Print your blog!!
LJBook (Turn your blog into a PDF Book)
Not that mine is worth printing, but a Blogger version, please ?
2004/05/28
Conflicting views on Sun's Open Source statement(s)
Groklaw doesn't like Schwartz statement, like ESR's rebuttal, and wonders if the bad mouthing of Red Hat[ammended]Open Source is part of Sun's settlement with Microsoft:GROKLAW
On the other hand Simon Phipps says that this is not based on any new interview with Schwartz, that ESR was fed a provocative line by eWeek and hence he came out fighting (as only he can):Webmink's take
So there is probably an element of the tech. press stoking things up during a slow news day. But there were enough ambiguous/worrying statements in the first eWeek interview to make Sun vulnerable to this sort of thing.
I think a reasonable response to ESR by Sun, plus any clarifications they wish to make with hindsight would be a good move here.
I think most people realise that we have a software community using a variety of business models - the bold (therefore newsworthy) but unhelpful arguments like all "Open Source is bad/communist/starving my children/blahblah" or "I'm more Open Source than you" doesn't help anyone.
AMMENDMENT: As Simon points out in the comments, the Sun's questions about Red Hat weren't criticisms of Open Source. I'd really love to know what they all really meant though!
2004/05/27
The salvos are flying in on AdTI
In addition to publishing a note from someone who did some background research on Linux source vs Unix ( and found no correlation, Eric Raymond and Newsforge are winding in some heavy hits.
If someone did pay for this book to be written, they'll be asking for their money back.
Legalise torture?
Why America's top liberal lawyer wants to legalise tortureI see what he is saying, but I think it is wrong. Maybe I am too wedded to the idea of "do onto others, as you would have them do unto you" - and yes it applies across religions.
Is going in front of a judge first, somehow sanitising what follows ? What verifiable facts could be presented to such a judge? When a judge of a foreign country has a similar power over coalition captives ?
This is indeed a slippery moral slope, and we are accelerating.....
Corporate moves to Linux
Now it is gathering momentum:Slashdot | Oracle To Finish Linux Makeover This Year
They might beat IBM to it ; weren't they aiming for end of 2005 ?
2004/05/26
Oh Lord, Say it ain't so!!
TheJacksonChannel.com - News - Sen. Lott Sounds Off On Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Photos
Where to start on this one ?
- The USA and its allies need to show the world that there is an alternative to barbarism
- You don't save lives (American or other) by turning a candidate "beacon of democracy in the Middle East" into another recruiting ground for terrorists
- There is plenty of evidence that some prisoners should never have been brought in - they can't tell the interrogators anything, because they don't know anything
- In every conflict it easy to vilify the opponents, make them less than human. The Geneva Convention was an attempt to halt this animal instinct.
- Are you telling me that those photographs show part of an interrogation ? They were(Mainly) a bunch of people out of control.
- Are ther any real interrogators there?
Poor leadership.
2004/05/25
Events and Business Processes
Sean McGrarth makes the following point: E-BUSINESS IN THE ENTERPRISE - When modelling business processes, upside down is the right way up:
"In this model, the programmer drives the business process onward, dictating the tempo which applications must follow. There are numerous terms used to describe this approach but my favorite is 'temporally coupled'. Applications must work in lock-step with each other for business process to function as they should.
This is a point solution. Why? Because it only works well when all the applications underfoot are under your control and (preferably) on the same physical network. Under those conditions, temporal coupling is manageable. Costly but manageable. The more general case of course is where not all the applications are under your control and not all on your local network. Web Services on an Extranet or the Internet for example.
To handle the general case of Web Services owned and hosted by other organizations, with the varying quality of service that that entails, programmers need to take a different approach to pan-application business process modelling. Instead of driving business processes programmatically, they need to deal with the fact that they are no longer completely in control. Web Services respond at different rates, they may not be up all the time, they will produce garbled data because somebody changes something without telling you and so on."
This seems natural to me; the ability to centrally model a process, even within a single company, is often an exercise in wishful thinking. Better to describe interconnecting patterns of behaviour and synthesise a view of how the parts work together.
Unless I misinterpret, it seems to me that UML Activity diagrams with Events can be used to model and view the results; what is the best mix of technologies underneath ? And can we generate these (or parts of these) from the UML diagrams?
2004/05/24
Peace Pilgrim
Steps Toward Inner Peace by Peace Pilgrim via Crossroads Dispatches
I have only had a chance to skim the "booklet" but this paragraph hit home in our present circumstances:
MAGIC FORMULAS: There is a magic formula for resolving conflicts. It is this: Have as your objective the resolving of the conflict, not the gaining of advantage. There is a magic formula for avoiding conflicts. It is this: Be concerned that you do not offend, not that you are not offended.
