OSCON 2007

OSCON 2007
- Wednesday
  - Keynote
    - Torkington - intro
    - Tim O'Reilly
      - O'Reilly Radar
      - SaaS changes/challenges OS assumptions
      - four freedoms of the FSF
        run, study, dist, improve
      - how to maintain those when
        requires 1000 cpus
        uses services based on proprietary algos
        redist isn't neccesary (already broadly dist.)
        improving "shared data" is more important
      - FSF seems dismissive of these problems.
      - need to rediscover value of freedom in new ways
      - wikipedia is the new kind of free
        dabbledb
        swivel
        manyeyes
      - Version control systems
        Why does congress need a VC system
        Diff. tools give diff. ways to think
      - OpenID is interesting
        There's a race to own data
        human geneome
        location data
        identity
        What needs to be open/free?
      - Launchpad
        collab services for OS developers
        sharing bugs/plans/etc. across projeccts
      - Open sourcce success factors
        frictionless SW distribution
        collaborative development
        modularity & lose coupling are important
        freeddom to build on, adapt or extend
        source helps, but not essential
        freedom to fork
      - web 2.0 is
        systems that harness network effects to get better the more people use them
      - Larry Wall's "Onion theory of open source"
        core is small
        layers of participation
        "betterr" the further you are ffrom the ccore
    - James Reinders, Intel
      - Outfitting for multi-core parallelism
      - Threading building blocks
      - C++ library
      - "$299" -- No, just kidding
      - moblin.org mobile internet linux devices
      - threadingbuildingblocks.org
      - compiler and processor independent
      - OS independent
      - Support available for $299
      - Works in C (with a C++ compiler)
    - Simon Peyton-Jones - Microsoft
      - Transactional Memory and Concurrency
      - Task parallelism
        30 year old technology
        locks and condition variables
        fundamentally flawed
      - What's wrong with locks?
        races (forgotten locks)
        deadlocks (too many, wrong order)
        lost wakeups
        diabolical error recovery
        => Locks are absurdly hard to get right
      - Atomic memory transactions
        Like database transactions
        All or nothing semantics
        A & I in ACID
        Can't deadlock -- no locks
        errror recovery is easy (rollback)
      - How do you make it work?
        optimistic concurrency
        reads and writes happen in a thread-local log
        At the end of the transaction, commit to memory
      - "retry" abandon current transaction and start over
        wait until one of the read memory locations changes
      - "choose" / "orElse"
        try this, if it retries, do that
      - There is a runtime cost
        but, compiler and processor tech can help
        faster but wrong is bad
        finer grained concurrency may allow faster code
      - Scales well with increasing numbers of threads
      - Available in STM Haskell today
        http://haskell.org/ghc
      - See article on wikipedia
    - Mark Shuttleworth & Tim O'Reilly
  - Andy Lester - Managing Technical Debt
    - Interst on debt will kill you
    - technical bankruptcy - can't do projects
    - Five step plan
      - identify debts
      - determine costs
      - pay the mmost profitable
      - stop inccurring new debt
      - repeat
    - Identify debts
      - clutter!
      - Anything you plan to do "later"
      - later == never
      - fragile code
      - ugly code
      - code w/o comments
      - outdated comments
      - Bus-sensitive knowledge
      - unpatched security holes
      - TODO & XXX???
      - Missing infrastructure (VC, bug tracking, etc.)
      - Relying on proprietary products
      - Jerks on the team
      - Jerks in management
      - No coding standards
      - code ownership
      - Unacknowledged Technical Debt
    - Determine Costs
      - Think time
      - Think $ too...
      - Think Risk
      - Cost of paying the debt
        time
        opportunity costs
        future maintenance
        HW
        SW
      - You are creating justification to sell the boss on the changes
      - opportunity cost
        what could be done instead?
        what if person is critical on other project
        do you push out release date to do docs?
