Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Joel understand the business end of software development pretty well:

Consulting company comes in, gets all the programmers in a room, tells them all about Function Points and stuff, and how productivity is REALLY IMPORTANT.

Programmers remember that scene from Office Space where Bob and Bob, the consultants, recommended all the people to get fired.

Programmers start writing a heck of a lot more function points. For example you can triple the number of function points in your code simply by round tripping everything through an XML file. Big waste of time, prone to bugs, does nothing, but each file you touch adds a function point. W00t!

Some companies manage this sort of thing without the outside consultants. Some important executive reads a book. The book has important tips on improving productivity. All the people reporting to the executive get a copy of the book, and are told how much there is to learn from it.

The message as it's received down in the trenches?

"The beatings will continue until morale improves"

What most shops need is less "help" from above, and more real autonomy.

Technorati Tags: consultants, productivity

On this morning's Smalltalk Daily, we learn how to recover lost code.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Allchin on Windows Vista:

During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed.

Hey Jim - I have a bridge for you. I guarantee that it will be more useful than Windows without anti-virus software.

Technorati Tags: microsoft

Via Dare Obasanjo comes this fascinating tidbit about page load times - it's a nice companion piece to the data I linked to the other day:

Marissa started with a story about a user test they did. They asked a group of Google searchers how many search results they wanted to see. Users asked for more, more than the ten results Google normally shows. More is more, they said. So, Marissa ran an experiment where Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic and revenue from Google searchers in the experimental group dropped by 20%. Ouch. Why? Why, when users had asked for this, did they seem to hate it? After a bit of looking, Marissa explained that they found an uncontrolled variable. The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate. The page with 30 results took .9 seconds. Half a second delay caused a 20% drop in traffic. Half a second delay killed user satisfaction. This conclusion may be surprising -- people notice a half second delay? -- but we had a similar experience at Amazon.com. In A/B tests, we tried delaying the page in increments of 100 milliseconds and found that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue.

I wonder how many web developers - myself included - had any idea that 1/2 a second had that kind of impact?

Technorati Tags: advertising

Well - it seems that there's a judge out there willing to question bozo damage claims from the RIAA:

A US COURT is forcing the Recording Industry of America to explain why it charges people it catches pirating $750 a single rather than the 70 cents they flog them to retailers for.

Sounds right to me. If the label sells the good for $X, then the presumed damage would be $X. Anything beyond that is into the punitive realm. The RIAA doesn't much like this:

The RIAA fought to prevent the amendment to Ms Lindor's case, claiming it was not up to her to decide damages. They said that her complaint about the level of damages was without merit and if the amendment went ahead it would prejudice them.

Cry me a river. My sympathy for the labels dried up and blew away a long, long time ago. Which reminds me - David Geffen is justifying the "Zune Tax" this way:

David Geffen, the media omniboss, is quoted: 'Each of these devices is used to store unpaid-for material...' The new business rationale is that stolen music should be paid for by profit sharing of newly sold Zune music players.

The raw stupidity of the labels continues to amaze me. Hey Geffen: you can take the Zune, and this "all my customers are criminals" attitude and stick it. As for MS: I won't be buying a Zune, and I'll be advising other people not to as well. When MS wants to take a "our customers aren't crooks" stand, perhaps one of the Zune guys could make an announcement on that.

Technorati Tags: RIAA, copyright

I've been noodling around with the COM interface to iTunes, and - after some help from Troy and one of our engineers, I got things working - in both VW and OST. I got OST working first, but I have VW open now, so let's start with that. First, I used the type analyzer to get the GUID:

"View Dispatch interface methods and properties"
COMAutomationTypeAnalyzer describeID: 'iTunes.Application' asGUID.

Then, I grabbed the dispatch interface:

"Open an instance and try some methods."
driver := COMDispatchDriver createObject: 'iTunes.Application'.

Then, using the dispatch interface I grabbed the LibraryPlaylist interface and added a file:

"Get the Library playlist interface and add a file to iTunes"
playListLib := driver getProperty: 'LibraryPlaylist'.
playListLib invokeMethod: 'AddFile' with: 'h:\audio\industry_misinterpretations_10-14-06.mp3'.

Which led to this:

Next post- we'll have a look at the OST code.

Technorati Tags: objectstudio, visualworks, COM

Having shown how to hit iTunes from VW, here's how I did the same thing in ObjectStudio. OST is more Windows oriented, so things were a bit simpler:

"Get a COM interface and a dispatch object"
ole := OLEObject newProgId: 'iTunes.Application'.
dispatcher := ole dispatcher.

"get the Playlist interface"
libPlay := dispatcher at: 'LibraryPlaylist'.

"Now add the file"
result := libPlay call: 'AddFile' params: (Array with: 'h:\audio\industry_misinterpretations_10-14-06.mp3').

Refer back to the same image from the previous post; it all worked the same way :) COM from Smalltalk isn't quite as hard as I thought it was.

