It seems that the RIAA going around scaring children again.
Year: 2007
OpenLaszlo 4 is out, you rock stars!
From the brilliant post on the OpenLaszlo project blog (man, that is a well-written blog entry! Wonder if there was a ghost writer involved?)
We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.0 is now available. This is the first official release of the new multi-runtime edition of OpenLaszlo, complete with a native browser DHTML (“ajax”) runtime, a heavily revamped Flash (7, 8, 9) runtime, and much more. With OpenLaszlo 4.0, you can compile source LZX applications for any supported target with a single mouse click.
OpenLaszlo 4.0 is available from http://www.openlaszlo.org/download
This release of OpenLaszlo is built on a new kernel architecture that abstracts away platform differences. Also, with OL4, we have switched to an inheritance-based class system that tracks the emerging ECMAScript 4 standard. These new language features have been implemented in the LFC core to support (and extend) JavaScript 2 `class` declarations portably. This means that the OpenLaszlo platform is well engineered to keep up with emerging JavaScript standards and to support new target runtimes.
In addition to literally hundreds of improvements to all aspects of the platform software and documentation, we have added new features, such as support for streaming media. The documentation tools have been re-implemented in order to to make them easier to maintain and also to give us more possibilities for arranging and accessing the data in the Reference Manual. Eventually, this will allow us to provide better cross-referencing, better indexing, more user control over presentation of information, and more options for printing and displaying the documentation.
We have put a lot of effort into improving our open source processes. The tools we use to build, test, and analyze OpenLaszlo have matured significantly with OL4. We have changed to using Subversion, for source control, in order to enable a more open development process. The build is now based on ant 1.6.5, rather than ant 1.5. We have created a new testing tool, lztest, for automated testing, to complement lzunit, our tool for application- and component-level testing. We have created a suite of benchmarks and benchmark analysis tools. By any criterion, this is the most ambitious and significant release in the history of OpenLaszlo.
The OpenLaszlo project aspires to be truly open and inclusive. Raju Bitter, our OpenLaszlo community manager, is on board to answer questions, streamline processes, and generally make it easier for you to play a vital part in this platform’s success.
Post questions and comments to laszlo-user@openlaszlo.org or to the OpenLaszlo Forum. Please report bugs, especially regressions from OpenLaszlo 3.x, to our bug database.
OpenLaszlo 4.0 is the culmination of a project that began more than a year ago, and it embodies the contributions of dozens of community members from around the world. Thank you, and congratulations to all of us!
We are pleased to offer our customers whatever services they want, as long as they don't help competitors . . . .
As some of you may have heard, carriers Cingular, Qwest and possibly other carriers are refusing to allow their subscribers to call freeconferencecall.com. Expect a number of other services to suffer similar fates — barring regulatory action or other legal steps.
What’s going on? It’s actually not a net neutrality issue (although as Bitchslappin Blog points out, it does serve as a rather nasty reminder of what is likely to happen in a non-neutral network). The issue here stems from a rather complex bit of regulatory arbitrage that I don’t fully understand myself. The facts here remain very murky, and I have no idea of the carriers are legally entitled to block these calls. (although my gut feeling based on my very surface understanding of the applicable law and the available facts is a qualified no — How’s that for legal caveats and wishy-washitude!) But if you’d like my speculaton on what I think is going on here, and why it’s likely to go on, read below….
Qwaq Debut
There has been private, academic, commercial and non-profit Croquet development for a while now. Much has been internal and proprietary (and even military) and so the general public has not had a chance to see it. Less than two months ago, we cobbled up an open sample application.
Meanwhile, the folks at Qwaq have been working hard in stealth mode, building a sophisticated application and aiming to be the first clearly commercial Croquet play. Read more.
Great Paper on NN Out of University of Florida
I’m back from a vacation in Israel to discover an amazing economic analysis of network neutrality posted by my good buddies at Consumers Union on hearusnow.org. Written by University of Florida Economists Hsing Cheng, Subhajoyti Bhandyopadhya and Hong Guo, Net Neutrality: A Policy Perspective applies game theory to the network neutrality debate. They conclude that abandoning network neutrality would create a disincentive for broadband network providers to build fatter pipes.