Must return for another look.......
2004/05/23
Honest
This is good stuff: great for being open about mistakes, fantastic that it could be aired on a blog, mature response from his colleagues:Anil Dash: Moving Forward.
Well done.
2004/05/22
2004/05/20
Disappointing economy with the truth
I'm disappointed if this is true:Amazon's Bezos: He omitted a crucial piece of data -- they weren't his to give up.
What Andrew Tanenbaum really thinks
A very interesting article:Some notes on the "Who wrote Linux" Kerfuffle
- He still believes the microkernel is the way to go
- OS kernels are (relatively) easy to do
- the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, or more precisely, its president, don't come out at all well. But then none of their articles have been very good so far
Well worth the read.
2004/05/18
Python on Nokia phones
Looks like a good kickoff:Python workshop
I'll be interested in seeing if this starts a trend for other mobile manufacturers.
Maybe Python on Pocket PC will be updated
2004/05/17
More on freedom 0
Simon Phipps gives a comprehensive guide to the many recent posts on freedom 0:
http://www.webmink.net/minkblog.htm
Was the Blackdown Java for Linux open source?
And why are users trapped by having to use THE professional?
And if you provide reasonable quality free(beer) software on all platforms, software which has a compliance suite why would there be an open source version? If Sun radical ly changes the Java license (and it is legal) an open source version will happen (unless a better language platform comes along )
http://www.webmink.net/minkblog.htm
Was the Blackdown Java for Linux open source?
And why are users trapped by having to use THE professional?
And if you provide reasonable quality free(beer) software on all platforms, software which has a compliance suite why would there be an open source version? If Sun radical ly changes the Java license (and it is legal) an open source version will happen (unless a better language platform comes along )
Sexist nonsense
The less advertising this sort of nonsense gets the better:Proof that Girls are evil
Work towards a target
Well done, Suw:Chocolate and Vodka :: Cruel and unusual punishment
But perhaps a target is needed to increase motivation ?
This weekend I got out for a lovely bike ride, and did 20 miles in preparation for our London to Brighton cycle ride , due on 20th June. Suw is welcome to join us for this event!!
And everyone is free to sponsor me !!
Keith's BHF Sponsorship Page (only just created - may not work yet)
"It's the community, stupid!"
Ted Leung on the air : Code, community and money
Well, I don't know whether Mark is "starting " to get this! Anyway I would re-order Ted's heading as Community, Code, Money! Perhaps Ideas should be in their ahead of Code.
Dave Winer, Userland: Open Source?????
Congratulations to Dave and Userland on a bold decision. My interpretation of Dave's blog has been that it is very much against Open Source, along the lines of "how do I survive/eat/prosper/do new things?"
Still, here we see, courtesy of a blog , some of the rationale for their decision. And it makes sense to me ( so it must be a good idea). "This is no longer core to us, but could be useful to others, so let it free!!"
(Reminds me of "Master and Commander" when they have to leave the carefully gathered samples behind to get back to their ship quickly - "Open the cages!")
So, when else does it make sense to open source things?
Mark Pilgrim on Freedom 0
Read this:Freedom 0 [dive into mark]
It is difficult to highlight a few points as there are so many good ones.
Once again the moral is - know what you really(, really) want from you software.
Movable Type: it's the whole feature set
Dan Bricklin emphasisies a really good point here:
The thing to learn here is that the choice of how you differentiate between users for pricing is a key element in a product's feature-set. You had better be pretty clear about the philosophy behind that differentiation and change it at your peril. Reactions to the new Movable Type licensing scheme
2004/05/15
Movable Type Controversy
Never used it myself, but many peole do. My main interest is that somehow people look at this situation and draw conclusions about Open Source software. Which is odd because I don't think MT is open source!
Here is what I regard as a well resoned look at the siruation for MT:
Brad Choate: Movable Type 3.0
His take seems to be that people who want to continue to use MT free ( including the new version) can do with pretty much the same restrictions as before. Maybe those who had to pay now have to pay more? Not sure: MT for use by more than one person and more than 3 blogs have to pay, any commercial activities ditto. Sure sounds like they should pay for something.
I have seen some talk about people who have contributed add-ons to MT being a bit sore about the situation. This is more understandable, but unfortunately, read the license !!
Anyway , folks , please don't infer any Open Source generalisations from this episode.
2004/05/13
E-mail blog from wireless iPaq
Hope this works.
The Pocket IE rendering of the blogger.com posting page is unusable :-(
I wonder if it was better before the blogger facelift ?
