New exception model in IronPython

I am a lurker in the IronPython mailing lists. Now that the project is slowly approaching 1.0 release, I have started taking an active interest in the proceedings in the list.

The recent postings on the proposed new exception handling system in IronPython makes interesting reading. Apparently the current model does not provide a nice co-existence of the exception hierarchies of CPython and the .NET CLI. This means that if you call a piece of pure CLI code from inside your Python (IronPython) code and if it raises a CLI exception, you are left stranded in no-man's land if your code only catches Python exceptions.

The proposed new model plans to separate the exception hierarchy into two hieararchies - one for .NET CLI exceptions and one for Python exceptions. The Python exception hierarchy will mirror that of the existing CPython exception class hierarchy. Under this model pure Python and CLI code catching their own exceptions will work the same. When the two worlds collide, i.e when pure Python code tries to catch a CLI exception or when pure CLI code tries to catch a Python exception, the system will convert the exception to the required type.

For example, if the Python code raises EOFError, the CLI code will see an EndOfStreamException. If the CLI code raises FileIOException, the Python code will see an IOError. The error mappings happen automatically.

Some problems still remain unsolved - like what the user should see as an exception traceback; should it be pure Python exceptions or .NET ? The current thinking is that the language should allow both forms in a user-configurable way.

One issue with this model is that in order to map CLI exceptions to Python exceptions you need to go through some kind of mapping for CLI to Python exceptions; this could slow things down a bit. Also, the model requires rethrowing of exceptions whenever the CLI and Python worlds collide.

It will be interesting to wait and watch how the new model develops.

The new exception model is described in detail in this Channel 9 wiki posting.

Back to Bangalore

I came back to Bangalore after six and a half fine days in Norway on 1st early morning, 2 am. The flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore took 8 hours.

The photo album is at Y! which is online here.

After spending six days at near and below zero temperatures in Norway, Bangalore is feeling hot.

Workshop in Norway

I am leaving tonight (Nov 24 2005, 2.15 am) to Grimstad, Norway for taking part in the 2nd international EIAO conference and workshop. This conference is organised by AUC as part of the EIAO project.

I will be making a small presentation on D-HarvestMan. I am returning to India on 1st Dec.

Here is a brief abstract of the proceedings in Grimstad.

2nd international EIAO conference and worskhop

24.11.05
1. Presentation of overall timeplan
2. Presentation of preliminary Observatory anatomy
3. WAM coordination (D3.1.1, UWEM, D5.1.1.1 and D5.1.1.2 )
4. Coordination of WP3, WP4 and WP5 release 1.0 time plans
5. Overall release 1.0 planning and actions

25.11.05

1. Welcome Mikael Snaprud
2. D-Crawler - Anand B. Pillai
3. Presentation of anatomy methodology Alf Fredvik
4. SW development process Design and test. Parastoo Mohagheghi, 
Per Wollebæk

26.11.05 and 27.11.05

1. Presentation of overall timeplan
2. Presentation of preliminary Observatory anatomy
3. Development of a DW anatomy
4. Description of each anatomy
5. Scheduling of each anatomy
6. SW development process (Design and test)
7. Coordination of WP6 and WP5 release 1.0 time plans
8. Overall release 1.0 planning and actions

28.11.05 
Follow ups and documentation
1. Inspection and adjustment of plans for each anatomy
2. Strategy for outreach and dissemination towards 
and after release 1.0
3. Summary and outlook - HarvestMan as a vehicle for 
research based teaching

Internet Summit in Tunis

The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), dubbed as the "Internet Showdown" by CNET, is being held under the aegis of the U.N in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia at present.

Dr.Mikael Snaprud of the EIAO project presented a paper in the conference(Past, Presence and Future of Research in the Information Society) associated to this summit on Nov 15. The paper talks about the role open source plays in ICT education and research, with the EIAO project as the background. The presentation associated with this paper is available at the EIAO Publications website.

The paper is authored by Mikael Snaprud, Agata Sawicka, Anand Pillai(myself), Nina Olsen, Morten.G.Olsen, Vidar Laupsa and Terje Gjøsæter.

D-HarvestMan prototype is born

It is 2.30 am in the morning right now. I am in a good mood. The reason is that I just finished coding and testing the basic D-HarvestMan prototype for a single master, single slave configuration. And it works! The master was able to successfully bootstrap the slave crawler with a new domain and let it start downloading files from it. Hip hip hooray!

D-HarvestMan is a project to write a distributed crawler on top of the existing HarvestMan. Distributed programming is always exciting, and a distributed crawler is even more so :-)

The fox is one year old

Firefox turned one year old on Nov 9, two days back. The wily fox has set the web on fire, ever since it debuted on Nov 9 2004. With the 1.5 final release on the way, it is well on course to capture further market share from the beleaguered I.E .

Three cheers to the Firefox team and wish all the best to the fox for its second year!

