A little over a month ago, I outlined how I would like to see the feed parser reorganized.  I’ve now put a little meat on the bones, in the form of running code.  Not just for the feed parser, but also for Planet.  I also did it all in Ruby, so I named this little experiment Mars.  Warning: this version is 0.0.1.  It just barely runs end-to-end.  Feed it real data, and it will choke on some of it.  But it can now produce partial results.

Inventory:

config

To keep things compatible, I ported the parsing logic from Python’s ConfigParser to Ruby.  Once parsed, the results are accessed as a Hash.  Eventually, I’ll provide Planet specific logic, like defaults, in this module

fido

Fido fetches (get it?) feeds.  It caches, follows redirects, times out, handles HTTP status codes, and compression/zip.  It also distributes work across multiple threads.

xmlparser

This module will use one of four XML parsers, and return the result as a REXML document.  If installed, it will use the fast and standards compliant expat or libxml2 parsers.  If neither are installed, it will use the slower and less compliant (to this day, it still parses <a>&</a> without error).  In all REXML isn’t too bad... as long as you depend on it for serialization or deserialization or XPath or expect quick turnaround on bug fixes or responses on their mailing list.  In the event the chosen parser fails to parse the document, the HTML5lib liberal XML parser will be used, and a bozo flag will be set on the document itself.

Transmogrify

With RSS, there often are several ways to express the same concept (shades of TMTOWTDI?).  Atom aspires to Python’s philosophy of There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.  This module is clearly opinionated software in that it will transmogrify feeds which use less obvious constructs into more obvious ones.

sift

Sift will filter out impurities and break down HTML into elements than can be iterated over.

forgiving_uri

This was imported from Bob Aman’s GentleCMS.  I need to look into Addressible (also from Bob Aman) to see if it is a better alternative.

spider

Spider orchestrates the retrieval and sifting of feeds, breaks the results into a set of entries, adds in source information, and caches the results.

splice

Splice will select the latest entries and produce a feed, and then process this information using a user supplied list of templates.  At the moment, the only templating language supported is XSLT.

style

If libxslt is installed, it will be used, otherwise an attempt is made to shell out to xsltproc.

harvest

Not yet integrated into the Mars proper, but used to drive the testing (and therefore the development) to date, this function dynamically constructs dictionaries from an Atom document.  This will undoubtedly be useful for other templating languages.  As everything is constructed dymanically, multiple date formats, mutiple serialization formats (think: dropping superfluous quotes on attributes and pesky things like explit paragraph end tags for HTML5 purists), and multiple aliases for any given element are no problem.

Also provided

planet

A small main program to drive the execution.

reconstitute

A demo program which will enable you to see what the parsed, transmogrified, and sifted version of any given feed looks like

test/feedparser

Runs a small portion (currently wellformed/(atom10|rss)/*.xml) of the feedparser test suite.  Check the comments to see what is not yet supported (mostly elements like cloud and textInput

All in all, I’m pleased with how compact this code is.  If anybody wants to join in on the fun, it is available as a bzr repository and there are plenty of test cases ready to be ported.

I've been talking to more people about FeedSync since I posted the v1 specification earlier this month. One common question people ask is about licensing terms for the spec, and what our thoughts are about FeedSync implementations.

We've always made it very clear that our goal is to have lots of independent implementations of FeedSync, and that we want to enable royalty-free use of the specification. The spec itself is released under a Creative Commons license; today we're also making the spec available under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. The full details are in this post on the FeedSync news blog. The short version is that the OSP makes life very easy for implementers. By placing the FeedSync spec under the OSP we're saying even more clearly that developers have royalty free use of the spec, now and in the future.

If you're new to the Open Specification Promise, they have a great page with an FAQ that explains the program in detail: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.aspx. The Feedback from Representatives of the Community link shows the response from several people in the open source community; it's been very positive. You can also take a look at our FeedSync FAQ for some specific questions and answers about FeedSync and OSP.

