Rivera nearly blew another one last night:
Mariano Rivera picked up right where he left off last October, blowing another lead against the Boston Red Sox. This time, Derek Jeter bailed him out.
The Yankees can't count on hitting to solve every bullpen issue - Rivera was losing steam last year, and he was injured earlier this spring. It may be time to start looking for a new closer.
Ephraim Schwartz points to some interesting comments by Ben Gaucherin of Sapient:
Ben Gaucherin, the CTO in question, says blogs “are a fad fueled by pop culture’s desperate search for the next big thing.” When I spoke with Gaucherin he was even more emphatic than he was in his news alert. He told me that blogs are the digital equivalent of the pet rock.
Translation: "I have nothing interesting to say, and those blasted bloggers are distracting people from the boring stuff I'd like to talk about"
I've taken a sideways step away from WWI (see my last few book posts) and taken up something completely different: "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded". This is another one of the fascinating books in my ever growing backlog.
I've only read the first third or so - but in the process of setting the background for the catastrophic eruption, the author delved into a discussion on plate tectonics. That was interesting stuff - apparently, a German scientist named Wegener had the idea as far back as the turn of the twentieth century but the scientific world scoffed - it was too wild an idea, and besides - he was a meteorologist, not an earth scientist.
His ideas were borne out over the next 60 years through various bits of research (interrupted by WWI and WWII) carried on by other people. Makes me wonder which well accepted pieces of scientific dogma will be discredited in the future, and reminds me that it's always a good idea to keep an open mind.
Slashdot has an item on Australian TV and BitTorrent - i.e., some viewers there would like to have it (given that many popular shows air in the US months before they show up in Oz) - the local tv networks are far less sanguine about the idea. I've run into this problem myself on this blog - back when "Angel" was nearing the end of its run, I had a few readers ask me not to post any details - since the show wouldn't be ending "down under" for months.
This is yet another example of time and distance compression being wrought by the net. Even a decade ago, you weren't likely to hear tv/movie details casually when something aired earlier in another region. Now, you have to go out of your way not to hear such things. I suspect that we are getting closer and closer to synchronized world-wide releases. It's already happening with movies - tv is going to be forced to follow.
Sam Gentile points to some Firefox configuration tips. They definitely improved things here.
Sean McGrath is unhappy over how long it takes to boot a PC (laptop, in this example). That's why I rarely shut mine down anymore - I just close the shell and let it hibernate. I've left my machine in that state for over a day as I've traveled, and even when the battery dies, things are ok - the system gets snapshotted to disk.
Maybe I'm just comfortable with the idea of snapshots, since that's what a Smalltalk image does when you save it :)
PR Opinions points out that the digital protection schemes that the RIAA and the MPAA are annoying us with are not limited to those fields - publishers of e-books are in on the act as well:
I finally bought one of these damned books because I needed it fairly quickly. I will never do it again. It's a great example of how traditional industries (publishers, music etc.) are completely missing the point. Their only reaction to the digital era is to sell products that are more inaccessible than their analog counterparts. The book in question could only be read using the very latest (and most bloated) version of Adobe Reader - which by the way includes loads of really useful nagware features. The book's copyright protection allows you to print 12 pages in any given week.... You can't transfer it onto you PDA... Instead you're forced to read it on your laptop and when the battery dies... Well so does your reading.
Call me old fashioned but I personally prefer physical books and this experience has just re-affirmed my preferences. Publishers can clearly save money in distribution and production by selling electronic versions but instead they worry about pirates. They are flattering themselves.
Have we learned nothing from the bad old days of attempted copy protection of floppy disks? This sort of thing irritates paying customers, and puts no real hurdles in the way of the pirates who want to do harm.
Don Park points out that MS bought Groove for less money than was invested:
Apparently, Groove was sold to Microsoft for $120 million in cash (via Dave) which falls short of $155 million invested into Groove. Since Microsoft was the largest investor, it's share out of the $120 million is about $80 million. That means Microsoft bought rest of Groove for just $40 million.
Which tells me that they were buying the staff more than they were buying the technology. Always a dicey proposition, since staff can freely walk away...
I've posted on the absolute stupidity going on in the schools before - I just let loose with a rant on why not having PC's isn't the problem, in fact. So imagine my mood when I ran across the latest batch of stupidity: it's the red pens that are the problem:
At Daniels Farm Elementary School in Trumbull, Connecticut, Karwoski's teachers grade papers by giving examples of better answers for those students who make mistakes. But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red, the color that teachers long have used to grade work.
Parents objected. Red writing, they said, was "stressful." The principal said teachers were just giving constructive advice and the color of ink used to convey that message should not matter. But some parents could not let it go.
