Published on
4 June 2009 ago in
Rants.
Recently, Brian Leiter (of Philosophical Gourmet Report fame) wrote a simple post on his blog about the lack of open-access journals in philosophy. A fellow postgrad student in a solid programme at Dundee commented that there are some good OA journals in recent continental philosophy. By the end of the conversation, Leiter has stood his ground by dismissing (1) that student as not being knowledgeable about his own field, (2) those journals for being “of poor reputation.” Leiter then closes with a grandiose sentiment of “I’m writing/editing a book about continental philosophy and I know what I’m talking about.” Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
As a result of Professor Leiter’s rudeness, the drama has continued. First, Graham posted an example of Leiter’s callousness regarding Derrida’s death. Not to be outdone, Leiter sends off retorts to Graham as well as Michael (the postgrad student). It’s great to stand one’s ground, however name-dropping and appealing to a reputation league table (which Leiter himself organises!) isn’t the best argument. We all know that good things only come out of the top 10 philosophy programmes in anglo-american analytic philosophy. We all certainly know that Leiter is the authority for reputation throughout the philosophy world, as he himself has demonstrated by naming people who he considers good sources…even if half of them are unheard of at continental programmes. That’s probably because those programmes are ranked low on Leiter’s scale and therefore cannot be considered good sources of continental philosophy. Next, we’ll be hearing that Deleuze isn’t a major figure in recent continental thought. Go figure.
I believe I am becoming more and more opinionated against writing a book for publication. Nearly anyone can get published now. This isn’t to say that good books aren’t getting published but that they are few and far between the mass of spam masquerading as books. Even ignoring anthologies of websites such as PHD: Piled High and Deep and PostSecrets, it seems that nearly every “famous blogger” across the internet is sharing their 2 cents in published books. Every blogger, whether a has-been actor from some randomly popular TV series over 15 years old or a web-designer-turned-blogger-turned-armchair-theologian, seems to have a book, telling their (relatively uninteresting) life story or giving advice on nearly any topic. I’m a big fan of the “Linux ideology” (OSI, FSF, and Open Access publishing) that strives to keep information available, but I’m still wary of being just another author among many. In some ways, I’d rather stay “just a blogger” and leave publications to the people who either do have something worth reading and those who think they do.
Published on
28 October 2007 ago in
Rants.
I have decided that I hate sites that require javascript and do not offer a “lo-fi” version. When I surf, I have javascript turned off except for the sites I like to frequent. No, it’s not about security because I’m confident in the security of my system/browser. It’s more that I don’t want to watch tons of “cool, flying gizmos” at some sites; I want information and only information. What’s really tacky, in my opinion, are school websites that use javascript for navigation. Most of the time, they don’t even mention that they require javascript! C’mon, even though we’re in “Web 2.x” crap, that doesn’t mean you leave behind everyone who doesn’t have the latest technologies enabled. It’s even worse if a site uses IE-only features because in this day and age, there are many non-IE browsers that are used. It’s about the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot.
Alright, here it is, another rant! The Telegraph reports that a man was arrested after “accidentally sending a friend request on Facebook to his estranged wife”: link. He claims that the login procedure confused him. OK, let’s look at the login screen:
And now, at the screen immediately after that, the “home” screen (names have been erased to protect the innocent):
Here are my questions: where is the “automatic friend request”? In fact, one has to go out of one’s way to send a friend request (either by going to someone’s friend list and clicking on the “Add to Friends” link or searching by name).
How could one not know whom one is requesting as a friend? Facebook quite blatantly uses people’s names as identification. Anyone’s profile is easily identified by their reported real name. There is no “coolprncss32″ or “Want to meet me tomorrow?” display names. It is only reported real names (of course, this can be tricked, but most of the people I’ve seen on Facebook haven’t done so).
What is so confusing about that login screen? Iit has a very noticeable location for login information and a basic ad for registering with Facebook. Nothing else. In fact, it is much simpler than MySpace’s login screen.
Well, my MythBox, which has been running Ubuntu Feisty has failed me. It seems to have been a bug in the 2.16.20 kernel. The main thrust of the bug was that it screwed with the I/O (read/write) to the hard disk. The first noticeable problem was at three weeks after the upgrade from Edgy because my /home partition (JFS for the very large video files) crashed. I was able to recover the log, but I thought the problem was in the JFS package. After ten days of research, I discovered that it wasn’t JFS (which hasn’t had any major upgrades for quite a while) but the kernel package. So, I contemplated my two options: upgrade to the 2.16.21 kernel (which was in gutsy) or downgrade back to Edgy. It’s nearly impossible to manually downgrade Ubuntu without having a lot of headache, so I chose the upgrade path (after all, my main computer runs Debian unstable with a few experimental packages). During the upgrade, apt-get choked on a disk I/O and the system is no longer bootable. Joy.
Since I now have to reinstall the system (and hopefully recover the pertinent data from my /var and /home partitions), I did some more research. My first priority was remain in the Debian-based system. Second was having a very stable system with less frequent updates (this was, for all intents and purposes, a server environment in which cutting edge is unnecessary). Some things I would need on this box: MySQL server, Apache, PHP, MythTV (of course), Subversion, an FTP daemon, and a SSH daemon. Right off, most MythTV-specific distros were out because they make it somewhat difficult to install other programs/packages. Ubuntu was out because this was the second time I’ve had some major problems with it. So, I settled on Debian stable. It has all the packages I want/need, and it’s super-stable. I’ve not have a bad experience with Debian stable (Debian testing, on the other hand…). SO, during whatever free time I may have this week, I will be re-installing old faithful.