The Pocket IE rendering of the blogger.com posting page is unusable :-(
I wonder if it was better before the blogger facelift ?
EU is getting more Stalinistic
Two problems:
- The EU political system is does not work properly. It is currently operating around the level of England before its Civil War - perhaps one day the EU Parliment will be properly elected and actually have some power. The Council of Ministers is too powerful, and goodness knows why it can overrule parliament. And why does the Commission have the power to advance Policy ?
- Software patents: by all means protect innovation, but the future (especially of increased employment) lies with growing smaller firms, not big ones defending their eroding competitiveness
Software Patent News
2004/05/12
2004/05/10
Good question
"The question now becomes, will that commoditization result in innovation?", from
Ted Leung : Will IT matter more after it's commoditized?
2004/05/09
2004/05/08
Making America .....
Seen via GT:Making America Our Own Again - A speech I'd like to hear: David Weinberger
A couple of things strike me: "Gosh, couldn't see a Brit saying that". But perhaps some did in the 18th/19th centuries?
Similarly, was there a period in Republican Rome when its citizen's thought they could improve the world?
The route from "Let us help you", via "We know best", to "We're better than you" is short and easy
I applaud David for what he has written, and I hope that his vision of a better world comes to pass, though I think it would be better if a growing team of nations lead this improvement.
You're a ruttish half-faced hedge-pig
Davtri.com :: Elizabethan Insulter
Very educational for students of Elisabethan history !!
2004/05/07
IRC chat rooms: how come I miss the fun ones?
The NYT's mighty authority and credibility are brought to bear on IRC:
I frequent #joiito, #python, #deryni_destinations, and no one has tried to sell me anything !! I'm missing out.
Fortunately others are taking a more serious line!! Mighty English/Welsh prose. Great stuff ; that'll show 'em!!
Does it all come down to greed?
SAS workers won when greed lost
So, according to this article, SAS were very fortunate ( by luck or judgment) not to go public at the height of the dot.com boom. Now, however:
Yet now Goodnight is in something of a jam. SAS is in terrific shape to take off in a resurgent tech industry — but to really soar and reach its potential, SAS should go public, industry observers say.
And here is one of those industry observers:"True greatness requires a grand plan fueled with equal amounts of paranoia and greed",.......The demands of Wall Street would drive Goodnight and SAS harder and would give SAS the cash and stock to pay for expansion. "He can and should set his sights much higher,"
And although the article ends by saying lets see what happens this time, the whole tone is that of the conventional Wall Street inspired view that all companies need large buckets of cash and the continual threat of takeover to stretch themselves.
I challenge this view: why can't a firm grow organically? Why can't it reward and motivate its best people without gross dot.com sums of money? Is it only greed and fear which motivate companies to try really hard (too hard)? Or do private companies just bumble along being dumb, fat and happy ? Or do they do well with enlightened leadership and staff who feel they are working in a great environment.
I think that across the world there are plenty of companies run privately and run well. And no I'm not saying that is right for every company - but let's not brainlessly accept the Wall Street view of life.
2004/05/05
Gentoo remix
Now I have a working Gentoo system, it is time to improve it ( or break it)!
Thanks to some advice on the forums I reset some flags to better describe the procesor I have (Duron on this system). Then , recompiled the system - truly amazing to watch it grind thru so many packages. Took a long time, and have yet to confirm any speed improvements, but it is geeky cool nonetheless!!
Also, tweaked the XF86Config - just like old times. But this worked really well - the resulution has improved, and the text is sharper than my old Linux system and my Windows XP system.
Just got to get sound working!!!!
"I'm cycling in the rain, I'm.....
I am in training for a charity bike ride from London to Brighton on June 20th. My neighbour and I went for a ride on (Bank Holiday) Monday. The day was grey and cool, but that is fine. But after 5 miles a light drizzle of rain started. After 12 mile it started to rain hard, but we pushed on for a while. Then we decided that this was needless, and so started back. We got colder, and tired, and made an error of judegement by taking the most direct route home - this , of course, proved to be an extremely hilly road.
We got home, but only just. I think we went beyond our current level of fitness. It really was the most miserable cycle I have ever done !!
Got home, showered, had lunch; in the afternoon the sun came out, and it was a beautiful spring day !!
2004/05/01
Gentoo bloggin
After a lot of time, I have got Gentoo working on my Duron system. Back to the old days of laborious setup (XF86 etc.) but the spped seems a lot better and the Internet performance is great!
Not sure I will do any of my other machines with it. Still plenty of things to play with - if they give any further speed improvements, perhaps I will!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)