O'Reilly Digital Media

Here is another Perl success story from Jay Lawrence, writing in to the mod_perl mailing list. EDDS is a customized document management system.

EDDS

There are few things more sure in life than death and taxes. Ok, well I can think of one more - tax forms!

The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA - our Federal tax collection agency - like the infamous IRS) has a collection of approximate 10,000 forms, guides and other publications that require management and control.

For the past 6 or 7 years these forms were managed using a proprietary database software that was costly to maintain and difficult to extend. As well, the system was housed on aging SPARC processors. In order to meet on-going and changing business requirements the system would need to be upgraded or replaced. It turns out that by using mod_perl, Linux and MySQL, plus some contracting time, the entire system was replaced for the cost of 1 year of operation costs.

A customized document management system was created to meet the unique business requirements of the forms management group at CCRA. This includes document versioning and multiple document formats for each document name. The filing and classification methods are continuously evolving and so the addition and decomission of some metadata fields is necessary.

New documents are created by either starting a new version of an existing form/document or by creating a new document header record. Then each document format, PDF, MS Word, Form Flow, etc., is uploaded using the file upload feature and the libapreq module to decode the uploaded files.

Security is a concern - we cannot place access to this document collection on the Internet. Instead we must report out files and then use rsync to move our data to a staging server. By using Perl we have been able to change from a weekly reporting cycle to a daily reporting cycle. As well, by using Perl we have been able to fix some really nasty decisions that were made 6 or 7 years ago when publishing to the web was to most people, an unknown process. Finally, by dumping the old software, CCRA and its clients were able to chuck out all those modems and go via the web.

The Publishing Directorate has been able to introduce many improvements to the reports of forms and publication. Turnaround time for changes or additions to existing reports, plus writing new ones, is trivial given we use the Template Toolkit (available through CPAN) for writing all reports. For things such as the Canadian Government On-Line (GOL) project, we are able to easily change templates and add new metadata fields. The power of reporting is good news for the Publishing Directorate, as their output represents the quality of their work.

CCRA is happy to have learned that Perl is the most practical language for extracting and reporting. The turnaround time and cost effectiveness of this project is a testament to that claim!

–Jay Lawrence

Jay Lawrence has a small services and software company in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His company builds custom information management and retrieval systems based entirely on open source software using Perl as his programming language of choice. He hopes to give back to the community by serving as co-ordinator of the Ottawa Perl Mongers group and by placing his best quality modules on CPAN.

To learn how large and small companies are using Perl to meet their goals, check out Perl Success Stories.

If you have a Perl success story of your own that you’d like to share, please let me know. You can reach me at: betsy@oreilly.com

Every neighborhood has a cool Mom. In our neighborhood, it was Mrs. Donnenwirth. When our Mom said we couldn’t go swimming at the Donnenwirth’s for the fifth straight day, Mrs. Donnenwirth would call up our Mom and explain how we had fallen in. She’d give me, her son Robbie (aka Little Robbie), and my brother $1.05 for three ice cream cones at Friendly’s, and another $5 to buy her a carton of cigarettes. When you’re 8 years old, they figure the cigarettes are for your friend’s Mom. She took me to my first rock concert (ELO, I think I was 12) and to Shea Stadium the day Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s record for the most hits.

Mrs. Donnenwirth was a diminuitive woman, maybe 5 feet tall, but she was one tough customer. In many ways Mrs. Donnenwirth was both mother and father to Robbie. But this is a story about Father’s Day, after all, and Mrs. Donnenwirth wasn’t a single mother. In fact, Mr. Donnenwirth was there every step of the way. He taught me to bowl. He came to every one of Robbie’s little league and soccer games. He was there for every breakfast and every cookout, and he was never late coming home for dinner.

Robert Donnenwith, Sr. (”Bob” to Mrs. Donnenwirth) was as tall as Mrs. Donnenwirth was short. He was so tall that he looked tall even sitting down, and he had to duck his head while riding in his van, lest he bump the ceiling. I’d guess he was 6′ 4″, but I’m just guessing. I never saw him standing up because he was paralyzed from the neck down, and he was confined to a wheelchair since before I was born. He could move his arms a bit but not his hands, which were permanently frozen in an unnatural and useless position. He could feed himself with a special fork strapped to one of his hands. He could drink through a straw, although usually his son or wife had to hold the cup where he could reach it. Mr. Donnewirth smoked too. Even as a young kid, I thought that was pretty funny–a guy in a wheelchair, smoking. It wasn’t like it was going to stunt his growth or die of lung cancer.

