Making it stick.

Via Slashdot on Virtual Retina Displays from UW, potentially the future of displays for small devices (and aren't they all going to be small?)...

Furness is exploring a method to simplify the VRD and help bring costs down. His latest design dispenses with the mirror entirely. Instead, the tip of a single fiber-optic strand is pointed at the retina and mechanically bent back and forth at very high rates. Essentially, you're staring right down the beam instead of at its reflection. The stripped-down scanner, he says, may not only be less expensive to produce but also paints a prettier picture.

"We could make the image as big as we want and display a huge gamut of a colors," Furness says. "It would be like wearing an IMAX theater in a pair of eyeglasses."

Mark Baker weaves two threads together. Well done.

Uche Ogbuji writes in response to my remark about XML. Mainly he's concerned about the conflation of XML and WS*.

I would list something more serious... usage models. XML is just a notation. I agree WS* and XML are relatively distinct topics. But XML is used to represent everything from SOAP messages to config files to databases, and it's not particularly good at any of them.

What does it mean to perform an XML query, when XML is just a notation and not a model per se? There is no "there" there when it comes to what an XML model is. XML is a notation for expressing essentially *any* kind of model.

So worse than conflating XML and WS* is the notion that XML is a model of some kind.

Update - a comment from Manuel Simoni: Shawn Bower's thesis (PDF).

"XML, RDF, Topic Maps, Relational Databases: So many data models, so little time"
Lois Delcambre, PSU Computer Science / OGI
Monday, November 1, 2004, 12:00pm, FAB 10

One advantage of having different representation schemes and data models is that users can select the right representation and associated tools for their particular need. XML might be a great model to represent some of your information, but maybe sometimes you'd prefer to use RDF for some of your other data. The problem is that multiple representation schemes introduce structural, model-based heterogeneity, making it difficult to combine information from different sources and exploit information using generic tools (e.g., for querying or browsing).

In this work, we are interested in supporting multiple data models and representation schemes in a single, generic representation scheme. We have defined a meta-data-model based representation called the Uni-Level Description (ULD) with a novel architecture to overcome the limitations of typical meta-model based approaches. Unique features of the ULD include:

• The ULD can accurately describe representation schemes, such as XML and RDF where schema is optional, in addition to traditional database models where a schema must be defined before any data can be entered.
• The ULD permits data models that support multiple levels of schema or instance-of relationships.
• The ULD represents the constructs of the data model, schema if present, and data in a single, uniform representation that can be easily used by generic tools.

We have used the ULD to write powerful, generic transformation rules that can even transform data directly from one representation scheme to another. We have also investigated the use of a simple generic browsing capability over information represented in diverse data models and representation schemes.

In this talk, we will motivate and define the ULD and discuss the transformation and browsing applications.

Lois Delcambre is a Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University. She also has a joint appointment as a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering with the OGI School of Science and Engineering at the Oregon Health & Science University. She works in the database field of computer science with a particular interest in database data models as well as other models for structured information including thesaurus models, knowledge representation models, semi-structured models such as XML and RDF, and ontology models.

Daniel Hinz writes from OOPSLA on the conference Wiki...

I think the concept of software debt is becoming an increasingly important concept. My experience indicates that way too many developers have a very short idea of the future. They move on often enough that they have no notion of interest coming due.

James Robertson writes about XML's ubiquity and yet lameness as a notation for configuration.

On the other hand "ini" files are equally lame, being too simplistic. And so we have a simple yet more expressive alternative in YAML which serves as a reasonable data notation that is printable, efficient, readable, streamable, maps well to popular dynamic languages, and so on... several things that XML is not.

From Greg Vaughn at OOPSLA 2004...

Another topic I’m seeing in various places, tutorials, practitioner reports, etc., is an analysis of what Architecture really is. One tongue in cheek definition given by Douglas Schmidt at a tutorial about the Forgotten Craft of Software Architecture is that architects are those people whose development skills are too oudated to still be developers, but don’t look good enough in suits to be managers.

Roy Fielding writes...

Software development is still driven by fads and fashion. In order to become well known, you need to hire some sexy models and generate press. Personally, I'd rather that people just learn a little more about software architecture and principled design.

S. Mike Dierken in the rest-discuss Yahoo group...

I've only met two or three people that understand - much less care deeply - about REST. I have met people that quickly recognize the value when I explain the basics, though. Amazon is full of very smart & quick people.

Put me in that latter category. Not that I am very smart or quick, but I recognize the value of the basics. I still get lost in the details when even the people who care deeply debate them.

I like this from Roy Fielding, which may be enough for me...

In short, if you can draw a state machine in which each state is self-described (resident on the client), the transitions from that state are also self-described (instructions for the client to initiate), and each transition is invoked using a self-descriptive message, then you have a RESTful application. All of the rest of the constraints fall out from the need to be self-descriptive...

Note, however, that it isn't necessary for all components to understand all of the semantics. It is only necessary for them to know when they do understand them and also when they do not. That way, applications can be deployed within the subset of the network that does understand without adversely impacting the components that do not (assuming they are implemented according to the communication standards).

And then there's this follow-up from Dave Pawson...

Following this most recent thread makes grabbing eels look easy.

