February 22, 2004

Linker on .NET issue

Joel Spolsky: Please Sir May I Have a Linker? and Jason Zander’s comments on it.

Basically I felt asking for a linker for .NET to link statically your application, is just kind of conflict fundamentally with what .NET is for. But without that option, it’s painful to ISV: you got a superb development environment/tools and you love it, however, to have the convenience it means your users suffering from the downloading (and potentially go away).

Jason said security is the real kicker. I was puzzled with that. Isn’t that Microsoft’s attitude is like: “Hey, if your application isn’t certified by us, it’s none of our issue!”. So if CLR has a bug got to be fixed and your standalone app is statically linked, would that be a concern to MS??

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July 15, 2003

PDF Usability

Jakob Nielsen has a rant of PDF usability on his latest AlertBox. These are the very true problems quoted from his article:

I hate to view PDF file in a browser window. It’s slow to launch the reader, the navigate bar is confusing, and it’s crash-prone. Always remember to right click on the PDF link and save it, or configure your browser to save it instead of open it with Acrobat Reader. The other annoying thing is, everytime you open a PDF file, you got to adjust the font size if you gonna view it on screen, because it’s designed for PRINTING.

If PDF files are typically converted from documents that were intended for print, why there’re still a lot of publishers use PDF for ebooks in attached CDROM? Aren’t they encourage printing of the ebooks when readers already hold the dead-tree copy? I would prefer CHM, for the indexing and search (chm format got the font issue too.

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July 03, 2003

Be friendly to Googlebot

[via Simon Willison] Scribbling.net’s useful tips on:

This is something less known:

Webloggers: use the meta tags to help the Googlebot index only your permalinks, not your constantly changing front page. To do this, use

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow” >

on your front page and

<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow” >

on your posts’ permanent locations.

In fact, most weblogs didn’t use frame, flash or DHTML (major blog tools don’t use these stuff by default); and most bloggers maintain meaningful title of pages and links. If you start your blog with blogging tool like MT, your blog has been friendly to Googlebot. Scribbling.net has more tips to be more understandable by Googlebot, a recommended read.

Related Google information:

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Google Toolbar 2.0 (Beta)

I went over to Google Toolbar to grab the Toolbar 2.0 Beta. The one I am having on my IE toolbar is version 1.7, but too bad it didn’t has an option “Update Google Toolbar” to auto-checking latest version and help users to shift over. Instead, I heard good word about the new version, then I have to go search in Google to get where is it, and then download, install it.

What’s good about this version, even it’s beta? It has these new features:

What’s the impact it brings? I am sure lots of people using Google Toolbar, because Opera has the Google search bar, and Mozilla has the easy access to Google search in navigation bar, to gain easy access to Google in IE — you’re left with the option to install Google Toolbar. Then now you have the easy to use popup-blocking by Google Toolbar. Considering the number of people who able to block pop-up window, you, the Webmaster of ads-heavy sites, should you still keep your pop-up Ads strategic? Don’t the rate of people seeing your Ads drop tremendously?

Who gain the benefit? If the popup Ads didn’t work, where did you think you would go to put your advertisement? Would Google benefit from this?

Anyhow, the pop-up blocking is a good implementation, the feature definitely is helpful.

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June 29, 2003

MySQL Fulltext Searching

MySQL Fulltext Searching explained how to add the fulltext index and enable fulltext searching in your MySQL tables. The author, Joe Stump, use blog-related tables as his example of implementing fulltext searching, interesting. With adding fulltext index to your MT tables, plus some php code, or just MT-SQL, you could have an advanced searching engine to replace the original MT search engine. Sound good. Would try it later.

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June 28, 2003

Quick Links, Jun 28

since1968 interviewed Jeffrey Zeldman.

First International Moblogging Conference. Of course, it’s at Tokyo, Japan.

Google Adsense: read Tim Bray and Russell’s experience of it. Quite a way to earn some cash if you’re sorta Internet celebrities.

Tim Bray got some thought of Wiki.