OOo plugin for Firefox

In the context of my previous post, it is interesting to see that people have already talked about how an OOo plugin for Firefox can be a killer collaboration application on par with MS Sharepoint.

Apparently a Mozilla plugin is already available in OOo 2.0. The problem with it is that you enable the plugin from inside OOo, which requires that OOo is already installed in your machine.

From the Mozilla OOo plugin specification,

"Plug-in usability

The plug-in works only if a working OpenOffice.org installation is found on the system""

This reduces the usability of the plugin, I think. Developing a light-weight OOo plugin for Mozilla/Firefox which can be installed on the fly could be pretty useful.

Some random thoughts on a web-based office suite

Ever since Sun and Google announced their partnership early in October, speculation has been rife on the possibility of a web-based office suite, aptly titled "GoogleOffice". However, there has not been any strong indication of such an effort underway. In fact a number of industry watchers were disappointed when Google and Sun announced that the initial collaboration would be on bundling the Google toolbar with Java runtime downloads.

Now that Microsoft is alligning itself as a services provider and trying to offer integrated solutions by bundling its diverse product portfolio (Office, MSN, messenger etc) along with its new service initiatives (Windows Live, Office Live), it is probably time that Google looked into countering these overtures with appropriate answers - I think there is nothing more fitting here than an office solution which integrates Gmail, Google Talk, Google Desktop and the Firefox web browser.

Perhaps such an effort is already underway in Google Labs. However, here is my vision for such a solution, a kind of blue print for a future GoogleOffice on the web.

Google office will be a collaborative suite integrating Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Talk and Firefox. Ideally it should have the following components:

1. An open-office plugin for Firefox
2. An extension to Google desktop that allows Gmail attachments to be searched and accessed.
3. An extension to Google talk that allows members to access attachments in their Gmail account and also share files and folders through Google Desktop.

Let me explain:

1. The Firefox plugin will allow one to view Openoffice documents inside the Firefox web-browser. Initially this need to support only OOo native file formats and the OpenDocument format, but MS office support would be preferable.
2. Right now attachments cannot be searched in Gmail. Google needs to add this capability to Gmail. Attachments can be searched by name, but they also need to be searchable by content.
3. Google desktop integrates with Gmail, but again attachments are not searchable or accessible. This capability need to be added to Google Desktop so that one can search and access documents stored as attachments in his Gmail id through Google Desktop.
4. The same capability should be added to Google Talk so that one can search for attached documents from Google Talk.
5. Integration between Google Talk and Google Desktop so that chatters can share documents with each other and search each others desktop, given sufficient access control privileges.

All these pieces will allow for a basic GoogleOffice over the web. Let us look at some common scenarios:

1. Someone is browsing in an Internet cafe - He wants to view an OOo document sent to his Gmail id as email attachment. Typically Internet cafes do not have OOo so he is at a loss (This happens to me quite often). This is where an OOo plugin for Firefox can help. Gmail need not know anything about this plugin. It can be a regular firefox plugin. In this case, Firefox will detect that the plugin is not installed, will download and install it automatically. Voila, you can view your OOo document inside firefox.

I dont think it will be too difficult to develop such a plugin, considering that the source code for OOo is open and the OOo file formats are well documented. This will also help in large scale acceptance of OOo file formats in a way similar to PDF. Editing capabilities will also be nice but this could be tough to implement in a browser plugin.

I would like to see plugins for all OOo file formats but specifically OOo writer (.sxw), OOo impress (.sxi) and the OpenDocument formats.

2. Adding capability to search and find attachments in Gmail will allow people to use Gmail as a sort of virtual storage for their documents (read office documents). I tend to do this even now, but because the attachments are not searchable, the experience is crippled. Initially these can be added for well known and open formats such as PDF and the OOo file formats.

3. Once Gmail is enhanced with advanced capabilities to search attachments, this capability should be integrated with Google desktop which can then index the attachments and make them searchable from the desktop. Considering the work involved in indexing large attachments, it actually makes sense to add this capabillity only to Google desktop rather than onto Gmail directly.

4. This opens up the possibility of integrating Firefox, Gmail and Google Desktop for searching, accessing and modifying office documents. One can use Google Desktop to search office doucments stored in his Gmail account, then open and edit them on his desktop inside Firefox using the OOo plugin. If OOo is installed on the machine already, it can be used instead.

5. The last missing piece is Google Talk. Google Talk should integrate with Google desktop allowing querying of documents (Gmail, desktop, photos etc) through Google Talk. Google should add capabilities to Google Talk which will make this possible not only on one's own desktop but across desktops.

That is, you can give privilges in Google Talk to selected Google Talk users (your friends, co-workers, family), to search and access documents from inside your desktop and also your Gmail id. These can be controlled by access at various levels - read-only, read-write etc.

If one finds documents of interest they can be shared and edited online. Google should provide something like a shared space for two interested parties to share documents as a part of Google talk. This space can either be part of Gmail or separate from it. However, it should allow for saving documents by multiple Google talk users, acting as a kind of collaborative space.


