I commented on a "Java dynamic code" post earlier, and got a few comments - so I pushed up a screencast showing how to generate new code (methods and classes) at runtime in Smalltalk. It's way, way simpler than the Java example, and I show that in the screencast. Watch it here; enjoy.
Technorati Tags: java, smalltalk, dynamic languages
In other pretzel twisting, see how much of an unnatural act you have to commit to get something vaguely like "duck typing" in Java.
As I said earlier today, I'll be over here, being productive. You Java guys knock yourselves out.
Technorati Tags: duck typing, dynamic languages, smalltalk
Doc Searls sums up what needs to be said about PayPerPost:
Yesterday I said PayPerPost makes you an ass****. Your job is to serve s***. You reduce yourself from a human being to an orifice for excreting messages. That may have seemed extreme or unkind; but hey, what's the difference between that and showing up on a bull**** detector?
What more needs to be added?
Technorati Tags: marketing, advertising, integrity
There's Dynamic as done in Java, and then there's the real thing, as I do it in my blog server all the time (just this morning, in fact). Code that didn't exist when I first wrote the server? No problem. Replacing methods as the server runs? No problem. Creating new code and just loading it? How do you think the recent addition of iTunes tag support (necessary before I could get the podcasts listed in iTunes and other podcast directories) loaded? I wrote the code, tested it, and had the server load the results. Suddenly the RSS generator was dropping new meta information out.
Here's an old post on how I do the same thing in a client. On the server, the steps are as follows:
That's it. No need to write code in some custom fashion to deal with things that didn't exist before - the Smalltalk system just accepts that they're there, and deals with it. This is yet another example of the mental cruft you have to deal with in a language like Java. In Smalltalk, that cruft just doesn't exist.
I'll be over here, being productive. You Java guys can read the multi-page post on how to do the same thing in your world :)
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, development, cincom smalltalk, dynamic languages
Steve Rubel notes that advertising dollars seem to be getting lower. I say "seem to be", because it's based on an analyst report (Blackfriars Communications), and I know nothing about them. Anyway, here's what Steve notes:
Actual dollars spent on advertising this year was sharply lower than the original estimates. This according to an analysis by Blackfriars Communications. Worse, the same story is true online.
Researchers had predicted that 10% of overall advertising spending this year would go online. Meanwhile, it ended up at 7% of budgets. Plus, the entire pie shrunk as well.
That could be air leaking out of the web 2.0 bubble. We'll probably know within a few months, one way or the other. One thing's for sure - a lot of startups are very, very dependent on ad revenue. Could Yahoo's difficulties there be an early warning sign?
Technorati Tags: web2.0
I just made a small change to the behavior here on the site. You'll notice the enormous lists of category and syndication lists have been shrunken down to pull menus. Michael suggested that to me last night (to be fair, Vassili has mentioned it more than once too). In any case, it's done now - the sidebars should be easier to navigate.
In today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at the process of writing external files.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Here's one of the problems with outsourcing your manufacturing widely - you really need to be careful about quality checks. Otherwise, you get things like the iPod virus fiasco:
The company said that a small number of video iPods made after Sept. 12 included the RavMonE virus. It said it has seen fewer than 25 reports of the problem, which it said does not affect other models of the media player, nor does it affect Macs.
From a PR perspective, Apple did the right thing by taking responsibility (and even managed to get a shot in at MS in the process):
"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it," Apple said on its site.
THis doesn't mean that you should run a vertical stack like Henry Ford did back in the 1920's - but it does mean that you need to "trust, but verify" rather than just "trust".
Technorati Tags: manufacturing, quality assurance
Michel Bany, the Cincomer who has ported Seaside from Squeak to VW, gives some tips on loading it:
Bundles SeasideForWebToolkit and SeasideForSwazoo are containers for a script that loads the actual Seaside bundles choosing bundles with similar version numbers.
The Seaside bundles can also be loaded manually in the following sequence :
- Seaside-VW
- Seaside
- Seaside-WebToolkit or Seaside-Swazoo
In this case you may load whatever versions you want, for instance :
- Seaside-VW 2.6b1.103
- Seaside 2.6b1.103
- Seaside-Swazoo 2.6b1.84
There may be some issues with the Seaside servlet at present; that's being looked at.
When I saw this reported on various blogs earlier today, I thought: "huh??"
But then I read Chris Petrilli's thoughts on the subject, and it started to make sense. It's kind of a cool idea, and - even if it doesn't sell much - I think it works as good PR.
Technorati Tags: Sun, datacenter
Travis has posted a screencast comparing SUnit and SUnitToo. meanwhile, Michael has posted a bunch of new ones - check the entire category.
