Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Giles Bowkett has some provocative things to say about software development:

But say that we know the average technology business is really kind of pathetic. Say further that the only difference between a company running Seaside, a company running Rails, and a company running PHP is that the Seaside company has huge balls, the Rails company has some balls, and the PHP company has no balls at all. That's got nothing to do with the godlike qualities of any particular language. All that tells you is that very few companies opt to use the best technology available to them. And unfortunately, anybody who has noticed that Microsoft exists already knew that.

The culture of technology businesses has a serious problem, which is that technology decisions are generally made by people who do not understand technological issues. But saying that the best languages somehow require godlike intelligence, when they are in fact simpler to use, more intuitive, and in one case designed for little kids, that's just silly. The difference between a Smalltalk programmer and a Java programmer isn't really located inside their brains at all. Look a little lower down. It's a difference at the scrotum level. One of these programmers has a scrotum, and one of them does not.

Heh. It's a fun read - and I agree with him.

Technorati Tags: Java, Ruby

In this talk from day 2 of the conference, Uwe Liebold of AMD Dresden discussed the approach AMD takes to testing. It's a good talk on an interesting subject - AMD runs their chip wafer fabs with a Cincom Smalltalk application, and they have very short windows during the year during which they can update their code. You can see his slides here.

Technorati Tags: AMD, testing, users conference, sunit, cincom smalltalk, smalltalk

You can tell a gadget has gotten popular when stuff like this starts getting created for it. Seriously - who wants the iToilet?

Technorati Tags: iPod

I don't often agree with Dave Winer, but he has JSON nailed: what were the developers of that thinking? Just as XML formats have become somewhat standard, we needed to invent something different just for the heck of it? Here's the JSON format description - it's basically key value pairs, surrounded by curly braces and quotes. Yeah, I really want another parser in my application to bulk it up some more. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: stupidity

I gave a "webinar" this morning - the slides and audio will be appearing over here for people who register. I recorded the session (at least my end of it), and I'll be posting the audio from that in a few weeks (I want to give the site an exclusive for awhile).

Sam Gentile opens a can of you know what on Steve Yegge:

I'd like to emphasize the not software part especially in light of Googler Steve Yegge's Ridiculous post who sprouted off for pages against Agile. He didn't know a thing about Agile which showed in his post - almost nothing he said was correct or substantiated. He glorified a cowboy egocentric coding style that is thankfully long gone from most companies. You get to do that when YOU DON'T BUILD REAL SOFTWARE and build glorified web sites that sell advertising that say "whoops" all the time. At least I know one company I'll never work for.

Google has finally updated Blogger - after years of neglect that allowed it to slip into being a huge spam farm. I haven't been keeping up with splog happenings, but I hope they paid some attention to that during the update.

Cincom Smalltalk customer MetaCase got a plug in this week's SDTimes:

MetaCase’s MetaEdit Plus 4.5 isn’t based on UML. It’s a domain-specific modeling tool, said company CEO Juha-Pekka Tolvanen. MetaEdit Plus differs from UML offerings in that it models concepts “that are specific to a narrow area,” he said. For instance, instead of specifying an application in terms of classes, attributes and operations, as UML tools do, MetaEdit Plus specifies an application using concepts that are specific to that industry. “For the insurance industry, you could model an application in terms of damages, payment, risk and bonuses,” said Tolvanen, offering an example.

Steve Kelly has demonstrated their tools to me, and they are very cool. You can read his blog here, or Juha-Pekka Tolvanen's here.

Technorati Tags: DSM

In this session from day 2 of the Users Conference, Martin Kobetic demonstrated how you use Web Services from the product - using Cincom Smalltalk as a client and as a server. You can take a look at the slides here.

Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, smalltalk, web services, users conference

I see Microsoft has filed another set of bozo patents - two related to RSS. Here's the first blurb that's easy to make fun of:

If granted, one proposed patent would cover "finding and consuming Web subscriptions in a Web browser." The invention, for example, could allow a user to "subscribe to a particular Web feed, be provided with a user interface that contains distinct indicia to identify new feeds, and...efficiently consume or read RSS feeds using both an RSS reader and a Web browser".

