OStatic

In Friday's OStatic Buffer Overflow, Sam linked to a Phoronix write up on Compiz's uncertain future.

Compiz, the project that brought eye-candy to Linux (with effects ranging from useful to breathtakingly beautiful to why would I want to do that? ), has been in trouble for some time. It's not yet had a stable release, though it has branched (and merged) several times.

If it's confusing for an end-user to figure out what branch of Compiz they're using, think about developing when branches and re-merges fly out of nowhere, like flames behind a mouse pointer, forcing code re-writes (or rendering months of work useless).

Kristian Lyngstol, a Compiz developer, says while the current situation is rather dark, it is not without hope. He doesn't sugarcoat the situation, and proposes what's next for project survival. Maybe not exciting, but his statements are precisely why Compiz still has a fighting chance.

Last month's Technology Review featured a piece on semantic computing. Semantic technology -- whether it's applied on the web or the desktop -- seems almost impossibly complex, as it tries to bring some very human traits of relating and connecting information to a machine environment. The artificial intelligence field, relatively speaking, is in its infancy, and since the human brain is largely an indistinguishable mix of biology and culture, it would seem semantic technology would be confined to psychology departments and computer science labs.

That isn't the case, of course. And when you consider that semantic technology deals with computers and people, and that any technology or study ultimately benefits from larger participant pools, it's little wonder that the Nepomuk project is open source and now even comes integrated with the KDE desktop.