... and - as the cliché requires - the etoy servers collapsed under the massive traffic the article and discussion on slashdot.org (news for nerds) generated.
result: a lot of confused hackers ;-) some even think that this is a media hack / prank by etoy.

etoy.HAEFLIGER wrote:

hi, here's how it got there: Matthias Stürmer who works in our team at ETH booked an office tank (etoy.CONTAINER) for their hackontest end of September and announced it on /.
... He misplaced the link to the SARCOPHAGUS instead of a regular etoy tank. Google is one of their sponsors.
So this confusion created the PR frenzy without giving us the opportunity to really benefit, except for the traffic...

thats great! this viral data salad shows perfectly how memetic mutation can lead to crazy stories that are not at all intentional. nobody created this to trigger a hype. a link to the wrong web address ... the rest is distributed story telling, conspiracy theory and imagination. its all in there: dead bodies, drugs, hackers and even google!

fact is: etoy just wants to be nice and contributes a regular etoy.TANK to the event ;-)

i admit that the etoy.CONTEXT and our history probably fueled the whole madness: etoy - leaving reality behind since 1994.

actually we don't create art and code to confuse people. our stuff is just a bit closer to the edge of reality than most corporation's output. things sometimes get a bit out of  our control.

thank you for helping us grow!
agent zai, ceo etoy.CORPORATION

On Apr 22, 2008, at 12:22 PM, etoy.POL wrote:

I find it rather disturbing to get to know about such huge public involvement of etoy in the hacker community through /.

especially since it could involve finding dedicated contributors for the angel-app.

Wo genau ist die Verbindung zwischen einem Google-Projekt und etoy?

cheers,
-p

silvan.zurbruegg wrote:

Moin,
Die ganze story hier beschert uns seit gestern massiv traffic:
http://technocrat.net/d/2008/4/20/39812
etoy.com /missioneternity.org war gestern zeitweise nicht
erreichbar. Es beginnt zu bessern heute ...
g,s

etoy invited advisors and agents to discuss the current China strategy. By invitation of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) MISSION ETERNITY is scheduled to present the SARCOPHAGUS during June in Beijing. Some agents harbor reservations about many political and social policies of the current Chinese government: a discussion about the T-words was overdue!

Smart insiders including political scientist and philosopher Dr. Ralph Weber from the University of St.Gallen briefed etoy about the current political system, its diversity and specific risk factors. A researcher of Chinese origin from ETH Zurich and a Swiss PHD student who worked for a year in Beijing offered anecdotes and insights into the Chinese education system and popular views including the widely-held conviction that of all things Western, political advice may be worth less than nothing.

Markus Nuessli (long time etoy friend, gallerist, night club owner and Asia expert who spent several years of his life in China / Japan and holds a master in japanology) completed the round of China-insiders.

Aside political risks and taboos, we discussed how to present MISSION ETERNITY project details to an expected visitor count of over 25,000 a day. What are the key questions to ask from the audience? What are the thoughts, in a culturally very different reference system, that sync an audience with the mindset of etoy.AGENTS? Where can we be understood and where do we risk to confuse (like we never confuse our audience)?

Dr. Maja Petrović-Šteger (a Research Fellow at Peterhouse college, and member of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge) contributed knowledge and advise as mortal remains expert. Ideas to integrate and reflect local burial ceremonies are on the way!

Inhouse council and lawyer etoy.KUBLI contributed his delicious and politically correct BAERLAUCH-PESTO to avoid further tomato import from spain.

We invite everybody to express their personal impression/position and feedback in the comment section of this post.

