I just about fell out of my chair when I read this, from Hank Steinbrenner:
"It's pretty obvious which players we're not going to trade," the owner's son said Wednesday, before rattling off the team's most-prized young pitchers. "Chamberlain, Hughes and even Kennedy. Not for a position player."
Does this mean that Yankees management has finally figured out that "one more hitter" isn't the answer?
As I've said before, I'm completely convinced that studios are screwing the writers - heck, here's another example of what passes for "thinking" in that set, from Michael Eisner:
According to CNET's The Social, in addition to calling the strike "stupid," Eisner said that the studios "make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners," adding that, "They make all these kinds of things, and who's making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple." Eisner then went on to say that, "If I was a union, I'd be striking up wherever he is."
Riiiiight. Should I get a piece of ABC, since I "pay" for the ads by watching them? With that out of the way, I have to say - I don't really agree with this piece at Forbes either, which backs the writers:
When 12,000 Hollywood writers traded pencils for picket signs this week, they took a huge risk. Even riskier: not striking. Losing to the studios now could doom their union as television gives way to the Internet.
I think my wife had the analogy about right when we talked about this last night. I mentioned something about the strike, and she said "Eastern Airlines". Remember them? The pilots struck, because they were being screwed over by the owners. However, the strike managed to be a lose-lose - Eastern just folded.
Now, I don't see the networks "just folding". However, I do see them losing touch with the younger demographic. My daughter, 13, already spends more time on the net than she does in front of the TV - and most of her friends do the same. With the few shows she does make time to watch ready to disappear, that tenuous connection to TV will just snap. Like the Eastern strike, the writers may well be outsmarting themselves - I don't know how much they can afford to lose from the younger, already drifting, demographic.
Sure, they're being screwed. The problem is, the cure may be far worse than the disease.
Here's a concrete example of DRM suckage: if you bought video from Major League Baseball before 2006, your CDs are now useless. Why? Because they've abandoned the old DRM system and gone to a new one. Which also means that buyers of current MLB media are on borrowed time. From the Joy of Sox blog:
"MLB no longer supports the DDS system" that it once used and so any CDs with downloaded games on them "are no good. They will not work with the current system."
Ponder that next time you buy a song or show from iTunes.
Update: Looks like Baseball has figured out that this is bad PR:
Wood has blogged about this problem before, but for whatever reason (because it got picked up by Techmeme.com perhaps? Or BoingBoing? ) it got more attention this time — and MLB apparently heard about the rising storm of negative publicity somehow. An update to Wood’s blog says that he got a call from a representative for the league, who admitted that they had handled things badly, and said that everyone affected would be able to download their games again for free.
I've done a number of screencasts on the browser, including one on the updates that are coming down the pike. Well, in today's dev build (available if you are in vw-dev), it's in the system:
Yes, that blue link will launch your default browser. Safari, in my case :)
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, code browser, refactoring browser
I'm trying to make sure that you can find Smalltalk information in a variety of places and formats. There's this blog, and the entire Cincom Smalltalk blog site. On the main CST site, we have:
And now, there are a few more ways to track this stuff, or point friends and co-workers to it:
 | Smalltalk on YouTube |
 | Smalltalk Videos on Facebook |
| Industry Misinterpretations on Facebook |
If you think we should have a presence anywhere else, let me know.
Technorati Tags: cincom smalltalk, video, screencast, podcast
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at loading Seaside 2.8 into the upcoming release of Cincom Smalltalk.
Michael notes that a lot of new stuff just hit the dev build of Cincom Smalltalk, so there are a few integration issues to sort out:
What to say, this build is going to be a bit messy for those giving it a go. It's the birth child of several major changes being merged in at once. It's very exciting, because many of the enhancements I've been loading in to my image (eg: RB4xx) are now in there by default. The new SUnitToo and SUnitToo(ls) are now included as well. There's lots of good stuff in there.
As an added bonus - Seaside 2.8 is included in the build and for the first time since we started this project, all the tests pass in the image straight out of the box! That's very exciting. In our development environment we now have over 300 unit tests that help us automate the testing of new Seaside versions. All of those pass too.
Our development versions of Seaside are now pulling in Glorp prerequisites if you load the Seaside-Glorp goodie as well. This brings Glorp+Seaside to a wider development audience and it should be getting a great deal more focus over the next few months as we gear up to the release of Cincom Smalltalk VisualWorks 7.6 and then Web Velocity 1.0 some time after that.