Technorati Tags: objectstudio, visualworks, COM

Today is Veteran's Day, and I tip my hat to all the men and women serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. My grandfather fought in WWI, and that was no picnic either. He was one of the lucky ones - he came back (physically) unscathed. I can't think of a better tribute than "In Flanders Fields" by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) (Canadian Army):

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Technorati Tags: remembrance

The perennial question:

Jeff Sutherland is one of the few original signatories of the agile manifesto who has enough integrity to allow agile methods to grow beyond its founding members. In this blog he points out the benefits of Ruby running on the Java VM. He later suggests that SmallTalk should also consider the same approach. I wonder if him and James Robertson have ever talked?

We looked at this a long time ago, and the answer is, it's not really feasible. Ruby is an interpreted language, so the speed hit it takes from living on a static optimized VM is theoretical. With Smalltalk, it would be very real. There are an awful lot of dynamic behaviors that would either be lost outright or run like a dog on the JVM. The same holds largely true of the CLR, btw.

Sure, Sun is talking about adding some dynamic language support to the VM. The process to make those mods is long and slow though - and telling customers to take a 30% hit in performance in order to live on a different VM just doesn't sound that useful.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, JVM, ruby

It's time for the weekly look at the logs. Lots of update downloads for BittomFeeder this week - that jacked the average up to 274/day:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Update	730
Windows	480
Mac X	232
Linux x86	118
Mac 8/9	114
CE ARM	73
Windows98/ME	38
Solaris	32
Linux Sparc	27
HPUX	21
AIX	15
Sources	14
Linux PPC	12
SGI	6
ADUX	4
CE x86	2

That takes me to the HTML page accesses. Traffic was solid again this week, with the tool distribution slanting to IE. Probably a rise in IE7 usage:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Internet Explorer	46.4%
Mozilla	38%
Other	3.1%
Planet Smalltalk	4.9%
MSN Bot	3.5%
LibPerl	2.4%
Opera	1.6%
Accoona	1.3%

Finally, the RSS tool distribution:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	20.4%%
BottomFeeder	19%
Other	1.4%
Safari RSS	6.8%
Net News Wire	6.6%
Google Feed Fetcher	6.3%
Internet Explorer	6.2%
BlogLines	5.1%
NewsGator	3.2%
Planet Smalltalk	2.4%
Strategic Board Bot	2.1%
RSS Bandit	1.5%
Liferea	1.4%
SharpReader	1.2%
Vienna	1.1%
MSN Bot	1.1%
News Fire	1.1%
JetBrains	1%
RSS 2 Email	1%
Python	1%
Java	1%
Jakarta	1%
Opera	1%
BlogSearch	1%
Feed Reader	1%
Live Journal	1%
Feed Demon	1%
Shrook	1%
RSSReader	1%
Magpie	1%

Looks like the movie sales are going well for Apple:

With half a million sales in just under eight weeks, customers are purchasing approximately 62,500 movies from Apple's iTunes store each week, or just shy of 9,000 each day.

"This underlines the strength and uniqueness of our film library, and indicates there is a consumer appetite for movie downloads that complements demand for DVDs," said president and chief executive Robert Iger.

Thus far, Disney is the only major motion picture studio who has agreed to sell its films through the ubiquitous iTunes service. However, News Corp's. Fox Entertainment Group and independent Lions Gates are reported to be in ongoing negotiations with Apple about making their catalog of films available to iTunes customers.

Those other studios seem to be wishing online sales would go away, allowing DVD sales to continue as they have. That's not going to happen - they should get on board, and stop leaving money on the table.

Technorati Tags: iTunes

Chris Petrilli explains things to James McGovern. If he bothers to read it, maybe he'll learn something. If not, there's always room for more bad implementations in your larger enterprises...

Nick Carr takes aim at excessive absurdity like this:

the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.” Under today’s system, such a query can lead to hours of sifting -- through lists of flights, hotel, car rentals -- and the options are often at odds with one another. Under Web 3.0, the same search would ideally call up a complete vacation package that was planned as meticulously as if it had been assembled by a human travel agent.

Yeah, that will work. If I gave that information to a live travel agent right now, they wouldn't have enough to go on. Do I like theme parks? Camping? The beach? This is all nuts. I'm with Carr:

One last thing: I'm claiming the trademarks on Web 3.0 Conference, Web 3.0 Summit, Web 3.0 Camp, Web 3.0 Uncamp, and Web 3.0 Olde Tyme Hoedown.

I think that's the appropriate level of seriousness to apply here.

Technorati Tags: hype, web3.0, semantic web

Vorlath demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of basic economics:

The money system is a colossal failure. It doesn't work. Those who have more make the rules. This means you are dependent on the rule makers to not screw up the money system. Any wealth you think you may have is imaginary. It's not about complaining when someone makes a lot of money. It's about others not making money in a system not of their choosing.

Read his whole post; that's just the summary. The bottom line is, he seems to think that the system of exchanging money for goods is a problem. Hmm - what would he propose as a replacement? Barter? For some utopians that sounds good, until you realize that most of us don't have anything specific to trade with - say - food producers. I'm a product manager, for instance, and I write some software on the side as a hobby. How would Vorlath propose that I buy vegetables? What do I have worth trading?

