Web services
Thursday, November 25, 2004, 02:38 PM - Tech
I'm reading through this article discussing SOAP vs. REST by Paul Prescod.

I've always been uncomfortable with the SOAP implementation of web services without really knowing why. It has always struck me as being something that is unnecessarily complex for the project at hand.

It seems my intuition is both right and wrong. Prescod makes the point that SOAP is easier to use than web protocols for the purpose of integrating legacy applications because it was designed that way.

The problem, as Prescod defines it, is that SOAP implementation treats the web as nothing more than a transport carrier rather than as a robust, interconnected information space.
It always holds out the hope that you can keep using your legacy protocols, keep using your legacy addressing models and just generate a web service wrapper for them. Consequently, SOAP takes a point of view that it provides mechanisms for communicating between computers, not policies about how to do so.

At every point where there has been controversy about the applicability of the SOAP specification to a new problem domain, SOAP has grown. It has never risked telling people that they must figure out how to map their problem onto the existing rules or perhaps even choose a different protocol. "Keep your current diet, maintain your current exercise schedule - but we'll help you lose five pounds per week."
I guess it was this "moving target" process that is what made SOAP seem overly complex. It reminds me of those application vendors who tell you their system can do anything you want it to (if you spend enough money to let them customize it).


Economic theory
Thursday, November 25, 2004, 01:49 PM - Economy
This stuff really can upset me, but I realize that I sound like a silly git because I don't have the time to really research my suppositions.

It seems to me that while wrapping economics with political theory is inevitble, it is tremendously unfortunate to the same degree that wrapping scientific findings with political/religious theory is counter-productive.

I think that an economic theory that does not take into account the cost of disposal and depletion is a theory that has not finished the job.


Circling Back
Sunday, November 21, 2004, 11:09 AM - Economy
Friday's post circles back to the first posts I made (about 3 generations ago, and they're not even online!).

I ask myself, what kind of snobbery are you talking about? Who is to decide what is "good" consumption vs. "bad" consumption? Isn't this the worst elitism possible? Just let the egalitarian market run.

But then I remember that the market is in no way egalitarian. US government policy clearly favors and supports a highway system over a mass-transit system, and the ancillary consumption patterns that support engenders. US government policy clearly favors the continued externalizing of the cost of pollution and resource exhaustion.

Changing these policies are not an act of elitism.


Consumption
Friday, November 19, 2004, 01:27 PM - Economy
This from Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley:
Global imbalances are a shared responsibility that requires a joint resolution. America is guilty of excess consumption, whereas the rest of the world suffers from under-consumption. Growth in US consumer demand averaged 4% annually (in real terms) over the 1995 to 2003 period, nearly double the 2.2% gains elsewhere in the industrial world.

America’s consumption binge has not been supported by internally-generated income growth. Instead, US consumers have borrowed against the future by squeezing saving to rock-bottom levels.

...as the currencies of Asia and Europe strengthen in response to a weaker dollar, there will be downward pressure on exports in these two regions — the main drivers of their growth in recent years. This will force Asia and Europe to push hard to stimulate domestic demand in order to compensate — resulting in a reduction of saving and a related narrowing of current-account surpluses
What bothers me about this type of analysis is that it is strictly quantitative. Supply and demand economics does not account for a qualitative analysis, such as: what is the quality of the consumption.

The excess consumption in the US is, in my opinion, consumption for the sake of consumption with many of the products sold by Wal-Mart, for instance, being of an increasingly lower quality. It leads to ours becoming a churn economy, not a durable economy. The apparent salvation is to get other economies to follow suit. This seems tremendously short-sighted.


Class War
Monday, November 15, 2004, 02:29 PM - Politics
I've been doing a lot of carpentry in the new apartment lately.

I've been working with the team on a new online publication lately.

I just read Richard Florida's Creative Class War essay at the Washington Monthly.

A couple of quotes that struck:
The last 20 years has seen the rise of the "culture wars"--between those who value traditional virtues, and others drawn to new lifestyles and diversity of opinion.

Clinton was a famous world traveler, appreciative of foreign cultures and ideas. Bush, throughout his life, has been indifferent if not hostile to all of that. ...Clinton, in his rhetoric and policies, wanted to bring the gifts of the creative class--high technology, a tolerant culture--to the hinterlands. Bush aimed to bring the values and economic priorities of the hinterlands to that ultimate creative center, Washington, D.C.
There is something terribly amiss in all of this. I have a bunch of questions jumbled up in my mind, and I just feel that if they were put together properly, sense would come of it.

- Much of the work of the Creative Class is information manipulation - more movies, more games, more privacy tracking - but to what end?
- Isn't there something wrong that our major export is entertainment and ideas and that the engine of our economy is non-essential consumer spending?
- Why don't the anti-globalization folks support the traditional virtues and values of parochial cultures?
- Why don't I get the same satisfaction from a completed software project that I get from my new bookcases?
- For that matter, why am I a memebr of the Creative Class because I manage technology, but not because I build beautiful bookcases?

There's a plethora of others, yet they all seem to boil down to there being something about tangible product and tangible work and tangible fulfillment that's missing in the conversation.


Faith & Politics
Monday, November 15, 2004, 10:14 AM - Politics
It's one thing to disagree with the politics of the other side. When Reagan won and Newt Gingrich won, I was concerned because of their political agendas but I was not concerned that the process was in jeopardy.

With this administration, I am concerned that the process is in jeopardy. Bush and his core constituency believe that Bush is following a calling that is higher than the mere words of man. I fear that he, and they, will morph his role from that of President into that of Prelate.

It's this sense that I take away from a story such as this from the AP via the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's decisions on America's obligations under international treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Friday.
It's one thing to chatise the free speech of others. It's another thing to call into question a foundation of our system of government which, in this case, is an independent judiciary. Ashcroft's words seem to come from a place where the speech of the Chosen One is sacrosanct and that questionings are punishable heresy.

I'm a-feared that this means that all the rules of man are subject to recall. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are quaint pieces of paper in the face of Bush's beliefs and the beliefs of his supporters.


Reality
Friday, November 12, 2004, 06:02 PM - Politics
Fascinating. It's been only a month or so since the Susskind piece in the NY Times, where the administration hack chastises "us" for being part of the reality-based community, and there are over 8 million hits on google for the phrase.

And masterful. We are now defining ourselves in their terms.

The irony is in that hoary question of liberal relativism: what is reality?


Moral values
Friday, November 12, 2004, 01:30 PM - Politics
Much is being written about the impact of moral values on the recent American voting. The term moral values is taking on, of course, specific political meaning, that being the moral values of conservative Christians.

When all said and done, I voted for Kerry because of what I consider to be moral values. Tolerance is a moral value. Inclusion is a moral value. Respect for others' beliefs is a moral value. Beating swords into ploughshares is a moral issue. Supporting the weak against the predations of the strong is a moral issue. Protecting all life, not just human life, is a moral issue.

So, again, the conservative Christians have co-opted morality for their political ends. But that in no way makes them moral.



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