Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Scoble says:

Third, most marketing sites exist to build relationships with customers. You think most businesses spend all that money to only have you visit once? Yeah, right. The only way a company can become profitable is have you visit again and again and again. Look at Amazon. Unprofitable for the first few years in business, but now that they have lots of repeat and return customers they are profitable.

Yeah, Amazon doesn't have RSS. But, the bar is higher now than it was in 1998 (just like the bar in 1998 was higher than it was in 1989).

Actually, they do have RSS, and I use it - you can set up search feeds through Amazon that pump back RSS. It's quite useful, especially if you are interested in a niche genre or a particular author. For instance, here's a feed url that will answer a book search for "Alternate History". I do get some bizarre matches on that (I'm looking for stuff like Turtledove's WWII series, and I sometimes run across stuff like this - go figure).

How did I construct that search? Why, BottomFeeder has a wizard for that :)

The registration deadline for the Smalltalk Solutions Coding Contest is tonight - the actual contest will be made public on Monday at 9 am (Eastern Daylight time). There are some serious prizes on the line for the top three finalists - assuming they can attend the conference.

Update: It's closed as of 6 PM EDT. Make sure to register for StS so you can see how it comes out.

I haven't taken a look at the logs in awhile (April 26), so I thought I'd take a gander. Here's what turns up for the interval from April 27 to May 12:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	1996
Mac 8/9	1000
HPUX	875
Sources	773
Mac X	521
Linux x86	496
CE ARM	284
Windows98/ME	181
Update	149
Solaris	38
Linux Sparc	34
AIX	29
Linux PPC	24
SGI	20
ADUX	10
Source Script	6

I'm still baffled by those HPUX numbers :) Somewhere, there's a bunch of HPUX users who really, really want an aggregator - look at the SPARC and AIX numbers in comparison. It's also still the case that we are getting nearly twice the requests for Mac 8/9 than we are for OS X. OS X gets all the press, but it looks like 8/9 is still popular. Or, people are running 8/9 clients under OS X for some reason. The total adds up to 6436, which is just over 400 a day - very nice numbers, and an increase over the last time period I looked at.

So next, let's have a look aggregator access to the XML Feeds:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	21.6%
BottomFeeder	20.4%
Other	18%
Net News Wire	13.6%
NewsGator	4.5%
Internet Explorer	4.4%
SharpReader	4.3%
BlogLines	4%
Planet Smalltalk	2%
Feed Demon	1.5%
Liferea	1.5%
RSS Bandit	1.2%
JetBrains	1%
Feed Reader	1%
Java	1%

Not a huge change from last time - Mozilla usage is slightly up, which probably means that Sage is getting used more. Everything else is about the same as before, with some slight variation. In other words, no huge surprises here.

Finally, let's take a look at the access to the HTML pages on the cincomsmalltalk site:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	45.6%
Internet Explorer	31.1%
Other	17.3%
Java	2.3%
BottomFeeder	1.5%
Net News Wire	1.2%
Opera	1%

The interesting thing here is that "Other" usage - and since I doubt people are doing the Java equivalent of wget in an eclipse workspace, "Java" above counts as other - has climbed a bunch, seemingly at the expense of Mozilla usage. Other than that, things are about the same as last time.

Spotted in Incipient(thoughts) - I ran across this explanation of teaching OO (Java, in this case, but that's not that relevant):

For instance, based on previous experience with students who had a similar background, I knew I might need to explain how the call stack worked, before introducing heap allocation as a further complication. I showed the slide with a picture of the stack and asked if that was familiar. People nodded. I wrote, in near-Java, a recursive implementation of "factorial" on the flip chart - and asked if that would work. One student said, "Not it won't - you'd need an extra static variable, wouldn't you ?"

So I walked through one specific call to factorial, showing how stack frames were allocated, where intermediate values of the parameter would be go, where intermediate results would go, and so on. Some of the students knew this stuff from CS classes, some of them even remembered parts of it - but I needed these notions, and the visual representations that go with them, to be in the "active" part of their memory while we'd be looking at more specifically OO notions, such as object construction (which involves dynamic allocation, which involves contrasting the stack and the heap, and which also raises the question of the difference Java draws between "primitive" and "object" types).

The question in the title arises from how Russ Pencin used to answer implementation detail questions in the Intro to Smalltalk class back at ParcPlace. Explaining the stack? That has less than nothing to do with teaching objects to a new group of students. I taught Smalltalk classes to many, many Cobol students, and trust me - the stack just didn't come up other than an explanation of what you saw in the debugger.

Getting bogged down in that level of detail does a huge disservice, IMHO. It's not useful, and doesn't have anything to do with the kinds of day to day business apps that ex-Cobol developers are going to be writing. teaching OO concepts has less than nothing to do with explaining the way the stack looks, or how objects get allocated in memory. As Russ used to ask me - Why do you care? A side point - if Java makes you care, then there's a very large problem inherent in Java.

Steve Rubel is still worried about AutoLink:

Google today shipped the gold master of its new Internet Explorer toolbar, complete with the oft-criticized autolink feature. eWeek has more including a soundbite from me. While the company made some changes to the Toolbar to give users options, Google still snubbed publishers. Autolink remains and the Toolbar now changes a publisher's content without their permission...with no way to opt-out. Gee, maybe the Google Content Blocker (a spoof) isn't so far from what we might see in the future.

All this, and no putting two and two together (the syndic8 thing I referenced). For that matter, on the political side I've noticed a few bloggers raising questions about Google News and how it picks content - the thought being that there's some active bias going on. That gets almost no attention, all the attention to the syndic8 thing gets cheered on by what amounts to a mob - and the entire Universe gets it shorts twisted over AutoLink - even as they cheerfully munge publisher content with ad blockers of various sorts.

At least inattention and hypocrisy are alive and well.

The whole controversy surrounding syndic8 and SEO has an interesting subtext to it. "Everyone" agrees that they crossed a line with their subdomain advertising - here's a typical post on it, and here's my earlier post, where I called it pagerank scamming. Jeff Barr weighed in with an apology this morning. The unasked questions are:

• What line did they cross?
• Who defined the line they crossed?
• What's the appropriate punishment for whatever line they crossed?

Before anyone gets all self righteous and claims that it's all too obvious what they did, consider - Google effectively de-listed them from the net, and did so unilaterally. Everyone cheered that - but imagine if it were Microsoft (or IBM back in the 80s) doing something similar - would you be as copacetic with it?

Here's the thing - "everyone" is up in arms about AutoLink (I found a bunch of "the sky is falling posts" on this just this morning). No one is the least bit worried about this raw display of power by Google. This whole thing has the feel of the mandatory self criticism practice that the Soviets and other communists used, and I find it troubling.

Apparently, things are not all sweetness and light at WalMart - have a look at this report:

Shari Eberts, retail analyst with J.P. Morgan, said the company's second-quarter forecast "is the largest negative revision in recent memory," and shares of Wal-Mart fell nearly 4 percent in early trading.

Wal-Mart's sales have suffered in recent quarters as soaring gasoline prices cut into household budgets, and the world's No. 1 retailer said it expects energy prices to weigh on second-quarter results too.

I don't think it has as much to do with the cost of fuel as this analyst would have us believe. Why do I say that? Two reasons. First this, from the same story:

Wal-Mart's weak first-quarter performance comes in contrast to rival Target Corp. (NYSE:TGT), which reported better-than-expected earnings as it kept prices up and reaped profits from its credit card operations. In contrast to Wal-Mart's focus on low prices, Target has carved out a niche selling stylish goods at low prices, as well as catering to consumers drawn just by price.

I'll fill in the blanks for the analyst, who likely hasn't left her desk and visited an actual WalMart or Target recently (or possibly ever). Here in the Columbia area, we have two nearby Targets, and two nearby WalMarts. When I walk into Target, what do I see?

• A Clean store - no disorganization on the shelves, the floors are clear, things look organized
• A staff that's working - stocking, checking people out of the store, etc

In contrast, what do I see at WalMart when I step in there?

• A somewhat dirty, somewhat unkempt store. Disorganized shelves, floors that look dirty
• The staff is socializing with itself - hanging around in the aisles, working slowly if at all

Here's what I think happened. After Sam Walton died, and a new team took over, standards slipped. Some bright MBA type decided that they could cut costs by doing without as much training (the socializing staff), and without as much cleaning (the general sense of disarray I see in there now). I'd bet that the MBA type who dreamed those things up is happy as heck, seeing reduced costs on his spreadsheet. Meanwhile, he's got no idea that this has a direct bearing on weak sales.

These small signs of distress are what I saw at KMart the last few years, before all the local stores were closed. Local shoppers started staying away because of those things. Ironically, the local WalMart is in an old KMart location - and it seems that location isn't all they've picked up. What the analysts who think this is all about energy costs miss is the small day to day stuff, which is almost certainly driven by some misplaced "cost control" policies from on high. We've all seen those kinds of things in action, and we've all seen the kind of damage they can cause. Just look at KMart...

Remember Satellite Forces, a company I visited last winter? They've just announced that their business is growing in the middle east. Satellite Forces uses Cincom Smalltalk to power their software:

SATELLITE FORCES ENHANCES TECHNICAL SUPPORT TO ADVANCE IN ACTIVE MIDDLE EASTERN IT MARKETS

Ottawa, May 12, 2005 - Satellite Forces International (SFI), a leading developer of business management applications, announced today that they are getting ready to launch their product and services in very active Middle Eastern markets. SFI is collaborating with Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources of Ottawa, to provide expert technical support to meet the needs and requirements specific to Middle Eastern IT organizations.

