Assertion Through Structure

I’ve been reading a lot about chaordic systems and chaordic organizations. Here is an excellent excerpt on governance:

True governance is based on understanding that even simple societies are far too complex to expect agreement in the particular. Systems of self-governance, in the individual and at every scale beyond, are based on understanding that ordinances, orders, and enforcement deal with an absence of true governance. They are an attempt to compel the kind of behavior that organizations fail to educe. Ordinances, orders, and enforcement are simply different words for control, command, and tyranny. Force is the ultimate tool of tyranny. Those who rise in a tyrannical world are those least capable of self-governance, whether of themselves, or inducement of it in others, else they would not engage in tyranny. When they rise, it is axiomatic that self-governance will decline and government will gradually be for the benefit of the few and the subjugation of the many. It will inexorably become destructive. Ultimately, there will be no limit to that destruction, for there appears to be no limit to the ability of science and the rational mind to create devices to alter or destroy all life forms and all aspects of the physical world.

Quote from Page 67 in One From Many, Visa and the Rise of Chaordic Organization, by Dee Hock

I’ve created a small little library for creating a right click menu in flash:

This works not only on the top level components, but also on nested components. In the example you can right click on each button and see a custom menu.

Demo:

Some Links:
AS3 Right Click Context Menu Right, Click To View Source

Context Menu Source In Zip File

MIT Licensed

package
{
	import flash.events.ContextMenuEvent;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
	import flash.ui.ContextMenuItem;
 
	import mx.core.Application;
	import mx.core.UIComponent;
 
	public class RightClickMenu
	{
		public var MenuContents:Array = new Array ();
 
		public  function RightClickMenu(){}
 
		public function AddItem (name:String, func:Function):void
		{
			MenuContents.push({Name:name, Func:func});
		}
 
		public function AssignRightClick (uiComponent:UIComponent):void
		{
			uiComponent.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, genEnableMenu (uiComponent));
			uiComponent.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, disableMenu);
		}
 
		/* Assignment */
		private function ResetContextMenu (event:MouseEvent):void
		{	//remove menu
			Application.application.contextMenu.customItems = new Array ();
			//remove this function
			Application.application.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, ResetContextMenu);
		}
 
		private function disableMenu(event:MouseEvent):void
		{
			//Stop the mouse move event from propagating to the application level, where we remove the menu
			event.stopImmediatePropagation();
		}
 
		private function genEnableMenu (uiComponent:UIComponent):Function
		{
			return function (event:MouseEvent):void
			{
				//add event listener to remove the menu on mouse move
				Application.application.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, ResetContextMenu);			
 
				//hide current menu
				Application.application.contextMenu.hideBuiltInItems();
 
				//remove menu (ifyou right click and then move, this may not be killed.
				Application.application.contextMenu.customItems = new Array ();				
 
				//create new menu
				for (var i:Number in MenuContents)
				{
					var menuItem:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem(MenuContents[i].Name);
					menuItem.addEventListener(ContextMenuEvent.MENU_ITEM_SELECT, MenuContents[i].Func);
					Application.application.contextMenu.customItems.push(menuItem);
				}
			}
		}
 
		private function genClickCall (func:Function):Function
		{
			return function (event:ContextMenuEvent):void
			{
				func()
				ResetContextMenu(null);
			}
 
		}
 
	}
}

To use the class 1) Create an instance of it, 2) Populate it, 3) bind it to the component.

		<![CDATA[
			import mx.controls.Alert;
 
			private function appComplete ():void
			{
				var menu1:RightClickMenu = new RightClickMenu ();
				menu1.AddItem("B1", function ():void{Alert.show("B1");});
				menu1.AddItem("B1-A", function ():void{Alert.show("B1-A");});
				menu1.AssignRightClick(b1);
 
				var menu2:RightClickMenu = new RightClickMenu ();
				menu2.AddItem("B2", function ():void{Alert.show("B2");});
				menu2.AssignRightClick(b2);
 
				var menu3:RightClickMenu = new RightClickMenu ();
				menu3.AddItem("B3", function ():void{Alert.show("B3");});
				menu3.AssignRightClick(b3);		
 
			}
		]]>

To allow non-local connections to couchdb is quite easy.

