More open source and disruptive technologies

Sun is seemingly moving on along its open source track. The Fortress programming language, a continuation of Fortran, has reached the ranks of open source. First Java then "Fortran", well it was long ago since I did anything in Fortran, actually a Fortran derivative with some powerful extra quirks; PLEX - Programming Language for Telephone Exchanges. It targets (still does - I think) demanding real-time systems, i.e. telephone traffic. Ericsson, inventor of PLEX; also has a programming language in the open source domain, Erlang. I have never tried Erlang, but it also targets real-time systems.

Update (2007-01-16); I recently found an intersting site regarding history of programming languages, HOPL. Unfortunately it does not mention PLEX.


There is an article recently depicting the next five most disruptive technologies, those that we will see more of during 2007. One technology which is mentioned is RFID. It got some hype a few years ago and then everything calmed down a bit. Eventually I see it more and more on a daily basis, i.e. not necessarily in the places mentioned a few years back; retail. I do see it being employed more and more in security though. I have two badges, one to get into my customer's premises and I recently gor one from my empolyer. Both utilises RFID tags, so it is no longer necessary to swipe the card, just hold in fron of the reader. Very convinient!


There is a search engine for people 50+. Check out Cranky.com It has a simple and nice UI, only shows like five results on the first page etc. Well, if you get tired of Google and sense, like myself (I do have quite some years before I reach that point, actually!), are closing in on the age critera of the target group ... maybe it could be worthwhile, I do not know anything yet whether how powerful it is or how good an indexer it has, etc.

Finally, came across this war map describing the software wars Microsoft is staging. Maybe true to some extent, but quite fun also admist everything ...