SUBJECT: eine neue phase fuer etoy: der virus ist def. tief drinnen angekommen im kunst system

INFO: jeder agent, welcher die meta values von etoy verstehen und mitgestalten will sollte sich an dieser diskusion beteiligen. allerdings nicht in form von emails (overkill) sondern hier im blog.

thank you for helping us grow
zai



wir stehen an einem wendepunkt den wir smart handhaben muessen.

mit shows wie VIDA/TELEFONICA ARCO, National Art Museum of China und manifesta sind wir auf dem weg in sehr arrivierte und damit teilweise auch fragwuerdige gefielde der kunst welt.

ich bin ehrlich gesagt nicht scharf darauf als pseudo-rebel alt zu werden. das habe ich immer gestatet und aus diesem grund haben sich auch krasse differenzen mit dem "boesen hans" als unueberbrueckbar erwiesen. billig-provokation, opfer-kuenstler und teenage rebellion sind nicht gut fuer ueber 30 jaehrige kuenstler.

smart, risky und kantig muss gute kunst jedoch sein sonst verkommt sie zur dekoration!


habe mir fuer die naechste phase folgendes ueberlegt:

wir muessen wieder mehr kommunizieren. dh content / statements bloggen sowie ab und zu massmailen... nicht nur termine/erfolgsmeldungen raushauen und einladungen versenden (die kann man immer noch reinmixen... aber unsere emails und posts sollten nicht blos pr fuer events, museen und sponsoren sein!)


dh konkret fuer die ARCO: bloggen vor ort und mass mailen (zb am donnerstag 14.2.2008)
direkte infos vom schlachtfeld des kunst- und geld-wahnsinns. anstatt nette einladungen zum besuch des schoenen etoy sarkophagus sollten die leute mitkriegen, dass wir hier nicht einfach brav das game mitmachen.

-> wir muessen die arcokontroverse gegen aussen kommunizieren. und zwar twisted.

zb anknuepfend an den (gescheiterten aber doch identitaetsstiftenden!) art market invasions versuch von 2004 (industry analysis).

etwa so: nachdem es 2004 nicht geklappt hat die galleristen dazu zu bringen ihre kunst gegen aktien zu tauschen (die nehmen ja nur simples geld!) und so den art market hype ein bisschen zu twisten bzw zu hinterfagen, started etoy.CORPORATION 4 jahre danach einen neuen angriff auf den kunstmarkt.

man koennte es gleich auch mit einem hint auf das buch HYPE! kunst und geld verbinden, welches mich zur zeit beschaeftigt. ich weiss echt nicht ob ich teil dieser maschine werden moechte oder wir mit etoy doch lieber einen neuen markt kreieren muessen ...auch wenn das an wahnsinn grenzt ;-) und armut bzw massive schulden (wie wir sie zur zeit haben) keine option ist.

das buch jedenfalls schafft kontext den wir hier brauchen (in meinen augen ohne cheap zu sein). wir muessen selber auch keine billigen moralischen statments abgeben. sondern den fact, dass dieser markt ultra korrupt, gierig und hype orientiert ist fuer sich sprechen lassen... und mit unseren shares indirekt kommentieren. wenn die leute dabei verunsichert sind weil sie merken, dass wir unsere shares viel ernster nehmen als sie es tun ist das SEHR GUT! denn dann beginnen sie zu verstehen was wir eigentlich machen.

ich glaube auf jeden fall, dass es wichtig ist jetzt nicht allzu soft zu werden oder schleimig einzufahren indem wir dem markt das geben was er will: etoy darf nicht in gefahr geraten sich anzubiedern nun wo wir den vida preis gewonnen haben und offiziell in die arco messe reingeraten. das gleiche problem zeigt sich auch wenn wir nach china gehen (immerhin eine ultra kapitalistische pseudo kommunismus diktatur in der leute ihrer rechte beraubt und hingerichtet werden) oder wenn wir irgendwann doch wieder mit einer gallery kooperieren: etoy muss sehr offensiv und twisted kommuniziert werden... nicht dass wir uns ploetzlich dem verdacht auf ausverkauf der "alten etoy werte" aussetzen. wenn ultra-linke-traeumer oder ehwige noergler sowas sagen ist das nicht so schlimm - das war schon immer so bei etoy.

aber die smarten leute (links und in der mitte/oben/unten) muessen sehen, dass wir versuchen diese sklavenkunst zu durchbrechen indem wir gescheite attacken (wie zb die etoy.SHARES) fahren und nicht einfach nur den simplen weg der lustigen objekte und abbildenden pointen gehen wie hirst, catalan, koons und co.

ja. einfache pointen, das lieben die leute im markt zur zeit. aber es gibt genug anspruchsvolle menschen die ein bisschen mehr twist brauchen - da wette ich meinen arsch drauf.