Heck, the money system is nothing more than an efficient barter system anyway - we've all agreed to use little bits of paper (etc) as proxies for physical items, so that we can all efficiently trade with each other - whether the two people trading have anything of value to trade each other or not. What's his proposed alternative?

Technorati Tags: economics

This week David Buck and I were joined by Bryce Kampjes, author of Exupery - and optimizing compiler targeting Squeak Smalltalk. Michael couldn't join us - a cold had him laid up at the time we recorded the podcast.

We had a good conversation though - if you're interested in how to make Smalltalk faster, this is a good place to start. I want to thank Bryce for joining us so late in the evening - it was after 10 pm by the time we got some basic audio issues worked out in the Skype hookup.

I've just finished two interesting books: "Copperheads" and "America Alone". They were both intriguing books, and pretty quick reads.

Then there are the books I'm either still reading, or waiting (not so patiently) for:

I'm still working on "The End of the Old Order", which covers the Napoleanic era from 1801 - 1805. The author (Kagan) says that there will be more volumes to cover the rest of that period, and I look forward to them.

I'm still waiting for "The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization" - Amazon is telling me that it should arrive next week. I sure hope so - it looks like a good book.

Technorati Tags: history

Drew, the RocketBoom guy shows us how not to turn down a business deal:

I have been losing sleep over it and decided this is just not going to be right for Rocketboom. While I expect this will be a big traffic loss for us, at heart, I really love Apple and will stick by them in this competition. I also remembered from last year that Microsoft was the first company to really make me feel as though I was being taken advantage of personally.

That's what's called "burning your bridges". Dynamiting them, actually. One of the commenters there put it best:

This really makes me want to negotiate with you regarding sponsorship opportunities on rocketboom.

If it goes badly, can i assume you'll badmouth my company, too?

This is the sort of thing you handle privately. If there's a need to make a public comment at all, it should not be disparaging.

Update: Scoble had this to say on his blog:

James Robertson says this isn’t the way to turn down a deal cause it blows up all bridges. I don’t agree. You define yourself and your business by the customers you fire. I’m sure that the next sponsorship deal that Andy gets offered will be a lot more like what Seagate gave me than what Microsoft usually offers.

I still don't think so. I think handling that sort of thing quietly would work out a lot better. I suspect that the PR/advertising people looking at RocketBoom don't think much of it either. When he gets other offers, it will be in spite of - not due to - this missive. Meaning, the large volume of traffic will be enough to push this mistake aside.

Technorati Tags: marketing, management

Here's the entire problem with McGovern's blog:

On every single page within my blog, the following disclaimer appears: The opinions expressed herein may or may not represent my own personal opinions... yet folks seem to ignore this statement and go off assuming and miss the entire point.

If you aren't expressing your opinion, you're just being a gadfly. I guess it's fair to assume your blog is what I thought it was at first - an elaborate satire. The non-contextual, tinfoil hat variety political pictures certainly go right along with that theory.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

Via Tim Bray, I see that Sun has decided on the license they'll use for OSS Java - the GPL. This will bring up an interesting issue: I get a lot of anecdotal reports of companies being concerned about using GPL software. So here's what I'm interested in seeing:

• Is Sun offering a dual license thing to deal with that, or is it less of a problem than I think it is?
• Is it a larger issue, and will companies stay on older revs of Java "just to be sure?"
• Will any larger company try to do a "hijack fork"?

Those aren't "I hope it fails" questions on my part, either - I'm genuinely curious.

Technorati Tags: OSS, GPL

On this morning's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the process model in Cincom Smalltalk. While I'm using VisualWorks to demonstrate, the same will hold for ObjectStudio 8, which is using VisualWorks as its home environment.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Here's the news I couldn't find earlier - Sun is providing safe harbor for people nervouse about the GPL opening things up too much. Not surprising:

However, Sun is employing the so-called "classpath exception," a license addition that allows the company to place limits on the software that the GPL covers, Green said.

The effect is that programmers who create applications using Sun's open-source versions of Java can use choose a different license for their applications, he said.

"In the case of Java SE (Java Standard Edition), we're enhancing (the GPL) with the classpath exception," Green said. "So when you're working on top or shipping applications with the (Java) libraries and virtual machine, you're not affected by the Java license."

In addition, Java creator Sun will continue to offer a commercial license, a "dual-license" structure that gives other software vendors legal indemnification and official standards certification.

So it looks like commercial users who don't trust GPL don't have to deal with it. That raises another question though - for vendors who don't care, will this eat into Sun's licensing revenue? That will be interesting to watch.

Technorati Tags: OSS, GPL

Space is running short: Cincom Smalltalk User Conference, December 5-7

Cincom Smalltalk User Conference
December 5-7, 2006
Frankfurt, Germany

Many Smalltalk users have already registered for the upcoming Cincom Smalltalk User Conference, which will take place on December 5-7 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Well known keynote speakers from the Smalltalk world, SAP Labs and IBM Methods Group will be talking about hot topics. The Cincom Smalltalk team is going to deliver detailed technical insights and tips as well as a look at the future roadmap. Click here to find the complete agenda with further information about our speakers and their talks.