So the school put red on the blacklist. Blue and other colors are in.
Oh my god. You know what the proper answer is for those parents? A few whacks across the chops with a clue by four, that's what. The problem isn't the color, it's the low grades. Either the parents aren't valuing education, the school isn't teaching anything, or - more likely - it's both.
The principal in question should be fired on the spot for going along with this idea. She's clearly not smart enough to be a principal; she may not be bright enough to be a doorstop. And lest you think that Karwoski is an isolated outpost of lunacy, there's this:
In many other schools, it's black and white when it comes to red. The color has become so symbolic of negativity that some principals and teachers will not touch it. "You could hold up a paper that says 'Great work!' and it won't even matter if it's written in red," said Joseph Foriska, principal of Thaddeus Stevens Elementary in Pittsburgh.
What kind of lame morons are we hiring to work in education these days? Yes, I know that there are good solid people in the teaching profession - my daughter has had a few. She's also had a few complete lamers, like her second grade math teacher. What really irritates me is that the good people seem to be getting crowded out by a group of "self esteem uber alles" types who can't locate the state they're teaching in on a map. What bothers me is seeing math only get taught three days a week, because we have to have reading and english. What bothers me is every other tech blogger thinking that more PC's in the classroom will bring salvation, while they studiously fail to notice the calculator use in first grade that prevents the acquisition of basic math skills. What bothers me is that the schools don't cover the history that brought this country (i.e., the one I live in) to its present position - American and European, primarily - and instead spend a disproportionate time on the history of the rest of the world which - to be really, really blunt - is just less relevent at the middle school and high school level. Unless you goal is to end up with a hopelessly uninformed citizen who won't have any idea how the system of government they live under evolved. I'm all in favor of learning as much about the world as possible - I'd just be happier if they'd move from the inside of the circle out, rather than from the outside in.
If you think history is being taught, just find a few 20 somethings and ask them to place the civil war within 10 years, or the revolution, or WWI. Then get more depressed by seeing how much of the times table they know...
But wait! There's more stupidity where this came from. It only gets worse:
"My generation was brought up on right or wrong with no in between, and red was always in your face," Kazmark said. "It's abrasive to me. Purple is just a little bit more gentle. Part of my job is to be attuned to what kids respond to, and red is not one of those colors."
Someone should ask that puzzlewit how he ever managed to grow up and get a job with his precious self esteem damaged by that gosh awful focus on right and wrong. You know what? Kids don't have a problem with red. In my experience, they have no problem with being shown right and wrong - it's the over-protective parents and the weak willed teachers and principals that have a problem. Which shows the way to a solution - parents who just suck it up and let their kids learn from their mistakes, and teachers and principals who have an actual backbone.
The blasted article just kept getting dumber as it went down too:
"It's taken a turn from 'Here's what you need to improve on' to 'Here's what you've done right,"' Powell said. "It's not that we're not pointing out mistakes, it's just that the method in which it's delivered is more positive." Her students, she said, probably would tune out red because they are so used to it. So she grades with whatever color -- turquoise blue, hot pink, lime green -- appeals to them.
That is a sound approach, said Leatrice Eiseman, a color specialist with a background in psychology who has written several books on the ties between colors and communication. "The human eye is notoriously fickle and is always searching for something new to look at it," she said. "If you use a color that has long been used in a traditional way, you can lose people's attention, especially if they have a history of a lot of red marks on their papers."
Oh really? Well gosh, let's change the traffic lights randomly then - the human eye being fickle and all. Where do they find people with these ideas? And heck - this is being reported by a some AP staffer - were they utterly incapable of thought? Was it just too hard to bring up counter-examples, like traffic lights? Or to ask how the previous 10 or 20 generations of kids ever managed to get by with red marks on their papers? And people wonder why I have such a low level of regard for the press...
Charles Miller tells us what Linux on the desktop is really like :)
She seems exciting at first and you pour an enormous amount of energy into the relationship, but she keeps demanding more and more, and she never gets any more predictable. You’ll find yourself awake at 4am arguing with her about where you left the toilet seat. And while the fact that her idea of a good night out is a trip to McDonalds means your wallet is thanking you, you end up wishing for someone a bit more refined.
If you’re lucky, you’ll come to your senses and do your best to keep her at arms length. If you’re unlucky, Stockholm syndrome will start to kick in…
Heh. And don't miss this... Mac and Windows explained!
Looks like Tina Brown and Gorman aren't the only clueless media-bots out there - just look at this senseless batch of word poop from David Shaw of the LA Times:
BLOGGERS require no journalistic experience. All they need is computer access and the desire to blog. There are other, even important differences between bloggers and mainstream journalists, perhaps the most significant being that bloggers pride themselves on being part of an unmediated medium, giving their readers unfiltered information. And therein lies the problem.
