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June 30, 2004
Utah Voting Equipment Selection Committee
The State of Utah's Voting Equipment Selection Committee is holding a public meeting tomorrow afternoon at 1pm in Price (in the Public Safety Building, 240 W. Main St.). This is the last public meeting before they release their RFP on July 6th. I'd love to attend but other appointments keep me from getting to Price. Is there anyone who can go, take notes, and send them in?
06:26 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Hatch and INDUCE
The Standard Examiner has an editorial on Senator Hatch's INDUCE Act which targets P2P technology in defense of the Music and Movie industries. I agree with what they've said. P2P is about much more than illegally sharing copyrighted materials. I believe INDUCE gives incumbent companies power to veto technology that threatens their business model regardless of its benefits in other areas. This is bad policy and bad business. Interestingly almost no one protected by this bill lives in Utah and Utah companies would be hurt disproportionately by this bill since they tend to be smaller and rely more on innovation to displace established companies.
10:48 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Dynamic Language Meets Dynamic Database
I'm working with Aradyme to help them develop product plans for the next version of their software. The core of Aradyme is a database with a dynamic schema. We decided today that Python will be the supported scripting language in the new version. Previous versions have used a homegrown scripting language. I saw a demo today of the Aradyme extension to Python that allows Aradyme databases to be manipulated directly from within the Python program. Its clean, simple, and performs well.
Making the decision to go with an established language was easy. Someone else is optimizing the interpreter, someone else is writing most of the documentation, and many people already know the language. Most important, there's a big chunk of code that we no longer have to write and maintain.
Python is a little tougher call. The criteria included finding a language that
- has an established developer community,
- is interpreted,
- uses dynamic types, and
- has a license that allows it to be embedded in a commercial product and freely redistributed
This led to a few choices including JavaScript, PHP, and Perl as well as Python. JavaScript is perceived as Web-only (and perceptions count). PHP is very SQL specific. Perl, much as I love it, wasn't acceptable to other members of the team. Python seemed the best choice. Dedicated developers in other languages would still be able to tie in through the C++ API, but the scripting language we will support is Python.
10:41 AM | Recommend This | Print This
J2EE Lead Programmer
Sento (I'm on the Board of Directors) is looking for a lead programmer with J2EE experience. The work is farily interesting: developing a next generation platform for their core business. The job is located in Utah. Send me and email with a resume if you're interested and I'll forward it on.
09:02 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Campaign Site Security
Wired News has a story about the lack of security on Bush and Kerry's campaign sites. This isn't that surprising. The interesting thing about campaigns is that they have a hard deadline. You can't slip. That puts tremendous pressure on the campaign to throw up the site quickly and concentrate on content and functionality. Of course, ignoring security is a risk and one that campaign managers are unlikely to understand fully. They'll pay more attention after a candidate is hurt because of poor Web site security.