October 2007 Archives

Some philosophy humour:



This is pretty much the same thing I thought this spring when I was first introduced to the Chalmers-zombie.  Qualia, by the way, is subjective experience.  The "what is it like to be" is a reference to a famous paper by Tomas Nagel published in 1974.

(Comic from chaospet, there's a fair few more comics there of a philosophical bent as well.  Comic reproduced under CC license.)

Listening to Dean Millard and Guy Flaming, they want to know why Nilsson is down, Schremp's been sent down, and Pouliot is still up.

A recurring theme from them and from callers to the show has been along the lines of rookies (Schremp) feeling pressure which is cramping their development, and it's the fault of Craig MacTavish, with no mistakes being tolerated.  I've watched several of the games (all of the last 5), and to my eye, there's a world of difference between guys like Sam Gagner and Andrew Cogliano, and Rob Schremp and Robert Nilsson.  Gagner and Cogliano have made mistakes, like every rookie does - positionally, poor choices of who to pass to, and so on.  The difference between Gagner, Cogliano and Schremp, Nilsson, is the former two are putting up results and their mistakes aren't as bad.

Defenders of the two R's would say that's because they've been given better linemates, but I don't think that's all there is to it.  Gagner's got a fair bit of native sense that helps him out, and Cogliano has his raw speed and a certain level of maturity that he's probably gotten from playing in the NCAA against guys three and four years older than he is.  Schremp has some nifty stickhandling moves and some offensive sense; he's gaining some defensive sense, but there's not much else there right now.  Nilsson just plain hasn't shown much of anything - never a good thing if you want to play on the second line, and he certainly had that chance early on.

Case in point (and of course I can't find the photo now), in the game against Phoenix, the puck was in the crease area and an Oiler was charging hard to the net with a couple of Coyotes in the area.  Schremp was standing well off to the side down by the icing line.  With the puck where it was, he can't just be standing there - he needs to be closer to the net with his feet moving and his stick on the ice.  It's just one play, but it's indicative of how he's been playing.  You can argue that maybe he'd have done better with better linemates, but you could also argue that if he's really that good, he'd be producing something anyway.  Kyle Brodziak can score playing with Reasoner - why can't Schremp?  Skill players need skill players to produce?  I don't think it's that simple.

As far as pressure goes, Craig MacTavish likely knows a few things about it.  I suspect his approach is something along the lines of "if you think there's pressure now, 7 games in to the season and you're feeling down because things aren't going your way, wait until game 7 of a playoff series."  You want to find out early and fast if players can handle the pressure, because in the playoffs, there are very few second chances.  If Schremp's confidence is such that only staying in the NHL on the first two lines allows him to be a happy and productive player, then I don't want to see him as an Oiler.  Time will tell.   Why does MacTavish give veterans the breaks he doesn't give rookies?  They've already proven they can recover.  Is that fair?  Well, it worked for the vets, right?  Ales Hemsky didn't play 82 games his rookie year, and he seems to be doing all right now.

Robbie Schremp doesn't worry me - this is not his make-or-break year, although time is running short.  Robert Nilsson doesn't really worry me - maybe it's just because my expectations weren't that high to begin with, but I think he's got another year anyway.  Marc Pouliot worries me.  I think he's still up because the team already figures they know what they have.  If he's not a regular by the end of the year, he's likely done, and that's a slap in the face of what we'd hoped was improved drafting since 2001.  Plus, it would be a disappointment of almost Hajtian proportions for Lain, and I don't know if the old man can take much more of that.  We sure would miss him.
(Image ganked from cbc.com, credit John Ulan/CP.)

One thing many people are good at is requiring definitions before discussing a particular topic.  If you want to talk about security, for instance, they'll want to lay out what defines a secure system.  Talking about successful hockey teams, they'll want to define metrics for success.  Consciousness, what defines it, and so on.

