The LA Smalltalk User's Group is about to meet:
LASTUG Meeting
Monday August 14, 2006
7:00 pm - 9:00 pmThis event repeats on the second Monday of every month.
Event Location: High Tech High, Los Angeles - Meeting Room
Street: 17111 Victory Blvd
City, State, Zip: Lake Balboa, CA, 91406 MapNotes:
There is usually an after meeting at Jerry's Deli on Ventura and Petit in Van Nuys that goes on to an indeterminate time.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
I mentioned that I'll be at the ESUG conference in early September - I'll be bringing along my new digital voice recorder too. I have one interview (with a partner) lined up, which I plan to post as a podcast. If you would like to talk about how you use Smalltalk, let me know - I'd be interested in recording a conversation about it.
I'll also be at the Cincom Smalltalk User Conference - we are holding that in Frankfurt, Germany this December - I'll post the location and some more details when I have them.
James McGovern wants me to address his political post on the middle east:
I will pay $75 if James Robertson can write a 100% positive, thoughtful and most importantly detailed response to this blog entry.
The thing is, this blog is hosted on Cincom's servers, and I use it to do Smalltalk advocacy and IT-related ranting. I don't address partisan/international politics here, for the simple reason that I don't want to imply that I speak for Cincom in that regard. I've toyed with the idea of running a more wide open blog elsewhere, but haven't given in to that temptation.
Bottom line - don't expect non-IT politics here.
Now this is what I like to see in August:
There are still 9 games left between the Yankees and the Sox, so anything could happen. Thus is a far cry from April though, when things went really wrong in the Bronx. I'm feeling positive about the rest of the season at this point.
Doc Searls quotes Britt Blaser about the problems of partisanship:
Fire-breathing partisanship is what we¹ve always done. It's what got us here. Maybe it¹s time to lay down that hatred and back slowly away.
That's just not going to happen. The middle - whether it's IT, partisan politics, or sports - is where ideas go to get crushed. Let me throw it back at Doc - are you ready to take a middle course on net neutrality? How about on Linux?
I rather doubt it. Likewise, people who are political partisans tend to be highly motivated, and highly interested. They are the 1% who actively engage in the game (to pull in what Nick Carr likes to note about participation in any field). The supposedly "reasonable" people in the middle are those who are not actively engaged - pretty much by definition. Pick a field - marketing, software development, politics, what have you: do you really want the people who don't care that much to be in charge? More importantly, do you think they will suddenly engage themselves?
Phil Windley finds that ATM access security can be a bizarre thing:
In Koln, we were in a hurry to get money to catch the train to Munich and the Dresdner Bank was the one closest to the hotel. It is in the latter category, neither my bank card nor my credit card would open the door, even though I was fairly certain that once I was in, either would work in the ATM. I didn't really have time to run around looking for an ATM, so I pulled out my wallet and started trying every card I had. I finally found one that worked: my BYU ID card. I have no idea why it worked and nothing else did.
Well, the day started out well enough, with 9 holes of golf. It went downhill from there. My car lost a belt, and it's the one that recharges the battery as you drive (among other things). This was bad. Fortunately, I was able to drive it to the mechanic - but not before 3 hours of waiting for AAA, as I thought the battery was dead. I guess the car is sad that it's not going to Florida with us :)
I just got this from the ESUG mailing list:
Pharmaceutical wholesale company situated in Prague is expanding it's Smalltalk team and have an open job offer:
Job description:
Complete development and maintenance of an existing ERP according to user requests starting from request analysis and ending with final testing. ERP is implemented in VisualWorks with Oracle DB beneath. Small team.Required skills:
Smalltalk (preferably VisualWorks)
Czech language - necessary for communication with usersDesired Skills:
SQL, Oracle 9 or 10
Unix (AIX, Linux)for more information mail to dvorak@gehe.cz
Speaking of Prague, I'll be there in early September at the ESUG conference.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, VisualWorks
Jim Kerstetter of CNet News has an interesting "what if" story on this question: What if IBM had held exclusive rights to the PC in 1981?
Technorati Tags: speculation
Here's a cautionary tale on what you can and can't expect when doing an open source project:
The development and release of NDoc 1.3 was a huge amount of work, and by all accounts widely appreciated. Unfortunately, despite the almost ubiquitous use of NDoc, there has been no support for the project from the .Net developer community either financially or by development contributions. Since 1.3 was released, there have been the grand total of eleven donations to the project. In fact, were it not for Oleg Tkachenko’s kind donation of a MS MVP MSDN subscription, I would not even have a copy of VS2005 to work with!