It's great to have an existing program like OSP that is such a good fit for FeedSync, and I've really appreciated the support from the folks in the Microsoft Interop group in bringing the FeedSync specification under the Open Specification Promise.

Our prognosticators have unveiled the second annual “IBM Next Five in Five” innovations that they believe have the potential to change way people work, live and play over the next five years.

First on the list: It’s easy being green after all, and you can save money doing it. There will be a range of “smart energy” technologies emerging to make it easier for you to manage your personal “carbon footprint.”

Hummers and unrechargeable batteries not included.

And no Kermit jokes, please.

Second, the way you drive will be completely different. In the next five years, there is a coming “wave of connectivity” between cars and the road that will change the way you drive and keep you more safer.

Forgot that cop in the traffic box: we’re talking intelligent agents and sensors along the highway that make it easier to navigate and avoid that idiot in the El Camino texting while driving.

“Helloooo, could you watch the road, please?!”

Third, you are what you eat, so you will know what you eat. Advancements in computer software and wireless radio sensor technologies (fancy phrase for RFID) are going to give you much more detailed information about the food you are buying and eating.

Do you really want to know the provenence of that “WhoppingBigBurgeraSaurus?” Really?

Fourth, your cell phone will be your wallet, ticket broker, concierge, bank, shopping buddy, and all around BFF. Everybody needs a Best Friend Forever, and why not your mobile device?

Hey, have you ever seen someone using their iPhone? Their Blackberry? Like really seen them?

The phrase “public display of mobile phone affection” comes to mind.

I hereby do not exonerate myself from said mobilerati.

And finally, five, doctors will get enhanced “super-senses” to better diagnose and treat you. Amen, brother. I have to say, I’ve had some pretty good medical experiences recently (knock on wood), between my sleep apnea surgery and my recent LASIK experience. I’ve never had better vision or slept better in my life.

But, according to our five in five projections, doctors will soon be able to see, hear, and understand our medical records in new ways: X-ray like vision to view medical images, super sensitive audio to hear the tiniest audio clue in your heart beat.

That’s all well and good, but will anybody be able to read their prescriptions, or get to your examination room before an hour passes buy? Now that would be innovation.

You can check out the video news release of the "Five in Five" here.

Technorati Tags: ibm_research, innovation, technology trends

I happen to hold a hard-won minority opinion about code bases. In particular I believe, quite staunchly I might add, that the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size…

People in the industry are very excited about various ideas that nominally help you deal with large code bases, such as IDEs that can manipulate code as “algebraic structures”, and search indexes, and so on. These people tend to view code bases much the way construction workers view dirt: they want great big machines that can move the dirt this way and that. There’s conservation of dirt at work: you can’t compress dirt, not much, so their solution set consists of various ways of shovelling the dirt around…

It’s just a mountain of dirt, and you just need big tools to move it around. The tools are exciting but the dirt is not…

The problem with Refactoring as applied to languages like Java, and this is really quite central to my thesis today, is that Refactoring makes the code base larger. I’d estimate that fewer than 5% of the standard refactorings supported by IDEs today make the code smaller. Refactoring is like cleaning your closet without being allowed to throw anything away. If you get a bigger closet, and put everything into nice labelled boxes, then your closet will unquestionably be more organized. But programmers tend to overlook the fact that spring cleaning works best when you’re willing to throw away stuff you don’t need…

Design Patterns was a mid-1990s book that provided twenty-three fancy new boxes for organizing your closet, plus an extensibility mechanism for defining new types of boxes. It was really great for those of us who were trying to organize jam-packed closets with almost no boxes, bags, shelves or drawers. All we had to do was remodel our houses to make the closets four times bigger, and suddenly we could make them as clean as a Nordstrom merchandise rack.

