Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

It appears Firefox is going to have what are, for now, non-intrusive ads that fill up your "frequently visited" tabs on an empty page with some adverts until you visit enough sites, as if those were helpful suggestions.

There's a painful irony in reading this shortly after DaringFireball linked to a post from a former RealNetworks employee explaining how adware was forcefully driving RealNetworks' business:

My manager then said, “More than half the company would have to lose their job in order for us to stop these tactics … so are you volunteering to be one of them?”

That was the day I learned I’d rather lose respectfully than win without honor. Once people become wary of your products or your business ethics, it’s game over. You can’t sustain for long, because you won’t keep your customers much longer.

I understand making money from having Google as your default search engine. That's an easy win-win. Google seems to offer the best (and if not the best, no worse than top two, and you'll have to pick who the other is) search engine, folks enjoy the simplicity of a search box/unified search bar, and you might as well pocket the cash for giving the bar to them.

But don't try to link this new ad grab to the search bar, as if Google was going to stop paying, which the originally linked news item about Firefox's new ads does:

Mozilla is heavily reliant on income from search royalties from Google, and has been for some time, so this would seem to be an exploration of other financial options – with possibly more alternative revenue streams to come?

That stream simply isn't drying up. How much do you think Bing would pay to be on Firefox? Everything I can tell from the rumors surrounding Microsoft now that they have a new CEO suggests that they're going to be less Windows-first-and-Windows-only than they have been in the past. And it's not like Bing was a stranger to search bars before now either.

There's plenty of revenue to keep Mozilla afloat without becoming the next RealNetworks, and only so many places where you can put ads without becoming intrusive. And hopefully only so many times you can insert ads before someone starts building Firefox without them. See Banshee, the crossplatform iTunes replacement -- there's been a small tempest about how its affiliate fees for music purchased through its UI at Amazon get rerouted on different Linux distros. It's not that hard to "re-monetize" software.

We've been happy to give Firefox a few dollars to provide us with better functions. If you want more cash, innovate with new functions, dang it. Or you might be surprised how quickly your users' goodwill dries up when you start demanding more tribute.

Labels: firefox, Google, hats of money

TL;DR -- Download a YesSQL database for Windows Phone 8 from here, then use it at your own risk.

Not too long ago, I finished up a "fun" project for myself that involved writing a chicken wire and duct tape dbms from scratch. It actually works fairly well, though I occasionally find additional stupid oversights (like splitting commands on "AND" without checking to see if it's part of a string literal) every so often while using it.

Actually, from my point of view, it works great. It's always insanely surprising when I try something fairly complicated in SQL and SqlDbSharp just works. That's fun.

Anyhow, since my best laptop's still a Windows 8, I've been spending some time playing with Windows Phone 8. I ebulliently detailed coming across some great tutorials a couple of weeks ago. And then, about a half-hour later, I completely 180-ed, whining that WP8 doesn't support pretty much any of the key stuff from System.Data, which bothered me enough to write more about the ORM mentality everything's taking on to the point that it arguably drove the choice of Microsoft's next CEO.

That's a topic for another post.

Windows Phone 8 Port

For today, I'll just say I've thrown away hours of free time, of and on and off again, porting my crazy database to Windows Phone 8. The biggest thing missing was, of course, System.Data, but I didn't really use enough of that namespace to make shimming up a DataTable too difficult. Jon Skeet's DictionaryBackedSet example helped a ton, and made shimming up my DataColumn usage easy.

The only other strange thing was figuring out the origin of lots of PlatformNotSupportedException errors that were masked by TypeInitializationException errors for me. As it turns out, Windows Phone 8 doesn't support calls to GetFolderPath like...
System.Environment.GetFolderPath (System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal)

... that I was using to initialize directories, and the PlatformNotSupportedException painfully meant that though it compiled, WP8 wasn't going to honor the call. Compiling code that'll later throw PlatformNotSupportedExceptions is, in my limited playing around, apparently pretty common. Makes some sense, as that allows you to reuse a ton of C#'s tools very quickly, but it's a real pain in the rear at run time.

Since I had the codebase's "base" directory defined in a static readonly variable that used that GetFolderPath call, I got the TypeInitializationException whenever I tried to access any static variable on that file -- the file where I have all my psuedo-global, readonly settings. So the errors popped up only at the time I tried to read a static variable or method on that class, even legitimate ones that didn't depend on GetFolderPath, as the code seemed to be sort of lazy-initialized, which red herringed the crud out of me.

Turns out, instead of the SpecialFolder setup, I needed to use some variation on...

ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.Path

... to make WP8 happy. Which means I really needed to abstract how I set my base directory with one more level of abstraction that checks platform.