“Entering our Atlantis application into a new and thriving geographic market space is of paramount importance to SFI” explains SFI president David Long. “ Having the appropriate level of product technical support is essential for meeting this goal”.

SFI and Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources have developed a plan to leverage SFI's Atlantis application by aligning SFI's technology and Harrington's pre-qualified technical support resources. By having competently trained Technical Associates from Canada train our Middle Eastern counterparts, SFI is ensuring a comprehensive support system for our initiatives in the region.

“In order to be prepared to meet demand in the Middle East, it was important for us to develop a relationship with a firm that has a reputation for resourcing highly skilled IT professionals”, explains Haissam Rahal, Director of Business Development - Europe and Middle East. “Collaborating with Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources enables us to focus on our core business of getting Atlantis to this new market area.”

Satellite Forces International Inc. believes the potential for Atlantis in the Middle Eastern IT environment is an estimated revenue stream upwards of 1.2 billion US dollars.

About Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources

Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources has been providing highly qualified resources to public and private sector clients for 30 years. Winner of the 2001 Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics and Standards and winner of Consumer Choice Award for Staffing industry in the last 3 years, Harrington has a pre-qualified pool of IT specialists that are available for diverse or unique skill required positions and can be engaged at various project stages. Harrington Staffing/Informatics Resources provides cost effective resourcing solutions in support of client business objectives. Visit www.harringtonhr.com

About Satellite Forces International

Satellite Forces is a Canadian based firm that specializes in the development of business process applications, advanced distributed networking solutions and software development tools. Atlantis, the main product offering, is designed to enhance and help expedite the development process for software development companies. Servicing a variety of globally positioned clients, SFI's Atlantis application is a flexible solution that enables organizations to increase profits and lower operating costs. Visit www.satelliteforces.ca.

Contact:

David Long

President, Satellite Forces International Inc.

InfoWorld reports on a more deep form of outsourcing:

If previously the preferred route for low-cost, offshore development in India was to set up a captive development subsidiary, ISVs are now looking at alternatives such as third-party outsourcers that specialize in end-to-end product development, said Sarath Sura, managing director of the Indian operations of Sierra Atlantic Based in Fremont, California, Sierra Atlantic provides outsourced IT services and has a product development facility in Hyderabad in south India.

Which is kind of where I figured this would go. Why did I say it sounded dodgy? Well, get a load of this quote from the article:

To hedge risks, some ISVs outsource to more than one Indian outsourcer. Senable Technologies Inc. a startup in Dallas, for example, has outsourced development to three vendors in India, including Aspire, according to Andy Pulianda, the company's chief executive officer. Senable selected the three vendors after evaluating about 100 companies.

"India has the capability to provide robust commercial product development, but significant due diligence is required before selecting partners that meet your requirements," Pulianda said. A major pitfall, for example, could be low price because the vendor offering the lowest price may have cut costs on infrastructure, communications links or on security, Pulianda added.

Welcome to integration hell with that strategy. Here's a far better idea - hire half as many developers as you think you need, and have them use Smalltalk. You'll actually get a product out the door without the overhead of managing three development teams 12 time zones away.

I've always liked Tino too:

Tino Martinez is trying to replace Don Mattingly again -- this time in the New York Yankees record book. Martinez homered for the fifth straight game and New York rallied twice from big deficits to beat the Seattle Mariners 13-9 on Wednesday for their season-high fifth straight win. No Yankee has had a home run streak this long since Mattingly -- now the club's hitting coach -- tied the major league mark in 1987 with home runs in eight consecutive games.

Here's a way to get better performance and save on payroll - ditch Giambi, claim breach of contract based on his steroid use. Put Tino back at first fulltime. We get better at bats, a better glove, and lower payroll. Maybe Steinbrenner and Cashman can locate a clue and come to the same conclusion...

Well, this is interesting. Google has temporarily suspended downloads of the accelerator, citing capacity issues:

Thank you for your interest in Google Web Accelerator. We have currently reached our maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users we can support.

There's some speculation that it might be part of a deeper problem, with this being a face saving excuse. Have a look at this:

The most disturbing aspect is Google Accelerator could prove to be a serious security problem for web sites specializing in dynamic user-generated content, such as forums and other community sites. This has always been an inherent problem when using carelessly configured caching proxy servers, but never before has such an expansive and intrusive caching platform been offered for free, thus the problems are likely to get much worse before improving as thousands more unsuspecting people install the Google Accelerator client each day.

Try using Web Accelerator on a forum site, one with lots of geeks who love Google and probably already have Web Accelerator installed. Why, if you're lucky, you'll be logged in as someone else, as the folks at SomethingAwful.com discovered. The posters in that forum discovered that most of the times they refreshed the page, they were logged in as a different person, seeing their friend's control panel for the forums.

Looks like there may be problems with the aggressive assumption that everyone follows the spec recommendations on GET completely. The thing to remember about this is that there are standards, and then there's actual practice. The latter tends to be a lot more relevant.

I finally got a contractor to come out and take a look at the entryway to my house. The wood around the doorway is rotting out, and it looks like the entire thing - door and all - will need to be replaced. The door has issues with sealing anyway, so a full replacement probably isn't a bad idea. Still, I wasn't really mentally prepared for a $2k estimate :(

I'm getting another estimate sometime in the next few days, so we'll see what that looks like. I've also called my builder - even though we are out of warranty, I think the problem is their fault - the way water drains off the roof, this was bound to happen. That probably won't go anywhere, but it can't hurt to ask.

In the meantime, I'm waiting for a tech from Comcast so that I can see if my cable modem is the issue. I'm getting connection drops of a few seconds to a few minutes duration about once an hour, and it's really getting irritating.

Update: The source of the problem has been identified - the line running from the cable box (outside) to my house (under the driveway) was bad - it was dropping signal before it ever got to the house. So, I now have a lovely orange line draped across my yard :) Within 2 weeks, Comcast should be out to replace the line properly. Apparently, they don't need to dig under the driveway at all - they have some kind of device that shoots a line right under from one post hole to another. Sounds cool - I'll post on it if I'm home when it happens.

Another Update: I spoke too soon. The connection was stable for a few hours, and now it's back to the micro-outages again. Sigh.

Register for Smalltalk Solutions now, so you can attend great talks like this one:

Introspection simplifies versioning of serialized objects

presentation

Schwab, Wilhelm: University of Florida, Department of Anaesthesiology

Tuesday 11:15 am to 12 pm

Abstract: Nearly transparent object serialization and subsequent deserialization are services commonly provided in object oriented programming systems. Examples of systems providing serialization services include Java, the Microsoft Foundation Class Library, and most Smalltalk systems. In general, serialization frameworks recursively serialize nested objects and collections, and automatically resolve circular references. The more reflective the system, the less effort is required of the programmer.

These features make serialization frameworks a very attractive choice for persisting application data. In effect, they provide a file format with little if any effort on the part of the application programmer. However, there is a cost associated with loading serialized data from previous versions of an application.

Unfortunately, the lure of obtaining a file format with no effort can turn into a break on future change. Programmers feel inhibited to improve their code because doing so might require changes to the serialized format of their objects.

This paper seeks to remove the barriers to change that are ordinarily associated with serialization frameworks and versioning. It presents a programming tool and some patterns for exploiting a reflective development environment to simplify writing code to cope with version changes in serialized object data. The tool is specific to Dolphin Smalltalk, but, could be adapted to other Smalltalks and to other reflective languages.

Bio: Dr. Schwab received the PhD degree for applications of image processing to problems in experimental stress analysis. For the past ten years, he has been largely occupied with medical applications of computers, including distributed object systems, clinician entry systems, and automated intraoperative data capture. He is firmly convinced that Smalltalk has been essential to successful collaboration with physicians and to building systems that are sufficiently robust for use by physicians at the point of patient care.

Much of Dr. Schwab's leisure time is devoted to drawing and, and more recently, painting in oil. He remains determined to master the basics of automobile repair and to build a modest piano repertoire.

See you in Orlando!

It's time that the people stopped pandering to Dave Winer's ego. The first thing to remember about Dave is that he's always reasonable, and it's the other guy who's wrong. Always. I mean, just look at his post, and compare it to Glenn's - which one sounds like a flaming egotist? The next thing to realize about Dave is his notions about rules - they're for other people - not important, syndication inventing, always right guys like Dave. Nope, never. Follow the self centered rambling here, here, and again, here.

For an example of his vast technical acumen, go have a look at the MetaWebLog API. Go ahead, try to implement just from that page - I dare you. It's far past time to stop pandering to this self centered, egotistical, obnoxious buffoon. He likes to play at being "the reasonable guy" - but if, like me, you've ever had the misfortune to exchange email with him, that veneer comes off very quickly and is replaced with venom and disdain.

If you don't agree with him - technically, politically, whatever - you aren't just wrong, you're evil. That's fine in 7th grade, but in an adult, it's just pathetic.

It's definite - people who commute from where I live - Columbia MD - to Northern VA, where the seminar I was attending was - are nuts. There's no way I could handle that drive every day :) Anyway, if you are curious about the Open Source/legal issues that the LSI seminar covered, follow this link - I pushed them all into a single category.

Ahh, everyone's favorite - the SCO suit. This talk is coming from David Bender, a well known attorney in this area of law. A short digression to set the table: Unix was born in 1969 at Bell Labs. It was widely licensed on nominal terms.