    - Pay the most profitable
      - not cheapest
      - not most fun
      - not easiest
      - Pick ONE
      - Put a time bound on it
      - improvement, not perfection
      - Just Fucking Do It (JFDI)
      - Quantify!
        Improved turnaround
        improved quality
        decreased risk
        etc.
        Tell stories about past problems
      - Do ONE thing at a time
        land one plane at a time
    - Stop incurring new debt
      - "Do everything perfectly from now on" - Just kidding
      - Keep track of your technical debt
        in your bug tracker
        On a poster on the wall
        Somewhere you can't just ignore it.
      - Understand your "cash flow"
    - Remain vigilant
      - Watch corners for potential debt
        The center will take care of itself
      - Automate corner watching
        automated tests
        static analysis
        perl::critic
        coverity
        findbugs
        pde
        vigorous policing
      - Avoid surprises later
  - Jonathan Oxer - Release Monkey
    - Build, Test & Release your Software into the Wild
    - Build test release is expensive
    - Adding deployment is reallly expensivve
    - Lots of moving parts
      - scm
      - bug tracking
      - docs
      - testing
      - packaging
      - deployment
    - Automate: hooks & APIs
    - Release monkey is glue
    - scm
    - automated doc creation
      - javadoc
      - phpdocc
      - doxygen
      - etc
    - Bug closure
      - Close bug when commit is made
      - Look for string in commit msg
    - trigger build process from scm
  - Rob Richards - Who am I
    - The age of Digital identity
    - http://xri.net/=rob.richards
    - What is a digital ID?
      - digital repr. of claims about an entity
        domain name
        email addr
        username
        I-name
      - Claims can be made by or about the entity
      - no built-in assumption of trust
    - What's the problem?
      - username/password explosion
      - info is being stored
        privacy issues
        security concerns / identity theft
      - user doesn't know who is using their info
    - 7 laws of identity
      - user control and consent
      - minimal disclosure for a constrained use
      - justifiable parties
      - direccted identity
      - pluralism of operators & technologies
      - human integration
      - Consistent experience across contexts
      - (Kim Cameron, identityblog.com/?page_id=354)
    - Different contexts
      - browsing
      - personal
      - others...
    - OpenID and Information Cards
      - Allow for SSO
      - decentralized
      - user-centric
        user is in control of data
        user aware of info exchange
      - can redduce amt. of personal info a remote site needs to store
      - potential to increase the web experience while maintaining privacy
    - OpenID
      - URL based
      - Not machine dependent
        usable at the library, etc.
      - simple
      - many libraries
    - OpenID interaction
      - user submits URL
      - relying party locates identity provider
      - relying party establishes association with IP
      - relying party redirects user to IP
      - User authenticates against IP
      - IP redirects back to relying party
    - Information Cards
      - (not cardspace)
      - variety of selectors for various OS's
      - identities represented as cards
        self asserted
        managed (third party provided)
      - Identifier is unique among parties
        public key, mumble mumble
      - Complex technologies
        SAML
        WS-Security / WS-Policy / WS-Trust
    - Infocard Interaction
      - relying party never talks to IP
      - it all goes through the user
      - SSL required
    - Integrating with usr accounts in existing apps
      - how is the initial assoc perfformed?
      - who has the ability to change a user's ID
        users should always have control
        Should an admin be able to change a user's id?
  - Aaron Boodman - Hacking with (and on) Google Gears
    - What is gears?
      - offline for ajax apps
      - Plugin for firefox, IE & Safari
      - adds APIs to javascript
      - open source (BSD)
      - open process
    - design goals
      - incremental improvement to the web platfform
      - "webby" - you can view source, etc.
