Recently Linus Torvalds did a presentation at Google about distributed version control. This is a great introduction to distributed version control if you have wondered what the big deal is. Unsurprisingly, the presentation also spends a considerable amount time talking about Git and picking on CVS and Subversion.
There is probably something else I should be doing right now but instead I decided to take a bit of time and see what is new in the WordPress world. Here are a few interesting things I found.
Latex support on wordpress.com blogs
A Latex wordpress plugin for people who host their own WordPress instance
If you are looking for local blogs checkout Local Thoughts.
University of Western Ontario (UWO)
If you happen to know of other local blogs you can add them to the above pages.
Learn 10 good UNIX usage habits from IBM Developer Works.
Worth reading even if you think of yourself as a shell veteran.
There is a major construction project going on at UWO right now called the Biotron. For details of this really interesting project take a look at the main Biotron website or this article from Canada.com.
A new biology super-lab under construction in London, Ont., will make Canada a testing ground for the latest ideas in disease, ecosystems and agriculture from all over the world.
They will be able to create the frigid darkness of Arctic winter, or the steamy heat of a tropical rainforest. They’ll be able to see what happens to a genetically modified crop under realistic conditions, without letting it escape into the environment.
“This is the first time anything like that has ever been built. So we’re absolutely unique,” says Duncan Hunter, associate dean of science at Western.
“There is no other facility like this in the world.”
“Everybody likes to describe their project, their facility, as being unique and world class. This one truly will be when it’s up and running.”
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Arrived in Ottawa today for OLS. Managed to get in early enough to make it over to the new (2005?) Canadian War Museum. Unfortunately, there was only two hours left before close. Two hours was not nearly long enough to do the museum justice. Even if you have been to the previous war museum you should go again. The new building is gorgeous and there is lot more stuff to look at. If you like to read everything in a museum, you need to budget a LOT more than two hours.
For those new to Ottawa, walking to the war museum from OLS will take under 30 minutes.
Red Hat has posted videos of the keynotes from the Red Hat summit in Nashville. So far, I have only watched two of the three videos. Both were excellent.
Eben Moglen: Discusses the philosophical and political ideas behind free software. He argues that free software is about allowing individual creativity. If you don’t ‘get’ free software you need to watch this speech.
Cory Doctorow: Provides a bit of history on copyright change and how the incumbent industries always try to stop progress. Lots of good DRM discussion as well.
There is no future in which bits will be harder to copy than they are today … Any business model that based on the idea that bits will be harder to copy is doomed. [Cory Doctorow (2006 RedHat summit in Nashville)]
I found both of these speeches to be inspiring. Free software is the start of a wider revolution. As Moglen says in his keynote (paraphrasing), it is an incredible privilege to live through a revolution.
Yesterday I required some clip art for a document I am preparing. With a little searching I found the Open Clip Art Library. This project provides clip art in SVG (a W3C standard) format licensed under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. This was perfect for my purposes since I use Inkscape which uses SVG by default.
The following article offers a nice introduction to some design techniques that may be used to create more reliable operating systems.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that microkernels long discarded as unacceptable because of their lower performance compared with monolithic kernels might be making a comeback due to their potentially higher reliability, which many people now regard as more important than performance. The wheel of reincarnation has turned.
Can We Make Operating Systems Reliable and Secure? by Andrew S. Tanenbaum