Clearing out several weeks of aggregator backlog:
- This is the kind of totally, completely, utterly random academic discussion that I read crooked timber for.
- Kip Hawley got interviewed on fluids today, after I slagged on his agency yesterday. Not very convinced- best case scenario TSA is still completely incompetent.
- odds I’ll go into academia are slim, but my civpro prof has started writing what looks to be a useful intro to legal academia. Doesn’t seem to think much about internet law, but otherwise, a useful intro. Coincidentally I started reading Volokh’s Academic Legal Writing this weekend on the plane- definitely recommended for anyone in your family/friends who are going to law school and intend to write while they are there.
- Alo: perhaps, just perhaps, rich clients are totally uninteresting? Maybe that is a more straightforward explanation than thinking that one of the world’s most successful companies is colluding with a transparent non-profit to kill an unsuccessful product. Maybe.
- Gerv (of mozilla fame) reviews v3 fairly positively.
- When 37 Signals is on, they are on. Particularly great post for me as I try to figure out the (unknown) short term steps to reach the (known) long-term goal. See also the first link/discussion here.
- Asay blogs on the OSL. I’m not sure it is the ‘best open-source license’, but it is clear and well-written.
- James Governor has a very good suggestion as to why Hugh doesn’t quite get Linux, and in general offers an interesting way of looking at open source.
- Open source advertising. Eeeenteresting.
- Terranova ponders on the difference between social contracts and EULAs. This is a hugely, hugely critical question- I look forward to more on it at TN.
- Bainbridge on evil and ideology in Harry Potter. Wacky. And pretty solid. (via Scalzi.)
- Duke’s new head of scholarly communications is blogging about copyright and scholarly communications. Should be interesting- scholars are among those who most directly build on the shoulders of others, and hence who should be most directly concerned about expansionist IP policies.
- UK DTRT. woot.
- Sun’s GC and CEO are doing interesting, forward-thinking things. Exciting.
- Stuart, you come cheap. :) Remember, any time you hear ‘gobuntu’, think ‘stooge distro‘. And any time you hear ‘database layer’, ask ‘where’s the beef?‘ Next time you hear ‘free laptop’, ask ‘why aren’t you investing in the project that is already building one?’
- Oh my god I’m behind on reading. Oy.
Or perhaps Thunderbird just isn’t a terribly good rich client, and – unlike with Firefox – there are many established alternatives (Kmail, Evolution, Sylpheed etc in the Linux world…Eudora, The Bat! and others in the Windows world).
Rich clients still kick the living shit out of webmail when used properly for large workloads. If I had to handle my mail load in webmail I would never have time to do anything else.
hey Luis!
‘Next time you hear ‘free laptop’, ask ‘why aren’t you investing in the project that is already building one?’’
http://laptop.org/ is nice, but it’s for use by kids in the developing world. There’s a world of difference between that and my Thinkpad here. I’d love to see a Thinkpad-class piece of laptop hardware that was fully open, and who knows, I might even pay for it.
What’s the “database layer” you refer to, btw?
Adam: anecdotally: (1) almost every Linux user I know (now in the hundreds through RH) who uses a rich client uses thunderbird and (2) I handle hundreds of emails a day with gmail just fine. Even if I couldn’t handle hundreds of emails a day with gmail, I’d still be in a tiny, tiny minority who handle that much mail- it doesn’t make sense for Mozilla to focus resources on that minority when the vast majority of the world is just fine with webmail.
Justin: the OLPC’s techcould easily be extended to a full-size laptop, which, not coincidentally, would kick the crap out of most full-size laptops given the innovative tech in the OLPC. But that would require investing instead of talking, and sharing the spotlight with RH, neither of which Canonical is good at doing.
The database layer is ‘Storm’, which is the ‘first step to open sourcing launchpad‘, aka ‘here is a little something which is completely useless but will give us something to talk about when challenged.’ The phrase ‘throw me a bone’ comes to mind.
oh yeah, *that* database layer; I remember now.
I have to agree, it seems a bit along the lines of “here’s some generic utility library we had to write in the process of writing Launchpad”.
You’ll never make partner if you go around saying that rich clients are uninteresting. ;-)
“The database layer is ‘Storm’, which is the ‘first step to open sourcing launchpad‘, aka ‘here is a little something which is completely useless but will give us something to talk about when challenged.’ The phrase ‘throw me a bone’ comes to mind.”
Are you saying that Canonical shouldn’t have made ‘storm’ free software? The phrase that comes to my mind is “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.
Also, that page you link to doesn’t actually contain the quoted text, and it’s not even an accurate paraphrase.