http://weblog.alseyn.netAlseyn Weblog (Comments)en-usThu, 23 Feb 2012 02:29:45 +0000Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:29:45 +0000http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttp://weblog.alseyn.net/xml-rss2.phpnull@alseyn.net (null)null@alseyn.net (null)http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2866&commentuid=376
I think , Its Agatha's picture , the mathematician , right ???
]]>Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:32:22 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2866&commentuid=376http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2849&commentuid=371]]>Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:38:53 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2849&commentuid=371http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2849&commentuid=370 There is nothing in the world more important than your health ,

Take care
]]>Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:36:01 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2849&commentuid=370http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2845&commentuid=368
You are right, a regular job visits lstream files and edit them to remove any todo items scheduled for removal (items marked as "done"). For repeating items that are marked as done, the datetime (from the metadata) of the item is sent to the future (so the item is not removed, just updated).

On the other hand, for stream items coming from xstream files (which are executable), the information that the item is marked as done is contained in a separate cache managed by activity-stream. Those items are feed to activity stream (by their source xstream files), but activity-stream knows to ignore them, so they are simply no longer displayed.

activity-stream would have a problem to update the metadata of repeating items given by xstream files, but if you think of it, the xstream can do that itself :-)


]]>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:39:40 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2845&commentuid=368http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2845&commentuid=367
Also you wrote (in the previous entry) "the item is actually scheduled for permanent removal from the file where it appeared", I guess that this would work from lstream files (which are plain text files), but not xstream files, does it ?
]]>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:31:31 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2845&commentuid=367http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2841&commentuid=366 you can perfectly have a religion, while not believing in God.

I realized that while reading Nicholas Taleb: I guess I simply needed it explained by a brilliantly scientific mind :)
]]>Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:10:08 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2841&commentuid=366http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2839&commentuid=365 Hi to every one ...

First , I would like to say that I am a God believer .
Second, I do understand that when people dont understand what religions are, because they've met unfriendly religious people or watch on TV some people ( who call themselvies religios ) do some bad staff and they say God said do this staff ...
What make me sad , the fact that most of religious people dont understand what their religion talking about , they completely missunderstand the truth and the reasons beyond being religious, thta because teir parents are religious or they live in a part of hte world where you should - because the religion their like a habit - be a religious , but they dont know why they are religious in the first place ( and most of them dont know most of hte rules of their religion ) ..
But these things dont make the religion it self a bad thing ...

And I want to ask Mr.Fabian ,about the girl ( Pascal's friend ) , Is it bad if she got her (moral compass) from her religion ??? From my point NO! and I am going to tell you why ...
For example , If you - I've said you for example - one day read a book which has been written by ( e.g. Freud )and you learnt from it alot of things which are make your life better and help you to understand alot of things , will you use this new information in your practical life ??? I would say Yes ! and I think its very stupid if you learnt something without using it , take its advantage , and share it with other people ... what a big thing ! It is a treasure.. Beside none would say that you was a bad person but when you read the book become a good onse , conversely , they would admirer you because you got the oint for the book and used what you've learnt in the right way .
Another example : If you read Ian stewart's books and became a mathematician , I will not say 'you will never be a mathematician because the book you've read its from Ian stewart is not your own book ' what I am trying to say is the following :
So, ( I am muslim ) I read Quran many times and each time a read it a discover and realized a new useful things , which make my life better , and the most important thing is that it helps me to improve my self and keep improving it ... so consider Quran as a book which I like , ( and I really do ) Is there any problem by taking a useful information and trying to use it in my life which I belive that it makes me a better person ???? If there is one , so why we study in schools and colleges ??? because , we have the same case but different books ofcourse ^_^

And ( again I said in my point of view and my understanding to my religion) I dont be a good person because I am 'afraid' from the God , I dont pray because of that either. I prayed because I believe that the God desrve to be thanked about what gives us , and in the pray time , Its the time you connected with the God alone and asking your self about what did you do during the day , so is a good way to reviwe your behavior and try to fix what you dont satisfy about...I dont try here to explane what is my religion but I am trying to let you know that we - religious people - love our religions .

