By rernst on 2009/12/13 - 12:30pm in categories: Content Management, Releases
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After much work, I've finally been successful in upgrading this blog to Drupal 6. This is the third attempt, and the first one that wouldn't have had me editing the database to fix the bork-ups that 'upgrading' modules between versions created. All of this caused me to remember why I was hesitant to upgrade before now.
Version 6 should not have been released without a fully-functional views and cck modules, and without good documentation on what changed. Up until some months ago, the Form API reference for drupal 6 was essentially here's the 5.x version: in order to use it for 6.x here's a massive list of errata. Not acceptable.
So, close to two years later D6 has decent documentation. It felt rushed, and didn't have what it needed to be usable by a large population of developers. Drag-and-drop rearrangement of weighted items is eye candy and not enough to justify a major release that destroys backwards-compatibility.
Fortunately, version 5 is still supported with security updates. But much new module development has halted, which is very unfortunate for some. With the release of D7, 5.x will no longer be officially supported, and there are a lot of 5.x sites remaining 'in the wild'. Drupal 7 looks good, and I hope it
Yet, the code freeze for version 7 was in September. With talk of this code freeze lasting six months or more, there is promise. One year between the release of version 5 and version 6 was too soon. The lack of a functional views module on release was a big sticking point for many people, but it was not the main issue I had with D6.
BTW, There is a views 7.x development version.
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A while ago -- at approximately the same time -- Facebook and Digg both started using a 'Navigation Bar' plopped at the top of all their outgoing links. Anyone who will remember the late 90's on the web will find this tactic familiar. Why is it annoying? Because it steals traffic, that's why.
It was scummy then, and it's even scummier now. The blogosphere responded rather quickly to Digg's implementation of it: everything from a firefox addon to strip it to a greasemonkey script to automate its removal from the sites you visit.
Which is why they backed down fairly quickly.
Facebook does the same thing now. A difference is that Facebook is far more immune to criticism from their userbase. I don't know if the cause is their 'too big to fail' attitude or just general disconnect from their userbase. No matter. Back in the late 1990's we had a solution to this problem: a javascript framebreaker. One line of javascript is all it takes.
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In the past there have been several worms and viruses that block websites. Conficker is included in this list: it blocks access via the web to several major antivirus vendors' websites.
This means that there is a simple, web-based test to detect its presence:
http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html.
If you see all the images, you're not infected :).
However, this isn't the end of things: Conficker can be updated remotely, so it might soon be upgraded to subvert this test by selectively allowing traffic to this test.
Such is the game of life...
By rernst on 2009/02/16 - 1:08am in categories: Life, Social Networking, Web Applications
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If you've been online any length of time you may have come across a news article heralding the death of the wedding: fewer people are getting married and on slow news days it seems like these articles are trotted out to fill the gap. I've come across one which inexplicably starts blaming twitter in the last quarter of the article. Twitter? I don't get it... did I miss a paragraph, or was one accidentally ommitted?
The latest social networking craze, Twitter – where users send 140-character messages in real time – attracts high-profile fans from Barack Obama to Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. Discontent is growing in the ranks, however, with the English language suffering as a result. "The newbies have taken over", and "tweeple are jumping on the bandwagon" are two complaints posted on the internet, but that hasn't stopped the number of Twitterers growing exponentially – last week 600 partied in London (one of 174 such events around the globe) raising money to supply clean water to third-world countries. Organisers claim they raised £700,000. Why this desperate need to communicate utter banalities?
Oh, and Facebook. Continuing on, it blames Facebook. In another era, perhaps it would have been myspace or orkut.
I fail to see the connection. An 140 character limit is no more at fault than the general 'dumbing-down' of society through television 'news' sound-bytes, a lack of attention span and a focus on mindless materialism.
By rernst on 2009/02/11 - 4:20pm in categories: Technology
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How do you eliminate almost an entire market segment? Pretty simple, as it appears.
All you need to do is merge together the two largest competitors in the field and then have the combined company go bankrupt. Easy!
The bigger they are, the harder they fall I guess.