Hmm. Call me crazy, but that sounds a heck of a lot like what BlogLines does. BlogLines has been around since before the June 2005 filing, so this seems to be an absurd attempt at overreach. Let's move on:

A related application, titled "content syndication platform," appears to describe a system that can break down feeds into a format that can be accessed and managed by many different types of applications and users.

Gee, you mean like OPML? Or like the various feed synchronization schemes that are out there? Here are the people who *cough* take credit *cough* for these bozo patents:

Jane Kim, program manager for RSS in Internet Explorer, detailed those features in a blog entry last year. Kim and her colleague Amar Gandhi, group program manager of the Windows RSS team, are among the inventors listed on both applications.

We can only hope that Kim and Gandhi will do the right thing, and try to get the patent application withdrawn.

Technorati Tags: rss, patents

Alan Knight gave a talk on Glorp at the users conference - he compared and contrasted Glorp and Ruby on Rails (and did a demo of Rails like actions using Seaside and Glorp). The slides are here.

Technorati Tags: Glorp, Ruby on Rails, cincom smalltalk, smalltalk, users conference

I've just posted the last session from day 2 this morning - but I'm not planning to get any sessions uploaded at all next week. Cincom is mostly shut down next, and I'm at least taking a break from the audio editing :)

The day three sessions will start arriving after the new year. Happy Holidays to all!

In today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a brief look at creating HTTP posts. The example interacts with a simple servlet running in my test blog server in my home office.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, http

Oh boy, here's another judge with no idea how the internet works: deep linking ruled out of bounds:

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it.

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events.

Lindsay ruled last week that "the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a 'fair use' of copyright material" and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.

If you don't want content linked to, then use redirects, password walls (etc, etc). If you put content up in an accessible location, you are allowing it to be linked to. Can someone hand this a judge an "internet for dummies" book and read it to him? I'm not even expecting him to read it himself without assistance.

Update: There are a bunch of dumb analogies in the comments. Here's the point: by making a page linkable, you are - in fact - inviting people to pass through it. That's the way the web works. The door on your house is intended to be a barrier through which you invite people. You want a link to require an invitation? Fine - push it behind a password wall. Given the way the web works, a linkable location is an invitation. Anyone who thinks otherwise has a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the system.

Technorati Tags: stupidity, copyright

Via Miguel de Icaza, I found this description of the "content protection" scheme that Vista is implementing. The short way to put this: Microsoft has implemented an amazingly ugly pile of mud that will yield lots and lots of bug reports. There's simply no way the system described will work well - it's too complicated.

Technorati Tags: Windows, Vista

Joel constructs meaning from the drivel posted by Steve Gillmor - without links or explanation, there's really no other way to describe it than drivel). I think I know what Gillmor is after with the whole "gesture" thing, but making obscure references and refusing to link to information on said references simply subtracts meaning.

If your goal is to make a point, Steve - sorry, it's not happening.

David, Michael, and I did our "Year in Smalltalk" show last night - a month by month wrap up of Smalltalk goings on across the year. That means this one went a bit long - just over 50 minutes with James' Smalltalk jobs report. Hope you enjoy it - and, as always - send feedback, comments, etc to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com

Update: More directory updating. My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-902515a0bc7a7814a2721c389a7a8b7f}

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Our time management skills could use a boost: you can see from this picture how many presents still need to be wrapped (and it's Christmas Eve already!)

There's still plenty of cooking to do as well - we have 11 people coming to dinner tomorrow. Hope your holiday is a little better organized!

