Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Dale Henrichs:

Seaside has been characterized as a "heretical" framework because it breaks many of the widely-accepted "best practices" for web applications, including "share as little state as possible." With GLASS (GemStone/S, Linux, Apache, Seaside, Smalltalk) GemStone takes this heresy to the next level where "everything is shared" - transparently and persistently.

GemStone/S is a Smalltalk-based object server that provides a platform for developing, deploying and managing scalable, persistent, high-performance, distributed applications. GemStone customers have distributed systems running on 100's of CPUs, high-performance systems where transaction rates exceed thousands of transactions per second, and large systems running with thousands of concurrent users.

In this talk, you'll learn how GLASS makes it possible for you to "share everything" in your Seaside application without having to "learn everything" about GemStone/S. In particular you will learn about the extensions that were made to the Seaside framework to make "transparent persistence" possible. You will also learn how to take advantage of these extensions to add "transparent persistence" to your own Seaside application.

Dale has been working with computers since 1975. Smalltalk discovered him while he was at Tektronix in the 1980s and he hasn't looked back. He is currently a Principal Engineer at GemStone Systems, Inc., where he is the primary engineer working on Seaside. His blog, http://gemstonesoup.wordpress.com is about using Seaside and GemStone/S.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, gemstone, glass, smalltalk solutions

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at a piece of preview (beta) code - Threaded COM

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, COM

If you liked the jet powered port-a-potty, you'll love this :)

We have some good information on traveling to Reno up on the STIC site; here's a very important thing I wanted to highlight:

Please Note: The resort's lowest rate is $49 per night. This will not give you one of the nicer, recently updated rooms. If you ask for the conference rate of $79, you'll get one of the upgraded rooms.

See you there!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk solutions

I think this is great advice for del Toro and Jackson - "The Hobbit" should try to aim for it, especially the bit about making Smaug a classic movie villain.

Looks like Randal has lined up another Smalltalk luminary for FLOSS weekly - Dan Ingalls.

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Mark Petersen:

In today's complex, fast-paced business environment, users should not be bothered with manually submitting defect reports. Applications should automatically submit defect reports to a defect tracking application like ClearQuest or Bugzilla. This presentation showcases the development of Smalltalk web services to implement an SOA solution for integrating defect tracking and reporting in a distributed, multi-platform database application. We will discuss our approach to designing and implementing web services that can be easily invoked from any web service enabled application, including Smalltalk based applications. We will also discuss how these services allow issues to be quickly tracked, shared and routed across a large set of users, and how this methodology can easily be leveraged in many different application environments

Mark Petersen is a Senior Engineer at IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center, located in East Fishkill, NY. He has been using Smalltalk for over 10 years to support semiconductor characterization and testsite design.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, exception handling

I saw this news from American Airlines, and I was taken aback - it's a seriously flawed policy from a branding perspective:

American Airlines said Wednesday that it would soon start charging passengers $15 to check their first bag each way, or $30 round-trip, if they are flying on a discounted fare.

Why do I say it's a branding problem? Well, consider what American Airlines is: not a discount carrier. When you fly an airline that is not a discount carrier, what are you (presumably) paying for? Some level of service. If you feel like you're getting nickle and dimed at every turn, then heck - why not fly an actual discount carrier and be done with it?

American is just confusing their brand. They would be better off, I think, to raise their fares instead, and not charge this "nickle and diming" fee. It'll just irritate people and send them off to a carrier that's already cheaper. Here's the clueless excuse from the execs there:

American Airlines executives said they had little choice but to impose such fees, given that the price of jet fuel is up more than 80 percent from a year ago.

"Our company and industry simply cannot afford to sit by hoping for industry and market conditions to improve," American's chief executive, Gerard J. Arpey, said Wednesday at a shareholder meeting.

So... they already charge (as most airlines do) for excess bags. I rather suspect that upping the fee for each ticket by $25 or $30 would have gone mostly unnoticed, and would have actually raised more revenue - not to mention the fact that it would have meshed with the brand better. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Update: This is a great comment from my friend Mike:

What I love about the whole stupid idea is that if you want to bring shampoo, toothpaste or any other hazardous health and beauty aid product with you, you're screwed. You can now check the stuff for $15 or spend the money when you arrive to buy the stuff, only the throw it away when you leave.

