Jade's weblog Archive

They have an explanation of how Amazon created the photos on the Yellow Pages site.

My idea was a little more collaborative -- the ability for any user to upload GPS encoded photos. You then could look at an overview map which would show how densely people have uploaded pictures in particular areas, and you could take virtual tours of those places.

You then would need a way of determining which pictures were the best in a densely photographed area. Probably some sort of rating scheme.

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

This reminds me of a thought experiment I had about ten years ago while in college:

Humans and apes are fairly similar genetically. Yet some religious groups think that people have souls and apes do not. Given that we can now start blending the line between humans and apes, imagine doing an experiment where..

You 'create' 100 children:

• The first child is 100% human, 0% ape.
• The next child is 99% human, 1% ape.
• The next child is 98% human, 1% ape.
• Etc...
• The last child is 100% ape, 0% human.

Now these people believe that having a soul is a binary thing. Either you have a soul or you don't. So the question is: which of these children have souls, and which do not?

(Stop and think about that before continuing. What do you think?)

The conclusion you (inevitably I think) come to is one of the following:

• There is a gene for having a soul. Somewhere in your genetic material is a gene that makes you have a soul. Or,
• There is no such thing as the soul. Or,
• The soul is not a binary thing at all. There are degrees of soul.

I won't say which of those I subscribe to, but I thought it an interesting thing to think about.

ns_section "ns/server/${server}/module/nscgi"
ns_param map "GET /mailman/ ${mailmanprefix}/cgi-bin"
ns_param map "POST /mailman/ ${mailmanprefix}/cgi-bin"

If I put a symlink from www/mailman to the /usr/local/mailman directory, it mostly works (but only mostly). But it really should work with the mapping, so I've removed the symlink, and I've tried fiddling with it in lots of ways. I'm back to the original configuration (I verified that), and am wondering if there is some trick to it.

Vinod says you have to list every directory, and I've tried that as well, although I really hope that is not the case.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I've commited this to oacs-5-1, so it will start appearing in OpenACS soon.

I believe I can use this in conjuction with Analog to produce reports on the amount of time each request takes...

The message on the server's main page said that the database was down.

So I log into the server, take down Aolserver, and attempt to restart Postgres:

svc -d /service/servername

www:~# /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
Stopping PostgreSQL database server: postmaster/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/pg_ctl: kill: (30083) - No such process
pg_ctl: postmaster does not shut down
.
Starting PostgreSQL database server: postmaster ((null) already running.).

www:~# su - postgres
postgres@www:~$ pg_ctl stop
waiting for postmaster to shut down...2005-01-17 10:26:12 [1548] LOG:  received smart shutdown request
.2005-01-17 10:26:12 [1590] LOG:  shutting down
..2005-01-17 10:26:15 [1590] LOG:  database system is shut down
done
postmaster successfully shut down
postgres@www:~$ exit
logout
www:~# /etc/init.d/postgresql start

One of the flaws in open-source software is that everyone wants the software to do different things -- so users add in lots of options. This article exposes the danger of not being selective when adding new functionality in.

I'm glad they are paying attention to both Windows and UI issues.

arch_commit: unable to acquire revision lock (could not rename file.)
tree: /home/safe4all-staging/safe4all-staging
revision: jade@safe4all.org--2005/openacs--staging--5.1.0--patch-14

The problem was the umask of another user committing to the archive. That set the permissions so I couldn't access them.

I figured out what was going on with help from ddaa and Rotty on #arch. They suggested using strace on the tla commit. That helped diagnose the problem.

Then, to fix it, you have to do this (I had to be root for some reason):

cd /home/safe4all/{archives}/2005/openacs/openacs--staging/openacs--staging--5.1.0/
chmod g+w *
cd patch-13
chmod g+w ++revision-lock/
chmod g+w ++revision-lock/+contents/

Then the commit worked.