Hope is considered one of the great virtues. Now, a virtue is defined as an "active quality" or a "power." So hope must therefore be a great power, and it is often invoked as such as people are implored to "keep hope alive," or not to "give up hope," in the face of adverse circumstances. We often try to "give people something to hope for" when they're in despair. So presumably the "great power" of hope is to be a source of strength.
But what is hope? One definition has it as "a desire of some good, with an expectation of obtaining it." So hope is both a desire and an expectation. But we know that both desire and expectation can lead to outcomes that are not necessarily "good." So why is hope a virtue? How is it a source of strength?
In most circumstances we use the word "hope" in a trivial expression of desire. "I hope it doesn't rain." Or, "I hope I win the Lotto." These kinds of hope are neither great strengths, nor great weaknesses. They're really just expressions of a preference or other form of desire.
In other circumstances, an expression of hope is definitely not a trivial expression of desire. A loved one's illness, a lost relative, a family member gone in harm's way, these are all situations where hope is often relied on as a source of strength. But it's a kind of false strength, a deceptive strength. In these cases, expressing hope is a way of expressing our fear, without making explicit reference to it. Instead of saying, "I'm afraid Grandma is going to die," we say, "I hope Grandma doesn't die." It allows us to speak of our fears, without confronting them directly.
When people begin to fall into despair, we try to give them "hope." We tell them not to give up "hope," that where there's life, there's "hope." What we're asking is not to surrender to your fear, and "hope" is the mask we use to disguise that fear. If we can disguise our fear with hope, then we can go on. But there is some risk to this.
In Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, he wrote about his experience as a Jew in Nazi concentration camps. Near the end of his narrative, he writes about the men who had been persuaded to stay alive in the camps by telling them that they had hope, that hope was something to live for. He tells us about the cruelty of life, in how men who had suffered so much during their captivity would suffer even more upon their release, when they discovered that everything they had hoped for was gone.
NPR was interviewing an author one afternoon not too long ago, I regret that I don't recall the author's name, but he had written a book about evil in the world. One of the questions that came up had something to do with the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WW II, and why it had taken them so long to resist violently. The author said he believed it was because they had had hope. They hoped that eventually they would be rescued, and this hope delayed action on their part to resist with violence. I don't know how accurate that account is, but it seemed to resonate with me, and what I've come to understand about the nature of hope.
Hope is like first aid. It can save a life, but it is a temporary measure. The real cure, the real healing, takes place by some other means. Sometimes when we're suddenly confronted with overwhelming fear, hope can keep us going. But if all we rely on is hope, then we may face even greater suffering, as did the men Viktor Frankl described. To rely exclusively on hope is, it seems to me, a denial of faith.
The real answer to fear is not hope, but faith. Love is faith in action, and courage is love in action in the face of fear. These things all build on one another and come from the "harmony of binding opposites." * Hope is a temporary measure in those moments when we can't find our faith. Hope allows us to continue to function, but we must attend to our faith if we wish to find grace, the harmony of binding opposites. When we've lost our faith, then all we hear inside our minds is the voice of fear. We can mask it with hope, but suffering may soon follow. We must learn again to be still, to quiet the voices in our minds.
When you've lost your faith, just be still. Your faith will find you.
* "From the strain of binding opposites comes harmony." Heraclitus
Well, I'm very pleased to report that my experiments in pie-making were quite successful. One minor glitch was that I probably left the apple pie in the oven a few minutes too long; the crust was quite done, though not burned; but it was a bit dry and crumbly on the top. In truth, the only thing experimental about them was how well I could follow directions. I did sort of combine two recipes for the apple pie, as I couldn't seem to find any brown sugar, so I substituted honey.
The turkey turned out excellent, even if it did take an hour longer than the directions suggested.
Chris had his friends spend then night, and there's still a bit of a conundrum pending on that account. These are not bad kids, in fact, one of them isn't a kid at all, but a 21 year old male, which gives me major cause for concern itself. A legal adult associating with minors poses some serious questions about access to alcohol. But they're not particularly good kids either. These are kids who have stopped moving forward, and while they are probably not looking for trouble, I think trouble will find them, probably sooner rather than later.
When Melissa was Chris's age, she had a close friend who was a kid like these. Fortunately, we moved away, and after one near-disastrous visit down here, she never saw her again. We're not going to be moving away from here, and so now I have to figure out how to separate Chris from these kids. Chris is still moving forward, though it has always been a bit of a struggle for him. I think these kids have kind of given up, at least for the moment, and that sort of appeals to Chris. I need to try to explain to Chris why it may not be wise to hang with these guys. Two of them have indicated they intend to rent an apartment in St. Augustine. That's far enough from here that it's slightly possible he may not see them again. I hope they do, but hope is a poor plan.
I can, of course, simply forbid him from going to the beach. He, of course, will defy me, and then I'll have to impose consequences, and that's always the hardest thing to do. Not from the standpoint that it's hard to impose consequences on your kid, but that it's demanding ensuring the consequences remain in effect. I think I'm going to rely on reason at first, which doesn't have the best chance of success, but we can always escalate from there. I do have one advantage with Chris that I didn't have with Melissa, and that's Melissa herself. I had Pat and Melissa give me their impressions of these kids, and they parallel my own. While Chris is likely not to listen to me because of my role as an authority figure, he may listen to Melissa and Pat. In any event, his liberty is about to be somewhat curtailed, and I'm sure he's not going to like it.
It's often a white-knuckle affair being a parent. You do battle with the whole faith and fear thing all the time, and uncertainty is constant presence. But you play the hand you're dealt. We'll have to see how this one plays out.