Technorati Tags: screencast
allofmp3.com to the RIAA: Go pound sand:
"They [the music studios] are concerned with making money for themselves not the artists. In our opinion, we and the artists are better off dealing directly with each other. In fact we believe it is the future of the music industry," they said.
Anything that torques off the RIAA is just fine in my book.
Technorati Tags: DRM
The studio lawsuits against user video sites have begun:
Universal Music has launched the established media industry’s first legal action against rapidly growing user-generated websites by filing copyright suits against start-ups Grouper.com and Bolt.com.
In separate lawsuits, Universal alleged that Grouper and Bolt had built up traffic by encouraging users to share music videos from its artists without their permission.
Apparently, putting lawyers and music industry executives together doesn't give you anything like a peanut butter cup; more like a crap sandwich, I should think.
Let me think - when music videos are put up this way, who exactly is getting hurt? I thought the whole point of such videos was to promote the music (and thus CD or digital sales). Leaving no marketing opportunity unquashed, Universal has pulled out the stupid stick.
The truth is, all candidates use it -- or suffer the consequences. When Wesley Clark entered the 2004 presidential race, he caught a cold, lost his voice, and was unable to campaign for several days. Some people speculated that the pace of a national campaign had knocked the former NATO comander off the campaign trail. I knew it was because he hadn't learned about hand sanitizer. National candidates shake hundreds, if not thousands, of hands every day. They will get sick unless they wash their hands early and often.
Consider the average trade show/conference - you meet tons of people, you shake their hands - and then you blame the post show cold on the airplane. I'm thinking it might not be the airplane air. This isn't something I've given much thought to, and I don't come down with serious colds all that often. If you do, you might want to consider the advice above.
Technorati Tags: health
What does it tell you about Sirius' gamble on Howard Stern when they have to offer it for free for two days to get more people interested?
What it tells me is that there are now tons of free choices available across all possible media outlets. It tells me that in the unlimited channel space that is the internet, that you have to be pretty darn good to get a decent sized paid audience. Personally, I've never liked Stern - his schtick has always been about "he said what on radio??", or "he did what on tv??", or, when he was married - "he did what, and his wife doesn't care??"
Well, he's now divorced, and he's on a channel where "outrageous" behavior is common. Why should I pay to hear Stern, if I can get someone like Ze Frank for free? His stuff isn't to my taste, but I suspect that there's a fair bit of cross-over in those audience bases. The difference? Ze Frank is free, Stern is behind a pay wall. Sort of like Times Select, really.
Stern was a phenomenon so long as his behavior was outside the norm, and he was the only one beating that particular drum. Those things are no longer true.
Technorati Tags: marketing, advertising
Dave Winer gets this dead on:
I practice this myself. There are some things I'm expert at. And some experiences I have that are newsworthy even though I'm not an expert. When I went to the DNC in 2004, I wasn't an expert at the political process, but I brought a digital camera, a MP3 recorder, and my laptop, so I took pictures, did podcasts, and blogged. Put enough normal people in a room covering an event, and you've got coverage. And in my recent experience with MacBooks, a few reporters offered to do phone interviews, which I declined. I said I had written it all up on the blog, all of it is on the record, for attribution, and having a pretty good idea how the interview process works, and the results it produces, the only rational thing for me to do these days is to decline the interview. I predict that more and more people will do that, unless the pros get their act together.
When we went on vacation last summer, I had someone from a local paper do a "man in the street" interview with my wife and I about the security regime at the airport (this was right after the whole "no liquids" thing). We spoke to the woman for 30 seconds, and she was taking notes. When I got back, I saw the item in a local paper - she invented quotes.
That's just shoddy. Digital recorders are cheap, and it would have been very easy for this reporter to get what we actually said down - but that would have been too hard, apparently. The pros in media aren't as professional as they think they are - and the level of respect they get (see: any survey on public attitudes about reporters) reflects that reality. They keep not getting that, and it's going to cause increasing pain for them over time.
Update: Dave added more here. Also good stuff.
Technorati Tags: reporting
PR. Differently calls BS on Edelman's behavior (including the apology):
You're going to tell me Steve couldn't have just walked into Richard's office and been like, "Richard, this isn't cool - We're creating some bad Ju-ju, and we're gonna get busted." Would Richard have listened? Maybe. But Steve commented ""I am sorry I could not speak about this sooner. I had no personal role in this project. There is a process in place that I had to let proceed through its course. This is why it took some time."
You're EDELMAN'S BLOG EXPERT. YOU HAD NO ROLE IN THIS PROJECT? And Columbus sat below, writing out star charts for his next trip to Asia. He had no personal role in actually FINDING America.
Can't say I disagree with him.