Simon Willison: The new RNIB site in CSS

Another buzz? SOA. Michael Champion: SOA: One acronym to bind them all?. I keep hearing this SOA at a local BEA Weblogic conference weeks ago. It doesn’t bring any new stuff in term of technology. Instead, in my opinion, it’s just a marketing term to link business to Web Services.

TestDox, part of AgileDox project, creates simple documentation from the method names in JUnit test cases. Looks interesting.

Mark Pilgrim: Don’t use UserLand’s validator

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June 25, 2003

How to build and sell your shareware

From Steve Pavlina, CEO, Dexterity Software:

Joel on Software:

And, Successful Shareware, Sanford Selznick’s The Do’s and Don’ts of Shareware, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

I noticed there’re so many websites out there telling you how to sell your shareware, and basically these websites providing you some middle-man or marketing services (btw, most of their pages suck). So, did shareware programmers do marketing? I guess so, at least the success one do.

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June 24, 2003

Google AdSense

Google is extending its Adword service to outside of Google. You could now put google’s text Ads on your own website. The text ads shown on your site would of course target to your readers, as how they always do in their search engine (noted it’s their main income). Go subscribe to Google AdSense if you’re interested.

Blogger? Sorry, the door ain’t open yet. Check out Tristan Louis’s experience! on that. Guess if Google want to do it, they’d try it on the new blogger.com first (or the current blogspot?).

[Update] Aaron Swartz got an application to let you have a feel what ads would Google AdSense put to your page. Try it.

Comments (4)

June 23, 2003

Quick links, 23 June 2003

My Visit to SCO

‘Head First Java’ Author Interview. Lots of juice on teaching and learning.

Interview with XP Founder Kent Beck

Joe Celko: Tree in SQL, A Look at SQL Trees, Nested Set Model of Trees, Part 2, Trees in SQL — Part II

I’ve just bought Alan Cooper’s About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design, hope I would spend more time on reading (instead of additic to blog reading).

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June 22, 2003

High Availability is NOT Cheap

If you’ve ever claimed 24×7x365 availability of your server, and you think it’s easy because you setup the database replication and keep the uptime for certain length of time, you’re wrong. That isn’t about high availability, that’s called lucky. I have met people who thought with current cheap and powerful intel server, plus free softwares (may be MySQL replication), they could easily achieve 24×7x365 (and of course they aren’t aware of all the exhaustive details of power/data/connection availability, it’s not even get to testing yet).

Go read this, Jeremy quoted Michael Conlen’s well written and easy to understand response of high availability (in MySQL mailing list).

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June 19, 2003

Jave.net embrace blog and Wiki

It isn’t news anywhere, just that when I last visited java.net, I didn’t notice they got a blog and Wiki! And of course, their RSS.

Sun seems want to do somethings big with java.net, at least pushing it to center of Java community. It’s late better than never. Good to see the constructive strength.

James Gosling got a blog, so did Daniel Steinberg. I don’t get why the others bloggers aren’t listed under weblogs subdirectory. The directory of blogs looks weird to me. Did they support Trackback/pingback? Nope.

By the way, here’s a cute Java is Everywhere animation (higher resolution).

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MSNBOT

Jeremy blog about the crawler from Microsoft. So far I didn’t see its footstep at my log yet. There’s an anonymous posted to Dave Winer’s blog saying:

They have Google in their crosshairs. They are trying to replicate every feature of Google in the next year, and have tie-ins with the next version of IE (including a ‘search’ box right on the browser toolbar that by default points at MSN Search) and in Windows Longhorn (the Search function in the shell will have an Internet option that will go to MSN by default). They made a build-vs-buy decision in the last few months (in fact they made an informal offer to purchase Google, which was refused).

According to him, MSN Search is currently depend on Inktomi and LookSmart. And MSN Search got $150m in profit last year! Wow, looks like the targetted Ads do rocks for them. Inktomi has been bought over by Yahoo, it’s significant for the software giant in Redmond to build their own crawler.

