Welcome to Nerdville

Can I be the only one who hates Microsoft Script Debugger as though it killed my own father? Despite Microsoft’s lead in the browser market (perhaps more likely due to IE’s bundling with Windows than IE’s actual superiority as a browser, but nevertheless) and their long-standing and well-respected support of the development community through things like Visual Basic, IIS/ASP, and .NET (both for standalone as well as web development), they are so far behind the mark in website debugging that it hurts.

I have become so accustomed to using the Firefox add-in “Firebug” to peek into JavaScript code that I am practically helpless without it. I remember a day when Microsoft Script Debugger used to open to the actual line of code with an error in it, but I guess those days are over (or it only works for debugging local ASP). Now clicking “Yes” on the script error dialog when asked “Do you wish to debug?” opens up Microsoft Script Debugger to some completely different script that isn’t even on my website. Very helpful.

Without being able to debug, I have to pepper all of my code across several libraries with alert() statements and just hope that I can figure out the state of affairs inside this twisted, illogical browser.

Thank you, Microsoft. I wouldn’t be nearly this unhappy if the browser you shoved down everyone’s throat was actually halfway decent.

I, personally, laughed aloud when I opened the “info” window for a PC server I was connected to yesterday.

The oh-so-familiar blue and white pattern that appears on that clunky, beige CRT monitor seals the deal on one of the cockiest inside jokes I’ve seen from the Apple developers yet. Good game!

There is such a lack of charisma and personality in your average knowledge base article. Granted, some information is very serious and calls for a staid and solemn description, but even in the absence of humor, there is always room for the comforting human touch of a skilled writer. Corporations have, for at least a decade, moved steadily away from the colloquial and into the crystal clear, yet icy and inhospitable waters of antiseptic technical writing.

Except, apparently, for Apple. Reproduced in full, for convenience:

As if it were a swarm of bees, you should stay away from the SyncServices folder in Mac OS X 10.4. Removing or modifying anything in it—or in subfolders within it—may cause unexpected issues. This folder is located in your Application Support folder, in your Library folder, in your Home folder.

Deleting or modifying things in the SyncServices folder may cause unexpected results such as:

• Duplicate contacts in Address Book or appointments in iCal.
• Data loss in Address Book or iCal.

Important: Any lost or duplicate data could propagate to other devices and computers via iSync and .Mac sync. This means data could be lost on other computers.

What would likely be considered by most businesses to be far too colloquial an expression for a technical article lends a familiarity to this information that, for me, makes it seem all the more reliable. I, like many consumers of knowledge base articles, appreciate the notion that there are human beings working behind the curtain and that they aren’t being hypnotized by corporate mind-control rays.

I appreciate Apple’s willingness to talk to its customers the way they would like to be spoken to and to achieve an effective balance between information and personality. Such practices are increasingly rare.

I like Joe’s Goals and I’m glad to see that Ian Smith is making something out of it. On top of that, I never even noticed that it was written in ColdFusion and, at the end of the day, I don’t care. Obviously someone’s choice of programming languages is like their choice of pizza toppings and people agree and disagree about those things all the time.

Of course none of that changes the fact that ColdFusion is rubbish. AJAX widgets or not, it’s based on Java, which means that it’s full of memory leaks. Why? Abysmal garbage collection (wait, it has garbage collection?) ColdFusion has some things about it that are very likable. Among them:

• Really sweet SQL query inline syntax
• Tag-based statements mingle effortlessly with HTML
• Easier to learn than Chinese checkers

Unfortunately, it’s horrendously inefficient in manipulating text, has the least consistent syntax of any language I’ve ever used (example: structkeyexists takes the arguments structure followed by key, whereas find takes the arguments substring followed by string. Why couldn’t they have put the thing you’re looking for either first or second in both cases? It’s hard to remember syntax when it’s full of exceptions), and is rife with logical oddities that you don’t find in any other language (example: the literal string “no” evaluates to false, though all other literal strings evaluate to true. The compare and comparenocase functions return some weird comparative result, so if the two strings are the same, the result is negative, which fills your code with tests like NOT comparenocase(). None of that would be necessary if the EQ operator wasn’t twice as slow as comparenocase at comparing strings. I’m glad they thought that one out fully.)

I use ColdFusion daily and I derive much pleasure from solving programming problems and implementing efficient solutions in any language, but sometimes it gets under my skin!

After reading Brian Guthrie’s article about Apple’s new iTunes non-DRM offering and the half-baked editorial from The Economist decrying this move as naive, I had to write something. First, I agree with what Brian said:

… I would go one step further and claim that, for those who are [avid downloaders], digital music has always been chiefly about convenience. I predict that the existence of a legal DRM-free method for obtaining the same, weighed against the threat of arbitrary and capricious lawsuits, will be enough to tip the scales.

I have been an enthusiastic patron of the iTunes Music Store since its inception—even despite the DRM issues—and I wholeheartedly side with Brian in his opinion that non-DRM offerings will simply sweeten the deal for those of us with absolutely no patience for buying stuff. My preference is to click some sort of a “button” and have my chosen merchandise handed to me by someone in a snappy uniform (snappy uniform optional) or, in the case of non-tangibles, download it instantly.

Furthermore, anyone who thinks that Digital Rights Management is effective or (even more frighteningly) anything less than a perversion of our legal system should read more Lawrence Lessig. For the sake of piling yet another anti-DMCA rant onto the mounting heap already gathered throughout the Internet, I will now recount a metaphor I made up while explaining DRM and the DMCA to my parents.

The biggest problem with DRM is that it stifles fair use; even though copyright law, as interpreted by Congress, should give anyone the right to manipulate copyrighted material to create what we call “derivative work,” DRM attempts to prevent that. Andy Warhol famously duplicated the ubiquitous Campbell’s Soup can as a statement about mass production and American consumerism. According to copyright law, it was (and is) completely legal for Andy Warhol to make huge silkscreen prints of the Campbell’s Soup can design because they were different enough, altered enough, to be considered “derivative.”

Now, let’s say there is some fantastical technology that could prevent people from making reproductions, photographs, copies, or otherwise duplicating the Campbell’s Soup can label. Some sort of a forcefield, perhaps. It is still within your rights to duplicate the label under the Constitutional rules of fair use (if you are duplicating it in a derivative work as described in the Constitution and in copyright law), but under the DMCA it becomes illegal to circumvent that fantastical copy protection technology.

The DMCA doesn’t protect copyrighted works. At least, not directly. The DMCA protects the technology that protects copyrighted works (chiefly Digital Rights Management), even in cases where the scope of protection created by the technology exceeds that of the copyright laws themselves. The DMCA is a clever and nefarious way to extend the reach of copyright law without actually changing a word of it.

The Economist is all wrong; DRM is worthless, music downloaders are sure to be largely made up of lazy and otherwise law-abiding people, and the new iTunes non-DRM offerings are already making my mouth water. I think being able to freely back up, restore, and play the music I buy in the way I prefer is worth a paltry $0.30.