Author: Dave Shevett

A wandering geek. Toys, shiny things, pursuits and distractions.

Where in the world is Dave?

Sorry for the total lack of updates lately. I can tell you about at least one of the things that’s burbling around.
This morning we accepted an offer on our house, with a closing set for July 31st.
We’re pretty excited, but also quite worn. Yay!

The J2EE vs .NET argument

I’ve had a couple conversations with people regarding .NET vs J2EE as a choice for application development and deployment. From a purely technical standpoint, the two technologies are very similar. The tools are powerful and detailed in both environments, and the end result is a distributed, object-based application platform.
But to me, taking the ‘C# is just like Java’ argument doesn’t actually address the underlying problem of a Microsoft vs Not-Microsoft solution. It took me a bit, but I think the best way to summarize it is thus:

The purpose of C# and .NET is to make money for Microsoft in tools, platform, and training sales. The purpose of J2EE is to get the job done. No one automatically gets rich when you decide to use J2EE as a platform. Which would you rather invest your time and money in, something where everything from the operating system on up to the deployment tools cost money, primarily to Microsoft, or a platform where the entire system can be designed, developed, distributed, and deployed on free software with the same level of stability and functionality? If support and training is important to you, then pay the people who know best to train you and support you, but you should not be charged just for your choice in platform.

So there.

This is so unfair.

There ought to be a law against this:

I get that there’s the whole “though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May” thing, but, hey, we’re almost done with May, can we have a little sunshine? Please?
(This is actually the forecast for about 100 miles north of here where we have our Maine house. I was looking forward to going up there Friday for the Memorial Day weekend, but gosh, this isn’t looking all that wonderful.)

Radio Paradise on XM radio? Probably not

I asked on one of the Radio Paradise forums whether XM Radio would ever carry RP. I’m getting closer to picking up an XM subscription, partially for the long drives to Maine and back that’ll happen all summer, but also for my trips down to NJ and back for my client.
In the the posting, Bill Goldsmith (the man behind RP, is quoted:

Neither XP or Sirius are interested in any outside music programming. They’re both committed to doing that themselves.
No huge loss for us, really. The day of widespread wireless broadband is near at hand. Verizon already has a very nice wireless broadband service in 30 US metro areas (400+ kbps, $80/mo – click here for more info). I know of at least a couple of RP listeners who use that service to listen to RP in their cars – & one who listens regularly on Amtrak between NYC & DC, rarely losing the signal.
Over the next few years, more wireless carriers will be adding or upgrading their 3g (broadband cellular) offerings, with speeds going up & prices coming down. Many ISPs & telcos will also be jumping on the WiMax bandwagon, offering true broadband wireless services which – though primarily designed for fixed-position use – have mobile possibilities as well.
So before too much longer, there will be very few places that you won’t be able to get an Internet connection on your PDA, phone, laptop, media player, or whatever. Then – who needs some multi-billion-dollar satellite corporation? So, like I said, no huge loss really.

The problem is that I don’t think I agree with Bill’s comments.
First, there’s the problem of cost. $75 a month is too high for most people to pay.
Second is the performance. I’ve used the 1xRTT service from Verizon, and it’s not all that hot. I don’t think it would keep up with the 128k feed I normally listen to (I’m seeing functional 1xRTT speeds of between 70kbps and 90kbps), therefore I’m looking at a serious reduction in my music quality.
Third is coverage. Yes, wireless broadband may be available in most metropolitan areas, but it is hardly ubiquitous. If I wanted to listen in metro areas, there are a lot of good progressive stations around Boston. The problem is they disappear in the middle of Connecticut or the New Hampshire mountains. That’s where I want to listen.
Fourth is more of a socio-political-economic issue. I had a problem for a bit where I thought XM Radio was owned by ClearChannel, a company who, IMHO, embodies all that is evil in large corporate holdings. In fact, ClearChannel is a minority investor in XM, and does not in fact own them. While I’m still giving ClearChannel some money, I will happily give XM radio money to support stations such as RadioParadise.
However, the money I give Verizon Wireless (quite a lot MORE money in fact) will never ever see its way into Radio Paradise’ pocket. I will get poorer service, poorer signal quality, and higher overhead trying to get a WiFi hookup running in my car just to listen to a dumbed-down music feed than I would get with a $10/month $90 receiver for XM radio.
Bill, I think you need to reconsider your reasoning for not at least talking to XM Radio again.

