Re: Remote Bf synching

Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

Blogging from Bottom Feeder to BlogSpot

This may be written up somewhere but here are my entries in the Bottomfeeder Blog Poster plugin settings:

• Blog API == Blogger API
  
• Blog ID == a six dgit number at the end of the URL of yourBlog e.g. 123456
  
• I do client side markup
  
• ftp url == ftp.blogspot.com
  
• Profile Name == any string to uniquely identify which blog you want to post to (BottomFeeder use only)
  
• Posts to retrieve (whatever)
  
• Username and Password == your Blogspot logon info
  
• On the Blogger API page : App Key == 1, Blogger URL == http://api.blogger.com/api
  
• Under Settings->API , ensure blogger API is selected (need to do this each time for ome reason)
  

Grady on UML "vs" DSL

What a guy !! Grady Booch on developerWorks : Blogs: "However, I think, as does Simon, that Keith misses the point when he distinguishes DSLs as something totally different from the UML. The last thing the world needs is yet another (non-open standard) programming model or language injected in an already complex space. Our experience has shown that domain-specific design and architectural patterns specified can (and should be) expressed in the very same language that one may use on a whiteboard or napkin, namely, the UML. "

UML & DSL: Simon says....

I find myself in agreement with the following points:developerWorks : Blogs:
My position is that the creation of domain specific languages that do not seamlessly support the ability to transform information along the refinement scale are not helpful to us. So, for example, a component designer that is a stand alone tool unconnected to the class designer that provides the next logical level of refinement (classes being used to construct components) is a pot hole in the road from concept to actual implementation. Now, this is not as I have said to indicate that domain specific languages are bad, just that many of us in this industry love to create new languages be they graphical, textual or conceptual. We have to beware of the tendency to build these disjoint languages that force the user to keep stopping and jumping across another gap.
My summary: present different views to different users, but in a way which keeps transformations (including mental ones) easy (e.g. all views based on common metamodel)


Now, does the UML help us in this? Well, actually as it stands no, it has many pot holes all of it’s own! But, one way to look at the UML is a pre-existing set of domain specific languages, with at least small and well understood gaps between them. For example most everyone is familiar with the class model, the component model, the state machine model – all of these can be treated as sub-languages, and have been successfully applied in projects.

My summary: common set of concepts which can be tailored


Now, the danger is then to say that the UML is enough surely for any problem (got a hammer here – anyone got a nail?). Well therein lies a big, big hole waiting for the unwary. The UML is a general purpose language, like English and as such can be vague in a particular domain, so we have created specific usages of the English language for engineering or science, even standardized the meanings of terms for defining specifications (RFC 2119). In this regard it is clear that the UML needs to have particular usage patterns documented as sub-languages, or domain specific usage.


But then, there are simply concepts in use today that do not map well to any UML sub-language or usage pattern. Well, the OMG has already thought of that and provided the Meta-Object Facility (MOF) which is the underlying language used to construct the UML – making MOF a domain specific language for constructing domain specific languages? Here at IBM the open source Eclipse Modeling Framework implements the MOF specification and provides both run time capabilities and tools for defining new modeling languages (and you can see examples in the XML Schema Tooling on eclipse.org).

My summary: UML can be extended, and if that isn't enough then new dialects based on MOF can be built. Still the transformation gap is small.

Anyone seen a scenario mapped out in the two approaches? When the terms and concepts seem so slippery a practical example always helps.

Quick now, what IS the difference between UML and DSL?

The DSL, MDA, UML thing again... | Lambda the Ultimate

Can you have one metamodel across differnet domains that, nonetheless can be tailored? If you do, can the transformation be small variations on one another ? Can we ever expect them to be totally automated? (no) What is a domain anyway : industry, level of abstraction?

This seems to be one of those arguments where the terms involved remain unresolved and ambiguous (at least to me)

High Court move over police chief

BBC NEWS | UK | High Court move over police chief

Apart from the details of this case, how do we come by such badly written laws here in the UK? Why do we write a law which apparently gives the Home Secretary the power to suspend a Chief Constable, but for some reason this has to be actinide through some other body such as the local Police Authority ?

Either we let local areas have authority or we don't. If we want to allow the case where the Home Secretary can ride rough-shod over this pretense at autonomy, then he should do the dismissing and inform the Police Authority.

