Following my email on software patents, I got a prompt reply from my MP Andrew Murrison:

Thank you. The only remedy would be legislative so I'll write to the relevant BERR minister for his thoughts.

and a reply from Graham Watson MEP:

I am aware that there is growing debate …

One of the truly excellent things about Python is its use of whitespace to group statements. I think Lisp could benefit from the same treatment. Someone should write a pre-parser for Clojure to do it.

I think it was a good idea to add a boolean type to Python, but I don't agree entirely with PEP 285. Specifically:

4) Should we strive to eliminate non-Boolean operations on bools in the future, through suitable warnings, so that for example True+1 would eventually (in Python 3000 …

What's your objection then Bill?

As you might imagine, I remain far from convinced!!

Bill

It sounds certainly interesting.

I've become bothered by the pulleys on rear derailleurs. They sap your exergy! Here's a more efficient gear system for bikes.

When you change down a gear, the chain would get pushed onto a smaller sprocket at the front, and simultaneously it would get pushed onto a bigger sprocket at …

Claire just texted me about Landshare and I've signed up. The idea is that someone can use my back garden to grow vegetables, and I get a share of the produce. I think I need to get the soil tested as the land was the site of some pretty nasty …

Keep up the good work.

I've been moved to write the following to my MP and some of my MEPs:

Andrew Murrison, Graham Watson, Neil Parish,

I was concerned to hear that the Court of Appeal has ruled that patents should be allowed on software.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article4907993.ece …