So onto SCO vs. IBM. Filed in 2003. Three complaints, and three sets of counter-claims. There's a motion pending for another complaint. very heavily litigated - as of April 2005, 437 docket entries. Five week trial is set for November 2005. Plaintiff: SCO, who markets Unix software. Defendent: IBM - markets a version of Unix called AIX. There are third party products - Linux in particular - that are Unix-like. The Linux claim is that this software was developed without relying on Unix code.

SCO alleges that IBM contributed a great deal of code derived from Unix software. The slide states that Linux is making inroads against MS, but the bigger issue, IMHO, is that it's making inroads against the various commercial Unix vendors, with SCO, at the low end, taking large scale damage. The most interesting thing to me, at this point - in my reading of the technical blogosphere, the SCO suit gets no respect (I certainly give it none, see above) - and is given no chance of success. The feel in this room is different. David points out that the biggest problem is that copyright law was written without software in mind, and it's fitting badly.

So how did Unix assets convey? From AT&T to Novell to Sabta Cruz Operation to the SCO Group (note: there's dispute on what went where on some of those steps). SCO claims that IBM breached its Unix license agreement with SCO's predecessor, AT&T by contributing derivative work to Linux. Their claim is that without these contributions, Linux would not be a viable competitor to SCO's Unix software (cue the loud guffaws from the tech blogosphere right there). They also claim copyright infringement, and claim that under the original AT&T agreement, they had the right to terminate IBM's license (which they did in 2003). Finally, they claimed unfair competition. SCO claims that IBM was well aware of these contracts and their meaning. SCO additionally claims that IBM intentionally harmed their business relationships by badmouting them with shared partners.

What does SCO want? $1B in restitution, and an injunction. Clearly, IBM doesn't agree :) The crux, it seems to me, is that SCO accepted the GPL by modifying and distributing Linux products for years. So, it's a "sour grapes" argument is what IBM says. IBM states that SCO acquired the rights to Unix software in an attempt to unify Unix and Linux - and that when that failed, they turned to a strategy of litigation.

Originally, SCO tried to claim a trade secrets infringement. When they couldn't identify any, they dropped that and started claiming that you need a SCO license to run Linux. IBM states that Linux developers will remove infringing code, if only SCO will identify it. SCO will not identify said infringement. So, IBM counter-claims that the AT&T/IBM agreement is breached by the attempted termination. They also make other claims under the lanham act, and claim that SCO has breached the GPL.

The original AT&T license looks confusing to me - it seems to state that IBM only had the right to use Unix and/or derivative works on internal systems and defined CPUs. If that's the cae, how do they ship any derived work? What am I missing here? This whole thing gets into what does or doesn't constitute a "derived work". It's at this point that I can state that I'm glad I'm not a lawyer - this is making my head spin. There's more - the people who signed the original IBM/AT&T contract could be called to testify, and they could be asked to explain what they understood the term "derivative work" to mean at the time. On another note, in Discovery, how does SCO identify supposedly infringing work?

SCO asserts that the added source is a derived work. Therefor, any of this code contributed to Linux constitutes a breach of the AT&T agreement. That's because derived work, according to the original license, it could only be used for internal purposes on designated machines. Then there's the GPL definition of the GPL:

either the program or ant derivative work under comyright law, that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it...

Now David goes back to the Unix conveyances. There's no dispute that AT&T sold all rights to Novell. There's a huge dispute over what did or didn't go the Santa Cruz Operation in 1995. So Novell sold everything in 1.1(a) to SCO, except for schedule b:

• A "All rights and ownership of Unix"
• B "All Copyrights"

Ok, that's confusing :) There was a 1996 amendment - revised (b) to exclude all copyrights except those owned by Novell and required by SCO. Gah! The original agreement between IBm and AT&T doesn't seem to grant irrevocable rights, but an amendment executed by IBM, Novell, and SCO states that on payment of considerations, they would get irrevocable rights.

SCO then moved on to sue Novell in 2004 for "slander of title to the Unix copyrights" - more or less, that Novell's claims about who owns what were damaging and made "with malice". Novell claims that the documents SCO relies on for transfer of copyright are not clear enough. There was a ruling last year that went Novell's way, but no ruling on whether a further amendment cures that. No decision yet - not clear whether it will impact the IBM suit.

Then, Red Hat sued SCO for creating FUD around Linux (and thus their business). That was filed in fall 2003. Court has stayed the case pending resolution of the IBM case. They wanted declaratory judgment that they did not infringe or violate copyright.

Then, SCO started suing end users. AutoZone was using SCO Unix, switched to Linux after SCO dropped support. SCO alleges that Linux is a derived work, and that AutoZone is infringing SCO's copyright. AutoZone tried to move it, failed, and this has been stayed pending IBM.

Then SCO sued Daimler Chrysler for breach of contract, because they switched from SCO Unix to Linux, which they claim is a derived work. Most of this one has been dismissed.

So - when the dust settles, what will the outcome be? Who wins? SCO? IBM? Linux backers? The proprietary Unix vendors? Who? David won't make a prediction at this point. He does think it's possible that SCO could lose on copyright but win on contract grounds.

A presentation from Karen faulds CopenHaver of Black Duck Software. Interesting - she brought up Friedman's "Flat Earth" book and chapter 3 (on Open source) straight off. I guess I need to buy the book.

Anecdote - story of a developer that a colleague had to fire, because he wasn't producing software, he was downloading various bits from the web and integrating them - thus increasing the risk of unintentional opening of code based on various OSS (and proprietary) licenses that may have walked in. To be fair, she points out that lawyers copy boilerplate all the time, so it's not an odd thing at all.

Heh - the idea is that our IP laws and licenses should transfer to China (after they translate the various licenses out there). ironically, in "The Birth of the Modern", a book I'm reading now - one of the huge complaints that the UK publishing industry had against the US in the early 19th century was our (then) lack of concern for copyright law. The more things change...

So anyway, she's flogging compliance software that supposedly fingerprints open source software so that you can look up what you have versus what's "out there". I'd like to know how that works, and what assumptions it makes about the software methodology that the code comes from :)

Virtually all companies now work in a "mixed IP" environment. Software is being built evr higher on older layers of previous work. What are the compliance concerns?

• Absence of control over code available for download w/o charge
• Questions regarding code pedigree
• Assumption that licenses are unenforceable

She claims that "everyone" will start shipping source with everything. I think I'll introduce her to Apple and MS sometime :) In any event - the notion she's flogging is that you need to know what you can and can't do with the code combinations you have, which is a valid concern. As to whether this is a real concern? At least for public firms, you have the whole Sarbanes-Oxley madness, so it'll get attention. So - step one is assessing what you have, and then remediating based on what you found.

She's advocating starting small, with a pilot project - and carrying it through from start to finish. Avoid disrupting development, and anticipate employee concerns. For public companies - the ones with SarbOx issues - you need to worry about whistleblower implications. I'd add that this will be a bigger problem if - for whatever reason - you have a demoralized set of employees. For any remediation plan, you need to involve all the players (including developers), or it will get rejected out of hand.

The goal of all this? To understand what it is you are building/shipping, and making sure that any issues are identified early.

This presentation comes down from theory into practice - what issues are there in using OSS licensed software? Alfred Kellog is an IP lawyer who specializes in software technology issues at UBS.

First off, there's a compelling value proposition (free!) On the legal side, it's an untested frontier:

• no judicial opinion validating the concept
• virtually no judicial opinion interpreting the provisions of the various OSS licenses
• no warranties or proof of non-IP infringement
• Reciprocal (viral) aspect of some licenses creates risk of unintended IP loss

So how do you utilize OSS without exposing yourself to excessive risk? What about risks you don't know about? (i.e., employee downloads that you are unaware of). Some of the risks you have to mitigate:

• Support - will you need it? Where will you get it?
• Lack of Warranties - What's the liklihood of a problem?
• Infringement claims - What is the risk, how do you figure it out? What are the consequences of a bad event?
• Non-compiance with license restrictions - are these easily satisfied?
• Loss of owed IP due to reciprocal features - How does your use impact? What is the uncertainty?
• License invalidity - hard to tell
• Unauthorized downloads - is there a policy in place explaining rules? Are there technical blocks? Can there be? What about open source that piggybacks with commercial products?
• Unauthorized open sourcing of your proprietary code by developers within your organization - need well known policies so that open source releases are planned

Now we have Ed Walsh on patents an Open Source. He's an IP lawyer in Boston. This is the "what's the catch" talk of the day. He defines the FSF folks as in the ideologue camp. Then you have the people creating OSS, the developers. Finally, you have the people distributing OSS software (bundlers, like RedHat). You might also classify them as integrators. Finally, there are the users (and the employers of the users). So to answer a patent question about OSS, you have to figure out where people sit (to find out where they stand).

A separate group are patent "trolls" (i.e., the fine folks at Eolas - or, given this absurd filing, Jeff Bezos. So - Ideologues, developers, distributors - all things being equal, they might prefer that they not be patents at all.

Integrators: Building products on base of hardware/software. Wants "base" products to be free of restrictions. May want to distribute a product with restrictions. Does not want costs, wants freedom to operate.

Users: Want freedom to operate. Want to keep using software, don't want costs - direct or indirect.

Freedom to operate - is OSS more risky? The main risk is infringement of IP (or at least the perceived risk of that). Many of the proprietary vendors hold lots of patents (IBM, MS, Sun, etc). There haven't been many infringement cases yet - the SCO case is a bad example of what could come about. [ed] - I'll note in passing that Jonathan Schwartz of Sun has said "I like IP" - which means that even the supposed friends of open systems could easily jump ship.