To put this into perspective, if only roughly 1-in-10 of the those who downloaded NDoc had donated the minimum allowable amount of $5 then I could have worked on NDoc 2.0 full-time and it could have been released months ago! Now, I am not suggesting that this should have occurred, or that anyone owes me anything for the work I have done, rather I am trying to demonstrate that if the community values open-source projects then it should do *something* to support them. MS has for years acknowledged community contributions via the MVP program but there is absolutely no support for community projects.
This tracks with my experience doing BottomFeeder. I've gotten a lot of help from a small number of people, but that's it. I don't ask for money, but that's because BottomFeeder is funded; it's a Cincom Smalltalk demonstration project. That's why I have time to work on it - it furthers my advocacy goals.
Over time, most unfunded OSS projects die or fade away. There's only so much time that a person with a day job can devote to one. The big successes, like Linux, Eclipse and Apache have (industry funded) foundations. For all intents and purposes, they are commercial software. Which is no surprise - developers, like everyone else, have bills to pay.
I love reading Tom Yager - it's an excursion into a history free zone of bloviating. Here's Yager last year, predicting that Apple would never, ever move to the x86. Follow the link to a picture I took of the magazine article which says in part:
Might Apple sell an x86? I doubt it. Might Apple shrink-wrap OS X for PC systems? Who cares?
...
I’ll tell you my pet scenario: IBM leaked the details of the top-secret PowerPC 970MP processor to needle Apple into committing to a volume purchase. Apple doesn’t like to be jerked around, so it had a sit-down with Intel over cucumber sandwiches and chortled, “You must promise not to tell anybody about this.”
But hey, that was last year. The original story is a bit hard to find; it's been moved to June 1st (it was originally June 6th, then updated June 9th to remove the prediction, then moved back to June 1 with the original text - check the archive page, where the story has been moved around), he now says:
The applicability of the knowledge transferred at WWDC will be especially broad this year because Apple is set to turn a corner that I predicted: It is one step away from turning the Mac into the world’s first universal x86 platform.
As he predicted? In which universe? It's a fair point to make now, but stating "as I predicted" is a bit much.
Paul Ingevaldson questions the conventional wisdom on build vs. buy:
If you have custom software, you can usually accommodate a new requirement at a reasonable cost. With an off-the-shelf package, this is often impossible. If a strategic initiative can't be accomplished because of the shortcomings of the packaged system, then the cost could be incalculable. This is the true cost of off-the-shelf. You must learn to use the software the same way most everyone else uses it.
I wonder if Dell could have developed its logistics system under this type of constraint. I wonder if FedEx and UPS could have revolutionized the shipping industry when faced with this type of scenario. I wonder if Cemex in Mexico could have become a high-tech cement producer using this approach.
If it's a strategic system, and using off the shelf software makes you like everyone else, where's the win? Sure, there are commodity areas where it makes sense to buy (or use commodity OSS) (email systems come to mind), but there are also areas where you want to differentiate yourself from the competition. A point worth considering, anyway.
Michael Moore helped fund a movie festival recently, and had this to say about attendance:
"The continued decrease in attendance (for Hollywood films) is not because of piracy, videogames, or the Internet, it's because the movies aren't very good anymore," Moore says. The fest sellouts, he says, show an aud demand for better fare.
Well, yes and no. There have always been plenty of bad flicks. The difference is, 20 years ago, there were far fewer alternatives to a movie. The TV choices were more limited, as were the gaming choices. I recall going to plenty of movies that I would never bother with now, because I would rather watch a grade B movie in the comfort of my home, on my own big screen TV. I think the widening entertainment choices have made a difference - it's made it harder for a less than spectacular film to have a big success at the theater. Which doesn't mean that such releases can't be successful - I'll watch things at home that I would never pay up front for :)
Technorati Tags: entertainment
I'd take this story about new cars being iPod ready a lot more seriously if this wasn't in it:
But before this week's announcement from iPod maker Apple Computer Inc., iPod users needed an adapter and a cassette tape deck to listen to the devices through their car stereo systems.
Never mind those hard to find FM transmitters that plug into your iPod. It's reporting of this sort that makes me skeptical of entire stories...
