I am quite vain about my web site, to the point that I like to have a scan through the log file from time to time. By far the most traffic is for my Zaurus Freeciv project, as it is linked from some fairly high profile sites. But a surprise star page is the one containing pictures of me and a friend travelling in the Czech Republic. This struck me as odd, so I investigated further.

It helps that the logs kept by a web server indicate the URL that contained the link a person followed to get to a certain page. If they used a search engine, this URL contains the words the person used to search. It turns out that my Czech Republic page is the number one link on Google for “czech people pictures“. And quite a lot of people are searching for that - 17 since the beginning of September. From the IP addresses and with some help from the Net World Map project, I have a good idea that these are mostly unique people.

Even more people are finding the page by searching for just, “people pictures”, although the page is not quite so prominent in the results of this search. Others find it by looking for pictures of Prague. One person using AOL was looking for, “pictures of people standing at a bar.” Another, 20 days later, on a different USA ISP, was looking for, “pictures of people drinking cocktails”.

I have learnt the following things from this investigation. 1) You can find out a lot of useless information from your website’s log file. 2) There is a definite market for pictures of Czech people. My site does not contain any (only pictures of people who happen to be in the Czech Republic) and I didn’t see any links that looked like they would satisfy such a request. 3) Search engines such as Google must contain a wealth of information on the kinds of things people search for. I wonder if some data mining could get something useful from this information. 4) I really shouldn’t look at my log file so closely!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 4:21 PM EDT

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Tony Blair’s dossier on Iraq’s weapons program is available from CNN among other places. I’ve read sections of it, and taken at face value it makes for scary reading. Having said that, it’s not the best quality information. It comes from the Joint Intelligence Committee who cannot reveal their sources, so we have to rely on statements like, “I and other Ministers have been briefed in detail on the intelligence and are satisfied as to its authority.” The information is also somewhat fragmented. For example:

the Castor Oil Production Plant at Fallujah: this was damaged in UK/US air attacks in 1998 (Operation Desert Fox) but has been rebuilt. The residue from the castor bean pulp can be used in the production of the biological agent ricin;

This rasies questions like, what other ingredients are needed to make ricin, and does Iraq have them? A more detailed report would go into this. Other claims are simply stated with no qualifications, supporting evidence, or explanation:

Confirmation that chemical and biological weapons play an important role in Iraqi military thinking: intelligence shows that Saddam attaches great importance to the possession of chemical and biological weapons which he regards as being the basis for Iraqi regional power. He believes that respect for Iraq rests on its possession of these weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them. Intelligence indicates that Saddam is determined to retain this capability and recognises that Iraqi political weight would be diminished if Iraq’s military power rested solely on its conventional military forces.

At best the dossier is a brief summary of what the JIC says it knows. On its own it doesn’t answer any questions, the reader is still left to make a judgement. However, it’s hard to assert that the document is false without invoking some kind of conspiracy theory. Either it is mostly true, or there is some secret hidden agenda at play which has led to a deliberately misleading document. It is impossible to tell which from the document itself. I think applying Occam’s razor should be enough.

Who do you trust more, the British and US Governments or a ruthless dictator? Hard liberals would also ask, is it right to take pre-emptive action? Perhaps the answers to both these questions are found in history:

“We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.” — Neville Chamberlain after signing a certain pact with a certain other dictator who insisted he was benevolent.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 4:31 PM EDT

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In a Boston Globe article, Elaine Scarry points out that on September 11th, centralised defense failed where distributed defense succeeded. The military were unable to stop a plane from crashing into the Pentagon despite a 55 minute warning that flight 77 had been hijacked. Meanwhile, on flight 93, the passengers figured out what was going on and successfully (albeit at the cost of their own lives) thwarted the terrorists. As Eric Raymond wrote, it’s only a shame that she didn’t take her arguments to the logical conclusion that the passengers should be armed.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 12:29 PM EDT

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On his web site, Flemming Funch describes in great detail a utopian, de-centralised society. It’s the kind of anarchy that would be a dramatic improvement over the so-called democracy we live in today, in which governments with their own agendas daily interfere in our lives in arbitrary ways. A central principle in HoloWorld is that everything is opt-in — nobody can force you to do anything. Groups may form and set rules, but if you don’t like the rules you can leave and join another group.

Flemming describes every aspect of the HoloWorld society, including ownership, legal system, economy, welfare and defense. Everything works without the need for enforced government. It would be a very nice place to live. And given the right conditions, it seems quite realistic. The biggest hurdle in getting from today’s society to a HoloWorld-like society would be getting rid of these governments that have in the past always formed to impose their will on people by force, especially when most people believe there is no other way.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft at 12:40 PM EDT

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In a recent email discussion with friends, it was asserted that command line programs are not only old fashioned, but also pointless. The underlying thought is that if you can do it with a GUI, why would you want to do it with a command line? Surely command lines are arcane, slow and complicated. As someone who writes and uses command line software every day, I feel compelled to defend them. Many people use and enjoy command line programs, and will not need convincing of their advantages, but many others seem to have written them off entirely, to the point that they will not touch worthy and useful software that happens to have a command line interface. Here is why they’re missing out.

