Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

BlogLines has published a web services API for things like synching and blogrolling - it's probably something I need to look at for BottomFeeder. I already support synching via HTTP (with another running instance of BottomFeeder) and via file import - but this would offload the problem. I'll be taking a look at the APIs and seeing what's necessary.

Joseph Pelrine has some interesting thoughts on sustainable development - he uses conditioning as a metaphor:

Training is divided into strength and conditioning. Strength training is at a higher intensity level (around 80% of the 1 rep mex, for fewer repetitions - normally 6-8), while conditioning is at a lower level (around 60% of the one-rep max, for more repetitions - normally 10-15). Training at lower levels is considered to be a waste of time, since the body is working neither in the aerobic nor anaerobic areas. Some of these ideas and principles may be applicable to the intensity level of a development team. In the worse case, they are interesting as System Metaphor. If the team's one-rep max is their maximum velocity, something between 60% and 80% of that would be a sustainable pace which would also be accepted by the customer. Through training, the one-rep max may (and hopefully should) be increased. Don't know how to apply this to development, though.

Well, there's no hard and fast rule - I think this is something like the line about art - "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like". You know sustainable pacing when you're doing it - likewise, you know a death march when you're in one. I've been on "you'll work 12 hours a day and like it" projects, and that's an attempt by management to push you to the 1 rep max on a daily basis. It doesn't work, and the results tend to be really sloppy. It's somewhat puzzling - management seems to understand that not "just anybody" can run a division, or a company. Why do so many of them think that developers are interchangeable parts?

SpaceShipOne successfully took off and landed today. This is akin to Lindbergh's flight back in 1927 - the really useful space work is about to start now that the private sector thinks there's money to be made. Here's to the future!

Seriously, who wants one of these? If you spend so much time on the throne that you need a headrest and cup holders, then you have real problems...

I just fixed an annoying bug that cropped up in BottomFeeder in the last release - the external browser setting not "sticking" after you set it. It turned out to be a state problem in the class that handles external browsing, and it cropped up when I split that class out of BottomFeeder and into a reusable package of its own. It's fixed now, so changes should 'stick'. Sorry about that!

CNet has a story on the problems with trying to ditch IE - too many sites cater specifically to IE:

For many people, using a non-Microsoft browser such as Firefox is now a must for secure Web surfing--but most still keep a copy of Internet Explorer around just in case.

The problem is that many Web developers create their sites so they work best with Internet Explorer (IE), but not to work as well with browser software used by relatively tiny groups of potential visitors.

This sort of thing can make it very hard to route around the damage that is IE. I run into this every time I need to get on the internal network here - in their infinite wisdom, the internal (or is that infernal?) IT group has made the entire intranet IE specific. Heck, if I forget and try to hit it with Firefox, it tells me that I'm using an unsupported browser and just stops. If I tell Opera to mimic IE and try that, I run into all sorts of IE specific tie ins - it's simpler to just give up and use IE.

This is a bigger problem than that though - I stumble across IE specific sites fairly frequently in my browsing. Heck, the Windows Update service from MS is the biggest culprit here. I have to run IE to patch Windows, and I have to patch Windows if I don't want to be 0wned by some teenager in west nowhere. sigh...

The next release of Cincom Smalltalk is right around the corner - it should hit in November. What's new? Lots of interesting stuff. In ObjectStudio, we have a port of Opentalk, which allows for messaging between VW and ObjectStudio. This is useful because it allows ObjectStudio developers to take advantage of the features of VisualWorks - by creating a simple RPC interface between an existing ObjectStudio application and a VW application server. In this way, ObjectStudio developers can take advantage of the Web Toolkit, Web Services, and the raft of other server-side functionality in VisualWorks. VisualWorks has plenty of new stuff as well - a set of wizards for dealing with Web Services will be one of the most prominent. There have been updates to Store as well, and CE support will be promoted out of beta. To see the whole list of new stuff coming down the pike, visit the information page on our Wiki. We also have a roadmap of future development on the Wiki - that will be constantly updated to reflect market based changes/updates.

What's the easiest way to keep track of these updates? Grab a news aggregator (like BottomFeeder), and subscribe to the Wiki's RSS feed

ObjectStudio® 7.0 Build 131 Evolutionary Version now available

The ObjectStudio 7.0 Build 131 Evolutionary Version is now available on a 90-day trial basis. This free download includes the latest changes that have been made since the release of ObjectStudio 6.9.1, and contains 31 bug fixes/enhancements. Please view the list below for summary descriptions for many of the issues that have been addressed.

Visit http://smalltalk.cincom.com/downloads/index.ssp?content=objectstudio to download.

