Cerebrate's Contemplations

Library-y: The LibraryThing Robot For Google Wave

2009-11-12T13:56:35-06:00

Shipped now from Arkane Systems, another useful tech demo in the form of Library-y, the LibraryThing robot for Google Wave. Simply add Library-y to your wave, and then on, in every blip you submit (shift-enter/Done button), all the ISBNs it detects will be automatically converted to links to the work page on LibraryThing.

Understands both 10- and 13- digit ISBNs, with or without hyphens!

To use Library-y, simply add library-y@appspot.com to your Google Wave contacts, and thence to your wave. The rest is automatic.

Contact silicate@googlewave.com on Wave for support, if needed.

Running OpenSim on Amazon EC2

2009-11-12T10:45:55-06:00

So, yeah, I’m moving a bunch of stuff off local servers to the cloud, starting with my blog, and also including my Notebook – well, that one, I’m moving both into local storage and out to the cloud. But instead of stashing stuff on another wiki, I’m going to simplify things considerably and just post ‘em up here, and let search find them for me when I want ‘em. So there’ll be a fair few technical notes and such cropping up here in the future.

Anyway. Here’s how to run OpenSim on Amazon EC2, for testing. This is fairly old, but it’s what I used when I was playing around with it, and is probably readily transferrable to newer versions. It’s a simple standalone image of a Linux installation of OpenSim (based on 02/12/2009 SVN release). It is configured in the simplest possible configuration, using SQLite, and with no provision made for persistence between instances. Thus, it is intended for evaluation/test/play/try-out purposes only.

Or, of course, for building further OpenSim instances on top of.

First Stage: Running the Instance via EC2

Ok. So, how does all this work?

Well, if you haven’t used Amazon EC2 before, the first thing you need to do is become familiar with Amazon Web Services in general, and it in particular. Go along to http://aws.amazon.com/ and sign up, then take a look around. In particular, if you intend to use your shiny new OpenSim server a lot, you may want to pay attention to the information on pricing you’ll find there. It doesn’t add up to much for casual use – indeed, all the time I spent initially getting things set up, complete with false start using the Windows version, only cost me $0.64. But be aware of it. I am not responsible for any costs you may incur due to losing track of time, forgetting you left the instance running, etc.

I’m going to assume that you can read the getting started guide on your own, and don’t really need me to help you out with that. After all, you are about to run a piece of server software here, so I’m going to assume that I’m dealing with a relatively technical audience.

Anyway, before you proceed to the next step, you need to have:

generated a key-pair
created a security group for your OpenSim instances (I call mine “opensim”).

The rules you want on this security group are:

tcp/22 (ssh) from your external IP address – and note, if you are using NAT, this means the address on the outside of your router
icmp 8:0 (ping) likewise
tcp/9000 from anywhere – 0.0.0.0/0
udp/9000 from anywhere – 0.0.0.0/0

If you’re using the command-line, the results of an:

ec2-describe-group.cmd opensim

Should look something like this, only with different user/group numbers and IP addresses:

GROUP 465102135893 opensim OpenSim instance group
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 0 65535 FROM USER 465102135893 GRPNAME default
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS udp 0 65535 FROM USER 465102135893 GRPNAME default
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 9000 9000 FROM CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS udp 9000 9000 FROM CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 22 22 FROM CIDR 24.249.106.76/32
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS icmp 8 0 FROM CIDR 24.249.106.76/32

And/or you’ll see the analogous thing in the web-based EC2 console.

Okay, now you’re ready to start that instance up. Here’s the command line for those of you who installed the tools; those of you who are using the console get a nifty wizard when you right-click the AMI and launch it, so just plug in the right data in the right place. Basically, you want to launch one instance, on a small server, in security group opensim, and with the key-pair you made – mine’s called ec2-keypair, for this example – which on the command line looks like this:

ec2-run-instances ami-73f3141a –g opensim –k ec2-keypair

Now, when you see it “running” in the console, or you see that ec2-describe-instances has started showing it as running instead of pending, then the server is up and running. And you can move on to the next step.

Second Stage: Fixing Up The Instance

So, can we connect yet?

No. See, OpenSim needs to know the external hostname or IP address of the server it’s running on to serve the region, and it gets that from one of its configuration files. Trouble is, every time you start an instance on Amazon EC2, it’s automatically assigned a new one, so the first thing we need to do is log in to it and alter that config file.

When you started the instance, the command-line tool or the console will have given you its external name, which happens to have its IP address embedded in it. It looks something like this:

ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com

So, the next thing we have to do is connect to the server using ssh, and for identification, use the private key file which you got when you generated your key-pair, and username root. Since there are about a gazillion ssh clients out there, you’re going to have to check how it wants the information on your own; for mine, PuTTY, the command line looks like this:

putty ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com -l root -i z:\ec2-putty-keypair.ppk

(Oh, yeah. With PuTTY, due to annoying stuff, you have to mangle the .pk file EC2 gives you into PuTTY's own format before this will work. Details at http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2007-03-01/GettingStartedGuide/putty.html . You probably won't have to do this with other ssh clients.)

Okay. Now you're logged onto the instance. The file we need to edit is /var/opensim/bin/Regions/default.xml, so open it up for editing:

vi /var/opensim/bin/Regions

(Assuming you know how to use vi; tutorial here: http://www.unix-manuals.com/tutorials/vi/vi-in-10-1.html . I suggest practising on your own local copy for cheapness's sake.)

Find the external_host_name="174.129.229.27" part of the Config line, delete the part between the double-quotes, and replace it with the IP address of the host name we got above. That is, if the host name was ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com, fill in 75.101.189.104. (This should work with the host name, yes, but it doesn't seem to for some reason.) Then save the file.

