I demand you withdraw your ill conceived and insulting comment. How dare you sully the good name of Banana Republics everywhere.
But seriously folks, the joke of American "Democracy" is only fresh in the US. You lost your freedom years ago, its only now that you are finding out. Outside the US we have been shaking out heads with dismay for years; if only because our own Governments have been using the US as an example.
Flying planes into buildings is terrorism. Blowing yourself up along with innocent people is terrorism. Hacking into poorly secured computers was at worst copyright infringement and access without permission.
Second, regardless of the crime this individual lives in the UK, and should be tried by UK law. Being tried by US law sets a very dangerous precedent.
I am an author. I don't live on the proceeds, and to be honest it is a rare book which makes huge volumes of cash. The point is that books that make money over the long term are very very rare, and that books this popular earn a huge proportion of their revenues from the first five years.
The same applies to music and movies. Movies and music which survive more than five years tend to enter our culture. At some point the marginal value to the original author is far less than the value of the work to society. The original Star Wars is now a cultural element, and we should be able to derive stories from it. When we can't do that we are in effect killing our own cultural ownership in our shared history.
Imagine if all the concepts that George Lucas stole ideas from were also strongly protected. Taking ideas and building on them is what humans have done since the species left the trees; before writing. We cannot permit our very culture to be stolen from us.
Oh, please. This analogy gets brought up into every single fucking IP discussion on this site, and it is always way the hell off base. There is no brave new industry that is making something better than what the software makers are making now... people are just taking what they make for free. When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy. Until then, stuff it, because it doesn't apply one bit.
Whats changed isn't the music itself, its the means of delivering it. The traditional delivery mediums used by music companies were supplanted by the web. Instead of taking advantage of web delivery they have done everything they can to undermine it in order to maintain their traditional network, such as music stores.
Artists are now realizing that they don't really need music companies, and that the value add music companies provide isn't worth the 90% of revenue the music industry earns. Just like the car the Internet is a disruptive technology. It has changed the face of how we interact.
No longer are we simply passive consumers of commercial offerings. This is great news because it will mean a great many more artists will be able to make a living, as they money can be distributed to artists rather than the middle men.
ISP based copyright license deals will eventually mean that this temporary legal glitch will be resolved. However, it will probably result in the major music labels being killed off.
I'm sure you are having visions of a pointy haired boss who is technically illiterate. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a 17 year veteran coder who has developed my management and leadership skills because people with both technical and leadership skills are badly needed.
The language used by a software project is a core strategic decision. That isn't to say that developers have no say in the decision, just that as manager the buck stops with you when it comes to making deadlines and ensuring quality. Just because you can hack up something quickly in Perl doesn't mean it is appropriate to be developing long term products in the same language.
I'm sick of self important developers taking the attitude that other developers are dumb because they write code which can be easily understood. Clarity in coding is a sign of clarity of thought. Code is an expression of your ideas and concepts. It is a form of communication not only the the computer but also to those who maintain the code after you.
To me good quality coding; that is being clear and maintainable with good unit tests; is about taking pride in your profession and your work.
Sometimes management are clueless, but don't assume so just because they don't believe the language you find the most fun to write in is the best for the business.
As a software manager what i'm interested in is developing quality applications. The biggest cost in software is maintenance. If a language is difficult to read by the original author it will be impossible to maintain by anyone else.
I would consider Python because it encourages good design and readable code. Professionally I use Java because I can easily hire people who use it, and it also encourages good design and readable code, if a tad verbose.
Perl is very consise, but also difficult to read. It turns into a maintenance nightmare, and there are far fewer developer who know Perl.
Python is far better; it is more consise than Java, has similar OO features, is readable. It isn't quite up to replacing Java, but has impressed me and many other Java coders.
Oh, and I have no sympathy for coders who think they are so cool being able to code in ways nobody else understands. I would rather see a slightly slower algorithm thats clear than a fast one that is unmaintainable.
Complex code is the enemy of quality, as is premature optimization.
Authors get between ten and twenty percent of revenue from books. The obvious thing to do for Universities is to introduce a 'library access' fee, and perhaps add it to University based internet access fees. Make the fee about 10% of what it would normally cost students to buy all their books. You can license the books under the creative commons - non commercial to encourage sharing, but the revenue is really linked to University access.
Now, take a large percentage of that money and redistribute it to the authors based on how many times a book is downloaded or accessed. Now the authors get income from their work, but the books themselves are still free.
I don't feel we can ignore the element of authors being compensated for their work; but the heavy handed approach of DRM and restriction cannot be the way forward.
Not only is IIS not a cash cow, its not a revenue generator at all. Any attempt to use IIS to break standards would be seen for what it was, so any strategic value of IIS is mute.
