Author Archives: joestump

Who designed the intelligent designer?

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I’ve been sort-of following the recent push to introduce intelligent design as an alternative theory to evolution. I’m totally against this for two reasons.

  1. Intelligent design smacks of religious overtones. The Supreme Court has, time and time again, ruled that religion has no place in public schools. If you’re so intent on having your kids learn intelligent design then send them to a private religious school.
  2. The huge hole in this theory is the question of who created this “intelligent designer”? Where did they come from? Where they in turn designed by another intelligent designer; one even more intelligent than our own designer? Or, oh the irony, did they evolve from some lesser designers?

My main complaint with the whole thing is that the market should fill this void. If there is a demand from parents wanting their children “taught” this “theory” then that demand should be met by private schools who have teachers on staff that are well versed in this theory. The courts all agree it’s illegal to teach it in public schools so why not save us all the headache and send your kid to private school where they’ll be taught all about this amazing new “theory”?

Present status of XSLT support in browsers

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Despite supporting XSLT Safari 2.0 ignores XSLT when it comes to RSS/RDF (I would assume Atom as well) feeds. This means that, if you have an XSLT transformation on your site’s various feeds, Safari will ignore the XSLT and render it within its native RSS viewer. Needless to say I’m not happy about this.

I’ve also discovered that Mozilla’s XSLT parser ignores disable-output-escaping, which, in their defense, is deprecated. In order to properly output XHTML/HTML that may be present in your <![CDATA[ ... ]]> you need to do the following.

  1. Remove your <![CDATA[ ... ]]>
  2. Make sure the markup inside of the <![CDATA[ ... ]]> is valid.
  3. Use <xsl:copy-of select="./*"/> to copy the content of the valid XHTML (it’s no longer HTML once it’s valid XML) into your output.

I’ve got an example (tested in Firefox, but not IE) of my RDF feed here. If you’re using Safari you’ll notice that it uses the new RSS reader instead of displaying my XSLT output. Thanks Apple. The odd part is that XSLT works just fine with non-RSS/RDF XML. The only thing I can guess is that Safari recognizes certain RSS tags and switches to whatever the RSS/RDF reader is.

I’ve been thinking about redoing the site so that it’s just XML/XSLT. This was the initial test to see how things would work in various browsers. Things look good, but in order to support Safari, I’ll have to use non-RSS/RDF XML.

I have seen the future

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Lots of people, including me, have wondered where the internet will be going in the future. What will be the next big boom? What will the next big technology be? Too late – Google has whooped everyone’s asses to the punch.

It’s been predicted before and, maybe, I’m just a little late in “getting it”, but XMLHttpRequest (aka AJAX) and web services (ie. SOAP) are totally where the web is heading. Combine this with micro formats and the semantic web and you can start to see where things are heading.

In the next five years it will no longer be acceptable to simple post XHTML to a website. Users will start demanding semantic XML delivered via HTTP through SOAP or XML-RPC so they can consume the information you post online in any manner they wish. The browser space will explode with new, alternate viewing methods (RSS aggregators being the first in a long line of new products that will alter the way we consume online materials).

If having an Internet connection isn’t already a requirement it will be within 10 years because, at that point, your operating system will rely on an Internet connection to function. If Google has anything to say about it you’ll most likely be booting off of their massive cluster. This has been widely anticipated for some time and I can see it’s already happening (GMail being a good example).

So, where are the opportunities? I see huge opportunities in the consulting end with helping people to bring web services online quickly. I also see a huge arena for people to create new specialized applications geared around specific web services. I also see new protocols popping up based on web services (ie. every photo sharing site publishing API’s that work the same for each site). The specialized applications I mentioned before will utilize these new protocols to create rich new applications that allow you to consume information in a totally new way. For instance, I could browse to img://cameron@flickr.com to view Cam’s photos. Or you could go to acronym://SOAP and have it give you a definition for SOAP. My favorite would be someone who would create info://Joe+Stump which would leverage the various API’s from Wikipedia, Google, etc. into a single “fact sheet” for the term provided. The possibilities are endless in this arena.