Further testing may result in removing changes from the final release - this is an early access build

Update: Some of you may have had a problem installing this build; there was a bug in the installation that has been fixed. If you had problems, try downloading it now

The idea that dynamic languages are the future is spreading:

Dynamic languages are high-level, dynamically typed open source languages. These languages, designed to solve the problems that programmers of all abilities face in building and integrating heterogeneous systems, have proven themselves both despite and thanks to their independence from corporate platform strategies, relying instead on grassroots development and support. Ideally suited to building loosely coupled systems that adapt to changing requirements, they form the foundation of myriad programming projects, from the birth of the web to tomorrow's challenges.

Hey look - RedHat bought (some of) the old Netscape Server tools. You have to figure that AOL just picked up a bunch of change they didn't expect to have - imagine the sales guy who landed this deal: "hey boss, you'll never guess what we managed to sell off":

RALEIGH, NC - Sept. 30 2004 -Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today announced that it has entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement with America Online, Inc. to acquire certain assets of Netscape Security Solutions.

The products to be acquired are derived from the Netscape Enterprise Suite and include Netscape Directory Server and Netscape Certificate Management System. Red Hat plans to start marketing these products as part of its Open Source Architecture over the next 6 to 12 months. Customers will then benefit from enhanced security, manageability and office productivity as these technologies are optimized for devices and applications across the Open Source Architecture.

This is really old, not up to date technology - I'm astonished that anyone wanted it. I guess the only question is how soon Schwartz has one of his patented "insights" on the deal.

Just look what that bright boy over at Sun is up to now - he's trying to patent a pricing plan:

Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz, who speaks often of innovation in sales methods and not just technology, is seeking a patent on the company's per-employee software pricing plan, CNET News.com has learned.

Other co-authors of the unpublished patent application, filed in July, are Chief Marketing Officer Anil Gadre and Director of Worldwide Marketing Aisling MacRunnels. In addition, Schwartz is co-author of two other patent applications relating to Sun's three-dimensional Looking Glass user interface.

A pricing plan? Is he serious? Whatever (fairly small) amounts of respect I had for Sun and Schwartz went out the window when I read that. and it's weirder than I thought:

If the patents are granted, Sun will donate any money they generate to charities, Schwartz said.

So he wants to extort money from other companies for a non-original idea, and then give it away? Heck, that fits in with the rest of their business plan (i.e., shovel money anywhere but into their own coffers). He's like Robin Hood's idiot twin.

We've seen reports of VisualWorks crashing on 2.6.x (x86) kernels with a segmentation fault. I've just gotten a message from engineering that pinpoints the problem:

There's a kernel patch floating around that implements a kernel barrier to executing code at addresses that fall into the stack or data segments of the process. The intention is to provide a safety net for stack frame overflow attacks. The 2.6.8-1.521 kernel from FC2 uses this patch, as well as several others that muck around with the exec shield system. Since VW runs on FC2 using 2.6.7-1.494.2.2 which also contains the exec shield patch, I suspect that one of the suplementary patches is causing this problem.

This exec check can be globally disabled by executing the following as root:

#> echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield

Now, we've also heard that the JVM has issues on the 2.6.x kernels; it's likely the same kind of problem. We'll have to address this in the future, but for now, try the suggestion above.

Debate? What debate? There's real news tonight! The Yankees clinched the AL East title for the 7th year in a row. It's time for the playoffs. If the pitching can settle down, I like their chances.

Remember that problem in the western US with air traffic about a month ago? TechWorld has a story on it, and the problem seems to be technology and process related:

The failure was ultimately down to a combination of human error and a design glitch in the Windows servers brought in over the past three years to replace the radio system's original Unix servers, according to the FAA.

The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times. To avoid this automatic shutdown, technicians are required to restart the system manually every 30 days. An improperly trained employee failed to reset the system, leading it to shut down without warning, the official said. Backup systems failed because of a software failure, according to a report in The New York Times.

I'm with Strongly Typed on one thing here - the above is just screaming for more information - what the heck is a "data overload"? Even so, I think we can see the outlines of the problem - using MS Windows for a critical service.

In an office environment, reboots may be a pain, but they can be done relatively easily (if a file server is unavailable for a few minutes at 2 am, few workers are going to care) - and if someone forgets to reboot said server and it crashes, it's likely to be more of an irritation than a life threatening problem. Not so in an air traffic control situation. What was the fallout from that?

The radio system shutdown, which lasted more than three hours, left 800 planes in the air without contact to air traffic control, and led to at least five cases where planes came too close to one another, according to comments by the Federal Aviation Administration reported in the LA Times and The New York Times. Air traffic controllers were reduced to using personal mobile phones to pass on warnings to controllers at other facilities, and watched close calls without being able to alert pilots, according to the LA Times report

That's a pretty high level of risk to assign to a system that is - according to the story - known to fail catastrophically on a known interval. Now, it's not like the server running this blog is a "critical" system - but I will point out that typing "uptime" at the console prompt yields an answer of 313 1/2 days (the last time that there was a power outage before IT installed a generator). You think maybe the FAA should have insisted on a system that didn't need the addition of a "reboot on a regular schedule" process? Here's the money quote:

Soon after installation, however, the FAA discovered that the system design could lead to a radio system shutdown, and put the maintenance procedure into place as a workaround, the LA Times said. The FAA reportedly said it has been working on a permanent fix but has only eliminated the problem in Seattle. The FAA is now planning to institute a second workaround - an alert that will warn controllers well before the software shuts down.