Technorati Tags: marketing, social media
The Smalltalk User Group meeting planned for the 18th (tomorrow) has been postponed until the 25th. Charles explains:
Due to the upcoming heavy rains on Wednesday, the fact that a lot of our members drive including our presenter which is coming from deep Jersey, the fact that the 18th also happens to be one of our regular's birthday which he will be spending with his immediate family, we shall be postponing our presentaton till next Wednesday the 25th which will be in direct conflict with OOPSLA
We apologize for any inconveniences
the management
NYC Smalltalk
(Re) mark your calendars!
In today's Smalltalk Daily, I take a brief look at the Menu building tool in VisualWorks.
Update: Fixed the link
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
ArcterJournal likes Heroes:
Wow, I gotta say that each week Heroes keeps getting better. It's one of those shows I wish I never heard about until after the season is over so I can watch them all one after another without the pain of having to wait 7 days to see what happens next. I don't often rave about TV shows, so when I do you know it's good.
I like it too - the "wake up" scene with the cheerleader this week was pretty darn creepy. I have to admit, I had a chuckle at the end, when Hiro visits from the future with a message. I couldn't stop myself from inserting "in the future, I stopped being a nerd" :)
It is a cool show though - worth a place on your DVR.
Technorati Tags: scifi
This is pretty interesting: just how accurate are YouTube's statistics?
On Saturday night, I grabbed a video called “Sheep” from the Most Recent list and re-uploaded it under the username “themusichall”. I realized that I’d lost the audio in the process (converted it to the wrong format), but decided to leave it like that - nobody would voluntarily share a 7 second clip with no audio. I then set the page to refresh itself over Sunday night and - sure enough - it was among the most viewed clips this morning. Admittedly, 10,000 or so views doesn’t get you to the top - it’s on the 3rd “Most Viewed” page and ranks 10th in the Comedy category. But this is one computer refreshing one page with fairly long time intervals: I’m not going to make any suggestions that would encourage you to screw it up even more, but it’s pretty obvious how you could attain the number one spot.
Now, Google isn't filled with dummies, so you have to figure they were aware of this kind of thing. But who knows?
I got a tip from Dave Buck this afternoon, and grabbed a few episodes of the Polymorphic Podcast - specifically, the interview with Dr. David West. Dr. West has some very nice things to say about Smalltalk, and gives some good rationales for why Smalltalk - and languages like Smalltalk - are a good choice.
Follow these links to grab part 1 and part 2 of the interview.
There's some Smalltalk in London this weekend:
This is the final reminder for the combined Smalltalk users group meeting this Friday and a Camp Smalltalk this Saturday.
On Friday:
Andy Bower, one of the main people behind Dolphin Smalltalk will be demoing Alchemetrics a trading system built in Dolphin.John Aspinall will be demoing ReStore.
There's 20 names on the wiki so far, this should be a great opportunity to meet other Smalltalkers.
http://www.xpdeveloper.net/xpdwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=SmalltalkUK20061020
On Saturday:
There's a camp Smalltalk. Felix will be working on Smalltalk/X, Francisco will be working on Morphic Wrappers, I'll be working on Exupery. Come along either to work on a project or learn by working with different people. Bring a project, a laptop, or just yourself.http://www.xpdeveloper.net/xpdwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=SmalltalkUK20061021
Remember to RSVP on the wiki. We need to provide security with a list of names so they'll let you in the building.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
The folks at Instantiations have set up a new support forum for VA developers. Probably something that the Smalltalk-Central folks should take note of.
Our October Digest is up on the main Smalltalk site - go check it out.
Here's an article that makes the case that RSS is too hard for most people. While the article makes a few good points, the various aggregators on the market - like BottomFeeder - have mechanisms in place to deal with most of the issues raised. For instance: the biggest problem for most neophytes is "what do I subscribe to?" Well, BottomFeeder tries to make that easier via auto-detect. For instance, let's say I want to subscribe to news feeds from CNN, and I don't know what they have. In the "Add Feed" dialog for Bf, simply put in the main CNN URL, as I show in the image below:
Clearly, that's not an RSS or Atom feed. However, BottomFeeder recognizes that, and scans the HTML that came down for likely feed links (failing that, it executes a search in one of the syndication search engines). What it comes back with is a list of all the feeds advertised at that site (on that page):
Finally, I can pick one or all. In most cases, it would be simpler to select all, and then blow away the ones you don't care about:
I've made that screenshot smaller, which is why it looks blurry. In any event, the feeds get added to their own folder automatically. So even if you don't know what RSS or Atom is, BottomFeeder will let you find stuff easily.
Another quibble; the author of that piece didn't do some basic research:
To the average website visitor RSS feeds seem to be a geek toy requiring knowledge that they don't have time to gain or just are are not interested in. If web browsers included feed readers by default it would probably increase RSS usage 10 fold. But since none of the web browser makers seem to be interested in trying to do this RSS may remain unknown and unpopular for years to come.