That leaves Microsoft gulping down development costs on something that earns them zero revenue. Not smart. If they are smart they will incorporate Apache into Windows Server. That isn't evil, its exactly what Apache wants according to its license.
The big question is whether Microsoft will fork Apache. I don't believe they will. The reason is simple; if they fork they will lose the primary benefit - a community of developers doing their own work for them. No doubt they will add some cute GUI front end applications to make it look like IIS, and allow.Net to work seamlessly as it does on IIS, but what they won't do is fork core Apache.
Of course, they may not do much work on core Apache either, leaving that to the Apache team. But that isn't evil either.
Bottom line here is that I've always known Microsoft will have to come to terms with Open Source. Its painful for them, and there is no doubt huge argument about how to deal with it.
Fighting Open Source may work in the short term to slow adoption, but long term it is only delaying the inevitable. A more constructive strategy would be accepting a reduction in market share and finding a place in the market that is stable in the long term.
For example, Microsoft has no real interest in operating system kernels. Any money they spend on new kernels is a waste when there are free alternatives. The value they deliver to the market is a well known API. Applications written for Windows will run on Windows, and users need not consider what Windowing system they use, or what packages are installed.
What might be easier is using Firefox rather than IE. IE earns no cash, and Firefox is getting a better reputation. Why bother to continue development of a browser that competes with free?
Of course, that doesn't mean they will do the same with Office - as this earns them substantial revenue. But even here OpenOffice will no doubt erode their market share in the long term. I don't expect you will see MS supporting OpenOffice!
In summary, don't expect MS to be nice when it comes to their core earners, but they might cooperate when it comes to cost centers.
Worrying about loss of hydrogen to space is probably a little too soon. The real issue is that Hydrogen is terribly impractical as a fuel. It makes far more sense to sunlight into a liquid fuel that can be easily handled.
The real problem with batteries right now is that for long journeys you will need to charge up for long periods. Petrol is easy, you can fill your car with several hours worth of fuel in a couple of minutes. You can't do that with batteries.
Hydrogen has its own problems, primarily storage and containment. It would make sense to use a liquid fuel with fuel cells, and have them charge a large capacitor. A car uses the most power when accelerating, so rather than making a fuel cell capable of providing sufficient peak power you can use a capacitor to store enough for a minute or so of peak acceleration, and enough power to sustain cruising speed up a reasonable gradient.
What about making methanol or alcohol directly from sunlight? I think the solution will ideally be a combination of biological and electrical.
The point is that there is a cost to having a multiplicity of development environments. It makes it very difficult to move developers to other projects, and thus tends to increase headcount. Uncontrolled use of technology means that developers can implement systems with little oversight from other developers, as other developers do not have the skills to do proper review.
I am not saying that we should decide to use only one language, but a small subset of languages and skills seems to be able to get most jobs done. Supporting languages and tools needs to consider more than just technical considerations. What is the availability of skills in the job market? What kind of vendor and community support is there? What kind of productivity can be expected? Will the technology be supported in future, or will we be left with a white elephant?
This wasn't a case of a little good humoured teasing. This was a case of somebody taking deliberate and malicious actions with forethought and planning with the express purpose of causing extreme personal distress to somebody. The person involved should be held responsible for the outcome, aka imprisoned and her kids taken into care. The only issue here is that the authorities don't have the laws needed to prosecute other than this lame fraud law.
Just to point out, Solar panel drapes are probably the worst idea for saving power. First of all if you open the drapes you don't collect power. When will you want to open them? On sunny days! How much will they cost? If they are anything like normal panels they will currently take about 20 years to break even cost wise. And that calculation is based on having solar panels soaking up every minute of available sunshine. Also you generally need direct sunlight on cells, not just reflected light. What about the wear and tear on electrical connections to something that has to move?
This is another silly idea being sold to those who want to LOOK green. Here is an idea to be more green - street lights that are motion activated; thus turning off when not required, saving huge amounts of electrical power.
How about having large scale solar plants that DON'T use inefficient PV cells. Have them produce electricity into the grid, or convert it to methane or perhaps methanol so we can use it in cars without converting them. How about putting several billion dollars into battery development, and - force companies who are preventing the use of batteries for electric cars via patents to license their patents at a reasonable rate.
Short term actions to reduce pump prices will simply delay the inevitable. Governments need to start INVESTING in carbon emission reduction rather than using it as an excuse to raise taxes.
Actually I think this is a great example of why Open Source works. Users are the ultimate fitness function, so when programmers deviate from what the users want another project can start up using the same code base and go off in another direction. Source code is like the DNA of programs.
