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CCNA, Network Engineering, Mutazilites, Journal Articles, Taxes!
First off, some deep-geek news. I'm enrolled to do get CCNA certification. How does this happen? I mean, I'm qualified to be a sociologist, a philosopher and a political scientist and I end being a network engineer.
The most troubling task of the week was fixing up the Borderlands network. With the world's most "no frills" ADSL modem, a rather impressive mini router, a Netgear switch and a Dec repeater and about fifteen or so clients (heterogenous of course, WinXP, WinNT, Mac OS X, Red Hat Linux, Mandrake), they decided to broadband provider to a dial-up account and then to a different broadband provider. Then the entire network fell over. I couldn't even ping 192.168.0.1 - even when connected! A couple of days of extreme frustration led to two important discoveries. One was a seriously FUBAR ethernet card (file under 'b' for 'bin') which was chewing up resources at a rate of knots and the other was some disturbingly sporadic behaviour by the router. Net result? Basic ICS with a a gateway with dual ethernet cards and send the router back to the manufacturer. It all works. Good.
Nobody likes a heretic, and it seems that some Muslims disklike suggestions that all it not well with the Quaran. I've been in a debate on the convert me community, where my suggestion that the Quaran is a imperfect text has been met with some resistance. Most disturbing of all is the lack of knowledge concerning the Mutazilites. Still, the practical upshot is that I know have an article for the Journal of Liberal Religion in the making.
Speaking of journal articles, I've also sent off a brief to the International Journal for Problems of Nonlinear Analysis in Engineering Systems on dissipitative structures in social systems, which I'll co-author with my colleague in mathematics, Dr. Cameron Jones. Finally, I've also pitched to present a paper at Ruxcon, the IT Security Conference at UTS although my subject matter (Australia - East Timor military intelligence) may be considered a little off-topic.
Other good news includes doing my tax for the first time since (ahem) 1997 and discovering, as I suspected, that the Australian Tax Office owes me a few thousand dollars. That should pay for a few weeks (at least) in Ha Noi with caseopaya if and when Australian Volunteers International get their collective act together and organize the visas etc properly this time. Grrr....
On other religious matters, apparently in Texas the Unitarians arent't a religion. But they fought back and won. Whilst on the unitarian topic, an old championof the creedless church, Kurt Vonnegut expresses his thoughts on the state of America.
Whilst I'm not usually a strong subscriber of the orthodox undergraduate Marxist doctrine of "Faire payers les riches" as a solution to economic problems, gross quantities of wealth sicken me, and the Australian example is quite revolting. "The total wealth of Australia's richest 200 people is $71.5 billion, up 13% from the $63.2 billion in 2003." If we divide that some by 20 million and you get (71 500/20) = $ 3 575 for every man, woman and child in the country.
From Erudito, Jose Ramos-Horta proves that he will be remembered as war-monger.
Sometimes, a War Saves People. Whilst the principle he espouses - a just war - is sound, the implementation is compeletely false in this instance - as pointed out by the people who developed the doctrine, the Roman Catholic Church. Also in the realm of faulty logic, Horta tries to suggest that because the French, Tanzanians and Vietnamese acted without UN approval this somehow justifies the invasion of Iraq. Apparently two people act wrong that makes their same action by a third person right.
More news from Iraq. Wonder of wonders, the New York Times admits to making errors, and no surprise, the United States again indicates that they will not be
The most troubling task of the week was fixing up the Borderlands network. With the world's most "no frills" ADSL modem, a rather impressive mini router, a Netgear switch and a Dec repeater and about fifteen or so clients (heterogenous of course, WinXP, WinNT, Mac OS X, Red Hat Linux, Mandrake), they decided to broadband provider to a dial-up account and then to a different broadband provider. Then the entire network fell over. I couldn't even ping 192.168.0.1 - even when connected! A couple of days of extreme frustration led to two important discoveries. One was a seriously FUBAR ethernet card (file under 'b' for 'bin') which was chewing up resources at a rate of knots and the other was some disturbingly sporadic behaviour by the router. Net result? Basic ICS with a a gateway with dual ethernet cards and send the router back to the manufacturer. It all works. Good.
Nobody likes a heretic, and it seems that some Muslims disklike suggestions that all it not well with the Quaran. I've been in a debate on the convert me community, where my suggestion that the Quaran is a imperfect text has been met with some resistance. Most disturbing of all is the lack of knowledge concerning the Mutazilites. Still, the practical upshot is that I know have an article for the Journal of Liberal Religion in the making.
Speaking of journal articles, I've also sent off a brief to the International Journal for Problems of Nonlinear Analysis in Engineering Systems on dissipitative structures in social systems, which I'll co-author with my colleague in mathematics, Dr. Cameron Jones. Finally, I've also pitched to present a paper at Ruxcon, the IT Security Conference at UTS although my subject matter (Australia - East Timor military intelligence) may be considered a little off-topic.