Now it should be able to find itself when it starts, so start it up. You need to be in the same directory as the server to start it, so these commands should do the trick:

cd /var/opensim/bin
mono OpenSim.exe

You'll find a whole bunch of text flashing by in your SSH session as the server starts up. When it ends with the lines:

Currently selected region is root
16:07:18 - [STARTUP]: Startup took 0m 15s

You're ready to go.

Third Stage: Running OpenSim and Connecting

You can connect to the OpenSim with any compatible viewer, including the standard Second Life viewer. The easiest way to do this is to simply copy the shortcut for that viewer on your desktop, and edit the "Target" line in the shortcut properties to include the --loginuri part below, obviously replacing the host name part of the URI with the same one that you used in the last step.

"C:\Program Files\SecondLifeReleaseCandidate\SecondLifeReleaseCandidate.exe" --loginuri http://ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9000/

Then just run it. The AMI is set up to accept logins from one user with first name "Test", last name "User", and password "test", initially.

And you're in your very own test sim!

When You’re Done

You can type "shutdown" to the OpenSim server if you really want to, but since in this instance EC2 will just throw away all the changes as soon as you terminate it anyway, there's not much need.

Anyway, don't bother trying to shut down the Linux server from inside it. Instead, either use the ec2-terminate-instances command:

ec2-terminate-instances.cmd i-b4bd37dd

with the instance number you got when you started the thing up, or right-click on the instance in the EC2 Console and hit Terminate.

DO NOT FORGET THIS STEP. OMIT IT AND YOU WILL BE BILLED FOR ALL THE TIME IT WILL BE RUNNING BEFORE YOU REMEMBER.

Stuff To Note

If you hate changing the IP address manually in step two, yes, you can get around this by using an Elastic IP and associating it with your instance each time you start it. Then you only have to change it the first time. I've done this myself when I was fiddling with it a lot, but please note that while Elastic IPs you use are free, Elastic IPs start costing you money when you aren't using them, and it adds up.

Yes, this is impractical for actual hosting, because any time the instance shuts down or is shut down, you lose all your changes. It should be possible to use Amazon's Elastic Block Store volumes to house the data files, with or without a MySQL database, to get around this, but I haven't got around to it yet. And, well, unless I'm gettin' paid, probably don't hold your breath for that coming out any time soon.

An Exceptionally Friendly Dog

2009-11-11T19:06:42-06:00

Behold. This is what I nightly see when attempting to watch television.

Gaaah, or Permalink Problems

2009-11-11T06:19:52-06:00

So, I guess I should not have listened at all when people told me that, sure, you can upgrade/export straight from Movable Type into Typepad, no worries, and it will preserve all your filenames, and thus also your permalinks.

Nuh-uh.

Please do not adjust your inbound links. I will fix this the hard way.

That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis

2009-11-10T17:51:00-06:00

I must confess that I did not enjoy this book so much as its predecessors in the Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, but then, I was not expecting to; it is, as indeed it was presented to me, a much darker and weightier book for the most part, in argument and tone.

Of course, I am sure some of my readers, knowing my ongoing interest in transhumanism and progress scientific and technical would have expected me to dislike the book, given its common reading against those. In actuality, this is not the case: while, obviously, I am philosophically at considerable variance with Lewis, I find much value in this book’s warnings against technocratic hubris, pragmatism overriding ethics, power-lust, subjectivism and gnosticism – consider this excerpt, for example, from p. 200 of my edition:

The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom’s own time, begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result.

[…]

You could not have done it with Nineteenth-Century scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and even if they could have been made to believe, their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt. MacPhee was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none of the people at Belbury knew what was happening; but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men?

And indeed, for the warning against foolish notion, albeit one all too easy to fall into, that possession of, or the quest for, increased power and control over the physical universe should or does exempt one from the laws of ethics, or of morality. From the same page:

Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stifling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress.

I also, quite naturally given my ethical philosophy, sympathize with Lewis’s objections to philosophy that degrades the value of the individual in its pretensions to objectivity of everything but ethics (and does, I might add, not inconsiderable violence to epistemology in the process); excerpting again, here from p. 293 and the mouth of one villain:

In reality the question is meaningless. It presupposes a means-and-ends pattern of thought which descends from Aristotle, who in his turn was merely hypostatising elements in the experience of an iron-age agricultural community. Motives are not the causes of action but its by-products. You are merely wasting your time by considering them. When you have obtained real objectivity, you will recognize, not some motives but all motives as merely animal, subjective epiphenomena. You will then have no motives and you will find that you do not need them. Their place will be supplied by something else which you will presently understand better than you do now. So far from being impoverished your action will become much more efficient.

In short, a valuable cautionary tale for all those of us would-be Daedalians and Prometheans interested in stumbling towards apotheosis. Recommended.

World of the Month (November 2009): Catacombs

2009-11-09T21:42:23-06:00

November’s (regretfully, somewhat belated, what with one thing and another) Metaplace Museum world of the month – still on the Halloween theme - is ferall’s Catacombs. Congratulations, ferall!

Apologies, Folks

2009-11-09T14:35:17-06:00

Apologies, folks, for that feed-puke. Just updated where it points, which causes that every time, it seems. Sigh.

In compensation, here is a picture of the World's Most Awesome Dog, looking sulky.

So, Here's The Thing

2009-11-09T11:58:29-06:00

I'm looking to get myself some more free time from maintenance, and among the most annoying chunks of maintenance I have are those on my special 32-bit and Not In Accordance With The Windows Way servers, which support my Movable Type and MediaWiki installations.

So it may just be time to kick those to the kerb. This is my first step in doing that - tear them out, and let's see how TypePad does to replace my former blogging engine.