Safari auto-detects RSS, and IE 7 will too - and IE 7 is coming out shortly. In fact, I expect that having IE 7 and Outlook 2007 support for RSS built in will spread the use of RSS very rapidly.
Technorati Tags: syndication, web
Today's Smalltalk Daily takes a brief look at the Dataset Widget in VisualWorks.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, VisualWorks
Battlestar Galactica has roared back with a great opening. Given the oddities of world-wide tv releases, I won't get into any real detail, but I will say this: if you were going to rank levels of badly off, things are worse for the characters on BSG (by a lot) than they are for anyone on Lost. Given the current situation on Lost, that's saying a lot.
I'm glad that things are looking up for the humans on BSG though - as good as the first two episodes were, I'm not sure I could stand watching much more of what Starbuck is going through. If you don't watch this show, you really need to ask yourself why.
Via Jeff Jarvis, I see that Dan Shanoff at Huffington Post objects to having journalists compensated based on the traffic they generate:
To treat journalists like mini-publishers is a slippery slope. For all of blogging's editorial opportunities -- the freedom to innovate or the chance to collapse the normally endless magazine response to timely issues -- the journalists are no longer simply doing their job.
When the mission is tied -- directly, through the incentive of increased financial compensation -- to maximizing traffic, the blogger is as much a marketer as they are a journalist.
Exactly how does Dan think it works now? Does he think that media outlets hire writers, and then just tell them to run off and "be creative"? Yeah, right. All this does is bring the rating system closer to the top. Ever wonder why newspapers add and drop op-ed authors, or comic strips, or sportswriters? Here's a huge hint for Dan - it's related to the eyeballs (i.e., traffic) they bring in. The advertisers are funny that way - they seem to care. I'm not sure what idealized world Dan lives in, but perhaps he could report on what color the sky is over there.
Technorati Tags: reporting, journalism
Looks like Edelman was trying to faux-blog on behalf of Wal-mart, a client of theirs. Here's what they were trying to do:
A pro-Wal-Mart blog called "Wal-Marting Across America," ostensibly launched by a pair of average Americans chronicling their cross-country travels in an RV and lodging in Wal-Mart parking lots, has been reduced to a farewell entry. One of its two contributors was revealed to be Jim Thresher, a staff photographer for The Washington Post.
Why would anyone think that was a good idea? At best, it was going to look weird - I mean, who parks in Wal-Mart parking lots in an RV while doing a cross country trip? Last time I looked, there weren't power, water, and septic hookups there. Given that, it's the sort of thing that's destined to be outed as a stupid PR stunt, with all the predictable fallout. To be brutal, this had Negative PR Event written all over it from the start (time from launch to outing: less than 3 weeks).
That's not the worst of it though. Thus far, Edelman is displaying a vast well of silence on this. Here's a question - where's Steve Rubel, or Richard Edelman? Not looking good, guys.
Here's a case of marketing gone terribly wrong: McDonald's Japan ran a contest giving away mp3 players, and gave away a little extra with each one:
However the MP3 players were infected with QQpass a very dangerous malware. So your PC is infected once you connect the DAP and it starts logging and transmitting username, passwords and other vital information. McDonalds Japan has apologized and set up a 24 hour helpline for those affected by the spyware loaded MP3 player.
I added "DRM" to the tags because this smells like a music industry sponsored piece of stupidity. In general, you should be the only one with indigestion after eating at McDonald's - your PC shouldn't feel your pain.
It's no fluke - the Tigers seem to be the real deal. They way they collapsed during the second half, everyone (myself included) thought the Yankees would put them away. They lost one, then took three straight. And now they've swept the A's, and are headed to the Series. One thing's for sure - they'll be more rested going in than either the Mets or the Cards.
The main thing is this: they might be a wild card team, but they're no fluke. They brought their game with them to October.
I've busily been listing the podcast into various podcast directories beyond iTunes. You can also find us on Odeo and Podshow now, which is pretty cool, IMHO.
Technorati Tags: Industry Misinterpretations, smalltalk
If I come into your office in jeans and a T-shirt, I'm not disrespecting you, because wearing such an outfit doesn't mean disrespect in my world. It's an outfit I like to wear and which I find myself comfortable in. Likewise, although I myself would never wear a suit, I respect your decision to wear it and might admire how well it fits you.
This is all in response to this post I made awhile back. Let me try to explain what's wrong with that "accept whatever I'm doing" attitude - it excuses nearly anything. How about picking your nose in public? Or refusing to wash regularly, so that you smell bad? They're the same thing, and what they are is impolite. In social settings, politeness exists to reduce friction. People who don't get that are - whether they realize it or not - increasing the social friction between people.
Put another way, it's one thing to put your feet on the coffee table at home, and something else again when you do it while visiting.