A design pattern isn’t a feature. A Factory isn’t a feature, nor is a Delegate nor a Proxy nor a Bridge. They “enable” features in a very loose sense, by providing nice boxes to hold the features in. But boxes and bags and shelves take space. And design patterns – at least most of the patterns in the “Gang of Four” book – make code bases get bigger. Tragically, the only GoF pattern that can help code get smaller (Interpreter) is utterly ignored by programmers who otherwise have the names of Design Patterns tattooed on their various body parts…

If you begin with the assumption that you need to shrink your code base, you will eventually be forced to conclude that you cannot continue to use Java. Conversely, if you begin with the assumption that you must use Java, then you will eventually be forced to conclude that you will have millions of lines of code…

You should take anything a “Java programmer” tells you with a hefty grain of salt, because an “X programmer”, for any value of X, is a weak player. You have to cross-train to be a decent athlete these days. Programmers need to be fluent in multiple languages with fundamentally different “character” before they can make truly informed design decisions…

Java is like a variant of the game of Tetris in which none of the pieces can fill gaps created by the other pieces, so all you can do is pile them up endlessly.

Imagine that you have a tool that lets you manage huge Tetris screens that are hundreds of stories high. In this scenario, stacking the pieces isn’t a problem, so there’s no need to be able to eliminate pieces. This is the cultural problem: they don’t realize they’re not actually playing the right game anymore…

Java-style IDEs intrinsically create a circular problem. The circularity stems from the nature of programming languages: the “game piece” shapes are determined by the language’s static type system. Java’s game pieces don’t permit code elimination because Java’s static type system doesn’t have any compression facilities – no macros, no lambdas, no declarative data structures, no templates, nothing that would permit the removal of the copy-and-paste duplication patterns that Java programmers think of as “inevitable boilerplate”, but which are in fact easily factored out in dynamic languages.

Dynamic features make it more difficult for IDEs to work their static code-base-management magic. IDEs don’t work as well with dynamic code features, so IDEs are responsible for encouraging the use of languages that require… IDEs. Ouch…

Whether it’s holidays or the close of the tax year that motivates, it’s a good time for generosity to non-profit causes. Here are some of mine:

The Tor Project, Inc. develops anonymity software to help users navigate the web without being tracked — helping whistleblowers blog anonymously and dissidents browse past national firewalls. The Tor Project will be concluding its first year as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and I’m proud to be on its Board of Directors. While your there, download the Tor software and add a node to the anonymity network.

Electronic Frontier Foundation relies on members’ donations to champion online freedoms in the courts. Its litigation against AT&T for participation in warrantless wiretapping has helped to expose the depth of the administration’s evasions. While you’re there, keep the pressure on congress to let the public hold telecommunications carriers accountable when they break the law.

Creative Commons celebrates five years of helping creators to share their works and the public to find them, through standard copyright-permissions licenses. Science Commons is extending this spirit to enable web-like collaboration in scientific research. While you’re there, search for CC-licensed work or license a work of your own.

One Laptop Per Child Through the end of the year, donors to OLPC can give one and get one — give one laptop to a child in a developing country and get one of their rugged yet open-source machines for your (inner) child.

Free Software Foundation produces both great software and the original great legal hack — copyleft. Grab some free software while you’re there.

American Civil Liberties Union isn’t tax-deductible, but we need allies lobbying for our rights in Washington too.

Writes Beth in an excellent article in Democracy Journal:

Now, however, new technology may be changing the relationship between democracy and expertise, affording an opportunity to improve competence by making good information available for better governance.

She argues against relying on professionals to make good political decisions for us, and goes into some depth on the Patent Office’s Peer-to-Patent project, which she designed. (Thanks to Howard Rheingold for the link.)

[Tags: democracy beth_noveck wiki edemocracy everything_is_miscellaneous ]

EAST LANSING, MI - Michigan State University officials today announced that they were placing the campus on “lockdown”, and never allowing the faculty, post-docs, graduate students, and select undergraduates to leave the campus again. In a statement released from the office of University President Lou Anna K. Simon, the University said that “We had recently taken the principled position that our faculty were under no circumstances allowed to use modern information sharing tools and collaborate online with their peers and the public. We felt that this position wasn’t strong enough. Our world class faculty and students carry important and critical University Intellectual Property and business records in their minds, and we just can’t let them get out and risk them sharing that property and exposing those records. We attempted pilot projects where each faculty member was given a stack of permission forms for each person they encountered to sign. That pilot was not successful. So we had to take the next logical step.”

