BU SHI KE FOU

It's a Big World Out There.

January 2007

Global (developer) education is a subject dear to our hearts. So we were pleased and provoked to note that, at a UK educational technology trade event, about two weeks back, Microsoft quietly announced that it had entered Beta on its "Grava" project.

The product codenamed "Grava" is a meta-programming/courseware-authoring system based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the graphics model underlying Windows Vista. It lets educators without a great deal of programming knowledge create courseware, publications, surveys, graphical physics demos and similar neat stuff, using an "app-gen" style user interface and underlying simplified script language. Courseware authored this way can be played back on the Grava Player, presently a stand-alone application.

Grava meta-applications can be enhanced further by delving into the (actually not too intimidating) underlying mysteries of WPF -- a very elegant and self-consistent model for multimedia, 3D and 2D graphics and text handling, in which content, functionality, time-based animation scripting and other variables are largely specified and controlled via human-readable (or at least comprehensible) XML files.

WPF is extended into Internet space by WPF/E ('E' is apparently for 'Everywhere'), a model for doing 2D animation, media and text-handling in suitably-equipped browser environments (WPF/E plug-ins are presently available for IE7, IE6+, FireFox and other browsers, running on Vista and XP SP2). This given, it seems likely (to me, anyway) that the ultimate destination for the Grava player is on the desktop, and in the browser -- meaning that what Microsoft is tentatively presenting, here, may be the basis for a powerful, Internet-enabled courseware publishing and administration system.

Given the current status of courseware authoring (profusion of platforms, no uniform standards, variable Internet compatibility, lots of home-grown solutions, etc.), I'd hazard that Microsoft's providing what may become a de-facto standard is probably beneficial, and that making it fully Internet-deployable (which they haven't announced, but I'm surmising is in the playbook) may lead in some very interesting and healthy directions. Like ... towards creation of a vast body of easily-licensed and/or opensource standard courseware; towards creation of a global community of commercial and freelance educator/content providers; and perhaps even towards some level of national, or even global concensus on the value of computer-based education, and towards creation of numerous new business models in courseware publishing, aggregation, syndication, etc. (think: "Google Learn," "courseware bloggers," etc.).

Still early times, yet. But I'm thinking of trying to get into the Community Tech Preview group for Grava and seeing who's there. You can apply, too:

https://beta.microsoft.com/Grava

Posted by John Jainschigg at 11:58 AM  Permalink |

By now, everybody who reads global geeknews has heard about the more or less spontaneous protest, by francophone residents of the Second Life virtuality, against the appearance, the week before last, of a virtual office connected to the ultra-rightist Front Nacional party of Jean-Marie Le Pen. If not, a very good account can be found here -- comprising not only original reportage by militantgeek, but solid quotes from (and links to the work of) SL journo Wagner James Au, whose analysis of the events is both lyrical and acute.

Because the Dobb's SL laboratory and Caffeine Cathedral is on Ile de France in the French Archipelago, I was on the scene as these events unfolded -- as usual, my jaw dropping and the hair on the back of my neck standing on end with the eerie feeling of being present as history was being made.

And as usual, the lay media got it wrong. And in this case, even the SL media got it a little wrong -- not because they didn't understand what was going on, but because they were explaining it mostly for an audience of SL residents.

The facts aren't in dispute: Le Pen's office appears. Beginning ironically on Martin Luther King day (a fact of which the French were no doubt mostly unaware, but which inflected our stateside perception of events), a protest is mounted. Over the course of 24 hours or so, the mood becomes increasingly ugly. And then, at a certain point, an attack commences -- residents pull out chain-guns, push weapons, rez cages and start sending in flying saucers dropping exploding pink pigs. Eventually, the Le Penistes retreat, taking their office with them, and trailing cries of "We shall return!" And today, a small casino stands on the spot.