Now, I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but given the current environment, I suspect that someone could make a viable claim that this rule is discriminatory towards women. There's no way to carry makeup and non-trivial amounts of lotion onboard, so you have to pay to check it. This makes it even more brilliant - the PR is awful, and it will likely generate lawsuits. Whether they end up being classified as frivolous or not, it will still cost American money to defend against them.

Technorati Tags: PR, branding, travel

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at using POP3 from Cincom Smalltalk to get email.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, email, pop3

The ESUG 2008 Conference now has a Facebook Event site as well - you can RSVP there and let everyone know you plan to attend.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, esug

There's probably something good that could be said about the Windows registry, but I sure can't think of it. It looks like XP SP3 has been pushed out with a registry corrupting bug - interestingly enough, one that also cropped up for some people in SP2 (full dosclosure - I've never seen it). I think MS would be well advised to ditch the registry, and just let applications worry about keeping settings in any way that makes sense for them. It's not as if we have a disk space shortage at this point...

IMHO, it's time for Microsoft to stop trying to compete in every possible market, and instead focus on software. They could start by creating a version of Windows with fewer problems :)

Where is that coming from, you ask? Well, I just saw where GameStop is no longer planning to stock Zunes, due to insufficient demand:

"We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated," said a GameStop spokesperson. "It (also) did not fit with our product mix." GameStop made the decision about a month ago. GameStop said it will sell Zune players online until it clears out its inventory.

That's got to bruise a few egos in Redmond, but it could be a good thing - if they pay attention to the signal it's sending.

Technorati Tags: zune, microsoft, ipod

We had a party for a friend who just turned 40 last night, and here was the hit of the evening:

That's the friend code screen of the Wii, which was being used to get us connected for later. We spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart :)

So is this bozo allergic to radio, too? How about cell phone transmissions, or wireless phones? How about random RF from thunderstorms? Or is it just the specific frequency of WiFi?

A group in Santa Fe says the city is discriminating against them because they say that they're allergic to the wireless Internet signal. And now they want Wi-Fi banned from public buildings.

I think I'm about to sneeze based on a stupidity overload....

Notwithstanding my fairly lackluster record in playing Civilization, I had a great time on the Polycast podcast this morning. Dan Quick was kind enough to invite me on (Michael has been a guest before), and it was a blast. The whole crowd on that cast is great - Dan Q, Cartimandua, and Makahlua. It was a lot of fun, and I want to thank Dan for inviting me.

Technorati Tags: polycast, civilization

Via PVRBlog, I ran across a good article on using a Mac Mini as a DVR (as opposed to a Tivo, Cable Box, etc). I've got an EyeTV on my MacBook Pro, and it is pretty cool - it would definitely suffice on a dedicated device. The UI is way, way better than the crappy one on the Comcast DVR, that's for sure.

Technorati Tags: mac mini, eyeTV, DVR

Recently, this query came up in the Seaside mailing list:

Looking for advice on best way to handle following situation: same application running with different database on different images on different machines where application code is the same but some key configurations are different such as various locale items like number formatting, currency symbol and large scale text changes do to different languages being used.

Rather than give you the stock market-speak from me, the product evangelist, I'll let a customer (Boris Popov) answer from the same thread:

The VisualWorks version of Seaside supports per-session locales and message catalogs dealing with both formatting and language issues AFAIK. I was going to look at that closer in a week or two and could report back if you're interested.

Although, that should be broadened to Cincom Smalltalk - you get that kind of thing in VW and ObjectStudio.

Technorati Tags: seaside, locales

Spotted in Engadget:

Samsung's just announced their first 256GB SSD. Not that you needed to know anything more than that to trigger salivation, but the MLC-flash SATA II drive has speeds of 200MBps read and 160MBps sequential write. Not like we'll be able to afford it or anything, but they'll be available come September, with a 1.8-inch version due in Q4.

Sure, it'll be expensive at first, but it will come down - and the size - my MacBok Pro has a 250 GB drive, but just imagine the battery life (and near silence) of one with a 256 GB flash drive.

