Global Nerdy

(I wish I'd come up with the line I used in the title, but some guy at Reddit came up with it first.)

The actual headline at Dr. Dobb's Portal reads Developers Embrace Java, Drop Visual Basic, but the title of this entry sums up my opinion on the matter. But I'll go with the news first and then editorialize.

The recently-released results of an Evans Data Corporation of 430 developers indicate that:

• Use of pre-.NET Visual Basic is down 35% since the spring
• Use of Visual Basic .NET is down 26%

This news shouldn't be too surprising. The last pre-.NET version of Visual Basic, version 6.0 was released in 1998, back during my VB contract development days. The support window for it must be coming to a close, and my guess is that only a few die-hards are using it for new application development rather than maintenance (I myself wrote my last new VB application in 2001 and my last VB maintenance work in 2003).

The development landscape was different back during those VB6 days. A fast home connection meant one of those new 56K modems, a new CD-ROM store seemed to be opening every week and the browser war had only recently turned in Microsoft's favor. The predictions were that the web was just a phase we were passing through; the future was in fat clients, which could provide a rich experience that web apps couldn't. VB6's design made only a few concessions to the web: there was an experimental feature called “HTML forms”, in which you could create VB application forms using HTML instead of VB's form builder (I'm not sure why), and there were countless demo apps showing how easy it was to embed IE into your apps. It certainly wasn't made for the development of web applications. My guess is that aside from a few die-hards — if there are FoxPro die-hards, there must exist VB6 ones — most VB6 use is in the realm of maintenance, not new app development.

VB.NET is a different case: there really isn't much that separates it from C#; it uses the same libraries and for the most part C# in Basic clothing. Given that the difference between VB.NET and C# is so slight, VB's verbosity, the similarity of syntax between Java and C# and that the “VB stigma” meant that a C# programmer would get paid more than a VB programmer, it's not surprising to see the drop in VB.NET use either.

The survey reports that these languages have the top spots:

• Java: 45%
• C/C++: 40%
• C#: 32%

As for the title of this entry, I have to admit that Java development doesn't excite me terribly. Writing Java applications requires a lot of mise en scene with libraries and supporting objects to accomplish the simplest of tasks — why do I have to declare a class just to write a “Hello World” application? Why does there have to be a 294-page book on using arrays? Why are some of Java's brightest lights abandoning ship for things like Ruby?

You can keep your grass clippings and tree bark. I'll take my steak and caesar salad in the form of PHP, Python and Ruby instead.

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Says John Battelle: "Now, clearly this is sourced by folks who were Miller lieutenants, but they say Falco's unexpected appointment means one thing: AOL is going to be stripped down and sold off within the next year."

Tags: AOL, Falco, Miller

Perhaps it's just a case of an executive thinking aloud, but it would be interesting to see a major network put some of the content it creates (but doesn't currently monetize) into a medium like the web, that doesn't carry an opportunity cost for reaching an audience.

At a recent conference, NBC Universal chief digital officer George Kliavkoff mused that perhaps the company will webcast Friday night rehearsals of Saturday Night Live. This is a pretty sharp idea, as it's easy to imagine people wanting to watch something like this, for the same reason that people buy DVDs for their extra content. Depending on your view of the current state of SNL, it could easily be more entertaining than the show itself.

For NBC to put the stuff it has in its vault on TV, they'd have to remove something else from the schedule (although the way NBC's ratings are going, they might do better to replace some of their primetime programming with old eps of "Knight Rider.") By putting it on the web, or even the iTunes Store, NBC can satisfy an audience and make money, without messing around with their most precious real-estate: the 8pm-11pm weeknight block.

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Tags: NBC, SNL, online video

The Financial Times is reporting that Apple's negotiations with the major movie studios over video content for the iTunes Store have hit a late-term DRM snag.

After months of discussion, a sticking point has emerged over the studios’ demand that Apple limit the number of devices that can use a film downloaded from iTunes.

The specifics of their objection are more explicitly stated in another FT article on the same topic:

Currently, content on iTunes can be uploaded to an unlimited number of iPods. This means people can freely copy music content by “synching” their iPods with their friends’ computers.

I'm sure many people will be surprised to find that they can pull songs onto their iPods off their friends' computers.

When you buy a track on the iTunes Store, you're restricted to playing it on a handful (currently five) registered computers. That is, the individual computers' copies of iTunes are associated with your account at the iTunes Store. As the FT says, you can upload your purchased tracks onto an unlimited number of iPods. Now, most people probably haven't tried to dock their iPod to more than one computer, so they probably aren't aware of the fact that the iPod associates itself with a single "home" iTunes library, and treats that as the definitive source of what goes on the iPod. It's part of the way Apple keeps the synchronization experience so smooth: you dock your iPod, it launches iTunes, looks for new material (tracks, podcasts, photos, movies) as well as any changes in your playlists or library, and makes the appropriate updates.

