Following on from my post yesterday, it emerged overnight that Oracle tried to buy MySQL. That gives credence to my belief that Oracle are really trying to get into the open source space, without releasing their own source code. Since open source is hot property at the moment, from Oracle's perspective it is better that they acquire database technology companies than a competitor. And if the rumors of

Unless you missed it, Oracle bought Sleepycat software.

There are many conspiracy theories about Oracle's motive. On the one hand, we have a big, commercial database company who is buying up companies that provide open source technology (they bought InnoBase last year).

On the other hand, we have MySQL, a company that has been using the InnoBase and Berkeley DB (Sleepycat's product).

In the UK today it is D-Day for Chip & Pin.

Basically, all UK credit and charge cards should now be fitted with a chip and when you pay for goods with your chip and pin card, you have to enter a pin number, rather than provide a signature.

All of the bugs in the process have yet to be ironed out - many of us, for example, still don't have chip and pin cards, even for our most regularly used cards. We can still sign, but the secondary problem here is that some stores are refusing to accept non chip & pin cards for transactions. There is no reason for this - except badly trained staff and a campaign by APACS that gives the impression that everything is OK.

I've just traveled on a long journey (4 hours) by train. It may be slower than plane, but it feels much more relaxed, there's a lot more space (up in first class we shared the entire carriage with about 6 other people), although the rest of the train was a lot busier, but most important of all, it lets you see a lot more of the country and the countryside, including those areas where you are just a few yards away from the craggy rocks of the coast and the North Sea.

It also gives you a much better opportunity to do some work - I had a massive table at my disposal, my own standard power socket and, had I been on the right train, the opportunity to use the free wireless (chargeable in standard) for Internet access for the entire journey duration.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about using personal power devices (such as CHP and wind turbines) to provide the power for your office and help lower those escalating power bills.

Now an article at the BBC describes how some companies and individuals are doing exactly that, including the Co-operative building in Manchester.

They expect to save 4% by having a mini farm of turbines on their roof, and up to 30% by using a combination of other 'green' technology.

I'm on the road again, although this time mostly for pleasure, and I'm wired up to the hotel network. Interestingly, net access is free in the rooms, and through wireless in the rest of the hotel, also free. Compared to the $10-$20 per day charged by most hotels I've visited and I'm both surprised and pleased.

The wireless option is obviously great and lets me work pretty much anywhere, but in the room (I'm on the top floor, basically a converted attic) it's wired only.

I don't have a big issue with that, but why do they supply such short cables?

I know they expect me only to work at the desk, but there's also a bed and a small seating area (in an otherwise huge room), but the cable is probably just 3-4ft long and its barely long enough to reach the desk.

I'm sure many people have seen sci-fi movies that involve individuals using touch screens in much more intelligent ways than we see available today.

Even the interface in Star Trek (which is often based on a touch screen with multiple layers and levels) looks more interesting than the interfaces available, touchscreen or otherwise.

Now a video has surfaced (through digg) of the work being done at NYU Media Research Lab on multi-touch interaction.

I was reading Get ripped off at iTunes store for low quality 128bit by Alex Scoble, and I'd like to offer a much cheaper, better quality alternative for obtaining your music.

Rather than buying the music through an online music store, which provides no control over how the music is ripped, or its format, not to mention the DRM issues, buy the music on CD.

I know what you're thinking - it'll be more expensive. But rather than buying the CD brand new, buy it second hand (Amazon is a great source here) or through special deals (3 for 2, or 4 for $10) specials. I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a CD - in fact many of the CDs in my collection are ones bought for as little as 99p (about $1.75). Even on Amazon I generally look to pay less than £5 ($9) for a CD, including postage, and often get them for as little as £1.99 ($3.50).

As an Apple developer, I was keen to get hold of the new Intel-based macs as soon as possible, so when the opportunity came up for us developers to get hold of one of the early machines I went for it like a shot.

While, of course, there were limitations about what I could talk about, I was, on the whole, thoroughly impressed with the machine that we were given as part of the Apple Transition Kit (ATK).

Now Apple has honoured an original (perhaps slightly veiled) promise to replace the original kit with an iMac. It's been on the desk for a little less than 2 hours and so far I'm impressed.

Earlier this week I talked about the ongoing advance of the VMware software through a range of different environments and how they compared to other solutions.

The VMware player software has been available for some time now, and it's been a hit. I am even considering producing some of my own VMware player packages that could be downloaded and used by VMware player users.

For me though the most useful product of VMware is their server offering. I run it on a server here, set up a number of different operating systems and then at any time I can log in to an environment and run an application or lookup a particular element. It certainly makes certain aspects of the job much easier. Within just a few minutes I can test an application within BSD, a number of Linux variants and Solaris without ever having to reboot, and for many, without having to do anything more than login.