It’s glad to see they start taking the step. If they long ago trying to simulate Google, MS users wouldn’t be suffered from their support site and MSDN search. And for years we’ve been used to rely on google to search issues related to Windows, like site:support.microsoft.com IE6 Sp1, site:msdn.microsoft.com SOAP… what a shame of Microsoft!

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June 11, 2003

Java Everywhere

[via Russell Beattie] I’ve never been JavaOne conference (or JavaTwo, the JavaOne in Taiwan). But when I looked at the official website and viewing the webcast, I feel, well, cool! And they also introduce a new collaborative workplace java.net.

It seem Sun is trying catching up with more marketing effort. May be they should have these cool stuff more often, and organize them at more places. You won’t gain lots of fresh technical food there, but it’s kind of motivating to try out more of Java stuff. That’s what Microsoft do with regular conference (e.g. Technet) to attract and create local developers’ desire to try their technology.

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June 09, 2003

Google Reloaded?

There is interesting analysis/guess on why google behaved differently at this Webmaster Forum thread: Why Google has become its ‘own worst nightmare competitor’. The post, written by Chris_D, explain the it was analogy of technology evolution take of Intel and Google, where:

if you don’t take advantage of the technological advancements you know will happen - your competitors will

Many people noted the changes of searching recently in Google, do they just simply mess up? Or is it some development going on with the competitive pressure?

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June 07, 2003

Jeremy's rant of font on Linux

Jeremy was frustrated with font on Linux, he has tried to do a simple task to have a decent view on 3 different browsers (of course, all running under Linux): Mozilla Firebird, Mozilla, Konqueror. Well, page on Firebird and Konqueror look crappy, Mozilla get the smooth-edged font right. Mozilla and Konqueror appeared to have the same fonts chosen but showing different result. Mozilla Firebird is still displaying the original font name for users to choose, something like *-adobe-*-time… (yes, that’s pain in the ass when you need to figure out what it is).

I don’t really know what’s the cause, but I do know how it feel. Back to the days where I had to configure my own Linux environment, I got to spent over 10 hours in front of the monitor, just to make the window look good. Certainly techniques to using TrueType font and XFT have been existed for a long time, and I am sure most of the Linux distribution put them on by default. So you ain’t gonna face this problem if you just install some distribution and using it with default option. The pain would come when you want to tune something. Is Linux ready for Desktop? To certain extend, I think the answer is yes. It got the environment for you to get the jobs done, it got the beautiful window manager which fairly perform most of UI job. However, if you tried to customize/configure something or you’re having some not-so-supported hardwares, Linux isn’t quite friendly to most of the users. Unless you got the know how, you won’t be out of the mess.

In my opinion, X Windows is the single biggest burden for Linux to be the desktop to compete other modern system. Lots of known techniques and solutions to well-known problems aren’t quite being aware. Linux kernel, filesystems are stable and reliable, lots of open source tools greatly improve productivity, but on UI side like font or printing issues are quite competitive to their rivals. These problems got existed solutions, but why people would still be bothered? Is it too many choices where different techniques applied by different distributions? Or the know-how is too difficult to access?

I’ve been using WinXP for the font. Maybe it’s time to try the latest Redhat 9 to check how’s the current Linux distribution answers to the desktop requirement. For sure we’d need trivial issues like font and printing to be working at the first place, then we’d talk about Linux for the desktop computing environment.

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June 06, 2003

Palm acquire Handspring

Palm announces(and here) acquisition of Handspring to bolster industry leadership. The deal is done by stock swap, and it would take place after Palm spin-off its software arm “PalmSource”http://www.palmsource.com/ — which licensed its PalmOS to various PDA, handhelds and mobile vendors.

In Chinese there’s an idiom saying if people stay together for too long the relationship might be broken, after splitting for a certain time, the relationship is back and united. It’s well explained in business world. Hawkins and Dubinsky, who brought the world Palm Pilot, leaving Palm and form Handspring in 1999. Since then they have produced series of Handspring PDA to market: from Visor, Visor Delux, Visor Edge to Treo. All these products are still licensing the PalmOS from Palm and both Palm and Handspring basically competing on the same market of Palm PDA. And now they merged, it seem a positive move after Palm PDA market started to sinked recent years and facing strong challenge from Pocket PC.

