WhichWasNice

The O'Reilly history of programming langauges

2005-10-29T10:31:00.000+01:00

Check out this history of computer languges (up to 2004). It's really interesting! (Referenced from Dr Dobbs magazine...)

GM crop creates herbicide-resistant "superweed"

2005-07-27T21:34:00.000+01:00

Modified genes from crops in a GM crop trial have transferred into local wild plants, creating a form of herbicide-resistant "superweed", the Guardian can reveal.
The cross-fertilisation between GM oilseed rape, a brassica, and a distantly related plant, charlock, had been discounted as virtually impossible by scientists with the environment department. It was found during a follow up to the government's three-year trials of GM crops which ended two years ago... The scientists also collected seeds from other weeds in the oilseed rape field and grew them in the laboratory. They found that two - both wild turnips - were herbicide resistant. The five scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, the government research station at Winfrith in Dorset, placed their findings on the department's website last week.

Carbon Neutral Flying

2005-07-27T21:31:00.000+01:00

One single shorthaul flight produces roughly the same amount of the global warming gas as 3 months worth of driving a 1.4 litre car. And we're all flying more. You can't do much about the fuel efficiency of aircraft, but if you need a holiday or if you're travelling on business, you can help reduce your personal contribution to global warming by making your flight CarbonNeutral. That means we organise for the CO2 associated with your flight to be ‘balanced out’ by forestry and climate friendly energy projects which save equivalent amounts of CO2. From FutureForests.com

Diving into Greasemonkey and thence to Microformats

2005-07-27T19:44:00.000+01:00

Dive into Greasemonkey lists the many and various ways in which Greasemonkey can be useful. While browsing through its chapters I followed a link and took a detour to MicroFormats. These look even more useful :-)
microformats are:
* a way of thinking about data
* design principles for formats
* adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns (“Pave the cow paths.”)
* highly correlated with semantic XHTML, AKA the real world semantics, AKA lowercase semantic web, AKA lossless XHTML
* a set of simple open data format standards that many are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
* “An evolutionary revolution”
* all the above.
microformats are not:
* a new language
* infinitely extensible and open-ended
* an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
* a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
* a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
* defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
* any of the above
Thing of it as a structured way to embed semantic information (e.g. calendaring details) into into standard HTML4 markup and you're half way there. More background info available at Phil Windley's Technometria.

Greasemonkey - Firefox extension

2005-07-27T19:32:00.000+01:00

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction. Greasemonkey was referenced by this fascinating article on Secure RSS Syndication.

Suits are back (again and again)

2005-06-24T22:45:00.000+01:00

"Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New
York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because
the suit was also back in February 2005, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002.
From Paul Graham.

GeoShell

2005-06-14T21:51:00.000+01:00

You too can Calm Your Desktop with this replacement windows shell

Omniscient Debugging

2005-06-12T12:06:00.000+01:00

"Because the debugger knows everything" -- as seen in Dr Dobbs

Rat Park: why happiness matters?

2005-06-07T01:33:00.000+01:00

Alexander's findings - that deprived rats seek solace in opiates, while contented rats avoid them - dramatically contradict our currently held beliefs about addiction. So, how might society benefit if his results were applied to human addicts? Nobody seemed to care.

Buying a Mac to use Linux?

2005-06-06T22:40:00.000+01:00

Check out the Mad Mac Linux Multimedia Machine.

Snippets of XQuery

2005-06-06T22:37:00.000+01:00

XQuery works where SQL doesn't?: From a development costs perspective, the XQuery approach turned out to be a significant savings. The tree-structure was ideal for building and searching the data, but not for reporting; the XML approach was well-suited for reporting (because we could leverage the power of XQuery), but would have been both more inconvenient and worse performing for implementing the entire application. Because the data set was a manageable size -- no more than a few tens of megabytes -- it was possible to convert the data from one form to another as was most convenient from a development perspective. A larger data set, one that could not be stored entirely in memory easily, would have required the entire application to be built around a database. While many good tools for dealing with persistent data are available, they all involve a lot more work than simply manipulating an in-memory data structure. If your data set is of a suitable size, you can have the best of both worlds.
Myth: XQuery will replace SQL: XQuery brings SQL-like querying power to applications that require access, selection, integration, and transformation from one or more XML collections. While XML enthusiasts have begun to see everything in the world encoded with XML tags, the relational database model is entrenched and most of the world's digital data is encoded in tables that are composed of rows and fields. SQL will not go away anytime soon. Instead, extensions to XQuery have already appeared that allow queries to treat the results of an SQL call as part of an XML document collection.

Tread not lightly on the RDF path you will

2005-06-06T22:27:00.000+01:00

Two interesting articles shedding some light on the areas around RDF...

First up, from IBM DeveloperWorks, an article on SPARQL: As more data is being stored in RDF formats like RSS, a need has arisen for a simple way to locate specific information. SPARQL, a powerful new query language fills that space, making it easy to find the data you need in the RDF haystack. Take a tour of SPARQL's features and learn how to use SPARQL queries from your own Java™ applications with the Jena Semantic Web Toolkit.
Secondly, from XML.com, an article on Topic Map Query Language: Work on TMQL started more than a year ago, kicked off by a number of proposals. The editors have attempted to consolidate these approaches into an official draft specification. It is still in flux but sufficiently mature now to justify asking for public feedback. In this introduction I assume that you are at least superficially familiar with Topic Maps and how to create maps. (If not, see Lars Marius Garshol's "What Are Topic Maps?" for a refresher.)

XML patent is an 'abomination'

2005-05-26T21:37:00.000+01:00

A software patent granted to Microsoft in the US has been labelled an 'abomination':"...Should someone else want to save a programming object in the form of an XML file, Microsoft can now charge them for the privilege or simply refuse them permission to do it at all in the US."' From ZDNet

More Eclipse plugins

2005-05-19T07:07:00.000+01:00

RDFX, EclipseXSLT and XMLAuthor all add some interesting features to the Eclipse workbench. Recommended!