It is entirely possible, however, for a single iPod to serve several Macs by putting the iPod into manual update mode. Apple tells you how to do it on their support site. That means I could connect my iPod to Joey's Mac and manually add tracks that he bought from the iTunes Store to it. Thus may I enjoy content I did not pay for, [Thanks, anonymous commenter—my iPod couldn't play something Joey bought on his iTunes Store account without being "controlled" by Joey's iTunes library; I'd have to let his copy of iTunes manage my iPod and potentially wipe my stuff off. That still means I could enjoy content he paid for temporarily until I resynchronized my iPod to my own library] And so the movie studios tremble in fear. But is that fear really justified?

One thing to remember about all of this is that it requires a better-than-average command of the care and feeding of iPods and iTunes, so many happy iPod owners (the ones who have never even cracked open the manual for their precious MP3 player) aren't going to be trying this stuff any time soon. Even if they did, Apple's bridge to the living room, the "iTV" device and software, doesn't stream content from the iPod; it pulls it off another computer in your home (presumably the "home" computer whose copy of iTunes "controls" your iPod). This means that you'd have to figure out some way to get the borrowed content off the iPod and back onto the "home" computer, and that's not something Apple's made easy. Even if you did crack that nut, of course, the borrower's computer presumably wouldn't be one of the five machines registered to play the purchaser's content. You would have to figure out a way to strip the FairPlay DRM restrictions from the file.

So, under the current scheme of things, two people could eventually enjoy a track only one person paid for, and the networking would be via iPod. The second person, however, wouldn't be able to move it off his iPod and onto his own machine without the aid of third party work-arounds, including some way to defeat FairPlay (I suppose one way around these restrictions would be to simply run your iPod through a dock that connects to your home theater, but then the content stays on your iPod, occupying space).

Even though these loopholes in sharing restrictions exist, none of this has led to the collapse of the music or television industries, nor to the demise of Disney. Serious movie pirates don't need to bother with ripping off iTunes Store content (that's why the studios have a piracy problem now, even though they don't yet offer their wares for download from Apple). It seems strangely paranoid of them to fixate on a marginal abuse case with a willing partner like Apple when the existing piracy scenario is already much worse. You can already rip a DVD to your hard drive, convert it to MPEG-4 video, and create an iPod-playable version of the content without the movie studios making their content available on the iTunes Store. The additional piracy that might emerge from any weakness in FairPlay is, at best, marginal, and would logically be offset by the offering iPod users an easy, reliable, and convenient legitimate option for digital versions of movies.

Tags: Big Content, iTunes Store, iTunes, iPod, Apple, movies

According to CBS MarketWatch, Zune is the 75th best-selling electronic product on Amazon, while the lowly Apple USB iPod Charger is a lofty no. 66. Yep, a power cord was beating down the latest iPod Killer.

The latest stats have the charger coming in at #51, while the 30GB Zune in black trails by ten places at #61.

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Tags: iPod, Zune, Amazon.com

You don't have to tell me about the hazards of the dating world. I've had dates end in complete disaster (by “disaster”, I mean that she was curled up in a ball screaming at me in front of a busload of art gallery attendees) and I've unknowing gone out with an identity thief (but was saved by the social network of my personal blog).

We've all heard stories about the annoying person who won't stop calling or who won't take a hint. In response, people have turned to technologies to provide some kind of communications buffer, such as the Hotmail or GMail address that one gives to casual acquaintances or potential dates or “social phone numbers”, which are explained in the New York Times article, Here's My Number (For Today).

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Can't sleep…clown will eat me…

After the registration annoyances and the three separate attempts it took to get the damned thing to install, there's been one more annoyance that I've encountered with Release Candidate 1 of Windows Vista. After waking up the computer from sleep, it seems to have forgotten its network connection settings.

This problem would become apparent whenever I'd attempt to use the browser. The browser would display “Waiting for URL of site…” in the status bar for about 10 or so seconds, after which I would be informed that I was not connected to the internet. After checking to see that the cable was properly plugged into my PC's network card, the router was working properly and that my internet connection was indeed active, I fired up the “Network and Sharing Center” control panel and attempt to get Vista back on the LAN.

There was just one problem: connecting to the LAN wasn't an available option. The only options that Vista provided were:

• Connect via PPPoE with your username and password
• Connect via modem

I searched through the various control panels, looked at numerous help windows and even tried a couple of wizards, but in the end, I went with the tried-and-true fix of “shut up and reboot”. Upon rebooting, the network connection worked just fine…

…until the machine went to sleep again. Then I was back in “You are not connected to the Internet” land again.

The fix was simple: don't let the machine sleep. In the “Power Options” control panel, I set the “Put the computer to sleep” control to “Never” and haven't had a problem with my network connection since.

When dealing with nightmares, whether they're Freddy Kruger or Windows Vista, sometimes the best thing to do is not to sleep.

Bonus Cultural Reading Material

Wikipedia has an article on the catchphrase “Can't sleep…clown will eat me”.