Almanac: 31 October 2000

By J.D. Hildebrand

Greetings! Today is the 305th day of 2000; 61 days remain in the year.

Happy Halloween! The festival of Samhain lives on tonight as children take to the streets with bags for collecting treats. Make sure you have plenty of treats on hand, or you might wind up with a trick instead! Trick or treat!

English poet John Keats, author of "Hyperion" and other marvelous poems, was born 205 years ago, on October 31, 1795. Celebrate by dipping into his works, or by rereading Dan Simmons's remarkable Hyperion books, which contain many allusions to Keats.

In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, causing a schism that led to the Reformation and the birth of the Protestant movement. Luther's document was so influential and powerful that other visionaries have adopted the format in their own efforts to change the world.

LOKI FOUNDER ON LINUX GAMING. Media & Games Online has published an interesting Q&A with Loki Entertainment president and founder Scott Draeker. Loki ports commercial games from Windows and other platforms to Linux, squashing bugs and performing rewrites in the process. The company's goal, Draeker says, is nothing less than to "make Linux the best gaming platform on the planet."

The entertaining, informative interview can be found here.

Loki's games are based on proprietary code and they're sold retail without source. But the company offers open source tools and useful libraries for free via its Web site. Here is the list of projects the company is supporting, and the code you can download.

THE LOW-DOWN ON SCRIPTING LANGUAGES. What's your favorite scripting language? Some developers use Perl, others swear by PHP. Everybody has an opinion.

eWeek Labs has published an informative evaluation that pits four scripting languages (and associated development environments) against each other: Allaire's ColdFusion, Apache's JSP-based Tomcat, the Microsoft VBScript/ASP approach, and PHP Development's PHP.

The winner? Click here to read the benchmarks for yourself.

MARTIN FOWLER, LARRY WALL STIR UP THE CROWDS. "Extreme programming" expert Martin Fowler challenged programmers to think big at his SD 2000 East presentation Tuesday. Chief scientist at San Jose-based ThoughtWorks Inc., Fowler said developers need to use processes that are more adaptive and iterative. Fowler advocates lightweight methodologies in which developers can stay nimble to respond to new information, new requirements, and new understanding.

ZDNet's account of Fowler's presentation can be found here.

For an even more thought-provoking presentation, check out this transcript of Larry Wall's presentation at Atlanta's Annual Linux Showcase. Wall, the creator of Perl, is known for his off-beat, provocative, entertaining presentations. Judging from this transcript, the Atlanta crowd was treated to Wall at his best. For more on Wall, Perl 6, and related subjects, start here or here.

OK, THE OPEN SOURCERS PROBABLY DIDN'T DO IT DEPT. Salon's ever-entertaining Andrew Leonard let himself in for trouble when he suggested that renegade members of the open source community may have been responsible for the break-in at Microsoft. In this entertaining report, he tells about getting burned in the flame wars -- and explains why he believes that the open sourcers' readiness to flame others is related to the community's main strength.

WHITHER NAPSTER? Napster is temporarily back in business, but the outlook isn't good. Smart Business's Joyce Slaton has written an informative, in-depth report of where the company stands, what happens next, and what the implications are for all of us.

As developers, we can't afford to ignore the Napster case. It isn't just about music. Every line of code we write is intellectual property, and like it or not, the legislation that safeguards Britney Spears's interest in her latest ballad is the same law that protects thee and me. I know, I know, it's tempting to play ostriche, bury our heads in the sand, and hope it all blows over soon. But I'm not sure we have that luxury.

Here is Slaton's report.

ENABLING DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT. People have been talking about the promise of geographically distributed programming projects since the invention of the modem. The Internet and successful projects like Linux and Apache have lent the discussions an underpinning of real achievements. Is it reasonable to think we'll all one day work from home, collaborating with developers around the globe? Businesses hope so -- home workers are cheaper to employ, especially if they work in countries where the wages are lower.

InfoWorld's Tom Sullivan offers this snapshot of the current state of distributed development.

BIG BROTHER KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE. What if your PDA and your credit cards and your laptop and your car all broadcast your location as you carried about your business. When you approached a restaurant near lunch time, it might page you or e-mail you the day's specials.

Science fiction? Not according to this CNN report, which details the surprising extent to which this information is already being made available. If you're concerned about online privacy, or intrigued about the potential of such technology, don't miss this report.

Keep hacking.