Waiting for the turkey, I figure I'll kill a few minutes here.
Chris is upstairs with some of his friends who don't seem to have anywhere else to go for Thanksgiving today. The upside is, I get to meet these guys he likes to hang out at the beach with at night. It's a motley looking crew. Melissa and Pat are here and they'll give me their impressions.
Spent a little more money at the iTunes Music Store. I bought the themes from Peter Gunn and Hawaii Five-O, they're classics. Bought a bunch of Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne. Ronstadt's been busy, I never knew. She did a nice cover of Springsteen's If I Should Fall Behind. I hadn't listened to any Jackson Browne in years, and it's a wonderful thing to get reacquainted.
I baked an apple pie and a pumpkin pie from scratch, apart from the frozen crusts. I'm anxious to see how they turned out.
My brother Mark is up with my parents this week. He bought a copy of Apple's Remote Desktop and I helped him work with that application. It's pretty cool. He'll be able to help my parents with their eMac from his place when they run into difficulties.
Hey, anybody know what happened to Lexmark's printer utility under Panther? Lexmark isn't very forthcoming on their website, and I can't seem to summon it with the new Print Center. It's useful for guessing how much ink is left in the cartridges, and for running the head alignment and cleaning utilities.
I notice that the attention-seeking fear-mongers have discovered the obvious again. Yes, it is possible to intercept the audio stream from iTunes and save it to a file, even when it's coming from a file that is supposed to be protected by DRM. We've been able to do that on the Mac since Audio Hijack and Wiretap came out, which has been at least several months now. I'm surprised no one has pointed out that, my God, you can record the audio from the audio out jacks to a cassette recorder! Sheesh. We're surrounded by idiots.
President Bush went to Iraq for Thanksgiving. That was nice of him.
Speaking of politics, I'm pretty sick of the rhetoric of fear. I've been trying to imagine what the rhetoric of faith might be. Haven't figured that out yet, but if I do I'll let you know.
The weather has been outstanding here lately. Unfortunately, I was down pretty hard most of last week, including the weekend. Some crap I've had a couple of times before. Massive headache, fever, spine aches, small of my back aches. First time I had it, thought it was meningitis. I went to the base clinic and they made me touch my chin to my chest and told me I didn't have meningitis and sent me home with a bottle of Motrin. A little over four years ago, Maria dragged me to the ER at NAS Jax, and they said they didn't know what I had, stay in bed and take Motrin. So this time I just stayed in bed and ate Motrin like it was candy. I still think it's viral meningitis, but what do I know? Anyway, I'm better now.
My heart goes out to the people of Turkey. Of all the places I've been in that part of the world (Europe/Middle East), the Turkish people were far and away the most friendly and engaging to me as an American. I never encountered genuine hostility anywhere, but I could always sense something of a distance between myself and the people of other countries because, I believe, of my nationality. Although I'm not sure it's the same anywhere these days.
"As much as I love the idea of silence and self-discovery, the world doesn't need that. Withdrawl (sic) is the most selfish of acts."
He points to a brief post at another weblog you can read if you wish, it's worth a look. It's not the kind of thing that would seem to merit John's retort, but it seems to have struck a chord in him. [Update: Okay, it appears that John has removed the post I'm commenting on. That's okay, but now I want to include the link to the item that prompted his transitory commentary. You can find it right here.]
Where John errs is equating "silence and self-discovery" with "withdrawal." To be sure, there are examples where people take things to extremes. Some people pursue meditation, Zen retreats or other spiritual activities as a way of escaping from the external world. Just as there are people who pursue a multitude of superficial activities and relationships as a way of escaping their internal world, and can be considered just as "selfish."
The key, of course, is balance. But I believe that for most of us, our lives are seriously unbalanced. Our culture does not encourage "silence and self-discovery," apart perhaps from certain segments of the self-help industry. We produce almost incomprehensible amounts of "entertainment" that is intended to be "consumed." We have enormous industries devoted to making and shaping opinions and views. The web is viewed as a great democratizing force, lowering the barriers to entry for people to express their views and opinions in weblogs and chat rooms and discussion boards. We watch reality TV which wouldn't be very entertaining if it showed people who might be engaged in "silence and self-discovery." "Talk radio" where listeners are encouraged to call in seems to be a dominant format in radio programming.
Where, in all that "consumption" and superficial "engagement" is there time for "silence and self-discovery?"
I believe that the imbalance is intentional, that distraction serves the needs of groups better than introspection. The creation and propping up of "authorities" is facilitated by not permitting people to think too much. One can even argue that our educational system is designed to ensure that people are equipped with as little as possible in the way of critical thinking skills so that they won't impede the messages of marketers and politicians.
This is not to say that people are stupid, they aren't. But people are ignorant. We all are, though it is a relative thing.
I object to the notion that "silence and self-discovery" is "selfish" in a negative sense. Let's not be obtuse here, almost everything we do has an element of selfishness in it. Consumption of entertainment is selfish, so is reading early works on the use of massed armor formations in warfare. Weblog writing is a selfish act.
The point is, it's your life. It doesn't belong to Time-Warner, it doesn't belong to the government, it doesn't belong to the Democratic or Republican parties, it doesn't belong to your church, it doesn't belong to your drug dealer, it doesn't belong to your spouse, it doesn't belong to the PTA, you are not a tool. It's your life. So if you don't engage in some amount of "silence and self-discovery," how can you know how much of what you do in your superficial engagement with the external world is truly yours, and how much of it is merely the conditioned behavior of an individual laboring under the burden of an enforced ignorance? If you don't know something about yourself, how can you know what you might best contribute to the world?