Technorati Tags: lifestyle
Boris Popov has published a start at the YUI for Seaside on VW. Go grab it from the Public Store - and if you're interested, it sounds like Boris could use a hand with it.
Technorati Tags: seaside
The tools over at the RIAA have demonstrated just how lame their legal strategy is: when confronted with a plaintiff who demands actual evidence of wrongdoing, they do two things:
These people are complete tools. The sooner they die off with their outdated business model, the better.
It's time for the weekly look at the logs - BottomFeeder downloads proceeded at a clip of 228 per day; the details:
| Platform | BottomFeeder Downloads |
| Update | 452 |
| Windows | 413 |
| Linux x86 | 133 |
| Mac X | 119 |
| CE ARM | 117 |
| Mac 8/9 | 78 |
| Solaris | 55 |
| Windows98/ME | 49 |
| Linux PPC | 35 |
| AIX | 30 |
| Linux Sparc | 30 |
| SGI | 29 |
| HPUX | 28 |
| Sources | 23 |
| ADUX | 6 |
| CE x86 | 2 |
Next up - the HTTP page accesses. The screencasts and podcasts seem to be establishing an audience, which I'm fairly pleased about:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| Internet Explorer | 40.9% |
| Mozilla | 39.6% |
| Other | 2.2% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 5% |
| Lib Perl | 4.5% |
| MSN Bot | 5.4% |
| Megite | 1.4% |
| Opera | 1% |
The IE numbers went up - I expect more IE 7 users are popping up - I've been seeing that in the RSS numbers. Speaking of which:
| Tool | Percentage of Accesses |
| Mozilla | 20.5% |
| BottomFeeder | 19.4% |
| Other | 9.3% |
| Internet Explorer | 7.3% |
| Net News Wire | 6.4% |
| Safari RSS | 5.7% |
| Google Feed Fetcher | 5.6% |
| BlogLines | 5.5% |
| NewsGator | 3% |
| Abilon | 2.7% |
| Planet Smalltalk | 1.9% |
| Opera | 1.6% |
| Akregator | 1.5% |
| RSS Bandit | 1.5% |
| RSS 2 Email | 1.2% |
| JetBrains | 1.2% |
| News Fire | 1.1% |
| Liferea | 1.1% |
| SharpReader | 1% |
| Python | 1% |
| MSN Bot | 1% |
| Jakarta | 1% |
| Java | 1% |
The IE numbers are rising, which tells me that IE 7 is spreading. It's been a good week traffic wise - up again!
I tune out the ad hominems. Try to argue, instead, by complimenting the intelligence and ethics of the person who opposes your viewpoint. Try to understand where they're coming from, and show that you understand. This one change would elevate discourse in the blogging community more than anything else. Matters like AdLink are always subject to judgement. Each of us has a different point of view. That someone sees it differently is a good thing, emphatically, it is not a personality flaw.
I think perhaps he should read some of his very own posts before trying to give out advice on this. In particular, he could start with his political rants.
Update: Dave responds. However, his response amounts to "ad homeneim attacks are ok if you really dislike someone. Umm, sure Dave. There's a sure-fire way to get a dialog going. If your intent is to start an actual dialog with people who disagree with you, that's not the way to do it.
Sure, I often toss around the same kind of attack (see anything I've written about the RIAA, for instance) - but in those cases, dialog isn't what I'm looking for. Apparently, neither is Dave.
Michael and I recorded episode 5 of Industry Misinterpretations earlier this evening - we spoke about a lot of things, some of them even things we planned to speak about :)
If you have feedback, please email me - and emailed mp3s might well get aired and commented on. We'll be back next week - see you then.
Update: Nothing to see here, move along :) Podshow PDN {podshow-e2dddbd29bb7640b840c04dffe1ace99}
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/audio/industry_misinterpretations_10-14-06.mp3 ( Size: 11413716 )]
Jeff Jarvis notes how far removed from reality the media elite really are:
Gregorian says the journalist is the intermediary and interpreter “between society and knowledge” and that the journlist is “the guardian of our democracy. . . . Yo are the ones who keep democracy alive. Economic institutions won’t.” He says that news media outlets need to be made invulnerable to economic interests. He says “we don’t encourage people to be in the truth business. We encourage people to be in the profit business.”
I am afraid we continue to try to insulate and separate the old ways of journalism from the market — from the public they are trying to serve. That is terribly dangerous.
I agree with Jeff - whose "truth" needs to be protected from economics? Do I get to have the same protections? I could just as plausibly argue that Smalltalk is the best development language ever, and therefore we should be insulated from competition. Yeah, right. These news guys need to get real jobs.
