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This section:
Blog postings by Operational Dynamics partners and staff
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Thu, 28 Sep 2006
db4o developers open their conference call
We like to go on and on about the benefits of open source, but its still rare to see a company bet everything on the premise. That’s one of the reasons that db4objects, maker of the db4o object oriented database, continues to impress me.
Those of us heavily involved in mondial libré take it for granted that our best work happens when we carry it out in an environment of openness and honesty. Few companies, however, even ones who release their code under an open source licence, truly embrace this idea and continue the bulk of their activities in secret.
So this week I was really impressed to see the developers of db4o invite a semi-public audience to their weekly conference call. They’re still feeling their way (which is why they started with a limited group) but this is a company determined to do things better — db4objects has already made the web forums their developers use to communicate public, then went one further and granted privileges to some of their more involved community members to contribute as well.
One of my colleagues noted:
It makes me feel good to listen to the people who are developing the database of my choice, because a database isn’t just software, a database is trustware! And it needs a big amount of trust to drop data into such an “exotic” and “small” object-database like db4o … but they seem to take the right approach: by open-sourcing their database and their development-model db4o gains lots of trust. And that’s what really counts in database-driven business.
— Maik Jablonski
In a rational world, I’d like to think I have better things to do than sitting up until 03:00 in order to listen to a bunch of database hackers talk about what they’re working on. The exciting thing about open source, though, is that its about more than cold hard rationality — it’s about the fire and passion that drives people and it’s always terrific to spend time watching a talented team being creative as they hash out hard problems.
Nothing is ever easy: I imagine that in the future as the spotlight moves onto them the temptation will be to turn their conference call into a marketing event. If they can resist that and continue to have frank discussions about contentious topics in the open, then I think they will have taken a significant step forward. Indeed, having their meeting in a more public forum will force them to stay on topic and use their time wisely, and I think that’s useful in its own right.
AfC
SLUG stories
One day I joined the channel for the Sydney Linux Users Group and saw:
The topic for #slug is: ... | NO PLAID! PLAID WEARERS, GET OUT! | ...
After having tried to figure it out for a while, I finally gave in and asked. The conversation went like this:
AfC: So I don’t pretend to be up on every single pop culture reference in my latest-country-of-refuge; can someone explain what the plaid thing in the topic is? It’s endured up there surprisingly long.
purserj: It’s a kfish thing. Apparantly he was abused by a plaid wearing scotsman as a child
AfC: purserj: so you’re saying we should all wear plaid to community events so we can contribute to further reinforcing the damage?
***purserj imagines a room full of plaid wearing geeks. I suppose it could be worse
AfC: Not one of them would be colour co-ordinated, but the group as a whole would be a mighty gestalt of blazing fashion harmony.
purserj: They might achieve critical mass though
yama: a room full of mostly overweight geeks is critical mass without the fancy attire!
In honor of Conrad Parker’s last day in Sydney before he heads off to do his doctorate in Kyoto, I hope there will be a big turnout at SLUG’s monthly meeting Friday night to wish kfish well (and, more to the point, to drink him under the table).
Make sure you wear plaid.
AfC
Tue, 26 Sep 2006
Restraint and Removal seminar in Sydney
The Aikido dojo where I train is hosting a “Restraint and Removal” seminar next Saturday or Sunday, 7 or 8 October 2006 from 11:00 am.
Sensei Thambu, who brought Aikido to Australia and founded the dojos in the Melbourne area, is widely regarded as a talented and engaging instructor. He has become well known for his Restraint and Removal seminar, which is only offered once a year to limited audiences. From their website:
This seminar brings Aikido concepts from the theoretical and places them firmly into the physical with robust and practical self defence evasion and control techniques. Ideally suited for law enforcement and the security industry, this course is open to the general public and will benefit both the beginner/novice and seasoned martial artist.
Places are going fast, so whether you’re a connoisseur of the martial arts, actually curious about Aikido, or just want to do something really cool next weekend, I encourage you to contact the dojo and sign up. (I’ve described the style of Aikido I study before — see Yoshinkan Aikido in Sydney).
The dojo is located at Level 1, 72 Wyndham St, Alexandria (just south of the intersection with Henderson Street). It’s an easy 5 minute walk south from Redfern station if coming by train; if you’re driving there’s lots of curbside parking.
AfC
Mon, 25 Sep 2006
java-gnome 2.14.3 released
Last week the java-gnome project did a point release of the stable branch of the Java bindings allowing you to write GTK and GNOME programs from Java. The 2.14.3 set of tarballs consist of:
glib-java 0.2.6
cairo-java 1.0.5
libgtk-java 2.8.7
libgnome-java 2.12.5
libglade-java 2.12.6
libgconf-java 2.12.4
libvte-java 0.12.1
libeds-java 0.5.1
As one would expect of a version number like 2.14.3, this release consists mostly of bugfixes and minor changes improving stability.
Of particular note are large contributions of patches and cleanups to the example code which ships with the sources of each library in doc/examples from the Sun team in Ireland. You guys are terrific. This effort was led by Michal Pryc.
You can download the tarballs making up this release from ftp.gnome.org. Anyone interested in learning more about writing GTK and GNOME applications using Java can either go to our website, java-gnome.sourceforge.net , or join us in #java-gnome on GIMPnet.
Meanwhile, work continues on what will become the java-gnome 2.16.0 set, which should hopefully be released soon.
As has been noted in several emails to both the java-gnome-developer and java-gnome-hackers mailing lists, we are engaged in a re-engineering of the Java bindings around the GNOME libraries, and so a major API break is expected after the java-gnome 2.16 series.
AfC
Thu, 21 Sep 2006
Save Pluto!
On August 24, 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Prague declared that Pluto is no longer a planet.
This is terrible! How can this cute fellow possibly be demoted from planet status?
There is a petition to force the IAU to reconsider. Important reasons cited as to why Pluto should be restored to full planetary status include:
The tiniest planet is beloved by kids, who are themselves tiny.
and:
Adults like Pluto, too. It rounds out the Solar System with the wonderfully-odd number Nine.
There’s also some technical babble about “gravity” and “cleaning up the neighbourhood” and such, but what further justification could you need? Sign the petition! Save Pluto!
AfC
Fri, 15 Sep 2006
Saturday is Software Freedom Day!
On the way to breakfast this morning, I turned to my fiancée and said:
“Tomorrow is Software Freedom Day!”
She pondered that for a moment and then replied:
“Does that mean that you’re allowed to not use your computer for an entire day? Excellent! Let’s go shopping!”
Apparently I still have some explaining to do :)
Software Freedom Day is Saturday 16 Sep 06 here there and everywhere. See events planned for your city on the SFD wiki (for example, Sydney) and help support the global culture of freedom and innovation.
AfC
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