My only simple question is :

Does the music currently sold on iTunes on behalf of independent artists or labels have to have DRM if the artist or label doesn’t want it? If so, why?

Until I see “DRM Free!” songs for purchase on iTunes I remain a cynic.

Mind you they may be already there, if they are I am more prepared to buy them.

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So what is my latest speculation? Well its not really clear to me what Apple is going to do. No amazing predictions here. However I will speculate that Apple is going to add another cool feature to the iTunes software very soon.

Where do I draw that conclusion? Well I saw the article where Paul Therrott pointed to a post by Apple announcing a delay for installing Microsoft’s Vista if you use iTunes. Paul points out that Vista has been floating around for quite some time. We know by the document that a new version is coming… Apple states “the next release of iTunes which will be available in the next few weeks”.

Why the delay? Well either there is something fundamentally difficult when coding for Vista or there is a killer new feature and why not kill two birds with one stone. My guess is something to do with Apple TV.

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I was browsing there with my trusty Firefox 2.0 and came across the error. So making sure that it wasn’t just a screwy render on Firefoxes part decide to refresh the page and even reload the browser. Is it my screen resolution? No I resize the window and refresh the page… still as bad… ok so I go and validate the page. No at the time I validated it the page (according to w3.org) has 130 errors. Now I am a forgiving kinda guy when it comes to validators but 130? Really? Meh well I suppose it is Microsoft and they tend to play by the rules.

So can we trust these guys to make an operating system? I’ll leave it up to you…

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Some serious questions need to be asked. Those involved in the current OS wars should take the opportunity to pull their head up for a breath of fresh air and consider their path forward. The one who can, does and correctly read what path to take may well find they take a big leap forward.

Some of the questions I would ask would be:

• What direction will we need to take to make the most of this power and future power?
• How can a new OS or an existing OS be modified to suit the direction of multi-core processing?
• What easy to use tools need to be built to make accessing the ever growing power of processors?
• How can I get my community/business behind any new direction in development?

Someone needs to take a retreat with some new information on where processors are heading and hopefully get a new ball rolling. Some of the tools aren’t built yet.  It is abundantly clear to me however, that if you build it they will come.

When discussing the latest publicized work of Valve with a colleague we were discussing how they were delegate different tasks across the new multi-core processors. Something along the lines of a combination of using entire cores for specific tasks and others for perhaps a combination of lesser tasks. What Valve seem to be heading towards is a hybrid method between coarse and find threading. Very interesting and for right now can be far better explained by others.

However what does this have to do with my interesting thought. Well they were mentioning how this multi core hybrid threading can help with AI in the game. I just took the next logical step in the thought process and wondered aloud would it not be possible for this to be applied to general AI.

Intelligence, or the simulation of it, surely just is an extension of multiple inputs being processed and calculated for an output that best fits. This obviously is based on what the database of existing knowledge contains and how that applies to the current inputs based on a educated set of rules. Eg if you are wrong someone or something tells you that you are wrong.

But the current problem with AI, as I see it, is combining multiple inputs with multiple outputs in a fast efficient way. Why multiple?  Think about it.  You are doing multiple tasks mentally at the same time that gets spread within your brain to different sections.  Different parts (cores) of your brain specializes in different tasks.  Therefore it is quite logical to foresee a computer doing the same thing.

Take it one step further into the future and processor cores may be designed differently for this very task.   Audio processing in a special core, video processing in another, data (memory) recall in another, data (memory) manipulation in another etc.

It can be seen as you put more power into processors and increase the programming tools that can access this power that soon we could have a computer and or robotic form that could very well be seen as “intelligent”.  As the architecture of CPU’s gets closer and closer to the structure of an actual brain it is in my opinion only a matter of time…

Its a nasty thought that unfortunately could be true. And after all the current administration in the United States has managed to line the pockets of many big oil companies quite well. Is it deliberate?

It has to be a huge gamble these politicians are running to not be found out if they are making policies based on what oil companies want. If this is the case the government in the United States had best be very careful how it treads. Also the people would realise that its not just politicians to blame in this. The oil industry could have to answer to not just the general public but alas the more extremist elements in the world. They could quite easily become the main targets of such stupid hatred.

Why when oil companies are making the biggest profits of all could they be running the risk of loosing the respect of the people and force a legal change to stop interference in top level policy making decisions.  Or even, and imagine this if you will, the banning of direct or indirect campaign contributions.

It seems to me that there are too many big companies of any industry who could buy policy.  This to me seems a completely flawed system.  When will the public in democratic countries demand that this system ceases.  I remember the system was supposed to be “for the people”… not for those who can bribe the most.

OK that is enough of that public political rant…

Myth One : PHP is Insecure!

Phooey I say!

PHP is no more or less secure than many other languages I’ve had the privilage of coding in. It all depends on how the programmer/s have coded the application. PHP itself is seldom, if ever, to blame. Poor coding practices and lack of knowledge about how to secure your application in any language will lead to your application being insecure.

Why then does PHP get a bad rap? In my mind it comes down to one thing. PHP is easy to learn and begin coding in. Whilst this is a good thing it also has a major drawback in that you will have quite a few PHP developers who do not understand how dangerous their applications can be if they are not secured properly. This knowledge is mostly painfully gained through experience.

