On Friday I learned that the Internet Engineering Task Force’s NomCom has selected me to serve a two-year term as Area Director (with Alexey Melnikov) of the Applications Area, beginning at IETF 77 in Anaheim this March. Being selected as Apps AD (and thereby a member of the IESG) is a great honor, and I shall endeavor to live up to the highest principles of the IETF while serving. Here’s to rough consensus and running code!
A lot of people think that American politics, even American society, has become increasingly polarized in the last ten or twenty years, marked by a widening chasm of left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative, secular vs. religious, etc. On the surface, that’s true. But I think the deeper division is the elite vs. the people, the political class vs. the productive class, those who govern and those who are governed. Indeed, once you notice that nothing ever changes in the District of Columbia or your state capitol — that the elites follow essentially the same policies no matter which gang is in charge — you start to realize that the supposed divisions among the people are extraordinarily convenient for the political class, because they keep the people from realizing that their real enemies are not the folks to their left or their right, but the elites up above. And while I am duly cautious about the dangers of popular rule (as were the Founding Fathers), I think Americans have much more to fear from elitism than from populism, especially in an age when knowledge and information are more dispersed than ever.
I run Prosody as my personal XMPP server at stpeter.im, so last night I decided to take a look at its source code. It’s quite a pleasure to read! I might need to take a more serious look at the Lua programming language because it seems to encourage readable code (though I think the Prosody team has a lot to do with it, too).
Here are some photos from today’s rally on the steps of the Colorado state capitol in opposition to the health care skulduggery in the District of Columbia, orchestrated by the good folks at the Independence Institute…
Today is the 11th anniversary of Jer’s first release of the jabberd server, which we commonly herald as the birthday of Jabber/XMPP technologies. All these years later, there’s still so much to do! Here’s what I’ll be focusing on in 2010:
I’m sure other topics will emerge, as well. :)
At my favorite library the other day I picked up Julie Rose’s recent translation of Les Misérables. As previously mentioned, to date I have read only the translation by Norman Denny, but I can envision over time reading most or all of the English translations — in part because translators can’t be trusted (I know, because I’m a translator myself) but mostly because I like to explore in depth the works of art that I love: I own seven recording of Bach’s Cello Suites, when at the Frick Collection in New York I find myself absorbed by Van Dyck’s portrait of Frans Snyder, I don’t read a lot of novels but I’ve plowed through Les Misérables and The Fountainhead and a few others numerous times, et cetera. Somewhere in Daybreak or Human, All Too Human or La Gaya Scienza, Nietzsche talks about the propensity of certain personality types to dive into the depths rather than to float widely on the surface of things, and I think I fall into the deep-diving category. Whether that’s always healthy or good, I’m not sure…
While uploading a new file to the Monadnock Press website just now (Leaves of Grass, if you’re curious), I realized that today’s date (2010-01-02) is palindromic. The next palindromic date will be 2011-11-02, after which we’ll have to wait until 2020-02-02. We’ll see if anyone notices, then… :)
Over the last two months I’ve managed to squeeze in a bit of publishing over at the Monadnock Press. In addition to my work on the text of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, I’ve also republished the following public-domain texts:
Expect more texts soon.
UPDATE 2010-01-02: I’ve also published The Right to Ignore the State by Herbert Spencer, The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns by Benjamin Constant, and the original (1855) version of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
As I noted on the jdev list yesterday, someone at Wikipedia is actively working to delete entries about various software projects that supposedly fail Wikipedia’s “notability” test. Pages about some XMPP software projects have already been deleted (e.g., Coccinella) and it seems that others will be deleted in the near future (e.g., Exodus, Gajim, ejabberd). On Sunday night I reviewed the some of the discussions about these pages, and in my opinion the “deletionists” are not very open to reasoned argument. While folks in the XMPP community could spend a lot of time trying to fight these deletions, I think it would be more productive to move these pages over to wiki.xmpp.org and make that the most accurate source for information about XMPP technologies (along with the regular xmpp.org site). Naturally, you are free to spend time and energy on Wikipedia, but I think the site is a lost cause, so I am going to spend my time and energy on a wiki where our work won’t be deleted because someone has some misguided ideas about “notability”.
If you’d like to help build out wiki.xmpp.org, feel free to ask one of the sysops there for an account. Typically the sysops hang out in the jdev chatroom (there’s even web access here thanks to our friends at Speeqe.com).