The next release is scheduled for Q1 of 2008, so things should calm down by then - and the toolset will be incrementally better.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, cincom smalltalk
Dave Buck does some fast alpha blending in Cincom Smalltalk, without dropping to C:
Using this technique, I can alpha blend two images of size 1128x680 within about 200mS on my system. Not bad for being pure Smalltalk code. With a primitive, I'm sure I can go much faster.
A dot net developer looks at Smalltalk, and notices that the shiniest things in .NET are pale imitations of stuff Smalltalk had back when the first IBM PCs were introduced.
Lambda the Ultimate notes that Etoys is an important part of the OLPC initiative:
The Etoys end-user programming environment is becoming tremendously important because of its inclusion with the One Laptop Per Child XO . Etoys was invented by Alan Kay's research group and is in continuous development and use as an integrated feature of Squeak Smalltalk. The Squeak/Etoys community includes lots of researchers, programmers, teachers, and kids around the world.
I've used Etoys to teach Smalltalk - it's a great way to get concepts across to kids.
Have a look here as well.
I've created another short introductory video - this one covers how #printOn: works in terms of the inspector - using the same class I created in this video.
I've also uploaded the video to YouTube.
At some point, big companies are going to recognize that their script driven customer support scheme is causing them more PR grief than it's worth - but now is not that time. This post, where a guy was repeatedly told that his WiFi would not work "because he used a Mac" rang a bell with me - I used to get the same crap from Comcast over my Linux box.
I'd have a problem with the cable modem - like no synch to the signal. I'd call, they would start their script, and stop dead when I explained that I couldn't go into Windows settings, because I was using Linux. Bam, they would immediately blame the Linux system. Never mind the fact that the cable modem wasn't getting a signal - it had to be the weird OS.
So here's another poor guy, getting the same lame responses, for the same lame reasons. The more things change....
Niall Ross does the most thorough reporting from Smalltalk events - both ESUG and Smalltalk Solutions. All of his reports, StS from 2002 forward, and ESUG since 1999, can be found here.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk solutions, esug
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at on the fly upgrading of application components
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Michael has a few tips, including some important info about upgrading Parallels.
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we look at the brace constructor for Arrays - built into Squeak, and easy to add to Cincom Smalltalk. Here's an example - this: {3 + 4. Date today} - yields an array with two items - 7, and today's date.
This is mostly useful for code compatibility between Cincom Smalltalk and Squeak.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk
Google is in the middle of a pretty big play - look at "Open Social" and the Android mobile OS play together, and you see the same thing: Google wants you to have access to Google apps everywhere. Unlike Apple, they don't really care what device you use, so long as your searches, calendar needs, and mail are all coming from Google.
The ground they are fighting on with "Open Social" is tougher - while developers might like the idea of a common API, the users of Facebook will have to be enticed off by something better and/or cooler - meaning, Google's influence there is reduced. On the mobile side, Mathew Ingram is completely correct though - the market in the US is very, very ready for more openness.
The last time there was a writers strike, "reality shows" like "Cops" were one result - another was a slippage in the number of viewers. Things are different now - unlike 1988, there are lots and lots of choices for eyeballs, from video games to the internet - Duncan Riley of TechCrunch nails that issue here:
The strike poses an interesting challenge for television at a time where internet usage has surpassed TV viewing time in most homes. Users are already choosing online entertainment over TV, how many more will switch off their televisions when their favorite shows stop going to air? These eyeballs present a real opportunity for online content creators at all levels; from the VC funded video startups through to the DIY part timers. The trends in viewer numbers have all been headed online to this point, this strike could well accelerate this trend, particularly if it lasts over the long term. It will be a chance for millions online to bloom
The writers think this is like a baseball strike, but I'm not sure they're right. There is a limited supply of top notch left handers who can throw strikes - there's no such shortage of writers. It's not as if the plotlines on most shows take enormous amounts of thought, either - most middling novelists have deeper plots than the average TV show.