This is a horrible fudge of a law, and I am glad it is coming back to irritate the politicians who regularly enact Laws with so little principle behind them. Actually, I hope it does more than irritate them!!

developerWorks : Blogs

Lisp <-> Java

Bill Clementson's Blog

AKMA Sanity

This is a great summary of the situation:Not to many winners in this argument

Russell Beattie Notebook - Rampaging Computer Science: "'The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.' --Bertrand Russell"

Java Community high on complexity?

Via David Buck: Russell Beattie Notebook - Rampaging Computer Science

I certainly felt this way about J2EE!!

I was there

I was at one of these tals ; very good it was too:tim.oreilly.com -- Various Things I've Written: Tim's Archive

London-Brighton Bike Ride

What am I thinking of? Forgot to Blog about my cycling epic!

Last Sunday, 20th June, I and 26,999 other "cyclists" bowled out of London on a nice sunny Sunday. We were about an hour late starting due to our transport , but also because of the huge queue to get the start/finish card stamped.

Cycling as a team proved almost impossible, but other tthan that and buses actually wanting to use the bus lane everything was fine.

Out in the country everything was lovely except hills on narrow lanes where most people got off to walk and blocked the road completely.

My legs got tired at about 40 miles - took a break and also sorted out why my new Camelbak water carrier was giving out so little water(kink in pipe).

At about 50 miles you hit the only real hill on the course, but it is nasty - again the road is quite narrow, so most people walk. The experts ( and people with proper clips on their pedals) are determined to cycle up; with a lot of tired people this is a recipe for disater. Oh, and it started raining big time, and Brighton being by the sea, the wind was cold.

The next 4 miles to the sea front were awful: rain, wind, large roads where the police bunch the cyclists up to let them cross - it took over an hour to do this.

By the end, I was really cold - my teamates looked even worse and were shaking.

Then we got a lift back to Winchester.

So, for next year, I'm looking for a cycling challenge which is far less crowded : any ideas ?

Slashdot | Profiting From A Vague Patent HOWTO

Hilarious: Irony Deficiency

WebMink: "(Yes, you're reading that correctly. A man named Kafka has been deployed to field questions about a prison where the criminals are only vaguely charged with crimes, can't speak to lawyers and likely will never get out.)"

Think tanks lack transparency

Deltoid : When Think Tanks Attack: " And the Albion Monitor writes:

[Citizens for a Sound Economy] is just one of several tax-exempt orgs that have divided over $750,000 from Microsoft and waxed in outrage over the proposed breakup of the software giant. Other beneficiaries include the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, and about a dozen more obscure names such as Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Small Business Survival Committee, the Independent Institute, Americans for Technology Leadership, and the Association for Competitive Technology.

Together the groups wage a disinformation campaign almost identical to the attempt to debunk global warming waged by Big Oil that we described in a 404 report two years ago. The strategy requires discrediting Microsoft critics while building a sham Â?grassrootsÂ? movement in support of the corporation.
"

Folks should be free to fund what they like, but who is sponsoring whom should be transparent, to avoid conflicts of interest.

LISP and SOA

1st European Lisp and Scheme Workshop: "Sheng-Chuan Wu, 'Lisp for Service Oriented Architecture Programs'"

Worth further sytudy - a quick scan shows many intersting points, but I'd lie a bit more detail.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Prisoner torture 'not sanctioned': "I have never ordered torture - I will never order torture -
President George W Bush"

George, I believe you. But your administration faces an uphill battle to convince folks that, whilst it was done without written orders, it was not done in an environmnent which pushed getting intelligence above nearly all else.

More finding LISP

I find myself wondering about LISP as well as Preston:Preston L. Bannister ? Finding Lisp.

But I'm not sure how he squares these two paragraphs:

• "Both were written using UCI Lisp. [....] The folks in the Ada programming environment project generated an Ada parser, interpreter, compiler, and integrated editor for a subset of Ada in a remarkably small amount of time. This was only possible by leveraging off the Lisp environment. " AND
  
• " In fact the combination of Java and XML covers much the same ground"
  

I should have thought the ADA environment probably used features such as LISP macros etc. ; how do Java and XML help there?

Finding Lisp: "One of the things that struck me is that more than any other language, Lisp, because of lambda calculus as well as the convenient notation provided by s-expressions, lends itself to source-level transformations. Macros are the most obvious user-level expression of this capability, but Lisp compilers also make very heavy use of this capability to reshape code symbolically before they actually start generating object code."