Here's another reason not to put any more faith in the "professional" media than in an arbitrary blogger:
The photograph showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph from its website, along a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors.
The Wikipedia model is looking less bizarre all the time.
Technorati Tags: editors
Via Rob Fahrni comes this link to a J.K. Rowling interview, where show confirms that Dumbledore is dead:
(Question about upcoming deaths): You shouldn't expect Dumbledore to pull a Gandalf. I need to be more explicit: Dumbledore is definitely dead. I know there's an entire site out there called DumbledoreIsNotDead.com, and I'm sorry they're not going to like this answer.
Partisans at that last site are not convinced yet :)
Looks like AOL hasn't gotten the "stop harassing customers" memo out to all of their staff yet - here's yet another story about death not being enough to stop the billing. Sometimes I wonder what that tenacity could achieve if they harnessed it to something worthwhile...
Technorati Tags: PR
I'm off to play golf this morning - a friend in northern VA is just getting started with the game. Fortunately, it's no longer furnace levels of heat here :)
Sanity is starting to break out in the software development field:
One of the big points was that Ruby has turned the conversation from compiled/interpreted and strictly typed vs. dynamically typed to verifiable. Ruby has proven that strict typing isn’t as important as working code. The compiler has become a big spell-checker, but tests are the only thing that can verify that the program is actually working as expected. Many times we have to add syntax to get the compiler to shut up. What really matters is how the program runs.
Us Smalltalkers have only known this for a few decades :)
I've made some improvements to the HTTP downloading code used in BottomFeeder. The stock code downloads everything into memory, with no real option to save to a file. I added some support code to do that a long while back for the upgrade tools, but they simply dropped the downloaded bytes to a file as soon as they were all in - which still filled a large memory buffer when it happened.
Now, that's been improved. I made some modifications to the HttpClient subclass I use in the upgrade tools, and gave it the ability to download straight to a file. This makes the EnclosureHandler practical - previously, using it could run past your memory settings, and cause problems (or simply cause excessive memory use). Now, that's no longer an issue. Next, I need to look at some code Blaine sent me. It was written for Dolphin, but the porting should mainly be in the file/stream area. It provides direct access to the iPod, which would be very nice.
The changes necessary weren't terribly complex - when the HttpClient starts grabbing data, it sets up a stream to download to in class HttpBuildHandler:
openBodyStream: aMessageBody aMessageBody isSimple ifTrue: [aMessageBody setByteSource: (ReadWriteStream on: (ByteArray new: 1024)) ]
All I did is have that code open a stream on a file (yes, it's simplistic - I only use this subclass to download files). The only hard part comes into cleanup; I trigger events so that the object that kicks off the download can move the file that's downloaded (to a temp file name) to the place and name it belongs. It works pretty well, and I'm happily using it. To get the update, you need to:
If you try that and have problems, let me know.
Update: I posted a new build under the dev downloads. So you can just grab that.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Boris Popov points to a comment from Bruce Tate:
I’m interested in Ruby, and a whole lot of other people are in this camp too, because it’s a dynamic language with a catalyst. Other languages have better web development experiences Seaside on Smalltalk, for example. But Rails has traction, and the combination of productivity in a clean language with good market share is tough to beat.
Boris asks the obvious question - are we into fashion statements, or actual delivery of working code? Boris is into the actual productivity, and says:
If you think there’s a better way of going about web development, who cares about traction? We took a plunge back in April to go with Seaside for our new web portal and couldn’t have been happier with the progress so far.
Try it for yourself and make up your own mind - don't just follow the crowd.