Fed up with only listening?
Then use our various opportunities for interactive communication! Debate with product engineering in the "Discussion Forum", get advice on open issues in one of the "Meet the Expert" sessions, present your applications and solutions within the scope of the "ShortCuts -- User Presentations". And exert direct influence on Cincom Smalltalk's development via your contribution in various "Birds of a Feather" sessions - set up your own on site, and make sure to check the schedule that will be posted there.

Further information on the conference and the registration form can be found here.

We're looking forward to meeting you in Frankfurt next month!
Best regards

Yvonne Schickel
Marketing Manager
Cincom Systems GmbH & Co. oHG
E-mail: infode@cincom.com
Phone: +49 6196 9003-0

PS:
Should you know any OO developer, who would like to learn an established dynamic language, please point them to the workshop "Experience Cincom Smalltalk", which runs simultaneously with the conference.

Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, cincom, smalltalk, objectstudio, visualworks

It's always runtime in Smalltalk -- Developer Workshop "Experience Cincom Smalltalk"

Workshop for OO developers looking for fun while programming
"Experience Cincom Smalltalk"
Frankfurt, Germany

Dynamic programming languages are a hot topic now; OOPSLA 2006 dedicated an exclusive forum to them. They are considered to be a serious alternative to Java, C# or C++ -- even within the IBM camp as you can tell from the following abstract:

"Smalltalk developers build onto a continuously running application called the image. Because the image is always running, any addition, deletion, or update of a method in any class occurs at run time." (Bruce Tate, "Delayed Binding", "Crossing Borders" site hosted by IBM)

But there are several dynamic languages. So why not using one of the "modern" ones, Ruby & Co? Or do you expect more from a software technology than just cost reductions through increased developer productivity and simplified maintenance? E.g.

• Power: one single technology for various applications and architectures!
• Openness: not an island solution!
• First-class tools: powerful, easy-to-use and seamlessly integrated!
• Performance and stability
• And happy developers: Having fun at work empowers extraordinary results!

In our developers' workshop "Experience Cincom Smalltalk", you can. From December 5-7, 2006. In Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

Further information about the workshop can be found here.
To register, please send an e-mail or use our registration form.

We're looking forward to your curiosity and willingness to experiment!

Best regards Yvonne Schickel
Marketing Manager
Cincom Systems GmbH & Co. oHG
E-mail: infode@cincom.com
Phone: +49 6196 9003-0

PS:
Should you know experienced Smalltalkers, feel free to make them aware of the Cincom Smalltalk User Conference, which will be running simultaneously with the workshop.

Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, cincom, smalltalk, visualworks, objectstudio

Carlos at Techdirt manages to infuriate the RIAA again simply by pointing out what the say, and what that means. Meanwhile, the shills at the RIAA continue to look like complete jerks. Witness this amazing assertion from their mouthpiece:

Like a trademark that becomes generic, the fair use doctrine is in danger of losing its meaning and value if CEA's self-serving claims are taken at face value. CEA has twisted and contorted "fair use" beyond its true intent, turning it into a free pass for those who simply don't want to pay for creative works.

Hey Cary - let me know when that rectal-cranial inversion gets to be too painful to stand.

Technorati Tags: DRM, stupidity

Apparently, Peter Scheer thinks he can be like Marty McFly - the news media can somehow take a quick trip to the past and fix everything:

What to do? Here's my proposal: Newspapers and wire services need to figure out a way, without running afoul of antitrust laws, to agree to embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period -- say, 24 hours -- after it is made available to paying customers. The point is not to remove content from the Internet, but to delay its free release in that venue.

A temporary embargo, by depriving the Internet of free, trustworthy news in real-time, would, I believe, quickly establish the true value of that information. Imagine the major Web portals -- Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN -- with nothing to offer in the category of news except out of date articles from "mainstream" media and blogosphere musings on yesterday's news. Digital fish wrap. And the portals know from unhappy experience (most recently in the case of Yahoo) just how difficult it is to create original and timely news content themselves.

I don't know whether he's noticed, but this internet thing is global. Exactly how does he plan on getting every wire service and media outlet to agree to those terms? Heck, even if it were possible, he'd have a classic "prisoner's dilemma" on his hands.

It's time for people like Scheer to get beyond the old days. The net is here to stay, as is widely available free content. The RIAA and the MPAA demonstrate the futility of trying to fight the future; even as they get friendly legal regimes passed on their behalf, technology continues to outwit them. There's no re-entry to that mythical past where everyone picked up the evening newspaper for the latest news.

Technorati Tags: newspapers, news, stupidity

Avi (and others) have talked about getting Ruby to run inside a Smalltalk system - and now Avi has gone ahead and taken a first step in that direction:

Here’s the cool thing about JRuby for this purpose: one, it has a nice, classic object-oriented parser/AST/Visitor package, in Java. Two, it makes it very easy to access Java classes and implement Java interfaces from Ruby. That means, as it turns out, that it’s trivial to write a JRuby script that uses the JRuby parser to parse some Ruby code, and then pass the parse nodes through a Ruby visitor implementation. So I wrote a visitor that does the least work possible to translate the simplest Ruby program possible into something Squeak Smalltalk can load and run, and hey, it adds 3+4 and comes up with 7. I’m pretty sure this is the lightestweight bootstrap there can be towards the goal of eventually getting Ruby running on a Smalltalk VM. No new parser needed: we use JRuby’s. No new compiler needed: we use Squeak’s. No third party libraries needed (I never could get ParseTree built on my Mac). No new code that needs to be written in any language but Ruby. Cool.

