"Broadcast news lacked historical background, stories were often not put in the wider context and there was insufficient analysis and interpretation of important events and issues, the report said."
"I lived in Europe from 1999 to 2001, and I typically paid over $4/gallon for gasoline. I coped by getting a very fuel efficient car. I didn’t feel unsafe, because I was not surrounded by big SUVs on the autobahn. I rode my bike whenever possible."
James R has an interesting summary of the DabbleDB talk at STS (actually he and others have done several - sounds like a great conference), but has a couple of asides which I find a bit questionable.....:
[ed. I'll interject at this point - you could use commercial software all the way down, like Cincom Smalltalk, and not pay a dime until large amounts of revenue arrives].Sure you could, but why not use a free one until you "have to" change - I'd prefer to negotiate from a position of no dependence on a vendor's features. With Squeak you know the deal; but what does "large aounts of revenue" actually mean? When do you sign this contract ( which will be earlier, I assume, than paying money)? In startup mode I can't imagine taking the time to ask these sorts of questions.
"Fascinating little side note when someone asked about using Gemstone. The Squeak connection to Gemstone is not maintained, which would mean moving to VW and getting a license. Which actually demonstrates the value of commercial software - you get support for various things you might want at some point :)"
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
"The guy with the cell phone in his ear bothers me a lot less than a number of things. For instance, the guy one lane over eating a Big Mac. Or the other guy doing 70, but who seems to be reading a book. Or, the woman coming up from behind who's applying mascara. Or the guy two lanes over who's shaving.
What I want to know is, in what way are cell phones worse than any of the examples I just gave? Or tons of others I'm sure you can think of?"
I agree with James. This is a slightly diferent take on a discussion I had with a lawyer about the way laws a drafted. Why is it that we don't have laws drafted with a set of criteria which are not dependent on particular technologies ( sometimes other specifics). If you are driving and voluntarily doing something which distracts yor attention, uses up one of your hands, obstructs you vision etc. it is dangerous driving - oh, by the way, using a mobile is an example, so is fiddling with the car radio.
As far as the law goes, it takes upvalable tie of legislators, makes life more difficult for the police ( and the public). It also means we are late in tackling the effects of technology introduction.
How about principles, folks?
"I call it the Temple of Complexity: a religion so ingrained in the IT industry that it has slipped from a conscious behavior to a subconscious assumption. We are programmed by the industry—and society to a lesser extent—to proclaim our littlest accomplishments as comparable to the great works of the world."
The complexity of a “solution” becomes asymptotic as you approach total flexibility.
A great post - read it all. I think that the quest for flexibility ( or more normally the absence of good requirements) is a problem; also the thinking about potential problems which have never actually occured; or if the did occcur it was a design error which is too hard to admit and fix......
"As a developer, look around you. Would you rather be part of the mainstream or a smaller community with critical mass? Going mainstream usually means slowing progress until it resembles a complete stop and dealing with a whole other level of secondary concerns."
I'm with David on this one - if you are mainstream you are not on the leading edge!!
"I guess it takes more than a warm mattress pad to make a relationship work."
You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for a buck fifty in late charges at the public library.”
- Will Hunting (played by Matt Damon), Good Will Hunting
The Personal MBA (PMBA) is an experiment in educational entrepreneurism. This manifesto will show you how to substantially increase your knowledge of business on your own time and with little cost, all without setting foot inside a classroom.
The PMBA is more flexible than a traditional MBA program, doesn’t involve going into massive debt, and won’t interrupt your income stream for two years. Just set aside some dedicated reading time, pick up a good book, learn as much as you can, and go out and make great things happen."
"Eiffel Software today announced that the latest version of its cross-platform IDE EiffelStudio? is now available under Dual Licensing, enabling users to choose between a license for commercial development and a license for Open Source development."I feel that many communities of less popular languages would benefit from going Open Source: Ruby and Python come to mind as success stories. Smalltalk and Eiffel have multiple proprietary implementations - which I would have thought made life difficult for all the incumbents. I wonder what would happen if the companies made the commodity parts of their offerings open source, as in pooled their resources? Difficult to achieve ! Andd each incumbent is at least comfortable with the status quo.....
"There is really only one way, now, to save the world: we must conserve.