Thus Google Talk and Google desktop along with Gmail and Firefox can be used to build a virtual collaborative office suite on the web which if done well, can probably pose some compeition to Microsoft office solutions and the recent office collaboration initiatives. It will also allow to take the OOo efforts to the web and provide it as a part of a services offering instead of the current stand-alone product.

Perhaps this vision is a bit grand, but I don't think it is a difficult one for Google and the open source (read Openoffice) community. All the pieces are already there, they just require some additional capabilities and some plumbing to work as a unified, web-based solution.

I have not thought to deep about the technical aspects of such a solution but a very interesting thought will be the role Java and Google toolbar can play in this integrated approach. Perhaps Java can be used to develop the Firefox OOo plugin also.

I hope we can expect to see a web-based office solution from Google, Sun and the OOo community within the next 12 months.

FOSS.in

FOSS.in has published the second list of speakers of the event. Some notables who are speaking include the legendary Alan Cox, Danese Cooper, David Fetter, Jeremy Zawodny, Jonathan Corbet, Andrew Cowie, Harald Welte and Brian Behlendorf.

Murugan Pal is giving a talk on "Open source Alternatives".

Also the talk by Zaheda Bhorat of Google on Google and open source seems interesting.

FOSS.in is scheduled from 29th Nov to 2nd Dec 2005 at Bangalore.

On Open Voting

An article published in a local daily of Granite Bay, CA, talks about accountability and the Open Voting Consortium.

Read the article.

What is my interest in this ? Well, I happen to be part of the team that originally developed the OVC prototype, which was demonstrated in April 1 2004. The OVC project was my first experience in working for an international open source project. The architects of the system decided to use Python for the project, which was how I got interested in it.

I am also a founding member of the OVC.

International Conference on Digital Inclusion and Open Source

The annual conference on "Digal Inclusion and Open Source" took place in Oslo, Norway from Oct 20-21, 2005.

A paper co-authored by me, Parastoo Mohaghegi, Mikael Snaprud & Nils Ulltveit-Moe was presented in the conference. The paper highlights the activities of the EIAO project in bringing together users and external contributors from different parts of the world in an EU sponsored project.

Read the abstract of the paper.

HarvestMan web-site redesign

I have finally re-designed the HarvestMan web-site! It has been something I have been planning since the beginning of this year! When I finally did it, it took me only two days. Surprising, how much savings one can get in terms of time, if one really focuses on the task at hand.

Microsoft and JBoss shake hands

Probably bad news for LAMP and other open source stacks. Complete news is here.

Pyrex

I am currently learning Pyrex, a language designed to take the pain out of writing C-extension modules for Python.

I plan to rewrite performance intensive portions of HarvestMan using Pyrex. These enhancments will be available as part of the next major HarvestMan release, version 1.5.

Cathedral tries to recruit Bazaar!

No kidding :-). Microsoft apparently tried to recruit Eric Raymond. If you don't know who Eric Raymond is, spend your afternoon reading up the excellent Cathedral and Bazaar essays, some of the best essays written on the open source model. He also happens to be one of the co-founders of OSI. Talk about Bush trying to recruit Osama Bin Laden for homeland security!

Read more about Microsoft's Mea Culpa in this article posted on ESR's blog.

Standalone Executables on Windows using py2exe

The latest release of py2exe, namely py2exe 0.6.1 allows to create single executables on Windows. This is an improvement over the earlier versions which used to create a host of files around the main executable. I think the new feature is a welcome one, especially for a project like HarvestMan which has a number of dependencies. If you try to create an executable for HarvestMan with existing versions
of py2exe, you get quite a lot of .pyd files which are well, a bit confusing.

I am looking forward to create standalone executables for HarvestMan using the latest py2exe and provide downloads for them. I think this should boost the popularity of HarvestMan, since many Windows users I know could not be bothered with going through all the steps to install a pure Python package such as HarvestMan. Downloading and installing a single file executable is much easier.

Expect win32 downloads of HarvestMan soon. Three cheers to py2exe and Thomas Heller.

Uraga is dead - Long live Uraga!

Uraga is dead. Swaroop has confirmed this in a post to BangPypers.
I long doubted this might be the case, since there was no mention of Uraga in Swaroop's blog for quite some time. The reason he cites is job pressure; as if guys who contribute to open source do not do justification to their daily job! It sounds ironic, to say the least.

I have a principle which I apply in any open source or professional work I undertake; that is, if I propose an idea, I will try at least to do a basic prototype implementation of the same. More so, if I am talking and letting the world know about it. It is a basic contract that one should have to the community with which one interacts, especially when one tries to market the community with the tag of his idea. In this case, the community is BangPypers and the idea is Uraga of course.

If you don't fulfill this basic social contract, then you are not fit to be an open source contributor, let alone an open source project initiator. I hope some of the new-age geeks who looks to open source for quick stardom realizes this.

