Concern

So, I did my traffic school penance for getting caught speeding, and I’m confused by one of the final test questions. The question asks what you should do when backing up, and you get three choices: (a) look over your left shoulder out the rear window, (b) look over your right shoulder out the rear window, or (c) look in the side view mirrors (this is in the US, so those in the UK or other places that drive on the left side, flip left/right shoulders). The “correct” answer is (b).

I have issues with this, though: in my car, I can’t see anything except the sky, or maybe an adult standing directly behind my car, and I can’t properly operate the break/gas/clutch, if I turn to look out the rear window. There’s no way, for example, that I could see a car behind me if I looked over my shoulder, because the rear of my car is so high, and because I’m not all that bendy and am pretty short. When backing up, I use all three mirrors, and look through the side windows.

What do you do? I posit that for most people (who aren’t skinny, are shorter than 6 feet tall, and are in any car larger than a Honda) looking over your right shoulder is nearly impossible.

This is an OK movie. It seems like a meet-in-the-middle of Sin City and A Scanner Darkly, but somehow the plot got left out. The story is completely conventional, almost feeling like it was computer-generated based on keyword (”dystopian future,” “hard-boiled cop drama,” “cyberpunk”) — oh, you mean the cop who just got suspended for getting to far into his current case fell in love with the sister of the kidnapped girl he’s searching for? Wow, didn’t see that one coming.

The animation is nice enough. Faces tend to look wrong some of the time, though, with all the harsh shadows. The hyper-industrial future Paris looks pretty good, even though is so damn dark all the time.

There’s a song in my head, that I’ve heard at the bar now and again, but I can’t figure out who sings it.

The only clear lyrics that I can reproduce is where “someone, someone” is said, repeated like that. The song has a quick tempo, has a dominant bass line and drum beat, and the singer is female. She sounds a little like Cherie Currie singing “Cherry Bomb,” but not quite. The song also sounds a little P.J. Harvey-ish, but I don’t think it is her.

I am a moron when it comes to recognizing notes, but there is a clear progression through three chords, descending in pitch:

3.. 3.. 3.. 3.. 3… 3.. 2.. 2.. 2.. 2.. 2… 2.. 1.. 1.. 1.. 1.. 0.5… 1…. 1.. 1.. 1.. 1.. 0.5… 1….

…where “..” is kinda like a 1/4 note and “…” is kinda a 3/8 note.

Please. Help.

You no doubt already know that Sun released parts of Java under the General Public License, with some parts released under the GPL with (what Sun is calling) the “Classpath exception.” The hotspot VM and the javac compiler are the big parts of J2SE that were released today.

As a GNU Classpath hacker, I’m of two minds of this development: first, and foremost, this is probably the best way that Sun could have done this, and I’m extremely pleased with this result. I’m almost stunned that Sun used what I think is the best license they could have chosen: pressures from other companies, whingeing about freeness for their narrow corporate goals, could have pushed an inferior license onto the code. So yes: this is probably the best outcome I could have hoped for for a Free Java from Sun.

But yes, what does this mean for GNU Classpath? The class library hasn’t been released yet, of course, but when it is, will GNU Classpath matter any more? Signs point to yes — parts of the Sun class library may be encumbered by agreements with other companies, so Sun may not be able to release those parts under a free license. The question remains though: will the parts that are opened obsolete the stuff I worked on? Crypto and TLS may not need more than one free implementation, and the version I worked on may be inferior. Certainly the work I did to try to improve our NIO implementation won’t be useful, because ours still has too many wrinkles in it. In the end it looks like a lot of my code may go to the dustbin of history, if the OpenJDK sufficiently eclipses GNU Classpath.

But, I think I’m fine with this. Even if zero lines of code I’ve written survives into the brave new Java world, I’m really pleased at this result. More free software is better for everyone, and since my skills have improved so much by hacking on Classpath, it was not a waste of time.

Also, I got one of these at work. It’s the only way to fly.