Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Amongst other things, Charles Petzold has some unkind things to say about Intellisense:

For example, suppose you’re typing some code and you decide you need a variable named id, and instead of defining it first, you start typing a statement that begins with id and a space. I always type a space between my variable and the equals sign. Because id is not defined anywhere, IntelliSense will find something that begins with those two letters that is syntactically correct in accordance with the references, namespaces, and context of your code. In my particular case, IntelliSense decided that I really wanted to define a variable of interface type IDataGridColumnStyleEditingNotificationService, an interface I’ve never had occasion to use.

On the plus side, if you really need to define an object of type IDataGridColumnStyleEditingNotificationService, all you need do is type id and a space.

If that’s wrong, you can eliminate IntelliSense’s proposed code and go back to what you originally typed with the Undo key combination Ctrl-Z. I wish I could slap its hand and say “No,” but Ctrl-Z is the only thing that works. Who could ever have guess that Ctrl-Z would become one of the most important keystrokes in using modern Windows applications? Ctrl-Z works in Microsoft Word as well, when Word is overly aggressive about fixing your typing.

Now, I have to caveat this with the observation that I've not used VisualStudio - but boy, that sure sounds like something annoying rather than something useful. What it reminds me of more than anything else is that damnable "feature" of Microsoft Word that knows where the bullet points go better than I do.

There's been some good work on making deployment easier in the upcoming VW 7.4 release - I'm going to walk through the process using a simple UI application later this morning in a screencast. I have to get the family moving out the door first though :)

I think the upshot of this Typepad story is that upgrading a service that needs constant uptime is a completely non-trivial thing. Most businesses don't have the sheer volume that Typepad does, which is probably fortunate.

Update: Fixed the code snippet

One of the slower operations on the blog server right now is a text search - I don't cache all blog entries in memory, and I have the same (OS) process that gets the request fetch all the items in order to index and do the search. That's fairly expensive, and it makes the image unresponsive if it happens at the same priority as everything else.

The solution in VW terms is to have that expensive search take place in another process. The problem? Well, there's the browser on the far end that made the request, and can't deal with having the server fork the request and hand back nothing. Enter class Promise. From the comment:

A Promise represents a value that is being computed by a concurrently executing process. An attempt to read the value of a Promise will wait until the process has finished computing it. If the process terminates with an exception, an attempt to read the value of the Promise will raise the same exception.

In short, what that means is that you can push an expensive calculation off to another process, and have the one that is waiting for the result just wait for it. In server terms, said process goes into a non-runnable state, which lets other things happen.

At this point, understanding the VW process model is useful. Processes at the same priority level do not time slice. So, as requests come in from browsers, the server forks off processes at the same priority - and they all compete for the CPU. In general, if they complete quickly or end up waiting on I/O, it all works out ok. The latter is what I needed in this case - I needed to have the process wait until results were ready. Here's the old code:

	allResults := self 
		actuallySearchFor: searchText 
		inTitle: searchInTitle 
		inText: searchInText.
	^allResults asSortedCollection: [:a :b | a timestamp > b timestamp].

Inside that method, the actual search happens, which can be slow. So, I modified it like so:

	promise := [self 
		actuallySearchFor: searchText 
		inTitle: searchInTitle 
		inText: searchInText] promiseAt: Processor userBackgroundPriority.
	allResults := promise value.
	^allResults asSortedCollection: [:a :b | a timestamp > b timestamp].

What that does is set up a process that runs at the given priority, with a Semaphore signalling when results are ready. As a consequence, the value allResults isn't produced until that process finishes - and the process waiting for that result goes into a non-runnable state until that happens. Which means that other processes at that priority level don't get starved for CPU as that one munches through the backlog of posts searching.

Realistically, I need to add a cache here, and I'm in the process of doing that. In the meantime, this pushes an expensive task to the background, and optimizes server responses for everyone else.

I had planned to do a screencast today, but I got tied down with the performance issue. If I have time in the next hour or so, I'll get it done. Otherwise, look for it tomorrow.

I was interested in the presentations here - they are from the MS PDC, and one covers dynamic languages on the CLR. However, much to my surprise, when I hit the link I got a dialog popped in Firefox:

How bogus is that? What kind of browser check are they doing over there?

It turns out I had time to get this done today. Here's the url to the WMV, where I walk through a simple demonstration of the VisualWorks 7.4 based Runtime Packager. Kudos to Alan for improving the tool.

