core dump

Standards Confusion and Harmonization

2007-07-30T17:59:00.000+03:00

This article over at the IEEE is an interesting read for anyone in the jabber space, think pub-sub for a start ;)

Software engineers have long debated the practical benefits of standards. The argument against standards is that setting a bar creates the risk of it being far lower than it should be, resulting in a free pass to do less; without the bar, users would do more. However, proponents of standards claim that having a bar to be hurdled is better than no bar at all.

We are being discussed.

2006-05-24T18:23:00.000+03:00

"Transport Suggestions"

.. thus the tangled web is wo'n.

jid escaping for hatrack [at]

2006-04-28T01:09:00.000+03:00

After some consideration, with nr's help, the following format seems sensible for hatracked things:
dude@ranch.com^phycon@spqr.com@hatrack.jabber.server
escaped:
dude\40ranch.com^phycon\40spqr.com@hatrack.jabber.server
instead of:
dude[at]ranch.com[^]phycon[at]spqr.com@hatrack.jabber.server

When rendering a hatracked jid, inserting "\nvia: " for ^'s (and maybe unescaped @'s) leads to enhanced readability.

dude@ranch.com
via: phycon@spqr.com
via: hatrack.jabber.server

dude@ranch.com
via: phycon@spqr.com@hatrack.jabber.server

Hatrack rosters

2006-04-28T01:07:00.000+03:00

Use JEP-0144: Roster Item Exchange, like a normal transport, to pass roster info from the hatracked jid.

id bound vs agnostic registration

2006-04-27T23:58:00.000+02:00

Transports are either id bound or agnostic. An id bound transport only allows registration for one id in the domain the transport provides access to; an id agnostic transport allows registration of multiple ids from one jid.

Welcome to the world of the hat. Right of admission reserved.

2006-04-07T17:01:00.000+02:00

hat = hyper availability token

So how does a hat work? Right now, a hat is a jid. But..
.. but that jid is not necessarily the ultimate jid.

Woah, Nelly. Ultimate jid?!? What say who?

Let's start with a use case.

Okay, let's say I wish to deal with a forum, and I want to have a jid for that forum. I could register a jid, phycon@spqr.forum, set up my user-agent to connect to the server for that jid and be happy, except that this soon becomes unmanageable. Especially when I want to use another client.

So.. I ask my hat-rack to register the jid. The hat-rack is a bot, user-agent, whatever, that will then go forth and register the jid (if the server is open. otherwise user intervention required) and seamlessly forward messages, presence &c. between me and the spqr public.

hatrack = Hyper Availability TRAnsport Connection Kit

Like a transport. For jabber to jabber.

I then get messages from:
dude[at]ranch.com[^]phycon[at]spqr.forum@hatrack.jabber.server

or, in more human-readable form:
dude@ranch.com via hat phycon@spqr.forum served by hatrack.jabber.server
A mouthful it is, but it's a jid.

Then if we had a clever forum jabber server with a built-in hat-rack, I could have:
dude[at]ranch.com[^]phycon@spqr.forum
Where I would have had to register with that server's hat-rack with my own jid. But my jid would still be masked from forum users. Of course my 'own' jid could in turn be hat-racked.

So, what we then have is the use of jids which give specific identity away, and retain anonymity. This is something like the behaviour of spamgourmet.com or '+' addressing, except that having a jid on a domain implies some relationship between oneself and the domain. Said another way, one is using the domain of the jid to offer meta-identity; that of a relationship with the server.

Some more examples:
box291@6600.pobox.co.za
student001@myuniversity.ac
dennis@ups.com
mark@myetailer.com

Each jid is used where that identity has meaning. So we use our university jid to talk to professors, establishing from the get-go our affiliation. Likewise, requests for auth to a jid in a particular domain imply assumed affiliation and allow the user to scope a request.

Disposability

Then we have the issue of disposability of jids. As with e-mail, sometimes an address will become compromised, if we've been creating a number of jids, we have some notion of where the undersirable behaviour has originated. The compromised jid can then be discarded if necessary and all other domains (of course) remain active.