Interesting approach - the code required to do that is here. Now it'll be interesting to see whether anyone else picks this up to look at - Blaine, perhaps?

This raises the question as to why one of the Smalltalk vendors (like, say, Cincom) doesn't take a crack at it. Well, the revenue model for it is not immediately obvious (meaning: you come up with a way to explain it to management - I haven't found that way yet :) ). Additionally, we have a fairly full plate of things we need to do to Cincom Smalltalk already, and the engineering team is over-committed on that.

That said, I think it's a cool idea. If there's money in it, a third party should be able to build support and help us sell it.

Technorati Tags: squeak, ruby

Nick Carr notes the existence of what he dubs"defensive blogging" - i.e., starting a blog so that you can have some control over what shows up in search results:

Leonsis is what you might call a defensive blogger. His main goal isn't to enter into a "conversation" with the AOL "community," but just to gain more control over the results that show up when people google him. In fact - and this really turns the whole corporate blogging ethos on its pointy little head - Leonsis is blogging not to increase the flow of information but to narrow it, for his own professional benefit.

I flagged this story as something of interest yesterday, but never got around to it. Today, it's a full blown meme :) I find that I like Doc Searl's take on this:

Doesn't always happen with me and Nick, but I couldn't agree more. Though I'd add that Ted is being both Machiavelli and Cluetrain compliant. (It isn't like the guy isn't getting clues, is it? He's not bunkered down in what Dr. Weinberger aptly called Fort Business.)

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we go a little deeper into Smalltalk processes, and learn one technique for easily dealing with background processes.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Via Glenn Reynolds, I'm reminded of the egregious charges hotels and conference centers charge for group net access:

There were 11 of us in a small conference room with a table that seated 12. Naturally, we all wanted access to the net, but the charge for that was $175 per person! That's $1,925 for internet access for the group. We (I) pitched a fit, and they agreed to cut it significantly, but it was still far more than what we were willing to pay.

This leads to absurd situations - at last year's LinuxWorld/NetworkWorld (note the second name) there was no internet access (the conference center wanted $300 per person). The question you have to ask yourself is - does that kind of charge plan actually work? Given all the business they don't get, does the business from the occasional moron who pays for it make up for it?

Publicity isn't that useful for this, since the people affected are transient, and may not return to the same hotel/center anytime soon.

Dave Winer makes a good point about what MS could have (and should have) done with the Zune:

I met with the people doing the Zune at Microsoft in the summer of 2004, when podcasting was gaining traction (in Seattle no less), but wasn't showing on their radar yet. I explained how they could make their device a perfect podcast client. I couldn't tell what they were thinking of course, but it seemed they weren't convinced podcasting was real. Too bad, they could have made a simple product, not had to do any deals with Hollywood, and do an end-run around Apple, which still hasn't made the corner turn to DRM-less media (which is one of the most profound things about podcasting, and no accident, I assure you).

That's hardly the end of the missteps though; it's as if MS considered every bone-headed move they could make for the Zune, and went ahead:

• Doesn't work with Windows Media Player; requires a new application
• Doesn't work with PlaysForSure, MS' recent DRM theory. If you bought PlaysForSure music, that sound you hear is the theme song from "Jaws"
• WiFi that doesn't serve any useful purpose
• Music Sharing via WiFi that will generate gosh knows how many bug reports that end with tech support saying "it's a feature, not a bug"
• A player that's a little bigger than it could be, and is much heavier than an iPod.
• You buy music via a point system ($5 minimum up front to buy songs at $0.99 each) - unlike, say, itms, where you just use that money thing so manv of us are familiar with

It's simply amazing that they could hit the market as a second mover and make that many initial mistakes. That last one on points is worthy of a whole "what were they thinking???" post of its own. I'd like to know what the product management/marketing team was thinking when they came up with this.

Update: CNN had Andrew Ross Sorkin on this morning to talk about the Zune. It was a classic "on the one hand, on the other" kind of review until the very end, when Soledad O'Brien brought out her new Nano shuffle. Ouch.

Technorati Tags: Zune, Microsoft, iPod

I just picked up "The Middle Ages", an overview of the period. It's good so far - I read through the early medieval period this evening, and on into the beginning of the high (pre-plague) period. It's not detailed, but it seems like a quick read. I'd read more tonight, but it's bedtime :)

Jason Calacanis argues that the dotCom bust didn't change the overall upward trend in online advertising - and argues further that the uptick is going to keep going:

The real story of Web 2.0 has little to do with the bells and whistles and everything to do with the stunning growth of online advertising. If you look there is a valley between the dotcom spending days (99/2000) and today, but the trend line would be fairly straight if you held a ruler over the 97 to 2006 points--which I do here with the black line. That dotcom overspend, and the dip after it, shouldn't have happened. Those swings were due to the emotional roller coaster of the dotcom bubble on the way up, and four huge events after: the dotcom bubble bursting, the accounting scandals, 9/11, and the brief recession caused by those first three.

