"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C Clarke
Musings from the technological frontier
January 29, 2008
MacBook Air Disappointment
I was rather surprised to see that the hard disk for the entry-level MacBook Air, while it has a reasonable 80 GB capacity, is a slow-as-a-drain 4200 rpm version. This is a real disappointment for what would otherwise be a reasonably-specified computer. It's a pity the solid-state optional drive adds a thousand dollars to the price. Still, the cool factor will inevitably have the Apple fanboys queuing round the block, so why should Steve Jobs worry?
January 24, 2008
Publicize PyCon!
 | There are signs that Chicago will be hosting the biggest and best PyCon ever in March this year. Even the publicity effort is better organized this year, with help from a PR company and now the introduction of the self-help PyCon publicity kit thanks to Catherine Devlin. The badge on the left comes pre-linked, and there's a smaller badge for your navigation bar too. Check it out, and help PyCon succeed! |
January 21, 2008
PyCon 2008 Registration Opens
Roll up, roll up, roll up, for the greatest show on earth. If you're a devotee of the Python language, that is. In the USA PyCon has quickly become the conference to attend. Registration opened less than 24 hours ago, and early bird pricing ($400 corporate, $200 "hobbyist" $125 student and $60 tutorial only) is available until February 20.
Yours truly was registered early, having taken part in testing the new site, and I have also booked a hotel room. If last year is anything to go by then those wanting to register for tutorials should book early to avoid disappointment: the more popular sessions were filled up even before early bird registration closed.
Doug Napoleone (whose wife gave birth to their third child this month) and the PyCon-Tech team have put in an amazing amount of work to ensure smooth running of the registration process, and it is by far the best site PyCon has had. Kudos to them: this year you can change your registration information after sign-up, preview your conference badge and do many things that have been impossible in earlier years.
So, sign up and I'll see you there!
Yours truly was registered early, having taken part in testing the new site, and I have also booked a hotel room. If last year is anything to go by then those wanting to register for tutorials should book early to avoid disappointment: the more popular sessions were filled up even before early bird registration closed.
Doug Napoleone (whose wife gave birth to their third child this month) and the PyCon-Tech team have put in an amazing amount of work to ensure smooth running of the registration process, and it is by far the best site PyCon has had. Kudos to them: this year you can change your registration information after sign-up, preview your conference badge and do many things that have been impossible in earlier years.
So, sign up and I'll see you there!
January 18, 2008
Resolver Released
In yet another piece of good news for Python fans, Resolver Systems have released their first product. It's a spreadsheet that you can manipulate in Python, and it's received a lot of interest from the financial communities on both sides of the Atlantic. [You would not believe how much of the world's financial dealing is controlled and managed by spreadsheets; it's really quite scary].
Resolver One is written in IronPython by a team which includes the Fuzzyman (occasionally also known as Michael Foord), of Voidspace Techie Blog fame, and it's currently the largest product developed in that languages, with a total codebase (including tests) of over 100 kloc. The company is bravely making the product available (though not, I believe, as open source) free for non-commercial use.
Mike and other members of the Resolver team will be at PyCon in Chicago in March, which is yet another reason to attend this most excellent conference. Registrations will, I am assured, be open by the beginning of next week--I have already secured my place by acting a test subject of the registration process, and will attempt to stay for a couple of the sprint days too this year.
Resolver One is written in IronPython by a team which includes the Fuzzyman (occasionally also known as Michael Foord), of Voidspace Techie Blog fame, and it's currently the largest product developed in that languages, with a total codebase (including tests) of over 100 kloc. The company is bravely making the product available (though not, I believe, as open source) free for non-commercial use.
Mike and other members of the Resolver team will be at PyCon in Chicago in March, which is yet another reason to attend this most excellent conference. Registrations will, I am assured, be open by the beginning of next week--I have already secured my place by acting a test subject of the registration process, and will attempt to stay for a couple of the sprint days too this year.
Python Declared "Programming Language of 2007"
Yet another article meriting screaming headlines declares Python to be the language of 2007. But on the home page of the python.org website the "news" is that Python 3.0a2 was released on December 9 and there was a Python Bug Day on January 19 (hang on a minute, that publication date has to be wrong, it's 36 hours in the future—someone's been borrowing Guido's time machine again). Anyway, it's nice to see Python getting good headlines, even if it doesn't yet shout them abroad as effectively as it might.
