Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Two grandsons of President Tyler (born in 1790, died in 1862) are still alive.

This is a smart move by Sirius XM:

Financially struggling Sirius XM Radio Inc. is planning to stream its subscription radio service to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices from Apple Inc. beginning this spring.

As I said in another post though, why would I use that instead of, say, Pandora? Why pay a monthly fee when I can get music that I'm much more likely to enjoy without the fee? The answer might end up being what saved AM radio: talk (sports and politics).

Technorati Tags: iPhone, satellite radio

John C. Dvorak explains:

The problem with the subscription model for today's big newspapers is the fact that there is very little exclusive information of any real value. The New York Times syndicates much of its content to other papers, so there are alternative sources - not subscription-based with the same information. Why buy a cow when milk is free?

That isn't going to change, either. Paper based news is dead, because it's too slow. Paper based analysis is probably doomed as well in a world with Kindles, iPhones, and BlackBerries (et. al.). What does that leave? Going hyper-local could work, but I doubt it will work for print. The costs are too high, and the potential audience too small to support it.

Before I get the comments, I'm not opposed to print, nor do I have an axe to grind on this. Reading in print allows for more serendipity than browsing does (especially on small devices). That said, the audience willing to pay for that tactile pleasure is aging and shrinking.

Back to online news - how is that going to be paid for? I really have no idea. The ad model has problems, and I don't think those problems are going away. I suspect that what we'll end up seeing is a completely new set of models that harness what the net does well - probably with a lot of paid content. They'll span the range from hyper-niche to topics of broad interest, but that's about as far as I can see at the moment :)

Technorati Tags: news

Because prior efforts to crack down on file sharing have worked so well - what's a few more dollars (pounds sterling, actually) to light on fire?

The UK is preparing a digital rights agency that will try to stamp out illegal music sharing.

Technorati Tags: law, music

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at the TreeView control in ObjectStudio. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using the ObjectStudio TreeView Control from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

I received a question from a customer today - he wanted to use the features of the VW transcript in ObjectStudio 8. The ObjectStudio transcript is a read-only thing, and he wanted something more engaging. Rather than try to build up the OST tool, I figured "why not use the VW tool?"

So I asked a few questions, did some debugging, and came up with a handful of overrides that accomplished my goal. The first one: have a VW transcript open detached when you ask for a transcript from the launcher menu. To do that, I made these two changes in class GlobalDictionary:

activateProgramWindow
	"if we use the VW Transcript, no need for this"

	""


openProgramWindow
	" Can't actually open program window, but the following is equivalent"

	"use the VW Transcript instead"
	Core.TextCollectorView open: Core.Transcript label: (#systemTranscript > 'System Transcript').

I commented out the rest of the code in that latter method. Then I needed to track down the implementations of #out - it turns out that all ObjectStudio objects use #out to dump themselves to the OST Transcript. So I overrode these three messages - first, in Object:

out
	"Use VW Transcript instead"
	Core.Transcript show: self print; cr

	""

Then in Symbol:

out
	"Use VW Transcript instead"
	Core.Transcript show: self; cr.

	""

And finally, in CharacterArray:

out
	"Use VW Transcript instead"
	Core.Transcript show: self; cr.

	""

And that's it. Engineering tells me that there are some primitive uses of Transcript that this misses, but it covers nearly all cases - and it gives you a Transcript with some more functionality. To print to it yourself, just use standard ObjectStudio protocol (i.e., #out) - or look at class TextCollector for the VW level API to the object. Enjoy!

Update: Andreas Hiltner adds a few caveats. Bear in mind that this is an unsupported hack, not a supported feature :)

Technorati Tags: objectstudio

Read Clay Shirky's entire piece, but this mid-article summation says it all:

With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves -- the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public -- has stopped being a problem.

That's the problem that various bits of media have been trying to avoid thinking about for years now. It goes beyond media though; the entertainment industry (with music going first) is also being hit by this. The only reason paid software is hanging on longer is that unlike music and movies, software usually needs a support presence behind it to answer questions, and you can build a charging model around that need.

You want to know what's going to happen with music, you should look at what Jonathan Coulton has been up to. With reporting, look at Michael Totten and Michael Yon. That's the future, and it doesn't involve huge organizations standing between you and the end product.