Measure test coverage with Cobertura

2005-05-07T13:18:00.000+01:00

Mark Doliner's Cobertura (cobertura is Spanish for coverage) is a free as in speech GPL tool that handles this job. Cobertura monitors tests by instrumenting the bytecode with extra statements to log which lines are and are not being reached as the test suite executes. It then produces a report in HTML or XML that shows exactly which packages, classes, methods, and individual lines of code are not being tested. You can write more tests for those specific areas to reveal any lingering bugs. From Elliotte Rusty Harold on DeveloperWorks

Command line XML

2005-03-13T15:06:00.000Z

XMLStarlet has what you need: XMLStarlet is a set of command line utilities (tools) which can be used to transform, query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using simple set of shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands. (Found in comments to an interesting article "Hacking OpenOffice" at XML.com).

Exploring the self-organizing nature of human systems

2005-02-25T21:45:00.000Z

complexOD sets the conditions for an emerging community of theorists and practitioners who explore the self-organizing nature of human systems. As a membership organization, ComplexOD provides:
* Information on innovative theory and practice that define the "differences that make a difference" to self-organizing human systems
* Conversation among theoreticians and practitioners to provide "transforming exchanges" that lead to new patterns of learning
* Opportunities for members to publish their own innovative work in a safe and constructive "container"

Hail the power of the command line!

2005-02-25T20:46:00.000Z

I always used to use command prompt tools but in recent years I've got lazy, and its not a good type of lazy. Its the lazy of living with a broken window, of learning 'just enough to solve the current problem and no more'. The command line takes that little bit more effort to get right initially, but what I'd forgotten was that with a decent command line application you are repaid your efforts later. Combine that with a little scripting knowledge and you can start plugging tools together and really start becoming truely lazy, the good lazy of being able to sit back and drink your coffee while a computer does all the repetitive work that you would normally do repeatedly yourself. Amen! (From Mike Roberts)

A Course In Black Box Testing

2005-02-25T20:44:00.000Z

Black box testing is the craft of testing a program from the external view. We look at how the program operates in its context, getting to know needs and reactions of the users, hardware and software platforms, and programs that communicate with it.
This course is an introduction to black box testing. It is a superset of the Software Testing 1 introductory courses that Florida Tech requires in its undergraduate (CSE 3411) and graduate (SWE 5411) software engineering degree programs. The full set of materials are equivalent to about a two-semester course.
(Referred from Bret Pettichord's blog)

Tsunami impact worsened by human impact?

2005-01-06T13:32:00.000Z

Jeff McNeely, chief scientist of the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN), who lived for several years in Indonesia and Thailand, two of the countries hit by Sunday's disaster, said it was "nothing new for nature" in a geologically active region. "What has made this a disaster is that people have started to occupy part of the landscape that they shouldn't have occupied," he told AFP in a telephone interview from Paris. "Fifty years ago the coastline was not densely occupied as now by tourist hotels."
"What has also happened over the last several decades is that many mangroves have been cleared to grow shrimp ponds so that we, here in Europe, can have cheap shrimp," he added. "The mangroves were all along the coasts where there are shallow waters. They offered protection against things like tsunamis. Over the last 20-30 years, "they were cleared by people who didn't have the long-term knowledge of why these mangroves should have been saved, by outsiders who get concessions from the governments and set up shrimp or prawn farms." The shrimps and prawns are sold to Europeans and other foreigners "at a price that does not include the environmental cost which is being paid today," McNeely said.

Using JConsole to Monitor Applications

2005-01-06T13:29:00.000Z

From developers.sun.com: The Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 release provides comprehensive monitoring and management support. It not only defines the management interfaces for the Java virtual machine, but also provides out-of-the-box remote monitoring and management on the Java platform and of applications that run on it. In addition, JDK 5.0 includes the Java Monitoring and Management Console (JConsole) tool. It uses the extensive instrumentation of the Java virtual machine to provide information on performance and resource consumption of applications running on the Java platform using Java Management Extension (JMX) technology. I haven't seen this feature of JDK5 mentioned before and it looks most useful...

CxxTest comes out top

2005-01-05T14:00:00.000Z

CxxTest came out top in this comparison of C++ unit testing tools.

Linux wireless driver for Centrino

2005-01-05T10:33:00.000Z

After several months as a happy user of the Ndiswrapper Linux wireless driver (eventually!) I finally made the switch to the more specific IPW2200 Centrino driver. Based on first impressions the switch was worthwhile: it was easier to install, and has been quicker and more reliable in use.

Killing versus helping

2005-01-04T10:21:00.000Z

George Monbiot writes that "our leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between helping people and killing them": The US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government £50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK £6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half days’ spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war.
It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in foreign aid: less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq.

(((aum)))

2004-12-29T21:26:00.000Z

Architecture of the World Wide Web, Vol 1

2004-12-29T21:21:00.000Z

Now (finally?!) published as a Recommendation by the W3C. Norman Walsh has made a PDF for easier offline reading.

Httrack for offline website browsing

2004-12-29T18:18:00.000Z

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility. It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system. It is also available as a Debian package :-)

Monad (or MSH): future Windows shell

2004-12-29T16:30:00.000Z

Jon Udell wrote: Last month I wrote about MSH ("Monad"), Microsoft's new command shell, and demonstrated the software on my blog. The column-plus-demo drew favorable reactions not only from the Windows crowd, but also from Unix/Linux folk who saw the MSH object pipeline as a genuine innovation. They're right.

Programming language popularity

2004-12-29T16:07:00.000Z

An interesting popularity ranking of various programming languages (linked from Sean McGrath's blog).