UPDATE 2009-12-29: While I’m at it, I’ve made some corrections to the Wikipedia page about XMPP (so far only to the history section). It will take me many hours to fix up this article, but at least I’ve made a start at the task…
Today is Bill of Rights Day, so it’s an appropriate time to reflect on the first ten amendments to the Constitution…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
It was ten years ago yesterday that I made my first post to the jdev@jabber.org discussion list. Working on Jabber has been a lot of fun so far! And, no, we didn’t call it XMPP back then. :P
Back in 2006 I posted a series of entries about global warming: Overheated Conclusions, Hot Logic, and Taking a Look (indeed, at the time my views seemed positively shocking to some people, since I appeared to be in denial about the supposed consensus of the scientific community). Now it turns out that the academics (can we even call them scientists?) at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia have perpetrated the greatest scientific fraud of all time, far surpassing small-time operators like Trofim Lysenko. Even a confirmed heretic like me never imagined that an inbred clique of scientific shysters would have the unmitigated gall to massively fudge the data, intimidate fellow researchers, ridicule critics, control scientific journals, suck up to politicians, and attempt to destroy evidence of their misdeeds — a litany of crimes professional, personal, ethical, and legal. Talk about absolutely brazen behavior! Thankfully these low-lifes are feeling the heat now that a trove of email messages, documents, and software programs from the CRU has come to light (seemingly perhaps through their own incompetence, since one of the miscreants seems to have included his password in his email signature). A welcome comeuppance, I say…
One of my favorite novels has long been Anthem by Ayn Rand; indeed it was the first public-domain text that I posted at the Monadnock Press website. Unfortunately, the Project Gutenberg etexts of Anthem contain numerous errors, only some of which are corrected in other online versions such as that by Richard Lawrence. Recently I took it upon myself to produce an accurate text of the novel, which it turns out is much more difficult than you might expect because two major editions were published during Rand’s lifetime (the original 1938 British edition and the heavily-revised 1946 American edition), true first printings of the 1946 edition are difficult to come by (I have yet to inspect one), later paperback versions printed in America contain further differences from the 1946 edition, and even the (assumed) 1946 text differs from the marked-up 1938 edition that Rand seems to have submitted to the typesetters. It’s a mess!
Although my research continues, I think I’m now getting close to a definitive version of the novel. To see the fruits of my labors, visit http://www.monadnock.net/rand/anthem.html (including extensive textual notes). I shall post again once I have a version that I think is truly definitive. Oh, and if you happen to own a first printing of the 1946 American edition by Pamphleteers Inc., please let me know (I might ask you to check a few passages for me).
Enjoy!
UPDATE 2009-11-22: I’ve just ordered a copy of the second printing (1947) by Pamphleteers of the first American edition (1946), which I hope is the same as the first printing (except for the price — the first printing is really expensive!). Further updates on the way…
UPDATE 2009-11-29: I have completed a thorough review of all the texts available to me, including a second printing of the first American edition. Until I can inspect the galley proofs housed at the Library of Congress, I shall not make further edits to the text published at the Monadnock Press, despite the fact that I have discovered some differences between the edits that Rand marked on her copy of the 1938 British edition and the 1946 American edition as published by Pamphleteers, Inc.