Is it efficient? Well no its not. Unlike commercial software where the fitness function is profitability which is linked but not a direct relationship to user satisfaction Open Source software is directly linked to user satisfaction. Unlike commercial software there is usually no boss to tell you what you should be developing.
There is one issue however. Tradisionally the user of open source has also been a developer. Developers are not typical people, they tend to have a certain personality, and prefer control over ease of use. Most users don't need or want the same level of control, but because the developers have the control they drive what gets adopted.
However when the gap between user and developer becomes too large evolutionary pressure will simply mean there is a fork - like this one - and the situation corrected naturally.
The Open Source community can never have some kind of authoritarian leadership that can command developers to take notice of users. They do what they want to do, and that is freedom we should cherish.
A few years ago I taught a class in Java. I program in Java professionally, so I know it is a powerful language. In learning Delphi I developed Object Orientated skills which easily transferred to Java. The main principle of Java is protecting the developer from themselves, with strict typing and automatic memory management. The main problem with C/C++ is programmers stuffing up memory allocation. Right now I manage a project that has C++ code, and we still deal with unexplained fatal crashes and such like. Anyhooo....
I thought it would be good to teach Java. Problem is that you are forced to make everything a class. That means you have the choice of either teaching all the principles of objects in the very first lesson - even before variables, or telling your class to ignore all the cruft at the top while you try to teach the basics. Even then basic things like keyboard input and outputs require in depth explanations of the Java API. I spent most of my time trying to explain why everything was so complex in Java.
Bottom line; the best language to teach programming is Python in my experience. You can write a one line hello world easily and teach all the basic principles of programming. I don't agree that languages like C should be taught first, as they tend to overwhelm students with details of the language rather than the principles. Python certainly isn't an endpoint. A professional developer should know several languages, even if they are not 'commercially proficient'.
The problem with Python, to be brutally honest is the poor quality of the documentation. I'm not talking about core Python so much as libraries. Often I get libraries and then spend ages trying to find references about how to use them.
If a customer has encountered a serious issue and is unable to operate, getting a hot fix out ASAP to them is sensible. Turn around time might be in the region of 48 hours. By hot fix I mean fixing the specific issue only compared to the state of the source when the last release was shipped - aka the maintenance branch for the last release.
In terms of period between each formal release; that will depend, but we try to have complete iterations (release or not) every three weeks. Ideally it should be two weeks, but we don't seem to do it on that time frame. Basically its one week of planning and design, two weeks of implementation.
Regardless, there is no 'correct' way - only the way that provides best value to the customer. If the customer can't use your software thats a *bad thing* - and you better fix it or they won't be your customer much longer.
Its funny enough that IBM are actually doing what we have joked about for so long. However, what will be far funnier is watching all the patent trolls squirm as they realize that opposing the patent by citing prior art is the equivalent of an admission of guilt as patent trolls. If they don't oppose they are open to patent infringement claims. If they oppose they publicly identify themselves as patent trolls. Laughing my ass off!
The thing is that you could enter a deal with YouTube in which ad dollars are given to you. However, unlike rolling your own site you don't have to buy thousands of servers, you don't have to manage the infrastructure, and you get to be in the place where a whole heap of people are already viewing video online. Your viewers get a better experience and feel free, while you profit. The key to the online world is community. If we don't feel that there is community around a site we won't be interested.
That said, increasingly YouTube has been censoring content critical of Bush and the war. It seems that their 'brave' efforts to stop people posting video's damaging to The Administration have been somewhat in vein, as the video's keep getting uploaded, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to support a video site that claims to allow uploads and then closes accounts which upload uncopyrighted material critical of The Administration.
The role of the OSI is to certify licenses that comply with the OSI guidelines for open source licenses. I understand that people don't trust Microsoft. Either do I. However, to reject a license based on who is proposing it rather than the content of the license would put lie to "open" in open source. Eventually Microsoft will adapt, and that will involve working with the open source community. They will also continue to compete.
Microsoft isn't like the Borg; there isn't one hive mind but rather thousands of individuals, some to are more friendly to open source than others. This creates internal frictions within the company in terms of determining strategy. Perhaps we should be supporting elements who are trying to move towards open source? Some have tried to make the point that Microsoft are undermining the GPL with this license, but if they wanted to do that they just need to make code available under a BSD style license.
This license is far more interesting, in that it deals with the patent infringement issue. After reading this license and separating the fact that it was prepared by Microsoft from the content, I feel that it is well written and worthwhile. There are fights we need to win against Microsoft in the area of file formats and their patent infringement claims. However this is not a good reason to reject good licenses.
