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itNews

It's not about Needing a Tablet

January 4, 2010 6:20:03.930

While I agree with Scoble's latest post about tablet computers - I do think that they'll go pretty mainstream if Apple releases one (whether Apple does so is still up in the air, regardless of how "solid" the rumors seem to be).

However - coming from Scoble, who's been hailing the coming tablet computing era for years, this has the sound of "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" about it. See this post from back in 2007, for instance :)

Having said that, I have to agree that Joe Wilcox's world weary "we don't need a tablet" post is just small minded:

Apple's rumored tablet computer cannot live up to the hype, which has reached almost ridiculous levels of rumor, speculation and anticipation. The rumored tablet will fall short of expectations, because they are simply too unrealistic. What surprises me most about the excitement and early analyst sales projections: No one is talking about addressable market.

I think all of that was being said about the iPhone before it appeared as well, and it pretty much reset the entire smart phone space. If Apple does bring out a tablet, I expect to see a full repeat of that play out.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Condensing the Changes File

January 4, 2010 8:08:30.635

There's an option under the System menu in VisualWorks (available in ObjectStudio 8 using the VW launcher) to Condense Changes. Today's video covers what that menu item does, why you might want to use it, and - more importantly - what it actually does.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smaltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk on the XO

January 4, 2010 8:28:53.515

The XO is another name for the OLPC - and it looks like some interesting Smalltalk (Squeak) work is going on to more fully integrate Smalltalk into the environment on that system - check out Milan Zimmerman's work to get Smalltalk hooked up to the activity system - meaning, making it possible to build apps that:

  • Are developed in Etoys (perhaps more precisely, in the underlying Squeak Smalltalk environment).
  • Run in Sugar, allowing interaction with the Datastore.
  • Participates in the Sugar environment, that is, can be saved/resumed in the Sugar Journal, can copy/paste onto a Journal.

Sounds pretty cool.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

When Flexibility Backfires: Video from ESUG 2009

January 4, 2010 11:59:11.469

Here's Yann Monclair at ESUG 2009, talking about some of the downsides of flexibility in Smalltalk. To get a copy of his slides, click here. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smaltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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open source

In Which an OSS Advocate Fails to Learn

January 4, 2010 12:48:56.082

I love this "call to action" from Michael Widenius amusing - here he decries Oracle acquiring MySQL:

It's not in the Internet users interest that one key piece of the net would be owned by an entity that has more to gain by severely limiting and in the long run even killing it as an open source product than by keeping it alive. If Oracle were allowed to acquire MySQL, we would be looking at less competition among databases, which will mean higher license and support prices. In the end it's always the consumers and the small businesses that have to pay the bills, in this case to Oracle.

Simple question for Mr. Widenius: just who sold MySQL to Sun in the first place? Once you did that (and took the huge payday, I might add) - what did you expect was going to happen? A future filled with happy Unicorns?

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

All Eyes Turn to Apple

January 4, 2010 17:22:02.259

The Apple Tablet rumors are reaching a crescendo - PCWorld is reporting that Apple will be making a major product announcement in January:

Sources in a position to know tell me Apple is indeed planning a media event later this month at which the company will announce a major new product. The gathering is to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, a space Apple often uses for media events like this. According to other sources, it will occur on Wednesday, Jan. 27, not Tuesday, Jan. 26, as had been rumored.

Now, it could be the tablet - or, it could be something along the lines of a real product where the AppleTV device lives. Based on some recent activity Apple's been involved in, I wonder if that's the real play here? It would be a lot like Apple to let the Tablet flames rise, and then come out with something completely different.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Beyond the Environment

January 4, 2010 18:07:12.010

Ok, this is an interesting little trend - James Ladd has been working on a Smalltalk implementation that would run on the JVM (part of his motivation is the widespread installation of the JVM, part is the widespread usage of tools like Eclipse). Now I see that there's some work to make it possible to develop Gemstone/S on Eclipse:

GemDev is (highly) experimental implementation of Eclipse-based IDE for GemStone Smalltalk, with intention to bring mainstream tools to Smalltalk. IDE provides features like Smalltalk Browser, code editor or object inspector. Basic navigation functionality (searching for references/implementors/senders) is available together with syntax coloring, hyperlinking, on the fly syntax error checking and code warnings.