I probably spent half my waking hours between ages 4 and 10 at the Donnenwirths’ house. I can only imagine the effort it must have taken Mrs. Donnenwirth to carry on her daily life. Chasing around an impish son while being fulltime caretaker to her husband. Mr. Donnenwirth had been a test pilot in the Air Force. His plane crashed, and he was left paralyzed. His wife was pregnant at the time.

I can only imagine what life was like for Mr. Donnenwirth. His family lived in a modest ranch house, with ramps and an elevator, and a converted handicapped van parked in the driveway, presumably all paid for by some well-earned government pension. Whereas many fathers would give anything to spend all day every day with their children, to watch them grow, to compete, to succeed, what father would be willing to do so at this price? I imagine he would have traded it gladly for a 45-minute commute to a dreary office, and a chance to play catch with his son on the weekends.

I said that Mr. Donnenwirth taught me to bowl, and I meant it. He’d sit in his wheelchair behind the scorer’s table and tell me how to correct my stance, how to align my wrist, how to follow through. When I was growing up, most Dads hit their kids to discipline them. Robbie knew that Mr. Donnenwirth couldn’t hit him, couldn’t even feed himself without someone’s help. I don’t know what kind of parent I could be if I were immobilized. I imagine I’d feel helpless and angry, as I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Donnenwirth often felt. But for me, their house was always a refuge, even if I couldn’t stand their dog. And I will always recall with admiration the struggles they faced and endured.

Mr. Donnenwirth died while I was living in California. The life expectancy of a man in his situation isn’t long, and he’d been in the wheelchair nearly 30 years. I heard of his death when I moved back to New Jersey. I visited Mrs. Donnenwirth, still looking youthful in her mid fifties and still living around the corner from my parents. When I rang the bell, my wife and kids in tow, she answered the door and didn’t miss a beat. “Well whadya know? It’s Needlenose!” (her longtime nickname for me). Mrs. Donnenwirth always told it like it was.

Who were the coolest parents in your neighborhood.

I decided that one day isn’t enough when it comes to Fatherhood, so I think I’ll talk about it all week. But today, I’ll pay tribute to all the DINKs (double income no kids) of the world.

My sister (”Aunt Elaine” to my kids) is one in a million. She has been happily married for twenty years and has never made a secret of the fact that she doesn’t want kids. Most people mistake such an attitude as meaning that the childless person is immune to the instincts of motherhood. On the contrary, my sister has simply chosen a different path. She just prefers kids about the time they can appreciate the things she appreciates–a good meal, a fine museum, some world travel.

Now that my daughters are a little older, Aunt Elaine has started taking them to museums. But my son, not yet four, is still a little on the young side for a grand day out. Although he likes museums, he wants to go with Mama and Papa, and Aunt Elaine doesn’t see the point if his parents are along for the ride. She prides herself on offering experiences that a child’s parents can’t or won’t.

Speaking of living on the edge, Father’s Day found our extended family around Grandma’s and Grandpa’s pool, and Zach leaned over a bit too far and fell in. There we no less than five adults nearby, and Zach did a surprisingly good job staying up without his “floaties” but Elaine leapt into action with blinding speed. She has a faster first step than Kobe Bryant, and like Shaquille O’Neal, she will not be denied. She was out of her lounge chair before Zach even hit the water and had scooped him up before he went under. As my daughter Ariel would later say, “Aunt Elaine was very fast. She jumped in as if she didn’t care about herself. She cared more about saving Zachary than herself.”

Now I’m sure someone else would have rescued Zachary momentarily, but Elaine deserves credit where credit is due. Although every father would take pride in plucking his son from a pool on Father’s Day, a true Father is glad to have his son’s Aunt do it, if only to save a child from an extra split-second of distress. So here is my public thanks to Zach’s Aunt Elaine, the best sister a father could have. She was not only helpful, but she was gracious to a fault (in a family full of people too willing to say “I told you so”), and we all thank her for it.

