The Open Source Bathroom

You know you're a geek... when you're running Cat5 cable in the bathroom:

Yes, that's Cat-5, and it's everywhere in this place. Everything in the new bathroom is going to be computer controlled or sensed, and I mean *everything*. The window winders will be electric, as will the curtains. Sensors will include ambient light, humidity, temperature, motion, door position, toilet flush, water flow, flowing water temperature, bath water temperature, and anything else I can think of. There won't be a single electrical item cabled in the usual way with a manual switch in line with the device: everything other than basic power points is cabled from a central termination point where it can be computer controlled, and switches themselves are replaced with home-made touch sensitive control surfaces that communicate via Cat-5 back to the automation controller.

Which will run Linux, of course.

(Via The Inquirer.)

Love and the Long March Spirit

John Battelle calls search engines "databases of intentions"; in this respect the top ten lists of queries say a lot about us. Interesting, then, to compare the top Western engine with the leading site for the East - Google vs Baidu.

Here's the Google list for "What?"

1. what is hezbollah
2. what is carisoprodol
3. what is acyclovir
4. what is alprazolam
5. what is tramadol
6. what is ajax
7. what is hydrocodone
8. what is vicodin
9. what is xenical
10. what is xanax

I think we can spot a certain trend here. Meanwhile, here's Baidu's list:

1. What is love?
2. What is the Long March spirit?
3. What is a blog?
4. What is dual-core?
5. What is 3G?
6. What is harmonious society?
7. What are futures? (stocks)
8. What is a trojan horse? (software)
9. What is happiness?
10. What is an ecosystem?

Maybe that's what we need in the West: more people searching for love and the Long March spirit.

Hardcore Coding

I've never really had the urge to hack on the Linux kernel (not least because I am the world's worst programmer - Fortran, anyone?) but if I did, I'd certainly be using Greg Kroah-Hartman's Linux Kernel in a Nutshell. To both his and O'Reilly's credit, you can download a copy (cc licence), but obviously buying one would be a good idea, too, for all the obvious reasons.

The Other Thunderbird

No, not that one, this one:

Sandia National Laboratories’ 8960-processor Thunderbird Linux cluster, developed in collaboration with Dell, Inc. and Cisco, maintained its sixth position in the Top500 Supercomputers by achieving an improved overall performance of 53.0 teraflops, an 18.5 percent increase in efficiency from last year's performance.

(Via Technocrat.)

Afforesting the Dell

Blige, I thought, Mikey's seen the light:

In a speech today at the Consumer Electronics Show here, Mr. Dell urged the electronics industry to foster the planting of trees in order to offset the impact of their devices’ energy consumption on the environment.

Bless yer, guvnor, you're a gent.

Oh, but wait:

He said Dell, the computer company he founded, would begin a program called “Plant a Tree for Me,” asking customers to donate $2 for every notebook computer they buy and $6 for every desktop PC. The money would be given to the Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund, two nonprofit groups that promote ways to reduce or offset carbon emissions, to buy and plant trees.

...

Dell intends to cover the administrative costs of the program. Mr. Dell was not able to estimate those costs.

I see: Mike Dell thinks planting trees to offset the energy that computers consume is such a great idea he's asking his customers to pay for it. Of course, it's not that Dell's company causes any damage to the environment independent of the energy its computers use.

But there again, I suppose poor old Mikey couldn't really afford to put his hand in his own pocket since he is getting a bit short of a bob or two, now that he's down to his last $17 billion.

Scratching an Icon

Who is this Steve Jobs whereof they speak? I just don't get the mindless adulation of this person (try reading "The Journey is the Reward" to get some perspective).

Take the iPhone: a large mobile phone that has the whizzo idea of making the screen - the most vulnerable part - cover the entire surface, so that it will get scratched to kingdom come in about a week in most people's pockets (remember the iPod Nano saga?).

I suppose it will drive a huge aftermarket in phone protectors: maybe all the Jobs fanboys sell third-party add-ons to his products.

