We’re about to depart on a typically complicated trip. This one involves flying to Seattle for the weekend, then going down to Silicon Valley for a couple of days (work – for me, anyway); then down the coast to Carmel Valley for Thanksgiving, and home via San Jose. And, mirabile dictu, all of the flights are non-stop.
Author: geoff
Travel plans (slightly updated)
In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading back to my birthplace for a Jini Community meeting. It should be a lot of fun….
Nit-pickers will notice that although the graphic shows West End tube stations, the the earlier, misleading graphic has been updated. The original version is still to be found on Jini.org. Graphics notwithstanding, Jini Community Meeting itself will be at The Brewery in the City of London, near Moorgate and the Barbican.
Humpty-Dumpty on IT
Herewith a collection of the most ill-defined terms in the computer business today. I’ve chosen them because in the last few months I’ve encountered at least two WILDLY incompatible uses of each one of them – often many more!
- policy
- virtualization
- agent
- edge
- web service
- solution
- service
- architecture
- SOA
Anyone like to suggest a few more? I’ll roll them into the top-level blog item as updates. By the way, I’m not suggesting that we stop using these terms, but I would like to see more judicious qualification and less universalization…
Blogger code
Apparently my blogger code is B5 d+ t+ k+ s u- f+ i+ o x- e l c–. Is this the MBTI of the new millennium?
Philosophical zombies
This page on David Chalmers’ web site is way too much fun. Not content with giving us a taxonomy of zombies (including Hollywood zombies and Unix processes), he delves into cocktails, cartoons, and 1960s pop music. Of course the core of the page is the collection of links to papers on philosophical zombies: devices which seem to have become part of the standard toolkit of certain philosophers of mind. Nigel Thomas’s elegant Zombie Killer ought to have sent them all packing, but unfortunately these impossible (but arguably conceivable) undead critters just won’t stay down….
The Urban Archipelago
Here‘s a powerful thesis about red America and blue America. It isn’t about the north vs. the south. It isn’t about slave states vs. free states. It isn’t (primarily) about religion, or guns, or gay marriage. It’s about cities: an archipelago of blue cities in a sea of red suburbs and rural areas. It’s about the Urban Archipelago. Worth reading.
(Via Sully, who also has a link to this really cool graphic.)
It's too early in the season for this kind of thing
We’re not yet half way through November, but winter can’t wait. The picture is from a traffic webcam about a mile from where I live in Brookline, MA. According to the NWS, Boston got 4 inches and Milton got 6.8 inches; we’re half-way between those points, so figure about 5+ inches. That’s what it felt like as I lugged the trash to the curbside.
Armistice
Terry wrote: “”On the 11th hour, of the 11th day of the year 1918 all fighting shall cease on the Western Front”
And so came the Armistice. The peace of the world was to follow. It had been a war, to end all wars.
But it wasn’t.”
(From Better Than Salt Money.)
Good grief
File under “nobody would believe you if you made it up”: Oslo Girl: “I saw on TV2 news last night that there was a march in the center of Oslo yesterday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Jews, apparently, were forbidden to participate. Technically, they could join the demonstration as long as they refrained from showing any Jewish symbols, like the Star of David. The rule was enforced in order to “avoid any conflicts.””
(Via Heretic’s Almanac. And Sully has also got it now.)
UPDATE/CORRECTION (from Sully’s Letters page): “There were Jews present in the demonstration. The arrangers, SOS Rasisme, makes it very clear that not only will they never exclude Jews from their activities, but they have always invited Jewish organisations to participate.
SOS Rasisme had specifically asked participants to refrain from displays of partisanship for either side in the Middle East conflict and unite behind the common message of the demonstration. This was their decision, not one of the authorities.
The “Jews and their friends” who tried to hijack the demonstration were in large part right-wing extremists, among them members of Forum Mot Islamisering (Forum Against Islamisation, FOMI), an organisation with neo-nazi roots. Along with them were at least one Jew, Erez Uriely, from a pro-Israel organisation called Norsk Israelsenter (Norwegian Israel Center, NIS). His choice of racist and right-wing extremist companions enraged Oslo’s Jewish community and Uriely and his wife were subsequently excluded from Det Mosaiske Trossamfund (The Mosaic Religious Body, DMT) of Oslo.
A statement from Norsk Forening Mot Antisemitism (Norwegian Society Against Anti-Semitism, NFMA) also condemned the action as historyless and unworthy.”
Book game, again
Terry announced: “Book game (cause it isn’t really a meme): Nearest Book, Page 23, Fifth sentence, Posted, with explanation.” OK, here goes:
When we talk of a green sensation, this talk is not equivalent simply to talk of “a state that is caused by grass, trees, and so on”.
This is from the Chalmer’s Conscious Mind book that I’ve talked about before; he’s recapitulating the standard philosophical idea of the phenomenal (“Known or derived through the senses rather than through the mind”). The paragraph continues:
We are talking about the phenomenal quality that generally occurs when a state is caused by grass and trees. If there is a causal analysis in the vicinity, it is something like “the kind of phenomenal state that is caused by grass, trees, and so on”. The phenomenal element in the concept prevents an analysis in purely functional terms.
By the way, it looks as if the entire text of the book is online, although the diagrams are missing and (inevitably) the pagination doesn’t match the printed version.
(We played this game before – a few months back, IIRC – but unlike some of these blog games it’s pretty much guaranteed to be different each time around.)