Title: David Baron's Weblog Link: http://dbaron.org/log/ -------------------------------- Title: Political spectra Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-10#e20041002a Date: Sat Oct 02 07:42:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content:

Since politics is (are?) on my mind lately, I want to point out an interesting site, Political Survey, which I first discovered when Eric Meyer pointed it out back in February.

It's interesting because it uses principal component analysis to derive the axes from the data, rather than trying to pick axes in advance. It's also interesting because the most significant axis it finds is the traditional left/right axis, but the second axis isn't the libertarian/authoritarian axis that some assert should be the second axisrather, it's a pragmatic/idealistic axis.

I've taken the survey twice, once in February and once today. My results were similar: I was in the left/pragmatic quadrant both times. (In February, I was -4.08 on right/left and +5.17 on pragmatic/idealistic. Today I was -3.63 on right/left and +4.65 on pragmatic/idealistic.)

-------------------------------- Title: A few (technical) thoughts Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-09#e20040922a Date: Wed Sep 22 07:48:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Bad memory Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-09#e20040911a Date: Sat Sep 11 19:14:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content:

So this morning I was getting annoyed at the small amount of RAM in my laptop. Since I recently (after having the laptop for over a year) got Linux to use my CPU at full speed instead of half speed (by adding DEVICE="acpi" to /etc/cpuspeed.conf), memory has really seemed to be the limiting factor. (Well, it has a slow disk too.) I've also been doing some things that use a lot of memory lately. I wondered why I only got 256 MiB of RAM in the first placethat didn't seem like something I'd do. So, with the thought of buying more RAM in mind, I pulled out the folder that had the receipt for my laptop to see whether I had an empty memory slot or 2 128 MiB DIMMs.

And the receipt said I had ordered 512 MiB of memory. But free says I have 256 MiB, and the BIOS agrees. And I don't really ever remember this machine having 512 MiB. So I opened up the laptop, and, lo and behold, there were 2 256 MiB DIMMs in there. A few experiments showed that one of the two memory slots was bad. And the machine is already out of warranty (since I got a short warranty, which for me is usually a better deal, especially since I'm never sure whether Dell will honor the warranty after I've installed Linux).

I really need a better memory of what I ordered. Or better memory. Or something. But maybe I'll at least remember not to order laptops from Dell again.

-------------------------------- Title: Weblog feed Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-08#e20040830a Date: Tue Aug 31 05:48:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content:

Reading the XSLT used for the newsfeed on the new mozilla.org webpage inspired me to finish a project I started quite a while agomaking an RSS feed for this weblog. After reading the one example XSLT file, I did the rest using only the XSLT spec and the XPath spec. So I now have an RSS feed produced by an XSLT transformation sheet (I don't like the use of the word stylesheet for XSLT). And it's apparently even valid.

Writing it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, although I am somewhat disappointed by the inability of XSLT to re-transform trees (i.e., use an already transformed tree, in the form of a result tree fragment bound to a variable, as the source tree for an additional transformation). I worked around the problem using a named template and xsl:call-template. At least I think it's something XSLT can't doat least I couldn't see how in the spec.

-------------------------------- Title: Intranet mode? Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-06#e20040621a Date: Mon Jun 21 21:41:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content:

If Microsoft is going to develop IE again, I challenge them to move most of their non-standard behavior out of quirks mode and into an Intranet mode.

Most of the quirky behavior of IE for Windows isn't actually needed to display Web sites correctly. It's needed for Intranet sites that have been designed to work with only one browser. Backwards-compatibility for corporate, academic, and government Intranets is a perfectly good reason to want to produce software that continues to display such sites, but it's no reason to inflict such software on the Web. This would make IE's handling of most web pages much more standard and lessen one of the main ways IE's near-monopoly discourages competition.

