#35 - Apr 99

Sorry I don't have the time to "wang out' a full one. I've just got back from a gruelling 500 mile round trip to Wales (taking daughter on hols) and am completely cream crackered. Instead I've cobbled together some news I found interesting as a quick feature for the main page. The techy bits which was/is a quick investigation into square root algorithms (with thanks to Ranko) will have to wait until a more tranquil time.

SETI@home
Almost completely unrelated to anything is the fact that the SETI@home Mac client is almost ready. This is like RC5 in that it uses processing time on many distributed computers (i.e. yours) 'cept the aim of the game here is to FFT through radio telescope data during processor idle time (ha!) searching for signs of intelligence.

You may or may not think this is a worthwhile use of idle processing power ([You may think it is impossible, viz:] do the math bozo, needle in haystack etc.) but if you do there is a link on the links page.

Unfortunately it seems the source for the client is not available :(

OSS stuff

This received last night:

From: bruce@perens.com
Date: 5 Apr 1999 23:00:21 -0000
To: publicsource@public.lists.apple.com
Subject: email threat
Sender: owner-publicsource@public.lists.apple.com
Precedence: bulk
Status:

Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message
was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may
consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified.

Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection,
I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely. The message
below has been censored so that it will pass the mailing list filter.

Thanks

Bruce Perens

> Damn straight I took it personally. And if you ever again behave like
> that kind of disruptive [censored] in public, insult me, and jeopardize
> the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally --
> and I will find a way to make you regret it. Watch your step.

I had to physically restrain myself from replying about "off topic" posts. Sadly a few hours later somebody beat me to it :)

Bruce later went on to post (about the off topicness of his post):

How about let's not discuss it any longer at all. I'm off this list, I'm
not happy about who Apple's friends are and I don't see any reason to hang
around with them any longer.

Interestingly SlashDot is not reporting this.

Anyway, the way it is here is that I do not think Open Source Software will ever work [i.e. replace commercial software] and I am completely distressed (for want of a better word) about the press's insistence that this is Linux's, err sorry, GNU Linux's year for the desktop. I also firmly believe that the whole Linux "community" has missed the fact that Apple avec OS X et Server [where OS X refers to the normal Mac desktop version to replace 8.xx] presents a very serious threat to Linux' popularity and growth curve. (OK, call me a cynic already - wouldn't be the first time)

I believe Rob thinks a little differently (correct me if I am wrong). I've been meaning to write an article about it for a long time, but it seems the whole world (and its dog) is writing these kind of essays today which relegates the idea somewhat. However, I'm sure we could get a little Rob 'n Stu discussion going. How 'bout it Wob? I'm quite happy to "open". (Like we have the time to kill!)

Next Fant 6 Beta

Thanks for all the feedback over the last month or two regards the last beta posted, all very helpful. We hope to have them [bugs] all fixed for the next beta version, which I want to be the last. I have a page full of fixes and updates to apply. Don't know about you but I would really like to get Fantasm 6 out of the door - I can't even remember when it went into testing. We get mail from new customers wondering why version 5.3 was just installed - why not 6, to which I have to reply that 6 is in testing.

When I took Anvil 2 and made it into 3 (which was about 9 months work) I knew there was a lot that could go wrong - hence the long testing period. Still the extended architecture of Anvil 3 seems to work OK and we haven't had any serious bugs at all. Plus it's way more useful than Anvil2; for example we plugged MrC into Anvil in two days and I believe (but don't quote me on this) that someone is working on a version control tool for Anv3 which will be most useful. Someone mentioned writing a Java lang def file for Anvil, which seems quite a practical proposition; time ,as always, will probably interfere with that one. Maybe a Java savvy user fancies a go at it?