. .

stupidity

The Stupid Burns

June 24, 2010 23:25:18.469

Sometimes I think society as a whole is engaged in a suicide pact. First example:

Transocean’s ban on employee knife possession nearly killed several BP drilling rig survivors, by preventing them from cutting the rope that attached the life boat to the drilling rig.

And, the second example, from San Francisco:

Last week, the city's board of supervisors voted 10-1 to require cellphone retailers to show how much radiation their phones emit. Mayor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign it, making it the first such law in the nation.

At some point, we'll all be so safe that we won't be able to do anything but quietly starve in a padded room...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Smalltalk in Argentina

June 24, 2010 23:04:53.609

The initial call for participation for Smalltalks 2010 is out:

SMALLTALKS 2010
4th Argentinian Smalltalk Conference
Research Track: Call for Papers
November 11th – 13th, 2010

Important dates:

  • Submission (Hard Deadline): September 7th, 2010 (Argentinian time: UTC/GMT -3 hours).
  • Notification of acceptance: October 6th, 2010.
  • Camera Ready Submission: October 20th, 2010.

There's a large and very active Smalltalk community in Argentina - this event has been growing quite nicely!

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

iPad, iPhone

June 24, 2010 15:32:43.114

FedEx delivered the iPad and iPhone this morning; I got them both set up pretty quickly. The iPhone is nice, but the square-ish shape is kind of weird for an Apple product. My only complaint so far is this - in my pocket, I can't tell the back from the front. It's a minor quibble and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I haven't tried a lot of things out yet - one thing I need to start using is voice commands with my headset.

The iPad is really nice - my daughter has already been using it to look things up for video games. It seems trivial, but it's nice to have a small device right there that's easy to read. I downloaded a free ebook a long time ago for my iPhone, but never really got anywhere with it. I went back to it on the iPad, and the reading experience on it seems very nice. I expect to shift a lot of my book purchases over to it.

My only complaint has nothing to do with the iPad - more of a "huh, what?" kind of thing. Facebook has no native iPad app yet? Seriously?

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

No Left Handed Calls?

June 24, 2010 10:29:40.000

I'll find out soon enough - FedEx says my phone is out for delivery. This reception problem based on how you hold the phone sounds very annoying:

One iPhone 4 demonstrated the issue everytime it was held in our left hand (as a right-handed person is apt to do) so that our palm was essentially bridging the two antennas.

You would think that basic acceptance testing would turn that sort of thing up...

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posted by James Robertson

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books

Bootstrapping Innovation

June 24, 2010 8:49:16.803

I just finished reading Sramana Mitra's Entrepreneur Journeys v.4 : Innovation: Need Of the Hour (Volume 4) - a set of interviews/case studies with various people who have built businesses from the ground up. Some with venture capital, some without, some in manufacturing, and some in software. The software examples resonated better with me, simply because it's a field I live in; I did like many of the examples from the "harder" sectors though.

I especially liked Paul Cook's Raychem story - he was pretty adamant about the need to pay attention to customers/prospects, and about getting to profitability fast. It's a lesson a lot of software outfits could learn from; I think a lot of the VC money that's been burned in the industry has been a net negative. Mitra makes that point later in the book, when she covered CollabNet, SpringSource, and SugarCRM - all outfits that started from nothing, and bootstrapped themselves into big things.

In general, I liked her call for more rational behavior on the part of government, VC's, and academia - I just wish she hadn't then been so rah rah about the Xunlight thing, a company that's lived exclusively off government grants. I'm not sure I'd call that a success. I also wish she had gone a bit into the problems in the IPO space being caused by SarbOx - that's an example of well intentioned government action that has had the unintended consequence of hindering IPOs.

Overall, I liked the book though. It was fun to read the various stories. Having worked at ParcPlace in the latter part of its startup journey, it was nice to read about firms and people who had not made the same mistakes.

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posted by James Robertson

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BottomFeeder

Where's BottomFeeder?

June 24, 2010 8:18:54.633

BottomFeeder

I've been mentioning the next release of BottomFeeder for awhile; you might be wondering where it is. The current build is based on VW 7.6, and 7.7 has been out for awhile - but 7.7.1 is coming out this summer. So rather than release it on a soon to be passed release of VW, I've decided to hold back. When 7.7.1 ships, I'll ship Bf. Other than one issue I'm tracking, things are ready for release.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/24/10: Smalltalk Syntax (1)

June 24, 2010 7:56:41.659

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at basic Smalltalk syntax. This is part 1 of at least 3 parts. If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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stupidity

Someone Hand John Gruber a Skype Account

June 23, 2010 22:52:28.081

I'm sure he'll be amazed with the service, what with how he seems to think that Apple's FaceTime is somehow revolutionary. Psst - Gruber - with Skype I can anyone, whether they have Skype or not. Heck, I can even get a Skype number.

