All posts by rbowen

For want of a nail

As I remarked in response to BrBourbon’s comments about history, I’m not sure that it’s legitimate to trace so much of human history to any one event. And, after a little more discussion on IRC, he encouraged me to write a little bit about Chaos Theory, as well as some of the other topics that we touched on.

Chaos theory, at its core, is amazingly simple. It says that when you change something small, it’s possible that it will have big consequences. The technical term is something like “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”, but that’s the basic idea. It can be explained by this poem:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The origins of this poem are unknown. The idea is that a thoughtless act can have enormous consequences, but the basics of Chaos Theory lie in these simple lines. A small change in initial conditions (nail vs no nail) have large consequences (kingdom vs no kingdom). But who is to say that the kingdom would have been won if the nail had not been lost? Even the simplest human equations depend on thousands of variables, many of which we are unable to ever know the values for.

I suggested, for example, that the variety of bean planted by a farmer in his field in the spring of AD328 may have been just as relevant to our current society as was the signing of the Magna Carta, or the outcome of the war of 1812. Perhaps more so, since it has had more time to percolate. And because of the complexity of the system, and the fact that historians only record those events that seem important at the time, we can never know how important that event really was.

So, I posit that trying to trace everything about our attitudes today, back to some source event in the past, is a *VERY* useful exercise, but is necessarily doomed to arrive at only a partial answer. At the very best.

For additional reading on Chaos, I recommend James Glick’s book, which makes the whole topic accessible to non-scientists.

The first 4 are free

Time Magine coverThe next time you look at CNN.com, or any other web site afilliated with Time magazine, look for the ads for the magazine. The message “Click Here to try 4 Free Trial Issues of Time!” appears next to a recent cover, which shows a kid with drugs. Yeah, it’s an article about kids taking too many prescription drugs. But it struck me as funny in a sort of “the first 4 are free” kind of way.

WebDAV, Windows, and Frustration

I’ve spent the last hour trying to find a functional webdav client for Windows, and I guess I have determined that there isn’t one. If someone would demonstrate that I am mistaken, I’d be much obliged. I’m running Win98 (because that’s what CDs I have, that’s why. No, I won’t upgrade to WinXP. Because I’m *NOT* paying for an OS ever again, that’s why.)

I just got done with the enormously frustrating installation of DAVExplorer. It was frustrating because I had to make guesses as to the dependencies, and then, when I ended up on the Sun web site, I had to chase links to find the actual file to download. Why can’t these Java people just give me something to download and install? With all the JREs and JDKs and JSEs and who knows what else, I never know what it is that I actually have to install to get one of these darned Java apps installed and working. And when I do get it installed, they never actually work as advertised. It’s little comfort that they are platform independent when they don’t work.

OK, so I got it installed, and it turns out that it does what the name says, and NOTHING ELSE. I can see DAV repositories. I can see the files in them. I can’t actually download them, edit them, or anything else that would be actually useful. What is the point of this thing, other than to tease and annoy me?

Is there seriously *no* Windows DAV client? This seems really odd. It’s not like the protocol is that complicated.

I’ve replaced FTP with DAV on my web servers because people with *real* operating systems can get functioning DAV clients to edit the content. But it appears that Windows users are just out in the cold. Having read that Windows XP, or perhaps Windows 2000, and maybe Windows 9x with IE6 installed, could access DAV shares, I thought that they would be able to do this. But on the server I see requests for _vti_bin and other such nonsense, and then the DAV “client” says that it’s not a valid “web folder.” I venture to say that it’s not a valid DAV client. Standards are there for a reason.

OK, I’m done ranting.

Silent movies

Last night I saw two silent movies at the Kentucky Theater. The Haunted House, starring Buster Keaton, and The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney.

I was misinformed, and the Kentucky does *not* have the original Wirlitzer. This showing was part of a fundraiser to restore the original Wirlitzer and reinstall it. They have all the pieces, and they are currently in a store room at the Singletary Center for the Arts. It’s going to cost about $650,000 to restore it, and once restored, it will be one of just 46 operating cinema organs in the world. Pretty cool.

But they did have an organ, and an organist to accompany the movie, so it was almost like the real thing. The Chaney movie was very very odd, with a deeply convoluted and confusing plot. But with the silent movie format, you didn’t actually have much dialog to rely on, just the inter-scene dialog panels, and some panels with plot explanations. It’s a very interesting format.

Analog

Rush – The Analog Kid

Too many hands on my time
Too many feelings
Too many things on my mind
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m hoping to find
When I leave I don’t know
What I’m leaving behind…

One of the things I find fascinating about Rush is that as I get older I find more depth to Neil’s lyrics. And a title like “Analog Kid” that seemed so random in 1982 makes a lot of sense now.

I’d sure like to be analog for a little while.

Self-deprecation

I grow very very weary of the self-deprecation that happens on IRC and mailing list.

Example:

<morka_> i’m really dumb and need to set up password protected page, like with .htaccess and .htpasswd
<morka_> are there any tutorial for really dumb people like me?

ok, now what was accomplished by that? I suppose this person is trying to encourage people to help him/her, but what I find that this makes me want to avoid this person. By telling me that they are dumb, I end up thinking that I want to avoid helping them, because they are unlikely to do any of the work themselves, and I’ll end up doing it for them.

When I go into a new forum, whether it is IRC or a mailing list, I try to present myself as someone who needs help, but who has already done the requisite homework (FAQs, Google, documentation). I’m not dumb, and I suspect that morka_ isn’t dumb either. So I don’t tell people that I’m dumb. What good would that do?

Pumpkins and Moose


This evening was the annual pumpkin carving party. As always, it was a blast. I carved a moose. And not just any moose, but the moose from the cover of my new book. I have a picture which you can see here. It’s not great. Hopefully Loren’s camera will give us a better rendition. Mine doesn’t do dark very well.

Apachecon

ApacheCon has a Wiki now, which will serve the same purpose as the one at OSCon (apparently the wiki itself has gone away, which is a shame). A sort of combined bulletin board, blog, discussion area, and events listing, which everyone can contribute to.

Despite the potential problems with Wikis, this is a fabulous way for folks to participate in the conference, before, during, after, and for people that are there, or not there.

Shane++ for getting this rolling.