First release of HtmlPrag, my permissive HTML parser that emits SXML. Intent is to extract information from Web pages using the SXML tools by Oleg Kiselyov, Kirill Lisovsky, and others. Somewhat premature first release now is because I have a habit of writing HTML parsers and never getting around to releasing them (the Java-based HtmlChewer, the Guile-based HtmlSuq).
Spam protection racket:
From: "Paul Root" <dukercrtc@altered.com> To: <nwv@acm.org> Subject: Say GOODBYE to SPAM Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 07:51:19 -0200 <body>Because blocking <B>SPAM</B> should be easy!<br> Fully integrated solutions available for:<ul> <li>Microsoft Outlook 2000/2002</li><li>Microsoft Outlook Express 5.0/6.0</li></ul><p> Get the email you want and nothing else.<br> <a href="http://junkfighter.com/?0pgELjetXRp9AfEy_SRRWDl2wJc6Omg2"> http://junkfighter.com/</a></body>
While looking for something else, found My First Rejection Letter. For reasons unknown, Tandy Corp. was uninterested in funding a naively-conceived electronics book by an adolescent wielding an old manual typewriter.
Around dawn in Harvard Square this morning, neon art on the Sert Gallery building, and Out Of Town News.
Surveillance photos of the MIT aeronautics building yesterday show the secret rice prototype, with cutting-edge rear stabilizer technology.
More coverage of FBI incursions on university campuses, with more information than the Boston Globe article that I linked on 10-Jan-2003: Dan Eggen, "FBI Taps Campus Police in Anti-Terror Operations," Washington Post, 25-Jan-2003
Tried Cheddar VeganRella, which is unusual for fake cheese in that doesn't have the animal product casein. Edible, but you wouldn't buy it ever again if what you wanted was cheese. Also failed to melt in face of extensive irradiation. The Rella Web site has that UFO Cult Netscape 2.0 feel to it.
Odd headline, and odd (but seemingly good) news:
The Senate voted today to bar deployment of a Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad. The curbs on the project, called the Total Information Awareness Program, were adopted without debate and by unanimous consent as part of a package of amendments to an omnibus spending bill. House leaders had no immediate comment on the surprise action, which will almost certainly go to a House-Senate conference. Neither did the White House or the Defense Department.
—Adam Clymer, "Senate Blocks Privacy Project," New York Times, 23-Jan-2003
Updated my Privoxy actions file. By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that my
.actions file secretly rewrites amazon.com URLs to
send all the referral kickbacks to me. That will have to wait for me to make a
.filter file.
After all other food sources in Central Square close Sunday night, Cinderella's remains open til 1am. Pizza by the slice, though not on their menu, is about $1.50.
I'm rewriting my old Guile-specific permissive HTML parser, HtmlSuq, to be R5RS and to emit SXML, which should then let us use tools like SXPath for scraping Web pages. For MyPaper, I was using a Java-based parser I wrote, called HtmlChewer, which constructed a dual graph representation, so that you could navigate alternately by hierarchical or linear structure, in either direction, from any given node. I think HtmlChewer was overkill, though, and suspect XPath-like queries will be sufficiently powerful and more elegant.
Pilot program to put TVs in NY cabs. Sounds obnoxious to begin with, and added dystopian touches are that TVs can't be turned off, and programming includes the Fox News outlet. Marc Santora, "Circle the Block, Cabby, My Show's On," New York Times, 16-Jan-2003
One of several gems still on the books in Massachusetts:
Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior.
This Saturday, Jan. 18, ANSWER peace march on Washington DC to protest both the threat of war against Iraq and new Bush administration policy concerning US weapons of mass destruction:
"Preemptive Strikes are Part of US Strategic Doctrine," reads the headline of the front page of the Washington Post of December 11, 2002. A classified version of the new Bush Doctrine "breaks with the fifty years of counter-proliferation efforts" by planning for the use of nuclear weapons against countries that not only have not attacked the US but that do not themselves possess nuclear capability.
A person's fantasy of plowing onto a crowded sidewalk with a Segway won him first dibs:
"My dream . . . Gliding effortlessly onto the sidewalk, crowded with commuters. Someone calls my name and I turn on a dime to see a neighbor who looks out of breath. He says he's running late for work. I smile. Their way, the old way. My way, Segway."