Design Patterns - Modelling the Singleton in Python

Singleton is a design pattern that seems to interest everyone, especially in the Python world.

I was doing a Google search on the ways in which Python implements the Singleton design pattern.

The results showed that in doing this in Python, you are limited only by your imagination. Unlike C++ or Java, you are not limited to a certain strategy of modeling the Singleton in Python.

I thought it was a good idea to gather the different Singleton solutions in Python and post it in a single post (pun intended) here. In this post, I list seven ways of modelling the Singleton in Python which looks elegant to me. I am not including some overly verbose or cryptic solutions which you will find if you perform the Google search above.

Though I have no preference for any particular solution, I have ordered them in the order of what I think is the least elegant solution, to the most elegant one. Of course this is purely personal! :-)

A word of caution: Except for the Borg solution, the rest of them will work only with new style classes. Also note that some solutions are exactly the same, though they look different. I have explained them as we go along.

The most basic solution overrides the __new__ method in an outer class, returning an instance of an inner class as the Singleton. Here it is:

class Singleton1(object):
    """ Singleton by overriding __new__ and using an inner
class by using new style classes """

   class __Singleton(object):
       pass

   __instance = None
  
   def __new__(cls):
       if not Singleton1.__instance:
           Singleton1.__instance = Singleton1.__Singleton()
       return Singleton1.__instance

Here is this solution in action:

s1=Singleton1()
print s1
s2=Singleton1()
print s2
s3=Singleton1()
print s3
<__main__.__Singleton object at 0x009F1390>
<__main__.__Singleton object at 0x009F1390>
<__main__.__Singleton object at 0x009F1390>

Clearly the drawback with this solution is that it is not a Singleton in its true sense. The Singleton class does not return an instance of itself, but an instance of an inner class. In other words, what appears to be the Singleton class is actually a class wrapper around an inner class, which is the actual Singleton. Not very elegant.

The next solution fixes this problem. It works directly with the guts of the class by accessing the classe's dictionary.

class Singleton2(object):

""" Singleton by using new style classes """

    def __new__(cls):
        if not '_the_instance' in cls.__dict__:
            cls._the_instance = object.__new__(cls)
        return cls._the_instance

All right. Is there something magical about the _the_instance attribute ? Nothing. So why can't we replace it with a direct class level attribute? Yes, you can though there is not much difference in both technically. However, it looks like a kind of combination of the first solution with the second one (which it is not), so here it is for illustration purposes.

class Singleton3(object):

    """ Singleton by using direct class attribute
access without using cls.__dict__. This might
look different from Singleton2, but in fact
it is the same. """

    __instance = None
   
    def __new__(cls):
        if not Singleton3.__instance:
            Singleton3.__instance = object.__new__(cls)
        return Singleton3.__instance

All right. Enough of fooling around with classes directly. Can't we do this by using metaclass magic? Looks like you can. And with most metaclass solutions, it seems to be somehow more elegant than directly putting the logic inside the class!

Here is the solution from Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Python.

class SingletonMetaClass(type):
def __init__(cls,name,bases,dict):
super(SingletonMetaClass,cls)    .__init__(name,bases,dict)
original_new = cls.__new__
def my_new(cls,*args,**kwds):
 if cls.instance == None:
   cls.instance =         original_new(cls,*args,**kwds)
 return cls.instance
cls.instance = None
cls.__new__ = staticmethod(my_new)

class Singleton4(object):
__metaclass__ = SingletonMetaClass

The idea is to override the __new__ method of the object's class right in it's metaclass's __init__ method. This is done the first time the object is created. The overrided __new__ works quite similar to the one in Singleton1,Singleton2 and Singleton3. Thereafter, everytime you create an object of Singleton4, it will call the __init__ in its metaclass where the magic happens.

The elegancy of this solution comes from the fact that, the extra code for the class is just one line, where we assign the __metaclass__ attribute. All the magic resides in the metaclass, which allows one to quickly convert his class to a Singleton by adding just this one line.

NOTE: In fact the metaclass solutions for Singletons (or any other patterns for that matter) are not class scoped solutions, but type scoped ones. It might take some time to wrap your head around that, if you come from a C++ background.

But does this look a bit cryptic? Well, I should say yes since it took some time for me to figure out what is happening here. Apparently, you don't need to take all that trouble to get it right. Here is the above solution re-written, but without the inner function and all that.

class SingletonMetaClass(type):

    """ Singleton using metaclasses by overriding
the __init__ method, 2nd version. """

    def my_new(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        if not cls.instance:
            cls.instance = object.__new__(cls)
        return cls.instance
           
    def __init__(cls, name, bases, dct):
        super(SingletonMetaClass, cls).__init__(name, bases, dct)
        cls.instance = None
        cls.__new__ = cls.my_new

class Singleton5(object):
    __metaclass__ = SingletonMetaClass

The above solution is a re-write of Singleton4, but lesser cryptic and more readable.