Update: Kind of an exclamation point on the problem:

While the entertainment industries push for harsher copyright laws, public opinion steers in the opposite direction. Two recent studies from Canada and Spain found that half of the Internet users use p2p networks to download music, software and films. Less than 5% of the respondents believe that people who download copyrighted content are engaging in criminal behavior.

This week we spoke to fellow Cincomer Dirk Verleysen, who's been working on the Modeling and Mapping tools in ObjectStudio. These tools had been allowed to stagnate in older versions of the product, and is now being brought up to date. In the podcast, we find out from Dirk what kind of progress has been made on the project, and what the roadmap going forward looks like. To hear it now, click here.

If you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or visit us on Facebook or Ning - you can vote for the Podcast Alley, and subscribe on iTunes. If you enjoy the podcast, pass the word - we would love to have more people hear about Smalltalk!

Sometimes I really wonder about IT management. Recently in comp.lang.smalltalk, a thread arose about migrating an application from Smalltalk to .NET. Forget the specific languages involved though; my answer on this is the same without regard to what the source and destination are: it's almost always a bad idea. Unless your language/tool vendor is going out of business, or pushing the product into EOL, such migrations just don't make sense. I've written about this extensively, so rather than recapitulate, I'll reference the older posts:

• Original Long post
• Follow-up #1
• Follow-up #2
• Follow-up #3

Every time I've seen this kind of thing come up, it's a variation on this:

• Line level management that created the original application has left the organization/group
• New management has arrived, and they are unfamiliar with the technology in use
• New management has experience with (insert tool/language here), and believes that it's the answer to every question
• New management insists that the application needs to be "modernized" (meaning, written in the favored technology he/she understands).

Just ask yourself: especially in a time of uncertain budgets, is a huge rewrite really the best use of your limited resources? What will your group not be doing for the business while they waste time on that?

Technorati Tags: technology rewrites

This sounds interesting, but I have no idea what utility it has at present:

Spy is written in RPython, and can be translated with the PyPy toolchain as C executable, as Java native backend, and as .Net native backend. Spy is the collaborative effort of the Squeak-PyPy Sprint in Bern last autumn. Spy has been realized by the PyPy Team and the SCG Group in only one week.

Update: Michael Foord has some details about PyPy on his blog

Last week, Alan Knight, our Smalltalk engineering manager, gave a presentation to the Ottawa (Canada) Smalltalk User's group. He talked about the product roadmap - where we are, where we're headed. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Alan Knight at the Ottawa Smalltalk User's Group, 3/9/09 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Dave Buck posted the video to Google Video:

Technorati Tags: smalltalk, ottawa

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we make ObjectStudio 8 use the VisualWorks Transcript, so that text can be copied / pasted to and from it. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Use the VW Transcript in ObjectStudio 8 from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

If you're interested in following Cincom Smalltalk information on Twitter - and not whatever else I happen to post on this blog - then follow Cincom Smalltalk. I've set it up to gather just the Smalltalk oriented posts that I make.

Technorati Tags: twitter, cincom smalltalk, social media

I've been trying to answer the question I pose in the title for a long while now with "Smalltalk Daily", the weekly podcast "Industry Misinterpretations", and the periodic videos that come out. As it happens, you can subscribe to all three in iTunes (or in any other podcatching software) - they're all listed in the iTunes store (search for Smalltalk in the podcast section) - but I'll list the basic urls below, which work with iTunes and any other software that tracks podcasts:

• Subscribe to Smalltalk Daily
• Subscribe to Industry Misinterpretations
• Subscribe to Smalltalk Videos

Especially with Smalltalk Daily, I try to point out how to solve everyday development problems using our products. I'm always open to suggestions for new topics, for any of these services. Just drop me an email!

Technorati Tags: smalltalk daily, industry misinterpretations, video

Welcome to News 2.0, with the Seattle PI leading the way:

We don't have reporters, editors or producers - everyone will do and be everything. Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page. That'll be a training challenge for everyone, but we're all up for the challenge and totally ready to pick up all these skills.