“Not successful is an understatement”, said J. Allen Farnsworth, a tenured Classical Biological Anthropology professor, “I got a bloody black eye when I asked the lady at the lawn and garden shop to sign this form after I gave my lecture about the history of all art that includes references to caterpillar segments. The University told me that I had to do this any and each time I shared their Intellectual Property.”

Pressed for more information about such an unprecedented move, a spokesperson for Simon said that “we realize this may cause some consternation. But our IT department created this thing they call a ‘wallfire’ for our computers, and we really liked that wall idea. We absolutely must protect our Intellectual Property, and our Business Records. Especially all those emails from the facilities department about why my request to the move the light switch closer to my desk hasn’t yet been completed. However, we feel that our faculty and students will be well cared for and comfortable here. We have the finest in Spartan accommodations.”

“Spartan is right.”, agreed Professor Farnsworth, “all they gave us was a cheap plastic air mattress, a toothbrush, and some toilet paper. And it’s not even two-ply.”

Asked for additional comment, a spokesperson for David Gift, Vice Provost for Libraries, Computing, and Technology told us that “David couldn’t be more pleased. He’s taken a lot of criticism for being such a classicist on this issue. Forcing everyone to use our crappy custom developed webmail client really has been hard. He’s been having administrative meetings and lunches, and golf outings every day, to try to get the budget increased now that we told everyone they can’t use better products. And that’s hard, you know? If we don’t get more budget, we may never be able to back up our mail server ever again. By locking up all our faculty and students, which of course was the next logical step, it takes some of the pressure of me, er, him. And with Jack [Valenti, late head of the MPAA] gone, it’s been hard to find a sympathetic shoulder to lean on. I’m really doing everything I can for our fine University! I’m trying to protect our Intellectual Property! Oh, excuse me, I have to meet with some RIAA representative to install their monitoring software on our ResNet”

Asked why the Administration wasn’t covered by this policy, a spokesperson for Chris Hanna, Interim Assistant Vice President for Human Resources responded simply “well, we do keep some business records, but we’ve been assured that we are neither intellectual, or have any brains.”

A joint Engineering/Natural Sciences research initiative that would allow the faculty and students to dump the University contents from their brains each night showed some early promise, but some of the key neurological research needed to implement the filters properly, so that the faculty and students didn’t forget the names of their pets and partners was only available from Stanford. And with the new IT policies, MSU wasn’t able to share in that information for risk of exposing their own Intellectual Property.

So, for now, MSU faculty and students stay locked in their offices inventing new Pong games while waiting for the mail servers to be rebooted. Stay tuned for more on this developing story.

Thanks to Kevin Gamble for information contributing to this report

4 Ways to Get Banned from the Technorati Top 100.

My One Laptop Per Child computer arrived overnight, as if delivered by elves. As Drew Barrymore would say, “Magical!”

Other than saying that it’s the cutest thing since otters began holding hands, I feel incompetent to review it. I’ve only used it for a couple of hours, and it’s very different from the usual computers. I can say that it does some things incredibly easily, like take photos. On the other hand, I’m lacking the mental model for doing some more complex things, like downloading an ebook from the Web and reading it offline on the laptop.

But this was not a computer designed for me, so I’m going to give it time to shape my expectations. So far, though, it’s just so cute and cuddly that I want to feed it kibble and take it out for a walk four times a day.

[Anthropological note: The OLPC laptop serves the social function as puppies: When strangers see you with one, they just have to stop you, stroke it, and say “Awwww.”]