Is that all you can do with metaclasses and the Singleton in Python? The answer is No. Looks like there is a much more elegant way of doing this using metaclasses. It is done by overriding
the __call__ method in the metaclass, instead of the __init__ method. This solution is the ASPN Python Cookbook Recipe #412551 by Daniel Brodie. I am just copying it here.

class SingletonMetaClass(type):

    """ Singleton using metaclasses by overriding the __call__ method.
          Original code courtesy from ASPN Python Cookbook recipe number
          412551 """

    def __init__(self, *args):
        type.__init__(self, *args)
        self._instances = {}

    def __call__(self, *args):
        if not args in self._instances:
            self._instances[args] = type.__call__(self, *args)
        return self._instances[args]

class Singleton6(object):
    __metaclass__ = SingletonMetaClass

Before I conclude, I should include one of the most ingenious methods of doing the Singleton in Python, created by Alex Martelli. This is the so-called Borg non-pattern. This and the concept of non-patterns is discussed in detail here.

The Borg is unique in that it re-defines the problem Singleton is trying to solve. Instead of trying to ensure that the unique instance maps to a unique memory location, Borg ensures that the state of the various instances are shared and hence the various instances are in effect, the same. In other words, Borg focuses on object equivalence instead of object identity which is what Singleton offers.

Here is the Borg non-pattern, applied to the Singleton problem.

class Singleton7:

    """ Alex martelli's Borg non-pattern. Not exactly
    a singleton. Focus on equivalence of state rather than the
    uniqueness of the Singleton instance """

    __shared_state = {}
    def __init__(self):
        self.__dict__ = self.__shared_state

Here is the Borg non-pattern in action.

s1=Singleton7()
# Set s1's state
s1.x = 100
print s1.__dict__
s2=Singleton7()
print s2.__dict__
s3=Singleton7()
print s3.__dict__

{'x': 100}
{'x': 100}
{'x': 100}

Well, according to me, that is the most elegant one. Instead of solving the Singleton problem directly, it solves the problem that the Singleton is trying to solve, which is that of ensuring
unique state across instances.

That is the end of my first post on Python and Design patterns. I hope to add more in the future, on the rest of the Gang of four Design Patterns.

Freezope is down

Freezope is down since yesterday. I was planning to make the 1.4.5 beta 1 release of HarvestMan today, but it looks like I cannot provide any updates on the HarvestMan site till freezope comes back up.

I might still make the files public at BerliOS and make the freshmeat and PyPI announcement today or tomorrow. There won't be any update at the site of course, but that can wait till freezope is back on track.

Apple? - Not on BillG's map

The latest offering from Redmond, MSN Virtual Earth beta is making the buzz for all the wrong reasons.

The Register reports that Apple HQ is nowhere to be found on MSN virtual earth. Apparently, MSN virtual earth has chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center towers too. Looks like the images Microsoft used is way too old.

Clearly, MS has pushed a hastily built software that has not undergone enough testing to make even to alpha stage, as a beta. The stunt is an apparent knee-jerk reaction to the buzz Google is making with its map service and Google Earth. This is supposed to be a competition to Google Earth, but clearly the features or stability to be a credible competitor are missing. This is when Google has upped its sights and started to map the moon!

My gripes about MSN Virtual Earth.

1. The images are way too old. The image quality and resolution is way lacking when compared to Google Earth. Since MS seems to have used U.S.G.S archives which are 10 years old, this is to be expected. But hey, we are talking about one of the richest companies in the world. Surely they could have done better.

2. The map is not as responsive to panning as Google maps. The tiling does not work very well, often leaving large patches of yellow rectangles without resolving the underlying geography. Also, the maps load pretty slowly and often you are left staring at blank patches of screen for seconds before the tiled images start loading. You almost end up thinking that the server has stopped responding. Yeah, I am on 256 kbps broadband, not dial-up :-) .

3. Screws up Firefox. After some panning and zooming, some buttons on Firefox (I am using 1.0.5) does not work well. And hey, why does it disable my "Back" button?

4. "Locate me" feature. I don't understand the actual need for such a feature except for generating buzz. The feature requires ActiveX which I think is one-step backwards for Microsoft for making this technology work with other browsers such as Firefox. The I.P address based location does not work very well. It located me in Bombay, India whereas I am actually in Bangalore.

5. Sticky mouse buttons: The left mouse click tends to "stick" on the page. So even after I release the mouse button and move the mouse, the image keeps panning. I have to click the left mouse button once more to "release" the "stickiness".

6. The stupid compass: Why do you need that? It just eats up space on the map and is really not very useful.

7. Interface quality: The interface seems hastily thrown together and not well thought out. It is counter-intuitive if you are used to Google maps since the search and address box is on the left rather than on the right as in Google. To me, right position seems more intuitive and user friendly since that means the map does not overlap on the right edge of my screen and looks solid. Also, MS seemed to have not done much research on how surrounding colors affect the users ability to effectively view the maps. The choice of colors and color contrast leaves a lot to be desired. If I were the engineer, I would replace that stupid blue overlay on the top with something that increases the contrast and is less straining on the eyes.

