Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorphenamine
According to the literature, diphenhydramine is the precursor to Prozac. This product is known as Benadryl. It is a first generation antihistamine, usually administered for allergic conditions such as hay fever, hives and the like.
However, cetirizine (Reactine) and loratadine (Claritin) have less effect on serotonin receptors, being second-generation antihistamines. They still relieve allergic conditions, but with almost no effect unlike Benadryl.
But chlorpheniramine (Chlor-Tripalon) appears to have a similar effect to diphenhydramine, with a faster onset of sedation and reduction of allergic reaction. Indeed, 12 mg of chlorpheniramine has the same effect as 75 mg of diphenhydramine. This suggests that the lower dose form of 4 mg is equivalent to 25 mg of diphenhydramine.
When mixed with high caffeine energy drinks, a near-giddy feeling occurs within the first ten minutes, followed by about 10-12 hours of a comfortable feeling without the mental fogginess that diphenhydramine sometimes brings.
Accompanying chlorpheniramine's effects is the ability to make conversation with strangers without feelings of intruding on another person's private space. The sedation of the product makes it superb in situations where high stress could induce hyperexciteability.
According to the literature, chlorpheniramine is sometimes used to calm patients as a nearly non-addictive alternative to the benzodiazepines.
This product, like diphenhydramine, could become the first OTC anti-depressant. The only side effects are rebound allergic symptoms due to suppression.
*** The observations noted in this entry is not an endorsement of drug abuse. The author takes no responsibility for the actions of other people reading should they decide to try any drug mentioned in it. Thouugh, the author does endorse a "less-is-more" attitude towards drugs i.e. use only enough to give a slight reaction to ingestion but do not combine with other drugs.
20080125
First Black Transworld Airflight
Reference: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0114/p20s01-usgn.html
Barrington Irving is the first black man to fly non-stop around the world. No doubt the racists will not be complaining that his Experience Aviation venture will just create a few black drug runners who aim to run drugs from narco-terrorist states.
But the feds have been there and done that since Vietnam.
Barrington now needs to be the first black astronaut to do a full transorbital alone.
Barrington Irving is the first black man to fly non-stop around the world. No doubt the racists will not be complaining that his Experience Aviation venture will just create a few black drug runners who aim to run drugs from narco-terrorist states.
But the feds have been there and done that since Vietnam.
Barrington now needs to be the first black astronaut to do a full transorbital alone.
Wrong-way Corrigan is Second Trans-Atlantic Flight Record Holder
Reference: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/douglas+corrigan
After Lindburgh's flight in 1927, Corrigan tried to make it across the Atlantic but was turned down, so he left after federal inspecters went to bed.
In 1988, during the 50th anniversary of his flight, the origanizers had to post guards at the wings and even considered tying his plane, Sunshine, to a police car.
Corrigan's chutzpah helped rise the spirits of Americans depressed by the Dirty Thirties which was precipitated only years before Lindburgh flew to Paris in 1927 by penny stock speculators.
Judging from Corrigan's plane and a description of how he jury-rigged it to fly further, plus his dedicate airplane mechanic work history, I would consider him to be America's finest air jockey.
This is no different from computer hobbyists who are hackers, except the medium is the air rather than the ether.
After Lindburgh's flight in 1927, Corrigan tried to make it across the Atlantic but was turned down, so he left after federal inspecters went to bed.
In 1988, during the 50th anniversary of his flight, the origanizers had to post guards at the wings and even considered tying his plane, Sunshine, to a police car.
Corrigan's chutzpah helped rise the spirits of Americans depressed by the Dirty Thirties which was precipitated only years before Lindburgh flew to Paris in 1927 by penny stock speculators.
Judging from Corrigan's plane and a description of how he jury-rigged it to fly further, plus his dedicate airplane mechanic work history, I would consider him to be America's finest air jockey.
This is no different from computer hobbyists who are hackers, except the medium is the air rather than the ether.
20080123
Tag Cloud for gandhara dot blogspot dot com as of Today
address ari being ca coleman-liau com comments compiled computer copy created directory domain dot flesch fog free grades higher however index information ip jinx kincaid links lix number people post program readability router scheme school script self server smog-grading smokeping software steve student system used user var work www year
created at TagCrowd.com
20080118
My Friend
"No one is either enemy or friend; only ego is my enemy, and True Self my friend." — an ancient samurai Zen motto
In life, enemies and friends are merely externalization of the original battle between ego and True Self. True Self is the term used by Buddhists to refer to that part of nature which is Buddha-nature. Another term for it is original self i.e. the primordial self before the passions arise, corrupting True Self to the point of attachment.
If more information on this topic is desired, then consult your local Buddhist or Google the terms. I will not define any more terms in this article unless it is pertinent to the discussion.
The reason why ego is the enemy is to emphasize the inner battle. Ego is the result and cause of the arising of passions, which deceive the person by distracting him from the purpose of life, which is to become aware of one's spiritual destiny.
As for True Self being the friend, given that True Self is another name for Buddha-nature, in awakening to one's true nature one is freed of ego's hold over oneself. Thus freed, one is grateful to one's liberator, the Buddha. Thus is True Self one's friend, for it is original self, always embraced by Buddha. This is why it is called Buddha-nature.
I wish I could explain further these concepts, but the use of many words to describe the indescribable only confuses non-Buddhists.
In life, enemies and friends are merely externalization of the original battle between ego and True Self. True Self is the term used by Buddhists to refer to that part of nature which is Buddha-nature. Another term for it is original self i.e. the primordial self before the passions arise, corrupting True Self to the point of attachment.
If more information on this topic is desired, then consult your local Buddhist or Google the terms. I will not define any more terms in this article unless it is pertinent to the discussion.
The reason why ego is the enemy is to emphasize the inner battle. Ego is the result and cause of the arising of passions, which deceive the person by distracting him from the purpose of life, which is to become aware of one's spiritual destiny.
As for True Self being the friend, given that True Self is another name for Buddha-nature, in awakening to one's true nature one is freed of ego's hold over oneself. Thus freed, one is grateful to one's liberator, the Buddha. Thus is True Self one's friend, for it is original self, always embraced by Buddha. This is why it is called Buddha-nature.
I wish I could explain further these concepts, but the use of many words to describe the indescribable only confuses non-Buddhists.
20080117
Undernutrition Kills Kids Yearly
Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080117/hl_afp/healthchildrennutrition_080117211620
Now I have been vindicated when earlier I mentioned the main problem of the post-modern diet is the risk of sub-clinical malnutrition. What is under-nutrition but malnutrition?
According to French researchers, under-nutrition "is to blame for 3.5 million deaths among children aged under five each year, but most of the fatalities occur in 20 countries, where targeted aid programmes could swiftly address the problem."
This is the world-wide malnutrition problem caused by lack of food, but you can still go on to claim that sub-clinical malnutrition is common in developed countries where children do not go to bed hungry, but get nutrient-poor food daily like carbonated beverages, processed meat, and factory meats which are heavily loaded with chemicals designed to ensure product makes it to your dinner table.
While I am not saying more people should go out hunting, I am saying that shopping in a grocery store is not the same as growing your own vegetables, raising your own chicken and hunting & fishing for part of your food intake.
