Rael:
Here’s an utterly naughty little something not for the faint-of-heart… inline_python is a stub plug-in for anyone wishing to try their hand at writing Blosxom plug-ins in Python. A hearty “yeehaw!” to the creator of the first Python Blosxom plug-in. ;-]
Truly evil stuff. <evil grin>
I think that this might open the floodgates for more robust Blosxom plugins.
I love Python. I really love Python. I’m working on a little project that should really obey robots.txt. I hit up google to see if there was any code out there for me to take a look at or if I was going to have to write a little code to handle robots.txt. Of course, one of the first things that I stumbled upon was robotparser, a module that does just that.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, all I have to do is import robotparser and use the code that has already been written for me. Python’s Standard Library absolutely rules.
WiFi News also points to a Washington Post article about Verizon Wireless’ EvDO high speed wireless:
Verizon has apparently acquired enough spectrum (and cheaply) in enough markets to roll out EvDO, a third-generation (3G) cell data technology that could allow from several hundred Kbps on the go to 2.4 Mbps for stationery use. I can’t wait to see if those are real-world speeds, or full-shared circuit speeds: that is, 2.4 Mbps is the available per-cell speed, split among users of that cell. (The same story misreports that Verizon is rolling out Wi-Fi service to hotels and airports; rather, they’ll resell Wayport service under their own brand.)
An IBM press release via WiFi News
In the latest update on truck stop wireless hot spots, Columbia Advanced Wireless will deploy 1,000 truck stops with wireless networks for truckers to stay on top of their loads and schedules. So far, they have two locations listed; watch for the 998 to come. (Truck stops are a reasonable place for non-truckers to stop, too, given that these wireless networks will most likely be in areas with otherwise limited broadband capability.)
Yes, I know. This is a techblog, not a warblog. The event should probably be marked though.
It looks like Bush has spotted Hussein 48 hours.
For the record, I turned the TV off as soon as his speech was over. I wanted to be informed about what was going down, but I’d rather not hear it rehashed until the late news is over. As a techblog reader yourself, you’ll be happy to know that my comments on the subject are over for the evening, and hopefully for awhile.
Aaron Swartz has put together two articles in his series: How to Do Stuff. First up are How to Do Version Control with CVS and How to Do Live Streaming.
Speex rocks for encoding and decoding speech with mad compression rates.
LWN‘s posting of this week’s Dr. Dobb’s Python-URL contains linkage to the Eric3 Python IDE. It looks really nice and is built upon PyQT and QScintilla. The screenshots are impressive, I’ll try to check it out.
The Register confirms that Wrox is no more.
IT publisher Wrox Press is set to close following the collapse into liquidation of US owners Peer Information last Friday.
Bummer. For the record, I’d be more than happy to pay for some material from Professional JSP 2.0.
A note to those of you who were screaming at the customer service reps at Verizon Wireless this afternoon in Columbia, Maryland:
If you had read your contract before you signed it, you would understand that the terms of your warranty stipulate that a warranty replacement may include a refurbished phone. It doesn’t matter if you’ve managed to break three phones already, you’re not getting a brand new phone. It is refurbished. No amount of yelling at the customer service rep or disturbing customers in line will get you a new phone. Really. It didn’t work for the guy yelling twenty minutes ago, and it’s not going to work for you.
You can call and complain, he is the manager on duty, and you can’t have a new phone, it’s refurbished.
Clemens points out:
Sam Gentile has blogged a compact overview on the IIS 6.0 process model. Because pictures say more than a thousand words, I recommend that you get this PPT file from Bill Staples (Group Program Manager for IIS at MS) in addition to reading what Sam has to say.
Sam Ruby has written a new essaylet on Noun vs. Verb:
Perhaps it is time for another essay. A short one, this time.
Here’s a quote from his essay, emphasis mine:
RSS could benefit from an explicit schema. RSS could benefit by more explicit rules defining whether HTML is allowed in titles or relative links are allowed in descriptions. RSS could benefit from a more clear separation of metadata from data. RSS could benefit from an ability to explicitly mark what items must be understood, and which are optional.
