Dell Sets Linux-PC Story Straight (NewsFactor)

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OpenOffice Gets Its OS X Story Straight

The Times sets its WMD record straight

"It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers."

"We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight."

For the Times, this transparency thing is still very new. And admitting that major stories that helped launch an ill-conceived war were at best careless and at worst fraudulent is a painful thing for any journalistic enterprise. But admitting mistakes is the first step toward preventing their recurrence.

Now if we can only get our president to understand that principle. Instead, here he is solemnly announcing, in his speech last night, that "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terror." Sure it is. How did it get that way? It wasn't such a front before we invaded. Our mistakes -- Bush's mistakes -- opened another front for bin Ladenism to exploit.

Will Saletan in Slate has a smart deconstruction of the strange rhetoric in Bush's speech that omits any acknowledgment of missteps and all reference to his own agency in the unfolding Iraq disaster. Bush hasn't done anything; instead, "history is moving." It would be funny if there weren't so many lives already lost, and more on the line.

Joel sets the matter straight

RDF-simple-API

Submitted by joeldg on Tue, 06/08/2004 - 16:11.

There is currently a lot of talk on the rdfdev list over converting a version of RAP to work with a simple FOAF parser that only needs to grab a few things.

Well, I agree with this on principle, I also feel that 'feature creep' is what kills (or at least partially dooms a lot of projects) and as I used to tell overzealous project managers "Lets just get this working with the minimal features first" before going head over heels into some bell or whistle or 'blinky-light' you (or the client) would like to see in it.

I usually try to work this way. I manage most of the time but often even I get stuck in the "it has to do 'everything'" mode and that will kill my productivity for a day or two until I grab myself and shake for a while until I am back to the "core" of what needs to be done.

When I worked as a systems analyst and would be creating diagrams of core functionality for this or that it really helped refine for developers (which I also was one of) and everyone involved because it gave you a map. (last count I have done DFD's, ERD's etc and even data dictionaries for over a hundred projects that have been brought to completion for clients.)

So, lets just have a nice map for where this is going "before" jumping off a proverbial bridge and then trying to swing a grappling hook back up as we are falling.

Ask a few questions (I know it seems simple, but bear with me):
1) What does it 'need' to do?
2) What language(s) does it 'need' to be done in?
3) What does the client want that can wait for a later refine and further work? (i.e. what can they live without that they say they cannot?)
4) What exactly do we need to do to support this?
5) and finally, is there something that 'works' currently out there so we don't have to do this at all? (programmers are lazy by nature...)

Note the use of the word "need" above, if it does not fit in that, it is extra and can wait or be tossed.

As an example, for core functionality of FOAFnet, why the hell would we ever want to put in WOT or airport codes? It is not and will never be needed for that. (For sub-projects yes, but not for FOAFnet core)

Anyway, I propose a marriage of a couple of things.

1) a pre-existing class that has already been done that can handle everything we currently need (triples-based-parsing) and it is faster than RAP and sits at around 30k if you rip the comments.

2) my little rdf->tree parser which is easy. (here is the source) which is geared towards being nothing but fast but is easily extensible with more functions. (it fufills some of my core functionality for simplicity and has already proved itself in the "real world" for a scutter I wrote to comb through foafs (lj, typepad etc all that)

I think that joining those two is perfect and that I what I will be working on. RAP for base level usuage will still be too big because once you made room to put in the kitchen sink you can't unmake the room.

Another reality (that some people are going to have to be force-fed) is that people who handroll their FOAF's are currently in the MAJOR minority [editor's note: sorry]. Almost all FOAF being used today is generated on the big sites and uses only a small portion of the FOAF vocab and then only the most stable and useful portions [of FOAF] or portions that are easy to infer from their current data.

A lot of people are seriously paranoid about privacy issues. For instance, the most oft asked question about the MeNowDocument vocab is privacy issues. i.e. do people really need to know this about me, and would anyone really care? I feel I have addressed a lot of these issues in the spec itself (i.e. it is obviously optional, and scripts handle most of it.) Anyway I digress.

Handrolled FOAF's I predict will cease to exist within a year or two at most. [editor's note: here here]

This is a "machine" readable and "writable" format people, and honestly, how often do you "view source" on webpages anymore?

Feel free to disagree, but if you do, at least let me know why.

[peoplesdns - dns style lookups in peoplespace]

Joel has been getting attacked for writing a simple, fast, highly optimized FOAF parser that ONLY recognizes the parts of FOAF - which are in our FOAFnet spec.

On one side you can say "that's all we need, so let's not worry about anything else" - while on the other side you can fear that your well tuned, highly refined, incredibly elegant architecture and plans - which aren't done yet - will never happen, because your spec is being highjacked by short term thinking malcontents.

Guess which side I'm on?

Folks just have to realize that we have to take baby steps before we can walk. It's really hard to get 25-50 companies - to all agree on a spec for passing entire social networks between systems.

But we promise - we really do - that we'll add more FOAF vocabulary - juicy items like Node ID, foaf:knows or rel:acquaintance - just as soon as we get really basic import/export working - with JUST:

- name

- image (depiction)

- email (sha1sum encrypted)

- and a list of names of friends

That's it.

This is a message that Joel De Gan needed to send to the FOAFnet and rdfweb heads who were trying to tell him that his optmized parser was........

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Dell Sets Linux-PC Story Straight (NewsFactor)

Dell Sets Linux-PC Story Straight (NewsFactor)

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Dell Sets Linux-PC Story Straight (NewsFactor)