My prof for the last couple of courses I've taken, Paul Thagard, has said several times that he finds this sort of thinking gets in the way of actually talking about an issue.  At first, I disagreed.  Intuitively, it seems obvious - we need to figure out what we're talking about, otherwise we'll just get confused.  However, the more I think about it, the more I think he's right.  Socratic dialogues frequently started with Socrates asking some hapless citizen "What is virtue?" or some other similar sort of question.  Socrates would question the citizen's definition, poking holes in it until finally the citizen got disgusted and walked off, then voted to make Socrates drink hemlock and die.

I don't know if I'd call Thagard's reasoning Socratic, but sometimes trying to lay out definitions first only gets in the way.  Sometimes it's more useful to simply carry on taking a definition for granted, and to tease out the definition during the discussion.  Maybe it doesn't save time (I haven't checked), but perhaps it can lead to a more interesting and fruitful discussion.

Try it some time.

This is probably really stupid, but it took me about 15 minutes of prodding and googling to figure out, so here it is.  I have a Blade 1000 upon which I've installed an older release of Solaris 10, with the intention of testing a flash upgrade before I try it "for reals".  Problem: it wouldn't automount my August 2007 release of Solaris 10 on DVD.

Solution:
 svcadm enable smserver
was the final step, although
 svcadm enable volfs
may be required as well.  After that, it will mount at /cdrom.

Game 2 of the home and home didn't go much better for the Oilers than did game 1.  Again, Luongo was magic, but he didn't have to be extremely good as the Oilers didn't challenge him much outside of the first period.  Roloson was ok for the Oil, but they just gave up too many chances, and the Sedins did their usual job of driving the defence crazy down low.  MacTavish had the line blender out again, to little effect.  Stortini drew in, as did Schremp (didn't think they got called up to sit), and Pouliot was re-inserted.

The first period and a half went pretty well for the Oilers, then things just fell apart when the Canucks power play dominated for two minutes straight - they didn't score, but they did shortly afterwards and the Oilers got down.    As the game wore on (to my eye) we saw the kids more and more, particularly Cogliano, Schremp, and Stortini.  Cogliano combined with some vicious forechecking by Stoll to put the Oilers only goal past Luongo.  I guess MacTavish and Moores decided since the usual suspects weren't getting things done with the man advantage, Schremp might as well get some time.  He didn't do great things with it, but neither was he embarassing - save when he tripped over the blue line.  On the last power play, he was even running it for a while from the half boards, Hemsky's usual spot. 

Looking at the TOI totals, yep, Schremp went 2:15-3:16-5:11 with 2:32 of PP time (1:54 in the 3rd), although Cogliano was a steady 6 minutes a period - third behind Horcoff and Stoll for total TOI amongst forwards.

What does Edmonton need to turn things around?  First of all, no surprise, they need their captain.  Moreau's always been one of the go-to guys - he fought his first game as an Oiler and hasn't stopped fighting since.  They need a power play (put on last year's record) - Souray and Pitkanen need to fulfil their promise, and Penner needs to make us forget a certain mou-let as he stands in front of the net.  And finally, they need their best players to be the best players.  Hemsky needs to step up, Horcoff needs to go with him, and Stoll needs to re-discover his game.  It's not clear that his concussion is to blame, as he doesn't appear to be hesitant at all, but there's a certain je ne sais quoi missing.  And finally, when all else fails, they need their goaltending to be better than "good".  Maybe a miracle would help too, but right now it's looking like Burke's gonna get that high pick he was drooling over.

Photo from icanhascheezburger.

I finally sucked it up and ordered Centre Ice last night, just in time to, er, enjoy the Canucks at the Oilers.  (I'd hoped to catch some of the Hawks-Wings game too, but that didn't work out.)  Of course, I could have held off a couple of days - the other team I'd like to watch is Pittsburgh, and of course they and the Oilers both are on CBC tonight.  C'est la vie.  At any rate, I took some notes from last night's game, and will again at least for the Oilers tonight - we should be seeing two different teams.

