So I still think that Byte.com still has a dumb login/logout interface but at least now it's letting me in. Previously, I would type in my login/pass (the one they had emailed me) and that wouldn't work. That was after the point when the ddj page would say that I needed to login but wouldn't give me the form to log into.
Today (about a week after I first encountered the problem), the site finally showed me a login screen so I could login with the login/pass that had been emailed to me. I think it might have shown me a page before and I couldn't use it because the password was wrong. Anyway, there was a link to have it email me another password, so I clicked on that sometime last week, logged in today, and that works now.
I would still be annoyed, except I've almost forgotten the problem now. I'll be annoyed next time there's some non-deterministic behavior on that site that makes me unable to login again, or do something similarly obvious, but perhaps implemented in a non-obvious way over there.
Maybe things got fixed earlier than a week ago, but I've been to Banaue with my wife, mom, sister and her entire family. That was a great trip. I wish I could afford to do that (timewise, since it's really not that expensive a trip) more than once a year or so.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Sunday, June 18, 2006
byte.com's incredibly bad interface
So I pointed out that byte.com is now free. That's great. A few days after that post though, I'm seeing the downside. That web site has an incredibly bad interface, at least with respect to logins and logouts.
1. There is no logout button or link. or even any indication, as far as I can tell
that one *is* logged in or logged out.
2. There is no login form either. There's a form to subscribe to the free
newsletter, but no login form.
So I guess the only way to login is to click on a protected article (any article, really, and hope that it's protected, since i'm able to view some articles but not others and I sure can't tell why there's a distinction except maybe age of the article) and if it brings me to a page that says it's protected and I should login, then to login.
That's what happened when I first tried it out for free a few days ago. It didn't even ask for registration details, just wanted an email address and then it let me in. Then it emailed me with my login and (random) password.
That's all great so far. Except now, since it won't let me logout, I keep getting a page that says I should register. Except I've *already* registered. I think maybe the authentication credentials are wrong (after all, it just let me in that first time without me having to first check my email, maybe it didn't insert my randomly generated password in my session yet). But now I can't find out where to logout so I can login properly.
I *could* throw away all my cookies and saved passwords, but I'm not about to do that for one free site that has bugs in its authentication system.
Of course, though, I might be unfair here. Maybe the 1 year old article I'm trying to read is just protected and I need to pay for it (similar to how the NYTimes has things setup, and why I never go to the NYTimes site anymore, nor even link to it), but the page it brings me to sure doesn't seem to say that. It won't even let me login, instead asking me to register again! But then remembering who I am and pre-filling the form with information I already posted before (but strangely enough, with the wrong country, I remember registering as being from the Philippines but it thinks I'm in Anguilla, which might be a firefox bug since I often register as being from Anguilla to other sites, e.g., the Washington Post).
So, OK, maybe I'm just confused. But if that's the case, they still need to fix their site. If they can get me confused, I've got to wonder what their paying customers think of the ease of use of that site.
1. There is no logout button or link. or even any indication, as far as I can tell
that one *is* logged in or logged out.
2. There is no login form either. There's a form to subscribe to the free
newsletter, but no login form.
So I guess the only way to login is to click on a protected article (any article, really, and hope that it's protected, since i'm able to view some articles but not others and I sure can't tell why there's a distinction except maybe age of the article) and if it brings me to a page that says it's protected and I should login, then to login.
That's what happened when I first tried it out for free a few days ago. It didn't even ask for registration details, just wanted an email address and then it let me in. Then it emailed me with my login and (random) password.
That's all great so far. Except now, since it won't let me logout, I keep getting a page that says I should register. Except I've *already* registered. I think maybe the authentication credentials are wrong (after all, it just let me in that first time without me having to first check my email, maybe it didn't insert my randomly generated password in my session yet). But now I can't find out where to logout so I can login properly.
I *could* throw away all my cookies and saved passwords, but I'm not about to do that for one free site that has bugs in its authentication system.
Of course, though, I might be unfair here. Maybe the 1 year old article I'm trying to read is just protected and I need to pay for it (similar to how the NYTimes has things setup, and why I never go to the NYTimes site anymore, nor even link to it), but the page it brings me to sure doesn't seem to say that. It won't even let me login, instead asking me to register again! But then remembering who I am and pre-filling the form with information I already posted before (but strangely enough, with the wrong country, I remember registering as being from the Philippines but it thinks I'm in Anguilla, which might be a firefox bug since I often register as being from Anguilla to other sites, e.g., the Washington Post).