The shutdown is intended to keep the system from becoming overloaded with data and potentially giving controllers wrong information about flights, according to a software analyst cited by the LA Times.

Microsoft told Techworld it was aware of the reports but was not immediately able to comment.

I think I'd say "no comment" if I were in their shoes as well...

Update: I got a link to this MS article in the comments, pointing out that Win 95/98 systems may hang after 49.7 days (which happens to be the time interval given in the air traffic story). So.... are they really running an air traffic control system on 95/98? Seems too coincidental to me.

I get questions on a regular basis about "goodies" - how to submit them to Cincom so that they'll end up on the product CD in the goodies directory. We have a process for that, and it's documented here. The short answer:

It is possible to submit goodies for inclusion in the /goodies/other directory in VisualWorks releases.

This mechanism was created to allow goodie maintainers to be able to update their packages in an automated way. The idea is to provide goodie maintainers with all of the resources they need in order to ensure that the most recent versions of their packages are included in new builds of the VisualWorks product.

If you have a goodie that you would like to submit (and maintain) using this process, you should send an email to vw-dev-owner@parcplace.net describing your package. Please make sure to include in this message the official name of the package, as this will be used to create your upload area. The vw-dev-owner will then:

• Create the directory ftp://ftp.cincomsmalltalk.com/pub/goodies/MyPackageName
• Notify you that you must be subscribed to the vw-dev-ann@parcplace.net mailing list (to receive weekly build announcements, notifications of "code freeze" dates, etc.)
• Notify you with your account information for logging in to the ftp server to perform uploads

The rest of the instructions are on the page I linked to above. It's pretty simple, and it allows us to automate the process

I'll be giving two talks in November, both on BottomFeeder. I'll be speaking to the Ottawa STUG on November 3rd, and the Toronto STUG on November 4th. I'll be explaining what BottomFeeder is, and going into implementation details - including the recent work to integrate NetResources and WithStyle. The location for the Ottawa STUG meetings can be found here, on the STUG's website. The Toronto meeting's location is detailed here, on their website. See you there!

Update: Here's a link to the presentation (PowerPoint)

My father sent me another interesting shot of the damage to the beach in his area. The shot below was taken before Jeanne rolled through; after that, the steps down to the beach were partially destroyed.

There are two things that hit me in that picture. See that driftwood mass? When I was there in June, that was a good thirty yards up from the water line. Also, it was nearly completely buried. That means that a lot of sand washed somewhere else. The other thing is that large dark area of the beach - there used to be dune over part of that - see how choppy it looks back by the sawgrass? Keep in mind, this is before Jeanne came through. Florida's been through a lot

It looks to me like the fine fellows at SCO are getting the future they so richly deserve - red ink and the possibility of being taken over.

Swimming in red ink from losses and decreasing revenue against the current of increasing legal expenses, The SCO Group Inc. in late August attempted to tread water by restructuring its legal costs and adopting measures to repel takeover attempts.

Meanwhile, Darl McBride is out there putting a happy face on all of it:

Despite the results, SCO CEO Darl McBride introduced the quarterly financial conference call by saying, "The quarter can best be described as one in which the company was firing on all cylinders."

Couldn't have happened to a nicer set of people...

I see that Larry O'Brien is using argument by assertion this month in SD Times:

I've previously talked about how explicit versus implicit typing is inserted too often into the entire debate over dynamic languages ( Ignoring the Scripts, Feb. 1, page 29). In an explicitly typed language, the programmer must state that foo is an integer before assigning foo the value 2; in an implicitly typed language, the programmer doesn't. I'm boggled that people argue that implicit typing is a slam-dunk productivity advantage.

Once a codebase gets beyond, say, a few thousand lines of code, you can no longer comprehend it in a top-down manner by reading over the entirety of the source and stepping through a few sample runs. Instead, you've got to dive into the middle, where you think your task is, and start putting together the program structure in your head. For jobs like that, which will become even more common as the corpus of sample and open-source code on the Internet grows, you need all the type information you can get.

I spent many years as a C programmer - yes, I know that the type system in C is far from perfect - but in this case, the example works, because O'Brien's take is that the magic type declarations help the developer make sense of the code. They really don't. If I'm looking at a large body of code, I'm looking for program structure - objects that do things, sets of objects that collaborate. The type declarations are completely meaningless in that regard - whether something is an int, a float (etc) doesn't tell me anything of real value - looking at the API of the object (does it have one? Did the developers actually create one? ) is far more meaningful

I've looked at large bodies of C code, C++ code, Java code, and Smalltalk code. By far the easiest to "grok" quickly is the Smalltalk code - because I can dive right in and see living objects. I once had to debug a socket communication issue between a Java app and a Smalltalk app. I was able to run through the Smalltalk code live, in a debugger (with real objects), and see what it was doing - which pointed me to the Java side of the equation. Over there, I quickly diagnosed the issue - for reasons I still can't fathom, they were sending 80 bytes of data (while expecting to send an entire XML file) and thinking it would work. Did the fact that the socket objects all had type declarations on them mean anything to me? Nope, didn't help a bit. For the most part, the extra verbosity got in the way (I know it's a socket for gosh sake, get the stupid words out of my face!).

