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news

Earthquakes and Tsunamis

February 27, 2010 16:00:40.138

The good news is, we can see tsunamis coming now. The bad news is, other than getting to high ground, there's not a lot you can do about a tsunami. For the rest of us who are not (directly) affected, there's live streaming available - that's certainly new. Interesting times we live in...

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

Is it Working DRM, or Extra Brittleness?

February 27, 2010 13:45:10.805

Slashdot reports on the DRM for Assassin's Creed 2 - apparently, if you don't have a working connection, it'll just stop working. Never mind all of the obvious issues with this from the consumer end (what if your ISP has an issue?) - what about the brittleness this introduces on the back end?

Remember, all of its code for saving and loading games (a significant feature, I'm sure you would agree) is tied into logging into a distant server and sending data back and forth. This vital and complex bit of code has been written from the ground up to require having the saved games live on a machine far away, with said machine being programmed to accept, save, and return the game data. This is a far more difficult problem for a hacker to circumvent.

While it may be harder to circumvent, it sure will be easy to tick off users. Say the servers have a problem - then every game owner is SOL. Say a DDOS attack is launched on those servers? In a way, the vendor has painted a target on themselves. I won't be a bit surprised if a few black hats take aim at it.

Going back to the client side for a moment, I see my XBox dropping offline fairly regularly for small amounts of time. Usually it's after it's been unused for a bit, but sometimes it just drops right in the middle of a game - I know this because the XBox notifies me. If I had Assassin's Creed 2, such periodic drops (and cuts from the game) would get to be really, really annoying. My desire to buy the game just about fell off a cliff.

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posted by James Robertson

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Macintosh

No External Drives?

February 27, 2010 10:24:59.553

I woke up this morning to an interesting thing - no USB drives (I have three attached) were showing on my Mac's desktop. I remembered that last night, when I was unhooking from the wired to wireless network (to move the Mac to the living room), the three drives wouldn't unmount - they stayed grayed for eons before I just gave up and unplugged the usb hub. I got the standard "you didn't eject" dialog, which I ignored, having seen it before.

My guess was that the service that handles that crashed, but Googling didn't turn up much - it seems a lot of people had USB issues with Tiger, but nothing relevant to me showed up. So.... I just rebooted. That cleared the problem, but I still wish I knew which service was involved - I likely could have just restarted it.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Privacy, or Harassment?

February 27, 2010 0:46:09.382

I take a skeptical view of this demand from the EU that Google change out streetview pictures every six months rather than every 12:

Currently, Google holds Street View images for a year but the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has said the search engine must chop this in half, as 12 months is a "disproportionate" length of time.

If there's a privacy issue, I fail to see how 12 months would be bad, but six months would be ok. This looks an awful lot like a way to raise Google's costs to me.

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posted by James Robertson

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law

US PTO Goes for More Stupid

February 26, 2010 18:13:23.040

If this patent granted to Facebook isn't a sign of terminal stupidity at the patent office, I don't know what is:

Has Facebook patented the news, or at least the news feed, in social-networking environments? On Tuesday, the United States Patent Office granted Facebook a patent for "Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network."

Heck, that seems like it could cover a widely read blog with registered users and threaded comments. Like, say, most of the political ones out there. Or Slashdot. Or Digg. Or... fill in the blanks. It's time to get a shovel, kill software patents, bury them, hose the ground over them with gas, and light it up.

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posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Xtreams: an Example

February 26, 2010 14:46:32.669

Martin Kobetic has posted an example of using Xtreams - looks quite good.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk Class on the Web

February 26, 2010 14:45:05.589

Dave Buck will be teaching a Smalltalk class via the net at the end of March:

At the end of March, Simberon will be delivering an instructor-led web-delivered course on Refactoring Object Oriented Design in Smalltalk. This course is 4 days long from March 29th to April 1st.  We'll be web-casting the course allowing you to take the course without travelling.  Lectures start at 11:00am EST and 3:00pm EST allowing you to attend the course fairly conveniently in any North American time zone.  Participants can ask questions through a chat channel or by e-mail.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Plugging Away at the Facebook Code

February 26, 2010 12:41:51.518

The last time I left the Facebook interface, it required a web browser for part of the login process; I wasn't really happy with that. So this morning I took a look at automating that. I made a fair bit of progress, but when I post the login form, it simply times out. My earlier attempts were failing due to a lack of cookies; that was simply a matter of caching them on the initial request, so that the client would go ahead and submit them on subsequent sends.