Kurt wrote something about "information acquisitiveness" the other day that is relevant. The new tools we have, broadband, RSS, news aggregators, large hard drives, and the like encourage us to exploit them and may make us feel as though we're more "empowered" than before. I think it can just as likely make us, paradoxically, more ignorant. How much stock are we comfortable in placing in the opinions of a person whose interests are a mile wide and a nanometer deep? Well, if all you're looking for is validation, provocation or titillation, then perhaps you're in good company.
I'll quote a couple of old dead Greeks just because it encourages me to know it's an old struggle in our species. Thales said, "Know thyself." Heraclitus wrote, "Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within."
The latest version of LaunchBar is a beta of 3.3. It includes some new Address Book features, and the default installation is to not show the LB menu icon (which, truthfully, I never used). The Address Book thing is pretty cool. Type your contact's name and if you hit return you get a new e-mail with the address filled in; hit CMD-return, and it opens Address Book to the contact's record. Cool. You'll find it at Objective Development.
The old WeatherPop menubar is saying it's 40 degrees (that's Fahrenheit) outside. Yikes! I'm not sure if that's unseasonably cold, but it's definitely the coldest it's been this fall. It's cold enough to make me think about switching the heat pump over to moving BTUs into the house. The upside is, it keeps my G4 running at a cool 128 degrees F.
Yesterday was just about a perfect day weather-wise. The high was about 76, blue skies, few clouds, light breeze. Very, very nice. Today shouldn't be bad either.
I love reading Nishida Kitaro, even though it sometimes makes my head hurt. An Inquiry Into the Good is a very brief book, but you have to think a lot about what he's written, or you miss some important things. There are some points I think I disagree with him about, but it may just be I don't understand him yet.
Anyway, I wanted to share this bit of an insight that I found interesting. He writes a good deal about the phenomenon of consciousness, and one of the things he points out is that consciousness arises, in part, out of conflict. Here's a quotation:
When we have matured in an art, that is, when we have attained to the unity of reality, we are unconscious and do not know our own unity. As we try to advance to even greater depths, conflicts arise with that which has already been attained, and in this encounter we become conscious again, for consciousness is always born of such conflicts. The fact that conflicts necessarily accompany spirit should be seen in light of the fact that spirit is accompanied by ideals. Ideals signify contradiction and conflict with actuality. (Since our spirit appears through conflict, there is always suffering in spirit, and the claim of pessimists that our world is characterized by suffering contains an element of truth.)
There is a footnote at the beginning of the chapter that says, "The Japanese term seishin, rendered here as 'spirit,' is roughly equivalent to the German term Geist and therefore might also be rendered 'mind' or 'psyche.' Due to the religious connotations of seishin found later in this work, we have translated it as 'spirit.'"
The first sentence in that quotation seems to be referring to the experience of "flow." I was most recently able to have that experience when I performed my form during my Taekwondo test, when I did not have the experience of hearing my inner voices either criticizing or encouraging me, nor did I notice any of the other students and how they were performing their form, and finally, when I was finished, I had the sense that no time had passed. So even though I was engaged in a vigorous, carefully performed, rigidly structured activity, I was quite unconscious, as we generally understand the experience of consciousness. And it is indeed that sense of conflict going on within my own mind, between the ideal of the form and my perception of my performance, that stimulates those inner voices, the critic and the coach. Yet the conscious experience of conflict is necessary, I think, in order to ultimately achieve the unconscious experience of mastery.
When I think back to what started me down the path that I find myself on now, it too was a conflict; a rather extreme conflict between an imaginary ideal that I had in my mind, and the actual life I found myself living. Suffering is the difference between the way things are and the way we'd like them to be. Yet this conflict, this suffering, is what propelled me to "advance to even greater depths" (interesting choice of words there). And now, four years later, I'm beginning to accept that there is no end to this sort of conflict if one wishes to live a conscious life. For a long time, I had this expectation that things would get easier. It seems what I really expected was that there would come a time when I could return to a state of near unconsciousness. That is, a state where I would not be preoccupied by conflict within my own mind.
I think perhaps there may be two ways to attain that state of unconsciousness. One may be at the point where one achieves the state of enlightenment that yields nirvana. I'm pretty sure I don't have a reservation there yet. The other way is perhaps the way most of us attain it, and the way I tried to maintain it before, and that is through distraction. Forcing our attention to other matters so as to avoid the conflicts within our own minds. Television, hobbies, beer (Well, just "too much" beer. Beer in moderation is a good thing.), work, food, politics, online discussion boards, whatever would serve to keep me from dealing that that uncomfortableness in my own skin. Our culture has become quite adept at meeting our distraction needs; probably with good reason.
The conflict between faith and fear has also confused me for some time. Now I'm beginning to think I understand its value. I used to think that one should always embrace an attitude of faith and "let go" of fear. But I think there is a hazard in favoring either approach to the exclusion of the other. Instead, one must struggle with one's own choice and allow the conflict to help inform or shape one's decision to act. Ignoring one's fear is perhaps as unwise as taking only its counsel.
Of course, being the Matrix head-case that I am, as these thoughts were occurring to me, I recalled what Seraph said to Neo before he brought him to see the Oracle in The Matrix Reloaded:
"You do not truly know someone until you fight them."