I am completely convinced that the producers are screwing over the writers - these are the same clowns that guide the "thinking" behind the RIAA and the MPAA, after all. However, I'm also convinced that the writers have way, way less leverage than they think. Any strike breaking ballplayer has to live in the same locker room with the other players later. A writer? Last time I looked, creative writing required a networked PC, and that requirement doesn't involve any day to day contact with the current writers. Unfortunately for the writers, I just don't think they hold the cards they think they do.
Technorati Tags: writers strike
Quick, someone get Paul Ingevaldson to work with non-IT people for a few weeks - maybe he'll stop spouting nonsense like this:
It has been my experience that IT professionals will do just about anything to please the user. Regardless of what is requested, the typical IT pro says yes. But what has it gotten us? We are being outsourced, offshored and told that we don’t matter. We agree to a major enhancement to a system during development, and we get charged with missing budgets and deadlines. We agree to modify an outside package, and then we are criticized when we incur ongoing maintenance costs.
Why are there so many end user developed systems out there? Could it be because the default answer from IT tends to be no? Could it be because - in general - they don't understand the business of the company, and are way too busy managing the pipes?
If his theory were correct, "Dilbert" wouldn't exist. He has a point about "the rest of us" not always understanding the true cost of the things we ask for, but it's a two way street full of misunderstanding - not the one way boulevard he imagines.
I should have put this link in the podcast post, but completely forgot. Dave Thomas just published an article on Javascript in the Journal of Object Technology.
SCI FI Wire reports that Heroes will wrap early if the writers strike is more than a quick demonstration:
TV Guide.com reported that producers of NBC's Heroes are shooting an alternate ending to the Dec. 3 episode that will wrap up the second season early in the event an expected writers' strike prevents the show from continuing with new episodes.
I'll say this: the strike will certainly get my attention if this happens. I don't watch tons of TV, but I do love Heroes. Going back to my earlier assertion though, I think any right/wrong assessment between the writers and producers misses the real problem: if this strike lasts long enough to take out shows like Heroes, the long term audience toll could end up surprising all sides. I'm not sure either side is thinking clearly about that.
Technorati Tags: stupidity
This week, we spoke to Dave Thomas - he runs Bedarra today, but is best known in the Smalltalk community for his work at OTI with embedded Smalltalk, IBM Smalltalk, and Envy. We had a long and wide ranging conversation about the state of software development, the history of Smalltalk, and how Dave sees the industry now.
We went long, so I've split this into two parts - I'll have part 2 out next weekend. As always, if you have feedback, send it to smalltalkpodcasts@cincom.com - or head on over to Podcast Alley, iTunes, or the "Industry Misinterpretations" group at Facebook.
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/audio/2007/industry_misinterpretations60.mp3 ( Size: 11340510 )]
Vorlath continues in his quest to prove Fred Brooks wrong, and mostly shows that he's really good at seeing trees. Forests? Not so much. He takes this assertion from "The Mythical Man Month":
Software is invisible and unvisualizable.
And attempts to call it debunked by pulling out a domain specific modeling tool example:
Let me debunk this once and for all. Take a look here . That's the node editor in Blender. With a certain set of primitive components, you can build ANY software. Anything in existence. So I'm not talking about Blender the software, or how to build the node editor. I'm talking about building software within the node editor. It works. And people like using it. This point of Brooks' that software is invisible is dead wrong. It's false. And it should be done with once and for all. People used to say that we'd never use graphical GUI's because text was so much faster and took less memory. Brooks says the screen is too small. Tell that to the people that make Blender and Lightwave.
We've just debunked 25% of Brooks' argument.
Not so much, no. You've shown a limited example for a fairly small field. There are fairly serious issues with the example - try building any non-trivial application using that kind of screen modeling. You quickly end up in what we used to call "green haze" with IBM's UI painter for VisualAge, or the old Digitalk PARTS system. It works really well for demos and relatively small examples. It doesn't scale at all well as your component space scales, because you quickly run out of screen turf for all the connecting wires.
There's also the small matter of the software that builds that modeler - is it also built in the modeler? Somehow I doubt it.
For any global assertion - like the ones from Brooks - it's easy to find anecdotal exceptions. It's fairly hard to find general cases that argue against him though.
Here's a question - if that kind of visual modeling is an actual debunking, then why is Vorlath bothering to design a new language? If he's found a general exception to Brooks' assertion, he should just be able to adopt the Blender system, right?
