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More 'inappropriate' humor
Posted Saturday, June 15, 2002 at 03:10 PM, and last edited Saturday, June 15, 2002 at 03:05 PM
Itamar Shtull-Trauring pointed out a funny piece on Mafia bosses frustrated with the Israeli illegal gambling scene:
"So we go to speak with these kosher guys, and they practically tell us we're idiots. Well, Fingers and I didn't particularly care for that kind of attitude, so we said we were there to offer protection. In exchange for a simple twenty percent off the top - a reasonable figure if you ask me - Fingers and I would prevent anything untoward happening to the casino location. Well... That didn't work out so well."
Yet Another Personality Test
Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2002 at 09:23 AM, and last edited Wednesday, November 19, 2003 at 01:45 PM
| SimilarMinds.com Compatibility Test |
Your match with Eric S. Raymond you are 98% similar you are 97% complementary |
Gaming the system
Posted Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:14 PM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:16 PM
Apparently, Enron's executives weren't as cunning as we've all been assuming. According to new documents, they bought the strategies they used to manipulate the energy market from Perot Systems, the company that had built California's energy trading infrastructure in the first place:
"California lawmakers said they were stunned by the 44-page presentation, a series of computer graphics that provided a primer on the state's deregulated electricity market and then illustrated ways to exploit it to raise power prices."
Hmm. How desperate to make a sale does a person have to be before they decide to deliberately sabotage the infrastructure we all depend on? But there was another little tidbit that I found more interesting:
"In a statement, the Plano, Texas-based firm said it had not provided any confidential information to Reliant or anyone else and had in fact "actively alerted" two energy-market oversight bodies about "defects in market rules" already adopted by the state."
I see parallels here between this 'alert' being ignored and the typical behaviour of software vendors when given a report on a security problem. If Perot Systems had said that it was going to publicly disclose the problems it had discovered after a set grace period, you can bet that those problems would have been fixed, rather than giving an insider an opportunity to exploit them. Every day, more of our infrastructure is susceptible to 'bugs' of this sort. As with software security, the only long-term solution is full disclosure.
[Via Vicki Rosenzweig], [Via Teresa Nielsen Hayden]
How shall I offend thee, let me count the ways.
Posted Wednesday, June 05, 2002 at 09:42 PM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 01:05 PM
Hmm. John Robb, COO at Userland, just posted an interesting little rant:
"Warbloggers are just weenies. These guys didn't spend time in the military or in situations that put them up against terrrorists. Do you think this war occured overnight? No. This has been a running battle for twenty years. Only now did it reach popular focus,. Unforutnately, especially for those of us that fought this war, these weenies are popping up out of woodwork claiming some testosterone laced powers. Go away you softies and work out your issues at a Star Wars convention."
I have this wierd feeling that I'm supposed to be offended by this, but I'm not sure why. Am I a Warblogger? I was certainly linked-to by many who identify themselves as such, particularly when I was still in Israel, but the label doesn't seem to fit.
I certainly did spend time in the military, the Israeli military, although I was only a non-com supply officer. So maybe I qualify as a weenie anyway. Except Israeli non-com supply officers have to routinely do things like ride shotgun on gasoline tankers driving over the Lebanese border to resupply units in the field, and have their share of gunfire and molotov cocktails directed at them in the Gaza strip. So I don't know, Israeli weenies are pretty tough by American standards.
Finally, there is that crack about the Star Wars convention. Hmm. That hits closer to home. Of course, as a die hard science fiction fan, you wouldn't catch me dead at a media convention, but I suspect that John is tarring all of us 'softies' who read and watch (and in some cases write) that Buck Rogers stuff with the same brush.
And I guess I am offended at having my hobby being used as an insult to put down another group of people.
Update: Sean Gallagher emailed to let me know that John took the posting down. According to blogdex, only two other weblogs had ever linked to it, Time's Shadow and Scripting News. The comments from John's site are still available, though.
Car bomb at Armageddon (Har Megiddo)
Posted Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 11:02 PM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:40 PM
A car bomb at Megiddo junction destroyed a bus today, killing at least 12 people, and wounding at least 30 more.
The bus had been destined for Tiberias,and many soldiers were believed to be on board. An hour after the attack, the bus was still burning.
CNN, Ha'aretz, and the Jerusalem Post have the story.
The Israeli security cabinet is being convened by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss Israel's response to this latest attack. Sharon may delay his upcoming visit to the US, which was to discuss the security situation along Israel's northern border.
Blog Con 2002
Posted Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 02:32 PM, and last edited Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 02:38 PM
Blog Con is going to be an F2F (Face to Face) meeting of webloggers in Las Vegas in late August. Since I live here, I plan to go.