Technorati Tags: web
Here are the first moves in the Google/YouTube copyright thing - Time-Warner is making noises about infringement (now that there are deep pockets involved):
Dick Parsons, Time Warner’s chairman and CEO, says he plans to pursue copyright complaints against YouTube. Time Warner owns AOL, Warner Brothers, Time Inc, HBO, Time Warner Cable, Home Box Office, New Line Cinema and Turner Broadcasting System, but is no longer associated with Warner Music, which has already struck a deal to supply music videos to YouTube users. Parsons says the decision has nothing to do with the $1.6 billion Google-YouTube deal on Monday, but it’s worth noting that Time Warner had a vague interest in buying YouTube, and thought the price was too high.
Chuckle. Nothing to do with the Google deal my foot :) Before this, they could try suing empty pockets. Now, they've got Google. Send out for popcorn; this is going to go extra innings.
Looks like Seaside is getting some attention:
Stephane Ducassé notes that Seaside downloads on SqueakSource have crossed the 200,000 downloads threshold. Rick Flower adds that this figure does not include the downloads of the VisualWorks port of Seaside, which is hosted on the Cincom public repository.
You can keep up with Squeak news at Weekly Squeak, and subscribe to their feed here.
Technorati Tags: seaside
Grady Booch has a nice post up on the difference between SOA and Snake Oil Architecture. I particularlay like this:
Stripped away of all the hype, a Service-Oriented Architecture is essentially a variant of well-proven message-passing architectural patterns. The variance comes in the form that services are cleverly designed to take advantage of the Web-centric infrastructure that pervades many organizations: services allow you to send and receive semantically rich messages through firewalls.
Smalltalk arrived on the message passing frontier a long, long time ago. In a lot of ways, HTTP messaging resembles what happens in Smalltalk - you send the server a message, and if it doesn't understand, it sends you back an appropriate HTTP error message (kind of like a DNU in Smalltalk). The server doesn't crash, it doesn't throw up its hands and stop; rather, it awaits the next message.
This kind of architecture has to be flexible, and growable at runtime. Smalltalk has been that way since the beginning, and HTTP servers operate in much the same way - you can add messages that they'll understand in well understood, dynamic ways. It's kind of nice to see people understanding this strength :)
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, development, web%20services
The 2006 Users Conference in Frankfurt, Germany is getting closer - you can get all the details by clicking on the user conference icon to the left (or the one below, if you are reading this via the feed).
I'll see you there - check out the updated agenda, and be sure to register.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, cincom, users conference
In today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at how to customize the display of an object in a user interface component - including the difference between customizing for a UI, and customizing for an inspector
If you go into the iTunes music store, move to Podcasts, and then do a Power Search - under title, use Smalltalk - the podcasts I've been doing here will show up, and you'll be able to subscribe straight from iTunes. Pretty cool.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Here's a great plan - one that could only be dreamed up by a set of geniuses running a spam outfit:
The statement from ICANN is just delicious:
Even if ICANN were properly brought before the court in this matter, which ICANN has not been, ICANN cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so. Only the Internet registrar with whom the registrant has a contractual relationship - and in certain instances the Internet registry - can suspend an individual domain name.
Heh. For some reason, the term "tool" keeps coming to mind in reference to the angry spammers...
Joel reviews "Beyond Java", and then makes a good point about the hurdles you face as a software developer:
Programming consists of overcoming two things: accidental difficulties, things which are difficult because you happen to be using inadequate programming tools, and things which are actually difficult , which no programming tool or language is going to solve. An example of an accidental difficulty is manual memory management, e.g. “malloc” and “free,” or the singleton classes people create in Java because they don’t have top level functions. An example of something which is actually difficult is dealing with the subtle interactions between different parts of a program, for example, figuring out all the implications of a new feature that you just added.
The key is to try and get out from under the accidental difficulties. Manifest Typing is one of those:
Although Stevey [ed: Yegge] lists lots of accidental difficulties in Java, when you read the book, you will notice a theme, which seems to be that it’s explicit typing, where the programmer is asked to declare the type of things, that leads to most of the problems. For example, the inability to express data in Java code is mostly just a side effect of the requirement that types be declared explicitly. Yes, there are other problems in Java, but this is The Big Hairy Problem right at the heart.
To a historian, it’s starting to look like type declarations are one of those accidental difficulties that good programming languages can eliminate. Beyond Java is a good summary of the arguments and worth reading.
I certainly agree - I think the "Farside" cartoon Yegge used the other day is as good a summary of the problems as any.
Technorati Tags: static typing, dynamic typing
There's the obvious "eyeballs to ads" thing, but this snippet from Slashdot makes an interesting point:
Google's core business model revolves around "fair use" and similar provisions of copyright law. I think they are most vulnerable in this area-- look at Belgium. So Google needed to buy YouTube for a couple of reasons related to this.