Update: Navigate here for the flash version. Oddly, in Firefox, I had to view the swf directly (same url, with a .swf ending) to see that. In IE it worked fine. Go figure :/

Apparently, some of the professional media gets really, really touchy when the rest of us jump into the sandbox with them. Witness this outburst from Forbes - they start out with an unethical blogger as their first example, in order to try and paint the whole field. Gee, it's as if they've never heard of Jayson Blair, or Steven Glass. Nope - it's "we're the professionals - trust us!" And the bloggers? All a bunch of rats:

Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat.

Yep, it's all bad out here - we should rely on those trusty industry analysts and big name journalists, because they never get anything wrong, and they never fall under the undue influence of vendors. There's then a whole page about how bad "word of mouth" negativity is on blogs. Hmm - I guess the author has never said a bad thing about a service experience to friends, because that would be, you know, wrong. But wait! It gets better - look at what Forbes is recommending:

BUILD A BLOG SWARM. Reach out to key bloggers and get them on your side. Lavish them with attention. Or cash.Earlier this year Marqui, a tiny Portland, Ore. software shop, began paying 21 bloggers $800 per month to post items about Marqui, while requiring them to disclose the payments. Marqui's listings soared on Google from 2,000 to 250,000 results. Never mind that one blogger took the money and bashed a Marqui marketing strategy anyway.

Yeah, that whole Marqui thing went over well. People always respond well to fake publicity. Their next idea is even worse:

BASH BACK. If you get attacked, dig up dirt on your assailant and feed it to sympathetic bloggers. Discredit him.

ATTACK THE HOST. Find some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That may prompt the ISP to shut him down. Or threaten to drag the host into a defamation suit against the blogger. The host isn't liable but may skip the hassle and cut off the blogger's access anyway. Also:Subpoena the host company, demanding the blogger's name or Internet address.

Yeah, getting into a catfight will gain the respect of everyone, and tossing frivolous lawsuits at the little guy is even better. Their next tip is to sue for defamation. I have a better idea - flog the writer at Forbes who wrote this with a clue by four, and do the same to the editor(s) who approved the story.

Apparently, Dave Winer went to the Torvalds school on specs:

Linux creator Linus Torvalds began the discussion saying, "a 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality."

The crucial difference being, Torvalds is talking about an OS kernel, while Winer's "specs" are supposed to define a method for interoperability.

Drunk and Retired has a discussion of Smalltalk about halfway into their episode 27 podcast. They looked at GNU Smalltalk and Squeak.

Dave Slusher makes a comment about podcasts and "slick" production values:

It’s interesting that the only people I ever hear talking about how the public won’t listen to anything but slick programming are people that produce slick programming.

Depends on what you mean by "slick". I don't like "I turned the mic on to see what would happen" podcasts. If there are dogs barking in the background, or drifting music, or people coughing - it's just annoying. Do you need studio quality stuff? No, but a broadcast filled with extraneous noise is just irksome.

Amateur audio doesn't have to mean "whatever noise happened" audio. Which reminds me - I need to buy a real microphone for my periodic screencasts :)

If you like Lileks, you'll like his bleatcasts. Short and funny send ups of the pop culture of yore.

We'll have an announcement about Smalltalk Solutions 2006 coming up on Monday - look for a press release from STIC, as well as an announcement from us. Of course, I'll post it here as well.

I had a few conference calls, and then a bunch of documents to slap together - We (the Cincom Smalltalk team) are having a quarterly review with senior management next week, so it was time to get everything prepared - short presentation, documents, the works. The tech blogosphere has been pretty light today anyway, overshadowed by the partisan excitement going on over on the political side. Maybe we can all argue about XML formats again next week :)

Time for my weekly look at the logs. Things still look solid for BottomFeeder downloads - they went at a rate of 430 per day last week. Here's the detail:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	893
HPUX	586
Mac 8/9	367
Sources	341
Update	204
Linux x86	201
Mac X	174
CE ARM	108
Windows98/ME	39
Solaris	26
Linux Sparc	26
AIX	20
Linux PPC	13
SGI	8
ADUX	5
Source Script	5

Next, I'll have a look at the accesses to the HTML pages for the blog site:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Internet Explorer	47.2%
Mozilla	36.6%
Other	7.2%
MSN Bot	4.5%
Java	2.3%
Google Bot	2.2%

That higher use of IE is sticking around - my traffic numbers have increased lately, so I suspect that what I've got is an influx of IE users. Finally, a look at the accesses to the RSS feed - where IE isn't making serious inroads yet:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	26.9%
BottomFeeder	14.4%
Net News Wire	11.3%
Other	11%
Safari RSS	4.1%
Java	4%
NewsGator	2.8%
SharpReader	2.6%
Internet Explorer	2.6%
Magpie	2.5%
RSSReader	2.4%
Feed Reader	2.4%
Planet Smalltalk	2.1%
Feed Demon	1.7%
BlogLines	1.6%
RSS Bandit	1.4%
JetBrains	1.2%
Liferea	1%
BlogSearch	1%
News Fire	1%
Google Bot	1%
Jakarta	1%

Still a lot of different tools being used to access the feeds - but I think it's notable that over 15% are directly identifiable as coming from Macs.