But the bottom line is that, yes, there's now an alternative to the now unsupported (?) C#-SQLite that lets you use SQL on Windows Phone 8 (link to dll in the readme displayed on that page). Sorta. ;^D File bugs, and I'll start fixing them, though the code's simple enough I think any mid-level C# coder should be able to understand what's going on pretty quickly.

Labels: SqlDbSharp, windows phone

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Elegant line from Ben Thompson on instant messaging Messaging: Mobile's Killer App \| stratēchery by Ben Thompson: Conversations are never ending, and friends come and go at a pace dictated not by physicality, but rather by attention. Great line from Ben Thompson on the importance of instant messaging. He's one of the few pundits that's good enough that when I find myself disagreeing with him, I stop and take the time to figure out how (most likely) 1.) I'm plain wrong or (occasionally, if I'm thoughtful enough) 2.) we're not really disagreeing, but taking different tacks at thinking the same thing. But absolutely regardless of my petty self-interjection, that's a well-written line that deserves some credit. Labels: communication posted by ruffin at 2/19/2014 02:21:00 PM

Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Enough misplaced Flappy Bird pity, Mr. Vogel The Bottom Feeder: Why Indie Developers Go Insane: Think about this. I mean you, personally. Think about what it would take to make you run from a gold mine like this. Really. Think about why someone would do this. Man, this line from Jeff Vogel on the end of Flappy Bird's run on the App Store has gotten some play in iOS app blogs recently. Look, guys, Flappy Bird's still here. It's still on devices that downloaded it before The Great Flappy Bird Culling of 2014. Thus the stupid [I assume fake] eBay listings of devices that already had the game installed. He's greatly slowed its pace of adoption -- to nothing -- but his installed user base didn't change and all. And now, well, who doesn't have a copy of Juggling? Nguyen hasn't run from the gold mine; he only slowed the stream. He still has the old mine as it stood on Culling Day, and got a heck of an advertizing boost for his other, smaller, previously ignored (relatively speaking) games. More interesting to me is considering how the game succeeded. Bird Gotta Fly: Why Flappy Bird Flew The Coop - Forbes: Stuart references Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto who studied arcade game players and realized that the appeal of these games “was born of the players being mad at themselves… So I would try to analyze how the game made players feel that way.” Regardless, don't cry for Nguyen's GEARS, okay? He's created three fractions of one percent of Wario Ware and apparently lucked into a decent payday from the work. Good for him, but enough with the pity. Labels: gaming, hats of money posted by ruffin at 2/18/2014 12:30:00 PM

Friday, February 14, 2014
Candy Crush fights CandySwipe with Candy Crusher. Too strange for words. King has bought an old trademark, and you're not going to like how they're using it \| Gamezebo: At the time of Ransom’s filing, King had little ground to stand on. Ransom’s game predated theirs, and he already held the mark for CANDYSWIPE, so it was up to the courts to decide. So here’s what King did: they bought an earlier trademark from another company, and are using that to try and have Ransom’s CANDYSWIPE trademark registration cancelled. The mark in question, CANDY CRUSHER, has been tied with game software and mobile applications (according to King’s filing) since 2004. It was acquired by King from its previous owner, AIM Productions N.V., on January 10, 2014. A guy has a game that was released months before Candy Crush, and whose name and approximate gameplay is reasonably reproduced in that later game. So he's got a trademark for CandySwipe, and fights Candy Crush's application for trademarking the name Candy Crush & Candy. He, rightfully enough, seems to think he should have seniority in the candy-named, match three (?) games. So Candy Crush buys an older game with a similar name so that they can shut him down. Seriously, our legal system is too weird if not for words, then because of them. Reminds me of advice I give kids, "Be careful how you word your wishes, in case they come true." Wish someone would warn lawmakers too. If only they didn't stand to gain by going through a revolving door out of lawmaking and into the business of selling the friction of enforcing them. Labels: gaming, hats of money posted by ruffin at 2/14/2014 08:50:00 AM