By the way , If someday ( this will never happened, but to let you know), someone prove that God doesnt exist and I really believe that person , I will not feel sad , I will not think that I wasted my time , But I will keep doing what I am doing know ( with my religion )
because every single detail make sense for me , I dont do it because I am afraid or for any other reasons but that I like my religion I like its rules , I like Quran as a book with alot of interesting and scientific things ...

I hope you can get my point
^_^




]]>Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:48:31 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2839&commentuid=365http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2839&commentuid=364
So, the initial question was "if you do not believe in God, where do you get your moral compass from?". I guess the question was asked by a God believer, so we can conclude that she (I also guess your interlocutor was female) gets her moral compass from her belief in God. To rephrase it, she implies that the main reason why she doesn't act like a psychopath is because she believes some magical, omniscient warden will inflict unspeakable punishments to her if she does. Hopefully that's not true: she doesn't act like a psychopath simply because she's not a psychopath; but it shows that the question hasn't been really thought through.

Now why we, believers and non-believers alike, tend not to act like assholes? Simply because that's our natural inclination; if we can afford to be nice to each other, we're happier it that way. That's how we've been designed/evolved. A species whose members instinctively want to harm each other would have been wiped out from the planet long ago. There are people who act very cruelly, but apart from a couple of mentally diseased freaks, most of them do that because they feel like they can't afford to be nice. They feel threatened by someone else's existence or beliefs, they feel like they both need something which can't be shared on mutually acceptable terms (can be food, wealth, land, power)...

Think of it in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: as long as you don't have your physiological needs fulfilled, as you don't feel safe, as you don't feel like you're part of a community who cares about you and about which you care, you're in danger; you're barely more than a beast, and you'll act like a jerk to eat, to feel safer, or be accepted by some community. Some people have skewed senses of safety or belonging, that's why you'll find millionnaire bankers who'd steal kill other people for their personal advancement. But when was the last time you saw a psychopath who looked like he felt safe and loved?

There's no need for a God to feel better in a nice person's skin, quite the opposite: if A needs to believe in Allah, while B needs to believe in YHWH, they both need validation that their respective God is the true one, and the simple existence of the other threatens their core beliefe, hence their identity. Let's get in a believer's mind for a minute: "Other religions shouldn't exist, if my God's revelation was so compelling, and if my very powerful God wanted humans to worship him. At the very least, worshippers of false Gods should bring the wrath of the true God upon them, they should be miserable, they should lose holy wars. I need to convert them, so that their false beliefs, which threaten my worldview, are suppressed. What, they want to convert *me* to their superstitions? Then I'm going full Holy war on them, and inflict them as much tourment as I can, on behalf of my God!". Luckily, most people don't go that far, they simply avoid thinking too hard about questions whose answer won't make them happier. But come on, religious beliefs have an extremely bad historical record, as incentives for peaceful coexistence. As Weinberg said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion".

There's a phenomenon worth mentioning here: we like to have anthropocentric explanations to things which happen to us. Beyond the obvious religious implications, it also means that when something bad happens to us, we want some other human being to be responsible for it, and boy are we going to retaliate. It can be Christians persecuted because of Rome's great fire, Jews because of 1929 crisis, freemasons because of France's 1939 debacle, immigrants because of native unskilled people's unemployment... it doesn't matter, we need some clearly identified scapegoat for every mishap. That's the root of many seemingly unjustified acts of barbarism.

The last interesting point you're raising is the moving definition of "next of kin", in the statement that "we naturally want to be nice to our next of kin". I guess that to qualify as a next of kin, the following conditions must be fulfilled:

* we must both be wealthy enough that neither of us needs to steal from the other;

* our spiritual views must be either mild enough or compatible enough, that each other's beliefs aren't felt as an existential threat to the other's;

* more generally, we must be confident that the other is sane enough to follow his natural inclination to be nice with us.

