Kill Them With Logic

Slashdot: VS 2010 forces tab indentation

2010-01-25T07:37:00.002-06:00

Though I prefer allowing people the choice, it is sometimes necessary to force people to see the light. =) +1 tabs!

Original: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=517188
Slashdot: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/01/25/038209/Visual-Studio-2010-Forces-Tab-Indenting

Gaming: Jack Thompson sues Facebook over ... allowing freedom of speech?!

2009-10-01T13:37:00.002-05:00

For those who have not kept up with the controversy surrounding Jack Thompson, he has been disbarred from Florida bar, called out for pushing his agenda in Utah, and attempted to sue multiple parties like Microsoft, ESRB & BestBuy. It seems like our favorite punching clown has made another sensationalized move by sueing Facebook!

Now please don't get me wrong: I do not want children under the age of 17 to play any mature rated game. I worked at BestBuy for a year in the video game department and made sure to bring up ESRB ratings to parents buying games for kids. However, Jack has been unable to come to terms with the fact that he demonized a huge subculture that doesn't appreciate it. I really don't feel sorry for this guy except for the fact that he came at the whole issue of video game violence in the wrong way.

Slashdot: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/01/0315246/Jack-Thompson-Sues-Facebook-For-40M?art_pos=9
Article: http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/320607

Gaming: PSP-no-go

2009-10-01T13:30:00.002-05:00

According to the majority of the folks at IGN, it seems Sony's latest version of its popular Playstation Portable (PSP) is receiving some less than stellar reviews. I was really hoping that it would fair a little better, however I am not surprised as the smaller form factor and lack of program to transfer UMDs to digital copies were the early criticisms about the move that Sony failed to address. My other issue with the system as a whole is the relative slow churn of games that I am interested in.

I have to tell Mrs. Felzbot that she was right about having me wait until Christmas to get one or decide if I want one!

Article: http://psp.ign.com/articles/103/1030179p1.html

Tool: FastIcn for Mac OS X

2009-06-10T12:47:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I found this neat tool called FastIcn for Mac OS X that allows you to drag and drop an object from your Mac onto this rotating cube and it will produce an image of it for you to use. This is great when you want to use icons for presentations as it will turn them into transparent PNGs. Anyhow, try it out for yourself and hope it helps!

Website: http://projects.digitalwaters.net/index.php?q=fasticns

Article: Are IT professionals prone to marriage issues?

2009-06-04T12:27:00.003-05:00

While looking up the news about the TechCrunch table, I came across another article that really caught my eye: how IT professionals felt like their marriages are hellish. After reading some of the responses, I came to a set of mixed feelings about the sample IT professionals questioned.

1. I love when people ask me about what I do especially if they really want to know

It has not taken me long within my IT career to realize that some people don't care about the details of the job. This is not due to the person asking but rather the tedious, analyzing nature of the work. It might also be due to the different mindset. Whatever the reason, I welcome curiosity as well as an opportunity to aid in whatever need someone has and don't believe anything we do is too far beyond most people.

2. People who are the busiest must also be the most patient

As I have been involved in extracurricular work from time-to-time that changes 8-hour days to 12-hour days, I understand everyone being tired and frustrated. However since I know everyone is susceptible to unloading once they get home, I strive to be mindful of what I say and how I act.

3. Your family should have the highest priority over all things

I don't think this needs anything explanation. There have been several occasions where I have confessed to my wife that she is the one I have sought after all of my life and am grateful for all things we share because I share them with her. Whatever happens in my life, I will always put her and my family before all things. That also means I need to do everything in my power to protect them and ensure their happiness.

Anyhow, I thought I would throw this out as a shame of an issue for IT professionals to have. I <3 my wife deeply and abhor whenever I do anything to hurt her. =(

Article: http://www.itworld.com/career/68604/why-it-peoples-marriages-are-hell

Article: Perspective on Twitter

2009-06-02T17:45:00.003-05:00

Though I have since removed myself from Twitter due to my own reasons, I thought this article was interesting as it was really trying to quantify people's fascination with the latest buzzword Web 2.0 thing. Could Twitter really be meant to convey consciousness? Is there danger in that? For those who know me, my mind is constantly racing with every which crazy thing I see or randomly and tangentially think of. If I wrote up all of my streaming consciousness, would it be any briefer than if I wrote an article about it? Anyhow, check the article out for yourself and come to your own truth.

Article: http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/06/dp_social_wired

Article: ANSI SQL2008 support for LIMIT WITH OFFSET!

2009-06-01T12:20:00.002-05:00

While responding to someone's question about whether we could paginate results from a database query, I ran across the following article on Sybase's website announcing ANSI SQL2008 standard and uncovered it supports the concept of OFFSET! For those who don't write SQL queries, let me give a simple example:

Pretend you have a document consisting of 10 paragraphs roughly the same size and wanted to print this document out. When printed out, each page would contain 3 paragraphs, which yields a 4 page print out. If you wanted the paragraphs 4-6, would you:

A) Print the pages 1 and 2
B) Print page 2

If you said option A, then you should not read any further. The logical choice is to only get what you need. You should not have to deal with all of the stuff prior to it. The same problem is one that people who use SQL to retrieve information out of databases: how do I get record 4 - 6 out of 10 without getting 1 - 3 or 7 - 10.