[Tags: olpc xo laptops linux ]

We pick up the story with The History of "Punch", new to Project Gutenberg. They have a whole chapter on Thackeray, including the section "A Mysterious Picture", which describes the cartoon:

In 1847 (Volume XII., p. 59) Thackeray contributed a "social" picture which is to this day a wonder to all beholders. It is entitled "Horrid Tragedy in Private Life," and represents a room in which two ladies, or a lady and a servant, are in a state of the greatest alarm. [The maximum possible alarm was lower then -ed.] What the meaning of it all is there is nothing whatever to indicate (unless it be that something has fallen on the taller lady's dress); and on its appearance the "Man in the Moon" offered a reward of £500 and a free pardon to anyone who would publish an explanation. The reward was never claimed; and Thackeray's contribution remains one of Punch's Prize Puzzles, unsolved, and, apparently, unsolvable.

First, "Man in the Moon" is a great name for a magazine. Second, it's awesome that in those days magazines held the power of pardon. Truly it was a more, or possibly less, enlightened time.

Now, searching on the cartoon's name gets you to The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray with bibliographic commentary and nostalgia by his daughter, Anne Ritchie:

Is it too late to claim the £500? The room was my father's study, where two little girls were found by him dressed up in various tablecloths and curtains. One was enacting a queen, and was ordering the rival sovereign off to instant execution, when he came home unexepectedly, and drew them then and there.

Jake Berendes came closest to divining the purpose of the cartoon: 'i think the message is "there is a lot of nonsense you will have to put up with if you have children so don't bother".'

As The Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to "Punch", which I'd actually encountered on a previous cartoon hunt but given up on because I was looking for the wrong year, points out, "neither in drawing nor text is there any clue to the situation; nor, if there were, could the joke be considered a very funny one."

Indeed. This discovery opens up more questions, like, how did this cartoon get published?

Lately, a couple of people have mentioned having trouble with my feeds. One person hadn't seen any new content from me since 2006 because he was subscribed to the old articles feed on my homepage. I 301 redirected it to this blog, since I don't self-publish articles on my site anymore. Another person mentioned that the recent "Fix That Tranny" post continuously appears as updated when it is in fact not. I switched the main feed for the site (the one that FeedBurner consumes) over to ATOM and I'm hoping that helps fix that problem. Please leave me a comment if you are having these or other problems.

Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to mention. The only valid public feed address for my blog is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/obie. If you are reading this via a jroller feed address, please take a moment to switch it over. (Unfortunately, it has to be done manually because JRoller doesn't give me any redirection options. At some point in the near future I'm going to switch off of JRoller and I don't want to lose you.)

Thanks for reading!

• At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - New York Times
  “Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.”
  (tags: physics science)
• Leopard Sets Operating System Sales Records For Apple — Apple — InformationWeek
  “In the first full month of sales, Leopard, officially called Mac OS X 10.5, raked in 32.8% more money than its predecessor Tiger, OS X 10.4, according to The NPD Group. Tiger had outsold all previous versions of the OS when it was launched in late April
  (tags: apple mac osx)

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor's Open Blog, 2007.
Posted under: News.
Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us

I just received a copy of Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life. Since I did the rather long series on Second Life earlier this year, I’ve been thinking about doing a book on construction and scripting techniques, though as with most such thoughts of mine I haven’t had the time to execute on it. Therefore, when I saw this book last week on Amazon I was curious to see what it would cover that might have.

On a very quick scan, it definitely is worth owning if you are into building in Second Life but don’t know all the ins and outs. There is a substantial amount of material available on the web about SL and at least two different wikis full of information. A common criticism I have seen about SL printed material is that the material is all otherwise available online. Well, yes, but not in one place and not designed to be read in a sequential way. Yes you can hunt for information is you know what you are looking for, but sometimes you miss the big picture or don’t discover entirely different ways of approaching the same problem.

This book covers the topics of prims, textures, scripting, landscaping, and use of external programs like Poser to do animation. It’s a dense book of almost 400 pages and offers a lot of practical tips. Moreover, it will help you learn what you don’t know. By this I mean that SL is a much more profound technical environment than most people give it credit for. This book covers a lot of that ground and has some good worked examples that pull together a lot of the concepts and techniques.