The first is because YouTube's business model also revolves around many of the same "fair use" provisions, and if YouTube loses its upcoming court cases, the fallout could fatally poison Google's business model. It would be very hard for Google to immunize itself from any judgments against YouTube that changed the interpretation of copyright law. Purchasing YouTube allows Google to directly counter such an attack with all its resources. It also decreases the likelihood of such an attack, since all the ambulance chasers who were smacking their lips in anticipation of an easy meal from YouTube's carcass are now slinking away, looking for easier prey that won't be able to fend them off for years with delaying tactics.
Under that theory, Google is a net loser if an (un-acquired) YouTube gets sued into oblivion, setting ugly fair use precedents on their way down. This way, Google gets to make their case (with their own high priced lawyers) if it comes to that. Note that Google went to visit Fox (MySpace) yesterday; they have a lot more clout in that meeting than YouTube would have had.
So to summarize: the YouTube buy wasn't just forward marketing, it was a defensive ploy. I might just buy that.
I have to say I agree with Jon Udell here - the audio editing piece of podcasting is time consuming, and trying to get a decently normalized sound is hard:
Here's the deal, from my perspective as an audio newbie now plunged into the deep end. As my podcasting method has evolved, I've settled into two modes of editing. In one mode, I refine the content of the recording. That involves fine-grained internal editing -- trimming out excessive ums, uhs, and pauses -- as well as coarse-grained edits that remove less interesting passages in order to focus on the most essential parts of the conversation. Applying both methods typically reduces the final product to somewhere between 70% and 90% of the original length and, in my opinion, sharpens the result in a way that's well worth the investment of time. I've always enjoyed this kind of editing in the textual realm, and it turns out that I enjoy it in the audio realm as well.
The other mode involves the purely technical work of taming sometimes-noisy phone lines and evening out audio levels. As I've become more sensitive to audio quality, I've found myself spending more and more time on the leveling process. It's not only needed to balance the caller and the callee. There can be a ton of loudness variation just within the caller's track. When you start fiddling with that, you're on a slippery slope that leads straight into a pit of drudgery.
Like Jon, I stumbled across the Levelator (in my case, it was by listening to TWiT). It's a primitive looking tool, but it does the job - you put in audio that's all over the map, and you end up with something that's nicely normalized. There are artifacts - the tool sometimes picks up ambient noise and levels that, but I can see that in Audacity easily enough and chop it out. It's a very nice tool for this task.
Technorati Tags: audio, audio editing
Today's Smalltalk Daily extends the LineReader class to handle field separators. While doing that, we get to see how Test Driven Development helps catch problems early.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Scoble doesn't paint the full picture here. Sure, it's easy to get credit in the U.S., and it's easy to buy a lot of expensive stuff. The problem is the debt load you end up building up:
Let me tell you how it works in the US of A. You walk into Best Buy. Ask for a credit application. Fill it out. They approve you for $10,000 on the spot (as long as you’ve paid all your credit card bills on time). You head over to the big screen department, pick out your $4,000 big screen and your $600 Playstation 3, and a $500 HD-DVD drive. Then you pay something like $140 per month in payments.
And the interest rate for these on the spot loans? In the neighborhood of 20%. Sure, you might get 12 months same as cash, but that's a bet the store is making with you - the bet being that you won't actually pay it all off in 12 months. If you don't, that 20% gets applied retroactively to the entire original amount, and then monthly to the revolving balance after that.
Here's a better idea: if you can't afford to spend that money upfront in disposable income (i.e., cash) - then don't. You'll be a whole lot happier at the end of each month when the bills come rolling in.
Technorati Tags: debt
That's the title of the new book I just picked up:
I've got a fascination with the Civil War period, and I liked "Battle Cry of Freedom", an earlier work by McPherson - he recommends this book by Jennifer Weber. This one looks very interesting as well. Here's the topic:
If Civil War battlefields saw vast carnage, the Northern home-front was itself far from tranquil. Fierce political debates set communities on edge, spurred secret plots against the Union, and triggered widespread violence, such as the New York City draft riots. And at the heart of all this turmoil stood Northern anti-war Democrats, nicknamed "Copperheads." Now, Jennifer L. Weber offers the first full-length portrait of this powerful faction to appear in almost half a century. Weber reveals how the Copperheads came perilously close to defeating Lincoln and ending the war in the South's favor. Indeed, by the summer of 1864, they had grown so strong that Lincoln himself thought his defeat was "exceedingly likely." Passionate defenders of civil liberties and states' rights--and often virulent racists--the Copperheads deplored Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, his liberal interpretation of the Constitution, and, most vehemently, his moves toward emancipation. Weber reveals how the battle over these issues grew so heated, particularly in the Midwest, that Northerners feared their neighbors would destroy their livestock, burn their homes, even kill them. Indeed, some Copperheads went so far as to conspire with Confederate forces and plan armed insurrections, including an attempt to launch an uprising during the Democratic convention in Chicago. Finally, Weber illuminates the role of Union soldiers, who, furious at Copperhead attacks on the war effort, moved firmly behind Lincoln. The soldiers' support for the embattled president kept him alive politically in his darkest times, and their victories on the battlefield secured his re-election. Disgraced after the war, the Copperheads melted into the shadows of history. Here, Jennifer L. Weber illuminates their dramatic story. Packed with sharp observation and fresh interpretations, Copperheads is a gripping account of the fierce dissent that Lincoln called "the fire in the rear."