Time for the penultimate log post of the year: this week, BottomFeeder downloads cruised along at a rate of 169/day (plus the 23/24 a day I get from downloads.com). The details:

Platform	BottomFeeder Downloads
Windows	331
Update	216
Mac X	134
Linux x86	98
CE ARM	66
Mac 8/9	62
Solaris	48
HPUX	45
Linux Sparc	37
AIX	33
Sources	28
Linux PPC	28
SGI	25
Windows98/ME	17
ADUX	9
CE x86	7

Next: The HTML page accesses by tools:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	43.4%
Internet Explorer	41.2%
Planet Smalltalk	6%
Other	4%
MSN Bot	3.3%
Zibber	2.1%
Opera	1.6%

The holiday traffic drop has started, and it looks like the audience I have is the core Mozilla plurality. On to the syndication stats:

Tool	Percentage of Accesses
Mozilla	19.7%
BottomFeeder	17.1%
Other	2.8%
BlogLines	9.1%
Net News Wire	7.4%
Internet Explorer	7.3%
Google Feed Fetcher	6.9%
Vienna	4.2%
Safari RSS	4%
NewsGator	2.8%
Planet Smalltalk	2.5%
News Fire	1.4%
Zibber	1.4%
Akregator	1.3%
SharpReader	1.1%
Liferea	1%
Lib Perl	1%
RSS Bandit	1%
MSN Bot	1%
Python	1%
JetBrains	1%
Jakarta	1%
Opera	1%
Java	1%
RSS 2 Email	1%
BlogSearch	1%

The syndication accesses are about the same as always, which tells me that the regular readers mostly use aggregators. Now - on to last minute holiday prep!

Doc Searls is spot on with this, on patenting software and business plans:

It is anti-productive, anti-competitive, anti-market, anti-freedom, anti-liberty and simply wrong for the U.S. (and for any country) to continue instinsting that 1) ways of doing business, and 2) the ever-growing periodic table of natural building materials we call software, should be patentable. They should not. We should write business method and software patent laws out of existence and start watching growth and progress happen all over the place.

After that, maybe we could reform copyright law...

I see that Sean Lindersay is trying to apply balm to the storm created by Microsoft's utterly bogus patent applications (the ones that deal with RSS and syndication). So let's review: this patent covers "finding and consuming Web subscriptions in a Web browser."

Hmm. BlogLines. Maybe Lindersay has heard of it? I know it can get kind of insular up there in the B0rg cube, but perhaps Lindersay could stop shoveling perfumed manure long enough to look around. Here's what he says by way of explanation:

First, these patents describe specific ways to improve the RSS end-user and developer experience (which we believe are valuable and innovative contributions) -- they do not constitute a claim that Microsoft invented RSS.

We have always fully acknowledged the innovators and supporters of RSS, like Dave Winer, Nick Bradbury and many others, and I can say, without hesitation, that I and my colleagues personally have the deepest respect for their invaluable contributions.

Yeah, yeah. Your patents are still full of crap and I'll say this: If Lindersay, Kim, or Ghandi (the two named on the patents) have a shred of decency, they'll move to get these applications pulled.

Technorati Tags: law, stupidity

I've got the podcast listed at Podcast Alley now - check it out.

This is the only kind of snowman we're likely to see anytime soon - so long as the jet stream keeps pumping warm air up from the gulf, anyway:

Then again, I'd rather have the rainy Christmas we're likely to have than the mess they've had in the Pacific northwest of late. We did make some progress - the gifts are wrapped, and food is being prepared:

And with that, a Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Now my office is completely defended: I have a 14 second movie (WMV) of my cylon snowman online - and a picture of the missile defense. The office is now safe from all intruders :)

There's still a pile a dishes to run through the dishwasher, but things are mostly back to normal around here - we cleaned up last night after everyone went home. It was a very nice Christmas for us - hope you enjoyed yours.

Engadget explains how to make your RFID infected passport completely secure, using tools you have lying around the house.

This is what I'm getting from the ITMS when I try to redeem the gift card I got from my parents:

So much for being ready to buy stuff :/

Patrick Logan, like Dave Winer a month or so ago, can't stand the new, ajaxified Yahoo TV listings:

I used to go to maps.yahoo.com and tv.yahoo.com with ease and comfort, knowing I'll get what I want quickly. But no longer.

