dikini.net

Protect Freedom #1: Eliminate DRM

Stikr aktion at factoryjoe's flickr garage.

After a lot of silence caused by lot's of work (good, my bills are happy) and a continuous diversion into scheme, haskell, dylan and other interesting languages, I'm back into php speaking land. Funny feeling that. So here comes the beginning of something I've been continuously rubbing my (leftovers of) brains against.

copout This is not php specific, but since it discusses frequent problems occuring in php apps, I've labeled it with as php related as well. Makes it easier maintaining the site you see.

I have a problem with active record as a pattern. It is a logical one. Essentially it turn a (SQL) database row into an object. The class of the object represents the SQL table or view. Of course you can add behaviour to those classes and objects, i.e. activating those records.

All that is nice and dandy, but when you start talking about relations and constructing dynamically queries and corresponding objects, we start hitting the limitations of what I will call from now on the naive active record.

The problem is not trivial at all. It boils down to how to make peace between the host language type system (for example classes) and the SQL's dynamic compound types - the relations expressed as SELECT variants for example. It gets even harder when we decide to reverse the direction, so that we actulally want to update the database. Yuk! As though somebody actually does that!

If you haven't heard Kilnaboy play, and let's face it, most of you haven't, try and do it. Get on the bus, train, walk, crawl, whatever just do it. It's worth it. I never thought that folk can make so much racket and actually be enjoyable. Well, the guys have the passion and the energy to pull it off and enjoy themselves at the same time.

Today I had the pleasure of reading works by Sir Isaac Newton and Simpson in the Philosophical Transactions (of the Royal Society). Yes, it's true, they have digitised their archive starting from volume 1, 1665/1666. It is an entertaining read. Enjoy.

Up until now I was avoiding putting my thoughts on 'paper', but here we are. My instincts simply say Restricting knowledge distribution and use is wrong. Some might say this makes me a communist devil, anarchist or whatever other epithet is currently cool in their circles. Let's avoid that for the time being. These scribbles are probably not 100% correct. But the ideas are what matters anyway. And will you find a difference from a bird's eye view?

Obviously this is a strong social issue, as in it reflects a growing concern of the society as a whole. The society as the human beings represented by a state, like UK, USA, France, Bulgaria, or groups of states like EU, UN, ... Some long time ago patents were introduced by the British Crown in order to give a temporary monopoly to inventors, so that they can protect and exploit their knowhow, while making the knowledge (their knowhow) public. This was a significant social issue. This way knowledge was immediately becoming exploitable by the society. People could benefit from the abstract knowledge or the principles behind the patentable invention. These principles were not patentable at the time, only some of their defined applications - the invention, machines, products etc... The monopoly lasted for a relatively short period of time. Longer than it would take at the time to reverse engineer an invetion and set up production of a competitive product, but not by too much. This is important, since timescales, im my opinion, are important when trying to rationalise the costs of patents to a society.