Anyhow, it seems ISO has adopted OFFSET within the SQL standard, however since they require hundreds of dollars to read the standards, I cannot show them personally. Just know they are out there and will start making developers lives easier for now on.

Article: http://iablog.sybase.com/paulley/2008/07/sql2008-now-an-approved-iso-international-standard/
Vendor comparisons: http://troels.arvin.dk/db/rdbms/#select-limit-offset

Technology: Hulu Labs provides Windows / Mac desktop client

2009-05-29T07:15:00.002-05:00

At the time of writing, this is merely a Firehose entry, however it was first published in Google News, but it seems like Hulu is responding to the masses that wanted to watch via their desktops by the development of Hulu Desktop. The screenshots seem very much like the Boxee interface, which is just insult to injury considering the Hulu ban on Boxee access. The big question is going to be how this will differ from their online service especially as it requires the installation of Adobe Flash.

Article: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/165686/hulu_releases_software_client_for_mac_pc.html
Hulu Desktop: http://www.hulu.com/labs/hulu-desktop
Boxee: http://www.boxee.tv/

FollowUp: SpringSource response

2009-05-28T08:28:00.003-05:00

This morning, I was surprised to find a reply from Mark Baars of SpringSource in response to an email I sent about my disappointment with SpringSource forum support. I want to present it as I appreciate Mark being a good sport. Though I stand behind my previous statements, I do hope for the success and improvement of SpringSource services as they really do provide quality frameworks.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Mark!

Dear Felzbot,

Thank you for your email. First of all sorry to hear you are not getting the answers to your questions out of our forums. The problem with these forums is that not everyone looks at all the topics, I saw that Christian answered one of the 4 questions you added to the forum. Most of our developers are currently working very hard on new releases like Spring Roo, tc Server and Spring 3.0. Right now we have approximately 500,000 visitors on our forums each day which makes it hard to reply to most of the questions (our team is not that big). That said the team is working hard to improve the information to the community:

- To help out our community we made SpringSource Tool Suite free (see: http://www.springsource.com/products/sts )
- We are providing more advanced webinars (see: http://www.springsource.com/webinars )
- We will launch a free two hour Spring training screen cast in June
- I’m trying to make Spring training courses available everywhere around the world right now. We launched Spanish courses, classes in Singapore, Dublin and many more new locations (see http://www.springsource.com/training )

I read your blog about the Codetown Java User Group, feel free to use my full name in you blogs. I’m ok with people having an opinion even if it is a negative one (those are most helpful after all since the feedback means you need to improve something).

Also feel free to contact me if you have further questions,

Best Regards,

Mark Baars
SpringSource EMEA
http://www.springsource.com

Van: Felzbot [mailto:felzbot@example.com]
Verzonden: woensdag 20 mei 2009 19:47
Aan: Mark Baars
Onderwerp: RE: Codetown Java User Group

Dear Mark,

I must say it is great to hear that SpringSource is looking for new avenues to reach their customers (developers), however I must say that I worry that this might be in vain due to the unreliable nature of the other avenues such as the Spring Framework forums. I have tried on several occasions to ask reasonable perhaps advanced questions and have never received a response on any of them. (http://killthemwithlogic.blogspot.com/2009/05/rant-springsource-forums-suck.html)

Thanks for the information update as I will check it out, however I feel as though other efforts need renewed support.

Sincerely,
Felzbot

Gaming: Penny Arcade insights into inFAMOUS

2009-05-27T10:29:00.004-05:00

Article: Creating New Yorker cover using iPhone Brushes application

2009-05-26T15:05:00.002-05:00

According to a recent Slashdot article, the recent cover of the New Yorker was created by a man simply through his iPhone. This is simply amazing how well this was done despite taking an hour! It definite is worth the 2 minute view time.

Slashdot: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/26/1759243
Article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/tny/2009/05/jorge-colombo-iphone-cover.html

Announcement: JASIG CAS Client for Java 3.1.6

2009-05-26T14:30:00.002-05:00

This afternoon JASIG announced the latest bug fix release of the Java CAS Client (3.1.6). This release is more meaningful to us due to eliminating a classloader memory leak due to a cleanup thread found by Brad C.

Dear CAS Community,

We're pleased to announce the release of the Jasig CAS Client for Java 3.1.6. This release includes a number of enhancements and bug fixes, and all users are encouraged to upgrade to it:

ENHANCEMENTS:
* Override init(FilterConfig) method for OSGI environments
* Reduce the scariness of the JNDI lookup warning for configuration
* Improved DEBUG logging of SingleSignOutHttpSessionListener
* Include Javadoc and Source JARs in Central Maven Repository

BUG FIXES:
* Cleaned up Thread in Proxy Storage so that classloader doesn't leak on restart
* Javadoc incorrect for serverName property
* SAML1.1 Ticket Validator does not respect renew=true
* Potential ConcurrentModificationException in clean up thread

Thanks to Brad Cupit from LSU for identifying and helping resolve the classloader leak on restart.