I've been aware of this event for a while, but hadn't started my own weblog at the time.
Blogdex Neighborhood
Posted Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 02:05 PM, and last edited Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 07:19 PM
Mark also points out DJ Adams' blogdex social network explorerer.
Here is my blogdex neighborhood. It's different from the result I get from Mark's blogrollfinder, probably because the blogrollfinder script uses Google's What's Related for the first level of exploration and then proceeds to analyze the blogroll links, whereas the blogdex explorer uses blogdex exclusively, which indexes all links on a weblog. Interesting that Google's and blogdex's information comes from the same original source, namely links in web pages, yet their results are so different.
Each list is telling me something qualitatively different about my weblog, but that quality is hard to define. Mark's focuses on permanent blogroll links and ignores transient conversational links (though I'm not sure what effect using Google at the beginning has), while blogdex gives permanent and transient links equal weight, but ignores sites that aren't a weblog. Neither of these approaches is 'better' just yet, because we still haven't figured out how to measure their utility as recommendation or navigation services.
Neighborhood watch
Posted Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 08:40 AM, and last edited Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 08:37 AM
Mark Pilgrim's cool new webservice figures out who's in your 'neighborhood' by first asking Google what your related sites are, scanning those sites for blogrolls, and then aggregating the results.
Here's my neighborhood. Mostly warblogs, of course, since most people linked to me while I was blogging the suicide bombings in Israel.
Category auto-discovery
Posted Sunday, June 02, 2002 at 11:32 AM, and last edited Tuesday, June 04, 2002 at 04:59 PM
Mark Pilgrim's evangalization of RSS auto discovery has yielded results as the blogging community has taken the idea and run with it.
I've added the necessary code to my weblog template, so the bookmarklets and news aggregators can find the RSS representation of my weblog more easily. Note that this is complementary to the coffee-cup and XML buttons that are in the left margin.
It seems to me that there are additional uses for the link tag in a weblogging context. For example, you can use it to point to category pages like so:
<link rel="Section" type="text/html" title="Category" href="https://yoursite.com/categories/Category/" />
You would have one <link> element for each category in your main page template, and the category page could then in turn point towards it's own RSS representation (in addition to the your main page pointing to your main RSS feed). This would allow aggregators to automatically discover weblog categories, and even create meta-category feeds from the weblogs that you read, if their category labels match.
Anyone else think this is a good idea?
Continuing the thought: Mark Pilgrim's Blogroll Finder could be used to find topics you should be interested in by aggregating the categories from the weblogs it reccomends.
Zope for cookie sites
Posted Saturday, June 01, 2002 at 05:24 PM, and last edited Saturday, June 01, 2002 at 11:11 PM
I just spotted an article on using Zope with Apache:
"If, on the other hand, you're merely putting up Grandma's chocolate chip cookies on the Web, you're going to find Zope way too complex for your relatively-simpler needs."
That quote struck me as funny, since a friend of mine has built a cookie website using Zope. Remember, Zope makes everything better!
Fighting gravity with levity
Posted Saturday, May 25, 2002 at 11:25 AM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:42 PM
The situation in Israel (and the middle east as a whole) is very serious. But I find that one of the ways I fight back against letting myself be overcome by depression in the face of overwhelming evil is with humor.
Puns and double-entendres are a favorite of mine. After I came back form Israel, I answered questions of "How was your trip?" with "I had a blast!".
I've also found a few very funny things on the web, like the Midwest Peace Talks:
"For too long, we have placated these belligerent foreigners, offering them reduced admissions to our waterparks and 'kids stay free' deals at our hotels. From this day forward, the state of Illinois will not negotiate with tourists."
And this gem of tastelessness, on the Zombie-Teenager Peace Process:
Other news outlets were more even in their coverage of the latest events. The New York Times criticized the Zombies for "their ill-advised eating of teenagers," but also criticize the teenagers for "their equally ill-advised efforts to stop the Zombies from eating teenagers."
Is it inappropriate to make fun of situations that are so dire? Hell no. Humor is one of the things that makes us human, and I for one am not willing to relinquish my humanity to inhuman terrorists.
The Mel Brooks solution
Posted Friday, May 24, 2002 at 07:39 PM, and last edited Saturday, May 25, 2002 at 11:46 AM
After we watched 'Blazing Saddles' last Sunday at his house, a friend was inspired by the movie and Meryl Yourish's The Stan Lee Solution, to post to his weblog the 'Mel Brooks Solution' to the War on America:
"Mongo ride out to bin Laden hideout on trusty water buffalo! Mongo pound Osama! Mongo pound on al-Qaeda til' al-Qaeda black 'n blue! Why Mongo do this? Mongo don't know. Mongo only pawn in game of life."