The interesting thing to mention here is that programming languages, for the most part, will become a moot point. It won’t matter what I program my web services in or what programming language you use to consume my web services. With AJAX, XML and web services the future is looking very interesting on the web.

I studied today

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I did something today that I didn’t think I’d ever do again – I studied for a test. I’m scheduled to take the GMAT on July, 15th. A few days ago I picked up a few books that cover the GMAT and spend about an hour today looking over the first two chapters.

I’m getting somewhat anxious over the whole idea of going back to school, but it’s also exciting. I hated school in undergrad, but I’m excited to go to school this time. I think this is mainly because of the fact that undergrad is comprised of, mostly, mediocre teachers, students and course materials. This time around I imagine it being differently. The University of Washington’s MBA program is ranked 18th in the nation. I envision great teachers who have hands on experience and students that actually want to be there. Should be fun.

Anyone have an extra $50,000 USD laying around they’d like to lend me?

Choice is Freedom

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I was having a conversation with a former colleague of mine about my recent flag burning post. While he thinks the proposed amendment is not a great idea, he thinks that burning the flag is disrespectful and, if you don’t like living in the US, you should leave. I, personally, think you should be able to do whatever you like with the flag – it is YOUR flag after all.

Remy also owns a bunch of guns. He thinks guns are cool. I’ve never had the need or desire to own a weapon. Again, we’re at odds, but I don’t argue with the fact that it’s totally his right to own as many guns as he wants.

You see the freedom in these two scenarios? Choice. He chooses to own guns and not burn flags, while others are free to not own guns and burn flags. Those are tangible examples of freedoms that both Republicans and Democrats are trying to take away from you. Freedoms we’ve had for 200 years.

What makes this country great isn’t some piece of cloth, the fact that you can buys as many guns as you want or the fact that you can abort your unborn child. What makes this country so great is that you have the choice to do those things.

If Democrats and Republicans get their way people will start losing their ability to make their own choices. It’s already illegal for adults to make lots of choices. Here are a few things that you no longer have a choice on how to act.

  1. Wearing a seat belt
  2. Consuming narcotics
  3. Wearing a helmet
  4. Marry people of the same sex

Here are four choices that you are no longer allowed to make. You know what strikes me is that these choices are my choice to make. They don’t affect anyone else, with the exception of number four, which shouldn’t matter either if the other person agrees as well.

Look around people. Two men or women getting married shouldn’t anger you. Abortion shouldn’t anger you. The fact that you have or are losing the right to make those choices is what should make you angry.

CNN.com Top Headlines Review

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Two of CNN.com’s top headlines right now are “Boy loses leg after shark attack” and “Soldiers land roles in ‘War of the Worlds'”. These are the top headlines that appear “above the fold” on one of the most popular news sites on the web. Yup, you read that right; some kid losing his leg and a bunch of soldiers getting parts as extras in some movie have been designated important enough to be prominently displayed above the fold on CNN.com.

I believe there have been two shark attacks this year in Florida. Two. Did you hear me? Two. In fact, there have only been 38 deaths from shark attacks in the US since 1580. 1580! Someone please tell me how some kid being attacked by a shark is worthy of national attention.

And then we have Spc. Kenneth Wright. He had the following to say about his part as an extra in a Tom Cruise movie.

It’s been a whirlwind to be part of it. My mom didn’t believe me at first when I told her I met Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg and Dakota Fanning. Now she’s stoked about it. Everybody in my family is going to go see me … I mean the movie.

Now, I’m not taking anything away from this soldier’s experience. I’d have been more than happy to help blow up martian airships in a movie with Tom Cruise as well, but is this really national news? Besides, just look at the picture. The pure look of utter “gosh shucks” on this guys face tells you that you’re showering way to much attention on his 15 minutes seconds.