      - One application, one URL
      - Seamless transition betw. online and offf
    - A collecction of APIs
      - localserver: capture html, images, etc. to make avail offline
      - database: store large amts of structured data
      - worker pool: Threading for javascript
    - Localserver
      - a cache, not an app server
      - supports atomic upgraddes of groups off resources
      - always serve-then-validate
      - auto-updates resources
    - database
      - SQLite
      - Scales well
      - Added full-text search
    - worker pool
      - run js on a diff OS thread
      - avoid blocking UI for long ops
      - process model
        each worker is its own separate js program
        comm. betw. workers is by message passing
        workers can't access dom
    - ajax app architecture
      - ui <-> local db <-> sync - xhr <-> internet
    - Versioning your app
      - three step process
      - update the server
      - gears autoupdates the client
      - All clients will run "out of date" code at least once, because of serve-then-validate
      - when new version runs, db needs to be migrated
    - strategies for versioning
      - try not to break backwards commpat
        be able to speak with old clients
        allows transparent autoupdate
      - implement schema migration system
    - What's next for gears?
      - support for searching & sorting in multiple languages for the DB
      - control panel (what's stored, how big, uninstall)
      - many worker pool improvements
        http reqs
        timers
        error handdling
        cross-domain
    - get involved
      - code.google.com/p/google-gears
      - mostly cross-platform c++ with some js
    - Gears SDK
      - "Command-line" db browser
      - example apps like gearpad
        simple but not simplistic
        synchronization & conflict resolution had to be written
      - integrates with gwt
      - dojo offline toolkit supports gears
        has a synchronization toolkit
    - gears.google.com
    - security
      - apps are sandboxed
        "same origin" policy
        domain + protocol + port
      - gears asks permission
  - Rolf Skyberg - Applying maslow's hierarchy of neeeds to tecchnology
    - "Disruptive Innovator" at eBay
    - Gave away chewing gum & tchotchkes
    - hundreds of slides delivered very quickly -- difficult to summarize
    - actions reflect goals
    - hierarchy
      - survial
      - security
      - social
      - expression
      - enlightenment
    - a market is a collection of individuals
    - web 1.0
      - commerce network
      - make money
      - "security"
    - web 2.0
      - social/individual needs
    - The more energy users spend looking for the basics (help, login, etc.), the less energy they have to devote to your app
    - make products that delight and empower your users
    - success goes to the prodduct that fulfills the most needs with the least amount of waste
    - "does this make me laugh or help me out?"
  - Scott Berkun - Myths of Innovation
    - Author of a book: "Myths of Innovation"
    - Myth of epiphany
      - Magic Moment
      - Creative thinking is a process, not a moment
      - Lots of work to prepare for the eureka moment
      - you can't replicate the moment, because that's not the important part
      - All the simple stuff (chairs, etc.) had to be invented the hard way
    - "We understand innovation"
      - vitruvius, the ten books of architecture
        Source of the archimedes bathtub myth
        used it to make a point about geeks being better than jocks
      - The most common pattern of innovation: "nothing comes of it"
      - innovation is like (geographical) exploration
        most of your time is spent doing the boring stuff (traveling)
        high failure ratio
      - If there's success, nobody talks about the hard work that brought about the success.
      - nobody talks about all the work that was done that led to failure
    - "People like it when you innovate"
      - luddites were, in their mileu, fairly reasonable guys...
      - innovation displaces something
      - must overcome the sociology of the displacement
      - "Diffusion of Innovations" Everett M. Rogers
      - "your big ideas" vs. "what people need/want/are ready for/fear/can't resist
    - Innovation requires
      - allow mistakes to be made
      - allow initiative
  - BoF - GPL v3 for non-lawyers
- Thursday
  - Keynotes
    - Ben Fry - The processing Language for Data Visualization
      - Processing
      - originally for the art & design community
      - DSL for doing very snazzy graphics & animation
      - processing.org
      - processing.org/exhibiton
    - Robin Hanson - Cognitive Biases
      - People make mistakes...
