. .

development

Enterprises Vs. Scale

March 10, 2010 19:50:23.769

I like this article by Dare Obasanjo on the relational DB/NoSQL divide - and his summary makes a great point, I think:

For these reasons I expect we'll see more large scale websites decide that instead of treating a SQL database as a denormalized key-value pair store that they would rather use a NoSQL database. However I also suspect that a lot of services who already have a sharded relational database + in-memory cache solution can get a lot of mileage from more judicious usage of in-memory caches before switching. This is especially true given that you still caches in front of your NoSQL databases anyway. There's also the question of whether traditional relational database vendors will add features to address the shortcomings highlighted by the NoSQL movement? Given that the sort of companies adopting NoSQL are doing so because they want to save costs on software, hardware and operations I somehow doubt that there is a lucrative market here for database vendors versus adding more features that the banks, insurance companies and telcos of the world find interesting.

I have to agree there - the needs of the enterprise seem to be diverging from the needs of the large scale website rapidly. Mind you, most websites are not large scale things - for every Digg or Twitter, there are tons of sites that get in the hundreds or low thousands of pageviews a day, and scale just fine with databases or even flat files. I think it remains to be seen whether the NoSQL movement will get much attention beyond the huge scale sites.

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Enterprise Development with ObjectStudio: Video

March 10, 2010 18:39:07.065

The Cincom Smalltalk team recently completed a five city tour - Seattle, Toronto, Baltimore, London, and Paris. We filmed the presentations we gave at each of the one day events, and now I'm releasing the highest quality iterations. Today's video is of Andreas Hiltner, talking about the Modeling and Mapping tools, and how they can aid enterprise Windows development using ObjectStudio 8. To watch, click on the viewer below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. Stay tuned - there's more to come from this series of events!

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

A Personal Repository with MS Access: Video

March 10, 2010 9:17:13.765

Today's screencast looks at setting up a personal Store Repository on Windows using MS Access.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags: , , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

weather

One Month Later

March 10, 2010 8:21:30.601

It's been a month since Snowmageddon, and my front yard still has a fair amount of snow on it - even after a couple weeks of temps above 40:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

security

The Rootkit that keeps going, and going...

March 10, 2010 6:32:45.903

Looks like Energizer needs to spiff up their internal procedures:

If you've bought the Energizer DUO USB battery charger, you might want to uninstall the software immediately. Why? Because it comes pre-loaded with a backdoor that can let someone remotely access your computer.

This is the scariest kind of security problem, because you tend to default to trusting software that comes from a reputable vendor.

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

open source

Enterprise Mashup

March 9, 2010 22:48:55.386

I find this announcement fascinating - a mashup of MS Outlook and Google Docs, using the APIs from both products:

Effective today, Mainsoft is offering full-featured access to Google Docs documents directly from within Microsoft Outlook. Their belief is that e-mail and document collaboration sites need to work together seamlessly — so end users can be more productive. They're also planning to give away software that offers full-featured access to SharePoint document libraries, within Microsoft Outlook. So to reiterate — full use of Google docs within Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint — tools enterprise users are used to, with the significant benefits that the cloud brings.
The Mainsoft product is called Harmony and will be a free product and has been built using SharePoint Web Services interfaces and Google Docs open APIs, giving full-featured access to Google Docs or SharePoint documents from an Outlook sidebar.

I'd love to know what Microsoft thinks of that. On the one hand, it doesn't displace Outlook. On the other hand, if an outfit that wants to go with Google Docs finds that they pretty much only use Outlook from the Office Suite, that could cause some heartburn.

Not having used Google Docs, I can't really say anything about whether they would actually serve as a replacement for Word and Excel. I've been happy enough with Apple's iWork, so I haven't seen any reason to wander over that way.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

gadgets

No iPad Shortage?

March 9, 2010 21:22:08.250

According to one analyst firm, the rumors of a looming iPad shortage are just that: rumors:

Apple is on track to build 5 million iPads in the first half of 2010, according to FBR Capital chip analyst Craig Berger. "We believe various news articles and competitor notes calling for a build delay were just false alarms," he writes. The company, of course, has now set an April 3 launch for Wi-Fi versions of the iPad, with 3G versions to ship toward the end of April.

I guess we'll find out soon enough; pre-orders start this week.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

stupidity

What Can He Drive off a Cliff Next?

March 9, 2010 17:42:17.562

Hey look - Mr. "I collected a huge payoff for my great success at driving Sun into the ground" Schwartz has a new blog. Looks like he's trying to explain himself. What I'd like to know is this: does he still think that "give it all away for free, and then somehow make it up in volume" is a good business plan?

