graydon's monotone project is the most beautifully simple design of a concurrent VC system I have ever seen: truly wonderful. A suggestion: perhaps rather than just inviting bug reports, having a `design risks' document would be worthwhile: there are likely to be subtle data integrity risks with the VC architecture if only because it is so novel, and inviting imaginative guesses as to where those risks might be could be a helpful exercise, a step higher-level than the usual OS code review process.
More politics
I can't seem to control my urge to put politics in my
diary entries, so... Excellent no-nonsense analysis in the New York Times by
Dilip Hiro: A couple of minor quibbles - firstly, the
Kurds are not a tribe, they are a colonial construct made
from several disinct peoples (with different languages) by
the British, secondly, I think the risk of an
Iran-like revolution in Iraq even with the caveats is overstated. Still, I think the conclusion I think is right - America will probably be generally liked in Iran if it doesn't stay too long in Iraq, and doesn't misuse Iraq as a pawn in its Middle-East strategy. Hard to figure out what the ever-secretive Bush administration actually plans to do.
Lastly, what is the attraction of lifelong socialist George Orwell for "leftist"-hating neoconservatives? A google search with leftism orwell turns up mostly neo-con sites: an extreme example is this neo-con warblog (complete with usual run of confused anti-arab hate speech), which has an Orwell quote close to the top-left hand corner of its root page. It's not just idiots like these people, intelligent neo-conservatives like Christopher Hitchens think they can wrap themselves in Orwell without any awarenes of how absurd they make themselves. The path from bad taste to intellectual dishonesty is a short one...
Postscript: yet more politics
An even more ironic abuse of Orwell is this neo-con weblog, I can't resist citing it:
I submit that Leftists of today should be defined less by their belief that inequality should never exist, but instead on the basis of a belief that ``superiority'' should never exist. All modern leftist beliefs flow inexorably from this view, including the most reprehensible opinion of them all: moral equivalence.(a criteria that Orwell clearly satisfies, so Orwell is just the sort of "leftist" this neo-con condemns)
In sum, a leftist proclaims that superiority should never exist, but in brilliant Orwellian fashion, once they are sure everyone else believes superiority is forbidden, take the mantle of leadership upon themselves, a one-eyed man among the blind, and use the lower classes' belief in self-gain ironically against them. Once everyone else believes in equality, the narcissistic leftist believes their own natural superiority will rise above the sea of commonality to lead their homogenous flock toward grazing.(aha! Orwell is invoked as an authority to condemn the immorality of the class of leftists to which he belongs. Simply the most wonderful pompous ignorance, I think I will congratulate the author...)