There isn’t much innovation come from Palm since they gain their success with Palm III series PDA. And they are a bit slow compare to evolution of Microsoft camp, where Pocket PC bring more power and colorful world based on Intel ARM processors. Later Palm switched to Intel processor from Motorola. It start catching up with more attractive/modern PDA: the Tungsten series.

I’ve been focusing on PalmOS programming on 1999 to 2000. So I’d looking forward to next round of revolution with their merging with Handspring.

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June 04, 2003

Localisation Effort

Sven-S. Porst: Translating

Once you know the other language sufficiently, getting the message across somehow isn’t too hard. However, getting it across with the text feeling right and belonging naturally to the other language, seems very hard to me. I certainly have great respect for translators of novels that make you not realise the novel wasn’t written in the language you’re reading it in.

It’s a piece well written by someone who really got the view, done it, ever been the bridge between 2 different culture. In my opinion, translation never as easy as it sound. You got to be very good in the target language as having the fair understanding of the source. And it ain’t enough if your target is to let the result be sound “natural”.

It’s even worse in world of Chinese, and worst in Computer field. As everybody knew, most computer terms came from English. It is obviously for IT people (programmer, sys admin…) to recognize the terms in English, even though their mother tongue isn’t English. However, there always need for translated words for ordinary people. It become a mess while there are various Chinese translations of Taiwan, China mainland, Hong Kong…(Malaysia and Singapore mostly follow but variant too occasionally). So you got to be specified in translating a English essay to Chinese encoding in Big5 (Taiwan) or GB3212 (China), there are different terms used for a single word. There are people pushing to use the original technical terms in computer books, since readers would still have to know/familiar the word, because English dominate the field at the mean time (not forsee to be changed though).

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June 02, 2003

Nullsoft WASTE

Here come another interesting event in software industry. Nullsoft released a secured P2P software named WASTE on May 28, 2003. WASTE run under a enrypted, distributed network protocol, and it was released under a GPL license; the news was slashdotted. Three days later, Nullsoft’s parent company, AOL Time Warner, pulled it back and announced WASTE was an unauthorized Nullsoft’s copyrighted software. The official entry page of WASTE has been modified and declared the unauthorized software:

NOTICE OF UNAUTHORIZED SOFTWARE

An unauthorized copy of Nullsoft’s copyrighted software was briefly posted on this website on or about Wednesday May 28, 2003. The software was identified as “WASTE” (the “Software”) and includes the files “waste-setup.exe”, “waste-source.zip”, “waste-source.tar.gz” and any additional files contained in these files.

Nullsoft is the exclusive owner of all right, title and interest in the Software. The posting of the Software on this website was not authorized by Nullsoft.

It is like: “Here’s the cool stuff, you could view, modify and even distribute it. Oops, no, we regret, we made a mistake, it’s COPYRIGHTED. Don’t distribute it!!” This again, been slashdotted and brought up a hot discussion if the downloaded copy still maintain its right as it was released under GPL.

AOL is quick on its action to pull down WASTE. This isn’t the first time they are doing it. Justin Frankel, the co-founder and principal developer of Nullsoft, developed Gnutella and putting it on website in year 2000. But it was quickly taken down, though other developers had able to download the source in time or reverse engineer later to form the Gnutella network. The other time was AOL forcing Nullsoft to shutdown its MP3 search engine. AOL is obviously dislike anything Nullsoft done having conflict with its media business, not at least.

Although it looks probably AOL could claim its authority (Nullsoft’s authority), lots of copies of WASTE has been mirrored and shared among P2P network (e.g. eDonkey, Freenet). Dave Winer has posted the source code on second day of its release.

Further news:

[Update, Jun 10] The cache of google is no more caching the original page, you could get the mirror of those original pages at:

They have also setup the network based on WASTE. Download and follow the instruction if you’d like to join.

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The guru? Or the skillful searcher?