It looks like I'm going to be pushing an interim (bug fix) BottomFeeder release soon - I'm just waiting on a new build of the XHTML component from the WithStyle guys. There's a bug in the network library we use - if you've seen the update loop stall (i.e., not complete) - then you've seen the bug. You can grab the updates to NetResources and NetResourcesHTTP to address that bug now.

Scoble on Gillmor's Attention Trust site:

I still don’t think I totally understand Steve’s vision, but that’s OK. It took me two years to understand Dave Winer’s vision of RSS. I have a 486 brain in a 64-bit world.

There's a reason he doesn't quite get it. Go visit the Attention Trust site - it's a rampant case of "Buzzword Bingo", with absolutely no details as to what problem (if any) it's on about. There's no point in paying attention if all you get back is worthless marketing-speak.

Tim Bray mentions a forum he participated on, dealing with the Massachusetts/ODF brawl that's breaking out:

I spent Thursday the 27th in Boston; I was invited by Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center to participate in a round-table discussion of interoperability and standards in general, and the current Massachusetts/ODF brouhaha in particular. It was interesting and instructive, and I recommend that anyone who cares about this check out the recording. To help understand the context, there is this guy in the room from ACT who was pushing back pretty hard against the new Massachusetts policy. His arguments are lifted pretty well word for word from the Microsoft talking points, which was useful as the event might otherwise have been a love-in.

The point that many people make about this is that MS Office is the de-facto standard for document interchange, and that moving to another toolset is therefore a large risk. The question I have is this: Is it really? Cincom's IT group is pretty heavily invested in Microsoft technology, and most of the documents that get created by employees are Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

Now, readers of this blog know that I have a fairly low opinion of the competing tools - they come across as clones of MS Office, copying (to my mind) all the irritating crap that makes me dislike MS Office in the first place. Having said that, I've never received a Word document that I couldn't open in Open Office (and I don't have the latest rev installed, either). I suppose there are shops that have invested heavily in office automation, building various tools off of Office using the COM apis. But I suspect that they are a minority, and - even for them - most of the work product produced is just simple documents with few macros.

Heck, I can't recall the last Word document I received with macros in it, and with Excel, the macros I see tend to be simple - sums and such. In other words, stuff that the competition handles pretty well. Which means the following - I expect that most shops could start using Open Office (et. al.) tomorrow and not suffer any real interoperability problems. MS has done a good job of feasting off of their de-facto standard status, but it's all held up by a wall of assumptions. I rather expect that Massachusetts will have far fewer problems using a competing product than MS would have you believe - and that's what they are afraid of.

It's kind of like the situation that French wine found itself in recently. For a very long time, French wine was perceived to be the best in the world, and sellers were able to charge a premium based on that perception. Over time, various competing sellers popped up with much, much lower costs - Chilean, Australian, and Italian wines, for example. For a variety of reasons (some political, some price based), people started trying out the alternatives over the last few years and discovered two things:

• The alternatives weren't worse - they were at least as good
• The alternatives were a lot cheaper

That's what put French vineyards into a world of hurt - the loss of caché cost them their premium price (and a fair bit of their sales volume). That's exactly the situation MS could find itself in, if enough people try out the competing products and start saying "hey - this is no worse, and it's a ton less expensive!" That's what MS is worried about.

I just love this explanation of partial classes from devx:

One of the greatest benefits of partial classes is that it allows a clean separation of business logic and the user interface (in particular the code that is generated by the visual designer). Using partial classes, the UI code can be hidden from the developer, who usually has no need to access it anyway. Partial classes will also make debugging easier, as the code is partitioned into separate files.

Yeah, so long as we keep the UI and domain code in separate methods in the same class, we've achieved real separation. Someone fetch the clue by four...

I've done another dev build of BottomFeeder - this includes all the fixes necessary to get rid of the stalling update issue. If no serious issues poke up over the weekend, I'll mark it as 4.1 and move it out to the standard download.