So is this the last book that is needed on SL building techniques? No, I don’t think so. I think there are different ways of approaching the material that will still add value, such as A Carpenter-Who-Knows-How-To-Code’s Guide to Construction in Second Life or An Architect’s Guide to Design and Construction in Second Life (I made those up). For its breadth of information, tips, and examples, I think this is well worth the purchase if you plan to get more serious about building objects and making them do things in SL.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor's Open Blog, 2007.
Posted under: Virtual Worlds.
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By Tim O'Reilly

I'd forgotten I'd done this video interview during the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin last month until Paul Andrews sent a link to my brother, with the comment: "Tim is always so refreshing because he can be so candid. Did you see this great wide-ranging video? Nobody else is pointing this stuff out because it might cost them a VC or market point."

Intruders.tv talks to Tim O'Reilly about social media, OpenSocial, Microsoft and Google market dominance, Facebook, genomics, Bubble 2.0 and, of course, the iPhone.

Yes, it's true that I said in the interview that Web 2.0 is a stupid name, that the companies trying to exploit the social graph are going about it all wrong, and that we're entering a period of consolidation where the big players are going to start trying to capture more value than they create. I had a bad cold, so I was perhaps a little more dour about the prospects for the future than I normally am. But I also talked about the potential still ahead of us -- in applications built on the social graph (as soon as they give the users real control over their own data), in genomics, and in the re-engagement of computing with the physical world.

The interview really was a "fireside chat," in a fabulous supper club in Berlin, at a party hosted by Felix Petersen of Plazes, Tariq Krim of Netvibes, and Rodrigo Sepulveda of Vpod.tv.

The Peer to Patent project (which I’ve reported on before) just pointed me to a particularly broad patent that could encumber user interfaces on the web and desktops for years to come.

The idea in this patent, submitted by Yahoo!, is a clever little idea: if someone is starting to drag an icon or mail message somewhere, why not bring the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak? If she is dragging a photo, for instance, the browser or operating system can guess that she wants to open it with PhotoShop or the Gimp, and present that choice right next to the icon for the photo.

Yes, an idea worth experimenting with, and one that (as the patent application amply emphasizes) could turn up soon in desktop window managers, in applications such as mail programs, in Ajax-enabled web pages, on mobile devices, and all sorts of places. And Yahoo! wants a cut for supposedly thinking it up.

Discussed by a lawyer in his blog and presented in full on the Peer to Patent site, this application seems to be a tough one to crack, despite its simplicity. Only two comments are posted, and no actual instances of prior art (although one comment tentatively suggests on instance). If no prior art is found in 35 days, the comment period closes on Peer to Patent and little stands in the way of granting the patent.

I have nothing against acknowledging the brilliance of the interface designers at Yahoo!. If GUI users overcome their initial surprise at having targets pop up at them, smart drag-and-drop may prove to be a convenience. Amusingly, the author of the patent application presents it as much more–a radical improvement to user interaction. But this has no impact on the granting of the patent. A novel idea can get a patent no matter how small an increment over current practice it represents.

What’s more disturbing to me is the cavalier way in which a Yahoo! designer has picked off the easiest layer of a complex design and tries to set up a toll gate to profit from it. (More likely, exercising the patent on such a small advance would just hold back its adoption, so I imagine Yahoo! is just trying to beef up its cross-licensing patent portfolio.) A consideration of the work that would go into implementing smart drag-and-drop quickly reveals that it would require serious research into user interaction and extensive changes to many parts of an application or desktop to deal with design issues such as:

• How does the system choose the targets to present to the user for each type of icon or other user interface element?
• How should the system subdivide its elements so that relevant targets are grouped with elements that can be dragged?
• Once heuristics for these choices are developed, what data structures store these targets, how are targets linked to the objects being dragged, and how can an association be made quickly so as to present targets almost instantly to preserve a comfortable user experience?
• What hooks does the desktop have to present to applications so they can create seamless experiences such as the hypothetic mail program suggested in the patent application? How do applications need to be redesigned in order to categorize user interface elements that are presented to the desktop for this service?