Apparently Python has moved up from #8 to #6 in TIOBE's last table, but unfortunately their obtuse use of web technology (frames within frames, some of them dynamically populated by client-side code) makes it somewhat difficult to link to their explanation of how they compute the results. I suspect myself that a large part of Python's improvement is due to the increasing visibility of IronPython, the Microsoft-supported .NET Python implementation. One rather sad quote for the old guard: "Perl is just dead".
But now I have another blog entry to write.
Apparently Python has moved up from #8 to #6 in TIOBE's last table, but unfortunately their obtuse use of web technology (frames within frames, some of them dynamically populated by client-side code) makes it somewhat difficult to link to their explanation of how they compute the results. I suspect myself that a large part of Python's improvement is due to the increasing visibility of IronPython, the Microsoft-supported .NET Python implementation. One rather sad quote for the old guard: "Perl is just dead".
But now I have another blog entry to write.
Python Gets Security Plaudit, Moves to Coverity Rung 2
This is something that hasn't yet made big news, but I don't know why not. For over a year now Coverity, funded by the Department of Homeland Security's Open Source Hardening project, has been working to report potential security flaws in open source projects. The company recently announced that eleven projects had been sufficiently proactive in responding to defect reports that they now move to "rung 2", giving them access to further levels of Coverity's hardening technology.
Of course Python is one of those projects. It says a lot for the developers that they responded so aggressively to the reports (some, inevitably, were specious but several represented significant issues that thanks to this initiative will never trouble Python users). The bottom line? Python, like Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN, Overdose, Perl, PHP, Postfix, Samba, and TCL, is a project whose developers take correctness and security seriously.
I anxiously await the results of the first scan of some Microsoft product, but I am not holding my breath. Even if the scan takes place (and for all I know Microsoft are using Coverity's scanners every day) Microsoft would not publish the results. This shows the value of openness, one of open source's major benefits: you know that security issues aren't being swept under the rug in the name of profit.
The tail end of a ZD-Net article suggests that some people are less than happy about this project because they feel it will lead to ill-informed discussion about security problems in open source software. While this isn't a battle that will be won in a day, being seen to assiduously fix reported software problems will eventually win against the lip service paid to security by so many commercial vendors. If you're looking for well-informed discussion then this blog is the place to come (he wrote, modestly).
Of course Python is one of those projects. It says a lot for the developers that they responded so aggressively to the reports (some, inevitably, were specious but several represented significant issues that thanks to this initiative will never trouble Python users). The bottom line? Python, like Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN, Overdose, Perl, PHP, Postfix, Samba, and TCL, is a project whose developers take correctness and security seriously.
I anxiously await the results of the first scan of some Microsoft product, but I am not holding my breath. Even if the scan takes place (and for all I know Microsoft are using Coverity's scanners every day) Microsoft would not publish the results. This shows the value of openness, one of open source's major benefits: you know that security issues aren't being swept under the rug in the name of profit.
The tail end of a ZD-Net article suggests that some people are less than happy about this project because they feel it will lead to ill-informed discussion about security problems in open source software. While this isn't a battle that will be won in a day, being seen to assiduously fix reported software problems will eventually win against the lip service paid to security by so many commercial vendors. If you're looking for well-informed discussion then this blog is the place to come (he wrote, modestly).
January 17, 2008
Sun Buys MySQL for $1 billion
Sun just raised their bet on open source by buying MySQL AB, the company that makes the most popular open source relational database in the world. They paid $800m in cash and assumed $200m in options to do so, even though MySQL distribute most of their software as open source.
MySQL was the first to aggressively adopt the so-called dual licensing model, which allowed products to be acquired as open source or bought with a support contract, and this has been popular with those who don't like the prospect of having to fall back on their own support resources.
Sun seem to be betting that closer ties with a popular database product will bring them more server and suppoer business, and who's to say they're wrong?
MySQL was the first to aggressively adopt the so-called dual licensing model, which allowed products to be acquired as open source or bought with a support contract, and this has been popular with those who don't like the prospect of having to fall back on their own support resources.
Sun seem to be betting that closer ties with a popular database product will bring them more server and suppoer business, and who's to say they're wrong?