Fully trained software developers

2004-12-29T14:55:00.000Z

Tim Bray wrote: But for me, this essay brought into focus the fact that anyone who isn’t comfortable with object-oriented design, and with relational data modeling, and with wrangling XML messages; anyone not comfortable with all three, I say, just isn’t fully trained.

Software Testing Automation Framework (STAF)

2004-12-29T14:23:00.000Z

Grig Gheorghiu's STAF/STAX tutorial gives some idea of how powerful the STAF framework is.

Visualising similarity in source code

2004-12-29T13:59:00.000Z

Wayne Allen pointed me to DotPlot. Could be useful...

EU lets down software developers again

2004-12-18T01:28:00.000Z

The EU software patent directive will be passed by the EU Council next week, at the same time as a law on bathing water quality.
The controversial EU directive that opponents fear will allow software patenting within Europe will be passed without vote or debate on Monday.
According to a Council agenda, the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive will be adopted during an Environment meeting, which is also due to deal with the issues of bathing water quality and batteries.
Postscript: Thanks to Poland this bizarre and absurd sequence of events was halted.

Stressful deadlines boost heart attack risk

2004-12-17T19:15:00.000Z

From the New Scientist: The pressure of meeting a work deadline can produce a sixfold increase in the risk of suffering a heart attack over the course of the following day. And competition at work could double the ongoing risk, according to a new study... Taking on extra responsibility at work over the last year - if viewed negatively by the participant - increased the chance of a heart attack by almost four times in women and over six times in men.

Turning up the heat

2004-12-14T17:19:00.000Z

From the Guardian 11-Dec-2004: Even a small increase in sea temperature could dramatically affect penguins, whales and a host of other marine creatures, warns scientist Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey.
And on Guardian 14-Dec-2004: By 2050 heatwaves like that of 2003, which killed 15,000 in Europe and pushed British temperatures above 38C (100F) for the first time, will seem "unusually cool", the Hadley Centre for Climate Change says. In its report Uncertainty, Risk and Dangerous Climate Change, to be published today at the climate talks in Buenos Aires, it estimates that average temperatures will rise by 3.5C, well above the 2C which the EU says is the limit to avoid catastrophic global warming. It also says that the Greenland ice sheet could disappear, ultimately raising the global sea level by 7 metres. This could proceed at the rate of 5.5mm a year, and this with the 3mm rise caused by the thermal expansion of sea water would soon put large part of Britain, including the London docklands, under threat.

Inequality entrenched in UK?

2004-12-14T16:51:00.000Z

Health inequality has grown: Between 1997 and 1999, males in England and Wales who were professionally employed were expected to live 7.4 years longer than manual unskilled workers. This expectancy gap had grown by two years since the period 1972 to 1976. The inequality in life expectancy for women has also increased in this period, yet by a less notable margin. Women who are manual workers are expected to live for 5.7 years less than those are professionally employed. This life expectancy gap has increased by six months since the 1970's study.
Super rich have doubled their money under Labour: Nearly 600,000 individuals in the top 1% of the UK wealth league owned assets worth £355bn in 1996, the last full year of Conservative rule. By 2002 that had increased to £797bn, the ONS said. Part of the gain was due to rising national prosperity, but the top 1% also increased their share of national wealth from 20% to 23% in the first six years of the Labour government. Meanwhile the wealth of the poorest 50% of the population shrank from 10% in 1986 towards the end of the Thatcher government's second term to 7% in 1996 and 5% in 2002. On average, each individual in the top 1% was £737,000 better off than just before Mr Blair arrived in Downing Street.
Source material: the ONS report "Focus on social inequalities"

Why is the election in Ohio certified 34 days after the election?

2004-12-13T17:12:00.000Z

From Jesse Jackson's testimony to the Conyers hearings: Ohio, 34 days. Suppose five states had to wait 34 days for certification of their elections. And they could be if people had the will to contest it. Suppose the Ukraine or South Africa or Iraq had to wait 34 days before election certification?
Why 92,000 “unprocessed” ballots, mostly among the poor, under-counts and over-counts, often a result of a breakdown in machinery. Why 150,000 provisional ballots in 88 counties, using different voting machines and standards for counting and dis-counting votes? Why in 2004 do we have an uneven field, different standards and faulty machines characterizing the vote in too many places?
Why in Warren County did election officials issue a “homeland security threat,” then lock out the press and independent observers while they secretly counted the vote? Why are voting machines still used that are privately owned by partisans, still subject to glitches and manipulation. Why are absentee ballots and military ballots still issued in an inconsistent, inaccurate, and untimely fashion?
Who is accountable? The integrity of the voting machines, and the machine tabulation, is an issue. We need a forensic computer analysis of the voter machines, and the machines left in the warehouses must be impounded.

Democracy for Ukraine but not the USA

2004-12-13T17:03:00.000Z

The United States lacks a coherent and consistent set of standards for registering to vote, voting, counting ballots or recounting them. Thus, every election cycle brings new instances of disenfranchisement and doubts about the validity of the process.
On the eve of the Conyers hearing, the new group Progressive Democrats of America released a well-reasoned list of electoral reforms which can and should become central to the activism of everyone who is dissatisfied with the process--and the result--of the November 2 election. PDA argues that America needs:
A Constitutional amendment confirming the right to vote.
A required paper record for all electronic and electronically tabulated voting systems.
Same-day registration for all Americans.
The creation of unified federal standards for national elections.
Meaningful equal protection of voting rights by such means as equal voting systems, equal numbers of machines, and equal time to vote.
An end to partisan oversight of the electoral process.
Extended voting periods to allow all voters a meaningful opportunity to vote.
Instant Run-off Voting and Proportional Representation.
Publicly financed elections for federal offices.

