The Invisible Hand of Jack
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Jack Connors and I are sitting on our usual bench at Castle Island. Lunch is the usual, too: couple of hot dogs each, mustard and relish, and we split an order of onion rings, though neither of us needs them. We talk about the governor&#146;s race. We gossip about what&#146;s happening downtown and at the Globe. We talk about how ...
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You don't find too many  dogs on "Masterpiece Theater," and "The Ruby in the Smoke"  certainly isn't one, either. It's a mystery yarn that fairly  crackles in the greatest tradition of the franchise, unraveling  its tangled web with unhurried brilliance in telling a story  based on the 1985 novel by Philip Pullman that introduced teen  sleuth Sally Lockhart to the world.
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And can blind people see colour by touch? Also in this week's column:â¦
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Gabe: I didn't realise it before but the comic we did for Assassins Creed is also being shown online. You can still get the printed version in the collectors edition of the game. The first page just went live today over on the official site. Here's a direct link if you're interested. It's an eight page story and I'm actually not sure what the release schedule for the rest of the pages is. I'll be sure and let you know here as they become available.   I drew this one and the the colors were handled by Imaginary Friends. Tycho is responsible for the words. The story takes place before the game and gives a little insight in the character of Altair. Obviously it's only one page right now but once you've seen some more of it I'd love to hear what you think.-Gabe out
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Jack Bauer may be everywhere at once. But he had to start   somewhere, right?
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A buddy of mine who once worked as a New York City assistant DA shared the following insight with me: Most criminals are not very bright. He and I had just seen a heist movie -- something where an evil genius and his sharp-as-tacks cronies had pulled of an inordinately complex scheme to knock over a bank, grabbing millions in the process. In truth, however, most criminals are more "Fargo" than "Oceans 13," and that goes for cyber criminals, as well.
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Gabe: Sorry for the late comic strip today. It was just a little more than I was able to get done in one day. I ended up having to finish it up this morning. I've had some requests for wallpapers of the relief at the top of the Olympus and I'll try and get something like that out.
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Tycho:  It wasn't until the strip was completed that I realized we had written two comic strips at the same time.  Gabriel thought this comic was literal, and I thought it was about miscommunication. At least, I hoped it was. This is a fantasy to which I still cling.
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Tycho: Sorry about that. Kiko digests the audio files for that, and I forgot that there President's Day was a holiday that people took seriously. Before today, I was not aware just how seriously Kiko took the concept of presidency. Also, I fixed an offensive and aggressively stupid typographical error in the post above. Now, it's only aggressively stupid in the ways I originally intended.(CW)TB
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Tycho:  When we were working on our first serious comic project, a comic about angels in high-school that would probably have made us wealthy beyond mortal imaginings, we got into our first real fight about religion.  Shaking with rage, he essentially threw me out of his house.  He called me up a few hours later to play Duke, but still.  We never talked about the comic again.  We try never to discuss anything of substance if we can help it, though we do allow an annual fracas as a gift to one another.  Oh, and here's a Gabe tip:  never end the Lord's Prayer with "Psyche."  Never.
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Images from NASA telescopes are jewels of the space program, marvelous to behold. But how do you behold them when you can't see? The answer lies between the covers of a new NASA-funded book written in Braille, Touch the Invisible Sky.