Welcome to Libertarianism

2009-11-05T08:10:05-06:00

Deplorable although the results of the gay marriage vote in Maine are, per se, it is nevertheless refreshing to observe the outpouring of outrage at the general concept of putting people's rights up for a popular vote.

(The idea of anything at all being too sacred to put up for a vote seeming to have become such a controversial position in this democracy-fetishizing age, after all, despite being more or less what the Founding Fathers were counting on to keep the government under control, re-revolution included if necessary. And, for that matter, the reason that a limit on the scale of the income tax to a maximum of 10% wasn't included in the 16th Amendment, although that outrage sure didn't show up on time.)

So, yes, it is time for much rejoicing. It would be nice if some of the people espousing this outrage at having to have one's rights approved in the first place would remember that it should be a generally applicable principle, eh? And, for that matter, that it applies to assorted means by which they can and have been taken away again by fiat in the past.

Dear Maine Voters

2009-11-04T08:03:13-06:00

So, at the same time you legalize medical marijuana, you also (re)ban gay marriage?

Does statist fuckheadery obey a conservation law, or something? The Law of Conservation of Minding Other People's Business? Or just regular old Conservation of Assholery?

Y'all just have to be screwing someone, don't you? The Cerebrate is disappointed.

Dear Morons

2009-11-01T07:04:15-06:00

Sometimes, you people are almost enough to turn me into a statist, do you know that?

Because, really, if so many members of the self-designated "reality-based community" actually believe what they claim, namely that the eight years of the Bush administration were an orgy of deregulated, free-market, laissez-faire capitalism fit to warm the cockles of a libertarian's heart...

...well, then, the arguments for mandatory eugenics take on a new immediacy.

Gamertags

2009-10-29T08:22:02-05:00

Okay, in light of more knowledge about how this works, and specifically about how the saving facilities on 360 games in general work, we've ended up splitting our gamertag apart into two gamertags. Sigh.

Anyway, jungspielen is still me, but now only me:

jungspielen

And Amy's now to be found under cearanibrid:

cearanibrid

So, y'know, y'all might want to go and add her, too.

Random Magic, Sasha Soren

2009-10-29T04:57:02-05:00

Well, it's another booklogging out of order, for another book that needs to be precipitated with coincidental haste onto Amy's reading shelf; this being the sort of indecent coincidence that occurs when one forgoes the stern discipline of the reading-order list to instead treat new releases and Early Reviewers books with the speed they deserve.

(If I keep on like this, I'm going to forget all about the other four books sitting on my to-be-booklogged pile, which would be unfortunate. Or at least I'm going to forget what I had to say about them, anyway.)

Anyway, on with the point! As you may have gathered from the forgoing, Random Magic is a book I received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Now, just to put the below into some form of context, as long-time readers and those who know me personally will be aware, I am something of a connoisseur of eccentricity. As is, after all, appropriate for someone who spends most of their time at 90 degrees plus or minus 17 from the mainstream - as the saying goes, "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that."

Thus, I was pretty convinced that I was going to like this book as soon as it arrived, and I opened the box. Now, the author has asked us Early Reviewers not to go around inventorying the packaging or its contents, so as not to give away the quirky little surprises contained therein - which request I shall, of course, honor, as I have no desire at all to spoil the experience of any of my fellow reviewers who may not have got to it yet - but I don't think I'll be doing that just by noting its existence. And to congratulate the writer on finding a clever way to hook my attention and predispose me to liking the work!

Not, I hasten to add, that I required any particular predisposition. For such a connoisseur of eccentricity, this book is just about perfect. There is a sweet spot, I think, positioned about halfway between the sublime and the ridiculous, between madcap surreality (and, well, the eponymous randomness) and underlying pattern, off of which it is really very easy to fall when attempting to write a book like this.

Fortunately for us, Sasha Soren nails it exactly.

Plot-wise, well, I leave you with the blurb:

When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes. Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is. Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Struths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.

And I shall not attempt to describe it further, partly because doing so would again be spoilerful, and partly because, well, to do so in more detail than the above would require far more explanation than this review, or indeed this review's margin, can reasonably contain.

And in any case, as ripping as the plot surely is, it is the execution of it where this book really shines. The author's dry, witty, and quirkily clever writing style is a perfect match for the plot and the setting, and the main characters (the initially out-of-his-depth Henry - who develops marvellously as a character throughout the book - and the clever, never-say-die Winnie) keep you moving on through the book. Indeed, I lost more than a few hours of sleep due to having to read Just! One! More! Chapter! (Kept my lovely wife awake occasionally due to uncontrollable laughter, too - this may be worth bearing in mind if you usually read books in bed.)

(As a side note, I should also like to mention just how refreshing I find it to read a book in which the author feels free to drop allusions - or, really, avalanche allusions! - to all kinds of things, from classical mythology to more recent folklore, without feeling the need to hammer them home, explain them, or in other wise treat the reader as if the entirety of human culture before, say, 1980 could reasonably be expected to be a closed book. Give me a book that assumes I have a clue, any day!)

To sum up: I have no hesitation in recommending this book superlatively. It's a charming and absolute delight to read. If you take me up on this recommendation, and don't subsequently enjoy it, you may want to check that you haven't died somewhere along the line and not noticed. Or at least fossilized, anyway.

Crossroads of Twilight/Knife of Dreams, Robert Jordan

2009-10-28T18:02:31-05:00

Not booklogging these...

...in their due and proper order in my booklog sequence because, well, we have a copy of The Gathering Storm sitting on the coffee table, and so I must booklog these so that Amy can have Knife of Dreams in due sequence. So mote it be.

(And, yes, I'm starting The Gathering Storm tonight. It is that time. Right after I play a little Bioshock.)