First rule of litigation: Sue someone solvent (i.e., follow the money). Many of the larger vendors are using patents as "trading cards" - the rest of the field has to "pay to play" (settlements). With widespread distribution of source, (alleged) infringement is easy to spot.

What about community countermeasures? There's a public patent foundation that challenges egregious patents. There's also the Open Source law Center and the OSDL's legal defense fund. There's also infringment insurance and indemnities offered by vendors. As well, some of the OSS vendors (RedHat, for instance) are getting patents - potentially as a defensive measure (the MAD theory of patent acquisition). Many patents are bad simply because the PTO primarily looks for duplicative patents, not for prior art. This is a problem in a new field (like software). What about the "Patent Pledges" of some of the big vendors (IBM, Sun, MS)? They are claiming that they won't assert their patents against the OSS community - there are potential anti-trust limits on large scale agreements this way. Bearing in mind that a patent assertion typically costs $2M, and most OSS projects are (financially) poor, this can easily be taken as grandstanding.

The GPL has an implied patent license

• Uncertainty about what is licensed and to whom
• Your contributions, anything in the code, or anything in the code or later added to it?
• Your chain of title or the entire open source community?

What risks surround IP really depend on which OSS license you use. For instance - how do you manage patent cross-licenses and obligations under the GPL? How can you know who you aren't supposed to sue?

Summary:

Ideologues don't like patents, never will. Distributors don't like patents, but are pragmatic. Integrators want it both ways, need a rational plan for their patents and those of others. users don't want to deal with patents, but need a rational plan.

Now we get to the part that the corporate members of the audience are interested in - how to make money off this stuff :) This is coming from Mark Webbink, Deputy General Counsel at RedHat.

As to "can you make money"? At this point, Mark popped up a slide showing RedHat revenue growth, which is now over $100M annually. Interestingly, their revenues started to trend up again in 2003 when they went to subscription licensing. In fact, 70% of the revenue is from subscriptions, 30% from services. Most of the subscription revenue is Enterprise based.

How you build a business model depends on which license (style) you choose - GPL or BSD. taking GPL first:

• Must include source
• All redistributed code must be GPL
• No restrictions on copy, modify (etc)
• No binary only (proprietary) code
• No per user (etc) fees

And the BSD:

• Does not requires source
• No need to push everything under BSD
• May impose other conditions
• May be embedded in proprietary systems
• May charge license (etc) fees

Retail model - not used extensively anymore, Redhat, Suse, (etc) have moved off. Did not provide scalable revenue, did not appeal to enterprise buyers.

The Loss Leader model: Early RedHat distro model to get mindshare, and now used by IBM (Eclipse) and other large vendors. Mostly used by OEMs. What about Dual Licensing? That's how MySQL used to do business (GPL or binary only). The license varies at licensee's choice. Allows a proprietary license for binary only uses. Experience? Creates market confusion (which license do I want/need? Why do I need to pay?) SleepCat software is seeing this now.

Where is it at now? The bundling model (i.e., services and subscriptions). Have to be creative about what you are charging for based on the license. You can charge for warranties, or "other" services so long as you don't interfere with downstream rights. So you create a bundle and charge a subscription license for the convenience of bundling. You can bundle technology instead of a service: TiVo, for instance. Typically in embedded apps.

Bundling with patents? Not really likely with respect to the GPL. With BSD, possible. The GPL, with its downstream obligations, makes it unlikely. What about a membership model? Mandrake used this model when retail wasn't working for them - somewhat similar to public radio funding.

What about the "Free Riders"? This is inevitable with Open Source models. You get non-developing distributors, non-contributing consultants - and not all enhancements go back to the community.

Here's the post lunch slump, but to keep us awake we have Douglas E. Phillips on the GPL and enforcement. Interestingly, there's been a recent filing challenging the GPL on anti-trust grounds in Indiana - so there should be a lot to talk about here. Douglas says he's going to focus specifically on the "viral" aspects of the license.

Eben Moglen of the FSF calls any questioning of the GPL's enforceability as FUD, and blames Microsoft. [ed] - given the "easy target" nature of MS in the OSS space, that seems mighty convenient. Moglen claims that it's enforceable because he's been enforcing it in private settlements (which says nothing about how it would be taken in court). Asking in a public forum tends to attract immediate attacks on a personal level (seen in various USENET forums).

In 2003, the FSF has pursued 20-30 enforcement actions in private (as reported in Forbes). The FSF has been engaged by companies wanting enforcement (MySQL) to help. There haven't been many decisions yet - and Douglas says that this is a lot like the way the BSA has taken to challenging alleged violations.

A year ago, there was a CA vs. Quest Software suit that seemed to assume the GPL was enforceable. in July 2004, there was a decision in Munich Germany, which enjoined distribution w/o conformance with the license. That's still not a US based decision though, so it's not resolved in the US.

In the US, there's the infamous SCO case, and more recently - 2005 - there's a suit alleging that the GPL is a price fixing scheme hurting programmers. So what grounds are there to challenge?

• Constitutional violation
• Pre-empted by copyright law
• Violates export control laws
• Never been tested in court
• Fails under the UCC
• Fails under common law
• Violates anti-trust law
• Selectively enforced by FSF
• Fails as a copyright license
• Too vague
• Not effective as shrink/click wrap

License vs. Contracts: Moglen states that a license is permission to use property, while a contract is an exchange of obligations. Moglen states that the licensor has no obligations, so it's a pure copyright license (i.e., no contract necessary). Thus, shrinkwrap license enforcement are avoided. [ed] This seems shaky to me...

What about the courts? We can reach back to General talking Pictures Corp. vs. Western Electric Co. (1938), which allows the patentee to grant a license. There's a 1995 case (McCoy vs. Mitsubishi Cutlery, Inc) stating that a license is in fact a contract. Muddies the waters, that's for sure.

What about revocation? Copyright law states that non-exclusive licenses are revocable. The FSF argues with that in its FAQs: "The public already has the right to use the program under the GPL, and this right cannot be withdrawn". Seems to be a conflict there.

Is it enforceable as a contract? Need assent from both parties first. The GPL itself does not purport to be a contract, and the FSF states that it's not. So - how can a contract be formed? The question is, does copyright pre-empt this? In 1996, the court rejected preemption in ProCD vs. Zeidenberg, stating that "rights created by contract are not equivalent to any exclusive rights within the general scope of copyright". Also - "Contracts, by contrast, generally affect only their parties; strangers may do as they please, so contracts to do not create exclusive rights".

Then there's Alcatel USA vs. DGI Technologies (1999), where we learned that copyright law cannot be used to indirectly gain commercial control over products it does not have copyrighted. Hmm - what does that say about the derivative/viral part of the GPL? The way the GPL is worded, a one line inclusion triggers derivation, and that goes well beyond current jurisprudence on copyrights.

This is an exploration of the various OSS licenses by Dov Scherzer (a lawyer in this field). The main thing - virtually no jurisprudence yet. Only one US case, some evolving ones in Germany. The US case (Progress Software vs. MySQL AB) was settled. To be clear, he explains that OSS is not:

• Proprietary software
• Freeware
• Shareware
• Public domain

Boy, there are a lot of interesting questions from the government people, and a bunch of assumptions based on regulations I'm not familiar with :) Apparently, some section of US code has something to do with public domain and government code, or people here think it does.

So what's the reason for the LGPL? It's intended to allow libraries that don't "infect" applications. The idea is that an LGPL library can be used with a proprietary program, and not "infect" it. Again, the whole issue revolves around the concept of linking, and the notions used in the LGPL and GPL make a lot of C/C++ assumptions. Gosh knows what this means in the world of languages like Smalltalk, Lisp, or even Java.

Is the GPL a binding contract? It's "clickwrap", not an actual contract. It's included with the sources, possibly as a separate file. On many sites, there's no explicit mention of the GPL other than in the source listings. So is it binding? Current jurisprudence states that Clickwrap, Shrinkwrap, and Browsewrap licenses are valid only if the user has made some kind of affirmative act to agree to the terms.

So what do the license terms that claim to push any derived work under the GPL mean?

• GPL vs. the Copyright act
• Hypo - what if I take 2 GPL lines and stuff them into a huge app?
• The GPL says boom - derivative work Ii.e., it's been opened)
• The copyright act differs (does not call it a derivative work).

A question here - what does copyright's "fair use" mean here? 2 lines? 100 lines? What? Under copyright law, it's not a derivative work unless it has substantially copied from a prior work. What this means in terms of source code is not clear (at least to me :) ). Current case work is pretty much on artistic work (art, text, music). Is using a small module different? What makes two pieces of code combined? Same storage media, but separated? Not combined. Same executable? Combined. [ed] - but even there, it's not clear - what about a Java JAR file or a Smalltalk parcel? The "same executable" standard seems to imply a problem here. Here's an interesting example - he addresses plugins, and states that it depends on how the plugin is used/invoked.

Again, I'd say that some court is going to have a ball with this some day. Another example from the slide deck: Load a GPL library into a non-GPL code base. Derive a subclass of one of the loaded classes - according to the FSF FAQ, that opens the entire application. The bottom line according to Dov: at present, you need both a lawyer and a technical expert to decipher the GPL FAQs. At present, none of this has been tested in court. We just don't know.

Heather J. Meeker on the CPL. It was approved in 2001 by the OSI, is a lot like the MPL. It was written to generalize the terms so that any OS originator (i.e., non-IBM) could use it.It came from the earlier IPL. Like the MPL, these licenses were intended to be accessible to lawyers and corporations. It is a viral license - version 0.5 was developed for Eclipse, the current version is 1.0.