If so, he's got a great future with the underpants gnomes.

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

gadgets

Unintended Consequences

March 9, 2010 11:30:51.793

This is one of the funny things about the way patent infringement suits tend to go - you can aim it as well as you want, but you may get results you didn't expect. Consider Apple's auits against HTC, based on their multi-touch work. They seem to be aiming at Google, which could end up empowering... Microsoft:

Even before the lawsuit, handset makers were having second thoughts about Google, which with the Nexus One had become a direct competitor. Now their faith in Android as the easiest and cheapest way to counter the iPhone has been shaken, says Reiner. The unintended consequence, he suggests, is to send them into the arms of Microsoft (MSFT) and Win7 Mobile.
"Our checks," writes Reiner, "indicate that Microsoft has been quick to sniff out this burgeoning opportunity and has begun to aggressively promote the strength of its own IP portfolio, as well as its willingness to join battle with customers that come under IP attack."

I had been thinking that Microsoft was out of the handset running, but this Apple campaign could actually give them new life. Whether that's better for them than just trying to, you know, actually compete better, is an open question.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Working with the Windows Registry: Video

March 9, 2010 9:32:55.642

Today's screencast takes a look at the Registry package, a contributed piece that makes it easier to work with the Windows registry from Smalltalk .

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

windows

The Downside to Running a Windows VM

March 9, 2010 7:13:02.032

Since I don't run Windows every day - and i sometimes go a weeks between runs of my Windows 7 VM - the updates tend to pile up. I was about to look at doing some more VW/COM screencasts, when I discovered that 370 MB of updates had piled up. There goes the next little while :)

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

books

Moose in Print

March 9, 2010 7:02:28.392

Tudor Girba is working on a Moose book:

This book offers an overview of the Moose platform for software and data analysis. More specifically it covers version 4.0.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

management

Living in the Future

March 9, 2010 6:43:15.767

Apparently, I've been living in the future since 1993: That's when I started woking out of my home office, using the net to stay in contact with the rest of the company. Back then it was dialup and email (pretty much only email) - now it's irc, various IM systems, and social networks. Either way though, I've been in the "virtual office" for a long time. Video chat one on one is now feasible (along with screen sharing) with tools like skype and iChat; I suspect that having multiple people on a video call will start being feasible without the expensive hookups soon.

What made me think about this? Dvorak writing about what print publishers should have done (and should still do):

With a single layer of editorial control, establish a virtual office environment with telecommuting, teleconferencing, and a VPN ring for the employees who can work from anywhere in the world.

That pretty much applies to anyone who's not doing collective manual labor, I think. More and more, work is going to get distributed. Management theory will have to do a lot of catching up.

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

browsers

Let's Do the Time Warp

March 9, 2010 6:20:27.777

Ever wanted to experience 1993 (at least the web part) again? Well, if you have a modern Linux distro, you can:

Github user Alan Dipert has posted the source code for NCSA Mosaic 2.7 on the code-hosting website. You can download it and run it on any modern Linux installation. It seems to run on Ubuntu just fine, though PNG support is a little wonky. The good news is that the folks on Github are actively submitting patches.

You'll have to ignore Google (or any modern search engine) to get the real feel, but there it is. It's hard to explain why those of us who were in that first wave of online users were so excited, given images like this:

Just seeing that "S" image brings back memories :)

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

games

The Mac Gets Gaming Parity

March 8, 2010 15:31:41.395

So much for "I need a PC for Games":

Eager gamers have no doubt already seen the teasers, but Valve has now finally confirmed that its Steam game distribution service and Source engine will at long last be headed to the Mac. According to Valve, the company's current line-up of games (including the Half-Life and Left 4 Dead series) will be available to Mac users in April, while Portal 2 will represent the company's first simultaneous release for PC and Mac later this year.

This is awesome news. While I've come to prefer the XBox and Wii for games, I can't take those on the road :)

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Post Event Summary

March 8, 2010 13:02:38.654

We've wrapped up the current round of Cincom Smalltalk events - if we schedule more, it'll be announced over on my Cincom Blog. In the meantime, you can check out our video wrapups from 4 of the 5 events (I neglected to hit the "record" button in London) on uStream - I've embedded the player below. I'll have video for the talks themselves up in the next few days - I have initial processing, editing, and post production ahead of me on that - and some of the steps are all about "hurry up and wait" :)

Live Video streaming by Ustream

Technorati Tags: , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Thales: Project Metrics at ESUG 2009

March 8, 2010 10:33:51.197

Here's another ESUG 2009 video - the Thales project on project metrics.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags: , , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Setting up Store using SQLLite: Video

March 8, 2010 9:00:03.711

Today's screencast looks at setting up a SQLLite database as a personal Store repository. It's quick, easy, and probably the fastest way to get started with Store as your version control system.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags: , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

stupidity

Maybe Michael Palin and a Cart would be Enough?