I'm not into Buddhism, so cannot comment about whether winning is not of it. However in martial arts winning is the goal. What I should be clear on is what "winning" in this context means. It means bringing freedom to people, showing them that there is a way that we can allow creative freedom, and not lock the right to be creative away in corporations. It doesn't mean bringing down Microsoft. Putting Microsoft at the centre of our definition of "winning" gives them far too much credit.
Today our freedoms are under attack, with increased "security", control of media concentrated in a few corporations, our politicians giving away basic rights, encouraging torture, and making a mockery of democracy. Open source is growing out of a very old concept; Freedom. Stallman understands the importance of freedom, but insists on assigning it to software. Open source does not give software freedom; it gives people freedom! Now we see the creative commons, sites like flickr, youtube, myspace, and yes Slashdot are growing all because they embrace freedom of creativity. This new freedom is threatening the old order. Music companies, traditional media, movie companies, all sources of traditional creative enterprise are giving way to creative individuals empowered by the global network.
Microsoft are but a small part of a far larger vista.
In martial arts one must keep ones mind clear and focused, free of hatred and emotion. Open source ideology is about embracing freedom, not hating Microsoft. Sure Microsoft are currently a barrier to freedom and by no means should we embrace them like long lost children just because they say something or act a little enlightened. But by the same token we should not shoot friends in the head just because the deviate from our ideology.
By letting an irrational hatred of Microsoft sour the relationship between Novell and the community we face a danger that the newly confirmed copyright ownership Novell has in Unix will be used by them the same way SCO did. Instead of finding a way to educate Novell we have taken a extreme and non productive approach which will tend to alienate not only Novell but any other companies considering working with the open source community.
The fact is that there are many companies out there which may make deals with Microsoft for their own reasons. We cannot expect companies to make a black and white decision about what "side" they are on. IBM for example is acting in its own self interest amd while that self interest is in the interests of the community all is well. But lets not deceive ourselves that they would fight for open source to the bitter end. They would settle. They would make a deal if it meant survival.
Novell may have been in a similar situation, and while I don't like these deals being done its a reality for companies in a way that it isn't for individuals. Microsoft won't sue you for personal use of a patent without a license, but they will sue Red Hat into the ground given the chance. Red Hat may yet need to make a deal if Linux does end up infringing, even if the Linux community can remove the infringement in quick order.
In truth Microsoft is USING our hatred against us. Already the Novell deal may have driven a wedge in the open source community between GPL 2 and GPL 3. Once again we see reactionary actions being driven by Microsoft to their advantage. Linus sees that hating Microsoft is no way forward. We need to examine, evalaute and develop strategies which allow us to define the ball game. Microsoft won when they turned the conversation to Total Cost of Ownership. They won when they got CEO's concerned about legal issues around Linux.
To win we must be more clever, less reactionary, and keep a clear head with a focus on what important; bringing open source to the world.
In the book "The Case for Mars" the case is made for a return trip being made directly from earth. The premise is that we can use a rocket much like the original Saturn. The principle would be to deliver a return ship on he surface of Mars first and have it refuel itself using the carbon dioxide present on mars along with a small nuclear generator - or possibly solar panels for those worried about nuclear generators in space. Once the first mission is a success and there is a viable return spacecraft sitting on mars you can send the humans.
We definitely have the technology to build a spacecraft. We have the technology to live in space for the length required, and have done so in earth orbit. The amount of money is in order of US$50 billion, which compared to the hundreds of billions spent on Iraq is good value for money. Hopefully a change of government in the US will see a more positive, progressive administration that is concerned more about developing technology and exploration than military actions.
Having been in the open source community for some time I can say that I actually find people with a real passion for open source prefer to take the high road as a matter of honour. Why would Linus steal a copy of Windows? Open source advocates believe in ownership of our own cultural artifacts as it relates to software. While I can't say that we have a specific interest in helping the RIAA or MPAA there is no reason to believe open source advocates are any more inclined to download music and videos any more that the average joe.
What I do see is the community wanting to take back its own cultural artifacts. What I mean by this is that all popular culture appears to be owned by some corporate. You can't record a song (in your own voice) that you heard on the radio, you can't participate without paying up dollars to owners. I tend to seek out indie music now. I think Apple have the right idea; make music available to people legally at a reasonable price and they will be willing.
However, lets get rid of the big labels taking 90% of the proceeds and help the artists and songwriters get the lion share as they deserve.
Slashdot Mirror
I demand you withdraw your ill conceived and insulting comment. How dare you sully the good name of Banana Republics everywhere.
But seriously folks, the joke of American "Democracy" is only fresh in the US. You lost your freedom years ago, its only now that you are finding out. Outside the US we have been shaking out heads with dismay for years; if only because our own Governments have been using the US as an example.