Now I'm not getting that error; instead, my login POST is timing out. Progress, but I'm not there yet...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Europe

February 26, 2010 9:04:22.590

Smalltalk in Europe The Cincom Smalltalk team is heading to Europe next week - we'll be in London on Tuesday, and Paris on Thursday. We'll be talking about what Smalltalk does now, and where it's headed - we'll have the Smalltalk management team and some engineering staff on hand to answer your questions.

Where will we be? You'll need to register for the events to get location details. I'll be putting the location details on my "where in the world" page early next week, so you can also just check back here then. We'll see you there!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

UI Tools and Packages: Video

February 26, 2010 8:33:05.794

Today's screencast looks at a small annoyance in the UI building tools - the fact that by default, they'll save code into the "none" package. Today we'll look at a work around for that.

You can download the video directly here. 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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copyright

The Joyfulness of the Copyright Kings

February 26, 2010 6:42:28.953

The more I read about ACTA, and the other things that the RIAA, MPAA, BSA (et. al.) are up to, the more I realize that they want us to live in a thinly gilded cage of severely restricted choices. Consider:

University of Edinburgh law lecturer Andres Guadamuz wrote a blog entry this week highlighting some particularly troubling aspects of the IIPA's 301 recommendations. The organization has condemned Indonesia and several other countries for encouraging government adoption of open source software. According to the IIPA, official government endorsements of open source software create "trade barriers" and restrict "equitable market access" for software companies.

Right. Where "trade barriers" means "wahhhhh - these people have choices!". That's not what they want; they want a future of locked down content controlled by a small group of cooperating vendors.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Complete Set of Seaside Videos

February 26, 2010 6:29:18.823

Gemstone has indexed their set of Seaside vidoes. Meanwhile, they'll be coming to Cincinnati on March 2nd (I'll be in London then, at our next technology event).

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Upcoming Audio

February 25, 2010 16:59:00.706

This Sunday we'll be releasing the talk we had with Tudor Girba about Glamour, and a week from Sunday, we'll be releasing the talk we just wrapped up with Dale Henrichs about Metacello. Good stuff!

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Oddly Immersive Game

February 25, 2010 8:47:30.983

Last night I got through the final battle in "Dragon Age: Origins" - it wasn't really that hard, it just required a lot of patience. It was my second run at the game - my first run through stalled at the end, partly because I didn't pay enough attention to the NPC characters during the game itself.

In DragonAge, you really need to pay attention to that stuff. Depending on how you interact with the people who join your little quest team, they'll either help a little or a lot; it impacts the plot going forward. It was enough fun that Intend to take another run at the game with a different origin story - there 6 possible openings to the game, all slightly different.

This is the way games are heading, and I like it :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Exporting Code in a Portable Fashion: Video

February 25, 2010 8:14:26.563

Today's screencast walks through exporting code out of VisualWorks or ObjectStudio in a format that will be compatible with various other Smalltalk dialects.

You can download the video directly here. 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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development

NoSQL Gets some Good PR

February 25, 2010 6:36:12.943

Twitter seems to be moving to Cassandra - a NoSQL database that was largely developed by Facebook. So says Ryan King, a developer at Twitter:

Ryan King, an engineer at Twitter, today told the blog MyNoSQL that the social networking company plans to move from MySQL to the Cassandra database for what he called its resilience, scalability and large community of open-source developers.

This puts the big three social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, and Digg - on Cassandra (or in the process of moving to it). Is this the start of a sea change in data storage, akin to the move from hierarchical to SQL a generation ago?

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posted by James Robertson

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weather

More Snow!

February 24, 2010 22:10:54.193

Doesn't look like our area is in the crosshairs like we were earlier this month, but there's some potential for real accumulations:

All we need is a tenth of an inch to go over 80 inches for the season - which is massive for this area :)

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Squeak License Closer to Clean

February 24, 2010 21:57:07.078

Randal Schwartz reports progress on the Squeak licensing front:

Well, after an immense amount of collective work with important legal and social restrictions and ramifications, I'm happy to see that we are in the home stretch!
The SFC asserted that we needed one final "call to all interested parties", and that has begun. Once that's complete (hopefully without a hitch), the current 3.10.2 release will be relabeled as Squeak 4.0, and made available under a combination of the Apache and MIT licenses.

