Cincom Smalltalk Community Blogs
Opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Cincom Systems, Inc.
I just got back from the Dallas Ruby group, where the Seaside/Web Velocity presentation went pretty well - I'd like to thank Adam Keys, who was kind enough to let me present to the group. Here I am presenting:
James Savidge, who's a local here, came out and helped me record the event (and he helped answer questions as well):
As you've you probably noticed in the liveblog, Apple just made this very much official, and announced that some 8 million songs from all the major labels will indeed be DRM free, with a full ten million planned by the end of the quarter. As if that wasn't enough, it's also announced a new pricing structure for tracks, including a new $0.69 tier and a $1.29 one, which music companies will apparently be able to use at their own discretion.
Looks like the magic combo was that Jobs had to give on flat pricing, and the labels gave on DRM. I'd call that a win for the rest of us - time to upgrade the tracks I have with DRM...
Technorati Tags: DRM
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we take a look at the recent changes to the Web Velocity beta candidate. If you're interested in getting involved in the beta, send me an email. In the meantime, click on the image below:
You can also watch it on Vimeo:
Web Velocity Beta Update from James Robertson on Vimeo.
Or on YouTube:
Technorati Tags: seaside, web velocity
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/casts/stDaily/2009/smalltalk_daily-01-06-09.mp4 ( Size: 6547099 )]
I'm in the air as I write this, and it's not one of the flights with WiFi on board. No travel hitches; I'll be at the Dallas Ruby meeting this evening. I'll have Cincom Smalltalk non-commercial CD's with me as well - hope to see a good crowd!
This evening James Savidge and I made sure that we can do screen sharing through Google's Jabber system, and it worked fine. So - if the weather keeps me in Baltimore tomorrow, we have a contingency plan (assuming sufficient bandwidth):
Not ideal, and I sure hope I get down to Dallas tomorrow - but we have a plan just in case :)
Technorati Tags: seaside
Weather permitting, I'll be in Dallas at the local Ruby group tomorrow night - presenting Seaside and Web Velocity. Here's where I'll be, starting at 7 PM:
With all the comparisons made between Ruby and Smalltalk and the excitement over the MagLev Ruby VM you might be wanting to know more about Smalltalk. Come and learn more about Smalltalk from James Robertson.
James Savidge, the Smalltalk Jobs guy, should also be there. Come join us!
Technorati Tags: seaside, web velocity
On today's Smalltalk Daily, we load database support (ODBC) into ObjectStudio 8, and get some initial connectivity set up. To watch, click on the image below:
You can also watch it on Vimeo:
Getting Started with Databases in OST from James Robertson on Vimeo.
Or on YouTube:
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/casts/stDaily/2009/smalltalk_daily-01-05-09.mp4 ( Size: 3912118 )]
It's stories like this one about Yellowstone that make me realize just how little control over some things we really have:
The elevation of the caldera is 35 inches higher than when measurement began in 1923, and it has been moving upward since mid-2004 at a rate of up to three inches a year - more than three times faster than has ever been measured previously.
An explosion matching the last Yellowstone eruption, which released 60 million times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb, would most certainly result in millions or even billions of deaths worldwide, both directly and indirectly.
In geologic time terms, the odds of it exploding in my (or any given) lifetime are small. Still pretty sobering.
Blu-Ray may have beaten HD-DVD, but it's rapidly becoming obsolete itself:
On Monday, for example, the Korean television maker LG Electronics plans to announce a new line of high-definition televisions that connect directly to the Internet with no set-top box required. The televisions will be able to play movies and television shows from online video-on-demand services, including Netflix.
My friend Mike was showing me the streaming capabilities of Netflix via his XBox the other day, and it looked pretty compelling. Why buy another player and a bunch of disks when you can just stream?
Jan van de Sandt has announced Cloudfork, an interface to the various Amazon services:
Cloudfront AWS is a new open source project that provides easy access from Smalltalk to the Amazon Web Services that are related to cloud computing.