      - Cognitive biases
      - People are even more biased than you think
      - YOU are more biased than you think, even if you think you're not biased
      - Betting markets overcome bias
    - Bill Hilf, Microsoft
      - Open Source at Microsoft
      - Architecting for Participation
      - Microsoft's Open Source work
    - Rick Falkvinge - Pirate Party
      - Founder of the Pirate Party in Sweeden
      - 0.63% of the popular vote
      - #10 party, #4 among youth
      - Economic principles are the real conflict
      - copyright is a commercial monopoly
      - used to be only in the public sphere
      - Now it's in private communication
      - to monitor, need to scan everything, even private email
      - => Privacy, or copyright? tough choice...
      - framing the debate as one of privacy
      - Other parties are asking them for help and explanation
      - "Political donations in Sweden are not regulated" -- feel free to donate
      - piratpartiet.se
    - Steve Yegge - Branding
      - How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps
      - Branding
      - "build it and they will come" - wrong
      - new coke vs old coke
      - new coke was a huge failure. Why
      - Turbo C vs Quick C
      - branding matters for SW too
      - A brand is a pointer, a placeholder
      - How do you make a brand?
      - Advertising?
      - Not necessarily
      - your brand needs to stand for something
      - "open source" is a terrible brand name
  - State-of Lightning Talks
    - Five minute talks by project leaders.
    - OLPC
      - 10 year old girl gave the talk
      - I missed most of it.
    - OpenID
      - Single Sign On
      - Nobody "owns" it
      - Lots of uptake
      - Will help with distributed social networking
      - 120 million open ids
      - 4500 sites supporting
      - 2.0 is close to done
        libraries for every language
      - OpenID foundation - 501c3
    - Django
      - djangoproject.com
      - python web platfform
      - like rails
      - data backed websites
      - community
        django just turned 2
        Many many django sites
        100 django projects on code.google.com
        satchmo - ecommerce package
        fsf, hp, pownce, scripps/howard, wash. post, curse gaming, tableau
      - New since 0.95...
        unicode
        oracle
        newforms package
        testing framework
        databrowse
        django.contrib.webdesign
        django.contrib.localflavor l10n
      - new admin i/f coming
    - LedgerSMB
      - Accounting app for small/mid businesses
      - up to a few hundred empl.
      - forked from SQL-Ledger in 2006
      - doesn't (yet) integrate well with other sw
      - many security updates in the last year
      - starting to refactor the project
      - coming:
        multi-user security
        GAAP compliant
        separation of duties/voucher system
        better maintainability & integration
      - www.ledgersmb.org
    - Open Solaris
      - New installer. After ten years
      - Lots of work to make it work on x86 hw
      - Generic whitebox hardware really works.
      - Wireless, sound, etc.
      - using mercurial SCM
      - All sun open source proj. will use mercurial
      - New director of oper sys. strategy
      - project indiana
        making it easier to install/update
        six month release cycle
        one CD install
        ease of use
        pkg mgmt system
    - MySQL
      - 5.1 is going RC soon
      - Falcon is going beta soon
        new storage engine
        faster than innodb on large
      - workbench (er tool) going beta
      - mysql proxy just released
      - mysqlnd php driver
      - 5.1 learned from mistakes in 5.0 release
      - Won't ship with big pile of bugs
      - partitioning
      - row based replication
      - full text indexing plugins
      - repl. support for cluster
      - xpath support
      - internal task scheduler
      - coming later
        hash & merge joins
        uhh, other stuff I missed
      - mysql forge - apps & code snippets
    - Gentoo
      - new feature
        splitting debug info
        cross compl.
        multiple inheritance in profiles
        reverse blocker detection
        slot based dependencies
      - New programs
        PyBugz
        x86 macs
      - More distributed devvelopment
        overlays
        "layman"
        sunrise
      - New package managers on board
        now have a spec for package files
      - Integrating docs into bash (doxygen for bash)
      - rewritten installer
        15 min install
        acts like other installers
        livecd builder
    - Chandler
      - PIM for people who use inbox as task list
      - shared task lists and calendars
      - hackable
      - desktop
        python, twisted, wxwidgets
      - server
      - web client
      - rss, webdav, imap, pop, ics, atom, web
      - Preview release Aug 2007
      - open source & extensible
        write desktop plugins in python
      - chandlerproject.org
    - Mozilla
      - Mozilla Foundation
      - Only five people
      - Administering grants
      - 2 years ago formed a corp
      - Most of the empl. work in the for profit corp.