Doc points to Nick Carr's piece on the Forbes article - the summation of Carr's piece:

Lyons's article isn't beyond criticism. His rhetoric does get overheated at times, and he can stretch too far in trying to make his points as pointed as possible. But those are hardly hanging offenses in magazine writing, and in the "citizen journalism" of the blogosphere they're as commonplace as typos. In rushing to dismiss the article, the blogosphere is simply exposing another of its shortcomings: It can dish it out, but it can't take it.

I think I could say the same thing about large segments of the print sphere - I haven't noticed a particular joy on the part of the print (or television, or radio) media when there are reports of errors on their part. It's common for corrections - even on large stories - to be buried deep in the paper, for instance, and to run long after the original story has done whatever damage it could do.

Then there's Doc's take on splogs:

That said, we also need to face the fact that some of the blogosphere (and it's more than a "sliver," I would submit - David Sifry of Technorati reportsthat close to 6% or more of new blogs are splogs) is a slum. That's the case with both splogs and attack bloggers, which are smaller in number than splogs but comprised of human beings (rather than robotic programs) practicing real offenses against other human beings.

Hmm - walked by a supermarket checkout recently? What do you think most of the rags there are, if not the "slums" of print media? The only real difference is that the barrier to entry for blogging is lower. The slums exist in both worlds, and they've existed in print for a long while. I don't notice the New York Times agonizing over its validity simply because the Enquirer exists. Splogs irritate me, but they have no more to do with me than the Enquirer has to do with the Times.

The dev build I posted earlier has problems on non-Windows platforms. So, if you grabbed it - skip back to the non-dev build and use that. I'll have a new build up tomorrow

If you grabbed the dev build and have been having trouble, help is on the way. I'm doing a new dev build, since it looks like Michael has fixed the problems with the NetResources library we use. Should be ready in a couple of hours.

We saw two interesting movies this weekend - "Stay" (at the theater), and "Shaun of the Dead") (with friends on DVD). Stay was well done, and had me guessing until the end - I was off on the wrong track as to the relationship between the psychiatrist and the protagonist right up the last few minutes. Definitely worth the time, I think.

"Shaun" was just a funny send up on zombie flicks. The first part where he and his friend Ed are completely oblivious to the growing chaos is hilarious. Worth the time as well.

Update: The dev build is ready for download now

I've been working to get a functional development build ready all morning. It turns out that there were two issues to be addressed, due to changes that Michael and the SwS guys had made in the NetResources library, and in WithStyle itself.

First off, the NR libraries had eliminated all references to the Twoflower HTML parser. As it happens, the replacement parser isn't ready for that step yet - there's lots of HTML it doesn't handle yet, so the result was content that we couldn't display unless LibTidy (A C library) did it for us. That was a problem, and I addressed it by making the relevant code invoke the old Tf parser as a last resort. Voila - it works!

The other problem was due to API changes made in WithStyle. I've implemented a parallel API for document loading in the Blog poster - the default API forks a few processes, and I wanted to be able to catch exceptions (and toss the poster into plain view mode) if a downloaded post was just too messy to handle. I did that quite awhile ago, and there were a few subtle changes in the latest WithStyle code that nuked my API. So, I walked through it again, patching it back up. I'm using the poster now, so clearly it's working again :)

I've got the new build uploading now, and it should be ready for download later today. Mind you, this only matters if you downloaded a full development build in the last few days - if you haven't, you should be fine with what you have now.

Scoble reports from the Blog Business Summit:

At the Blog Business Summit yesterday we discovered just how bad RSS usability sucks. Molly Holzschalg was on stage with me and visited a blog and was trying to find its RSS feed. She couldn’t find it. Why? Cause there’s no consistency in this industry on how to subscribe.

Some sites use RSS icons. Most that I visit use the orange XML icon. But other sites don’t have any icon and instead use words like “subscribe” or “feed” or “web feed.”

Even others, like many Blogger sites, don’t have any icon or word with a link at all. For those you’ve gotta know to simply add “atom.xml” onto the end of the URL. Aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

The icons are for the minority of the audience that knows what they are. Most people are going to interact with RSS in one of two ways:

• Their favorite browser will do auto-discovery for them, and offer to subscribe for them
• They'll try to subscribe (in their aggregator) to the main page, and the aggregator will do auto-discovery for them. BottomFeeder does the latter already; is there an aggregator out there that doesn't?