The CPL distinguishes between original contributors and subsequent contributors. It also defines recipients. What you end up with is a stream of licensors (down the chain of contributors) - it's basically another way of saying sub-licensor, more or less (question from Larry Rosen). The CPL is explicit about copyright and patent licenses. The language I'm looking at on the screen was definitely written by a corporate lawyer - I nearly fell asleep just reading the first sentence.

Interesting isclaimer on infringement - the CPl puts the onus on the person wishing to redistribute to get patent rights if they are required. Definitely corporate friendly :) Another thing - subject to indemnification of contributors, distributors may offer different business terms to licensees. So, you can offer the software commercially for money. And another hint that this is a corporate license - the license explicitly states that each party waives its rights to a jury trial in any resulting litigation.

Interesting kicker on this last bit - the federal government has issues with automatic license termination and decisions about default litigation terms. Commercial firms probably have specific contracts for federal agencies for those cases - but that makes open source terms really interesting.

Larry is going to talk about the Academic Free Licenses and the Open Software License:

• AFL: not reciprocal (like the BSD)
• OSL: reciprocal (like the GPL)

The idea behind these two is to create two licenses that cover the ground between the GPL on the one hand, and the BSD on the other. The OSL lists all the provisions in section 106 of (US) copyright. The OSL contains the reciprocal (viral) clause. The AFL does not include that clause. The idea here is to provide two licenses that are mostly the same, but allow for that difference.

These licenses don't define "Derivative Work", leaving that as an exercise to the courts and lawyers. These licenses try to spell out that you get patent rights based on those that are embodied in the original work, and that they carry through to derivative works. The OSL license also try to mail down the concept of "distribution" by defining an "External Deployment" as any use by someone other than you. The AFL doesn't deal with this, as it doesn't care about reciprocity. Note that this definition calls ASP usage a "distribution".

So I asked - what if you offered a virtual Linux box as part of a grid service? that counts as a distribution in this sense, according to Larry. The basic issue is that the Copyright Act doesn't define distribution (not surprisingly - the world was different then).

What about disclaimer of warranty? The OSL and AFL warrants that the licensor has the right to grant you a license. This eliminates the "where did it come from?" problem that people worry about with OSS. This puts the risk back on the licensor, as they are warranting that they have the right to distribute. The license also states that any bringing of a patent claim (against the original work) by the licensee against the licensor or any other licensee will terminate the license (and thus the granted rights).

Peter Moldave (lawyer) is going to cover a few more licenses - Artistic, intel, MIT, NASA, PHP. These cover 4% of the licenses used on SourceForge (as opposed to 80% for the GPL/LGPL).

MIT, Intel, PHP - like BSD

Artistic, NASA - unique, some MPL like properties

All of these are OSI compliant (Artistic 2.0 is not listed). The NASA one merely adds language about export law (US). The MIT, Intel, and Artistic 2.0 are "GPL compatible". PHP is "free" but not "GPL compatible". Compatible here means that code under a GPL compatible license may be used in a GPL licensed project.

MIT, Intel, PHP - all simple. The Artistic and NASA licenses are complicated. MIT, Intel, PHP - no substantial restrictions imposed. Artistic - modified source need not be distributed if standard source is available. NASA - restrictive, modified source must be distributed. With all of these licenses, larger works are allowable - no restrictions.

MIT, Intel, PHP - no pricing constraints. Artistic:

• Can't charge for the code
• Can only charge a reasonable copying fee
• Can charge for support
• Can charge for larger work

NASA - source code must be freely available, not clear beyond that. Then there's patent treatments - other than NASA license, all of these are silent. NASA license has a specific grant of patent rights. The treatment of combination patents and modifications specified. Peter's take here - he's yet to see an OSS license that goes over patent rights in a helpful way. Only the NASA license requires any kind of warranty - the rest simply disclaim. What about output use (i.e., is the output of a compiler a "derivative work? What about a parser?). The Artistic and NASA licenses attempt to address, but get to technically specific (Artistic speaks explicitly about C and Perl routines - go figure).

All of these provide specifics on internal/external use, and opening of derived works. What about utility (i.e., do we actually need them?) - MIT, PHP, Intel - no real difference from the BSD. Artistic: 1.0 Unclear, and the V2.0 gets a lot closer to the GPL or perhaps the MPL. NASA - long and complex.

This talk looks at a variety of Open Source licenses - given by David Teske, a lawyer who works in this area. Heh - he starts out by welcoming us to the "Less Stressful" part of the program. He calls the GPL the "800 lb Gorilla" rather than the "grandaddy" of Open Source licenses. It absorbs almost all discussion of OSS.

The basic problem behind this morning's earlier conversations - the mismatch between standard copyright law and software. We simply haven't resolved this issue. This talk will cover 4 licenses - Mozilla, (same as Sun's, generally), BSD, Sleepycat, and Apache.

• Non-restrictive - BSD, SleepyCat, and Apache
• Restrictive - MPL

The BSD license was the first one of these on the ground (including the GPL). It's purpose was to enhance collaboration while protecting the University (Berkely). The BSD is purely defensive - it doesn't "stick" to the code. What the BSD impacts are source and binary redistribution under a few conditions.

The BSD grants use "as-is" (i.e., like you found/developed it yourself). No express or implied warranties, no liabilities for damages under any theory of use. There are a few obligations - when you redistribute the source/binary, you must include the original copyright notice, and you can't use the contributor's name for advertising.

The SleepyCat license is a tweaked BSD license. It's nearly identical to the BSD - in the disclaimer, it specifically lists non-infringement as a warranty not provided. Section 3 adds some uncertainty:

• Some unclear language on how you must include source.
• The source must be freely redistributable under "reasonable conditions" (meaning what?)

This is an example of how a forked license often creates a less useful dead end. Next - the MPL, which was derived out of a desire to move between the openess of the BSD and the restrictions of the GPL. The main thing - covered code has to go under the MPL, so unlike the BSD, code under the MPL stays under the MPL. What rights does it grant?

• Reproduction
• Modification
• Display
• Perform (not really applicable to software, but included anyway).
• Use and sub-license

The MPL tries to define a modification more cleanly than the GPL. It's any "addition or deletion from the substance or structure". It's any new file that includes any part of the covered code. [ed] - again, very biased towards the world Smalltalk doesn't live in - I'd be interested to see how a new parcel in VW with an override of an existing method/class in the system gets defined here...

The original authors and each later contributor grants a broad patent license to each licensee in any patent rights it can license that would otherwise be infringed by that code inserted by the licensor. The business needs of Netscape (original developer of MPL) show through here. The MPL also includes explicit terms for the removal of license rights. It's a pretty broad attempt to prevent patent suits by licensees.The MPL also - like the GPL - prevents the licensor from changing the license terms in an additional document. On the other hand, release under different terms entirely is allowed.

Finally, the Apache License (1.0/1.1) - like the BSD. The ASL 2.0 combines aspects of the BSD, MPL, and GPL. The ASL 2.0 grants copyright license as per the MPL, in the same order. It then defines derivative works, more like the GPL. Patent license is like the MPL, somewhat less expansive. The ASL allows derived works to be distributed under a different license - provided that you are not breaching the ASl in your own use. It also explicitly allows warranties and liability, as well as charging for support (etc).

Looks like I'll be storing up posts for later again - I'm attending a seminar on Open Source (from a legal/licensing standpoint) in Tyson's Corner, VA. The seminar is being put on by LSI (Law Seminars International). Why am I attending this, you ask? Well, we (the Cincom Smalltalk team) get asked about open source with respect to our product quite frequently. We don't have any plans to go that way at present - but I'm always on the lookout for more and better information. First up - Rick Statile of RedHat, on the GPL and the LGPL. Looks like Rick is a General Counsel for RedHat - his background is in M&A, where OSS license issues can crop up in interesting ways

The agenda:

• Cover the GPL and the LGPL
• History of the GPL
• GPL Themes and Issues
• Discussion of the text of the GPL
• LGPL differences
• Q&A

This is looking at the GPL (and LGPL) from the legal side - and from that standpoint, the GPL is short - only 3000 words (as opposed to many commercial licenses - which are often much longer). Interesting stats here - of the (at the time the stats were gathered) projects on SourceForge:

• 63,094 projects
• 43,578 under the GPL
• 7095 under the LGPL

So roughly 80% of the SF projects are under the GPL or the LGPL. His take - the license reads more like a manifesto or political document than like a license. First written in 1989, version 2 in 1991 - never challenged in court. Inspired by Stallman's experience with EMACS authorship.

GPL Themes and Issues:

• "Free"- gratis vs. libre
• Reciprocity/Copyleft
• "Viral" nature of the GPL - what does this mean?
• Is it a contract or a naked copyright license?
• What about software patents and the GPL?
• Revising/future versions
• Compat with other OSS licenses
• Warranties/Limitations of Liability

The preamble is like a manifesto, although it's not "formally" part of the license itself. It's not at all clear whether a court would take it into account when interpreting the license. Rick believes that the preamble would be taken into account, since a court may not find the actual contents clear enough. There's also Stallman's public comments and the FSF website FAQs on it.

The outline of the GPL - Rick states that it's clear here that the license was not written by a lawyer. It's also not necessarily congruent with copyright law (especially with respect to derivative works) - but this license was written before a lot of current jurisprudence was determined. Trademarks are completely left out of the license (example - redistribution of RedHat Linux involves stripping the trademarks out).

Section 1: covers redistribution rights. You have to include the GPL, note the absence of a warranty.