Presence

Another issue is when and what presence to be using. One option would be for hat-racks to have 2 modes: default-off and mirror. In default-off mode, the user needs to bring each hat online as and when required, in mirror mode, the hats mirror the status of the upstream jid. Possibly per-hat granularity is a good idea.

Interesting linkage:
http://www.passel.org/planet/

Jidam and Jideve

2006-04-07T17:00:00.000+02:00

And jidam and jideve strolled through the garden of jiden. And jideve was tempted by the serpent to eat from the wikedpedia. And jideve realised she was naked, her jid was bare and exposed. And they clad themselves in fig-leaves. And jidam wore a fig-leaf-hat. And the admin spake unto them thus: "Now that you've finally made yourselves decent feel free to roam to other domains; but please try not to expose your naked selves to too many people, it could come back to haunt me. And I might have to smite your user account."

The hat, the source of anonymous identity.

2006-04-07T16:58:00.000+02:00

One day:
Someone arrives wearing a UPS hat, they work for UPS, you take your parcel, you have-a-nice-day-now. Did you get his name? Would you recognise him in a line-up? Should you?

The next day:
Someone arrives wearing a UPS hat, they work for UPS, you take your parcel, you see it is torn. "Hang on a sec, um..", quick glance at his badge, "Dennis. It looks like something is wrong with my package." Ooh! we got his name. Lucky us! Is that really his name? Did he borrow a badge because his aunt mavis put his through the drier? Does it matter? Well, maybe a little.

JabMark: delicious jabber

2005-12-12T02:04:00.000+02:00

A jabber/xmpp driven online bookmark management system.

Would rock.

Drag link from browser gives string of form:
"http://phycon.blogspot.com/
core dump"
send this to jid of service, bookmark added, service returns list of suggested tags.
Transmit command "tag tagname1 tagname2" to service to tag the link.

Other commands include
"alltags": show list of all tags
"recent": show recently added sites
"pull 'num'": pull a site into focus by its number in the last returned result set
"search 'string'": search user's db for marks with matching substrings

table sites(user_jid, url, desc string)
table tags(user_jid, url, tag string)

Jabber/Interworlds What hat are you wearing?

2005-04-05T21:22:00.000+02:00

Tokens are ambiguous, overused and confusing. Hand in your token, and take a hat!

Hats make sense (even though they're somewhat out of fashion irl) as a real-world analogue to all this pill/token hokey I've been spouting.

Your company can give you a hat to wear which, when you're wearing it will let denizens know that you are ready to work, answer questions, or be asked to debug your nasty code.

Spamgourmet-esque actually. Interact with people wearing relevant hats, 90% of the time they won't look beyond the hat, but you can at your discretion show them your other hats or your raw address.

Jabber/Interworlds Tokens

2005-01-27T20:06:00.000+02:00

An Interworld token is based on the idea of pills from the first Jabber/Interworlds Blog.

A token is something you get to 'wear' to indicate your affilitation to a world/forum.

Tokens are able to be flagged normally hidden, and then only shown on demand. A token consists of a piece of iw (interworld) signed information which contains the relevant information for the identity in that world. Tokens also contain a link to a uri for the world and a uri to a facility (possibly the challenge bot) for checking the authenticity of the signature. (the check uri [challengebot jid] might need to be specified as a custom field in the world's base page to complicate spoofing attempts)

The method in which a token is acquired is quite amusing to me. Instead of a single challenge for password, the challenge bot will be able to issue a series of challenges. Obviously in the case of a single challenge this simplifies to a password system. But it would be possible to establish questionnaires and/or other interactive sessions which upon successful completion would result in the granting of the token. Thus world tokens can be granted to previously unknown parties based on their ability to satisfy the challenge bot's whimsy.

Tokens can be represented by an icon referenced in the token.

Jabber/MUC Plazas

2005-01-06T13:35:00.000+02:00

MUC's are themed meeting places for ppl. It should be possible to flag a person in an muc to add them to your roster, not exchange auth, just add that nick on that muc to your roster.

The problem comes in with one person, one nick, multiple muc rooms. now as long as these MUC rooms are related by some means (same directory server of iets) there should be a way of extending that presence between them.

This is the seed.