That's a long list. And the best place to begin is with the basics: guaranteeing the right to vote. During the Supreme Court deliberations in 2000 on the Bush v. Gore case that ultimately determined the occupant of the White House, Justice Antonin Scalia went out of his way to establish that the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for the president of the United States.

Tough goals and strict limits crucial to protect sea life

2004-12-12T16:43:00.000Z

Policing protected areas and limiting fishing outside them will be crucial to the network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) proposed in a report on fish conservation by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Euan Dunn, Head of Marine Policy at the RSPB said: 'MPAs, where fishing is banned or restricted, can protect whole food chains, from sandeels to seabirds and vulnerable slow-growing fish species.
'A fishing ban in up to 30% of UK waters is the target we must aim for to safeguard our marine environment. That goal is as appropriate to the North Atlantic as anywhere else.'
'This report should confirm to ministers that a network of Marine Protected Areas should be included in the Marine Bill. It should also concentrate minds on moving away from traditional, but failing, fishing management policies and towards a set of measures that makes fishing sustainable. If that means compensating fishermen who no longer have work, then that is what the government and its European partners must do.'

"everything you do is a baboon"

2004-12-07T13:29:00.000Z

When I was visiting my ex-colleague and long time friend Jeff Martin I dragged him over lunch into the Association of Photographers gallery to look at their winter exhibition Capture (pictures from the summer Open exhibition can be seen here). I thought that the most striking photo was one of a nun in front of the misty Guggenheim in Bilbao, but all the images were excellent and worth taking the time to see.
[The title of this blog is taken from some graffiti outside the sandwich shop - where I got an excellent baked potato to eat.]

US policies - not presentation - fuel anti-Americanism

2004-12-02T21:27:00.000Z

Sidney Blumenthal writes in Salon.com: "Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic - namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is - for Americans - really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is ... heightened by election-year atmospherics, but none the less sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims, they are talking to themselves." Actually, this is the conclusion of the report of the defence science board taskforce on strategic communication - the product of a Pentagon advisory panel - delivered in September. Its 102 pages were not made public in the presidential campaign, but, barely noticed by the US press, silently slipped on to a Pentagon website on Thanksgiving eve. [...] "Thus the critical problem in American public diplomacy directed toward the Muslim world is not one of 'dissemination of information', or even one of crafting and delivering the 'right' message. Rather, it is a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none - the United States is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims ... Inevitably, therefore, whatever Americans do and say only serves the party that has both the message and the 'loud and clear' channel: the enemy."
See the Antiwar.com Blog for more analysis of this critical report.

This food racket just can't go on

2004-12-02T21:14:00.000Z

From The Guardian: "The way we eat is not just ecologically unsustainable but also morally and even biologically unsustainable. Making it better requires radical structural change. It needs tighter competition policies. It needs reform of subsidies and trade rules. It needs regulation of business, none of which government is inclined to do. So making our food better will also require a massive consumer rebellion. In my experience when people are well-informed about how this globalised food is made, they no longer want to eat it."

Open source gets UK public sector boost

2004-12-02T21:11:00.000Z

From Yahoo! ZDNet News: An organisation aims to help small open-source companies win government contracts.
A group of open-source providers that aims to promote the deployment of open source in the public sector was launched on Monday.The consortium, known as the Open Source Consortium (OSC), has over 60 members, the majority of which are based in the UK.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the OSC, said it is primarily aimed at promoting open source in government organisations, where there are barriers to its adoption."

Free mind mapping software

2004-11-22T16:58:00.000Z

Try Freemind (from Willem van den Ende's blog.)

Hard objects of desire

2004-11-21T21:51:00.000Z

Hard laptop cases aren't cheap but they do take care of their contents - and look great with it :-)

Species loss has critical implications for human well-being

2004-11-21T21:19:00.000Z

A total of 15,589 species face extinction, reveals the 2004 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. One in three amphibians and almost half of all freshwater turtles are threatened, on top of the one in eight birds and one in four mammals known to be in jeopardy.

Nine years of lock-in

2004-11-21T21:09:00.000Z

From the Register: Last week the UK's National Health Service announced a landmark licensing deal with Microsoft, trumpeting savings of £330 million over the lifespan of the agreement. And what a sweet deal it was - for Microsoft. The NHS, the "largest procurer of IT services in the world" is now locked into Windows and Microsoft Office for nine years; its IT suppliers, if they wish to remain its IT suppliers, must also lock themselves in, and anyone working with the new NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has effectively had Windows chosen for them.

TV Be Gone (zap!)

2004-10-29T11:30:00.000+01:00

I must have you, precioussssssss...

Firefox web developer toolbar

2004-10-29T11:25:00.000+01:00

Tons of features: possibly indispensable for web development?!

Laszlo - the next hard to spell big thing

2004-10-29T11:07:00.000+01:00

Laszlo Systems recently open-sourced their toolkit for rich UI browser-based clients. Or, as they put it, "Now serving rich Internet applications baked with open source goodness".

Colorado Software Summit

2004-10-29T11:05:00.000+01:00

Wish I was there - I'm jealous ;-)

Vector graphics with Javascript

2004-10-29T10:57:00.000+01:00

Walter Zorn's astonishingly capable toolkit draws lines, polygons and ellipses right in your browser. Cool!

Accessing files on Win2K from Linux using NFS

2004-10-22T23:13:00.000+01:00

It's pleasantly easy and quick even over my home network... though I'd recommend using SOSSNT over Cygwin for the Win2K NFS server.

Amphibians: going, going, gone?