Even simple things like strip_slashes(); and other such little commands in PHP can at first not be accessable to new programmers and these are simply begginners mistakes.

Sometimes PHP is tarred witht the “insecure” brush because of actions that even non-PHP programmers make. For example installing a PHP application that has not been programmed securely. An example of this is most recently in my country a major hosting company had most of its customers hacked and taken down. Now they claim it cost them in the tens of thousands of dollars to repair.

All this was because someone had uploaded an old version of PHPBB. But what I head was a PHP security hole. Now this is silly.

I have been learning this language and can see how it is tricky to secure things if you don’t know what you are doing. Media and community attention grabbing events have occured sure. But why is it that people have been able to hack into systems with programs written in PHP? Not just poor coding practices but the other side of the coin is also popularity. It is like the Microsoft security curse. It is pervasive therefore hackers will target it.

Myth Two: PHP Doesn’t Scale

Busted!

Again if its done properly PHP can be one of the most scaleable platforms. You develop a application framework with scaleability kept in mind then the application will scale. Of course sometimes the application is first developed with just a small scale deployment in mind and scaling isn’t even considered.

For a prime example of PHP being deployed on a large scale look simply at sites like www.wikipedia.org or even www.yahoo.com. I mean how much bigger can you get?

I need say no more.

What other PHP myths can you bust? Comment below.

Also if you enjoyed this article please feel free to digg it.

So anyway according to the story (here) some researchers at MIT are on the verge of producing a prototype battery that can potentially be charged hundreds of thousands of times. No, wait, it gets better! Not only that but each charge may only take a matter of seconds! Now that is cool!

Just imagine being able to fully charge your favourite gadget in seconds. No more hassling with rechargeable batteries or even worse discarding non-rechargeable ones with great cost to the environment. Now your battery will more than likely last longer than any device it is plugged into.

Now this does present a problem. I think if such batteries exist manufacturers may have to be legislated to otherwise we could still end up with a huge amount of waste. I can see manufacturers making devices that only fit their battery pack and after the device fails people will be throwing no only the faulty device away but also a perfectly good set of rechargeable batteries. This is where governments need to be smart and strong. Sometimes listening to companies because they may fund your campaign or charity can be a dangerous thing. Putting the best interest of the environment should be paramount.

Delay of syndication. What I am proposing here is that you can limit the feed going out to subscribers in chunks. What do I mean here? Well simply put the problem lies in a heavily subscribed feed that has large amounts of data (such as a podcast) struggles when everyone hits that content at the same time. What is required is the ability to say release the updated fee in something like IP ranges. So that 68.0.0.1 to 68.255.255.255 would get the feed first then after a certain determined time the next IP block etc.

But the real question is how will this be achieved? Perhaps a serverside script that determines what RSS xml is handed over. So that people can’t circumvent it simply by creating software that turns off a “hide download” in the feed. Also I see the use of random releases to the blocks of IP addresses. Not meaning the blocks will be random cycled, rather that the order of IP ranges selected will change each time a change to the feed is made. This will help keep people from finding out what IP addresses will get the feed the earliest and using a method to again circumvent this system. It also is a neutral system so that one country isn’t favoured over another.
I can see some other ways around this method but as of yet I have not heard of a better solution.

This would in some part help the load on download servers but the down side is that you may have a heavier CPU load on the web-server doing the pre-processing IP detection and feed handout script.

If someone wants to use this idea go ahead. I just require that you let me know and credit me with the inspiration in your script.

Now having said that when a key developer like this has to leave your team it can be painful, no matter what. There are just some critical ways of working and thinking that are hard, for all but the few skilled enough, to understand and work quickly on.

Our business recently had this happen. Now the two other main developers, me being one of them, are not really PHP/MySQL guru's. We get by but certainly were no where near as good as what the other fellow was. Having just quoted for a reasonable sized job we were faced with trying to get another developer, train them and hope for the best or do it ourselves.

We understood the framework of the new system which, thankfully, had been built previously for another client. However this new job was different. We could use the same underlying system but we had to make significant enough changes to the PHP code and underlying database to be concerned.

So doom and gloom? No, quite the opposite. Having now nearly completed the job (just some tidying up and polishing left to do) we both have found the initial dread of having to develop the site on our own turned to excitement and sense of achievement on modifying, creating and overcoming.

I found that we learnt more than we would otherwise have done in a shorter space of time because we just had to! It surprises me constantly what we are all capable of when faced with these types of situations. Yes we could have failed and not met our deadlines. However we now find our selves 12 whole days ahead of where we should be! I now have a greater respect also for good creators of frameworks that are open enough to convert to many different site styles. These are hellishly difficult to write well.

The moral of the story? Don't give up on yourself just yet. You might surprise yourself on what you can achieve. Having said all that… be realistic! If you can get someone better at the job to do it. Get them to do it! Pay them well because they are worth it.

Oh and if you are wondering it wasn't because of pay that we lost the other developer. I can't tell you why but lets just say he would love to work for us still and we would love to have him here. Circumstances can seem cruel but in business pain can lead to gain if you handle it right.