Ether Location

2004-11-16T15:43:00.000+02:00

So, radio direction finding's acronym is a lot like that of the resource description framework. Googling rdf just won't cut it. Anyhow, jusat some link caching for now.

anti-mega gps/gsm person tracking

Aspicore GSM Tracker

Poot.

Zope/Python/COM/Excel

2004-10-12T09:00:00.000+02:00

For now, this is a corralling point for research on the topic.

Starting blocks:

win32com part of win32all for Python.

The guys at boddie.org.uk document their experience with Python and COM although the page focuses on Outlook and Exchange.

However, just before terminating you should check that pythoncom._GetInterfaceCount() returns zero. If non-zero, it means that there is still a reference to a COM object somewhere in your program, and it should be removed. - Mark Hammond

More from Mark... "Python Programming on Win32" By Mark Hammond & Andy Robinson — "Chapter 12 - Advanced Python and COM" (Online Here) covers the nitty gritty of using COM from within Python, paying particular attention to late- versus early- bound dispatch.

Python and Excel is the first google result for "python excel" and contains two useful code fragments. The first is an example of basic python COM operations in Excel, the second shows how to detect users closing excel applications.

A piece on Zope Products from Linux Journal; introduction with examples & HOW-TOs.

Sovereignty

2004-09-19T17:39:00.000+03:00

Of note:Violating 'Sovereignty'.

Interesting reference to Cranston's "The Sovereignty Revolution" (Stanford University Press) - Should find & read it sometime.

Fonts & Icons

2004-09-07T13:46:00.000+03:00

Hrm, blogger gobbled my previous post.. bad blogger. (or bad me .. who knows?)

Found a new iconset, crystal for psi, based on Crystal SVG Iconset by Everaldo Coelho. Pretty cool.

Subsequent tweaking led me down the path of fontiness... to decide OpenSymbol is a pretty good screen font for psi. 'OCR A Extended' is a pretty legible font, but the punctuation is screwy. Font research took me to "Great Truetype Fonts" which needs further perusal. Also noteworthy is Usability News: So, What Size and Type of Font Should I Use on My Website?.

Might as well include a reference to the "Creating Icons" tutorial over on gimp.org.

Well, brief summary of earlier lost blog. *grumble*

Corrective Eye Excercises

2004-08-25T14:27:00.000+03:00

Sparked by discussions with Turner, I have finally gone out and investigated. And I am now just as undecided as before, except with more facts.

Basically we have a bunch of anecdotal evidence (real or faked?), academic skepticism, one or two people trying to make money off of the techniques, and a few information sites which oftentimes state in disclaimers that there is no hard evidence to back up either side of the debate.

It all seems to have started with the work of Dr. William Bates around the turn of the 20th century. Bates was a qualified physician [1] who in the course of his work observed day-today variations in the observed refractive errors. Based on these observations, experiments and a healthy dose of mysticism, Bates wrote The Cure of Imperfect Eyesight by Treatment Without Glasses, (online here) published in 1920.

The Vision Improvement Site is a valuable resource offering all you need to know to see more clearly in your quest for perfect eyesight.

The library at the International Society for the Enhancement of Eyesight (I-SEE) is well-stocked although it tends to house only items which support the argument for non-conventional treatment. An open assault from the "Center for Quackery Control, Inc." on the validity of Bates' methods can be found in the article Can Eye Exercises Improve Vision?.

For a summary of the eye excercises and eye-care techniques available, see this page on the "Vision Improvement Site"; also worth checking out is The Computer Health Nut's Guide to Vision Improvement.

I also stumbled across Corneal Refractive Therapy (CRT) as sold by Paragon CRT. CRT is FDA approved and generally accepted, althought its efficacy is often brought into question. The article Corneal Refractive Therapy: Inside the Trials and Beyond presents the results of trials upon which the author's private practice began offering CRT.

Wanton marketing of eye exercises can be observed on the "Vision for life" site; the nice people there will also take great pleasure in promulgating "newsletters" stuffed with testimonials and other advertorial matter if you choose to subscribe. The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices has an amusing copy of an advert for "The Natural Eye Normalizer".

