UITE recently, Xara Xtreme which is a popular (vector) drawing program, moved from being pricey proprietary software to the GPL. Xara may have been the victim or sufferer of bigger packages and vendors (e.g. CorelDraw, Photoshop). My guess is that, much like Netscape, they had the choice of either letting the code of that product accumulate mold or earn a large(er) audience — a large user base — to which they can then offer paid support and self-tailored extensions. Netscape achieved something similar by putting the code out there. Today we are seeing the impact of Firefox, which enjoys generous streams of revenue as well. Xara Xtreme will directly challenge Inkscape, a screenshot of which can be seen above.

In the near future, more and more companies will be facing a crossroad wherein they can either fall to oblivion or receive exposure by throwing themselves at the Open Source community. It would enough to have just a few ‘residual’ companies that fell victims to giants like Adobe, or Microsoft, or whoever. Sooner or later they can be ‘resurrected’ owing to the GPL, once they release the code and get absorbed by a crowd of Open Source advocates that contributes back. When the user base of Open Source platforms such GNU/Linux expands, this will become more financially viable and there will be an increasing incentive to go down that route.

Patents, copyrights and trademarks serve an important role. They prevent theft of one’s methods and reputations, which often require heavy investment (not necessarily financial). But what about intellectual property which is fuzzy and not concrete? I will use a case study to exemplify this.

Think about the case where Xerox patented the one-stroke Graffiti input, which Palm devices later used for stylus-based input. It is the method by which drawing on a screen is translated into discrete, atomic signals such as letters and numbers. Jotting a line from top to bottom to render a “1″ should not warrant anyone property of such an idea, right? Yet, that’s what Xerox achieved. They ‘invented’ the chalkboard interpretation language and took ownership. Ultimately, as to abstain from paying royalties perhaps, Palm invented “Graffiti 2″, which is a cumbersome method of achieving the very same thing. People’s habits were broken and input made slower just because Xerox ‘owned’ a more efficient input method that involved a single, unambiguous stroke. A common language was actually possessed by one master.

Let that teach us why patents in software are evil and are not accepted in Europe. The case would of course be different in fields like medicine and especially drug discovery.

would like to take a brief moment and speak about my opinion on religion, atheism, creationism, and evolution. I will do not in a nutshell since elaboration tends drive the readers away.

From what I can gather form real-life situations, pious and devout believers confute the evolutions or try to contradict it. It is a matter of perception, which provides nothing but self satisfaction. A beholder always sees beauty in his/her thoughts, tradition and creation. At worse time, he/she even finds shelter in it.

Technology entails enlightenment. More enlightened people remain mantally bendable, which is the reason why this 21^st century slowly escapes religion (there are exceptions). Such people are not distracted by the hoi polloi and can form their own opinion and use careful judgment. To religious families, refusal to believe in God is not a million miles away from becoming mischievous, to say the very least. So what gives? In some families this can even entail corporal punishment.

Digressing to discuss the interaction between religion and science, have a look at the following recent article:

On February 20th, the infamously pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute released news that over 500 doctoral scientists had signed its statement “publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution.”

A day earlier, a newly launched coalition of scientists, educators and clergy members called the Alliance for Science revealed a converse document at the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Clergy Letter Project snagged the signatures of 10,000 clerics on a document that in part states, “We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.”

In my humble opinion, society as a whole will sooner or later fend off the trite and reach the inevitable vocation, which is science, spirituality aloof. A whole myriad of miracles and legends will no longer have a mental impact on people. They will find ways to feel elated, other than to pray or rely on an entity of supremacy.

OW that Windows Vista’s release has been delayed (due to security, drivers, etc.) and a revamped Office has been delayed too, certain predictions seem truer than ever before.

It was only a couple of days ago that Apache’s head permitted 10 years before the complete eclipse, wherein commercial software ceases to exist ‘in the wild’. Essentially, such a scenario would make commercial software (binaries) lose all value. It may serve no purpose as accompanying code will just lodge on the shelves to collect dust. This outlook must be the rationale behind Xara Xtreme going from commercial all the way to the GPL — a complete 180!

It seems ever more evident that any Windows ‘box booter’ and Visual Basic-only programmer could soon become obsolete, unless Open Source skills are quickly acquired. The next couple of years will be rather intersting as they will bring radical changes to the software development market.

Bill Gates recently stated very clearly that the future of computing is in services. This must the reason why many of his executives have already defected to Google and certain governmental departments are migrating to Open Source, which is independent from opaque packages. All that is left, on the face of it, are big budgets for brainwash of businesses and vendors, as well as IT managers and the public.

Related item: Windows Vista is Service Pack III (parody)

Some argue that this would be the last operating system from Microsoft

NE part of me truly loves Google — loving Google like nobody else! Google gives me plenty of referrals: about 500 for text search and over 400 for image search every day; and that’s for my main Web site alone. So how could I ever complain? It seems to respect me and treat me so well. Then again, it is akin to having an evil spouse, whose living is made in some dishonest ways. Allow me to elaborate if I may.

As many others, I sure have my Google ‘pet peeves’. I love them and dislike them at the same time, for a whole variety of reasons. Some of the more recent controversial moves, such as censorship in China and paid-for competitive ads (leading to manipulation the search results), had me think twice. I have mixed feelings, which makes me no exception. I feel betrayed sometimes. I feel as though I have been cheated on since Google is not the woman whom I married — the one who vowed to “do no evil”.

However, and despite it all, Google seems to hurt others the most. It rarely if ever punishes myself. So should I respect that ‘wife’ of mine? Or should I sympathise with others and demonstrate whenever I get the chance? I was once approached by Google regarding a job (during controversial times too), but nowadays, I do not believe like I could ever accept it. I continue to respect the Google search engine, which is doing a splendid job, technically-speaking. I am not going to embrace too stern a principle. I am about to ‘Googlefast’, as Chris Pirillo recently called it, but I just try to remain objective and fair (thus come my outbursts of criticism).

My ‘wife’ has committed her sins. One day she may face the consequences, but I will probably abide by my commitments to her and remain passive while she justifiably suffers in court. Each crime has got to bring its bitter consequences and I just hope that the mantra was not disposed of , yet.

Google can still improve. And I am not talking about their search results.

couple of months back, Vista engineers ere bragging about Intel systems architecture which would enable quick startups from memory. This sounded like “hibernation mode” rather than standby, but it was still used as Windows Vista selling point, alongside updates without reboot. So here we shall address two issues.

Why should one bother rebooting? Linux rarely ever requires it. Frequency of updates is low and the severity of bugs is relatively low. And again, what is there to be gained from quick reboots or even the avoidance of bootstrapping? Saving a minute a couple of times a year? It would probably take longer to just set up such quick startup facilities. The whole scheme is unnecessary with energy saving modes, so again, why ever reboot in the first place? And why bother reducing booting duration?

BOUT a year ago, I agreed upon a rule for myself: Read more of the technology sections in Web sites; feeds likewise. Front pages and doorway pages tend to concentrate on celebrities (sports included), sex, and death.

This disposition is a matter of personal preference, of course, but the general advice is for each person to choose feeds that intersect with and correspond to main interests. Good feeds encourage reading. Reading re-enforces knowledge and in the lack of distracting detail, the mind is better stimulated, as well as focused on consistent information.

Related item: Greedy Feeds and Generous Feeds