Linked List: November 13, 2007

Tuesday, 13 November 2007

Dalvik: How Google Routed Around Sun’s IP-Based Licensing Restrictions on Java ME ★

Stefano Mazzocchi on how Google avoided Sun’s Java ME licensing restrictions: they’ve written their own virtual machine, Dalvik:

But Android’s programs are written in Java, using Java-oriented IDEs (it also comes with an Eclipse plugin)… it just doesn’t compile the Java code into Java bytecode but (oops, Sun didn’t see this one coming) into Dalvik bytecode.

So, Android uses the syntax of the Java platform (the Java “language”, if you wish, which is enough to make Java programmers feel at home and IDEs to support the editing smoothly) and the Java SE class library but not the Java bytecode or the Java virtual machine to execute it on the phone (and, note, Android’s implementation of the Java SE class library is, indeed, Apache Harmony’s!)

(Thanks to Nate Silva.)

Your Creation Museum Report ★

John Scalzi on The Creation Museum:

Let me say this much: I have to admit admiration for the pure balls-out, high-octane creationism that’s on offer here. Not for the Creation Museum that mamby-pamby weak sauce known as “Intelligent Design,” which tries to slip God by as some random designer, who just sort of got the ball rolling by accident. Screw that, pal: The Creation Museum’s God is hands on! He made every one of those animals from the damn mud and he did it no earlier than 4004 BC, or thereabouts.

Bento ★

Public beta of a mysterious, intriguing new app from FileMaker — a Leopard-only “personal database”.

Investment Firm Names Al Gore as a Partner ★

Matt Richtel reporting for The Times:

Deepening his ties to Silicon Valley, former Vice President Al Gore said on Monday that he had become a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Spotlight Strikes Back ★

Matt Neuburg:

In order to explain why Spotlight in Leopard is so good, I have to talk briefly about why Spotlight in Tiger was so bad.

Great details on how to construct complex Spotlight queries.

Dave Dribin: ‘The Problem With Spaces’ ★

Dave Dribin does a good job explaining why Spaces falls short.

I believe a major part of them problem is that Apple tried to make virtual desktops accessible to the average user. However, I think no matter how much spit, polish, and animation Apple puts on Spaces, virtual desktops is a power user feature. Spaces is broken because it is designed for the wrong user.

(I got a ton of email yesterday telling me I could solve my complaint by setting Safari to “Every Space” in the Exposé & Spaces pane in System Prefs, but that isn’t what I want at all. Yes, it avoids the problem where you get teleported to a different space by Command-Tabbing to or clicking the Dock icon of Safari, but setting Safari to “Every Space” means all open Safari windows are visible in every space. If I’m working on a certain project in space 2, I only want the Safari windows that pertain to that project to appear in space 2.)

JavaScript Bookmarklet Builder ★

Worth a re-link: A text filter I wrote a few months ago that makes writing — and especially revising — JavaScript bookmarklets much more pleasant. I use it with BBEdit, but it should work well with TextWrangler and TextMate, too.

Bob Herbert on Reagan’s 1980 Mississippi Speech ★

With yet another op-ed column in The Times on this topic, which yet again does not refer to the other Times columnists who are debating the same issue, this is starting to get absurd. But I’m enthralled — it’s an angry, personal argument, but you have to be following along, and aware of The Times’s op-ed columnist policies, to see it.