Meanwhile, the Web Velocity team has been working to make Smalltalk available in a completely new environment - native web browser based tools. One thing is for sure - there's a lot of interesting "break the traditional metaphors" work going on, which is good - stagnation is death :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Cincom Smalltalk NC: Closer

January 4, 2010 20:41:16.217

We're closer to the NC release at Cincom - the shipments of the commercial product are just starting to go out (after the holiday break), and we thought it would bad form to get the NC in people's hands before paying customers saw the bits :)

There are also a few loose ends being wrapped up technically on the NC installlers, but we think all of this stuff is close. You should expect to see VW 7.7 and OS 8.2 NC available within a week or two (fingers crossed)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Conferences

January 5, 2010 6:32:26.388

The Cincom Smalltalk team be coming to see you later this month:

  • January 21: Seattle, Washington
  • January 26: Toronto, Ontario
  • January 28: Baltimore/Washinton, Maryland

Attendance is free; you can register here. We're prepared to show you what's new and exciting in the product suite - VW 7.7 and OS 8.2 have just been released, and Web Velocity 1.0 has only been out for a little while. So... here's a question: if you plan to attend one of these events, what would you like to see? What topics would you like to see covered? Drop a comment, or send me email.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Video from Smalltalks 2009

January 5, 2010 7:11:36.989

Looks like the Gemstone folks have split video from their presentation at Smalltalks 2009 into multiple parts, and have released the first part.

Gemstone has released part 2

Gemstone has released part 3

Gemstone has released part 4

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posted by James Robertson

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marketing

The New Marketing Battle Cry

January 5, 2010 7:48:58.509

I'm starting to see that marketing is a lot like teaching - periodically, new fads sweep through the field, and a lot of people get swept up in the new idea - whether what they were doing before worked or not. Take this David Meerman Scott Video from Eloqua Experience, for instance, where the catch phrase is "No one cares about your product".

From this, the take away is that you should promote something other than your product - success stories (real or imagined), problems your product solves (channeling the late 90's "solution, not software" thing), and so on. There's something to that; people do want to hear more about the problems you can solve than about a dry list of features and functions.

But.... a lot depends on what kind of product you are promoting, too. Take development tools in general, and, for me, Smalltalk in particular. Back in the early and mid 90's, there was a lot of top down selling happening in this field - I remember being involved in plenty of "bake offs", where I'd go in as a Smalltalk SE (sales engineer) and do a competitive demo against a guy promoting a competing product (typically some 4GL toolset). That simply doesn't happen anymore; tools in this segment move bottom up now. Developers read blogs, news sources reporting on the IT sector, and they talk to friends about what they use/see. When something catches their eye, they download it, and - so long as the installation and getting started process doesn't immediately disqualify it, they might try and build something small.

That process right there is where product marketing plays a role in the development environment space. It's correct that developers, like everyone else, want to know what problem your product solves, but for them, the problems in question are development ones. If your tool is aimed at a particular niche - Ruby on Rails and Web Velocity are specifically web development things, for instance - you aren't going to promote the building of Windows client side customer care apps. So what kind of information is the developer looking for as he/she evaluates the tool? Yes, the boring old "features and functions" stuff. Spiffed up for the modern era, that means simple tutorial pages and short videos rather than large piles of doc, but still: the developer is interested in the basics.

None of that contradicts the basics of David's thesis, but it does mean that you can't just take the glib 30,000 foot view and decree that "features and fuctions" is of no interest to anyone. It all depends on who the audience is. For instance, let's say that the developer evaluating your tools likes what he sees, and decides "hey, I'd like to get me some of that". At that point, they'll go talk to a manager about using the tool. That conversation won't revolve around low level details; the manager will mostly assume that his staff has done that work for him. The manager will go on a hunt for other information:

  • Does anyone else use this stuff (answer: success stories)
  • What does it cost (answer: information on the website)

The roadblocks at the management level can be political, of course - you could have an IT manager who has decided that "this shop uses technology X, period", where X is usually some safe sounding mainstream thing. Barring that, all the roadblocks are back at the vendor end: can the manager find the information he's looking for? If not, you lost a prospect very early in the process.

In summary, you need to take what David's saying and apply it to the field you're in. What information your target audience wants and needs from you depends on who that target audience is. You simply can't apply a blanket rule.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Missing Source Code

January 5, 2010 8:54:47.611

What do you do if you start up VisualWorks and all you see is decompiled code? This video shows you what's probably wrong, and how to fix it.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Too Little, Too Late

January 5, 2010 9:44:57.614

Like Blu-Ray, I think this effort at a standard download format for online video is a day late and a dollar short? Why? Well, there's recognition even from the advocates:

"The market desperately needs this, but in some senses it is already moving past it toward rental of content over ownership," said Danielle Levitas, an analyst at IDC. Ms. Levitas also said DECE's progress had been slower than she expected: "I wanted to see devices in the market already announced by C.E.S."

We just picked up an XBox this fall, and I signed up for Netflix not long after that - for a flat monthly fee, I can stream a whole bunch of content whenever I feel like it. Apple just bought a streaming outfit (LaLa), so it seem slike they know where things are headed, too.

There are a small number of movies/TV shows that I want to own persistently - video simply isn't like music; most things I watch, I have no interest in seeing them again. Even for the things I do want to see again, streaming mostly solves that problem. Maybe if these guys had a standard right now, and a slew of hardware supporting it, this would have a chance of catching on - but I have my doubts even then. Blu-Ray seems to be very slow to pick up, because DVD's are good enough, everyone has a player, and streaming is coming online. Where does this initiative fit, exactly?