Here’s what I’m reading right now:
Book reports might be forthcoming on a few of these…
Periodically I like to make short lists of books and recordings that I would not want to do without. It helps to focus the mind. Lately I’ve been thinking about the 25 albums (not individual songs or pieces) that I would want on a desert island. Here’s the current list, in alphabetical order by performer:
Abbey Lincoln, You Gotta Pay the Band
Claudio Arrau, Chopin: Nocturnes
Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out
Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
Duke Ellington, And His Mother Called Him Bill
Ella Fitzgerald, The Intimate Ella
Aretha Franklin, The First Twelve Sides
Glenn Gould, Bach: Goldberg Variations (1981)
Michael Hedges, Breakfast in the Field
Paul Hillier, Troubadour Songs and Medieval Lyrics
Keller Quartet, Bach: Art of the Fugue
Alicia De Larrocha, Granados: Goyescas
Jakob Lindberg, Lute Music from Scotland and France
Jacques Loussier, Plays Bach
Patricia McCarty, Bach: Cello Suites
Joni Mitchell, Blue
Tim O’Brien, Traveler
Panocha Quartet, Dvorak: Cypresses & String Quartet #10
Joe Pass, Virtuoso #3
Marcus Roberts, If I Could Be With You
Andras Schiff, Bach: Keyboard Partitas
Steeleye Span, Hark! The Village Wait
Westminster Cathedral Choir, Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli, Missa Brevis
Yes, Close to the Edge
Subject to change. :)
And what about the 25th recording? I’d make a miscellany of individual songs and pieces of music that I love. One of these days I’ll figure out which tunes would make the cut…
Last night I got my first taste of the local specialty in Hiroshima: okonomiyaki. (Did I mention that I’m in Japan right now? :) The best I can describe it is that it’s kind of like a noodle frittata or cabbage-stuffed pancake. You sit down at this huge griddle and they cook it up right in front of you, then you eat it there on edge of the griddle so it stays warm while you watch the cooks and sip your beer or sake. Outstanding. :)
I’m getting a bit tired of all the unsupported allegations from people like Anil Dash and Adam Fisk that XMPP is bloated or impossible to deploy. Now maybe I’m just a bit snarky at the moment because it’s 5:30 AM where I am in Hiroshima Japan and I got 3 hours of sleep last night, but it seems to me that some salient facts might be in order:
We didn’t have protocol buffers and other such shiny new binary technologies back in 1999 when Jabber/XMPP technologies were originally designed. Feel free to design a new binary collaboration protocol from the ground up using a non-XML technology if you’d like, but don’t criticize design choices from 10+ years ago if better alternatives were not available.
XMPP messages are not on the order of a kilobyte as some people seem to believe (apparently without ever reading the XMPP specs or running the XML console in an XMPP client like Psi). Think more like 100 bytes or less! We have deliberately kept the footprint light.
The major bandwidth hog in an IM system is presence, not messaging. We have kept presence very small. To save bandwidth on mobile devices and such, don’t share presence. We’re working on optimizations here (step one of our mobile optimization strategy was roster versioning so that you don’t have to download your complete buddy list if it hasn’t changed since you last logged in). Instead of complaining, help solve the problem by joining with other smart developers at the XMPP Standards Foundation.
XMPP has native compression (via TLS or at the application layer) and it is extremely efficient because we use long-lived XML streams and only a single parser instance for all those repetitive, purportedly bloated XML elements and attributes.
I seriously question the charge that XMPP is bloated or impossible to deploy, especially when those comments arise in the context of major applications and services like Google Wave / Chrome / Talk, Facebook IM and Live Journal Talk, etc. Yes, XMPP is a bit bigger on the wire than a purely binary protocol might have been, but there are legitimate design tradeoffs here of size vs. ease of understanding (and ease of extension). Anyone who designs that “one binary collaboration protocol to rule them all” will run into the same basic issues that the Jabber team faced in 1999, and then ten years from now some smart (but smart-aleck) commentators will be saying the same thing about whatever you come up with.
TANSTAAFL, folks. :)
Back in 2004, a controversy erupted in the XMPP developer community regarding the RhymBox instant messaging client. Through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings, the parties to an agreement regarding further development of that client went their separate ways in a rather public fashion, resulting in a cloud over the RhymBox name and the emergence of a new client called Pandion.
I am happy to announce that this long-running dispute has been successfully resolved. I would like to thank Sebastiaan Deckers and Justin Fisher for their patience and cooperation in settling this matter. Details are available in a special press release just issued by the XMPP Standards Foundation.
I’m really starting to like small books. Yes, I recently wrote a book that’s 320 pages long, but in my own reading I’ve taken to books of under 200 (and preferably 100) pages. Oxford’s series of Very Short Introductions is a good example. Another might be the original 1855, 92-page edition of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, which was so short that he said it “would tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air: I am nearly always successful with the reader in the open air.” Others I like: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, Ayn Rand’s Anthem, the fragments of Epicurus (which I’m still working to translate), and Frederic Bastiat’s The Law.
Too, I suspect that short books might be the only ones to survive the coming dominance of the e-reader, because you can always squeeze a properly-configured short book in your pocket. If I ever get around to starting a public domain press, the printed (as opposed to online) books will all be highly portable, perhaps even tiny (I rather like the thirtytwomo size: 5.5 x 3.5 inches).
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