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(InfoWorld) - What's the link between eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, often regarded as the father of modern economics, and the open-source software movement? According to Marten Mickos, the chief executive officer of open-source database company MySQL, it's Smith's concept of an "invisible hand," which guides individuals pursuing their own betterment to achieve goals that also benefit society at large. Mickos sees an invisible hand at work in much of what's going on in today's open-source community. This includes the wrangling over the current draft of the GNU general public license version 3 (GPLv3), which he anticipates will result in a good outcome. MySQL's database is distributed under the GPL. Even Oracle's surpriseÂ acquisition of InnobaseÂ a year ago has worked out well, Mickos contends. Oracle's purchase was widely seen as a predatory strike against MySQL, which bundles the Finnish startup's InnoDB database storage engine with its database. The move led to other firms approaching MySQL about developing their own engines for the database and ended up with the company opening up its database storage API (application programming interface) to third parties to give users more choice of which engines to use. Mickos also talked about other aspects of the open-source business model and what lies ahead for MySQL when he chatted Friday with the IDG News Service. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation. IDGNS: Recently, a number of open-source developers have expressed their unhappiness with the Free Software FoundationÂ (FSF) and the second draft of GPLv3. Are you concerned about a potential forking of the license as some people stick with GPLv2 and others move to GPLv3? Mickos: It's not a catastrophe if we have two GPLs out there. It does show how sometimes success can turn against you. The fact that GPLv2 has been so successful means developers don't see a need to change. They say, 'If it's not broke, don't fix it.' I agree with the arguments the FSF has with the license. They've done their homework and they have good rational reasons for changing it. But they also have a philosophical, dogmatic attitude that many open-source developers don't have. We've always preached that open source is not a religion or a political party or a society. FSF does have a societal aspect. That's a great area but some developers don't care. They're not here to save mankind or save the planet from destruction. The process is still ongoing. It's time to debate, not time to deliver conclusions. At MySQL, we haven't made up our minds on GPL and we don't need to do so yet, it's not time. IDGNS: How do you decide when MySQL needs to develop new features for the database and when to rely on the open-source community for those innovations? Mickos: One of the essences of our business is to know when to do what. You need to figure out what the end user wants. We have 10 million users. How the heck do you figure out what they want and then figure out how to do it? If 9 million want one thing and 1 million another, it could be that the 1 million is more important than the 9 million. It's the ability to know what makes sense. Thanks to the early releases [of our products], we can fix mistakes. We're allowed to make mistakes in passing. For example, we had an internal project on optimization or a cache that we were developing, then we found someone else was developing one too. We could turn [around] our mistake and choose what was best. Or, take our JDBC (Java database connectivity) driver. The community developed three, four or five. One was clearly the market leader. We acquired and licensed it and brought the developer onboard. We didn't decide, but let the ecosystem or Darwinism say what works best. IDGNS: So, is open source then a more forgiving environment than the proprietary software world? Mickos: No, you're not forgiven, but open source is self-healing. There's no forgiveness, but someone else can cover up for you. A year ago, Oracle bought InnoDB. Now, a year later, there are many ways you can store MySQL and many players. It's like the invisible hand that Adam Smith spoke about is really working. There's some sort of invisible hand guiding open source. At the end of the day, something good can come out of it. Some people are very angry with FSF, still people will see a community and a good outcome [with GPLv3]. IDGNS: What's ahead in 2007 for MySQL? Mickos: We'll see a strong uptake in the enterprise market as the number of users running MySQL 5.0 grows. It takes time for developers to adopt the new version; it's starting to happen. We'll seeÂ more partners. We already have Novell, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys, and recently Red Hat. There will be others. With our technologies, there will be Falcon and MySQL 5.1. We're doing great work on our GUI (graphical user interface) tools and making our ODBC (open database connectivity) and JDBC drivers even better. IDGNS: What's the latest news on Falcon, the transactional database engine being developed by database architect Jim Starkey who joined MySQL in February? Mickos: It's not just Jim Starkey. We have a handful of engineers working closely with him. The next stage is for Falcon to be in alpha [testing], which will be soon. IDGNS: Is MySQL's current dominance of the open-source database market ever a cause for concern? Mickos: I do hear sometimes from staff, "We're great. We don't need to work." But then our engineers are very self-deprecating and they get embarrassed about any problems. It's a balancing act. Sometimes, I have to say to the organization, "Cheer up, we have a great product;" other times, "Don't be complaisant. We're not done yet." If we're good, we keep going at it until we feel we're done and can rest. If something bad happens, we should work a little bit harder to get it done. Like it looked bad when Oracle acquired InnoDB. At first it was "What the heck are we going to do?" But weÂ turned it to our advantage.
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You wonder why he can't get his arms around it -- the fame, the fortune, the free fall that inevitably accompanies both if you do not anticipate the warning signs that are always there, lurking in the shadows.
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Dave Flemming is best known for the call heard nowhere in the world.
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Tycho:  I was in a guild with the guy who started FigurePrints, and when he extended coupons to the old crew I snapped them up and gave them as Christmas presents.  None of my characters ever reached the highest echelons of Azerothian Fashion, so it seemed like they were better invested in Gabriel and Keek, who poured night after night into Battlegrounds and Active Volcanoes fighting dragons and whatnot. The coupons I have described are difficult to secure, only available in random drawings at random intervals, or if by some twist of fate you happen to have been guildmates with a cunning entrepreneur.  It's really a way to ennoble the lost years you plowed into that game.  It's the sort of thing you'd think a person would appreciate.
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Checking for ghosts or aliens? Brief Torchwood's Captain Jack has been sighted at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Does this mean that when it is switched on it is likely to open a rift under Cardiff from whence all manner of spooky things shall spring?â¦
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Many people in religious circles say it's one of the biggest problems facing families and congregations.  Yet:  It can go undetected.  It has no outward signs.  It is barely discussed.  The culprit? Pornography.  The Rev.