IMHO hunting and fishing licenses are not done to conserve limited game resources, but to ensure rich hunting & fishing "hobbyists" can afford to get a trophy. The waste of game resources is one travesty of such sport, and such hobbyists should be forced to take lessons on the processing of their game into meat as part of the hunting & fishing licensing process. While I am sure fish suffer as much being hooked and clubbed to death, I am not convinced barb-less hooks and the current practise of catch-and-release is any less traumatic for the fish. However, sports hunters and fishers should limit their hunting and fishing to what they can eat.
Getting back to those kids in developing countries, the main reason they are starving is due to foreign aid not getting to them. In most cases, the privileged few in a given nation are hoarding food supplies stolen from the foreign aid agencies through fraud. A leader of a corrupt nation could easily force an army of "homeless and starving" native to grab what they get and cache it at a specific site. If that army is bigger and stronger than the actual homeless and starving people, then the foreign aid agency can only stand back and watch.
No one knows if 750 out of 1000 people are aligned with the corrupt leader and hoarding while the other 250 get barely enough to last them a day, a week, or a month.
So what actually kills kids in undeveloped countries is not actually under-nutrition but social Darwinism. However, penalizing the corrupt leaders will not help the kids. Only Bill Gates and Frank Giustra can do that, because it is so cheap to feed and care for children in developing nations.
This post marks my second one where a reference URL is not converted to a working link. This is a good "feature" of my limited interface in the Blogger editor due to it detecting Konqueror. In fact it detects Konqueror and is not fooled by the spoofing Konqueror provides.
Now I have been vindicated when earlier I mentioned the main problem of the post-modern diet is the risk of sub-clinical malnutrition. What is under-nutrition but malnutrition?
According to French researchers, under-nutrition "is to blame for 3.5 million deaths among children aged under five each year, but most of the fatalities occur in 20 countries, where targeted aid programmes could swiftly address the problem."
This is the world-wide malnutrition problem caused by lack of food, but you can still go on to claim that sub-clinical malnutrition is common in developed countries where children do not go to bed hungry, but get nutrient-poor food daily like carbonated beverages, processed meat, and factory meats which are heavily loaded with chemicals designed to ensure product makes it to your dinner table.
While I am not saying more people should go out hunting, I am saying that shopping in a grocery store is not the same as growing your own vegetables, raising your own chicken and hunting & fishing for part of your food intake.
IMHO hunting and fishing licenses are not done to conserve limited game resources, but to ensure rich hunting & fishing "hobbyists" can afford to get a trophy. The waste of game resources is one travesty of such sport, and such hobbyists should be forced to take lessons on the processing of their game into meat as part of the hunting & fishing licensing process. While I am sure fish suffer as much being hooked and clubbed to death, I am not convinced barb-less hooks and the current practise of catch-and-release is any less traumatic for the fish. However, sports hunters and fishers should limit their hunting and fishing to what they can eat.
Getting back to those kids in developing countries, the main reason they are starving is due to foreign aid not getting to them. In most cases, the privileged few in a given nation are hoarding food supplies stolen from the foreign aid agencies through fraud. A leader of a corrupt nation could easily force an army of "homeless and starving" native to grab what they get and cache it at a specific site. If that army is bigger and stronger than the actual homeless and starving people, then the foreign aid agency can only stand back and watch.
No one knows if 750 out of 1000 people are aligned with the corrupt leader and hoarding while the other 250 get barely enough to last them a day, a week, or a month.
So what actually kills kids in undeveloped countries is not actually under-nutrition but social Darwinism. However, penalizing the corrupt leaders will not help the kids. Only Bill Gates and Frank Giustra can do that, because it is so cheap to feed and care for children in developing nations.
This post marks my second one where a reference URL is not converted to a working link. This is a good "feature" of my limited interface in the Blogger editor due to it detecting Konqueror. In fact it detects Konqueror and is not fooled by the spoofing Konqueror provides.
20080116
Why Software Wants to be Free
"When software publishers talk about “enforcing” their “rights” or “stopping piracy”, what they actually say is secondary. The real message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take for granted; the public is supposed to accept them uncritically. So let's examine them.
One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the US Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users' natural right to copy.
Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about software is what jobs it allows you to do—that we computer users should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.
A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption may have seemed plausible, before the free software movement demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting chains on it.
If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society." -- R.M. Stallman, About the Gnu Project: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
Software piracy exists with regard to proprietary software as well as smartphone apps. Using and modifying Linux code, be it Ada source, BASH scripts, C (and C++) source, etc. I am not sure about HTML and XML, but GPL could augment ordinary copyright laws to cover those mark-up languages as they usually present documents on the Internet or are used to manipulate character data (or manipulate characters as data in the case of XML, and also include ASCII encryption (in some hexadecimal format such as binhex, uuencode, or xxencode) of raw binary data.
Though, the publishing derivative of Gnu Public License (GPL) could cover the SGML-like languages. The GNU site should have that somewhere.
Returning to the quoute, the text refers to another article by Stallman called "Why Software Should Not Have Owners", which is almost like a prime directive for UNIX programmers and users.
In it, he writes:
"Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright. That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright. Consider these four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):
1) Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.
2) Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.
3) Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.
4) Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA's request) of people such as MIT's David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.
All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as “samizdat”. There is of course a difference: the motive for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the motive is profit. But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive. Any attempt to block the sharing of information, no matter why, leads to the same methods and the same harshness" -- R.M. Stallman, Why Software Should Not Have Owners: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
With regard to "free" software, it is an extension of free speech. If one pays a member of the SPA to attend workshops on their new product, they will probaby be given a non-disclosure document to sign, which essentially makes that product in effect a "slave" of its own. If one then "frees" the slave of an SPA owner, he becomes a "pirate". However, there is an unwritten clause in that owner's license which states that a customer may purchase "limited" freedom to use more than one copy on more than one computer. This is called "licensing". This licensing violates a person's right to make a copy of a software product because usually the contract limits one to a certain number of copies and a license has to be purchased to cover more copies. In short, software licensing only propagates slavery.
If the product has a defect in it, and you know of a workaround to compensate it, sharing the knowledge about that workaround isn't covered by software licensing; but if the workaround consists of changing a byte or character in the software, then that could be considered a license violation even if it improves productivity.
Consider a product whose license limits it to 10 copies, and the 11(+n) copy will not run on any computer, and the license for additional copies is expensive. Suppose a customer reverse engineers the software and figures out how to change the program so that the 11th copy will still run on his computer. He is considered to be a software pirate for freeing his program from being limited to 10 copies. If he tells other people about how to modify their copies of this program, then he is a criminal.
Today, digital rights are considered the sole domain of publishers, be they software (the members of SPA) or multimedia like MPAA or RIAA. Rather than sticking with offshore piracy, common in Asia because of the cost of software, which very few people in Asian countries can afford, publishers are now targeting children of people who work in offices whose owners usually pay publishers for limited licensing of their products. This is probably because it's harder to bring Asian pirates to justice, but you have a captive audience waiting to be milked of their money for being busted for peer-to-peer (p2p) download of multimedia and software products in the form of high school and college students.
Obviously, the conclusion I can come to is that being a good consumer comes with a high price. Any consumer is in no way free, for he has to live by the rumes of his community, and with respect to published works controlled by publishers, he always pays for the right of use, be it running a program on a computer or even reading a book.
A typical consumer may consist of being a Winblows "owner", where you own a license to use Vista. He is described in Stallman's first quote above. In contrast, a UNIX programmer/user is described in his second quote.