March 8, 2010 6:32:19.452

Sometimes an act of stupidity wanders all the way over to just plain idiotic - a woman's father dies, so she's in the process of cleaning various estate things up, and gets to disconnecting the phone service. She goes so far as to send a copy of the death certificate to Verizon, and gets this reaction:

It seems Lacy did not have her father's PIN (personal identification number) to access the account. So the representative refused to help her.
...
"Well, there's nothing else I can do for you," the representative said before laughing and hanging up the phone.

This is what you get when you've elevated process above everything else. Fear of making a mistake leads to acts of mindless stupidity instead.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Squeak Via Twitter

March 8, 2010 6:11:29.102

Spotted in Planet Squeak

The commits to Squeak trunk (the new community development model) are now also visible in Twitter:

Technorati Tags: , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Metacello with Dale Henrichs

March 7, 2010 21:10:17.547

This week's podcast is an interview we did with Dale Henrichs of Gemstone about the Metacello project - a configuration management add on for Monticello (version control for Squeak and Pharo). We'd like to thank Dale for taking the time to talk to us - it was a lot of fun!

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!

Technorati Tags: , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

development

Fighting Against Reality

March 7, 2010 10:15:19.819

You have to recognize what era you live in - and as much as it might be nice to hearken back to some presumed "golden age", it's just not coming back. Where am I going with this? To Mike Taylor's lament about the mundaneness of modern software development:

Today, I mostly paste libraries together. So do you, most likely, if you work in software. Doesn't that seem anticlimactic? We did all those courses on LR grammars and concurrent software and referentially transparent functional languages. We messed about with Prolog, Lisp and APL. We studied invariants and formal preconditions and operating system theory. Now how much of that do we use? A huge part of my job these days seems to be impedence-matching between big opaque chunks of library software that sort of do most of what my program is meant to achieve, but don't quite work right together so I have to, I don't know, translate USMARC records into Dublin Core or something. Is that programming? Really?

I rather suspect that as cars moved from being mostly mechanical to being highly dependent on software the same kind of lament went up amongst car enthusiasts. There's really no going back though; just as I have no real interest in gapping my own spark plugs, I have no real interest in writing my own version of malloc(). Even if I did, outside of being a harmless hobby, who the heck (outside of a handful of OS developers) would pay me to do it?

The world turns, and life moves on. The time for building every little library by hand is gone, and it's not coming back. Personally, I'm happy about that; I just never got a thrill out of low level grunt work :)

Having said that, I can tell you where that level of creation is still going on: game development.

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

How to Distribute Applications

March 7, 2010 9:47:45.574

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Summer of Smalltalk

March 6, 2010 23:22:59.560

The Squeak/Pharo Community is getting ready for Google's Summer of Code:

Mariano Martinez Peck will administrate the joint application supported by Janko Mivšek. They need to supply Google with information about ESUG as a mentoring organisation and a list of ideas/projects,  each with a description and a nominated mentor. If their submission get selected by Google they will be told how many projects Google will sponsor — the mentor receives $500 and the student who volunteers to work on the projects will receive $4500.

The deadline to get projects included is March 12; follow the link for full details.

Technorati Tags: , ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

gadgets

The iPad Cometh

March 6, 2010 7:43:13.314

Spotted in Engadget

Word from Apple is out -- so get your credit cards ready. The iPad will be launching on Saturday April 3rd (and on the shelves, er... display tables at Apple retail stores), but you'll be able to plunk down cold, hard cash for it in just a week. Pre-orders will begin on March 12th for the US version (non-3G) for that April street date, with the 3G version coming in late April

I suspect we'll be in that pre-order queue - my wife has expressed a pretty keen interest in this device :)

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

law

Software Patents

March 6, 2010 7:31:59.064

I agree with Alain Reynaud that seventeen years is way, way too long a time period for a software patent, but I think seven years (his proposed interval) is also too long:

The problem, you see, is their length. Seventeen years of monopoly is an eternity in Internet time. Instead, software patents should only be valid for seven years.