In the aftermath, the global media concensus (at least among "fair and balanced" sources) seems to be that:

1. This is important. Which I don't dispute, but then again, important why? There have been fights and protests in SL before -- but this is the first time (I think) such famous names and deeply-polarized philosophies have been involved. Beyond that, there's nothing much to mark this incident as having special significance ... then again, we could say as much about the Potemkin affair or the capture of Fort Sumter -- not distinguished or particularly meaningful actions in and of themselves, but definitely "shots heard 'round the world."
2. It's a good thing that SL residents drove out Le Pen. Which I do dispute, but only a little. I'm all for free speech and assembly. But frankly, it's hard for me to be concerned with the free-speech and assembly rights of neo-fascists. And I find the tenacious counterculturalism (an agglomeration of leftism, greenism, sciencism, humanism, libertarianism, entrepreneurism, anti-corporatism and other weird bedfellows) of SL refreshing and hopeful. Also, this is my SL neighborhood we're talking about -- donc je m'en fiche les questions de 'constitutionalite.'
3. But it was bad that SL residents used "violence" to quash "free speech." This, I dispute stridently, on semantic and philosophical grounds -- and it was this point the lay media most completely failed to grasp. Violence in Second Life is symbolic -- confined to displays of fireworks, tossing avatars around harmlessly, and various forms of high- and low-tech "griefing" (i.e., tossing avatars several thousand meters, attaching 200MB textures to people's heads to blind them, rezzing cages around them, etc.). Annoying, yes. Denial-of-servicey, sure. But harmless. And unless you have rights to property, you can't hurt, steal or displace it at all. So all the apparent violence done, here, could be construed as no more than a form of "speech."

   Posted by John Jainschigg at 01:54 PM  Permalink |

   
   January 16, 2007
   

   It's Showtime! (In India)

   
   

   This past weekend, Jon Erickson (Editorial Director of the portal and Editor in Chief of Dr. Dobb's Journal) and other CMP colleagues journeyed to Hyderabad for the first stop on this week's Dr. Dobb's SD Expo India three-city tour. In Jon's case, it was a little like watching an America's Cup race via telemetry -- at every intermediate airport (and on the WiFi-equipped Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Hyderabad), he'd sign on and update us via instant messaging, file a few blog entries, etc. His most recent dispatch, from the seventh-floor atrium restaurant of the Taj Krishna hotel, informed us that he'd tasted all the available local coffees, and that Chennai was currently leading the pack. Watch for Jon's news updates on the show, over the next several days, in our Architecture & Design department, and elsewhere.

   Posted by John Jainschigg at 11:05 AM  Permalink |

   
   January 09, 2007
   

   Stellman Does Open Source

   
   

   The hype surrounding open source creates the impression, among outsiders to the movement, that opensource projects tend to be somewhat loosely managed. The reality is that -- while open source does profit from egalitarian, meritocratic and concensus-driven collaboration modalities, open source is also helping to evolve and extend the disciplines of project management and quality control. The big difference between the quality paradigms influencing enterprise and commercial development teams, on the one hand, and open source teams on the other, is that in the latter case, programmers demand quality from one another, and impose best practices to obtain it.

   Open source project management and quality-control best practice will be the topic of Andrew Stellman's revised presentation at Dr. Dobb's SD Expo India, beginning 1/16. Andrew is an expert on open source and surrounding agile software development methodologies -- more about his work can be found at www.stellman-greene.com/aspm/.
   

   Posted by John Jainschigg at 03:37 PM  Permalink |

   
   January 02, 2007
   

   And Still More from Dr. Dobb's SD Expo India!

   
   

   Yet another late-breaking seminar has been announced as part of the (fast-growing) Project Management track at Dr. Dobb's SD Expo India (which begins its three-city tour 1/16 at the Taj Krishna hotel in Hyderabad). Intel will offer attendees a course on how to maximize application performance using Intel software development architectures and development tools -- obtaining performance advantages in every phase of software design and build/test/deploy cycles. Read more about it here.

   Posted by John Jainschigg at 03:09 PM  Permalink |