Shure E2c Success!

Last week I braved the discount racks at Microcenter down in Cambridge for an hour or two just sort of looking to see what’s available. I would highly recommend this exercise to anyone who likes finding affordable items in the “Gosh, I could use that!” mindset.
This weeks find included a set of opened-but-new Shure E2c noise cancelling headphones for the tasty price of $69.99. These are the in-ear ‘bud’ style, which have traditionally had problems with long-term wear, not to mention no noise-cancellation ability.
The Shure headphones come with a handful of replaceable clear soft plastic and foam inserts. It took quite a while to find a mix-and-match arrangement that fit my (apparently) different sized ears. I ended up with the ‘middle-size’ plastic insert for my left ear, and one of the foam inserts for my right. This arrangement gives me a noise-cancelled environment that’s mobile, small, and plugs into my stereo jack on the laptop (Mmm, Radio Paradise), with the added bonus of being small and mobile. Oh yeah, and they sound GREAT.
The final factor will be long term wear. So far I’m going on 2 hours and they’re still quite comfortable.
Of course, there’s the drawback. They’re noise-cancelling headphones (passive, not active), which means that when the music’s off, it sounds like someone has wrapped my head in pillows. Because of the complex process of putting the headphones in, I tend to unjack it if I need to run to the bathroom or to the kitchen for more coffee or wahtever. Makes chatting in the kitchen a bit of a challenge (though normally I’m working alone, so no biggie).
So the next step is to wire up amplifying mics I can jack into personally, so I’ll have my music at the desk, and have a hearing-aid system when walking around.
My steps toward becoming Cyber-Geek continue.

Further to my anti-religion commentary…

Just to follow on to my recent posting, while reviewing James Randi’s excellent weekly column, I read a great quote from the master himself, Mark Twain

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive … but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

Another reason why I consider myself agnostic

A lot of thought regarding my own personal belief structures has been rattling around in my head for the last year or two. Perhaps a lot of it has to do with what I see as the ascendancy of the radical religious view, and how somehow the concept of ‘spirituality’ has been perverted into a political cause. To me spirituality is a deeply personal, internal, and individualistic thing. When attempts are made to codify, organize, and publish those thoughts as dogma, I believe it damages, if not destroys those paths that an individual is following.
Organized religion, or even just the term ‘religion’, in it’s many forms, I feel is anathema to this process of self-examination and growing. Why is it that organizations feel that they must structure a persons individual growth, and if you do it ‘wrong’, somehow you are ‘bad’.
Now before I get everyone in an uproar, the immediate reaction by those who practice religion in whatever form tends to be “Wait, _I_ dont’ practice religion that way!” or “My faith doesn’t believe that!” I say to them then “Then why are you practicing a religion?”
Seriously though, take a look at that. A religion is an attempt to explain things that may not be understandable or clear to a person existing in the world. In the Good Old Days, religion was all powerful because the world was not well understood. Modern day, however, the average layman can tell you what an Atom is, and that the earth goes around the sun. So why do we need to make up stories about old men up in the sky to explain the world around us?
What set me off on this was not only the ongoing idiocy by the Creationists in the US government, in particular the absurd drive by the radical right to tear down the concept of evolution as it’s being taught in the schools. There’s a wonderful commentary from the American Association of Physics Teachers:

Evolution and cosmology represent two of the unifying concepts of modern science. There are few scientific theories more firmly supported by observations than these: Biological evolution has occurred and new species have arisen over time, life on Earth originated more than a billion years ago, and most stars are at least several billion years old. Overwhelming evidence comes from diverse sources – the structure and function of DNA, geological analysis of rocks, paleontological studies of fossils, telescopic observations of distant stars and galaxies – and no serious scientist questions these claims. We do our children a grave disservice if we remove from their education an exposure to firm scientific evidence supporting principles that significantly shape our understanding of the world in which we live.