But Visual Basic has been and can be an implicitly typed language, while the "dynamic language hacker" traces a genealogy that runs from LISP to Smalltalk to Python. What truly reshapes productivity in those programming systems (note, I didn't say "languages") is an interactive workspace. This has nothing to do with finger typing or compilation speed or debugging (or rather, it doesn't reduce to just these things). Even if you've never used any of these languages, you have undoubtedly used an interactive workspace with your database.

I suppose he never stopped to ponder why it is that dynamic languages tend to have such interactive tools, while static languages generally don't (yes, Eclipse has "edit and continue". No, it doesn't always work, and it's not nearly as flexible). Might be that the rigidity of the static side makes such tools a lot more expensive to build - which explains the dearth of them. O'Brien agrees that interactive tools help - he doesn't consider why they exist in dynamic land, and tend to be lame to non-existant in static land. He might want to spend a few minutes considering the implications.

Looks like WebEx is trying to allow presentation operators to become little brother during a conference:

Web-conferencing leader WebEx is set to release a new service Monday tailored for sales professionals, including a tool to make sure that the client is paying attention during a remote presentation.

The "attention indicator" is built into the Sales Center version of WebEx's service, primarily used for presenting PowerPoint slides over the Internet in conjunction with an audio conference call. Start goofing off during a virtual sales call, and the presenter will know it and respond by spicing up the presentation, said Sanjay Dalal, director of market development for WebEx.

I'm not sure that I want that level of intrusion during a presentation, thanks.

In this post, I was stunned by the notion that an air traffic control system might be on win 95/98. Commenters pointed out this link, which indicates that the more likely explanation is this:

The elapsed time is stored as a DWORD value. Therefore, the time will wrap around to zero if the system is run continuously for 49.7 days.

This is just too amusing for words. A multi-hour shutdown caused by static typing, and the fact that many typing decisions in languages that require it end up being essentially random. Note to static typing advocates - had they used Smalltalk, this kind of problem would be impossible....

I'm catching up on my trade rag reading today, and I just ran across this article in eweek. The article details "reverse migrations" from Linux back to Windows. Now, I'm not saying that such migrations are silly; in many cases, they are probably sensible (I still don't think that Linux is ready for most desktop office users, for instance). However, one of the assertions in the article astonished me:

Combe was initially wary about its sites running on Linux, but it moved to offset that risk by making sure its provider contract had built-in service-level agreements. Case said he was surprised by how well the system worked, but Linux became an issue when Combe's Web applications needed a database, and the only option available to the company was one from Oracle Corp.

What? He hasn't heard of Sybase, DB/2, MySQL or PostgreSQL? As I said above, there are situations where using Linux instead of Windows may not make sense - but this most assuredly isn't a reasonable rationale. I'm kind of surprised that the author of the piece (Peter Galli of eweek) let that comment through unchallenged. The only major DBMS that isn't supported on Linux is SQLServer (for obvious reasons). I'm not sure I buy the TCO arguments either (current uptime of my XP box: 1 day, since the last Windows Update required a reboot. Current uptime of the Linux server running this blog: 314 days). Either way though, that db argument is deeply silly.

I've had qualms about the skills of reporters for quite some time now - the CBS memogate thing is an example of suspect reporting in politics, and this thing looks like suspect reporting in the tech world. Do reporters just not know how to do basic research? Have they even heard of Google? I mean, seriously:

• Sybase on Linux search
• DB2 on Linux search
• PostgreSQL on Linux search
• MySQL on Linux search
• Oracle on Linux search

Is it just too hard to spend a minute or two looking things up before letting a blatantly silly claim appear in a story? Heck, later in the same story comes this:

Three years ago, the resort implemented an e-commerce system that used Red Hat Inc. Linux, The Apache Software Foundation's Apache Web servers and MySQL AB's MySQL database; the system was programmed in PHP.

So, there is another db available for Linux, eh? I don't suppose that might have been useful to point out on page 1? It gets worse. The next "don't use Linux" argument came here:

Roy also had concerns about the security and reliability of the system. System failures and escalating costs had the resort reconsidering its Linux decision when, over a weekend in late-summer 2002, in the midst of its season-pass sale - accounting for the sale of about 5,000 passes, the system went down. The e-commerce component stopped working for about a day.

"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said. "When one of our guests went over the limit, it crashed the whole store. We then had to manually identify the erroneous credit card charges."