The distribution can be downloaded from:
http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas-clients/cas-client-3.1.6-release.tar.gz
http://www.ja-sig.org/downloads/cas-clients/cas-client-3.1.6-release.zip

Within the next few days, it should be available via the Central Maven Repository (we have to wait until they sync with the Spring Security repository).

This release is API compatible with the previous 3.1.x branch releases.

Thanks
-Scott

Article: Seems like Apple isn't making Safari 4 so sexy under the covers

2009-05-24T07:11:00.003-05:00

Recently, someone sat down and dug into Safari 4 to discover that it creates a ton of tracking files that accumulate much faster than anyone would expect. Hopefully these tracking files are Safari 4 specific and I can safely revert to Safari 3. Anyhow, I think I should revert back until Apple forces me to upgrade or includes features I want.

Article: http://www.thrica.com/archives/352

Article: Using Vim & Screen for Common Lisp development

2009-05-24T06:58:00.003-05:00

When I started teaching myself Common Lisp, I came across the "Whatever you write into the interpreter stays in the interpreter" issue, however I am a vim bigot, so things won't be so easy as using SLIME. That is when I stumbled upon a way to use Vim & Screen together to easily develop from Vim!

After downloading Jonathan's slime.vim file, I ended changing the keymapping from Control+c to Control+l since I use Control+c to escape insert mode instead of using Esc. It may also help you to set a default session name in let g:screen_sessionname = "" to reduce some tediousness of setup. The rest of his instructions seem easy enough, but something to elaborate on: Vim will pull either the current line or the lines that you have selected via a visual block.

Anyhow, I am happy as a lark about this and appreciate this little Vim plugin!

Article: http://technotales.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/like-slime-for-vim/

slime.vim: http://s3.amazonaws.com/mps/slime.vim

SLIME: http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/

Gaming: Gaming more popular than going to movies

2009-05-22T07:35:00.003-05:00

“Video games account for one-third of the average monthly consumer spending in the U.S. for core entertainment content, including music, video, games,” said Anita Frazier, video games industry analyst for NPD. “While a portion of that share stems from the premium price of console games, we’re also seeing an overall increase in the number of people participating in gaming year-over-year.”

To say 63% of people have played a video game in 6 months to 53% of people who went to the theater is not a pure apples-to-apples comparison. Consumers can typically play and replay games they have purchased for as long as their console functions or the media is readable. Movies are a one shot deal whose associated costs have risen year after year; $20 for 2 tickets and a bag of popcorn versus $60 for a game that will last a while.

Anyhow, it is an interesting article that bring up larger questions:

Is gaming considered more acceptable?
How will this affect non-gaming social interactions?
Is this due to issues with non-gaming social venues?
Is this something people should be alarmed about?

I will tell you my thoughts after next Wednesday when I take the day off to relax and play inFamous!

Slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/21/2221246
Article: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23719
Article: http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_090520.html

Rumor: $700 or less Apple Tablet

2009-05-21T10:42:00.002-05:00

I started to feel really good about the fact that I finally had a second news story submitted to Slashdot that was promoted to be news worthy about some news out of the Apple rumor mill. That was all until the first comment to rate a 5 in the article was:

Rumours are not news. They belong on Digg. Please please /., try to keep the quality of the post high and avoid speculation like this. It makes the site so much more worth reading.

I would think that if Slashdot had a process of rating articles (Firehose) to see whether it should be promoted to an actual story that it could say, "This is what our audience wants to read" and someone who doesn't want the quality "to suffer" then they should use it.

Rumor: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/05/21/apple_to_answer_netbook_market_with_500_700_tablet_report.html
Slashdot: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/21/1422222
Comment: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1240861&cid=28039989

Random: Taking poll on frequency of rants versus non-rant articles

2009-05-20T19:24:00.001-05:00

It seems lately I have let loose more of my frustrations and wanted to see how the KTWL audience views them. I have created a poll on the right that will be open for a couple weeks, which I hope people would use to honestly assess the content provided here. I hope to take the response to heart and see how I can better present my thoughts and feelings in the future.

Thanks!
Felzbot

Random: Lisp XKCD

2009-05-20T13:51:00.002-05:00

Article: SpringSource advocating CodeTown JUG

2009-05-20T12:52:00.003-05:00

In an effort to provide more resources to its customers, SpringSource has started sending emails to people talking about a new website called CodeTown, which is appears to be a software developer community not tied to one programming language, environment, operating system, etc. The following email is one that I received, which makes no mention of SpringSource's involvement with this website:

From: Mark Baars SpringSource [mailto:m####.b####@springsource.com]
Sent: Wed 5/20/2009 10:46 AM
To: Felzbot
Subject: Codetown Java User Group

Dear Felzbot,

As you might know Michael Levin is the founder of several Java User Groups all around the world (even a West African JUG) and a big contributor to open source. Because JUG's are both informative, educational and fun networks for all Java users I wanted to inform you about the Codetown Java User Group.

