Coding Horror: How Not to Advertise on the Internet
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:07 am EDT, Jul 10, 2009
Apparently that ad didn't perform up to expectations at Evony world HQ, because the ads got progressively ... well, take a look for yourself. These are presented in chronological order of appearance on the internet.
With infinite eyeballs, all content on the Web approaches porn to gain attention.
Apple proposes HTTP streaming feature as protocol standard - Ars Technica
Topic: Miscellaneous
7:56 am EDT, Jul 10, 2009
[As Apple sees it the] biggest issue with RTSP is that the protocol or its necessary ports may be blocked by routers or firewall settings, preventing a device from accessing the stream. As the standard protocol for the Web, though, HTTP is generally accessible. Furthermore, no special server is required other than a standard HTTP server, which is more widely supported in content distribution networks, and more expertise in optimizing HTTP delivery is generally available than for RTSP.
Enter HTTP Live Streaming. The basic mechanics involve using software on the server to break an MPEG-2 transport stream into small chunks saved as separate files, and an extension to the .m3u playlist specification (.m3u8) to tell the client where to get the files that make up the complete stream. The media player client merely downloads and plays the small chunks in the order specified in the playlist, and in the case of a live stream, periodically refreshes the playlist to see if there have been any new chunks added to the stream.
This is in contrast to real-time streaming, as there would necessarily be a minimum latency of whatever duration the server slices the stream into (Apple refers to 10 seconds as an example). As the server encodes the video and slices it into 10 second clips, for instance, it creates or updates a playlist for the stream with the URL of the next clip. The client begins by downloading one or more of the clips, playing them in order. As one clip plays, the client begins downloading the next specified clip until it reaches a tag in the playlist that signals the end of the stream.null
This idea sits poorly with me. The whole HTTP as the new TCP/IP has lot of ramifications people often don't discuss . Given the 33% to 66% failure rate of WAFs we as an industry obviously fail at deep packet inspection. Not to mention the resource overhead of delivering audio and video on an IP/TCP/HTTP/Video stack instead of IP/UDP/RTSP stack. I'd love to see a comparison given various network conditions of latency and loss. On AT&T like the iPhone is? You know those dropped or spotty calls? Thats AT&T consistently failing to deliver you the *compressed* equivalent of a POTS line (8 bits at 8000Hz).
Ajaxian » jQuery Visualize: Updated accessible charts and graphs
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:53 pm EDT, Jul 9, 2009
Scott Jehl has released jQuery Visualize, the plugin that groks HTML tables and generates lovely charts from it, all from a simple $('table').visualize(); (lot's of options for you to twiddle too if you want).
This is damn cool!
On a side note, when will Firefox get a "right click open in Excel" for HTML tables? That is one of the only reasons I open IE anymore.
10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur
Topic: Miscellaneous
1:48 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2009
Many of the people over at BarCamp are working on/struggling with the transition from programmer to entrepreneur. WSo here’s a few observations:
-Code is 5% of your business -Design is everything, relative to the competition -Get used to thinking long term -Admit that you don’t understand the end user and rectify that -Love your customers -Remember to design for ease of use. Even advanced users like easy. -Remember to bounce your ideas off people who aren’t working on the project -Don’t be afraid to pull things out -Patience is a virtue -Treat it like you are learning to program all over
More Using 'Reply to All' To tell people to Stop replying to all
Topic: Miscellaneous
12:27 am EDT, Jul 7, 2009
Someone (incorrectly) sent an email to a huge distribution list inside of HP software asking a question (where huge is defined as > 600 employees). Now *everyone* is using "reply to all" to tell everyone to either:
1) Take them off the mailing list 2) Stop using "reply to all"
Outlooks has been hanging for 20 minutes trying to download all the messages...
Update: The pain has ended after 163 "Reply to All"'s
Update 2: Crap. Just got 13 emails from people in EMEA who are just getting into the office, seeing this, and... REPLYING TO ALL!. You'd think 170 messages in their mailboxes would be a hint... I think whats happening is they are opening Outlook, and only a few messages download before they decide to reply.
We studied the assignment scheme of Social Security numbers (SSNs) and discovered that individual SSNs can be predicted entirely from public data. Specifically, we found that it is possible to combine information from government sources with simple demographic data (such as an individual's state and date of birth, widely available from commercial databases, voter registration lists, or online social networks) to predict narrow ranges of values wherein individual SSNs are likely to fall.