Other good news includes doing my tax for the first time since (ahem) 1997 and discovering, as I suspected, that the Australian Tax Office owes me a few thousand dollars. That should pay for a few weeks (at least) in Ha Noi with caseopaya if and when Australian Volunteers International get their collective act together and organize the visas etc properly this time. Grrr....
On other religious matters, apparently in Texas the Unitarians arent't a religion. But they fought back and won. Whilst on the unitarian topic, an old championof the creedless church, Kurt Vonnegut expresses his thoughts on the state of America.
Whilst I'm not usually a strong subscriber of the orthodox undergraduate Marxist doctrine of "Faire payers les riches" as a solution to economic problems, gross quantities of wealth sicken me, and the Australian example is quite revolting. "The total wealth of Australia's richest 200 people is $71.5 billion, up 13% from the $63.2 billion in 2003." If we divide that some by 20 million and you get (71 500/20) = $ 3 575 for every man, woman and child in the country.
From Erudito, Jose Ramos-Horta proves that he will be remembered as war-monger.
Sometimes, a War Saves People. Whilst the principle he espouses - a just war - is sound, the implementation is compeletely false in this instance - as pointed out by the people who developed the doctrine, the Roman Catholic Church. Also in the realm of faulty logic, Horta tries to suggest that because the French, Tanzanians and Vietnamese acted without UN approval this somehow justifies the invasion of Iraq. Apparently two people act wrong that makes their same action by a third person right.
More news from Iraq. Wonder of wonders, the New York Times admits to making errors, and no surprise, the United States again indicates that they will not be
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First off, some deep-geek news. I'm enrolled to do get <a href=" http://www.cisco.com/en/US/learning/le3/le2/le0/le9/learning_certification_type_home.html">CCNA certification</a>. How does this happen? I mean, I'm qualified to be a sociologist, a philosopher and a political scientist and I end being a network engineer.
The most troubling task of the week was fixing up the Borderlands network. With the world's most "no frills" <a href="http://www.ozcableguy.com/dlink1.html#dsl300g">ADSL modem</a>, a rather impressive mini <a href="http://www.micronica.com.au/catalog/sharer/wip400/">router</a>, a Netgear switch and a Dec repeater and about fifteen or so clients (heterogenous of course, WinXP, WinNT, Mac OS X, Red Hat Linux, Mandrake), they decided to broadband provider to a dial-up account and then to a different broadband provider. Then the entire network fell over. I couldn't even ping 192.168.0.1 - even when connected! A couple of days of extreme frustration led to two important discoveries. One was a seriously FUBAR ethernet card (file under 'b' for 'bin') which was chewing up resources at a rate of knots and the other was some disturbingly sporadic behaviour by the router. Net result? Basic ICS with a a gateway with dual ethernet cards and send the router back to the manufacturer. It all works. Good.
Nobody likes a heretic, and it seems that some Muslims disklike suggestions that all it not well with the Quaran. I've been in a debate on the convert me community, where my suggestion that the Quaran is a <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/163366.html">imperfect text</a> has been met with some <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/165638.html">resistance</a>. Most disturbing of all is the lack of knowledge concerning the <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/163651.html">Mutazilites</a>. Still, the practical upshot is that I know have an article for the <a href=" http://www.meadville.edu/archives.html">Journal of Liberal Religion</a> in the making.
Speaking of journal articles, I've also sent off a brief to the <a href="http://www.kcn.ru/tat_en/science/ans/journals/ansj.html">International Journal for Problems of Nonlinear Analysis in Engineering Systems</a> on dissipitative structures in social systems, which I'll co-author with my colleague in mathematics, <a href="http://www.swin.edu.au/chem/bio/fractals/refslist.htm">Dr. Cameron Jones</a>. Finally, I've also pitched to present a paper at <a href=" http://www.ruxcon.org.au/index.shtml">Ruxcon</a>, the IT Security Conference at UTS although my subject matter (Australia - East Timor military intelligence) may be considered a little off-topic.
Other good news includes doing my tax for the first time since (ahem) 1997 and discovering, as I suspected, that the Australian Tax Office owes me a few thousand dollars. That should pay for a few weeks (at least) in Ha Noi with caseopaya if and when Australian Volunteers International get their collective act together and organize the visas etc <i>properly</i> this time. Grrr....
On other religious matters, apparently in Texas the Unitarians arent't a <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/legolastn/80783.html">religion</a>. But they fought back and <a href="http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com/local/local/story/1944373p-2252261c.html">won</a>. Whilst on the unitarian topic, an old championof the creedless church, Kurt Vonnegut expresses <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey/">his thoughts</a> on the state of America.
