Given Microsof'ts history I would be very leary of adopting any standard they proposed. There have been several standards that were adopted before people realized that they contained submarine patents. Microsoft typically proposes FRAND terms for their patents, and FRAND terms are incompatible with the GPL among other things. Any standard that requires FRAND licenses cannot in practice be used by FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).
pgmer6809

Considering the approach that Oracle is taking of trying to copyright and charge license fees just for using the Java API's (see Oracle vs Google) I cant see any sane person developing on a non-Oracle provided Java platform. If they can sue Google for Dalvik they can certainly sue whoever deploys Rootbeer if they feel like it.
pgmer6809

Once again we have an article about a supercomputer going nuts over a bunch of hardware, without mentioning the software.
A supercomputer is made out of multiple chips the way a house is made from bricks, but a pile of chips is no more a supercomputer than
a pile of bricks is a house.
So what software makes the supercomputer useful?

Just because Linux and Unix have some of the same lines of code, does NOT mean that linux copied the code from unix.
The code could have come from BSD for example and in fact there are several instances where linux and Unix share (or shared) the same BSD code.

The code could also have come from implementing the Posix Standard. The PDF linked to seems to be an implementation of errno.h which I believe is part of the POSIX standard.
So again just because the code appears in Unix, does NOT mean that Unix had copyright ownership of that code.

To prove its case SCO would have had to prove that:
a) Linux had lines of code that were substantially similar to Unix. (some minor examples provided but even that was not definitive)
In fact the judge who supervised the discovery kept asking for details and at the end of the multi year discovery process, said, "Is this all you've got?"

b) Unix had copyrights to the code in question (again not proven)

c) SCO owned the Unix copyrights (again not proven)

d) SCO never granted the rights to use that code in any way. In fact Caldera (aka SCO) distributed a version of Linux under the GPL which in effect granted GPL license to any of their code that happened to be in Linux.

So even if all of a, b, and c were true,
they STILL did not have a case for infringement.
I almost wish that SCO had owned the UNIX copyrights, because then this whole issue would have been resolved by now, instead of relying on Novell.

softcoder.

James Martin used to be considered an authority on this stuff back in the days of Big Iron.
He has written a couple of books on DB design, including relational DB design.
Having said that, there has been a huge advance in technology, and in the SQL language since his day.
The principles remain sound, especially for Relational DB's but the implementations may be different.

There is one other thing to consider. What type of queries will you be making against the million row tables?
OLTP queries where you expect to get one or two records back, or Decision Management queries where you will get several hundred or thousand rows back that
will then be summarized in some sort of report/spreadsheet/graph?

In the first case traditional relational DB design with SQL is probably still OK. In the second case there are new ways to approach this, with the table designs being based on columns
and not on rows.
softcoder.

Jones should take a lesson from Richard Lenski (see)
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/lenski-gives-co.html

There is an answer that makes a lot of sense. He too has spent 20+ years generating data.

There is legitimate concern that the data would be 'misquoted'. However Jones' answer leaves a lot to be desired.
Compare to Lenski's answer where he does agree to provide data (and perhaps samples?) to legitimate requests.
Even if the request is from a news organization you suspect is out to disprove your conclusions, that is not in itself a valid reason to refuse. If you want your conclusions to be put into action in the real world (i.e. political decisions regarding car emissions, carbon taxes etc.) you should be prepared to go through the political process. Messy perhaps, but necessary.
softcoder.

Second the motion!
It is true that PJ's original intent was to document the SCO case for posterity. Initially she did not have a real opinion about SCO. She was looking forward to the trial and observing the tactics of two sets of high profile lawyers. That changed pretty quick of course once SCO and their lawyers showed their true colors.
But still the original mission of Groklaw - to document in depth the SCO trial - is accomplished.
In the process she has also shown the power of harnessing the FOSS methodology to other fields.
There is nothing stopping the ACLU, or the EFF, or anyone else from doing the same about issues that matter to them, but we cant really expect PJ to be the one to do it.
An honorary doctorate in LAW for PJ sounds like an excellent idea. Maybe at the next OSCON? Tell Tim O'Reilly to start promoting it!

First let me recommend you read Bertrand Meyer's write up on teaching introductory programming. Meyer is the inventor of the EIFFEL language, and the Design by Contract methodology. He teaches at the Zurich Technical institute.
Even if your students are not at the first year university level, some of his thoughts would be of value.

Second let me say that there are enough accomplished youngsters out there that you do not want to turn them off by boring them with trivia.
Meyer's approach is to use a well established library building blocks and let the student start by making calls to the library to implement some interesting new features.
Once hooked on the 'coolness' of being able to tell the computer what to do, some/most of them will want to know why and how this all works.

Third, given the almost total video orientation of today's youth I would suggest that the 'first program' should not be 'hello world' but instead be drawing a smiley face on the screen. Or something of similar graphical nature and complexity.
There was a language called LOGO developed for the commodore 64 that had that approach. Very easy to make a 'turtle' crawl around the screen and make figures/shapes. Learning to direct the 'turtle' was how the kids got introduced to statements, loops, conditionals etc.

softcoder