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The biggest news in IT happened a couple of weeks ago, when Oracle filed a lawsuit against Google (reddit discussion), in which it claims that:

“Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520″

The lawsuit reminds of the early Java war between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems (technical details): eventually Microsoft and Sun settled on an amount of 20 million dollars and the promise to phase out all Microsoft products that used Microsoft’s Java Virtual Machine.

The most interesting point made during the outrage the last couple of weeks was Miguel de Icaza’s comments on Oracles lawsuit (reddit discussion), which is extremely hilarious but points out good points: Google’s Dalvik engine already marked that discussions between Google and Sun re: Java ME had run on the rocks and that at that stage, Google should have known about any upcoming Java patent lawsuit. Additionally, it also looks the former CEO of Sun specifically pitched the Java patents (“Sue Google” to possible suitors. Icaza further speculates:

Google could settle current damages with Oracle, and switch to the better designed, more pleasant to use, and more open .NET platform.

And that would be extremely ironic. The main question is: If Android is so important to Google, why didn’t it pick up Java by buying Sun while it could do so? At this stage it almost looks like that .Net/Mono is a safer platform than Java (which is something that Icaza has been claiming since, well, ever).

I get cranky when I see people use regular expressions or simple substring routines when extracting strings from, for example, e-mail addresses. The first method, while powerful, is memory hungry, the second method is plain childish. You should only use substring/copy methods if you’re hundred percent certain that the data is formatted and well-formed (that is, it comes through exactly as you expect it to. In the case of e-mail addresses, this is of course, not true. After all, e-mail addresses can come in any format. The following samples are all legal: “hey@you.com”, “hey@you.com (Hey You)”, “ Hey You”, “Hey, You “. Your simple substring copy function would most likely have troubles resolving all of these e-mail variants.

During my Roundabout tenure, we ran into issues where extraction of names/e-mail from e-mail headers didn’t work out as originally planned. I was not surprised to find those evil substring routines in the code and literally rewrote that into a state machine (look for HeaderAddressToStringList). Extremely elegant and very effective.

Why use a state machine then? Because with string operations like this, looping through a string is a lot faster than trying hundreds of “if conditions” to cover all these e-mail cases. Keep in mind that simplicity is the key though: the more states you define, the complexer the code.

I‘m surprised how many people look here for help on the .Net 2.0 SerialPort component (reference, which leads to this posting). I have plenty of example code, but I haven’t had time to re-test the project or even try com0com on this 64-bit Windows box. Com0Com (link) does support 64-bit environments, provided that you:

The com0com.sys is a test-signed kernel-mode driver that will not load by
default. To enable test signing, enter command:

bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

and reboot the computer.

What is bcdedit?

No examples for now but my earlier mentioned posting should get you somewhere.

Hier, j’ai mis à jour à WordPress 3.0 et remarqué que, malgré les avertissements sur le Web, mon fidèle AHCommentCentral travaillait encore sur OK. Je n’ai pas fait quelque chose pour les sources depuis, peut-être il ya 4 ans.

J’ai vu aussi que j’ai encore une ancienne version du thème actuel («Simplish): J’ai été réfléchir si je dois faire une mise à jour: cela nécessite une certaine concentration avant et en arrière que le thème actuel eu quelques modifications personnalisées. Pas vraiment ce que je trouve que je ferais tout de suite.

Sinon, je pourrais mettre mon thème xvisionaryx, qui est un thème que j’ai utilisé pour une courte période (moins d’une semaine) après beaucoup personnaliser le thème d’origine visionnaire. Je ne pouvais convertir en un «WordPress 3.0″ thème, mais une fois de plus, je suis hésitant faire car elle nécessite la création d’un environnement de test. Mon serveur linux («Elsie») a été hors service depuis que je suis éloigné de NS.

Ainsi, le résultat net semble être le «statu quo», ce qui n’est pas l’évolution future prévue, les mises à jour de prudence et de lumière annonce. Sonne comme l’étoffe ordinaire.

I hate to pay too much attention to issues that are so trivial that you want people just to shut up and accept it: A couple of weeks ago, WordPress came a bit in the news because a popular theme maker refused to abide the GPL with one of his popular themes. That link points to a metafilter thread and the discussion goes to the extremes with regards to the GPL: there’s even some ‘libertarian’ views why the GPL is bad. This comment precisely details my point of view and I quote:

At the end of the day, Chris wants to build on top of GPL’d software to make money, but does not want to respect the licensing requirements that come with the GPL. He — and others who agree with him — are taking their stand on hair-splitty definitions to circumvent the clearly explained intention of the license. “You can do what you want with this GPL software, including building stuff on top of it. If you build stuff on top of it, though, and you distribute it to other people, you must give the same rights to them.”