Oh, that's just too rich. So david - what exactly are your journalistic qualifications? You hung around J-school for a few years taking easy classes and getting drunk? After which you got a job with a paper that can barely spell editor, much less do any actual editing? Why do I say that? Well, look at his example, presumably fact checked by that brilliant editing team he scorns people like me for not having:
Equally irresponsible, it was yet another blogger — if he can be so characterized — Matt Drudge, who first posted the erroneous story last year alleging that Kerry had had an affair with a young intern.
Drudge may be more a tipster and a gossip than a true blogger, but I see him as part of the same solipsistic, self-aggrandizing journalist-wannabe genre, and I don't think the reporter's shield law should be available to anyone so quick to disseminate inaccurate information, with no editors to examine or restrain him.
Great example except.... Drudge is not a blogger. And you can climb down off your high horse about editorial restraint - it certainly didn't help CBS news any in the infamous 60 Minutes story last fall - and the only reason the NY Times didn't get similarly caught is that CBS decided to run ahead of them. Yeah David - editors are a perfect check. That explains the near perfection of MSM reportage. And don't even get me started on the "technology reporting" the papers do. Sheesh, talk about lack of facts masquerading as stories. Then there's this lovely bit of crap:
Reporters in 31 states, including California, as well as Washington, D.C., are protected by shield laws. Most of those laws -- and California's in particular -- provide more protection than does the 1st Amendment itself. That's why the Bush administration is pursuing its cases in federal court, where state shield laws don't apply. That's also why many journalists -- and several congressmen -- are actively seeking a federal shield law.
I strongly favor such a law, and in this climate we have to be careful about when and under what circumstances we apply and assert the journalist's privilege. If the courts allow every Tom, Dick and Matt who wants to call himself a journalist to invoke the privilege to protect confidential sources, the public will become even less trusting than it already is of all journalists.
Let's just start a "registered school of journalists" then, and everyone who wants to be one has to go there and get a badge. That will make it so much simpler to figure out who the superior folks (like Shaw there) are, and who us peons are. It will be far easier to stay in our place that way too. Do you guys get to wear the special badges, or do we?
Johnny can't read, so we better ban iPods:
So it’s not like this is the first we’re hearing of The Fear that technology will destroy the fabric of all social life. But it’s the first we’ve heard of a school actually banning iPods as a result of that fear. Students attending Sydney, Australia’s private International Grammar School are being asked either to leave the white gadgets at home, or to place them in a locked drawer during the duration of the school day — because they enable students to “avoid communication with others” and may lead to “social isolation or escape from our community.” Somehow we doubt teenagers’ desire to escape from the community originated with the iPod, and we also doubt there will be a mass communication breakdown no matter how much they turn up the Zeppelin. But hey, now the students can bond over how much this ban sucks, and that’s community right there, folks.
Be a good little drone now...
King Kaufman reports on the opening of baseball season - and apparently, the alternate universe I've been in since last fall is righting itself:
Both of the game's marquee teams showed off their new big-name pitchers, Randy Johnson of the Yankees and David Wells of the Red Sox. Not surprisingly, Johnson came out ahead, Wells giving up a run in the second and coming unhinged in the third, balking in the third run of the inning when he started and then stopped his windup, something you might call a rookie mistake if you could find a rookie who'd make it.
Hideki Matsui robbed Kevin Millar of a home run down the left field line, then singled twice and homered himself. Previous steroids poster boy Jason Giambi got a hit, was hit by two pitches and made some nice plays at first base before being replaced by Tino Martinez, returning to cheers from a three-year exile in St. Louis and some place in Florida where there's reportedly a team. Johnson threw six solid innings. The Yankees romped 9-2.
That's how things are supposed to work :)
WASHINGTON, D.C. April 4 2005 Tom Nies, Cincom President and CEO, will be encouraging entrepreneurship and sharing the challenges of today’s global marketplace in a series of speeches and events scheduled from April 7-13 in Washington, D.C., USA and London, UK.
Event 1: Annual Awards Dinner of the Center for the Study of the Presidency
When: April 7, 2005
Where: Capital Ballroom of the J.W. Marriott, which is located at 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. in Washington D.C.
Cincom and its CEO, Tom Nies, will be recognized and honored during the 39th Annual Awards Dinner of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. The event is in conjunction with the establishment of the Cincom Scholar Fellowship.
Twice each year, this unique Study of the Presidency Fellows Program brings together top students from the best schools to Washington D.C. for an immersion into public policy. The students meet with national leaders from the White House and Congress, and write original papers on the subject of the presidency.
