I was looking at the PHP5 (no this is not about PHP) Reflection API and came across a post talking about the “Dynamic Proxy” design pattern. As I didn’t know what it was about I did a quick search and found that the design pattern had a US Patent on it! I was disgusted and appalled that design patterns could be patented. This is like putting a patent on a certain English sentence grammar.
Obviously the guys at the US Patent office don’t understand what they are allowing to happen. Imagine if 90% of all programming was patented, which can be done fairly easily, it would completely retard innovation and an sort of progress. Fortunately is this impossible to enforce in closed source code software but Open Source [OS] is another story. This could be the biggest legal threat to OS so far. Large companies who have the budget, could have teams that sift thought their OS competition looking for patent infringements and shutting them down. An ugly thought which would gain them only hatred from the developer community. Lets hope that’s enough of a disincentive…
The Washington Post asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the 2006 winners: Continue reading ‘New words’
“I was implying that the Honourable Member for Wentworth was like a lizard on a rock - alive, but looking dead.”
“I suppose that the Honourable Gentleman’s hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness.”
“That you Jim? Paul Keating here. Just because you swallowed a fucking dictionary when you were about 15 doesn’t give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over the rest of us.”
And finally in Melbourne a few years back there was a lot of noise in the media after one politician accused another of “having a couple of kangaroos loose in the top paddock”.
I was sitting on the grass in the park at Boxhagener Plaz yesterday with Melissa and Emma, and having a chat in the sun. We were approached by a plainly dresses nice young Indian girl who then proceeded to tell us about her “organization” that raises money to save the forests by making porn with random strangers in the bush. It took a few moments to get our heads around the idea, and we had to think about wether we wanted to… contribute. She said they were “fighting for what we belived in and having fun at the same time”. It seemed resonable when she put it that way. Hippys having fun?
It raised the question that I have been thinking about since I worked on a certain gay dating website: “Can porn be used for good?”. I guess everyone has to decided for themselves.
But try and say three times fast: “Fucking Forest Fuckers”
Update
There is a conference in Berlin that could find an answer to these question. I would like to fond out the intellectual stance on it these days. I guess it doesn’t matter how you reason it, its all about the vibe.
Ten years ago a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem and no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-team.
Some creative dumby text for you web developers out there thanks to malevole.
