Inventing the Future

Croquet in the Economist (print edition!)

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In this article, Linux entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth says, “We’ve started to use [Croquet] for planning and building Ubuntu.”

Linux works well. One of the hard parts with delivering on “Linux” (generically) is that there are a lot of variations. Croquet works on some combinations of kernel, libraries and device drivers, but not on others. I don’t have a Linux box myself, so I haven’t spent any time on it. (The Croquet Collaborative runs on FreeBSD, and does so as a graphicsless server.) It’s tough to be trying to accomplish something while wrestling with configuration issues.

But Plopp offers a consumer-market product on many flavors of Linux (as well as Windows/Mac), but it doesn’t (yet?) make use of the full collaborative Croquet SDK. Once it runs, it runs. I guess the Ubunto folks have got real Croquet running with their developer and business configurations, and are now starting to explore its use for doing real work.

Caveat Hacktor

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I just saw the delightful high-quality site on core computer algorithms Hacker’s Delight. I was startled by the following notice about the corresponding book:

“After the first printing, an errata file was started. The publisher did not incorporate this into the second printing. For the third printing, he made all the corrections known up to that point in time. For the fourth and fifth printings, the publisher subcontracted the production work, and accidentally gave the subcontractor the files for the first printing. The sixth printing corrects all the errors known up to when it was printed (November 2006). Therefore, the best copy to obtain is the sixth printing, and the second best is the third printing.”

Good grief. This is the kind of thing that makes airplanes fall out of the sky — or my bank say “oops.” As an engineer, I have long been aware of how much stuff out there is truly not designed, transcribed, or built correctly, but this little example gives a nice compact summary to my unvoiced horrified sputtering. I wonder if more direct and immediate Internet technology (like Wikipedia and maybe Sophie) will help.

Intel adapting to OLPC, and graphics accleration on mobiles

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My read of this money.cnn.com article, and the linked presentations for investors, is that Intel’s fairly near-term strategy:

  • Includes major specific responses to the OLPC. (E.g., a focus on lower cost and marketing in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.) OLPC has changed the game.

  • Suggests that graphics acceleration must be included in Intel’s products for mobile computing. (E.g., noting that “the most important applications…including Second Life” won’t run on a mobile phone, and that the “uncrompromised” “full Internet” has to run on mobiles without delay from when it is available on desktops.)

Nothing to be surprised at, but this is the first time I’ve seen this officially from Intel.

Of mice and pirates

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I had always understood patents to be about the mechanism of the device, not it’s effect. E.g., a particular mouse trap design, not the idea of catching mice.

But what do I know? Squeak blogger Torsten turned me on to this article about some courtroom pirates suing Apple over the User Interface in their latest operating system release. The original patent was for an old Xerox UI implemented in Interlisp-D, and now owned by a holding company.

Apple’s Tiger operating system isn’t implemented in Lisp. Do you suppose the lawyers are basing their argument on Greenspun’s Tenth Rule?

this just in: All your planet are belong to us

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How will it change the world to give millions of children low-cost computers and open source software? The first real effect is to provoke a response from Microsoft.

Initially Wintel executives dismissed and ridiculed the OLPC project. But now Microsoft is employing the infamous embrace-and-destroy practice that it has always used to subdue competition.

People are already reporting that Microsoft now plans to give away crippled versions of their software for as little as $3 a copy. But take a look at the real deal. Professional edition can be had for a dollar. Most importantly, the program offers cheap used junk Wintel computers, with Microsoft paying half the cost. In order to place their software in the world’s hands, they intend to undercut the complete OLPC package cost by roughly half. Never mind that the crap boxes consume massive amounts of unavailable power, require massive wired infrastructure through the rainforests, are full of toxins, not hardened against sand and kid use, etc. And of course, the software is the same crap they foist on the rest of us.

Clever, no?