These are just two perfect examples of how crappy the media outlets in this country are. You are sorely under-informed or, worse yet, misinformed if you are still watching your local news channel to find today’s stories. The cable channels aren’t much better either.

Actually, I’m not sure we aren’t seeing a chicken/egg problem with the public demanding such “news” and the various news outlets sensationalizing such “stories”.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.

Celebrate the First Amendment! Burn a Flag!

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What’s on your representatives’ minds? Iraq? Social Security? Maybe they are giving our current dependency on foreign oil some thought? Nope, they’re worried about people burning the US flag. So worried, in fact, the House of Representatives have taken the drastic step of approving a Constitutional amendment. To make matters worse the proposed amendment is absurdly vague.

The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

The funny part is that the the US Flag Code specifically states that the flag should be disposed of by burning it.

The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

Also, what does desecration mean, exactly? According to Wiktionary it means the following.

An act of disrespect or impiety towards something considered sacred; blasphemy, sacrilege or profanation.

First of all I have problems with the country’s near religious worshipping of a piece of cloth. Why is it so sacred? The ideals it represents should be held in higher esteem. At any rate, what constitutes desecration? The amendment is worded in such a way that anything could be construed as desecration. Can I still wear my hammer pants with the flag on them? What if I leave the flag out in the rain because I’m forgetful? Am I breaking the law?

Never mind the fact that 95% of all the flag burning you see on TV takes place in a foreign country. Idiots.

UPDATE: It appears that it is already illegal to desecrate the flag, which makes this proposed amendment even more confusing to me.

Whoever knowingly mutilates, defaces, physically defiles,
burns, maintains on the floor or ground, or tramples upon any flag
of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
for not more than one year, or both.

BoingBoing Black Listed

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Welcome to the “I almost care” category, which my second category in as many weeks. The other new category being “Libertarianism”. Now, on to something I almost care about.

BoingBoing.net was blacklisted by some “censorware” site. Sites get blacklisted by being offensive, of an adult nature or “inappropriate” for some reason or another.

I’m not shocked that BoingBoing was blacklisted. They have, after all, ran advertising prominently on their site for Suicide Girls, which is an adult website features naked women. Not to mention the plethora of other links and articles they post that, in some way or another, feature the naked human form, drug paraphernalia, etc. What shocks me is that BoingBoing was surprised they were blacklisted.

Could they be more holy? If you want to be taken seriously as a “journalist” or whatever the hell bloggers want to be called these days, then quit posting pictures of pierced and tattooed naked women on your site. And, for the love of God, please don’t act surprised when you find out someone doesn’t want their kid browsing said site.

Back to School

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Lauren and I have both been looking into going back to school. I’ve thought about a ton of different options. I’ve thought about a law degree, an MBA and a Master’s in Computer Science, but I think I’ve finally figured out which program would suit me best. The University of Washington has a Technology Management MBA, which is a regular MBA geared towards professionals (I use “professionals” here lightly as I still work in shorts and flip-flops).

Better yet, if you choose to focus on Information Systems you can continue for two more quarters and get another Master’s; a Master of Science in Information Systems. So, in just two years, I can have two master’s degrees.

This also opens up the possibilities of getting one of two doctorates. I could get one in either business or information systems. Of course, I’d only do that if I decided to get tenure at some college or something like that. At any rate I’ll know more in a few days when I go check out the information sessions.

Libertarian Environmentalism

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Are you a douche bag driving a huge SUV and feeling guilty about all the smog you produce?

If so, then you can, of course, buy yourself some comfort on the open market. The idea is that you can purchase emission credits from the open emissions exchange from a smog producing company. By reducing the number of credits a company has it reduces the amount of crap they can spew into the air.

This is exactly the type of idea a Libertarian tree hugger would come up with. The idea is that if enough people purchased credits and didn’t use them, then companies would be forced to upgrade their emission systems because they wouldn’t have the extra credits they normally would have purchased on the open emissions exchange.

Interesting to say the least.