This week David, Michael, and I spoke to Dan Heidinga of IBM about his work on Smalltalk on Eclipse - you can hear his full talk at Smalltalk Solutions; here's the abstract:

Eclipse had its start as a re-implementation of the VisualAge IDE so it's fitting that we bring Smalltalk to Eclipse in the form of the Smalltalk Development Tools (STDT). Based on VisualAge for Smalltalk (aka ENVY/Smalltalk), STDT seeks to bring a Smalltalk runtime into Eclipse.

This talk will provide an overview of the effort to bring Smalltalk to Eclipse, our goals and aspirations, and the current status of the Smalltalk Development Tools. We will present our future plans for STDT, including a discussion of some of the challenges in implementing a Smalltalk IDE in a Java-based platform.

"Imagine, putting source code in files! How quaint." -- Kent Beck

It was a fun talk - we also talked briefly about the discussion going on between Squeak developers and Debian folks about getting EToys into Debian.

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook, Podcast Alley, Ning, or iTunes.

Technorati Tags: Eclipse, smalltalk, black knight

I just finished reading "Flags of our Fathers", and can think of no more fitting tribute to Memorial Day than "The Photograph"

Dare Obasanjo points out that design will trump a lot of other things, especially if you need to scale massively:

Scaling a service infrastructure is all about optimizations and trade offs. My original post wasn't meant to imply that Twitter's scaling problems are unsolvable since similar problems have obviously have been solved by other online services and Enterprise products in the messaging space. It was meant to inject some perspective in the silly claims that Ruby on Rails is to blame and give readers some perspective on the kind of architectural problems that have to be solved.

The only caveat I'd add is this: most applications don't have anywhere near the scaling demands of Twitter - which is why "architecture astronauts" can be dangerous.

Technorati Tags: twitter

Michael is looking for some "blue sky" ideas on where to take our product.

Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, web velocity

Read Write Web points out that the "wisdom" of crowds can go in any number of directions - not all of them good:

SitePoint Marketing Manager Shayne Tilley talked about the company's efforts to promote a recent book giveaway via Digg on an SP blog. Within an hour after the promotion went live it had been dugg 30 times, but then, just as quickly, it was buried. Was it because SitePoint had submitted their own content to Digg, something that Digg users generally frown upon? No, SitePoint hadn't done that, they just put a "Digg This" button on the campaign page. The reason for the bury was likely this comment, according to SitePoint, who noticed the bury come down shortly after the comment was posted:

"It's a trap. When you download it runs a validation check to see if you are running a pirated version of photoshop. Which then logs your ip back to Adobe HQ who then mark the ip address in the automated billing system. You will recieve [sic] a fine for $500 in the next 2 to 5 working days. Congratulations" -- luke16

Which wasn't true. What we forget is this: people in groups will do things that - as individuals - they know are stupid. We see this every day in meetings, and we all remember it from our childhoods. What makes us think that groups are any wiser because they are virtual?

Technorati Tags: crowdsourcing

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Petr Stepanek:

Craft.CASE is a business process management tool written entirely in VisualWorks. This experience report will discuss the internal architecture of Craft.CASE, its metamodel, components etc. We will report on design and implementation issues, ease and difficulties we had with the implementation using VisualWorks Smalltalk and current state of development.

James Governor has some excellent advice for Microsoft - pity they won't listen to it:

t seems to me that Microsoft’s most important competitor is Apple, not Google. Google’s revenues don’t actually hurt Microsoft, they just grow Google. But if Microsoft wasn’t fully aware of just bad its core business is hurting after it announced revenues fell 24% year over year, last week’s news from eWeek should serve as another glass of water on the head on the pillow. While Microsoft is dreaming sweet dreams of out-searching Google, Apple has taken 2/3 of the $1000+ PC market.

There's a whole generation of high school and college age kids learning that Macs are better right now; if you don't think that will have an impact over the next few years, dream on. IBM was certain that they were on top in the mid 80's - that ended fairly abruptly.

While Microsoft is off wasting money on its pursuit of Yahoo, their next generation of core revenues are being threatened. IMHO, it's time to clean house at the top.