Anyway, these two. Crossroads of Twilight: sucks. Interminably sucks. I have found the nadir of this series, and it is here. Sigh. This middle book defines middle-book syndrome to a quite absurd degree, and was it not necessary to fill the gap between the books on either side of it, I'd probably not have bothered with it at all.

But it is, so I did.

Fortunately, Knife of Dreams is quite the opposite. Sure, it's no tGH or tSR, but it does reflect, I think, a pleasant return to the old-school Jordan of earlier in the series. And it has Mat in it getting a decent number of opportunities to be awesome, so, hey, that's a bonus.

And that's all I have to say at this point.

Technolust Wins Out Over Principles

2009-10-23T23:06:06-05:00

So, folks, I finally gave in and bought a 360.

(It was the Netflix streaming and the Windows Media Center extender more than anything that got me, I think.)

Gamertag me if you want me to have it. Ours is jungspielen, if y'all care.

Aristotle: Right?

2009-10-22T08:48:55-05:00

So, recently I was linked to another tedious article in the Guardian, in which someone complains about there being too much culture, too much stuff, out there. Which seems to be the perennial lament of some segments of the self-styled intelligentsia, as you may have noticed - evidently whatever marvellous things they have learned don't include self-control or the ability to prioritize.

But then I got to this frankly disgusting part:

Here's what I want: I want to be told what to read, watch and listen to. I want my hands tied. I want a cultural diet. I want a government employee to turn up on my doorstep once a month, carrying a single book for me to read. I want all my TV channels removed and replaced by a single electro-pipe delivering one programme or movie a day. If I don't watch it, it gets replaced by the following day's selection. I want all my MP3s deleted and replaced with one unskippable radio station playing one song after the other. And every time I think about complaining, I want a minotaur to punch me in the kidneys and remind me how it was before.

In short: I've tried more. It's awful. I want less, and I want it now.

And I thought about this. And then I thought about all the people I know or know of who want, or claim they want, to be made to do this, and prevented from doing that, and regulated in their doing of the other, and then it hit me:

Aristotle's theory of natural slavery is seeming more and more plausible by the day.

Remember that? It goes like this, paraphrasing broadly and eliminating some of the elements clearly 'of his time': Some individuals lack an adequate deliberative faculty; i.e., there is a defect in their mentality that renders them incapable of determining, and subsequently pursuing, those ends that constitute eudaimonia. Therefore, their only way of participating in the Good Life is to be directed by another who possesses an adequate deliberative faculty.

Now, let us consider those who, as Aristotle put it, 'participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle' and therefore is 'a slave by nature'. Alas for their plight in these modern times, since we have for good and adequate reasons abolished slavery - and yet, they still know at some subconscious level that they need to fill in for that innate lack of deliberative faculty.

I submit that the most common response in the modern era - leaving aside such minority quirks as the Gorean subculture - is to join some religion, political group, faction, or party, or other top-down belief structure which will gladly, oh so very gladly, relieve you of the need to think, choose, speak, decide or eschew for your own damn self, thus relieving the intolerable psychological pressure of needing to think while being unable or unwilling to think.

Depressing as hell, really, as theories go, but consider for a moment just how well this explains how both right-wing authoritarianism and left-wing collectivism accumulate hordes of memebot-like followers - or, for that matter, the Cult of Apple - and I bet you'll feel truthiness.

The Warrior Lives, Joel Rosenberg

2009-10-22T08:16:51-05:00

And next in the booklog pile, the next of the Guardians of the Flame series, The Warrior Lives. In which we see the fallout of the death of Karl Cullinane, the maturation story of his heir comes to a climax (completing the arc from the last book, The Heir Apparent), and decisions are made with regard to the future of the Empire and its tension with the Other Siders mission against slavery, etc.

This time, I'm not even going to give the metacommentary, because it's exactly the same as it has been for the last book and the ones before that, and I don't really have anything else to say. The quality holds up and it continued to be enjoyable, although really, I'm starting to think I'd have preferred to get fewer longer books and break the story up less.

But on we go.

Talkin' About Namespaces

2009-10-21T16:00:00-05:00

Script in Metaplace?

Come to Cafe Eleutheria at 4:00 PM PDT on Wednesday 21st for a discussion of namespaces, naming standards, name recording, and other ways to avoid current and future problems with name collisions!

We've started seeing collisions in the chat command namespace, and while I don't want to speak for any other scripters, I notice I've started occasionally seeing collisions in the property-name and trigger-name namespaces too.

This is obviously a problem, and not just for scripters, because as large as Metaplace is these days, we can't testevery module against every other module, and that means the first the average Metaplace user is going to find out about the problem is when they install two unrelated, differently-authored modules, and all of a sudden their world is broken in some weird way they've no idea how to debug.

So, here's my notion. Rather than make the Metaplace folks come up with a technical solution after the fact - which is going to be damn tricky anyway, since some modules need to interact - I'm suggesting that we, the scripting community, get together and come up with some naming standards for voluntary compliance for our modules' private properties and triggers, such that we can be sure of not stepping on each others' code, and plans to record the public properties, triggers, chat commands, etc. we're using on the Wiki, as per the page Obo has started for chat commands, again, so we can be sure to avoid duplication or accidentally stepping on a trigger other modules are using.

In the meantime, please post your thoughts and ideas on this topic to the forums, at http://www.metaplace.com/forums/posts/view/3569969 .

Plan B, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

2009-10-16T09:43:43-05:00

And back I go once more for more Liaden universe awesomeness.