2004-10-15T23:08:00.000+01:00

The world's frogs, newts and toads are dying. They are being over-harvested for food, their homes are being destroyed, and most worryingly, entire species are disappearing for no apparent reason
Amphibian malformations- extra limbs, malformed or missing limbs, and facial malformations - have been documented in 44 states, and involve nearly 60 species. In some local populations, up to 60% of the amphibians exhibit malformations.
Amphibians are declining, as are most, if not all other groups of life on Earth. This loss of biodiversity should be a cause of concern to all of us. However, there are good reasons for thinking that disappearing amphibians are especially significant.
An entire species of golden toad, observed breeding on a Costa Rican mountainside, vanished two years later and has not been seen since. Frogs examined during a middle-school science outing in Minnesota are found to have astonishingly high rates of physical deformities. At least three species of amphibians have apparently vanished from their former range in Yosemite National Park. What is happening to amphibians?

Need a free music player for Windows?

2004-10-15T21:50:00.000+01:00

Quinnware's' Quintessential Player does the trick. MP3 and OGG both supported :-)

Why Jon Udell's blog rocks

2004-10-14T18:01:00.000+01:00

Just recently he has written about (among other things):

JotSpot - the Application Wiki
XML literals for Python (like the fabled X# but with Pythonic semantics)
E4X - EcmaScript for XML

Content-specific URL links to PDF content

2004-10-14T17:57:00.000+01:00

URL Examples:
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#nameddest=Chapter6
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#page=3
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#page=3&zoom=200,250,100
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#zoom=50
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#page=72&view=fitH,100
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#view=fitb&nameddest=Chapter3
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#pagemode=none
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#pagemode=bookmarks&page=2
http://mydocs/doc.pdf#page=3&pagemode=thumbs

Python and XML tidbits

2004-10-14T17:47:00.000+01:00

Two nice tidbits from this overview of the current Py/XML world:

XMLObject combines the best Object Oriented features of Python with XML managing. Declare your XMLObjects, you don't have to know the internal cooking, you deal with Objects, you get XML. That's all.
GraphPath is a little-language for analysing graph-structured data, especially RDF. The syntax of GraphPath is reminiscent of Xpath. It has a python implementation that can be teamed up with your favourite python RDF API (e.g. Redland, rdflib, or your own API).

Beware the Patent-wock my son

2004-10-13T16:46:00.000+01:00

Troubled by the recent news of Sun's out of court settlement with Kodak I sank into a deeper despair when I read this:The most sobering aspect of the story of Major Armstrong is that the patents involved were relatively simple and clear cut. They described genuine inventions that stood apart from anything that had gone before, that could easily be understood and put in context, and that did things that had clearly not been possible before. Each of them changed the world. Software patents rarely have any of these attributes.
If such exemplary patents could fuel half a century of pitched legal battles, with entrenched interests prepared to burn money and lawyers to distort the market, how much more trouble is due to us with software patents? What modern-day Armstrong would knowingly embark on a similar course? And without more Armstrongs, how are we to make progress?

Open vs patched security holes

2004-10-11T18:00:00.000+01:00

Compare and contrast this data from Secunia:

Organic farming boosts biodiversity

2004-10-11T17:31:00.000+01:00

From NewScientist: Organic farming increases biodiversity at every level of the food chain - all the way from lowly bacteria to mammals. This is the conclusion of the largest review ever done of studies from around the world comparing organic and conventional agriculture.
Previous studies have shown that organic farming methods can benefit the wildlife around farms. But "the fact that the message is similar all the way up the food chain is new information", says agricultural scientist Martin Entz of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
The study reviewed data from Europe, Canada, New Zealand and the US. Neither of the two groups of researchers who did the study - one from English Nature, a government agency which champions wildlife conservation, and one from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds - has a vested interest in organic farming.

Rumsfeld is misunderstood? Yeah, right

2004-10-11T17:09:00.000+01:00

"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two [Iraq and Al Qaeda]," Mr Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations.

The statement - a u-turn on Mr Rumsfeld's assertion in September 2002 that the CIA had "bulletproof" evidence of a connection - appeared in line with a new intelligence review that failed to find a connection.

Mr Rumsfeld later said his comments to the council had been "misunderstood".

NB: In an interview in 2003 Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Full references and citations at TruthAndPolitics.org

Doing business in the bedroom

2004-10-11T16:51:00.000+01:00

We have absorbed so deeply the logic of market capitalism that it has infected every form of human interaction; the language we use to describe intimacy says it all. We talk of "investing" in our relationships; we have transferred the language of business - our "partner" - to the bedroom. The model of contractualism, exchange and self-interest now applies to love with all the cynicism that entails: "What am I getting out of the relationship?" "I'm not getting my needs met". Our experience of sexuality is riddled with mutual instrumentality: using others as means to our own end - sexual pleasure. These are all signposts of a banality in our understanding of human interaction, with no access to our deep and inescapable interdependence from which so much true human satisfaction comes... This may all sound relentlessly grim, but there are reasons to be cheerful. What too often gets overlooked are the many places of resistance - institutions of great inspiration and relationship which manage (just) to get beyond the contractualism of the market to offer unconditional service. I think of the Catholic hospice where my father died and the generous-hearted nurse who nursed him. I see everywhere the struggle of people holding on to their own sense of integrity and authenticity of relationship in a hostile culture; it's rarely reflected in the media and it has little public celebration or endorsement. We don't have language even to describe it to each other, so sceptical and cynical of human motivation have we become, but we all know it when we meet it and it is the greatest of riches. The nagging unanswered question in my mind is whether those places of resistance are the last pockets of rebellion soon to fall, or the beginning of the fight-back.

Which was NOT nice

2004-10-11T11:55:00.000+01:00

Info9002. Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 (KB867460) cannot be installed because you have one or more hot fixes installed. Remove them and try again.

How long will it take for Microsoft to reinvent the sort of dependency aware software-packaging system that other OS-es (e.g. Debian) have had for years? Sigh...

S5 runs slide shows in a browser

2004-10-08T18:43:00.000+01:00

With just CSS, XHTML and Javascript - wow. So simple and elegant. Great stuff!

