Joel on Software: Up the tata without a tutu

Until yesterday, the FogBUGZ license said that you couldn't reverse engineer the program, attempt to look at the source code, or modify it in any way. Various honest people have asked how much we charge for a source license, so that they could customize a few things.

Hmmm. Why does the license say you can't change the source code? I couldn't think of a single reason. In fact I thought of a lot of counter-reasons, and immediately changed the license agreement. So now you're going to have to sit through one of those old-fuddy-duddy stories from my past...

Joel's stories are far from fuddy-duddy. Well worth keeping tabs on Joel on Software.

Bryan Bell's Simple Navigation tip is very similar to the way I have set up my own template which 'includes' the Navigation page and my personal Bookmarks page.

Adam Curry's Weblog - Mail Pages

I get mail, lots and lots of mail. Instead of just forwarding all the good bits to friends I also want some of them available to everyone.

That's what the Mail Pages are for, so if you never want email posted publicly, Do Not send it to adam@curry.com

If the e-mails are all going to be as hilarious as these then I'm going to 'eavesdrop' on a regular basis ;-)

ZDNet: eWEEK: Linux looms large at IBM

While the Armonk, N.Y., company's initial goal was to enable Linux on the mainframe, it is now working to effectively cluster large-scale Linux configurations. The result should mean more scalable and reliable server and mainframe applications for such things as e-mail, Web hosting and enterprise resource planning.

I know quite a few of my students dip into this weblog. I also know that some of them are serious game afficiandos but I doubt that they come anyway near to the guy that's auctioning The Ultimate Video Game Library! on eBay. Bids closed at $70,000 which didn't even meet the reserve price!! via [hbwt]

BBC News | UK | Spy plans 'threat to human rights'

Civil liberties campaigners have warned the government that granting police and secret services greater snooping powers would be a breach of human rights.

It has been reported that British intelligence services and the police are seeking powers to log all telephone calls, e-mails and internet traffic in the UK.

This would be an unbelievable development and a massive intrusion on privacy. Would the government countenance the mandatory 'steaming open of envelopes' and recording of all postal correspondence? Can you imagine the uproar that that would cause?

Perhaps the most incredulous aspect of this whole idea is that the blithering idiot - the deputy director general of NCIS, Roger Gaspar - who is responsible for the proposal estimates that a database to store all the information would cost about £3m to set up and £9m a year to run!! Unbelievable!!!

Regular readers may recall my mentioning Buchanan International. Looks like they have this sort of technology already and the people:

FT.com | People | Special

"How do we write a program that detects anything bad that's going on on the internet?" asked Stephen Whitelaw, former Glasgow University lecturer and chief executive of Buchanan International, a security software company based outside Glasgow.

...

These intellectual feats breed eccentrics. One Actis employee, Roy MacNaughton, a 21-year-old drop-out from Glasgow University and a gifted astrophysicist who was also a concert grade pianist at the age of 12, guards the database.

A second, a ruthless tracker of criminals known only as Stew, is unkempt, sleeps in the office overnight and pads about barefoot. "We found Stew in the PC section of a bookshop in Glasgow - the best place to find his sort," says Whitelaw. "The last thing I want is disciplined minds."

Good to know all this data is in safe hands then!! By my reckoning they'll get £1m each to set it up and £3m each per annum to not spend on socks and toiletries. BTW, if you're reading this Stephen, Roy and Stew it's nothing personal OK ;-)

Update: Out of curiosity I visited the Buchanan International website. [health warning: do not visit if you are susceptible to epilepsy - really]:

Coming soon...
In precisely 11 days, 18 hours, 6 minutes and 20 seconds we launch our exciting new website.
Until then you can view our existing temporary site by clicking here.

In a cunning ploy to throw off potential hackers and other ne'er-do-wells, the self-proclaimed monitors of the 'Dark Side of the Internet' have cleverly placed their welcome text and the 'here' link on a nice blue background thus rendering the link almost invisible. An even more cunning stunt was to make sure that that link to the existing temporary link [currently] throws up a 404 Not Found

Obviously these subtle ploys are to demonstrate to the politicians and security services that Buchanan International is at the forefront of website protection measures (specifically sprinkling \s into URLs), dark-force counter-measures, and anti-snooping techniques. After all, if visitors don't have an epileptic seizure and then actually manage to find the link they'll just get a 404 Not Found. Brilliant! Way to go BI!!

Perhaps In precisely 11 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes and 37 seconds [at the time of writing] they'll launch their exciting new website by just fixing the link ;-)

Finally, for the terminally curious the Buchanan International Newspage announces:

buchanan and system lookout map the dark side of the web

Earlier this evening the family got together at my brother's to celebrate his birthday. Happy Birthday Richard

Talking of birthdays - EditThisPage.com celebrates it's first one tomorrow.

The Mops Page

Mops is Michael Hore's robust and powerful public-domain development system for the Macintosh. With Forth and Smalltalk parentage, Mops has extensive OOP capabilities including multiple inheritance, and a class library supporting the Macintosh interface.

Speaking of Forth reminds of my time at Dragon Data as the lead software designer for the Dragon Data Ltd DRAGON 32 / 64. The M6809 implementation of Forth ruuning on the Dragon was a nice development environment. I still have a soft spot for the Motorola 6809E - a lovely 8-bit architecture and probably the only processor with a SEX instruction ;-). One of these days I will need to write up my experiences whilst at Dragon. In the meantime any reader with way too much time on their hands can check out Google Search: Dragon 32 Smeed.

Coincidentally, a Google search with the words Smeed and Dragon will find a mention of my cousin Michelle who is heavily involved in Dragon Boat racing. Michelle helped with the staging of the first World Championships held outside of the Far East.

But the best known member of my immediate family is my uncle - Vic Smeed a famous model designer and author.

It's the Scripting News 'MISS' - Make It Simple Stupid - day today:

My job is to write the top-level of Radio, to explain what it is and how it works. Our goal is to make Radio as simple to use and understand as Manila was one year ago.

Thanks Dave!

That reminds me, Seth and the rest of the Mcrobyte team have just completed* MISS Month for Conversant. Looking forward to using the fruits of their labour. Thanks Macrobyte!

[* update: F.C. Support: upgrades You may remember that we started MISS Month a few days early, releasing the first few "make it simple" upgrades in late October. We're also going to finish a few days late.]

And Jim Roepcke documents his new WeblogView Page type for Conversant which allows a webmaster to set up as many different versions (looks/formats) for their weblogs as they want. Readers of Jim's Have Browser Will Travel [hbwt] can even have your their very own version of that site!. Thanks Jim!

On Thursday Mark Morgan announced the launch of Becoming Conversant

The goal is threefold: help newcomers by explaining Conversant from the user's viewpoint; organize, point to, mirror, and provide examples of documentation for Conversant; and share some of the really neat stuff users and others have done with Conversant.

I have the dubious honour of naming Becoming Conversant:

As to the name - plays on Conversant, first words, conversations, etc. conjure up all sorts of possibilities. 'Becoming Conversant' comes immediately to mind (and which prompted the change of subject title ;-))

But Mark deserves all the credit for getting it off the ground. I'll be delighted to contribute to the effort Mark. Thanks Mark!

It's been too busy so far today to update this site. Hopefully later tonight my time I'll redress the balance.