What, so now a programmer error is a flaw in Linux? Who wrote this story, the Microsoft marketing department? If I were Peter Galli, I'd be embarrassed to have my name associated with this slop - it's a 2 page wet kiss to Microsoft filled with shoddy assertions - and it somehow found its way into the News and Analysis section of the magazine! Sheesh.

If you've tried out the Minesweeper plugin for BottomFeeder, you may have had problems ranging from it not responding to locking Bf up completely. I've just diagnosed that issue; there's an update online now - for the under development 3.7 beta and for the in production 3.6. Enjoy

The secret is revealed here :)

Ted Neward compares the WS* efforts with the older CORBA efforts - and has a few criticisms. Hmm. The more I look at what's happening with WS*, the more I think it looks exactly like what the OMG did with CORBA - a blizzard of specs no one cares about, which tend sto make vendor interop harder and harder. But anyway - I thought this was an interesting thing:

For me, the fatal problem for CORBA was that they also tried to tackle standardizing programming models/language bindings. Ever use CORBA using the C++ language bindings? Yuck. How about in Java - not so good either.

Hmm - there's a standard Smalltalk model as well, and somehow, it's simply not that complex. I'll show you:

Step one - turn on the listener in the DST control panel - make sure to enable I3. Step two - create a small class with a count variable, accessors for that variable, and an "API" method:

initialize
     "set the initial state"
     self count: 0.

add: aNumber
     self count: self count + aNumber.

Now, modify the #initialize method this way:

initialize
     self counter: 0.
     ORBObject namingService contextReBind: 'counterService' asDSTName to: self.

And add this method to "tear down" the service when you are done

release
     super release.
     ORBObject namingService contextUnBind: 'counterService' asDSTName.

Now, you can set up an instance by executing Counter inspect and leaving the inspector up for examination. Now, start up DST on another system, and execute this in a workspace: ORBObject namingService contextResolve: 'counterService' asDSTName.. That's it - you can now send the remote objects messages, like #add:, write there in the inspector. From there, wrapping a UI on it isn't hard.

Sure, there's exception handling, dealing with dropped connections - but that's no different than network programming has ever been. If you want the demo above to work with non-Smalltalk code, you need to go ahead and generate the appropriate IDL - but again, that happens for you. Seems a wee bit simpler than the complexity you see in Java and C++, eh? CORBA really didn't have to be complex - it just became so in the mainstream languages. Which says more about those languages than it does about CORBA, IMHO. The main reason that WS* is succeeding where CORBA failed? Port 80

I had an interesting bug reported to me two days ago - recent dev builds of BottomFeeder were no longer showing the url of a link when you placed the mouse over the link. As it happens, this was due to a packaging error on my part in some of the code - I left a (as it happens) crucial bit out of the build. The latest update addresses this; there's no need to restart - just grab the update and go.

This is a disturbing case. Given that I'm a Smalltalk guy, I had to stop from guffawing every time the author used the term "Java" and "Innovation" in a sentence, but - all snarkiness aside - this is a horrid decision. To be honest, I also wonder how Sun's lawyers could lose such a case - it's not as if VM technology is anything new. I'd love to know what arguments were presented in the courtroom. In any case, there are plenty examples of either prior art or concurrent art:

Right here at Cincom there's a prime example of it - Mantis, a RAD tool originally built for mainframe development - launched in 1983. Then there's UCSD Pascal - introduced in 1970. I remember working with that in the late 70's on the family's Apple IIe. Of course there's Smalltalk, which dates from the early 70's, and Lisp - which dates from the late 50's (although the first VM came later, I'm sure). The point is, VM technology of the sort Kodak won on was all being created either before or at the same time as the early Wang systems - the early 70's.

I rather suspect that Kodak went after Sun because Sun has a lot of cash on hand, but is bleeding (from a year on year revenue perspective) - they could have hit MS on .NET (or heck, any of us Smalltalk vendors for that matter) - but MS would likely win, and none of the Smalltalk vendors have enough cash to bother with. I hope Sun appeals this decision - it would be nice if Kodak could be fined for wasting everyone's time with such a bogus suit...

Charles Monteiro of the NYC STUG has set up a wiki for the STUG and for the broader Smalltalk community. Check it out

Ted Neward makes a lot of good points in this article, but a side point he brushes past (because it's not really what he's trying to talk about) interested me:

No, but its edges [Java] are definitely showing, and there's all too many people who are eager to do exactly that. If Java is to avoid that fate, it must evolve in a meaningful way, and Sun appears unwilling or unable to pursue that evolution.

IMHO, this is due to Sun having decided that the JVM itself is sacrosanct - they add features by mucking around at the language level (which Ted discussed here). Look at the other managed environments out there - MS is willing to make changes to the CLR, and their hiring of Jim Hugunin (author of Iron Python) indicates a willingness to do so in support of Dynamic languages. Here at Cincom, we changed the VM back in 5i in support of namespaces - and while we are conservative about doing so, we aren't utterly opposed to the idea, as Sun seems to be. So long as Sun keeps the JVM locked in 1994, they are going to fall (technologically) behind - and that trend will accelerate over time.

