Archive for November, 2006

Bottles and bottles and bottles.

Published November 30, 2006 wine 0 Comments

From gapingvoid:

Here’s the deal. Thresher, one of Stormhoek’s main customers, is one of the largest wine store chains here in the UK. They’ve got them all over the country, pretty much in every small town you go to. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

So they have this wee pre-Christmas offer.

For ten days, from 30 November until 10 December, they will offering 40% off ALL their wine. That means all Stormhoek, all red and white, all French, all Spanish, all Australian, all Champagne. Everything.

For details on how to get it, head over to gapingvoid and read what Hugh has to say.

[Update]  So I was a bit late in posting this because it seemed like a good idea to wait until the start of the offer. Seems other people didn’t and it’s had a pretty big effect.

It’ll make an IBMer out of you.

Published November 29, 2006 Foundation , IBM 0 Comments

6 and a bit years ago I went through a 3 week Induction course for IBM PUEs to give us (as 17 and 18 year olds) all we’d need to deal the ‘real world of IBM’. It covered basic technical and business skills, including an ‘Invitation to Tender’ which was a day long exercise in dealing with a business problem, meeting ‘customers’ and having difficult meeting with them. It was a lot of fun, quite silly really, but did cover the basics of dealing in a professional customer environment, and most crucially, what not to do.

Today I saw a bit of the grown up version of this exercise, the final presentations of ‘Foundation Skills in a Project Environment’. This is a ~7 day version of the above for new joiners to many parts of IBM UK. I won’t go into details so as not to spoil the surprise for future attendees. The participants seemed to have enjoyed the exercise (once it was over!), and seemed to be able to confidently represent IBM. Just 3 weeks in that’s pretty good and I’m happy to welcome them as our newest IBMers*.

* A cheezy term I know, but a well known one**

** Though interestingly one not known by Google

My So-Called Second Life

Published November 21, 2006 IBM , Tech , secondlife 0 Comments

Yesterday afternoon I attended the ‘IBM UK Second Life Summit in Hursley’. It was in Hursley both in real life and in secondlife.

I’ve dabbled a bit in secondlife over the past few months, particularly because of all of the talk about it on eightbar. It was really interesting to see what IBM has done so far in the area of virtual worlds, what the immediate short-term plans are (impressed) and whay might happen in the slightly longer term (more impressed).

In secondlife I’m ‘dizley Abernathy’, a not very well dressed, pretty boring looking avatar (all because I’m cheap and not great at creating my own clothes yet)*  yet to be honest I don’t see myself really using that identity any more that I use davidillsley@gmail.com (which is to say not much). I enjoy the immersive nature of secondlife but to me it’s more of a tool. I want to be me (not necessarily have an avatar that looks like me) and use the space to enrich my interactions with other people. I suppose there is an important privacy issue which is dodged by the second name thing but I’m sure there must be a way to deal with that.

I think I’ll spend a little more time in secondlife now, exploring places and the technology, seeing where it could take us.

PodCastCon UK 2006

Published November 19, 2006 podcastconuk , podcasting 0 Comments

I’ve been really poor at posting recently. I have a bunch of draft posts waiting to be completed but I’m forcing myself to be timely with this one.

I went to PodCastConUK 2006 on a whim yesterday. It was mentioned in a podcast I listened to on Friday, Ididn’t have any plans for Saturday, and was pretty cheap. It was an interesting day, talking to podcasters, manufacturers and advertising/pr people.

I spoke to a number of people about the technical opportunities and the main area that kept coming up in all of the discussions was that of audience feedback. Everyone wants more and IMO we can make it easier for people to submit feedback and for listeners to consume the feedback from other listeners. Definite food for thought that I’ll hopefully attack this week.

Some of the discussion was wider than just podcasting. The panel on ‘Citizen Journalism’ in particular threw up a bunch of interesting opinion, including from BBC and Guardian employees. There seemed to be a concensus that the term is problematic and that people who meet journalistic standards are journalists regardless of whether they’re a blogger or podcaster.