Nobody could know everything. I got the same feeling/experience as Jeremy and Kasia. I agree with his perception of “knowledge worker” in 90s, and we have more or less achieved that with the Web and of course, the search engines. That actually means the knowledge isn’t well organized, instead, it is accessible because of good work of Google, Altavista, Alltheweb, Yahoo…etc (did Yahoo’s initial categorized web into directories still working? How often did people searching information through web directory now?)

I was too feeling guilty sometimes as giving credit of solving some problems. Without actually good at the particular problem, I was just able to effectively search the web —- most of the time, google. Or more specifically, Google groups, which previously known as dejanews, store and indexing all newsgroup posts. I used to found google groups more helpful on searching technical information. Take for example, I was searching for Microsoft Global IME for NT4 for my chinese typing in office PC this morning. I got the feel that M$ is either too dump in organizing its sites, or else it’s purposely being unfriendly to Google. It’s difficult to get what you want on Microsoft, no matter you try to be specific or general. Failed to get it on web search, I found easily some other’s similar experience by turning to search on newsgroup. That’s what great of Google groups.

Nevertheless, you need to get experience for being skillful or effective to search. Being more senior position in my department, I found freshies can’t really judge what they’ve gotten from google. Or, they don’t know what to search. Take the other example, fresh VB developer could only scratch their head while facing some weird Windows development problem. Without knowledge of Windows API and how it really works under the hood, they can’t really analyze the searching result. Here’s the experience came into picture.

So is it enough by just knowing how to search? Nope. It’d never be, your knowledge foundation and analysis morph into something called searching know how. Not everybody looks the same in front of search engine. So, Kasia, you shouldn’t feel guilty over that. :)

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May 29, 2003

How do you justify usability testing?

There is no silver bullet. It takes years for software industry to develop methodology to improve software development process. Then it came the debugging skills and understand the important of testing.

It’s always about design choice, nobody is going to be right at the first design. Thus the testing pay off, and the sound methodology ensure the better outcome.

These are the questions asked to Jakob Nielsen:

His answer. Although it basically talk about UI design, I feel it could apply to lot of fields of softwares. So I would know what to answer if boss asking what to justify unit test…

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May 25, 2003

Some things going on in Google

I think Jeremy is right. When I was back from trip, I found my site getting lots from hits from Google, even I haven’t blogged for 6 days then. And that’s because of my blog entry before Matrix Reloaded. On about 17/May to 21/May, it was the first link coming out in google no matter you’re searching for understanding/explaining/what’s happen in Matrix Reloaded (well, it seem lots of people don’t get what the hell happening in the movie).

I was surprised with that even though I was blogging about Animatrix (the anime series about Matrix). But then starting 22/May, the page never showed up again with same searching term, not anymore the first result. I then wondering it might due to lots of movie review of that movie was out and so they got higher ranks. Nope, not really, I found a few days later that googlebot seem treating my blog as the traditional static web pages rather as Blog?! Google is seem in a progress to take effort to remove blog from its search. It now showing your main blog URL instead of individual archive even you specifically search for that. Well, you could get away from that if you blog long enough in web. If you are new then probably google think it’s good enough to cache all but only display your main entry page.

Is it a smart move? Let’s wait and see what google is going to bring to the web, even it is pressure from commercial aspect.

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May 08, 2003

Programmers' mental food: 08 May 2003

Paul Graham: The Hundred-Year Language

Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters

Robert C. Martin: Are Dynamic Languages Going to Replace Static Languages? (comments)

Bill Venners: Can Static and Dynamic Languages Live in Harmony?

Bruce Eckel: Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing

The production time of software developers is critical for your software competency. That’s why better tools developed in order to help programmers to code more interactively, to modeling ahead by test planning. CPU cycle is sacrificed, but doesn’t matter, it’s cheap. It’s a well worth trade-off. The future would strengthen more on this and more experienced programmers tend to switch. Nope, lots of programmers already borned scripting…

Ken Arnold: Are Programmers People? And If So, What to Do About It?