It is updated every day with content like video's, blogs, forum posts
Events are organized for the members to highlight the latest developments in Java, Spring, Tomcat, etc.
Discounts are provided for professional Java training courses
The JUG has a lot of professional Java users that provide feedback to problems by using the forums

And as Michael himself explains:

"Codetown is a social network. Its got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends"

I would advice you to take a look at the JUG website, right now the Java User Group has 280 members. Signing up is free and can be done here:

http://www.codetown.us/

Always feel free to contact me about Spring / Tomcat related questions and Michael about the Java User Group (chaff@cambridgeweb.ie)

Best Regards,

M### B###
Director of Marketing EMEA
SpringSource
http://www.springsource.com

For those who have been reading my entries since the beginning, you will know that I already have issues with SpringSource's support. Hopefully since this community isn't readily controlled or supported by SpringSource it might not suck as badly, but only time will tell how serious they are to supporting people if that is even their mission.

Gaming: Top 11 iPhone Games

2009-05-20T10:10:00.002-05:00

I have been looking for looking for nicely done wastes of time (i.e. games) for my iPhone over the past few months and came across this article listing PC Magazine's top 11. After reading it, I was surprised that SimCity was released for iPhone and how good it looks compared to SNES era SimCity. Also, I was also pleased to find Wolfenstein 3D and Deer Hunter 3D despite the fact that I do 0% hunting in real life.

Anyhow, check them out and let me know if you find any other worthwhile games!

Article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347361,00.asp

Rant: Lack of applying scientific method to solve problems

2009-05-20T08:03:00.006-05:00

DISCLAIMER: I apologize for any toes I step on with this, but this has happened more than enough times to qualify for a small rant. I am completely aware that I have exhibited this behavior and strive not to. I further realize that sometimes it is more efficient to ask someone that might save lots of time by figuring things out faster, but I am a little irked by the constant "There is a problem with CAS" and it really isn't a problem with CAS.

For two years now, we have been working towards switching to a third-party SSO package called JASIG Central Authentication Service (CAS). Within a year of deployment, we started encountering issues here and there whether it was a Sun Java bug, inexperience with Tomcat optimization, poor JBoss Cache support, or political battles with the load balancer. However, CAS has held up pretty well on its own for the most part as there have been few issues that were really CAS' fault. Unfortunately, those who know of CAS have come to immediately think that something is wrong with it whenever they experience any issues.

I fully understand people asking me if there are issues with CAS as they are unable to log into the server to check logs and see what is going on. However, it would be nice for people to hold off a little longer on initial conclusions and dig a little deeper to truly determine if the problem they perceive is really CAS' fault.

Lets take a little example scenario and apply the scientific method to determine what the problem is:

Make sense of the problem: I am unable to get into CAS-protected Java applications
Form conjecture: There is an issue with CAS and it is not working
Form theory: If CAS is not working, I cannot login to Portal
Test theory: Try to login to Portal and find it works
Reform conjecture: CAS is working but CAS-protected Java applications are slow
Reform theory: If CAS is working but not Java apps, then Java app server is not working
Test theory: Check whether Java app server is running and if pages are being served
Reform conjecture: Java app server is serving pages but slow to serve authenticated pages
Reform theory: CAS client having issues
Test theory: Examine logs to find exceptions from CAS client
Reform conjecture: No exceptions from CAS client, so something after CAS client is broken
Reform theory: Authorization occurs after authentication, so it might be broken
Test theory: Test whether authorization database is up and available
Reform conjecture: Authorization database is not responding
Reform theory: Database is having issues
Test theory: Ask DBA if there are issues with database
Reform conjecture: Database is having issues and a restart fixes things

As I said in the disclaimer, I don't mind people asking for help early on in solving a problem but rather I am irked when people say there is a problem when their problem is not where they perceive it to be. I believe CAS has a bad enough reputation where I don't want to hear people say there are issues with it when it has been such a champ in such a resistent environment.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Article: Facebook brings momentum behind OpenId usage

2009-05-19T14:39:00.002-05:00

Recently, Facebook has settled on using OpenId for the SSO portion of the popular social networking website. Here at LSU, we have settled on using JASIG CAS for SSO of our portal. I am sure most would say this is a great thing as now users can have a single identity across multiple, disparate websites, however I believe few bring up the potential dangers involved.

Anyhow, need to read up more on this and think what this will cause.

Article: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Facebook-Knocks-Down-Another-Single-Sign-On-Hurdle-With-OpenID-Adoption-67111.html?wlc=1242761859

Gaming: Bethesda announces Falloull expansions for PS3 ... finally

2009-05-19T11:03:00.004-05:00

For those who have played Fallout 3, it has easily become a treasured memory within the fondest of games we have played. However, there has been a torn to this rose in terms of Bethesda only having downloadable content (DLC) for PC and XBox 360 and not PS3. It seems that enough time has past for Microsoft to have exclusive first distribution rights and now Bethesda is bringing home to the PS3. Only trick is that it will be a delay between releases.

I am 99.99% sure the reason why the content wasn't released on all systems simultaneously is because Bethesda took a Microsoft bribe for initial first rights to the DLC. You can say, "Microsoft paid for the content, so they should get it.", which is a very reasonable case. However, the rub here is that Bethesda never came out and said it because it would piss off their PS3 gamers, so they didn't have the guts / balls / other bodily appendage to say it. It is a shame they couldn't be upfront and honest, but they probably wanted the extra money in the harder economic times.

