Posts

Russell Beattie has kicked off an interesting thread of discussion on the topic of the future of Java: In fact, I’d say that many of today’s current hot trends in programming are a direct result of a backlash against everything that Java has come to represent: Lengthy code and slow development being the first and foremost on the list. In Java you generally need hundreds of lines of code to do what modern scripting languages do in dozens (or less). The general up tick in interest in Ruby, Python and PHP during the 2000s all has its roots in programmers who had to work on one Java project too many, and were desperate to find something more efficient and less painful to use. You all know the story - less XML and cleaner, leaner code - and once you’ve experienced it, believe me, you won’t go back. ...

Here’s something that jumped out at me in a blog post about the threat that lead paint in homes poses to children: So why the stall in taking action? Well, first there is the lead lobby. Then there is cost of de-leading paint in older houses nationwide, which works out to an estimated $58 billion, or about $8,000 for each IQ point saved. Apparently this is too much for Washington, since no progress has been made towards lowering allowable lead limits since 2000. ...

In the course of tinkering around with the blog, I’ve decided to give FeedBurner another try. Soon http://rc3.org/atom.xml will be redirected to http://feeds.rc3.org/rc3dotorg. I’m just waiting for the DNS CNAME to propagate. Update: Looks like my three day TTL on domain names means that the new URL won’t be live until Wednesday.

Getting back into the swing of things. How do you define “wealthy?” Here’s a definition that works for me. Google News is moving beyond being a news aggregator and allowing subjects of news stories to post feedback. Rogers Cadenhead finds Utah coal mine owner Robert Murray taking advantage of the service. Scott Rosenberg on how music recordings have gotten louder and less interesting. It’s official, telcos assisted the NSA in mass wiretapping of Americans. ...

I just upgraded to Movable Type 4. The process was dirt simple and it appears to have worked. Now it’s time to dig in and see what some of the new features are. Update: Turns out I created a few issues by mucking around. Looks like I have some work ahead of me …

Now that I’m all caught up on the DVDs, I thought I’d just mention that if you haven’t watched The Wire, HBO’s drama about the effects of the drug trade on the city of Baltimore, you must go out and rent it or buy it immediately. I skipped it when it premiered on HBO way back in 2002, and I’m kind of glad I did, because it afforded me the opportunity to watch the first three seasons over a couple of months. ...

I’m still too busy on my JavaScript project to really write all that much, but I wanted to at least let you know that I’m still alive (albeit buried under an avalanche of unread items in my feed reader). Stephen O’Grady is attempting to simplify his life. I think programmers refer to this as YAGNI. I’m looking into the Mercurial version control system, wondering if it’s a decent lightweight alternative to Subversion for smaller projects. ...

The one thing to read on the subject of Karl Rove’s resignation is Dan Froomkin’s White House Watch column today.

Anil muses on the idea that the iPhone is unsuitable for the enterprise, and more generally on the idea that somehow “work” products and “home” products are mutually incompatible. Anil has been on fire lately. Here’s a snippet: Here’s the truth: You can meet all the (reasonable) requirements of an Enterprise while still creating a product that delights and inspires the people who make up that organization. In fact, you have to do so. ...

From the “About damn time” file comes the news that SCO has had its claims on owning the copyright for various pieces of Unix shot down in federal court. In the 102-page ruling, the judge, Dale A. Kimball, also said Novell could force SCO to abandon its claims against I.B.M., which SCO had sued. Judge Kimball’s decision in favor of Novell could almost entirely undermine SCO’s 2003 lawsuit against I.B.M. The ruling could remove the cloud over open-source software like Linux, an operating system loosely modeled on the proprietary Unix. The unresolved ownership has been seen as a limiting factor in the willingness of computing managers for businesses large and small to adopt open-source software, which can be adapted freely by software developers and can be legally shared or modified by end users. ...