Technorati Tags: apple, Macintosh

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the IMAP support in Cincom Smalltalk.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, imap, email

If you're coming to StS08, you'll likely be checking in with the vendors and STIC folks in the exhibit area; here's the schedule for that:

Day	Hours
June 18	6:30 PM - 9 PM (or later)
June 19	7:30 - 8:30, 10:00 - 10:30, 12:00 - 1:30, 3:00 - 3:30, 5:00 - 7:00
June 20	7:30 - 8:30, 10:00 - 10:30, 12:00 - 1:30, 3:00 - 3:30

To Register Onsite:

Day	Hours
June 18	1:30 - 2:30, 5:30 - 7:30
June 19	8:00 - 8:30, 1:00 1:30
June 20	8:00 - 8:30, 1:00 1:30
June 21	Open During Breaks

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Randal Schwartz is doing some more evangelism:

Aran Deltec of the Thousand Oaks Perl Mongers has moved rapidly to enable me to make a last-minute presentation of my "Seaside: Your Next Web Framework" tomorrow night.  Details are available from their mailing list note.  It's an open invitation if you're in the greater LA area, although you may find it easier if you're already north of the hills.

Speaking of which, another Ruby group has just accepted a Seaside talk I volunteered. I should have details soon.

This can't be fun:

The main toilet aboard the International Space Station has broken down, forcing the three crew members to use the loo on the Soyuz escape craft that's permanently attached to the ISS, according to various media reports. However, the Soyuz head will offer only temporary relief, as its holding tank will quickly fill up.

Fortunately, a replacement toilet is on the way. Makes it clear that no problem is simple in space though.

Well, that was more trouble than it should have been. I upgraded an internal blog server from VW 7.4.1 to VW 7.6 earlier today, and after a few API issues got resolved, it was pretty smooth. So I went ahead and started the upgrade of the server here - which went a bit less smoothly. There was an outage of about an hour as I fiddled around trying to figure out the problem (not helped by watching the updated "Andromeda Strain" out of the other eye :) )

Anyway, things should be back to normal - but I won't be surprised to see a few small issues here and there either.

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Randy Coulman:

At Smalltalk Solutions 2006, I did a presentation on Ward Cunningham's Framework for Integrated Test (FIT). This tutorial provides a more detailed and interactive introduction.

After a brief introduction to Fit, and the related FitNesse and FitLibrary, I will introduce a small project. As a group, we will write Fit tests for the project and then get them to pass. As part of the exercise, we will talk about good and bad ways of writing Fit tests and introduce the primary ways of connecting the Fit tests to the system under test.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, FIT, FitNesse

Mathew Ingram spotlights the larger issue that is bedeviling music right now: how to get payment for what's rapidly becoming a commodity:

As Ethan points out, these kinds of concerns aren't solely the province of the music business. Other content-related industries are struggling with the same issues: if content can flow in dozens of different ways, and in many cases is effectively free, how do content producers generate something meaningful that people will be willing to pay for?

Here's where I'd start: don't treat your customers as if their criminals. That's the bad place that the RIAA and the MPAA have gone, and it's the place we're all going with idiotic proposals like ACTA. The answer isn't to extend the DMCA across the planet. How's this: make it conveneient to pay, and see how that works out?

On today's Smalltalk Daily we take a look at THreePaneSelectors, an improved senders/receievers browser .

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Dr. Steve Kelly and Dr. Juha-Pekka Tolvanen of MetaCase have written a book about their area of expertise - Domain Specific Modeling. That's Steve on the left, and Juha-Pekka on the right below:

We did a success story with MetaCase here.

Update: Hey cool - Steve Kelly points out that the book is also available for the Kindle.

Technorati Tags: DSM, books

Turns out, the upgrade went smoothly - the only issues were my own brain cramps. I had an older version of one parcel in place (which caused a bug in going to the archives), and that was about it. The server is now running on VW 7.6, and it seems noticeably snappier (and it's using fewer resources on the back end, always a good thing).

