper that day and just waited. He called at 4 PM to tell me he had a meeting at 5:00 and would call me when it was over. No problem. At 6:30 he knocked on the hotel room door. It was easier to get a cab than to wait in line for the only available pay phone.
That evening, we ate sushi ("bait" as Mark calls it) and then met some of his Marine buddies at SywanykS Scarlet and gold Traditions nightclub, owned by a retired Marine Sergeant Major with the unlikely name of Ihor Sywanyk. That place is both amazing and disgusting at the same time. SywanykS is a two-story bar with a dance floor, but every available piece of wall and ceiling is crammed with Marine (and some Navy) paraphernalia, including weaponry. Rifles, pistols, knives, uniforms, rank insignia, letters of historical significance, recruiting and movie posters and, naturally, flags. There were even crew-served weapons like a World War II 30-calibre machine gun and a couple of bazookas. Dates ranged from the earliest days of the Marines to the present, more than two centuries of military history. The disgusting part was the clientele. Not the Marines! The women.
There is a well understood corner of psychology which explains why wars and other lengthy military deployments foster infidelity. Most of the women in SywanykS were married (occasionally serially) to several Marines. The politically incorrect term has been, for millennia, "camp followers". I swear I recognized at least one from a bar in the Philippines twenty years ago. It certainly would not have been out of the question. In short, I had forgotten just how broken the marriage and social situation is in the service and the Marines of Camp Lejeune brought it home to me. I sat there and quietly drank my beer while Mark spoke with old friends, drank, danced a bit and generally reveled in being out of Iraq. He ate some meat which wasn't goat and basked in the normalcy of it all. We were, of course, up late.
Mark crashed in my hotel room, but was wide awake at 6 AM due to jet lag. He asked whether I wanted to get breakfast or sleep another 20 minutes :) I said I wanted to sleep, so he proceeded to talk to me until I hit the shower. I read some passages from Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom about Iraq and the Arabs. He agreed with Lawrence's sentiments and mentioned that Seven Pillars was recommended reading for all Marine officers headed for Iraq. Unfortunately, he hadn't found the time to read it. He regrets it now. It really is a timeless appraisal of the Middle East, in spite of its colonial tone and rough descriptions of its inhabitants (such as calling the Syrians an "apelike people", although Mark and his Marines used harsher language than that).
Naturally, conversation at breakfast turned to U.S. foreign policy in the region. I was against the war and still am. I grow more convinced on a daily basis that the invasion and, indeed, the policy of proactive regime change is contrary to the United States' strategic interests. Mark, of course, staunchly defended our need to be there. As I presented him not with my arguments, but with Lawrence's, I saw an interesting reaction. He recognized the fundamental truth of the matter, that the culture of the region (the dominant memes, in the language of this blog) ensured that the only two things could happen; a strong leader would arise or the country would break up in sectarian violence. Jeffersonian democracy, with its reliance on an informed public and the rule of law, would not take root in a country ruled by tribal allegiances. And yet, he dared not admit to himself that his sacrifice and the more complete sacrifices of his colleagues were destined to be in vain. He recognized, but dare not admit, that the U.S. is likely to leave Iraq one day to its own devices without the hope of leaving a stable, democratic ally in its place.
"But", Mark said, "they really are bad guys and we are killing them."
"Of course they are.", I replied, "You are still cleaning up the mess left from the invasion. Saddam opened his prisons. Al Qaeda and others came in. And now we are making more of them every day, with the occupation, the publication of prison abuses, and the failure to do anything with the Guantanamo detainees. Do you think you can kill them all? Do you think you can stamp out an idea with force?".
"If you think violence never solves anything, ask the Carthaginians." Mark quoted Robert Heinlein.
Ah, but Alexander the Great showed us how to win an empire without genocide, didn't he? We do not have the guts or the reason, really, to just kill them all. Still, it was interesting to hear that the concept had indeed been discussed by Marine officers. That, to me, is an indication that our more soft strategy is not being as effective as they would like. It is also, academically, a nice illustration of meme iteration; some things go out of fashion, but the root ideas stay around.
Mark left breakfast troubled, which is why I did not discuss this state of affairs with him before his return. Combat requires focus, not armchair quarterbacking, no matter how accurate.
Mark is slowly making his way home to Korea, with planned stops in Ohio and Kansas City. God Speed, my friend. You are my brother in arms, my brother in blood and I am with you always. I thank you for your sacrifice and wish I could have been there with you to carry out our country's so very flawed policies. I raise a glass to you when I wish to raise a sword and shout, "Follow me!"
The contradiction is not lost on me. I disagree with the war, but want to go. It is my calling, my first and perhaps only true profession. As recently as nine months ago, the Chief Medical Officer at Fort Lee issued a letter saying that I was too broken to return to service. If he hadn't, or if I could have found a way to get a waiver, I would be there now. Do I miss the loneliness, the privations, the work. the uniform, the mission? No. I miss the brotherhood and feel that there is where I belong. I am damned to a hell of my own creation for failing to live up to requirements of health which keep me here, providing for my family, in the comfort of my own home, raising my children and living with my wonderful wife. There are times when I hate the comfort I have acquired and count myself less of a man for having achieved it.