I guess you should stay tuned to Randal's blog for updates :)

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posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Using the Smalltalk Facebook Interface

February 24, 2010 15:51:00.824

I've seen a few questions pop up on getting started with the Facebook interface I wrote, so I thought I'd post a basic "getting started" tutorial. First off, you need to go to the Facebook website (developer pages) and create an application definition - you'll get your application keys (you'll need those to make any Facebook API callls).

Once you've done that, start VisualWorks 7.7 (or ObjectStudio 8.2) and load the FacebookBundle from the public store repository.

Once you've done that, you need to execute the following code (use a workspace for now) with your application credentials:


"login"
holder := FacebookSecretHolder new
		apiKey: apiKey;
		secretKey: secret;
		applicationId: appId.

"now get the connection (will spawn a web browser"
connection := Connection withSecretHolder: holder.
connection login.

At the end of that, your default browser should pop up - it may show you what's below, or it may prompt you to login:

Once you've logged in, execute the following code to start a session:


"get auth token"
connection authGetSession.

At this point, you can start using the API - but you may notice that some calls don't work as you expect. For instance, #getStream will only return your news updates, and trying to publish to the news stream (#streamPublish:) will fail. Why? Well, your application needs to have permissions granted. Execute the following code, which will spin your browser back up, prompting you to authorize the relevant permissions:


"only need to ask for these authorizations once - grants permission to read news feed
and to write to the news feed"
connection grantExtendedPermissionFor: 'read_stream'.
connection grantExtendedPermissionFor: 'publish_stream'.

As the comment notes, you only need to do that once. Not once per session, once, period - unless Facebook changes something, or you use the APIs (or website) to revoke the granted rights. Now, use this to read the stream (inspect the results), and then publish an update:


"now read the news feed"
connection streamGet.


"update status in stream"
connection streamPublish: 'Writing to my Facebook news stream from Smalltalk!'.

Use the browser to verify that it all worked. That's pretty much it - to disconnect your session, use the code below:


"logout"
connection clearSession

You should be good to go. If anything seems wrong, just let me know

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posted by James Robertson

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podcasting

Talking about Metacello

February 24, 2010 13:45:23.647

We'll be live tomorrow at 4pm EST with Dale Henrichs of Gemstone - talking about MetaCello, a pacakge management system for Monticello. To listen live, head to our justin.tv site at 4 PM.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

How to Report a Bug: Video

February 24, 2010 8:13:20.525

Today's screencast walks through the process of reporting a bug in Cincom Smalltalk - what kind of information you need, and how to prepare it.

You can download the video directly here. 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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law

Technically Illiterate

February 24, 2010 6:49:27.840

I love the "thinking" behind this acton out of Italy:

A Milan court has convicted three Google Inc executives for the 2006 transmission of a video showing the bullying of a youth with Down's syndrome, the judge in the case told Reuters on Wednesday.

As is their policy, Google removed the video once they were notified of the issue. That wasn't good enough for the geniuses prosecuting the case:

It said that, as hosting platforms that do not create their own content, Google Video, YouTube and Facebook cannot be held responsible for content that others upload, comparing the case to prosecuting the postal system for hate letters sent by mail. But the prosecutors accused Google of negligence arguing the video remained online for two months even though some web users had already posted comments asking for it to be taken down.

I wonder whether they pondered what that means. Pick a video that gets a decent number of views, and you'll find a few comments as to why it should go - there's always someone who objects. There's simply no way for any company to pro-actively do what these people seems to want, unless they are willing to put up with huge posting delays (manual review of all upoads), or a ton of false positives (as software excludes based on some kind of heuristic).

Do we really want video auto-pulled based on comments anyway? Consider how that would play out.

Oh, one last ill effect of this: the three Google executives in question now can't travel freely, even though they had nothing to do with this. I'm not sure we want a world where that sort of outcome is common, either.

Update: Google Comments:

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them -- every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video -- then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear.

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posted by James Robertson

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law

Annals of Stupid Actions

February 23, 2010 22:56:05.615

Fresh off wasting time on Microsoft, the EU is ready to waste more time on... Google

Now that Microsoft's browser selection story story is all but settled, it looks like the European Union is gearing up for a new antitrust probe, with its crosshairs aimed generally in Google's direction.