I've got two upcoming talks, both on BottomFeeder:

Ottawa, November 3rd

The Ottawa Carleton Smalltalk Users Group will be holding its next meeting on November 3, 2004. We are pleased to welcome James Robertson from Cincom to give the presentation.

BottomFeeder

James Robertson
Nov 3, 2004
7:00 PM
Room 5115 Herzberg Building
Carleton University

BottomFeeder is an RSS/Atom news aggregator written in VisualWorks Smalltalk. In this talk I'll explain:

• what a news aggregator is
• why you should care
• Go over some implementation details

BottomFeeder is a smart network client, dealing with XML, Http, XML-RPC, and SOAP. It's a free, open source application - many of the pieces can be easily reused in other application, including the HTTP layer (which handles authentication, mod gzip, and encoding issues), the online updating layer (which allows BottomFeeder to be updated on the fly).

Questions will be welcome.

The meeting will be held in Room 5115, Herzberg Laboratories (building 13 on the map ). Pay-parking is available in Lot 1, 2, and parking meters can be found along University Drive. Free parking is available across Bronson Avenue opposite Lot 5.

Please RSVP to david@simberon.com if you plan to attend. For more details, please visit the web site at http://smalltalk.ottawa.on.ca

Then, on November 4th I'll be in Toronto:

The Toronto Smalltalk User Group has two meetings scheduled: Oct. 14 we have Dorin Sandu and Mark Suska from Abrai Smalltalk and, hot on the heals of his Ottawa presentation, Nov. 4 we have James Robertson with a demo of BottomFeeder.

Both meetings are at the offices of Northwater Capital, 47th floor of the Bay Wellington tower, on the corner of Bay and Wellington, and both start at 6:30. We will be providing refreshments, so please send a note to TSUG@rogers.com with 'Smalltalk' in the subject line, and tell us you will be attending.

For more information, see the TSUG website

Ralph Johnson has some very compelling thoughts the ethics of software criticism. Go read the whole thing.

SpaceShipOne successfully made it up and down today - I think we are looking at something as significant as Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic in 1927. Now that it looks possible, the private sector is going to start looking at ways to make money.

Cincom's President, Mr. Tom Nies, will be interviewed on a Tallahassee radio station:

Cincom's President Tom Nies will be interviewed live on The Morning Show with Preston Scott -- 1270 WFLA (WNLS-AM), Tallahassee, Fla. tomorrow morning (October 5th, 2004).

The Morning Show with Preston Scott, is Tallahassee's number one local talk show dedicated to the issues of the day along with keeping listeners informed with local, news, weather and talk. Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey, Donald Trump and Glenn Beck are the nations top talkers and are in the morning lineup to keep their listeners informed and entertained throughout the day on 1270 WFLA.

When: 8:05 am, October 5th

Where: Radio Station 1270 WNLS (WFLA) Talk Radio

What: Cincom and The entrepreneurial spirit.

WebSense has a really good post up about market messages and the net - I particularly liked this comment:

There is no market for messages. In fact, there never was, but now the customer is in a position to say so.

There's lots more there - take a look.

Here's one way to make friends and influence people - call most of your prospects in a given market segment thieves. Have a look here for the full interview; here's the relevant bit:

Steve Ballmer: Let me first talk about DRM. Now we've had DRM in Windows for quite some number of years, there's nothing new about that....

Journalist: [interrupting] Having said that, that hasn't stopped, you know, pirates from running rampant....

SB: Of course not: nothing does! I mean, what's the most common format of music listened to on an iPod?

J: On an iPod....

SB: Stolen! Stolen!

J: [confused] On an iPod?

SB: Yes. Most people still steal music. [laughing] The fact that you can buy it and it's protected doesn't affect the fact that most people still steal [music]. I'd LOVE to say all problems have been solved, whether it's iPod/iTunes -- where Apple has done some nice work, no doubt about it -- but the truth of the matter is we can build these technologies, but as long as there's alternate forms of music acquisition, there will still be ways for people to steal music.

That's right Steve, we're all filthy rotten thieves out here, and unless we have technology that completely locks us into MS approved technology, we'll all go to hell, pigs will fall from the sky, and all manner of bad things will happen. Yes, I've seen how Hollywood has gone broke on videotapes. And I've seen how the music industry fell apart because of audio tapes and CD burners. Yep, it's really too bad that we don't have a movie or music industry anymore - thank goodness we have Steve Ballmer to save us from further rot and ruination.