All the World's a Stage/Film/MMORPG/Virtual World

More signs of the times:

Disney CEO Bob Iger showed off the revamped Disney.com during his CES keynote yesterday, but there was little "hard news" on offer—except for the announcement that Disney is bringing its hottest properties into the virtual realm. Iger announced that the company would launch a massively multiplayer Pirates of the Caribbean later this year.

And

James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said on Monday.

...

The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

First Open Access Journal on Open Access

It seems hard to believe, but if Peter Suber, Mr Open Access, says so, it must be true:

Open Access Research is a new peer-reviewed OA journal sponsored by the Georgia State University Library. It's the first peer-reviewed journal devoted to OA itself.

Microsoft Vista: "Checked" by the NSA

News that the US's official eavesdropper, the National Security Agency, has had a hand in Vista is going to go down really well with the governments of China, Russia, India, etc. etc.:

For the first time, the giant software maker is acknowledging the help of the secretive agency, better known for eavesdropping on foreign officials and, more recently, U.S. citizens as part of the Bush administration's effort to combat terrorism. The agency said it has helped in the development of the security of Microsoft's new operating system -- the brains of a computer -- to protect it from worms, Trojan horses and other insidious computer attackers.

Interestingly:

Novell, which sells a Linux-based operating system, also works with government agencies on software security issues, spokesman Bruce Lowry said in an e-mail, "but we're not in a position to go into specifics of the who, what, when types of questions."

But at least you can look at the code to find out what they did - unlike with Vista.... (Via The Inquirer.)

Chinese Whispers About Dell and GNU/Linux

As this Reg article points out, Dell's attitude to GNU/Linux has always been somewhat ambivalent. So news that a Dell box running the Red Flag distro is available in China is interesting.

Lost in Translation

I wrote recently about the goings-on at the Council of the European Union, and their strange reason for not supporting GNU/Linux users. But now, it seems, everything has been explained:

The European Union has blamed a translation mistake for its claim that it cannot legally support Linux.

Oh, that's OK, then. But, er, what exactly happened?

A spokesman for the Council of the EU, the Union's representative body, told ZDNet UK: "It was originally written in French, and the French version has no such statement. So it is a mistake."

Hm: the statement didn't exist, and then a "translation error" made it come into existence? How odd. But wait, there's more:

The spokesman explained that the service was only fully launched in September, and there was a need to get the service up and running, even if that meant not supporting all operating systems. He also said there was a cost, and complexity, of supporting additional operating systems such as Linux. And he added: "If we change, it is not only for Linux, we would have to open up to all open sources."

Now, hang on a minute: supporting GNU/Linux just means making RealAudio feeds available, since these can be played by open source systems as well as on proprietary systems. That's one more format, not an infinitude of "open sources" - just like many Web sites provide.

This is beginning to get fishier than the EU's fisheries policy....

Google Reaches for the Stars

One of the most important shifts in science at the moment is towards dealing with the digital deluge. Whether in the field of genomics, particle physics or astronomy, science is starting to produce data in not just gigabytes, or even terabytes, but petabytes, exabytes and beyond (zettabytes, yottabytes, etc.).

Take the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, for starters:

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is a proposed ground-based 8.4-meter, 10 square-degree-field telescope that will provide digital imaging of faint astronomical objects across the entire sky, night after night. In a relentless campaign of 15 second exposures, LSST will cover the available sky every three nights, opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move on rapid timescales: exploding supernovae, potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids, and distant Kuiper Belt Objects. The superb images from the LSST will also be used to trace billions of remote galaxies and measure the distortions in their shapes produced by lumps of Dark Matter, providing multiple tests of the mysterious Dark Energy.

How much data?

Over 30 thousand gigabytes (30TB) of images will be generated every night during the decade-long LSST sky survey.

Or for those of you without calculators, that's 10x365x30x1,000,000,000,000 bytes, roughly 100 petabytes. And where there's data, there's also information; and where there's information...there's Google:

Google has joined a group of nineteen universities and national labs that are building the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).

...