Section 2: covers modification/derivative work. This is where the "viral" nature comes in. Defines derivative works very broadly - any inclusion of any GPL code potentially makes the entire thing fall under the GPL. Rick: "Uses Copyright law against itself" - forces an author to keep their programs open. It's explicitly not a public domain thing - copyright is still in force.

Section 3: Specifies that you have to either include source, or make it available on request at nominal (i.e., only shipping) costs. Clearly written pre-internet (no cost of distro).

Here's the kicker - the viral nature of the license can open software that you would like to keep proprietary. Running a proprietary application on a GPL OS (i.e., Linux) is ok. Shipping on the same CD is fine as well, and does not open it. On the other hand, including GPL software with yours can open it. Question: "What do you mean by including?" So loading GPL code into an application may well infect it - another speaker is going to cover this later.

Rick's take - he thinks that it's unlikely that a court would force proprietary code to be opened (even if distributed) - he instead thinks that there might be copyright infringement, and damages might be assessed - and an injunction would forbid further distribution. This is clearly a point that much of the audience isn't in agreement with. In fact, one of the audience members pointed out that in Germany, the GPL has been enforced such that shipping software has been pushed under the GPL (under mutual agreement though - so still not clear).

The key reason that Rick believes this is that the GPL is a license, not a contract. There's no contract to specify specific damages, which is why the theory is that you would get an injunction preventing further shipment without a contract or removal. Big question here to define the difference between "shipping" and "distributing" - of concern to government agencies (if agency 1 gives code including GPL to agency 2, is that shipping of distributing?). The theory is, certainly within an agency it's not shipping (i.e., does not trigger the viral nature). People differ when you cross agency lines. Which raises the same question in my mind about distribution between business units of a firm, depending on the legal structure of the firm. Hmmm.

My take here - a court is going to have a lot of fun with this when it finally gets tested :)

The Acceptance clause (Section 5) - modifying or distributing implies acceptance (which is why Rick says it's a license and not a contract). The really tricky thing is patents - when the license was first written, Microsoft had no software patents. Now, they've exploded. There are firms (insurance firms wanting to make money) claiming that Linux infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by MS (but a lot are held by Linux friendly companies like IBM) - so Rick's thought is that we have what amounts to MAD protection here - MS won't launch because it would result in a large IBM response. Joy :)

How does it differ from the LGPL? The LGPL attempts to address the "viral" nature of the license in the face of link libraries. The consensus seems to be that static links trigger, while dynamic links don't. However, Rick says: Consult a lawyer.

Sci Fi Wire reports that Carnivale is gone:

HBO confirmed that it is canceling Carnivale, its Depression-era supernatural drama, after two seasons, Variety reported. HBO had produced a total of 24 episodes in the show's run.

It was a pretty decent show - I liked it well enough, my wife loved it. I wish they had just ended it instead of giving it the ambiguous send off they did. Compare the ending of the show (where the Preacher was being brought back by Sofie) with the way "Buffy" always wrapped a season, or with the way "Veronica Mars" ended last night. In both cases, a season wrap could stand as a series wrap if the show bit the dust.

I know that this has been commented on by other people, but it's an interesting piece of "police action" on the internet - Google was irritatated enough by the pagerank scamming that syndic8 was up to that they've removed them from their index. Go ahead - Google for Syndic8. Notice how they don't come up? Bill Kearny, one of the guys behind the site, has managed to get them to appear on page one (down a few links) by redirecting from his domain, but wow - that's a penalty. The take-away from this? Don't go wild with your SEO tricks if you want to be found.

Don Park weighs in on the Google Accelerator thing, and quotes a part of the spec that some of the purists haven't noticed:

In particular, the convention has been established that the GET and HEAD methods SHOULD NOT have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval. These methods ought to be considered "safe".

As Don points out, SHOULD NOT is not at all the same as MUST NOT. There is this, also quoted by Don:

Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature.

The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.

I'm with Don on this one though - the user in this case is a bot, not the person in front of the screen. Most people who are using applications with unsafe GETs are not, in fact, internet spec experts, and have no idea that the bot they installed - the one promising faster page loads - is busy hitting all sorts of page links that may have side effects.

An interesting question at this point would be - how many internet banking sites have unsafe GETs embedded in them? If there are any, I rather expect that the first GWA interaction with one of those will be interesting, to say the least...

The coding contest for StS 2005 is coming up quickly:

The Smalltalk Industry Council is pleased to announce the first annual 2005 Smalltalk Solutions Smalltalk Coding Contest. The Smalltalk Solutions Technical Conference will be held in Orlando June 27-29, 2005 and will serve as the home for the coding competition finale. Smalltalk Solutions is the premier forum for bringing together Smalltalk users, developers, vendors, and enthusiasts.

Coding contest prizes include:

1st round of the competition

The top 3 ranked in no particular order will receive a free conference registration and a free membership to STIC

2nd Round of the Competition

• 1st Place - $1,000 USD to be used towards a future Camp Smalltalk attendance
• 2nd Place - iPod
• 3rd Place- iPod shuffle

Each of the finalists of the first portion of the contest will receive a Smalltalk Solutions 2005 conference registration valued at $670 USD as well as a complimentary individual membership to the STIC. This does not include travel, lodging meals, tutorials, or any other fees associated with the conference attendance. Please note, in order to compete in the second round of the contest, finalists must be able to attend the conference. The second round of the contest will consist of the three highest ranking contestants who are able to attend the 2005 Smalltalk Solutions conference.

The Smalltalk Solutions Coding Competition is broken into two phases of competition. The first phase begins on Monday, May 16 at 9 a.m. EST and ends on Wednesday, May 18 at 9 a.m. EST running for 48 consecutive hours. Registration will begin March 1 and participants must register for the competition online at www.stic.org by May 13 at 6 p.m. EST. Confirmed registrants will receive the requirements for the first phase online. All coding must be done in Smalltalk. The problem will require a web application. Client GUIs will not be acceptable solutions.Conference registration is not required to participate in the first phase of the competition. Please note, in order to compete in the second round of the contest, finalists must be able to attend the conference. The second round of the contest will consist of the three highest ranking contestants who are able to attend the 2005 Smalltalk Solutions conference.

One representative from each of the four board member companies consisting of Cincom Systems, GemStone, IBM, and Knowledge Systems Corporation will judge the first phase of the competition. Each submission will be submitted to the judges as blind submissions and a total of three (3) winners will be selected to compete onsite at Smalltalk Solutions 2005 in Orlando, Florida. The winners of the first phase will be announced on June 1, 2005 on the Smalltalk Industry Council web site.

The second and final phase of the competition will take place on Sunday, June 26, 2005 from 6 p.m. to10 p.m. onsite at the Wyndham Orlando during Smalltalk Solutions pre-registration. The details of the second phase of the competition will not be released to the finalists until the competition begins.

Prize winners will be announced during the keynote general session on Wednesday, June 29, 2005.

One of the things that's buzzing around the blogosphere is the whole related content thing. There's attention.xml, an effort from Technorati to give you feedback on how often stuff you care about is updated; there's the venerable trackback, which attempts (when not being spammed out of existence) to cross link posts. And of course there's comments.

All this got me thinking - I already have filtering in BottomFeeder - you can create keywords which, if they show up in a post, will suppress that item. What about the other end of that though - content which, if it shows up, should be elevated? And keyword based isn't enough - you want to be able to flag content that, according to you, is related. So, I opened up a workspace in BottomFeeder (one of the cooler things about having a full environment available in the app) and wrote this:

| relations items results |
relations := Dictionary new.
relations at: 'aggregator' put: #('rssbandit' 'rss bandit' 'bottomfeeder' 'newsgator' 'feeddemon' 'feed demon').


items := RSSFeedManager default getAllItems.
results := Dictionary new.
results at: 'aggregator' put: OrderedCollection new.
items do: [:each |
	relations keysAndValuesDo: [:key :values | | matchOrNil toMatch |
		toMatch := each description.
		toMatch notNil
			ifTrue: [matchOrNil := values detect: [:eachValue | ('*', eachValue, '*') match: toMatch] ifNone: [nil].
			matchOrNil notNil ifTrue: [(results at: key) add: each]]]].
^results

 

So what does that do? First, I defined a dictionary that pointed to related terms (the names of a few aggregators). Then I ran through all the items, looking for matches, and slapping them into a results dictionary. This isn't that fast; doing it incrementally as items arrived would be a lot more optimal. Still - the nice thing is that I could experiment on live data in a running application. Here's a screenshot of the resulting inspector:

That's an interesting "first cut" at thinking about this problem. Clearly, there are things to consider here - for instance, say I wanted to find things related to RSS, Atom, (etc). I want items that mention those, but I don't want to include items that just include links to feeds that end in .rss (etc). So - it's a simple sounding problem with a lot of complexity behind it.

I know, I know - any second now, the RDF crew is going to explain how RDF triples solve this entire problem. Which might be true, IF all feeds out there were in RDF. Since they aren't, we have to look elsewhere for answers...

ArcterJournal points to a very funny comic - I'm with Darth this time :)

Register for StS 2005, so you can attend talks like this one:

Smalltalk in an Autonomous Ground Vehicle -- A New Direction

presentation

Hylands, Jon:

Tuesday 10:30 am to 11:15 am

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles are an emerging technology that are ideally suited for exploration, reconnaissance, inspection, and monitoring. The software required to successfully pilot an autonomous vehicle must be very robust, capable of complex behaviors, and also be easy to maintain and extend. Smalltalk fits the bill on all of these requirements.