The Center brings together experts from government, academia, and the corporate world to discuss key issues facing the presidency. Although program initiatives change from time to time, all Center activities rest largely upon the following four pillars:
The Cincom Scholar Fellowship will be domiciled at the University of Cincinnati. The first topic of research for the Cincom Scholar will (tentatively) revolve around changing and improving tax policies to stimulate growth of mid-to-intermediate companies, foster job creation, drive innovation, and enhance U.S. competitiveness.
American Ambassador Max Kampleman will keynote the annual awards dinner and will also receive the Publius Award for bipartisan public service.
In attendance at the dinner will be over 600 D.C. insiders, journalists, White House staffers, and members of congress.
In addition, Cincom has been invited to participate in a private-public partnership called the Foundation for International Understanding whose mission is to help strengthen the image of the U.S. in the world and help offset rampant anti-Americanism. Cincom has been asked to participate in creating the business plan for the Foundation that wishes to tap Cincom’s extensive expertise in information technology and integration of the World Wide Web to help overcome the challenge of international communications. This interaction and relationship building should also lead to Cincom business development in the near future.
"I commend the Center for the Study of the Presidency for your ongoing efforts to promote research and dialogue that strengthens our country and helps prepare our next generation of leaders. Your work contributes to a future of promise for all."
President George W. Bush
43rd President of the United States
"Throughout its history, the Center has been a beacon for students of American Government. Its lectures and conferences have provided forums for spirited debate…its fellowship programs have given students from across the country the opportunity to participate in active political discourse …"
William Jefferson Clinton
42nd President of the United States
Event 2: Nies’ Keynote on Tax Reform and Job Creation at The Washington Center
When: April 8, 2005 at 11:30 a.m.
Where: The Washington Center in Washington D.C.
The second of these events is a keynote speech on tax reform and job creation that Tom Nies will deliver on April 8.
Nies’ provocative views on the relaxation of taxation for corporations with revenues under $50 million were recently published in the October issue of the Manufacturer and January issue of British Industry.
Pivotal issues of debate in this program will include tax reform and job creation. Mr. Nies will speak based on his experience as a successful entrepreneur and former Ohio Federal Reserve Board member.
The keynote audience will consist of young professionals participating in the Governors Program of The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, as well as the technology program and select media. This prestigious semester-long program hosts 75 rising stars in public policy from Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The select group serves in professional positions across the family of institutions associated with international trade and investment-driven policy.
The Washington Center will conduct media outreach to all Washington DC media outlets and bureaus. These include: Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Financial Times, Business Week, Bloomberg, CNBC, Dow Jones, NPR, The New York Times, Barron’s, Investor’s Business Daily and many others.
Governmental invitations have been extended to numerous congressional “Hill committees” - think-tanks and diplomatic arms.
They include: Budget (Senate & Congressional); Financial Services; Small Business; Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs.
Think-Tanks include:
Event 3: Red Herring Venture Market Conference
When: April 13, 2005
Where: Park Lane Hilton, London
Tom Nies will also participate in a CEO Roundtable on April 13 at the Red Herring Venture Market Conference in London. The Roundtable, titled “Will Europe build another software giant?" includes Tom Nies; Bernard Liautaud, CEO of Business Objects; and Michael Lynch, CEO of Autonomy. One of the issues that will be addressed with this panel is how difficult it is for American software companies to do business in Europe and how that compares with European software firms that have been successful in the US.
In the last few updates to the 3.9 dev stream, there have been some glitches with the blog poster. Specifically, the cursor placement on word wrap could get all wonky. I just grabbed the latest code from SwS, and that problem is fixed. We should have a 3.9 release as soon as two things happen - Rich is still working on doc (this is a big job, and I really, really appreciate his work!), and I need to do a new build. Stay tuned
Tim Bray thinks that technology will solve the ID problem in feeds:
With Atom, every entry is required to have both a universally-unique ID and a field called updated, the time-stamp when the publisher thinks it last changed. That means that if ever I see the same entry twice, that’s a bug! There’s no wiggle room, somebody’s breaking a rule and I can track it down and harass them until they fix it.
Yeah, right. This assumes a lot - like every content aggregator in the food chain preserving id tags. RSS 2.0 has GUIDs already, and I can tell you, not all content aggregators preserve them - many of them just go ahead and create their own. Atom will not wave a magic wand and fix bad practice.
The only way to deal with ths problem is a system like NNTP, but I don't see that happening.