The pluses.

1. It occupies more screen area than Google maps. Clearly this is an advantage.
2. Seems to show more places in India than Google. Hell, it even shows some obscure towns and villages in Kerala, my native state. Google maps suck in that respect.


Conclusion: Not enough reasons for anyone to switch to Virtual Earth if he/she is already using Google earth/google maps. I think MS should apologize, rename the release to MSN VE alpha, work on it a bit more and release a much better, user-friendly and fast beta. Then I would agree that it is competition.

Apple - An "i" for Innovation

iMac, iPod, iTunes - Popular brand names from a company known for its innovative products - Apple.

Now it has become official. In a Businessweek poll conducted among top executives from across the planet, Apple won the top slot for the most innovative company, with nearly 25% of the votes.

3M came second with nearly 12% of the votes, followed by Microsoft. Big Blue came a distant 7th after GE, Sony and Dell in that order.

Another feather in the innovative cap of CEO Steve Jobs.

Way to go Apple! Well done.

Hasta-la-Vista Windows!

Microsoft has re-christened its unborn poster child,
"Windows Longhorn" as "Windows Vista".

The marketing speak from Microsoft is that Windows Vista brings clarity to the connected world.

Personally, I think "Longhorn" was much better than "Vista" though it gave rise to subtle bovine references.

It will be no wonder if the naming turns out to be prescient and puts an end to Microsoft monopoly on the desktop, considering the rate at which features are getting axed from Longhorn aka Vista.
(Also read Steven J Vaughan Nichols' article on axing of Monad from Longhorn).

Is it time yet to say "Hasta-la-Vista Microsoft"? Let us wait and watch.

Longhorn Screenshots

Some screenshots of Longhorn have made it to a few blogs today. The news has also hit Slashdot. The winbeta.org site claims that this cannot be part of Longhorn Beta1, since the build number 5203 is not part of the Beta1 builds, which means it must be a leak from inside Microsoft.

The screenshots show a system which looks like a modified Windows XP with transparency and some other eye candy and a black theme. Nothing great when you consider that this system was supposedly 5 years in the making.

Microsoft cannot even do a copy job well. ;-)

Btw, I have added a few screenshots right here with the new photo feature of blogger.

Originals, courtesy xerocool.

---

Europe says no to software patents

On July 6, the European parliament decided
by a large majority to reject the software patents directive.
This is great news for the FOSS community and open software
innovation in general. The patent directive was a looming threat for
software innovation in Europe, since it threatened to bring
into legislation, the US style practice of supporting patents
in software and business processes.

Redhat and Sun Microsystems worked with the
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) to bring about this victory for those who value free and
open source software.

This should be a blow to Microsoft's business aspirations in Europe
and should help the Linux community.

Guido did not create Python!

Well, you and me know that the title of this post is not true, but that is not what Mark Joseph Edwards would have us believe, given a chance.

In an article on Windows IT Pro Magazine introducing IronPython, he writes...

"You might have heard of Python, a popular and powerful cross-platform open-source programming language. Python, which is the creation of Jim Hugunin..."

I am not sure how many Pythonistas read Windows IT Pro, but I won't suggest it to someone who is new to Python, for reasons that are very clear. :-)

IronPython, Boo and Smallscript

What do the terms IronPython,Boo and Smallscript have in common?

Well, before you type an entry into dictionary.com, let me tell
you that these are all relatively new language implementations for the CLR provided by the .NET platform.

IronPython is a supposedly faster implementation of CPython for .NET, which allows you to extend Python on .NET with C# and other .NET static languages.

Boo is a new, statically typed OO language for .NET with a Python-inspired syntax, but without it's dynamic typing overhead. Boo claims to be as fast as C# or VB.net on the .NET platform.

Smallscript provides the new S# language, a modular re-design of the Smalltalk language, designed to work with .NET and the AOS common language platform which supports dynamic languages.

IronPython had initially hogged the limelight, but after the
creator Jim Hugunin was appointed by Microsoft, it has become something of a one-man-show instead of becoming a true peer reviewed open source project.

Best Essays on Software in 2004

I found a post on the best essays on software in 2004 at Max Ischenko's blog today and felt that I should make a mention of it in my blog.

The discussion started in the popular Joel on software, when Joel asked his readers to post
essays which they consider are the best on software related topics in 2004..

Go to: Best essays on software in 2004.