Technorati Tags: software development
Mathew Ingram points to a Canadian study that shows what most of us already knew: music sharing isn't hurting music sales. There are changes afoot due to digital sales pushing us back to more of a "singles model", but that's different:
“The analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased.
That is, we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.”
I won't hold my breath waiting for the RIAA to acquire a clue.
Technorati Tags: RIAA, management, stupidity
We have another two parter coming up on "Industry Misinterpretations" - this time with "Big Dave" Thomas - the guy who made OTI - and thus Envy and IBM Smalltalk - happen. We had a good conversation about software development, agile, and the part of Smalltalk history that Dave was part of. I should have the audio out sometime tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I get the ancillary pieces, and when I get the editing done.
There were some skype drop-outs, but I'm hoping that wasn't too bad - we'll see how it goes
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, oti, software development
Looks like the ScreenWriters are going on strike - barring a last minute miracle in negotiations. That's going to mean really bad TV a few months from now, especially if it's prolonged. However, I suspect that both the writers and management are going to regret this if it goes as long (or longer) than the 1988 strike:
The writers’ union’s 1988 strike, which lasted five months and cost Hollywood an estimated $500 million, had a profound effect on the industry. It helped further fragment a TV audience already being seduced away from the big networks by cable and videogames; it is estimated that network viewership dropped 9 percent. And that was before the cultural onslaught of the Internet.
A nine percent drop is significant; I'd expect more damage this time around. Perhaps both sides ought to ponder the whole MAD theory...
I just realized that my phone can, in fact take video. This should have been far more obvious - if you look at the keypad, there's a button that has two icons on it - a camera and movie camera. Is the video option under that? Heck no - you have to click the left arrow, to the screen with VCast options - down at number seven (in a locked cabinet, as it were) is the "Take Flix" option.
What idiot thought that was a good idea?
Technorati Tags: mobile phone
Andres Valloud points to the burgeoning registrations for the upcoming Smalltalk conference in Buenos Aires:
The Smalltalks 2007 conference to be held in Buenos Aires just went past 100 registrations, and we are still 5 weeks from the conference. We have also been getting high quality presentation proposals. I can't quite tell what they are yet, but it is going to be a very interesting gathering.
Looks like it's going to be a great event!
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, conferences
Java and C# continue to crawl along the trail blazed by Smalltalk over 20 years ago - witness this post about creating your own foreach() method:
Even if you never use this code (I won't!), you can see at a small scale the power of thinking in closures, especially for implementing language features. This is one of the reasons why Smalltalk was such a small language - you could implement much of what Java programmers think of as language as library methods. Lisp and FORTH are small languages (at least conceptually - ignore Common Lisp!) for similar reasons. Java 7 is aiming in the same direction.
Of course, you can enjoy a small language now, instead of waiting for the gremlins of the JSR to figure out why it would have been a good idea :)
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, java, software development
On today's Smalltalk Daily, I show how to deal with malformed XML without creating a tag soup parser.
Update: The link actually goes to today's cast now :)
Mathew Ingram notes that the Times has moved into modern aggregation - as he says, newspapers have always been aggregators, and this is just the latest iteration:
When you click, you go to BlogRunner.com, which is a blog aggregator/headline engine that the New York Times acquired last year. I wasn’t initially that impressed with it when I first saw it (before the Times bought it), but I’ve been back several times since and I think it does a pretty good job. As Erick Schonfeld notes at TechCrunch, the Times is also building content aggregated by BlogRunner into other parts of its site, including at the bottom of news stories (the same way I use Sphere on my posts).
The Times has taken a couple of smart steps recently - they opened up their archives, they got rid of TimesSelect - now this. A lot of newspapers don't look like they'll manage the transition to digital real well - but the Times is starting to figure it out.
Technorati Tags: media, newspapers
Goran Krampe has a bunch of OOPSLA posts - start here and keep scrolling.
Technorati Tags: OOPSLA
I guess we'll find out whether open APIs matter to people - Google has announced that everyone but Facebook is onboard with their new "Open Social" system. Via TechCrunch:
MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining.
That's fairly big, because it means that one API now gives you "widget" access to multiple systems. Facebook had all the momentum right through yesterday, but I have to think that this takes some of the wind out of their sails. On the other hand, I don't know that I'm about to move the Industry Misinterpretations Group off Facebook - and the various widgets on these systems are mostly useless. The big thing is "where the people are" - so the question is, will this drive any movement off Facebook? If it does, they'll look back wistfully at that Yahoo offer they turned down.