Basically, I am a lazy guy. There are a whole raft of web sites I usually visit at some point during the day, and I don't have them bookmarked. Instead I rely on others' blogrolls. Sometimes they go and change their blogrolls though, or delete them entirely, and I have to figure out a new way to get to someone's site.
For many high-profile weblogs, all I have to do is type the blogger's name, or the weblog's name into the Safari search bar. The relevant weblog is usually in the first few hits back from Google.
Now, here's something that occurs to me that Apple might choose to do with Safari, though I'm pretty sure it's not exactly a high-value feature. Address Book has a field for a contact's web site, and Safari allows you to display the web addresses of contacts you have entered in your address book. But if you enter the name of your contact in Safari's URL field, it doesn't consult your Address Book first. Instead, it does what most browsers have done, it tries to coerce it into a valid URL usually by appending a ".com" and inserting a "www." at the beginning. I'm not sure why it wouldn't do three other things first - consult the bookmarks file for sites of that name and inserting the appropriate URL, or, failing that, consulting the Address Book for a contact of the same name and then inserting any URL found there. Finally, it might consult the History file and insert whatever URL may be in the History file that has a page name close to what is entered in the URL field.
Of course, as the user, I could use the mouse to essentially do all those things for myself, but why not have the computer do it for me?
I find I have less to say about things these days. Often I feel the familiar urge to say something, but now I'm as likely to keep quiet as I am to speak up. This bothers me a little, because I've always felt it was important to speak up when you felt strongly about something. Now I'm not so sure about that.
Sometimes the urge to speak up is the result of habituated thinking, a conditioned response. Someone writes something that triggers an emotional response, certain automatic behaviors kick in, and before I know it I'm writing some kind of negative response. I can't think of a case where it did any particular good. I get to feel a bit of an adrenaline rush from the experience, and maybe a couple of people agree with me and I get a little validation; but most of the time, the target of my ire and indignation is unaffected. There is no change of opinion, no reevaluation of position. It's all energy expended to no good end, other than perhaps to stimulate the already persuaded and generate a little titillation for the folks who like to watch. I also can't recall a case when, finding myself on the receiving end, I've altered my point of view; especially if it was something I cared enough about to have an opinion that was likely to provoke that kind of response.
I suppose this is a kind of self-censorship, but I think it's a good thing. One person's self-censorship is another person's self-discipline perhaps. Just as I've learned to pay attention to what's going on inside my own mind when I'm behind the wheel, becoming a calmer and safer driver in the process, I'm learning to pay attention not just to what I write, but why I want to write it.
Macro focus is a bit tricky with the small LCD on the A70 and these antiquated eyeballs, but this one turned out okay. Probably twice actual size. Don't know what the plant is, other than it has long, thin, very tough thorns that will put a serious hurt on anyone stumbling into them.
This is weird but, in hindsight, probably entirely predictable. Apple's probably going to have to include a "Private" flag for songs an iTunes user may not wish to share with people because of what they might reveal about their personality. (Update: Doh! Of course, Apple has already incorporated what is essentially that feature in the Sharing preference for iTunes. You can choose to share only certain playlists, so you can tailor your musical tastes for public consumption.)
I'm pretty sure I don't care who sees what's in my playlists. I'm not a very interesting person and it's probably nowhere more evident than the music on my computer.
If you want to have some fun, go buy yourself a copy of OmniGraffle 3 and then download their Address Book scripts. In the latest version of Address Book, there are relationship fields you can add. Omni Development has written some scripts that can chart the relationship information from Address Book into OmniGraffle. It's very cool. Here's one of those webs AKMA's physician was talking about yesterday: (Pictures being worth a thousand words and all.)
I say we move the President, Vice President, senior civilian leadership of DOD, the House and the Senate to Baghdad and make them live and work there for 12 months.
I think things would get a lot better in a big hurry. Both in Iraq and here at home.
And they might think twice the next time they get the urge to charge off and save the world.
It's unsurprising, but disappointing, the amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth issuing from certain interest groups about Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature. Yes, technically, it is possible to eventually archive every scanned page of a book in the database, and then use OCR software to create a searchable, editable copy of it.
It is also possible to take a book home from the library and scan each and every page on my flatbed scanner and convert it into a searchable, editable, digital copy. In fact, it's probably easier since I don't have to screw around with the internet and if I have a Firewire scanner, it's probably faster than downloading it anyway.
And, horrors, think of this! I can go to Books-a-Million or Barnes and Noble, buy a Diet Coke and a cookie and sit there for hours reading books that I'll never buy! Now with these silly camera-equipped mobile phones, why, someone could sit in one of those big comfy chairs and photograph each and every page!
We should probably ban libraries, and lock all the books up in the bookstore behind glass cabinets like they do the video games. We wouldn't want any of these authors to be deprived of their just rewards for the sake of the convenience of the great unwashed masses.
I buy far more books than I do music, and since music has gone digital, I've bought a lot more music. Imagine what might happen when books become as easy to buy electronically as music is. That is, if the fear-mongers don't cancel the future in order to feel better about someone not getting a glimpse of their deathless prose without paying for the privilege.
Some folks seem to miss being able to navigate higher up the directory in column view in the Finder. So far, I haven't found that to be a limitation. You can always command-click on the icon in the title-bar and move as high as you care to go in the path list regardless of whether or not you have the tool bar showing in any Finder window view.
With toolbar:
No toolbar:
Works fine. I'm pretty sure this isn't new in Panther, but it's not something I used a great deal before. I'm just pointing out that it's another way to move higher in the directory path.
Heh, I just noticed that to go "higher" in the directory, you must go "lower" in the list. Isn't that just like life?