Throughout recorded history, all true spiritual traditions have counseled against greed and advocated simplicity; the Quaker voice is merely a conservator of that wisdom.
The planet has grown hotter.
Our energy supplies are dwindling.
There is no time like now to heed the Quaker testimony on simplicity."
Bitten by the Enterprise Bug - The Daily WTF: "Aaron questioned why it had to be so much more code to load a simple request. The consultants explained: In our experience, enterprise applications require significantly more code as non-enterprise."
The whole article is kind of depressing, but if something requires way more code to be written for no clear benefit then it is probably the wrong way to go as an app. developer. Of course, it could be a good way to go for consultants :-)
"Same old story from what I can see. Anyone that wants an agile enterprise can get it using technology that is ten years old or more. There is *no* need to invest in WS-* or an ESB. I think an ESB could be a good investment in some cases but not because of any promise of a 'standards-based platform'."
You really earned it Peter , PCL's great book.
Absolutely. I'd recommend it even if you don't really want to learn Lisp - it is a grea example of a pragmatic programming language tutorial!
And so am I !! In the interests of science, I currently have one done with the quick knot, and one with the secure knot. The latter looks a real mess on my leather laces!!
Man what a cynical view of human nature!Seth's Blog: The problem with "global warming":
"The muted reaction to our impending disaster comes down to two things:
1. the name.
Global is good.
Warm is good.
Even greenhouses are good places.
How can 'global warming' be bad?
I'm not being facetious. If the problem were called 'Atmosphere cancer' or 'Pollution death' the entire conversation would be framed in a different way."
In other words, damn it he's right.
"Robert Oppenheimer agonized over building the A-bomb. Alfred Nobel got queasy about creating dynamite. Robert Propst invented nothing so destructive. Yet before he died in 2000, he lamented his unwitting contribution to what he called 'monolithic insanity.'"
Quotes of the Day - The Quotations Page: "
'A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.'
"Some of you have been worried about our future here at Writely. As one concerned user wrote:'I love Writely, but... I was wondering, is there any way to send you guys some money? I understand it's free and all, but I just feel bad that you don't charge. Thanks!'
We appreciate the sentiment, and all the support we've gotten from our users, but thankfully, your donations won't be necessary, for one very exciting reason:
Writely is now part of Google!"
Good news - I have a Writely account ( so I can sit smugly whilst others now have to wait to sign-up) and, whilst I haven't used it that much, I really love the idea and look forward to many new improvements - so long as the takeover goes smoothly!
This one made me smile :-)
Bill Clementson's Blog: The Most Important Idea in Computer Science: "'Java and C make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.'"
On the Java theme: Mak Guzdial: Report on OOPSLA97"Java is a great step forward. For the C Community."
Looks like a good MP3 player built on Firefox, but don't you just hate sentences like this:Development | Songbirdnest.com: "We plan to keep the vast majority, if not all, of our source code available under a GPL license."
Open Source: "What does an EHM do for a living? He builds the American empire the way a dope dealer builds a network of dependency. The drugs an EHM sells are aid agency loans to developing countries Â? loans that bind the country to hiring American companies to build the highways or design the power plants. Most of the real benefits therefore stick with American contractors and corportions. The loans, by design, are also too big to repay on time so that the country effectively becomes a pawn the U.S. can use for military or political or economic convenience. And one more thing: these loans enrich a tiny minority in the debtor country (usually including a corrupt head of government) and impoverish the masses by increasing the national debt. Perkins says heÂ?s witnessed this cycle over and over again. He was part of what drives it. .....Does John Perkins’s argument ring true to you? What would you like to ask him? And who should mix it up with Perkins on the air?"
BBC NEWS | Health | Drug limits foetal alcohol damage: "A drug may be able to reduce the damage caused to babies whose mothers drink heavily during pregnancy."
Anyone tried it?
Google Reader: "If you're an identity management supplier it is time to set up a UK office. If you're already here its time to hire more salesmen and lobbyists. No delays, no excuses. Jump in. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity - practically all upside, with little or no oversight."
Don't read it all unless you are interested in liberty, democracy, your taxes etc.