January 8, 2008
Windmill Web Testing Framework
If what this page says is true then Windmill will be very well worth some investigation. Of course the major problem with the Python web world is that so much is going on it's simply impossible to keep up with everything! Of course WSGI lays the foundation for much else, and it appears that Zope 2 now plays well with others.
I think I might start trying to make shorter blog entries just to note the most interesting developments as PyPI (Cheese Shop) contributions fly past at a rate of knots.
In the past I have looked at TurboGears, and was impressed how easy it was to implement the functionality of another web site. Recently I have been doing a similar thing with Django. We are very fortunate to have two such capable frameworks available for our web developments, and I am going to try and make sure that they both get some coverage in Python Magazine.
I think I might start trying to make shorter blog entries just to note the most interesting developments as PyPI (Cheese Shop) contributions fly past at a rate of knots.
In the past I have looked at TurboGears, and was impressed how easy it was to implement the functionality of another web site. Recently I have been doing a similar thing with Django. We are very fortunate to have two such capable frameworks available for our web developments, and I am going to try and make sure that they both get some coverage in Python Magazine.
January 7, 2008
Teaching Python to Programmers
Well, PyCon is now less than three months away, and the most recent event of note was the announcement of the list of tutorials. I am happy to say that my own proposal was accepted, so one of the offerings is Python 101 for Programmers.
The intention is to give experienced programmers who are new to Python enough insight into the language that the simpler PyCon sessions will make sense to them. PyCon is an incredibly valuable resource for promoting the Python language, and I hope that all readers will encourage programmers they know to come to the conference and learn more about this interesting language. Of course I'll be happy to see them in the tutorial too!
The PSF has made real attempts in the last couple of years to evangelize the language, but ultimately the lesson of evangelism is: the best promoters of a language are its enthusiastic users. It seems to me that Python is crossing the knee of some curve right now, and acceptance is improving to the stage that it's getting hard to find Python programmers.
Of course there's another reason for going to PyCon if you are looking for a job. The biggest and best Python employers have realized that PyCon is the easiest place to make contact with the community. You only have to look at the list of past and present sponsors to see that.
So, I hope to see you all at PyCon, preferably in the company of a programmer who's just starting out with the language!
The intention is to give experienced programmers who are new to Python enough insight into the language that the simpler PyCon sessions will make sense to them. PyCon is an incredibly valuable resource for promoting the Python language, and I hope that all readers will encourage programmers they know to come to the conference and learn more about this interesting language. Of course I'll be happy to see them in the tutorial too!
The PSF has made real attempts in the last couple of years to evangelize the language, but ultimately the lesson of evangelism is: the best promoters of a language are its enthusiastic users. It seems to me that Python is crossing the knee of some curve right now, and acceptance is improving to the stage that it's getting hard to find Python programmers.
Of course there's another reason for going to PyCon if you are looking for a job. The biggest and best Python employers have realized that PyCon is the easiest place to make contact with the community. You only have to look at the list of past and present sponsors to see that.
So, I hope to see you all at PyCon, preferably in the company of a programmer who's just starting out with the language!
December 30, 2007
Starting to Understand Django
Given a fairly quiet holiday season I wanted to try and make some sense of Django, having formerly given TurboGears a look (though not yet having written that up). Both are capable systems whose designers I have a lot of respect for, so it would be nice to master their elementss. Each in its own way has the potential to improve web productivity, though it remains to be seen whether I have the headspace for all of both systems given their complexity.
After a couple of days messing around with Django I am at the stage where I have imported the Holden Web database model using Django's introspection features. A deal of cleanup was required, as well as a certain amount of reordering—most of which would not have been necessary if I'd had the sense to delete the Django admin tables from mo model, since I doubt I will need to manipulate them directly. Anyway, it's rather nice to see that the following views.py can generate the almost home page shown above:
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.loader import get_template
from mainapp.models import Section
def homepage(request):
seclist = Section.objects.all()
hpdict = dict(("secPathZone%d" % s.sechomeslot, s.secpath) for s in seclist)
return HttpResponse(get_template("homepage.html").render(hpdict))
This is neat, though I have an idea that rendering the unnumbered lists to add the missing link sets is going to involve me in a little more work than I have had to do so far. Still, it's an encouraging start. I am serving this web from a local Apache server using mod_python to control Django and serving static content (images, CSS files) directly.