Let me say, first and foremost, that despite it having meant that I missed out on some damn fine books back in the 80s, that I am distinctly glad not to have ended up enduring the 10 year publishing gap between the end of the previous book, Carpe Diem (read as part of Partners in Necessity, and booklogged here), especially since Carpe Diem ends thoroughly in medias res and indeed in medias crisis in the ongoing conflict between Clan Korval and the Department of the Interior.

About which I shall say no more, thus rendering this booklog post rather less than this book deserves, but since I recommend this series superlatively, I would hate to spoil the plot for any readers who might have agreed with me on that point and rushed out to buy it last time around...

Suffice it to say that said plotting continues to entirely delight, and my inner worldbuilding maven was exceptionally pleased to get a good look at the internal culture of the Yxtrang, the third human culture of the Liaden universe, this time around - as well as more details revealed of those we have already met.

Technophobia Saddens Me

2009-10-16T05:42:45-05:00

I'm sorry, folks. But I don't find the robotic pillow in the least creepy. I find it awesome. (And I also feel kind of sorry for it, since the Internet is determined to hurt its feelings.)

Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.

Also, does this remind anyone else of Miles's gengineered cat blanket from, um, Brothers in Arms?

Blog Action Day '09: Global Warming

2009-10-15T17:24:32-05:00

Well, folks, it's Blog Action Day again! I missed 2008's, unfortunately, so that link points back to 2007's post. Which, coincidentally, was about the environment, which is still kind of relevant this time around, given the topic, so you might as well go back and read that one again, too.

This time around said topic is Climate Change. Woo! Which given the range of positions I've occupied on the topic in the past should be interesting for me to write about, but hey, that's what makes this fun.

Okay. Let us start by defining the problem. I suspect most people think the problem's already pretty defined, but then, that's half the problem in debating any issue: whoever gets to it first makes up the terms of the debate and thus puts everyone's thinking - splut! - right in the box.

Let us start by admitting to ourselves what we really want to do, and why we really want to do it. We want the climate not to change, for sundry reasons, which boil down to (a) it changes the ecology and (b) it has really inconvenient side effects, like coastal cities becoming modern Atlantises.

And as we all know, or at least those of us who've ever looked at the big geological picture know, the climate varies all the damn time. Over the history of our lovely blue planet it has varied from the frigid chill of the Ice Age to the stinkin' tropical bogs of the Carboniferous Epoch, and for that matter, a good while ago, it varied so much that this wasn't a lovely blue planet, but rather a murky yellow-green planet whose atmosphere consisted largely of carbon dioxide and methane and other such yummy stuff. Party time for the prokaryotes, but nothing you'd care to live in.

Now, the interesting thing about that is that through all of those changes, the actual planet - by which I mean, for all the pedants out there, not merely the big ball of rock and mud, but also the planetary ecology, has muddled along just fine. Sure, the anaerobes had a pretty hard time when oxygen became the Next Big Thing, and the dinosaurs all died out, and there have been Ice Ages, and extinctions, and goodness knows what throughout the few billion years there's been an environment, but if you look at it in the large, well, the planet and life on it just keeps muddling along. And every time some shift in the climate comes along and whacks one form of life, nature comes back with three more freshly invented ones next week to suit the new climate.

(And, incidentally, we're nowhere near the hot end of the geological record. Just so you know.)

So, give up all thoughts of "saving the planet". It won't notice what we do, and it won't care, any more than it would notice or care if we just let everything run amuck. Forget about "fighting for nature". Nature doesn't give a crap, and would merely use the opportunity to come up with an awesome fish that likes hot water and plants that make their own shade. While you're at it, have done with "protecting the environment". Over the last few billion years it's shrugged off worse crap than anything humanity could do, even if we TRIED to destroy everything.

So. First point of honesty, here - we're, meaning the general we, not interested in preventing climate change here for the environment's sake, or because warming is particularly bad, per se. We're interested in preventing climate change because the Great Midwestern Desert and Coastal Floodening, or, for that matter, Ice Age 2: Glaciers Devour Canada Before Coming For US, is monumentally inconvenient for our nice, comfortable, human-civilization-y lives and some species we find useful. No-one wants to have to start importing wheat from Canada/Siberia, to move house because their old town is in the middle of a new desert/10 feet underwater, or to have to face the prospect of a million Third Worlders knocking at the door 'cause the same thing has happened to their entire country.

(Those blessed with empathy may also consider the potential for vast human suffering and the extinction of species which we, as humans, find cute/photogenic/interesting in some way - oh, come on, you know it's true. Everyone with a heart gets all weepy about the polar bears and the baby seals, but you know as well as I do that if the poster animal for climate-changed caused extinction was the sea cucumber or the banana slug, no-one but a few cranks would give a rat's ass.)

Having reconciled ourselves, then, to the essential self-centeredness of the whole exercise, and hopefully not been too put off by the Canute-like nature of attempting to stop the turning cycles of the world in their courses, let us consider next the question of anthropogenic climate change. So much of the arguing back and forth appears to be concerned with whether it is, or it isn't, caused by human action in one way or another. I'm going to adopt something of an iconoclastic position here: why give a damn?

Well, okay, yes, it is relevant when considering possible solutions. But with regard to whether we should do something about it or not, really, it's irrelevant. Just because we caused a thing doesn't mean we should have to fix it, not if its effects won't matter, and if we really are staring ZOMGWTFBBQ-scale disaster in the face, whether it's anthropogenic or solagenic or deigenic or freakin' Martian-lizard-genic hardly matters, because we're staring ZOMGWTFBBQ-scale disaster in the face! Unless you actually are one of the three cranks who feel morally obliged to sacrifice yourself to nature, just not to the feelthy works of man, but if you are, please understand that the other six billion of us don't want to do that today, thank you so very much.

