Month: May 2003

I think I’m doing the current part of my Ph.D backwards. Here I am trying to figure out how a complex systems analysis of service discovery protocols can be useful before I’ve finished creating my own model for service discovery. What I should be doing is concentrating on developing a service discovery protocol and then performing a complex systems analysis of it. It would take all the guesswork out of what I’m doing at the moment. The reason, I think, I started doing it this way was because I actually wanted complex systems theory to have a bearing on what my initial protocol looks like. But this probably isn’t smart. If there’s anything I’ve learned from talking to Kai and others, you need to have some sort of working model or a simulation so that you can discover patterns and attractors and the like.

This situation presents a problem because Jaga and I were wanting to write a complex systems based paper for MDM 04. I wonder what I’m going to do?

Not a bad FA Cup final, but by no means a classic either. Pity Southampton didn’t win though. At least it was Pires who scored the winning goal (one of my favourite players) for Arsenal.

I went and saw The Matrix Reloaded on Friday with Nigel, Max, Terry and Shane. It was good, but not as good as the first installment. It was action packed, which, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily a positive thing. However, the plot wasn’t completely lost amongst the explosions, martial arts and extraordinary special effects. When inside the Matrix, Neo is superhuman, bending or breaking the "rules" of physics as he sees fit. In the real world, the machines are preparing to destroy Zion, the last human city. An argument ensues between Morpheus and his commander about how best to defend Zion. The commander wants to fight a conventional battle, matching hover ships against the sentinels. Morpheus, who believes in the prophecy of the Oracle, argues that the prophecy should be given a chance, that only Neo can end the war. The council of Zion grant Morpheus time to fulfil the prophecy. To fulfil the prophecy, Neo must go to The Source in order to save Zion and the human race. But to get to The Source, Neo must first find The Key Maker who is being held by a rather nasty chap by the name of Merovingian. To cut a long story short, Neo eventually gets to The Source after a few fights and explosions. At The Source he finds a guy calling himself The Architect who claims to be the creator of The Matrix. Of course, The Architect is a program of the machines, an AI. After some interesting philosophical banter, Neo manages to fulfil the prophecy. After reviving Trinity from death by massaging her heart, they exit The Matrix. But the war is not over. The prophecy was not fulfilled! But has Neo really exited the Matrix, or has he somehow managed to find himself in another "layer" of the Matrix? The reason this question arises is because his powers seem to have followed him from the Matrix to the real world!

I do not rate The Matrix Reloaded as highly as the first film. Roger Ebert apparently thinks the second installment is better than the first, but I’m not sure why. The complaints he had about the first film would seem to apply just as much, if not more, to The Matrix Reloaded. It’s OK if reviews differ from one reviewer to the next, but when you’re not self-consistent, there’s a problem. I don’t understand him at all sometimes!

I upgraded my workstation to RedHat 9 today. It was quite painless. The worst bit was actually migrating my old postgresql database to the newer version. The latest version has a new internal format, which means I had to dump the data from the old database, remove the old database, initialise the new database and restore my tables and data. Then I had to get the configuration right. Anyway, my blog is back online after being offline for about three hours.

So it’s gonna be Juventus and AC Milan in the Champions’ League final. I can’t believe Juve beat Real Madrid. Real did not play the best of matches, but Juve played very well. It was the most attacking display I’ve seen from an Italian club for quite a while. Figo missed a penalty and Montero should have been sent off, so a few things went Juve’s way. Nevertheless, on that performance, they deserve to be in the final. Unfortunately, Nedved will miss the final due to suspension. He picked up a needless yellow card towards the end. Juve won’t be the same team without him. He’s been their best all season, and scored a wonderful goal in the semi-final. So, Juve go through 4-3 on aggregate. Milan go through courtesy of the away goals rule. The stupid thing is that both of their games were at the same ground! Inter share the same ground as AC Milan. However, the first leg was Milan’s home game, and the second leg was their away game. The first game finished 0-0. The second finished 1-1, so the aggregates scores were equal, but Milan scored an "away" goal, so they go through. Given Juve’s willingness to play attacking football, I’ll support them for the final.

I spent today coding the StockExchange portion of the assignment sample solution and reading about Grid Computing. Of course there was the prac, which was attended by a total of two students, and they just needed about five minute’s of help each.

El español está va bien, aparte de el español en mi poste anterior :|. Yo inventé algunas nuevas palabras!

As I was saying in my last post, before I was rudely interrupted by my Spanish class ;), a person either has faith in God (and thus believes that he exists) or does not. Faith in God either exists in that person or it does not. There is no halfway house.

Concerning the actual existence of God, I pretty much reject the whole idea of God or gods. The notion of God is a concoction of the human mind, and nothing more. Of course I have no proof of this, but you have no proof of the non-existence of furry pink astro-monkeys who control the universe from an upbeat sushi bar in the Shell Dimensions (a set of dimensions that we cannot know exists because they encapsulate the eleven or so dimensions in our universe). I’m being no sillier than you.

