del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since July 14, 2008 at 09:00 AM:

• TABLE 29: 2 Hour Focaccia
  Jessica Marotta’s two hour focaccia bread recipe.
  Tags: blog, food, recipe, bread
• bunnie’s blog > Blog Archive > Miles per Gallon vs. Gallons per Mile
  An important lesson on quantitative comparisons, and why most “green eco-fags” have an emotionally, but not factually, compelling argument.
  Tags: blog, economics, math, gasoline

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since July 7, 2008 at 09:00 AM:

• Robustness Principle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Postel’s Law: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.
  Tags: reference, wikipedia, programming, jon-postel, quote
• protobuf – Google Code
  Google discovers why AOL’s SNAC wins over XML for on-the-wire RPC – good on you, Google. Is Google’s version of FLAP coming next?
  Tags: networking, programming, google, aol

I haven’t been actively reading my feeds, so when I fired up the reader today, I saw Bill Kocik’s pro-gun essay in his blog.

Personally, I:

• Do not own my own firearm.
• Do not like the idea of anyone using firearms.
• Recognize that firearms exist and will never go away.
• Believe that someone is less likely to perpetuate a violent crime if the odds that they will get shot in retaliation increases.
• Believe that in a world where guns are readily available, a steady equilibrium of safety will eventually be reached–perhaps, unfortunately, after much death by guns. Those left remaining and still alive will learn to co-exist safely together.
• Do not believe that fewer guns is the answer. As long as the balance of power leans in favor of criminals, no one can be safe.
• Am thankful that there are people who responsibly own and carry firearms, so that I don’t have to.

Wishing that we could live in a world without firearms is just that: wishful thinking. The reality is that guns have been invented and that can never be undone. The only rational path to safety is reaching the point where enough people are carrying firearms so that using one inappropriately will be dealt with swiftly and abruptly: with deadly force.

Tags: liberty, safety, firearms, guns, violence, crime

… or, “Everything old is new again!“

Yesterday, Google announced Protocol Buffers, their data interchange format and API libraries. Before I say anything else, I want to say I’m glad they did it: it uses neither XML nor ASN.1, which means someone at Google has a clue.

What bothers me is that yet again, what was old is new again–their on-the-wire encoding of the data is simply TLV and AOL has been using SNAC/TLV for at least 15 years now. However, AOL’s SNAC/TLV covers a lot more use cases than what Protocol Buffers does. Then, there’s AOL’s FLAP transport for SNAC which Google hasn’t even approached. There’s still a lot more “work” that Google has to do–or, just use what AOL’s already proven works.

Of course, Google gets the community pat-on-the-back because they released this publically whereas AOL still has it hidden behind some proprietary lock and key. AOL, this is another technology opportunity missed: you could have continued to keep your internal, proprietary technology relevant if you’d simply opened this stuff up, first. Now, you’ll have to continue to replace it–at a huge sunk cost–with “standards-based implementations.” Oops.

In the end, I’m glad to finally see someone not blindly drinking the XML Kool-Aid. Maybe there’s hope, yet.

Tags: Google, AOL

del.icio.us/dossy (RSS) links since June 30, 2008 at 09:00 AM:

• ScreenSteps: Rapid Documentation Tool
  $40 tool to simplify capturing screenshots and annotating them – Mac and WinXP. Very nicely done.
  Tags: software, product, documentation, tools