Technorati Tags: seaside, development
It's that time again - time for the logs. Next week at this time I'll be in Disneyworld, so posts like this one might be a bit delayed. It might be the slow season, but BottomFeeder downloads are proceeding nicely: 193 per day last week. The details:
| Platform | BottomFeeder Downloads |
| Windows | 654 |
| Windows98/ME | 144 |
| Update | 123 |
| Linux x86 | 115 |
| Mac X | 113 |
| CE ARM | 78 |
| Mac 8/9 | 58 |
| Solaris | 19 |
| HPUX | 15 |
| Sources | 10 |
| Linux Sparc | 9 |
| AIX | 7 |
| Linux PPC | 3 |
| SGI | 2 |
Interesting jump in the Windows download number; there wasn't a new release, so I'm not sure what that's about. Off to the HTML page accesses:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| Mozilla | 44.9% |
| Internet Explorer | 37.4% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 6.6% |
| MSN Bot | 3.5% |
| Other | 10.5% |
| Opera | 2.4% |
| Megite | 1.3% |
IE has been creeping up over the last few weeks and months, from the 20 percent range into the high 30s. It's almost reached parity with Mozilla now. Which kind of bites, since Microsoft still can't be bothered to fix the CSS box model :/
Off to the RSS page accesses:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| BottomFeeder | 19.1% |
| Mozilla | 18.1% |
| Other | 10.6% |
| BlogLines | 8.9% |
| Net News Wire | 7.6% |
| Internet Explorer | 6.5% |
| Safari RSS | 5.2% |
| Google Feed Fetcher | 4.5% |
| NewsGator | 4.3% |
| BlogSearch | 2.6% |
| Larbin | 2.1% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 1.8% |
| SharpReader | 1.4% |
| 1.2% | |
| Akregator | 1.2% |
| Opera | 1.1% |
| RSS Bandit | 1.1% |
| Jakarta | 1% |
| RSS 2 Email | 1% |
| JetBrains | 1% |
| Liferea | 1% |
| MSN Bot | 1% |
| Java | 1% |
| Lilina | 1% |
Still a lot of tool diversity in the aggregator space.
Long time readers of this blog will know that I have high levels of skepticism around Sun's business plans. However, that's not a universally held view, and the news of the second round of cuts yesterday (part of the year long plan to shed about 5000 staff) drew some positive press:
Schwartz's promotion and the job cuts led UBS Warburg analyst Benjamin Reitzes to suggest on Thursday that Sun has the same ingredients for a turnaround that Xerox had earlier in the decade.
"Many aspects of the potential turnaround seem familiar," he said in a report. "Both have large, sticky customer bases, high market share, hidden assets, bloated cost structure and solid cash flow potential...We believe shares represent a compelling value."
I'm still skeptical, but a deep enough round of cuts could put them back on the positive side of the line. It remains to be seen whether this round will do that. It also remains to be seen whether they can, in the long run, afford the large software expenditures they are making for stuff they give away.
Technorati Tags: management
CNet reports on a BlackHat talk that brought up security issues with some aggregators:
Also, attackers could send malicious code to mailing lists that offer RSS or Atom feeds and commandeer vulnerable systems that way, Auger said. Feeds are popular because they let people consolidate information streams from multiple sites, such as blogs, in one application, called a feed reader, removing the need to surf to multiple sites. In other news:
Many of the popular feed reading applications are faulted because the designers have failed to add valuable security checks, Auger said. In particular, the applications should not allow JavaScript that is included in feeds to run. Instead, it should be filtered out, he said.
BottomFeeder ignores Javascript (it can't do otherwise) - which makes it safe from this sort of thing
Technorati Tags: rss, atom, syndication, security
It looks like a major corporation is willing to test the DMCA waters: Circuit City is offering to rip DVDs (ones you own) to your video player (such as a video iPod).
The stupid part is the fact that we even need this service. If I buy a DVD, I should be able (under Fair Use) to copy that DVD to another device I own. So long as I'm not selling the results, (and I believe that Circuit City should be ok here, because they are ripping things you bring them) any violation would be yours, not theirs. The dicey part is that to rip DVDs, you have to circumvent the copy protection, which is illegal. Looks like test case time to me - I'm sure that the MPAA will go bats. With luck, they'll be sent to the dark place they belong.
File this under "Too good to be true" - I should have looked into it instead of posting from the airport. As Seth says in the comments, it's not happening.
Simon Lin links to a Bruce Tate PDF on things Java should steal from Ruby. The thing is, if Sun did that, they would actually have either Ruby or Smalltalk. Since both of those exist already, there are shorter steps to productivity than waiting for that to happen.
An interesting aside that Bruce Tate points out - static language advocates seem to think that you can't have refactoring without the manifest typing. This ignores that fact that - like just about everything else - the refactoring browser was invented in Smalltalk.
Andres Valloud is giving a talk on "Truly Efficient Smalltalk" at OOPSLA this fall.
Technorati Tags: OOPSLA
Patrick Logan notes a few interesting comments from Gilad Bracha at JavaWorld:
"It has come to our attention that some people want to program in things other than Java," Bracha quipped.
Sun is broadening its support for dynamic languages to satisfy user demand, but also to help broaden the overall community of developers who use the Java platform, Bracha said.