Flying planes into buildings is terrorism. Blowing yourself up along with innocent people is terrorism. Hacking into poorly secured computers was at worst copyright infringement and access without permission.
Second, regardless of the crime this individual lives in the UK, and should be tried by UK law. Being tried by US law sets a very dangerous precedent.
Computer: I am the Counsel 9000. Please enumerate your issues for analysis.
Astronaut: I'm depressed. I want to kill myself.
Computer: Issue number 1, depression, resolution is consumption of depression relief medication.
Computer automatically dispenses anti-depression medication.
Astronaut: Thanks, I hope this will help.
Computer: Issue number 2, terminate life, resolution is evacuation of cabin atmosphere into space.
Astronaut: Wai....
I am an author. I don't live on the proceeds, and to be honest it is a rare book which makes huge volumes of cash. The point is that books that make money over the long term are very very rare, and that books this popular earn a huge proportion of their revenues from the first five years.
The same applies to music and movies. Movies and music which survive more than five years tend to enter our culture. At some point the marginal value to the original author is far less than the value of the work to society. The original Star Wars is now a cultural element, and we should be able to derive stories from it. When we can't do that we are in effect killing our own cultural ownership in our shared history.
Imagine if all the concepts that George Lucas stole ideas from were also strongly protected. Taking ideas and building on them is what humans have done since the species left the trees; before writing. We cannot permit our very culture to be stolen from us.
Oh, please. This analogy gets brought up into every single fucking IP discussion on this site, and it is always way the hell off base. There is no brave new industry that is making something better than what the software makers are making now... people are just taking what they make for free. When someone is making a new type of thing which obsoletes software, get back to me, and then you can use the buggy whip analogy. Until then, stuff it, because it doesn't apply one bit.
Whats changed isn't the music itself, its the means of delivering it. The traditional delivery mediums used by music companies were supplanted by the web. Instead of taking advantage of web delivery they have done everything they can to undermine it in order to maintain their traditional network, such as music stores.
Artists are now realizing that they don't really need music companies, and that the value add music companies provide isn't worth the 90% of revenue the music industry earns. Just like the car the Internet is a disruptive technology. It has changed the face of how we interact.
No longer are we simply passive consumers of commercial offerings. This is great news because it will mean a great many more artists will be able to make a living, as they money can be distributed to artists rather than the middle men.
ISP based copyright license deals will eventually mean that this temporary legal glitch will be resolved. However, it will probably result in the major music labels being killed off.
I'm sure you are having visions of a pointy haired boss who is technically illiterate. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a 17 year veteran coder who has developed my management and leadership skills because people with both technical and leadership skills are badly needed.
The language used by a software project is a core strategic decision. That isn't to say that developers have no say in the decision, just that as manager the buck stops with you when it comes to making deadlines and ensuring quality. Just because you can hack up something quickly in Perl doesn't mean it is appropriate to be developing long term products in the same language.
I'm sick of self important developers taking the attitude that other developers are dumb because they write code which can be easily understood. Clarity in coding is a sign of clarity of thought. Code is an expression of your ideas and concepts. It is a form of communication not only the the computer but also to those who maintain the code after you.
To me good quality coding; that is being clear and maintainable with good unit tests; is about taking pride in your profession and your work.
Sometimes management are clueless, but don't assume so just because they don't believe the language you find the most fun to write in is the best for the business.
As a software manager what i'm interested in is developing quality applications. The biggest cost in software is maintenance. If a language is difficult to read by the original author it will be impossible to maintain by anyone else.
I would consider Python because it encourages good design and readable code. Professionally I use Java because I can easily hire people who use it, and it also encourages good design and readable code, if a tad verbose.
Perl is very consise, but also difficult to read. It turns into a maintenance nightmare, and there are far fewer developer who know Perl.
Python is far better; it is more consise than Java, has similar OO features, is readable. It isn't quite up to replacing Java, but has impressed me and many other Java coders.
Oh, and I have no sympathy for coders who think they are so cool being able to code in ways nobody else understands. I would rather see a slightly slower algorithm thats clear than a fast one that is unmaintainable.
Complex code is the enemy of quality, as is premature optimization.
Authors get between ten and twenty percent of revenue from books. The obvious thing to do for Universities is to introduce a 'library access' fee, and perhaps add it to University based internet access fees. Make the fee about 10% of what it would normally cost students to buy all their books. You can license the books under the creative commons - non commercial to encourage sharing, but the revenue is really linked to University access.
Now, take a large percentage of that money and redistribute it to the authors based on how many times a book is downloaded or accessed. Now the authors get income from their work, but the books themselves are still free.