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

The Joys of Cold Weather

January 5, 2010 10:14:00.356

It's cold enough here in Maryland, but I took a look at the part of Florida where my parents live - it's 43 there now. I imagine that's screwing up my Dad's golf league :)

Meanwhile, I see where Orlando hit 21 F overnight, and that it'll go down to 28 tonight. I was in Disney on vacation in 1982, the last time that happened. I stayed a week over with my sister (we were both in college then, so had more time than my parents did) - every garden in Disney had been cleaned out and replanting was starting. I expect they'll have to do that again. That's got to be a huge pile of money....

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posted by James Robertson

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games

I'll Never See my Daughter Again

January 5, 2010 13:46:02.676

She's already obsessed with Dragon Age Origins; with an expansion planned for March, she'll never come up for air :)

posted by James Robertson

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management

Enterprisey Versus Productive

January 5, 2010 14:19:21.159

I think Tim Bray hits this one on the head, talking about the difference between typical small shop/open source efforts and their enterprise cousins:

It's like this: The time between having an idea and its public launch is measured in days not months, weeks not years. Same for each subsequent release cycle. Teams are small. Progress is iterative. No oceans are boiled, no monster requirements documents written.

I've seen this up close with website launches. I watched a project take over 2 years to go from initial concept to deployment once. Ten days ago, I decided to launch this blog and just did it. Now, this blog is hardly akin to an enterprise system, but, take it back to when I launched my Cincom blog in 2002 - that was 4 classes sitting on an underpowered server. The output was pretty ugly, and it didn't scale worth a darn, but - and here's the crucial point - it was live.

I didn't ask for (or get) permission, I just went ahead and ran. Over time, I had to make changes, but I did those iteratively as they were needed. I'm still doing that; I patched a bug in this blog and the corporate one just this morning. The key, I think, is to take the Nike line seriously: just do it.

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Back to our Regular Program

January 5, 2010 22:38:15.697

We'll be getting back to the regular podcast this weekend - Michael and I will be talking about Smalltalk implementations. When I have a more definite time, I'll get that posted so you can listen live on justin.tv.

posted by James Robertson

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movies

Hobbits are Coming

January 6, 2010 6:30:07.229

Spotted in SCI FI Wire:

Looks like Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit movies are moving ahead as planned: Production Weekly now reports that they will begin a 14-month production schedule in June.

That's good news - there's been a lot of talk about issues with this production, and I'm really looking forward to it...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Hard Coding

January 6, 2010 6:53:24.509

I should know better by now - when I hacked in support to my client posting tool for automated tweeting, I hardcoded the blog that the tweet was assumed to be coming from. Well, here I am, with a new blog, and said assumption blew up on me :) Hat tip chaetal for getting on me about it :)

posted by James Robertson

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weather

No Quips About the Warm Weather This Week

January 6, 2010 6:59:31.589

My dad has been silent about the nicer weather in Florida this week - he often likes to tell me how he's about to hit the golf course. Well... this week there's been less of that:

Honestly, that's really odd weather for the part of Florida he and my mom live in (the Space Coast region). Especially since it's predicted to hang around for nearly a week...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Ottawa

January 6, 2010 7:03:16.762

The Ottawa STUG has Dave Buck on January 13:

Over the years, there have been several attempts to build a reporting framework in Smalltalk. It's difficult, though, to build a framework that has the power to produce the kind of reports expected in modern systems. David will talk about various approaches he's used in the past along with his current favorite of using Apace FOP.

Follow the link for the location and contact info. Dave is one of the best Smalltalkers I know; if you're near Ottawa then, make a point to check it out.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Enhancing the Smalltalk Editor

January 6, 2010 8:31:27.116

The code editor in Cincom Smalltalk can be a bit basic - there are some loadable packages available that enhance it. Today we'll take a look at oe of them, and show you where to find others.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Toronto

January 6, 2010 11:45:39.244

On January 26th, there will be two Cincom Smalltalk events in Toronto, Ontario:

The evening event is at a new location, so if you've been to a TSUG meeting before, this is not in the same place.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Fun with Browsers

January 6, 2010 14:00:12.421

I still can't settle on a browser. Yesterday, Firefox started being unable to successfully upload to Vimeo. Chrome worked, but I have other irritations with Chrome. Meanwhile, on Windows, I was trying to browse an intranet site at Cincom, and getting a 500. Call Helpdesk, ask other people, no one else has the problem. I fire up Windows in a VM, try it there - works fine. So apparently, IE got a transient 500 response at some point , and then helpfully cached it for me.