Here's a tip Steve - put a sock in it. And oh by the way - I will not so much as consider buying any of MS' music solutions - not after hearing this. When I enter that space, it looks like I'll be getting an iPod. Unless you turn on a dime and pay attention to the intelligent words from Scoble on this point, who's trying to clean up your mess. You should listen to him

These guys want Smalltalk, but can't admit it to themselves :)

Mark your calendar! - The Cincom Smalltalk User Conference in Frankfurt/Main, December 7-9, 2004

Dear clients and Cincom Smalltalk users,

For the first time in several years, Cincom are again organizing the Cincom Smalltalk User Conference which will take place in Frankfurt/Main from December 7-9, 2004.

Do not miss this conference and mark your calendar right now, we will soon send you the final agenda with all the details!

What are the highlights you will find at the conference?

• A presentation by the Cincom Smalltalk product manager on current status and future strategy of the technology
• Presentations, live-demos, and discussions on main current engineering themes, such as:
• Future development of VisualWorks VM
• Parallel development of VisualWorks / ObjectStudio
• Agile project management and eXtreme programming
• Innovative web applications with VisualWorks/Seaside
• The 1CCustomer Advisory Board 1D: Use this opportunity to discuss with the Cincom Smalltalk management and our engineering team what your wants and needs are concerning the future development of Smalltalk, and what areas should be enhanced with a higher priority, etc.
• Meet the Experts: Experts from our VisualWorks and ObjectStudio engineering teams will help you with your specific questions and issues 13 just ask.

Who should benefit from attending the conference?

• Our customers and partners using Cincom Smalltalk.
• Organizations which want to have a deep insight into the current status of Cincom Smalltalk and the ongoing enhancements of the past years.
• Companies that are not satisfied with the productivity of their present development technologies.
• Companies looking for Smalltalk development environments that are continuously being enhanced and developed.

When does the conference begin and end?

1. Tuesday, December 7, 2004, 10:00 AM 13 7:30 PM - followed by a buffet dinner.
2. Wednesday, December 8, 2004, 08:30 AM 13 7:30 PM - followed by a buffet dinner.
3. Thursday, December 9, 2004, 08:30 AM - ~1:30 PM

Where does the conference take place?
Relexa Hotel Frankfurt/Main
Merton-Viertel/Lurgiallee 2
D-60439 Frankfurt/Main
Germany
Phone: +49(0)69/ 957 78-0
E-mail: Frankfurt-Main@relexa-hotel.de
Web: www.relexa-hotels.de

Frankfurt's international Rhein-Main airport is approximately only 20 km away.

Accommodation

We have a limited number of hotel rooms available for the participants at our conference. Special room rate: AC 75,- per single room incl. 16 % VAT, extensive breakfast buffet, and relaxation at the fitness centre.

Please mention "Cincom conference" when you book your hotel room.

What does the conference cost?
When booking before November 8, 2004:
Early-bird-price at AC 499,- per person + VAT
Booking after November 8, 2004: AC 599,- per person + VAT
Please note that the number of conference seats is limited.

What's included:

Included in the conference price: conference information package, complete catering during the conference including two dinners in the hotel restaurant, and a surprise present.

Booking:

If you want to make sure to get a conference seat at the early-bird-price at AC 499,- + VAT, just email your reservation to infode@cincom.com including your company and contact details (please with your local mail address). For any questions in advance please do not hesitate to contact our Technical Account Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, Helge Nowak, at hnowak@cincom.com, or the Cincom Smalltalk representative in your local Cincom office.

We will send you a comprehensive agenda with more details very soon. Make sure that you don't miss it.

Kind regards,
The Cincom Smalltalk Team

Don Park has noticed an interesting issue with regards to firewalls and Java:

One of the nice features in XP SP2 Firewall is that when an application tries to access the network, it opens a dialog asking if the application should be granted network access and remembers the choice user makes.  This is great for normal applications.  Unfortunately, Java applications all fall under the hosting application name (java.exe and javaw.exe) so network access can not be given to some Java applications and not others.

Now, this is a problem for many VM based languages, unless you can create a platform executable. There are certainly tools for doing that in Java, although it doesn't sound like many people deploy Java applications that way. In VisualWorks Smalltalk, creating a Windows executable is fairly simple (have a look at the documentation in the packaging/win directory) - I do that for BottomFeeder. In general, this is something that developers of VM based systems are going to have to deal with.

Seems that HP is torqued about Jonathan Schwartz's weblog - they sent Sun a nasty-gram asking him to cease and desist. Here's the story on that:

Sun Microsystems' high-profile president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz has struck a raw nerve with his inflammatory Weblog entries which has led to Hewlett-Packard sending a letter of demand to Sun to put an end to the commentary.

HP has confirmed a letter was sent earlier this week demanding Schwartz stop using his blog to comment on HP's strategic direction.

The HP spokesman declined to provide any details about the content of the letter except to say it specifically refers to Schwartz's Weblog commentary about HP.

Schwartz has not been shy with his statements about the HP's strategies, particularly regarding its Unix operating system, HP-UX.

In a blog entry, dated August 18, Schwartz referred to HP-UX as a 'dying' operating system.