Much time and money will be spent on this, and absolutely nothing useful will come of it. Kind of like what happened with Microsoft, actually....

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posted by James Robertson

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security

What Privacy?

February 23, 2010 20:20:58.733

Before I read the book Daemon, I really didn't think about my phone and privacy all that much:

At any given moment, it - and therefore your carrier - knows within a few feet exactly where you're standing. It knows when you're stationary or walking - and the direction you're heading. It knows who you stood next to on the transit bus, that you walked through Washington Square today when a political rally took place.

Mind you, Daemon is fiction - but many things could be done with the reams of location/activity data the typical smartphone has access to, and not all of them are good...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

How to Report a Bug

February 23, 2010 15:07:48.090

If you see something like what's below, and you're sure that it's the fault of Cincom code instead of yours, what do you do? See my post over on my Cincom blog.

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

ExtraActivity and Animation

February 23, 2010 8:21:25.161

Today's screencast takes a look at ExtraActivity - a contributed library for VisualWorks that makes animations simpler to create.

You can download the video directly here. 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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marketing

Some Pigs are More Equal than Others

February 23, 2010 6:49:44.769

Apple's ban on "sexy" apps in the app store looks even sillier now that we learn that Sports Illustrated (swimsuit issue) and Playboy are still around. Phil Schiller strove mightily to win the "lamest rationale ever" award:

When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. "The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," he said.

Umm, right. It's enough to make your head spin. It took four days to come up with that?

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

A Smalltalk Appliance

February 23, 2010 6:41:10.309

Want to try out Smalltalk, but not sure which one to try? Well, Marten Feldtmann has made things easier for you - he's created an appliance (VM) with the major Smalltalks all loaded already

The following Smalltalks are installed:
  • Smalltalk/X 5-4-6 (Windows)
  • Smalltalk/X 5-4-6 (Linux)
  • VASmalltalk 8.01 (Linux)
  • VASmalltalk 8.01 (Windows)
  • ObjectStudio 8.1 (Windows)
  • VisualWorks 7.7 (Linux)
  • VisualWorks 7.7 (Windows)
  • Pharo (Linux) RC2

The only issue I see there is that it should include ObjectStudio 8.2 - you can get that here

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

SeaBreeze at ESUG 2009: Video

February 22, 2010 15:47:42.359

Here's another ESUG 2009 video - Karsten Kuche talking about SeaBreeze, a UI builder and library for Seaside, built in VisualWorks.

You can download the video directly here. 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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Macintosh

Back to the Apple Store

February 22, 2010 9:10:07.680

My wife's Macbook (now fairly old, I guess) seems to be having a problem - while the battery has power (there's a button you can press to check on the white macbooks), the machine isn't actually getting any. So it's off to the Apple store for an appointment today - it should still be under AppleCare, so at least it won't cost me an arm and a leg...

posted by James Robertson

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security

Chuck Norris is in your Router

February 22, 2010 8:45:06.333

When I first saw the slashdot posting, I expected to find some ill informed political argument about Linux - but no, it's actually a botnet plague using Chuck Norris' name. Just when I think computer security stories can't get stranger...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Introducing Xtreams

February 22, 2010 8:07:12.363

Today's screencast takes a brief, introductory overview of Xtreams - a new streaming library for Smalltalk that is under early development. You can listen to our podcast on Xtreams here, and get started by visiting the Google Code Page.

You can download the video directly here. 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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books

Changeable Textbooks

February 22, 2010 6:24:55.537

I like the idea of textbooks that can be updated:

Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.

However, that's not really the reason this idea is being pushed:

The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks. "Psychology," for example, which has a list price of $134.29 (available on Barnes & Noble's Web site for $122.73), will sell for $48.76 in the DynamicBooks version.

That price cut is intended to gut the market for used textbooks (just like game publishers would like to gut that trade in their space). At least for textbooks, it's driving prices down.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Industry Misinterpretations 176: Slate

February 21, 2010 20:49:26.366

This week Michael and I spoke to Brian Rice about Slate - a language inspired by Smalltalk, Self, and other dynamic languages. To quote from the Slate website:

Slate is a prototype-based object-oriented programming language based on Self, CLOS, and Smalltalk-80. Slate syntax is intended to be as familiar as possible to a Smalltalker, for the clarity of messages as phrases. Unlike the Smalltalk family, methods within Slate can be assigned to a signature of objects, instead of being installed on one favored receiver.

