Software is a social activity

There's an interesting discussion going on in the Apache mailing lists about legal rights versus social rights. Here's a representative message, from Roy Fielding.

Money quote:

There is no code in the universe that is worth any further discussion once it has been poisoned by ill will. Just cut the dead limbs and let the rest of the plant grow itself.

Java 7 was released today ... did you even notice?

Is this the quietest and least-remarked-upon release of Java that has ever occurred?

Google News says "Results 1-2 of about 2 related articles."

If the industry has, in fact, moved on, what did it move on to? HTML5/JavaScript? Ruby? C#?

Armenia had aloft rated players upon each house

It would appear that automated translation is making progress, but is not quite perfect yet. Dana MacKenzie explores a particularly delightful example.

VC finance bloggers

When time permits, I try to read Fred Wilson's essays, particularly his well-known and well-respected "MBA Mondays" series. I'm not a finance guy by profession nor by aspiration, and much of it goes over my head, yet slowly but surely I'm learning more about VC financial operations work.

So I was pleased recently to see that Brad Feld, who is a very interesting VC blogger himself, is embarking on a similar series, which he calls "Finance Fridays".

So there you go! You can now book-end your work week by learning a little bit of finance to start and end each week!

Animals are like energy pills

Jennifer Pharr Davis, a speed hiker who lives in North Carolina, is engaged in a speed hike of the entire Appalachian Trail this summer, from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia.

In order to achieve her goal, she has to cover 48 miles on average each day, hiking 17 hours a day; her support team meets her at ponts where the trail crosses roads in order to deliver a nearly-constant supply of nutrition.

Asked about the upside of hiking all day, Pharr Davis did not hesitate. "Animals!" she cried out.

"Any time I've seen a moose or a bear, it's like taking a little energy pill," she said.

I know that thrill, though I've never seen a moose in the wild, and only a handful of bear experiences in 3 decades.

I saw my first wild fox this month, though!

Hip-Hop Chess Federation story

Here's an intriguing story about a young woman from San Francisco's extremely impoverished Bayview neighborhood whose chess-playing talent has been recognized by the Susan Polgar Foundation.

NPR article on Software Patents

The team at NPR's Planet Money / This American Life programs dig deeply into the world of software patents.

Included in their story is a wonderful description of a trip to Marshall, Texas, in an attempt to talk to a living human being at one of the companies filing lawsuits for software patent infringement:

So we went to Marshall. The door to Oasis's office was locked, and through the crack under the door we could see there were no lights were on inside.

It's kind of a cliche to knock on the door of the empty office. But we'd flown a long way. So we knocked. No one answered.

The office was in a corridor where all the other doors looked exactly the same —locked, nameplates over the door, no light coming out. It was a corridor of silent, empty offices with names like "Software Rights Archive," and "Bulletproof Technology of Texas."

It turns out a lot of those companies in that corridor, maybe every single one of them, is doing exactly what Oasis Research is doing. They appear to have no employees. They are not coming up with new inventions. The companies are in Marshall, Texas because they are filing lawsuits for patent infringement.

Patent lawsuits are big business in Marshall, which is part of the eastern district of Texas.

Many people say that juries in Marshall are friendly to patent owners trying to get a large verdict. A local lawyer who has argued on both sides of numerous patent cases says it's actually because cases go to trial more quickly in Marshall than in other places.

In any case, thousands of lawsuits are filed there, claiming that there's an inventor whose invention is being used without permission. But there are no inventors in Marshall, just corridors of empty offices.

It's a great article, and the team from NPR did great reporting work to bring it all together. You should read the whole thing (or listen to the NPR episode on the radio).