To allow non local access, modify


/usr/local/etc/couchdb/default.ini


so that

bind_address = 0.0.0.0


Here’s an excellent description that captures the essence of government much more clearly than than Paine’s eloquent line:

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Perhaps because it speaks so simply, Planned Chaos by Ludwig Von Mises, Chapter 6: The Liberation of Demons (Page 63)

State and government are nothing else than the social apparatus of violent coercion and repression. Such an apparatus, the police power, is indispensable in order to prevent antisocial individuals and bands from destroying social cooperation. Violent prevention and suppression of antisocial activities benefit the whole of society and each of its members. But violence and oppression are nonetheless evils and corrupt those in charge of their application. It is necessary to restrict the power of those in office lest they become absolute despots. Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violence coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm upon those they dislike.

And by antisocial he doesn’t mean what is covered by the ASBOs

So today, I found one of my books on Heidegger, my ipod played a heidegger lecture on random, and I stumbled across a Heidegger video on reddit, so I figured I’d post the lecture. It’s by Hubert Dreyfus, and in at about 30 minutes in he starts talking about limits to symbolic artificial intelligence — It’s really good here’s the link: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/stream.php?type=download&webcastid=20429

The entire series of lectures, which is really good so far — I still have a lot left, is at: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978475

I’ve been working with CouchDB and I was never really happy with how I was managing/version controlling my design documents.  Luckily, I read about CouchApp — I had initially thought it was a tool for developing CouchDB hosted appilcations, but now know that it can be used to at a very basic level to make it easy to control my desgin documents.  Here are a few notes that might make it easy for others to get started; I’m still learning this tool, so this may not be the optimal procedure (also, I’m not using any of the advanced features of CouchApp [e.g. macros], but will in the future).

There are two ways of using CouchApp  to push design documents to CouchDb: 1.  Generating the design document from multiple files (preferred), and 2. Generating the views from a single JSON file.

Generating the Design Document from its Component Pieces

1. Install CouchDB & CouchApp - Both are easy to install and well documented, so need for any additional notes.
2. The directory structure used is used to hold the atomic pieces of the design document and should have a structure as follows:
   • {myapp} - app directory
   • {myapp}/{sampledesign} — design document name
   • {myapp}/{sampledesign}/views — directory that holds views
   • {myapp}/{sampledesign}/views/{viewname}/ — view name
   • {myapp}/{sampledesign}/views/{viewname}/map.js — map function
   • {myapp}/{sampledesign}/views/{viewname}/reduce.js — reduce function

   We create a directory for the application {myapp}, we  then create a directory to hold our design document {sampledesign}, and last we create a directory for our view {viewname}.  Each view must contain one map.js file, and can (optional) contain one reduce.js file.

3. In this example we’re only going to create a map function, so map.js should look like:

           //This is a simple function that doesn't do anything
           //useful, but will work on all CouchDB databases.
           function(doc) {
              emit(doc._id, doc);
           }

4. To generate the design document and push it into CouchDB: Go to the {myapp} directory run the following command (for this example assume: {myapp} = myapp and {sampledesing} = mydesigndoc ):

   couchapp push mydesigndoc http://127.0.0.1:5984/myapp

5. To view the generate design document you can go to  http://localhost:5984/_utils/document.html?myapp/_design/mydesigndoc#source (the following url is for a db named myapp with a design document named mydesigndoc)

And that’s all there is to it.  You can develop and version control the design documents.

Alternate: Generating the views from a single JSON file.

1. Install CouchDB & CouchApp - Both are easy to install and well documented, so need for any additional notes.
2. Create a directory to store the design documents: “myapp/_design”  (this directory can be anything)
3. Create a directory for each design document: “myapp/_desgin/design_document”
4. Inside the design document create a JSON file named views (views.json) : “myapp/_design/design_document/views.json”
5. The contents of thee view document should be a JSON document containing view objects with map and reduce functions. For example, see the code listing below we have the view test with a map function.  Note: This is a useless view, but it will work on any CouchDB database.