Anyhow, I am glad it is coming out despite all of the crap Bethesda has done to alienate their consumers ... t(-.- t)

Article: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/984/984129p1.html

Random: Making way for those wider posts / images

2009-05-18T18:30:00.001-05:00

...Okay, after being booted from Blogspot and retyping this article, I am now back with a wider blog to accommodate pictures and larger real estate! Originally, it was 660 px and has now been upgraded to 900 px, so let me know if this is better or not.

Random: Python XKCD

2009-05-18T14:34:00.001-05:00

Article: Disappointing technology ... Hi Ubuntu!

2009-05-18T09:43:00.001-05:00

I know some of my buddies will like to defend its honor, but I think Linux on the desktop being ubiquitous was never really going to happen. Though some distributions like Ubuntu are trying to make it easier to use, I have seen this thing go one for over a decade and it doesn't feel like much has changed. Sure, Wal-Mart or Dell go back and forth with offering Linux-based machines, but those are gobbled up by geeks for the limited time they are available and then they stop.

Anyhow, I find several of the things here very worthy of being here: VR, Zune, and Vista. As for the rest of it, I recognize all of them and all but Firewire and Bluetooth outright failed in my eyes; Firewire and Bluetooth are not going down easily.

Article: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/145271,top-10-disappointing-technologies.aspx

Article: Mozilla moving beyond tabs?

2009-05-18T09:31:00.003-05:00

It seems Mozilla is looking to part with a feature that they helped popularize (yes, Opera started it but who likes Opera really?). It is hard for me to think about what could be next beyond tabs because they are still pretty new to some (IE users) and they have really changed how we use a browser. I agree that having more than 8 tabs is unwieldy and perhaps groups or tasklets would be helpful but I usually keep mine clean. I usually keep a tab open for Gmail and Purevolume / Pandora, so that is 2 out of 8 there. I might look into the referenced plugin as it could be useful.

What are your thoughts?

Article: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/252991/mozilla-preparing-to-scrap-tabbed-browsing.html
Competition: http://design-challenge.mozilla.com/summer09/
Article: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefoxnext-tabs-on-the-side/
Plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890

Article: PHP 5.3 Release Candidate 2 available; 5.3 RC3 in 2-3 weeks!

2009-05-16T08:03:00.003-05:00

For those of you who cannot wait for Late Static Binding and Closures to be implemented in PHP, then the latest release candidate news should help get you excited! Now all you need to do is to prepare for the coming of version 5.3 by reading the upgrade guide.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE UPGRADE GUIDE

It is good they throw warnings about pass-by-value in place of pass-by-reference but it really is silly we are still dealing with this Nteenth years after C; need to tell pointers to grow up!
The new array functions (array_replace and array_replace_recursive) seem useful
Curious about preg_filter()
Not only does lcfirst() go against naming conventions but I never realized this was so common it needed a method...
The abbreviated ?: ternary will be fun!

Article: http://www.php.net/archive/2009.php#id2009-05-07-1
Guide: http://wiki.php.net/doc/scratchpad/upgrade/53

Article: PHP, HTML, JS generation of sites from UIzard.org

2009-05-15T16:31:00.004-05:00

I saw this article a few months ago about a tool to build PHP / HTML / JS for websites, however the website was being pounded due to Slashdot traffic. I haven't forgotten about it and will begin reviewing it shortly, but the concept of in-browser development is becoming more and more favored with tools like Firebug and Web Developer.

Anyhow, check it out for yourself and weigh in!

Slashdot: http://www.opensourcereleasefeed.com/interview/show/ryu-sunt-tae-creator-of-uizard
Website: http://www.uizard.org/

Random: Comical (mis-)origins about programming languages

2009-05-15T10:06:00.002-05:00

NOTE: Thanks to Philip C. for the link!

It is a shame they don't formally include PHP in the satire though there are some attempts by others in the comments section.

Article: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Article: MySQL refactoring highlights discontent with MySQL 5.1?

2009-05-15T07:40:00.004-05:00

Though the referenced article is about the start of the Open Database Alliance by MySQL founder Monty Widenius, I think the additional information about Oracle / Sun / MySQL planning a refactoring of MySQL is due to the disappointing MySQL 5.1 release. I have not personally used Drizzle yet as I have not weighed in on the whole Cloud debate, but it is something I will start looking into.

UPDATE:

Just had a read through on the AskMonty.org wiki about the new database engine Maria they are working on to replace MyISAM as the de facto standard of MySQL engines. Monty makes an interesting statement, "Another primary goal for this release is to make Maria code of good quality; performance is not a primary goal for this release!". Not saying I cannot understand this but that might hurt adoption a little for where performance is necessary. More than likely small time websites and projects will start using Maria 1.5 and others will wait for Maria 2.0.