These tools all stink, just differently :)

posted by James Robertson

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general

New Seats

January 6, 2010 17:25:16.961

Our old loveseat has had a good run, but it was time to replace it. Since my wife has knee issues, we decided to get a pair of recliners:

They are pretty darn comfortable, but this changes my standard "sit in a high back chair with a table" arrangement with the laptop. So I headed to Amazon and ordered a lap desk. I should have that Friday; I'll write up a review after I see how well that works out.

posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Pandora Versus Satellite Radio

January 6, 2010 21:10:25.387

I listen to Pandora in the car - use the iPhone app, plug a cable into the Aux jack of the stereo, and off we go. That's a pretty simple solution, but it looks like Pandora is working with Pioneer on a wireless solution that could go into either factory installed or aftermarket systems:

Pioneer will sell a device that will detect users' Pandora settings on their Apple iPhones. The internet radio service claims about 42 million users, which could mean substantial revenue for Pioneer, even if just a fraction pay the $1,200 to buy the Pandora connection system.

That price point is ridiculous, but the idea seems good. Getting internet radio in the car could put a hammer to satellite radio - but only if the price comes down to reasonable levels. Right now, only an idiot would pay $1200. You could sell this for a small markup over the cost of an aux cable - so, maybe $20, tops. $1200? You have to wonder what they've been smoking...

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Y-2010

January 6, 2010 21:32:05.537

When I read stories like this, I end up feeling a whole lot better about my own code. An astonishing number of systems had trouble with the changeover from 2009 to 2010:

Chips used in bank cards to identify account numbers could not read the year 2010 properly, making it impossible for ATMs and point of sale machines in Germany to read debit cards of 30 million people since New Year's Day, according to published reports. The workaround is to reprogram the machines so the chips don't have to deal with the number.

To get that, you would have to have your software assume the first three digits of the year and just add the last one - apparently, some developer just assumed "of course this won't be running in 2010". The hilarious part is that this happened so soon after the whole "just assume the leading 19" thing from the last century's software...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Finding References to Primitives

January 7, 2010 8:45:34.839

Sometimes it's useful to be able to track down all references to a specific primitive - primitives being the call interface between the image and the VM. Today's screencast shows you how to do that:

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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management

What's the ROI on That?

January 7, 2010 10:27:00.785

I completely agree with the rant David Meerman Scott let loose here on ROI and social media/web marketing. A lot of people ask for that, but honestly: what's the ROI on things like a print ad, or a TV ad, or a radio spot? There's no good way to track that, and there never has been - but since these methods are well known, they are comfortable.

I have no idea what the ROI is of the Smalltalk channels I've set up on YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook - but I know that they generate interest from people who wouldn't necessarily have found Smalltalk if all we had was our own website.

All you can do is plug away, put out material your target audience will think is interesting, and give it time to work. Expecting a spreadsheet number under ROI is just fooling yourself.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

A Real World Series?

January 7, 2010 10:35:24.865

When I've traveled, I've sometimes had people make fun of the baseball World Series, since, outside of one team in Canada, it's a US thing. Well, it looks like talk are underway between MLB and their Japanese counterparts to do something about that:

In meetings with Japanese commissioner Ryozo Kato in Milwaukee, MLB commissioner Bud Selig proposed that the Japanese and U.S. champions play each other, the Nikkansports newspaper reported Thursday.

That would be pretty awesome, but there are complications. Like, when would it take place? November? If so, it would probably have to be like the Superbowl, played in a neutral location with good weather. You wouldn't want a series between, say, the Chicago White Sox and a Japanese team in the middle of November - you could get snow outs.

If that gets resolved though, it would be really cool.

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posted by James Robertson

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blog

The Reading List

January 7, 2010 12:51:27.582

Over there on the right (assuming you're reading this from the site) is a new section - a Reading List. The books there are ones I've either just read, or am reading now. At the moment, I'm in the third one in that list, A Storm of Swords. It's a good book, and I'm sure that I'll soon be joining the legions of people who want martin to produce another book already :)

Full disclosure though - the links are Amazon affiliate links, so if you follow them and then buy the book, a few pennies come my way. Doesn't cost you anything extra, but it will help keep the lights on over this blog :)

posted by James Robertson

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blog

Upcoming Outage

January 7, 2010 13:56:12.727

Slicehost just sent me a message telling me that the server hosting my slice will need a reboot, and it's scheduled for sometime between 6 pm and 7pm (est) today. So, expect to see the site down for a bit when that happens :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk on the Road

January 7, 2010 15:26:43.486

Smalltalk Conference

The Smalltalk team at Cincom is getting ready to come out to see you - we'll be visiting the following cities soon:

  • January 21: Seattle, Washington
  • January 26: Toronto, Ontario
  • January 28: Baltimore/Washington

These are all free events - you can register for any of them by following this link. Each of them is a half day, 9 AM - 1 PM. We'll see you on the road!

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

Who Owns What We Produce?

January 7, 2010 22:19:02.072

Mark Bernstein notes that we can't freely transfer most software (he uses OS X as an example, but most commercial software works the same way). He then asks:

But you can use TextEdit (which comes with Mac OS X) to write a text file, which you can save, copy, and sell without further obligation to Apple.

Question: how do we know we can do this? Where is it written?

Similarly, how do we know, when buying a typewriter, that its manufacturer doesn't acquire some rights to whatever we produce with the typewriter?