      - Corp is owned by the foundation
      - "Internet as a Public Good" conference
      - Some expansion in the next year
      - Firefox is a big part of their focus
    - PostgreSQL
      - What's new in 8.3
      - Devs & admins
        integrated full text search
        xml storage & indexing
        new datatypes - uuid, enum
        index sort order, null placement
        update & delete at cursor posn.
        function costing
        pg_standby
        Improved regex support
        regex_split_to_[arr|table]
        GSSAPI / kerberos
      - vacuuming gets easier
        multiple autovacuum daemons
        Heap Only Tuple
        HOT rows are vacuumed page at a time
      - performancce improvements - 10% over 8.2
      - 80% of the speed of oracle
      - async commit
      - plan cache
      - synchronous scan
    - Gnome mobile
      - Code, not a consortium or standards body
      - user experience
      - mobility
      - big list of participants
      - C, C++, Python
      - Bluez, eds, telepathy, avahi, gstreameer, matcchbox, etc
      - nokia n800, openmoko, OLPC, vernier labquest
      - jeff Waugh is a good speaker
    - Derby
      - Opensource lightweight Java DB
      - Sun & IBM collab
      - Bundled in java 6 jdk, and ubuntu feisty
      - tracction
        web client store
        middle tier space
        embedded in shrink-wrapped apps
        departmental client/server db
      - new features
        security improvements
        performancce
        lang. based ordering
        blobs/clobs
        drop column
        create table as...
      - Future (prob. 10.4)
        roles/privs
        scalability
        replication
        table funcs.
        jmx monitoring
        unique where not null constraints
        limit/offset (olap windowing)
        java web start
    - Apache
      - ASF mission - framework for projects
      - 50 top-level projects
      - 1500 committers, 220 foundation members
    - Subversion
      - "CVS done right"
      - 43 developers with global write
      - 90 with partial write
      - both salaried and volunteer devs
      - stable dev process
      - mid to mild turnover rate (1 full committer changge per year)
      - consensus based process
        only had to resort to voting twice
      - global committers are in charge, with lots of community input
      - recently formed nonprofit subversion corp. for long term interests (trademark)
      - quadratic growth
      - in 1.5
        merge tracking
        interactive conflict resol
        changelist feature
        sparse working copies
        cyrus sasl
        improved apis
        bugfixes galore
        backwards compat still preserved
    - Linux Kernel
      - In five minutes
      - Great presentation
        daughter showed paper "slides" while he read stuff at high speed
        The slides degenerated into penguin jokes
        why don't you see
        pengins in britain?
        They're afraid of Wales.