When Intel calls, Skype listens | CNET News.com: "The latest version of Skype's Internet-calling software can host up to 10 users on a conference call, but only if your PC has a dual-core processor from Intel, Skype and Intel announced Wednesday.
Intel's Core Duo and Pentium D processors have been designated the mass conference-calling processor of choice for Skype 2.0, launched last month. The limit will remain at five callers for PCs using single-core chips and Advanced Micro Devices' dual-core Athlon 64 chip, which some tests have shown outperforms Intel's dual-core chip."
What did Skype get from this deal?
Would they have done this deal before they became part of a lartge corporation?
Then read the list of interesting but unreported items
Of course, if I were a cynic, I'd suggest that a system which seems to scientifically extract security data could be a useful weapon in the media war. Lucky that I am not a cynic.
I have taken a quick look ( yes, you do have to register) and it looks good. I need to see what it can do with my Pocket PC
"I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.
Moby, quoted on CNN.com, March 2005"
Can't see the deadline for paper submissions but looks like some great talks: I particularly want to hear this one: Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development: "Pair Managing: Two Managers per Programmer by Jim Highsmith"
"Asked to explain how in the midst of plenty the NHS was running out of money, she[Patricia Hewit, Health Secretary] said that there were a variety of reasons.
“In some cases, it is financial mismanagement. In others, it is inefficiently organised services — such as not doing enough operations as day cases, or keeping people in hospital longer than needed.
“In some areas, there are too many services being provided from too many places. In others, the health community has been overspending for a very long time and taking money from other parts of the NHS to balance their books."
OK, so you are saying there are just a variety of different reasons, but then say this.....
“This is very unfair on underspending areas, which tend to be in the North and the Midlands — they are subsidising NHS services in the South and East.”"
Hmm, so perhaps it is not random after all! Let's see, the South and East - most densly populated, highest costs of living....... Sounds like a problem in the system as a whole to me.
Shirley recently left her "regular" job and branched out into coaching. I think she will be good at it based on the workshops she did for us.
Glad to see that GTD is working its way into her repertoire - it will help with the new business and help her clients
Good luck Shirley!!
From the always interesting Ted Leung on the air: "At Mind Camp, Todd Blanchard brought by a copy of 'Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots', and the girls got excited by paging through it. It looked pretty good, and Squeak/Smalltalk certainly has the programming constructs that I want my kids to be exposed to straight off (at least if they are going to be programmers). Also, one of the original motivations for Smalltalk was for allowing kids to do programming and simulations, and that heritage seems to have carried through into the Squeak community. For a great/depressing look at some of the learning applications, you can check out this video from ETech 2003."
I just bought this book for my nephew - I am waiting to see how he takes to it. My own kids are still resolutely against programming - they obviously see what it has done to me!!
As usual, this is so true and can be applied to so many things. It's great to share even in business!!
Good luck! random-state.net / December 13th 2005: "I've decided to starve.
To accomplish this life-goal and simultaneously bring joy to the world I'm embarking on an entrepreneurial career in early 2006.
The business plan is centered around providing commercial support for Steel Bank Studio, an open source Common Lisp development environment built around SBCL and Slime."
The idea that we take a measure, which is a public order measure, designed to protect our Parliament building as depriving us of freedom of speech is ridiculously overdoneHow does stopping someone speaking protect a building ?
Someone is either too annoyed to read clearly or their mastery of english not as good as Linus'.
Of course, the anti-Gnome point is there nonetheless. I have only recently started using Gnome with Ubuntu - so far it seems nice. I iss some KDE things but perhaps I just haven't looked for their equivalent yet.
To be fair there were also several German Army Divisions as well - interesting that the quote omits that. Looking at it from our perspective today, though there was some very valiant resistance then, it seems odd that Iraq is so difficult by comparison with WW2 Europe. What are the differences? I would suggest: no religious fanaticism, in Western Europe ( maybe not eastern) the ability to live quite well if you behaved ( and weren't Jewish), little prospect of salvation until 1944, and the certainty of dreadful reprisals from the occupier with no moderation caused by the world's media watching.
"The Deryni Adventure Game is on its Way!"
I'm sure it will be worth the wait! Just in time for Xmas (hint).