MacTavish started out with fairly standard lines; Reasoner with Brodziak and Sanderson started, Horcoff with Hemsky and Penner, Stoll between Torres and Gagner, and finally Cogliano centred Nilsson and Jacques.  I must confess that I thought of Sanderson as a throw-in on the Lupul/Smith for Pitkanen deal, but he's showing that while he's not likely to score 35 ever again, he's still valuable to have in your lineup.  He was fast all night, although his cross-ice passes led to a few rushes the wrong way when they didn't work.  When the passes did work though, they usually resulted in a decent chance, and at least it changes up the Oilers offense a bit.

Sheldon Souray is high event at both ends; he looked like an AHLer on the 1-0 goal as he went for the big hit on Bieksa behind the net and put himself way out of position, leaving his man Pyatt out front and Penner unable to contain him.  (I see Souray got credited with a hit on that.  Not sure if the -1 is sufficient punishment, that goal was mostly on him.)  However, the 2-1 goal was the result of some good work by Souray.  I suspect a lot more of the same this season.

Garon looked really bad, although I'm not sure why he got pulled.  The 1-0 and 3-1 goals weren't really his fault; Souray left his post for the 1-0 goal, and the 3-1 was a shorthanded breakaway that the Canucks should have never had.  (The 2-1 was, however, on his head - still, even Patrick Roy dropped the occasional puck.)

Once the score was 3-1, MacTavish started changing up the lines, Gagner finally got the spot on the top line MacT more or less promised him to the press, but couldn't get much going.  Nevertheless, if the young man keeps playing like he did last night, good things will happen.  He drove the net a couple of times and while he was outmuscled several times, at least had a lot of try in him and got an assist on Souray's goal.  He should do much better with another 10 or 15 pounds of muscle.  Despite all the talk about stunting his development and such, it's hard to see how the team can justify sending him back if he continues producing - I think we're just so used to seeing middlin' picks make not much out of their first shota at the pro that we've forgotten that sometimes, 18 year olds really can come in and do well.  It remains to be seen, of course, if he can keep it up, but I'm not seeing a lot of weaknesses in his game save his physical presence, and you can't teach size any better in the OHL than you can in the NHL.

Jacques continues to amaze - how many minutes can a man play with NHL players and not get a single point?  Even Scott Pearson got the occasional goal, for pete's sake.  I don't know how many more chances he's going to get, one suspects this is his make it or break it year.

All in all, it was a pretty lousy effort by the good guys, and Luongo was there to bail out the Canucks when they did make mistakes.  Nilsson and Jacques going down for Stortini and Schremp is as much a message to the rest of the team as it is a chance for Robimus Prime and the Sudbury Kid - the team has some AHL depth this year and aren't afraid to use it.  Since I've talked about the other Top Kids, I might as well at least mention Cogliano and Nillson.  Cogs is fast like stink but not much doing at either end last night.  Nilsson didn't show much of anything beyond he's young.

The surprise for me is Pouliot - I haven't seen much of him this year, but if Stortini draws in for him this game I'll have to hope that the young Frenchman is hurt.  After the way he played near the end of last season, he deserves a pass for his apparently not great pre-season.

Reasons to Hate 1: The Anaheim (Mighty) Ducks

#1 They won.
If you can't hate the Stanley Cup champs (and you're not a deluded Ducks fan like Earl Sleek), then there's not much hope for you and you might as well stop reading this series here.

#2 They're going to keep winning.
They've got a great mix of vets and youth.  Getzlaf, Miller, and Perry are barely old enough to drink in the US, and guys like McDonald, Pahlsson, Kunitz, Moen, Beauchemin, and Pronger still have a lot of life left in them.  Bobby Ryan looks to be the next Corey Perry. Maybe they'll have trouble keeping this team together, and you never know what injuries will do to a team, but for at least the next couple of years, they'll go as far as their goaltending will take them; Giguere's proven himself worthy of the 2003 Conn Smythe win, and Bryzgalov's no slouch either.