Update: Command-Up Arrow will also move higher in the directory tree, with a caveat. If you're viewing the contents of the window as a list (because you want to sort the contents on the date or something), when you type Command-Up Arrow, it will open a new Finder Window. If you're in column view, it keeps you in the same window and just moves up a level.
Derrick Story has a pretty cool article up on using Image Capture to share pictures over a Rendezvous-enabled network. He only mentions using cameras, but on a hunch I tried to see if Image Capture would share pictures from a compact flash card inserted in my SanDisk CF card reader. It sure does! Very nice.
Here's another question for you to ponder: What path does each of us walk that is as narrow as the razor's edge? It's an actual physical constraint, not just a metaphysical or metaphorical one.
Here's a good question to ask yourself sometime: What is faith? It's one of those words we're so familiar with, we really think we know what it means. But, echoing the Spaniard, I might suggest, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Part of the new mojo for Mac maintenance (brought to you courtesy of the Department of Gratuitous Alliteration) is to "repair permissions." Think of it as "rebuild the desktop" for the 21st Century. It solves any manner of ailments that may afflict your silicon savant from time to time. How and why it solves those ailments is something known only to those indoctrinated within the priesthood of the Church of Unix, but lay people are encourage to invoke the sacrament frequently, and always after installing a new application.
Well, under Puma (10.1) and Jaguar (10.2), I've always had a litany of files whose permissions had to be repaired; almost always the same ones each time. I think I'm happy to report that under Panther my permissions always seem to be in an excellent state of repair, though Disk Utility is always quite happy to perform the service for me just the same.
I'm not sure if this is due to some new improvement under the hood, or if something just got fixed in the latest install that had been broken and never successfully fixed before, but I'm happy just the same.
The problem with sequels and trilogies and any sort of serial movie franchise is that a set of expectations is created within the audience, and the creators ignore those expectations at their peril. Sometimes expectations can be confounded with delightful results; other times, the results aren't so happy.
I think there's no way the Wachowski brothers could have satisfied everyone's expectations after the first movie. The brothers haven't been very forthcoming with what their intent was in the first movie, and so it became something of a Rorschach Test for many viewers. It was so rich with religious and cultural symbols and references, and the "twist" of the central conceit of the movie, that "reality" is only an illusion, an enormously varied set of expectations was created in a diverse audience. It's unsurprising that most of those expectations have gone unfulfilled, and that many of the reviews are negative or luke-warm at best.
I think too many people were expecting another "twist," like Zion being another layer in the matrix. These folks focused on the central conceit of the first movie, and not on what idea that conceit may have served. Being surprised, or stimulated by it, they expected more of the same in the subsequent films; but having served its purpose, the brothers had no need to further convolute their account with gratuitous tricks along the lines of the first one.
Also, while they are obviously very smart, talented, even gifted filmmakers, writing dialog is not their strong point, and plotting leaves something to be desired; although I hasten to add that the plot adequately served the needsof the film.
Finally, I think most people who saw the first movie got distracted by all the puzzles and external references, and missed what the movie was about. That may be a bit of a personal conceit on my part, because I think I know what the whole trilogy is about. I could be wrong of course, it may well be just about making money. But the trilogy is very satisfying to me at the level of its central theme, or message.
I'm going to go see it again. Ideally, I'd like to wait until I am able to view it on DVD before writing about it at length, but I'm going to be out of this business by the time Revolutions appears in DVD. But I think one or two more viewings will be sufficient for my purposes.
I will say this now though, the brothers met my expectations in the final confrontation between Smith and Neo, when Neo utters his final words to Smith. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, and I hadn't read about it or heard about it before. It's the only thing he could say, if you've been following along with where the brothers had been taking us. I will say they pretty much beat us about the head and shoulders with it for much of Reloaded and Revolutions, but it's possible to miss it. Or at least miss the significance of it. It's also not the only central theme because there are two, but they're really tied together into one issue. It's the same issue we all face.
Cops go to a high school to conduct a drug raid. They draw their weapons, because whenever there is drug activity, there is the possibility of violence, and they were concerned for the safety of the students.
So if the safety of the students was a concern, why was a drug raid performed on school property during school hours when the greatest number of students were present?
Did a voice-chat with Steve Vore who is using a borrowed Powerbook (TiBook, I think).
I debated whether or not spending money on my 2001 iBook would be worthwhile. RAM seems to be kind of pricey again. I've read that Panther uses more real RAM than Jaguar and can start hitting VM pretty hard sooner than Jaguar did. I watched the Activity Monitor application while I was running a typical number of apps, and it did seem to have a high number of pageouts. Heavy paging has somewhat more serious implications in a portable than on a desktop, especially a portable that isn't especially fast in the first place. You get the speed hit, but it eats into your battery life as well; even though the backlight is probably the biggest source of battery drain. In the end, I figured it was worth $90.00 to keep the iBook running as fast as it can, so I bought a 512MB SoDIMM from DMS. Should be here sometime next week.
The Gold Edition Collection of Loony Tunes cartoons was at Target the other day for a nice discount, so I picked that up. The first cartoon I watched was Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century. l love that cartoon! Alludium phosdex: the Shaving Cream Atom. Genius, pure genius. I had digitized some of the audio from it a number of years ago, and when I was on the Board of Inspection and Survey I kept some of it on the Toshiba laptop they issued me. It came in especially handy in certain meetings when someone would say something and I'd click on the player and you'd hear Daffy Duck's hysterical laugh followed by, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."