I've often wondered why Sun got so adamant about Java (the language) as opposed to the VM. From their perspective, why should they care so long as the VM is in use? I suspect that Microsoft's moves to support things like Iron Python and Vista Smalltalk are having some impact.
It looks like Norway would like to define Apple's business plans; they want Apple to open up the iTunes music store:
Apple Computer Inc. has struck a defiant stance with Scandinavian regulators, staunchly defending its right to make its iPod the only portable music player compatible with songs purchased from the company's iTunes music store.
Norway isn't the only place this sort of thinking is happening - I was listening to the Buzz Out Loud podcast this afternoon (August 3rd, 2006), and it was clear to me that Molly Wood is thinking the same thing. Here's the deal: there are tons of mp3 players on the market, and more than a few music stores. The iTunes store has the largest share, and that might have something to do with iTunes offering a better experience than most of the competition. The only thing that truly stands in the way of a better store is the RIAA and their insistence on brain dead DRM; if eMusic had access to more labels, I rather expect that their share of the downloadable music market would rise dramatically if they had such access.
Heck, if Apple is forced to include other devices, maybe I should demand that Sun start offering Squeak side by side with Java. It would make about as much sense.
Earlier in the year, the Yankees lost both Matsui and Sheffield to injuries. Sheffield came back, and Matsui is on the mend. Now it seems to be the Red Sox' turn - and it's pretty bad luck for them to lose Wakefield and Varitek at this point, down the stretch.
Varitek in particular is a huge loss - he is to the Red Sox what Jeter is for the Yankees. Ramirez and Ortiz may hit bigger, but Varitek always seems to be part of action in the big games. However, things are more interesting all around than they were a month ago. The White Sox have fallen well off the pace the Tigers are setting (and boy, doesn't that sound weird to say!) - which puts the wild card back in play as part of the mix in the AL East. We could easily end up with another Yankees/Red Sox duel in the playoffs.
Peter Fisk questions the future of the static hegemony:
Successful Internet applications today are based on dynamic languages: Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Lisp, Smalltalk and Javascript.
I can't understand how statically compiled “rich client” applications can be successfully deployed to thousands of users across the Internet - unless all those users have precisely the same requirements.
Couldn't have said it better myself
Technorati Tags: development
Jon Udell shows just how deep the rabbit hole goes when all you want is a clip from the middle of an audio stream.
David Leibs, who was one of the PARC guys way back, is speaking at an AMD event:
Then check out this townhall on August 8 to learn more about what it means to you: Business Partner Townhall Special guest speakers: David Liebs and Michael Wall, AMD.
...
David Leibs joined AMD at the beginning of 2006 as an AMD Fellow to work on Acceleration for both Java and XML. Prior to AMD David worked at Oracle as the J2EE Appserver architect. David worked for many years on Smalltalk-80, first at Xerox Parc and subsequently at ParcPlace Systems
If you don't get the connection, AMD is one of our larger customers - they use Cincom Smalltalk in very mission critical areas.
Just imagine Calvin with this fully automatic rubber band gatling gun:
Suzy Derkins, watch out :)
Technorati Tags: toys
Looks like Calacanis' experiment is working out:
The first 10 Navigators: We've hired three of the top 12 DIGG users, the #1 user from Newsvine, the #1 user from Reddit, and a bunch of Weblogs, Inc. folks.
So much for the theory that people do this kind of thing for status alone, and wouldn't dream of getting paid. Utopians take note: if there's a market, there's revenue.
Michael has created an interface to the Berkeley Database from Cincom Smalltalk. Load it up from the public repository and give it a whirl.
The excitingly hot weather continued here today - we knocked off the training class at 4:30 after the power dropped for the second time at 4:30. It was exciting to drive on streets like this:
with all the traffic lights out. Fortunately, there's power here at the hotel. The car's external thermometer read 101, but nearby signs had it at 95. With over 60% humidity, it's nasty either way...
Nick Carr digs out more data from Richard MacManus:
Richard MacManus has published some striking statistics about Digg, supplied to him by the site Diggtrends. The data reveal that of Digg's 445,000 registered users, only 2,287 contributed any stories to the site during the last six weeks. But here are the real eye-openers: The top 100 users contributed fully 55% of the stories that appeared on the site's front page, and the top 10 users - yep, you can count 'em on your own two hands - contributed a whopping 30% of the front page stories. Peer production? I think a better term for it would be peerage production.