#3 They changed their name.
I'm now sure this was a calculated move to push them over the edge to finally win it all.  See also: the Colobec Nordalanche.

#4 Brian Burke.
The guy's an arrogant ass.  Worse, he wins.  There's nothing worse than a poor winner.   The Canucks didn't fire him because they were losing (they weren't), they fired him because he's a butthead.  Even if he's arguably been in the fortunate position of taking over teams on the rise, he still has put together the final pieces for a couple of winning teams in a row now.  In Vancouver he orchestrated the Sedins, and if there's a better dynamic duo in the league right now I haven't seen them yet.  In Anaheim he tinkered a bit and then stole Pronger from the Oilers.  Maybe they would have won without CP, but I doubt it.


#5 The team is as annoying as their GM.
Between the chirpiness of guys like Todd Marchant and Travis Moen, the sheer skill and audacity of guys like Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, the tight checking of Marchant and Samuel Pahlsson, and the “screw you, I'm better than you and I've got a Norris and a Stanley Cup to prove it” of Chris Pronger, this team has got to rank up there amongst the most annoying in the league to play against.  Plus, see reasons 1 and 2.

#6 Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer.
Selanne's a UFA and won't return unless it's with the Ducks.  Talk about self-selecting for victory.  And Niedermayer's now won about everything there is to win, so he's contemplating retirement?  Sheesh.

I'm sure I could keep going, but this should be enough fuel for the fire.

(Image yanked from www.nysun.com, credits Jeff Gross / Getty Images.)

Since everybody knows the best way to drive traffic to your site is to make  a list, and I don't think I've seen such a list yet, I'll be doing a series of entries on reasons to hate each and every NHL team there is.  This is more than just an exercise in attempting to suck people in to read my wit and weekly roundup entries of boring work stuff though; since I'm a sucker, I bought NHL Centre Ice last night, and would like to use it to watch more than just Oilers games.  However, my knowledge of the non-Oilers teams is weak in general, and particularly when we're talking Eastern Conference teams.  So, I hope to learn a bit more about some of the teams I'll be watching, and maybe you, the Constant Reader, might learn something too.  (Or maybe you'll mock me viciously yet impotently since I am rubber and you are glue, and then close your browser window in disgust.)

Rules: one team per post, reverse order of the 2006-2007 standings, starting with the Stanley Cup champs, the Anaheim Ducks.  (Yes, they finished fourth overall.  What are rules for, if not to be broken?)

It's nice to see that Novell still haven't stomped out all the crappy wording in their UIs.  I have a fresh 10.3 install, and I figured I'd check out the "Community Repositories" I saw in yast2 | Software.  I decided I didn't want anything there, so I clicked the Abort button seen in the background of this screenshot, and got:

Sometimes it's nice to see things never change. (You want to click "Continue" there, by the way, if you really mean to abort.)

Kevin Lowe powered his way off the life support today, and so far, the kids are making him look pretty smart.  It's early in the season, Sam Gagner has a pair of assists with limited icetime and is looking to supplant Ales Hemsky as the youngest player to crack the lineup in forever.  Cogliano's looking serviceable, and all Sanderson has to do is score 10 more goals and he'll be more useful than poor Lupul was last season.  (At his current rate, as nobody can seem to resist pointing out this time of year, that'll happen in another 10 games.)

On the other hand, anybody who's watched enough hockey knows that kids are always about half a step away from the wheels falling off altogether.  There's a lot more Steve Kellys and Ralph Intranuovos in the world than there are Ales Hemskys; chances are good that if even one of them turn out as good as Ryan Smyth, we'll still have to suffer through a couple years of pain before they reach those heights.