There’s a reason why GPL-ed code is called viral: if you don’t want your code touched by that license, don’t build on GPL-ed code.

Via the UK’s Telegraph, I read that 40% of Americans believe that the Lord will return before 2050. Why not by 2030 or 2040, I wonder? On the other hand, 2050 is an excellent year as it is right in between 2100 and 2000. 2050 is definitely not a prime-number. On a serious note: Why don’t newspapers link to the official Pew statistics? The Pew report is right here.

You know, with China being the sole creditor in the world (I bet Keynes didn’t see this come), I find articles like these both hilarious and sad. Obviously, in China, there’s a need for a certain type of people to make things look official.

read about the home-coming of the Dutch national football team earlier this week and thought of putting up some closing remarks about the lost final match against Spain. It was a fricking ugly game after a fairly efficient Worldcup run: I say fairly efficient, as I thought that the Dutch players didn’t show any quality football and relied on too many lucky events to make it to the finals. There were some good moments: I thought Van Bronckhorst was consistent and even scored a goal that would have made it into the list of much discussed ‘best of World cup 2010′ goals if not for that final.

Maybe that’s the point I’m trying to make: In the build-up to the final, it appeared that the foreign press was in favour of the Dutch winning the worldcup, reminiscing the finals of 1974 and 1978. Sadly, of the 2010 World Cup final, the only picture the 2010 final that sticks out is the De Jong karate kick: intentional or not.

On the good side: now might be a good time to start rebuilding a new Dutch national team. Most of the current members of Dutch squad were also involved in the ‘Battle of Nuremberg’.

In the late 70′s, the show ‘The Water Margin’ became an instant hit in Europe. Produced by Nippon TV, the show spanned about 30 episodes (I think) and it featured as many types of martial arts kids could only dream of, and a story line that evokes so many cliches, that it, as an adult, makes one’s toes curl up. I mean: An outlaw hero and his merry band of bandits fighting against an evil tyrant. Surely, you’ve heard that story before. But put that story right in Asia, with martial arts, swords and surreal fight scenes (example: “the two day fight”), present that to a European audience and you get an instant hit.

Unsurprisingly, the show’s tune has engraved itself in the minds of ‘Generation 70′ and that tune is the focus of today’s ‘Past The Bridge’ posting. A one minute sample can be found right here. The sung theme features the voice of one ‘Pete Mac Junior’, who I believe is just a Japanese singer. If you’re more into the original musical theme (and if you’re curious about the show itself), you may want to check YouTube. It features trumpets, strings and strangely enough a perfect, out of step, rhythm section. For more dramatic effect, those Japanese lyrics.

There’s a slight irony in all of this: The show was heavily based on the Chinese book with the same name (wikipedia). Written in the early 1500′s, the books became an instant hit in Japan (first translated 200 years later), where the stories were literally localized. The irony, again? A Japanese show, featuring Japanese actors in a Chinese setting playing Chinese rebels. I heard that the Chinese did a remake of the show and apparently there’s also a movie (based on the books) in post-production.

But without doubt, as a kid I was impressed with the show and whenever allowed by my parents, I watched and devoured the stories and fights of Lin Chung and his band of, well, funny looking characters.

I watched the Dutch play the other day, against Brazil and saw them win that game in their particular style they’re now known for: messy football with a teeny bit of flair and luck. After the equalizer, that unfortunate mix-up from Cesar and Melo, I was surprised to see the Brazilian team completely collapse, physically and emotionally. There was a remark by one of the guests at the CBC who said it the best (quoted as best as I can):

“There was this total lack of emotional balance in the Brazil team: From Dunga literally kicking and beating up the dug-out to his players losing it on the field”

God. Sometimes I just hate this game for all the theatrics of the players and coaches.

I think I’ve mentioned this earlier that I find the latest Civ 4 add-ons hardly playable and enjoyable: Beyond the Sword is one of the main culprits. The balance of the game seem to have tipped more towards combat, and (as frequent Civ players know) being in a constant wage of war will eventually hurt technology progress. With announcement of Civ 5 (“Coming this Fall”), one can only hope for the better.

