This year is a particularly nice year for the church leaders to pontificate about. A world spun into chaos by the reckless actions of the those near the top of global capitalism:

At midnight mass at Westminster Cathedral, Murphy-O’Connor called for a “moral purpose” to the market economy.

“Christianity neither condemns nor canonises the market economy – it may be an essential element in the conduct of human affairs,” he said.

A market system has moral hazards, but ‘moral purpose’? What could that even mean. It’s an utterly vague statement that sounds nice, but means nothing.

“But we have to remember that it is a system governed by people, not some blind force like gravity. Those who operate the market have an obligation to act in ways that promote the common good, not just in ways that promote the interests of certain groups. The market economy will only work justly if it has an underlying moral purpose.”

Adam Smith would certainly disagree that it isn’t a blind force. Has this guy not heard of the invisible hand? How could people in a market system possibly promote a ‘common good’ – the idea is vague, and the interactions so complex that it would impossible to know if your actions would promote said good or not. The biggest problem of all would be that to promote some common good, you might put yourself at a disadvantage, and an adversary would just reap the benefits. See here

This all seems like utter fence sitting on the part of the church. ‘Maybe markets work, but some bad stuff has just happened, so maybe it’s because people weren’t being moral, so if people just be moral then we can all be happy.’ But it’s absolutely incorrect. No, markets aren’t the only option, but if they are used, then one must act as a rational agent and consider only one’s self-interest. That’s the only way that a market economy will work. Of course, the church has an interest not to promote any alternatives to the market – socialism has never generally been a good bedfellow with religion. Take for instance this quote from Lenin:

The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.

It’s not unusual for the chruch to be wrong about things. Their very conception of the nature of reality being the gravest error. However, they need to stick to the theology and avoid the economics in future. They never have misgivings about telling scientists to avoid theology.

The current crisis is actually a massive opportunity for the church to regain its lost position. If the UK is spun into depression and despair, then as a cognitive defense, people will once again turn to the church to tell them the next life is going to be better than this.

Because there weren’t already lyrics for So F’ing Pimp:

I’m so Pimp it should be a crime
My site’s been slashdotted four seperate times
I can factor numbers into their constituent primes
Oh, and did I mention that I spit the dopest rhymes

My cotton sheets are three hundred thread count
I got overdraft protection on my checking account
I got dual flat panel nineteen inch screens
I got slim flit boot cut Levi jeans
I can solve a rubicks cube in ninety seconds flat
I know all the fatalities in mortal combat
I scored a fifteen ninety on the SATs
I got a masters degree from MIT
I got Office season three on DVD
And that’s why I’m a motherfucking P-I-M-P

[I'm pimp... So pimp...]

I code in Java, Lisp, C and Perl
One time I swear I even saw a naked girl
I wear boxer briefs from Fruit of the Loom
There’s a foosball table in my living room

I’m top of the line, first in the class
Leader of the pack, number one brass
It’s platonic truth, I’m like an ideal gas
Pretty as a picture and smooth as glass

I’m fast as lightning, strong as an ox
Fit as a fiddle and sly as a fox
Cool as a cucumber, in fact I’m ice cold
I’m fine as wine, I’m good as gold
I’m the best there is son, second to none
Cream of the crop, can’t be outdone

I’m sharp as a tack, bright as the sun
I’m sweeter than sugar, and twice as fun
I’m tough as nails, hard as a rock
Tip of the top, the cock of the wok

You know I’m honest as the day is long
And I’m so fucking pimp I had to write this song

[I'm pimp... So pimp...]

My HMO’s co pay is only ten bucks
My motherboard’s a sus-p-five deluxe
I got a quad band walkman phone
And you know I got a badass ringtone

I’m the head honcho, the daddy mack
I’m the numero uno, the leader of the pack
I’m the big kahuna, the top of the stack
Yo, if this were France, I’d be Jacques Chirac

If I were a perfume, I would be Chanel
If i were a prize, I would be the Nobel
If I were a hotel, I would be the Plaza
If I were an espresso, I would be Lavazza
If I were a number, I would be complex
If I were a watch, I would be Rolex
If I were Greek, they would call me Zeus
If I were a vodka, I would be grey goose
If I were a primate, I would be a chimp
Which is just a way of saying that I’m so fucking pimp

[I'm pimp... So pimp...]

Were I a play mode, I would be shuffle
Were I a fungus, I would be a truffle
A composer? I would be Bach
A bag? I’d be a Ziploc

I thought they already had clowns in Wall Street…

For 7 minutes that is.

Phoenix EDL.