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!

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posted by James Robertson

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travel

Post Laundering Win

February 21, 2010 12:28:35.737

I was a little worried that the earlier snow storms might have delayed passport processing (I need mine in a week) - but lo and behold, the new passport arrived sometime this week by mail (I've been a bit lax in checking the mailbox). Crisis averted; I'll see you in London and Paris early next month!

posted by James Robertson

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books

Daemon Wrapup

February 20, 2010 23:34:38.765

I just finished reading Freedom - the second (and final, I think) part of the story Daniel Suarez started with Daemon. I spent most of the first book debating which "side" to root for; by the end of the second book, it became apparent that the answer to that was not terribly simple.

Suarez did set the libertarian-ish techno-elite up as the sympathetic side, but with plentiful "be careful what you wish for" warnings. It was a very fast moving pair of books; I consumed the two stories in days (it would have been less time were I not still obsessed with Dragon Age: Origins :)

The main complaint I have with the story is the prominent place that Suarez assigns mainstream (especially cable tv) news sources. There's the "Darknet" set up by the deceased protagonist, and then there's the media - it's as if the entire internet that we know now doesn't exist. That's a pretty big hole to ignore, but the story is entertaining if you can get beyond that. I'd love to see the autheor asked about that in an interview though :)

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posted by James Robertson

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browsers

Gears for All?

February 20, 2010 21:47:12.557

There's been a new post to the Google "Gears Blog", explaining why they haven't said much about Gears of late. The main reason? HTML5 seems to be on track to provide the same features natively:

If you've wondered why there haven't been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it's because we've shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5. We're not there yet, but we are getting closer.

It would be pretty nice to get rid of the hacks that exist for video, if nothing else.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

More Data for the iPhone

February 20, 2010 11:59:56.889

I've run into the iPhone download limit myself - Civ Revolution for the iPhone is just over 10 MB, for instance. So it's welcome news that they are upping the (3G based) cap to 20 MB - but that's not going to help much with full shows. An hour long TV show, at compression rates that give you a decent viewing experience, is still in the hundreds of megabyte range. And that's stadard def - HD is a whole other kettle of fish.

This whole capped bandwidth model is going to have to change if mobile devices are going to be used to consume streaming video, or even just "not on wifi" video...

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Xtreams Goes MIT

February 20, 2010 11:57:55.999

As listeners to the podcast know, there's been a project underway to create a new streams framework - Xtreams. It would be nice to see this catch on across Smalltalk using the same codebase - allowing modifications and improvements to come from anywhere. So:

So....

That's right - the project is under the MIT license. That means that you can take it to any Smalltalk (or even non-Smalltalk) implementation free from worry. If this code has value, let's see it spread. To get started, try the Google Code project page.

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posted by James Robertson

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law

Patent Trolling - it's what old companies do

February 20, 2010 11:15:43.579

I'm not sure whether I should laugh, or cry about this story - Kodak is trying to get touchscreen smartphones banned on patent infringement grounds:

Eastman Kodak claims that Apple Computers and Research in Motion are guilty of infringement of patents. Kodak has taken the step to request the U.S. International Trade Commission prevent both companies from importing their smart phones into the United States. Nokia filed a similar complaint in December 2009.

What patents, and why?

Kodak's complaint says the iPhone and BlackBerry infringe on the patent approved in 2001 regarding the ability to preview images. Kodak made more than $622 million on intellectual property last year and expects to receive more than $450 million in royalty this year from Samsung. It is seeking a similar agreement with Apple and Research in Motion.

How hard would it be to change the system by just this tiny amount: in order to bring a patent infringement suit, you would have to actually be providing a competing product in the space that you are complaining about - thus showing that there's actual harm? I know, it's just crazy talk. How would that keep legions of lawyers employed?

Update: I love this from Gordon Weakliem:

Ideas are worthless without execution, and as it is, the practice of patent trolling completely subverts the intended economic incentive behind patents. I’m amazed that corporate America hasn’t thrown their collective weight at Congress and forced reform. I suspect that the attitude is an intellectual property Cold War the large patent-holders are building a system of mutually assured destruction and regard the patent terrorists as a manageable cost of doing business.

Read the rest of his post - he makes some great points.

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posted by James Robertson

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