Sam has said as much in his essaylet, but exactly why don’t we put together a schema for site syndication? I know something like this has to be approached carefully, as you have various RSS camps. The whole RSS1.0/RDF vs. RSS0.9x/2.0 thing seems worse than Mac vs. PC.
So why not? Would it be possible to set up a schema that at least the vast majority people could agree upon? Could it be possible to have a syndication format that you could actually parse because it is well formed XML? Would it even be RSS then, or would it be something completely different.
XSS (XML Site Summary|Syndication)?
Maybe I’m missing the point. It sounds a bit like reinventing the wheel. Everyone complained when RSS 2.0 came out. They would probably freak out about something like this. At the same time, it makes sense. RSS has evolved a lot. A whole lot. Perhaps we need to take a step back, evaluate what we have, and clean it up a bit. Take what is defined as valid RSS and formalize it. Schema it up.
Something like this would probably solve our metaweblog/blogger API/etc problems. We could send a raw XSS item over HTTP with some authentication headers. We could send a raw XSS item or items over SOAP with some authentication Throw some XSS over Jabber. Do whatever you want with it, because at this point, it’s just data.
It would be important not to tolerate poorly formed XSS. Part of the problem of parsing RSS now is that we stay true to ‘be careful what you send and liberal in what you recieve.’ The problem is, aparently not everyone has been very careful about what gets produced. Now we’re regexing instead of parsing XML in order to get the job done. I’m not quite sure how this would be done, besides through a community effort. If John Smith’s blog produces invalid XSS, we would have to rag on him. We couldn’t do what we did in the past: make an exception and add some code to our RSS parsers so that we can read it. At that point, it would begin to dilute just as RSS has.
Just thinking out loud, taking Sam’s thoughts to their logical conclusion. Why not?
Danny Ayers comments that RSS 1.0 has a schema. That’s great. Unfortunately, RSS is not RSS 1.0. RSS is all versions of RSS that are in the wild, including 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, etc.
. . . I think I’ll move to Australia.
R3R is an RSS reader that can retrieve and display RSS 3.0 feeds.
And here I thought that RSS 3.0 was a joke. Then again, if Raging Platypus supports it, it must be good.
[Larkware] A couple of weblogs have reported that Wrox is going under. Although at the moment this has to be classed as “credible rumor,” it really doesn’t surprise me, on two fronts. First, it seems to me that Wrox’s strategy for the past year or so has been mainly “throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see what sticks.”
I really really hope not. I was looking forward to Professional JSP 2.0…
I found this with Feedster this morning:
Roadside assistance was never more fun.
Trunk Monkey…it’s a little big so if you have a slow connection you may want to skip it.
I so need a ‘trunk monkey’ button in my car.
MacHack is the annual gathering of Mac developers, coordinated by developers, that descends each year on Dearborn, Mi. It’s a round-the-click geekfest that runs for three days in June. The event’s coordinators have unveiled this year’s planned list technical sessions and papers.
From the MacHack site:
Dates for the 18th annual Conference for Leading Edge Developers have been finalized. MaHack will take place June 19-21. Note, that as is customary, MacHack will start at 12:01 AM on Thursday, in this case June 19, 2003. Get ready and mark your calendars. Expect more information on the conference to start appearing here in the near future.
Russ@Mobitopia points out why many 802.11b hotspots in a confined area can make things suck.
Apparently WiFi is a little too popular at CeBIT, with over 76 hotspots. The problem is, they were all interfering with each other, bringing effective range to a few meters and slowing down transfer rates like crazy. It looks like bluetooth made it through unharmed, though.
Carlos Perez points to MIT’s Haystack Project, a “universal information client” that looks like it has a clean and useful GUI interface. It was written with SWT.
CNet:
A new proposal from a group led by IBM and Microsoft could conflict with an earlier plan for reliable Web services messaging.