I don't feel we can ignore the element of authors being compensated for their work; but the heavy handed approach of DRM and restriction cannot be the way forward.
I for one welcome our new bacteriological overlords.
Not only is IIS not a cash cow, its not a revenue generator at all. Any attempt to use IIS to break standards would be seen for what it was, so any strategic value of IIS is mute.
That leaves Microsoft gulping down development costs on something that earns them zero revenue. Not smart. If they are smart they will incorporate Apache into Windows Server. That isn't evil, its exactly what Apache wants according to its license.
The big question is whether Microsoft will fork Apache. I don't believe they will. The reason is simple; if they fork they will lose the primary benefit - a community of developers doing their own work for them. No doubt they will add some cute GUI front end applications to make it look like IIS, and allow .Net to work seamlessly as it does on IIS, but what they won't do is fork core Apache.
Of course, they may not do much work on core Apache either, leaving that to the Apache team. But that isn't evil either.
Bottom line here is that I've always known Microsoft will have to come to terms with Open Source. Its painful for them, and there is no doubt huge argument about how to deal with it.
Fighting Open Source may work in the short term to slow adoption, but long term it is only delaying the inevitable. A more constructive strategy would be accepting a reduction in market share and finding a place in the market that is stable in the long term.
For example, Microsoft has no real interest in operating system kernels. Any money they spend on new kernels is a waste when there are free alternatives. The value they deliver to the market is a well known API. Applications written for Windows will run on Windows, and users need not consider what Windowing system they use, or what packages are installed.
What might be easier is using Firefox rather than IE. IE earns no cash, and Firefox is getting a better reputation. Why bother to continue development of a browser that competes with free?
Of course, that doesn't mean they will do the same with Office - as this earns them substantial revenue. But even here OpenOffice will no doubt erode their market share in the long term. I don't expect you will see MS supporting OpenOffice!
In summary, don't expect MS to be nice when it comes to their core earners, but they might cooperate when it comes to cost centers.
Worrying about loss of hydrogen to space is probably a little too soon. The real issue is that Hydrogen is terribly impractical as a fuel. It makes far more sense to sunlight into a liquid fuel that can be easily handled.
The real problem with batteries right now is that for long journeys you will need to charge up for long periods. Petrol is easy, you can fill your car with several hours worth of fuel in a couple of minutes. You can't do that with batteries.
Hydrogen has its own problems, primarily storage and containment. It would make sense to use a liquid fuel with fuel cells, and have them charge a large capacitor. A car uses the most power when accelerating, so rather than making a fuel cell capable of providing sufficient peak power you can use a capacitor to store enough for a minute or so of peak acceleration, and enough power to sustain cruising speed up a reasonable gradient.
What about making methanol or alcohol directly from sunlight? I think the solution will ideally be a combination of biological and electrical.
The point is that there is a cost to having a multiplicity of development environments. It makes it very difficult to move developers to other projects, and thus tends to increase headcount. Uncontrolled use of technology means that developers can implement systems with little oversight from other developers, as other developers do not have the skills to do proper review.
I am not saying that we should decide to use only one language, but a small subset of languages and skills seems to be able to get most jobs done. Supporting languages and tools needs to consider more than just technical considerations. What is the availability of skills in the job market? What kind of vendor and community support is there? What kind of productivity can be expected? Will the technology be supported in future, or will we be left with a white elephant?
This wasn't a case of a little good humoured teasing. This was a case of somebody taking deliberate and malicious actions with forethought and planning with the express purpose of causing extreme personal distress to somebody. The person involved should be held responsible for the outcome, aka imprisoned and her kids taken into care. The only issue here is that the authorities don't have the laws needed to prosecute other than this lame fraud law.
Just to point out, Solar panel drapes are probably the worst idea for saving power. First of all if you open the drapes you don't collect power. When will you want to open them? On sunny days! How much will they cost? If they are anything like normal panels they will currently take about 20 years to break even cost wise. And that calculation is based on having solar panels soaking up every minute of available sunshine. Also you generally need direct sunlight on cells, not just reflected light. What about the wear and tear on electrical connections to something that has to move?
This is another silly idea being sold to those who want to LOOK green. Here is an idea to be more green - street lights that are motion activated; thus turning off when not required, saving huge amounts of electrical power.
How about having large scale solar plants that DON'T use inefficient PV cells. Have them produce electricity into the grid, or convert it to methane or perhaps methanol so we can use it in cars without converting them. How about putting several billion dollars into battery development, and - force companies who are preventing the use of batteries for electric cars via patents to license their patents at a reasonable rate.
Short term actions to reduce pump prices will simply delay the inevitable. Governments need to start INVESTING in carbon emission reduction rather than using it as an excuse to raise taxes.