While he's at it, maybe he should check out Google Voice, too. Sheesh.

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posted by James Robertson

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law

YouTube wins case against Viacom

June 23, 2010 21:02:27.719

Viacom loses their ridiculous suit against YouTube:

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

I'm sure it didn't help when it came out that Viacom's marketing staff were uploading material as fast as their lawyers were issuing takedown notices...

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posted by James Robertson

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DRM

DRM or Death

June 23, 2010 9:03:58.000

The more things change, the more they stay the same. New administration, same old panic over intellectual property. Apparently, a kitten dies somewhere every time a song is shared over p2p...

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

ESUG Innovation Awards: Submission Time

June 23, 2010 8:27:26.655

If you have a cool Smalltalk app that you would like to show the world, why not submit it for the ESUG Innovation Awards?

We are proud to announce the 6th Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete. This year we will also request 3-5min video.

Whip out your browser and flip cam!

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/23/10: Installing Custom Error Handling into a Runtime

June 23, 2010 8:06:17.655

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at adding error handling (for the runtime) via the build script. We're adding the basic stuff from RuntimePackager, but you can customize from there. The build script is just below; You can also just skip to the video


"build a simple app"

"load all my needed parcels - including RTP"
[#(   '$(VISUALWORKS)/packaging/RuntimePackager.pcl'
	'SampleApp.pcl') do: [:each |
        Parcel loadParcelFrom: each]]
	on: MissingParcelSource
	do: [:ex | ex resume: true].

"turn change log off, so that we can ship patches reasonably"
'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference 
	ifDefinedDo: [:flag | 
		'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference value: false].

"Set herald string"
ObjectMemory setHeraldString: 'This is an Example Application in VisualWorks'.

"reset parcel path"
Parcel searchPathModel value removeAll.

"set up runtime state"
DeploymentOptionsSystem current startInRuntime: true.

"set up runtime state  (NOTE: This block is commented out
so that we can see the results in the example.

UI.WindowManager noWindowBlock: [:windowManager | ].
stream := WriteStream on: String new.
stream nextPutAll: 'changeRequest'; cr; cr; tab.
stream nextPutAll: '^true'.
VisualLauncher compile: stream contents.
VisualLauncher allInstances do: [:each | each closeAndUnschedule.  each release]."

"Install Error Handling - This is the new segment"
Notifier current: RuntimePackager.RuntimeEmergencyNotifier.
RuntimePackager.RuntimeEmergencyNotifier imageDumperClass: RuntimePackager.RuntimeFullDumper.
RuntimePackager.RuntimeManager errorLogPath: 'error.log'.
Notifier logToFile: true.

ObjectMemory garbageCollect.
Workbook allInstances do: [:each | each closeRequest].
(Delay forSeconds: 20) wait.
Parcel searchPathModel value: (List with: (PortableFilename named: '.')).
SourceFileManager default discardSources.

"Now save the image such that this file does not get looked for at startup"
[ObjectMemory permSaveAs: 'sample' thenQuit: false] fork.
[(Delay forSeconds: 45) wait.
RuntimeSystem isRuntime ifFalse: [ObjectMemory quit]] fork


If you can't watch the YouTube embed below, click here to go to the video now:

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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browsers

Firefox Gets On the Process Wagon

June 23, 2010 7:08:05.833

It's not quite as cool as the separate process per tab thing that Chrome does, but Firefox has taken a nice step forward - plugins/extensions run in separate processes:

The big new feature in this release is out-of-process plugins (OOPP). This means things like Flash, Java, QuickTime, etc., all run in separate processes, so when Flash decides to crash, it won't take your browser out with it. If Flash starts consuming all the CPU it can find, you can kill it without nuking your browser session

I'm still using Safari - "Reader" is awesome, and the "Readability" extension just isn't good enough yet. It's kind of cool seeing all of this browser competition though :)

posted by James Robertson

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itNews

Lazy Management Tactics

June 23, 2010 6:53:39.640

Gosh forbid that a manager should look into something useful, like, say - are people in my group getting their jobs done. No, far simpler to use fear and intimidation - like this proud comment about the installation of monitoring software:

"Once you talk to five people in the organization, it's like a virus," he said. "People learn that 'These guys are serious, they really do look at what is going on.'"

posted by James Robertson

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web

56k Modem?

