I’m going to rewrite FLJUD as soon as I’ve finished moving in. I released it as a sort of experimental beta over a year ago, not expecting it to get much attention, but there are now quite a few users (some at rather large organisations), too many bugs and even some patches from users. I’ve got features in some of my other Jabber components that would be good in Fljud too. Most of all, the Jabber specs have settled and formed into IETF standards (XMPP), and Fljud does not conform to the XMPP spec in it’s rather unorthodox form fields. Time to implement lots of nice new JEP features instead: Data Forms, Disco, Feature Negotiation, and lots more.

That’s the plan. More news as reality intervenes - at the very least, I’ll get an intermediate patched version 0.5 up in the next couple of weeks.

It’s a standard plot element of Chinese/Hong Kong cinema: send a lone policeman to sort out a big problem far away. Probably Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Sammo Hung. Improbable, but fun.

But in real life, when the UN requests help from China (problems in Afghanistan), China sends… one policeman!

“Zhang Ming, a policeman with experience fighting drug trafficking in Hainan Province, south China, will leave for Afghanistan on January 16 on a UN peacekeeping mission.”

He’s probably an intelligence advisor rather than an action hero type, but wait for the ‘true story’ film.

Link: China sends police officer on UN peacekeeping mission to Afghanistan

Imperial justice in Iraq? Three men, one of whom threw away an object that could have been a weapon, and one who seems to have just been driving past on a tractor, are judged to be The Enemy and executed by an Apache helicopter crew. One of them isn’t vapourised by gunfire and crawls away injured, so it takes another burst of 30mm gunfire to kill him.

There’s been no contextual information (or official justification) released for this clip. It seems to be spreading as juvenile entertainment rather than evidence something very worrying. If these men had just fired a missile, then returning fire would be acceptable, but the clip seems to show something closer to indiscriminate assassination (if they were following a suspect) or just plain murder. Bear in mind that a group of ‘resistance fighters’ captured and interogated recently turned out to be a Reuters film crew.

Link: Apache killing video becomes viral news (Yes, but I’m not passing it on with a “woo hoo!” noise)

Link: Rules of Engagement (Notice how the title of the story contains a hint of ethical concern

Monocultures are bad: the dominance of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office is a great example of this, often cited by Open Source advocates.

One system in use almost everywhere means that one common set of weaknesses is also almost everywhere, and other systems/cultures shape themselves to depend on the monoculture. Monocultures are stable in the short term but prone to sudden collapse, causing much wider damage to dependant neighbours. Variety, adaptability and competition are better: for genes, societies and software.

This is why the fantastic success of Apache is beginning to worry me. According to Netcraft’s recent survey of web servers, almost 70% of active web sites are provided by Apache. Companies are (understandably) dumping Microsoft’s IIS, and most are then moving to Apache.

I like Apache - it’s well documented, powerful, flexible, reliable and truly free software. The Apache project is a model of good open source development. But it’s still becoming a monoculture, and even with its excellent reputation for security, a major flaw in Apache could cause immense problems for the Internet. We need more heavyweight web servers - most alternatives to Apache are either specialised or lightweight, and once you’ve enjoyed Apache’s feature set it’s difficult to change to much more limited software.

I almost wish IIS was better.

After reading Ben Hammersley’s post about body armour, I have to admit I’m strangely tempted too.

This one looks good. And available in a range of colours!

Ben goes to places like Afghanistan, and I’m moving to Manchester, which isn’t quite the same.

A. needs programing work, I need a change, career, wider experience. So I’ve got myself a new job in Manchester, and we’re moving there in a couple of weeks.

I’ll be a smaller fish in an enormously big pond, which, to over-extend a metaphor, gives me more room to grow. And A. will be in a town with about ten times the employment opportunities. If only it didn’t also have ten times as many job-hunters. We’ve always wanted to try living in a city centre flat, so that’s another big change: I’ll be ten minutes walk from just about anything I’d want to visit. No more trains and taxi, no more commute.

We’re both generally quiet, settled types, and the move disrupts everything. We’re having to get rid of many possessions, leave our home of almost nine years, loose our Internet connection for weeks (sob), and possibly pay an amazingly large amount to move our remaining stuff (books seem to cost more than furniture).

I’ve never really felt that I belonged in Newcastle, but at the same time, it’s where I’ve spent most of my adult life, and my friends are here.

On the other hand, I’ll be living five minutes from Manchester’s ‘china town’ area. Mmmm.

A Usenet (newsgroup) discussion on ‘F/18 Interceptor’ for the Amiga has been slowly growing for over 12 years.

Link: F/A 18 interceptor

Computers need to do more of this sort of thing: as you type a US zip code, the map visually narrows the code’s coverage down to the precise location on a map of the USA.

It’s interesting to see how the very finite namespace of the zip number is divided across the different regions. If settlement patterns change a great deal, the allocations wouldn’t work. They’d have to add a number!

Link: Zipdecode

One of the fascinatings things about Christian fundamentalists is that although they claim the Bible (usually the rather dodgy King James version) is literally the word of God, to be obeyed in its entirety, they actually ‘pick and choose’ at least as much as the more liberal, “unorthodox” varieties of Christianity*. I’d like to see a bible colour-coded into overlapping areas that show which bits are accepted/ignored by each major group.

Link: Things Creationists Hate

• For instance, I’ve yet to see people campaigning against the eating of scampi, crabsticks, lobsters or prawn cocktails**, a practice classed as “an abomination” in the bible, near the bit which condemns homosexual acts in religious ceremonies as “an abomination”.

** OK Sam, apart from vegetarian groups and UK government health advisors.

This site was an interesting read, and led me to read other OOP design articles and start rewriting much of Hippo, which had got much too bloated. It might now do slightly less than before, but it does it in a neater and faster way. Ah, the product-less joys of working to your own deadlines. Unfortunately I now can’t bear to see my old code. I’ll probably feel the same way next year.

Link: Perl Design Patterns