The plan is to take in The Matrix: Revolutions tonight. "It ends tonight." I'm hoping for a deluxe DVD collection (as if that won't happen), with additional scenes at some point in the not-too-distant future.
I didn't really say much about Melissa's wedding, did I? Well, it went really well. Only a few stressful moments, but nothing catastrophic, or even, "It'll be funny when we look back on it." The staff at the hotel did a superb job with one notable exception that we kind of worked around. The DJ did a great job and really helped keep the reception fun and entertaining.
There was plenty of food and the drinks flowed all night. I estimated we had about 130 people in attendance, but it's very likely we came close to hitting the 145 figure we gave to the hotel and for which I paid. I was worried about running out of food or having the bar close down early, but neither one happened. That was my first bar tab that ran into the thousands of dollars. I've had a few in the hundreds in my day, but not in the thousands. I think I'm going to have to start saving for Caitlin's wedding right now.
Lots of folks stopped by and told me what a great time they had, and how nice everything was, which I hadn't expected and appreciated very much. Someone mentioned that they'd never been to a wedding with so many attractive people before. I thought that was kind of an odd comment, but I think she was referring to everyone being very well dressed, even the guests.
I met Melissa's dad for the first time. Unfortunately, or perhaps not I suppose, I didn't get a chance to speak to him very long. He seemed happy to be there. I danced a couple of dances with Maria, and of course the father-daughter dance with Melissa, but pretty much sat out the bulk of the dancing. Maria sure didn't. She was out there quite a bit, having a great time. Maria created all the table centerpieces and all the bouquets and flower arrangements, she's quite talented in that way. Pat's family is simply outstanding. Of course, we've known Pat's parents, Dave and Karen, for a few years now, but this was the first time we met the rest of the clan. Dave's only brother died many years ago, but his sister-in-law and nephew came all the way out from California to attend the wedding. Karen has a twin sister who I met for the first time. That was very confusing, they really are identical! They're all wonderful people, and it was fun meeting them.
I'm anxious to see how the photographer handled the ceremony itself. The wedding party was extremely backlit, none of my pictures were really worth reproducing. I tried fixing them in PhotoPaint, but I'm not skilled enough in image manipulation to make the kinds of corrections that might save them.
Anyway, it was a great wedding and a great time on a wonderful day.
I've sent e-mails to the editors a CNet asking them if they can point me to any other instance when they've published an editorial that was specifically against a particular product.
Five reasons not to buy Windows XP?
Five reasons not to buy a Dell computer?
Five reasons not to read CNet?
Of course, there's a disingenuous disclaimer that they really love the iPod.
I find that I'm feeling much greater sympathy for Daniel Dennett's, Consciousness Explained these days. I also find I'm beginning to understand the Buddhist concept of no-self.
Does understanding that a rainbow is merely an illusion make it any less delightful? I don't think so. But it does help you choose not to chase them.
What if we assume that there is no American leader in the current slate of candidates with the requisite leadership ability, vision and political skill to fashion a successful conclusion to America's involvement in Iraq? What if Iraq is destined to disintegrate into factional violence regardless of who is in office? How does that affect the decision regarding who to vote for in the next election?
In my opinion, Iraq is the single most important issue facing this country and will be so through the 2004 general election. I think that getting Iraq wrong, or at least more wrong than it already is, has long-term implications for this nation that outweigh the issues of health care, social security, manufacturing jobs and eroding civil liberties. How Iraq plays out affects far more people, over a longer period of time than any of those domestic issues.
Why do I believe that? Well, it seems to me that if we fail to establish a stable, working government in Iraq, it will fracture into three regional states following a period of internal conflict. Turkey and Iran and other regional players will very likely respond to the situation in ways that are difficult to predict, but the instability in the region will be a source of violence and tension for years to come, with implications for access to oil and its price in the world market. A US pullout will probably also be recognized by many as a victory for fundamentalist Islamicists, with implications for entire region, and indeed the entire Moslem world. In short, I believe it is very likely that a premature US withdrawal will create a vastly larger problem than the one we supposedly solved. Like it or not, we're stuck with this now.
If that is the case, what do we do about the 2004 general election? My strong desire is not to reward the incumbent group of short-sighted ideologues who have placed us in this situation, and who have thus far manifestly failed to exhibit the level of competence necessary to successfully conclude our involvement in Iraq, which will very likely extend past the term of the next president. In short, I want to throw the bums out. The question is, will a Democrat make the problem better or worse?
All leadership is not created equal. "Anyone but Bush" is not a strategy. I don't think a populist Democrat running on domestic issues and essentially just against the war can beat Bush. But even if one could, it is possible that such an outcome might even be less desirable than a second Bush term. The Bush administration is emotionally invested in Iraq, it is possible that while they generally seem to lack the competence to accomplish the mission (Though they're pretty damn good at printing banners, you have to give them that.), they probably do possess the necessary interest and wherewithal to remain engaged in Iraq until they stumble on the right solution. They also will probably continue to enjoy majorities in both houses of Congress. It is by no means clear that a Democrat, like say Dr. Dean, will be able to sustain the same level of interest.
It's beginning to appear as though the economy will recover and job growth will begin again in time to take the economic pressure off of the incumbent president. Iraq will be his greatest political vulnerability. Whether my brief glance at what may be at stake in Iraq now is realistic or not, the Democrats are going to have to make Iraq the front and center issue in any campaign against Bush. But in order to beat Bush, they're going to have to win the votes of independents, and they have the potential to win the votes of disaffected conservatives or military types if they field the right candidate.