Whilst I'm not usually a strong subscriber of the orthodox undergraduate Marxist doctrine of "Faire payers les riches" as a solution to economic problems, gross quantities of wealth sicken me, and the <a href=" http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/24/1085359552381.html">Australian example</a> is quite revolting. "The total wealth of Australia's richest 200 people is $71.5 billion, up 13% from the $63.2 billion in 2003." If we divide that some by 20 million and you get (71 500/20) = $ 3 575 for every man, woman and child in the country.
From Erudito, Jose Ramos-Horta proves that he will be remembered as war-monger.
<a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005071">Sometimes, a War Saves People</a>. Whilst the principle he espouses - a just war - is sound, the implementation is compeletely false in this instance - as pointed out by the people who developed the doctrine, the <a href=" http://www.americancatholic.org/News/JustWar/Iraq/">Roman Catholic Church</a>. Also in the realm of faulty logic, Horta tries to suggest that because the French, Tanzanians and Vietnamese acted without UN approval this somehow justifies the invasion of Iraq. Apparently two people act wrong that makes their same action by a third person right.
More news from Iraq. Wonder of wonders, the New York Times admits to making <a href="http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/26/1085461831616.html">errors</a>, and no surprise, the United States again indicates that they will not be <a href="http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/26/1085461831613.html"">subject to any Iraqi 'democracy' that they set up</a>
The death-knell of the telephone? <a href=" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/18/cisco_ibm/">IBM and Cisco team up for VoIP</a>
the_siobhan has a meme. 10 stories in 3 sentances or less. I'll try it, but not in this post (too full already!). Go do this in your own LJ.
Brain-breaker of the week award goes to Leoz. "Which came first ? the chicken of the egg? I tackled the question experimentally, using a chicken, an egg, and the United States Postal Service (USPS)."
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i4/chicken_egg.html
On a final note, the universe is big. Real big. How big? <a href=" http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/25/1085461764914.html">Universe 741 billion, trillion kilometres wide (we think)</a>.
The most troubling task of the week was fixing up the Borderlands network. With the world's most "no frills" <a href="http://www.ozcableguy.com/dlink1.html#dsl300g">ADSL modem</a>, a rather impressive mini <a href="http://www.micronica.com.au/catalog/sharer/wip400/">router</a>, a Netgear switch and a Dec repeater and about fifteen or so clients (heterogenous of course, WinXP, WinNT, Mac OS X, Red Hat Linux, Mandrake), they decided to broadband provider to a dial-up account and then to a different broadband provider. Then the entire network fell over. I couldn't even ping 192.168.0.1 - even when connected! A couple of days of extreme frustration led to two important discoveries. One was a seriously FUBAR ethernet card (file under 'b' for 'bin') which was chewing up resources at a rate of knots and the other was some disturbingly sporadic behaviour by the router. Net result? Basic ICS with a a gateway with dual ethernet cards and send the router back to the manufacturer. It all works. Good.
Nobody likes a heretic, and it seems that some Muslims disklike suggestions that all it not well with the Quaran. I've been in a debate on the convert me community, where my suggestion that the Quaran is a <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/163366.html">imperfect text</a> has been met with some <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/165638.html">resistance</a>. Most disturbing of all is the lack of knowledge concerning the <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/community/convert_me/163651.html">Mutazilites</a>. Still, the practical upshot is that I know have an article for the <a href=" http://www.meadville.edu/archives.html">Journal of Liberal Religion</a> in the making.
Speaking of journal articles, I've also sent off a brief to the <a href="http://www.kcn.ru/tat_en/science/ans/journals/ansj.html">International Journal for Problems of Nonlinear Analysis in Engineering Systems</a> on dissipitative structures in social systems, which I'll co-author with my colleague in mathematics, <a href="http://www.swin.edu.au/chem/bio/fractals/refslist.htm">Dr. Cameron Jones</a>. Finally, I've also pitched to present a paper at <a href=" http://www.ruxcon.org.au/index.shtml">Ruxcon</a>, the IT Security Conference at UTS although my subject matter (Australia - East Timor military intelligence) may be considered a little off-topic.
Other good news includes doing my tax for the first time since (ahem) 1997 and discovering, as I suspected, that the Australian Tax Office owes me a few thousand dollars. That should pay for a few weeks (at least) in Ha Noi with caseopaya if and when Australian Volunteers International get their collective act together and organize the visas etc <i>properly</i> this time. Grrr....
On other religious matters, apparently in Texas the Unitarians arent't a <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/legolastn/80783.html">religion</a>. But they fought back and <a href="http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com/local/local/story/1944373p-2252261c.html">won</a>. Whilst on the unitarian topic, an old championof the creedless church, Kurt Vonnegut expresses <a href="http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/cold_turkey/">his thoughts</a> on the state of America.