If this analysis seems familiar, it’s because I wrote something similar (but without the fancy math) about a year ago. As always, I get warm fuzzies whenever economists confirm my Econ 101 “gut check.”
Of course, these guys being real economists (as opposed to undergrad posseurs like yours truly) have a bit more to say on the subject and use lots of fancy math that I will not try to reproduce. But I offer some brief plain language explanation (including what I think are the brilliant points in the analysis) below….
Hooray for Libby Conviction!
Just a note to celebrate the conviction of Shooter Cheney’s loyal underling Lewis Libby, a lying weasle if ever there was one (not to mention a purveyor of kiddie porn –see is “novel”). As expected, the corporate media are working overtime to spread the meme that some kind of injustice was done to poor ol’ Scooter. Well, that’s a syndrome we know well here at Wetmachine. Nobody expected Moloch to whither away after one little conviction, nor Bush neither. Nevertheless we can take joy that one soldier of the Bush crime family has been at least temporarily sidelined.
For a great analysis of the right wing/Bushista/corporate infotainment spin, see this helpful post at premiere site Firedoglake. And if you have a few pennies to throw in the direction of that stellar group of citizen journalists, by all means do so. They’re fighting a brave battle on behalf of all of us.
P.S. This FDL post about the role played by NPR’s “All Things Considered” in shilling for the administration is also well worth your while.
Libby trial reflection: “My pencil is dull and my handwriting stinks”
Isadore Barmash, who passed away last November at the age of 84, was a longtime reporter for the New York Times. Political junkies may be forgiven for not being familiar with his extensive body of work, for Barmash’s beat was retail business, not politics. He had a particular interest in the apparel industry (he had worked at Women’s Wear Daily before joining the Times). His articles were found most often not in the front section of the paper, but deep in the business pages. I myself don’t care about fashion, and when I read a newspaper I usually skip the business stories. So I’m not the kind of guy who would be expected to notice Barmash’s byline. But I used to follow Barmash’s work because for a period in from the late 60’s through 1975, when I was in high school and college, he had series of front-page-of-the-New-York-Times articles that I found absolutely compelling.
His subject was my father.
I thought of Barmash a few weeks ago when Tim Russert’s testimony at the Lewis Libby trial was reported. Under oath, Russert said that when he talked to senior government officials, everything was “off the record” unless the official explicitly agreed to go “on the record.” People who value the role of journalism in a democracy were appalled by Russert’s admission, but attentive students of contemporary American “journalism” were not surprised. Dan Froomkin rightly said, “That’s not reporting, that’s enabling.” Russert’s sworn testimony made patently clear that what he does for a living is not journalism properly understood, but rather a form of court stenography served up in a a faux-journalism format.
Below the fold, what Barmash, a real journalist, told my father about “on the record” and “off the record.”
Designed to Fail
I remember being moved by hearing Alan Kay speak fondly about a machine that was designed to crash. Now there’s a new version of the Croquet Collaborative that does this, too!
Internet radio in immanent danger?
According to this story (via slashdot), some regulatory board that I’ve never heard of has handed down some ruling which, if it stands, could be the death knell of internet radio (or a t least of internet radio that originates in countries that adhere to this regime?).
As I type this I’m listening to the fantastic (OpenLaszlo application)Pandora — an internet radio station that astoundingly accounts for more than 1% of all internet traffic (??? can this be so???). I also listen to a lot of college radio stations streaming on the net.
Is this mavevlous technology about to be taken away from us by the RIAA goons? I don’t pretend to understand the legal, political, or technical issues. An opinion from Mr. Feld is clearly in order. What’s the word, Harold? Should I be panicking?
Distributed Systems Part 2: Off-Island Data
The Core Croquet model describes a complete independent simulation, in which changing behavior is automatically synchronized between all participants. The model is best thought of as describing replicated objects with behavior over time, rather than as older models of program and data (or state). The collection of objects in a given replicated simulation is called an “island.”
However, one of the nice things about the Croquet model is that it can co-exist with other models. It is perfectly reasonable to use a “data” model for immutable objects (which do not change their behavior over time).