I am on the lookout for a simple TV listing and a simple map, no Ajax required, or frankly, not even desired.

Web design seems to go through "fashion" phases. I recall (years ago now) when "everyone" had to use Frames - the funny part being that Frames were intended to solve the same problem that Yahoo is trying to "solve" here. The hardest part of design (and I'm not about to say that I'm an expert in this area) is knowing when something isn't broke and doesn't need fixing.

I finally managed to redeem my itunes card today; looks like Apple's store was overloaded yesterday (likely a good sign for them). However, I'm now in the middle of the "DRM shuffle" - which looks like this:

• My library is on the Mac
• I buy the music on the PC
• I rip a CD out of iTunes
• I import the CD into the Mac

So on the one hand, the DRM is easy enough to bypass. On the other hand, there's no good reason I should have to do this at all - it would be simpler to just buy the music on the Mac in the first place. Sigh...

Technorati Tags: music

Sci Fi Wire notes the latest sign of Potter-Mania: The fate of Harry (and friends) is of enough interest to attract gamblers:

A British bookmaker is taking bets on whether boy wizard Harry Potter will die in the seventh and final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as well as the identity of the killer. Other bets on the plot include the possibility of marriages, births and the deaths of other characters.

Nick Carr links to Philip Dawdy, who massively misses the point:

The computer, some of you may recall, was supposed to free us. We were supposed to have so many automated tasks and so on that we'd be done with work by 3 p.m. and off to the social club. Things haven't worked out this way at all. Not only do we do more work for more hours than we used to before the computer age, but even when we are not working per se, we have become slaves to our fictional selves on Web 2.0. I worry about people younger than me who have no idea what human communication and hanging out were like before the PCs and Macs turned into these hyper-communication tools. The Net has become our social club. In Seattle, any popular coffeehouse is filled with people who just sit at tables on their laptops and communicate with other fictional selves on the Net instead of doing the least bit of the communication and interaction -- positive or negative -- with people sitting five feet away. All those people, all that weird isolation. Zombies.

There have always been outsiders - anyone wonder what people like Dawdy thought of "The Beats" back in the 50's? One of the cooler things about the connectivity offered by the net is the ability to find other people with similar interests regardless of distance. Take my podcast - I do that with two friends, one in Ottawa, Canada, the other in Canberra, Australia. That simply wasn't possible (without massive monetary expenditures) before things like Skype appeared.

Sure, there are people who "fall into" the net and never come back out. There are people who fall into bottles (and needles, etc), too. Dawdy is ultimately something of a Luddite - he's not sure what's been lost to technology, but he's positive that we lost something.

Technorati Tags: Luddism

I got some nice books for my birthday (November) that I haven't gotten to yet - I'm still plowing through " The End of the Old Order ". I just got two new books that look interesting though (and enough book store gift cards to keep me in reading for months):

This one looks interesting, and it should give me a good background for the book I just finished on Tamerlane. One of the successor empires of Khan's, "The Golden Horde", was finished off by Tamerlane

I also got this one:

I know less about the battle of Iwo Jima than I'd like - my father in law fought there. From what I have read, it was one of the most awful fights of the Pacific campaign.

Looks like the reading backlog is full again :)

Technorati Tags: history

Scoble has decided to be on hand for a political announcement from one of the 2008 Presidential candidates (ye gods - the election season just ended). Anyway, here's what he has to say about it:

Already look at how people are posting information about the candidates to Wikipedia. No more “control the message” here. The only way to control this beast is to lay it all out there and make yourself, and your views, open to everyone.

Hmm. He's way, way more optimistic about that than I am. So long as he's headed to this candidate's launch - and maybe he'll take a PodTech camera to visit other candidates over the next 18 months, too - perhaps he could ask some questions about issues that the tech community is interested in: software patent law, the ever lengthening lifespan of copyrights (along with the DRM mess that comes with that), and whether net neutrality should (or should not) be dealt with in law. Those are all things that don't fit neatly into the US left/right, red/blue story line - but things that us techies care a lot about.

Technorati Tags: politics