Thanks for the update, Tommy. This is the only major open source geospatial conference I've ever missed and I'm starting to feel pangs of regret.

Is this what Joel Spolsky was talking about when he said Python was only halfway safe?. Via Boing Boing.

body_html_template

Brian Timoney has secured a slot for FRUGOS at GIS in the Rockies.

Last week programmers broke Windows Media DRM, and today it's announced that others have cracked iTunes FairPlay DRM. How will GeoDRM, using the same technologies as the big media companies, prevent unauthorized use of your geodata?

Congratulations to Ross Scaife et al. EDUCE is funded by the NSF. Ross is the host of the Pleiades project web infrastructure.

Colorado has a lot going for it, but the xenophobia -- whether homegrown or more recently imported from Texas and California -- is embarrassing.

Here's a brief follow-up about my vegetable garden. June was abnormally hot, but cool enough at night for tomatoes to set fruit. We've had all-you-can-eat tomatoes since July 1, and the eggplant and chiles kicked in three weeks later.

August has been much cooler, which means I can spend less time watering and more time processing tomatoes for storage. We get 2+ liters of primo Roma tomatoes every 3 or 4 days. Nick the bottoms with a paring knife, dunk them into boiling water two pints at a time for 15 seconds, and the skins peel away effortlessly. The tomatoes go into bags with the bare minimum metadata, and then into my deep freezer -- destined for a late autumn pasta sauce, or a mid-winter stracotto.

My remix of Godwin's Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a mention of Manifold approaches one.

See comments at the recent James Fee post.

Paul Ramsey swings his clue-by-four:

Open source is not about users, it is about developers. It is only about users in so far as users become sufficiently engaged in the project that they either become developers themselves, or support developers through careful bug finding or documentation.

I'd add that Open Source is for integrators too. End users not so much.

Update: Those of you who aren't persuaded by Paul Ramsey -- have a listen to Steve Ballmer.