   {
      "views": {
          "test": {
           "map": "function(doc) {\n    emit(doc._id, doc);\n}\n"
          }
      }
   }

6. From the “_design” directory run the following command:

   couchapp push {desgin_document_dir} http://127.0.0.1:5984/{dbname}

   where {dbname} is the name of your db and {design_document_dir} is the name of the design document directory , so if my database was named: “myapp”  and the design document dir was named: “sampledesign” it would look like:

   couchapp push sampledesign http://127.0.0.1:5984/myapp

   Note: If you are unsure of what the view json structure is you can create your views using Futon which is installed at: http://localhost:5984/_utils/ by creating a temporary view, saving it, and then navigating to the design document it created.  http://localhost:5984/_utils/document.html?myapp/_design/sampledesign#source (the following url is for a db named myapp with a design document named sampledesign)

After following those steps you can easily push json documents to couchdb and use whatever version controll system that you’d like; however, there is a better way of laying out the files.

So there you have it, a quick introduction to the two ways of using CouchApp to manage CouchDB Documents.

So on Friday, I was trying to set a static IP in Ubuntu 8, it took me forever to figure out how to do it. I ran into problems where I’d try to set it using the network configuration application, but each time I restarted the machine I would lose all the settings and it would default to dhcp.

I then tried editing /etc/network/interfaces like so

iface eth0 inet static
address 18.116.0.208
netmask 255.255.0.0
gateway 18.116.0.1

with all sorts of DNS stuff in there, but even though this set the IP correctly the DNS didn’t work.

To get the DNS working I had to add DNS info this file:

/etc/resolv.conf

domain mit.edu
search mit.edu
nameserver 18.71.0.151
nameserver 18.70.0.160
nameserver 18.72.0.3

That finally worked, hope this helps anyone encountering this issue.

Installing Virtuoso Open Source Edition on Windows isn’t that difficult, I did have a few small issues but here is a log of the install. Might be of use to anyone else wanting to give it a try.

Here’s a link to the install directions I filed: Install Directions

Here’s a link to the binary file: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?groupname=virtuoso&filename=virtuoso-opensource-win32-5.0.5.zip&use_mirror=dfn

Notes:

I felt the directions on this page were a little short, so I figured I’d make some notes

ODBC Driver Registration

I. Create Enviornment Variable
1. Righ click on My Computer > Properties

2. Select the Advanced Tab
3. Click the Environment Variables Button
4. Under the System Variables section, click NEW
5. Name the variable: VIRTUOSO_HOME
6. Set the path to the directory: \virtuoso-opensource (what should of been the results of unzipping the windows build).

7. To Test: open a command line and type: cd %VIRTUOSO_HOME%

Setup DSN

I had to skip this section since it couldn’t connect — nothing was running. When I later tried to connect after starting the demo service using the instrucitons in the section called: “Creating a Windows Service for the Demo Database” I got a bad username/password.
after getting the demo service running, i went back and used localhost:1112 and dba:dba and it worked.

Creating a Windows Service for the Demo Database

1. I manually modified the path (found in step 2) using the instructions above to create an envrionment variable. This time, instead of creating a new one I merely appended the two paths required to tthe existing Path variable. I then restarted my system.

Paste this at the end of the path: ;%VIRTUOSO_HOME%\bin;%VIRTUOSO_HOME%\lib

After this step I got the demo service running

——

All of the uri’s provided in the document do not work, 404 error except
http://localhost:8890/sparql

After pinging the mailing list I got a quick response from Hugh Williams, he told me to add a few lines to the config file.

I had to edit the demo.ini
1. Changed the DirsAllowed from:
DirsAllowed = .\tmp\, .\backup\, ..\vad\, virtprof.out, ..\bin\OpenLink.Data.Virtuoso.dll, .\classlib\
to:
DirsAllowed = ..\..\..\..\share\virtuoso\vad, .\tmp\, .\backup\, ..\vad\, virtprof.out, ..\bin\OpenLink.Data.Virtuoso.dll, .\classlib\

added this to the beginning: ..\..\..\..\share\virtuoso\vad,

2. Then added this line:
VADInstallDir = ..\..\..\..\share\virtuoso\vad

3. Stopped & Started it

4. This url now worked: http://localhost:8890/conductor/

Some usful commands:

List Running Services

virtuoso-t +service list

Create Service Instance
virtuoso-t +service screate +instance “Demo” +configfile demo.ini

Stop Instance
virtuoso-t +instance “Demo” +service stop

Start Instance
virtuoso-t +instance “Demo” +service start

Excellent interview with Milton Friedman. I’ve read a few of his books and seen quite a few his videos, this is a great one.

So HC08 was an amazing success. Here are some pictures
Hunt Camp 08 Pictures, video will soon be available.