I try to ignore these feelings. If we are to learn to live together in peace, to fix our planet's ecological and economic ills, we can no longer afford to listen to the stirrings of our animal emotions.
Back in the Great State of Northern Virginia, I received an invitation to attend a monthly meeting of the Potomac Arms Collectors Association, to be held at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. My friend Chris proffered the invitation, a staunch Catholic, life member of the NRA, Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel and career civil servant at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. He was my roommate at the Virginia Military Institute. Chris collects and restores Springfield '03 rifles and is an avid shooter.
The gun club meeting was about as you'd expect. There was not a single member or guest who was anything other than a white male. Many routinely capped their sentences with an "Amen". About half were carrying a concealed, loaded pistol. The average age was old and the meeting paused several times for adjustments due to a member's lack of hearing, seeing or ability to hold water. That is not to say that there were no young members; in fact there were several. The young ones could shoot, but simply not yet afford the expensive toys.
The guest speaker was Martin K.A. Morgan, Director of Research for the New Orleans-based National D-Day Museum. He presented a fascinating (if esoteric) piece of research regarding the Medal of Honor winner Tony Stein. Stein's citation included the odd statement that he was, "armed with a personally improvised aircraft-type weapon". Morgan was intrigued and spent his time as a Hurricane Katrina evacuee in the National Archives attempting to discover what this weapon was. It turned out to be an ANM2 30-calibre machine gun, apparently "liberated" by the Marines from a downed Navy A-24 Dauntless aircraft. Stein's battalion had modified six of these things to provide extra firepower during the assault on Iwo Jima. Quite a story. The History Channel is apparently going to air his full story at the behest of Dr. Morgan sometime this year.
OK, so far, so good. Interesting research. A good story. Fat, old white men. Free food.
Then came show-n-tell ;)
Five tables had been arranged between speaker and audience. Upon them had been laid an assortment of weapons, mostly rifles, business end toward the speaker. Most dated from the World Wars and the fascination seemed to stem from their history. Weapons which had been used in combat, especially by themselves, their forebears or at least someone known to history were most highly prized.
There were Thompson machine guns, lots of Springfields and M1 Garands, variants from Russia, Finland, France, single-shot "get-a-guns" intended to be dropped to the French partisans, etc, etc, etc. Fifty people and more than that number of weapons.
Chris tells me that every collector was there for the feeling when they presented something which made another collector insanely jealous. I saw it happen once or twice. It wasn't pretty.
It really was like the show and tell session in an elementary school. These grown men would show off their wares. They would quote knowledge of a particular weapon's manufacturing, test and acceptance marks, serial numbers, known and suspected history. They would recount their efforts on e-bay to acquire missing parts. The one question which was always asked, sometimes in unbelieving tones, was "Have you shot it?"
The end of the meeting included a discussion of logistics for their upcoming gun show. There were tense questions regarding insurance and shocked expressions of pain when it became clear that not even dealers could carry concealed during the show. Ammunition could not be immediately accessible either, after a loaded .308 rifle was accidently discharged at a Fredericksburg gun show in January. Not unexpectedly, the opinion of the crowd was that the gun owner had been set up and falsely arrested.
Chris didn't want to go out to dinner or get a beer afterward. He needed his sleep. He was, after all, getting old.
My friends are on both sides of the deep political divide that is early twenty-first century America. This particular week, I caught up with those on the far, far right. Christian, xenophobic, nationalist, steadfast, unwavering, gallant. Like us all, both good and bad, right and wrong.
Mark was my childhood friend. I have known him for (gasp!) 31 years. He joined the Marines when I joined the Navy and we even billeted together twice on the USS Blue Ridge during the formerly annual Team Spirit amphibious exercises off Korea. He stayed in Korea and works for the Army as a civil servant and serves in the Marine Reserves. I have taken my family to visit his in Korea and we get together whenever we can. He was called to active duty last year and went to Iraq as an advisor to an Iraqi battalion. Last weekend, he came back to the US to drop his combat gear before heading home to Seoul. I drove to Camp Lejeune to see him.
Mark had told me by email a week in advance that he thought he would arrive at Lejeune on a certain Friday at 3:30 PM. I know how the military works (slowly!), so I arrived in the area about 6:30 PM, checked into a hotel and waited. Mark called my cell phone at 1:30 AM, showed up by taxi at 2:00 AM and we talked for a couple of hours.
Mark was clearly processing a tremendous affront to his sensibilities. He shot no one and was not shot. Still, his vehicle (an aging Panhard armored car, not a HMMWV) was hit twice by improvised explosive devices and he spent some time sheltering from mortar fire. The thing that bothered him most, though, was the mortuary duty for his Marines and Iraqi colleagues.
He had to be on base and ready to go at 7, so we called it quits at 4 and I drive him back to his barracks. Camp Lejeune is big and I put 35 miles on my car getting there and back from a hotel that was only two miles outside the gate.
I slept in Sunday morning, knowing he would be working all day. Patience was the name of the game. There is no rushing a bureaucracy that size. I did some writing on a paper that day and just waited. He called at 4 PM to tell me he had a meeting at 5:00 and would call me when it was over. No problem. At 6:30 he knocked on the hotel room door. It was easier to get a cab than to wait in line for the only available pay phone.
