Monthly Archives: August 2005

Imperial Conditioning

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This Wikipedia entry for Dune Terminology clearly states the following:

IMPERIAL CONDITIONING: a development of the Suk Medical Schools: the highest conditioning against taking human life. Initiates are marked by a diamond tattoo on the forehead and are permitted to wear their hair long and bound by a silver Suk ring.

So I dog-headedly mangle the intentions of Mr. Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece and redefine “Imperial Conditioning” for the rasx() context—for the sake of science fact. Let me start with this: Imperialism institutionalizes gluttony. There is no accident that the BBC reports “US people getting fatter, fast.” It is their Imperial Conditioning at work. Are you confused about how the hell I am connecting Frank Herbert, gluttony and obesity together? Well… it’s your Imperial Conditioning at work. You don’t have to try to ignore this Blog post. You just will.

Empires do not preserve all human life. Empires preserve and protect the liberty and freedom of a small group of synthetically rich families who were naturally impoverished. This small cartel—this minority—rules the majority. And they hold on to power through Imperial Conditioning. What you may call wisdom and “human nature,” I would probably see as excellent Imperial Conditioning at work. Hey, what’s on Tee Vee? Imperial Conditioning. What’s in the next Potter Boy Wizard book? Imperial Conditioning. Why are attractive women and children treated as sex objects? They are Imperial booty to be stolen and used up. In an empire, human life does not come from women and children. It comes from macho soldiers with unisex family values conquering foreign lands and “out sourcing” the inhabitants. When humanity is acquired in bulk, the value of human life drops.

So it may appear to Dune fans that they are ‘free’ to hate what I have done to their sacred fictional words but to me this is an illusion. Such free haters have very few mental/emotional choices beyond cynicism, hate and fear—for this, again, is the Imperial Conditioning at work. Now they are ready for war… as errand boys sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.

Link Exchange

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monogatari

Atsushi Eno is disappointed with Microsoft Patterns and Practices regarding XML so he writes “the ‘true’ Checklists: XML Performance.”

Google Releases Blog Add-in for MS Word

My work on CleanXHTML is justified (again) as big-ass Google releases Blogger for Word. What I would like to do is have CleanXHTML connect to a Web service on the fly like InfoPath does to take it beyond the Clipboard stuff shown earlier.

Libxslt

Bob DuCharme of XML.com fame writes “Appreciating Libxslt,” which should help me get up to speed with finally being able to transform XML with PHP. This ties in with “Appendix B. Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5” at php.net.

I almost used GhostDoc…

…but I ended up just leaving a link for it here. Who knows what our future holds?

I say code-behind JavaScript and you say tomato…

So Peter-Paul Koch writes about “JavaScript Triggers” at A List Apart. What he is talking about is a design pattern I have been using since the days of Danny Goodman, his JavaScript bibles. Using Mr. Koch’s terms, I have been building “JavaScript Trigger Chains” or “Cascading JavaScript Triggers” for quite some time. I look forward to the day when I can write about this stuff and post it on SonghaySystem.com.

Is it the System Tray?

In “Why do some people call the taskbar the ‘tray’?” this matter is put to rest at The New Old Thing.

‘Stupid’ Virtual PC Tricks

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So I am thinking that I can explicitly define the roles my notebook plays by setting up Virtual PCs for each role. Eventually, this notebook will have to have its operating system upgraded. Is it possible to migrate, say, all of my Macromedia applications to a virtual PC without any inconvenient side effects? I choose Macromedia (their tools as of 2004) because I depend on their coding tools (I do not depend on their graphics tools like freeHand or Fireworks)—whatever hardware-related performance problems should be limited. Moreover, I can reduce the screen resolution for the Virtual PC so that I can finally magnify those tiny-ass UI fonts while running the physical PC at 1600×1200.

My guessing suggests that my Sonic Foundry and Sony Pictures Digital tools should have direct access to the hardware. Adobe Photoshop and all of my 3D-rendering apps should have direct access as well. However, I know that all of my Microsoft tools can run on a Virtual PC—so that’s two Virtual PCs: a Macromedia coding box and a Microsoft coding box.

By migrating to a virtual PC, it looks like I can plug and unplug huge chunks of hard drive space. When the time comes to upgrade, I can start with a fresh box running Virtual PC and then plug in a virtual machine image packed with “pre-installed” applications. This seems too easy. There has to be catch!

Dr. Peter Sefton of The University of Southern Queensland calls Brian Jones of Microsoft “Glib”

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CleanXHTML ElementsSo I am trying to understand Peter Sefton’s mind toward Microsoft Word and how he has used tables for semantic markup. I am not being coy or am secretly carrying multiple meanings. In fact, I appreciate Peter’s reference to me, by name, in his recent Blog entry “More on Microsoft Word vs XML Schemas.”

The picture floating at left shows the XML Structure Task Pane. The hope here is that Peter Sefton will see almost instantly that most of the elements listed are semantic elements that cannot be expressed in WordProcessingML. Now, the screenshot below shows this Blog entry being composed in Microsoft Word.

rasx() Blog Entry

I am almost sure that I am misunderstanding Dr. Sefton. But the assumption here is that he might have used tables where all of the magenta XML elements appear in this entry. Moreover, I would like to know what he thinks of the XML Structure Task Pane. I will make an effort to search his Blog for any remarks about it.

Now when I am ready to post my entry into WordPress, without any help from Google™ I run my “beta” version of CleanXHTML that produces output like the stuff shown below:

CleanXHTML Output

I see Dr. Sefton as a potential customer of this product and would like to know what the hell is so wrong with it. His detailed input into this matter is more than academic. I consider it invaluable.

More Russian Prison Intrigue

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According to the BBC, Russian “business tycoon” Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on a prison hunger strike. You know, like how Randall Robinson would be on a hunger strike? Our virtually resident poet, Vladimir Orlov, has two poetry presentations here at kintespace.com so we can perhaps place Mr. Khodorkovsky in the ‘proper’ context.

His first is “Poetic License” and his second presentation is “We shall wear orange scarves.” See: kintespace.com is your one-stop shop for Russian-business-tycoon-on-hunger-strike-in-prison poetry!