Java 1.5 - don't leap before you look

2004-10-05T17:00:00.000+01:00

Look here:
- even Bruce Eckel is Puzzling through Erasure (spread over 4 information crammed blog entries that can only leave you scratching your head and wondering, "All this, just to avoid a ClassCastException?!")
- the Trove collection classes offer an efficient means of storing primitives without requiring the Java 1.5 autoboxing features

The Internet in a nutshell

2004-10-05T11:17:00.000+01:00

1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet\u2019s three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already

Full detail at World of Ends

Clearer anti-aliased typefaces

2004-10-01T16:34:00.000+01:00

Have you activated Cleartype yet?
"9 out of 10 consultants prefer it!" (source unknown)
"Wow cleartype is pretty good!" - Robin Morris
"The best thing since....the last quite good thing" - Stuart Rolland
"I can see clearly now, the text is smooth" - Jimmy Cliff

ACM condemns US presidential e-voting

2004-09-28T11:30:00.000+01:00

The world's oldest professional society of computer scientists took aim on Monday at electronic voting machines, recommending they not be used in elections unless they provide a physical paper trail. In a new position statement, the Association for Computing Machinery said that "voting systems should enable each voter to inspect a physical record to verify that his or her vote has been accurately cast and to serve as an independent check on the result produced and stored by the system."
Accidental bugs or intentional malicious code in e-voting machines could affect an election's results. ACM said that a paper trail will provide a way to double-check what's happening inside machines from companies such as Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems -- a feat that would not otherwise be possible. Such systems are expected to be used by tens of millions of voters in the US election this November.

Ten Fallacies of Software Analysis and Design

2004-09-27T17:01:00.000+01:00

Carlos Perez's list navigates around an underlying theme: These fallacies have its roots in our mathematical traditions, which is a world of perfect determinism. Unfortunately this static thinking mindset is prevalent in software engineering. It's important to realize that the world undergoes continuous change, with feedback and side effects that create non-linearities, with time that's relativistic and with humans that are unpredictable. Finally, if its not obvious to you, your software implementation actually interfaces with this reality. Amen to that.

Common sense breaks out all over in Brussels

2004-09-27T14:59:00.000+01:00

According to Tim Bray, the European Commission wrote to Sun and Microsoft and made two specific requests:
* That we consider taking the Open Office XML Format, currently under construction at OASIS, to ISO for consideration as an International Standard.
* That we implement a set of filters to allow software to interoperate between the Open Office and Microsoft Office XML file formats.
The letter also contained the following paragraph which I think ought to be posted on the office walls wherever IT strategists gather:

Transparency and accessibility requirements dictate that public information and government transactions avoid depending on technologies that imply or impose a specific product or platform on businesses or citizens.

TiddlyWiki

2004-09-27T11:18:00.000+01:00

Is this the smallest, craziest Wiki ever?

What is Mule UMO?

2004-09-24T03:12:00.000+01:00

Mule is a light-weight messaging framework. It can be thought of as a highly distributable object broker that can seamlessly handle interactions with other applications using disparate technologies such as Jms, Http, Email, and Xml-Rpc.
The Mule framework provides a highly scalable environment in which you can deploy your business components. Mule manages all the interactions between components transparently whether they exist in the same VM or over the internet and regardless of the underlying transport used.
Mule was designed around the Enterprise Service Bus enterprise integration pattern, which stipulates that different components or applications communicate through a common messaging bus, usually implemented using Jms or some other messaging server.
Mule goes a lot further by abstracting Jms and any other transport technology away from the business objects used to receive messages from the bus.

The UK's new rubbish dump: China?

2004-09-24T02:47:00.000+01:00

Clare Wilton, wastes spokeswoman for Friends of the Earth, said: "People will be shocked that some of the newspapers and empty drinks bottles they put out for recycling can end up in China. It's an environmental disgrace. The solution is to expand the UK's own recycling industry. This would be good for the environment, create local jobs and help Britain become a leader in green technology."
Sending plastic bottles to China is "barmy", said Mike Croxford, manager of Newport Wastesavers, which collects 50 tonnes a month of plastic from 50,000 homes in south Wales. "We should be dealing with the stuff here, but the reality now is that most plastic in Britain is going abroad. I don't think the public knows where some of it goes. If they knew it was going right round the world, they might not encourage it."
But other recyclers said it was better to send rubbish to China to be recycled than to put it in landfill in Britain. Andrew Simmons of the Peterborough-based waste charity Recoup buys millions of plastic bottles from UK councils, bales them up, and sells them to a reprocessor who then sells them on to Europe or, increasingly, to China. He rejected claims that Britain was dumping its rubbish on China and said that the environmental cost of sending bottles thousands of miles was negligible compared with making "virgin" plastic bottles from oil.

Hidden cost of the hardware upgrade cycle

2004-09-24T02:42:00.000+01:00

Britain is throwing out more than 1m tonnes of electronic "e-waste" such as broken computer monitors and discarded mobile phones every year, and new government figures show that more than ever is going abroad. Last year, 23,000 tonnes of IT and electronic equipment was shipped out illegally, mostly to China, west Africa, Pakistan and India...

What's in a typical 27kg (60lb) desktop computer?
Plastics - 6.26kg
Lead - 1.72kg
Silica - 6.8kg
Aluminium - 3.86kg
Iron - 5.58kg
Copper - 1.91kg
Nickel - 0.23kg
Zinc - 0.6kg
Tin - 0.27kg

Also present are trace amounts of manganese, arsenic, mercury, indium, niobium, yttrium, titanium, cobalt, chromium, cadmium, selenium, beryllium, gold, tantalum, vanadium, europium, and silver.