Slashdot: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/14/1921243
Open Database Alliance: http://opendatabasealliance.com/
Drizzle: https://launchpad.net/drizzle

Gaming: Take-Two wants to take $12 million over Duke Nukem Forever

2009-05-15T07:31:00.003-05:00

Outside of Doom, I grew up on Duke Nukem 3D just like the next middle age 20 something and though I wasn't keeping my breath, it is a shame the longest running joke in the computing world has died once again. Today on Slashdot, it turns out that Take-Two Interactive, which is the same company that brings you Grand Theft Auto and BioShock series, initially provided $12 million for publishing rights to Duke Nukem Forever and want it back since 3D Realms has stated Duke Nuke Forever will not be made.

Why is this game so hard to come out with? Is 3D Realms so big of a joke that they cannot do it themselves? I think it was a fluke they came out with Duke Nukem 3D and we should have left it at that.

UPDATE

Apparently Take-Two is bringing 3D Realms to court and demanding the source code of the game so they can put it out themselves! Perhaps this long standing joke might finally come to an end ...

Slashdot: http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/15/065205
Article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347238,00.asp

Gaming: BioShock 2 demo with commentary

2009-05-13T18:34:00.003-05:00

Last night, I came across a satisfying 9-minute demo of BioShock 2 with developer commentary and must say that it looks to be every bit as exciting as the first! They talk about planning surprises even for the most suspicious players who are looking for curve balls like the ones encountered in the original BioShock.

If you have not played and completed the first game, I recommend going out to get it right now for whatever system you have (PS3, PC, XBox 360) and enjoy it now. I am currently on my third play through and enjoying every moment of setting cyclone traps, electrocuting splicers, and riddling anything with my supped machine gun.

Video: http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/14257954/bioshock-2/videos/bioshock2_trl_walk051209c.html

Random: 7 sent to hospital due to refrigerator of rotten food

2009-05-13T13:53:00.003-05:00

There have been times over the past 3 years where I have turned my head when checking into particular refrigerators at work because people left stuff there for a number of weeks, however I have never heard of people being sent to the hospital over it! Here is a random article from Slashdot about some AT&T employees in San Jose, CA who needed to go to the hospital because of it.

It makes me wonder if I should still be eating expired Pocky that we were ripped off on from VeryAsia ... By the way, I would recommend not buying Pocky from VeryAsia but rather from your local World Market outlet as they bring in the basics (chocolate and strawberry) that haven't expired.

Article: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/1536245

Article: IE losing to Firefox in 2013?

2009-05-13T11:46:00.003-05:00

Saw an article on Slashdot about how IE has been losing 5% market share every year to other web browsers. I cannot help but feel proud of converting some infinitely minute number of people from IE to Firefox helped in some way. Honestly though, I am a Firefox bigot as it has the most features I find appealing (plugins, themes, tabbed browsing, frequent releases, Awesome Bar, etc).

What would things be like without IE being the common denominator? Would ActiveX go by the way side and some other technology come into play? Perhaps Java could gain some ground as it is portable and would not play on specific JRE tricks. Would more sites conform to CSS / XHTML standards now that the standards hand holding / overlooking goes away and they are told to grow up like the rest of the seasoned web sites?

We shall see but I find this fascinating!

Article: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/1546213

Advice: Executing Common Lisp from Vim

2009-05-13T09:25:00.005-05:00

DISCLAIMER: Thanks to Adam Z. for this trick!

NOTE: This involves Vim, CLISP, and Linux/Unix with CLISP being in your execution path.

Apparently the Common Lisp interpreters use an idea called REPL (Read, Evaluate, Print, Loop) to deal with statements, however there is no way to write your work out after the fact. Traditionally, Lisp coders would use their favorite Common Lisp interpreter along with SLIME, which is an Emacs tie in that gives a lot of nice things when it comes to coding Lisp. That is not an option for me as I am a Vim bigot, so I needed a way to write my code in Vim and have it sent to CLISP.

After opening a Vim session and starting to write Lisp code, save the file (example.lisp) and type the following command:

:!clisp example.lisp

This will instruct Vim to run a system command and to dump the standard output results into your Vim session.

1 (defun hello-world ()
2 (format t "Hello world!"))
3 (hello-world)

localhost:~ felzbot$ vim hello-world.lisp

Hello world!

Press ENTER or type command to continue

Advice: Common Lisp Interpreters on Mac OS X

2009-05-13T09:12:00.005-05:00

Once I decided on taking on Common Lisp, I quickly found out that there are several different Common Lisp interpreters available for us, which left me with the question, "Which one should I use with Mac OS X?"

Initially I tried Allegro CL because they had some free training sessions online and Mac OS X installer. I ultimately decided against it because the operating and license restrictions were too limiting. Also the initial training session was long winded and not really getting to the subject matter quick enough; 20 - 30 minutes and still nothing on actual Common Lisp code.

After that, I came across CLISP and thought it was a step up as it was completely free and open; it also didn't hurt it was part of the GNU project. The only trick was that I had to install it under MacPorts since it was a Unix utility, but that is pretty straight forward. I have been pleased with it so far and intend to use this for the most part.

