Jason's Log

SCO: Dumb and Dumberer

Code red for open source?: SCO Group says copyrighted code has illegally made its way into Linux, the popular open-source OS. If true, the open-source community could find its hard-won gains threatened.

{from CNET News.com}

What SCO has failed to grasp are the parallels between the process of open source development and the structure of open networks (like the internet). When the internet experiences a point outage (a router goes down), the network will start to route traffic through different pipes. In most cases, the outage is never noticed by the end users. Like the internet, open source development processes are similarly capable of automatically routing around outages. If you declare a piece of code unfit for use, someone else can write a replacement for it. Declare a piece of code illegal, and someone can release a patch for it.

So even though SCO may be able to target large profitable companies like IBM, they could never hope to even thwart the overall progress of linux. Consider the 'not-for-profit' Linux distributions, like Debian and Gentoo. It is conceivable SCO that could seek an injuction against the distribution of the source code, but within days replacements would be available. The process of open source would simply re-route the network to avoid the outage.

Change the world, eh?

According to Business 2.0 article, the following six technologies are going to change the world:

1. Printing new organs using Ink-Jet printers: The quote regarding this one is actually the scariest part..."It's a huge step toward the eternity of mankind". As much as I'd like to see replacement rejection-proof organs, this one looks to be 25 years in the distance to me.

2. Machines that interact with people the way people do: Mimicing human facial gestures is one thing, but reproducing human emotional context is an entirely different problem to be solved. The first problem to solve is software that can determine the emotional state of a human based on facial gestures.

3. The supersonic business jet: Now this is something that I can readily appreciate. Just going from the Bay Area to Chicago is an 8-hour ordeal (if you include airport overhead and timezone changes). Anything to improve that situation is welcome.

4. All day portable power: To the victor in this race will go the spoils. The first company to market with an easily refillable, long lasting (at least 5X an equivalent metal-acid battery) portable fuel cell power source will win big. Very big.

5. Computer display screens as thin and flexible as a piece of paper: Display screens that are thin and light weight- good. Display screens plastered on every possible surface in my environment a la Minority Report- bad.

6. Networks of cheap, aspirin-size sensor robots everywhere: Luckily, there is no mention of a right to privacy in the US Constitution, and the "unlawful search and siezure" stuff doesn't make surveillance illegal, just inadmissable in a court. Ugh.

Here is what they missed:

1. The combination of totally ubiquitous high speed wireless networking, very long lasting fuel cell power, collapsable/foldable 17-inch OLED display screen, audio-in, audio-out, and collapsable/foldable high-speed input device. It will be called "Device of the Gods". I will buy one.

2. Nuclear fusion as a power supply. It would completely change the economic and political world dynamics. It is also likely to be the only shot we have at making zero-emission transportation systems cost effective to deploy and operate on a large scale. Hydrolyzing water to keep your portable fuel cells well fed won't be cheap, after all.

MyPHPBlog now has guids, BTW

Brent Simmons: "Not all RSS feeds contain guids. My hope is that more and more they will since theyre so useful, since they make reading news so much better." Amen.

For what it's worth, MyPHPBlog's RSS 2.0 feeds now support permaLink GUIDs. Just click in the little orange XML icon in the right hand column. Now how cool is that?

{from Scripting News}

A political quiz you should try

If you're either bored, or still trying to make sense of the upcoming 2004 political scene, you should get ready by taking the Worlds Smallest Political Quiz. It's great fun at parties too!

Updates and upgrades

After a weekend of hacking, I now have MyPHPBlog parsing RDF feeds, exporting RSS 2.0 compliant feeds, and properly encoding URLs in content. I think my next task will be some database schema cleanup. That's part of what I love about PHP: It makes the easy stuff easy.

Duck flavored snacks?

I just discovered that Taylor gets duck and potato flavored dog treats, made by a company called Natural Balance. Who knew such a thing even existed. I can't remember the last time I ate duck.

Jared Diamond on Decisions

Spend a few minutes and read (or listen listen to) "WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS?" by Jared Diamond, author of "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

The most insightful passage of this essay (IMO) is his description of "creeping normalcy", or problems that arise slowly over time in such a way that most people cannot perceive the downward trend. If some condition gets only slightly worse each year, it is hard to notice that something has become markedly worse over a period of many years. Diamond uses environmental anecdotes to make his points, but the principles could just as well be applied to economic decision making.

For example: Slowly increasing government expenditures that eventually lead to the loss of economic freedoms for citizens. It's not as though from one year to the next the percent of income you owe to the government increases drastically. The accretion is slow, but the outcome is disastrous (think deficit spending, increased federal spending). In fact, this is the basic premise behind F. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom".

Making M. Friedman proud

Behind the cross-Atlantic productivity gap: The labor-productivity gap is again widening between the United States and Germany and France. Differences in IT spending don't fully explain it. What's going on?

The minute I got to the part in the above article where the authors claimed that inappropriate government regulation was to blame for the productivity dispairities between the two countries, I could almost hear Milton Friedman uttering the words himself.

According to the good book of Capitalism and Freedom, cases of goverment regulation that reach their intended outcome are few and far between. Why is it that politicians think they are smart enough to control the machinations of systems that are so vastly more complex then they could ever hope to grasp? And why is it they seem convinced that a single politician could make wiser decisions than a hundred million consumers in aggregate?

{from CNET News.com}

Taylor must really be bored

For reasons unknown to me, Taylor decided to start pacing around 7:30 this morning. He even dropped his kong-toy twice in an attempt to get us out of bed. Damn that dog...no appreciation for sleeping in on weekends.

About Software Reliability...

Re: this slashdot article on Software Reliability. What most non-software developers don't realise is that quality is hard for several reasons:

1. It is expensive and takes time
2. It is difficult to market and sell

Consumers have always wanted those things that are 'new and improved', not 'more stable and resilient to failure'. Which basically leaves you with only a few choices:

A. Live with mediocre quality
B. Spends lots of money
C. Wait for an open-source version to mature.

I chose 'C'.