      - Listed every new feature
      - he talked *reallly* fast
      - 31000 patches
      - 2330 loc per day
      - mod'd 2780 loc per day
      - 5 major releases
  - Next Generation Version Control Systems
    - standing room only -- very popular
    - Not a good speaker, hard to follow
    - Early history
      - RCS
      - CVS
    - Subversion
      - network via binary webdav proto
      - flattened branching
      - some copy efficiency
      - new "dimension" of properties
    - Distributed development
      - patch-based
      - "tags" simply snapshots of source
      - many tools based on this arch, bzr, darcs
    - next gen tools
      - fully distributed
      - every revision traceable
      - effficient packs/bundles (rev sets)
      - complete, uniform distribution of history
    - Benifits of distribution
      - no central point of failure
      - commit ID assigned in unique ways (hashing, uuids)
      - decentralized is inherently transactional
      - no enforced "star pattern"
        self-forming clusters of development
    - Revision model requirements
      - must represent merges to work
      - versions must not change by location
      - branching is in the direction of cchanges
    - Revision data warehousing
      - find more info on reasons for a change
      - data mining repository
      - more than just 'log'
      - If you've got the whole repo on your disk, more info available to you
      - Good visualization tools
      - Demo of git GUI viewer
    - Stable development model
      - bad changes are easy to drop
      - rules
        No single commit can break the build
        every commit is well desccribed
      - "bisect" find which commit ruined your day
      - reviews are easier
    - bazar-ng (bzr)
      - python based, oldest
    - git
      - unix style c api
      - fast
      - activve
    - mercurial (hg)
      - python & C
      - fast
      - progress & features
    - inodes vs content
      - git only tracks content, not inodes
        history mining advanced by necessity
        occasionally doesn't detect renames
        inode based ops are slow
      - hg & bzr content based
    - UUID generation
      - hg & git based on checsum of rev & history
        offers "lossless revisions"
      - bzr patch IDs are UUIDs
    - lightweight branches
      - encourages frequent topic branching
      - every bug/feature can have its own branch
      - git & hg support well, bzr less so
    - pragmatic concerns
      - bzr & hg concentrate on ease of use
      - git not focused on ease of use - "write it yourseelf"
    - portability
      - hg - win + unix
      - bzr installs well on both
      - git (written by Linus...)
    - speed
      - bzr "fastt enough for most users"
        good up to thousands of changes
      - hg optimized for "cold cache" - very fast
      - git also fst
    - disk space
      - bzr ok
      - hg - very tight packs
      - git - very tight packs. 10x smaller than svn
      - gcc
        1.1gb svn checkout, 18 gb repo
        280 mb git repo
  - Python 3000
    - Frank Wilson Award for contributions to python community
      - Steve Holden
      - python community conference
      - author of web programmng book
    - what is python 3000
    - python 3.0
    - will be incompatible
    - working on it for about a year
    - close to defining what it will be
      - 41 PEPs submitted
      - 12 open
      - 10 acccepted
      - 10 final
      - 8 rejected
    - schedule
      - 3.0a1 2007-08
      - 2.6a1 2007-12
      - 2.6 final 2008-06
      - 3.0 final 2008-08
    - 3.0 will be incompatible
      - not even aiming for a usable common subset
    - 2.6
      - fully backward compat to 2.5
      - will have forward compat features
      - "py3k warnings mode" detects runtime probs
      - 2-to-3 source conversion tool
        does a lot
        can't do dataflow analysis or type inferrence
        mechanical work of conversion
    - How to convert to 3.0
      - start with unit tests
      - port to 2.6
      - test with py3k warnings
      - fix all warnings
      - use 2-to-3 to convert to 3.0 syntax
        don't hand edit the code
      - test converted code under 3.0
      - fix 2.6 code, repeat conversion/test
      - release separate 2.6 & 3.0 tarballs
    - What to do now
      - Start using "modern" features
        sorted()
        xrange()
        int//int
        relative import
        new exception hierarchy
        segregate unicode processing
      - Don't try to write syntactic 3.0 code
      - Don't go in one step from 2.5 to 3.0
        transition to 2.6 first
    - Why switch to 3.0
      - Unicode source code
        Not in standard library - ASCII only
        unicode allowed in identifiers
        default encoding is UTF-8
        Probably to RTL...