After that, I came across Clozure CL and was impressed that they not only had Mac OS X installer but that it used Cocoa / Carbon for a nicer UI than popping open terminal and running CLISP. The only downside for me personally is that it only hooked into Emacs via SLIME, which is not an option for me; I am a Vim bigot. =P

Finally, I heard about LispWorks but decided against it because it has a number of restrictions for their free version.

Allegro CL: http://www.franz.com/products/allegrocl/
CLISP: http://www.gnu.org/software/clisp/
Clozure CL: http://trac.clozure.com/openmcl
LispWorks: http://www.lispworks.com/

Book: Practical Common Lisp

2009-05-13T09:07:00.003-05:00

For those of who are interested on this journey of Common Lisp, I realized after ordering the book that the commonly referenced "Practical Common Lisp" is available online in its entirety for FREE! I am not kicking myself too hard because I like tangible things, so I will enjoy the book; also turning the PostScript version into a PDF comes out to 1100 pages!

Book: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Misc: Going to learn Common Lisp

2009-05-09T21:31:00.003-05:00

I finally gave it some thought and decided I should finally breakdown and learn Common Lisp. I have wrestled with the question of whether to learn Scala, Python, Ruby, Heskell, Lisp or Scheme and decided on Lisp as everyone talks about how feature X in Lisp has made its way into modern programming languages. The only other languages I might have chosen would be ALGOL or SmallTalk. Anyhow, I start now by trying to find online learning material, but I will leave this XKCD comic for everyone's amusement.

Article: Zend Framework 1.8 Released

2009-05-07T10:21:00.002-05:00

This morning I got an email from Zend stating that Zend Framework 1.8.0 was finally released. I have been looking forward to this as they are suppose to make it easier for bootstrapping your ZF applications by sharing common setup amongst them such as database settings. It appears that the ZF change log is down, but I was able to fish out the change log from the ZF 1.8 Subversion tag:

Zend_Tool
Zend_Application
Zend_Loader_Autoloader and Zend_Loader_Autoloader_Resource
Zend_Navigation
Zend_CodeGenerator
Zend_Reflection
Zend Server backend for Zend_Cache
Zend_Service_Amazon_Ec2
Zend_Service_Amazon_S3
Zend_Filter_Encrypt
Zend_Filter_Decrypt
Zend_Filter_LocalizedToNormalized and _NormalizedToLocalized
Support for file upload progress support in Zend_File_Transfer
Translation-aware routes
Zend_Json expression support
Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Curl
SOAP input and output header support
Support for keyword field search using query strings
Support for searching across multiple indexes in Zend_Search_Lucene
Significant improvements for Zend_Search_Lucene search result match
Support for page scaling
Zend_Tag_Cloud
Locale support in Zend_Validate_Int and Zend_Validate_Float
Phonecode support in Zend_Locale
Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists and _RecordNotExists
Zend_Validate_Iban
Zend_Validate_File_WordCount

Article: http://now.eloqua.com/e/es.aspx?s=714&e=774545E7B2954FC2B5E0F2DE30F59190&elq=F6BBD423F14A4344B2E4C7E347E4D5E7

Changelog: http://framework.zend.com/svn/framework/standard/tags/release-1.8.0/README.txt

Download: http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

Rant: Nice features for Safari 4 to support natively

2009-05-07T08:48:00.002-05:00

For those who don't use Mac OS X, Safari is Apple's proprietary web browser that comes installed much in the same way that Microsoft provides Internet Explorer. I have been actively using the Safari 4 Beta release since it was first came out and have come up with a little wish list of features that would be nice for Apple to support natively:

1. Smarter URL Address bar

Safari's URL address bar offers URL suggestions / auto-complete by matching on the domain of a website. While this is helpful, it is a pain to remember to type "www.purevolume.com" just for it to start matching against the bands I listened to the other day but didn't bookmark.

With the release of Mozilla's Firefox 3, my world was changed with the inclusion of the Awesome Bar as now I could simply start typing a portion of the URL or label of the site I want to go to and it would match it from anywhere within URLs in my history or bookmarks. So now I can just type "purevolume" or if I happen to remember that I was listening to "Closure in Moscow", it will match on either one of those. The Awesome Bar can also match based upon labels assigned to bookmarks, so I could have also searched based on "music", "rock", "progressive", etc as I like to label my music by type.

2. Jump to Tab

It seems all of the major web browsers off the ability to have multiple tabs within a single instance of the web browser and some ability to move to an adjacent tab with some minor keystrokes. However, I am stuck on stupid with Mozilla's Firefox as they have a feature that allows the user to directly jump to a specific tab by hitting Command / Control and the number of the tab starting with the left most tab being number 1.

This is a really cool feature, so I can now keep tabs open for Sun Java 6 Javadocs, Gmail, PureVolume / Pandora, etc and go to the one I want directly instead of cycling through them or using a mouse to click the one I want.

Currently the only way to get this feature in Safari is by using AppleScript that will issues the necessary commands to switch to a specific tab and then assign these scripts to keystrokes manually. There are numerous articles on how to do this ( here , here , here ), but it is pretty bad that another browser supports this out of the box without manual setup and configuration.