So, OK, maybe I'm just confused. But if that's the case, they still need to fix their site. If they can get me confused, I've got to wonder what their paying customers think of the ease of use of that site.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
evolution outbound filters and mangling the Sender
Related to my previous post, I'd always thought that it would be great if the Gnome Evolution email client were capable of mangling the Sender in the email based on user-specified conditions. If that were possible, then I'd be able to setup an outgoing filter so that if at least one of the recipients were those mailing lists then it would change the Sender to my mailing list address.
There would still be corner cases where that wouldn't work (but where an elaboration of it might work, e.g., instead of mangling the sender directly, it might create a new email with the sender being corrected, but leaving the original email intact).
I could probably do something like that with the "Pipe to Program" action, with some sed magic thrown in. But, no. It *is* a useful inconvenience and I'm too lazy to figure it out. Hehe, long ago when I was wishing for that feature, I already knew I'd be able to do it with Pipe to Program and sed. I was too lazy then too :-).
There would still be corner cases where that wouldn't work (but where an elaboration of it might work, e.g., instead of mangling the sender directly, it might create a new email with the sender being corrected, but leaving the original email intact).
I could probably do something like that with the "Pipe to Program" action, with some sed magic thrown in. But, no. It *is* a useful inconvenience and I'm too lazy to figure it out. Hehe, long ago when I was wishing for that feature, I already knew I'd be able to do it with Pipe to Program and sed. I was too lazy then too :-).
A useful inconvenience
I have several email addresses and one of them I use for subscribing to mailing lists. I never use gmail for reading mailing lists (instead i download it via fetchmail and use evolution to check the local POP3 server). This is mainly because I just don't have the time to monitor mailing lists anymore.
Evolution uses my default email address for sending mail out (unless I change the From address explicitly). That isn't the same as my mailing lists address. That's inconvenient, since often I'll send out a reply to a list post and it'll bounce back because I forgot to change the From address.
I find though, that the inconvenience is useful. It's an additional brake on emails that I might not actually want to send out yet (they need editing, the tone is too strong, the tone is too weak, the point is missing, whatever). It's too bad though. Sometimes I'll write a long, informative, interesting (maybe) post, and then I'll delete it when it bounces back because it doesn't pass muster. But that's the nature of useless posts. They're a waste of time, created in the heat of the moment, starting as a rant and ending as a flame, or the other way around, moving from to whimper, or just wandering around, pointless and dumb. If they're a waste anyway, better not to pollute lists (and the impressionable) with them, or feeding the trolls.
Evolution uses my default email address for sending mail out (unless I change the From address explicitly). That isn't the same as my mailing lists address. That's inconvenient, since often I'll send out a reply to a list post and it'll bounce back because I forgot to change the From address.
I find though, that the inconvenience is useful. It's an additional brake on emails that I might not actually want to send out yet (they need editing, the tone is too strong, the tone is too weak, the point is missing, whatever). It's too bad though. Sometimes I'll write a long, informative, interesting (maybe) post, and then I'll delete it when it bounces back because it doesn't pass muster. But that's the nature of useless posts. They're a waste of time, created in the heat of the moment, starting as a rant and ending as a flame, or the other way around, moving from to whimper, or just wandering around, pointless and dumb. If they're a waste anyway, better not to pollute lists (and the impressionable) with them, or feeding the trolls.
byte.com is free!
I read Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor proto-blog regularly. Not as much as I used to, I've been busy, but regularly. This week he says that Byte.com is now free. It used to be free and for many years I read it online. Before that, I was in the U.S. and i actually had a subscription (along with subscriptions to Scientific American, Dr Dobbs and various C/C++ magazines.
Byte became payware for though, so I stopped reading Jerry's column there, instead switching to the main blog. Now that it's free again, I'm going to have to read several years of articles :-). Jerry is always fun, so I'll read all of that. The articles though, I'll read only if they're relevant and not too dated.
It's too bad that Moshe Bar's column ended, I enjoyed those, although they were quite a bit over my head (probably still are, since I'm not as hard core as I'd like to be).
Byte became payware for though, so I stopped reading Jerry's column there, instead switching to the main blog. Now that it's free again, I'm going to have to read several years of articles :-). Jerry is always fun, so I'll read all of that. The articles though, I'll read only if they're relevant and not too dated.