      - Changing string datatype
        java-like model
        strings (str type) always unicode
        separate bytes type
        must explicitly specify encoding to swtich betw. types
        dropping u"..." prefix
        .encode() str -> bytes
        .decode() bytes -> str
      - bytes type
        mutable sequence of small ints (0..255)
        impl as unsigned char[]
        has some list like methods (.extend())
        bytes literals b"ascii"
      - New IO library
        stackable components (like java)
        lowest level: unbuffered bytes
        platform dependent - not C stdio
        middle layer: buffering
        top layer: unicode encoding/decoding
        Compatible API
        open(filename) returns buffered text file
        read() & readlines() return strings
        open(filename, "rb") returns buffered binary file
        read() & readlines() return bytes
        Print is a function
        print x , y => print(x, y)
        print >>f, x => print(x, file=f)
        Auto xlation is 98% correct
      - String formatting
        now a method
        see pep 3101 for details
        "see {0}, {1} & {2}".format("a", "b", "c")
      - Classic classes are dead
      - Signature annotations
        in function declaration
        Mostly used for introspection
        language doesn't use it, adddons can
      - new metaclass syntax
        class C(B1, B2, metacclass=MC)
        metaclass can provide __prepare__()
        returns namespace dict for class body execcution
      - issubclass & isinstancce
        overloadable on the 2nd arg
        used for "virtual inheritance"
      - Abstract Base Classes
        voluntary base classes for standdard apis
        Usable as a mixin class (like DictMixin)
        provides abstract methods you must override
        @abstractmethod decorates an abst. meth.
        Standard ABCs will be provided
        collections.py
        io.py
        numbers.py (real, rational, complex)
      - Exception reform
        raise E(arg)
        "except e as v" instead of except e, v
        All exc must derive from BaseException
        new exc. attrs
        __traceback__
        __cause__
        set by raise "E from v"
        chained exceptions
        __context__
        set when raising in except/finally block
        Exc's aren't seqs; use v.args
      - Int/Long unification
        siingle built in integer type
        slightly slower
      - Int division returns a float
        use // for int division
        usable in 2.x "from __future__ import division"
      - Octal & binary literals
        0o777 == octal (instead of 0777)
        0b1010 == binary
      - itera{tors,bles}, not Lists
        range() behaves like old xrange()
        zip(), map(), filter() return iterators
        dict.keys(), .items(), .values()
      - Dictionary Views
        inspired by java collections
        remove iter[keys|items|values]()
        repl by .keys() .items() .values()
        These return a dict view
        not an iterator
        lightweight obj that can be iterated repeatedly
        .keys(), .items() have set semantics
        .values() has colllection semantics (supp. iter() & len())
      - Default Comparisons changed
        default == compare against identity (same as 2.x)
        <, <=, >, >= raise TypeError by default (new)
        exammple [1,2,""].sort raises TypeError
      - Nonlocal statement
        like "global", but only for outer scope
        useful for closures
      - new super() call
        pep 3135
        
        super() now works -- digs out from frame
      - Set Literals
        {1,2,3} same as set([1,2,3])
        no empty set literal, use set()
        no frozenset literal; use frozenset({...})
        set comprehensions - maybe even dict comprehensions
      - And more...
  - Prototype
    - Amy Hoy
    - Javascript is a real language
    - everything in js is an object. Everything.
      - Even functions are objects
    - javascript relies heavily on functions
    - objects
      - var newObj = {}
      - newObj.foo = "bar"
      - obj's are kinda like hashes
    - how does it work w/o clases?
      - It's a prototype based language
      - prototype ~~ template
      - all obj's have a prototype attr
      - mess w/the prototype, and it changes all the object instances
    - Most of the preso was code...
      - http://slash7.com/ to download the slides
    - Prototype Library is cool
      - allows Class creation
      - modeled after ruby
      - the $ and $$ methods
      - useful form methods - focus, activate, deactivate
      - Really easy ajax
        insert the result directly into the dom
        supply callbacks for failure, success, etc.
  - Programming with dynamic confidence
    - Matt Harrison
    - http://panela.blog-city.com/
    - Dynamic langs let you write less code
      - python is executable pseudocode
      - easier to read
      - easier to review
      - less to test
      - less bugs
    - Not a very good or compelling talk. Lesson: Don't just read your talk.