Dr. Dean is emphatically not the right candidate. Although there is much about the man that I admire, and at another time I might be a supporter, he is not the candidate I would support in the 2004 general election. Although I believe it is possible for someone like Dr. Dean to assemble a team that can help us find our way out of the mess we've created in Iraq, I'm not confident that he will give it the necessary attention and support to implement such a plan successfully. He'll have to struggle with a Congress that will likely remain a Republican majority, and that will probably not be inclined to see him succeed too readily. Iraq will require most of his attention, and Dr. Dean's favorite issues are domestic ones.
In my opinion, if the Democrats are to have any chance of attracting independents and disaffected Bush supporters, they're going to have to field a candidate that is a credible national security candidate, and one who will be likely to give the necessary attention to the situation in Iraq. I believe the best candidate at the moment is Wesley Clark, and my, distant, second choice would be John Kerry. I desperately want to vote against George Bush, but I won't do so for a candidate whose commitment to successfully resolving our involvement in Iraq is uncertain.
Of course, my lifetime batting average for primary candidates and presidents is pretty much zero. If my track record is any indication, Wes Clark and John Kerry don't have a prayer of getting the nomination, let alone becoming elected. I'd sure like to see that change.
Also, Microsoft has been bothered by the relative ease with which hackers have copied games that run on Xbox consoles. By buying one game disk and copying it with rewritable DVD disks, Microsoft is losing millions of dollars in game system revenues, analysts said.
Of course, I have to wonder, why doesn't MS deploy it's own "trusted computing" DRM scheme in its consumer electronics product as a test case before it deploys it someplace where it might actually really matter?
I'm happy to report I received excellent support from Corel on my PhotoPaint quitting on launch and missing serial numbers. The solution to the quit on launch is, in hindsight, something I might have thought to try - just delete the preference file. PhotoPaint makes this easy by just holding down the shift key while double-clicking the or otherwise launching the application. A dialog comes up to ask if you want to overwrite the existing workspace, and you reply affirmatively and everything is good to go from there. So I didn't have to reinstall.
They were also kind enough to issue me a new serial number so that if I should ever have to reinstall, I won't have to struggle with the missing previous serial numbers, basically it'll look like the non-upgrade installation.
My hold time was close to zero, the amount of keypad navigation was about average, and my support representative was courteous and knowledgeable. Of course, you only get 30 days of telephone support from Corel, but in only starts after the fist call and this was my first call despite owning the software from several months. Color me happy!
Longhorn Changed My Life: Standards? What Standards?
I tried to follow some of the information coming out of Microsoft's developers' conference, but I must say I couldn't form a coherent picture of what was being announced and what it might mean for the future of computing, at least computing in a marketplace that offers meaningful choices.
I'm afraid this column by Jon Udell is perhaps the most accurate and cogent assessment of the import of MS's most recent announcements that I've seen thus far; and it isn't clear that the news is good for anyone not on the MS platform. (One might well ask why would I think it would?)
In some respects, I think one has to admire what MS has been able to achieve here, from a strictly technical standpoint. But in an earlier column regarding the implications of Avalon, Jon Udell notes, "To my way of thinking, you don't have 'the best of both approaches' unless you have a ubiquitous client." What Jon leaves unstated is that MS, with 95% of the desktops essentially has a ubiquitous client. The remaining 5% of us on Mac or Linux desktops are just asterisks in the Microsoft universe, as in:
*Note: MS is not a monopoly, because people can choose Mac OS X or Linux operating systems.
Again, what is remarkable and at least somewhat admirable from a strictly technical point of view is what a disciplined organization can accomplish in a short period of time. MS has essentially realized the vision of a number of W3C web standards committees far more thoroughly and far more quickly than the lethargic, semi-collaborative, semi-competitive efforts of standards bodies and consortiums. MS has grasped "the network is the computer," and it's beginning to look as though it doesn't intend to let go. It essentially means that unless the Linux community and Apple are able to successfully engineer client-side applications that can interoperate with MS network services, they will be further marginalized in the marketplace. Even if they can, it's a fair bet there will be a MS tax in the form of patent licensing or licensed access to specifications. Given the competitive threat posed by Linux, at least as Microsoft seems perceive that threat, it's fairly clear that further marginalization is both intended and desired. It also means that much of the user experience in a MS "the network is the computer" world is going to be a MS user experience, regardless of what platform you're using.
Whether or not MS can get the marketplace to transition their existing desktop configurations from 2000 Pro and XP in sufficient numbers to realize this vision remains to be seen, but it doesn't appear to be an overly challenging problem.
I'm not sure what the response of the marketplace is going to be. There's little chance for a disparate group of competitors to act together as effectively as MS is able to, so I don't see an effective response going forward. Open source undoubtedly has sufficient talent, but lacks the discipline to deliver an effective response. Apple has the talent and the discipline, but probably lacks sufficient gravitas in the marketplace to swing significant numbers of people to the platform.
I think that, for better or worse, if MS's Longhorn vision is realized, their monopoly position is only going to be strengthened and Tim O'Reilly's question about how many people use Linux software (Answer: Everyone. Google runs on Linux software.), can be rephrased to ask the same thing about MS and the answer will be even more true. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on whether you feel there is value in competition in the marketplace, or if you believe MS consistently delivers a superior product. As for my opinion, I think we're screwed.
In most of the reviews I've read about Panther, uniformly favorable I must add, some comment was made about the $129.00 price and the fact that it's the fourth such upgrade since Mac OS X was declared ready for service. Most observers are critical to one degree or another of the cost.