Doc points to this great post on the problems of customer communication. Fair warning: there's a bunch of profanity. Still worth the read. CFO's and marketing departments should read as many times as necessary in order to understand it :) Here's a great point:
One of the most ubiquitous and irritating things in the world is calling a company hunting for Customer Service. When you call the customer service number, you are greeted with a recording that tells you that you have reached the Dumb Product Company. The Dumb Product Company as decided that a pre-recorded message is the most cost effective way to deal with customers, and before you reach anybody with lungs, you are given this recorded message to visit the Dumb Marketing Company website.
Does this look as stupid as it sounds? Because we are on the phone, the last f****** thing we need is to be reminded that the Dumb Product Company has a website, which after bouncing around is not addressing our issue.
Let's think about this for a moment. You are calling Customer Service because you have an issue. The very first node in the decision tree is whether you are connected to the Internet, which in most cases is true as that is where you found the Customer Service telephone number. You did not find either an answer, or when your communication with the company was either ignored, or was not used, because you decided that whether or not you wear boxers or briefs was none of their business and has nothing to do with your issue, you are on the telephone.
Every CFO, CEO, or "business consultant" who ever recommended installing that kind of system should read this carefully.
I suppose Rich is going to want to hurt me now :) I just added two toolbar items - Next and Previous. They allow you to navigate through the history of your Bf browsing. There's a setting allowing you to specify how deep you want that history to go.
I'll be teaching an intro to Store class (along with some ad-hoc coverage of other topics) this week - which means that posting will likely be somewhat infrequent. At the same time, we are very close to getting BottomFeeder 3.9 out. There's expanded documentation coming, including coverage of the posting tool. This is going to be a good release.
Blaine Buxton compares the raw line counts between WikiPedia (PHP) and SmallWiki (Smalltalk) - and in the process, demonstrates what the real benefits of Smalltalk are - faster delivery, more time to solve real problems:
| Component | WikiPedia LOC | SmallWiki LOC |
|---|---|---|
| Wiki Parser | 117,616 | 555 |
| Query Engine | 20,970 | 195 |
When the differentials look like that, it just doesn't matter how many existing libraries you have...
If you have the 3.9 (dev) version of BottomFeeder, then you've likely noticed one odd thing about the menu when you minimize Bf into the Windows Tray. When you next summon the menu, the menu pops up relative to where you last had the cursor when you were using the app, not relative to the tray. That's fixed in the latest rev, thanks to some code from Bob.
Rogers Cadenhead makes a few points about commercial software and open source, summarizing with this:
I'm not complaining about that -- I heart Linux and make part of my living using open source software -- but it illustrates where dollars would be better spent protecting programmers from wolves. Commercial developers stop working when you stop paying them. Open source coders who can't work for free will be replaced by people who can, if the software meets a need.
Perhaps I'm being obtuse, but if I was told an open source project's lead developer needed user donations to make a living, I'd be less likely to contribute. The long-term viability of the project would be better with a lead whose financial considerations were less acute.
That last bit is instructive - eventually, Open Source favors the larger (i.e., financially independent) developers and companies. Over time, most small open source projects tend to go commercial or disappear. Just wander through SourceForge sometime and survey the damage.
Update: Mark Bernstein weighs in
Ted Neward takes a second look at Lisp, and likes what he sees:
The interesting thing I find, on second approach, is that Lisp is a fairly approachable language, assuming you've got Graham's book next to you to do it. He's done a good job (up through Chapter 2, anyway) of highlighting the key parts of Lisp--the fact that it's a very simple language in terms of its basic syntax and structure--without bogging you down too much in rhetoric and "clearly Lisp is the best of any language on the planet" propaganda. (Well, there is a bit of that last, but that's to be expected from Graham, particularly if you've read his "Hackers and Painters". It's not too unbearable, at least not thus far.) My next task is to find a Common Lisp implementation I can stick into a VPC/VMW image and start playing around with. Maybe I'll even think about giving a talk on it and how Lisp seems to have influenced other languages, a la Ruby.
Simplicity is the key here. The implementors of Java and .NET just don't get it on that score. They think it all revolves around having a a veritable ton of complexity wrapped in a set of wizards. It's the other way around...
Sin City was one strange flick. The way the stories with Willis and Rourke intertwined in particular - my wife started to wonder if they were really the same person (there's a hint that way in something that Nancy said).
It was definitely a filmed comic book - and it played that way. It was a wild ride, and I enjoyed the whole 2 hours. Recommended.
Well, Galactica ended with a bang tonight. I have to say that I didn't see any if the big plot twists coming - either on Caprica or on Galactica. The stuff with Boomer (all of her) in particular was unexpected. Now I can hardly wait for July...
Charles Miller finds the perfect description of software development:
When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show ‘em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the fourth one… stayed up! And that’s what you’re gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands. — Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Ed Foster jumps into the wayback machine and reports on how things might have gone if Edison had been attacked in the same way that the makers of TiVo (et. al.) have been.