No one (with the possible exception of Dave Winer) expects people to look for orange icons. One way or another, they expect to have the "right thing" just happen.

I've discovered what could actually suck worse than MS Office, Open Office, and the rest of the competition: the same thing, but hosted on a web server:

Microsoft is leaping into hosted applications big time. InformationWeek reports that Microsoft plans to offer hosted implementations of SharePoint, CRM and ERP applications. But the best quote in that article was left till last. A "Microsoft insider" was asked which other products and services Microsoft would host and the reply was: "Everything. Hosted Office. Everything hosted."

Yeah, that's what I want - server lag and possible network outages, in addition to the aggravation of not being able to put the $%^&*() bullet points where I want them.

I have a simpler solution for MS - how about you whack the Office team with a clue by four (especially the morons who dreamed up that gosh awful ribbon), and get the team to start from scratch - with the simple mission of creating something that doesn't make users pound their heads against the wall with every usage?

This is an interesting introduction to Squeak - this part is intriguing:

Also, and to give one example more, Squeak can be used as a windows manager of any Linux, replacing Gnome, KDE, or whatever, using some of the modules that can be loaded with the Package Loader. Surprising, isn't it?

I have one more dev build going up - it turns out that my previous fixes were still off. I've got that addressed now, and the new build will be available for download later tonight (if I'm still awake), or tomorrow morning if I'm not :)

Check out the new Blaine. Now, we just need to get him a tie :)

Via Bob Congdon, a look at the Star Wars Jedi in terms of their decadence and inevitable fall. More detail than I think Lucas had in mind, but it's interesting.

Wow, if this Joystiq report is correct (sourced from the BBC), then Sony missed a huge window - Christmas 2005. Now, that might matter less if it weren't for two things:

• The PS3 won't have backward compatibility with the PS2 (and PS1)
• The XBox 360 will be out for Christmas this year

The GameCube system is the third player here, and Nintendo has already announced that their new console will be backward compatible. In fact, you'll be able to download old NES games (although the old cartridges won't work). The XBox 360 is a new system, with no back compatibility, like the PS3. What that means is that early on, the new XBox and the new PS3 were going to be fighting for market share in a "from scratch" situation - including the all important "get games written" race.

Well - if this is true, then Microsoft gets at least a year of free time to establish a lead on Sony. Which means, I think, that Sony is going to have to do a serious rethink on the backwards compatibility issue. Here's the relevant bit from the report:

The PS3 is delayed until 2007, the decision for this came about through the failure of the initial hardware the PS3 Development Team created. Apparently, 300 PS3 Units were created and sent to various software developers to begin creating games for the new system. However, design flaws in the PS3 (Specifically, not enough coolant) caused the systems to overheat and meltdown after moderate use by the developers.

According to my DM (District Manager), Sony went and fired the entirety of the PS3 Development Team for this flaw. In short, from what I’ve heard, if Sony gained anything from this experience, it’s minor technical knowledge on what the PS3 can handle, but for the most part they were sent to square one.

Sounds a little over the top to me, but if the basics are right - that problems with the PS3 are going to delay the launch - then MS just got a huge market boost for free.

LinuxWorld® & NetworkWorld Canada 2006:

Presents the Smalltalk Solutions Conference

ITWorld Expo Canada and The Smalltalk Industry Council (STIC) are pleased to announce that Smalltalk Solutions 2006 will be hosted at LinuxWorld & NetworkWorld Canada, April 24-26, 2006, in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Smalltalk is a portable, pure object-oriented language that runs on all popular platforms. It is known for being one of the best ways to learn object-oriented programming and the best way for software developers to build applications quickly and efficiently. The Smalltalk Solutions forum is the premier event for bringing together Smalltalk users, developers, and enthusiasts.

“The Smalltalk Solutions Conference is a natural fit with LWNW Canada and we are excited about bringing together diverse groups of professionals who share similar interests.” said Bruce Cole, President of Plum Communications and producer of LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld Canada.

"The Smalltalk Industry Council is proud to be a part of LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld Canada 2006. Smalltalk is the ultimate dynamic language. It is well supported on the Linux platform with multiple commercial development environments available, along with many exciting research projects," said Allen B. Davis, Executive Director of the Smalltalk Industry Council.

LINUXWORLD & NETWORKWORLD CANADA

The leading marketplace for companies that sell, or promote information technology based products, services, applications and solutions across all platforms to senior information technology specialists and executive managers. The event is a valuable resource for these professionals to fulfill their need for the most up to date information that enables them to keep their organizations running at top efficiency.