Returning to the title of this article, the reason why software wants to be free is, in the hands of a competent programmer or user, the source code has the potential of being modified to work on a particular system.
For example, on my Ubuntu Linux system (6.06.10 LTS), I've installed smokeping, a software which fpings hosts and sotres the results in a database that is used to create graphics of network statistics based on the response times derived from the use of smokeping.
And one bug I've noticed is that Ubuntu Linux creates /var/run as a volatile tmpfs - that is, the directory which stores pid files for programs run as daemons which may have child copies running concurrently in memory and need to know the process number for their parent in order to complete nicely and not run amok by becoming zombies.
My understanding of why /var/run was made volatile is that it is easier to dump it on reboot and start over. However, the smokeping author has a script run from /etc/init.d which has this line:
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/smokeping/$NAME.pid
** $NAME=smokeping
Basically, in this line the program to start and stop a program nicely as daemon, start-stop-daemon, starts quietly, and in the process creates the file smokeping.pid in the directory, /var/run/smokeping
However, this line fails on startup because /var/run being actually a directory mounted on a tmpfs, does not have the directory /var/run/smokeping !
Here's df's output showing /var/run:
varrun 127340 196 127144 1% /var/run
So, whenever I reboot my system, I get an error message that states that smokeping cannot create /var/run/smokeping/smokeping.pid because the smokeping directory does not exist.
Now /var/run/smokeping needs to be created first and assigned ownership to smokeping by root before /etc/init.d/smokeping can be run successfully.
So this needs to be done on startup before other resident programs are run under one of the seven different user modes Linux uses. This is done by running in numerical sequence the scripts in /etc/rcS.d, followed by the running of scripts found in the rc[0-6]. rc0.d and rc1.d are used for killing processes during certain shutdown modes, with rc0.d for major shutdown (halt) and rc1.d for single user mode.
However, for the purpose of this example, I'll assume we know where smokeping runs from after startup, and if I get a question about that, find out so we both know.
Because of the nonexistence of the /var/run/smokeping, I had to create a script to check to see if the smokeping.pid is in it, and if it isn't to confirm the directory smokeping is present and after confirming that it does not exist, then create the directory and change ownership to smokeping by root.
And this effort was done all because of a 'bug' in smokeping.
That's like about a total time of an hour invested because of one bug which partially due to the volatile nature of /var/run, but mostly due to the author of smokeping assuming that the installation of the smokeping software would create the smokeping directory on a /var/run directory that is a part of the /var hierarchy on the filesystem.
Now it would not be useful to use apt-get install --reinstall smokeping, since in some cases you may have to download smokeping again, just to recreate the /var/run/smokeping directory.
I could have edited the /etc/init.d/smokeping script but realized that restarts and stop/starts would rerun a check for the /var/run/smokeping repeatedly. So I created my own script, thus leaving the startup script /etc/init.d/smokeping alone.
Instead, I created /etc/init.d/mksmokeping_dir to create the directory and give the smokeping user ownership. Then I created a link to /etc/rcS.d/S98mksmokeping_dir so that the next to last thing started up is the creation of the smokeping directory.
I presented this example to show you how one software was freed of a bug caused by making /var/run volatile i.e. mounting it as a tmpfs. The action of this bug was to prevent the creation of a pid file used by the program to handle child process completion i.e. knowing the process ID number of their parent, they are able to complete nicely and not live on as zombies. My script basically checks to make sure the pid file and the /var/run/smokeping directory do not exist before creating the smokeping directory and assigning ownership to smokeping. Hopefully my program solves this problem and successfully fixes this bug on startup consistently.
And generally I hope I have explained why software wants to be free, and hinted at what kind of freedom applies to software (and other published works related to computers). This is the reason why I am here on Jinx. I figure I'd be collaborating with the enemy by using a third-party example and avoiding using a recent trivial example of how I freed a particular software on my Linux computer.
If someone is reading this post and is using Ubuntu Linux, then I may provide my mksmokeping_dir script on demand. If you wish to use smokeping, then you should remember that you need apache if you don't need to "break" your system to use it with thttpd. I don't mention how to break the system to use smokeping with thttpd because it is trivial: it consists of changing the smokeping config file to point to the rrd subdirectory. the main html directory is /var/www/smokeping in which are subdirectories created for the png files used to display graphic statistics.
If you need the config file to see how I do it under my system, then I can't let you have my version. Another thing that needs to be done, which does break Linux, is you have to modify the permissions of the smokeping directory and everything under it to 777 or at least chown smokeping the rrd files. So, don't try this on a DMZ'd computer because you can end up with /var/www/smokeping being turned into a ftp warez repository.
Thus, if you want to use smokeping on Ubuntu Linux under Apache, then you only need my script.
If you want to adapt smokeping to thttpd, then you have to break Linux security to do it by making /var/www/smokeping world read/writeable preferably owned by smokeping. The risk here is that once smokeping is owned by a cracker, root can be compromised with some work, especially if your password is secure by consisting of a minimum of seven alphabetic charactrs and one numeric character, and is changed every three weeks. So, remember, thttpd is for secure media pushing content and should not be pushing output of programs that need to break security by the use of world read/writeable permissions on everything. You might get away by using chmod -R 755 and chown -R smokeping:smokeping on /var/www/smokeping.
One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the US Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users' natural right to copy.
Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about software is what jobs it allows you to do—that we computer users should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.
A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption may have seemed plausible, before the free software movement demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting chains on it.
If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society." -- R.M. Stallman, About the Gnu Project: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
Software piracy exists with regard to proprietary software as well as smartphone apps. Using and modifying Linux code, be it Ada source, BASH scripts, C (and C++) source, etc. I am not sure about HTML and XML, but GPL could augment ordinary copyright laws to cover those mark-up languages as they usually present documents on the Internet or are used to manipulate character data (or manipulate characters as data in the case of XML, and also include ASCII encryption (in some hexadecimal format such as binhex, uuencode, or xxencode) of raw binary data.
Though, the publishing derivative of Gnu Public License (GPL) could cover the SGML-like languages. The GNU site should have that somewhere.
Returning to the quoute, the text refers to another article by Stallman called "Why Software Should Not Have Owners", which is almost like a prime directive for UNIX programmers and users.
In it, he writes:
"Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright. That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright. Consider these four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):
1) Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.
2) Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.
3) Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.
4) Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA's request) of people such as MIT's David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.
All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as “samizdat”. There is of course a difference: the motive for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the motive is profit. But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive. Any attempt to block the sharing of information, no matter why, leads to the same methods and the same harshness" -- R.M. Stallman, Why Software Should Not Have Owners: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
With regard to "free" software, it is an extension of free speech. If one pays a member of the SPA to attend workshops on their new product, they will probaby be given a non-disclosure document to sign, which essentially makes that product in effect a "slave" of its own. If one then "frees" the slave of an SPA owner, he becomes a "pirate". However, there is an unwritten clause in that owner's license which states that a customer may purchase "limited" freedom to use more than one copy on more than one computer. This is called "licensing". This licensing violates a person's right to make a copy of a software product because usually the contract limits one to a certain number of copies and a license has to be purchased to cover more copies. In short, software licensing only propagates slavery.
If the product has a defect in it, and you know of a workaround to compensate it, sharing the knowledge about that workaround isn't covered by software licensing; but if the workaround consists of changing a byte or character in the software, then that could be considered a license violation even if it improves productivity.