It's too bad that Moshe Bar's column ended, I enjoyed those, although they were quite a bit over my head (probably still are, since I'm not as hard core as I'd like to be).
Thursday, June 08, 2006
devshed rss
I use Bloglines as my RSS reader (too lazy to find standalone RSS readers for Linux). I had DevShed in there, but I find that it doesn't seem to be a good RSS citizen, or maybe I'm just doing something wrong.
With other feeds, as soon as I even click on the folder in bloglines, the articles are marked read and when I go to bloglines again, I don't see those articles as unread anymore. Devshed articles aren't like that. The same articles keep coming up as new even though I've read them already. Not sure what that's about. I've already removed it from my list of feeds and I don't care to add them again to debug the problem. My guess is, though, that they allow comments to update the feed. Most other sites (e.g., digg) don't.
It's really no big deal, but even the little effort required to look there and notice that I've read the articles already is too much for me, I'd rather not see anything there anymore than have to go through tomorrow seeing the same articles about how to optimize mysql or how to implement a socket server in php.
With other feeds, as soon as I even click on the folder in bloglines, the articles are marked read and when I go to bloglines again, I don't see those articles as unread anymore. Devshed articles aren't like that. The same articles keep coming up as new even though I've read them already. Not sure what that's about. I've already removed it from my list of feeds and I don't care to add them again to debug the problem. My guess is, though, that they allow comments to update the feed. Most other sites (e.g., digg) don't.
It's really no big deal, but even the little effort required to look there and notice that I've read the articles already is too much for me, I'd rather not see anything there anymore than have to go through tomorrow seeing the same articles about how to optimize mysql or how to implement a socket server in php.
Creative Zen mp3 player and gnomad2
We got a Creative Zen Xtra MP3 Player as a gift from my brother. It was to be just my birthday gift, but it's so perfect for just now (sol is pregnant, for a bit she was on bed rest, very bored), and Sol's birthday is near enough to mine (which is still months away) that we thought it was the perfect gift for both of us for the rest of the year :-).
Unfortunately, the Zen doesn't look like just a USB external storage device, it uses some other protocol. I didn't want to be dual-booting into Windows (at some point I'm going to remove Windows from this laptop completely, I kept it around for the Zen) everytime I need to move files onto the MP3 player or to modify playlists and such.
Fortunately, GNomad2 implements the MTP protocol and allows file copying and manipulation of playlists and such. It didn't work for me the first few times I tried it, but after a week of looking at it off-and-on, I finally got it working (devfs was the charm). It might be possible to run it without devfs, but the RPM I installed it with didn't seem to have the nomad.usermap file on it, so I just boot into a devfs capable kernel when I need to copy files. And since I don't want to dualboot, well, I just always boot into a devfs capable kernel these days :-).
Things to remember, and the point of this post: DEVFS.
Also: less laziness and maybe building from source and actually reading the documentation might make DEVFS unnecessary. Unfortunately, the laziness is systemic.
Unfortunately, the Zen doesn't look like just a USB external storage device, it uses some other protocol. I didn't want to be dual-booting into Windows (at some point I'm going to remove Windows from this laptop completely, I kept it around for the Zen) everytime I need to move files onto the MP3 player or to modify playlists and such.
Fortunately, GNomad2 implements the MTP protocol and allows file copying and manipulation of playlists and such. It didn't work for me the first few times I tried it, but after a week of looking at it off-and-on, I finally got it working (devfs was the charm). It might be possible to run it without devfs, but the RPM I installed it with didn't seem to have the nomad.usermap file on it, so I just boot into a devfs capable kernel when I need to copy files. And since I don't want to dualboot, well, I just always boot into a devfs capable kernel these days :-).
Things to remember, and the point of this post: DEVFS.
Also: less laziness and maybe building from source and actually reading the documentation might make DEVFS unnecessary. Unfortunately, the laziness is systemic.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Frameworks and new development
At work the IT team is re-implementing/improving the software system for managing the business. The head office software and database schemas are going to be replaced entirely, and the remote site software is going to be partly re-implemented, but we're keeping the remote database schema as is for now. Fixing *that* monster is probably for next year.
It's exciting to be rebuilding the system since the current system is so much of a mess.