SMALLTALK INDUSTRY COUNCIL (STIC)

The Smalltalk Industry Council is a cohesive Smalltalk community where information, technical Systems issues, new ideas and concerns are openly discussed to benefit the industry. STIC members are users and vendors of Smalltalk tools, components, databases and services. The Smalltalk Industry Council’s core members include Instantiations, Cincom Systems, Inc., GemStone and Knowledge Systems Corporation. STIC is a nonprofit trade association whose goal is to promote the awareness of and increase demand for Smalltalk. STIC has been the organizer of Smalltalk Solutions since 2001, the premier venue for bringing together Smalltalk users, vendors and enthusiasts.

LinuxWorld Canada and NetworkWorld Canada Conference and Expo are owned by ITWorld Expo Canada (owned by IDG World Expo and IT World Canada). As the Canadian affiliate of IDG, ITWorld Canada publishes CIO Canada, Network World Canada, ComputerWorld Canada, CIO Governments’ Review, and IT Focus. IDG World Expo produces technology-focused trade shows, conferences and events globally. LinuxWorld and NetworkWorld are registered trademarks of International Data Group. IT World Expo Canada is managed by Plum Communications, a leading organizer of community-based IT events in Canada since 1984.

For further information:

Stephanie Cole

LinuxWorld & NetworkWorld Canada

Event Publicist

(905) 695-0123 x211

steph@plumcom.ca

www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca

Suzanne Fortman

Cincom Systems, Inc

STIC Marketing Chairman

(949) 722-8928

sfortman@cincom.com

www.stic.org

Dave Taylor takes a contrary tack, supporting the main thrusts (but not the tone) of the Forbes article on blogs. Where I think he goes a bit off the rails is in this segment, where he makes the point that bloggers aren't journalists:

I've wrestled with this point myself, having been on panels about blogging sponsored by the Society for Professional Journalists and similar. It's fashionable to be skeptical of journalists, especially after con men like Jayson Blair sully the reputation of even the most revered bastion of professional journalism, but it is nonetheless true that the vast majority of journalists check their facts and ensure they have at least two sources to corroborate information.

Bloggers, on the other hand, are happy to cite other bloggers as the source of information, a tortuous chain that often ends at a single person opining something controversial and interesting about a company or product. Bloggers also don't respect moratoriums on publishing information from companies, arrogantly believing that the blogosphere is more important than any sort of announcement schedule by the organization. As a result, few companies pre-release information to even the most serious and professional of bloggers.

I don't think I'd make the claim that journalists are any better at sourcing and fact checking than bloggers are. For all the vaunted fact checkers and editors, they still screw up, early and often - because, like bloggers, they have their own axes to grind, and sometimes let their personal opinions/politics run ahead of the facts. There were many cases of this during the last Presidential election, from all sides of the political spectrum. In the IT sector, it happens a whole heck of lot with industry analysts - you needn't look far to find claims of "pay to play" in that realm.

My point? Bloggers are no better or worse than their MSM cousins here. The main difference is that the barrier to entry for blogging is much, much lower. As to embragoing information? Don't make me laugh. More than half of reporting is publishing information that someone didn't want to see made public. You see this in politics and in tech reporting - heck, Apple goes nuts when anyone leaks information on some "secret sauce" they have in mind.

What analysts and reporters fear is that their former monopoly on opinion mongering is at an end. No one likes to share a stage they used to have to themselves.

This story talks about OpenOffice bloat relative to MS Office, but the interesting bit to me is the drive by XML reference:

Even when dealing with what is essentially the same data, OpenOffice Calc uses up 211 MBs of private unsharable memory while Excel uses up 34 MBs of private unsharable memory. The fact that OpenOffice.org Calc takes about 100 times the CPU time explains the kind of drastic results we were getting where Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes. Most of that massive speed difference is due to XML being very processor intensive, but Microsoft still handles its own XML files about 7 times faster than OpenOffice.org handles OpenDocument ODS format and uses far less memory than OpenOffice.org.

I switched BottomFeeder from an XML save format to a binary serialized file format a long while back, and it did two things:

• Save files shrank by a factor of about 10
• They loaded more than one order of magnitude faster

XML is the favorite buzzword of everyone and his brother, and the State of Massachusetts has taken OpenOffice up on the idea of replacing Office, in part because of this open file format. We'll see how much they like it after they experience extra long file load times.

It's Halloween, so we have stocked up on candy and await the visit of all the little munhkins in the neighborhood. Boo!