I expect that this transition will be something of a shock for some of the more pampered people in the news business :)

Spotted in Chronos

Göran Krampe has created a file format for change sets (in Squeak) - sounds like he's interested in making it more generally applicable

I think Steven Johnson gets the direction the news is going right: we think we're losing important stuff, but - in fact - we're gaining a lot:

In fact, I think in the long run, we're going to look back at many facets of old media and realize that we were living in a desert disguised as a rain forest. Local news may be the best example of this. When people talk about the civic damage that a community suffers by losing its newspaper, one of the key things that people point to is the loss of local news coverage. But I suspect in ten years, when we look back at traditional local coverage, it will look much more like MacWorld circa 1987. I adore the City section of the New York Times, but every Sunday when I pick it up, there are only three or four stories in the whole section that I find interesting or relevant to my life --out of probably twenty stories total. And yet every week in my neighborhood there are easily twenty stories that I would be interested in reading: a mugging three blocks from my house; a new deli opening; a house sale; the baseball team at my kid's school winning a big game.

Consider the technology niche I deal with: Smalltalk. Back in the 90's, there was a monthly print journal, "The Smalltalk Report". When it folded, there was much lamentation, but stop and compare what we had back "in the glory days" to what we have now.

Then: One monthly journal with a handful of articles

Now: A plethora of blogs and websites that produce regular content, including podcasts and videos

That's happening across the board, in every field you can think of. The future won't be one of paltry content and no good reporting; it will be one of more content than you can imagine, covering a multitude of niches in ways that we can barely imagine.

While I think Shirky and Johnson are right, there's still a lot of wrong out there. Witness David Carr of the NY Times, fantasizing about some way to force people to pay for newsgathering:

No more free content. The Web has become the primary delivery mechanism for quality newsrooms across the country, and consumers will have to participate in financing the newsgathering process if it is to continue. Setting the price point at free --the newspaper analyst Alan D. Mutter called it the "original sin" -- has brought the industry millions of eyeballs and a return that doesn't cover the coffee budget of some newsrooms.

So what does he propose to do about a local blogger who shows up to cover a city hall meeting? Take him out behind the building and work him over? Force a paywall in front of all of his "news" posts?

The world of news gathering and reporting is shifting, and there's no way to hold back the tide. The old business models simply don't work. Pretending otherwise isn't a solution.

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at how to integrate an HTTP API into an existing application. The example uses the blog posting tool I use and Twitter. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch on Vimeo:

Integrating HTTP Based Services from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Spotted in Micro Persuasion

As long as Twitter maintains a following I feel every business should join it and converse with their customers - just as I said a year ago. Still, it's always important for everyone to see the big picture. That's why predicting a market top is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. In part, it's what I am paid to do - think about what's next. This disicipline keeps me and others like Robert Scoble like from getting stale.

Perhaps. It's also what makes the two of you look like hummingbirds...

Technorati Tags: twitter

Looks like there's something of a "Is Fit Dead" conversation going on. I've always had my doubts about expecting end users to work with HTML/Wikis, and that seems to be one of the sticking points...

Update: In case you aren't sure what FIT is, go here.

And there was much rejoicing. Just head on over to Engadget, and keep scrolling

Technorati Tags: iPhone, apple

I love my iPhone, but really - Joy of Tech has this one nailed :)

Simberon is offering OO training in Ottawa this May - follow the link for details and registration information.

Update: See, this is why I have comments - so I can find out what I don't know. It turns out that there's almost the API I want implemented. So:

     versions := (Store.Package withName: 'TimeSoZone' version: '8').
     versions notEmpty
	     ifFalse: [versions first loadSrc]

I ran into some interesting problems with my BottomFeeder build script and the latest VW build today - as it happens, I had an interaction problem between the new build and the latest version of a package in the public repository. Why did I run into that? Well, here's the line of the script that I ran into trouble with:

(Store.Package newestVersionWithName: 'TimeSoZone') loadSrc.