Excellent question. Copyright law is the legal answer, but never mind that; consider how Copyright law has been twisted of late...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Automating Smalltalk Builds

January 8, 2010 8:49:41.011

Awhile back, Randy Coulman did some work to integrate Smalltalk (VisualWorks) with Cruise Control - now it looks like some Squeakers have done something similar with Hudson:

Yanni Chiu created a project "Hudson Build" allowing you automate a build through a shell script run by Hudson, and view the SUnit test results through Hudson. Lukas now uses this to build seaside and pharo smalltalk images and monitor the builds in his Hudson server.

This is the kind of thing I'd like to see more of...

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

Not Snowmageddon

January 8, 2010 8:59:41.861

Today's snow was good for a 2 hour school delay though:

And after the driveway clearing...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Limiting the Browser View

January 8, 2010 9:49:44.106

When you are working in Smalltalk, you typically work in a small number of packages and bundles. If the names of those are separated (alphabetically speaking), going back and forth in the browser can mean a lot of scrolling. So - today's screencast introduces a small package you can load that lets you limit the package view to a small number of packages/bundles you select.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Overheard

January 8, 2010 9:53:23.196

This was funny, passed by on IRC a moment ago:

and why doesn't the windows malicious software removal tool uninstall windows?

One of life's imponderables, that...

posted by James Robertson

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books

Thursday Next

January 8, 2010 10:19:54.561

My sister got me the first three books in the "Thursday Next" series - I'm currently reading The Eyre Affair. The alternate reality that Jason Fforde has set up is fascinating - the book opens in a version of 1985 where the Crimean War is still going on. Russia is still ruled by the Czar. There's a U.N., but I have no idea how that came about - I'm not far enough in to have much back story yet. I love alternate reality though, and I'm getting back into scifi/fantasy - so this set of books looks great. So far, I'd have to recommend them :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Limiting the Browser View and Projects

January 8, 2010 10:40:25.851

After doing today's screencast, I got to thinking about the older idea of Smalltalk projects. Squeak still has them, I think - you could create a "project" and get a set of tools that opened in a pre-defined way. Taking the idea of a limited browser view and projects together though, and I think you could build a lightweight project browser. Consider the idea:

Instead of just "select some packages and limit the view", what if you could select some packages, give that selection set a name, and then save that name? Then, instead of having to recreate a selection set as you worked in an image, you could bounce between named "projects". Sound like a reasonable idea?

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posted by James Robertson

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humor

Not the VisualWorks you were Looking For

January 8, 2010 10:44:50.101

I just had to chuckle at this. Not the VW my readers are looking for, I think :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

New VisualGST

January 8, 2010 11:29:54.486

VisualGST has made it to release 0.7 - looks like some good stuff made it into the build. We did a podcast with Gwenael on this at ESUG last year.

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Chrome Motors To Extensions

January 8, 2010 17:32:38.992

The dev (unstable) build of Chrome for Mac now has extension support - I'm guessing that I'll be able to shelve Safari and Firefox on a more permanent basis soon. Not quite yet though:

The dev channel edition of Chrome lives up to its label; according to Laforge, the Mac preview crashes when the user adds a new bookmark folder if sync is enabled.

Chrome usage is going up, too - it's apparently up to 4.6% of all browser usage.

posted by James Robertson

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tv

Lost FTW

January 8, 2010 17:41:53.082

I find this amusing - the White House decided not to preempt the big "Lost" season opener for the annual State of the Union Speech. I suspect they didn't want a modern day Heidi incident on their hands :)

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posted by James Robertson

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copyright

The Pernicious Impact of Long Copyright Terms

January 8, 2010 20:38:32.876

Rogers Cadenhead goes into depth about the loss of a dead friend's online works - the friend's heirs don't have any interest in letting the material be archived. Their reason's aren't what interests me here - it's this:

For works created on the web, however, the only thing keeping them around is an active publisher or a copyright license that permits others to reprint the material. A copyright holder who wanted a web site to disappear completely could take it offline, demand its removal from all archives and never allow republication. Leslie's work will not begin passing into the public domain until 2065.

Think about how far out that is - no one who knew the person he's talking about will be around then. The lesson here, to me, is simple: the term for copyright is just too long. As it stands now, copyright law protects the interests of the big players, and works against the interests of the rest of us.

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posted by James Robertson

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management

Welcome to Support

January 9, 2010 8:29:28.829

Google is learning that selling a product directly brings with it some obligations: support:

But Google is selling the phone directly to end-users. That means many users are turning to it first, and the search giant doesn't have the kind of customer support that mobile-phone users are accustomed to. Google appears to be only accepting e-mail customer queries, to which it pledges to reply in one to two days -- far too long, say most people who are complaining online.