If you’re a web developer or other person with experience in graphical interfaces, maybe you can prevent this. Check out the claims and see what prior art you can find.

Immediately after college, I started graduate school in Mathematics in 1980. After a couple of years I decided to take a leave of absence because 1) the woman to whom I was engaged was going to start graduate school several hundred miles away, and 2) I wanted to rethink what I was doing in my career. In thinking about where to work, I decided to apply to IBM because I had worked there as a summer student. Since I was a known quantity to them, I figured I could start at a higher position and a higher salary.

The day I joined IBM was December 20, 1982. Tomorrow is my 25th anniversary with the company.

In that time I worked on optimization software for the internal telecommunications network; moved to IBM Research to work on symbolic mathematical computation, user interfaces, a compiler, and web-based scientific publishing; spent four years in the middle of my Research work finishing my Ph.D., with IBM picking up the tab; moved to the Software Group to commercialize use of XML in vertical industries; worked on web services and SOA; took a turn in Websphere marketing for a couple of years; and am now in my current gig.

Along the way I did marry that woman, and am still married to her with our 25th anniversary coming next summer. We’ve had two kids and seven cats (though not all at the same time). We’ve moved six times, getting older houses further and further north.

That is, I’ve lived and have had a variety of careers, I just happen to have worked for the same company for a pretty long time. I have no idea when I’ll retire from working in this industry and it seems like a long time from now, maybe twenty more years. When I was younger I couldn’t understand why people would retire because I was in a very academic frame of mind. Now I get the point (grin), but I think of it as more of a transition to doing something else constructive, like teaching or writing full-time.

In any case, 25 years doesn’t seem as long as it used to.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor's Open Blog, 2007.
Posted under: Family.
Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

According to this article (Norwegian only, sorry) on digi.no the Norwegian government has mandated the use of open document formats from January 1st, 2009. I’ll give a brief overview of what the article actually says.

There are three formats that have been mandated for all documentation between authorities and users/partners, namely:

• HTML for all public information on the Web.
• PDF for all documents where layout needs to be preserved.
• ODF for all documents that the recipient is supposed to be able to edit

Goverment, state and regional agencies, authorities and services may also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats. The decree is retroactive, and by 2014 all documents published prior to this decree must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats.

While the decree doesn’t mandate any format for internal documentation, I still have hopes that every interested party will standardize on the same formats for internal use as well, and it is also my hope that a real competitive market for information systems is created.

Either way, for me as a dedicated user of Linux, proponent of open formats and standards, this is delightful. I’ll end it with a quote from our minister for information technologies, Heidi Grande Røys, with some emphasis added from my side:

Everyone should have equal access to public documents. From 2009, every citizen will be able to choose which software they want to use to get access to public information. The goverment’s decision will also improve the terms of competition between software providers. In the future, we will not accept that govermental agencies lock the users of public information to closed formats.

YAY!

As mentioned previously a lot of Java developers on OSX are upset at Apple's silence as to its intentions with respect to the release of Java 6. There used to be a developer preview available, which was pulled recently with no indication as to when a replacement would be available. People like me who upgraded in the hope of having the latest and greatest - which we have been very patiently waiting for over a year for - are very disappointed. It creates all kinds of annoyances, like not being able to run Java Tutorial examples. Some who are working on Java 6 projects cannot use their computer easily, without resorting to installation of a separate OS in a virtual machine, to do their job. We all like OSX: its a beautiful easy to use Unix that usually really helps us get our work done. I have been very happily using it since 2004.