-------------------------------- Title: The W3C Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-06#e20040609a Date: Thu Jun 10 00:06:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: More about the workshop Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-06#e20040607a Date: Mon Jun 07 19:01:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Travel & Meetings Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-06#e20040604a Date: Fri Jun 04 22:47:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: No exit? Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-05#e20040527a Date: Thu May 27 22:51:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Fragmentation of document formats on the Web Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-05#e20040513a Date: Thu May 13 18:30:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Monterey County Coast Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-04#e20040419a Date: Tue Apr 20 05:54:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Snow in Mandelieu Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-03#e20040301a Date: Mon Mar 01 17:37:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: States I've visited Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-02#e20040203a Date: Tue Feb 03 08:13:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The man to beat bush? Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2004-01#e20040129a Date: Thu Jan 29 20:01:00 UTC 2004 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Don't run away from tables Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-11#e20031126a Date: Thu Nov 27 01:17:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The good news Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-10#e20031007a Date: Wed Oct 08 06:24:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Mozilla Firebird, part 2 Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-09#e20030914a Date: Sun Sep 14 19:29:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Election 2004: The Albuquerque debate Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-09#e20030909d Date: Wed Sep 10 05:15:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Mozilla Firebird Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-09#e20030909c Date: Wed Sep 10 04:39:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Israel and Palestine Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-09#e20030909b Date: Wed Sep 10 04:02:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: My blog Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-09#e20030909a Date: Wed Sep 10 03:41:00 UTC 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I wrote a letter to the New York Times ... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-08#l20030831 Date: Sun Aug 31 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The CSS3 syntax module draft was publis... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-08#l20030813 Date: Wed Aug 13 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: More on my new laptop. I don't think I... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-08#l20030806 Date: Wed Aug 06 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Fun with sendmail! More later on my ne... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-07#l20030731 Date: Thu Jul 31 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I'm amused that when the President of t... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-07#l20030716 Date: Wed Jul 16 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: It's rally annoying whn th E ky on my k... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-06#l20030609 Date: Mon Jun 09 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: My reading lately has consisted of read... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-06#l20030604 Date: Wed Jun 04 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: So I've been in California for over a m... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-05#l20030523 Date: Fri May 23 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I lost a day's worth of dbaron.org emai... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-04#l20030426 Date: Sat Apr 26 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I'm moving to California on Wednesday a... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-04#l20030414 Date: Mon Apr 14 00:00:00 CEST 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The lack of UI for strict focus-follows... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-03#l20030329 Date: Sat Mar 29 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I'm one of those tcsh users who's alway... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-03#l20030314 Date: Fri Mar 14 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: It's March now, and we're beginning to ... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-03#l20030308 Date: Sat Mar 08 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: For those of you who don't have the fun... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-02#l20030213 Date: Thu Feb 13 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I've seen a bunch of good movies recent... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-02#l20030210 Date: Mon Feb 10 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I've done a few neat hacks with X-Remot... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-02#l20030202 Date: Sun Feb 02 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: In the fun with old hardware category..... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-01#l20030129 Date: Wed Jan 29 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Just for the record, I was exaggerating... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-01#l20030112 Date: Sun Jan 12 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Since everyone else (hyatt, shaver, jwz... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2003-01#l20030109 Date: Thu Jan 09 00:00:00 CET 2003 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: I obeyed his instructions ten minutes ... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-12#l20021221 Date: Sat Dec 21 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: something I need to remember more often... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-12#l20021215 Date: Sun Dec 15 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: Judging from his December 12 entry, Hix... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-12#l20021214 Date: Sat Dec 14 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: If you thought discrimination was a thi... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-12#l20021211 Date: Wed Dec 11 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: It's too cold outside. To be exact, it... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-12#l20021203 Date: Tue Dec 03 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: [18:53:10] Hi all [18:55:05] ... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-11#l20021128 Date: Thu Nov 28 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The concert on Friday night went well, ... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-11#l20021124 Date: Sun Nov 24 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: It's nice to wake up in the morning and... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-11#l20021121 Date: Thu Nov 21 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: The New York Times is reporting tha... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-11#l20021115 Date: Fri Nov 15 00:00:00 CET 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: -------------------------------- Title: So some people think I should have a we... Link: http://dbaron.org/log/2002-09#l20020914 Date: Sat Sep 14 00:00:00 CEST 2002 Creator: David Baron Subject: Category: Content: