Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2003

  • A New Web Services Protocol?

    CNet:

    A proposed method for sharing information between systems linked on the Internet promises to speed collaborative applications by up to 10 times the current rates.

    The protocol, developed by Jonghun Park, a professor at Pennsylvania State University’s School of Information Sciences and Technology, is based on an algorithm that lets it use parallel instead of serial methods to process requests. Such a method boosts the efficiency of how resources are shared over the Internet. The new protocol is called Order-based Deadlock Prevention Protocol with Parallel Requests.

  • Mark Pilgrim: MTV Unplugged

    Mark Pilgrim is unplugging:

    I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself.

    Hopefully it will help.  Good luck.  I’ve been having some plugged-in issues lately, but they’re all self-imposed.  No client to blame.

  • No Clock?

    Mark Pilgrim works too much.

  • AMD Sets a Date for Opteron Release

    [H]ard|OCP:

    SUNNYVALE, CA-JANUARY 31, 2003-AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that the worldwide introduction of its next-generation, 64-bit AMD Opteron(tm) processor for servers and workstations will take place on April 22 in New York City. AMD plans to follow up with the introduction of the AMD Athlon(tm) 64 processor for the desktop and mobile markets in September 2003.

    They also announced the release of some new XP chips:

    AMD also announced today that it will introduce the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ on February 10 and the AMD Athlon XP processor 3200+ in mid-2003. These processors, based on the core code-named “Barton,” feature additional integrated cache memory for industry-leading performance.

    I’ll take two Opterons to go, please.

  • Weblogs for Software Developers

    CNet:

    Web logs (commonly known as “blogs”), message boards and other online forums are becoming increasingly important vehicles for developers to attract customers–and development talent–well before an application even enters the beta stage.

  • tblib Has a Home Page

    I created a one-stop tblib page.

  • tblib Command Line Client

    Here it is, that command line client using tblib that I promised you.  It’ll be fairly useful under a unix-like environment, as you can just type ./tbclient.py <args> while in windows you have to do python tbclient.py <args> or use PythonWin or something.  Here is a sample session from one of my Linux boxes:

    [user @ box tb]$ ./tbclient.py
    Usage: tblib <args>
      Valid arguments:
        -tburl foo: ping the trackback url foo
        -title foo: title of your trackback or weblog post
        -excerpt foo: Uses foo as the excerpt to be posted to the trackback
        -url foo: The url to point to (usually the url of the post in which you ref the trackback)
        -blogname foo: The name of your weblog
    [user @ box tb]$ ./tbclient.py -tburl http://Queue/weblog/mt-tb.cgi/7 -title "My Title" -excerpt "My Excerpt" -url http://postneo.com -blogname "My Weblog Name"
    Trackback command line client here.  Preparing TrackBack...
    TrackBack URL: http://Queue/weblog/mt-tb.cgi/7
    TrackBack Title: My Title
    TrackBack Excerpt: My Excerpt
    Your URL: http://postneo.com
    Your Weblog Name: My Weblog Name
    Pinging http://Queue/weblog/mt-tb.cgi/7...
    HTTP Response: 200 OK
    TrackBack Error Code is: 0 (zero is okay)
    Done!

    The client, as the library is released under GPL, but I’m waiting for someone to speak up and I’ll be flexible on licensing.  There are a couple of gotchas in the current (really simple) client.  For example, you need to enclose arguments that are more than one word in quotes, otherwise it will truncate to the first word.  I’m really not dealing with command line args as well as I should be, but you can view the source for a quick and dirty way to DIY.

    That’s about all the functionality that you get in this 0.0.2 release.  The source code is here.  It relies on tblib-0.1.0 or greater (unless I break something in the future).  Send any questions or comments my way.  Over the next day or two, I’ll try to complete the client with an -autodiscover option.  I also want to clean things up with the option of -a || –autodiscover, etc.  I know it’s quite easy, I just didn’t have the energy to google it up.

    I still owe you some real docs and an actual project page, but that will come eventually.

  • Radio Backup/Restore

    Looks like Jake has unleashed a Radio backup-restore command to the radio-dev list.  I’ll let them work out the bugs, then I might try it so I can reformat and reinstall my ailing win2k server.  I’ve been quite afraid to do so until now.