The main lesson I learned should have been obvious - don't upgrade a server while engaged in the plot of movie on TV :)

Randal's Seaside presentation tonight will be on uStream from 8 PM PDT to about 9:30 PM PDT - I think I'll check it out myself.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Blaine Buxton is giving a Seaside talk in Omaha:

At the next Omaha Dynamic Language User Group, I will be speaking on Seaside. If you missed my talk at the BarCampKansasCity, you can catch it now. I will be showing how to build web applications with the best web framework out there. Expect lots of simplicity and heretical statements.

This Seaside thing is starting to catch on.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk

Smalltalk Solutions 2008 is coming up fast - the schedule of events is here, and registration is here. There are a ton of great talks, like this one from Andreas Hiltner and Mark Grinnell:

This talk will discuss several groundbreaking features of ObjectStudio, such as it is the first and only Smalltalk environment to receive Microsoft's Vista certification, and the first and only Smalltalk to be hosted on a different Smalltalk's VM. It will also cover ObjectStudio's strengths in a Microsoft-centric infrastructure and outline a customer's experience choosing ObjectStudio 8 for a new application during its beta cycle.

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, smalltalk solutions, objectstudio

Every so often I read about the large amount of unexploded ordinance in France and Belgium from WWI - this morning I looked for more information and ran across this Wikipedia page:

In the Ardennes region of France, large-scale citizen evacuations were necessary during UXO removal operations in 2001. In the forests of Verdun French government "demineurs" working for the Department du Deminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas. According to the film "Aftermath", these demineurs "have gathered more than twenty million shells but have lost six hundred demineurs. At the current speed, France will be fully cleared and safe - in seven hundred years." French farmers still find many UXOs when ploughing their fields; the so-called "iron harvest."

Seven Hundred years - the mind boggles. History isn't as far removed as many people seem to think.

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at Searchlight, a new take on senders/implementors/references searching in Smalltalk

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, search

Spotted in Engadget:

iRobot's various military robots are already capable of packing some weaponry, but it looks like Metal Storm is set to give their arsenal a considerable boost, with it recently demonstrating its remotely-operated FireStorm weapons system on one of iRobot's standard Warrior platforms. That system essentially makes the ammunition the only moving part in the weapon, with it able to fire bullets electronically at a rate of thousands of rounds per minute (or "theoretically" even up to a million), which Metal Storm says makes the system ideal for a whole range of applications including, somewhat ominously, "crowd control."

Incidentally, I wonder if author John Birmingham ("Weapons of Choice", "Final Impact") came up with the term "Metal Storm" independently?

Well, if there's one thing I can't accuse movie execs of, it's originality:

On the heels of the successful revival of the "Indiana Jones" franchise, Paramount has set in motion a fourth installment of "Beverly Hills Cop."

More "Incredibles", less of this, please...

Well, this is disappointing:

Warlords did not produce a great number of sales, far less than was expected. There is also the problem of programing for Civ 4, now as I said above using the same engine as previous game usually makes porting new titles easier, that is not the case for the Civ 4 titles. While the actual game is fairly stable (not perfect of course) the code behind it on the PC side is a mess. This kind of thrown together code makes it difficult to port the game and fix problems that arise in the port. Due to the sheer number of problems we have encountered with working with the PC code for the Civ 4 titles it may be that production does not wish to have to go through it again. For instance when patching games it usually takes a couple of weeks or as much as eight weeks. Civ 4 patches take us months to program and test because of constant problems.

That's apparently from a support engineer at Aspyr - at least it works under Parallels!

Technorati Tags: civ4

Jim Louderback of Revision 3 explains how an MPAA/RIAA backed company took them off the air over Memorial Day weekend - and it happened because they (Revision 3) discovered and closed a back door in their network. Apparently, if these self appointed copyright guardians can't steal your bandwidth, you can't have it either...

We did a podcast with Carl Gundel (Part 1, Part 2) awhile back, and we talked a bit about his runbasic site - which is a Cincom Smalltalk/Seaside site. While it's Smalltalk powered, it's all about Carl's product, Liberty Basic - and he's been wrapping Seaside with Liberty Basic to bring the language into the Web world. Here's a snapshot of one of his examples, which you can run directly on the site:

If you want to introduce someone to software, Basic is a great way to do it - and picking this one gives you all the back-end power of Smalltalk :)

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, runbasic, liberty basic