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB), the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, announced today that it has completed its previously announced acquisition of META Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: METG), a premier information technology research and consulting firm
Sadly, all the former Meta folks will have to take stupid pills now, and learn to draw pointless boxes...
King Kaufman says that the Sox will win again:
American League preview: The Red Sox will win again, and this time it won't take a miracle.
I'm not so sure. I think that the Yankees are now in the "now you've made me mad" state, and will be pushing really hard - they took the Sox for granted in game four (and on) last season, and I doubt that will happen again. The critical thing though: pitching. For the Sox, that means the following:
Of course, the Yankees have pitching issues as well - I still think that getting Johnson was a mistake (he's old, and breaking down). Beyond Mussina, the rest of the staff does not look that strong. I think it's going to come down to who wants it more.
I finally got the client tool working against Blogger. The problem turned out to be simple - there are a few variations on the Blogger API out there. In particular, there are two "initialization" methods listed: 'blogger.getUserBlogs' and 'blogger.getUsersBlogs'. The Blogger page lists the correct one (I misread it). So - if you grab the latest update for the 3.9 based poster, it should now work. I've tested it against a test blog I set up.
There's still a bit of weirdness - the blogger dev email list claims that you should hit this RPC entry point: https://www.blogger.com/api/RPC2. However, I get network errors (referent inaccessible) on that one. The old one: http://plant.blogger.com/api/RPC2 seems to work fine though.
Update: A couple of small caveats. Make sure you grabbed 3.55. Also, if you run multiple blogs on Blogger, the tool will only find the "first" one in an automated fashion. Here's what you can do: put the blogId for your blog in the settings, and the tool will use that instead of asking the server for it. You can then just add multiple profiles, changing the blogid for each one.
Looks like Julia Lerman was part of an April Fool's joke on VB stuff. Clearly I didn't see it; I thought she was the target of the joke :) Reminds me of my reaction to the "Microsoft buys Squeak" joke from a few years back. Thank goodness I only reacted in email :)
The latest 3.9 dev build of BottomFeeder is up. Navigate to the download page, scroll down to the dev links, and grab what you need. If you already have a 3.9 dev build, then all you really need is a new image/exe - the appropriate baseapp download.
Micro Persuasion reports that Google has upped their mail limits to 2 GB (and the story is, they won't stop there). Looks like unlimited email storage may be the future...
Gmail has boosted its storage capacity to two gigabytes and has added other new features
Dave Winer is still talking about AutoLink:
Now, as I've said so many times (one more time won't hurt), I don't like it when a big heartless company takes my work and modifies it in a way that makes it hard to tell what they wrote and what I wrote. I'm concerned that if I let this company do it, then another company is going to, and another and pretty soon they're going to be competing on the basis of how "useful" they make my work, again without my permission, and with no compensation to me. I'm concerned that they may make changes I don't agree with, or even worse, change the meaning of what I wrote so as to confuse people about what I think. I quit working for a big publication because they were doing this, I went independent so my writing could have integrity, so it could truly represent what I think, to the best of my ability. Cory, Google crossed my line. To use your terminology, they're doing something fraudulent by passing off their derivative work as mine.
If they were hosting that work, I'd agree. The trouble is, they aren't. AutoLink runs locally (and only when requested). It modifies content only when I ask it to. Heck, we've had services that are far, far more intrusive for years now - BabelFish, for instance. When someone runs your page through BabelFish, the content gets translated. Now, anyone who's had the joy of seeing badly translated documentation from Japan or China knows that there can be "hilarious" consequences.
I don't recall any of the luminaries who are screaming about AutoLink ever breathing a word about BabelFish - and yet, it's arguably doing something far, far more dicey with your content. If adding a link is changing your meaning, then what's an automated (and inexact) translation doing to it? Google crossed a line that had been crossed years ago - what we have here are people who are willing to overlook changes they personally like and get all lathered up over changes they don't. There's a word for that.
Hani (of Bile Blog fame) will be speaking at JavaOne - it's almost enough to make me want to attend :)
Oh and just to taunt you f*****, I'd like to now brag that my proposal for a JavaOne presentation has been accepted! 'Male Services For The Enterprise', muhahaha! I'll be discussing the stuff in this entry in more detail.
Jonathan Schwartz laments that his put position as an officer of a public company prevents him from ripping out a good "April Fools" post. I'm not an officer, and Cincom's not a public company - but I feel equally constrained. The bottom line is, you don't want to say something - on a blog, in a public speech, what have you - that's going to reflect badly on your employer. That's just common sense.