Logix Talk

I should be blogging more often, but some how I have to put a lot of mental effort to get my ideas into words most of the time, which makes me a pathetic blogger ;-)

Well, I had a nice trip to Norway last week where I met with some cool folks at Agder University College with a vision to create accessibility metrics in order to improve European web sites. I am involved in the project because they are using HarvestMan web crawler, as part of the crawler component in the project. I have to blog about it separately, since there is a lot to write. However, here are some quick links:

• Web
  accessibility and meta-modeling workshop on 15th April 2005


• European Internet Accessibility Observatory Home Page

Hey, I am diverting... This post is about the upcoming talk on Logix, a multi-language programming system developed by Tom Locke. He says has "outsourced himself" to Bangalore for developing and popularising Logix here. The idea is to allow the Python developer to create his own languages and schema
by using a meta-language model.

I think it is ideally suited for tasks such as meta-modeling which is one important aspect of EIAO. Perhaps the EIAO folks will look into Logix for developing some of their metamodeling components. It could also be used for developing software modeling techniques similar to UML, specific to Python.

The talk is on May 7th at the regular venue for BangPypers meetings, i.e at ThoughtWorks, Diamond District. For more information see my post at BangPypers
regarding the talk here. For marking your calendars, go here.

BangPypers is turning out to be an important forum for presenting Python related
technologies and reaching out to the Python community here. The Logix talk is yet another achievement which shows the popularity of BangPypers.

If you are in Bangalore on May 7th and you like the idea of multi-language programming, it might be a good idea to drop in at ThoughtWorks by 5.00 pm to attend Tom's talk.

Yahoooooooooo!

Yahoo! completed 10 years on 3rd March.
Yahoo!, which started off as a search-engine has now diversified into many areas, so that it is not perceived any more as specialising in any single vertical. Meanwhile Google has beaten Yahoo! as the top search engine.

Yahoo! is remarkable in that it has survived the dotcom bubble and the meltdown of the Internet during early 2000. When many search engines and web startups such as Altavista, Excite, Lycos, Go.com, Snap etc fell down by the wayside, Yahoo! is still going strong with a 50 billion $ market cap.

Google has been the leader in taking new technologies to the market, with Yahoo! being forced to follow-up. The new Yahoo! search has borrowed a lot of concepts from the Google, not just the look n feel. Google has been the pioneer in broadening the search market from simple keyword/directory search to specific search verticals such as newsgroup search, image search, catalog search, product search, scholar search, news search, video search etc.

However Yahoo! has improved their search tremendously since they parted ways with Google last year. Though forced to do catch-up, Yahoo! seems to be doing a good job of it now a days, with Microsoft tagging along.

So who will win the search war ultimately? One yer back I would have confidently said "Google" (Yahoo! who?) but not anymore. The field is wide open once more.

Microsoft gets "Groovy"

Microsoft recently acquired Groove Networks and Ray Ozzie in one shot. Ozzie will become one of the three CTOs at Microsoft, taking care of collaborative software, for the evil empire.

So what is the big deal? From Microsoft point of view, it is another one of the acquisitions which appears to give an "edge" to its products. Groove is basically a peer to peer computing system over a secure internet connection which allows people to share documents over a network, creating a kind of virtual office. Microsoft has been an early investor in Groove, providing it funding as early as 2001. Ozzie has also aligned himself nicely with Microsoft since his days as the chief architect of Lotus Notes at IBM. Thus the acquisition is not a big surprise at all.

Ozzie has been successful in aligning his software ideas with the biggies in the game, since 1984. He worked for Lotus in developing Lotus Notes and later on continued his work at IBM, when IBM acquired Lotus. He left Lotus and IBM to start Groove in 1997 and aligned his work with Microsoft. Bill Gates, who is not too lavish in encomiums, have praised Ozzie as one of the best programmers in the universe. However tall that might sound to be, one has to accept that Ozzie is a shrewd guy with his software, and knows to position himself correctly in the market.

Ozzie is surely one of the most influential programmers of the 90s and can be credited with inventing the groupware class of software products, along with pioneers such as Mitch Kapor. It will be interesting to see how his ideas and vision will work at Microsoft, and whether the addition of Ozzie as CTO, will improve the technical quality of Microsoft products in areas where they lack sorely such as security. Ozzie has had a lot of success as an independent programmer and team leader, but it remains to be seen how that experience helps in shaping the future of collaborative software at a company of the size of Microsoft.

Economics of the Bazaar

If you have been associated to opensource software in an intimate way, say as a programmer, business developer or the marketing/sales person, you must have asked yourself this question at some point.

"How can opensource software be a viable business? How do you make money by creating software whose source code is free?"

Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the OSI (Open Source Initiative) has some interesint insights on this. According to him, open source reduces the costs for your business IT infrastructure so that you save money which can be used for creating software that differentiates your business from others. In other words, you can spend your money on researching and developing your actual technology instead of spending it on buying up software infrastructure. The money you save becomes additional profit or can be spent on other areas where it is required.

Well I never looked at open source from that point of view. I think this comes from the my programmer's mindset where the focus is immediately set on the free and available source code rather than thinking about the economics behind it.

Bruce's article contrasts the open source model with other software development models and points out the benefits of the open source economy. The complete article can be found here. A must read for any open source afficianado.

Daily Python Url!