That evening, we ate sushi ("bait" as Mark calls it) and then met some of his Marine buddies at SywanykS Scarlet and gold Traditions nightclub, owned by a retired Marine Sergeant Major with the unlikely name of Ihor Sywanyk. That place is both amazing and disgusting at the same time. SywanykS is a two-story bar with a dance floor, but every available piece of wall and ceiling is crammed with Marine (and some Navy) paraphernalia, including weaponry. Rifles, pistols, knives, uniforms, rank insignia, letters of historical significance, recruiting and movie posters and, naturally, flags. There were even crew-served weapons like a World War II 30-calibre machine gun and a couple of bazookas. Dates ranged from the earliest days of the Marines to the present, more than two centuries of military history. The disgusting part was the clientele. Not the Marines! The women.
There is a well understood corner of psychology which explains why wars and other lengthy military deployments foster infidelity. Most of the women in SywanykS were married (occasionally serially) to several Marines. The politically incorrect term has been, for millennia, "camp followers". I swear I recognized at least one from a bar in the Philippines twenty years ago. It certainly would not have been out of the question. In short, I had forgotten just how broken the marriage and social situation is in the service and the Marines of Camp Lejeune brought it home to me. I sat there and quietly drank my beer while Mark spoke with old friends, drank, danced a bit and generally reveled in being out of Iraq. He ate some meat which wasn't goat and basked in the normalcy of it all. We were, of course, up late.
Mark crashed in my hotel room, but was wide awake at 6 AM due to jet lag. He asked whether I wanted to get breakfast or sleep another 20 minutes :) I said I wanted to sleep, so he proceeded to talk to me until I hit the shower. I read some passages from Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom about Iraq and the Arabs. He agreed with Lawrence's sentiments and mentioned that Seven Pillars was recommended reading for all Marine officers headed for Iraq. Unfortunately, he hadn't found the time to read it. He regrets it now. It really is a timeless appraisal of the Middle East, in spite of its colonial tone and rough descriptions of its inhabitants (such as calling the Syrians an "apelike people", although Mark and his Marines used harsher language than that).
Naturally, conversation at breakfast turned to U.S. foreign policy in the region. I was against the war and still am. I grow more convinced on a daily basis that the invasion and, indeed, the policy of proactive regime change is contrary to the United States' strategic interests. Mark, of course, staunchly defended our need to be there. As I presented him not with my arguments, but with Lawrence's, I saw an interesting reaction. He recognized the fundamental truth of the matter, that the culture of the region (the dominant memes, in the language of this blog) ensured that the only two things could happen; a strong leader would arise or the country would break up in sectarian violence. Jeffersonian democracy, with its reliance on an informed public and the rule of law, would not take root in a country ruled by tribal allegiances. And yet, he dared not admit to himself that his sacrifice and the more complete sacrifices of his colleagues were destined to be in vain. He recognized, but dare not admit, that the U.S. is likely to leave Iraq one day to its own devices without the hope of leaving a stable, democratic ally in its place.
"But", Mark said, "they really are bad guys and we are killing them."
"Of course they are.", I replied, "You are still cleaning up the mess left from the invasion. Saddam opened his prisons. Al Qaeda and others came in. And now we are making more of them every day, with the occupation, the publication of prison abuses, and the failure to do anything with the Guantanamo detainees. Do you think you can kill them all? Do you think you can stamp out an idea with force?".
"If you think violence never solves anything, ask the Carthaginians." Mark quoted Robert Heinlein.
Ah, but Alexander the Great showed us how to win an empire without genocide, didn't he? We do not have the guts or the reason, really, to just kill them all. Still, it was interesting to hear that the concept had indeed been discussed by Marine officers. That, to me, is an indication that our more soft strategy is not being as effective as they would like. It is also, academically, a nice illustration of meme iteration; some things go out of fashion, but the root ideas stay around.
Mark left breakfast troubled, which is why I did not discuss this state of affairs with him before his return. Combat requires focus, not armchair quarterbacking, no matter how accurate.
Mark is slowly making his way home to Korea, with planned stops in Ohio and Kansas City. God Speed, my friend. You are my brother in arms, my brother in blood and I am with you always. I thank you for your sacrifice and wish I could have been there with you to carry out our country's so very flawed policies. I raise a glass to you when I wish to raise a sword and shout, "Follow me!"
The contradiction is not lost on me. I disagree with the war, but want to go. It is my calling, my first and perhaps only true profession. As recently as nine months ago, the Chief Medical Officer at Fort Lee issued a letter saying that I was too broken to return to service. If he hadn't, or if I could have found a way to get a waiver, I would be there now. Do I miss the loneliness, the privations, the work. the uniform, the mission? No. I miss the brotherhood and feel that there is where I belong. I am damned to a hell of my own creation for failing to live up to requirements of health which keep me here, providing for my family, in the comfort of my own home, raising my children and living with my wonderful wife. There are times when I hate the comfort I have acquired and count myself less of a man for having achieved it.