wenn diese leute unsere haltung allerdings nicht mitbekommen oder die bewusste konfrontation mit den values solcher shows (arco, china etc) nicht mitschneiden wird es schwierig fuer uns. dann fallen wir zwischen stuhl und bank. von weit weg kann es schnell so aussehen: aha jetzt ist etoy auch an der messe, in china etc... und spielt das langweilige kunstgame mit das sie frueher so frech aus dem netz reflektiert haben.

das alles schliesst ein bisschen mehr "kostendeckung" nicht aus. im gegenteil. es gibt wohl eher investoren die das was wir seit jahren machen wichtig finden und ein gegen-gewicht supporten wollen... als dass wir ploetzlich die grossen collectors und iwan wirth in unserem tank haben (und wollen wir das ueberhaupt?!) das ist doch anyway ein ganz anderer schlag mensch. ich fuehle mich jedenfals wohler mit visionaeren wie joi ito, magda von postmasters oder thomas tuemena von hugo film. auch sie sind erfolgreich aber nicht ganz so gierig und schleimig wie mancher kunstgigant. ich habe keine lust den rest meines lebens an high society parties herumzuhaengen und die sadomasochistischen gelueste der reichsten der reichen zu befriedigen.

wir brauchen keine flick-collection um zu ueberleben (und die schulden abzuzahlen) sondern die zukunft der kunst muss mitbestimmt werden. saatchi & co verkoerpern aus meiner sicht die gier der vergangenen jahre (welche vermutlich ihren zenit bereits am ueberschreiten ist)... all die goldenen fallschirme und wertschoepfungsketten die man am himmel sieht nerven nicht nur meinen vater.

gute kunst kann und muss visionen aufbauen und nicht nur brav mitspielen in der hirnlosen profitmaximierungs chilbi. ansonsten werde ich lieber wieder telefonsex-lsd-ufo-tycoon (wie zu HIRN-lein zeiten) oder baue eine kleiderbuegelfabrik in asien auf: und werde RICHTIG RICHTIG reich (und kaufe den schaedel von hirst um ihn ins all zu schiessen wo er dann verglueht wie leary's erste aschen-portion).

stefan: koennen wir morgen mal darueber reden wie wir das umsetzen koennen (nein nicht die kleiderbueglfabrik in asien)? ich rede von der kommunikationsstrategie der naechsten monate. muss ja nicht grad alles auf einmal sein ;-)

step by step. zuviel verkraften die menschen ja anyway nicht in einer portion (dann liest kein schwein unsere posts... so wie vielleicht diesen.. ich stelle ihn gleich mal auf public um zu sehen was das heisst).

your ceo
zai

Two videos on YouTube demonstrating seriously cool hacks with the Wii Remote.

Track your fingers:

Virtual Whiteboard:

Fun little article on the supposed Y10K problem:

   The most common fix for the Y2K problem has been to switch to 4-digit
   years.  This fix covers roughly the next 8,000 years (until the year
   9999) by which time, everyone seems convinced that all current
   programs will have been retired.  This is exactly the faulty logic
   and lazy programming practice that led to the current Y2K problem!
   Programmers and designers always assume that their code will
   eventually disappear, but history suggests that code and programs are
   often used well past their intended circumstances.

In a similar vein, but intended to be serious: A Long, Painful History of Time.

In this beautiful google tech talk, Conal Elliott makes a convincing case that API and UI should in fact be one and the same -- while currently there lurks one of the deepest schisms of IT. Among other things, he makes this rather outrageous statement (see 17:40):

The essence of programming has nothing to do with programs.

but of course not without thoroughly backing it up. In fact, he presents a prototypical tool kit which does just that. The talk gets a bit technical towards the end, but should be accessible (and I recommend it) to everyone with a general interest in programming and user interface design.

We are very pleased to be able to announce the immediate availability of ANGEL APPLICATION version 0.3.0.

This update consists of stability fixes (see e.g. here), api cleanup work (see the current module import graph), as well as GUI work. See the CHANGELOG. Further information is available on the M∞ ANGEL-APPLICATION Developer Wiki.