Consider a product whose license limits it to 10 copies, and the 11(+n) copy will not run on any computer, and the license for additional copies is expensive. Suppose a customer reverse engineers the software and figures out how to change the program so that the 11th copy will still run on his computer. He is considered to be a software pirate for freeing his program from being limited to 10 copies. If he tells other people about how to modify their copies of this program, then he is a criminal.
Today, digital rights are considered the sole domain of publishers, be they software (the members of SPA) or multimedia like MPAA or RIAA. Rather than sticking with offshore piracy, common in Asia because of the cost of software, which very few people in Asian countries can afford, publishers are now targeting children of people who work in offices whose owners usually pay publishers for limited licensing of their products. This is probably because it's harder to bring Asian pirates to justice, but you have a captive audience waiting to be milked of their money for being busted for peer-to-peer (p2p) download of multimedia and software products in the form of high school and college students.
Obviously, the conclusion I can come to is that being a good consumer comes with a high price. Any consumer is in no way free, for he has to live by the rumes of his community, and with respect to published works controlled by publishers, he always pays for the right of use, be it running a program on a computer or even reading a book.
A typical consumer may consist of being a Winblows "owner", where you own a license to use Vista. He is described in Stallman's first quote above. In contrast, a UNIX programmer/user is described in his second quote.
Returning to the title of this article, the reason why software wants to be free is, in the hands of a competent programmer or user, the source code has the potential of being modified to work on a particular system.
For example, on my Ubuntu Linux system (6.06.10 LTS), I've installed smokeping, a software which fpings hosts and sotres the results in a database that is used to create graphics of network statistics based on the response times derived from the use of smokeping.
And one bug I've noticed is that Ubuntu Linux creates /var/run as a volatile tmpfs - that is, the directory which stores pid files for programs run as daemons which may have child copies running concurrently in memory and need to know the process number for their parent in order to complete nicely and not run amok by becoming zombies.
My understanding of why /var/run was made volatile is that it is easier to dump it on reboot and start over. However, the smokeping author has a script run from /etc/init.d which has this line:
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/smokeping/$NAME.pid
** $NAME=smokeping
Basically, in this line the program to start and stop a program nicely as daemon, start-stop-daemon, starts quietly, and in the process creates the file smokeping.pid in the directory, /var/run/smokeping
However, this line fails on startup because /var/run being actually a directory mounted on a tmpfs, does not have the directory /var/run/smokeping !
Here's df's output showing /var/run:
varrun 127340 196 127144 1% /var/run
So, whenever I reboot my system, I get an error message that states that smokeping cannot create /var/run/smokeping/smokeping.pid because the smokeping directory does not exist.
Now /var/run/smokeping needs to be created first and assigned ownership to smokeping by root before /etc/init.d/smokeping can be run successfully.
So this needs to be done on startup before other resident programs are run under one of the seven different user modes Linux uses. This is done by running in numerical sequence the scripts in /etc/rcS.d, followed by the running of scripts found in the rc[0-6]. rc0.d and rc1.d are used for killing processes during certain shutdown modes, with rc0.d for major shutdown (halt) and rc1.d for single user mode.
However, for the purpose of this example, I'll assume we know where smokeping runs from after startup, and if I get a question about that, find out so we both know.
Because of the nonexistence of the /var/run/smokeping, I had to create a script to check to see if the smokeping.pid is in it, and if it isn't to confirm the directory smokeping is present and after confirming that it does not exist, then create the directory and change ownership to smokeping by root.
And this effort was done all because of a 'bug' in smokeping.
That's like about a total time of an hour invested because of one bug which partially due to the volatile nature of /var/run, but mostly due to the author of smokeping assuming that the installation of the smokeping software would create the smokeping directory on a /var/run directory that is a part of the /var hierarchy on the filesystem.
Now it would not be useful to use apt-get install --reinstall smokeping, since in some cases you may have to download smokeping again, just to recreate the /var/run/smokeping directory.
I could have edited the /etc/init.d/smokeping script but realized that restarts and stop/starts would rerun a check for the /var/run/smokeping repeatedly. So I created my own script, thus leaving the startup script /etc/init.d/smokeping alone.
Instead, I created /etc/init.d/mksmokeping_dir to create the directory and give the smokeping user ownership. Then I created a link to /etc/rcS.d/S98mksmokeping_dir so that the next to last thing started up is the creation of the smokeping directory.
I presented this example to show you how one software was freed of a bug caused by making /var/run volatile i.e. mounting it as a tmpfs. The action of this bug was to prevent the creation of a pid file used by the program to handle child process completion i.e. knowing the process ID number of their parent, they are able to complete nicely and not live on as zombies. My script basically checks to make sure the pid file and the /var/run/smokeping directory do not exist before creating the smokeping directory and assigning ownership to smokeping. Hopefully my program solves this problem and successfully fixes this bug on startup consistently.
And generally I hope I have explained why software wants to be free, and hinted at what kind of freedom applies to software (and other published works related to computers). This is the reason why I am here on Jinx. I figure I'd be collaborating with the enemy by using a third-party example and avoiding using a recent trivial example of how I freed a particular software on my Linux computer.
If someone is reading this post and is using Ubuntu Linux, then I may provide my mksmokeping_dir script on demand. If you wish to use smokeping, then you should remember that you need apache if you don't need to "break" your system to use it with thttpd. I don't mention how to break the system to use smokeping with thttpd because it is trivial: it consists of changing the smokeping config file to point to the rrd subdirectory. the main html directory is /var/www/smokeping in which are subdirectories created for the png files used to display graphic statistics.
If you need the config file to see how I do it under my system, then I can't let you have my version. Another thing that needs to be done, which does break Linux, is you have to modify the permissions of the smokeping directory and everything under it to 777 or at least chown smokeping the rrd files. So, don't try this on a DMZ'd computer because you can end up with /var/www/smokeping being turned into a ftp warez repository.
Thus, if you want to use smokeping on Ubuntu Linux under Apache, then you only need my script.
If you want to adapt smokeping to thttpd, then you have to break Linux security to do it by making /var/www/smokeping world read/writeable preferably owned by smokeping. The risk here is that once smokeping is owned by a cracker, root can be compromised with some work, especially if your password is secure by consisting of a minimum of seven alphabetic charactrs and one numeric character, and is changed every three weeks. So, remember, thttpd is for secure media pushing content and should not be pushing output of programs that need to break security by the use of world read/writeable permissions on everything. You might get away by using chmod -R 755 and chown -R smokeping:smokeping on /var/www/smokeping.
20080114
Hacker (poem)
(written a few weeks after Mitnick's arrest in Raleigh, NC on February 15th, 1995 ...)
I'm probably just an ordinary person,
insignificant in the scheme of things,
if you get what I mean... Time to dump this scene.
I've been from Boston to Houston to San Diego,
then around the world from Singapore to Japan,
And back home again... All without leaving the country.
I may have call-forwarded four times to get
cops right off my ass with my cellular modem.
I definitely don't like it when the heat's too close,
just monitoring all my calls for carrier.
But I dig this game of cat-and-mouse all the same.
To me it's just another game of one-upmanship.
For I am a hacker on the Internet, joining IRC,
stopping to leave a flame in Alt.2600,
FTP'ing into MILNET for some utility,
searching for that Gopher site for info,
Web browsing on some Web site on data encryption.
Man! Call it what you want, it ain't any addiction.