I try to ignore these feelings. If we are to learn to live together in peace, to fix our planet's ecological and economic ills, we can no longer afford to listen to the stirrings of our animal emotions.
Back in the Great State of Northern Virginia, I received an invitation to attend a monthly meeting of the Potomac Arms Collectors Association, to be held at the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. My friend Chris proffered the invitation, a staunch Catholic, life member of the NRA, Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel and career civil servant at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. He was my roommate at the Virginia Military Institute. Chris collects and restores Springfield '03 rifles and is an avid shooter.
The gun club meeting was about as you'd expect. There was not a single member or guest who was anything other than a white male. Many routinely capped their sentences with an "Amen". About half were carrying a concealed, loaded pistol. The average age was old and the meeting paused several times for adjustments due to a member's lack of hearing, seeing or ability to hold water. That is not to say that there were no young members; in fact there were several. The young ones could shoot, but simply not yet afford the expensive toys.
The guest speaker was Martin K.A. Morgan, Director of Research for the New Orleans-based National D-Day Museum. He presented a fascinating (if esoteric) piece of research regarding the Medal of Honor winner Tony Stein. Stein's citation included the odd statement that he was, "armed with a personally improvised aircraft-type weapon". Morgan was intrigued and spent his time as a Hurricane Katrina evacuee in the National Archives attempting to discover what this weapon was. It turned out to be an ANM2 30-calibre machine gun, apparently "liberated" by the Marines from a downed Navy A-24 Dauntless aircraft. Stein's battalion had modified six of these things to provide extra firepower during the assault on Iwo Jima. Quite a story. The History Channel is apparently going to air his full story at the behest of Dr. Morgan sometime this year.
OK, so far, so good. Interesting research. A good story. Fat, old white men. Free food.
Then came show-n-tell ;)
Five tables had been arranged between speaker and audience. Upon them had been laid an assortment of weapons, mostly rifles, business end toward the speaker. Most dated from the World Wars and the fascination seemed to stem from their history. Weapons which had been used in combat, especially by themselves, their forebears or at least someone known to history were most highly prized.
There were Thompson machine guns, lots of Springfields and M1 Garands, variants from Russia, Finland, France, single-shot "get-a-guns" intended to be dropped to the French partisans, etc, etc, etc. Fifty people and more than that number of weapons.
Chris tells me that every collector was there for the feeling when they presented something which made another collector insanely jealous. I saw it happen once or twice. It wasn't pretty.
It really was like the show and tell session in an elementary school. These grown men would show off their wares. They would quote knowledge of a particular weapon's manufacturing, test and acceptance marks, serial numbers, known and suspected history. They would recount their efforts on e-bay to acquire missing parts. The one question which was always asked, sometimes in unbelieving tones, was "Have you shot it?"
The end of the meeting included a discussion of logistics for their upcoming gun show. There were tense questions regarding insurance and shocked expressions of pain when it became clear that not even dealers could carry concealed during the show. Ammunition could not be immediately accessible either, after a loaded .308 rifle was accidently discharged at a Fredericksburg gun show in January. Not unexpectedly, the opinion of the crowd was that the gun owner had been set up and falsely arrested.
Chris didn't want to go out to dinner or get a beer afterward. He needed his sleep. He was, after all, getting old.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Fighting Fate
In high school, I spent most of my time and energy on literature, history and comparative religion. I then studied engineering in college primarily to be forced to learn more math. Funny how people work, isn't it?
So, it was no surprise to be told that my personality suggests a different graduate degree. My friend Weeble discovered the same thing. It was probably that question about always arguing with the prof...
So, it was no surprise to be told that my personality suggests a different graduate degree. My friend Weeble discovered the same thing. It was probably that question about always arguing with the prof...
| You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy) |
 You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer. |
Friday, February 24, 2006
Lost Opportunity in the Philippines
Twenty years ago this week, I was a young naval officer visiting the Philippine capital city of Manila. I walked into a basket shop about ten miles from the port (and my ship), only to be chased out by a large street mob. The coup against dictator Ferdinand Marcos had begun.
Although Marcos was a key US ally, he was also a corrupt dictator. We did a lot of that in those days, and unfortunately still do when we find it convenient. I couldn't help but feel that his overthrow would usher in a more representative government for the Filipino people. Cory Aquino's People Power revolution unseated Marcos, but sadly, could not repair the nepotism and financial corruption embedded in Filipino culture.
This week, the Philippine government celebrated the twenty-year anniversary of the People Power revolution by stopping another coup.
I'm pretty sure the lesson is that it is easier to destroy than create (or to fix). History is clear that revolutions tend to be highjacked by alternate political interests as soon as they occur (e.g. the Russian Revolution of 1917). Even strong outside powers have failed to figure out the fine art of nation building. William Shawcross' book Deliver Us From Evil, which documents UN attempts to fix failed states, is excellent reading for anyone convinced otherwise. Too bad George Bush and Condy Rice didn't read it before destroying the governmental infrastructure of Iraq.
Although Marcos was a key US ally, he was also a corrupt dictator. We did a lot of that in those days, and unfortunately still do when we find it convenient. I couldn't help but feel that his overthrow would usher in a more representative government for the Filipino people. Cory Aquino's People Power revolution unseated Marcos, but sadly, could not repair the nepotism and financial corruption embedded in Filipino culture.