After a couple of days messing around with Django I am at the stage where I have imported the Holden Web database model using Django's introspection features. A deal of cleanup was required, as well as a certain amount of reordering—most of which would not have been necessary if I'd had the sense to delete the Django admin tables from mo model, since I doubt I will need to manipulate them directly. Anyway, it's rather nice to see that the following views.py can generate the almost home page shown above:from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template.loader import get_template
from mainapp.models import Section
def homepage(request):
seclist = Section.objects.all()
hpdict = dict(("secPathZone%d" % s.sechomeslot, s.secpath) for s in seclist)
return HttpResponse(get_template("homepage.html").render(hpdict))
This is neat, though I have an idea that rendering the unnumbered lists to add the missing link sets is going to involve me in a little more work than I have had to do so far. Still, it's an encouraging start. I am serving this web from a local Apache server using mod_python to control Django and serving static content (images, CSS files) directly.
December 22, 2007
Ubuntu 7.10 Sound on Asus M2NPV-VM Motherboard
Dear Lazyweb:
I am really enjoying my new Linux system, but I can't seem to get the sound working. Perhaps it's a driver issue: all I know is that the aplay -l command gives me the following output:
aplay: device_list: 204: no soundcards found
This is very disappointing, as I was hoping to use this machine to work on a podcasts and screencasts in the new year. I'd be very pleased to find a recipe for fully working audio and digital sound, but at the moment any kind of sound would be a great improvement.
Google searches reveal that this has been an issue with various distributions and releases but so far nobody seems to have published a reliable solution, and I am beginning to doubt that one exists ...
I am really enjoying my new Linux system, but I can't seem to get the sound working. Perhaps it's a driver issue: all I know is that the aplay -l command gives me the following output:
aplay: device_list: 204: no soundcards found
This is very disappointing, as I was hoping to use this machine to work on a podcasts and screencasts in the new year. I'd be very pleased to find a recipe for fully working audio and digital sound, but at the moment any kind of sound would be a great improvement.
Google searches reveal that this has been an issue with various distributions and releases but so far nobody seems to have published a reliable solution, and I am beginning to doubt that one exists ...
December 21, 2007
December 19, 2007
Cheese Shop Doing Good Business
PyPi, the Python Package Index, is affectionately known as the Cheese Shop due to the the Python world's affinity with Monty Python and its tendency to relish obscure puns based on the sketches. I can't say I have ever liked the nickname, but PyPi is a valuable repository of often highly usable code and currently contains over 3,000 contributions. So it's worth a look.
The RSS feed contains the last thirty updates, which currently covers a 48-hour span--the feed appears to be updated once daily at 7 pm. So there's clearly a lot going on, and when I get time (note the ironic sound of hollow laughter ringing metaphorically in your ears) I shall be using the browse interface to take a closer look.
The RSS feed contains the last thirty updates, which currently covers a 48-hour span--the feed appears to be updated once daily at 7 pm. So there's clearly a lot going on, and when I get time (note the ironic sound of hollow laughter ringing metaphorically in your ears) I shall be using the browse interface to take a closer look.
December 18, 2007
Cygwin ssh-agent Control
[Edited: 10/6/08 Remove temporary files before starting a new agent]
Another little annoyance gone: all Cygwin processes now share a single ssh-agent instance, which is started up automatically as required. I picked this tip up from a now-forgotten blog. the only change required to that recipe being to re-order the redirections for the ssh-agent command. Since it took me a while to find (low Google-fu today?) I take the liberty of repeating it here so I don't forget it.
In your ~/.bashrc file add the following:
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/.ssh-socket
ssh-add -l >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? = 2 ]; then
# Exit status 2 means couldn't connect to ssh-agent; start one now
rm -rf /tmp/.ssh-*
ssh-agent -a $SSH_AUTH_SOCK >/tmp/.ssh-script
. /tmp/.ssh-script
echo $SSH_AGENT_PID >/tmp/.ssh-agent-pid
fi
function kill-agent {
pid=`cat /tmp/.ssh-agent-pid`
kill $pid
}
You can use Start | My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Environment Variables to add an environment variable called SSH_AUTH_SOCK whose value is /tmp/.ssh-socket to make the agent available to other Cygwin-aware processes you run under Windows.
That's better!
For some reason a number of posts were stuck in the blog as drafts. This one is from October last year.