It seems to me that a lot of things that used to be explained away as God’s work (i.e. the creation of the universe) can now be explained by science. Slowly science will explain more and more things that could once be explained by speaking in mysterious tones and lots of arm waving. Why is this faith in science any different to faith in God? Science started from nothing and has now explained a great deal. It’s explained things that the earliest practicioners of the various sciences can’t have imagined it would explain. It’s allowed us to build things (and destroy things, sadly). Science may never be able to explain how the universe came into existence (then again, it might), but that’s irrelevant. All it needs to do is explain some of the things which religious texts put down to God, such as where we came from and how the Earth was formed (as opposed to the universe as a whole). There is no reason for me to doubt that science will eventually accomplish this, given time. This is certainly a very different kind of faith than that which many people place in God.

There might be a scenario, involving both Schrodinger and his cat, in which God exists and does not exist at the same time, but we won’t pursue that train of thought here. It would, however, apease the theists and atheists because they would both be correct.

Today was one of the more productive days I’ve had recently, at least in terms of the amount of writing I got done. I make no claim as to the quality of this writing though. It’s most likely all crap, and won’t find its way into a paper or my thesis. But I feel that’s irrelevant at this point in time. I need the writing practice, and I need to get all my thoughts onto paper.

Even though today was a more productive day, I still feel like I’m forcing myself to work. There’s no spark there at the moment. Thankfully this is the first time during my Ph.D when my motivation has waned to these low levels. From what other people are telling me, it happens a bit more often to most people. I don’t want to drag on like this for much longer though. I think I’ll dedicate tomorrow to implementing a sample solution for the second comp4301 assignment. After that’s out of the way, maybe I’ll feel ready to work on Ph.D stuff. I hope so.

At least there were no weird conversations today. Well maybe there was one. I think I got voted weirdest person in the office, mainly for being a vegetarian who actually likes the taste of meat (or used to before giving it up!), from what I could gather. This is just an absolute cop out. Although I actually like being different from everyone else (and hence weird), the other two a stranger than I. I think you guys are weird. I’m calling it a tie between you two whether you like it or not. Strange people. Who’s stupid idea was this contest anyway? Probably the same person that taped a Freddo Frog to our office door, but I wouldn’t put it past the other one either. At least there’ll only be one weird person to put up with in the office tomorrow. The other weirdo works from home on Tuesdays. These guys are the best weirdos around, though. I can’t think of another pair of weirdos on the planet that I’d rather share my office with. Hmm, maybe if I think harder… ;)

Español estoy voyando bien. Pero tengo que recordar más vocabulario. La gramática es fácil. Solamente el vocabulario es defícil de recordar. Yo tengo el mismo problema en inglés.

Went to Caloundra for the weekend, mainly so we could be with Mum on Mother’s Day. I didn’t go swimming because I had (still have) the flu. We took Mum out to dinner on Saturday night. On Sunday we went on a long drive in the Blackall Ranges. So we drove through Maleny, Conondale, Kenilworth and Montville (in that order) among other places. We tried to take our little Holden Barina on a little detour down a very rough dirt track. We crossed one creek, but then chickened out on the second one after watching some 4 wheel drives go through. Seeing how deep the creek was and how much the 4 wheel drives were bouncing around on the creek bed, we decided to turn back. But it was an exciting little detour anyway. Stopped for lunch at a nice little park near Kenilworth where Little Yabba Creek meets the Mary River. It was a really, really enjoyable day out. Mum loved it, which is the main thing, I guess.

Had another religious debate. Tried to explain to Riko why the position of agnosticism is not just another point on the theist-atheist spectrum. Failed. Didn’t even get to the punchline because I’d spent so much time trying to clarify terms and whatnot. The simplest argument is this. A person who holds the position of agnosticism says that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not. Granted. Therefore it is a question of faith and of belief. To ask an agnostic person whether they have faith in God and his existence is a completely different question. But it is a question the agnostic must answer. Do you have faith in the existence of God? (Do you believe God exists?) Either the person has faith, or does not. If they have faith, then they are a theist (agnostic theist, meaning they cannot know if God exists, but they believe God exists). If they do not have faith, then they are an atheist (agnostic atheist, meaning they cannot know if God exists, but they don’t believe he exists). Religion, and belief in God, by definition requires a leap of faith. Either a person has faith or doesn’t have faith. The question of whether God actually exists is separate to what one chooses to believe. The statement that a person neither has faith nor does not have faith, is logically absurd, and therefore does not represent a point on the theist-atheist continuum. It does not represent a belief. A person may change between belief and non-belief, but at any particular point in time, a person either believes or does not. Concerning faith in God, the answer "I don’t know" is not a valid answer. It just means that the person has not searched themselves adequately, or is reluctant to say "No".

Books Ryan Says to Read

• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan
• Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Books Karen Says to Read

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Tess by Thomas Hardy
• My Brother Jack by George Johnston

Books I Forgot to Include in Previous List

• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• Four Comedies (compiled by Penguin) by William Shakespeare

I’m going to be reading for a very, very long time…
Cool!

Yes, this is the third entry in quick succession. Note to self: create a mechanism in my blogging system to differentiate public posts from private posts. The world needs to be protected from some of the stuff I want to keep in my blog ;). But this will require me to keep track of sessions in my blog servlet so that I can log in and view my private blog entries. Could be a while before I have the chance to make the required modifications.

Now that the situation in Iraq has cooled down somewhat, I’ve been pretty slack when it comes to keeping up with the latest news. I did see John Howard receive a standing ovation at Yankee Stadium during a baseball match yesterday. I swear the bloke may as well be a Yank. It’ll be interesting to see whether he raises the issue of our Governor General with the Queen when he visits her.