This week, the Philippine government celebrated the twenty-year anniversary of the People Power revolution by stopping another coup.
I'm pretty sure the lesson is that it is easier to destroy than create (or to fix). History is clear that revolutions tend to be highjacked by alternate political interests as soon as they occur (e.g. the Russian Revolution of 1917). Even strong outside powers have failed to figure out the fine art of nation building. William Shawcross' book Deliver Us From Evil, which documents UN attempts to fix failed states, is excellent reading for anyone convinced otherwise. Too bad George Bush and Condy Rice didn't read it before destroying the governmental infrastructure of Iraq.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Broken Nose and Bruised Ego
It was the strangest morning. We normally spend an hour doing Tae Kwon Do each Saturday morning and today was no exception. I didn't particularly want to go and neither did my eight-year-old son Aidan. Bernadette did and we went anyway. As is normal for a Saturday, we warmed up playing games during the family class, such as dodge ball. It makes a nice change from stretching, running and calisthenics.
About ten minutes into the games, Bernadette held Aidan in front of her to avoid getting hit. She was, of course, just playing. Aidan over-reacted and head-butted her. Hard. He did, in fact, break her nose. She heard it crack and bled nicely all over the mat.
Two hours in the Loudoun County Hospital were sufficient to determine that the break was present, minor and no significant deviation of the bone occurred. Unbelievably, he hit her far enough up on the bone that the septum does not appear to have deviated either. That means she is likely to recover without surgery. Whew!
Aidan feels horrible and Bernadette is doped up on Tylenol with Codine. *Sigh*. The family that plays together...
About ten minutes into the games, Bernadette held Aidan in front of her to avoid getting hit. She was, of course, just playing. Aidan over-reacted and head-butted her. Hard. He did, in fact, break her nose. She heard it crack and bled nicely all over the mat.
Two hours in the Loudoun County Hospital were sufficient to determine that the break was present, minor and no significant deviation of the bone occurred. Unbelievably, he hit her far enough up on the bone that the septum does not appear to have deviated either. That means she is likely to recover without surgery. Whew!
Aidan feels horrible and Bernadette is doped up on Tylenol with Codine. *Sigh*. The family that plays together...
Monday, February 06, 2006
The Principle of Least Power
The Principle of Least Power in relation to computer languges suggests that one should use the least powerful language capable of performing a given task. Advantages of doing this include higher liklihoods of data reusability and security. In short, you limit your exposure to the Law of Unknown Consequences, which states that any action causes consequences and some of those consequences cannot be predicted.
The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has recently decided to make The Principle of Least Power a "Draft TAG Finding", further embedding this idea into Web architecture.
The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) has recently decided to make The Principle of Least Power a "Draft TAG Finding", further embedding this idea into Web architecture.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Can Corporations Stop Doing Evil?
My family recently acquired a Tivo digital video recorder. Once we started time shifting, I naturally started to think about the impact on the business models of the broadcasters and advertisers. I realized that advertisers could adjust to the millions of time-shifters by using reasonably static images on a portion of their screen real estate. One could still be brand-imprinted, even while fast forwarding.
That isn't what they did.
It didn't take me long to realize that advertisers, almost certainly with assistance from broadcasters, now randomly interleave frames from a show into a the commercial video stream. This results in a user slowing to normal speed playback, thinking the show is back on. They end up watching a commercial. In other words, advertisers had a opportunity to adjust to a new technological environment simply and effectively, but choose an aggressive (and antagonistic) approach instead. It is no wonder we hear talk of certain corporations "hating their customers".
This is the month that Google decided to facilitate censorship in China. Google's corporate philosophy is still on the Web, and number 6, "You can make money without doing evil", is still there, too. Although much has been made of this by others, it is my opinion that Google executives came across a difficult problem: Make less money by appealing to philosophy or more money by appeasing China. More money won. Everything else is justification.
This is also the month that Northrop Grumman decided to seize control of the Open Source Kowari project, a move which will probably result in the project's death over time. Although this action was not in the league of Enron's massive malfeasance or the lack of acceptable governance which lead to the Exxon Valdez disaster, it came from the same root cause: Corporations, via their most effective employees, choose short-term profits over long-term concerns. That goes for the protection of their customer base, the environment, and even executive jail time.
Is it possible for a modern corporation to compete and still act ethically? In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I believe there is hope. What we need is a meme iteration.
Twentieth Century Europe has managed just such a meme iteration. T. R. Reid's excellent book The United States Of Europe documents the rise of the European Union from the ashes of the First and Second World Wars. Europeans, it seems, finally got so fed up with killing each other that they formed an intertwining economy so that the individual nations simply couldn't gear up for war. In other words, the very idea of continuing the millennia-old practice of warfare became untenable and had to be replaced.
Will the EU succeed? Or will history judge it to be a flash in the pan, a minor interruption in the violence? Perhaps it will end up in a non-creative stasis like Renaissance Switzerland:
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
-- Orson Wells: The Third Man
Japan's attempt to form a more perfect society during the Tokugawa era ended in just such a stasis, albeit an extremely refined one. The thing I find most fascinating about this period in history is that the Tokugawa shoguns did not attempt to eliminate aggressive tendencies in their society, but to channel them.