Another little annoyance gone: all Cygwin processes now share a single ssh-agent instance, which is started up automatically as required. I picked this tip up from a now-forgotten blog. the only change required to that recipe being to re-order the redirections for the ssh-agent command. Since it took me a while to find (low Google-fu today?) I take the liberty of repeating it here so I don't forget it.
In your ~/.bashrc file add the following:
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/.ssh-socket
ssh-add -l >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? = 2 ]; then
# Exit status 2 means couldn't connect to ssh-agent; start one now
rm -rf /tmp/.ssh-*
ssh-agent -a $SSH_AUTH_SOCK >/tmp/.ssh-script
. /tmp/.ssh-script
echo $SSH_AGENT_PID >/tmp/.ssh-agent-pid
fi
function kill-agent {
pid=`cat /tmp/.ssh-agent-pid`
kill $pid
}
You can use Start | My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Environment Variables to add an environment variable called SSH_AUTH_SOCK whose value is /tmp/.ssh-socket to make the agent available to other Cygwin-aware processes you run under Windows.
That's better!
For some reason a number of posts were stuck in the blog as drafts. This one is from October last year.
December 16, 2007
Getting There
Damn, it's been a long time without a decent computing infrastructure.
Regular readers (you poor, benighted individuals) will know that a lot of the last year has been taken up by a relocation from the United Kingdom (back) to the USA. In the UK somebody asked me how many computers I had, after a brief mental count, I replied "seven" (which didn't seem excessive to me). I gave one away to an honorary niece before I moved--she is probably still the only kid in her school with a Linux laptop.
Unfortunately four of them had to be packed up and moved with the rest of my house contents, the only ones carried across by hand being my wife's laptop and mine. This wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the unfortunate necessity to live in rented accommodation (thanks, Gwen and Warren) from February until our new house was ready in September. The move into the new house, of course, coincided with a rather large number of non-computing tasks regarded as necessary for making the new environment livable.
So, now we have blinds on most of the windows, rugs in all rooms, a properly sealed garage floor (yes, "...Magic" is not my only blog) and Christmas shopping completed and the necessary gifts mailed to the UK I have been able to start thinking again about working with more than just the single trusty laptop that has kept me going for the last year. Woot!
The first piece of slightly depressing news was that my Linux system headrat was dead on arrival. I could boot up from an original disk on the second IDE interface, but the primary disk was as dead as the proverbial dodo--we are talking clicking noises from the head actuator, which is rarely a good sign. Fortunately this disk wasn't the one with my home directory on it, so there was no need to restore from backups. Headrat was getting pretty long in the tooth, however: to give you some idea it was a system I put together myself and the first one with a 1GHz Athlon processor in it. While quite blazing seven years ago, the performance today is no longer so impressive, so I decided to see what was available today.
With the help of a local (and very competent) computer dealer I managed to get the following system (now christened hourbot) for just over $600 including sales tax.
There have been a few glitches, like having to load the proprietary Nvidia video drivers before I could get reasonable display performance, but overall the road has been smooth. Ironically I chose the specific motherboard for the superior audio quality it potentially offers, but so far I have been unable to get the sound subsystem working properly. If the lazyweb can help ne solve this outstanding issue I will be a happy man indeed--I had hoped to be able to use this system for putting podcasts together, but this won' at least t be possible until Audacity can see some usable sound hardware. I am prepared to wait a little longer for full 5.1 sound.
I brought the new system home just less than a week ago, and so far haven't had time to do too much with it (though it's nice to have cron job keeping the holdenweb.com front page news up to date on an hourly basis). Yesterday I managed to put a new wireless router up for general use, allowing me to repurpose my venerable Linksys WRT54G (which had been running OpenWRT) by loading Sveasoft's GNU/Linux-based Talisman 1.3.1 release on it. This has allowed me to go to WPA encryption, meaning I can now do client work over a wireless connection with fewer worries and can also get back into the home network securely via SSH.
So far I have only used Cywin's X server over the LAN, but in theory it will soon be possible to use the Internet to get a full Linux desktop from machines inside my firewall .That will be something pleasant, even if asymmetries in cable bandwidth make it run at less than stellar speed.
I managed to get all this done before going out to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday (many happy returns, Dave!), which has left me too tired (though not "emotional") to write much more tonight. But boy, it's good to lose the limitations of Windows and get back to realizing how much simpler it is to solve problems when you are no longer limited by proprietary constraints.
