afongen

• Oracle will support PHP in the next version of its application server. Probably useful if we end up with that app server at work.
• Lingua::EN::Gender implements the Koppel-Argamon algorithm for guessing an author’s gender.

Quick links:

• An article in Governing about sharing code across government agencies.
• Phil Windley comments.
• Brian Sweeting comments: “I agree with Phil that embracing open source software is important to eGov, but wouldn’t it also be great to require that all logic behind future eGov apps must be built so they can be consumed as a web service?”
• Tim O’Reilly wants all software to be network aware.
• Ray Ozzie on the architecture of extreme mobility: don’t just assume a network, assume mobile users. Dense, read carefully.
• Open Source in Government.
• Government Forge.

Stuart Langridge notes that the BBC will make their program archives available online. Follow Stuart’s links to more thoughtful discussion than I could ever hope to post, especially given that I’m still a bit thunderstruck.

It does appear that the programs will be “available to anyone in the UK”, so initially I won’t directly benefit, but I don’t care: the repercussions of a move like this will move quickly beyond the borders. It cannot remain contained for long. Beyond the merely technical impossibility of blocking non-UK users, which is a perfectly understandable goal (they paid for it, after all), there’s the far more interesting question of what influence the BBC will have on its broadcasting counterparts worldwide. Danny O’Brien writes,

While the commercial companies fret over the dangers of P2P and zero-cost replication, the BBC has realised that this is its greatest opportunity. Not to beat commercial media concerns, but to finally stop mimicking them.

With apologies for the not entirely fair comparison of the two organizations, I’d love to see PBS do this. But I have little doubt that commercial interests will intervene.

What I’d really like to see is the commercial media concerns mimic the BBC.

Anyway. Right on.

Thinking about outsourcing to India? Don’t make a move before you consider Primate Programming, Inc.

Humans and higher primates share approximately 97% of their DNA in common. Recent research in primate programming suggests computing is a task that most higher primates can easily perform. Visual Basic 6.0™ was the preferred IDE for the majority of experiment primate subjects.

As you might expect, “they were baffled by anything to do with modern Java IDEs such as SunONE®, Visual Age® and Jbuilder®. None of the animals understood the Java programming language.”

Hat tip to Mark Beihoffer.

A bee stung me in the ankle while I was going for a walk around Lake Como with Owen tonight. My first thought was, “Rats, I don’t know what to do for a bee sting.” Unbelievable. I have to brush up on my basic first aid.

My second thought was, “I hope I’m not deathly allergic to bee stings.” It’s been years since I was stung. Or had been until tonight. You never know.

Kiara just looked at my ankle said, “Looks like you’re not allergic … yet.” Smirk. Thanks.

Tinfoil Hat Linux.

It started as a secure, single floppy, bootable Linux distribution for storing PGP keys and then encrypting, signing and wiping files. At some point it became an exercise in over-engineering.

I forgot about this coincidence the other day: Edward Tufte published an article in Wired about how “PowerPoint is Evil” just as I finally got around to reading his essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.

I’ve written before about how much I hate PowerPoint. Even before I read Tufte, I’d realized that it’s more than just the tool, it’s that the tool contributes to so many bad presentations. Its all the excruciatingly dull or misused PowerPoints I’ve sat through that I really resent.

That and PowerPoint on the web. The slide shows themselves are bad enough, with their ugly markup and pages that are usable only in certain browsers (<cough>IE/Win</cough>). More troublesome, though, is the fact that PowerPoint presentations are going on the web in the first place. A well designed PowerPoint is meaningless outside the context of the presentation it is meant to accompany, yet (as Tufte bemoans) the slide shows are regularly disseminated via email and on web sites.

My biggest gripe is against the use of PowerPoint in lieu of written reports. Gartner does this. For a study they did for my employer last year, they supplied their report as a PowerPoint instead of bothering to actually write something. Two PowerPoints, really: an executive summary and the actual “report.” Bah.

(In)accessibility is an obvious complaint, as well. Yes, there are tools to make PowerPoint-generated web pages more accessible, but thus far they have not impressed me. Moreover, they distract from the far more pertinent question of why a slide show is on the web in the first place.

When I get a call asking for help putting a PowerPoint on the web, my first response is to discourage the caller from doing so. Publishing a single summary page or an honest-to-god written report will server her readers far better. If I can scan a page that contains the same content as the PowerPoint, or even slightly expanded, I’ll be much happier than if I have to click through fifty or sixty low-resolution and low-content pages. I’ll be even happier to read something more carefully written that lays out information and arguments in a thoughtful and sensible progression (something that one should expect from a high-buck and respected organization like Gartner. Oops.).

Is it harder and more time-consuming to create these alternate versions? Depends. Creating a summary is certainly easier than futzing with the convoluted process of creating an accessible or even usable HTML version of the slide show. In most cases, writing a complete report is more difficult, but to my mind that is an advantage because it forces you to consider whether it is worth adding content to your web site. If you are unwilling to take the time to string together coherent sentences to make your message meaningful, then what you have to say will not usefully contribute to your web site’s content.

Or you could go ahead and throw another PowerPoint on the midden heap that your site will become.

We’ve started checking out DVDs at the library. They have a surprisingly decent collection. There’s usually a waiting list, but big deal: we can add ourselves to the list online, and be notified by email when it’s our turn. It’s like Netflix, but free! Well, that and the DVDs aren’t mailed to us. Again, big deal: we’re at the library on a regular basis anyway.

The latest issue of Wired arrived the other day with more than a few coincidences:

• The cover article is about synthetic diamonds. Kiara just finished reading Ben Bova’s Moonrise, which deals with using nanobots to create diamonds.
• Robert Levine interviews Neal Stephenson, just as I start rereading Snow Crash and begin to get psyched for his next book, due next month.
• There’s an article about a worldwide electricity grid, just as the grid in the northeastern US fails.
• There’s an article on Extreme Programming, just as I finished reading the Extreme Programming Pocket Guide.

New York Times: “A Young Writers’ Round Table, via the Web.” I would have loved publishing online as a kid.