This demo will show Orion, a simple hobby-level autonomous ground vehicle built by the presenter's brother, with the high-level "brain" of the system running in Squeak Smalltalk on an embedded Linux single-board computer. The autonomous controller for this vehicle can also control many other autonomous vehicles, including MicroSeeker, the presenter's autonomous underwater vehicle. Orion is being built to compete in the RoboMagellan compeition held by the Seattle Robotics Society in September.

Bio: Jon Hylands has been doing Smalltalk programming since 1987. Jon's main interests include hobby robotics and autonomous submersibles, and making Smalltalk work on embedded devices.

See you in Orlando!

This looks interesting - Scratch is a development teaching tool built in Squeak - it's a level up from EToys, which is more appropriate for the younger set. So if you're interested in teaching a 10-13 year old some programming skills, Scratch looks like a great way to go.

I had a great meeting this afternoon - I can't really talk about it yet, but you can expect to hear some news from us before Smalltalk Solutions. Now I'm back at the RDU airport, with a good connection - nothing like the slow link this morning. I didn't even have to pay again - I had purchased a 24 hour pass earlier, and I'm actually getting to use it again.

With any luck, I'll be home this evening - my ticket wouldn't normally allow standby today (I'm scheduled out tomorrow - we wrapped up early) - but the ticket agent for American was very nice and very helpful - all they asked was a ticket change fee, and if I don't get on tonight, I can get that refunded. Since the change fee is the same as a hotel night, I break even on the deal. Fingers crossed :)

If you have the latest updates to BottomFeeder, you'll see that I've added support for the new Yahoo RSS searches. I haven't released it yet, but I've also added support for BlogPulse searches.

One of the things I've noticed is that the number of RSS/Atom enabled searches is proliferating - and my current approach of adding direct supprt simply isn't going to scale. So, I'm going to add support for user-definable search feeds before the next release. It's an easy modification, and ne I've been considering for awhile.

One of the interesting things about flying is looking at the landscape from above. I've read a fair bit of American history at this point, and one of the things I know is that the east coast was nearly deforested by the end of the 19th century. That's no longer true - even in a heavily populated corridor like the east coast, the forests are back in a big way. A quick look out the window shows that - as we left the DC area, the towns and suburbs all look like they are nestled into the forest. It's not primeval forest by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not a denuded wasteland either. It's really quite remarkable, all things considered.

I'm off to Raleigh-Durham this morning, up at the glorious hour of 4:30 am so that I could make it to DCA in time fr a 6:37 AM flight. Joy. So here I am at DCA, waiting for my flight to board - and the powers that be here at this airport haven't heard of WiFi. It's kind of amazing, really - with all the Congressmen, lobbyists, and aides that pass through here, you would figure that connectivity would be a no brainer. Then again, maybe "no brain" is the appropriate thought here in DC...

Register for StS 2005 now - so you can hear about interesting community work like this:

OpentalkMatrix

presentation

Monteiro, Charles: OCIT

Tuesday 9:15 am to 10 am

Abstract: OpentalkMatrix is a p2p application in some respects similar to LimeWire. It will be used as the context for discussion of Opentalk ST-ST distributed object messaging protocol. The discussion will include issues related to secured communications in particular integrating with Stunnel, gnutella-like query propagation, among other things. The discussion will not assume any prior knowledge of Opentalk ST-ST and therefore it will also include a brief introduction to the related concepts. There will be a demonstration of OpentalkMatrix which will consist of searching for components on a network and downloading the components to the query issuer's node. Currently, a component can be any file type. However, special treatment is provided for parcels. A query for a parcel will find said parcel and not only download the parcel but all pre-requisite parcels as well as other non-parcel files that have been registered as pre-requisites i.e. typically configuration and data files, possibly images etc. Once loaded the parcel can then be engaged i.e. launched.

There is a security mechanism in place to secure unauthorized download of components. Currently, it is password based but the basic framework is in place to do more sophisticated enforcement. OpentalkMatrix, also illustrates the notion of an SRE (Smalltalk Runtime Environment). It is also somewhat similar to what Java Web Start does i.e. it accomplishes the same thing. Note that the plan is to provide support for another type of component namely a "service". A service is something that does something for you on the p2p network. Once a service is found then said service can be engaged.

Finally the demo hopefully will include audience participation i.e. attendees should be able to logon onto the wireless p2p network and find something i.e. such as they would were they using LimeWire.

Bio: Charles A. Monteiro has been the chair of NYC Smalltalk for the last 4 years and been a member since 1996. He has been actively using Smalltalk since 1994 and has delivered enterprise applications to Fortune 500 companies such as Florida Power & Light, Keyspan Enery and ADP. His professional application experience has involved diverse technical areas such as custom pen graphics, geographical information systems, object database systems, multimedia consumer apps, web enablement of AS400 systems and peer to peer systems. The business domains include gas and electric utlities, finance, music education, EAI and database tools.

Charles is currently the technical architect and project lead for an established small NYC metro based financial software firm where Opentalk is actively being used. The company's clients include one of the largest banks in the world. Other Smalltalk related activities include working on a open source Traits implementation for VisualWorks. Most of his leisure time however is spent playing and studying the guitar.

See you in Orlando!

Scoble is wondering about the knowledge divide in the computer/software sector:

I'm finding this too. When I talk with audiences I either find people who are very familiar with the blog world (if you know what Technorati is, for instance, you are probably one of those people), while most people just don't know much about our little world at all.

I've talked about this divide before, and I think it's a simple one. The people who don't follow things that closely are mostly put off by the fact that the PC (and the Mac, for that matter - never mind Linux) are not consumer grade devices. Consider a TV, or a stereo, or an iPod or a TiVO. For the most part, you plug them in, hook them up, and go. There are steps to get at the more advanced features, but consider what you never have to worry about:

• Applying software updates (if they happen at all, they happen without user intervention)
• Viruses, spam, malware of any kind
• General twiddling of settings that seem irrelevant to you, the end consumer

Computers just aren't like that yet. If you want to be safe, you always need to be on the lookout for the latest updates from your OS vendor and from the vendors of the various tools you use (Firefox, etc.). It's way more babysitting than most people want to do for something they purchased - especially since they don't need to for the rest of the stuff they buy.

Where is this going? A plethora of single purpose devices, I think - like the iPod, the TiVo, et. al. General purpose computers will likely go back to being hobbyist tools, with simpler, easier to deal with, consumer grade devices taking over the common chores.

For more evidence of the power of inertia in the development space, have a look at this post (read the comments) from the BaseCamp developers. They use Ruby, and ran smack into the "why didn't you use (insert other language here)" argument. In this example, it's PHP. I like this response to that argument, and it's what I think about the "but what about all the Java developers" arguments I get on a regular basis:

When you say "I really can't see how it would be slower to code something in PHP than in another language" then you've already closed all ears to argument. If you think PHP—or any language—is the be all, end all of development in any domain, I can only wish you the best of luck in your future endevours. Perhaps you could be so kind as to reveal your name, so future clients could know that this is your opinion and choose their engagement so advised?

The bizarro world is the one where inertia rules the land and any tool but the one in your hand must be feared or distrusted. If you're interested in stepping back into the world of informed opinion and facts with specific questions instead of meaningless slander, let me know. I'm happy to answer based on my experiences with developing both PHP and Ruby and with the data we have on finding Ruby programmers.

Update: Link added after the commenters pointed out that I forgot it.

Rakaz illustrates a number of issues that confront authors of aggregators - this resonates well with me, since I just fixed a mistake in Bf that broke the app's ability to read Atom 0.3 feeds. The sheer number of feed varieties, as well as the volume of interpretations of same, has led to chaos. At the moment, the latest rev of BottomFeeder reads all of them. Who knows what will happen tomorrow :)

In the last build of BottomFeeder, I accidentally broke support for Atom 0.3 feeds. I was adding support for the putative Atom 1.0 standard, and factored my code badly - thus breaking Atom 0.3 feeds in Bf. I've got an update available - grab the latest BottomFeeder.pcl if you haven't been seeing updates to feeds that you should have been. I'm also replacing the full builds on the download site, since they had this flaw baked in.

Misbehaving mistakes common word usage for sexism. Here's a useful tip before rushing off the deep end and crying sexism (or racism, etc, etc) - it's not always about you.

Chris Petrilli noticed this story on the kid who was suspended for.. well read it:

I can’t imagine why he was disorderly when you’ve just made him hang up on his mother, who could be killed at any point. That’s just irrational behavior on his part. Oh wait, no, these shmucks, who pass for “principals,” need to lose their job for not giving one iota about the child, and only about the rules. This is why our school system sucks. It’s become nothing but an amalgam of rules and regulations, punishment and retribution, testing over learning, and what we are creating are proto-drones for the workforce, not vibrant individuals.

Arrested? For talking on the cell phone? And you think you’re being “nice” by just suspending him? Asshats. So what would have been the “right response?” That’s hard to say, but likely it would have been a warning, or something similar.

All they care about at the schools now are rules. There's absolutely no room for judgment at all - which has to make you wonder about the tacit lessons that kids are learning. At my daughter's school, kids can be suspended for bringing cough drops or aspirin without a doctor's note - one from the parents won't suffice. She was terrified that the school was going to kick her out when my wife gave her a pseudofed in the car, since the car was in the school parking lot.

The origins of this are an extreme aversion to risk, and - most especially - an aversion to potential legal liability. The perceived risk of suits is apparently so high that we've ended up with absurd regulatory regimes in the schools. Note I said the perceived risks - I have no idea what the actual risks are. While there's a lot of reporting about stupid lawsuits, it's dangerous to assume a lot based on that kind of anecdotal evidence. Either way though, it's a very bad thing.