This all reminds me of something that happened in the Smalltalk space years ago. There was an enterprise solution for a particular niche that was being sold as a "consulting solution" - meaning, when you bought the software, you bought a few consultants (at cost) to install it, tweak it, and get it running in your environment. It was a small but lucrative business, and one of the larger consulting outfits decided that they wanted to jump into the space - so they bought the software. They didn't buy the smaller firm outright though, so they got none of the expertise. They decided that they wanted to just "put the software in a box" and sell it as a regular product.

That's when they learned that vendors have things like support staffs, 800 call in lines, dedicated email support (this was long before online forums popped up). I recall a bunch of us at ParcPlace (that's how long ago this was) snickering at all of this, because, working for a vendor, this was all pretty obvious to us.

Fast forward to today, and Google is having the same lesson pounded into it. They want to get by with the level of email support they've been offering for things like Google Reader. The services they've offered to the public in the past have been free, so having slow turn around email has been sufficient. When you start selling a real product, for real money, that people wll naturally need some level of support on - the rules all change.

I wonder how Google will deal with this: they can either stop selling direct, or they can add a real support group. It should be fun to watch...

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Podcast Later Today

January 9, 2010 9:02:17.404

We'll be doing the podcast later today - I don't have a time yet, because Michael is still jetlagged :) We'll probably be on justin.tv as well - just watch the Twitter feed for announcements.

Our plan is to talk about "the state of Smalltalk" - by which I mean that we'll talk about the state of the various Smalltalk implementations, as we see them. I'm sure that will generate plenty fo feedback all by itself, as we are hardly unbiased observers :) Listen in and let us know what you think.

posted by James Robertson

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weather

Weather Front, or Line of Attack?

January 9, 2010 9:26:20.984

I realize that this is a computer model of a frontal system, but boy, that's the smoothest line for such a thing that I've ever seen:

With all that cold, rainy weather moving through Florida, my Dad has got to be pretty miserable - he moved down there to get away from winter and play golf at this time of year :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Plugging Things into VW on Windows

January 9, 2010 13:58:09.352

Here's something that hasn't been possible in VisualWorks before the 7.7 release:

That's the QuickTime ActiveX control embedded in a VW Window, with a small list of movies in the listbox to load. I think Monday's screencast will be on this :)

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Live in Five

January 9, 2010 14:57:48.636

We'll be on the air live to talk about Smalltalk implementations - the "State of Smalltalk" - in 5 minutes. Go here.

Update: Done now, we'll have the podcast out tomorrow, as per usual.

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

Content Control

January 10, 2010 9:32:25.011

Whether it's formally DRM or not, any content control system - no matter how well intentioned or well managed - has a future issue. I'll explain what I mean in a moment, but first, here's Engadget explaining the Keychest system Disney is touting at CES:

The easiest way to explain it is with an example and the most obvious to us is iTunes and Comcast. Both companies offer video on demand and use their own DRM to prevent copying. If both participated in KeyChest -- this isn't studio based -- and we bought a movie on iTunes, the next time we hit up Comcast VOD we'd be able to watch the same movie without paying again. The genius of the idea is how simple it is, basically the participantes report your purchases to the KeyChest and query it to see what else you bought.

While the technology was very different, PlaysForSure offered the same advantages - and when MS got tired of it, both their partners and the customers of those partners were left with content that was in limbo. Keychest suffers the same defect. What if companies like those in the example sign up, and, down the road, one or more of them starts to bail out. Over time, as the number of companies left supporting the technology shrinks, the chances of a PlaysForSure limbo result just grows.

The thing the studios (et. al.) need to get through their thick skulls is this: the amount of piracy done by end consumers is trivial. The big problem is the theft on their end (when bootleg copies appear before release, it wasn't some kid with Bittorrent), and the "professional" thieves who create copies from video made off the screen by early viewings. Those holes can be made smaller via better security measures - and they are where the big wins are. All of the efforts on the consumer side just irritate people and make their lives harder, while accomplishing very, very little.

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posted by James Robertson

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sports

Is This August Football?

January 10, 2010 14:10:43.886

The way this Ravens/Patriots game started, it looked like it was going to be a complete laugher for the Ravens - 24 unanswered points with 2 turnovers. Then the Ravens returned the favor, and the Pats scored a TD, then went 3 and out after the second turnover. It still looks like the Ravens are in charge, but mostly, it looks like we rewound top August - it's that sloppy.

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 170: The State of Smalltalk

January 10, 2010 20:15:46.947

Here's our first podcast of 2010 - and we take a wide angle view of the various Smalltalk implementations out there. There's a lot more Smalltalk out there than you might think - go here for the notes we used for the podcast, with links to the implementations we spoke about:

To listen now, you can either download the mp3 edition, or the AAC edition. The AAC edition comes with chapter markers. You can subscribe to either edition of the podcast directly in iTunes; just search for Smalltalk and look in the Podcast results. You can subscribe to the mp3 edition directly using this feed, or the AAC edition using this feed using any podcatching software.

To listen immediately, use the player below:

If you like the music we use, please visit Josh Woodward's site. We use the song Effortless for our intro/outro music. I'm sure he'd appreciate your support!

