Month: May 2007

Community

Shape of the Future?

Is the end of our notions of privacy the shape of the future? While most ‘What does the future hold’ articles seem to be full of overly wishful thinking and fluff, this is an interesting and thought-provoking article from SF author Charlie Stross. This is a talk he presented in Munich at a TNG Technology Consulting technology open day. (transcript: Charlie’s Diary: Shaping the future) He brings up some interesting possibilities – from an always-on, completely connected populace, to complete “lifelogs” housed in synthetic diamond storage devices.

Community

Spoke too soon? Formal Objections filed in W3C vote

While the vote totals in the poll are still positive by a large majority, there have been a couple formal objections lodged which could overturn the vote. The W3C‘s process for consensus and dissent allows for formal objections to either be remedied by compromise, or in a case where that compromise is not possible a Chair may record a decision in spite of dissent in order for a group to move on. According to the same process document:

Groups should favor proposals that create the weakest objections. This is preferred over proposals that are supported by a large majority but that cause strong objections from a few people. As part of making a decision where there is dissent, the Chair is expected to be aware of which participants work for the same (or related) Member organizations and weigh their input accordingly.

While there doesn’t seem to be much interest outside the W3C and WHATWG on this issue right now (at least none that I am seeing online) I will be keeping a close eye on the developments and announcements from W3C to see how this all plays out.

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Community

Looks like WHATWG’s HTML 5 is a go

Although the poll hasn’t closed yet (it is open until May 4) 90 96 of the 115 voting members of the HTML Working Group have cast their vote, and the results are:

Shall we Adopt HTML5 as our specification text for review?

Yes: 78 84
No: 2
Concur: 7
Abstain: 3

So, even if the remaining 25 19 votes are all no, the vote is to adopt the WHATWG HTML5 (comprised of the Web Apps 1.0 and Web Forms 2.0 specifications) as a starting point for the next HTML version.

Other votes on the page include the decision to name the next HTML specification “HTML 5” and to appoint Ian Hickson and Dave Hyatt as the specification editors. I highly recommend reading the results, in order to see the rationale given by many of the members for their vote on each of the questions, as this gives a valuable insight into where the group currently is and in what direction they are looking to move.

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Edits: updated numbers on 5/3

OS

Still waiting for Ubuntu Studio

While the first release of Ubuntu Studio was supposed ot happen in April, it is now May and still no release. The only info from the wiki as regards an expected release date is:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the release of Ubuntu Studio 7.04 will be delayed. Progress is happening rapidly, but we will not be estimating the duration of the delay.

Many of the links on the main wiki page result in 404 errors, including the ‘Ubuntu Studio News’. As a musician and fan of Open Source tools and operating systems I can say that I am a little disheartened by the delay and lack of any apparent movement. I’m not saying that nothing is happening in Ubuntu Studio development, just that a wiki which gives no indication of how things are progressing, frankly, gives me the feeling that it may not actually be released this year.

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Development

One to watch?

Sun is proposing an alternative to AJAX, called Project Flair, which is set for early release later this year. In an InfoWorld article, Sun engineer and principal investor Dan Ingalls describes it as being more like the old style of of desktop application programming (using a JavaScript programming kernel) that adds collaboration and web access.

How this actually ends up performing is anyone’s guess, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

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