38 years ago today, representatives of the People's Republic of China (PRC) first attended the United Nations, including the Security Council, as China's representatives, where previously the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan had represented China.
Since 1991 the ROC (now commonly known as Taiwan) has re-applied for UN membership to represent the people of Taiwan and its outlying islands only, under such names as "The Republic of China (Taiwan)," "The Republic of China on Taiwan," and most recently (in July 2007, under DPP President Chen Shui-bian) as simply "Taiwan." Taiwan has also requested that the UN consider the issue of its representation in other ways, such as granting it status as a "non-member entity," a position currently held by Palestine. Because of the opposition of the PRC [that is, mainland China], however, which holds veto power in the Security Council, all such applications have been denied. The ROC continues to call on the international body to recognize the rights of the 23 million people of Taiwan, who since 1971 have received no representation in the UN, or in its related international affiliates such as the World Health Organization.
[...] Although the ROC no longer actively asserts its claim to be the government of the whole of China, it has not renounced that claim. Taiwan independence supporters argue the ROC not renouncing its claim is mainly because the PRC has publicly stated that any movement to change the ROC constitution would be seen as a move towards declaring independence, and thus a reason for military action. Given the PRC's attitude, even having the General Assembly admit the ROC or "Taiwan" as an observer (as has been done with Palestine) would be problematic. The case of Palestine is distinguishable from that of the ROC, because of the UN's commitment to a two state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, and no such commitment to the Taiwan issue.
[...] In 2009, for the first time in 17 years, Taiwan will not submit a bid to join the United Nations as a member.
If grooming the relations between the Perl 5 and Perl 6 cliques feels like an uphill undertaking sometimes, imagine the epic tangledness of two governments with a namespace conflict.
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Today, despite being quite well-rested, I couldn't bring myself to code. Maybe because the weekend left many impressions needing digestion, or maybe because I have a plane to catch today, and I need to focus so I don't accidentally put the hand lotion in my hand luggage again.
But coding isn't everything; instead, remembering my blog post about cheese, I threw together a sketch of how I imagine the daily status page, which would hopefully be visited by many active Perl 6 community members, and needs to look clean and simple.
Doing that sketch raised another question, which I will probably spend some time thinking about on the plane home: what factors should contribute in the 'King of the Hill' scoring? Surely having tests (even if they fail) is better than not having them? Or is it somehow unfair to give a lower score to a project just because it doesn't have tests? Which project would receive the higher score: one with 1000 tests, out of which 100 pass — or one with 99 tests, out of which 98 pass? When I think about it, I switch from having one as my favourite, to preferring the other.
The more I think about it, the more similar questions turn up. Still, I'm optimistic that somewhere in the large space of scoring algorithm, there is (at least) one which is sensible enough to produce results that people will agree with, and yet fairly simple.
I guess we'll have to find that algorithm in the same way we arrive at other algorithm, by iterating up to it, methodically. Maybe even with tests; why not? 哈哈 But in the meantime, we can discuss how we think it'll look.
Re:Coverage!
masak on 2009-11-23T20:49:21
I'm not so worried about slow (the cron job has all night!), but currently the limit is that we can't, as you yourself point out. Other than that, I agree fully.
Hm, I don't know enough about coverage -- haven't done it much myself. To me, the immediate question, in the spirit of the ones I asked in the post, would be "is it always right to punish a module author for not having 100% coverage?".
Re:Coverage!
frew on 2009-11-23T21:24:54
Well, it's probably not always possible to get 100% coverage, but if a single test gets 100% coverage (possible with simple modules) I don't think that it should lose points.
On the other hand I recently adopted a module on CPAN that originally just had basic use tests and some autogenerated pod tests. It didn't test the basic functionality AT ALL. It always passed tests on all platforms, but that's because it didn't have any real tests. I'd say that it should have gotten a low ranking for something like this.
Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to find the average coverage (I'd guess somewhere in the high 80's to low 90's) and say if you are above that then it no longer measures cov.
Lastly, it would probably be best to make this as multiweighted as possible so it's hard to game without just making a good module:-) Re:Coverage!
masak on 2009-11-24T11:04:19
Lastly, it would probably be best to make this as multiweighted as possible so it's hard to game without just making a good module
:-) Yes. That's what I'm after: a metric that's hard to game, and that people can look at, saying "OK, I can do that. I agree that a project which satisfies those things should have a good score. Let's do this."
Re:At the airport
masak on 2009-11-23T20:59:55
I think the modern security theatre at the airports is ridiculous. I'm glad I've read enough about its ridiculousness on the web so that I can pass through it with a smile inside, while my exterior does all the motions asked of me. It's like a little dance, a bit like bees do, but this one is called "we'd like to show we care about security" rather than "where's the funky nectar?".
Oh, and if I have to be without my hand lotion for an hour while we're in the sky, it's really no big deal. But to even imply that it might pose a serious security threat by being a liquid bomb, that's taking leave of what we usually refer to as sanity. Either it's not a liquid bomb, or we should seriously consider moving away from it slowly, instead of debating whether I have to check in my hand luggage.
Maybe I just showed my deep ignorance of liquid bombs. Maybe it doesn't go off until you twist the lid or something. I guess I'll learn that when the next action film features a plane terrorist with a tube of hand lotion.