After a week and a half of checking out various php MVC frameworks we've settled on Symfony. We looked at a lot of frameworks (including
one that was developed by the contractor we're working with). Many were cut because it didn't look like they could serve our needs, they had one or two vital features missing. Even symfony was almost cut, except we figured out a way to get around its assumption that primary keys are serial (so, never editable, in its generated CRUD scaffolding). CakePHP was cut because it doesn't seem to support compound primary keys. I really like Prado but it seems to have a sufficiently high learning curve that I'd have trouble training new developers to work with it. I'll use it on some personal project at some point, but we won't use it at work.
Some other frameworks (Seagull, QCodo, etc) we tested for a bit, but when we encountered bugs or couldn't make them work with our system (postgresql, pretty complex database structure) we gave up on them.
The framework will be a help, but I'm more excited about the great work we'll be doing with architecting the business logic and database layers so that we will be able to more easily fix/modify the database without needing to modify higher layers. Or if the change propagates that high, that we'll be able to easily determine which database service providing classes/methods need to be changed and which reports need to be modified because of that.
Doxygen (or PHPDocumentor) will be a big help with all this too, and subversion/svk, of course.
We're also architecting how much of the business logic should sit inside the database. I'm aware that some people (a lot in the Oracle camp, and in MS SQL Server too) like to put all their business logic in the database (some to the point of not allowing access to tables directly, instead allowing access only to functions which are the ones that access the tables). I'm not on that side of the issue.
The old database went too far the other way, having pretty much no primary keys, no check constraints, no referential integrity constraints or (in many cases) even not null constraints.
I'm leaning toward something in the middle, where the database has enough business logic (constraints, primary keys, referential integrity and some triggers for complex constraints) to protect itself from some program bugs and invalid inputs), rejecting transactions which fail those constraints. The user level programs will check their inputs and reject invalid inputs, etc, but the database will reject anything that gets through the user level programs.
This will involve some cost due to doing some of the work in both places (the programs and the database constraints need to be in sync about what is or is not invalid, I'm not too concerned about the execution cost since good database design and insightful use of indexes will mitigate those), but I think it's worthwhile. Otherwise, the database is at the mercy of buggy programs.
It's exciting to be rebuilding the system since the current system is so much of a mess.
After a week and a half of checking out various php MVC frameworks we've settled on Symfony. We looked at a lot of frameworks (including
one that was developed by the contractor we're working with). Many were cut because it didn't look like they could serve our needs, they had one or two vital features missing. Even symfony was almost cut, except we figured out a way to get around its assumption that primary keys are serial (so, never editable, in its generated CRUD scaffolding). CakePHP was cut because it doesn't seem to support compound primary keys. I really like Prado but it seems to have a sufficiently high learning curve that I'd have trouble training new developers to work with it. I'll use it on some personal project at some point, but we won't use it at work.
Some other frameworks (Seagull, QCodo, etc) we tested for a bit, but when we encountered bugs or couldn't make them work with our system (postgresql, pretty complex database structure) we gave up on them.
The framework will be a help, but I'm more excited about the great work we'll be doing with architecting the business logic and database layers so that we will be able to more easily fix/modify the database without needing to modify higher layers. Or if the change propagates that high, that we'll be able to easily determine which database service providing classes/methods need to be changed and which reports need to be modified because of that.
Doxygen (or PHPDocumentor) will be a big help with all this too, and subversion/svk, of course.
We're also architecting how much of the business logic should sit inside the database. I'm aware that some people (a lot in the Oracle camp, and in MS SQL Server too) like to put all their business logic in the database (some to the point of not allowing access to tables directly, instead allowing access only to functions which are the ones that access the tables). I'm not on that side of the issue.
The old database went too far the other way, having pretty much no primary keys, no check constraints, no referential integrity constraints or (in many cases) even not null constraints.
I'm leaning toward something in the middle, where the database has enough business logic (constraints, primary keys, referential integrity and some triggers for complex constraints) to protect itself from some program bugs and invalid inputs), rejecting transactions which fail those constraints. The user level programs will check their inputs and reject invalid inputs, etc, but the database will reject anything that gets through the user level programs.
This will involve some cost due to doing some of the work in both places (the programs and the database constraints need to be in sync about what is or is not invalid, I'm not too concerned about the execution cost since good database design and insightful use of indexes will mitigate those), but I think it's worthwhile. Otherwise, the database is at the mercy of buggy programs.
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