We don't need no stinkin' Vista!
Regular readers (you poor, benighted individuals) will know that a lot of the last year has been taken up by a relocation from the United Kingdom (back) to the USA. In the UK somebody asked me how many computers I had, after a brief mental count, I replied "seven" (which didn't seem excessive to me). I gave one away to an honorary niece before I moved--she is probably still the only kid in her school with a Linux laptop.
Unfortunately four of them had to be packed up and moved with the rest of my house contents, the only ones carried across by hand being my wife's laptop and mine. This wouldn't have been so bad had it not been for the unfortunate necessity to live in rented accommodation (thanks, Gwen and Warren) from February until our new house was ready in September. The move into the new house, of course, coincided with a rather large number of non-computing tasks regarded as necessary for making the new environment livable.
So, now we have blinds on most of the windows, rugs in all rooms, a properly sealed garage floor (yes, "...Magic" is not my only blog) and Christmas shopping completed and the necessary gifts mailed to the UK I have been able to start thinking again about working with more than just the single trusty laptop that has kept me going for the last year. Woot!
The first piece of slightly depressing news was that my Linux system headrat was dead on arrival. I could boot up from an original disk on the second IDE interface, but the primary disk was as dead as the proverbial dodo--we are talking clicking noises from the head actuator, which is rarely a good sign. Fortunately this disk wasn't the one with my home directory on it, so there was no need to restore from backups. Headrat was getting pretty long in the tooth, however: to give you some idea it was a system I put together myself and the first one with a 1GHz Athlon processor in it. While quite blazing seven years ago, the performance today is no longer so impressive, so I decided to see what was available today.
With the help of a local (and very competent) computer dealer I managed to get the following system (now christened hourbot) for just over $600 including sales tax.
- Athlon 64 dual core 4600+ processor
- 4 GB DDF-2-667 memory
- 160 GB SATA 7200 RPM disk drive
- 18x DVD+/- RW DL optical drive
- Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard
There have been a few glitches, like having to load the proprietary Nvidia video drivers before I could get reasonable display performance, but overall the road has been smooth. Ironically I chose the specific motherboard for the superior audio quality it potentially offers, but so far I have been unable to get the sound subsystem working properly. If the lazyweb can help ne solve this outstanding issue I will be a happy man indeed--I had hoped to be able to use this system for putting podcasts together, but this won' at least t be possible until Audacity can see some usable sound hardware. I am prepared to wait a little longer for full 5.1 sound.
I brought the new system home just less than a week ago, and so far haven't had time to do too much with it (though it's nice to have cron job keeping the holdenweb.com front page news up to date on an hourly basis). Yesterday I managed to put a new wireless router up for general use, allowing me to repurpose my venerable Linksys WRT54G (which had been running OpenWRT) by loading Sveasoft's GNU/Linux-based Talisman 1.3.1 release on it. This has allowed me to go to WPA encryption, meaning I can now do client work over a wireless connection with fewer worries and can also get back into the home network securely via SSH.
So far I have only used Cywin's X server over the LAN, but in theory it will soon be possible to use the Internet to get a full Linux desktop from machines inside my firewall .That will be something pleasant, even if asymmetries in cable bandwidth make it run at less than stellar speed.
I managed to get all this done before going out to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday (many happy returns, Dave!), which has left me too tired (though not "emotional") to write much more tonight. But boy, it's good to lose the limitations of Windows and get back to realizing how much simpler it is to solve problems when you are no longer limited by proprietary constraints.
We don't need no stinkin' Vista!
December 6, 2007
Voting Machine Manufacturers Don't Get It
It's reasonably well known that the governor of California instituted a thorough review of voting machines which culminated in a fairly damning report earlier this year. San Francisco is now getting ready to spend $12 million on new machines, and the manufacturers have (apparently successfully) resisted requests to open up their source code. The reason they give is that "it would amount to giving away to competitors their proprietary software code".
So never mind scrutinized correctness, let's keep the buggy stuff to ourselves. These people make me smile as I hit my head against the wall. If democracy is as important as everyone keeps claiming then the most important thing is to count the damned votes correctly. But this is America, so profits have to come first.