So, yeah, my jury is still out, but I think this may well be woth investigation, especially if you are myopic. And if you have (or gain in future) experience with this form of therapy, please drop me a line.

Creation, life, god, chaos et al

2004-05-28T19:43:00.000+03:00

This is a mind-state dump attempting to record my current thoughts regarding geek.neo's blog on fnuckle under the "philosophy" setion.

The creation bit follows loosely the structure that I used to describe this to Gnome over the weekend.

First off, the concept of "othering" certain of our faculties in order to comprehend them is time-honoured, particularly in buddhism, although it is not explicit. These days a psychologist would probably parcel it off as dissociative personality disorder, which it really isn't.

The "othering" of the metaphysical is an interesting habit of mankind. Personally I wouldn't use "othering" to describe what I understand this phenomenon to be, as othering to me means an imposed distinction on a set that could (should?) otherwise be treated homogeneously. Whereas the matter/mind/spirit connection is not necessarily a continuum as evidenced by the ability to exist without connecting to that spark.

Now onto creation:

In the beginning...

Before I go any further, I think it prudent to mention that due to the simple rule-based (even fractal) nature of the universe, microcosm inevitably reflects macrocosm and so this, my view, is presented from a universe-centric standpoint, whereas this site takes an earth-centric standpoint and geek.neo took a mind-centric standpoint. Personally I believe that it is by investigating the very big and the very small that we can come to a better understanding of the essence of the middle-size.

... the universe was formless. And void. And boring. Well, to start before that, in verse one...

Incidentally, for a good online biblical resource, check out blueletterbible.org, then don't forget the Ocean Research Library.

So, hopefully you have turned to genesis in either of these, because it will form my roadmap, this being an attempt to reconcile my atheist world view with my theist world view. (dissociative personality disorder again)

... god created "the heavens" and "the earth" ...
"the heavens" — shamayim
1) heaven, heavens, sky
a) visible heavens, sky
1) as abode of the stars
2) as the visible universe, the sky, atmosphere, etc
b) Heaven (as the abode of God)

"the earth" — erets
land, earth
best defined as that which is not shamayim, or otherwise the whole of the earth

So, we have the first action in the creation of the universe being the creation of not X (X') and X. X' is the abode of god, and X is the abode of man or to be more precise all things material. (X+X'=S, where S is the undifferentiated non-existence that was the state before verse 1:1)

— my definition gets a little blurred as to where to put "space" but I'll ramble on a bit and maybe clear my own mind up a bit —

I believe X is energy (the physical energy that gets bound up into atoms and particles etc.) and X' is found in that which is not physical energy. So, simply, X' is the meta-physical, this works with the exception of "space" (which we have so much of) which should become clearer soon.

To digress slightly, if you have ever seen one of those string-art thingys where there are a bunch of nails with strings interwoven between them, this is an image I sometimes use to ponder the nature of the relationship between points of matter and the X'.

So, we have the heavens (X') and the earth (X). Yay!

But the earth is formless and void and boring. That is because it is just an amorphous blob of energy, viewed in the stasis of the first moment. At this point,
"darkness [was] upon the face of the deep."
So now, we have the primary differentiation having occurred, we have a Space-Time-Energy continuum (X) which is currently just a load of energy. Not even quantised into photons yet.

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
God, the great organising principle that unites the hearts of men, binds all together and pretty much created everything was moving on this interface between X and X'. (It is interesting to note here that waters has been exchanged for earth, an indication that an attempt at allusion is being made using a limited vocabulary)

So, what is the first action of the unifying principle that is God?
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

"A crash of drums! A flash of light!" — we have photons.

Boom! The simplest quantification of energy, bunching up a local field of energy into a single particle, moving, as is innate in the structure of the STEC at their speed of natural EM resonance through the space which was created as a concomitant event. All spong'ing into being around the same time in a gigantic photonic cataclysmic event that would make lightening and supernovas blush in insignificance.

Light, and darkness. Quaint, isn't it.
"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night."
Okay, day and night if you will.

"And the evening and the morning were the first day."
Following the divine example, I will leave this for now and go home for the evening. More to follow in the morning.