Seven Years ago we didn't have Twitter or Facebook - which means that a patent (like the newsfeed one Facebook wants) would still be around (if granted today) in 2016 - still an eternity in internet terms.

No, I have a more radical notion: no software patents, period. Let competition take care of the problem. Big companies won't "rull the roost" under such a system; as happens right now, they'll still mostly go the M&A route to innovate. What would disappear is patent trolls.

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

stupidity

Confused by that PR Thing

March 5, 2010 18:36:02.339

So not only is Viacom yanking "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" from Hulu, it's also threatening to sue anyone who posts clips:

"Yes, we intend to do so," PR rep Tony Fox told THR. "My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem."

Right.... because a couple of minutes of either show is likely to discourage viewing. By that logic, they should stop running ads, since they're only likely to discourage viewing, too. Morons.

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

tv

So far From Canon...

March 5, 2010 18:35:47.269

Spotted in SCI FI Wire:

The network announced today that it has ordered a 10th season of the young Superman series.

The entire Kandor thread makes no sense, Luthor is out of focus, and by now, the name "Superman" would never get used - "The Blur" would be what happened. The writers don't know when to stop...

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

games

OS X and Games

March 5, 2010 18:35:27.619

PC World is now reporting that Steam is coming to OS X:

it seems the rumors are true and Steam will in fact see an OS X release.

Which means that the mac will stop being a second tier gaming platform. One less reason to require a Windows machine, it sounds like :)

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Convenience Methods: Video

March 5, 2010 18:29:30.129

Today's screencast looks at a small package of convenience methods I've used to deal with various network interfaces.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

travel

Heading Home

March 4, 2010 16:08:58.577

Travel day tomorrow - walk to the train station, 40 minutes to CDG, hop to London, take a plane from there to NY, then wait a few hours, fly to Baltimore. Then get a cab. So it truly will be a day of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles :)

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Smalltalk in Paris

March 4, 2010 6:58:50.380

We've had a good event so far (Georg is finishing his talk as I write this) - here are a few snapshots from the day - but first, if you want to hear our wrapup from the event, we'll be on ustream at 7:30 AM EST talking about it. The pics:

Arden Presents

Suz introduces Arden

Georg Presents

Group during Coffee Break

Doing my presentation

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

news

Leave the WiFi on, Lose the Laptop

March 4, 2010 5:19:53.926

I guess you could lose an iPhone or Touch the same way - cheap wifi finders can be used to track down an active device - PCWorld reports:

A statement by the mobile security software vendor highlighted a recent warning from a security specialist at University of Technology, in Jamaica. He said that it appeared crooks running a lottery scam on the island were using stolen laptops to do so. They tracked down the often out-of-sight computers using Wi-Fi radio detectors.

And the cost for such trackers is $50 or less, so it's not like there's a high bar to entry. Sobering...

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

general

Can I have some heat?

March 4, 2010 5:02:26.526

Today's event in Paris is going well except for one small thing - it's 37 (f) outside, and there's no heat in the room we are in. Thank goodness for the heat emissions from the laptops :)

Technorati Tags:

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

smalltalk

Using Silt as a Blog Server: Video

March 4, 2010 1:36:43.947

Today's screencast is a brief overview of the steps involved in setting up a Cincom Smalltalk based blog server using Silt, a web toolkit based application server that has been in production for over 7 years.

You can download the video directly here. If you like this kind of video, why not subscribe to "Smalltalk Daily"?

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

travel

A Day in Paris

March 3, 2010 14:11:56.683

Ahead of tomorrow's event here in Paris, we had some time for "speed sightseeing" today: Here are a few photos:

Had it not been so bone crushingly cold (winds), I'd likely stlll be out there :)

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

travel

Around London

March 3, 2010 14:06:02.963

After the event wrapped up yesterday we had some time for some "speed sightseeing" in London - I snaped a few photos:

Technorati Tags: ,

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

music

Boneheaded Music Industry Move of the Day

March 3, 2010 5:30:03.140

Truly a pile of awesome (via David Meerman Scott)

In a completely boneheaded move, the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) announced that they want to set up a system to charge people who tweet any part of song lyric.

Why yes, 140 characters promoting music is just bad. I'd ask if the music industry could get stupider, but I'm kind of afraid to find out...

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This

tv

Game of Thrones - Coming to HBO

March 3, 2010 5:29:44.360

Spotted in SCI FI Wire

It's official: HBO has given a green light to a 10-episode series based on George R.R. Martin's fantasy series Game of Thrones and released the first image from the show

The big question though: will book five ever appear?

posted by James Robertson

 Share Tweet This