What that does is find the named package and load the latest version. The problem is, the latest version happens to be a branch I don't want - what I really want is the last "stable" version. Perusing class Store.DBRecord, it doesn't look like there's an API to load a specific version. However, that's not really much of a problem, because we can craft a line of code that suits our needs:

((Store.Package allVersionsWithName: 'TimeSoZone') detect: [:each | each version = '8'])

That almost solved my problem. It turns out that the script wasn't loading the latest version of a package I wanted - ImageConfig. Why? Well, there's an old (2003) version that was published with a previous rev of Store, and it has a primary key that makes it look newer than the actual latest version. Yes, I'd call that a bug :) Still, I needed to deal with it, and I just used the same line of code again:

((Store.Package allVersionsWithName: 'ImageConfig') detect: [:each | each version = '7.10'])

And that solved my problem. I'll do a screencast on this in the morning :)

Technorati Tags: BottomFeeder, build script

So now I see that IBM is talking about buying Sun:

International Business Machines Corp. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. in a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas, according to people familiar with the matter.

The good news for people interested in Sun is that IBM would jettison all of the "we'll make it up in volume" bozos at Sun (like their CEO), and actually use their services business to start bringing in revenue from Sun's various open source properties.

I have to say, it's amusing that the purchase price would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.5B (hat tip Troy - he has a subscription the WSJ, so he has access to that little tidbit). Recall that Sun blew $1B on MySQL not so long ago; I wonder how much more the company would have been worth had they not done that, and instead just made outrageous salary offers to the lead MySQL developers?

Technorati Tags: sun, ibm

On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at how to load a specific version of a package/bundle from Store within a script. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Scripting a specific version load from Store from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Here's something you don't want to say in a public Twitter channel, after a job interview:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

Heck, I have searches set up for finding Twitter (and wider) references to Smalltalk, VisualWorks, ObjectStudio, Cincom (and a number of other terms as well). I think anyone applying for a job should assume that the company you are applying to will be doing the same...

Technorati Tags: social media, web, twitter

A long while back, Michael and I wote a simple Twitter Client. That client is obsolete now, but there's some useful code in it that I'm in the process of harvesting. When I publish this morning, I should have a small bundle that contains:

• A simple client for posting to Twitter
• A simple client for fetching updates from Twitter

What it won't have is any kind of UI. The idea here is to provide a small interface that could be used by anyone interested in Twitter for their own projects.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

Today's Smalltalk Daily demonstrates a simple HTTP based interface to Twitter. The code works in either VW or ObjectStudio - it's domain level only, with no associated API. To try it out, load TwitterInterface (bundle) from the public reposittory in either toolset. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

A Simple Twitter Client from James Robertson on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

Producer Donald De Line told Dark Horizons that a live-action movie based on the 1960s animated TV series The Jetsons is still a go. The movie was first announced in May of 2007.

I'd love to know who thought this would be a good idea. How hard would it be for the bright guys in Hollywood to try perusing the SciFi section at Borders (or B&N, you get the idea) and find something new to film?

We've had some great interviews and shows lately, and we have some more coming up. This weekend, I'll be releasing Alan Knight's talk to the Ottawa Smalltalk User Group (which he gave on March 9th). We also spoke to John McIntosh recently, about some of the work he's been doing of late - specifically, his work in getting Squeak running on the iPhone. We'll also have Alan on the podcast directly soon, to talk more in depth about managing the Smalltalk team here at Cincom. We also have some other interviews lined up that aren't finalized yet, but we have high hopes for.

Subscribe in iTunes now, or just drop this url into your favorite podcatching software.

Technorati Tags: podcast, industry misinterpretations

I think Dvorak has this right:

These phones are still a little weak for word processing and full docking capability. By that I mean the phone should be dockable, but not into another computer -- into a simple dock that attaches a keyboard and screen. The smartphone should have enough power to run the software it has as full-blown application software. Combined with some nifty cloud applications and remote storage, these phones should give people enough to get by. In fact, the newer processor chips coming out for the smartphone will deliver a lot of computing power.