Having thus dismissed that question, we then come on to the real question of the day, the Global Warming Debate. Not "is it anthropogenic", but "is it happening at all?". And yes, it is a debate, for the painfully simple reason that people are still debating it.

Well, on this question, I Take No Position. Frankly, inasmuch as the quality of the debate is about, say, Creationists arguing with GOSPLAN about this year's tractor-production statistics, I think "I Take No Position" is the only reasonable position for anyone not actively engaged in primary research to take, assuming they have some pretensions to intellectual integrity.

Because the only thing I have learnt, after hours and hours and days and days of reading through primary, secondary, and tertiary sources on the topic is that everyone lies like weasels for the good of the cause, misrepresents data, misrepresents what other people have said, makes extremely dubious use of statistics, and generally fudges the issue to suit what they want it to be.

Yes, I said everyone, AND I MEAN EVERYONE. Don't come yammering to me about the scientific consensus. I'm not some schmuck who missed philosophy of science class, I know that's not how science works, and you know it as well as I do. The scientific consensus pre-, during- and post-Wegener was that there was no such thing as continental drift, and yet they move. Don't come bleating to me about how the oil companies/Big Energy/the elite/the Republican Party/the Bavarian Illuminati/the Jews (And yes, I've heard all of those, except for the Bavarian Illuminati. Yet.) are bankrolling studies to serve their interests instead of the truth as if it was all one-sided. Public choice theory blew that one out of the water long ago, and if you don't believe that politicians and government regulators have self-interest in greatly expanding the scope of their control over the economy and daily life, well, then, keep taking the soma.

(Did you really think it was just a coincidence that, the Green fetish for alternative energy aside, the vast majority of the proposed political solutions to climate change are just coincidentally a grab-bag of a progressive statist's existing wet dreams?

One might also mention the way that these people love to cite the IPCC reports to demonstrate the existence of climate change, yet somehow they all fall silent when it comes to the economic portion of the IPCC report. Which report identifies the A1T economic model - summarized as 'capitalism, globalized, strong emphasis on market-based solutions' - of all the economic models they used in the study as the one which produces one of the lowest cumulative emissions while still growing the economy at the highest rate. Anyone think that's a coincidence? Granted, that may well have been knocked on the head by the recession, but it has nonetheless been the "scientific consensus" for over a decade. Intellectual dishonesty rampant.)

And yes, while I'm fairly confident most of you won't bother to verify this, while the climate change denial side has been caught fabricating data, distorting the evidence to fit their beliefs, and just plain practicing bad science, so too has the pro-climate change side. A couple of its proponents have even been unwise enough to go on record stating that a bit of falsified disasterbation is entirely justified if it makes the public Wake! Up! And! Take! Action! Now!

(I'm not terribly interested in arguing over a specific list of lies, which are many on both sides, so no, I'm not going to provide you with one. Google should suffice; most are well documented, and it's not my job to do your research for you. This is an opinion piece.)

But never mind that for now. While actually asserting the existence of climate change in the present is probably unwise, given the climate (sic) of intrigue and politicized deception, let us proceed arguendo on the assumption that it does exist. It is, after all, reasonably probable that this is correct, and therefore that something ought to be done about it to preserve our civilized asses. And, indeed, the comfort of our civilized asses, since very few of us would enjoy subsistence farming, however "green" it might be.

(It isn't, by the way.)

I shall now proceed to attack a couple of sacred cows. I shall begin with the notion of alternative energy...

...well, actually, no I won't. The need for an alternative energy source is pretty damned obvious, and would be there even if not for the climate. I shall, however, attack the notion of government subsidies for alternative energy - and, since this is a climate change post, I'm going to do so not on my regular economic grounds, but on the much simpler grounds that to do this with any effectiveness at all requires the government's experts to be able to predict the future, in order to know which approaches will work out before trying them.

Even if Cassandra were working for the Department of Energy, no-one would believe her.

And as the non-existence of the flying car, the lack of a pressing need to solve the problem of horse dung inundating the streets of New York, the lack of the Master Computer for the American Continent being cooled by the entire flow of the Colorado River, etc., demonstrates, the government experts - and, indeed, regular private-sector futurists and other would-be technocrats - are pretty bloody awful at predicting useful future solutions.

A bidding war over whose pet project gets funding - which, Congress being Congress, will mean "whose district" most of the time, committing money to political projects that it's too embarrassing to cancel, God-awful carbon-pessimizing side-effect-ridden boondoggles like corn biofuel, and various other ways of sucking capital away from whatever the eventual winner turns out to be does nothing but obstruct and distract the development process that will lead to whatever the eventual solution turns out to be.

The purpose of the various means of internalizing the emissions externality is to give the private sector an incentive to find ways of getting rid of said externality. Do that, and then leave it the hell alone.

Next, I'm going to go after the whole notion that we can solve the problem of climate change by cutting emissions. No, we can't. Really. I've nothing against cutting emissions, being generally not in favor of pollution, but seriously, people. Won't work.

Partly it won't work because the numbers just don't add up when you go beyond simple carbon-neutrality. I know that, and you know that too, and as soon as the requirements of extreme emissions-cutting become apparent to the general public, they'll know that too. But let that pass.

Here's your real problem: we're not alone in the world. Or rather, we have two real problems, and they're called China and India. And other not-yet-at-the-Western-lifestyle countries, too, but they're a drop in the bucket compared to these two. Together, they contain 2.5 billion people, somewhere between a half and a third of the entire population of the world.

And a large proportion of those people are dirt poor peasants.

But, thanks to the wonders of globalization, a lot of those dirt poor peasants have seen American television, even if only on the one shared television set in the village.

If you think telling rich, spoiled Westerners that their lifestyles have to be cut a little is hard to do - and it seems to be - imagine what it would be like to go back and live in the actual, genuine, Shit Age.

