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Saturday, October 26
Friday, October 25
Baby Duck Effect [WebTech]
Seems to be a day for dangerous quotes. I'm not sure where Jon Udell spotted my old idea about the Baby Duck Effect but he's partially quoted it in an op-ed on Java as a GUI tool today. Two things need saying on this so you don't get the wrong idea about my views on Java from his reference.
First, when I talk about the 'baby duck effect' I am explaining why the aspect of an innovation that gets popular is often different to the aspect that gets used first. It's happend repeatedly. With Java, applets were the iconic idea but servlets were the catalyst for adoption. With XML, document sharing was discussed but it was largely data flows that were the catalyst. With web services, published service aggregation was iconic but intranet applications look like being the catalyst. And so on.
In keynotes I humourously (I hope) say this is like a duck egg hatching - the little head pops out and the first thing the new eyes see becomes mother! In technology, evangelists illustrate innovations by promoting an idea that will catch the popular imagination, but insiders typically know that it will be something different that acts as an adoption catalyst. For example, in 1996 in IBM, it was pretty clear to us that Java technology was a server idea even when we were creating the Windows 3.1 version (I see my name has been taken off that one!).
Second, that doesn't mean I think the iconic idea is irrelevant or has failed. On the contrary, I believe that is the idea whose day is yet to come in most cases. So with Java technology, life as a GUI technology in devices is only now starting to become a reality. With XML, I believe document transfers al la REST will be a key to the future and that document meta-data technologies will be the bedrock of the internet in years to come. Right now, we are seeing XML document formats giving OpenOffice.org so much power that Microsoft has been forced to publicise the XML option in Office 11 way ahead of release. And maybe one day published web service aggregation will be a power to be reckoned with beyond force-fit proprietary solutions and cool prototypes.
posted at 10:02 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Thursday, October 24
Wednesday, October 23
Power of Pele [PhotoTravel]
  I've visited the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park before, but the encounter with the massive scale and awesome power of the thing remains as great. For my stop-over this trip I promised myself I was going to go to the lava flows. The first day the park was 'closed' due to vog (smog made by volcanic gasses), but Monday I was able to drive down in the morning and see where Kilauea and Pu'u O'o are feeding lava into the sea - a huge plume of steam, glass dust and acid is constantly streaming into the air from the cyan-blue ocean at the end of each lava tube where 2000° lava instantly turns seawater to plasma. There were three plumes visible Monday - indeed, the marked track must have crossed two of the lava tubes, an unsettling thought.
 It's almost too huge, like the way that the Grand Canyon only truly sinks in for me when I shut my eyes and consider the scale of what I am seeing. The power is unmistakeable though - the end of the Chain of Craters road shows where the lava has just ploughed through regardless. It's easy to understand why the polynesian culture was willing to go to the murderous extremes of kapu to try to appease Pele and avoid this - a practice which continued as late as 1819. Even now, the rationalisations of 21st century thought can be humbled by the raw power that surrounds you standing in the heart of an active lava flow area. The heat, the fumes, the new-born rock, the control over ocean and weather - all provide a natural 'total perspective vortex'.
posted at 9:35 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Tuesday, October 22
The Frog Chorus [PhotoTravel]
 Being an adept with an atlas, I spotted that Hawai'i was mid-way between Sydney in Australia and San Jose in California. I had intended a long weekend there but got stuck in Sydney with a nasty illness [aside: what irony! I survived Bombay, Delhi, Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei and Hong Kong and then got sick at the end of my week in Sydney!] and in the end left on Sunday morning. Crossing the date-line meant I got to Hawai'i on Saturday night so at least I got some time there. I stayed on Big Island in a perfect B&B in the town of Volcano (the Volcano Inn - their front door is shown to the left), right at the entrance to the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park.
 More about the volcano tomorrow I expect, but the highlight of the entire trip for me was going to the Lava Tree State Park in Puna, an enclave of rich jungle on the south-east corner of the island. It has some fascinating (if a little phallic) tree casts and a great name for the double entendre detector but the serendipity of the visit was the sounds. As dusk fell, the sound of birds singing started to appear - only there were no birds. The singing increased to choral proportions and was coming from all around me in the jungle undergrowth, but nothing was flying anywhere. Gradually it dawned on me that this was the sound of tree frogs. It was totally captivating; I stood being consumed by insects for maybe half an hour listening to a Philip Glass oratorio sung by tree frogs. Sadly they are not welcome - turns out they are introduced and considered a pest - but then everything in Hawai'i arrived at some point, even the state bird (the Nene) is descended from canada geese that outstayed their welcome, so maybe one day they will be valued.
posted at 9:28 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Monday, October 21
Language Standards a Smoke-screen? [WebTech]
I'm quoted by Gavin Clark of Computerwire in his item (syndicated by The Register) about the standardisation of Microsoft's C# programming language and their moves to make their C++ compiler catch up with the standards a little. My remarks there are a little truncated and consequently unclear, so I'd like to elaborate a little.