Jabber/Interworlds

2004-05-25T12:15:00.000+03:00

This is pretty much dominating my free thought cycles at the moment. Basically an extension of the jabber IM system to include virtual and real "worlds". The simplest examples are the interconnection of MU*'s and the facilitation of inter-world trade. This trade is of the type discussed in the "walrus" article on Castranova's work.

The key behind the interworlds concept is the fact that the protocols over which the interworlds communicate need not be interworld aware.

Poppin' pillz

The ID token (which I call a pill, visualised like one of the powerups in Arkanoid, Revenge of Doh; this allows the user to take the pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes :-) ) is a central concept. It operates similarly to kerberos in terms of trust relationships, but in many ways is very different.

So how does she work?

An example is in order. First the analog side:
I meet someone in the street (a world-space), they have no idea who I am, we have a conversation about quantum computing and then part ways without exchanging id info. He will then be able to recognise me by my face. (local world ID token)

I now know him by face and add think of him as "The quantum computing guy". (This is a one-entry meta contact with friendly name "The quantum computing guy")

The next time I am on the same street, I recognise the person and go talk to him. This works fine as long as the person's face doesn't change. (If it does change they are most likely not wanting to be recognised anyways.)

Enter the interworld

Now the person and I wish to take the relationship to another world-space, by exchanging phone numbers. I take his cell-phone number and missed call him, we have now authenticated our phone numbers and can recognise each other in the GSM world-space based our phone numbers. (world ID tokens, or pills)

Now I add the phone number to my knowledge of "the quantum computing guy", although our lacking social skills have meant we still haven't exchanged names. (phone number added to meta-contact)

Pillbox organisation

I then get a phone-call, and it is from "the quantum computing guy". (I have caller ID of course) I answer my phone, "This is Paul speaking." He says, "Hello Paul, this is Bob." I will then add the name "Bob" to "the quantum computing guy" (So now my meta-contact contains: Bob, the quantum computing guy, facial signature, cell-phone number)

I then set "Bob" as the primary id, as I feel Bob is a better ID. If bob wasn't unique, I could either create a composite ID or add another free-form ID string (which can include other ID's) that I feel is unique.

Trusted Authentication

Now it turns out that Bob is wanting to leave his job and I need a new quantum computing guy, so we discuss the prospects of employment. He tells me he went to the University de Computing a la Tiny (UCT) which is a world leader in small things, particularly quantum computing. He gives me their address and I walk over there, I look at his ID card clipped to his belt and add his staff number to my store. I then stop by reception and ask them about staffmember X1A3FF they tell me that he is a professor in quantum computing, has been there for 10 years and lives in room 314. I have now authenticated his UCT ID and store that info against his name. (I add the authenticated UCT pill to his meta-contact box)

This all translates quite nicely into my Interworlds structure which I will elaborate later.

See also:

Conversation with Nurm

Community taxation

2004-04-12T21:48:00.000+02:00

--develop this writeup--

basically the individual joins a community, some geographic restriction (e.g. same city) that community then collects the individuals taxes and rates in exchange for a small cut of those. This cut will then be used to projects aligned with the goals of that community.

That way religious institutions, gaming groups, neighbourhoods et al can contribute and be tied together.

Community meetings etc will foster community and improve social fabric.

Completely voluntary fraternity. Financial incentive.

Should pretty much offset itself against the cost of having current tax collection processes, with the small cost incurred for auditing communities.

good idea/bad idea? not sure yet.

sci-fi

2004-04-12T21:47:00.000+02:00

sci-fi books to look at a later date.
EOT

My name

2004-03-25T14:29:00.000+02:00

Just found out the harsh truth about the uniqueness of my name - it isn't.

Now I guess I have to write a worthwhile web page. (my real name, not my nick)

UCT Engineering Degree Programme Helper

2004-03-25T11:56:00.000+02:00

"If you stay on the academic straight and narrow, these pages are not for you."

Write up a page on making your way through the thick of an engineering degree.

2004-03-24T13:26:00.000+02:00

Angelfire has been sonicwalled. Time to move.

--

Maybe I should read some Heinlein.

--

You don't need pants for the victory dance, 'cause I R better than Weasel!