Now imagine that you're not telling this to rich, spoiled Westerners. Imagine that you're telling it to dirt-poor peasants who already live there, with the corollary being that the rich, spoiled Westerners are (a) getting to keep some of their stuff, and (b) are YOU. And they will never, ever, EVER get to stop living miserable subsistence-level lives or get any of that neat stuff they saw on television.

The governments of India and China have some experience with, um, popular revolts. They know what happens to governments that are stupid enough to tell their people that they're that screwed, especially at the behest of wealthy foreigners. And neither India nor China is governed by complete morons, so they're not going to tell their people that. They're going to tell us, the wealthy foreigners, "You first", which is exactly what they have been doing, knowing that there's almost no chance they'll have to follow through on it, and then even if we did, they'll turn around then and find some other excuse for not doing it.

And both China and India, this very large segment of the world's population, are sitting right on top of huge deposits of brown coal, which has the advantage of being real cheap and easy to turn into energy, coupled with the disadvantage of emitting CO2 (and other fun things like sulphur dioxide) all over the place.

So, not to put too fine a point on it, it doesn't matter a damn what the West does in re emissions, in real terms. We could abolish every form of energy generation more advanced than waterwheels and windmills tomorrow, and aside from most of us dying in the next few months, and it would have bugger all effect, because that coal is there, those people are determined to have the benefits of a modern, industrialized society, and short of blowing them right off the map, there is not one damn thing you, I, or anyone else can do about it.

So, what am I telling you you should do, I hear you cry? Pray for geoengineering, folks, and I'm not just saying that because I think orbital megastructures are awesome (although they are) or because it would revitalize our moribund space program (although it would), or even because building a giant orbital sunshade would solve future climate issues, such as global warming from waste heat, something that doesn't seem to be taken into account nearly as much as it ought to be, especially since the laws of thermodynamics tells us that you simply can't cut those emissions, period.

(Although it would have the tiny political flaw that a few design modifications would also make it a handy-dandy space weapon, suitable for melting entire cities into glass. Enh. Can't make an omelet...)

But it's time to seriously consider ideas like that and the other geoengineering concepts that have come up. And not just the megascale engineering; it's time to start thinking about regrowing wetlands and constructing flood barriers and replenishing aquifers and better redistributing water and moving people out of flood plains and generally doing all the tedious detail work of civil engineering needed to shape an infrastructure that can help us address the local consequences of climate change, and adapt to and ride out the ones we can't head off.

It's hard. It's unglamorous. Frankly, a lot of it is boring. And it doesn't let you sit in the limelight for spending billions of dollars of public money, preen yourself for being greener than your neighbors, or have all the jolly fun of ordering people around and tell them how to live their lives.

But it's also vital, 'cause if this thing's real, then it's coming right at us, and all the wishing and pretentious wankery in the world's not going to save us when it hits.

Sacrifice, Karen Traviss

2009-10-15T14:07:11-05:00

And now back to booklogging, with the next in the Legacy of the Force series of Star Wars EU books.

Really, the biggest problem with this book is that it is two books.

One book, the one I suspect Karen Traviss really wanted to write, featuring Boba Fett and the Mandalorians, is actually a pretty decent read.

Unfortunately, the second book is the one that the title applies to, and that book, featuring the ongoing Fall of Jacen and his reveal as Darth Spoiler and, most importantly, his big death-of-a-main-character eponymous Sacrifice to become fully en-Sith-ed is not. These are major events in the history of the universe, people. I should not feel vaguely bored when I read them.

And, really, Fairly Obvious Spoiler deserved a better death than that. Or, well, a better plot in general.

Summation: Enh.

Google Wave Tip #1: Own-Post Filters

2009-10-13T17:43:35-05:00

Here's a useful little thing to keep your inbox organized, seeing as pretty much any wave you look at is put in there, on the assumption that it must be something you care about. Which, in fairness, it probably was at some point.

I have four searches set up, as follows:

My, with the query creator:me -with:public
Posted, with the query by:me -creator:me -with:public
My Public, with the query creator:me with:public
Posted Public, with the query by:me -creator:me with:public

And have assigned colors to each of them. These identify, respectively, waves which I have created which are not public, waves to which I have posted which are not public (but may be shared among a group), waves which I have created and made public, and public waves which I've posted to.

Cutting those four out of the mass up front makes it much easier for me to keep track of the waves which I have altered, in some way, and thus have more cause to be watching than those which I've just glanced it.

Google Wave

2009-10-13T08:50:52-05:00

If you have Google Wave...

...and are signed in...

...and probably are reading this blog at the original site, since goodness knows what syndicators do to my code...

...then you should see my public wave right here:

If you don't.... well, carry on. There's nothing to see here.

The Odyssey, Homer

2009-10-07T07:48:20-05:00

Remember when I booklogged The Iliad?

This is the greatest epic poem of its age that the Iliad came in second to.

A Crown of Swords / The Path of Daggers / Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan

2009-10-07T07:13:26-05:00

Once again, a triple booklogging:

...in technical violation of my booklogging order rules, again because after so long discussing these on rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan, I've precious little to say about them any more.

Although, actually, I do have one thing to say about these, which is that - in general - I think they have each held up better on re-reading them, this time, than they did the first time through. I mean, none of them are a The Great Hunt or a The Shadow Rising, by any means, but the period of middle-series suck isn't as acute as I remember it being.

Well, not in these books, anyway. I'm in the middle of Crossroads of Twilight right now, and I have to admit, with it, I'm feeling the suck hard. But so far as these three are concerned, not so bad.

And on we go.