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

VisualWorks: 7.7
ObjectStudio: 8.2
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com

Squeak: Version 3.10
http://squeak.org
Recent Split to create Pharo
Recent changes in the contribution model
Still embroiled in the license issue
"consensus" model
leads to forks (Cuis, Pharo, others)
new VMs coming?

Pharo: 1.0 RC1
http://www.pharo-project.org/home
Clean MIT License
Lots of forward motion
Seaside home
"benevolent dictator" model

CUIS Smalltalk: version 2.0
http://www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html
Squeak Fork
intended to be smaller, cleaner, lighter

GNU ST: Version 3.1
http://smalltalk.gnu.org/
Mostly Paolo Bonzini
GPL, GNU project
file based (but going to an image)
concentrating on bringing in libraries from other Smalltalks
Runs best on Linux, often has issues elsewhere (as per our podcast)
VisualGST for GST - bring modern GUI tools to GST

Smalltalk/X: Version
http://www.exept.de/en/products/smalltalk-x/stx-overview
inline C, static compilation possible
can build DLLs and executables w/o image
x86 (Windows, Linux, Solaris FreeBSD) and Sparc
Can provide oter platforms on request
Free for most uses, they do sell commercial licenses and support/consulting
license: http://live.exept.de/doc/online/english/LICENCE_STX.html

VA Smalltalk: Version 8.0.1
http://instantiations.com/VAST/prod/vast.html
Now offers an NC/Academic version
Bringing in Seaside (no continuation support)
integrated the entire Instantiations suite of add on tools, giving product facelift

Dolphin Smalltalk: Version 6
http://www.object-arts.com/content/navigation/home.html
Community (free) and Commercial (cheap) versions
COM DLL and windows exe possible
Weird schism
  Dolphin NG (Lesser Software)
  Andy Bower's more recent statements about bringing Dolphin back
General sales model difficulty for niche products sold this way

Gemstone/S: Version 2.4
http://www.gemstone.com/products/gemstone
64 bit, probably first commercial 64 bit Smalltalk
OO DBMS
GLASS, most recent efforts in Smalltalk here
MagLev - Ruby in Gemstone/S

Lesser Smalltalk
http://www.lesser-software.com/lswvst.htm
hidden from view - no eval versions, pricing unclear
native for Windows
building compatible VM for VSE, and Dolphin
looks and sounds interesting, with the tight Windows integration

Smalltalk MT: Version 5.6
http://www.objectconnect.com/
Native, Multi-threaded for Windows
Aimed at games development on PCs
Small, fast executables

F-Script: Version 2.0
http://www.fscript.org/
Scripting for OS X, like AppleScript but with ST syntax
built on Cocoa, allows full access to Cocoa objects

Smalltalk SYX: version 0.1.7
http://code.google.com/p/syx/
Windows, Linux, OSX, embedded systems
Small, targeted at building embedded apps

Redline Smalltalk: In Development
http://twitter.com/smalltalkjvm
Smalltalk for the JVM
Nothing available yet; just the Twitter feed and some blog posts

Etoile: Version (in dev)
http://etoileos.com/
Built on GNUStep, an OSS fork of Nextstep (now Cocoa)
Larger project than Smalltalk - going for entire layer to run atop your OS
Smalltalk is a scripting tool in this effort
recently added more ST level tools (workspace)

Strongtalk: version 0.200
http://code.google.com/p/strongtalk/
Fast JIT for Smalltalk, bought by Sun years ago to speed up Java
open sourced in 2008
minimal progress since then, but active mailing list
Works on Windows, Linux

Zoku/Smalltalk: In Development
http://www.smalltalk.org/versions/ZokuSmalltalk.html
research project, Peter William Lount
to support his consulting business?

Sharp Smalltalk: version 1.1
http://www.refactory.com/Software/SharpSmalltalk/
Mostly moribund, seems mostly proof of concept
Smalltalk on .NET
Classes wrap .NET classes

Ambrai Smalltalk: Version: ?
http://www.ambrai.com/
For OS X, but back revs
intended to be native OS X Smalltalk

PIC/Smalltalk
http://www.huv.com/uSeeker/index.html
Smalltalk for embedded use in robots, Jon Hyland's work

VSE: Version 3.10/2000
Moribund, died in 1997
small, fairly fanatical fan base exists and uses it
Windows specific (was win 95 logo certified)

posted by James Robertson

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general

How Far We've Come

January 10, 2010 20:41:20.717

Spotted in Instapundit

The real irony of this disc is that the amount of memory you can write to it (1.44 MB, if memory — heh serves) isn’t enough to store the jpeg of the picture of it which came out of my camera (1.49 MB). That’s progress for you.

"Back in the Day", we booted an entire OS from floppies that held even less data :)

posted by James Robertson

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tv

Soon, it will be a Pamphlet

January 10, 2010 20:59:50.097

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

Remember NBC's proposed sci-fi series Day One? First it was a show. Then it was a one-season show. Then it was a miniseries. Now, it's just a TV movie, said Angela Bromstad, president of prime-time entertainment at NBC and Universal Media Studios.