—"The Wheel Thing," Washington Post, 15-Jan-2003
With the help of a protocol sniffer and then a couple manual NNTP
sessions, showed that bos.news.speakeasy.net (actually
news-central.giganews.com) responses to LIST ACTIVE
requests are sporadically giving incorrect (i.e., earlier than previously
reported) last-article IDs. Evidence has been submitted to Speakeasy.
A piece perhaps intended to maintain political capital with those who think that religious faith belongs in White House policy and decision-making processes:
"That was why Bush was so confident: not because he was arrogant but because he believed that the future was held in stronger hands than his own." [...] Frum also reports on "the tone" inside the White House, one shaped by numerous aides (including Gersen) who share the president's evangelical Protestantism. This is a White House, we learn, of prayer and Bible study, of "moral fervor" grounded in faith.
—Terry Eastlund, "Bush's faith has influenced his conduct in public office," Dallas Morning News, 13-Jan-2003
Eastlund, the publisher of The Weekly Standard, reprinted the article there on 14-Jan-2003 as "The Faithful President."
Saw French film Artemisia, around the relationship between Artemisia Gentileschi and Agostino Tassi. Though apparently not faithful to history, an engaging story. Better, though even more tragic, was a related French film, Camille Claudel, of Claudel's relationship with Rodin.
The original 1369 Coffeehouse in Inman Square is celebrating its tenth anniversary today, and everything is on the house. They're accepting donations for a charitable hunger project.
Email today from the MIT Alumni Association, via Kintera, Inc., and containing a Kintera tracking bug in the HTML, prompts me to release an update of my Privoxy actions file. Sent the alumni people a note about why sharing alumni information with outside companies is not a good idea (and incidentally mentioning that they keep assuring me I won't get any more email solicitations and then sending them anyway). I begin to suspect they don't want to hear from me except in the form of a check.
Interesting reading, whether or not you accept the argument: Louis Bolce, Gerald De Maio "Our Secularist Democratic Party," The Public Interest, Fall 2002.
On way to find coffee yesterday morning, snapped snow on the park.
With abuses by past FBI leadership (e.g., Hoover) in mind, especially attempts to suppress progressive social movements, universities quietly collaborating with the FBI to monitor professors and students should not be undertaken lightly.
At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a campus police detective reports to the Springfield office of the FBI nearly full time. [...] "Universities exist to follow ideas, and to explore things that may not be popular at that moment, and to question ideas that people hold dear," said Dan Clawson, a sociology professor at UMass-Amherst. "Anything that tends to limit that attacks the heart of the university."
—"University police help the FBI in terror fight," Boston Globe, 9-Jan-2003
The iGo stand for the flatpanel iMac is a neat design. However, it appears that proper typing posture might press the knees against the forward pillars. The pillars could be straddled, but the design affords no privacy panel.
The Encyclopedia Britannica remarks [of Kant] that "as he never married, he kept the habits of his studious youth to old age." I wonder whether the author of this article was a bachelor or a married man.
—Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 1945, pp. 706
Three showstopper issues on the sexy 17" PowerBook G4:
Bizarre claim of "ultralight (just 6.8 pounds)" puts it at twice the poundage of laptops like the ThinkPad X-Series.
"starts at $3299"
Installing GNU/Linux would mean wiping out a somewhat attractive (yet non-Free) OS.
For all those who've asked: I'm preparing a journal submission on the MindShare thesis. I really should've done a conference paper earlier, but got distracted with bureaucracy. Am updating the Web page with some more info.
In the backlog of snail-mail was a reassuring response from the Cambridge Board of Election Commissioners. I get the impression they will make more intelligent decisions about polling technology than some other cities have.
Talk about un-American priorities:
BRASILIA, Jan. 3 — Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has suspended the $700 million purchase of 12 supersonic fighter jets, choosing to devote more of this year's budget to fighting poverty, the defense minister said today.
—"Brazil Suspends Fighter Jet Deal," Reuters via Washington Post
Stuck on laptop again. Released Quack 0.17. Adds a few requested enhancements, including pretty-lambda
(which works quite well with isearch and such, thanks to GNU Emacs 21), and
splits special w3m support off into w3mnav.el.
"Director Quits Los Alamos Under Fire," New York Times.
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