Don't treat me like a common criminal!
I'm relatively harmless to anyone,
just watch out how you treat me.
I'm just too damned smart to remain satisfied
without understanding technical manuals.
So please don't start with this 'dangerous' shit!
I'm just an ordinary person who wants to know...
I'm probably some ordinary guy on the bus,
going to some hacker meet in the city.
You don't know who I am, but try to understand:
I don't try to crash your bank computer,
I don't steal corporate secrets for my own gain.
All I like is information out of curiosity.
Since when has this become a crime?
I'm probably just an ordinary person,
insignificant in the scheme of things,
if you get what I mean... Time to dump this scene.
I've been from Boston to Houston to San Diego,
then around the world from Singapore to Japan,
And back home again... All without leaving the country.
I may have call-forwarded four times to get
cops right off my ass with my cellular modem.
I definitely don't like it when the heat's too close,
just monitoring all my calls for carrier.
But I dig this game of cat-and-mouse all the same.
To me it's just another game of one-upmanship.
For I am a hacker on the Internet, joining IRC,
stopping to leave a flame in Alt.2600,
FTP'ing into MILNET for some utility,
searching for that Gopher site for info,
Web browsing on some Web site on data encryption.
Man! Call it what you want, it ain't any addiction.
Don't treat me like a common criminal!
I'm relatively harmless to anyone,
just watch out how you treat me.
I'm just too damned smart to remain satisfied
without understanding technical manuals.
So please don't start with this 'dangerous' shit!
I'm just an ordinary person who wants to know...
I'm probably some ordinary guy on the bus,
going to some hacker meet in the city.
You don't know who I am, but try to understand:
I don't try to crash your bank computer,
I don't steal corporate secrets for my own gain.
All I like is information out of curiosity.
Since when has this become a crime?
20080113
Could My HighFog Index Be the Cause of Misunderstanding?
From what I remember when i found the original script for calculating fog indexes in BASIC years ago, fog index calculators determine the grade level the author writes at.
According to my research, the fog index for school teachers is Grade 5. Yes, teachers are taught on how to effectively write so as to be understood by a 10-year-old. So I checked shaw dot ca's webpages, and they all rate Grade 11.
If you need to confirm of a website is beyond your reading comprehension - uses big words and phrases - then try out www dot readability dot info !
I am not going to post a link because it's too valuable a link to let the spambots get ahold of to try to get into the server.
I will post the readability results of Gandhara dot blogspot dot com:
Here's a list of Fog Indexes for various websites:
www dot bell dot ca:
www dot shaw dot ca:
gettingtothegate dot com
(The feminist women's lobby group trying to get more women into government):
Note: My guess is this website was written by a teacher.
andreareimer dot typepad dot com
(Andrea Reimer is the VSB school teacher who parlayed her network of university friends into stepping up in the Green Party of BC hierarchy, to the point where she's applying Green politicking to Vancouver city council):
Hmmm, she write one grade level about me! I bet people misunderstand her more than they do me!
Now a look at our fine post-second educational institutions starting with UBC:
www dot ubc dot ca:
Obviously written by a teacher.
www dot sfu ca matches Andrea's Grade 8 score:
Comment: My guess is, she gradated from SFU since the scores are so similar.
www dot kwantlen dot ca is not surprise, considering how terse the website is:
So I decided to check another webpage in the kwantlen dot ca domain.
This is the score for the testimonials offered by faculty at Kwantlen (www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw faculty dot html):
Being mostly masters grads, they naturally use a lot of big words and score above Grade 11, even better than the shaw dot ca webmaster, who might have graduated at an Albertan university.
Student testimonies (www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw students dot html) scored the following:
Comment: Not as high as the teachers, but this leads me to suspect that the webmaster chose, in both cases, the most complex sentences to quote from both groups.
Just to make sure that it's the webmaster's editing that is making these testimonials so complex, I checked out the alumni's page to see if any quotes from teachers lowered the scores like it did the students'.
www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw alumni dot html:
It looks like the alumnis, no longer hard-pressed to impress everyone like their former teachers and fellow students, scored more than 25 points lower on the Lix grade, which is still higher than Grade 11 but is dropping back to normal.
University of Calgary's webpage (www dot ucalgary dot ca) scores at around Grade 11:
Comment: But Edmonton (www dot ualberta dot ca) scored higher, which means that the Shaw webmaster is a University of Alberta university grad surrounded by call centre staff who graduated from University of Calgary:
Comment: University of Alberta has the highest ratings so far, and that's the first time I've seen the Flesch Index go negative! And using by the grades, I've calculated that the Shaw webmaster may have networked with at least six of the call centre staff.
Now on to the government of bc:
www dot uvic dot ca scores:
The government of Canada (www dot gc dot ca slash-fw home dot html) scores in the same range
Checking www dot psac dot ca reveals similarities with student activists:
The student left's website of choice for some (www dot resist dot ca) show:
The activist newsfeed mostlywater dot org has pretty much the same level:
Comment: This leads me to suspect that the webmasters of both sites have the same background, or have the same newsource.
Anarchist dot com however gives low grades, which leads me to suspect the webmaster has learned to keep it simple.
Since the scores for the psac website showed a strong tie with the student activist movement, I thought I'd find a site that caters to white collars. So I checked out the Canadian Venture Capitalist Association:
Comment: This may indicate the webmaster is a university grad.
So I checked www dot garage dot com:
Finally, I peeked at www dot whitehouse dot gov and got this:
According to my research, the fog index for school teachers is Grade 5. Yes, teachers are taught on how to effectively write so as to be understood by a 10-year-old. So I checked shaw dot ca's webpages, and they all rate Grade 11.
If you need to confirm of a website is beyond your reading comprehension - uses big words and phrases - then try out www dot readability dot info !
I am not going to post a link because it's too valuable a link to let the spambots get ahold of to try to get into the server.
I will post the readability results of Gandhara dot blogspot dot com:
Readability report for http://gandhara.blogspot.com readability grades: Kincaid: 9.2 ARI: 10.0 Coleman-Liau: 11.2 Flesch Index: 64.1 Fog Index: 12.5 Lix: 42.9 = school year 7 SMOG-Grading: 11.3 sentence info: 19581 characters 4278 words, average length 4.58 characters = 1.45 syllables 217 sentences, average length 19.7 words 48% (106) short sentences (at most 15 words) 16% (35) long sentences (at least 30 words) 16 paragraphs, average length 13.6 sentences 2% (6) questions 48% (106) passive sentences longest sent 156 wds at sent 215; shortest sent 1 wds at sent 39 word usage: verb types: to be (145) auxiliary (51) types as % of total: conjunctions 6(242) pronouns 7(288) prepositions 11(490) nominalizations 1(47) sentence beginnings: pronoun (29) interrogative pronoun (6) article (16) subordinating conjunction (20) conjunction (4) preposition (14)
Here's a list of Fog Indexes for various websites:
www dot bell dot ca:
readability grades: Kincaid: 6.4 ARI: 8.4 Coleman-Liau: 13.7 Flesch Index: 71.4 Fog Index: 9.3 Lix: 33.4 = below school year 5 SMOG-Grading: 9.3
www dot shaw dot ca:
readability grades: Kincaid: 10.9 ARI: 16.2 Coleman-Liau: 19.2 Flesch Index: 51.3 Fog Index: 15.2 Lix: 64.5 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 13.4
gettingtothegate dot com
(The feminist women's lobby group trying to get more women into government):
readability grades: Kincaid: 8.2 ARI: 9.9 Coleman-Liau: 11.7 Flesch Index: 69.8 Fog Index: 11.3 Lix: 36.4 = school year 5 SMOG-Grading: 10.3
Note: My guess is this website was written by a teacher.
andreareimer dot typepad dot com
(Andrea Reimer is the VSB school teacher who parlayed her network of university friends into stepping up in the Green Party of BC hierarchy, to the point where she's applying Green politicking to Vancouver city council):
Readability grades: Kincaid: 10.5 ARI: 12.1 Coleman-Liau: 10.1 Flesch Index: 65.1 Fog Index: 13.7 Lix: 45.4 = school year 8 SMOG-Grading: 11.2
Hmmm, she write one grade level about me! I bet people misunderstand her more than they do me!
Now a look at our fine post-second educational institutions starting with UBC:
www dot ubc dot ca:
readability grades: Kincaid: 7.6 ARI: 9.0 Coleman-Liau: 13.0 Flesch Index: 67.1 Fog Index: 10.9 Lix: 40.7 = school year 6 SMOG-Grading: 10.4
Obviously written by a teacher.
www dot sfu ca matches Andrea's Grade 8 score:
readability grades: Kincaid: 8.2 ARI: 9.0 Coleman-Liau: 10.2 Flesch Index: 70.5 Fog Index: 11.4 Lix: 44.6 = school year 8 SMOG-Grading: 10.3
Comment: My guess is, she gradated from SFU since the scores are so similar.
www dot kwantlen dot ca is not surprise, considering how terse the website is:
Readability grades: Kincaid: 1.5 ARI: 2.1 Coleman-Liau: 9.6 Flesch Index: 96.1 Fog Index: 5.7 Lix: 29.6 = below school year 5 SMOG-Grading: 6.9
So I decided to check another webpage in the kwantlen dot ca domain.
This is the score for the testimonials offered by faculty at Kwantlen (www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw faculty dot html):
readability grades: Kincaid: 22.1 ARI: 28.0 Coleman-Liau: 15.8 Flesch Index: 22.6 Fog Index: 24.4 Lix: 84.5 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 16.5
Being mostly masters grads, they naturally use a lot of big words and score above Grade 11, even better than the shaw dot ca webmaster, who might have graduated at an Albertan university.
Student testimonies (www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw students dot html) scored the following:
readability grades: Kincaid: 22.0 ARI: 27.8 Coleman-Liau: 14.4 Flesch Index: 26.9 Fog Index: 24.6 Lix: 81.5 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 16.1
Comment: Not as high as the teachers, but this leads me to suspect that the webmaster chose, in both cases, the most complex sentences to quote from both groups.
Just to make sure that it's the webmaster's editing that is making these testimonials so complex, I checked out the alumni's page to see if any quotes from teachers lowered the scores like it did the students'.
www dot kwantlen dot ca slash-fw testimonials slash-fw alumni dot html:
readability grades: Kincaid: 13.5 ARI: 17.1 Coleman-Liau: 12.9 Flesch Index: 53.8 Fog Index: 16.0 Lix: 57.1 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 12.1
It looks like the alumnis, no longer hard-pressed to impress everyone like their former teachers and fellow students, scored more than 25 points lower on the Lix grade, which is still higher than Grade 11 but is dropping back to normal.
University of Calgary's webpage (www dot ucalgary dot ca) scores at around Grade 11:
readability grades: Kincaid: 12.1 ARI: 14.4 Coleman-Liau: 14.8 Flesch Index: 48.7 Fog Index: 15.3 Lix: 55.1 = school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 13.2
Comment: But Edmonton (www dot ualberta dot ca) scored higher, which means that the Shaw webmaster is a University of Alberta university grad surrounded by call centre staff who graduated from University of Calgary:
readability grades: Kincaid: 34.4 ARI: 43.9 Coleman-Liau: 18.4 Flesch Index: -16.1 Fog Index: 38.3 Lix: 123.4 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 24.2
Comment: University of Alberta has the highest ratings so far, and that's the first time I've seen the Flesch Index go negative! And using by the grades, I've calculated that the Shaw webmaster may have networked with at least six of the call centre staff.
Now on to the government of bc:
readability grades: Kincaid: 17.4 ARI: 22.2 Coleman-Liau: 16.4 Flesch Index: 34.0 Fog Index: 20.6 Lix: 74.5 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 16.0
www dot uvic dot ca scores:
readability grades: Kincaid: 12.4 ARI: 15.5 Coleman-Liau: 15.6 Flesch Index: 48.2 Fog Index: 16.0 Lix: 58.4 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 13.8
The government of Canada (www dot gc dot ca slash-fw home dot html) scores in the same range
readability grades: Kincaid: 12.6 ARI: 17.1 Coleman-Liau: 16.2 Flesch Index: 50.4 Fog Index: 16.4 Lix: 57.4 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 13.8
Checking www dot psac dot ca reveals similarities with student activists:
readability grades: Kincaid: 8.2 ARI: 11.9 Coleman-Liau: 16.3 Flesch Index: 63.9 Fog Index: 10.8 Lix: 48.9 = school year 9 SMOG-Grading: 10.3
The student left's website of choice for some (www dot resist dot ca) show:
readability grades: Kincaid: 11.2 ARI: 12.6 Coleman-Liau: 12.4 Flesch Index: 55.8 Fog Index: 14.6 Lix: 49.2 = school year 9 SMOG-Grading: 12.7
The activist newsfeed mostlywater dot org has pretty much the same level:
readability grades: Kincaid: 11.8 ARI: 13.9 Coleman-Liau: 12.4 Flesch Index: 56.3 Fog Index: 15.1 Lix: 50.7 = school year 9 SMOG-Grading: 12.7
Comment: This leads me to suspect that the webmasters of both sites have the same background, or have the same newsource.
Anarchist dot com however gives low grades, which leads me to suspect the webmaster has learned to keep it simple.
readability grades: Kincaid: 6.4 ARI: 6.6 Coleman-Liau: 9.9 Flesch Index: 76.4 Fog Index: 9.5 Lix: 33.8 = below school year 5 SMOG-Grading: 9.3
Since the scores for the psac website showed a strong tie with the student activist movement, I thought I'd find a site that caters to white collars. So I checked out the Canadian Venture Capitalist Association:
readability grades: Kincaid: 13.9 ARI: 16.7 Coleman-Liau: 16.9 Flesch Index: 38.1 Fog Index: 17.8 Lix: 62.0 = higher than school year 11 SMOG-Grading: 15.2
Comment: This may indicate the webmaster is a university grad.
So I checked www dot garage dot com:
readability grades: Kincaid: 8.5 ARI: 10.8 Coleman-Liau: 16.8 Flesch Index: 55.7 Fog Index: 11.7 Lix: 48.3 = school year 9 SMOG-Grading: 10.9
Finally, I peeked at www dot whitehouse dot gov and got this:
readability grades: Kincaid: 12.4 ARI: 14.9 Coleman-Liau: 13.7 Flesch Index: 51.2 Fog Index: 15.9 Lix: 52.7 = school year 10 SMOG-Grading: 13.5
20080112
Beni: Music to My Ears
When I visit Vancouver, sometimes I hang out at a coffee shop to guess which city a certain group of Japanese women are from. At times I even get bold enough to go up to them and ask in Japanese, "Where are you from?" just to see if I am right.
From my scanty research so far, I've determined that the girls who frequent Granville establishments like Blenz or work at the Japanese restaurant on the street (Yamazaki?) are not from Tokyo but from near Kobe and Nara, which are older parts of Japan. IMHO I don't think Tokyo people have the time to vacation or do ESL vacations. Perhaps they are too busy trying to make a good impression at home on the tourists.
IMHO it too may be rare to have visitors from the Inland Sea area (Shikoku) and southern Japan because they tend to prefer Europe or Hawaii. As well, the insular nature of Shikoku-jin may tend to make them seem shy, though I can imagine the few Catholics would be hooked on Rome.
Getting back to accents, in Japan, the accents are called -beni ie Tokyo-beni, and are due to influence and intermixing of Korean and Chinese and even European languages on Japanese in a given area.
E.g. Kagoshima-beni has adopted European and English words. As well, various adverbs, verbs and suffixes are distinct to a region, city or district. Part of this was to done to code-talk so villagers would discuss matters openly in front of their overlords who spoke the same language as their masters i.e. a Shogun born in the southern region would speak in southern dialect at home but speak in court language in Kyoto. If he wanted to discuss something personal with one of his loyal retainers, then he might switch to beni, provided that the Emperor did not employ spies from the same village as the Shogun to eavesdrop.
As well, there is a variant of Tokyo-beni that the kids there are rapidly evolving into a dialect distinct from standard beni. Over here, we call it "street slang", and the roughest equivalence would be "gangsta talk". One of its endearing qualities is almost every phrase sounds like a challenge because of the sentence ending: wakari-masu ka? (do you understand?) becomes wakaru de ya? or wakaru de yo? Also, English words are incorporated, sometimes in amusing ways foreign to Westerners. Indeed, the swear word "fuck" does not have the same emotional impact on Japanese ears as it does on Westerners sensitized to its meaning.
Anyways, after modernization (1853), dialect no longer determined where the average Japanese will end up as it did 2000+ years previously, prior to seclusion in the 17th Century. Though, Tokyo gossips will still pretend Kagoshima beni is incomprehensible and the people rude, ignoring the fact that it's easy to distinguish a Tokyo rube in Nagasaki from a native when he opens his mouth.
Overall though, it's all music to my ears, and I take special joy in enjoying the music of beni-shaberu (colloquial chatter) when travelling to and from the city.
From my scanty research so far, I've determined that the girls who frequent Granville establishments like Blenz or work at the Japanese restaurant on the street (Yamazaki?) are not from Tokyo but from near Kobe and Nara, which are older parts of Japan. IMHO I don't think Tokyo people have the time to vacation or do ESL vacations. Perhaps they are too busy trying to make a good impression at home on the tourists.
IMHO it too may be rare to have visitors from the Inland Sea area (Shikoku) and southern Japan because they tend to prefer Europe or Hawaii. As well, the insular nature of Shikoku-jin may tend to make them seem shy, though I can imagine the few Catholics would be hooked on Rome.
Getting back to accents, in Japan, the accents are called -beni ie Tokyo-beni, and are due to influence and intermixing of Korean and Chinese and even European languages on Japanese in a given area.
E.g. Kagoshima-beni has adopted European and English words. As well, various adverbs, verbs and suffixes are distinct to a region, city or district. Part of this was to done to code-talk so villagers would discuss matters openly in front of their overlords who spoke the same language as their masters i.e. a Shogun born in the southern region would speak in southern dialect at home but speak in court language in Kyoto. If he wanted to discuss something personal with one of his loyal retainers, then he might switch to beni, provided that the Emperor did not employ spies from the same village as the Shogun to eavesdrop.
As well, there is a variant of Tokyo-beni that the kids there are rapidly evolving into a dialect distinct from standard beni. Over here, we call it "street slang", and the roughest equivalence would be "gangsta talk". One of its endearing qualities is almost every phrase sounds like a challenge because of the sentence ending: wakari-masu ka? (do you understand?) becomes wakaru de ya? or wakaru de yo? Also, English words are incorporated, sometimes in amusing ways foreign to Westerners. Indeed, the swear word "fuck" does not have the same emotional impact on Japanese ears as it does on Westerners sensitized to its meaning.
Anyways, after modernization (1853), dialect no longer determined where the average Japanese will end up as it did 2000+ years previously, prior to seclusion in the 17th Century. Though, Tokyo gossips will still pretend Kagoshima beni is incomprehensible and the people rude, ignoring the fact that it's easy to distinguish a Tokyo rube in Nagasaki from a native when he opens his mouth.
Overall though, it's all music to my ears, and I take special joy in enjoying the music of beni-shaberu (colloquial chatter) when travelling to and from the city.
"Student is N*!!*r": Student Debt in Canada Profits the Banks
Referenced URL; http://www.canadastudentdebt.ca
A few minutes ago I just signed the petition at the Student Loan Debt website, and added my personal story.
It ceases to amaze me that the people who harassed my mother and myself throughout the years from 2003 t0 2005 just stopped calling because I told the National Student Loan Centre my contact information and requested they only use that information. As well, the Student Loan Act's clause about violating my privacy is being adhered to, since Google has enough information for them to track me down, including phone number and current address.
Naturally it would be foolish of me to contact them and inform them of my current address and phone number. So, at the current interest rate of 11%, I probably owe them in $1430-1760 in interest, but that is assuming my principal is $16K. It could be less. But if we assume $1440 is the outstanding interest for 2007, that meant $120 a month keeps interest in near-balance.
In actual fact, $1440 would go to pay off one principal (probably the federal part of the loan), while allowing the other principal to grow. So they'd probably service the smaller amount since its interest is smaller than the larger.
However, I just got my semi-annual bank statement recently, and after balancing out my MoE&IA payments, my annual taxable income is under $6000. This income cap satisfies the $500 a month cap that the Income Assistance act stipulates for persons with disabilities, and works against repayment of my loan.
Why? Because on average, I make less than $500 a month - it is closer to $200-300 a month. As well, I am uncertain if I could cope with working 160 hours a month. Sadly, because the government likes employers with full-time employees and penalizes employees with part-time staff (despite the fact that the latter employers pay less taxes), no company wants a part-time employee.
Besides, I like being security for an employer that caters to the entertainment industry. People who wonder why should search for my En Karma dance video.
However, Jerry Farber is right: "the student as nigger" is reflected in student loan policies and MPAA/RIAA as two ways that their oppression is assured.
A few minutes ago I just signed the petition at the Student Loan Debt website, and added my personal story.
It ceases to amaze me that the people who harassed my mother and myself throughout the years from 2003 t0 2005 just stopped calling because I told the National Student Loan Centre my contact information and requested they only use that information. As well, the Student Loan Act's clause about violating my privacy is being adhered to, since Google has enough information for them to track me down, including phone number and current address.
Naturally it would be foolish of me to contact them and inform them of my current address and phone number. So, at the current interest rate of 11%, I probably owe them in $1430-1760 in interest, but that is assuming my principal is $16K. It could be less. But if we assume $1440 is the outstanding interest for 2007, that meant $120 a month keeps interest in near-balance.
In actual fact, $1440 would go to pay off one principal (probably the federal part of the loan), while allowing the other principal to grow. So they'd probably service the smaller amount since its interest is smaller than the larger.