June 23, 2010 0:16:11.024

Those guys at Adobe are keeping up with the latest trends:

But what if I hadn't moved up from 28.8?

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posted by James Robertson

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general

Evening Sky

June 22, 2010 22:28:19.886

I just thought this was a nice sunset view, although being in a parking lot detracted from it:

Then once I got home, I got a piece of good news:

My wife has had such good things to say about the device, I decided to get one. I'm hoping to cut down on the additions to the piles of books around here :)

posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

InfoQ Interviews Dan Ingalls

June 22, 2010 13:37:38.565

InfoQ interviewed Dan Ingalls earlier this year (during QCon in London). Lots of good stuff about the history of Smalltalk, and the Lively Kernel work he was doing more recently.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Kindle and eBooks

June 22, 2010 10:15:35.808

The important thing for Amazon to focus on is the core item - books - and not the hardware device. As Om Malik points out, Amazon gets paid whether you use a Kindle or not, so long as you buy from their store:

The day I first laid hands on Apple’s iPad I banished my Amazon Kindle to the back of the proverbial drawer. And yet, I have been spending, on average, about $10 every 3-5 days on Amazon’s site buying a book to read using the Kindle application on the iPad. In fact, the reading experience on the iPad is so superior to that of the Kindle I often find myself staying up later than usual reading a book.

Some companies would have doubled down on the hardware, but Amazon was smart - they pushed the reader app out to iPhones (and now iPads) - they don't care what device you read on, so long as it was purchased from them. My wife's experience mirrors Malik's, except that she didn't bother with the Kindle in the first place.

Since the Kindle app exists on iPhones, iPads, PCs, and Android devices, stuff you buy there is portable. Anything you buy in the iBook store, on the other hand, is locked to the Apple device. Amazon is playing this very intelligently.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/22/10: A Simple Deployment Example

June 22, 2010 9:39:39.853

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a simple runtime scripting example. I've covered this topic before, but used the (more complex) BottomFeeder application as my example. Here, we take a simple "application" (a class with one method) and a simple subsystem to start it - along with the script to do the build. The script is reproduced below; if you would rather just watch the video, then just go here. I posted all of the code and steps for this yesterday if you would rather take this in textual post form. You can download the example code here.


"build a simple app"

"load all my needed parcels"
[#('SampleApp.pcl') do: [:each |
        Parcel loadParcelFrom: each]]
	on: MissingParcelSource
	do: [:ex | ex resume: true].

"turn change log off, so that we can ship patches reasonably"
'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference 
	ifDefinedDo: [:flag | 
		'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference value: false].

"Set herald string"
ObjectMemory setHeraldString: 'This is an Example Application in VisualWorks'.

"reset parcel path"
Parcel searchPathModel value removeAll.

"set up runtime state"
DeploymentOptionsSystem current startInRuntime: true.

"set up runtime state"
UI.WindowManager noWindowBlock: [:windowManager | ].
stream := WriteStream on: String new.
stream nextPutAll: 'changeRequest'; cr; cr; tab.
stream nextPutAll: '^true'.
VisualLauncher compile: stream contents.
VisualLauncher allInstances do: [:each | each closeAndUnschedule.  each release].

ObjectMemory garbageCollect.
Workbook allInstances do: [:each | each closeRequest].
(Delay forSeconds: 20) wait.
Parcel searchPathModel value: (List with: (PortableFilename named: '.')).
SourceFileManager default discardSources.

"Now save the image such that this file does not get looked for at startup"
[ObjectMemory permSaveAs: 'sample' thenQuit: false] fork.
[(Delay forSeconds: 45) wait.
RuntimeSystem isRuntime ifFalse: [ObjectMemory quit]] fork

Need the direct link to YouTube for this video?

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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social media

Personal Branding?

June 22, 2010 7:29:54.349

Doc Searls has been talking about the limitations of "personal branding" for awhile now - this morning he linked to two people on the subject. The "manifesto" post by Maureen Johnson is the one that caught my eye - her message about "social media experts" is something I'm familiar with.