Joel captures the anti-institutional aspect of Web 2.0, although he hasn't expressed it this way.

First, Joel on Microsoft...

If I were Bill (Gates), I think I'd fire about three quarters of the people working on that (the presentation system). Not because they are incompetent. But because there are too many people creating too many technologies.

Compare with the Web 2.0 paradigm, e.g. Basecamp...

Aren’t big payrolls and large head counts Web 1.0?

Back to Joel, this time on Google...

One of the mistakes Google is making is applications like Gmail are great on the Google platform. But if Google was really paying attention, they'd say we have to have outside developers writing applications for Google. There should be 27 different e-mail systems using the Google infrastructure.

And finally, Joel on other Web 1.0 institutions...

Nobody's ever going to use SharePoint in college. Ever. So no startup is ever going to use SharePoint because none of the kids who leave college are going to know it. This was BEA's big problem. Kids in college, when they want to learn about Web development, they learn Perl, PHP, maybe Microsoft's (ASP.Net) stack. They don't learn about Domino or BEA...

It's weird Microsoft doesn't recognize this with things like SharePoint and InfoPath. .. the only way those guys [BEA, MSFT, etc.] have hope of getting mind share in the market is to have an extensive sales force.

The computing flag is at half mast. Ken Iverson has died at the age of 83.

As the inventor of APL, Iverson was truly one of just a handful of original thinkers of programming.

Don Box...

To anticipate Patrick's comments, I'm a huge fan of minimal kernels of abstraction (like lisp) upon which we define entire universes.

SOAP is minimalistic enough for me - it's sad (but not terminal) that SOAP's defun, WSDL/XSD, is as complicated as it is.

Had we started with a simpler basis (perhaps Relax NG + some SOAP-specific extensions), my guess is we'd be having different discussions right now.

This seems to be arguing about syntax, more or less. I think the more interesting argument is about semantics. In particular, the semantics of coordination.

Looking for a minimal *coordination* kernel (a machine) upon which we define entire *coordinated* universes, SOAP is merely a syntax for defining the right machine primitives. SOAP is a general purpose *language* kernel. We still need to define the machine kernel, whether we use SOAP or something other language to describe it.

What would make a good coordination machine kernel?

It should have enough primitives to be useful for the simplest cases. Those primitives should be fixed and yet composable for most of the interesting, complex cases.

The rest-discuss Yahoo group is in the midst of a useful discussion of what makes for RESTful uses of HTTP POST. Roy Fielding's description of a RESTful client-based state machine was a point in the conversation that I could latch on to.

From there I was able to go back and forth through the chronology of messages to piece together the points of discussion. Mark Baker's arguing for a more strict definition of RESTful POST (I think) than Roy, but I'm not sure yet whether this is a communication issue or a technical issue with HTTP itself.

Is IBM blowing their Smalltalk ship out of the water just when the tide is heading again for dynamic languages?

A creative mosaic memorial.

...so this could either concern me or lull me to sleep...

The Chinese currency is currently overheated, with inflation there approaching double-digit levels and threatening to lead to economic collapse. Prevailing view is that if China doesn't immediately revalue its currency upwards by 20-25% (so much for the benefits of offshoring!), it will suffer a hard correction and severe recession. The consequences of that will be a sharp, inflationary increase in the cost of Chinese goods, and great difficulties for the many, many American companies that are now utterly dependent on cheap Chinese goods for their survival. Thanks, Wal-Mart!

Cornell University News...

According to a new Cornell University study, Bush's approval rating rises every time the federal government issues a new terrorist warning, by an average margin of 2.75 points.

My domain as well as email to stardecisions.com has been down and in transition (really limbo) for quite a while. If you've sent email to patrickdlogan at stardecisions.com in the last month or so, I probably haven't seen it.

But now I have the domain running on a hosted user-mode Linux box at linode.com. Postfix is running and email is flowing again, for better or worse.

User-mode Linux is a great way to run at least a low-traffic server where you want full control over the systems you run. And webmin is a convenient way to administer all the typical services you'd want to run.

The documentary "Going Upriver" is available on-line.

Dave Winer writes about the Valerie Plame case, in which one or two senior Bush officials very likely broke significant laws...

If it's true that Bush Administration is using dirty tricks to silence critics, playing with people's lives for crying out loud (something that as far as we know even Nixon didn't do), doesn't the electorate deserve to know?

There is significant evidence the Nixon campaign in 1968 played with lives by interfering with peace talks held by the Johnson administration that might have ended the war half a dozen years than what turned out to be the case. The Nixon campaign apparently was sending backchannel messages to the enemy that if they held out for a Nixon victory, the new administration would cut them a better deal. There is also evidence that Johnson and Humphrey were onto the covert operation, but perhaps did not have enough evidence to go public before the election.

Nixon probably played with about 20,000 American lives with this one since the adminstration found it more profitable to continue rather than end the war. Who knows how many Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and others would not have died had the peace talks ended the war in 1968.

Should anyone complain I am just an ardent Democrat (I'm not even a registered Democrat!) I will also state the obvious that Johnson also played with tens of thousands of lives (at a minimum), through events the least of which was not the Gulf of Tonkin.