It remains to be seen if the goalmouth in Lowe's future will be empty for a glorious wraparound goal as he escapes the defender, or if the goalie will slide over just in time to block him and shatter his hopes and dreams.  I'm not sure myself, but I know that Kevin Lowe's never backed away from a fight in his life, and I don't figure on him starting now.

(Photo from oilersheritage.com and is copyright the Edmonton Oilers.)

After some fiddling, I got mpijohn going on my Rocks 4.3 cluster.  Kind of dirty, but what I did was to extract and build to ~/src/mpijohn, then mkdir ~/john to hold working files and such.

I made a file called johnboxes that looked like this:
compute-0-0
compute-0-1
compute-0-2
compute-0-3

john_appfile:
-np 1 john -incremental /home/mpatters/john/passwd.1
-np 1 john -incremental /home/mpatters/john/passwd.1
-np 1 john -incremental /home/mpatters/john/passwd.1
-np 1 john -incremental /home/mpatters/john/passwd.1
where passwd.1 was an appropriate prepared passwd/shadow file combination.

A shell script to rule them all:
#!/bin/sh
JOHN=/home/mpatters/john
mpirun --hostfile ${JOHN}/johnboxes --app ${JOHN}/john_appfile

Then I called the shell script, and away it went.  I did get some bitching like this:
libibverbs: Fatal: couldn't open sysfs class 'infiniband_verbs'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
[0,1,2]: OpenIB on host compute-0-2 was unable to find any HCAs.
Another transport will be used instead, although this may result in
lower performance.
but I don't think that's the end of the world; google suggested a few ways to make it go away.  I'd also had to just "ln -s ~/src/john/run/* ." in my john directory, but that was mostly because I got bored of fiddling with paths.  That effectively put john.conf and password.lst in CWD.

Five minutes later, I had my first hit off a machine that had been compromised.  I don't know if that makes me happy or sad.  It took me a bit of fiddling to get this far, given that I'd never really used OpenMPI before, so some judicious use of Google assisted me.  Now I just need more hardware for my cracking cluster and I will be able to inflict much agony on my users.

Germane to the course I'm taking now, Tim Crane is interviewed for Philosophy Bites, a podcast I enjoy.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to download the podcast either this morning or this evening, but I will summarise once I can and get a chance to listen to it.

Speaking of my course, my prof has asked for a slight change in format that will make it extremely difficult to keep my readings discussions to 100 words, so I fear that experiment must come to an end.  (Perhaps I'll try to restrict myself to no more than 150 words instead.)  However, I did find that it became much easier to remain concise the more I did, until the last couple where I composed in my head what I wanted to say, typed it in, and was pleased to find myself within a dozen words or so either way.  I recommend this as an exercise in concise writing.  Unfortunately, MovableType's editor lacks a word count feature.

As seems to be the habit with franchise sales since the lockout, looks like Bettman prematurely queered Balsillie's deal.  Again.

Good job, Gary.

Hands up, everybody who didn't see this coming?  Yeah, thought so.

The headline from the Pipline email I got about an hour ago:

MOREAU NAMED OILERS 12TH CAPTAIN

That says it all, really.  Buchberger, Smith, Moreau: perfect Oilers captains.

One thing I commonly hear from my clients is "I would have asked you this before, but you're so busy."

It's true, I'm pretty busy.  If nobody were to ask me anything new at all, I likely have enough work to keep me busy for at least a full year (and I could probably even bill that time out as research support).  That doesn't mean that clients should not be asking me to do things though - I would like to think that I do a pretty good job of prioritizing (at least my boss tells me so, and grandboss seems to agree), and if they never tell me there's a problem - even a small one - I can't very well fix it.

I'm not sure what the best solution to this is, beyond telling them "no, it's ok, even if it seems small, ask anyway" - particularly since those who say "but you look too busy" the most are the ones who ask for the least, which means their problems never get fixed.

But it's a problem and I need to figure out a solution.