And no, it has nothing to do with free speech either. I can say whatever I want - bearing in mind that my employer has no obligation to keep me on board :)
The 3.9 release of BottomFeeder is getting closer. There have been a number of improvements - the biggest being in the area of the posting tool. It's now WYSIWYG (thanks to Michael and his friends at SwS). It also supports the Blogger API, the MetaWebLog API, and the MT API properly now - thanks to a lot of testing by James Savidge. Rich is putting some finishing touches on the documentation, and then we should have a release. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I'm uploading a new development build now; it should be live sometime in the morning
Blogging Roller is apparently hard coded to ping weblogs.com specifically - that reminds me of a nifty little feature of Silt. The Silt settings file has an on/off option for blog pings, and another setting that allows you to specify the sites that will be pinged. Heck, I even allowed an option for setting the xml-rpc method to use, in case that ever changed :)
I didn't have time to put together a screencast today, so it was fortuitous that I got a link to one in email - a Seaside screencast. It's fairly large - 42 MB.
Rogers Cadenhead points out that anything you try to "get away with" on the web will be spotted by someone sooner or later. Unlike a Newspaper, you can't bury corrections somewhere in the back...
Darren Hobbs points out that having an artificial divide between compile time and runtime just makes life harder:
It gets more interesting when you get errors that aren't caught by the compiler (eg. calling a method on a null reference). In Java or C# the defect is already ossified in the compiled bytecode, and to fix it I have to change the source and recompile it plus everything that depends on it. On a big project this can be a time consuming process. On the other hand, in Smalltalk the error would be 'UndefinedObject doesNotUnderstand:someMethod'. And it would be as easy to correct as the mispelled method name from the previous example.
Seems to me that compile time checking is only important when you have the inconvenience of compile time in the first place.
Having to compile up front is like airport security - it gives you the illusion of safety with none of the actual benefits - and it makes the whole process slower as well...
Mission Software created a "Smalltalk on the JVM" compiler awhile back, and is now thinking about open sourcing it. If you have an opinion, let Jason Jones know!
I'm hoping to have a talk at ESUG this summer - I'd be giving the same talk that I'm planning to deliver at StS 2005. I just went through the process of creating PDF documents describing BottomFeeder and Silt - I'm also submitting those as innovative Smalltalk applications - we'll see what happens there. In any case, I've got my flight set up, so I'll be attending ESUG. Hope to see you there!
I've been planning to go to ESUG this summer, and was planning to take the family. We dawdled on getting free seats, and as of last week, there weren't any free seats available in coach (on the airlines I have miles on). I was resigned to buying seats ($1500 for two was the best rate I could find to Brussels), but I decided to check American's website once more. To my pleasant suprise, there were seats - so I grabbed them quickly. We now have a passport to arrange, but the trip is set - I'll be in Europe from the 15th - 24th of August. Whoo Hoo!
I just ran through the logs again - this set is for the period between March 17 and March 29. I find it interesting to see what tools are being used to access the site - especially the ups and downs of the various aggregators:
| Mozilla | 39% |
| Internet Explorer | 17.9% |
| Other | 13.7% |
| BottomFeeder | 11.4% |
| Net News Wire | 5.6% |
| BlogLines | 2.1% |
| NewsGator | 1.7% |
| SharpReader | 1.5% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 1.1% |
| Liferea | 1% |
| Java | 1% |
| Feed Demon | 1% |
| Journster | 1% |
| Magpie | 1% |
| Opera | 1% |
Now, that all adds up to 100%, but that's because I rounded. There were a number of things under the 1% threshold I use as a cutoff, but it all washed out in the rounding. The stats are overall; here are the stats for the various feeds:
| BottomFeeder | 25% |
| Mozilla | 20% |
| Other | 13.4% |
| Net News Wire | 12.2% |
| BlogLines | 4.7% |
| NewsGator | 3.7% |
| Internet Explorer | 3.4% |
| SharpReader | 3.3% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 2.4% |
| Liferea | 2.2% |
| Feed Demon | 1.8% |
| Journster | 1.7% |
| Magpie | 1.4% |
| RSS Bandit | 1% |
| News Fire | 1% |
| PubSub | 1% |
| Opera | 1% |
| Feed Reader | 1% |
| Java | 1% |
| JetBrains | 1% |
David Buck airs one of his pet peeves - bad Science in tv and books:
One thing that really bothers me is when I see bad science shown on TV shows, books, or movies. For example, the CSI series often take pictures captured from video cameras and continue to enhance and zoom them until they can see a perfect reflection of a person in another person's eyeball.
I would like to see them blow up an image until they see a black square.
"What's that?" "A pixel" "Can you zoom in some more?" "Sure, how big a square do you want?"