I am a regular reader of Daily Python Url which gives a snapshot of the daily happenings in the Python universe. It is powered by Blogger.

For the last week, the blog has been almost dead. I was getting the same old page, last posted on 3rd March. Today I came to know the reason :-)



2005-03-10

(no posts? some editors are on vacation, the rest of us are just lazy. and blogger sucks. postings will resume shortly. stay tuned.)



Well guys, shrug off your laziness and get a fresh start! I think that the Daily Python Url is too important for the Python community to be given such a cold shoulder!

IBM Redux

I just finished reading the book "IBM Redux" by Doug Garr. The book is all about the business turn around by IBM in the last decade under the leadership of the previous CEO, Lou Gerstner.

The book is a great read on how corporations behave and gives many insights into how a gigantic corporation like IBM works. It is quite eloquent in its praise for Gerstner, though his not-so-amiable personality and ego-centric nature is pointed out as personal drawbacks. However, the book lays no doubt on who is responsible for the bounce back by IBM from the bottomless quagmire it found itself in the beginning of the 90s.

It also has a few interesting anecdotes such as IBM's role in the 1994 Atlanta Olympics and the PR disaster which ensued. A few pages are also devoted to the much hyped Garry Kasparov - Deep Blue face-off in 1997.

The book follows a rather chronological style, starting from the events that lead to Gerstner's heading IBM, and ending with the peak of Gerstner's rule at 1999, when he is sitting pretty at the top and is percieved widely as the saviour of IBM. The author follows the style of chipping in with a few anecdotes and history pieces here and there which sometimes is against the flow of reading. However, he cannot be charged on missing out a single piece of event which impacted the computer & software technology landscape during 1993-1999, where IBM played a part, either as the vanquisher or as the vanquished (Remember OS/2 Anyone?).

All in all a good read and a book recommended to anyone interested in the history of technology.

Some links worth reading about Lou Gerstner and his life.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-828095.html
http://www.forbes.com/2002/11/11/cx_ld_1112gerstner.html
http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/eng/team/l5-team861.html
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9114982

The BangPypers

First of all, the introduction -> The BangPypers are a group of Python enthusiasts in the city of Bangalore where I live.

How did BangPypers come into being? It all started on Dec 27 2004, when I was browsing the Daily Python Url blog and saw a post mentioning that "Chennai Python Meetup is on...". I followed the link and found out about the Meetup.com site. I was surprised to learn that there were already many Python meetup groups at the site http://python.meetup.com. Well I mused that if the Chennaites can come up with a Python meetup group, the Bangaloreans can come up with one too and do it in a better manner, considering that Bangalore is the tech hub of India.

I scourged the python meetup site for any Bangalore Python meetup groups. There was one, a dysfunctional group that called themselves "Bengalru Python meetup group" with 5 members and looking for an organizer. I initially joined them and posted a message.

The next day, I checked the site. There was no reply for my post and I realized that the group was quite dead. Bengaluru might be the original name of Bangalore in Kannada, but it is of course more popular and better known as "Bangalore" itself.

I created the "Bangalore Python meetup group" on Dec 28. The first few members to join were my friends who I invited - Anish Damodaran, Indrajith. I also sent an invitation to Premshree Pillai and posted in comp.lang.python about the news.

There was good response over the many days that followed with 16 members joining till Jan 7 2005. Swaroop published about the group in his blog on Jan 7th and the response increased, which shows the popularity of his blog. I have captured some interesting statistics on this in a post to the BangPypers group.

We had the first meeting at Ebony Restaurant, Barton Center, M.G Road on Jan 22nd. 10 guys including me attended. We decided to form the Yahoo! group and also a website. The idea for Project Uraga was also born. It was a fun night, though I had some personal expenditure which I expect the group to make up over time. :-)

I created the Y! group with the name "BangPypers" on 24 Jan 2005. We have a lot of activity in the group and it still must be one of the Yahoo! groups with the highest traffic. The group currently has 75 members most of who are in Bangalore. There are a sizeable number of non-Bangaloreans too. The first month had 101 messages, Feb had a whopping 364 messages! March has just started and we already have 25 messages over the last 4 days.

We had the first "technical meetup" of the group at ThoughtWorks on Feb 19 2005. You can read all about it here .

A website at http://www.bangpypers.org is also registered. Many thanks to Ramdas S of Developer IQ for doing the same. The website work has not started off however. We also have a Google group of the same name. All posts to Y! BangPypers gets mirrored to the Google BangPypers.

If you love Python and you are a Bangalorean, you should join BangPypers :-) . Well, you are invited to join even if you are a non-Bangalorean. BangPypers is the second biggest Python meetup group in the world, so we are on the world-map of Python, just like Bangalore is on the world-map for technology.

My Blog is up!

After trying to set up a number of blogs on many different sites, I have finally found time
and patience to create a blog of my own... hip hip hooray!

The setup is not complete. You can find details about me and my work once I set it up properly.