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Fri, 30 Jan 2004
Just saw The Fog of War by Errol Morris about Robert S. McNamara and the 11 lessons he's learned in life. In short, go see it. Draw your own conclusions, but here's a place to start: Teacher's Guide to Fog of War (24-page PDF). My dear readers, it seems that I've encountered a crossroads again. I just received word that I have passed my Phase II, which is in essence my qualifier exam for my Masters and PhD degree. So, if I wish, I can depart in a few months with my new MS degree in hand and seek employment, or I can stay to pursue a PhD. Other than finding a dissertation topic and the immense time investment therein, I don't believe there's any other obstacle to receiving a PhD at this point. Which road to take? In short, I'm torn. Regardless, I wouldn't trade this for anything else. C'est la vie! Tue, 27 Jan 2004So, the Rangers made A-Rod their captain. I don't get it. They even did it in formal attire. What a joke. This isn't hockey (where the captain has official duties as the representative to the referees). Seems like an empty gesture, if you ask me. We're only 23 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting. Sadly, the Rangers off-season is more of a bust than anything else. At least, the Angels and Red Sox made up for that. Addendum: On Truism, I agree. It's not that A-Rod is paid $25 million. It's that they gave Chan Ho and Juan Gone $13 million each. A-Rod at least was the MVP. [/sports/rangers] permanent link Sun, 25 Jan 2004Don't look now, but here come the Mavs! Dirk's finally healthy. 8 game winning streak. Beat the Kings. I find most NBA games incredibly boring, but the Kings-Mavs always put on a great show. Who needs defense? [/sports/mavericks] permanent link Wed, 21 Jan 2004The role of discourse in the university So, tonight I attended a variety of lectures across the campus. First, I attended Mark Rose's talk entitled "Nine-Tenths of the Law: The English Copyright Debates and the Rhetoric of the Public Domain." (Also see the Duke Law Review article of the same name) Rose gave an overview of the English government's flip-flops on whether copyright should be considered property with perpetual rights. (Some of the same cases are discussed in Lessig's books.) More interestingly, Rose then discussed how there has been a lack of how to properly frame discussions of public domain. There really haven't been any codified notions of what it means to have something in the public domain. Rose mentioned that one approach to advocating the public domain is to follow the lessons of the environmental movement (oh, boy). His point is that we need to identify that there are real problems with the copyright law and form alliances with people who might not seem our allies (at first) in order to see real change. For example, the environmentalists partnered with hunters who wanted clean game. The advice seems much the same as Lessig: we need to organize and educate in order to change the law. It won't happen otherwise. Then, I went over and listened to a debate entitled "America's Foreign Policy: Unilateralism vs. Multilateralism: (Should We Have Listened to France?)" with Professor William Schonfeld (who gives fantastic lectures) and Dr. Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute. In short, the only thing I can say is that this reaffirmed my fundamental position that there is no right or wrong in politics. I agreed and disagreed with both speakers on certain points. You need to listen to all of the evidence and then come to your own conclusions. And, I bet that's the best lesson a university can teach their students... I think the real rationale behind Planet Apache is to explore the social expanse of the ASF community not to get automated messages. So, my question to ya'll is does having a RSS feed of Gump add value? I don't think so. Tue, 20 Jan 2004The impact of blogs on politics Matthew Langham discusses whether the Internet has changed the way we "do politics". I asked much the same in a comment on this off-topic post on our class blog last night. In the end, I think it has more to do about the content of the message rather than the form in which it is conducted. The benefit of the Internet allows people to make judgements themselves by going directly to the sources rather than relying upon others to tell us what to think. Listening to the candidates talk last night, there was a sharp divide in their messages for this country. Some of them were focused on the process, while others concentrated on a vision. I personally think those with vision are much better positioned than those who are solely about the process. But, that's me. [/ucirvine/classes] permanent link Mon, 19 Jan 2004Why do we not have classes today? Most of the international students have no idea why there weren't any classes today. Perhaps it's only those of us who have grown up in the US who understand our history and why people like King were so pivotal on changing our concept of race and equality. I don't think most Apache-allied developers need to read this: How To Criticize Computer Scientists. We need to read it for my 280 class (hence the ucirvine category - a problem with single classification systems!), but I found it funny to read. One of my fellow grad students calls the Apache developers "a pack of piranahas." Oh, you don't even know! [/ucirvine/classes] permanent link Sun, 18 Jan 2004This calendar is either just really wrong or really right. You pick. One of the staff members gave it to him, so we all have to look at it while we meet with him discussing how we want to graduate before the next Ice Age. Super encouraging for our fragile egos. Sat, 17 Jan 2004First, the grocers are on strike. Then, the TAs authorized a strike, and saw the university agree to the terms at the last minute. Now, the UCI cheerleaders are striking. Thu, 15 Jan 2004Rewrites considered harmful or necessary? Rewrites considered harmful is a recent story on Slashdot. One of his case studies (such as they are) is Apache 1.x vs. Apache 2.x. As one of the many contributors involved in Apache HTTP Server, I think I should chime in here... There's been a number of threads on dev@httpd.apache.org about why we didn't just go to 1.4, and every time our answer is the same: 'Why don't you do it?' One of the key philosophies in our brand of OSS is that we won't stop anyone from working on it. But, don't ask us why we're not supporting it. Each one of us has made our own decision about what version to support and not to support. I personally think the integration of mod_dav, mod_ssl, split of APR/APR-util (which has spawned a new set of programs using it - see Subversion), and the new filtering system are worth it. I think most of us who work on Apache HTTP Server believe that 2.x is a better platform to write modules on than 1.3. Apache HTTP Server 1.3 has known issues that limit what functionality we can provide (good luck adding threading, IPv6, filtering, or portability that doesn't require hard-coded defines). That's not to say that we aren't immune to user migration claims. But, is it all that hard to upgrade? I think the rationale behind most people not upgrading is that they are happy with 1.3. As things start to require Apache HTTP Server 2.x (ahem Subversion ahem), I think we'll see the migration rate rise. A few exceptions - like mod_perl - are harder to migrate, but that's because they are really meta-modules not modules that provide functionality. Almost all configuration directives should work from 1.3 in 2.0, too. But, we've been attacked for this for years, and everyone just throws stones rather than help fix the problems themselves. So, stop whining. If you don't want to upgrade, don't. And, we're not insulted if you stick with 1.3. Just don't ask for support from me... So, it seems that Planet Apache is now live. And, it seems that people have different lengths on what they will allow in their feeds? Some do complete feeds, some do partial feeds. I've installed the foreshortened plugin on blosxom and I think I can turn it on for my feeds, but I'm wondering what we're intending. Will people just come to Planet Apache for the 'highlights' or is it a true group blog without the 'highlights'? I think I've got writebacks enabled on my own blog, and I might have trackbacks too, but I have no clue if they are working or not. And, I know that my atom feed is working. (blosxom's RSS 0.91 feed doesn't work with the planet software.) Wed, 14 Jan 2004Saw the PhD Topic Generator on Bambino's Curse, and put in F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and got this:
You should have seen our real list of suggested titles! (Hayek will probably end up as a citation in the proposal we're working on now.) [/ucirvine/papers] permanent link Sat, 03 Jan 2004For one of my upcoming classes next quarter, I have to participate in a weblog. As everything in academia, it's an experiment. They usually just don't tell you until it's over. Well, I think almost every DNS server is updated, except for the one that I use. I've sent an email to the guys who maintain the campus DNS install, and they said they'll restart it to see if that fixes it. So, I'll probably make this live this weekend. By the way, this is how academia actually works. You send an email to someone else in the hopes that they will fix it. |
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