Thursday, February 13, 2014
Firefox's slippery, ad-covered slope It appears Firefox is going to have what are, for now, non-intrusive ads that fill up your "frequently visited" tabs on an empty page with some adverts until you visit enough sites, as if those were helpful suggestions. There's a painful irony in reading this shortly after DaringFireball linked to a post from a former RealNetworks employee explaining how adware was forcefully driving RealNetworks' business: My manager then said, “More than half the company would have to lose their job in order for us to stop these tactics … so are you volunteering to be one of them?” That was the day I learned I’d rather lose respectfully than win without honor. Once people become wary of your products or your business ethics, it’s game over. You can’t sustain for long, because you won’t keep your customers much longer. I understand making money from having Google as your default search engine. That's an easy win-win. Google seems to offer the best (and if not the best, no worse than top two, and you'll have to pick who the other is) search engine, folks enjoy the simplicity of a search box/unified search bar, and you might as well pocket the cash for giving the bar to them. But don't try to link this new ad grab to the search bar, as if Google was going to stop paying, which the originally linked news item about Firefox's new ads does: Mozilla is heavily reliant on income from search royalties from Google, and has been for some time, so this would seem to be an exploration of other financial options – with possibly more alternative revenue streams to come? That stream simply isn't drying up. How much do you think Bing would pay to be on Firefox? Everything I can tell from the rumors surrounding Microsoft now that they have a new CEO suggests that they're going to be less Windows-first-and-Windows-only than they have been in the past. And it's not like Bing was a stranger to search bars before now either. There's plenty of revenue to keep Mozilla afloat without becoming the next RealNetworks, and only so many places where you can put ads without becoming intrusive. And hopefully only so many times you can insert ads before someone starts building Firefox without them. See Banshee, the crossplatform iTunes replacement -- there's been a small tempest about how its affiliate fees for music purchased through its UI at Amazon get rerouted on different Linux distros. It's not that hard to "re-monetize" software. We've been happy to give Firefox a few dollars to provide us with better functions. If you want more cash, innovate with new functions, dang it. Or you might be surprised how quickly your users' goodwill dries up when you start demanding more tribute. Labels: firefox, Google, hats of money posted by ruffin at 2/13/2014 08:05:00 AM

Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Wil Shipley on App Ratings Begging For App Ratings: I’ve just submitted a new version of Delicious Library 3, and I’m scared out of my head that the first two or three people who review it won’t like it, which will tank it to the extent where nobody discovers it any more, so there won’t be any positive reviews to balance them out. Probably the most well-argued case I've seen for devs bugging users to rate something. The strange disincentive to release updates to well-rated apps seems, well, insane. What a broken system. posted by ruffin at 2/11/2014 12:52:00 PM

Why does Task Manager have a "Tiny Footprint" mode, exactly? Task Manager Menu Bar and Tabs Are Not Visible: When you start Task Manager, the menu bar and tabs may not be visible. This behavior can occur if Task Manager is running in Tiny Footprint mode. When you double-click the empty space in the border around the tabs, Task Manager switches to this mode. To switch Task Manager to its normal display mode, double-click the top border of the window. Who knew? MSDN, that's who. Labels: noteToSelf, windows posted by ruffin at 2/11/2014 08:49:00 AM

Monday, February 10, 2014
In app payments: More like the fair or a drug addiction? @baekdal #opinion quoting what "John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronic Arts, said at a stockholder's meeting last year": When you are 6 hours into playing Battlefield, and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time. The site quoting Riccitiello, above, says this immediately afterwards: This is like a heroin dealer giving you a free weeks supply, and just when you are hooked that's when he will force you to pay. And John is apparently an addict himself, having spent $5,000 in microtransactions in games himself. I can't help but think this parallel is now officially overused. As a drug non-user, the only places my "price sensitivity" obviously drops to near numbness are the fair (state and local) and sports games. I can't tell which gaming in app purchases like the one described here is more like -- chemicals that we're unable to resist or a culturally constructed heterotopia, where value is temporarily redefined. Labels: gaming, hats of money posted by ruffin at 2/10/2014 12:00:00 PM