Heh. This plays right into my ongoing issue with reporting on various subjects - with the reporting on subjects I do know something about being so bad, I can only wonder about the rest...
The Marcom Blog points out that - if you are a blogger - you are actually creating one, and it can come back to bite you:
I have a friend that works at a large retail chain in the PR department. For the most part their company is very low on the radar in blogs. Recently though when I did a search in Technorati for the company name I came across a blog post from a teenager who had just started working there. In his post he detailed the training program and videos they watched as part of orientation. His comments were not very flattering.
He doesn’t work there anymore.
This is the way it's going to be - there's a small window right now where (some) hiring managers aren't that net savvy, so you can "get away" with saying whatever you want on a blog. That window is narrowing all the time though - I wouldn't be at all surprised to see past blog posts of mine being brought up if I were in a job search mode (I'm not :) ).
Maybe it would be a good idea to post one of those WWII vintage "Loose Lips Sink Ships" posters next to the keyboard :)
Update: Dana VanDen Heuvel has some good related points. I have a small comment on one one of the points:
Most people have never dealt with the media, and the media are only getting more savvy - everyone in your company should know how to deflect media inquiries and handle themselves in front of the media
The thing to keep in mind is - anyone can be a member of the media now. Say you attend a trade show, and - after a talk (or during it), you make a few comments. Do you have any idea whether you'll be quoted on someone's blog? I actually have people (not that often, but I expect to see more of it) ask me not to blog things - i.e., they want to stay off the record.
Slashdot reports on a ruling that could really wreak havoc on those of us who work remotely - a telecommuter working for a NY State firm was told he had to pay NY taxes. Mind you, his home state was taxing him as well. Does this sort of thing mean that I can be taxed by Ohio, since Cincom is based there? Or perhaps California, since we have a lot of our engineering resources there, and my job as Product Manager involves setting development priorities? This is a disaster waiting to unfold...
Curt Schilling is slowly coming back from that Frankenstein procedure they used last fall during the playoffs. I realize that having him then meant beating the Yankees and winning the Series; I also wondered whether it was going to be worth it in the long run. The fact that Schilling has been shaky this spring - and is currently pitching in the minors - is not an auspicious sign.
Learning Seaside points to Avi's new company - Smallthought. Looks like he's planning to focus on the small application side, where too many people try to "get by" with a spreadsheet.
We have information on the keynote speakers for StS 2005 - register now so you won't miss any of it:
Eric Evans, author of Domain-Driven Design, will be presenting "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" on Monday, June 27. Full abstract and bio here.
Niall Ross, who owns a consulting firm, has worked on a variety of meta-data-driven systems, mostly in the financial domain will be presenting:" The Value of Smalltalk" on Wednesday, June 29. Full abstract and bio here.
So I'm killing time at LAX - supposedly part of hi-tech California. Only no one sent the memo to LAX,which is blissfully free of WiFi - at least in the American terminal. There's a "Travel Right" cafe here, complete with dialup plugs. How very, very 90's of them. I'm not impressed :/
It's been a good trip out to California - my daughter visited he cousin, we had a good LAStug meeting, and my daughter and I capped it off with a trip to "California Adventure" today. That was a lot of fun - the coaster in the park in very cool. I'll have pictures once I get online.
The nightmare was the first few minutes after I arrived at Victoria's cousin's house.They had a PC set up that they wanted me to look at, because it wouldn't print. That seemed straightforward - the printer was showing an error light, and it looked like a hardware problem. The nightmare was the connection. Here was a PC - running XP service pack I, no updates installed, no software firewall enabled, no router.
Oh boy. Now, many people at this point get all huffy and claim that they "asked" trouble. And in a sense, they did - I explained to them that an unprotected PC was like not locking your door. Ad-Aware found a bunch of stuff, for instance. I immediately turned on the Windows firewall (better tha nothing), and switched them over to FireFox. I suggested that they buy a real firewall and a router as well. The trouble is, they really shouldn't have to do any of those things. Look at buying a TV, or a TiVO, for instance - do you have to babysit either one, making sure that all relevant patches are installed all the time?
No, you don't. Why? Because both are consumer grade appliances. The PC, for good or ill, isn't - it's somewhere between hobbyist device and consumer appliance, neither fish nor fowl. They still need far more attention than most people are willing to give them - and those of us that geek out on this stuff would do well to remember that. It's all well and good to say "user training". It's also a good idea to look at other consumer grade technology and realize what the expectations actually are.
I'll probably be offline all or most of tomorrow - my daughter and I will be heading to California Adventure (or possibly Universal - I'll leave it up to her). This time, I'll wear a hat!
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