Looks like the nice folks at Sony have taken a fairly nasty leap - they have DRM that walks into malicious trojan installation. How nice; just what I needed.

I'm up early and on my way to Cincinnati for our quarterly review - each of the business groups at Cincom meets with senior managenment (Mr. Nies and a few others) each quarter to go over their status and raise any issues that might need the attention of senior management. So, it's off to DCA, over to Dayton, down to the Cincinnati suburbs, and then back this evening. Makes for a lovely day :)

For Java, that is. Roland Tanglao:

It's been 10 years and there are still no compelling client side or desktop apps in Java and all the compelling server apps (sorry enterprise apps don't count as compelling!) are done in PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, Smalltalk et al.

From Andrew Anderson:

So is Java on the way out ? I hope not, because I believe that fundamentally Java is a great language, but Java does have some real problems. I think the root cause of most of the problems is Java's enormous scope and complexity

I'd say that the complexity is based on the initial "simple" implementation just not being powerful enough. Java's not going to go away, but it's heading the way of Cobol - large installed base, critical for many existing applications - but just not interesting anymore.

It may not be Smalltalk, but Ruby is a very close cousin of Smalltalk - and it's getting the attention of people like Scoble. It's just about breakout time for languages that don't put in handcuffs.

I especially like this point he raises:

On clients, they want to choose the highest-reach platforms. That doesn’t mean a Windows app. Or even an app that runs only in IE. It must run on every variant of Linux and Macintosh too.

You mean, like BottomFeeder?

Naked Conversations has some weird ideas:

"Meanwhile, Redmond is proud but not foolish. The writing is on the wall that almost all software will be open and free."

Oh? Software developers, like everyone else, needs to pay for living space, food (etc). The dirty secret about free software is that most people won't pay for maintenance and support - heck, that fact is what doomed the tool market's standard developer license model - it only works if you have lots of new sales each year, because there's steady attrition in the maintenance contracts. Start out by offering your software for free, and you only go broke faster.

The true beauty of watching the current tools space is seeing the people who called MS "evil" for giving IE away hailing IBM as a visionary for making Eclipse free. That sound you hear is all the Java tool vendors dying.

Chris Petrilli explains how simplicity is power:

When people are introduced to Smalltalk, they often come away a bit befuddled, and also feeling like some of their syntactic sugar addictions can’t be fulfilled. Take the wiley “case” statement that exists in many languages. Turns out you can implement it in Smalltalk via just simply extending the underlying classes. Poof! Try that in most languages and people will look at you funny. So far, Lisp and Smalltalk are the only two languages I’ve used that are so trivially extensible to meet new requirements. Others can be extended, but not so seamlessly.

Another example - look at how languages like Java and C# implement generics, and then consider that it's a complete non-issue in Smalltalk.

Smalltalk Solutions 2006 is closer than you think - April of next year! The call for submissions is up, linked via the LinuxWorld/NetworkWorld pages here - and submissions are due by November 30. With the co-located event, your talk has much greater potential exposure - so get it sent in! You can go directly to the Smalltalk Solutions proposal page here.

Dave Winer reports on the Windows Live demo that took place yesterday while I was in meetings. I can't find a link to the specific strip, but there was a Dilbert comic years ago that this reminds me of - Dilbert and Wally are supposed to do a holographic demo, and all they have time for is Wally's head in a cut out monitor. It sounds like that's where Gates was yesterday.

Mini-Microsoft has comments on that here; I suspect that Gates left the stage pretty darn mad. I know what it's like to have a demo flame out in front of an audience (never one so large as that - my time as a sales engineer didn't include anything that big) - it's not enjoyable. At least in my case, the fault was usually mine, since I was the one putting the demos together. I really wouldn't want to be a member of the team that was managing that demo right now.

Steve Kelly sent me an email that pointed out a few issues (mostly lack of updates) with the version of Silt that's in the public Store, and with what's available here. I've refreshed the zip file, and made a new addition - a pre-built server.

There are instructions and download links on this page. The server is configured to start on port 9000. To change that, you'll want to use the included headful image, where you can modify the port settings. The headless (i.e., no GUI) image will start up the blog automatically; the headful server will do so after you execute the line of code in the open workspace.

Questions? Email me.