Democracy Is Rightfully Skeptical, Not Sick

2009-10-06T12:35:22-05:00

This Ezra Klein article - It Is Democracy, Not Health-Care Reform, That Is Sick - dates from back in August, but since:

(a) I have only just seen it;
(b) He's a well-known voice on his side of the argument;
(c) It's really got a huge historical hole in it;

I'm going to address it anyway.

Here's the key paragraph in the article, but I suggest you go and read the whole thing anyway:

What we're seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It's distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not require an explicit detailing of the "institutional checks" that will prevent one partner from beating or killing the other. In a healthy relationship, such madness is simply unthinkable. If it was not unthinkable, then no number of institutional checks could repair that relationship. Similarly, the relationship between the protesters and the government is not healthy. The protesters believe the government capable of madness. There is no evidence for that claim, which means that there is no answer for it, either. That claim is not about what is in this bill, or what government has done in Medicare and Medicaid and the VA. It is about what a certain slice of Americans think their government -- and by extension, their fellow citizens -- capable of.

Now, I think that most of us would agree that the relationship between many people and the government is not healthy. Or, for that matter, that it is very dysfunctional. But what Mr. Klein generally fails to address - except in the quoted "There is no evidence for that claim, which means that there is no answer for it, either." - and hopes we pick up on, is that in his view the blame for the dysfunctionality falls on the shoulders of the protesters, who are just being silly and irrational in their suspicions of the government.

Unfortunately, historically speaking, there are plenty of examples of a government being capable of madness, just in the 20th century, and almost as many examples of the fellow citizens of the victims being happy to go along with it. One might ask, on the one hand, if Mr. Klein would have been advising German Jews to trust in the sanity of their government and fellow citizens in the 1930s.

But let us, to be charitable, confine ourselves to our government, and remember only things like:

The Tuskeegee syphilis experiments.
State-run eugenics programs.
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
The internment of Japanese-Americans.
Civil asset forfeiture.
Indefinite detention of terror suspects.

To mention only the things that leap immediately to mind. The history of the 20th and 21st centuries alone is replete with examples of people who found themselves on the wrong end of what their government and fellow citizens turned out to be capable of, after all.

So, Mr. Klein, to return to your metaphor, indeed, the relationship is dysfunctional. But it is dysfunctional because the people still remember the bruises from the government's previous outbursts of madness, and in this case, placing the fault with the side that's expecting the next blow to come at any time rather than with the side who has a half-empty whiskey bottle in one hand and a mouth full of promises that he can change, really, and no, he won't act like that any more...

Wait. Which political set is it that keeps complaining about the other ones always being too quick to blame the victim? I'm confused.

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2009-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

Downsizing the Federal Government

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2009-10-06T00:00:00-07:00

Microsoft Fix-It Blog

Compliance

2009-10-05T16:44:49-05:00

In compliance with new FTC regulations, I must reveal that I have financial ties, in some cases involving being paid to blog, to all five Arkane Systems divisions (me), Caustic Curios (me), and the Not-So-Vast Libertarian Conspiracy (also me).

It is possible that paying myself to endorse myself, my opinions, and my products may have influenced my opinion of myself to be more positive than it might have been otherwise. On the other hand, given my splendidly high opinion of myself, it just might not have. Who knows?

More seriously:

"In the case of books, Cleland saw no problem with a blogger receiving a book, provided there wasn't a linked advertisement to buy the book and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had finished reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland's standpoint, count as 'compensation' and require a disclosure."

Well, I do receive free books sometimes, through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I do link 'advertisements' to buy the book from Amazon, for my readers convenience, and I so keep the book afterwards, because I don't believe in disposing of books (and, more importantly, believe some mighty harsh things about people who do). Consider this my disclosure.

Anyone who believes this changes my book reviews, on the other hand, is an idiot, because (a) a free book once in a while is not enough to buy my soul, and (b) a free turd, however polished, is still a turd.

Lousy Dirty Stinking Commies

2009-10-05T12:24:04-05:00

Well, as some of you may know if you tried to follow the link, my Real Che T-shirt design was pulled from Zazzle, at the request of these guys:

http://cheguevarawholesale.com/

Who claim to be the only people who can market any goods based on the iconic Alberto Korda photograph. This IP claim is, of course, total bollocks. As Wikimedia (my source for the photograph) will inform you, based on the research they did, and as a modicum of independent research will confirm, said image is in the public domain in the US and most elsewheres, for a variety of legal reasons including that, well, Communist Cuba, like most Communist regimes, wasn't all that keen on having evil capitalist copyright laws in the first place.

So, basically, they got it pulled using a bogus, fraudulent, downright in-your-face lie of an IP claim. Isn't that just the kind of lousy, low-down, sneaking, underhanded trick you expect of a bunch of - since they're selling merchandise with said image - hypocritical, stinking, Commie scum?

Well, it's the kind of thing I expect, anyway. Never could stand competition or a free market in ideas, your average Commie. Never will, either.

(I don't blame Zazzle at all, in any of this, by the way. While I'm still appealing, I don't really expect to get much of a result - but then, it's not their job to go to the mattresses for me in legal wrangling with damn Commies, so I don't expect them to. I can respect their desire to stay free of legal entanglements, even bogus ones.)

But, hell, there are a lot of public domain images out there of Che, even if not the iconic one. Behold the Real Che #2, based on a public domain image they don't (currently magically claim to) own, and if they still want to bring it, we'll see who gets tired first:

See Figure One, Stimulus Peeps

2009-10-03T12:32:06-05:00

O ye who supported the much-vaunted stimulus package/recovery plan?

This graph, along with September's 9.8% in a month in which the labor force dropped by over half a million, is the entire Austrian School of economics giving you the eponymous middle finger. Are we having a teachable moment yet?

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2009-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

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