It appears that Digg does have editors, they are just unpaid. Which leads me to believe that Jason Calacanis is crazy like a fox.
Wow, I guess it's a good day to not be in Columbia, MD. The high here in Dayton should be 96 F - which sounds hot, but boy, look at Columbia:
Ouch.
Technorati Tags: heatwave
Here's something you don't see every day: other authors pleading with J.K. Rowling to spare Harry:
Best-selling authors John Irving and Stephen King both made a plea to Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling not to kill the boy wizard in the final book of the series, but Rowling made no promises, the Reuters news service reported.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are just waiting for that book to appear :)
Technorati Tags: Potter
Looks like F-Script is getting an update too:
F-Script 1.3.4 has been released. F-Script is an embeddable scripting language based on Smalltalk for Mac OS X, providing access to Cocoa and other Objective-C objects.
It's Smalltalk time again :)
Joel Spolsky has just discovered the beauty of anonymous functions:
Jeez, that is handy. Notice that I'm creating a function there on the fly, not even bothering to name it, just picking it up by its ears and tossing it into a function.
As soon as you start thinking in terms of anonymous functions as arguments, you might notice code all over the place that, say, does something to every element of an array.
He then notes that some older languages don't allow this, and makes an assumption:
Many older languages simply had no way to do this kind of stuff. Other languages let you do it, but it's hard (for example, C has function pointers, but you have to declare and define the function somewhere else). Object-oriented programming languages aren't completely convinced that you should be allowed to do anything with functions.
Java required you to create a whole object with a single method called a functor if you wanted to treat a function like a first class object. Combine that with the fact that many OO languages want you to create a whole file for each class, and it gets really klunky fast. If your programming language requires you to use functors, you're not getting all the benefits of a modern programming environment. See if you can get some of your money back.
Yet again, I have to point out that Smalltalk had this back in the 80's. Java didn't because it's a dumbed down language with training wheels, which is supposed to somehow add power. Umm, right.
Perhaps Joel should have a look at Smalltalk, and see what else he's missed :)
David Simmons got interviewed by BitWise magazine - looks like he's going to get back to work on the project. It's kind of interesting to see that with the Vista Smalltalk project also going on - maybe he and Peter Fisk should talk?
Technorati Tags: .NET, development
I was trying to figure out a networking issue (turns out that it's related to the access rights in the training room) when I stumbled across a nasty little bug in BottomFeeder. In Bf, I use a HTTP package called NetResources, which adds application level niceties on top of the stock HTTP libs in VisualWorks - cookie management, caching, and a number of other things. As part of that, we add extensions to the HttpClient class, and also override the class definition. That's where things got hairy.
If you override class definitions, you really need to check them with each new release of the base product. I didn't do that, and I ran into this - here's the stock definition of the class:
Smalltalk.Net defineClass: #HttpClient
superclass: #{Net.NetClient}
indexedType: #none
private: false
instanceVariableNames: 'request proxyHost keepAlive useProxy connection
entityParsingOptions cookieAgent enableCookies protocol authPolicy '
classInstanceVariableNames: ''
imports: ''
category: 'Net-HTTP-Support'
And here's what I had in 7.3:
Smalltalk.Net defineClass: #HttpClient
superclass: #{Net.NetClient}
indexedType: #none
private: false
instanceVariableNames: 'request proxyHost keepAlive useProxyAuthorization connection
entityParsingOptions cookieAgent enableCookies protocol originalResponse '
classInstanceVariableNames: ''
imports: ''
category: 'Net-HTTP-Support'
The variable "originalResponse" was added so that after certain exceptions, we could go back and examine the state. The big problem is that other than that, the definitions should match (and they didn't). I patched that this morning, but I think I'll do a fresh build when I get back from this trip. Grab the patch for Http-Overrides in the meantime!
Technorati Tags: development, BottomFeeder
I heard on the Buzz Out Loud podcast last night that the E3 game conference is dead. They talked about it, and brought up that basically, various game companies have been spending tons of money on a marketing effort of dubious value. Using online video, blogs, and podcasts, you can get the same message out, to the same audience, at a tiny fraction of the cost. That raises the obvious question: are CES and other big shows next?
More from Scoble here.
I find this kind of thing to be fairly silly - in a discussion about following web references back to something of interest, Scoble says:
One other thing. I didn’t link to Fred Wilson’s blog. Why? Cause if you really cared you’d have read it by now, right? I assume my readers know how to use Google and TechMeme. Cause you’re smarter than me and I can find Fred in both places right now.