In which ways do we in the United States of America attempt to deal with the reality of human (especially male) aggression? Spectator sports? An over-active military? More people in prison than any other industrialized country?
I am no stranger to male aggression, but I do not choose to ignore it or pretend that it does not exist. I am a graduate of two military colleges, a certified U.S. Navy "warfare specialist" and a martial artist. I believe that I know something of mankind's inherent aggressive tendencies. My wife and I chose to enroll our son in martial arts at a young age specifically to channel those energies positively.
Aggressive and competitive tendencies assisted our ancestors to survive. That's why they are there. Effective channeling, not avoidance, seems necessary. We can do that with diversion ("Yay! The Steelers won! Woo hoo!") or direction (such as the very existence of the Special Forces and the CIA), but we had better not ignore it.
The same is true of corporate governance. Executives who want to play the game need to be provided diversion or direction to stop them from hurting innocents. There must also be limitations. That is why we have Open Source licenses and environmental regulations. Too bad legislation lags corporate actions so badly.
Can we find memes that enhance our ability to feed the planet, save other species, encourage happy, healthy people and get on with life without corporate evil? I hope so. We'll keep looking. Perhaps that is what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote of the "pursuit of happiness" being an "inalienable right".
That isn't what they did.
It didn't take me long to realize that advertisers, almost certainly with assistance from broadcasters, now randomly interleave frames from a show into a the commercial video stream. This results in a user slowing to normal speed playback, thinking the show is back on. They end up watching a commercial. In other words, advertisers had a opportunity to adjust to a new technological environment simply and effectively, but choose an aggressive (and antagonistic) approach instead. It is no wonder we hear talk of certain corporations "hating their customers".
This is the month that Google decided to facilitate censorship in China. Google's corporate philosophy is still on the Web, and number 6, "You can make money without doing evil", is still there, too. Although much has been made of this by others, it is my opinion that Google executives came across a difficult problem: Make less money by appealing to philosophy or more money by appeasing China. More money won. Everything else is justification.
This is also the month that Northrop Grumman decided to seize control of the Open Source Kowari project, a move which will probably result in the project's death over time. Although this action was not in the league of Enron's massive malfeasance or the lack of acceptable governance which lead to the Exxon Valdez disaster, it came from the same root cause: Corporations, via their most effective employees, choose short-term profits over long-term concerns. That goes for the protection of their customer base, the environment, and even executive jail time.
Is it possible for a modern corporation to compete and still act ethically? In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I believe there is hope. What we need is a meme iteration.
Twentieth Century Europe has managed just such a meme iteration. T. R. Reid's excellent book The United States Of Europe documents the rise of the European Union from the ashes of the First and Second World Wars. Europeans, it seems, finally got so fed up with killing each other that they formed an intertwining economy so that the individual nations simply couldn't gear up for war. In other words, the very idea of continuing the millennia-old practice of warfare became untenable and had to be replaced.
Will the EU succeed? Or will history judge it to be a flash in the pan, a minor interruption in the violence? Perhaps it will end up in a non-creative stasis like Renaissance Switzerland:
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
-- Orson Wells: The Third Man
Japan's attempt to form a more perfect society during the Tokugawa era ended in just such a stasis, albeit an extremely refined one. The thing I find most fascinating about this period in history is that the Tokugawa shoguns did not attempt to eliminate aggressive tendencies in their society, but to channel them.
In which ways do we in the United States of America attempt to deal with the reality of human (especially male) aggression? Spectator sports? An over-active military? More people in prison than any other industrialized country?
I am no stranger to male aggression, but I do not choose to ignore it or pretend that it does not exist. I am a graduate of two military colleges, a certified U.S. Navy "warfare specialist" and a martial artist. I believe that I know something of mankind's inherent aggressive tendencies. My wife and I chose to enroll our son in martial arts at a young age specifically to channel those energies positively.
Aggressive and competitive tendencies assisted our ancestors to survive. That's why they are there. Effective channeling, not avoidance, seems necessary. We can do that with diversion ("Yay! The Steelers won! Woo hoo!") or direction (such as the very existence of the Special Forces and the CIA), but we had better not ignore it.
The same is true of corporate governance. Executives who want to play the game need to be provided diversion or direction to stop them from hurting innocents. There must also be limitations. That is why we have Open Source licenses and environmental regulations. Too bad legislation lags corporate actions so badly.
Can we find memes that enhance our ability to feed the planet, save other species, encourage happy, healthy people and get on with life without corporate evil? I hope so. We'll keep looking. Perhaps that is what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote of the "pursuit of happiness" being an "inalienable right".
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Diving into Ruby
Brian introduced me to Ruby fully a year ago, but I only started to code something in it last month. My initial reaction has been very, very positive. The only problem I have had with anything in the Ruby or Rails environments related to the known-broken SaltedHashLoginGenerator, which I eventually decided to avoid for now.