Saturday, February 08, 2014
SQL and DataTables on Windows Phone 8. No joke. TL;DR -- Download a YesSQL database for Windows Phone 8 from here, then use it at your own risk. Not too long ago, I finished up a "fun" project for myself that involved writing a chicken wire and duct tape dbms from scratch. It actually works fairly well, though I occasionally find additional stupid oversights (like splitting commands on "AND" without checking to see if it's part of a string literal) every so often while using it. Actually, from my point of view, it works great. It's always insanely surprising when I try something fairly complicated in SQL and SqlDbSharp just works. That's fun. Anyhow, since my best laptop's still a Windows 8, I've been spending some time playing with Windows Phone 8. I ebulliently detailed coming across some great tutorials a couple of weeks ago. And then, about a half-hour later, I completely 180-ed, whining that WP8 doesn't support pretty much any of the key stuff from System.Data, which bothered me enough to write more about the ORM mentality everything's taking on to the point that it arguably drove the choice of Microsoft's next CEO. That's a topic for another post. Windows Phone 8 Port For today, I'll just say I've thrown away hours of free time, of and on and off again, porting my crazy database to Windows Phone 8. The biggest thing missing was, of course, System.Data, but I didn't really use enough of that namespace to make shimming up a DataTable too difficult. Jon Skeet's DictionaryBackedSet example helped a ton, and made shimming up my DataColumn usage easy. The only other strange thing was figuring out the origin of lots of PlatformNotSupportedException errors that were masked by TypeInitializationException errors for me. As it turns out, Windows Phone 8 doesn't support calls to GetFolderPath like... `System.Environment.GetFolderPath (System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal)` ... that I was using to initialize directories, and the PlatformNotSupportedException painfully meant that though it compiled, WP8 wasn't going to honor the call. Compiling code that'll later throw PlatformNotSupportedExceptions is, in my limited playing around, apparently pretty common. Makes some sense, as that allows you to reuse a ton of C#'s tools very quickly, but it's a real pain in the rear at run time. Since I had the codebase's "base" directory defined in a static readonly variable that used that GetFolderPath call, I got the TypeInitializationException whenever I tried to access any static variable on that file -- the file where I have all my psuedo-global, readonly settings. So the errors popped up only at the time I tried to read a static variable or method on that class, even legitimate ones that didn't depend on GetFolderPath, as the code seemed to be sort of lazy-initialized, which red herringed the crud out of me. Turns out, instead of the SpecialFolder setup, I needed to use some variation on... `ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.Path` ... to make WP8 happy. Which means I really needed to abstract how I set my base directory with one more level of abstraction that checks platform. But the bottom line is that, yes, there's now an alternative to the now unsupported (?) C#-SQLite that lets you use SQL on Windows Phone 8 (link to dll in the readme displayed on that page). Sorta. ;^D File bugs, and I'll start fixing them, though the code's simple enough I think any mid-level C# coder should be able to understand what's going on pretty quickly. Labels: SqlDbSharp, windows phone posted by ruffin at 2/08/2014 08:53:00 PM

Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Spoiler: Essentially, yes -- "Must Everything Be Virtual With NHibernate?" Must Everything Be Virtual With NHibernate? - That Extra Mile: But, whenever you access any of the non-identifier members (that means properties and methods) of a proxy instance, NHibernate needs to make sure that the data of either the Customer or the Employee (depending on which one you're using) needs to be fetched from the database. So how does NHibernate do that? The proxies will override all of your properties and methods and when one of them is accessed, NHibernate will either fetch the data of the entity if it's not present yet and then proceed with the original implementation of the property or the method, or it will immediately call the original implementation if the data was already present. Wish that post had some code to show what he was talking about (that is, code that shows what the NHibernate proxy looks like), not because it's difficult to understand, but it's even easier, I think, than reading about it. I just wanted to add some methods, which seems like it shouldn't have any influence on what data's pulled at all, but, of course, you have to have pulled your data for the entity has any of its methods called. I've got to assume the NHibernate proxy just adds a wrapper of "Has data been loaded? If not, lazy-load it before you really call this method" to each method. What a boring bit of overhead, but as Brion says... There are other ORM's that don't require you to make your members virtual and they are still able to offer lazy loading features. But those ORM's usually require you to either inherit from a specified base class, or to implement one or more interfaces that the ORM will use. The overhead's coming out somewhere if you don't want to aggressively load your data. Labels: nhibernate posted by ruffin at 2/04/2014 01:52:00 PM

Is it good that WHO warns about cancer? BBC News - Cancer 'tidal wave' on horizon, warns WHO : The WHO's World Cancer Report 2014 said the major sources of preventable cancer included: Smoking Infections Alcohol Obesity and inactivity Radiation, both from the sun and medical scans Air pollution and other environmental factors Delayed parenthood, having fewer children and not breastfeeding. That's quite a list. Some of that is somewhat unavoidable, and the last 1.) I wonder if it's got its cause and effect down, and 2.) Even if it does, isn't that part of the culture that gives us the health care good enough to worry about living long enough for cancer to matter. That is, I'd like to know how old the folks are who get cancer. Look, I want to get rid of early cancer. But at some point... If you look at the BBC's graphic of where cancer is happening, it seems to correlate to the First World/capital/longer life expectancies fairly well, right? I mean, let's face hard facts: We have to die of something, right? If you live long enough, it's probably pretty likely cancer gets you. I think we're learning what the end game looks like. This doesn't mean it's not a good thing to stop smoking. And you should stop reading and go for a run right now. And we should spend serious resources fighting pollution. But thank heavens so many of us can be worried about these issues, not death from childbirth, or malaria (or other disease), or from not having enough food, or... What makes me wonder is what happens if we solve this one. At some point, we begin to confound our own creation myths. Labels: Other Stuff posted by ruffin at 2/04/2014 10:42:00 AM

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