I do not say that folks should not have the right to organize to observe their beliefs. Observation is one thing, but brainwashing and political activism to expand the power of those religious organizations is obscene.
In doing some of my research, I came upon some commentary by one of the more powerful religious organizations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons. This is a huge, wealthy, and powerful organization. The Mormons are noted for their high secrecy, but there are several very good sources for insight into the practices this organization condones. In particular, I refer to the Ex-Mormons Archiva. The articles that drove me to post here refer to the ‘Apache Tears’ episode (see down further on that page). This is an organization entrusted with small children, and they inflict this level of trauma on them. On top of that is the doctrine of “Death before Rape”, which seems to be norm. “You got raped? You must not have fought hard enough, you’re still alive.”
This is just one example of my total disdain for virtually all forms of organized religion. I feel that we as human beings are in no position to decide what is right or what is wrong (if there is such a thing), and even beyond that, we are in no position to define that viewpoint to others. Who are we to know? The old maxim “There is no truth” still holds. (For more entertaining reading, apparently even that statement is false. Another example of self delusional double-think.)
Agnosticism. “We just don’t know.”

Microsofts World View Validated Again

If you have a pulse and are connected to the net at anything faster than pigeon speed, you’ve heard that Sony has released the Playstation 3 at the E3 gaming expo. I don’t know about you, but the specs on this thing are pretty mindblowing. Checkit:

  • It will support Blu-ray (obviously), DVD±R/W, CD-R/RW
  • Backwards compatible with the PlayStation 2 and original Playstation
  • One 3.2GHz Cell processor – total system performance rated at 2.18 teraflops (uh, that’s actually about twice what Microsoft is claiming the Xbox 360 will do); it will have 256MB system RAM 3.2GHz, and 256MB GDDR VRAM at 700MHz
  • The nVidia graphics will be called the RSX (Reality Synthesizer), and will trump the Xbox 360 with 1080p (yes, that’s a p) graphics support.
  • There will be a 2.5-inch hard drive (i.e. laptop hard drive) attachment – a first for a Sony launch (no, we don’t count the PSX and/or the FF add-on)
  • Memory Stick Duo slot, and very surprisingly, an SD and CF slots
  • Bluetooth support with up to seven wireless controllers
  • Six USB system ports
  • 1080p HDTV direct support (!!)

Wow. For me, the kicker on this is once again they’ve made backwards compatability a big priority. This means this PS3 can play all the games released for the PS2 (somewhere around a bazillion) as well as all the games for the PS1 (another few bazillion). Cool.
Now lets take a look at the Other Side. Microsoft released their Xbox 360. Microsoft has been trying to take over the home market from Sony for quite a while, and while they have a good solid hold on sports games, they’re not making much progress elsewhere. They had hoped that coming out with a new console around the time the PS3 came out would win them points.
The word on the street is that the Xbox 360 is backwards compatable. Sorta. The comments I’ve heard are that it will “run the major titles”.
Does this sound familiar? Microsoft went to the biggest game manufacturers, and asked htem what their top selling games were, and tweaked and modded the 360 to make sure it would run those games. Screw the rest of them, they didn’t make any money.
This approach is SOOO like every upgrade that Microsoft has ever done – Win95, Win98, Win2k, WinXP, etc. The ‘big stuff’ ran, but the little stuff had a tendency to break.
I’ll point out that Sony is maintaining compatability with a machine that hasn’t been manufactured in something like 7 years. And no ‘some titles’ or ‘the big ones should work’ schpiel here. They all do. Why? Because they know their specs, they know their platform, they know what a game can and can’t do, and they built the environments accordingly.
Not that I would have gone out and bought an Xbox 360. I wouldn’t. But the PS3 just seems to blow the socks off anything the 360 is offering, including backwards compatability so I can play those old dusty PS1 games I have.
Now, all I have to do is be able to afford it. Hmm.