I don't know that I've given the "personal brand" thing a lot of thought over the years. I avoid some subjects on my blogs (partisan politics), simply to avoid having disagreements over things I'd rather not talk about in this particular forum.

I think the big divide in this area is between normal people and the advocates who spend all of their time telling you to "promote your personal brand". You know what? This isn't really that complicated. Write about what you're interested in. Even if - like me - what you're interested in crosses over into commercial promotion, that doesn't mean that you have to become a mindless shill. Listen to our podcast for awhile, and you'll see that Michael and I haven't been shy about noting various flaws in Cincom Smalltalk. We love the product, but we know where the bodies are buried, too. Lots of promoters like to pretend that their favored product/solution/brand has no flaws - that way lies the "mindless shill" tag.

Ultimately, you want to come off as believable. There are going to be plenty of people who disagree with you, and that's fine - no one has a monoploy on truth, or even on a better point of view. The best you can do is to have people realize that you stand behind your words.

posted by James Robertson

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tutorial

Creating a Simple Runtime

June 21, 2010 11:54:31.107

I received a question about creating a runtime image via my chatback widget this morning - I've done screencasts on that, but those use BottomFeeder as an example. While that's a real example, it's also fairly large, and somewhat complex. So - I thought a very simple example might be useful.

First, I created a new package, and then a new class (subclassed from Object) with no instance variables.


Smalltalk defineClass: #Sample
	superclass: #{Core.Object}
	indexedType: #none
	private: false
	instanceVariableNames: ''
	classInstanceVariableNames: ''
	imports: ''
	category: ''

I gave this class one method:


doMyThing
	Transcript show: 'This is from the Sample App'; cr.
	ObjectMemory quit.

So that the results are clear, I ran the application in headless mode - the Transcript write drops to a file called 'headless-transcript.log' (that's configurable, but never mind). Next, I need a way to have this application startup. I created a new class:


Smalltalk defineClass: #SampleUserApp
	superclass: #{Core.UserApplication}
	indexedType: #none
	private: false
	instanceVariableNames: ''
	classInstanceVariableNames: ''
	imports: ''
	category: ''

That's a class that exists to define a startup procedure. You create a new method called #main, and put your startup code there:


main
	Sample new doMyThing.

Next, I need a script that creates a new image, and puts it into "runtime" mode - the #main method will not fire unless the image is in that state. Here's the script:


"build a simple app"

"load all my needed parcels (Non-Windows)"
[#('SampleApp.pcl') do: [:each |
        Parcel loadParcelFrom: each]]
	on: MissingParcelSource
	do: [:ex | ex resume: true].

"turn change log off, so that we can ship patches reasonably"
'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference 
	ifDefinedDo: [:flag | 'ChangeSet.BroadcastChanges' asQualifiedReference value: false].

"Set herald string"
ObjectMemory setHeraldString: 'This is an Example Application in VisualWorks'.

"reset parcel path"
Parcel searchPathModel value removeAll.

"set up runtime state"
DeploymentOptionsSystem current startInRuntime: true.

"set up runtime state"
UI.WindowManager noWindowBlock: [:windowManager | ].
stream := WriteStream on: String new.
stream nextPutAll: 'changeRequest'; cr; cr; tab.
stream nextPutAll: '^true'.
VisualLauncher compile: stream contents.
VisualLauncher allInstances do: [:each | each closeAndUnschedule.  each release].

ObjectMemory garbageCollect.
Workbook allInstances do: [:each | each closeRequest].
(Delay forSeconds: 20) wait.
Parcel searchPathModel value: (List with: (PortableFilename named: '.')).
SourceFileManager default discardSources.

"Now save the image such that this file does not get looked for at startup"
[ObjectMemory permSaveAs: 'sample' thenQuit: false] fork.
[(Delay forSeconds: 45) wait.
RuntimeSystem isRuntime ifFalse: [ObjectMemory quit]] fork

I saved the code I created to a parcel, so that I could do a clean load. On my Mac, the command line looked like this (I have a symlink from visual to where the VM actually resides):

./visual visual.im -filein sampleDeploy.st

Where 'sampleDeploy.st' is the script above. Running that drops a single line to 'headless-transcript.log' and quits, just as you would expect. You can copy the script from above, and download the example parcel here.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/21/10: Using Pragmas for Menu Items in VW

June 21, 2010 8:11:28.037

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at dynamically adding menu items in VisualWorks with pragmas. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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smalltalk

Cog VM Out

June 21, 2010 6:41:01.907

Squeak, Pharo, and Cuis now have a JITted VM option - Cog has been released. The link goes to the ftp site; the only announcement I've seen is the readme file there.