-
OpenLaszlo 4 is out, you rock stars!
From the brilliant post on the OpenLaszlo project blog (man, that is a well-written blog entry! Wonder if there was a ghost writer involved?)
We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.0 is now available. This is the first official release of the new multi-runtime edition of OpenLaszlo, complete with a native browser DHTML (“ajax”) runtime, a heavily revamped Flash (7, 8, 9) runtime, and much more. With OpenLaszlo 4.0, you can compile source LZX applications for any supported target with a single mouse click.
OpenLaszlo 4.0 is available from http://www.openlaszlo.org/download
This release of OpenLaszlo is built on a new kernel architecture that abstracts away platform differences. Also, with OL4, we have switched to an inheritance-based class system that tracks the emerging ECMAScript 4 standard. These new language features have been implemented in the LFC core to support (and extend) JavaScript 2 `class` declarations portably. This means that the OpenLaszlo platform is well engineered to keep up with emerging JavaScript standards and to support new target runtimes.
In addition to literally hundreds of improvements to all aspects of the platform software and documentation, we have added new features, such as support for streaming media. The documentation tools have been re-implemented in order to to make them easier to maintain and also to give us more possibilities for arranging and accessing the data in the Reference Manual. Eventually, this will allow us to provide better cross-referencing, better indexing, more user control over presentation of information, and more options for printing and displaying the documentation.
We have put a lot of effort into improving our open source processes. The tools we use to build, test, and analyze OpenLaszlo have matured significantly with OL4. We have changed to using Subversion, for source control, in order to enable a more open development process. The build is now based on ant 1.6.5, rather than ant 1.5. We have created a new testing tool, lztest, for automated testing, to complement lzunit, our tool for application- and component-level testing. We have created a suite of benchmarks and benchmark analysis tools. By any criterion, this is the most ambitious and significant release in the history of OpenLaszlo.
The OpenLaszlo project aspires to be truly open and inclusive. Raju Bitter, our OpenLaszlo community manager, is on board to answer questions, streamline processes, and generally make it easier for you to play a vital part in this platform’s success.
Post questions and comments to laszlo-user@openlaszlo.org or to the OpenLaszlo Forum. Please report bugs, especially regressions from OpenLaszlo 3.x, to our bug database.
OpenLaszlo 4.0 is the culmination of a project that began more than a year ago, and it embodies the contributions of dozens of community members from around the world. Thank you, and congratulations to all of us!
We are pleased to offer our customers whatever services they want, as long as they don't help competitors . . . .
As some of you may have heard, carriers Cingular, Qwest and possibly other carriers are refusing to allow their subscribers to call freeconferencecall.com. Expect a number of other services to suffer similar fates — barring regulatory action or other legal steps.
What’s going on? It’s actually not a net neutrality issue (although as Bitchslappin Blog points out, it does serve as a rather nasty reminder of what is likely to happen in a non-neutral network). The issue here stems from a rather complex bit of regulatory arbitrage that I don’t fully understand myself. The facts here remain very murky, and I have no idea of the carriers are legally entitled to block these calls. (although my gut feeling based on my very surface understanding of the applicable law and the available facts is a qualified no — How’s that for legal caveats and wishy-washitude!) But if you’d like my speculaton on what I think is going on here, and why it’s likely to go on, read below….
Qwaq Debut
There has been private, academic, commercial and non-profit Croquet development for a while now. Much has been internal and proprietary (and even military) and so the general public has not had a chance to see it. Less than two months ago, we cobbled up an open sample application.
Meanwhile, the folks at Qwaq have been working hard in stealth mode, building a sophisticated application and aiming to be the first clearly commercial Croquet play. Read more.
Great Paper on NN Out of University of Florida
I’m back from a vacation in Israel to discover an amazing economic analysis of network neutrality posted by my good buddies at Consumers Union on hearusnow.org. Written by University of Florida Economists Hsing Cheng, Subhajoyti Bhandyopadhya and Hong Guo, Net Neutrality: A Policy Perspective applies game theory to the network neutrality debate. They conclude that abandoning network neutrality would create a disincentive for broadband network providers to build fatter pipes.