Artima.com: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas

  1. Don’t Live with Broken Windows
  2. Orthogonality and the DRY Principle
  3. Good Enough Software
  4. Abstraction and Detail
  5. Building Adaptable Systems
  6. Programming Close to the Domain
  7. Programming is Gardening, not Engineering
  8. Tracer Bullets and Prototypes
  9. Programming Defensively
  10. Plain Text and XML

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May 04, 2003

Link Fest: May 4th 2003

Slow day, traditional Sunday to spend on shopping. I got some links-n-read:

Jeremy Zawodny: Revisiting FreeBSD vs. Linux for MySQL

MySQL doc: FreeBSD Notes

Kalsey: Related Entries Plugin
Kalsey: Related Entries Revisited
Simon Willison: Experimental feature: Related entries
inluminent: Related Entries Redux and Implementation
It sounds like an pretty interesting feature to be implemented. Should try it someday (till I got enough entries :-)

C++ days numbered? : the debate of should C++ go away soon, this sort of arguing come now and then

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April 27, 2003

Font Bitch of Microsoft Html Help file (chm)

Almost all the technical books come with an electronic version in attached CDROM nowadays. Their eBook format most likely falls under PDF, HTML or CHM. I got a few eBooks in Microsoft Html Help format (extension of .chm). It's a pretty nice format though you could only execute it under Windows. With proper designed CHM file, you got the easy navigation options of contents, index and search. That's good, it is opened faster than PDF so I used to open CHM file for searching. Instead, it's quite a standard help file format now for numbers of Windows application.

But, most of the chm files I got has the average small font size. And I CAN'T change the FONT SIZE. That's annoying! It's not really you can't change the font size. When I first notice there is no option allowed me to change font size. Thinking of it's Microsoft product, then it must be using IE to view their archived/encoded html help file. So I change the View->Text Size to largest, hoping that it take affect on the chm file opened later. NO, it didn't work. Then, google it. Search with "Html Help font size", or "Microsoft Html Help..." won't do you good because that's more famous html help: HTML Help by The Web Design Group. "CHM Font size" get me what I wanted. Yes, it did link with IE. Despite changing the View->Text Size in IE, you need to hold down Ctrl and roll your mouse scroll wheel to change the chm file font size. If this also didn't work, or you're still stick with the traditional mouse, you got to do it the hard way: find some tool to decompile the chm file, it's just archived of group of html files. Change the font setting and using the chm authoring tool to re-compile it.

Further search shows Microsoft Support site has an article instruct how to add a Font Button in chm file toolbar, which allow users to change the font size of the content. Therefore, please, if you are a Windows developer constructing the help file for your application, or you are the publisher who decide to put the ebooks in chm file format, DO add the Font Button. That saves pain in the ass.

Comments (1)

April 26, 2003

Users want to be in control

Low-End Media for User Empowerment>>

These technical issues will pass away with time. Within ten years, most users will hopefully have broadband, and user interface standards for websites will likely stabilize, making advanced features easier to operate.

Still, low-end media will remain a favorite because of one fundamental factor: it lets users control their experience. The Web exists to provide instant gratification. Users place their hand on the mouse and decide where to go. The easier it is for users to get exactly what they need, when they need it, the more satisfied they will be.


How many website managers need the education to learn about web usability? Low end media is a clear win over high end, complex media. As Jakob noted in his latest Alertbox, the key processes where users wanted to be in control: Reading, Finding relevant content, Authoring. It helps a lot to have a clear layout for users to read and navigate. It boost your website performance if it has less annoying and distracting multimedia on your web. Your website would be more reachable if Googlebot likes it. And good and easy authoring tools attract more writing, it means a lot to community website.

So, is weblog kind of low end media which wins? Yeah, sure. Blog community has excellent authoring tools. Most of the blogs providing clear and simple navigating. And google do like blogs, there are times the top search result come with blogs instead of those official websites. With brilliant blogger like Mark gave excellent guide on accessibility, blogs are more sensitive and friendly to users with disabilities.

The key problem is that's so many ignorant manager out there highly depend on design agencies, vendor -- who pushes whatever "happening" technology and whatever design tactic to increase earning.

