I’ve migrated all of the content on this site to a Creative Commons license. I went for the license that requires attribution, noncommercial use only, and that anyone who uses the content agree to share their work as well. Seems fair to me. If you’re using the HTML provided by Creative Commons and you want it to validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict, you’ll need to change border=“0” in the img tag to style=“border: none”. ...
ElcomSoft was found not guilty of violating the DMCA. Ha ha ha. The result for the teen author of DeCSS in Norway was less pleasant.
Now that Wi-Fi is pretty much taking over the world, the military is complaining that it interferes with some types of military radar and that changes should be made to accommodate the military’s requirements. Unfortunately, it’s too late. There are already millions of Wi-Fi devices that have been deployed, and there are going to be millions more as well. The appropriate time for the military to complain was when the FCC proposed opening up the frequency range used by Wi-Fi for unlicensed usage. Besides, newer cordless phones also use the same frequency ranges as 802.11b and 802.11a wireless networking devices – are we going to update all of those as well? And finally, what incentive to people in other countries have for complying with the requirements of the US military? In theory, it’s more important that military radar work in parts of the world where we actually fight than here on American soil, unless the concern is that Wi-Fi is making it harder for us to catch drug smugglers or something. ...
This post at Textism makes me glad I never sent Dean Allen that email telling him how much he looks like Dubya (see picture). One day I went as far as shuffling through the pictures of Dubya at Yahoo News to see if I could find one with a particularly uncanny resemblance to send along but I got bored of it really quickly and gave up.
The Creative Commons site has launched, along with some interesting licenses you can apply to your creative works. Of course you can write any license you want for the work you do, but the availability of some standard licenses for software was a great catalyst for the explosion of open source software, and hopefully these licenses will create a similar renaissance in the creation of other intellectual property dedicated to the public good. This isn’t the first attempt to create open licenses for creative works, but that’s OK. What’s important here is the exposure. ...
Just riffing here on something somebody said: Andy Oliver is whipping up a froth about the JCP. One thing I rarely see discussed by the proponents of open sourcing Java is how to stop Microsoft from highjacking Java. If Java was open sourced, then Microsoft would pick it up, change it in incompatible ways, and then distribute it to 90% of all computers on the planet through the next version of Windows, and every Windows update. What if we posit that C# is Microsoft’s incompatible revision of Java and the .NET runtime is the new Java Virtual Machine? There’s a lot more to .NET and the CLR than that, but my point stands. Now that Microsoft already has its Java killer out on the market, it seems the risks of open sourcing have gone down. ...
Today, Timothy Noah points out that Strom Thurmond has never actually apologized for his blatant racism, despite the conventional wisdom that he has. Just to be fair, I have no idea whether Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia (who is reputed to be a former high ranking member of the KKK) has apologized for his racist past, either.
The bottom line is that I wish there were more hours in the day. Just as companies have to decide where to spend their capital to maximize value, software developers have to figure out how to spend their time to maximize their skill set. Not a day goes by when I don’t read about something that sounds interesting that I never follow up on. A few years ago, I was a Web developer who spent most of their time hacking on things in Perl, PHP, Cold Fusion, and many other more obscure platforms. I decided that I needed to turn the battleship and become a Java developer, in large part because I thought that Java developers were more employable than I was, and made more money to boot. As it turns out, I really enjoy programming in Java, but the bottom line is that I decided to make the transition for crass, commercial reasons. Even more years ago, I could have decided that what I wanted to focus on was Visual Basic, and ASP. I decided not to because I knew enough VB to consider it extremely distasteful. (You don’t have to agree with me on this, I just found the entire Microsoft development ecosystem to be aesthetically unpleasing.) Anyway, we’re all forced to make decisions like these throughout our careers. And the thing that really gets me (even though I know it’s inevitable) is that as people, we have to deal with lock in just the way businesses do. If Company A comes out with an enterprise software package that provides five times the functionality of Company B’s package at half the price, most of Company B’s customers will not move over because of the huge pain involved in converting the data, migrating the software, and teaching people to use the new system. Even in the open source world where licensing costs are not an issue, people still get locked in to data formats, interfaces, and just about everything else. Unfortunately, things are just the same for individual software developers. I know some polymath software developers who are able to program well in many languages and on many platforms, but for the most part, broad and deep are tradeoffs. Time spent learning the esoterica that make you a great programmer in a particular language is time you don’t spend picking up that one extra scripting language that might be useful to you occasionally. Of course, there’s something to be said for learning many languages because picking up the different philosophies enables you to make better decisions about how to solve problems in general, but rarely will you meet people who have true expert knowledge in many different areas. So the big picture question is how to create the most fulfilling career for yourself? One option is to delve really deeply into a particular technology and become a real expert on it. For example, I could try to expand my knowledge of Java as greatly as possible and learn other things that are complementary to Java expertise, and hope to trade on that in the years to come. However, of more interest to me is the idea of abstracting my skillset. I’d like to move into a position where there’s less heads down coding work and more mentoring of other developers, managing of projects, and focusing on the big picture. Aside from my specific knowledge of HTML, Perl, Java, SQL and other things like that, I have general knowledge of what makes sense for developing applications, how to get projects finished on time, and how to evaluate and make decisions on technology. The theory is that by being absolved of the need for esoteric knowledge, I could dabble more with things that interest me and have more fun at work. Of course, the kicker here is that to do all that, you have to find someone who’ll pay you for it. In any case, I think this is a career transition that every developer has to go through – broader or deeper. If you’re a developer, I encourage you to think about it actively rather than putting your career on autopilot. Your skills are your asset, and rarely do they take you where you want to go by accident. ...
Some San Francisco hackers are working on rigging up a system that enables Laotians in remote farming villages to connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi and computers powered by pedal driven generators. For all the stupid crap that we do in the IT industry, it’s great to read about projects like this that are improving the lives of people. It’s also incredible to realize what a big difference simple inventions can make in the developing world. Not long ago I read about a system that includes a long hose and a bike driven pump that enables African farmers to irrigate fields using water in nearby wetlands. Before this incredibly simple device was introduced, they had to try to irrigate their fields by carrying water over in buckets. I love reading about projects like this, and dream that someday I can work on one myself. ...
Colin Powell: The U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative: Building Hope for the Years Ahead. I wonder why I’m not reading more about this speech. It might be the best foreign policy speech given by anyone in the current administration.