It would be nice to be able to hook an iPhone up to an LCD screen and keyboard, and have it function as a fullblown system. I suspect that kind of capability will arrive soon - certainly Google would be happy to see the g-phone used that way along with a suite of Google cloud apps :)

Spotted in Engadget:

"Oh, bollocks." No, we can't definitively prove that Gordon Brown said that after witnessing a "Wrong Region" code when inserting a DVD given to him by Barack Obama, but we're sure something of the sort was uttered. You see, the ridiculous DVD region coding system recently prevented the British Prime Minister from viewing a set of 25 "American classics" on DVD, all of which were bestowed upon him by President Obama during a recent visit to Washington, D.C. We hate to bludgeon a dead mule, but seriously, when will the DRM madness end?

Leaving aside any politics, this whole thing illustrate the silliness of region codes. In a world where anyone can download just about anything they want via BitTorrent, why do we have region codes? What exactly is being protected here? Even before the net came on big, was there any real risk of piracy stopped by this? Region free players do exist....

On today's Smalltalk Daily we take a look at customizing the display of list elements in VW with VisualBlock objects. The specific example changes the alignment of the text in the list, either left, right, or center - but the main point is how to use VisualBlocks. To watch, click on the image below:

You can also watch it on Vimeo:

Using VisualBlocks from James Robertson on Vimeo.

Or on YouTube:

Earlier this year I mentioned that Cincom would be coming to you with Smalltalk information - we've got our first seminar date and location planned: April 29, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It should be a great day, with lots of information from the experts here at Cincom. There are some general details on the seminar series here; if you would like to request one in your area, send an email to the Smalltalk Star Team.

Stay tuned - I'll push out more information as I get it.

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

Just as CD's replaced LPs, digital (both mp3s and streaming services) are replacing CDs:

While overall music sales were up 10 percent in 2008, the year saw a drop not only in CD sales, but in the number of customers actually purchasing music. But according to a new report, the act of music listening is actually on the rise. While digital music purchases remain strong, the numbers show that there is still much more work to be done in the industry's transition to a new, more diverse set of business models.

Services like Pandora are the new radio. I have Pandora on about 50% of the time now, and my iTunes collection on the rest of it. I listen to things like podcasts when I'm exercising. The good news is, we seem to have passed through the denial stage of this transition (where DRM was seen as the way to go), and onto something like acceptance.

Over in video land, denial is still king - but as consumer level bandwidth improves, I think we'll get to see the same kind of dynamic play out there.

Technorati Tags: drm, business models

Sounds like Microsoft has achieved one big goal: they are becoming the lead "hard core" game vendor, taking that slot from Sony. The Greenberg interview over on Gamasutra is somewhat self serving, but heck - MS has the console and game title numbers to back it up.

Technorati Tags: ps3, xbox360

Spotted in Engadget

Hot off word that Apple's Mac and iPod sales for February took a 16 percent hit compared to last year, Steve Ballmer says the "tide has really turned" after recent Apple market share gains: "Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction. The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be

Hmm - I'll buy the idea of expense keeping people back, but those of us who've made the switch to Mac have done so for more than "just a logo". My MBP still boots as fast as it did when I got it, during the summer of 2007. My old G4 based Mini still boots as fast, and it goes back a lot longer. The iMac that I bought last summer - same story.

The old Windows notebook next to me? I can get in a decent workout while I wait for it to boot and log me in. My wife's media center PC? Same story. There's one major thing MS could do that would help a lot: eliminate the "pre load" capability that so many apps (Microsft's and others) use at boot time. It used to serve a purpose back when machines were slower, but all it does now is make Windows look a lot slower than it really is.

Wow, the best seats at the new Yankee Stadium aren't cheap:

If you want to buy a front-row seat at the new Yankee Stadium for an individual game, the list price of a ticket is $2,625. Individual game sales for the first season of the $1.5 billion ballpark start Tuesday, and the Legends Seats that ring the infield start at $525 a game, according to the team's Web site. Those seats cost $500-$2,500 as part of full season tickets, and they include food and soft drinks.

Grandstand seats start at $23, and the bleachers are $14. Better get that third mortgage before you head out :)

Technorati Tags: baseball, yankees

I just finished watching the series finale, and I liked it. The "God's plan" idea that has threaded in and out of the series was made clear, and all of the story threads were wrapped up within that context. I don't want to drop any spoilers yet (what with the various air times for the show, and DVR usage, etc) - but everything did get answered in a consistent way at the end.

Technorati Tags: bsg, galactica