OK, a couple of posts rattled my cage today:
He sums up with a nice indictment of Common Lisp's freeze-dried-since-1994 state:
Fun Fact about Common Lisp: standard Common Lisp has no networking libraries at all, but it does have a built in function to print integers as Roman numerals , using either the new style (14=XIV) or the old-style (14=XIIII) Roman numerals. Huh.
: In the pros department: itÂ's a great programming language. Ruby, python, perl, java can'?t really compete as languages. HTML and symbolic expressions are almost a one-to-one mapping, so generating HTML is a breeze. It'?s great fun to work in, and I'?ve certainly learned a good deal about programming in general just for using it.
Having a Lisp process I can manipulate on a live server has been very handy for updating small changes and debugging as well.
The drawbacks all basically stem from the same problem. Since very few people actually use Lisp, we can'?t take advantage of the tremendous community support the other languages have. There are few libraries, few implementations, and little real-world examples of building large-scale websites in Lisp. The language itself (ANSI Common Lisp) hasn?t changed much since it was standardized, which was about 20 years ago.
They are right - and I have seen this before: Eiffel and Smalltalk. In both these cases there seems to be a few small vendors and a small but very passionate groups of developers, but too much diversity of effort.
In the Eiffel case, the heavyweight vendor (relative to the minnows) decided to make friends with Microsoft and go it pretty much alone on another round of standardisation. In the Smalltalk arena, some are celebrating the exit of IBM from that segment; again the are several vendors. Squeak is interesting as a nice environment,open source - this could be the future there - or not - who knows.
For both languages, grouping together in the face of competition from other languages would be sensible ; how about a common Open Source base platform with charging for specific add ons, or services (I believe Dolphin Smalltalk pursues its on environment and does services) ?
And what about Lisp? Even more fragmented - why do so many rebuild basic Lisp compilers/interpreters? Are Franz and LispWorks going to thrive by doing it all? Hell, is Lips going to thrive? What would it take to get a 2nd round odf standardisation going, so that Lisp has the range of standard libraries that Java and C# have? Then others could focus on better environments and pushing ahead in more new areas.
Come on guys, don't let the bad guys win!
Phew this ranting is tiring - I'm off for a lie down
Grady puts this simply and well:
developWorks: Blogs: Grady Booch: "It is with great sadness that I report the death of John Vlissides who passed away last Thursday, having been diagnosed with brain cancer in early 2004. John was one of the Gang of Four and a brilliant researcher, but above all a kind and gentle man. He will be missed.
"
Many thanks James Governor for this URL in the comments of my rant on barriers to entry:tecosystems: It's All About Barriers to Entry:
"One of the more common refrains our clients - as well as all of you folks too, I suppose - are hearing from me these days is 'lower your barriers to entry.' The basic premise behind the thought is simple: if one accepts (as I do) Jonathan Schwartz's contention that we've entered the Participation Age, barriers to entry that throttle that participation become a critical concern."
The examples in the post by Stephen O'Grady are more "barriers to participation" than what is conjured up in my MBA-trained mind; perhaps that would be a better phrase? Don't get me wrong, "barriers to entry" could ( logically) refer to the examples Stephen gives, but the phrase is loaded for what i imagine is a large chunk of his audience.
Just a thought!
Looks interesting, but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be support for the new, intersting, dynamic languages.
Via a piece of (well-deserved) congratulation of a colleague On MySQL props for Stepho, and Open Source Business models we get the folowing:
tecosystems: Attack of the Open Source Databases: The (Brief) Q&A:
"Well, I hate to say that it's all about barriers to entry, but it's all about barriers to entry"
and this...
Q: So how have the commercial suppliers responded?
A: By reducing one barrier to entry: making or considering making their products free.
Well, if I understnd the point being made, then this isn't how I would use the term "barrier to entry". To me a barrier to entry was something which prevented competition; thus the (high) cost of developing a full-featured relational database was a barrier to entry for MySQL, PostGres etc. But since Open Source development is a disruptive technology it first established a low cost, low function version of the database, and is now performing a segment invasion of the market segment of higher-function databases. Thus the commercial suppliers are not removing a barrier to entry (from this perspective) but responding to a breach of a barrier to entry. If Open Source Databases are a disruptive technology then other issues than function and cost will come into play. For example, the encumbents may not be able to alter their support or channels structure to the new competitive environment.