- Friday
  - Keynotes
    - Phil Rosedale, Linden Labs
      - Second Life
      - It's not just a game
      - Voice chat is coming
      - Presence is an important part of second life
      - To fully realize its potential, it needs to be fully open
      - They're going to open source the server
      - Network effects (power law) means you want to open source
      - Very serious about open source
    - Jimmy Wales, Wikia - Open Search
      - Wikia - Open search
      - Every human has access to the sum of human knowledge
      - wikia is everything else -- all the other books in the library
      - Wikia is a separate organization, not related to wikipedia
      - Look at the benefits of non-proprietary web
      - See how cool wikipedia is, compared to Britannica
      - ==> We need a non-proprietary web search engine
      - building the stack
        search tools
        public algorithms for ranking
        publicly available crawl of the web
        all open source
      - http://search.wikia.com/
      - Jeremie Miller is working on this
        Founder of Jabber
        Invented XMPP
        Shares Wales' philosophy
      - basic principles
        Transparency - openness in systems & algo's, content & APIs
        Collaboration - Everyone can contribute in soome way; strong community focus
        Quality - Improve the relevancy and accuracy of results and the searching experience
        Privacy - The holy grail of privacy protection
      - Big announcement - Just acquired Grub from Looksmart
      - Releasing Grub under a free license
      - Grub is a distributed crawler - like seti@home
      - But how do you deal with scammers and spammers?
        Security thru obscurity isn't the answer
        Open algo's are the right path
        The "restaurant analogy"
        Design a restaurant
        Serving steak
        customers will have knives...
        knives are dangerous
        so, keep everyone in a cage
        This is stupid.
        The real world doesn't work that way, online communities shouldn't either
    - Simon Wardley, Fotango - Commoditization of IT
      - Commoditisation of IT and What the Future Holds
      - Funny guy, good talk, but hard to take notes
      - commoditisation == what was hot is now boring
      - When it's new, it's a competetivve advvantage
      - When it's a commodity, it's just a cost of doing business
      - Saas is about commoditization
      - Open source is the only way to get to a utility market for IT infrastructure
    - Nat Torkington
      - Whipping thru points quickly
      - Linux is 16 yrs old, it's a teenager
      - More funny that you can't takes notes on
    - James Larsson - Pimp my Garbage
      - hardware hacker
      - Batshit insane.
      - "Leather Fetish Pong"
  - Michael Peters - Updating your testing toolbox
    - Three types of testing
      - During development
      - performance
      - regression (smoke)
    - During development
      - Firebug! - firefox plugin
      - Safari 3 will have web inspector (like firebug)
      - LiveHTTPHeaders
        another ff plugin
        all http headers for all reqs
        Can save all headers to a file, then run grep on that
      - view formatted source
        FF plugin
        state of the DOM right now
        of course, firebug does this too
        But this allows you to save a snapshot
      - PageDiff
        FF plugin
        Capture the page *now*
        Diff versus some other snapshot
      - meld - visual diff tool for linux
    - Performance
      - Load time analyzer
        FF plugin from google
        gives js execution time, which firebug doesn't
      - Yslow
        yahoo thing like load time analyzer
        gives tips and hints
      - benchmark.js
        gfx.neohub.com/benchmark
        compare similar techniques to find fastest
        compare browsers
    - regression
      - selenium (but see windmill)
        selenium-rc
        selenium server
        Can stop/start browser
        selenium core, runs inside browser
        selenium IDE
        combine IDE & RC to allow many folks to make goood tests
      - http://windmill.osafoundation.org/
        http://windmill.osafoundation.org/trac/wiki/MissionStatement
      - Continuous integration testing
        runs tests repeatedly
      - smolder
        uses TAP - Test Anything Protocol
        simple & line oriented
        20 yrs old
        language agnostic
  - r0ml - An Open Source Lexicon
    - SW is the trivium of the 21st century
    - programming is rhetoric
    - Use archaic words for modern concepts, instead of pressing modern words into places they don't really fit.
    - Much erudition.
    - You had to be there...
  - Closing Keynote
    - Hardware hacking