  • JavaSSH

    I’d like to give a quick shout out to JavaSSH, which I can launch via Java Web Start.  Good stuff.  Luckily these machines wipe themselves when they boot.  🙂

  • Video Cards and Doom III

    Mac Central:

    Id Software co-founder and the programmer behind the forthcoming game Doom III John Carmack recently updated his .plan files with his musings on the latest graphics hardware from rivals ATI Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp. Carmack doesn’t come out solidly in favor of either technology, but he weighs the pros and cons of each.

    It seems to me that you’d be well off going with either high end card, though I’m not personally going to pay $400 for one.  When I get a GeForce FX Lite or equivalent for under $200, I’ll buy one.

  • Track Back: The Next Generation (TB:TNG)

    Dave Winer:

    Timothy Appnel: The Next Generation of TrackBack.

    Tim has some good ideas.  Having released tblib, I’ll do my best to keep an eye on the direction of trackback.

  • OMG to adopt CORBA to WSDL spec

    Infoworld:

    According to OMG officials, the specification is intended to boost interoperability between CORBA and Web services applications.

  • Class

    Long live in-classroom weblogging!

  • Python in PHP

    Keith points out Python in PHP:

    To that end, I’ve written a Python extension for PHP. In short, this extensions allows the Python interpretter to be embedded inside of PHP (think of PHP as the parent language with Python as its child). This allows native Python objects to be instantiated and manipulated from within PHP. There is also initial support for accessing PHP functions and data from within the embedded Python environment.

    I’ll take two.

  • Washington Technology has a story about Linux in Space:

    On board the shuttle, which circles the planet at approximately 150 miles in the atmosphere, an embedded PC module holds a 233-megahertz processor with 128 megabytes of random access memory and a solid-state 144-megabyte hard drive disk. The computer runs a commercial Linux operating system, Red Hat version 6.1, according to Frank Hallahan, a Computer Science Corp. employee, who is a member of the OMNI team.

    [via NewsForge]

  • Matt: Climbing the Charts on Google

    From the navel-gazing dept:

    I’ve jumped from the 40-somethingth Matt on Google to the twenty-somethingth Matt (23rd!) on Google.

    I’m suprised that nobody else has mentioned the most recent google shift.  I swear I don’t look myself up every day.  Really!

  • NetBSD 1.6.1 Release Process Has Begun

    From NetBSD.org:

    The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that NetBSD 1.6.1 has been branched and the release engineering process has begun. NetBSD 1.6.1 is a maintenance (or patch) release for users of NetBSD 1.6, not to be confused with NetBSD-current (which will become the next major release). As a patch release, it is not branched off the head of the CVS source tree, but instead includes all security fixes and patches applied to the 1.6 branch.

    Looks like we’re looking at a RC followed by a release in the near future.

  • How Many Langues Will Fit in my Head?

    I’m going to one of my classes for the first time tonight.  It looks like I’ll be working almost exclusively in .NET and C#.  For kicks, I thought I’d wear my Linux Rocks tshirt to class.  We’ll see if people have a sense of humor or not.

    Now all I have to do is find a Microsoft shirt to wear to my Saturday morning class in which I’ll be working almost exclusively in Java.

    Java in the morning, C++ in the afternoon, C# in the evening.  If you count my recent Python on the side (and in the middle of the night), you could explain my current headache.  I’ll blame it on a lack of caffeine, though.

  • Smalltalk (and Python?) in Education

    James Robertson:

    I’m building client tools for posting to the blog, and for editing existing items already posted. On top of that, I will be teaching a Smalltalk class – I use Squeak with 8-10 year olds. They have a blast, and there’s no way I could get anywhere using something like Java with this age group.

    I remember the good old days (possibly different than your good old days) when Pascal was the only thing available (besides Logo) to teach basic programming principles.  Nowadays I’d make the argument that Python might be well suited to take over this role.  For an example, check out the Python in Education SIG at python.org.

    I don’t have any experience in Smalltalk to comment on how well it might be used in education.  However, if you can make it stick with a group of 8-10 year olds, you’ve got to be doing something right.

  • dotnetweblogs.com/sgentile

    Sam Gentile has migrated from Radio to an ASP.NET weblog.  His RSS feed has also changed.  I’ve updated my links and feeds appropriately.  My old pointers to his weblog will still point to his old blog, and will eventually rot.