Update: As a commenter pointed out, there was an announcement, in both the Squeak and Pharo email lists. Here's a link to one of them (they are the same text)

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posted by James Robertson

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web

This Can't Please Adobe

June 21, 2010 6:34:37.497

There are plenty of pragmatic reasons to avoid Flash right now - using a more neutral format gets you on the iPhone and iPad, while not leaving you off Android and PCs. However, it also looks like there might be more tangible benefits - witness Scribd:

Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months

That kind of response gets noticed.

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posted by James Robertson

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audio

Industry Misinterpretations 193: Squeak Oversight Board, June 2010, part 2

June 20, 2010 21:14:45.749

This week's podcast features Juan Vuletich and Jecel Assumpcao, two of the members of the Squeak Oversight Board. This is part 2 of two - if you want to hear part 1 first, download that here. This is our second talk with member sof the SOB; we plan to do regular updates with them over time.

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. You can also download the podcast in ogg format.

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!

posted by James Robertson

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PR

Does ATT Exist to Create Bad PR Examples?

June 20, 2010 10:56:45.668

Maybe that's not their reason for existing, but boy - it's what they do best:

The saga continues. A reader forwarded us this note he got from AT&T, simply stating that his iPhone 4 preorder had been cancelled, for no apparent reason. And he's not the only one.

Follow the link for an image showing the cancellation notice. There are a few hard foreign policy issues about which it's common to say (about one party or the other) that "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Well, when it comes to having positive PR, that pretty much defines AT&T. IT's as if they see the possibility, and run. Fast.

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Alan Wake

June 20, 2010 10:50:47.878

My daughter got me Alan Wake for Father's Day - I started playing it late last night. It's an interesting game - a lot like an episodic TV series with a game component added on. The only complaint I have so far is the controller actions - what on earth were they thinking when they made the "B" button the action one? That's contrary to every other game I've played :)

I have to admit, it does a good job of setting the atmospherics though. It sort of freaked my daughter and I out when a light blew out in the room while we were playing :) If you don't get that - light (or its absence) plays a big role in the game. Your flashlight seems to be the best weapon (at least so far; I'm not very far in).

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posted by James Robertson

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security

Cory Doctorow Gets Phished

June 19, 2010 13:54:02.187

This is useful advice about security:

Phishing isn’t (just) about finding a person who is technically naive. It’s about attacking the seemingly impregnable defenses of the technically sophisticated until you find a single, incredibly unlikely, short-lived crack in the wall.

To be honest, I'm surprised that Doctorow got tripped up by the "Is this you" Twitter/Facebook thing though - that's a pretty well known attack. On the other hand, we all click on stuff without thinking too deeply about it, and url shorteners are a very useful attack vector.

posted by James Robertson

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copyright

Copyrights and Stupidity

June 19, 2010 12:53:33.853

It's getting to the point where I'm wondering whether copyright law has any value at all. Witness this idiotic proposal from Germany:

It looks as if publishers might really be lobbying for obtaining a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolise speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder.

I can see it now - the literary police swooping in and shutting down a blog for malicious reuse of a sentence. If sentences can be copyrighted, are there any limits at all? The only "positive" from this is that it reassures me that North America does not have a monopoly on stupidity with respect to copyright law....

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posted by James Robertson

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games

Video Game Suggestions

June 19, 2010 11:20:28.950

I finished a second run through of Mass Effect 2 last night; now I'm looking for a new plot driven game to get. Any suggestions? Alan Wake looks interesting, but I'd love to hear from anyone who's actually played it.

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posted by James Robertson

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gadgets

Microsoft is not in the Mobile Game

June 18, 2010 11:33:30.000

This story explains why Microsoft isn't in the mobile game at all. Not long after touting Windows Phone 7 as the next big thing, they've announced Windows Mobile:

The company has previously announced the Windows Phone 7 OS for smartphones. Microsoft's focus on consumer mobile devices will continue through the Windows Phone brand, Kelley said. It's unclear if the Windows Embedded Handheld announcement means that Windows Phone 7 will not support enterprise capabilities originally promised for that OS, or if Windows Embedded Handheld and Windows Phone 7 will compete with each other for business users.