Tiger Woods won his second US Open today, no doubt making his father, Earl Woods, very proud and happy. Earl certainly seems to have raised an admirable son. Maybe all of us could raise world-class athletes if we had the time, or maybe Tiger Woods is unique. I’d like to tell you about another father and son I know who are no less remarkable than Earl and Tiger Woods.

Bob Witanek has an 8-year-old son named Robert. Robert plays piano better than any other 8-year-old I’ve ever known. He also composes his own music and the other day he transcribed a piano piece to violin for my daughters who play violin (although not nearly as prodigiously as Robert plays piano). Last month, for his grandfather’s birthday, when asked to play “Happy Birthday,” Robert asked “in what key?” and proceeded to play at least 4 different renditions. I wouldn’t put it past him to have arranged them on the spot. He plays lengthy Beethoven sonatas from memory. He also dabbles in violin.

But I didn’t set out to write about Robert today, because it is Father’s Day, so I want to talk about his father Bob. Bob appears quite ordinary, and yet Robert is evidence that Bob is in fact extraordinary. Unlike Earl Woods who, as I understand it, decided it would be cool to help his son become the world’s greatest golfer, Bob had no such plans for Robert. Instead, Robert spontaneously started playing piano at age 4 and hasn’t wanted to stop since. Bob has nurtured Robert’s love for music despite the challenges. Bob could tell you the exact diagnosis better than I, but Robert is, to my untrained eye, an autistic savant.

Bob doesn’t push Robert to perform. Instead, music is Robert’s love and favorite outlet. To nurture this love, Bob has tirelessly worked to organize monthly recitals at which his son and other children could share their love of music. He has tried to arrange play-ins with other children to give Robert more social interaction through music. He has successfully lobbied the local school board to admit third-graders into the music program (instead of waiting until the fourth grade). Bob has done this for all the children in the district, not just his son Robert.

Through no fault of his own, however, Bob had a bad day yesterday. Some attendees at the latest recital criticized his son for playing too long and too well (too advanced a piece). These insensitive clots were concerned that their mainstream children might have their delicate egos bruised rather than enriched because Robert plays so well. They also complained that a man with an autistic child sometimes runs three minutes late; they wanted to leave after their children played without giving the other child performers appropriate courtesy. They were too busy to listen to the beautiful music played by the son of the man who has single-handedly organized the monthly recitals for nearly two years. Maybe Bob should criticize them every time their children do something that Robert cannot, like make consistent eye contact or attend a public school without a full-time assistant. But I suspect they will never udnerstand the kind of love that Bob has for Robert, the love that fathers like Bob give daily to children that face the kinds of challenges Robert does.

I ask you to visit Bob’s Parent’s of Young Musicians site. I ask you to send him an email at bwitanek@igc.org and tell him what a wonderful father he is. And if you live in the Princeton, NJ area, or want to visit, I ask you to come by one of our monthly recitals and see the joy on his son Robert’s face when he plays the music that means so much to him.

Share your father’s day story

One big complaint about Flash content is that it isn’t indexable. Although this isn’t entirely true, Macromedia has come up with a solution:
Macromedia Releases Flash Search Engine SDK. It is a C++ toolkit that lets search engines like Yahoo and Google fully index Flash SWF content.

Prior to the release of the XDK, Flash developers could publish their Flash content so that the text within the Flash SWF file was included in the HTML Meta tags on the page that contained the Flash content.Furthermore, you could already use Google’s :swf option to search for SWF files.

However, my argument for some time has been that Flash content isn’t the type of stuff you necessarily want to index. Does anyone complain that GIFs aren’t indexable? SVG afficionados will point out that SVG is laden with metadata. One pointed out that you could serach for red clip art using SVG. I don’t know anyone who ever wanted to do that.

Likewise, there are complaints about not being able to use the browser’s Back button in Flash. Again, this isn’t entirely true. Developers can set up Flash SWF files that will work with the Back button. Nevermind that some database-driven sites don’t work with the browser’s Back button. Nevermind that it isn’t always clear where one would want to go back to in a Flash-type presentation. What does it mean to go back to a page when that page isn’t static?

Anyway, I see this as Macromedia’s response to zealotry, which they’ve always been pretty good at deflecting and adapting to. Maybe it will remove one more unfounded prejudice against Flash.

Does it matter if Flash content is indexable?

Here is a Perl success story that was originally posted by Chris Benson to the Perl advocacy mailing list.