Scobles take on this is that you shouldn't say anything bad about the competition - it only motivates them. I'm not so sure that always works - sometimes it makes sense to comment on a competitor's direction, sometimes it doesn't. What I will say is that it rarely makes sense to whine about it like HP is - it just makes you look silly. Ignore it or confront it with your own speech - but don't whine.

Who has time for politics with the playoffs happening? Today at 4 we have the Red Sox vs. The Angels, and then tonight at 8 we have the main event - the Yankees vs. the Twins.

In response to a question on this post - yes, we'll have a transcript of the interview. I'm waiting for a final copy from marketing at the moment.

Now that's a DVR:

Sony's Vaio 'Type X' - the Japanese giant's so-called Tivo-killer -- launches today. A Pentium 4 at 3.60GHz comprises the heart of this beefy PVR, with 1GB DDR and 1TB (4x250GB RAID 0) of storage standard -- welcome to the future, where you can simultaneously record up to seven programs at once and store so many of them that you'll likely deplete national bon-bon supplies. If that weren't enough, the Type X also comes bundled with Adobe Premiere to edit as you please, and your choice of flat-panel display as an add-on, ranging in size from 17 to 23 inches. You won't be able to get one in the States, barring import, and the price is unclear.

Makes my ReplayTV devices look lame...

Here's an interesting article on software development/deployment problems. The most instructive part, to my mind, came about half way down:

Big software projects -- whether to manage supply chains, handle payroll, track inventory, prepare finances -- tend to begin with high expectations and the best intentions. They're all about efficiency, reliability, cost-savings, competitiveness.

Companies might develop their own programs internally, outsource the job or buy from a company such as SAP AG, Oracle Corp. or PeopleSoft Inc. Regardless of the route, it's usually a major undertaking to get things right.

Often, however, the first step toward total disaster is taken before the first line of code is drawn up. Organizations must map out exactly how they do business, refining procedures along the way. All this must be clearly explained to a project's technical team. Security workers look at posted flight delays at Los Angeles International Airport caused by a radio system outage in September.

"The risk associated with these projects is not around software but is around the actual business process redesign that takes place," said Bill Wohl, an SAP spokesman. "These projects require very strong executive leadership, very talented consulting resources and a very focused effort if the project is to be successful and not disruptive."

Those kinds of projects tend to fail for a simple reason - you can't solve a political problem with a technology solution. If you attempt to roll out a large system that assumes you will change processes to match it - then you're going to run smack into tons of internal, internecine political issues. It's much harder to convince an organization to change than it is to create software that adapts itself to the existing system. Not to mention that it saves you the political headaches...

You might have had trouble downloading the Non-Commercial product yesterday if you were doing the initial registration. Way back when, I was enforcing a 7 character limit on usernames. I think this had to do with a limitation in an older rev of PostgreSQL, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me. In any case, I changed that yesterday - but initially, I had the new test backwards - instead of limiting usernames to be more than 5 characters but less than 32, it was checking the reverse - and then giving a misleading error. I fixed that yesterday afternoon - if you had trouble registering, go try it now. Sorry for the trouble.

Remember Croquet? There's a new announcement from them up:

Thanks for your patience. The developer's release of Croquet (codenamed "Jasmine") is undergoing some final Q&A prior to being made available for download on this page on Monday, October 11.

Jasmine will allow you to begin developing components with some level of comfort that the interfaces will not change significantly between this and the user release. That said, there are a number if important pieces still missing, but we are quite comfortable that these will be available soon and have decided that there is no reason to wait for them before releasing the system. Please let us know of any problems you might run into or ideas for improvement that you might have. This release represents a major turning point in the evolution of Croquet - from a closed development effort to one that is open and truly takes advantage of the dynamics and capabilities of the open source community. Thanks again for your support.

So keep that page bookmarked...

I'll say one thing, McNealy is probably the most quotable CEO in the tech space. Get a load of what The Register has him saying in response to a query about the relationship between Sun and MS:

When asked by a Northwestern student why Microsoft decided to make peace with Sun, McNealy drifted into odd territory. His basic claim was that Microsoft knew it needed some competition and that Sun was the lesser of all evils. This claim covers the operating system wars, desktop software and middleware.

"Microsoft needed a partner," McNealy said. "Their customers wanted choice. One is an unstable molecule."

It can only be assumed that McNealy was referring to Linux with that last comment. Sadly, he moved away from the molecular analysis at that point.

"Who else are they going to choose as their second source? You know, Sun and Microsoft aren't that competitive. We don't do MSN, we don't do Xbox, we don't do applications. They don't do computers, storage or infrastructure."

An unstable molecule. Heh.

I wonder if Jonathan Schwartz knew how ironic these comments would look after the Kodak verdict came in:

I believe in intellectual property. In my view, it's the foundation of world economies, and certainly the foundation upon which Sun Microsystems was built. Copyright, trademark, patent - I believe in them all. I also believe in innovation and competition - and that these beliefs are not mutually exclusive.

As I said here, I think this was a really, really bad decision...