· Source: Microelectronics and Computer Technology corporation (MCC). Electronics industry Environmental roadmap

IT Recruitment is fundamentally flawed

2004-09-24T01:44:00.000+01:00

On the plus side, the number of over-45s in the IT industry is growing. But the downside is that IT employers have yet to fully realise the demographic time-bomb they have ticking away in their recruitment policies.
Across the UK, the workforce is ageing and soon the proportion of under 35s in all areas of employment will be at a record low. As fewer young people enter the industry - and 'A' Level entrants for computer studies are at an all-time low - we cannot afford to allow people with vast experience of IT to be discarded.
The research also suggests the number of women in UK IT has almost halved in the past four years, and that the adoption of flexible working practices is way behind other sectors - the latter a particular irony considering the number of organisations trying implement mobile systems. [Source: Computing magazine]

We are what we do

2004-09-21T17:23:00.000+01:00

Many of us perceive a yawning gap between what needs to be done, and what we can personally influence. Worldwide, 30,000 children die of preventable illnesses every day; 42 million people are living with, and dying from, HIV/ AIDS; and average income declined in 54 countries in the 1990's.
Yet, the scale of these problems simply induces a state of paralysis in us as individuals. Most of us think that we have to leave the achievement of change to Governments, Big Business or professional lobbying organisations. Yet we know in our hearts that this is not enough.
The question is not whether we should act alone, but how we can act together.
We Are What We Do is not another charity. It's not an institution. It's a movement. We are not trying to raise money. We are trying to prove that the solution to the world's big problems is to aggregate millions of small actions. Small actions performed not by saints or 'do-gooders' or radicals, but by anyone and everyone...by you, your neighbours, colleagues, friends, family.

Interested? Sign up for one of the actions now!

Eclipse Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet

2004-09-21T10:56:00.000+01:00

Eclipse has good support for keystroke bindings - the problem is getting an overview of which key / keys provide the shortcuts for which actions. (Individual shortcuts are accessible in the IDE via Window/Preferences/Workbench/Keys...) The solution? This excellent PDF.

Creative Commons and XMP

2004-09-20T16:59:00.000+01:00

Just came across this application of XMP in the Creative Commons project for open licensing of non textual data. Nice :-)

Eclipse Visual Editor at 1.0 RC3

2004-09-20T16:18:00.000+01:00

Looks like the Eclipse VE project has made another release. Not sure if it's related or not, but the latest copy of Dr Dobbs contains an interest-piquing article about the VEP...

So many LiveCD distros, so little time

2004-09-20T14:03:00.000+01:00

I just ducked out of a Knoppix vs Mepis debate (started by Kingsley, who else?!), and thought I'd check on the number of LiveCD distros currently available. The answer apparently is thirty-eight.

Switching to Subversion

2004-09-20T11:37:00.001+01:00

Mike Mason has been championing Subversion for a while now: this article covers the ground you need to know to successfully make the switch from CVS :-)

Seeking closure

2004-09-20T10:33:00.000+01:00

Martin Fowler forgot about Python in his recent blog entry about closures -- fortunately Ivan Moore stepped up to fill the gap.

Python 2.4

2004-09-18T21:51:00.000+01:00

WhatsNew includes Generator expressions and function / method decorators, plus the usual preformance improvements and clarifying fixes.
And some nice sort implementation features.

Who says quality doesn't come cheap?

2004-09-17T14:38:00.000+01:00

I saw a rave review of the "Skullcandy Skullcrushers" headphones on the TV of all places. They came top of the class, beating Bose and Sennheiser, and all for a reasonably low price. Must remember to get some ;-)

Productivity = Quality Management x IT Investment

2004-09-17T11:00:00.000+01:00

The results showed that a one-point improvement on the five point scale in management practice produced a 25 per cent increase in the company's total factor productivity (a measure that includes both labour and capital productivity)... [and] additional computing power delivered higher productivity but with a much more modest impact. The difference in productivity generated by increased IT investments was a mere quarter of that from improved management practices.
So, turning to the ongoing debate, does this mean that IT does not matter? Well not quite. What the results show is that when better management practices were combined with increased IT investments, the increase in productivity was several times larger than by increasing IT or improving management practices alone.

The Evil Empire attacks USB

2004-09-17T10:51:00.000+01:00

There IS a new USB standard in the works and it is at the heart of Microsoft's sudden interest in USB security. Co-developed with Intel, the new USB standard specifically excludes Linux and probably OS X devices as well. I'm told the Intel folks are quite embarrassed about this, but feel powerless to do anything about it. The new standard will be sold to USB device makers as a chance to replace every device they've already sold, and PC makers will be told they can do the same with every desktop. But for non-Windows computers the likely result will be that Windows-standard USB devices will no longer be compatible, which means there will have to be two USB standards, and the non-Windows variety will have lower sales volume and therefore higher prices. Going further, the PC standard will lead to motherboards that will be hostile to Linux, and will likely mean that loading Linux will result in a PC with inoperative USB ports. This, too, could mean dual motherboard standards, again with the Windows variety having higher volumes and lower prices. Scary stuff: full story at I, Cringely

The Eight Fallacies Of Distributed Computing

2004-09-15T16:45:00.000+01:00

Thank you Peter Deutsch for compiling this list of major fallacies:
1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn't change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous

EmPy - Python-style Templating

2004-09-15T16:41:00.000+01:00

EmPy is a system for embedding Python expressions and statements in template text; it takes an EmPy source file, processes it, and produces output. This is accomplished via expansions, which are special signals to the EmPy system and are set off by a special prefix (by default the at sign, @). EmPy can expand arbitrary Python expressions and statements in this way, as well as a variety of special forms. Textual data not explicitly delimited in this way is sent unaffected to the output, allowing Python to be used in effect as a markup language. Also supported are callbacks via hooks, recording and playback via diversions, and dynamic, chainable filters. The system is highly configurable via command line options and embedded commands. Scripting a scripting language - wierdly compelling :-)

Put a penguin in your Pocket

2004-09-10T17:38:00.000+01:00

From DeveloperWorks: Installing Linux™ on your iPAQ can be a great way to breathe new life into aging hardware or make an existing tool even better, particularly if you are a fan of Linux on the desktop. You can leverage your existing knowledge and enjoy the benefits of familiar (pun intended) free and open source software on the move. In this article, learn how to turbocharge your HP-Compaq iPAQ PDA with Linux. Something that really caught my eye was the mention of a special 'pypaq' distribution of the 'Familiar' Linux distro...