According to Chris,

It’s more of a how I met the programming language of my dreams, or as Uri Guttman put it, “how Perl saved my A**”, but it was also a success story. This all happened a long, long time ago; when Intel 386s with 12MB of RAM were cutting edge machines so the code isn’t used anymore.

HOW PERL SAVED MY A**

Background:

I used to be development/1st-/2nd-/3rd-line tech. support for a software house selling back office systems to lawyers. Lawyers’ accounts remain open for the life of a case — you can’t transfer balances at the end of a period like (some) normal accounts. Therefore you have to transfer data from any existing system — even if it’s a 20 year-old mini from a defunct manufacturer, with no support, no documentation, no system software and no file/record layouts.

We would get the user to print all the reports on the system … and capture the output to disk. I used grep+sed+awk to process these text files into the form our application needed.

The story:

Close of business one Friday afternoon: I visited a firm of lawyers and collected their live data. I took the data home and started the conversion on the machine that I would be installing — with the converted data — on Monday morning. (I had already collected test data and written and tested the scripts with a sub-set of the data). The conversion should take until Saturday night, and then I would spend Sunday verifying and crosschecking the results.

Saturday morning: come down to find the machine only 10% through the processing and the disk chattering away. I eventually managed to log in and found that the awk conversion process was using all RAM + 50% swap … and growing at 4kB every few records…

A quick calculation showed that (a) it would run out of swap before completion and (b) it was not going to be finished in time for a Monday morning installation.

ARRRRRGH!

I was committed to a Monday install. One thing you learn working for lawyers — you do not upset lawyers: it tends to be expensive.

Aside:

I had been playing round with this new language that has been released (in several dozen messages posted to comp.lang.misc (or something)): Perl — already at version 3. I had managed to get it compiled on the Altos Unix systems we were using then, but hadn’t done much with it — the challenge had been getting it running on Altos Unix :-), but I’d noticed that (a) it was supposed to be at least 10x faster than awk and (b) it had a awk-to-perl translator. I happened to have a tape with Perl compiled for Altos Unix with me.

Back to the plot:

* I cut several thousand lines of awk code out of the shell scripts they were embedded in and saved them in separate files.

* I installed perl from the tape.

* I ran a2p on the files — and saved the results. I noticed a few warnings telling me to check whether the correct character or numeric test had been chosen: it had.

* a2p also pointed out a misplaced comment — that turned out to be causing the memory leak — but didn’t generate an error or warning from awk.

Even though removing the comment had (apparently) solved the problem, I was running late, so having created the Perl scripts I decided to use them: the processing took under 1 hour.

** The processing took under 1 hour. **

The expected processing time in awk was ~18 hours: In spite of the problems with awk, because of Perl I was now ahead of schedule. The system was installed on the Monday morning.

This story still brings tears of relief/joy to my eyes.

I have used Perl ever since.

–

Chris Benson

To learn how large and small companies are using Perl to meet their goals, check out Perl Success Stories.

If you have a Perl success story of your own that you’d like to share, please let me know. You can reach me at: betsy@oreilly.com

I will present here a problem: MP4 should be far more harmful to video than MP3 was to audio. Then I will present some mitigating circumstances that could save offline video after all.

I have observed that people consume video in completely different ways than audio, not the least of which is that people WON’T use a jukebox app to keep “all their favorite movies” on an iVideoPod, or similar consumption.

People purchase CD’s to use them over and over. People purchase DVD’s to watch a couple of times (with the notable exception of movies for children e.g. Disney movies)

The RIAA’s concerns about cannibalized sales are arguably unsubstantiated, as we have seen both expansion and contraction of that market post-MP3. However, the MPAA may have a point- if I can insert my DVD, image it to my hard drive, and Joe can download it and burn an identical DVD, Joe will do this to satisfy his urge for the movie. He’s done as a customer in that scenario.

A stopgap measure is obviously to keep pushing the DVD format faster than the bandwidth or storage capacity of consumers. A list of approaches:

• delay pc and television convergence so that PC’s are still unwieldy as home entertainment centers
• push 9.8 Gig and higher DVD’s when consumers can only burn 4.3’s
• keep adding features to DVD’s so they have to buy the real thing
• Push the price of DVD’s down so that it’s still easier (time invested vs. cost) to buy it than download it.
• Provide some tangiblity unavailable in the ephemeral, online version of the content

Aren’t these just delays to the overpowering march of technology?