Ever wonder how a Lightsaber works?

You see them at the stores, on TV, and occasionally during police activities, but how do they really work?
Check out the nice full detailed article at HowStuffWorks.com for an inside look at these fascinating and flexible devices. They go into detail not only on the theory and construction, but also into examples of both self defense (keeping an attacker at bay) as well as domestic (re-warming your coffee) uses.
Interested in one for yourself? Make sure you mosey over to Park Sabers and check out their full line of custom built lightsabers.

Don LaFontaine on Wait Wait Don’t Tell me

My voiceover hero, Don LaFontaine was the guest on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. The show is available on the NPR website. The show is from 05-14-2005, so the ‘current’ link might not work. You can try this link. Don’s part in the show starts around the 18 minute mark.
Don LaFontaine is also known as the ‘Voice of God’ – or ‘The King of the Movie Trailer’. His is the voice most folks associate with modern trailers in the theater. Some refer to him as the “In a world…” guy – a phrase he actually ad-libbed at several years ago, and is now a mainstay.

‘Downing Street’ War Memo

During the runup to the british election, a memo was referenced repeatedly referring to documents detailing a series of high intelligence meetings between british intelligence (MI6) and the Administration in 2002:

the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

In the non-bushy circles, such a cry is frequently dismissed with a “Yes yes, we’ve heard this over and over again, but there’s no proof, go away. Who cares.” These sort of documents do in fact document how much Bush has lied to the world and the American public about his motivations and his planning.
What’s been most appalling is the lack of attention this document has gotten. House democrats wrote to Bush on May 6th:

In a letter to President Bush on May 6, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress’ approval

Both Bush and Blair have denied that a decision on war was made in 2002, and maintain that they were preparing for military operations only as an option. A Blair spokesman said the report added nothing significant to the record of the run-up to the war.

Game Review: Armagetron

In the ongoing quest to keep myself entertained, I try to rummage around looking for good distractions to while away the hours between the time I declare “I can’t work anymore” and the time I can safely say “It’s time to go to bed.”
My earlier solution to fill these hours was Kobo Deluxe, which, while still an outstanding game, gets wearing after a while. Not to mention crampy on the hands.
I recently discovered ArmageTron, the most accurate reproduction of the infamous Lightcycle ‘game’ in the 1982 movie ‘Tron I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of ’em.
Now, I, like other geeks, had daydreams about that lightcycle game for the longest time. I even wrote a version of it for the TRS-80 called ‘Gridrunner’ that was a load of fun, but hardly as visual as the movie.
ArmageTron reproduces the exact look and feel of the movie game. The scrolling green grid, the whine of the motors on the cycles, the exact left! right! left left! action of steerig the bikes and everything. The game designers have also brought in things that puzzled me in the original movie, but make the gameplay perfect.
For instance, your lightcycle runs faster if it’s close to the jetwall of another cycle. If you’re brushing up against it, it’s the fastest. This doesnt’ work for the arena walls (so you can’t go tearing around the outside of the arena), but it does make chasing someone else interesting. The person behind doing the chasing has the advantage of picking up speed, the person being chased has the advantage of being able to make a right angle turn directly in front of the chaser.
In keeping with the original premise in ‘Tron’ (that the programs were actually small autonomous creatures living inside the computer – and they could think live and die on their own), the AI opponents in the game are named after well known applications that are known to be somewhat tempermental. This is presumably to give you satisfaction ramming them into a wall. It works. There’s nothing like tearing off in pursuit of ‘Outlook’ and slamming it into a wall.
I installed ArmageTron via the Debian Sarge packages, so installation took only took a few seconds. The game is rock solid and very playable, though does require a fully functional GL installation. I haven’t tested the networked version yet, but variable-level AI is quite a challenge in its own right.
This is a fast paced, well designed, and extremely well executed game, taking a simple concept, with a baseline for presentation, and making it an eminently playable game. Kudos!