"Partnering with Google will significantly enhance our ability to convert LSST data to knowledge," said University of California, Davis, Professor and LSST Director J. Anthony Tyson. "LSST will change the way we observe the universe by mapping the visible sky deeply, rapidly, and continuously. It will open entirely new windows on our universe, yielding discoveries in a variety of areas of astronomy and fundamental physics. Innovations in data management will play a central role."

(Via C|net.)

UKPMC: A Name to Remember

If, like me, you're a fan of PubMed Central, and you live in Europe, here's some good news: UK PubMed Central has just opened, providing a local mirror. And if you're not yet a fan, do take a look at the large and growing holdings of biomedical titles, many of them fully open access. Here's what the press release says:

Initially UKPMC mirrors the American PubMed Central database (hosted by the NCBI at NIH). From today, UK scientists will also be able to submit their research outputs for inclusion in UKPMC. Through 2007, and beyond, the partners will develop innovative tools for UKPMC to further support biomedical research. In this way, UKPMC will grow into a unique online resource representing the UK’s biomedical research output.

(Via Open Access News.)

Second Life Opens up the Client

Fantastic news: Linden Lab has released the source code for the Second Life client under the GNU GPL v2. Nice historical context, too:

In 1993, NCSA released their liberally licensed, but proprietary, Mosaic 2.0 browser with support for inline images arguably heralding the start of the web as we know it today. In an act of either acceptance of the inevitable or simple desperation, Netscape Communications released the bulk of the Netscape Communicator code base to form the foundation of projects as Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

We are not desperate, and we welcome the inevitable with open arms.

Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.

This is a great move by the Lindens, and a major step towards an open, standards-based virtual world. It will be interesting to see what comes of this. Sad, though, to see the deeply ignorant comments on the Linden Lab blog post lamenting this move because of the increased griefing they claim it will cause - as if security by obscurity ever worked.

Coders of the (virtual) world, unite!

Of Sears and Seers

People often ask: "but what's Second Life for?" Maybe this is the answer:

IBM, which recently set up a business group to explore possibilities in virtual worlds — and earmarked millions of dollars for the effort — is now bringing mega-retailer Sears to the virtual world of Second Life in a project to be announced today, 8 January, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

...

each of the floors will present different possibilities for taking advantage of a 3D online world like Second Life for showing off Sears products and giving consumers more functionality than they could get from a flat Web page.

...

The plan is to allow a customer to import their own kitchen design to the virtual space, fit it out with Sears products, and be able to move around in it as they would a real kitchen in order to get a feel for how the products would work in their kitchen at home.

Visionary stuff indeed.

From Code Re-use to Stuff Re-use

One of the strengths of open source is that you don't have to re-invent the wheel; instead, you can re-use what others have done. A key element of this is the existence of the Net to make the operation frictionless. It's harder to do this kind of thing in other spheres, but it seems that the Chinese are trying - once again, thanks to the Net:

huan ke (literally the person who exchanges) is very hot in cyberspace in China where people are famous for their thrift and known for not throwing anything away. This means there are closets full of unwanted stuff that can be traded for others' unwanted stuff.

(Via Smart Mobs.)

The More Than Middling Middle Kingdom

The news that the Chinese Lemote Technology Corporation has released its first PCs based on the Loongson/Godson chip is interesting for a number of reasons. First, because the chip was designed and made entirely in China, making the country independent of Western chipmakers; and secondly, because as a non-standard chip architecture, the new chip can't run Windows. Which, means, almost inevitably, that it runs GNU/Linux. If China wants to be truly independent, free software is the quickest and easiest way to do it.

It's Hard to Be Good

I applaud the way Bill Gates is putting his vast wealth to good use through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, just as I despise the way he gained it. But it's interesting to see that even being good is hard:

In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

Seems it's not so easy to keep the bad bits from ruining the good bits. (Via Slashdot.)

