Life As It Comes

A relatively widely-used IDE for Java is called Eclipse. There’s a project at UC Davis, called code_swarm, which has an interesting visualization of the development of the Eclipse IDE over the years. You can check it out here.

There are also visualizations for Python, PostgreSQL, and Apache.

The human genome is increasingly studied and understood. Projects out of IBM’s Computational Biology group, such as The Genographic Project powered by technology on par with BlueGene, stand to change the way we look at heredity and ancestry. With that in mind, it is important to think about the ramifications this will have on the societal aspects of our everyday lives.

It is good to know that legislation such as the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is already making its way into the books.

IBM has released Lotus Symphony for free to the masses today. This is huge news in the office suite front. Lotus Symphony will compete directly with Microsoft Office (since it is enterprise-quality). Office lost a huge battle last week when Microsoft’s efforts to fast-track OOXML were voted down at ISO, and this, coupled with today’s launch of Google Presentations, is like a 1-2 punch.

Hooray for openness, innovation, and moving away from Microsoft’s propriety lock-down in yet another arena!

My patent:

System and Method for Protecting a Title Key in a Secure Distribution System for Recordable Media Content

has been granted by the USPTO.

That’s exciting!

Big news in the open Java community. Apache Harmony has requested in an open letter that Sun allow it to use the JCK freely.

I’m not sure what Sun will do here. If it does change the license to allow this, does that mean IBM will stop having to pay for it? It seems unlikely Sun will change the commercial license.

The JCK allows 3rd party Java/JVM distributors to test for compliance and claim compatibility with Sun Java. If you cannot pass the JCK, you cannot claim to be a true Java implementation.