So never mind scrutinized correctness, let's keep the buggy stuff to ourselves. These people make me smile as I hit my head against the wall. If democracy is as important as everyone keeps claiming then the most important thing is to count the damned votes correctly. But this is America, so profits have to come first.
December 5, 2007
Sun to Reward Open Source Contributors
Sun Microsystems made the news on Tuesday by announcing in India (which they feel will produce the majority of open source contributors in future) that they intended to start handing out cash rewards to open source programmers. Interestingly, although it's all over Google, it seems impossible to find a reference that does not include the word "dangle", indicating to me that a single source - Chris Kanaracus of IDG - is involved. Nice to get so much attention!
It was also reported, though, that Sun would "be releasing further details on Wednesday". The details have received very little web coverage, however. It turns out that Sun are investing $1 million, and have selected a few specific communities to work with in their Open Source Community Awards program's first year.
It's good to see the commercial world starting to recognize that the efforts of a relatively small number of forward-thinking pioneers have quietly and effectively provided the beginnings of an open infrastructure that we can all work with. I hope that others who have profited by their efforts will follow suit in short order. Industrial Light and Magic, to mention but one worthy candidate.
It was also reported, though, that Sun would "be releasing further details on Wednesday". The details have received very little web coverage, however. It turns out that Sun are investing $1 million, and have selected a few specific communities to work with in their Open Source Community Awards program's first year.
It's good to see the commercial world starting to recognize that the efforts of a relatively small number of forward-thinking pioneers have quietly and effectively provided the beginnings of an open infrastructure that we can all work with. I hope that others who have profited by their efforts will follow suit in short order. Industrial Light and Magic, to mention but one worthy candidate.
HOPping All Over the Place
Several regular Python bloggers have already noted the Google Highly Open Project (GHOP), which aims to introduce secondary school students to the open source world. The team managing the Python effort for the project have been pleasantly surprised by the competence of the student contributors, and they are just getting ready to add another batch of projects. If there's a project that you think would improve the Python ecology, take a look at the Python project page and get in touch with the organizers from there.
The project has just received an offer of hardware to help it along. This will broaden the scope of the activities, and the team has already started brainstorming about uses for the new kit.
So, the reason for this post is mostly to point out what an awesome job the guys who are organizing the project have been doing. Titus Brown took the lead and came up with a stupendous list of projects in extremely short order. He has been ably assisted by Andre Roberge, Doug Hellman and Georg Brandl pretty much right from the start, and an increasing number of others have joined in to suggest projects and review student submissions, offering guidance and generally helping things along.
Well done, all of you. The whole Python community owes you thanks for the amazing efforts you continue to make on their behalf on GHOP.
The project has just received an offer of hardware to help it along. This will broaden the scope of the activities, and the team has already started brainstorming about uses for the new kit.
So, the reason for this post is mostly to point out what an awesome job the guys who are organizing the project have been doing. Titus Brown took the lead and came up with a stupendous list of projects in extremely short order. He has been ably assisted by Andre Roberge, Doug Hellman and Georg Brandl pretty much right from the start, and an increasing number of others have joined in to suggest projects and review student submissions, offering guidance and generally helping things along.
Well done, all of you. The whole Python community owes you thanks for the amazing efforts you continue to make on their behalf on GHOP.
November 30, 2007
Just go, SCO
Well, I said in August that SCO were dying, and shortly after that they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company has since been delisted from NASDAQ. I've been looking at the company's web site, and I especially like the list of recent awards and recognition.
This all underlines the intellectual bankruptcy of Darl McBride's approach to open source technologies. I have no idea who holds stock in SCO, but I think it's time they chose a new chief executive. At 19 cents a share its total market capitalization is just over $4 million. How are the mighty fallen.
I just feel sorry for the SCO employees, who have done little to deserve the odium heaped on their employer from all sides.
This all underlines the intellectual bankruptcy of Darl McBride's approach to open source technologies. I have no idea who holds stock in SCO, but I think it's time they chose a new chief executive. At 19 cents a share its total market capitalization is just over $4 million. How are the mighty fallen.
I just feel sorry for the SCO employees, who have done little to deserve the odium heaped on their employer from all sides.
November 29, 2007
Amazon Web Services
For the first time in a long time I have started to take a serious look at how the content for holdenweb.com is generated. The site is currently pretty much a testbed, and everything is generated from a database (even the occasional pieces of dynamic content, though most pages are simple static HTML). This allows us to ensure that all pages have a uniform style and that all the internal navigation links are consistent.
