Free as in Speech and Beer

This is just too funny, I had to share. Now you have your "free speech" and your "free beer" at the same time. Vores Øl version 1.0 would appear to be the first open source beer! It is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0. So check out their recipe and have your freedom, but please enjoy it responsibly.

CodeCon 2005

The program for CodeCon 2005 has been announced. CodeCon is the premier showcase of cutting edge software development. All presentations include working demonstrations, ideally accompanied by source code. Presentations are done by one of the active developers of the code in question and are of working code.

A very wide variety of topics are covered: Encryption (privacy), RSS, chat, Blogs, web development, etc. Check out the list and maybe I will see you there. It is being held in San Francisco CA from February 11th to the 13th, 2005 with the price being $80 at the door.

The program chair is Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent.

Comment SPAM

Well, it finally happened. I guess it was inevitable. There were 3 postings of comment spam. I deleted them and turned off anonymous posting. Sorry for any inconvenience. If you want to leave a comment then I guess you will need to sign up for a Blogger account to leave comments, or use the contact link to send me a message directly.

Requiring a login isn't as bad as disabling them completely as I understand that Typepad recently had to because comment spam was getting out of hand. I guess the spammers have migrated to Blogger blogs now.

Longhorn Wins Wired News' Vaporware Award

Longhorn Wins Wired News' Vaporware Award. Longhorn is the next OS from Microsoft. Originally scheduled for release in 2004 the ship date and features continue to slip. It is suggested that they might bundle it with Duke Nukem Forever, one of the other recurring winners.

The Gang Of Four Design Patterns in Delphi

Felix Colibri has converted the code examples from the Gang Of Four Design Patterns to the Delphi programming language. It sounds like he has done all the code samples, but specifically focused on the design patterns. Since it is just the code samples they don't do much good unless you have the book too. The examples were originally written in SmallTalk and C++.

4 hours of Yukon love. . .

Turns out you can get a double helping of developer group goodness on Thursday, January 6th (Tomorrow).

As you all know we have our usual first Thursday meeting at 7 PM. We will discuss our reading from Design Patterns Explained, have a couple Delphi component demos and maybe a demo of CodeSmith by Randy. In addition I just found out about an opportunity to take an in-depth look at SQL Server 2005 - Yukon from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. So that will give you enough time to eat and still make it to our meeting (you might think we planned it that way).

The staff at ExecuTrain is hosting local Microsoft SQL Server expert and Microsoft Regional Director Richard Hundhausen to present this 1/2 day technology seminar on SQL Server 2005. The Idaho DBA Association welcomes all members and associates to this excellent learning opportunity. Event registration and details to follow. The event will be held at the ExecuTrain facility on Maple Grove by Emerald.

I spoke with Richard briefly about the event. The way he describes it is "4 hours of Yukon love ... from a developer's point of view."

Admission is free. For more information visit www.idahodba.org, or just show up.

The one-minute risk assessment tool

ACM Queue have an article on The one-minute risk assessment tool where they discuss an analysis of risks in software development, using data from senior IT managers, and the surprising results it produced.

Interestingly the number one reason for software project to fail was the use of an inappropriate methodology. The second reason was no surprise to me and that is lack of customer involvement - if your customers don't tell you what they want, then it is hard to deliver it.

Tsunami relief fund

Generally I try to keep my posts here specific to software developers. I actually heard about the Tsunami a few days ago, but wasn't sure what I could do about it. I finally decided this is the kind of news that is relevant to everyone who is human. If you haven't already heard, they are estimating that around 120,000 people in India, Asia and the surrounding area have lost their lives as a result of a Tsunami that was caused by a level 9.0 earthquake.

The Red Cross has setup a relief fund that they taking donations for. Amazon has put together a donation button that allows you do donate directly to Red Cross. Brian Sullivan's has adopted that code so that it can be easily posted to a blog. I am now passing the opportunity to you so that you may make a difference by donating now.

How Dedicated are You?

As software developers I believe we are all dedicated to our projects. Personally I consider any code I write as a personal artistic expression that contains a bit of me when I am done. I don't know that I have been as dedicated to a project as Ron Avitzur as described in his "The Graphing Calculator Story"

This is the story of how one programmer, originally working as a contractor, took a project that was canceled, and saw it through to a shipping project. It is a riot to read, and will really make you think about what it means to be dedicated to a project.

Diabold Continues to Run NT4 as Support Ends

Diebold, a company who should want its name to be synonymous with security and maintained technology, was pointed out to still be running the eight year old Windows NT 4 Server as Microsoft prepares to end support for the operating system effective December 31st, 2004. If you are not familiar with Diebold, they make ATM equipment for banks, and recently ventured into electronic voting equipment. With all the negative reaction from their voting equipment it really makes me think twice about using one of their ATM's again.

Update: As Jake pointed out, it is Diebold, not Diabold. I guess I had bought into the diabolical image projected on them by all the folks out on Slashdot. I can't update the post title or Blogger will move the page since that is what makes the post page name.