Talking about civilization, I had one link still in my queue of links to be elaborating on, which is Thinking Meat’s “Was civilization a bad idea” posting a while ago. The posting was a response to Spencer Well’s Seed Magazine essay ‘Pandora’s seed’, where the geneticist discusses how the rate of cultural evolution (technological advances for example) seem to have taken a toll on human evolution. As an example, the geneticist notes that:

The unprecedented rise in chronic disease in westernized societies is perhaps the most obvious example. I say westernized, rather than western, because we are now well aware of the growing incidence of heart disease, diabetes and plain-old obesity in the developing world, particularly in places such as India and China. As they become more like us, they are taking on many of our worst attributes as well.

If you think of the medical progress we’ve made since the early ages, where thanks to medical science the life expectancy went from, what, 20 years to 65+ years, it feels a bit ironic that thanks to that progress we’re in need of more medical care these days than in the Stone Ages and that our health has come with a (monetary) price.

I guess the point of healthy life is that you should just eat healthy and with moderation. Otherwise the bugs will take over in a couple centuries.

1.Reddit, Civ 4 tips and Steam.

The FIFA Worldcup 2010 has started a couple of days ago and I noticed that I haven’t seen any of the matches yet only because the matches are a broadcast at impossible times. For a lack of better links (or rather, laziness), the following days I hope to watch the Copa Mondial on CBC’s website (live streaming apparently).

I’ve only briefly mentioned the Van Der Sloot case on this blog (to be honest, hardly is a better word). In summary, guy who was main suspect in Aruba case is arrested by Peruvian police for the homocide of the daughter of a Peruvian multi-millionaire uh wait. There are so more colourful details to this case that I’m 100% certain that Hollywood will make a movie out of this. Unfortunately, most of the saillant details seem to come from the Dutch press.

One of the most compelling stories from the Internet (“Right now, On the Internet”, cue typical news program music) is the story about Keanu Reeves. The Guardian perfectly summarizes the story but alas, no links (“What, horrors!”). Here ya go then.

Earlier this weekend, at the local liquor store I was briefly distracted by a brandy or wine named ‘Caballero’ (can’t find on the Internets): I’m not sure if it was the brand name or the name of the drink itself, but, it reminded me of the other brand name of cigarettes made by a Dutch cigarettes manufacturer, then called ‘Sigarettenfabriek Ed. Laurens B.V’. The company was eventually bought out by British American Tobacco. Their site has a rather bland portion about the health risks of smoking and genetically modified tobacco (no).

Both my parents smoked: Originally, my mother smoked Caballero cigarettes I believe and then switched to ‘Belinda’ cigarettes, which, as you can tell, were cigarettes solely targeted to females. My mother eventually quit smoking (cold turkey I believe) and the images of “the mexican on his horse” cigarette packs slowly faded away from my memories and probably (as the brand doesn’t appear to exist anymore) from the minds of continental Europeans.

If you look close to the right, you’ll see a can. An ordinary aluminium can. It could have been a photo of a Coca-Cola can. A photo of a recycled Coca-Cola can. Or a regular steel/metal food can for that matter. You’ve probably seen hundreds types of cans in your whole life. Some cans are used to store vegetables. Some cans are stored to use precious liquids, scented oils, Plumtree’s and cat food. Some cans flew off the production line in a metal packaging plant. Some of them never did.

Some of the cans did not meet the stringent quality specifications and in turn were stored elsewhere for recycling purposes. They would have been stored in large carts, hauled or carted away by machinists/operators who incidentally may have worn dark blue overalls.

Most likely these operators would have been wearing earplugs, as to protect their ears from the noise of cans being pulled, pushed and belted through presses, sorters and painting machines. And it’s particularly that clicking high pitched metallic noise that these people would remember if they’re presented with a can like that can shown above.

It’s a fairly noisy can, so to say.

I read this the day before yesterday: apparently, Jupiter has lost one of it’s bands (National Geographic on this) within the last couple of months (or even year). If you’re curious if this will have any impact on our Earthly lives, please check your local daily astrology forecast.

Computers are fascination and so are games: depending on your mileage, of course. Earlier this month, I learnt that a senior fellow in the US managed to defeat the game ‘Bejeweled’ by reaching the topscore of (wait for it, wait for it), 2,147,783,647. If you’re not familiar with that number, for your reference I present Wikipedia’s entry on Integer numbers.

And last but not least, via Reddit, I came across this gem (or youtube video) showcasing the excellent animation stuff in the Arma2 game. I looked at this game a year or so ago and while buggy, I was extremely impressed with the online-multiplayer portion of Arma2. From the ‘Leave no man alone, rescue Arthur’ mission, to that ‘long lonely walk until someone offered me a ride on his bike to the battlefield’ occasion. No really: surreal.