Whilst I'm not usually a strong subscriber of the orthodox undergraduate Marxist doctrine of "Faire payers les riches" as a solution to economic problems, gross quantities of wealth sicken me, and the <a href=" http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/24/1085359552381.html">Australian example</a> is quite revolting. "The total wealth of Australia's richest 200 people is $71.5 billion, up 13% from the $63.2 billion in 2003." If we divide that some by 20 million and you get (71 500/20) = $ 3 575 for every man, woman and child in the country.
From Erudito, Jose Ramos-Horta proves that he will be remembered as war-monger.
<a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005071">Sometimes, a War Saves People</a>. Whilst the principle he espouses - a just war - is sound, the implementation is compeletely false in this instance - as pointed out by the people who developed the doctrine, the <a href=" http://www.americancatholic.org/News/JustWar/Iraq/">Roman Catholic Church</a>. Also in the realm of faulty logic, Horta tries to suggest that because the French, Tanzanians and Vietnamese acted without UN approval this somehow justifies the invasion of Iraq. Apparently two people act wrong that makes their same action by a third person right.
More news from Iraq. Wonder of wonders, the New York Times admits to making <a href="http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/26/1085461831616.html">errors</a>, and no surprise, the United States again indicates that they will not be <a href="http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/26/1085461831613.html"">subject to any Iraqi 'democracy' that they set up</a>
The death-knell of the telephone? <a href=" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/18/cisco_ibm/">IBM and Cisco team up for VoIP</a>
the_siobhan has a meme. 10 stories in 3 sentances or less. I'll try it, but not in this post (too full already!). Go do this in your own LJ.
Brain-breaker of the week award goes to Leoz. "Which came first ? the chicken of the egg? I tackled the question experimentally, using a chicken, an egg, and the United States Postal Service (USPS)."
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i4/chicken_egg.html
On a final note, the universe is big. Real big. How big? <a href=" http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/05/25/1085461764914.html">Universe 741 billion, trillion kilometres wide (we think)</a>.
no subject
...and nicely contextualised within the demolition of an absurd presumption anyway - that an Arabic (Oh, riiiight - which 'Arabic'?) speaking angel went 'shazam' (a town in Yemen, I believe - famous for its fig-bottling works, and carpets woven out of old Fitzroy jerseys), appeared to some guy (peace be upon him), refrained from exsanguinating him like a dairy cow (or is that aliens? I get confused), and said "have a religion, buddy!".
Only slightly less absurd than angels supplying magic glasses to read golden books, but Mormonism always was going to win the "Idiot Theology Medal with Oak Leaves and Swords", every time.
Not that any of this matters - there's no undermining of the Prophet's exclusive franchise with mere logic, reason and fact!
You in biiiiiiiiiiig trouble, kufr-boy. ;-)
The War for Good Sense continues.....
no subject
You know, I was actually quite disappointed with the response by the Muslims, because many that I have met are fairly erudite people and are quite capable of understanding the difference between analogy and fact.
Of course, the problem isn't assisted by "official" and state-sanctioned Islamic doctrine which suppresses secular and rational thinking. Given that nearly all the Muslims I have met are Malays (or Australians!), who pride themselves in their secularism maybe I've been receiving a biased picture.
no subject
Oh, and I think your exposure to secularised Muslims would definately skew yer sample!
And for your delectation, go here:
http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/index.php
In between posing various daft theological conundrums to the Mufti, there are a lot of questions about whacking off.
Hilarious.
no subject
Thanks for the link. There's lots of opportunites there for some well-meaning fun.
Actually some of the people with a broomstick up their arse could do with a thread on sex and religion. The homosexuality and god bit has been done to death, but it would be -ahh- juicy to get into the details...
I can't believe it. I'm thinking of trolling convert_me.
Second response!
Just a thought... They were all American Muslims! Which I suppose puts them not necessarily in the category of being 'recent converts' but at the very least 'a despised minority', which probably explains why they can get so defensive.
In stark contrast the most common expression of faith I heard in Indonesia was "I'm Muslim... but I'd really like a beer".
no subject
It's a bit the same with all religions... Most people know where to draw the line between their beliefs and infringing on others. But there are always extremists who've gone over the top.
Add to that radicalism in the middle east caused by various wars to garden variety religious extremism and it's a potent brew.
Over my years I'm probably about the only Jewish guy (technically only; my Mum is, but I didn't grow up in the culture or religion and am happily atheistic) who's shared flats with both a skinhead and a devoted Sri Lankan muslim. Not at the same time, of course; now that would be a sitcom! Oddly enough, they're the two best housemates I've shared a place with :-).
Okay, I've rambled aimlessly here enough. My work is done.