Technorati Tags: social media
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at reading images (graphics) into Cincom Smalltalk.
Mathew Ingram notes that Apple is not immune to upgrade problems - the fanboys notwithstanding:
The growing number of reports about problems with Leopard, the new Mac OS, show that there is a lot more to it than that. I just heard from a friend -- a relatively recent convert to Apple PCs -- who said that the upgrade didn’t just present him with a blue screen (something that until now had been associated exclusively with Windows machines), but actually wiped out most of his data and a substantial number of applications as well. I don’t know whether his problems were a result of using the third-party Application Enhancer software or not, as some have reported.
I had decided to wait on Leopard, and it looks like it was a good idea. I'll give it a few months to sort out.
I've been pondering the post from Steve Jones that I commented on the other day; it was while looking over the comments that I had a small epiphany - would Jones accept the "well, you can't expect much from the masses" theory in a home improvement project? Would he accept shoddy work from a contractor as quickly as he seems willing to accept it from a developer?
In general, how happy would he be if his attitude toward accepting mediocrity extended to every service he paid for? Does he just shrug his shoulders when a repair guy comes out and botches a job?
Technorati Tags: software development
The tragedy is, a lot of people are going to cheer Brendan Eich on in his response to Microsoft's Chris Wilson - simply because it's the "good guys" against the "bad guys". However, I had a bunch of red flags go off when I read this:
The pattern of general assertions about small being beautiful and sufficient for web application developers' needs, met by specific arguments listing use-cases where JS does not scale in time or space, or lacks basic data integrity, type safety, and programming in the large support, in turn met by absolutely zero specific counter-arguments -- this is a pattern we have seen over and over in TG1 this year.
If things go that way, I expect to see a larger, more baroque, harder to understand Javascript come out the other end. I've seen this movie before - it's what happened to Java when they added generics. I suspect that the best thing possible for the wider community would be a nasty fight at the standards board that prevented any "progress".
Technorati Tags: web development
For the curious people who asked me about the restaurant I mentioned here, I found the name - "Bardia's Orleans Cafe". It's well worth visiting. Here's a Washington Post review of the place - it's at 2412 18th street in the District.
Dare Obasanjo has some good insight on what Google will likely accomplish with their entry into the social media API space: they'll force a standard.
If enough momentum gains around OpenSocial, then three things will happen
- Widget developers will start to favor coding to OpenSocial because it supports multiple sites as well as targeting the Facebook platform
- Eventually Facebook platform developers will start asking Zuckerburg and company to support OpenSocial so they only need to worry about one code base (kinda, it won’t be that easy)
- Other companies with proprietary widget platforms or plans to create one will bow down to the tide and adopt OpenSocial
That sounds about right to me - it will be interesting to watch two things over the next little while:
Supposedly, DirectX 10 was one of the reasons that gaming on Vista was going to be better than gaming on XP. Well... maybe not so much. Have a look at this post on ExtremeTech - it sounds like this is yet another reason to stay on XP.
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we add code completion to the development tools.
Technorati Tags: smalltalk, code completion
I was fairly appalled when I read this "enterpirse" piece from Steve Jones - the fact that he's in charge of any project at all is pretty depressing. Not because he's actively opposed to dynamic languages - that's just a symptom. No, it's this kind of attitude:
This is the reason I am against dynamic languages and all of the fan-boy parts of IT. IT is no-longer a hackers paradise populated only by people with a background in Computer Science, it is a discipline for the masses and as such the IT technologies and standards that we adopt should recognise that stopping the majority doing something stupid is the goal, because the smart guys can always cope.
If you are willing to put up with bad developers and poor practices, I guess you'll come out the other end believing this sort of thing. In Jones' world, the best you can do is fight against the mediocrity. Gosh forbid you do any selective hiring, or train the staff you have - or even hold them to high expectations. No, better to expect nothing and get nothing.
That thinking combines pretty well with this NY Times piece I read yesterday - on why Enterprise applications tend to be hard to use. I'll go so far as to say that they'll keep being hard to use until the kind of thinking illustrated by Jones leaves IT.
Hat tip to Patrick Logan, who led me to the Jones post and to this one from Steve Vinoski.
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