The first solution of course is to have our voice heard. One way to do this is to file a bug with Apple. Please do this! The only problem I have with it is that as opposed to the Java bug database which is completely open, the Apple bug database is completely closed. So there's no real way of verifying how many people have posted a report. We must therefore complement that action with an equal Open action. Following the noble example given to us by Nova Spivack, when he asked for people to make their voice heard in support of the Burmese people and got some real results, let us do the same to help Apple make the right decision.
Anybody who would like to support this issue in the blogosphere, should help post a blog with the string

13949712720901ForOSX

The first part of the string is the decimal notation for 0xCAFEBABE [1], the magic cookie for JavaClass files (thanks David for the number and the pointer to Fredericiana's photo). Then post similar instructions on your blog or point people here. Let's see how far this gets us! [2]

We should then be able to use any search engine, Google is a good choice, to search for this string [3], and hopefully motivate the managers at Apple to invest more time on Java and be more open about their plans with the community.

Your vote may also be an energizer to those groups that are starting to port the OpenJDK to OSX (via the mac java community).

Notes

1. Oops I just noticed a mistake here. 13949712720901 in dec = 0xCAFEBABE405 in Hex. Even better. So that's CAFEBABE + the HTTP 405 Response, which means "Method not available". :-)
2. If you know a foreign language then please translate the instructions and explanations so that more people can understand what is going on. Always post a link to some instructions. Language is a Virus, but it is most virulent when it is understandable and hyperlinked, of course.
3. A search on Google Web returns more results - more than AllTheWeb or AltaVista - but Google Blog Search contains less duplicates. The real number of votes is somewhere between those two numbers, as some people are voting on their open source web sites, which are not always feed enabled. Simon is keeping count.
4. Karussell is keeping a list of related articles.

Update

Tuesday Nov 13: Landon Fuller has been able to get a very nice hello world GUI app running on OSX using the FreeBSD jdk1.6 port. It runs under X Windows only. Excellent work!

Nov 20th, 2007: Dave Dirbin publishes the first beta release of the open source java 6. This campaign has gathered 105 blog votes if we count the results from Google Blog Search, placing it easily among the top 10 bug reports at the Java Bug database. The Google web search returns 256 results, which will contain the blog search, many duplicate pages pointing to blogs + some extra votes people may have placed on the web. I guess that those extra votes may pop this bug report up to the top 5 position.

Wednesday Dec 19: Apple has put a developer preview of Java 6 up on Apple Developer Connection. It is nice to see things progress on that side. As a result of this conflict, Java development on OSX has become a lot richer, with an open source JDK starting to compete with the closed one from Apple. This can only be good for both, and for developer and customer confidence in the platform.

In the past week I gave a couple of presentations of Hyperdata illustrating the concept with demos of the Tabulator and Beatnik, the Hyper Address Book I am just working on.

The first talk I gave at the University of Sao Paulo, which was called at the last minute by Professor Imre Simon, who had led the Yochai Benkler talk the week before. It was a nice turnout of over 20 people, and I spoke at a more theoretical level of the semantic web, how it related to Metcalf's law, as explained in more detailed in a recently published paper by Prof. James Hendler, and how an application like Beatnik could give a powerful social meaning to all of this. I also looked at some of the interesting problems related to trust and belief revision that come up in a simple application like Beatnik, which touched a chord with Renata Wassermann who has written extensively on that field of the Semantic Web.
Many thanks to Prof Simon, for allowing me to speak. For a view from the audience see Rafael Ferreira's blog (in English) and Professor Ewout's blog (in Portuguese).

Yesterday I gave a more Java oriented technical talk at GlobalCode, an evening learning center in Sao Paulo, with a J2EE project on dev.java.net. I touched on how one may be able to use OpenId and foaf to create a secure yet open social network.
About 25 people attended which must be a really good turnout for a period so close to Christmas, when everyone is looking forward to the surf board present from Santa Claus, getting into their swimming trunks and paddling off to catch the next big wave. Well the really big wave that everyone in the know will be preparing for is the hyperdata wave. And to catch it one needs to practice one's skills. And a good way to do this is to help out with a simple application like Beatnik.
Thanks to Vinicius and Yara Senger for organising this.