I have to disagree with Scoble on this one:

Someone claimed I deleted some comments. I did not. I don't delete comments. Even very distasteful ones. Even ones who call me an idiot. Even ones that say discriminatory things.

Why not? Because I believe strongly in freedom of speech. Even speech I might hate. It takes a thick skin. Yes, I have provided a soap box for people to say some distasteful things. Yes, most corporate types don't agree that I should give people such a soap box (I know most other corporate webloggers delete comments).

But, I think it's important to hear from everyone, not just those I like

There's something to that, sure. On the other hand, deleting distasteful, obnoxious comments is also a matter of cleaning up the commons. To a large extent, allowing a completely open forum for things like swearing, porn, racism, (what have you) is tacit acceptance of such commentary. Ask yourself this question - would you be happy with having that kind of commentary in the presence of your kids? I know I'm not.

It's not censorship to impose standards and express disapproval. Social disapproval is a very strong force, and it's how things like racism, sexism, and other ism's get fixed. You can wave at government enforced tolerance all you want, but in a free society, you don't get law without a fairly strong social consensus. You need social disapproval before you'll ever see a legal framework backing you. Which takes me back to disapproval of nastiness - it's a matter of not allowing the commons to be taken over by the forces of ugliness.

Allowing open debate does not mean that you have to put up with rude, obnoxious behavior. Cleaning that up helps make for a better society that is less likely to clamor for censorship. Tolerating all manner of rudeness in public only sets you up for a backlash later - and the same people who initially supported the supposed tolerance are always stunned to see the backlash develop. They shouldn't be.

All the excitement around Google's accelerator psuhed the updates out of my head for a few days - here's today's reminder:

VisualAge & GemStone/S application development utilities

experience report

Northwater Objects

Tuesday 8:30 am to 9:15 am

VisualAge & GemStone/S application development utilities Our financial application is written in VisualAge and GemStone/S. Over the years we've developed a set of utilities to help with our application development. We will show our GemStone code synchronization and instance migration tools, GemStone object archiving, ENVY change reports, icon management tool, runtime error notification, method trace tools, and a number of miscellaneous features. Our experience with utility development has reinforced our opinion that the ability to extend the development environment is a fundamental strength of Smalltalk.

Don't forget to register! See you in Orlando.

I was watching the latest "Medium" on the Replay, when I had a thought - a lot of recent shows with a paranormal bent have gone with a "good" psychic in opposition with a "bad" psychic - The ill fated "Point Pleasant" operated like that, as did "Tru Calling". Obviously, "Revelation" is doing that, and even "Buffy" went that way when Faith went bad. None of this is surprising, of course - good vs. evil is a very old theme.

So anyway, I was watching "Medium", and jokingly asked my wife when they would add an evil medium to oppose the heroine. She gave a scoffing look, but then the preview for next week came on - and sure enough, there it was. Within Hollywood, there's definitely conservation of story lines...

This post on Http GET and side effects - in light of Google's Web Accelerator - made me think about something. I only just posted on this, but now I've read a bit more and thought about it. Here's what BitWorking has to say:

Let's start talking about you. And by you I mean all the web application developers out there that have been mis-using HTTP. Now I've been telling you over and over how to use HTTP correctly, how to build you web applications in a RESTful manner, and the consequences you could face if you didn't. Well, you didn't listen to me, did you 37Signals? Did you? Now Google releases their Web Accelerator and your application is broken. Apparently you used GET to delete items from Backpack and when Googles Web Accelerator pre-fetches that URI in you web app, items get deleted. Let's make this clear, Google didn't break your application, your application was broken, Google was just the first person to point it out to you. Do you feel the pain? Do you feel it?

Well, let's not get too self righteous or too far ahead of ourselves, hmm? Let's talk about something that's been an off and on topic in the syndication world for awhile - RFC 3229. That spec defines how a web server can answer incremental changes from a client. In the context of a news aggregator, that means only items that are new/changed since the last such request. In order to implement that on the server side, you'll need a dynamic feed, using header information in a GET request.

Well. The GET request effects a state change in the server with respect to the client in question. This is arguably a good thing for any conforming clients, since it reduces the amount of traffic that needs to be served. It's also something that Google's accelerator could render completely useless. I emphasize could - it's unclear to me whether the request sent by Google would include the requisite header info.

The point though, is this - not all client requests that result in a server state change are bad things. Heck, if they are we better get rid of 304, right now. The purists shouting from the rooftops about state free GET requests haven't thought this one all the way through.

I just finished reading "The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity 1812 - 1822". It was interesting to me in more ways than one - the author, Harold Nicholson, was one of the British diplomats at the Paris conference of 1919. He wrote this book about the post Napoleanic era in 1945, at the close of World War II - he notes at the beginning of the book that much archival material was unavailable to him due to the war.

The striking thing about this book is just how different Europe was then. Reading about the negotiations, for instance - one of the Italian Kings (there were several Italian states then) was nearly removed from his throne, and they conference cast about looking for another principality to give him as a feifdom. Very different indeed. One thing remains the same though - the kind of horse trading that happened in 1919 happened in 1815, and again in Dayton in 1995. The only thing that changes are the public justifications.

The principal players at the Vienna Congress are well known and very famous - Tallyrand of France, Metternich of Austria, Alexander of Russia. I hadn't known much about Castlereagh of England before reading this book, but Nicholson painted a very sympathetic portrait - he was a complex man living in a difficult age. Tallyrand isn't described much in this book - it was written very much from a UK perspective. Still, it was fascinating to see how he brought France from the position as loser of the war to near equal at the negotiation table - the man was brilliant.

After reading this book, I went to my shelf in search of another tome on that era - "The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815-1830". It's a very different book, looking at the forces that drove the creation of the modern world, according to the author, Paul Johnson. I bought it years ago, but I guess it wasn't time for me to read it. Now it is. It's massive - 1000 pages. I suspect I'll be reading it for awhile. I'm not done with WWI yet, either - I've got Tuchman's "The Guns of August" as my bedtime book.

The end of Nicholson's book has me interested in Europe through the revolutions of 1848 - Metternich spent a lot of time trying to tamp that down, and I'd like to read about that era. Anyone have any suggested reading?

Blogging Roller isn't happy with the new Google accelerator:

Beware the Google Web Accelerator. It willl wreak havoc on the web applications that you use (Roller incuded). Problem is, in most webapps HTTP GET changes things (even though it shouldn't). Read all about it on O'Reilly Radar. I don't understand this. Google employs a hell of a lot of very smart people. How did they let this one slip by?

GET is supposed to be side effect free. The trouble is, many of the existing web apps don't work that way. Standards are great, but when practice varies as much as it has, that tells you something. I'm not sure how this will play out - will the 800 lb Google force change, or will the accelerator fail in the face of current web reality? It will be interesting to watch it play out.

The summer release of Cincom Smalltalk is just about ready to go. We've wrapped up the engineering work, and it's now a matter of production steps - CD production, internal order entry system updates, etc. We should have things ready to go from a customer point of view by the end of this month, and CD's should start arriving in customer hands in late May or early June.

This is a maintenance release - we are on a twice yearly release schedule now:

• Summer: Bug fix/maintenance release. No major changes, it's possible for beta code to move into production
• Winter: Major release. new features/functions (etc) will be released

See this wiki page for details on Summer 2005, and over here for Winter 2005.

Doc Searls has a follow up post to his "flat" post, where he disagrees with Dave Friedman's disagreement:

Friedman: "IQ distributions are a bell curve: there are very few people at the low (retarded) end of intelligence, and there are very few at the high (genius) end of intelligence. Most of us are bunched in the middle. The distribution is much the same as a distribution of humans' heights: Tom Cruise is below average in height and Yao Ming is above average. (But Tom Cruise is closer to the average than Ming.)"

Doc: "Wrong. I've been 5'9 the whole time my IQ has been measured everywhere from very smart to very dumb. Intelligence is complicated, conditional and hard to measure. The belief that people have "an IQ," however, comes easy. Too easy. "

I'm not so sure that the disagreement is as violent as it sounds. It would surprise me to find that intelligence isn't distributed on a bell curve - it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that measuring it is difficult, and that our current methods miss-classify people. To take a simple case - my Dad is mildly dyslexic, and never really liked to read because of that. I would guess that many IQ tests would rank him low because of that. A failure of methodology doesn't imply that a thing doesn't exist.

Doc wants to believe this:

The unwelcome point I've been making here, and that John Taylor Gatto has been making for much longer, is that most people are born smart and that we use theh likes of IQ tests to pound populations of uniquely gifted individuals into bell curves.

And sure, there's plenty of round pegging going on in the schools. The inability of the schools to deliver mass customization is a completely different problem though, and doesn't really speak to the distribution of intelligence. I'd agree with Doc that most current IQ tests are worse than useless. I do think there's something that could be measured, if we had any idea how. Ironically, his closing anecdote makes my point:

By the way, back when I got out of college, I was spared boring jobs at two insurance companies by flunking IQ tests. One was Aetna. That was administered right at the employment agency. No waiting. Impressive. I forget the name fo the other one, but I remember the setting vividly. It was in Newark. Nice offices, friendly people. The guy who interviewed me told the employment agency something like, "I was so impressed by the interview. He seemed real smart, and knew an awful lot of stuff. But then when we got the IQ test back we found out he was really dumb."

Placing the interviewer right down there towards the lower end of the bell curve, I think...