I'm looking forward to this book.
Late last spring, when I got my cholesterol and triglyceride levels from my doctor, I realized that I was going to have to change my eating habits. The constant acid reflux should have been a hint, too (my wife brought that up more than once). Looking at my diet, I had been eating tons of junk - potato chips, fries - and some stuff that wasn't necessarily junk, but that I shouldn't eat a lot of - pasta and bread.
I also started making more time to exercise, and I've increased my daily jog from 20 minutes to 45+. Importantly, I've made sure to carve out time for exercise while I've been on the road, too - something I had stopped doing. The results have been pretty good - I've dropped about 20 pounds, I feel a lot better, the acid reflux is gone, and - more importantly - the cholesterol and triglyceride numbers dropped to safe levels.
This came to mind because a friend of mine had a friend of his (acquaintance of mine) die of a sudden heart attack last week. He was still in his 30's, a decade younger than me. That's sobering news, and made me realize that taking better care of myself isn't just about better fitting clothes.
Technorati Tags: health
Threadwatch claims to have a source on this:
GOOG is looking at Facebook at a 2.3bil price. This could be a total joke on their part, but the source is solid.
Hmm. Another all stock deal, or is this just nonsense? I've been hearing a lot about Facebook on CNet's Buzz out Loud podcast, but haven't paid much attention. There is a parallel with the YouTube deal though: Google had video, but YouTube had gotten marketshare. Here, Google has Orkut, but again: Facebook has the eyeballs.
Update: From the comments, I found Jeremy Warner's skeptical take on the YouTube acquisition. I have a problem with his column though, based on this assertion:
So far, so positive. Yet there is also a more sinister reason why Google is buying YouTube. It is to do with the fact that the two have a common set of business values in the sense that neither seems to care a fig about the law of copyright. Both rely on the use of free content to drive their business. They therefore have next to no cost, or at least one so marginal that it wouldn't be recognised by any traditional media company.
We all know about YouTube's copyright issues, but Google? What is he talking about? The news aggregation case, perhaps? Google's book search (which seems to lead to higher sales; go figure)? He doesn't explain, either because he's engaged in hand waving, or thinks it's too obvious to bother with. I'd like to know what he's thinking.
Ralph Johnson explains what patterns are, and what they aren't.
Technorati Tags: design, design patterns
Read/Write Web explains why 2007 will be the breakout year for RSS, and it comes down to two things - first, Internet Explorer 7:
Despite the issues with RSS implementation in IE7 which Marshall Kirkpatrick rightly pointed out - and Dave Winer agreed with - IE7 still represents a major milestone for RSS. It will almost certainly be the most used browser in the world within 12 months
Don't underestimate the impact IE 7 will have here. It's still the most widely used browser, and it will stay that way for the forseeable future. I'm already seeing an uptick in IE usage in my logs (on the RSS side) due to the slow rollout of IE 7 beta. This is one thing that will help make RSS mainstream. The other - Outlook:
"Work with RSS Subscriptions from within Office Outlook 2007. You can now fully subscribe to and interact with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds right from Office Outlook 2007, the most natural place to manage this kind of information. It’s easy to get started adding RSS feeds using the RSS Subscriptions home page within Office Outlook 2007."
Personally, I hate Outlook a lot, and won't work with it (I tried recently - I still hate it) - but I'm an outlier on this. Outlook is used by tons of people, and having built-in RSS support is going to really drive adoption, IMHO.
Via Ramon Leon, I ran across this great write up on Enterprise development, and why it sucks eggs. It's things like this that make me happy that I don't live in that world - the software I build is built my way, and any problems are my own fault.
Technorati Tags: IT
In Today's Smalltalk Daily, we stay with the simple UI we built yesterday, and add a dialog to request the filename (instead of hardcoding it into the application).
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Doc Searls asks the salient question:
Forget about pilfered programs from Fox and all the BigCo jive. What would YouTube have been worth to Google if the user - generated stuff wasn't there?
Head on over to his place for his take on why Google Video never really took off, and why YouTube did. I was a skeptic on YouTube's chances, but I get what Doc is saying. Now, anyway. Six months ago, not so much :)
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