We need three planets to sustain us

2004-09-10T10:23:00.000+01:00

If everyone in the world lived like the average person in Britain, we would need three planets to sustain us. On average, Britons use up 5.4 hectares of the earth's natural resources every year, well above the global average of 3.4 hectares. According to Earthday, an environmental pressure group, the Earth can only sustain 1.8 hectares per person. So how do you know when you are consuming too much? Earthday has built a web application that calculates your "global footprint" from a multiple choice quiz. If you are serious about reducing your global footprint, it is not easy. Redefining Progress, a partner pressure group, recommends ditching the car, going vegetarian and flying a lot less often. (From the Guardian Web Watch)

RESTful best practices

2004-09-03T11:32:00.000+01:00

This is a great article about best practices for Representational State Transfer (REST) web services [that] have won the hearts of many working developers. For example, Amazon's web services have both SOAP and REST interfaces, and 85% of the usage is on the REST interface. Compared with other styles of web services, REST is easy to implement and has many highly desirable architectural properties: scalability, performance, security, reliability, and extensibility. Those characteristics fit nicely with the modern business environment, which commands technical solutions just as adoptive and agile as the business itself.

NDISWrapper for Linux WLAN cards

2004-08-31T13:34:00.000+01:00

Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project provides a linux kernel module that loads and runs Ndis (Windows network driver API) drivers supplied by the vendors... The driver works quite well on many builtin cards as well as PCMCIA (Cardbus only) cards. Some USB cards are also supported.
Postscript:Debian + ndiswrapper == hair loss says it all ;-)

Space for ideas

2004-08-31T11:26:00.000+01:00

Six original works have been commissioned from thought leaders Dr. Edward de Bono, Robert Heller, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Jonathon Porritt, Professor Richard Wiseman and Reverend Peter Owen Jones to help businesses and individuals generate new ideas and thinking. Developing and sustaining a business is a craft that requires intuition, energy and plenty of ideas. Unlike typical management texts these essays are written to be practical.

No relief from the misery?

2004-08-31T10:59:00.000+01:00

Many British people fail to relax at weekends, despite working some of the longest hours in Europe, researchers have said. According to a survey, many people are spending their weekends worrying about work or catching up on chores. Less than a quarter of people associate weekends with having fun [the poll indicates]

And holidays provide little respite either: Misery on the first day back comes shortly after logging on, as a quarter said a full email inbox - or in-tray - would sour their return. However, it was the simple things that could turn the day around, with 58% saying they just wanted their boss to show they cared, and 44% saying they would perk up if they heard a cheery "welcome back". But for a gloomy one in eight, nothing their boss could do would erase the dark clouds. The chief executive of Investors In People, Ruth Spellman, said: "Employers must take action before eagerness for change leads to a determination to leave. It's so clear that the simple steps count. It doesn't take much to say 'welcome back', and the research shows it could have a massive effect on motivation."

Software Freedom Part 3

2004-08-31T10:55:00.000+01:00

Should FOSS be open (as in door) rather than open (as in source)? Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's new chief executive officer, has created a lot of controversy by posting provocative attacks on Red Hat and IBM on his blog. Still, he has scored one palpable hit by pointing out that what customers really value is not openness per se, but the ability to substitute one product for another.

Software Freedom Part 2

2004-08-31T10:49:00.000+01:00

The UN sponsored International Open Source Network recognises that FOSS represents an opportunity for developing countries to adopt affordable software and solutions toward bridging the digital divide. Cost-savings will allow funds to be used on other priorities and development objectives... The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific Region. It shapes its activities around FOSS technologies and applications. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human resources in the region... IOSN is an initiative of the Asia-Pacific Information Development Programme (APDIP), which has been supporting the strategic and effective use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997.

Software Freedom Part 1

2004-08-31T10:46:00.000+01:00

On August 28, 2004, we will celebrate the first annual Software Freedom Day. On that day, we will make the world aware of the virtues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and encourage its widespread use. We will set up stations in public places to give away informational fliers and CDs with selected FOSS, including TheOpenCD and a Linux Live CD.

Climate warming all at sea

2004-08-31T10:42:00.000+01:00

According to SAHFOS strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red mullet are migrating north. Several sea birds are also in trouble. Kittiwake numbers are falling fast and guillemots are struggling to breed. And, earlier this summer, hundreds of fulmar (a relative of the albatross) corpses washed up on the Norfolk coast, having apparently starved to death. Scientists suspect these events are linked and they are trying to work out how.

Beyond global warming: where on earth are we going?

2004-08-31T10:36:00.000+01:00

At the EuroScience Open Forum Professor Schellnhuber said 12 "hotspots" had been identified so far, areas which acted like massive regulators of the Earth's environment. If these critical regions were subjected to stress, they could trigger large-scale, rapid changes across the entire planet. But not enough was known about them to be able to predict when the limits of tolerance were reached. "We have so far completely underestimated the importance of these locations," he said. "What we do know is that going beyond critical thresholds in these regions could have dramatic consequences for humans and other life forms." One example of a hotspot was the North Atlantic current, the ocean circulation pattern responsible for bringing warmer air to northern Europe, the collapse of which could lead to a very large regional climate shift. Others were the West Antarctic ice sheet, the Sahara desert, and the forests of the Amazon basin. Yet another hotspot, Professor Schellnhuber said, was the Asian monsoon system. (from BBC news)