He's got charts on his site to back up his idea (along with some caveats about external events impacting it). I think he's mostly right, although I'd add something: we are also moving from mass marketing and broad brush advertising to niche markets and niche advertising. Which means that it will be easy to argue that things are slowing down, even as they increase (but spread out).

Technorati Tags: advertising, web2.0

James McGovern doesn't seem to care for the back and forth treatment his postings generate, so he's come back with this description of my site:

On the contrary, most truths are apt to become familiar and unexciting. No one thrills to the idea that the earth orbits the sun like they used to. But this new blase attitude has not altered the structure of the solar system. Equally, most fiction is surprising and not in the least dull to read, but it remains fiction for all that. The best refutations also tend to draw on facts that are tediously obvious. How better can you refute an opinion than by showing it to be inconsistent with something well-known to be true? Are the below fact tediously obvious when it comes to Ruby on Rails?

Near the middle of that paragraph, he linked the word "fiction" to my site. Well, to each his own - if he can't stand the heat, maybe the kitchen isn't the place for him. Having gotten that off his chest, McGoveren goes on to demonstrate that he's fearful of actually doing his own job via these assertions:

No large analyst firm has spent any time researching Ruby uptake nor have any of their clients asked them to?

Is it the job of analysts to back initiatives, so that the risk for any failures can be spread around? In McGovern's universe, I guess so. Here's a thought: Do your job. Do some research yourself, start a pilot project on a low risk task, and see how it works out. The results of that might actually mean something. Or, you can wait for the next large "IT in 20 years" report from the bozo firm of camp followers.

No Indian outsourcing firm and their bloggers have even indirectly hinted at the fact that they are using it for large enterprise applications?

Umm, duhh. That's because those firms mostly maintain existing applications written over the last 20 years - they aren't creating many new applications. Realizing that might require some actual thinking though.

Even though there are lots of Enterprise Architects who use Ruby outside of work, they never felt it was worth the time to talk about it in any meaningful way at work?

As Chris Petrilli recently noted, this is due to herd behavior and risk aversion. Better to fail the same way as everyone else than to try something different and stick out. The rewards for success apparently matter less than the risks of failure.

If you were to write a mission-critical enterprise application on a Java platform to support 5,000 concurrent users it would be 50X faster than anything the Ruby community could dream of? It would also outscale Ruby by factors?

The wealth of time and effort devoted to this topic is where he gets this from, right? Well, here's the thing - most large enterprise apps spend a lot of time dealing with the database. That part is optimized by doing better table and query design. So Ruby is interpreted; so what? That's simply not going to be relevant for most applications. On the kind of bozo comparisons that McGovern has in mind here, both C and C++ are going to outperform C#, Java, and VB.NET. Does that mean that the enterprise should stick with C, because "clearly" it's faster?

Again, I'll point out the obvious to McGovern: if you actually tried a pilot project, you might learn something. If you stay in the middle of the herd, you won't. I'm sure it seems safer there in the middle; everyone is doing the same thing, and any failures can be balmed over. Then again, the chance of a real outstanding success is also about nil.

I'll skip the rest, since it's getting tiresome to repeat "do your job" over and over. However, this bullet point from McGovern illustrates the pack thinking very well:

Can you point to a single Fortune 200 enterprise whose primary business isn't technology and a single revenue-generating mission-critical system built using Ruby? If you can't, could you at least speculate as to when you think this will happen?

There you go. It's safer in the middle of the herd, where the soothing voices of the shepherds remove all thoughts about anything better.

Update: Chris Petrilli weighs in.

Technorati Tags: management

On today's Smalltalk Daily, I take a brief look at the COM Connect, demonstrating a basic hookup to iTunes.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

I've said good things about XPlay in the past, but boy - if you get Windows bit rot, bad things happen.

When I was experimenting with the COM interface to iTunes, I had to uninstall/reinstall. I probably could have just upgraded XPlay - there's a patch that says it updates to iTunes 7.x. Not noticing, I went to what I figured was the safest route: uninstall, reinstall, update.

Oh boy. I had to reboot after each step. Would it be too hard to have the installer kill and restart the application? Sheesh.

Technorati Tags: XPlay, iPod

It sounds like the people who pre-ordered PS3's aren't going to be happy. I was at one of the local Gamestop stores the other day, picking up a DS game for my daughter, who just turned 13. While I was paying, I asked the guy if they were getting any PS3's for the launch. The surprising answer was "no" - he told me that he had to call a bunch of people (who pre-ordered) with disappointing news.

I know that Microsoft muffed the initial launch of the 360 (there were shortages) - but not this badly. Sony is starting to look like the Keystone Kops.

Technorati Tags: PS3, games, console

Speaking of bad launches, I don't think I'd want a job as one of Microsoft's PR flack's right now. This Engadget review is just devastating - and having a series of crashes on 2 separate systems is not encouraging. The Apple Matters site is biased, sure - but the Zune point system take-down is well deserved.