If this analysis seems familiar, it’s because I wrote something similar (but without the fancy math) about a year ago. As always, I get warm fuzzies whenever economists confirm my Econ 101 “gut check.”
Of course, these guys being real economists (as opposed to undergrad posseurs like yours truly) have a bit more to say on the subject and use lots of fancy math that I will not try to reproduce. But I offer some brief plain language explanation (including what I think are the brilliant points in the analysis) below….
Hooray for Libby Conviction!
Just a note to celebrate the conviction of Shooter Cheney’s loyal underling Lewis Libby, a lying weasle if ever there was one (not to mention a purveyor of kiddie porn –see is “novel”). As expected, the corporate media are working overtime to spread the meme that some kind of injustice was done to poor ol’ Scooter. Well, that’s a syndrome we know well here at Wetmachine. Nobody expected Moloch to whither away after one little conviction, nor Bush neither. Nevertheless we can take joy that one soldier of the Bush crime family has been at least temporarily sidelined.
For a great analysis of the right wing/Bushista/corporate infotainment spin, see this helpful post at premiere site Firedoglake. And if you have a few pennies to throw in the direction of that stellar group of citizen journalists, by all means do so. They’re fighting a brave battle on behalf of all of us.
P.S. This FDL post about the role played by NPR’s “All Things Considered” in shilling for the administration is also well worth your while.
Libby trial reflection: “My pencil is dull and my handwriting stinks”
Isadore Barmash, who passed away last November at the age of 84, was a longtime reporter for the New York Times. Political junkies may be forgiven for not being familiar with his extensive body of work, for Barmash’s beat was retail business, not politics. He had a particular interest in the apparel industry (he had worked at Women’s Wear Daily before joining the Times). His articles were found most often not in the front section of the paper, but deep in the business pages. I myself don’t care about fashion, and when I read a newspaper I usually skip the business stories. So I’m not the kind of guy who would be expected to notice Barmash’s byline. But I used to follow Barmash’s work because for a period in from the late 60’s through 1975, when I was in high school and college, he had series of front-page-of-the-New-York-Times articles that I found absolutely compelling.
His subject was my father.
I thought of Barmash a few weeks ago when Tim Russert’s testimony at the Lewis Libby trial was reported. Under oath, Russert said that when he talked to senior government officials, everything was “off the record” unless the official explicitly agreed to go “on the record.” People who value the role of journalism in a democracy were appalled by Russert’s admission, but attentive students of contemporary American “journalism” were not surprised. Dan Froomkin rightly said, “That’s not reporting, that’s enabling.” Russert’s sworn testimony made patently clear that what he does for a living is not journalism properly understood, but rather a form of court stenography served up in a a faux-journalism format.
Below the fold, what Barmash, a real journalist, told my father about “on the record” and “off the record.”
Designed to Fail
I remember being moved by hearing Alan Kay speak fondly about a machine that was designed to crash. Now there’s a new version of the Croquet Collaborative that does this, too!
Internet radio in immanent danger?
According to this story (via slashdot), some regulatory board that I’ve never heard of has handed down some ruling which, if it stands, could be the death knell of internet radio (or a t least of internet radio that originates in countries that adhere to this regime?).
As I type this I’m listening to the fantastic (OpenLaszlo application)Pandora — an internet radio station that astoundingly accounts for more than 1% of all internet traffic (??? can this be so???). I also listen to a lot of college radio stations streaming on the net.
Is this mavevlous technology about to be taken away from us by the RIAA goons? I don’t pretend to understand the legal, political, or technical issues. An opinion from Mr. Feld is clearly in order. What’s the word, Harold? Should I be panicking?
Distributed Systems Part 2: Off-Island Data
The Core Croquet model describes a complete independent simulation, in which changing behavior is automatically synchronized between all participants. The model is best thought of as describing replicated objects with behavior over time, rather than as older models of program and data (or state). The collection of objects in a given replicated simulation is called an “island.”
However, one of the nice things about the Croquet model is that it can co-exist with other models. It is perfectly reasonable to use a “data” model for immutable objects (which do not change their behavior over time).