Actually I think this is a great example of why Open Source works. Users are the ultimate fitness function, so when programmers deviate from what the users want another project can start up using the same code base and go off in another direction. Source code is like the DNA of programs.
Is it efficient? Well no its not. Unlike commercial software where the fitness function is profitability which is linked but not a direct relationship to user satisfaction Open Source software is directly linked to user satisfaction.
Unlike commercial software there is usually no boss to tell you what you should be developing.
There is one issue however. Tradisionally the user of open source has also been a developer. Developers are not typical people, they tend to have a certain personality, and prefer control over ease of use. Most users don't need or want the same level of control, but because the developers have the control they drive what gets adopted.
However when the gap between user and developer becomes too large evolutionary pressure will simply mean there is a fork - like this one - and the situation corrected naturally.
The Open Source community can never have some kind of authoritarian leadership that can command developers to take notice of users. They do what they want to do, and that is freedom we should cherish.
Also, its 300 scientists that must be paid a very low wage.
A few years ago I taught a class in Java. I program in Java professionally, so I know it is a powerful language. In learning Delphi I developed Object Orientated skills which easily transferred to Java. The main principle of Java is protecting the developer from themselves, with strict typing and automatic memory management. The main problem with C/C++ is programmers stuffing up memory allocation. Right now I manage a project that has C++ code, and we still deal with unexplained fatal crashes and such like. Anyhooo....
I thought it would be good to teach Java. Problem is that you are forced to make everything a class. That means you have the choice of either teaching all the principles of objects in the very first lesson - even before variables, or telling your class to ignore all the cruft at the top while you try to teach the basics. Even then basic things like keyboard input and outputs require in depth explanations of the Java API. I spent most of my time trying to explain why everything was so complex in Java.
Bottom line; the best language to teach programming is Python in my experience. You can write a one line hello world easily and teach all the basic principles of programming. I don't agree that languages like C should be taught first, as they tend to overwhelm students with details of the language rather than the principles. Python certainly isn't an endpoint. A professional developer should know several languages, even if they are not 'commercially proficient'.
The problem with Python, to be brutally honest is the poor quality of the documentation. I'm not talking about core Python so much as libraries. Often I get libraries and then spend ages trying to find references about how to use them.
If a customer has encountered a serious issue and is unable to operate, getting a hot fix out ASAP to them is sensible. Turn around time might be in the region of 48 hours. By hot fix I mean fixing the specific issue only compared to the state of the source when the last release was shipped - aka the maintenance branch for the last release.
In terms of period between each formal release; that will depend, but we try to have complete iterations (release or not) every three weeks. Ideally it should be two weeks, but we don't seem to do it on that time frame. Basically its one week of planning and design, two weeks of implementation.
Regardless, there is no 'correct' way - only the way that provides best value to the customer. If the customer can't use your software thats a *bad thing* - and you better fix it or they won't be your customer much longer.
Its funny enough that IBM are actually doing what we have joked about for so long. However, what will be far funnier is watching all the patent trolls squirm as they realize that opposing the patent by citing prior art is the equivalent of an admission of guilt as patent trolls. If they don't oppose they are open to patent infringement claims. If they oppose they publicly identify themselves as patent trolls. Laughing my ass off!
The thing is that you could enter a deal with YouTube in which ad dollars are given to you. However, unlike rolling your own site you don't have to buy thousands of servers, you don't have to manage the infrastructure, and you get to be in the place where a whole heap of people are already viewing video online. Your viewers get a better experience and feel free, while you profit. The key to the online world is community. If we don't feel that there is community around a site we won't be interested.
That said, increasingly YouTube has been censoring content critical of Bush and the war. It seems that their 'brave' efforts to stop people posting video's damaging to The Administration have been somewhat in vein, as the video's keep getting uploaded, but to be honest I'm not sure I want to support a video site that claims to allow uploads and then closes accounts which upload uncopyrighted material critical of The Administration.
The role of the OSI is to certify licenses that comply with the OSI guidelines for open source licenses. I understand that people don't trust Microsoft. Either do I. However, to reject a license based on who is proposing it rather than the content of the license would put lie to "open" in open source. Eventually Microsoft will adapt, and that will involve working with the open source community. They will also continue to compete.
Microsoft isn't like the Borg; there isn't one hive mind but rather thousands of individuals, some to are more friendly to open source than others. This creates internal frictions within the company in terms of determining strategy. Perhaps we should be supporting elements who are trying to move towards open source? Some have tried to make the point that Microsoft are undermining the GPL with this license, but if they wanted to do that they just need to make code available under a BSD style license.
