Tuesday, November 30, 2004
blog space policies
So far, the usage policies are best described as "making things up as we go" and the actual usage patterns are somewhat on the chatty side. As it happens, though, the site’s setup results in nooks and crannies like personal blogs that warrant a more explicit approach.
As a matter of technical fact, the site’s content is comprised of public and personal entries and in a nutshell, I believe it should be up to the user posting personal entries to state an individual comment policy and to the degree that this is technically possible, enforce it if it need be.
Having said that, this leaves more questions than answers and it points back to some fundamental questions like:
Where’s the best place to state personal comment preferences?
Should personal blog entries be automatically promoted to the front page? Should it be a choice? Should it be possible to disable comments for any particular personal entry? Is it technically possible to enable comment moderation/review for personal entries? Should we consider enabling this globally?
Is it technically possible to establish personal sub-sites with their own front page? I believe the answer to be "yes", but it would probably require some well-considered config changes and perhaps a code patch or two.
Perhaps it would be best for the regulars to state their opinions and expectations and see what shakes out.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Why Germany should be proud
More from Expatica…
Germany’s history once meant that
Germans saying they were proud of their country was somehow linked to
the nation’s disastrous nationalist past. But Andrew McCathie argues
that Iraq and a younger generation are breaking that taboo.
The joke over there used to be "Man ist wieder wer"...
Indeed,
part of the country’s new sense of confidence about its position on the
world stage has been accompanied by an interest in seeing the war and
all its misery from a German perceptive, rather than from an
exclusively British or US standpoint.
Fair enough, as far as I’m concerned. Not to forget the time between 1945 and the beginning of the Cold War, which is mostly white space in German history books.
“Chinese leader calls for improved EU-China trade”
Expatica: Chinese leader calls for improved EU-China trade
26 November 2004
HAMBURG - Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan urged
improved trade and commercial relations between the European Union and
his country, pledging on Friday that his country would work to improve
investment conditions and commercial cooperation.
...
"China is the
world’s biggest developing country. The EU is the world’s biggest
economic region," the Beijing leader said. "The EU has become China’s
biggest trading partner." Trade so far this year had reached a
volume of about EUR 100 billion.
...
In his speech, Zeng did not once mention the
United States, instead focusing on the deepening ties with the EU
"China and the E.U. have a lot of common ground politically," he said.
...
Zeng said he and the
Berlin leaders agreed that "relations are in very good shape" between
Germany and China. ...
In the
first ten months, German-Chinese trade had come to over EUR 32 billion,
up 30 percent, and accounting for about one-third of China’s total
trade with the EU, Zeng said. He said China’s economy was on course to
show 9 percent growth this year.
I’m sure one can read more into this article as warranted, but nevertheless…
Sunday, November 28, 2004
dedicated servers
Hi DS,
the answer is a bit too long for the shoutbox. In general, shared hosting accounts are quite restrictive in what you can do; specificailly, you are limited to whatever functionality the web-based control panels provide. It is rare to have SSH (command line) access, which is an invaluable timesaver, and you can forget about direct editing of config files.
Dathorn, the hosting provider I use, offers reseller accounts, which means you get to carve up your resources between one or more shared accounts and within those limits, you get to call the shots. In particular, you can define what functions the control panels offer and you can e.g. run as many domains or databases as you like - provided your use isn’t considered abusive.
A dedicated server means that you have exclusive use of it; you either get a box with a vanilla OS and command line, roll-your-own only, or perhaps the rent includes a license for a web-based control panel. You will, however, have unfettered root access to the box and can install and run whatever network services you care to - provided you don’t violate some terms of usage.
Dedicated servers tend to be more expensive than shared plans, but they also give you way more disk space and bandwidth. High-end shared plans and low-end dedicated servers seem to be pretty close in monthly fees. One drawback to dedicated servers is that you do your own tech support, except for some trivial assistance in power-cycling and console intervention. If you install a custom Linux kernel, say, the hosting provider can’t really help you out…
So, in a nutshell, if you know what you’re doing, have needs that a shared environment can’t satisfy (like running your own DNS servers, chat servers, whatever), and can afford or at least split the cost of a dedicated server, it’s the way to go. And of course, many web hosting companies resell capacity on dedicated servers…
Not to forget one problem - having joint sysadmins either requires a very thick skin, a good deal of trust, or zero-tolerance change management policies. Of course, you could run UML, Xen, or vserver and create virtual dedicated servers 
All of this is just off the top of my head, but you should get the idea. With dedicated servers, you pay for the priviledge of shooting your own foot.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Just wow.
Elwed has taken the kids out for a walk and I am alone in the house for the first time since before the baby was born.
“Remember those laboratory rats that went crazy when they were deprived of their privacy?”
“They’re living with you, too?”
—The Big Chill
My mother has this old-fashioned view of who should be taking care of the kids. She feels men aren’t capable of doing it very well. So she’s always insistent that I go home when I’ve left Elwed with the girls for more than an hour; today she even sent a whole cheesecake home with me to repay him for suffering through his “babysitting.” Shit, I’m with the baby twenty hours a day and nobody gives ME a damn cheesecake for doing my job.
Elwed is perfectly competent, even inspired, as a parent. He can do anything I can do (except for the whole functioning mammary gland bit), and often he does it better. In fact, he can soothe the girls better because he never had the crutch of being able to nurse them; he had to work out his own techniques. He can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let me forget he’s a man ... (Sorry, got caught up in a ‘70’s Enjoli commercial moment.)
So do I worry whether he’s going to get into trouble taking them out on an expedition? Fuck no. I’m just grateful.
Damn, it’s quiet in here.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
I’m puzzled:
From one of the entries in the news aggregator section:
Source: Daily KOS
Categories: Blogs
Do your guests pronounce marry/merry/Mary the same (they must be from upstate NY) or different?
OK. Maybe it’s because I grew up close to the NY border, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how these three words COULD be pronounced differently.
atheist apologetics?
I stumbled over the term "atheist apologetics" and now I ponder if there is such a thing. Clearly, the atheists that make the positive claim that god does not exist have their work cut out for them and one can reasonably expect that they need their own version of apologetics.
In general, I believe it would be more accurate to say that atheists practice a systematic counter-attack against the evangelical theist’s positions. Everybody is welcome to their own beliefs, but when somebody attacks my position without provocation, more than a simple "go away" seems appropriate. But what to call it?
the definition game
I have yet to meet an atheist that has thought his way through his position and defines it as anything else but "I do not affirm that god exists" and I’m reasonably certain that the regular readers understand what amounts to the minimal qualification one has to meet to call himself an atheist.
It occured to me that I have never thought about the mimimal qualification a theist has to meet. Informally, expressing a belief in god is good enough for me, but I suppose this could be rephrased as "I do not affirm that god does not exist". However, what about the stronger "I affirm that god exists"? I’m groping around the edges of how faith and doubt fit into the theistic view. To me, there seems to be a profound assymmetry between atheist and theist positions, but I can’t quite articulate it.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Telepolis
The German Heise Verlag publishes three most interesting magazines, c’t, iX, and Telepolis. Here are some sample English-language articles from Telepolis:
Coming Home?
Leaving the coalition of the billing seems much harder than joining
Election Fallout
The growing sectionalism which threatens to split apart America is evident in Europe as well
The Tyranny of the Two Party System in the US
What Lessons are there to Learn from the Outcome of the 2004 US Election?
Electropolis?
The question of perceived gender of online personas has arisen.
On edit: There’s a thesis named Electropolis that’s still an interesting read. My recollection is also that the paper was published after GM and I met on IRC.
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