Overall, it was a fun day, with lots of things to think about, lots of interesting people to talk to, and some really good music.

The IcedTea question.

Published November 13, 2006 Open Source , Tech , apache , classpath , harmony , java , sun 1 Comment

So there’s more information about the Java (TM) announcement and I’m going to assume the best.

Before I go any further, let me again acknowledge that it’s a big step and I have strong hopes that the things that are not perfect will get sorted out over time. Also, as always these comments are my own and don’t reflect IBM’s position etc etc.

As I said earlier in the day, governance is key and it seems Sun’s model is not changing in the short term i.e. Only Sun employees can commit changes and shared copyright assignment. They say that the former is intended to change over time but one of the charts on the site uses the word ‘eventually’ which isn’t encouraging. I think that these factors make it likely that Kaffe+Classpath will continue to be actively developed until there is more of a level playing field but I believe that’s healthy anyway.

Sam Ruby jokes (I think) that Debian will end up calling their build of the OpenJDK sources IcedTea rather than Java (TM) but the Sun FAQ is pretty clear on this question

Q: What must I do to call my software based on code from the OpenJDK or phoneME projects “Java”?

A: The requirements for the use of the “Java” trademark and name have not changed with the open sourcing of the JDK and Java ME source code. The GPL v2 does not include a trademark license - no OSI-approved open-source licenses do. Sun does not currently have a licensing program that permits the use of the “Java” mark in your product or company name. You can use a truthful “tagline” however associating your product or company with Java technology, according to Sun’s standard terms for use for trademarks. Please see http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/ for more details.

This more than suggests that even if you build OpenJDK from a set of sources you get verbatim from Sun you can’t call it Java (TM) (or java.exe ?) . It sounds to me like Distributors, to call something Java will have to use Binaries of Sun’s builds (which are potentially a fork themselves) under the DLJ… which makes things really complicated. Not legal questions I want to be anywhere near.

For the moment I’m very happy that Apache Harmony exists and is doing so well. It’s through competition and challenging Sun that Java (TM) will gain most.

Java is RMS Free?

Published November 13, 2006 Open Source , Tech , java , sun 0 Comments

From Tim Bray

Java Is Free

When I took the job at Sun in early 2004, I had a long talk with John Fowler, about this blog among other things. John said: “You might end up happier if you don’t blog about open-sourcing Java.” That was then. Today’s story is simple: Unmodified GPL2 for our SE, ME, and EE code. GPL2 + Classpath exception for the SE libraries. Javac and HotSpot and JavaHelp code drops today. The libraries to follow, with pain expected fighting through the encumbrances. Governance TBD, but external committers are a design goal. No short-term changes in the TCK or JCP. There are a ton of presentations and an (excellent) FAQ and so on, all to show up at sun.com/opensource/java sometime in the next few hours. I wanted to add a couple of remarks on areas that stuff doesn’t highlight.

This is a huge shift for Java (TM) and will, I’m sure, have a big impact on the industry (including a lot of colleagues and probably me). It’s great to see Sun take such a big step in the right direction but the real question always was and still is governance. More thoughts later when there’s more information available.

Young

Published November 4, 2006 Personal 0 Comments

Today I turn 24. I’m still young, troublingly young according to my manager.

I’ve enjoyed my life so-far and I have no reason to expect that to change. Thanks to everyone whose sent messages and cards. It’s because of all my great friends, old and new that I do enjoy my life a lot.

Oh, and I’m glad my birthday doesn’t fall on a weekday or I might be spending it like Adrian evidently spent his yesterday.

Next Page »

About

I’m David Illsley, I work in Web Services development at IBM Hursley, which involves work on the Apache WS Project, where I am a committer and PMC member. When not working with technology, I spend a lot of time on the backstage aspects of theatre, and a sadly decreasing amount of time reading.

a

Disclaimer

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.