One important thing to note: if you are upgrading from an older version, you will have to purge/empty your local repository once before being able to help safeguard MISSION ETERNITY data forever. This can be done with a single mouse-click in the File menu -> "Purge repository".

In my previous post, I presented netaddress, an RFC 3986 compliant (I believe) URI parser (and all the shenanigans that come with it, such as numerical IP addresses). Now, while it's good to know that that's available, it has made the parsing simple URI's (the most common case) more complicated than it needs to be. This is because it now exposes most of the complexity inherent in URI's. But this is yet another place where parser combinators really shine. Say, I'd want to parse URI's of the simplified form $(scheme)://$(host)$(path), then this is all you need to do:

from rfc3986 import scheme, reg_name, path_abempty
from pyparsing import Literal
host = reg_name.setResultsName("host")
path = path_abempty.setResultsName("path")
URI = scheme + Literal("://") + host + path

And now you've got yourself a validating parser for your reduced grammar. Nice, no? I've added this as an extra module ("notQuiteURI") to netaddress, so you can use it like this:

>>> from netaddress import notQuiteURI 
>>> uri = notQuiteURI.URI.parseString("http://host.name.com/path/to/resource")
>>> uri.scheme
'http'
>>> uri.host
'host.name.com'
>>> uri.path
(['/', 'path', '/', 'to', '/', 'resource'], {})

Update: netaddress is now available through the python cheese shop. If you're interested, you should be able to install it by simply typing:

$ easy_install netaddress
  

This is the last in a series of three posts (1, 2), discussing issues with pythons urlparse module. Here, I intend to provide a solution.

In the last post, I was talking about parser combinators and parsec in particular, mentioning pyparsing towards the end. The angel-app being a python application, parsec, while cool, is of no immediate use. pyparsing on the other hand provides parsec-like functionality for python. Consider this excerpt from the RFC 3986-compliant URI parser that I'm about to present in this post (please ignore as usual the blog's spurious formatting):

dec_octet = Combine(Or([
        Literal("25") + ZeroToFive,            # 250 - 255

        Literal("2") + ZeroToFour + Digit,     # 200 - 249

        Literal("1") + repeat(Digit, 2),       # 100 - 199

        OneToNine + Digit,                     # 10 - 99

        Digit                                  # 1-9    

        ]))

IPv4address = Group(repeat(dec_octet + Literal("."), 3) + dec_octet)

And now:

>>> from netaddress import IPv4address 
[snipped warning message]
>>> IPv4address.parseString("127.0.0.1") 
([(['127', '.', '0', '.', '0', '.', '1'], {})], {}) 
>>> IPv4address.parseString("350.0.0.1") 
Traceback (most recent call last):   
File "", line 1, in ?  
[snip]    
egg/pyparsing.py", line 1244, in parseImpl     
    raise exc 
pyparsing.ParseException: Expected "." (at char 2), (line:1, col:3) 

Anyhow, what I mean to say is this: We have a validating URI parser now. Apart from the bugs that are still to be expected for a piece of code at this early stage, it should be RFC 3986 compliant. You can get either the python package, or a tarball of the darcs repository (unfortunately my zope account chockes on the "_darcs" directory filename, so I'm still looking for a good way to host the darcs).

This is how one would use it:

>>> from netaddress import URI
>>> uri = URI.parseString("http://localhost:6221/foo/bar")
>>> uri.port
'6221'
>>> uri.host
'localhost'
>>> uri.scheme
'http'

Or, in the case of a more complex parse:

>>> uri = URI.parseString("http://vincent@localhost:6221/foo/bar")
>>> uri.asDict().keys()
['scheme', 'hier_part']
>>> uri.hier_part.path_abempty
(['/', 'foo', '/', 'bar'], {})
>>> uri.hier_part.authority.userinfo
'vincent'
>>> uri.hier_part.authority.port    
'6221' 

Hope you find this useful.