I'm not convinced it's a legitimate criticism. I didn't buy the initial Mac OS X release, choosing to stick with OS 9 until 10.1, Puma, was released. Puma was an adequate OS and it was under Puma that I essentially stopped using Mac OS 9, even on a relatively anemic 400MHz G3 iMac and a 500 MHz iBook. When Jaguar was announced, the performance improvements and feature additions made it a compelling upgrade for me, even though at the time I couldn't use some of the major improvements like Quartz Extreme, and the G4 Velocity Engine code enhancements. I could have skipped the upgrade and saved myself some money, electing to wait instead for Panther, as indeed anyone else can. No one is forced to buy any upgrade, and for the most part the previous releases remain functional operating systems. There were some concerns that security issues that had been addressed in Panther would not be addressed in Jaguar, but Apple has issued a statement that it would address those issues in a maintenance update to Jaguar. What remains an interesting question is the status of those security issues in Puma, as there are undoubtedly many people still running 10.1.
It seems to be Apple's intent to issue significant annual releases that users will have to pay for to obtain. As long as Apple continues to offer significant improvements in either performance or features, I don't see that strategy failing. If the next release doesn't appear to offer that kind of value relative to its price, I'll skip it until the next one. It remains to be seen if Apple can continue to offer that kind of value on an annual basis, but if they can I think its great for users and great for the competitive marketplace, such as it is.
Not mine. My daughter's. She's actually my step-daughter, but the distinction is merely a technical one. I'm the guy walking her down the aisle, or, in this case, over the dune. Tried on my tux yesterday. Ugh. Chris looked pretty smashing in his, even with the mohawk.
We all went out to dinner last night at Chizu, the Japanese restaurant where Melissa and Pat met a pretty long time ago. Pat's contingent is pretty huge, but a big part of his family lives in Florida. My relatives all live in New York, except for my brother Eric who's in Alabama, but it would have been a financial stretch for any of them to make it. Maria has a handful of folks, her sister and two nieces and a nephew, and a cousin along with respective elements of their families. Melissa has a pretty big group of friends, so the bride's side of the aisle won't look too empty.
This is one of those milestones in life that kind of makes you look back at events and reflect. I'm not sure what conclusions one can draw, maybe that time sure does seem to go by fast. Or that most of the things we fear thankfully don't come to pass. Melissa is a wonderful young woman. I'd like to think I had some part in that, and I suppose I did to some extent. But it's also fair to say that she's a wonderful young woman in spite of me as much as because of me, and for this I'm grateful too.
Address Book needs a Time Zone field, maybe even a "Contact's Time:" field with the Time Zone correction already applied so I don't have to do the calculation in my head. (I'm a fundamentally lazy man in these matters).
The MacRumors' report on iChat sessions being extended to multiple simultaneous AV chats was amplified at MacOS Rumors. The multiple sessions would be strictly audio chats, which solves a great deal of the bandwidth problem.
Apple should consider extending iChat's functionality a bit into internet telephony so that it could be used to contact people who don't have iChat connectivity, but do have access to a telephone.
Actually, "thinking" is probably too strong a term, "day-dreaming" might be more appropriate.
Cecil reminds me that I might have been unclear on the Bluetooth/RFID "presence" device in a comment to the previous post. I agree with Cecil that I wouldn't want the computer calling me back from the kitchen to the computer to answer an IM. My idea only makes sense when you have more than one computer on a network in your home. I don't think it's too much of a stretch these days for a lot of folks to have more than one computer, and a laptop in the bedroom, an eMac or an iMac in the kitchen and a main machine in the living room or den doesn't seem like science fiction. I wouldn't leave the kitchen to answer an IM either, and that raises an interesting point.
An RFID device is merely passive. I haven't looked into ranges on the things, so they may not be appropriate for this application. But what might make them even less appropriate is that you can't indicate anything beyond presence. With something like a Bluetooth device, with a bit of intelligence built-in, you could indicate presence and state. For instance, you could tell the computer, "I don't wish to be disturbed, I'll be baking sourdough bread in the kitchen." Of course, the computer doesn't know the first thing about sourdough bread, but presumably it would understand "I don't wish to be disturbed," and it could set a flag on your presence device that would indicate "do not disturb" to all the other computers you came into contact with within your residence. Alternatively, using the passive RFID approach, the computer you told that you didn't wish to be disturbed would note that in a file on the network that all other machines check before initiating communications with the user. In any case, a "do not disturb" flag would set your iChat status to "Unavailable," and if someone IM'ed you anyway, the computer would not inform you and may even send a canned reply "I am not available at the moment."
You could also just tell the computer "Screen all my calls," in which case the computer would announce to you on whatever machine you were nearest, that so-and-so was requesting a chat, and you could tell the computer to accept to reject the call.
I think those voice commands are relatively easily accomplished today using Speakable Items and Applescript. I don't know how well they'd work if you're not right in front of the computer. Now, a Bluetooth presence device might include a noise-cancellation microphone so you can speak to the computer from wherever you are in the room and be understood.
What's cool about iChat AV is that you could be in the kitchen baking sourdough bread and you could still take the call. I think we'd need a wider angle lens on the iSight for these kinds of applications where you might be in a room several feet away from the camera. Audio would still come from your Bluetooth presence device. The person calling would see you were baking sourdough bread and could decide if what they wished to tell you was important enough to ask to interrupt you, or they might just say "I see you're busy, give me a call later," or something.
So, somebody invent one of those things like they used to wear on Star Trek The Next Generation so I can talk to my computer wherever I am, and it knows where I am.