Tonight I attended the first (some say second) meeting of NovaRUG. I was hesitate about attending another users group, especially after Bernadette noted that it was "so ninties" to do so. However, I was not at all hesitate about hearing what Rich Kilmer was up to. Brian calls him the more productive person he knows, and with good reason. Rich is the genius behind Ruby Gems and kindly hosts RubyForge.
Rich presented two Ruby applications. The first was a prototype mid-air refueling simulation for the U.S. Air Force via BBN. He (amazingly( pulled it off in 200 hours of coding, complete with a multi-layer Mercador-projection map by making use of his ActiveStep GUI API for Macromedia Flash. It was a stunning peice of discliplined, logical thought. The second app was the upcoming product from his company InfoEther, called Indi. Indi is a portable, PDA-like environment on a USB drive. It includes two executables, one each for Windows and Mac OS X. Running either will bootstrap a browser/Flash environment to run the Ruby application. Very cool. A Linux version will come out as soon as Macromedia allows Linux to support Flash 8 format.
I'm not going to announce my own Ruby app yet, just in case my impending move to Fredericksburg and trip to Australia get in the way of completion. However, rest assured that I will blog it, release it under an Open Source license and throw up a service to allow free use as soon as I have it in a pretty state.
Tonight I attended the first (some say second) meeting of NovaRUG. I was hesitate about attending another users group, especially after Bernadette noted that it was "so ninties" to do so. However, I was not at all hesitate about hearing what Rich Kilmer was up to. Brian calls him the more productive person he knows, and with good reason. Rich is the genius behind Ruby Gems and kindly hosts RubyForge.
Rich presented two Ruby applications. The first was a prototype mid-air refueling simulation for the U.S. Air Force via BBN. He (amazingly( pulled it off in 200 hours of coding, complete with a multi-layer Mercador-projection map by making use of his ActiveStep GUI API for Macromedia Flash. It was a stunning peice of discliplined, logical thought. The second app was the upcoming product from his company InfoEther, called Indi. Indi is a portable, PDA-like environment on a USB drive. It includes two executables, one each for Windows and Mac OS X. Running either will bootstrap a browser/Flash environment to run the Ruby application. Very cool. A Linux version will come out as soon as Macromedia allows Linux to support Flash 8 format.
I'm not going to announce my own Ruby app yet, just in case my impending move to Fredericksburg and trip to Australia get in the way of completion. However, rest assured that I will blog it, release it under an Open Source license and throw up a service to allow free use as soon as I have it in a pretty state.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Policy Aware Web Meeting, Day 2
Day two of the Policy Aware Web face-to-face meeting ended up about as I expected. Over the last year, we have been able to show that policies and logical proofs can effectively be used to control access to Web resources between two parties. This year, we are moving on to the more interesting three- and four-party scenarios.
In short, we want to allow a policy to allow very non-technical Web users to be given access where their relationship to the content is proven by a logical proof constructed of elements from other, more technical, sites. We have to allow everyone's grandmother to play.
I'll have the new use case up shortly, but for now it is given in the meeting notes.
Tim Berners-Lee showed off his Tabulator at the PAW meeting, proving once again that he is not only smarter than the rest of us, he is also more productive. The Tabulator is very, very cool. It is a 100% javascript application to navigate and display Web-based RDF content to the point where it grounds in the traditional Web. It also allows searches within multiple identified RDF sources. Tim's vision of the Semantic Web is simply more clear than mine and it continues to impress me.
In short, we want to allow a policy to allow very non-technical Web users to be given access where their relationship to the content is proven by a logical proof constructed of elements from other, more technical, sites. We have to allow everyone's grandmother to play.
I'll have the new use case up shortly, but for now it is given in the meeting notes.
Tim Berners-Lee showed off his Tabulator at the PAW meeting, proving once again that he is not only smarter than the rest of us, he is also more productive. The Tabulator is very, very cool. It is a 100% javascript application to navigate and display Web-based RDF content to the point where it grounds in the traditional Web. It also allows searches within multiple identified RDF sources. Tim's vision of the Semantic Web is simply more clear than mine and it continues to impress me.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Policy Aware Web Face-to-Face Meeting
Today was the first day of the semi-annual Policy Aware Web project face-to-face meeting.
Open ID still likely to be used for the demo code, although discussion continues. FOAF secrets are also still a candidate. It is a primary goal to ensure the final architecture, which is not yet complete, be agnostic to authentication mechanisms.
We are playing with a new use case, to extend the ones already listed on the PAW use cases page. The new use case is an extension of the photo sharing idea, where a family member of a conference attendee wishes to see a photo and the policy allows it. That will be fun to implement and will be the first time we are trying a use case with four actors.
For the first time, we used SubEthaEdit to take minutes instead of #PAW on IRC. This was because only one person showed up with a PC; everyone else had a Mac Powerbook. SubEthaEdit allowed seven or eight of us to edit the same document to create meeting minutes that we all agreed to.
Open ID still likely to be used for the demo code, although discussion continues. FOAF secrets are also still a candidate. It is a primary goal to ensure the final architecture, which is not yet complete, be agnostic to authentication mechanisms.