Wow. I have to wonder whether it will air at all :)

posted by James Robertson

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culture

Let's Pull out a Few Old Chestnuts

January 11, 2010 6:31:14.143

Every few months you find a hand wringing article about "the next generation" and how they are being influenced by technology. Sure enough, I ran across the Times fretting about the impact of IM and social networking on the younger set:

"I worry that young people won't be able to summon the capacity to focus and concentrate when they need to," said Vicky Rideout, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which will release a sweeping survey on the technology and media habits of children and teenagers this month.

Way back in the late 60's and early 70's, this researcher's predecessors were fretting that TV was doing the same thing to my generation. Later on, video games were doing it. The symptoms never change, just the technology being ranted at.

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

The Coming Death of the Broadcast TV Model

January 11, 2010 6:46:34.713

I watch the way my daughter consumes video, and I realize that the broadcast model is on its last legs. I'm sure there are people in her age group (high school) who watch a fair amount of TV, but here's what I see:

  • Lots of iTunes usage
  • Interest in Streaming (we just got Netflix)
  • Virtually no "channel surfing" or regular watching. What watching there is, is via the DVR

The broadcast model is being shaken up now. Over the next decade, I think it's going to shrink dramatically, to be replaced by more of an on-demand model. No one under twenty really expects to have to wait for anything they want to see. Heck, I've gotten to that point myself...

posted by James Robertson

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development

Flash Coming to the iPhone

January 11, 2010 9:24:03.458

Well, Flash is sort of coming to the iPhone. But, it's enough to start a small tidal wave. TechCrunch reports:

Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple's blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 (currently in private beta), will include a "Packager for iPhone" apps which will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won't run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. (Microsoft is taking a similar approach with Silverlight). This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.

For good or ill, Flash is the standard video format on the web. HTML5 may change that over time, but not soon. For the forseeable future, Flash is pretty much where it's at if you want to hit the majority of browser users. More importantly (and this is what Apple feared early on) - it'll "flood the zone" with potential iPhone developers:

Once Adobe publicly releases CS5, Flash apps and video still won't run on the iPhone. But those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. In contrast, there are only an estimated 125,000 or so iPhone developers.

Heck, I have the Flash SDK on my Mac inside Eclipse. I have the Glare code that hooks that up to VisualWorks. That means that with a fair amount of ease, I could probably package up a "Smalltalk Daily" app for the iPhone that drove itself off a VW back end once this comes out.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using ActiveX Components in VisualWorks

January 11, 2010 13:02:30.409

Today we take a look at a new feature in VW 7.7: Embedding ActiveX components (on Windows, obviously) into VisualWorks windows.

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Off to the Races

January 11, 2010 13:22:47.959

No sooner had we decided to get a new dishwasher (arriving Thursday) than my wife's car decided that it needed a new tire - fortunately, she was only 3 or so miles from the house when that became obvious. If it's not one thing, it's another....

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk is Coming to You

January 11, 2010 13:51:21.749

I'll be heading out to do some roadshows with the Smalltalk team at Cincom - we'll be in Seattle, Toronto, and Baltimore:

register now
Date Location Time
January 21, Seattle, Washington Crowne Plaza of Seattle
Corner of 6th and Seneca
9 AM - 1 PM
January 26, Toronto, Ontario Hilton Garden Inn Toronto City Centre
200 Dundas Street East
9 AM - 1 PM
January 28, Baltimore, MD TBD 9 AM - 1 PM

You can register to let us know you're coming - it's free. We'll have plenty to say about the new releases of ObjectStudio and VisualWorks, as well as WebVelocity. See you there!

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posted by James Robertson

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standards

Is HD DVD Making a Comeback?

January 11, 2010 17:33:50.273

Engadget reports an HD DVD (not Blu-Ray) player from a Chinese manufacturer. I thought HD DVD was dead?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Pharo Screencasts

January 11, 2010 18:05:11.926

Looks like a new video site devoted to Pharo has popped up - the videos are all Vimeo embeds, so there's no feed for iTunes, but you can watch over there.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Just in Time Resourcing with SUnit

January 11, 2010 19:26:59.398

Here's Niall Ross, talking about new features of SUnit at ESUG 2009, held in Brest, France last summer. You can grab a copy of Niall's slides here(PDF). To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Videos"?

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posted by James Robertson

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tv

Heroes - About 1/4 as Many Characters Needed

January 11, 2010 21:34:57.487

Heroes used to be good - season 1, when the cast was a reasonable sized ensemble. Since then, the writers seem to have been working with the theory that "more characters are better!"

Many, many more characters. So many characters that we get to spend tiny bits of time on each plot thread - so little that we can't really maintain much interest in any of them.

Kill half of them, and maybe the show will have meaning again....

posted by James Robertson

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