--- title: On language choices, west side story virus, bray vs. bray and other good stuff date: 2005-10-07T00:51:02Z modified: 2005-10-07T00:51:02Z permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/on-language-choices-west-side-story-virus-bray-vs-bray-and-other-good-stuff/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 369 categories: - Uncategorized timestamp: 2005-10-07T00:51:02Z tags: - Uncategorized --- James Robertson points to [Dave Thomas](http://blogs.pragprog.com/cgi-bin/pragdave.cgi/Tech/Ruby/LanguageChoice.rdoc) via [Brad Wilson](http://www.agileprogrammer.com/dotnetguy/archive/2005/09/16/7893.aspx) on [why language choice matters more than floating point performance](http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3304579574). Why obsess about clock speeds when its the design of an application that most greatly affects performance. How many of us really need screaming floating point? Good question. [West Side Story as 28 Days Later](http://www.ps260.com/Trailer/westsidestorytrailer_small.mov) A remixed preview of the musical. really great stuff. mashup. A must see. [Moveable Type Turning On European Mainstream Media blogs](http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2005/09/the_french_spor.html) : Loic’s blog is all a flutter with new customer wins. Novell PR alerted me to IBM’s slick [blogging on business](http://www-306.ibm.com/e-business/ondemand/us/customerloyalty/blogs/blogging_flash.shtml) interviews with Harriet Pearson and Willy Chiu. See that – Novell marketing just drove me to IBM, not because IBM is talking about Novell, but because its talking about social software. [](http://www.nestlecareers.co.uk/about/mission.htm) Ouch ouch ouch and ouch again. From [The Post Money Value](http://ricksegal.typepad.com/pmv/2005/10/geeks_and_the_t.html): > “In a blog entry about something else, **_Robert “Checkbook” Scoble_** adds a note with the following”… I thought it was [Robert “Cool-Aid” Scoble](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000828.html), but there you go… Talking of Scoble, [Writeboard](http://www.writeboard.com/) as a “[dumbed down wiki](http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/10/02.html#a11338) ? Is that like a dumbed down blog, I mean an MSN space? Ah yes I see you made the correction – not dumbed down, “easier”. Here is a post in which Tim Bray [disapproves of the approval of his own software patent](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/10/02/US-Patent-6950791) . I love this business. Some people are going to be excited by the fact that someone is creating a bootable disc distribution of Open Solaris. I am probably slightly more interested in the fact the [Belenix](http://belenix.sarovar.org/belenix_background.html) project is out of Bangalore, with this goal in its background notes: “_The OSS community in India will not want to install or use official Solaris Express. They would rather have an open distro built from an open source base_ .” “**You are our radar; we’re just picking it up.”** Could be RedMonk’s motto. From Wired’s [profile of Tim O’Reilly](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.10/oreilly.html). Here is another gem of a quote in the same piece, which I must admit had me analysing this article on Tim to try and better understand my own working methods: “I actually feel like I did some of my best work as a technical writer in those early years, because I didn’t know anything,” he says. “**I would just have to read stuff until I saw the patterns**.” [An asset management blog](http://softwaremanagers.org/). How cool is that. Its cool to see someone focusing on asset management – go Rita Bowman. ITIL-community take note. Poking into [Oracle RDF support ](http://www.picklematrix.net/archives/000979.html). Robin Wilton works at Sun. He b[logs on ID management and technology issues](http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/racingsnake?entry=two_shots_two_feet) . I like the way he blogs on UK politics too, as it relates to issues of ID, policy and security. I know a lot of people think politics shouldn’t stray into blogs (why do you need censors if people censor themselves? capitalism is a wonderful thing, ain’t it). As my regular readers know I don’t subscribe to the notion we can avoid politics in our writings. Life is politics. Technology is politics. Ecology is politics. So why try and avoid it? Anyway Robin points to the way the Labour Conference is morphing into a stage managed US-style presidential love fest. No photos of delegates by delegates? Blimey. I hope RedMonk can tap into one of these [laws](http://blogs.msdn.com/alexbarn/archive/2005/10/02/476218.aspx), Alex. Tipping points, and making money. Damn – check out those visual story maps at [news.com 2.0](http://beta.news.com.com/BEA+Upgrades+are+now+on+the+fly/2100-1012_3-5884633.html?tag=cd.hed). That is coolness. Cote on attentionxml – [limitations](http://www.drunkandretired.com/2005/10/my-content-intake-its-all-about.html). smart analysis as usual, somewhat leftfield as usual. The key – implicit versus explicit metadata. Oh yeah – talking of attention, [the trust is now up and running](http://www.attentiontrust.org/), with a [Firefox plug in](http://www.attentiontrust.org/services) and everything. Go Seth and Steve.