In our very affluent society, it's easier than ever to meet these criteria, at least for upper and middle class people in Western democracies. This might change if/when economic growth halts, but today it's cheaper to accumulate wealth by creating it than by stealing it from war (provided that we have enough cheap energy, e.g. in the form of spoiled middle-east oil...); since we're all happier, the more we love each other, we ought to strive to maintain and enhance those favorable conditions. I wished we were collectively smart enough to figure that out at a very large scale...


]]>Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:36:14 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2839&commentuid=364http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2837&commentuid=363
1. Coming from you I am not surprised. You always try and think of the box., which is a good thing

2. I am sorry but this will never work. It took me a while to fully realise why, but in fact people are just not that rational. I mean our species seem to genuinely be incapable to think rationally, above all when it come to reproduction related feelings.

Question: could this have come up because you are currently under a girl's "protection" ? ;-)


]]>Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:55:15 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2837&commentuid=363http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2832&commentuid=361]]>Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:04:52 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2832&commentuid=361http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2828&commentuid=359
I have my email on my website, otherwise try pascal@alseyn.net , Cheers.

]]>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:49:14 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2828&commentuid=359http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2828&commentuid=358 I am the "British woman" from Rhodes...I want to be your friend but I'm not really good-looking anymore (I think I used to be, but its hard to remember that long ago...) and I don't know my IQ score...all I know is I don't believe in God, I love reading and watching good science fiction and I really got a kick out of meeting you and talking to you...in fact it was one of the highlights of the holiday> I didn't get talking to anyone fun for the rest of the trip...I tried to chat to people but they were all BORING married couples who only want to complain, or crazy Russians (there was a big fight a few days after you left between two Russian families. Can you believe it, the hotel staff are not allowed to call police! they have to complain to travel company people and then they decide whether to call the cops).

I spoke to one British couple whose first insight into their experience was..."we paid for a sea view room, but they gave us a garden view..." aaaaagh! that type of person makes me feel like a fucking alien! I said to them..."If I was on holiday with my lover, I wouldn't care about the view, I'd find plenty to do in the bedroom..." They gave each other a worried glance and that was the end of the conversation! I spent most of the holiday on the lovely beach (I have never seen such lovely pebbles-were they marble?) and swimming in the lovely sea. Thank goodness I took plenty of books and some hashish!
Bessie and her friend went out every night and I only saw them for dinner as I couldn't get them to the beach.
Once I had a Chinese guy massage my legs and feet on the beach...that was funny, he really tickled me a lot and although we couldn't converse I think we understood one another!
Right now I am avoiding work...by which I mean my creative thing, which is playing the accordion. I have just auditioned for a new band. I have all their songs taped and I have to try and enhance them with my own musical stylings. Its difficult at the beginning but once I get going it will be fun.
I also spend my time trying to write my novella and doing voluntary work. I am a Befriender for the RNIB...every week I visit people and hang out and chat. Today I spent the afternoon with Joan, who is, at 97, one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. Can you believe, she lived in the same house for 72 years? Every week she tells me something amazing. For example, her father, as a child of 8, would walk miles to school in the winter and he would earn A PENNY A WEEK for laying and cleaning the fires in the schoolhouse!
Pascal, I hope you are well and I leave you,
your friend (if I qualifiy!)
Rosy Armitage xx
]]>Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:48:47 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2828&commentuid=358http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2817&commentuid=357
What a laugher. I don't even want to know how much you are charging for your current rails' job.




]]>Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:30:34 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2817&commentuid=357http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2814&commentuid=356
But then, you make an interesting point about feminism. To me, I am a woman by the way, feminism is simply something that a bunch of sexually frustrated milfs came up with to make them feel better. The average woman out there, does't behave as if she cares, if they did care, we would certainly have noticed. Your point on fashion magazines is one key, not that men do not have their share of stupid mindless activities, but women seem to be genuinely hardwired for other things than abstract academic studies.
]]>Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:17:20 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2814&commentuid=356http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2813&commentuid=355]]>Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:11:45 +0000http://weblog.alseyn.net/index.php?itemid=2813&commentuid=355