I see some bright sides. For one, culturally, I think people are less prone to aggregate bootlegged video than audio. For one thing, it isn’t as collectable- you want to store music on your hard drive because you might listen to it. However, once you have viewed a movie on your hard drive, you are much more likely to want to get that Gigabyte of data off your hard drive.

Netflix and other online DVD rentals have made it essentially painless to get any media desired overnight. That is currently how long it takes to do a quality RIP of video. So the potential to hoard all that video on your hard drive is there… and still a bit pointless.

The emerging opportunity for online video is UNAVAILABLE content… and this can be bootlegs of concerts, leaked indiscretions of celebrities, but more importantly, all the residual video that content owners never had enough of a market to sell.

Independent bands may never see their label asking them if they want to press a DVD. But online distribution… could make it viable. But what about the tangible element? Naturally, if one of the they-might-be-giants (financially successful indie band) fans purchases a digital video of priorly unreleased, high-quality video footage, one of two things will occur:

1. This fan will copy it to all their TMBG fan friends, obviating their need to purchase it, making the offering a financial loss
2. This fan will tell all his TMBG fan friends to get it on the tmbg website, making the video release a financial success

Which will it be? To some degree, it will have to do with the craft of the publisher in getting their consumers to buy it, independent of any awards, incentives, etc. But this is just too much of a risk for traditional content publishers.

A far brighter side exists as well: that march of technology that is making the cost of physical media disappear as well.
Because, as ephemeral online media threatens to destroy physical media, physical media costs will approach zero as well.

There may be a time soon when it is actualy cheaper to produce and send someone the DVD than to download it to them.

Think about this: mail is < $1. CD media is <$1. Your time ... < 1$?

Working for the merchants of offline video is people’s desire to objectify their ephemeral digital objects. Portable MP3 players allow people to carry tangible forms of their media. And once people are used to burning DVD’s of their own video and media, and turning out their own content of high production value (for instance, what if DVD burners had a dye sublimation labeling system built in?), they will tend to purchase the original DVD, if they wanted the tangible version.

Just-in-time pressing of disks can be the tangibility answer for this type of content. One thing that no one seems to be noticing is that once production costs for a one-off disk approach nothing, the distribution costs will go away FOR OFFLINE, PHSYICAL MEDIA AS WELL.

Already, radio stations are not purchasing CD’s. Oldies stations have no need- there is no ‘new’ music to get. Thus, all that is needed is a large industrial version of a digital jukebox, and some hefty license fees to a provider, and it’s poof, instant radio station.

Now bring this into the record store: continue to stock the indie stuff, but digitally stock all the major releases. You can already scan their UPC code and listen to them… why not press to copy? With the scanned tiffs of the cover art and everything. Only weird Pet Shop Boys CD’s with orange lego covers would need ’special handling’… but you could buy the cheaper pressed copy as well. Hell, mongram it (a la iPod) and buy a tacky digitally signed analog artist’s signature while you’re at it…

What about people stealing from the machine? No chance. IN-STORE COPY PROTECTION SYSTEMS WORK! They have already solved the problem of employee theft… for an example, note Kinko’s. Kinko’s pays Xerox, Canon, whoever they lease copiers from, for every copy. It’s digitally tracked. Has been for years. Copy guys come out and ‘read the meter’, just like the gas guys. the system works. Kids won’t make extra copies because managers can count blanks just like they count cups at 7-11, you know?

So while we think that everything is going ONLINE because of course it’s cheaper, that’s not how things work.

The cruelest joke will be when studios loss-lead a home-vending hardware solution to printing your own DVD’s. You want it? Go crazy. Print your own DVDs. Save us the distribution cost. Fill your house with them. Buy the blank CD’s from us online. Buy the cool black DVD cases, in bulk from us… or through costco. We don’t care. Pirate the content for all we care… we’ll make it back when you pay $0.40 for the PDF of the cover art.

When was the last time you spent $3.60 for an artfully branded, well serviced coffee beverage?

Oh, you’ll pay for your content somehow, someway. The media industry isn’t going anywhere. : )

PS: A Fedex truck full of DVDs delivers more bandwidth (Gigabytes/second) than your fiber-to-the-home ever will.

When will offline distribution become cheaper than online? Isn’t online distribution better for the environment?