I would now like to propose the Mel Brooks Solution to the MPAA's terrorist attack on the technology industry:
The Problem: The MPAA, under the leadership of Jack Valenti, are waging a terrorist war against this country's most important industry (the computer technology industry). They wish to subvert the free and open discourse that has made this country great and which is so critical to the nation's security and economic pre-eminence. They propose to veto the technologies that are developed and the products that are brought to market. Any conduct that is not pre-approved and pre-authorized by Hollywood, is to be criminalized.
The Solution: "Mongo leave Western movie set, find Jack Valenti (he very bad man!). Mongo pound on Valenti until he broke up into itty-bitty pieces! Then Mongo pound on pieces some more! Why Mongo do this? Mongo don't know. Mongo only pawn in game of life."
Must.. Not... Ruin... Surprise...
Posted Monday, May 20, 2002 at 04:16 PM, and last edited Monday, May 20, 2002 at 04:08 PM
This past weekend Roxanne (my significant other), and I decided to go to see Spider-Man instead of Star-Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. The movie was great, a very good interpretation of the comic-book. I did have a few quibbles, but hey, the director did a good job.
Anyway, a day later (while we discussing when we would go see AotC) Roxanne was saying that there was something she hadn't understood about Episode One. "Ask away." says I.
"Where's Darth Vader?" she asks.
I was dumbfounded. I wouldn't have thought that anyone in North America between the ages of 29 and 50 could have avoided knowing the answer to this question.
It turns out she's never seen episodes four through six all the way through, just bits and pieces on TV and while working around kids who were watching the movies (she's a school nurse).
The really incredible thing is that she hadn't ever asked this question since seeing Episode I and had someone blurt out the answer to her. We'll go see Episode II soon, and then see about organizing a Star-Wars movie night for us and a bunch of our friends.
Until then, I'm swearing our friends to secrecy.
Attack in Netanya Market
Posted Sunday, May 19, 2002 at 02:26 PM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:37 PM
There has been another attack in Netanya, this time in the open-air market, or souk (pronounced 'shook').
Three people were killed and at least 56 people are injured.
More coverage at Ha'aretz, and The Jerusalem Post.
I called my mom in Israel as soon as I heard about this this morning, everybody in my family is fine. I didn't really expect anything different, since none of them use that market anymore.
I do have some memories of going there with my grandmother as a kid, but never liked the place. Nothing will put a kid off seafood quite like an open-air fishmonger.
'Web Services' a misnomer
Posted Friday, May 17, 2002 at 02:16 PM, and last edited Friday, May 17, 2002 at 02:08 PM
I've never liked the term 'web-services' when applied to technologies like XML-RPC and SOAP.
First of all, services offered over the web don't necessarily use any of these technologies. Here's an example: WimpyPoint, created by Phillip Greenspun, is obviously a free service for creating and viewing presentations over the web. It has a simple HTML based interface, and you interact with this service through a web browser. To me, this is an example of what comes to mind as a 'web-service', even though it is not accessible through XML-RPC, SOAP, or REST.
Colin Faulkingham has recently created MetaPresentation, which he describes as a web-service. However, there is no great functional difference between MetaPresentation and WimpyPoint. What is different is that MetaPresentation exposes it's functionality via XML-RPC, making it programatically accessible to other applications. In other words, it's exposing an API.
Second, not all software that exposes an API via XML-RPC, SOAP, or REST is necessarily a service. Developers are using these technologies to expose functionality between desktop applications as well.
Third, the term 'web-services' plays into the hands of the BigCos. A 'service' is something you expect to pay money for. Large established service-oriented brands have a big advantage when competing for mindshare in this arena, even though an API is something that any developer can add to their software where they expect other software to be able to access it programatically.
For all these reasons, I prefer the term 'Web-APIs' over 'Web-services'.
Free agency vs. wage slavery
Posted Wednesday, May 15, 2002 at 11:43 AM, and last edited Friday, May 17, 2002 at 05:42 PM
Shane McChesney: "I'm not disparaging people with jobs, hell no. I *am* disparaging the idea that a job is a safe thing. Many of my friends and peers have discovered that the hard way over the past few years. Some of them just in the past few weeks."
BTW, I'm the guy that got "bumped down to contractor status" that Shane mentions.
For myself, I don't have any illusions about a full time job representing security, and haven't had any such illusions for a very long time. The two main reasons I've sought full time employment in the past have been predictability and specialization.