The list of things MS got wrong (I went through this already) is simply amazing. When I told my wife and daughter last night that the Zune wouldn't work with Windows Media Player, they were just stunned - and I think that's going to be the normal reaction.

Oh, and one other thing - while I was at Gamestop, I saw the Zune promo materials. "Welcome to the Social"??? Do the MS marketing gnomes think it's 1920, and we're all headed out for ice cream? If this is what the major iPod competition is going to look like, I don't think Apple has much to worry about.

Technorati Tags: Zune, mp3 player, iPod

I've been beating the drum on the bozo DRM built into Windows Vista: PVP-OPM for awhile now. Finally, the trade press seems to have noticed. Computerworld has an article up detailing the many DRM *cough* features *cough* that Vista has, including my least favorite one:

Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at research firm Directions On Microsoft, asserts that this process does not bode well for new content formats such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD, neither of which are likely to survive their association with DRM technology. "I could not be more skeptical about the viability of the DRM included with Vista, from either a technical or a business standpoint," Rosoff stated. "It's so consumer-unfriendly that I think it's bound to fail -- and when it fails, it will sink whatever new formats content owners are trying to impose."

The annoyance comes from the way PVP-OPM works. If you don't have DRM compliant hardware all along the line, then how (or even whether) content will play for you is a decision made by the content owners. Have a legally owned HD-DVD that you want to play on your Vista machine, but happen to have a monitor without the requisite damage built into it? You could be completely SOL.

This is why I call DRM a bug - it doesn't stop the real bad guys, but it annoys the crap out of those of us who follow the rules. MS gave the lame excuse that they had to go along with Hollywood on this, or the content owners would have decided not to release their content. Oh really? You mean they would have abandoned the market and gone home? This was a golden PR opportunity for MS - one where, had they been thinking at all, they could have brained Apple in the music and video business - but no. Instead, they've decided that they agree with David Geffen (twit, Hollywood) - we're all thieves out here.

Technorati Tags: music, Microsoft, stupidity

Michael is exploring ways to improve the C interfacing from VisualWorks.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Here's an idea that sounds great in principle: have MS ship out a critical update that maxes out the power savings mode on every network connected PC. Who could be against power savings and less waste?

Microsoft should issue a software upgrade to every computer running Microsoft Windows worldwide. The upgrade would adjust the machine's energy-saving settings for maximum efficiency. Of course, this upgrade would have to allow critical systems to opt out. Nobody wants air traffic control computers to suddenly go into deep hibernation. But correcting for critical systems should be very simple for a company that churns out millions of lines of code every year.

The devil is in the toss off line at the end. Systems aren't waving flags that say "me, me! I'm critical!". Look at the roll out of IE7 - MS has decided to make that a critical upgrade, and if you don't want it (and many corporations don't want it yet), you have to opt out. That means that IE 7 will slip unwanted onto a fairly large number of systems.

That's a minor thing compared to the "max power savings" idea though.

The settings on the right are the maxed out power savings mode. Do you want servers that got missed hibernating after this goes through? What about connected hospital systems? Or traffic monitoring systems? There's no end to the list of systems that could be affected badly, given an admin mistake in not opting out.

Technorati Tags: power

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a brief look at interfacing Smalltalk with C.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

James McGovern:

I wonder what James Robertson and the SmallTalk jamboree could learn by reading what he is saying vs simply viewing it as an contrarian perspective to my own.

I'd have an easier time taking McGovern seriously if he could learn to spell. It's Smalltalk, with a lower case T. As I've mentioned before, the bozo political pictures don't help either. Here's a hint: people who agree with your enterprise points may not agree with your politics - and forcing them to stare at the latter will make them ignore the former. That's one of the main reasons I avoid partisan politics here, btw.

Hot on the heels of last week's podcast, Exupery 0.1 has been released:

Exupery 0.10 is now released. There are prebuilt VM's available for both Windows and Linux. This release now provides a measurable speed improvement for the compilerBenchmark macro benchmark due to work on dynamic primitive inlining.

Instructions for installation and a link to a pre-built image is here.

 

    Benchmarks on my Athlon 64 3500+
    =========================================================
    arithmaticLoopBenchmark  1398 compiled   92 ratio: 15.196
    bytecodeBenchmark        2134 compiled  469 ratio:  4.550
    sendBenchmark            1580 compiled  697 ratio:  2.267
    doLoopsBenchmark         1090 compiled  840 ratio:  1.298
    largeExplorers            334 compiled  358 ratio:  0.933
    compilerBenchmark         733 compiled  705 ratio:  1.040
    Cumulative Time          4167 compiled 1448 ratio   2.878


    1,067,222,511 bytecodes/sec; 16,716,421 sends/sec


    Benchmarks on Andy's Mobile Pentium 3
    =========================================================
    arithmaticLoopBenchmark  2487 compiled  285 ratio:  8.726
    bytecodeBenchmark        4271 compiled 1255 ratio:  3.403
    sendBenchmark            3482 compiled 1772 ratio:  1.965
    doLoopsBenchmark         2078 compiled 1663 ratio:  1.250
    largeExplorers           2224 compiled 1683 ratio:  1.321
    compilerBenchmark        2093 compiled 1712 ratio:  1.223
    Cumulative Time         12903 compiled 4971 ratio   2.596