My observation was that programmers don't typically use languages to create software. They use programming languages to weave together library calls to create software. Consequently, a programmer's marketable expertise is actually in their skill with the libraries they use to create software - the programming language with which they do so is relatively unimportant. Programmers seeking to build with the Java class libraries can use the Java language, or Jython, or NetRexx, or indeed any of the 160 systems that target the Java virtual machine. Programmers using the UNIX libraries have a similar choice; programmers using Microsoft's MFC libraries a smaller set of choices; those using Microsoft's new .NET framework a similarly small set. Of course, in typical form projecting weaknesses and engaging in doubletalk, the small range of choice is portrayed as a large one...
So what does language standardisation buy us? Well, it means that we will have a basic familiarity with the programming languages we find variously implemented. But beyond that, I would suggest it doesn't buy us much. What brings value is library stability. The Java environment achieves this by the oversight of a very good standards body, the Java Community Process. UNIX achieves it via the Open Group. But what about Microsoft? Their libraries come with no promise of stability as no-one but them gets a vote. Indeed, their switch from MFC to .NET Framework is probably the reason for their new-found interest in language standards. Talking about 'language choice' and 'language standards' is all fine rhetoric, but what programmers really need is library stability. Perhaps it's embarrassment over that which is creating the new language fervour in Redmond, to blow a smoke-screen over the retraining VB and C++ programmers are facing?
posted at 9:11 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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No Debate [SocioPolitico]
Where is the appropriate forum for the debate of new legislation? It used to be in the press, or in Parliament, but now we are seeing template legislation created centrally in Europe and then enacted by cookie-cutter in Parliament, it seems the right to debate legislation has been removed. Two cases grab me particularly at the moment; the case of the European Copyright Directive (ECD) and the case of the European Arrest Warrant [via Natalie Solent] (EAW). If you're not familiar with the EAW, go directly and take a good look, scares the hell out of me.
In both cases, legislation has been devised which removes rights from British citizens (and probably other EU citizens too) as it levels the legislative landscape. To its authors it probably sounds very reasonable - copyright harmonisation sounds good, and being able to arrest criminals EU-wide sounds a fine objective. As ever, the devil is in the details. The ECD threatens to enact copy protection measures which, like the deeply flawed American DMCA, at best threaten and at worst eliminate the fair-use rights we all take for granted with media. The EAW allows arrest and detention of British citizens in Britain under the conditions of other EU member states - Greece, for example. Expect arbitrary arrest involving physical assault that can't be challenged in court, detention without trial or charge for arbitrary periods, and more.
While I often have a lot of sympathy for the idea of a European federation (which will immediately block me from a whole load of blogrolls), the implications of having legislation being devised effectively in camera and then being beyond reproach when it comes to national enactment seems deeply wrong to me. I don't agree with the anti-EC brigades extreme pull-out-or-perish position but nonetheless I think we can see a big problem developing here as rounded but wrong legislation pours into Parliament.
posted at 11:18 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far)
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Sunday, October 20
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A stray photograph from India today. In Delhi at 
Last two photographs from Australia today. The Sydney Botanical gardens have a big problem with flying foxes (fruit bats). These aren't the tiny bat-lets you find in your garden - these are substantial mammals with big black wings. As you'll see on the left, they may be an endangered species in Australia but they are locally common in the priceless tree collection in the Gardens and all 3500 of them spend happy days in the sun defoliating the trees. So what do you do if you are the curator of the tree collection? Well, nothing really. They usually try scaring the bats away with bat-hostile noises (not at the moment though as it's the breeding season) but as the bats have a straight choice of lush exotic trees or skyscrapers I can't really see that working.
I spent my last evening in Sydney experimenting with long-exposure photographs of the Sydney Opera House. This visit I was lucky enough to actually attend a 
Today's photos from the Tour are two bird pictures taken in Sydney. As well as ibis, the botanical gardens have other local birds just hanging out. The kookaburra to the left was watching the cockatiel to the right as both were being illicitly fed breadcrumbs by a visitor. As the day went on I saw plenty more cockatiels but no more kookaburras. This was actually my second wild kookaburra - the first was lazing in a tree when I toured the mountains to the north of Brisbane four years ago.