However, I just got my semi-annual bank statement recently, and after balancing out my MoE&IA payments, my annual taxable income is under $6000. This income cap satisfies the $500 a month cap that the Income Assistance act stipulates for persons with disabilities, and works against repayment of my loan.
Why? Because on average, I make less than $500 a month - it is closer to $200-300 a month. As well, I am uncertain if I could cope with working 160 hours a month. Sadly, because the government likes employers with full-time employees and penalizes employees with part-time staff (despite the fact that the latter employers pay less taxes), no company wants a part-time employee.
Besides, I like being security for an employer that caters to the entertainment industry. People who wonder why should search for my En Karma dance video.
However, Jerry Farber is right: "the student as nigger" is reflected in student loan policies and MPAA/RIAA as two ways that their oppression is assured.
20080111
A kalitka (poem)
A kalitka
hogy leverjék a lélek
a kalitkában ismert
mint "körülmények",
E madárkalitka ismert
mint "ingatag szeretet".
A vágyunk a vége,
kell majd az úton.
to cage is
to crush the soul
in the cage known
as "conditions",
this bird-cage known
as "fickle love".
as we desire its end,
we must will the means.
20080110
The Challenges of Japanese on Computers
After studying the Japanese character challenge in Terminal and Konsole, I've noticed that Kterm displays Japanese well, despite the annoying fact that desktop entries for applications may have descriptions that are displayed perfected in UTF-8 format without problems.
As a consequence of my research, here are several things I've discovered about Japanese and computers:
Most Japanese using computers use several programs together that help them write in Japanese. This consists of typing in Romaji, which one program recognizes and translates into both Kanji and Hiragana, but very litttle Katakana, which is reserved for transliteration of foreign words. To conserve typing, most words rendered as Katakana in Japanese retain their foreign spelling (as best as the particular Japanese writer can muster, based on whether they graduated from an ESL cram school). So, technically Japanese compuer enthusiasts actually write in ASCII character sets (charsets) but it gets translated into one of four charsets - Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, JIS-7 or ISO 2022-JP. As well there is Unicode.
When W3M or Links2 displays text, it isn't in UTF-8. It's ISO 8859-1.
Most applications that run in the BASH shell will display correctly if they have an option to use alternate character sets such as 8859-1, which may be programmed into the particular application, though with l10n, by installing more than just English, the font manager will translate fonts to be displayed in UTF-8.
Links2 does not correctly use UTF-8 and is based on 8859-1. It needs a UTF-8 upgrade, or at least, the current version I got for Dapper is not working.
I have also discovered that several apps (pyDict) isn't set to display as UTF-8.
As a consequence of my research, here are several things I've discovered about Japanese and computers:
Most Japanese using computers use several programs together that help them write in Japanese. This consists of typing in Romaji, which one program recognizes and translates into both Kanji and Hiragana, but very litttle Katakana, which is reserved for transliteration of foreign words. To conserve typing, most words rendered as Katakana in Japanese retain their foreign spelling (as best as the particular Japanese writer can muster, based on whether they graduated from an ESL cram school). So, technically Japanese compuer enthusiasts actually write in ASCII character sets (charsets) but it gets translated into one of four charsets - Shift-JIS, EUC-JP, JIS-7 or ISO 2022-JP. As well there is Unicode.
When W3M or Links2 displays text, it isn't in UTF-8. It's ISO 8859-1.
Most applications that run in the BASH shell will display correctly if they have an option to use alternate character sets such as 8859-1, which may be programmed into the particular application, though with l10n, by installing more than just English, the font manager will translate fonts to be displayed in UTF-8.
Links2 does not correctly use UTF-8 and is based on 8859-1. It needs a UTF-8 upgrade, or at least, the current version I got for Dapper is not working.
I have also discovered that several apps (pyDict) isn't set to display as UTF-8.
20080107
Jerry Rubin Quote Echoes Unabomb Manifesto 230
"What would happen if the white ideological Left took power? The hippie streets would be the first cleaned up by the 'socialist' pigs. We'd be forced to get haircuts and shaves every week. We'd have to bathe every night, and we'd go to jail for saying dirty words. Sex, except to produce children for the revolution, would be illegal. Psychedelic drugs would be capital crimes and beer drinking mandatory. Rock dancing would be taboo, and mini-skirts, Hollywood movies and comic books illegal." - Jerry Rubin
"The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, "enlightened" psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois." - T. Kaczynski, unabomb manifesto 230
So, then if the unabomb manifesto author is merely rephrasing Rubin's quote, then surely Kaczinski is not the original author of the manifesto.
Indeed, quite probably Industrial Society and its Future was not originally penned by Kaczinski, as can be determined by the use of "we" and "us", two pronouns anarchists do not use but have been used by radicals writing in anonymity as part of a "domestic terrorist" group.
"The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, "enlightened" psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois." - T. Kaczynski, unabomb manifesto 230
So, then if the unabomb manifesto author is merely rephrasing Rubin's quote, then surely Kaczinski is not the original author of the manifesto.
Indeed, quite probably Industrial Society and its Future was not originally penned by Kaczinski, as can be determined by the use of "we" and "us", two pronouns anarchists do not use but have been used by radicals writing in anonymity as part of a "domestic terrorist" group.
20080106
OpenGridForum: Child of DARPA
Open Forum: Open Standards
"The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a community of users, developers, and vendors leading the global standardization effort for grid computing. The OGF community consists of thousands of individuals in industry and research, representing over 400 organizations in more than 50 countries. Together we work to accelerate adoption of grid computing worldwide because we believe grids will lead to new discoveries, new opportunities, and better business practices." — Overview, Who We Are
"The Open Grid Forum accelerates grid adoption to enable business value and scientific discovery by providing an open forum for grid innovation and developing open standards for grid software interoperability." — The OGF Mission, ibid.
It is a subset of Open Source Software.
OGF is strong in the domestic American military industrial complex and globally in the European analog of the military industrial complex, but Canadian participation is notably absent. In Canada we have super-fast network links connecting campuses across the country.
This is where Ottawa agreed to front money to improve networking infrastructure between campuses across the nation so that research scientists in universities can collaborate in real-time with each other.
As well, other providers help with building infrastructure.
20080105
New Year 2008: Truth and programming as meta-objects
In 2008 I plan to expose people to the truth in as subtle a form as I can manage. For starters I will quietly call the consensual truth that everyone learned in school "propaganda" aimed at marketing the consumer lifestyle. Just because nearly everyone agrees what we read and hear on the TV is "truth" does not make such propaganda true. We just consent to it being true within context of what that truth is selling us. It is still propaganda designed to sell a product. Ultimately, it isn't truth because it is based on the consumer model.
———
From what I have learned about Python and Ruby as programming languages, Python is mildly object-oriented programming (OOP) while Ruby is much more OOP. As well, Ruby derives a lot of its flavor from Perl and its object-oriented features are mainly inspired by Smalltalk. It also shares some features with Python, Lisp, Dylan, and CLU.
Python is used to manipulate content derived from the Web, and has methods of displaying text in a window. It is object oriented. Perl is a powerful language used mainly to manipulate text. Smalltalk is one of the oldest of programming language, and the classic Apple Mac used an operating system based on it. Today, Mac OS X is based on FreedBSD and its desktop is derived from WM and NextStep.
Currently I am reading Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)