    Benchmarks from my Pentium-M laptop
    =========================================================
    arithmaticLoopBenchmark 1003 compiled  191 ratio:   5.251
    bytecodeBenchmark       1773 compiled  683 ratio:   2.596
    sendBenchmark           1446 compiled  922 ratio:   1.568
    doLoopsBenchmark         991 compiled  918 ratio:   1.080
    largeExplorers           418 compiled  441 ratio:   0.948
    compilerBenchmark        718 compiled  683 ratio:   1.051
    Cumulative Time         3773 compiled 2015 ratio    1.872

It's interesting that on Andy's machine Exupery is providing a nice performance improvement for largeExplorers while on my machine there is a 7% performance loss. The loss is due to the interpreter inlining Point>>@ into the main interpreter loop while Exupery executes it as a normal primitive. Andy's benchmarks are promising enough for a 1.0, pity relative performance isn't so high on the other two machines.

There is a mailing list for those interested in the project here .

Many thanks to Andy Tween for doing the Windows port and building the official Windows VM. Thanks also to Patrick Mauritz for doing a Solaris x86 port which was the first OS port.

Bryce

Technorati Tags: Exupery, Squeak

I'd like to get the podcast listed in Yahoo's directory - really. Sadly, any attempt to add it has been generating this for weeks now:

So what's up with Yahoo? The feed validates in every other directory I've submitted to.

Technorati Tags: podcast, rss, feed

Rob Fahrni on the Potter V trailer:

I'm always tempted to buy a ticket, watch the trailer, and leave the theatre. Does anyone out there actually do that?

I wouldn't bet against :)

Technorati Tags: movies, Harry Potter

The Zune could run Linux:

A deconstruction of the new Microsoft gadget reveals that it uses a processor capable of running Linux, prompting speculation about a Zune hack eventually enabling unlimited MP3 sharing.

I can just see the apoplectic fits in studio boardrooms as they envision unrestricted WiFi music sharing :)

Technorati Tags: music, Zune, Linux

Is part of the Novell deal a slow motion SCO replay? Here's Ballmer:

"Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered," Ballmer said. This "is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability."

Meanwhile, a statement on Novell's site after the deal said, in part:

the agreement had nothing to do with any known infringement.

Color me skeptical.

Technorati Tags: linux, Novell, SCO

Sometimes you wake up, look in your aggregator, and find that half the conversations are about inside baseball. To with: the little tempest in a teapot over techmeme and the A-Listers.

If you're caught up in that, it's worth pausing and asking yourself a simple question: why do you blog? Personally, I'm engaged in product evangelism, with some commentary on industry trends tossed in as I see fit. Showing up on a site like Techmeme is cool, but it's not what I'm doing this for.

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at allocating C data structures from within VisualWorks.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

The November Cincom Smalltalk Digest is online - and don't forget about the Cincom Smalltalk Users Conference, December 5-7 in Frankfurt, Germany. Go Register here.

Technorati Tags: cincom, smalltalk

This can't be a good omen for the launch of Vista:

Last night, a crane flew through the sixth floor windows of Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's main public relations agency. The metal contraption--and no bird--crashed into offices for the team responsible for Windows PR.

Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Technorati Tags: news

Looks like the severe shortage of PS3 units (something lie 150,000 - 200,000 were shipped to the US) is creating an auction feeding frenzy:

The Sony units were being advertised on the San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist with asking prices ranging from $1,500 and $4,000. But the blogosphere was agog Friday morning with reports of a single 60GB system receiving a bid of $9,000. No, that's not a typo, it really does say $9,000 is being offered for a video game unit originally sold for $600. But something seems, well, not quite right. The bidding jumped from $3,500, which seems to be about the standard selling price right now, straight to $8,000. You do the math.

Never mind $9000 - what kind of nut job is willing to pay $3500 for a game system? Here's a tip for all you fanboys - the XBox 360 is in stock, for a lot less. Sheesh.

Technorati Tags: console, games, PS3

The MPAA has had another attack of the stupids - they are suing a business that rips a DVD that you've bought to an iPod that you've also bought:

According to the suit, Load 'N Go sells both DVDs and iPods and loads the former onto the latter for customers who purchase both. The company then sends the iPod and the original DVDs to the customer. So the customer has purchased every DVD, and Load 'N Go just saves them the trouble of ripping the DVD. The movie studios' suit claims that this is illegal, because ripping a DVD (i.e., decrypting it and making a copy) is illegal under the DMCA. The suit also claims that this constitutes copyright infringement.

So if that's a copyright infringement, then so is any movie or music individuals rip. The sheer lunacy of this is obvious to everyone but the MPAA - do they seriously think that a separate fee for the "right" to copy to a media player is reasonable?

I sure hope they recover from the rectal-cranial inversion soon.

Technorati Tags: stupidity