This license is far more interesting, in that it deals with the patent infringement issue. After reading this license and separating the fact that it was prepared by Microsoft from the content, I feel that it is well written and worthwhile. There are fights we need to win against Microsoft in the area of file formats and their patent infringement claims. However this is not a good reason to reject good licenses.
I'm not into Buddhism, so cannot comment about whether winning is not of it. However in martial arts winning is the goal. What I should be clear on is what "winning" in this context means. It means bringing freedom to people, showing them that there is a way that we can allow creative freedom, and not lock the right to be creative away in corporations. It doesn't mean bringing down Microsoft. Putting Microsoft at the centre of our definition of "winning" gives them far too much credit.
Today our freedoms are under attack, with increased "security", control of media concentrated in a few corporations, our politicians giving away basic rights, encouraging torture, and making a mockery of democracy. Open source is growing out of a very old concept; Freedom. Stallman understands the importance of freedom, but insists on assigning it to software. Open source does not give software freedom; it gives people freedom! Now we see the creative commons, sites like flickr, youtube, myspace, and yes Slashdot are growing all because they embrace freedom of creativity. This new freedom is threatening the old order. Music companies, traditional media, movie companies, all sources of traditional creative enterprise are giving way to creative individuals empowered by the global network.
Microsoft are but a small part of a far larger vista.
In martial arts one must keep ones mind clear and focused, free of hatred and emotion. Open source ideology is about embracing freedom, not hating Microsoft. Sure Microsoft are currently a barrier to freedom and by no means should we embrace them like long lost children just because they say something or act a little enlightened. But by the same token we should not shoot friends in the head just because the deviate from our ideology.
By letting an irrational hatred of Microsoft sour the relationship between Novell and the community we face a danger that the newly confirmed copyright ownership Novell has in Unix will be used by them the same way SCO did. Instead of finding a way to educate Novell we have taken a extreme and non productive approach which will tend to alienate not only Novell but any other companies considering working with the open source community.
The fact is that there are many companies out there which may make deals with Microsoft for their own reasons. We cannot expect companies to make a black and white decision about what "side" they are on. IBM for example is acting in its own self interest amd while that self interest is in the interests of the community all is well. But lets not deceive ourselves that they would fight for open source to the bitter end. They would settle. They would make a deal if it meant survival.
Novell may have been in a similar situation, and while I don't like these deals being done its a reality for companies in a way that it isn't for individuals. Microsoft won't sue you for personal use of a patent without a license, but they will sue Red Hat into the ground given the chance. Red Hat may yet need to make a deal if Linux does end up infringing, even if the Linux community can remove the infringement in quick order.
In truth Microsoft is USING our hatred against us. Already the Novell deal may have driven a wedge in the open source community between GPL 2 and GPL 3. Once again we see reactionary actions being driven by Microsoft to their advantage. Linus sees that hating Microsoft is no way forward. We need to examine, evalaute and develop strategies which allow us to define the ball game. Microsoft won when they turned the conversation to Total Cost of Ownership. They won when they got CEO's concerned about legal issues around Linux.
To win we must be more clever, less reactionary, and keep a clear head with a focus on what important; bringing open source to the world.
In the book "The Case for Mars" the case is made for a return trip being made directly from earth. The premise is that we can use a rocket much like the original Saturn. The principle would be to deliver a return ship on he surface of Mars first and have it refuel itself using the carbon dioxide present on mars along with a small nuclear generator - or possibly solar panels for those worried about nuclear generators in space. Once the first mission is a success and there is a viable return spacecraft sitting on mars you can send the humans.
We definitely have the technology to build a spacecraft. We have the technology to live in space for the length required, and have done so in earth orbit. The amount of money is in order of US$50 billion, which compared to the hundreds of billions spent on Iraq is good value for money. Hopefully a change of government in the US will see a more positive, progressive administration that is concerned more about developing technology and exploration than military actions.
Having been in the open source community for some time I can say that I actually find people with a real passion for open source prefer to take the high road as a matter of honour. Why would Linus steal a copy of Windows? Open source advocates believe in ownership of our own cultural artifacts as it relates to software. While I can't say that we have a specific interest in helping the RIAA or MPAA there is no reason to believe open source advocates are any more inclined to download music and videos any more that the average joe.
What I do see is the community wanting to take back its own cultural artifacts. What I mean by this is that all popular culture appears to be owned by some corporate. You can't record a song (in your own voice) that you heard on the radio, you can't participate without paying up dollars to owners. I tend to seek out indie music now. I think Apple have the right idea; make music available to people legally at a reasonable price and they will be willing.
However, lets get rid of the big labels taking 90% of the proceeds and help the artists and songwriters get the lion share as they deserve.