The “Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. A CS professor fighting pancreatic cancer.

“james joyce cabal”

(hundredth post)

I’m currently bedridden at home from a nasty dose of the flu and therefore have to use ssh to connect to my machine in the lab.

This machine is behind a firewall however, requiring the use of an intermediary SSH server. So typically you’d do:

CLIENT>  ssh GATEWAY
GATEWAY> ssh DESTINATION

While this can be satisfactory enough for most uses, it doesn’t make copying files any easier, and my usual course of action was to copy the file to the gateway machine and then copy it from there to my laptop.

Today I got a little tired of that and decided to fix it.

This exerpt from “SSH: The definitive guide” proposes that you either use a remote authorized_hosts file command from the gateway to connect to the destination or to create a manual tunnel like so:
# ~/.ssh/config on client C
host S
hostname localhost
port 2001


# Execute on client C
$ ssh -L2001:S:22 G
# Execute on client C in a different shell
$ ssh S
This works well enough, but annoying that it required the manual creation of the tunnel. As for the authorized_hosts command method, it would require creating a new key for the client to use to make each connection to the gateway in order for the gateway to know which machine to connect to. (Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what I mean) – Too much effort.

Instead I started thinking about using ssh_config to create the tunnel automatically before the connection:

~/.ssh/config:

HOST DESTINATION
 hostname GATEWAY
 ControlPath=none
 LocalForward 2002 DESTINATION:22
 PermitLocalCommand yes
 LocalCommand ssh -p 2002 localhost


However, this didn’t work, and I didn’t figure out why it couldn’t get past the key exchange.

Another solution I considered was to use something called ProxyCommand, which I already use to connect to machines using HTTPS and SOCKS proxies. So I wrote a script that will make an ssh tunnel through the gateway and connect to the remote machine using the handy ‘nc’ utility.

~/.ssh/config:

HOST [DESTINATION]
 ProxyCommand ~/bin/sc 2002 %h %p [GATEWAY]


~/bin/sc:

#!/bin/sh
#$1 == local port $2 == far away host $3 == far away host port $4 == gateway host
ssh -oControlPath=~/.$2$4 -f -N -L$1:$2:$3 $4
nc localhost $1


This will always use the same tunnel to forward a connection to the ssh server on the destination machine, saving resources. There was however the issue that ssh would constantly try to create the tunnel at each invocation, and the ControlPath was a neat solution to avoid that (if there is already exists a tunnel it silently does nothing). The only problem with this technique is that I couldn’t come up with a good way to garbage collect the unused tunnels. Perhaps a file locking based technique, using a counter (similar to reference counting) would work well. But it would be a much bigger project than I wanted.

I realised that using nc on the gateway machine would also work:

~/.ssh/config

HOST [DESTINATION]
 ProxyCommand ssh [GATEWAY] nc %h %p


However this unsatisfactorily left nc processes running on the gateway machine, probably due to unimplemented shutdown message handling in some part of the network stack.

Both of these solutions were nice that they allowed the client to connect directly to the ssh server on the destination, enabling the use of ssh keys, forwarded ports, and preventing man-in-the-middle attacks. However, the nc utility is not exactly meant to be used in a production setup. A proper solution to the whole problem would involve modifying the sourcecode of ssh, to allow specifying a gateway in some fashion.

I attended this great talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA while I was in San Francisco in March.

Today I came across the “famous” Reith Lectures (named after the first Director General of the BBC). If you were ignorant like me to their existance, they can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith/

Of considerable note is the collection of historic Reith lectures, and in particular the one by Bertrand Russell, where he talks about social cohesion and human nature: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith/historic_audio/reith_historic.shtml

It certainly makes for good listening. Just a shame that they’re only available in RealCrap format.

Christopher Johnson McCandless

February 12, 1968 – August 18, 1992

Just an update about my current goings on. I haven’t had anytime really to think of what to write.

After Paris, I took a Thalys to Brussels, then a regular train to Amsterdam. Spent 2 days there, took a really good walking tour. Then I took a train to Dusselforf, waited there for a couple of hours, then a night train to Berlin (I only had a seat, so didn’t sleep well). Was only planning on spending one night in Berlin, but I need to pace myself a bit, so decided to stay two nights. Probably will go to Prague next, but will need to figure out train times and book hostel ahead of time.

Paris is a full on experience. Even it’s subway system seems more complicated than that of other cities at first. The first day I was there it felt like everything was running in fast-time; but it was probably a cause de la sleep deprivation: I had to take a night bus to Dublin for my flight, meaning I missed a night’s sleep. I took a flight to Charleroi, Belgium, then a bus to the train station, then a train to Bruxelles, then the Thalys high speed train to Paris.