Predictability, as opposed to security, is simply the fact that while I'm receiving a regular paycheck I know how much I'm going to have in my bank account at any particular time. I know how much I can spend, and how much I can save. It's just one damn thing less that I need to think about, so I can concentrate on things that are, to me, more important.
I've tried the independent contractor route before. For a computer geek, I'm fairly well rounded. Besides coding, I know design, marketing, and writing, but nobody can be good at everything. My weak spot is sales. I'm just not a very good salesman. More specifically, I am a terrible closer, and if you can't close the sale, you are going to struggle as an independent contractor, no matter what other skills and experience you're bringing to the table. As someone else's employee, I can specialize, and concentrate on the work that I do well, leaving the salesmanship to other people.
However, perhaps I've grown enough as a people-person in the past five years to give freelancing another shot. I've co-authored the Zope Bible, I'm more experienced, and I now have a broader social network, partly due to this weblog. It's now far more feasible than it was in the past for me to rely on others to make and close sales while remaining an independent contractor.
In any case, assuming that everyone who prefers to be an employees does so due to risk-aversion and a misplaced sense of security is clearly an oversimplification.
Being sick sucks
Posted Saturday, April 27, 2002 at 10:32 AM, and last edited Saturday, April 27, 2002 at 10:32 AM
Ok, I suppose I owe you folks (my loyal readers) an explanation for the brief hiatus here on my weblog.
Basically, about two weeks ago I was pretty sick with a sore throat and a high fever. While the fever and sore throat passed, I've felt run down ever since with little to no appetite, and have lost about ten pounds. It's weight I could stand to lose, but as I wasn't trying to lose weight, it is still a little disconcerting.
I still forced myself to post a few things to the weblog, but then real life caught up with me, and between work pressure, a family situation, the home owners association, and being sick, something had to give. So I took a short break from the weblog.
I'm back now, and will be posting regularly again.
Amazon XML API
Posted Wednesday, April 17, 2002 at 03:44 PM, and last edited Friday, June 07, 2002 at 09:43 PM
I just got an Amazon Associates email that announces a new XML based API for Amazon's database:
"New XML Platform For Developers
At Amazon.com, we are passionate about driving continuous innovation that
serves our customers in the best way possible. We know you share this
passion, and now we're providing an even easier way to optimize your
Amazon.com placements. By putting Amazon.com XML directly into your hands,
you'll now have the flexibility to display dynamic product information in
any way you choose."
https://associates.amazon.com/exec/panama/associates/tg/browse/-/567812/ [Associates login required].
The data is only supposed to be used for building Associate stores, you can only query a single product line (books, music, DVDs, etc) at a time and the API is limited to returning 15 results per query. All in all, it looks it looks like a very interesting beginning, but limited in it's utility.
There is also a Developer discussion board, and there is already a Perl client library, and an implementation for Radio Userland.
Bah. The single most important piece of info about an item, it's sales rank, is not included in the results. Instead, the 'ranking' data only reflects the sorting order of the query results.
Update: Dave Winer is refusing to help promote Amazon's API. The reasons he gives are good ones, but I'm a little more concerned that there is no opportunity here to use the data for anything other than creating a storefront. Amazon has a lot of interesting data, so a patent encumbrance on the means to access that data is a little less important than the licensing encumbrance on the data itself. Interop can always be achieved by adding another layer (annoying as that can be). After all, Dave created an XML-RPC gateway to the Google API without too much trouble.
Damon Knight 1922 - 2002
Posted Monday, April 15, 2002 at 05:35 PM, and last edited Monday, April 15, 2002 at 07:34 PM
Damon Knight, author of science fiction classics like Hell's Pavement and "To Serve Man," has died.
"He was the first reviewer to subject science fiction to the standards of ambitious mainstream fiction; his collection of essays and reviews, In Search of Wonder, is the founding document of modern SF criticism."
" he (co)founded the Milford series of writing workshops, which led to the creation of the Clarion SF and Fantasy Writers' Workshop, at which he and his wife Kate Wilhelm taught for decades -- helping to raise generation after generation of some of the field's best writers"
"Damon was annoying, brilliant, lyrical, irascible, funny, patient, generous, and one of the people who created the modern science fiction world. In the great cosmic index of Homeric epithets, his is one word: 'Teacher.'"
[Hat tip to Alex Borders]
Update: Patrick Nielsen Hayden wrote the quoted text. Cory Doctorow has a couple of postings, too.
Copyright © 2001 - 2002 Michael Bernstein