From Alan Knight, Program Chair for Smalltalk Solutions 2006:

This year's Smalltalk Solutions will be held in conjunction with the Linux World and Network World Expo in Toronto, April 24-26. See

http://www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca/

for more information on the conference in general. We are now looking for presentations concerning all aspects of Smalltalk usage, both commercial and non-commercial, and for all dialects and operating systems. That is to say, even though the main conference has Linux in its name, it is not a requirement that Smalltalk Solutions presentations involve Linux.

Note that the conference format will be slightly different from previous years, with tutorials held on April 24th, ahead of the main conference. Regular session slots will be one hour, rather than the 45 minute slots we have used previously.

To submit a proposal, please use the form at

http://www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca/sts_call_papers.cfm

which also includes more detailed information. You can also e-mail Alan Knight with any questions.

Finally, and most important, note that the submission deadline is November 30th, so get your proposal in as soon as possible!!!

Thank you,

Alan Knight

Smalltalk Solutions 2006 Program Chair

Here's a fine example of Quality Technology Reporting (TM):

Microsoft has announced plans to offer an online version of its Windows operating software, going head-to-head with archrival Google in the field of cyber applications. Ethan Lindsey reports.

Did the person who wrote that blurb stop to consider whether it made sense?

Julik doesn't like UTF:

When starting on any programming project you can reasonably expect every component of the toolchain to have broken UTF support. Every single one of them. From database to the bindings to the scripting language to the web server.

Well, if you were using Smalltalk, that wouldn't necessarily be the case. Cincom Smalltalk deals with UTF, mostly without problems. When writing Silt and BottomFeeder, my biggest issues have been with inbound text of unknown (and unmarked) encoding.

That could buy me a few game systems :)

Yet another developer who wants Smalltalk, but doesn't know it yet:

MMORPGs addresses more of the Web's problems. 0.7 on the Compensation paradox: a viable economy is present, but there is just one bank. 0.2 on the Identity paradox: at least it knows your nickname. 0.7 on the Compatibility paradox: single closed-source implementation. Zero on the Boundary paradox. And 0.5 on the Responsibility paradox, since there is a central but active authority.

Final rating is: modern software platform -- 1.4, modern gaming platform -- 2.1. To build a successor to the Web, don't start with .Net: instead, take World of Warcraft and make it suitable for general purpose use.

Croquet, anyone?

User Friendly has the release of Civ IV about right :)

Sony is scrambling now that they've been caught installing rootkit spyware on systems that play their music CD's.

The firestorm began when Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals, discovered evidence of a "rootkit" on his Windows PC. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.

...

On Wednesday, Sony answered its critics by promising to issue a patch that allows antivirus software to pierce First 4 Internet's cloaking function. But in our view, the hacker and virus threat is something of a red herring. The harm of the Sony DRM scheme is not that it enables evildoers, but that Sony itself did evil.

Shorter Sony: "Oops, you caught us (damn). We promise to remove the evil software that we shouldn't have installed in the first place, and we'll be a lot more careful about covering our tracks in the future".

And the music industry wonders why people distrust them.

Looks like we just found the perfect beverage for developers - possibly bigger than Mountain Dew. I bring you.... Coffee Beer.

A drink somewhere between coffee and beer could soon be on the menu. Nestec, part of the Nestlé empire in Switzerland, has filed patents in every major market round the world on a "fermented coffee beverage" that pours and foams like beer, but smells of strong coffee and packs a concentrated caffeine kick.

Could make for some fun coding adventures :)

Just in case I was confused about my status in life:

You scored as Couch Potato Cat. Decorative pillow? No, that'd be you sitting on the couch, even still. Hmm. . . I'm guessing you have Web TV.

Couch Potato Cat	67%
Pissed at the World Cat	58%
Nerd Cat	42%
Drunk Cat	33%
Ninja Cat	25%
Deranged Cat	17%
Love Machine Cat	17%

Which absurd cat are you?

After all these years, DNA testing may tell us who Jack the Ripper actually was. It will be interesting to find out which (if any) of the authors who've written about this were right.

Torsten reports on a new Squeak based learning kit for kids called Scratch. It looks pretty cool

When I last visited Australia, I picked up a book (our local guy, Andrew MacNeil's suggestion) called "Weapons of Choice" - it's a time travel/alternate history riff, kind of like 1632, or Island in the Sea of Time (but without Stirling's rather active fantasy life surrounding sexual mores).

Well, Birmingham has the sequel to "Weapons of Choice" out - "Designated Targets". It's a decent successor, although I wish it focused more on the changed WWII, and less on the social impacts of the time travelers - interesting though that is, I'm really looking for an action book here :)

Anyway, if you like alternate history, the Birmingham books are worth your time.