There is definately a romantic feel to the city, from the public displays of affection to the many couple centric activies; however I wouldn’t call it cliche - it’s not at all like the movies really. Something that I don’t think many people know is that there are a lot of Japaneese people in Paris, mostly tourists I think, as that’s where I keep seeing them. If they’re not the biggest tourist ethnic group then they might be close to it. What I like about them is that they’re not afraid to take a tripod with them to take photos - other people use a flash for instance to photograph Arc de Triumph at night - no point, crap photo. Some people also don’t get the message that you can’t use flash in some places, or maybe they don’t know how to turn it off, or maybe they’re the worst photographers ever. I don’t understand the mentality of peope that still carry around video cameras to film tourist attriaction, that stuff  never makes complelling viewing - no script.

Yesterday I checked out Notre Dam, Latin Quarter, Eiffel Tour, Champs Elesee  other things I can’t recall. Today I spent about 4 hours in the Louvre (not enough), seen the catacombes, the Graveyard place ( which I didn’t have the map for, so the only grave I got to see was dear old Osar Wilde and Georges Pompideau building (didn’t go in).

Tomorrow it’s on the Thalys again to Amsterdam.

I’m travelling to continental Europe in two days. I have a 10 day within 22 day interrail ticket, but only have about 2 weeks until I need to come back. The rough plan is something like Brussels-Paris-Amsterdam-Berlin/Munich-Prague/Budapest-Vienna-Florence-Rome but that is likely to change (map). I haven’t yet really thought about what I want to visit, other than the catacombs and that graveyard in Paris, and the scientific historical locations in Vienna.

If the cyber-cafe internet on the continent is reasonably priced, then I’ll hopefully blog and post photos - I’m not bringing my laptop as that is just not sensible.

If you want a more interesting read, I recommend this guy.

While posting videos is not something I do very often at this blog. I came across this one particular documentary film that really struck me. It’s called Dangerous Knowledge and it’s about four thinkers — Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing who destroyed any hopes we would ever have for certainty in knowledge. The film is especially powerful to me right now as I have for weeks been obsessing with the limits of knowledge, undoubtedly to unhealthy levels. This film does not tell me anything new of course, but it presents it in a light that shows how very deep these problems were to these great mathematicians. The commentary for the documentary was also well chosen — Gregory Chaitin and Roger Penrose among those talking. At one point I was almost reduced to tears by the beauty that was hinted at.

A new season of the British sitcom, the IT Crowd, set in an IT department/basement has just started showing on TV. It’s from Graham Lineham (the same guy as Father Ted). I must admit that first time round I didn’t find the series that funny (and neither did many people), or at least not laugh-out-loud funny; but the new series I’m glad to say had me in stitches. The characters are all basically still the same, but their production values seem to have increased massively. The first episode wasn’t set in the office, so maybe that had a large part to do with the hilarity.

If you can’t get it on TV, then fear not, it’s all over the interwebs. Check out stage6 or youtube.

Just like Gareth, I lead a very fragmented life online.

Del.icio.us - where I put all my bookmarks of interesting and useful stuff I find on the web.

For social messaging: Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.

Facebook - my social network of choice, I also have stagnant Bebo, Orkut and MySpace profiles.

I also have Flickr photos, youtube videos, Plazes, Last.fm, allconsuming and 43things. No doubt I’ve missed a few, and some of these I barely use, such as digg and reddit accounts.

Obviously this list will save private investigators plenty of time.

I was looking at this beautiful image today in Firefox and made it my desktop background, but then I noticed that it looked even better as a background than in the Firefox window. A little more investigating revealed that (at least on mac) Gecko doesn’t render images as vibrant as Safari.

Webkit (Safari) vs. Camino (Mozilla):

Just something to keep in mind next time you’re Flickring.

The polls will close in ten minutes for the Irish general election. Unfortunately I am outside my constituency and cannot return as it is exam time (and I also didn’t have a chance to move my vote or do a postal vote). A few people have mentioned that the government scheduled the election at this time because they knew students would be away from home doing exams now, and students are generally thought to be for change (some people also comment that Sinn Fein has a large student support these days due to their socialist policies). At least we’re better off than in the UK, where because of first-past-the-post, the Lib Dem voting students at home have almost no effect nationally.

It will be interesting to see how it goes anyway. We might be electing the people that will see this country’s economy collapse, even though none of them acknowledge that it will.

At this junction in my life, and I don’t really know where either path will take me. Both paths are one way only. The decision will soon be taken however.