So, picky, picky, picky (that's me!) ; otherwise an excellent piece. I have enjoyed James' pieces for sometime, but am just getting started with his colleague - keep going, if only to keep me on my (MBA) toes!!
If you have time and want to wonder at a really poorly constructed argument, take a look at this article:
Why IP owners should worry | Perspectives | CNET News.com:
"It reflects the currently fashionable idea that confiscatory government policy must be used to even the score (whatever that means), thrusting highly demanded, privately risked IP out of the hands of legitimate property owners and into the hands of other, favored actors to further 'develop' it.
A recent court decision in the U.S. (i.e., the Supreme Court's eminent domain decision in Kelo); regulatory and legislative actions in the EU (i.e., the EC's stance on interoperability, and failure by the EU Parliament this summer to pass patent legislation); and rampant piracy, not just in the developing world but here on these shores, buttress this supposition."
See any real connection between the assertion and the evidence cited? Rampant piracy is an example of the sovereignty/IP conflict?
Oh and the article also starts by dragging in the ODF saga, which is a contest betqeen 2 pieces of IP.
BTW I would assert that the Open Source community is also part of the IP community - it just chooses to be more liberal with its IP - and it depends on IP law too. Now file sharing of protected materials is something else, as is the demand to control hardware, infect computers with rootkitspolice everything just in case there is illegal file sharing going on.
Still Looking for a Desktop Linux | Bayosphere: "So I just loaded Novell's SuSE Linux version 10 on my Thinkpad. All went well until I ran the online updates for the OS and various applications on the machine. That's when Firefox started popping up an error message box every time it loaded a new page. Reinstalling Firefox didn't help.
Someday -- maybe someday -- desktop Linux will just work. Not yet."
If the definition of "ready for the desktop" is a single app not working after install, then there is no OS ready for the desktop. I have had the misfortune of reinstalling a few OSs in my time, and they are all subject to problems, often a lot more severe thhan this example. I have to say that Firefox not working, is not a problem I have had ( so far).
I missed this one: The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, November 12, 2005: "Now I have to add Peter Drucker to the growing list of gurus I always wanted to meet, but never will. He died yesterday in Claremont, California, at 95."
I enjoyed his writings. I recall reading his book "Management" not long after I started work; then the company I worked for got a new Managing Director - he basically worked his way through that book to improve the firm.
Which Lord of the Rings race do you come from? Me, I'm a......
Numenorean
To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla
"Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog."
I now have to type in a "Word Verification" for any post; I hate to think what characteristics they mean:-( I would have thought the frequencies of posts would be too low.
Hopefully their human reviewer will see some other characterstics.
I just got back from attending the ECMDA conference. The city of Nuremberg is lovely ( well, I only saw the centre) - there is a walled city (much of it recently restored) , impressive Churches, and an Imperial palace. Much history - had a bad foot but managed to hop round the town once, but had to miss the official guided tour ( 90 minutes).
The conference was well organised and the conference hotel was very nice. No free wi-fi though:-( Some very interesting papers and workshops, and some not .... as with most conferences.
A good crowd of people, some to meet for the first time, some to meet again, some to meet for the first time face-to-face.
Good fun - looking forward to next years in Bilbao.
Alloy Homepage: "The Alloy Analyzer is a tool developed by the Software Design Group for analyzing models written in Alloy, a simple structural modeling language based on first-order logic. The tool can generate instances of invariants, simulate the execution of operations (even those defined implicitly), and check user-specified properties of a model."
I love the analogy, and am always keen to see applications of contracts.
A very sad situation:Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online: "Jo Williams, Mencap's Chief Executive said: 'It is hard for anyone to imagine the extent of the caring role that families face. It goes above and beyond what anyone would consider acceptable. But, they do not want praise or rewards - just appropriate help and support to enable them to go on caring.
'We want local authorities to urgently address families' needs; planning services with families themselves, deciding how to spend money on short breaks and monitoring the impact on families. We want the government to do more to monitor what local authorities are doing and to respond to growing demand by putting more money into services.'"
I wonder why this case had to come to court? To even imagine that a custodial sentence was appropriate beggars belief. And why, in a country which spends so much on care, do some people just get left to struggle on alone?