It's becoming clear to me, at least, that the rot at MS starts at the top. Ballmer is a sales guy with no grasp of what his company does, or of where the industry is headed. He needs to go - and whoever they replace him with should start by radically downsizing the company. If it's big enough to come out with this kind of confusion, it's too big.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalk

Using My Own Stuff

June 18, 2010 9:46:55.212

I did a screencast on the mini-aggregator code recently - it allows you to specify a set of feeds (possibly with content filters), and push out an output set of links. I thought it might be nice to actually start using that - so over on the sidebar, you'll notice a new section titled "Related". Under that I have a set of the most recent (only 1 deep) posts from some of the Smalltalk blogs I read. It auto-updates via cron every fifteen minutes, so it should stay current.

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/18/10: Immutable Literals

June 18, 2010 7:51:58.843

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at immutable literals in Smalltalk - and how to deal with legacy code that does not know about immutability. You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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smalltalk

Cuis 2.4 Ships

June 18, 2010 6:52:06.620

Juan Vuletich just released Cuis 2.4:

Cuis 2.4 is available at www.jvuletich.org/Cuis/Index.html.

New in Cuis 2.4

  • Adaptive Morphic CPU usage. Saves a lot of CPU on servers running many images.
  • Compiler update with Eliot's fixes
  • Configurable underscore meaning (from Squeak)
  • Enable / disable Shout in Workspaces
  • Big speedup of BW PNG
  • Many minor fixes and cleanup

We interviewed Juan on Industry Misinterpretations about Cuis awhile back. He's also on last week's podcast in his role on the Squeak board, and will be on the upcoming (episode 193) episode as well (it was a 2 parter)

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posted by James Robertson

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development

Maybe Email Addresses?

June 18, 2010 6:36:57.930

Patrick McKenzie explains why everything you think you know (as a software developer) about names (personal names, not variables) is wrong. While email addresses don't share all of those problems, it's not safe to assume that everyone who goes into your system will have one...

posted by James Robertson

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advertising

Living in 1990

June 17, 2010 20:51:24.039

I love this take on the effectiveness of newspaper ads, as compared to social media/web stuff:

I can choose to place an ad in the New York Times if my target is nationwide or in my town’s paper if it is locally relevant. I can direct (control) who sees my ad. The folks following me on Twitter are from all over the world. As far as I know, there isn’t a simple way to reach only the those in a particular market. Nor do I currently have a strong enough local base of followers. I would need to find someone else local with a bunch of followers and hope they’d re-tweet for me.

The targeting thing is only partly correct. Why? Well, what are the circulation numbers? What's the demographic uptake? At least in the US, the readership for printed news drops through the floor the lower the age bracket gets.

The better question is, would traditional ads do you much good anyway? I still think most advertising is a shared fiction, where the buyers and sellers agree to pretend that something useful is happening.

posted by James Robertson

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science

Cell Phones, RF, and Health

June 17, 2010 13:50:28.403

It sounds to me like the mobile phone field is still moving to quickly to get definitive data - the studies on cell phones and brain tumors were all done in a largely (gone now) analog spectrum phone world:

Unfortunately, there were flaws and vagueness in the Interphone study, starting with the fact that it was based on cell phone use six years ago and out of date compared to today's 3G-class phones. This enabled the CTIA to cite it as evidence that cell phones were not a definitive factor in cases of brain cancer.

Then we had 2G digital for a bit (still do), and 3G, while mature, is still rolling out. 4G (LTE) is right around the corner. Nothing has been in the field long enough for a longitudinal study to yield useful numbers. Even if 3G and LTE settle down and stick for awhile, you'll still have to wait for years before there's enough data. As I was saying on a different topic yesterday, we just don't know what we don't know...

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posted by James Robertson

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webVelocity

WebVelocity 1.1 Beta Info

June 17, 2010 8:58:13.983

I have all the details on my Cincom blog

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posted by James Robertson

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smalltalkDaily

Smalltalk Daily 06/17/10: JQuery in WebVelocity 1.1

June 17, 2010 8:14:22.413

Today's Smalltalk Daily looks at a simple JQuery based Ajax example in WebVelocity 1.1 (beta). You can watch it on YouTube right now, or follow this link to the video.

You can follow the Smalltalk channel on YouTube for all the "Smalltalk Daily" videos. You can also check out the videos on Vimeo, where the quality is higher, or over on Facebook, if you are a member.

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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