Congratulations! It�s a book! After what seems like a long and difficult pregnancy, the MySQL Reference Manual, the first book in the new O�Reilly Community Press series, has been born. Oops — I mean released.

This new series hasn�t been an easy one to get started. When we first began the discussion over a year ago to create a new series, little did we know how many obstacles we would have to overcome to make it a reality.

The idea seemed straightforward enough: publish essential community-generated documentation. So just what is that? Since the advent of computers, do-it-yourself documentation has been a foundation of grassroots technology development. FreeBSD, Linux, Perl, Apache, MySQL, and other core open source Internet technologies have flourished with the help of online documentation created by dedicated members of their technical communities. Part of the criteria that we use when deciding whether a title belongs in this new series is that the technology has proven itself in the field and has a dedicated and enthusiastic group of users that would like to see the documentation in printed form.

Thanks to that classic user interface � the book � O�Reilly Community Press allows hackers to access the wisdom of their community on the bus, at the beach, or in the bathroom.

Okay. Sounds reasonable. We take the documentation that has already appeared online, we put it into a book, and voila! Well, it isn�t that easy. Even with traditional books, editors have found it hard to predict release dates. It�s even harder with Community Press books. We don�t have the buffer of a tech review and production cycle that takes up to several months for traditional books. Instead, we expect to get the book and send it immediately to the printer after a light proof read. In addition, these books are constantly being updated along with the technologies they cover. I won�t even mention the challenges we faced in the conversion process � but we�re making improvements so that future Community Press titles will go more smoothly.

The reason I�m writing about this is to explain why the covers look different from O�Reilly�s classic animal books. �The series look is a direct descendent of early O�Reilly Nutshell handbook covers, which featured simple, classic line drawings printed with black ink on nubbly brown paper,� said Edie Freedman, O�Reilly�s Creative Director and original cover designer. �The oak tree on the cover of the books in the series represents the organic way the O�Reilly Community Press titles develop. The covers also evoke the books� importance to their communities, for oak trees grace the �town common� in most New England towns, anchoring the town�s gathering place.�

Difficulties aside, I�m as proud of this first offering as I can be. We�ve worked together as a company to publish the best of the documentation that emerges from the technical communities we serve. And this is just the beginning. Other books in the pipeline include a new edition of Greg Lehey’s The Complete FreeBSD and DocBook, 2nd Edition by Norm Walsh and Lenny Muellner.

So get yourself a copy and let me know what you think:
MySQL Reference Manual

What do you think of the new series?

Related link: http://www.wolframscience.com

Stephen Wolfram’s long-awaited magnum opus, A New Kind of

Science, was published last month. As recent

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/arts/11WOLF.html">coverage of the book in the New York Times

noted, “…his claims surpass the most extravagant speculation. He has, he argues, discovered underlying

principles that affect the development of everything from the human brain to the workings of the universe,

requiring a revolutionary rethinking of physics, mathematics, biology and other sciences.”

A copy of the massive tome arrived on my doorstep last week when Amazon was at last able to fulfill a

pre-order I had placed over a year earlier. Needless to say, the content is indeed fascinating. In fact, in

the case of this extraordinary book, even the copyright notice provides cause for reflection. Consider for

yourself:

“Copyright © 2002 by Stephen Wolfram, LLC

…Discoveries and ideas introduced in this book, whether presented at length or not, and the legal rights and

goodwill associated with them, represent valuable property of Stephen Wolfram, LLC, and when they or work

based on them is described or presented, whether for scholarly purposes or otherwise, appropriate attribution

should be given.

…Illustrations (including tables) may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of the copyright

holder. Most individual illustrations in this book represent substantial original works in themselves, and

their reproduction is not a fair use… Permission to reproduce illustrations will normally be granted for

scholarly purposes so long as the illustrations are not modified…[and] are used and explained in an

appropriate way… Stephen Wolfram, LLC is the owner of the full copyright to all illustrations in this book

(except as indicated in the colophon), including…such original elements as non-obvious choices of rules and

initial conditions used to create them.”

Will this relatively broad assertion of rights impede, enhance, or have no effect
on the rate and manner in which Wolfram’s work is assessed and utilized (or not) by others? Would the history

of science and technological development have been different had the “discoveries and ideas introduced” in the

Principia been the property of Isaac Newton, LLC?