In a previous post, I described issues with parsing and validating URL's with the functionality provided by Python's stdlib. I will just restate that clearly, all messages exchanged by angel-app nodes must be validated in order for it to work properly. What to do? First of all, I was of course not the first person to notice the module's shortcomings. However, I was surprised at the answers that popped up: It seems like no one was interested in actually coming up with a validating parser (perhaps even just for a subset of the complete URI syntax), but instead people focussed on fixing specific cases where the parser would fail -- in essence adding new features, rather than putting the whole system on a solid basis. Suggestions go so far as to propose a new URI parsing module. However, the proposed new module is again based on the premise that the input represents a valid URI, the behavior in the case of an invalid input is again left undefined. WTF? Have these people never looked beyond string.split() and regexes?

Dudes, writing a VALIDATING PARSER is NOT THAT HARD, if you have a reasonable grammar and good libs. Why do people keep pretending that it is? Sure, you might be afraid of having to fire up lex, yacc and antlr, and for good reason. But with sufficiently dynamic languages, that's usually unnecessary, if you have a parser combinator library handy.

The key idea behind parser combinators is that you write your parser in a bottom up fashion, in just the same way that you would define your grammar. You write a parser for a small part of the grammar, then combine these partial parsers to form a complex whole. The canonical example in this context is Haskell's parsec library. Let's start out with a simple restricted URI grammar:

module RestrictedURI where

import Text.ParserCombinators.Parsec

data URI = URI {  
                host :: [String],
                port :: Int,
                path :: [String]
                } deriving (Eq, Show, Read)

schemeP = string "http"  "scheme"
schemeSepP = string "://"  "scheme separator"

hostPartP = many lower  "part of a host name"
hostNameP = sepBy hostPartP (string ".")  "host name"

pathSegmentP = sepEndBy1 (many1 alphaNum) (string "/")  "multiple path segments"
pathP = do {
            root - string "/"  "absolute path required"; 
            segments - pathSegmentP;
            return (root:segments)
        }  "an absolute path, optionally terminated by a /"

restrictedURIP :: Parser URI
restrictedURIP = 
        do {
            ignored - schemeP;
            ignored - schemeSepP;
            h - hostNameP;
            p - pathP;
            return (URI h 80 p)
        }  "a subset of the full URI grammar"


parseURI :: String -> (Either ParseError URI)
parseURI = parse restrictedURIP ""

(Where you should forgive me for the blog inserting break tags all over the place). But just to illustrate:

vincent$ ghci 
GHCi, version 6.8.1: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help 
Loading package base ... linking ... done. 
Prelude> :l restrictedURI  
[1 of 1] Compiling RestrictedURI    ( restrictedURI.hs, interpreted ) 
Ok, modules loaded: RestrictedURI. 
*RestrictedURI> parseURI "http://localhost.com/foo/bar" 
Loading package parsec-2.1.0.0 ... linking ... done. 
Right (URI {host = ["localhost","com"], port = 80, path = ["/","foo","bar"]}) 

Plus, we get composability, validation and error messages essentially for free:

*RestrictedURI> parseURI "http://localhost2.com/foo/bar" 
Left (line 1, column 17): unexpected "2" expecting lowercase letter, 
"." or an absolute path, optionally terminated by a / 

Now consider the following excerpt from Haskell's Network.URI.

--  RFC3986, section 3.1  
uscheme :: URIParser String 
uscheme = 
   do  { s - oneThenMany alphaChar (satisfy isSchemeChar)         
       ; char ':'
       ; return $ s++":"
       } 

(Again, please forgive for the blog eating my code, but you can also get it from the haskell web site.) And compare that to the ABNF found in the corresponding section of the RFC:

scheme      = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "-" / "." )

Note how the complete URI grammar specification in the RFC is barely a page long. So yeah, implementing this grammar is a significant amount of work (of course you could always choose to support just a well-defined subset), but if you have a good parser combinator library, it's just a few hours of mechanically transforming the ABNF into your parser grammar. You can even watch the Simpsons while doing it (I did). In the case of Network.URI, this boils down a line count of 1278, with about half of the lines being comments or empty lines. Not only that, but given the complete grammar specification, it's super easy to formulate a modified grammar.

As it turns out, Python has a library quite like parsec, it's called pyparsing and I'll bore you with it in my next (and last) post on this topic.