Yeah, Steve Gillmor explained to me why NOT linking is better than linking. Tell me Fred, did your traffic from search engines go up today?
Except... a link makes it easier on your readers. Sure, I could find his blog (and the post of interest) via Google. But I have to actually do that, either using the search feature of BottomFeeder, or in a browser. I could have gotten there immediately if there was a link.
It's not that gestures have no value - if I'm not specifically looking, and I stumble across something, I can use tools to find more information. Likewise, I can rely on search feeds for references. But why should I set up a search feed for "Scoble", for instance, if what I really want is to read his blog? It's easier to just subscribe. Likewise, it would have been simpler to just follow a link.
So in the spirit of additional feedback, I didn't find Fred Wilson's blog, because I didn't bother to look in the first place. Had you linked, I would have. Making me plow through a search engine is way too much like work.
Have a look at the Vista Smalltalk blog, and take note of the last few posts - especially this one. It looks like there's going to be a native Smalltalk for .NET, which will expand the playing field for all of us. Want cross platform Smalltalk? Use VisualWorks. Want native Windows with access to the power of VW? Use ObjectStudio. Want native .NET? Use Vista Smalltalk. Want a full open source solution? Use Squeak.
Come on in, the water's fine :)
Technorati Tags: .NET, windows, development
I'm teaching a Smalltalk Intro class this week (and my network access here in the training room is kind of wonky). So posting is going to be light.
Boris is helping setup a Smalltalk get together in Vancouver, B.C.:
What: Informal Seaside/Squeak/VisualWorks/Smalltalk Meet Up
When: Friday, August 18, 2006 @ 6:00PM PST
Where: Stamp’s Landing Neighborhood Pub - 610 Stamps Landing, Vancouver, BC - Google Map
Who: Everyone with interests in Seaside, Squeak, VisualWorks and anything else to do with Smalltalk is welcomed to join us for a beer (coffee, milk, coke, juice, water) or two and informal chat about state of things in the Seaside world and whatever else people choose to catch up on. There is no agenda, simply because putting a bunch of passionate Smalltalkers in the same room seems to turn into a good thing on its own, so why ruin it? ;)
Sounds like fun :)
Technorati Tags: seaside
At least my daughter got off the ground on time. She took her first solo flight today - while I head to corporate to teach a Smalltalk class, she's heading to visit her cousins. my flight to Dayton had one of those unexplained delays on the ground. Scheduled departure time: 8:35 AM. Actual: about 9:20 AM.
I still have about an hour to drive, too - Cincom's HQ is about an hour from the Dayton airport. At least I remembered the FM transmitter for my iPod...
Jonathan Schwartz pulls something of a "fast one" in his latest post:
And lastly, there was a discussion of wage rates and cost of living on the desirability of an economy for R&D.
My point - shared by many in the room, but not all - was that Silicon Valley's (and certainly Sun's) business is largely insensitive to the price of labor on the world market. As one of my staff members said recently, "when it comes to hiring, this ain't Costco, we don't buy in bulk." If we can bring a product to market three or six or twelve months earlier than planned, wage rates as a percentage of total return aren't even measurable in calculating returns. (What was Bill Joy's starting salary? My point... who cares.)
It seems to be the case that companies all over Silicon Valley (and beyond) care a lot. If they didn't, a lot of the hiring in India simply wouldn't be happening. I certainly admit to having price sensitivity about hiring in North America; hiring someone in Silicon Valley is going to cost a lot more than hiring an equivalently skilled person nearly anywhere else (Manhattan excepted). If you don't think that enters into decision making, you live on another planet.
Technorati Tags: salary
Chris Pirillo notes that Microsoft has finally recognized the obvious:
The Ribbon, a new top-of-the-window feature in most of the suite’s applications -- including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- takes up too much space, say many beta users and reviewers . In response, the next Office 2007 update, a so-called Technical Refresh (TR), will include changes to the Ribbon. Although an undocumented - or at least unpublicized - Ctrl-F1 key combination has “collapsed” the Ribbon since the very first beta to provide more viewing and working space for documents, Microsoft program manger Jensen Harris has outlined new ways that the feature will be called in future versions.
It's a good thing that they got plenty of feedback, so that they could make this adjustment before the release, rather than afterwards.
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