• Typing commands can be faster. For instance, I can type “find /usr -name *.txt” faster than I can click on start, select find find files, wait for the find dialog to open, select “Browse Directory”, browse to “/usr”, and type *.txt into the name box.
• There is a lot of good command line software about that it would be silly to just ignore. My favourite is wget. You can type “wget -r http://www.website.com” to download an entire website into a local folder. I use it to put websites on my PDA. And because it’s a command line program, and command line programs are portable, it runs on my PC (Linux and Windows) and on my PDA. There aren’t many GUI programs about that run on all three. Also, I can write a shell script that will download all my favourite websites in one go.
• It’s quick and easy to write your own command line software. You can use C, Perl, or just shell scripts. You don’t have to learn a GUI library to do it, and you don’t waste time laying out dialog boxes. I write command line programs all the time at work to do all kinds of things, like testing the embedded software I write. At home I have scripts that do things like back up certain files.
• Command line programs are extensible. You can combine them together by piping their outputs into the input of another program, or by calling them from script files. For example, I wrote one program that could send serial port commands to a rack mounted box I was testing, then I wrote a series of batch scripts that would invoke various commands. It ended up being very powerful and solving lots of problems that weren’t forseen when it was written.

I’m not suggesting that command lines are the be all and end all. There are some things I wouldn’t want to use a command line program for: Reading email, browsing the web or writing this weblog. Anyone who only uses their computer for email, web browsing and writing weblogs is free to disregard all of the above.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Open Source at 10:37 PM EDT

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A new hazard perception test is to become a part of the UK driving test. This involves watching video clips taken from a driver’s viewpoint, and clicking a mouse when a hazard is spotted. It sounds a good idea, but a there seem to be problems with deciding what counts as a hazard and what doesn’t. In reality, almost anything that moves, and quite a lot of things that don’t are hazards. Parked cars might open their doors, pedestrians might stray into the road, and traffic lights might change colour.

The test does not penalise for perceiving a hazard where there isn’t one, and even though it is supposed to be able to spot random mouse clicking, it’s not hard to see how the test might be cheated by simply clicking at anything.

A real test of drivers’ perception would have to account for what exactly it was that the subject perceived as a hazard. The Institute of Advanced Motorists‘ driving test acheives this by requiring testees to give a running commentary on what hazards they perceive and how they are adjusting their driving accordingly.

Good observation is extremely important when driving, and many people seem to stare blankly ahead at a fixed distance in front of them, seemingly in a trance like state. Any emphasis on observation in the driving test is a good thing, but I’m not convinced this new test goes far enough.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Driving at 3:15 PM EDT

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In another BBC article, it seems police are using an advertising campaign to encourage people to say no to drugs and guns. Drug related shootings are apparently up by 42% on last year. Alan Brown, head of project Trident, says, “We are asking the community to turn away from guns and drugs and the people who supply them.” Well it’s a nice sentiment, but it’s a bit hard to turn away from someone pointing a gun at you.

It would be a great help if people were allowed to buy their drugs from licensed retail outlets, instead of from criminals. People are going to buy drugs anyway, why create a highly lucrative market for the exclusive benefit of gun toting gangsters? While we’re at it, maybe we should stop allowing only criminals to have guns - they would be a lot less powerful if the occasionally met some resistance.

As it stands, we have laws perfectly designed to encourage gun toting gangsters. No poster is going to change that.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Self Defense at 9:17 AM EDT

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According to a BBC article there are calls to reform jury laws so that the criminal record of suspects can be routinely revealed in court. Presumably so that people can disregard the evidence and decide to convict based on whether or not they think the suspect has paid sufficiently for past crimes. Only 19% of respondents to a survey said they would reach a verdict based solely on the evidence presented. This is frightening stuff - it means you can get sent to jail just for looking a bit shifty. I’d like to think people would take their jury duty a little more seriously than that. Is not the whole point of a trial to decide whether or not someone committed a crime, or am I being naive?

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 8:56 AM EDT

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Today I was sent an email containing the word, absquatulation. Eager to find out what it meant, I looked it up on Dictionary.com. More intriguing than its meaning (to depart in a hurry) is its etymology:

In the 19th century, the vibrant energy of American English appeared in the use of Latin affixes to create jocular pseudo-Latin “learned” words. There is a precedent for this in the language of Shakespeare, whose plays contain scores of made-up Latinate words….Today, these creations have an old-fashioned and rustic flavor curiously at odds with their elegance. They are kept alive in regions of the United States where change is slow. For example, Appalachian speech is characterized by the frequent use of words such as recollect, aggravate, and oblige.

This reminded me of the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou, where indeed such words are used frequently. Some searching revealed other words from the same period, like hornswoggle, skedaddle and sockdolager, all of which somehow sound best when said with a hillbilly accent.

The way language changes over time is fascinating. Anyone who finds it odd that new words are constantly added to dictionaries, or argues too strongly in favour of ‘correct’ usage, is somehow missing the point. I aim to invent at least one new word and have it adopted into everyday speech!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 11:00 AM EDT

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I don’t buy many DVDs, and when I do they’re always movies I really liked. And I’m usually interested enough in them to sit through the filmmakers’ commentaries, it gives a good insight into how the movie was made. It’s interesting to think, though, about what happens to the commentary on a really bad movie. I’ve only ever bothered to watch one such commentary, that of Sphere which I rented on particularly bored sunday afternoon. It features Samuel L Jackson who says about two things, and Dustin Hoffman who complains endlessly about how difficult it is to method act in front of a blue screen, and how he’s never going to do another special effects movie.

I was reminded of this by an Onion article which details the commentaries on several bad movies, and shows how they give an insight into why the movie is so bad. Britney Spears is apparently as moronic as I suspected:

…Britney shares her insights on fellow cast members, including Aykroyd (”He’s the sweetest guy alive”), Justin Long (”He was so sweet”), and Kim Cattrall (”She was very, very sweet”). The filmmakers praise their star for being able to differentiate between herself and her character.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 10:27 AM EDT

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