Mmm, Yes, But

Antony Mayfield points to an interesting piece in the Guardian that worries about what it calls the Mmm, Yes, But culture that blogs can spawn:

They will write: "Mmm, yes, but have you considered ..." To which we will reply: "Mmm, yes, you could be right about ..." And so a wonderfully civilised post-Blairite conversation will ensue. I wonder. There's nothing very civilised about a lot of the posting happening now; it's more like a shouting match-cum-punchup. And that's why it's often so entertaining. There is something about the Mmm-yes-but theory of the blog that is quite disquieting. Even if it became a reality, it could result only in hesitant journalism, bland criticism and writing that is predisposed to dull consensus.

As a journalist and blogger, I too have noticed this practice. Indeed, I adopt myself. But this is not out of timidity, but because I think it is the only way if blogging is to lead to anything of value in terms of online discussions.

If you want to see why the mmm-yes-but approach is necessary, take a look at the comments on Digg or Slashdot. There you will see human nature at its worst, with abusive, ad hominem, logicless attacks on the other posts leading to yet more of the same. If, on the contrary, you answer with the mmm-yes-but technique, I've noticed how it quickly chills the temperature of the debate. Not, let it be noted, the level of the debate, merely the language in which it is framed.

So to the Guardian writer and his points, I can only say: mmm, yes, but....

Google Earth Meets Second Life

Apparently, Google Earth now has a layer that includes user-generated buildings:

What you get is the best of 3D Warehouse's textured buildings uploaded by users, downloaded by default as you zoom in.

But the really interesting bit is as follows:

As speculated on Ogle Earth before, and now confirmed, Google is harnessing the creativity of its users to populate its Earth with 3D textured buildings, whereas Microsoft Virtual Earth is engaging in "central planning", with a concerted effort to map 3D textures onto models using technology from its recent acquisitions. Which is quicker and/or better will become apparent over time.

But what happens when a user deletes a contributed building from 3D Warehouse? I went looking for the answer in the terms of service, and the answer is quite clear (I think): Although you own your content, uploading it to 3D Warehouse gives Google a "perpetual license" to reproduce both the content and derivative works of the content, even if you later remove it from your account.

Which, of course, is precisely the approach that Second Life takes.

Real-time Google Earth

Well, almost.

Coming Your Way: Geoethics

Given the current state of the planetary commons, I fear we are going to be needing these sooner than expected.

London Games Academy?

If you believe, as I do, that there is a general convergence between films, virtual worlds and gaming, then it makes sense to nurture gaming talent in the same way as young filmmakers are promoted, for example at the London Film School. It seems that some in the UK Government get this too:

Woodward suggested that the industry should help to found an academy similar in function the successful London Film School. “The best way for the video games industry to have the talent and the skills it wants is to move into the hot seat itself; to come to the government and say 'we want to put some money into an - academy'”, he said.

Unfortunately, in his haste to dash any hopes of government handouts, Woodward loses the plot somewhat:

The minister appeared to dismiss hopes for tax breaks in the UK, as enjoyed by the film and other creative industries, saying that the games industry had moved beyond an early “rebel period” of “looking enviously at … tax breaks and other state incentives”.

If games are like films in deserving support - not least because they will generate jobs, revenue and tax - why not give them tax breaks just like films? What's the difference - apart from snobbery?

Virtual Copyright: A Palpable Hit

This is rather amusing:

Anshe Chung Studios, Second Life’s biggest property developer, is pressing media outlets to take down photos and video of a griefing attack against its eponymous founder, claiming that reproducing the images violates copyright.

The point is that taking a picture of someone in the real world for journalistic purposes would generally be fine - you don't have a copyright in your appearance, since you didn't do much to create it.

But in Second Life, things are rather different. People spend plenty of time creating themselves, and copyright for that digital creation is explicitly vested by Linden Labs in those creators. So Anshe Chung seems quite within her rights to demand the takedown.

Of course, being within her rights, and being right are two quite different things....

Sound the Trumpet

Talking of trumpets - or not, in Wikipedia's case:

Trumpet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the trumpet was invented by a young man named theebis faggattus the second in 450 ad....

Catch it while it lasts.