A couple of the content elements are generated programmatically. We create the Python news items by reading bookmarks I have tagged as python in my del.icio.us account (using methods to be described, I hope, in an upcoming Python Magazine article), and the books by searching for python using amazon.com's web services. Recent attempts to regenerate the content, however, have resulted in broken links to Amazon's site. Being Amazon they don't throw up an error page, they just try to sell you other products, but I don't want to piss our readers off with irrelevant links so I had to fix the code.
The issue causing the error turned out to be a change in the way that Amazon's site names its graphics files. When I first wrote the code all image names began with the product's ASIN (Amazon's product code), but now they get random-seeming names like 21rxsZ884SL.jpg. Since I was grabbing the leading digits and assuming that gave me the ASIN it's little wonder that the links were coming out wrong. During this effort I realized that I was using the API definition from November 10, 2004. Much to Amazon's credit the calls still work, despite the fact that the API seems to have been revised about twenty times since then.
The books have also become less relevant as more and more Monty Python content is issued, along with books about keeping snakes and the like, so I decided to hone up the search a little. It turns out that all I needed to do was add BrowseNode=5 to my request to limit it to computer and Internet books. Lo and behold, my test site is now populated with relevant literature, so after a few content tweaks I can republish the site and hopefully see the Amazon commission start to climb again. (Hope springs eternal). The new content probably won't be published until the weekend as there are a couple of other tweaks I'd like to make.
Since I was revising the code anyway I threw out the old expat-based parser and replaced it with code that used the friendlier ElementTree module, now a part of the Python standard library. This reduced the line count by about 35% and making it simpler, more robust, and easier to understand at the same time. I was quite amused to note that Amazon provide web service libraries for Java, C# and Visual Basic programmers. In Python the standard library already contains everything you need. We don't need no stinking libraries (though I am sure it would be easy to provide the same features that Amazon's libraries do from a Python library module).
Reading the updated specifications for Amazon web services has made me realize that there's a lot more you can do with them now than there was three years ago, so I shall be revisiting this topic before long. If you're doing neat things with Amazon and Python I'd be delighted to hear from you.
A couple of the content elements are generated programmatically. We create the Python news items by reading bookmarks I have tagged as python in my del.icio.us account (using methods to be described, I hope, in an upcoming Python Magazine article), and the books by searching for python using amazon.com's web services. Recent attempts to regenerate the content, however, have resulted in broken links to Amazon's site. Being Amazon they don't throw up an error page, they just try to sell you other products, but I don't want to piss our readers off with irrelevant links so I had to fix the code.
The issue causing the error turned out to be a change in the way that Amazon's site names its graphics files. When I first wrote the code all image names began with the product's ASIN (Amazon's product code), but now they get random-seeming names like 21rxsZ884SL.jpg. Since I was grabbing the leading digits and assuming that gave me the ASIN it's little wonder that the links were coming out wrong. During this effort I realized that I was using the API definition from November 10, 2004. Much to Amazon's credit the calls still work, despite the fact that the API seems to have been revised about twenty times since then.
The books have also become less relevant as more and more Monty Python content is issued, along with books about keeping snakes and the like, so I decided to hone up the search a little. It turns out that all I needed to do was add BrowseNode=5 to my request to limit it to computer and Internet books. Lo and behold, my test site is now populated with relevant literature, so after a few content tweaks I can republish the site and hopefully see the Amazon commission start to climb again. (Hope springs eternal). The new content probably won't be published until the weekend as there are a couple of other tweaks I'd like to make.
Since I was revising the code anyway I threw out the old expat-based parser and replaced it with code that used the friendlier ElementTree module, now a part of the Python standard library. This reduced the line count by about 35% and making it simpler, more robust, and easier to understand at the same time. I was quite amused to note that Amazon provide web service libraries for Java, C# and Visual Basic programmers. In Python the standard library already contains everything you need. We don't need no stinking libraries (though I am sure it would be easy to provide the same features that Amazon's libraries do from a Python library module).
Reading the updated specifications for Amazon web services has made me realize that there's a lot more you can do with them now than there was three years ago, so I shall be revisiting this topic before long. If you're doing neat things with Amazon and Python I'd be delighted to hear from you.
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