Reference

Article: Early look at PHP 6

2009-05-06T15:07:00.000-05:00

Update: Found article on Linux Today that has some information about PHP V6 in terms of improving Unicode support; most likely to bolster internationalization.

Article: http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2009050602735OSSWDV

As soon as I see the link for the article from Slashdot, I find out that IBM cannot handle being slashdotted, so I don't have much to provide at the moment. Here is the snippet provided within the original Slashdot article:

"In this article, learn about the new PHP V6 features in detail. Learn how it is easier to use, more secure, and more suitable for internationalization. New PHP V6 features include improved support for Unicode, clean-up of several functions, improved extensions, engine additions, changes to OO functions, and PHP additions"

As I find out more, I will post responses to the original article, but I will leave you with one of the comments from the Slashdot article:

One of these things just doesn't belong

python: myArray.append(myvalue)
ruby: myArray.push(myvalue)
objective-c: [myArray addObject: myvalue]
smalltalk: myArray add: myvalue
PHP: array_push($myarray, $myvalue)

I cannot argue with that!

Article: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-php-v6/index.html
Slashdot Article: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/06/180235
Comment: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1224431&cid=27849973

Article: SpringSource acquires Hyperic

2009-05-06T13:26:00.001-05:00

We currently use Hyperic's server monitoring suite to figure out what is going on with our Linux servers while we use SpringSource's Java frameworks in our software development. It seems that SpringSource has now acquired Hyperic in an attempt to flush out their portfolio. I think this can be a great thing especially for us and cannot wait to see what they offer.

Article: http://www.hyperic.com/springsource/

Technology: SpringSource Forums Suck

2009-05-06T13:03:00.002-05:00

For those who are not big Java developers, SpringSource is a company that provides a suite of open source Java frameworks for a variety of needs: dependency injection, web MVC, security, etc. I have used several of these frameworks and have been pleased with them for the most part. However, I absolutely abhor needing to go to the SpringSource forums to get help as I barely get any type of response most of the time.

Some might say, "Well it is a free forum, so no one has to answer your question", which is a valid point. However, I am an active responder to mail list requests for help on the JASIG Central Authentication Service mail list, so I know that open source projects can have great sources of help.

Here are all of the posts I ever made:

Aside from the bug I registered, I have NEVER received a response about a single question and am pretty sure they are fairly decent questions; not the sort of "Read the fucking manual" type of questions you see.

So thank you SpringSource for never really coming through for me once again: t(-.- t)

Article: Autobiography of the programmer who designed the software used to collapse the economy

2009-05-06T09:35:00.000-05:00

After finally reading the full 6 page article, I must say that it provides a very interesting story about how one man took advantage of opportunity like any of us would and the effects it caused. Personally, I cannot blame the guy but rather the users and those who abused the market. Anyhow, I think this is something all programmers should read.

Article: http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/

Vim Tip: Global Command

2009-05-01T07:59:00.000-05:00

In Vim, you typically transform lines within a file using the standard :s[ubstitute] command to replace, transform, or remove values within a line. However there are times when you want to perform some special task on the entire file that is outside of :s[ubstitute] and other commands ability. This is where the :g[lobal] command comes into place:

:[range]g[lobal]/{pattern}/[cmd]

Quick dissection:

[range] = optional range of lines to limit command to; defaults to entire file (1, $)
g[lobal] = Vim global command; use either "global" or "g"
{pattern} = regular expression to match text to apply [cmd]
[cmd] = Ex command to be performed on each match of {pattern}

The power of this Ex command is that it can apply any Ex command to any line of the file. Okay, so you are probably thinking, "There are tons of Ex commands that allow you to specify a range", which is correct. However, there are plenty of Ex commands that don't allow you to use regular expressions to apply them such as the :d[elete] command; it just allows you to specify a range.

Let me show you some small, useful examples of the :g[lobal] command and you will begin to see what this is one of the most powerful commands available to you:

Delete all empty lines within a file
:g/^\s*$/d

Show lines containing {word} including line number
:g/{word}/#

Shift lines containing {word} one level deeper
:g/{word}/>

Shift lines containing {word} one level shallower
:g/{word}/<

There are tons of little tricks that the average developer can use on a normal basis that I will add them over time, but this is single command has the greatest potential of any other command I have used.

For a listing of all Vim Ex commands, check out their help documentation here:
http://www.vim.org/htmldoc/index.html#ex-cmd-index

Commencement

2009-05-01T07:40:00.001-05:00

After some thought, I have decided to keep a technical blog / journal about the things I discover in my software development career that would benefit others. I hope to talk about Java, PHP, Vim, Eclipse, Apache Tomcat, JASIG Central Authentication Service (CAS), security matters, and anything interesting that tickles my brain.

The name "Kill Them With Logic" is a play on "Kill Them With Kindness", which believes someone will mend their ways due to the kind, altruistic deeds shown them. I am at a point where the software development decisions out of my control are made haphazardly and no amount of kindness changes someones perspective, so I have decided to use logic rather than emotion to persuade others. This is my soap box to stand on to give voice to the mind boggling decisions made and what could have been.

Now with that pleasantry out of the way, I hope you enjoy what you find and let me know your thoughts on rants, advice, and all things logic.