They are starting with Squeak, but intend to cover other Smalltalks. I think I might lend a hand and see if I can get the CST port rolling. Sounds like a great idea!
Technorati Tags: aws, amazon, cloud services
I'm not sure this makes sense to me:
Twitter is my shared notepad. If I want to remember something and I don't mind if everyone else knows it, I just post it here.
I've used my blog that way, but I'm not sure Twitter works as well. For one thing, Google doesn't seem to index tweets, while they do index my blog. Also, if I need to remember something, it's rare that I can boild it down to 140 characters and keep it meaningful.
Technorati Tags: twitter, social media
Here's the Industry Misinterpretations year in review - a look back at all things Smalltalk (and a few things beyond Smalltalk) from 2008. You can download the podcast here.
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!
Enclosures:
[http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/audio/2009/industry_misinterpretations118.mp3 ( Size: 16741525 )]
Whenever a story about music appears - like the one I just commented on below - an RIAA troll is sure to follow. In the comments, I found this:
DRM has never prevented people from paying for music. DRM does prevent people from illegally turning one purchased item into dozens of free give-away items. DRM does have the potential to discourage people who intend to illegally distribute protected music from buying protected music.
The commenter must know 2, maybe 3 people. There's a lot of music I haven't purchased due to DRM. There are tons of issues with it, too - just witness the problems surrounding the abandonment of DRM schemes by MS and Wal-Mart. Suddenly, unless you have the time to rip it all to CD, your music is unplayable. Heck, even with Apple's less onerous DRM there are problems.
When we first bought the Mac Mini (years ago now), the HD died on us. There went all the music. I had two options: call Apple (as it happened, they did allow us to re-download, with a warning that they might not in the future), or rip the music off the iPod using "illegal" software. The latter wasn't a full answer; the iPod had my music, but not my daughter's. Then there's the "five computer" limit, which the RIAA thinks is too generous. We went over that limit, even after telling a couple of machines to de-authorize. Now I have to de-authorize every machine except the main host and start over.
So yeah, DRM never stopped anyone. Except average people - and I don't mean me. Last week, I was at the gym with my wife. It's the gym with the therapy pool, so it's heavy on retired people. As I'm changing in the locker room, I overhear 2 older gentlemen lamenting the fact that their iTunes music is limited to 5 machines. They didn't know much about DRM, but they knew they hated it - and they were glad to hear about the DRM-free Amazon store that integrates nicely with iTunes. I may not be an average music listener, but these older guys were - and the RIAA has no idea how much they've ticked people off...
If nothing else, the resurgence of Vinyl is kind of interesting:
In 2008, 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. The previous record was in 2000, when 1.5 million LP albums were sold. More than two out of every three vinyl albums bought in 2008 were purchased at an independent music store, according to SoundScan.
I don't think this will go very far though. Most people aren't audiophiles, and the convenience of an iPod trumps whatever quality hit you may (or may not) be able to perceive. What we are seeing, IMHO, is another instance of narrowcasting. There aren't that many audiophiles in any one place (compared to MP3 buyers), but there is a market if you aggregate them all together - and the net has made that possible.
The oddball outcome of that might be this: vinyl may outlive the CD, because the CD doesn't offer much over the MP3 (especially with DRM-free outlets like Amazon around).
Michael and I were recording our year end wrap up last night when, 27 minutes in, Audacity crashed on me. Fortunately, it saves all the audio in segments as it records. Unfortunately, I wasn't on the 1.3 rev, so it couldn't recover. I wrote a quick bit of Smalltalk to just slam the files together, but that resulted in a nasty click sound at the end of each segment (as did a command line "cat" command).
Fortunately, other people have had this problem, and I found a nice little recovery tool. Worked like a charm, and all I'm left with is the task of putting the bits back together in a way that sounds continuous :)