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April 24, 2003

SQSH

I forgot to mention sqsh. It's a tool designed with intention to replace isql for Sybase. There are a few key applications in our company use Sybase. So it's my everyday tool. Sqsh could be built in most of the Unix system. And it could be executed under Windows with Cygwin library. Why is it my favourite tool? It provide a shining feature where isql can't compete with (if you have to work in command line env): sqsh could pipeline your SQL query with your shell. It's common to use the following usage:



sqsh> select * from tableName

sqsh> go > tablename.txt



sqsh> sp_help

sqsh> go | grep favortable



sqsh> select name from person

sqsh> go | grep simon | sort | uniq



sqsh> select......

sqsh> go | myfilter.sh | more

You could do the post-processing, filtering of your SQL query result with quick customizable shell script. Or just some quick-n-dirty hack. It's just too much useful compare to the plain old isql. You should try it if you're still frequently query your Sybase database with isql.

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Command Line Fun

John Gruber is enjoying the command line fun with running PHP, enhanced "rm", appswitch in his Mac OS X box.

I am an UNIX guy, but most of the times the machine I used at the work installed with Windows. Although I am quite happy with the GUI of Windows, I tends to spend more time to put my hand on keyboard instead of mouse. That's the joy brought from Cygwin to me. What is Cygwin? Cygwin is an UNIX environment for Windows. And it come with lots of powerful tools ported from Unix. Better yet, it has a friendly setup wizard nowadays. The setup allow you to install directly from Internet or local. All you have to do is just select the wanted packages/softwares, it would fix it up for you, no dependency hassle! Back to old days of Cygwin B18, B19 version, there always problems of figuring which version of library to install and what extra libraries needed. Now you don't have to worry, what we need to do is act like an plain normal users. The setup works like a charm!

It's good to have tools like gawk and cURL. I got many simple scripts done in AWK or PHP to process lots of files. What's the choice you have in Windows? The old DOS batch file scripting? VBS/WSH? Thank God I got Cygwin and the tools come with it. Shell scripting is more fun then and tools like grep, awk, cURL, even php/perl/python just simply work! They get the jobs done.

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April 20, 2003

Old vs Current vs Next Web

While I was playing around with CSS, learning a bit about XHTML, I got the exact same feeling as Sterling Hughes. As he noted: I want my web back. Isn't these technology supposed to be more obvious to human? I don't know. I am a long time C/C++ developer and ever developing with Java/VB. It's easy for me to start HTML coding (as nature as other programmer or non-programmer) without keep following the standard and trend. Maybe it's because of the non-concentration on this web technology, where I still pretty much stay at the old client-server and Unix programming world. Or maybe it's just the same stuff where vendors' implementation/own benefit collide with the standard, then causing all the mess....

Even though, I still prefer the current going with CSS/XHTML/XFORM...but I wonder how many web developers out there have adopted it? More than 50%? I 've got a feel of like C++ communities, where one of the gruop focusing on all pragmatic issue regarding their product, without knowing much of deployment of C++ template/generic programming; and other group focusing much on the standard compliant, complicated semantics issue (it take how many years for one C++ developer to understand most of the its semantic?), and the exciting template experiments.

Whatever it is, choose what are you comfortable for. Let the market decide by itself.

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April 18, 2003

Messenger Spam

Ever since I got my DSL broadband installed at home, there are spam coming and pop-up as normal message box. It never show up as I was doing something, mostly when I didn't off the PC and came back from work, something as following show up:

messenger-spam.png


What the heck?! A simple click to let it go away as I first seeing it. It come more and more recently, then I start paying attention to what "it" said. Realizing it's sort of spam via Windows default messenging service, I have to say spam is really everywhere. They tried as hard as they could and never give up. But what's wrong with their mind, don't they do some marketing? As the example above, sending some IP located in Malaysia and offer property renting?! Come on, use your brain, spammer. May the bad luck always with you!

My home PC running WinXP Pro, disable the Messenger service at Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services and change its Startup Type to manual could solve the problem. Well, I never need to type "net send somebody" in order to communicate with someone at home :).

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