We are playing with a new use case, to extend the ones already listed on the PAW use cases page. The new use case is an extension of the photo sharing idea, where a family member of a conference attendee wishes to see a photo and the policy allows it. That will be fun to implement and will be the first time we are trying a use case with four actors.
For the first time, we used SubEthaEdit to take minutes instead of #PAW on IRC. This was because only one person showed up with a PC; everyone else had a Mac Powerbook. SubEthaEdit allowed seven or eight of us to edit the same document to create meeting minutes that we all agreed to.
Firefox's Ping Considered Harmful
The Firefox browser has implemented a ping attribute on HTML anchors and areas. The idea is to notify a different URL when the link is clicked and is meant for Web usage tracking. The justification is that since link trackers are doing this anyway with Javascript hacks, why not make it cleaner?
I am surprised that the Mozilla team would encode this in an HTML change. I thought they would prefer to fight this sort of privacy invasion instead of encoding it in an Open Source project. So much for Open Source being equivalent to Open Society.
I am surprised that the Mozilla team would encode this in an HTML change. I thought they would prefer to fight this sort of privacy invasion instead of encoding it in an Open Source project. So much for Open Source being equivalent to Open Society.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Fixing Agriculture
Jared Diamond has called the invention of agriculture, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race". His point is that is was bad for the nutrition of individuals, lead to cities and therefore large-scale conflict and is unquestionably bad for the planet.
There may be a solution. Enter Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute.
Jackson has famously said, "If we don’t get sustainability in agriculture first, sustainability will not happen." And he is doing something about it. His big idea is remarkably simple: Bio-engineer crops which are perennial underground, but act like harvestable, annuals above ground. We would get food without a continual depletion of soil nutrients. Cool!
There may be a solution. Enter Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute.
Jackson has famously said, "If we don’t get sustainability in agriculture first, sustainability will not happen." And he is doing something about it. His big idea is remarkably simple: Bio-engineer crops which are perennial underground, but act like harvestable, annuals above ground. We would get food without a continual depletion of soil nutrients. Cool!
The Green Flash is Real and I've Seen It
A common topic of discussion among blue-water sailors is whether one has seen the illusive "green flash". Invariably, most don't believe it happens, some believe and maybe one in a couple hundred have actually seen it. I fall into the last category. I have been fortunate enough to see it three times, twice in the Western Pacific and once about 200 nautical miles North of Hawai'i.
When the sun is just below the horizon, some rays are refracted by the atmosphere and are thus visible. That causes twilight. If the conditions are just right, the atmosphere may act as a prism and split the light into its component wavelengths as it passes your position. Just for a fraction of a second, one may see the flash of green (or even violet or blue, which makes sense theoretically, although the green is easiest to see).
The phenonenon is rare because the atmosphere is rarely clear enough, and people rarely observe the sun at just the right time. I know navigators who have observed sunsets hundreds of days at sea and missed it every time.
The beautiful image below was captured by a Finish photographer in 1992. I found it via Google, posted as a Goddard Spaceflight Center Astronomy Image of the Day.
When the sun is just below the horizon, some rays are refracted by the atmosphere and are thus visible. That causes twilight. If the conditions are just right, the atmosphere may act as a prism and split the light into its component wavelengths as it passes your position. Just for a fraction of a second, one may see the flash of green (or even violet or blue, which makes sense theoretically, although the green is easiest to see).
The phenonenon is rare because the atmosphere is rarely clear enough, and people rarely observe the sun at just the right time. I know navigators who have observed sunsets hundreds of days at sea and missed it every time.
The beautiful image below was captured by a Finish photographer in 1992. I found it via Google, posted as a Goddard Spaceflight Center Astronomy Image of the Day.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Northrop Grumman's Position on Kowari
After some consideration, I have decided to publish the letter from Northrop Grumman senior counsel Michael Wallach. I interpreted that letter as threatening, in spite of its polite tone. It was clear upon a careful reading that Northrop Grumman did not intend to comply with the terms of the MPL.
My response to Mr. Wallach attempted to address the factual errors made in his letter, especially as related to Northrop's directions to me as a consultant and their misapplication of the MPL.
Hopefully, this will help answer some of the questions about Northrop Grumman's intentions toward Kowari.
I separately wrote a response to Brian Ippolito, Northrop Grumman's director of the Tucana project. In that letter, I expressed my concerns about their gratuitous use of lawyers and announced my resignation from the Kowari project.
It is my opinion that Northrop Grumman does understand the MPL as it relates to Kowari, they simply don't like it. I personally briefed Mr. Ippolito on the MPL in November 2005 and he asked detailed questions.
My response to Mr. Wallach attempted to address the factual errors made in his letter, especially as related to Northrop's directions to me as a consultant and their misapplication of the MPL.
Hopefully, this will help answer some of the questions about Northrop Grumman's intentions toward Kowari.
I separately wrote a response to Brian Ippolito, Northrop Grumman's director of the Tucana project. In that letter, I expressed my concerns about their gratuitous use of lawyers and announced my resignation from the Kowari project.
It is my opinion that Northrop Grumman does understand the MPL as it relates to Kowari, they simply don't like it. I personally briefed Mr. Ippolito on the MPL in November 2005 and he asked detailed questions.
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